>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are just wrapping up day two at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Keith, this event is enormous. We were just comparing our step goals. This event size is 16 American football fields. Enormous, 20,000 people. I think, combined, we have around 15,000 steps today. >> That sounds about right. >> Quite a few of them go to your longer legs than mine but this event is really been incredible, the energy that SAP's CEO Bill McDermott kicked off with yesterday morning has really been carried through this event and with our guests on the show for the last two days. >> No, we did 23, 24 interviews and every last one of them was high-energy. The guests were extremely excited about the products, the solutions, and the problems they're solving for, not just enterprise, but for society. I thought that was a really great theme of the guests today specifically. >> It's amazing, and you talk about, you know, the impact on society and SAP wants to be one of the top world's most valuable brands like Apple, Google, Coca Cola, who are all customers of SAP's and who all sell products that we can interact with, that we can taste, you know, Mercedes Benz, we can drive. They've got this invisible software product. They've been around for 46 years. And to your point, the stories that we have heard about how these invisible product, products, are transforming industries, are saving lives, was really something that I did not expect. >> Well when you make a great product that impact lives or... I compare it to making great content. theCUBE makes great content, that content would be found, people would take notice, you make a great product that impacts people's lives. It's no wonder that SAP is near the top of that brand recognition, brand value, 17th on the list. If they continue to do that, if they become the product, the ERP solution that you can talk to and you can ask a question, you know, not just business questions of what were the numbers the last quarter for Chicago, but you can ask a question, you know what, where is the best place to take my family to live in Eastern Europe during the summer months? That becomes value-add that people wouldn't be able to ignore. >> They've done a tremendous job building this partner ecosystem. There were hundreds of partner sessions alone. We've heard from a lot of their partners. We're in the NetApp booth, thanks to NetApp for having theCUBE here. NetApp is a customer and a partner of SAP and we heard a lot about how SAP is transforming to the cloud dramatically with the help of this massive partner ecosystem. >> You know what, we've had Microsoft, Fujitsu, SAP, NetApp, Nvidia, the list goes on and on of customers and partnerships of examples of companies that have come together and they've been consistent. In some areas, obviously Microsoft competes with SAP. In some areas, Microsoft competes with NetApp. But they recognize that without these alliances, without these partnerships, they can't solve these large, complex problems of ridding parts of Africa with mosquitoes. SAP can't do that by themselves. Microsoft can't do that by themselves. And this week was a great acknowledgement and a example of how the ecosystem works. >> They also talked a lot at this event about the intelligent enterprise where it's, you know, it's not just about digital transformation as table stakes. Companies that do it well have, or are working towards getting, this true 360-degree view of the customer which is essential. They talked about enabling that via certain things that they're leading in, or pioneering, which is connecting the demand chain and the supply chain. They really talked about enabling this new, this current SAP that's built for this fourth generation customer experience. Our lives as consumers have dramatically influenced business. We expect to have the ability to, you know, try and buy an app if we want it, right? And they're using that model very well to give customers in many industries, they have 390,000 customers, choice and flexibility. And the partner ecosystem is just part of that flexibility that they have to give. And they do a great job of listening to their customers who really are helping with a lot of the co-development in a very symbiotic way. >> Yeah, SAP is reentering this people-centric view of ERP, CRM, of data, saying that their relationship is about people. Bill McDermott spent a lot of time talking about trust. One of the reasons why people trust the brand of theCUBE is because we're on the ground, we're talking to the users, we're talking to the people. People can reach out and touch and feel you, there's a personal relationship between that brand and the community. The same thing with, got the same feel for what SAP is trying to do of, you know, obviously with over 20,000 people, I dunno if the number is 21,000, 22,000, but more than 20,000 people, a million people online watching the event, SAP the serious about this C/4HANA move, of being able to say, you know what, we are going to create a ecosystem of trust. We talked about trust with the app center and being able to validate applications on the platform. SAP has long been one of those companies that's serious about their partnerships and validation and certification of platforms. So whether it's HCI, storage with NetApp, the deep relationship with NetApp, SAP is going to put its brand upfront and say that if you're going to engage with one of our partnerships, there's a transient trust that goes from SAP to their partners. >> And we talked with a number of folks working in different groups within SAP focused on the customer. This morning we had on their Chief Customer, a guy from their Chief Customer Office who talked about these, kinda top 100 strategic accounts that they partner with who then also they take that information, those learnings and don't just improve the technologies but they also use them to influence much greater than a hundred customers. They're strategically utilizing that data. We talked yesterday with one of the gentlemen running the SAP four, S/4HANA community rather, and the Leonardo community and the amount of engagement that they have in that community, especially in Leonardo which has only been around for a year. The customer engagement is key but also their reaction to it, and I would say even, I think we heard a lot of how they're being proactive with creating content and enabling their customers to be able to learn at the same time as they're learning from their customers. >> Yeah some hero numbers that we heard this week: 6,000 people in that HANA, the S/4HANA community. While the Customer Success Group focuses on the top 100 customers, there were, I think 38,000 people following the Twitter account, so there's obviously outreached stretch. The Leonardo and S/4 communities have created a thousand videos on how-to. So obviously the impact of and the reach of SAP has ambitions of not just raising brand awareness and getting into that Top 10 with Apple and Google, they also have the ambitions of becoming a platform, a ecosystem. You know, we look at Microsoft as kinda one of the ultimate platform companies. Microsoft partners make more money off of Windows than Microsoft makes off of Windows. SAP seems to have the same goal of their partners, there's a hundred partners on the show floor, that should generate more revenue than SAP which would be impressive. SAP, I looked the other day, $136 billion market capital, not a small company at all. >> So you have an interesting perspective, for many reasons, but one you've run large SAP infrastructures before. And here you are now at SAPPHIRE from the press and media, the analyst perspective. What are some of the things that really surprised you in all of your experience as a user of SAP to now covering it from this angle. >> You know what, I don't know if it was a year ago. It was not even a full year, my anniversary for running my company is August. So less than a year ago I ran SAP for a large pharmaceutical. And we're in the throes of selecting where our next platform was gonna be hosted. Cloud was a possibility and it is amazing how the conversations have changed from my peers a year ago, or a year and a half or even a year ago, to now to how readily acceptable customers are of running mission-critical, the core of the business, 77% of the world's transactions, we heard today, goes through SAP, how willing customers are at running those work goals in the cloud. Second piece, which was probably a proof point, how much SAP has improved SAP in the cloud. SAP has marketed SAP HANA and SAP as cloud-ready applications, it was more of something that you... I took legacy application, I installed it on VMs in the cloud, cloud-ready. No we've given examples from the hyperscalers, specifically Google, of how, and Microsoft of how, customers are coming whipping their credit card up, spinning up instances of HANA, spinning them down. Google talked about how you can migrate your whole ECC on HANA to the cloud within 30 minutes to two hours, amazing movement in cloud. I think it's by far my biggest surprise coming to this show. I didn't expect SAP to accelerate their cloud adoption as fast as they have. >> I'm curious to your thoughts too about simplicity, simplicity of message, you know, what's their best-run businesses campaign? Best-run businesses run on SAP. Simplicity has long been part of their messaging. As we look at the SAP cloud platform and some of the announcements there today and you look at, they've got Ariba, and Concur, and Fieldglass, and SuccessFactors, with the C/4 announcement from yesterday, what is your impression on, have they been able to sort of simplify and kind of reduce customer confusion in terms of this breadth of products and technologies that SAP now delivers? >> You know, SAP is a big company and they have a lot of products. They've been around for 46 years. You know, we didn't talk about any legacy database stuff. They still own Siebel so they still own a traditional database company. It's easier said than done to simplify the message. When you come to... You know, we talked to interviewee after interviewee, customers are still overwhelmed when they look at a overall problem. They can even identify SAP as the potential partner to solve it, but 300 products is still 300 products. It's very... You can help simplify the message by throwing those products in categories, sales force, which product you lead with, so new customers, you know, sales force will help you with that. Traditional customers that don't have deep relationships with their sales force and solution providers, maybe, I think there's still a little difficulty around understanding the messaging around all of 300 products. I mean, it's 300 products. >> Well, there's always work to be done and well we have... There was a lot of product announcements, a lot of energy, and evangelicalism that you and I heard consistently throughout the event and on-set here. A third area that I think really struck me is, SAP has been very vocal about having an initiative to raise the profile of women in technology. They did an excellent job of getting women onstage during both keynote sessions, yesterday and today. From their CMO, Alicia Tillman, to Lindsey Vonn and a whole suite of women Olympic athletes that were yesterday in the general session, to some of the women that were doing some of these outstanding demos and I, I really tip my hat to SAP because for being as large and as lengthy of an incumbent as they are, they're really able to focus on some of these key areas and we at theCUBE love to cover that because it's something that really needs consistent awareness. >> Well, I dunno if people would notice but we probably, both of us, are very vested in diversity and Silicon Valley, in general, is always appreciated when companies go, not just acknowledge the challenge of diversity, it is a very, very difficult problem. It's probably one of the most difficult problems in our industry. So to actually put some meat on a bone, announce the problem, announce the challenge, and go forth and put, you know, obviously, extremely capable women and minorities in the forefront. >> Yeah. Well Keith, always a pleasure hosting with you. Thanks so much for working with me the last couple of days, it's been-- >> I always enjoy it. >> I do too. It's really been a really fun, energetic show so thanks for all of your help. >> Thank you. >> Keith and I wanna thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend, we're from SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Thanks for watching. (energetic music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I am Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend. We have been here all day at SAP Sapphire 2018. Keith, this venue in Orlando is so huge. It's the equivalent of 16 American football fields. >> Yeah, probably should not have worn a pair of new shoes. >> No, but you did close your rings, so it's a trade-off, right? >> It's a trade-off, yeah. >> So, the keynote this morning started out with a bang. Bill McDermott, the CEO of SAP, is probably the most energetic, evangelical, C-level I've ever seen on stage. You really could feel the excitement, the momentum. They also followed that with some great announcements. You know, they've been saying for awhile, being pretty bullish about wanting to not just disrupt the Sierra market, but wanting to become one of the world's most valuable brands. They wanna be up there with the Apples, and the Googles, and Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, who all have products that we all see, and touch, and feel, and buy. And they announced that the brands e-rankings just came out the other day, that they're number 17, up four spots from last year. So, their momentum is, they're really putting their money where their mouth is. >> Yeah, so SAP is the cash register of the world. 70% of the world's transactions go through SAP, but most of us don't see it. So, it's amazing to see that they're ranked number 17 on those brands that are very, you know, if you told somebody you worked for SAP, they'd be like, oh, okay, I think I might have heard of that. >> Right. >> Or, I've heard that that was the reason why manufacturing is down, because the SAP system was down. So, it is a bold statement to say that you're gonna go from that, to a household name. Interestingly enough, part of that is becoming an ecosystem. So, becoming a platform. What we've heard today was a lot of talk about how SAP is transforming from a product company. You know, a point-of-sale system is one thing, but to say that you've built a ecosystem, and a platform around that, is the goal that I think I heard today from the stage floor. >> And you're right, you talk about, you know, them becoming a household name, with a product that's basically invisible to most people who probably use it. They have amassed 390,000 customers in 46 years. They've been around for a long time. This event, though, is massive. The partner area alone is huge. There's probably more than 20,000 people not just that are here, in Orlando, but, he said, Bill McDermott, a million people engaging with SAP Sapphire via the online experience. That's enormous. But to your point, it's all really fundamentally due to the partnerships, the systems integrators, the technology partners and more who have helped them on their transformation. >> Yeah, we had KPIT on, they said the guest has been on 20 Sapphires for 20 years, the event has gone on for 25 years in some form. He remembered, initially, they might have had one or two sessions. They have 12, KPIT has 12 sessions this year at the Sapphire 2018. There's a huge ecosystem of partners, here on the show floor. Over 500, I think, sessions in general. We had the VP of Community for S/4. They have 1,000 how-to videos on how to just do basic things in S/4. Huge community, huge event. SAP is starting to make end rolls and becoming, again, not just a products company, but an ecosystem company, I think. Sapphire in Orlando is a great example of how they're expanding the brand. >> Yes, and in fact, on the brand part, you know, that's one of the things that their CMO, Alicia Tillman, who was on main stage this morning, that's something that I've heard her talk about before. She's been the CMO for about nine months now, and she said, you know, and marketers will know, campaigns and messaging will change every quarter, six months, and that is fine. It's the brand narrative that they really started to work on at SAP. So, you're seeing this "Best-run companies run on SAP", it's sharing the value of what SAP can deliver with their partner ecosystem, in terms of how it's helping customers transform their businesses, transform industries, save lives. They've done a very focused job on showing how this invisible technology is really revolutionizing the world. They're now going, you know, full-force, embedding A.I., and really being quite bold, they're saying. I loved what Bill McDermott had on the slide this morning, of augmented intelligence. And there's always a lot of concern with A.I, right? Jobs being replaced. And he talked about what he, and some of the other world leaders, were talking about. And I liked augmented intelligence, to augment humanity, this connection of humans and machines working together. They're really being quite bold, and focused, in that area. I'm just curious what your take was from an advanced analytics A.I. perspective. >> So, there's a lot of talk around advanced A.I. analytics. At the end of the day, it's about actual business results. We're here in the booth of NetApp, who has done a great job, frankly, of transforming their image from a storage company in the middle of a transformation to being known as a data-driven company. So, NetApp has gone through a similar change that SAP is looking to do, from a brand perspective. Reasonably enough, we had the CIO, Bill, from NetApp, that talked about that transformation, and how data is a key part of their own transformation, internally. And, how SAP could probably hold NetApp up as a great example of a company that's using the predecessor to C/4HANA, which was just announced, on the staged hypers of taking data, analyzing that data, applying A.I, machine learning, more like machine learning in reality. Machine learning to that data, and then getting insights, so that humans can make better decisions. >> Right. You know, on that front, one of the themes I heard today, Keith, from not just Bill Miller, the CIO of NetApp, who was on here with us earlier, but some of their other partners, NetApp and SAP's partners, all talk about their own transformations, internally, as essential for them to become intelligent enterprises, which is a lot of what SAP's talking about. But I also thought that was quite valuable, from an external perspective, to hear NetApp talk so candidly about their transformation, and share that with their customers who are in similar positions. I think, when vendors will, say, drink their own champagne, and there's real proof there in the pudding. I think that's tremendously valuable for these brands. And we've just heard that kind of consistently throughout the day today, of companies that are showing how they're transforming to then help their customers also transform. >> So, one of the things that we like to ask on theCUBE is not just about current customer base, but, what new customers are you attracting? So, one of the interesting conversations is one of the last ones we had with WorkSpan, and how they're a small company, and they started out the gate with SAP, and how the brand has gone beyond this, oh, this is a manufacturing, supply chain, you must be a Fortune 500 company to even consider rolling it out to. You know what? We're a brand new company, providing a data-driven product, and out of the gate, we're selecting a S/4HANA and the platform to create this new product that's consumed by not necessarily technologists, that powers an alliance platform to find and curate business alliances. I thought that was an extremely interesting interview that shows the power of expanding beyond just a focus on traditional enterprise, but the power of data. And once you've become a platform, how you can power your partner ecosystem. >> I thought that was a great example, as well, of a company that's only been in business for three years, less than four years. How they saw this gap in the market, where they said, you know, we're surrounded by alliance partners of SAP's in this 16 football fields location that we're in. And WorkSpan found that 60 to 75% of announced alliances fail. Huge opportunity for them to then get in from a systematic perspective and align, you know, two companies' marketing automation systems, for example, and sales automation systems. And they really saw this big opportunity to, like you were saying, create an entirely new product, and probably create a new market as a result. I thought that was a really modern example of an idea that saw a huge gap, and can be transformative. I asked Ahmed, after we stopped rolling the cameras, all right, so you found 60 to 75% of these announced alliances fail, typically. What does WorkSpan think you can do to bring that number down? And he said, within two years, we wanna get that down to about 30%. >> Wow. That is an amazing stat. So, let's look at the companies that are digitally transforming. So we had two guests that I want to highlight, one with Mike McGivney from SAP SuccessFactors, which is SAP's people-focused cloud, and then Wolfgang Hopfes, the head of SAP Business for EMEA. And they're on a unique challenge. SAP has been around for 46 years, and in IT years, that's like, you know, 1,000. So, there's a lot of technical debt, that companies are now paying for. You know, back in the nineties, early 2000s, customizing SAP was all the rage. Now, customers are faced with, they have to digitally transform their organizations, how do they do so? Well, it's not so easy to move from a customized SAP to S/4. Bill trumpeted the numbers of 1,800 SAP HANA customers, which is great, well over a billion dollars in sales for an in-memory database. However, SAP has over 300,000 customers. So there's a lot of opportunity, but a lot of challenge. So, the ecosystem of partners, Fujitsu, NetApp, other infrastructure companies looking to help simplify the infrastructure so that technologists within these customer organizations can focus on the higher stack of those larger business challenges of basically pulling apart what they've built. Bill from NetApp shared how difficult their transformation was from their CRM to >> Hypers? >> Hypers. He called it painful, a painful six months. And what we saw today, I think, was a reality check. A lot of enterprises have a lot of pain ahead of them. >> Well, it's pain in a number of areas, and one of them is cultural. And I really thought, you know, you say, SAP being 46 years old is like, 1,000 in IT, or dog years. They're like the Gandalf of IT, right? But one of the things that I found quite remarkable is 46 year-old history, 390,000 customers. But clearly, they have been able to evolve their culture to be able to support what their customers need, and go from just being a supply chain procurement-focused type of business. And I thought that was really quite compelling, to see how they must have had to transform their culture, so that they can help businesses transform. They make it look easy, with the messaging and the momentum, but that was something that for a company that's an incumbent like that, is a bit of, you might say, even a model for how to do that right. >> Yeah, we talked to Joe Lazar, he's the SAP VP of Global Technology Partners. He talked about how SAP likes to be pushed to be a little uncomfortable by their partners, and we asked him the tough questions. You know, there's been tweets and there's been announcements from all the ACI vendors. I've talked to customer after customer that says, you know what, S/4HANA on HCI is what we want. A very quotable comment that he made was, we're not doing S/4 on HANA because we want to, we're doing S/4 on HANA because customers demand it. So, SAP is definitely listening to customer demand, S/4 on HANA is one of those things. You know, he tried to stay away from the bad word of certified on 4HANA, and validated, and focused on solutions, but SAP has a little ways to go. And that's kind of a, you talk to any HCI customer, validated and certified 4HANA is a bad word today, but SAP understands it and they're moving to certify the platform for HCI, so I thought that was a great example of them listening to customers and continuing to transform over the years. >> You're absolutely right. In fact, you know, if you look up digital transformation, one of the first pillars that you're gonna see is you gotta become customer-centric. And we really heard that a lot today. Even NetApp, when you were talking with Bill Miller about ONTAP in the cloud, going it's okay guys, maybe we have to listen to our customers. If we don't we won't be in business. That's a hallmark of an enterprise that is digitally transforming. >> Yeah, I'd argue that Dave Hitts was the one who forced that, that kind of cultural change. You had to bring in the founder to talk to the engineers and that had very engineer-driven thinking And I think Dave was very direct, like you know, we have to make the change or we won't be in business. The pendulum has changed to cloud. The SAP, which is not by any stretch of the mind, was never designed to run in the cloud, but they're adopting the technology for what customers are demanding. There's an AWS booth here, Fujitsu was the first one to say that, you know what, if customers need fail-fast environments, that's exactly where they should go, and put S/4 implementations, and then steady states should be moved to RMPRAM or private dating center or hosted solutions. So, the ecosystem seems to be embracing this change. >> Definitely. Anything that you're particularly looking forward to tomorrow for Day 2? >> You know what? I love talking to customers, so I'm looking forward to more customer conversations, talking about how is this being used? We haven't really talked a lot about Leonardo much. So, you know, IoT, A.I., how are these things that get a lot of press being perceived by actual customers? How are they being implemented? What's their true adoption rate? >> Awesome. Well, I look forward to hosting with you tomorrow, Keith. Thanks so much. >> I appreciate it. >> Thanks for watching. Keith and I have been at SAP Sapphire, bringing you some hopefully great informative content. From the NetApp booth, Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching.

>> From Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and we are in Orlando Florida, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018 in the NetApp booth. We're excited to welcome to theCUBE from SAP the SVP of global technology partners Joe Zarb. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. >> I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me, excited to share with you all the great things that are going on here at SAPPHIRE and with SAP. >> This event is huge. Bill McDermott was saying this morning in his keynote that it's the biggest SAPPHIRE that you guys have ever done, and one of the numbers, he gave a lot of numbers this morning, I always geek out on numbers, >> Right. (laughs) >> He said you guys are expecting about a million people to engage with SAP related to SAPPHIRE. That's incredible. >> It's incredible, it's incredible. A million people, think about the global reach a company with 70% of the world's commerce transactions going through our systems, people want to know what's next? What's coming out next from an innovation point of view, what are our leaders saying? What are our partners saying about where the future is and it really speaks to the whole concept of digitizing business processes. Every company wants to be a startup and I think what you're seeing here is a lot of that excitement that SAP, we just consider ourselves a very big startup with a broad reach. So, I think Bill was able to capture that excitement, convey that excitement and I think the ecosystem is reflecting that. >> A 46 year old startup nonetheless, right? >> Yeah, right exactly. >> So as the leader of the technology partners, talk to us about how those technology partners have been fundamental in SAP's transformation. >> Totally fundamental, particularly as SAP starts to transform into really a platform company. The platform provides a level of abstraction that customers can leverage to simplify their infrastructure and their access to applications, and it also creates extensibility and it's all about the partner ecosystem. So one of the biggest agenda items that we have in terms of that is really the whole hyper-converged infrastructure play, and it's really going to be something that is going to help customers innovate, drive down costs and drive up ROI. There's very few plays that are a triple whammy and this is one of them. So the partner ecosystem to us that spans our global service providers, our technology partners which are both hardware and software partners, but we also have data syndication partners, and we have other partners in the management consultant fields, et cetera. They all contribute to expanding and enhancing our digital platform and our applications. >> So, one of the areas I like to challenge infrastructure companies on, NetApp is a data-driven infrastructure company, and when you're talking to enterprise, application-centric people, infrastructure's one of these things that's an afterthought. >> Right. >> But HCI is really changing the game. NetApp's SolidFire Division along with some of their now compute innovations to form this new HCI story. Can you provide some color? What's the significance of having an HCI based infrastructure for your SAP deployment? >> Yes, that's a great question. First let me back up and I completely agree with you, when you talk to most customers, their eyes glaze over when you start talking about storage, what have you, but when you start talking about the sophisticated customers that are driving innovation and trying to transform their business, there's really three technical elements that they're very focused on. One is connectivity. They're trying to connect to all kinds of devices, business processes, and aspects of their business that haven't been connected. They're connecting because they want to retrieve signals from areas in the field and areas of customers and products they've never collected before, as they connect these signals, they're creating tremendous storages of data. And so, until you get over that, realize the enormity of that problem and the scope of "How do you now take this data "and turn it into a collection "of perishable insights that you can act on?" Until you've reached that level of sophistication, you don't understand why a company like NetApp is critical to your entire digital infrastructure and story. And that whole hyper-converged area is really the ability to promise, it's a promise to the customer that their workload can scale essentially infinitely on premise, in the cloud, cloud to cloud, back to on premise. And so at SAP, as an application provider, we look at applications that are going to run at the edge, at the core and on premise, and in the cloud. HCI helps us deliver that vision at the application tier but you have to have the platform and the infrastructure there. And NetApp is a great partner to help us fulfill that vision as well as other partners, but they're very key. >> So you have your business applications, you have SAP HANA from a database and memory database capability. Now we're talking about the Leonardo stack. You have this, what's becoming a platform, and as a platform provider, you look towards your ecosystem to extend the capability of the platform, to create more value. Where are you seeing the value generated in the partnership with NetApp? >> That's a great question, so all of our partners have the ability to one, reinforce the dominance in those markets we choose to serve and those applications we choose to deliver. However the real value of the ecosystem and a company like NetApp, is when they take us out of our comfort zone, and by taking us out of our comfort zone, they're taking us to roll your own applications, custom applications, or third party non-SAP applications where they're storing and managing the data yet making it accessible to Leonardo for machine learning, to create block chain scenarios where we can create trusted relationships, leveraging data that may not be SAP data, and also in the whole internet of things. Connecting to sensors and using that data from sensors in ways that really have nothing to do with SAP's core applications per se, but may have benefits to the customer in ways that really needs to be co-innovated. So our partners are a critical player to put us outside of our comfort zone, force us to grow, force us to learn, force us to expand, and NetApp has proven to be one of those partners that can deal with a myriad of data types from a myriad of applications that force us to stretch into voice recognition, to force us into data mining and data analytics and the like. >> So as we talk about pushing out of your comfort zone, SAP has been extremely steady in being able to provide a mixture between hardware partners, whether it's appliance model for deployment of HANA to a partnerships with first level support through partners such as NetApp. Talk through where you guys are at in the partnership, specifically with a technology that's killer, that Bill talked about which is SAP HANA on HCI. Are we going to see HANA on HCI in the near future? Customers are really interested in it and it seems like a slam dunk. >> It seems like a no brainer, right? >> Yeah, like no brainer, yeah. >> And it is, it is a no brainer. We're going to see HANA on HCI, not because SAP wants HANA on HCI, it's because our customers want HANA on HCI, and we're slaves to our customers. So where we are right now is we know that we are a trusted supplier and provider to our customers and they know that the SAP brand stands for integrity and all of the -ilities that go with running a large complex enterprise, reliability, serviceability, maintainability et cetera. So we're actually working very closely with all of our HCI partners to go through a rather arduous certification process. Through that certification process it's a commitment that we're asking them to make and they're asking us to make for the long term. I don't like the word certification, I prefer new product introduction, because what we're asking them to do is build their products, tune it to our products, we're going to do the same and we're going to continuously innovate and continuously introduce new products. So the word, the former word, is certification. All I can say is, we don't like to pre-release or announce anything so watch this space, but I am so excited to be a tech head. >> What are some of the, if we look at a retailer, for example, who has to work with, say it's an apparel manufacturer and they've got a designer they've got to work with, textiles, all these different sources of information and it might take a year from a design to go from concept to actual product that they can sell. So you mentioned and I really like that you talked about insights as perishable, it was something about actionalbe insights, but for a company like an apparel company who has such a long cycle from concept to delivery, how will HCI facilitate them being able to link and sync, what Bill McDermott said this morning is, synchronize the supply chain with the demand chain? >> Right, yes, that whole value chain, value proposition. So, the beautiful thing is, all of those companies have a track record and a history of data. A lot of that data is right now in NetApp. So there's a lot of learnings and knowledge that haven't been mined and pooled out of that data that exists today. HCI is going to enable a couple of things. One is when you look at a distributed supply chain, we have probably the industry's leading distributed supply chain solution, track and trace capabilities, to be able to follow that product throughout it's life cycle. As we capture that data with HCI infrastructure, we're going to be able to analyze and transform those business processes, candidly, in ways that we haven't thought of yet. The beauty of HCI is, when you talk about retailers you're often times dealing with companies that have wire thin margins, so they want to be able to create products quickly, get them to market quickly and do it within the cost constraints. HCI is one of those rare platform and enabling technologies that delivers on that. It's going to allow you to rightsize your workload in the cloud or on premise or on the right size servers et cetera. And it's going to allow you to scale up as needed and manage a more efficient yet effective infrastructure. So I see HCI playing a role not only in retailers, but really across all industries. It's one of those really beautiful horizontal technologies that adds immediate value to those people that have reached that maturity curve. >> So as we talk about these advanced applications, can't help but get into topics such as ILT, edge in general, applications as we look at SAP as a platform company, applications SAP may not build directly but have to integrate with. How do you see HCI and your global partners figuring into those advanced applications and the infrastructure around that? >> Yeah so that's a great question, thank you. If you really look at those new emerging applications that are edge, core and cloud, lots of moving parts. Lots of moving parts gives you the opportunity to rightsize the workload and the processing at the edge or at the core at the cloud, but it also creates a tremendous amount of complexity. So to really create a breakthrough, you have to radically simplify and standardize the processes that manage that core, cloud, edge relationship. If you can create that environment, then people can deploy, manage, monitor, maintain these environments much more effectively with a lower skillset, right? So there's not that hurdle. I kind of think of it as today's IT infrastructure is kind of like a manual car and as you get bigger IT it becomes an 18-wheeler, it's a little hard to, unwieldy. You've got to be really good at driving in reverse and stuff like that. When you add HCI you're not necessarily going to an autonomous car but you've definitely got an automatic transmission, you probably could do a couple of things pretty well automatically right? And that allows a whole new class of drivers to get in the car. And so I think that's what HCI is going to do, as the architectures and the deployment methods get more complex, it's going to keep it manageable and within a skill base and price point that people can live with. >> I like that analogy, I think that's very simple to follow speaking of simplicity. I wanted to ask you about when you guys are going to market with partners. Bill McDermott has been very vocal, as we talked about when we kicked off this segment, about wanting to be one of the top ten most valuable brands. Among the likes of Apple, Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz, Google, who sell products that we can touch and wear and feel and see. With technology like SAP and even, say, what you're doing with NetApp on hyper-converged, what's the conversation like when you're talking about products that people may not even know are under the hood? How do you ignite a customer to be excited? What are some of those exciting customer examples that you see that really show how this technology from SAP and your partners can change a company, change an industry, change a life? >> Right. That's a great question and it's really the essence of a brand right? So first I would encourage all of your viewers, go play Bill's keynote from SAPPHIRE today, I mean, I think he was totally evangelical and I think he painted the picture so. From my perspective the brand, so first all of those brands that you mentioned, right, Apple and Google, these are all loyal SAP customers. They're also SAP partners so we're punching with the heavyweights. We're at, I think, number 17 in brand equity and we're working our way up. I think our focus isn't so much touching and feeling our products. I think it's more about trust, making a promise and a commitment to the market and that market validating that commitment and statement with money. Basically buying our products, deploying our products, and basing their business on our products. And so, when I think of SAP becoming that brand as more and more companies continue to rely on us, trust in us and as we become a more integrated economy and society, they're going to realize Apple is going to be able to trust Google because they're using SAP and they know there's integrity of the data and their processing. Google's going to be able to trust their suppliers, like NetApp and HP and et cetera because they're using SAP as well. So there's this, basically this movement of trust and brand identity that will be validated by our customers. We create the message, the customers create the brand. So I think that's our approach. >> Like trust is the new currency. >> It is, it really is, particularly in the data-based, data-oriented society and economy. >> My good friend Tom, on Twitter said that the future is data, the future isn't databases. So, I thought it was a brilliant quote, so shout out to Tom. So as we look at that, the future is data and not databases, and you guys have rolled out an established database in HANA, but how do you refocus, not on the actual technology but on the data itself as it relates to, you know NetApp has started to market themselves as a data-driven company. What's the relationship between the infrastructure, the database, the application and the actual data? >> So, good question, it's a long answer, so let me try to net out a couple of key areas there. So if you kind of look at data, data plays a point of origination where you're going to enter data and capture the transactions of the business. It's also the source of innovation. After capturing all that data there are these perishable insights and there are these anomalies and signals that are trapped in there that you're going to pull out. So when you look at the infrastructure itself, our belief is that consumers and the consumer experience with technology has created a very real time society. We chat in real time, we post images in real time, we message in real time and we believe that level of performance is what enterprises are going to demand. Batches going away. People, they don't want to hear, "Oh no it takes hours "to sift though a petabyte of data." They don't want to hear it. So they want to move to, they want their answers now, and so that's what we've really focused on is that whole real time experience, and we believe that data, like you said data, it is going to be both the source of insight, it's going to be the system of record and then it's really going to be the basis of the next generation products and services. So if you look at all the companies that people are trying to copy and mirror, they're giving away their software products and they're monetizing the insights that they glean from that data, right? So Facebook makes their money off of advertising that is based on your likes and preferences and shares, et cetera, like that. So their business isn't software, it's how do I monetize that data, that behavior that is trapped in that data, how do I surface those behaviors? So we think that's very core to us. We have a group within SAP that works with our partners and customers to help them build data-driven business models, data-driven business products and data-driven solutions and NetApp is core to all that. I think once you get and start to deal with the order of magnitude of data that we're talking about here, you have to move to an HCI and you have to move to a trusted player like that. >> The Facebook example as we wrap things up, you kind of just alluded to one of the things that I've heard some of your execs saying, including your CMO, Alicia Tillman, where, our customers don't care about the technology, they care about their customers and you kind of just articulated that really well. That that's what you need to be able to enable is what Facebook is delivering, what Apple is delivering, or what Google is delivering. So thanks so much Joe, for stopping by and sharing what you guys are doing with partners to really kind of fundamentally change the direction that SAP is going in. >> Thanks, it's great to be here and thanks for having me. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAPPHIRE 2018, thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE! Covering DevNet Create 2018, brought to you by Cisco. >> Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive live coverage here in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum for Cisco's DevNet Create. I'm here with Lauren Cooney, the analyst, for the Wikibon team and our next guest is I'm proud to have Guy Kawasaki here on theCUBE. Guy is, goes without mentioning, a legend in the industry. Currently, the chief evangelist for Canva author of Art of the Start, a real pioneer in entrepreneurship, tech entrepreneurship, tech evangelism. Guy, great to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Among other things, you've done a lot of amazing things. Thanks for joining us. >> What better place to be. >> The tech culture now is so mainstream. You're seeing Facebook CEO draw in more audience than a Supreme Court justice. >> More people watched the Senate hearings yesterday-- >> He probably has more impact than a Supreme Court justice. >> He's running the world. The tech culture has really grown to be a mainstream...in the early days the computer industry when it was really the beginning of the revolution, the PC revolution, Macintosh and the PC, you were there. So much has happened. I mean, as you look back, I mean looked out at the young guns coming up, what's your view, what's your reaction to all this? You have these (mumbles) moments. >> What's your take on all this? >> I suppose many people would say, we never thought it would get to this point. It's turned destructive and negative and all that. But it's a short snapshot of time and, first of all, can we put the genie back in the bottle? No, so it doesn't really matter. But, all things considered, the democratization of computing, everybody has a computer, whether it's a phone or a computer. The democratization of the transfer of information, obviously some information may be faint, may be not what you like. But would we go back to a time where we send things by fax machines? Not at all, I mean all things considered, >> it's a great time to be alive. >> Democratization goes through these waves, democratization with the PC, democratization with the internet, democratization of web 2.0 and social media. The beginning of social media, about 15 years, maybe 10, whatever way you might want to mark it. And now democratization with data and AI is interesting. So you're having these waves of democratization. It's going to take some time to sort out. I mean, as you look at the tech trends, how do you make sense of it, or what do you get excited about? How do you surf that wave? (chuckling) If you're going to surf the wave, the big wave coming, which some say is block chain and cryptocurrency and decentralization. What's the wave that you're on, that's the question? >> To use a surfing analogy, if we're going to go down that rat hole, a good, experienced surfer knows where to sit, can look out and say, I'll take the fourth wave. And I'll sit in the right place, turn around at the right time, paddle at the right time, you know, all that. And then there's people like me. We sit in the same place, and every 15 minutes, the right wave comes along and catches us. Those are the two theories. >> I think if only predicting tech trends were as easy as predicting surfing. >> Interviewer: Timing's everything. >> Timing is everything, luck is a lot to do with it. We only learn about the Apples and the Googles and the Ciscos and the Facebooks and the Pinterests and the Instagrams. I think you think, well, there are these really smart people and they can predict the trend or cause a trend. I think it's more the game of big numbers where if you have enough surfers in the water, somebody's going to catch a wave. (chuckling) And then you can say, yeah, I knew he was the best surfer. >> But really, right place, right time. >> And you got to know what a wave looks like. >> Guy: Well, yeah. >> You got to be, like, okay, am I in a tide pool >> or am I on a boogie board. >> And to your point, you've got to be in the water. [John] Yeah, yeah. >> You can't be standing on the shore, saying I'm going to catch a wave. You have to be in the water, and if you're in the water, >> nine times out of ten you're going to get crushed. (chuckling) >> If you're not out in front of that next wave, you're driftwood. In surfing, people will jump and try to take your wave, this sounds like the tactic of the whole industry. >> Guy: Exactly, right, right. >> What waves do you see that are coming, in your mind. You've seen a lot of waves in your day. I mean, right now, what wave is exciting you right now. >> If you look at the waves, what's out there? >> What I learn about that is, you can only declare your intelligence and victory after the fact, right. I can tell you the internet of things is big. I can tell you that social media is big. I can tell you that computing is big. Problem is I could tell you that because I know it's big now. Can I tell you what's in the future, no. If I could...first of all I wouldn't tell you. (chuckling) So I think in a rare moment of humility it's the law of big numbers. Infinite monkeys typing at keyboards, somebody's going to come up with Beethoven. >> I want to ask you a question because I get asked this question a lot, Hey, John, you've been around a while. I want to catch that next big wave, I want to be in the next Google, I want to be rich on stock options. (Guy chuckling) I said, a lot of times the best companies where you take the most advantage of is when no one else wants to work there or no one yet knows it. We really can't say, Oh, I'm going to get rich on that company because by that time it's either too late and people are chasing the wrong thing. >> Guy: Absolutely. >> How do you give that same advice to someone? >> Listen, you're talking to a guy who quit Apple twice and turned down Steve once. So how smart could I be? (John chuckling) Now we can say Apple is the most valuable company in the world, you should have stayed there. Well, thank you very much, thanks for tell me now. I think it's really... I don't want to be too dramatic, but I could almost build a case that you should invest in or work for the most dumb-ass idea you heard of. Because at any given point-- >> Airbnb, we're going to rent out mattresses >> and give out cereal. >> Very good example, Airbnb. Let's face it, if somebody told you Airbnb, before there was Airbnb, you would say, So you're telling me that I'm going to rent a room from somebody I met on the internet, and I'm going to sleep in that person's house, hoping he's not a murderer or pedophile. On the flip side, you're saying, I'm going to rent out my room to someone who I hope is not a pedophile or an ax murderer. Or ebay...I'm going to buy this printer from 3000 miles away and I'm going to assume it works. Or I'm going to sell my good printer to someone 3000 miles away and assume that he's not going to say he never got it or that it didn't work and he wants a refund. So if you go down the line of all these ideas, you'd have to say at the time, nobody. Even take an extreme: Zappos. If you told me that women would buy shoes without trying them on, seeing them, smelling them, and touching them, I would tell you you're crazy. You'd buy a book that way. You'd buy a CD that way, you'd buy a DVD. Would you buy shoes, would you buy shoes without trying them on. >> I totally would. (laughing) Now I can say that. >> To Zappos's credit, some of the way it made that work is it offered shipping back for free. So there was really no risk. But I would have been a skeptic about Zappos. >> Well, it was one of those things for me, Zappos, where they shipped in one day so I could get them immediately, try them on and if they didn't work, I could ship them back and get a different size. It was no big deal, it was very low overhead. So that's one of the reasons that that worked. But I think when you mention all of these great things like Ebay and Airbnb, it's really part of the sharing economy with people really wanting to share the goodness of their goods with other people that need them. >> It's just really connecting those folks. >> Places like Oakland and San Francisco, where there are certain streets where you line up and you just get in the next car with a stranger, and you go to San Francisco with them. >> Lauren: Yeah. >> And it's not computerized or anything. It's just trust. >> I did that once and it was frightening. (laughs) You never know who the driver is going to be or how they're going to drive. >> But you did it. >> I did it. >> People do it every day. >> I know. >> I'm amazed. >> I did it once, but... (laughing) >> Let's ask you a question. What's the craziest idea that you've seen that worked and the craziest idea that didn't work. >> Let's start with the easy one. I had a company called garage.com, and we were a venture capitalist investment bank, so we got pitched all the time. One day, a guy comes in and says, I'm going to build... A dirigible hotel over San Francisco. So you stay in the dirigible. Another person said, We're going to build a geodesic dome over Los Angeles. And I can't remember if it was to keep the air pollution in or out. I'll just tell you one really great one. These people were from Seagate so they had Cray, they worked for Seagate. And they say, We have this patent-pending, curb-jumping, patent-pending whatever technology so that if you drop your laptop with your hard disk, the head won't crash into the hard disk and ruin the hard disk. And at the time, this was 15 years ago, that was a great idea, right. It wasn't solid state. Heads crashing into hard disks. >> Moving parts. >> Seagate, so this is a great idea. Every hard disk in every laptop should be like it. So we get in the car, we go to their office, and the receptionist says, Oh, they're running late because they're on the phone with IBM. IBM is really interested in using this technology for the IBM PC laptop. Keep us waiting, keep us waiting. And they get out, and, Yeah, IBM was really, they're so excited, they're ready to move. And I, like, we're really excited. And finally I said, Give me the jist, what is your technology, is it like some special chip that detects gravitational fall, it's too fast, it's got to be hitting the ground so it parks the head because it recognizes motion or whatever. And I swear to God, I swear to God, he brings out this piece of foam and he says this is military spec foam. So we take your hard disk, we put this foam thing around it, and we put it in the laptop. And I swear to God, I was having an out of body experience. >> You're telling me-- >> I drove all the way here-- >> That your proprietary technology is putting foam around the hard disk, and IBM is excited by this foam. So welcome to my life. >> So what are you up to now. Talk about your evangelism. I know you're a (mumbles) Mercedes. You have a bunch of things going on. You've been very prolific in social media. You were on the suggested user list from day one on Twitter. >> No, I wasn't. >> Oh, no, you weren't, that's right. But you have a zillion followers. >> That's why I have never forgiven Twitter for that. >> I thought they put you on. >> Guy: No. >> Okay, I stand corrected. >> You had to be an actress. >> Some tech people got on there, I know. >> Guy: Yeah. >> But I was not on. >> There you go. >> Measly 20,000 or so. But you got a million and a half followers active. You've really been prolific in a good way. (laughing) Engaging with communities. >> Yeah. >> What have you learned and how do you view this next generation of social because you're seeing the Facebooks, you're seeing LinkedIn. There's siloed platforms. Is there hope? What's your take on it, is it going to grow? >> I've come to the point where I always believe things are never as good or as bad as they seem. So I don't think it's as bad as people say. If these social media sites are selling my data, they're going to go broke selling my data. (laughs) I don't know how you could look at my data. First of all, I never look at ads, so go ahead, sell my data. I'm not going to look at the ad anyway. It doesn't matter. I think the ability to spread ideas, arguably good or bad, the ability to spread ideas with social media, all things considered, is better. It's going to be abused and all that. My father was a state senator in Honolulu, and we were into banner ads way before anybody else. Banner was literally a piece of cloth with his name on it that you staple to the side of a building, saying Vote for Duke Kawasaki. That was the nature of banner advertisement back then. Do I think that social media targeting and all that for sales is a good thing? Yes, I do. If you're a real estate broker, and you wanted to reach people who live in Silicon Valley, age 50 to 70, female or male or whatever, in such-and-such an income bracket, how else can you do it but Facebook? >> It's good and bad. >> That's why Facebook is so successful. >> The metadata is all about the clan and the culture, and I think putting ideas out there is a way to send your ideas into the ether, make it happen. So, that's key. Now, we're here at a developer conference, so one of the things that's also a big part of this community is the notion of how open source has become a tier one citizen, and it's really running the world. Which is also grounded in community as well. You have this ethos of community, ethos of software open. >> I believe in open source. I believe that the more intelligent people pounding on your stuff, the better it is. I'm an author, and what I do is, speaking in the sense of open source. So right now I'm about 80% done with my book. I put out a post on social media saying anybody that wants to review my book, test my book, send me your information. So I do this, I cut it off at about 280 people. I send them the Word document, the entire Word document of my book. Does that mean they can take it and publish it in China tomorrow, yes. But, from that, I get hundreds and hundreds of comments. >> John: Wisdom of the crowds, self-editing. >> Yeah, and they point out stuff that I never would have noticed because I'm too close to at this point. So is there a downside, yes. Is there piracy, yes. Arguably, would those pirates have bought the book anyway? No. >> Our content's all free. We're really big in China because they actually take it and translate it in the native language. >> Guy: Which you would never have done. >> With all the jargon, you can't hire a-- >> Guy: You would never have done that. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Guy, great to catch up with you. Thanks for coming on. What are you working on now, you mentioned the book, what's the book about? >> The book is called Wise Guy, and it's a compilation of the stories that have influenced my life. So it's not an auto-biography. It is not a memoir. Have you ever heard of the book Chicken Soup for the Soul? >> John: Yeah, yeah. >> You know, it's inspirational stories. This is miso soup for the soul. (laughing) So I'm working on that, TV evangelism with Canva is just going gangbusters. Brand ambassadors for Mercedes Benz. I'm on the board of directors of a company called Cheeze with a zee. It's an anti-social photo-sharing and vidoo-sharing app. And that's it. >> You've been an inspiration to many, great job of the year has been a big fan of your work. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Guy Kawasaki here inside theCUBE. We're at Devnet Create. This is Cisco's cloud developer conference. Different from their core Devnet Cisco Networking developer, and this is all about dev ops open source. And this is theCUBE bringing you all the action here in Mountain View, California. We'll be right back with more after this short break.

>> Hi I'm Peter Burris and welcome to another Wikibon Action Item. (electronic music) One of the most pressing strategic issues that businesses face is how to get more value out of their data, In our opinion that's the essence of a digital business transformation, is the using of data as an asset to improve your operations and take better advantage of market opportunities. The problem of data though, it's shareable, it's copyable, it's reusable. It's easy to create derivative value out of it. One of the biggest misnomers in the digital business world is the notion that data is the new fuel or the new oil. It's not, You can only use oil once. You can apply it to a purpose and not multiple purposes. Data you can apply to a lot of purposes, which is why you are able to get such interesting and increasing returns to that asset if you use it appropriately. Now, this becomes especially important for technology companies that are attempting to provide digital business technologies or services or other capabilities to their customers. In the consumer world, it started to reach a head. Questions about Facebook's reuse of a person's data through an ad based business model is now starting to lead people to question the degree to which the information asymmetry about what I'm giving and how they're using it is really worth the value that I get out of Facebook, is something that consumers and certainly governments are starting to talk about. it's also one of the bases for GDPR, which is going to start enforcing significant fines in the next month or so. In the B2B world that question is going to become especially acute. Why? Because as we try to add intelligence to the services and the products that we are utilizing within digital business, some of that requires a degree of, or some sort of relationship where some amount of data is passed to improve the models and machine learning and AI that are associated with that intelligence. Now, some companies have come out and said flat out they're not going to reuse a customer's data. IBM being a good example of that. When Ginni Rometty at IBM Think said, we're not going to reuse our customer's data. The question for the panel here is, is that going to be a part of a differentiating value proposition in the marketplace? Are we going to see circumstances in which companies keep products and services low by reusing a client's data and others sustaining their experience and sustaining a trust model say they won't. How is that going to play out in front of customers? So joining me today here in the studio, David Floyer. >> Hi there. >> And on the remote lines we have Neil Raden, Jim Kobielus, George Gilbert, and Ralph Finos. Hey, guys. >> All: Hey. >> All right so... Neil, let me start with you. You've been in the BI world as a user, as a consultant, for many, many number of years. Help us understand the relationship between data, assets, ownership, and strategy. >> Oh, God. Well, I don't know that I've been in the BI world. Anyway, as a consultant when we would do a project for a company, there were very clear lines of what belong to us and what belong to the client. They were paying us generously. They would allow us to come in to their company and do things that they needed and in return we treated them with respect. We wouldn't take their data. We wouldn't take their data models that we built, for example, and sell them to another company. That's just, as far as I'm concerned, that's just theft. So if I'm housing another company's data because I'm a cloud provider or some sort of application provider and I say well, you know, I can use this data too. To me the analogy is, I'm a warehousing company and independently I go into the warehouse and I say, you know, these guys aren't moving their inventory fast enough, I think I'll sell some of it. It just isn't right. >> I think it's a great point. Jim Kobielus. As we think about the role that data, machine learning play, training models, delivering new classes of services, we don't have a clean answer right now. So what's your thought on how this is likely to play out? >> I agree totally with Neil, first of all. If it's somebody else's data, you don't own it, therefore you can't sell and you can't monetize it, clearly. But where you have derivative assets, like machine learning models that are derivative from data, it's the same phenomena, it's the same issue at a higher level. You can build and train, or should, your machine learning models only from data that you have legal access to. You own or you have license and so forth. So as you're building these derivative assets, first and foremost, make sure as you're populating your data lake, to build and to do the training, that you have clear ownership over the data. So with GDPR and so forth, we have to be doubly triply vigilant to make sure that we're not using data that we don't have authorized ownership or access to. That is critically important. And so, I get kind of queasy when I hear some people say we use blockchain to make... the sharing of training data more distributed and federated or whatever. It's like wait a second. That doesn't solve the issues of ownership. That makes it even more problematic. If you get this massive blockchain of data coming from hither and yon, who owns what? How do you know? Do you dare build any models whatsoever from any of that data? That's a huge gray area that nobody's really addressed yet. >> Yeah well, it might mean that the blockchain has been poorly designed. I think that we talked in one of the previous Action Items about the role that blockchain design's going to play. But moving aside from the blockchain, so it seems as though we generally agree that data is owned by somebody typically and that the ownership of it, as Neil said, means that you can't intercept it at some point in time just because it is easily copied and then generate rents on it yourself. David Floyer, what does that mean from a ongoing systems design and development standpoint? How are we going to assure, as Jim said, not only that we know what data is ours but make sure that we have the right protection strategies, in a sense, in place to make sure that the data as it moves, we have some influence and control over it. >> Well, my starting point is that AI and AI infused products are fueled by data. You need that data, and Jim and Neil have already talked about that. In my opinion, the most effective way of improving a company's products, whatever the products are, from manufacturing, agriculture, financial services, is to use AI infused capabilities. That is likely to give you the best return on your money and businesses need to focus on their own products. That's the first place you are trying to protect from anybody coming in. Businesses own that data. They own the data about your products, in use by your customers, use that data to improve your products with AI infused function and use it before your competition eats your lunch. >> But let's build on that. So we're not saying that, for example, if you're a storage system supplier, since that's a relatively easy one. You've got very, very fast SSDs. Very, very fast NVMe over Fabric. Great technology. You can collect data about how that system is working but that doesn't give you rights to then also collect data about how the customer's using the system. >> There is a line which you need to make sure that you are covering. For example, Call Home on a product, any product, whose data is that? You need to make sure that you can use that data. You have some sort of agreement with the customer and that's a win-win because you're using that data to improve the product, prove things about it. But that's very, very clear that you should have a contractual relationship, as Jim and Neil were pointing out. You need the right to use that data. It can't come beyond the hand. But you must get it because if you don't get it, you won't be able to improve your products. >> Now, we're talking here about technology products which have often very concrete and obvious ownership and people who are specifically responsible for administering them. But when we start getting into the IoT domain or in other places where the device is infused with intelligence and it might be collecting data that's not directly associated with its purpose, just by virtue of the nature of sensors that are out there and the whole concept of digital twin introduces some tension in all this. George Gilbert. Take us through what's been happening with the overall suppliers of technology that are related to digital twin building, designing, etc. How are they securing or making promises committing to their customers that they will not cross this data boundary as they improve the quality of their twins? >> Well, as you quoted Ginni Rometty starting out, she's saying IBM, unlike its competitors, will not take advantage and leverage and monetize your data. But it's a little more subtle than that and digital twins are just sort of another manifestation of industry-specific sort of solution development that we've done for decades. The differences, as Jim and David have pointed out, that with machine learning, it's not so much code that's at the heart of these digital twins, it's the machine learning models and the data is what informs those models. Now... So you don't want all your secret sauce to go from Mercedes Benz to BMW but at the same time the economics of industry solutions means that you do want some of the repeatability that we've always gotten from industry solutions. You might have parts that are just company specific. And so in IBM's case, if you really parse what they're saying, they take what they learn in terms of the models from the data when they're working with BMW, and some of that is going to go into the industry specific models that they're going to use when they're working with Mercedes-Benz. If you really, really sort of peel the onion back and ask them, it's not the models, it's not the features of the models, but it's the coefficients that weight the features or variables in the models that they will keep segregated by customer. So in other words, you get some of the benefits, the economic benefits of reuse across customers with similar expertise but you don't actually get all of the secret sauce. >> Now, Ralph Finos-- >> And I agree with George here. I think that's an interesting topic. That's one of the important points. It's not kosher to monetize data that you don't own but conceivably if you can abstract from that data at some higher level, like George's describing, in terms of weights and coefficients and so forth, in a neural network that's derivative from the model. At some point in the abstraction, you should be able to monetize. I mean, it's like a paraphrase of some copyrighted material. A paraphrase, I'm not a lawyer, but you can, you can sell a paraphrase because it's your own original work that's based obviously on your reading of Moby Dick or whatever it is you're paraphrasing. >> Yeah, I think-- >> Jim I-- >> Peter: Go ahead, Neil. >> I agree with that but there's a line. There was a guy who worked at Capital One, this was about ten years ago, and he was their chief statistician or whatever. This was before we had words like machine learning and data science, it was called statistics and predictive analytics. He left the company and formed his own company and rewrote and recoded all of the algorithms he had for about 20 different predictive models. Formed a company and then licensed that stuff to Sybase and Teradata and whatnot. Now, the question I have is, did that cross the line or didn't it? These were algorithms actually developed inside Capital One. Did he have the right to use those, even if he wrote new computer code to make them run in databases? So it's more than just data, I think. It's a, well, it's a marketplace and I think that if you own something someone should not be able to take it and make money on it. But that doesn't mean you can't make an agreement with them to do that, and I think we're going to see a lot of that. IMSN gets data on prescription drugs and IRI and Nielsen gets scanner data and they pay for it and then they add value to it and they resell it. So I think that's really the issue is the use has to be understood by all the parties and the compensation has to be appropriate to the use. >> All right, so Ralph Finos. As a guy who looks at market models and handles a lot of the fundamentals for how we do our forecasting, look at this from the standpoint of how people are going to make money because clearly what we're talking about sounds like is the idea that any derivative use is embedded in algorithms. Seeing how those contracts get set up and I got a comment on that in a second, but the promise, a number of years ago, is that people are going to start selling data willy-nilly as a basis for their economic, a way of capturing value out of their economic activities or their business activities, hasn't matured yet generally. Do we see like this brand new data economy, where everybody's selling data to each other, being the way that this all plays out? >> Yeah, I'm having a hard time imagining this as a marketplace. I think we pointed at the manufacturing industries, technology industries, where some of this makes some sense. But I think from a practitioner perspective, you're looking for variables that are meaningful that are in a form you can actually use to make prediction. That you understand what the the history and the validity of that of that data is. And in a lot of cases there's a lot of garbage out there that you can't use. And the notion of paying for something that ultimately you look at and say, oh crap, it's not, this isn't really helping me, is going to be... maybe not an insurmountable barrier but it's going to create some obstacles in the market for adoption of this kind of thought process. We have to think about the utility of the data that feeds your models. >> Yeah, I think there's going to be a lot, like there's going to be a lot of legal questions raised and I recommend that people go look at a recent SiliconANGLE article written by Mike Wheatley and edited by our Editor In Chief Robert Hof about Microsoft letting technology partners own right to joint innovations. This is a quite a difference. This is quite a change for Microsoft who used to send you, if you sent an email with an idea to them, you'd often get an email back saying oh, just to let you know any correspondence we have here is the property of Microsoft. So there clearly is tension in the model about how we're going to utilize data and enable derivative use and how we're going to share, how we're going to appropriate value and share in the returns of that. I think this is going to be an absolutely central feature of business models, certainly in the digital business world for quite some time. The last thing I'll note and then I'll get to the Action Items, the last thing I'll mention here is that one of the biggest challenges in whenever we start talking about how we set up businesses and institutionalize the work that's done, is to look at the nature of the assets and the scope of the assets and in circumstances where the asset is used by two parties and it's generating a high degree of value, as measured by the transactions against those assets, there's always going to be a tendency for one party to try to take ownership of it. One party that's able to generate greater returns than the other, almost always makes move to try to take more control out of that asset and that's the basis of governance. And so everybody talks about data governance as though it's like something that you worry about with your backup and restore. Well, that's important but this notion of data governance increasingly is going to become a feature of strategy and boardroom conversations about what it really means to create data assets, sustain those data assets, get value out of them, and how we determine whether or not the right balance is being struck between the value that we're getting out of our data and third parties are getting out of our data, including customers. So with that, let's do a quick Action Item. David Floyer, I'm looking at you. Why don't we start here. David Floyer, Action Item. >> So my Action Item is for businesses, you should focus. Focus on data about your products in use by your customers, to improve, help improve the quality of your products and fuse AI into those products as one of the most efficient ways of adding value to it. And do that before your competition has a chance to come in and get data that will stop you from doing that. >> George Gilbert, Action Item. >> I guess mine would be that... in most cases you you want to embrace some amount of reuse because of the economics involved from your joint development with a solution provider. But if others are going to get some benefit from sort of reusing some of the intellectual property that informs models that you build, make sure you negotiate with your vendor that any upgrades to those models, whether they're digital twins or in other forms, that there's a canonical version that can come back and be an upgraded path for you as well. >> Jim Kobielus, Action Item. >> My Action Item is for businesses to regard your data as a product that you monetize yourself. Or if you are unable to monetize it yourself, if there is a partner, like a supplier or a customer who can monetize that data, then negotiate the terms of that monetization in your your relationship and be vigilant on that so you get a piece of that stream. Even if the bulk of the work is done by your partner. >> Neil Raden, Action Item. >> It's all based on transparency. Your data is your data. No one else can take it without your consent. That doesn't mean that you can't get involved in relationships where there's an agreement to do that. But the problem is most agreements, especially when you look at a business consumer, are so onerous that nobody reads them and nobody understands them. So the person providing the data has to have an unequivocal right to sell it to you and the person buying it has to really understand what the limits are that they can do with it. >> Ralph Finos, Action Item. You're muted Ralph. But it was brilliant, whatever it was. >> Well it was and I really can't say much more than that. (Peter laughs) But I think from a practitioner perspective and I understand that from a manufacturing perspective how the value could be there. But as a practitioner if you're fishing for data out there that someone has that might look like something you can use, chances are it's not. And you need to be real careful about spending money to get data that you're not really clear is going to help you. >> Great. All right, thanks very much team. So here's our Action Item conclusion for today. The whole concept of digital business is predicated in the idea of using data assets in a differential way to better serve your markets and improve your operations. It's your data. Increasingly, that is going to be the base for differentiation. And any weak undertaking to allow that data to get out has the potential that someone else can, through their data science and their capabilities, re-engineer much of what you regard as your differentiation. We've had conversations with leading data scientists who say that if someone were to sell customer data into a open marketplace, that it would take about four days for a great data scientist to re-engineer almost everything about your customer base. So as a consequence, we have to tread lightly here as we think about what it means to release data into the wild. Ultimately, the challenge there for any business will be: how do I establish the appropriate governance and protections, not just looking at the technology but rather looking at the overall notion of the data assets. If you don't understand how to monetize your data and nonetheless enter into a partnership with somebody else, by definition that partner is going to generate greater value out of your data than you are. There's significant information asymmetries here. So it's something that, every company must undertake an understanding of how to generate value out of their data. We don't think that there's going to be a general-purpose marketplace for sharing data in a lot of ways. This is going to be a heavily contracted arrangement but it doesn't mean that we should not take great steps or important steps right now to start doing a better job of instrumenting our products and services so that we can start collecting data about our products and services because the path forward is going to demonstrate that we're going to be able to improve, dramatically improve the quality of the goods and services we sell by reducing the assets specificities for our customers by making them more intelligent and more programmable. Finally, is this going to be a feature of a differentiated business relationship through trust? We're open to that. Personally, I'll speak for myself, I think it will. I think that there is going to be an important element, ultimately, of being able to demonstrate to a customer base, to a marketplace, that you take privacy, data ownership, and intellectual property control of data assets seriously and that you are very, very specific, very transparent, in how you're going to use those in derivative business transactions. All right. So once again, David Floyer, thank you very much here in the studio. On the phone: Neil Raden, Ralph Finos, Jim Kobielus, and George Gilbert. This has been another Wikibon Action Item. (electronic music)

(clicking) >> I am Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at Google for the sixth annual Top Women in Cloud Awards event with CloudNOW. Very excited to be joined by next guest, Ajit George, the Managing Director of the Shanti Bhavan Children's Project. Welcome to the cube. >> Hi Lisa, it's great to be here. >> So, I was so excited to have a chat with you. The Shanti Bhavan Children's Project is incredible. Tell us about it, 20 years now, tell us about what that is, how your family is involved, and what it's helping to do for these young children in Bangelore, India? >> Sure, Shanti Bhavan was founded by my father, Dr. Abraham George, 20 years ago, and its goal is to educate children, but also to eliminate poverty and change entire systems of communities and governments. It, the way we achieve this goal is by taking children from the poorest communities in India, giving them a high-quality, boarding school education, from the age of four until they graduate from 12th grade, and we cover everything during that period. So, their healthcare, their clothing, their boarding, food, all of that is taken care of, as well as training in soft skills. So, debate, interpersonal and interview skills, leadership skills, and the whole nine yards. While we educate them in the highest curriculum, the toughest standards in India, and then we pay for their entire college degree afterwards. So, that is 17 years of a high-quality intervention per child from the very first day they start school to the very first day of work. >> That's incredible and you have a very high college graduation rate, isn't that correct? Yeah, that is correct. If they pass out of high school, their high school graduation rate is about 77%, University graduation rate is 98% and so- >> Wow, 98%. >> It's been pretty exciting and they go on from those, from college to multinational companies, like Mercedes-Benz or Amazon, or Goldman Sachs. So, our kids who come from urban slums or rural villages with huts with no running water or electricity are making more in their first five years, than their parents make in a lifetime. So, it's a quantum leap, it is a genuine breaking the cycle of poverty, and the ability to become both, either the primary or the sole breadwinner for their entire family. So, four or five other people are dependent on them at the age of 21. >> And that's incredible, I was watching, there is a Daughters of Destiny, Netflix Original Docuseries. I saw the trailer of it today, incredibly profound. One of the things that, a couple things that really stuck out to me was, this is taking children from poverty to possibility. And also, one of the young girls that was in that trailer had said, "I've got a lot to lose, it's now or never for me." These children seem to really understand the gravity of their situation, and genuinely recognize the opportunity that they've been given. >> Yeah, sure, every single Shanti Bhavan child understands, it's almost like they've won the lottery, they've had an opportunity that no one in their families have ever had, but no one from their communities have had either. They're the first person in their family for generations to get any kind of education, and so that's a powerful opportunity, but it's also an important obligation or duty to give back to the family and to make an impact for the community because they are given this golden ticket, and they want to do something important with it. If they don't succeed, nobody gives them a second chance. Kids from that kind of community, and from that kind of circumstance, don't really have a second chance if they aren't able to make the most of it. So when you hear those stories they're talking about, "hey, I really need to seize this moment." "I need to seize this opportunity," maybe, "my mother's back at home and she needs my help," maybe, "my father's bedridden." A lot of these kids have generational debt, so they owe money to, like a money lender, which is an illegal lender and that's a couple generations back. Maybe their grandparents have taken out this debt, so they have all these debts piled up on them, and they have healthcare bills piled up on them, and they've got housing and all of these other problems. Then they have to educate their younger brothers and sisters and pay for dowries for their family members. It's the enormous responsibilities on one child is huge, but they're able to step up because they're given this powerful education, this great opportunity, so there's a lot of pressure, but there's also this great knowledge that they have a horizon out there that no one in their family has ever had before. >> That's incredible and so in the last couple minutes here, CloudNOW, where we are at the awards event tonight, they've teamed up with Intel, Apcera, and CB Technologies, to launch the Daughters of Destiny STEM scholarship. So exciting, what's that going to mean for current students, at Shanti Bhavan or the future students? >> Right, I think I'm really, really thankful, first of all to CB Technologies, Intel, and Apcera, as well as the CloudNOW. This scholarship is the first of its kind within our program and it allows these three young ladies, who are the first recipients of the scholarship, and hopefully there'll be many more recipients, but these young ladies to get a high-quality college education in the STEM fields, which is their passion. So, it opens doors for them for their education, potentially for internships and maybe job opportunities after college. So, I think this is a gateway to something bright and beautiful. >> Oh, I love that and how you described it for these children as a quantum leap, is as profound as what's been shown in the Netflix series. So, Ajit, thank you so much for joining. I wish we had more time, this is such an incredible project that you're working on, but we thank you for stopping by theCUBE and sharing it with us. >> Thank you so much, Lisa, it's great to be here. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google for the CloudNOW, Top Women in Technology Awards. Bye for now. (closing music)