(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Vegas. It's theCUBE live at AWS re:Invent 2022. We're hearing up to 50,000 people here. It feels like if the energy at this show is palpable. I love that. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, we had the keynote this morning that Adam Selipsky delivered lots of momentum in his first year. One of the things that you said that you were looking in your breaking analysis that was released a few days ago, four trends and one of them, he said under Selipsky's rule in the 2020s, there's going to be a rush of data that will dwarf anything we have ever seen. >> Yeah, it was at least a quarter, maybe a third of his keynote this morning was all about data and the theme is simplifying data and doing better data integration, integrating across different data platforms. And we're excited to talk about that. Always want to simplify data. It's like the rush of data is so fast. It's hard for us to keep up. >> It is hard to keep that up. We're going to be talking with an alumni next about how his company is helping organizations like Cisco Meraki keep up with that data explosion. Please welcome back to the program, Matthew Scullion, the CEO of Matillion and how Hoshang Chenoy joins us, data scientist at Cisco Meraki. Guys, great to have you on the program. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> So Matthew, we last saw you just a few months ago in Vegas at Snowflake Summits. >> Matthew: We only meet in Vegas. >> I guess we do, that's okay. Talk to us about some of the things, I know that Matillion is a data transformation solution that was originally introduced for AWS for Redshift. But talk to us about Matillion. What's gone on since we've seen you last? >> Well, I mean it's not that long ago but actually quite a lot. And it's all to do with exactly what you guys were just talking about there. This almost hard to comprehend way the world is changing with the amounts of data that we now can and need to put to work. And our worldview is there's no shortage of data but the choke points certainly one of the choke points. Maybe the choke point is our ability to make that data useful, to make it business ready. And we always talk about the end use cases. We talk about the dashboard or the AI model or the data science algorithm. But until before we can do any of that fun stuff, we have to refine raw data into business ready, usable data. And that's what Matillion is all about. And so since we last met, we've made a couple of really important announcements and possibly at the top of the list is what we call the data productivity cloud. And it's really squarely addressed this problem. It's the results of many years of work, really the apex of many years of the outsize engineering investment, Matillion loves to make. And the Data Productivity Cloud is all about helping organizations like Cisco Meraki and hundreds of others enterprise organizations around the world, get their data business ready, faster. >> Hoshang talk to us a little bit about what's going on at Cisco Meraki, how you're leveraging Matillion from a productivity standpoint. >> I've really been a Matillion fan for a while, actually even before Cisco Meraki at my previous company, LiveRamp. And you know, we brought Matillion to LiveRamp because you know, to Matthew's point, there is a stage in every data growth as I want to call it, where you have different companies at different stages. But to get data, data ready, you really need a platform like Matillion because it makes it really easy. So you have to understand Matillion, I think it's designed for someone that uses a lot of code but also someone that uses no code because the UI is so good. Someone like a marketer who doesn't really understand what's going on with that data but wants to be a data driven marketer when they look at the UI they immediately get it. They're just like, oh, I get what's happening with my data. And so that's the brilliance of Matillion and to get data to that data ready part, Matillion does a really, really good job because what we've been able to do is blend so many different data sources. So there is an abundance of data. Data is siloed though. And the connectivity between different data is getting harder and harder. And so here comes the Matillion with it's really simple solution, easy to use platform, powerful and we get to use all of that. So to really change the way we've thought about our analytics, the way we've progressed our division, yeah. >> You're always asking about superpowers and that is a superpower of Matillion 'cause you know, low-code, no-code sounds great but it only gets you a quarter of the way there, maybe 50% of the way there. You're kind of an "and" not an "or." >> That's a hundred percent right. And so I mentioned the Data Productivity Cloud earlier which is the name of this platform of technology we provide. That's all to do with making data business ready. And so I think one of the things we've seen in this industry over the past few years is a kind of extreme decomposition in terms of vendors of making data business ready. You've got vendors that just do loading, you've got vendors that just do a bit of data transformation, you've got vendors that do data ops and orchestration, you've got vendors that do reverse ETL. And so with the data productivity platform, you've got all of that. And particularly in this kind of, macroeconomic heavy weather that we're now starting to face, I think companies are looking for that. It's like, I don't want to buy five things, five sets of skills, five expensive licenses. I want one platform that can do it. But to your point David, it's the and not the or. We talk about the Data Productivity Cloud, the DPC, as being everyone ready. And what we mean by that is if you are the tech savvy marketer who wants to get a particular insight and you understand what a Rowan economy is, but you're not necessarily a hardcore super geeky data engineer then you can visual low-code, no-code, your data to a point where it's business ready. You can do that really quick. It's easy to understand, it's faster to ramp people onto those projects cause it like explains itself, faster to hand it over cause it's self-documenting. But, they'll always be individuals, teams, "and", "or" use cases that want to high-code as well. Maybe you want to code in SQL or Python, increasingly of course in DBT and you can do that on top of the Data Productivity Cloud as well. So you're not having to make a choice, but is that right? >> So one of the things that Matillion really delivers is speed to insight. I've always said that, you know, when you want to be business ready you want to make fast decisions, you want to act on data quickly, Matillion allows you to, this feed to insight is just unbelievably fast because you blend all of these different data sources, you can find the deficiencies in your process, you fix that and you can quickly turn things around and I don't think there's any other platform that I've ever used that has that ability. So the speed to insight is so tremendous with Matillion. >> The thing I always assume going on in our customers teams, like you run Hoshang is that the visual metaphor, be it around the orchestration and data ops jobs, be it around the transformation. I hope it makes it easier for teams not only to build it in the first place, but to live with it, right? To hand it over to other people and all that good stuff. Is that true? >> Let me highlight that a little bit more and better for you. So, say for example, if you don't have a platform like Matillion, you don't really have a central repository. >> Yeah. >> Where all of your codes meet, you could have a get repository, you could do all of those things. But, for example, for definitions, business definitions, any of those kind of things, you don't want it to live in just a spreadsheet. You want it to have a central platform where everybody can go in, there's detailed notes, copious notes that you can make on Matillion and people know exactly which flow to go to and be part of, and so I kind of think that that's really, really important because that's really helped us in a big, big way. 'Cause when I first got there, you know, you were pulling code from different scripts and things and you were trying to piece everything together. But when you have a platform like Matillion and you actually see it seamlessly across, it's just so phenomenal. >> So, I want to pick up on something Matthew said about, consolidating platforms and vendors because we have some data from PTR, one of our survey partners and they went out, every quarter they do surveys and they asked the customers that were going to decrease their spending in the quarter, "How are you going to do it?" And number one, by far, like, over a third said, "We're going to consolidate redundant vendors." Way ahead of cloud, we going to optimize cloud resource that was next at like 15%. So, confirms what you were saying and you're hearing that a lot. Will you wait? And I think we never get rid of stuff, we talk about it all the time. We call it GRS, get rid of stuff. Were you able to consolidate or at least minimize your expense around? >> Hoshang: Yeah, absolutely. >> What we were able to do is identify different parts of our tech stack that were just either deficient or duplicate, you know, so they're just like, we don't want any duplicate efforts, we just want to be able to have like, a single platform that does things, does things well and Matillion helped us identify all of those different and how do we choose the right tech stack. It's also about like Matillion is so easy to integrate with any tech stack, you know, it's just they have a generic API tool that you can log into anything besides all of the components that are already there. So it's a great platform to help you do that. >> And the three things we always say about the Data Productivity Cloud, everyone ready, we spoke about this is whether low-code, no-code, quasi-technical, quasi-business person using it, through to a high-end data engineer. You're going to feel at home on the DPC. The second one, which Hoshang was just alluding to there is stack ready, right? So it is built for AWS, built for Snowflake, built for Redshift, pure tight integration, push down ELT better than you could write yourself by hand. And then the final one is future ready, which is this idea that you can start now super easy. And we buy software quickly nowadays, right? We spin it up, we try it out and before we know it, the whole organization is using it. And so the future ready talks about that continuum of being able to launch in five minutes, learn it in five hours, deliver your first project in five days and yet still be happy that it's an enterprise scalable platform, five years down track including integrating with all the different things. So Matillion's job holding up the end of the bargain that Hoshang was just talking about there is to ensure we keep putting the features integrations and support into the Data Productivity Cloud to make sure that Hoshang's team can continue to live inside it and do all the things they need to do. >> Hoshang, you talked about the speed to insight being tremendously fast, but if I'm looking at Cisco Meraki from a high level business outcome perspective, what are some of those outcomes that a Matillion is helping Cisco Meraki to achieve. >> So I can just talk in general, not giving you like any specific numbers or anything, but for example, we were trying to understand how well our small and medium business campaigns were doing and we had to actually pull in data from multiple different sources. So not just, our instances of Marketo and Salesforce, we had to look at our internal databases. So Matillion helped us blend all of that together. Once I had all of that data blended, it was then ready to be analyzed. And once we had that analysis done, we were able to confirm that our SMB campaigns were doing well but these the things that we need to do to improve them. When we did that and all of that happened so quickly because they were like, well you need to get data from here, you need to get data from there. And we're like, great, we'll just plug, plug, plug. We put it all together, build transformations and you know we produced this insight and then we were able to reform, refine, and keep getting better and better at it. And you know, we had a 40X return on SMB campaigns. It's unbelievable. >> And there's the revenue tie in right there. >> Hoshang: Yeah. >> Matthew, I know you've been super busy, tons of meetings, you didn't get to see the whole keynote, but one of the themes of Adam Selipsky's keynote was, you know, the three letter word of ETL, they laid out a vision of zero ETL and then they announced zero ETL for Aurora and Redshift. And you think about ETL, I remember the days they said, "Okay, we're going to do ELT." Which is like, raising the debt ceiling, we're just going to kick the can down the road. So, what do you think about that vision? You know, how does it relate to what you guys are doing? >> So there was a, I don't know if this only works in the UK or it works globally. It was a good line many years ago. Rumors of my death are premature or so I think it was an obituary had gone out in the times by accident and that's how the guy responded to it. Something like that. It's a little bit like that. The announcement earlier within the AWS space of zero ETL between platforms like Aurora and Redshift and perhaps more over time is really about data movement, right? So it's about do I need to do a load of high cost in terms of coding and compute, movement of data between one platform, another. At Matillion, we've always seen data movement as an enabling technology, which gets you to the value add of transformation. My favorite metaphor to bring this to life is one of iron. So the world's made of iron, right? The world is literally made of iron ore but iron ore isn't useful until you turn it to steel. Loading data is digging out iron ore from the ground and moving it to the refinery. Transformation of data is turning iron ore into steel and what the announcements you saw earlier from AWS are more about the quarry to the factory bit than they are about the iron ore to the steel bit. And so, I think it's great that platforms are making it easier to move data between them, but it doesn't change the need for Hoshang's business professionals to refine that data into something useful to drive their marketing campaigns. >> Exactly, it's quarry to the factory and a very Snowflake like in a way, right? You make it easy to get in. >> It's like, don't get me wrong, I'm great to see investment going into the Redshift business and the AWS data analytics stack. We do a lot of business there. But yes, this stuff is also there on Snowflake, already. >> I mean come on, we've seen this for years. You know, I know there's a big love fest between Snowflake and AWS 'cause they're selling so much business in the field. But look that we saw it separating computing from storage, then AWS does it and now, you know, why not? It's good sense. That's what customers want. The customer obsessed data sharing is another thing. >> And if you take data sharing as an example from our friends at Snowflake, when that was announced a few people possibly, yourselves, said, "Oh, Matthew what do you think about this? You're in the data movement business." And I was like, "Ah, I'm not really actually, some of my competitors are in the data movement business. I have data movement as part of my platform. We don't charge directly for it. It's just part of the platform." And really what it's to do is to get the data into a place where you can do the fun stuff with it of refining into steel. And so if Snowflake or now AWS and the Redshift group are making that easier that's just faster to fun for me really. >> Yeah, sure. >> Last question, a question for both of you. If you had, you have a brand new shiny car, you got a bumper sticker that you want to put on that car to tell everyone about Matillion, everyone about Cisco Meraki, what does that bumper sticker say? >> So for Matillion, it says Matillion is the Data Productivity Cloud. We help you make your data business ready, faster. And then for a joke I'd write, "Which you are going to need in the face of this tsunami of data." So that's what mine would say. >> Love it. Hoshang, what would you say? >> I would say that Cisco makes some of the best products for IT professionals. And I don't think you can, really do the things you do in IT without any Cisco product. Really phenomenal products. And, we've gone so much beyond just the IT realm. So you know, it's been phenomenal. >> Awesome. Guys, it's been a pleasure having you back on the program. Congrats to you now Hoshang, an alumni of theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> But thank you for talking to us, Matthew, about what's going on with Matillion so much since we've seen you last. I can imagine how much worse going to go on until we see you again. But we appreciate, especially having the Cisco Meraki customer example that really articulates the value of data for everyone. We appreciate your insights and we appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Privilege to be here. Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> Pleasure. For our guests and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>Hello, everyone. Welcome to the cubes presentation of the 80, but startup showcases MarTech is the focus. And this is all about the emerging cloud scale customer experience. This is season two, episode three of the ongoing series covering the exciting, fast growing startups from the cloud AWS ecosystem to talk about the future and what's available now, where are the actions? I'm your host John fur. Today. We joined by Cub alumni, Jerry Chen partner at Greylock ventures. Jerry. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on, >>John. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate you welcome there for season two. Uh, as a, as a guest star, >><laugh>, you know, Hey, you know, season two, it's not a one and done it's continued coverage. We, we got the episodic, uh, cube flicks model going >>Here. Well, you know, congratulations, the, the coverage on this ecosystem around AWS has been impressive, right? I think you and I have talked a long time about AWS and the ecosystem building. It just continues to grow. And so the coverage you did last season, all the events of this season is, is pretty amazing from the data security to now marketing. So it's, it's great to >>Watch. And 12 years now, the cube been running. I remember 2013, when we first met you in the cube, we just left VMware just getting into the venture business. And we were just riffing the next 80. No one really kind of knew how big it would be. Um, but we were kinda riffing on. We kind of had a sense now it's happening. So now you start to see every vertical kind of explode with the right digital transformation and disruption where you see new incumbents. I mean, new Newton brands get replaced the incumbent old guard. And now in MarTech, it's ripe for, for disruption because web two has gone on to web 2.5, 3, 4, 5, um, cookies are going away. You've got more governance and privacy challenges. There's a slew of kind of ad tech baggage, but yet lots of new data opportunities. Jerry, this is a huge, uh, thing. What's your take on this whole MarTech cloud scale, uh, >>Market? I, I think, I think to your point, John, that first the trends are correct and the bad and the good or good old days, the battle days MarTech is really about your webpage. And then email right there. There's, there's the emails, the only channel and the webpage was only real estate and technology to care about fast forward, you know, 10 years you have webpages, mobile apps, VR experiences, car experiences, your, your, your Alexa home experiences. Let's not even get to web three web 18, whatever it is. Plus you got text messages, WhatsApp, messenger, email, still great, et cetera. So I think what we've seen is both, um, explosion and data, uh, explosion of channel. So sources of data have increases and the fruits of the data where you can reach your customers from text, email, phone calls, etcetera have exploded too. So the previous generation created big company responses, Equa, you know, that exact target that got acquired by Oracle or, or, um, Salesforce, and then companies like, um, you know, MailChimp that got acquired as well, but into it, you're seeing a new generation companies for this new stack. So I, I think it's exciting. >>Yeah. And you mentioned all those things about the different channels and stuff, but the key point is now the generation shifts going on, not just technical generation, uh, and platform and tools, it's the people they're younger. They don't do email. They have, you know, proton mail accounts, zillion Gmail accounts, just to get the freebie. Um, they're like, they're, they'll do subscriptions, but not a lot. So the generational piece on the human side is huge. Okay. And then you got the standards, bodies thrown away, things like cookies. Sure. So all this is makes it for a complicated, messy situation. Um, so out of this has to come a billion dollar startup in my mind, >>I, I think multiple billion dollars, but I think you're right in the sense that how we want engage with the company branch, either consumer brands or business brands, no one wants to pick a phone anymore. Right? Everybody wants to either chat or DM people on Twitter. So number one, the, the way we engage is different, both, um, where both, how like chat or phone, but where like mobile device, but also when it's the moment when we need to talk to a company or brand be it at the store, um, when I'm shopping in real life or in my car or at the airport, like we want to reach the brands, the brands wanna reach us at the point of decision, the point of support, the point of contact. And then you, you layer upon that the, the playing field, John of privacy security, right? All these data silos in the cloud, the, the, the, the game has changed and become even more complicated with the startup. So the startups are gonna win. Will do, you know, the collect, all the data, make us secure in private, but then reach your customers when and where they want and how they want it. >>So I gotta ask you, because you had a great podcast just this week, published and snowflake had their event going on the data cloud, there's a new kind of SAS platform vibe going on. You're starting to see it play out. Uh, and one of the things I, I noticed on your podcast with the president of Hashi Corp, who was on people should listen to that podcast. It's on gray matter, which is the Greylocks podcast, uh, plug for you guys. He mentioned he mentions the open source dynamic, right? Sure. And, and I like what he, things, he said, he said, software business has changed forever. It's my words. Now he said infrastructure, but I'm saying software in general, more broader infrastructure and software as a category is all open source. One game over no debate. Right. You agree? >>I, I think you said infrastructure specifically starts at open source, but I would say all open source is one more or less because open source is in every bit of software. Right? And so from your operating system to your car, to your mobile phone, open source, not necessarily as a business model or, or, or whatever, we can talk about that. But open source as a way to build software distribute, software consume software has one, right? It is everywhere. So regardless how you make money on it, how you build software, an open source community ha has >>One. Okay. So let's just agree. That's cool. I agree with that. Let's take it to the next level. I'm a company starting a company to sell to big companies who pay. I gotta have a proprietary advantage. There's gotta be a way. And there is, I know you've talked about it, but I have my opinion. There is needs to be a way to be proprietary in a way that allows for that growth, whether it's integration, it's not gonna be on software license or maybe support or new open source model. But how does startups in the MarTech this area in general, when they disrupt or change the category, they gotta get value creation going. What's your take on, on building. >>You can still build proprietary software on top of open source, right? So there's many companies out there, um, you know, in a company called rock set, they've heavily open source technology like Rock's DB under the hood, but they're running a cloud database. That's proprietary snowflake. You talk about them today. You know, it's not open source technology company, but they use open source software. I'm sure in the hoods, but then there's open source companies, data break. So let's not confus the two, you can still build proprietary software. There's just components of open source, wherever we go. So number one is you can still build proprietary IP. Number two, you can get proprietary data sources, right? So I think increasingly you're seeing companies fight. I call this systems intelligence, right, by getting proprietary data, to train your algorithms, to train your recommendations, to train your applications, you can still collect data, um, that other competitors don't have. >>And then it can use the data differently, right? The system of intelligence. And then when you apply the system intelligence to the end user, you can create value, right? And ultimately, especially marketing tech, the highest level, what we call the system of engagement, right? If, if the chat bot the mobile UI, the phone, the voice app, etcetera, if you own the system of engagement, be a slack, or be it, the operating system for a phone, you can also win. So still multiple levels to play John in multiple ways to build proprietary advantage. Um, just gotta own system record. Yeah. System intelligence, system engagement. Easy, right? Yeah. >>Oh, so easy. Well, the good news is the cloud scale and the CapEx funded there. I mean, look at Amazon, they've got a ton of open storage. You mentioned snowflake, but they're getting a proprietary value. P so I need to ask you MarTech in particular, that means it's a data business, which you, you pointed out and we agree. MarTech will be about the data of the workflows. How do you get those workflows what's changing and how these companies are gonna be building? What's your take on it? Because it's gonna be one of those things where it might be the innovation on a source of data, or how you handle two parties, ex handling encrypted data sets. I don't know. Maybe it's a special encryption tool, so we don't know what it is. What's your what's, what's your outlook on this area? >>I, I, I think that last point just said is super interesting, super genius. It's integration or multiple data sources. So I think either one, if it's a data business, do you have proprietary data? Um, one number two with the data you do have proprietary, not how do you enrich the data and do you enrich the data with, uh, a public data set or a party data set? So this could be cookies. It could be done in Brad street or zoom info information. How do you enrich the data? Number three, do you have machine learning models or some other IP that once you collected the data, enriched the data, you know, what do you do with the data? And then number four is once you have, um, you know, that model of the data, the customer or the business, what do you deal with it? Do you email, do you do a tax? >>Do you do a campaign? Do you upsell? Do you change the price dynamically in our customers? Do you serve a new content on your website? So I think that workflow to your point is you can start from the same place, what to do with the data in between and all the, on the out the side of this, this pipeline is where a MarTech company can have then. So like I said before, it was a website to an email go to website. You know, we have a cookie fill out a form. Yeah. I send you an email later. I think now you, you can't just do a website to email, it's a website plus mobile apps, plus, you know, in real world interaction to text message, chat, phone, call Twitter, a whatever, you know, it's >>Like, it's like, they're playing checkers in web two and you're talking 3d chess. <laugh>, I mean, there's a level, there's a huge gap between what's coming. And this is kind of interesting because now you mentioned, you know, uh, machine learning and data, and AI is gonna factor into all this. You mentioned, uh, you know, rock set. One of your portfolios has under the hood, you know, open source and then use proprietary data and cloud. Okay. That's a configuration, that's an architecture, right? So architecture will be important in terms of how companies posture in this market, cuz MarTech is ripe for innovation because it's based on these old technologies, but there's tons of workflows, but you gotta have the data. Right. And so if I have the best journey map from a client that goes to a website, but then they go and they do something in the organic or somewhere else. If I don't have that, what good is it? It's like a blind spot. >>Correct. So I think you're seeing folks with the data BS, snowflake or data bricks, or an Amazon that S three say, Hey, come to my data cloud. Right. Which, you know, Snowflake's advertising, Amazon will say the data cloud is S3 because all your data exists there anyway. So you just, you know, live on S3 data. Bricks will say, S3 is great, but only use Amazon tools use data bricks. Right. And then, but on top of that, but then you had our SaaS companies like Oracle, Salesforce, whoever, and say, you know, use our qua Marketo, exact target, you know, application as a system record. And so I think you're gonna have a battle between, do I just work my data in S3 or where my data exists or gonna work my data, some other application, like a Marketo Ella cloud Z target, um, or, you know, it could be a Twilio segment, right. Was combination. So you'll have this battle between these, these, these giants in the cloud, easy, the castles, right. Versus, uh, the, the, the, the contenders or the, or the challengers as we call >>'em. Well, great. Always chat with the other. We always talk about castles in the cloud, which is your work that you guys put out, just an update on. So check out greylock.com. They have castles on the cloud, which is a great thesis on and a map by the way ecosystem. So you guys do a really good job props to Jerry and the team over at Greylock. Um, okay. Now I gotta ask kind of like the VC private equity sure. Market question, you know, evaluations. Uh, first of all, I think it's a great time to do a startup. So it's a good time to be in the VC business. I think the next two years, you're gonna find some nice gems, but also you gotta have that cleansing period. You got a lot of overvaluation. So what happened with the markets? So there's gonna be a lot of M and a. So the question is what are some of the things that you see as challenges for product teams in particular that might have that killer answer in MarTech, or might not have the runway if there's no cash, um, how do people partner in this modern era, cuz scale's a big deal, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> you can measure everything. So you get the combination of a, a new kind of M and a market coming, a potential growth market for the right solution. Again, value's gotta be be there. What's your take on this market? >>I, I, I think you're right. Either you need runway, so cash to make it through, through this next, you know, two, three years, whatever you think the market Turmo is or two, you need scale, right? So if you're at a company of scale and you have enough data, you can probably succeed on your own. If not, if you're kind of in between or early to your point, either one focus, a narrower wedge, John, just like we say, just reduce the surface area. And next two years focus on solving one problem. Very, very well, or number two in this MarTech space, especially there's a lot of partnership and integration opportunities to create a complete solution together, to compete against kind of the incumbents. Right? So I think they're folks with the data, they're folks doing data, privacy, security, they're post focusing their workflow or marketing workflows. You're gonna see either one, um, some M and a, but I definitely can see a lot of Coopers in partnership. And so in the past, maybe you would say, I'm just raise another a hundred million dollars and do what you're doing today. You might say, look, instead of raising more money let's partner together or, or merge or find a solution. So I think people are gonna get creative. Yeah. Like said scarcity often is good. Yeah. I think forces a lot more focus and a lot more creativity. >>Yeah. That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up up. Cause I didn't think you were gonna go there. I was gonna ask that biz dev activity is going to be really fundamental because runway combined with the fact that, Hey, you know, if you know, get real or you're gonna go under is a real issue. So now people become friends. They're like, okay, if we partner, um, it's clearly a good way to go if you can get there. So what advice would you give companies? Um, even most experienced, uh, founders and operators. This is a different market, right? It's a different kind of velocity, obviously architectural data. You mentioned some of those key things. What's the posture to partner. What's your advice? What's the combat man manual to kind of compete in this new biz dev world where some it's a make or break time, either get the funding, get the customers, which is how you get funding or you get a biz dev deal where you combine forces, uh, go to market together or not. What's your advice? >>I, I think that the combat manual is either you're partnering for one or two things, either one technology or two customers or sometimes both. So it would say which partnerships, youre doing for technology EG solution completers. Like you have, you know, this puzzle piece, I have this puzzle piece data and data privacy and let's work together. Um, or number two is like, who can help you with customers? And that's either a, I, they can be channel for you or, or vice versa or can share customers and you can actually go to market together and find customers jointly. So ideally you're partner for one, if not the other, sometimes both. And just figure out where in your life cycle do you need? Um, friends. >>Yeah. Great. My final question, Jerry, first of all, thanks for coming on and sharing your in insight as usual. Always. Awesome final question for the folks watching that are gonna be partnering and buying product and services from these startups. Um, there's a select few great ones here and obviously every other episode as well, and you've got a bunch you're investing in this, it's actually a good market for the ones that are lean companies that are lean and mean have value. And the cloud scale does provide that. So a lot of companies are getting it right, they're gonna break through. So they're clearly gonna be getting customers the buyer side, how should they be looking through the lens right now and looking at companies, what should they look for? Um, and they like to take chances with seeing that. So it's not so much, they gotta be vetted, but you know, how do they know the winners from the pretenders? >>You know, I, I think the customers are always smart. I think in the, in the, in the past in market market tech, especially they often had a budget to experiment with. I think you're looking now the customers, the buyer technologies are looking for a hard ROI, like a return on investment. And before think they might experiment more, but now they're saying, Hey, are you gonna help me save money or increase revenue or some hardcore metric that they care about? So I think, um, the startups that actually have a strong ROI, like save money or increased revenue and can like point empirically how they do that will, will, you know, rise to the top of, of the MarTech landscape. And customers will see that they're they're, the customers are smart, right? They're savvy buyers. They, they, they, they, they can smell good from bad and they're gonna see the strong >>ROI. Yeah. And the other thing too, I like to point out, I'd love to get your reaction real quick is a lot of the companies have DNA, any open source or they have some community track record where communities now, part of the vetting. I mean, are they real good people? >>Yeah. I, I think open stores, like you said, in the community in general, like especially all these communities that move on slack or discord or something else. Right. I think for sure, just going through all those forums, slack communities or discord communities, you can see what's a good product versus next versus bad. Don't go to like the other sites. These communities would tell you who's working. >>Well, we got a discord channel on the cube now had 14,000 members. Now it's down to six, losing people left and right. We need a moderator, um, to get on. If you know anyone on discord, anyone watching wants to volunteer to be the cube discord, moderator. Uh, we could use some help there. Love discord. Uh, Jerry. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. What's new at Greylock. What's some of the things happening. Give a quick plug for the firm. When you guys working on, I know there's been some cool things happening, new investments, people moving. >>Yeah. Look we're we're Greylock partners, seed series a firm. I focus at enterprise software. I have a team with me that also does consumer investing as well as crypto investing like all firms. So, but we're we're seed series a occasionally later stage growth. So if you're interested, uh, FA me@jkontwitterorjgreylock.com. Thank you, John. >>Great stuff, Jerry. Thanks for coming on. This is the Cube's presentation of the, a startup showcase. MarTech is the series this time, emerging cloud scale customer experience where the integration and the data matters. This is season two, episode three of the ongoing series covering the hottest cloud startups from the ADWS ecosystem. Um, John farrier, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of AWS re:invent 2021. I'm here with my co-host John Furrier and we're running one of the largest, most significant technology events in the history of 2021. Two live sets here in Las Vegas, along with our two studios. And we are absolutely delighted. We're incredibly delighted to welcome a returning alumni. It's not enough to just say that you're an alumni because you have been such a fixture of theCUBE for so many years. Annie Weinberger. And Annie is head of product marketing for applications at AWS. Annie, welcome. >> Thank you so much, it's great to be back. >> It's wonderful to have you back. Let's dive right into it. >> Okay. >> Talk to us about Connect. What does that mean when I say Connect? >> Yes, well, I think if we talk about Amazon Connect, we have to go back to the beginning of the origin story. So, over 10 years ago, when Amazon retail was looking for a solution to manage their customer service and their contact center, we went out and we looked at different solutions and nothing really met our needs. Nothing could kind of provide the scale that we needed at Amazon, or could really be as flexible as we needed to ensure that we're our customer obsession could come through in our customer service. So we built our own solution. And over the years, customers were coming to us and asking, you know, what do you use for your customer service technology? And so we launched Amazon Connect, our omni-channel cloud contact center solution just over four years ago. And it is the one of the fastest growing services at AWS. We have tens of thousands of customers using it today, like Capital One into it, Bank of Omaha, Mutual of Omaha, Best Western, you know, I can go on and on. And they're using it to have over 10 million interactions with customers every day. So it's, you know, growing phenomenally and we just couldn't be more proud to help our customers with their customer service. >> So, yeah. Talk about some of the components that go into that. What are the sort of puzzle pieces that make up AWS Connect? Because obviously connecting with a customer can take a whole bunch of different forms with email, text, voice. >> Yeah >> What's included in that? >> So it's an omni-channel cloud contact center. It provides, you know, any way you want to talk to your customers. There's traditional methods of voice. There's automated ways to connect. So IVRs or interactive voice responses where you call with voice prompts, there's chat, you know. We have Lex Bots that use the same technology that powers Alexa for natural language understanding. And I think customers really like it for a few reasons. One is that unlike kind of other contact center solutions, you can set it up in minutes. You know, American Preparatory Academy had to set up a contact center, they did it in two days. And then it's very, very easy to customize and use. So another example is, you know, when Priceline was going through COVID and they realized their call volume went up 300% overnight, and everybody was just sitting near the queue waiting to talk to an agent. So in 20 minutes, we were able to go in and very easily with a drag and drop interface, customize the ad flow so that people who had a reservation in the next 72 hours were prioritized. So very, very easily. >> You just jumped the gun on me. I was going to ask this because we never boarding that Connect during the pandemic was a huge success. >> Annie: Yes. >> It was many, many examples where people were just located, disrupted by the pandemic. And you guys had tons of traction from government public sector to commercial across the board. Adam Solecki told me in person a couple weeks ago that it was on fire, Connect was on fire. So again, a tailwind, one of those examples with the pandemic, but it highlights this idea or purpose built, ready to go. >> Pre-built the applications. >> Pre-built application. This is a phenomenon. >> It's moving up the stack for AWS. It's very exciting. I think, yeah, we had over 5,000 new contact centers stood up in March and April of 2020 alone. >> Dave: Wow. >> Give it some scale, just go back to the scale piece. Cause this is like, like amazing to stand up a call center like hours, days. Like this is like incredible to, give us some stats on some examples of how fast people were standing up Connect. >> Yeah, I mean, you could stand it up overnight. American Preparatory Academy, as I mentioned did it in two days, we had, you know, this county of Los Angeles did theirs I think at a day. You could go and right now you don't need any technical expertise, even though you have some. >> theCUBE call center, we don't need people calling. >> We had everyone from a Mexican restaurant needed to take to go orders. Cause now it's COVID and they don't have a call. They've been able to set that up, grab a phone number and start taking takeout orders all the way to like capital one, you know, with 40,000 agents that need to move remote overnight. And I think that it's because of that ease to set up, but also the scale and the way that we charge. So, you know, it's AWS consumption-based pricing. You only pay for the interactions with customers. So the barrier to entry is really, really low. You don't have to migrate everything over and buy a bunch of new licenses. You can just stand it up and you're only charged for the interactions with customers. And then if you want to scale down like into it, obviously tax season they're bringing on a lot more agents to handle calls, when those agents aren't really needed for that busy time, you're not paying for those seats. >> You're flex. Take me through the, okay, that's a win, I get that. So home run, great success. Now, the machine learning story is interesting too, because you have the purpose-built platform. There's some customizations that can happen on top of it. So it's not just, here's a general purpose piece of software. People are using some customizations. Take us through the other things. >> Well, the exciting thing is they're not even real customizations because we're AWS, we can leverage the AML services and built pre-built purpose-built features. So there it's embedded and you know, Amazon Connect has been cloud native and AI born since the very beginning. So we've taken a lot of the AI services and built them into you don't need any knowledge. You don't have to know anything about AIML. You can just go in and start leveraging it. And it has huge powerful effects for our customers. We launched three new features this year. One was Amazon Wisdom. That's part of Amazon Connect. And what that does is, you know, if you're an agent and you're on the phone and customer's asking questions, today what they have to do is go in and search across all these different knowledge repositories to find the answer or, you know, how do I issue a refund? You know, we're hearing about this feature that's broken on our product. We're listening behind the scenes to that call and then just automatically providing the knowledge articles as they're on the call saying, this is what you should do, giving them recommendations so we can help the customer much more quickly. >> I love them moving up the stack. Again, a huge fan of Connect. We've highlighting in all of our stories. It's a phenomenon that's translating to other areas, but I want to tie back in where it goes next cause on these keynotes, Adam Solecki's and today was Swami, the conversations about a horizontal data plane. And so as customers would say, use Connect, I might want, if I'm a big customer I want to integrate that into my data because it's voice data, it's call centers, customer data, but I have other databases. So how do you guys look at that integration layer snapping it together with say, a time series database, or maybe a CRM system or retail e-commerce because again, it's all data but it's connected call center. Some may think it's silo, but it's not really siloed. So, I'm a customer. How do I integrate call center? >> Yeah and it's, you know, we have a very strong partner with Salesforce. They're actually a reseller of Connect. So we work with them very, very closely. We have out of the box integrations with Salesforce, with your other, you know, analytics databases with Marketo with other services that you need. I think again, it's one of the benefits of being AWS, it's very extensible, very flexible, and really easy to bring in and share the data that we have with other systems. >> John: So it's not an issue then. >> One of the conversation points that's come up is the, this idea that a large majority of IT Spend is still on premises today. In other words, the AWS total addressable market hasn't been tapped yet. And, you imagine going through the pandemic, someone using AWS Connect to create a virtual call center, now as we hopefully come out and people some return to the office, but now they have the tools to be able to stay at home and be more flexible. Those people, maybe they weren't in the cloud that much before. But to John's point, now you start talking about connecting all of those other data sources. Well, where do those data sources belong? They belong in AWS. So, from your perspective, on the surface it looks like, well, wait, you have these products, but really those are gateways to everything else that AWS does. Is that a fair statement? >> I think it's very, yeah. Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> The big thing I want to get into is okay, we're, I mean, we don't have a lot of people calling for theCUBE but I mean, we wouldn't use the call center, but there's audio involved. Are people more going back to the old school phones for support now with the pandemic? Cause you've mentioned that earlier about the price line, having more- >> I think it's, you know, when we talk to our customers too, it's about letting, letting any customer contact you the way they want to. You know, we, you know, I was talking to Delta, spoke with us yesterday in the business application leadership session. And she said, you know, when someone has a flight issue, I'm sure you can attest to this. I did the same thing. They call, you know, if your, if your flight got canceled or it's looking like it's going to keep pushing, you don't necessarily want to go, you know, use a chat bot or send an email or a text, but there's other use cases where you just want a quick answer, you know, if you contact, I haven't received my product yet, you know, it said it was shipped, I didn't get it. I don't necessarily want to talk to someone, but so, it's just about making that available. >> On the voice side, is it other apps are integrating voice? So what's the interface to call center? Is it, can I integrate like an app voice integrated through the app or it's all phone? >> Because for the agents, there's an agent UI. So they'll see kind of calls that they have in their queue coming up, they'll see the tasks that they have to issue or refund. They'll see the kind of analytics that they have. The knowledge works. There's a supervisor view, so they could go see, you know, we with contact lens for Amazon Connect, we had a launch this, you know, this week, every event around contact lens, it lets you see the trends and sentiment of what's going on the call. It gives them like those training moments. If people aren't using the standard sign-off or the standard greeting on the call, it's a training moment and they can kind of see what's happening and get real-time alerts. If two keywords of a customer saying they cancel into the call, that can get a flag and they can go in and help the agent if necessary. So. >> All kinds of metadata extraction going on in real time. >> Yeah. >> How do you, how would AWS to go through the process of determining what should be bespoke solution hearing versus something that can be productized? And we know there are 475 different kinds of instances. However, you can come up with a package solution where people could pick features and get up and running really quickly. How is that decision making process? >> Well, I mean, you know, 90% at least of what we do build, it comes from what our customers ask for. So we don't, it's the onus is not on us. We listen to our customers, they tell us what they want us to build. Contact center solutions are their line of business applications are purchased by business decision makers and they're used to doing more buying than building. So they wanted to be more out of the box, more like pre-built, but we still are AWS. We make it very, very extensible, very easy to customize, like pull in other data sources. But when we look at how we are going to move up the stack and other areas, we just continue to listen to our customers. >> What's the biggest thing you learned in the pandemic from the team? What's the learnings coming out of the pandemic as hybrid world is upon us? >> I mean, I think a few things with, you know, starting, as you mentioned with the cloud, that the kind of idea of a contact center being a massive building, usually in the middle of America where, you know, people go and they sit and they have conversations. If that was really turned on its head and you can have very secure and accessible solutions through the cloud so that you can work from anywhere. So that was really fantastic to see. >> That's going to be interesting to see moving forward. How that paradigm shifts some centralized call centers, but a lot of this aggregated work that can be done. >> I mean, who knows the, you know, gig economy could be in the contact center, you know. >> Yeah, absolutely >> Yeah >> Maybe get some CUBE hosts, give us theCUBE Connect. We get some CUBE hosts remote. >> That's important work, yeah. >> We need, we need to talk. I got to got my phone number in that list. Annie, it's been fantastic to have you. >> Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. >> For John Furrier, this is Dave Nicholson telling you, thank you for joining our continuous coverage of AWS reinvent 2021. Stick with theCUBE for the best in hybrid event coverage. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE covering Boomi World 19. Brought to you by Boomi. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Lisa Martin, John Furrier is my co-host, and we are at Boomi World 2019 in Washington, D.C. Very pleased to be joined by the founder of Boomi and the co-founder and CEO of Guru, Rick Nucci. Hey, Rick. >> Hello. >> Lisa: Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me, this is very cool setup. >> Lisa: Yeah, isn't it?! >> Rick: Yeah. >> So this is a founder of Boomi. It's pretty cool to have a celebrity on our stage. >> Rick: I'm not a celebrity. (laughs) >> (laughs) Talk to us about all that back in the day back in Philadelphia when you had this idea for what now has become a company that has 9,000+ customers in 80+ countries. >> Yeah, I'm beyond proud of this team and just how well they have done and made this business into what it is today. Yeah, way back in 2007, we were really looking at the integration market, and back then, cloud was really an unknown future. It was creeping up the Hype Cycle of the Gartner. Hype Cycle's my favorite thing they do. A lot of people were dismissing it as a fad, and we were early adopters of cloud internally at Boomi. We were early users of Salesforce and NetSuite and just thought and made a bet and a lot of this stuff is luck as any founder will tell you, any honest founder will tell you. And recognize that, hey, if the world were to move to cloud, how would you actually think about the integration problem? Because it would be very different than how you would think about it in the on-prem days when you have everything in your own data center behind your own four walls. In this world, everything's different. Security's a huge deal, the way data moves and has to mediate between firewalls is a big deal. And none of these products are built like this and so, really wanted as a team, and I remember these early conversations and had the willingness to take a big bet and swing for the fences and what I mean by that is really build a product from the ground up in this new paradigm, new cloud, and take a bet and say, hey, if cloud does take off, this will be awesome for Boomi. If not, well, we'll be in the line of all the other startups that have come and gone. And I think we ended up in a good spot. >> Yeah, that's a great point, Rick, about the founders being honest. And a lot of it is hard work, but having a vision and making multiple bets and big bets. I remember, when EC2 came out, it was a startup dream, too, by the way. You could just purchase a data center. But it wasn't fully complete, it was actually growing very fast. More services were coming on, they were web services, so that was API-based concepts back then. When was the crossover point for you guys going, "okay, we got this, the bets are coming in. "We're going to double down, we're going to double down on this." What were some of those moments where you started to get visibility that was a good bet? And what did you do? >> Yeah, what it really was was the rise of SaaS, very specifically, and the rise of business applications that were being re-architected in the cloud. And everybody knew about Salesforce, but there weren't a lot of other things back then. And there was NetSuite and a handful of others, but then, you started to see additional business units start to build cloud, and you had, in the HR space, with success factors in Taleo and marketing automation space with Eloqua and Marketo. CRM space, we all know that story, e-commerce space procurement, and you start to see these best-of-breed products rise up which is amazing, but as that was happening, it was proliferating the integration problem. And so what became really clear to us, I think, as we were going through this and finding product market fit for Boomi, again, back in 2007, 2008, that was the pattern that emerged, like hey, every time someone buys one of these products, they are going to have to integrate 'cause you're talking about employee data, customer data. You have to integrate this with your other systems and that was going to create an opportunity for us and that was where we were like, okay, I think we're onto something. >> You know, to date, we've been doing theCUBE for 10 years. We made a big bet that people, authentic conversation would be a good bet, turns out it worked. We love it, things going great, but now, we're living in a world now that's getting more complex and I want to get your thoughts that Dave Vellante, myself, Stu who have been talking about how clouds changed and we were goofing on the Web 2.0 metaphor by saying, Cloud 1.0, Cloud 2.0. But I want to get your thoughts on how you might see this because, if you say Cloud 1.0 was Amazon, compute storage, AtScale, cloud NATO, all started there. Pretty straightforward if you're going to be born in the cloud, then you could work with some things there, but to bring multicloud and for enterprises to adopt with this integration challenge, Cloud 2.0 unveils some new things like, for instance, network management now is observability. Configuration management is now automation (chuckles). So you start to see things emerge differently in this Cloud 2.0 operating model. How do you see Cloud 2.0? Do you believe that, one, there's a Cloud 2.0 the way I said it, and if so, what is your version of what Cloud 2.0 would look like? >> Yeah, I think, yes, definitely think things are changing and the way that I think about it is that we're continuing to unbundle, and what I mean by unbundle is we're continuing to proliferate... Buyers are willing to buy and, therefore, we're continuing to proliferate relatively narrower and narrower and deeper and deeper capabilities and functionalities. And one big driver of that is AI, specifically, machine learning, and not the hypey stuff, but the real stuff. It's funny, man, when you compare, right now, AI, and what I was just talking about, it's the same thing all over again. It's Hype Cycle crawling up the thing, okay. But now, I think the recipe for good AI products that really do solve problems is that they're very intentionally narrow and they're very deep because they're gathering good training data and they're built to solve a very specific problem. So I think-- >> Like domain expertise, domain-specific-- >> Exactly, industry expertise, domain expertise, use case. If you're gathering training data about a knowledge worker, the data you'll gather is very different if you're a salesperson or an HR professional or an engineer. And I think the AI companies that are getting it right, are really dialed in and focused on that, so as a result, you see this proliferation of things that might be layered on top of big platforms like CRM's and technologies like Slack, which is creating a place for all this to come together, but you're seeing this unbundling where you're getting more and more kind of almost microservices, not quite, but very fine-tuned, specific things coming together. >> So machine learning, I totally agree with you, it's definitely hype, but the hardcore machine learning has a math side to it and a cognition side, cognitive learning thing. But, also, data is a common thread here. I mentioned domain-specific. >> Rick: All about the data. >> So, if data's super important, you want domain expertise which I agree with, but also there's now a horizontal scalability with observation data. The more data you have, the better at machine learning. It may or may not, depending on what the context is, so you have contextual data, this is a (chuckles) hard thing. What's your view on this because this is where people maybe get caught around the axis of machine learning hype and not nearly narrowing on what their data thinking is. >> Rick: 100%. >> What's your--? >> 100%, I think people will tend to fall in the trap of focusing on the algorithms that they're building and not recognizing that, without the data, the algorithms are useless. Right? >> Lisa: Right. >> And that it's really about how, as a ML problem that you're trying to tackle. Are you gathering data that's good, high-quality, scalable, accurate, protected, and safe? Because now, for different reasons, but again, just like when we were moving to cloud, security and privacy are utmost important because, for any AI to do its job well, it has to gather a lot of data out of the enterprise and store it and train off of that. >> It's interesting a lot of the cloud play. I mean sales was just a unicorn right out of the gate and they were a pioneer, that's what it is. They were cloud before cloud was cloud as we know it today. But you see a lot of things like the marketing automation cloud platform. It's a marketing cloud, I got a sales cloud. Almost seem too monolithic and you see people trying to unbundle that. I think you're right. Or break it apart 'cause the data is stuck in this full-stack model because, if you agree with your sets, horizontal scalability and vertical integration is the architecture. Technically, that's half-stack. (chuckles) >> Yes, yes. >> John: So half-stack developers are evaluable now. >> Totally, and yes, I like that term. The other problem that I think you're getting at is tendency isolation of that data. A lot of things were built with that in mind, meaning that the best AI you're going to build is only going to be what you can derive from one customer's set of data. Whereas, now, people are designing things intentionally such that the more customers that are using the thing, the better and smarter it gets. And so, to your point about monolithic, I think the opportunity that the next wave of startups have is that they can design in that world and that just means that their technology will get better faster 'cause it'll be able to learn from more data and-- >> This hasn't been changing a lot in cloud. I want to get your thoughts because you guys at Boomi here are on a single-tenant instance model because the collective intelligence of the data benefits everybody as more people come in. That's a beautiful fly, we'll feel a lot like Amazon model to me. But the old days, multi-tenancy was the holy grail. Maybe that came from the telcos or whatever, hosting world. What's your view on single-tenant instance on a SaaS business versus, say, multiten... There's trade-offs and pros and cons. What's your opinion, where do you lean on this one? >> Yeah, I mean we, both Boomi and Guru, so two eras worth or whatever. You have to have some level of tenancy isolation for some level of what you do. And, at Boomi, what we did is we separated the sensitive, private data. Boomi has customers processing payroll through its product, so very, very sensitive stuff absolutely has to be protected and isolated per tenant, and Boomi and Guru is signing up for that, and the clauses that we sign to are security agreements. But what you can decouple from that is more of the metadata or the attributes about that data and that customer, so Boomi, you're referring to, launched way back when Boomi Suggest which basically learned. As all the people were building data maps, connecting different things together, Boomi could learn from all that and go, oh, you're trying to do this. Well, these however many other customers, let me suggest how these maps are drawn, and Guru, we're following a very similar pattern, so Guru, we store knowledge which also tends to be IP for a company and so, yes, we absolutely adhere to the fact that only a handful of our employees can ever see that stuff, and that's 'cause they're in devops, and they needed to keep things running, but all the tenants are protected from one another. No one could ever leak to another one. But there are things about organization and structure and tagging and learnings you can get that are not that sensitive stuff that does make the product better from an AI perspective the more people that use it. And so, I don't know that I'm giving you one or another, but I think it does come down to how you intentionally design your data to it. >> John: Decoupling is the critical piece. >> Absolutely. >> This is the cloud architecture. Decouple, use API's to connect highly cohesive elements, and the platform can be cohesive if shared. >> Absolutely, and you can still get all the benefits of scalability and elastic growth and, yeah, 100%. >> Along that uncoupling line, tell us a little bit briefly about what Guru is and then I want to talk about some of the use cases. I know I'm a big Slack user; you probably are too, John. Talk to us about what you're doing there, but just give our folks a sense of what Guru is and all that good stuff. >> Sure, I mean Guru's, in some ways, like Boomi, rethinking a very old problem, in this case, it's knowledge management. That's a concept we've talked about for a long time and I think, these days, it has really become something that does impact a company's ability to scale and grow reliably, so very specifically, what we do is we bring the knowledge that employees need to do their job to them when they need it. So imagine if you're a customer support agent and you're supporting Spotify, you're an employee of Spotify. And I write in and I want to know about the new Hulu partnership. As an agent, you use Guru to look up and give me that answer and you don't have to go to a portal, you don't have to go to some other place to do that. Guru's sitting there right next to your ticket or your chat as you're having it in real time, saying, hey, there's asking about Hulu. This is the important things you want to know and talk about. And then the other half of that is, we make sure that that doesn't go still. The classic problem with knowledge products is the information, when you're talking about something like product knowledge, changes all the time. And the world we live in is moving faster and faster and faster, so we used to ship product once a year, once every two years. Now we ship product every month, sometimes couple times a month. >> Can you get a Guru bot for our journalism and our Cube hosts? We can be real time. >> Hey! >> I would be happy to do that. >> That'd be great! >> (laughs) Guru journalist. >> Actually, you're able to set it right in there where your ears are-- >> Lisa: I'll take it. >> Just prompting you, exactly. So, and then you asked about Slack, that's a really great partner for us. They were an early investor in the company. They're a customer, but together, if you think about where a lot of knowledge exchange happens in Slack, it's, hey, I need to know something. I think I can go slack John 'cause I think he'll know the answer. He knows about this. And you're like the 87th person who's asked me that same thing over again. Well, with Guru being integrated into Slack, you can just say, "Guru, give them the answer." And you don't have to repeat yourself. And that expert fatigue problem is a real thing. >> John: That's a huge issue. >> Absolutely. >> And, as your company grows and more and more people are, oh, poor John's getting buried for being the expert, one of the reasons he got you there. Now he's getting burned out and buried from it. And so we seek to solve that problem and then, post-Guru, a company will scale faster, they'll onboard their employees faster, they'll launch products better, 'cause everyone will know what to talk about-- >> It's like a frequently asked questions operating system. >> Rick: Exactly. >> At a moment's notice. >> Technology, right? And making it living 'cause all those FAQ's change all the time. >> And that's the important part too is keeping it relevant, 24 by 7. >> Rick: Absolutely. >> Which is difficult. >> Contextual data analysis is really hard. What's the secret sauce? >> The secret sauce is that we live where you work. The secret sauce is that we focus very specifically on specific workflows like that customer support agent and so, by knowing what you're doing and what ticket you're working on and what chat you're having with a customer, Guru can be anticipatory over time and start to say, "hey, you probably "want to talk to him about this," and bring that answer to you. It's because we live where you work. And that was frankly accidental in a lot of ways. We were trying to solve the problem of knowledge living where you work, and then what we realized is, wow, there's a lot of interesting stuff that we can learn and give back to the customer about what problems they're solving and when they're using Guru and why, and that only makes the product better. So that's really, I think, the thing that, if you ask our typical customers, really gets them excited. They'll say, hey, because of Guru, I feel more confident when I'm on the phone, that I'm always going to give the right answer. >> That's awesome. >> I love hearing customers talk about or even have business leaders talk about some of the accidental discoveries or capabilities, but just how, over time, more and more and more value gets unlocked if you can actually, really extract value from that data. Last question, Rick, I need to know what's in a name? The name Boomi, the name Guru? >> Yes, well, I'll start with the less exciting answer which I always get asked about, which is Boomi, which is a Hindi word that means "earth" or "from the earth". And, sometimes, if you're ordering at the Indian restaurant, you'll see B-H-O-M-I and that might be the vegetables on the menu. That name came from an early employee of the company. I wish I could say that it had a connection to business (laughs). It really doesn't, it just was like, it looks cool, and people tend to remember the name. And honestly, there have been so many moments in the early, early days where we were like, should we change the name, it doesn't really. And we're like you know what? People tend to, it sticks with them, it's kind of exciting, and we kept it. Guru, on the flip side, one of our early employees came up with that name too, and I think she was listening to me talk about what we were doing and she's like, oh, that thing is like a guru to you. And so the brand promise is that you feel like a guru in your area of expertise within a company and that our product plays a relatively small role in you having that, feeling confident about that expertise. >> I love that, awesome. Rick, thank you so much for joining John and me on theCUBE today, we appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> John: Thanks. >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Boomi World 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: From the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, it's theCUBE. Covering Coupa Inspire 2019. Brought to you by Coupa. >> Welcome to theCUBE. Lisa Martin on the ground at Coupa Inspire '19 from the Vegas. I'm very pleased to welcome not Bono, not Sting, it's Chandar, the CMO of Coupa. Chandar, welcome to theCUBE. >> Lisa, thank you, it's great to be here today. >> This is a really cool event. Procurement is sexy. >> It is sexy. >> It can be so incredibly transformative to any organization. I loved how the last two days, what you guys have done is a great job of articulating Coupa's value in procurement, invoicing, payments, expense, through the voices of your customers and I think there's no better brand value that you can get. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Tell us a little bit about your role as the CMO of Coupa and marketing in a fast-growing company with a product that people might go, "I haven't heard of that, what is that again?" >> Yeah, it's a good question. I think if I look at it, my role is at Coupa, especially, for Coupa, what's interesting about it, as you said, is that every company makes money, every company spends money. So, invariably, Coupa can be used across a set of different companies. One from the Golden State Warriors to Procter & Gamble to the Lukemia & Lymphoma Society. Across the board. And then, from our perspective, holistically, we're looking at business, but managed from different aspects of spend. You said procurement was in expenses. So, my role is to build a marketing engine to get the flywheel effect of first you drive awareness. All marketing starts with awareness and you said people haven't heard of it. And so, to first to drive awareness in a very thoughtful way to the right contextual community we want to go after. And, two, drive acquisition, we'll drive close synergies between sales and marketing to ultimately drive pipeline and win rates and ultimately deals. And then, very importantly in today's world, is to drive the advocacy and get your most passionate customers to evangelize about the brand, so that you create the flywheel effect of awareness, acquisition, and advocacy. And, that's really what my role today is. >> And, I love how I read an article where you call that the stairway to marketing heaven. So, I thought, I wonder if you're a guitar guy, but you're right. It's how to drive awareness, but in a meaningful, thoughtful way. Especially today, with all all the technology, we wake up with it, right? Our phone is our alarm clock. We are bombarded by ads. If we're on Instagram, following our favorite celebrities or whatnot and it's scary when they have the right context, but it has to be thoughtful. We need to know our audience. So, you describe this stairway to marketing heaven, as you just mentioned, it's awareness, it's acquisition, which is key. But, I feel like a lot of companies don't forget the advocacy part, but they don't invest enough in it because that's the best salesperson for your technology, is the people that are using it successfully, right? >> Totally. Yeah, so, in fact, there was a study about a couple of years which looked at how balanced the boat is in terms of spending in presale versus post-sale. And, it's interesting that 87% of B2B marketing spend was presale. In other words, only 13% of people were investing in retention marketing, adoption mastery, customer marketing, and this is what advocacy marketing. And, in today's world, that doesn't work because you got to balance the boat because, to your point, you're getting in a peer-bond world where your existing customers are your best sellers. And, prospects who have all the buying power today are looking to your existing customers to guide them in their purchasing decisions. So, as an organization, if you balance the boat, then you're going to get the flywheel effect going for you in terms of driving the right advocacy across all channels. Just not your own channel if you earn channels to ultimately drive that acquisition going. >> Do you think that's actually more valuable? 'Cause it's one thing to have on your .com site, your social media sites, all these great things about your technologies, etc., coming from customers or from product experts, from influencers. Talk about the value. As technology advances so much and we are influenced by so many other channels, the value of the earned channel and that peer-to-peer relationship. >> Yeah, I think, as I say, that every mom says her baby is good-looking. But, in software, not every baby is really good-looking. Which means, if you take that analogy and extend it, if you're coming to your own channel, invariably, you're going to see some great customer videos about your product, you're going to see some great endorsements and testimonials, you're going to see some great quotes about your product. The reality, there's no bad news about your product on your own website, on your own channel. But, the reality is there are some, some people who might have different opinions. If you go to Glassdoor, no company gets a five on Glassdoor. And, if you take the same thing and extend it to earned channels for advocacy, folks like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius, and B2B, for example, are becoming more relevant today than before because two things. One is 85% of our customers' journey is self-directed. >> Lisa: That much? >> That much and Forrester has anywhere from 60 to 80, but reality is whether you're buying a car or you're buying Coupa. Today, a customer is discovering more journeys. And, in that process, they are looking to more of these earned channels as validation of which ones to go after than just your own channels. So, that's why we got to balance the boat and distribute our advocacy spend dollars across both your own channels and your earned channels. And, that's really important for you and the flywheel will pay off for you over time from that perspective. >> It will and that seems like a lot of the things that Suzy Irwin was talking about to the audience earlier. That's common sense. Why is it that you see these marketing budgets that are so heavily weighted towards just getting awareness, getting customers acquired, and then not thinking about retention marketing account based marketing. >> I'll tell you why. I think any smart CMO will conceptually agree with you. Nobody's going to say, of course, this is not important for me to get advocacy. The challenge comes in in terms of how that marketing department is measured. What gets measured gets funding at the end of the day. >> Lisa: That's a good point. >> And, reality is a lot of these B2B companies are still measuring marketing based on, what's the pipeline you're driving and what's at the top of the funnel metrics that you're driving? In reality, that's a little bit of a skewed thing because then if that's what you're being measured at the board level, at the executive level, then guess what? All your funding is going to go towards that. But, really, the true measurement of marketing, one, is about, yes, you have to get pipeline. You have to influence win rates at the bottom of the funnel and that's where product marketing comes in. But, as importantly, you have to look at the number of brand advocates you create and lifetime value of a customer. >> Yes, CLV, yes. >> And, that's really, really, customer lifetime value is so important because in a SaaS business, ultimately, the Mufasa metric, I'm a Lion King fan. The Mufasa metric is really lifetime value because if a customer stays longer with you, pays you more, and is shouting from the rooftop, then, invariably, that SaaS business is doing well. And, that's why you have to balance the boat in terms of post-advocacies, post-acquisition spend into advocacy, as much as you've done in pre-acquisition. >> When you came into Coupa a couple of years ago, have you been able to shift those budgets because you're able to demonstrate the value that that advocacy piece generates with the flywheel? >> Absolutely and I have a very progressive-thinking CEO who's partners with me on this too. So, we've been absolutely able to do that. In fact, what we're trying to do at the end of the day and most software companies, the real goal should be creating a tribe. In technology, you have to create a tribe to be a titan. And, it's just not about the capability, it's about the community. And, that's really what we're trying to do at Coupa is to create the tribal community feeling. So, if the community is bigger than the brand, it is about the community itself and learning, sharing, and growing with each other and being successful. And, we're just fostering that. So, from that perspective, if you look at this conference and the investment we're making here, some of the programs we're doing in terms of advocacy, what we call spend sellers, etc., is all about that community tribal feeling and go establish that. To use some inspiration from our consumer brands, if you really think about it, people don't buy what they want. People buy what they want to be. So, let me give you what I mean by that. What I want could be a bike. It could be any motorbike, but what I want to be could be part of a very special community and that's why Harley Davidson is successful. What I want could be any stationary bike today, but what I want to be is part of some cool community like Peloton. That's why Peloton is successful. So, similarly for us, what I want could be some spend management software, but what I want to be is part of this community, this cool club, and that's the feeling we're trying to create in the post-acquisition cycle. >> I love that you said that because you talked about that this morning and I loved how you had the word community on the slide and then broke that out into communication unity. And, one of the senses that I got yesterday when-- >> Chandar: Rob was talking about it. >> Yeah, when Rob kicked off everything is this is a very collaborative community. We think about that in terms in terms even like a developer community or something like that. But, Coupa is now managing $1.2 trillion of spend through the platform that every other business that's using Coupa gets to benefit from. It's customer-centric, it's supplier-centric, but it's about applying the right technologies, AI, machine learning, to all this data, so everybody benefits. >> That's right and one of the interesting aspects of community building is one aspect of community building is that Marc Benioff had a great, evangelistic marketing was a way of community building. He would come in and really evangelize and this is where we're going and you all need to come with us. When I was at Marketo, it was interesting. Community building was through more educational marketing and doing it through this, I'm going to educate you through though leadership. Another good way of community building is through product intelligence, which is community intelligence. So, collectively, the sum of all parts are smarter than the parts themselves. And, Rob has a great line, which says, "None of us is as smart as all of us." And, the fundamental community intelligence offering is based on this first principle. So, example, if I'm the community of Coupa customers, the next customer is smarter than the previous customer because the collective intelligence grew, which means I can then go benchmark it myself. I gave an example this morning of USO, the company that provides services to the United States troops. And, when Rick Quaintance at USO benchmarked himself using community intelligence, versus the rest of the community, he realizes that his invoice cycle times are seven times lower. So, that kind of intelligence is extremely beneficial and invaluable to companies. So, that's the value of the community, is providing the collective intelligence. Waze is a great consumer example. Those of us who use Waze for traffic know that it's all community driven and each one of us is smarter because we're collectively using it. It's the same concept in applying that to B2B software. >> So, as we see, you mentioned the over 80% of the buying decision is self-directed whether we're buying a car or Coupa software. Did Coupa foresee that in the last decade to see we're going to have to go to a more community-driven collaboration because the consumer of any thing, any product or service, is going to be so empowered 'cause that's a part of the Coupa foundation. >> It is. >> Lisa: Which, we don't see a lot in companies that are 10 plus years old. >> Yeah, and credit to Rob for his vision for this. It's because I think early part of the company, he wrote into the contracts that the company can benefit. Collectively, every company can benefit by being part of this community. And, the fact is data's aggregated, abstracted, there's no information that is sensitive, etc. But, the fact is we all can collectively benefit through it. That was a great vision of Rob and early people and that's benefited us because the benefit is really over scale and time. Now, your $1.2 trillion, it is really statistically significant in each different industry to get that intelligence. And, that is one of the other reasons we launched our business spend index. It's called spendindex.com. Where we can use the billions of dollars spent in the community to provide a leading indicator of economic growth based on current business spend sentiment. You think of ADP as this payroll, it's called ADP payroll thing that comes out and the gross domestic product report comes out. Those tend to be rear-view mirror lagging indicators. But, as we're using community-based intelligence to provide a windshield, a leading indicator of where the economy is going. So, there's so many different use cases. Benefiting based on spend you're doing as well as where the economy is going and all this is based on the intelligence. >> It's so powerful because, to your point, you're not looking behind. >> Chandar: It's the windshield. >> Exactly, able to be looking forward. So, with all the announcements and the great things that have come out with the AWS expansion, what you guys are doing with Coupa Pay. I was shocked to learn the percentages of businesses that are still writing paper checks. Or, the fact that a lot of companies have 10 plus banks that they're working with. There's still so much manual processes. You must just be, the future is so bright, you got to wear shades with Coupa. But, what excites you about what you guys have announced the last coupe of days and the feedback that you're hearing from your tribe? >> I think there's two kinds of things. One is continue to set the innovation agenda for the industry. And, really, you have to look at every customer on their unique journey of maturity and maturation, so we have a very thoughtful, what we call, maturity index, The business spend management index. Whereas, you are seeing some of these customers, for example, you mentioned, may be in the first stage of this maturity, where, for them, it's just getting automation and going from paper to paperless could be the first step. But, some other customers might say, "I've gotten there, "but I want to get the next level of sophistication "to orchestrate these business spend processes." So, what's exciting for us in the feedback is we're creating product capability across this maturation journey for our customers to make them successful at each of those places. And, Coupa Pay is one example of that. Whereas, some of the other pieces we talked about, we announced about some of the community offerings that we did also is on that. So, that's one exciting piece. The other exciting piece that customers tell us at this conference is, "Foster platforms for us "to engage with each other, learn from each other, "share from each other, and grow with each other." So, even stuff that Rob talked about, which is sourced together. This concept of customers coming together to drive a sourcing process and, again, the collective intelligence in the community, that, we're getting very, very positive feedback from that perspective. And, ultimately, Rob has a really good saying that, "It is not about customer satisfaction. "It is about customer success." That's a delineation there. A customer could be very satisfied with you, but they may not be necessarily successful. And, we say, it's not about satisfaction. It's about success. And, by creating this innovation cycle and then having a post-implementation process that's getting true value, that's truly how we drive customer success. >> And, something that I've heard over and over as I've talked to a number of your customers yesterday and today is how much they're feeling Coupa is listening. Their feedback is being incorporated. They're actually influencing the development of the technology and that was loud and clear the last two days. >> Yeah, I think there is, Rob talked about the number of features that are being influenced by the community and we have these-- >> 300 plus in the last 12 months. >> Yes, 300 plus in the last 12 months. And, there's this concept of two ears, one mouth. And, listen, learn, and innovate and that's the philosophy here. But, it's a right mix of listening to customers, learning from them, and getting the right input from them for driving innovation, as well as having strategic vision on where this market is going and having the right mix of those to provide the capability to customers. >> Wow, you're on a rocket ship. Chandar, it was great to have you on theCUBE. You'll have to come back. >> Yes, Lisa, absolutely, I'll come back and it was a pleasure being here. Awesome. >> Awesome, thank you so much. For Chandar, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from Coupa Inspire '19. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(upbeat music) [Narrator] Live from Las Vegas, It's theCUBE Covering Informatica World 2019 Brought to you by Informatica >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World here in Las Vegas. I'm your Host, Rebecca Knight. Along with my Co-Host, John Furrier. We have a CUBE alum joining us Graeme Thompson. SVP and CIO of Informatica. Thank you so much for coming, for returning to theCUBE. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So one of the themes we talk a lot about on theCUBE, It's the 10th anniversary of theCUBE, is the changing role of the CIO and you are a CIO so you are well positioned to answer this question. In addition to the changing role there's also the perception of what it is versus the reality. Can you talk a little about how you see the role having evolved both at Informatica as well as your other peers at other companies as well as sort of what the industry is expecting or maybe those not in the industry thinks you do versus actually what you do? >> Yeah that's a long frustration thank you >> I'm sorry >> You're keeping me on my toes here Yeah so a lot of things, the outcomes are the same but with different methods so vendor management has always been important, cost management has always been important but as it moves from being predominantly on prem to be primarily in the cloud The dynamics of how these deals are put together changes so you need a different kind of approach to how you manage the portfolio of cloud applications. Security if different in the cloud it's still important it always has been always will be. But it's different in the cloud you have to look much more as vendor risk management make sure that you're comfortable with the risk posture of the vendors you are sourcing your applications from. So those things I would put in the category of You're trying to accomplish the same thing you're just doing it differently because your application work load is more likely to be in the cloud. Things that are different though, completely different are expectations. So everyone can see the power of data and the power of having speed and agility in the cloud but they want it immediately and they don't want to do the hard work to get there so I find that the CIO sometimes has to be the educator or the evangelist for change to explain that if you want all this data to generate all these miraculous new outcomes you have to focus on the process and then you have to enable that process within an application that's going to meet your needs today and tomorrow. You have to think end to end which means you have to integrate applications like Marketo and Salesforce. Then you need to find a way to get it all in your data lake That is completely different it's a completely different sport From what we were playing as CIOs 5 years ago and it's definitely the biggest area of change I've seen both internally and talking to PIOs >> Graeme, we've talked in the past, goo to see you again. You are a CIO your work for Informatica so you're the CIO of Informatica so you don't need to be sold on the value of data You're in the data business. You have a data company that thinks hard and has been building products for years in private, in retooling, you see the wave, we've talked about it you've been on the same wave, a great wave, for 4 years everyone else is now on it. SO as a CIO who works for a company that's you know you're not going to get in trouble for doing a data driven project what are some of the things that you've got going on because you do have relationships with all the different cloud providers you do have a great on premises large install base and now you guys as a company what are some of the projects you're doing that would a nice guiding light to folks watching who were really kicked in the tires on digital transmission, not just like talking about it but like okay architecure, roadmap, really thinking through all the hairy problems of what's coming down the pipe for them. What are you working on? >> Yeah so I think our marketing team has done a really good job framing things in the four journeys. So talk about it within that context. So the first one is next gen analytics. So a lot of companies go into this thinking Right all I have to do is find out where the data lives, ingest the data into my data lake or data warehouse, put Tableau on top of it and job done. Not the case, right? So as soon as you start shading data across more than one function, marketing are really good at knowing their data. They know how its generated. They know how it can be used. As soon as you let someone else loose on marketing's data, it's use at your own risk. Right so that introduces the need for governance. If you're going to use data in one organization that was generated in another one, you have to agree on the definition of terms. You have to agree on calculations so that you don't get the finance team and the sales team debating what the renewal rate is. So the next gen analytics journey for us has been an interesting one. We started with an on-prem data warehouse that's now on AZUR. The tipping point for us was when most of the data is generated in the cloud, why move it back on-prem just to do analytics on it? So we made a decision to build that on the cloud with AZUR. >> So leave it on the cloud, it's there. >> Yeah >> and then have the on-premise piece >> Go onto the cloud. >> It's where the MDM it's where the pieces kind of come together? >> Yep >> All right so... >> So that's the analytics journey. >> So I'll give you another curve bal here. So as you come in here, you say okay great the next step is well you know I need to actually make my AI work. Your clear, you know "the clarity starts here" it's a nice slogan. Nice play on words there but AI is ultimately where everyone wants to get to. >> Yeah >> AI is fed by data, machine learning, other things, really kind of feeding the outcome for AI. But without good data, and/or data can can help the AI get smarter. This kind of brings up the conversation of more data or diverse data - different data sets. So accessing data sets actually is a new dynamic that people are getting into and proving it adds value to AI. >> Yeah >> How do you see that playing out because this is really kind of brings up the real complex question which is that as you mentioned earlier; terms, rights, marketplaces, sharing data, uh you know, all these new things? What's your view on this notion of having more data sets feeding intelligent AI? >> So part of the increase in enthusiasm about AI and ML is really the convergence of.. the technology's actually ready to help, its not a science project off to the side anymore. And the need for it has never been greater. There's no way a human can keep up with all the data that's being generated even at a company like ours. So if you want to find out where the data is created, where it's used, who has access to it, then your going to have to apply some AI to it otherwise there's no shot. You'd need an ever increasing team of humans who would fail to do the job adequately. >> So you see data sets merging... not merging but like being merchandised, if you will, for lack of a better word? >> Yeah well you have to manage the linage of it. >> All right. So you have to know where it's created, where it's used, you know, who has access to it? Is that access appropriate? Uh... all those thing have to be taken into account. Especially when you look at all the compliance and privacy things that we're all faced with now that 18 months ago we weren't all that concerned about. >> And that really goes back to what you said earlier in our conversation in that the role of the CIO is so much as an educator and an evangelist. So can you talk a little bit about what you've learned in terms of making that message really sink in with employees in terms of understand where the data lives, who has access to it, all the obstacles that you just talked about? >> Yeah so part of it is those managing the IT team and then those managing the relationships with your business constituents. So let's take the IT team first. Really good IT people, like really good engineers, will work on the most interesting problem available. It's our job as a CIO to make sure that the most profitable problem is also the most interesting one. Fight number one is getting people working on the right things cause IT people with work incredibly hard . You just need to make sure they're working incredibly hard on the right stuff with a focus on the right outcome at the end of it. So that's the IT part. Then working with the business stakeholders, its really setting expectations. Cause quite rightly, they want everything as soon as they can describe it, it should be available. There's often a lot of technical dept that we have as organizations, you know? We had a more than 10 year old deployment of sales force, you got to believe there was a ton of technical debt in there because it was built to perfection for our old business. It wasn't built for our new business. So you have to work with the buiness stakeholders. Bring them along with you on what to do first, what to do next, what the dependencies are, ' and focus on setting exceptions that its not going to be done overnight. >> So about governance. Obviously governance has been around for awhile, we've talked about it before. But now more than ever your seeing in the news first anniversary of GDPR, I predicted that would be... I won't say it... I said like, months before... bad words.. BS basically. But it's reality. More privacy stuff your seeing more and more, um, regions in cloud dealing with certain restrictions. So when it hear regulation, I hear constrained data. That goes in my mind, I hear oh my god. Regulation and innovation are always sometimes at odds. So it's a balancing act. What are you guys doing to address that? What's the solution today and how do you see that playing out because SAS is about data and agility and that's why SAS has been so popular and that's what digital transformation is going to get to is these SAS-like benefits. Agile, risk-taking, high reward. Low-risk, high reward kind of things. How do you get the balance between, you know, regulation, compliance, risk, and innovation? >> Yeah, so I can talk about how we look at it internally and then a little bit about how our customers look at it. So, for us you can look at it like a tax. As a tax on innovation. Or, if you look at a little bit more optimistically, who wouldn't want to honor the customer's right to be forgotten? Who wouldn't want to consult their customer on where you use their data? So you can also look at it as way that by implementing the GDPR or the California Privacy Standard or whatever it is, it makes your company better. It allows you to be the company that you would like to aspire to be. So you don't have to just look at it as a tax. Now I'm going to look at our customers. They fall into 2 categories: those that have to do it because they're in a regulated industry like financial services or healthcare, and then there's those that do it because they know it will help them serve their customers better. And you see a lot of governance and compliance projects starting from a place of defensiveness. They have to do it because they have to comply with new regulations that apply to them and often its companies that are really trying to make the best use of their data but they want to do it in a really responsible way. Um - if done properly and responsibly, it can be something that's good for everyone, I believe. >> I just have one final question about the skills gap. And this is something we've been really talking a lot about here. What are you doing to address it? And is the problem really as bad as the headlines are making it out to be? >> Yeah so there's the macro problem of aging workforce and where are the new people coming from? There's that one - it's been with us for awhile and applies across all functions. Then there's specific skills areas in IT that are always a shortage. Security is one - it's really, really difficult to find really good IT security.. information security people. Often these groups can be ivory tower-ish so its hard to find people who are really practitioners. It's hard to select them and it's hard to retain them because they always want to build and then move on and build something new. So security is one. Obviously data and analytics is a huge one. Finding people that can, that know a little bit more than what an oric in our warehouse does is a challenge and then once you get those people, you have to make sure they are working on things that they find are worthy of their time so that they are motivated to work as hard as you need them to work. And other areas like managing cloud vendors is I think a skill set that will start to grow up. Um - these cloud contracts get really expensive as you scale and there's no friction at the point of consumption. You know, we've got engineers that aren't allowed to order a stapler from Amazon without approval. But they can sign the company up for tens of thousands of dollars worth of compute cost obligations. You need governance and skills to manage uh - that. If you ask an engineer do you want slow or fast and big or small, they're going to pick fast and large, right? >> Just a dumb follow up on that skills gap question. For the folks who are graduating collage, high school, elementary school.. ..education is obviously kind of a little bit linear but you know people have argued that there's no one playbook for the kinds of courses you would take to get into the data kind of world there. Is there any pattern your seeing where the folks who are really excelling in this new environment have certain skills and classes? So if someone is going into collage maybe honing a class on you know on a particular class or dicipline? Have you seen some things that work? >> No >> No? >> What I have seen that works is finding people who have a track record of solving important business problems and using that to select the people that you hire. Cause the.. having a sound education in technology is one thing. You got to understand the business domain and the problem that you are trying to solve. That's where the value comes from. The business stakeholders value someone that can understand the problem they are trying to solve or the opportunity that they are trying to take advantage of. So finding those people that have a track record of solving meaningful problems, uh to me, has been a way to find the right folks in that area. >> Multitalent is then.. it's early, too, I mean, Berkley just had their first graduating class of you know, Data Sciences, kind of gives you an idea of how early this is. >> Yeah and it takes 2 to 4 years to have a University course accredited. By the time you've done that it's out of date. >> It's out of date. >> So that has to change. >> My final question for you, Graeme, is what's the um... For the folks that aren't here at Informatica World 2019 whats the summary in your view? The theme of the show? What's the key highlights that people should walk away with this year for the focus of Informatica World 2019? >> So it's not a new theme, it's more of a expansion on the' theme from the last couple of years. So the importance of the platform is key. You can go off as an IT professional and source one product to solve one problem and before you're done I guarantee you'll have found an adjacent problem and you're going to wish you'd chosen a platform instead of an individual product. So if you listen to Anneals Keynote this morning and Ahmet got into more detail, its really about the platform and the power of Claire and the AI part as part of that overall platform - that's really the theme - but its not new. It's not something we just came up with last week it's been our strategy for at least 24 months so we just continue to build on it. >> Bad data or no data, there's no AI, or bad data is bad AI and no data is no AI? That's essentially the reality as AI becomes mainstream. >> Yeah. >> All right, thank you. >> Great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Graeme >> Pleasure. >> You're watching theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019 I'm Rebecca Knight and John Furrier. Thanks for staying tuned. (upbeat music)

>> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2019, brought to you Adobe. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick. We have been covering Imagine 2019 in Vegas, all day today, talking all things eCommerce, innovation, technology, the customer experience. Jeff, one of the biggest themes, I think, that we've heard today, from all of our guests, is how strong this community is, how naturally it was developed in the last ten years, and how influential it is to delivering exceptional customer experience technology. >> In fact, Jason said without the community, there would be no Magento. So it's, it's ingrained in the culture. It's ingrained in the DNA. I think, you know, doing some of the research, you know, there was people talking about the dark days of Magento, as it went into eBay, and apparently whatever that plan was, that didn't work. And then out of eBay into private equity. Out of private equity into, now, Adobe. And it sounds like the community's kind of been following along, and maybe they were holding their breath a little bit, a year ago, but it sounds like they kind of got through that, that kind of concern knothole, if you will, and kind of popped out the other side, and realized there's a whole lot of opportunity that comes to Magento, via being part of Adobe now that they didn't have before. So I think, it sounds like they're good with it, and they're ready to go, and nothing but opportunity ahead. >> Yeah, you know, I think with any acquisition, and, you know, we cover so many technology shows, and we've been part of acquisitions before at different companies. They're challenging. There's always, I think, natural trepidation. I think it's just a natural response that anybody, probably, from an executive to an individual contributor level, is going to have. But one of the things that came up so resolutely, was how organic the Magento community has been developed over time. That, like you said, as Jason was saying, without it, there is no Magento. Not only are they influential. It's very much a symbiotic relationship, that pleasantly, surprisingly, sounds like it's been integrated very nicely, into Adobe. And to your point, they now are seeing, wow, there's a tremendous amount of technology and resources that we didn't have the opportunity to leverage before. Talking about the experience, the digital experience business of Adobe's, which is growing. Grew 20% year over year, 2017 to 2018. On a very strong trajectory this year. A lot of opportunity to enable merchants of any size to have this really 360 degree of the customer experience, and manage it with analytics, and advertising, and marketing, and add the commerce piece, so that they can take that marketing interaction and actually convert it to revenue. >> Right, right. I mean, look at Adobe. I mean, they brought in Magento, which we know, late last year. They also brought in Marketo at almost about the same time, $4.7 billion. So they're making huge moves. And I think it's a pretty unique situation, where, again, they come from the creative, and now, with the data, and a sophisticated platform, and you talk about the AB testing, again. It used to be just AB, now it's AB times literally millions and millions of customized experiences delivered to the client. And then now, again, I think really an interesting point of view is where then you bring the commerce to the point of engagement rather than trying to use the engagement as a way to drive people to commerce. I mean, they seem really well positioned, I think they're going to really enjoy people like Accenture, and some of the of the other big system integrators that now are going to be, you know, behind this platform. So it seems to be a fit, a marriage made in heaven. It almost makes you wonder why Adobe was so late to have an eCommerce platform, which is the thing that kind of surprises me, I think, the most. >> Yeah, well, it also gives them the opportunity to compete with Shopify and with Salesforce Commerce, and kind of harness this brand power. But you talked about something that we've talked about all day, and that's bringing the transaction and the commerce experience to me as a consumer wherever I am, whether it's in app shopping through Instagram. Rather than, you know, delivering me a personalized experience, leveraging the power of these technologies, to understand the right things about me as a consumer, to deliver me an experience that is frictionless. It's going to allow me to have a seamless experience. We talked about that with progressive web apps, and how that's going to enable next generation shopping for merchants of all sizes to enable. Don't just engage me on my mobile, if that's where I want to be. If you don't have the opportunity to convert me seamlessly to actually transact, there's a huge adjustable market or gap in converting that to revenue, which Jason Woolsey also talked about. Kind of thinking about next steps for Adobe and what they're going to be able to do to help those merchants capture in real time, leveraging the power of technology, emerging technologies like AI, in real-time to make that shoppable moment turn into dollars for the merchant. >> Right, lot of great things. I thought it was interesting having TJ Gamble on, and talked about coopetition. Right? Coopetition is such a fundamental part of Silicon Valley and the world in which we live in. And he said, you know, if you're making fat margin, as Jeff Bezos loves to say, your margin is my opportunity. You're going to compete with Amazon, but in the meantime, you got to compete with them. So to enable integration into the Amazon platform with your Magento store, the integration into Google Shopping, integration into Instagram purchases, in app purchases, I mean, these really opening up the opportunities for these smaller retailers, mid-sized retailers, to compete in a really complicated and super hyper-competitive world. But now they can, again, focus on their brand, which we hear over and over and over, focus on their experience, focus on their community, and leverage some of this special breed technology under the covers across platform, across different modes of buying. Because the other thing we hear over and over and over is you got to give people choice. You can't say no. So if they want to buy it through Amazon, let 'em buy it through Amazon. If they want to buy it through Instagram, let 'em buy it through Instagram. If they want to come to you eCommerce site, let 'em come to your eCommerce site But, you know, in opening up all those channels for the merchant to be able to execute their transactions regardless of how the customer got to them, or how, more importantly, they got to the customer. >> And, you know, the SMB front is really key that you brought up, because, in the last year, since the acquisition was announced, about a year ago, and completed, I think in September of 2018, there was not just concern from the community, that we talked about at the beginning of this segment, but also the small and the medium business. Like, well, Adobe has a really big presence in enterprise. Is that going to be cannibalized with this acquisition of Magento, who had such a strong presence with those smaller merchants? And you mentioned some of thee things with Amazon and Google that we heard yesterday and today. I think really assuaging some of those concerns that the smaller businesses had, but also, allowing these smaller merchants to sort of level the playing field, and have access to the power of a branded Amazon storefront that allows a smaller business to get some differentiation, whereas before they didn't have that. So I think we heard a lot about that today, and how, I think, those smaller brands are probably, maybe breathing a sign of relief, that this acquisition is really going to enable them, with a lot more tools, but not at the, you know, cannibalizing what they have been doing with Magento for so long. >> Right, right. And some other fun discussions. I really enjoyed the time with Tina, talking about influencer marketing. It's amazing how that continues to evolve at a really fast pace. Right? A derivation of professional endorsement, which is something we've known ever since Joe Namath put on stockings many moons ago. But to see it go from big influencers, to micro-influencers, you know. How do you sponsor people, give them money, engage as a brand, and still maintain that they legitimately like your product, use your product. I think it's a really fascinating space to, again, to be able to purchase within that Instagram application, I think, is really interesting. And then a lot of conversations about the post transaction engagement. You know, send them not one email confirmation that your items are coming, but send them two. And really to think about lifetime value of the customer, and engaging the customer via content, and, oh, by the way, there'll be some transactions in commerce as well. I think it's really forward-looking, and really enjoyed that conversation as well. >> I did too. I didn't know the difference between an influencer and a micro-influencer, and you kind of infer based on just the name alone. But also how brands have the opportunity to leverage data, to evaluate maybe we should actually make more investments in somebody with a thousand followers, for example, than somebody with a hundred thousand. Because the revenue attribution, or the website traffic lift that they're going to get from a micro-influencer could far outweigh the benefits, financially, than going with somebody, a celebrity or what not, that, as you said, back to, you know, Joe Namath, many decades ago. So that was interesting, but it's also a good use of using data to build brand reputation, build, increase customer lifetime value, but also get so much more targeted, and really understand how to operationalize the commerce portion of your business, and through whom, through which channels you're going to see the biggest bang for your buck. >> Yeah, it's really interesting times, you know, this idea that the apps follow you. I mean, my favorite example is Spotify. Super sophisticated app. Right? I can be listening to my phone. I get into my car. It follows me. I go into my office. It follows me on my computer. I go out on my bike. It follows me. It stays the same state. And so, for the commerce and the community to be able to follow you around is a really interesting idea. And again, it was Hillary Mason, actually, that first came up with the term that, you know, AI, and good recommendations done well are magic, and done poorly, are creepy. I think it's always going to be this interesting fine line. Again, I think the whole concept of, you know, using old data and how fast do you update it, and that's kind of the example. I've been looking at tents. I bought a tent. I don't want to see ads for tents anymore. Right? It's time to see an ad for a sleeping bag, or a camp stove. And these are really happening in real-time. You know, we've heard about Omnichannel. We've heard about 360 view of the customer, ad nauseam. You've been in this business for a long time. But it sounds like it's finally coming together, and it's finally where we have the data, we have the access to the data, the speed of the analytics, and just the raw horsepower in modeling that we can now start to apply this real-time, ML, to data, in-flight, to be able to serve up the not creepy but correct recommendations, at the right time to the right person. It's getting closer and closer to reality. >> It is getting closer, and as you were talking about that, one of the things that popped into my head is going from the creepy to the magic that is, you think, wow, is really leveraging this data and using the power of machine learning and AI, a great facilitator. Or is the bottom foundation order management? If you don't have the, or inventory management. If you don't have the inventory, it's great to have all these capabilities to transact in real time, but if you can't fulfill it, you're going to sink. >> Yeah. >> So Magento, with, you know, some of their core technology enabling this. Really enabling, not just enabling the 360 degree customer view, but being able to fulfill it. Those are table stakes, and game changers. >> Right. >> For merchants of any size. >> Right, and I think they do have to engage. I mean, they have to be brands. Right? Because a commodity item I can go get anywhere. There's got to be a reason to come. Lot of conversations, not so much here, but at the Adobe summit, in terms of the content piece, and having an ongoing dialog and an ongoing content relationship, with your client. Now you can slice and dice and serve that up lots of different ways based on who they are and the context. But if you don't have that, you can't just compete on price. You just can't compete on inventory, 'cause Amazon is going to win. Right? You can't stock, my favorite thing is, is shirt, shirt little pins in here. How do you stock those? You can't. They don't cost any money, and you don't sell that many. Amazon can. So, find you niche, you know. Engage your customers. Engage your community, and there'll be some transactions that come along with this. And I think it's really reinforced that, I think, its probably really timely for Magento to be part of Adobe, because eCommerce, just purely by itself, is going to be tougher and tougher to do unless you've got this deeper relationship with your customers, beyond simply transacting something. >> Exactly. So I enjoyed hosting, as I always do with you, Jeff. Learned a lot today, and excited to hear about what's next for this event, now that Adobe is leveraging the power of Magento. >> Well, we heard the announcements, Gary's going to make the announcement tomorrow. So hang out for the keynote tomorrow to find out more about Imagine 2020. We'll be there. >> 2020, yes. >> 2020, because we'll know everything in 2020. >> We will know. That's right. I can't wait. >> 2020 hindsight. >> I'm waiting for that. Well, Jeff, as I said, always a pleasure hosting with you. >> You too, Lisa. >> I brought the sea urchin necklace out. >> I like it. I like it. >> This is just for Jeff. It's making it's appearance on theCUBE. We want to thank you for watching, for Jeff Frick, I'm Lisa Martin, and you've been watching theCUBE live from Imagine 19 at The Wynn Las Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Magento Imagine 2019, brought to you by Adobe. >> Hey, welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick. We're coming to you live from Magento Imagine 2019. Welcoming to theCUBE for the first time Gary Specter, the VP of Commerce, Sales and Customer Success at Adobe. Gary, welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you, I'm thrilled to be here. >> So there's about 3,500 people here, you guys have, from 60-plus countries. >> Gary: That's right. >> I think 100 sessions, 150 speakers. People coming down from ceilings, up from the floor. >> Gary: And we're streaming live. >> First ever live stream, yes. >> On the general set, first ever. That's right. Someone tweeted out that there are 35,000 people watching. >> Marketing probably loved that and then had a heart attack at the same time. >> Yeah, I'm sure they did. Not exactly accurate but I'll take what I can get. >> Tell us about the event, the spirit of the event. This is kind of, yesterday evening things kicked off. What of some of the things you've hearing from customers, partners, developers? >> So, I think the thing that's really unique about Imagine is that it does involve partners, the community, developers, along with Magento and our customers and our prospects. And it makes it really different because the developer community and our partners are so passionate about Magento. And I think everybody feels really good about the marriage of Adobe and Magento. You had technologies that were very well aligned, not overlapping. It enables us to extend the capabilities of what we can do from both the Adobe side or the Magento side. I like to say that the color palette got a lot bigger, and I think there's a lot of excitement around that and what that means to all of these people, developers, partners, the ecosystem, customers, prospects. So the energy is really high. I think obviously people are, what's next? And what does this mean for Magento? And I think it means investment, I think it means a higher rate of agility and an expansion of what we do. Acceleration of our roadmap. So I think people are very, very positive. And this is my fourth Imagine, and it's really, I've never felt the energy higher than at this Imagine. So it's exciting for me. >> Gary, one of the interesting ways that you talked about community and everybody wants developer communities, right? And you guys also have open source as a passion. But you phrased it in a way I've never heard before, is that you like going to sleep at night knowing that there's a whole bunch of other CEOs betting their business-- >> That's right. >> On this platform. >> Yeah. >> And it's not just you guys, so it's a really different way to think about open source. We often think of the developers and there's smart people outside your four walls contributing code. But it's not often couched in terms of the business terms. >> No. >> If there's are other people betting their business, thinking about how are they gonna help grow your business by building their business on top of Magento. >> That's what drives the passion of the community. These people realize that there's a symbiotic relationship here. If Magento successful, the ability for them to be successful is very broad. And if Magento's not successful, then you have to ask yourselves did I make the right bet? So a lot of our tech partners have build these great solutions on top of Magento, and it's a partnership. And you don't have that anywhere else, and again, I sleep better at night, to your point. I don't know where you got that quote, but it's actually mine, it's phenomenal. >> No, no, I think I got it from your Argentina 2017 talk perhaps. >> Actually, it's true. I know that all of these tech partners, these CEOs, they have my back. I'd like them to know I have theirs. And I don't think Adobe has any, there's no reason or rhyme why that would ever change. I think Adobe will enhance it. And I think that's why there so much excitement here. >> Well, and it's really a validation and what we talked about before, the prior segment, was now to bring the marketing tools, and the AI and all the power that's in that big building in San Jose, free the commerce transaction, really, to your point, adds so much more horse power to the total solution. >> Like I said, color palette just got a lot bigger. There's so many more things that we can do and so many more colors we can use to create these great experience for our brands and our customers, that we could've done before but it was a lot of work, but now we've got all of the makings of a platform that will enable that and we're already pretty far along in taking the Adobe experience cloud and making that work. And I'm just really excited about the future and what this offers for our customers and our brands. >> We've heard a number of guests that talk about just what you were referring to a minute ago, and that was really this symbiosis of Adobe, the power that Adobe brings, the data that Adobe brings, along with Magento, So a new Adobe commerce buy was just launched a couple of months ago, at Adobe Summit powered by Magento Commerce, but you look at it as analytics, advertising, marketing, commerce, fundamentals for managing what is a changing and highly demand customer experience, 'cause we want more and more things accessible from right here. So some of the feedback from customers, partners, developers since that announcement and now going "Ahh, okay now I can actually touch and see and play with this two symbiosis machines coming together." >> Yeah, I think it's not a hard thing to get. I think when the acquisition first happened, there's a little let's wait and see and make sure they get it right. And I think what I feel today, or what people have given to me today is the feedback that they're believers. They know that we're gonna execute on this strategy, and this strategy is gonna allow us to extend our lead on our competitors, which in return, allows these brands and these commerce players to extend their lead on their competitors. >> Let's talk about the small/medium business folks for a minute. When the announcement was made last year, the intention, right after Imagine 2018 I believe, for Adobe to acquire Magento, and then right after they acquired Marketo, there was some concern for is Adobe gonna kind of shift what Magento has been doing, so successfully for so long, away from focusing on those smaller merchants to the enterprise folks. Yesterday and today, we heard some great, exciting announcements with what you guys are doing with Amazon Sales Channel, with Google Shopping, and it sounded like the small and medium business size folks were going "Yes, this is what we need." Talk to us a little bit about that. >> I mean, you mentioned two, along with PWA and some of the other things that we're doing. While these can be leveraged in the enterprise, they were built for the mid-market in the SMB space. And there is no doubt that Adobe and Magento both understand how important SMB and the mid-market is. And in fact, we've seen acceleration in the SMB space since the acquisition, from the Magento side of the house. And Adobe is fully committed and knows that there's market share there to be had. And the application or the business problems that we solve at the enterprise, are still applicable for the mid-market and the SMB space. They're handled in a little bit different of a manner, but they have same aspirations. And the solution's gonna be able, when you look across everything that you're gonna be able to do, it plays for both markets. And Adobe has an incredible opportunity to really drive market share in this mid-market. They don't have a big footprint there today. Even if you capture just a small portion of it, and its our plans to capture a large portion of it, but even a small portion of it is gonna make a big impact on Adobe. So I think that we will see acceleration in the mid-market and in the SMB space with what we're doing, what we're developing together, and the different types of products that we can offer to those markets that Adobe has in its broader portfolio. >> And of course on the enterprise side, what we don't see here that we saw at Adobe Summit a couple weeks back are some of the really big integrators who have huge practices built around and on top of the Adobe tool set that now you get to leverage. I'm sure you're pretty excited about as running field. There's, again, a whole nother group of people, not necessarily CEOs, but managing partners, who have bet their jobs, bet their livelihood, bet their practices on this, and now you getta take advantage of those resources as well. >> Absolutely, and I think that a lot of the large integrators and partners, I think everybody's starting to understand that commerce is very different now than it was five or 10 years ago, right? I call it bite small, chew fast. And HP is a great example, where they started in some of the smaller APAC countries and then went to Brazil, and they're looking at the US last, but they're taking it a step at a time. One country, one country, one country. And a lot of our big retailers or brands that wanna expand globally are doing the same things, or companies that have portfolios of brands, one at a time. Bite small, chew fast. Launch, be successful, launch, be successful. And I think the SIs, including the large partners, understand that and they're changing the way that they look at businesses holistically. So I think right time, right place. >> Yeah, we had Gillian Campbell from HP on right after her keynote this morning, and it was an interesting kinda POC program. And I said what was some of the market dynamics that identified APAC as the right market to start in. And part of that, I think, was that from a historical legacy perspective of using Magento on the HP Inc. side. But some of the things I found interesting to them was that leveraging the data to understand the cultural e-commerce differences snd how different cultures interact with different social media platforms or purchasing platforms differently, and how important it is to really understand those commerce patterns and start to drive conversions from there there and then go success, roll it out, rinse and repeat. >> And she nailed it right? I mean, buy online, pick up in store versus having it delivered to your home, if you live in the middle of India, what's the reality of you getting that delivered in an hour? And if you look at country like Russia, which is very spread out, right, so there's not a high density outside of a lot of their major cities and you have a lot of the same issues. If you're gonna have it ship to your home, how long is it gonna take? It might be easier just to go pick it up in the store. And I think it's different in every region. And it's good to be able to have access to that data to get a good read on what are the things our customers want specifically to drive the experience they need within that region. >> Right, key for a company whether it's something the size of an HP Inc. or not, to be able to scale globally, but also have that sort of local market adaptation where you're able to react, understand the preferences in your markets, and deliver exactly what those consumers want. So having a tool like Magento as the power to enable that global scale regional adaptation, it's a driver. >> And I think you start to add complexity when you look at do they use their phone, do they use their computer? Do they use social networks and buy buttons? I have an interesting dynamic in my own house where I've got a 13-year-old, and the way that she would shop online is different than the way that my wife would shop online, which is very different from how I would shop online. I browse and go to the store. My wife uses her computer. My daughter shops on Pinterest, or Instagram, or Facebook. Very different journeys for the three of us, and we could be buying the same thing, and we're all gonna do it differently. So it crosses generations as well. >> So, Gary, it feels like kinda the dust has settled post-Adobe acquisition where everybody feels kinda comfortable, and it's been a year and everything didn't go bananas. So as you look forward now, after things have kinda settled, what are some of your priorities over the next year, If we sit down a year from now, what are you working on? >> I can tell you that for me, the biggest priority for me is to make sure that the mid-market and the SMB flywheel is effective, the way that we go to market, the way that we target that segment. And it's not that I'm not interested in the enterprise. I'm extremely interested in the enterprise. But we have a lot of people that are working on the enterprise. And Adobe doesn't have deep domain expertise around the mid-market. But with Marketo and Magento, you now do. So for me personally, I wanna make sure that that flywheel is well-run, it's well-oiled, it's set up for success, that operationally, the things that we do to drive market share in that segment run as effectively as the rest of Adobe on the enterprise side. It's a new sales motion for Adobe. But the good news is I think Adobe understands that. We understand that as a company, and I think over the next year, for me, that's where my focus is gonna be. >> So if we keep looking out to the next year, this is your fourth Magento Imagine. >> It is. >> Is there gonna be a Magento Imagine 2020? >> So I will tell you that there will be an Imagine 2020, and I will share details around that Wednesday. I've been asked to help close Imagine out, and when I do, I will be thrilled to announce our plans for Imagine 2020. >> So can folks watch that on the livestream tomorrow, Wednesday, that 15th? >> They can. >> Are you gonna be coming up from the floor, the ceiling? >> I think I'm probably just gonna dance on out. I have been invigorated, I love being here. Imagine is the one opportunity every year where I come out of this thing just feeling really good about the opportunities that we had ahead of us. And by Wednesday, although tired, I'm usually really happy to be going back and getting in the field with my teams and just driving opportunity. And I think we had an amazing one. >> Well, we'll be all watching. Is it imagine.magento.com to watch the livestream ? Or magento.imagine.com. go to to the Magento.com site, Wednesday tomorrow in the afternoon, you're gonna be able to hear more about what's to come next year. Gary, thank you so much for giving us time today. >> Thanks for having me, enjoy it. >> Our pleasure. >> It's great to meet you all. >> Excellent >> Thank you. >> For Jeff Frick, I'm Lisa Martin. Tou're watching theCUBE live from Magento Imagine 2019 from Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering Adobe summit 2019 brought to you by Accenture Interactive okay welcome back everyone so cubes live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe summit 2019 I'm John ferry with Jeff Frick our next guest is Jim LaLanne CX orchestration practice lead at Accenture customer experience engine welcome to the cube Thank You Forex for joining us customer experience engine CX e CX a yes that's your product I should we work on what's the importance of that what's the big deal so the big deal is there's a proliferation of technology in the world and and one of the main challenges is everything's silent everybody has a different lens when you talk to the sales folks they have a view of the customer when you talk to marketing day of you nobody ever talks and the problem is when these organizations they think technology is the answer so and one of the things that we're always asked inside of the Accenture interactive is well how do you bring all this stuff together and we kept getting asked the same question over and over and over again and so finally we decided you know what let's do something about it let's make this so that you move the discussion away from technology and how can you accelerate your transformation and use something like CX e to bring that to life Jim you've been a pro in this business know digital back we're gonna you're mister you've seen many ways of the hype and the reality you know the titles of customer success man and your orchestration practice manager you know we're relevant but now more than ever those actually means something look at orchestration that's a big term used in cloud computing around orchestrating workloads customer success that's the theme of the show sure experiences so now more than every we're starting to see some visibility into tech implementations to hard problems that were being tackled by pioneers on the bass now in front and center here how do you summarize that that market right now because do you believe that to be true and what is that visibility what are people looking at right now and then what's behind it well for far too long it was always about the technology providers themselves or the in the cusp who are our customers the organizations that hire Accenture to help them transform but what we've seen is just a complete seismic shift it's all about what is the customer or the consumer one it's not about what we as organizations want it's about what the consumers want so we do very much see that as a trend that's moving and in in order to do that you really need to decouple your systems of engagement from your systems of record and by doing that it allows organizations to experiment so there's new technology coming in everyday probably while we're sitting here at least a hundred others have come to life yeah but it becomes hard because when you're always having that technology come into play how can you plug it into your own ecosystem to let the consumer get done what they want to get done on their terms because that's their expectation they don't really care what your internal problems are they just want to be able to get done what they want to get done and if they can't with you it'll go somewhere else so the practice what you're seeing is the practices have an environment that allows you to try stuff yes without a lot of hurdles and you know integration yeah so the standard thing would be any time an organization wanted to try a new product it could take anywhere from 6 12 18 months just before they could even figure out does it work what we're trying to do with cxe is turn that into a matter of weeks in some cases in a matter of days so by having a platform or a capability set up so as a new application comes in great I already know about the customer information because I'm making that transparent to everything I can plug it in I can experiment I spend a month I measured does this actually work if it doesn't great get it out let me try the next thing so it gives that flexibility to organizations which marketers love because the last thing you want to do is tell us CMO is like that idea you have that's great that's what really agility exactly come talk to me in nine months different now in terms of the people process and technically been talking about 360 view of the customer is short for donkey years right so what's now is different is it just a perfect storm of some of these things finally coming together is there some particular process or kind of secret sauce to get us over this you know finally we're here you know we can finally get that view of the customer one of the things that that started to happen was you started moving the I the idea and the concept of a single view of a customer out of back-end master data management legacy hard really complex applications and with the poll earlier for Asian what they call customer data platform CDP's there are applications that are built natively in the cloud that are exposed through api's it makes it easier to stand up those capabilities so it really starts becoming a question of well why wouldn't you do this so in the past it would be well I gotta go get capital expenditure money and I gotta go through this whole business justification now it's I can have something stood up literally in a matter of Miss villains which is purpose-built and it gives you that capability to then plug in place so that gives especially for us as system integrators it makes it exciting for us because we can say you know what I can stand up a single view of your customer I can be couple that from the sales force the Adobe's the Marketo we are the world up that would never built for that right that's not their expertise take a minute to explain what is the customer experience engine the CSE what is it so in essence it's the plumbing it's all the stuff that nobody ever wants to do that always destroys transformations so again this was one of these things where every single transformation you had ever seen I don't care pick your vendor Adobe s AP Microsoft where they always fall down is in integration it's just it's just the nature of the business so what we did with CX II was we said you know what what I want to be able to do is I want to have a micro services based architecture that allows me to if I have a client telling app one week I can plug that in three weeks later I want to use something like tulip I'm going to unplug what I have I'm going to plug tulip in but the experience that the consumer sees on the glass it doesn't change so when I'm writing a mobile application I'm going to use the experience API what sits underneath it and this is what CXC provides is that system API layer to then say you know what I'm going to unplug tulip I'm going to plug in something else the consumer is done to what it's like it's like a Tesla versus a car there's all the software updates going on behind the scenes changing the configuration of the automobile yeah similar experience you're gonna automate creating mechanisms so that the application the workload for the user is not disrupted by you're making modifications under the hood so to speak well think of it this way so and we'll go with the car analogy which was probably why with the engine engine mechanism but I was explaining it to another another gentleman and he said he's like you guys are like to pimp my ride of ID I'm not changing my engine what I'm doing is I'm adding a spoiler here I'm adding new tires and rims here I'm you know putting on you know flames I'm doing all these things but the underlying engine or the heartbeat of the engagement that stays the same what you're enabling me to do as a business is tailor and adjust based on consumer expectations so if today they really want to engage with us with email next week it's through a RvR I they have that ability and I don't have to completely retrofit my entire IT architect and this is the modern approach that we see people that are winning take a take a certain formula and that is build software abstractions in their areas of expertise so here if I get this right the the CXC the customer experience engine is essentially your domain knowledge of the center interactive extract it away to make it easier for the vendors to work through your system yeah so you solve your own problems but unstop being a customer benefit right because what we firmly believe the hard part in a digital transformation is not the tech which is easy for me to say because I'm the propellerhead in the room but to me it's it's a much more fascinating conversation to say how do we transform your people and your process to be customer centric that's actually the hard part it's not the tech so by taking the tech difficulty off the table then that allows them to jumpstart and get to the actual meet of changing how they operate and the other piece of that which i think is ensuring you didn't touch on that specifically but I'm I'm sure it's got to be there is it democratizes the access apps and the ability to do things with that data to the people that aren't necessarily tied into the ERP and tied into these other systems so you can now have other people running out algorithms doing tests doing experimentation so really that democratization is so important well it's amazing the empowerment that you give people when you just provide transparency of the data so when when the sales staff if the retail rep in the store all of a sudden has transparency of what have been the engagements that have been going on with the consumer they can have a meaningful conversation and they're focused on how can they help that consumer in that moment so we look at it as you know the last moment that you engage with a consumer is usually the most telling because typically you are 20% more likely to maintain loyalty if it's a positive you're only four percent likely if it's negative yeah and if anything you will lose 32 percent of your population on one bad experience so you look at your thoughts on the vendor relationship and that's so much locking because I think lock-in is really about value you do a good job you get value because we will use you but with cloud tick tools and api's are becoming a very key part of the tool chest if you will for the users and your customer base and so we're seeing that the skills gap and the retraining that's trying to happen tends to focus on api's and tools so Amazon's got a cloud everybody's no one wants to learn ten different tool sets right how do you view that because I think we hear from practitioners all the time and they always say you know I just want it to work I want infrastructure as code I love DevOps I love agility but I don't want to learn all these new tool sets all right but I'm comfortable with this cloud I'm comfortable with this these kinds of tooling tool chains or api's how do you see that evolving is that going to be automated away will it be innovation there what's your thoughts there so my general feeling is I think you're going to continue to see more and more consolidation of adoptions in the rest based API space just because one it's easier on developers and developers win so if you make a developer's life difficult they're just going to move to something else so for the organizations that embrace that they're gonna continue to see that you will you will start to see more and more automation but I mean ultimately at the end of the day the economy that we work in runs off of api's and it's really the more you embrace it the more you share information are willing to share information within reason I mean there's you know legal and all sorts of things that have to have to be looked after but you know that's what that's what drives things so we as Accenture we look at application partners that embrace that methodology embrace that belief system of let's make it easy to share data that's one of the things that you know Adobe Microsoft and sa P are doing what the open data initiative is also trying to make it easier to share information amongst different stacks so it's a it's a variation of that and I I do believe that you're gonna continue to see more of that just because again the consumer that's what they expect and also the cloud native trend also that's a tailwind for that movement as well because they expect it to short standards I mean to a certain extent if you think about what's even cloud native it anymore cuz a lot of times people say well I'm on Fram well where are you I'm from ma well I've got my virtual cloud sitting over here or my privacy it's just distributed computing all right what's getting you excited here at Adobe summit I mean I'm impressed with the platform play I think they got that right I think they didn't over reach its laid out nice single view the customer got the data pipelining and semantic engine on the on the other side of it and a variety of app integrations looks solid to me what's your thoughts on Adobe I think it's a good first step to be fair I think it's a good first step I actually applaud them for for going down that path I'm excited about the possibilities it gives to our customers who are embracing the Adobe stack I'd like to see them go further especially with in terms of extending it out to other partners as well because it's one of those things of there's no one platform that solves everything that's a large reason why we established cxe is the days where you could just have all Adobe and that's going to solve everything across they'll service marketing and commerce that's there's no one provider that has that so you need to have that ability to transfer data and to drive that experience so I'm excited about where Adobe's going with the experience platform because I think it's a good first step especially on their side to try and make it easier again it's about how do you make it easier to deploy applications so that you can serve the purpose for the consumer so I think it I think it's a good first I would you describe the makeup of the ecosystem community breaking down from developers to integrators and partners because as you start to see this kind of enabling platforms as you said it's a first step is foundational you'll see how it kind of evolves sure ultimately developers will to me will be a canary in a coal mine on this one but how does has the makeup of the community on the development side what did what it's the personas are the developers the hardcore cloud guys are they mostly app developers is there some segmentation what's your view of this I think so what I'm seeing is developers turning more into cross utilization of skills if there's there's less and less of I'm just this type of developer it's usually more of I'm gonna experiment and do a little bit of everything what I've actually been finding interesting is a lot of developers are turning into people that sit in marketing or sit in sales operations or you know some people have turned it citizen integrators but it's people who do not come from a technical background but the tools that are being created today are enabling them to do more of the integration work on their own and that's one of the benefits when you have open API is recipes api's is you can put more of that power in the hands of less technical users there's that's not to say you're not going to ever need hard for developers but what I'm seeing is more and more non-technical people are getting into the developers of time cycles are changing they want to be closer to those customers that the closer to the front line is not in the back office kind of coding away right you just you don't with with consumer expectations shifting on a dime you can't wait and that's one of the things that we spend a lot of time trying to help our IT side of the house customers is how to be flexible how to be nimble so that when marketing where any business leader comes to you and says hey I want to try this out you don't say I'll get back to you in nine months it should be I'll get back to you next week yeah and that's really the goal of what we're trying to do with new titles we had a guest on the queue we've been doing the queue for 10 years first time we've ever had a guest with a title marketing CIO which was kind of business saying look I got I got to sit in the marketing team and be a CIO over here and translate and put projects together and make things happen to your point about it's an integrator kind of like putting it all together well I mean it's no different than you see more and more CIOs become much more business focused business savvy they're not just hey I'm going to keep the lights on from a technology perspective the the more successful CIOs have that business lens no different than the CMO the CMO czar having to get smarter on technology and a lot of times what we're saying is the CMOS are driving the tech agenda not the CIOs so as a result I'm not surprised to see I'm the would you say was a marketing CIO Marketing CIO thanks for the insights great to have you on yeah I think get the talk tech and under the hood marketing text great final question for you what's next for CXC customer experience engine what's going on what's the next leg of the journey for you so the next leg of a journey is we've already got the integration layer laid out so we can pretty much plug-and-play any application that is out there we're really diving into real time analytics real time segmentation taking some of the power of the capabilities that are in the CDP space to drive those engagements so it's really it's it's an expansion and then that data space and making it that much more accessible to our customers that's great you guys bring some abstraction some automation to the table for customers it's a cube bringing you all the data here and insights I'm chef Fred chef Rick stay with us more day 2 coverage after this short break

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Accenture Interactive. >> Welcome back everyone to our live coverage, CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, my cohost Jeff Frick, our next guest Mishel Justesen, Group Manager, Dynamics 365 and Marketing Technology at Avanade. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> So we were just talking before you came on camera that you're in charge of Global Marketing Practice for Avanade. >> Yeah, so I'm what you called a Global Marketing COP Lead at Avanade and so basically what that means is I'm in charge of our marketing technology community, our marketing technology community at Avanade. >> A lot of relationships forming in the industry, a lot of discussions around open data, open APIs. How has the landscape shifted in the marketing technology realm over the past three years? Because you're seeing a lot of cloud computing like vibe going on, you're seeing agility, real time, AI themes kind of creeping into content development marketing. >> Yes, yes. >> It's changed a lot, how do you see it? >> It has changed a lot and I've been in the marketing technology industry before Marketing Technologist even existed. So I've seen a lot of change and I think the thing that I'm most excited about is the way I'm looking at things right now is as a Marketing Technologist, you don't have to integrate anything anymore. You can put your data in the cloud and marketers have a specific need for a specific type of data, right? So I don't have to integrate my marketing technology anymore, I can put that data in the cloud, I can enable it with some AI, and then I can send it wherever I need to go. >> So data's been the big flashpoint, in terms of inflection point and changing the direction of the industry, it's how people are handling their data and the thinking around it almost is from an architecture standpoint or use cases. What are the key trends there around the data? What are the big moving parts? >> Well, I mean one of the things that's always a pain point for marketers is all of those data silos that happen from all the different marketing tools that you'll have to use, right? So it's painful, so how do you report on that, what do you do, right? So what I really love is I love seeing how as markers, we can now put data into a single source of truth, along with all the other data that we can use to enable our reporting. For me, as a marketer, I've always wanted to be able to get access to my ERP data so I can really see the ROI on my campaigns and how they're actually doing. And if I can marry that up with the sales data as well and I can pull all that data from one place, I'm a happy camper. >> I got to ask you about being a marketing technologist because also we've been doing theCUBEs, our tenth year, covering thousands of events we've done over the years. First time ever, someone yesterday came on, a guest, and their title was Marketing CIO. >> Wow, that's fabulous. >> And we think that's going to be a big spring but it brings up the conversation of what does IT do, what does systems people do, because the notion of systems and data is not so much just in IT, information technology department problem or opportunity. There's new roles changing and coming together. How do you, what's your take on-- >> I thought you were going to ask me hard questions, this is an easy one, right? (chuckling) >> We'll get to the hard ones later. >> Okay good, so what I've found is really interesting is the transformation of the IT department versus the Marketing IT department, right? So IT has always spoken a certain language, right? But marketing and the marketing lingo, it requires a certain amount of expertise and when you have marketing technology you need to understand the lingo of marketing and what type of data and what kind of strategies to go after. You can't expect an IT department to understand that. So that's why you're seeing a Marketing CIO, because they speak the language of technology, right, Marketing Technologists, marketing technology, and they understand how to implement that technology. So that's where there's a nice shift in that going on, I love to hear this. >> Okay so now the hard question. >> Okay. >> So all the people that are here with Adobe, Adobe's got an ecosystem, you're in it, Accenture Interactive, everyone else, they're out there to try to sell services and products and experiences to the customer, the consumer, or B to B brands. Who's their buyer now? Who actually, who are they selling to? Is the personas the same, who is the person who writes the checks and makes the decision? >> The CMO. >> CMO? >> The Marketing CIO, right? (John laughing) I actually look at that from a different angle, personally. What I am after is actually the marketing team, right? So of course as marketers we understand what the customer journey is, right? And we have to be able to, as marketers, I'm putting myself in that persona of course, right? As marketers we have to make sure that we can get to those potential customers, right? But one thing that I'd like to just bring up, if I may, is that I'm more concerned about how does the marketer get their job done, right? So for me, at Avanade, I'm super excited about how I can help them get their job done better. So there's two markets there now. >> Yeah, yeah, and the roles are changing radically-- >> They totally do. >> You're seeing a lot of new things happening. >> So Mishel, curious to get your take, you've been at this for a while, how things have changed from kind of everything lining up in a funnel type situation to get to the sale, to now the sale is just part of an ongoing relationship-- >> It's a part of an ongoing experience-- >> That people are trying to establish so how does that change kind of the things that marketers need to think about, the KPIs that they need to measure beyond simply correlating a campaign back to the ERP system to see if they got a good ROI on that effort? >> Well, I think what's really exciting about marketing now is that we have a bigger seat at the table, right, at that table for the business. And with the ability to report and really show the value of what we do, we're not just top of the funnel. Traditionally what happens is we can do all the work we do to brings leads into a sales ecosystem and then we're like okay there you go. Sales, do what you need to do, right? We don't have to stop there anymore. We can help with the entire sales process. And once that sales process is done and we have a customer, we can continue to help the business engage with that customer. So we're part of the entire journey. >> Right, and I'm curious too, your take, which I think is driven a lot by mobile where your touch points are shorter but more frequent, right, more diverse but a lot more of them, all different stages of that funnel. Cause they can get a lot of information on their own. So how has that kind of changed from a marketer perspective, how to think about content, how to think about that journey, not just as a simple funnel that drives to a transaction. >> Yeah, our jobs are not easy anymore. Yeah, we really have to be more strategic as marketers. So what's interesting about that is across that entire journey, we have to somehow be able to provide an experience in the moment, right? And the good news is, is that we have lots of marketing technology that can help us do that, right? It requires a lot of data, it requires a lot of engagement, and then being able to ingest that information and react to it as close to real time a we can is, I think it's a huge challenge, but that's what we have to be ready for. >> One of the things we heard from a lot of the practitioners that come on, customers of Adobe, and the ecosystem is getting more diverse data so they can get the blind spots identified, where they think they don't have any visibility and the-- >> The white space? >> In the white space, well they don't have enough, well they don't know what's going on. So what they were mentioning was is that okay funnel's great but they're going into this other journey past non-linear progressions, new-organic or in other channels and they want to try to identify what's going on there. So they need to instrument it, right? >> Yeah. So the challenging is how do I get that silo data that might be somewhere else? Or if it's new data, new first-party data, or third-party data, getting more data exposed into these new progressions is a real challenge. >> It is. And they want to keep iterating on it. So that seems to come up a lot. What's your reaction to that and how does this new kind of, let's say horizontal or horizontally scalable experience users are having? How do you guys view that? >> Well I, again I would love as a marketer to have access to all my data in one place, right? And not just my data, cause we have, marketers have special data, right? I would like to make sure I have all my data in one place. So, adjure, put it in the cloud on my data service, right? Put it there for me so I can then enable it, I can start throwing some AI at it so that I can have AI working for me, right? So I can help-- >> Talk about that dynamic, take a minute to explain why it's important to put the data in the cloud, because there's benefits to that-- >> Sure. >> You were mentioning earlier in the interview. Why is it important? Just take a minute to explain why it's important to put the data in the cloud. >> Well, because it gets rid of the data silos that you have, right? So if you can put your data in one place and then pull it into the systems, just the amount of data you need you can get to it in bite size pieces, right? So let me just inform the sales team with the information that just they need, right? And for the marketing team, let me give them just the data they care about, right? Cause it's very different. But if we have all of that in the same place then we can pull it in wherever we need it. >> Talk about your business and how you guys are doing in marketing. What's going on in the global landscape? What are some of the big trends that you're seeing? What wave are you riding? What's the big business benefits you guys are going after right now? >> Well right now at Avanade, we're really focused on this Adobe and Microsoft partnership. Right, for me, it's a really exciting time to be a marketer because well, to be a Marketing Technologist, to be at Avanade and helping with this whole new partnership. We now have the power of a whole marketing experience platform, Adobe experience platform, right, and the partnership with Microsoft and we can bring these two platforms together, right so-- >> And LinkedIn too, although technically Microsoft-- >> And LinkedIn, yeah. >> Still part of Microsoft, but you got the Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn which are kind of different groups, right? But still Microsoft. >> Yeah. Yeah and LinkedIn's a great example too. So LinkedIn has two places for marketers and sales to work. So marketers can do the LinkedIn lead gen, right? And then Sales can look at the LinkedIn profiles and the company profiles right on that lead record on Dynamics 365, right? So Marketing and Sales can work together. I can bring the leads in as a marketer and a sales person, and I can look at that lead on LinkedIn. So that's super exciting. >> What content types do you see as working, obviously videos, hot right now. I was just at the RSH Show, Jeff and I were there. We saw, everyone's doing videos from video blogging to full sets. Obviously we're streaming here. Video seems to be a hot format. >> What are, what other-- >> Video has been a hot format forever, I mean YouTube came into existence and all of a sudden you've got citizen videographers, right? And then you can put content out there like crazy. I see that it's still a very relevant platform but I personally would like to see how we can use AI to start targeting content to people who are doing some sort of activity online, it doesn't matter where you're at, to engage them, right? >> I think the machine learning is a big point for the AI. And you mentioned earlier, you don't have to worry about connecting stuff and I think if you look at the experience platform that they announced yesterday, they have all these connectors on the sides of their architecture cause that's where you guys are also connecting in, right, This is where you guys see that automation happening. >> Yes, yes. >> Is that what you meant by auto-integrating? >> Yes, exactly, yeah so as someone that builds marketing technology stacks, right, using Dynamics 365 as the hub of that, one of the biggest pain points back in the day, as in a couple years ago, right, was does this integrate with my CRM? Because that's a pain point, how am I going to integrate? I don't have to worry about that anymore, right? Again, going back to putting data in the cloud, I don't have to integrate technology directly into D365 anymore, right, and that-- >> What's the table stakes in the mar-tech stack, what's changed on the table stakes because it's funny as evolution comes, these new capabilities become table stakes like integration. You can't integrate, you're out. What new things are going on in the marketing technology field that was an exception or a luxury just a few months ago or years ago that are now table stakes for marketers? >> Table stakes in the marketing technology landscape, I think Adobe is really, let me shamelessly plug that cause I'm so excited about it, right, Adobe's really a leader in that. So how do you take an entire marketing technology platform, right, and it's not just, it's email marketing, it's your web space, it's your whatever other tool you have, right in your marketing technology stack. How do you aggregate them together in a way that makes sense for the marketer to use. So I think what you're going to see is things need to be really easy for the marketers to use on their own, right? Sometimes you need developers to do a lot of things, right? These pieces of technology can be really tech heavy in that respect, and I think you're going to see a lot of drag and drop capability, let's enable the marketer, the citizen marketer as I like to call them, to actually build what they need more on the fly. And you're seeing that a lot right now-- >> Well it's funny-- >> Marketo's very similar like that. >> Cause when you said the good news is the marketers have all these tools, I thought you were then going to say and the bad news is the marketers have all these tools. (John laughing) >> That's so true, yeah. >> Cause there's so many of them, right? >> There's such a, I know, influx of possibility, right? >> Right, so to have an integrated platform that pulls a lot of the core pieces together, you don't necessarily have to worry about the laundry list of potential tools that you might-- >> Exactly, exactly. >> That you might leverage. Already pre-integrated, ready to roll, super. Final thoughts on seeing the Satya on stage, that's got to help your enthusiasm for the partnership. >> 100%. (John and Jeff laughing) >> Good. >> I'm super happy to be here and I'm a huge advocate of the partnership so I'm really excited to see this happening. >> I think Adobe's done a great job. We're tough customers to please in terms of the tech but on the cloud side, the way they laid it out. The got all the things we think right, the first party-- >> Yeah, it's brilliant. >> Module, the data pipe lining and semantics was those are two, I think, beautiful architectural pieces. >> I agree. >> I think it's going to be, if they can get this thing automated and getting going, no more integration-- >> Thank you for making my life easier. (all laughing) I know, right? >> We'll see some acceleration on your end, with technologists. >> Yes, yup, I'll help, I'm here. >> Mishel, thank you for sharing the data and insights on theCUBE. >> Of course. >> Thanks. >> Of course. >> Great insights here on theCUBE, Adobe Summit, I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, stay with us for more Day Two coverage after this short break. (techno music)

live from Las Vegas it's the queue covering Adobe summit 2019 brought to you by Adobe welcome back everyone live cube coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe summit 2019 I'm John fry with Jeff Frick two days of wall-to-wall coverage our next guest is Josh Van Tonder group product marketing manager to Dobby thanks for joining us thanks pleasure you're managing the marketing of the products of experienced manager within the platform great event here really the keynote we have agreed a good view good review this morning it's a great platform a lot of elements to it journey it's the Holy Grail that's super interesting and I mean I think you can see the Holy Grail you know it's it's just great actually hearing from the customers right I think it comes to life when you hear the stories they're telling kind of the solutions they're bringing a market on top of it it's it's it's very exhilarating for the product teams to see it all in action and coming to life through the customers you know we cover hundreds of events a year we hear all the stories everyone talks about innovation it's really happening here is gadot bees transform to cloud years ago so now you start to see Marketo Magento coming through the mix full platform architecture open API is open data this is the beginning of a sea change we started to seeing customers having the end-to-end experience where each functional element can do its job and connect with the data this is progressive that's great stuff it's great stuff so so where where are we what's going on with the product what's what's going on how our customers dealing with this because you got Best Buy up there forty million emails personalized yep personalization at scale yep I mean I think the the crux of what's going on is I think a lot of the organizations I mean essentially the name of the game is delivering personalized experiences right I mean how do you how do you get someone to have that moment that moment of truth where they they get to see and interact with the brand in a way that's relevant to that right I mean I think we all we all respond that way I think you know even statistics show that our own statistics show that so we've done some surveys of other consumers um it's 51 percent say I'm much more likely to buy something from a if it's personalized and 49 1% are gonna say look I'm gonna be more loyal to you because it is relevant to me which makes sense I think you and I would probably agree that if it's it's the nail on the head I want to bring up a point that the in the keynote the CEO said he said people don't buy products they buy experiences okay and this is now kind of become the the kind of the mission of all companies just seeing a big frame with direct-to-consumer yeah in all verticals not just B to B to C directly consumer so now companies can go direct to the consumer so how does that change like the ite equation because the old days were you know Bill stack and rack servers load some soft yeah sell it to a customer but now you're dealing with a user experience model that's everywhere yeah that's an interesting basis I mean a the crux of the issue is under the underneath that is it takes contents and data together to kind of deliver the great experience and at the end of the day IT is front and center as the enabler strategically for how that gets delivered I think what we've been seeing is they're they're sort of I would say four key pillars elements that that they've been using to turn their portfolio to be a strategic advantage so one is how do you manage omni-channel right I mean I guess it's getting further with your message so it's if that's essentially an omni-channel thing the other is being faster about getting to market with that message so you know maybe how does cloud play into that how does how do you enable the marketing teams and then I think the last thing and this is this is one that's been a hot topic is where does where does AI simultaneously help drive that better experience so I think those are sort of the pieces we're seeing coming into play from an IT standpoint where they they have a lot of a lot of influence to advance the overall business mission you know Jeff and I were talking about our intro about how the cloud has really in changed the game with Adobe and the customer base you know the old cloud conversation around DevOps and around the building applications work waterfall processes are gonna be dismantled by agility process based processes you started to see that now with content and creative yet we're agility and feed and data are now the new thing so a Content developer is kind of like a software developer for software you guys are providing cloud tech capabilities for content developers yeah creative developers that's right kind of metaphor there what's how do you view that how do customers react to that that's interesting I mean I think you you know usually you bring up the one side is cloud agility and the corollary to that it's just overall content velocity if you will right so I think from a cloud standpoint the the model would be you know how do i how do I get to market faster and in more geographies how to get to more geographies how do I you know support rolling out new infrastructure or new products more more quickly on the cloud infrastructure and then how do I deal with growth right how do i ami system if you look at it from the content lens which i think is what you're getting at there's a similar paradigm in terms of this agility so from an IT standpoint how do you enable someone that's on the marketing team to discover their content to reuse it more effectively and then deploy it more effectively and there are many pieces to the ité equation that fundamentally empower if you will let that velocity in terms of being able to manage discover and and frankly optimize that content as you get it out there so it's an interesting thing that I think we've been doing a lot of looking at a lot of product innovation specifically from an Adobe standpoint in terms of actually enabling that that product velocity which I mean the platform out there basically is the architecture for the platform to do that yes elements so this is just a perfect storm that's come together finally in terms of capability because we've talked about 360 view of the customer ad nauseam and and we've talked about omni-channel for many many many years but I think the execution on those was was was certainly lagging behind the vision but is it now because of the integration of the platform is it because the Big Data architectures is it because now you know it's it's it's you're reading real-time data on ingest you're not going back this normal data what is it this now and abling just actually execute on the vision that we've been talking about for years yeah I mean I think there there are multiple pieces kind of coming together that are helping so I think you know as you said I think in some sense what you're getting at is there there were historically many silos of how these things have historically been managed and what we're seeing is is a trend towards centralizing that information because ultimately you can drive more insights by looking at it and it's just you get more velocity for reusing it so you know to look at it from let's just take an example of the V omni-channel so if we look at it purely from delivering content what we as say an IOT device comes to market or you have these more advanced single page apps on the web page or an Alexa right what we saw is a rise of separate systems in some sense to manage those but now we're seeing a trend where gosh if we were to have all that content in one place if we had all the analytics behind that in one place we can more effectively personalize the customer journey across each of those and that's effectively what you're hearing a lot of today is can I have sort of a centralized but hybrid model that supports through api's getting that information to different touch points and then the data engine that will allow the personalization across each of that those touch points and that I think is the fundamentally the part that's unlocking a lot of value and is it the acceptance of the of the AI and and kind of the machine learning that's going to help you do it because you can't you can create 40 million emails with the people right you mean you have to have automation and you have to have some intelligence behind that you just can't do it manually so is that where we finally kind of broken through so that I can send 40 million different emails in one campaign with some intelligence and some logic behind who's got what yeah I think you hit the nail and I had that right I mean I think if personalization is the name of the game and you're interacting on more touch points with more pieces of contents how do you get it right for each audience and so that's where AI is it's just adds tremendous a tremendous velocity and help for businesses to get that right so I think you can think of it almost this pipeline to deliver the experience so on one hand how do you create that experience hey I can play a role how do you manage it internally hey I can play a role in terms of discovering the assets and we're using it delivering it it can play a role and actually getting the right content out there I'll give you some examples of that in a second but and then the final piece is it has you know the actual optimization of that right so to give you some examples what we've seen happening is you can literally use the AI the the data on interactions of how people interacting across your system and actually create interfaces on-the-fly for specific segments of audiences right so instead of say I as a marketer creating that interface you know using web development or tooling why not have the system actually recompose what is being served up you know maybe a certain layout with multiple columns works for some audiences maybe it just needs to be one banner with a certain type of image a I can actually do that for you by looking at the analytics of you know how do you react to certain things versus me and drawing corollaries so there's a lot of police places along that chain where AI is the impact is productivity obviously because you know the right to queries or figure out what's come in that's presented to you that's good that's kind of the impact of the marketer right it's about yeah it's about scaling the market or right I mean I think that's one of the big challenges from a business standpoint is you know your team's never big enough to serve every person every single customer as a marketer so that's where a I essentially unlocks that that scale it gives you a marketing team of thousands where you may only have a team of a hundred or twenty depending on the size of the order to tune that up in terms of a customer I've got an Adobe I'm Adobe customer I go the Adobe cloud experience cloud how do I tune this up I mean is there a way that you guys have figured out that allows them to kind of get it up and running fast without a lot of complexity yeah that's like that's a good question it's I mean that's actually it's really critical because that from a marketing standpoint you know IT can bring to bear a number of different technologies but unless they're easy to adopt you're not gonna go anywhere so I think the trick is almost giving marketers the easy button so I think that's that's where a lot of the magic and AI happens is you pick one specific problem you know in Adobe's case we pick a problem where we know we have a lot of intelligence about creative assets and we have visibility and how those are being used so if we bring those together we can solve specific problems about discovering content or how we deliver that optimally but the wit to answer your specific question it's almost as though we try to give an easy button for the marketer right so I feed you a bunch of say audience segments and then I plug you into my my analytics data press a button and I ideally it's gonna just figure it out for me write it and and then test if it works that's the key thing is once you get in a market test it right and and it can do that for you and I don't think there's enough you know kind of highlight on that where you know those dramatic before to do a/b testing now you can test everything you know at such scale it's such detail into your point you think you know your segments and you can create your own segments but you can actually let the Machine create segments based on actual behavior of people which I guess really is enabled by most you know so many of your interactions now with brands is digital so give you that opportunity to grab a piece of that exhaust do the analytics and get some insight out of it yeah that's exactly right I mean I you know data the scale of data I mean everybody's flooded with data right now but it's really where's the needle in the haystack and I think that's that's where AI plays a crucial role I mean it it can do things like figure out anomalies on on your interactions across a large swath of users right if something something you see in the data is it's statistically normal or not and should I pay attention to it and what should i do from it so AI starts to play a role in that it can even do simple things like we all have mobile phones we all want to watch more video on mobile phones the problem is as a business as a marketing team and and I'm sure even you know you folks have the same situation is the content that you create may not be ready to be consumed appropriately on each device right so if I pick up my mol device has it been optimized properly so you can do things like have a I pick the focal points in a video and crop out the rest and follow the focal point and only show that on the phone so well certainly gonna call you up because we have a lot of video we don't have twenty videos here today so a lot of luck but this is the norm people gonna have more velocity of videos that's that's podcasts yep blog posts so the waterfalls I was getting earlier this waterfall thing is over it's more of an agile environment so I got to ask the customer question is that reality yet grounded in the customer base or is it still early adopters or I guess the question is what's the pattern that you're seeing in customers Bart what makes a good market or what makes a good organization to embrace the kind of change that's on our doorstep right now it's a good that's a good question and it I think it takes two to tango I think there's a an IT elements and a marketing elements and I think we're seeing an evolution and how how the two work together in this new model so from an IT standpoint they are the enabler for example to get content onto multiple multiple different channels from a from our marketers standpoint they ultimately are the ones that define and help articulate the right message and type of content if IT and marketers are working well together the more the the IT team is going to enable that market or T marketing team to essentially iterate quickly in content so there's a whole set of things that can be done to enable the marketing team to be agile and getting that content out there so I think you know the evolution I would say is is in in how the two teams are working so I think your waterfall model and past I'd say it's entirely gone but it has been reframed in a ways exploring it that's a good way to test to see if if IT and CM a CIO and the CMO working together yeah probably aligned to four change right they're not maybe not it's so I mean I'll give you a very specific example so one thing that we've been seeing in our world is so for example on cloud you know there's a lot of things you can do more quickly traditionally there have been some waterfall development models what we've seen is IT now has a DevOps process where they're very fast and rolling out application updates but if you can actually standardize that if you can create a pipeline for Creek getting code onto the onto the different environments if you test it and roll it out faster what that means for marketing and business is the time to market goes down so for example we've actually been baking that into our products can we literally here's a best-in-class pipeline for doing an agile development model it's already pre-built into the the infrastructure to enable IT to kind of go faster on the behalf of so here's a question for you put you on the spot sure in all the stores major shifts is always gaps there's always gaps in new markets or white spaces so there's three areas technology gaps skills gaps and culture gaps yep can you talk about what you see as the key gaps that people are starting to get over on figure out how to fill those gaps because they can become direct walkers if they're not resolved so tech gap skills gap and culture gap so just because we talking tech a lot let's reverse it and talk you know sort of the the team and organization elements I mean you think one thing that we've we've definitely been seeing is is if you will the the alignment of what was traditionally a channel management is now moving more closely into the CDO or CMO arm which I think is a good thing right I think what we see as some of our leading customers is the marketing and and chief digital officer x' have increasingly more alignment and a seat at the table of how the individual channel line of businesses are operating and that's a very good thing because it does help close the loop on the customer journey across those channels which I think it's traditionally been a bit of a dilemma so I would say that's one thing we're seeing much more is that the channels the channel management actually going under directly or more alignment with the marketing arm or something like a CDO so on the org side that's one area and that helps with the velocity right and they're rearranging the org structures to align with how does content me to be shared across these teams do you really own that channel is it is it do we do we have a customer journey that is owned across all channels right and I think that's an important conversation that these companies have been struggling with in our and I've evolved a lot in the last few years and we talked about the tech gap already but skills gap what skills are out there that are needed obviously day the machine learning yeah a big one date the machine learning stuff I mean I think Adobe's fuel horse on the races I think we're trying to democratize some of that so as I said earlier the hope is for the marketing team we we give them a neat easy path to to unlock that there are areas where there's been big growth like so for example the front and frameworks and development for single page applications that's an area from an IT standpoint where we've seen a tremendous growth in that technology set and and how that plays a role with the rest of the infrastructure yeah and and and simply how does that actually align with the traditional tools they've been using for managing their websites I think what we've seen is that they're now skill wise and technology wise actually taking of you that you you still have one centralized platform but ultimately you'll have IT developer resources that plug in to say one central hybrid content management system for example any new personas popping out of this just shift that's going on with cloud and and creativity experience cloud any new roles that are emerging that you see popping out yeah I mean I so I mean one example we've seen and it's it's it's been an evolution but you know for example we've seen the rise of something called journey managers right which just goes back to what I was mentioning earlier which are our people that their business and tack align but they're interested in understanding how does a customer actually move across a specific journey so they're mapped to if you will a task a customer's trying to do and how do i optimize that you know assuming and knowing that you know if Josh is going to try and get some customer support he's not just always going to call the support line he's going to try other things and how do I simplify that for him and taking a very holistic view so I think that's that's one thing we've seen more of and it's it's a you know a great way to approach it fascinating insights Josh thanks for coming on I'll give you the final word I put a plug in for what you're working on experience manager what's new what's happening yeah absolutely so we're I'm part of the experience manager team so we're part of the organization that that helps our brands deliver and manage digital experiences so essentially we're enabling if you will omni channel delivery and management of those experiences and a key thrusts for us are around enabling IT to get content effectively across channels and also experience intelligence how do we how do we deliver AI and machine learning innovation to make the marketers job easier for getting personalized experiences to market and enabling IT to support them more efficiently so there's a number of innovations and exciting things that we're very excited about it someone for the congratulations Josh van Tonder group product marketing manager at adobe experience manager his product breaking down what's going on here at Adobe summit and in the industry I'm Jennifer Jeff rick stay with us for more coverage here at adobe summit after this short break

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to Palo Altos Cube Studios for CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. We're with Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, CUBE Alumni. He's been on before. Building one of the most compelling companies that's disrupting and changing the game in Comms, advertising, PR, with Cloud technologies. Kevin, great to see you again, thanks for coming in. >> Likewise John, It's really good to be back. >> So, we haven't chatted in two years. You've been busy. Our last conversation was the beginning of 2017. Cision's done a lot of interesting things. You've got a lot of M and A under your belt. You're putting this portfolio together with Cloud technologies. Really been interesting. I really got to say I think you cracked the code on I think a new reality, a new economic reality. Also new capabilities for comms folks. Congratulations. >> Thank you, it's been a fun ride. >> So give us the update. So two years since we talked, how many deals, companies have you bought? What's the headcount, what's the revenue? Give us an update. >> In the four years, 12 acquisitions, seven of which have happened since I've been here. Up to 4,500 employees in over 40 countries. Customer count has grown to over 50,000 customers globally. Revenue's kind of gone from 500s to just shy of 800 million. A lot of leadership changes, and as you just mentioned, pretty seismic change, finally. We've certainly been the catalyst and the cattle prod for that seismic change around tech, data, measurement and analytics finally becoming mature and adopted inside this line of business like the Chief Communication Officer, the earn media folks. To say that they were not tech savvy a few years ago would be an understatement. So, a lot's been going on. >> Yeah, and certainly the trend is your friend, in my opinion, for you. But I think the reality is not yet upon people's general mindset. It's coming quickly, so if you look at some of the big trends out there. Look at fake news, look at Facebook, look at the Google effect. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Big Tech, Amazon. Cloud computing, in that time period that you were, prior to just going to Cision, you had Oracle Cloud, done a lot of great things on the Marketing Cloud side. But the timing of Cloud computing, the timing of how media has changed. There's not many journalists anymore. We had Andy Cunningham, a legendary industry veteran, formerly of Cunningham Communications. He did the PR for Steve Jobs. You said, there's no more journalists, a few left, but you got to tell your story direct to the consumer. >> You do. >> This is now a new marketing phenomenon. This is a tailwind for you at Cision because you guys, although put these cubbies together, have a unique vision around bringing brand value advertising at PR economics. >> Yeah, that's a good way to put it. >> Tell us the vision of Cision and specifically the shift that's happening. Why are you guys important? What wave are you riding? >> So, there's a couple shifts, John. You and I have talked about this in previous programs There's this shift of the line of business, having to work in a whole bunch of non-integrated point solutions. The CFO used to live in 17 different applications from 17 vendors. That's all squished together. Now I buy from one Cloud platform, right, from Oracle or SAP. Same thing happened in Human Capital Management. 22 things squished into the Cloud, one from Workday, right. Same thing happened, you had 25 different things for sales and service. That all squished together, into one CRM in the Cloud, I buy from Salesforce, right. And our last rodeo, the early part of this stack, it was me and Adobe battling it out for the right to go squish the entire the LUMAscape into a marketing cloud, right, so there could be one ring to rule them all for the CMO. So, it happens in every single category. It just hasn't had over here, happened on the earned media side and the Chief Communications Officer. So, bringing the tech stack so that now we are for the CCO what Adobe is for the CMO what Salesforce is for the CRO, Workday is for the CHRO. That has to happen. You can't do, you can't manage it this way without sophisticated tech, without automation, without integration, you can't do it. The second thing that had to happen, especially in marketing and advertising, they all figured out how to get revenue credit. Advertising was a slow single-digit CAGR industry for 50 years. And then something happened. After 5% CAGR for 50 years, and then something happened over the next 10 years. Digital paid went from like 15 billion to 150 billion. And what happened is that old, I know half my advertising is wasted on this one half. That went bye-bye. Now I know immediately, down to the page, down the ad unit, down to this, exactly what worked, right. When I was able to put Pixels on ads, John, you'd go to that page, Pixel would go on you, It would follow you around If you ended up putting something in the e-commerce shop that ad got credit. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's how the entire-- >> But that's how the infrastructure would let you, allowed you, it enabled you to do that. Then again, paid advertising, paid search, paid advertising, that thing has created massive value in here. >> Massive value. But my buyer, right, so the person that does the little ad on the most regional tech page got credit. My buyer that got Bob Evans, the Cloud King, to write an article about why Microsoft is going to beat AWS, he's a credible third party influencer, writing objectively. That article's worth triple platinum and has more credibility than 20,000 Microsoft sales reps. We've never, until Cision, well let's Pixel that, let's go figure out how many of those are the target audience. Let's ride that all the way down to the lead form that's right. Basically it's super simple. Nobody's ever tracked the press releases, the articles or any of the earned media content, the way people have tracked banner ads or e-commerce emails. Therefore this line of business never get revenue credit. It stayed over here in the OpEx pile where things like commerce and advertising got dumped onto the revenue pile. Well, you saw the crazy investment shift. So, that's really the more important one, is Comms is finally getting quantified ROI and business's attribution like their commerce and advertising peers for the first time ever in 2018 via what Cision's rolled out. That's the exciting piece. >> I think, I mean, I guess what I hear you saying is that for the first time, the PR actually can be measured, similar to how advertising >> You got it. >> Couldn't be measured then be measured. Now PR or communications can be measured. >> They get measured the same way. And then one other thing. That ad, that press release, down to the business event. This one had $2 million dollars of ad spend, this one had no ad spend. When it goes to convert, in CRM or it goes to convert on a website, this one came from banner ad, this one came from credible third party content. Guess which one, not only had zero ad spend instead of $2 million in ad spend. Guess which one from which source actually converts better. It's the guy that chose to read credible third-party article. He's going to convert in the marketing system way better that somebody who just clicked on the ad. >> Well certainly, I'm biased-- >> So all the way down the funnel, we're talking about real financial impact based on capturing earned media ID, which is pretty exciting. >> Well, I think the more exciting thing is that you're basically taking a value that is unfunded quote by the advertising firm, has no budget basically, or thin budgets, trying to hit an organic, credible outlet which is converting in progression to a buyer, an outcome. That progression is now tracked. But let's just talk about the economics because you're talking about $2 million in spend, it could be $20 million. The ratio between ad spend and conversion to this new element you mentioned is different. You're essentially talking about the big mega trend, which is organic content. Meaning connecting to sources. >> That's right. >> That flow. Of course, we believe and we, at the Cube, everyone's been seeing that with our business. Let's talk about that dynamic because this is not a funded operationalized piece yet, so we've been seeing, in the industry, PR and comms becoming more powerful. So, the Chief Communication Officer isn't just rolling out press releases, although they have to do that to communicate. You've got medium posts now, you've got multiple channels. A lot of places to put the story. So the Chief Communication Officer really is the Chief Storyteller Officer, Not necessarily the CMO. >> Emphatically. >> The Martech Stack kind of tracking. So talk about that dynamic. How is the Chief Communication Officer role change or changing? Why is that important and what should people be thinking about, if they are a Chief Communication Officer? >> You know, it's interesting. There's a, I'm just going to call it an actual contradiction on this front. When you and I were getting out of our undergrad, 7 out of 10 times that CCO, the Chief Communication Officer, worked for the CEO and 30% of time other. Yet the role was materially narrow. The role has exploded. You just said it pretty eloquently. This role has really exploded and widened its aperture. Right now though 7 out of 10 of them actually do work for the CMO, which is a pretty interesting contradiction. And only 30% of them work for the CEO. Despite the fact that from an organizational stand point, that kind of counter intuitive org move has been made. It doesn't really matter because, so much of what you just said too, you was in marketing's purview or around brand or around reputation or around telling the story or around even owning the key assets. Key assets isn't that beautiful Budweiser frog commercial they played on Super Bowl anymore. The key assets are what's getting done over in the communications, in part. So, from a storytelling standpoint, from an ownership of the narrative, from a, not just a product or a service or promotion, but the whole company, the whole brand reputation, the goodwill, all of that is comms. Therefore you're seeing comms take the widest amount of real estate around the boardroom table than they've ever had. Despite the fact that they don't sit in the chair as much. I mentioned that just because I find it very interesting. Comms has never been more empowered, never had a wider aperture. >> But budget wise, they're not really that loaded up with funding. >> And to my earlier point, it's because they couldn't show. Super strategic. Showing ROI. >> So, showing ROI is critical. >> Not the quality of clippings. >> It was the Maslow of Hierarchy of Needs if you can just show me that I put a quarter in and I got a dollar out. Like the ads and the e-commerce folks do. It simply drives the drives me. >> So take us through some of those analytics because people who know about comms, the old school comms people who are doing this, they should really be thinking about what their operation is because, can I get an article in the Wall Street Journal? Can Silicon Angle write about us? I've got to get more clippings. That tend to be the thing. Did we get the press release out on time? They're not really tied into some of the key marketing mix pieces. They tend to be kind of a narrow scope. Those metrics were pretty clear. What are the new metrics? What's the new operational playbook.? >> Yeah, we call those Vanity Metrics. I cared about theoretical reach. Hey, Yahoo tells me I reached 222 billion people, so I plug in 222 billion people. I reached more people than there are on the planet with this PR campaign. I needed to get to the basic stuff like how many people did I actually reach, number one. But they don't, they do theoretical reach. They work in things like sentiment. Well, I'm going to come up with, 100 reporters wrote about me. I'm going to come up with, how many of them I thought were positive, negative, neutral. Sentiment analysis, they measure number of reporters or hits versus their competitors and say, Proctor and Gamble rolled out this diaper product, how did I do this five days? How much did Proctor and Gamble diapers get written about versus Craft diapers versus Unilever's. Share a voice. Not irrelevant metrics. But not metrics the CEO and the CFO are going to invest in. >> Conversion to brand or sales, those kind of things? >> They never just never existed. Those never existed. Now when we can introduce the same exact metrics that the commerce and the ad folks do and say, I can tell you exactly how many people. I can tell you exactly who they were, demographic, firmographic, lifestyle, you name it. I can tell you who the audience is you're reaching. I can tell you exactly what they do. When those kind of people read those kind of articles or those kind of people read those kind of press releases, they go to these destinations, they take these behaviors. And because I can track that all the way down to whatever that success metric is, which could be a lead form if I'm B2B for pipe. It could be a e-commerce store from B2C. It could be a rating or review or a user generation content gourd. It could be a sign up and register, if I'm trying to get database names. Whatever the business metric is. That's what the commerce and the ad people do all day every day. That's why they are more funded than ever. The fact that press releases, articles, tweets, blogs, the fact that the earned media stuff has never been able to do those things is why they just continue to suffer and have had a real lack of investment prices going on for the last 20 year. >> Talk about the trend around-- >> It's simple stuff. >> I know, if you improve the ROI, you get more budget. >> It really is that simple. >> That's been the challenge. I think PR is certainly becoming, comms is becoming more powerful. People know I talk about it all the time. I think comms is the new CMO I think command and control and organic content work together in the organic. We've seen it first hand in our business. But, it's an issue of tech savviness and also vision. A lot of people just are uncomfortable shifting to the new realities. >> That's for sure. >> What are some of the people tech savvy look at when they look at say revamping comms platform or strategy versus say old school? >> I'll give you two answers on that, John. Here is one thing that is good for us, that 7 out of 10 to the CCOs work for the CMO. Because when I was in this seat starting to light that fire under the CMO for the first time, which was not that long ago, and they were not tech savvy, and they were not sophisticated. They didn't know how to do this stuff either. That was a good 10 year journey to get the CMO from not sophisticated to very sophisticated. Now they're one of the more sophisticated lines of business in the world. But that was a slog. >> So are we going to see a Comms Stack? Like Martech, ComTech. >> ComTech is the decision communication Cloud, is ComTech. So we did it. We've built the Cloud stack. Again like I said, just like Adobe has the tech stack for marketing, Cision has the tech stack for comms, and we've replicated that. But because the CCO works for the CMO and the CMO's already been through this. Been through this with Ad Techs, been through this with MarTech, been through this with eCommerce, been through this with Web. You know, I've got a three or four year sophistication path this time just because >> The learnings are there >> The company's already done it everywhere else. The boss has already done it everywhere else. >> So the learnings are there from the MarTech so it's a pretty easy leap to take? >> That's exactly right. >> It's just-- >> How CommTech works is shocking. Incredibly similar to how MarTech and AdTech work. A lot of it is the same technology, just being applied different. >> That's good news >> So, the adoption curve for us is a fantastic thing. It's a really good thing for us that 70% of them work for CMOs because the CMO is the most impatient person on the planet, to get this over because the CMO is sick of doing customer journeys or omni channel across just paid and owned. They recognize that the most influential thing to influence you, it's not their emails, it's not their push notifications, It's not their ads. It's recognizing which credible third-party content you read, getting them into that, so that they're influencing you. >> It's kind of like Google PageRank in the old days. This source is more relevant than that one, give it more weight. >> And now all of a sudden if I have my Cision ID, I can plug in the more weight stuff under your profile. I want to let him go across paid and owned too, I materially improve the performance of the paid and owned because I'm putting in the really important signal versus what's sitting over there in the DMP or the CDP, which is kind of garbage. That's really important. >> I really think. >> I thinks you've got a home run here. I think you've really cracked the code on this. I think you are absolutely right on the money with comms and CommsTech. I see it all the time. In my years of experiences, it's so obvious. Then again, the tailwind is that they've been through the MarTech. The question I have for you is cultural shift. That's a big one. So, I'm out evangelizing all the time about the CUBE Cloud and some of the things we're doing. I run into the deer in the headlights on one side, what do you mean? And then people like, I believe, I totally understand. The believers and the non believers. What's the cultural shift? Because some chief comms op, they're very savvy, progressive, we've got to make the shift. How do they get the ship to turn? What are some of the cultural challenges? >> And boy is that right. I felt the same thing, getting more doing it with the CMO. A lot of people kept their head in the sand until they got obsoleted. They didn't know. Could they not see the train coming? They didn't want to see the train coming. Now you go look at the top 100 CMOs in the world today. Pretty different bunch than who those top 100 CMOs were 10 years ago. Really different bunch. History's repeating itself over here too. You've got the extremely innovative CCOs that are driving that change and transformation. You've got the deer in the headlight, okay, I know I need to do this, but I'm not sure how, and you do have your typical, you know, nope, I've got my do not disturb sign and police tape over my office. I won't even let you in my door. I don't want to hear about it. You've got all flavors. The good news is we are well past the half point where the innovators are starting actually to deploy and show results, the deer in the headlights are starting to innovate, and these folks are at least opening up the door and taking down some tape. >> Is there pressure on the agency side now? A lot of agencies charge a lot of monthly billings for these clients, the old school thing. Some are trying to be progressive and do more services. Have you seen, with the Cision Cloud and things that you're doing, that you're enabling, those agencies seem to be more productive? >> Yes. >> Are the client's putting pressure on those agencies so they see more value? Talk about the agency dynamic. >> That's also a virtuous cycle too, right? That cycle goes from, it's a Bell Curve. At the beginning of the bell curve, customers have no clue about the communications. They go to their agencies for advice. So, you have to educate the agencies on how to say nice things about you. By the time you're at the Bell Curve, the client's know about the tech or they've adopted the tech, and the agencies realize, oh, I can monetize the hell out of this. They need strategy and services and content and creative and campaign. This is yet another good old fashioned >> High gross profit. >> A buck for the tech means six bucks for me as the service agency. At the bottom, over here, I'll never forget this when we did our modern marketing experiences, Erik, the CMO of Clorox said, hey, to all you agencies out there, now that we're mature, you know, we choose our our agency based on their fluency around our tech stack. So it goes that violently and therefore, the agencies really do need to try to get fluent. The ones that do, really reap rewards because there is a blatant amount of need as the line of business customer tries to get from here to here. And the agency is the is the very first place that that customer is going to go to. >> So, basically the agency-- >> The customer has first right of refusal to go provide these services and monetize them. >> So, the agency has to keep up. >> They certainly do. >> Because, if the game gets changed by speed, it's accelerated >> If they keep up, yup. >> Value is created. If they don't have their running shoes on, they're out. >> If they keep up and they stay fluent, then they're going to be great. The last thing back in the things. We've kind of hit this. This is one of those magic points I've been talking about for 20 years. When the CFO or the CEO or the CMO walk down to the CCOs office and say, where are we on this, 'cause it's out in the wild now, there are over 1200 big brands doing this measurement, Cision ID, CommsTech stuff. It's getting written about by good old fashioned media. Customer says, wow, I couldn't do this for 50 years, now I am, and look what I just did to my Comms program. That gets read. The world's the same place as it always has been. You and I read that. We go down to our comms department and say, wow, I didn't know that was possible, where are we on this? So the Where Are We On This wave is coming to communications, which is an accelerant. >> It's an accountability-- >> Now it's accountability, and therefore, the urgency to get fluent and changed. So now they're hiring up quantums and operations and statisticians and database people just like the marketers did. The anatomy of a communications department is starting to like half science half art, just like happened in marketing. Whereas before that, it was 95% art and 5% science. But it's getting to be 50/50. >> Do you have any competition? >> We have, just like always. >> You guys pretty much have PR Newswire, a lot of big elements there. >> We do. >> You've got a good foothold. >> This is just an example. Even though Marketo is part of Adobe, giant. And Eloqua is part of Oracle, giant and Pardot is part of Salesforce. You've got three goliaths in marketing automation. Hubspot's still sticking around. PeerPlay, marketing Automation. You can just picture it. CRM giants, Microsoft and Salesforce have eaten the world Zendesk's still kicking around. It's a little PeerPlay. That equivalent exists. I have nobody that's even one fifth as big as I am, or as global or complete. But I do have some small, point specific solution providers. They're still hanging out there. >> The thing is, one, first you're a great leader. You've seen the moving on the marking tech side. You've got waves of experience under your belt. But I think what's interesting is that like the Web 1.0, having websites and webpages, Web 2.0 and social networks. That was about the first generation. Serve information, create Affiliate programs, all kind of coded tracking. You mentioned all that. I over-simplified it, but you get the idea. Now, every company needs a new capability. They need to stand up media infra structure. What does that mean? They're going to throw a podcast, they're going to take their content, put them into multiple channels. That's a comms function. Now comms is becoming the new CMO-like capability in this earned channel. So, your Cloud becomes that provisioning entity for companies to stand up capabilities without waiting. Is that the vision? >> You've nailed it. And that is one of the key reasons why you have to have a tech stack. That's a spot on one, another one. Early in my career, the 20 influences that mattered, they were all newspaper reporters or TV folks. There was only 20 of them. I had a Rolodex. so I could take each one of them out for a three Martini lunch, they'd write something good about me. >> Wish is was that easy now. >> Now, you have thousands of influencers across 52 channels, and they change in real time, and they're global in nature. It's another example of where, well, if you don't automate that with tech and by the way. >> You're left behind. >> If you send out digital content they talk back to you in real time. You have to actually not only do influencer identification, outreach and curation, you've got to do real time engagement. >> There's no agility. >> There's none. >> Zero agility. >> None, exactly. >> There's no like Dev Ops mindset in there at all. >> Then the speed with which, it's no longer okay for comms to call the agency and say, give me a ClipBook, I've got to get it to my CEO by Friday. That whole start the ClipBook on Tuesday, I've got to have the ClipBook, the physical ClipBook on the CEO as an example. Nope, if I'm not basically streaming my senior executives in real time, curated and analyzed as to what's important and what it means, I can't do that without a tech stack. >> Well, Andy Cunningham was on the Cube. >> This whole thing has been forced to get modernized by cloud technology and transformation >> Andy Cunningham, a legend in the comms business who did all Steve Jobs comms, legend. She basically said on The Cube, it's not about waiting for the clips to create the ClipBook, create your own ClipBook and get it out there. Then evaluate and engage. This is the new command and control with digital assets. >> Now, it's become the real-time, curated feed that never stops. It sure as hell better not. Because comms is in trouble if it does. >> Well this is a great topic. But let's have you in this, I can go deep on this. I think this is a really important shift, and you guys are the only ones that are on it at this level. I don't think the Salesforce and the Adobe yet, I don't think they're nimble enough to go after this wave. I think they're stuck on their wave and they're making a lot of money. >> You know John, paid media and owned media. The Google Marketing Cloud, that SAP Marketing Cloud, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce Marketing Clouds. They don't do anything in earned. Nothing. This is one of the reasons I jumped because I knew this needed to happen. But, you know, they're also chasing much bigger pots of money. Marketing and Advertising is still a lot more money. We're working on it to grow the pie for comms. But, bottom line is, they're chasing the big markets as I was at Oracle. And they're still pretty much in a violent arms race against each other. Salesforce is still way more focused on what Adobe's doing. >> You're just on a different wave. >> So, we're just over here doing this, building a billion dollar cloud leader, that is mission critical to everyone of their customers. They're going to end up being some pretty import partners to us, because they've been too focused on the big arms race against each other, in paid and owned and have not had the luxury to even go here. >> Well I think this wave that you're on is going to be really big. I think they don't see it, in my opinion, or can't get there. With the right surfboard, to use a surfing analogy, there's going to be a big wave. Thanks for sharing your insights. >> Absolutely. >> While you're here, get the plug in for Cision. What's going on, what's next? What's the big momentum? Get the plug in for the company. What are you guys still going to do? >> Plugin for the company. The company has acquired a couple of companies in January. You might see, one of which is Falcon. Basically Falcon is one of the big four in the land of Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Spredfast. Cloud companies do this. Adobe has Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Parking Cloud. Salesforce has Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud. Cision has just become a multi cloud company. We now have the Cision Social Cloud and the Cision Communications Cloud. And we're going to go grab a couple hundred million dollars of stuff away from Sprinklr, Hootsuite and collapse social into this. Most of social is earned as well. So, look for a wing spread, into another adjacent market. I think that's number one. Then look for publishing of the data. That's probably going to be the most exciting thing because we just talked about, again our metrics and capabilities you can buy But, little teaser. If we can say, in two months here's the average click through on a Google ad, YouTube ad, a banner ad, I'll show it to you on a Blog, a press release, an article. Apples to apples. Here is the conversion rate. If I can start becoming almost like an eMarketer or publisher on what happens when people read earned, there's going to be some unbelievable stats and they're going to be incredibly telling, and it's going to drive where are we on that. So this is going to be the year. >> It's a new digital advertising format. It's a new format. >> That's exactly right. >> It's a new digital advertising format. >> And its one when the CEO understands that he or she can have it for earned now, the way he's had it for marketing and advertising, that little conversation walking down the hall. In thousands of companies where the CCO or the VP of PR looks up and the CEO is going where are we on that? That's the year that that can flip switches, which I'm excited about. >> Every silo function is now horizontally connected with data, now measured, fully instrumented. The value will be there and whoever can bring the value gets the budget. That's the new model. Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, changing the game in the shift around the Chief Communications Officer and how that is becoming more tech savvy. Really disrupting the business by measuring earned media. A big wave that's coming. Of course, it's early, but it's going to be a big one. Kevin, thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure, John, thank you. >> So, CUBE conversation here in Palo Alto Thanks for watching. >> Thanks John. (upbeat music)

(energetic string music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another Cube Conversation from our beautiful studios in Palo Alto. As we do with every Cube Conversation, we want to find a great topic and a smart person to talk about it, and that's what we've got today. What's the topic? We're going to be talking about new classes of AI, that are capable of addressing some of the more complex white-collar worker work that gets done. And to have that conversation, we've got Amy Guarino, who's the COO of Kyndi, here on the Cube with us today. Amy, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you very much Peter. >> So, tell us a little bit about yourself first. >> Sure, so I grew up at IBM in sales and sales management, and then started doin' startups. Most recently, I spent eight years at Marketo, and then just after the Vista acquisition, I joined Kyndi. So that was two years ago. It was a nine person science and research kind of an organization and we've done a few things to get the group in order and we now have 31 folks and really focus on explainable AI. >> Okay, so explainable AI, what is that? >> So what's really interesting is that AI has had a lot of success, specifically around deep learning, neural nets. And one of the challenges with that approach is that it is a black box. You can't understand what the outcome was, or is. And what's really interesting, I was with a customer yesterday, and they were telling me that they were using deep learning around water treatment plants. But they got a lot of feedback that if I'm going to be drinking water, you need to explain to me what it is that you're doing to it and why. And they were like, well holy cow, we can't. And they said, that's a problem. And that's why they came to us, cause they wanted to learn about how you could do explainable type of AI. And the approach that we take really focuses on language. And how do analyze that language, but doin' it in a way where you're able to trace back to the actual raw data source to make sure that it really is correct. So we think about it as more augmenting humans versus replacing humans. >> Well let me see if I can break that down, cause I think of AI, at least things that are pertinent to AI, in a couple of different ways, kind of a mix. To what degree is something programatic, and therefore you can discover patterns in how the program operates so that you can improve it. But there's also social elements to any system that has to happen. >> Yes. >> And it's, and the black box is good for very programatic, relatively structured, where the problem space is relatively well defined, relatively well articulated and has a very specific role in a broader context of things. But when we start talking about activities that have a significant social component, where human beings are a major participant or a major source of value in the activity set that's being performed, you can't count on a black box because humans won't adopt it. So is it, when you say discoverable AI, was that it? >> Explainable AI. >> Explainable AI, is it really AI for those use cases where human beings are and essential part of the value, creation value chain? >> I think that's a great way to think about it. We initially thought it was going to be most applicable in regulated industries, where you had a requirement to explain it. But what we found is it absolutely works there, but it also is very relevant for any kind of decisions where humans are allocating resources or doing something and they have to explain why. >> So the explainable AI means that the AI can be more easily adopted by human centered activities. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, so how, so we think about AI, we think about deep learning, we think about machine learning, I mean, text automatically introduces natural language processing. What of, what elements are you combining to make the explainable AI of Kyndi work? >> So what we do is we actually ingest documents, PDF's, word documents, any kind of text, we then apply natural language processing to that to be able to parse out the entities, the terms, all of the concepts. We apply machine learning so that we can extract what we call proto-ontology, or structure, from that. So you don't have to do a lot of work upfront building out a taxonomy, and therefore we have benefit of being able to go from one domain to another very quickly and then we take all-- >> Which, by the way, blackbox AI does not do well. >> That's correct, that's absolutely correct. We addressed that deficiency as well. And then we take that output and we put it in what we call cognitive memory, which is a knowledge graph. It's a proprietary knowledge graph that allows us then to be able to search the information on there from a context perspective, so a cognitive type of search. We can also apply certain preset, sort of a filters, for different applications. So, one of the areas where we focus on is around pharmaceutical, and they're very interested in understanding and analyzing a lot of the texts associated with reports around drug discovery. And to be able to understand where there's data integrity and where's there's not-- >> And whether the process had been followed right, you got to believe. >> Yes, absolutely. And to be able to apply those preset filters against that across a really large data set and be able to highlight and get to a smaller subset that the scientists can dig into and really understand where there are potential issues and figure out how to mitigate those issues is critical. >> So let me see if I can generalize. A explainable AI being applied in a domain, like pharmaceutical-- >> Yes. >> that has a common set of audit features to it, in terms of the methods used-- >> Yes. >> for drug discovery, drug authorization, and okay. And utilizing that with the drug discovery people who are responsible for actually validating that the process is being followed appropriately to limit the amount of manual work that goes into the audit process, have I got that right? >> Yes, absolutely, by a huge factor. >> How huge? >> It's like 100 times. >> Oh, okay, well that works. >> Yes, it does work. >> So we're talking about being able to, you said 100 times, to reduce the number of people or to increase the volume of possible candidates for drug commercialization. >> Absolutely right, absolutely right. >> So what other domains do you expect Kyndi to be applied to? >> It's a very broad capability. It's any kind of work where you're reading lots of text. Today we focus in terms of the pharma opportunities. We have a lot of manufacturing folks that are looking at ways to be able to look at and review, sort of tribal knowledge that exists within a manufacturing environment. As people retire, there's a lot of information that doesn't quite get passed down and they're trying to figure out ways to get that information and also make it more easily searchable. >> Can you look at COBOL code? >> Uh, we've talked about it, we've talked about it. We do that and also in the government, we do a lot of work. >> Alright, so, you know it's interesting that you started talking about pharmaceutical. Most firms like yours work their way up to pharmaceutical. >> Yes. >> Because pharmaceutical is, you know the FDA is governed by rules where liabilities actually are associated with software. >> Yes. >> Most domains doesn't have to worry about that. So you guys are starting with the hardest problems with the greatest potential commercial risk and you're working your way into others. >> Well I think it's because it's explainable. I think that's the advantage that we have. And so we are able, then, to go back and provide that provenance to be able to support how we got there. And so it makes a big difference. >> Okay, so what's going to happen with Kyndi in 2019? >> We're going to continue to grow and really expand, particularly on the commercial side of the business, and go beyond pharmaceutical into manufacturing, maybe even a little for the financial services. But really make our customers successful, show how successful we can be. And that's going to be our marketing capability, to be able to help share this with the rest of the world. >> Yeah, if you're around COBOL, you can help my CIO guys. >> Okay. (laughter) >> There's a lot of people, like me, retiring. Alright, Amy Guarino, COO of Kyndi, talking about explainable AI and the need for new classes of tools that can augment human activity, make 'em more productive. Amy, thanks very much for being on The Cube. >> Thanks Peter, it's been great. >> Once again, I'm Peter Burris, thanks very much for watching this Cube Conversation. Until next time. (energetic string music)

(light orchestral music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another Cube Conversation from our wonderful studios here in Palo Alto, California. One of the most challenging things that any business has to navigate, especially B2B business, is that crucial relationship between sales and marketing and customer engagement. How to make customer engagement as high quality, high value, to a customer but also as productive to the business as possible. And to have that conversation, we've got Amy Guarino, who's a COO of Kyndi here on theCUBE with us today. Now Amy, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much Peter. >> So we're going to start with something that recently happened. You recently attended a Women in Sales conference, tell us a little bit about yourself and then we can talk about that conference. >> Sure, I'm the COO of Kyndi which is an explainable AI company, and that means I have responsibility for everything customer-facing. So from sales, marketing, services, support, and anything else to help make sure that we run the business in a good way. I recently came from Marketo, I had eight years there, where sales and marketing was really definitely a critical piece, and hopefully we helped change a little bit in terms of the way people think about sales and marketing. >> Well that's a small job that you have so, but nonetheless you had time to go to this Women in Sales conference, tell us a little bit about it. >> Sure yeah, so it's a group that started out in New York city, and then they've been having some events across the country, but this was the first West Coast event. So myself and there were two other women that have sales leadership roles out here and we participated and there were about 120 mostly women, I think there were three fellas there that joined. So what I couldn't figure out is why more fellas didn't come, it seems like a great place to meet a bunch of pretty interesting women. So, it really was a fun event and a lot of the questions focused on women in sales careers and how best to develop a sales career. >> Well certainly I'm sure it would have been an opportunity for some men to discover something about how women envision the role that sales plays, the role of engagement. There have been a number of studies over the years that women actually seem to demonstrate an even stronger affinity for making some of those connections necessary to traverse a very highly complex, high-value sales relationship. What were some of the highlights that you took away from the conference? >> Well I think some of things that were pretty interesting was understanding how do women look at sales differently and really what are some of the unique aspects of how women approach things, and a lot of it focused on listening skills and a woman's ability to, and it's not to mean that fellas aren't good listeners. >> What, what, what, what? I'm sorry, what? >> But I think it is something that women do have a natural affinity to be able to listen and to really pull out when someone is speaking, whether it's a prospect or a customer, what really is important to them? >> So listening is one, any others that just pop to mind? >> I think the other was in terms of sales management is really interesting is the ability for women sales managers and leaders to be able to understand what are the strengths and weaknesses of folks on the team, how to be able to coach them, and then how to pull together a team that really takes advantage of all of the different skills across the whole sales team. >> So here's one of the questions that I have about looking at women in sales as a thing. You have to on the one hand be very careful about generalizing, but on the other hand you really do want to discover what attributes of a person tend to create value for business, create value for the customers, et cetera. Was there any conversation about how far we should take some of these generalizations like I once had someone tell me, "Well men are very transactional, "women are very relationship-orientated." Which always seemed to me to be a bromide. But how far should we take the notion of women specifically in sales as we think about business management? >> Well the piece I think we talked about a lot last night was not so much in terms of the generalizations, but the fact that in today's world you want to hire the best of the best, and in order to hire the best of the best, women make up 50% of the population, you want to be able to-- >> And 80% of the best. >> (laughs) Well I appreciate that, but you want to be able to put yourself in a business culture or a sales culture where that's appreciated. I think especially in tech there's so many situations where you walk into a tech sales organization, and it's 80, 90% fellas and it makes it tough for women to want to join that kind of an organization. And as a sales leader, as a sales manager, if you want to hire the best of the best, you want to make sure that you're attracting people, the best, and so therefore you want to make sure your culture really is in a position to be able to attract the best. >> Yeah, 'cause I think one of the things that our Chief Revenue Officer has to do is it has to drive sales productivity which means taking advantage of skills and improving sales enabled them. But at the same time establishing a culture that encourages each person to shine, that doesn't diminish different types of skills. And I got to believe that's one of the things you took away. How are you applying some of the lessons that you learned to your job as a COO and responsible for customer engagement at Kyndi? >> Well I think the one thing is to really be attentive to it. Sometimes your business is growing so fast you're just like, "Oh, I'm just going to hire and get things going." And one of the things, we're not quite at that stage where we're adding tons of people yet, but we know we're going to, is making sure that we're thinking about and being very deliberate in terms of the types of folks that we're recruiting. And one of the things that I've seen most effective, particularly for fast-growing tech companies, is hiring women leadership. I think sometimes, and I don't think it's where the fellas are hiring people 'cause they want to not hire women, but its more they hire people they know. And so all of a sudden you look up and you realize, oh my goodness I've got six first-line sales managers and they're all guys. And when a woman goes in to interview for a first-line role and they look at that and say well, your whole management staff is all men, how is that going to make me feel comfortable? Is this the kind of environment where I'm going to be able to be successful? And so it's really being very deliberate and intense in terms of thinking about how can I make sure that I do have some women in leadership? And I think that can change the dynamic quite a bit in terms of the company culture. >> And are you discovering that at least from a Kyndi standpoint, I mean obviously Kyndi at very, very senior levels is you. So that says something about what constitutes being important at Kyndi. Do you anticipate that having more women is going to improve your ability to engage customers? Improve your ability for customers to take action quicker? What's the expectation? >> I think that the expectation is that you've got different types of perspectives and different types of way to look at customer acquisition and customer engagement and customer support, and we can all help each other. When you have different opinions and different ways of looking at things, as a team then you really get much more productive in terms of being able to do the right things for customers and make sure they're successful. >> So a culture that encourages, or at least liberates and takes advantage of diversity. Talk a little bit about the sales enablement side of that. Because again one of the things I mentioned earlier is that as chief revenue officer, part of your job has to be to accelerate increases in productivity of your field organization as fast as possible. How does what you heard from the conference yesterday, that mission, sales enablement, et cetera, come together, collide? >> Sure, yeah I'm not sure that it's specific to women, but it's any time you bring on a new rep, you want to be able to take that gap from when you hire them to the time their productive, and productive means being able to go out and actually sell something to a customer. You want to make that as quick as possible and as efficient as possible. So it's really understanding that path and understanding what it's going to take to help make that rep successful. Doing that in a systematic approach as opposed to, hey why don't you go out and go on a few calls with somebody and then see how it goes. Because when you actually take that and make it into a process, you can understand where people are picking things up, where they're not picking things up, what you can actually do to enhance that process and make it go faster and make it easier for new to people to come on board and be productive. 'Cause sales people want to sell, they want to get engaged with customers, they're eager to get going and really make an impact, and so the better you can enhance that process I think the better and more successful they'll feel. And then from an organizational standpoint, the quicker you can make your number, because it's all about how do I have as many quota-carrying, productive reps in the territory as quickly as possible. >> Yeah, one last thought, I think other thing is that sales people tend to learn from other sales people. Having a culture that encourages that kind of sharing and that kind of respect and that kind of diversity means that you're going to get a lot more different perspectives on what works. >> Exactly, it's all about figuring out what works and what doesn't work and then sharing that information across the group. >> Alright, fantastic, Amy Guarino, COO of Kyndi, talking about women in sales and how she is COO and to space taking some of the lessons learned and applying it to make Kyndi a more inclusive, better customer serving business. >> Terrific, thanks Peter. >> Thanks Amy, and once again this is Peter Burris, thanks again for listening to this Cube Conversation. Until next time. (light orchestral music)

(vibrant music) >> Everybody welcome to the special CUBE conversation here at the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Dayna Rothman, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere. Great to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah, thanks so much for having me. >> So you guys have a lot of action going on. >> Yes. >> A lot of funding, new CEO, a very successful KubeCon part of the CNCF, we saw each other there. The space is out of control right now. The growth is amazing. >> Yes. >> Amazon reinvent two weeks before in Vegas, packed. >> There's been a lot going on, geez. >> Talk about Mesosphere. You guys got some news and momentum. Talk about the momentum. >> Yeah, we've had a ton of momentum. We got 126 million in funding about eight months ago, or so, a little bit before I joined. I joined five, six months ago. Things have really kicked off in the space. Obviously, the space has gone crazy with everything around Kubernetes and all the different acquisitions and just almost crossing the chasm into some of those later adopters now, which has been really, really great for us. After the funding and hiring on a lot of seasoned executives, we're really taking marketing to the next place, taking what we're doing with product to the next phase, so it's been a great ride so far. >> Yeah, we've had a chance to interview you guys a lot over the years from OpenStack and then as the Cloud Native moves into the mainstream. It's interesting. The tech chops are solid, great company DNA, but it's interesting. You go back a year and a half or two years ago and say the word Kubernete, would be like, what language are you speaking? >> Yeah. >> Now, you see it in Forbes, see it everywhere. Kubernetes has risen to mainstream. Amazon Cloud, Google, Microsoft, they're all growing. Kubernetes is like a core, major generational thing in the tech world. You're new. >> Yes. >> What do you think about Kubernetes? Do you look at this, wow, what is Kubernetes? How did you get attracted to Mesosphere and what do you think about all this? >> Yeah, the funny thing about, just a Kubernetes story and me, I guess. A couple companies ago, working for MarTech company, I did have a boss that actually came from this space and I distinctly remember him talking about Kubernetes at that time and, coming from a different space, I just had like, what are you even talking about? He was going to KubeCon in the early days. So, I was actually familiar with it. Then, how I got attracted to Mesosphere and this space, I'd been at MarTech for a decade and really looking just to do something else and who's doing something really innovative, where's a different space that I can go in that's really growing. MarTech and SalesTech, a lot of these little players right now and nobody's really innovating. Actually, with Mesosphere, my husband actually works there as well and he started about a year and a half ago and I had spoken to the executive team several times about just marketing, best practices and marketing leadership, revenue and attribution, and the more I spoke to them, the more interested I got in the company, and then this role was available and it was just a great fit, plus I knew some of the ins and outs already just from having that connection to Mesosphere in the first place. >> Was it just saying too, you mentioned MarTech. We've been following that space for a long time. We actually got to see how this works with the first cloud before Cloud was a cloud. MarTech was very Cloud-oriented from day one. You think about what that was, self-service, lot of data issues, lot of applications that had real value, 'cause money's there. You got leads and all kinds of marketing activity, so MarTech has that almost cloud-first DNA to begin with and you come from that. Now when you come over to the Cloud Native, you're seeing the developer world building a whole 'nother generation of what looks like many industries that have that same characteristics, self-service, large scale, data. These are the top conversations. >> Yeah. >> So, interesting connection that you have that background. So when you come into this world and you see all these developers building out this application layer, CICD pipelining, and then below Kubernetes, you got all this tech, where are the opportunities? What's the value proposition from Mesosphere? What are you guys attacking? Who's your buyer? Are they developers, are they going to be businesses? Take a minute to explain that. >> A couple of different things to address some of your points. As far as our buyers and where the space is going, I think where we're really strong is really having that enterprise DNA where we can take a lot of this tech and a lot of these open-source projects and really make them enterprise ready so that companies that are much bigger and have all these security regulations and red tape can actually leverage them so that they can continue innovating. As we grow, our buyers are also evolving, from, in the earlier days, mostly developers, engineers, more of that technical crowd, but now we're coming across a lot more executive level folks. We're talking to the CIOs, the CTOs, the business users where we have to shift a little bit and have more of that business use case. The other thing is really that we're getting past the point of the really early adopters. We have customers that have been with us for awhile that are very innovative, Silicon Valley companies, and now we're seeing different industries. We have a lot of automotive clients, finance, manufacturings, some of these older industries that want to adopt technology like Kubernetes, but they don't know how to fit it into what their organization needs and wants from the IT department. >> So there's a lot of education involved, probably. >> I would imagine. >> Yes. >> Value creates other customers. Okay, I've got all these workloads. I see all the early adopters and the web-scale guys. We all live around here. We know all the Ubers and everyone else out there. Lift, what a great case study when you read those guys. But the mainstreamed America kind of companies that have data sets and are going to go to Cloud have to move these workloads around. Are they coming to you guys for specific help? Are they saying, teach us how to do it? What are the specific conversations that you guys have with those customers? >> Sure. Sometimes they come to us with a specific project, but the education piece I think is really big for us to get to the next level on what we're trying to do. That's where what I'm building out in the marketing team is going to be really powerful, so that instead of people coming to us on a project basis, we're educating some of these enterprise companies on how they can leverage it, what they should be thinking about, how they can make that transformation to more of a cloud-like environment and what they need to think about. That's a big part of the strategy going forward, is that we want to get out there as educators, as thought leaders in the space so that we can get in front of some of these folks that maybe have heard of Kubernetes or are thinking about it but don't quite understand what it is and how it fits into their business. We do, though, get several questions on just, hey, I'm interested in CICD, what is it, or what is this Kubernetes, can you guys help us? That's where we're jumping in. >> I want to ask you a question about the B2Bs and the BI space because one of the things I think is really interesting is you start to see the mainstream tech press go, whoa, Enterprise is hot, consumer's not. It tends to have these cycles and when you start to see companies like Mesosphere going to the next level, they're targeting customers in mainstream enterprise. They have to up their game and get on the marketing side. You're hired to do that. What's your strategy? Is it fill the pipeline, is it more educational, build more event, evangelism, localization, is it global? Take us through your vision of what's next level for Mesosphere. >> I think definitely all of those things and one of the most important things for me is, when I came on board, it was really, from an operational perspective, making sure that our marketing department is ready for scale in that we have all the things that we need in order to generate those leads and accelerate them through the pipeline and that we're really partnering with the sales team, so when I think about marketing, it's not just top funnel region, it's like what are the different programs that we're doing in the middle of the funnel to accelerate opportunities to help close deals and that's where we actually create different campaigns to serve some of the middle of the funnel functions. Content is a big piece of my strategy. I come from a content marketing background. I ran content marketing at Marketo for several years pre IPO into post and I really created the content engine there. So I've seen the value of thought leadership content, creating content for the different levels of the buyer journey, so that's a big focus for my team and then building that out with different multi-channel campaigns. Events are huge for us. I love events and we do big scale conferences and ancillary events around the conferences and then we also have a very active field marketing program where we're going into the regions and doing these smaller executive events that are very high-touch. So, it's really like all the different pieces. Right now, we're working on brand, we're working on look and feel, we'll redo the website, so we have everything. >> You're busy. >> Very. (laughs) >> You look great. >> Well, I'm going on. >> You look like you're not stressed at all. You look really relaxed. >> No. >> I want to ask you a question, 'cause you're on the cutting edge, you've got a great background. I love the MarTech. I've always said MarTech never really lived up to its promise because Cloud changed the game, but I still think MarTech will be huge, because with Cloud-scale and data driven strategies, I think it's going to be explosive even further than what we've seen, but there's been a lot of venture backing as Marketo has been successful, just recently bought by Adobe, but as you look at the digital landscape, you mentioned events, what's your thoughts on digital and physical events, 'cause you mentioned high-touch events, spectrum of activities you're deploying, you got physical events which are turning out to be quite fantastic, Face-to-Face is intimate. There's a lot of networking, and digital. How do you bring the event physical world with the digital. How do you view that as a marketer? We combine them, especially for the bigger event campaigns, so whether it's a trade show booth or an ancillary event around a trade show, like a very large party or something like that, we'll have a whole digital promotional strategy around that that includes, maybe we'll create a micro-site, we have ads that are targeted to people that we think that are going to attend these events, we'll do paid programs, other paid channels to drive attendance and to generate that visibility, so I really like to combine them and also email and nurturing is a big part of the strategy as well but it's important to have that online and offline presence and they should map to each other. >> It's interesting, we're seeing a trend, through theCUBE I've been to a lot of events where people want the digital experience to map to what's it like onsite; reputation, work with good people, have that kind of vibe, and it's evolving and search marketing has always been effective. Email marketing is out there, that's tried and true ways to fill the top of the funnel. Is there new techniques that you see coming that marketers should be aware of? You have that history with MarTech. You've seen where it's been and where it's going. What's a new hot area that you're watching that's evolving in real time, because we're go to a web 3.0 where the users have different expectations. It's not just email blasts anymore, although that's one mechanism. What's the new thing? What are you looking at? >> It's this like a new-old thing, I guess, (laughs) but comp-based marketing is something a lot of marketers are getting into right now and it's certainly a hot trend and a hot topic and it's really, I guess, an older way of thinking about marketing instead of that very wide top funnel region where you're just trying to get just thousands of people into your funnel and doing different things, you have your set key account list that you're going after, that your company and your reps and marketing all agree on and you're doing very targeted campaigns to those specific accounts, so we've been doing some really interesting things with different ad platforms. They have ad platforms now where you can actually target on an account by account basis, based on IP address and a lot of other attributes, and you can actually do account-based nurturing through ads, which is very interesting. I can have an ad that specifically calls out the company that only that company sees. Direct mail is actually also a pretty big piece of this, which again, is an older thing. Not direct mail like a little postcard you get, but like a dimensional mailer for an executive >> It's not a spray and pray, very targeted. >> No, it's very targeted. >> Talk about the dynamic, because you're now getting into what we're seeing as a trend where it's not just the marketing person, hey where are my Glengarry leads, or where are the leads, the leads aren't good enough, always that finger-pointing that's tended to go on traditionally, and I may be oversimplifying it, but-- >> It still happens. (laughs) >> The partnering with sales becomes even more critical because you have a lot of surface area in your marketing mix. That's not going away, you mentioned those variety of things, but tightening it up with sales and sales enablement seems to be a trend in marketing in general with data-driven things, because now you can measure everything. Now, it's like, what do you measure? So, having a tighter coupling with sales is a key thing. Talk about that dynamic and how it's changing and what you guys are doing. >> Being really tightly coupled with the sales development team and the sales team is a super important part of our strategy. Even when I think of what our goals are as a marketing organization, it's a lot later in the funnel than I think, historically, marketers have been measured. When I'm reporting out on performance, I report out on the entire funnel. I look at conversion rates for every single stage. Marketing is measured on pipeline and revenue and because of that reason, that requires a very tight coupling with the sales department, understanding who they're going after, what's working, what's not and where people are in the sales cycle so that marketing can jump in and it really assists them. It's not like a who gets credit for what type of situation. It's like we're all moving towards the same goal, so different things that we do, and I think attribution and measurement really helps quite a bit with this, is we can measure what campaign works for different regions. We know what campaigns are good for sourcing people, what campaigns are good for accelerating somebody from a meeting to an op. We can get very granular with topics, channels, campaign types and even accounts, looking at account engagement, so that information is really powerful when you partner with an AE and go at it together. We do a lot of later-stage field events as well, where we're going after key executives in open opportunities and doing very high-end dinners or maybe we're doing a track day or something like that. >> It's interesting because the world's changing from the, again, old to new, is interesting. I love how you put that, because the old way was big end budget, throw it out there, get the reach, and then now it's much more targeted, much more tactical. Still the same strategic objectives, but then cut up into more tactical programs. Is that a challenge for some? Just while you're here, your insight is so amazing. Other marketers that aren't as savvy as you, try to tackle this, what's your advice to them when you start thinking about that, because I'm sure you get asked all the time, how do I tackle this new world? How do you advise friends and colleagues in the industry when they say, I've got to move from the 50/50 ad spin where I don't know where it's being measured, it's a big budget, big ad agency, I want to take those dollars and deploy them into what looks like programs that used to have smaller budgets but in totality can be effective? What's your advice? >> I think it's a hard jump for a lot of marketers. A lot of marketers that I've come in contact with do have that, even if it's not like that big ad budget mentality, it's like that, oh we're responsible for generating leads, and that's kind of where it ends, and you talk impressions in those types of metrics. I think in order to really survive as a marketer these days, you have to move to that next level where you're measuring things and you're really thinking about that full funnel. The advice that I give to a lot of high-end executive teams is to start measuring your marketing department, your VP, your CMO on later stage metrics so that potentially their comp, if it's a bonus or whatever, that it's aligned to the sales team and that we're looking at pipeline and revenue instead of leads generated or impressions or other things like that. >> So real conversion. >> Yeah, just a little bit of a forcing function to get folks there and that's what I do with my team when we look at performance. >> Well Dayna, you're a real pro. Looking forward to having more conversations. I love the MarTech background that you have. I think Cloud Native is essentially going to have, as a major feature, MarTech kind of things. Data, content, analysis, real time, full measurement across multiple spectrums. That's the premise of Cloud, so love to follow up with you. Final topic area is Mesosphere. As you guys go next level, got some big funding, new CEO, what's the positioning, what's the value statement, how are you guys posturing to the marketplace? >> Really focusing on that, how these leader adopters are able to have these enterprise standards by having the flexibility of what some of these different technologies and platforms are able to give these companies. We're definitely focusing a lot on innovating through IOT and we're doing some really cool projects with customers on how they can use our platform for those types of projects and really, from a Kupernetes perspective, we're continuing to work on how we can optimize and drive our value proposition there. Then, again, thinking more in that Cloud-like way, how can we continue pushing the envelope in that Cloud-like experience for our own platform and software. >> Takeaway for you when you look at Amazon reinvent, which was a couple weeks ago and then KubeCon CNCF, Cloud Native Computing Foundation event in Seattle just last week. What was your big takeaway? If you had to look back and zoom out and go on the balcony and look at the stage of the industry, what was your takeaway? What was your personal takeaway? What anecdotal things popped out at you? What was the learnings that you saw in those two events? What's happening? >> I think, again, as time goes, I think a lot of the themes I've been talking about. Especially at KubeCon with 8000 people, they were sold out way before the event. We were actually very surprised that they sold out. We weren't prepared for that 'cause we still had to purchase a bunch of additional tickets, but I think just the popularity of some of these technologies and the business folks and the executives that are attending these events, it is starting to move more towards that enterprise. How can we adopt this stuff for the enterprise? For both events, for me that was a key takeaway. When you're looking at the different vendors, even on the expo floor, what are they talking about, what are they trying to do? Then the attendance at these events and even a lot of the talks were around bringing this stuff to the next level, having more of that cloud-like experience for the enterprise and having those best practices in there. >> As the serious marketer that you are, what was your impression of the role the community plays, because Mesosphere has a great position in the community. They've been a great steward in the community, have a great reputation. The role of the community now as part of the whole marketing production system in and of itself. Reputation, referrals, this is a big part of it. This is a dynamic. Your thoughts on role of the community in marketing in these new areas. >> Role of the community is huge. You need the community on your side in order to grow the business, because those are the folks that are going to evangelize. Those are where the influencers are coming from. For me, as I've gotten into this space, it's really been trying to understand who these people are, what they're interested in, how we can provide value, how we can provide fun, what are the ways we can partner with the community and approach it in more of like a humanistic way, so that's what we've been doing a lot of work, in just trying to get to know the community and creating marketing that is effective and an assistance to them as well. >> One that adds value is always, it's like an upstream project. You create value, you get respected for it, as long as you're not trying to overplay your hand. I do want to get your thoughts on reaction to KubeCon. I thought one of the things that happened there, besides theCUBE being there, of course, we were there from the beginning, was, you guys stole the show at Mesosphere. You had Ice Cube perform, and that was the buzz of the show. Talk about what happened, what was the response, Ice Cube performed, it was great reviews, saw it on Twitter. What was that all about? Share some stories. >> I thought, when we were trying to plan KubeCon, and how can we really, my goal was, I want to take over the show and really generate that buzz. Again, a big piece of that is the community and trying to think of, what can we do for the community that's going to get them excited. Picking an artist is a challenge, right? It's got to hit all these different goals, like you've got to pick somebody that's not crazy millions of dollars, you have to pick somebody that people are really familiar with, you have to pick somebody that most people like that's still relevant. So I think choosing Ice Cube was an important piece of that. Then, that it was just, to me, having come from the MarTech space and the sales-type space, I know what some of these huge, impactful parties and side events can have on a brand and that space is very, that happens a lot, and I've done that in several companies. I don't think it's really happening as much in this space from my experience so far, >> That KubeCon first and that was a big, big production. >> Yeah, exactly. >> What was the feedback? Were you happy with the results, 'cause I thought it was fantastic. >> It was great. We got fantastic feedback. I knew it would be, when we launched it, a very new thing, so it created a lot of buzz, a lot of chatter, could be controversial, which I was prepared for and I thought would be good to start that conversation, but at the event, it was just incredible. We had a completely packed house. Everyone was so excited to be there. We had great reactions on Twitter and I think that the community was just really happy to have that place where we can all come together and have a great time and that enabled us to put our brand out there as, so when people think of Mesosphere, they'll remember that event, so it's been incredibly successful. >> The Ice Cube, great job. Okay, I want to get your thoughts, 2019, what's going to happen for you in 2019? What can we expect from Mesosphere? >> We can definitely expect some great product innovations, different things we're working on, especially with the funding, and a new CEO. We're definitely looking to, we're going to take the brand into the next level. I think you're going to see us a lot more. I'm thinking through a potential, kind of our own user conference in San Francisco for next year, where we'll do a couple of days. Multi-track, thought leadership, a bigger production, so that's something that's exciting. We've got a lot of great programs planned for 2019. >> Awesome. Well, congratulations on a great event at KubeCon with Ice Cube and all of the successful momentum at Mesosphere. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Dayna Rothman here, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere, turning up the heat in the marketing, bringing Mesosphere to the next level. A lot of momentum. The industry's on fire, it's just an amazing time in Cloud Native. This is theCUBE covering every day in Cloud Native here. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (vibrant music)

(vibrant music) >> Everybody welcome to the special CUBE conversation here at the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Dayna Rothman, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere. Great to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah, thanks so much for having me. >> So you guys have a lot of action going on. >> Yes. >> A lot of funding, new CEO, a very successful CubeCon part of the CNCF, we saw each other there. The space is out of control right now. The growth is amazing. >> Yes. >> Amazon reinvent two weeks before in Vegas, packed. >> There's been a lot going on, geez. >> Talk about Mesosphere. You guys got some news and momentum. Talk about the momentum. >> Yeah, we've had a ton of momentum. We got 126 million in funding about eight months ago, or so, a little bit before I joined. I joined five, six months ago. Things have really kicked off in the space. Obviously, the space has gone crazy with everything around Kubernetes and all the different acquisitions and just almost crossing the chasm into some of those later adopters now, which has been really, really great for us. After the funding and hiring on a lot of seasoned executives, we're really taking marketing to the next place, taking what we're doing with product to the next phase, so it's been a great ride so far. >> Yeah, we've had a chance to interview you guys a lot over the years from OpenStack and then as the Cloud Native moves into the mainstream. It's interesting. The tech chops are solid, great company DNA, but it's interesting. You go back a year and a half or two years ago and say the word Kubernete, would be like, what language are you speaking? >> Yeah. >> Now, you see it in Forbes, see it everywhere. Kubernetes has risen to mainstream. Amazon Cloud, Google, Microsoft, they're all growing. Kubernetes is like a core, major generational thing in the tech world. You're new. >> Yes. >> What do you think about Kubernetes? Do you look at this, wow, what is Kubernetes? How did you get attracted to Mesosphere and what do you think about all this? >> Yeah, the funny thing about, just a Kubernetes story and me, I guess. A couple companies ago, working for MarTech company, I did have a boss that actually came from this space and I distinctly remember him talking about Kubernetes at that time and, coming from a different space, I just had like, what are you even talking about? He was going to CubeCon in the early days. So, I was actually familiar with it. Then, how I got attracted to Mesosphere and this space, I'd been at MarTech for a decade and really looking just to do something else and who's doing something really innovative, where's a different space that I can go in that's really growing. MarTech and SalesTech, a lot of these little players right now and nobody's really innovating. Actually, with Mesosphere, my husband actually works there as well and he started about a year and a half ago and I had spoken to the executive team several times about just marketing, best practices and marketing leadership, revenue and attribution, and the more I spoke to them, the more interested I got in the company, and then this role was available and it was just a great fit, plus I knew some of the ins and outs already just from having that connection to Mesosphere in the first place. >> Was it just saying too, you mentioned MarTech. We've been following that space for a long time. We actually got to see how this works with the first cloud before Cloud was a cloud. MarTech was very Cloud-oriented from day one. You think about what that was, self-service, lot of data issues, lot of applications that had real value, 'cause money's there. You got leads and all kinds of marketing activity, so MarTech has that almost cloud-first DNA to begin with and you come from that. Now when you come over to the Cloud Native, you're seeing the developer world building a whole 'nother generation of what looks like many industries that have that same characteristics, self-service, large scale, data. These are the top conversations. >> Yeah. >> So, interesting connection that you have that background. So when you come into this world and you see all these developers building out this application layer, CICD pipelining, and then below Kubernetes, you got all this tech, where are the opportunities? What's the value proposition from Mesosphere? What are you guys attacking? Who's your buyer? Are they developers, are they going to be businesses? Take a minute to explain that. >> A couple of different things to address some of your points. As far as our buyers and where the space is going, I think where we're really strong is really having that enterprise DNA where we can take a lot of this tech and a lot of these open-source projects and really make them enterprise ready so that companies that are much bigger and have all these security regulations and red tape can actually leverage them so that they can continue innovating. As we grow, our buyers are also evolving, from, in the earlier days, mostly developers, engineers, more of that technical crowd, but now we're coming across a lot more executive level folks. We're talking to the CIOs, the CTOs, the business users where we have to shift a little bit and have more of that business use case. The other thing is really that we're getting past the point of the really early adopters. We have customers that have been with us for awhile that are very innovative, Silicon Valley companies, and now we're seeing different industries. We have a lot of automotive clients, finance, manufacturings, some of these older industries that want to adopt technology like Kubernetes, but they don't know how to fit it into what their organization needs and wants from the IT department. >> So there's a lot of education involved, probably. >> I would imagine. >> Yes. >> Value creates other customers. Okay, I've got all these workloads. I see all the early adopters and the web-scale guys. We all live around here. We know all the Ubers and everyone else out there. Lift, what a great case study when you read those guys. But the mainstreamed America kind of companies that have data sets and are going to go to Cloud have to move these workloads around. Are they coming to you guys for specific help? Are they saying, teach us how to do it? What are the specific conversations that you guys have with those customers? >> Sure. Sometimes they come to us with a specific project, but the education piece I think is really big for us to get to the next level on what we're trying to do. That's where what I'm building out in the marketing team is going to be really powerful, so that instead of people coming to us on a project basis, we're educating some of these enterprise companies on how they can leverage it, what they should be thinking about, how they can make that transformation to more of a cloud-like environment and what they need to think about. That's a big part of the strategy going forward, is that we want to get out there as educators, as thought leaders in the space so that we can get in front of some of these folks that maybe have heard of Kubernetes or are thinking about it but don't quite understand what it is and how it fits into their business. We do, though, get several questions on just, hey, I'm interested in CICD, what is it, or what is this Kubernetes, can you guys help us? That's where we're jumping in. >> I want to ask you a question about the B2Bs and the BI space because one of the things I think is really interesting is you start to see the mainstream tech press go, whoa, Enterprise is hot, consumer's not. It tends to have these cycles and when you start to see companies like Mesosphere going to the next level, they're targeting customers in mainstream enterprise. They have to up their game and get on the marketing side. You're hired to do that. What's your strategy? Is it fill the pipeline, is it more educational, build more event, evangelism, localization, is it global? Take us through your vision of what's next level for Mesosphere. >> I think definitely all of those things and one of the most important things for me is, when I came on board, it was really, from an operational perspective, making sure that our marketing department is ready for scale in that we have all the things that we need in order to generate those leads and accelerate them through the pipeline and that we're really partnering with the sales team, so when I think about marketing, it's not just top funnel region, it's like what are the different programs that we're doing in the middle of the funnel to accelerate opportunities to help close deals and that's where we actually create different campaigns to serve some of the middle of the funnel functions. Content is a big piece of my strategy. I come from a content marketing background. I ran content marketing at Marketo for several years pre IPO into post and I really created the content engine there. So I've seen the value of thought leadership content, creating content for the different levels of the buyer journey, so that's a big focus for my team and then building that out with different multi-channel campaigns. Events are huge for us. I love events and we do big scale conferences and ancillary events around the conferences and then we also have a very active field marketing program where we're going into the regions and doing these smaller executive events that are very high-touch. So, it's really like all the different pieces. Right now, we're working on brand, we're working on look and feel, we'll redo the website, so we have everything. >> You're busy. >> Very. (laughs) >> You look great. >> Well, I'm going on. >> You look like you're not stressed at all. You look really relaxed. >> No. >> I want to ask you a question, 'cause you're on the cutting edge, you've got a great background. I love the MarTech. I've always said MarTech never really lived up to its promise because Cloud changed the game, but I still think MarTech will be huge, because with Cloud-scale and data driven strategies, I think it's going to be explosive even further than what we've seen, but there's been a lot of venture backing as Marketo has been successful, just recently bought by Adobe, but as you look at the digital landscape, you mentioned events, what's your thoughts on digital and physical events, 'cause you mentioned high-touch events, spectrum of activities you're deploying, you got physical events which are turning out to be quite fantastic, Face-to-Face is intimate. There's a lot of networking, and digital. How do you bring the event physical world with the digital. How do you view that as a marketer? We combine them, especially for the bigger event campaigns, so whether it's a trade show booth or an ancillary event around a trade show, like a very large party or something like that, we'll have a whole digital promotional strategy around that that includes, maybe we'll create a micro-site, we have ads that are targeted to people that we think that are going to attend these events, we'll do paid programs, other paid channels to drive attendance and to generate that visibility, so I really like to combine them and also email and nurturing is a big part of the strategy as well but it's important to have that online and offline presence and they should map to each other. >> It's interesting, we're seeing a trend, through theCUBE I've been to a lot of events where people want the digital experience to map to what's it like onsite; reputation, work with good people, have that kind of vibe, and it's evolving and search marketing has always been effective. Email marketing is out there, that's tried and true ways to fill the top of the funnel. Is there new techniques that you see coming that marketers should be aware of? You have that history with MarTech. You've seen where it's been and where it's going. What's a new hot area that you're watching that's evolving in real time, because we're go to a web 3.0 where the users have different expectations. It's not just email blasts anymore, although that's one mechanism. What's the new thing? What are you looking at? >> It's this like a new-old thing, I guess, (laughs) but comp-based marketing is something a lot of marketers are getting into right now and it's certainly a hot trend and a hot topic and it's really, I guess, an older way of thinking about marketing instead of that very wide top funnel region where you're just trying to get just thousands of people into your funnel and doing different things, you have your set key account list that you're going after, that your company and your reps and marketing all agree on and you're doing very targeted campaigns to those specific accounts, so we've been doing some really interesting things with different ad platforms. They have ad platforms now where you can actually target on an account by account basis, based on IP address and a lot of other attributes, and you can actually do account-based nurturing through ads, which is very interesting. I can have an ad that specifically calls out the company that only that company sees. Direct mail is actually also a pretty big piece of this, which again, is an older thing. Not direct mail like a little postcard you get, but like a dimensional mailer for an executive >> It's not a spray and pray, very targeted. >> No, it's very targeted. >> Talk about the dynamic, because you're now getting into what we're seeing as a trend where it's not just the marketing person, hey where are my Glengarry leads, or where are the leads, the leads aren't good enough, always that finger-pointing that's tended to go on traditionally, and I may be oversimplifying it, but-- >> It still happens. (laughs) >> The partnering with sales becomes even more critical because you have a lot of surface area in your marketing mix. That's not going away, you mentioned those variety of things, but tightening it up with sales and sales enablement seems to be a trend in marketing in general with data-driven things, because now you can measure everything. Now, it's like, what do you measure? So, having a tighter coupling with sales is a key thing. Talk about that dynamic and how it's changing and what you guys are doing. >> Being really tightly coupled with the sales development team and the sales team is a super important part of our strategy. Even when I think of what our goals are as a marketing organization, it's a lot later in the funnel than I think, historically, marketers have been measured. When I'm reporting out on performance, I report out on the entire funnel. I look at conversion rates for every single stage. Marketing is measured on pipeline and revenue and because of that reason, that requires a very tight coupling with the sales department, understanding who they're going after, what's working, what's not and where people are in the sales cycle so that marketing can jump in and it really assists them. It's not like a who gets credit for what type of situation. It's like we're all moving towards the same goal, so different things that we do, and I think attribution and measurement really helps quite a bit with this, is we can measure what campaign works for different regions. We know what campaigns are good for sourcing people, what campaigns are good for accelerating somebody from a meeting to an op. We can get very granular with topics, channels, campaign types and even accounts, looking at account engagement, so that information is really powerful when you partner with an AE and go at it together. We do a lot of later-stage field events as well, where we're going after key executives in open opportunities and doing very high-end dinners or maybe we're doing a track day or something like that. >> It's interesting because the world's changing from the, again, old to new, is interesting. I love how you put that, because the old way was big end budget, throw it out there, get the reach, and then now it's much more targeted, much more tactical. Still the same strategic objectives, but then cut up into more tactical programs. Is that a challenge for some? Just while you're here, your insight is so amazing. Other marketers that aren't as savvy as you, try to tackle this, what's your advice to them when you start thinking about that, because I'm sure you get asked all the time, how do I tackle this new world? How do you advise friends and colleagues in the industry when they say, I've got to move from the 50/50 ad spin where I don't know where it's being measured, it's a big budget, big ad agency, I want to take those dollars and deploy them into what looks like programs that used to have smaller budgets but in totality can be effective? What's your advice? >> I think it's a hard jump for a lot of marketers. A lot of marketers that I've come in contact with do have that, even if it's not like that big ad budget mentality, it's like that, oh we're responsible for generating leads, and that's kind of where it ends, and you talk impressions in those types of metrics. I think in order to really survive as a marketer these days, you have to move to that next level where you're measuring things and you're really thinking about that full funnel. The advice that I give to a lot of high-end executive teams is to start measuring your marketing department, your VP, your CMO on later stage metrics so that potentially their comp, if it's a bonus or whatever, that it's aligned to the sales team and that we're looking at pipeline and revenue instead of leads generated or impressions or other things like that. >> So real conversion. >> Yeah, just a little bit of a forcing function to get folks there and that's what I do with my team when we look at performance. >> Well Dayna, you're a real pro. Looking forward to having more conversations. I love the MarTech background that you have. I think Cloud Native is essentially going to have, as a major feature, MarTech kind of things. Data, content, analysis, real time, full measurement across multiple spectrums. That's the premise of Cloud, so love to follow up with you. Final topic area is Mesosphere. As you guys go next level, got some big funding, new CEO, what's the positioning, what's the value statement, how are you guys posturing to the marketplace? >> Really focusing on that, how these leader adopters are able to have these enterprise standards by having the flexibility of what some of these different technologies and platforms are able to give these companies. We're definitely focusing a lot on innovating through IOT and we're doing some really cool projects with customers on how they can use our platform for those types of projects and really, from a Kupernetes perspective, we're continuing to work on how we can optimize and drive our value proposition there. Then, again, thinking more in that Cloud-like way, how can we continue pushing the envelope in that Cloud-like experience for our own platform and software. >> Takeaway for you when you look at Amazon reinvent, which was a couple weeks ago and then CubeCon CNCF, Cloud Native Computing Foundation event in Seattle just last week. What was your big takeaway? If you had to look back and zoom out and go on the balcony and look at the stage of the industry, what was your takeaway? What was your personal takeaway? What anecdotal things popped out at you? What was the learnings that you saw in those two events? What's happening? >> I think, again, as time goes, I think a lot of the themes I've been talking about. Especially at CubeCon with 8000 people, they were sold out way before the event. We were actually very surprised that they sold out. We weren't prepared for that 'cause we still had to purchase a bunch of additional tickets, but I think just the popularity of some of these technologies and the business folks and the executives that are attending these events, it is starting to move more towards that enterprise. How can we adopt this stuff for the enterprise? For both events, for me that was a key takeaway. When you're looking at the different vendors, even on the expo floor, what are they talking about, what are they trying to do? Then the attendance at these events and even a lot of the talks were around bringing this stuff to the next level, having more of that cloud-like experience for the enterprise and having those best practices in there. >> As the serious marketer that you are, what was your impression of the role the community plays, because Mesosphere has a great position in the community. They've been a great steward in the community, have a great reputation. The role of the community now as part of the whole marketing production system in and of itself. Reputation, referrals, this is a big part of it. This is a dynamic. Your thoughts on role of the community in marketing in these new areas. >> Role of the community is huge. You need the community on your side in order to grow the business, because those are the folks that are going to evangelize. Those are where the influencers are coming from. For me, as I've gotten into this space, it's really been trying to understand who these people are, what they're interested in, how we can provide value, how we can provide fun, what are the ways we can partner with the community and approach it in more of like a humanistic way, so that's what we've been doing a lot of work, in just trying to get to know the community and creating marketing that is effective and an assistance to them as well. >> One that adds value is always, it's like an upstream project. You create value, you get respected for it, as long as you're not trying to overplay your hand. I do want to get your thoughts on reaction to CubeCon. I thought one of the things that happened there, besides theCUBE being there, of course, we were there from the beginning, was, you guys stole the show at Mesosphere. You had Ice Cube perform, and that was the buzz of the show. Talk about what happened, what was the response, Ice Cube performed, it was great reviews, saw it on Twitter. What was that all about? Share some stories. >> I thought, when we were trying to plan CubeCon, and how can we really, my goal was, I want to take over the show and really generate that buzz. Again, a big piece of that is the community and trying to think of, what can we do for the community that's going to get them excited. Picking an artist is a challenge, right? It's got to hit all these different goals, like you've got to pick somebody that's not crazy millions of dollars, you have to pick somebody that people are really familiar with, you have to pick somebody that most people like that's still relevant. So I think choosing Ice Cube was an important piece of that. Then, that it was just, to me, having come from the MarTech space and the sales-type space, I know what some of these huge, impactful parties and side events can have on a brand and that space is very, that happens a lot, and I've done that in several companies. I don't think it's really happening as much in this space from my experience so far, >> That CubeCon first and that was a big, big production. >> Yeah, exactly. >> What was the feedback? Were you happy with the results, 'cause I thought it was fantastic. >> It was great. We got fantastic feedback. I knew it would be, when we launched it, a very new thing, so it created a lot of buzz, a lot of chatter, could be controversial, which I was prepared for and I thought would be good to start that conversation, but at the event, it was just incredible. We had a completely packed house. Everyone was so excited to be there. We had great reactions on Twitter and I think that the community was just really happy to have that place where we can all come together and have a great time and that enabled us to put our brand out there as, so when people think of Mesosphere, they'll remember that event, so it's been incredibly successful. >> The Ice Cube, great job. Okay, I want to get your thoughts, 2019, what's going to happen for you in 2019? What can we expect from Mesosphere? >> We can definitely expect some great product innovations, different things we're working on, especially with the funding, and a new CEO. We're definitely looking to, we're going to take the brand into the next level. I think you're going to see us a lot more. I'm thinking through a potential, kind of our own user conference in San Francisco for next year, where we'll do a couple of days. Multi-track, thought leadership, a bigger production, so that's something that's exciting. We've got a lot of great programs planned for 2019. >> Awesome. Well, congratulations on a great event at CubeCon with Ice Cube and all of the successful momentum at Mesosphere. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Dayna Rothman here, Vice President of Marketing at Mesosphere, turning up the heat in the marketing, bringing Mesosphere to the next level. A lot of momentum. The industry's on fire, it's just an amazing time in Cloud Native. This is theCUBE covering every day in Cloud Native here. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (vibrant music)