(smooth music) >> Hi, everybody. This is Dave Vellante, and with me is Sandeep Singh. He's the vice president of storage marketing at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and we're going to riff on some of the trends in the industry, what we're seeing, and we got a little treat for you, Sandeep. Great to see you, man. >> Dave, it's a pleasure to be here. >> You and I have known each other for a long time. We've had some great discussions, some debates, (chuckles) some intriguing mind benders. What are you seeing out there in storage? So much has changed. What are the key trends you're seeing? And let's get into it. >> Yeah. Across the board, as you said, so much has changed. When you reflect back at the underlying transformation that's taking place with data, cloud, and AI across the board, first of all, for our customers, they're seeing this massive data explosion that literally now spans edge to core to cloud. They're also seeing a diversity of the application workloads across the board. The emphasis that it's placing is on the complexity that underlies overall infrastructure and data management. Across the board, we're hearing a lot from customers about just the underlying infrastructure and complexity, and the infrastructure sprawl. And then the second element of that is really extending into the complexity of data management. >> So it's interesting to talk about data management. You remember you and I were in... Well, you were in Andover. I don't know. It was probably like five years ago. And all we were talking about was media, flash this and flash that, and at the time that was kind of the hot storage topic. Well, flash came in, addressed some of the clicks that we historically talked about. Now the problem statement is really kind of, quote unquote, metaphorically moving up the stack, if you will. You mentioned management. But let's dig into that a little bit. I mean, what is management? I mean, a lot of people... That means different things to different people. You talk to a database person or a backup person. How do you look at management? What does that mean to you? >> Yeah, Dave. You mentioned that flash came in, and it actually accelerated the overall speed and latency that storage was delivering to the application workloads. But fundamentally, when you look back at storage over a couple of decades, the underlying way of how you're managing storage hasn't fundamentally changed. There's still an incredible amount of complexity for ITs. It's still a manual admin-driven experience for customers. And what that's translating to is, more often than not, IT is in the world of firefighting, and it leaves them unable to help with the more strategic projects to innovate for the business. And basically IT has that pressure point of moving beyond that, and helping bring greater levels of agility that line of business owners are asking for, and to be able to deliver on more of the strategic projects. So that's one element of it. The second element that we're hearing from customers about is as more and more data just continues to explode from edge to core to cloud, and as basically the infrastructure has grown from just being on-prem, to being at the edge, to being in the cloud, now that complexity is expanding from just being on-prem to across multiple different clouds. So when you look across the data life cycle, how do you store it? How do you secure it? How do you basically protect it, and archive it, and analyze that data? That end to end life cycle management of data, today resides on just a fragmented set of overall infrastructure, and tools, and processes, and administrative boundaries. That's creating a massive challenge for customers. And the impact of that, ultimately, is essentially comes at a cost to agility, to innovation, and ultimately business risk. >> Yeah, so we've seen obviously the cloud has addressed a lot of these problems, but the problem is the cloud is in the cloud. And much of my stuff, most of my stuff, isn't in the cloud. (chuckles) So I have all these other workloads that are either on-prem, and now you've got this emerging edge. And so I wonder if we could just talk a little vision here for a minute. I mean, what I've been envisioning is this abstraction layer that cuts across all, whether... It doesn't really matter where it is. If it's on-prem, if it's across cloud, if it's in the cloud, on the edge. We could talk about what that all means. But if customers that I talk to, they're sort of done with the complexity of that underlying infrastructure. They want technology to take care of that. They want automation. They want AI brought into that equation. And it seems like we're on the cusp of the decade where that might happen. What's your take? >> Well, yeah. Certainly, I mentioned that data cloud and AI are really the disruptive forces that are propelling the digital transformation for customers. Cloud has set the standard for agility, and AI-driven insights and intelligence are really helping to make the underlying infrastructure invisible. And yet a lot of their application workloads and data is on-prem and is increasingly growing at the edge. So they want that same experience to be able to truly bring that agility to wherever their data and apps load. And that's one of the things that we're continuing to hear from customers. >> And this problem's just going to get worse. I mean, we... For decades we marched to the cadence of Moore's law, and everybody's kind of forgets about Moore's law. And they'll say, "Ah, it's dying," or whatever. But actually, when you look at the processing power that's coming out now, it's not... It's more than doubling every two years, quadrupling every two years. So now you've got this capability in your hands, and application designers, storage companies, networking companies, they're going to have all this power to now bring in AI and do things that we've never even imagined before. So it's not about the box, and the speeds and feeds of the box. It's really more about this abstraction layer that I was talking about, the management, if you will, that you were discussing, and what we can do in terms of being able to power new workloads, machine intelligence. It's this kind of ubiquitous... Call it the cloud, but it's expanding pretty much everywhere in every part of our lives, (chuckles) even to the edge. You think about autonomous vehicles, you think about factories. It's actually quite mind boggling where we're headed. >> It is, and you touched upon AI, and certainly when you look at infrastructure, for example, there's been a ton of complexity in infrastructure management. One of the studies that was done, actually by IDC, indicated that over 90% of the challenges that arise, for example, ultimately down at the storage infrastructure layer that's powering the apps, ultimately, arises from way above the stack all the way from the server layer on down, or even the virtual machine layer. And there, for example, AI ops for infrastructure has become a game changer for customers to be able to bring the power of AI, and machine learning, and multi-variate analysis to be able to predict and prevent issues. Dave, you also touched upon edge, and across the board, what we're seeing is the enterprise edge is becoming that frontier for customer experiences, and the opportunity to reimagine customer experiences, as well as just the frontier for commerce that's happening when you look at retail, and manufacturing, and/or financial services. So across the board, with the data growth that's happening, and this edge becoming the strategic frontier for delivering the customer experiences, how you power your application workloads there, how you deliver that data, and protect that data, and be able to seamlessly manage that overall infrastructure, as you mentioned, abstracted away at a higher level, becomes incredibly important for our customers. >> It's so interesting to hear how the conversation's changing, I'd like to say. I go back to whatever it was, five years ago, we're talking about flash, storage class memory, and NVMe, and those things are still there, but your emphasis now, you're talking about machine learning, AI, math around deep learning. It's really software is really what you're focusing on these days. >> Very much so. Certainly, this notion of software and services that are delivering and unlocking a whole new experience for customers, that's really the game changer going forward for customers, and that's what we're focused on. >> Well, I said we had a little surprise for you. So you guys are having an event on May 4th. It's called Unleash the Power of Data. What's that event all about, Sandeep? >> Yeah. We are very much excited about our May 4th event. As you mentioned, it's called Unleash the Power of Data. And as most organizations today are data driven, and data is at the heart of what they're doing, we're excited to invite everyone to join this event. And through this event, we're unveiling a new vision for data that accelerates the data-driven transformation from edge to cloud. This event promises to be a pivotal event, and one that IT admins, cloud architects, virtual machine admins, vice-presidents, directors of IT, and CIOs really won't want to miss. Across the board, this event is just bringing a new way of articulating the overall problem statement, and a market-in focused the articulation of the trends that we were just discussing. It's an event that's going to be hosted by business and technology journalist, Shibani Joshi. It will feature a market-in panel with a focus on the crucial role that data is playing in customers' digital transformation. It will also include and feature Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE, and Tom Black, senior vice president and general manager of HPE storage business, and industry experts, including Julia Palmer, research vice president at Gartner. We will unveil game-changing HPE innovations that will make it possible for organizations across edge to cloud to unleash the power of data. >> Sounds like a great event. I presume I can go to hpe.com. And what? Get information. Is it a registered event? How does that all work? >> Yeah, we invite everyone to visit hpe.com, and by visiting there, you can click and save the date of May 4th at 8:00 AM Pacific. We invite everyone to join us. We couldn't be more excited to get to this event, and be able to share the vision and game-changing HPE innovations. >> Awesome. So it's... So I don't have to register, right? I don't have to give up my three children's name, and my social security number to attend your event, is that right? (chuckles) >> No registration required. Come by, click on hpe.com. Save the date on your calendar. And we very much look forward to having everyone join us for this event. >> I love it. It's pure content event. I'm not going to get a phone call afterwards saying, "Hey, buy some stuff from me." That could come other channels, so that's good. (chuckles) Thank you for that. Thanks for providing that service to the industry. I'm excited to see what you guys are going to be announcing that day. And look, Sandeep, I mean, like I said, we've known each other a while. We've seen a lot of trends, but the next 10 years, it ain't going to look like the last 10, is it? >> It's going to be very different, and we couldn't be more excited. >> Well, Sandeep, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE, and riffing with me on the industry, and giving us a preview for your event. Good luck with that, and always great to see you. >> Thanks a lot, Dave. Always great to see you as well. >> All right, and thank you, everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (smooth music)

>>from >>around >>The globe. It's the cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you >>by IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events in this case virtually to extract the signal from the noise. Now we're gonna talk about one of the deepest customer relationships in the tech business with Pete Bill, who is the IBM managing director for American Express. Pete, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having me Dave. >>So as I said, this is one of the deepest vendor client relationships. I mean, it's more than that because you're not a vendor, your partner, very deep relationship, many, many, you know, decades plus uh, executives know each other. There's been a some senior executives from American Express as I recall, came over to IBM of course, famously Lou Gerstner um, but but talk about the, just give us the overview of the evolution of that partnership. >>Yeah, well, as you rightfully mentioned, uh the relationship is long and deep, its over 100 years. I mean the original deal was probably around the club buying clocks and uh scales and all that kind of stuff and it evolved over time. But what it does indeed create is a long deep lasting relationship as a fundament for doing business and uh yeah that business has gone through a lot of cycles over the last decades, as you say, uh from from buying stuff. But I would say over time evolving really into a partnership around services, mutual business back and forth, exchanging executives on board level american Express executives on the board of IBM and vice versa. So yeah, it's a very very deep long relationship of two iconic companies in in Manhattan. >>Yeah, so it's got to be more than just buying stuff. Obviously there's a lot of business being transacted but you've got to intimate your title has american Express in it. So you've got to intimately understand your client's business. I mean that's I guess that's always the case, but we're taking it to another level here, >>aren't we? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so what you really are after and what we do is IBM is really get into the shoes basically of american Express trying to support their business to their clients. So american Express is very focused on small and medium business. So we tip into how can we help the small and medium businesses part of the american Express custom set and how can we help evolve their business models, that technology their services to serve their clients better because in the old days indeed. To your point it was like, oh we wanted to buy the right stuff and then we use that to do our thing. But that the technology today, the area in which we operate is completely different. If you don't understand the the client of american Express, we cannot serve american express as a company. So it is indeed very important and it is therefore deeper and it requires way more focused on the clients of american express than in the old days I would say. >>Well the pandemic must have been a challenging uh environment. Of course. I mean you know people aren't out shopping as much although you know people are waiting, they can't wait to get back out. They say it's gonna be like Woodstock with the american express cards. But so so maybe talk a little bit about how how you work together during the pandemic. >>Yeah. So well first of all like anybody, we're all work from home. But american express really uh I would say almost reengaged on what is core and the threat that used to support to small and medium business. So american Express started this stand for small initiative led by steve Square himself about how can we enable the small enterprises uh in doing business in the covid period? What do they need? I mean, yeah, they need money, but they also need help like how to deal with your financials with your people. Can we use the spare time to do more education? And so IBM was one of the partners that jumped on board immediately to say, okay, let us help in that platform support you were necessary with the platform but definitely help you in that platform to reach out to the small and medium enterprises uh specifically in the new york area. And like many other partners, we all got on board and I think it got another focus. Again, I mean small and medium business has always been a focus, but it's different when so many companies are struggling right now. And so we get a got on board. And I think that that is really a very clear partnership expression. I would say, >>how do you measure success with with american Express? What are some of the key things that you guys look at? How, how have you evolved that over time? >>Well, ultimately, I would say it's client satisfaction in the end, it sounds like an open door, but it really is. I mean the real the real measurement, I mean there's always money measurements back and forth. You can argue that that is of course you need to do solid business. There's no discussion there, but I would say it's where do we align on the strategic intent from both companies and let me elaborate a second on that one. If american Express is really transforming its business to become way more, I would say uh cloud enabled hybrid technologies enabled. Uh we provide a lot of that material. Uh so we are really working together on trying to leverage each other in building that hybrid platform that will enable that future. And why do you need that? Well, because american Express needs to be dynamic and getting fit, excellent board, getting exchanges with with with with new companies going way faster. It's not a traditional old style anymore where you could go for transformations for years now it needs to be on the spot. Um so we show our strategies are really well aligned and I would say the real measurement of success is how can we now make that to the benefit of american Express? And on the back of that we will do good business. So uh client satisfaction should be the primary one. Strategic alignment important. And then of course doing the sound business on the back of that for both sides, >>financial services firms have always been pretty savvy when it comes to applying technology to business some of the most demanding customers and more advanced. Uh So you know the american express is likely already on a digital transformation prior to the covid hitting at the same time. It talks about it being accelerated. But I think what people miss is that it wasn't well they don't miss it but you know to think about it in this way, it wasn't planned, it was like forced. And so you just you have no choice, you couldn't think about it, you just have to do an act. And so on the one hand, okay, that's good. It was a forcing function. It also served as a Petri just but on the other hand, I'm sure a lot of mistakes were made now as we exit the pandemic step back and say okay wow, we learned a lot now. We can make a more planned full approach and really go deeper and lean in over the next several years. What are your thoughts on that and how does it relate to what you guys are doing with american Express? >>I think that's a very good point. I agree. It's what you see is that uh this indeed has forced us in a lot of things. I mean I think the good news is american Express was already enabled for a lot of that new technology. They have invested, they have a lot of very skilled good people uh a very clear strategy and what they were after this and they put more pressure on it. I think what you will see happening in the foreseeable future after we get out of all of this is that the, let's say the urgency to complete the transformation on cloud and data will become even more crucial. And so the priority will become higher and it will not be just higher because of the Turkish wanting it to do it, but because the business needs it. So uh needed from a risk perspective, they needed, from an agility perspective, go to market of new products. Uh they need to really move fast. It's a fast moving market, you get a lot of the media competition is there? Uh so to enable that the move to get new technologies and faster is becoming pivotal and crucial. And I think for now it's more of almost like a survival statement. We need to get through this bubble of Covid as soon as that's done, we need to think way more on the structural elements of debt and how we enable a hybrid strategy going forward. >>So in the spirit of you need to understand your customer in this case american Express and understand their business. An american express is uh make you laugh anytime I call american Express, you know, if I have to work out a problem or whatever. Uh and I gotta talk to some customer service. They always thank me for my loyalty because I have been a customer for a long time. You know, back when probably when Ronald Reagan was president, it was my first Amex card. And so they're like, oh thank you, Mr Volonte. We we really appreciate your loyalty. So loyalty is a big thing for american Express with its customers. So what about IBM and American Express? How are you breeding, you know, what's that loyalty factor look like for you guys? >>Yeah, I think it's a very important element. I mean to your point, I have the same experience, It's it's a it's a crucial element. Uh the whole, I mean american Express is famous for its loyalty schemes for loyalty as a company. I think loyalty like the business has evolved, I think the loyalty evolves in the same style in I would say in the in the in the old days, I would say the argument was you need to have the best product, you know, you you need to be and then we'll buy the product in the current environment. I would argue that it's way more about skills, Do we have the right people? Do we have the right technology strategy kind of stuff? I would say for the future, it's way more about do we have the right trust, commitment and loyalty of the people that work with us going forward to serve the client needs? And I think that evolution, it's almost like you have an industrial revolution, there was an information resolution. I think there's more of a loyalty revolution coming up where the real differentiating factors is because we can study this and argue this for ages. But a lot of parties will deliver a lot of good technology to the market, they will deliver a lot of good people, they will have good price points. So what's the real differentiating factor? It's like, do we really trust these people? And then I think relationship loyalty will really come and play and it will not become and play just between an IBM and an american express, but I would argue it will come and play in the whole business cycle of american express to their clients. I mean if the credit card swipe of your american express card in a shop fails, It needs to be my problem. If I deliver the service to American express it cannot be that Oh American express has a problem and you know what, it's 8:00 in the evening uh yeah we have reduced services. No we never had that, we will never have that but we need to get even deeper in understanding what the effects are of these business issues. >>Yeah I mean you're right the nature of loyalty, the preservative products have changed. I mean I remember you know I used to travel overseas with american Express traveler's checks that was a staple of every overseas trip that I ever took you no matter where I was going, whether it's asia pacific or or europe, I had to have that packet and I and I had you know, there were times when, when you know one time particularly had a problem film, they were right there to solve the problem. Of course, many young people in the audience don't even know what american express traveler's check is. They probably don't know what cash is carrying around crypto in their wallet. But but but that's an example and that's about trust, trust that product, I trust that company behind the product. Again, that has to extend to your relationship doesn't. >>Absolutely. So the technology that an american Express users, whether they do it themselves or whether it's provided by partners like IBM it needs to be seamless because let's face it, you would not be interested to know who provides you the security on your credit card. If you have an american Express card, you expect expect american Express to deliver your the security that you need and whether american Express delivers that or IBM you couldn't care less and you shouldn't care less. But what it does require is that in the old school I would say it was more like okay we'll give some services and some products to american Express and guys could look now, we need to think ahead and I think that's where the power of IBM comes in where that we really attuned by industry to the industry issues like compliance, security, stability services, um to the inclined to you. So you need to feel if I cannot explain what I do to american express in your terms as an infusion of an express credit card, you can argue what's the real value add. And definitely if there's like 345 parties playing exactly the same game, it needs to be differentiating and I think a company like IBM we have differentiating value but we need to make it very clear and that's I think where you see companies like american Express really work together and that's what loyalty and trust really comes in play. >>Last question when we got to go is you have american expression, your title are other companies jealous >>we >>want that >>to, they should, they should >>be. Uh >>but I I must say, I mean we deal with a ton of financial institutions as you know around the globe including the other credit cards. But yeah, I think where these deep relationship ships commonplace indeed too. I mean they're so old, so deep, so and entrenched and it really start there's different dimensions to it and it's not always that hard coded anymore, it's the subtlety of really relying on each other. I mean when something happens in the middle of the night with american express, all of IBM is on board as of the second and it's not driven by contracts or by anything. It's by people that have an American Express logo on the forehead and work for an IBM. >>Yeah. Right. It's awesome. Pete Pete bills. Great story. Thanks so much for coming to the cube. It's great to have you. >>Thanks for having me. >>All right and keep it right. There is day volonte ongoing coverage of think 2021. You're watching the Cube? Yeah.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios today, talking about a pretty interesting topic. You probably haven't heard of it, but you're going to know a lot of the attributes and it's going to sound very familiar. And that's BizOps, the concept of BizOps. We've heard about DevOps and DevSecOps and a whole bunch of ops, but BizOps is really a new twist and a new way to think about this. And we're excited to have the woman who actually wrote the book on the topic. She's Laureen Knudsen. She's a Chief Transformation Officer from Broadcom. She's also the co-author of the "Modern Business Management: Creating a Built-to-Change Organization", and a founding member of the BizOps Coalition. Laureen, great to see you. >> Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. >> Absolutely. For people that aren't familiar with BizOps, give us kind of the quick high level. What is BizOps? >> BizOps is a new way of doing business. Just like Agile changed engineering and DevOps changed how we put things into production, BizOps is changing from soup to nuts. So from concept to cash or strategy to execution, right. There's a lot of... This has been talked about for a few years now, but this is formalizing that structure. So what do you need to do to truly have your strategy linked to your customer base? And so it's creating that umbrella over all of these other ops processes that brings it all together to tie the top to the bottom. >> Right. So, DevOps, right, fundamentally changed, the way the software gets developed. There used to be waterfall, it used to be data market's development document and then a product requirements document, then you put together a plan and you code it for six months or nine months, threw it over the Wall operations, and then hopefully they delivered. That doesn't happen anymore. And that was really set forth about 20 years ago when this kind of revolution happened on the software side. So what's been happening on the business side, and why now do they need their own ops to be pulled into this process? >> Well, sort of in the same way that things happened in the late 1990s, where certain organizations started to realize that that wasn't the most efficient way to create software and came together and created the Agile Manifesto. We've realized that there's certain things in doing business that make us much more effective and efficient. Things like bringing a data stream from the top to the bottom so every level of the organization has the data they need to run their business. Having that trust run throughout the organization, having that communication and that transparency from the strategy to the execution. You know, the global economy is just in dire straits right now, and the world is moving faster than ever. And so being able to respond to that change is vital at all levels of the organization. >> So you wrote the book years ago, I'm sure you've speaking to ton of business leaders, you know, as an author of the book, what were the biggest inhibitors to kind of the adoption of these ops and there must have been something, because why then did you found this coalition? What was the, you know, kind of the founding principle behind the coalition? >> Well, a bunch of industry leaders have come together to realize that in the same way that development needed to change in the early 2000s, really business needs to change today. And to your point, we've been talking about this for a while. Different companies are doing it better than others. And the ones that are doing this well are really heads and tails succeeding above the others. So, it's not easy though. It's not easy to change an entire organization and to change the way you do business. So, the coalition is bringing together some principles and values. We've come together to talk about how we're doing business differently and what actually works. And the main things you need to focus on in order to ensure success. >> Right. But you did it loud and proud with this declarative manifesto and then an event, actually, later this month that you're going to have to really unveil the manifesto, October 15th. I think it's 9:00, or excuse me, >> 11: 00 AM Eastern, 8:00 AM Pacific. Manifesto, right? Just the word manifesto, elicits all types of, kind of emotional response and really strong declarative statement of purpose and mission. So, why the manifesto and what's really the key pieces of the manifesto? >> You know, you need the principles that go along to help you change people, process and technology. And a lot of folks are focusing only on the technology and the data that comes from that technology and all that is key and vital to the way that you run your business differently. It's not the only piece. And so we need to focus on how do we get to bring the people along with us, how do we change our processes to be more efficient and effective. And the four values and the principles that we've created as this coalition, really help companies to do that more easily and to know they're on the right track, in the same way that the Agile principles and the values that brought out in the Agile Manifesto did. >> Right. So, I have a preview version here of the values. And I think it is really important for people to stay kind of fundamental values. 'Cause then everything builds from that and if there's ever a question, you can go back to the values as of a reference point. But just to read a few of, you know, business outcomes over individual projects, trust and collaboration over siloed teams and organizations, data-driven decisions over opinions and judgment calls, and finally, learn responded pivot over following a documented plan. And that seems so, right, so simple and so foundational and so fundamental to the way business works today. But the fact that you have to put this coalition together, and the fact that you're publishing this manifesto, tells me that the adoption really isn't where it should be. And this is really a new way to try to drive the adoption of these values. >> Absolutely. I mean, everybody seems to understand that they need to focus on their customers and that they need to focus on outcomes, but you can't just take something, you know, once you have work in progress and say, well, what's the value of this one piece of work. You have to have started at the beginning to come with the right outcome you're trying to meet, and then ensure that you're doing that all along the path to creating that and to bringing that to your customer base. It's focusing on your customers and creating the trust with your customers as well as through your organization. The data is really vital. Being able to run our businesses on real data and know the reality of the situation rather than at status reports that were created by people saying, yeah, I'm done, but there's no definition of done, right? It's fundamentally changing how we do business, which sounds easy. But as we know because of the Agile transformations that we've done and DevOps transformations that we've done, it's not as easy as it sounds. >> Right. So, why not just try to include more of the business people in the DevOps process? Why the strategy to have BizOps as kind of a standalone activity and again, to have the coalition and manifesto, that means it's super important. Can't the business people participate in the DevOps, or why has that not really been effective? >> It's really a different part of the business. And BizOps is a framework that pulls together all of these other operational pieces. So, security, operations, you know, how do you get something from engineering out to your customers, really were DevOps focuses, right? So, that's great. But running your business includes a lot more than your IT organization or your engineering teams. So this really expands out and brings in all of the rest of the business for how you sell software, how you plan, how you fund your teams, how you look at the work from that high strategic level and ensuring that you create that solid pipeline of data so that you truly know the status of any strategy in your organization. I was working with one group who had really good strategies and they had really good execution and they found that they spent over $100 million annually rolling up that data to try and understand the true status of their strategies. So companies are spending and are being very inefficient in, you know, they're spending millions of dollars on trying to do this link where if you just fundamentally change the way you do business a little bit, day to day, you can have that as a natural outcome of your processes. >> Right. 'Cause you've talked about on some of this stuff about using it as a way to do prioritization and to make sure you're not spending money places that you shouldn't. Another thing that strikes me as I go through the principles are, again, things that in 2020 should not be new information, you know, frequent changes, which was not part of the old paradigm. Trust and transparency. And I think you even tied it back into one of the articles I saw, tying trust and transparency really back to employee engagement, which then drives profitability and productivity. So I wonder if you can talk about the role of trust and in your conversations with people, as you've been kind of developing this idea over the years since the book, getting leaders to, you know, to trust their people, to do what that needs to be done rather than managing tasks, you know, manage the outcome, not manage tasks. >> Right. This is really important. Having trust in your organizations, especially today when everyone's remote, right? And in almost every company in the globe right now, most of their employees are working from their houses. You can't really do command and control well when no one is sitting in your building with you. So being able to have that trust to truly trust in your employees, you know, we spend a lot of money on all of these technical folks that we hire, and then we put people in place to try and direct them what to do on a daily basis. And so having... Building that trust within your organization, and it goes both ways, right? Employees need to trust the leadership, leadership needs to trust the employees, but it's not just from the top level to the end level, right? To the team level. It's actually every level in the middle. So this is truly pulling the pieces of work that we've done over the past few years through the entire organization. It's getting rid of what we call that frozen middle, of middle management and making sure that trust is aligned in there as well. And that the communication and transparency is working through that part of the organization. >> Right. Another principle I want to highlight is talking about the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Clearly, we all know, right, data's exploding, et cetera, et cetera, and we want to get the data driven decisions. But what this really calls out is that there's probably more data, both in terms of frequency and complexity, than people can really sift through, in terms of finding what they should be working on and what's important and what's not, you know, the classic separating the signal from the noise. I wonder if you can speak to a little bit about the role of machine learning and artificial intelligence, as an enhancer to productivity in this BizOps world versus a threat to people's jobs. >> Absolutely. I mean, like I said already that there's some companies spending $100 million rolling up data on things that computers can do today, even without machine learning and an AI. But when we put that into place, it really doesn't replace people any more than DevOps removed people from the organization. We automated a lot in testing yet we still have test organizations. It's just a different focus and a way of doing business. And this is no different. I'm seeing a lot of companies though start to try and throw all of their data together. And I've recently started saying that they're creating data land fields when they're attempting to create data lakes. And so you really need to understand your data that you're collecting and why you're collecting it and what outcomes you're trying to get from that data so that you can understand your business and you're not just creating, to your point, more noise. >> Right. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the event that's coming up on the 15th, about, you know, kind of, what is the role of the coalition? How should people get involved, what's membership all about, and then what can they expect to happen on the 15th? >> We have 10 industry leaders that have come together to author the BizOps Manifesto. And it's everyone from influencers, transformation experts, CEOs of a lot of companies or of organizations. We have people like Evan Leybourn of the Business Agility Institute and Sally Elatta from AgilityHealth, who have come to help author this and are really transformational leaders across the globe. And to get involved, you can go to bizopsmanifesto.org. and you can sign the manifesto. You can align to that if, you know, if you want to bring this into your own organization, we're happy to help work with that as well. So it's a group of industry leaders who are here to help the globe get more efficient and effective in how they do business. >> It's really interesting, right. It's not really an open source project, but it is kind of a co-opetition in terms of, you know, you're reaching out to lots of different companies and lots of different leaders to participate. They may or may not be competitive, but really this is more kind of an industry, kind of productivity thing, if you will, to bring all these people together at the coalition. Would that be accurate? >> It is accurate, but we're also looking to have competitors. I mean, we've... Competitors is an interesting thing today because there's no company just uses one company software, for example, to automate all of their pieces, right? There's all of these products that have to come together and share data today in the same way that we needed to share, you know, access to software. In the past, integrations were really difficult and now, you know, everyone's got open APIs. It's a very similar thing with data today. And so we are working with our competitors and we're working with, you know, like you said, industry leaders. We have Mik Kersten from Tasktop as part of this as well. We're looking at how we can benefit the companies of the world today, much more efficiently and effectively than we have in the past. So it is a group of people who compete with each other, maybe on a daily basis, but also have the same customers and have the need to help companies today, especially in this economy with the pandemic, right. There's a lot of companies in dire straits right now and we all need to come together as business leaders to help those companies get through this time. And anything that we can do to do that is going to benefit us all in the long run. >> Right. You know, it is really interesting co-opetition, is like you say, most companies have everybody's, you know, a lot of different products and people compete as well as having API connections and having all kinds of interesting relationships. So the lines are not so clean, like they used to be. And as we've seen with DevOps, you know, significant delta in the productivity and the responsiveness and the way software is delivered. So, sounds super exciting. We'll look forward to the event on the 15th. I give you the last word. What are you looking most forward to for the big launch in a couple of weeks? >> I'm really excited for people to give us their feedback on what they think and how this benefits them. And I'm excited to help our customers and help the, you know, the big companies of the world get through these next 18 months. I think we're all in for a bit more of a struggled time, you know, at a difficult time, and anything that we can all do to work together. So I'm looking forward to working with other industry leaders on this as well, and to the benefit of, you know, the global economy. >> Right. Well, great. Well, Laureen, thank you for giving us the one on one on BizOps. Really appreciate it. And best of luck to you and good luck to you and the team on the 15th. >> Thanks so much. >> Alrighty. Thank you. All right, she's Laureen, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music begins)