>>from >>around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 Special coverage sponsored by A. W s Global Partner Network. >>Hello and welcome to the Cube. Virtual in our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 and our special coverage of a PM partner experience where the Cube virtual and I'm your host, Justin Warren. And today I'm joined by Mike Gill. Fix. Who is the chief product officer for IBM Cloud PACs. Mike, welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you. Thanks for happening. >>Now. Cloud PACs is a new thing from IBM. I'm not particularly familiar with it, but it's it's related to IBM's partnership with with a W s. So maybe you could just start us off quickly by explaining what is cloud packs and what's your role as chief product officer there? >>Well, Klopp acts sort of our next generation platform. What we've been doing is bringing the power of IBM software really across the board and bringing it to a hybrid cloud environments, so make it really easy for our customers to consume it wherever wherever they want, however, they want to choose to do it with a consistent skill set and making it really easy to kind of get those things up and running and deliver value quickly. And this is part of IBM hybrid approach. So what we've seen is organizations that can leverage the same skill set and, you know, basically take those work quotes, make him run where they need thio. Yields about a 2.5 times are y and cloud packs it at the center of that running on the open shift platform so they get consistent security skills and powerful software to run their business running everywhere. And we've been partnering with AWS because we want to make sure that those customers that have made that choice could get access to those capabilities easy and as fast as possible. >>Right? And and the cloud PACs have built on the red hat open. Now let me get this right. It's the open hybrid cloud platform. So is that open shift? >>It is Open shift. Yes. I >>mean, IBM >>is incredibly committed to being thio. Open software and open ship does provide that common layer, and the reason that's important is you want consistent security. You want to avoid lock in, right? That gives you a very powerful platform A fabric, if you will, that can truly run anywhere with any workload. And we've been working very closely with a W s to make sure that is Ah, Premier. First class experience on AWS. >>Yes. So the the open shift on AWS is is relatively new from IBM. So could you explain what is open shift on AWS? And how does that differ from the open shift that people may be already familiar with? >>Well, the Colonel, if you will, is the same. It's the same sort of central open source software, but in working closely with AWS were now making those things available a simple services that you can quickly provisioned and run, and that makes it really easy for people to get started. But again, sort of carrying forward that same sort of skill set. So that's kind of a key way in which we see that you can gain that sort of consistency, you know, no matter where you're running that workflow and we've been investing in that integration, working closely with them Amazon, >>right? And we all know red hats, commitment, thio, open source software and the open ecosystems. Red hat is rightly famous for it, and I I am old enough to remember when it was a brand new thing, particularly in enterprise. Thio allow open source toe to come in and have anything to do with workloads. And now it's It's ALS, the rage, and people are running quite critical workloads on it. So what are you seeing in the adoption within the enterprise off open software? >>The adoption is massive, I think. Well, first, let me describe what's driving it. I mean, people want to tap into innovation and the beauty of open source is your your kind of crowd sourcing, if you will, this massive community of developers that are creating just an incredible amount of innovation and incredible speed, and it's a great way to ensure that you avoid vendor lock in. So enterprises of all types are looking to open solutions as a way both of innovating faster and getting protection. And that commitment is something certainly redheaded tapped into its behind the great success of Red Hat. And it's something that, frankly, is permeating throughout IBM and that we're very committed to driving this sort of open approach. And that means that you know, we need to ensure that people get access to the innovation they need, run it where they want and ensure that they feel that they have choice >>on the choice. I think is a key part of it that isn't really coming through in some of the narrative that there's a lot of discussion about how you should actually, should you go cloud. I remember when it was. Either you should stay on site or should you go, Go to Cloud and we had a long discussion there. Hybrid Cloud really does seem to have come of age where it's it's a a realistic kind of compromise, probably the wrong word, but it's it's a trade off between doing all of one thing or all another. And for most enterprises, that doesn't actually seem to be the choice that that's actually viable for them. So hybrid seems like it's actually just the practical approach. Would that be accurate? >>Well, our studies have shown that if you look statistically at the set of work, oh, that's moved to clouds, you know, something like 20% of workloads have only moved to cloud, meaning the other 80% is experiencing barriers to move >>and some >>of those barriers is figuring out what to do with all this data that's sitting on Prem or, you know, these these applications that have years and years of intelligence baked into them that cannot easily be ported. And so organizations looking to hybrid approaches because they give them more choice. It helps them deal with fragmentation, meaning as I move more workload, I have consistent skill set. It helps me extend my existing investments and bring it into the cloud world. And all those things again are done with consistent security. That's really important, right? Organizations need to make sure they're protecting their assets. Their data throughout, you know, leveraging a consistent platform. So that's really the benefit of the hybrid approach. It essentially is going to enable these organizations unlocked more workload and gain the acceleration and the transformative, effective clouds. And that's why I think they're really That's why it's becoming a necessity, right, because they just can't get that 80% to move. Yah, >>Yeah, I've long said that the cloud is a state of mind rather than a particular location. It's It's more about an operational model of how you do things, so hearing that we've only got 20% of workloads have moved to this new way of doing things does rather suggest that there's a lot more work to be done. What for? Those organizations that are just looking to do this now they've they've done a bit of it and they're looking for those next new workloads. Where do you see customers struggling the most? And where do you think that IBM can help them there? >>Well, um, boy, where they struggling the most? First, I think skills. I mean, they have to figure out a new set of technologies to go and transition from the old World to the new. And at the heart of that is lots of really critical debate. Like, how do they modernize the way that they do software delivery for many enterprises, right. Embrace new ways of doing software delivery. How do they deal with the data issues that arise from where the data sets their obligations for data protection? Um, what happened to the data spans multiple different places, but you have to provide high quality performance and security thes air, all parts of issues that you know, spanned different environments. And so they have to figure out how to manage those kinds of things and make it work in one place. I think the benefit of partnering, you know, with Amazon is clearly there's a huge, you know, customer base. That's interesting. Amazon. I think the benefit of the idea and partnership is you know, we can help to go and unlock some of those new workloads and find ways to get that cloud benefit and help to move them to the cloud faster again with that consistency of experience. And that's why I think it's a good match partnership. We're giving more customers choice. We're helping them to unlock innovation substantially, faster, >>right? And so, for people who might want to just get started without how would they approach this? Do you think people might have some experience with AWS? It's It's almost difficult not to these days, but for those who aren't familiar with the red hat on a W s with open shift on AWS, how would they get started with you? Thio to explore what's possible? >>Well, one of the things that we're offering to our clients is a service that we refer to his I. D. Um garage Z you know, an engagement model, if you will, within IBM, where we work with our clients and we really help them to do co creation. So help to understand their business problem. Or, you know, the target state of where they want their I t to get to. And in working with them in co creation, you know, we help them to affect that transition. Let's say that it's about, you know, delivering business applications faster. Let's say it's about modernizing the applications they have or offering new services new business models again, all in the spirit of co creation. And we found that to be really popular. Um, it's a great way to get started. We we leverage design thinking approach. They can think about the customer experience and their outcome. If they're creating new business, processes, new applications and then really help them toe uplift their skills and, you know, get ready. Thio adopt cloud technology and everything that they dio. >>It sounds like this is, ah, lot of established workloads that people already have in their organizations. It's already there. It's generating real money. It's It's not those experimental workloads that we saw early on which was a well, let's try. This cloud is a fabulous way where we can run some experiments, and if it doesn't work, we just turn it off again. These sound like a lot more workloads, air kind of more important to the business. Is that be true? >>Yeah, I think that's true now. I wouldn't say they're just existing work clothes, because I think there's lots of new business innovation that many of our, you know, clients want to go on launch. And so this gives them an opportunity to do that new innovation but not forget the past, meaning they could bring it forward and bring it forward into an integrated experience. I mean, that's what everyone demands of a true digital business, right? They expect that your experience is integrated, that it's responsive that it's targeted and personalized, and the only way to do that is to allow for experimentation that integrates in with the, you know, standard business processes and things that you did before. And so you need to be able to connect those things together seamlessly, >>right? So it sounds like it's it's a transition more than creating new thing completely from scratch. It's well Look, we've done a lot of innovation over the past decade or so in cloud. We know what works, but we still have workloads that people clearly no one value. How do we put those things together and do it in such a way that we maintain the flexibility to be able to make new changes as we as we learn new things? >>Yeah, leverage what you've got. Play to your strength. I mean, that's that's how you create speed. If you have to reinvent the wheel every time, it's going to be a slow roll. >>Yeah, that does seem like an area where an organization, probably at this point should be looking to partner with other people who have done the hard yards. They've They've already figured this out. What, as you say, Why can't make all of these obvious areas yourself when you're you're starting from scratch? When there's a wealth of experience out there, and particularly this whole ecosystem that exists around around open software? Uh, in fact, maybe you could tell us a little bit about the ecosystem opportunities that are there because red, that's been part of this for a very long time. AWS has a very broad ecosystem is we're all familiar with being here. It reinvent yet again. How does that ecosystem claim toe? What's possible? >>I well, let me explain why I think IBM brings a different dimension to that trio, right? IBM brings the industry expertise. I mean, we've long worked with all of our clients are partners on solving some of the biggest business problems and being embedded in the thing that they do. So we have deep knowledge of their enterprise challenges where they're trying to take them. Deep knowledge of their business processes were ableto bring that that industry know how mixed with, you know, red hats approach to an open, foundational platform coupled with, you know, the great infrastructure you could get from Amazon. And, you know, that's a great sort of powerful combination that we can bring to each of our clients and, you know, maybe just to bring it back a little bit to that idea of Okay, so what's the rolling cloud packs in that? I mean, compact are the kind of software that we've built to enable enterprises to run their essential business processes right in the essential digital operations that they run everything from security to protecting their data or giving them powerful data tools to implement a I and, you know, to implement ai algorithms in the heart of their business or giving them powerful automation capabilities so they can digitize their operations and also make sure those things were going to run effectively. It's those kinds of capabilities that we're bringing in the form of cloud PACs. Think of that is that that substrate that runs a digital business that now could be brought through right running on AWS infrastructure. Good. It's integration that we've done >>right. So basically taking things that as a pre package module that we can just grab that module, drop it in and and start using it rather than having to build it ourselves from scratch. >>That's right. They make them leverage of those powerful capabilities and get focused on innovating the things that matter. Right? So the huge accelerant to getting business value. >>And it does sound a lot easier than trying to learn how to do the complex sort of deep learning and linear algorithms that they're involved in machine learning. I have looked into it a bit and trying to manage that sort of deep maths, and I think I'd much rather just just grab one off the shelf, plug it in and just use it. >>Yeah, It's also better than writing assembler code, which was some of my first programming experiences as well. So I think the software industry has moved on just a little bit since then. >>I think we have to say I do not miss the days of handwriting. Assemble at all, uh, sometimes for nostalgia reasons. But if we want to get things done, I think I'd much rather work in something a little higher level >>specific drinking. >>So thank you so much for my for my guest there. Mike Gill. Fix chief product officer for IBM Cloud PACs from IBM. This has been the cubes coverage off AWS reinvent 2020 and the a p m. Partner experience. I've been your host, Justin Warren. Make sure you come back and join us for more coverage later on

>> Reporter: From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS global partner network. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE virtual and our coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 and our special coverage of APN partner experience. We are theCUBE virtual and I'm your host, Justin Warren. And today I'm joined by Mike Gilfix who is the Chief Product Officer for IBM Cloud Paks. Mike, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. Now, Cloud Paks is a new thing from IBM. I'm not particularly familiar with it, but it's related to IBM's partnership with AWS. So maybe you could just start us off quickly by explaining what is Cloud Paks and what's your role as Chief Product Officer there? >> Well, Cloud Paks is sort of our next generation platform. What we've been doing is bringing the power of IBM software really across the board and bringing it to a hybrid cloud environment. So making it really easy for our customers to consume it wherever they want, however, they want to choose to do it with a consistent skillset and making it really easy to kind of get those things up and running and deliver value quickly. And this is part of IBM's hybrid approach. So what we've seen is organizations that can leverage the same skillset and, you know basically take those workloads make them run where they need to yields about a two and a half times ROI and Caltech sit at the center of that running on the OpenShift platform. So they get consistent security, skills and powerful software to run their business running everywhere. And we've been partnering with AWS because we want to make sure that those customers that have made that choice, can get access to those capabilities easy and as fast as possible. >> Right. And the Cloud Paks and Built On the Red Hat open. Now, let me get this right. It's the open hybrid cloud platform. So is that OpenShift? >> It is OpenShift, yes. I mean IBM is incredibly committed to open software and OpenShift does provide that common layer. And the reason that's important is you want consistent security. You want to avoid lock-in, right? That gives you a very powerful platform, (indistinct) if you will, they can truly run anywhere with any workload. And we've been working very closely with AWS to make sure that is a premiere first-class experience on AWS. >> Yes so the OpenShift on AWS is relatively new from IBM. So could you explain what is OpenShift on AWS and how does that differ from the OpenShift that people may be already familiar with? Well, the kernel, if you will, is the same it's the same sort of central open source software but in working closely with AWS we're now making those things available as simple services that you can quickly provision and run. And that makes it really easy for people to get started, but again sort of carrying forward that same sort of skill sets. So that's kind of a key way in which we see that you can gain that sort of consistency, you know, no matter where you're running that workload. And we've been investing in that integration working closely with them, Amazon. >> Yeah, and we all know Red Hat's commitment to open source software in the open ecosystems. Red hat is rightly famous for it. And I am old enough to remember when it was a brand new thing, particularly in enterprise to allow open source to come in and have anything to do with workloads. And now it's all the rage and people are running quite critical workloads on it. So what are you seeing in the adoption within the enterprise of open software? >> The adoption is massive. I think, well first let me describe what's driving it. I mean, people want to tap into innovation and the beauty of open source is you're kind of crowdsourcing if you will, this massive community of developers that are creating just an incredible amount of innovation at incredible speed. And it's a great way to ensure that you avoid vendor lock-in. So enterprises of all types are looking to open solutions as a way, both of innovating faster and getting protection. And that commitment, is something certainly Red Hat has tapped into. It's behind the great success of Red Hat. And it's something that frankly is permeating throughout IBM in that we're very committed to driving this sort of open approach. And that means that, you know, we need to ensure that people can get access to the innovation they need, run it where they want and ensure that they feel that they have choice. >> And the choice I think is a key part of it that isn't really coming through in some of the narrative. There's a lot of discussion about how you should actually pick, should you go cloud? I remember when it was either you should stay on-site or should you go to cloud? And we had a long discussion there. Hybrid cloud really does seem to have come of age where it's a realistic kind of compromise is probably the wrong word, but it's a trade off between doing all the one thing or all another. And for most enterprises, that doesn't actually seem to be the choice that's actually viable for them. So hybrid seems like it's actually just the practical approach. Would that be accurate? >> Well our studies have shown that if you look statistically at the set of workload that's moved to cloud, you know something like 20% of workloads have only moved to cloud meaning the other 80% is experiencing barriers to move. And some of those barriers is figuring out what to do with all this data that's sitting on-prem or you know, these applications that have years and years of intelligence baked into them that can not easily be ported. And so organizations are looking at the hybrid approaches because they give them more choice. It helps them deal with fragmentation. Meaning as I move more workload, I have consistent skillset. It helps me extend my existing investments and bring it into the cloud world. And all those things again are done with consistent security. That's really important, right? Organizations need to make sure they're protecting their assets, their data throughout, you know leveraging a consistent platform. So that's really the benefit of the hybrid approach. It essentially is going to enable these organizations to unlock more workload and gain the acceleration and the transformative effect of cloud. And that's why it's becoming a necessity, right? Because they just can't get that 80% to move yet. >> Yeah and I've long said that the cloud is a state of mind rather than a particular location. It's more about an operational model of how you do things. So hearing that we've only got 20% of workloads have moved to this new way of doing things does rather suggest that there's a lot more work to be done. What, for those organizations that are just looking to do this now or they've done a bit of it and they're looking for those next new workloads, where do you see customers struggling the most and where do you think that IBM can help them there? >> Well,(indistinct) where are they struggling the most? First I think skills. I mean, they have to figure out a new set of technologies to go and transition from this old world to the new and at the heart of that is lots of really critical debates. Like how do they modernize the way that they do software delivery for many enterprises, right? Embrace new ways of doing software delivery. How do they deal with the data issues that arise from where the data sits, their obligations for data protection, what happens if the data spans multiple different places but you have to provide high quality performance and security. These are all parts of issues that, you know, span different environments. And so they have to figure out how to manage those kinds of things and make it work in one place. I think the benefit of partnering, you know, with Amazon is, clearly there's a huge customer base that's interested in Amazon. I think the benefit of the IBM partnership is, you know, we can help to go and unlock some of those new workloads and find ways to get that cloud benefit and help to move them to the cloud faster again with that consistency of experience. And that's why I think it's a good match partnership where we're giving more customers choice. We're helping them to unlock innovation substantially faster. >> Right. And so for people who might want to just get started without it, how would they approach this? People might have some experience with AWS, it's almost difficult not to these days, but for those who aren't familiar with the Red Hat on AWS with OpenShift on AWS, how would they get started with you to explore what's possible? >> Well, one of the things that we're offering to our clients is a service that we refer to as IBM garage. It's, you know, an engagement model if you will, within IBM, where we work with our clients and we really help them to do co-creation so help to understand their business problem or, you know, the target state of where they want their IT to get to. And in working with them in co-creation, you know, we help them to affect that transition. Let's say that it's about delivering business applications faster. Let's say it's about modernizing the applications they have or offering new services, new business models, again all in the spirit of co-creation. And we found that to be really popular. It's a great way to get started. We've leveraged design thinking and approach. They can think about the customer experience and their outcome. If they're creating new business processes, new applications, and then really help them to uplift their skills and, you know, get ready to adopt cloud technology and everything that they do. >> It sounds like this is a lot of established workloads that people already have in their organizations. It's already there, it's generating real money. It's not those experimental workloads that we saw early on which was a, well let's try this. Cloud is a fabulous way where we can run some experiments. And if it doesn't work, we just turn it off again. These sound like a lot more workloads are kind of more important to the business. Is that be true? >> Yeah. I think that's true. Now I wouldn't say they're just existing workloads because I think there's lots of new business innovation that many of our, you know, clients want to go and launch. And so this gives them an opportunity to do that new innovation, but not forget the past meaning they can bring it forward and bring it forward into an integrated experience. I mean, that's what everyone demands of a true digital business, right? They expect that your experience is integrated, that it's responsive, that it's targeted and personalized. And the only way to do that is to allow for experimentation that integrates in with the, you know, standard business processes and things that you did before. And so you need to be able to connect those things together seamlessly. >> Right. So it sounds like it's a transition more than creating new thing completely from scratch. It's well, look, we've done a lot of innovation over the past decade or so in cloud, we know what works but we still have workloads that people clearly know and value. How do we put those things together and do it in such a way that we maintain the flexibility to be able to make new changes as we learn new things. >> Yeah, leverage what you've got play to your strengths. I mean that's how you create speed. If you have to reinvent the wheel every time it's going to be a slow roll. >> Yeah and that does seem like an area where an organization probably at this point should be looking to partner with other people who have done the hard yards. They've already figured this out. Well, as you say, why can't we make all of these obvious areas yourself when you're starting from scratch, when there's a wealth of experience out there and particularly this whole ecosystem that exists around the open software? In fact maybe you could tell us a little bit about the ecosystem opportunities that are there because Red Hat has been part of this for a very long time. AWS has a very broad ecosystem as we're all familiar with being here at re:Invent yet again. How does that ecosystem play into what's possible? >> Well, let me explain why I think IBM brings a different dimension to that trio, right? IBM brings deep industry expertise. I mean, we've long worked with all of our clients, our partners on solving some of their biggest business problems and being embedded in the thing that they do. So we have deep knowledge of their enterprise challenges, deep knowledge of their business processes. deep knowledge of their business processes. We are able to bring that industry know how mixed with, you know, Red Hat's approach to an open foundational platform, coupled with, you know, the great infrastructure you can get from Amazon and, you know, that's a great sort of powerful combination that we can bring to each of our clients. And, you know, maybe just to bring it back a little bit to that idea, okay so what's the role in Cloud Paks in that? I mean, Cloud Paks are the kind of software that we've built to enable enterprises to run their essential business processes, right? In the central digital operations that they run everything from security to protecting their data or giving them powerful data tools to implement AI and you know, to implement AI algorithms in the heart of their business or giving them powerful automation capabilities so they can digitize their operations. And also we make sure those things are going to run effectively. It's those kinds of capabilities that we're bringing in the form of Cloud Paks think of that as that substrate that runs a digital business that now can be brought through right? Running on AWS infrastructure through this integration that we've done. >> Right. So basically taking things as a pre-packaged module that we can just grab that module drop it in and start using it rather than having to build it ourselves from scratch. >> That's right. And they can leverage those powerful capabilities and get focused on innovating the things that matter, right? So the huge accelerant to getting business value. >> And it does sound a lot easier than trying to learn how to do the complex sort of deep learning and linear algorithms that they're involved in machine learning. I have looked into it a bit and trying to manage that sort of deep masses. I think I'd much rather just grab one off the shelf plug it in and just use it. >> Yeah. It's also better than writing assembler code which was some of my first programming experiences as well. So I think the software industry has moved on just a little bit since then. (chuckles) >> I think we have is that I do not miss the days of handwriting assembly at all. Sometimes for this (indistinct) reasons. But if we want to get things done, I think I'd much rather work in something a little higher level. (Mike laughing) So thank you very much for joining me. My guest Mike Gilfix there from IBM, sorry, from IBM cloud. And this has been, sorry, go ahead. We'll cut that. Can we cut and reedit this outro? >> Cameraman: Yeah, you guys can or you can just go ahead and just start over again. >> I'll just do, I'll just do the outro. Try it again. >> Cameraman: Yeah, sounds good. >> So thank you so much for my guests there Mike Gilfix, Chief Product Officer for IBM Cloud Paks from IBM. This has been theCUBES coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 and the APN partner experience. I've been your host, Justin Warren, make sure you come back and join us for more coverage later on.

>> From the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE covering Comcast Innovation Day. (smooth music) Brought to you by Comcast. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center here in Sunnyvale. Very cool facility right off the runway from Moffett. They got a ton of cool toys downstairs which I get to go play with, which I'm looking forward to, but today the conversation was all about CX, customer experience, and you know, Comcast is there. A lot of people like to watch their TVs, interacting with their cable systems for a long, long time, but there's a whole range of new and innovative things that are coming out from Comcast, and we're excited to have an engineer who's kind of down in the bowels here in the engine room building all this stuff. So like to welcome Mike Fine. He's a cable software architect for Comcast. Mike, great to see you. >> Likewise. >> So you had a really cool demo earlier, which is not a demo, right? I think this thing is-- >> Production. >> Now in production, it's called the X1 Eye Control. I think most people know what X1 is. What's X1 Eye Control? >> Yeah. X1 Eye Control is a web application that integrates with off-the-shelf accessibility hardware, so that could be a Tobii eye gaze rig, it could be something called a sip-and-puff, which let's users use their inhalation and exhalation to control the application, or any other off-the-shelf accessibility hardware that can mimic a mouse to a piece of software. >> Too, it's-- >> Yeah. The goal of the project was pretty simple. It was to let people with ALS and other conditions control their TVs independently. >> That's amazing, and you showed a great video. The gentleman on the video is using I think an eye gaze method, but you said you've got integrations to a number of different, you know, kind of ADA-approved interface devices. >> That's right, the journey that this project has taken has been interesting. We started with just the ALS use case, which was the eye gaze, but it turned out that one of our early users had control over his voice, which is somewhat unusual for ALS patients, and so he asked whether he could control it with his voice, so we did that work through he had Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which was nice, so we did that work, and then of course given that we have the voice remote we decided could we make voice work for everybody, which we did, so now the application is on par with a physical remote, and then we even went further and let people type in voice commands, so in case somebody who's perhaps mute or had a speech impediment, or some sort of speech pathology issue that prevented them from using a voice, they could do that as well. >> It's really interesting, I mean you guys have so many kind of interface points to an ecosystem broader than simply what's available at Comcast, whether it's on the front end, as you said, with some of these interfaces with ADA devices, or on the backend if I want to watch my Netflix or I want to watch YouTube, or I want to watch, you know, a different service. You guys have really taken, you know, kind of an open, integrated approach to all these, one might argue, competitive threats to really bring it in as the customer wants to experience. Why did you do that, what's kind of the philosophy driving that? >> Yeah, well, the first thought that comes to mind is that none of it's possible without the right cloud APIs, so somebody very visionary years ago made the decision that everything you can do on your TV or on the mobile app you can do through the cloud, and so a project like this couldn't happen unless it was possible for a piece of software that somebody invented well after the fact to cause a TV to change channels unless there was that underpinning, so like any other piece of software it's a bit of an iceberg. There's a lot of stuff underneath that you don't realize as a user-- >> Right. >> But it's there and that's what makes it possible. >> Right, I'm just curious about some of the challenges in terms of moving UI and UX forward into places that people are not familiar with. And I've joked about it on a number of these interviews that, you know, I still get an email, not only from Comcast, but from Google and from Alexa, suggesting to me ways in which I might use voice. You know, as you sit back from a technologist what are some of the challenges you guys, you know, kind of anticipate, what are some of the ones you didn't anticipate, and how do you help us old people, you know, find new ways to interact with the technology? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I mean there's a lot of us here that spend our days solving that exact problem, right? Part of it is is notifying you of interesting things through SMS or through mobile push, or the messages on the TV, so your team is playing in a game that you want to see, a movie that you've declared interest in has become cheaper, become free, or maybe even buyable if you wanted to do that. Obviously there's lots of AI and ML in terms of putting recommendations in front of you based on your viewing habits, based on broader trends across, you know, because you watch this, other people watch this, so we know this is probably a good solution for you as well, but yeah, we're all, there's a large number of us trying to optimize what we call "time to joy," from the time you pick up your remote to think about what you want to watch to the time you're actually watching something you want to watch; make that as seamless as possible. >> Preston said you guys get like a billion voice commands, what was the period of time? >> A month. >> A month. >> A month, yeah. (chuckles) >> So obviously a big, giant new dataset for you guys now to have at your disposal. >> What are some of the things that you're learning from that inbound, what can you do with it, how do you, you know, now use this direct touch with the customer to, again, kind of recycle and have another iteration on improved experience? >> Right, so voice is a lot like a text chat, like a bot interface in that it's an experience where users are telling you exactly what they want to do, so if a user sits in front of a traditional web application or mobile application and has trouble finding what they want to do, they can't figure out what button to press, what screen to go to, you have no idea, right? You can't infer that they're having a problem, but with voice or somebody interacting with a bot, they type exactly what they mean, or they say exactly what they mean, so we can mine those voice commands and find the popular ones that we don't at that point have implemented, and if we can iterate on that cycle fast enough we can quickly introduce new voice commands that our users are literally asking for as quickly as possible. >> Right. What about the stuff that customers are not asking for, because right? There's one line of thought, which is the customer knows best, but the customer doesn't know-- >> That's right. >> What they don't know. So how do you guys continue to look for more kind of cutting edge stuff that isn't necessarily coming back through a feedback loop? >> Right, yeah, so it's an interesting question. So we're trying to add other non-TV use cases into the mix, right, so controlling your IoT devices at home, controlling your security, seeing your cameras through the Set-Top Box, and so on. So you know, until those use cases exist nobody's asking for them, and so you do have to be a bit visionary in terms of what you want to put out there as voice commands. You know, luckily we have people who, well, we're all customers of the platform generally, so we know what it means to be a user, but you know, we have people that talk with users and have a general sense of what they want to do, and then we figure out what the right commands are. >> Right, not voice specifically, but let's unpack a little bit deeper into the impact of IoT. You know, Nest probably was the first kind of broadly accepted kind of IoT device in the home, and now you got Ring, which everybody loves to take pictures of people stealing their boxes from the front porch, but that puts you guys with the internet connectivity in a very different place than simply providing a football game or the entertainment. So as you think of your role changing in the house, specifically with now these connected devices, how do you think about new opportunities, new challenges that being the person in the middle of that is different than just sending a TV signal? >> Yeah, there's a lot of talk about trying to be the home OS. Certainly we are in a unique position being in the home, both in terms of the router and the internet, but also, you know, often frankly you know when your system's setup a human being came in and helps you understand how to best position the physical devices in your house, and so on, that other companies don't have, right? Those vendors just don't have that builtin advantage. Clearly security has become a big thing for us. Home automation, I sit very close to that group. They're doing amazing things with automating rules like, you know, "Tell me when my door's been open too long," and these sort of things, and so more and more the use cases start to converge, that, for example, when you say, "Good morning," we have this idea of scenes, all right. So when your morning starts you not only want to tune the TV, but you also want to crank up the lights and unlock the door and open the windows, or whatever, and when you go to bed, so the actions that are involved in those use cases span not just TV and not just internet, but all of it. >> Right, it's just funny because I don't think Comcast would be the first name that people would say when they're talking about voice technology and the transformational impact of voice technology, right? They're probably going to say Siri was the first and Alexa's probably the most popular, and you know-- >> Right. >> Google's got Lord knows how many inputs they have, but you guys are really sitting at a central place, and I might argue it's one of the more used voice applications-- >> Absolutely. >> Out there, so from kind of a technology leadership perspective you guys have a bunch of really unique assets in terms of where you are, what you control, what you're sitting on in terms of that internet. You know, how does that really help you and the team think about Comcast as an innovation company, Comcast as a cool tech company, not necessarily Comcast as what used to be just a cable company? >> Right, right. Well you know, as somebody in the valley with friends in the valley it's always interesting to try to differentiate reality from the view that many people have. You know, this is definitely much more than your dad's cable company. It's a consumer and electronic company as much as anything else. We very much position ourselves with all the, you know, with the FAANG companies, et cetera, so you know, when we talked about CX it's no longer the case that whatever's passable for a stodgy cable company passes as CX anymore. Now you're being compared to a set of customers, companies that are providing fantastic user experiences for their customers, and you're being held to that standard, so you know, there's a lot of pressure on us, which is great; we like that. We want to produce fantastic products, and yeah, I don't know if I have a great answer in terms of how to move forward in terms of melding it all together, but we have a lot of smart people in the hallways making that happen. (chuckles) >> So last question is really the impact of AI, because you know, we cover a lot of tech events and a lot of talk about AI, but you know, I think those of us around know that really where AI shines is applied AI in specific applications for specific U cases. So how are you guys, you know, kind of implementing AI, where are some of the opportunities that you see that you can do in the future that you couldn't do the past, whether it be just with much better datasets, whether it be with much faster connectivity and much better compute so that you can ultimately deliver a better customer experience using some of these really modern tools? >> Right, so some of the work is just making what you already do or experience better, so for example showing you recommendations, right? Just make that algorithm better, and so there's a great deal of effort, as you might expect, at a company like this on that problem, but there's also work being done to just take any interactivity between you and the system out of the picture completely. We talked a little bit about this earlier, that, for example, we're working on technology that when you turn your TV on in the morning it should probably tune to the channel that you normally tune to in the morning. That's a pretty simple problem, in a sense, but you know, if I watch your viewing patterns and I see that you turn on a particular news show in the morning, why should you have to pick up the remote and change it from what you watched the night before to that channel? It should just happen. We talked about the Smart Resume stuff, that's obviously a fantastic use case for end users, so there's, you know, it's not surprising it's being used all over the technology set. It's in the home automation world. You know, it's in A/B testing, so trying to figure out the right cohorts to try different things in front of, so it's everywhere as you would expect. >> Right, right, it's pretty amazing. I mean there's just so many things going on, you know, kind of under the covers, some that we can see, some that we can't see where you guys are really kind of progressing, you know kind of the leading edge, cutting edge customer experience with something that people interact with every single day. >> That's right. >> Yeah, cool stuff. Well Mike, thanks for taking a few minutes. Congratulations on the Eye Control; really a cool story, and look forward to more publicity around that because that's a really important piece of technology. >> Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. >> All right. He's Mike, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (smooth music)

>> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Hotel Nikko in downtown San Francisco, International Women's Day. Accenture's putting on a big event today. It's called Getting to Equal, about 400 executives. Packed house in the little conference area. So we're excited to sit down with some of the leadership team and talk about some interesting research that Accenture's come out with. And also just talk to some terrific guests and we're excited by our first guest. She's Jennifer Cabalquinto. She's the CFO of the Golden State Warriors. Jennifer, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> I'm joined by Mike Sutcliff. He's a group chief executive for Accenture Digital. Great to see you Mike. >> Great to be hear. >> Alright, so let's just jump in to it. We're a little short on time and got a packed schedule. But I want to jump in, Jennifer with you, in culture. >> Yeah. >> Talk about the culture at the Golden State Warriors. I think it's such a phenomenal example that we can all see. We can't see in lot's of other companies, but with a professional sports franchise, we can see what a top down culture change when the change of management happened. When, when >> Sure >> Joe and Peter came in and how they've been able to change the culture, but then also drive that through all the way down to the greatest operations. >> Yeah, no we've really been fortunate. Our ownership group has been so supportive. And they really want us to succeed and they gave us all the resources to do it. And they've really brought that sort of Silicon Valley leadership style and fast fail and really make us push to be innovative and to grow. I love, you know, they brought on Bob Myers as our general manager for the basketball operation side. And he always says that he recruits for character first. And then tall 'cause you can't teach tall, but character is really something that I think, we as part of the whole organization really focuses on is that, you know, it's that are we all willing to be a team and have that sort of drive together. >> Right. >> And Joe and Peter embody that from the top down and I think it really permeates. And it's really our desire to be innovative and to drive this business, both on the basketball side and on the business side. >> And what's interesting, I mean they're good guys, but they're not doing it to be good guys, they're doing it to win. I mean, it's a competitive business >> Sure. >> that we can all watch the winners and losers. It's a business decision for better business. >> That's exactly right and you know, they really do want to win. They're competitive and every single person I think in the organization is competitive. But I think they want to win in the right way. And I think you can see it in the way that we approach both the basketball side and the business side really wanting to, you know, I think do, I think the community the best that we can. I mean, we really want to reflect our community, as well as our business partners and really succeed together >> Right. So Mike, you're out on the field. You talk to a lot of customers. I mean, do people get it? Do people get that diversity of opinions, points of views, teams, isn't just to do the right thing? It's actually to drive better business outcomes? >> I think they do. I mean one of the reasons we were attracted to work with the Warriors is they were looking not just to change their game, but to change the community that they were involved in. We see lot's of clients with the same aspiration. They're trying to figure out how to improve the way the world works and lives. And so if you want improve the way the world works and lives, you got to have diversity of thought. People with different educational backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, different experiences who can look at those really tough problems and say there's a better way. >> Right. >> And that's where we think diversity brings powers. That diversity of experience allowing you to come up with new solutions. >> So Jennifer, just from a woman's perspective being in obviously a very male dominated world. Of course, a lot of the tech companies around here are as well, how are you attracted to this industry? You know, kind of, what was your experience going in knowing that you were going to be in the minority in terms of the executives around the table? >> Right. >> And how did you overcome? >> You know, I am one of five children. I have four brothers, two older, two younger. And raised in Brooklyn. I'd like to think that I've been competing with boys my entire life. And I think my environment sort of gave me a tough skin. So I don't look at it in that lens. I didn't approach the job thinking I'm the only woman, or I'm one of a handful of women. I really approached the job saying I can make a difference in this organization and to help drive and bring a new perspective to the sports industry. It was my first sports job I was out of entertainment space and not really the sports entertainment world. And I really thought that I could bring a different perspective. And I think, you know, the ownership saw the same thing. And that's why I came aboard. And I think not filtering anything that I do with the lens of I'm a woman. >> Right. >> I think really makes a difference in terms of how I approach the role and then how other people, you know, sort of receive that. >> Right. So that said, for the gals that weren't raised in Brooklyn with four brothers. Fighting for food at the table probably since you were a little kid. You know, what advice would you give them? I mean, is it just, there's some really great advice coming out of the panel in terms of just focus on data, focus on results, you know, raise your hand. What advice would you give to, you know, say young women, say a junior in college, a senior in college, first years out, who want to get started, and are attracted to a traditionally male dominated space? >> Sure, I think one, don't self edit. Like know you can succeed in that space. Just because it's male dominated doesn't mean that it needs to always be that way. I also think you have to be great at what you do. I mean it's performance first, I think in any industry. And so, when you can actually have the confidence in your abilities, I think it starts to show through and then people, you know, I think respond to that. So I think perform really, really well. Be deliberate about what you want. Ask for what you want. Set your rules. You know, I think all of that is really important. Find your voice. >> Alright, well we could go on and on, and I want to continue this later at the San Antonio game this evening, but we'll make that work out, but we got to drop. So I'll leave it there. Jennifer, Mike, thanks for >> See you there. >> taking a few minutes. >> Great to see you today. >> Alright, I'm Jeff Frick, we're at the Accenture International Women's Day celebration in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Washington D.C. It's the Cube. Covering .NEXT Conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> We're back. Welcome to Nutanix.NEXT. NEXTConf. #NEXTConf. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract a signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm joined by my co-host Stuart Miniman. Mike Day is here as the CEO of PXP Solutions. Financial services company and a customer of Nutanix. Mike thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> So, tell us a little bit more about PXP Solutions. >> We're a payment gateway which is a part of the financial services industry that most people don't even think about. And if you think about going into a store. Going into a hotel. Presenting a card. We're the bit between there and the bank. So, talk about mission critical piece of service. That is a very complicated process involves many banks, many card scans. Visa, Mastercard and so forth. So we actually have to be the piece between the retailer or the merchant. The consumer and the bank. >> So, in thinking about your industry. Some of the drivers and changes of the industry. How has that affected your strategy with regard to information technology? >> For us it was about expanding our business. We came from that really old three tier model. Big investments, they're a lumpy IT. We're moving more and more to a global business. We worked in the US. We have some big retailers here involved in EMV rollout for the US. And that creates demands on us where we have to have processing in the localities. So we have to create a new infrastructure here in the US. So we've taken up Hostess space in New Jersey. And we had to build a whole new processing infrastructure. I don't want to have teams here. Nothing personal. We're a small business, we don't want to have teams dotted around the world. Which means I have to think about getting manageable IT in the right territory. >> So Mike, I hear things like that and it comes to mind. Well, why don't you just use the public cloud or what is the edge implications of what you're doing. Edge computing, may have been talked about a lot. So maybe sketch out for us a little bit about. You know, kind of this scope of what you do. And do you tie into the public cloud? I think of like CDN's. Are you related to that or what do you deal with and what don't you deal with? >> It's an interesting conversation. It's one I've had with the public cloud vendors. For us it's all about PCI scope. You'll get all the merchants talking about this. It's about card data. There's a lot in the press about companies being compromised. We provide secure processing. So, as soon as that card is either on somebody's webpage or is delivered into a pad. We encrypt that data. Now, if we start putting that encrypted data and those tokens and card records. And we manage over a billion card records. Into the public cloud. That brings that cloud infrastructure into scope of PCI. You don't want to be doing that. So, we kind of have to use our own infrastructure but we want to leverage. Leverage, nice American way of saying it. We want to get some leverage to way that we want all the benefits of public cloud. But we need to do it ourselves. Now, I'm sure a public cloud vendor will say. Oh, we can be PCI compliant. Right this time. We don't want to do that. So, we have a cloud solution. But it's our cloud. >> Okay, so you're essentially trying to mimic that public cloud experience on-prem. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And so presuming that's where Nutanix comes in. That's their whole message. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> So, can you maybe take us through how you. Where you came from and where you are now, how you got there. >> Okay, again the benefits to being a small business. The benefits of being an ex CIO means that we can make decisions quite quickly. You're not going through layers of the CTO and his infrastructure guy and the sequel guy and so forth. You can play fast and loose. We had a three tier architecture. Largely coming to end of life. We had a big sand. So you had lots of single points of failure actually in the process. And we needed to do something different. We've been bumping into Nutanix. And they were very aggressive three years ago. As you can imagine as a new entry. They did the puppy dog sell. You know, here have one. See how you get on. We deployed that. We were going to do a VDI deployment which seems to be how most people start. But actually, we thought why? Why do you do that? So, we went straight to heavy lifting. And we put production into a production environment into Nutanix. And immediately kicked it out. The two new data centers with Nutanix kit. It means that a whole storage compute piece is gone from our daily management. >> And Mike, can you talk about the operational model. You said especially you've got some remote sites that you don't even want anybody there. How many people do you have managing this? How's that different from the old sand days that you had before? >> I hesitate. Six people operate our entire infrastructure. They're not located anywhere near the infrastructure. The infrastructure is in the London Docklands and in New Jersey. We go to New Jersey for physical inspections once a year. Everything else is done remotely. >> I'm from New Jersey originally and I understand why people don't want to go there too often. >> Mike: It's a nice place to visit. >> But right, so. Does it live up to that invisible infrastructure that Nutanix? What do your people, in operative? What do they touch, what would they have to worry about? >> Okay, so I'm going to give you a scenario. Where we obviously have processing in more that one data center. One of the things that we need to be able to do with that processing is to move stuff. Either for reasons of operational requirements where your trying to take a part of your infrastructure down for maintenance. Or if you had a disaster recovery incident you need to be able to move your processing to these different DC's. What we can do and what we do on a regular basis is that we will ship our processing between the different stacks and the different locations. And that's the press of a button. I mean, obviously our infrastructure and our systems and solutions are designed to operate in that way. But literally we can move processing to a new data center. And in terms of consumer experience. No change. Technically there's about a half a second delay. In half a second, no problem at all. So we can move stuff between data centers. And we do that on a regular basis. >> Mike, you mentioned that initially you were considering just doing a VDI workload. Kind of testing the waters. And you decided, no let's just go forward. What were your concerns at that point? >> I think the concerns for us was does it live up to the hype. We were being given lots of figures. All the vendors were doing that. Telling us how much quicker it would be. How much less compute we would need. How cheap it would be. But only when you do this thing in real life. When you actually do some real heavy lifting. When you start installing sequel service into a Nutanix environment, does it work? I had a queue of people telling me don't do it. It's going to be a disaster. And we did it and it wasn't a disaster. It was outstanding. >> So, we always talk about the labor costs. As a former CIO you know how labor intensive IT is. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And our premise is, you know what you've described. Mimicking cloud on-prem. Our premise has always been. You know, research indicates that a lot of the savings are in the productivity of the IT people. You can shift those resources elsewhere. Guys like you are trying to do digital transformations. Which sounds like such a buzz word. But it's actually starting to gain foot hole. It's a real deal. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> And you can't be doing long provisioning and fund that and fund these analytics and data driven transformations. So, is that a correct premise? Does it have a sort of major business impact on your IT staff? >> It does, I mean. Basically what it means now is our guys can get on doing the fun stuff. When we started doing this, they all thought they were loosing jobs and we were going to be cutting head count. We were never doing that. Because we never got out of the soup. You know, the IT guys would understand this. You spend all day fighting fires. You never get to do the fun stuff. But what we've managed to do is. We've managed to get to the point where our fundamental processing is just solid. We can deploy service at the click of a button. We can move service between data centers at the click of a button. We can do the stuff that everybody aspires to. But then, now those guys can then go and do the fun stuff. >> Interviewer: What's the fun stuff? >> The fun stuff for us is the analytics. It's using tools like Splent to truly understand what's going on. Getting predictive in what we do. That's the fun stuff. >> Were the skill sets of the guys who are putting out fires with the infrastructure compatible with the fun stuff or did you have to reskill? >> We trained. It's very easy to take a bunch of guys that you always asked to do one job. Then change the job and then assume the guys are bad guys. That's not how it works. I do think it's 80% personality, 20% skill. You can fill it in. So what we did was the guys who have been previously just fire fighting. It took a while. And it took a while for them to trust us. That we weren't really taking them into a trap of some sort. But we reskilled them. We didn't just bring new people in. >> Would you had. You feel like you would have had to hire more people if you didn't make this move? >> I'd say we couldn't have actually deployed in the model we currently did deployed to with the people we have. We were looking for operation efficiency. But we want resilience. Think about payments. You don't get two chances to take a payment. >> I mean, there's a very high level. Let's not be precise by the way. In percentage terms, how much more? What percent more IT labor would you have needed if you didn't make this move? Was it a 10% factor or 20%, 50%, double? >> Remember, we're a small company. We're talking about six people now. We'll probably need another four or five people. And at one point we had that as vacancies. And we've done other things recently. So in terms of our corp environment we're going to have to office 365. You know we're taking away again stuff that doesn't add value to us as a business. And pushing that out of what we do. >> That's a substantial business impact. >> It is. So Mike, you seem really happy with Nutanix but what's on your wish list? What would you like to see from Nutanix or maybe their Ecosystem? We've got the big expo floor here. What would make your companies life easier, you know simpler? >> I think for us it's just having some clarity as to where they're heading next. They've been an excellent start up. They've been moving the market. They've been ahead of the market. The problem I've always seen is companies as they get to this size. Almost like the wave go the market swamps back over them. They start hiring in from all the companies they used to be different to. And it's how do they stop that happening? How do they preserve the essence of what made them dynamic? So, you talk about functionality. You talk about the hypervisor. We're a EXS house. We use Vmware. But we're now using a cropless hypervisor in some of our environments. The issue for that is. >> Any information you can give us as how you make that decision? Whether you go ESX or AHV? >> It's purely down to the. Not so much the capabilities of AHV or ESX. We think AHV from a price point prospective is incredibly attractive. But as you know, everybody's infrastructure isn't just the hypervisor. It isn't just the hardware. It' all of the other ancillary platforms. You know, the security platforms, the thin platforms and so forth. And until those vendors start saying they support AHV. That's a barrier to us for using it in a production environment. Nutanix are great. They'll say they'll look after us. But no CIO ever got praise for just trusting a guy that he met on the street. You know, you've got to be careful. >> So you want that ecosystem to develop further? >> Mike: Very much so. >> Whether it's Nutanix, you know. Writing, integrating with a particular platform that you need or vice versa. >> Yes, definately. And you can see that here. There are some announcements I know that are coming from some other vendors here. Where they have much tighter integration to AHV. That's got to pick up a pace. >> Well, and that's their philosophy I would presume. We're going to write you our API, at least make that open. Now, but somebody's got to write to the API. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> So the work has to be done. But fundamentally it's there. It's not a closed sack as it were. >> But there's got to be a compelling client driver for that. So I can understand where these other vendors haven't made investment in the past. Because until they know they can make money with it. Having full on deployment with AHV. Why would you invest in that? But I thing Nutanix has got to the point now where there's no doubt they're a player. So now you have to be bold. >> Well, being a public company helps. >> Mike: Yeah. >> And seeing the growth rates and it's just you know. Helps with that sort of advertising the brand. But that takes time and they're still a small company. >> Mike: Very much so. >> Mike, you said you started out with VDI and kind of got to know it. You kind of look back at what you've done. Were there any surprises or anything you'd give advice to people that are just starting this journey from your learnings? >> I'll use a really bad analogy that I used last year. And most people don't sort of like it as much as I do. When people start on VDI and we never did it. We actually have never gone down the VDI route. We looked at it and went ahhh. We've got more important stuff. More fun stuff to do. Going down this road. Taking a VDI approach. I said it's like driving your Ferrari down the high street. You might think you look cool. But you're not really driving a Ferrari. You got to take this kit out on the road. And you need to give it some heavy loads. Because in the early days, the new tanks box hated being quiet. That they took time to spool up and so forth. That problems gone away now. But if you're going to really look at this stuff and you're going to get proper return on you're investment. Give it heavy lifting to do. And use it in anger. And don't just take the easy option. You know, the option where you don't have to convince the production guys. I would say, for us, the biggest lesson. >> Absolutely, find one of those hard problems. Throw something meaningful at it. >> Mike: Yeah, and you learn then. >> You learn then, absolutely. >> How about any thoughts on the events? I mean it's early but you know inner access. >> This is my third. My third .NEXT. So they've only had three. >> Okay, so you've been to all three in the US? You didn't go to the one in Vienna? >> I did as well. My head office was in Vienna so I actually wasn't at the event. But I attended the parties. >> Oh, okay. Even better. What do you get out of event like this? >> Two things. First of all, we get to understand what's going on. We do get briefings from Nutanix, so obviously we're quite involved with them. But it's good to hear it and hear the reaction from other customers. I think more importantly is an opportunity to network with other customers in Nutanix. Understand their issues. Share ideas. It's a great networking event for like minded people. And I think for me, it's worth the trip over to the US to do that. >> Good, Mike thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. It was a pleasure having you. Appreciate your insights. >> Mike: Yes. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back at Nutanix.net NEXTConf. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back. (tech music)

>>Okay, welcome back everyone. It's the Cube's coverage of AWS, Amazon re Mars machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. I'm John Prairie host of the cube. We're here for two days, live coverage, and we're getting all the stories and story here is our entrepreneur hot startup making things happen, making more connectivity, go Diana GenZ, founder and CEO of El speed, El or L speed. Welcome to the cube. >>Well, speed represents how fast we can transfer the data. And so an L is a upper electro sort of magnetic phenomena that lives above thunderstorms and it moves very, very fast. It looks like it moves faster than the speed of light. So we play on the speed of elves. >>Well, let's get into it cuz I love the love, the approach you take. And this is consistent with the theme of the show, a lot of industrial change and innovations sometimes recycling old technology to help invent new ones, integrations platforms coming together, little bit more, open, less proprietary. You're in an area where you're gonna solve the bandwidth problem with unique new ways. Yeah. Pick them in to explain what you're working on. What's the project and what's the ambition. >>Yes, exactly. I think we fit really well in that concept of taking something that has a lot of heritage reliability. We are very familiar with this technology. We've used it for more than 50 years. We like it. Um, and the problem with that technology has been that it's very expensive. It's not affordable, not affordable to people like you and me such that that amount of bandwidth can actually be available to us. So what we have done is really focused on advanced materials and manufacturing techniques to make this new technology significantly more affordable. So like, >>And technology is >>So we make power amplifiers that are based on TTS. So TTS are in amplifiers that actually like are currently being operated on the Voyager way back, long time ago. Um, it's a very old technology and we have taken it and really revamped it and looked at it differently. And how can we make it to technology over the future? Um, so we specifically operate in millimeter wave frequencies, um, and at millimeter wave frequencies, we can provide significantly more bandwidth than what you can do at lower frequency. >>Okay. So the folks that aren't wireless say, what does millimeter wave mean? >>Millimeter wave is the amount of frequency that you have sort of in space. So the wavelength of that frequency is a millimeter wave range. So sort of the size of your nail or something like that, thickness of your nail. And so because of that, when you start operating at those frequencies, you can send significantly more information, right? The frequencies that we use today are sort of on a order of, you know, centimeters, you know, 10 centimeters, something like that. So about like this. And so, and that doesn't allow you to send as much data as you can at these higher frequencies. >>So more bandwidth >>Significantly more >>Than so the problem you're solving is taking something that's actually high bandwidth and has long ranges, >>Correct. >>Should bring it to the common price points to be deployed. >>That's >>Right, >>Correct. That's right. So this particular technology allows you to generate enough power so you can send the data over long distances. So if you are on the ground, you can create 40 plus kilometer links or you can send that information straight to space all the way to the geo stations, right? So you actually have enough power, um, to provide that amount of bandwidth. So the, the challenge has been is affordability, which is what we have done is focus specifically is how do you reduce that cost? >>Well, I love anything that gets me more bandwidth, more, no one ever went out of business for providing more bandwidth. Well maybe the app <laugh>, um, than monopolies. Um, talk about how you got here. What was the origination story? Um, you work at slack, not confused with slack as in the messaging application, the Stanford linear accelerator in technically Menlo park. I think >>It is in Menlo park, in Menlo >>Park up Palo. Okay. >>So, so it's right on sand hill road, right? Right. >>Sand hill road next, all the VCs that drive past it all the time, what's it like there? And how was it like, were you guys working on this at slack? Was it like something that you had a lot of interest in? Were you scratching this itch so to >>Speak? So this particular technology has many applications. Um, and so particle accelerators are one of the applications of this technology. So, and, um, right. So some of the users for particle accelerators are of course facilities like slack, where we do some amazing science. Um, but you can take that same particle accelerator. Right. And we use it for cancer treatment. So one technology doesn't just apply to sort of one solution, you know, I'm using in my company for communications, right. And this is how it related to the work that I was doing at slack. So at slack, my focus was on materials and manufacturing of these particular devices. And I really focused on what is fundamental limitation of how much power you can really pack into the size of the device. If you can really shrink the size of the device, you know, what can you do? And that applies whether it's particle accelerators or these millimeter wave amplifiers that I'm working on today. Um, and yes, slack <laugh> without the K yes. Is, is a, uh, particle accelerated laboratory that's operated, uh, by Stanford for the department >>And all the geeks know about it's it's it's folklore certainly in Silicon valley. Yes. And I didn't even know they had the hidden tunnels behind in the >>Mouth. They do, they >>Too kind of >>Stuff up there. I think they're back to having tours. So that's, it's always worth visiting. >>Let me get a little kind of camera crew in there. All right. Let's talk about back to the, back to your opportunity there. Um, how many people do you have working for you? What's the funding status? Where are you in your journey? >>So I hired my first person last June, uh, and we're at 14 people today. Um, we have just did the first close of our seed round. So we had our Pree round last year and we are sort of in the middle of our seed round right now. Um, and the plan is to get to series a sometime next year, depending on sort of performance >>And what we are already. So you're product building mode right now. >>We actually are in product building mode. We have, uh, product delivery scheduled in the next few months, >>You know? So you have customers ordering amplifiers. >>Yes. We actually have customer orders. >>What's the price point you're getting at what's cause that I could see people lining up in this >>Well. So because of our focus on manufacturing, we are also attaching customer interest to volume. So it depends on whether you're buying 10 of them or a thousand of them. So the price point varies <laugh> >>Course. >>So >>Buying bulk, Amazon <laugh> yes. You have a lot of outposts out there potentially. And you got the telecoms edge booming. Yes. Um, they got full blown data centers now at these absolutely. It used to be just, you know, monopoles or, you know, trust towers. >>Well, so this is one of the advantages of having a wireless technology. If you're trying to put a, a location that's remote or even semi remote for you to be able to put a fiber link, that spot is years an enormous amount of investment. So you can get the same amount of data movement if you switch to technology like ours mm-hmm <affirmative> um, and so, yeah, that's a, it's a great application for, um, for millimeter >>Weight. So things are going good. You got orders, you've got product being built. You're gonna get through your seat to soon to have series a >>Next year. Yeah. And so the next step for us is building a factory, uh, which is we are sort of doing a, a planned low rate, initial production, uh, starting probably at the end of this year, trying to scale to sort of tens of units per week. Um, and then after that, trying to get the factory, they'll be able to do sort of 10 times that, uh, but we are gauging that with a customer interest so that we are matching the production to the >>What's what's your current, uh, verticals that are most interested now. >>So our primary application space is communications and back holes specifically. Uh, I think we're very well positioned to enter that market. Um, it sort of the next focus is going to space. So actually being on the space vehicles and, but to do that, we have to go for the space qualifications. So we have a team focusing on how to space >>Qualified. It's all certifications, all kinds of security checks. >>Correct. So that will take a little bit of time. I think the earliest we'll get there is next year. Yeah. Um, and so, but there is a lot of interest and support from sort of current companies, the new space companies to sort of help move technology faster. Yeah. Otherwise you can't get access to something that's new, right. Space qualification >>Takes space. I'm space force, everyone I talk to here and all over the industry on NASA to space force, they want to move faster. They don't wanna be perceived as that old slow antiquated systems. Yes. They want to be cooler and faster, but secure. >>Absolutely >>Security is a huge deal right now. >>And that's one of the advantages that we provide. Right. We are relying on a heritage technology and also because it's millimeter wave, it provides you a certain amount of security, right. Because it's much, much harder to intercept than anything else. Right. >>Well, exciting news. Congratulations. Thank you. Um, if you wanna take a minute to go plug for your startup, you're gonna hire, um, what's status. >>Um, you mean for my new employees? >>Yeah. What are you looking for customers? What kind of customers you looking hire? >>Absolutely >>Put commercial out there from the company. >>Okay. So when it comes to customers, we are looking for people that are willing to move really fast, as fast as we are moving and willing to actually consider something like millimeter wave for their backhoe applications. So starting at K band and all the way to WB frequencies for those that are my customers, they will know exactly what I'm talking about. Yes. And so, and we are bringing a technology that's reliable and bringing their cost down by a factor of 10, meaning something that was half a million before is going to be significantly cheaper today. And you could afford to actually buy >>Thousand faster, cheaper. >>Exactly. That's that's, that's the thing. So when it comes to employees, so we are growing really fast. Um, and we have a very fun team that cares about people. So for example, we spend one hour every week to actually talk about growth and personal development as sort of part of our culture. It's something we're committed to is that you have to love what you do. And so when you come to work, you better be having fun. Yeah. And so we are looking for people that are very techy, but also sort of are human centered and are willing to make the world a better place, which is what sort of El is all about is, you know, making technology useful for people, right. When it comes to communications, right. Making me a, you connected or us connected to the rest of the world as we sit here. >>Yeah. And more empathetic and connected, like just connected emotionally >>Connected in Mo both ways. >>Yeah. Both ways. Exactly physical and emotional and more bandwidth, more connections. Right. >>And you can have that interaction to be significantly higher quality. Right. If you can actually recreate that environment with my >>Day, I work for you. Sounds like a great place. No, <laugh> no. I'll stay with Mike Day job. Thanks Dan. Thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate >>It. Of course. Thank you for hosting me. >>Okay. We're here at re Mars. All the hot startups are here. Technologists. It's kind of a geeky nerd show and it's really cool because it's about industrial innovation and about space and all the cool things we love at the cube. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.