>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend, and we are with NetApp in their booth at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Welcoming Mike McGibbney to theCUBE, from SAP. You're the SVP of SuccessFactors Service, Delivery and Operations. Welcome. >> Well, thank you. >> So, SuccessFactors, largest people cloud in the world. So you probably a little bit busy. >> Just a little bit. >> Tell us about what you're doing at SuccessFactors. >> So I'm responsible for the delivery and operation of the cloud service. So we service all of our customers and continue to introduce new capabilities into that cloud. We support them from payroll, all the way through recruitment. Basically, from hire to retire. >> So Mike, not your first cloud. Little background and history. Me and Mike have been on the, well probably one of the toughest projects, politically, I've ever been on. >> Yes, definitely. >> So there's history, but great history. We deliver success. This isn't your first cloud. >> No. >> You've built clouds before. What's fundamentally different about the SAP people cloud versus clouds you've built in the past? >> I think the speed. The way this is accelerating, both the breadth of the capabilities that we're offering when you think about the integrations into SAP, and the growth. So this is moving truly at cloud speed. The things that we're shooting for today are already past. So we constantly have to be focused out there on the horizon. We've gotta adapt very quickly. And we've gotta implement very quickly. Our customers need it to accelerate their business. And our services need that support underneath them as well. >> So you guys, as you said, have this, have this long history, so I'll let you guys chat in a minute. But in terms of customer experience, customer engagement, customer influence, that was kind of a lot of undertone in the keynote this morning. 50 million business users on SuccessFactors and 60 industries. How do you, needing to get to the speed that you just mentioned how do you get that customer feedback to drive evolution of the product as fast as they're demanding it? >> Well, so the product and engineering team have a whole system around customer engagements with delivery panels and steering committees. But from an operations side, we felt that it was important as well. We have a whole organization that is focused on engaging the customer. We built our operational centers. And we do probably about 60 customer tours a year through our operational centers. We also do about 200 customer calls from the operational team a month. So globally, we work with the pre-sales, the CEE groups, and some of the other SAP support groups, to make sure that we have boots on the ground, understanding what our customers want, understanding what their experience is, so we can continue to adjust and reset the bar where it needs to be. >> So Lisa, I'm not gonna dominate the conversation. Me and Mike can probably, we'll crack open a beer in a minute, (laughter) and we'll continue. But there's other hero numbers on the stage. Let's talk about the high level first and then me and Mike can geek out. What are some of the other Xers reveals? >> Oh, good question. I think just some of the industries. I always like to see which industries are kind of leading edge here. So he mentioned 23,000 HANA users and 25 different industries. And I'm curious, that's a lot. And I'm curious to see what some of the key use cases are that you guys are driving with helping some customers in many industries that hire to retire. What are some of the key use cases that you're helping those customers to drive? >> Well, I think we have a good presence in about every vertical, from both the public and the private sector. The suite of tools that we have, service the entire, each of those use cases. I think when you start to think about the SAP suite and the integration story that they talked about, with the intelligence and the analytics on top, that just takes it to another level. And I think that's really underlying important message. I think and that's what's gonna help, not only SuccessFactors, but SAP continue to drive and lead across the board. >> So can we talk a little bit about customer interaction? I think traditionally, you've served up infrastructures to developers directly. But a lot of cases, your direct customer may be your actual business user looking to transform digitally. Talk about the experience, the difference in experience of running the cloud that was consumed by other technologies, to potentially running a cloud that's centered on people who are thinking about people and customers. >> Yeah, that's a great question because these are business-critical activities. You think about something like learning, right? That's used to certify pilots before they can take off. So we can actually, the availability and the delivery of that service, is critical. Large amusement parks have to certify all the ride handlers. So this thing has to be available 24 by seven, 365 days a week. And that's just something like learning. When you think about some of the other facets, they are entrenched in our customers' modern business processes. And they're all critical. So when we look at these, we have to look at 'em like we used to, some of the most critical functions in the backend. So we run them like you would, from an operational perspective, like a bank, okay? With that resilience, those practices, that focus. But we also have to do it at the speed of cloud. (laughs) >> I was just gonna ask that question. You have two competing episodes. You know, I like to, well, people. Well, SAP process is 70 percent of the transactions in the world. It is called, has been called, the cash register of the cloud. It is the ultimate system of record. Therefore, it should never be touched. However, we have to move fast. We have to digitally transform their commercial entities that want to build cool new applications on Fiori, et cetera. There are other business integrations. How do you weigh those two, what seems like competing interests? >> I think Bert laid out the data strategy and how we're gonna integrate the data across the suite. And that's gonna be the key, right? Instead of integrating and porting to, we're gonna have single sources of data where data is gonna reside. We're gonna use that as a system of record, as the suite evolves. That'll give it the data integrity that it needs, also the performance and integration perspective. >> So we're sponsored by the data driven company, NetApp, who is powering one of the most powerful data platforms on the planet, SAP. Talk about the relationship and importance of NetApps, NetApp vision in supporting your vision. >> So NetApp was here at SAP long before I started, but I have a, probably a 20 year, probably 17 to 20 year history, with that app. And you know, data is critical. The storage, the access, the performance. And they've been a critical part of almost every architecture I've worked on today. Rock solid performance, rock solid reliability, but more important to me, is the partnership with the company, and the support that we get. Not just on the stuff that we're doing today, but thinking about how we're gonna change in the future, and supporting us as we evolve, and helping us plan and think through that as well. >> One of the things that Bill talked about this morning, as well, is getting to this 4th gen of customer experience. That these expectations, we've talked about speed. That it's, everything has to be done yesterday, right? How are you guys working with NetApp delivering that 4th generation customer experience, internally and to your 50 million business users? >> Well, I think you touched on bits and pieces of it. It's a whole suite of-- It's a whole program of plans, right? Between Fiori, you know, all those things in the front end, where the customer touches. But in the backend, it's about speed and reliability to their data, right? So our architectures are getting simplified. Our data's getting condensed. We need the compliance pieces and that's where NetApp kinda play a core role in, in those pieces. >> So back in traditional infrastructures and operations, we could tell speeds and feeds as one of the best features of why you should use one service over another. As you describe the way, everyone expects speeds and feeds. What are some of the value props or KPIs for your new environment? >> So, we've really shifted. So one of the things that we've done is we've actually added operational intelligence. So we have basically a brain that sits on top of our cloud environment. It looks at all of the transactions. It filters out all the noise. So the speeds and feeds are part of a, now a service or a business function, that we're delivering. That metric down by itself is important. But unless you can correlate it to some business impact, or something happening, it doesn't really have the weight that it needs. >> Right. >> So now what we're looking at is we've ingested and mapped all of the business transactions. We can proactively focus on the ones. So we filter out 99 and change percent of the noise. And then we prorate the things that we need to kinda pivot and focus on. We have three global operational centers around the world. One in Budapest. One in Bangalore. And one in Reston. And then we have a global operation center that sits on the top, so the regionals sit in the region. And they look at all of that feedback from that intelligence. >> So getting those key performance indicators out of the system As I looked at LinkedIn, I looked at some of the common folks we have. You have a pretty consistent core team that support you over the past two or three different major iterations you've done. Talk through how collectively your team has looked at new innovations and operation deliveries such as DevOps. And you've changed the way that your core team approaches these challenges and the outcomes that you've been able to realize. >> So for us, it's about, you know the architecture and technology evolves. As it evolves, it makes a few things simpler. And also, introduces some usually more complex challenges. But it's mitigating risk, delivering performance and reliability, and maturing your actions. So if we do those basic things as we mature the technology underneath, we can drive that. So the team has been focused on, when we think about DevOps, we think about delivering seamlessly new capabilities, features into the cloud. How do we do that with a minimized risk, through automation, and seamless, right? So it's how we segmented the application, how we built the resilience in, how our processes understand and validate and be able to stand in if something happens. >> I'm wondering on that, from maybe a pivot is, we talk about often times, at different events. Whether we're talking about advanced analytics or data science skills gap. Or I think Bill even said like, upskilling. Think I heard that term this morning. I'm curious, as you were saying that, that the folks that you've been working with for a long time on different projects. What are some of the skills that they're able to, you may be able to enable them to learn, by being part of SAP? Is it something that helps accelerate their ability to develop even better, more competitive products? >> Yeah, so SAP has one of the best talent pools I've ever seen across. Some very brilliant people in every business line. So there's best practices that can be learned from everything that we do. All you have to do is be able to have the conversations and look around. When we brought the team in, about two years ago, we did a whole skills analyses, gap analyses, of the skills that we had. We looked at our operating model, created a new operating model that was enabling us to evolve from an operational perspective. And then put plans in place, and use the tools that we sell to help deliver development to the team. So basically, we became our own customer. We drove development of our, upskilling our existing resources, and we supplemented where needed. And we also pulled from the collective knowledge of SAP. So doing those three things, helped us really accelerate and execute something that typically would take three years in less than 12 months. >> Last question, Mike, for you. This morning's energetic keynote, we've talked about it a number of times already today. Really, I think somebody on the show earlier said, likened Bill McDermott to kind of, really an evangelist, which is really refreshing. You don't see a lot of C-levels that are that, where you can feel and kinda see their passion. The SAP has been very vocal for a while about really wanting to disrupt the marketplace for CRM. Some big news coming out today. I'm just wondering, kind of culturally, to wrap this up, what excites you about this train that you're on at SAP? >> I think that the message is electrifying. And inside of SAP, you feel that. So we've been feeling it as these bits and pieces have been coming out over the last year. So this is just a culmination of all the little pieces that we've known inside and we're able to share externally. So I'm extremely excited about where we're at and where we're going. And obviously, anytime I get to hear Bill speak, it just amplifies it. >> Yeah, that energy was really, you can feel it from wherever you were. It was awesome. Mike, thanks so much for stopping by and catching up with your old buddy Keith and me and sharing what you guys are doing with SuccessFactors. >> Excellent, excellent. Thanks very much. >> Thanks for -- Oh sorry, and thanks for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, from SAP SAPPHIRE in the NetApp booth. Thanks for watching. (fast tempo music)