(upbeat music) >> TheCUBE presents UiPath Forward 5. Brought to you by UiPath. >> Hello and welcome back to TheCUBE's coverage of UiPath Forward 5. We're here in Las Vegas at the Venetian Convention Center. This is day two. We're wrapping up Dave Nicholson and Dave Vellante. This is the fourth time theCUBE has been at UiPath Forward. And we've seen the transformation of the company from, essentially, what was a really interesting and easy to adopt point product to now one through acquisitions, IPO, has made a number of enhancements to its platform. David Cardenas is here. Deputy Director of Operations for County of Los Angeles, the Department of Public Health. David, good to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me on guys. Appreciate it. >> So what is your role? What does it have to do with automation? >> So I had been, actually started off in the IT space within the public health. Had served as a CIO previously, but now been moving into broader operations. And I basically manage all of the back office operations for the department, HR, IT, finance, all that. >> So you've had a wild ride in the last couple of years. >> Yeah, I think, like I've been talking earlier, it's just been, the last two years have just been horrendous. It's been a really difficult experience for us. >> Yeah, and I mean, the scars are there, and maybe permanently. But it also had major effects on organizations, on operations that, again, seem to be permanent. How would you describe the situation in your organization? >> So I think it, the urgency that came along with the pandemic response, kind of required us to look at things, you know, differently. We had to be, realize we had to be a lot more nimble than when we were and try to figure out how to enhance our operations. But really look at the core of what we're doing and figure out how it is to be more efficient. So I think we've kind of seen it as an opportunity to really examine ourselves a little bit more deeply and see what things we need to do to kind of, to fix our operations and get things on a better path. >> You know, I think a lot of organizations we talked to say that. But I want to understand how you handle this is, you didn't have time to sit back in the middle of the pandemic. >> Yeah. >> And then as you exit, what I call the isolation economy, people are so burned out, you know? So how do you deal with that organizational trauma? Say, okay now, let's sit back and think about this. Do people, are they eager to do so? Do they have the appetite for it? What's that dynamic like? >> So I think certainly there's a level of exhaustion inside the organization. I can't say that there isn't because it's just been, you know, two years of 24/7/365 kind of work. And that's tough on any organization. But I think what we realize is that there's, you know, we need to move into action quickly 'cause we don't know what's going to come next, right? And we're expecting that this is just a sign of what's to come and that we're just at the start of that stage of, we're just going to see a lot more outbreaks, we're going to see a lot more conditions kind of hitting us. And if we're not prepared for that, we're not going to be able to respond for the, and preserve the health and safety of our citizens, right? So I think we're taking a very active, like, look at these opportunities and see what we've done and say how do we now make the changes that we made in response to the pandemic permanent so that the next time this comes at us, we won't have to be struggling the way that we were to try to figure things out because we'll have such a better foundation in place to be able to move things forward. >> I mean, I've never served in the military, but I imagine that when you're in the military, you're always prepared for some kind of, you know, in your world, code red, right? >> Yeah. >> So it's like this code red culture. And that seems to have carried through, right? People are, you know, constantly aware that, wow. We got caught off guard and we don't want that to happen again. Because that was a big part of the trauma was just the unknown- >> Right. >> and the lack of preparedness. So thinking about technology and its role in helping you to prepare for that type of uncertainty. Can you describe how you're applying technology to prepare for the next unknown? >> So I think, so that first part of what you said, I think the difficulty we've always had in the public health side is that there's the, generally the approach to healthcare is very reactionary, right? Your first interface with the healthcare system is, "I'm going to go see my doctor; I'm going to go to the hospital." The work that we do in public health is to try to do everything we can to keep you out of that, right? So it's broad-based messaging, social media now is going to put us out there. But also, to be able to surveil disease in a different way. And so the holy grail for us in healthcare has always been, at least on the public health side, has been to try to see how can we tap in more actively that when you go see the doctor or when you go to the hospital, how can I get access to that information very, very quickly so that I know, and can see, and surveil my entire county in my jurisdiction and know, oh, there's an outbreak of disease happening in this section of the county. We're 10 million people with, you know, hundreds of square miles inside of LA. There are places where we can see very, you know, specific targets that we know we have to hit. But the data's a little stale and we find out several months after. We need to figure out a way to do that more actively. Technology's going to be our path to be able to capture that information more actively and come up on something a little bit, so we can track things faster and be able to respond more quickly. So that's our focus for all our technology implementations, automation like UiPath has offered us and other things, is around how to gather that information more quickly and put that into action so we can do quick interventions. >> People have notoriously short memories. Please tell me (chuckles) any of the friction that you may have experienced in years past before the pandemic. That those friction points where people are thinking, "Eh, what are the odds?" >> Yeah. "Eh, I've got finite budget, I think I'm going to spend it on this thing over here." Do you, are you able to still ride sort of the wave of mind share at this point when putting programs together for the future? >> So whatever friction was there during the pandemic wiped away. I mean, we had amazing collaboration with the medical provider community, our hospital partners. The healthcare system in LA was working very closely with us to make sure that we were responding. And there is that wave that we are trying to make sure that we use this as an opportunity to kind of ride it so that we can implement all the things that we want. 'Cause we don't know how long that's going to last us. The last time that I saw anything this large was after the anthrax attacks and the bioterrorism attacks that we had after 9/11. >> How interesting. >> Public health was really in lens at that point. And we had a huge infusion of funding, a lot of support from stakeholders, both politically and within the healthcare system. And we were able to make some large steps in movement at that point. This feels the same but in a larger scale because now it touched every part of the infrastructure. And we saw how society really had to react to what was going on in a different way than anyone has ever prepared for. And so now is we think is a time where we know that people are making more investments. And our success is going to be their success in the longterm. >> And you have to know that expectations are now set- >> Extremely high. >> at a completely different level, right? >> Yes, absolutely. >> There is no, "Oh, we don't have enough PPE." >> Correct. >> Right? >> David: Correct. >> The the expectation level is, hey, you should have learned from all of- >> We should have it; we can deliver it, We'll have it at the ready when we need to provide it. Yes, absolutely. >> Okay, so I sort of mentioned, we're, David cubed on theCUBE (all laughing). So three Daves. You spoke today at the conference? >> Actually I'm speaking later actually in the session in an hour or so. >> Oh Okay. My understanding is that you've got this concept of putting humans at the center of the automation. What does that mean? Why is that important? Help us understand that. >> So I think what we found in the crisis is that the high demand for information was something we hadn't seen before, right? We're one of the largest media markets in the United States. And what we really had trouble with is trying to figure out how to serve the residents, to provide them the information that we needed to provide to them. And so what we had traditionally done is press releases, you know, just general marketing campaigns, billboards, trying to send our message out. And when you're talking about a pandemic where on a daily basis, hour-by-hour people wanted to know what was going on in their local communities. Like, we had to change the way that we focused on. So we started thinking about, what is the information that the residents of our county need? And how can we set up an infrastructure to sustain the feeding of that? Because if we can provide more information, people will make their own personal decisions around their personal risk, their personal safety measures they need to take, and do so more actively. More so than, you know, one of us going on camera to say, "This is what you should do." They can look for themselves and look at the data that's in front of them and be able to make those choices for themselves, right? And so we needed to make sure that everything that we were doing wasn't built around feeding it to our political stakeholders, which are important stakeholders. We needed to make sure that they're aware and are messaging out, and our leadership are aware. But it's what could we give the public to be able to make them have access to information that we were collecting on an every single day basis to be able to make the decisions for their lives. And so the automation was key to that. We were at the beginning of the pandemic just had tons and tons of resources that we were throwing at the problem that was, our systems were slow, we didn't have good ability to move data back and forth between our systems, and we needed a stop-gap solution to really fill that need and be able to make the data cycles to meet the data cycles. We had basically every day had to deliver reports and analytics and dashboards by like 10 o'clock in the morning because we knew that the 12 an hour and the five-hour news cycles were going to hit and the press were going to then take those and message out. And the public started to kind of come in at that same time and look at 10 and 11 o'clock and 12 o'clock. >> Yeah. >> We could see it from how many hits were hitting our website, looking for that information. So when we failed and had a cycle where that data cycle didn't work and we couldn't deliver, the public would let us know, the press would let us know, the stakeholders would let us know. We had never experienced anything like that before, right. Where people had like this voracious appetite for the information. So we needed to have a very bulletproof process to make sure that every single 24 hours we were delivering that data, making it available at the ready. >> Software robots enabled that. >> Exactly. >> Okay. And so how were you able to implement that so quickly within such a traumatic environment? >> So I think, I guess necessity is always the mother of invention. It kind of drove us to go real quickly to look at what we had. We had data entry operations set up where we had dozens and dozens of people whose sole job in life on a 24-hour cycle was to receive medical reports that we we're getting, interview data that's coming from our case interviews, hospitalization data that was coming in through all these different channels. And it was all coming in in various forms. And they were entering that into our systems of record. And that's what we were using, extracts from that system of record, what was using to generate the data analyses in our systems and our dashboards. And so we couldn't rely on those after a while because the data was coming in at such high volume. There wasn't enough data entry staff to be able to fit the need, right? And so we needed to replace those humans and take them out of that data entry cycle, pop in the bots. And so what we started to look at is, let's pick off the, where it is that that data entry cycle starts and see what we could do to kind of replace that cycle. And we started off with a very discreet workload that was focused on some of our case interview data that was being turned into PDFs that somebody was using to enter into our systems. And we said, "Well before you do that," since we can't import into the systems 'cause it wasn't working, the import utilities weren't working. We got 'em into simple Excel spreadsheets, mapped those to the fields in our systems and let the bots do that over and over again. And we just started off with that one-use case and just tuned it and went cycle after cycle. The bots just got better and better to the point where we had almost like 95% success rates on each submission of data transactions that we did every day. >> Okay, and you applied that automation, I don't know, how many bots was it roughly? >> We're now at like 30; we started with about five. >> Okay, oh, interesting. So you started with five and you applied 'em to this specific use case to handle the velocity and volume of data- >> Correct. >> that was coming in. But that's obviously dynamic and it's changed. >> Absolutely. >> I presume it's shifted to other areas now. So how did you take what you learned there and then apply it to other use cases in other parts of the organization? >> So, fortunately for us, the process that was being used to capture the information to generate the dashboards and the analyses for the case interview data, which is what we started with- >> Yeah. >> Was essentially being used the same for the hospitalization data that we were getting and for tracking deaths as they were coming in as well. And so the bots essentially were just, we just took one process, take the same bots, copy them over essentially, and had them follow the very same process. We didn't try to introduce any different workflow than what was being done for the first one so we could replicate quickly. So I think it was lucky for us a lot- >> Dave V.: I was going to say, was that luck or by design? >> It was the same people doing the same analyses, right? So in the end they were thinking about how to be efficient themselves. So they kind of had coalesced around a similar process. And so it was kind of like fortunate, but it was by design in terms of how they- >> Dave V.: It was logical to them. >> Logical to them to make it. >> Interesting. >> So for us to be able to insert the bots became pretty easy on the front end. It's just now as we're trying to now expand to other areas that were now encountering like unique processes that we just can't replicate that quickly. We're having to like now dig into. >> So how are you handling that? First of all, how are you determining which processes? Is it sort of process driven? Is it data driven? How do you determine that? >> So obviously right now the focus still is COVID. So the the priorities scale that we've set internally for analyzing those opportunities really is centered around, you know, which things are really going to help our pandemic response, right? We're expecting another surge that's going to happen probably in the next couple of weeks. That'll probably take us through December. Hopefully, at that point, things start to calm down. But that means high-data volume again; these same process. So we're looking at optimizing the processes that we have, what can we do to make those cycles better, faster, you know, what else can we add? The data teams haven't stopped to try to figure out how else can they turn out new data reports, new data analysis, to give us a different perspective on the new variants and the new different outbreaks and hotspots that are popping up. And so we also have to kind of keep up with where they're going on these data dashboards. So they're adding more data into these reports so we know we have to optimize that. And then there's these kind of tangential work. So for example, COVID brought about, unfortunately, a lot of domestic violence reports. And so we have a lot of domestic violence agencies that we work with and that we have interactions with and to monitor their work, we have certain processes. So that's kind of like COVID-adjacent. But it's because it's such a very critical task, we're looking at how we can kind of help in those processes and areas. Same thing in like in our substance abuse area. We have substance use disorder treatment services that we provide. And we're delivering those at a higher rate because COVID kind of created more of a crisis than we would've liked. And so that's how we're prioritizing. It's really about what is the social need, what does the community need, and how can we put the technology work in those areas? >> So how do you envision the future of automation in your organization and the future of your organization? What does that look like? Paint a picture for us. >> So I'm hoping that it really does, you know, so we're going to take everything that's COVID related in the disease control areas, both in terms of our laboratory operations, in terms of our clinic operations, the way we respond, vaccination campaigns, things of that nature. And we're going to look at it to see what can efficiencies can we do there because it's a natural outgrowth of everything we've done on COVID up to this point. So, you know, it's almost like it's as simple as you're just replicating it with another disease. The disease might have different characteristics, but the work process that we follow is very similar. It's not like we're going to change everything and do something completely different for a respiratory condition as we would for some other type of foodborne condition or something else that might happen. So we certainly see very easy opportunities to just to grow out what we've already done in terms of the processes is to do that. So that's wave one, is really focus on that grow out. The second piece I think is to look at these kind of other general kind of community-based type of operations and see what operations we can do there to kind of implement some improvements there. And then I'm certainly in my new role of, in Deputy Director of Operation, I'm a CIO before. Now that I'm in this operations role, I have access to the full administrative apparatus for the department. And believe me, there's enough to keep me busy there. (Dave V. Laughing) And so that's going to be kind of my third prong is to kind of look at the implement there. >> Awesome. Go ahead, Dave. >> Yeah, so, this is going to be taking a step back, kind of a higher level view. If we could direct the same level of rigor and attention towards some other thing that we've directed towards COVID, if you could snap your fingers and make that happen, what would that thing be in the arena of public health in LA County in particular, or if you want California, United States. What is something that you feel maybe needs more attention that it's getting right now? >> So I think I touched on it a little bit earlier, but I think it's the thing we've been always been trying to get to is how to really become just very intentional about how we share data more actively, right? I don't have to know everything about you, but there are certain things I care about when you go to the doctor for that doctor and that physician to tell me. Our physicians, our healthcare system as you know, is always under a lot of pressure. Doctors don't have the time to sit down and write a form out for me and tell me everything that's going on. During COVID they did because they were, they cared about their patients so much and knew, I need to know what's going on at every single moment. And if I don't tell you what's going on in my office, you'll never know and can't tell us what's going on in the community. So they had a vested interest in telling us. But on a normal day-to-day, they don't have the time for that. I got to replace that. We got to make sure that when we get to, not me only, but everyone in this public health community has to be focused and working with our healthcare partners to automate the dissemination and the distribution of information so that I have the information at my fingers, that I can then tell you, "Here's what's going on in your local community," down to your neighborhood, down to your zip code, your census tracked, down to your neighbors' homes. We'll be able to tell you, "This is your risk. Here are the things that are going on. This is what you have to watch out for." And the more that we can be more that focused and laser-focused on meeting that goal, we will be able to do our job more effectively. >> And you can do that while preserving people's privacy. >> Privacy, absolutely. >> Yeah, absolutely. But if people are informed then they can make their own decisions. >> Correct. >> And they're not frustrated at the systems. David, we got to wrap. >> Sure. >> But maybe you can help us. What's your impression of the, first of all, is this your first Forward? You've been to others? >> This is my first time. >> Okay. >> My first time. >> What's your sort of takeaway when you go back to the office or home and people say, "Hey, how was the show? What, what'd you learn?" What are you going to say? >> Well, from just seeing all the partners here and kind of seeing all the different events I've been able to go to and the sessions there's, you don't know many times I've gone to and say, "We've got to be doing that." And so there's certainly these opportunities for, you know, more AI, more automation opportunities that we have not, we just haven't even touched on really. I think that we really need to do that. I have to be able to, as a public institution at some point our budgets get capped. We only have so much that we're going to receive. Even riding this wave, there's only so much we're going to be able to get. So we have to be very efficient and use our resources more. There's a lot more that we can do with AI, a lot more with the tools that we saw, some of the work product that are coming out at this conference that we think we can directly apply to kind of take the humans out of that, their traditional roles, get them doing higher level work so I can get the most out of them and have this other more mundane type of work, just have the systems just do it. I don't need anybody doing that necessarily, that work. I need to be able to leverage them for other higher level capabilities. >> Well thank you for that. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and really appreciate. Dave- >> It's been great talking to you guys, thank you. >> Dave, you know, I love software shows because the business impact is so enormous and I especially love cool software shows. You know, this first of all, the venue. 3,500 people here. Very cool venue. I like the fact that it's not like booth in your face, booth competition. I mean I love VMware, VMworld, VMware Explore. But it's like, "My booth is bigger than your booth." This is really nice and clean, and it's all about the experience. >> A lot of steak, not as much sizzle. >> Yeah, definitely. >> A lot of steak. >> And the customer content at the UiPath events is always outstanding. But we are entering a new era for UiPath, and we're talking. We heard a lot about the Enterprise platform. You know, the big thing is this company's been in this quarterly shock-lock since last April when it went public. And it hasn't all been pretty. And so new co-CEO comes in, they've got, you know, resetting priorities around financials, go to market, they've got to have profitable growth. So watching that that closely. But also product innovation so the co-CEOs will be able to split that up, split their duties up. Daniel Dines the product visionary, product guru. Rob Enslin, you know- making the operations work. >> Operations execution business, yeah. >> We heard that Carl Eschenbach did the introduction. Carl's a major operator, wanted that DNA into the company. 'Cause they got to keep product innovation. And I want to, I want to see R&D spending, stay relatively high. >> Product innovation, but under the heading of platform. And that's the key thing is just not being that tool set. The positioning has been, I think, accurate that, you know, over history, we started with these RPA tools and now we've moved into business process automation and now we're moving into new frontiers where, where truly, AI and ML are being leveraged. I love the re-infer story about going in and using natural national (chuckles) national, natural language processing. I can't even say it, to go through messaging. That's sort of a next-level of intelligence to be able to automate things that couldn't be automated before. So that whole platform story is key. And they seem to have made a pretty good case for their journey into platform as far as I'm concerned. >> Well, yeah, to me again. So it's always about the customers, want to come to an event like this, you listen to what they say in the keynotes and then you listen to what the customers say. And there's a very strong alignment in the UiPath community between, you know, the marketing and the actual implementation. You know, marketing's always going to be ahead. But, we saw this a couple of years ago with platform. And now we're seeing it, you know, throughout the customer base, 10,000+ customers. I think this company could have, you know, easily double, tripled, maybe even 10x that. All right, we got to wrap. Dave Nicholson, thank you. Two weeks in a row. Good job. And let's see. Check out siliconangle.com for all the news. Check out thecube.net; wikibon.com has the research. We'll be on the road as usual. theCUBE, you can follow us. UiPath Forward 5, Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. We're out and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everyone to this CUBE coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We have a lot going on at this year's re:Invent with over 100 guests on the program, and I'm excited to welcome two of those guests here with me right now. We are joined by Ralph Munsen, the Chief Information Officer at Warner Music Group and Atif Khan, the CTO of Alkira and founder of Alkira as well. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. So glad to be here with you. >> Good to be here. >> Yeah. Good old fashioned Zoom is become our best friend in the last 22 months or so I'm losing count. Atif, I'd like to start with you. I know Alkira has been on the key before, but it's been a while and you guys are a relatively young company. Give the audience an overview of Alkira and what it is that you deliver. >> Absolutely, Lisa. So we started back in may of 2018, and the Cloud networking space, multicloud networking. And we came out of stealth mode back in April of 2020, and launched the company. In fact, one of our first events coming out of stealth mode was a Cuban interview back in April of 2020. So here at Telecare, what we are doing is we are building a Cloud platform, which allows customers to build a common network across multiple Clouds with built-in network and security services, with the policy and management layer on top full end to end visibility and governance capabilities. And all of this is delivered as a service and consumed as a service as well. And I'm very glad to be here with Ralph, who is from Warner Music Group and is one of our marquee customers. So I'll let Ralph introduce himself, and tell us a bit more about Alkira and WMTS Cloud journey. >> That sounds great. Ralph, why don't you start by giving the audience? I'm sure everyone knows Warner Music Group, but in case there's anyone out there that might not. Give us a little bit of a background. >> Yeah, so the Warner Music Group has been around since 1950 and 1940 even it had its roots at Hollywood and out of Warner Brothers Pictures, Today, say global company in 79 countries we operated. If the 100 employees and we have two major divisions, we have our era recorded music division, which has the labels people commonly turn to Atlantic records, Warner brothers records, and so forth. And then we have our publishing division, which is more a chapel, which is where our songwriters live. And of course we have some singer songwriters that are on both sides of our business. But now currently people may know our artists. We have ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Cardi B, Blake Shelton and I could go on and on. But exciting, great year, we're having one of our best years ever. And I'm so glad to be here and partnering with an Alkira. >> Excellent. I love all of those artists that you mentioned. Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit now Ralph about the backstory. Talk to me about the IT infrastructure at Warner Music Group, what you had there and some of the challenges that you had that you came to Alkira to solve. >> Yeah, well initially when I took over about five years ago now, we were very much a data center based business with traditional networking and IT functions. Additionally with our foreign affiliates, IT was sort of decentralized in the sense that a lot of the networking and data center components were left to regions. And so while we operated globally, we didn't really operate globally, at Warner among our affiliates. So one of the challenges was how do we get out of the data center? Cloud was new. One of the big things that were coming with big data, which is absolutely right for moving, going straight to the Cloud, especially if you don't have anything on-prem and how do we rationalize all of these different locations and conduct all the M&A work we've been doing? So it was quite a challenge, really. At the end, we wanted to have one view of the network, and Alkira. I looked at many a company and Alkira seemed the best to provide that to us. So. >> Well, talk to me a little bit more about why Alkira, because as Atif was saying, they're very young. What came out of stealth mode during the pandemic Warner Music Group, being around since the 40s and 50s, the legacy institution, a great brand. What made you take a risk on such an early stage startup? >> Quite frankly, there was nothing in the space (chuckles) at the time you loved, there were companies that had components of it, of what Alkira does, which is basically network orchestration allowing us to use existing components. And nobody has the whole package, especially incorporating security. So, we figured why not take, take a chance? There's no, it won't hurt you no harm. And if anything is successful, it will give us a great ability to manage our network, much more efficiently taking things that took days down to hours and being able to do it much more efficiently with much fewer staff, as opposed to hiring a lot more because when you orchestrate all the components that are underneath, obviously it requires more bodies, more resources. >> Right. That efficiency and cost optimization is key there. Atif I have to ask you, talk to me about, this is only a few years ago, the gap in the market that you and your brothers saw a few years ago, when you founded the company, because as Rob was saying, there was nobody else in the market at the time that could do what you're doing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So Lisa, as you know, myself and Amir, we were also a part of the founding team of Viptela, which was the SD-WAN Company. So back in the day when we did SD-WAN, the requirement was to connect sites together. So if you go back like 5, 10, 5, 7, 10 years ago, networking was done to connect sites together, which could be remote sites, data centers, sites to data centers, all of that together. But fast forward, a few more years with the adoption of Cloud, requirements changed from the networking perspective. So now your network is not just connecting sites together, but most of the traffic now is from sites or users, which could be sitting anywhere. If you look at, what's going on? in the pandemic people are working from all across the globe. They are not just sitting in campuses or sites. So traffic patterns are from sites or users mostly to the Cloud or SaaS applications. So now networks also need to evolve and they need to be built inside the Cloud rather than from outside or connecting into the Cloud. So Cloud access is one capability, but building a network inside the Cloud becomes a requirement. And secondly, now it's not just only about connectivity because security becomes even more important because your security perimeter is changing as well. So securing all these Cloud networks becomes very, very complicated. And now as Ralph can tell you, majority of the enterprises have a multicloud strategy and each Cloud is done differently. So the moment you bring in multiple Clouds, multiple regions across the globe, it becomes so complicated for enterprises to build and manage. They need something, or a platform which makes it easy, gives them one way of doing networking, building a common network across whether you're connecting multiple Clouds or Clouds to your on-prem locations or Clouds to internet or sites to internet. So that's where we saw this gap and we decided to build Alkira to tackle this problem. >> Got it. So Rob, let's talk now about what you've implemented as a team was saying we live in this, in this work from anywhere hybrid multicloud world. Talk to us about Warner, what you implemented and maybe a little bit about your multicloud strategy, if you've got one. >> Ralph: Yeah. So over the last five years, Warner has migrated entirely into Cloud. And to this point before it's multicloud, we're mainly in AWS, but we do have some pleasure and some Google Cloud. And with that, I was telling Atif and Amir. It was interesting and they built a Cloud on site. They totally forgot about the networking aspect. So (laughs), you have ease of use for services and servers inside (indistinct) cloud, but networking is not really present, not to mention when it was built out, it wasn't made to go to competing Clouds. So most companies are facing this problem. How do you treat these environments as a single holistic environment? How do you turn things up, turn things down? How do you secure it, When every single one is different habits, selling unique ways of doing things? So that really was, how we ended up looking for an out Alkira, because I just kept looking at the costs and the profit print grow and grow and grow. And the complexity to a (indistinct) before is growing exponential. One change in one thing would lead to two changes to another. If you add another Cloud or you add another point on the network, you've got exponential growth and complexity, complexity, you have to deal with. So one stop shop. (chuckles) >> One stop shop and reducing that complexity. Talk to me about reducing complexity, and what you're accomplishing there. Especially, in the last year and a half as things have been so dynamic, shall we say? (chuckles) >> Yeah, well, I will say this. It was turnkey for the most part. It took a matter of months as opposed to years, because out of the box, there was a lot of integrations with the major network of players. So as of right now, you can buy firewalls, routing, VPC, things like this, they all exist, but they're not orchestrated together. Right? And then you have policies and security, again not orchestrating a different set of tools. So it really only took us two to three months to get it up and running, I acts, I just had a conversation (chuckles) with them when we were going to finish. So I think we'll be finishing this up completely in January and sometime. So, I was pretty sure. >> LISA: That's fantastic. So really, >> Yeah. >> Sorry Relaph fast time to market there with getting things implemented. Talk to me about from a business outcome perspective, you are CIO, what are some of the outcomes? That this technology is enabling you to deliver back to the business? >> Yeah, it really, the number 1, 2 big ones come to mind. One being able to provide them a secure enterprise. I know when there is the change it's made uniforms for our network without, some of older something's being forgotten about. So that's number one, security is big. You can imagine a company like more ever marquee brands, all brands, any company of marquee brands are targets today. That's number one. Number two is our time to market for eminent. So when we buy a company the time it takes us to get them to be completely part of Warner and therefore start realizing the business case and benefits sort of reasonably bought. Bought the company to begin with. So, we're buying a lot more and we're turning them up and turning those business cases up faster. But usually those cases would say things like six months to a year to integrate with us, and then we can unlock the set of benefits. Now it's more like, two to three months and you start to be able to lock the benefits sooner. And of course, those are different than a case by case basis, but that's. >> Sure, but significantly faster there, you're looking at a two to three X multiplier there, as you talked about. >> Ralph: right. >> Now, you mentioned multicloud Ralph. So here we are at re:Invent. I imagine part of your AWS as part of your Cloud infrastructure and they're a technology partner of ALkira's. >> Ralph: Correct. Yeah. So AWS is actually our biggest Cloud provider of the three, and yeah (laugh) they're their partner without cure. So Good. >> And Atif then you, Alkira's technology partner of AWS, correct? >> Yeas. Alkira is a technology partner of AWS, we are also available on AWS marketplace. So customers can consume, AlKira's platform from AWS marketplace as well. >> But given the fact that so many businesses in every industry are multicloud, I assume that you work with all the Cloud vendors. Atif Yeah? >> Absolutely. So our platform runs inside of the Cloud and runs in AWS is a Cloud as well. And from there it connects to multiple Clouds. So if customers need to connect to Azure or AWS from there or Oracle Cloud or any other Cloud, for that matter, they can connect from our platform and our platform is it scales horizontally. So as customers needs scale, it scales as well. And one of the key advantages is, it's consumed as a service. So there's no software to download or hardware to run for or to acquire for any of the customers. It's a software solution and it's consumed as a service. >> Got it. Ralph one on one more question for you before we wrap things up here, want to get your recommendations for IT Executives, CEOs, who might be in a similar situation to you, whether or not they are with a legacy organization, what are some of your recommendations that you say you need to be looking at a, B and C? >> Yeah, I would primarily say really need to be looking at some of these newer technologies that can help speed up, people, especially in this case to transition to the Cloud and that planning ahead of time, especially goal-setting, I find to be it's any of these places, providers is absolutely Paramount, because you can, if you don't make your own (indistinct) take that step forward and you can end up with shelter. So I make sure that it's very important that when you commit to that, you commit fully, you plan it out and you make sure you actually use it to get the benefits. One of my tech key is software. So. (chuckles) (Lisa Laughing) I'm a bit of it so. >> Well, you've been there and It costs a lot of money and it doesn't do any good. It doesn't move the business forward. And in this day and age, there is a competitor right behind the rear view mirror who might be smaller, more nimble, and more agile, who can take your place easily. >> Absolutely. >> If the organization isn't willing to take the risks and commit, as you said, Atif last question over for you, where are the customers go to learn more? I know you are at re:Invent your booth 1628, but what do you recommend folks go attendees of the event, as well as just other prospects to go to learn more about what you guys are delivering for companies like Warner Music Group. >> So if you're at re:Invent, please stop by our booth. And one of our Cloud specialists will give you a demo as well. So it's a very quick demo and you'll see, how we are reinventing networking for the Cloud narrow. You can also go to our website and you'll find a lot of information on our website. You can request a demo there as well. So look forward to seeing most of you at our booth and those who are not attending in person, please go visit our website. >> Lisa: Reinventing Networking. I like your play on words. They are Atif very appropriate. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today talking about Alkira, Warner Music Group, what you guys are doing together and how this new early stage technology is really quite transformative. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> For Ralph Munsen and Atif Khan, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. Thanks for watching. (soft techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome everyone to this CUBE coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We have a lot going on at this year's re:Invent with over 100 guests on the program, and I'm excited to welcome two of those guests here with me right now. We are joined by Ralph Munsen, the Chief Information Officer at Warner Music Group and Atif Khan, the CTO of Alkira and founder of Alkira as well. Gentlemen, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. So glad to be here with you. >> Good to be here. >> Yeah. Good old fashioned Zoom is become our best friend in the last 22 months or so I'm losing count. Atif, I'd like to start with you. I know Alkira has been on the key before, but it's been a while and you guys are a relatively young company. Give the audience an overview of Alkira and what it is that you deliver. >> Absolutely, Lisa. So we started back in may of 2018, and the Cloud networking space, multicloud networking. And we came out of stealth mode back in April of 2020, and launched the company. In fact, one of our first events coming out of stealth mode was a Cuban interview back in April of 2020. So here at Telecare, what we are doing is we are building a Cloud platform, which allows customers to build a common network across multiple Clouds with built-in network and security services, with the policy and management layer on top full end to end visibility and governance capabilities. And all of this is delivered as a service and consumed as a service as well. And I'm very glad to be here with Ralph, who is from Warner Music Group and is one of our marquee customers. So I'll let Ralph introduce himself, and tell us a bit more about Alkira and WMTS Cloud journey. >> That sounds great. Ralph, why don't you start by giving the audience? I'm sure everyone knows Warner Music Group, but in case there's anyone out there that might not. Give us a little bit of a background. >> Yeah, so the Warner Music Group has been around since 1950 and 1940 even it had its roots at Hollywood and out of Warner Brothers Pictures, Today, say global company in 79 countries we operated. If the 100 employees and we have two major divisions, we have our era recorded music division, which has the labels people commonly turn to Atlantic records, Warner brothers records, and so forth. And then we have our publishing division, which is more a chapel, which is where our songwriters live. And of course we have some singer songwriters that are on both sides of our business. But now currently people may know our artists. We have ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Coldplay, Cardi B, Blake Shelton and I could go on and on. But exciting, great year, we're having one of our best years ever. And I'm so glad to be here and partnering with an Alkira. >> Excellent. I love all of those artists that you mentioned. Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit now Ralph about the backstory. Talk to me about the IT infrastructure at Warner Music Group, what you had there and some of the challenges that you had that you came to Alkira to solve. >> Yeah, well initially when I took over about five years ago now, we were very much a data center based business with traditional networking and IT functions. Additionally with our foreign affiliates, IT was sort of decentralized in the sense that a lot of the networking and data center components were left to regions. And so while we operated globally, we didn't really operate globally, at Warner among our affiliates. So one of the challenges was how do we get out of the data center? Cloud was new. One of the big things that were coming with big data, which is absolutely right for moving, going straight to the Cloud, especially if you don't have anything on-prem and how do we rationalize all of these different locations and conduct all the M&A work we've been doing? So it was quite a challenge, really. At the end, we wanted to have one view of the network, and now Alkira. I looked at many of companies and I'm curious in the best to provide that to us. So. >> Well, talk to me a little bit more about why Alkira, because as Atif was saying, they're very young. What came out of stealth mode during the pandemic Warner Music Group, being around since the 40s and 50s, the legacy institution, a great brand. What made you take a risk on such an early stage startup? >> Quite frankly, there was nothing in the space (chuckles) at the time you loved, there were companies that had components of it, of what Alkira does, which is basically network orchestration allowing us to use existing components. And nobody has the whole package, especially incorporating security. So, we figured why not take, take a chance? There's no, it won't hurt you no harm. And if anything is successful, it will give us a great ability to manage our network, much more efficiently taking things that took days down to hours and being able to do it much more efficiently with much fewer staff, as opposed to hiring a lot more because when you orchestrate all the components that are underneath, obviously it requires more bodies, more resources. >> Right. That efficiency and cost optimization is key there. Atif I have to ask you, talk to me about, this is only a few years ago, the gap in the market that you and your brothers saw a few years ago, when you founded the company, because as Rob was saying, there was nobody else in the market at the time that could do what you're doing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So Lisa, as you know, myself and Amir, we were also a part of the founding team of Viptela, which was the SD-WAN Company. So back in the day when we did SD-WAN, the requirement was to connect sites together. So if you go back like 5, 10, 5, 7, 10 years ago, networking was done to connect sites together, which could be remote sites, data centers, sites to data centers, all of that together. But fast forward, a few more years with the adoption of Cloud, requirements changed from the networking perspective. So now your network is not just connecting sites together, but most of the traffic now is from sites or users, which could be sitting anywhere. If you look at, what's going on? in the pandemic people are working from all across the globe. They are not just sitting in campuses or sites. So traffic patterns are from sites or users mostly to the Cloud or SaaS applications. So now networks also need to evolve and they need to be built inside the Cloud rather than from outside or connecting into the Cloud. So Cloud access is one capability, but building a network inside the Cloud becomes a requirement. And secondly, now it's not just only about connectivity because security becomes even more important because your security perimeter is changing as well. So securing all these Cloud networks becomes very, very complicated. And now as Ralph can tell you, majority of the enterprises have a multicloud strategy and each Cloud is done differently. So the moment you bring in multiple Clouds, multiple regions across the globe, it becomes so complicated for enterprises to build and manage. They need something, or a platform which makes it easy, gives them one way of doing networking, building a common network across whether you're connecting multiple Clouds or Clouds to your on-prem locations or Clouds to internet or sites to internet. So that's where we saw this gap and we decided to build Alkira to tackle this problem. >> Got it. So Rob, let's talk now about what you've implemented as a team was saying we live in this, in this work from anywhere hybrid multicloud world. Talk to us about Warner, what you implemented and maybe a little bit about your multicloud strategy, if you've got one. >> Ralph: Yeah. So over the last five years, Warner has migrated entirely into Cloud. And to this point before it's multicloud, we're mainly in AWS, but we do have some pleasure and some Google Cloud. And with that, I was telling Atif and Amir. It was interesting and they built a Cloud on site. They totally forgot about the networking aspect. So (laughs), you have ease of use for services and servers inside (indistinct) cloud, but networking is not really present, not to mention when it was built out, it wasn't made to go to competing Clouds. So most companies are facing this problem. How do you treat these environments as a single holistic environment? How do you turn things up, turn things down? How do you secure it, When every single one is different habits, selling unique ways of doing things? So that really was, how we ended up looking for an out Alkira, because I just kept looking at the costs and the profit print grow and grow and grow. And the complexity to a (indistinct) before is growing exponential. One change in one thing would lead to two changes to another. If you add another Cloud or you add another point on the network, you've got exponential growth and complexity, complexity, you have to deal with. So one stop shop. (chuckles) >> One stop shop and reducing that complexity. Talk to me about reducing complexity, and what you're accomplishing there. Especially, in the last year and a half as things have been so dynamic, shall we say? (chuckles) >> Yeah, well, I will say this. It was turnkey for the most part. It took a matter of months as opposed to years, because out of the box, there was a lot of integrations with the major network of players. So as of right now, you can buy firewalls, routing, VPC, things like this, they all exist, but they're not orchestrated together. Right? And then you have policies and security, again not orchestrating a different set of tools. So it really only took us two to three months to get it up and running, I acts, I just had a conversation (chuckles) with them when we were going to finish. So I think we'll be finishing this up completely in January and sometime. So, I was pretty sure. >> LISA: That's fantastic. So really, >> Yeah. >> Sorry Relaph fast time to market there with getting things implemented. Talk to me about from a business outcome perspective, you are CIO, what are some of the outcomes? That this technology is enabling you to deliver back to the business? >> Yeah, it really, the number 1, 2 big ones come to mind. One being able to provide them a secure enterprise. I know when there is the change it's made uniforms for our network without, some of older something's being forgotten about. So that's number one, security is big. You can imagine a company like more ever marquee brands, all brands, any company of marquee brands are targets today. That's number one. Number two is our time to market for eminent. So when we buy a company the time it takes us to get them to be completely part of Warner and therefore start realizing the business case and benefits sort of reasonably bought. Bought the company to begin with. So, we're buying a lot more and we're turning them up and turning those business cases up faster. But usually those cases would say things like six months to a year to integrate with us, and then we can unlock the set of benefits. Now it's more like, two to three months and you start to be able to lock the benefits sooner. And of course, those are different than a case by case basis, but that's. >> Sure, but significantly faster there, you're looking at a two to three X multiplier there, as you talked about. >> Ralph: right. >> Now, you mentioned multicloud Ralph. So here we are at re:Invent. I imagine part of your AWS as part of your Cloud infrastructure and they're a technology partner of ALkira's. >> Ralph: Correct. Yeah. So AWS is actually our biggest Cloud provider of the three, and yeah (laugh) they're their partner without cure. So Good. >> And Atif then you, Alkira's technology partner of AWS, correct? >> Yeas. Alkira is a technology partner of AWS, we are also available on AWS marketplace. So customers can consume, AlKira's platform from AWS marketplace as well. >> But given the fact that so many businesses in every industry are multicloud, I assume that you work with all the Cloud vendors. Atif Yeah? >> Absolutely. So our platform runs inside of the Cloud and runs in AWS is a Cloud as well. And from there it connects to multiple Clouds. So if customers need to connect to Azure or AWS from there or Oracle Cloud or any other Cloud, for that matter, they can connect from our platform and our platform is it scales horizontally. So as customers needs scale, it scales as well. And one of the key advantages is, it's consumed as a service. So there's no software to download or hardware to run for or to acquire for any of the customers. It's a software solution and it's consumed as a service. >> Got it. Ralph one on one more question for you before we wrap things up here, want to get your recommendations for IT Executives, CEOs, who might be in a similar situation to you, whether or not they are with a legacy organization, what are some of your recommendations that you say you need to be looking at a, B and C? >> Yeah, I would primarily say really need to be looking at some of these newer technologies that can help speed up, people, especially in this case to transition to the Cloud and that planning ahead of time, especially goal-setting, I find to be it's any of these places, providers is absolutely Paramount, because you can, if you don't make your own (indistinct) take that step forward and you can end up with shelter. So I make sure that it's very important that when you commit to that, you commit fully, you plan it out and you make sure you actually use it to get the benefits. One of my tech key is software. So. (chuckles) (Lisa Laughing) I'm a bit of it so. >> Well, you've been there and It costs a lot of money and it doesn't do any good. It doesn't move the business forward. And in this day and age, there is a competitor right behind the rear view mirror who might be smaller, more nimble, and more agile, who can take your place easily. >> Absolutely. >> If the organization isn't willing to take the risks and commit, as you said, Atif last question over for you, where are the customers go to learn more? I know you are at re:Invent your booth 1628, but what do you recommend folks go attendees of the event, as well as just other prospects to go to learn more about what you guys are delivering for companies like Warner Music Group. >> So if you're at re:Invent, please stop by our booth. And one of our Cloud specialists will give you a demo as well. So it's a very quick demo and you'll see, how we are reinventing networking for the Cloud narrow. You can also go to our website and you'll find a lot of information on our website. You can request a demo there as well. So look forward to seeing most of you at our booth and those who are not attending in person, please go visit our website. >> Lisa: Reinventing Networking. I like your play on words. They are Atif very appropriate. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today talking about Alkira, Warner Music Group, what you guys are doing together and how this new early stage technology is really quite transformative. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> For Ralph Munsen and Atif Khan, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. Thanks for watching. (soft techno music)

(music) >> Live from Orlado, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. and theCube's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone, to theCube's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite. Happy hour has started. The crowd is roaring. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Thomas LaRock. >> He is the Head Geek at SolarWinds. Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thanks for having me. >> Great title: Head Geek >> Yes. >> So, tell our viewers a little bit about what - tell us about SolarWinds and also about what you do. >> SolarWinds is a company that offers about forty different products to help with your enterprise infrastructure monitoring. Really unify management of your systems. Been in the business for about twenty years and I've been with them for about eight now. Head Geek is really, uh, you can equate it to being a technical evangelist. >> Okay. So you're out there trying to win the hearts and minds, trying to tell everyone what you do. >> Yes, I need you all to love me. (laughing) and love my products. >> So, Thomas, and for those who don't already follow you on Twitter, you're a SQL rockstar. >> Yes, yes [Stu] - I need to say, "thank you," because you helped connect me with a lot of the community here, especially on the data side of the house. You and I have known each other for a bunch of years. You're a Microsoft MVP. So maybe give us a little bit of community aspect: what it means to be a Microsoft MVP for those who don't know. You're an evangelist in this space and you've been on this show many times. >> I usually don't talk about myself a lot, but sure. (Rebecca laughing) Let's go for it. I've been a Microsoft data platform MVP for about 10 year now. And it was intresting when you reached out, looking to get connected. I was kind of stunned by how many people I actually knew or knew how to get in touch with for you. I help you line up, I guess, a handful of people to be on the show because you were telling me you hadn't been here at Microsoft Ignite and I just thought, "well I know people," and they should know Stu, and we should get them connected so that you guys can have some good conversations. But, yeah, it's been a wild ride for me those ten years where Microsoft awards people MVP designation. It's kind of being an evangelist for Microsoft and some of the great stuff that they've been doing over the past ten years. >> It's a phenomenal program. Most people in the technology industry know the Microsoft MVP program. I was a Vmware expert for a number of years. Many of the things were patterned off of that. John Troyer is a friend of mine. He said that was one the things he looked at. Sytrics has programs like this. Many of the vendors here have evangelists or paragons showing that technology out here. Alight. So talk a little bit about community. Talk about database space. Data and databases have been going through such, you know, explosion of what's going on out there, right? SQL's still around. It's not all cosmos and, you know, microservices-based, cloud, native architecture. >> So the SQL Server box product is still around, but what I think is more amazing to me has been the evalution of...Let's take for example, one of the announcements today, the big data cluster. So, it's essentially a container that's going to run SQL servers, Spark and Hadoop, all in one. Basically, a pod that will get deployed by kubernetes. When you wrap all that together, what you start to realize is that the pattern that Microsoft has been doing for the past few years, which is, essentially, going to where the people are. What I mean is: you have in the open-source world, you have people and developers that have embraced things like DevOps much faster than what the Windows developers have been doing. So instead of taking your time trying to drag all these people where you want them to be, they've just start building all the cool stuff where all the cool kids already are, and everybody's just going to gravitate. Data has gravity, right? So, you're building these things, and people are going to follow it. Now, it's not that they're expecting to sell a billion dollars woth of licenses. No. They just need to be a part of the conversation. So if you're a company that's using those technologies, now all of a sudden, it's like, this is an option. Are you interested in it? Microsoft is the company that's best poised to bring enterprises to the cloud. Amazon has a huge share. We all know that, but Microsoft's already that platform of choice for these enterprises. Microsoft is going to be the one to help them get to the cloud. [Stu]- Thomas, Explain what you mean by that because the strength I look at Microsoft is look, they've got your application. Business productivity: that's where they are. Apologize for cutting you off there. Is that what you mean? The applications are changing and you trusted Microsoft and the application and therefore, that's a vendor of choice. >> Absolutely. If it's already your vendor of choice then, I don't want to say, "Lock in," but if it's already your preference and if they can help get to the cloud, or in the hybrid situation or just lift and shift and just get there, then that's the one you going to want to do it. Everything they're building and all the services they're providing... At the end of the day, they and Amazon, they're the new electric company. They want data. That's the electricity. They don't care how you get it, but between... even Vmware. Between Amazon, Vmware and Microsoft, they're going to be the ones to help... They're going to be your infrastructure companies. Microsoft-managed desktop now. We'll manage your laptop for you. >> Everything that they're doing essentially like, don't even need my own IT department. Microsoft's going to be the largest MSP in history, right? That's where they're headed. They're going to manage everything for you. The data part of it, of course for me, I just love talking about data. But the data part of it...Data is essential to everything we do. It's all about the data. They're doing their best to manage it and secure it. Security is a huge thing. There were some security announcements today as well, which were awesome. The advanced threat detection, the protection that they have. I'm always amazed when I walk through the offering they have for SQL injection protection. I try and ask people, "Who's right now monitoring for SQL injection?" And they're like, "We're not doing that." For fifteen dollars a month, you could do this for your servers. They're like, "that's amazing what they're offerening." Why wouldn't you want that as a service? Why wouldn't you sign-up tomorrow for this stuff? So, I get excited about it. I think all this stuff they're building is great. The announcements today were great. I think they have more coming out over the next couple days. Or at least in the sessions, we'll start seeing a lot of hands-on stuff. I'm excited for it. >> So when you were talking about Microsoft being the automatic vendor of choice. Why wouldn't you? You treated it as a no brainer. What does Microsoft need to do to make sure customers feel that way too? >> I think Microsoft is going to do that... How I would do that. A couple ways. One, at the end of the day, Microsoft wants what we all want, what I want, is they want happy customers. So they're going to do whatever it takes so their customers are happy. So one way you do that is you get a lot of valuable feedback from customers. So, one thing Microsoft has done in the past is they've increased the amount telemetry they're collecting from their products. So they know the usage. They know what the customers want. They know what the customers need. But they also collect simple voice to the customer. You're simply asking the customer, "What do you want?" And you're doing everything you can to keep them happy. And you're finding out where the struggles are. You're helping them solve those problems. How do you not earn trust as a result of all that, right? I think that's the avenue they've been doing for, at least, ten years. Well, let's say, eight years. That's the avenue and the approach they've been doing. I'd say it's been somewhat successful. >> Thomas, as our team was preparing for this show, we understand that Microsoft has a lot of strengths, but if I look at the AI space, Microsoft is not the clear leader today. Um, we think that some of the connections that Microsoft has, everything that you said, down to the desktop. Heck, even in the consumer space, they're down to the Xbox. There's a lot of reasons why Microsoft... You can say, "Here's a path of how Microsoft could become. You know number one, number two in the AI space over time. But, we're listening to things, like the Open Data Initiative that they announced today, which, obviously, Microsoft's working with a lot of partners out there, but it's a big ecosystem. Data plays everywhere. I mean, Google obviously has strong play in data. We've talked plenty about Amazon. What does Microsoft need to do to take the strength that they have in data move forward in AI and become even stronger player in the marketplace? >> So, AI, itself, is kind of that broad term. I mean, AI is a simple if-then statement. It doesn't really have to do anything, right? So let's talk about machine learning, predictive analytics, or even deep learning. That's really the are that we're talking about. What does Microsoft have to do? Well, they have to offer the services. But they don't have offer, say, new things. They just have to offer things that already exist. For example, the idea of, um, incorperating Jupiter notebooks into the Azure Data Studio. So if that could be achieved, you know, now you're bringing the workspaces people are using into the Microsoft platform a little bit, making it a little bit easier. So instead of these people in these enterprises... They already trust Microsoft. They already have the tools. But I got to go use these other things. Well, eventually, those other things come into the Microsoft tools, and now you don't have to use that other stuff either. I would talk about the ability to publish these models as a service. I've done the Academy program. I've earned a few certifications on some of this stuff. I was amazed at how easy it was with a few clicks, you know, published as a service as an API. It's sitting there. I sent in my data and I get back a result, a prediction. I was like, that was really easy. So I know they're not the leaders, but they're making it easy, especially for somebody like me who can start at zero and get to where I need to be. They made it incredibly easy and in some cases, it was intuative. I'm like, oh, I know what to do next with this widgit I'm building. I think it will take time for them to kind of get all that stuff in place. I don't know how long. But does Microsoft have to be the leader in AI? They have the Cognitive Toolkit. They have all that stuff with Cortana. They have the data. I think the customers are coming along. I think they get there just by attrition. I'm not sure there's something they're going to build where everybody just says, "There it is." Except there's the Quantum stuff. And last year's announcement of Quantum, I thought was one of the most stunning things. It just hit me. I had no idea working on it. So, who knows? A year from now there could be something similar to that type of announcement, where we're like, now I get it, now I got to go have this thing. I don't think we all need, you know, a hotdog not hotdog app, which seems to be the bulk of the examples out there. Some of the image classification stuff that you have out there is fabulous. There are a lot of use cases for it. Um, I'm not sure how they get there. But, I do think eventually over time, the platform that they offer, they do get just through attrition. >> One of the things you brought up earlier in this conversation was the Open Source Initiative and Stu, we had expressed a bit of skepticism that it's still going to take three to five years, for, really, customers to see the value of this. But once...The announcement was made today, so now we're going to go forward with this Initiative. What do you see as the future? >> Yeah, I was trying to, even, figure it out. So it sounds like the three companies are sharing data with each other. They pledged to be open. So if you buy one of their products, that data can seamlessly go into that other product is what it sounded like. And they were open, if I heard it right, they were open to partnering with other companies as well. >> Correct. >> Yes. Yes. >> Other vendors or customers, even that could tie in into these APIs, doing everything that they're doing. Open data models. >> Speaking as a data guy, that means if I trust one, I have to trust them all. (Stu Laughing) >> Right? So I don't know. I have trus&t issues. (Rebecca laughing) >> Clearly. >> I'm a DBA, by heart, so I have trust issues. I need to know a little more about it, but on the surface, just the words, "open data," sound great. I just don't know the practical, uh, practicality of it. It sounds like it's a way for people, or these companies, to partner with each other to get more of your data into their platform and their infrastructure. >> Yeah. I think next time we have Thomas on, we're going to spend some time talking about the dark side of data. >> Yes, indeed. >> We can talk dark data. Oh, sure. (Rebecca laughing) >> Well, Thomas, it was so much fun having you on this show and I should just plug your book. You are the author of "DBA Survivor." >> I am. Yes. It was a little book. So being a DBA, uh, I had some challenges in my role and I decided, as my friend Kevin Kline put it to me, he goes, "You should write the book you wish had written for you and handed to you on day zero of being a DBA." And I said, "Oh." It took m&e, I think, like, three weeks. It was just so easyto write all of that. >> It just flowed (laughing.) >> It was just stuff I had to say. But, yeah, thank you. >> Excellent. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (music playing)

[lively music] >> Man: Live from Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCube, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2017. Brought to you by the Cloud Foundry Foundation and Pivotal. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost, John Troyer. Happy to welcome back to the program, actually a former colleague of mine, Cornelia Davis, Senior Director of Technology at Pivotal. Cornelia, it's great to see you. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> All right, so why don't you fill in our audience a little bit about your role at Pivotal, you've been involved since before the foundation in early days of everything happening. >> Yeah, and in fact I have been working with Cloud Foundry for longer than the Pivotal Company's existed. As you know, Stu, you and I used to work together at EMC in the corporate CTO office. >> Yeah, I remember a company named EMC. [Laughing] >> Yep. And I worked in the architecture group and we did architecture in emerging tech. And about five years ago, my boss, who you know, Tom McGuire, said, "You know, this platform as a service thing, I think is going to be pretty disruptive, and I want you to start looking at it. And so naturally we were EMC, VMware was incubating Cloud Foundry already, so I started playing with Cloud Foundry. So that was way back in the days of Cloud Foundry version 1.0. I'm one of those people who got to raise my hand and say, "Yes, I've been to every single Cloud Foundry Summit." [Stu Laughing] But fast forward then we had the Pivotal spin-off, and since the Pivotal spin-off, I joined the Cloud Foundry team proper, and I've been in a role working the product organization, working with James Waters, who I know you spoke to earlier today, and helping our customers kind of get their arms wrapped around what this...this isn't just the next application platform. How really, it's radically different, and how the applications, it enables a completely different style of application. And so really helping customers grok the differences about that. >> Yeah, Cornelia, I want you to help us dig into this a little bit, because when we look at any of these massive changes, a lot of times we say, you know, the technology is the easy part. It's really the change in mindset, the change in the structure, new skillsets. What are you seeing, what's different now than it was, say, three or five years ago, and what are those customer discussions that you're having? >> Yeah, and that's a great question, and I will say, and thanks for the opportunity to say this, is that the technology isn't always the easy part. [Stu laughs] So let me give you an example. So just earlier today I was on a call where somebody was talking about some user interviews that they had done with some programmers, and what they concluded at the end of that was that programmers really weren't comfortable with the "asynch" model for this particular API, and that they really wanted to just deal with the synchronous stuff. And the answer there is not that we say, "Oh, okay, we'll let you keep doing synchronous." The answer is that yes, there's a technology thing here that's hard, which is starting to think asynchronously and changing the way that we design our applications. So the technology's not always easy, but we have to go there, because in the cloud, where things are so extraordinarily distributed in a way, and the cloud is constantly changing in ways that it never did before, we have to adopt new technology models. So that's the first thing I'll say, is that we definitely, the technology parts are sometimes hard. That said, certainly over the course of the last four years, as I've worked with those customers, in the beginning, I spent a lot of time, as you know, I'm a technologist, so I spent a lot of time at the whiteboard, and sketching out architectures and talking about changes in the architecture of the platform or changes in the architecture of the application, but then I very quickly found myself talking to customers about the other things that are going to need to change around the edges. So if, for example, you want to start deploying software multiple times a day, you're going to have to change your processes, because you can't have the security office have to do a full audit of every change before it goes into production if it's going to happen three or four times a day. And if you do that, then does that imply organizational changes? So I spend a great deal of my time really talking about the whole DevOps and the people and process side of the equation as well. So last week, I was just - I'm part of the programming committee of the DevOps Enterprise Summit, and we just held that last week in London. And there we spent a lot of time talking about those elements as well. >> I spoke with somebody who was at that conference, and they said it was a little bit sobering, because there are people who have adopted a lot of these practices, and then there are people who are trying and then probably people who have not started yet. >> Cornelia: Yeah. >> As Coté calls them "the donkeys without the unicorn horns yet. >> Cornelia: Ah. >> But as you go out to the customer base, obviously part of what Pivotal is doing is really this huge Pivotal Apps push about showing people the culture. I mean, do you feel like it's a push or a pull, does the technology come first, and then the culture, does the CIO yell, or do the developers say, "We want this"? >> So we definitely get a little bit of both. I would say that I have had the great opportunity to work with a great number of these customers, so Allstate, for example, we've seen Allstate here at CF Summit year after year, and Opal spoke about Andy Zitney talking about this three or four years ago. Well, that was IT saying, "Hey," and that was more from the operations side saying, "Hey, we're going to build you a new platform," and then will they come? Now, they of course had to couple that together with, "Okay, we're not just going to build the platform, we have to put things in place to enable people to use it properly. So there's certainly- and that came a little bit more from Andy Zitney's vision. So it was a little bit more from the top, "Hey, we understand there's a better way, we're going to start making this available to you, and we'll teach you along the way." We absolutely see the opposite as well, though. Where we see the groundswell, which sometimes comes from a bunch of really smart people starting to play with the open source things. And saying, "Hey, there's got to be a better way," or the shadow IT. They're frustrated with the three-month cycles, and those things. So it isn't one answer, it's really both. It comes from both sides. >> All right. So Cornelia, you're good at understanding some of those next generation things. One of the terms that we've been talking about for the last couple of years is "cloud-native." Could you help us really kind of tease apart what that means in your customer base, and the way you approach and explain that? >> Yeah. So the term "cloud-native" is brilliant from the perspective of having a term for it that has really taken ahold. Because I would say that three years ago, I used to say to people, "Hey, cloud is not about where you're computing, it's about how you're computing." But in fact, that's not exactly accurate. And so, now that cloud-native is a term that's taken hold, I have modified my statement. And the statement that I like to make now is that, cloud, in fact, is where you compute. It could be a public cloud, it could be a private cloud, but it is more of a location. Cloud-native is the how. So I like to also characterize the cloud and cloud-native, really cloud-native applications, as two fundamental things. One is that cloud-native has reached levels of distribution that we have not seen before. We've been dealing with distributed systems and heck, in universities, there have been courses on distributed systems for 40 years. But even when I started my career 30 years ago, I started my career in aerospace doing embedded systems, and I remember working on a system where we had three processors. You know, that was as distributed as we got. And we actually mapped out on a whiteboard, okay, we're going to run this on this process and parallel with this on this process, and the point there is it was distributed, but we knew exactly what we had, and we could count on that being there. Now, it's reached a completely different, many many orders of magnitude more, in terms of the number of distributed components, as we go to microservices and those types of things. So that's one of the things that I characterize cloud and cloud-native, is highly distributed like we've never seen before. Couple that together with the other thing I just talked about with the embedded systems, that's very different from that, is constantly changing. Always changing. And whether that change is happening because of some catastrophe or that change is happening because we are doing an upgrade, a planned upgrade, it's constantly in flux. And so we have to do things differently for that. And so that, I think really, is what cloud-native is about, is the how, and like I said, highly distributed, constantly changing. >> All right. And what about the role of data, when we talk about that? Distributed architectures, storage is really tough in that kind of environment. >> Cornelia: Yep. >> And therefore, how does data play into it? >> Cornelia: Yeah, so cloud-native apps were really, as an industry starting, and here at CF Summit, people are really kind of grokking what that means. Highly distributed, small, loosely coupled components that we've put together, we'll talk about that collective in just a moment. But they're generally stateless and so on. So we understand cloud-native apps, but cloud-native involves data as well, as you said, now most of our customers that have, as you said, some of them are a little bit further along whether it's DevOps or it's cloud-native architectures, they're a little further along. And those that are quite far along, have a lot of microservices, and so you look at them, and if you look just at the microservices, you think, "Ah, beautiful. Loosely coupled, independent teams, and so on," and then you pull back the curtain, and you realize that those microservices are all tied to a shared database. There's this monolithic Oracle database or SQL server, something at the back end, that they're all tied to. And so in fact, when a team wants to make a rev on a microservice, they might still have to go through some of that planning and lockstep with lots of other teams, because, "Hey, I want to change something in the data." So the data, remember we just talked about highly distributed? Well, on the data side, it's not so highly distributed. Yes, we've got multi data centers, but we have, again, a predictable number of nodes. We know what we've got deployed. We have very rigid architectures and configurations and so on. So when we start to apply cloud-native to data, we look at the same goals we had with cloud-native applications, which is autonomy, so being able to have the different cloud-native components evolve independently, resilience, so that we have bulkheads and air gaps between them, all of those same goals, let's start to apply those to data. >> And you feel that that's not happening today yet. We're earlier in the process yet? >> It hasn't been happening. That's right. We're far far far earlier in the process. And so what we want to start to do is take that monolith that's sitting behind the curtain and we want to start breaking it apart. Now, the industry has definitely gotten to the point where they're starting to tackle this. And that was, I kind of had an epiphany about a year ago, I was working with a customer, talking to them about DevOps, talking about all these cloud-native patterns and practices, and the punch line was it was the data team of this organization. So they didn't understand the solutions, but they were understanding that they had pain points that were very reminiscent of the pain points that their colleagues in the application server teams had had, had been tackling for three or four years. So the types of technologies that we're starting to see emerge and the types of patterns we're starting to see emerge are things like unified logs, like applying Kafka to that problem of having a unified log and that be the source of record. And event-driven systems and those types of things. Every microservice gets its own database, which, yeah, we'll get some of that, but that's a kind of purist and not pragmatic way of looking at things. Caching plays a pretty big role in that, so caching in the past has been all about performance, but now when we start to look at patterns, how can we use caches to help us create those bulkheads and those air gaps so we get additional resilience in our microservices architecture? If we can put caches and there are companies like Netflix, like Twitter, who have done that, who have embedded caching deeply through their entire architecture. >> Well, do you think these technologies will come from the database or, well, let's call it the database projects and vendors themselves, or is that something, those patterns can get built into a platform, say, like Cloud Foundry? >> I think it's going to probably come more from the platform community, which is not to say that database vendors aren't thinking about that, but again, they are keeping the lights on with their existing product, so they have those quintessential business school constraints that are holding them back. >> A quick question on nomenclature. So a few years back as cloud-native was being coined, you also heard about 12-Factor apps, and that was one particular manifesto, and certainly the ops folks, I would call it at the time, said, "Well, wait a minute, that's great for your front end, but where are you storing your state?" >> Cornelia: Exactly. And so I love this conversation about >> Yep. cloud-native data. So that is what we're talking about here? >> That's exactly what we're talking about, is doing that. And so it allows us, it's interesting, because as soon as we take a model where we say, "Okay, every microservice gets its own microdatabase," then of course everybody in any large enterprise says, "Wait a minute, what about my data compliance, my data governance, how do I keep a customer that's stored in this database over here from diverging from the customer record that's stored in this other database?" I mean, we've spent decades talking about the 360 view of customers, because we've already been somewhat more fragmented than we wanted, and our knee-jerk reaction over the last several decades was, let's consolidate everything into one database. But with that comes slowness. It's the proverbial large, large ship that's hard to turn and hard to move. But what's different now is that we're starting to come up with some different patterns of doing that, what we call master data management in the past, we're applying completely different patterns now, where those individual microservice databases are really just seen as a materialized view of some source of record, and that source of record is just a time series of events, and you can always rebuild. You know, it's very interesting, because databases have had a log as a part of their architecture forever. For a very, very long time. And in fact, the log, arguably, is more important than any of the database tables that are stored on disk, because you can always recreate the database tables from the log. Now take that concept and distribute it. That's what cloud-native data is all about. To take what has been a single fabric, and now create a highly distributed, constantly changing fabric for data. And figuring out what those patterns are. >> Cornelia, I want to give you the final word. You've been to all the Cloud Foundry Summits. Either the customers or the event itself, what are some of the things that are kind of new and changing, that people that aren't at the show should know about? >> You know, I was walking down the hallway this afternoon, one thing I'll note that has changed, like I said, I was walking down the hallway with a colleague of mine, and he said, "I have 12 people from a single one of my customers here. 12 people." I spoke with somebody else who said, "Yep, another customer - not a vendor, but a customer - sent 30 people here." So we have- Cloud Foundry Summit in the beginning was a whole bunch of people who were the hobbyists, if you will. So I think we've reached that inflection point where we have the users, not just the hobbyists, but the true users that are going to leverage the platform. That's one thing that's changed. Some of the things- the other interesting thing I think that is really brilliant is the touch that the Cloud Foundry Foundation has. So I'll tell you, I submitted several papers here three years ago, when it was still the Pivotal Show. I could talk about whatever I wanted. I don't always get my papers accepted here now. And that is a good thing. That's a really good thing, so we have really democratized the community, so it truly is a community event. I think that's another thing that's happened, is kind of the democratization of Cloud Foundry, and I love that. >> Cornelia Davis, it's a pleasure to catch up with you, thank you so much for joining us. And John and I will be back with a couple of customers, actually, here at the Cloud Foundry Summit. So stay tuned and thanks for watching theCube. [lively music]

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Hi everybody, we're back. This is theCUBE and we're live from Knowledge17, I'm Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick. Michael Dippolito, did I say that right? >> D'Ippolito, close enough. >> D'Ippolito, sorry about that. A fellow Italian, I should get that right. D'Ippolito is assistant Vice President of Run Services Delivery, infrastructure and operations for Nationwide Insurance. Nationwide is on your side. >> You got it. It's in our heads right? >> I remember that. >> What a great marketing campaign. Michael, great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So how's Knowledge going for ya? >> Very good, very good. I'm really excited about some of the new things coming out with the newest release that was just announced this morning. And as a matter of fact I'm ready to go back and say let's jump to that version right? Because it sounds really exciting. >> So where are you right now? Which version are you on? Are you on the Helsinki? >> We are on the Helsinki release now. We usually like to jump a couple and stay as current as we can, usually you know one release behind maybe but if we find there's good functionality in jumping one we'll do it. >> I want to come back and talk about that, because we like to pick your brains about what's the best practice there, but before we do maybe set up your role at Nationwide. >> Yeah, RunService is a pretty large organization for Nationwide, through acquisitions and through our legacy environments, we have lots of application systems, you know, keeping all those running is a monumental task. So, our group is kind of sitting mainly in the middle of the applications, the infrastructure, the process, and trying to help everything stay running smoothly. >> Okay and you started with IT service management change management, like most customers, is that right? And then, you've been evolving that. Can you talk about that a little bit? >> Yeah we just implemented, about a year ago actually, we installed a year ago. >> Okay. >> We went with the Fuji release that we implemented then we've already jumped to Helsinki, and we pretty much went all processes all at once and kind of a big bang. We actually did ask that management at first does a little bit of a pilot, but then we actually went through all the other ITSM functionality, big bang after that. >> Jeff: So you're all in. >> Michael: Yeah. >> So what was life like, you know, give us a before and after, and maybe take us through the business case and how that all came about. >> I'll give you a perfect example, I just kind of did an after action review for our senior management, on our previous platform, which was an on prem heavily customized platform, to take a release would require a year and a half with a lot of planning and about a million dollars. >> Jeff: To do an upgrade. >> To do an upgrade. (Jeff Laughing) This last release to Helsinki went about six weeks, and about $100,000. So, that's a huge business case right there. Being able to be in the cloud, not having to worry about the infrastructure ourselves, and really we drove a model of zero customization so we wanted to stay out of box as much as possible, just for that reason so we could take releases fast and stay current. >> Wow, I'm sure that benefits. >> In the, you know, was situtation, the cost was predominantly people cost, programming cost, license cost, maintenance, consultants? >> It was mostly hours of effort. >> Yeah. >> The amount of customization we had and then to retrofit and test all those changes back into the release from the vendor was a monumental task and we never want to get into that situation again. >> And so with the ServiceNow upgrade, it's not out of pocket cost as much, you're quantifying time, is that correct? >> Correct. >> Yeah okay. >> It's mostly our internal cost. >> You said the time it took was a year and a half and then, like a typical upgrade in ServiceNow is, >> Michael: Less than two months. >> Okay. >> For us to bring it in test it, exercise it, making sure all our customizations, or configurations actually I should say, are working well. And a lot of it is more just the change management around it, you know, putting out the word, the communications, doing a little bit of training, or whatever it takes to get ready for a smooth launch. >> And some of the upfront planning of that as well. Now, when we talk to customers, there seems to be, we heard today that 90% of customers are adopting service catalog, CMDB, I don't know. It's mixed, right? We hear some yes, some no. Maybe tell us your experiences. >> We have a huge focus on CMDB right now. We think that CMDB is basically the foundation to all your other processes to run more smoothly right? So good trustworthy data enables faster incident resolution, better problem solving, more rigorous change management so you asses your risk of change better. So really when we sold our CMDB project, we didn't sell it based on the CMDB, we sold it based on all those other things, >> All the benefits. >> That get a ramp off of it. You know, from doing that effort. So, we're putting a lot of effort on CMDB maturity. >> So you were talking before about some of the things you saw today in Jakarta that were of interest before we go there, you had mentioned you started with Fuji, and now you're on Helsinki. What was the, you didn't double leapfrog did you? Or did you? What's your upgrade strategy? You said you might be an N minus one, but you like to stay pretty current. What's your strategy in regards to upgrades? >> Right now, we're looking at trying to be N minus one >> Uh huh. >> and taking two per year. So looking at two releases a year. We're trying to plan our schedules around maybe spring and fall. So we organize our work and our patterns around that. But something like that. We haven't really solidified that yet. A lot of it depends on what we see coming up, and what we can take advantage of. Like for example, we're getting ready to implement Work Day. And we want to make sure we have great integration between Work Day and ServiceNow. Some of the things that Jakarta is going to offer us is going to integrate nicely into Work Day. So, we may jump to that version because of that. >> So we heard this morning that the big things, well CJ set up the big things in Jakarta were going to be performance, obviously everybody better performance, maybe some UX stuff in there too, vendor risk management, and then the software asset management, which got the big cheers and the whoohoo! >> Yeah. (Jeff chuckling) >> Yeah, so, what in Jakarta is appealing to you? >> This software as a management I'd say, is very interesting because we're looking at that very closely right now in terms of our strategy around that. The other one I really like is the performance analytics and the predictive analytics that are coming out. I'd really love to be able to benchmark ourselves against other companies in terms of how we're doing. I feel we beat ourselves up a lot internally around things like availability or performance. But then, when I look and talk to others, we're not so bad. (Jeff chuckling) We're actually doing pretty good. So it'd be nice to get that benchmarking. >> Right, right. >> And some of that trend analysis that's offered. And then, finally, how do we get into a more predictive analytics mode where we can prevent incidents from happening before they do? So that's key. >> It was interesting, listening to Farrell Hough this morning talk about sort of the evolution of automation. How do you look at automation? Some shops are afraid of automation, but it seems like the ServiceNow customers we talk to really can't go fast enough. What is your thought, and how are you evolving automation? >> Well, one of our key drivers right now is how do we increase the speed of delivery to the marketplace? But, we also have to stay safe and reliable, right? And the key to speed is through automation. You can't really get that speed if you're not highly automated. And, to be highly automated, you need really high trustworthy data. So that enables fast decision making, and accuracy. >> Jeff: And that ties back to your CMDB commitment. >> Exactly, so, that all entailed enables speed, which we really want because in today's world speed is everything in terms of how you're constantly adapting your systems of engagement out there with your customers. Constantly learning from their patterns and adjusting on the fly. And that requires new mindsets. >> So you start with IT service management, you've got HR as well, is that right? >> We don't have the HR model. Right now we're only IT service management. >> Okay, straight IT services. >> We're looking at other modules, as we speak. >> Okay, so you want to make sure you get the value out of the initial ITSM, and then, how do you see that, you know, evolving? What is the conversation like internally? Do the business lines say, wow, all of a sudden we're getting improved service, and how are you doing that? Or is it more of a push where you go out to the business and say hey, here are some ideas. How does that all work? >> I'll tell you what we're really starting to see is a really change in what's driving innovation. And it's more coming from IT versus, the former models where IT was kind of like the order taker, and the business came up with everything they needed. Now, with the pace of change with technology, new business models are coming from IT to the business. And we're actually almost seeing ourselves more of an IT company than we are an insurance company. And, you starting to see those patterns especially with things like, now we're talking about metered insurance for auto, right? So basically, pay by the mile insurance, versus paying the same rate for six months. With the data we're getting out of vehicles today we can adjust your rates on the fly as you drive. Why should you pay the same rate if your car sits in the garage all weekend, versus you take it out and drive it 200 miles, right? So with the kind of data, big data and analytics that are coming from the vehicles we can do that now. >> So how is that conversation taking place? Is it being initiated by somebody in the IT staff that says hey, did you know that we have this data and we can do this? Let's take it to the business unit. Or does the business unit saying, I just saw Flo, the competitor, sticking the little thing in the dashboard? (Michael chuckling) Can we do that too? You know, there's a lot of talk about IT taking a seat at the business table >> Right. >> But how have you seen it actually been executed inside of Nationwide? >> Actually what we're seeing is, the lines are very blurry now between IT and the business. Almost to where, we're just a team working together versus the silos you used to have, and throwing the ideas over the fence. So we actually have a team that their goal is strategy and innovation. They report up through our CIO, and then business line teams have similar organizations, and they all work in a matrix fashion together. So anybody can bring any type of idea to the table, regardless of who you report up through. And we take those into consideration and we look for partners, we've got partners coming to us all the time that want to join us in innovation. And so it doesn't have to be our own solution. It could just be us on the back end of somebody else's front end, right? So, there's a lot of interesting ideas coming at us. >> What's happening in the business Mike? I mean you've got, obviously you're supporting the big systems or claims, you've got your agents systems, but mobile has exploded onto the scene. >> Yes. >> How has that affected you? What are some of the drivers in the insurance business these days? >> Well, definitely we're in this digital world now so, mobile first is critical. Everything has to be mobile enabled. We have to think of our strategy in a digital way constantly so we have a whole digital strategy that we work on. The traditional models of agency sold insurance won't ever really go away, per se, but they are shrinking. You see the demands and needs of the millennials coming up, very differently and changing. You have to compete on price to get in the door. That's important, so again we're trying to find all those interaction or intercept points with our customers as they need us. People don't really like to think of insurance, it's not on top of mind in their day to day life. But, when certain events happen like oh, I'm going to get married, or I'm going to take a trip, or you know, those kinds of things. >> Jeff: Right, kid turns sixteen. >> Yeah, we have different ways to interact with our customers, and offer some solutions that meet their need at the time. >> Well it seems like you're right, to be competitive, you've got to have the right price for those that say okay, I've got to get insurance, I need to start somewhere, great, but are you able to, as an industry, sell value? I mean, increasingly you're seeing some companies I would say Nationwide is one, where you're selling value. >> Yeah. >> Is that a trend in the business? >> Absolutely, I'll give you an example. One of the things that, normally the insurance model used to be I buy insurance and I'm protected when something bad happens. then when something bad happens, you compensate me. You pay my claim. But what about, if we can help you prevent the bad thing from even happening? So with products like our Smart Home package that you can buy now with internet of things, we can put sensors on those hot water tanks or on those pipes, or connected to your alarm system so that maybe we could alert you when we see your pipe is about to break. >> Right so, we cover, as you know our audience, we cover big data a lot. And the data business, and the insurance business have come mashing together, right? You had mentioned before, Mike, in many regards you're becoming an IT company and digitization is all about data. And the data allows you guys to build new products, to offer new services, to be more competitive and at the end of the day it's all about speed. >> Correct, speed and then that helps drive that value equation, right? So it's not so much being the lowest price, although you have to have a good price to be in the game, but then after that how can you provide that value? >> I'm curious Mike, from an insurance point of view, where before the business was based on, you know you didn't have so much data, right? So you had some big swaths, Age, sex, smoker, not smoker, but now as you're able to get data to the individual level, how that changes the way you look at it? Because it's very different than just kind of aggregating to the bulk, and then the poor unfortunate soul who has a car wreck, you pay the claim. But now, like you said, you know if I'm driving on the weekends, or if I'm parking my car. How is that really shaping the way that you guys look at the marketplace and the opportunities? >> Well you know, in the old days, you used to be able to take basically a subset of data from the past, and make your decisions based on that. >> A subset of data from the past, I love that. >> Now we're taking all the data in real time. >> In real time. >> So that puts more demands on the need for the technologies to provide that. It's critical, like especially if we're going to change your rates daily on how we insure your car, we have to have all the data, all the time. >> I remember Abhi Mehta, one of our early big data CUBE interviews, he made the statement in 2010 he said, "Sampling is dead." And, now, some people will debate that but the point he was making is just the same one you just made Michael is that you've got that data coming in, streaming it in real time. Some consumers, you know, have an issue with sticking that little meter in their car, but ultimately, that's the trend. It's going to happen. >> And you know we're seeing, and you're probably seeing it in other businesses as well, if you can provide that value, customers will give you the access and the data, because they see a value in return. So, it's that value equation. If it's good enough, they'll give you the value, and they'll give you the data. >> Dave: Yeah, you see it every day in mobile apps, right? >> Correct. >> You know, you're in New York City trying to get somewhere and it's like, turn on location services and I can help you. >> When you download any app, there's a big screen that comes up and you say I accept at the bottom, and then it has access to your pictures, access to your location and you're free to hit that accept because you see the value in that application. >> It's a quid pro quo, you know it's interesting we had the author on yesterday, Pink, Daniel Pink? >> Jeff: Pink, Mr. Pink, yes. >> And he was pointing out, he said look there used to be that the brand used to have all the information, and now there's parody in information, but in many regards, this whole digitization is an attempt by the brand to provide, to use more data and to give the consumers more value, and to create differentiation in the marketplace, and that's kind of what you're describing in your business. Last question, what's on ServiceNow's to-do list? What do you want to see a year, year and a half in? >> Well, after we implemented, we partnered with ServiceNow in a project they call Inspire, and basically it's to, what are we going to do next? You know, that very question, how do we leverage now what we've implemented, and take advantage of what the platform has to offer? We see lots of opportunities, as a matter of fact our list is so long we just don't have the bandwidth to do it all (Jeff chuckling) and we have to prioritize, but we see a lot of integration points, we see a lot of APIs coming in, we are in a kind of a really big phase in automation right now, we're trying to automate as much as possible, so for our on prem technology, we really want to go into automated provisioning of our assets, which means being able to connect those into the CMDB as they're provisioned, all automatically, and we want to really shorten those cycle times for when we have to provision infrastructure and support our applications. So ServiceNow is setting us up to do just that. >> Inspire is a great program, it's one of the best freebies in the business, and it leads, it's a win win. The customer gets the best experts, they come in and obviously, the hope is they're going to buy more stuff from ServiceNow, and if the value's there you will. Why not? It's going to drive to the bottom line. >> Using cloud to provision on prem resources, I like that. (all laughing) >> Mike thanks very much for coming to theCUBE, it was really a pleasure having you. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Jeff: Thanks for sharing the insight. >> Alright keep it right there buddy we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break, there's a CUBEr live from Knowledge, be right back. (techno music)