>> Voiceover: Live from San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube. Covering QuickBooks Connect 2016, sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks. Now, here are your hosts, Jeff Frick and John Walls. >> Welcome back here on the Cube as we continue our coverage here at Quickbooks Connect 2016 live from San Jose at the Convention Center. 5,000 attendees, the third year of this event, more than ever, and certainly that explosive growth is personified in what's happening here. On this floor and the key note station, and of course at home, if you're a small business owner you know exactly what we're talking about. Along with Jeff Frick, I'm John Walls and we're joined now by probably one of the most popular authors, most widely read authors in America today. Malcolm Gladwell, five times New York Times Bestseller Author. Congratulations on that. And the Revisionist History Podcast, which we love. I love the Wilt Chamberlain podcast, Big Man Can't Shoot. Thanks for joining us. Great to have you. >> Delighted to be here. >> So, first off, tell us about, and the whole spirit of this show is about the entrepreneurial capabilities of so many people in the workplace today. What's your thought about entrepreneurism if you will, and what does it take to be a good outside the box thinker? Like so many of these folks are. >> Well there ... The explosion ... Here we are in the middle of Silicon Valley and what this part of the country has done to change the culture of the entire world's economy in the last 20 years, 25 years is nothing short of incredible. Entrepreneurship has gone from something that people thought of as the province of wackos and weirdos and strange people to a kind of thing that kids aspire to do and be. That's an amazing transformation. And I think when we ... What's happened over the course of that transformation is we've discovered that the definition of what it takes to be good is a lot broader than we thought. That many different kinds of people using many different kinds of strategies can be effective at starting businesses and achieving. I think that's been the great take home lesson of this entrepreneurial explosion of the last generation. >> I think probably in all of your works, there are pieces of it that you could extract and apply to this world, but what really struck me I think about David and Goliath, about advantages, disadvantages and making the most of your strengths basically, how do you see that translating or how would you want to communicate that to somebody, a small business owner, who thinks "Man, I'm up against the wall"? "How am I going to cut through the clutter?" "How am I going to get there?" All this sweat equity. But yet, there are advantages that they have. >> Yeah. Yeah, because this goes to this issue of learning strategies that there's a kind of learning called compensation learning, where you are learning out of weakness, not out of strength. You're learning from your failures and that kind of learning is a lot harder to do, but it's a lot more powerful. So the task of the small business owner, who is facing a whole series of disadvantages and weaknesses relative to much larger competitors, there's no question, it's a harder way to go. But, if you can pull it off, you'll end up in a much stronger position. If you can be one of those people who can do compensation learning, and in that book I talk, for example, about how many entrepreneurs are dyslexic, and that's a beautiful example of that. Some portion of people who suffer from quite a serious learning disorder, not all of them, some portion of them manage to turn that around into an advantage. To take something, to take a basic inability to read, and turn that into developing skills or delegation and leadership and problem solving and developing an incredible resilience, the ability to cope with failure. They turn a weakness into a strength and they end up being far more powerful than they would be as a result. And when I interviewed all these successful, dyslexic entrepreneurs for that book, what was amazing was that all of them said, "I did not succeed despite my disability, I succeeded because of it." And that's the crux of it. And so I think there is a silver lining to many of the clouds that small business owners face. >> It's a really powerful statement because so often, people are using drugs and medication and other things to kind of normalize people that are maybe not in the mean, that are on the fringe. But in fact, it's their ability to put a different lens, and see things differently that opens up an opportunity that the regular person just trucking down the road didn't see right in front of them. >> That's what I meant when I said earlier, talking about how our kind of definition of what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur is expanding. I think we're beginning to understand that lots of traits that we once thought of as just problematic have unexpected benefits. Like I remember once reading someone who was putting out that basically, most of the great research scientists in the world have OCD. And you kind of have to have OCD if you want to be ... 'Cause what are you doing? You're spending hours and hours in the lab doing the same incredibly precise experiment over and over and over again, and measuring your results to the slightest. That's OCD behavior that has found a beautiful home. Right? Has found a world where you need to be that way, right? And I read that as like, "That's lovely." These are people who we drugged up and pushed off to the fringes two generations ago, and now we've found a home for them in labs where they're doing incredibly productive and satisfying work. >> Yeah, I think you profiled in one of the podcasts, a cancer researcher who you said nobody really likes the guy, he's kind of an ordinary guy, but he was just so laser focused on the very specific problem that he was trying to solve. He didn't really care. That's what he was all about. >> Yeah, no, this has been a lovely development in our understanding of human capacity. >> So where do the ideas come from? I'm one of the many fans and I've read, and every time I read one of your books, it never ceases to amaze me how much you make me think. Which is, I think, why we're all so attracted to it. Because it seems so obvious, right? After you present this beautiful, elegant case, like "I never thought of that." Where do those ideas come from? What motivates you to say "I'm going to write blank. I'm going to do tipping point." >> I wish I had a system, 'cause right now I'm planning the next season of my podcast, so I need 10 more ideas for that, and I'm starting to write a new book so I need 80,000 words for that. And I'm wondering, I wish I had a big bucket full of ideas. (laughter) So I'm running around with my head cut off talking to people, but I spent the summer ... I probably read 40 books this summer to do with ... Apart from, I'm not talking about novels and fillers, and serious books that I'm trying to get. And I've been going around talking to people, just talking to interesting people trying to work out what I'm interested in. And trying to just uncover interesting things that will prompt me to go in cool new directions. There is a kind of, you have to let your mind ... It's like, the farmer lets his field go fallow for a while. You've got to have a fallow period where you just let everything regenerate and then you plant the crop again. >> But somehow reading 40 books doesn't sound like, to me, you're letting your mind go fallow. >> Well I didn't have a ... I was literally just lying around reading books. It seemed pretty fallow to me. >> What was your favorite one out of that read? Or the most enlightening one out of that read? >> I got on these weird side tracks this summer. I became obsessed with Churchill's Best Friend. Churchill had a best friend who betrays him. And it's this incredibly moving story. And I don't know how it fits in what I want to do, but I want to try and make it fit, 'cause it's such a weird and troubling story about this, I mean a truly transcendent figure in history who has a best friend who stabs him in the back with consequences for the world. Anyway, so I read like seven bizarre, weird, obscure books about this guy. And I was like "There's something there I think." >> He's out there, yeah. >> Alright, so we'll pick something that was a little more topical. Last night, they had a drink making robot machine over in the corner making drinks. And it just brings up, as we get into more automation, more connected systems. We had the huge knockout of the web last week from the East coast. As you look at the future, there's the happy future, where the machines do all the hard work and we get to sit around and read books like you did, which is fantastic. And then there's the darker potential future, where the machines take everyone's jobs. What are people going to do? And if it can make drinks and it can diagnose disease and read every manual that came out. How do people fit? And then there's the middle ground, right? The best chess player is the best chess player and a machine, not either or. So I'm just curious to get your thoughts as we look to the next big wave of AI and machine learning and automation, how you see that shaking out. >> I think it's important not to overstate how much of our lives we will be willing to let machines take over. So it's been very interesting for me as a writer, to observe, for example, what happened with eBooks over the last 10 years. So eBooks come along and everyone says, "The printed book is over. It's going to all going to be on ... Why would you go and lug around a big, heavy book when you can get for a fraction of the cost something that'll be ..." And so there were all these gloom and doom, and expectations, and what happens? Well, it turns out that eBooks are still a fairly sizeable portion of the market place. But it turns out that most people actually want to read a book, a physical object, that that's more pleasurable somehow, that the interaction with this thing, this pages and paper, is pleasing. It's part of the experience. And I think that's a useful ... No, that's not a robot and that's not AI, but it's an important reminder that the interactions and the activities that make up our lives are not just functional activities. They are opportunities for enjoyment and engagement, and part of the reason you go to a restaurant is not just to eat the food, but to engage with the people in the restaurant. Part of the pleasure is the person who brings you the wine bottle and gives you a little spiel. Now, I can replace that person with a robot, but the question is do you want to? Now, you can do it. And I can imagine a future where the robot brings you the best wine in the world and does some algorithm and gives you the finest wine. But I don't know, if I'm having a nice night out and I'm paying 60 dollars a plate for my dinner, I kind of want the human interaction. I mean, it's part of the pleasure. Same thing with self-driving cars. It baffles me as a kind of car guy how everyone assumes that "Oh, well, by 2020, it'll all be self-driving cars." Wait a minute, what if I enjoy driving a car? We've forgotten this. It's actually quite a pleasant thing to go and to make decisions unconsciously and consciously and drive down the road. And I like a manual transmission, I like the feel of driving a car. I don't want to give that up. Why should I have to give that up? So it's like, we can't get ahead of ourselves. You mentioned the chess thing, which is a great example of this. Can you make a machine that will beat a person at chess? Yes, you can. But it's not chess. Chess is a gameplay between two people. That's why it's interesting. If it's played between two machines no one will watch it! So it's this absurd thing. I can also make a machine that can run faster than Usain Bolt. It's called a car. Do I want to watch a race between a car and Usain Bolt? No. Why? Because what's pleasurable is watching human beings race. >> But Jeff hit on something, and then you touched on it with the car, and I think about GPS. And how it wasn't that long ago, and I kind of sound like my grandfather now or my father, that we just drove around, right? And if you came to the traffic, "Oh God, I've hit traffic." But now we use applications that take us, and they're using their intelligence. Is it possible, can you see with this generation of kids coming up now, that artificial intelligence kind of makes our personal thinking obsolete? And we don't process like we do, we don't evaluate, we don't analyze, and so we're raising a whole different kind of human, because of the interaction with technology or what we can sign to technology, because we give up on it. >> Well it'd be different. I think that, so let's stick with cars for a moment. I think now we have a world where a whole class of people drive their car to work in the morning. And when they're driving their car, the number of things they can do with their imagination and mind is limited. They can listen to music or the news or a podcast, or they can just sit there, but they can't ... They can maybe talk on a phone even though they shouldn't, but they can't do work and they can't lie in the back and take a nap, and they can't daydream, and they can't have a meaningful interaction with more than one person. What we're going to move to is a world where some people will give up whatever kind of pleasure or interaction that came from driving a car, and replace it with another kind of interaction. So driving a car becomes ... The time that you're in a car becomes a place where an infinite number of things can happen, as opposed to five things can happen. And I sort of think that's what the world looks like, is we get this incredibly complicated mix. Medicine becomes some mixture of the computer is going to do all the easy stuff, but half of medicine is about being reassured. It's about your personal fears. It's not about the diagnosis, or which drug you take. And for that stuff, I imagine that we're going to have much longer, deeper, more meaningful conversations with our doctors 15 years from now, when the computer has taken all the easy stuff off the table, or the AI, the robot. So in many ways, that world allows for much richer, personal interactions than the one we're in now. The doctor really will have ... My doctor has no time for me now. He's like "I got to move around." >> "Got to go." >> In ten years, it's possible my doctor will be able to sit down with me for half an hour or 45 minutes twice a year and really talk about what's going on with me and that's the promise of the future. I don't think we're going to have a situation where everything's done by the robot. >> Well this is one of those occasions where I truly wish we had tons of more time, but you have a busy schedule and so we're going to allow you to go on, but thank you so much ... >> Thank you. It was super fun. >> John: For sharing this time with us. We've thoroughly enjoyed it. >> Jeff: Look forward to the KeyNote later this afternoon as well. >> And we look forward to the next 80,000 words, so good luck with that too! >> Thank you. >> Malcolm Gladwell, joining us here on the Cube. Back with more from San Jose right after this. (upbeat music)

>>welcome back. And thanks for joining us for our second session. External data, your new leading indicators. We'll be hearing from industry leaders as they share best practices and challenges in leveraging external data. This panel will be a true conversation on the part of the possible. All right, let's get to >>it >>today. We're excited to be joined by thought spots. Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindy Housing Deloitte's chief data officer Manteo, the founder and CEO of Eagle Alfa. And it Kilduff and Snowflakes, VP of data marketplace and customer product strategy. Matt Glickman. Cindy. Without further ado, the floor is yours. >>Thank you, Mallory. And I am thrilled to have this brilliant team joining us from around the world. And they really bring each a very unique perspective. So I'm going to start from further away. Emmett, Welcome. Where you joining us from? >>Thanks for having us, Cindy. I'm joining from Dublin, Ireland, >>great. And and tell us a little bit about Eagle Alfa. What do you dio >>from a company's perspective? Think of Eagle Alfa as an aggregator off all the external data sets on a word I'll use a few times. Today is a big advantage we could bring companies is we have a data concierge service. There's so much data we can help identify the right data sets depending on the specific needs of the company. >>Yeah. And so, Emma, you know, people think I was a little I kind of shocked the industry. Going from gardener to a tech startup. Um, you have had a brave journey as well, Going from financial services to starting this company, really pioneering it with I think the most data sets of any of thes is that right? >>Yes, it was. It was a big jump to go from Morgan Stanley. Uh, leave the comforts of that environment Thio, PowerPoint deck and myself raising funding eight years ago s So it was a big jump on. We were very early in our market. It's in the last few years where there's been real momentum and adoption by various types of verticals. The hedge funds were first, maybe then private equity, but corporate sar are following quite quickly from behind. That will be the biggest users, in our view, by by a significant distance. >>Yeah, great. Thank um, it So we're going to go a little farther a field now, but back to the U. S. So, Juan, where you joining us from? >>Hey, Cindy. Thanks for having me. I'm joining you from Houston, Texas. >>Great. Used to be my home. Yeah, probably see Rice University back there. And you have a distinct perspective serving both Deloitte customers externally, but also internally. Can you tell us about that? >>Yeah, absolutely. So I serve as the Lord consultants, chief data officer, and as a professional service firm, I have the responsibility for overseeing our overall data agenda, which includes both the way we use data and insights to run and operate our own business, but also in how we develop data and insights services that we then take to market and how we serve our dealers and clients. >>Great. Thank you, Juan. And last but not least, Matt Glickman. Kind of in my own backyard in New York. Right, Matt? >>Correct. Joining I haven't been into the city and many months, but yes, um, based in New York. >>Okay. Great. And so, Matt, you and Emmett also, you know, brave pioneers in this space, and I'm remembering a conversation you and I shared when you were still a J. P. Morgan, I believe. And you're Goldman Sachs. Sorry. Sorry. Goldman. Can you Can you share that with us? >>Sure. I made the move back in 2015. Um, when everyone thought, you know, my wife, my wife included that I was crazy. I don't know if I would call it Comfortable was emitted, but particularly had been there for a long time on git suffered in some ways. A lot of the pains we're talking about today, given the number of data, says that the amount of of new data sets that are always demand for having run analytics teams at Goldman, seeing the pain and realizing that this pain was not unique to Goldman Sachs, it was being replicated everywhere across the industry, um, in a mind boggling way and and the fortuitous, um, luck to have one of snowflakes. Founders come to pitch snowflake to Goldman a little bit early. Um, they became a customer later, but a little bit early in 2014. And, you know, I realized that this was clearly, you know, the answer from first principles on bond. If I ever was going to leave, this was a problem. I was acutely aware of. And I also was aware of how much the man that was in financial services for a better solution and how the cloud could really solve this problem in particular the ability to not have to move data in and out of these organizations. And this was something that I saw the future of. Thank you, Andi, that this was, you know, sort of the pain that people just expected to pay. Um, this price if you need a data, there was method you had thio. You had to use you either ftp data in and out. You had data that was being, you know, dropped off and, you know, maybe in in in a new ways and cloud buckets or a P i s You have to suck all this data down and reconstruct it. And God forbid the formats change. It was, you know, a nightmare. And then having issues with data, you had a what you were seeing internally. You look nothing like what the data vendors were seeing because they want a completely different system, maybe model completely differently. Um, but this was just the way things were. Everyone had firewalls. Everyone had their own data centers. There was no other way on git was super costly. And you know this. I won't even share the the details of you know, the errors that would occur in the pain that would come from that, Um what I realized it was confirmed. What I saw it snowflake at the time was once everyone moves to run their actual workloads in this in the cloud right where you're now beyond your firewall, you'll have all this scale. But on top of that, you'll be able to point at data from these vendors were not there the traditional data vendors. Or, you know, this new wave of alternative data vendors, for example, like the ones that eagle out for brings together And bring these all these data sets together with your own internal data without moving it. Yeah, this was a fundamental shift of what you know, it's in some ways, it was a side effect of everyone moving to the cloud for costs and scale and elasticity. But as a side effect of that is what we talked about, You know it snowflake summit, you know, yesterday was this notion of a data cloud that would connect data between regions between cloud vendors between customers in a way where you could now reference data. Just like your reference websites today, I don't download CNN dot com. I point at it, and it points me to something else. I'm always seeing the latest version, obviously, and we can, you know, all collaborate on what I'm seeing on that website. That's the same thing that now can happen with data. So And I saw this as what was possible, and I distinctly asked the question, you know, the CEO of the time Is this possible? And not only was it possible it was a fundamental construct that was built into the way that snowflake was delivered. And then, lastly, this is what we learned. And I think this is what you know. M It also has been touting is that it's all great if data is out there and even if you lower that bar of access where data doesn't have to move, how do I know? Right? If I'm back to sitting at Goldman Sachs, how do I know what data is available to me now in this this you know, connected data network eso we released our data marketplace, which was a very different kind of marketplace than these of the past. Where for us, it was really like a global catalog that would elect a consumer data consumer. Noah data was available, but also level the playing field. Now we're now, you know, Eagle, Alfa, or even, you know, a new alternative data vendor build something in their in their basement can now publish that data set so that the world could see and consume and be aligned to, you know, snowflakes, core business, and not where we wouldn't have to be competing or having to take, um, any kind of custody of that data. So adding that catalog to this now ubiquitous access, um really changed the game and, you know, and then now I seem like a genius for making this move. But back then, like I said, we've seen I seem like instant. I was insane. >>Well, given, given that snowflake was the hottest aipo like ever, you were a genius. Uh, doing this, you know, six years in advance. E think we all agree on that, But, you know, a lot of this is still visionary. Um, you know, some of the most leading companies are already doing this. But one What? What is your take our Are you best in class customers still moving the data? Or is this like they're at least thinking about data monetization? What are you seeing from your perspective? >>Yeah, I mean, I did you know, the overall appreciation and understanding of you know, one. I got to get my house in order around my data, um, has something that has been, you know, understood and acted upon. Andi, I do agree that there is a shift now that says, you know, data silos alone aren't necessarily gonna bring me, you know, new and unique insights on dso enriching that with external third party data is absolutely, you know, sort of the the ship that we're seeing our customers undergo. Um, what I find extremely interesting in this space and what some of the most mature clients are doing is, you know, really taking advantage of these data marketplaces. But building data partnerships right there from what mutually exclusive, where there is a win win scenario for for you know, that organization and that could be, you know, retail customers or life science customers like with pandemic, right the way we saw companies that weren't naturally sharing information are now building these data partnership right that are going are going into mutually benefit, you know, all organizations that are sort of part of that value to Andi. I think that's the sort of really important criteria. And how we're seeing our clients that are extremely successful at this is that partnership has benefits on both sides of that equation, right? Both the data provider and then the consumer of that. And there has to be, you know, some way to ensure that both parties are are are learning right, gaining you insights to support, you know, whatever their business organization going on. >>Yeah, great one. So those data partnerships getting across the full value chain of sharing data and analytics Emmett, you work on both sides of the equation here, helping companies. Let's say let's say data providers maybe, like, you know, cast with human mobility monetize that. But then also people that are new to it. Where you seeing the top use cases? Well, >>interestingly, I agree with one of the supply side. One of the interesting trends is we're seeing a lot more data coming from large Corporates. Whether they're listed are private equity backed, as opposed to maybe data startups that are earning money just through data monetization. I think that's a great trend. I think that means a lot of the best. Data said it data is yet to come, um, in terms off the tough economy and how that's changed. I think the category that's had the most momentum and your references is Geo location data. It's that was the category at our conference in December 2000 and 12 that was pipped as the category to watch in 2019. On it didn't become that at all. Um, there were some regulatory concerns for certain types of geo data, but with with covert 19, it's Bean absolutely critical for governments, ministries of finance, central banks, municipalities, Thio crunch that data to understand what's happening in a real time basis. But from a company perspective, it's obviously critical as well. In terms of planning when customers might be back in the High Street on DSO, fourth traditionally consumer transaction data of all the 26 categories in our taxonomy has been the most popular. But Geo is definitely catching up your slide. Talked about being a tough economy. Just one point to contradict that for certain pockets of our clients, e commerce companies are having a field day, obviously, on they are very data driven and tech literate on day are they are really good client base for us because they're incredibly hungry, firm or data to help drive various, uh, decision making. >>Yeah, So fair enough. Some sectors of the economy e commerce, electron, ICS, healthcare are doing great. Others travel, hospitality, Um, super challenging. So I like your quote. The best is yet to come, >>but >>that's data sets is yet to come. And I do think the cloud is enabling that because we could get rid of some of the messy manual data flows that Matt you talked about, but nonetheless, Still, one of the hardest things is the data map. Things combining internal and external >>when >>you might not even have good master data. Common keys on your internal data. So any advice for this? Anyone who wants to take that? >>Sure I can. I can I can start. That's okay. I do think you know, one of the first problems is just a cataloging of the information that's out there. Um, you know, at least within our organization. When I took on this role, we were, you know, a large buyer of third party data. But our organization as a whole didn't necessarily have full visibility into what was being bought and for what purpose. And so having a catalog that helps us internally navigate what data we have and how we're gonna use it was sort of step number one. Um, so I think that's absolutely important. Um, I would say if we could go from having that catalog, you know, created manually to more automated to me, that's sort of the next step in our evolution, because everyone is saying right, the ongoing, uh, you know, creation of new external data sets. It's only going to get richer on DSO. We wanna be able to take advantage of that, you know, at the at the pacing speed, that data is being created. So going from Emanuel catalog to anonymous >>data >>catalog, I think, is a key capability for us. But then you know, to your second point, Cindy is how doe I then connect that to our own internal data to drive greater greater insights and how we run our business or how we serve our customers. Andi, that one you know really is a It's a tricky is a tricky, uh, question because I think it just depends on what data we're looking toe leverage. You know, we have this concept just around. Not not all data is created equal. And when you think about governance and you think about the management of your master data, your internal nomenclature on how you define and run your business, you know that that entire ecosystem begins to get extremely massive and it gets very broad and very deep on DSO for us. You know, government and master data management is absolutely important. But we took a very sort of prioritized approach on which domains do we really need to get right that drive the greatest results for our organization on dso mapping those domains like client data or employee data to these external third party data sources across this catalog was really the the unlocked for us versus trying to create this, you know, massive connection between all the external data that we're, uh, leveraging as well as all of our own internal data eso for us. I think it was very. It was a very tailored, prioritized approach to connecting internal data to external data based on the domains that matter most to our business. >>So if the domains so customer important domain and maybe that's looking at things, um, you know, whether it's social media data or customer transactions, you prioritized first by that, Is that right? >>That's correct. That's correct. >>And so, then, Matt, I'm going to throw it back to you because snowflake is in a unique position. You actually get to see what are the most popular data sets is is that playing out what one described are you seeing that play out? >>I I'd say Watch this space. Like like you said. I mean this. We've you know, I think we start with the data club. We solve that that movement problem, which I think was really the barrier that you tended to not even have a chance to focus on this mapping problem. Um, this notion of concordance, I think this is where I see the big next momentum in this space is going to be a flurry of traditional and new startups who deliver this concordance or knowledge graph as a service where this is no longer a problem that I have to solve internal to my organization. The notion of mastering which is again when everyone has to do in every organization like they used to have to do with moving data into the organization goes away. And this becomes like, I find the best of breed for the different scopes of data that I have. And it's delivered to me as a, you know, as a cloud service that just takes my data. My internal data maps it to these 2nd and 3rd party data sets. Um, all delivered to me, you know, a service. >>Yeah, well, that would be brilliant concordance as a service or or clean clean master data as a service. Um, using augmented data prep would be brilliant. So let's hope we get there. Um, you know, so 2020 has been a wild ride for everyone. If I could ask each of you imagine what is the art of the possible or looking ahead to the next to your and that you are you already mentioned the best is yet to come. Can you want to drill down on that. What what part of the best is yet to come or what is your already two possible? >>Just just a brief comment on mapping. Just this week we published a white paper on mapping, which is available for for anyone on eagle alfa dot com. It's It's a massive challenge. It's very difficult to solve. Just with technology Onda people have tried to solve it and get a certain level of accuracy, but can't get to 100% which which, which, which makes it difficult to solve it. If if if there is a new service coming out against 100% I'm all ears and that there will be a massive step forward for the entire data industry, even if it comes in a few years time, let alone next year, I think going back to the comment on data Cindy. Yes, I think boards of companies are Mawr and Mawr. Viewing data as an asset as opposed to an expense are a cost center on bond. They are looking therefore to get their internal house in order, as one was saying, but also monetize the data they are sitting on lots of companies. They're sitting on potentially valuable data. It's not all valuable on a lot of cases. They think it's worth a lot more than it is being frank. But in some cases there is valuable data on bond. If monetized, it can drop to the bottom line on. So I think that bodes well right across the world. A lot of the best date is yet to come on. I think a lot of firms like Deloitte are very well positioned to help drive that adoption because they are the trusted advisor to a lot of these Corporates. Um, so that's one thing. I think, from a company perspective. It's still we're still at the first base. It's quite frustrating how slow a lot of companies are to move and adopt, and some of them are haven't hired CDO. Some of them don't have their internal house in order. I think that has to change next year. I think if we have this conference at this time next year, I would expect that would hopefully be close to the tipping point for Corporates to use external data. And the Malcolm Gladwell tipping point on the final point I make is I think, that will hopefully start to see multi department use as opposed to silos again. Parliaments and silos, hopefully will be more coordinated on the company's side. Data could be used by marketing by sales by r and D by strategy by finance holds external data. So it really, hopefully will be coordinated by this time next year. >>Yeah, Thank you. So, to your point, there recently was an article to about one of the airlines that their data actually has more value than the company itself now. So I know, I know. We're counting on, you know, integrators trusted advisers like Deloitte to help us get there. Uh, one what? What do you think? And if I can also drill down, you know, financial services was early toe all of this because they needed the early signals. And and we talk about, you know, is is external data now more valuable than internal? Because we need those early signals in just such a different economy. >>Yeah, I think you know, for me, it's it's the seamless integration of all these external data sources and and the signals that organizations need and how to bring those into, you know, the day to day operations of your organization, right? So how do you bring those into, You know, you're planning process. How do you bring that into your sales process on DSO? I think for me success or or where I see the that the use and adoption of this is it's got to get down to that level off of operations for organizations. For this to continue to move at the pace and deliver the value that you know, we're all describing. I think we're going to get there. But I think until organizations truly get down to that level of operations and how they're using this data, it'll sort of seem like a Bolton, right? So for me, I think it's all about Mawr, the seamless integration. And I think to what Matt mentioned just around services that could help connect external data with internal data. I'll take that one step beyond and say, How can we have the data connect itself? Eso I had references Thio, you know, automation and machine learning. Um, there's significant advances in terms of how we're seeing, you know, mapping to occur in a auto generated fashion. I think this specific space and again the connection between external and internal data is a prime example of where we need to disrupt that, you know, sort of traditional data pipeline on. Try to automate that as much as possible. And let's have the data, you know, connect itself because it then sort of supports. You know, the first concept which waas How do we make it more seamless and integrated into, you know, the business processes of the organization's >>Yeah, great ones. So you two are thinking those automated, more intelligent data pipelines will get us there faster. Matt, you already gave us one. Great, Uh, look ahead, Any more to add to >>it, I'll give you I'll give you two more. One is a bit controversial, but I'll throw that you anyway, um, going back to the point that one made about data partnerships What you were saying Cindy about, you know, the value. These companies, you know, tends to be somehow sometimes more about the data they have than the actual service they provide. I predict you're going to see a wave of mergers and acquisitions. Um, that it's solely about locking down access to data as opposed to having data open up. Um to the broader, you know, economy, if I can, whether that be a retailer or, you know, insurance company was thes prime data assets. Um, you know, they could try to monetize that themselves, But if someone could acquire them and get exclusive access that data, I think that's going to be a wave of, um, in a that is gonna be like, Well, we bought this for this amount of money because of their data assets s. So I think that's gonna be a big wave. And it'll be maybe under the guise of data partnerships. But it really be about, you know, get locking down exclusive access to valuable data as opposed to trying toe monetize it itself number one. And then lastly, you know. Now, did you have this kind of ubiquity of data in this interconnected data network? Well, we're starting to see, and I think going to see a big wave of is hyper personalization of applications where instead of having the application have the data itself Have me Matt at Snowflake. Bring my data graph to applications. Right? This decoupling of we always talk about how you get data out of these applications. It's sort of the reverse was saying Now I want to bring all of my data access that I have 1st, 2nd and 3rd party into my application. Instead of having to think about getting all the data out of these applications, I think about it how when you you know, using a workout app in the consumer space, right? I can connect my Spotify or connect my apple music into that app to personalize the experience and bring my music list to that. Imagine if I could do that, you know, in a in a CRM. Imagine I could do that in a risk management. Imagine I could do that in a marketing app where I can bring my entire data graph with me and personalize that experience for, you know, for given what I have. And I think again, you know, partners like thoughts. But I think in a unique position to help enable that capability, you know, for this next wave of of applications that really take advantage of this decoupling of data. But having data flow into the app tied to me as opposed to having the APP have to know about my data ahead of time, >>Yeah, yeah, So that is very forward thinking. So I'll end with a prediction and a best practice. I am predicting that the organizations that really leverage external data, new data sources, not just whether or what have you and modernize those data flows will outperform the organizations that don't. And as a best practice to getting there, I the CDOs that own this have at least visibility into everything they're purchasing can save millions of dollars in duplicate spend. So, Thio, get their three key takeaways. Identify the leading indicators and market signals The data you need Thio. Better identify that. Consolidate those purchases and please explore the data sets the range of data sets data providers that we have on the thought spot. Atlas Marketplace Mallory over to you. >>Wow. Thank you. That was incredible. Thank you. To all of our Panelists for being here and sharing that wisdom. We really appreciate it. For those of you at home, stay close by. Our third session is coming right up and we'll be joined by our partner AWS and get to see how you can leverage the full power of your data cloud complete with the demo. Make sure to tune in to see you >>then

>> Woman: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Hey you, welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin coming to you from Las Vegas Coupa Inspire '19. I'm excited to be welcoming to the Cube for the first time, Ravi Thakur. The SVP of Business Acceleration from Coupa. Ravi welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you Lisa. Appreciate it. So day one, everybody had started the day off. The general session was lots of information from Rob. We heard from Malcolm Gladwell. One of my favorite storytellers. If I could master telling a story the way he does that would be awesome. We've also heard from some customers today. We had the Lululemon staples, KPMG, Deloitte. People are excited about the innovations and how Coupa is really helping to transform the CPO, the CFO and help these guys and girls become much more strategic. >> Ravi: Right >> Lots of change and lots of forcing functions too like consumerization and pricing pressures and and all these things. But something that you guys announced back in, I believe November 2018. Just about six months ago, was Coupa Pay. Talk to us a little bit about Coupa Pay in the spirit of this events theme of Spend Smarter. Together. What is Coupa Pay? What were some of the gaps in the market that you guys saw? And thought we can help B2B customers uncripple themselves. >> Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for those questions Lisa. I've been with Coupa for over 12 years now and throughout that time I've have had thousands of conversations with Spend management professionals across all different topics. But whenever payments would come up there's always a sense of it's kind of a nightmare, it's a mess for us let's not talk about that. (laughing) And what we've seen is that. A lot of large companies have multiple ERP systems and when you have multiple ERP systems trying to get a hold of the data and be able to control the funds going out can be a little bit of a challenge. Then when you start mixing in that there's so many different ways to pay suppliers. Weather it's a credit card or a digital cheque or cross-border payment. Whatever it may be. It becomes a big conglomeration of a big nightmare. And so when we started looking at payments. We wanted to figure out well, how can we simplify this experience for our customers? Because we already have best in class procurement best in class AP automation. Adding payments was kind of an easy decision. >> Lisa: Natural evolution. >> A natural evolution of how we were progressing or kind of move into business spend manager categorization of Business Spend Management. And so when we started the journey we made the decision maybe about 18 months ago to actually start getting into this a little bit. And we started off as you mentioned last November with announcing virtual cards on purchase orders. We've started adding other things like early pay discounts. Which are kind of a financing type of solution and just yesterday, actually just today Rob announced general availability for invoice payments. Which is really the workhorse of payments. It's taking all of your invoices that you have as a company and how do you pay your different suppliers. >> Lisa: I can imagine a company would have multiple banks that they're dealing with to pay different suppliers different suppliers, probably had different preferences and then what's the percentage of invoices that are being paid by cheque by paper cheque still. >> Ravi: Yeah, I mean in the U.S. I think I had a statistic from 2016. It's a couple of years dated but it said 51% of payments in the U.S. is still via cheque. It's crazy. And I had a meeting earlier today with a pretty large customer. And they're telling me about how their treasury the woman that runs treasury for them. She walks around with the key fob of 12 different key fobs, for two-factor authentication to log in to 12 different banks, all over the world. And a lot of that is very painful it opens themselves up to a lot of inefficiencies to risk, to potential fraud and with the payment solutions that we're offering that we're actually now generally available with. We're able to solve a lot of those challenges it's really exciting for us. >> Absolutely. And driving up the efficiency of accounts payable by having all of these options. Can imagine from a customer's perspective all of the elements in that business they're going to get tighter going to get more simple and where it's going to really be an enabler of an organization's overall digital business transformation >> Right, it's one of the last areas of transformation we see in Business Spend Management. We've already as mentioned the procurement process AP automation, where we handle expense reporting and now when you're starting to look at payments and doing it at the scale that we're looking at doing. There are a lot of payment solutions out there a lot of payment providers. But none of them have the backing of the procurement process None of them have the rich invoice data that we bring to the table. Let alone the ability for us to send payments due payments domestically, across the globe. Which is a very unique differentiator for us. Along with being able to pay out cross-border payments in hundreds of countries. Now the other thing that we've seen from organizations especially as the the way that the economy and organizations have evolved. You're not just paying a supplier that has ACH information They're not willing to provide you with their bank account information. Might be a five-person flower shop that you need to buy flowers from occasion. It may be temp labour that you have hired for certain projects. Or contingent workforce for certain projects. Or maybe even paying back your employees through expense reports. And so as we've architected our payment solutions we've looked at all of these together and figure it out what are the different optimal ways to do that. As a matter of fact we're announcing a partnership with PayPal. So in order to now send payments via PayPal from a business PayPal account from our customer to the PayPal accounts of their some of their smaller suppliers. So that's a unique way that we're thinking about what are the common use cases scenarios in the consumer world and bringing that into the business environment. >> Yeah, that consumerization effect is so interesting because we're all consumers every day. Weather we're shopping for some beach wear for a backyard barbecue or something on Amazon or whatever happens to be. We have this expectation, culturally we're trained we can find anything. We get anything, we can see all the suppliers and the different prices and select. Read all these reviews. Because we're so conditioned to that in our everyday lives those people that are doing that then have buying decisions and buying roles and their company's expect the same experience. >> Ravi: Right >> And you guys are listening to your customers and enabling that which is huge hugely impactful to every industry, right? Manufacturing, Retail, Health Care you name it. >> Any business that has employees which is every business in the world. It's a great point. I mean just a consumerization of all of these different aspects of business and that's where, when we started Coupa and as we've continued to grow throughout our expansion it's just really listening to our customers listening to the vibrant community that we've created. I met a lot of meetings today and I met with another customer a couple of hours ago and he was super excited about how he's been on our Coupa Community. We have a portal for our customers. They can put in their ideas and talk about and have conversations. He just loves the way that we've been able to react and be able to implement a number of his solutions that have made his life easier along with the broader community of buyers that we have. >> All the marketing material talks about this BSM community that is developing together and that was one of the themes I felt that I heard from Rob this morning during his general session is this. Not only is this community incredibly rich with data 1.2 trillion dollars of spend they are going through this which is a 5X multiplier from I think you should have said this at 2016. But it's also encouraging, suppliers that are in there customers that are in there are able to to learn and save from each other. The collaboration element was really, I thought quite potent and it sounded like quite a differentiator to me. >> Right, absolutely. I think Rob talked about what we're calling prescriptions. >> Yes, 18'000 so far? >> Exactly, and you know the ability to take a look at it's not just $1.2 trillion worth of spend. It's 5 million suppliers. It's not all of them have catalog items but a lot of them do have catalog items. It's looking across millions of purchase order millions of invoices across the system and being able to rationalize and look at data and look at all of these different trends that no one's able to do and really it's just the beginning of the power of what we're doing. We've introduced our business spend index. Which is a leading indicator of how the economy and businesses are operating. We're really just starting to scratch the surface in this area, I mean a thousand customers is great. But as we continue to grow and expand and multiply our customer base. We're going to be able to help things around broader supply chain initiatives. Help things around sustainability. Help organizations figure out are they working with suppliers that are not only suppliers that are risky which we do today. But what about tier two suppliers or tier three suppliers that have a potential risk in their supply chain. And as we start to accumulate lot more data we're able to do things that really no one's ever been able to do, ever. >> Lisa: Thinking back that the 12 years that you have at Coupa and the massive transformation that you've seen in every industry. All of these different disruptors. Like we talked about earlier, all of the changes that are really forcing CPO's and CFO's to become sort of those fraud detectors and those strategic thinkers. Because they can see there this isn't just about buying and sourcing. There is tremendous business potential by having that visibility where all your Spend is in one platform. That's absolutely transformational. >> What do businesses do? They spend money or they sell goods or services and we have half of that equation and we're doing it at a scale that hasn't been seen before. So yeah, the ability for us to over what we've seen over the past 12 years. Not just what's happening at a macro economic level that's a big part of it. But just in general. What's the thinking of the CPO's? What's the thinking of the CFO's? How are they starting to look at things? How are they starting to feel the empathy for their employees. The empathy for their suppliers and making business decisions. And we're now part of that conversation. We're part of that equation as these companies are looking at these things. >> And have you seen the roles of the CPO and the CFO start to change, to start embracing emerging technologies embracing AI and machine learning and understanding how that can really once they have the data and they can apply intelligence and train the machines, how much potential they have. Are they receptive now? >> Ravi: It's just a start. it's just a start. I mean, when I joined Coupa 12 years ago Salesforce is really just starting to get going with the whole SAS thing and it's been a phenomenal change. We had the opportunity of lunch with Malcolm Gladwell today as an executive team and one of the things that we talked about was Silicon Valley and what's happening in general with technology. And he put it very clear, he said we're in the first minute of the technology revolution. It's still super early and how things are moving and transforming in this world We're at the forefront today and we want to continue to be there as the world changes. >> Lisa: So lots of exciting news today you mentioned PayPal. What are some of the other things that are going to be coming out this week that are exciting to you and your customers? >> So a lot of things that are coming out for payments specifically, we're going to be announcing a number of partnerships in the morning. I'll be announcing a number of partnerships on the main stage. We're doing, as mentioned, something with PayPal. We're going to announce that Citibank has joined as a virtual card issuer on the Coupa Pay platform. They're one of the largest global issuers in the world. We're introducing TransferMate as a strategic partner for money movement. And kind of one of the more unique things is when you think about payments and when you think about our community of buyers and suppliers. It's buyers and it's suppliers. And so we want to start spending more time and more focus at least from a payment standpoint on how can we make it easier for suppliers to do business with our customers. We're also going to announce an integration with Stripe. So Stripe is one of the, the bigger Fintechs in the world One of the darling Fintech companies around. And what they're doing is because of their capabilities around the card processing standpoint. Not to get into too much the details but we can now enable a super or a higher level of efficiency for card acceptance for suppliers that hasn't been seen before through our Virtual Card capabilities. So we're really excited about these partnerships and there's a lot more to come over the next several months here. >> To borrow this from Malcolm Gladwell the fact that he thinks we're in the first minute of this technology revolution, is like oh! Shocking. But all I've heard all day today is customer centricity, supplier centricity. Ravi thank you so much, for stopping by the Cube and giving us some of your time on this very exciting day. I know day two will be, probably as action-packed. Tomorrow, but we appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. >> My pleasure >> Appreciate it. For Ravi Thakur, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Coupa Inspire '19. Thanks for watching (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a Cube conversation. >> Welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in our Palto Alto studios today for a Cube conversation, kind of an interesting conversation around trying to connect big enterprises who are always trying to be innovative with small companies who are usually innovative but don't necessarily have the connections the big companies that have a little bit more resources and might be interested in the things that they're working on. Really doing that through podcasts, which is a really growing venue. It's been going on for a while, but we're seeing a big uptake in, I think, the consumption of podcasts, who's doing podcasts, the brands behind podcasts. So we're really happy to have them all the way from Texas. It's Erin Gregor and Syya Yasotornrat, the cofounders of Innovation Calling. So welcome. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank for having us. >> Absolutely, so did I get the description right of Innovation Calling, or give everyone kind of your overview of what you guys are up to. >> Yeah, so Innovation Calling was developed with the fact of there's, being in Dallas, we've got a lot of large corporations with innovation labs. They're trying to stand out. They're trying to connect with great talent, but a lot of these people, everybody's got an innovation lab, and we've talked about this before. If you're in the Fortune 500, you are a tech company whether you like it or not. And so we just saw this potential to highlight these companies to be able to hopefully get talent. And then on the other side enterprise companies are trying to connect with start-ups, established start-ups, not ideas, but established and there's a lot to sift through. Hopefully the goal of the podcast is to highlight these companies and help with that sifting and help with the talent pool and really connecting the creators with the companies that are trying to create. >> What's kind of the objective of that matching 'cause clearly it's not a hiring, you're not a hiring service. >> Right. >> You're talking about companies, not people, so what's kind of the objective? What's kind of your best case if this connection works? >> So for us our best case scenario is, obviously, we are at the forefront of innovation with emerging technologies today. Obviously Silicon Valley has a lot of talent and a lot of corporations already in that space, but when you think of the mid-tier, second-tier cities like Dallas, for example, you don't have as many tech workers, but there's still need for that type of talent, right? >> Right. >> With podcasting as our venue and medium to communicate that, we also realized that there was a great potential for these corporations to leverage podcasting as a way to communicate and do their outreach. Again, we're on those mid-tier second-tier cities where you might not have the plethora of folks here in the Bay Area. >> Right, right, but even if they connect with that company, are you thinking that there's going to be some type of technical alliance, some type of partnership, an OEM agreement, or what again kind of if you're pitching this to the small company, what am I like "Yay! You're finally getting" Ya know I listened to your podcast the other day. You had a woman on from Erickson, and I'm building some 5G widget. What's kind of my anticipated outcome of participating and kind of following your funnel and connecting with Erickson? >> So we have a couple of different ways. First of all, we can through us, we've actually made a lot of handshakes, so that's what I love to do is help create the handshakes and we've done that personally. The other side is we are taking the next step and doing live events. So that podcast that you talked about was a series of women in tech leadership where it's not just a live podcasting event but a networking event. So we're really taking the next step in creating these opportunities that you can be in the same room more exclusive type room that we're putting together, a lot of invite only perspective, but helping to make those connections where I see somebody from Erickson is going to be there, I want to make sure and now I can actually be in person and make that happen too. >> Okay. Why podcast? How did you come to use podcast as kind of your medium? >> So I think there's been a tradition in the last five six years that podcast does have the potential to blow up. I think now in 2019 we've actually hit that threshold where there's actually consumer response and with enough studies what they've discovered is most podcast listeners are actually educated business professionals. They tend to lean towards technology, yet you don't see a lot of technology-branded podcasts. And so we looked at the market. A lot of hobbyist type and personal branded podcasts, but we think now is the right time for corporations to make the investment to understand that the medium of traditional advertising is actually evolving and podcast is leading that forefront. You're seeing a lot of huge investments. Actually here there's a hundred million dollar plus investments for the purpose of growing the podcast community. >> Is that for the infrastructure? Or is that for the actual talent and the community and the content generation? >> Yes, the answer is yes, it's everything. (laughter) A company that does a lot of production but builds the community too. >> So I listen to Malcolm Gladwell's all the time. We got to interview him at Quickbooks Connect a couple years ago. You know, really interesting podcast. There's guys like Joe Rogan and stuff that obviously got a ton of great pub when he had Elon Musk on, who smoked not really a joint but kind of a joint and that, but I'm curious on the business side, are there some kind of lighthouse podcasts that you guys see that you use either as an example for what you're trying to develop or as an example to show? I'm just going to keep using Erickson just 'cause it's top of mind from what I just watched. To show them to say hey this is the type of thing that you guys should be trying to do. Who are some of your favorites? >> I'm a big fan of Hackable McAfee that has rolled out. When you think of tech branding and that is what we do focus on is technology based corporations, we tend to lead toward speeds and feeds. That's kind of our, we're engineered background folks in general, right? But I thought Hackable does a great job of pulling in some technology but then using stories or using events of being hacked, for example, something that the audience can relate to. And it's a storytelling, and that's the story arc that I think in general we're helping corporations understand the value of storytelling. It's not just about a product. It's not just selling a cup per se, but the story around it. How good that cup of coffee will feel when you drink it or you know, the experience or memories that you have it evokes. >> So how far are you along on your journey? You have a number of podcasts up already on your site. Are you the first inning, the third inning, is this still kind of early days or where are you in your development of your concept and your company? >> Well, we have a couple of different components to our business, so the podcast has What I was telling you about too we have a network component, we've got a consulting services. Our goal for Innovation Calling was let's first prove the concept. Let's plug into a network. Let's make sure we We'll be the test case essentially, and we've proven that. So from that perspective of that component, we're hitting, we're almost at 100,000 downloads of our podcasts. You know, we're doing pretty well with that. And now as we build it's the next component, so we're bringing on a couple customers from a consulting basis and we help not just with the production but with the promotion. So you spoke earlier about, I always kind of look at if the tree falls in the forest but no one was there to hear it, did it actually happen? I feel that saying fits with a lot of corporate podcasts. They're out there, but no one knows they're out there. So are you going to continue spending that kind of money on production and time with your employees if you're not going to do anything to promote it. And no one knows it exists? So we help on both sides of that scale. >> So on your podcast, which has been the women in tech theme, is that kind of the theme you're going to continue, or is that kind of a launching thing and you're going to turn into other themes? >> That's just a component. So Innovation Calling, there's men on the actual podcast. But we started that specific series to yes talk about the technology perspective of women, but how did you get there? What's your story of growing? So that's just a segment of that podcast again to bring in to really theme the live events to help grow that community on a segment basis? So as that grows, our goal is to do a couple different other types of segments. We talked about a channel. The idea of that yesterday with a client, so we want to actually take the bigger part of Innovation Calling and niche it down bit by bit on the live event scale. >> And then on the event side, how often are you doing them? What's the format, how many people, frequency, and what's the format? >> Syya is ready to go. >> She's ready to go. >> Let me tell you, I'm ready to go. First off, there's wine and hors d'oeuvres, so if we can't wine you and dine you I suppose, but no, really again we're about building community first and foremost. The Dallas Fort Worth area is making great strides in the entrepreneurial side. Big investments to get major corporations to come in the area, so we think this is a great opportunity for these folk to come together. A lot of folks from outside of town, who are looking to build their network again because they've been relocated. And then, you know, our themes. Women in technology is our first theme because, quite frankly we're sort of biased a little bit towards that. >> Well it's a good theme. >> Got to help our people. >> But again it is a very casual format right now. It's interview-based. >> Is it a hundred people? Five hundred people? >> We actually started and we want it to be intimate. We want the value of the network to actually make genuine connections as opposed to if it gets too large, I feel like some individual might be left off the side. So we actually started off our very first one that sold out was forty people and we did not want more than that in a room. Quite frankly then it gets claustrophobic. >> What about frequency? >> Once a month. >> Once a month. >> Our goal is to keep the size about 75-100 of those, max out at 100, but make sure to Syya's point keep them at an intimate scale. >> What about geography? Obviously you guys are based out of Dallas Fort Worth area. You're here in Silicon Valley. What's kind of your geographic plan? How do you see this kind of evolving? >> Absolutely. We would love to share this across the United States. Again we want to make sure Dallas is viable, proves a point. It is a second-tier city versus something like the Silicon Valley area or Chicago, New York, etc. We are not trying to create a brand new women in technology group, if you will. We're actually working in collaboration with existing women technology groups. We're just simply leveraging the networking opportunity through live podcasting. Again, growing the podcast medium. >> Yeah, I would say by early 2020 our goal is to be in, to come out here and to be able to have an audience to do a live event. We actually had drinks with someone last night about that collaboration, so we'd love to grow it on a perspective and be able to do it in different communities 'cause I've been podcasting for about five years through other businesses and the live event, it's just really. I mean you know you do live interviews. >> I do a lot of live events. >> There's just something special about that connection and then being there live to do the interview. It's a really fun format. >> Right. So do you have any upcoming guests you can plug or share with us today on your next couple podcasts? >> Our next event is actually April 9th. (laughter) (mumbles) April 9th and we're going to have Crystal Christensen, VP of Tech Support at SonicWall. We're very excited to have her onboard. We're still in confirmation, but we're going to be expecting folks from SalesForce, HPE, and Facebook for our next events. >> Okay, great. Where do people go to listen to the podcasts? >> Innovationcalling.com >> All right. Well Syya, Erin, thanks for stopping by. Hopefully you have a good successful couple of days in Silicon Valley and safe travels home. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much for having us, Jeff. Appreciate it. >> She's Erin, she's Syya, I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're at our Palo Alto studios for our Cube conversation. Thanks for watching. We'll catch ya next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. (peppy digital music) >> Veritas Vision 2017 everybody. We're here at The Aria Hotel. This is day two of theCUBE's coverage of Vtas, #VtasVision, and this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stuart Miniman who is my cohost for the week. Stu, we heard Richard Branson this morning. The world-renowned entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson came up from the British Virgin Islands where he lives. He lives in the Caribbean. And evidently he was holed out during the hurricane in his wine cellar, but he was able to make it up here for the keynote. We saw on Twitter, so, great keynote, we'll talk about that a little bit. We saw on Twitter that he actually stopped by the Hitachi event, Hitachi NEXT for women in tech, a little mini event that they had over there. So, pretty cool guy. Some of the takeaways: he talked a lot about- well, first of all, welcome to day two. >> Thanks, Dave. Yeah, and people are pretty excited that sometimes they bring in those marquee guests, someone that's going to get everybody to say, "Okay, wait, it's day two. "I want to get up early, get in the groove." Some really interesting topics, I mean talking about, thinking about the community at large, one of the things I loved he talked about. I've got all of these, I've got hotels, I've got different things. We draw a circle around it. Think about the community, think about the schools that are there, think about if there's people that don't have homes. All these things to, giving back to the community, he says we can all do our piece there, and talking about sustainable business. >> As far as, I mean we do a lot of these, as you know, and as far as the keynote speakers go, I thought he was one of the better ones. Certainly one of the bigger names. Some of the ones that we've seen in the past that I think are comparable, Bill Clinton at Dell World 2012 was pretty happening. >> There's a reason that Bill Clinton is known as the orator that he is. >> Yeah, so he was quite good. And then Robert Gates, both at ServiceNow and Nutanics, Condi Rice at Nutanics, both very impressive. Malcolm Gladwell, who's been on theCUBE and Nate Silver, who's also been on theCUBE, again, very impressive. Thomas Friedman we've seen at the IBM shows. The author, the guy who wrote the Jobs book was very very strong, come on, help me. >> Oh, yeah, Walter Isaacson. >> Walter Isaacson was at Tableau, so you've seen some- >> Yeah, I've seen Elon Musk also at the Dell show. >> Oh, I didn't see Elon, okay. >> Yeah, I think that was the year you didn't come. >> So I say Branson, from the ones I've seen, I don't know how he compared to Musk, was probably the best I think I've ever seen. Very inspirational, talking about the disaster. They had really well-thought-out and well-produced videos that he sort of laid in. The first one was sort of a commercial for Richard Branson and who he was and how he's, his passion for changing the world, which is so genuine. And then a lot of stuff on the disaster in the British Virgin Islands, the total devastation. And then he sort of went into his passion for entrepreneurs, and what he sees as an entrepreneur is he sort of defined it as somebody who wants to make the world a better place, innovations, disruptive innovations to make the world a better place. And then had a sort of interesting Q&A session with Lynn Lucas. >> Yeah, and one of the lines he said, people, you don't go out with the idea that, "I'm going to be a businessman." It's, "I want to go out, I want to build something, "I want to create something." I love one of the early anecdotes that he said when he was in school, and he had, what was it, a newsletter or something he was writing against the Vietnam War, and the school said, "Well, you can either stay in school, "or you can keep doing your thing." He said, "Well, that choice is easy, buh-bye." And when he was leaving, they said, "Well, you're either going to be, end up in jail or be a millionaire, we're not sure." And he said, "Well, what do ya know, I ended up doing both." (both laughing) >> So he is quite a character, and just very understated, but he's got this aura that allows him to be understated and still appear as this sort of mega-personality. He talked about, actually some of the interesting things he said about rebuilding after Irma, obviously you got to build stronger homes, and he really sort of pounded the reducing the reliance on fossil fuels, and can't be the same old, same old, basically calling for a Marshall Plan for the Caribbean. One of the things that struck me, and it's a tech audience, generally a more liberal audience, he got some fond applause for that, but he said, "You guys are about data, you don't just ignore data." And one of the data points that he threw out was that the Atlantic Ocean at some points during Irma was 86 degrees, which is quite astounding. So, he's basically saying, "Time to make a commitment "to not retreat from the Paris Agreement." And then he also talked about, from an entrepreneurial standpoint and building a company that taking note of the little things, he said, makes a big difference. And talking about open cultures, letting people work from home, letting people take unpaid sabbaticals, he did say unpaid. And then he touted his new book, Finding My Virginity, which is the sequel to Losing My Virginity. So it was all very good. Some of the things to be successful: you need to learn to learn, you need to listen, sort of an age-old bromide, but somehow it seemed to have more impact coming from Branson. And then, actually then Lucas asked one of the questions that I put forth, was what's his relationship with Musk and Bezos? And he said he actually is very quite friendly with Elon, and of course they are sort of birds of a feather, all three of them, with the rocket ships. And he said, "We don't talk much about that, "we just sort of-" specifically in reference to Bezos. But overall, I thought it was very strong. >> Yeah Dave, what was the line I think he said? "You want to be friends with your competitors "but fight hard against them all day, "go drinking with them at night." >> Right, fight like crazy during the day, right. So, that was sort of the setup, and again, I thought Lynn Lucas did a very good job. He's, I guess in one respect he's an easy interview 'cause he's such a- we interview these dynamic figures, they just sort of talk and they're good. But she kept the conversation going and asked some good questions and wasn't intimidated, which you can be sometimes by those big personalities. So I thought that was all good. And then we turned into- which I was also surprised and appreciative that they put Branson on first. A lot of companies would've held him to the end. >> Stu: Right. >> Said, "Alright, let's get everybody in the room "and we'll force them to listen to our product stuff, "and then we can get the highlight, the headliner." Veritas chose to do it differently. Now, maybe it was a scheduling thing, I don't know. But that was kind of cool. Go right to where the action is. You're not coming here to watch 60 Minutes, you want to see the headline show right away, and that's what they did, so from a content standpoint I was appreciative of that. >> Yeah, absolutely. And then, of course, they brought on David Noy, who we're going to have on in a little while, and went through, really, the updates. So really it's the expansion, Dave, of their software-defined storage, the family of products called InfoScale. Yesterday we talked a bit about the Veritas HyperScale, so that is, they've got the HyperScale for OpenStack, they've got the HyperScale for containers, and then filling out the product line is the Veritas Access, which is really their scale-out NAS solution, including, they did one of the classic unveils of Veritas Software Company. It was a little odd for me to be like, "Here's an appliance "for Veritas Bezel." >> Here's a box! >> Partnership with Seagate. So they said very clearly, "Look, if you really want it simple, "and you want it to come just from us, "and that's what you'd like, great. "Here's an appliance, trusted supplier, "we've put the whole thing together, "but that's not going to be our primary business, "that's not the main way we want to do things. "We want to offer the software, "and you can choose your hardware piece." Once again, knocking on some of those integrated hardware suppliers with the 70 point margin. And then the last one, one of the bigger announcements of the show, is the Veritas Cloud Storage, which they're calling is object storage with brains. And one thing we want to dig into: those brains, what is that functionality, 'cause object storage from day one always had a little bit more intelligence than the traditional storage. Metadata is usually built in, so where is the artificial intelligence, machine learning, what is that knowledge that's kind of built into it, because I find, Dave, on the consumer side, I'm amazed these days as how much extra metadata and knowledge gets built into things. So, on my phone, I'll start searching for things, and it'll just have things appear. I know you're not fond of the automated assistants, but I've got a couple of them in my house, so I can ask them questions, and they are getting smarter and smarter over time, and they already know everything we're doing anyway. >> You know, I like the automated assistants. We have, well, my kid has an Echo, but what concerns me, Stu, is when I am speaking to those automated assistants about, "Hey, maybe we should take a trip "to this place or that place," and then all of a sudden the next day on my laptop I start to see ads for trips to that place. I start to think about, wow, this is strange. I worry about the privacy of those systems. They're going to, they already know more about me than I know about me. But I want to come back to those three announcements we're going to have David Noy on: HyperScale, Access, and Cloud Object. So some of the things we want to ask that we don't really know is the HyperScale: is it Block, is it File, it's OpenStack specific, but it's general. >> Right, but the two flavors: one's for OpenStack, and of course OpenStack has a number of projects, so I would think you could be able to do Block and File but would definitely love that clarification. And then they have a different one for containers. >> Okay, so I kind of don't understand that, right? 'Cause is it OpenStack containers, or is it Linux containers, or is it- >> Well, containers are always going to be on Linux, and containers can fit with OpenStack, but we've got their Chief Product Officer, and we've got David Noy. >> Dave: So we'll attack some of that. >> So we'll dig into all of those. >> And then, the Access piece, you know, after the apocalypse, there are going to be three things left in this world: cockroaches, mainframes, and Dot Hill RAID arrays. When Seagate was up on stage, Seagate bought this company called Dot Hill, which has been around longer than I have, and so, like you said, that was kind of strange seeing an appliance unveil from the software company. But hey, they need boxes to run on this stuff. It was interesting, too, the engineer Abhijit came out, and they talked about software-defined, and we've been doing software-defined, is what he said, way before the term ever came out. It's true, Veritas was, if not the first, one of the first software-defined storage companies. >> Stu: Oh yeah. >> And the problem back then was there were always scaling issues, there were performance issues, and now, with the advancements in microprocessor, in DRAM, and flash technologies, software-defined has plenty of horsepower underneath it. >> Oh yeah, well, Dave, 15 years ago, the FUD from every storage company was, "You can't trust storage functionality "just on some generic server." Reminds me back, I go back 20 years, it was like, "Oh, you wouldn't run some "mission-critical thing on Windows." It's always, "That's not ready for prime time, "it's not enterprise-grade." And now, of course, everybody's on the software-defined bandwagon. >> Well, and of course when you talk to the hardware companies, and you call them hardware companies, specifically HPE and Dell EMC as examples, and Lenovo, etc. Lenovo not so much, the Chinese sort of embraced hardware. >> And even Hitachi's trying to rebrand themselves; they're very much a hardware company, but they've got software assets. >> So when you worked at EMC, and you know when you sat down and talked to the guys like Brian Gallagher, he would stress, "Oh, all my guys, all my engineers "are software engineers. We're not a hardware company." So there's a nuance there, it's sort of more the delivery and the culture and the ethos, which I think defines the software culture, and of course the gross margins. And then of course the Cloud Object piece; we want to understand what's different from, you know, object storage embeds metadata in the data and obviously is a lower cost sort of option. Think of S3 as the sort of poster child for cloud object storage. So Veritas is an arms dealer that's putting their hat in the ring kind of late, right? There's a lot of object going on out there, but it's not really taking off, other than with the cloud guys. So you got a few object guys around there. Cleversafe got bought out by IBM, Scality's still around doing some stuff with HPE. So really, it hasn't even taken off yet, so maybe the timing's not so bad. >> Absolutely, and love to hear some of the use cases, what their customers are doing. Yeah, Dave, if we have but one critique, saw a lot of partners up on stage but not as many customers. Usually expect a few more customers to be out there. Part of it is they're launching some new products, not talking about very much the products they've had in there. I know in the breakouts there are a lot of customers here, but would have liked to see a few more early customers front and center. >> Well, I think that's the key issue for this company, Stu, is that, we talked about this at the close yesterday, is how do they transition that legacy install base to the new platform. Bill Coleman said, "It's ours to lose." And I think that's right, and so the answer for a company like that in the playbook is clear: go private so you don't have to get exposed to the 90 day shock lock, invest, build out a modern platform. He talked about microservices and modern development platform. And create products that people want, and migrate people over. You're in a position to do that. But you're right, when you talk to the customers here, they're NetBackup customers, that's really what they're doing, and they're here to sort of learn, learn about best practice and see where they're going. NetBackup, I think, 8.1 was announced this week, so people are glomming onto that, but the vast majority of the revenue of this company is from their existing legacy enterprise business. That's a transition that has to take place. Luckily it doesn't have to take place in the public eye from a financial standpoint. So they can have some patient capital and work through it. Alright Stu, lineup today: a lot of product stuff. We got Jason Buffington coming on for getting the analyst perspective. So we'll be here all day. Last word? >> Yeah, and end of the day with Foreigner, it feels like the first time we're here. Veritas feels hot-blooded. We'll keep rolling. >> Alright, luckily we're not seeing double vision. Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back right after this short break. This is theCUBE, we're live from Vertias Vision 2017 in Las Vegas. We'll be right back. (peppy digital music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the CUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2016. Brought to you by AWS and its ecosystem partners. (light techno music) Now, here's your host. >> And we're back, happy to welcome back to the program, regular guest on our program, David Richards, who is the founder and CEO of WANdisco. David, anything interesting happen since last time, you know, we've talked to you? >> David: Well I kind of got, you guys are a bad omen for me. Kind of left the CUBE in New York, got off a plane, got fired, and then four days later got reinstated. Apart from that, virtually nothing's happened actually. >> Hey, you know it's good coverage in The Financial Times, and then lots of press and everything, so lots more people know about WANdisco now, right? >> David: That's right, and I don't have Tourette's, I promise. (laughs) >> Alright, David, AWS re:Invent, I mean, pretty impressive show, you know we see you in a lot of shows, many of them interesting, lots of smart people but I mean, wow this is pretty impressive. They got up on stage lots of things that I'm sure interest you, give us your take of the show so far. >> It's fascinating, I mean, this sort of must have been, I wasn't there when, you know, Steve Jobs was launching the first Mac and so on, but this kind of feels, more than just a small movement. This is a large shift in enterprise, moving from On-premises to Cloud, I think it's unquestionable that's happening. I mean, I'm sure you've covered it this week on The Cube. I've not seen it, but 32,000 people are here. Virtually every single vendor that you could ever think of is exhibiting in this exhibit hall. You can barely move about the people. Our booth traffic has just been phenomenal this week, and it really feels like this is a seismic shift in the marketplace. I know we've been saying that for a while, but it really does feel that way. >> Why do you think now, is it just, we just got here, and it's the overnight success that's been ten years in the making, or was there an event or something that really, kind of, tipped it over to where we are, because clearly, it's very different than last year. >> It, sort of, Cloud V1, and you guys have been covering this for a long time, was really companies that were born in the Cloud, it was the Airbnbs, it was the Tinders, it was the Facebooks and so on. Those companies were actually made, born in the Cloud. What's now happening, clearly, is enterprise is moving to the Cloud, and Cloud 2.0 really is about a different set of requirements, a different set of customers. There are customers with massive petabyte-scale data sets that they really can't take advantage of, they can't really scale out, it's too complex for them to build many of the applications they need to build, they now have to move to Cloud, and, you know, 32,000 people are not here just for the sake of it, they're here because they have to be here, because they're moving, obviously, to Cloud, and AWS have such a massive lead, I think, in the Cloud at the moment and Enterprise Cloud, and that's probably why so many people are here. >> David, one of the interesting things to look at at this show is, Amazon has some opinions about where data lives, how it moves, where you process it, you know, all of those kind of things. You guys are kind of opinionated on those kind of things too so, you know, give us your view on those kind of, those guys. I mean, I made a comment on Twitter, it was like, "Hey, what do we call a data lake when it's in the Cloud now?" >> Jeff: Well look, that's what happens to Clouds, they-- >> One of the big reveals in Andy Jassy's talk this morning was a truck coming across the front of the stage, and I've had so many emails saying, is this real, is this a joke, are we now really moving data in a semi from On-premises into the Cloud? And, it's kind of interesting, I think it's a little bit of a gimmick to be honest with you, I think Amazon do lots of great things, there were lots of wonderful announcements today, like opening up Alexa and allowing, you know, and some of the things they're doing with serverless computers, just phenomenal, but I think a truck to move data from On-premises to Cloud, kind of feels like we're back in the 1970s to me, whereas I was talking to a, the CIO of an automotive company a couple of weeks ago. They have a problem where, you know, to move data causes an outage in their organization today of about 30 hours. Their data growth is going to be so vast, the velocity is going to be so great in the next 12 months, that if they use the existing technology today, that they have today, would take them in the region of a month to move that data. So, trucks are great for cold, archival data, well they might be great for cold, archival data, I'm sure you could figure out a better way, like the internet to move it, but for our active transactional data, data that changes and moves, that's critical to the organization, you simply can't put it on the back of a truck and basically mail it to Amazon with a Snowball, that really doesn't work, and I think the market really needs to be educated a little bit about what's possible. >> Well, and I don't know that Amazon would necessarily disagree with you. I mean, if you look at the Snowball family, they had the Snowball Edge out there, which was realization, hey I might want compute, and even, we're going to give you that new green grass Lambda, serverless type stuff, so that you can do processing where there's no network, or I can't do anything, but, I guess, we know from a physics standpoint, I understand, you know, the internet is great, but, you know, if I want to move, you know, 100 petabytes or more of data, you know, even if I'm a Telco, that's a ton of data that I need to move. So, tell me where there's this connect. >> So, the way that WANdisco's technology works, is we continually replicate data, so where every other form of data replication is time based, it requires the concept of a clock, like, even Google, who've got Google Spanner, which is kind of active/active replication, but relies on a satellite in the sky, on atomic clocks, GPS clocks on every single server. We don't have any of that reliance, we're transactional data replication, which means if something changes, it gets replicated, and that process is continuous, which means that you can basically move data applications without any downtime or interruption to service. And that's absolutely critical for what I called earlier Cloud V2, which is the enterprises moving to Cloud, they have to be able to get there without any interruption to service. Small data, yeah, you can use that kind of technology, or non-strategic data, yeah, you can use this kind of technology. Strategic data and strategic applications, trading systems, you know, you can't be 99.99% correct if somebody's got cancer or not, right? If you're using the Cloud, or machine learning technology to figure that out, you can't be, you know, almost certain, you need to be completely certain, and that requires data to be where it's supposed to be. >> So, Amazon's a partner of yours. What's it like being a partner of Amazon's these days? Give us your point on that. >> Amazon are a phenomenal company. They have to be, right, they've just built, probably the world's most valuable enterprise technology business by a country mile in ten years. I mean, it's just, you know, zero to 10 billion in (snaps fingers) the blink of an eye is just incredible. And part of their secret is, they base everything on data, and I've learned a lot from dealing with Amazon actually, everything is data driven. You know, they have this Five Why's, I'm sure you've read about it in the media, where you have to prove, through facts and figures, not sentiment, that something is so, and that's pretty uncomfortable for a lot of people. For us, it's not, and it's, working with Amazon, their requirements, the bar is so high it's made our products much much much better. They have a well-architectured review that they go through with all their partners. They're actually great to partner with, if you're not a very good company, I would, daresay, don't bother because they'll find you out very quickly. But they're a great set of guys, very very good to partner with, it's very black and white, it's very quantitative, but, yeah, they've obviously got a huge market. >> Yeah. One of the things I love about this show is that the quality of people, you know, is phenomenal, and you get such a, I mean, a huge cross-section, not only location, size, industry, but one of the things I think that is across everybody that comes here, is they're trying new things, they're open to, you know, moving forward, iterating, learning, which has been one of the things that, you know, we kind of say what holds companies back is like, oh I'm doing it the old way. So, what's your experience been with the users? Any stories you can tell from that standpoint? >> So, right down to the bottom of the organization, they're prepared to take any idea. I mean, Amazon Web Services, for goodness' sake was basically a paper that was written and presented to Jeff Bezos, right, who said, yeah that's a good idea to Jassy and said yeah, let's go off and do it. But they, virtually every innovation in their organization is somebody coming up with an idea. They have the mechanics and machinery to listen to that idea. We do it ourselves, so, we're looking at serverless compute and using Lambda so we can have replication literally as a service that you can just call, you can call Paxos, which is our core IP, it's based on Paxos, it's called DConE, so you can call that algorithm and get a replication service. So these concepts, some of the concepts that Amazon are introducing, their ability to move so quickly to introduce new products is because they have this innovative approach where they allow people, right down to the very bottom of the organization, to come up with new ideas and approaches to doing things. And it's perfectly fine for somebody at the bottom of their organization to challenge somebody at the top of the organization. In fact, they expect it. And again, that's not comfortable for a lot of people, but I like the way that they go around their business. >> I'm looking forward to, Alexa, how's my replication doing? (laughs loudly) >> Wouldn't that be great? >> Well, it's interesting you say that, we had Malcolm Gladwell on a month or two ago, and he talked about, the most powerful organizations are the ones that let the fresh ideas bubble up from the bottom because it's the people that have not been tainted by being in part of the company, that had new and creative and innovative, and a different way of looking at it, and oftentimes they get squelched, so the fact that they let those ideas come up, and also driven by data, pretty powerful. >> It's interesting being at the show this week, and I have two types of meetings, I have meetings with companies at the forefront of this Cloud revolution, companies at the forefront of building new, innovative applications that were designed for the Cloud, and then I have other meetings with companies, vendors, who have been caught out by this. They didn't see this coming, they didn't expect, you know, this sea change to happen as quickly as it's happening and they really are fighting and scrambling to know what to do, and this is everything from, you know, the big services companies, the big traditional enterprise storage companies are really struggling to understand what they're going to do with the Cloud, and they don't have those processes and procedures inside their businesses like we do. Like, they can't change and be agile and nimble and take advantage of these new products and markets that are suddenly appearing overnight. >> Yeah, it's funny, the guy from (mumbles) was talking about, they don't want to be a system integrator anymore, right now it's services integration and really changing the way you think about putting this stuff together, it's very different. >> It is very different, and, it used to be the case that you'd get, and I know we've all lived through this, you get the enterprise sales guy that turns up in the $2,000 suit and the Porsche parked outside, and comes in and sells you, you know, a piece of software, and asks you how your wife and kids are doing and all the rest of it. Look at the audience here today. They're not going to put up with, you know, that style of enterprise sales moving forward. People are buying stuff from a marketplace. The expectation is you can choose, select, deploy, and build applications yourself, and that's how many of these companies are operating today. So it's not just the sea change in the technology, the technology's facilitating completely different and new markets. >> Jeff: Behaviors, yeah. >> David, want to give you the final word on, as you leave this show, you know, your takeaways, what you want people to know. >> Clearly we're in an era where, this is going to be an Enterprise Cloud. Cloud 2.0 is all about enterprises that are taking their data from On-premises into the Cloud. It's happening very quickly. 32,000 people are here this week, they're here for a reason, because they have to be. This is a sea change in the marketplace, and I hope, well I know WANdisco's the vanguard of moving many of those enterprises from On-premises into the Cloud very quickly. >> Alright, absolutely, definitely agree with the sea change there. David Richards, founder and still CEO of WANdisco, really appreciate you joining us again. We'll be back to wrap up our coverage of today at AWS re:Invent 2016. You're watching the CUBE. (light techno music)