>> Announcer: Live, from San Francisco , it's The Cube. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. >> Okay we're back here live in San Francisco at Moscone West for exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference on John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and the host of the cube here. Our next guest is Mary Min, Vice President of Global Business Development at SE Works Inc. Former entrepreneur, gamer, still entrepreneurial in her new world, but has seen the evolution of gaming. Here to talk about Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and kind of the trajectory of life in the digital era. Welcome to The Cube. >> Okay thank you. >> So we were just talking before we came on about the evolution of your career. You had a start-up, you sold it. It was a game. You been gaming since the late 90s and looking forward. What is the evolution of gaming and how it relates to Augmented Reality? Because there's a debate that goes on in the industry. Oh, VR is the next big thing, but yet it failed. Tim Cook recently came out and said hey, you know, don't get your hopes up. There's still more head room to do. Not necessarily a bad thing. Because now Augmented Reality is winning. You're seeing it in industrial IOT. You're seeing Augmented Reality. So what's your thoughts about how people should think about the evolution of this new wave of innovation. >> I think that with any new technology that's really life-changing for society as a whole, nothing ever gets done on the first iteration or the first phase. Things will never really take off on the first round especially when you're going mass consumer. Because people need time for learned behavior. People are creatures of habit. They like to stick what's familiar. And in order for them to move from one leap to the next, you need baby steps. And those baby steps unfortunately will include pioneers in whatever field, whether it be AR, or VR, that need to blaze the trail for their successors to come and start building on top of that as well. I read something really interesting this morning coming here where if you have someone who's trying to dig a well, and you need to dig 10 feet, the first person fails because they only dug the first foot. Second person, third person, subsequently until the ninth person, that well is not dug. But that 10th person is who successfully has the water filling the well. That 10th person could not have dug that final last foot if the first nine didn't go before him. And I consider that's really the phase that VR and AR honor as well. We needed that first iteration of VR in order to have the new generation of engineers, entrepreneurs, product people, mindset people, to start thinking about how to shape the future of this ecosystem. And we needed that to have it's course in order for AR to build on top of those learnings. And hopefully as we subsequently start to build on those as well, we don't view this as failures necessarily, but as necessary advancements in order to get to the ultimate goal of integrating more technology into our lives to make it a better life. >> And the relationship between the hardware platforms, whether it's console, PC, handset, or headset, and software, is interesting. And I want to talk about that with you. But first I want to tell you a story. Tell about your entrepreneur story. You were at UC-Berkeley Cal here, University of California - Berkeley, my daughter is a junior there, but... Great school, doing a lot of cutting-edge stuff there at Berkeley, and certainly not a lack of protests either these days. But, tell us the story. You dropped out and started a company. Tell the story. >> So I was attending Berkeley, and I'm very grateful that I was able to go to Cal. Particularly because I grew up in southern California where around the time that I grew up, there really wasn't a lot of start-ups or entrepreneurial minded people. And I came up here and became really immersed in tech and that was my first foray into it. And during college, I was working at a gaming company to help support myself through school. And just really fell in love with it. And decided that was truly what I wanted to do. My parents supported my decision, and so with their help and approval, I started building games. And I've been building games since, again, the mid-to-late 90s until now. Ran a couple of companies. Founded a few of them. And the latest one that I founded was a few years ago called Second-Wave Games. We had sold it to a larger company called World Golf Tour. And here I am now building tools for game developers actually. >> And what an evolution. You go back, I mean, the Nokia phones. You know, then the iPhone hit the scene. The smart phones. So everything in-between has been a balance of being creative with software and art, if you will gaming as art. What has changed? I mean obviously things fail, because it's a content business. Content is games. So there's always that symbiotic relationship between hardware and software. Who pushes who? Is it the yin and the yang? Or is it the good and the bad? What's going on between the relationship these days? Because we certainly see it on the enterprise side. Software at the end is driving infrastructure. What's the relationship from the content, from the artistry standpoint, and the handset. >> From our point, content makers are not very interested in any platform or hardware that doesn't have the distribution. But the hardware manufacturers need the content in order to push the distribution of hardware. So it becomes a chicken and the egg problem. And it really depends on the approach that people will take. The content distributors do not own the platform. They don't own the distribution of the actual devices that will run things. So it really kind of falls on the hardware manufacturers to decide what path they will go down. We will see more aggressive things like Microsoft when they first launched the Xbox for example. They took a heavy loss on every unit that they sold. But they were focused primarily on distribution. And then, they hit on this magic, very very like, really really run-away hit called Halo. You like Halo, you have to play on Xbox. It's not available on the other consoles. >> And Call of Duty right after it. >> Call of Duty right after it. >> The list is endless. >> So that becomes a really excellent example of how content drives adaptation of hardware. Because if you are huge fans of this title, you have to go to this hardware. And there is no other argument about it. >> It's interesting, the evolution of the internet, early adopters you saw as the adult industry. It was a leading indicator of the trends in online advertising. That's a big joke in the industry. Now, you are seeing the leading indicators in terms of cutting-edge pioneer blade trailers is gaming. Virtual communities, virtual currencies, the gaming culture you can almost use as a precursor to what you're seeing on the crypto side with blockchain. You can see on the Augmented Reality. That's a gamification of life where now the content is the real world. So that's super exciting for someone who has been in the gaming era. And software developers got to be sitting there licking their chops saying, hey I want to get in on this. >> So at my current company, SEWORKS, when we started developing our solution, we actually tested it first and foremost with gaming. With gaming apps above everything else. And people were a little puzzled thinking why would you test gaming above finance or healthcare or IOT? And our answer is because gaming is the most complex thing anyone can possibly make. It contains pretty much every single piece of technology that you could ever know. There are communications layers, there have the most sophisticated graphics layers, they have intense AI layers, they have intense algorithms, anything calculated, and it is in itself an inherit small economical ecosystem as well. So it is a very complex mini-world that you are building inside of the constraints of one application which then has to be very sophisticated in technology in order to run on our current set of hardware and devices. So it's the most challenging thing that we could build for and that's why we chose it. And I see the same thing happening. Gaming is life and life is games. Outside of solving your very basic human needs of shelter, food, and sleep, clothing. What's the immediate next thing that you want to do? People want to be entertained in some format or another. And games are really just almost like a primal urge in an instant. >> Yeah, and you said you're seeing the intersection of E-commerce, entertainment, and web services or cloud. Which you can bundle in IOT, all intersecting. And that's really what the real world is. Analog digital coming together is the consumerization of physical and digital. Which Samsung is putting out there. And this is the perfect beginning wave coming. Do you agree? >> I think so. As I was sitting through the keynote today, and I'm just reflecting on the future where I can watch TV and there's this beautiful scene of a local in northern California. Then I say, I want to go! And I jump in my car and the destination is magically loaded on my GPS in my very smart car, and it just takes me there. I don't have think about it. And on the way, they've already made reservations, right? It seems like a very seamless integration of everything if it's ideally done, and part of me, I think the security paranoia in me, is also a little afraid that too much information is going to be not necessarily a good thing in a lot of senses, because what we see, and what I've seen in almost 20 years of tech, is every time we rush to new technology, new platforms, new distribution, methodologies, people rush in and make the same mistakes over and over again. So I am a little afraid that with this era, it's going to be exactly the same. Where we see explosion of growth, we see explosion of content, people coming in with a gold rush, and then a few years later when thing are established, we're going to start to see the security leaks, the data leaks, the breaches. >> It's kind of like you don't know that smoking is bad for you until they realized people die of lung cancer. It's like data is the same thing. You don't know how much privacy you have given up. I mean look at Equifax. There's going to be more of those. So I think permission-less, permission-based data security, huge issue governing. That's big. >> It is, particularly because your average consumer is not very privacy sensitive. If I want to use something, I want to use something and asking me for permissions is just a hurdle that if I'm motivated enough to actually use a service, or use an app, I'm just going to keep brushing aside without really thinking about it. And alarmingly, the number of apps that we look at, the number of permissions that they ask, is kind of scary. >> Mary, great to have you on the cube. Great conversation. Great thought leadership. I'll give you the final word. What are you guys doing at SEWORKS? What are you up to after the event? What are some of the things you're working on? Get the plug in for your company. >> Yeah, so, what SEWORKS does is, we do tools for developers to help you alleviate your security needs when you're developing for mobile apps or for IOT or for connected, anything actually. If you're building on Android or iOS, we have a solution for you. We're essentially like your armory so we outfit you with an incredible shield that protects your application when it ships to the public. Against hacking and reverse engineering. >> So security as a service? >> We're security as a service. Just think of us as your on-call hackers, how's that? >> Great, your white hat shield for the apps, for mobile, mobile development is hot obviously. New user experiences and expectations are here. There's a big wave coming in, we're seeing on machine learning. You're seeing with AI. And certainly Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. All powered by unlimited compute in the cloud. Mary Min, SEWORKS, The Cube, more live coverage here in San Francisco after the short break.

>> Announcer: Live from San Fransisco, it's theCUBE covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. >> Hello everyone and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference live here in San Fransisco, California, Moscone West. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE media and co-host here at theCUBE's exclusive coverage with Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principle Analyst at Lopez Research, good friend of theCUBE, Cube albumni. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, John. >> We see each other all the time at the industry events, usually enterprise and some cloud events. We've been seeing each other a lot at these, kind of consumer events. >> Yeah. >> Sounds like the consumerization of IT is happening. >> Big crossover. Yeah, I don't believe there is any consumer or enterprise, there's just degrees of, you know, how much security, how much management ya get, right? It's got to be a good consumer device to be used by anyone. >> What are some of the analyst reports you guys are putting out now? Obviously, you've been covering apps, to kind of set that up. As you know, we always talk in the past about IoT, >> Maribel: Yeah. >> The intelligent edge, cloud, and the role of app developers that are coming into the enterprise. Every CIO has got a mandate. More app development. Devops. Devops. It's hard. How is this helping? >> You know, I've previously come at this from the concept of mobile enablement in the enterprise, right? And now, it just seems like we're just looking at new applications, new experiences that cross boundaries, right? Is it at your home? Is it in a hotel? Is it on your corporate campus, right? I think the role of the app developer is changing to be more encompassing. I think the big news in all the shows we go to now is like AI and machine learning. That term is just everywhere. It's the IoT of 2017, right? Last year was IoT; this year it's AI and machine learning. So we're seeing a lot of that for the app dev community. >> And now you start to see Augmented Reality, also known as AR, in this space of Samsung and Apple and these new app developers. Augmented Reality core, obviously from a development standpoint, big news here at the Samsung conference. The other big news is ARCore and ARKit, ARKit is the IOT piece. [Maribel] - Mhm. >> So we've been seeing a lot of slowdown in Iot. For instance, everyone is kicking the tires on Iot, but it's industrial Iot that's getting the traction. >> Yeah, I think industrial IoT is getting the traction because they've been at it for years, right? It was M2M before that. If you look at what is happening in consumer IoT, it's still an absolute disaster. So, I think the big news of the day, for Samsung, I mean, obviously, we just talked about how AI was in there, we talked about how ARVR was in there. But, what we didn't talk about is the fact that now we're looking at the SmartThings Cloud. And this is the attempt to say, listen, we've got many different clouds; how do we unify clouds as Samsung? And then, also, how do we let other people participate in the cloud? 'Cause the real challenge is, everybody has their fiefdom right now. >> John: Yeah. >> You know, you're in the Apple fiefdom, you're in the Google fiefdom, you're in the Alexa Amazon fiefdom. How do we get to a point where I can just use my stuff? >> Yeah, this is classic breaking down the silos in the world we talk about in the enterprise. >> Yeah. >> And that's been like a two generation initiative. But you look at the guest I just had on theCUBE, Mary Min and Greg Harris before that. They're a different culture. They don't really give a crap about plumbing. >> Maribel: (laughs) No, no. >> They're producing AR games. they've got security challenges. So their development challenges are very DevOps native. They didn't sign up for DevOps, they just are DevOps cloud native. So, that world is one, then you got the IT guys going, wait a minute, I got to support this new edge device. >> Right. I've got to manage it, I've got to secure it. >> Those worlds are coming together. >> Maribel: Yes, absolutely. >> Your thoughts on Samsung's opportunity; are they poised, do they care about IT; IT care about Samsung? >> You know, Samsung's a big company, right? So it really depends on what division of Samsung you're looking at, whether or not they care about IT. What I would say though, is that they're trying to make moves that will can across the board now, right? Trying to make a cloud that can be secure for your consumer things, but can also be upleveled if you want to make it an enterprise of things cloud as well, right? The AI concept is really about just creating usability. And, I think when we think of DevOps, what we think about is creating better application experiences that can know you, that can respond to you. And this is the whole... we talked about Big Data a few years ago, remember everything was Big Data, right? Well Big Data is now machine learning and AI, which is the natural evolution of it. So, I'm starting to see a lot of things that can be used across Samsung. So, I do think in that regard, they're well positioned. They've got a lot of technology in the home. They've got a lot of presence for the enterprise mobile camp. The IoT camp, I think is a wild card for everybody right now. >> What do you think about Samsung's chances with the cloud they have? Because they sprinkle a little bit of cloud in there. >> Maribel: Yeah. >> They didn't talk about data at all, which I was surprised. They kind of inherently... I mean it's a privacy issue; a security thing. But I love the presentation about the kitchen. >> Maribel: Oh yeah, that was great. >> Because the kitchen is where... >> The family hub for the home, right? >> The family hub, that's where everyone hangs out at the parties, right? Everyone ends up in the kitchen. But it kind of highlights this consumerization trend. They kind of sprinkled cloud, but I'm not seeing cloud... I'm not seeing, like, we're bringing compute to you. So, is that just native for Samsung? Is it a missed opportunity? Are they strong there? What's your thoughts? >> I think you actually started with this whole dialogue of well, does anybody really care about what the background technology is, right? So I think we're definitely a little lighter on the terms and more about what the use cases were. Like, why do you use this? They have semiconductors, they have a cloud, they have security, they have devices. They've got a lot of things, so it's really not about the technology as much as it used to be, right? What I think some of the differences might be is a cloud for what? >> Yeah. >> And they are actually taking the approach of we've got a cloud for things and we know what these things are. So I think they're well positioned in that regard because they will have a specific cloud that's not just a generic cloud. >> I think they want to own the interface. To me, my take away, squithing through the hype is they want to own the interface edge. If you contrast say Samsung to say Alibaba group, which we were just covering them in China, compare them to Amazon, you'll see a contrast in strategies. Obviously, Amazon is just blowing everyone away on a massive scale. And they're not even in China. So, if they were actually in China the numbers would be off the charts. >> Maribel: Yeah, be a different thing, yeah. >> But, lets take Alibaba, for instance, and Samsung. Alibaba's an eCommerce company. But they don't want to be known as an eCommerce company. They're heavily invested in data. That's front and center of their message. Smart cities, they're talking about. They have a big cloud that they're pumping out, so that's much different, for them, they don't have an edge device, ya know? >> Yeah, well.. >> Samsung does, but we don't hear cloud, smart cities. We hear family hubs, smart TV, Bixby. >> But it is an experience world, right? And I think that's been the problem with technology adoption to date. You can't figure out how to use it, right? So the next big evolution of technology isn't necessarily about creating a new thing. It's about being able to use a thing. I think Enjon actually made a great comment when he said we use about 10% of the functionality in our cell phone. Why is that? You don't even know it's there. You don't know how to find it, you don't know how to turn it on and off. Like how do you just simplify what we have today? And if they can do that, that was, or used to be, the hallmark of Apple right? >> John: Right. >> And now people are like, well, even Apple products are kind of of complex compared to what they used to be. So how do we get this back to we can use the stuff that we already have built. >> You're nailing it, Maribel. I totally agree with you 100% because if you look at the big waves of innovation: web 1.0 '90's. Mid '90's, '95. Web 2.0 and then now Blockchain and cloud. >> Absolutely. >> All the winners simplified things, reduced the steps it takes to do something and made it easy to use. >> Yeah. >> That's the magical formula. >> Frictionless. >> FYI, entrepreneurs, simplify, make it easy to use and reduce the steps it takes to find stuff; to do stuff. >> Absolutely. >> That's the magical formula. Okay, so, with that in mind, critical analysis of Samsung and a positive analysis of Samsung, then. What did they do right here and what can they work on? >> Okay, so what they did right: I think they are finally trying to pull together all the different versions of Samsung and allow you to have a couple of things, Bixby and cloud, to go across devices; that's right. What I think they still need to work on is there's still boundaries there. It's not exactly clear like where things start, where things end. And they're a little cryptic on the details right now. >> John: You mean under the hood. >> Under hood, I mean I think devs are here to figure out what's going on. How do I make this happen? So there better be some real serious deep dives in these dev sessions so that they know exactly, when they leave, what they can build with Samsung. And how does it work with non-Samsung things. That's still a huge wild card. >> And obviously, cloud, multi-cloud enterprises, you need infrastructure. >> Yeah. >> I mean, smart cities, smart homes, you need plumbing. You need to have compute power, you need some storage. I'm not hearing any of that here. >> No, I don't think that that was a tone that they were trying to take. I think they've been looking much more high level at, if you're a developer, what experiences could you have. I'd also like to see more about how to help monetization. If you go to IO, you go to WWDC, there's always these big slides about how are we going to make money as developers by using this platform. And so that's something we need to see a little more of. >> I got my Samsung smaller phone. I'm going to have to get the Galaxy, the big one, looking good. The screens are great, the cameras are great. >> The Note 8 is really great. It's a good device. >> They're the one with the pen, that's on the Note. Okay, Maribel, thanks for coming on. Appreciate you sharing your analysis. Quick update, what are you doing now? What are you up to? What are they key research pillars? >> Yeah, everybody's trying to figure out what machine learning and AI mean for them. And then, what are the real use case behind IoT. So, we talked a lot about industrial Iots's, right? Anything else? Is there Iot for GENbiz? We'll have to find out. >> Maribel Lopez, been on theCUBE so many times, she's practically an analyst on theCUBE here. Great to have you come on, really appreciate your insight. Check her out, Lopez Research, the best in the business. Been covering the span of enterprise to IT, to consumerization. This is theCUBE bringing you all the action live here at Moscone West. Exclusive coverage of Samsung Developers Conference. Bringing Augmented reality, virtual reality, all this new user interface to the masses. >> Maribel: All the reality. Everywhere. >> All the reality. This is theCUBE, data reality here on theCUBE, a new TV show. Thanks for watching.