>> Welcome to theCUBE's Virtual Coverage of Data Citizens 2022. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with Laura Sellers who is the Chief Product Officer at Collibra, the host of Data Citizens, Laura, welcome. Good to see you. >> Thank you. Nice to be here. >> Yeah, your keynote at Data Citizens this year focused on you know, your mission to drive ease of use and scale. Now, when I think about historically fast access to the right data at the right time in a form that's really easily consumable it's been kind of challenging especially for business users. Can you explain to our audience why this matters so much and what's actually different today in the data ecosystem to make this a reality? >> Yeah, definitely. So I think what we really need and what I hear from customers every single day is that we need a new approach to data management and our product teams. What inspired me to come to Collibra a little bit over a year ago, was really the fact that they're very focused on bringing trusted data to more users across more sources for more use cases. And so as we look at what we're announcing with these innovations of ease of use and scale it's really about making teams more productive in getting started with and the ability to manage data across the entire organization. So we've been very focused on richer experiences, a broader ecosystem of partners, as well as a platform that delivers performance, scale and security that our users and teams need and demand. So as we look at, oh, go ahead. >> I was going to say, you know, when I look back at like the last 10 years it was all about getting the technology to work and it was just so complicated, but, but please carry on. I'd love to hear more about this. >> Yeah, I really, you know, Collibra is a system of engagement for data and we really are working on bringing that entire system of engagement to life for everyone to leverage here and now. So what we're announcing from our ease of use side of the world is first our data marketplace. This is the ability for all users to discover and access data quickly and easily shop for it, if you will. The next thing that we're also introducing is the new homepage. It's really about the ability to drive adoption and have users find data more quickly. And then the two more areas of the ease of use side of the world is our world of usage analytics. And one of the big pushes and passions we have at Collibra is to help with this data-driven culture that all companies are trying to create. And also helping with data literacy. With something like usage analytics, it's really about driving adoption of the Collibra platform, understanding what's working, who's accessing it, what's not. And then finally we're also introducing what's called Workflow Designer. And we love our workflows at Collibra, it's a big differentiator to be able to automate business processes. The Designer is really about a way for more people to be able to create those workflows, collaborate on those workflows, as well as people to be able to easily interact with them. So a lot of of exciting things when it comes to ease of use to make it easier for all users to find data. >> Yes, there's definitely a lot to unpack there. You know, you mentioned this idea of shopping for the data. That's interesting to me. Why this analogy, metaphor or analogy, I always get those confused. Let's go with analogy. Why is it so important to data consumers? >> I think when you look at the world of data, and I talked about this system of engagement, it's really about making it more accessible to the masses. And what users are used to is a shopping experience like your Amazon, if you will. And so having a consumer grade experience where users can quickly go in and find the data, trust that data, understand where the data's coming from and then be able to quickly access it, is the idea of being able to shop for it. Just making it as simple as possible and really speeding the time to value for any of the business analysts, data analysts out there. >> Yeah, I think you see a lot of discussion about rethinking data architectures, putting data in the hands of the users and business people, decentralized data and of course that's awesome. I love that. But of course then you have to have self-service infrastructure and you have to have governance. And those are really challenging. And I think so many organizations they're facing adoption challenges. You know, when it comes to enabling teams generally, especially domain experts to adopt new data technologies you know, like the tech comes fast and furious. You got all these open source projects and you get really confusing. Of course it risks security, governance and all that good stuff. You got all this jargon. So where do you see, you know, the friction in adopting new data technologies? What's your point of view, and how can organizations overcome these challenges? >> You're, you're dead on. There's so much technology and there's so much to stay on top of, which is part of the friction, right? Is just being able to stay ahead of and understand all the technologies that are coming. You also look at it as there's so many more sources of data and people are migrating data to the cloud and they're migrating to new sources. Where the friction comes is really that ability to understand where the data came from, where it's moving to and then also to be able to put the access controls on top of it. So people are only getting access to the data that they should be getting access to. So one of the other things we're announcing with, with all of the innovations that are coming is what we're doing around performance and scale. So with all of the data movement, with all of the data that's out there, the first thing we're launching in the world of performance and scale is our world of data quality. It's something that Collibra has been working on for the past year and a half, but we're launching the ability to have data quality in the cloud. So it's currently an on-premise offering, but we'll now be able to carry that over into the cloud for us to manage that way. We're also introducing the ability to push down data quality into Snowflake. So this is, again, one of those challenges is making sure that that data that you have is, is high quality as you move forward. And so really another, we're just reducing friction. You already have Snowflake stood up, it's not another machine for you to manage, it's just push-down capabilities into Snowflake to be able to track that quality. Another thing that we're launching with that is what we call Collibra Protect. And this is that ability for users to be able to ingest metadata, understand where the PII data is and then set policies up on top of it. So very quickly be able to set policies and have them enforced at the data level. So anybody in the organization is only getting access to the data they should have access to. >> This topic of data quality is interesting. It's something that I've followed for a number of years. It used to be a back office function, you know and really confined only to highly regulated industries like financial services and healthcare and government. You know, you look back over a decade ago, you didn't have this worry about personal information, GDPR, and you know, California Consumer Privacy Act all becomes so much important. The cloud is really changed things in terms of performance and scale. And of course partnering for, with Snowflake, it's all about sharing data and monetization anything but a back office function. So it was kind of smart that you guys were early on and of course attracting them and as an investor as well was very strong validation. What can you tell us about the nature of the relationship with Snowflake and specifically interested in sort of joint engineering and product innovation efforts, you know, beyond the standard go-to-market stuff? >> Definitely. So you mentioned there were a strategic investor in Collibra about a year ago. A little less than that I guess. We've been working with them though for over a year really tightly with their product and engineering teams to make sure that Collibra is adding real value. Our unified platform is touching pieces of, our unified platform are touching all pieces of Snowflake. And when I say that, what I mean is we're first, you know, able to ingest data with Snowflake, which which has always existed. We're able to profile and classify that data. We're announcing with Collibra Protect this week that you're now able to create those policies on top of Snowflake and have them enforced. So again, people can get more value out of their Snowflake more quickly, as far as time to value with our policies for all business users to be able to create. We're also announcing Snowflake Lineage 2.0. So this is the ability to take stored procedures in Snowflake and understand the lineage of where did the data come from, how was it transformed, within Snowflake as well as the data quality push-down, as I mentioned, data quality, you brought it up. It is a new, it is a big industry push and you know, one of the things I think Gartner mentioned is people are losing up to $15 million dollars without having great data quality. So this push-down capability for Snowflake really is again a big ease of use push for us at Collibra of that ability to, to push it into Snowflake, take advantage of the data, the data source and the engine that already lives there, and get the right, and make sure you have the right quality. >> I mean the nice thing about Snowflake if you play in the Snowflake sandbox, you, you can get sort of a, you know, high degree of confidence that the data sharing can be done in a safe way. Bringing, you know, Collibra into the, into the story allows me to have that data quality and and that governance that I, that I need. You know, we've said many times on theCUBE that one of the notable differences in cloud this decade versus last decade I mean there are obvious differences just in terms of scale and scope, but it's shaping up to be about the strength of the ecosystems. That's really a hallmark of these big cloud players. I mean they're, it's a key factor for innovating, accelerating product delivery, filling gaps in in the hyperscale offerings. Because you got more stack, you know, mature stack capabilities and you know, that creates this flywheel momentum as we often say. But, so my question is, how do you work with the hyperscalers? Like whether it's AWS or Google or whomever, and what do you see as your role and what's the Collibra sweet spot? >> Yeah, definitely. So, you know, one of the things I mentioned early on is the broader ecosystem of partners is what it's all about. And so we have that strong partnership with Snowflake. We also are doing more with Google around, you know, GCP and Collibra Protect there, but also tighter Dataplex integration. So similar to what you've seen with our strategic moves around Snowflake, and really covering the broad ecosystem of what Collibra can do on top of that data source. We're extending that to the world of Google as well and the world of Dataplex. We also have great partners in SI's. Infosys is somebody we spoke with at the conference who's done a lot of great work with Levi's, as they're really important to help people with their whole data strategy and driving that data-driven culture and and Collibra being the core of it. >> Hi Laura, we're going to, we're going to end it there but I wonder if you could kind of put a bow on, you know, this year, the event your, your perspectives. So just give us your closing thoughts. >> Yeah, definitely. So I, I want to say this is one of the biggest releases Collibra's ever had. Definitely the biggest one since I've been with the company a little over a year. We have all these great new product innovations coming to really drive the ease of use, to make data more valuable for users everywhere and, and companies everywhere. And so it's all about everybody being able to easily find, understand and trust and get access to that data going forward. >> Well congratulations on all the progress. It was great to have you on theCUBE. First time, I believe. And really appreciate you, you taking the time with us. >> Yes, thank you, for your time. >> You're very welcome. Okay, you're watching the coverage of Data Citizens 2022 on theCUBE your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(light music) >> Welcome to the Cube's virtual coverage of Data Citizens 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Laura Sellers, who is the Chief Product Officer at Collibra, the host of Data Citizens. Laura, welcome. Good to see you. >> Thank you. Nice to be here. >> You know, your keynote at Data Citizens this year focused on, you know, your mission to drive ease of use and scale. Now, when I think about historically, fast access to the right data at the right time in a form that's really easily consumable, it's been kind of challenging, especially for business users. Can you explain to our audience why this matters so much, and what's actually different today in the data ecosystem to make this a reality? >> Yeah, definitely. So I think what we really need and what I hear from customers every single day is that we need a new approach to data management, and our product team is what inspired me to come to Collibra a little bit over a year ago, was really the fact that they're very focused on bringing trusted data to more users across more sources for more use cases. And so as we look at what we're announcing with these innovations of ease of use and scale, it's really about making teams more productive in getting started with and the ability to manage data across the entire organization. So we've been very focused on richer experiences, a broader ecosystem of partners, as well as a platform that delivers performance, scale, and security that our users and teams need and demand. So as we look at, oh, go ahead. >> I was going to say, you know, when I look back at like the last 10 years, it was all about getting the technology to work, and it was just so complicated, but please carry on. I'd love to hear more about this. >> Yeah, I really, you know, Collibra is a system of engagement for data, and we really are working on bringing that entire system of engagement to life for everyone to leverage here and now. So what we're announcing from our ease of use side of the world is first our data marketplace. This is the ability for all users to discover and access data quickly and easily, shop for it, if you will. The next thing that we're also introducing is the new homepage. It's really about the ability to drive adoption and have users find data more quickly. And then the two more areas of the ease of use side of the world is our world of usage analytics. And one of the big pushes and passions we have at Collibra is to help with this data driven culture that all companies are trying to create, and also helping with data literacy. With something like usage analytics, it's really about driving adoption of the Collibra platform, understanding what's working, who's accessing it, what's not. And then finally, we're also introducing what's called Workflow Designer. And we love our workflows at Collibra. It's a big differentiator to be able to automate business processes. The designer is really about a way for more people to be able to create those workflows, collaborate on those workflows, as well as people to be able to easily interact with them. So a lot of exciting things when it comes to ease of use to make it easier for all users to find data. >> Yes, there's definitely a lot to unpack there. You know, you mentioned this idea of shopping for the data. That's interesting to me. Why this analogy, metaphor or analogy? I always get those confused. Let's go with analogy. Why is it so important to data consumers? >> I think when you look at the world of data, and I talked about this system of engagement, it's really about making it more accessible to the masses. And what users are used to is a shopping experience, like your Amazon, if you will. And so having a consumer grade experience where users can quickly go in and find the data, trust that data, understand where the data's coming from, and then be able to quickly access it, is the idea of being able to shop for it, just making it as simple as possible and really speeding the time to value for any of the business analysts, data analysts out there. >> Yeah, I think when you see a lot of discussion about rethinking data architectures, putting data in the hands of the users and business people, decentralized data, and of course that's awesome. I love that. But of course, then you have to have self-service infrastructure, and you have to have governance. And those are really challenging. And I think so many organizations, they're facing adoption challenges. You know, when it comes to enabling teams generally, especially domain experts, to adopt new data technologies, you know, like the tech comes fast and furious. You got all these open source projects. It can get really confusing. Of course it risks security, governance, and all that good stuff. You got all this jargon. So where do you see, you know, the friction in adopting new data technologies? What's your point of view, and how can organizations overcome these challenges? >> You're dead on. There's so much technology, and there's so much to stay on top of, which is part of the friction, right? It's just being able to stay ahead of and understand all the technologies that are coming. You also look at as there's so many more sources of data, and people are migrating data to the cloud, and they're migrating to new sources. Where the friction comes is really that ability to understand where the data came from, where it's moving to, and then also to be able to put the access controls on top of it. So people are only getting access to the data that they should be getting access to. So one of the other things we're announcing with all of the innovations that are coming is what we're doing around performance and scale. So with all of the data movement, with all of the data that's out there, the first thing we're launching in the world of performance and scale is our world of data quality. It's something that Collibra has been working on for the past year and a half, but we're launching the ability to have data quality in the cloud. So it's currently an on-premise offering, but we'll now be able to carry that over into the cloud for us to manage that way. We're also introducing the ability to push down data quality into Snowflake. So this is, again, one of those challenges is making sure that that data that you have is high quality as you move forward. And so really another, we're just reducing friction. You already have Snowflake stood up. It's not another machine for you to manage. It's just push down capabilities into Snowflake to be able to track that quality. Another thing that we're launching with that is what we call Collibra Protect. And this is that ability for users to be able to ingest metadata, understand where the PII data is, and then set policies up on top of it. So very quickly be able to set policies and have them enforced at the data level. So anybody in the organization is only getting access to the data they should have access to. >> This topic of data quality is interesting. It's something that I've followed for a number of years. It used to be a back office function, you know, and really confined only to highly regulated industries like financial services and healthcare and government. You know, you look back over a decade ago, you didn't have this worry about personal information, GDPR, and, you know, California Consumer Privacy Act, all becomes so much important. The cloud has really changed things in terms of performance and scale, and of course, partnering with Snowflake, it's all about sharing data and monetization, anything but a back office function. So it was kind of smart that you guys were early on and of course, attracting them as an investor as well was very strong validation. What can you tell us about the nature of the relationship with Snowflake, and specifically interested in sort of joint engineering and product innovation efforts, you know, beyond the standard go to market stuff? >> Definitely. So you mentioned they were a strategic investor in Collibra about a year ago. A little less than that I guess. We've been working with them though for over a year really tightly with their product and engineering teams to make sure that Collibra is adding real value. Our unified platform is touching, pieces of our unified platform are touching all pieces of Snowflake. And when I say that, what I mean is we're first, you know, able to ingest data with Snowflake, which has always existed. We're able to profile and classify that data. We're announcing with Collibra Protect this week that you're now able to create those policies on top of Snowflake and have them enforced. So again, people can get more value out of their Snowflake more quickly. As far as time to value with our policies, for all business users to be able to create. We're also announcing Snowflake Lineage 2.0. So this is the ability to take stored procedures in Snowflake and understand the lineage of where did the data come from, how was it transformed within Snowflake, as well as the data quality pushdown, as I mentioned. Data quality, you brought it up, it is a new, it is a big industry push, and you know, one of the things I think Gartner mentioned is people are losing up to $15 million without having great data quality. So this push down capability for Snowflake really is, again, a big ease of use push for us at Collibra of that ability to push it into Snowflake, take advantage of the data source and the engine that already lives there, and get the right and make sure you have the right quality. >> I mean, the nice thing about Snowflake, if you play in the Snowflake sandbox, you can get sort of a high degree of confidence that the data sharing can be done in a safe way. Bringing Collibra into the story allows me to have that data quality and that governance that I need. You know, we've said many times on the Cube that one of the notable differences in cloud this decade versus last decade, I mean there are obvious differences just in terms of scale and scope, but it's shaping up to be about the strength of the ecosystems. That's really a hallmark of these big cloud players. I mean they're, it's a key factor for innovating, accelerating product delivery, filling gaps in the hyperscale offerings, 'cause you got more stack, you know, much more stack capabilities, and it creates this flywheel momentum as we often say. But, so my question is, how do you work with the hyperscalers? Like whether it's AWS or Google or whomever, and what do you see as your role, and what's the Collibra sweet spot? >> Yeah, definitely. So, you know, one of the things I mentioned early on is the broader ecosystem of partners is what it's all about. And so we have that strong partnership with Snowflake. We also are doing more with Google around, you know, GCP and Collibra Protect there, but also tighter Dataplex integration. So similar to what you've seen with our strategic moves around Snowflake and really covering the broad ecosystem of what Collibra can do on top of that data source, we're extending that to the world of Google as well and the world of Dataplex. We also have great partners in SIs. Infosys is somebody we spoke with at the conference who's done a lot of great work with Levi's, as they're really important to help people with their whole data strategy and driving that data driven culture and Collibra being the core of it. >> All right, Laura, we're going to end it there, but I wonder if you could kind of put a bow on this year, the event, your perspectives. So just give us your closing thoughts. >> Yeah, definitely. So I want to say, this is one of the biggest releases Collibra's ever had, definitely the biggest one since I've been with the company a little over a year. We have all these great new product innovations coming to really drive the ease of use, to make data more valuable for users everywhere and companies everywhere. And so it's all about everybody being able to easily find, understand, and trust, and get access to that data going forward. >> Well congratulations on all the progress. It was great to have you on the Cube, first time I believe, and really appreciate you taking the time with us. >> Yes, thank you for your time. >> You're very welcome. Okay, you're watching the coverage of Data Citizens 2022 on the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (light music)

>>Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of VMware Explorer, 2022. I'm John furrier with Dave Valante host of the cube. We're here on the ground floor, Moscone west two sets Walter Wall coverage. Three days. We heard Laura Heisman, the senior vice president and CMO of VMware, put it all together. Great to see you. Nice, thanks for, to see you for spending time outta your very busy week. >>It is a busy week. It is a great week. >>So a lot of people were anticipating what world was gonna look like. And then the name changed to VMware Explorer. This is our 12th year covering VMware's annual conference, formerly known ASM world. Now VMware Explorer, bold move, but Raghu teased it out on his keynote. Some reason behind it, expand on, on the thought process. The name change, obviously multi-cloud big headline here. vSphere eight partnerships with cloud hyperscale is a completely clear direction for VMware. Take us through why the name changed. Exactly, exactly. And why it's all coming together. Think he kind of hinted that he kinda said exactly, you know, exploring the new things, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But take us through that. You've architected it. >>Yeah. It is a, a change of, we have a great past at VMware and we're looking to our future at the same time. And so when you come back from a pandemic and things changing, and you're really looking at the expansion of the business now is the time because it wasn't just to come back to what we were doing before. And every company should be thinking about that, but it's what are we gonna do to actually go forward? And VMware itself is on our own journey as expanding in more into the cloud, our multi-cloud leadership and everything that we're doing there. And we wanted to make sure that our audience was able to explore that with us. And so it was the perfect opportunity we're back live. And VMware Explorer is for everyone. That's been coming Tom world for so many years. We love our community and expanding it to our new communities that maybe don't have that legacy and that history and have them here with us at >>VMware. You did a great job. I love the event here. Love how it turned out. And, and a lot of interesting things happened along the way. Prior to this event you had we're coming outta the pandemic. So it's the first face to face yes. Of the VMware community coming together, which this is an annual right of passage for everyone in the customer base. Broadcom buys VMware. No, no, if you name change it to VMware Explorer and then Broadcom buys VMware. So announces, announces the, the buyout. So, and all the certainty, uncertainty kind of hanging around it. You had to navigate those waters, take us through, what was that like? How did you pull it off? It was a huge success. Yeah, because everyone showed up. Yeah. It's, it's, it's the same event, different name, >>It's >>Same vibe. >>The only thing constant is change. Right? And so it's the, we've gotta focus on the business and our VMware customers and our partners and our community at large. And so it's really keeping the eye on what we're trying to communicate to our community. And this is for our VMware community. The VMO community is here in spades. It is wonderful to have the VMO community here. We have tons of different customers, new customers, old customers, and it's just being able to share everything VMware. And I think people are just excited about that. It's great energy on the show floor and all >>Around. And it's not like you had years to plan it. I mean, you basically six months in you, you went, you said you went on a six month listening tour the other day. What was the number one question you got on that listening tour? >>Well, definitely about the name change was one, but I would say also, it's not just the question. It was the ask of, we have we're in what we call our chapter three here. And it's really our move into multicloud and helping all of our customers with their complexities. >>So virtualization, private cloud, and now multi-cloud correct. The third chapter. >>Yeah. And the, the question and the ask is how do we let our customers and partners know what this is, help us Laura. Like that was the number one ask to me of help us explain it. And that was my challenge and opportunity coming into explore, and really to explain everything about our, if you watched the gen session yesterday, these was, was going through our multiple different chapters where we are helping our customers with their multi-cloud strategies. And so it is been that evolution gets us today and it doesn't end today. It starts today. And we keep going, >>Like, like a lot of companies, obviously in you in this new role, you inherited a hybrid world and, and you've got, you got two years of virtual under your belt, and now you're running a completely different event from that standpoint. How does the sort of the COVID online translate into new relationships and how you're cultivating those? What's that dynamic like? >>Well, let's start with how happy everyone is to see each other in person. No doubt. Yeah. It is amazing just to see people, the high fives in the hallways, the hugs, oh, some people just the fist pump, whatever people mats are there masks aren't there, right? It is something of where everyone's comfort level, but it is really just about getting everyone together and thinking about how do, how was it before the pandemic? You don't necessarily just wanna repeat coming back. And so how do you think about this from an in-person event? People have been sitting behind their screens. How do we engage and how are we interactive? Knowing that attention spans are probably a little bit shorter. People are used to getting up and going get their coffee. We have coffee in the conference rooms, right? Things like that, making the experience just a really great one for everyone. So they're comfortable back in person, but I mean, honestly the energy and seeing people's smiles on their faces, it's wonderful to be back in person. >>It's interesting, you know, the cube, we've had some transformations ourselves with the pandemic and, and living through and getting back to events, but hybrid cloud and hybrid events is now the steady state. So, and in a way it's kind of interesting how hybrid cloud and now multi-cloud the digital aspect of integrating into the physical events is now key. First class citizen thinking. Yeah. For CMOs, you guys did a great job of preserving the, the, the, the best part of it, which is face to face people seeing each other and now bringing in the digital and then extending this. So that it's an always on kind of explore. Is that the thinking behind it? Yes. What's your vision on where you go next? Because if it's not, it's not one and done and see you next year. No anymore, because no, the pandemic showed us that hybrid and digital and physical together. If design as first class citizens with each other. Yeah. One sub-optimize me obviously face to face is better than digital, but if you can't make it, it shouldn't be a bad experience. >>No, not at all. Good's your vision. And, and we're in a point where not everyone's gonna come back, that everyone has what's going on with their life. And so you have to think about it as in person and online, it's not necessarily even hybrid. And so it's, what's the experience for people that are here, you know, over 10,000 people here, you wanna be sure that that is a great experience for them. And then our viewers online, we wanna be sure that they're able to, to know what's going on, stay in touch with everything VMware and enjoy that. So the gen session that was live, we have a ton of on demand content. And this is just the start. So now we go on to essentially multiple other VMware explorers around the world. >>It's interesting. The business model of events is so tickets driven or sponsorship on site on the location that you can get almost addicted to the, no, we don't wanna do digital and kind of foreclose that you guys embraced the, the combo. So what's the attendance. I mean, probably wasn't as big as when everyone was physical. Yep. What are some of the numbers? Can you give us some D data on attendance? Some of the stats around the show, cuz obviously people showed up and drove. Yes. It wasn't a no show. That's sure a lot of great stuff here >>We have. So it's over 10,000 people that are registered and we see them here. The gen session was packed. They're walking the show floor and then I don't have the numbers yet for our online viewership, but everything that we're doing to promote it online, if anyone missed it online, the gen session is already up and they'll see more sessions going live as well as all the on demand content so that everyone can stay in the loop of what's happening. And all of our announcements, >>You're obviously not disappointed. Were you surprised? A little nervous. >>So I will say one thing that we learned from others, thank goodness others have gone before us. So as far as coming back in person is the big change is actually registration happens closer to the event, right. Is a very big change from pre so, >>So it's at the end. Yes. >>The last three weeks. And we had been told that from peers at RSA and other conferences, that that's what happens. So we were prepared for that, but people wanna know what's going on in the world. Yeah. Right. You wanna have that faith before you buy that ticket and book your travel. And so that has definitely been one of the biggest changes and one that I think that will maybe continue to see here. So that was probably the biggest thing that changed as far as what to expect as registration. But we planned for this. We knew it was not going to be as big in the past and that that's gonna be, I think the new norm, >>I think you're right. I think a lot of last minute decisions, you know, sometimes people >>Wanna know, I mean, it's, what's gonna happen another gonna be outbreak or, I mean, I think people have gotten trained to be disappointed >>Well and be flexible >>With COVID I and, and, and weirded out by things. So people get anxiety on the COVID you've seen that. Yeah. >>Yeah. Yeah. I wanna ask you about the developer messaging cause that's one of the real huge takeaways. It was so strong. And you said the other day in the analyst session, the developers of the Kings and the Queens now, you know, we, when we hear developers, we think we pictured Steve Bama running around on stage developers develop, but it's different. It's a different vibe here. It it's like you're serving the Kings in the, in the Queens with, through partnerships and embracing open source. Can you talk a little bit about how you approached or, and you are approaching developer messages? Yeah, >>I, so, you know, I came from GitHub and so developers have been on my mind for many years now. And so joining VMware, I got to join this great world of enterprise software background and my developer background. And we have such an opportunity to really help our developer community understand the benefits of VMware to make them heroes just like we made sort of virtualization professionals heroes in the past, we can do the same thing with developers. We wanna be sure that we're speaking with our developer community. That was very much on stage as well as many of the sessions. And so our, we think about that with our products and what we're doing as far as product development and helping developers be able to test and learn with our products. And it's really thinking about the enterprise developer and how can we help them be successful. >>And I think, I think the beautiful thing about that message is, is that the enterprises that you guys have that great base with, they're all pretty much leaned into cl cloud native and they see it and it's starting to see the hybrid private cloud public cloud. And now with edge coming, it's pretty much a mandate that cloud native drive the architecture and that came clear in the messaging. So I have to ask you on the activations, you guys have done how much developer ops customer base mix are you seeing transfer over? Because the trend that we're seeing is is that it operations and that's generic. I'll say that word generically, but you know, your base is it almost every company has VMware. So they're also enabling inside their company developers. So how much is developer percentage to ops or is they blending in, it's almost a hundred percent, which how would you see >>That it's growing? So it's definitely growing. I wouldn't say it's a hundred percent, but it is growing. And it is one where every company is thinking about their developer. There's not enough developers in the world per the number of job openings out there. Everyone wants to innovate fast and they need to be able to invest in their developers. And we wanna be able to give them the tools to be able to do that. Cuz you want your developers to be happy and make it easier to do their jobs. And so that's what we're committed to really being able to help them do. And so we're seeing an uptick there and we're seeing, you'll see that with our product announcements and what we're doing. And so it's growing. >>The other thing I want to ask you, we saw again, we saw a lot of energy on the customer vibe. We're getting catching that here, cuz the sessions are right behind us and upstairs the floor, we've heard comments like the ecosystem's back. I mean not to anywhere, but there was a definitely an ecosystem spring to the step. If you will, amongst the partners, can you share what's happening here? Observations things that you've noticed that have been cool, that that can highlight some trends in the partner side of it. Yeah. What's going on with partners. >>Yeah. I mean our partners are so important to us. We're thrilled that they're here with us here. The expo floor, it is busy and people are visiting and reuniting and learning from each other and everything that you want to happen on the expo floor. And we've done special things throughout the week. For example, we have a whole hyperscaler day essentially happening where we wanna highlight some of the hyperscalers and let them be able to, to share with all of our attendees what they're doing. So we've given them more time within the sessions as well. And so you'll see our partner ecosystem all over the place, not just on the expo >>Floor, a lot of range of partners. Dave, you got the hyperscalers, you have the big, the big whales and cloud whales. And then you have now the second tier we call 'em super cloud type customer and partners. And you got the multi-cloud architecture, developing a lot of moving parts that are changing and growing and evolving. How do you view that? How you just gonna ride the wave? Are you watching it? Are you gonna explore it through more, you know, kind of joint marketing. I mean, what's your, how do you take this momentum that you have? And by the way, a lot of stuff's coming outta the oven. I was talking with Joan last night at the, at the press analyst event. And there's a lot of stuff coming outta the VMware oven product wise that hasn't hit the market yet. Yep. That's that's that's I mean, you can't really put a number on that sales yet, but it's got value. Yep. So you got that happening. You got this momentum behind you, you just ride the wave and what's the strategy. Well, >>It is all about how do we pass to the partner, right? So it is about the partner relationship. And we think about that our partner community is huge to us at VMware. I'm sure you've been hearing that from everyone you've been speaking to. So it's not even it's ride the wave, but it's embrace. Got it. It's embrace our partners. We need their help, our customer base. We do touch everybody and we need them to be able to support us and share what it is that we're doing from our product E evolution, our product announcements. So it's continuous education. It's there in educating us. It's definitely a two way relationship and really what we're even to get done here at explore together. It's progress that you can't always do on a zoom or a teams call or a WebEx call. You can't do that in two weeks, two years sometimes. And we're able to even have really great conversations >>Here and, and your go to market is transforming as well. You, you guys have talked about how you're reaching many different touchpoints. We've talked about developers. I mean, the other thing we've seen at events, we talked about the last minute, you know, registrations. The other thing we've seen is a lot more senior members of audiences. And now part of that is maybe okay, maybe some of the junior folks can't travel, they can't get, but, but, but why is it that the senior people come, they, they maybe they wouldn't have come before maybe because they're going through digital transformations. They wanna lean in and understand it better. But it seemed, I know you had an executive summit, you know, on day zero and Hawk 10 was here and, and so forth. So, okay. I get that. But it seems in talking to the partners, they're like, wow, the quality of the conversations that we're having has really been up leveled compared to previous years in other conferences. >>So yeah. Yeah. I think it's that they're all thinking about their transformation as well. We had the executive summit on day zero for us Monday, right? And it was a hundred plus executives invited in for a day who have stayed because they wanna hear what's going on. When I joined VMware, I said, VMware has a gift that so many companies are jealous of because we have relationships with the executives and that's what every company's startup to large company wants. And they're, they're really trusted customers of ours. And so we haven't been together and they want to be here to be able to know what's going on and join us in the meetings. And we have tons of meetings happening throughout >>The event and they're loyal and they're loyal. They're absolutely, they're active, active in a good way. They'll give you great feedback, candid feedback. Sometimes, you know, you might not wanna hear, but it's truthful. They're rare, engaging feedback gift. And they stay with you and they're loyal and they show up and they learn they're in sessions. So all good stuff. And then we only have about a minute left. Laura. I want to get your thoughts and, and end the segment with your explanation to the world around explore. What's next? What does it mean? What's gonna happen next? What does this brand turn into? Yeah. How do you see this unfolding? How do people, how should people view the VMware Explorer event brand and future activities? >>Yeah. VMware Explorer. This is just the start. So we're after this, we're going to Brazil, Barcelona, Singapore, China, and Japan. And so it is definitely a momentum that we're going on. The brand is unbelievable. It is so beautiful. We're exploring with it. We can have so much fun with this brand and we plan to continue to have fun with this brand. And it is all about the, the momentum with our sales team and our customers and our partners. And just continuing what we're doing, this is, this is just the beginning. It's not the, it's a global >>Brand explore >>Global. Absolutely. Absolutely. >>All right, Dave, that's gonna be great for the cube global activities. There you go, Laura. Great to see you. Thank you for coming on. I know you're super busy. Final question. It's kind of the trick question. What's your favorite aspect of the event? Pick a favorite child. What's going on here? Okay. In your mind, what's the most exciting thing about this event that that's near and dear to >>Your heart? So first it's hearing the feedback from the customers, but I do have to say my team as well. I mean, huge shout out to my team. They are the hub and spoke of all parts of explore. Yeah. VMware Explorer. Wouldn't be here without them. And so it's great to see it all coming >>Together. As they say in the scoring and the Olympics, the degree of difficulty for this event, given all the things going on, you guys did an amazing job. >>We witnessed >>To it. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for a great booth here. It looks beautiful. Thanks for coming. Wonderful. >>Thank you for >>Having me. Okay. The cues live coverage here on the floor of Moscone west I'm Trevor Dave. Valante two sets, three days. Stay with us for more live coverage. We'll be right back.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women In Tech, International Women's Day 2022. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I have two guests from AWS here with me. Carolina Pina joins us, the head of Enterprise Enablement for LATAM and Laura Alvarez Modernel is here as well, Public Sector Programs Manager at AWS. Ladies, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Nice to meet you. >> Thank you for having us. >> Carolina, let's start with you. Talk to me a little bit about your role, what it is that you're doing there. >> So my role in AWS is to actually create mechanisms of massive training to try to close the talent gap that we have in the region. And when I mentioned talent gap, I'm talking about obviously digital and cloud-computing skills. So that's, that's, in a nutshell what my role entails. >> Lisa: Got it. How long have you been in that role? Just curious. >> So I've been at AWS a little bit over, over two years. I was actually in the public sector team when I joined, leading the education vertical for Latin American Canada. And I recently joined the commercial sector now leading these massive training efforts for the region for LATAM. >> And Laura, you're in public sector. Talk to me a little bit about your role. >> Yes, I'm in public sector. I'm also based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. So yeah, I'm from Latin America, and I lead educational and community impact programs in the Southern cone of Latin America. I also lead diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and I'm part of the Women at Amazon global board. That's our affinity group to make sure we make efforts towards building a more equal world. And on a personal note I'm really passionate about the topic of gender equality because I truly think it affects us all as women and as Latins. So that's something that I'm always interested in collaborating with. >> Lisa: Excellent. Carolina back to you. If we think about from an enablement perspective how is AWS partnering with its customers and its partners to train and employ women particularly in technology? >> Oh, sure. Lisa, so it's not a surprise. We, like I mentioned, you know we have a big cloud skills, talent gap in the region. In fact, you know, 69% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. So, and this represents a 15 year high. So, many of these companies are actually, you know, our own commercial customers. So they approach us saying, you know, asking for for support training and developing their talent. So like I mentioned, in my role I create massive training efforts and initiatives. So we always take into consideration women, minorities, underrepresented community, and not just for the current talent, meaning like the people that are currently employed, but also to ensure that we are proactively implementing initiatives to develop a talent of younger you know, a younger generation and a talent. So we can, you know, to inspire them and, and ensure that they, that we're seeing them represented in companies like AWS, you know and our customers, and in our partners. And obviously we, when we sit down with customers to craft these massive trainings you know, leveraging their ecosystems and communities, we actually try to use all our AWS training and certification portfolio which includes, you know, in live in class with live in structures, in classroom trainings. We also have our AWS Skill Builder platform which is the platform that allows us to, you know to reach a broader audience because it has, you know over 500 free and on-demand classes. And we also have a lot of different other programs that touches in different audiences. You know, we have AWS re/Start for underrepresented, and underemployed minorities. We also have AWS Academy, which is the program that we have for higher education institutions. And we have AWS, you know, Educate which also touches, you know, cloud beginners. So in every single of these programs, we ensure that we are encompassing and really speaking to women and developing training and developing women. >> Lisa: That's a great focus there. Laura, talk to me about upskilling. I know AWS is very much about promoting from within. What are some of the things that it's doing to help women in Latin America develop those tech skills and upskill from where, maybe where they are now? >> Well, Lisa, I think that is super interesting because there's definitely a skills gap problem, right? We have all heard about. And what's funny is also that we have this huge opportunity in Latin America to train people and to help further develop the countries. And we have the companies that need the talent. So why is there still a gap, right? And I think that's because there's no magic solution to solving this problem. No, like epic Hollywood movie scene that it's going to show how we close the gap. And it takes stepping out of our comfort zone. And as Carolina mentioned, collaborating. So, we at AWS have a commitment to help 29 million people globally to grow their technical skills with free cloud-computing skills training by 2025. I know that sounds a lot through educational programs but we do have as Carolina mentioned, a Skill Builder you can go into the website for free, enter, choose your path, get trained. We have Academy that we implement with universities. Re/Start that is a program that's already available in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica. So there are a lot of opportunities, but you also mentioned something else that I would like to dive a bit deeper that is Latin American women. And yesterday we had the opportunity to record a panel about intersectionality with three amazing Latin women. And what we have to learn from that is that these are two minorities that intersect, right. We're talking about females that are minority. Latinas are minority. And in tech, that is also something that is even bigger minority. So there are more difficulties there and we need to make sure that we are meeting that talent that is there that is in Latin America, that exists. We know for sure we have unicorns in Latin America that are even AWS customers like Mercado Libre, and we have to meet them with the opportunities. And that's why we created a program that came from identifying how this problem evolves in Latin America, that there is a lack of confidence in women also that they don't feel prepared or equipped. There is a cultural component why we don't choose tech careers. And we partner with universities, more than 12 universities in Latin America with the International American Development Bank as well to create tech skills that's a free five weeks program in order to get students and get female in Latin America, into the tech world. And we also have them with mentorship. So I think that is an opportunity to truly collaborate because we as AWS are not going to solve these by ourselves, right? We need everyone pitching in on that. >> Lisa: Right. It's absolutely a team effort. You mentioned something important in terms of helping women, and especially minorities get out of their comfort zone. Carolina, I'm curious when you're talking with women and getting them into the program and sharing with them all of the enablement programs that you have, how do you help them be confident to get out of that comfort zone? That's a hard thing to do. >> Yeah, no, for sure. For sure, Lisa, well, I, you know, a lot of times actually I use myself as an example because, you know, I studied engineering and industrial systems engineering many years ago. And you know, a lot of my career has been in in higher education and innovation and startups. And as I mentioned in the intro I've been at AWS for a little bit over two years. So I, my career has not been in cloud and I recently joined the cloud. So I actually had to go through our own trainings and get our own certifications. So I, that's, you know a lot of times I actually, I use my own example, so people understand that you don't have to come from tech, you don't have to come, you can actually be a non-tech person and, and also see the the benefits of the cloud. And you don't have to only, you know, learn cloud if you're in the IT department or in an IT team. So sometimes, I also emphasize that the cloud and the future is absolutely the cloud. In fact, the world economic foreign, you know teaches us that cloud-computing is that the technology that's going to be mostly adopted by 2025. So that's why we need to ensure that every single person, women and others are really knowledgeable in the cloud. So that's why, you know, technical and untechnical. But I, you know, I use myself as an example for them to say, you know, you can actually do it. And obviously also I collaborate with Laura and a lot of the women at Amazon Latin America Group to also you know, ensure that we're doing webinars and panels. So we show them ourselves as role model like, Laura is an incredible role model for our community. And so it's also to to show examples of what the possibilities are. And that's what we do. >> Lisa: I love that you're sharing >> And can I make a note there also? >> Please, yes. >> To add to that. I think it also requires the companies and the, and the private sector to get out of their comfort zone, right? Because we are not going to find solutions doing what we are already doing. We truly need to go and get near these persons with a new message. Their interest is there in these programs we have reached more than 3,000 women already in Latin America with tech skills. So it's not that women are not interested. It's like, how do we reach them with a message that resounds with them, right? Like how we can explain the power of technology to transform the world and to actually improve their communities. I think there's something there also that we need to think further of. >> It's so important. You know, we say often when we're talking about women in tech, that she needs to see what she can be or if she can't see it, she can't be it. So having those role models and those mentors and sponsors is absolutely critical for women to get, I call it getting comfortably uncomfortable out of that comfort zone and recognizing there's so many opportunities. Carolina, to your point, you know, these days every company is a tech company, a data company whether you're talking about a car dealer, a grocery market. So your point about, you know, and obviously the future being cloud there's so much opportunity that that opens up, for everybody really, but that's an important thing for people to recognize how they can be a part of that get out of their comfort zone and try something that they maybe hadn't considered before. >> Yes. And, actually, Lisa I would love to share an example. So we have a group, O Boticário, which is one of our customers one of the, the lead retails in Brazil. And they've been a customer of AWS since 2013 when they realized that, you know the urgency and the importance of embracing state of the art technology, to your point, like, you know this is a retail company that understands that needs to be, you know embrace digital transformation, especially because, you know they get very busy during mother's days and other holidays during the year. So they realized that they, instead of outsourcing their IT requirements to technology experts they decided to actually start developing and bringing the talent, you know within itself, within, you know, technology in-house. So they decided to start training within. And that's when we, obviously we partnered with them to also create a very comprehensive training and certification plan that started with, you know a lot of the infrastructure and security teams but then it was actually then implemented in the rest of the company. So going back to the point like everybody really needs to know. And what we also love about O Boticário is they they really care about the diversion and inclusion aspect of this equation. And we actually collaborated with them as well through this program called Desenvolve with the Brazilian government. And Desenvolve means developing Portuguese and they this program really ensures that we are also closing that gender and that race gap and ensuring that they're actually, you know, developing talent in cloud for Brazil. So we, you know, obviously have been very successful with them and we will continue to do even more things with them particular for this topic. >> Lisa: I've always known how customer focused AWS is every time we get to go to re:Invent or some of the events but it's so nice to hear these the educational programs that you're doing with customers to help them improve DEI to help them enable their own women in their organizations to learn skills. I didn't realize that. I think that's fantastic very much a symbiotic part of AWS. If we think about the theme for this year's International Women's Day, Breaking The Bias I want to get both of your opinions and Laura we'll start with you, what that means to you, and where do you think we are in Latin America with breaking the bias? >> Well, I think breaking the bias is the first step to truly being who we are every day and being able to bring that to our work as well. I think we are in a learning curve of that. The companies are changing culturally, as Carolina mentioned we have customers that are aware of the importance of having women. And as we say at AWS not only because there is a good business reason because there is, because there are studies that show that we can increase the country's CPD, but also because it's important and it's the right thing to do. So in terms of breaking the bias I think we are learning and we have a long way to go. I talked a bit earlier about intersectionality and that is something that is also important to highlight, right? Because we are talking about females but we are also talking about another minorities. We're talking about underrepresented communities, Indigenous People, Latins. So when these overlap, we face even bigger challenges to get where we want to get, right? And to get to decision making places because technology is transforming the ways we take decisions, we live, and we need someone like us taking those decisions. So I think it's important at first to be aware and to see that you can get there and eventually to start the conversation going and to build the conversation, not to just leave it but to make sure we hear people and their input and what they're going through. >> Lisa: Yes. We definitely need to hear them. Carolina, what's your take on breaking the bias and where do you from your experience, where do you think we are with it? >> Yeah, no, I'm as passionate as Laura on this topic. And that's why we, you know we're collaborating in the Women at Amazon Latin America Chapter, because we're both very, I think breaking the bias starts with us and ourselves. And we are very proactive within AWS and externally. And I feel it's also, I mean, Lisa, what we've been doing is not only, obviously gathering you know, the troops and really making sure that, that we have very aggressive goals internally, but also bringing you know, bringing our male counterparts, and other, you know, other members of the other communities, because the change, we're not going to make it alone. Like the change where it is not women only talking to women is going to make the change. We actually need to make sure the male and other groups are represented. And the dialogue that they're that we're very conscious about that. And I feel like we're seeing more and more that the topic is becoming more of a priority not only within AWS and Amazon but we also see it because now that I meet with when I meet with customers around the region they really want to see how we can collaborate in these diversion and inclusion initiatives. So I think we are breaking the bias because now this topic is more top of mind. And then we are being more proactively addressing it and and training people and educating people. And I feel we're really in a pivoted point where the change that we've really been wanting to we will see in the next you know, few years which is very exciting. >> Lisa: Excellent, and we'll see that with the help of women like you guys. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what you're doing, how you're helping organizations across AWS's ecosystem, customers, partners, and helping, of course, folks from within you, right. It's a holistic effort, but we are on our way to breaking that bias and again, I thank you both for your insights. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa, for the opportunity. >> My pleasure. For Carolina Pina and Laura Alvarez Modernel, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech, International Women's Day 2022. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin learn Dubois joins me next VP of product management at Dell technologies. Laura, welcome back to the program. >>Yeah. Thank you so much, Lisa. It's just fantastic to be here and talking about data protection. Um, you know, now that we're coming out of COVID, it's just wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. >>Isn't it so refreshing. So you're going to provide some updates on Dell's data protection software, some of the innovation, how you're working with customers and prospects on that. So let's go ahead and dig right in. Let's talk about some of the innovation and the enhancements that Dell is making to its data protection suite of software, and also how customers are influencing that. >>Yeah, so it's a great question, Lisa and you're right. We have driven a lot of innovation and enhancements in our data protection suite. And let me just level set a second. So data protection suite, you know, is a solution that is deployed by really tens of thousands of customers. And we continue to innovate and enhance that data protection suite data protection suite is comprised primarily of three main data protection, software capabilities, so longstanding capabilities and customer adoption of Avamar, which continues to be a central capability on our portfolio. The second one is networker. Um, so networker is also an enterprise grade, highly scalable and performance data protection solution. And then a couple of years ago, um, we launched a new data protection capability called power protect data manager. So all three of these capabilities were really the foundation of our data protection suite. And as I said, you know, enterprises around the world rely on these three capable sets of capabilities to protect their data, regardless of wherever it resides. And, um, it's really central now more than ever in the face of, you know, increasing security, um, you know, risks and compliance and the need to be able to have an always kind of available environment that customers rely on the capabilities and data protection suite to really make sure their enterprises resilient. Absolutely. >>And make sure that that data is recoverable. If anything happens, you mentioned cybersecurity. We'll get into that in a second, but so thousands of Avamar and networker customers, what are some of the key workloads and data that these customers are protecting with these technologies? >>Yeah, I mean, so actually tens of thousands, tens of thousands, tens of thousands of customers that rely on data protection suite and you know, it really, I think the, the, the strength and advantage of our portfolio is its breadth, breadth and Kip terms with client operating environments in terms of applications and databases in terms of workloads and, and, and specifically use cases. So, I mean, the breadth that we offer is unparalleled. Um, you know, pretty much when a windows, Linux, um, open VMs, NetWare, you know, kind of, you know, going back in time, a long tail of kind of operating environments and then databases, right? So everything from SQL and Oracle and Sybase and DB two to new types of databases, like, you know, the no SQL or, or content store and, and, and, um, key value store types of types of, um, no SQL, uh, schema was if you will. >>And so, and then lastly is the, the use cases, right? So being able to protect data, whether that be data that's in a data center, out in remote or branch locations or data that's out in the cloud, right. And of course, create increasingly customers are placing their data, um, in a variety of locations, on edge, on core data centers and in cloud environments. And, um, we actually have over, uh, six exabytes of capacity on our management, across public cloud environments. So, um, pretty extensive deployment of our, our data protection suite in public clouds, you know, the leading hyperscalers, um, uh, cloud environments on premises as well. >>So let's talk a little bit about the customer influence because obviously there's a very cooperative relationship that Dell has with its customers that help you achieve things. Like, for example, I saw that according to IDC, Dell technologies is number one and data protection, appliances, and software leader in the Gartner magic quadrant for data center, backup and recovery for over 20 years. Now, talk to us a little bit more about that symbiotic customer Dell. >>Yeah. So it's a great question. We see our customers and strategic partners, and we really want to understand their business, their requirements. We engage on a quarterly basis with customers and partners in, um, it advisory councils. And then of course, we are always engaging with customers outside of those cycles on a kind of a one-on-one basis. And so we're really driving the innovation and the backlogs and the roadmap for data protection suite based upon customer feedback and, um, uh, approximately 79% of the fortune 100 customers, our Dell data, Dell technologies, data protection customers. Now that's not to say that that's our only customer base. We have customers in commercial accounts in mid-market and in, uh, federal agencies. Um, but you know, we take our customer relationships really, really seriously, and we engage with them, uh, on a regular basis, both in a group forum to provide feedback as well as in a one-on-one basis. And we're building our roadmaps and our, and our, our, our product releases based on feedback from customers. And, um, again, you know, large customer base that we take very seriously, >>Right to the customer listening obviously is critical for Dell. So you talked a little bit about what that cycle looks like in terms of quarterly meetings, and then those individual meetings, what are some of the enhancements and advancements that customers have actually influenced? >>Yeah, so we, I mean, we, I think, um, continuing, continuing to provide simplicity and ease of use is a key, uh, element of our portfolio and our in our strategy, right? So continuing to modernize and update the software in terms of workflows, in terms of, uh, know common experiences, also increasingly customers want to automate their data protection process. So really taking an API first strategy for how we deliver capabilities to customers, you know, continuing to expand our client, um, database hypervisor environments, continue to extend out our cloud support. Um, you know, things like, um, protection of cloud, native applications with, uh, increasingly customers containerizing, um, and building scale-out applications. We want to be able to protect Kubernetes environment. So that's kind of an area of focus for us. Um, another area of focus for us is going deeper with our key strategic partners, you know, whether that'd be a, a cloud partner, a hypervisor partner, and then of course, customers, in fact, one of the top three things that we consistently hear from, from these councils that we do is the, the criticality of security security and or data protection environment, but the criticality of being able to be resilient from, and, and in the event of a, of a cyber attack to be able to resilient recover from that cyber attack. >>So that is an area where we continue to make, uh, innovations and investments, uh, in the data protection suite. >>And that's so critical. One of the things that we saw in the last year, 15 months, plus Laura, is this massive rise in ransomware. It's now a household word, the colonial pipeline, for example, that meat plan, it's, it's now many businesses knowing it's not if we get attacked, but it's when, so having the ability to be resilient and recover that data is table stakes for, I imagine a business in any organization, I want to understand a little bit more. So you talked about tens of thousands of customers using Avamar and networker. So now they have the capability of also expanding and using more of, of the suite. Talk to me a little bit about that. >>Yeah, so, I mean, I think it starts with the customer environment and what workloads and use cases they have and because of the breadth of capabilities and Dave, the data protection suite, you know, we really optimize the solution based upon their needs, right? So if they have, um, a large portfolio of, of applications that they need to maintain, but they're also building applications or, or, or systems for the future, we have S you know, solution there. If they have a single hypervisor strategy or a multiple hypervisor strategy, we have a, you know, a strategy there, if they have data that's on premise and across a range of public clouds, you know, one large customer we have as a, you know, kind of, uh, uh, uh, three-plus one strategy around cloud. So there's, they, there's, they're, they're leveraging, you know, three different, um, uh, public cloud, I as environments. And then they're also have their on-premise cloud environment. So, you know, we, it really starts with the customer workload and the data and where it lives, whether that's be out in an edge location in a row remote or branch office on an end point somewhere, they need to protect whether it be in a core data center or multiple data centers, or rather that be in the cloud. Um, you know, that's how we think about optimizing the solution for the, for the customers. >>Curious if you can give me any examples of customers, maybe by industry that were, have been with Dell for a long time with Avamar networker and how they've expanded, being able to pick, as you say, as their, or as their environment grows. And we've got, um, now as this blur, right, it's now work from anywhere data centers, edge. Talk to me about some customers, examples that you think really articulate the value of what Dell is doing. >>Yeah, so, I mean, I think one customer, um, in the financial services sector comes to mind. They have a large, uh, um, amount of unstructured data that they need to protect, you know, petabytes, petabytes, and petabytes of data they need to protect. And so I think that's one customer that comes to mind is someone we've been with for a long time, uh, you know, been partnering with for a long time, >>A lot of, of, um, flexibility and choice for Avamar, a networker customers, as things change the world continues to pivot. And we know it's absolutely essential to be able to recover that data. You mentioned 70, I think 79% of the fortune 100 are using, uh, Dell technologies for data protection software. That's probably something that's only going to continue to grow. Um, lots of stuff coming up, as you mentioned, but what are some of the things that you're personally excited about as the world starts to open up and you get to actually go out and engage with customers >>I'm in just looking forward to like in-person meetings, right? I mean, I just love going and trying to understand what problems the customers are trying to solve and how we can help address those. Um, I think, you know, what I see customers sort of struggling with is how do they kind of manage their current environment while they're building for the future? Um, so there's a lot of interest in questions around, you know, the, how do they protect some of these new types of workloads, whether they're deployed on premise or in the public cloud. Um, so that continues to be an area where we, you know, we continue to engage with customers. Um, I'm also really personally excited about, you know, the extensions that we're doing and our cyber recovery capabilities socio can expect to hear more about some of those in the, in the next 12 months, because we're really, um, you know, seeing that as a key, uh, driver to kind of increase, um, you know, increased policies around and, and implementations around data protection, uh, is, is because of these, you know, the, the need to be able to re be resilient from cyber attacks. >>Um, I would say we're also doing some very interesting integrations with VMware. Um, we're going to have some first and only announcements around VMware and managing protection for VMware, uh, you know, VM environments. So we can look forward to hearing more about that. And, you know, we have customers that are deployed our data protection solutions at scale. Um, you know, one customer has 150,000 clients they're protecting with our data protection offerings. Wow. 150,000. And so, you know, we're continuing to improve the, and enhance the products to meet those kinds of scale requirements. And, um, you know, I'm excited by the fact that, that we've had this long standing relationship with this one particular customer and, you know, continue to, to help and, and flow an edge where, where their needs go. >>And that's something that even a great job of talking about is just not just a longstanding relationships, but really that dedication that Dell has to innovating with its customers. Laura, thank you for sharing some of the updates of what's new, what you're continuing to do with customers and what you're looking forward to in the future. It sounds like we might hear some news around the VMworld timeframe. Yes. All right, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate your time. >>It's been great to be here. Thanks so much. >>Excellent for Laura Dwight and Lisa Martin, you're watching this cube conversation.

(gentle music) >> Welcome to this Cube Conversation, I'm Lisa Martin. Laura Dubois joins me next, VP of product management at Dell Technologies, Laura, welcome back to the program. >> Yeah, thank you so much Lisa, it's just fantastic to be here and talking about data protection now that we're coming out of COVID, it's just wonderful to be here, thank you so much. >> Isn't it so refreshing. So, you're going to provide some updates on Dell's data protection software, some of the innovation, how you're working with customers and prospects. So let's go ahead and dig right in, let's talk about some of the innovation and the enhancements that Dell is making to its data protection suite of software and also how customers are influencing that. >> Yeah, so it's a great question Lisa and you're right. We have driven a lot of innovation and enhancements in our data protection suite. And let me just level a second. So data protection suite, is a solution that is deployed by really tens of thousands of customers. And we continue to innovate and enhance that data protection suite. Data protection suite is comprised primarily of three main data protection software capabilities. So, longstanding capabilities and customer adoption of Avamar, which continues to be a central capability on our portfolio. The second one is Networker. So Networker is also an enterprise grade, highly scalable and performance data protection solution. And then a couple of years ago, we launched a new data protection capability called power protect data manager. So, all three of these capabilities, really the foundation of our data protection suite. And as I said, enterprises around the world rely on these three sets of capabilities to protect their data, regardless of wherever it resides. And it's really central now more than ever in the face of increasing security, risks and compliance and the need to be able to have an always kind of available environment that customers rely on the capabilities and data protection suite to really make sure their enterprises resilient. >> Absolutely, and make sure that that data is recoverable if anything happens, you mentioned cybersecurity. We'll get into that in a second. But so thousands of Avamar and Networker customers, what are some of the key workloads and data that these customers are protecting with these technologies? >> Yeah, I mean, so, actually tens of thousands. >> Tens of thousands. >> Tens of thousands of customers that rely on data protection suite. And it really, I think the strength and advantage of our portfolio is its breadth, breadth in terms of client operating environments, in terms of applications and databases, in terms of workloads and specifically use cases. So I mean, the breadth that we offer is unparalleled, pretty much whether Windows, Linux, OpenVMS, NetWare, kind of going back in time a long tail of kind of operating environments and then databases, right. So everything from SQL and Oracle and Sybase and DB2 to new types of databases, like the NoSQL or content store and key value store types of NoSQL schemas, if you will. And so, and then lastly is the word they use cases, right? So being able to protect data, whether that be data that's in a data center, out in remote or branch locations or data that's out in the cloud, right. And of course, increasingly customers are placing their data in a variety of locations; on Edge, on core data centers and in cloud environments. And we actually have over six exabytes of capacity under management, across public cloud environments. So pretty extensive deployment of our data protection suite in public clouds, you know, the leading hyperscalers, cloud environments and premises as well. >> So let's talk a little bit about the customer influence 'cause obviously there's a very cooperative relationship that Dell has with its customers that help you achieve things. Like, for example, I saw that according to IDC, Dell Technologies is number one in data protection, appliances, and software, leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for data center backup and recovery for over 20 years now. Talk to us a little bit more about that symbiotic customer, Dell relationship. >> Yeah, so it's a great question. We see our customers as strategic partners, and we really want to understand their business, their requirements. We engage on a quarterly basis with customers and partners in advisory councils. And then of course, we are always engaging with customers outside of those cycles on a kind of a one-on-one basis. And so we are really driving the innovation and the backlogs and the roadmap for data protection suite based upon customer feedback. And approximately 79% of the fortune 100 customers, our Dell data, Dell Technologies data protection customers. Now that's not to say that that's our only customer base. We have customers in commercial accounts, in mid-market in federal agencies, but, you know, we take our customer relationships really, really seriously, and we engage with them on a regular basis, both in a group forum to provide feedback as well as in a one-on-one basis. And we're building our roadmaps and our product release is based on feedback from customers, and again, know large customer base that we take very seriously. >> Right to the customer listening obviously it is critical for Dell. So you talked a little bit about what that cycle looks like in terms of quarterly meetings and then those individual meetings. What are some of the enhancements and advancements that customers have actually influenced? >> Yeah, so we, I mean, we, I think continuing to provide simplicity and ease of use is a key element of our portfolio and our strategy, right? So continuing to modernize and update the software in terms of workflows, in terms of, you know, common experiences also increasingly customers want to automate their data protection process. So really taking an API-first strategy for how we deliver capabilities to customers, continuing to expand our client database, hypervisor environments, continue to extend out our cloud support, you know, things like protection of cloud native applications with increasingly customers containerizing and building scale-out applications. We want to be able to protect Kubernetes environment. So that's kind of an area of focus for us. Another area of focus for us is going deeper with our key strategic partners, whether that'd be a cloud partner or a hypervisor partner. And then of course, customers, in fact, one of the top three things that we consistently hear from these councils that we do is the criticality of security, security and our data protection environment but the criticality of being able to be resilient from, and in the event of a cyber attack to be able to resilient recover from that cyber attack. So that is an area where we continue to make innovations and investments in the data protection suite as well. >> And that's so critical. One of the things that we saw in the last year, 15 months plus Laura, is this massive rise in ransomware. It's now a household word, the Colonial Pipeline for example, the meat packing plant, it's now many businesses knowing it's not, if we get attacked, but it's when. So having the ability to be resilient and recover that data is table stakes for, I imagine a business in any organization. I want to understand a little bit more. So you talked about tens of thousands of customers using Avamar and Networker. So now they have the capability of also expanding and using more of the suite. Talk to me a little bit about that. >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think it starts with the customer environment and what workloads and use cases they have. And because of the breadth of capabilities indeed the data protection suite, we really optimize the solution based upon their needs, right. So if they have a large portfolio of applications that they need to maintain but they're also building applications or systems for the future, we have a solution there. If they have a single hypervisor strategy or a multiple hypervisor strategy, we have a strategy there, if they have data that's on-premise and across a range of public clouds, one large customer we have as a, kind of three-plus one strategy around cloud. So they're leveraging three different public cloud, IS environments, and then they're also have their on-premise cloud environment. So, you know, we, it really starts with the customer workload and the data, and where it lives; whether that's be out in an Edge location in a remote or branch office, on an end point somewhere, they need to protect whether it be in a core data center or multiple data centers, or rather be in the cloud. That's how we think about optimizing the solution for the customers. >> Curious if you can give me any examples of customers maybe by industry that were, have been with Dell for a long time with Avamar and Networker for a long time and how they've expanded, being able to pick, as you say, as their, or as their environment grows and we've got, now this blur of right. It's now worked from anywhere, data centers, Edge. Talk to me about some customers examples that you think really articulate the value of what Dell is delivering. >> Yeah, so, I mean, I think one customer in the financial services sector comes to mind. They have a large amount of unstructured data that they need to protect, you know, petabytes, petabytes and petabytes of data they need to protect. And so I think that's one customer that comes to mind is someone we've been with for a long time, been partnering with for a long time. Another customer I mentioned in the, it was a kind of a three-letter software company that is a really strategic partner for us with on-premise, in the cloud. You know, healthcare is a big and important sector for Dell. We have integrations into kind of leading healthcare applications. So that's another big, whether they be a healthcare provider or a healthcare insurance company, and had a fourth example, but it's escaping my mind right now, but, I would say going back to the cyber discussion, I mean, one thing that we, where we see really customers looking for guidance from us around cyber recovery and cyber resilience is in what the, you know, of course president Biden just released this executive board on his mandate for ensuring that the federal agencies but also companies in the millisecond sector, sectors be able to ensure resilience from cyber attacks. So that's companies in financial services, that's companies in healthcare, energy, oil, and gas transportation, right. Obviously in companies and industries that are critical to our economy and our infrastructure. And so that has been an area where we've seen, recently in the last, I would say 12 months increased in engagement, you mentioned Colonial Pipeline, for example. So those are some high salient highlights I think of in terms of, you know, kind of key customers. But pretty much every sector. I mean, the U.S. government, all of the the agencies, whether they be civilian, or DOD or key kind of engagement partners of ours. >> Yeah, and as you said in the last year, what a year it's been. But really a business in every industry has got to be able to be resilient and recover when something happens. Can you talk a little bit about some of the specific enhancements that you guys have made to the suite? >> Yeah, sure. So, you know, we continue to enhance our hypervisor capabilities. So we continue to enhance not only the core VMware or hyperbaric capabilities but we continue to enhance some of the extensions or plugins that we have for those. So whether that be things like our VRealized plugin or a vCloud director plugin for say, VMware. So that's kind of a big focus for us. Continuing to enhance capabilities around leveraging the cloud for long-term retention. So that's another kind of enhancement area for us. But cloud in general is an ara where we continue to drive more and more enhancement. Improving performance in cloud environments for a variety of use cases, whether that be DR to the cloud, backup or replications of the cloud or backing up workloads that are already in the cloud. There's a key use cases for us, as well as the archive to cloud use cases. So there's just some examples or areas where we've driven enhancements and you can expect to see more, you know we have a six month release cadence for Avamar and Networker, and we continue with that momentum. And at the end of this month, we have the next major release of our data protection suite. And then six months later, we'll have the next update and so on and so forth. And we've been doing that actually for the last three to four years. This is a six month release cadence for data protection suite. We continue with that momentum. And like I said, simplicity and modernity, APIs and automation, extending our workloads and hypervisors and use cases. And then cloud is a big focusing area as well, as well as security and cyber resilience. >> Right, and so a lot of flexibility in choice for Avamar and Networker customers. As things change the world continues to pivot and we know it's absolutely essential to be able to recover that data. You mentioned 70, I think 79% of the Fortune 100 are using Dell technologies for data protection software. That's probably something that's only going to continue to grow. Lots of stuff coming up. As you mention, what are some of the things that you're personally excited about as the world starts to open up and you get to actually go out and engage with customers? >> I'm in just looking forward to like in-person meetings. I mean, I just loved going and trying to understand what problems the customers are trying to solve and how we can help address those. I think, you know, what I see customers sort of struggling with is how do they kind of manage their current environment while they're building for the future? So there's a lot of interest in questions around, how do they protect some of these new types of workloads, whether they're deployed on premise or in the public cloud. So that continues to be an area where we continue to engage with customers. I'm also really personally excited about the extensions that we're doing in our cyber recovery capabilities so as you can expect to hear more about some of those in the next 12 months, because we're really seeing that as a key driver to kind of increased policies around and implementations around data protection is because of these, you know, the needs to be able to be resilient from cyber attacks. I would say we're also doing some very interesting integrations with VMware. We're going to have some first and only announcements around VMware and managing protection for VMware, you know, VM environments. So you can look forward to hearing more about that. And we have customers that have deployed our data protection solutions at scale. One customer has 150,000 clients who they're protecting with our data protection offerings, 150,000. And so we're continuing to improve the, and enhance the products to meet those kinds of scale requirements. And I'm excited by the fact that we've had this long standing relationship with this one particular customer and continue to help in flowing up where their needs go. >> And that's something that even a great job of talking about is just not just a longstanding relationships but really that dedication that Dell has to innovating with its customers. Laura, thank you for sharing some of the updates of what's new, what you're continuing to do with customers, and what you're looking forward to in the future. It sounds like we might hear some news around the VMworld timeframe. >> Yes, I think so. >> All right, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. Appreciate your time. >> Yeah, it's been great to be here. Thanks so much. >> Excellent from Laura Dubois and Lisa Martin, you're watching this Cube Conversation. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think virtual 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got three great guests here to talk about IBM Cloud Satellite and AI operations. Laura Guio, GM of Global Cisco Alliance. Matthew Angelstad, IBM Partner, Lead Client Partner for Canada, Financial Services. And Kuberan Kandasamy, VP of Personal Insurance at Economical Insurance. Folks, thanks for coming on theCUBE, this great panel on Cloud Satellite and AI ops. Thanks for joining me. >> Thank you, John. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, John, good to see you. >> Well, first, let's start with you. There's the General Manager for the IBM-Cisco strategic partnership. Tell us more about the relationship as cloud has become hybrid and it's pretty much determined that's the standard and multicloud is right around the corner. The programmability of the infrastructure is critical. And so, obviously you can see the modern applications are doing that. Take us through the IBM-Cisco strategic partnership. >> Absolutely, so John, as you know, and we've talked in the past, it's a 25-year relationship between IBM and Cisco, long-standing. Now, if you look at Cisco in the past, they've really been known as a networking and hardware company. But with the evolution of Cisco and how they're changing, they're really switching to be more around a supporting technology and in the services and software areas. With that change coupled with Kyndryl, our spin-off of what we were previously calling NewCo, we have an opportunity now to refocus all of the work that we're doing as IBM and Cisco going forward. You couple that with the Red Hat acquisition that we did almost two years ago, we've got a three-way partnership here that's really bringing a lot of value to the marketplace. Now, when you look at that from a hybrid cloud perspective, we announced our Satellite product, which is built on top of Cisco technology with IBM in that as well. And then really taking the security elements of what Cisco does and bringing all of this into the fold around that hybrid cloud solution. So, we're super excited about this. >> Real quick while I have you, you brought up a couple of key points. I just want to get to, I know we're going to get to it later, but the operating model has shifted. You mentioned with the NewCo and these relationships, ecosystem relationships and network effect, not just like packets, but like businesses and APIs are critical. This new cloud operating model is really the center of that equation. How does that relate into all that? >> So, you know, these operating models and how we're going to market here is changing dramatically. And you take what Cisco's doing, and you know, we've got a client here with us today, Kuberan who's going to talk about what they're doing with some of this technology. But really taking that at the core of how do you bring value at the client. What are they doing to get that hybrid cloud solution put into place? And then what are all those surrounding elements around software, managing the ops and things that we need? This is where IBM and Cisco couple together, really great value. >> Kuberan, you got teed up beautifully there. So, I want to go to you and then I'll go to Matthew after. But, okay, tell us more about this IBM-Cisco dynamic. You guys are a hot growth company doing very well and continuing to grow. And sure, post-pandemic is looking good too. So, take us through why you decided to engage IBM and Cisco. >> Sure. Sure, John, thank you. You know, to appreciate how we got here and why we asked IBM and Cisco to help us, let me first start by providing some background. Our journey started back in 2016 when we launched Sonnet, an MVP. Sonnet is our fully automated, direct-to-customer digital channel, where customers can quote and buy home and auto policies online without the need to engage anyone at Economical. Then in 2018, we launched Vyne, another MVP. Vyne is our simplified self-serve and digitized broker channel, where our broker partners can quote and buy home and auto insurance policies for their customers, again, without the need to engage anyone at Economical. Both Sonnet and Vyne have won awards for innovation and both have been industry disruptors. You know, after launch, we heightened our focus on enhancing business functionality and user experiences. Given that we had started with MVPs, it made sense for us to put a lot of emphasis on enhancements initially. And, you know, we maintain the platform level monitoring capabilities at a macro level. And the way we did the enhancements where we stood up agile pods, you know, focused on very specific business mandate. This approach delivered desired results for our business, but as our excitement grew for our upcoming IPO and our business started ramping up their growth plans, we needed to increase our focus on fine-tuning key components, which included enhancing our focus on stability and predictability for our Sonnet and Vyne platforms. And we needed the ability to look deeper and get into the micro level, so that we can monitor the pulse of, you know, every component of our user's journey across both Sonnet and Vyne, and we needed help with this. And this is where we engaged IBM and Cisco to help us through this journey. >> On that vision real quick. How does the AI fit in? More on the automation side or on the app side? I mean, I can imagine with that growth in the IPO, you think in automation, I'm assuming, can you elaborate quickly? >> Absolutely. So, I mean, if you think about it, it's a lot of data that we get, like it's all digitized, so we have a lot of data in there. And this is where, you know, the ability to be able to actually mine that data and actually be taking proactive steps in terms of predicting, having predictability and all that, that's where the AI ops comes in. But that's part of our journey through this. >> Yeah, it's good. I mean, the theme here is transformation is the innovation at scale. Matthew, you lead the Financial Services division in Canada. What are you seeing as the hot topics with your clients and how are you responding? How is IBM participating? >> Yeah, absolutely. And Kuberan was touching on this from Economical's perspective. They already have two leading digital solutions in market with Sonnet on the retail customer side in Vyne with their broker network. But what we're seeing even more so in the past year so of the pandemic is a dramatic acceleration of that end-to-end digital experience. So, our clients and their customers are expecting digital native solutions that are contextually personalized, highly secure and always available or extremely resilient, right? That obviously plays into IBM's capabilities and our joint capabilities with our partner ecosystem such as Cisco AppDynamics around hybrid, multicloud and AI. >> So, if you don't mind, if you don't mind following up on that AppDynamics point. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that solution played out and how that evolved? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, first off, this was based, again, on our long-standing relationship with Cisco AppDynamics that Laura was speaking about. And then the unique to what Kuberan in Economical was seeking of stitching together the data footprint across the infrastructure architecture but leveraging data in a business context. And I think that is the unique value that AppDynamics brings to this scenario here, is a market-leading solution that does bring together those multiple data sets but contextualizes them in a business context. So, you can understand from a user perspective that end-to-end journey right from initiation in the application, all the way through the technical infrastructure. And it becomes very preventative in terms of identifying and resolving potential issues before they even occur. >> So, AppD and these IBM services work well together right there. That's your key point, right? That's. >> Absolutely, and that's, the point is bringing together the best combination of solutions and services on behalf of our customer set. And this where AppDynamics and IBM and our other partners work incredibly well together. >> Well, we'll talk about the dynamics again. This is, again, this highlights the point of the better together combination here with the Cisco relationship and the IBM evolution you mentioned. What can other clients expect? I mean, this is going to be the playbook. (laughs) I mean, you got the Cloud Satellite. Take us through what this means. What does all this mean? >> Yeah, absolutely. I'll start, and maybe even Laura can add as needed. But from an IBM perspective, absolutely. We're going to work with our partner ecosystem in the hybrid multicloud world. So, we've really evolved whether it's IBM Cloud, AWS, as some of our clients, including Economical and others. Microsoft Azure, Google. It is about bringing those together regardless of strategic decisions made on cloud platform, but understanding how the applications play together. And again, stitching together the data across those application sets to drive value out of it. This is where we're really seeing the evolution of IBM and our partner ecosystem, and the evolution of IBM services as well. >> Awesome. >> Yeah. And if you really look at what Cisco's trying to do, they've declared they're going to be in this hybrid cloud space. They bring the elements to the solution when you look at networking. We look at some of the security. And then when we start looking at how this combines with edge technology, we really start getting combinations between the IBM technology, the Cisco technology and how that completes a picture in a solution for the client. >> I love the end-to-end story. I see hybrid as distributed computer in my mind and now you've got multicloud as subsystems and all is going to have to be operated together. And the software that makes that happen. And I can see tons of head room opportunity there. Kuberan, talk about what you guys are seeing as results now. Because this is where you start to see the conversation shift to. It's not just go to the cloud anymore, it's make the cloud operational on all environments. That's really what people want to see. Can you share what you're seeing as a result and where do you go from there? >> Yeah, absolutely. You know, what's awesome about all of this is first of all, in a very short time the team which really was composed of a cross-functional and a highly collaborative group of people, they've already delivered some key pieces that are giving us line of sight into what's going on for a business solution. And, you know, the implemented scope is already detecting symptoms and allowing us to be very proactive and it is also helping us to complete root cause analysis faster. It's helping us to reduce defect linkage through our quality assurance practices. So, you know, for us, as I mentioned earlier, this is a journey like, you know, unlike traditional approaches where implementations are driven by predetermined scope. We are changing the mindset, specifically because we're using a lot of telemetry and continuous discovery in helping transform how our platform is important. You know, it has become part of our philosophy where business and technology are now working closer together. And our vision is to navigate continuously towards having a highly automated monitoring solution that leverages cognitive insights and intelligence. So, you know, to be able to have a robust self-healing capability. And this is where it kind of ties with the whole cloud capability, because now you can actually enable the self-healing capabilities and with AppDynamics bringing in the dynamic capture of issues happening and things like that. And if you kind of step back a bit and if you think of this approach, this is no different than how we envisioned and how we implemented both Sonnet and Vyne, where it was a fully digitized end-to-end solution that provides services and value for, excuse me, for our customers. Right? So, hopefully that kind of stitches the picture for you. >> That's awesome, great insight. Laura, Matthew, Kuberan, thanks for coming on theCUBE. In the last minute that we have, let's go down the line. Laura, Matthew and Kuberan, we'll start with you guys. What's the bottom line for IBM and Cisco's relationship with the Cloud Satellite and AI. What should people walk away with? What's the bumper sticker? What's the summary? >> So, as IBM invest more and more in these strategic hybrid cloud solutions industry-focused, it's really bringing an industry-focused solution to clients without us having to reinvent that every time. And as you've heard from Kuberan here, I mean, we're bringing that value to our customers. >> All right. Matthew? >> Yeah, I'd just like to add, and this is a great example here of being able to co-innovate and collaborate with our partners and with our clients, Economical in this case, to evolve these solutions. And as Kuberan has stated, this is the first step in a journey here and there's lots of exciting things to come. >> Kuberan, take us home, final word. >> Thank you. What I would say is, what we've learned from this is really standing this stuff in more like a garage style kind of a situation where you can actually get something going rapid and you get business results and you start seeing ROI very quickly. So, that's the benefit I've seen. >> Awesome, great points. IBM and Cisco better together. This ecosystem, the co-creation, the new network effects is the new dynamic in the marketplace. This is the table stakes. Thanks for coming on, thanks for sharing the insights. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thanks a lot, John. >> Okay, IBM Think 2021. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thank you for watching. (cheerful music)

>>from around the globe. It's the >>cube >>With digital coverage of IBM think 2021 >>brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think Virtual 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube. Got three great guests here talking about IBM cloud satellite and AI operations, Lori G O G M of Global SisQo Alliance, Matthew, Engelstad, IBM partner. Lead client partner for Canada financial services and cooper on Kent Asami VP of personal insurance. That economical insurance folks. Thanks for coming on the cube. This great panel on cloud satellite and Ai Ops. Thanks for joining me. >>Thank you. Thank you. Thank you john. Good to see you. >>Well, first let's start with you. There's a general manager for the IBM Cisco Strategic Partnership. Tell us more about the relationship as cloud has become hybrid. It's pretty much determined that's the standard and multi clouds right around the corner. The program ability of the infrastructure is critical and so obviously you can see the modern applications are doing that take us through the IBM Cisco strategic partnership. >>Mhm. Absolutely. So john as you know, and we've talked in the past, it's a 25 year relationship between IBM and Cisco longstanding. Now if you look at Cisco in the past, they've really been known as a networking and hardware company, but with the evolution of Cisco and how they're changing, they're really switching to be more around supporting technology and in the services and software areas. With that change coupled with Kendrell, our spin off of what we were previously calling Newco, we have an opportunity now to refocus all of the work that we're doing as IBM and Cisco going forward. You couple that with the red hat acquisition that we did almost two years ago, we've got a three way partnership here that's really bringing a lot of value to the marketplace. Now, when you look at that from a hybrid cloud perspective, we announced our satellite product which is built on top of Cisco technology with IBM in that as well. And then really taking the security elements of what Cisco does and bringing all this into the fold around that hybrid cloud solution. So we're super excited about this >>real quick. Why have you brought up a couple key points? I just want to get too. I know we're gonna get to it later, but the operating model has shifted, you mentioned with the new co and these relationships, ecosystem relationships and network effect, not just like packets, but like businesses and mps are critical. This new cloud operating model is really a center of of that. That that equation, how does that relate into all that? >>So, the, you know, these operating models and how we're going to market here is changing dramatically and you take what Cisco is doing and you know, we've got a client here with us Today programme who's going to talk about what they're doing with some of this technology. But really taking that at the core of how do you bring value at the client, what are they doing to get that hybrid cloud solution put into place And then what are all those surrounding elements around software managing the apps and things that we need? This is where IBM and Cisco coupled together. Really bring value >>cooper. You got teed up beautifully there so I want to go to you then go to Matthew after but okay, tell us more about this IBM. Cisco dynamic. You guys are hot growth company um doing very well and continuing to grow and sure, post pandemic. It's looking good too. So take us through why you decided to engage IBM and Cisco? >>Sure, sure john thank you. Um you know, to appreciate how we got here and why? We asked IBM and Cisco to help us. Let me first start by providing some background. Our journey started back in 2016 when we launched Sonnet and M. V. P. Uh Sonnet is a fully automated director customer digital channel where customers can quote and buy home and all of his online without the need to engage anyone at economical. Then in 2018, we launched by another m. v. p. Wine is our simplified self serve and digitized broker channel where broker partners can quote and buy home and auto insurance policies for their customers again, without the need to engage anyone at economical. Both uh some wine have won awards for innovation and both have been industry disruptors. You know, after launch we heightened our focus on enhancing business functionality and user experiences, given that we had started with MVPs, it made sense for us to put a lot of emphasis on enhancements initially. And you know, we maintained platform level monitoring capabilities at a macro macro level. We we and and the way we did the enhancement where we stood up agile pods, you know, focused on very specific business mandate. This approach delivered design results for our business. But as our excitement grew for our upcoming I. P. O. And our business started ramping up their growth plans. We needed to increase our focus on fine tuning key components which included enhancing our focus on stability and predictability for our sonnet and wine platforms. And we needed the ability to look deeper and get into the micro level so that we can monitor the pulse of uh you know, every component of our users journey uh across both solid and wine. And we need to help with this. And this is where we engage idea Francisco to help us through this journey >>on that vision real quick. How does the A. I. Fit in more on the automation side or on the upside? I mean I can imagine what that growth in the I. P. O. You're thinking automation I'm assuming. Can you elaborate quickly? >>Absolutely. So I mean if you think about it, it's a lot of data that we get like it's all digitized so we have a lot of data in there and this is where you know the ability to be able to actually mined that data and actually be taking proactive steps in terms of predicting having predictability and all that. That's where the Ai Ops comes in but that's part of our journey through this. >>Yeah that's good. I mean the theme here is transformation is the innovation at scale. Matthew, you lead the financial services division in Canada. What are you seeing as the hot topics uh with your clients and how are you responding? House IBM participating? >>Yeah, absolutely. And cooper and was touching on on this from economical perspective, they already have two leading digital solutions in market with Sonnet on the retail customer side in vine with their broker network. But what we're seeing even more so in the past year or so of the pandemic is a dramatic acceleration of that and then digital experience. So our clients and their customers are expecting digital native solutions that are contextually personalized, highly secure and always available or extremely resilient. Right? That obviously plays into IBM's capabilities and our joint capabilities with our partner ecosystem such as Cisco appdynamics around high hybrid, multi cloud and AI. >>So, if you don't mind if I don't mind following up on that app dynamics point, um can you tell me a little bit more about how that solution played out and how that involved? >>Yeah, absolutely. So first off this was based again on our longstanding relationship with Cisco appdynamics that laura was speaking about and then unique to what cooper and and economical was seeking. Of stitching together the data footprint across the infrastructure architecture. But leveraging data in a business context. And I think that is the unique value that app dynamics brings to this scenario here is a market leading solution that does bring together those multiple datasets, but contextual ISeS them in a business context. So you can understand from a user perspective that end to end journey right from initiation in the application all the way through the technical infrastructure and it becomes very preventative uh in terms of identifying and resolving potential issues before they even occur. >>So empty and this IBM services worked well together right there. That's your key point, right? That's >>absolutely. And that's the point is bringing to bear the best combination of, of solutions and services on behalf of our customers set. And this is where appdynamics and IBM uh, and our other partners work incredibly well together. >>We'll talk about the dynamics. Again, this is again, this highlights the point of the better together combination here with the Cisco relationship and the IBM evolution you mentioned, um what can other clients expect? I mean, this is gonna be the playbook. I mean you got the cloud satellite take us through what this means. What does all this mean? >>Yeah, absolutely. I'll start and maybe even laura can can add as as needed, but from an IBM perspective, absolutely. We're gonna work with our partner ecosystem um in the hybrid, multi cloud world. So uh we've really evolved whether it's IBM cloud aws as some of our clients, including economical and others Microsoft, Azure, um google. Uh It is about bringing those together regardless of strategic decisions made on cloud platform, but understanding how the applications play together and again, stitching together the data across those applications sets to drive value out of it. Uh This is where we're really seeing the evolution of IBM in our partner ecosystem and the evolution of IBM services as well. Awesome. >>Yeah. And if you really look at what Cisco is trying to do, um they've declared they're going to be in this hybrid cloud space. They bring elements to the solution. When you look at networking we look at some of the security and then when we start looking at how this combines with edge technology, we really start getting combinations between the IBM technology, the Cisco technology and how that completes a picture in a solution for a client. >>I love the end to end story, actually hybrids, distributed computer in my mind and now you've got multi club, it's just subsystems and all gonna have to be operated together and the software all makes that happen. I could see tons of headroom opportunity there cooper and talk about what you guys are seeing as results now because this is where you start to see uh the conversation shift too. It's not just go to the cloud anymore, it's make the cloud operational on all environments. That's really people want to see, can you share what you're seeing as a result? And where do you go from there? >>Yeah, absolutely. Um you know what's awesome about all of this is first of all, in a very short time, the team which really was composed of a cross functional and the highly collaborative group of people, uh they've already delivered some key pieces that are giving us line aside into what's going on for our business solution and you know, the implemented uh scope is already detecting symptoms and allowing us to be very proactive and it is also helping us to complete root cause analysis faster, helping us reduce defect linkage through a quality assurance practices. So, you know, for us, as I mentioned earlier, this is a journey like, you know, unlike traditional approaches where um implementations are driven by predetermined scope, we are changing the mindset specifically because we're using a lot of telemetry and continuous discovery in helping transform how our platform is important. You know, it has become part of our philosophy where business and technology are now working closer together and our vision is to navigate yeah continuously towards having a highly automated monitoring solution that leverages cognitive insights and intelligence. So you know to be able to have a robust self healing capability and this is where it kind of ties with the whole cloud capability because now you can actually enable the self self healing capabilities and with afghan um is bringing in the uh uh dynamic capture of issues happening and things like that. And if you kind of step back a bit and if you think of this approach, this is no different than how we envisioned and how we implemented both Summit and Wine where it was a fully digitized end to end solution that provides services and value for excuse me for our customers. Right? So hopefully that changes the picture. >>That's awesome. Great insight, Laura Matthew Gordon? Thanks for coming on the cube in the last minute that we have, let's go down the line laura Matthew cooper on. We'll start with you guys. What's the bottom line for IBM and Cisco relationship with the cloud satellite and a I guess what should people walk away with? What's the bumper sticker? What's the summary? >>So as IBM invest more and more in these strategic cloud hybrid cloud solutions industry focused, it's really bringing an industry focused solution to clients without us having to reinvent that every time. And as you heard from from Kobrin here, I mean we're bringing that value to our customers. >>All right Matthew, >>yeah, I just like to add and this is a great example here of being able to co innovate and collaborate with our partners and with our clients, economical in this case to evolve these solutions And as cooper and had stated, uh, this is the first step in a journey here and there's lots of exciting things to come, >>come on, take us home. Final word. >>Thank you. What I would say is what we've learned from. This is really uh, standing this up more like a garage style kind of situation where you can actually get something going rapid and you get business results and you start seeing RY very quickly. So that's the benefit. I've >>seen some great points. IBM and Cisco better together this ecosystem. The co creation, the new network effects is the new dynamic in the marketplace. This is the table stakes. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing the insight. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thanks a lot john >>Okay. IBM think 2021. I'm John for with the Cube. Thank you for watching. >>Mm

>>Hello. Everyone were here it the Data Cloud summit and we had a real treat for you. I call it the CMO Power Panel. We're gonna explore how data is transforming marketing, branding and promotion, and with me, a three phenomenal marketing pros and chief marketing officers. Denise Person is the CMO Snowflakes Kat Holden of Thought spot and Laura Langdon of Whip pro Folks. Great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >>Great to be with you, David. >>Awesome. Denise, let's let's start with you. I want to talk about the role and the changing role of the CMO. It's changed a lot, you know, sports, of course, with all this data, but I wonder what you're experiencing and can you share us share with us? Why marketing, especially, is being impacted by data? >>Well, data is really what has helped us marketers turn ourselves into revenue drivers instead instead of call centers, and that's definitely a much better place to be. We come today measure things that were never possible before. What a person most excited about is the rial time access to data we have today. In the past, we used to get stale reports, you know, weeks after a marketing program was over. Today we get data in real time as our campaigns are up and running. And this is really what enables us to make those riel time adjustments to our investments in real time. And that is really have a profound impact on the results were having. And also today, you know, more than ever, adaptability is truly the superpower or marketing today and day. That's really what allows us to adapt to our customers preferences in real time. And that's really critical at this time. >>That's interesting what you say because, you know, in tough times used to be okay. Sales and engineering put a brick wall around those and you know the name it. Marketing, Say Okay, cut. But now it's like you go to marketing and say, Okay, what's the data say? How do we have to pivot and Scott? I wonder what of data and cloud really brought to the modern marketer that you might not have had before this modern era? >>Well, it Z this era. I don't think there's ever been a better time to be a marketer than there is right now, and The primary reason is that we have access to data and insights like we've never had, and I'm not exaggerating. When I say that I have 100 times more access to data, then I had a decade. It's just phenomenal when you look at the power of cloud search, ai These new consumer experiences for analytics. We can do things in seconds that used to take days and so it's B comments did he said. Ah, superpower for us toe. Have access to so much data and it's, you know, Kobe has been hard. Ah, lot of our marketing teams who've never worked harder, making this pivot from the physical world to the virtual world. But there, you know, at least we're working, and three other part of it is that digital she's created this phenomenal opportunity for us because the beauty of digital and digital transformation is that everything now is trackable, which makes it measurable and means that we can actually get insights that we can act on in a smarter way. And you know, it's worth giving an example. If you just look at this show right, like this event that we're doing in a physical world, all of you watching at home, you'd be in front of us in a room and we'd be able to know if you're in the room, right? We tracking the scanners when you walked in. But that's basically it. At that point, we don't really get a good sense for how much you like what we're saying. Uh, maybe you filled out a survey, but only 5 to 10% of people ever do that in the digital world. We know how long you stick around, and as a result, like it's easy people could just with the click, you know, change the channel. And so the bar for content has gone way up as we do these events. But we know how long people are sticking around. And that's what's so special about it. You know Denise and her team as the host of this show, they're going to know how long people watch this segment and that knowing is powerful. I mean, it's simple as using a product like thought spot. You could just ask a question. How many you know, what's the average view? Time by session and boom and sharp pops up. You're gonna know what's working, what's not. And that's something that you could take and act on in the future. And that's what our That's what customers were doing. So you know, snowflake in the spot that we share a customer with Lulu and they're tracking programs. So what people are watching at home, how long they're watching what they're watching next, and they're able to do that in a super granular way and improve their content as a result. And that's the power of this new world we live in. Uh, that's made the cloud and data so accessible to folks like us. >>Well, thank you for that. And I want to come back to that notion to understand how you're bringing data into your marketing office. But I wanna bring Laura and Laura were pro You guys partner with a lot of brands, a lot of companies around the world. I mean, thousands of partners, obviously snowflake and thought spot are, too. How are you using data to optimize these co marketing relationships? You know specifically, what are the trends that you're seeing around around things like customer experience? >>So, you know, we used data for all of our marketing decisions our own as well as with our partners. And I think what's really been interesting about partner marketing data is we can we can feed that back to our sales team, right? So it's very directional for them as well in their efforts moving forward. So I think that's a place where specifically to partners, it's really powerful. We can also use our collective data to go out to customers to better effect. And then, you know, regarding these trends, we just did a survey on the state of the intelligent enterprise. We we interviewed 300 companies, US and UK, and there were three Interesting. I thought statistics relevant to this, um, Onley 22% of the companies that we interviewed felt that their marketing was where it needed to be from an automation standpoint. So lots of room for us to grow right. Lots of space for us to play. And 61% of them believed that it was critical that they implement this technology to become a more intelligent enterprise. But when they ranked readiness by function, marketing came in six right, so H R R and D finance were all ahead of marketing. It was followed by sales, you know, And then the final data point that I think was interesting was 40% of those agreed that while the technology was the most important thing, that thought leadership was critical, you know? And I think that's where marketers really could bring. You know, our tried and true experience to bear and merging with this technology. >>Great. Thank you. So so did he say I've been getting the Kool Aid injection this week around Data Cloud have been pushing people, But now that I have the CMO in front of me, I wanna ask about the data cloud and what it means specifically for the customers. And what are some of the learnings? Maybe that you've experienced that can support some of the things that that Laura and Scott were just discussing. >>Yeah. Scott said before, right, he had 100 times more data than he ever has before. And that's again, if you look at all the companies we talked to around the world, it's not about the amount of data that they have. That is the problem is the ability to access that data that data for most companies is trapped across Silas across the organization. It's It's in data applications, systems of records. Some of that data sits with your partners that you want access, and that's really what the data clouds camps in. Data Cloud is really mobilizing that data for you. It brings all that data together for you in one place so you can finally access that data and really provide ubiquitous access to that data to everyone in your organization that needs it and can truly unlock the value off that data. And from a marketing perspective, I mean, we are responsible for the customer experience, you know, we provide to our customers. And if you have access toe all the data on your customers, that's when you have that customer 3 60 that we've all been talking about for so many years. And if you have all that data, you can truly, you know, look at their, you know, buying behaviors, put all those dots together and create those exceptional customer experiences. You can do things such as the retailers do in terms of personal decision, for instance, rights and those are the type of experiences in our customers are expecting today. They are expecting a 100% personalized experience for them all the time. And if you don't have all the data, you can't really put those experiences together at scale. And that is really where the data cloud comes in again. The data cloud is not only about mobilizing your own data within your enterprise. It's also about having access to data from your partners or extending access to your own data in a secure way to your partners within your ecosystems. >>Yeah, So I'm glad you mentioned a couple of things. I've been writing about this a lot, and particularly the 3 60 that we would dying for but haven't really been able to tap. I didn't call it the Data Cloud. I don't have a marketing gene. I had another sort of boring name for it, but I think there's, you know, similar vectors there. So I appreciate that. Scott, I wanna come back to this notion of building data DNA in your marketing, you know, fluency on and how you put data at the core of your marketing ops. I've been working with a lot of folks in banking and manufacturing and other industries that air that are struggling to do this. How are you doing it? What are some of the challenges that you can share and maybe some advice for your peers out there? >>Yeah, sure, it's, um Well, you brought up this concept of data fluency and it zone important one. And there's been a lot of talking industry about data literacy and being able to read data. But I think it's more important to be able to speak data to be fluent. And as marketers, we're all storytellers. And when you combine data with storytelling, magic happens. And so getting a data fluency is a great goal for us toe have for all of the people in our companies. And to get to that end, I think one of the things that's happening is that people are hiring wrong and they're thinking about it. They're making some mistakes. And so a couple of things come to mind when, especially when I look at marketing teams that I'm familiar with, they're hiring a lot of data analysts and data scientists, and those folks are amazing and every team needs them. Uh, but if you go to big on that, you do yourself a disservice. The second key thing is that you're basically giving your front lines, focus your marketing managers or people on the front lines. An excuse not to get involved data. And I think that's a big mistake because it used to be really hard. But with the technologies available to us now, these new consumer like experiences for Data Analytics, anybody can do it. And so we as leaders have to encourage them to do it. And I'll give you just a you know, an example. You know, I've got about 32 people on my marketing team, and I don't have any data analysts on my team across our entire company. We have a couple of analysts and a couple of data engineers, and what's happening is the world is changing where those folks, their enablers, they architect the system, they bring in the different status forces they use. Technologies like snowflake has been so great at making it easier for people. The folks technology together, and they get data out of it quickly. But they're pulling it together, and then we'll simple things like, Hey, I just want to see this weekly instead of monthly. You don't need to waste your expensive data science talent. Gartner puts a stand out there that 50% of data scientists are doing basic visualization work. That's not a good use of their time. You The products are >>easy >>enough now that everyday marketing managers could do that. And when you have a marketing manager come to you and say, You know, I just figured out this this campaign, which looks great on the surface, is doing poorly. From our perspective, that's a magic moment. And so we all need to coach our teams to get there. And I would say, you know, lead by example, give them an opportunity Thio access data and turn it into a story that's really powerful. And then, lastly, praised people who do it, use it as something to celebrate inside our companies is a great way to kind of get this initiative. >>E love it. You're talking about democratizing data, making it self service. People feel ownership, you know, Laura did. He starts talking about the ecosystem, and you're kind of the ecosystem pro here. How does the ecosystem help marketers succeed? Maybe you could talk about the power of many versus the resource of of one. >>Sure, you know, I think it's a it's a game changer and it will continue to be. And I think it's really the next level for marketers to harness this. This power that's out there and use it. You know, it's something that's important to us. But it's also something we're starting to see our customers demand, you know, we went from a one size fits all solution, Thio. They want to bring the best in class to their organization. We all need to be really agile and flexible right now. And I think this ecosystem allows that, you know, you think about the power of a snow plate snowflake mining data for you, and then a thought spot really giving you the dashboard toe, have what you want. And then, of course, um, implementation partner like a whip Roh coming in and really being able to plug in whatever else you need, um, to deliver. And, uh, I think it's really super powerful. And I think it gives us, you know, it just gives us so much to play with. And so much room to grow is market. >>Thank you. Did he say why don't you bring us home? We're almost out of time here, but marketing, art, science both. What do you thoughts? >>Definite? Both. I think that's exciting. Part about marketing. It is a balancing act between art and science. Clearly, it's problem or science today than it used to be. But the art part is really about inspiring change. It's about changing people's people's behavior and challenging the status quo, right? That's the art part. The science part. That's about making the right decisions all the time, right? Making sure we are truly investing in what's gonna drive revenue for us. >>Guys, thanks so much for coming on the Cube. Great discussion. Really appreciate it. Thank you for watching everybody. We're here at the data clouds summit. A lot of great content, so keep it right there. We'll be right back right after this short break.

Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE! Covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everybody, we're back. And this is theCUBE, and we're covering IBM Think 2020, the Digital Think, and we are covering wall-to-wall. We're here with Keith Dyer, who's the Vice President of Sales and Channels at Cisco, and Laura Guio, long-time friend to CUBE Alum, she's the General Manager of the Global Cisco Alliance, and California Senior State Exec. Folks, welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Nice to see you, Dave. >> Good to see you too, Dave. >> Hey, I got to ask you, Laura, what's this California Senior State Executive into your title? Tell me about that. >> So, I'm responsible for all of the IBM population here in the state of California, and during this time of COVID-19, it's been very interesting, so I manage all the, as I call it, care and feeding of the employees up and down the state, and how we're responding to the shelter-in-place orders, and how IBM is responding from an employee perspective. >> Yeah, you know, I've interviewed a number of CXOs, some from both your companies, and that's the theme that we keep hearing, Keith, is: Number one is the health and wellbeing and safety of our employees, and then once that's confirmed, get to work. >> Yeah, it's a completely different environment that we're in, and I mean, Cisco and IBM both being big global companies, coming from being in offices and in environments of working closely with one another to sheltering in  home and working out of our home offices, I think the thing that both of our companies have the ability to do is to empower our folks to do that. And we're doing that, we're doing that both from an individual perspective, with our tools and our technologies, but we're also doing that together, with a lot of the things that this partnership and this alliance brings to this, which is really, you know, being able to provide IT services to remote workers and to be able to still keep this economy moving along. >> Yeah, along with our data partner, ETR, we were one of the first to report that sort of work-from-home offset, how budgets are shifting, in fact, 20% of the CIOs that we surveyed, 1200 CIOs, said their budgets were actually increasing. So, I wonder, Laura, if you could talk about the, you guys had a relationship with Cisco and IBM for a long time. Maybe, talk about some of the go-to-market highlights, and I want to double-click on that. >> Yeah, so we've had a long-standing relationship, over 20 years, that we've partnered together in the marketplace. And because of that long-standing relationship, it gives us an opportunity, not at just the very senior levels of this relationship, but all the way out to the field in the sellers, on what's needed out there from a client perspective. We're constantly coming out with new, integrated solutions, things that answer the questions and the problems that our customers are trying to solve. One in particular, right now, is called Private Cloud Infrastructures as a Service. This with Cisco Technology, and IBM Technology and Services gives the client an answer on how to get that private Cloud in their facility and not have to have the CAPEC question on getting that server portion of that in there. Cisco has a unique opportunity with IBM, to offer that customer. >> So Keith, one of the things I'd like to talk about with any go-to-market strategies is, you get together when you get a market partner and you try to identify the ideal customer, what's the right profile, What's the value proposition. And I'm wondering, just generally, what does that look like for you guys, and then specifically, how has that changed, or has that changed as a result of COVID-19? >> Well, I think a couple of things: One, one of the things where Cisco and IBM have long been partners together has been from a security perspective, and as we move into this new class of workers that are working remotely, and that are working in environments where security is paramount, and one of the work that we've done together around threat management and the way we both have put security measures and security products in place and solutions to help remote workers to be able to work with security into their networks. >> Yeah, so in our reporting, we've noted that it's not just video collaboration tools that are on the uptake, it is things like, whether it's VPNs, networking bandwidth, wide area networks, securing that remote infrastructure. So Laura, maybe, you could help us understand what IBM's bringing to the table, and maybe we can talk about what Cisco's bringing to the table here. >> Well, when you look at it from an IBM perspective, our huge client base out there from a services perspective. Generally, where we start, those customers are looking for end-to-end solutions. So when you take technologies like Cisco has, and combine it with the breadth of technology, around Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Security, that gives the ability to a client to come to one place, get that end-to-end solution, and feel secure that it is an enterprise-quality solution, that they don't have to worry about all the other part pieces they have to plug in there. >> Yeah, one of the things we've been talking about is: I was just talking to Rob Thomas about this, he said, "You know, Dave, I don't know if anything's "going to really dramatically change with COVID-19, "maybe, it is, maybe it isn't, "but definitely some things are being accelerated. "And when you think about the acceleration to Cloud, talking about the industry angle, Laura, Edge, IOT, I wonder if you guys could talk a little bit about, maybe, start with Keith, do you see there are some learnings here in this period, during this pandemic, that maybe will accelerate, sort of some of those Edge discussions, or the things that we've learned that maybe, would have taken longer to put into practice? Let us start with Keith. >> Yeah, I think first and foremost, it's just getting at the data, and being able to have that data to a decision faster, and that's the whole reason we're really investing around Edge technologies, so that we can take that data in, we can hope it helps us make decisions faster, and get to outcomes for customers better, and a part of that becomes around having the right security postures, but also then being able to link up back to the data center, which is what we do with IBM around HyperCloud. >> Laura, anything you'd add to that from an industry perspective? >> Yeah, I think that the technology that Cisco brings to the table really it helps accelerate that solution, and get what the client's looking for. We had a recent example, well, at the end of last year; we met with a number of manufacturing customers in Europe. And we took them through a solution that we have with the Edge and Security that Cisco offers, the pieces that IBM brings to the table, but the manufacturers really looked at this and said, "Wow! This really gives me that Edge technology that I need, "it provides all the security that I'm looking for, "and allows this manufacturing to line autonomously, "run without having to have that intervention "that a number of other solutions would require." >> You know, it's kind of a sensitive topic when I talk to executives, and when we talk to the CIOs and CSOs with ETR in the roundtable, there was a sensitivity to, and sort of a negative sensitivity to so-called "the ambulance chasing." And so what they don't want is, "Hey, here's a free trial for, you know, "but you got to swipe your credit card, "you have to promise to sign something. "We just don't have time for that." I bring that up because Cisco and IBM came up in this roundtable as two companies, there were others, too, by the way, that were really responding well from the customer perspective. And these were industries that were hard-hit, you know, we're talking about airlines, we're talking about hospitality, really hard-hit types of industries, and they called out IBM, Cisco, and as I say, seven or eight other companies, so I think the industry, because you guys are large companies, established companies, they expect more of you. They expect kind of adult supervision, if you will, in the room. I wonder if you could talk about, maybe, some of the other things that, but first of all, react to that, and tell me the other things, Laura, that, maybe, you guys have done, either as individual companies or jointly. >> Yeah, I'll start and I'll let Keith answer here. So, I liked the comment, "the adults in the room". What we're finding as customers are coming to companies like Cisco and IBM and saying, "Look, I need a solid enterprise solution. "I'm looking for somebody who's tested it, tried-and-true, "that you've got recognition in the industry, "that you're going to bring a complete, "solid solution forward." And so we are being tapped into as two companies, to really bring us two to the clients, they don't have a whole lot of time right now to go figure it out, and they believe in us, and what we've been able to provide for the market. >> Yeah, and one of the things that I would add to that was that the investment that both of our companies are making, really just in our customers, and helping them get through this journey. You know, we both have fantastic CEOs, who are really visionaries, and who are really beginning to look at, and how they can help accelerate our customers, so that when we get on the other side we're stronger and we're able to deliver technology, and be able to deliver to our customers. You know, Laura and I, we're inundated, almost on a daily basis of requests and support. And we've actually had a grassroots effort that really kind of bore up through our sales teams are providing education and providing services in the education sector, using IBM technology, and using Cisco Webex Technology. We've been partnering with other partners, such as Samsung and Apple, to deliver those on devices, and you know, these aren't necessarily things that came out of the CEO offices, these were solutions and efforts that are grassrooted up through our organization, because of the strong partnership that we have in the industry. >> I love that, because, I mean, we've all been touched by education, kids' remote learning, healthcare's another one. I mean, everybody knows somebody, you know, a nurse, or now the first responders, "the today's heroes", that are having to really risk their lives, literally, every day when they go into work, and that is happening on the front lines, so Keith, I appreciate your comment, that it's a grassroots effort and Laura, you got a new CEO, you know, Arvind, stepped into this and I'm excited to talk to him about his first moves, but any other color you can add to that, or other initiatives that you've seen in the field? >> Yeah, so Keith touched on it just a moment ago there, you talk about the ICUs in the hospitals. Almost a month ago when this all started, I sat there watching the news, watching people dying in the hospital without a chance to really talk to their family members, and the burden that it was putting onto the health care professionals. We came up with, I said, there's a solution there, went to Keith, said, "You know, we've got Webex, "we've got other things in the portfolio," went to Samsung, they have devices that are military-grade, that'll work there. We were able to put a solution together pretty quickly. We've got a number of hospitals that are evaluating it right now, we're almost ready to roll this out, but that just goes to a mature company that has all this security and interactions with other companies that have the part pieces that you need, and then test it, make sure it's secure, that it's enterprise-grade, and get it out there. There's not many companies in the world that can do that. >> Well, I think that goes to what you were saying before, I called it "adult supervision," but I talked to Sri Srinivasan, who runs Cisco's Collaboration division, and as they say, the CIOs told us, "You know, we're really off-put "by people trying to sell us," but what Sri told me was that Cisco made a free-offering, no swipe of the credit card, "Hey, if you buy something down the road that's fine, "if you don't, you know, doesn't matter." And that's the kind of leadership that I think people expect from companies like IBM and Cisco, quite frankly. >> Yeah, and you know, Dave, what Sri and what Chuck did there, you know, that wasn't easy to do, I mean, we've essentially doubled and almost tripled our capacity of Webex as we've gone through this, and we were just absolutely, that organization that is working well overtime, overtime, overtime. Laura and I were able to take that, take some of that technology, be able to get out in the front, and truly it's not about creating revenue right now, it's about helping get our customers through this crisis together. We'll worry about, you know, commercial opportunities that come down the road. >> Yeah, and those will happen, those are going to be outcomes of your business practices, and talking to Rob Thomas, and again, and he'd been the data angle here, all the data, the data sources, the data quality, you're seeing it. You see even the maps, you see even the real-time updates, I mean, things change, literally, on a day-to-day basis, and that's kind of IBM's wheelhouse, really. >> Yeah, yeah. And we're addressing a lot of that with what we're doing here between our two companies, and providing that solution, getting to that data, get it securely where it needs to be. We've been on the forefront of providing from an IBM perspective, around the COVID information that's being used around the world through our weather company application that we have out there. We've offered up the mainframe technologies, and our supercomputers around, be able to help hospitals and those that are working on vaccines and all of that information, so you've got to have the networking piece of that, you've got to have the technology that it works on, and then you've got to have that data that you can access and manipulate quickly to get those answers out. >> Yeah, and Cisco, IBM, it's been a partnership that made a lot of sense, there's not a ton of overlap in your portfolios, which is quite amazing given the size of your companies. You know, there is some, but generally speaking, it's been a pretty productive partnership. Keith, Laura, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, sharing a little bit of information, and thanks for what you're doing during this crisis. Stay safe. >> Thanks Dave. Thanks Dave. >> All right, you're welcome. And thank you for watching. Everybody, this is Dave Vellante, our wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's Digital Think 2020. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Live from San Diego, California It's the queue covering Sisqo Live US 2019 Tio by Cisco and its ecosystem barkers. >> Welcome back. It's the Cube here at Cisco Live, San Diego 2019 times. Two minute My co host is Day Volante. First, I want to welcome back custom dos Katie, who is the vice president. Product management with Cisco Compute. We talked with him a lot about Piper Flex anywhere in Barcelona. Wanna welcome to the program of first time guests Laura Crone, who's the vice president of sales and marketing group in NSG sales and marketing at Intel. Laura, thanks so much for joining us, All right, So since Katie has been our program, let let's start with you. You know, we know, you know. We've watched, you know, Cisco UCS and that compute, you know, since it rolled out for about a decade ago. Now on DH, you know Intel always up on stage with Cisco talking about the latest enhancements everywhere I go this year, people are talking about obtained and how technologies like envy me are baking in tow. The environment storage class memories, you know, coming there. So you know, let's start with kind of intel. What's happening in your world and you know your activities. Francisco live >> great. So I'm glad to hear you've heard a lot about octane because I have some marketing of my organization. So obtain is the first new memory architecture er in over 25 years. And it is different than Nanda, right? It is you, Khun, right? Data to the silicon that is programs faster and has greater endurance. So when you think of obtain its fast like D ram But it's persistent, like nay on three D now. And it has some industry leading combinations of capabilities such a cz high throughput, high endurance, high quality of service and low latent see. And for a storage device, what could be better than having fast performance and hi consistency. Oh, >> Laura's you say? Yeah, but 25 years since this move. You know, I remember when I when I started working with Dave, it was, you know, how do we get out of you know, the horrible, scuzzy stack is what we had lived on for decades there. And finally, Now it feels like we're coming through the clearing and there is just going to be wave after wave of new technologies that air free to get us high performance low latent c on the like. >> Yeah, And I think the other big part of that which is part of Cisco's hyper flex all in Vienna, is the envy me standards. So, you know, we've lived in a world of legacy satya controllers, which created a lot of bottlenecks and the performance Now that the industry is moving toe envy me, that even opens up it. Mohr And so, as we were developing, obtain, we knew we had Teo go move the industry to a new protocol. Otherwise, that pairing was not going to be very successful. >> Alright, so Katie all envy me, tell more. >> So we come here and we talk about all the cool innovations we do within the company. And then sometimes you come here and we talk about all the cool innovation we do with our partners, our technology partner, that intel being a fantastic technology partner, obviously being the server business, you've got a partner with intel on. We've really going away that across the walls ofthe two organizations to bring, uh, just do to life, right? So Cisco 80 I hyper flex is one of the products >> we >> talked about in the past. Hyper Flex, all in Miami that uses Intel's obtain technology is, well, it's Intel's three demand all envy me devices to power really the fastest workloads that customers want to put on this device. So you talked about free envy me. Pricing is getting to a point where it becomes that much more accessible to youth, ese for powering databases for par like those those work clothes required that leyton see characteristics and acquire those I ops on DH. That's what we've enabled with Cisco Hyper Flex collaborating with Intel of Envy Me portfolio. >> Remember when I started in the business, somebody was sharing with me to educate me on the head? A pyramid? Think of the period is a storage hierarchy. And at the top of it, was it actually an Intel solid state device, which back then was not It was volatile, right? So you had to put, you know, backup power supplies on it. Uh, so but any rate and then with all this memory architecture coming and flash towards people have been saying, well, it's going to flatten that pyramid. But now, with obtain. You're seeing the reemergence of that periods of that pyramid. So help us understand, sort of where it fits from a supplier standpoint and a no yam and ultimate customer. Because if I understand it, so obtain is faster than NAND, but it's going to be more expensive, but it's slower than D Ram, but it's cheaper, right? So where does it fit? What, the use cases? Where does it fit in that hierarchy? Maybe. >> Yeah. So if you think about the hierarchy at the very top is D RAM, which is going to be your fastest lowest Leighton see product. But right below that is obtained. Persistent memory, the dims and you get greater density because that's one of the challenges with the Ram is they're not dense enough, nor are they affordable enough, right? And so you get that creates a new tear in the store tire curry. Go below that and you have obtain assist ease, which bring even mohr density. So we go up to a 1.5 terabyte in a obtain sst, uh, and you that now get performance for your storage and memory expansion. Then you have three Dean and and then even below that, you have three thing and Q l c, which gives you cost effective, high density capacity. And then below that is the old fashioned hard disk drive. And then magnet. Yeah, you start inserting all these tears that give architects and both hardware and software an opportunity. Teo rethink how they wantto do storage. >> So the demand for this granularity obviously coming from your your buyers, your direct bars and your customers. So what does it do for you and specifically your customers? >> Yeah. So the name of the game is performance and the ability to have in a land where things are not very predictable, the ability to support any thing that the your end customers may throw at you if you're a 90 department. That may mean a bur internal of, uh, data scientist team are traditional architect off a traditional application. Now, what Intel and Cisco can do together is truly unique because we control all parts of the stack, everything from the sober itself to the to the storage devices to the distributed file system that sits on top ofit. So, for example, in Etienne, hyper flecks were using obtain as a cashing here on because we write the distributed file system. We can speak in a balance between what we put in the cash in care how it moved out data to the non cashing 3 90 year, as as Intel came out with their latest processors that support memory class torched last memory. We support that now we can engineer this whole system and to end so that we can deliver to customers the innovation that Intel is bringing to the table in a way that's consumable by their, uh, one more thing I'll throw out there. So technology is great, but it needs to be resilient because I D departments will occasionally yank out the wrong wire. They are barely yank out the wrong drive. One of the things that we work together with Intel What? How do we court rise into this? How to be with reliability, availability, serviceability? How do we prevent against accidental removal or accidental insertion on DH? Some of those go innovations have let Teo asked, getting out in the market a hyper flecked system that uses these technologies in a way that's really usable by teens in our customs. I'd >> love to double click on that in the context of envy. Envy? What you guys were talking about, You mentioned horrible storage deck. I think he called it the horrible, scuzzy stack. And Laura, you were talking about the You know, the cheap and deep now is a spinning disk. So my understanding is that you've got a lot of overhead in the traditional scuzzy protocol, but nobody ever noticed because you had this mechanical device. Now, with flash storage, it all becomes exposed. And VM e allows just a like a bat phone. Right? Okay, so correct me where I got that wrong, But maybe you could give us the perspective. You know what? Why Envy Emmy is important from your standpoint. And how are you guys using it? >> Yeah, I think envy and me is just a much faster protocol. And you're absolutely right. We have a graph that we show of the old world and how much overhead there is all the way down to when you have obtained in a dim solution with no overhead octane assist. E still has a tiny bit, but there's a graph that shows all of that Leyton C is removed when you deploy, obtain so envy me gives you much greater band with right. The CPU is not bottlenecked, and you get greater CPU efficiency when you have a faster interface like and >> and like hyper flexes taking advantage of this house. Oh, >> yeah? Let me give you a couple of examples. So anything performance, the first thing that comes to mind is databases. So for those kinds of workloads, this system gets about 25% better performance. Next thing that comes to mind is people really don't know what they're gonna put on the system. So sometimes they put databases, sometimes put mixed workloads. So when we look at mixed workloads way get about 65% or so better I ops, we get 37% better lately sees. So even in a mixed I opened Wyman wherever have databases you may have a Web theory may have other things. This thing is definite resilient to handle the workload. So it's it just opens up the splatter abuse cases. >> So any other questions I had was specific to obtain. D ram has consumer applications, as does Flash Anand was obtained. Have similar consumer applications can achieve that volume so that the prices, you can come down, not free, but continue to sort of drive the curves. >> Eso When we look at the overall tam, we see the tam growing out over time. I don't know exactly when it crosses. Over the volume are the bits of the ram, but we absolutely see it growing over time. And as a technology ramps, it'll have a you know, it costs ramping curves. Well, >> it'll follow that curve. Okay, good. >> Yeah, Just Katie. Give us a little bit. Broad view of hyper flex here. Att? The show, people, you know, play any labs with the brand new obtained pieces or what? What other highlights that you and the team have this week? >> Yeah, absolutely. So in in Barcelona, we talked about high, perfect for all that is live today. So in the show floor, people can look at the hyper flex at the edge combined with S t one. How do you control How did deploy thousands of edge locations from a centralized location to the part of the inner side which cloud based management too? So that whole experience is unable. Now, at the other end of the spectrum is how do we drive even more performance. So we were always, always the performance leader. Now we're comparing ourselves to ourselves to behavior 35% better than our previous all flash. With the innovation Intel is bringing to the table, some of the other pieces are actually use cases. So there's a big hospital chain where my kids go toe goto, get treated and look and see the doctor. There are lots of medical use cases which require epic the medical software company to power it, whether it is the end terminals or it is the back and database. So that epic hyperspace and happy cachet those have been out be invalidated on hyper flex, using the technology that we just talked about around update on doll in via me that can get me there is that much more power. That means that when my my doctor and the nurse pulls off, the records don't show up fast. But all the medical records, all of those other high performance seeking applications also run that much more streamlined, so I would encourage people little water solution. We've got a tremendous set off demos out there to go up there and check us out >> and there's a great white paper out on this, right? That e g s >> e g is made one of the a company that I've seen benchmarking Ah, a hyper flex. >> So whatever Elaborate where they do a lab report or >> it's what they do is they bench around different hyper converge infrastructure vendors. So they did this first time around and they and they said, Well, we could pack that much more We EMS on a on a hyper flex with rotating drives. And then they did it again And I said, Well, now that you got all flash Well, deacon, you got now the performance and the ladies see leadership and then they did it again and they said, Well, hang on, you you've kind of left the competition that does that. That's not going to make a pretty chart to show when we compare your all in Miami against your hyper so many. When you get that good, you compare against yourselves. We've been the performance theater on the estate has been doing the >> data obtained. The next generation added up, >> and this is what a database workload. OK, nowyou bringing obtain a little toast to the latest report >> has that measures >> measures obtain against are all flash report and then also ship or measure across vendors. So >> where can I get this? Is at some party or website or >> it's off all of this. All of this is off off the Cisco Hyper Flex website on artist go dot com. But F is the companies that want to go directly to their about getting a more >> I guess final final question for you is you know, I think back the early is ucs. It was the memory enhancements that they had that allowed the dentist virtual ization in the industry back when it started. It sounds like we're just taking that to the next level with this next generation of solutions. What what else would you out about? The relationship with Cisco and Intel? >> Eso, Intel and Cisco worked together for years right innovation around the CPU and the platform, and it's super exciting to be expanding our relationship to storage. And I'm even more excited that the Cisco hyper flex solution is endorsing Intel obtain and three thing and and we're seeing great examples of really use workloads where are in customers can benefit from this technology. >> Katie Laura. Thanks so much for the update. Congratulations on the progress that you've made so far for David Dante on Student, and we'll be back with more coverage here. It's just go live 2019 in San Diego. Thanks for watching the cue >> theme.

>> Live from New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Lenovo Transform 2.0. Brought to you by Lenovo. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, everyone. We are here at Lenovo Transform in New York City. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Stu Miniman. We're joined by Laura Laltrello. She is the VP Datacenter Group Services here at Lenovo. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. It's your first time on the show. >> Yes, thank you for inviting me. >> Welcome. We're talking to you today about DevOps and blockchain, two of our favorite topics here on theCUBE. Let's start by talking about DevOps in general. About how much it has transformed the way we test and monitor and deploy new kinds of technology, and then add blockchain to this. Tell our viewers a little bit about what you do. >> DevOps has absolutely transformed many companies. The companies I've talked about today, at Transform, all three of them in the past two years have doubled their stock price. Imagine being able to double your stock price. Some have gone almost to triple, and they've done it by being able to go to market very fast and get what they want out in market. Then, adjust to the market as market demands change. They're using both agile software development along with setting up instant infrastructure and combining those techniques and the methodology and culture that goes on top of that to have small teams focused on business outcomes and that is, in summary, the DevOps process. >> I love that. Rebecca and I love talking about the cultural piece and we know a lot of times the technology piece is the easy part, the networking, it's the things upper in the stack, it's the people and processes and politics where we get tough. If I knew we were talking about DevOps, I wouldn't have worn the tie today. (all laughing) >> Yeah. >> How is Lenovo transforming internally, and how are you helping customers that are digging into this process? >> That's a really good point. DevOps is more of a mentality than a methodology. The methodology's great, but we work with our customers to ensure that they have the right project, that they have the right culture, and that they've gone through change management process they need to get everybody onboard to a new way of thinking about driving their business. We've done it internally with our blockchain process. We've implemented blockchain in our supply chain in three different areas, and they started as tiny proof of concepts and we just keep iterating and building on it like a typical DevOps model so that we're getting benefit from it, and we're starting to see it. >> You're using yourself as a case study here. >> Absolutely. >> Can you explain a little bit to our audience, a lot of times, they're going to hear blockchain and they're going to think bitcoin. >> Sure. Maybe explain, we understand that there's relationship, but it's not the same at all. >> One of our blockchain processes, we work with our suppliers, and we use it for supply and demand forecasting. If anyone knows how supply and demand forecasting works, typically by the time the person gets the information, the information's old and something's happened in the market and it's changed. With blockchain, you have access instantly to the exact same information, so you're working on the same level and the same basis, and it makes it transparent and clear to everyone. One of the other places we've used it is in software. Software licensing credits. We don't want to pay inventory costs for software licensing, so we're able to use blockchain so that when our users start using the software, then we start paying for it. It saves a ton and everybody's aware of what's happening because of the blockchain. >> You were talking about the right mindset for DevOps. Can you describe what you mean by that? >> A lot of IT teams still operate under we've got a milestone to hit, and then we've got another deliverable, and we have another milestone. With DevOps, what you're doing is you're having a very small group of people with a business outcome, which is extremely different. You want to take your time-to-quote process and cut it in half. That might be the business outcome that you're aligning your DevOps group to, and then they figure out exactly how to get there. It's very different than planning up front and saying I need this released in the U.S. by this date. Because a lot of times, by the time you get there, it's not the outcome you really wanted. >> When you talked about yourself as a case study here, how would you describe the Lenovo team and how everything changed and how the iteration process worked and whether or not you had to win over any skeptics? >> There are a ton of skeptics just on DevOps itself, and then obviously there are more on blockchain because it's so foreign, it's such a foreign concept. We started by just getting small groups of people to work together in that type of environment so that they get it and understand it and realize that the potential security risks are not as threatening as you might think because there's a DevSecOps security process. Once they realize that you can align on business outcomes and you can accomplish so much more by bringing something to market faster, they start to realize oh, I can keep making this better and we've gotten small teams, grassroot efforts involved to start doing that. >> Obviously, we've heard from Lenovo many times that service levels and how you're measured by customers, Lenovo does very well. First of all, congratulations. The question is is it enough, and of course it's a piece of the overall puzzle, so maybe help explain how support and service fit into the overall story as to how you not only maintain customers but win new customers. >> It is not enough. My service practice, my aspiration is to drive a complete, effortless experience for the customer, meaning every single time they engage with us they do not have to put any effort forward. When you start thinking about your processes internally backwards, and you're looking at it from a customer point of view and thinking what effort did they have to put in, it drives a very different mindset and it shifts people to think about doing the process very differently. We're thinking about things like entitlement. The customer doesn't get any value out of entitlement so how do we make it go away, and how do we make all unnecessary steps go away so we can continue to maintain that high customer sat. >> It's interesting, I think back, I'll date myself, 20 years in my career when I was out in the field dealing with customers. Customers loved me cause I took care of them. Where'd you become the Maytag repair man? They don't even have to see you, they don't have to know you. Certain people I talk to it's like wait, whose that Lenovo, oh wait, those are all those machines I have everywhere that I didn't even think about. >> That's OK. >> How do you balance that? >> There is so much going on right now in tech between machine learning and IoT and edge computing that we have a place, and that place should be providing value and driving business outcomes for our customers, not in repairing their machines. >> Going back to the culture, because this is just where I love to be, we heard on the mainstage so much about Kirk and (mumbles) talking about these points of pride for this company is this customer centricity but also being seen as an ethical, as a sustainable company, lauded for its social conduct. How does that feel when you're on the inside of Lenovo? How does that feel as an employee? >> I've talked to a lot of companies in the past 15 years I've been with Lenovo, and I can truly say we're one of the only companies that acts globally, and we look at a diverse set of opinions and that to me is really valued because when you're starting to try to see the elephant from every single angle, you get a better outcome. Every time I think about what's going to happen with this company, I know that foundation of thinking about things globally and looking at it from our entire customer set makes us a truly unique and different company. >> That's a great point. Do you have any examples or something you can say because there's lots of multi-national companies out there, but not that many that are truly global. >> Our Lenovo leadership team, they meet every quarter. They purposefully choose a different city to meet in every quarter and a different continent. When they do that, they go and immerse themselves in the culture of that continent so they get that flavor, and then we ensure that our board members and our LEC is a makeup of different nationalities and different perspectives. That alone gives you that tension to think about things much differently. Where a lot of our competitors, and a lot of companies out there, they really do make decisions in one city and if you're not in that city, you're not really part of the decision-making body of the company. >> They pay a lot of lip service to oh no, we care about these things, but actually what you're saying is so important by actually living that. What do you think, one of the questions that Stu and I have had for all these executives is the transformation story is great, as we know, we know by the numbers that this company has turned the corner and is really accelerating. The momentum is there. What are we looking at three to five years from now? What does success really look like for Lenovo? >> The customers will start to see us as a customer experience company more than a product company. You will see us transform our customer experience end to end, from every contact point, and even contact points within the devices. If anybody's had a chance to look at our OK Google device, they'll see that thing is based on looking at a customer experience and changing the way people use those devices. It's just a simple add of a few things in technology that's made that work. >> Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> It's great to have you. I'm sure you'll be back. >> Yes, I appreciate it, thank you for the time today. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman, we will have more from Lenovo Transform in just a little bit. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. It's a great event, we've been here before. About 700 attendees really listening in. It's a single track conference for a couple days of women leaders telling their stories. How they got to where they are. Some of the challenges they had to overcome. There's a ton of women, some men, I think they just brought in a busload of students, so it's a really good event, and we're excited to be here again. 'cause Arianna just does a terrific job with Girls in Tech. And we're excited, our next guest, she's Laura Messerschmitt, VP Global Customer Experience for GoDaddy, Laura, good to see you. >> Nice to meet you. >> So we've had a ton of GoDaddy guests on, at Grace Hopper, so we're very familiar with the company. So it's great to meet you but it's funny. When we first met with August at Grace Hopper, I'm like August, what are you doing here? You guys have like the most sexist print ad at least back in the day of anybody. They are going to run you out of the building. But you guys changed the culture and you're a big part of that, and that was your presentation. >> Yeah, I started with GoDaddy through an acquisition. And when I came in, the only thing I knew was those Superbowl commercials. And I was, I came in very skeptical, like what is this place? Is this the right place for me? It doesn't stand for my values. But what I found was this amazing company that actually did promote women in tech, and that had this big presence. And so we went to go and change it and try to make it even better for women in tech, and change the brand. And so that's what we've been doing over the last five years is working on making that change to be a premier leader for women in tech. >> So how hard is that when literally your forward facing brand to the outside world are these super racy commercials that you can't even see the end of it, you have to jump onto the internet to finish them. So how did that get started? How does it get implemented? What are some of the lessons learned in going through that process? And I assume it's still an ongoing exercise. >> It is, I think at the beginning, the hard part was that we new we wanted to make a change, and we new that 60% of our customer base was women. And so we had to make a change. It was a business imperative. But we didn't know where we were going at first. And so we sort of circled for a little while, where we were trying to think how do we make this happen. What do we do? And we started to set the vision, that we were actually going to change not just our own selves, but the industry, to make it better for women. That then set us on a course for where we would go, and then things moved pretty quickly. For example, we moved our hiring of tech women from 14% one year, to 40% the next year. >> In one year. >> In one year, yeah. >> So what did you do to do that? That is not a statement, that's a lot of steps and processes. So what are some of the things that you guys did? >> So what we found is that the small things really do matter. And so we changed all of our job descriptions. So we got rid of words like code ninja, that women wouldn't relate to and made them gender neutral. And that brought in more women. And then what we did is we required each hiring manager to have at least one diverse candidate when they interviewed. And what we found is that when the hiring managers would go out to find diverse candidates, they would go searching and they'd find not one, but they'd find five. And so suddenly you'd have this huge pipeline of incoming women. And we also did things like go to the Grace Hopper conference to find more woman that could come in and recruit. And that actually what made that major change from the 14% to the 40 in one year. >> Wow, and again, kind of that top down vision. I'm curious, who woke up one day and said wait, 60% of our customers are women, maybe we should do something a little bit different. >> I think it was a lot of people. The one I would mention in particular is Blake Irving. He was our CEO that came in right around when we were making this change. And he had a personal story with his sister, where she had unfortunately passed away, but prior to her passing, she had promoted women and he had promised her that he would also promote women in the industry that he ended up in. And so once he became CEO, he was bound and determined that we were not only going to change GoDaddy, but we were also going to make an impact in the industry. Because he'd made that promise. >> That's great. You know on the hiring manager story, we can't help it. Everybody has a bias whether they know it or not, or admit to it. And we're also like birds of a feather, right. It's comfortable to be around and be with people that look like us and sound like us, and that's kind of the natural state. So unless you force someone to look beyond that they're just not going to do it, as a natural course. It's interesting that you said, once they, once you forced them to look, not only did they find, but they found a whole bunch of great opportunity. >> Another piece of in was not putting a quota on it. So it wasn't a quota on the hiring, it was just a quota on you have to have at least one in your interview pool. And so that, that meant that people were okay with it. People did feel like they had to pick, they wanted to pick the best candidate, and so we were just making sure that the best candidates we actually showing up. And when they did show up, a lot of times, the women were the ones getting hired because they were the best candidate. >> So I'm curious in terms of the cultural change. How did it affect in a more general level as you were successful in making this transformation which was a top down prerogative from the CEO? >> Well for me, being a woman, that seeing a lot more people like me in the company, and sort of at all aspects of the company. So previous to this change, a lot of the technical people were all men, and sort of marketing and other functions were women. And I started to see women being hired into these other functions, and it opened up sort of, a world of possibility. And I also think the company's better off because of it. Our financial results have been great, and I think that's partially due to this huge change that we've made. And I think it does impact the finances because we had more diversity in our thinking and they way we made decisions. >> Well, I think it's been proven time and time again, that diversity's only the right thing to do, but it does lead to better outcomes, which goes right to the bottom line, so it's certainly a huge contributor, because you just get different points of view that you wouldn't have ever thought of. A little bit about Girls in Tech here. Why you here? What is this event and this organization about for you personally as well as GoDaddy? >> So I would say, GoDaddy has been working with Women in Tech, oh sorry, Girls in Tech for about five years now. And I think we believe in there mission, right because their mission aligns very much with ours, which is to help women in tech. But over the past five years, we've seen them transition, and they've started focusing also on women founders. And given that our customers are small businesses, we care a lot about that, and so it's been very lock step for the last five years. And just being here at the conference is great to get to talk to other women that are trying to do similar things in their companies, and to share notes. >> Right, so I guess we'll see you at pitch night, later this year. All right Laura, well thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story. It's funny, when we were at Grace Hopper, you know most of the girls there, are just fresh out of school, didn't know the old GoDaddy. So, we don't necessarily want to talk about it, but it's actually a really great story to be able to make that transition at such an extreme from one side to the other. So the best to you guys. >> Thank, work to do, but we're keep going. >> Well thanks again for stopping by. >> Thank you so much. >> She's Laura, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube. We're Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube. Covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in downtown San Francisco at the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. It's a great event, we've been here before. About 700 attendees really listening in. It's a single track conference for a couple days of women leaders telling their stories. How they got to where they are. Some of the challenges they had to overcome. There's a ton of women, some men, I think they just brought in a busload of students, so it's a really good event, and we're excited to be here again. 'cause Arianna just does a terrific job with Girls in Tech. And we're excited, our next guest, she's Laura Messerschmitt, VP Global Customer Experience for GoDaddy, Laura, good to see you. >> Nice to meet you. >> So we've had a ton of GoDaddy guests on, at Grace Hopper, so we're very familiar with the company. So it's great to meet you but it's funny. When we first met with August at Grace Hopper, I'm like August, what are you doing here? You guys have like the most sexist print ad at least back in the day of anybody. They are going to run you out of the building. But you guys changed the culture and you're a big part of that, and that was your presentation. >> Yeah, I started with GoDaddy through an acquisition. And when I came in, the only thing I knew was those Superbowl commercials. And I was, I came in very skeptical, like what is this place? Is this the right place for me? It doesn't stand for my values. But what I found was this amazing company that actually did promote women in tech, and that had this big presence. And so we went to go and change it and try to make it even better for women in tech, and change the brand. And so that's what we've been doing over the last five years is working on making that change to be a premier leader for women in tech. >> So how hard is that when literally your forward facing brand to the outside world are these super racy commercials that you can't even see the end of it, you have to jump onto the internet to finish them. So how did that get started? How does it get implemented? What are some of the lessons learned in going through that process? And I assume it's still an ongoing exercise. >> It is, I think at the beginning, the hard part was that we new we wanted to make a change, and we new that 60% of our customer base was women. And so we had to make a change. It was a business imperative. But we didn't know where we were going at first. And so we sort of circled for a little while, where we were trying to think how do we make this happen. What do we do? And we started to set the vision, that we were actually going to change not just our own selves, but the industry, to make it better for women. That then set us on a course for where we would go, and then things moved pretty quickly. For example, we moved our hiring of tech women from 14% one year, to 40% the next year. >> In one year. >> In one year, yeah. >> So what did you do to do that? That is not a statement, that's a lot of steps and processes. So what are some of the things that you guys did? >> So what we found is that the small things really do matter. And so we changed all of our job descriptions. So we got rid of words like code ninja, that women wouldn't relate to and made them gender neutral. And that brought in more women. And then what we did is we required each hiring manager to have at least one diverse candidate when they interviewed. And what we found is that when the hiring managers would go out to find diverse candidates, they would go searching and they'd find not one, but they'd find five. And so suddenly you'd have this huge pipeline of incoming women. And we also did things like go to the Grace Hopper conference to find more woman that could come in and recruit. And that actually what made that major change from the 14% to the 40 in one year. >> Wow, and again, kind of that top down vision. I'm curious, who woke up one day and said wait, 60% of our customers are women, maybe we should do something a little bit different. >> I think it was a lot of people. The one I would mention in particular is Blake Irving. He was our CEO that came in right around when we were making this change. And he had a personal story with his sister, where she had unfortunately passed away, but prior to her passing, she had promoted women and he had promised her that he would also promote women in the industry that he ended up in. And so once he became CEO, he was bound and determined that we were not only going to change GoDaddy, but we were also going to make an impact in the industry. Because he'd made that promise. >> That's great. You know on the hiring manager story, we can't help it. Everybody has a bias whether they know it or not, or admit to it. And we're also like birds of a feather, right. It's comfortable to be around and be with people that look like us and sound like us, and that's kind of the natural state. So unless you force someone to look beyond that they're just not going to do it, as a natural course. It's interesting that you said, once they, once you forced them to look, not only did they find, but they found a whole bunch of great opportunity. >> Another piece of in was not putting a quota on it. So it wasn't a quota on the hiring, it was just a quota on you have to have at least one in your interview pool. And so that, that meant that people were okay with it. People did feel like they had to pick, they wanted to pick the best candidate, and so we were just making sure that the best candidates we actually showing up. And when they did show up, a lot of times, the women were the ones getting hired because they were the best candidate. >> So I'm curious in terms of the cultural change. How did it affect in a more general level as you were successful in making this transformation which was a top down prerogative from the CEO? >> Well for me, being a woman, that seeing a lot more people like me in the company, and sort of at all aspects of the company. So previous to this change, a lot of the technical people were all men, and sort of marketing and other functions were women. And I started to see women being hired into these other functions, and it opened up sort of, a world of possibility. And I also think the company's better off because of it. Our financial results have been great, and I think that's partially due to this huge change that we've made. And I think it does impact the finances because we had more diversity in our thinking and they way we made decisions. >> Well, I think it's been proven time and time again, that diversity's only the right thing to do, but it does lead to better outcomes, which goes right to the bottom line, so it's certainly a huge contributor, because you just get different points of view that you wouldn't have ever thought of. A little bit about Girls in Tech here. Why you here? What is this event and this organization about for you personally as well as GoDaddy? >> So I would say, GoDaddy has been working with Women in Tech, oh sorry, Girls in Tech for about five years now. And I think we believe in there mission, right because their mission aligns very much with ours, which is to help women in tech. But over the past five years, we've seen them transition, and they've started focusing also on women founders. And given that our customers are small businesses, we care a lot about that, and so it's been very lock step for the last five years. And just being here at the conference is great to get to talk to other women that are trying to do similar things in their companies, and to share notes. >> Right, so I guess we'll see you at pitch night, later this year. All right Laura, well thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story. It's funny, when we were at Grace Hopper, you know most of the girls there, are just fresh out of school, didn't know the old GoDaddy. So, we don't necessarily want to talk about it, but it's actually a really great story to be able to make that transition at such an extreme from one side to the other. So the best to you guys. >> Thank, work to do, but we're keep going. >> Well thanks again for stopping by. >> Thank you so much. >> She's Laura, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube. We're Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2017, presented by AWS, Intel, and our ecosystem of partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in Las Vegas for AWS Amazon web services re:Invent 2017. I'm John Furrier with Keith Townsend. Our next guest is Laura Stevens, data scientist at the American Heart Association, an AWS customer, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, it's nice to be here. >> So, the new architecture, we're seeing all this great stuff, but one of the things that they mention is data is the killer app, that's my word, Verna didn't say that, but essentially saying that. You guys are doing some good work with AWS and precision medicine, what's the story? How does this all work, what are you working with them on? >> Yeah, so the American Heart Association was founded in 1924, and it is the oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to curing heart disease and stroke, and I think in the past few years what the American Heart Association has realized is that the potential of technology and data can really help us create innovative ways and really launch precision medicine in a fashion that hasn't been capable to do before. >> What are you guys doing with AWS? What's that, what's the solution? >> Yeah so the HA has strategically partnered with Amazon Web Services to basically use technology as a way to power precision medicine, and so when I say precision medicine, I mean identifying individual treatments, based on one's genetics, their environmental factors, their life factors, that then results in preventative and treatment that's catered to you as an individual rather than kind of a one size fits all approach that is currently happening. >> So more tailored? >> Yeah, specifically tailored to you as an individual. >> What do I do, get a genome sequence? I walk in, they throw a high force computing, sequence my genomes, maybe edit some genes while they're at it, I mean what's going on. There's some cutting edge conversations out there we see in some of the academic areas, course per that was me just throwing that in for fun, but data has to be there. What kind of data do you guys look at? Is it personal data, is it like how big is the data? Give us a sense of some of the data science work that you're doing? >> Yeah so the American Heart Association has launched the Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, and as a result, with Amazon, they created the precision medicine platform, which is a data marketplace that houses and provides analytic tools that enable high performance computing and data sharing for all sorts of different types of data, whether it be personal data, clinical trial data, pharmaceutical data, other data that's collected in different industries, hospital data, so a variety of data. >> So Laura, there's a lot of think fud out there around the ability to store data in a cloud, but there's also some valid concerns. A lot of individual researchers, I would imagine, don't have the skillset to properly protect data. What is the Heart Association doing with the framework to help your customers protect data? >> Yeah so the I guess security of data, the security of the individual, and the privacy of the individual is at the heart of the AHA, and it's their number one concern, and making anything that they provide that a number one priority, and the way that we do that in partnering with AWS is with this cloud environment we've been able to create even if you have data that you'd like to use sort of a walled garden behind your data so that it's not accessible to people who don't have access to the data, and it's also HIPAA compliant, it meets the standards that the utmost secure standards of health care today. >> So I want to make sure we're clear on this, the Heart Association doesn't collect data themselves. Are you guys creating a platform for your members to leverage this technology? >> So there's, I would so maybe both actually. The American Heart Association does have data that it is associated with, with its volunteers and the hospitals that it's associated with, and then on top of that, we've actually just launched My Research Legacy, which allows individuals of the community to, who want to share their data, whether you're healthy or just sick, either one, they want to share their data and help in aiding to cure heart disease and stroke, and so they can share their own data, and then on top of that, anybody, we are committed to strategically partnering with anybody who's involved and wants to share their data and make their data accessible. >> So I can share my data? >> Yes, you can share your data. >> Wow, so what type of tools do you guys use against that data set and what are some of the outcomes? >> Yeah so I think the foundation is the cloud, and that's where the data is stored and housed, and then from there, we have a variety of different tools that enable researchers to kind of custom build data sets that they want to answer the specific research questions they have, and so some of those tools, they range from common tools that are already in use today on your personal computer, such as Python or R Bioconductor, and then they have more high performance computing tools, such as Hal or any kind of s3 environment, or Amazon services, and then on top of that I think what is so awesome about the platform is that it's very dynamic, so a tool that's needed to use for high performance computing or a tool that's needed even just as a on a smaller data set, that can easily be installed and may be available to researchers, and so that they can use it for their research. >> So kind of data as a service. I would love to know about the community itself. How are you guys sharing the results of kind of oh this process worked great for this type of analysis amongst your members? >> Yeah so I think that there's kind of two different targets in that sense that you can think of is that there's the researchers and the researchers that come to the platform and then there's actually the patient itself, and ultimately the HA's goal is to make, to use the data and use the researcher for patient centered care, so with the researchers specifically, we have a variety of tutorials available so that researchers can one, learn how to perform high performance computing analysis, see what other people have done. We have a forum where researchers can log on and enable, I guess access other researchers and talk to them about different analysis, and then additionally we have My Research Legacy, which is patient centered, so it's this is what's been found and this is what we can give back to you as the patient about your specific individualized treatment. >> What do you do on a daily basis? Take us through your job, are you writing code, are you slinging API's around? What are some of the things that you're doing? >> I think I might say all of the above. I think right now my main effort is focused on one, conducting research using the platform, so I do use the platform to answer my own research questions, and those we have presented at different conferences, for example the American Heart Association, we had a talk here about the precision medicine platform, and then two, I'm focused on strategically making the precision medicine platform better by getting more data, adding data to the platform, improving the way that data is harmonized in the platform, and improving the amount of data that we have, and the diversity, and the variety. >> Alright, we'll help you with that, so let's help you get some people recruited, so what do they got to do to volunteer, volunteer their data, because I think this is one of those things where you know people do want to help. So, how do they, how you onboard? You use the website, is it easy, one click? Do they have to wear an iWatch, I mean what I mean? >> Yeah. >> What's the deal? What do I got to do? >> So I think I would encourage researchers and scientists and anybody who is data centric to go to precision.heart.org, and they can just sign up for an account, they can contact us through that, there's plenty of different ways to get in touch with us and plenty of ways to help. >> Precision.heart.org. >> Yup, precision.heart.org. >> Stu: Register now. >> Register now click, >> Powered by AWS. >> Yup. >> Alright so I gotta ask you as an AWS customer, okay take your customer hat off, put your citizen's hat on, what is Amazon mean to you, I mean is it, how do you describe it to people who don't use it? >> Okay yeah, so I think... the HA's ultimate mission right, is to provide individualized treatment and cures for cardiovascular disease and stroke. Amazon is a way to enable that and make that actually happen so that we can mine extremely large data sets, identify those individualized patterns. It allows us to store data in a fashion where we can provide a market place where there's extremely large amounts of data, extremely diverse amounts of data, and data that can be processed effectively, so that it can be directly used for research. >> What's your favorite tool or product or service within Amazon? >> That's a good question. I think, I mean the cloud and s3 buckets are definitely in a sense they're my favorites because there's so much that can be stored right there, Athena I think is also pretty awesome, and then the EMR clusters with Spark. >> The list is too long. >> My jam. >> It is. (laughs) >> So, one of the interesting things that I love is a lot of my friends are in non-profits, fundraising is a big, big challenge, grants are again, a big challenge, have you guys seen any new opportunities as a result of the results of the research coming out of HA and AWS in the cloud? >> Yeah so I think one of the coolest things about the HA is that they have this Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine, and the strategic partnership between the HA and AWS, even just this year we've launched 13 new grants, where the HA kind of backs the research behind, and the AWS provides credit so that people can come to the cloud and use the cloud and use the tools available on a grant funded basis. >> So tell me a little bit more about that program. Anybody specifically that you, kind of like saying, seeing that's used these credits from AWS to do some cool research? >> Yeah definitely, so I think specifically we have one grantee right now that is really focused on identifying outcomes across multiple clinical trials, so currently clinical trials take 20 years, and there's a large variety of them. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the Framingham heart study, the Dallas heart study, the Jackson heart study, and trying to determine how those trials compare, and what outcomes we can generate, and research insights we can generate across multiple data sets is something that's been challenging due to the ability to not being able to necessarily access that data, all of those different data sets together, and then two, trying to find ways to actually compare them, and so with the precision medicine platform, we have a grantee at the University of Colorado-Denver, who has been able to find those synchronicities across data sets and has actually created kind of a framework that then can be implemented in the precision medicine platform. >> Well I just registered, it takes really two seconds to register, that's cool. Thanks so much for pointing out precision.heart.org. Final question, you said EMR's your jam. (laughing) >> Why, why is it? Why do you like it so much, is it fast, is it easy to use? >> I think the speed is one of the things. When it comes to using genetic data and multiple biological levels of data, whether it be your genetics, your lifestyle, your environment factors, there's... it just ends up being extremely large amounts of data, and to be able to implement things like server-less AI, and artificial intelligence, and machine learning on that data set is time consuming, and having the power of an EMR cluster that is scalable makes that so much faster so that we can then answer our research questions faster and identify those insights and get them to out in the world. >> Gotta love the new services they're launching, too. It just builds on top of it. Doesn't it? >> Yes. >> Yeah, soon everyone's gonna be jamming on AWS in our opinion. Thanks so much for coming on, appreciate the stories and commentary. >> Yeah. >> Precision.heart.org, you want to volunteer if you're a researcher or a user, want to share your data, they've got a lot of data science mojo going on over there, so check it out. It's theCUBE bringing a lot of data here, tons of data from the show, three days of wall to wall coverage, we'll be back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Berlin, Germany, it's theCUBE! Covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by NetApp. (rippling music) Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, along with my cohost Peter Burris. We are joined by Brett Roscoe. He is the Vice President for Solutions and Service Marketing at NetApp, and Laura Dubois, who is a Group Vice President at IDC. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. So, NetApp and IDC partner together and worked on this big research project, as you were calling it, a thought leadership project, to really tease out what the companies that are thriving and being successful with their data strategies are doing, and what separates those from those that are merely just surviving. Do you want to just lay the scene for our viewers and explain why you embarked on this? Well, you know, it's interesting. NetApp has embarked on its own journey, right, its own transformation. If you look at where the company's been really over the past few years in terms of becoming a traditional storage company to a truly software, cloud-focused, data-focused company, right? And that means a whole different set of capabilities that we provide to our customers. It's a different, our customers are looking at data in a different way. So what we did was look at that and say we know that we're going through a transformation, so we know our customers are going through a journey themselves. And whatever their business model is, it's being disrupted by this digital economy. And we wanted a way to work with IDC and really help our customers understand what that journey might look like, where they might be on that path, and what are the tools and what are the engagement models for us to help them along that journey? So that was really the goal, was really, it's engagement with our customers, it's looking and being curious about where they are on their journey on digital, and how do they move forward in that, in doing all kinds of new things like new customer opportunities and new business and cost optimization, all that kind of stuff. So that's really what got us interested in the project to begin with. Yeah, and I would just add to that. Revenue's at risk of disruption across pretty much every industry, and what's different is the amount of revenue that's at risk within one industry to the next. And all of this revenue that's at risk, is really as a consequence of new kinds of business models, new kinds of products and services that are getting launched new ways of engaging with customers. And these are some of the things that we see thrivers doing and outperforming merely just survivors, or even just data resisters. And so we want to understand the characteristics of data thrivers, and what are they doing that's uniquely different, what are their attributes versus companies that are just surviving. So let's tease that out a little bit. What are these data thrivers doing differently? What are some of the best practices that have emerged from this study? Well I mean, I think if you look at there's a lot of great information that came out of the study for us in terms of what they're doing. I think in a nutshell, it's really they put a focus on their data and they look at it as an asset to their business. Which means a lot of different things in terms of how is the data able to drive opportunities for them. I mean, there's so many companies now that are getting insights from their data, and they're able to push that back to their customer. I mean, NetApp is a perfect example of that. We actually do that with our customers. All the telemetry data we collect from our own systems, we provide that information back to our customers so they can help plan and optimize their own environments. So I think data is certainly, it's validated our theory, our message of where we're going with data, but I think the data focus, I mean, there's lot of other attributes, there's the focus of hiring chief data officers within the company, there's certainly lots of other attributes, Laura, that you can comment on. Yeah, I mean, we see new roles emerging around data, right, and so we see the rise of the data management office. We see the emergence of a Chief Data Officer, we see data architects, certainly data scientists, and this data role that's increasingly integrated into sort of the traditional IT organization, enterprise, architecture. And so enterprise, architecture and these data roles very, very closely aligned is one, I would say, example of a best practice in terms of the thriver organizations, is having these data champions, if you will, or data visionaries. And certainly there's a lot of things that need to be done to have a successful execution, and a data strategy as a first place, but then a successful execution around data. And there's a lot of challenges that exist around data as well. So the survey highlighted that obviously data's distributed, it's dynamic and it's diverse, it's not only in your private cloud but in the public cloud, I think it's at 34% on average of data is in a public cloud. So, how to deal with these challenges is, I think, also one of the things that you guys wanted to highlight. Yeah, and I think the other big revelation was the thrivers, one of the aspects, so not their data focus but also they're making business decisions with their data. They tend to use that data in terms of their operations and how they drive their business. They tend to look for new ways to engage with their customers through a digital or data-driven experience. Look at the number of mobile apps coming out of consumer, really B to C kind of businesses. So there's more and more digital focus, there's more and more data focus, and there's business decisions made around that data. So, I want to push you guys on this a little bit. 'Cause we've always used data in business, so that's not new. There's always been increasing amounts of data being used. So while the volume's certainly new, it's very interesting, it's by itself not that new. What is new about this? What is really new about it that's catalyzing this change right now? Have you got some insights into that? Well, I would just say if you look at some of the largest companies that are no longer here, so you've got Blockbuster, you've got Borders Books and Music, you've got RadioShack, look at what Amazon has done to the retail industry. You look at what Uber is doing to the transportation industry. Look at every single industry, there's disruption. And there's the success of this new innovative company, and I think that's why now. Yes, data has always been an important attribute of any kind of business operation. As more data gets digital, combine that with innovation and APIs that allow you to, and the public cloud, allow you to use that as a launch pad for innovation. I think those are some of the things about why now. I mean, that would be my take, I don't know-- Yeah, I think there's a couple things. Number one, I think yes, businesses have been storing data for years and using data for years, but what you're seeing is new ways to use the data. There's analytics now, it is so easy to run analytics compared to what it was just years ago, that you can now use data that you've been storing for years and run historical patterns on that, and figure out trends and new ways to do business. I think the other piece that is very interesting is the machine learning, the artificial intelligence, right? So much of the industry now, I mean, look at the automotive industry. They are collecting more information than I bet they ever thought they would, because the autonomous driving effort, all of that, is all about collecting information, doing analytics on information, and creating AI capabilities within their products. So there's a whole new business that's all new, there's whole new revenue streams that are coming up as a result of leveraging insights from data. So let me run something by ya, 'cause I was looking for something different. It used to be that the data we were working was what I call stylized data. You can't go out here in Berlin and wander the streets and find Accounting. It doesn't exist, it's human-made, it's contrived. HR is contrived. We have historically built these systems based on transactions, highly stylized types of data. There's only so much you can do with it. But because of technology, mobile, IOT, others, we now are utilizing real world data. So we're collecting an entirely new class of data that has a dramatic impact in how we think about business and operations. Does that comport with what the study said, that study respondents focusing on new types of data as opposed to just traditional sources of data? We certainly looked at correlations of what data thrivers are doing by different types of data. I would say, in terms of the new types of data that are emerging, you've got time series data, stream data, that's increasingly important. You've got machine-generated data from sensors. And I would say that one thing that the thrivers do better than merely just survivors, is have processes and procedures in place to action the data. To collect it and analyze it, as Brett pointed out, is accessible, and it's easy. But what's not easy to is to action results out of that data to drive change and business processes, to drive change in how things are brought to market, for example. So, those are things that data thrivers are doing that maybe data survivors aren't. I don't know if you have anything to add to that. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. I think, yes, traditional data, but it's interesting because even those traditional data sets that have been sitting there for years have untapped value. >> Peter: Wikibon knew types of data. That's right. But we've also been doing data warehousing, analytics for a long time. So it seems as though, I would guess, that the companies that are leading, many that you mentioned, are capturing data differently, they're using analytics and turning data into value differently, and then they are taking action based on that data differently. And I'm wondering if across the continuum that you guys have identified, of thrivers all the way down to survivors, and you mentioned one other, data-- >> Laura: resisters. resisters, and there was, anyways. So there's some continuum of data companies. Do they fall into that pattern, where I'm good at capturing data, I'm good at generating analytics, but I'm not good at taking action on it? Is that what a data resister is? So a data resister is sort of the one extreme. Companies that don't have well-aligned processes where they're doing digital transformation on a very ad hoc basis, it's not repeatable. They're somewhat resistant to change. They're really not embracing that there's disruption going on that data can be a source of enablement to do the disrupting, not being disrupted. So they're kind of resisting those fundamental constructs, I would say. They typically tend to be very siloed. Their IT's in a very siloed architecture where they're not looking for ways to take advantage of new opportunities across the data they're generating, or the data they're collecting, rather. So that would be they're either not as good at creating business value out of the data they have access to. Yes, that's right, that's right. And then I think the whole thing with thrivers is that they are purposeful. They set a high level objective, a business-level objective that says we're going to leverage data and we're going to use digital to help drive our business forward. We are going to look to disrupt our own business before somebody disrupts it for us. So how do you help those data resistors? What's your message to them, particularly if they may not even operate with the belief that data is this asset? I mean, that's the whole premise of the study. I think the data that comes out, like you know, hey data thrivers, you're two times more likely to draw two times more profitability to there's lots of great statistics that we pulled out of this to say thrivers have a lot more going for them. There is a direct corelation that says if you are taking a high business value of your data, and high business value of the digital transformation that you are going to be more profitable, you're going to generate more revenue, and you're going to be more relevant in the next 10 to 20 years. And that's what we want to use that, to say okay where are you on this journey? We're actually giving them tools to measure themselves by taking assessments. They can take an assessment of their own situation and say okay, we are a survivor Okay, how do we move closer to being a thriver? And that's where NetApp would love to come in and engage and say let us show you best practices, let us show you tools and capabilities that we can bring to bear to your environment to help you go a little bit further on that journey, or help you on a path that's going to lead you to a data thriver. Yeah, that's right, I agree with that. (laughs) What is the thing that keeps you up at night for the data resister, though, in the sense of someone who is not, does not have, maybe not even capturing and storing the data but really has no strategy to take whatever insights the data might be giving them to create value? I don't know, that's a hard question. I don't know, what keeps you up at night? Well, I think if I were looking at a data resister, I think the stats, the data's against them. I mean, right? If you look at a Fortune 500 company in the 1950s, their average lifespan was something like 40 years. And by the year 2020, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company is going to be seven years, and that's because of disruption. Now, historically that may have been industrial disruption, but now it's digital disruption, and that right there is, if you're feeling like you're just a survivor, that ought to keep a survivor up at night. If I can ask too. It's, for example, one of the reasons why so many executives say you have to hire millennials, because there's this presumption that millennials have a more natural affinity with data, than older people like me. Now, there's not necessarily a lot of stats that definitely prove that, but I think that's one of the, the misperceptions, or one of the perceptions, that I have to get more young people in because they'll be more likely to help me move forward in an empirical style of management than some older people who are used to a very, very different type of management practice. But still there are a lot of things that companies, I would presume, would need to be able to do to move from one who's resisting these kinds of changes to actually taking advantage of it. Can I ask one more question? Is it that, did the research discover that data is the cause of some of these, or just is correlated with success? In other words, you take a company like Amazon, who did not have to build stores like traditional retailers, didn't have to carry that financial burden, didn't have to worry so much about those things, so that may be starting to change, interestingly enough. Is that, so they found a way to use data to alter that business, but they also didn't have to deal with the financial structure of a lot of the companies they were competing with. They were able to say our business is data, whereas others had said our business is serving the customer with these places in place. So, which is it? Do you think it's a combination of cause and effect, or is it just that it's correlated? Hmm. I would say it's probably both. We do see a correlation, but I would say the study included companies whose business was data, as well as companies that were across a variety of industries where they're just leveraging data in new ways. I would say there's probably some aspects of both of that, but that wasn't like a central tenent of the study per se, but maybe that will be phase two. Maybe we'll mine the data and try and find some insights there. Yeah, there's a lot more information that we can glean from this data. We think this'll be an ongoing effort for us to kind of be a thought leader in this area. I mean, the data proved that there was 11% of those 800 respondents that are thrivers, which means most people are not in that place yet. So I think it's going to be a journey for everyone. Yes, I agree that some companies may have some laws of physics or some previous disruptions like brick and mortar versus online retail, but it doesn't mean there's not ways that traditional companies can't use technology. I mean, you look at, in the white paper, we used examples like General Electric and John Deere. These are very traditional companies that are using technology to collect data to provide insights into how customers are using their products. So that's kind of the thought leadership that any company has to have, is how do I leverage digital capabilities, online capabilities, to my advantage and keep being disruptive in the digital age? I think that's kind of the message that we want them to hear. Right, and I would just add to that. It's not only their data, but it's third-party data. So it's enriching their data, say in the case of Starbucks. So Starbucks is a company that certainly has many physical assets. They're taking their customer data, they're taking partner data, whether that be music data, or content from the New York Times, and they're combining that all to provide a customer experience on their mobile app that gives them an experience on the digital platform that they might have experienced in the physical store. So when they go to order their coffee in their mobile pay app, they don't have to wait in line for their coffee, it's already paid for and ready when they go to pick it up. But while they're in their app, they can listen to music or they can read the New York Times. So there's a company that is using their own data plus third party data to really provide a more enriched experience for their company, and that's a traditional, physical company. And they're learning about their customers through that process too. Exactly, exactly, right. Are there any industries that you think are struggling more with this than others? Or is it really a company-specific thing? Well, the research shows that companies in ever industry are facing disruption, and the research shows that companies in every industry are reacting to that disruption. There are some industries that tend to have, obviously by industry they might have more thrivers or more resisters, but nothing I can per se call out by industry. I think retail is the one that you can point to and say there's an industry that's really struggling to really keep up with the disruption that the large, people like Amazon and others have really leveraged digital well advanced of them, well in advance of their thought process. So I think the white paper actually breaks down the data by industry, so you can kind of look at that, I think that will provide some details. But I think every, there is no industry immune, we'll just put it that way. And the whole concept of industry is undergoing change as well. That's true, that is true, everything's been disrupted. Great, well, Brett and Laura thank you so much for coming on our show. We had a great conversation. Thank you. Enjoy your time. You're watching theCUBE, we'll have more from NetApp Insight after this. (rippling music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering NAB 2017. Brought to you by HGST. >> Welcome back to The Cube, we are live from NAB 2017 on day three, live from Las Vegas. Excited to be joined by my next guest from Adobe, Laura Williams Argilla. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> You are the director of Product Management for Professional Video. >> Laura: Yes, I am. >> And you've been, you are focused on digital video and storytelling. It sounds like that's been a long-time passion of yours. >> Yes, I actually was raised in a family, my dad was a video person as well. He worked with educational technologies and helping connect people in remote areas with more populated areas for educational purposes. And he always had video gear around the house and was very passionate about watching movies and making television. And so he got me indoctrinated pretty young. And by the time I graduated from high school, I knew that I wanted to do something with media. And so I went to school for broadcasting. >> Wow, that's fantastic. So speaking of connectivity that your dad was able to facilitate, tell us about what Adobe is doing here at NAB 2017. What's the Creative Cloud? >> So the Creative Cloud is the suite of Adobe tools. And it is a collection of all of the tools that enable creativity from digital imaging to motion pictures to Photoshop and all of the core creative tools, and a collection of services that help enable the connection between those tools. At NAB this year, we're announcing the Creative Cloud additions, or updates to the video products including After Effects, Premiere, Premiere Pro, AME, Audition, and Speedgrade Prelude. The whole bundle. >> The whole bundle. So talk to us about the target audience for Creative Cloud. Is it the wannabe YouTube star? Or are we talking about broad spectrum or is it more focused on the kind of like the individual filmmaker? >> With the Creative Cloud, we actually have a really broad range of customers who we target. We target everybody from the aspiring YouTube creator who's just starting their channel, all the way up to some of the major motion pictures. Deadpool was edited in Premiere Pro, Hail, Caesar! by the Cohen Brothers was also edited in Premiere Pro, as was Gone Girl. And we continue to just see amazing adoption. Also, Premiere is broadly used in broadcasting environments, but that doesn't preclude us from also being incredibly functional for individuals or small groups. >> So if we look at kind of those target audiences as maybe the large and the small separately for a second, walk us through for the aspiring YouTuber, what are some of the benefits that person is going to get in comparison to the benefits that a creator of Deadpool would get for example? >> Sure, so I think, in general, there's a lot of overlap because they're both trying to tell stories, right? So you both start with raw footage and shape that into the story that you're trying to tell, and those tools work whether you're working on a motion picture or you're working on a YouTube channel. But I think there's certain things that we've introduced, like this year at the show, motion graphic templates, which give the opportunity to work with really powerful motion graphic effects in Premiere using simple sliders, the essential sound panel which also dramatically simplifies some of the most common audio corrections that a YouTuber or anybody would make, but especially for someone who maybe doesn't have the technical depth of being able to jump into Audition and figure out all those parameters. This is a single slider for adjusting multiple parameters to increase the overall quality of their audio with one quick move. For the broadcast and the high-end motion picture end, one of the things that we're really proud of with Adobe is that we work well with partners. We have a huge ecosystem of third-party partners, everything from asset management systems to audio enrichment systems, that you can access directly through Adobe through system panels that they can create to give direct access in our tools. And it really makes the workflow so much easier because you're not having to pop in and out of a system to get work done. >> One of the things that kind of popped up when you were talking about the commonality of benefits from the aspiring individual to a studio is how they gain efficiencies from this. Talk to us a little bit more about, with respect to the partner ecosystem, how the partnering with Adobe helps enable efficiencies across this whole production process. >> Absolutely. So one of the best examples that I can give for efficiency is the asset management systems that we can enable to have direct access for users inside of Premiere. So if I'm working with any number of asset management systems, instead of having to go and use a web interface or a client interface to access my files, that can be presented as though it is part of Premiere. So it feels like I'm getting just a panel, like a window that has a view directly into my asset management system, which makes it feel like a much more cohesive part of that workflow, and also it saves me the time. And as a former editor, I know that you lose thought process when you have to jump out of what you're doing to go get that asset and come back. With this process, the interface doesn't change. You get to stay right in Premiere and go pull the assets that you need for that. And it just makes it so much easier and so you end up spending a lot less time with the jumping between, getting back to the good state and remembering what you were doing also. >> That's a really interesting point that you bring up about how we look at technology as this facilitator, as this enabler, but also the cognitive process that an individual is responsible for whatever part of it has to go through is also facilitated by offloading some of these tasks and making it automated and simpler. That's not something that I think we've heard this week or kind of talked about it in that context, but that's quite important. >> It's very important, and I think as a creative person, you want to remain in your creative space as long as possible and you don't want to go into the administrative space of asset management. You want that to be handed to where you're working. And I do think that that constant shift of focus is really difficult to manage and stay in that productive space. So I think, to me, that's one of the biggest benefits of having these interconnected tools. >> Speaking of other benefits within Adobe from a content volume perspective, you guys are providing access to over 75 million stock images, videos, 3D assets, graphics. What does Adobe's cloud look like to be able to facilitate this quick access to things like that? >> So we have a really powerful architecture behind our cloud. Each part of the system is established to best serve that type of use, and the acquisition of Adobe Stock has been one of our prides and joys because it is, again, the direct access to millions of images and videos and you can access those directly through your product. So if I'm in Premiere and I need a stock image, I can search for stock images inside of Premiere and I can place that image and test it, it'll be watermarked. I can show it to you, say does this work? You say yes, and I can buy it without having to go through the process of replacing that image. I just click, buy, and it changes the image in place, letting me know that I've now purchased it or licensed it, which is, again, a huge time saver. But the infrastructure behind the cloud is really, wow, (laughs) it's large and scalable and we have incredible uptime service. We're very, very fortunate with the way that we've been able to manage that architecture. >> Do you find any of, is security a concern for, or are you finding it now that there's so much proficiency in, not only cloud technologies, but cloud users, that it's really not nearly as big of a concern as it was before? >> I think there used to be a lot more concern about it, and Adobe has made security a first priority for cloud assets, especially when we understand that your creative material is so much a part of your income, and it's yours, it's proprietary. You don't want other people to have access to it unless you choose to share it. So we have a full security team focused on making sure our assets remain safe. But in the past few years, we've seen an enormous shift in people's willingness to put assets in the cloud and data in the cloud. And I think as people become more comfortable with it because of the known quantity of what internet security looks like, what data security looks like, they're more comfortable with it and then they're able to reap the benefits of having that connective workflow, that they are not forced to manage, upgrade, maintain. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Offloading that is always fantastic. Well Laura, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your wisdom of all your years of expertise at Adobe, and also before when you were kind of groomed by your dad. It was great to have you on the program today. >> Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >> Good. And we thank you for watching. Stick around, we're live from NAB 2017 on day three. I'm Lisa Martin. We'll be right back. (calm and smooth electronic music)