>>Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the queue at IBM interconnect 2015 brought to you by headline sponsor IBM. >>Hey, welcome back everyone. We are live in Las Vegas. This is the cube Silicon angle's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John furrier with Dave Alante host. Our next guest is Meg Swanson, director of marketing for IBM blue mix and with psyched to have her back on the cube last year we interviewed you one year ago in blue mix got kicked off. It was just a beta. Now it's blowing up huge and all the great success. Welcome back and congratulations. Right. >>Thank you. It's been a, it's been quite a year of Steve Robinson says if we kind of count these and joggers feels a bit like seven and it's been absolutely exciting. So we've in a span of a year, cause when we met at polls we were just at beta, you know we were, we were onboarding developers, getting feedback and now we have over 102 services on the platforms. They're rolling out rapidly and we have the deployment models with public, private and then we announced local at the show and it's just been, it's been tremendous. >>But before we get into some of the details, there's a lot of things to highlight. I want to just say congratulations because we cover a lot of companies you want to win when we meet people and they say they're going to do something and then they do it and do more and over and over achieve on the, on the mission. Cause you guys were very cautious at first you got Bloomix out there and then the wind was your back. The CEO says we need to win cloud. Right? And so you get the little reorg going on. Nancy Pearson was on yesterday, shows a little, a little bit of color on that and now you've got developers, you've got resources at your disposal. So take us through that. What happened? I mean I'll see blue mix hit a nerve obviously right out of the gate the signups were pretty strong, but we didn't hit that tipping point. When did you take us through the tipping point? When did it go? Oh my God, we've got a tiger by the tail. It was when the resources came in, was it before or after? >>It has a bit before that. So it's really your middle of, of last year. So as we, we had incredible adoption early on. So really building Bloomix from an open source perspective, building on cloud Foundry, strong partnerships with cloud Foundry and the team. And then just onboarding service after service. It truly owned reticent and all the different partners that we've had. And then around October was when we brought the Watson services on and we had been steadily growing, you know, the developer following and the babies that was pre yes. And uh, and the teams have always a mix is a platform that we're serving up. Um, you know, the IBM, uh, services plus our third party and open source. So we, even though we asked, we just reorganized, we've been working across the team since day one because we have the internet of things services, which are fantastic. Those are taking off really well. And we have the Watson teams, we have the mobile teams, the DevOps teams. So we're constantly working across and now we're reorganized into the cloud unit, which is fantastic because it just helps accelerate even more so >>you know, any, any agile business that has continuous integration like the cloud internally, you have to kind of think that way. And we're hearing that I internally at IBM does a transformation to be more agile, to go faster, which everyone's saying go fast. Everyone wants you to go fast. The CEOs, they said that yesterday, um, was, it was the tipping point that you had success and you doubled down on it was there, the proof point was Watson says, Hey look it, we can do this. Was that the key enabler? >>Yeah, the tipping point for us was really in the early stages, listening to developer feedback and making sure that we were re architecting and designing the product, that we have an incredible onboarding experience. So it developers where we know from marketing standpoint, we were getting the word out and really focusing on building community. So, you know, a few months into the year we started just very small grassroots meetup groups. Right now we have 71 countries every other week having meetups for their building applications on Bloomix. So for us it was, it was getting that community started and then having the community realize that we were taking their feedback on board and we would get, even on our Twitter handle, we'd get updates saying, Whoa, thanks Bloomix didn't, didn't realize you were listing to a, to the feedback and they, and they would mentioned what they had, you know, tweeted at us as far as um, input and how we'd made the change. And so every other day we're posting, you know, blog posts with updates on how we're working with developers. Just to make it a lot easier. >>Matt, can you talk about your open source strategy and how it's evolved as a company? I mean, IBM was, I think the first large enterprise company to get dive into open source and you went in big billion dollar investment way back when the Linux stories were now, but it's really evolved. Um, you use your, your muscle, your money and your vision and, and your open source of history, you know, in the community. How has it evolved? How is it changing? >>IBM for over 20 years we've been driving and fueling and having engineers really involved in open source community and helping to move that community along lifted up and and really anything that you're doing, especially from a hybrid cloud standpoint, you have to have open standards, you have to build an open architecture, you have to be embracing, you know, all the various open source technologies that are out there. You saw the work that we're doing and you spoke with the Docker team yesterday and, and so from our perspective is there's, there's no other way it is open by design. So all of our teams are very focused on making sure that we're working with the cloud Foundry foundation and getting input from all of the companies that are involved in that foundation. Because together we are going to create, you know, open standards and drive and momentum. Because if you're an independent developer or even if you're a large enterprise acting at the speed of an independent developer like we saw yesterday with city, you've got to be able to move and be portable. And if you're locked into proprietary standards, you're, you're just really, there's, there's nowhere you to go in this new world and this all the integration that you need. >>Okay. But there's another nuance there that I want to explore with you is that in the old days, it used to be you'd have a committee, right? Right. Everybody would maybe pay to get into the committee and they'd set a bunch of standards. Nine times out of 10 or 99 out of a hundred that it would flop. Right. And people, a lot of people said that would happen. For instance, with cloud Foundry, you guys came in and gave it a big lift. They're talking to that way around the open data platform now. So what's the difference? Is it just that there's an open source component to it? Is it that simple? >>Is the community, so, I mean, open source is successful because of the community. Listening to the community and sharing the community has a voice. And then the companies that are involved at, you know, at maybe more of a, you'll see that the table from a leadership perspective with the foundations, it's their, their role and their mission to be listening to the community and bring those forward. If any of those fail and you know, the companies involved aren't listening to the community or the community's not engaged and doesn't feel engaged and they're not innovating the platform, it's not going to work. So that's why we're very focused on building the sense of community, listening to what's out there and then enhancing. So you on the announcement with the Docker around enterprise grade containers, we were very specific with the way we approached that and named that. And you look at your, the secure gateway that needs to be added. You look at, um, the enhancements we've made from cloud Foundry on auto scaling. So really looking at what is the community looking for and then how do we then pay it back. >>So what's the message to developers? I mean, it sounds awesome. It's not easy. What you just described. Just Oh yeah, let's get the community. Well, it's hard to build community. So what's the message to developers? They have a lot of choices, a lot of options, and they spend time in various areas. What's the message to them from IBM, >>from an over an open source standpoint, just to be involved, be committed, be any, there are projects every day within the open source community where you can contribute code and you can be involved. And it's really about being very active and vocal and having, having a seat at the table. So I mean our teams, we're constantly looking through stack overflow in the feedback that we see their feedback on Reddit, feedback on get hub, you know, how, how often is the code being for blood? What kind of adoption metrics are we seeing? So from a developer standpoint, I would say, you know, it's time to lean in and be very involved because I mean not just IBM, but all the companies that we're working with across absolutely listening. And I mean this is such an era for developers where they, they have a seat at, at this big community table. It's not easy, but it's the right thing to do. The >>Docker and the register, this is modern stuff that developers want doctors. The hottest trend, you know, I was talking to dr folks, we interviewed Solomon years or couple of years ago in the cube before they changed their name even it was like, and we're so excited and all of a sudden they're now the bell of the ball. As you say, everyone wants to get married with Docker. Red is also is compelling node. These are cutting edge technologies that are part of the integrated stack. So how do you guys talk about that? In contrast to say Amazon, because Amazon and developers are used to these things. Elastic means stuff. They have auto-scaling. What do you guys have now that's direct, directly competitive with Amazon? >>Well, from a, from an application development standpoint, I see where we've gotten advantage is you look at the history of IBM around dev ops, right? So bringing together development operations in this continuous delivery life cycle and really looking at how are you going to quickly build an application and then that's, that's not the end of it, right? You now have to make sure from a security standpoint or you know, and you've heard from Mark Zonoff yesterday and the team on how are we providing strong security tools where you can do, you know in process application scanning and then you've got to deploy, you've got to auto scale, you've got to bring it back and you've got maybe an issue you've got to remediate and then redeploy. So for us it's really looking at at mobile app development and web development in that developer life cycle. And then in our conversations with our partners, the open source community, it's ensuring that we are helping to accelerate that every step of the way. >>I mean the announcement around API harmony, great example where we've got kind of the era of the impatient developer and we're all of us where you don't want to spend time writing a line of code if it's already been written. You don't want to spend time, you know, creating integration and creating API APIs if they're already out there. What you need are the tools at your fingertips where you can quickly build an application, search all the API APIs that are available and your private API APIs, you know, connect that into your mobile applications so you're to market faster. And then it's about you're enhancing and uh, you know, and, and really bringing different, yeah. >>So what do you say the developer out there that's watching this gives it the profile. Yeah, I'm comfortable. Amazon, I'm not sure I should go on blue mix. Maybe I should, maybe the best move was not to move or maybe they have something I want that I don't know about. So talk about those two scenarios. Cause like they're comfortable, they're like, okay, I, I'm fearful of moving over cause I'm comfortable over here with my tooling. Um, you know, developers are cause you work with them and then there's also the fear of missing out. Like, can I do better on Bloomex? So that's a common theme that we're hearing on developers. So how do you, how do you talk to those specifics? >>Yeah, and we, uh, we have those conversations, uh, quite a bit. And it's really about looking ahead at your strategy and at what point, especially for uh, developers within large enterprises. At what point do you need to connect with the backend systems? At what point do you need to ensure that you've got secure connectors? Our European clients are Latin American clients. They had concerns around data privacy, right? And so how are you sure that even the data centers that it's hosted in, you know, we have 40 data centers within software and growing every day and those are owned by IBM. Those are secured and it's really looking at where are you going to go as you expand your application. And do you have the right partner in place, the right steps along the way that you can, and more importantly, that you're not locked in. Because as much as, I mean, we have a lot of heart for Bloomex and what we're building, we want to ensure that we've built it to be open because we also want to have know low barrier exit. We want to make sure it's a great experience and it's our job to make sure that we've got the right services. The right time. >>So you don't, they don't feel locked in. So lock in is the lock in is a satisfaction >>yeah. Experience. It's not a, Oh I can't move because it's going to be too expensive to, you know. Right. And then there is a sense of, of expense that we're starting to see around the hidden cost of data. And as you may have walked into what you thought was a freemium model with some of the providers that are out there and you're scaling and now you have an ornament amount of data coming in and you're looking to store and provision that we are hearing, I mean the, there are hidden costs there that are also going to opening the door to other players that we've, we've, we know that we understand, uh, what you're gonna be facing down the road. So we've built the, the pricing, the application, the platform to allow for that. Whereas there are other platforms that haven't, because it is, you know, working at that kind of volume and scales a bit bit new to them and having to move that >>data is a problem too. So you mentioned 40 data centers, the more the merrier. I say here's some of the statistics. What's happening? How many services we did a little bit yesterday. Go a little deeper. What's exciting? What are the, the, the proud pieces of the, the platform that you can share with the developers? >>Yeah, it's been the integration. It's high integration between the design teams and in listening to developer feedback and then constantly designing the platform to have an amazing onboarding experience. So we announced yesterday the, uh, the Watson zones and the internet of things zone. And these are really designed to be, uh, a way to onboard into blue mix for developers that give you all the tools and resources and training that you need in order to start using cognitive applications like Watson. Because it is as exciting as the Watson services are, you do have a moment where you sit back and think, how am I going to use the power of Watson in my application? So we're creating these onboarding zones. So that's been huge advancement. Really excited about that. You're gonna see a lot more zones come out from us this year. And then the area of internet of things. So we have our, our IOT services. You had Nigel and Ian on yesterday from silver Hawk and power boat racing with internet things. They're fantastic. >>How about business outcomes? Get to finish the race and when you know the stories to the monitors, so you know if your heart rates going over right, >>that's pretty important data. And uh, so, so what we've seen to the exciting areas are really the zones and then the adoption and growth around internet of things space. And, uh, it's, it's a funny art. Our teams of developers that are out working with clients and out working with startups. If you open up their bags, they're probably gonna find a light bulb, a pebble watch. Um, but to connectors, I'm surprised anybody can get their report security nowadays that's on our team because we have all these demonstrations that we're doing with clients of, you know, imagine if you have, if you're trying to create a smart building for your employees and you have their mobile devices that are sensing and, and pinging the, um, the thermostat system, the lighting system. I'm the office. And as they're driving in and getting in proximity, things start turning on inside the office. So we do downloads with light bulbs and watches and, and really are starting to think through this smarter planet and smarter cities initiative with internet of things. And how are you using Bloomix and the power of cloud to now bring that to life within, uh, within cities and within enterprises? >>Go ahead. What's the developer persona look like these days when you're talking about the startup she talked to you? Think of the hoodies you think about the enterprise guys. So those two worlds coming together, >>they are in, in the fact that a lot of large enterprises are building innovation centers inside of themselves. And so they have, um, whether it's, if they have foundries or innovation centers or groups of developers, they're really looking to harness that, that speed and uh, an innovation that we've seen from, you know, some of the enterprise developers. And then also the big advancement that we've seen is the continual growth of the hackathons. So, you know, we know city we've been partnering with at and T as well on, on creating as many opportunities for their internal developers and external ecosystem of developers to be bringing forward new ideas to them. And then what we, we don't talk about as much publicly are the internal hackathons we do inside of large corporations. So we work with the CIO, his office, we go in 24 hour period and their developers are working on Bloomex within 24 hours. Well, depending on the number of, of it of developers they have, we'll have, you know, 50 75 a hundred mobile apps that are built. And then shark tank style, you know, they pitch the apps to their CIO and we vote on them together, you know, with the company. And then that's the roadmap for, you know, their 2015 plan and what applications they're going to bring tomorrow market. >>So talk about the geekiness of IBM and we were talking about this on the intro about what IBM should be doing, obviously where we're editorializing and pining, but um, it's known as kind of like the big company is slow old IBM, big blue, big iron and you guys are trying to be cool to see the keynotes out here. We may see that, but you guys actually have a geeky kind of community going out with this dev thing, which we've been following the past couple of years. It's pretty cool. Um, IBM is a geek culture. I mean it's got a lot of geeks that IBM, and that's a bad word we heard in New York, but a lot of computer science is um, technical people, very awesome bench of talent and patents. Right? So I'll ask, coming to bear, we're hearing, so share with the folks out there that are watching, what's it like at IBM? It's geeky. Is it? Is it, you said they carry gadgets around, I mean, is that the way people are at IBM? I mean, what's the culture like? Your group is, I think one of the ones that are kind of the edgiest. I think it's definitely not a mall culture. >>This multiple pockets. You've got a conservative customer base, but the average to be good, you gotta be, >>yeah, you gotta be kidding. It's about being authentic. So we're not trying to be anything. We're not. And when you look at me, you met, you know, the teams that I've gone through. We've got Jeff's lawyer and Marvin Goldman running around on our teams and, and we have massive development labs, you know, OBS, developers within, you know, high fund, our, our London facilities. And this is going on every day. So we're not putting on airs. You're not pretending. This is truly what our teams are doing. So we have, you know, Joshua Carr in the UK is constantly with, um, you know, with, with children in schools, showing them how to fly a drone with a banana, right where you do the device connectors. That wasn't because it was a stunt that we were trying to pull. It's just truly what they do. And we're very involved in the STEM initiatives for schools. >>I'm very involved in, you know, our distinguished engineers working through. So, but to attract developers and to get them in gray shade into your platform on board, you're judged by the company kids, they want to see themselves there. Right? So that's, there's a culture of developers now, I don't want to say brogrammers but like in this, the youngest guns are like, they've never loaded Linux on machines. They always say what bloats off where it's all cloud to them. So you're born in the cloud. So that's just a complete cultural shift, right, to talk about you guys have that mojo internally or, yes, it's about, it's about taking what we know inside the company and exposing that to developers and creating that developer to develop our connection. And you mentioned programmers. I mean we have Lauren Schaffer, we have a number of female developers on our teams and we are very much focused on ensuring that we're leading and making sure that we are creating a very balanced on environment of developers and leading in that area of making sure we have a lot of diversity. >>And so it's really about, from a marketing standpoint, it's, you know, you don't market to developers. Yeah, no, your technical chops or what's the market and you make sure that what they're interested in and what thereafter we're going to connect them with an IBM development team or is somebody else in the community through developer works that's working on it as well. And it's that local community. There's local connections headfake developers as we learned that. No, and my team, my marketing team, it's half developers, half data analysts. I mean we are, I mean EDC shifts inside of IBM marketing. I mean it's all data driven. I'm using the entire portfolio SAS portfolio we have with, you know, Unica, Coremetrics and, and then every day giving developers more trends and more technologies to play with your kid in the candy store. They ask you the, um, the question that's on my mind is what was the big learnings over the year that you guys walked away? >>What was magnified this year? Y'all see, you launched it a year ago, you have some growth, right? What's the learnings that was magnified for your team and the whole group? I'd say the speed. Um, so when you talked about, you know, agile development, agile delivery, you look at going from, you know, a few services to 102, you now have to re reinvent the way product development is done inside the company. So it's cloud versus mobile first. And it's really looking at across all the services we have, how long can they be a beta, how long, you know, are we going to do testing? What is the beta to general availability, onboarding for developers and migration path. Because a lot of companies will launch a beta, you're using the beta, you're embedded in it, and then all of a sudden it goes generally available and you have to rip and replace. Like that's horrible. And you know, experience. So we've, the biggest change I've seen is just the agile delivery and the speed at which internally to IBM we're working and learning from our partners that we're onboarding, bringing more and more partners every day. >>We got a break, but I want to ask you one final question. What's the coolest thing that you guys have done with Blumix internally? >>So internally it's been the Watson services and the Watson hackathons. So, uh, we are doing message resonance and sentiment analysis, so you can actually take a memos that are written or uh, or external documentation, run it through message resonance and, and start creating profiles of, of messaging. So it's been a, so you've got traditional writers, you know, geeking out of it and now they're uploading their content into the mobile applications and, uh, and you're then changing the way that, >>yeah, we had, we did a test, Adam sent us a link for the beta with the blue mix and we took all our chats and the social group has an amazing crowd chats, a zillion people on it and it's a huge transcript. I just cut and paste the transcript into the site and it spit out like the top things. And it was like, you know, openness cause it's a, it's a Twitter, Twitter, Twitter chat and they gave it a little, all the sentiment. I was like, wow, this is awesome so we could see where this going. So, um, that's cool. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming on the cube again. Great to see you. Congratulations and keep us posted and we'll bull up. Keep checking in with you on the progress. This is the cube. We'll be right back live in Las Vegas after this short break.