>>Oh, well, the back to the cubes coverage of ADA bus reinvent, 2021 executive seminar, I'm John ferry hosts of the cube. We've got a great segment here on the modernization. We were ringing in the success with Amazon web services, Vodafone digital in the UK, an example of modern engineering examples using Amazon, the cloud, looking at where we're cloud native is actually changing the game two great guests, Ben Collie, head, head of digital engineering, Vodafone UK, and Maynard Williams, managing director of center. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on the cube and sharing the story. >>Thanks, John. Appreciate it. So >>I gotta, I gotta ask you guys one of the main themes that we've been covering all year and even even pre pandemic, we, we saw the cloud native wave coming pretty hard containers. Great for modernization sets the table. You seeing things like Kubernetes and now serverless changing the game on all aspects of how modernization is happening. And everyone's talking about application modernization shift left all great for business, but you have to, you have to kind of take care of things under the, under the covers a little bit, the infrastructure, making sure the engineering teams are all set. So this has been a top topic. This is kind of what you guys are doing. Can you guys explain to me the needs that Vodafone has, um, that brought about this transformation? >>Yeah, sure. Um, so we we've been on this transformation for around four years, but you're absolutely right. The, uh, the pandemic has been a real catalyst for, for all kinds of organizations like ours around the world. Uh, so we were really driving a digital first agenda for quite a long time. Uh, and that, that came as, as you just said, John, it, it really did start with the, uh, the cloud hosted, uh, and then, uh, and then moving and realizing the difference between that and become native to the, to the cloud and really leveraging the services, uh, like AWS, um, in order to really drive pace, uh, and, and the outcomes that we needed for the business. Uh, we've seen a huge change over the last, uh, purely over the last 18 months, really. Um, our daily traffic, uh, these days is as it was on our highest ever, uh, uh, like an iPhone launch day, for example, um, before the pandemic, is I a daily traffic these days. And so that scalability and flexibility and that leveraging those services has been absolutely fundamental to supporting the, the changing needs and expectations of our customers. >>You know, back in the old days, uh, Maynard, you know, it's oh yeah, black Friday surge, you need the cloud to scale up and be flexible. Agile elastic, you know, scale is definitely now table stakes. And if you're not dealing with scale and some sort of either SRE fashion or whatever, you, you really ain't going to be behind the curve, but the next level that's being discussed is how do you leverage the scale for not just customer experience and business value, but we're talking about system architecture, kind of thinking there's kind of, this is our system design is now a big part of it. Can you talk about how this kind of threads together? Because we always talk about consumer experience, customer experience CX, but now there's a new system was mindset out there. Can you kind of share your vision on that >>Thing that stands out for me is if I look at digital, we've designed it to a point where the scale is just as you say, it's the table stakes, and only for launch with something that two years ago needed to be planned and thought about. And it's now absolutely routine. We think about the business side of it, but a big increase in scale really is seamless. But if I look at the full stack, we're still connected into some of the older backend systems, um, where any production, uh, they were on prime actually tasks. This is on AWS now, which is a big step forward, but when you've got to manage scaling in a way that translates from backend systems that are on premises on prime, and therefore we can't lastingly scale through to the front tab where we have to be able to scale up very seamlessly and balancing that across with, uh, an architecture that supports that level of scale and makes it so seamless on something like, as you say, iPhone launches or back Friday, any product coming out is actually key to the way we've architected that. >>So you're saying that essentially AWS combined with Vodafone worked on this solution that was more of a cloud native solutions that the innovation here, can you just summarize and unpack a little bit of what is the innovation, what problems did you solve together with essentially those and Vodafone? What was the core challenge? Yes. >>I think that the core is actually, how do you get to the point where, um, at the scaling is seamless, where you can move from being on the cloud to cloud native has been, just touched on what the same time you're actually connected into an enterprise state where the production systems are all on prem and don't have that ability to scale in the same fraction. So you can't, for example, push you to load into, uh, an on-prem backend system and, and simply expected to scale in the same fashion. So between our three organizations architecting something that is robust scales, we usable and takes away a load of pieces that actually were quite complex two years ago. And turns them into just routine has been a big step forward. >>And I want to get your reaction to this because, you know, you're, you're the you're on the, on the front line saying, Hey, be more agile at Basel saying, be agile, do different left, take that hill. Um, it's, it's easier said than done. Talk about what goes on when you have to implement and the stakes involved. Again, there's always the old way, new way. Can you just kind of give some color on what's going on? What's your perspective showing? >>And as I just said, that the real benefits and the story behind this was the ability to launch an iPhone. For example, as a event for Vodafone previously was weeks and months of preparation and design and testing and confidence building. And now it really is, it just happens. Uh, and we watched things scale and, and, and then down again, gracefully, um, and really do celebrate the, the another level up, if you like the leveling up of us as an organization, allowing our commercial colleagues to, to launch propositions or to launch campaigns without needing us to be involved anymore, because they're confident, we're all that things will, will flex like that. But you're absolutely right, that, that the changes and the demands of us as a, as a team, but also the, the expectations of our stakeholders, uh, have been changing for quite a long time now. Uh, and we're really excited now to be able to meet them by leveraging the services that we're discussing. >>Yeah. So the guys say said launched the iPhone, no big deal routine, hit the pub. Everyone's happy having a good day. >>Uh, >>Let's get into the solution, how it works. Talk about what's going on with the covers. How does this all work? Can you take us through, what's the state of the art of the, of the solution? Sure. >>Well, uh, as you mentioned earlier, we were very much inclined to serverless these days. So we rolled out fire gate, um, a few, uh, uh, started about 18 months ago. Um, and that really has, um, freed us up in, into all kinds of, um, uh, scalability, uh, measures, but also really about, about reusing and applying this across much more than just the, the engineering or the digital part of Vodafone, where we, where we began. So that's been a really big part of our agenda, uh, and that's, that's informed all kinds of things, the ability to scale and flex like that, and the architecture beneath us, um, and the containerization and orchestration that that goes along with that has really enabled us to, um, to flex that, uh, ability to, to reuse it across other areas. And because of that, now it's driven our hiring policy or tooling and, uh, technical, uh, our procedural approaches, uh, it all now leverages that ability to move a patient, to be able to scale, uh, not just in, um, uh, infrastructure or ability to serve customers, but in ability to deliver for the business commercially as well. Uh, and this is all now informed on our direction. I think, as an organization, >>It's interesting, you mentioned far you far gate than a trigger of events happens. People get excited, opens up new doors of opportunities as a chain reaction from that. Um, talk about the impact to the staff and the operations, because you almost, it's motivating at some level you get new things happening, but you're actually making things go better and faster, cheaper. >>Yeah. Uh, well, the, the impact is one, uh, because we're on a journey at Vodafone of this transformation, really becoming a technology business first and foremost, rather than a telco classically like our competitors, uh, we're able to really drive cultural change as well. So the impact on our people is a really, it's been particularly engaging. One with, we've also been part of, uh, a real recruitment drive. We've just announced 7,000 new, uh, roles, uh, joining our team across Europe and that these are engineering roles, um, driving more of the same, uh, behaviors and principles of a modern software engineering business like ours. Uh, and that really is fueled by our, our ability to experiment and try, but become cloud native and, and, uh, employ these services in the way that they're designed to be >>Maynard. I'd like to get your take on this and, and, and shift to a topic around how, what this all means. Um, if you zoom out and you say, okay, with the pandemic, it's become a mobile virtual hybrid. Now world around work play, all those lines are kind of blurring. It's not as clean as it used to be. Oh, the network segmented over here. This is over here. These legacy systems were built around the notion of things when nicely segmented. Um, now you have this whole kind of mashup, if you will, of how you just want to work, right. There's mobilization is a huge thing. So access identity, these are things that we're all kind of set up nicely before the pandemic, or at least, you know, not as, uh, stable, maybe not scalable, but what's your take on this? What's the big picture what's all happening. >>I think, I mean, the pandemic has accelerated a set of changes that were already happening anyway. And I'd say the other particles is under the covers. A lot of the work's been done has been to create the microservices that stitch together to produce those journeys, but, you know, running the containers. And so that, that opens up an omni-channel future that starts to move away from saying actually businesses are organized around the environment in which they're serving. Is it a retail store? Is it, is it online that additional and so on, and actually into much more of a space where you're building the best journeys and those journeys come and are served through digital or through a call center or through a store and so on. And that makes a huge difference because the focus on improving the customer's experience has been enormous. And I think that's one of the other parts that come out of the whole cloud native setup. >>And the ability to experiment has been iteratively and endlessly improving the experience for the customer. And that's, that's a, that's a massive step forward. So we can talk about the fact that we deploy a huge number of times more frequently than we did even a year ago, uh, or the, you know, our quality has improved by a massive percentage and so on. And I think the thing that's really interesting is the improvement in the experience and the endless improvement and iteration of that, because we can make lots and lots of small changes and do every day. That's a big one, >>You know, what's interesting Ben, and let's get your reaction on this. And if you don't mind to just add a little color to this, this is just another example of reports that we've been talking with folks on where it's not about just replatforming to the cloud. It's refactoring the business, uh, with, with the engineering, the modernization. And so there's two things that go on one, you see the efficiencies and new doors open up new things are happening. People are getting excited, good, some good Mo morale boosting things are becoming clear, but then there's actually new business, new business value being created or new propositions engineering propositions. Can you share from a digital standpoint, because this seems to be the new role of the digital person, whether it's engineering or on the business side, make things run faster, cheaper, and better, and then create new opportunities, new propositions, what's your >>Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's fundamentally around pace of delivery. Uh, being able to, as, as may not says, uh, moving from a world, uh, two or three years ago where we were deploying once every two or three months, uh, this is a website once every two or three months where we were, uh, to now it's happening all the time every day. Uh, it's, it's, it's a skill that we've given us as an organization that we couldn't have leveraged before. And what we're able to do with that now is experiment our way and iterate our way to new value streams, as you say, but also trial and error. What we already know, uh, or expects to be true with our customers much, much more easily and much, much more frequently, very little a barrier to production or friction between us and the customer these days, and the almost instant response and feedback we get from customers. Um, we, we learn constantly about because of that. And it's, uh, it's become much less of a stab in the dark with large business cases where they work well, they worked and are much more experimental initiative. Uh, we, most of the propositions we know about, but also to the experiments, um, and unknowns in our future. Um, that also now unlocked, >>That's a great point. You mentioned about the whole timing of, you know, the old way, months, weeks, just for website stuff, uh, Maynard. And if you guys can share this new world order is actually pretty exciting, but also daunting if you're not like in the water, so to speak, right? So, you know, some people are actually, you know, putting their toe in the water, they're experimenting, but it's a game changer. I mean, a significant step up of value. What's your advice about solutions and they're not easy. I mean, you just got to get your hands around the sensor. You guys have been doing a lot more of these projects is seeing more and more of these, these kinds of partnerships, uh, and the value is there. Can you guys share your, your, uh, opinion and advice to folks out there watching saying, how do I do this and is it going to be worth it? Is that bridge to the future there? >>I mean, I think there's a mechanical piece. How do I enable this? And we can talk about dev ops and moving to cloud native, and actually some of the, some of the process side of as an organization, how do I get really comfortable with deploying very frequently and it being low risk and routine. And so the other part for me, which we sort of haven't touched on is as much as we talk about experimentation, it's about the data and the analytics and the knowledge that we create of that. So the, the, the small changes we're making are highly scientific. And when we think about actually understanding how we're optimizing experiences, that's all about the whole set of data points that I'm pinning up. And so I'll take two parts is know the, the journey we've been on here is, is about enablement. It's about moving the architecture. It's about moving the ways of working so that a lot of things that were hard or required thinking about two years ago on that quality team. But the other part of it is understanding the data and having the analytics capability and being able to make a very scientific experiment where you can see the result in the day-to-day >>Ben, what's your reaction advice to folks watching as they modernize exciting, challenging. It's a lot of hard work, but what's it look, it's the end game, >>All of those things, yes. I'd say it's, um, more than anything, it's a necessity these days we have to embark on this journey. It is, it is daunting. And, and of course, a lot of large organizations like ours, we were successful for doing things in a particular way, uh, have built up a lot of, uh, protection mechanisms for doing, for making sure we protect that. And so to come at it from a new angle is, is obviously daunting. And it's very challenging as well. There is an immune system in all of our organizations that is real, but I'll deal with it. Um, but the, the real, um, success behind, uh, the real, I think the reasons behind a lot of our success has been beat by being able to quickly prove value to quickly prove that outcomes are deliverable and achievable. Um, and then to build on those and iterate on it. And as, as I said, it's, it's about being able to move at pace for us in Vodafone. It's about leveraging our scale. We're a huge organization. Um, and we're, we're now coming together as one to really make sure that we do just lean on that scale more than we have them. Yeah, that's really about iterating, as I said, and, and, um, finding things that work, keep doing it, finding things that hold you back and get rid of them as quickly as you can, uh, is what I would say for us. >>It's interesting. You mentioned the scale. The thing about the cloud is when I hear the common pattern is it takes advantage of the strengths of your environment. You know, so every environment is a bit different, but you guys have the scale. I have to ask you while you're here. What are some of the anecdotal comments that kind of, you hear from folks that make you happy? When about the results? I think saying, Hey man, I'm not even seeing this anymore, or, wow. This is faster. What's some of the sound bites that you guys take as proof points of the success of this project. >>Yeah. It's, uh, I'd say it's mainly an R there's two things I would say, uh, the ability to rely less on it delivery if you like. So empowering our commercial business to make changes for themselves in a safe and secure manner. So providing these self-service capabilities, we've started to see a real pace about our commercial business, as well as our technology business. Uh, but also the, the time it takes to get things out is probably one of the biggest, uh, really tangible results and outcomes for us at the moment. Um, just the sheer amount of things we can release to production, uh, in, in sorts of short space, space of time really does bring to life, our ability to now trial and error, to AB test a Canary deploy. Things like that is really, um, it's been a real superpower for our, um, transformation, I think yes. >>Kind of kidding about can't make time to go to the pub, but in reality, it's free time freeing up people from doing those tasks that were slower shifting that value. >>Yeah. Whereas as you mentioned, Johnny, it really is much more than a technical journey. This is a cultural one as well for a lot of organizations and, um, by being more connected, by being more connected to the outcomes or the value that you add into production, uh, it really does drive a new culture and engagement across our teams. You know, if it's six months between writing a line of code and seeing it in production by up no sense of ownership or pride in what I've done there, but if I can deploy code immediately see an impact good or bad, um, then, uh, I really do feel connected to the outcomes and the value that I'm driving to, to the business and to our customers. So there really is a great cultural, >>Yeah. I remember Andy Jassy last year when he was a sea of AWS on stage and talked about that dynamic of the teamwork, people rowing in the right direction. Um, feeling part of it may know this is a cultural shift on how companies do business. I know center I've covered probably a dozen or so killer projects that have just been awesomely new and kind of different, but successful built on the cloud. So a lot of replatforming refactoring you're in the front lines, working with, uh, companies that essentially what's the pattern that you see that's that's happening right now. What's the, what's your view of the current market? >>Um, I mean, I think there's a huge shift to this, that this journey too has been part of the move from being on the cloud to being proud nature. I'm really getting that value because there's a, um, a kind of, almost a example. I see there's a light bulb moment where ownership of what you put in production means that you move away from a model of we change code because either the business tell us too, because they have a functional requirement or because something's broken. When we get into the model of that, I want to improve the thing that I feel ownership of. That's not leave. And you suddenly see how much difference that makes to the experience of it, the quality of it, the stability, all of those things improving. And so if, if I look more generally that cultural shift is it is an evolution that organizations go through and it starts with actually delivering it in a more agile way. At some large scale, you see agility moving up into kind of business agility and starting to affect things like budgeting cycles and the kind of corporate functions. If you like that tend to sit around, uh, you know, supporting Pete pieces of delivery. And there's a lot more of that happening at the moment, a load with more organizations pushing into being properly cloud native and transforming rather than the kind of first wave, which was the shift onto the cloud. Now it's actually, that's really leveraged what we've got with the, >>Yeah. And you guys essentially have been riding on the wave of AWS and the cloud for many, many years. We've been covering it. Ben great success story. Thanks for coming on the cube, a head of digital engineering, Vodafone UK, great example of modern engineering at work using AWS in Europe. Uh, thanks for coming on the Cuban, sharing your story. Maynor thank you for also coming on and the work you're doing at Accenture and AWS. Thank you. Thanks John. The cube coverage of AWS reinvent 2021 executive summit. I'm John furry, your host. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS Reinvent 2021 Executive Summit. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've got a great segment here on the modernization, where we're ringing in the success with Amazon Web Services and Vodafone Digital in the UK. An example of modern engineering, examples using Amazon, the cloud. Looking at where cloud-native is actually changing the game. We got two great guests, Ben Connolly, Head of Digital Engineering at Vodafone UK, and Maynard Williams, Managing Director of Accenture. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on theCUBE and sharing the story. >> Thanks John, appreciate the invite. >> So I got to ask you guys, one of the main themes that we've been covering all year, and even pre-pandemic, we saw the cloud-native wave coming pretty hard. Containers, great for modernization, sets the table. You seeing things like Kubernetes, and now Serverless changing the game on all aspects of how modernization is happening. And everyone's talking about application modernization, shift left, all great for business, but you have to kind of take care of things under the covers a little bit. The infrastructure, making sure the engineering teams are all set. So this has been a top topic. This is kind of what you guys are doing. Can you guys explain to me the needs that Vodafone has that brought about this transformation? >> Yeah, sure. So we we've been on this transformation program for years, but you're absolutely right. The pandemic has been a real catalyst for all kinds of organizations like ours around the world. So we were really driving digital first agenda for quite a long time. And that that came as you just said John, it really did start with the cloud hosted and then moving and realizing the difference between that and become native to the cloud and really leveraging the services like AWS in order to really drive pace and the outcomes that we needed for the business. We've seen a huge change purely over the last 18 months really. Our daily traffic these days is as it was on our highest ever like an iPhone launch day, for example, before the pandemic is daily traffic these days. And so that scalability and flexibility and that leveraging those services has been absolutely fundamental to supporting the changing needs and expectations of our customers. >> You know, back in the old days, Maynard oh yeah, Black Friday surge, you need the cloud to scale up and be flexible, agile, elastic. The scale is definitely now table stakes. And if you're not dealing with scale and some sort of either SRE fashion or whatever, you're really going to be behind the curve. But the next level that's being discussed is how do you leverage the scale for not just customer experience and business value but we're talking about system architecture, kind of thinking there's going to, this is our system design is now a big part of it. Can you talk about how this kind of threads together? Because we always talk about consumer experience, customer experience CX, but now there's a new systems mindset out there. Can you kind of share your vision on that. >> Yeah, I think the thing that stands out for me is if I look at digital, we've designed it to a point where the scale is just as you say, it's the table stakes. And iPhone launch was something that two years ago needed to be planned and thought about. And it's now absolutely routine. We think about the business side of it but a big increase in scale really is seamless. But if I look at the full stack, we're still connected into some of the older backend systems where we're in production they're on prime actually tests is on AWS now, which is a big step forward, but when you've got to manage scaling in a way that translates from backend systems that are on-premises or on-prem, and therefore we can't elastically scale through to the front tab where we have to be able to scale up very seamlessly and balancing that across with an architecture that supports that level of scale and makes it so seamless on something like, as you say, iPhone launches or Black Friday or any product coming out is actually key to the way we've architected that. >> So you saying that essentially AWS combined with Vodafone worked on this solution that was more of a cloud native solutions. Is that the innovation? Can you just summarize and unpack a little bit, what is the innovation? What problems did you solve together with Accenture and Vodafone? What was the core challenge? >> Yes well, I think that the core is actually, how do you get to the point where the scaling is seamless, where you can move from being on the cloud to cloud native, as Ben just touched on, when at the same time you're actually connected into an enterprise state where the production systems are all on-prem and don't have that ability to scale in the same fashion. So you can't, for example, push you to load into an on-prem backend system and simply expected to scale in the same fashion. So between our three organizations, architecting something that is robust scales, reusable and takes away a load of pieces that actually were quite complex two years ago and turns them into just routine has been a big step forward. >> And I want to get your reaction to this because you're on the front line saying, hey, be more agile, the boss that says, be agile, do different left, take that hill. It's easier said than done. Talk about what goes on when you have to implement and the stakes involved. Again, there's always the old way, new way. Could you just kind of give some color on what's going on? What's your perspective? >> Sure, and Maynard just said that the real benefits and the story behind this was the ability to launch an iPhone For example, as a non event for Vodafone previously was weeks and months of preparation and design and testing and confidence building. And now it really is, it just happens. And we watched things scale and then down again gracefully and really do celebrate the level up if you like, the leveling up of us as an organization, allowing our commercial colleagues to launch propositions or to launch campaigns without needing us to be involved anymore, because they're confident, we're all confident that things will flex like that. But you're absolutely right that the changes and the demands of us as a team, but also the expectations of our stakeholders have been changing for quite a long time now. And we're really excited now to be able to meet them by leveraging the services that we're discussing it. >> Yeah, so the guy said launched the iPhone, no big deal routine, hit the pub, everyone's happy. Having a good day. Let's get into the solution, how it works. Talk about what's going on under the covers. How does this all work? Can you take us through what's the state of the art of the of the solution? >> Sure. Well as you mentioned earlier, we were very much inclined to Serverless these days. So we rolled out fire gate a few, it started about 18 months ago and that really has freed us up into all kinds of scalability measures but also really about reusing and applying this across much more than just the engineering or the digital part of Vodafone where we began. So that's been a really big part of our agenda and that's informed all kinds of things. The ability to scale and flex like that and the architecture beneath us and the containerization and orchestration that goes along with that has really enabled us to flex that ability to reuse it across other areas. And because of that now it's driven our hiring policy, our tooling and technical, our procedural approaches, and it all now leverages that ability to move a pace and to be able to scale, not just in infrastructure or ability to serve customers, but in ability to deliver for the business commercially as well. And this is all now informed on our direction I think, as an organization. >> It's interesting, you mentioned you far gate then a trigger of events happens. People get excited, opens up new doors of opportunities, there's a chain reaction from that. Talk about the impact to the staff in the operations because you almost it's motivating. At some level, you got new things happening but you're actually making things go better and faster, cheaper. >> Yeah, well, the impact is one because we're on a journey at Vodafone of this transformation really becoming a technology business first and foremost, rather than a telco classically like our competitors. We're able to really drive cultural change as well. So the impact on our people is a really, it's been a particularly engaging one, we've also been part of a real recruitment drive. We've just announced 7,000 new roles joining our team across Europe. And these are engineering roles driving more of the same behaviors and principles of a modern software engineering business like ours. And that really is fueled by our ability to experiment and try but become cloud native and employ these services in the way that they're designed to be. >> Maynard, I'd like to get your take on this and shift to a topic around what this all means. You zoom out and you say, okay, with the pandemic, it's become a mobile virtual hybrid now world around work play, all those lines are kind of blurring. It's not as clean as it used to be. Oh, the network segmented over here, this is over here, these legacy systems were built around the notion of things were nicely segmented. Now you have this whole kind of mashup if you will, of how you just want to work, right? There's mobilization is a huge thing. So access, identity, these are things that we're all kind of set up nicely before the pandemic, or at least not as a stable maybe not scalable. But what's your take on this? What's the big picture? What's all happening? >> I think, I mean, the pandemic has accelerated a set of changes that were already happening anyway. And I'd say the other part of this is under the covers. A lot of the work has been to create the microservices that stitch together to produce those journeys that run in the containers and so that opens up an Omni-channel feature that starts to move away from saying actually, businesses are organized around the environment in which they're serving. Is it a retail store? Is it online, additional and so on? And actually into much more of a space where you're building the best journeys and those journeys can and are served through digital or through a call center or through a store and so on. And that makes a huge difference because the focus on improving the customer's experience has been enormous. And I think that's one of the other parts that come out of the whole cloud native setup and the ability to experiment has been intuitively and endlessly improving the experience for the customer. And that's a massive step forward. So we can talk about the fact that we deploy a huge number of times more frequently than we did even a year ago or that our quality is improved by a massive percentage and so on. And I think the thing that's really interesting is the improvement in the experience and the endless improvement and iteration of that because we can make lots and lots of small changes and do every day. That's a big step forward. >> You know, what's interesting, Ben and let's get your reaction on this and if you don't mind to just add a little color to this. This is just another example of reports that we've been talking with folks on where it's not about just re-platforming to the cloud. It's refactoring the business with the engineering, the modernization. And so there's two things that go on. One, you see the efficiencies, new doors open up, new things are happening, people are getting excited, get some good morale boost, things are becoming clear, but then this actually new business value being created or new propositions, engineering propositions. Can you share from a digital standpoint because this seems to be the new role of the digital person, whether it's engineering or on the business side, make things run faster, cheaper and better and then create new opportunities, new propositions. What's your reaction? >> Yeah, it's fundamentally around pace of delivery. Being able to, as Maynard says, moving from a world two or three years ago where we were deploying once every two or three months. This is a website once every two or three months, it's where we were. And so now it's happening all the time every day. It's a skill that we've given us as an organization that we couldn't have leveraged before. And what we're able to do with that now is experiment our way and iterate our way to new value streams, as you say, but also to trial and error what we already know or expect to be true with our customers much, much more easily and much, much more frequently. Very little a barrier to production or friction between us and the customer these days and the almost instant response and feedback we get from customers, we learn constantly because of that and it's become much less of a stab in the dark with large business cases where they work well, they work to now much more experimental initiative. That way both to the propositions we know about but also to the experiments and unknowns in our future that also now unlocked for us. >> That's a great point you mentioned about the whole timing of, the old way, months, weeks, just for website stuff. Maynard, if you guys can share this new world order is actually pretty exciting but also daunting if you're not like in the water, so to speak. So some people are actually putting their toe in the water, they're experimenting but it's a game changer. I mean, a significant step up of value. What's your advice about solutions? And they're not easy. I mean, you just got to get your hands around Accenture. You guys have been doing a lot more of these projects and seeing more and more of these kinds of partnerships and the value is there. Can you guys share your opinion and advice to folks out there watching saying, how do I do this and is it going to be worth it? Is that bridge to the future there? >> I mean, I think there's a mechanical piece. How do I enable this? We could talk about DevOps and moving to cloud native and actually some of the process side of as an organization, how do I get really comfortable with deploying very frequently and it being low risk and routine and so on. The other part for me, which we sort of haven't touched on is as much as we talk about experimentation, it's about the data and the analytics and the knowledge that we create out of that. So the small changes we're making are highly scientific. And when we think about actually understanding how we're optimizing experiences, that's all about a whole set of data points that underpin it. And so I'd say two parts. It's the journey we've been on here is about enablement. It's about moving the architecture. It's about moving the ways of working so that a lot of things that were hard or required thinking about two years ago on that are routine but the other part of it is understanding the data and having the analytics capability and being able to make a very scientific experiment where you can see the result in the day to day. >> Ben, what's your reaction advice to folks watching as they modernize exciting, challenging. It's a lot of hard work, but what is its the end game? >> All of those things, yes. I'd say it's more than anything, it's a necessity these days we have to embark on this journey and it is daunting. And of course, a lot of large organizations like ours, we were successful for doing things in a particular way and built up a lot of protection mechanisms for making sure we protect that. And so to come at it from a new angle is obviously daunting. And it's very challenging as well. There is an immune system in all of our organizations it is real and we will all deal with it. But the success behind, I think the real reasons behind a lot of our success has been by being able to quickly prove value, to quickly prove that outcomes are deliverable and achievable. And then to build on those and iterate on it. And as I said, it's about being able to move at pace. For us in Vodafone it's about leveraging our scale. We're a huge organization, and we're now coming together as one to really make sure that we do lean on that scale more than we have them. We're really about iterating, as I said and finding things that work, keep doing it, finding things that hold you back and get rid of them as quickly as you can is what I would say for us. >> It's interesting you mentioned the scale. The thing about the cloud is when I hear the common pattern is it takes advantage of the strengths of your environment. So every environment's a bit different but you guys have the scale. I have to ask you while you're here. What are some of the anecdotal comments that kind of you hear from folks that make you happy, what about the results? I think saying, hey man, I'm not even seeing this anymore or wow this is faster. What's some of the sound bites that you guys take as proof points of the success of this project. >> Yeah, I'd say it's mainly there's two things I would say, the ability to rely less on IT delivery if you like. So empowering our commercial business to make changes for themselves in a safe and secure manner. So providing these self-service capabilities, we've started to see a real pace about our commercial business, as well as our technology business. But also the time it takes to get things out is probably one of the biggest, really tangible results and outcomes for us at the moment. Just the sheer amount of things we can release to production in sorts of short space of time really does bring to life our ability to now trial and error, to AB test Canary deploy, things like that is really, it's been a real superpower for our transformation. >> Yeah, kind of kidding about having time to go to the pub but in reality, it's free time freeing up people from doing those tasks that were slower and shifting that value. >> Yeah, as you mentioned John, it really is much more than a technical journey. This is a cultural one as well for a lot of organizations. And by being more connected to the outcomes or the value that you add into production, it really does drive a new culture and engagement across our teams. If it's six months between rising line of code and seeing it in production, I have no sense of ownership or pride in what I've done there, but if I can deploy code immediately see an impact good or bad, then I really do feel connected to the outcomes and the value that I'm driving to the business and to our customers. So there really is a great cultural journey as well. >> Yeah, I remember Andy Jassy last year when he was the CEO of AWS on the stage and talked about that dynamic of the team where people run in the right direction, feeling part of it. Maynard, this is a cultural shift on how companies do business. I know Accenture have covered probably a dozen or so killer projects that have just been awesomely new and kind of different but a successful built on the cloud. So a lot of re-platforming refactoring. You're in the front lines working with companies at Accenture. What's the pattern that you see that's happening right now? What's your view of the current market? >> I mean, I think there's a huge shift in this journey too has bankrupted the move from being on the cloud to being cloud native. I'm really getting that value because there's a kind of almost example I see, there's a light bulb moment where ownership of what you put in production means that you move away from a model of we change code because either the business tell us to cause they have a functional requirement or because something's broken when we get into the model of but I want to improve the thing that I feel ownership of that's not alive. And you suddenly see how much difference that makes to the experience of it, the quality of it, the stability, all of those things improving. And so if I look more generally that cultural shift is an evolution that organizations go through and it starts with actually delivering it in a more agile way. At some large scale, you see agility moving up into that kind of business agility and starting to affect things like budgeting cycles and the kind of corporate functions if you like, that tend to sit around supporting peak pieces of delivery. And there's a lot more of that happening at the moment, aligned with more organizations pushing into being properly cloud native and transforming rather than the kind of first wave which was the shift onto the cloud. Now it's actually, that's really leveraged what we've got with the cloud. >> Yeah and you guys essentially have been riding on the wave of AWS and the Cloud for many, many years we've been covering it. Ben great success story. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, a head of Digital Engineering, Vodafone UK. Great example of modern engineering at work using AWS in Europe. Thanks for coming on theCUBE sharing your story. Maynard, thank you for also coming on and the work you're doing at Accenture and AWS, thank you. >> Thanks John, great to be here. >> It's theCUBE coverage of AWS Reinvent 2021 Executive Summit, I'm John Furrier your host, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>Live from Washington, D C it's the cube covering Boomi world 19 how to bide booming. >>Welcome to the cube at Lisa Martin at Boomi world 19 in Washington DC and with John furrier and John and I are pleased to welcome to the cube Jason Maynard, the SVP of global field operations from NetSuite. Jason, welcome. Thanks for having me. It's great to be in D C and on the cube. It is. We were just talking about baseball, so we'll have to park that for a second and talk about some other sexy stuff besides baseball, ERP. So nets we, I saw you on stage this morning. You guys have been a partner of the first Alliance partner with Boomi for about 12 years. Thousands of joint customers. candy.com is one of them. Yep. They're going to be on later today. So I'm excited to have my afternoon sugar rush. Make sure he brings a big bag. You got it. So talk to us about you guys. We're also, I noticed Boomie's 2019 Alliance partner of the year. Lots of innovations going on. Give our audience a little bit of an overview of what NetSuite is doing with Boomi. >>Great. So Boomi is, has been one of our longest partners. I said I think we, we first inked the partnership in 2007 so it goes back 12, 13 years. Um, we, we, when we sell ERP, you always end up having to connect to a legacy on prem system, right? Or you may have to connect to new marketplaces to sell and so there's always need for integration. And so from day one, Boomi wanted to really kind of push the envelope work with cloud players. You know, when we started NetSuite 20 years ago, it was kinda crazy to put business applications on the internet and they'd been there from day one with us really on this journey. And so they've been a great partner to sort of help all those customers migrate and move their business to the cloud. >> You guys had success with Boomi on the customer front. >>Can you unpack that a little bit? Because the customer equation around data is interesting. You guys have turned this into an opportunity with nets. We talk about how that works. Yeah, I mean look EV every customer needs to get more insight out of their data. And you know, the ERP system is one of the major hubs in any organization, right? You've got a handful of system of records, right? And core financials is one of the main systems of record and inevitably every customer will have probably 1520 legacy data sources, right? That are going to be necessary for an ERP. And so for us, working with Boomi across not just the U S but across the globe with a lot of different international customers, it's a natural fit because we're not obviously going to be connecting with all of the systems that they're touching today. It brings a lot more value of data into NetSuite, which obviously then helps our customer out. >>So you guys were at, you said an early partner of Boomi back in 2007 when they were founded. We got to speak with Rick Nucci yesterday. So one of the interesting things that we talk about, and John even pointed out yesterday is you know, they took a big bet, Boomi dead way back then with building this architecture that's pretty unique to this day. This single instance, multi-tenant cloud application. Take us back to, because obviously NetSuite's been around longer, you a lot of choice, there are more iPods vendors out there. What is it about the way that Boomi is architected that is enabling your customers to achieve so much success but also really that you buy saw back in Oh seven I think this is something that's going to be a real big opportunity for NetSuite. >>You know, it's, it's, it's been an interesting ride because if you go back even to Oh seven and didn't even maybe eight or nine years ago, it was not a foregone conclusion with a lot of technology vendors that the world was going to shift to the cloud. Yeah, right. There were a lot of server huggers out there. There still are. They still want to hug this, they still want to hug the machine. Right. And so it's important, I think that we work with partners who have the same true North in terms of where we think that the technology is going. And I think that alignment, which is, you know, we're 100% in the cloud, always have been, always will be. Boomi shared that vision early on. So it was easier to make a bet then right, with a vendor who was going to have that commitment. >>And so that's been, to their credit, the vision that they've had for obviously years now. And I think that's what's helped them grow so quickly. And one of the things that you observed obviously is that the customers have choices, but the world software's changing, right? I mean cloud has changed the software development life cycle. I mean just in the past decade alone, the business of change, you still going to have the system of records. Okay. But with containers and Kubernetes and some of these cloud native opportunities, there's more flexibility in how people are deploying legacy and or core apps. Yeah. So they're not getting thrown away as everyone had predicted. So, I mean, there was some funded saying, well, everyone's going to move to the cloud and not really. Yeah, well I look at it, it's a good point because there's no packaged applications. They're not the entirety of the application market as you know. >>Right? Custom application development will never go away. You will always have, you know, things that are custom. People build apps on NetSuite, right? Things that are very close to ERP you'll build on the NetSuite platform. But there are things that are not, you know, native to our platform that need to connect to NetSuite. And there are customers that we share who are, have legacy COBOL applications for example. Right? And they may need to put a wrapper around that and get certain forms into NetSuite. So it really does run the gamut. And so it'll never be one thing, right? We just sort of, in the technology industry, we never go from, you know, 100 to zero in terms of what's deployed in the legacy. We sort of layer in compost technology. And I think that's what's happening. And so, you know, we'll replace certain systems. We go in and we pretty much always replace a an on prem system but there are a lot of on-prem technologies that a will never, never go away. >> I was digging around about Boomi and you guys net suite looking at some of the use cases. One thing that caught my eye was, you know, the growth startup for instance, might be born in the cloud. Yup. Never have an it department. Um, they have kind of a um, hacked together system of record at HR and ERP kind of things, but at some point they've got to grow and they hit a growth spurt and they just become rapid growth. Eventually goes public. You guys have had good success with Boomi in these kinds of startups. It's pretty normal. You've seen this before. Can you talk about that dynamic because at some point people got to start establishing formal, is this the systems applications? You're gonna need payroll, you're gonna need HR. I mean this is blocking and tackling. You guys have been successful there. >> Well, you know, we, we like to think about we can be the first system that you'll ever need and hopefully we'll be the last system that you'll ever need. Right? And what ends up happening is we've architected NetSuite to let you start small and then add more functionality as you grow. So you may start with just basic financials. You may add order management, move into full fledged ERP, maybe you're going to use our HR system down the road. And so we kind of, we kind of stairway a customer through their journey. Boomi does the same thing. Maybe you start with two connectors, right? You're just connecting two basic applications and, and that's sweet. And then you evolve into something more sophisticated, right? Where as you saw today and some of the technology demos where, you know, they're tapping into all sorts of different systems that are not even ERP or CRM, it's, you know, IOT and just all sorts of different insights that they can bring from the different technologies. >>Better together message is legit and this works. Yeah. You know, we look at, technology is all about coopertition these days, right? Is every vendor, right? In some way we overlap, you know, Boomie's owned by Dell, NetSuite's owned by Oracle, right? We're, we're all sort of inner inner locked in one way or another. But ultimately we have to work together because we share so many customers and so customers don't have the patience and nor should they for any of the sort of the, the vendor warfare. And I think that's the cool thing that's evolved with technology standards. It's easy for us to work together and we have to do it and we want to do it because it's what's the right thing for the customer. >>Let's talk about net suite as a launching pad for a lot of tech IPOs in the last few years. Give us your perspectives on what you guys started to recognize as a lot of these tech companies have kind of, that's why it just seems to me like net suite has been this sort of launchpad for that. Talk to us about what you've achieved there. >>Yeah, no, it's, we're, we're really humbled by the fact that more companies go, Poe tech companies go public on NetSuite than frankly you need any other ERP system. Um, you know, we help invent the industry. Early on, 20 years ago, Evan Goldberg and Larry had the famous four minute phone call to, you know, kind of crazily idea to put business apps on the web. Um, and so we've been, you know, at the forefront of this, but it's not just technology. It's, you know, we, we're a subscription business right from day one. Like we didn't sell a license with maintenance. We sold a subscription. So I think a lot of customers look at us and say, okay, they've been through the journey that we have. You know, we went public 12 years ago, you know, we past $1 billion in sales, you know, we got acquired. So the journey that we've been on, most of our customers are going to be on that journey in one form or another. >>We're going to, we've made acquisitions. Our customers make acquisitions, right? So we tried it and this was sort of the genius of what Evan and the team built is a system that can handle any business model. So whether you're selling time as a service, whether you're selling time or you're selling a subscription, you're selling a widget, maybe you're going to sell a widget as a service in the future. We can kind of handle any of the business models and most of the IPS are innovative companies that innovate not just with what they sell, but in how they sell it. >> Show about some stories from the field that you've seen out there. Anecdotally, share some turn situation. What are customers going through right now? Enterprises as they go through their journeys, they realize cloud's there. They got some stuff on premise is going to keep there. >>There's obviously certain reasons you're gonna run payroll in the cloud. You're going to have to have multitenancy is allows it news cases and clouds, not that straightforward. When you start thinking about having an enterprise and the hybrid mode of operations, what are some of the customers feeling? What's a, what's the mindset? What's their architecture look like? What are some of the examples? Can you share? Yeah. You know, I'd say three things come to mind. So first off, it's this business model innovation, right? The, the on prem systems tend to lock you into a model, right? And there's nothing, and when they were built, they were innovative 1520, 30 years ago. Most companies, business models have outgrown that legacy system. So they need to move off that to enable some new thing that they want to do. So that's a big driver. I think the other thing is, is globalization is here to stay. >>Um, you know, whether you're in the United States or you're in the UK or you're in Asia, right? We're one interconnected global economy. And so you may, you know, source from Asia, you may design in California, you may do nearshore assembly in Mexico and then you do omni-channel distribution. So you have to be global. And I would say the thing that's changed in the last 10 years is companies are being global from day one. It's not just something you add on five, seven, eight years down the road. You see companies designed for being global. And that I think those two things, business model, innovation global are our big catalyst right now. I mean we had, Oh one more thing real quick. So we have a Cuba alumni set on the cube data's the new software. Yeah. So if you've got a global business, data's critical as the data needs to be acted upon, you've got policy, you got regulations, regulatory issues, personal privacy stuff, company policy. >>As you have this global layer of data, making it available, addressable across multiple systems is a huge task. What's your view on that? Well it's, it's, it's an interesting question cause we think of it and kind of three pillars. It's we give you visibility, we give you control and then we give you the agility, right? So you've got to, first off, you've got to have visibility into the data, right? You need to know what's happening. Like how much did we sell in the Australian subsidiary yesterday, right? You need to have controls. If your CFO, you need to have global financial controls. You may have sold a lot in Australia. You've got to make sure you're spending too much. Right? How do you manage that? And then ultimately the agility is how do you make a decision on that? Right. And so that's those three things I think all play into it. >>And how does the consumerization effect impact it? Visibility, control, agility. Because as consumers we have this expectation whether you know in our personal lives we can get anything that we want within a couple of clicks. So when you're talking to a tech, whether it's a young tech company or even not a tech company like candy.com which is seems like a mixture. You and I were talking before of a number of different industries, all, all in one. How does, has NetSuite evolved to enable that consumer to go from their personal life to being able to interact with ERP next, struck the value from it in the ways that they want? Anywhere, anytime. >>Let's, let's be honest, for a second, ERP kinda got a dirty reputation. You know, in the nineties nobody loved their ERP implementations. Books had been written on this, right? ERP was like, it was like going like a bad trip to the dentist office in the 90s and that was sort of the catalyst for our company. But that's not enough just to be in the cloud. It's you have to make your user experience consumer grade, right? We always talk about enterprise grade. It's all the, reliability, scalability, all that kind of stuff. That's sort of a given, like you have to do that, but I think you have to, you have to adopt the consumer grade. So we spent a lot of time and we're doing a lot more and we're going to be rolling out some new stuff around user interface and just how easy is it to have a dashboard on your phone so that you can run your business from your smartphone versus actually having to be tethered to the desktop because we're all mobile, we're all traveling. You're a business owner, you're a CFO, you're CEO. You need to be connected. Maybe you're too connected. Maybe that's part, maybe we have screen-time problems. We do business. If we, if we can give our customers Screentime addiction to watch their business in real time, I guess that's a good thing. Right? And so we want to be able to make sure that they can have all that insight at their fingertips, whether they're in the office or at the beach. >>And speaking of insight, talk to us about brain yard. What that is, why you developed it and what it's enabling. >>Yeah. Thank you. That's like my, I was hoping you were gonna ask me. It's my secret, but not so secret anymore. Pet project. So one of the things being in the cloud, we have 18,000 customers, right? We have a single instance of NetSuite and so we've had the unique seat at the table to see all of these different companies grow in all these different industries. We evolved into selling by industry. So we have a retail version of software version of manufacturing, nonprofit, 1213 different industries. What we had in that is we had all these insights by industry. What is the right DSO number for a software company, right? What is the thing that a nonprofit needs to look at? And so we had trapped inside of NetSuite, all these brains sitting in all this information and PowerPoint and word docs and just everywhere. And so we decided to crack the hood open and literally open source that information and put it on the website. >>And so there's a subtle message here is that we have to do more than just sell bits. We, we're ultimately selling customer success or a business outcome, whatever you want to call it. So we need to transfer that knowledge to our customers so they can run their business better. So it's our investment back into the customer saying, Hey, you know what, if you're a software company and your DSO is at this level, you know, best in class is actually, you know, five days lower on a day sale, outstanding. How do you get your business to close that gap? And that's where we can really add value comms. People love comparables and best practices. You're essentially taking that heavy lifting work. It's giving it up there. It's benchmarking, it's analysis. You know, I was a former wall street analyst, so this one's near and dear to my heart, which is comparison, you know, how is this company doing versus that company? >>And so we have lots of data, um, that we've gleaned over the years. Lots of insights. So we kind of know what those best practices are. This is just the first phase of what we're doing. We're working with a lot of partners across the industry to give us some of their industry data so we kind of mash it up and come up with the insights. So it wasn't as an analyst, I'd love to get your thoughts real quick and take the, take the net suite hat off, put your industry participants hat on. Lot of wall street challenges around we worked, pulled their IPO, their GP gross profit was down. Other SAS businesses have huge margins. Their successful zooms public. There's a new formula developing in this cloud 2.0 world software world where the dynamic between classic software and software economics in the cloud are changing. What's your thoughts on this? >>If a startups out there and growing companies that are really looking to crack the code by at all costs and then monetize, get the margins that would, what's your, what's your analysis? No, it's, I, this is an area that I think a lot of companies raise too much, too much capital. Right? And they, we've been in this very unique environment over the last kind of eight or nine years where I'd argue a lot of startups who've been overfunded and when you have overfunding you chase growth at really no, you know, at without any limit on terms of the cost and what you see as you sort of distort the reality of what's happening in the business. And so I would argue that we've had, you know, zero in basically free money in terms of access to capital and we've lost track of some of the basics that you need to build a profitable, sustainable business. >>So, you know, when I was working on wall street, you couldn't go public, you know, if you were within say four quarters of cashflow break even, right? Those are some of the things that we used to have. But you've seen, you know, business fundamentals. Yeah, I need, and so what's happening right now? It's just a little bit of her. I think it's mean reversion. Honestly. I think you're seeing, you know, the public markets, you know, if you will veto some of the frothiness that's been in the private markets. And so this is, I think companies, some marketplaces do. That's what they, that's there. It's fantastic. It's a self correcting mechanism, right? I mean it's, you know, just cause you marked up your last round when you were private to a good Jillian dollars doesn't mean that the buy side on, you know, the pension fund is going to want to pay that and we work so you can't be high and run a business. You know, as we were saying, you know, trying, you know, God bless them, they're trying, but it's probably not the best practice I would not have. I would not recommend that. It's not a good look for wall street. How a good luck, you know, you can get on the Joe Rogan show there, knock yourself out. If you're a Ilan, you can do it. But you know, he's the, he's the only one we're going to let, don't know. >>Probably shouldn't be publicly. Air's too much unless you want something to laugh at and you know what, in this economy, I think we all need that. Jason, thank you for sharing with us what you're doing at NetSuite with Boomi, the insights that you guys are opening up with brain yard. So from brain yard, let's go back to the other yard that I promised. The baseball yard, your Dodger fan giants fan. Hats off. You guys are there. We are not. So I will say good luck to your team. We appreciate your time and what can I say, Bri? I'll give it to ya. All right, well it's been a pleasure talking to you and thank you for your time. Thanks for John furrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube from booby world 19 thanks for watching.

(intense orchestral music) >> Hello everybody welcome to theCUBE, special announcement here, exclusive coverage. Covering Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld with some special news, we're here with Jason Maynard, Sr. Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Oracle NetSuite, and Jim McGeever, EVP, Second to Vice President at Oracle NetSuite. Thanks For joining this special CUBE coverage. >> Thanks... - Thank you. >> Great to be here. So we've got some exclusive news around SuiteWorld going on, so let's get down and dirty, so you got four major announcements goin' on: Oracle NetSuite global, vertical IntelligenceSuite, and new SuiteCommerce, let's get into the hard news. What's the big story around the news? >> The big story is we're going global, and in a big way, it's one of the big advantages of the Oracle acquisition, we could never have afforded to go to as many countries as fast as we can, and now with Oracle, we'll really be able to go really fast. And as a result, we're building a lot of new international features. So 2018, we've really turned the developmentship to build out deep localizations for most of the major economies around the world. >> NetSuite's had a great track record, obviously everyone kind of has well documented history, obviously now with Oracle. What's the stride look like, what's, what're you guys, you guys are hitting a stride. What's is look like, what's different about it, if anything, what's the big highlight here at SuiteWorld? >> Well, we've really put the foot on the gas petal, so we're actually growing much faster now than we were when we were independent. And a lot of it is due to the international growth, I mean, for example in China, China we didn't have a market presence, it's now our fourth biggest market after only a year. And that's just starting, it's amazing how fast that it's grown. >> Talk about the international global piece, because global has become kind of like a, a whitewash term for some, but it's hard to do. Especially China you mentioned that one, so you have China, and then the rest of international. There are issues with Cloud, you've got regions, you've got data privacy, obviously GDPR's on the horizon, and it's got some teeth to it I would argue, relatively, you know, sharp in some areas, not in others, but it's a challenging dynamic, but the upside is it's a very lucrative opportunity. What's different about international now, then say just five-six years ago? >> Oh, there's two major differences. So one is the data privacy rules, GDPR, I mean that's just amazing how, what an impact that has on businesses, and also the data residency rules. So we're having to build our data centers around the globe, which we never would've had to do before. Now this is, thankfully we have a company that has data centers around the world, so it's becoming a lot cheaper and easier for us to do that. But that's really tough for a business to be able to do that themselves. >> So, you know, the theme I want to get out there is, is that, you know people want to do more with less, that's a classic consolidation message. There's some consolidation going on, when you look at Cloud, how people are trying to figure out Cloud on premise in the, in Cloud. But it's not a consolidation market, it's a massive growth market. Jason what does more mean? I mean people want more, they might have to do with less, but there's an upside, growth component. How are you guys talking with that one challenge? Cuz there's challenges, and there's opportunities at the same time. >> You know, it's an interesting time, I think a lot of folks say it's easier than ever to start a business. But the flip side is, is it's harder than ever to actually scale and grow. So when we're out talking to our customers, and were getting, you know, into what they're trying to solve. The biggest issue they have, is how do I overcome this issue of breaking these barriers of growth. So, it could be going global, It could be doing more with less, right? How do I automate my business so I can reinvest into things that are going to make me more successful? Like acquiring new customers. Those are the type of challenges that we see out there, it's more with less, get me to where I need to be, and frankly, stop doing the things that are sort of counterproductive and inefficient, and really drive, top lane. >> I think that's one nuance that's missed a lot in the analysis is that, it's not so much more with less, it's more efficiency with Cloud, you get more leverage than software. That's always been the case with software economics. How does that translate to the business strategy for you guys as you guys go global? Talk about some of news around the, the verticals, vertical integration, cuz that's going to be a big part of it, with either the developer community and/or your partner ecosystems. >> Sure, so what we're seeing is, if you look at our product, what people use. When we looked at our customer base, customers who are international, customers who use vertical features grow much faster than customers who are single domestic. So we looked across the board, and so what we're really focused on is how we can help those companies grow even faster. So how do you go international quicker? But every business is not a generic business, so they all have these vertical features, some have inventory, some have projects. So what they really need is features that can help them execute their business better. So we go deep by vertical, and in fact, our whole company is organized vertically, our sales teams, our development teams, and so when we go to market we go vertically, and so we're doing some really cool stuff. Especially in the product-based area, uh, that's the new supply tower control center, which really helps enable people to get product to their customers on time. >> Well I'd like to get both of you to weigh in on the hard question, right? Bringin' the heat now. >> Jim: Okay. >> Jason: Alright. >> Everyone wants to know, okay, what's it like with Oracle? Is that helping you, is it hurting you? Oracle has a reputation, they're moving to the Cloud very quickly, but again they're an incumbent, okay in the old, in the Cloud way. So, you know hards pers putting up some numbers, you can talk to folks at amazon like whoa, you know, they're Oracle. So there's a lot of uncertainty around who's going to be the modern player. So the question is: How are you guys, working in that environment? Obviously Oracles numbers are up, they're moving to the Cloud model, they're stats are flying, at a pace that, they're moving as fast as they can. But you guys have always had a different perspective. How is the NetSuite/Oracle relationship working, and how do you talk to customers about that? >> Sure. So we're, they've run us really independently, so we're a global business unit inside of Oracle. So all sales, development, marketing, product, all report up through me, Evan, and Jason, and we report into the CEO of Oracle. So we're really run purely independently. The only other thing I'll add, so really not that much has changed, other than we get to leverage a lot of their global scale, and as Mark Hurd says, and try to avoid the negatives of the scale. But they are all in on Cloud, this is, when you're in a meeting with the senior leadership at Oracle, it's not a fake thing, it's a not a, a marketing message they truly believe at their core, that in the Cloud, or that everything's moving to the Cloud. So there's, we get the same incentives to sell to an Oracle owned premise customer as we do to an SAP owned premise customer. >> Jason to add to that, I want to get your perspective. We were talking before we came on around, the scale piece, that Jim just mentioned. Talk about the profile of the kind of customers that you guys have here as SuiteWorld. Is the profile of your customer changing? Take a minute to explain who is the NetSuite customer, cuz the global thing is interesting, if you're growing, soon to be multi-national, or you're already multi-national company, this matters. So, and then the scale matters as well, so, what is the profile of the customer, how does that help, how does that weave into the Oracle scale? >> So we have over 40 thousand organizations globally running NetSuite. It's a pretty interesting mix. Obviously a lot of small/mid-sized companies, and we have a few, you know, a good decent percentage of our base are multi-billion dollar companies. We see an interesting, I think, dynamic, which is: the most successful NetSuite customers, are the ones that have gone global. They grow faster like Jim said, than the domestic only. I think the one other hallmark that I would point out to the NetSuite customer, the customer base. You see sort of an innovative group of entrepreneurs. So we see all sorts of great stories with the customers, you know, in Jim's keynote, Kara Goldin, the founder of Hint, right? She started off with a mission to stop folks from drinking soda water and drink actual water. Started with, you know, 10 years ago, and is now on an amazing trajectory. So we find-- >> John: You guys get a lot of growth companies. >> Yeah, we get a lot of the growers, we get a lot of the, really kind of the entrepreneurs who start small with us, and then scale with us, all the way to becoming a multi-billion dollar company. >> And this is where the international piece matters, right? >> Oh yeah. >> So let's talk about that and then we'll move onto the the next set of news. So if I'm a growing company, and we're expanding crazy, I care about localization, I care about data in regions, certainly Cloud, as you mentioned Oracle's really serious about what they are, they care about regions, this is an issue. So talk about the benefits of me, a growing company, how do I take advantage of localization, what do you guys offer, what's the playbook? (laughing) >> It's, we just make it easy. I mean, our whole focus is: if you're a business, it's hard enough to go international, and figure out your value proposition, and what makes you unique and what makes you differentiated, the last thing you need to be worried about are your IT systems, and spending your time on infrastructure, and selling it all up. So our kind of job is, we'll just take care of that, if you want to go to Germany, you will literally flip a switch inside the system, and you have a German enabled application. >> And what's the alternative, if I don't go with you guys? >> You have to go find someone in Germany, to go buy an application, install it, then you implement it, then you integrate it. I mean that's a multi-month, if not year process. >> John: And expensive. >> Very expensive-- >> You've got to find people, you got to know the nuances, the local issues. (laughing) >> Right. And so you've got to learn all that. We come fully localized, and we don't do it just in a way that is, it's a starting point. We have all the German tax forms built-in to the system, when you log onto NetSuite and once you flip this switch, you go to page, all the German tax forms are there, and we will automatically fill them out for you. >> Jason, I want to get your perspective, because local marketing is a big deal. You guys are in hundreds of countries, I know that from, from doing the research and watching you guys grow. But where do you have actual presence and where does presence matter, can you just highlight, the NetSuite, cuz I think this is going to where, people going to want to know, okay, there's hundreds of countries out there, but where are you, where's the core going to be? >> So it's an interesting point because it's, I think it's not just about product, right? It's not just about having a product that's localized for a specific country, it's about having everything else, right? It's having, making sure the support is in the local language, it's making sure that we have people who speak the language, making sure we have facilities, sales, service people, having a localized data center-- >> John: You guys are committed to that. >> We are 100% committed, this is, you know you asked the question earlier about what, what has been the benefit of Oracle? I don't think, as a standalone company, we'd have been able to pull off what we're pulling off and announcing this week. Without the backing of, and the Oracle resources, because the have the global reach, that we can easily tap into. So when we do local now, we're doing it with everything that a customer needs to be successful. >> Okay, so the next set it is, I want to dive into the hard news is the, new SuiteCommerce kind of vibe, sweet success for SuiteCommerce. It's a new e-commerce solution that gives customers the freedom to grow and evolve their digital commerce business. So this is basically commerce, you're talking about like, doing business. What is this news about, gives us the quick summary, and let's discuss. So our previous commerce product was actually very advanced, we actually started at the top first. We enabled you to touch every pixel on the page, customizing in any way, shape, or form you wanted. What we've done with SuiteCommerce is now we've taken it, and came out with an entirely pre-packaged, pre-built websites. So you can be up and running, with a very complex, fully featured website, in 30 days or less. And it's point and click choose, and this is not going to a basic colors and theme choices, we have complex features that enable you to run your business. So you can come to us, and we will have you running, with commerce enabled, integrated with your back office, with less, in 30 days. >> Jason, I can see two use-cases for this, one is, you know, I need turnkey guys, here's the keys to the kingdom, build it for me, I'll give you all my raw materials, we're up and running, you know, classic turnkey. Then there's the more of the dev ops Cloud model, which is, hey I need access to APIs, I have my own development team. Okay, how do you talk to both those guys, and there's also hybrids in the intersection of both those. So there's two modes of use-cases, how do you guys address the developer? It's interesting, I think the way we look at it is, we can be the first system you buy, and we can also be the last system you'd ever buy, right? And that's that freedom to grow and evolve. So, you may want to start out with us because you're an emerging retailer, and you're launching just in the US. But as you evolve to six more countries in a year and a half because you've got the hit product or you're selling, and you want to start to then expand your sophistication, then we can migrate you to some of the more advanced capabilities, but. What we're delivering today is that ability to have a packaged, out of the Cloud, easier to use, on ramp, to get the value of of NetSuite. >> And the horizontally scalable Cloud is obviously, with developers like, what's the developer story here? Can you guys share the developer perspective for your customer, if I have a team of developers? >> So we use the exact same technology, so SuiteCommerce and SuiteCommerce advanced is the exact same technology. One, we've been the developer, and pre-packaged it, and delivered it to the customer. But if you start with that, you can instantly switch over, and take over the development yourself. So either stay with us, we'll work with you, we'll develop it. Or you can just take that as a starting point and develop it going forward. >> John: Awesome. >> Literally, I think something is 75-80% of our customers, literally customize NetSuite in some shape or form, so you can imagine-- >> John: So you guys are totally open to let developers completely develop them. >> Yeah, there's a platform as a service offering, inside of NetSuite, which is something, that as customers evolve and grow they tend to consume and use more of those platforming features. >> So one of the things I'm reading here in the news, that I want to dive into, that I like. You know I like... (stammering) I like new things. So the latest edition you guys are doing have this concept of micro verticals, that span a variety of industry. So that means data potentially could fly around, certainly. In cyber security we were covering at RSA just recently, the role of data sharing is huge, you obviously got the other end on the policy side of, you know the data protection. So you can't have, you got to have a combination of data sharing to make machine learning, and make, you know, some of these new AI capabilities work. At the same time, you got to have policies around that. But these micro verticals will have to operate in a new way. So, what does a micro vertical mean, and how are you helping customers saying you know, I played a little bit of media, I play a little bit in financial, you know have a lot of different requirements that may cross verticals. How do you guys handle that? >> Well we started off with industries, so we used to think of wholesale distribution as a whole series of vertical features, you need a warehouse, you need all the management, there's all these things that you needed in order to make that work. And now we're going into verticals within that, such as food and beverage, or health and beauty. Then we get down food and beverage, now you have cold storage, so that's where we get to the micro vertical level, and the requirements there are actually quite different than you may get from a generic health and beauty vertical. So what we build are those micro vertical features, to enable this business. >> So you guys drill down into the verticals and segment them down, and, rather than some general purpose solution that's, you know, tryin' to hit, so there's some requirements changes. >> And all the regulatory and compliance requirements that go with those micro verticals, those are engineered as part of the process. >> And what's the impact of the customers, talk about the customer impact, what's the benefit for them? They get better product, they're happier, they get it quicker, and they get it cheaper. So it's kind of the more we do, and the less you do, the happier the customer is going to be. >> Alright philosophical question now, this is really what customers want, they want to have, they want to feel like it's a personal experience customized for their business. How do you make that work in this new Cloud world, what's the secret sauce that you guys bring to the table to make customers get the flexibility, the agility, obviously the scale of Oracle helps, on the foundational level. But as you guys roll out the NetSuites next generation customer environment, what's the secret? >> Well we've always had a platform, a deep platform, and so people have always customized our product. So we're using the exact same customization technologies to deliver these micro verticals that customers and developers have been able to do for years so it's just about leveraging what everyone can do to make it a better solution for those customers. >> Final question now, I mentioned machine learning and AI before, so the IntelligenceSuite is news here. Let's get into that. If you're not doing AI you're not relevant these days, everyone's throwing AI around like it's like at, oh we're AI-ing this so it's machine learning. But this is real, I mean software has to drive efficiencies. There's scale involved in software. Machine learning and artificial intelligence is a great path to operationalize, and automate, and create insights. So what is IntelligenceSuite about, can you share the news there? >> Sure, so we're not building a generic AI tool, Oracle's got a massive investment in that, and I'm sure at some point we'll leverage it. We're actually looking at very specific use-cases within our application, that customers can use right now. And so we're actually taking solutions such as: what is the quickest way to get your inventory to your customer, and using some machine learning to help actually route, and pick the right inventory items, and the right location to get the quickest delivery time to your customer. So we're taking very specific use-cases, and we're building that intelligence in, around that. We're not coming out with a generic AI tool that will, solve all potential questions, answer all potential questions even if you don't know what the questions are, that will come a little bit later. But right now, this is really-- So you guys are taking the low-hanging fruit, drilling down in known use-cases for your customers, and bringing that kind of automation to the table? I think, we basically take the attitude of, machines and humans together are generally a better answer than either by themselves. So we'll give you all the choices, and give you the recommendations, and let you pick the way you want to go. >> Jason how do you market that to a customer? Cuz this is really, I think, a big point. Humans and machines clearly are involved, you look at all the success of machine learning. This is now becoming known, you look at Facebook in front of the United States lawmakers, you know, they don't even know how Facebook works so, you know, you've got an enterprise, they're learning about data, they want real answers and they need to have it digged out for them. >> Jason: I think AI and machine learning could perhaps be, you know, the new planking, the most overused, over-hyped, you know, thing out there right now, and every vendor has to come up with a, like a sort of a perceived AI strategy, so I think it's overwhelming for a lot of customers. Because at the end of the day, these customers are trying to figure out how do I solve really specific problems. They don't have AI problems, they have tangible business problems. And so we took this approach to build this from scratch, inside of NetSuite, we didn't acquire, you know, some random startup, and try and plug and graph that onto NetSuite, we built it with the same though process, around how do we solve that problem, make it more efficient, so. Our conversations with our customers are not about technology, they're about, hey how do we get you, you know, better turns on your inventory, how do we solve a specific business problem, and that resonates, that makes it a lot easier, cuz that's what they know. >> Yeah, there's a shiny new toy, kind of thing, hey look it we got some new tools, and there's a place for that kind of, from a developers standpoint I can see it being a great sandbox. But you guys are taking a different approach, add known customer problems, that you can automate away and create insights, is that right? >> That's it. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> To wrap up, I want to get the thoughts of SuiteWorld, what's going on here, what's the main conversations, what're you guys promoting, what's the message, what's some of the conversations, and what's next for NetSuite? >> You know the biggest conversation is customers talking to each other about how they grow and scale their business. And so we try and create an environment at SuiteWorld where these customers can learn from each other, they can talk to each other. Obviously we share our insights and perspectives, but it's really about them, and how they figure out, and really learn from other experiences to solve what they're trying to accomplish. >> Jim top level message to customers, next 10 years, what's the NetSuite 20 mile stair look like for you guys? >> You know the great thing about NetSuite, we've been around almost 20 years, we've been on the same mission, the same product, and we look at the confusion that's out there in the marketplace. I think people feel very grateful that we're on the path and we know where we're going, and we're delivering them real value, real deliverables, and we're not forcing them to change their business. We change for them, not the other way round. >> From a tech perspective, tech enablement, and outcome perspective, what's the main themes of the show this year. >> It's mostly about or international rollout, our new commerce products, our vertical features, our micro vertical features, and our intelligence assistance. >> Cloud, IOT, AI, software all powerin' this, guys thanks so much for the insight. Exclusive news coverage here on Oracle NetSuite SuiteWorld, big announcements here, this is theCUBE, thanks for watching. (intense orchestral music)

>>live from Washington, D. C. >>It's the Cube >>covering Bumi World 19. Do you buy movie? >>Hey, welcome back to the Cube. We've got candy. That's right. I am Lisa Martin in Washington, D. C. At booming World 19 with John Ferrier and John and I are excited to be talking next with a chief technology officer of candy dot com. Gary, welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you for having me great to be here. >>So tell our audience about candy dot com Guinea all that you want dot com cool stuff. >>It is cool stuff. It is the endless. I'll just like going to the supermarket and never runs. Oh, it's absolutely perfect. That's actually how we started knowing that there was so much candy out there that people wanted in the lines just weren't long enough to put him in, no matter where you checked out, and we started off being the online candy store, which was a foot in the door, but it was a very small opening at that time. >>One of the things you said when I met you today whilst eating candy that you guys brought thank you very much for that was very appropriate. Um, was that candy? Is recession proof? >>It is. It's it's ah, you know, good times, bad times. You know, people are gonna have birthday parties. People get married holidays. They're going to come. You know, you've had a really great day. It's a candy bar. You know, you've had a really bad day. It's the candy bar. That's just it's an impulse buy, but it's an impulse buy with your favorite. I mean, it's something to comfort more than anything else, actually. And the technology side talk about how you guys were organized. What? Some of the challenges and how does Bumi fit in? Take us through the journey. Sure, when we started out, we thought, How hard could it be doing? Data entry will get the orders. They'll come across, we'll have some people. Instrument to the system will start filling up, you know, and then everything else will take care of itself. And within about a few minutes, we realized that that was probably not going to work. It was not scalable because first of all, data entry is air pro. You know, if you have someone actually trying to do with their, it's not gonna work for us. So we realized that there was a mechanism out there with Edie I and we went to 1/3 party provider to help us with the FBI. And that's how we started with the first couple of integrations and it was good. It got us off the ground and got us further into that door. >>So you started with, um, how many different partners trading partners take us back to kind of the last 10 years of candy dot com and how that Trading Partner Network has grown. >>Oh, it's like the journey. It's still we starts with the first step. We had one that was interested, one that wanted to work with Austin, and we started to do the work with them and figure out how to handle it. But they had multiple divisions, so, you know, there was only one that was 32 actual integrations that had to be done on being a traditional brick and mortar. It's very competitive. So once the word got out that they were work with us, there was a couple other. So we had six pretty big ones lined up early on that we needed to have integrated in up and running very quickly. >>And from a digital perspective, what were some of the initial system's applications that you implemented just start being able to manage and track those trading partner interactions to ensure that you're able to deliver? You know what? The candy, the candy demand that you need to fill? >>It was, sadly, a lot of C S V. A lot of email, a lot of phone calls back and forth. There was a lot of hours, and it was one those ones where we would really just bring in temps and try to keep up with it did not really have a repeatable process or a good technical footprint of what we needed to d'oh way didn't know what we didn't know when we started, and we very rapidly came to become aware of what we needed to do. >>So starting with air P Net sweet brought net Sweden two years ago. Tell us about that and what you thought was gonna solve all of our problems. Well, that's why it's >>a great package because it brought us both order management and it brought us here. Pee in. There were so many models and so much technology behind it and they have a warehouse module. There's, like all we could grow forever With this, it will never be bounded. This is gonna be fantastic. But what we forgot is that it was only as good as the data in there. And if we're using as a manual data entry, it's not going to meet our needs. We needed to come up with a better way in a more efficient way to get the data in. And this was still back in the day when we're trying to fulfill something within a week, much less where we're at today. >>Okay, so where does Bumi fit into play? >>We realized, unfortunately that even when you have an integration up and running and as good as the integration is, some of your trading partners will have changes. They're going to give you a different reference number. They're gonna give you a different requirement. They're gonna make something that was optional now mandatory. So we had problems because it wasn't just also that was impacting everyone that was doing an integration with that trading partner had it. So if I had outsourced it and there was 100 people that had that map. We were one of 100. Sometimes we were one, and sometimes we were as far away from one is possible and you understand that, and you appreciate it because there's only a finite number of hours to get things done. So we understood that to be really profitable and get to the level of service we needed to control the data. And that's when we decided that we needed to bring the E. D I and house. >>So when you were looking for the right integration partner, what was it about Bhumi from a technology perspective and a business perspective that really differentiated it. >>First and foremost, the number one requirement had to talk to nets. We had a have a native nets. We'd integration if it did not talk to net sweet. It wasn't gonna make it onto our plate because we weren't gonna spend the time to reinvent the wheel when obviously the wheel was out there. We had actually done that once before, and it was successful but painful. And there's people out there who build a connection and work to silver partners like blooming in the platinum partners that can go out and they can actually keep up with the release before it comes out. And you're being proactive by the reactive from a business need. It was We can't drop data. We need to be efficient. We need to be timely. We need visibility. And looking at Bumi, it met all those needs. We had a connection into nets. We had a reporting tool. We had error messages coming back. We had everything that we needed to manage our own world and take control of it. Or so we thought >>that look. Okay, so get this implemented. What sort of opportunities is the start opening up? You talked about control there, or so we thought. What have you been able to unlock where control is concerned? In the last few years, >>what we didn't realize with what we were doing is that way. We're just basically turning on everything and trying to run this efficiently and fast as possible. And that was really the wrong approach to take what we needed to do it as some governance to it as some logic to it, too, you know, not compete with jobs. There's there's a finite number of avenues into the back end system, you need to utilize it. But there was also tools that we found out inside this system that handled things like error trapping and retrial, logic and time outs and stuff like that. And as we worked with the subject matter experts at Boom, as we worked with the people at Nets, we in our account managers who would show us things and help us long. We learned a lot more about him. When we went live back in February of 2016 we were very excited. We did 1000 orders into our system and one day and we thought, How phenomenal is this? I mean, 1000 orders. How many more orders could you actually look for? And we very soon realized that there was a lot more orders willing to come into our system if we could handle it. >>So what? So when you first started with Bhumi went from some number 2 1000 orders today. What was that original number that you guys were able to handle when it was more of a manual process? >>It depend on how many attempts we could hire that sometimes it was 100 orders we got in. Sometimes it was 100% dependent on people. Also depend on someone, Remember, understands the spreadsheet. >>The Sun's painful, >>painful and not really easy to plan for. >>But you discovered pretty quickly you went from I won't say 0 to 1000. But somewhere in between that realized tha the capabilities, though of this system was gonna allow you to get 20,000 orders per day. Where was the demand coming from? Was it coming from trading partners was coming from their customers? Was it coming from your internal team seeing Hey, guys, I think there's a lot more power here than we originally thought. >>Well, success begets success because we were able to get an order in now in a timely fashion and ship it out there. All of a sudden, I realized we were shipping orders within 48 to 72 hours. It wasn't taking 10 days anymore, so we had repeat customers, which obviously makes your numbers go up. And then, as you know, your experience is good and you share it because social media is the weight of the world All the sudden, you know if if you tell two friends and they tell two friends we start getting more volume. Damn white starts happening is someone realizes they're losing market share of their brick and mortar website. And who was fulfilling the orders for them if they're doing so well and we're losing business and they start knocking on the door saying what? We'd like to work with you as well. And the other thing, too, is just timing. In the United States, it's pretty warm between April and October, and the bulk of perishable and heat sensitive product will ship through one of our warehouses because we have the thermal controls in the programs in place to give a good experience to make sure the product arrives the way it's supposed to be treated. >>Yeah, you were mentioning that when you were on stage this morning with Mandy Dolly Well, Mami CMO and Jason Maynard from Net Sweet that there are obviously, if you order some chocolate. I wanted to get there in the exact state in which I saw it online, right? But there's you've gotta have a lot of access, invisibility and systems to be able to help you facilitate that temperature control, depending on the type of product. >>Absolutely. So we're very proud of the fact that, you know, we're temperature controlled where humidity controlled were suf certified. We've done everything the right way to make sure that what we do is gonna be the best experience that your food is safe. Because, Paramount, the last thing we ever want to do is to keep a product of someone's gonna make your child sex because, you know, you don't want anyone to get sick. But the worst feeling is apparent is when your kid doesn't feel well. So we understand that Andi have a phenomenal staff. Are Q A team will go through and we have ways to test the product to get to the melting point. And we know different products melted different temperatures, and we determine what those temperatures are. We build those thresholds we do calls out to get the weather. No, I'm shipping it from my location to you. What's the temperature of my It doesn't matter if it's cold at your place. It is 90 where I'm shipping it from. So we look at what is it now? Where is it going? What's it gonna be the next few days? How big is it? You know how much product is in there with that? That isn't heat sensitive. And we have a pretty complex algorithm that we put in place That has really enabled us to handle the summer months and give a good product because, I mean a lot of people like s'mores, but they don't want the pre melted chocolate showing up at their house. >>Would agree. That takes the fun out of the bonfire part, right? Exactly. So let's talk about the people transformation because you were saying your 100% dependent on manual Somebody even sending the spreadsheet little into star inputting data to process X number of orders per day went from almost 0 to 1000 overnight with Bhumi, then saw this capacity for 20,000. How have has your team has other business units within candy like finance? How are they benefiting from all of this? What a presume is massive workforce productivity gains that you're giving everybody? >>Absolutely. It was a great problem tohave because as we got bigger and we started getting more and more orders than we got more and more invoices and you know, we got more and more checks in which we always think it's a good thing, but those checks need to be reconciled. They have to be reconciled against the transaction Inside the Nets week. It's no exaggeration that we would have pages printed out with a ruler going down and highlighting one by one on the invoice to make sure nothing was omitted. And we were spending an individual spent an eight hour day, three days a week, just going through direct missile. One invoice that was coming in and we would get two or three a week from them. So it was painful and again also error prone. And these people are very creative, very smart, and they offer so much more to the business that it was a waste of their time in a waste of their intellect. S o del. Booming, we found out, is not just any eyes phenomenal, Aditi, I but it has all these other tools and won. The tools we had was to be able to take the remittance file from the financial institution, reconcile it against the invoice is in the system and create a C S V import that would run that we have a script for that created a cash payment in our system that would actually close out the invoices and be paid so that we don't take care of it. It was done, and finance would basically get the file and e mail to us. We would file it back and they'd run an import. So instead of 250 hours a week, it was five minutes of file. >>That's a dramatics saving hundreds of hours a month, but also faster time to revenue recognition. >>That's a big one, you know, because when you try to get people discounts or give them brakes or if your terms are out there, it's nice to get it in there and keep your system's clean, because you also have to answer to the end of the month. You know you want to close the books and everything in manual processes. Air one the few things that you can't just throw more horsepower at. >>I'm glad you brought up, though from a resource kind of reallocation. Perspective is, these folks, in particular areas of the business, have value that they're not able before weren't able to really unlock and deliver. Now, with the technology in place, they're able to probably focus on more strategic areas of the business or more strategic projects. I also imagine your sales. We said faster time to revenue in revenue recognition, but big boost to candy dot comes sales. Since you've implemented the technology >>direct, I mean the sales numbers have just grown. I mean, as much as we do. No do are forecasting and think where it's going to go. Wee wee drastically underestimated this year. The summer was very, very good to us. Our first year under booming, we ran for 11 months. We did a little over 600,000 orders for that first year. In comparison, in June, July and August this year, we did over a 1,000,000 orders. That's a lot of chocolate. So a >>lot of candy, >>most certainly >>busier time, period. I mean Halloweens in a few weeks, Christmas is coming. How does that compare in terms of like the Flux >>way? Have a peek? Obviously, Halloween Halloween is obviously the time, of course. November 1st, our orders are zero because everyone walks in with a pillowcase of candy from their kids to the office, so it literally goes from a 1,000,000 miles an hour or two nothing, and it's it's kind of eerie. But throughout the summer we stay very, very busy because a lot of the market places don't have the facility and listen, they're great, you know, it's one stop shopping. They have everything, but everything is in a warehouse in that entire warehouse is not properly controlled to handle food products. So they decided it was an advantageous for them to ship, you know, during the summer, and it's poorly monitored as a summer Shipp program. But it's really more of a heat sensitive program because we'll add the thermal product to protect the thermal packaging to protect the product, even in February. I mean, there's some spots in Florida in Texas at a pretty one that you want to protect the item. So it's a heat sensitive program that we're very proud of, and we keep advancing and we keep growing. And, you know, I have. I'm very fortunate. I have a great team. I mean, we're not gonna call out, you know, like Jim and Scott, because that would be wrong to deal with. These guys have been with me from the start, and they put the E. T. I in place. They put the scripting in place that the guys were just, you know, rock stars on. Do I look good because of their effort? And I'm very, very proud of the team we've assembled that does this to make sure that you're and satisfaction is always met. >>Awesome story. So I imagine you know, when we hear like, four out of five dentists recommend this kind of bet. Is the fifth dentist recommending candy dot com? Is that where that guy's been? >>Yeah, he's got four kids >>going through college and >>everything, so he figures candy dot com to go. Way to make the money to make sure those tuition skip. >>All right. Well, Gary, it's been a pleasure to have you on the keys. Thank you for sharing what you're doing with bhumi at candy dot com. We appreciate and thanks for all the candy. >>Oh, our pleasure. Thank you very much for having been a great couple of days. I'm glad to be part of it. >>All right. Our pleasure for John Ferrier. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Bhumi World 19. Thanks for watching