>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Splunk .conf19. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. It's theCUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for Splunk's .conf 2019. It's the 10th year of .conf and we have two great guests, Rick Fitz, senior vice president, general manager of groups at Splunk, and Karthik Rau, vice president, area GM of SignalFx. The big story is SignalFx acquired by Splunk. Rick, you sponsored that. Guys, welcome to theCUBE, great to see you guys again. >> Yeah, great to be here, Jeff. >> Great to be here. >> They just broke a world record for the bike on intro there. >> Rick: They did. >> Pretty exciting what's going on here, a lot of records being broken. Splunk just continues to move the needle on capabilities, product, platform, brand messaging. SignalFx coming, we've been reporting on it since their founding, really in your wheelhouse, you guys bought them for a good number, a big number? >> Rick: Yup. >> Why? What's going on? Why the interest in SignalFx? >> You know, for a long time, we've been watching, I would say, perhaps, patiently, watching the market and the trends, and we were really waiting for a time where the new application architecture was really going to kind of start to take hold, where this cloud native trend that we've been seeing where people are building applications, where people are actually delivering applications to market in quite a different way, would finally get some escape velocity, and we've been watching patiently for that to occur. And as we saw that last year start to accelerate, really, we went out and surveyed the entire market and, of course, at the end of that survey, resulted in the acquisition of SignalFX, and also of Omnition. And so we bought those two companies, and have combined them to deliver on our vision of what we've trying to do for DevOps. >> Rick, you and I had a conversation in 2015 here in theCUBE at the .Conf at that time, you were on the IoT, you saw this wave, again, you've been patient. What about IT operations that's happening now that makes this so critical for Splunk? 'Cause IT operations, we know what automation's doing, machine learning toolkit, getting a lot of rave reviews. People love to automate things, but more apps are coming. What's the motivation now? What was the critical linchpin for you to make this happen? >> Yeah, exactly. What we're seeing is, in traditional IT operations is this world where developers build these monolithic applications, hand 'em off to operations, and they operate it. And then in the same conversation, you'll get handed over to somebody running, if you will, developer engineering or cloud engineering or they have various different levels for it but you're really dealing with an engineering organization and they're being tasked with digitization of their enterprise and very strategic investments are being made there, but they're also being asked to build things at high availability, high scalability, and highly reliable with lots of change. So it's kind of the competitive advantage of the enterprise. And as I was seeing that occur more and more I just saw the distance between IT operations and development, kind of, separate, and I said, wow, that's interesting 'cause it's being driven by this new application architecture, or cloud native architecture. And I didn't want to be left behind. I wanted to actually be able to build a bridge for IT operations into this future. And I think this future trend is something that's going to be lasting for the next 10, 15 to 20 years. So I think this is very strategic to Splunk and very important for us to get right for the long-term, but I also see my role as part of Splunk, is to make sure that we take IT operations into this new world, because these new worlds, and if you will, the existing worlds, those operating models are quite different. >> John: Yeah. >> They operate differently. They think differently. They, in one they own their code, they're on call. In another one they're waiting for something to fix so then they try to, you know, we're waiting for something to break and then they fix it. So we're trying to actually help enterprises across that entire gambit with some pattern. >> And certainly with security the theme here, at this event, this is a security event too, on top of everything right? So, this is what it's turned into. >> Rick: That's right. >> Data is driving a lot of security polemetry and data's important for security, so. >> Yeah. >> I mean, that's operations. >> That's right. And your apps have to be secured, in both worlds. >> Yeah. >> So, I think Splunk has a role to play in helping in this transformation for all of IT as it becomes much more developer centric. And, of course, as I said, that is really one of the strategic reasons why we led the acquisition Citadel FX in Omni. >> Well, we're looking forward to seeing how you handle the acquisition, of course, we were fans of the deal. Karthik, I got to ask you, every single company in observability space is going public. So, why, you could have gone public, why Splunk? Why sell to these guys? What made it a fit for you? >> Well, ultimately, we look at a number of things, or we looked at a number of things in making the decision and we wouldn't have done this with anyone other than Splunk. Just a strategic fit was just so great on so many levels. You know, when we started the company our goal was to solve the modern dream observability challenges for anyone building a cloud native application, and we knew that was going to be a long road. They're going to be a lot of things we needed to invest in and develop. And so we started on the metric side. We layered on distributive tracing and we took a philosophy that we wanted to build an enterprise great, scalable, robust, feature-rich set of technologies. We weren't in the market to build, you know, SMB, kind of very simple, limited type of a product. We're really focused on the larger, more sophisticated customers. And so, as we looked at continuing to extend our portfolio, one of the things that we needed to invest in was in the logging space because, when you think about the trifecta of monitoring data types that you need, you know, logging is a big part of it. And we knew that we wouldn't be able to go and build a logging system from the ground up that would be robust enough to support enterprise use cases, and so we started a partnership conversation with Rick and team, and it just became very clear through that process that there was a tremendous amount of product fit, vision fit, culture fit, values fit. Just everything was so aligned that we realized that we could do so much more together as one company. So, we rounded out the solution portfolio, or the technology portfolio quite substantially over night by becoming a part of Splunk and then the other part of it too is, you know, we saw as we were dealing with customers, we were dealing mostly with native cloud native, cloud first customers. But a lot of the customers that we were, that were prospects, that we were talking too were more traditional enterprises who were not 100% of the way there yet. Some of them weren't even 10% of the way there yet. And it was difficult for us to really engage in conversations early with them, to help them understand what does it mean to shift from traditional IT ops to DevOps because we didn't have a relationship with them on the IT ops side of things, and so, the other thing that we were really excited about being a part of Splunk is we can be a part of that conversation from the very beginning when the customer, you know, maybe they're just beginning to think about it and they don't have the urgency of doing it today but we can be there with them from the very beginning and help them get there on their timelines. >> This is an interesting discussion point because what you're highlighting and we've had conversations about your company about being a platform, not just a tool. So, you're getting at is that as you guys started getting more market share, you're platform needs, you needed logging. And meet the market leader, right here right? >> Yeah. >> That's right. >> So, you guys need them, so, partnering's hard when you're trying to build a platform. Now, you can have a platform that enables partners to build on top of it, but components of a full baked platform, it's hard to partner. Rick, what's your thoughts and reaction to that, because that's my statement, but do you agree with it? It's hard to partner in the platform, it's core competency. Look it, he struggled with logging 'cause he'd have to build out a boat load of new investment and you guys are already, just to catch up. >> Yeah, that's right. And I think the thing that needs to be stated here is in your large scale enterprises, they are truly looking for the best to breed, highly scalable environments, right, that we're talking about here. And, they want, they encouraged us to take a step in this direction. It was an obvious choice and I think that has been the reaction that we've kind of heard universally. Like, this is a great idea. This is a really strategic thing that you've Splunk folks have actually done. And so that's really encouraging and so I would agree with you. Partnering, and we were talking through it, but as we were talking, it's like, this is better not to partner in this case. >> John: Better together. >> One of the things that's really important is that logs, you know, that's what were all about. We've actually spent a lot of time in trying to invest into this streaming world of dealing with things in stream. And these guys have perfected it for Metrix, which is, that's the strategic aspect of this. And then combining what they had already done with Tracing, with Omnition, it just doubles down on this future of this application architecture that I mentioned. >> Some MMAs have a couple flavors to them. You buy a company, you throw them under a general manager, an executive, they kind of live there. Founders lead, you get the core tech, some team. The other scenario is full team comes in, hits the ground running. They're building out. They're going to own the build-out. It's seems to me based upon the Omnition acquisition, you're giving Karthik and team, kind of some reign here. >> Rick: Yeah. >> To go build this out. Is that how you guys see it? >> Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, both Speros and Karthik report to me. I'm their onboarding czar, as it were. But were really what we're going to focus on is customer success and achieving our business case. And really capitalizing on the opportunity. These guys were running a hundred miles an hour and we got to get them to got a thousand miles and we're only going to make adjustments to the business case in order to achieve that. And that's what we're here to do is to shepherd this organization in its entirety to the greatness that I think we all see out there. We're going to do that in a very careful, cautious way. >> Karthik, Omnition is a acquisition stealth company. Kind of a commitment saying hey, here's some more horsepower. Talk about how that happened and what's the purpose behind that acquisition. >> Well, I can let Rick talk to how it happened. And I'll talk about the other plans, so. >> When we surveyed the market we actually found that people have certain strengths. These guys that actually started their journey into tracing. I guess their first release was last December and so they've made some strides. And we kind of found Omnition through this discussion and we went like, oh my gosh. And we were in the process of doing the acquisition, doing due diligence. And we set everything on their roadmap is what these guys have done and vice versa. This is another combination that we can't pass up. This is, and what I told him the day we closed, I said, if you had the capital you would have done this, and he's like, yeah I would've. (chuckles) >> One of the things that Rick had asked me during our process was, what are the top three things that you would invest in if you had Slunk resources behind you. And I said Microservices APM, Microservices APM, Microservices APM, and so. >> And I got a big grin 'cause I obviously couldn't disclose what we doing but.. >> You know, the Omnition team, they're still in stealth so there's not a whole lot out there on the web about them. It's a phenomenal team. They've got people who are committers on some major open source projects, deeply technical, very, very shared philosophy to what we had a SignalFx in terms of open instrumentation, not having any proprietary lock in how you collect an instrument data. Very similar philosophies around leveraging the power of analytics and monitoring. And we just actually focused on different parts of the problem because we're both relatively early in this effort. So, we effectively doubled up the teams capacity over night and accelerated our roadmap by several quarters, so, I'm really excited about what we can do together with them. >> Well, are they the Bay area or they from.. >> They are Bay area base, yes. >> Okay cool. Well, I want to get your guys' thoughts on the keynote today. Feedback was authentic, kind of very cool keynote. As you guys bring this together, Rick, Karthik team, the optics, the messaging, what's the core positioning? What's, as you guys look at wholistic view now that you've invested in and are building out for customers, what's the posture? Take us through the keynote positioning. What's the marketplace, customer message around the future here? >> Yeah, I think it's really clear that what we're trying to do for IT organizations and application development organizations is build solutions that are modern and helpful to their core mission. And, by the way as I mentioned, in the world of new development, it's different, it's a different solution set. It's a different approach, a different operating model than it is in current IT operations. And so, one of the key messages we wanted to resonate is that we have the right solutions in both these worlds for you and that we're trying to develop an operating model of reactive response, a quick response, or engaging the right person in the problem, through our use of VictorOps for example, and using that as a way to be very intelligent about how we educate the people that are engaging in resolution process. So, we are trying to create a bridge to both worlds so that they can both be successful. And then under pit that, of course, with automation that can be leveraged in both worlds as well. So, that's what we're trying to convey. We know it's early days, by the way, these guys have been with the company for three weeks, so, it's kind of like, wow. >> Culture shock. >> Culture shock. >> Throw into deep water. Yeah, let's throw you out on stage in front of 11,000 people and see if you can swim and they did phenomenal, by the way. But that was kind of the key message and we're so excited because we just, we feel like were just in the first inning of perhaps a 19 or 20 inning game, 'cause I think it's going to be a lot of fun. >> Karthik: Yeah it is. >> And it's going to be close out here but we're really excited to be able to bring this to market. >> I mean, it's amazing coming in now three weeks in to see the breath of technology that's available and that's going platform. And, you know, what struck me today watching the keynote was just, you know it's such a feature rich and such a broad platform from everything in the, with the core, indexing capabilities that everyone's known about a long time. All of the ML, the additional capabilities we're going to bring in on the metric side. >> Yeah. >> And then the use cases just across every persona, there's just so much that we can do. >> What do you think of the culture? Are they run hard? They a playful company? They like to work hard, play hard? >> Yup. >> But they also are focused on real customer value. They got great engaged communities. What's your take of the culture so far? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean culture fit was a really important part for us if we're going to be acquired by a company and be a part of a larger organization. Their kindred spirits I feel to the way we ran SignalFx. It's a very customer focused organization, great technology and engineering culture. And it's hard to find both, right? It feels like every organization is very important and very well respected. It's not like heavily skewed to it's just all about engineers, it's all about sales, it's very balanced culture and it's very customer focused. >> Guys, congratulations. Big deal. They don't see these kind of mega deals, they come along once in a while. It's a big bet. Good luck with everything, Rick. Thanks for coming on. Final question for both of you, what's the big take-a-way to take back to the office as you leave .Conf this week? What's going to resinate the most with you guys that you're going to take back as feedback? >> For me its, you know, I get my energies from customer conversations. We all do here at Splunk. If you're having a bad day, go talk to a customer and then they walk you and stop you in the hall and say, you know we really thank you again doing what you do. And so it just, I take back from this always that what we do matters and is important and just keep chugging along at it because we're doing some really good work out there that's really helping lives. And that's really important. >> John: That's good therapy. >> Yeah. >> When a bad day, talk to a customer. >> Go talk to a customer. >> I love you guys. (laughs) What's your take-a-way? >> I'm just, I'm thrilled at the number of customers who are coming up to me and saying how excited they are about the acquisition and working with us. You know, that's really re-affirming for me and it's just super exciting to see what we have ahead of us. >> You guys have a great tech following. A lot of tech leaders who knew you guys, knew you had good stuff so congratulations. Great Validation. >> Yup. Thank you. >> John: Good job >> Thank you John. >> Thanks you guys for coming on theCUBE. Great insight. Thanks for sharing all that data. (laughs) Data to everywhere here on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)