(upbeat instrumental music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studios for a CUBE Conversation. It's just a couple of days until RSA kicks off a huge security conference. I think the biggest security conference in the industry. And we've got a security expert here in the house and we're excited to have him stop by. It's Manish Gupta, the Founder and CEO of ShipLeft. Manish, great to see you. >> Yeah, great to see you too, thank you. >> Welcome. So you must be really busy getting everything buttoned up for next week. >> Oh yeah, absolutely ready to go. >> Alright so for the people that aren't familiar with ShiftLeft, give us kind of the basic overview. >> Yeah of course. So ShiftLeft about a two and a half year old company. We started with the problem of you know, the software's driving innovation all around us, right? I mean, we see it in autonomous cars, IoTs, increasingly SwaaS software in the cloud. And all of the software needs to be figured out, how are we going to protect it. And so it's a big problem, and we've been working on it for about two and a half years now. Raised our Series A and most recently in the last two weeks, we announced our Series B of 20 Million. >> Congratulations. >> Amazing team, yeah! >> So, you've been in the security space for a long time. >> Correct. >> And RSA's a giant conference. I don't know what the numbers will be this year. I'm sure it'll be north of 40 thousand people. Moscone North, South and West will be full. Every hotel is full. But it kind of begs a question, like, haven't we got some of the security thing figured out? It's just a never-ending kind of startup opportunities as there's new ways to approach this kind of fundamental problem which is, how do we keep the bad guys out. How do we keep them from doing bad things while the surface area expands exponentially. The attack surface expands. And we hear every day that people are getting breached and breached and breached. So the whole ecosystem, and kind of approach has completely changed over the time that you've been involved in this business. >> Indeed, as you said, I've been in cybersecurity for a long time. I like to say the last 15 years, first part of my career, I was focused on detecting viruses. Then it became worms. Then most recently at FireEye, we were detecting advanced malware nation-state attacks like APT1s and APT3s. But it was then that sort of, it dawned on me that, look about 80% of security money gets spent on detecting bad stuff, right? And that's reactive. Essentially what that means is we are letting the bad guy shoot first and then we are trying to figure out, okay what are we going to do now. >> We're waiting like 150 days right, down from 230 days, before we even-- >> Exactly. >> know that he's shootin' at us. >> That's right. Now couple that with as you said, the attack surface is ever increasing, right. Because we're using software in every which way which means all of this stuff needs to be protected. And so that's why we were wanted to start with a fresh perspective which is to say, let's not worry about attacks. Because that is not in our control. That's in the bad guys' control. What can we control? Which is our software. And so, that is why what we do at ShiftLeft is to understand the software very quickly, extract its attack surface in minutes, and then allow you to fix whatever you want to, whatever you can during the time frame you have available. And here comes the next innovation which is, if you don't fix anything, which is almost always the case, we will protect the application in production. Now the key is, we protect the application in production against its vulnerabilities. So we never ever react to threats. We don't care. >> So you have like a wrapper around the known vulnerabilities within the code. Is that a good desciption? >> Yes, you could absolutely, that's a good way of thinking about it is you know, let's say a million lines of code. We find 10 vulnerabilities in it. So it's only in 10 specific instances of the application. Now we also know what vulnerabilities exist on line 100 and line 200 and so on. And with that knowledge, we can very precisely protect each vulnerability. >> It's a really interesting approach. You know, one of the things I find fascinating with security is it's kind of like insurance. >> Mm hmm. >> In theory, you could spend 110% of all your revenue budget >> Correct. >> on security, but you can't so you have to make trade off decisions. You have to make business value decisions and you have to prioritize. So this is a really different approach, that you're offering an option either to fix the known, and/or just to protect the known, so that there's some variability in the kind of the degree of investment that the customer wants to spend. >> You summed it up well, Jeff. I think the fundamental challenge with security has been that. Is that ya know, 15 years ago we've asked our customers to buy antivirus. Then we asked them to buy intrusion detection. Then we asked them to buy nation-state or malware protection. Now we're asking them to buy machine learning based mechanisms to detect more threats, right? And so the funnel is like this, right, but it never goes down to zero. And so tomorrow some other approach will come up to detect the 0.1% of the malware. And guess what? The sys-os really don't have a choice right? Because they have to protect their organization. So they have to buy that tool also. Now in this entire process, you never get better, right? Notice that you never get better. All you're doing is just reacting. And because a virus from 15 years ago theoretically could still come and attack you, you can't throw away that too either. Right, and so that is precisely why I'm so passionate about work we're doing at ShiftLeft is we will protect you from, in sort of in bad continuous improvement for the first time in security. Find the vulnerabilities, fix them. But if you can't fix them, we will protect you. >> Now, what about another kind of big shift in the way software is delivered, is everything is an API to someone else's software. And oftentimes there's many many components that are being pulled in from many many places that contribute to, but aren't software that I control personally. >> Correct. >> So how do you guys deal with those types of challenges? >> Great question, great question. And you know, the popular saying is we are becoming an API economy. >> Right, right. >> And what we exchange on our APIs is increasingly a lot of data. And you're right. If you think about historical approaches, we will now have to break open the API on a network, to find out what it contains. And for various reasons, super hard to do, lots of operational efficiencies, inefficiencies, excuse me. And this is again where the ShiftLeft approach is rather unique. See because we go down to the very foundation. It's hard work right, but we go down to the very foundation, what is the source code of the API. So we will understand, okay, well this is what you should be putting in the API, right? But then I see that a variable called Personally Identifiable Information is being put into that API. I can now tell you before this becomes a problem that'll embarrass you in the newspapers. I, we will tell you, hey look, you are writing PII to a third party API without encryption, right. So you get to fix the problem at the very root where it starts. >> So but, can you wrap the known vulnerability in a partner piece of software? >> Absolutely we can. >> As it interfaces with my software? >> Correct. So, there are two aspects to it right. The first is what are you putting into that API, right, that is completely in your control. >> Right. >> Right, we don't really need to understand the API for that matter. So that is one particular use case we can absolutely protect you there, right. The second is when the API, when integrated into your application, makes your application vulnerable. Right, so I'll give you an example. This happened to one our our customers. This is a 3,500 person technical, technology company based here in Santa Clara. They were using a third party API. Very popular one. That third party API in turn was using a Jackson databind library, just an open source library. Now, as a company when we decide to use that API, we don't really worry about, we don't have visibility into like what all is it hurting. >> Downstream. >> Exactly. >> And how many feeds are in that one particular one. >> That's right. And so this is the supply chain of software. Right? Multiple components are now being brought together very quickly to create the functionality that you want to deliver to your users, to your customers. But in this pace of execution, we need tools like ShiftLeft to tell us hey what are we hurting. And whatever we are hurting, how is that impacting the security of our application. >> Right, right. Pretty interesting stuff, you got another component of something that's really important today that wasn't necessarily when you started this adventure. And that's the open source play. >> Yes. >> So as I understand it, you guys started really from more of an open source play and then ShiftLeft grew out of kind of commercializing what was that open source project. I wonder if can explain a little bit more. >> Yeah, I would love to. So the foundation of what we do is a technology called Core Property Graph. So, this is an invention of our chief scientist, Dr. Fabian Yamaguchi, one of the foremost authorities in the world, in the area of understanding code, right. And so as part of his PhD thesis, he came up with this technology and decided to open source a tool called Joern. >> Joern. J-O-E-R-N. >> That's right. >> Not easy to figure out, Joern yes. (laughing) >> Exactly. And it's actually his friend's name so that's how he named it. >> Ah, is that right? >> So he open sourced it and several organizations around the world have since used it to find very hard to find vulnerabilities. Right so as an example, this is a IEEE paper where this technology was used by Fabian to find 18 zero-day vulnerabilities in the main line Linux code, right. So arguably one of the most complex pieces of code on the planet, 15 million lines of code. Arguably one of the most analyzed pieces of code on the planet. And as recently as 2015, he finds 18 zero-days. And no false positives. Every single vulnerabilty has been acknowledged and fixed by the Linux community. That's the power. And so we use that as the foundation. So you write that as open source but since then we've done a lot of incremental work on enhancing it to make it enterprise ready. And that is a product we offer. as call this Ocular. Where we give you, think about it as my best analogy, is just like Google Maps for your source code. >> Yeah, I think it's a good analogy and he goes through that in one of his videos kind of explaining the mapping. >> Correct. >> Of different layers of kind of visibility into how you should look at software code. >> Indeed. >> Yeah alright, well before we let ya go, you got some exciting things happening next week beyond just the regular activities at RSA. You guys have been invited to participate in a special activity. I wonder if you can share a little bit and give a plug and maybe we can send some fans up to, I dunno if it's going to be audience participation in the judging. >> Yes. >> Go ahead and let us know what you're doing. >> Thank you for giving me that opportunity. Yeah super, super excited about, so we've been selected as one of the top 10 finalists for the RSA Innovation Sandbox. As you mentioned in your opening, RSA is the biggest security trade show in the world. And so now this has become the most seminal way of highlighting innovative work being done in the security industry. So I get three minutes to pitch ShiftLeft in front of an audience of about 1,500 to 2,000 people. Really looking forward to that. >> Well I dunno if you can speed this up to only three minutes (laughing) but I'm sure you'll be able to nail it. >> I will try. >> Alright well Manish, thanks for taking a few minutes of your day and I'm sure we'll see you in San Francisco next week. >> Thank you very much, thank you. >> Alright, It's Manish, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're having a CUBE Conversation in our Palo Alto studios. Thanks for watchin' and we'll see ya next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering Spark Summit East 2017. Brought to you by Databricks. Now, here are your hosts Dave Vellante and George Gilbert. >> Welcome back to snowy Boston, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here at Spark Summit East, hashtag SparkSummit. Manish Gupta is here, he's the CMO at Redis Labs. Manish, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, good to be here. >> So, you know, 10 years ago you say you're in the database business and everybody would yawn. Now you're the life of the party. >> Yeah, the world has changed. I think the party has lots and lots of players. We are happy to be on the top of that heap. >> It is a crowded space, so how does Redis Labs differentiate? >> Redis Labs is the company behind the massively popular open source Redis, and Redis became popular because of its performance primarily, and then simplicity. Developers could very easily run up an instance of Redis, solve some very hairy problems, and time to market was a big issue for them. Redis Enterprise took that forward and enabled it to be mission critical, ready for the largest workloads, ready for things that the enterprises need in a highly distributed clustered environment. So they have resilience and they benefit from the performance of Redis. >> And your claim to fame, as you say, is that top-gun performance, you guys will talk about some of the benchmarks later. We're talking about use cases like fraud detection, as example. Obviously ad serving would be another one. But add some color to that if you would. >> Redis is whatever you need to make real time real, Redis plays a very important role. It is able to deliver millions of operations per second with sub-millisecond latency, and that's the hallmark. With data structures that comprise Redis, you can solve the problems in a way, and the reason you can get that performance is because the data structures take some very complex issues and simplify the operation. Depending on the use case, you could use one of the data structures, you can mix and match the data structures, so that's the power of a Redis. We're used for ITO, for machine learning, for metering of billing and telecommunications environment, for personalization, for ad serving with companies like Groupon and others, and the list goes on and on. >> Yeah, you've got a big list on your website of all your customers, so you can check that out. Let's get the business model piece out of the way. Everybody's always fascinated. Okay, you got open source, how do you make money? How does Redis make money? >> Yeah, you know, we believe strategically fostering the growth of open source is foundational in our business model, and we invest heavily both R&D and marketing to do that. On top of that, to enable enterprise success and deployment of Redis, we have the mission critical, highly available Redis Enterprise offerings. Our monetization is entirely based on the Redis Enterprise platform, which takes advantage of the data structures and performance of core Redis, but layers on top management and the capabilities that make things like auto-recovery, auto-sorting, management much, much easier for the enterprise. We make that available in four deployment models. The enterprise can select us as Redis cloud, which runs on a public infrastructure on any of the four major platforms. We also allow for the enterprise to select a VPC environment in their own private clouds. They can also get software and self-manage that, or get our software and we can manage it for them. Four deployment options are the modalities in other ways where the enterprise customers help us monetize. >> When you said four major platforms, you meant cloud platforms? >> That's right. AWS, >> So, AWS, Azure >> Azure, Google, and IBM. >> Is IBM software, got there in the fourth, alright. >> That's right, all four. >> Go to the whip IBM. Go ahead, George. >> Along the lines of the business model, and we were sort of starting to talk about this earlier offline, you're just one component in building an application, and there's always this challenge of, well, I can manage my component better than anyone else, but it's got to fit with a bunch of other vendors' components. How do you make that seamless to the customer so that it's not defaulting over to a cloud vendor who has to build all the components themselves to make it work together? >> Certainly, you know, database is an integral part of your stack, of your application stack, but it is a stack, so there are other components. Redis and Redis Labs has a very, very large ecosystem within which we operate. We work closely with others for interfaces, for connectors, for interoperability, and that's a sustained environment that we invest in on a continuous basis. >> How do handle application consistency? A lot of in the no-SQL world, even in the AWS world, you hear about eventual consistency, but in the real-time world, there's a need for more rigorous, what's your philosophy there, how do you approach that? >> I think that's an issue that many no-SQL vendors have not been able to crack. Redis Labs has been at the forefront of that. We are taking an approach, and we are offering what we call tuneable consistency. Depending on the economics and the business model and the use case, the needs of consistency vary. In some cases, you do need immediate consistency. In other cases, you don't ever need consistency. And to give that flexibility to the customer is very important, so we've taken the approach where you can go from loose consistency to what we call strong eventual consistency. That approach is based on a fairly well trusted architecture and approach called CRDT, Conflict-free Replication Data Type. That approach allows us to, regardless of what the cluster magnitude or the distribution looks like geographically, we can deliver strong eventual consistency which meets the needs of majority of the customers. >> What are you seeing in terms of, you know, also in that a discussion about acid properties, and how many workloads really need acid properties. What are seeing now as you get more cloud native workloads and more no-SQL oriented workloads in terms of the requirement for those acid properties? >> First of all, we truly believe and agree that not all environments required acid support. Having said that, to be a truly credible database, you must support acid, and we do. Redis is acid-compli, supports acid, and Redis Labs certainly supports that. >> I remember on a stage once with Curt Monash, I'm sure you know Curt, right? Very famous database person. And he basically had a similar answer. But you would say that increasingly there are workloads that, the growth workloads don't necessarily require that, is that fair statement? >> That's a fair statement I would say. >> Dave: Great, good. >> There's a trade-off, though, when you talked about strong eventual consistency, potentially you have to wait for, presumably, a quorum of the partitions, I'm getting really technical here, but in other words, you've got a copy of the data here-- >> Dave: Good CMO question. (laughing) >> But your value proposition to the customers, we get this stuff done fast, but if you have to wait for a couple other servers to make sure that they've got the update, that can slow things way down. How does that trade-off work? >> I think that's part of the power of our architecture. We have a nothing shared, single proxy architecture where all of the replication, the disaster recovery, and the consistency management of the back end is handled by the proxy, and we ensure that the performance is not degraded when you are working through the consistency challenges, and that's where significant amount of IP is in the development of that proxy. >> I'll take that as a, let's go into it even more offline. >> Manish: Sounds good. >> And I have some other CMO questions, if I may. A lot of young companies like yours, especially in open source world, when they go to get the word out, they rely on their community, their open source community, and that's the core, and that makes a lot of sense, it's their peeps. As you become, grow more into enterprise grade apps and workloads, how do you extend beyond that? What is Redis Labs doing to sort of reach that C-Suite, are you even trying to reach that C-Suite up level to messaging? How do you as a CMO deal with those challenges? >> Maybe I'll begin by talking about our personas that matter to us in the ecosystem. The enterprise level, the architects, the developers, are the primary target, which we try to influence in early part of the decision cycle, it's at the architectural level. The ultimate teams that manage, run, and operate the infrastructure is certainly the DevOps, or the operations teams, and we spend time there. All along for some of the enterprise engagements, CIOs, chief data officers, and CTOs tend to play a very important role in the decisions and the selection process, and so, we do influence and interact with the C-Suite quite heavily. What the power of the open source gives us is that groundswell of love for Redis. Literally you can walk around a developer environment, such as the Spark Summit here, and you'll find people wearing Redis Geek shirts. And we get emails from Kazakhstan and strange, places from all over the world where we don't necessarily have salesforce, and requesting t-shirts, "send us stickers." Because people love Redis, and the word of mouth, that ground level love for the technology enables the decisions to be so much easier and smoother. We're not convincing, it's not a philosophical battle anymore. It's simply about the use case and the solution where Redis Enterprise fits or doesn't fit. >> Okay, so it really is that core developer community that are your advocates, and they're able to internally sell to the C-Suite. A lot of times the C-Suite, not the CTO so much, but certainly the CIO, CDO are like, "Yeah, yeah, they're geekin' out on some new hot thing. "What's the business impact?" Do you get that question a lot, and how do address it? >> I think then you get to some of the very basic tools, ROI calculators and the value proposition. For the C-level, the message is very simple. We are the least risky bet. We are the best long-term proposition, and we are the best cost answer for their implementation. Particularly as the needs are increasingly becoming more real-time in nature, they are not batch processed. Yes, there will always be some of that, but as the workloads are becoming, there is a need for faster processing, there is a need for quick insights, and real-time is not a moniker anymore, right. Real-time truly needs to be delivered today. And so, I think those three propositions for the C-Suite are resonating very well. >> Let's talk about ROI calculators for a second. I love talking about it because it underscores what a company feels as though its core value proposition is. I would think with Redis Labs part of the value proposition is you are enabling new types of workloads and new types of, whether it's sources of revenue or productivity. And these are generally telephone numbers as compared to some of the cost savings head to head to your competition, which of course you want to stress as well because the CFO cares about the cap-backs. What do you emphasize in that, and we don't have to get into the calculator itself, but in the conceptual model, what's the emphasis? Is it on those sort of business value attributes, is it on the sort of cost-savings? How do you translate performance into that business value? A lot of questions there, but if you could summarize, that'd be great. >> Well, I think you can think of it in three dimensions. The very first one is, does the performance support the use case or the solution that is required? That's the very first one. The second piece that fits in it, and that's in our books, that's operations per second and the latency. The second piece is the cost side, and that has two components to it. The first component is, what are the compute requirements? So, what is the infrastructure underneath that has to support it? And the efficiency that Redis and Redis Enterprise has is dramatically superior to the alternatives. And so, the economics show up. To run a million operations per second, we can do that on two nodes as opposed to alternative, which might need 50 nodes or 300 nodes. >> You can utilize your assets on the floor much better than maybe the competition can. >> This is where the data structures come into play quite a bit. That's one part of-- >> Dave: That's one part of the cost. >> Yeah. The other part of the cost is the human cost. >> Dave: People, yeah. >> And because, and this goes back to the open source, because the people available with the talent and the competency and appreciation for Redis, it's easy to procure those people, and your cost of acquisition and deploying goes down quite a bit. So, there's a human cost to it. The third dimension to this whole equation is time to market. And time to market is measured in many ways. Is it lost revenue if it takes you longer to get there? And Redis consistently from multiple analysts' reports gets top ranking for fastest way to get to market because of how simple it is. Beyond performance, simplicity is a second hallmark. >> That's a benefit acceleration, and you can quantify that. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And that's a revenue parameter, right. >> For years, people have been saying this Cambrian explosion of databases is unsustainable, and sort of in response we've gotten a squaring of the Cambrian explosion. The question is, with your sort of very flexible, I don't want to get too geeky, 'cause Dave'll cut me off, but the idea that you can accommodate time series and all these different ways of, all these different types of data, are we approaching a situation where customers can start consolidating their database choices and have fewer vendors, fewer products in their landscape? >> I think not only are we getting there, but we must get there. You've got over 300 databases in the marketplace, and imagine a CIO or an architect trying to have to sort through that to make a decision, it's difficult, and you certainly cannot support it from a trading standpoint or from an investment, cap-backs, and all that standpoint. What we have done with Redis is introduce something called Redis Modules. We released that at the last RedisConf in May in San Francisco. And the Redis Module is a very simple concept but a very powerful concept. It's an API which can be utilized to take an existing development effort, written as CC++, that can be ported onto the Redis data structures. This gives you the flexibility without having to reinvent the wheel every single time to take that investment, port it on top of Redis, and you get the performance, and you can make now Redis becomes a multi-model database. And I'm going to get to your answer of how do you address the multiple needs so you don't need multiple databases. To give you some examples, since the introduction of Redis Modules, we have now over 50 modules that have been published by a variety of places, not just Redis Labs. To indicate how simple and how powerful this model is. We took Lucene and developed the world's fastest full-text search engine as a module. We have very recently introduced Redis machine learning as a module that works with Spark ML and serves as a great serving layer in the machine learning domain. Just two very simple examples, but work that's being done ported over onto Redis data structures and now you have ability to do some very powerful things because of what Redis is. And this is the way future's going to be. I think every database is trying to offer multi-functionality to be multi-model in nature, but instead of doing it one step at a time, this approach gives us the ability to leverage the entire ecosystem. >> Your point being consolidation's inevitable in this business as well. >> Manish: Architectural consolidation. >> Yes, but also you would think, company consolidation, isn't that going to follow? What do you make of the market, and tell me, if you look back on the database market and what Oracle was able to achieve in the face of, maybe not as many players, but you had Sybase and Informix, and certainly DB2's still around, and SQL Server's still around, but Oracle won, and maybe it was SQL standards that. It's great to be lucky and good. Can we learn from that, or is this a whole different world? Are there similarities, and how do you, how do you see that consolidation potentially shaking out, if you agree that there will be consolidation? >> Yeah, there has to be, first and foremost, an architectural approach that solves the OPEX, CAPEX challenge for the enterprise. But beyond that, no industry can sustain the diversity and the fragmentation that exists in database world. I think there will always be new things coming out, of universities particularly. There's great innovation and research happening, and that is required to augment. But at the end of the day, the commercial enterprises cannot be of the fragmented volume that we have today in the database world, so there is going to be some consolidation, and it's not unnatural. I think it's natural, it's expected, time will tell what that looks like. We've seen some of our competitors acquire smaller companies to add graph functionality, to add search functionality. We just don't think that's the level of consolidation that really moves the needle for the industry. It's got to be at a higher level of consolidation. >> I don't want to, don't take this the wrong way, don't hate me for saying it, but is Oracle sort of the enemy, if I can say that. I mean, it's like, no, okay. >> Depends how you define enemy. >> I'm not going to go do many of the workloads that you're talking about on Oracle, despite what Larry tells me at Oracle OpenWorld. And I'm not going to make Oracle my choice for any of the workloads that you guys are working on. I guess in terms, I mean, everybody who's in the database business looks at that and say, "Hey, we can do it cheaper, better, "more productively," but, could you respond to that, and what do you make of Amazon's moves in the database world? Does that concern you? >> We think of Amazon and Oracle as two very different philosophies, if you can use that word. The approach we have taken is really a forward-looking approach and philosophy. We believe that the needs of the market need to be solved in new ways, and new ways should not be encumbered by old approaches. We're not trying to go and replicate what was done in the SQL world or in a relational database world. Our approach is how do you deliver a multi-model database that has the real-time attribute attached to it in a way that requires very limited computer force power and very few resources to manage? You take all of those things as kind of the core philosophy, which is a forward-looking philosophy. We are definitely not trying to replicate what an Oracle used to be. AWS I think is a very different animal. >> Dave: Interesting, though. >> They have defined the cloud, and I think play a very important role. We are a strong partner of theirs, much of our traffic runs on AWS infrastructure, certainly also on other clouds. I think AWS is one to watch in how they evolve. They have database offerings, including Redis offerings. However, we fully recognize, and the industry recognizes that that's not to the same capability as Redis Enterprise. It's open sourced Redis managed by AWS, and that's fine as a cache, but you cannot persist, and you really cannot have a multi-model capability that's a full database in that approach. >> And you're in the marketplace. >> Manish: We are in the marketplace. >> Obviously. >> And actually, we announced earlier, a few weeks ago, that you can buy and get Redis cloud access, which is Redis Enterprise cloud, on AWS through the integrated billing approach on their marketplace. You can have an AWS account and get our service, the true Redis Enterprise service. >> And as a software company, you'd figure, okay, the cloud infrastructures are service, we don't care what infrastructure it runs on. Whatever the customer wants, but you see AWS making these moves up-market, you got to obviously be paying attention to that. >> Manish: Certainly, certainly. >> Go ahead, last question. >> Interesting that you were saying that to solve this problem of proliferation of choice it has to be multi-model with speed and low resource requirement. If I were to interpret that from an old-style database perspective, it would be you're going to get, the multi-model is something you are addressing now, with the extensibility, but the speed means taking out that abstraction layer that was the query optimizer sort of and working almost at the storage layer, or having an option to do that. Would that be a fair way to say? >> No, I don't think that necessarily needs to be the case. For us, speed translates from the simplicity and the power of the data structures. Instead of having to serialize, deserialize before you process data in a Spark context, or instead of having to look for data that is perhaps not put in sorted sets for a use case that you might be doing, running a query on, if the data is already handled through one of the data structures, you now have a much faster query time, you now have the ability to reach the data in the right approach. And again, this is no-SQL, right, so it's a schema lesson write and it sets your scheme as you want it be on read. We marry that with the data structures, and that gives you the ultimate speed. >> We have to leave it there, but Manish, I'll give you the last word. Things we should be paying attention to for Redis Labs this year, events, announcements? >> I think the big thing I would leave the audience with is RedisConf 2017. It's May 31 to June 2 in San Francisco. We are expecting over 1,000 people. The brightest minds around Redis of the database world will be there, and anybody who is considering deploying the next generation database should attend. >> Dave: Where are you doing that? >> It's the Marriott Marquis in San Franciso. >> Great, is that on Howard Street, across from the--? >> It is right across from Moscone. >> Great, awesome location. People know it, easy to get to. Well, congratulations on the success. We'll be lookin' for outputs from that event, and hope to see you again on theCUBE. >> Thank you, enjoyed the conversation. >> Alright, good. Keep it right there, everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Spark Summit East. Be right back. (upbeat electronic rock music)

(upbeat music) >> Facilitator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with other leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Java is the world's most popular programming language. And it remains the leading application development platform. But what's the status of Java? What a customers doing? And very importantly, what is Oracle's and the community strategy with respect to Java? Welcome everybody to this Java power panel on theCUBE. I'm your host, Dave Vellante. Manish Gupta here, he's the Vice President of Global Marketing at Java for Oracle, Donald Smith is also on the panel, and he's the Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle and we're joined by David Floyd who is a CTO of Wikibon Research and has done a number of research activities on this very topic. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Manish, I want to start with you. Can you help us understand really what dig into Oracle strategy with respect to Java. The technology, the licensing, the support. How has that evolved over time? Take us through that. >> Dave, with 51 billion JVMs deployed worldwide, Java has truly cemented its position as the language of innovation and the technology world. There's no question about that. In fact, I like to say it's really the language of empowerment. Given the the impact it has had numerous applications ranging from the Mars Rover to genomics and everything in between. As Oracle acquired sign over 10 years ago, it's really kept it front of mind, two aspects of what we want to do with the technology and the platform. The first one was to ensure there was broad accessibility to the technology and the platform for anybody that wanted to benefit from it. And the second one was to ensure that the ecosystem remained vibrant and thriving throughout. I managed to do both. And underpinning these two objectives were really three pillars of our strategy. The first one was around trust, ensuring that openness and transparency of the technology was as was before continued to be the case going forward. The second element of that within the trust pillar was to ensure that as enterprises invested in the technology that investment was protected, it was not, you invest and you lose over a period of time in a backward compatibility, interoperability, certifications, were all foundational to the platform itself to the features, to the innovation moving forward. And more recently as we have rethought to the support, the licensing and the overall structure of the pricing that we have ensured that ultimately the trust comes along in those dimensions as well. So the launch of the Java subscription came along with, pay as you go model, it's a transparent pricing structure and discuss structure published on the website. So you can go and see what it would cost for the desktop on servers or cloud deployment. So those were the things that made kind of the first pillar happen. The second one was Dunno innovation. Over the last 25 years, Java has stood the test of time. It has delivered the needs of today while preparing for the future. And that remains the case. It is not something that has sort of focused on the fat of the day and the hot thing for the day, but really more important that it is prepared to deal with the mission critical, massive scale deployments that can run for years, for decades, in some cases. And keeping that in mind, Oracle has continued to put more and more technology into the open source world with every release that comes out, you can see 80 plus percent of the contributions come from Oracle. So that's the second pillar around innovation. And the third piece of the strategy has been around predictability. Ensuring that Java, the technology and platform perform as advertised, and that goes into the feature releases, it goes into the release process, it goes into the fact that you were broadly within the open JDK environment for developing and executing the roadmap. From a CIO standpoint, it's important to know that the technology used to develop your applications has talent around. And your, if you're going to develop something like Java, you'll find the right Java engineers to do the job. That is not a question, right? And so that's part of predictability. And finally, again with the change in the six months release cadence that came about three years ago, with the release of Java 10, we've really made sure that it's not, no, a bunch of things come about. You don't know when they're going to be released, but you know, like clockwork, you'll have a new Java list every six months. And that's been the case every March and September, since Java 10, you've had a new release of Java with certain features that come up and we just launched Java 15. So trust innovation predictability, have really been the three pillars on which we've executed the strategy for Java. >> Excellent, thank you for that intro, and we're going to get into it now. I'm glad you mentioned the sun acquisition. I said at the time that Java was the linchpin of that acquisition, many people, of course, we looked at the integration piece with the hardware, but it was really Java and the capabilities that it brings. And of course, a lot of Oracle software written in Java and not the least of which is a fusion. But now let's get into the components of this. And I want to talk a little bit about the methodology of this and going to call on you David Floyer. But essentially my understanding is that Wikibon went through and David, you led this, you did a technical deep dive, which you always do, did a number of in depth interviews with Java customers. And then of course you also did a web survey and then you built from that data and economic model. So you can try to understand the sort of dimensions of the financials if you will. So what were your key findings there? >> So the key findings were that Java was in a good state that people were happy with the Java. The second key finding is that the business case itself for using the Oracle services, the subscription services was good. It didn't mean to say that that wasn't for every company, the right way to do it, but there was a very good return on that. And the third area was that there was a degree of confidence that the new way of doing things, the six-month cycle, as opposed to the three-year cycle was overall a benefit to the rate of change, the ability for them to introduce new features quickly. >> Okay, well, I mean, you know, and I read that research. And to me my takeaways where I saw the continued relevance of Java, which is kind of goes without saying, but a lot of times it gets lost in the headlines. That subscription piece is key. We're going to get into some of the economics as to how that affects customers and it saves you money. And the other piece was the roadmap becoming more transparent. And I don't want to dig into that a little bit, but before we do, let's get into that innovation component Manish, mentioned that several times, but Don, I want to go to you guys. We have a slide on the various components of the innovation. If you would bring this up and Don I wonder if you could talk to this and give us some examples if you would. >> Yeah, sure. So we were the number one development platform for the last 25 years. We want to be the number one development platform for the next 25 years. And in order to do that, we have to be constantly innovating and constantly innovating not only the business side in terms of the subscription and the support offerings and commercial features like Manish was talking about, but also the platform in general. And so the way we like to talk about innovation as we break it down by these pillars that you can see on the slide. And so the first pillar is continuous improvements to the language. So this is watching developers trying to write the same piece of code over and over again, and us asking, can we make you more efficient? Can we give you more language features that reduce the amount of boilerplate that you have to write? The second pillar is a project that we just announced a few months ago called Leyden. And the idea with Leyden is addressing the longterm pinpoints of Java slow startup time and time to peak performance. So if you go back 10 years ago, everybody knows about Java as an enterprise platform, Java EE application servers. They all had the notion of being very long lived. And so Java at that time would be optimized towards long lived applications, startup, and performance. Where if it took a little while to get there, it didn't matter as long as when it got there, it was super fast. And so we're trying to get that peak performance faster in the world of microservices. In a similar vein with project loom, we're looking at making concurrency simple again, looking at how developers are doing more reactive style programming and realizing that the threading model needs to be rethought from the ground up, that project is looking really, really good. Then we have project Panama. Project Panama is all about making it easier to connect Java with native libraries. Valhalla is all about improving, there's a couple of benefits, but it's all about improving memory density and being able to access and iterate and operate over primitive data types at super fast speeds by better optimizing how that information is stored in memory. And then the other pillar of the final pillar that we have been working on from an innovation perspective is ZGC. We introduced a new garbage collector technology a few years ago, G1GCE a generational garbage collector with the eye towards making garbage collection in Java pause lists. So if you, again, if you go back in time and look at the history of Java, memory management is awesome, but there's always that cost and risk of a garbage collection cycle, taking a bit of time away from a critical application. And ZGC is all about getting rid of that. So lots of innovation, lots of different pillars going on right now. >> Awesome, I'm impressed. There's something after Valhalla. I thought that was Nirvana. (laughing) But now, and these are all open source projects, right? And you guys obviously provide committers, there are other people in the open source world who provide that, is that correct Don? >> Yeah, that's correct. We have about 80% of the contributions in open JDK. We are the stewards of open JDK and lead the project. Most of the pillars I talked about here are you know Oracle folks working on that. >> Awesome. Okay, let's get into some of the data. David, I want to come back to you and talk about some of the survey results guys, if you bring up that next slide. Why David, why do people upgrade? What are the drivers? It's really talks to the large companies and what's different from the small company or mid-size companies? What are the takeaways here? >> David: Well, so this is interesting, and as you might expect, large enterprises, have very concerned about application stability. Whereas midsize or enterprises are much more concerned about the performance, making sure that the performance is good. They are both concerned about reliable performance and security, but it's interesting that from a regulation point of view, mid-size companies really want to make sure that they are obeying the regulations, that they are meeting those. Whereas larger organizations usually have their own security and regulation functions looking very hard at these things. So that looking less to the platform to provide those than their own people. >> Yeah, I think you're right. I think the midsize organizations don't have as many people running around taking care of security and it's harder for them to keep up with the edicts of the organization. So they want to stay more current. Don, I wonder if you can add anything to this data from an innovation standpoint. >> Yeah, well, and from a product management standpoint, and what we see here is when you look at just going from fortune 500 to global 2000, you see things that are important to one or less so than the other. You can extrapolate that all the way down to a small company or a startup. And that's why providing the most flexibility in terms of an offering to allow people to decide what, when, where, and how they would be going to upgrade their software so they can do it when they want, and on their own terms. You can see that that becomes really important. And also making sure that we're providing innovation in a broad way so that it'll appeal both to the enterprise and again extrapolating that forward down to even very small startups. >> You know, David, the other thing that struck me in the data, if we bring up that other piece is the upgrade strategy, and there was a stark difference between large enterprises and midsize organizations. Talk to this data, if you would. >> Yes, this is again, a pretty stark difference between them. When you're looking at large enterprises, they really wants stability and they don't want to upgrade so often. Whereas mid-size enterprises, are much more willing to both upgrade on a regular cadence and really have a much more up-to-date, or have always have the latest software. They're driving smaller applications, but they're much more agile about their approach to it. Again, emphasizing what Don was saying about the smaller enterprises wanting a different strategy and a different way of doing things than large enterprises. >> So Manish this says to me that you got it right from a strategy standpoint. I mean, any color you can add here. >> Yeah, it's very intuitive that whether you're a large organization, a mid-sized enterprise or a small business, right? You face competitive pressures, your dynamics are unique. What you're able to do with the resources, what you desire to do at the pace that is appropriate for your environment, are really unique to you, and to try to force one model across any one size or across any set of dynamics is just not appropriate. So we've always felt that giving the enterprises and the organization, the ability to move at the pace of their business is the right approach. And so when we designed the Oracle Java SE subscription, we truly have that front and center in our thought process. And that structure seems to be working well. >> David, what I like about the way you do research is you actually build an economic model. A lot of these business value projects. I know this well, having been in the business a long time, they'll go out to ask the customer what they got, and then the customer said, "Well, I got a 111% ROI, and boom, that's what it is. You actually construct an economic model, you bring in rules of thumb, it allows you to do what ifs you can test that model and calibrate it against the real world. So I commend you on that. You've done a lot of hard work there, but bottom line at forests, I mean, let's bring up the economics. I mean, that's what people ultimately want to know. Does this save me money? What's the bottom line here? >> Yeah. Yes, that's a very important question. And the way we go about it is to ask the questions so that we can extract from those questions, how much effort it took, for example, to upgrade things, how much effort it took for important applications and not so important applications. So we have a very detailed model driven by the survey itself and in the back of the research, I'm a great believer that you should be able to follow exactly what the research said, what the survey said and how it was applied to the model. So, and what were you focused on was, what was the return of using the Java subscription service or taking an upgrade every six months? Those were the two ways that we looked at it. And for large enterprises, the four-year costs for the enterprise was $11 million, but for taking the additional subscription service, and this was well well covered, the payback is within a year, well covered by the lower costs of managing in a lot of systems and environment. And we found a very similar result on those midsize services. There, it was 3 million, and again, they got that back the year in terms of payback. So, but that's one alternative. There is another alternative that may be worthwhile the extra money if you really want to be up-to-date and or if you want to drive a much more aggressive strategy for your organization. >> So these are huge numbers. I mean, he's talking about 30% savings on average for large and mid-sized enterprises in the percentage terms, but the absolute dollars are actually enormous. So, you know, large companies here, we're talking about $20 billion enterprises with 500 or more Java applications. And mid-size is, you're talking about a couple, two, $3 billion companies. Manish, what are you saying in the customer base in terms of the economics? >> Yeah, you know anytime an organization is looking at an offering and a solution, they want to make sure just giving them the value. And we all know that the priorities of businesses have, they want to focus on that. Managing the Java estate is important, but is it the thing where they want to invest the dollars? And if they are investing the dollars, are they getting the return? We find that if you can give the enterprises an ability where they can see the return, the cost is right for them. And if you can mirror that and you can map it also with reduce risk, then you put the right formula. And with the subscription, they're able to not only see the cost savings that the model indicates clearly, but they're also able to reduce the risk in terms of security protection and other things. So it's a really, really good combination for the enterprises. >> Well, thank you, I wonder Manish, if you could bring us home here and just kind of summarize from your thoughts, everything you've heard today, what are the key takeaways? >> You know Java has been around for 25 years, and we certainly believe it's really positioned well for what's required today. And perhaps more importantly, what is needed for the next decade and for the next 25 years. Having now served thousands of customers with the Java subscription, it's clear that it is meeting the needs of fortune 10 organizations all the way down to a 5% development house, for example. What we're hearing from across the board is really Java has been the go to platform and it continues to be the go to platform for mission critical development and deployment. However, the complexity as the Java estate becomes large when you've got tens to hundreds, in some cases over a thousand applications running across the enterprise, that complexity can be daunting. And the Java subscription is really serving the needs in three ways. One, it's getting them the best of class support from Oracle, which is a steward of Java, the company that is generating over 80% of innovation with every single release. The second thing they're getting the business flexibility. So they can move at the pace that works for them. And therapies is as a business model as indicated that they're getting it at a lower cost while having your list. So the combination of these things is the reason why we're seeing very high renewal rates, why we're seeing thousands of organization take it over. And I want to wrap it up by saying one final thing, that you can count on Oracle to be the transparent, to be the right steward or both technology innovation, as well as to ensuring the support for the vast ecosystem whether it's libraries, frameworks, user groups, educational services and so on. So Java is here, has been here for the enterprise, large and small, and it's ready for the next generation as well. >> Great, thank you for that. Well, one more question. What's the call to action? If I'm a mid-sized company or a large company, I've made investments in Java, what, what should I do next? >> I would say, take a look at the Oracle subscription. It will reduce your rates. It'll save you a cost and it'll give you a lower risk parameter for your organization. >> Great, nice and crisp, I like it. If you like, if you guys don't object, I'm going to give you my summary. I've been taking notes this whole time and so, we've explored two options. Customers can do it yourself or go with the subscription on a regular cadence. It's very clear to me that that Java remains relevant as we set up top. It's the world's most popular programming language we know about all that. The ecosystem is really moving fast. Of course, with the stewardship of Oracle cloud microservices, the development of, of modern applications. I think that the directional changes that Manish you guys and, and Don and Oracle have made were really the right call. The research that David you did, shows that it's serving customers better. It lowers costs, it's cutting down risk particularly for the mid-sized companies that maybe are, or don't have the security infrastructure and the talent to go chase those problems. And I love the roadmap piece. The more transparent roadmap really is going to give the industry and the community much more confidence to invest and move forward. So guys, thanks very much for coming on this CUBE Java power panel. It was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, I thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante, for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Facilitator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with other leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Java is the world's most popular programming language. And it remains the leading application development platform. But what's the status of Java? What a customers doing? And very importantly, what is Oracle's and the community strategy with respect to Java? Welcome everybody to this Java power panel on theCUBE. I'm your host, Dave Vellante. Manish Gupta here, he's the Vice President of Global Marketing at Java for Oracle, Donald Smith is also on the panel, and he's the Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle and we're joined by David Floyd who is a CTO of Wikibon Research and has done a number of research activities on this very topic. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Manish, I want to start with you. Can you help us understand really what dig into Oracle strategy with respect to Java. The technology, the licensing, the support. How has that evolved over time? Take us through that. >> Dave, with 51 billion JVMs deployed worldwide, Java has truly cemented its position as the language of innovation and the technology world. There's no question about that. In fact, I like to say it's really the language of empowerment. Given the the impact it has had numerous applications ranging from the Mars Rover to genomics and everything in between. As Oracle acquired sign over 10 years ago, it's really kept it front of mind, two aspects of what we want to do with the technology and the platform. The first one was to ensure there was broad accessibility to the technology and the platform for anybody that wanted to benefit from it. And the second one was to ensure that the ecosystem remained vibrant and thriving throughout. I managed to do both. And underpinning these two objectives were really three pillars of our strategy. The first one was around trust, ensuring that openness and transparency of the technology was as was before continued to be the case going forward. The second element of that within the trust pillar was to ensure that as enterprises invested in the technology that investment was protected, it was not, you invest and you lose over a period of time in a backward compatibility, interoperability, certifications, were all foundational to the platform itself to the features, to the innovation moving forward. And more recently as we have rethought to the support, the licensing and the overall structure of the pricing that we have ensured that ultimately the trust comes along in those dimensions as well. So the launch of the Java subscription came along with, pay as you go model, it's a transparent pricing structure and discuss structure published on the website. So you can go and see what it would cost for the desktop on servers or cloud deployment. So those were the things that made kind of the first pillar happen. The second one was Dunno innovation. Over the last 25 years, Java has stood the test of time. It has delivered the needs of today while preparing for the future. And that remains the case. It is not something that has sort of focused on the fat of the day and the hot thing for the day, but really more important that it is prepared to deal with the mission critical, massive scale deployments that can run for years, for decades, in some cases. And keeping that in mind, Oracle has continued to put more and more technology into the open source world with every release that comes out, you can see 80 plus percent of the contributions come from Oracle. So that's the second pillar around innovation. And the third piece of the strategy has been around predictability. Ensuring that Java, the technology and platform perform as advertised, and that goes into the feature releases, it goes into the release process, it goes into the fact that you were broadly within the open JDK environment for developing and executing the roadmap. From a CIO standpoint, it's important to know that the technology used to develop your applications has talent around. And your, if you're going to develop something like Java, you'll find the right Java engineers to do the job. That is not a question, right? And so that's part of predictability. And finally, again with the change in the six months release cadence that came about three years ago, with the release of Java 10, we've really made sure that it's not, no, a bunch of things come about. You don't know when they're going to be released, but you know, like clockwork, you'll have a new Java list every six months. And that's been the case every March and September, since Java 10, you've had a new release of Java with certain features that come up and we just launched Java 15. So trust innovation predictability, have really been the three pillars on which we've executed the strategy for Java. >> Excellent, thank you for that intro, and we're going to get into it now. I'm glad you mentioned the sun acquisition. I said at the time that Java was the linchpin of that acquisition, many people, of course, we looked at the integration piece with the hardware, but it was really Java and the capabilities that it brings. And of course, a lot of Oracle software written in Java and not the least of which is a fusion. But now let's get into the components of this. And I want to talk a little bit about the methodology of this and going to call on you David Floria. But essentially my understanding is that Wikibon went through and David, you led this, you did a technical deep dive, which you always do, did a number of in depth interviews with Java customers. And then of course you also did a web survey and then you built from that data and economic model. So you can try to understand the sort of dimensions of the financials if you will. So what were your key findings there? >> So the key findings were that Java was in a good state that people were happy with the Java. The second key finding is that the business case itself for using the Oracle services, the subscription services was good. It didn't mean to say that that wasn't for every company, the right way to do it, but there was a very good return on that. And the third area was that there was a degree of confidence that the new way of doing things, the six-month cycle, as opposed to the three-year cycle was overall a benefit to the rate of change, the ability for them to introduce new features quickly. >> Okay, well, I mean, you know, and I read that research. And to me my takeaways where I saw the continued relevance of Java, which is kind of goes without saying, but a lot of times it gets lost in the headlines. That subscription piece is key. We're going to get into some of the economics as to how that affects customers and it saves you money. And the other piece was the roadmap becoming more transparent. And I don't want to dig into that a little bit, but before we do, let's get into that innovation component Manish, mentioned that several times, but Don, I want to go to you guys. We have a slide on the various components of the innovation. If you would bring this up and Don I wonder if you could talk to this and give us some examples if you would. >> Yeah, sure. So we were the number one development platform for the last 25 years. We want to be the number one development platform for the next 25 years. And in order to do that, we have to be constantly innovating and constantly innovating not only the business side in terms of the subscription and the support offerings and commercial features like Manish was talking about, but also the platform in general. And so the way we like to talk about innovation as we break it down by these pillars that you can see on the slide. And so the first pillar is continuous improvements to the language. So this is watching developers trying to write the same piece of code over and over again, and us asking, can we make you more efficient? Can we give you more language features that reduce the amount of boilerplate that you have to write? The second pillar is a project that we just announced a few months ago called Leyden. And the idea with Leyden is addressing the longterm pinpoints of Java slow startup time and time to peak performance. So if you go back 10 years ago, everybody knows about Java as an enterprise platform, Java EE application servers. They all had the notion of being very long lived. And so Java at that time would be optimized towards long lived applications, startup, and performance. Where if it took a little while to get there, it didn't matter as long as when it got there, it was super fast. And so we're trying to get that peak performance faster in the world of microservices. In a similar vein with project loom, we're looking at making concurrency simple again, looking at how developers are doing more reactive style programming and realizing that the threading model needs to be rethought from the ground up, that project is looking really, really good. Then we have project Panama. Project Panama is all about making it easier to connect Java with native libraries. Valhalla is all about improving, there's a couple of benefits, but it's all about improving memory density and being able to access and iterate and operate over primitive data types at super fast speeds by better optimizing how that information is stored in memory. And then the other pillar of the final pillar that we have been working on from an innovation perspective is ZGC. We introduced a new garbage collector technology a few years ago, G1GCE a generational garbage collector with the eye towards making garbage collection in Java pause lists. So if you, again, if you go back in time and look at the history of Java, memory management is awesome, but there's always that cost and risk of a garbage collection cycle, taking a bit of time away from a critical application. And ZGC is all about getting rid of that. So lots of innovation, lots of different pillars going on right now. >> Awesome, I'm impressed. There's something after Valhalla. I thought that was Nirvana. (laughing) But now, and these are all open source projects, right? And you guys obviously provide committers, there are other people in the open source world who provide that, is that correct Don? >> Yeah, that's correct. We have about 80% of the contributions in open JDK. We are the stewards of open JDK and lead the project. Most of the pillars I talked about here are you know Oracle folks working on that. >> Awesome. Okay, let's get into some of the data. David, I want to come back to you and talk about some of the survey results guys, if you bring up that next slide. Why David, why do people upgrade? What are the drivers? It's really talks to the large companies and what's different from the small company or mid-size companies? What are the takeaways here? >> David: Well, so this is interesting, and as you might expect, large enterprises, have very concerned about application stability. Whereas midsize or enterprises are much more concerned about the performance, making sure that the performance is good. They are both concerned about reliable performance and security, but it's interesting that from a regulation point of view, mid-size companies really want to make sure that they are obeying the regulations, that they are meeting those. Whereas larger organizations usually have their own security and regulation functions looking very hard at these things. So that looking less to the platform to provide those than their own people. >> Yeah, I think you're right. I think the midsize organizations don't have as many people running around taking care of security and it's harder for them to keep up with the edicts of the organization. So they want to stay more current. Don, I wonder if you can add anything to this data from an innovation standpoint. >> Yeah, well, and from a product management standpoint, and what we see here is when you look at just going from fortune 500 to global 2000, you see things that are important to one or less so than the other. You can extrapolate that all the way down to a small company or a startup. And that's why providing the most flexibility in terms of an offering to allow people to decide what, when, where, and how they would be going to upgrade their software so they can do it when they want, and on their own terms. You can see that that becomes really important. And also making sure that we're providing innovation in a broad way so that it'll appeal both to the enterprise and again extrapolating that forward down to even very small startups. >> You know, David, the other thing that struck me in the data, if we bring up that other piece is the upgrade strategy, and there was a stark difference between large enterprises and midsize organizations. Talk to this data, if you would. >> Yes, this is again, a pretty stark difference between them. When you're looking at large enterprises, they really wants stability and they don't want to upgrade so often. Whereas mid-size enterprises, are much more willing to both upgrade on a regular cadence and really have a much more up-to-date, or have always have the latest software. They're driving smaller applications, but they're much more agile about their approach to it. Again, emphasizing what Don was saying about the smaller enterprises wanting a different strategy and a different way of doing things than large enterprises. >> So Manish this says to me that you got it right from a strategy standpoint. I mean, any color you can add here. >> Yeah, it's very intuitive that whether you're a large organization, a mid-sized enterprise or a small business, right? You face competitive pressures, your dynamics are unique. What you're able to do with the resources, what you desire to do at the pace that is appropriate for your environment, are really unique to you, and to try to force one model across any one size or across any set of dynamics is just not appropriate. So we've always felt that giving the enterprises and the organization, the ability to move at the pace of their business is the right approach. And so when we designed the Oracle Java SE subscription, we truly have that front and center in our thought process. And that structure seems to be working well. >> David, what I like about the way you do research is you actually build an economic model. A lot of these business value projects. I know this well, having been in the business a long time, they'll go out to ask the customer what they got, and then the customer said, "Well, I got a 111% ROI, and boom, that's what it is. You actually construct an economic model, you bring in rules of thumb, it allows you to do what ifs you can test that model and calibrate it against the real world. So I commend you on that. You've done a lot of hard work there, but bottom line at forests, I mean, let's bring up the economics. I mean, that's what people ultimately want to know. Does this save me money? What's the bottom line here? >> Yeah. Yes, that's a very important question. And the way we go about it is to ask the questions so that we can extract from those questions, how much effort it took, for example, to upgrade things, how much effort it took for important applications and not so important applications. So we have a very detailed model driven by the survey itself and in the back of the research, I'm a great believer that you should be able to follow exactly what the research said, what the survey said and how it was applied to the model. So, and what were you focused on was, what was the return of using the Java subscription service or taking an upgrade every six months? Those were the two ways that we looked at it. And for large enterprises, the four-year costs for the enterprise was $11 million, but for taking the additional subscription service, and this was well well covered, the payback is within a year, well covered by the lower costs of managing in a lot of systems and environment. And we found a very similar result on those midsize services. There, it was 3 million, and again, they got that back the year in terms of payback. So, but that's one alternative. There is another alternative that may be worthwhile the extra money if you really want to be up-to-date and or if you want to drive a much more aggressive strategy for your organization. >> So these are huge numbers. I mean, he's talking about 30% savings on average for large and mid-sized enterprises in the percentage terms, but the absolute dollars are actually enormous. So, you know, large companies here, we're talking about $20 billion enterprises with 500 or more Java applications. And mid-size is, you're talking about a couple, two, $3 billion companies. Manish, what are you saying in the customer base in terms of the economics? >> Yeah, you know anytime an organization is looking at an offering and a solution, they want to make sure just giving them the value. And we all know that the priorities of businesses have, they want to focus on that. Managing the Java estate is important, but is it the thing where they want to invest the dollars? And if they are investing the dollars, are they getting the return? We find that if you can give the enterprises an ability where they can see the return, the cost is right for them. And if you can mirror that and you can map it also with reduce risk, then you put the right formula. And with the subscription, they're able to not only see the cost savings that the model indicates clearly, but they're also able to reduce the risk in terms of security protection and other things. So it's a really, really good combination for the enterprises. >> Well, thank you, I wonder Manish, if you could bring us home here and just kind of summarize from your thoughts, everything you've heard today, what are the key takeaways? >> You know Java has been around for 25 years, and we certainly believe it's really positioned well for what's required today. And perhaps more importantly, what is needed for the next decade and for the next 25 years. Having now served thousands of customers with the Java subscription, it's clear that it is meeting the needs of fortune 10 organizations all the way down to a 5% development house, for example. What we're hearing from across the board is really Java has been the go to platform and it continues to be the go to platform for mission critical development and deployment. However, the complexity as the Java estate becomes large when you've got tens to hundreds, in some cases over a thousand applications running across the enterprise, that complexity can be daunting. And the Java subscription is really serving the needs in three ways. One, it's getting them the best of class support from Oracle, which is a steward of Java, the company that is generating over 80% of innovation with every single release. The second thing they're getting the business flexibility. So they can move at the pace that works for them. And therapies is as a business model as indicated that they're getting it at a lower cost while having your list. So the combination of these things is the reason why we're seeing very high renewal rates, why we're seeing thousands of organization take it over. And I want to wrap it up by saying one final thing, that you can count on Oracle to be the transparent, to be the right steward or both technology innovation, as well as to ensuring the support for the vast ecosystem whether it's libraries, frameworks, user groups, educational services and so on. So Java is here, has been here for the enterprise, large and small, and it's ready for the next generation as well. >> Great, thank you for that. Well, one more question. What's the call to action? If I'm a mid-sized company or a large company, I've made investments in Java, what, what should I do next? >> I would say, take a look at the Oracle subscription. It will reduce your rates. It'll save you a cost and it'll give you a lower risk parameter for your organization. >> Great, nice and crisp, I like it. If you like, if you guys don't object, I'm going to give you my summary. I've been taking notes this whole time and so, we've explored two options. Customers can do it yourself or go with the subscription on a regular cadence. It's very clear to me that that Java remains relevant as we set up top. It's the world's most popular programming language we know about all that. The ecosystem is really moving fast. Of course, with the stewardship of Oracle cloud microservices, the development of, of modern applications. I think that the directional changes that Manish you guys and, and Don and Oracle have made were really the right call. The research that David you did, shows that it's serving customers better. It lowers costs, it's cutting down risk particularly for the mid-sized companies that maybe are, or don't have the security infrastructure and the talent to go chase those problems. And I love the roadmap piece. The more transparent roadmap really is going to give the industry and the community much more confidence to invest and move forward. So guys, thanks very much for coming on this CUBE Java power panel. It was great to have you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, I thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante, for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>Yeah, >>from The Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering IBM. Think brought to you by IBM. >>Everybody welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the IBM think 2020 digital event experience. My name is Dave Volante. Manish Gupta is here. He's the global managing director for chemicals, petroleum and industrial products that IBM Manish. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube. How you doing out there in Saratoga, California? All good. >>I'm doing great. I'm doing great, given, considering everything. The role of all of this. >>I mean, right, it's tough times, but look it, We can still, you know, have a smile every now and then, right? I mean, you know, it's very nice for a lot of people in our hearts. Go out. Everybody there. So I I want to start off one of the areas that you're steeped in is the energy sector. You know, generally, people are very much concerned about oil. Price of oil drop below, you know, zero went negative. People have been paying people take oil and understand that was a technical, but still the prices of depressed >>I >>learned about credit risk and the like. But what's your take on what's going on in the energy sector right now? >>Yes. So I think the companies that, uh, that have taken on a lot of debt and don't have a stable operating conditions will naturally suffer through this in the oil industry. Clearly, until the prices come back with will be as demand picks up, that would be several months to more than that. As we can imagine, we'll see the The more stable companies, the more I'll say companies that have ah longer balance sheets survived for sure. In addition, you know, the the other aspect of it is of course, they're all double down on making sure your companies and your free services companies or double down on productivity conserving cash as well as considering how they accelerate. In my view, there transition are more more profitable areas of growth as demand comes back, >>is there? Is there a silver lining here? I mean, in normal times, you know, of the oil price drops and the like, a tax cut. Um, I know the government. The United States government, anyway, has been beefing up its strategic reserves that has a history of buying low Is there any good that you see coming out of this? So >>So I think the good that'll come out is is surely that the stronger companies will come through more successfully. The company that have taken less risk, the companies that have that have invested in more more stable operating platforms and and at the end of the day, I think, the companies that have taken a more future proof strategy for their business portfolio. So whether you take a B B, for example or a shell, they're actively working the words deporting the energy transition. I think that will be the You'll see an acceleration of companies starting the thinker off where they need to go in the future. You support the energy transition. I think the silver lining of the end of the day will be, Ah, that as is, sometimes you just said oil is very precious. Resource, therefore, should not be burned. And and so the question at hand is, you know, what do you do with with all the oil that's available? What do you build out of it? Whether it's petrochemicals, I think that transition to more future proof product portfolio on business model will be will be truly the silver lining. >>How about the broader industrial companies that you follow? I mean, they were sort of moving down a path of digital transformation. I o t obviously is the big theme within many industrial sectors. What are you seeing in the broader? >>So I think in the broader base clearly, you know, supply chains and the spread of barely, you know, demand demand dropping prior demand signals which were sometimes ignored for historical reporting. Ah, that that is now becoming more important. I your sense and response by then. So as you step back and look that that they need to maintain business continuity is, of course, the highest priority. But as they come out off this, we expect that we're thinking of this is as the future for industrial sector will be. What we would call is hybrid. I you know, supply chains will need to be local and global manufacturing will need to be both traditional. A swell is additive. I you know, you you produce more, more locally and in addition of products and services will need to be a combination of digital and and physical. And at the end of the day if you step back. I saw something recently that said, Ah, you know who's leading the digital transformation in your company Now the multiple choices were the CEO, the CDO CIO, or is it? And this option was circled over 19. If you think of it in simple terms, covered, 19 is creating the acceleration of digital transformation because the only valid response in in my mind as you look at these ah as these different hybrid models is a consideration of technology being being a fulcrum off, getting a future proof of black mom. >>So it would seem to me that the financial framework are going to change. The The notion of how you made money for the last 10 years is not going to be the way you make money going forward. Yeah, there's there's likely to be some share shifts. In other words, those that figure out how to be profitable with this sort of new model perhaps could gain share efficiently. And and maybe you're going to see some share shifts in the industrial zone. What are your thoughts on that? >>Yes. So companies that are in what we would call essential of vertical industries will definitely be the ones that they continue to grow. You take a simple example, or for spectral chemicals companies, companies that make make plastics as well as chemical, they're going to a variety of other applications. Plastics. Interestingly enough, it's now a resurgence, and the reason it's resurgent is it's really it's a boarding, you know, hygiene, packaging, medical packaging, etcetera, etcetera. We'll see industries that shift that way if we step back and look at a broader and broader ah study that was done actually about 10 years ago by Harvard. With that, the companies that survive a recession, I think it said about 9% of the company's actually flourish coming out of a recession, about 75% take three years to recover and on the remainder was. I think if you do the math about 17 18% Ah, do not survive. But to do such a recession now, the ones that drive through >>I >>had a dual focus on both the customer experience and customer engagement and shifting to areas of higher value by thinking of what they should be doing and how they should be doing doing those things and Secondly, they also focused a lot on on operational improvements. And whether that's obliging, that's manufacturing. It's whether it's outsourcing non core functions. Automating that's a problem that you're focused on customer on operations is the hallmark of a successful outcome. Was what the study studied determined putting that that that your focus is what will be the the prime hallmark as we come through this >>interesting it Now, of course, biology sort of got us into this problem in technology. Deal with some of these issues on Help us get out of this problem. And what specifically is IBM doing? >>Yes, So we've We've identified seven areas off focus as we think of off coming out of this crisis, and we have referred to those 78 years of off focus as being our emerge. Stronger areas of focus the ones that I think are relevant, are including new ways of working. Ah, cyber resilience. Thinking of extreme motivation, automation. An intelligent work flows thinking off, making sure that we are eating our clients with having more in a more system that are available on demand, helping them create platforms and applications that can work regardless of the location At the end of the day, we step back for a brief three areas of focus that we see will be new. It new ways of working and supporting work. They're working or remote working. Ah, extreme automation. When industrial companies come back to work safe, distancing, he's going to be the norm as well as allowing for but the fact that you want to be you want to be prepared for the next crisis. Therefore, extreme automation, whether that implementing robots and factories or or implementing solutions that guide you in the worker safety or workers being close together as well as supporting customer engagement or the customer experience is being done. Putting that extreme automation layer through so that so that the reliance and the ability to cooperate with out the workforce becomes more important. I think it's really the acceleration that we expect. We'll be able to support our clients with, uh, as as they come out of there soon, as they as they had after the next normal. >>You see software robots as being a part of that sort of automation friends, you know, r p A and the like >>for sure that that's an important part, especially in the back office functions that will be software robots and, I think, layered on top of that when you buy AI. Then you have AI augmenting a lot of professionals, whether it's chat bots in customer call centers or technical service centers or or it far greater increasing in automation processes that could be automated. But then the AI would would support for the rest that can't be simply automated but need intelligence support as well. >>So if I go back to your CEO of a Harvard study, last thing I want to be I'm on the board just feels, is in your 17%. I either want to be in the 90% if I'm well positioned right now, and maybe you have an opportunity to do so. But if not, I'm in that fat middle. And I really wanna be ableto come out of this stronger, even if it may might take a couple of years. So my question is, it seems like companies, they're gonna have to, at least in the near term, potentially sacrifice profitability in order to gain that business continuance, business resiliency that you talked about. Can they can They have their cake and eat it, too. In other words, can they maybe take a near term hit on profitability? But they ultimately become more successful and more profitable? Maybe using data >>the data would be one thing. I think the other part of this will will using data, for example, to predict demand forecast where where the puck is going and the use of data on on a monthly basis is going to be inadequate. Clearly right. Getting more more capability for real time demand sensing to create platforms that allow us to allow companies to understand where needs are emerging so that they can pivot there. Ah, their product portfolio accordingly, Collaborating with customers in in a far more I'll call it CO create crowd source way Ah would create more resilient customer relationship that come out in the future as well. And at the end, I think they'll be also an element around asset like strategies, which requires partnering with IBM suppliers etcetera, which then allow data to be the foundation where you can essentially say I'm using this much of this capability our forces, I'm investing in insignificant of capital a place. >>So when I talk to executives. I'm hearing the consistent themes We very much are concerned about the health and well of our of our employees getting remote home infrastructure going once we ensure that they're healthy, we want to make sure that they're productive getting staying close to customers for sure. Making Short Foster are in line because there's so much uncertainty. But not a lot of time right now is being spent on sort of the long term strategic aspect of the organization that maybe will come back slowly. So what advice are you giving the organizations right now in this situation? >>Yeah. So I think the biggest focus would be, as I think, Winston Churchill said, this never based a good crisis. Eso So considering considering that as being the backdrop Ah, these are the times when, when recognizing what would be the sources of value, like I said before making sure the dual focus is kept in mind, apart from of course, ah, employee health and safety and engagement. Ah, then then, in addition to that, keeping in mind that the localization off supply chains will need to be a big topic keeping your ah, as they say, powder dry for but the opportunity of buyer and march. I would also be an element start considering how you re configure your supply chain. And at the end of the day, another important element would be making sure that you are Ah, you. As you come out of this, don't lose sight off sustainable development. No as well as you go back to the things off the fact that since digital will be an important fulcrum come out the other end apart from the other elements we talked about that you start prioritized those digital transformation programs that focus on both operations and supply chain as well as customer engagement. And that becomes a key focus and no longer just driven by, Let's say, the straight business case, but also persisting and ending. The resilience will come out and deal with people prices as well. >>So many of those things that you just mentioned might have been culturally challenging for a lot of organizations prior to over it. But in a way, organization's going to get covert Mulligan or the CEO. You know, the boards of directors might have felt like okay, we had to make some changes, but we got to be careful now with Covic being such a disruptor. Uh huh. Organizations been really drive forward and set up for the next decade. Bring us home. What do your final thought? >>Yeah, I think boards and see years have Do you have to really think of this in stages and and start to Of course, the initially the start of this crisis was not not planned, but recognizing that this recovery will appear in stages, so we think of it is respond, which is where most companies are the next day being ah you know, being being recover, which is getting started back up or dealing with demand and so on. And the third stage being green went I think boards and see years need to start putting perhaps three work streams in place around these three different time horizons. And keep that they're planning in place so that they can effectively work to recovery while they have a separate stream. That's focusing on the reinvent, but they're more resilient and more prepared, and they are able to take and take advantage of both the opportunities as well as of getting more resilient company for the future, >>great insight and an awesome advice. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube. Really appreciate your time. >>Appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. >>You're very welcome. And thank you for watching everybody. We're seeing the pattern emerged where? We're not just gonna go back the last decade. We're really gonna have toe prepare for the next decade. Business resiliency and business continuance and flexibility. It's a whole new world, folks. This is the Cube covering IBM. Think 2020 the digital event. We'll be right back right after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco. It's theCUBE. Covering RSA conference 2020 San Francisco. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're at RSA 2020, Moscone and beautiful San Francisco's day four I think Thursday already. This is a crazy conference Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I don't think we'll be here for tomorrow. It's been a pretty full slate. As it is, we're excited to have our next guest. She is Rose Ross, the founder and chief trailblazer, for Tech Trailblazers. Rose. Great to meet you. >> It's great to be here too. >> Absolutely. So what are the Tech Trailblazers? >> So the Tech Trailblazers are an awards lead platform, which recognizes the creme de la creme of the enterprise Tech startup landscape. >> Jeff: Okay. >> So we cover the categories from AI through to storage, but obviously security is a big part of that and we find that security and cloud are usually our most popular awards to be entered into. >> Okay, and I assume you're, really recognizing the individuals more than the companies, >> We do both. >> Or is it more of the companies? You do both. >> We do the Tech category so they can compare like for like apples with apples, pears with pears, security startups with security startups. And then we also acknowledge and recognize some of the key players in those startups. So we have a female trailblazers and a male trailblazer each year . >> Okay, and how long have you been doing this? >> This is our eighth edition. >> The eighth edition. >> Started for a while. 2012 was our first outing. >> Okay, And you said you just gave out this year's Awards on Monday? >> That's right. We announced it. Yeah, day one of RSA. >> Right, so give us some of the highlights. Who were some of the special people that you called out this year? >> Some of the special people, I actually sat down with one of the special people just now interviewed CEO of Shift-left who is our security trailblazer this year. Manish Gupta and yeah, we spent some time chatting about his journey and his challenges and his successes. And finding out more about the technology itself. So. >> And so what are the criteria to win? >> So we kind of look at a number of elements. We have an independent body of judges who are from the analyst community, from the blogger community from industry itself. So we have CSOs, CIOs, and just people who understand the Technology really, at both the technical level and what is needed by the marketplace. So we look at a number of things. One is obviously innovation. If you're looking at the startup world, you want to look at people who are bringing new and exciting things that are needed by companies, to either secure them or store their data or analyze their data. But we also look at how they're doing in the market. So, we'll be looking at what their go to market strategy is, how they're engaging with the end user community, that type of stuff. >> Okay. And at what stage in their growth are they generally you know, kind of coming into your radar? >> So we sort of do the cutoff for a start up as being having not celebrated their sixth birthday yet. >> Six birthday okay. >> Right, so and have not gone beyond Series C funding. >> Okay. >> So you wanted to keep it on the the newer end of the startup spectrum. We also have a special award for those that have not received any VC funding whatsoever. So they're either growing organically or privately funded. That could be seed capital, you know, crowdfunding, whatever that might be. And they have to be two years or younger, and they are all fire starters. >> And those are fire starters. So those are probably it's just really a function of life, 'cause I would imagine the vast majority of the companies that you recognize, eventually get VC funding if you're playing in this crazy technology space. >> It certainly helps to get to where you want to go. Accelerate, put a bit more fuel in the tank. >> So you also announced in your press release the incredible amount of money (laughs) your award winners have raised over time. Do you tell us a little bit more about that? >> Well, yeah, with RSA this week, we thought it'd be a great time to reflect back on what our security trailblazers had done over these eight editions. And obviously, it's a little bit early for expecting additional fundraising from Shift-left, 'cause they literally got the award on Monday. >> Great. >> But hopefully, if you look at the history of it all, we look at the people who've received the accolade over the last eight editions, nearly all of them have been within their first two years. Most of them have done at least one round of funding, but have usually gone on to do another significant round of funding within 12 months of having one, we'd love to take all the credit for that, but I think you really need to put that on the team. >> Jeff: Right. >> And acquisitions have also been quite prevalent. So we looked at the numbers just before RSA, and it was 72 722 million of the disclosed raised, and just in the security, >> Right. >> Space. Unfortunately, or very fortunately for one of our winners, ZeroFOX, they just peeped in with raising 74 million last Friday, which we didn't include. So if we put the undisclosed it would definitely over 800 million now. So well done to the ZeroFOX guys. >> Right, so how did you get involved in this? >> It was an idea that I had. My my other life is a Tech PR person. And we were working on a campaign for a show somewhat like RSA in the UK. And we thought it would be a great idea to run a startup competition to highlight some new entrants to the market. Unfortunately, they didn't think it was a fit for what they wanted to do, but it was such a compelling idea. I've worked with startups all my life and one of the challenges was always with them, particularly in the early stages to get recognition and to get coverage. So we thought we can do something about this. And I thought, well, nobody's going to listen to a PR person. They aren't interested in what I think. I'm not an expert on who's great in this space. So I spoke to Joe Bagley, who's the CTO of Amir for VMware, who's somebody I've worked with a lot over the years. And I said, Look, Joe, if I run something like this, would you come on board as a judge? And he said, Absolutely, I think it's a brilliant idea. And luckily, many other amazing judges has followed in his footsteps. So it's thanks to them, so. >> How many judges are there? >> We have around 40. I mean, we have a number of what a number of categories. So we want a specialist in those areas. Some cover multiple light cloud and security or Cloud and Storage. But obviously, when you look at AI and blockchain and all these other categories, you need people who really understand that space. >> And what's the process kind of how big is the top of the funnel when he started? And then how do you kind of whittle it down to the end when you said 1212 categories, so 12 winners per year about? >> Yeah. So we started off as obviously people enter usually through their PR team or their marketing team, or pull together the information that we request, which is quite a lengthy process, it's a big commitment of time. But not huge, but we do want to get to a certain amount of detail, to make a decision and give the judges something to work with. Then for that period, we then put out the judges to create the shortlist. So they will come back they will score on a number of elements, which are things like innovation and the maturity of the technology, then go to market attractiveness and their own personal view of how exciting and it is intuitive and how trailblazing it actually is. >> Right. >> Then we put it out to a public vote, but also the judges then take the shortlist and take another look at everybody. >> And it gets a public vote too? >> Yes, it does. >> It so does. Do the judges ever meet with the the nominees or is it all done based on the application the application packet that you put together and any other independent information they find on their own? >> Well, we still would encourage. I know the judges do like to reach out to people. And I know that obviously there are relationships because of the nature of the types of judges. >> Jeff: Sure. >> Obviously, we've got people in industry within the vendor community, analysts and bloggers, so they will have people that they know. So I always encourage people, if they say, you know, what would you do? I said, Well, if I was you, I would also reach out to the judges in your area, and just make them aware of who you are. And if they have other questions that they should you know, set up a briefing or something. >> Right. So it's really interesting concept to get the pub into the startup world because it's really, as you know, being in PR, you know, it's really hard to get elevated above the noise, if you will. And you know, we're sitting here surrounded by I don't even know how many thousands of vendors are in this hall. >> The early stage has 51 just as a starter. >> 51 in the early stage expo. >> Yes. >> Which hall is that? >> It's up on the second floor. >> On the second floor. Then there's little like corners of cubbies have of not even 10 by 10s. But you know the kind of the classic kiosks. So, when you're talking to two small companies, regardless of whether they go for the word, what do you tell them as a PR pro? What do you tell them as someone who's, you know, kind of seeing the challenges of trying to raise your profile as a small company? Do you stick to your knitting? Do you in a try to get a high profile? When you know, what are some of the tips and tricks that help little companies rise above the den, if you will, in this great space. >> Validation is always very important. Talk to the influencers in your space, talk to the analysts in your space, the bloggers in your space, and get that feedback and integrate it into your plan of how you create your message. And I think that's one of the hard things, a lot of startups particularly in the technology space, particularly enterprise Tech, they really in the weeds with what's amazing about their products and why they put it together. But you really have to put that into very simple terms. >> Jeff: Right. >> I mean, if you look at someone like RSA, we have got, you know, a lot of buzzwords kicking around here. You do have to try and put that into the deeds and requirements of the end user community. That's always got to be your lens on things >> Right. >> really. >> And you also you always have the vendor viability issues, you know, with your top and even if your Tech relatively inexpensive, maybe as a PLC or this or that, it still takes an investment from your potential customers to put it in and take that risk. And, you know, that's a much bigger hurdle to overcome often than simply the pricing or the structure of the deal. Not a easy, not an easy path. >> It has to be a partnership. I mean, one of the things we were advocating a couple years ago is that the bigger organizations really should have somebody who has a role of being a Chief Collaboration Officer for those smaller companies to engage with them. Because even the procurement process can obviously kill you. >> A little kill a little company, right? Even the pre sales, just having meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings and meetings to talk about the meetings that you're going to have to maybe eventually (laughs) get to somebody who can make a decision. >> Yeah, Its tough. >> Very cool. >> So, any kind of significant changes in the programme over time? Are you pretty much at the same place you were eight years ago? Or do you see this expanding into different categories? How do you see, you know, kind of the evolution of the Trailblazer? >> Well, we like to review everything and we listened to our judges, we listened to people in the marketplace. I mean, I had a great meeting yesterday with somebody in banking, who works with an awful lot of startups. And there is some really good news coming through that. The enterprise Tech VC community, there's a lot more of an appetite. They're starting to see the value more and more of investing in that type of longer longer term, because you can actually scale beyond where you can do sometimes with a consumer Technology. >> Right >> The potential unicorn sometimes don't quite make it. Those horses aren't always that reliable in the race. >> (laughs) Sometimes too much money is not a good thing that is for sure. >> Yeah. >> Or is good for you? It's a great way I know, I think the kind of the award format is a great way to shine a little bit of extra light on some of these companies that are really struggling to get noticed. It's a really difficult process for a startup, especially in such a deep Technology field. Something is so mission critical that people it's just not that easy for people to give you a try and give you a trial. Takes a lot of investment. So good work and look forward >> Thank you. to continuing to see the winners, raise lots of money and have success. >> Right, absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. >> All right Rose thanks again. She's Rose, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. We're at RSA 2020. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)