>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage, where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, of course virtually in this case, now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships and the flywheel they deliver in the technology business. And with me are Jason Kelly, he's the general manager global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Dasgupta, who's the vice president of marketing for IBM global business services. Folks it's great to see you again. I wish we were face-to-face, but this'll have to do. >> Good to see you Dave and same, I wish we were face to face, but we'll, we'll go with this. >> Soon. We're being patient. Jason, let's start with you. You, you have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >> So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said, we have a partner strategy Dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us, a partner strategy. Something that we it's not new, we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve in and build even stronger. This thought of a, a partner strategy is it... Nothing's better than the thought of a partnership and people say, "Oh, well, you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner." And it sounds almost as a one to one type relationship. Our strategy is much different than that Dave and our execution is even better. And that, that execution is focused on now the requirement that the market, our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners, that one... One player, can't deliver all their needs. They can't design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out, this thought of an ecosystem. And our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's, let's call it a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user, it's going to take many players to cover that. And then we as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the end client is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that end client. >> I think about when you talk about the, the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know the business books years ago where you see the conceptual value chain, you could certainly understand that and you could put processes together to connect them and now, you've got technology. I think of APIs. It's, it's, it really supports that everything gets accelerated and, and Mani, I wonder if you could address sort of the the go to market, how this notion of ecosystem which is so important is impacting the way in which you go to market. >> Absolutely. So modern business, you know demands a new approach to working. The ecosystem thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market. It's a mutual halo of the brands. So as responsible, you know, for the championship of, of the IBM and the Global Business Services brand, I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win, win, win as we say in the market. It should be a win for, our clients first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM, and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this go-to-market market strategy to life. >> So I wonder if we can maybe talk about, how this actually works and, and pulling some examples. You must have some favorites that we can touch on. Is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names? >> Sure. Names always work in debut writing. It's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy and I'll, I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds. As we're doing this virtually because of what, because of an unfortunate pandemic. Just disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path we go, whoa! (clears throat) How do we, how do we address that? Well, anytime there's a tough task IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely, or standing up a system behind the current social security administration, you know during the depression, you pick it. Well here we are now and why not start with that as an example because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here. First, Dave, this thought of, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives which is, how do we get this vaccine created in record time? Which it was. The fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. So Pfizer created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind that is a wonderful partner of ours, SAP trying to work with that. So us working with SAP, along with Pfizer in order to figure out, how to get that value chain and some would say supply chain, but I'll, I'll address that in a second, but there's many players there. And, and so we were in the middle of that with Pfizer committed to saying, how do we do that with SAP? So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency. You have Ms. State, Alocal, you have healthcare life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh, wait a second Dave, this is getting very complicated, right? Well, this is the thought of convening in the ecosystem. And this is what I'm telling you is, is our execution and it, it has worked well and so it's, it's it's happening now and we see it still developing and being, being, you know very productive in real time. But then, I said there was a another example and that's with me, you, Mani, whomever. You pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of, of the value chain. That's why I said I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is, is, is someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute that's not a small task. It's not just get, get the content there and put it in someone's arm. Instead there's scheduling that must be done. There's follow up, and entire case management like system. Salesforce is a master at this. So work.com team with IBM we said now, let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability, that user experience, user interaction interface and then also, in bringing another player in the ecosystem. One of ours, Watson health, along with our blockchain team, we brought together something called a digital health pass. So, I've just talked about two ecosystems where multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I call it out blockchain technology and obviously supply chain, but there's also AI, IOT. So you start to see where, look, this is truly an orchestration effort that has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master in design and tying that, that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome. You, me, Mani are all getting the shot, being healthy. That's a real-time example of us working with an ecosystem and teaming with key strategic partners. >> You know Mani, I, I, I mean, Jason you're right. I mean this pandemic's been horrible. I have to say, I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like, okay here's some big PCs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So, at least, the tech industry has saved the business. I mean, with, and earlier we mentioned AI, automation, data, you know, even things basic things like, security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right. I mean, IBM in particular, other large companies, you mentioned, SAP who have taken the lead and it's really, I, I don't, I Mani I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit but I wonder if there's some of your favorite partnerships that you can talk about. >> Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to build on what you just said, Dave. IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world's leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it. Now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution, you would need to connect these disparate systems sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the clients. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of, you know, you asked about favorites. There are, this is really a co-opetition market where everybody has products, everybody has services. The most important thing is how are we, how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case? I would say one important thing in this, as you observe how these stories are panning out. In an ecosystem, in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a "sell with" model from, from a go-to-market perspective. There is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners, right? So think about this, the span and scope or what we do here and so that's the sell through, and then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products for example, Salesforce, running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the, the modern way of doing business with modern IT. >> Well, and you mentioned co-opetition. I mean, I look at it, you're, you're, you're part of IBM that will work with anybody 'cause you're your customer first. Whether it's AWS, Microsoft, I mean, Oracle is a, is a, is a really tough competitor but your customers are using Oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean, as a, those are some, you know good examples I think of your point about co-opetition. >> Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case, Delta. Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile and now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right? With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down be more agile, be more secure be closer to their customers to try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud, on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The, the beauty of this model in a hybrid cloud approach is that you're able to put them on red hat openshift, you're able to do and package the, the services into microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a... On a portable almost a platform agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing as the ability, to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day. >> How about some of the like SaaS players? Like some of the more prominent ones. And we, we, we watched the ascendancy of ServiceNow and Workday, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an AI opportunity but maybe you could add some color there. >> So I like the fact Dave that you call out the different hyperscalers, for example whether it's AWS, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, hey, had this happened a long time ago, you know you started talking about the, the heft of the technology. I started thinking of all the, the the truck loads of servers or whatever they, you know they'd have to pull up, we don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud. And you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out. You start to think of what I call, I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers. They're both. And then you start to say, what are, what are different people supplying? Well, in that ecosystem, we know there's not going to be one player. There's going to be multiple. So we partner by doing just what Mani called out as this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, multi-clouds. Maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability, that flexibility, we empower and this is what it's doing is that co-opetition. We empower our partners, our strategic partners. We want them to be better with us and this is just the thought of, you know, being able to actually bring more together and move faster. Which is almost counter-intuitive. You're like, wait a minute, you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly. Because we have the capability to integrate those, those technologies and get that outcome that Mani mentioned. >> I would add to one Jason, you mentioned something very, very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast, you go alone. But if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view, in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >> What about like, so I get the technology players and there's maybe things that you do, that others don't or vice versa so the gap fillers, et cetera. But what about, how, maybe customers do they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, maybe they be, they they be customer or an NGO as another example. Are they part of this value chain part of this ecosystem? >> Absolutely. I'll give you... I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health pass. That digital health pass, is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential. Think of it as a health credential, not a vaccine passport cause it could be used for a test for, a negative test on COVID, it could be used for antibodies. So if you have this credential it's something that we as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of, you know getting people certifications versus a four-year diploma. How do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a Jenny Rometty thought. Let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then said wait, here's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of New York said that they want it to do it that way and they said, listen we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our New York citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable. It could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we want it to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with these strategic partners, like Salesforce and SAP, Alocal. I mean, I can just keep going. And we said, "Okay, let's do this." And this is this thought of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that Dave. This only brings it to the forefront just as you said. Yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem, we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together, convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcomes so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they, they want it. >> Guys, we've got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this, this digital transformation journey that we already, we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise. I love the hybrid cloud and AI focus. Jason and Mani, really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >> Thank you so much, Dave. Fantastic. >> Thank you Dave. Great to be with you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for the cube and in continuous coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. (poignant music) (bright uplifting music)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by >>IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise of course, virtually in this case now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships in the flywheel, they deliver in the technology business and with me or Jason kelly, general manager, global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Das Gupta, who is the vice president of marketing for IBM Global Business services folks. It's great to see you again in which we're face to face. But this will have to do >>good to see you Dave and uh same, I wish we were face to face but uh we'll we'll go with this >>soon. We're being patient, Jason. Let's start with you. You have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >>So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said we have a partner strategy dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us a partner strategy something that we it's not new and we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve and build even stronger. This thought of a partner strategy is it nothing is better than the thought of a partner ship. And people say oh well you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner And it sounds almost as a 1-1 type relationship. Our strategies is much different than that. David our execution is even better and that that execution is focused on now. The requirement that the market our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners that one player can't deliver all their needs, they can't Design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out. This thought of an ecosystem and our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's let's call it a a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user. It's going to take many players to cover that. And then we, as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the incline is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that in client. >>I think about when you talk about the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know, the business books years ago you see the conceptual value chain, you can certainly understand that you can put processes together to connect them and now you've got technology, I think of a P. I. S. It's it's really supports that everything gets accelerated and and uh money. I wonder if you could address some of the the go to market how this notion of of ecosystem which is so important, is impacting the way in which you go to market. >>Absolutely. So modern business, you know, demands a new approach to working the ecosystem. Thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market, it's a mutual halo of the brands, so as responsible for the championship of the IBM and the global business services brand. I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win win win, as we say in the market, it should be a win for our clients, first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this, go to market strategy to life. >>So I wonder if we could maybe talk about how this actually works and and pull in some examples, uh you must have some favorites that that we can touch on. Uh is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names, >>sure names, always working debut, right. And it's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy. And I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds as we're doing this virtually because of what because of an unfortunate pandemic, um, this disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path. We go well, how do we, how do we address that? Well, any time there's a tough task, IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely or standing up a system behind the current Social Security Administration, you know, during the Depression, you pick it well here we are now. And why not start with that as an example? Because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here first day, this thought of a, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create uh and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives, which is how do we get this vaccine created in record time, which it was the fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. Visor created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind. That is a wonderful partner of R. S. A. P. Trying to work with that. So us working with S. A. P. Along with Pfizer in order to figure out how to get that value chain. And some would say supply chain, but I'll address that in a second. But there's many players there. And so we were in the middle of that with fires are committed to saying, how do we do that with S. A. P. So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency, a state, a local, you have healthcare, life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh wait a second day. This is getting very complicated, Right? Well, this is the thought of convening an ecosystem and this is what I'm telling you is our execution and it has worked well. And so it's it's it's happening now. We still it's we see it's still developing and being, being, you know, very productive in real time. But then I said there was another example and that's with me, you mani whomever you pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of of the value chain. That's why I said, I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is a someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute, that's not a small task. It's not just get the content there and put it in someone's arm instead they're scheduling that must be done. There's follow up an entire case management like system sells force is a master at this, so work dot com team with IBM, we sit now let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability that the user experience, user interaction interface and then also in bringing another player in the ecosystem, one of ours Watson health along with our block changing, we brought together something called a Digital Health pass. So I've just talked about two ecosystems work multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I called out Blockchain technology and obviously supply chain but there's also a I I O T. So you start to see where look this is truly an orchestration effort. It has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master and design and tying that that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome you me money all getting into shot being healthy. That's a real time example of us working with an ecosystem and teeming with key strategic partners, >>you know, money, I mean Jason you're right. I mean pandemics been horrible, I have to say. I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like okay here's some big pcs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So I mean the tech industry has saved business. I mean with not only we mentioned ai automation data, uh even things basic things like security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right, I mean IBM in particular, other large companies you mentioned ASAP you have taken the lead and it's really I don't money, I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit, but I wonder if there's some of your favorite, you know, partnerships that you can talk about. >>Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna build on what you just said. Dave IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution you would need to connect these disparate systems, sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the client. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of you know, you asked about favorite there are this is really a coop petition market where everybody has products, everybody has service is the most important thing is how how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case, I would say one important thing in this. As you observe how these stories are panning out in an ecosystem in in part in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a cell with model from from a go to market perspective, there is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners. Right? So think about the span and scope of what we do here. And so that's the sell through. And then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products, for example. Salesforce running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the modern way of doing business with modernity. >>Well. And you mentioned cooperation. I mean you're you're part of IBM that will work with anybody because your customer first, whether it's a W. S. Microsoft oracle is a is a is a really tough competitor. But your customers are using oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean as a those are some good examples. I think of your point about cooper Titian. >>Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case. Delta, Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile. Now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down, be more agile will be more secure, be closer to their customers, try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The beauty of this model and a hybrid cloud approach is that you are able to put them on red hat open shift, you're able to do and package the services into a microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a portable, almost platform. Agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing is the ability to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day, >>how about some of the like sass players, like some of the more prominent ones and we watched the ascendancy of service now and and, and work day, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an Ai opportunity, but maybe you could add some, you know, color there. >>So I like the fact that you call out the different hyper scholars for example, uh whether it's a W. S, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, he had this happened a long time ago, you know, you start talking about the heft of the technology, I started thinking of all the truckloads of servers or whatever they have to pull up. We don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud and you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out, you start to think of what I I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know, these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers, they're both. And then you start to say what we're different people supplying well in that ecosystem, we know there's not gonna be one player, there's gonna be multiple. So we partner by doing just what monty called out is this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, Multi clouds, maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability that flexibility we empower and this is what's doing that cooperation, we empower our partners are strategic partners, we want them to be better with us. And this is this thought of being able to actually bring more together and move faster which is almost counterintuitive. You're like wait a minute you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly because we have the capability to integrate those those technologies and get that outcome that monty mentioned, >>I would add to this one. Jason you mentioned something very very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast you go alone but if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >>What about like so I get the technology players and there may be things that you do that others don't or vice versa. So the gap fillers etcetera. But what about how to maybe customers that they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, may they be they be customer or an N. G. O. As another example, Are they part of this value chain? Part of this ecosystem? >>Absolutely. I'll give you I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health past that Digital Health Pass is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential Think of it as a health credential not a vaccine passport because it could be used for a test for a negative test on Covid, it could be used for antibiotics. So if you have this credential, it's something that we, as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of getting people uh certifications versus a four year diploma, how do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a jenny Rometty thought, let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then it's wait, there's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of new york said that they wanted to do it that way and they said, listen, we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our new york citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable, it could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we wanted to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with the strategic Partners, a Salesforce and ASAP and work. I mean, I can just keep and we said okay let's do this. And this is the start of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that day but this only brings it to the forefront just as you said, yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcome so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they want it >>guys, we got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this this digital transformation journey that we already we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise, I love the hybrid cloud and AI Focus, Jason and money really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >>Thank you so much. Dave Fantastic. All >>Right. And thank you for watching everybody's day Vigilante for the Cuban. Our continuous coverage of IBM, think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. >>Mhm.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's the theCUBE covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Valanti and welcome back to the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience. This is the afterglow, the after thoughts, the post halo effect. Mani Dasgupta is here. She's the Vice President of Brand and Product Marketing at IBM. Great to see you again, thanks for coming back on Mani. >> Thank you Dave, it's fantastic to be here after Think which has been super successful for us, so excited to have this chat. >> You know it's really nice, one of the silver linings of these digital events is you can actually have these kinds of conversations in an afterglow, so I want to get right into it. Mark Foster kind of set things up for the division and the service, he talked about a lot of customers. He talked about the cognitive enterprise, and he gave really three sort of arcs of his content discussion. One was the market making platforms, the second was intelligent work flows, and the third is the whole enterprise experience in humanity and he tied it in to the whole COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder if you could give us your thoughts, and maybe an example? >> Sure, absolutely, sure can. You know the cognitive enterprise is a framework that businesses can adapt as they go on forward with their business transformation journey. The market making platform is in simple terms, its how do you put yourself in the route for growth? Do you need to look for new customers, do you need to look for new markets? What's your competitive advantage? Build a platform, or create a platform which signifies competitive advantage for you. So that's the first piece of it. The second piece of it pertains to the operations of the company. How well are you run? How efficient are you? How effective are your processes? How have you been able to apply the latest and greatest in technologies? Edge, 5G, automation, artificial intelligence. How are you able to apply those technologies to make your processes work better for you? So that's the second big piece. And the third piece is keeping your customers at the core of whatever you do. So the experience of the customers, the updated and newer demands of the customers. How do you address that with the human at the center of it, right? The empathy that I was talking about when we spoke last, before and during Think. It's truly important especially in these times, every company is trying to figure out, in this scenario, how do they keep their business on the growth track? And the cognitive enterprise framework helps them on this journey. >> Was there an example that came out of Think that you can point to that is reflective of this? >> Absolutely, there were actually three great case studies that clients and colleagues who joined us during Think, we had the CEO of Yara, we had Shell and we had Frito Lay. A quick example is Frito Lay, and I bring them up because this is a brand that everybody recognizes, in fact they are now in 94% of all US households. And these are name brands like your chips, especially when we are all stuck at home during this pandemic they are a name that quite often comes to mind, Frito Lay. So a good example of what they are having to deal with. They haven't changed their transformation trajectory, they have sped it up. They have just become way more agile, teams that were in different locations are now all near shore. If you think about this scenario right now, everybody is working on Webex, everybody is getting distributed agile to work, so everybody, nobody is at a disadvantage because they are somewhere in India or they are somewhere in Mexico, or they are somewhere in the US, they are all together right now working together on the same digital platform. So actually everybody's near shore. So they have sped up their direct to consumer channel, in the past one month they have been able to quickly pivot and bring snacks.com to people, everybody across the US, that's a very good example of how you can apply the changes around you to your advantage, and make sure that this contributes to the growth and success of their business, and we had Frito join us live during Think, if you want to see it you can go live to our, now on our on demand platform and watch them. >> One of the things that Mark Foster mentioned in his remarks was that a lot of executives might have been thinking prior to COVID that they wanted to shake things up a little bit. But it's risky, you know they're kind of reticent to do that well, things have been shaken up. And now they've got you know the perfect reason to disrupt their own business. And organizations have been very tactical, focus on the customer, really trying to keep the lights on, managing cash, et cetera, but as we start to come out of this, they're beginning to think of the more midterm impacts, they're rethinking the ideal customer profile, and the value proposition in this new reality. So how should customers think about getting started on this journey of the cognitive enterprise if they haven't started already? >> You know it's, the good thing is the technology right now is available to us, even if people want to get started they can do it right now. One of the ways that we have been advising our clients to get started who haven't get started this journey, is to come together in a distributed agile framework, what we call the IBM Garage our Co-Creation Workshop, put the customer at the center of it and create an empathy map. Around what is the problem that we are trying to solve? What's the most important thing that that particular business is trying to solve? And for every business it may be a different answer, right? And so it's not prescriptive, its a place where you can come and lay out the cards on the table and figure out what's the right next step for your business, and then we can use the same model to unpack the problem into solvable components and apply technology to very quickly show results. The beauty of this is not just an MVP, this is actually solving real world problems, and it is doing it at global scale. That's the beauty of it and I think that's where we should start. >> You know a lot of these big events, the big physical events, of course we love them it's something theCUBE has been doing for 10 years, but the disappointing thing is oftentimes after the event everybody disappears, they go back to work and it's sort of forgotten. The great thing about these digital events is you can kind of continue the discussion, not unlike what we're doing now, but also you have these Think Summits, and you're going to be connecting the dots in the thread from Think all the way through until this thing ends and even beyond I would predict, that digital is here to stay, at least an event standpoint, and a hybrid, and other businesses. So give us the update on the Think Summits, how do we get more information, what are they all about? >> Absolutely, for more information is always available on our on demand platforms, so you can go onto IBM.com/think, but what you said Dave is so important. That this is not a one and done, we want to keep the conversations running, we want to keep engaging with everybody who has come last week to have an engaging discussion with us, we will continue this in June, in Europe, in different cities we have a number of Think Summits. This will be followed with other Think Summits across the globe. Now as IBM we feel we have a responsibility not just that we create content and thought leadership that is consumed by millions of people across the globe, we do it in a way that is global. So we want to make sure that you and I today are talking in English, that we are able to have our colleagues in China are able to have the same conversation in the language that they prefer, and so in Japan and so on and so forth, IBM being the truly global company that we are, we want to make sure that the conversations also have nuances that are impacting these countries in real time, in the situation that we are in, not all companies are in the same space in the curve, some are recovering, some are bouncing back, some are just getting into this scenario that's all around us. So the remedy and the routes that business will take, is also slightly different. So we want to make sure we are very customized, we want to make sure we are really very relevant to that audience. So follow us on the Think Summits across the globe, as the new dates are keeping on newer dates are getting announced on the Think platform, so that's ready to go. The one last thing I would also say Dave, is that at this time what's very important is that not all tech is created equal, and not all companies are created equal. What's the cost of bad advice and so I think it's very important to be mindful of who you engage with. And make sure that we are not taken advantage of in these kind of scenarios. Be very mindful of how how well your partner understands your business, how well your partner understands what could go wrong. And plan for it, and not just show but be there with your clients, with your customers throughout the journey, and take them back to the path of growth. >> Yeah that whole notion of business resilience and not only as a defensive move, but also something that you can lean into, really try to grow your business, there's a lot of learning going on, a lot of great content on the IBM Think Digital Experience site. Of course theCUBE.net. Mani, thanks so much for coming back on, and breaking down IBM Think, and giving us a forward look to the Think Summits. Great to have you. >> Absolutely my pleasure Dave, thank you. >> And thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Valanti for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (upbeat instrumental music)

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's the cube covering IBM thing brought to you by IBM. >>All right, ready? We're back. This is the cubes continuous coverage of IBM 2020 the digital event experience. My name is Dave Volante. Dasgupta is here. She's the vice president of marketing at IBM. She's also the COO of the global business services. good to see you. Thanks for coming back in the cube. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Deva fantastic to be here. Do you have a lot of experience with brands? IBM itself, you know, amazing well known, a leading brand well, I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what you're seeing in terms of how brands are responding to the 19 crisis. There are things out there that you're seeing that are inspiring you and yeah. What should we be looking for? Oh my gosh. I mean all around the last two, two months we have been living now in a, in an, in a new reality and this is not going to go back, do what we knew was normal. >>Right. This is going to be the new normal and how brands react to it sets us up for future growth and future success. You know, as a in the global business services steam as a CMO there I meet a lot of every single day and they are coming to us with business challenges. What makes the big difference right now? I think in terms of of being a successful brand is the resilience and the adaptive. If you see a company like IBM and you've talked a little bit about how iconic this brand is, it's been there for about 108 hundred and nine years now and it is being able to successfully reinvent itself every turn of the century and every turn of what's happening around us. Uh, it being able to I think it's extremely important. What also is important as a brand is the emphasis that you can feel towards the growth and success of your client's business. I think sets, um, any, any brand apart from growth. So adaptability and empathy. Those would be my two big thanks. We talked to a number of CIO is IBM came out as one of the companies really helping. It wasn't just IBM, there were many, many large organizations, small organizations that really had this empathic, we're in this together. >>That's exactly right. If you look at it, it's, it's both of what we do for our clients but also what we do for our own employees. Um, 95% of our work IBM is not working from home in a safe and secure environment. We've been able to work with our clients and move those teams that work with our clients also in a more safe and safe your environment. For example, something like our cocreation workshop, the IBM garage would think that for cocreation innovation, you all need to be together in a room and put up sticky notes on the board behind you. Okay. Yeah. We have moved into to be a virtual experience and we are now offering free trials of a lot of our products and solutions to our clients for the next 90 days where they can get their most resting business. Yes. Problem solved. You know, we just want to make sure we get that together and get the economy back on track. Get the companies back on the track of. >>Now, one of the other passions of yours I know is this notion of of the cognitive business, a smarter business. And, and I want to ask you, help us understand what that is. You know, beyond the sort of marketing taglines, what is a smarter business? >>Yes, a smarter business is adaptive and resilient. that would be the biggest things, um, that I would highlight. Now, how do they do that? They do that because they are able to have business arms. They use the data that they have at their disposal. Then mind you, this is not the, um, data that is searchable online. 80% of or customer data is with. The organizations themselves. Now, how do they use that data to create business plans, forms that give them competitive advantage is one of the core tenets of what makes a smarter business. The second piece is around workflows that are more intelligent. Now, what makes these work, those more intelligent, what are these words? Those, these are end to end processes. So think of supply chain. How do you make your supply chain more resilient in the covert crisis right now that many, um, many companies are grappling with. >>How do you strengthen your direct to consumer routes? Many companies that used to deliver to stores now are figuring out how to get direct to consumers. So yeah, making these work close more intelligent, more resilient. How do you manage your work of course, right? Um, how do you make sure that the customer data that many employee's work is safe and secure? Sure. So second is the intelligence. Yes. And the third thing is all about the expedience and being able to engage with your customers in you are ways, if you think of some specific industries that are dealing with customer claims, you know, you look at the health, yeah. Provider industry, you're looking at insurance claims and and things like that. They are grappling with this new reality and being to then connect with your customers in new and engaging ways. I think is of utmost importance. So the three things, platforms, most expedience is what makes us smarter business possible. And that business is adaptive and resilient. >>Uh, the way in which brands are engaging dramatically different then it was just a few months ago. And our thinking is there's going to be some permanent changes here. What, what are your thoughts in that regard? >>Absolutely. 100% agree. Um, when we go back work, when we all get out of our home offices, um, it's going to be an a new way of. Right. Okay. And we're already seeing, uh, the engagement within our own work. Forced rising. Yeah. For example, I just came off of a, one of our all hands calls and we create these new videos on how we have new coworkers. We have, you know, pets and kids and parents cared for at home. Yeah. Mmm. all of this though, there is a greater sense of togetherness. There is a greater sense of solidarity. And what inspires me the most is when I look at the people around us in the delivery, uh, deems, you know, across the world. If you look at India, if you look at Philippines in our big teams that are delivering for clients every single day, the resiliency that they have shown in being able to overcome these, these hurdles are giving us ideas that this is not a one and done. >>This could actually be the new normal going beyond it. The automation that we have been able to apply. Um, uh, when you have like AI, how do you processes different if things are more efficient, wouldn't it be a better idea? Just have that go throughout to the rest of, you know, um, what's the new normal around us? So this is absolutely gonna change the way we work, the way we engage with our clients and the kind of, um, new ways of a new routes to market. I think that is the most exciting to me. How can we, how can we feel T and find out new routes to market new customers and be able to provide them value. The Watson Watson digital assistant is, is interesting to me because it allows us as one example of a hospital to be able to put out information that's accurate and timely. >>These things have to be done in near real time. As we know, the Covance situation, it changes daily. You know, maybe the change is, is decelerating a little bit, but it's still several times a week. there was a period of time where it was changing multiple times for days. Yes. So for instance, do I wear a mask? Do I not wear a mask? How far do I have to stand away? Can I can I actually get this by walking behind somebody, et cetera, et cetera. So much information that changed so quickly is the medical community got that. So you have to be able to access that data and you know, to your point about that, yeah, intelligent workflow, be able to do that in near real time. And that's what to me anyway, it's about operationalizing that data, you know, AI capability across the organization. >>Not just in some stovepipe where I have to ask somebody to some analysis for me that that is a huge change in the way in which businesses operate, isn't it? It is a huge change. And I think it's also about visibility, um, that the common man is right now the citizens that the people who are, who are, um, trying to access these technology. Yes. I think it gives them a renewed hope, um, in what technology could really provide. How are we are still being able to work while we are stuck in our homes, how we are still able to buy things online and the not jeopardize the safety of our loved ones who, you know, I'm the who maybe immunocompromised. You cannot go out and shop how we are able to still do the delivery. And, and the beauty of this is we in the technology industry we knew this, so >>go back one year we were working with. Um, no a company that supplies life saving medicines to many parts of Africa, the supply chain there and the technology and the intelligence that we had embedded in that hello made it possible for this human and tech interaction. And I think that is what the beauty of this is the renewed understanding of what technology can do for you. Yeah. And the ability to interact with the technology to make that happen. For example, in Africa, you have to sometimes rely on the Goodwill of the local villagers when there are floods and the pats are run over with water. You have to trigger, um, uh, an email or you know, you have to go to your cell phone so that the locals can then the medicine's over. Yeah. Uh, over the flooded planes to the hospitals. The interaction of the human with the technology that is there to help you and make your lives easier. I think right now there's renewed understanding and acceptance of that and I think it's a, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for all of us. >>I mean, it really is the, the uniqueness of IBM, deep industry expertise, knowledge, and yet know tons of R and D and technology. Oh, galore. Manny, thanks so much for coming back on the cubes. Great to see you. Hopefully next time it'll be face to face, but I really appreciate your time. >>Oh, I, I so wished for that I, so I, I do miss the the live connections, but you know, technology will take us forward till then and, uh, fantastic to be here. I loved it. Toxin. >>Great. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante, but the cube for the IBM digital event experience, you 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Moscone North, this is IBM Think 2019. You're watching theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, and we're going to dig into a segment talking about the cognitive enterprise. And helping me through that, I have one returning guest and one new guest to theCUBE, so furthest away from me, the returning guest is Jesus Mantas, who is the managing partner strategy for the digital platforms and innovation in the IBM Global business services. Jesus, welcome back. >> Thank you >> A little bit of a mouthful on the title. And Mani Dasgupta, CMO of the same group, the IBM Global business services. Thanks so much both for joining us. Alright, so cognitive enterprise. We're going to play a little game here first. Buzzword Bingo here, you know, can we talk about, what cognitive is, where you can't say AI, ML, platform, or enterprise in there. So do we start with the CMO first? >> Sure, I can go. Cognitive enterprise, those are two bing bing right there. What's your core competitive advantage, is what I would say. As a company, do you know why you exist? And once you get to that, how do you then take it to your clients, in a way that would help you grow, and sustain growth in the future. That truly is the future of a smart business, what we call the cognitive enterprise. >> So, Jesus, data is something we talk about a lot, at all the shows, we hear all the tropes about it's the new oil, the rocket fuel that are going to drive companies. You've got strategy and innovation in your title, I'd love you to build off as to where this cognitive enterprise fits in to those big trends of AI that we were talking about. Jinny was just on the keynote stage, talking about Watson, talking about all those pieces, so where does that fit with some of these megawaves that we're talking about. >> I think it's the way that we define this new, smarter organizations that use data to the fullest extent. And I think the way that we define it is, one is this reuse of data, your own data, the external data, and the way you aggregate it, the way that you apply AI or other things to use that. But the technology itself is a means to an end, it's not the end, so these organizations change the way the work flows, and they also train people to make sure that they understand how to operate in a world where they have more information and they can make better decisions with that data that they could before. All of that is what we are labeling. It's more than digital, it's more than AI. It is this concept of a cognitive enterprise. It's a smarter way to do what a company does. >> Okay, I'd love if you could give us a little bit of a compare, contrast. You know, the wave of big data was, there's massive amounts of data, we're going to allow the business practitioner, to be able to leverage that data. Was a great goal, unfortunately when we did research, at least half the time it wasn't really panning out there. Doesn't mean we didn't learn good things, and there weren't lots of great tools and business value generated out there. So, give us, you know, what's the same and what's different, as to this new wave. >> This is how do you make that data work for you, really. It is about, when you talk of data, you think of data that's out there, but 80% of the data today, is owned by you. And by you, I mean a business, right, you own your customers' data, you know your customer better than anybody else. So what do you really do with it? And we are at an inflection point right now, where these technologies that you just talked about, be it blockchain, be it internet of things, be it AI. You can truly bring the power of these technologies, to start making sense of that data that you own, and use it to create, what we call, your competitive advantage, your business platform. So, think about it, I can break it down. Would you just be a retailer of clothes? Or, would you be a fashion expert? And which one would have long-term success for you? Or if you think of a completely different industry, would you be an insurance provider, you sell insurance products, or would you be a risk management expert? That decision to be who you want to be, is really at the heart of the cognitive enterprise, and what we are proposing to the clients here. >> Alright, help frame for us your group, where that fits in. IBM sells hardware, software, has a huge services organization. What are the deliverables and the services and products involved in your group? >> Sure, we are the services organization of IBM, and one of the core reasons why we exist is to help our clients solve their toughest business problems. And so, if you think about it, you think about it as different puzzle pieces, but they don't quite always fit together. We exist to sharpen the edges, to sometimes round the edges, make it customized, make it right for you, so that at the end of the day, you're able to deliver results for your customers and be closer to them than ever before. >> The balance we look at in this multi-cloud world, it'd be nice if you have a little bit more standardization, but of course we know when we talk with businesses, every company is different and is challenging. So, where are the architectural engagements? What are the design criteria? Where is some of the hard work your group gets involved in? >> Yeah, I think we've been spending a lot of work and a lot of time on understanding how to get clients, most clients have done a lot of experimentation. But they rarely figured out how to get that experimentation into real production, at scale, with impact. So that's where we've spent a lot of the time. Fundamentally it has to do with, not only understanding Agile as a method, but being able to combine that with taking that journey all the way through to production, actually integrating with compliance requirements that, if you're in a regulated industry, you have to do, and do that in a way that doesn't become a digital island. I think what we have learned is, when companies see this big divide between, that's the legacy world and that's the new world you can never put those two together. So we came up with this concept of IBM Garage, which is the way in which our team, the services side, can actually bring it all together, and it gets massively enhanced and improved, with technology like containers, like Kubernetes, because now you can actually open up architectures, without reinventing them, and connect them with new technology, and do that synchronously. So you can basically be modernizing your legacy, you can be creating new innovation, in the form of new platforms, but you can do it at the same time, and as you do that through cycles, you also change the skillsets that you have in your company, because if you don't change that skillset, you're always going to have a problem scaling. That's what we do, that's what we help the clients do. >> Yeah, skillsets are so critical. Something we've been hearing over and over is, that whole digital transformation, this isn't some 18 to 24 month going to deploy some software, bring in a lot of consultants, they go and do it, hopefully it works and then they walk away. We're talking about much faster time frames, usually agile methodology, talk about skillset-changing. How do we help customers move fast and accelerate, because that's really the faster, faster, faster, it's just one of those driving things we hear. >> I was talking to one of the clients this morning, and what she said is, it's so helpful to have a framework, just to know where to start, and also to know, sometimes it's there in their mind, but they want to see it in front of them, how to break a problem down into smaller components, so that you can get to value faster, so we have actually a seven-step process, of the cognitive enterprise. So we start with, what is your core platform? In fact, Jesus coined this term, he calls it the digital Darwinism. Do you want to talk about the digital Darwinism, Jesus? >> Yeah, I think it reflects very well this urgency. In the analog world when most businesses are based on how clients choose you based on proximity, based on convenience, based on brand, based on trust, based on price. Even if you're not great at it, you have enough friction in an analog world, that the clients will keep coming. All of us and more of our things that we do every day, are in our phone, and they are digitally accessible, all of that friction disappears, and what happens then is, the people that are very good at something becomes, everybody goes to them, and the people that are not the best. I call it, they either thrive or they die very quickly. So in the digital world, being really good at something is a lot more important than in the analog world. You can survive being average in the analog world. Once you get to the digital world, it's transparent. Everyone will know, you're the best, you're not the best, and nobody would pick you if you're not the best, so it's really important to reconfigure yourself, and understand the trust and your brand, understand how digitally you translate what you are, and then make sure that your clients will keep choosing you in a digital world as much as they were choosing you in an analog world. >> I tell you, that resonates really well with me. The old line you used to hear is, if you want to get something done, give it to someone who's really busy, because they will usually figure out a way to do it. I spent a handful of years in my career doing operations, and what I did when I was in operations, when I talked to people in IT, is tell me next quarter and next year, do you think you're going to have more or less work more data to deal with, more thing thing, and of course the answer is, we all know that pace of change is the only thing that's constant in this industry. So, if I don't figure out how I automate, change, or get rid of the stuff that I'm not good at, we're just going to continue to be buried. Are there commonalities that you see, as success factors or how do you help measure, what are some key KPIs that customers walk out of, when they go through an engagement like this? >> Yeah, just carrying on from where Jesus left off, the second step is very close to what you were just saying. It's about the data and how you're using that data. So some of the key success factors would be, what is the output of it, and it's not in the proof of concept phase anymore. It is real-time, it is big, people are doing it at a grand scale. I think, Jesus, maybe we take it through the seven steps, and then the key success criteria comes right at you, right after that. So after you do the workflow, after you do the data for internal competitive advantage, we go to the next step, which is all about workflows. You want to talk a bit about that? >> Yeah, I think one of the advantages that artificial intelligence brings to companies is, the fact that you can now, I mean as a human, there is only so much data that you can ingest. There is a limit, and most businesses try to optimize what that is and how you make decisions. But, artificial intelligence becomes this aid that will read and summarize things for you. So now you can take into account, into workflows, massive amounts of information, to optimize, or even not having to do things you had to do before, at a scale that, as a human you cannot do. This idea of inserting AI into workflows is the real idea. I think we talk a lot about AI as a technology, but that's just a means to an end. The end is a workflow that is embedded with blockchain, with AI, with IOT, and then people that are trained to engage with those workflows, so you actually change the output. And I think that's the big idea, that step of, it is workflow that is embedded with AI, it's not just about the technology, it's the combination of the main industry, and the technology that actually creates that >> And where does it sit, right? Where does it sit? Your tech choices, the architecture choices are also important. And we joked about this, like if you really like Netflix, and you're watching something and something is coming up after three seconds, how does it know what you really like? But it does, but think about this. This wouldn't be possible on a 1950s television set. So you've got to think about what's your tech platform of choice, how do you upgrade that, and what's the architecture look like? >> I want to give you both the final word. Lots of users here at the show. What are you most excited about? Give us an insight on some of the conversations you've been having already. >> Amazing conversations so far. The really aha-moment was, people really like to share within their peer set, so this morning I was at the business exchange, and people were having conversations, but just to bounce it off someone, who is facing the same issues that you do, across different industries, was a really aha-moment, and we have the IBM Garage actually right behind us on the other side of Moscone. We set it up so that clients can come in, and unpack their problems, and we helped them think it through, used design thinking, help them think it through. We are hoping in the next couple of days, we get lots of brilliant ideas, come from the sessions like that, and really putting the customer at the core of what you want to do. >> It's a recurring theme of all the client conversations, this idea of, they all want the speed and agility of a startup at the strength and scale of an enterprise. That's what they're asking us, as the services organization of IBM, to do is, help us not just experiment, that was good before, not good enough now. Help us do that with agility, with new technologies, but we want it to mean something at scale, globally implement it, create an impact. And I think again, the way in which hybrid multi-cloud can play into that, the way in which IBM Garage can combine the legacy world with the new world and moving people into new platforms is a really exciting method and approach that is resonating a lot with clients. >> Really appreciate you both sharing updates and absolutely as you painted a picture, just as in 1950 we didn't have the tools to run Netflix, now in 2019, we have the tools for customers to be able to help build the cognitive enterprise and not only test but get into real-world deployment at a speed that was really unheralded before today. Thanks so much for joining. We'll be back with more coverage here from IBM Think 2019. I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)