(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier. We're joined by Steven Guggenheimer, he is the corporate vice president of AI and ISV engagement at Microsoft. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Sure, thanks for having me. >> So one of the things that we're hearing so much at this conference is, "data needs AI but AI needs data." I'm wondering from your perspective, AI engagement, where do you come down on this? What are you hearing? what are your thoughts on that big theme? >> Um, well, data is the -- some people say the oil for AI, pick your terminology, but there is no AI without data. The reason that AI is such a hot topic right now is the combination of sort of compute storage and networking at scale, which means the access for developers and data scientists to work with large sets of data and then the actual data. If you don't have data you can't build models, if you can't build models, that's what is the definition of AI. So you need data. I always-- all the coaching I do is about sort of, BI before AI. If you can't actually get insight out of your data, let's not try to add intelligence. If you can't get insight out of your data, it means your data is not in a good-- your data state is not in order. So data first. >> A lot of architectural work is being done on data. I see a horizontally scalable cloud, gives a nice access to a lot of different you know, observational data sets. >> Yeah >> It used to be give the guy the silo, got the data, go get more data, slower. Now, data feeds the developer process because SaaS business models have been proven that data and SaaS work well together. So how do we get more-- what's the sequence of architecture to usability of data so that not only can you just have analytical systems, but where developers can start building their SaaS apps with data? >> Yeah, I mean we have this notion where we often talk about sort of, blades or feedback loops. There's sort of four or five things most companies do. You work with customers, you have employees, you have a supply chain or some type of partner chain, You run your finance and operations. So the question becomes, in each of those processes, there's data. Human-generated forms over data or pick your loop and now you getting tons and tons of data. The trick now is to make it reusable. Mostly what we've done for years, form over data, take the data, form over data. And what we do is we get all these different databases. We try and create some layer that brings it all together. We build cubes out of it to view and then we get this hopeless spaghetti. So the trick right now, we're working on something called Common Data Model, which others are well, or Common Data Service. Let's get the entities lined up from the very beginning. We've worked with Adobe and SAP on the Open Data Initiative. Let's start at the core, let's make the data layer reusable, We're you know, databases have become data warehouses have become data lakes. We're heading towards a data tidal wave, and if we don't get the data estate in order to run the line of business applications, to feed all of the things we do to use the ML and AI on top of it, we're going to drown in data and not get what we want out of it. So, architecturally I think about the Common Data Model and the Common Data Service both generically by industry, we build accelerators for that, getting the big organizations like the three I mentioned aligned around that, making it such that any, you know, organization can build from that and then building on top of that. For big companies you have to decide, what do I keep and what do I throw out? You know, what do I just give up on and start from fresh? What do I actually clean? Where do I use tools from Informatica or others to help me clean it, secure it? But you've got to put all that thought in. >> You know we were chatting before we came on camera about the internet days and the storied history that you had at Microsoft. And during the internet, search was the big application. And search on the internet actually worked really well because they didn't have a legacy. And the people that tried to crack the code on search inside an enterprise, much harder problem (Giggles). Because of the database things you mentioned. How does today's enterprise get the benefit of SaaS as if they were cloud-native SaaS with the data? So you know, the challenge we're hearing here is having a Common Data Model is all great, but I just want to be a SaaS player, I want to use my data to feed into my business value. How does a company move out of those legacy constraints? What do you see as-- >> Well there's different paths that different companies will take. I mean, the good news is that if you get your data in order to do what you said, then whether you build, buy or partner for the SaaS services, you can use that data underneath and you should be feeding it back in and making it such that it's sort of reusable and the pipeline is consistent. The truth is on all this, it's just going to end up infused anyway. When you used the internet, which is a funny analogy 'cause I remind people, you know, when the internet came out we had internet products, we had internet events, we had internet shows. We don't have any of that anymore. It's just woven into everything we do. AI is going to be the same. You have all this hype right now, you have AI shows, you have, you know, AI groups. The truth is, in 10, 15 years, AI it's just going to be woven into everything. The data is going to be set up for that. >> So what's the misconception on AI? 'Cause, first of all, I love the fact that AI is hyped up because my kids love it. Machine learning they learn because they hear about AI and they hear all this coolness. So machine learning goes hand-in-hand with AI, you feed machine learning, machine learning feeds the AI application. But a lot of people have aspirations around AI. Some of them are ungettable and so that's probably a misalignment around the hype. What's your feeling of where the reality is and what's the misconceptions, how should people approach AI? Any thoughts there. >> I think a lot about the AI journey, the first year we were having these AI conversations, we talked about AI for everybody, just go play. Now the conversation is, I call it pragmatic AI. Look, lets talk about, you know, how you want to think about AI, it's going to end up everywhere, so the question becomes, what's your differentiation as a company, and how is AI going to support it? Like any other new technology, in the beginning, people just want to play. Just because you can -- let's just say just you can build a virtual agent, doesn't mean every company should. So the question becomes, first off, BI before AI, get your data state in order. Second, in a build buy partner model, what's your differentiation as a company? Whether you want to use either your unique data or your unique skill sets to use AI against that differentiation to help you grow. Otherwise, like, expect somebody else to have infused AI into the products you buy, the SaaS services, you know, use that, then build whatever you want and then there's, you know, if you think you're going to build a new business based on your unique data or your unique AI capabilities, great, let's have that conversation, we need that too but rarely does that become the state. so, most of the conversations move from, you know, the hype to okay, let's get pragmatic which is why I always come back to data first 'cause if you not doing that, you're not setting up for the long run. Let's build for the long run, then let's just have a business conversation like, how do you differentiate yourself as a business? Okay, how is this tool going to help you? >> I want to ask about, uh about innovation, and particularly because Microsoft is a company that's now entering its middle age (giggling) and-- >> What does that say about me, oh no >> As one of famously innovative company, but how do you stay on the cutting edge? I mean, I'm wondering internally how you think about AI for Microsoft's business purposes. What are the conversations around AI? >> One of such is, core conversations around this notion of tech intensity you know, from where we focus on how we think about things we think about tech intensity against different areas, AI being one of those. Look, AI is really this interesting thing. I would say we're plumbers by trade, we build software plumbing for others. So, we do three things right, with AI. Basically, there's a layer growing on top of the core development stack, compute, storage, networking for AI. So we're building a layer, cognitive services, bot services, machine learning, set of tools for developers to infuse AI into things that they've built, so that's thing number one. Thing number two, is we infuse AI into our own products, into Windows, into Office, into Azure, into dynamics. You don't see it, we don't talk about it, we don't say Microsoft Windows Inking brought to you by Azure AI. It just works, but our inking works, our face login works, oh, you know, I can -- it's helping me write a better resume in LinkedIn, that's all AI behind the scenes. Now, the third thing you think about then is, "how do you actually use AI to run the business better"? So, how do you think about, AI assisting professionals, how do we think about the, how we do mocking better, How we forecasting sales, so AI is about plumbing, let's build a platform for others, let's use it ourselves on our own products, and then let's think about how you actually use it to run the company better. And that's how we think about it-- >> That's pragmatic >> Very pragmatic AI is kind of -- >> Yeah, that's how I think about it and we, you know, it's interesting 'cause back to the tech intensity point, we get together on an AI conversation, we searching with the senior leadership team about once every other week, and we're round robin between a research topic, the platform and one of the solutions. So it's, you're always getting constant feedback about is the platform doing what we need to build solutions? Is the research feeding the platform? So, you're getting this really nice feedback loop right now and that tech intensity. >> Quality data always has been a big part of the data modeling in the past, Cloud now allows for data marketplaces I've seen sharing of data as a dynamic, almost like sharing libraries of your developer back in the day, so data is now being merchandised in a new way. This is a trend, what's your thought on it? Because if this continues, you're going to have more data inputs, does that-- >> Err, there are places where data is aggregated and potentially can be re-used. We can -- Bing is an example, Google would be an example um, I know people who aggregate data for different industries, etcetera. It's not an easy business, the rules and rights around data, the GPR compliance, the rest of it. I think there's a deer there but you really have to be in the business for-- the trick you run into is, if you're going to be an aggregator, and then a reseller of data, where's that data coming from? What are the rights, what's the security? And then, are the people who are providing that data comfortable with their competitors getting the data? 'cause if you're really going to be a data provider marketplace, first person who's going to want on is the competitor, so, I think it's an interesting conversation, I think it's kind of growing and there's some real good work there, I don't think it's as-- >> not viable yet >> Easily to do it at scale, for as many people who think they have the data asset as believed they do. But that's Steve's view, that's not a Microsoft's statement. (laughing) >> good disclaimer >> Steve's view, so I want to hear Steve's view on the skills gap, this is a huge problem in the technology industry, as so few people to fill roles. How's Microsoft dealing-- what's your view-- >> my view is I'm glad I work at Microsoft, 'cause we spend a lot of energy on that, um, I wish there were a single solution, but we have Minecraft for education, starting with kids, how do you help, you know, Minecraft is this great tool that teachers use help kids get started, so that's a tool set we work on something called tills, which is uh, basically, our developers teach school kids remotely, junior, high school level, you know, coding. Um, we have made investments against this, we have online training, you know, we work with universities. I don't know the perfect answer, um, but I do know we invest and we work with Hadi Partovi and his group on code.org, I mean any place that there is work going on, we work with the military for people coming out of the military service. So we're heavily invested. I'm hopeful that the ease of use of some of the tools and just from a job area, it drives people but I don't know the perfect answer. Steve's view is I don't know the answer, I do know we try every trick in the book-- >> Multipronged attack >> I'm a parent of two kids, like I have my daughter, you know, working on more on the tech side and you know, it's hard to keep kids on a track for that-- >> There's no degree yet, but we had a first degree this year, graduated from the school but there's kind of like a skills portfolio of different things depending on the make-up I mean, domain expertise is critical, if you don't know what you're tryna do, that's -- >> I think we got a mix, because what you're starting to see is, the tools for subject matter experts, are getting better, we have something called the power platfrom, which allows people who aren't necessarily coders by trade, but want to be able to build, you know, sort of apps or services to be able to do that more easily and mix their subject matter expertise. And you see many more people come out of any program, take biology, with sort of computer knowledge to a decent level. AI and ML research, different area, hard skills gap right there >> Steve, great insights, thanks for spending some time with us, great insights on the skills gap and just overall >> thanks for coming on theCUBE >> We didn't talk about rugby, but okay, fine. Thanks, next time >> next time >> You're one of those ballsmen >> we'd track you down >> The ballsmen can throw >> Exactly, shout out to them >> There we go, >> thank you >> Ah, you are watching theCUBE we'd come right back with more from Informatica World I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier, stay tuned (upbeat music)

(energetic music) >> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and it's Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, the ESPN of tech. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We are here live in Las Vegas at Dell Technologies World, the 10th anniversary of theCUBE being here at this conference. We have two guests for this segment. We have Jeff Woolsey, the Principal Program Manager Windows Server/Hybrid Cloud, Microsoft. Welcome, Jeff. >> Thank you very much. >> And Bob Ward, the principal architect at Microsoft. Thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks, glad to be here. >> It's a pleasure. Honor to be here on the 10th anniversary, by the way. >> Oh is that right? >> Well, it's a big milestone. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you very much. >> I've never been to theCUBE. I didn't even know what it was. >> (laughs) >> Like what is this thing? >> So it is now been a couple of days since Tatiana Dellis stood up on that stage and talked about the partnership. Now that we're sort of a few days past that announcement, what are you hearing? What's the feedback you're getting from customers? Give us some flavor there. >> Well, I've been spending some time in the Microsoft booth and, in fact, I was just chatting with a bunch of the guys that have been talking with a lot of customers as well and we all came to the consensus that everyone's telling us the same thing. They're very excited to be able to use Azure, to be able to use VMware, to be able to use these in the Azure Cloud together. They feel like it's the best of both worlds. I already have my VMware, I'm using my Office 365, I'm interested in doing more and now they're both collocated and I can do everything I need together. >> Yeah it was pretty interesting for me 'cause VMware and Microsoft have had an interesting relationship. I mean, the number one application that always lived on a VM was Microsoft stuff. The operating system standpoint an everything, but especially in the end using computer space Microsoft and VM weren't necessarily on the same page to see both CEOs, also both CUBE alums, up there talking about that really had most of us sit up and take notice. Congratulations on the progress. >> For me, being in a SQL server space, it's a huge popular workload on VMware, as you know and virtualization so everybody's coming up to me saying when can I start running SQL server in this environment? So we're excited to kind of see the possibilities there. >> Customers, they live in a heterogeneous environment. Multicloud has only amplified that. It's like, I want to be able to choose my infrastructure, my Cloud, and my application of choice and know that my vendors are going to rally around me and make this easy to use. >> This is about meeting our customers where they are, giving them the ability to do everything they need to do, and make our customers just super productive. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So, Jeff, there's some of the new specific give us the update as to the pieces of the puzzle and the various options that Microsoft has in this ecosystem. >> Well, a lot of these things are still coming to light and I would tell people definitely take a look at the blog. The blog really goes in in depth. But key part of this is, for customers that want to use their VMware, you get to provision your resources using, for example, the well known, well easy to use Azure Infrastructure and Azure Portal, but when it's time to actually do your VMs or configure your network, you get to use all of the same tools that you're using. So your vCenter, your vSphere, all of the things that a VMware administrator knows how to do, you continue to use those. So, it feels familiar. You don't feel like there's a massive change going on. And then when you want to hook this up to your Azure resources, we're making that super easy, as well, through integration in the portal. And you're going to see a lot more. I think really this is just the beginning of a long road map together. >> I want to ask you about SQL 19. I know that's your value, so-- >> That's what I do, I'm the SQL guy. >> Yeah, so tell us what's new. >> Well, you know, we launched SQL 19 last year at Ignite with our preview of SQL 19. And it'll be, by the way, it'll be generally available in the second half of this calendar year. We did something really radical with SQL 19. We did something called data virtualization polybase. Imagine as a SQL customer you connecting with SQL and then getting access to Oracle, MongoDB, Hadoop data sources, all sorts of different data in your environment, but you don't move the data. You just connect to SQL Server and get access to everything in your corporate environment now. We realize you're not just going to have SQL Server now in your environment. You're going to have everything. But we think SQL can become like your new data hub to put that together. And then we built something called big data clusters where we just deploy all that for you automatically. We even actually built a Hadoop cluster for you with SQL. It's kind of radical stuff for the normal database people, right? >> Bob, it's fascinating times. We know it used to be like you know I have one database and now when I talk to customers no, I have a dozen databases and my sources of data are everywhere and it's an opportunity of leveraging the data, but boy are there some challenges. How are customers getting their arms around this. >> I mean, it's really difficult. We have a lot of people that are SQL Server customers that realize they have those other data sources in their environment, but they have skills called TSQL, it's a programming language. And they don't want to lose it, they want to learn, like, 10 other languages, but they have to access that data source. Let me give you an example. You got Oracle in a Linux environment as your accounting system and you can't move it to SQL Server. No problem. Just use SQL with your TSQL language to query that data, get the results, and join it with your structured data in SQL Server itself. So that's a radical new thing for us to do and it's all coming in SQL 19. >> And what it helps-- what really helps break down is when you have all of these disparate sources and disparate databases, everything gets siloed. And one of the things I have to remind people is when I talk to people about their data center modernization and very often they'll talk about you know, I've had servers and data that's 20, 30, even, you know, decades old and they talk about it almost like it's like baggage it's luggage. I'm like, no, that's your company, that's your history. That data is all those customer interactions. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually take better advantage of it. With this new version of SQL, you can bring all of these together and then start to leverage things like ML and AI to actually better harvest and data mine that and rather than keeping those in disparate silos that you can't access. >> How ready would you say are your customers to take advantage of AI and ML and all the other-- >> It's interesting you say that because we actually launched the ability to run R and Python with SQL Server even two years ago. And so we've got a whole new class of customers, like data scientists now, that are working together with DBAs to start to put those workloads together with SQL Server so it's actually starting to come a really big deal for a lot of our community. >> Alright, so, Jeff, we had theCUBE at Microsoft Ignite last year, first time we'd done a Microsoft show. As you mentioned, our 10th year here, at what used to be EMC World. It was Interesting for me to dig in. There's so many different stack options, like we heard this week with Dell Technologies. Azure, I understood things a lot from the infrastructure side. I talked to a lot of your partners, talked to me about how many nodes and how many cores and all that stuff. But very clearly at the show, Azure Stack is an extension of Azure and therefore the applications that live on it, how I manage that, I should think Azure first, not infrastructure first. There's other solutions that extend the infrastructure side, things like WSSD I heard a lot about. But give us the update on Azure Stack, always interest in the Cloud, watching where that fits and some of the other adjacent pieces of the portfolio. >> So the Azure Stack is really becoming a rich portfolio now. So we launched with Azure Stack, which is, again, to give you that Cloud consistency. So you can literally write applications that you can run on premises, you can move to the Cloud. And you can do this without any code change. At the same time, a bunch of customers came to us and they said this is really awesome, but we have other environments where we just simply need to run traditional workloads. We want to run traditional VMs and containers and stuff like that. But we really want to make it easy to connect to the Cloud. And so what we have actually launched is Azure Stack HCI. It's been out about a month, month and a half. And, in fact, here at Dell EMC Dell Technology World here, we actually have Azure Stack HCI Solutions that are shipping, that are on the marketplace right now here are the show as well and I was just demoing one to someone who was blown away at just how easy it is with our admin center integration to actually manage the hyper converged cluster and very quickly and easily configure it to Azure so that I can replicate a virtual machine to Azure with one click. So I can back up to Azure in just a couple clicks. I can set up easy network connectivity in all of these things. And best yet, Dell just announced their integration for their servers into admin center here at Dell Technologies World. So there's a lot that we're doing together on premises as well. >> Okay, so if I understand right, is Dell is that one of their, what they call Ready Nodes, or something in the VxFlex family. >> Yes. >> That standpoint. The HCI market is something that when we wrote about it when it was first coming out, it made sense that, really, the operating system and hypervisor companies take a lead in that space. We saw VMware do it aggressively and Microsoft had a number of different offerings, but maybe explain why this offering today versus where we were five years ago with HCI. >> Well, one of the things that we've been seeing, so as people move to the Cloud and they start to modernize their applications and their portfolio, we see two things happen. Generally, there are some apps that people say hey, I'm obviously going to move that stuff to Azure. For example, Exchange. Office 365, Microsoft, you manage my mail for me. But then there are a bunch of apps that people say that are going to stay on Prem. So, for example, in the case of SQL, SQL is actually an example of one I see happening going in both places. Some people want to run SQL up in the Cloud, 'cause they want to take advantage of some of the services there. And then there are people who say I have SQL that is never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to the Cloud because of latency or for governance and compliance. So I want to run that on modern hardware that's super fast. So this new Dell Solutions that have Intel, Optane DC Persistent Memory have lots of cores. >> I'm excited about that stuff, man. >> Oh my gosh, yes. Optane Persistent Memory and lots of cores, lots of fast networking. So it's modern, but it's also secure. Because a lot of servers are still very old, five, seven, ten years old, those don't have things like TPM, Secure Boot, UEFI. And so you're running on a very insecure platform. So we want people to modernize on new hardware with a new OS and platform that's secure and take advantage of the latest and greatest and then make it easy to connect up to Azure for hybrid cloud. >> Persistent Memory's pretty exciting stuff. >> Yes. >> Actually, Dell EMC and Intel just published a paper using SQL Server to take advantage of that technology. SQL can be I/O bound application. You got to have data and storage, right? So now Dell EMC partnered together with SQL 19 to access Persistent Memory, bypass the I/O part of the kernel itself. And I think they achieved something like 170% faster performance versus even a fast NVNMe. It's a great example of just using a new technology, but putting the code in SQL to have that intelligence to figure out how fast can Persistent Memory be for your application. >> I want to ask about the cultural implications of the Dell Microsoft relationship partnership because, you know, these two companies are tech giants and really of the same generation. They're sort of the Gen Xers, in their 30s and 40s, they're not the startups, been around the block. So can you talk a little bit about what it's like to work so closely with Dell and sort of the similarities and maybe the differences. >> Sure. >> Well, first of all, we've been doing it for, like you said, we've been doing this for awhile. So it's not like we're strangers to this. And we've always had very close collaboration in a lot of different ways. Whether it was in the client, whether it's tablets, whether it's devices, whether it's servers, whether it's networking. Now, what we're doing is upping our cloud game. Essentially what we're doing is, we're saying there is an are here in Cloud where we can both work a lot closer together and take advantage of the work that we've done traditionally at the hardware level. Let's take that engineering investment and let's do that in the Cloud together to benefit our mutual customers. >> Well, SQL Server is just a primary application that people like to run on Dell servers. And I've been here for 26 years at Microsoft and I've seen a lot of folks run SQL Server on Dell, but lately I've been talking to Dell, it's not just about running SQL on hardware, it's about solutions. I was even having discussions yesterday about Dell about taking our ML and AI services with SQL and how could Dell even package ready solutions with their offerings using our software stack, but even addition, how would you bring machine learning and SQL and AI together with a whole Dell comp-- So it's not just about talking about the servers anymore as much, even though it's great, it's all about solutions and I'm starting to see that conversation happen a lot lately. >> And it's generally not a server conversation. That's one of the reasons why Azure Stack HCI is important. Because its customers-- customers don't come to me and say Jeff, I want to buy a server. No, I want to buy a solution. I want something that's pre configured, pre validated, pre certified. That's why when I talk about Azure Stack HCI, invariably, I'm going to get the question: Can I build my own? Yes, you can build your own. Do I recommend it? No, I would actually recommend you take a look at our Azure Stack HCI catalog. Like I said, we've got Dell EMC solutions here because not only is the hardware certified for Windows server, but then we go above and beyond, we actually run whole bunch of BurnInTests, a bunch of stress tests. We actually configure, tune, and tune these things for the best possible performance and security so it's ready to go. Dell EMC can ship it to you and you're up and running versus hey, I'm trying to configure make all this thing work and then test it for the next few months. No, you're able to consume Cloud very quickly, connect right up, and, boom, you got hybrid in the house. >> Exactly. >> Jeff and Bob, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great to have you. >> Our pleasure. Thanks for having us. Enjoyed it, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more of theCUBEs live coverage of Dell Technologies World coming up in just a little bit.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube! Covering Informatica World 2018. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back, everyone. We're live here in Las Vegas at the Venetian. This is Informatica World 2018. This is The Cube's exclusive coverage. I'm John Furrier, cohost of The Cube, with Peter Burris, my cohost for the past two days. Wall-to-wall coverage. Our next two guests are Ronen Schwartz, SVP's Junior Vice President, General Manager, Big Data Cloud, and Data Integration for Informatica; and John MacIntyre, who's the product management for Azure Sequel Data Warehouse with Microsoft. Part of the big news this morning on the keynote is the relationship between Microsoft Azure Cloud and Informatica. Welcome back, welcome to The Cube! Thanks for coming! >> Yeah, it's good to be here. >> So great to have you guys on, we were looking forward to this interview all morning, all day. We heard about the rumor of the news. Let's jump into it. But I want you to highlight the relationship, how you guys got here, because it's not just news, it's not just an announcement. There's actually code, shipping, product integration, push button, console, it's cloud, it's real cloud, hyper cloud. >> John: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. >> It's a real product. >> John M.: Absolutely. >> Yeah, definitely, this is correct and I do want to encourage the audience to go directly to the Azure environment, try SQL Data Warehouse and try to load as much data as possible, leverage the Informatica intelligent cloud services. It is, as you said, available today. >> Okay, so explain the product. Let's say you got the Informatica intelligent cloud services on Azure. What is the specific product? Take us through specifically what's happening and what is the impact to customers? >> So if you are a customer and you're looking to get agility, you want to get scale, you want to enjoy the benefits of cloud data warehouse, one of the first barriers that you have is how do I get my data into these new amazing capabilities that I can achieve in the cloud. And I think with this announcement we're simplifying that process and making it really streamlined. From within the same place that you start your new data warehouse, in one click you're actually coming to the strongest IPES that exists in the market and you are able to choose your data source and actually decide what data do you want to move and then in a very simple process, move that data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse. >> John, talk about the ease of use, because one of the things that pops in my head when I think about data is, man it's a pain in the butt. I got to do all this stuff, I got to get it off a storage drive, I got to upload it, I got to set it on a drive, FedEx the drive, whatever. Cloud has to be console based. Talk about that aspect of this deal. >> Well I think, John, you know one of the things that you'll hear from Microsoft is that we want to build the most productive cloud available for customers and when we look at it as Ronen was saying, excuse me, we move data, we get data connected into the Azure cloud and how do we do that in a push button way and so what you'll see through the integration that we've done is that all the way through single sign on, that you can just push a button, build that pipeline, get that data flowing from your on-premises environment and get that into the Azure SQL Data Warehouse with just pushing a few buttons and so what we see is customers are able to really accelerate their migration and movement to the cloud through that productivity. >> And how long has it been in the works for? You guys just didn't meet yesterday and did product integration. Talk about the relationship with Informatica. >> Yeah, we've been working with Informatica for years. Informatica's been a great partner and so we started working on this integration, I think, probably over a year ago and really envisioning what we could do for customers. How do we take all of the really great capabilities that Informatica brings to customers and connect those to the Azure cloud. One of the things that we believe for customers is that customers will live in a hybrid world, at least for some foreseeable time and so how do we enable customers to live in that world, to have their data spread across that world, and get all the lineage, governance, and data management capabilities that you need as an enterprise in this world and that's one of the great things that Informatica brings to the table here. >> And Microsoft, your ethos too is also your, seems to be and you can confirm this if it's true or not, to be open for data portability. >> John M.: Yeah. >> Certainly, GDPR has certainly a huge signal to the market that look, no one's going to fool around with this. Data's at the center of the value proposition. It has to move around. >> That's right. And so when we think about data, data interoperability, data portability, recently we introduced Azure Databricks as a GA service on Azure and so we've already done data interoperability across our relational data warehouse products as well as the Databricks products, so Spark and Spark runtimes can interoperate and have data access with the relational warehouse and the relational warehouse can load into Spark Clusters and so we see this giving customers the freedom to move their data and have their data in places that they need them as critical for them to be successful. >> Ronen, let me just get specific on the news here a second. The product is GA or preview, or? >> The product is in preview and it will be fully GA'd in the Q3 time frame, hopefully the middle toward the end of Q3. Customer can start experiencing with the product today and they will actually see us adding more and more capabilities to this experience even before the GA. >> What are some of the things the customers have been asking for? I know you guys do a lot of work on the product side with the customers so I want to ask the requirements that you guys put together on defining this product. What were some of things that were their pain points that you're solving and was it the ease of use, was it part of the plan of enterprise cataloging? Where did you guys come down when you did your PRD, or your requirements and all this stuff? >> So we've been working with customers and with partners for the last few years over their journey to adopt cloud and I think what we've seen is part of the challenges of adopting cloud was where do I start? How do I figure out what data should I move to the cloud first? What is actually going to be impacted by me doing this? One impact you touch which is security and privacy. Am I putting something in risk? Am I following the company policies? But other things is like, what other system are depending on this data to exist here and so when I move to the cloud, am I actually changing my overall enterprise data architecture? Where Informatica have been focusing, especially with the new catalog capabilities is in really giving the enterprise the full picture of the data. If data is the most important asset that you have, we're actually trying to map it for you, including impact analysis, including relationship dependencies. What we're trying to simplify is actually choosing the right data to move to the cloud and actually dealing with rest of the impact that is happening when you're adopting cloud fast. I think cloud is bringing an amazing premise. We want to make it really, really easy. This latest announcement is actually touching the experience itself, how can a customer go from starting a new data warehouse to bringing the data to the data warehouse. I think we are now making it even simpler than ever before. >> So one of the challenges that enterprises have overall is that they're so few people who really understand how to build these pipelines, how to administer these pipelines. Data scientists are not, the numbers are not growing fast. Microsoft also is an enormously powerful ecosystem itself. Do you anticipate that by doing IICS in this relationship way that your developers can actually start incorporating higher, more complex, more higher value data services in a simple way so that they can start putting it into their applications and reduce the need for those really smart people at large and small companies? >> I mean, I think what we want to get to is this notion of self-service data. And to Ronen's point, but that data has to be governed, that data has to be protected, you need to know that you can trust that data, you can trust the source of that data, (coughs) excuse me, you know that you can make decisions from that data, but we hear from customers is they really want IT and these specialists to get out of the way of the business. And so they want to enable their workforce to actually do data production, to say I can create a data set that I can actually make decisions around. I know the lineage of that data set, I know the quality of that data set, and I know where it's appropriate to go use that data set. It could be for data science. It could be for a data engineer to go pick up and use for another pipeline, or it could be for a business analyst. But I think with this partnership, what we're really focusing on is how do we accelerate that productivity for those people who are discovering the data, managing the data, and then those that can then build these data streams and build these data sets that can be consumed inside an organization. Now I think to your point, once we do that, we believe that we will see a proliferation of analysis and higher level advanced analytics on top of that data. What we're hearing from customers is the challenge isn't necessarily getting machine enlargening services up and running or doing advanced analytics or building models and training models. Yes there is a narrow set of people that go and do that, but inordinately what we hear is that customers are spending the bulk of their time, shaping, managing that data, wrangling that data, getting that data in a form that it can actually be consumed and I think this partnership-- >> A lot of prep work. >> Yeah, a ton of prep work. >> Talk about the dynamic. We've been hearing on The Cube here, certainly, and also out in the industry, that 80% of the time spent managing all this stuff, you guys have a value proposition of caching all the metadata so you can get a clear view and customers, we had Toyota on earlier, said we had all the data, we just actually made all these mistakes because we didn't connect it all. What you guys are doing, coming from Ronen, you're going to bring all of the Microsoft tools to the table now, so I'm a customer, the benefit to me is I get to leverage the power, BI stuff or whatever is coming down the pipe, whatever tools you have in your ecosystem, on-prem and also in the cloud, is that? >> Absolutely and so things like PowerApps going to be an ability with no code, low code experiences to actually go build intelligent applications, build things like sales oriented applications, recruiting oriented applications, and leverage that data, that is really what we want to unlock for enterprises and for data professionals. >> What do you think the time will be, just ballpark, ballpark order of magnitude, time to, that you're going to save on the setup? If 80% is industry benchmark people throwing around, but say 80% is wrangling setup, 20% analysis. What do you guys see the impact with something like the intelligent cloud service with Azure? >> Ronen, you can speak to what you're seeing already from some of the customers, but I think even from what we saw this morning in the keynote, we're cutting down the time dramatically in terms of, from identifying what data has value and then actually getting that, moving into Azure, what you saw in less than 10 minutes today would take days if not weeks to actually get done without these tools-- >> So significant number, big number? >> John M.: Yeah, absolutely. >> And I think there are actually two parts to people going through the adoption. One is the technology of moving the data, but the other one that is even, I think, a bigger barrier and sometimes even more important is can I actually just discover and identify the data and can I actually get all the metadata needed so that I can get the approval or I can get personally comfortable with the data that I'm choosinng. I think this cost now is actually being eliminated and that is actually going to allow more people to consume more data even faster, but I do agree that I think the demo speaks better than anything else, got a lot of good-- >> John F.: A few clicks and you're there, got some great props on Twitter, saw some great tweets. The question that begs next is now that I got a pipeline and automating, all this stuff's going on, console based and cataloging all this great stuff, AI, machine learning involved, where, is there, did you guys put the secret sauce in some of the tech? I mean, can you share what's under the hood at all? (laughs) Or is that the secret sauce? >> So, I can not steal some of the demos of tomorrow, but I think you will-- >> Yes you can. (laughs) >> Come on, tell us. >> But I think you will see an interesting AI driven interface-- >> That's a yes. >> From Microsoft working very interestingly with the catalog to drive intelligence to the users, so we will definitely demo it tomorrow on stage. >> John F.: So that's a yes. >> Yes, the answer is yes. >> But I want to build on this because I asked a question about whether or not developers are going to get access to this. If I have a platform that allows me to build very, very complex, but very rich, in a simple way, pipelines to data, I have a catalog that allows me to discover data, sustain knowledge about that data as the data changes over time, and I have a very simple way of setting that up and running it through an Azure cloud experience, can I anticipate that over time certain conventions for how data gets established, gets set up, organized, formats, all that other stuff, starts to emerge as a combination of this partnership so that developers can go into an account and say, okay so we're going to do this for you, oh, you have customer data, you have this data, I want to be able to grab that and make it part of my application. Isn't that where this goes over time? >> Yes, yes, in a very substantive way. I think we're also looking at it from, you'll have stay tuned on the Microsoft side, but we're working towards looking at data entities, business entities, and how do we enrich those entities and to your point, where do they get enriched in that data pipeline and then how do they get consumed and how do they get consumed in a way where we're expressing the data model, the schema, the lineage, and all of these things in a way that's very discoverable for those consuming that data, so they understand where it's coming from so that people, so we look at this partnership in terms of getting that data, getting that data more enriched, and getting that data more consumable in a standard way for application developers. Again, it could be those building intelligent applications, it could be those building business applications and there's a whole set of tools-- >> Or some as-yet-undefined class of applications that are made possible because it's easier to find the data, acknowledge the data, use the data. >> John M.: Yeah, absolutely. >> If we had more time, I'd love to drill down on the future with Microservices, containers, Kubernetes, all the cool stuff that's going on around cloud native. I'm sure there's a lot of head room there from a developer standpoint. Final question is, extending the partnership. Is there a go to market together? Are you guys taking it to the field? What's the relationship with Microsoft, your ecosystem, your developers, your customers, and Informatica? >> Yeah, we're doing a lot of joint go-to-market. Today already we've been doing a lot all the way up to this announcement and I think you'll see that increase based on this announcement. I don't know if Ronen you want to talk about specific things we're doing. >> Yeah, I think the success with the customer is already there and there is actually a really nice list of customers here that are mutual customer of ours doing exactly these scenarios. We'll make it easier for them to do it from now on. >> Yep. >> From a go-to-market perspective, we have a really nice go-to-market motion where the sales teams are actually getting aligned. The new visible integration will make it even easier for them. >> Yeah, this really hits a lot of the sweet spot, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, truly data-driven, ease of use, getting up and running. Congratulations, Ronen, great job. John, great to see you. Here inside The Cube, putting all the data, packing it, sharing it out over the airwaves and over the Internet. Just The Cube, I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris, thanks for watching. Back with more live coverage. Stay with us for more coverage here at Informatica World 2018, live in Las Vegas. We'll be right back. (soft electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018 brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Cube's continuing coverage of Dell Technologies World from Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, and we're joined by two Cube alumni. We've got Paul Galjan, Senior Director of Microsoft Hybrid Cloud for Dell EMC, and Claude Lorenson, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cloud and Enterprise Platform, from Microsoft. Hi Guys. >> Combined Voices: Hi, how are you? >> Welcome back. >> Voice 1: Thank you. It's really great to be here. >> So, we've had almost two full days of talking with customers, partners ... We want to talk to you guys about what's next, what is next, well, we'll get there ... What's new? How about that? With Dell EMC and Microsoft? >> Yeah, so we shipped toward the end of last year, fourth quarter of last year. We went GA, and what's happening is there's an amazing amount of momentum in the enterprise now. We're seeing a lot of interest from the financial sector, from manufacturing, oil and gas. People are really interested in exploring use cases for Azure Stack and also government. Government is also spending up. And we're spending the week here with a ton of great customers and exploring how we can extend their IT business. >> Yeah, we've been very happy with the number of new customers that have joined this platform with Dell EMC. As Paul mentioned, we're seeing some focus on a few verticals in manufacturing, financial services, and, for Microsoft, working with Dell EMC has been a natural because we've worked on a solution like this for quite a few years so it makes the making the sausage part easier when work we work with Dell EMC because we're a trusted partner for quite a while in these solutions. >> We've been making sausage with Microsoft for a long time. (laughter) >> That is a Cube meme for sure. (laughter) So, it's been nine months, there's the ideal of what a product is, and then customers get it, and they start to use it. What have been some of the surprises? Has it been exactly what you guys thought it would be? Or have the customers kind of stretched the imagination to using Azure Stack instead. >> So the thing that surprised me the most is how much our portfolio, at least from a Dell EMC perspective, is how much our portfolio really plays into the decision. And, I'll give you an example, our ISO LAN attach rate with Dell EMC Azure Stack is tremendous, and it's because the inherent the storage density of a hyper-converged infrastructure is what it is, and when you have a multi-petabyte data set that you want to process using cloud types of technologies having an ISO LAN sitting right next to it makes sense. That has surprised me how quickly people have jumped to that with production use cases. >> Keith: It is an interesting concept. >> For Microsoft, the thing that surprised us a lot is the customer that actually get the platform as an enabler of digital transformation the amount of things that they want to do on it is just like mind boggling, so we are constantly asked to add different things to the base services. And, of course, we're doing our best to triage this and prioritize what makes the most sense, but there are the people who gets it, they have tremendous use case very specific for them that Azure Stack enables, so we're on our toes to keep improving the different services that we can offer for Azure Stack. >> Lisa: And you mentioned a number of verticals that seemed to be kind of early adopters here. Are there common use cases among government, financial services, or are you seeing specific use cases to those industries? >> I can talk to that. Gas and mining industry, we see a lot of interest in the disconnected scenarios because of poor latency with the internet. They want to run some of their application that they usually run on Azure, but they want to run it in the mine shaft, for example, or they want to run it in a drilling platform in the ocean. So Azure Stack is an extension of Azure for this so in these kind of industries, the disconnected scenario is very, very big. If you can think of Defense also, if they want to use something in moving vehicle Azure Stack is a great platform for that. >> And it's not just latency, it's just simple data gravity. You know if you have, if you're generating pentabytes of data on a daily basis out on an oil rig, you're not going to be able to get that into W Azure, GPC, or Azure. So you can process it, upload results, filtered results back to Azure for further processing. It's a really common use case. And the federal space is quite big for defense actually. >> So what are the most common services on Azure Stack taking advantage of the petabytes of ISO LAN right next to it as opposed to shipping it back to ... on a truck back to the Azure data center? >> So you want to talk about some of the recent developments for all that? >> You go ahead with all that. >> So what we're seeing a lot of initiatives around is IoT, and those are, that's that very typical data gravity type issue, and it also has it also has compliance implications particularly in the EU. Being able to control where the data is and being able- >> Staying within the border of the country so you don't move it in a data center that is not in your country so Azure become Azure in your country if you don't have your own Azure data centers. And the banking industry in Europe is pretty particular about this, so that's a big vertical for us in Europe. >> Yeah, a lot of finance. >> What about? >> I'm sorry go ahead. >> Oh thank you, sir. I wanted to talk, Claude, to you about what differentiates Dell EMC as an OEM for Microsoft with Azure Stack. >> Well, one thing that differentiates Dell EMC is the fact that they have a broad portfolio of server storage, they have great backup solution, for example, and that's needed in Azure Stack, And, also, let's face it, familiarity. We have been building these integrated systems together for a long, long time. So we know their engineering team, we have a well-oiled machine in terms of testing, so it's easier in some ways there. There's a familiarity in how we work that's quite well-known, and we can take advantage of their portfolio. Like I said, backup is a huge thing for Azure Stack. I mean it's hard to find a better partner for backup than Dell EMC, for example. So, we have a long experience in selling product together. And the client side, the laptop side, we have a long experience of selling Windows Server together, I mean, for years, they've been one of our biggest reseller of Windows Server. So, all this knowledge about Microsoft and how Microsoft works makes Azure Stack simpler to develop with a partner like Dell EMC. >> Okay, can you guys expand upon the advantages of the relationship when it comes to support? Nine months in, there's going to be stumbling blocks, there's going to be challenges, there's just going to be a lot to learn. What has been been a typical customer support experience with two companies? >> So, this really speaks to the learnings that we've had over the years working together. We have jointly, we have worked together on what we call 'Case Exchange API' which allows for ... it goes well above and beyond kind of the typical TSA net case exchange, with that sites, logs. This is API level access into mutual case management systems where we can get visibility into Microsoft's status with a given case and Microsoft can give visibility into Dell EMC's status with the case. And so it makes it so that the customer experience is completely seamless, and they can call, it doesn't matter which number you call for support, it ends up, you end up with a completely seamless experience. It's great. >> And we had years to improve that process and now we have an electronic, automatic ticket exchange and Dell EMC was one of the first partners to really implement this with us, and it's helped tremendously for the customer experience, and, luckily, so far, support hasn't been a big issue on Azure Stack. (laughter) As numbers grow and grow, I'm sure it'll change. >> So, you've been partners for a long time, we've talked about this well-oiled sausage factory (laughter) partners, collaborative ... (laughter) >> That can tweet. You will get tags. >> It is a tweetable moment. So collaboration, visibility, talk to us about the two cloud strategies, Dell EMC's cloud strategy, Microsoft's cloud strategy, how do they align? >> Okay, well, from a Dell EMC perspective, it's a no-brainer, of the big public clouds, Microsoft is really unique in their hybrid cloud approach. There's the Mware approach with AWS and bringing the workload to the cloud. Microsoft is the only major cloud vendor right now bringing the cloud to the work. And it's just a no-brainer from that perspective amongst most cases. >> And for Microsoft? >> Well, our cloud strategy is pretty clear- it's Azure, (laughter) but that part you said. Azure Stack is an extension of Azure. It brings Azure in different scenarios that would not be possible before, and we rely on our trusted, secure and hybrid, hybrid across the board not only with Azure, but with SQL Server, with identity, with security are pillars on these key functions our hybrids across, on premises, and in the cloud. Azure Stack brings this all up for different workloads. So, Azure, we're all in, and it's going well. And Azure Stack as an extension of that bringing in to the customer data center. >> Keith: So, let's talk about this Azure inside of a customer's data center. This is public cloud inside of a customer's data center, expectations change, operations change, technical capability changes, what have been some of the key learnings as customers start to to assume public cloud in their private data center? Like you said, this is a unique approach, this is hybrid cloud like no other model, instead of going inside out, you guys are going outside in. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I think the biggest the biggest perception change that needs, that customers, it helps that customers learn it early, is that Azure Stack is cloud. Simply because it's residing on your data center floor doesn't mean that it's virtualization and all those concepts go along with it. I'll give you a perfect example, if you have a workload that has some sort of unbalanced, you know, you need a lot of RAM but a little CPU, a lot of IOPs but not a whole lot of capacity, those are things that you capture as part of the re-platforming, the refactoring process, if you're going into public Azure or AWS. That same process needs to be followed for going into Azure Stack because from an operating model perspective it's an identical process. >> So let's talk about what's next. I talked to Jeff Snover again about nine months ago and one of the things he said, one of the advantages of Azure Stack is that it is new, and in being new, you can bring in new services, so customers are there to talk, looking at the cloud, they're going to look at things such as containers, functions as a service, et cetera. What's next for Azure Stack and Dell EMC? >> Claude: I'll talk a little about ... Well, we have a roadmap. It's a public roadmap. You can find it on Azure dot com. So what's next is extending the platform with more and more services. So one thing we have to tell customers is that not all services in Azure run in Azure Stack today. There's a subset. We're expanding that subset. We take input from our partner and customer and prioritizing what we are going to do, but also what's next is things like increased scalability, for example, increased efficiency in terms of virtual density, virtual machine density. Increase the number of regions that you can support, so making it from a one off to a true scale product is one of the things we're focusing on. We're making, we're putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that our customers are happy, so when they deploy Azure Stack, we want to make sure that their experience is good, so we're expending effort on making sure that there's a good way for them to reach out to us, but basically expanding the number of services on the platform is is what's new and what's next. >> So, Claude, last question for you, from Microsoft, we're at the first Dell Technologies World, right, last year with Dell EMC, 14 thousand people here, That's a huge, loads of partners, what are some things that you're looking forward to hearing tomorrow in your session from the Dell Technologies customers? >> I'm interested in learning about their use case, how does it fit their data centers? Because every customer is a little bit different, I had some customer meeting today, Dell EMC has invited me to quite a few customers and hearing what they want to do is really interesting because it can guide which next services, for example, we should implement, so hearing the specific is a very important thing. My experience I've talked at Dell, Dell EMC World for quite a few years, very often, the people who come in these session, they are kind of like rookie. They want to know, they want to learn. The experienced folks, we get to talk to them in the booth, but in the session, we get a lot of rookies, like what is thing, what it is, you got to be conscious of that too. >> Well, thanks, guys, for stopping back by the Cube and sharing what's new with Microsoft Hybrid Cloud and Dell EMC, we appreciate that. >> Thank you. We appreciate the time, look forward to it next year. >> Absolutely! >> Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. We are live on Day Two of Dell Technologies World. I am Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (music)

>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2018 brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference 2018, here in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have a three panel guest with us today. We have Eric Schaeffer, the Senior Managing Director of Accenture, Paul Maher, GM Industry Experiences at Microsoft, and Yasushi Yagyu, Assistant Manager at NEC Corporation. Thank you so much for joining me. >> Guests: Thank you. >> So you're on this panel because you are all platinum sponsors and close partners of IFS. We've heard a lot today about IFS's passion for customers. It's a customer-centric, customer-focused company. I'd love to hear from you, your experiences as being partners with IFS. If you could describe a little bit about what you've experienced. I'm going to start with you. >> Thanks, Rebecca. I think, we've been, Accenture and IFS have been partners for many many years, and what I've appreciated in the relationship is the customer focus, but really the focus on delivering value to both IFS and Accenture customers. It's a value-driven approach, very industry specific. So understanding the industry issues, leveraging IFS products and solution to best meet these, having Accenture come in and help tailor the solution to the industry imperatives, and also leveraging digital technologies and combining these with the IFS foundation, which I think was a key term used this morning. >> Yeah, I mean so... Microsoft and IFS have had a very long and prosperous partnership over the last 20 years or so. What's great here, from the keynote this morning is obviously the announcement of IFS Applications 10. And so Microsoft obviously, being a Cloud provider, we've most recently been working very closely with IFS on their move to the Cloud and moving their solutions to the Cloud. So you know, this thing called digital transformation is really, sort of the boss and it's great to see, you know, as you had probably this morning in the keynote, you know, really disruption is really driving new innovation and so we're really glad to partner with IFS in response to that disruption, thinking about Cloud and bringing the IFS Solutions to the Cloud, and really delivering innovation to really address the digital transformation needs of industry. >> And I'd love to talk about you, Yasushi, about innovation. I mean, I ask all of you, but this is a company that really is known for having a history of innovation. How do you come together and collaborate and come up with new creative solutions? >> Uh huh. For example, we have independently, we have AI engine. Namely HML is our engine. And our customer has already implemented that kind of AI solution to predict the demand forecast. And then... Our solution is connect to the IFS Production Control Module, or master schedule module. And then, now our AI can generate forecast data and send it to the master schedule module. >> I know that Accenture has innovation centers around the world. Can you talk a little bit about how you innovate with IFS? >> Well, so we have four innovation centers across the world. We have one in Detroit, one in Munich, Shanghai, and Tokyo. And what we do with IFS is look at industry use cases. And then by combining IFS solutions, plus some of the digital assets, which are proprietary to Accenture, combining the two to deliver new levels of efficiency. And so helping out clients, walking through these innovation centers, they get the "Wow" moment where they see how IFS plus Accenture combined can deliver more value and unlock the value which is trapped in their enterprise. >> Can you talk a little bit about that "Wow" factor? I mean, what are sort of... What are a lot of the challenges that your clients are facing, that you're partnership with IFS has helped them solve? >> Well, many of our clients and I think the term digital transformation of industry was mentioned, it is how is digital transforming the industry. I think the question is not the why. Everybody's convinced and has understood that it is happening. The question is more of the how to. And this is where the combination of IFS plus Accenture really focusing on the how to, how to leverage these technologies on very pragmatic use cases, demand forecasting we heard. It's all about artificial intelligence and visual and computer vision for visual quality inspections, analytics on the shop floor. So it's working with IFS and our clients, the team of three, to identify these use cases and see how to leverage digital to respond and provide a solution. >> At Microsoft, what kind of benefits have you seen with some of the IFS products? >> Yeah, I mean so, from a Microsoft perspective, of course, you know, we are the vendor, the technology vendor. Most recently we've been working very closely with IFS around the move to the Cloud. So I mean, certainly as I think about the partnership that we've had, it really is multi-faceted in terms of, of course we work very closely around how do we think about driving new opportunities and sales motions. And IFS is one of our highest ranked managed partners so we partner very closely there. But suddenly if I was to focus on the technology innovation perspective, what we're really excited about is really that digital disruption and using the new IFS applications, in particular, IFS Applications 10 that's been announced at the conference, working in partnership there to really look to see how do we start to move the needle and move new customers to really achieve to their digital transformation needs and demands, in partnership with the IFS solution running on the Microsoft digital Cloud. >> What are some of the most exciting new features in IFS 10 that you're most excited about? >> Yeah, I mean you mentioned before about the buzz words and the on-trend technologies and I'll kind of quote the keynote this morning, but what really excites me and excites our joint customers, IFS and Microsoft, is things like artificial intelligence, so what that can do around things like machine learning, cognitive services, things like IoT and making that a reality, so thinking about things like predictive maintenance and really being able to integrate the IFS solutions on the Microsoft digital platform, leveraging IoT to really help in those sort of scenarios is great. And then, really super excited about some of the new innovation opportunities. So thinking about things like block chain and what that can do, as you think about the broader opportunity around supply chain and payments and so on. So I think that closer together of the platform but also we've had such a close partnership with IFS, so thinking about really sort of a business problem-led approach, followed by how can the technology and innovation help our joint customers, I think is really helping us as we're looking to innovate in the world of digital transformation. >> And I know that NEC has recently come out with an announcement about AI and heterogeneous, mixed learning technology. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about that, Yasushi? >> Yes, we have an engine, engine model. And our customer has implemented that kind of AI solution to demand forecast or machine failure prediction operations. And some of our AI solutions do collaborate with IFS predictions. For example, at NEC booth we can demonstrate our demand forecast solution. And information from each product comes from IFS master schedule or inventory transaction as input data into AI engine. And then AI generates forecast data automatically and sends it back to that module, yeah. >> So here, IFS, we've heard a lot today too, about the metrics, how it measures its success, and we've heard that it has very high NPS score, its Gartner Insights score is far above competitors, and yet it is kind of this best kept secret in the industry. What would your advice be to IFS in terms of getting the word out about its products? >> Yeah, I mean I think everyone's looking for opportunities to further their market share and drive that new innovation and sales pipeline. I think the best guidance I would give is that IFS really is a first-class company and has first-class products. I think it's continued to innovate and be true to the core and you know, just work with partners like good friends here to really get the word out. But it's really not about doing unnatural acts. I think it's really about building an empathy and understanding of what's needed in the industry and I think the story telling and brand awareness will grow. And I think, from what I was hearing this morning, I mean the conference even this year has already grown by 20 percent, so I think you'll see those sort of leading integrators of the word getting out and the brand profile out there. So I think it's a cautious approach, a strategic approach by using partners and not doing unnatural things. Let the innovation that's happening at IFS and with those partnerships, almost do the story telling and the brand awareness, and just be true to the competency and listen to the customers. >> Well when you think ahead at what we're going to be thinking about and talking about at WoCo 2019, 2020, what are sort of the big trends that you see? I mean we've hit a lot of the buzz words with AI and machine learning. What else do you see on the horizon? What's keeping you up at night or are you thinking about? >> Well what I do see is that, so we mentioned all these digital technologies, they will force manufacturers, I believe, to completely reinvent their products and services. And so the products of tomorrow will be with a lot of AI, a lot of digital technologies inside of products, also outside of the products. So products will be very different from today. And so you can easily imagine that the way you engineer, the way you manufacture, the way you support these products, will also be completely different. So I think next year, 2019, will be a lot about how digital is reinventing the products and services of the manufacturers. >> Right, we keep thinking about how it's reinventing our workforce and changing the way we're doing things, but it's actually going to be reinventing what's coming out, too, of these processes. >> Yeah I mean, you've touched upon some of the buzz words. I think it's also the maturity of the technologies. So I mean, I think that's certainly what excites me, is that the maturity and the capabilities has grown. So things like machine learning isn't necessarily new but with breakthroughs around the algorithms, that's kind of bringing the pragmatic reality of it being able to drive the innovation needed, you know? Capabilities such as the Cloud is providing that ability to scale up, scale down, the ability to provide processing power that wasn't there, previously possible in their price-performance way. So I think it's great to focus on some of the shiny things that are coming up, but I think it's also important to look at saying the things that are of yesterday isn't that far off, it's the maturity that they're reaching and so it's really making sure that they are taken advantage of and really taking that pragmatic approach of, it's got to be business-led versus technology-led, bringing that innovation into industry. >> Yasushi, do you see any big trends on the horizon that you're thinking about at NEC? >> I'm sorry? >> Big technology trends? Things that you're thinking about, maybe you're worried about, concerned about? >> Ah yes, I think IoT technology is helping reach to early maturity stage already. And at this rate, many users successfully gather, collect biased kind of data and revitalize the data to improve actual business operations. As a next step, I believe AI technologies will be widely applied for demand forecasting or that kind of failure prediction and that case of success in each industry will become solution models or templates, which will accelerate the progress of AI introduction. >> Great, well thank you so much. I really appreciate Yasushi, Eric, Paul, I really appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. >> Thank you. >> We will have more from IFS WoCo 2018 just after this. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering Cloud Foundry Summit 2017. Brought to you by The Cloud Foundry Foundation, and Pivotal. >> Oh my Bosh! One of the fun t-shirts here at the Cloud Foundry Summit. I'm Stu Miniman joined by my co-host John Troyer. We've had a day of some really good interviews, really liked geeking out, digging into this hybrid, multi-cloud world, John. Something that feels to be coming into focus a little bit more. I had a bunch of questions coming in, and many of them, at least, I have some answers as to where they're going. What's your take on the Cloud Foundry Summit? >> Yeah, my first Cloud Foundry Summit I thought was super interesting. We got to talk to a couple users, which is always really interesting, and also some folks from the foundation. It was insightful, actually. I talked to a few vendors here, and they said, well how's the crowd? I said, not big, but the people who are here are big. Right? In terms of, there weren't 20,000 people here, there were 1,700, but the companies that are involved are serious about Cloud Foundry, they're all in, they're building apps and they're not building one or two apps, they're building thousands of apps on Cloud Foundry and moving their whole enterprise over. So, that was kind of super enlightening to me. >> Yeah, I mean, John, we know the story here. We've talked at a number of events about this. When you've got big financial companies, insurance companies, people in healthcare, if they don't become more agile, they will be Uberized. We have to have a different term, right? Uber's in the news for all the bad reasons now, so Netflix was the old term, but that digital disruption by start-ups. So, when you hear companies, oh, we're a 75-year-old company, we're a 100-year-old company, we're becoming a software company, and therefore, we're going to take our thousands of apps, and somewhere writing, we always have the new things we're writing, and then we'll move some along. So, that application really spectrum of the new stuff, and then pulling along the old one with a platform like Cloud Foundry, being that bridge to the future if you will. >> Right. Right. And, we aren't talking about a small team chatting on slack. We're talking about, in one organization, thousands of developers, coordinating on this platform. >> Yeah, absolutely. We to talked Express Scripts, I think they said they're hiring about a thousand engineers in a little more than a year. So, big companies, a lot of things to move when we're talking, Liberty Mutual is like, oh we want 75% of our IT staff to be writing code, and today they're less than 50%. So, if you're sitting in that other 50%, the writing is on the wall that you need to move in that direction, or maybe we're not the right organization for you. I'm curious, your take about that retraining of staff, we know we have a shortage of skill sets. How do they learn? How do they get, is it certifications? Is it training? What have you seen? >> Well they did just announce the Cloud Foundry certification program here today. So, I think that was an interesting component that's needed for support for this. But, really the Cloud Foundry supports all sorts of technologies and I think you see it in both the contributors here and in the technology. So, it's polyglot world, I see a lot of people, the crowd, used to, known assistments are indeed doing more programming, doing more automation, and so I think it's all of a course. I think, look it's clear, in five or 10 years the profile of people in IT is going to look a lot different. And, this is one of the leading edges of it. >> Yeah. Coming to the show and we talked about it on the intro that drumbeat of Kubernetes really gaining the hearts and minds of developers, I feel like it's been diffused a little bit. I don't know whether Kubo is the answer, but it is an answer. We've talked to some people in the ecosystem, that have other options that they're doing. As well as, of course, companies like Google, which Kubernetes came out of and Microsoft who's embracing Kubernetes, they like choice, they want people to use their platform. Keeping a more open approach for Cloud Foundry to work with other pieces of open source in the ecosystem. It's goodness? Time will tell whether this one solution makes sense. What's your take on that? >> Sure, I think Cloud Foundry has always been known as the opinionated platform. But, I think now the subtleties have come out that, yes there are certain opinions in the way things are glued together, but as James Waters pointed out, they've always had different kinds of abstractions of things running on or in the platform, in terms of whole apps or server list, we didn't really talk about today. But, so Kubernetes is sitting beside there for people who want more knobs, who already have an app, that expects that kind of scalability and management, makes sense for the Cloud Foundry. I think, they seem pretty open to embracing whatever works, and in some ways it's an analogy to what going on in the clouds like Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and that it's like, look bring us your work loads, we will run them. So, I think that's kind of an opening of at least a publicly stance of an opening. >> Yeah. I like this as Steve O'Grady said in the conversation we had with him, there's a lot of choices out there and therefore customers really, they want that. Of course there's the paradox situation. How do I keep up on all the latest and greatest? I mean, three years ago, the last time I came to the show, was like 08 Docker, totally going to disrupt this. Now it's Kubernetes, we only brought up functions as a service or as a server less, like once, and it did not seem to fit into where this plays today. But, there's options out there. Customers that are here, like what they're doing. It is moving them forward, it is enabling them to be that faster, faster, faster. More agile, meet the needs of the business and stay competitive. >> Yeah. Steve's term was different tools for different jobs or something like that right? >> We always said at Wikibon, a torse is for courses. >> Yeah. I mean a polyglot is one way that Coops' Clouds Foundry world used to talk about it. But, I think different tools is a great way. There is, we're in a technical time of great diversity. Which is awesome right? There's no monoculture here, which is super interesting, I think. >> Yeah absolutely, also the move from Cloud Foundry really started out as a predominantly, a non premises deployment and Public Cloud is seeping into it. We talked to a couple of customers that are starting to use Public Cloud, and most of them who weren't using it today were understanding where it fits. Sorting that piece out and look at solutions like Cloud Foundry as one of those pieces that are going to give them flexibility moving forward. >> Yeah. I mean I think that this is something that's going to have to develop over time. Right? It's one thing to say, I'm a layer on top of another cloud, but Amazon really wants you to use its databases, and Google Cloud really wants you to use it's services. And so, you can only stay completely independent for so long without taking advantage of those things, as you evolve these platforms. So, there is that tension there, that will play out, but it's played out over and over again at the many levels in tact. So, we'll see some standard stuff there. If Cloud Foundry has enough value, people will use it as their deployment platform on MultiCloud. Well let's talk about MultiCloud. What you think Stu? But sometimes MultiCloud is more of an ideal than a practicality for many organizations. >> Yeah. What about Pivitol? So if we look at Pivitol, number they're doing in Cloud Foundry, was, last year was about 275 million, so that number had been shared in one of the earnings calls. Seems like a very well position for the Fortune 1000. I'm always trying to figure out. What is the tam that they can go after? Who does it work for, and who doesn't it? At OpenStack we talked about, well great, the Telco NFV market looks great, but is that 20 or 50 companies. For something like Cloud Foundry, there's lots of big revenue that they can get by knocking down many of these Fortune 1,000's. But, it does seem to be that enterprise grade, therefore there's dollars attached to that. It is something that they, Pivitol, has done a solid job of converting that need, using open source into actual software revenues. Yes, their services and labs are a critical, critical, critical piece of what they do, but it is the subscription of software that they built. Many of their clients were on, I know , a three year subscription and lots of those renewals have started coming now. Expectation is that we could see an IPO by them by 2018. It's been reported I'm sure Michael Dell would love to have another influx of cash that he can help fund all of the the things that he's doing. What's your take on Pivitol coming out of this? >> I mean, from here it looks like Pivotal is very comfortable with it's place and who it's customers are. I didn't see a lot of hedging about, we're going after a different market, or we're going for the individual developer, or we think this can be used by almost anybody. These are big companies we're talking about. In the key note this morning for the foundation, talked about enterprise grade. Talking about security, talking about scale, talking about developer experience. They're not shy about it. They're serious when they say they are an enterprise grade platform. So, which I think is great right? You should know yourself and I really feel like both the foundation and Pivitol, a big part of the foundation, does know itself and knows who's it's customers are. >> Yeah. I guess the only thing that I look at is, so many conferences that I go to, is this a platform that SAS companies are building on? As we look at what the future of companies, and especially in the technology space, are going to look like, yes we have some of these big companies that are using it, but you know there's not the, oh okay, work day and sales force, and all these companies, I haven't seen these companies that are already just software companies using it. It's the industry, older companies that are trying to get more into software and therefore this helps with their digital transformation. The companies that are born in the cloud, I haven't seen that in there, and that's fine. There's definitely a diversity of the marketplace. >> Yeah. If you look at a spectrum, we're saying that all SAS companies are software companies, well those SAS companies may be even more software company than a manufacturer or a finance company. So, I think that's okay. One thing they have to watch with the ecosystem and the customer base is the speed of evolution, the speed of the ecosystem, new entrants coming in. Can they keep the velocity of innovation up? I'm sure that's one thing they're looking at. >> Yeah. It is interesting right? Will the millennials be using Cloud Foundry caring about it? Or is this more the boomer, the older generation that have used it? >> Hey, it's not a job versus Steve McGrady, it's not a job versus Dotnet or Microsoft World anymore, but they're still a lot of job developers and new ones coming in. I think hey, there's still COBOL programmers. >> Alright. Want to give you final takeaways. For me some good quality users talking about their stories. There's reality here as you said, there wasn't any big shift is to what Cloud Foundry or the foundation or what they are doing. There's not some big pivot that they need to do. No pun on Pivotal. But, sometimes you go and you're like, are they tone deaf? Are they drinking their own Kool Aid? I think this group understands where they fit. They're focused on delivering it, definitely a changing ecosystem from previous years and how they fit into that whole cloud environment. I'll give you the final word. >> Sure. That goes with some of what you said. The people seem very productive. They seem happy. They seems super engaged. The show floor when the sessions were in session, there was nobody here on the show floor. People are here to learn. Which means that they're here to get stuff done. It's kind of a no nonsense crowd. So, I really enjoyed the day. >> Alright well, John always a pleasure to catch up with you. Appreciate you sitting in for the day and talking about all of this. You brought some great expertise to the discussion. Big thanks to the team here. We actually had four shows this week from the Cube, so as we get towards almost July 4th, which means that we get a deep breath before the fall tour comes. So, I want to thank everybody for watching. As always, check out thecube.net for all the videos from this show and all the other shows. If you see a show that we're going to be at and you want to be on, get in touch with us. If you have a show that we're not at, please feel free to reach out to us. We're really easy to get in touch with. For my co host John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman. Once again as always, thank you for watching the Cube and we will see you at the next show.