>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering NetApp Insight 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, live in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay at NetApp Insight 2018, the third annual with customers, partners, endless press, NetAppians. We're excited to welcome two alumni back to theCUBE. We have Nancy Hart, Head of Marketing for Cloud Infrastructure at NetApp, and Dale Degen, Cloud Infrastructure Business Director. Guys, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you so much. It's so great to see you guys again. >> Likewise. So we got back from a standing room only keynote, thousands of people here, and one of the interesting things, Nancy, that Stu and I both observed were today no product announcements. It was really about concepts. The first time we heard anything architecture related was really the Data Fabric, but George Kurian, the CEO of NetApp, talked about the four principles of digital transformation. >> Nancy: Right >> I wonder if we can unpack those with you guys. >> Nancy: Yes >> The first one talking about digital transformation requires IT transformation. >> Nancy: Yes >> Talk to us about that speed as the new scale. What does that mean for NetAPP as a company that needs transformed... >> Nancy: Right >> and to your customers? >> So it means for our customers the idea is that speed is the new scale, right. That to create new businesses, to create new opportunities, to create new revenues, there has to be a lot more agile and agilent on their ITs. Right. So, NetApp will really focus on doing is how to break down the barriers between Dev and Ops. The days of silos, months of provisioning all of that is now gone. Because companies need to now help their teams build faster, build better, and that's really what George was talking about, in this idea that the speed is the new scale. And if our customers are not driving IT agile... Agile IT operations on their own data centers, their competitors certainly are. >> How does... NetApp talks a lot about being driven, the data authority and hybrid cloud. George also said hybrid clouds do in multi-cloud or the defacto architecture. >> Yes >> When you talk with customers, how do they digest "NetApp's going to help "me be data driven?" >> Nancy: Right >> What's that conversation like? >> So, looks like a lot these days, we have our customers, they have their own users, their own internal DevOps team who have gotten very used to taking their Corporate AMEX and running up the Amazon, setting up a new compute shape or storage. The thing is we see customers are trying to rebalance where they put their data cap with data, where they put their applications. Do somethings being, belong in public cloud? Absolutely, but there is also this natural rebalance, that not every application should be in the cloud. For reasons of data governance, perhaps cost, whatever it is, when they build that next new application, it may be in the data center. So, to make that work is the idea of a hybrid multi-cloud experience, and the key part of that is the experience. It's not a management experience. It's a consumption experience. It's a very seamless, simple consumption experience if you've got up in the public cloud, but in a private cloud in your data center. >> Stu: Nancy, I like that. We've always, we've been saying on theCUBE for a couple of years now, cloud is not a destination, it's an operating model. >> Yes It's the way we need to think things, but Dale, when I talk to customers, we talk about their cloud strategy, we talk about what they want, every single one of them, totally different. How much they're doing SaaS , versus how many mulvic public lines they're doing, and of course, they're still figuring out what they've got in their traditional data centers. And its that certain companies have been selling them multiple products, they've got their data all spread out, so, are we getting away from silos, how architecturally do we build this? There's so much differentiation out in the marketplace today. It'd be lovely to have a magic wand and say "Oh, everything's, "you know, simple." But that really hasn't been the case in an enterprise IT. >> Dale: I think you nailed it the way you described it right there You have an enterprises that have built up a collection of applications, some of them have been given a cloud mandate. And so, that means something different to everyone. Sometimes they're going out all SaaS, sometimes they're saying, "I want to put everything, "all my storage in the cloud." We're seeing an interesting moment in time where, there's almost a reaction to that, and finding out maybe there's silos within different public cloud service providers, maybe the monthly cost is a little bit larger than what people might have expected on that. At NetApp, we've been working with our customers, I kind of love being here because the last couple years has just been this huge transformation of the company around that, taking a lot of our customers have viewed us as number one in storage the trusted provider on that. I really, expanding out to a more data driven solution on there. And things we've done internally to address side is really focused on different business imperatives there. Because I think each of our customers has their data center that they need their rock solid applications on. They're thinking about this journey to the cloud. They're trying to innovate with acceleration in the cloud with different services with the cloud public... the biggest public clouds and along the way they're also saying "I need some of that agility internally." And so we've, we've really built that, to build out your kind of a hybrid multi cloud experience. And the company strategy is coming together. We're seeing investments, we're seeing growth and announcements and all of those. >> So one of the interesting things that I observed in the keynote this morning was NetApp being 26 year old, 26 years young company, right? Massive install base. You've got a lot of customers who were not born in the digital age and George Kurian your CEO seems to kind of address them almost right out of the gate. >> Nancy: Yes. >> So let's talk about the data fabric a little bit more. Let's unpack that because some of the messaging seems to be reflecting that, that, and I think Anthony liked talked about this a little bit this morning in the keynote as well. It, it's, it's transforming from a vision to an architecture for your customers, your incumbent enterprise customers who were not born in the cloud, what does being data driven mean to them? How are they embracing this architecture idea of the data fabric and using it to use their data to identify new customer touchpoints, deliver new services, increased revenue? >> Dale: So we're seeing a lot of our customers really transform their business to take advantage of these new services in the cloud. The value that a lot of them are bringing to us is they have a massive amount of institutional data that maybe was in different silos. May be they had different as a service offerings touching it. We're able to bring it together with the data fabric. So now they can consolidate this into a large amount of tangible data. You can have multiple as a service solutions and services coming from public cloud service providers to do analytics on data. For example, we have energy companies that have seismic data from 50 years ago that is sitting on tapes. It's better than anything they could even get today. They bring it all together and now they're doing data analytics on this and they're finding new ways to really take advantage of that. So we're seeing that across the board and we're, Our goal is to try to move them along that journey. >> Nancy: Yes >> Stu: Nancy, could you give us a little insight as to who you're selling to? >> Yes Where is NetApp getting involved in kind of those strategic discussions? As I said, >> Great >> you know everybody's got a cloud strategy, but I said usually the external still drawing and it's something you need to revisit often so you know where is NetApp seat at that table? You've got a lot of partners here >> Nancy: Yes >> and how are things changing? >> Nancy: So, a lot of things are changing a lot of ways for Netapp and the companies that we're selling to and who we're selling to at those companies. We certainly see a lot of new buyers and it's interesting to see now that the decision making, the who's sitting at the decision table when they make that decision of what kind of infrastructure to purchase, is it getting larger and larger group and now we're really seeing the Dev teams, their internal Dev ops teams have a seat at that table who are and they're having significant influence on the infrastructure and operations teams on what kind of investments that companies should be making. Right, so, working with partners, going to market through the largest public hyper scalers and reaching these new buyers and new and existing accounts as well. So even if there is a traditional part of the data center, I guarantee you somewhere in every company there's a new Dev team working on new business models. And so we want to attend (mumbles) >> Lisa: Does the conversation Nancy, start at the business outcomes level? >> Nancy: Absolutely. >> And, and your perspective, how are you seeing some of the more technical folks in an organization participating in a business outcomes driven conversation where it's more about these are the things we need to do to, to compete to increase our revenue. What, how is that persona based conversation changing? So actually I have a story from a customer meeting earlier this week, right? And so we were talking with the customer about data fabric and what we can do and how we can deliver a seamless experience between public and private clouds. And we walked out of their room and the gentleman from the customer who's I walked in that room as a storage admin and I walked out as a data fabric architect. Right. >> Lisa: It's pretty good validation >> It's pretty good validation. It's happening right now like the personas, even personas that we've traditionally known are certainly changing. What do yo say? >> So that point we're seeing some of the attributes that service providers are offering. We're seeing enterprises at the same time trying to build those up scale. And it's really been amazing as we're seeing you, you spoke about speed is the new agility on here and it's really the agility to be kind of build those infrastructures quickly and take advantage of that at a business advantage level. And a lot of the most technical customers of ours are saying now they're kind of at a, they have a seat at the table to kind of inspire some of those business innovations. They, they see how they could make the company more efficient and all of a sudden they're getting a lot more attention at the C level. >> Stu: Alright. So a few years ago there was the wave of big data, you know, it was really what I summed it up. One of the key findings was it was that bit flip of saying, oh my gosh, I have so much data to, Oh yes, yes, I've got so much data and I can take advantage of it. What I want you to help connect us is when you talk about being data driven, NetApp at its core is you know, there's storage, there's infrastructure, there's software. How do I then get the insights and the value out of the data, the data that I've helped my customers get to? >> Nancy: So let me give you an example of what NetApp is doing around this very issue, right? So we have a very large install base like you talked about. We have a new product called the active IQ. And what it does is based on community wisdom pulled from 30,000 or more installed systems across our entire customer base. And what we do is we use AI ML to extract value and intelligent insights and then actionable plans for our customers. So even if a customer doesn't have 30,000 units installed, they can take advantage of all of that knowledge themselves. So we drink our own champagne and we apply the things that we learned, but we can also help customers do the same thing in their own business as an extract value from their own data. >> Lisa: I'm curious too, from a company as as history does NetApp, formerly network appliance, how is NetApp drinking our own champagne example? How does that influence customers perspective on NetApp's transformation and convince a customer to trust NetApp and go, "yes, this is a partner "that I want to work with "to help us be able "to just do point, "not just a mass, "a tonne of data "and the silo, "but extract insights that are "essential to try this, this change." >> Dale: So we actually have some breakout sessions here where NetApp IT is speaking to that a talking about how we have NetApp on NetApp. You know we've got the active IQ data coming in, so an all flash fas tier being teared down through east series to object storage to a giant data lake of active IQ doing analytics on that. And so that's a great reference for us. We're able to have them speak to our customers directly, eye to eye in our executive briefing center, and oftentimes that pushes them over the edge on that one. >> Nancy: Because we're living the dream and we're making our own mistakes along the way and so when we have folks from our NetApp's own IT department come speak with customers, it's very credible about we did this at work, we did this. It didn't work so much. Right? But we're in that same transformation journey as our customers as well. >> Well, the failure I always say is my, It's not a bad word. It's part of that journey. >> Nancy: Yes. Well, finishing up Nancy with you. Talk to us about the media customer example that really articulates the value that NetApp is delivering as an enabler of the data driven company. >> So one of my favorites these days as we work with a company called Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, right? And they brought us new Ciox and he was really interested in transforming the IT experience for his clinicians. Right. These are the people that work with kids in the hospital, sick kids, they're stressed out families. And I love this story because it's very easy for me to imagine if my child was in the hospital, how stressed out I would be to have a clinician walk in fast, easy access, the latest data about my child, a happy clinician. That would be such an impact to me. And so to see what our customers are doing at children's mercy and they'll also multi cloud they've got their own private clouds are accelerating their VDI, they're working with public clouds all through NetApp product in the end to help those kids and to help maybe some moms on wherever you are, just a smidge less. >> Lisa: Are you helping them to use some of the emerging technologies, IoT AI to drive faster, better outcomes and decision making for these in these critical literally life and death situations? >> So the first project we're working on them as about accelerating their VDI. How does he get a virtual desktop to all his clinician? So whatever room that clinician is in, he has access. So she has access to the latest data about that child. Right. And to make the overall just a better experience so that the new ciox is very keen on just delivering a better experience, not better technology, but a better experience for his clinicians and for his patients. >> Nancy, Dale, thanks so much for stopping by on day one of insight. We appreciate your time. Got to give you some cubes stickers because you're doubling the alumni now. Real. Exactly. We want to thank you. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman for watching the cube. Again, we're live all day at NetApp Insight 2018. Stick around. Stu and I will be right back with our next guest.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Justin Warren on day one of VMworld 2018. This is the twentieth anniversary of VMware. Lots of momentum this morning kicking things off. Justin and I are happy to be joined by some folks from NetApp. We have Nancy Hart, the Head of Marketing for Cloud Infrastructure. >> Good afternoon. >> Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you Julie, it's so great to be here. And an alumni, Gabe Chapman. I love your Twitter handle @bacon_is_king. Senior Manager of NetApp HCI. Hey, Gabe. >> Hi, how are you doing? >> Good. Guys, lots of momentum. Pat Gelsinger was probably one of my favorite keynotes cause he's really energetic. He even went full-in with his faux tap this morning. I was impressed. >> Impressive. >> You guys have some news. >> Yes. >> Tell us about what's new with NetApp and VMware today. >> Fantastic, exciting times at NetApp these days. NetApp is really focused on becoming the data authority for hybrid cloud. Part of that is what we're excited to announce today here at VMworld, is a NetApp-verified architecture for VMware private cloud for HCI. What you heard today in Pat's keynote was a lot about connection on-premises private clouds with hyperscalers public clouds. That's what we're doing in our partnership with VMware here and this validated architecture for private clouds. Exciting news for us. In addition, we're also really be thrilled to be announcing new storage nodes for our NetApp HCI product and SolidFire product, as well. Lots going on today. >> Wow, that's really cool. >> Gabe, you've been in the field a lot. What are some of the things that you're hearing? Some of the signage around here is about VMware's making things possible, making momentum possible. What are some of the things that you're seeing in the field in terms of customer's momentum? Leveraging HCI from NetApp to drive new business models, new revenue streams. >> I think one of the things I see commonly is that the hyperconverge as a platform has been around for about six, seven years now. Customers are seeing that some of the first generational approaches have got them to a certain level in terms of addressing simplicity and kind of that turnkey infrastructure stack, but where they would like to go next is more cloud integrated, more scalability, more enterprise class or enterprise scale technology. Therefore, they're kind of looking at the NetApp HCI product and the architecture that we've brought to market, and seeing the potential to not only do things on-premise that they'd normally do in terms of a infrastructure platform but also move in to new services. How do we integrate with existing investments that they've had? How do we become connected into the hybrid cloud model with the hyperscalers themselves and really push towards a all-encompassing cloud infrastructure platform other than just a box. >> Yeah, one of the things I noticed in the keynote today that, I think, relates to that, and I'm interested to hear, Nancy and Gabe, a little bit more about what customers are doing here, because it seems that the idea of it must be all cloud or all on-site, that's gone away now. It's very much hybrid cloud world, multi cloud world, where customers have choice. Are you hearing that from customers? Clearly, there seems to be some demand here because we've seen the change in messaging. >> Absolutely, and I think what you're seeing is customers want the option to take advantage of all the resources. Regardless if those resources are on-premises or in public clouds, and that's what we're doing here at NetApp with our own HCI solution. As the market evolves under our feet, Gabe talked about those first generation vendors weren't quite enough, that our customers are choosing NetApp cause they want more then what they can get from those first generation vendors. What you really want to see is that convergence continues to march on and that there is more to collapse into this stack, particularly that connection up into the public cloud. Customers are definitely looking today, they're making buying decisions today based on that option. >> Right, and clearly, there's lots of customers who have substantial investment already in NetApp so being able to use what've you already got and extend it with a vendor that you're already familiar with and you know how it works. There's a lot of value there. >> We're a trusted vendor. NetApp is a trusted enterprise vendor with the reliability and customers can come to us with confidence and choose NetApp with confidence. >> We were with you guys at SAP just a couple months ago at the beginning of the summer and #datadriven was everywhere, I'm seeing it in Twitter. We often hear many things about data is power, data is currency, data is fuel. Data is all of those things if it can be harnessed and acted upon in real time. How does NetApp HCI, what are some of the differentiators? Obviously, we talked about the trusted partnership, but how does NetApp help customers actually live a data-driven life within their organization? >> I think a lot of times it starts with understanding where your data lives. How you manage it, manipulate it, and secure it. We have things like GPDR that comes (mumbles). All the sudden, everybody's scrambling to come up with a solution or a reference architecture or some way that integrates with it. I think, naturally, NetApp being the product technology company that it's been and it's lived and breathed data all its life. We understand our customer's unique requirements around governance, around security, around mobility, and we've built technologies that don't lock you into any one mode of consumption. If you bought a filer, if you bought an HCI system, if you bought an object store platform, the data fabric piece is the glue that binds and allows data mobility and portability across multiple platforms. Not only from the edge to the core, but also to the cloud and kind of gives you that larger, bigger picture. We believe that as we start to see this transition, especially edge computing, especially as we look at things like NVMe over fabrics and getting in to new levels and also services that we are delivering across the hyperscalers. A cohesive picture and story around where your data lives, how you manage it, and who can access it is empowering customers to make their transition into the multi cloud space. >> Right, clearly that transition, I think, is what people weren't really understanding three or four years ago. It was like enterprises aren't going to be there in one spot. You can't just turn it on in five seconds, these things take time. >> (mumbles) flipped, yeah. >> With our data fabric we're able to cover the entire NetApp portfolio from edge to core to cloud. As you say, enterprises and different departments in those enterprises will make their own transition and go down their own journey of digital transformation in their own time. NetApp can really be that trusted partner for all these enterprises. >> With so much choice comes, I think, inherently a lot of complexity. I thought they did a great job this morning in the keynote, Pat Gelsinger and team, of really talking about their announcements, what VMware has done in their history pretty clearly. I can imagine from a customer's perspective, if it's an enterprise organization who doesn't want to get Uber-ized, they probably don't know where to start. Talk to us about sort of the business-level conversations that NetApp has with not just your existing customers who know they can come to NetApp to trust you but also some of those maybe newer businesses or newer enterprise businesses to NetApp. How can they come to you and say help us understand? We probably have, what did they say this morning? The average customer's eight clouds. How do you help them to sort of digest that, embrace it, and be able to maximize it so that their data can be available as soon as they need it? >> What it is is data's at the heart of the enterprise and how people help customers change their world with data, but there has to be a direct business outcome for that. When enterprise customers learn to mine the value of their data they can really build new revenue streams, they can create new touchpoints with their own customers to drive their businesses. For example, one of our early NetApp HCI customers was down in Australia. A company called Consatel, a service provider down in Australia. They were really struggling to set up new businesses and new services to their own customer base. When the conversation, when they worked with NetApp what they were able to do was deploy new services three times faster over their last vendor. Think about what that did for their top line. If this company Consatel could deploy new services, new revenue opportunities three times faster. >> Blowing their competitors out of the water. >> Blowing their competitors out of the water. That's a business-level conversation. This is not a conversation about technology. Yes, under the covers, there's some amazing, fantastic technology, but it has to serve the business. Consatel has now been so successful with NetApp HCI that they now are expanding into brand new geo and geo regions and bringing new services to a whole new set of customers and a whole new customer base working with us. >> That's what I'm hearing in the conversations that I have with customers. I'm interested to hear from yourself and Gabe as to whether you're hearing this across the board. You've got one example here of customers who are concerned more with additional revenues. New revenue streams, new ways of making money top line and not so much about cost savings. That was something that was being, we were concentrating on that maybe three or four years ago. That seems to have been de-emphasized now and people are much more interested in seeking out new ways to use things. New sources of revenue and focusing on top line. Is that something that you're seeing across the board or is that only leading edge companies that are looking at that? >> We see it across the board, I think, with a lot of customers across many different verticals. For instance, Children's Mercy Hospital bought our NetApp HCI product for a virtual desktop implementation and they did so for a lot of reasons. One of them being the traditional TCO/ROI discussion. But also allows them to provide a platform that isn't just a silo of resources because of the unique aspects and differentiation that we have on our platform. We're able to go and do mixed workloads and do consolidation so they're realizing savings and gains across collapsing silos, bringing multiple applications on the same, common infrastructure. The same way they would've gone and swiped their credit card at Amazon. When you do that, you don't care if you're putting a SQL database, an Oracle or what not. They're going to give you the resource that you need. We want to mimic that locally on-prem for customers. Then, also have that integration with cloud services. If we're building a cloud service that runs on Amazon or Google, or if we're integrating with VMware as it runs on AWS or whatever, we want to be able to extend those services from local on-premises environments into the cloud and back based on that. I think that's really where the value is. There's no turnkey public cloud in a hybrid cloud integration piece. It's a journey and you have to analyze all the applications and the way you've done business. NetApp, having been working in the enterprise space as a trusted advisor for such a long time, we understand the customer's needs. We've been in the cloud space for a number of years already and we kind of understand that space. We're bridging the gap at the data level and helping to expand that more at the infrastructure level as well and as we branch into new services as time goes on. >> You've got that challenge of every customer being different but there's also trends that are common across the industry and NetApp being the size and having the history that it does, you've seen all of these things before and you know that yes, this is unique to you as a customer, but also we've seen this in other customers. This would be of value to you and you can bring that to those customers. >> Not only that, we have this product called Active IQ and it tends to be a service and support and monitoring application but, like you said, we have a very large customer base and using features and functionalities in AI we're able to use the data that we get from Active IQ as a community wisdom in effect and then make suggestions to those users as well. NetApp does have a very large install base. What can we learn from that install base, how can we help existing customers run their operations better with that community wisdom? >> We've always referred to it as actionable intelligence for your data. We've all played Tetris as a kid, it's playing Tetris with your data, Tetris with your workloads, and making sure that they all line up so that you get all four blocks break at the same time and get the high score. It's really taking and really, truly mining your infrastructure, mining your workloads and your information, and making sure that you're getting the most effective resource utilization that you possibly can. Across not just virtual machine workloads but also data workloads and understanding what you have on the floor versus what you need six months from now to one year from now. That Active IQ platform is really an integral part to really understanding customer's data resource utilization, etc. >> As someone who has played storage Tetris, any help that you can do is very, very welcome. >> I got to bring that back. That's the second reference I've heard to that in the last couple days. One of the things that Pat Gelsinger and team talked about this morning during the general session was superpowers and the need to enable enterprises to be able to harness their superpowers and maximize AI, machine learning, IoT, the edge. How was NetApp and VMware uniquely positioned to help your customers be able to take that actionable intelligence, Gabe, that you mentioned on that data to drive the new business models and revenue streams? >> I think our superpower would be, information is power, so that's our superpower is being data-driven and understanding how we take the customer's data, leverage it to its most effective use, and allocate it and protect it properly. There's a whole bunch of different areas around what we're doing there. Ours would be understanding data, understanding how customers want to use it, and what kind of information they want to extract from it. I'll have to come up with a fancy term for, maybe data thrivers is my superpower. That could be definitely one part of it. >> You could make a logo out of that. >> That sounds pretty good. >> The Thriver. >> The Thriver, I like it. >> We're data thrivers. >> I like it. >> I think so. >> NetApp has been a partner of VMware's for a very long time. You have a large ecosystem of partners, as well. What you guys announced today, talk to us about some of the benefits or really the opportunities that's going to give to NetApp's channel partners. >> There's a lot of opportunity here for our channel partners. As our customers take this journey, they're going to turn to their trusted advisors, their partners, to help them take that journey as well. What we've done here with what we announced with the VMware private cloud for HCI, this is a significant opportunity for our channel partners to work with their customers and take them down that path to be that data thriver. To harness that superpower. New opportunities for all. Customers need someone to help them show the way and channel partners are really the community to do that. >> For those channel partners who are keen to go and do this, how should they engage with you? How should they start talking to NetApp about helping their customers to go down this journey? >> Honestly, we're making the announcement this week. That's the first step is come by our booths. >> It's a thing, yeah. >> If they're here, obviously. We have a very large channel organization. We have outreach, we'll have training, we'll have, the path to hybrid clouds starts with turnKey private cloud and that's kind of what we've done here. We're working on that turnkey private cloud with our partner VMware and NetApp together to kind of facilitate that first step. Then we go out and work with our channel partner organizations to find the customers that want to go down that path. Then they can bring their additional add-on to it. There's a lot of opportunity to go out and really push and help customers make this transition between the two different worlds and obviously we can go to netapp.com and come and take a look. We have plenty of information there, too. >> Just as we wrap up here, I'm curious, Nancy, to get your perspective, from a cloud infrastructure perspective or vision, the announcements that VMware made today. Big news with AWS. Launched that last year. Talked about a lot of expansion going to apache. A lot of work in Australia. >> Yep. >> What does that as well as some other product enhancements they announced today, what does that mean to NetApp? >> I think for NetApp and for our customers, cause really let's stay focused on NetApp's customers, some of the announcements you saw Pat make today provides new options, new opportunities for NetApp's customers globally. As there's these new features, new functionalities to that turnkey solution for private cloud, what you saw is VMware expanding that relationship with AWS just gives new options and new opportunities. >> Hopefully, people can go and maybe by tomorrow get a data thriver pin or sticker. >> Going to have to run out to Kinko's real quick and make some stickers. >> Maybe print it on some bacon. >> Actually, I think we have pretzel necklaces in our booth to go for the beer crawl. >> Oh wow. What time is that? >> Soon, not soon enough. >> Nancy and Gabe, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and chatting with Justin and me. Very exciting to hear NetApp's continued transformation and what you're helping customers achieve. >> Thank you for your time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. For Justin Warren, I'm Lisa Martin. We're at VMworld, day one, stick around we'll be right back. (electronic tones)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're here live at theCUBE in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE with Stu Miniman. It's our third day of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our next two guests are from NetApp. Russell Fishman, Director of Product Management, and Keith Barto, Director of Product Management, both directors of product management. One was the former CEO of Immersive, now with NetApp for a few years. Guys, great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us, John. Thank you. >> We saw you guys in Barcelona, obviously. The NetApp story just keeps on getting better. Also, you have core customer base. Cisco's going under transformation. You guys have been transforming ever since I started seeing NetApp arrive on the scene in the 90s. Every year there's always a new innovation. But now, more than ever, you're hearing even Cisco Bellwether in the routing networking business putting up old way network, hey there's a firewall. There's some devices in there. To a completely new, obviously, cloud made in the modern era really things are changing. So what's your reaction to that? Obviously, you guys are a part of that story. You have a relationship with Cisco. What's your reaction to that? And talk about your relationship with Cisco. >> So we obviously have a huge relationship with Cisco. And most folks will know about our FlexPods, I think that's probably the most famous way that we collaborate with these guys. We just came off the back of an amazing year, five straight quarters of double-digit, year-on-year growth, killing in the market. Obviously, we have to brag a little bit, right, come on. >> It's theCUBE, come on! >> It's theCUBE, we gotta be a little bit excited about it. So we're really excited about that, it just really talks to the strength of the relationship, right? So there's a very strong relationship there, and it's been there with FlexPod for eight years, and there's been a lot of transformation, exactly to your point John, a lot of transformation during that time, a lot of focus on the clouds. So one of the questions I always get asked, is why is converged infrastructure still relevant in a cloud-first world? And it is not obvious answer, now clearly our customers think that it is, and so do our partners. But it is not obvious why that is. NetApp has gone through, you talked about transformation, NetApp has gone through this massive transformation, huge focus on clouds, I mean, we have these cloud-first, cloud-native, focus around our data management platforms. We talk about a concept called the data fabric, I don't know if you've heard of the data fabric before. >> Yeah. >> And the data fabric really talks to how, our vision for how enterprises want to manage that new digital currency that is data across all the silos that they want to leverage, right? We've been able to bring some of that goodness into FlexPod, and that's why we're still relevant now. >> Yeah, so Keith, I think back to when converging infrastructure was built as about simplification, we were gonna take all these boxes and put it down to a box and that was the new unit of measurement. Well, Russell was just talking about we've got multi-cloud, when I think of NetApp now, it's always been a software company, but now software in that multi-cloud world, help connect the dots for us, as to management of converged infrastructure into that whole multi-cloud story. >> Yeah, we were very privileged to be acquired by NetApp last March, and my company Immersive, a lot of us came actually out of Cisco. So I was one of the original FlexPod architects from Cisco and had the privilege of helping to build the network, the storage that we brought into FlexPod, and a lot of our customers and our retailers kept on saying, "How do we know we put it together properly? "How are we following the best practices from the CVDs, "from the NVAs, from the TRs?" And so we took those rules and those analytics and we put them into platform, into a SaaS-based platform, and we were able to analyze that, coming from our customers' FlexPods, from within their deployments, from within their multi-data centers, and bring that into our service, run those analytics, prove those best practices, show the deficiencies, get our resellers out there to help our customers, 'cause FlexPod is a meet in the channel play, and we relied heavily on our resellers to make it a success. >> What was the driver for that product? When you started that company and that happened, what was the main motivation behind that? Was it analytics, was it insight, what was some of the things that you guys were building in, was it operational data? >> The real reason was people kept on asking, "How do I know?" Because it's a reference architecture, not a product, "How do I know I did it right?" Because it's really important, we're gonna run our key business applications on this platform, right? My SAP, my Oracle, my Sequel, my SharePoint, my Outlook. I gotta make sure this stuff is really gonna work properly, and it's going to grow in scale with the business. So I need to make sure that those redundant links are there. I need to make sure that when I do VMWare upgrade, or a Microsoft upgrade, that the firmware is alignment with the best practices in the interoperability matrix, so we wanted to make that as easy as possible, so that from a single dashboard, you can see all of those things, you can diagnose it quickly, you can get those email alerts and notifications, and because you end up with disparate operation teams, the server team, the network team, the storage team, the hypervisor team, sometimes they don't always talk effectively with each other, and from one single dashboard, we're now able to show everybody where things are today, and then, one of my favorites, when there is a problem, you call either Services or Support, and you say, "Hey it's not working," and they say, "What did you change?" And you say, "I didn't change anything." We have that historical-- >> Finger pointing kicks in, it was his fault! >> Yeah we have the historical snapshot and trending, so we can go back and look at where things were and do a comparison to where they are today, and it allows us to have a much faster mean time to resolution. >> And what do you guys call that product now within Cisco? What's it... >> It's now called Converged Systems Advisor in NetApp. >> Awesome, so what's next for convergers. Obviously, people, both cloud growth, we're seeing the on-premise, Wikibon has reported, the true private cloud numbers, which basically say there's a lot of on-premise activity going on, that's gonna look like cloud, it's gonna operate like cloud, so they need to have that. There's migration going on, but it's not a lift and shift, to cloud, there's gonna be, obviously, the hybrid cloud and multi-cloud. So, cloud folks still buy hardware, too. You gotta still run stuff, networks aren't going away, storage isn't going away, so what's next for the converged infrastructure play with FlexPod? How do you guys manage that roadmap? >> So, we just announced some things coming into, jointly with Cisco, coming into Cisco Live. One of those things we announced was something called Managed Private Cloud on FlexPods, or actually no, FlexPod Managed Private Cloud, sorry, I switch it around. And FlexPod Managed Private Cloud, it really talks to exactly what you're talking about, John, which is... What we find, cloud has fundamentally changed customers' expectations of what they want on-prem. They recognize the need on-prem, we live in a hybrid world. Those of us that've been in the industry long enough, and have a couple of gray hairs, know that there are very few transitions that are really absolute in the business. A lot of people pronounce that it's gonna be this way or that way, and the reality is, it's something in between. And that's fine because cloud is just another tool in the toolbox, and you don't want to hit every nail with the same hammer, you want to find the right tool for the right job. So what we've done is we've taken some of that cloud goodness, which really means not having to worry about the underlying infrastructure, all right. Worrying about the applications, being more application-focused, more business-value-focused, more line-of-business-focused. And being able to deliver that in a way that people can consume it on-premise. So it really feels like a FlexPod delivered like a cloud, but from a management day-to-day perspective, you don't have to do it-- >> So, it's flexible. >> It's flexible-- >> FlexPod. >> But it's done for you, so it's your little piece of cloud, sitting on-prem, and you don't have to manage it or run it day-to-day. >> Let's talk about what you just said about the whole transformation, people say a certain way, basically you're kind of saying, a lot of press, and a lot of analysts say, "Oh, you've got to do this digital transformation." Customers will take a pragmatic approach, but you guys at NetApp have been talking for a long time, I've been following it, non-disruptive operations. >> Yes. >> So what you see in the cloud if people wanna take those first three steps, but they don't want to have to overhaul anything, containers have proved to be great resource there, Kubernetes is showing a great way to have life cycle management on the app side of infrastructure. How does your customers, and Cisco customers, maintain that non-disruptive operational playbook, because Cisco guys are gonna start changing, moving up the stack too-- >> Absolutely. >> Doesn't mean storage is gonna go away, but they don't want to disrupt anything, your thoughts? >> And it doesn't mean any of it goes away, that's the funny thing, we talk about where we want to focus, but it's as much about not having to worry about the things that we had to worry about that are just there in the future, right? So it's kind of like if you went back 200 years, going to get fresh water was a big hassle, now it isn't, it's delivered to you, right? I know it sounds like a crazy analogy, but the reality is is that we shouldn't have to worry about the basics of on-premise, private cloud, it should just be automatic, it should be simple to execute, simple to manage, simple to order, simple to deploy, and then you focus on the value, so that's what we've been really focused on. >> Keith, when I listen to my friends in the networking space management's still a challenge. The punchline is usually, they hear single pane of glass, and they said that's spelled P-A-I-N. >> I've heard that one too. >> Talk a little bit about how your solutions tie into some of the broader tools out there. >> Well, we first looked at the compute layer and said, because of the extensibility of USC Manager and the API integration, we're able to take advantage of that, and be able to pull that data out, and XOS, right? We're able to do that exact same thing, and the background that we had at Cisco, and knowing those products really well, we were able to gather all the specific data we need to look at those best practices. And it's a complex architecture, but it's a very elegant architecture, because of the high availability, it can provide the performance, the non-disruptive operations that you were bringing up, John. We want to make sure that we're able to keep those things in line, so as we bring our next release of CSA out, we're going to be adding Enterprise Fibre Channel, so the new MDS switches, we're gonna be bringing our relationship with VMWare in our engine to be able to ingest the configuration of VMWare in. We're also bringing back our partner-centric reseller portal so when customer is running Converged Systems Advisor, they can share it to their reseller, and the reseller's going to be able to provide managed services, support services, and professional services to expand, to repair, to augment those existing FlexPods in their customers' environments. So we're really excited to be able to bring that solution back to our resellers-- >> What's that going to do, what's the impact of that, because I almost imagine that's going to enable them to want to be tightly integrated but also get data from their customers. What do you guys see as the value for the partners to take advantage of that? >> Well, I just met with a partner at our booth, just a few moments ago, and walked them through the solution they had never seen it before. It takes a reseller a week, or even multiple weeks, depending on the size of the FlexPod, to actually go through the configuration of the servers, the network, the storage, the hypervisors, and correlate that into a deliverable to their customer. We can do that in sub-10 minutes, sub-15 minutes. >> So faster time to the customer value. >> Faster time to customer value, faster time to resolution if there is a problem, and then again, they're running in their key business applications on this platform, we've been doing it for eight years, we want to continue to expand upon the value the FlexPod can offer. >> But I wanted to add just a couple of things to what you were saying. We talked about FlexPod really being a channel play. That's important to us in product management, not so important to our customers. What it really means to our customers is they tend to have a very close relationship with their partners. Their partners are the ones that are really enabling FlexPod for them. What we're doing with Converged Systems Advisor, is we are creating such a close relationship at a technical level, technology level, between the customer and the partner, that the partner's there to help them on a daily basis. Where there is a problem, it's almost like the telematics in your car, right? All the cars now, they're phoning back home, they're telling where there's something wrong, you get this letter or an email, you need a service, you need... This is exactly what we're achieving with the Converged System Advisor-- >> When you call support, what don't you want to hear? What's your model number, what's your serial number, what's your contract ID? Wouldn't it be great if everybody's singing off the same sheet of music? >> Well, you bring a great point there. There was so much discussion, well, converged infrastructure a public lot, those are gonna be really simple, and they're gonna be homogenous, and they're all gonna be great, but yeah, you're smiling and laughing because the reality is you're never gonna find two customers that have the same environment, no matter what you're talking about. >> No. >> So I need the tooling, I need the data and the analytics, to help get through that. I shouldn't have to spend half an hour on level one support. >> And that's all-- >> I shouldn't have to go through multiple forms the same time. >> Yes, and you're right Stu, that's always been, that's always been the mantra for FlexPod since the word dot. We don't get to an 11 billion dollar install base unless you're doing something right, and the word, the reason the word flex is in there, it's a dichotomy, whenever you go into these sorts of discussions, do you make it really fixed, right? Which is almost like, I call it like straight jacket, right. But you know what you get, right? Or do you make it flexible, right? And the flexibility really addresses the business need as opposed to the technology need. So the product guys love it when it's fixed, the customers love it when it's flexible. >> Yeah, you're talking about basically, changes... You want changes to be rolling with the... Technology rolling with the changes. >> Yes. >> Not be stuck in the straight jacket, or we'll also say tailor-made suit, but things change, you wanna... Fashion changes, so this is a real big issue, and talk about support, I think the ideal outcome is not to even call support, with analytics and push notifications and AI, you can almost see what DevNet's doing here, around how developer are getting involved with DevOps and network DevOps. Coders can come in and use the analytics, if tightly integrated in, so that you get the notifications, or they know exactly your environment. Is that, how far along are you guys on that path, because analytics play a big role, you've got the command center there, the Converged Systems Advisor, implies advising, resolution, prescription, what's the vision? >> So Immersive was a Cisco solution partner at the very beginning, so we were a part of this group right behind us, and it was exciting to be a part of that, to attend Cisco Live and be a part of DevNet, and we expanded upon, as you mentioned, the API, integrations of all these platforms, and when cluster data ONTAP came out for NetApp, we did the exact same thing, right? So we get integrated with NetApp, and very easily able to bring all that data in. Now, massaging that data is the hard part, right? Understanding what is noise and what is the real goodness, so you have to find those best practices, look at the hard work that our teams have done around validated designs between Cisco and NetApp, and look at the best practices that come from those particular pieces of hardware. And then once that intelligence is built, correlating that in the cloud service is really where the magic happens. So our teams are back there talking with the network experts the storage experts, the compute networks, the virtualization experts, and so when we have that data, and now you can decision-eer, right? You can start advising your resellers. So we bring up the rules dashboard, and then we do have alerting that we can send to ticketing systems to the remedies, the ServiceNows-- >> It's interesting, I'd love to get the product perspective on this, and across the bigger picture, because the trend we're seeing, certainly on theCUBE, over the past few years, and most recently this year, is the move from device, hardware, to system. So the systems approach really becomes more of a holistic view where, you're looking at the holistic view of multiple things happening. >> Yes. >> It's not just, this is the box, here's where the rack is, command line interface, you guys taking that same approach, can you just add some color on NetApp's vision on looking at holistically, 'cause that's really where software shines. >> No, no, and that's absolutely, so we have a way of seeing FlexPod as a, we call it a converged system, and for that exact reason. So what CSA is able to do is look at anything that happens within that converged system and the context of the overall system, and that really is the key, right? When you understand things in context it means so much more. Just think about when you listen to someone talk, a word taken out of context means nothing, right? So when we listen to that infrastructure, what it tells us is understood in context. And what it will ultimately do, and I think you were kind of hinting at this, John, the vision here is that there will be self-healing infrastructures, self-healing converged systems, just like the cloud, right? So we are continuously monitoring the configuration, the availability, and other aspects of your converged system and we are able to take action to make sure it stays on the rails. >> We saw you guys at the RSA event, you guys had a small little party we went to, and we were riffing, having fun with some of the NetApp folks, and the big trend in cloud is server-less. So the joke was, is this storage-less solution coming? To your point about this, if you think about it, it's just storage somewhere. This is kind of a joke, but it's also kind of nuanced. This is elastic-- >> No, no! It's absolutely true, if you look at NetApp's strategy, if you look at our cloud strategy, we're the first third-party branded services part of the AGI core services, we're not in the marketplace, we're actually part of AGI core. It's NetApp cloud volumes for AGI, and a customer doesn't know what's going on behind the scenes but let's be clear, we're talking about software-defined storage here, right? >> And cloud-ified, too, as well, talk about cloud operations. >> Yeah, still at the end of the day, for us, our intellectual property is not really tied to hardware, we obviously use that as a way to get our intellectual property in the hands of our customers. But we're not tied to a-- >> You guys made a good bet on cloud, I remember talking before Kurian took over, you guys were kicking the tires on Amazon years ago. >> Yes, yes, yes, that's right. >> So it's not like a Johnny-come-lately to the cloud, you guys have been deep in the core. >> Absolutely. >> To end this segment, I wanted to get your thoughts, because you guys are here at Cisco Live, what should the audience understand that couldn't make it out here as the top story at Cisco Live, and what is your role with Cisco here, what's the big story, top line, high-order bit, NetApp, Cisco story. >> So I'll go first, and I'll let my friend here go second. We were really excited coming into Cisco Live, right. We had this pretty big announcement last week, there were a few different aspects to it, but I'll talk about two of them. A new focus between Cisco and NetApp on verticals around FlexPod, and what that really means is that we're focused on very specific verticals, including healthcare, but there'll be others that come down the line. We announced a new solution base on Epic PHR. We announced some lead customers, including the Mercy Technology Services, which is part of the Mercy Hospital group. So that was super exciting, I think what it does is it just demonstrates that our focus is on the outcomes, as opposed to the actual infrastructure, the infrastructure is the way to deliver that. So we're very excited about that at Cisco. The second thing that we announced was, I said, mentioned this Managed Private Cloud, we actually announced it with four of our major joint partners, Dimension Data, ProAct, Microland, and oh my Lord, ePlus, yes of course. That was super exciting as well, and what it does is it captures the imagination, and it's always very fun when you're standing at a booth, and people say, "Oh, I've known FlexPod, "I've seen you guys around." But there's always something new to talk about. >> The relevance is more than ever. >> Absolutely. >> Keith, what wave is NetApp riding right now, if you look at the Cisco action going on, what they're going through, what should people know about the big wave that you guys are taking advantage of right now? >> I think the big wave is absolutely gotta be what we're doing with the hyperscalers. We by far have taken the industry by storm, when you think about what we've done with Microsoft, what we're doing with Google, you know, sorry? >> And Amazon. >> And Amazon, thank you. >> Small companies. >> Yeah, just small hyperscalers, right? It's amazing what we can do with cloud ONTAP, across those vendors, and when we look at what our customers have done with FlexPod, and their relationship with Cisco and NetApp, and our ability to work together to help customers get their data from their core data centers to cloud, back, to their customers, and for us to be able to use analytics the way we do on FlexPod, I think there's a real opportunity-- >> And riding the scale wave too, scaling is huge. Everyone's talking about large-scale, talking about hyperscale as that is the largest scale you can see. >> Well, and our ability to control where the data lives, right? Because you want to be able to hold control of your data, and being able to use familiar tools like what you're already using in your own data center and in your own converged infrastructures, being able to use that ONTAP operating system to be able to control that experience is gonna be very important. >> Guys, thanks for coming in for the NetApp update, great news, great alignment with Cisco. It's a large-scale world, and certainly, the world is changing, storage is gonna be a critical part of it, server, storage, infrastructure, cloud operations on-premise, and in the cloud. TheCUBE, bringing you live coverage. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, stay with us for more day three of three days of coverage here in Orlando, Florida, for Cisco Live, we'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with theCUBE. We're in Palo Alto, California at the Four Seasons Hotel. An interesting event, it's called Security in the Boardroom, and it's part of the security series put on by the Chertoff Group. They do a couple of events a year, and they've returned to the Four Seasons. It's really an interesting twist on the whole security discussion, really elevating it to what's happening in the boardroom. We're excited to be here, we've got some great guests lined up, and we've got our first guest of the day. He's Bob Griffin. He's the CEO of Ayasdi. >> Correct. >> Welcome, Bob. >> Thanks. >> I got the pronunciation right, so. >> You did, indeed. >> For people that aren't familiar with the company, what is Ayasdi all about? >> Well Ayasdi's an artificial intelligence platform manufacturer that builds technologies that allows us to effectively deploy enterprise class artificial intelligence applications. >> For security's specific application or beyond security? >> Yeah, beyond security. We're fundamentally focused in three areas. We're focused in the financial crimes area, specifically around doing things like anti-money laundering, risk and compliance, waste, fraud and abuse. We're focused a lot in the healthcare area, around doing things like, clinical variation management, population health risk, and we've got a very strong focus in the federal government and the public sector, mostly around the intelligence community, DoD and so forth. >> Okay. So, financial institutions, the government, and then who's the purchaser, what's the segment that buys your healthcare focus applications? >> It's traditionally both the payers and the providers. So folks that are looking at, how do we manage costs associated, but how do we make more use of healthcare practices? So, folks like Mercy Hospital, folks like Intermountain, United Healthcare, folks like that. >> So it's interesting 'cause there's a lot of talk of machine learning and AI right now, it's hot, hot, hot like beg-id was a couple years ago. But I think, a lot of people are still confused as to how is it actually being used. Is it actually being used? It's probably affecting them in ways they have no idea. So, how is the adoption of AI progressing from your point of view in these industries, and how is it helping transform them? >> Well, it's absolutely transformational technology. The reality is all applications eventually are going to have to become intelligent or they become obsolete. The biggest challenge with artificial intelligence is that it's moving incredibly quickly. The rate of change, milestones, are daily. So if you're not running to artificial intelligence applications, or developing and deploying those, you're behind the curve. If you're sitting at the stoplight right now, and you're competitors are entering the intersection using artificial intelligence, you're never going to catch up, so you have to move quickly. >> Right. >> The second thing, I think, is that, artificial intelligence now has got an opportunity that can really focus and help with real business problems. Traditionally, what we've done with artificial intelligence is we've parked it in innovation labs, or we've parked it in R&D. It's time to take it out of that and really put it to place, in areas around opportunities we talked earlier about. Anti-money laundering. How do you reduce the number of false positives to make your 5000 investigators more effectively? Artificial intelligence can do that kind of application. >> I was wondering if there's any stories you can share publicly about some of the big impacts or maybe little impacts that people would never have guessed where you can apply this type of technology to positive outcome. >> Sure. So, let's talk a little bit about, let's take anti-money laundering as an example. We have a client that has nearly 7000 investigators. And their challenge is, they're getting almost 98% false positives. They came to >> 98% false positives? >> 98 false positives, I mean think about that. >> Which is crazy. >> Out of every hundred, only two positives are actually effective. Alright so, they came to us and said, look, if we can reduce our false positives by say 3-5%, that's a home run for us, right? What do you think you can do to help us? We took their information, their data, put ourselves within their workflow. And we we're able to give them a 26% reduction in false positives. Well that changes the game for them. Just the economic savings alone is incredible. You're talking nearly 140 million dollars. So, those are real things. I'll give you one more example in the healthcare area. We've been studying type 2 diabetes for nearly 40 years. We took that same data set that people have been studying and working with one of our partners, we were able to very quickly, through our platform, segment up that data set and show that type 2 diabetes really falls into three subsegments. And those subsegments are really indicators of what's likely to happen to patients, but more importantly, they subsegment up into things like, these clients, er these patients that have these conditions are likely to develop cancer. These clients are likely to develop retinopathy, blindness. What that's doing is it's changing the way, not only they're going to prosecute a cure, but also the way they're going to prosecute the treatment of type 2 diabetes. It's changing the game. >> So, it's interesting. You got a technology platform. Do you also deliver the data to scientists? How does it work in terms of, or are you a tool that you hand to data scientists inside the organization, the one you just, given an example of and gives them a different tool, or you also delivering services to help refine and tune? 'Cause obviously it's always implied that these things, not only do you pump the data in, that there's a continuing ongoing process of learning as they, continue to get smarter. >> Absolutely. The answer actually is yes. We provide a platform, and that platform really comes with capabilities to enable our clients to develop artificial intelligence applications in real time or near real time. So, it has things like an SDK, it has REST APIs, but more importantly, it has a tool we build called Envision. And that Envision really allows our clients to very rapidly prototype new artificial intelligence applications and get them into production incredibly quickly. Now to your point, there are, some of our clients that don't have the technological skills or prowess, but yet, need to take advantage of the technology. So we have a professional services capability that will come in. We'll bring in data scientists as required. We'll bring in subject matter experts as needed. We'll bring in program managers and so forth, and we'll take them from kind of, cradle to grave, in helping them build out those applications. As part of that we'll train them, educate them and let them to become self-sufficient. Because, one of the things that I think is incredibly important about artificial intelligence that nobody's talking about, is any machine-intelligent application has to be able to do five things. It has to be able to discover. You know, find out and do observational discovery. What does it not know about itself, What can it learn? And that's important, because if you can do unsupervised discovery, then you can do the next thing, prediction, much more effectively. So it has to be able to discover, it has to be able to do prediction, from the past we can predict the future. It has to be able to do justification, and that's probably one of the most important areas that we talk about. Justification is not necessarily what is it the algorithm did, but why did it do that, why did it take that action? Why did it segment the population to these sizes? What is it that it proved? Why did that sensor go off? And so forth. >> This is really, to kind of, unveil the black box a little bit. 'Cause nobody wants the white box anymore. >> Absolutely. And then lastly, it's got to be able to do two additional things. It's got to be able to act on what it has discovered, what it's predicted, what it's justified. And then lastly, it's got to be episodic, it's got to learn. So what did I learn from the last episode, and how do I apply that back to a new form of discovery, a new form of prediction, the next level of justification and action. >> That's a great summary, Bob. And it's interesting. 'Cause you guys talk a lot about, I was doing some homework before I came in on the justification piece. You got to open up that black box, it's no longer good enough just to kick out an answer. >> Absolutely. And if you can't on it, what's the point, you know? It's kind of more of a science experiment. Before I let you go, we're running out of time, but, the roots of the company, is around this thing called topological data analysis. And you're not a data scientist, nor am I, but conceptually, what was different about that approach, that people weren't doing previously? >> Well so, topological data science, data analysis, is the study of the shape of data. All data comes in shape. The challenge historically is most people apply traditional algorithms to data assuming that it's going to be in a linear fashion, for example. So they'll linear regression analysis. Or if it's clustered data, they'll apply clustering technologies and so forth. The challenge is, what happens if your data is in a flare shape? Or what if it's in a circular shape? Or what if it's time series based and so forth? What we do is, with TDA, the first thing it does, is we understand the shape of the data 'cause the data will tell you a lot about itself and its shape. And from that shape you can start to ask more intelligent questions about the data so you can unlock all of the insight. >> So it's really almost like, a higher order organization if you will. 'Cause we always look for patterns, right? That's what we always do as people. Alright, well Bob, really interesting conversation. >> Thanks. >> I really look forward to the next time we get a chance to sit down. >> I appreciate it. >> We'll have to leave it there for now. >> Alright, appreciate your time. >> Alright, Bob Griffin, he's the CEO at Ayasdi. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. We're at the Chernoff event, it's called Security in the Boardroom, we'll be right back.