>> Speaker: From around the Globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of DockerCon Live 2020, brought to you by Docker and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello, how you doing? Welcome to DockerCon. We're kind of halfway through now, I guess. Thank you for joining us on this session. So my name is Elton, I'm a Docker Captain. And I'm joined by Julie who was also a Docker Captain. This is actually this session was Julie's idea. We were talking about this learning of Docker and how it's a light bulb moment for lots of people. But Julie, she came up with this great idea for DevOps. So I'll let Julie introduce herself, and tell you a bit about what we're going to talk about. >> Thanks, Elton. So I'm Julie Lerman. I'm a Software Coach. I'm a developer. I've been a developer for over 30 years. I work independently and I'm a Docker captain. Also a Microsoft Regional Director. I wouldn't let them put it on there, because it makes people think I work for Microsoft but I don't. (he laughs) >> Yeah, so it's a weird title. So the Microsoft ID the Regional Director, it's like a kind of Uber, MVP. So I'm an MVP. And that's fine. That's just like a community recognition, just like you get with a Docker captain. So MVP is kind of like the micro version, Julie's MVP too. But then you get the Regional Director which is something that MVP get. >> Doesn't matter. >> I'm not surprised Julie. >> Stop, a humble man. (he laughs) >> We've been using Docker for years 10 years between. >> You probably, how long ago was your Docker aha moment? >> So 2014 I first started using Docker, so I was working on a project, where I was assaulting for a team who were building an Android tablet, and they were building the whole thing, so they Spec out the tablet, they got a bill over in the far East. They were building their own OS their own app to run on and of course all that stacks within it. But they was all talking to the services that were running in the power they wanted to use as your for that and .NET that was on-prem, though that technology historically . So I came in to do the .NET stuff is running in as your, but I got really friendly with the Linux guys. It was very DevOps, it was one team who did the whole thing. And they were using Docker for that their build tools, and for have the and the CI tools, and they were running their own get server and it was all in. >> Already until 2014. That's pretty cool. >> Yeah, pretty early introduction to it. And it was super cool. So I'd always been interested in Linux, but never really dug into it. Because the entry bar was so high runs nothing in it. So you read about this great open source project, and then you go and look at the documentation and you have to download the source code and build it and it's like, well, I'm not going to be doing that stuff. And then Docker came along. I do Docker run. (he laughs) >> Well, I would say it was a little definitely delayed from that. I'm still thinking Wait, when you first started saying that this company was building their own android system, you start thinking, they're building software, but no, they weren't building everything, which is pretty amazing. So, I have to say it took me quite a while, but I was also behind on understanding virtual machines. (both laughs) So, Docker comes along, and I have lots of friends who are using it, I spent a lot of time with Michelle Noorali this Monday, and she's big container person. And most of the people I hear talking about Docker are really doing DevOps, which is not my thing. As a developer, I always just said, let somebody else do that stuff. I want to code an architect and do things like that. And I also do a lot of data work. I'm not like a big data person doing analytics. Or I'm not a DBA. I'm more very involved in getting data in and out of applications. So my aha moment, I would say was like, four years ago, after Microsoft moved SQL Server over to Linux, and then put it inside a Docker image. So that was my very first experience, just saying, oh, what does this do and I downloaded the image. And Docker run. And then like literally I was like, holy smokes. SQL Servers already installed. The containers up like that, and then it's got to run a couple of Bashan SQL scripts to get all the system tables, and databases and things like that. So that's another 15 seconds. But that was literally for me. The not really aha, it was more like OMG, and I'll keep the EFF out just to keep it clean here. It was my OMG moment with Docker. So getting that start, then I worked with the SQL Server image and container and did some different things, with that in applications. And then eventually, expanded my knowledge out bit by bit, and got a deeper understanding of it and tried more things. So I get to a comfort level and then add to it and add to it. >> Yeah. And I think that the great thing about that is that as you're going on that journey that aha moments keep coming, along we had another aha moment this week, with the new announcement that you can use your Docker compose files, and use your Docker commands to spin stuff up running in as your container instances. So like that you've kept up that learning journey is there if you want to go down, How do I take my monolithic application, and break up into pieces and run those in containers? Like suddenly the fact that you can just glue all these things together in run it on one platform, and manage everything in the same way? And these light bulbs keep on coming. So, you've seen the modernization things that people are doing that's a lot of the work that I do now, and taking these big applications, you just write a Docker file, and you've got your 15 year old .NET application running in the container. And you can run that in the cloud with no changes to code, and not see them. But that's super powerful for people. >> And I think one of the really important things, especially for people like you and I, who are also teachers, and is to try to really remember that moment, because I know a lot of times, when people are deeply expert in something it they forget how hard it was, or what it felt like not to understand it that context. So I still have held on to that. So when I talk, I like to do introduction, I like to help people get that aha moment. And then I say, Okay, now go on to the, they're really expert people. You're ready to learn more, but it's really important to especially, maybe we're teachers, conference speakers, book authors, pluralsight, etc. But lots of other people, who are working on teams they might already be somebody who's gotten there with Docker, and they want to help their teammates understand Docker. So I think it's really important to, for everybody who wants to share that to kind of have a little empathy, and remember what that was like, and understand that sometimes it just takes explaining it a different way explaining maybe, just tweaking your expression, or some of the words or your analogies. >> Yeah, that's definitely true. And you often find this it's a technology, that people really become affectionate for, they have a real deep feeling for documents, once they start using it, and you get these internal champions in companies who say, "This is the stuff I've been using, I've been using this at home or whatever." And they want to bring it into their project, and it's pretty cool to be able to say to them this is, take me on the same journey that you've been on, or you've been on a journey, which was probably slightly more investment for you, because you had to learn from scratch. But now you can relay that back into your own project. So you can take, you don't have to take everyone from scratch like you did. You can say, here's the Docker file for our own application. This is how it works. And bringing things into the terms that people are using everyday , I think is something that's super powerful. Why because you're completely strange. (he laughs) >> Oh, I was being really cool about your video. (both laughs) Maybe it's just how it streaming back to me. I think the teacher thing again, like we'll work a little harder and, bump our knees and stub our toes, or tear our hair out or whatever pain we have to go through, with that learning because, it's also kind of obsessive. And you can steer people away from those things, although it's also helpful to let them be aware like this might happen, and if it does, it's because of this. But that's not the happy path. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think, it's really interesting talking to people about the time you're trying to get to what problem are they trying to solve? It's interesting, you talk about DevOps there, and how that sort of not an area, that you've done a lot of stuff in. Writing a couple of organizations, whether they're really trying hard to move that model, and trying to break down the barriers, between the team who build the software, and the team who run the software, but they have those barriers, but 20 years, it's really hard to write that stuff down. And it's a big cultural shift, it needs a lot of investment. But if you can make a technological change as well, if you can get people using the same tools, the same languages, the same processes to do things, that makes it so much easier. Like now my operators are using Docker files, on there and the security team are going into the Docker file and cozening it, or DevOps team or building up my compose file, and everyone's using the same thing, it really helps a lot, to bind people together to work on the same area. >> I also do a lot of work in domain Dave Vellante design, and that whole idea of collaboration, and bringing together teams, that don't normally work together, and bringing them together, and enabling them to find a way to collaborate giving them tools for collaboration, just like what you're saying with, having the same terms and using the same tools. So that's really powerful. You gave me a great example of one of your clients, aha moments with Docker. Do you remember which that was? The money yes, it's a very powerful Aha. >> Yes. >> She cherish that. >> The company that I've worked for before, when I was doing still get thought that I can sort a thing, and they knew I'd go into containers. I was working for Docker at the time. And I went in just as if I wasn't a sales pitch or anything, I was just as a favor to talk to them about what containers would look like if payments, their operation, big heavy Windows users, huge number of environment, lots of VMs that are all running stuff, to get the isolation, and give them what they needed. And I did this presentation of IT. So it wasn't a technical thing. It was very high level, it was about how containers kind of work. And I'm fundamentally a technical person, so I probably have more detail in there. And then you would get from a sales pitch, but it was very much about, you can take your applications, you can wrap them up the running these things for containers, you still get the isolation, you can run loads more of them on the same hardware that you've got, and you don't pay a Windows license each of those containers, you pay a license for the server that the right one. >> That's it, that's the moment. >> And the head of IT said that's going to save us millions of dollars. (he laughs) And that was his aha moment. >> I'm going to wrap that into my conference session, about getting to the Docker, for sure getting that aha moment. My experience is less that but wow, I mean, that's so powerful. When you're talking to come C level people about making those kinds of changes, because you need to have their buy in. So as a developer and somebody who works with developers, and that's kind of my audience, my experience more has been, when I'm giving conference presentations, and I'll start out in a room of people, and I have to say, when I'm at .NET focus conference, I find that the not there yet with Docker. Part of the audience is a big one. So I kind of do a poll at the beginning of the talk. Who's heard of Docker, obviously, they're in the room, but curious because you still don't really understand it. And that's usually a bulk of the room. And what I like to ask at the end is, of all of you that, that first group, like, do you feel like you get it now, like you just get what it is and what it does, as opposed to I don't know what this thing is. It's for rocket scientists. Is that's how I felt about it. I was like, I'm just a developer. It wasn't my thing. But now, I'm still not doing DevOps, I use Docker as a really important tool, during development and test and that's actually one of it I'm going to be talking about that. But it's my session a little later. Oh, like the next hour. It's about using Docker, that my aha Docker, SQL Server, in an image and but using that in Dave Vellante, it's not about the DevOps and the CI/CD and Kubernetes, I can spell it. (he laughs) Especially when I get to say k eight s, Like I even know the cool Lingo (mumbles) on Twitter. (he laughs) >> I think that's one of the cool things about this technology stack in particular, I think to get the most out of it, you need to dig in really light if you want to, if you're looking at doing this stuff in production, if you're attracted by the fact that I can have a managed container platform in anytime. And I can deploy my app, everywhere using the same set of things that compose files or humidity files or whatever. And if you really want to take advantage of that, you kind of have to get down to the principles understand all go on a proper kind of learning journey. But if you don't want to do that, you can kind of stop wherever it makes sense for you. So like even when I'm talking to different audiences, is a lot strangely enough, I did a pool size large bin this morning. It was quite a specific topic. It was about building applications in containers. So is about using containers, to compile your app and then package it, so you can build anywhere. But even a session like that, the first maybe two minutes, I give a lightning quick overview, of what containers are and how you use them. Here's exactly like you say, people will come to a session, if it's got Docker or humanities in the title. But if they don't have the entry requirements. They've never really used this stuff. And we were up here and it's a big dump for them. So I try and always have that introductory slide. >> I had to do that on the fly. >> Sorry. >> I've done that on the fly in conference, because yes, doing like, ASP.NET Core with Entity Framework and containers. And, 80% of the room, really didn't know anything about Docker. So, instead of talking like five minutes about Docker and then demoing the rest, I ended up spending more time talking about Docker, to make sure everybody was really you could tell that difference when they're like oh, like that they understood enough, in order to be follow along and understand the value of what it was that I was there to show, about it in that core, I'm also this is making me remember that first time I actually use Docker compose, because it was a while, I was just using the SQL Server, Docker image, in on my development machine for quite a while. And because I wasn't deploying, I was learning and exploring and so I was on my development machine, so I didn't need to do anything else. So the first time I really started orchestrating, that was yet another aha moment. But I was ready for it then. I think you know if you start with Docker compose and you don't haven't done the other, maybe I would write but I was ready, because I'd already gotten used to using the tooling and, really understanding what was going on with containers. Then that Docker compose was like yeah. (he laughs) >> It's just the next one, in the line is a great comment actually in the chat about someone in the chat. >> From chat? >> Yeah, from Steve saying, that he could see there would be an aha moment for his about security. And actually that's absolutely, it's so when security people, first want to get their head around containers, they get worried that if someone can compromise the app in the container, they might get a break out, and get to all the other containers. And suddenly, instead of having one VM compromised, you have 100 containers compromised. But actually, when you dig into it so much easier to get this kind of defense in depth, when you're building in containers, because you have your tape on an image that's owned by your team who produced the path, whether or not they will have their own images, that are built with best practices. You can sign your images, through your platform doesn't run anything that isn't signed, you have a full history of exactly what's in the source code is what's in production, there's all sorts of, ways you can layer on security that, attract that side of the audience. >> I've been looking at you this whole time, and like I forgot about the live chat. There's the live chat. (he laughs) There's Scott Johnston in live chat. >> Yes. >> People talking about Kubernetes and swarm. I'm scrolling through quickly to see if anybody's saying, well, my aha moment was. >> There was a good one. What was this one from Fatima earlier on, Maya was pointing out with almost no configuration onto a VM, and couldn't believe it never looked back on us. >> Yeah. >> That's exactly, on one command, if your image is mostly built, SaaS has some sensible defaults, it just all works. And everyone's (mumbles). >> Yeah, and the thing that I'm doing in my session is, what I love. the fact that for development team, Development Testing everybody on the team, and then again on up the pipeline to CI/CD. It's just a matter of, not only do you have your SaaS code, but in your SaaS code, you've got your Docker compose, and your Docker compose just makes sure, that you have the development environment that you need, all the frame, everything that you need is just there, without having to go out and find it and install it. >> There were no gap in a development environment with CI build the production. So I'm hearing, you don't hear but I can hear that we need to wrap up. >> Oh, yeah. >> Get yourself prepared for your next session, which everyone should definitely, I'll be watching everyone else do. So thanks everyone for joining. Thanks, Julie for a great idea for a conversation, was about 4050 we'll have a beer with and I would, I would Yeah. >> Yeah, we live many thousands of miles away from one another. >> Well, hopefully next year, there will be a different topic on how we can all meet some of you guys. >> And I do need to point out, the last time we were together, Elton, I got a copy of Alan's book and he signed it. (both laughs) And we took a picture of it. >> There are still more books on the stand >> Yeah, I know that's an old book, but it's the one that you signed. Thank you so much. >> Thanks everyone for joining and we'll enjoy the rest of the topic home. >> Bye. (soft music)

>>Live from Orlando, Florida. It's the cube covering Microsoft ignite brought to you by Cohesity. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Microsoft ignite. We are in day three of three days of wall-to-wall coverage, all things Microsoft. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Along with my cohost Stu, a minimum. We are joined by Martina grom. She is the CEO at work of at work in Vienna and a Microsoft MVP. >>Thank you so much for coming on the show. My tags for the invitation. I'm glad to be here. So tell us a little bit about at work, what do you do? So, so what we are doing, we are an ISV located in Australia and in Germany we are around 25 people and we do software development on the one side. And on the other side we support customers in going into the cloud to develop a deployment strategy to use Microsoft technology and yeah, governance, deployment, migration. And recently we also started with adoption and change management because it's a huge topic for many customers. So who >>are your customers? What, what kinds of industries are they in? >>Yeah. So, um, we actually do not focus on a specific industry. We are more focusing on enterprise customers. So every, every customer was a large customer. So one friend once told me, you like the complicated cases. So I like to work with enterprises and learn what they are doing from a security perspective and how they do that. And we have customers in the financial sector as well as in retail business. So all over that and mainly in Europe we have some customers in the U S as well. >>So, so Martina, I know from a Microsoft MVP standpoint, you focus on Oh three 65 is, is that the primary engagement that you have with customers or is it a span of product? >>Yes. Yeah. The interesting part is I started with Microsoft three 65 in 2008 when Microsoft started going into the cloud business. So that time back, my first product I looked at was exchange hosted services, which was the antivirus, anti-spam solution. Microsoft provided. And then, um, every single partner first told us, Matina you will never earn money with cloud technologies because no customer will do that. Everyone was still on premises. And in 2011 I got the MVP award because I was one of the first to focus so heavily on office three 65. And the benefit I have out of that is that I know all products services quite well. And currently I'm more focusing on the security and compliance side. >>Yeah, it's interesting because today when I talked to Microsoft customers in on premises to the exception and it's usually, Oh, I'm a government agency and I need to be completely cut off from certain environments, so therefore I can't do it. Um, you know, I, I've said for the last few years, Microsoft actually gave customers not only the green light, but the push to go sass with what they're doing. So tell, tell, give us a little bit of, you know, the landscape today is, is that, is that the exception rather than the rule and are most people kind of okay with O three 65 in the cloud? >>Yeah, I, I think cloud services, it's a matter of trust. So as I am located in Europe, we um, and especially in the German speaking countries like Austria, Germany, Switzerland, many people just didn't trust it from the beginning because they said it's a American company. We don't know where all our data is. Antawn at Microsoft is very open and um, and what the did, they are very transparent what they are doing. So you get tons of material around how to trust the cloud, how it works and so on. And the current state is more for an on premises customer. He is safer to go into a cloud service then stay on premises. And this is one of the things I really like about that because it's, it doesn't depend on the customer side. Even a small customer can have the same security features a large enterprise customer has. >>Okay. If you could just expand on that a little bit because you know, for the longest time security was the blocker to do there. And for many now looking at the cloud, it at least it lets me restart and rethink what I'm doing as opposed to, you know, often security was something that got pushed to the back burner in my data center. So is it that Microsoft has, you know, all of the security taking care of, is it a combination of getting to restart and rethink of it? How do you look at that? >>Um, I think the main point is traditionally when you are on premises, you think your data center is secure because you own it, you hosted, you organize it, you operate it and everything is there. And we are very an and those customers are very focused on endpoint security. So everything comes from the outside. Uh, might be dangerous. But with cloud technologies, it's not only your, your own network you need to just to have a safe place for, you also need to secure the cloud services. And that means if you broaden that experience and going into a SAS service, you have much more security there. In terms of the talking at the very beginning where you said, I liked the complicated cases, so we know you like a challenge. And then you also said you're getting into more adoption and change management. Talk about some of the challenges that you're seeing in terms of your clients embracing this, this, this technology. >>Yeah, so from my perspective, one of the biggest challenges customers currently have is Microsoft is moving very fast and people need to change and get comfortable with an evergreen service, which might change today and might change next week again. And this is something people need to adopt and, and use put a lot of pressure on that because they say, Oh, there are the nice, fancy tools, the new tools, it's teams, it's everything else. And we need that to do, to work properly and to be in a modern workplace. And this is quite the challenge for every it operations team because they need to build a secure environment. It needs governance and it also needs change and adoption. Okay. >>Martina, you mentioned the modern workplace. So another area you work on is enterprise social. So, you know, I worked for a large enterprise, you know, a vendor in this ecosystem back when that, you know, social wave was hitting, you know, use jive, uses Yammer when it first launched long before Microsoft had uh, brought it, um, you know, we don't talk about the wave anymore. Bring us, you know, what's happening in that space these days. >>Yeah. So enterprise, social and I love being there as well because I, I try to get people, so what, what I saw what, what I saw when Microsoft acquired Yama, it brought a lot of change into Microsoft itself because um, there was currently a graph technology in a, in, in Yammer as a product which brings up more relevant content to the users and people really liked that. And then you saw all the collaboration, which is mainly document based on SharePoint, SharePoint, online and so on. And currently those, um, services come together and then after a couple of years you got Microsoft teams and people that again got confused and that, so this is the next tool helped me what tools I use when, and that's one of the biggest question many customers have currently because they probably don't understand it from the beginning, but if they start adopting that, the use cases become pretty clear for them. >>That to say we work in teams in our project environment, but we, if we want to reach the whole organization, we go into Yammer or in an enterprise social tool. >> So talk about, there's been a lot of new changes to teams that have been announced this week here at ignite. What as an acre slapped MPP? What is most sparking your interest? Um, I'm not a Microsoft employee, but a VP, sorry. Yeah. Um, so what I like about that is that teams brings kind of a good user experience to use as they have one client. They have the outlook client, they have the teams client and they can work within the team. In Microsoft teams, they can use it for video calls, for conferences, anything. So it's, it's a one stop shop defined in teams and with the extension which is brought now in, in with the new Yammer experience, they also have the broad experience of the enterprise social network integrated into their teams client. And this will bring a fundamental change because then a project team which is working together can also look out of one client. What is going on in my organization. Are there any questions? Can I share that? And Tom, >>Martina, I want to go back to a word that you brought up. When you talk about the cloud, it's trust. It's something that we heard over and over. And again, the keynote is Sacha positioning Microsoft as a trusted partner. A, they've got, what? What's it 47, sorry, 54 different Azure regions worldwide. So, uh, you know, are they local enough? Are they engaged enough? Is Microsoft earning the trust of you as a partner and as your customers, do they, they seem Microsoft as a trusted partner? >>Yeah. So from my experience, Microsoft is a trust verse it company. Because what, what I learned from them during their whole cloud journey, they got a lot of push backs. In the beginning they said it's, it's just in the European union, we don't like that. We want our data centers, which are closer to us because it feels more secure if I have a data center region in South Africa, in France, in Switzerland or wherever I am. And Microsoft invests a lot in building that trust and it's completely transparent what they are doing. So you can go to the websites and can say, okay, I'm located in Switzerland. Um, I want my data in there, so what services to get there. So it's really, um, a good opportunities for customers. And also what I learned from customers is if you see a service running and you do not use it, you can't build up on trust because you just don't know. >>It's like swimming in the air without any water. So, and this is many customers just saw and they, um, they discovered, okay, it works, it doesn't fail. We can trust on the solution. And this is really important. You said that you mainly work with European customers, a few in the U S what do you think are the biggest differences between the two groups? Our European customers naturally a little more skeptical, particularly when it comes to data. It's um, in Europe we are very specific in data privacy and the thing that might be a difference between the U S and and Europe, especially in German, that people really look at privacy issues and could that happen on, and then we have GDPR, which was brought up by the European union, which would bring additional trust and security into our customers and on every single website we are surfing on. So I think that's one of the biggest differences from an enterprise side. The, the fears are quite the same. It's, it's like we are going to the cloud and we need to use a service and how can we work through that? I do not see that many differences. So >>Martina, you were proven right? You bet early on a technology adoption has been there. As you're looking forward, what are the things that, that we are early on today that are exciting you or that you think we're going to be talking about 2020 and beyond? >>Yeah. What I think what will come to us is more intelligence and more AI stuff because this is something which will really help us. And you see the, the little small things in PowerPoint that you get your beautiful designed PowerPoint slides automatically that your auto client says, Hey, you have an appointment, you have a really recording in five minutes, you need 10 minutes to go. Should I send an email that you are running late? So we will see much more intelligence in there. And also the new projects which, which are brought, they are, so knowledge sharing will be fundamental in the future that we find the resources we need and they're relevant what we need in, in, in the, in the time we need it. So what does this mean for the future? I mean you're just describing a, a world in which we all can be more productive. >>We are communicating more seamlessly. What does this mean for how teams communicate and collaborate? Yeah. Um, so what does think every positive side also might have a negative side? We go into an always on scenario, so we will be connected everywhere at home during cooking, doing, bringing kids to school and so on. So what I think what we as humans need to learn is how we can separate us from that and how we can just quiet down and get some space left out of the full amount of information which is around us because we can't get every single information and to see that very often when I talk with customers, have around Yammer, they said it's just too much. I have to read so much information because you feel you are losing control and you are losing information and this is what we need to learn as humans. >>Any, you know, what, what guidance do you give to people? The, the world of streams, right? I remember social media, they were like, Oh my gosh, I didn't look at it for the weekend. How do I, you know, look at all of that stuff that I missed. And usually I just frame, I'm like, you ignore everything that you missed and you start where it is today. But it's different in a work environment. >>Yeah. In a work environment. So my advice for customers is everything that I tell you at Tecton is interesting for you. If you're not tech, it's probably not for you. So this is the main curse. It's like unread emails or it's like the little notification bar. You got a message, a personal message to one-to-one message, then you should react on that. That's it. And not read everything because it's probably not relevant for you at. That's great advice. Words to live by. Thank you so much for Martina. Yeah. Pleasure having again, I'm Rebecca Knight for two minimums. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage from Microsoft ignite..

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering the IBM Think 2019, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to the redone Moscone Center here in San Francisco. I'm Stu Miniman with my co-host, Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE's wall to wall coverage of IBM Think 2019. >> Happy to welcome back to the program, a CUBE alumni Stephanie Trunzo, who's the Global Head of IBM Cloud Garage. >> Stephanie, thanks for joining us again. >> Yeah, yeah, great to be here. >> Good to see you. >> So, you're one of the IBM boomerangs. >> So you've worked for IBM before >> Indeed, that's right. and you're back now. So tell us a little about, we've had some interviews about the IBM Cloud Garage but tell us about your role, what you are doing. >> So I was with IBM for 13 years. >> I left and started a company called Point Source. >> We were a business partner and we did a lot of work in mobile and digital transformation and I sold that company and I kind of thought, "Well what's next?" and this opportunity presented itself. >> And it's perfect because the Cloud Garage is taking a new approach to how we interact with our clients from an IBM perspective and a lot of it is very similar to what we did at Point Source which is take this digital transformation, digital agency approach to looking at business outcomes first. >> Yeah, so one of our favorite topics, you know, cause it's a buzzword for a few years but when we talked to companies, I mean it's real. >> A few years back it was like, right, >> I'm doing a mobile app. I'm doing things like that. >> Bring us inside. It's a spectrum and every company is different but tell us what digital transformation means to the costumers that you're working with and how IBM and the Cloud Garage is helping them along that journey >> Yeah >> You know it's funny that you say that. Digital transformation can feel like a buzzword, right? >> And I think it's because there's so many things that are broader than just digital about transformation. So we talk in the Cloud Garage about guided transformation as a way of helping our clients not only think about how do they take Legacy applications, how do they take a new modern approach to their technology? How do they apply digital to processes that they already have in place? >> But also think about culture, new ways of working. >> Those aren't necessarily digital topics but we think about it as a guided transformation approach, meaning, can we teach along the way? >> So we're not just helping our clients see rapid outcomes and develop MVPs but are we helping them also learn along the way? >> So clients are really looking for people to help them, coach them on making decisions, bring expertise to the table so that they also have sustainable frameworks and you know, they're skilling people up in these new modern technologies as well. >> So digital transformation, of course, it is the buzzword of the day but every CEO you talk to is trying to get digital transformation right. >> So, what do you think some of the common ways in which people are pursuing the right path of digital transformation and maybe the question is what's perhaps some of the mistakes that people are making? >> Yeah, yeah, so I think if we think about it from the side of some challenges or mistakes or you know maybe missteps that people have along the way, is probably not spending enough time focusing on users, you know, taking the time to take a real outside-in approach. What is necessary to interact with your clients differently? >> What are the new capabilities that you could be offering? But instead of just daydreaming about all of the cool stuff that technology could do, really grounding it in an understanding of what your users want, what your users need, the data that will help inform those decisions. So I think that that's one misstep, is that people get excited about new technologies and so often it's like a solution looking for a problem and so we try to help make sure that we're really identifying business outcomes and what are the things that they want to test, to learn more so it's real iterative learning. >> And I think something you said is also really important, getting it right. >> What does that mean? >> Getting it right, it's a journey, it's this evolution so I'm not sure you ever hit a stage were you say, "Ah-ha, I've done it." (laughing) But more you can identify milestones where you can learn and apply that learning to keep evolving. >> Yeah. Often when we talk to users, the long pole to tent that transformation is that application portfolio. There's some stuff that can move pretty quick and we've seen that happen in the industry but boy, there's some stuff that I shoved it into VM and I kept it running five or 10 years longer than I should. >> How are companies doing along that line? >> How do we help get, because that's one of the challenges for users is, "Ugh, I have to use this horrible application." >> Yes. >> "That just can't move this at the speed that we need it to." >> Yeah, so when I talk with clients about this, one of the things that we often discuss is that you look backwards at your legacy architectures or your systems, like, core systems that take forever to migrate and often they were architected with time, not intention, right? So one microdecision after another took place over 10, 15, 20 years and your architecture, it reflects that. So I think that Cloud offers this really unique opportunity to look at your architecture going forward with an intentional mindset. So, kind of resetting the clock on all those architectural decisions that have accrued over a time. And I think that one of the aspects of getting people moving, even on the sticky projects, is breaking it down to consumable pieces. So one of the things we do in the Cloud Garage is help our clients figure out how to identify an actionable MVP. A minimum viable product that we can show quick success against. They've got a hypothesis they need to test. Let's just take one application, let's take one work load, and let's move that and see what happens. So we're going to do that learning, we're going to test that hypothesis and that starts you down a path that's a little quicker. >> How do I engage with the IBM Cloud Garage? >> If I'm interested, how do I get started? Is it a set of services? How does it all work? >> Yes, so we have 15 locations globally so they're built for purpose, built for activity spaces around the world. You can come into one of those spaces and we can do a tour, we can do a framing workshop which helps identify business opportunities, that first piece, the first step in the journey and get you moving really quickly. >> We also will do a couple different kinds of models if one of those locations doesn't work for a client or isn't a good geographical location. We'll also do pop-up Garages where we'll go to the client and work directly onsite with them. >> We've heard a lot about how Cloud fits into a lot of the digital transformation? >> What I haven't heard as much, but I would expect IBM is doing is how AI fits into that activity. >> Absolutely. Yeah, so in fact, I kind of lump that all together, to be honest, because part of the journey is identifying, again, if you're starting from business outcomes, you're working back to the technology solution so maybe the objective is to, you're in insurance industry and you need to develop policy quotes quicker. In order to develop that solution, that might necessarily involve us figuring out how to not only get their core systems to clouds so that they can extract data faster but also get more intelligent about underwriting processes so they can get quotes out quickly. So all of those technologies come into our process almost as a subplot to the business outcome that we're trying to drive for our clients. >> How much do you get involved in helping with the data strategy specifically? I mean, we think of the innovation sandwich that is data plus machine intelligence plus Cloud for scale, how involved are you in the data strategy? >> Is that part of the initiative? >> Absolutely. In fact, I think there's a really great symbiotic relationship and we see this pattern really often where clients will come to us because they want to do some application modernization as a starting point. >> As soon as we get into that conversation, you realize you actually need to modernize your data strategy as well. So there's a cyclical relationship and either entry point ends up involving the other, so if you're modernizing your data, what are you doing with it? You're probably surfacing it in an application, now we're back into an application discussion again. So we do definitely get involved in that and in fact, we have several offerings that are specifically geared towards data and analytics. >> Stephanie, about how long is a typical engagement? >> Is there an ending point or are there follow-ups that you have to make sure you're tweaking ... >> It never ends. It never ends. Yeah. (laughing) >> So, a typical engagement is we would start with the framing workshop I mentioned to identify the business opportunity. Design thinking workshop to take that business opportunity. Take all these great big ideas that people come up with and funnel it into something that's actionable. >> So take all the big ideas then and turn it into the one that we're going to pursue. >> And then an MVP workshop where we co-create with the client so we're teaching those skills, pair programming and working directly with them and a product owner to develop an MVP, test that hypothesis. And at the end, sometimes the MVP is something that is ready to roll in to production. >> Sometimes the MVP is something that leads to a learning that produces a second MVP. >> A typical engagement, end to end, for us, is probably around three months to get that first MVP and that's a pretty rapid pace to go the whole way from, and sometimes it's just as short as three weeks. So it just depends on the scope. But to go the whole way from identifying an opportunity and to testing it and having a real results, it's pretty fast. >> Are there specific KPI's that the customer can usually have coming out of that? >> Three months. That's a great window. >> You used to think about these engagements that used to roll out. >> Three years! >> It used to be more. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah, so we do look at... >> It really depends on what it is that they're trying to achieve. But we do define success criteria upfront. Those success criteria then are the things that we're testing as part of the MVP process. And so at the end, you will have actionable results. You'll have information that you've learned from as a result of developing that MVP. >> Sometimes it's something like understanding whether certain security protocols internally can be met with moving a workload in a certain way. Sometimes it's actually about user conversion. So it could be a marketing goal. >> It really depends on what they're trying to achieve. >> Where do you want to see this go? I mean, obviously, you're riding the waves. Digital transformation, AI, data. Where do you see this going over the next two to five years? >> Yeah. So I think some of the fascinating things that we've been doing and the Garage is a great place because so much innovation is happening there. Our clients are kind of testing boundaries. So we get to see a lot of the pretty far, out-there things. >> We've had projects with blockchain tracking fish in streams like a farm to table scenario but marry that with Watson image recognition so we can tell what the fish is and digitally imprint an ID on it. The sky's the limit on the kinds of things that we can come up with and build an MVP for. But I think some of the stuff that I would see in the next few years is really more around what I'll say ambient computing. We're adding additional senses, it's no longer just sight. Now we have so much voice. >> There's all of these other ways that we are interacting in context. >> And so I think we're going to keep exploring this kind of ambient notion of the things that are going on around us, whether that's data, artificial intelligence, and forming things, and then incorporating that into how technology interacts with consumers, users, et cetera. >> You're really taking the notion of digital transformation to the next level. >> That's right. >> Say, sensing. >> Exactly. >> Acting on behalf of the brand. >> That's right. >> Injecting intelligence layer- >> You got it. >> Into that all. >> Exactly. >> Nice. >> Yeah. >> Alright. Stephanie, there's tons of users here at the show. Are there customer stories that people get to hear throughout the week? >> What highlights? >> Yeah, definitely. So, we really are big on storytelling because it's the easiest way to understand these things. Some of these technologies are difficult, you know. They're intense concepts. >> So we have a lot of our clients come and share their stories onstage. There's a keynote on Thursday where we're talking about how to take an idea to MVP and we've got several clients joining us to talk about the Cloud Garage and how we actually impacted their business so, yeah. >> Alright. Well, Stephanie, we really appreciate all the updates on IBM Cloud Garage. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Congratulations. >> Thanks for having me back! Five years. Great. >> Alright. Well, we always love to tell the stories of what's happening at all the big shows. Help extract the signal from the noise. From Dave Vallente, I'm Stu Miniman. >> We'll be right back. Thanks for watching theCube.

>> That's sort of what I bring, is an ability to catalyze the conversation, and share that knowledge with others in the community. Our philosophy is everybody expert in something, everybody is passionate about something, and has real deep knowledge about that something. What we want to focus in on that area and extract that knowledge and share it with our communities. This is Dave Vellante, thanks for watching theCUBE. (smooth music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment, we have Anna Chu, who is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft and Shona Chee, Product Marketing Manager Diversity and Tech Community Lead. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Happy to be here! >> So, you are dressed very similarly. (laughs) >> Yes, we are. >> Yes, so we're going to get into diversity, because I want to go there, but let me start with you, Anna. So, you are really in charge of the community within the vast ecosystem of Microsoft. That's a big job. So how do you go about it? What's your approach to the Microsoft Community? >> Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. I've been leading the community efforts at Microsoft Ignite for the past two and a half, three years. And ultimately, it's all about the people in the room. These are IT pros, these are developers; people who care about technology. It's also end users as well; people who are business-focused. So we really want to make sure that we're delivering content that is going to help them go back to their communities, go back to their offices and be able to share all that knowledge back into the workplace. >> And Shona, so then you are within a slice of that community. So focusing on diversity and tech. So, what is your, how do you operate? >> So we see diversity as really closely integrated with technology. So we are a community that lives on the tech community. So there's a direct link, AKA dot MS Life Diversity and Tech, but what we're pretty much doing is bringing people together. All the tech communities to talk about important topics of diversity inclusion. So, traditionally, it's always been very HR driven, a lot about talent and acquisition and recruitment, but for us its really about what about the people in career, how do we help them feel like they belong, and they're apart of this ecosystem. So that's where we see the symbiotic relationship. >> And I have to say that it's my first time to the show. I've watched it from afar, I knew lots of people that were Microsoft MVPs over the years, very impressed. Maybe give our audience a little bit about what goes on in the show. You got all the podcasts going, there's meet-ups, there, you know, lots of good flare you're giving out at the show, and everything else like that. So, what's everybody missing that didn't come to this community gathering? >> Gosh, I hope I didn't miss out on anything, really. I really hope that we were as inclusive as possible. But every year we try and make the event more community infused than ever before. In previous years, we just really focused on content that would be live on a stage, such as at a theater or a breakout, but we really want to add a little bit more of the networking side of things too this year. So we've invested in the meetups, which are more formalized ways for the community to find their people. But we've also invested in idea swaps, such as a brand new concept that we've landed here in Microsoft Ignite, where we have group idea swaps where people are putting together topics that they want to meet with others about. And we also want to facilitate more one on one networking because personal relationships are such a critical part to being professionally strong in your career. You can't be successful without other people. So we really want to enable Ignite to be that platform. We've got people from all around the world. Shona's got this amazing pin wall in the Diversity and Tech area that showcases where everyone is coming from. There are people coming from really remote areas, to people all parts of Western Europe and the US, and I think there's a lot to be gained from people being able to find each other through Ignite. >> And what we always tell attendees is everything is live-streamed or recorded in terms of sessions, so the biggest take away here is really people and communities, so we really encourage people to meet-up, build valuable connections, just talk about topics that might be uncomfortable so that we can learn from it. >> Such a great point there. It's funny it is one of those pro tips out there. First of all, when there's a really big convention center, and there's a lot of people, there's certain sessions that you want to be at. Maybe you want to talk to the speaker in due but, when you find time on the plane ride back or spend a little time in that suite, you can go re-watch some of it, the people is really what drives everybody to the event. >> Where else would you meet 25,000 people in one venue, right? So it's really exciting. >> Shona you said talk about topics that are a little uncomfortable, those are the hardest things to talk about, particularly with a group of strangers. So what has been your experience at this conference, what are people saying that might count as that? >> Right, so the recent inclusion has really come front and center in terms of topics that's hot in the IT industry in particular. So traditionally people think about diverse inclusion as gender, right? Men and women. But, we're seeing that it's a lot more multi faceted than that. We're talking really about intersectionality of identities, all of us hold multiple identities, I'm a woman in tech, I'm an IT professional, I'm a millennial. So there's multi areas that we deal with, but we need to address each and every one of them. So for example, this year we have a lot of sessions focused on LGBTQ, and we also have our partners talking about this topic as well, and just really getting people in a room to say help me learn more about this area that I'm not that familiar with, or let's talk about race and culture. What do people in your culture do? What is the norm, what is acceptable? And that's why we also partnered with Tech Women, it's a US department of state initiative where we invite women from developing countries to come share their experience being an IT pro in those countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon. So we really want to give them platform to interact with attendees, but also giving mostly North American and European customers a chance to hear from someone in a completely different cultural setting. >> And just talking about all the various identities that we all encapsulate. Is the workplace the right place to talk about those things? That is another question too, in the sense of we are bringing our full self to work and we are spending so many hours at work. But at the same time, what is the right balance, do you think? >> Yeah, I think that's a great point. On the Monday leadership panel, we actually talk about leadership and building inclusive work cultures. Like you said, we spend so much time in the office, sometimes our coworkers become our family almost, right? How do we create and environment where people feel like they belong, where they feel like they can be genuine and not feel like they have to hide something, because in-authenticity really shows, and we want to encourage people to just feel like they have a safe place to express themselves. >> So in terms of advocating for yourself at work, I know that's another big theme that is in the diversity and tech workshops, what is some advice that you have for women, for underrepresented minorities, for people of various sexual orientations to make sure that they are having there careers that they are capable of having, and not being and not coming up against other biases and challenges. >> So in the Tuesday session, Donna Secaur actually talked about this, which was a great point, she said, you can write your own story, you can't control what people say about you, but you can control what's out there in the media, you can control how you do your social media profiles, and I think it's really encouraging people to take a look at what's online. Brand yourself how you want people to see you, and be proud of it, I think that's one of the biggest points. >> I also think that Microsoft Ignite brings so many people together, but they all have a common mutual passion which is about technology, and if that manages to bridge build bridges between people who may not necessarily get to know each other, so people from different religions or from different ethnic backgrounds, who don't really have that opportunity to get to know each other, and then they find a common passion, or they also face the same challenge on how to govern teams or things like that then suddenly we're doing a lot to help, build bridges and just drive that human connection so we can get beyond some of those challenges that we're facing in 2018. >> One of the ideas that bridges both community and diversity is career paths. I know a lot of the shows they go is how're we taking somebody from a certain world that growth mindset that we hear Sasha talking about how're you looking to address that and how is that discussed in the communities? >> Gosh, we've just launch a completely new Microsoft learned platform as well, one of the things that is really important ab6out learning is actually learning through community too. And if we can enable people to find their own people by helping them share best practices and tips, and we've made huge in roads there. So one of the things we've run as part of Microsoft Ignite, are community socials. So community socials are a way for people to find their people. So we've hosted ones for Microsoft Exchange an6d Outlook and we can make an element of fun out of that too, so there seems to be a certain personality in that community called squeaky lobster, I don't know if you've heard of squeaky lobster. It's some sort of inside joke that even I don't understand, but apparently he's a personality, and he's here to unite the community together, and then people will come together, and they'll talk about Exchange 2019, and they'll talk about how that impacts other parts of Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and then they'll talk about all the different ways that they can connect with each other as well. So it's a very amorphous thing. From a learning perspective, we have a lot of things that we can do to create platforms for learning, which is really awesome, but at the end of the day we have to learn through community because it's just IT professionals and developers are having to learn at a crazy pace, faster than they've ever had before. So that's a really big part. >> And I like that you mentioned career paths, because we just partnered with the MVP community to launch a community mentors program, and that's where we partner with over 700 participants all around the world from 65 countries, and over 800 years of combined industry experience, to have mentors work with mentees from other countries, and do a lot of cross sharing, just sharing expertise and best practices. >> And you have your student ambassadors here too. >> So that's a new thing that we've also rolled out at Ignite this year, we've invited seven student ambassadors from three local colleges here, and we invited them to work with our community reporters to push out some exciting video content. So that helps them to get a flavor of what kind of roles are out there in tech. We want to debunk the myth that you have to learn coding to work in technology and that is not true. There are so many amazing IT pro roles out there that we really want to educate people on. >> So the technology industry at this point in time has a very bad reputation in terms of diversity, there's not enough women, there's not enough minorities, there's not enough sexual orientation diversity. Coupled with this real bro culture, what's your best advice for technology companies today to be more inclusive, that's one of Satya Nadella's real guiding principles is embracing diversity, different perspectives, and being inclusive. How do you do it? >> I would say the first thing is really, just take the first step. We're all on a journey, this is a really big hairy issue that we're all working to tackle, and we cannot do this alone, and that's something we've heard consistently with all our partners. We are working together to tackle this as an industry, and I can't speak for other companies, but at Microsoft we have a strong culture of empathy, and as you know from Sasha's key note we're all about empowering people to be the best that they can be, and that is why we've developed code of conduct, we make sure people know what's acceptable, what are the boundaries that we can talk with, but still push the limit and say, hey I want to learn more about your culture, I want to know more about the LGBTQ community, I want to know about inclusive design and accessibility, how do I build technology that is accessible for everybody. So I think it's not easy for sure, even for Microsoft, we are still trying a lot of things for the first time. We learn and we grow from it, and we just keep improving it every year, so we hope that in future Ignites it will be even better. >> And having community members, even individually own being a champion for diversity too, whether it be in their own organization, or in their own user groups that they run, we really want to make sure that they are feeling like I can be an ally for diversity, whether you are someone who is the the typical persona in the IT pro world, which is a white male, and I'm really glad to hear a lot of these stories of people saying you know what, I am going to be that person that's going to step in and say something when I don't think things are right. >> And there are topics that everybody can relate to as well like mental health and wellness, that's an issue that's really come in the spotlight with a lot of stress in the industry. So it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, your gender identity, all of us are human beings. We all feel the same pressures and stress, and we just had that lunch session where literally tears were shed because people felt like I now have space to say I'm struggling with this, can you help me? And I think that's a really powerful thing to even just get started. >> It does require a lot of bravery, I think. Because for me even, I like to be able to find other people that I can relate to, who also share some of the same challenges that I have, and so I think that's the first step really, basically opening the doors and letting people express themselves and then other people are also going to feel like they're included. I think that's really one of the first steps. >> And where better to do it than a community. Finding your people in this space so yeah. >> And I want to ask about the buttons you have on so, yours, Anna's says Ringleader, Shona, game changer. >> Networking ninja >> And Networking ninja! I love it. So can you explain what these mean? >> Yeah so this year we want to try to really interactive button wall and we want people to come, and feel like they can share what's there diversity super powers, so all of us play a really important role, we where many hats from a day to day basis, but we want to know, what do people feel like is there ultimate strength, whether you're a mentor, are you an enabler, are you a supporter, what is it? And these were just great conversation topics, so if I saw that Anna's a Ringleader, I might come up to her and be like, oh that's me too, can we talk and schedule and idea slot? So we just want to create a fun way for people to interact, but another important thing we've launched this year is the pronoun buttons, so we want everybody to feel like they can be comfortable telling people what is the pronoun that they prefer rather than what visually people think they are, so that is something that we've launched this year as well. >> Very cool, very cool. Well thank you both so much for coming on theCube, it was really fun talking to you. >> Thank you for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (smooth music)

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

>> Narrator: From Hell's Kitchen in New York City, it's theCUBE. On the ground at Serverlessconf. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hi I'm Stu Miniman, here with theCUBE at Serverlessconf in New York City, really excited to have on the program one of the keynote speakers and a first time guest on theCUBE, it's someone I've know through the interwebs and have read his stuff for many years, Simon Wardley who's a researcher with a leading edge firm, Simon, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you ever so much for inviting me. It's a delight to be here. >> Alright, so my understanding is thanks to this event, you've reached a lifelong career goal. You're now a Sith Lord? (laughing) >> Well, somebody basically took a quote of mine and put it on a Star Wars poster with The Empire at the bottom, so yes, it is absolutely there you are, I am a Sith Lord, so delightful. >> The quote was that Serverless will just fundamentally change the architecture of how we build things. Something along those lines, I believe. >> Absolutely, yes. >> Alright, so let's start there. There are so many, come on, we all got really excited when containers came out. We're going to talk to John Willis >> You did. (laughing) >> We're going to talk about unikernels. The industry as a whole, there's frothiness and buzz >> Okay. >> So Serverless, you know, how's it different? How's it the same? Why's it so important from your standpoint? >> So, really good questions. So, to explain that question, we have to start off with a subject that is dear to my heart which is mapping. So when we look at the value chain of any organization, the components in that value chain are evolving and they evolve from the genesis, the novel and new to custom built examples and eventually products and rental services and then commodity and utility services. And that process is driven by supply and demand competition. It happens not only to activities, but to practice and data, but we give them different terms. They have all of the same characteristics as when they evolve. Now, when you look at that evolving environment, what you discover is there are two basic forms of disruption. There is the highly unpredictable form, which either occurs due to the appearance of something novel and new, which we don't know what it's going to impact or to product substitution. So that's the Nokia versus Apple, sort of battle, you don't know which way it's going to go until after the battle. And there is a second form of disruption, which is much more anticipatable or predictable and that is the product to utility change. So we know that when things evolve from product to utility we're going to see a rapid period of change and then there's a punctuated equilibrium. Explotion of higher order systems. We're going to see co-evolution of practice, disruption of past companies stuck behind inertia barriers. Yes it's going to be a bad efficiency, no we're not going to save any money 'cause we're just going to do more stuff with it and we're going to have all these new things as well. And we can anticipate that in advance. So when you start looking at value chains of organization, it's always the shift from product to commodity and utility which makes the big transformation in industry. And so one of them was compute. Shifting from products, as in servers, to utility as in cloud. Unfortunately dreadful term, cloud, an awful word, you know it's not a wispy thing up in the sky, it is something very specific, the shift from compute to utility. >> Would you put virtualization along that continuum? >> Okay, so virtualization was one of the underlying components, which actually helped with that happen. >> Yes. >> And so you've also got the explosion of practices around that co-evolution of practice, things like DevOps. Well, the same transition is now happening in the platform space. So, we're moving away from a product stack, things like, LAMP and .NET, to much more utility-based code execution environments. And that's what we're getting with Lambda. And we're going to see an explosion of new things built on top, inertia barriers, companies stuck behind, they'll die off, It'll be a rapid change punctuated equilibrium. You'll get all sorts of new things built. So we're going through that big transformation. Now, these transformations have been going on for about 300 years, some of them impact micro scale economics, some macro, the biggest we call ages. And that all depends upon how widespread that component is in other value chains, so when we're talking about software, we're talking about a component which is in almost all other value chains, it's shifting from product to utility, massive change, highly predictable. This is what Serverless is about. So, will it change everything? Absolutely it will. >> Alright, so Simon, I'm wondering, if you've mapped out for Serverless, where's the land of economic expection, the land of happiness and the land of despair? (laughing) >> Well, okay, happiness, despair and expectation? >> Yes. >> Okay interesting one. So the land of despair will be getting stuck behind the inertia barriers, dismissing it, saying it's not going to impact, it's not going to impact, no, no, because there's a punctuated equilibrium, it'll surprise you because it's an exponential growth, so you'll think you've got loads and loads of time and 10 years from now, you're like, be panicking, oh my gosh, it's impacting, I can't get the skills for people to help me do the transformation. My entire industry and business model is starting to disappear, so that is the land of despair that's coming to people, that's easy to defend against because most people can't see the environment. They're going to just walk straight into that one. The land of happiness. Well, obviously other than being the utility providers who'll be extremely happy about the growth of their industry, another area of happiness will be some of the novel and new things built on top. So, we're bound to see the, sort, of, one person, two person company who builds a fuction which is sold through something like the marketplace and everybody uses and they sell it for a billion. So, we'll get the two person billion dollar company and I'm sure that will make them delightfully happy. So, that's despair, happiness, also inflated expectations. So one of the big lies will be, Serverless is going to save me money in terms of reducing my IT budget. I'm afraid not. This is Jevons Paradox, this is being going on since 1865. All that's going to happen is yes, it becomes more efficient but we'll do more stuff because we're in competition so we'll spend exactly the same as we've always done, but just doing vastly more. But none the less, loads of consultants will write reports about how it will save you money and lots of people will be disappointed. >> I want to poke at that for a second. (laughing) I don't disagree with Javons Paradox when it comes to power, but example, say you know, our host for this event, A Cloud Guru. >> Yeah. >> They're priced to deliver per user is way lower than if they'd have done this the traditional way and I've heard many examples here at the show already where they've said, oh if I had built it this way, you know, it's now an order of magnitude less dollars, so. >> Let's forget order of mag, let's go many orders of magnitude. So from now to say the 1980s, for a thousand dollars, I can get a million times more compute resource than I could back then. Has my IT budget reduced a million fold during that time? And the answer is >> Yeah. >> What, my IT budget has reduced a million fold? >> No, no, no my IT budget has not reduced a million fold. >> Not at all, because we've just ended up doing vastly more stuff. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So the point is, yes. >> Budgets are always flat, yes. >> So the point is yes, we will be able to do the same things but more efficiently, but your IT budget doesn't reduce because we end up doing more things. So we're in competition, say, you and me and say you evolve, you use these environments you don't reduce your IT spending, you do more things, I'm now having to spend more and more just to try and keep up with you. So eventually I'm forced to adopt to that new world. So what happens is the individual acts become more efficient, but because we do more, we don't save anything. >> You know, want to look at kind of, maps versus strategy. >> Okay. >> I guess one of the things, if I'm talking to the typical Enterprise CIO or Board and they say, oh, well, a year ago I heard about Serverless, or today I heard about Serverless, you know, the strategy is going to change greatly because this is changing so rapidly, how do you help companies understand when things are changing so fast, how do I set a strategy for today? How long do I keep it? How often do I revisit it? >> So, if you map an environment, like all maps, they're dynamic, so you're constantly adapting and changing them as the environment is changing. So, when you look at, you have the purpose of your company, you have the landscape you're operating in, there are a number of climatic patents, about 30 of them, which impact that environment, will change it, so you need to understand those. Then there's sort of university useful patents known as doctrine, then there's game play. Now, for most organizations, because they cannot see the environment, they cannot distinguish, or may just be completely oblivious to any of this, so when they were talking about change, if I look at how things evolve from genesis, custom built product commodity, most organizations will go genesis, that's an innovation, every custom built feature differentiation of a product's an innovation, every shift in product to utility is an innovation, so all they see is innovation, innovation, innovation. And therefore, it's very easy to get sucked in to one size fits all methods work. One size innovation programs, where in fact, the genesis you would be using something like a lightweight XP, the product development, much more lean enterprise, so SCRUM and MVP and the utility is much more outsourcing or Six Sigma. So you should be using multiple techniques and multiple methods and most organizations aren't in that position. And if they're not in that position, of being able to see the environment, it's difficult to see where to attack, it's difficult to understand why here over there, it's difficult to manipulate the market. So, what happens is most organizations work on gut feel, whatever's popular in HPR and just act. And you can call that strategy if you wish. >> Alright, so I wish we could talk for another couple of hours, but want to give you the final take away >> Yes. >> Serverless today, how should people be thinking about it and what should they be looking for over the next six to 12 months in this space? >> So, the key thing about Serverless is we're seeing a shift from platform from product to utility, so you should be developing skills in that space. And we're seeing co-evolution of practice. By that, we mean there is a new set of practices combining finance and development together. What those practices are, we don't know yet. You have to experiment and explore. That's why attending events and being involved in building stuff will help you discover those practices. So today if your company, well it depends on your position, so if you're a company which is behind the game, you, say, haven't gone into infractructure as a service, you're not doing DevOps, you're own people are resistant to this change cause the other vendors say you're going to lose their jobs and blah, then rather then embarking on a five to seven year program, 'cause that's how long it will take to do that, you should move up the stack and start with Serverless and learning those practices. 'Cause no one knows them well, so you can take your people who've got inertia and re-train them in that space overcoming that inertia and give yourself a path forward. So, depends on your position, but I think most companies should be experimenting in this space. >> Alright, well Simon Wardley, it's a pleasure to catch up with you today. >> Delight. >> Hope to have you back on theCUBE at another event soon. Thank you so much for watching theCUBE.

(upbeat music) >> Commentator: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering ServiceNow Knowledge17, brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Hi everybody, welcome back to Knowledge17. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm with my co-host Jeff Frick at our fifth Knowledge. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. Seneca Louck is here, he's the Business Process Lead at Dow Chemical. A relatively new ServiceNow customer. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you guys. >> Thanks for having me. >> So you said this is your second Knowledge. >> Seneca: It is. >> And, well how do you like Orlando? >> I like it, I like it. I'm here, in Venetian, >> Sunny? >> for next year, and so I'm a Vegas guy, so I'll be happy to get back there, but Orlando's nice. >> Dave: Where's home for you? >> Originally from New Jersey. Worked in Philadelphia for 15 years and relocated to Midland, Michigan, where Dow Chemical's headquartered. >> Dave: Fantastic, ah it's great, great country, Michigan. >> Absolutely. >> So, take us through your role, start there. What do you do, >> Sure. >> at Dow Chemical? >> So, I'm a Business Process Lead for Enterprise Service Management. We could go down the ITSM route, or we can go down the BSM route and we said, "Why pick one?" Enterprise Systems Management used to be the name. We actually elevated it up, Enterprise Service Management. We're the IT Operability focus on the end. >> Okay, and you said you went live, with ServiceNow, June last year? >> June 11th last year, we started with Incident Problem Change Config. We did Change Management, sorry, a month later. And then we did Service Request catalog, rolled out for the whole rest of the year. >> How long did it take you from sort of, when you said, "All right, we're doing this. "Start the project." To actually get, you know, MVP out? >> The cake. >> Yeah, the cake. (laughs) >> To get to the cake. >> And MVP's a really important thing. Minimum Viable Product. It was a hard lesson for us to learn. Quickly we realized that we're not going to be able to do everything we want to do in a first shot. So, we did focus very heavily on MVP. ServiceNow was good enough to make sure that they bred that into us, the importance of that. And so, we started in October, with workshops. We spent probably the first four or five months before we wrote one single line of code or configured one thing in ServiceNow. You know, a lot of that work was As-Is Process. Document it, understand it, uplift it, figure out what we want that To-Be Process to look like, and then figure out how the tool's going to deliver against that. >> Did you do some of that, I mean much of that came as part of the business case, and then you just refined it, is that right? >> The business case was really more on the value side. We didn't get into the specifics around process. We had a high level idea what we wanted to do strategically. Right? >> Yeah. >> Our guiding principles were really, Industry Best Practice, we like to think we're special. But really, the industry should know. Out of the box, ServiceNow, whenever possible. And to be honest, the out-of-the-box ServiceNow should reflect Industry Best Practice fairly well. And so that was kind of the coming in position for us. We deviated only when absolutely necessary and we really tried to stick to vanilla. >> So you minimized custom mods? >> Seneca: We really tried to do that, yes. There's times where we had to deviate of course. But we really wanted to look to see if ServiceNow had an answer, and if we could tweak what was already there, then great. There's only a handful of opportunities where we had to build something net new. >> And was that related to your ERP, or when did you have to build those custom mods? >> So, in places where we might have a concept that was to bring Legacy capability from a previous system. We knew we weren't going to cut and run from the old to the new. We had to kind of pull on some of the capabilities of that platform. So, the way you guys do category, sub-category, we did through classification. And so we had to customize a couple of tables to bring classifications over to bridge that gap. >> I see, okay, and then, so then you go live. Now was it a CMDB, a single CMDB across the organization? >> So, we have HP technology, where we had large investment. We wanted to keep that for discovery purposes and it enabled us to build one big tunnel between our CMDB and ServiceNow, so it made the integration go very easily. So, we really did two key integrations, a CMDB integration and an LDAP one to get our people data. Once that was done, we were on our feet, we were stood up and we were ready to start delivering processes. >> And the Service Catalog? >> Service Catalog was an interesting one because we had it spread out in a bunch of places. We had web forums, where somebody had customized a small, little web forum that that was actually making calls into our ticketing system to create service requests. We also had Request Center, which was brought in to try and solve that world of Service Request Management, but it only did it for Service Request. And we realize ServiceNow is going to do it end-to-end. >> Seneca, when you're thinking about your investments. I like to look at 'em as you get investments to run the business, some to grow the business and some to transform the business. And you're really sort of an IT-transform expert. How do you allocate that? Are those mutually exclusive? Do they sort of blend into each other and how much of your investment is transformation, and what does that all mean? >> Yeah, so it's tough because you've got guys that are on the run side, and I actually spent the large majority of my career on the run side. So, I know what if feels like to be accountable for everything in production, regardless of how it got there. And so, I kind of oscillate back and forth. Right? If the hair's on fire and these guys are going to be dead by the time the project transforms next year's capability, there's no point in us waiting. We can't wait. So, we're bouncing in and out of transformation and dealing with, making sure operability can happen effectively, efficiently, and that these guys are around next year, and alive and well, so that we can deliver that transformational capability. >> You talked about MVP being kind of a new concept. I wonder if you could dig into that a little bit further. >> Sure, sure. >> Is that not kind of a process or methodology that you guys have done in the past, or was it a learning curve? >> So, it was a little bit of a learning curve. So, typically you know, we delivered the biggest SAP implementation in the history of the world. A billion dollars, 800 SAP systems. And it took us seven years. So, we didn't think a lot about MVP, we wanted perfection. And so we made sure that we got it. And it cost us dearly. But in the end, the results were good. In this case, we had to move fast. Right? We weren't going to be able to do it all. We knew the capabilities that you see, throughout this room, are incredible. We want to get to them. But we've got to get on to the platform first. And so, we really did hone in on trying to find, what is the minimum product that we need to get people moved over to the platform, and we'll increment from there. So, it was a little bit of a learning for us. It was a little bit of a culture change. And we kind of found that sweet spot between Agile and Waterfall, which I think we called it Wagile, or (laughs). Yeah, Wagile I think, >> Well, right. >> is the name. >> I mean your implementation >> coincided with the sort of DevOps craze, and Agile, but there's >> That's right, that's right. >> a place for Waterfall, right? >> There is, there is. >> Sometimes, you need >> that perfection. Other times, you need to break stuff and iterate. >> Absolutely. >> But so, that's interesting. You said you came up with sort of a hybrid. Sometimes, hybrids are scary. So, how did you sort of come to that point and how's it workin' for you? >> Yeah, so what we did is we front-ended a lot of the requirements. We spent, like I said, several months, just sitting and doing requirements. And then, we transitioned into two-week sprints. And we pulled out of the backlog, the requirements that we had captured in those months previous. So, that was kind of how we blended the two together. We're more a Waterfall shop but we were delivering a system of record. And so, in systems of record, we strongly believe that Agile can be dangerous. It's not necessarily the place to start. And so, we started with Waterfall, and we kind of ended with Agile. >> All right, okay, and so, what so far have been the sort of business impacts? Can you share that with us? >> Yeah absolutely, so first thing's first, we're getting consistency throughout our processes. So, many times, geographical differences or even within a geography, at a sub-activity level, people were doing things differently. So, first thing we had to do was Standardize Process. That gives us the ability to measure across the world, how that process is being executed. Whereas before, we couldn't do that one-for-one, we couldn't compare these things one-for-one. And so, now we have that vision, now we have that visibility, and we were a performance analytics customer from day one, so we started capturing data to baseline, to benchmark, from Go Live, until today, and we've got incredible data to go back then and do the continuous service improvement. >> And how much of the consistency and process was forced in your pre-deployment activities, where you kind of find, all right, we got to sit down and actually document this to put it into the system. Versus, now that you've got this tool in place, that you see the opportunity to continue to go after new processes. >> It varied, dependent upon area, so Change Management was actually not a bad process from a global perspective. On the flip side is, we actually implemented some case management capability for our Business Functions. Their processes were extremely deviated across geographies, across activities. And so it depends, but the bottom line is that before we talk about implementing on this platform, we got to talk standardization. Good news is the incident problem changed. It wasn't as much work. On the Business Process side, it was a lot more. >> How are you predominantly measured? Is it getting stuff done? Are there other sort of KPI's that you focus on? Is there one that you try to optimize? >> So, these days, we're actually operating in a little bit of a dangerous place because we're going through so much mergers and acquisition activity, that our success is, can we integrate a company in less than a year while we go on to do the biggest chemical merger in the history of the world? So, typically, we would be kind of looking at metrics, and KPI's, down at the process level. Right now, we're looking at, can I actually bring these companies together? So it's integrated. >> And not kill each other. >> And not kill each other. (laughs) That's right. That's not to say we're not doing the latter as well but I think we have to start with, can we get the big activities done so that we can figure out how to do the process improvement. >> Dave: Right. How about the show for you here? What's it been like? What are you learning? >> Yeah, so. >> Are you sharing? >> Dx Continuum I think is going to be the theme that I'm going to leave here thinking, wow, these guys did the right thing with that purchase. So, you know the artificial intelligence, the machine learning, the data lakes, that we're going to be able to take all this data that we have and pump it out to you guys. And you're going to turn around and tell us an interesting story. You're going to tell me the questions that I would never even think to ask because you're going to be able to see into that data in ways that we never even dreamed possible. So, that's the big one for me. I've heard some rumors of some other things coming, but I shouldn't know about those and so I'm not going to say anything at this point. But right now, it's about the machine learning, the artificial intelligence. >> So, what other, I mean 'cause a company the size of Dow must be doing some interesting things with Big Data and Hadoop and AI. How does what you're doing or does what you're doing with ServiceNow relate to those sort of other activities? Is there sort of a data platform strategy? >> It's an interesting question. It's something that we're actually struggling with a little bit to figure out what that strategy is going to be. I don't think the larger organization expected so many opportunities to use analytics and to use machine learning against data sets that otherwise were, this is operation stuff, for the most part, right? We're starting to get into the business side a little bit but really, we were focused on running the business from an operations perspective. And so, all of a sudden, now, we're getting attention that we wouldn't have had otherwise, from the big players, you know. The SAP Business Warehouse, Business Intelligence guys. They've got 120 people delivering their reporting service. I got a guy half-time, that's helping me with my PA reports and we've got to figure out a way to either join our strategies together or at least meet in the middle because there's data that we probably want to share from each other. >> Do you have a Chief Data Officer on staff? >> We do not, that I'm aware of, actually. But I think it is , it's a very powerful role, but in our SAP world, they kind of act as that defacto person within our organization. But they're not very interested in what we're doing yet but they are starting to get the attention of us. >> It's interesting 'cause we talk a lot about IoT Now will bridge, you know, kind of the IT and the Ops folks. And it sounds like you're having that experience really specifically built around some of the processes that you're delivering in ServiceNow. To bring those two world together. >> Yeah, so while I mentioned machine learning and Artificial Intellience, that's actually right there, second on my list. The thing I came here last year and raised my hands and said I need the most is I need the ability to bring massive amounts of data onto this platform. Raw performance data, network data, server data, utilization data, end-user data. I want to be able to bring it into this platform so that I can use it to correlate events and incidents and problems. And so, the things that you guys are doing for IoT, to bring massive data sets in, are actually going to solve my problem, but I don't think it was necessarily what you were trying to solve. But I'm very happy for that. >> So, by the way, we're independent media, so we're (laughs) like third-party guys. >> Understood, understood >> It's these guys, ServiceNow. So, we just sort of unpack, analyze. What about if you had to do it again. What would you do differently? Obviously you would have, and you did, you embraced the MVP, other things? >> So, we took a very dangerous route in that we didn't have a team built. We didn't have a competency built. We took a system integrator and we went off and we went hog wild and we implemented it quickly, while we built the team, while we built the governance, while we built the competency center. If I could do it again, I'd have that team ready, staffed, you know, well-trained up front, so that we could learn as we went, a little bit more, be a little more autonomous and self-sufficient. >> Were you one of the 100 customers that John Donahoe met with in 45 days? >> I was not actually. >> And if you weren't, then what would you tell him in terms of the piece that he said, "What can we do better?" What would you? >> Yeah. >> So, the question came up yesterday, around releases. You know, should we do more, should we do less. I mean, we're actually struggling a little bit to keep up with the two releases per year. So, the biggest thing that I see is not making it a wholesale upgrade. If I could take parts and pieces from the new capabilities that are coming without having to go through the full upgrade cycle, you know, I think that would be huge for me. So that we don't have to spend a couple of months or we're hoping to get that down to one month. But this is our first one in production. So, we're going to spend three months getting this upgrade right. We're hoping to get it down to, you know, a couple of weeks to a month. But if I can take pieces and parts of the capability that's being delivered, and not have to take it wholesale, that would be the thing. >> Yeah, so that's interesting because Multi-instance is nice. You don't have to go on the SaaS player's schedule. But you want to keep current, you know, for a lot of reasons, with maybe, with certain parts of the upgrade. Yeah, okay, that doesn't sound trivial. (laughs) >> Yeah, it's not. >> Although I know they're thinking about it so it's come up, I've heard a couple of people at least mention that it's something that they have to think about. They may not actually go that direction. But at least that they're thinking about it, that tells me that they're exploring other avenues to deliver capability. >> Dave: What's in the future for you guys? Where do you want to take this thing? >> Yeah, so our next big thing's going to be Event Management. So, we've got 45 different tools that are doing monitoring from purchase tools to somebody's script that's sitting on the mainframe that sends us an event, when some exception happens. And so we've built, you know, with a custom IT process automation tool, our Event Management framework. And it's integrated with ServiceNow. But at the heart of it is, there's some old technology, decade-old technology, that was my first entry into IT process automation. And so, as the person who built it, I'm going to be the one that ultimately unplugs it and hands it over to ServiceNow. So, for us, that's the next step for what we're going to do. >> Awesome, well listen, Seneca, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. It's great to have you. Loved the knowledge. >> Thanks for having us. >> Dave: Rapid fire, you know, perfect for theCUBE, so thank you. >> Great, wonderful. >> Thank you, guys. >> Thanks for coming on. >> I appreciate it. >> All right, pleasure. >> All right, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Knowledge17 in Orlando. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Voiceover: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering Oracle OpenWorld 2016, brought to you by Oracle. Now here's your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Welcome back everyone, we're here live in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld 2016. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program We go out to events and extract the signal noise. Three days of coverage, wall to wall, ending up day one right now. Wrapping up amazing day. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Peter Burris. Our next guest is Senior Vice President of Oracle Cloud, Steve Daheb. CUBE alumni, great to see you again! >> I have four times, four time alum. >> (Mumbles) the MVP award for most times on theCUBE. You've been there almost for a couple years now. >> Yeah. >> Peter: Yeah, you and Alec Baldwin. (laughter) >> Yeah, less than two years, it's exciting. >> So you are working hard. Last time I saw you like, you have to be running harder. You're running harder. >> Yeah, we were in DC together. >> You've been running really hard, so congratulations. Saw the numbers, 70% growth percentage. Not numbers, I don't remember the eh, four billion. >> Numbers are getting bigger, percentages are still going up, so it's good. >> Percentages are double digits, but the real big thing is that you guys now are putting a dent into the awareness of Oracle being a viable and competing opportunity against Amazon Web Service. Larry Ellison said "Amazon, your lead is no more." Which was a headline in SiliconANGLE. So question, how are you guys continuing to differentiate yourself against AWS and Microsoft? >> I think there's three things. One is we differentiate when we look holistically in cloud. 'Cause you know you talk about cloud, and people define it in multiple different ways. Some say oh, Salesforce is cloud, or Amazon is cloud. And we define it as really requiring all three layers of the stack. So Software as a Service, which we can talk about. Platform as a Service, which is that core database middleware application development. And then the Infrastructure as a Service. And we're seeing at some points all these things are interrelated. When does past-op and IS begin? What's a discrete IaaS motion and how does that move to sort of production databases and different things? And so we first and foremost differentiate by looking holistically at what we're offering, and then sharing that we have a complete portfolio that's also open and provides choice to customers in terms of how to deploy it. >> Holistic, end to end holistic or holistic breadth? >> I think it's both. So we look at where we go deep into all layers of the cloud, and then we'll look holistically around a hybrid solution that allows people to deploy in cloud and on prem. And that's where we can differentiate with Amazon. So you know, at a technology perspective, Larry announced some incredible things in terms of we have the benefit of coming in and re-defining what an IaaS architecture looks like and provide scale and performance as well as cost. We provide choice in terms of, look, if I deploy something on Amazon, I can't actually move that back to what's on prem. You can't actually have isolated orphaned sort of instances on public cloud without tying that back to what's on prem. And then you just look at some of the database examples. It's a fork of an old code. I mean, it's not compatible with anything so I can run Oracle database on Amazon, I can run Oracle database on Oracle, I can run Oracle database in Microsoft. I can run Amazon on Amazon. I can't inter-operate with DV2, with SQL, with Oracle, with Teradata, so I think we're just sort of trying to demystify a little bit of what's going on out there. >> But one of the ways was talk about work loads moving between on prem, that's going to get that right 100% across the board. >> Absolutely. >> It's interesting, but I got to ask you. Larry Ellison said on the earnings call last Thursday after Safra and then Mark Hurd made their announcements and man, sounded like things were going amazing. The earnings call was like woohoo, oh my God, the Kool-Aid injection! Then Larry got on, but he said a really cool thing I wanted to just drill down on. He said we're not even getting started yet. We are playing the long game is what he's obviously saying. But he made a comment about Microsoft. He said Microsoft is already well into moving their install base and apps onto Azure. >> Yeah. >> And Oracle hasn't even begun getting started. Now, I'm sure you started, but implying significantly that a lot of the database customers and customers haven't really moved there yet. Is that true? How would you (mumbles). >> It's actually interesting, 415 Research just actually published a study and they said only 6% of workloads are actually running in public cloud infrastructure today. And IDC just actually put out a note that said only 6% around database and analytics. So I think we're actually showing up with the right solution at the right time. And we have 4,000 database customers, we're in a great position to move them to cloud. >> So is Larry right, that a large portion haven't moved yet, and Microsoft, larger have moved? >> Yeah, I think that the majority hasn't. I think that the analogy he was drawing is think about Microsoft that can move their office suite. Take 365 and move that to cloud, or things like SharePoint and move that to cloud. I think what he's saying is look at that analogy in terms of who's in the best position to migrate these database customers to cloud, and we believe Oracle is. And again, it is early days overall. There's a lot of noise about what the cool kids are out there doing, but when you think about it, 90% of these. >> The cool kids are making money. >> The cool kids are making money, Oracle is making money too. >> Of course, that's what I brought a (mumbles). You had a question, sorry to interrupt. >> Well yeah, no, really quickly. So in many respects, it sounds like what you're saying is that you can do what Amazon can do, but Amazon still can't do what you can do. >> Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think we're coming out and saying look, if you look at it, the application layer, they don't have anything. And so again, we have core ERP, HCM, supply, sales, service, all these things that we've shipped it to cloud. We actually do 45 billion transactions a day and support 30 million unique users weekly on our cloud. We're a viable cloud. These are core financial systems that companies use to run their business. We've been running in cloud for a while. We have the PaaS layer, our database, our middleware, the analytics, the security, things like IOT, that's core to Oracle's DNA. And then yeah, you have this commodity compute infrastructure. If you look at Amazon, 86% of their business is still about commodity compute. So we can offer that for customers as part of the overall solution. And I know they've been talking about getting it to the database so I would say stay tuned to what Larry has to say tomorrow on that. But we believe holistically when you look at all the pieces, we provide that solution that those 95% of workloads that haven't moved to cloud yet actually really need. >> So that brings up a good point. Cloud world, you mentioned DC where we had your special event, theCUBE was broadcasting live in DC. There all up on youtube.com/siliconangle. >> Shameless plug, shameless plug. >> Of course, get that last minute in there. But I want to ask you (mumbles) you announced the Cloud at Customer >> Yeah. >> So what's the status of that, 'cause we get lost in the slew of announcements here at Oracle OpenWorld. What's the update? Doing well? Reaction from customers? >> It's doing really well. It actually solves a big, again, that problem we talked about. I want to consume public cloud services, but I might have regulatory data sovereignty sort of industry or it might just be my own internal governance that's not going to allow me to deploy that, consume public cloud services on somebody else's cloud, but I can consume it with Cloud at Customer. >> Is it a transition point, because they feel good about this, they get some stability with the Cloud on Customer? Is it a transition point, is it a fixture, is it a blanky? Is it their binky? >> I think it could be both. I think it could be a transition point. I think for some customers again, depending on where they are, where they live, what type of industry, what type of data we're talking about, that might be the way they're going to consume it. Whereas I have data sovereignty laws, I can't actually move anything to cloud unless those change, but it still allows me to consume cloud in a cloud-like fashion subscription basis. Same identical services that we have in our public cloud, but just have it behind their firewall. >> So today's announcements featured partners pretty strong, and Oracle's always had a pretty big ecosystem. It's one of the key reasons for your success. And a lot of the partners out there would like themselves to start getting into the cloud, by offering services to their customers using a lot of what you're doing from a standpoint of moving your enterprise customers forward. As Oracle looks out at the landscape, you see Oracle, AWS, you're going to compete aggressively for that. But also your partners are going to step up, and they're going to offer their own cloud services. What about your customers? Do you anticipate seeing branded cloud services from your customers as they engage their customers differently through digital means? >> Yeah, that's actually a great question. I do think, yeah, a lot of our customers actually have their own services that they provide to end users. And I would say first, to back up, I think again it's about providing choice to our customers so they can engage within Oracle. They can engage with our partners on not only our technology, but maybe how do I migrate to cloud? How do I consume it in different ways? Also take a more solutions-based approach. (intercom blares) So if I'm looking at. Aw, we just got hit with that. Are they shutting this thing down in a few minutes? >> No no, we're good. >> A 16 ton thing's going to drop on the table. >> What is happening here? >> The Monty Python foot is going to come down on us. >> That's right. >> I thought that was a CUBE announcement sort of coming up. >> CUBE, Steve Daheb is on theCUBE! >> We should be announcing that. So I think that again, enabling the ecosystem to provide solutions. And I think as customers provide their own branded solutions, hopefully that's based on Oracle Cloud services and it's something that they can just re-brand, maybe augment, customize, and deploy for their own customers. >> They're giving us the bell here, but I want to get one last word in, we've got a little noise factor going on here. >> This is alright, man. >> The Infrastructure as a Service really is the third leg of the stool here for you guys. Big push here, you have the SaaS business on the press release. Second year in a row, Oracle has sold more SaaS and PaaS than any other cloud service provider. I think Larry used the word combined. Not sure I agree with that, but I haven't looked up the numbers, so I haven't fact-checked that. But then the next one comes down here as the second generation infrastructure that does twice the compute, twice the memory, four times the storage, 10 times more IO, 20% in price lower than Amazon Web Services. It's a new opportunity for Oracle to layer on top of our rapidly growing SaaS and PaaS. How are you going to layer infrastructures on top of PaaS and Saas? Isn't it the other way around? >> Yeah, I think it, yeah, sort of how do you look at it. They're tightly integrated. There's different sorts of entry points for IaaS. There could be discrete compute, but we think ultimately we see a lot of pull through from PaaS. So I might be deploying Oracle database but I'm doing it on a non-Oracle sort of application here. So I move the database to cloud and I pull compute to support that. And then from a software perspective, as Mark would say and Larry would say, we actually when we sell SaaS, you know, Software as a Service, we're selling that full stack to go along with it. >> Well, put it this way, that a database buyer looks at IaaS and sees infrastructure. An applications seller looks at the database and sees infrastructure. And so as you said, it's really what your perspective is. Containers is going to make it even more complex. >> Yeah, I agree. But it's interesting, 'cause I think ultimately that's the more strategic way that this is going to be consumed. I don't think you walk into somewhere, you say hey, you want some compute? We got some compute. Maybe more on the storage archive position, but when you look at the application development, when you look at applications, when you look at migrating databases, I think that's where you're going to pull through the infrastructure, and so that's why we're focused on offering all three layers of the cloud. >> There's definitely a trend towards enterprise-grade cloud, I was seeing that here at Oracle and at VMworld. We were just at theCUBE there. You're seeing this shift, they're getting out of the cloud game, so they're a different strategy. But Pat Gelsinger when I asked, pressed him on Amazon Web Service, saying did Amazon Web Service kind of force your hand? He kind of called it the developer cloud. That's how he called the Amazon Web Services. But they have developers. So my question to you is what's the strategy for developers? 'Cause at the end of the day we're seeing, talking to the VC certainly that was just on, there's going to be a mobile explosion of enterprise developers for mobile, cloud, lot of white space. You guys have an ecosystem, you have PaaS that's developer friendly. >> It is very developer friendly. >> What do you do with developers? Give us the update. What specifically are you guys doing in market. >> We have a big focus you're going to see with respect to developers. We've had Java developers that have been an incredible community for years and we've been serving them for years. I think Judy, before Larry took the stage, announced Oracle Code, which is going to be a multi-city road show where can get together. We're going to provide them access to Oracle Cloud, allow them to develop in multiple type tools, which I think was an important part of the announcement as well. Larry's saying look, it's not just about Java. It's about Ruby, it's about Python, it's about Node.js, it's about having an open platform that supports all developers. Tools like application containers and some of the other things. >> How would you grade you guys now? Not well suited for developers? Certainly Java you have developer community. But in market when you bring it to customers, is there a developer program that you guys have in motion? What's in the market? >> We do have things in motion. There's a developer program today and we continue to expand in that community. So we move away from just maybe traditionally Oracle developers to a broader set of developers. I think giving them a robust enterprise-grade platform, that gives them choice. So you're going to see a lot, hopefully we'll see you guys on the road at some of these events. But we're going to go out. >> There's a huge demand for developers to create opportunity in the ecosystem. I know you got to go, better wrap up. Thanks for spending the time. >> No thanks, a great way to wrap up the day. >> Congratulations, I know you're running hard. You look great, nice watch again. Yeah, flash the watch. >> I just miss the pocket square that you guys had in DC, I got to get that right next time. >> Best dressed man at Oracle. We are here live at theCUBE in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris. Day one of coverage, three days wall-to-wall here live. TheCUBE, Thanks for watching.