(inspirational music) >> theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (uplifting electronic music) (crowd chattering in background) >> Hi everybody. We're back at the Fira in Barcelona. Winding up our four day wall-to-wall coverage of MWC23 theCUBE has been thrilled to cover the telco transformation. Dave Vellante with Dave Nicholson. Really excited to have NTT on. Shahid Ahmed is the Group EVP of New Ventures and Innovation at NTT in from Chicago. Welcome to Barcelona. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me over. >> So, really interesting title. You have, you know, people might not know NTT you know, huge Japan telco but a lot of other businesses, explain your business. >> So we do a lot of things. Most of us are known for our Docomo business in Japan. We have one of the largest wireless cellular carriers in the world. We serve most of Japan. Outside of Japan, we are B2B systems, integration, professional services company. So we offer managed services. We have data centers, we have undersea cables. We offer all kinds of outsourcing services. So we're a big company. >> So there's a narrative out there that says, you know, 5G, it's a lot of hype, not a lot of adoption. Nobody's ever going to make money at 5G. You have a different point of view, I understand. You're like leaning into 5G and you've actually got some traction there. Explain that. >> So 5G can be viewed from two lenses. One is just you and I using our cell phones and we get 5G coverage over it. And the other one is for businesses to use 5G, and we call that private 5G or enterprise grade 5G. Two very separate distinct things, but it is 5G in the end. Now the big debate here in Europe and US is how to monetize 5G. As a consumer, you and I are not going to pay extra for 5G. I mean, I haven't. I just expect the carrier to offer faster, cheaper services. And so would I pay extra? Not really. I just want a reliable network from my carrier. >> Paid up for the good camera though, didn't you? >> I did. (Dave and Dave laughing) >> I'm waiting for four cameras now. >> So the carriers are in this little bit of a pickle at the moment because they've just spent billions of dollars, not only on spectrum but the infrastructure needed to upgrade to 5G, yet nobody's willing to pay extra for that 5G service. >> Oh, right. >> So what do they do? And one idea is to look at enterprises, companies, industrial companies, manufacturing companies who want to build their own 5G networks to support their own use cases. And these use cases could be anything from automating the surveyor belt to cameras with 5G in it to AGVs. These are little carts running around warehouses picking up products and goods, but they have to be connected all the time. Wifi doesn't work all the time there. And so those businesses are willing to pay for 5G. So your question is, is there a business case for 5G? Yes. I don't think it's in the consumer side. I think it's in the business side. And that's where NTT is finding success. >> So you said, you know, how they going to make money, right? You very well described the telco dilemma. We heard earlier this week, you know, well, we could tax the OTT vendors, like Netflix of course shot back and said, "Well, we spent a lot of money on content. We're driving a lot of value. Why don't you help us pay for the content development?" Which is incredibly expensive. I think I heard we're going to tax the developers for API calls on the network. I'm not sure how well that's going to work out. Look at Twitter, you know, we'll see. And then yeah, there's the B2B piece. What's your take on, we heard the Orange CEO say, "We need help." You know, maybe implying we're going to tax the OTT vendors, but we're for net neutrality, which seems like it's completely counter-posed. What's your take on, you know, fair share in the network? >> Look, we've seen this debate unfold in the US for the last 10 years. >> Yeah. >> Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman started that debate and he made great progress and open internet and net neutrality. The thing is that if you create a lane, a tollway, where some companies have to pay toll and others don't have to, you create an environment where the innovation could be stifled. Content providers may not appear on the scene anymore. And with everything happening around AI, we may see that backfire. So creating a toll for rich companies to be able to pay that toll and get on a faster speed internet, that may work some places may backfire in others. >> It's, you know, you're bringing up a great point. It's one of those sort of unintended consequences. You got to be be careful because the little guy gets crushed in that environment, and then what? Right? Then you stifle innovation. So, okay, so you're a fan of net neutrality. You think the balance that the US model, for a change, maybe the US got it right instead of like GDPR, who sort of informed the US on privacy, maybe the opposite on net neutrality. >> I think so. I mean, look, the way the US, particularly the FCC and the FTC has mandated these rules and regulation. I think it's a nice balance. FTC is all looking at big tech at the moment, but- >> Lena Khan wants to break up big tech. I mean for, you know, you big tech, boom, break 'em up, right? So, but that's, you know- >> That's a whole different story. >> Yeah. Right. We could talk about that too, if you want. >> Right. But I think that we have a balanced approach, a measured approach. Asking the content providers or the developers to pay for your innovative creative application that's on your phone, you know, that's asking for too much in my opinion. >> You know, I think you're right though. Government did do a good job with net neutrality in the US and, I mean, I'm just going to go my high horse for a second, so forgive me. >> Go for it. >> Market forces have always done a better job at adjudicating, you know, competition. Now, if a company's a monopoly, in my view they should be, you know, regulated, or at least penalized. Yeah, but generally speaking, you know the attack on big tech, I think is perhaps misplaced. I sat through, and the reason it's relevant to Mobile World Congress or MWC, is I sat through a Nokia presentation this week and they were talking about Bell Labs when United States broke up, you know, the US telcos, >> Yeah. >> Bell Labs was a gem in the US and now it's owned by Nokia. >> Yeah. >> Right? And so you got to be careful about, you know what you wish for with breaking up big tech. You got AI, you've got, you know, competition with China- >> Yeah, but the upside to breaking up Ma Bell was not just the baby Bells and maybe the stranded orphan asset of Bell Labs, but I would argue it led to innovation. I'm old enough to remember- >> I would say it made the US less competitive. >> I know. >> You were in junior high school, but I remember as an adult, having a rotary dial phone and having to pay for that access, and there was no such- >> Yeah, but they all came back together. The baby Bells are all, they got all acquired. And the cable company, it was no different. So I don't know, do you have a perspective of this? Because you know this better than I do. >> Well, I think look at Nokia, just they announced a whole new branding strategy and new brand. >> I like the brand. >> Yeah. And- >> It looks cool. >> But guess what? It's B2B oriented. >> (laughs) Yeah. >> It's no longer consumer, >> Right, yeah. >> because they felt that Nokia brand phone was sort of misleading towards a lot of business to business work that they do. And so they've oriented themselves to B2B. Look, my point is, the carriers and the service providers, network operators, and look, I'm a network operator, too, in Japan. We need to innovate ourselves. Nobody's stopping us from coming up with a content strategy. Nobody's stopping a carrier from building a interesting, new, over-the-top app. In fact, we have better control over that because we are closer to the customer. We need to innovate, we need to be more creative. I don't think taxing the little developer that's building a very innovative application is going to help in the long run. >> NTT Japan, what do they have a content play? I, sorry, I'm not familiar with it. Are they strong in content, or competitive like Netflix-like, or? >> We have relationships with them, and you remember i-mode? >> Yeah. Oh yeah, sure. >> Remember in the old days. I mean, that was a big hit. >> Yeah, yeah, you're right. >> Right? I mean, that was actually the original app marketplace. >> Right. >> And the application store. So, of course we've evolved from that and we should, and this is an evolution and we should look at it more positively instead of looking at ways to regulate it. We should let it prosper and let it see where- >> But why do you think that telcos generally have failed at content? I mean, AT&T is sort of the exception that proves the rule. I mean, they got some great properties, obviously, CNN and HBO, but generally it's viewed as a challenging asset and others have had to diversify or, you know, sell the assets. Why do you think that telcos have had such trouble there? >> Well, Comcast owns also a lot of content. >> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. >> And I think, I think that is definitely a strategy that should be explored here in Europe. And I think that has been underexplored. I, in my opinion, I believe that every large carrier must have some sort of content strategy at some point, or else you are a pipe. >> Yeah. You lose touch with a customer. >> Yeah. And by the way, being a dump pipe is okay. >> No, it's a lucrative business. >> It's a good business. You just have to focus. And if you start to do a lot of ancillary things around it then you start to see the margins erode. But if you just focus on being a pipe, I think that's a very good business and it's very lucrative. Everybody wants bandwidth. There's insatiable demand for bandwidth all the time. >> Enjoy the monopoly, I say. >> Yeah, well, capital is like an organism in and of itself. It's going to seek a place where it can insert itself and grow. Do you think that the questions around fair share right now are having people wait in the wings to see what's going to happen? Because especially if I'm on the small end of creating content, creating services, and there's possibly a death blow to my fixed costs that could be coming down the line, I'm going to hold back and wait. Do you think that the answer is let's solve this sooner than later? What are your thoughts? >> I think in Europe the opinion has been always to go after the big tech. I mean, we've seen a lot of moves either through antitrust, or other means. >> Or the guillotine! >> That's right. (all chuckle) A guillotine. Yes. And I've heard those directly. I think, look, in the end, EU has to decide what's right for their constituents, the countries they operate, and the economy. Frankly, with where the economy is, you got recession, inflation pressures, a war, and who knows what else might come down the pipe. I would be very careful in messing with this equilibrium in this economy. Until at least we have gone through this inflation and recessionary pressure and see what happens. >> I, again, I think I come back to markets, ultimately, will adjudicate. I think what we're seeing with chatGPT is like a Netscape moment in some ways. And I can't predict what's going to happen, but I can predict that it's going to change the world. And there's going to be new disruptors that come about. That just, I don't think Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple are going to rule the world forever. They're just, I guarantee they're not, you know. They'll make it through. But there's going to be some new companies. I think it might be open AI, might not be. Give us a plug for NTT at the show. What do you guys got going here? Really appreciate you coming on. >> Thank you. So, you know, we're showing off our private 5G network for enterprises, for businesses. We see this as a huge opportunities. If you look around here you've got Rohde & Schwarz, that's the industrial company. You got Airbus here. All the big industrial companies are here. Automotive companies and private 5G. 5G inside a factory, inside a hospital, a warehouse, a mining operation. That's where the dollars are. >> Is it a meaningful business for you today? >> It is. We just started this business only a couple of years ago. We're seeing amazing growth and I think there's a lot of good opportunities there. >> Shahid Ahmed, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. It was great to have you. Really a pleasure. >> Thanks for having me over. Great questions. >> Oh, you're welcome. All right. For David Nicholson, Dave Vellante. We'll be back, right after this short break, from the Fira in Barcelona, MWC23. You're watching theCUBE. (uplifting electronic music)

>>Hey everyone. Hello from Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with you, and I'm on the show floor at Reinvent. But we have a very special program series that the Cube has been doing called Women of the Cloud. It's brought to you by aws and I'm so pleased to have an excellent panel of women leaders in technology and in cloud to talk about their tactical recommendations for you, what they see as found, where they've helped organizations be successful with cloud. Please welcome my three guests, Tara Kapor, president and Chief Revenue Officer, consulting and Digital Transformations, NTT Data. We have Rachel Mu, aws, head of North America, partner sales from aws, and Jimmy Barnes joins us as well, managing director, investment banking engineering at Goldman Sachs. It is so great to have you guys on this power panel. I love it. Thank you for joining me. >>Thank >>You. Let's start with you. Give us a little bit of, of your background at NTT Data and I, and I understand NTT has a big focus on women in technology and in stem. Talk to us a little bit about that and then we'll go around the table. >>Perfect, thank you. Thank you. So brand new role for me at Entity Data. I started three months back and it's a fascinating company. We are about 22 billion in size. We work across industries on multiple innovative use cases. So we are doing a ton of work on edge analytics in the cloud, and that's where we are here with aws. We are also doing a ton of work on the private 5G that we are rolling out and essentially building out industry-wide use cases across financial services, manufacturing, tech, et cetera. Lots of women identity. We essentially have women run cloud program today. We have a gal called Nore Hanson who is our practice leader for cloud. We have Matine who's Latifa, who's our AWS cloud leader. We have Molly Ward who leads up a solutions on the cloud. We have an amazing lady in Mona who leads up our marketing programs. So a fantastic plethora of diverse women driving amazing work identity on cloud. >>That's outstanding to hear because it's one of those things that you can't be what you can't see. Right. We all talk about that. Rachel, talk a little bit about your role and some of the focus that AWS has. I know they're big customer obsession, I'm sure obsessed with other things as well. >>Sure. So Rachel Muir, pleased to be here again. I think this will be my third time. So a big fan of the Cube. I'm fortunate enough to lead our North America partner and channel business, and I'll tell you, I've been at AWS for a little under two years, and honestly, it's been probably the best two years of my career. Just in terms of where the cloud is, where it's headed, the business outcomes that we can deliver with our customers and with our partners is absolutely remarkable. We get to, you know, make the impossible possible every day. So I'm, I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to, to be part of this inaugural Women of the Cloud panel. >>Oh, I'm prepared to have all three of you. One of the things that feedback, kind of pivoting off what, Rachel, one of the things that you said that one of our guests, some of several of our guests have said is that coming out of Adams keynote this morning, it just seems limitless what AWS can do and I love that it gives me kind of chills what they can do with cloud computing and technology, with its ecosystem of partners with its customers like Goldman Sachs. Jimmy, talk to us a little bit about you, your role at Goldman Sachs. You know, we think of Goldman Sachs is a, is a huge financial institution, but it's also a technology company. >>Yeah. I mean, since the age of 15 I've been super passionate about how we can use technology to transform business and simplify modernized business processes. And it's, I'm so thrilled that I have the opportunity to do that at Goldman Sachs as an engineer. I recently moved about two years ago into the investment banking business and it's, you know, it's best in class, one of the top companies in terms of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, et cetera. But what surprised me is how technology enables all the businesses across the board. Right? And I get to be leading the digital platform for building out the digital platform for in the investment banking business where we're modernizing and transforming existing businesses. These are not new businesses. It's like sometimes I liken it to trying to change the train while it's moving, right? These are existing businesses, but now we get to modernize and transform on the cloud. Right. Not just efficiency for the business by efficiency for technologists as >>Well. Right, right. Sticking with you, Jimmy. I wanna understand, so you've been, you've been interested in tech since you were young. I only got into tech and accidentally as an adult. I'm curious about your career path, but talk to us about that. What are some of the recommendations that you would have for other women who might be looking at, I wanna be in technology, but I wanna work for some of the big companies and they don't think about the Goldman Sachs or some of the other companies like Walmart that are absolutely technology driven. What's your advice for those women who want to grow their career? >>I also, growing up, I was, I was interested in various things. I, I loved doing hair. I used to do my own hair and I used to do hair for other students at school and I was also interested in running an entertainment company. And I used actually go around performing and singing and dancing with a group of friends, especially at church. But what amazed me is when I landed my first job at a real estate agent and everything was being done manually on paper, I was like, wow, technology can bring transformation anywhere and everywhere. And so whilst I have a myriad of interest, there's so many ways that technology can be applied. There's so many different types of disciplines within technology. It's not, there's hands on, like I'm colder, I like to code, but they're product managers, there are business analysts, there are infrastructure specialist. They're a security specialist. And I think it's about pursuing your passion, right? Pursuing your passion and identifying which aspects of technology peak your interest. And then diving in. >>Love that. Diving in. Rachel, you're shaking your head. You definitely are in alignment with a lot of what >>Duties I am. So, you know, interesting enough, I actually started my career as a civil engineer and eventually made it into, into technology. So very similar. I saw in, you know, heavy highway construction how manual some of these processes were. And mind you, this was before the cloud. And I sat down and wrote a little computer program to automate a lot of these manual tasks. And for me it was about simplification of the customer journey and really figuring out how do you deliver value. You know, on fast forward, say 20 plus years, here I am with AWS who has got this amazing cloud platform with over 200 services. And when I think about what we do in tech, from business transformation to modernizing to helping customers think about how do they create new business models, I've really found, I've really found my sweet spot, and I'll say for anyone who wants to get into tech or even switch careers, there's just a couple words of advice that I have. And it's really two words, just start. >>Yes, >>That's it. Just start. Because sometimes later becomes never. And you know, fuel your passion, be curious, think about new things. Yes. And just >>Start, I love that. Just start, you should get t-shirts made with that. Tell me a little bit about some of your recommendations. Obviously just start is great when follow your passion. What would you say to those out there looking to plan the letter? >>So, you know, my, my story's a little bit like jus because I did not want to be in tech. You know, I wanted an easy life. I did well in school and I wanted to actually be an air hostess. And when I broke that to my father, you know, the standard Indian person, now he did, he, you know, he wanted me to go in and be an engineer. Okay? So I was actually push into computer engineering, graduated. But then really two things today, right? When I look back, really two pieces, two areas I believe, which are really important for success. One is, you know, we need to be competent. And the second is we need to be confident, right? Yes, yes. It's so much easier to be competent because a lot of us diverse women, diverse people tend to over rotate on knowing their technical skills, right? Knowing technical skills important, but you need to know how to potentially apply those to business, right? Be able to define a business roi. And I see Julie nodding because she wants people to come in and give her a business ROI for programs that you're executing at Goldman Sachs. I presume the more difficult part though is confidence. >>Absolutely. It's so hard, especially when, when we're younger, we don't know. Raise your hand because I guarantee you either half the people in the, in the room or on the zoom these days weren't listening or have the same question and are too afraid to ask because they don't have the confidence. That's right. Give me, let's pivot on confidence for a minute, Jim, and let's go back to how would you advise your younger self to find your confidence? >>That's, that's a tough one because I feel like even this older self is still finding exercise to, to be real. But I think it's about, I would say it's not praise. I think it's about praising yourself, like recognizing your accomplishments. When I think about my younger self, I think I, I like to focus more on what I didn't do or what I didn't accomplish, instead of majoring and focusing on all the accomplishments and the achievements and reminding myself of those day after day after day. And I think it's about celebrating your wins. >>I love that. Celebrating your wins. Do you agree, Rachel? >>I do. Here's the hard part, and I look around this table of amazing business leaders and I can guarantee that every single one of us sometime this year woke up and said, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that. Oh >>Yeah. But >>What we haven't followed that by is, I don't know how to do that yet. Right. And here's the other thing I would tell my younger self is there will be days where every single one of us falls apart. There will be days when we feel like we failed at work. There will be days when you feel like you failed as a parent or you failed as a spouse. There'll be days where you have a kid in the middle of target screaming and crying while you're trying to close a big business deal and you just like, oh my gosh, is this really my life? But what I would tell my younger self is, look, the crying, the chaos, the second guessing yourself, the successes, every single one of those are milestones. And it's triumphant, it's tragic, but every single thing that we have been through is fiercely worthwhile. And it's what got us >>Here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Think of all the trials and tribulations and six and Zacks that got you to this table right now. Yep. So Terry, you brought up confidence. How would you advise the women out there won't say you're gonna know stuff. The women out there now that are watching those that are watching right there. Hi. How would you advise them to really find their, their ability to praise themselves, recognize all of the trials and the tribulations as milestones as Rachel said, and really give themselves a seat at the table, raise their hand regardless of who else is in the room? >>You know, it's a, it's a more complex question just because confidence stems from courage, right? Confidence also stems from the belief that you're going to be treated fairly right now in an organization for you to be treated fairly. You need to have, be surrounded by supporters that are going to promote your voice. And very often women don't invest enough in building that support system around them. Yeah. Right. We have mentors, and mentors are great because they come in and they advise us and they'll tell us what we need to go out and do. We really need a team of sponsors Yes. Who come in and support us in the moment in the business. Give us the informal channel because very often we are not plugged into the informal channel, right. So we don't get those special projects or assignments or even opportunities to prove that we can do the tough task. Yeah. So, you know, my, my advice would be to go out and build a network of sponsors. Yes. And if you don't have one, be a sponsor for someone else. That's right. I love that. Great way to win sponsorship is by extending it todos. >>And sometimes too, it's about, honestly, I didn't even know the difference between a mentor and a sponsor until a few years ago. And I started thinking, who are I? And then I started realizing who they were. That's right. And some of the conversations that we've had on the cube about women in technology, women of the cloud with some of the women leaders have said, build, and this is kind of like, sort of what you were saying, build your own personal board of directors. Yeah. And that, oh, it gives me chills. It's just, it's so important for, for not just women, but anybody, for everybody. But it's so important to do that. And if you, you think about LinkedIn as an example, you have a network, it's there, utilize it, figure out who your mentors are, who your sponsors are, who are gonna help you land the next thing, start building that reputation. But having that board of directors that you can kind of answer to or have some accountability towards, I think is hugely very >>Important. Yeah. >>Very important. I think, you know, just for, just for those that are listening, a really important distinction for me was mentors are people that you have that help you with, Hey, here's the situation that you were just in. They advise you on the situation. Sponsors are the people that stick up for you when you're not in the room to them. Right. Sponsors are the ones that say, Hey, I think so and so not only needs to have a seat at the table, but they need to build the table. And that's a really important delineation. Yeah. Between mentors and sponsors. And everybody's gotta have a sponsor both within their company and outside of their company. Someone that's advocating for them on their behalf when they don't even know it. Yeah. Yeah. >>I love that you said that. Build the table. It reminds me of a quote that I heard from Will I am, I know, very random. It was a podcast he did with Oprah Winfrey on ai. He's very into ai and I was doing a panel on ai, so I was doing a lot of research and he said, similar for Rachel to build the table, don't wait for a door to open. You go build a door. And I just thought, God, that is such brilliant advice. It is. It's hard to do. It is. Especially when, you know, the four of us in this room, there's a lot of women around here, but we are in an environment where we are the minority women of color are also the minority. What do you guys think where tech is in terms of de and I and really focusing on De and I as as really a very focused strategic initiative. Turner, what do you think? >>So, you know, I just, I, I spoke earlier about the women that we have at Entity Data, right? We have a fabulous team of women. And joining this team has been a moment of revelation for me coming in. I think to promote dni, we all need to start giving back, right? Yes. So today, I would love to announce that we at Entity would like to welcome all of you out there. You know, folks that have diverse ideas, you know, ISV, partners with diverse solutions, thought leaders out there who want to contribute into the ecosystem, right? Customers out there who want to work with companies that are socially responsible, right? We want to work with all of you, come back, reach out to us and be a part of the ecosystem because we can build this together, right? AWS has an amazing platform that gives us an opportunity to do things differently. Yes. Right. Entity data is building a women powered cloud team. And I want to really extend that out to everyone else to be a part this ecosystem, >>But a fantastic opportunity. You know, when we talk about diversity and inclusion and equity, it needs to be intentional for organization. It sounds very intentional at ntt. I know that that intention is definitely there at AWS as well. What are your thoughts on where tech is with respect to diversity? Even thought diversity? Because a lot of times we tend to go to our comfort zones. We do. And so we tend to start creating these circles of kind of like, you know, think tanks and they think alike people to go outside of that comfort zone. It's part of building the table, of building the, is the table and getting people from outside your comfort zone to come in and bring in diverse thought. Because can you imagine the potential of technology if we have true thought diversity in an organization? >>Right? It's, it's incredible. So one of the things that I always share with my team is we've got the opportunity to really change the outcome, right? As you know, you talked about Will I am I'm gonna talk about Bono from you too, right? One of, one of his favorite quotes is, we are the people we've been waiting for. Oh, I love that. And when you think about that, that is us. There is no one else that's gonna change the outcome and continue to deliver some of the business outcomes and the innovation that we are if we don't continue to raise our hand and we don't continue to, to inspire the next generation of leaders to do the same thing. And what I've found is when you start openly sharing what your innovation ideas are or how you're leveraging your engineering background, your stories and your successes, and, and frankly, some of your failures become the inspiration for someone you might not even know. Absolutely. And that's the, you know, that's the key. You're right. Inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, yes. Have to be at the forefront of every business decision. And I think too often companies think that, you know, inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility is one thing, and business outcomes are another. And they're not. No, they are one in the same. You can't build business outcomes without also focusing on inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility. That's the deliberate piece. >>And, and it has to be deliberate. Jimmy, I wanna ask you, we only have a couple of minutes left, but you're a woman in tech, you're a woman of color. What was that like for you? You, you were very intentional knowing when you were quite young. Yeah. What you wanted to do, but how have you navigated that? Because I can't imagine that was easy. >>It wasn't. I remember, I always tell the story and the, the two things that I really wanted to emphasize today when I thought about this panel is rep representation matters and showing up matters, right? And there's a statement, there's a flow, I don't know who it's attributed to, but be the change you want to see. And I remember walking through the doors of Goldman Sachs 15 years ago and not seeing a black female engineer leader, right? And at that point in time, I had a choice. I could be like, oh, there's no one look like, there's no one that looks like me. I don't belong here. Or I could do what I actually did and say, well, I'm gonna be that person. >>Good, >>Right? I'm going to be the chain. I'm going to show up and I am going to have a seat at the table so that other people behind me can also have a seat at the table. And I think that I've had the privilege to work for a company who has been inclusive, who has had the right support system, the right structures in place, so that I can be that person who is the first black woman tech fellow at Goldman Sachs, who is one of the first black females to be promoted up the rank as a, from analysts to managing director at the company. You know, that was not just because I determined that I belong here, but because the company ensure that I felt that I belong. >>Right. >>That's a great point. They ensure that you felt that. Yeah. You need to be able to feel that. Last question, we've only got about a minute left. 2023 is just around the corner. What comes to your mind, Jimmy will stick with you as you head into the new year. >>Sorry, can you repeat >>What comes to mind priorities for 2023 that you're excited about? >>I'm excited about the democratization of data. Yeah. I'm excited about a lot of the announcements today and I, I think there is a, a huge shift going on with this whole concept of marketplaces and data exchanges and data sharing. And I think both internally and externally, people are coming together more. Companies are coming together more to really de democratize and make data available. And data is power. But a lot of our businesses are running, running on insights, right? And we need to bring that data together and I'm really excited about the trends that's going on in cloud, in technology to actually bring the data sets together. >>Touro, what are you most excited about as we head to 2023? >>I think I'm really excited about the possibilities that entity data has right here, right now, city of Las Vegas, we've actually rolled out a smart city project. So saving citizens life, using data edge analytics, machine learning, being able to predict adverse incidents before they happen, and then being able to take remediation action, right? So that's technology actually working in real time to give us tangible results. We also sponsor the Incar races. Lots of work happening there in delivering amazing customer experience across the platform to millions of users real time. So I think I'm just excited about technology coming together, but while that's happening, I think we really need to be mindful at this time that we don't push our planet into per right. We need to be sustainable, we need to be responsible. >>Absolutely. Rachel, take us out. What are you most excited about going into 2023? >>So, you know, there are so many trends that are, that we could talk about, but I'll tell you at aws, you know, we're big. We, we impact the world. So we've gotta be really thoughtful and humble about what it is that we do. So for me, what I'm most excited about is, you know, one of our leadership principles is about, you know, with what broad responsibility brings, you know, you've got to impact sustainability and many of those other things. And for me, I think it's about waking up every day for our customers, for our partners, and for the younger generations. And being better, doing better, and making better for this planet and for, you know, the future generations to come. So >>I think your tag line just start applies to all of that. It does. It has been an absolute pleasure. And then really an honor to talk to you on the program. Thank you all for joining me, sharing your experiences, sharing what you've accomplished, your recommendations for those others who might be our same generation or older or younger. All really beautiful advice. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. We appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering upgrade 2020 The NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >>Hi, I'm stupid, man. And this is the Cubes coverage of Upgrade 2020 the global research Summit for NTT and always happy when we get to talk about digital transformation. Happy to welcome to the program First time guests on the program. Eric Clark. He is the chief digital officer with NTT Data. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank >>you. Glad to be here. >>All right, so let's start, you know, CDOs. First of all, there there's lots of studios. We've done lots of events with the chief data officers, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about data. But the digital officers, of course, digital so important in general. And even more so in 2020. But let's understand your role is as chief digital officer. What's your charter where you sit in York? What you're responsible for? >>Yeah, definitely. And you know, it's a good question. I often start conversations with our customers by talking about exactly that, because Chief Digital officer means something different toe different companies. So for us, it's primarily market facing. Onda What that means is I spend most of my time looking at research, looking at R and D, looking at what our competitors are doing in the market and looking at where trends. We're going to make sure that we have the right offerings and capabilities to bring to our customers to make sure that they will remain competitive in their markets. >>That's great. You know, We've been talking for years about the, you know, the digital transformations that companies have been going through. One of our definitions have been. If you're not at the end of it, more data driven, you probably haven't done the right thing. But Eric, this year with 2020 you know, anecdotally we talked to a lot of customers, and obviously there's certain initiatives that get frozen or, you know, uh, we'll take a little bit longer. But those digital initiatives, which are supposed to rely on data and help us move fast and be more agile, seem to be at the top of the list and are accelerating because if I can't respond to you know, the daily and weekly changes that have been great in 2020 you know, I might have a tough time surviving. So what are you seeing? You know, how does that live in your world? >>Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's what we're seeing from our client base as well. So early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of freeze, you know, hold everything. Stop. Stop spending. And let's figure out where we are and where this is going. But very quickly that turn to we've got to react. We're gonna be living with this for a while and we can't. We can't afford to sit back and wait and see where it goes. We've got to react, and we've got to direct our our future. And very often the way that comes out is with digital. So you know, customers are looking for opportunities to leverage digital, to grow revenue, to improve customer engagement and to drive more of their revenue through digital channels. >>Interested in one thing I didn't here and there, but I'm sure is part of it. What about the employees themselves? One of the big things, of course, is that we've made this wonderful corporate environment. You've got the great great Internet there, and now wait. Everybody's at home and scrambling as to what they do. So so how about the kind of the the e x to go along with the C X? Yeah, >>exactly. And that was actually one of the first places that we focused as a company, because we do a lot of you know what we refer to as workplace services. So making sure that our customers employees have the tools they need to do their job successfully. Eso immediately. When when officers started closing and people started going home, our big challenge was Let's make sure that our customers can connect from anywhere from wherever they need to be working from and have access to the applications and the tools and the products that they need to perform their jobs remotely. And that's really turned into a significant business of its own of, you know, really addressing those needs not only for our customers but also for our employee base. You know, we have 50,000 people that we sent home more than 90% of overnight, and you know, many of these are our employees that are interacting with our customer based on a daily basis, So we had to make sure not only that they had connective, >>but >>he had to be secure. So it was a very big switch. And I think I personally was really impressed. Not only with what we did, but what we saw. The industry. Dutilleux make that transition very safely and seamlessly. >>Well, let's Eric, I love you to expand a little bit on that. You know which pieces of that that full solution, Uh, is NTT offering? And how do you and your partner's, uh, you know, help your customers through. You know, those rapid options that they need? >>Yeah, so So So we're a full suite provider. So we're focused on digital operations, which is, you know, digitizing your back office from your workplace services to your hybrid infrastructure network, etcetera, all the way through bringing. You know what? We refer to his journey to the cloud. So how do we help you identify what applications and what data you need in the cloud? Um uh, c X and E x. Very big focuses for us. In fact, we take a lot of pride in while we do go to market and sell c X specifically, we consider c x part of everything we do so if we're talking about workplace services or hybrid infrastructure or security. We want the employee experience to be solid, and we want the employee experience to be consistent across all of those things. So way think that our customers should not expect to have different interfaces and different portals and different user experiences when they do work with us across infrastructure and application and cloud etcetera. >>That's excellent, Eric. You know, we spent the last six months talking about how do we react to the pandemic? And now, at least, you know, here in the U. S. Uh, the Children are back in school. If they're back, though, it tends to be ah, hybrid model. And when we look at work, often we know we're gonna have this elongated kind of new abnormal, if you will. So, yes, you might be back in the office some, but chances are you will spend some time remote and therefore it's not work from home or back toe work. It's work from anywhere, is what I need to be able to do. So how are you preparing? How are you helping your customers through that? Because, you know, it's one thing if it was just, you know, a switch that says I'm either here or there, but it z changing and it's very fluid. >>Yeah, and you're exactly right. It is work from anywhere, but there are some of our customers that don't have the luxury of work from anywhere. So when you think about manufacturing facilities and different hospitality companies, um, there there are people that need to go into physical places. We do a lot in the healthcare space. We need doctors in the hospitals. So we've done a lot to help our customers figure out safe ways to return to the work. Recently, we've seen universities and, as you mentioned, you know, high schools and elementary schools all going back with varying degrees of success, right? Some of them have failed, and they've had to take a pause and and figure out how they're going to restart. We've also seen professional sports leagues and now college sports leagues. Andi, When we see them having issues, we see protocols adjusting and we see them looking for what can we do to make this safer, more effective and more successful for whether it's our sports team, our school or our business. So we've taken a very active approaching that, and we're leveraging technology and creating I P. That starts with pre arrival, you know, registering in advance and, you know, opting in for things like tracking social distancing and tracking the use of mask, then using cameras and facilities to monitor it, to make sure people that are are adhering to social distancing and adhering to wearing masks. Andi In the event that they aren't we can send instant notifications to their phone. If we have repeat violators, Weaken. Prohibit them from coming back to the office so we can have very strict controls and adherence to whatever the protocols. Maybe as the protocols change. And then the other thing that allows us to do is in the event someone would test positive with co vid, we will know exactly who they've been within 6 ft of without a mask over the past X number of days. All that is stored in the cloud for us to, you know, use for reference and use for audit purposes so that gives us the ability to then use are apt to direct all the people that the person that was positive was in contact with, let them go, get tested, come back with a negative test before they return to the office. So So, basically, what we've done is we've created all kinds of technology using automation and AI and facial recognition to bring MAWR safety and more security to the workplace. Whatever that work placement might be, whether again, school, university manufacturing facility or a hotel >>Really interesting topic. You know, tracking and tracing so critically important we've seen in many countries around the world. That's really help them get their arms around and control that. You know, we talked to the top of the interview about, you know, digital means leveraging the data. And if I don't have the data, I can't respond to what's happening there. Um, here in the US, I haven't heard as much about the tracking and tracing. Is this a company by company thing do they have is the expense all on them to do it? And of course, it raises the concerns about Well, I'm concerned about my privacy and that that balance between the public interest on my right to privacy, how do you help your customer sort through some of those issues >>Well, privacy is definitely a big issue. And, you know, you noticed that when I was explaining that I said in pre pre arrival, you opt in. So the way we've approached it is it is an opt in. So those that don't wanna opt into that kind of tracking and tracing, um won't won't be those that will be allowed to come back to the office. And that goes back to your other point of work from anywhere. Many of those people can still successfully work from anywhere but those that feel like they're more effective, more successful or have a need to be in an office or need to be physically again in a manufacturing facility or a hotel. We have a way to do that safely, >>right? Well, Eric, one of the things I love about research events like yours is a little peek in tow. What's coming on down the road? So any other things you'd like toe, you know, share about, You know, some of the things that are exciting. You some things we should be looking at a little bit further down the road. >>Well, I think you know for us, as you know, We spend a significant amount of money each year on research, and and we really get excited about thes thes opportunities in these showcases. So you'll see ah, lot of exciting information and a lot of what's coming in the future. Um, a lot of it right now, obviously, because of the times you'll see themes of safety and security. Um, but you're also going to see just ah, whole lot of really thought provoking forward thinking technology. >>Always take the opportunity. Even when there are crisis is out there. There's the opportunity for innovation and acceleration off. What's happening? Eric, Thanks so much pleasure talking with you and definitely looking forward to hearing more from from the event. >>Great. Thank you. Enjoyed it. >>Stay with us for more coverage from upgrade 2020 times to minimum. Thanks as always, for watching cute with

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. Covering the UPGRADE 2020, the NTT Research Summit. Presented by NTT research. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of UPGRADE 2020. It's the NTT Research Labs Summit, and it's all about upgrading reality. Heavy duty basic research around a bunch of very smart topics. And we're really excited to have our next guest to kind of dive in. I promise you, it'll be the deepest conversation you have today, unless you watch a few more of these segments. So our first guest we're welcoming back Kazuhiro Gomi He's the president and CEO of NTT research, Kaza great to see you. >> Good to see you. And joining him is Yoshi Yamamoto. He is a fellow for NTT Research and also the director of the Physics and Informatics Lab. Yoshi, great to meet you as well. >> Nice to meet you. >> So I was teasing the crew earlier, Yoshi, when I was doing some background work on you and I pulled up your Wikipedia page and I was like, okay guys, read this thing and tell me what a, what Yoshi does. You that have been knee deep in quantum computing and all of the supporting things around quantum heavy duty kind of next gen computing. I wonder if you can kind of share a little bit, you know, your mission running this labs and really thinking so far in advance of what we, you know, kind of experience and what we work with today and this new kind of basic research. >> NTT started the research on quantum computing back in 1986 87. So it is already more than 30 years. So, the company invested in this field. We have accumulated a lot of sort of our ideas, knowledge, technology in this field. And probably, it is the right time to establish the connection, close connection to US academia. And in this way, we will jointly sort of advance our research capabilities towards the future. The goal is still, I think, a long way to go. But by collaborating with American universities, and students we can accelerate NTT effort in this area. >> So, you've been moving, you've been working on quantum for 30 years. I had no idea that that research has been going on for such a very long time. We hear about it in the news and we hear about it a place like IBM and iSensor has a neat little demo that they have in the new sales force period. What, what is, what makes quantum so exciting and the potential to work so hard for so long? And what is it going to eventually open up for us when we get it to commercial availability? >> The honest answer to that question is we don't know yet. Still, I think after 30 years I think of hard working on quantum Physics and Computing. Still we don't know clean applications are even, I think we feel that the current, all the current efforts, are not necessarily, I think, practical from the engineering viewpoint. So, it is still a long way to go. But the reason why NTT has been continuously working on the subject is basically the very, sort of bottom or fundamental side of the present day communication and the computing technology. There is always a quantum principle and it is very important for us to understand the quantum principles and quantum limit for communication and computing first of all. And if we are lucky, maybe we can make a breakthrough for the next generation communication and computing technology based on quantum principles. >> Right. >> But the second, is really I think just a guess, and hope, researcher's hope and nothing very solid yet. >> Right? Well, Kazu I want to go, go to you cause it really highlights the difference between, you know, kind of basic hardcore fundamental research versus building new applications or building new products or building new, you know, things that are going to be, you know, commercially viable and you can build an ROI and you can figure out what the customers are going to buy. It really reflects that this is very different. This is very, very basic with very, very long lead times and very difficult execution. So when, you know, for NTT to spend that money and invest that time and people for long, long periods of time with not necessarily a clean ROI at the end, that really, it's really an interesting statement in terms of this investment and thinking about something big like upgrading reality. >> Yeah, so that's what this, yeah, exactly that you talked about what the basic research is, and from NTT perspective, yeah, we feel like we, as Dr. Yamamoto, he just mentioned that we've been investing into 30 plus years of a time in this field and, you know, and we, well, I can talk about why this is important. And some of them is that, you know, that the current computer that everybody uses, we are certainly, well, there might be some more areas of improvement, but we will someday in, I don't know, four years, five years, 10 years down the road, there might be some big roadblock in terms of more capacity, more powers and stuff. We may run into some issues. So we need to be prepared for those kinds of things. So, yes we are in a way of fortunate that we are, we have a great team to, and a special and an expertise in this field. And, you know, we have, we can spend some resource towards that. So why not? We should just do that in preparation for that big, big wall so to speak. I guess we are expecting to kind of run into, five, 10 years down the road. So let's just looking into it, invest some resources into it. So that's where we are, we're here. And again, I I'm, from my perspective, we are very fortunate that we have all the resources that we can do. >> It's great. Right, as they give it to you. Dr. Yamamoto, I wonder if you can share what it's like in terms of the industry and academic working together. You look at the presentations that are happening here at the event. All the great academic institutions are very well represented, very deep papers. You at NTT, you spend some time at Stanford, talk about how it is working between this joint development with great academic institutions, as well as the great company. >> Traditionally in the United States, there has been always two complementary opportunities for training next generation scientists and engineers. One opportunity is junior faculty position or possible position in academia, where main emphasis is education. The other opportunity is junior researcher position in industrial lab where apparently the focus emphasis is research. And eventually we need two types of intellectual leaders from two different career paths. When they sort of work together, with a strong educational background and a strong research background, maybe we can make wonderful breakthrough I think. So it is very important to sort of connect between two institutions. However, in the recent past, particularly after Better Lab disappeared, basic research activity in industrial lab decreases substantially. And we hope MTT research can contribute to the building of fundamental science in industry side. And for that purpose cross collaboration with research Universities are very important. So the first task we have been working so far, is to build up this industry academia connection. >> Huge compliment NTT to continue to fund the basic research. Cause as you said, there's a lot of companies that were in it before and are not in it any more. And when you often read the history of, of, of computing and a lot of different things, you know, it goes back to a lot of times, some basic, some basic research. And just for everyone to know what we're talking about, I want to read a couple of, of sessions that you could attend and learn within Dr. Yamamoto space. So it's Coherent nonlinear dynamics combinatorial optimization. That's just one session. I love it. Physics successfully implements Lagrange multiplier optimization. I love it. Photonics accelerators for machine learning. I mean, it's so it's so interesting to read basic research titles because, you know, it's like a micro-focus of a subset. It's not quantum computing, it's all these little smaller pieces of the quantum computing stack. And then obviously very deep and rich. Deep dives into those, those topics. And so, again, Kazu, this is the first one that's going to run after the day, the first physics lab. But then you've got the crypto cryptography and information security lab, as well as the medical and health information lab. You started with physics and informatics. Is that the, is that the history? Is that the favorite child you can lead that day off on day two of the event. >> We did throw a straw and Dr. Yamamoto won it Just kidding (all laugh) >> (indistinct), right? It's always fair. >> But certainly this quantum, Well, all the topics certainly are focuses that the basic research, that's definitely a commonality. But I think the quantum physics is in a way kind of very symbolic to kind of show that the, what the basic research is. And many people has a many ideas associated with the term basic research. But I think that the quantum physics is certainly one of the strong candidates that many people may think of. So well, and I think this is definitely a good place to start for this session, from my perspective. >> Right. >> Well, and it almost feels like that's kind of the foundational even for the other sessions, right? So you talk about medical or you talk about cryptography in information, still at the end of the day, there's going to be compute happening to drive those processes. Whether it's looking at, at, at medical slides or trying to do diagnosis, or trying to run a bunch of analysis against huge data sets, which then goes back to, you know, ultimately algorithms and ultimately compute, and this opening up of this entirely different set of, of horsepower. But Dr. Yamamoto, I'm just curious, how did you get started down this path of, of this crazy 30 year journey on quantum computing. >> The first quantum algorithm was invented by David Deutsch back in 1985. These particular algorithm turned out later the complete failure, not useful at all. And he spent seven years, actually, to fix loophole and invented the first successful algorithm that was 1992. Even though the first algorithm was a complete failure, that paper actually created a lot of excitement among the young scientists at NTT Basic Research Lab, immediately after the paper appeared. And 1987 is actually, I think, one year later. So this paper appeared. And we, sort of agreed that maybe one of the interesting future direction is quantum information processing. And that's how it started. It's it's spontaneous sort of activity, I think among young scientists of late twenties and early thirties at the time. >> And what do you think Dr. Yamamoto that people should think about? If, if, if again, if we're at a, at a cocktail party, not with not with a bunch of, of people that, that intimately know the topic, how do you explain it to them? How, how should they think about this great opportunity around quantum that's kept you engaged for decades and decades and decades. >> The quantum is everywhere. Namely, I think this world I think is fundamentally based on and created from quantum substrate. At the very bottom of our, sort of world, consist of electrons and photons and atoms and those fundamental particles sort of behave according to quantum rule. And which is a very different from classical reality, namely the world where we are living every day. The relevant question which is also interesting is how our classical world or classical reality surfaces from the general or universal quantum substrate where our intuition never works. And that sort of a fundamental question actually opens the possibility I think by utilizing quantum principle or quantum classical sort of crossover principle, we can revolutionize the current limitation in communication and computation. That's basically the start point. We start from quantum substrate. Under classical world the surface is on top of quantum substrate exceptional case. And we build the, sort of communication and computing machine in these exceptional sort of world. But equally dig into quantum substrate, new opportunities is open for us. That's somewhat the fundamental question. >> That's great. >> Well, I'm not, yeah, we can't get too deep cause you'll lose me, you'll lose me long before, before you get to the bottom of the, of the story, but, you know, I really appreciate it. And of course back to you this is your guys' first event. It's a really bold statement, right? Upgrade reality. I just wonder if, when you look at the, at the registrant's and you look at the participation and what do you kind of anticipate, how much of the anticipation is, is kind of people in the business, you know, kind of celebrating and, and kind of catching up to the latest research and how much of it is going to be really inspirational for those next, you know, early 20 somethings who are looking to grab, you know, an exciting field to hitch their wagon to, and to come away after this, to say, wow, this is something that really hooked me and I want to get down and really kind of advance this technology a little bit, further advance this research a little bit further. >> So yeah, for, from my point of view for this event, I'm expecting, there are quite wide range of people. I'm, I'm hoping that are interested in to this event. Like you mentioned that those are the, you know, the business people who wants to know what NTT does, and then what, you know, the wider spectrum of NTT does. And then, and also, especially like today's events and onwards, very specific to each topic. And we go into very deep dive. And, and so to, to this session, especially in a lot of participants from the academia's world, for each, each subject, including students, and then some other, basically students and professors and teachers and all those people as well. So, so that's are my expectations. And then from that program arrangement perspective, that's always something in my mind that how do we address those different kind of segments of the people. And we all welcoming, by the way, for those people. So to me to, so yesterday was the general sessions where I'm kind of expecting more that the business, and then perhaps some other more and more general people who're just curious what NTT is doing. And so instead of going too much details, but just to give you the ideas that the what's that our vision is and also, you know, a little bit of fla flavor is a good word or not, but give you some ideas of what we are trying to do. And then the better from here for the next three days, obviously for the academic people, and then those who are the experts in each field, probably day one is not quite deep enough. Not quite addressing what they want to know. So day two, three, four are the days that designed for that kind of requirements and expectations. >> Right? And, and are most of the presentations built on academic research, that's been submitted to journals and other formal, you know, peer review and peer publication types of activities. So this is all very formal, very professional, and very, probably accessible to people that know where to find this information. >> Mmh. >> Yeah, it's great. >> Yeah. >> Well, I, I have learned a ton about NTT and a ton about this crazy basic research that you guys are doing, and a ton about the fact that I need to go back to school if I ever want to learn any of this stuff, because it's, it's a fascinating tale and it's it's great to know as we've seen these other basic research companies, not necessarily academic but companies kind of go away. We mentioned Xerox PARC and Bell Labs that you guys have really picked up that mantle. Not necessarily picked it up, you're already doing it yourselves. but really continuing to carry that mantle so that we can make these fundamental, basic building block breakthroughs to take us to the next generation. And as you say, upgrade the future. So again, congratulations. Thanks for sharing this story and good luck with all those presentations. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Alright, Yoshi, Kazu I'm Jeff, NTT UPGRADE 2020. We're going to upgrade the feature. Thanks for watching. See you next time. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering the Upgrade 2020, the NTT research summit, presented by NTT research. >> Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBEs, coverage of Upgrade 2020. Of course, it's NTT's Global Research Summit. Really excited, we're going to be able to dig into healthcare, the health system of course, something that's been, top of mind for everyone around the globe this year, so happy to welcome you to the program. First time guest Mary Edwards. She is the president of provider at NTT DATA Services. Mary, welcome to the program, saying thanks so much for joining us. >> Hi, Stu. Glad to be here. >> All right. So why don't we start, as I tee it up. We're going to be talking about health care there, just a little bit of your background, your group inside of NTT DATA Services. >> Sure. So I've been at NTT DATA Services for a year, just about a year on the knows. Really glad to be here. I've been healthcare, all of my career over 30 years. At first in the Blues, in underwriting actuarial and strategy, then hop to consulting. I was a partner with Accenture for 20, well, yeah, I think 22 years, I was at Accenture. and then, I was leading a commercial markets portion of a platform as a service company for a couple of years, and then NTT called and I was really impressed with what I learned about NTT and delighted to join the firm as the president of provider. >> Well, Mary, I've got a little bit of background in some of the health I love, I go to innovation conferences, and they're like, "We have the opportunity to really transform markets, but it's so tough to make change." Well, you've been there for a year, and the last year, there's been a force in function to change the advent of telehealth and telemedicine. I've done plenty of interviews, and heck, me and my family have been to doctors, using those services, which, at the beginning of this year, I wouldn't have thought was possible. Some of these might be long term changes in impact on what's happening, but bring us inside, your customers, what are some of the pressing challenges they're facing? And it's been a little bit this, there obviously, are huge challenges, but there's also been an opportunity to make some rapid changes. >> Great question. Well, first of all, there's no place I'd rather be right now, than serving the health systems across the US, and certainly we have impact globally. It's dynamic time, lots of change, and as you say, with change comes opportunity. But also, it's a time of deep fragility, and a time when these clients really need help, not just from NTT, but from a variety of partners. And I know, I feel and my team feels, that it's a privilege to work in supporting them, through this very difficult time. And when I say difficult time, I mean, think about it, even before the pandemic, Chartists research was talking about the fact that likely 25% of rural hospitals would fail. Fast forward only a couple of months from that, research being published and across the industry, outpatient revenues are down 11% year over year, inpatient revenue down as well, labor expenses up by nearly 18%. And so there's a lot of pressures on the industry right now. And that's what I mean by just a very significant time to be in the industry and position to help. There's a huge recovery, that needs to happen from what our clients have experienced. First and foremost, top line. We've got to get the revenue back into the hospitals. The CARES Act funding doesn't last forever, and certainly, brings with it some obligations. So bringing in that top line growth, virtual health, which you mentioned, is a big part of that strategy. At the same time, they've got to deal with all the new delivery models or working models, work from anywhere is something that all businesses have to face, and incredibly, an incredible challenge for our health systems. Because of course, it's not just about how we do our individual work, but the interactions that they have to have in conducting the work that they do. So care from anywhere and work from anywhere, are huge concerns of our health system clients now. And you have to do that in industrialized ways, because you don't know where you're working day to day, you have to be able to have fast switching, right? Because we're not in control of where we work. Cities and states are telling us, what we have to do on a day in day out basis. There's a huge concept - >> Human. >> Oh, go ahead. Sure. >> Yeah, no, I just say, as you say, obviously, healthcare is rightly so a heavily regulated industry. So bring us inside a little bit, what are some of those opportunities, some of those innovations that providers are being able to take advantage? And have we opened the gates a little bit to help things move a little bit faster here in 2020, due to necessity? >> Yeah. Well, virtual care, you mentioned that earlier, has exploded. There's a lot of dialogue right now in the industry about whether that's forever. It will never go back to the low single digits that it was prior to the pandemic. I mean, prior to the pandemic health systems were happy if they could get to 10%. Overnight, virtual care went to 40%, 50%, increase overnight, and just continue to grow. CEOs across the industry prior to the pandemic, were really focused on digital front door strategies, the ability to enable consumers to enter the healthcare system, digitally and virtually. And so probably for the 18 months before the pandemic, most large system CEOs that I talked to, were working on those strategies. They're doubling down on those strategies, because the industry is reshaping around that digital future state. The cost pressures that we're seeing in health care, at the same time, require that they think about new operating and delivery models, certainly the industry will restructure, based on what we've gone through and continue to experience. And that will mean certainly changes in consolidation in the healthcare industry, right? As certainly certain systems will fail, right. Can't support what's happening around the economics of the industry. But also within our delivery and operations, there will be and we're already seeing a trend toward more pervasive outsourcing, moving offshore, taking particularly back office functions, whether it's IT or business processes, and looking for the help that can drive down the cost structure, better automate, and innovate on those processes and delivery models, and accelerate their journey to the digital future state of health. >> So Mary, help us understand NTT DATA Services, and NTT broader, what are the solutions? How are you helping your customers with everything we've discussed here? >> Sure, well, you can't enable those digital front door strategies unless you do things like get your applications to the cloud. You've got to be able to open up your environment to trade, if I say it that way, right? To exchange more broadly, even within your own ecosystem, within your own walls, the ability to connect doctors with doctors that before the pandemic didn't have a need to connect in the same way becomes important. So at NTT, we do everything, journey to the cloud. Certainly the security that's so important to those journey and also the digital future of health care. RPA, the introduction of bots and AI to workflows and operations in order to reduce cost. In my division in provider, we worked for nearly the last year on something we call, nucleus for healthcare, which is that digital front door enabled by digital foundation and which delivers through pre-selected capabilities scheduling, through virtual care visits to care coordination and payment, all integrated across the digital fabric, in order to accelerate the industry and certainly our health system partners achievement of that digital front door vision and the full digital future for healthcare. >> I love you talked about RPA automation, has been one of the top things we've been hearing this year. It's just a top sea level priority. We love coming to events like this, a lot of discussion of research looking a little bit forward down the road. What are some of the items here at Upgrade 2020, you want to make sure our audience get a little peek into? >> Yeah, well, you talk about automation, and I said a moment ago about offshore, we're thinking about no shore, right? So when you think about the application of automation and advanced analytics AI into business processes, it's not about moving business processes to a lower cost geography, it's about automating, and enabling through bots and whatnot, the ability to not have hands touch it, and really conserving your resources for the more complex things that have to happen. So I love that concept of no shoring, and really using technology to position humans for their best possible work, solving the harder problems that we face as an industry. I think about innovations in patient monitoring, and what we can take in terms of IoT, from other industries. And for instance, at NTT, we've been doing smart city with the city of Las Vegas, for a couple of years now. And we've got lots of AI around movement, heat, light, the physical context of things. You think about how you move that into healthcare. And it's certainly about patient observation, and creating safe spaces, where doctors and nurses don't have to travel in and out of rooms when there's a high contagion rate, but it's also about using AI, not just to watch the room, but to allow AI to alert when there's something very significant happening, what kind of movement in the bed, what does that infer in terms of what's happening in the patient's room, and alerting on that basis versus a visual monitor, if you will. There are other innovations. Oh, go ahead, Stu. >> Oh, no, so sorry, I thought you had said, please finish. >> Well, I was just about to say there are other innovations that we're working on, that are really about patient well being, patient companion. I think about the work we're doing at NTT disruption around something called Jibo, which is a robotics, very cool little guy who we've had some experience using it in our children's hospitals, right. It becomes like a really a companion of sorts. There are lots of applications for that kind of technology, especially in a pandemic time, when most of our patients are isolated and craving some human interaction and these capabilities can be like that, they can be companions, and they can provide the social interaction that really lead to health and well being. >> Well, so many important topics. Mary, thank you so much for joining us. Great to hear your automation, robotics in the people, at the center, of course, of what we look at in healthcare. Great to talk to you. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you. Bye bye. >> Stay tuned for more coverage from Upgrade 2020. I'm Stu Miniman, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, It's theCUBE! Covering the Upgrade 2020, the NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of Upgrade 2020. It's the NTT Research Summit covering a lot of really deep topics around a lot of the basic core research that NTT is sponsoring. Kind of like the old days of Mobell or some of the other kind of core research. And we're excited to have our next guest to go. A little bit beyond the core research and actually talk about working with people today. So we'd like to welcome in Alex Bennett. He is the global senior vice president of the intelligent workplace for NTT. Alex, good morning? >> Good morning, Jeff. How are you doing. >> Terrific. So I think for a lot of people, you know, probably know the NTT name, certainly in the States, but are not familiar with, I think, you know, the degree of which you guys have this huge business around services and workplace collaboration, I wonder if you can give us kind of a high level summary of the services angle at NTT, you know, beyond just putting in communications infrastructure equipment. >> Yeah, definitely. I mean, the NTT, as you said, is it's a huge organization, Very well known in Japan and growing in last year that we brought together about 32 different brands under the entity limited brand and we have NTT data services as well. So our role is really to look at the client requirements, the business needs that they have and be able to provide end to end solutions and wrap them with our services to make sure they've got, you know, efficiency gains, but also improving employee experience and experience around, you know, improving how they connect to their customers as well. >> Right, right. So obviously COVID-19, what was, you know, kind of a light switch moment back in March has now turned into, you know, kind of an ongoing, a new normal here we are six months plus into this, into this thing, really no end in sight in the immediate term. So, you know, people were thrown into the situation where work from home, work from anywhere had to happen with no prep. You've been in the business for a long time working on solutions. So there's the obvious things like security and access, but what are some of the less obvious things that people should be thinking about when they think about supporting their employees that are not now coming into the office? >> Well, I mean, it's been interesting, right. I said I have been in the sector for a long time and a lot of the themes have been the same for the last 10, 15 years, you know, how do we improve employee experience? How do we start to look at things like wellbeing? You know, how does it have an impact on productivity? And how do you make sure that we make it simple for people to carry out their tasks? Now, something I get asked a lot is this idea of how do we make it frictionless? A lot of the time, people don't really care about the brand or the technology. They just want to be able to carry out their role from whatever industry sector they aren't doing it efficiently and do it well, but also to be able to interact. I think it's been really important. And this pandemic has brought about this view, that people haven't been able to socialize in the same way they have in the past and work is really about people, you know, the workplace is also about people and how you connect those people into customers and provide efficiencies in that area. So the conversations I've been having in the last, you know, six to seven months, it's been quite interesting that the programs they were taking 18 months, 24 months, 36 months over, have had to be accelerated and really deployed in about three months. And then that's brought about the lows of operation on policy concerns. So as you mentioned, as you start to have this new, what we're calling, you know, distributed workforce, especially those organizations which have been perhaps more enterprise specific, you know, which are going into carpeted office environments, they've been requested by governments to only work from home. And that's brought about a huge impact to how people work, but also socialize. So from a technology standpoint, you've asked people, right, you're going to work from home, actually, do you have network connectivity? Can you actually connect with a technology tool? Like, you know, collaboration to be able to speak to your customers, to speak to your GOPs. Now what device are you actually working on? So we saw this real drive around what is this sort of immediate business continuity requirement for a secure remote worker. >> Right. And that brought about other concerns as well. >> Right. So there's so many layers to this conversation. I'm psyched to dig into it. But one of the ones I want to dig in is kind of tools overload, you know, this idea of collaboration and, you know, trying to get your work done and trying to get bears removed. At the same time though, it just can't seems like we just keep getting more tools added to the palette that we have to interact with every day, whether it's lack or a sauna or Salesforce or box, or you know, the list goes on and on and on. And the other thing that just seems strange to me is that right, all of these things have a notification component. So it's almost like the noise is increasing. I don't hear a lot of people ripping out old tooling or ripping out old systems. So how do you help guide people to say, that there's all these great collaboration tools, there's all these great communication tools, but you can't have all of them firing all the time and expect people to actually have time to get work done. >> Yeah. And it's also, you know, some people are used to that, you might have a digital native who's used to using multiple tools, but you don't have others that actually haven't been taught or a learning program about how to use different tools for different applications. And that becomes that person becomes frustrated and their productivity levels can go down. I think that what we'd really try and do is understand what are the business requirements by the persona? And also if you think of that distributed worker, that's now having to work from home and go into the office for specific tasks that are allowed, are they a sales person? No. Are they actually working in HR? What do they need and what are the tasks they need? And that start to provide the right types of tools and technology specifically for them and make sure they have a learning path that's driven around how they actually enable that technology. But you're right though. I think one of the thing that COVID founder's that doesn't happen overnight, you know, that's an engagement process. COVID hit and everyone was at home straight away. So we did see this huge transition from what may have been a legacy on premise application to starting to use more cloud based applications. And almost everyone was thrown in at the deep pant. Right? Well, here you go, just get on and use it. And at the same time they had WeChat or they had no other types of applications like WhatsApp and there were all these channels were happening. And they always had an impact on things like compliance and security, because all of a sudden, you're not using a corporately approved platform and solution. And you're starting to talk about perhaps confidential information. That's not in a way that is actually retained inside of a corporate network for the compliance and regulatory components. Right. So it's been a really interesting time in the last few months. >> Right. Well, so let's just touch on security for a minute. 'Cause obviously security is a huge concern. As you said, there's a whole bunch of security. You get kind of new security issues. One is just, everybody's working from home, whether they've got to VPN or not, or they're on their... You know, whatever their cable provider. You don't know what devices they're on, right? There's so many different devices and too as these apps have proliferated all over all these devices, whether access Salesforce on my phone or on my laptop or on my computer at work. Right. All very different. So when you look at the kind of security challenge that has come from distributed workforce with this super acceleration, you know, how many customers are ready for it, it's just caused a complete, you know, kind of fire, a hair on fire reaction to get up to speed, or, you know, are a lot of the systems of the monitored system relatively well locked down. So it wasn't a giant, you know, kind of adjustment back in March. >> Really. It depends on the type of company culture it was before. You know, what we've actually seen from some research we've done very recently across 1500 different companies, those organizations that have really invested become more digital disruptors. Now that they've embedded an idea of agility, they've actually already got a distributed workforce. They've already started to move a lot of their platforms and applications to the cloud. They've started to think about these IT policies and security. Previously, they've been very successful in how they've been able to pivot and drive this business continuity. I think for others that have been, no have large installed base of employees, no have set policies in place it's been harder for them to transition. And what we've seen is that they're the organizations that have really tried to integrate some of the new technologies into the old and that that's quite difficult sometimes. So, you know, around security, out of those 1500 organizations, nearly 70% of them said that they have a higher level of risk and concern about this. You're already in compliance today than they had prior to the pandemic. >> Right. >> What also is brought about is this idea of moving from a sort of perimeter security now where you'd come into an office and you have this perimeter where the network's secure, the physical location, and security, containerize the applications. And you've got to empower employees more now because you know, people are going to be mobile. They're going to be using multiple devices in different locations, all around the world. So we're seeing this transition as people move to cloud based platform, security is starting to get embedded into the application and it goes back to that persona aspect. So you can start to initiate things like you know, data loss protection and rights management about the content an individual has based on their location or the confidentiality of that document or piece of information. So that's where we're seeing this move is sort of really accelerating to the group, take the stress away from the employee embedded into an actual system and an application. And that has the intelligence to work out the security and the compliance on behalf of the individual. >> Right. You know, where I was going to go is, you know, there's a lot of conversations now about certain companies announcing that people can just work from home for the foreseeable future, especially here in Silicon Valley. And you mentioned that, you know, for some people that were already kind of down at digital transformation path, they're in good shape. Other people, you know, weren't that far, and of course all the means on social media are, you know, what drove your digital transformation, the CEO, the CMO, or COVID. And we all know the answer to the question. So I just want to get, you know, kind of a longterm perspective. You've been in this space for a long time. I think there's going to be, you know, a significantly increased percentage of people that are working from home. A significantly increased percentage of the time, if not a hundred percent of the time. How do you see this kind of, you know, extending out and how will it impact the way that people motivate? 'Cause at the end of the day, you've written a ton of blog posts on this, you know, motivation equals profitability. And a motivated engaged people do better work and do get better results on the bottom line. How do you see this as this as (indistinct) rules for six months, 12 months, 24 months, when there's some mishmash of combination of work from home and work from the office? >> I think probably the first thing to say is that from the research we've done, we think that's going to differ by different geographies. I mean, it's interesting when you look at areas like India and perhaps South Africa where the network connectivity home is actually not as good as in Northern Europe or North America, and actually it becomes quite hard to carry out your role and task at home. And it can become really frustrating. There's also sort of health and safety components to also working at home. Now we've had a lot of people, especially the younger generation who are in shared home, shared facilities. Now who's going to pay for the internet, the bundles, you know, and actually you only have your bedroom and is it healthy to work at your bedroom all day? So when you really sort of peel back the layers of this, this is a really complex environment, and it's also dependent on the industry sector you are. You're actually driving. But at a high level, one thing we're really seeing is most people still want to have a level of human interaction. That we as humans like to like to work together and engage together. And in fact, about 80% of the respondents of our report actually said, they want to come back to the office. Now this, this speaks to this idea of choice and flexibility. 'Cause it's not just about coming back for five days a week, eight to five, it's about going actually I've got a task to carry out. It'd be really helpful if I was with my team face to face. >> Right. >> And I can come in for four hours, book my time in that physical space, carry that out, and then I can go home and do that sort of really the research based work which I can do in the safety of my own environment. So that's what we're seeing across the industry whereas before. Now, I think everyone's trying to build these really nice big offices that looked fantastic, more huge and talked about your brand. Most organizations now are repurposing space 'cause they're not going to have as many people inside of those physical locations, but they're motivating for them to come in for creative work, you know, to be social, to think about how they do cross agile team development. >> Jeff: Right. >> And that's what we're starting to see today. >> Yeah. It's really interesting you think of some young engineer that just graduated from school, gets a job at Google and you know, you get all your food there and they'll do your dry cleaning and they'll change the oil in your car and they'll, you know, take care of everything. And, and so there's this little growth in these little micro houses. Well guess what, now you don't have any of that stuff anymore. The micro house with no kitchen or kitchen that does look so attractive. And I want to shift gears a little bit more detail on NTT. You know, we've talked to lots of people about new ways to work. IBM, Citrix, you know, VM-ware has a solution and you work with big company. So how does NTT fit in, you know, kind of a transformation process big and that on the big scale, but more kind of an employee engagement and a work from anywhere type of engagement. How do you guys fit within, you know, big system integrators, like a center that are driving organizational change and, you know, kind of all this other suite of technology that they might already have in place. >> Yeah. I mean, we sort of sit in that role of a service delivery organization as well as systems integrator. So our role is to actually go into those clients and sit down with them, which is now virtually, rather than in person a lot of the time. And really understand what are those business KPIs they have and help them shape that strategy. And to do that, you've got to understand what they have today, that view of the assets. And that goes across multiple components as you said, from, you know, desktop application, security, inclusive of culture, property assets, network. And what we do is really take a holistic view of those areas that go for you to reach that business goal, that KPI, you know, this is the project that you're going to have to do. And anything around employee engagement ultimately is fed also by how good your network is and how secure that network is to deliver those applications efficiently for that employee to carry out their task in that frictionless way. So we have a very holistic view about how we then deliver Upgrade. That the core infrastructure, we do that secure by design is our sort of policy and everything we do, you know, security is embedded into what we do, and then we deliver that outcome. But then we erupt things like adoption services. I think one thing in the past, you know, people say here's a technology, go on and do it. Especially nowadays, you've got quite complex platforms. You've got to really understand how do you give information to people to self serve them, that sort of nudge technology, so they can understand how to carry it out on that idea of adoption training. Change of management is becoming ever increasingly important for our clients. >> Right. So I wan shift gears again, Alex, and talk about the show Upgrade 2020. Lot of (laughs) a lot of really heavy science going on here in healthcare, in IT, in a whole bunch of areas. Pretty exciting stuff, you know, we've talked to some other guests about some of the real details and I'm definitely going to attend some sessions and have my brain exploded I'm sure. But I'm just curious of how it fits with what your doing, you know, you've been involved, as you said, not necessarily the NTT, but you've been involved in kind of workplace collaboration tools for a long, long time. You know, how do you see, you know, kind of basic research and some of this really fundamental research, you know, kind of helping you and your customers and your solutions, you know, as we kind of moved down the road. >> Alright, hold at that. The main conversation we're having with executives today is this idea of employee wellbeing and experience is fundamental to the success of their business. 'Cause it drives customer centricity productivity gains. You've got to think about how technology can underpin that and deliver insights to you. So, you know, the new currency is data. And what I find really interesting around and what we're talking about with Upgrade 2020 is this ideas of digital twins. So when you think of this concept of a digital twin, it all is based on this idea of extensibility. So all your decisions that you're making right to today, you know, these short term decisions you having to do for business continuity, you've got to think about the longterm impact of how you're going to be able to ingest that data from all those systems into a central area, to give you insight. Now, from that insight, you've then got the, you know, the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to actually say right, for this component how many of my employees really are? Then well, are they doing well in the productivity gains? And from my property estate, you know, how many of my properties are actually reducing the energy consumption? And are we adhering to our sustainability goals? Are they well? So the actual physical environment is safe for those employees. So all of those disparate platforms have to come together into that one area and give you insight. So that the marrying of physical space with the how humans interact all into a digital twin, I think is really interesting and something I'm speaking to clients about day in, day out. >> I love that, that is awesome. You know, we're first exposed to the digital twin concept years ago, doing some work with general electric, because they were doing a lot of digital twin work around, you know, engines on airplanes and, you know, simulate an airplane engine that's running on a plane in the Middle East, it's going to act very different than a plane that's running in Alaska. And then, you know, I love the concept of digital twin around the context of people in medicine, right. And modeling a heart or modeling a behavior system or cardiovascular system. How are you talking about digital twins? 'Cause it sounds like you're talking about kind of a combination between, you know, kind of individual people and how they're doing versus some group of people as a unit or organization. And then you even mentioned, you know, sustainability goals and buildings. So when you're talking about digital twin in this context, what are the boundaries? How are you organizing that thing that you can then do, you know, kind of tests and kind of predictive exercises to see how the real thing is going to do relative to what the digital twin did. >> Yeah. But it goes back to defining those business outcomes. And most of the discussions we're having is, yeah, obviously increased productivity, but it's also a reducing costs. A big one we've seen in my area is attraction retention of talent. You know, intellectual property is going to differentiate organizations in the future as technology sort of standardizes. But sustainability again from the research we've done is really high up on the executives agenda. You know, the idea that we, as NTT as well, we have a duty to society to actually start giving back a view of how technology can improve the sustainability goal. And in fact, we've just become the business Avenger for the UN sustainability goal, number 11, around the idea of communities and smart cities. So the clients that I'm speaking to when they're looking at those business objectives are no 10, 15% of my, my actual costs associated to my property. We've now got a new distributed workforce, but I've got a huge amount of energy going into those properties. Now we can actually connect now building management systems into now that digital twin. We can also start to look at the other platforms such as lifts, you know, also all the heating and air ventilation. And start to get the data that allows us to model and predict when certain issues may occur. So, you know, as less people start coming in, you'll have occupancy data. You'll be able to say, you're actually, this location has only been used 30% capacity. We could reduce the amount of space we have, or in fact, we don't need that space at all. And in that space, we know that we're running an HVAC system and air conditioning a hundred percent of the time. You start to actually reduce that and you can reduce energy consumption by 30%. Now goes back to this whole idea of extensibility on one building that can have a big impact, but across 500 buildings that we're NTT have, that's a significant amount of energy that we can change. >> Jeff: Right. >> And also you can then start to think about the idea of, you know, more different type of power purchasing agreement with sustainable energy going into those environments. >> So many, you know, kind of so many interesting twists and turns on this journey since, you know, that COVID hit. And it is going to be really fascinating to see kind of what sticks and, you know, and the longterm ramifications. 'Cause we're not going back to the way that it was. I think that's not even a question. Just the last thing on kind of the data, you know, we saw some really, I think not such great things early on in this thing where, you know, you get put us basically a sniffer on and you know, our people sitting in front of their computer all day. I saw some nasty thing on Twitter the other day. My boss wants me to be on Zoom calls all day long. I mean, do people get it that, you know, there's an opportunity to increase motivation, not decrease motivation by, you know, a responsible use and a good use of this data versus, you know, a potential perception of, well now they're just big brothering me to death. >> It's such a hot topic, right? I mean, even before COVID we had, you know, the GDPR compliance in Europe. But that ultimately is a global compliance and the West coast America also got a similar one now about what data you're actually keeping about me as an individual. And I should have access to that and I can not speak to my company about it. And is it big brother or actually using that data to help inform me as an individual ways of improving the way I work or working in a way that has a better balance for me as an individual. And we're having these conversations with our clients right now about how we do this, because they having to work with workers counselors in countries like Germany. Because track and trace does have that view of that sort of big brother. What, where are you? What are you doing? And how long have you been on your computer? I think it's down to the culture of your business and the purpose that you have and how you engage with your employees, that you show that data to be about all benefiting them as an individual. Now, I'm going back to that digital twin, that the view of ingesting data, then from perhaps platforms like, you know, Cisco WebEx or Office 365, and you can see how long they are actually in front of their screen. You can then start to predict and see where you may have burnout or in fact affect change where you say RHR policy should dictate, you shouldn't be working 14 hours a day. That's not good for you. It's not good for us. And actually nudge them and teach them about taking no time away from the desk and actually having a better work balance. And that's important because it all goes back to increases the productivity longterm, but it's great brand association and it's good for attraction and retention of talent. >> Right, Right. Well, I think the retention and attraction is a huge thing. You keep talking about productivity and obviously in your blog post talking about engagement, right. And engagement is such a direct tie to that. And then at the bottom line (giggles) it's kind of like diversity of opinion. It actually makes good business sense. And you actually put more money in the bank at the end of the day, when you do some of these more progressive, you know, kind of approaches to how you manage the people. 'Cause they're not machines, they're people. >> Yeah. And you should allow them to make decisions. You know, that again, distributed working, you've got to think of how to empower them with the tools that gives them the choice to make decisions. And you know, that that decision making is more democratized inside of organizations that are successful. But if you don't have the technology that allows them to do that, it goes back to a hierarchical decision making. And that takes time, it's slower to market, and then you know, you're not as successful as your competition. So we're really trying to prove that this idea of thinking about people first using the data that backs it up you know, with empirical data to show the benefits, is the way forward for organizations today. >> Yeah. Alex, great conversation. Certainly nothing but opportunity (laughs) I had for you and what you do in this really fast evolving and transformative space, which is so important. Which is how do people work? How do they feel good? How are they engaged? How are they productive and really contribute? And at the end of the day, it is good business. So exciting times, good luck on the show and some of this crazy research coming out of it on the digital twin, and we look forward to continuing to watch the story unfold. >> Thank you very much, Jeff. >> Alright. He's Alex. I'm Jeff. You're watching Upgrade 2020. The continuous coverage from theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering upgrade twenty twenty, The NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >>Welcome back. I'm stupid a man. And this is the Cubes coverage of Upgrade twenty twenty. Of course, it's the NTT Research Summit and happy to welcome to the program someone that watch the Cube for a long time. But first time on the program. Simon Walsh. He is the new CEO of NTT America's Simon. Great to see you and thanks so much for joining us. >>Thanks very much. Too good to be here. All right. See, >>A Zai mentioned your your previous companies that you've worked for are ones that the Cube and Cube audience are well aware of. Matter of fact, when I worked for some of those companies, NTT is one of the large global companies that I had the pleasure to interact with over the years. But if you could maybe let's start with just a little bit of your background. And as I said, it's only been a few months that you've been the CEO, so you know, what's it like coming into a role like this? You know, during the situation that we're all faced with in twenty twenty. >>Yeah, Thank you. I mean, my background is really in, You know, the platforms that enable the customers Thio run their technologies. Andi, Uh, you know, I spent some of my time in Europe and the media on then latterly the last five plus years in the Americas. I have to say I really enjoy It's a much better environment. If I think about it from a GDP and an economy perspective, it's, ah really dynamic place to work. I worked with companies headquartered from Europe running America's, and I've worked with companies that were headquartered in the Americas, running some of the European businesses. So I've crossed the continent's if you like. I recently joined NTT. I have to say, you know, it was a pretty lengthy process to explore, but that was partly, you know, interviews and due diligence because you want to make sure that, you know, you're you're buying into a company that, you know, number one, you can have ah, cultural compatibility with, but also somebody who you see really investing in technology that consult for, you know, the business agenda of the markets. So that's really a bit about my background and then, you know, joining. I mean, I literally joined last week of June, so my whole time has bean through, locked down in terms of employment. It's been very unique. Taking on a new post, exclusively remote. Andi I was a bit worried, you know, at a human level, just, you know, how do you connect with people? What I would comment is I've actually had the ability to really meet ah, lot more people in person because you can physically get to people's schedules a lot easier. So that's certainly helped, you know. And I've done my, uh, activities of meeting clients. Eso they've been very amenable to connecting talking to our business partners and spending, you know, considerable amount of time with my colleagues, uh, in the Americas and around the world. Andi, it's actually been very rewarding. I think, funnily enough, you probably physically closer because you're on a screen and you probably like twenty four inches away from each other. Whereas in a meeting room you'd be the other side of the table. So it's been unique, but so far so good. >>Well, yeah, absolutely. The the new abnormal is we. We have sometimes say what? We're all usedto looking in the screens all day talking to various people there. Uh, the impact on business, though, has been, uh, you know, obviously ah, lot of different things, depending on the company. But that discussion of digital transformation a few years ago it was like, Oh, I don't know if it's really is it a buzzword? But that the spotlight that's been shown here in twenty twenty is what Israel and what is not leveraging cloud services, giving people agility, being able to react fast because, boy in twenty twenty if we needed to react fast, so help bring us inside a little bit. And your time there, the discussion you're having with customers, that adoption moving along that journey for digital transformation, the impact that you're seeing and house NTT helping its customers as they need to accelerate and respond toe the realities that we see today. >>Yeah, so you're right into I mean, digital disruption has been ongoing for multiple years. Way used to call it technology and change, and now we call it digital disruption or digital transformation. So it's not necessarily new. I think the thing that's really accelerated in twenty twenty, You know, as a consequence of the pandemic is really the word distributed, uh, in that customers are undertaking their digital transformations understanding. You know what it is to modernize processes, you know, modernize the customer experience on Then they're finding that actually, they don't need in a board room and discuss, you know, the performance of the business so they now need to have distributed access to data on. I think the topics that we see very prevalent is the distributed nature off the workforce. Andi. Obviously there's always been a filled workforce, and we've had systems, crm systems and other systems that were built for a distributed workforce. But now we have toe think about our supply chain management systems and our HR systems, the P and L. And you know all of the activities that business undertakes with an entirely distributed workforce, and it's quite abnormal. And I think what we've learned is where is the data on how doe I amalgamate data from distributed systems. And so I see. And we're doing a lot of work with our clients relating to digital transformation, but really about how doe I join data from system a two system F in a distributed manner, most importantly, securely timely on in A in an interface that is usable on it sounds really easy is like Oh, great, yeah, it's just two different data points. Connect them together, make it secure, make it visible, create transparency. But we all know that the world is full of technical debt, legacy systems and platforms Very expensive and significant historical investments on those things Don't modernize themselves overnight. Quite often. The dollars to modernize them don't justify themselves. So we then end up layering on, you know, new technology. So you know what I'm seeing on in digital transformation is really about. How do we handle distributed data Distributed decision making on how we do that in a secure manner on through an interface that is, uh, user friendly? >>Yeah, way. Obviously know that there's had to be some prioritization. You know, the joke. I've had everybody came into twenty twenty with Okay, here. Here's what I'm gonna do for the first half of the year. Here's the objectives that I have, and we kind of throw those in the shredder rather early on Number one priority. I still hear it was probably that the number one priority coming into the year and it stays there, and you've mentioned it multiple times. Its security, you know, is absolutely front and center Still. How overall, though, How are your customers? You know, the c X So sweet. How are they adjusting their priorities? Are there certain projects that just go on hold? Are there certain ones that get front and center? Obviously, you know, that distributed work from anywhere. Telemedicine, uh, you know, teach and learn from anywhere have been top of mind. But any other key learnings you're finding or prioritization changes, some of which are gonna probably stay with us. Uh, you know, for the long term, >>Absolutely. We've definitely seems Thio customers re prioritizing. And I think there is obviously an inevitability to this, a za consequence of the pandemic. I mean, if you were undertaking a campus upgrade, you might just put that on pause for the moment. And we've absolutely seen that. But what we've really seen is a prioritization has been How do we get our information to our users? Whether the user is a customer or whether the user is an employee, you know, there's examples where there's lots of companies who are saying they've got, like, online detail, right. But now they've got to do curbside pickup because they've actually got inventory in the stores. But the stores couldn't open. So what you've seen is a re prioritization to say, Well, when we look out inventory management and the supply chain systems, are we factoring in that the inventory we have in a store could also be seen as inventory across the stores? And in fact, what we've really got now is a distributed warehouse. We've got inventory in the warehouse like wholesale, ready for distribution on. Then we've got inventory in a store retail ready for consumer consumption. What? We don't want that to be separate Infantry. We want that to be holistic on. Then how do we enable any any consumer anywhere to be able to arrange for curbside pickup, which we didn't used to do because we would come into the store or arrange for mail order? But the inventory may come from, you know, I may send something from San Francisco to somebody in Boston because it was in a storied inventory in San Francisco. Now, sure, it's got it's got some freight cost, but I've also got some other efficiency savings, and I'm reducing my working capital in my inventory expense. So we've seen prioritization for really how to take advantage of this. I come back to it. This word distributed is very simple in principle, but everything is now working on a new dynamic. So that's some of the prioritization we've seen. >>Um, you mentioned one of the things that might get put on hold is wait. If I was doing a corporate network update, that might not be the first thing. You know, we we Absolutely. We've gotten some great data on just the changing traffic patterns of the Internet, but the network is so critically important, everybody from home is, you know, dealing with Children doing their zoom classrooms while we're trying to dio video meetings. Um, NTT obviously has a strong, uh, you know, network component to what? Its businesses help us understand the services that are important there. What? What? You're working with customers. And how has this kind of transformed, uh, some of those activities? >>Yeah, Yeah, sure. Thank you. You're so right. I mean, I have to say I just like thio, pay my respects to colleagues and fellow workers around the world who are not just working from home but also home schooling in parallel. Uh, kids are fled the nest, you know, they're working for themselves now, so we don't have the extra activity of home schooling. But I can really have a lot of respect her colleagues who are trying to do both. It's a real fine art on. We've seen a lot of actually just talking of re prioritization. We've seen a lot of companies, including ourselves. You know, say to our colleagues, Look after your Children home, school them do everything you can to support your families on, then get to your work So that re prioritization. Justin behavior has been a key change that we've seen a lot of people do that flexibility to. You know, work is something you do not somewhere you go on. Therefore, as long as the work is done, we can flex around. You know your needs is a family, so that's one prioritization we've seen at, actually. But to your point on the network, it is quite amusing to me that we've been for years now talking about cloud on demand subscription services on Actually, the one asset that you need to really enable cloud is the network and its historically been the least cloudlike that you could possibly imagine Because you still need to specify a physical connection. You still need to specify a band with value you still need to specify. You know, the number of devices you get too attached to it. I think this is really a monstrous change that we're going to experience and really are experiencing the network as a service. I mean, we talk about I as has SAS. But what happened toe now, as I mean really, did we just think that everything was about computing software? The network is the underpin er on DSO. Really? We see a big change and this is where we've been very busy in the network as a service enabling customers tohave dynamic reallocation of resources on the network so that they can prioritize traffic, prioritize content, prioritize events, you know, a lot of customers are now doing activities such as hosting their own event, their own digital conference on. Do you want to prioritize what the user experience is when you host one of those events over perhaps a back office process that, quite frankly, wait a few days so we see a significant opportunity. This is where we've been very busy the last few months in really building out much more dynamic network of the service solutions. You know, the Cloud Network. And I think the whole software defined network agenda has materially accelerated. That's one major area on then. The other area has just been the phenomenal ship to I p voice on soft bone, actually almost the deletion of the phone in its entirety. Everybody using you know, teams or Skype or Google hangouts to really use as their collaboration mechanism on. Then you know, we're providing all the underlying transportation layer. But as I p voice, you know, that creates a much more integrated collaboration. Experience on git creates a cost saving because you're taking away classic voice services. >>Yeah, Simon Boy, I'm excited for that. I I remember when I got my first BlackBerry and they were trying to sell me some things. I'm like, Wait, this is an Internet endpoint. I can do all of these things there and of course you know it's taking taking it. The last dozen years. If If Ghana certain far, but and we always joke, it's like smartphones. We don't use them for phones anymore. We use them for all the messaging and all those services. So, uh, the the data and the network are so critically important, something I want to turn Thio, you know, upgrade twenty twenty. You know what? I'm excited about this. You know, we've talked about, you know, the major impacts of what's happened in twenty twenty, and we're looking at the here and now. But it's great in technology when we get to be able to look forward and look at some of the opportunities out there. So we'd love to hear from your standpoint, some of the areas. What's exciting? You what's exciting? That we can look forward to some of the areas and pockets of research that we see at the event. >>Yeah. Thank you. Strewn E. I think what I like about Aravind is the investment that we make to work with, You know, scientific community, academia, really invest in, you know, forward looking future proofing, how physics and different technologies might play a role in the future. And, you know, some of these investments and some of this research yields commercial products, and some of it doesn't. But it's still a very valuable opportunity for us to really look at you know where technology is going. I think the areas that particularly appealing to me on a personal level, just the whole thing of quantum computing. This is, uh, you know, I know we're already exploring the capabilities of quantum computing in, you know, some labs and Cem academia centers on really to understand, how can we take advantage of that? But I think if you then say and you take another area that we're exploring through the event Biosciences, if you then take the two together and you think Okay, how do we take quantum computing on? We take Biosciences on you think about health care, and then you think about the pandemic. You know? Are there things that we can do with simulations and technologies in the future that really would give us a greater comprehension and ability to accelerate understanding, understand, accelerate testing, and then really contribute to, you know, the health and welfare of society. Andi, I think that's really quite an exciting area for us. So that's a specific topic that I'm particularly interested in. I'm glad to see us doing a lot in that space quantum computing as well as you know, Biosciences. And I'd say, you know, one other area where I still think we're all trying to ascertain how it serves the business is really the area of Blockchain. I think this is, um, intriguing. I'm still mentally trying to master the subject. No amount of white papers has managed Thio overcome the topic of my brain yet, So I'm still working on it on. Then I think cryptography, I come back to the same subject security. I mean, we are dependent as citizens, businesses and nations on technology. Now, on our data is available how we secure it, How we make sure that it's encrypted is absolutely going to be critical. You see an increasing push nationally on globally to ensure that there is, you know, security of data on. I think the subject of cryptography and how we go forward with, you know, beyond one hundred and twenty eight bit is gonna be a very difficult and critical subjects. So these are the areas I'm very impressed with. >>Wonderful. Simon, I wanna give you the final word from update. Great. Twenty twenty. >>Yeah, thanks to you. Just thanks very much, Thio. Anybody that's attending what you'll find through various workshops. There's lots of insight from our strategic partners from research scientists from academia from ourselves. So thank you very much for participating. You know, we always value your feedback. So please tell us what we could do to improve the content to help you with your businesses. Onda, We look forward and hope that everybody stays safe. Thank you for connecting with us virtually >>well. Simon Walsh, Thank you so much. Great. Having a conversation and glad to have you in our cube alumni now, >>thank you very much to have a good day. >>Alright, Stay tuned. More coverage from upgrade twenty twenty. I'm still minimum. And thanks. As always, for watching the cube. Yeah,

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering the Upgrade 2020, the NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Palo Alto studio for our ongoing coverage of the Upgrade 2020, it's the NTT Research conference. It's our first year covering the event, it's actually the first year for the event inaugural, a year for the events, we're really, really excited to get into this. It's basic research that drives a whole lot of innovation, and we're really excited to have our next guest. He is Kazuhiro Gomi, he is the President and CEO of NTT Research. Kazu, great to see you. >> Hi, good to see you. >> Yeah, so let's jump into it. So this event, like many events was originally scheduled I think for March at Berkeley, clearly COVID came along and you guys had to make some changes. I wonder if you can just share a little bit about your thinking in terms of having this event, getting this great information out, but having to do it in a digital way and kind of rethinking the conference strategy. >> Sure, yeah. So NTT Research, we started our operations about a year ago, July, 2019. and I always wanted to show the world that to give a update of what we have done in the areas of basic and fundamental research. So we plan to do that in March, as you mentioned, however, that the rest of it to some extent history, we needed to cancel the event and then decided to do this time of the year through virtual. Something we learned, however, not everything is bad, by doing this virtual we can certainly reach out to so many peoples around the globe at the same time. So we're taking, I think, trying to get the best out of it. >> Right, right, so you've got a terrific lineup. So let's jump into a little bit. So first thing just about NTT Research, we're all familiar, if you've been around for a little while about Bell Labs, we're fortunate to have Xerox PARC up the street here in Palo Alto, these are kind of famous institutions doing basic research. People probably aren't as familiar at least in the states around NTT basic research. But when you think about real bottom line basic research and how it contributes ultimately, it gets into products, and solutions, and health care, and all kinds of places. How should people think about basic research and its role in ultimately coming to market in products, and services, and all different things. But you're getting way down into the weeds into the really, really basic hardcore technology. >> Sure, yeah, so let me just from my perspective, define the basic research versus some other research and development. For us that the basic research means that we don't necessarily have any like a product roadmap or commercialization roadmap, we just want to look at the fundamental core technology of all things. And from the timescale perspective obviously, not that we're not looking at something new, thing, next year, next six months, that kind of thing. We are looking at five years or sometimes longer than that, potentially 10 years down the road. But you mentioned about the Bell Lab and Xerox PARC. Yeah, well, they used to be such organizations in the United States, however, well, arguably those days have kind of gone, but so that's what's going on in the United States. In Japan, NTT has have done quite a bit of basic research over the years. And so we wanted to, I think because that a lot of the cases that we can talk about the end of the Moore's laws and then the, we are kind of scary time for that. The energy consumptions on ITs We need to make some huge, big, fundamental change has to happen to sustain our long-term development of the ideas and basically for the sake of human beings. >> Right, right. >> So NTT sees that and also we've been doing quite a bit of basic research in Japan. So we recognize this is a time that the let's expand this activities and then by doing, as a part of doing so is open up the research lab in Silicon Valley, where certainly we can really work better, work easier to with that the global talents in this field. So that's how we started this endeavor, like I said, last year. And so far, it's a tremendous progress that we have made, so that's where we are. >> That's great, so just a little bit more specific. So you guys are broken down into three labs as I understand, you've got the Physics, the PHI, which is Physics and Informatics, the CIS lab Cryptography and Information Security, and the MEI lab Medical and Health Informatics, and the conference has really laid out along those same tracks, really day one is a whole lot of stuff, or excuse me, they do to run the Physics and Informatics day. The next day is really Cryptography and Information Security, and then the Medical and Health Informatics. So those are super interesting but very diverse kind of buckets of fundamental research. And you guys are attacking all three of those pillars. >> Yup, so day one, general session, is that we cover the whole, all the topics. And but just that whole general topics. I think some people, those who want to understand what NTT research is all about, joining day one will be a great day to be, to understand more holistic what we are doing. However, given the type of research topic that we are tackling, we need the deep dive conversations, very specific to each topic by the specialist and the experts in each field. Therefore we have a day two, three, and four for a specific topics that we're going to talk about. So that's a configuration of this conference. >> Right, right, and I love. I just have to read a few of the session breakout titles 'cause I think they're just amazing and I always love learning new vocabulary words. Coherent nonlinear dynamics and combinatorial optimization language multipliers, indistinguishability obfuscation from well-founded assumptions, fully deniable communications and computation. I mean, a brief history of the quasi-adaptive NIZKs, which I don't even know what that stands for. (Gomi laughing) Really some interesting topics. But the other thing that jumps out when you go through the sessions is the representation of universities and really the topflight university. So you've got people coming from MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Notre Dame, Michigan, the list goes on and on. Talk to us about the role of academic institutions and how NTT works in conjunction with academic institutions, and how at this basic research level kind of the commercial academic interests align and come together, and work together to really move this basic research down the road. >> Sure, so the working with academic, especially at the top-notch universities are crucial for us. Obviously, that's where the experts in each field of the basic research doing their super activities and we definitely need to get connected, and then we need to accelerate our activities and together with the entities researchers. So that has been kind of one of the number one priority for us to jumpstart and get some going. So as you mentioned, Jeff, that we have a lineup of professors and researchers from each top-notch universities joining to this event and talking at a generous, looking at different sessions. So I'm sure that those who are listening in to those sessions, you will learn well what's going on from the NTT's mind or NTT researchers mind to tackle each problem. But at the same time you will get to hear that top level researchers and professors in each field. So I believe this is going to be a kind of unique, certainly session that to understand what's it's like in a research field of quantum computing, encryptions, and then medical informatics of the world. >> Right. >> So that's, I am sure it's going to be a pretty great lineups. >> Oh, absolutely, a lot of information exchange. And I'm not going to ask you to pick your favorite child 'cause that would be unfair, but what I am going to do is I noticed too that you also write for the Forbes Technology Council members. So you're publishing on Forbes, and one of the articles that you publish relatively recently was about biological digital twins. And this is a topic that I'm really interested in. We used to do a lot of stuff with GE and there was always a lot of conversation about digital twins, for turbines, and motors, and kind of all this big, heavy industrial equipment so that you could get ahead of the curve in terms of anticipating maintenance and basically kind of run simulations of its lifetime. Need concept, now, and that's applied to people in biology, whether that's your heart or maybe it's a bigger system, your cardiovascular system, or the person as a whole. I mean, that just opens up so much interesting opportunities in terms of modeling people and being able to run simulations. If they do things different, I would presume, eat different, walk a little bit more, exercise a little bit more. And you wrote about it, I wonder if you could share kind of your excitement about the potential for digital twins in the medical space. >> Sure, so I think that the benefit is very clear for a lot of people, I would hope that the ones, basically, the computer system can simulate or emulate your own body, not just a generic human body, it's the body for Kazu Gomi at the age of whatever. (Jeff laughing) And so if you get that precise simulation of your body you can do a lot of things. Oh, you, meaning I think a medical professional can do a lot of thing. You can predict what's going to happen to my body in the next year, six months, whatever. Or if I'm feeling sick or whatever the reasons and then the doctor wants to prescribe a few different medicines, but you can really test it out a different kind of medicines, not to you, but to the twin, medical twin then obviously is safer to do some kind of specific medicines or whatever. So anyway, those are the kind of visions that we have. And I have to admit that there's a lot of things, technically we have to overcome, and it will take a lot of years to get there. But I think it's a pretty good goal to define, so we said we did it and I talked with a couple of different experts and I am definitely more convinced that this is a very nice goal to set. However, well, just talking about the goal, just talking about those kinds of futuristic thing, you may just end up with a science fiction. So we need to be more specific, so we have the very researchers are breaking down into different pieces, how to get there, again, it's going to be a pretty long journey, but we're starting from that, they're try to get the digital twin for the cardiovascular system, so basically the create your own heart. Again, the important part is that this model of my heart is very similar to your heart, Jeff, but it's not identical it is somehow different. >> Right, right. >> So we are looking on it and there are certainly some, we're not the only one thinking something like this, there are definitely like-minded researchers in the world. So we are gathered together with those folks and then come up with the exchanging the ideas and coming up with that, the plans, and ideas, that's where we are. But like you said, this is really a exciting goal and exciting project. >> Right, and I like the fact that you consistently in all the background material that I picked up preparing for this today, this focus on tech for good and tech for helping the human species do better down the road. In another topic, in other blog post, you talked about and specifically what are 15 amazing technologies contributing to the greater good and you highlighted cryptography. So there's a lot of interesting conversations around encryption and depending kind of commercialization of quantum computing and how that can break all the existing kind of encryption. And there's going to be this whole renaissance in cryptography, why did you pick that amongst the entire pallet of technologies you can pick from, what's special about cryptography for helping people in the future? >> Okay, so encryption, I think most of the people, just when you hear the study of the encryption, you may think what the goal of these researchers or researches, you may think that you want to make your encryption more robust and more difficult to break. That you can probably imagine that's the type of research that we are doing. >> Jeff: Right. >> And yes, yes, we are doing that, but that's not the only direction that we are working on. Our researchers are working on different kinds of encryptions and basically encryptions controls that you can just reveal, say part of the data being encrypted, or depending upon that kind of attribute of whoever has the key, the information being revealed are slightly different. Those kinds of encryption, well, it's kind of hard to explain verbally, but functional encryption they call is becoming a reality. And I believe those inherit data itself has that protection mechanism, and also controlling who has access to the information is one of the keys to address the current status. Current status, what I mean by that is, that they're more connected world we are going to have, and more information are created through IOT and all that kind of stuff, more sensors out there, I think. So it is great on the one side that we can do a lot of things, but at the same time there's a tons of concerns from the perspective of privacy, and securities, and stuff, and then how to make those things happen together while addressing the concern and the leverage or the benefit you can create super complex accessing systems. But those things, I hate to say that there are some inherently bringing in some vulnerabilities and break at some point, which we don't want to see. >> Right. >> So I think having those securities and privacy mechanism in that the file itself is I think that one of the key to address those issues, again, get the benefit of that they're connected in this, and then while maintaining the privacy and security for the future. >> Right. >> So and then that's, in the end will be the better for everyone and a better society. So I couldn't pick other (Gomi and Jeff laughing) technology but I felt like this is easier for me to explain to a lot of people. So that's mainly the reasons that I went back launching. >> Well, you keep publishing, so I'm sure you'll work your way through most of the technologies over a period of time, but it's really good to hear there's a lot of talk about security not enough about privacy. There's usually the regs and the compliance laws lag, what's kind of happening in the marketplace. So it's good to hear that's really a piece of the conversation because without the privacy the other stuff is not as attractive. And we're seeing all types of issues that are coming up and the regs are catching up. So privacy is a super important piece. But the other thing that is so neat is to be exposed not being an academic, not being in this basic research every day, but have the opportunity to really hear at this level of detail, the amount of work that's being done by big brain smart people to move these basic technologies along, we deal often in kind of higher level applications versus the stuff that's really going on under the cover. So really a great opportunity to learn more and hear from, and probably understand some, understand not all about some of these great, kind of baseline technologies, really good stuff. >> Yup. >> Yeah, so thank-you for inviting us for the first one. And we'll be excited to sit in on some sessions and I'm going to learn. What's that one phrase that I got to learn? The N-I-K-Z-T. NIZKs. (laughs) >> NIZKs. (laughs) >> Yeah, NIZKs, the brief history of quasi-adaptive NI. >> Oh, all right, yeah, yeah. (Gomi and Jeff laughing) >> All right, Kazuhiro, I give you the final word- >> You will find out, yeah. >> You've been working on this thing for over a year, I'm sure you're excited to finally kind of let it out to the world, I wonder if you have any final thoughts you want to share before we send people back off to their sessions. >> Well, let's see, I'm sure if you're watching this video, you are almost there for that actual summit. It's about to start and so hope you enjoy the summit and in a physical, well, I mentioned about the benefit of this virtual, we can reach out to many people, but obviously there's also a flip side of the coin as well. With a physical, we can get more spontaneous conversations and more in-depth discussion, certainly we can do it, perhaps not today. It's more difficult to do it, but yeah, I encourage you to, I think I encouraged my researchers NTT side as well to basic communicate with all of you potentially and hopefully then to have more in-depth, meaningful conversations just starting from here. So just feel comfortable, perhaps just feel comfortable to reach out to me and then all the other NTT folks. And then now, also that the researchers from other organizations, I'm sure they're looking for this type of interactions moving forward as well, yeah. >> Terrific, well, thank-you for that open invitation and you heard it everybody, reach out, and touch base, and communicate, and engage. And it's not quite the same as being physical in the halls, but that you can talk to a whole lot more people. So Kazu, again, thanks for inviting us. Congratulations on the event and really glad to be here covering it. >> Yeah, thank-you very much, Jeff, appreciate it. >> All right, thank-you. He's Kazu, I'm Jeff, we are at the Upgrade 2020, the NTT Research Summit. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From around the globe, its theCUBE, covering the UPGRADE 2020, the NTT Research Summit presented by NTT research. >> Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of UPGRADE 2020. Of course, it's the NTT Research Summit and happy to welcome to the program, someone that's watched theCUBE for a long time, but first time on the program, Simon Walsh, he is the new CEO of NTT Americas. Simon, great to see you, and thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks very much Stu, good to be here, nice to see you. >> As I mentioned, your previous companies that you've worked for are that theCUBE and theCUBE audience are well aware of. As a matter of fact, when I worked for some of those companies, NTT is one of the large global companies that I had the pleasure to interact with over the years. But if you could, maybe, let's start with just a bit of your background. And as I said, it's only been a few months that you've been the CEO. So, what's it like coming into a role like this, during the the situation that we're all faced with in 2020? >> Yeah. Thank you. My background is really in the platforms that enable the customers to run their technologies. And, I've spent some of my time in Europe and India and then lastly the last five plus years in the Americas, I have to say, I really enjoy it. It's a much better environment. And if I think about it from a GDP and an economy perspective, it's a really dynamic place to work. I've worked with companies, headquartered from Europe, running in Americas. And I've worked with companies that were headquartered in the Americas, running some of the European businesses. So, I've crossed the continents if you like. And I recently joined NTT and I have to say, it was a pretty lengthy process to explore, but that was partly, interviews and due diligence. Cause you want to make sure that, you're buying into a company that, number one, you can have a cultural compatibility with, but also somebody who you see really investing in technology that consult for the business agenda of the markets. So, that's really a bit about my background and then joining. I mean, I literally joined the last week of June, so, my whole time has been through lockdown in terms of employment. It's been very unique taking on a new post, exclusively remote, and I was a bit worried, at a human level, just, how do you connect with people? But what I would comment is I've actually had the ability to really meet a lot more people in person cause you can physically get to people's schedules a lot easier. So, that's certainly helped. And I've done my activities of meeting up clients. So, they've been very amenable to connecting, talking to our business partners and spending considerable amount of time with my colleagues in the Americas and around the world. And it's actually been very rewarding. I think, funnily enough, you probably physically closer because you're on a screen, and you're probably like 24 inches away from each other. Whereas in a meeting room you'd be the other side of a table. So, it's been unique, but so far so good. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. The new abnormal, as we've sometimes say we're all used to looking in the screens all day, talking to various people there. The impact on business though has been, obviously a lot of different things depending on the company, but that discussion of digital transformation a few years ago, it was like, "Oh, I don't know if it's real, is it a buzz word?" But that the spotlight that's been shown here in 2020 is what is real and what is not? Leveraging cloud services, giving people agility, being able to react fast because buoyant 2020th, we needed to react fast. So, help bring us inside a bit, and your time there, the discussions you're having with customers that adoption, moving along that journey for digital transformation, the impact that you're seeing and how's NTT helping its customers as they need to accelerate and respond to the realities that we see today. >> Yeah. So you're right Stu. I mean, digital disruption has been on varying for multiple years and we used to call it, technology and change and now we call it digital disruption or digital transformation. So, it's not necessarily new. I think the thing that's really accelerated in 2020, as a consequence of the pandemic is really the word distributed in that customers are undertaking their digital transformations, understanding what it is to modernize processes, modernize the customer experience. And then they're finding that actually they don't meet in a boardroom and discuss, the performance of the business. So, they now need to have distributed access to data. And I think that the topics that we see very prevalent is the distributed nature of the workforce. And obviously there's always been a field workforce and we've had systems. CRM systems and other systems that were built for a distributed workforce. But now we have to think about how supply chain management systems and our HR systems, the PNL, and, all of the activities that our business undertakes with an entirely distributed workforce. And it's quite abnormal. What I think what we've learned is where is the data and how do I amalgamate data from distributed systems? And so I see, we're doing a lot of work with our clients relating to digital transformation, but really about how do I join data from system A to System F in a distributed manner? And most importantly, securely, timely and in an interface that is usable. And it sounds really easy. It's like, Oh great. Yeah, it's just two different data points, connect them together, make it secure, make it visible, create transparency. But we all know that the world is full of technical debt, legacy systems and platforms, very expensive and significant historical investments. And those things don't modernize themselves overnight. And quite often the dollars to modernize them don't justify themselves. So, we then end up layering on new technology. So, what I'm seeing in digital transformation is really about how do we handle distributed data, distributed decision making, and how do we do that in a secure manner and through an interface that is user friendly. >> Yeah, we obviously know that there's had to be some prioritization. The joke I've had, everybody came into 2020 with, "Okay, here's what I'm going to do for the first half of the year. Here's the objectives that I have." And we kind of throw those in the shredder rather early on. Number one priority I still hear it was probably that the number one priority coming into the year and it stays there and you've mentioned it multiple times, it's security, it is absolutely front and center still. How overall though, how are your customers, the CXO suite, how are they adjusting their priorities? Are there certain projects that just go on hold? Are there certain ones that get front and center, obviously, you know, that distributed work from anywhere telemedicine, teach and learn from anywhere, have been top of mind. But any other key learnings you're finding or prioritization changes, some of which are going to probably stay with us, for the longterm. >> Absolutely. We've definitely seen customers reprioritizing. And I think there is obviously an inevitability to this as a consequence of the pandemic. I mean, if you were undertaking a campus upgrade, you might just put that on pause for the moment. And we've absolutely seen that. But what we've really seen as a prioritization has been, how do we get our information to our users, whether the user is a customer or whether the user is an employee? There's examples where there's lots of companies who say they've got like online e-tail, right? But now they've got to do curbside pickup because they've actually got inventory in the stores, but the stores couldn't open. So, what you've seen is a re-prioritization to say, well when we look at inventory management and the supply chain systems, are we factoring in the inventory we have in a store could also be seen as inventory across the stores? And in fact, what we've really got now is a distributed warehouse. We've got inventory in the warehouse like wholesale ready for distribution. And then we've got inventory in a store, retail ready for consumer consumption. What don't want that to be separate inventory. We want that to be holistic. And then how do we enable any consumer anywhere to be able to arrange for curbside pickup, which we didn't use to do because we would come into the store or arrange for mail order. But the inventory may come from you know, I may send something from San Francisco to somebody in Boston because it was in a store inventory in San Francisco. Now, sure, it's got some freight cost, but I've also got some other efficiency savings and I'm reducing my working capital or my inventory expense. So, we've seen prioritization for really how to take advantage of this. I come back to it, this word distributed is very simple in principal, but everything is now working on a new dynamic. So, that's some of the prioritization we've seen. >> You mentioned one of the things that might get put on hold is, wait if I was doing a corporate network update, that might not be the first thing, we absolutely, we've gotten some great data on just the changing traffic patterns of the internet, but the network is so critically important. Everybody from home is dealing with, you know, children doing their Zoom classrooms while we're trying to do video meetings. NTT obviously has a strong network component to what its business is. So, help us understand the services that are important there, what you're working with customers and how has this kind of transformed some of those activities? >> Yeah. Yeah, sure. Thank you. You're so right. I mean and I have to say, I just like to pay my respects to colleagues and fellow workers around the world who are not just working from home, but also homeschooling in parallel. Our kids fled the nest, either they're working for themselves now, so, we don't have the extra activity of homeschooling, but I can really have a lot of respect for colleagues who are trying to do both, it's a real fine art. And we've seen a lot of actually just talking of re-prioritization. We've seen a lot of companies including ourselves, say to our colleagues, look after your children, homeschool them, do everything you can to support your families and then get to your work. So, that re-prioritization just in behavior has been a key change that we've seen a lot of people do. That flexibility to, you know, work is something you do, not somewhere you go. And therefore, as long as the work is done, we can flex around, you know your needs as a family. So, that's one prioritization we've seen active actually. But to your point on the network, it's quite amusing to me that we've been for years now talking about cloud, on-demand subscription services. And actually the one asset that you need to really enable cloud is the network. And it's historically been the least cloud-like that you could possibly imagine because you still need to specify a physical connection. You still need to specify a bandwidth value. You still need to specify, the number of devices you've got to attach to it. I think this is really a monstrous change that we're going to experience and really are experiencing, the network as a service. I mean, we talk about IAS, PAS SAS, but what happened to NAS? I mean, really did we just think that everything was about computer and software? The networker is the underpinner. And so really we see a big change and this is where we've been very busy in the network as a service enabling customers to have, dynamic reallocation of resources on the network so that they can prioritize traffic, prioritize content, prioritize events. A lot of customers and are doing activities such as hosting their own event, their own digital conference. And you want to prioritize what the user experience is when you host one of those events over perhaps back office process that can quite frankly wait a few days. So, we see a significant opportunity. This is where we've been very busy the last few months in really building out much more dynamic network as a service solutions, the cloud network. And I think the whole software defined network agenda has materially accelerated. That's one major area. And then the other area has just been the phenomenal shift to IP voice and software and actually almost the deletion of the phone in its entirety. Everybody using, Teams or Skype or Google Hangouts to really use as their collaboration mechanism. And then, we're providing all the underlying transportation layer, but as IP voices, that creates a much more integrated collaboration experience, and it creates a cost saving cause you're taking away the classic voice services. >> Yeah. So Simon boy, I'm excited for that. I tell you, I remember when I got my first Blackberry and they were trying to sell me some things, I'm like, "Wait, this is an internet endpoint. I can do all of these things there." And of course, you know, it's taken me the last dozen years. If gone a certain far, but, and we always joke. It's like smartphones, we don't use them for phones anymore. We use them for all the messaging and all those services. So, the data and the network are so critically important. Simon, I want to turn to UPGRADE 2020, you know what I'm excited about this, we've talked about the major impacts of what's happened in 2020. And we're looking at the here and now, but it's great in technology when we get to be able to look forward and look at some of the opportunities out there. So, would love to hear from your standpoint, some of the areas, what's exciting you, what's exciting that we can look forward to some of the areas and pockets of research that we see at the event. >> Yeah, I think he's Stu. I think what I like about our event is the investment that we make to work with the scientific community, academia, and really invest in, forward-looking, future-proofing, how physics and different technologies might play a role in the future. And, some of these investments and some of this research yields, commercial products and some of it doesn't, but it's still a very valuable opportunity for us to really look at where technology is going. I think the areas that are particularly appealing to me on a personal level, just the whole thing of Quantum computing. This is, I know we're already exploring the capabilities of Quantum computing in some labs, and some academia centers and really to understanding how can we take advantage of that. But I think if you then say, and you take another area that we're exploring through the event, Biosciences. If you then take the two together and you think, okay, how do we take Quantum computing, and we take Biosciences and you think about healthcare, and then you think about the pandemic, are there things that we can do with simulations and technologies in the future that really would give us greater comprehension and ability to accelerate, understanding, accelerate testing, and then really contribute to the health and welfare of society. And I think that's really quite an exciting area for us. So, that's a specific topic that I'm particularly interested in. I'm glad to see us doing a lot in that space, Quantum computing, as well as the Biosciences. And I'd say one other area where I still think we're all trying to ascertain, how it serves the business is really the area of blockchain. I think this is intriguing. I'm still mentally trying to master the subject. No amount of white papers has managed to overcome the topic in my brain yet. So I'm still working on it. And then I think cryptography, I come back to the same subject security. I mean, we are dependent as citizens, businesses and nations on technology now, and our data is available how we secure it, how we make sure that it's encrypted is absolutely going to be critical. You see an increasing push nationally and globally to ensure that there is security of data. And I think the subject of cryptography, and how we go forward with, beyond 128 bit is going to be a very difficult and critical subject. So these are the areas I'm very impressed with. >> Wonderful. Simon, I want to give you the final word from UPGRADE 2020. >> Yeah. Thanks, Stu Just thanks very much to anybody that's attending. What you'll find through various workshops is lots of insight, from our strategic partners, from research scientists, from academia, from ourselves. So thank you very much for participating. We always value your feedback. So, please tell us what we could do to improve the content, to help you with your businesses. And we look forward and hope that everybody stays safe. Thank you for connecting with us virtually. >> Well, Simon Walsh. Thank you so much. Great having a conversation and glad to have you in our Cube alumni now. >> Thank you very much Stu. Have a good day. >> All right. And stay tuned more coverage from UPGRADE 2020 I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks as always for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> From around the globe, it's the Cube covering the Upgrade 2020, the NTT Research Summit presented by NTT Research. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is the Cube's coverage of Upgrade 2020 the Global Research Summit for NTT and always happy when we get to talk about digital transformation. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest on the program, Eric Clark. He is the Chief Digital Officer with NTT data. Eric, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> All right so Eric, let's start, you know, CDOs, first of all, there's lots of CDOs. We've done lots of events with the Chief Data Officers, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about data, but the digital officers, of course digital so important in general and even more so in 2020. But let's understand your role as Chief Digital Officer. What's your charter? Where you sit in the work? What are you responsible for? >> Yeah, definitely, and you know, it's a good question. I often start conversations with our customers by talking about exactly that, because Chief Digital Officer means something different to different companies. So for us, it's primarily my market facing. And what that means is I spend most of my time looking at research, looking at R&D, looking at what our competitors are doing in the market and looking at where trends are going to make sure that we have the right offerings and capabilities to bring to our customers, to make sure that they will remain competitive in their markets. >> That's great, you know, we've been talking for years about the digital transformations that companies have been going through. One of our definitions has been, if you're not at the end of it, more data-driven, you probably haven't done the right thing. But Eric, this year with 2020, you know, anecdotally, we talked to a lot of customers and obviously there's certain initiatives that get frozen or will take a little bit longer, but those digital initiatives, which are supposed to rely on data and help us move fast and be more agile, seem to be at the top of the list and are accelerating because if I can't respond to the daily and weekly changes that have been great in 2020, I might have a tough time surviving. So, what are you seeing? How does that live in your world? >> Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's what we're seeing from our client base as well. So early on in the pandemic, there was a lot of freeze. You know, hold everything, stop, stop spending, and let's figure out where we are and where this is going. But very quickly that turned to, we've got to react. We're going to be living with this for awhile. And we can't afford to sit back and wait and see where it goes. We've got to react and we've got to direct our future. And very often the way that comes out is with digital. So, customers are looking for opportunities to leverage digital, to grow revenue, to improve customer engagement and to drive more of their revenue through digital channels. >> Interesting, but one thing I didn't here in there, but I'm sure is part if it, what about the employees themselves? One of the big things of course, is that we've made this wonderful corporate environment, you've got the great internet there and now way everybody's at home and scrambling as to what they do. So how about the kind of the EX to go along with the CX? >> Yeah, exactly, and that was actually one of the first places that we focused as a company, because we do a lot of what we refer to as workplace services. So making sure that our customers, employees have the tools they need to do their job successfully. So immediately when offices started closing and people started going home, our big challenge was let's make sure that our customers can connect from anywhere, from wherever they need to be working from and have access to the applications and the tools and the products that they need to perform their jobs remotely. And that's really turned into a significant business of its own, really addressing those needs, not only for our customers, but also for our employee base. We have 50,000 people that we sent home, more than 90% of overnight. And many of these are our employees that are interacting with our customer base on a daily basis. So we had to make sure not only that they had connected but they had to be secure. So it was a very big switch and I think I personally was really impressed not only with what we did, but what we saw the industry do, to make that transition very safely and seamlessly. >> Eric I'd love you to expand a little bit on that, You know, which pieces of that full solution that is NTT offering and how do you and your partners help your customers through those rapid adoptions that they need? >> Yeah, so we're a full suite provider. So, we're focused on digital operations, which is digitizing your back office from your workplace services to your hybrid infrastructure network, et cetera. All the way through bringing what we refer to as journey to the cloud. So how do we help you identify what applications and what data you need in the cloud. CX and EX very big focuses for us. In fact, we take a lot of pride in, while we do go to market and sell CX specifically, we consider CX part of everything we do. So if we're talking about workplace services or hybrid infrastructure or security, we want the employee experience to be solid, and we want the employee experience to be consistent across all of those things. So, we think that our customers should not expect to have different interfaces and different portals and different user experiences when they do work with us across infrastructure, application and cloud, et cetera. >> That's excellent Eric. You know we spent the last six months talking about how did we react to the pandemic, and now at least here in the US, the children are back in school. If they're back though, it tends to be a hybrid model. And when we look at work, often we know we're going to have this long gated, kind of new abnormal if you will. So, yes you might be back in the office some, but chances are you will spend some time remote and therefore it's not work from home or back to work, it's work from anywhere, is what I need to be able to do. So, how are you preparing? How are you helping your customers through that? Because it's one thing if it was just a switch that says, I'm either here or there, but it's changing and it's very fluid. >> Yeah, and you're exactly right, it is work from anywhere. But there are some of our customers that don't have the luxury of work from anywhere. So when you think about manufacturing facilities and different hospitality companies, there are people that need to go into physical places. We do a lot in the healthcare space. We need doctors in the hospitals. So we've done a lot to help our customers figure out safe ways to return to work. Recently, we've seen universities, and as you mentioned, high schools and elementary schools all going back with varying degrees of success, right? Some of them have failed and they've had to take a pause and figure out how they're going to restart. We've also seen professional sports leagues and now college sports leagues. And when we see them having issues, we see protocols adjusting and we see them looking for what can we do to make this safer, more effective and more successful for whether it's our sports team, our school or our business. So we've taken a very active approach in that. And we're leveraging technology and creating IP that starts with pre-arrival, registering in advance and opting in for things like tracking social distancing and tracking the use of masks. Then using cameras and facilities to monitor it, to make sure people that are adhering to social distancing and adhering to wearing mask. And in the event that they aren't, we can send instant notifications to their phone. If we have repeat violators, we can prohibit them from coming back to the office. So we can have very strict controls and adherence to whatever the protocols may be as the protocols change. And then the other thing that allows us to do is in the event, someone would test positive with COVID, we will know exactly who they've been within six feet of without a mask over the past X number of days. All of that is stored in the cloud for us to use for reference and use for audit purposes. So that gives us the ability to then use our app to direct all the people that the person that was positive was in contact with, let them go get tested, come back with a negative test before they returned to the office. So basically what we've done is we've created all kinds of technology using automation and AI and facial recognition to bring more safety and more security to the workplace, whatever that workplace might be. Whether again, school, university, manufacturing facility, or a hotel. >> Really interesting topic. Tracking and tracing, so critically important. We've seen in many countries around the world, that's really helped them get their arms around and control that. We talked at the top of the interview about digital means leveraging the data. And if I don't have the data, I can't respond to what's happening there. Here in the US, I haven't heard as much about the tracking and tracing. Is this a company by company thing? Do they have the expense all on them to do it? And of course it raises the concerns about, well, I'm concerned about my privacy and that balance between the public interest and my right to privacy. How do you help your customers sort through some of those issues? >> Well, privacy is definitely a big issue. And you notice that when I was explaining that I said in pre-arrival, you opt in. So the way we've approached it is, it is an opt in. So those that don't want to opt in to that kind of tracking and tracing, won't be those that will be allowed to come back to the office. And that goes back to your other point, I've worked from anywhere. Many of those people can still successfully work from anywhere. But those that feel like they're more effective, more successful or have a need to be in an office, or a need to be physically again in a manufacturing facility or a hotel, we have a way to do that safely. >> All right, well, Eric one of the things I love about research events lately like yours, is a little peek into what's coming on down the road. So, any other things you'd like to share about? You know, some of the things that are exciting you, some things we should be looking at a little bit further down the road? >> Well, I think, you know, for us as you know, we spend a significant amount of money each year on research, and we really get excited about these opportunities and these showcases. So you'll see a lot of exciting information and a lot of what's coming in the future. (indistinct) out of it right now obviously because of the time you'll see themes of safety and security, but you're also going to see just a whole lot of really thought provoking, forward thinking technology. >> You always take the opportunity, even when they're crisis out there. There's the opportunity for innovation and acceleration of what's happening. >> Yes. Eric, thanks so much, a pleasure talking with you and definitely looking forward to hearing more from the event. >> Great, thank you, enjoyed it. >> And stick with us for more coverage from Upgrade 2020, I'm Stu Miniman, thanks as always for watching the Cube. (upbeat music)

(energetic music) >> Live, from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier. We're in Las Vegas and we have somebody from the city of Las Vegas here. We've got two gentlemen joining us. Bill Baver, the VP of NTT. Hey Bill, good to have you on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, appreciate being here. >> And your partner in crime Michael Sherwood, the IT Director Las Vegas. The city of Las Vegas, where we are right now. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Love having you here. >> Thank you for having us. So guys, theCUBE comes to Vegas a lot. There's a ton of shows here. You can fit a ton of people. Last year, Bill, we'll start with you, NTT and Dell Technologies announced this exciting smart cities initiative. Talk to us about, in the last year, first of all why NTT is partnering with Dell Technologies and what you've done. And then of course we're going to dig into Las Vegas as one of those smart secure cities that Michael, I can tell, is just tell dying to tell us about. So, in the last year, what's going on? >> Well, first off when you start digging let me see. I want to see how this really plays here. (laughter) So, I'm ready for that. So, yes last year we announced a partnership between Dell, NTT and Las Vegas. And it's really a three way partnership. And since then, if you ever work with city governments, how far the city of Las Vegas has come has been amazing. So within six months we installed equipment that was supposed to be there. And then started for the last six months running a system there, running it around public safety perspective, and really starting to bring true insights to what they're doing. The Dell part brings equipment on the edge and our core data center. How to go back and forth between the entire Dell family. Dell, EMC, VMware, and then the NTT family that's there. And then really the third leg of the stool is the city of Las Vegas and the insights they've allowed to us to recognize and sort of bring to them. So they can make changes in how the city is looking at and running the environment. >> And why did you decide to start this partnership with the wonderful city of Las Vegas? >> It's really around innovation. So, Michael Sherwood, and the city of Las Vegas have really become a leader in innovation around the country and they're really willing to take chances. And they have an innovation zone that allows them to do projects rather quickly. Not as quick as this sometimes, but rather quickly. Then, we can start to see results and then they can adjust and start to figure out how it's going to roll out and sustain across the city. So, it was their innovation and it was really Michael's legacy of what he's been doing so far and what his willingness to work with partners has been. So that's really a reason to do this as we went forward. >> So, how about the innovation strategy? Because, obviously, Las Vegas, a lot of people come here. Destination, public safety's been critical. Number one. I've seen the evolution of just really smart moves whether it's blocking the sidewalks from anyone driving on them to the use of video and processing video. You need AI for that. So it's probably a melting pot of interest to be on the forefront. >> Why would innovation go anywhere else other than Las Vegas, where we're the innovators of entertainment. We're the innovators of fun. So, why not be the innovators of technology and innovate with great companies like NTT and Dell. I mean you can't get any better. If you want to talk about a cube of perfection that would be it right there. You have innovation around the board surrounded by great companies. Las Vegas is innovative. We have a culture here to use technology to not only make our citizenry safer, but to insight development, to insight economic growth. So innovations not just something that is just limited to technology. It's limited to all facets of society. >> That's great culture too. You don't really have to change the culture if people are already there. What leading edge stuff are you working on now that'd be really cool to talk about? I mean smart cities, obviously, cameras on corners looking at things, so traffic, EIOT devices. What are some of the things? Share with us, open the kimono a little bit. Talk about it. >> So, first off, one thing. We do not say cameras, we say optical sensors because that's more pleasing to the ear. So, as we gather data it'll go, so go ahead. >> All right, thank you Bill. (laughter) So optical. Even I learn something every day in innovation. I mean now we have optical sensors. >> It's all optics. >> It's all optic. Let me just start with, you know public safety's very important. So we're doing some things there with our partnership with Dell and NTT. I like to call it autonomous policing. Where we're really providing real time analysis of a location. So, in the old days or current days of policing, police randomly drive around and do a patrol. That's what we call it. What we're looking at now is using cameras to provide, excuse me, optical sensors, to provide real time situational awareness to those first responders. So as they're responding to an incident, number one, there really is an incident. Because the optical sensor has validated that there is an issue there. And as the officers respond to that, they're actually able to see real time analysis from those optical sensors that's giving them a safety presence. So we're really taking policing, and really putting policing where it needs to be when it needs to be there. That's one category. The other one's mobility. We all want to get from point A to B the most convenient way possible. And what we're doing with the Dell NTT partnership and this optical sensor system, as well as analytics, is really looking at improving traffic flow, but improving traffic flow smartly. And something that's scalable that not just Las Vegas can do but any city could do across the world. Again, Las Vegas, we don't consider ourselves just a national US based innovator. We look at ourselves as world innovators. So really mobility is somewhere that can go anywhere in the world. Same with public safety. >> Talk about the architecture of innovation. How do you guys pull this off? What's the playbook? A lot of people want to be, first of all, cultural change is hard. You guys are there, like I said earlier. What's the playbook? You got to have multi-cloud architecture. You got to start thinking about getting a system set up. Either like some sort of sandbox or I've seen (mumbles) innovation zone. How do you pull it off? What's the playbook? >> I think the playbook goes down to a great team. Without a great team and great partners it doesn't matter what technology you have behind it, it's the team and partnership. That's really what makes this special. You see the bond between myself and Bill. But that goes through all levels of NTT, as far as all levels of Dell. So it's about bringing winning players and winning skill sets together, and then taking great technology and funneling around that. That is a success. Anybody can be an innovator. It's nothing special, though I'm available to help people innovate. But, I think what it really takes is understanding your business. Understanding your performance measures that you want to hit. What do you want to do? In a football team, they want to score a touchdown. In my job I want to use my resources effectively as I can and create things that are safe, and create a better Las Vegas for everybody. >> Speed is critical. It used to be the old days, months to get projects done. Then it became weeks, now it's days, hours. The shift in the time spectrum has radically changed. >> It's tough. It's tough for government. Government is traditionally not known for it's agility and speed. You know, we're changing some of that here. But we're still struggling in a couple of areas. We have some refinement to do. I think, nationwide, purchasing is hard. We want to be fair and equal to everybody. But, at the same time, we want to get these solutions out in the marketplace because it is helping the city be more effective. So, there's challenges still. But, overall, the future is very bright and the technology and expertise that our partnership has really is making, I mean, in one year I don't think any government in the US has done as much as the city of Las Vegas has with our partnership. >> I would add that Michael's being a little humble on that there's not a lot of, everybody can do innovation. We have an innovation zone that allows him the flexibility to do that. So, that's really important. And then the technology, Michael is right that it is tough. There are times that it didn't work to the schedule. But that goes back to the teamwork of everybody saying our end goal is we want to get this done, and going towards that. >> Talk about the innovation zone. Talk about the innovation zone. Is that a physical zone? is it where you can deploy new towers and test stuff? >> It's downtown Las Vegas. If you're familiar with Fremont Street, it's the big canopy area. So, it's about 80 square blocks around that area that incorporates an entertainment district, a government zone, a medical, where we basically have fiber optics. Different type of technologies and we ask partners to come in and test. But, to follow up a little bit, I'll disagree with my panelist here. You know, every city can do >> That you're not humble? (laughter) >> But every city can do innovations. It's about understanding risk and taking a little gamble and a little chance. We do that everyday in our lives, but yet when we get into out work we seem to forget about risk. >> It's a tech playground, too. You're going to attract great people when you have this kind of flexibility to just deploy. Do bake-offs, test new equipment. >> You got it. Again, so many people know Las Vegas just for what they see while they're here. Which is fun and entertainment. We want everyone to know that Las Vegas also means business. We're here to be discovered. We're here to be used. Not abused, but we're here to be used. (laughter) >> If you're bringing you equipment into you're tech zone does it stay in Vegas? (laughter) >> Everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. >> It can't leave. >> Including the equipment. >> Like hotel California. >> All the equipment. Yes >> Exactly. >> I'd like to have the people remain as well. But no, I mean we're open for business. We're not just a great place to play. We're a great place to develop your products and sell product. >> So talk to us about, not just the innovation zone, but as you mentioned before, this is a challenging thing for governments and municipalities to undertake. It's expensive, right? There's a tremendous amount of people that are coming in and out of Vegas 24 by seven. When you're talking, I presume, Michael, that you're talking with you're talking with your peers in other industries about, this is why we set up an innovation zone. This is why it's so critical. Here's the advancements we've made in terms of safety in the last year. What are some of the industries that you talk to and some of your recommendations for them to take that gamble and to find the resources to make this happen? >> Well it's finding the great partners obviously is one. But two is start small. So many cities want to do, I want to replace all my street lights with smart lights. In Las Vegas that would be over a hundred thousand street lights to replace. A huge project, daunting. But why not start small? Get an understanding of the technology. Understand how it works. And then see what you like and what you don't like. And then you can go ahead and, from a small pilot, then, with the education behind you start branching out and making it bigger. And I think the key to my success is start small gain knowledge, gain success, and then build on that success. Don't try to shoot for that one shot and you're going to be a winner. >> That's great advice. What about some of those key constituents of yours, you mentioned some of the things you're doing with policing and from a government perspective. Who have been some of your key constituents to become champions of what you're doing with NTT and Dell Technologies? >> It's really the people, the people that visit here. I look at everybody as a customer. Whether you live here, play here, you're a customer of Las Vegas. And so we want you to be happy. We want you to be able to get from A to B. It doesn't do us any good if you're stuck in the car because you're not spending any money. And so, I want you excited. I want you having the best time of your life at the best restaurants. I want you having the safest experience here. I want you to return. So my objectives are no different than a private business. Except, I have the whole community. So it's when people in the community say thank you for letting us get to A to B quicker. They never thank me personally, but they're happy about it. I'm not hearing complaints about being stuck in traffic. >> Getting to A, B quicker is a lot of really long stop lights in Vegas. Any optical sensors going to help us with that? >> Taxi lights? >> You've got to come down. This year, we actually, in January we did an autonomous vehicle all the way from Mandalay Bay down to the Golden Nugget. Great technology. It worked. We're getting there. Yes, traffic is still in certain areas an issue. But come down to the innovation district. You want to drive around there it's great. >> We've got to have theCUBE there. We've got to get a tour of this. >> We've got the inside track here. >> In time. >> I know a guy in Vegas. You're out guy >> I'm your guy. (laughter) >> Guys, talk about the key learnings. You can both share some data around the journey the past couple years as technology has shifted. Obviously, apps or renaissances happening, more apps are coming over the top: Saska, cloud, partnerships or people equations happening. What's some key learnings or scar tissue that you guys have learned over the past few years that you could share to folks watching? >> I think one of the first parts is the learning is partnership and your end goal. Because, there are going to be bumps in the road as we go, and there were bumps. Things couldn't get installed as quickly. It didn't work the way we wanted. That's why we started as a proof of concept. But then the other part of the learning is start small and grow. It's not only start small in an area or even a section of the city. It's how does it grow so that you have a sustainable model for the city so they can then pay for it as they go forward. We all want to make sure that it gives us a model forward. So the openness of the NTT and Dell partnerships to allow us to have that time to do it, that was really important for us to figure a model forward. And now we're fitting into the city model a lot better. And it's making it work beyond just the innovation zone. That's where we're taking it now, and that's the key for us all. >> Mike, any learnings? >> Definitely, let me tag on to his openness. Number one is an open platform. Having a platform that's open, that your data's accessible regardless of what changes. Everybody knows technology changes rapidly. So having agility to situations. Today, right now it's mobility for me. It is public safety. But I really look to the future as curb monetization. Where we're monetizing that curb with autonomous vehicles. How do you get there? If you have a closed system that doesn't have the interface, doesn't have the agility, you can't get there. So, the open architecture is something to me that with the learning, I would have never come to that conclusion without the partnership and the learning avenues. But the open architecture is key. >> The most important question I want to ask, Michael, to you is, when the Raiders come to town, that's going to change the game big time. The Oakland Raiders, the black hole. Whole new fan base. >> I'm excited. (laughter) I'm looking for that to be, even though I live on the other side of the stadium so I have to go through there on the weekends. But I'm super excited. I'm not just excited about the game coming. I'm excited about the innovations and the new opportunities for a great city. And we have the Golden Knights you get to have a phenomenal season this year. Give them a shout out, and wait to come. I will bet you in the next year there will be some new sports franchises here. >> And the tech involvement, all kidding aside about the Raiders, it's fun to talk about because they're moving here, that's great. But the tech involved in sports is cutting edge. You've got entertainment, obviously, here inside the venues. And you've got service, managing the team, it's the same IOT problem everyone else has. >> It's in a little mini-city of it's own. It's going to have it's own IOT opportunities there. We're working closely with the stadium authority in that regard. We're sharing our experiences, sharing our partners. But, couldn't be more excited and actually, elated to have them here locally. >> Working closer to get tickets? (laughter) >> How about a suite, I was thinking suite. I'll ask for the suite. >> I'll be with the regular people. (laughter) >> Remember I'm a civil servant of the government here. Very low connections on my lane. >> Last thing, Michael for you, is we talked about the public safety issue. But, in terms of the opportunity for you to let more of the public know. There obviously have been some public incidents here that have been known the world over. It's an important message to get out to everyone. This is a global city. What are some of the opportunities that you have to share what you guys are doing with NTT and Dell Technologies so that the perspective visitors know, I'm coming into a pretty, this is a very AI enabled city that's really looking out for my best interests. >> I'm here on theCUBE. I thought if I was here >> This is it. >> everybody would know about the great things we're doing. >> That's true. >> So, beyond that though. It's part of why we're here today is to share our story and to start outreaching more. We're doing more in the community than we've done before. We're opening a great innovation center downtown. We're calling, it has many name currently now, we're trying to focus on one. But, the concept is basically a technology embassy. Where we're going around the world and sharing our story and letting companies know that they can come here and test their technology, and we can share that with the community. So, really technology is nothing without a great community that supports it. And so, a lot of what I do is sharing that message about what we're doing. We share with our partners, and we come on shows. There's only one show to come on, but this is the show, where I'm sharing what we're doing first. >> He's a quick learner. I think the thing that's been really cool for you guys to share, what NTT Dell and the city of Las Vegas are doing to turn Vegas into this AI enabled city for societal good, but it's also this whole message I think I've heard from you guys in the last 15 minutes is this is all about community, collaboration, people. We thank you both so much for giving us some time this morning on theCUBE. Now you're alumni so you've got to get stickers. And you've got to come back, 'cause this is only going in a better direction. So we're excited to hear in the next year what happens. Doug, Michael, thank you so much for your time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Great being here. >> Appreciate it. >> Excellent. For John Furrier I'm Lisa Martin. Can you feel the buzz of Dell Technologies World 2019. Stick around we'll be right back with our next guest. (energetic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> And we are indeed in Las Vegas for day two of Dell Technologies World 2018. Some 14,000 strong in attendance and a show with a lot of vibrancy, a lot of energy, and certainly it's reflected in what's happening on the show floor. Along with Stu Minaman, I'm John Walls, and we're now joined by a couple of guests. It's an honor to bring to the set Howard Elias, president of services, digital and IT at Dell EMC. Howard, how are you sir? >> Great, I'm doing fantastic. As you said, the energy's super high. >> John: Absolutely, and also joining us is Jun Sawada, who is the CFO of NTT and the CEO of NTT Security. Sawada-san, nice to have you with us, sir. >> Yeah, nice to meet you, so a very exciting such a time. Thank you very much. >> You bet, thank you for being here. So Howard, let's just kick off, I'm curious. You've thought about the show. Bigger, better than ever. So many people here, so much conversation and dialogue. And how do you feel and what are you hearing from people? >> Well you know, it's our first Dell Technologies World. We continue to believe we're better together, and we're getting great energy and feedback from our customers and partners. And I couldn't be more pleased to be with Sawada-san here today. A great partner, an NTT group of companies, where we're going to talk about some interesting solutions, which is what we've been talking about with all of our customers today. >> Especially right here in Las Vegas. It's certainly no coincidence, right, the show, and then some work that the two companies have done and are announcing. Tell us a little bit about that. What is the project that involves Las Vegas and your perspective involvement? >> Well I'll let Sawada-san, but this is all about an initial POC that we're doing for the city of Las Vegas. Utilizing the IOT technologies combined between NTT group and Dell Technologies. >> Yes, and also, we want to realize the situation awareness of a city of Las Vegas. That's our issue in including three features. One, with the reactive analysis, analyzing and also a site. It may H, H. We are going to realize, such as indicating that some instance has occurred. And the second feature is a proactive analyzing that adds a center, data centers. It's been providing also a trend or investigation, or the predictions. Lastly, third feature is very interesting. It's a deployment automatically all over the ICT lethal seeds, simultaneously. So based on the several technologies. >> So we love this smart cities theme. I've had the opportunity to interview people from different cities and see governments actually getting involved. I wonder if we can get into some of the key technology pieces that are involved here between NTT and the Dell family. >> We are developing ways, actually, at Dell technologies that we call the Cognitive Foundation. It consists of two technologies, one in times for, very focused to multi, much orchestration. It's been a cover up, so March beta, March domain, March layers, lots of the March we can integrate it. The other one is a software defined ICT lethal system, based on the batchilisation technology coming from Dell Technologies, we're in warehouse. >> Howard, sounds like this fits in with a lot of themes we've been hearing at the show. IOT, of course, I would expect to be heavily involved, but maybe explain some of the Dell standpoint, where some of this fits in. >> Well that's exactly right. So as you know, our IOT strategy is a very comprehensive end-to-end one around edge, to the distributed core, to the cloud. And then, working with NTT in terms of bringing that solution to market for a particular use case, like a smart city, in Las Vegas. And we're going to learn a lot together about how all of this comes and comes to fruition. But it really is about that edge to distributed core to cloud. And it's really based on the Dell technologies around our gateways, our hyper conversion infrastructure, some of the VM-ware software foundation capabilities, together with all of the solutions that Sawada-san has talked about. >> Yeah, I would think, it seems like this is a great test case, great test bed if you will. So, where does this go from here? What are your strategic intents in terms of what you plan to learn here and how it will apply elsewhere? >> That's basically, we were starting that this proof of a concept is a form of this coming September. After the two months, we will go into a market offering with two, both companies. But basically, our business plan is a business to business to anything. In that case, the Las Vegas city is a center bean. Dell Technologies and the NTT is a fast bean, as an enabler to support the center bean. Center bean providing a barrier to the anything, anywhere. So those type of package of concepts that we want to deploy to the other United States cities, not only United States, in the world. >> Globally? >> Globally. >> Howard: Yeah, globally, including in Japan, of course. >> Of course. (laughs) I am very familiar Japan. (laughs) >> And it's great because it's not just about the IOT strategy that we've talked about, but it really is about all of the transformation strategies we have. If you think about building a smart city, it's every aspect of digital, IT, workforce, and security transformation, all coming together into a complete, comprehensive solution. >> Alright, where does it go from here? Talk about the vision for the future, as to what we see in the future, Sawada-san. >> Yeah exactly, so not only are we very focused at the time, with public safety. But both company is we can extend those solution to other solution of smart ones. For instance, education, for instance, the retails, or entertainment, including stadium solutions, or other medical. There's no leftover area that we can extend our solution. You're driving a cognitive foundation. >> Yeah, and we're going to learn a lot from the POC. We also have been working on other projects around the world. And we're going to take all of those learnings and roll that into new products and services that we can deliver to our customers. >> Yeah. >> Well, it's a fantastic laboratory, no doubt about that, Las Vegas is, and I'm sure what you learned here will be applicable, as you said, to cities, not only in the United States, in Japan and all over the world. >> All over the world. >> Great project. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us. I appreciate your, and I look forward to hearing back. Check in a year from now. >> We'll do that. >> Let's see where we are. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> Back with more from Dell Technologies World 2018. You're watching theCUBE, we're live, and we're in Las Vegas. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's the theCUBE, covering Mobile World Congress 2017. Brought to you by Intel. >> Hey welcome back. We're here live in Palo Alto at the SiliconANGLE Media Cube studios, our new 4500 square foot office. We merged with our two offices here to have our own studio, and we're covering Mobile World Congress for two days. 8AM to 6 every day, breaking down all the analysis from the news, commentary and really breaking down the meaning and the impact of what's happening, and the trends. We're doing it here in California, bringing folks in and also calling people up in Barcelona, getting their reaction on the ground. We've got our reporters, we have analysts there but all the action's happening here in Palo Alto for our analysis. Our next guest is Christina Ku, director of NTT Docomo Ventures. Welcome to theCube, appreciate it. >> Hi. Well it was good to see you again. >> Great to see you. Obviously we've known each other for over a decade now and you've been in the investment community for a while. The first question is why aren't you there at a Mobile World Congress? Because it's changed so much, it's a telco show and some apps are now thrown in there. But there's so much more going on right now around 5G, AI, software, end to end fabrics. So it's not just "Give me more software, provision more subscribers." It's a whole other ball game. >> That's a great question. So our CEO of NTT Docomo is there, and the C-level team. But we are the innovation team. We have been here since 2005 doing research and then added business development about three years ago and then a ventures team that's been around and now we're part of NTT Docomo Ventures. What we're looking for is more services and software and this year I guess the focus is AI. And AI is, I would call it the new infrastructure. Since wireless networks are all data now, the new infrastructure is AI rules. Rules for everything, vertical and new maps. So I can talk a little bit more what we've been seeing in kind of the software and services area and how we're looking at the Bay Area as kind of the new innovation to bring back to Japan to work with NTT Docomo. >> That's awesome. Let's take a minute, Christina, if you can, just before we get started, take a minute to explain what your role is and the group that you're in at NTT Docomo here in the Bay area. What you guys are doing, the focus, and some of the things that you're involved in. >> Great yeah, thanks. So, I'm a director and I invest on behalf of two funds. One is NTT Docomo Ventures for NTT Docomo, the wireless carrier. Sixty-million subscribers, all in Japan. Our competitor is SoftBank. We're bigger in Japan, and have more market share. And also the NTT Group has a two hundred and fifty million dollar fund. They're off the 101 Freeway. There's NTT Security, i-Cube, a division of companies, as well. And the idea is to bring these technologies through start ups, through BD, to help them enter Japan. And also, to invest, a minority investment. >> That's awesome. So you have to pound the pavement, go out there and see all the action. Obviously, Silicon Valley, a lot of stuff happening here, and you've got a lot of experience here. Your thoughts on the business model, and how the AI as a service, you mentioned that, which is, we totally see the same thing. We see a confluence of old network models transforming into personal networks. We're seeing a trend where the relationship to the network, if you will, from a personal standpoint, could be the device initially, but now it's wearables. It's the watch, it's the tablet. So now people have this connection, digital connection to the network. Might not be just one network, it could be two, so now AI has to come in, and people are speculating that AI could be that nice brokering automation between all the digital services. Whether I'm jumping into an autonomous vehicle >> So if you refer to services for consumers, then the approach that we have is to offer a B to B to C business model, so in each lifestyle category. We purchased a cooking school, or a percentage of a cooking school, ABC Cooking. And then we were looking for kitchen devices, right, to offer that service, an oven, a bluetooth connected pan. I think some of these devices will be showing up at a Mobile World Congress. And then, people want a service wrapped around that. Same thing happened last year with fitness, with Fitbit, but also there's so many other devices to monitor your heartbeat and your health at the consumer level. But consumers want a service provider, someone to put that together for them. And I think AI would be in that layer. >> So when you say service, you don't mean like, network services or connections, you mean lifestyle services. You mentioned cooking. By the way, Twitch has one of the most popular shows in Korea. People watch each other eating food. It's one of the hottest live-streaming shows. But this kind of talks about that. You mentioned healthcare. Is this the kind of new software you see? And these are kind of the new digital services? Is that what you're looking at? >> That's exactly what we're looking at. I think people don't associate a carrier and services. In Asia, more so, maybe Korea, and Japan, because 5G will happen there, first. And Docomo will be the first carrier to have 5G in Japan. I think Korea, they'll have their version first. So I think with that, we have been, I guess since the days of i-mode, offering services, in a way. Because PC, and phone has been analogous, all data services have been just data in Japan. >> What's your take on 5G right now? Because obviously that's the big story at Mobile World Congress. Is it real? Is this one of the big upgrade areas? Do you see that being a catalyst? >> Yeah, I mean, we will have it for the Tokoyo Olympics. So we're working on that. >> And what kind of speeds are they talking about? Gigabit, is that what they're looking at? >> Yeah, I think it's within 30 seconds you can download a full HD movie. >> (laughs) I want that. >> For consumers like me right? >> Come on, I want that now. We had our last guest talking about that. "What am I going to do with a Gig?" I'm like, well, apps will figure it out. That's one of the beautiful things about software. What's the coolest thing that you've seen? In terms of, as you look at some of the things that are around the corner, what are some of the cool highlights that you see connecting the dots with some of these new kinds of services? What's the trends? >> Depends on if you say consumer, enterprise, or kind of core. Like I said, what's in the home is interesting. On the infrastructure side, mapping. I think new types of beyond Waze mapping, 3-D drone mapping. >> The drone thing is super hot. That is killer. >> But it requires a new data set. >> Yeah. >> Right? And if you look at, Waze is great, but if you look at it, it's almost outdated, now, right? In terms of what you can imagine, if there is a tree that comes up because of a storm, or has fallen down, you want that map to configure that. So that the drone can fly over the building, or the tree, or whatever's in the way. So you need real-time mapping, and I think that's an interesting area that we've been looking at a lot. >> And connectivity will fuel a lot of these devices, whether they're drones, or other sensors on the network. As that's, I'd imagine, the good instrumentation out there for that stuff. >> And also social data. The confluence of easy, cheap social data. And then marrying that, and stitching that in there. You know, we've found companies that will identify you through video, like computer vision, and a drone will follow you and recognize you through AI. >> That's cool. >> That's kind of, you know, there may be small increases in innovation, but without the AI and the machine learning, you can't- >> Yeah, it's interesting, you know, this lifestyle, these services. I think that's the right strategy in the right direction. Because we were just having a debate earlier this morning on theCube, here, about autonomous vehicles. Because one of the four categories of the hot trends in Mobile World Congress is autonomous vehicles, entertainment and media, smart cities, and home, automating and all that stuff. And that's all an opportunity for services. But we were debating that transportation's not going away, but I might not buy a car in the future. The differentiation might come from really cool software that allows me to take my preferences, my Spotify playlist, all my digital services that I am leveraging into an environment, whether it's a car, a theater, a park, a stadium. Whatever lifestyle I'm in, I can then move with my digital ecosystem, if you will. My personal- >> Your preferences. >> My digital aura, if you will, and not have to reboot, and connect. I mean right now, my phone works. I just associate, but you know, still, it feels clunky. So I think that's kind of a cool direction. Is that something that you see that telcos and most folks will pick up? Or is that just you guys doing that right now? >> I think what interests me about NTT Docomo when I joined was that they're kind of in the forefront, and in kind of leadership of that. And I think Korea and Japan, in Asia, are looking ahead. What do you do with unlimited data? And then kind of following you everywhere. So I think AI, uh, you know, we had SIRI, Shabette Concierge, which was, I guess, our version of SIRI a long time ago. There's a lot of voice-enabled applications. So, I guess, will that be the interface? I think another interesting concept is what will be the interface? The phone, Amazon Echo, what will be the natural interface for you to connect to these devices and preferences? >> Take us through the day to day in the life of a VC, kind of the deals that you do. What happens in your day to day life here in Silicon Valley? Take us through some of the things that you go through every day. >> Most days, I guess, just meeting with companies and trying to find, you know, the next one. There's so many great areas, and also the next trends. We also do a lot of enterprise deals. So I've been looking at security, cloud, a lot of the devops, or kind of what's around the cloud systems. Finding the right companies. And then, also intersecting with my, I have a business development team, and they connect to Tokyo, so there at night, talking to the business group leaders. And finding that balance of, what is a technology that would work in Japan? What are they interested in? And then, out here, scouting for those companies. >> Yeah, one of the sub-plots of the Mobile World Congress this year, which is consistent with pretty much the trend is that the enterprise, IT, is evolving very quickly because of the cloud. Amazon has certainly demonstrated the winning in the cloud. And security, no perimeter, API economy, these new trends are forcing IT to move from this proven operational methodology to very agile, data-driven, high-compute clouds. And security's one of the huge issues. And now you have multi-clouds, where I might have something in Azure, I might have something in Amazon, I might have something in a geographic basis around the world trying to operate globally, being a multinational, is challenging. What's your take on that? Because this is an area that is not sexy as the consumer play, but in the B-to-B space, it is really front and center. RSA conference just last week, we were talking on email about RSA. Two weeks ago, that was the number one thing. You've got the cybersecurity issues, you've got the cyber surveillance, and also just the threat detection from ransomware to just consumer phishing. What's your thoughts in this area? >> So, I guess we're looking at kind of what's the next new area, which would be using AI to analyze all this data that's coming in, from the perimeter, from the end point, on your network, right? And then what can bubble up to the surface? We've invested in two companies in this area: Centrify and Cyphort. Looking for, kind of, other companies that- >> John: Well, Centrify, they're really focused on the breech. >> They're really focused, yes. >> Tom Kemp, in fact we went to their party at the RSA, Jeff Frick and I. They had a great band. Had a good time with those guys. But they're doing extremely well. They're very focused on mobile. >> They're doing really well, yeah. >> So what is the challenge, in your mind, right now, if you're an entrepreneur out there, for the folks watching? They're looking for kind of like the white space. They're looking for some tea leaves to read. Could you share any color on just advice for the entrepreneurs out there? Because it's certainly a turbulent time in the enterprise, and just in general, the cloud market. >> It's very competitive. >> Advice for entres, where should they focus? What sort of key metrics should they be building their ventures around? >> I think it depends on if you have an idea, or have a product already, but I think it's very competitive, right? And it's hard to break out of. What's your product differentiation? On the enterprise space, I think building a product, solving the problem. And then once you've done that, built a great team, then sales. And I think in the security space, trying to get to a million ARR, right? Just getting to a certain scale- >> So tell us about Centrify. When did you guys invest in those guys? Early, was it later on, which round did you guys- >> We invested, in the last round, so, uh, we were late stage investors, but we're very happy with the investment. They're doing very well. >> Awesome. Any other cool things you're working on that you'd like to share? >> We have taken apart AI, and started to look at transportation, so I think mapping is a little bit a part of that. It's also driving different industries, like e-commerce, IoT. We've looked at IoT. >> You must get a lot of this all the time, and I've got to ask you the same question, because I always get asked, "John, what is AI?" Now, I have two answers. Oh, AI's been around for a long time, but then there's a new AI. How do you answer that question? Because AI as a service essentially is software in the world paradigm, and it certainly is happening where you're going to start to see some significant software advances. But AI in and of itself is evolving. How do you describe AI as a service? How would you describe it to the layperson out there? >> I think, maybe its early stage, it's the team, and the technology. How many PhDs, you know, what are you looking at? What type of machine learns? That's, we have the more technical team. We build services. You know, my boss' boss is the head of services and he reports to the CTO of Docomo. His team and he, they look at that. Then on the other hand, though, I think its later stage, is vertical industries. Have people taken it apart, put it together, and then are monetizing that? So I think it's- >> John: It's a lot of machine learning. A lot of data-driven, So algorithms over data, or data over algorithms? Is there a philosophy there? I mean, that's a debate that people love to talk about. >> Maybe it depends on where you're applying it, who it's for, where do you get the data, how do you train the data? And, you know, what is the result? And are people happy with the result? I think the core infrastructure, I think once an AI company becomes hot, then it gets bought, and at that point, we all know who the players are. And people are probably looking for more and more of those, so I think those are harder to find. So then, like I've said, we've taken that apart, and maybe we've looked at mapping. What are maybe more the components underneath that that we can start to say this is going to be huge in the future? >> Yeah, and I think that's a great philosophy, too. If you look at how IBM has branded Waston, you could almost look at how successful that's been because people can get a mental model around that. And they've taken a similar approach, although I would say they've done very good on the vertical packaging. And a lot of work's going on, now, I think we're seeing down in the guts of the tech. I think there's a machine learning and more going on there, which is really cool. >> Which utilizes the cloud, right, and- >> That's where the power- >> That's where the power is. >> The compute. I mean Amazon has that. At the last re-invent, they announced the machine learning as a service. You're starting to see this now, where people can take a iterative approach to leveraging this AI as a service. I'm really impressed by that. Congratulations on a great strategy. I think that should be a winner. >> Yeah. Thank you. And that's going to be probably a core business model. I think other telcos should take notice of that. But maybe we shouldn't tell them we're alive. We can't put it back. Christina, thanks so much for coming in, appreciate it. Christina Ku, here, inside theCube. Special coverage of Mobile World Congress. Doing all the investments, checking out all the new business models, and really looking at AI as a service, and that really is cutting edge. That really is consistent with the data. It's theCube, we'll be right back with more after this short break. (tech music) (digital music)

>> My name is Franco Nori. Is a great pleasure to be here and I thank you for attending this meeting and I'll be talking about some of the work we are doing within the NTT-PHI group. I would like to thank the organizers for putting together this very interesting event. The topics studied by NTT-PHI are very exciting and I'm glad to be part of this great team. Let me first start with a brief overview of just a few interactions between our team and other groups within NTT-PHI. After this brief overview or these interactions then I'm going to start talking about machine learning and neural networks applied to computationally difficult problems in quantum physics. The first one I would like to raise is the following. Is it possible to have decoherence free interaction between qubits? And the proposed solution was a postdoc and a visitor and myself some years ago was to study decoherence free interaction between giant atoms made of superconducting qubits in the context of waveguide quantum electrodynamics. The theoretical prediction was confirmed by a very nice experiment performed by Will Oliver's group at MIT was probably so a few months ago in nature and it's called waveguide quantum electrodynamics with superconducting artificial giant atoms. And this is the first joint MIT Michigan nature paper during this NTT-PHI grand period. And we're very pleased with this. And I look forward to having additional collaborations like this one also with other NTT-PHI groups, Another collaboration inside NTT-PHI regards the quantum hall effects in a rapidly rotating polarity and condensates. And this work is mainly driven by two people, a Michael Fraser and Yoshihisa Yamamoto. They are the main driving forces of this project and this has been a great fun. We're also interacting inside the NTT-PHI environment with the groups of marandI Caltech, like McMahon Cornell, Oliver MIT, and as I mentioned before, Fraser Yamamoto NTT and others at NTT-PHI are also very welcome to interact with us. NTT-PHI is interested in various topics including how to use neural networks to solve computationally difficult and important problems. Let us now look at one example of using neural networks to study computationally difficult and hard problems. Everything we'll be talking today is mostly working progress to be extended and improve in the future. So the first example I would like to discuss is topological quantum phase transition retrieved through manifold learning, which is a variety of version of machine learning. This work is done in collaboration with Che, Gneiting and Liu all members of the group. preprint is available in the archive. Some groups are studying a quantum enhanced machine learning where machine learning is supposed to be used in actual quantum computers to use exponential speed-up and using quantum error correction we're not working on these kind of things we're doing something different. We're studying how to apply machine learning applied to quantum problems. For example how to identify quantum phases and phase transitions. We shall be talking about right now. How to achieve, how to perform quantum state tomography in a more efficient manner. That's another work of ours which I'll be showing later on. And how to assist the experimental data analysis which is a separate project which we recently published. But I will not discuss today because the experiments can produce massive amounts of data and machine learning can help to understand these huge tsunami of data provided by these experiments. Machine learning can be either supervised or unsupervised. Supervised is requires human labeled data. So we have here the blue dots have a label. The red dots have a different label. And the question is the new data corresponds to either the blue category or the red category. And many of these problems in machine learning they use the example of identifying cats and dogs but this is typical example. However, there are the cases which are also provides with there are no labels. So you're looking at the cluster structure and you need to define a metric, a distance between the different points to be able to correlate them together to create these clusters. And you can manifold learning is ideally suited to look at problems we just did our non-linearities and unsupervised. Once you're using the principle component analysis along this green axis here which are the principal axis here. You can actually identify a simple structure with linear projection when you increase the axis here, you get the red dots in one area, and the blue dots down here. But in general you could get red green, yellow, blue dots in a complicated manner and the correlations are better seen when you do an nonlinear embedding. And in unsupervised learning the colors represent similarities are not labels because there are no prior labels here. So we are interested on using machine learning to identify topological quantum phases. And this requires looking at the actual phases and their boundaries. And you start from a set of Hamiltonians or wave functions. And recall that this is difficult to do because there is no symmetry breaking, there is no local order parameters and in complicated cases you can not compute the topological properties analytically and numerically is very hard. So therefore machine learning is enriching the toolbox for studying topological quantum phase transitions. And before our work, there were quite a few groups looking at supervised machine learning. The shortcomings that you need to have prior knowledge of the system and the data must be labeled for each phase. This is needed in order to train the neural networks . More recently in the past few years, there has been increased push on looking at all supervised and Nonlinear embeddings. One of the shortcomings we have seen is that they all use the Euclidean distance which is a natural way to construct the similarity matrix. But we have proven that it is suboptimal. It is not the optimal way to look at distance. The Chebyshev distances provides better performance. So therefore the difficulty here is how to detect topological quantifies transition is a challenge because there is no local order parameters. Few years ago we thought well, three or so years ago machine learning may provide effective methods for identifying topological Features needed in the past few years. The past two years several groups are moving this direction. And we have shown that one type of machine learning called manifold learning can successfully retrieve topological quantum phase transitions in momentum and real spaces. We have also Shown that if you use the Chebyshev distance between data points are supposed to Euclidean distance, you sharpen the characteristic features of these topological quantum phases in momentum space and the afterwards we do so-called diffusion map, Isometric map can be applied to implement the dimensionality reduction and to learn about these phases and phase transition in an unsupervised manner. So this is a summary of this work on how to characterize and study topological phases. And the example we used is to look at the canonical famous models like the SSH model, the QWZ model, the quenched SSH model. We look at this momentous space and the real space, and we found that the metal works very well in all of these models. And moreover provides a implications and demonstrations for learning also in real space where the topological invariants could be either or known or hard to compute. So it provides insight on both momentum space and real space and its the capability of manifold learning is very good especially when you have the suitable metric in exploring topological quantum phase transition. So this is one area we would like to keep working on topological faces and how to detect them. Of course there are other problems where neural networks can be useful to solve computationally hard and important problems in quantum physics. And one of them is quantum state tomography which is important to evaluate the quality of state production experiments. The problem is quantum state tomography scales really bad. It is impossible to perform it for six and a half 20 qubits. If you have 2000 or more forget it, it's not going to work. So now we're seeing a very important process which is one here tomography which cannot be done because there is a computationally hard bottleneck. So machine learning is designed to efficiently handle big data. So the question we're asking a few years ago is chemistry learning help us to solve this bottleneck which is quantum state tomography. And this is a project called Eigenstate extraction with neural network tomography with a student Melkani , research scientists of the group Clemens Gneiting and I'll be brief in summarizing this now. The specific machine learning paradigm is the standard artificial neural networks. They have been recently shown in the past couple of years to be successful for tomography of pure States. Our approach will be to carry this over to mixed States. And this is done by successively reconstructing the eigenStates or the mixed states. So it is an iterative procedure where you can slowly slowly get into the desired target state. If you wish to see more details, this has been recently published in phys rev A and has been selected as a editor suggestion. I mean like some of the referees liked it. So tomography is very hard to do but it's important and machine learning can help us to do that using neural networks and these to achieve mixed state tomography using an iterative eigenstate reconstruction. So why it is so challenging? Because you're trying to reconstruct the quantum States from measurements. You have a single qubit, you have a few Pauli matrices there are very few measurements to make when you have N qubits then the N appears in the exponent. So the number of measurements grows exponentially and this exponential scaling makes the computation to be very difficult. It's prohibitively expensive for large system sizes. So this is the bottleneck is these exponential dependence on the number of qubits. So by the time you get to 20 or 24 it is impossible. It gets even worst. Experimental data is noisy and therefore you need to consider maximum-likelihood estimation in order to reconstruct the quantum state that kind of fits the measurements best. And again these are expensive. There was a seminal work sometime ago on ion-traps. The post-processing for eight qubits took them an entire week. There were different ideas proposed regarding compressed sensing to reduce measurements, linear regression, et cetera. But they all have problems and you quickly hit a wall. There's no way to avoid it. Indeed the initial estimate is that to do tomography for 14 qubits state, you will take centuries and you cannot support a graduate student for a century because you need to pay your retirement benefits and it is simply complicated. So therefore a team here sometime ago we're looking at the question of how to do a full reconstruction of 14-qubit States with in four hours. Actually it was three point three hours Though sometime ago and many experimental groups were telling us that was very popular paper to read and study because they wanted to do fast quantum state tomography. They could not support the student for one or two centuries. They wanted to get the results quickly. And then because we need to get these density matrices and then they need to do these measurements here. But we have N qubits the number of expectation values go like four to the N to the Pauli matrices becomes much bigger. A maximum likelihood makes it even more time consuming. And this is the paper by the group in Inns brook, where they go this one week post-processing and they will speed-up done by different groups and hours. Also how to do 14 qubit tomography in four hours, using linear regression. But the next question is can machine learning help with quantum state tomography? Can allow us to give us the tools to do the next step to improve it even further. And then the standard one is this one here. Therefore for neural networks there are some inputs here, X1, X2 X3. There are some weighting factors when you get an output function PHI we just call Nonlinear activation function that could be heavy side Sigmon piecewise, linear logistic hyperbolic. And this creates a decision boundary and input space where you get let's say the red one, the red dots on the left and the blue dots on the right. Some separation between them. And you could have either two layers or three layers or any number layers can do either shallow or deep. This cannot allow you to approximate any continuous function. You can train data via some cost function minimization. And then there are different varieties of neural nets. We're looking at some sequel restricted Boltzmann machine. Restricted means that the input layer speeds are not talking to each other. The output layers means are not talking to each other. And we got reasonably good results with the input layer, output layer, no hidden layer and the probability of finding a spin configuration called the Boltzmann factor. So we try to leverage Pure-state tomography for mixed-state tomography. By doing an iterative process where you start here. So there are the mixed States in the blue area the pure States boundary here. And then the initial state is here with the iterative process you get closer and closer to the actual mixed state. And then eventually once you get here, you do the final jump inside. So you're looking at a dominant eigenstate which is closest pure state and then computer some measurements and then do an iterative algorithm that to make you approach this desire state. And after you do that then you can essentially compare results with some data. We got some data for four to eight trapped-ion qubits approximate W States were produced and they were looking at let's say the dominant eigenstate is reliably recorded for any equal four, five six, seven, eight for the ion-state, for the eigenvalues we're still working because we're getting some results which are not as accurate as we would like to. So this is still work in progress, but for the States is working really well. So there is some cost scaling which is beneficial, goes like NR as opposed to N squared. And then the most relevant information on the quality of the state production is retrieved directly. This works for flexible rank. And so it is possible to extract the ion-state within network tomography. It is cost-effective and scalable and delivers the most relevant information about state generation. And it's an interesting and viable use case for machine learning in quantum physics. We're also now more recently working on how to do quantum state tomography using Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks. Usually the masters student are analyzed in PhD and then two former postdocs. So this CGANs refers to this Conditional Generative Adversarial Networks. In this framework you have two neural networks which are essentially having a dual, they're competing with each other. And one of them is called generator another one is called discriminator. And there they're learning multi-modal models from the data. And then we improved these by adding a cost of neural network layers that enable the conversion of outputs from any standard neural network into physical density matrix. So therefore to reconstruct the density matrix, the generator layer and the discriminator networks So the two networks, they must train each other on data using standard gradient-based methods. So we demonstrate that our quantum state tomography and the adversarial network can reconstruct the optical quantum state with very high fidelity which is orders of magnitude faster and from less data than a standard maximum likelihood metals. So we're excited about this. We also show that this quantum state tomography with these adversarial networks can reconstruct a quantum state in a single evolution of the generator network. If it has been pre-trained on similar quantum States. so requires some additional training. And all of these is still work in progress where some preliminary results written up but we're continuing. And I would like to thank all of you for attending this talk. And thanks again for the invitation.

Hi, I'm Hideo Mabuchi from Stanford University. This is my presentation on coherent nonlinear dynamics, and combinatorial optimization. This is going to be a talk, to introduce an approach, we are taking to the analysis, of the performance of Coherent Ising Machines. So let me start with a brief introduction, to ising optimization. The ising model, represents a set of interacting magnetic moments or spins, with total energy given by the expression, shown at the bottom left of the slide. Here the cigna variables are meant to take binary values. The matrix element jij, represents the interaction, strength and sign, between any pair of spins ij, and hi represents a possible local magnetic field, acting on each thing. The ising ground state problem, is defined in an assignment of binary spin values, that achieves the lowest possible value of total energy. And an instance of the easing problem, is specified by given numerical values, for the matrix j and vector h, although the ising model originates in physics, we understand the ground state problem, to correspond to what would be called, quadratic binary optimization, in the field of operations research. And in fact, in terms of computational complexity theory, it can be established that the, ising ground state problem is NP complete. Qualitatively speaking, this makes the ising problem, a representative sort of hard optimization problem, for which it is expected, that the runtime required by any computational algorithm, to find exact solutions, should asyntonically scale, exponentially with the number of spins, and four worst case instances at each end. Of course, there's no reason to believe that, the problem instances that actually arise, in practical optimization scenarios, are going to be worst case instances. And it's also not generally the case, in practical optimization scenarios, that we demand absolute optimum solutions. Usually we're more interested in, just getting the best solution we can, within an affordable cost, where costs may be measured in terms of time, service fees and or energy required for computation. This focus is great interest on, so-called heuristic algorithms, for the ising problem and other NP complete problems, which generally get very good, but not guaranteed optimum solutions, and run much faster than algorithms, that are designed to find absolute Optima. To get some feeling for present day numbers, we can consider the famous traveling salesman problem, for which extensive compilations, of benchmarking data may be found online. A recent study found that, the best known TSP solver required median runtimes, across a library of problem instances, that scaled as a very steep route exponential, for an up to approximately 4,500. This gives some indication of the change, in runtime scaling for generic, as opposed to worst case problem instances. Some of the instances considered in this study, were taken from a public library of TSPs, derived from real world VLSI design data. This VLSI TSP library, includes instances within ranging from 131 to 744,710, instances from this library within between 6,880 and 13,584, were first solved just a few years ago, in 2017 requiring days of runtime, and a 48 core two gigahertz cluster, all instances with n greater than or equal to 14,233, remain unsolved exactly by any means. Approximate solutions however, have been found by heuristic methods, for all instances in the VLSI TSP library, with, for example, a solution within 0.014% of a known lower bound, having been discovered for an instance, with n equal 19,289, requiring approximately two days of runtime, on a single quarter at 2.4 gigahertz. Now, if we simple-minded the extrapolate, the route exponential scaling, from the study yet to n equal 4,500, we might expect that an exact solver, would require something more like a year of runtime, on the 48 core cluster, used for the n equals 13,580 for instance, which shows how much, a very small concession on the quality of the solution, makes it possible to tackle much larger instances, with much lower costs, at the extreme end, the largest TSP ever solved exactly has n equal 85,900. This is an instance derived from 1980s VLSI design, and this required 136 CPU years of computation, normalized to a single core, 2.4 gigahertz. But the 20 fold larger, so-called world TSP benchmark instance, with n equals 1,904,711, has been solved approximately, with an optimality gap bounded below 0.0474%. Coming back to the general practical concerns, of applied optimization. We may note that a recent meta study, analyze the performance of no fewer than, 37 heuristic algorithms for MaxCut, and quadratic binary optimization problems. And find the performance... Sorry, and found that a different heuristics, work best for different problem instances, selected from a large scale heterogeneous test bed, with some evidence, the cryptic structure, in terms of what types of problem instances, were best solved by any given heuristic. Indeed, there are reasons to believe, that these results for MaxCut, and quadratic binary optimization, reflect to general principle, of a performance complementarity, among heuristic optimization algorithms, and the practice of solving hard optimization problems. There thus arises the critical pre processing issue, of trying to guess, which of a number of available, good heuristic algorithms should be chosen, to tackle a given problem instance. Assuming that any one of them, would incur high cost to run, on a large problem of incidents, making an astute choice of heuristic, is a crucial part of maximizing overall performance. Unfortunately, we still have very little conceptual insight, about what makes a specific problem instance, good or bad for any given heuristic optimization algorithm. This is certainly pinpointed by researchers in the field, as a circumstance and must be addressed. So adding this all up, we see that a critical frontier, for cutting edge academic research involves, both the development of novel heuristic algorithms, that deliver better performance with lower costs, on classes of problem instances, that are underserved by existing approaches, as well as fundamental research, to provide deep conceptual insight, into what makes a given problem instance, easy or hard for such algorithms. In fact, these days, as we talk about the end of Moore's law, and speculate about a so-called second quantum revolution, it's natural to talk not only about novel algorithms, for conventional CPUs, but also about highly customized, special purpose hardware architectures, on which we may run entirely unconventional algorithms, for common tutorial optimizations, such as ising problem. So against that backdrop, I'd like to use my remaining time, to introduce our work on, analysis of coherent using machine architectures, and associated optimization algorithms. Ising machines in general, are a novel class of information processing architectures, for solving combinatorial optimization problems, by embedding them in the dynamics, of analog, physical, or a cyber-physical systems. In contrast to both more traditional engineering approaches, that build ising machines using conventional electronics, and more radical proposals, that would require large scale quantum entanglement the emerging paradigm of coherent ising machines, leverages coherent nominal dynamics, in photonic or optical electronic platforms, to enable near term construction, of large scale prototypes, that leverage posting as information dynamics. The general structure of current of current CIM systems, as shown in the figure on the right, the role of the easing spins, is played by a train of optical pulses, circulating around a fiber optical storage ring, that beam splitter inserted in the ring, is used to periodically sample, the amplitude of every optical pulse. And the measurement results, are continually read into an FPGA, which uses then to compute perturbations, to be applied to each pulse, by a synchronized optical injections. These perturbations are engineered to implement, the spin-spin coupling and local magnetic field terms, of the ising hamiltonian, corresponding to a linear part of the CIM dynamics. Asynchronously pumped parametric amplifier, denoted here as PPL and wave guide, adds a crucial nonlinear component, to the CIM dynamics as well. And the basic CIM algorithm, the pump power starts very low, and is gradually increased, at low pump powers, the amplitudes of the easing spin pulses, behave as continuous complex variables, whose real parts which can be positive or negative, by the role of soft or perhaps mean field spins. Once the pump power crosses the threshold, for perimetric self oscillation in the optical fiber ring, however, the amplitudes of the easing spin pulses, become effectively quantized into binary values, while the pump power is being ramped up, the FPGA subsystem continuously applies, its measurement based feedback implementation, of the using hamiltonian terms. The interplay of the linearized easing dynamics, implemented by the FPGA , and the thresholds quantization dynamics, provided by the sink pumped parametric amplifier, result in a final state, of the optical plus amplitudes, at the end of the pump ramp, that can be read as a binary strain, giving a proposed solution, of the ising ground state problem. This method of solving ising problems, seems quite different from a conventional algorithm, that runs entirely on a digital computer. As a crucial aspect, of the computation is performed physically, by the analog continuous coherent nonlinear dynamics, of the optical degrees of freedom, in our efforts to analyze CA and performance. We have therefore turn to dynamical systems theory. Namely a study of bifurcations, the evolution of critical points, and typologies of heteroclitic orbits, and basins of attraction. We conjecture that such analysis, can provide fundamental insight, into what makes certain optimization instances, hard or easy for coherent ising machines, and hope that our approach, can lead to both improvements of the course CIM algorithm, and the pre processing rubric, for rapidly assessing the CIM insuibility of the instances. To provide a bit of intuition about how this all works. It may help to consider the threshold dynamics, of just one or two optical parametric oscillators, in the CIM architecture just described. We can think of each of the pulse time slots, circulating around the fiber ring, as are presenting an independent OPO. We can think of a single OPO degree of freedom, as a single resonant optical mode, that experiences linear dissipation, due to coupling loss, and gain in a pump near crystal, as shown in the diagram on the upper left of the slide, as the pump power is increased from zero. As in the CIM algorithm, the non-linear gain is initially too low, to overcome linear dissipation. And the OPO field remains in a near vacuum state, at a critical threshold value, gain equals dissipation, and the OPO undergoes a sort of lasing transition. And the steady States of the OPO, above this threshold are essentially coherent States. There are actually two possible values, of the OPO coherent amplitude, and any given above threshold pump power, which are equal in magnitude, but opposite in phase, when the OPO cross this threshold, it basically chooses one of the two possible phases, randomly, resulting in the generation, of a single bit of information. If we consider two uncoupled OPOs, as shown in the upper right diagram, pumped at exactly the same power at all times, then as the pump power is increased through threshold, each OPO will independently choose a phase, and thus two random bits are generated, for any number of uncoupled OPOs, the threshold power per OPOs is unchanged, from the single OPO case. Now, however, consider a scenario, in which the two appeals are coupled to each other, by a mutual injection of their out coupled fields, as shown in the diagram on the lower right. One can imagine that, depending on the sign of the coupling parameter alpha, when one OPO is lasing, it will inject a perturbation into the other, that may interfere either constructively or destructively, with the field that it is trying to generate, via its own lasing process. As a result, when can easily show that for alpha positive, there's an effective ferromagnetic coupling, between the two OPO fields, and their collective oscillation threshold, is lowered from that of the independent OPO case, but only for the two collective oscillation modes, in which the two OPO phases are the same. For alpha negative, the collective oscillation threshold, is lowered only for the configurations, in which the OPO phases are opposite. So then looking at how alpha is related to the jij matrix, of the ising spin coupling hamilitonian, it follows the, we could use this simplistic to OPO CIM, to solve the ground state problem, of the ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic angles, to ising model, simply by increasing the pump power, from zero and observing what phase relation occurs, as the two appeals first start to lase. Clearly we can imagine generalizing the story to larger, and, however, the story doesn't stay as clean and simple, for all larger problem instances. And to find a more complicated example, we only need to go to n equals four, for some choices of jij for n equals four, the story remains simple, like the n equals two case. The figure on the upper left of this slide, shows the energy of various critical points, for a non frustrated n equals for instance, in which the first bifurcated critical point, that is the one that, by forgets of the lowest pump value a, this first bifurcated critical point, flows asyntonically into the lowest energy using solution, and the figure on the upper right, however, the first bifurcated critical point, flows to a very good, but suboptimal minimum at large pump power. The global minimum is actually given, by a distinct critical point. The first appears at a higher pump power, and is not needed radically connected to the origin. The basic CIM algorithm, is this not able to find this global minimum, such non-ideal behavior, seems to become more common at margin end, for the n equals 20 instance show in the lower plots, where the lower right pod is just a zoom into, a region of the lower left block. It can be seen that the global minimum, corresponds to a critical point, that first appears that of pump parameter a around 0.16, at some distance from the adriatic trajectory of the origin. That's curious to note that, in both of these small and examples, however, the critical point corresponding to the global minimum, appears relatively close, to the adiabatic trajectory of the origin, as compared to the most of the other, local minimum that appear. We're currently working to characterise, the face portrait typology, between the global minimum, and the adiabatic trajectory of the origin, taking clues as to how the basic CIM algorithm, could be generalized, to search for non-adiabatic trajectories, that jumped to the global minimum, during the pump up, of course, n equals 20 is still too small, to be of interest for practical optimization applications. But the advantage of beginning, with the study of small instances, is that we're able to reliably to determine, their global minima, and to see how they relate to the idea, that trajectory of the origin, and the basic CIM algorithm. And the small land limit, We can also analyze, for the quantum mechanical models of CAM dynamics, but that's a topic for future talks. Existing large-scale prototypes, are pushing into the range of, n equals, 10 to the four, 10 to the five, 10 to the six. So our ultimate objective in theoretical analysis, really has to be, to try to say something about CAM dynamics, and regime of much larger in. Our initial approach to characterizing CAM behavior, in the large end regime, relies on the use of random matrix theory. And this connects to prior research on spin classes, SK models, and the tap equations, et cetera, at present we're focusing on, statistical characterization, of the CIM gradient descent landscape, including the evolution of critical points, And their value spectra, as the pump powers gradually increase. We're investigating, for example, whether there could be some way, to explain differences in the relative stability, of the global minimum versus other local minima. We're also working to understand the deleterious, or potentially beneficial effects, of non-ideologies such as asymmetry, in the implemented using couplings, looking one step ahead, we plan to move next into the direction, of considering more realistic classes of problem instances, such as quadratic binary optimization with constraints. So in closing I should acknowledge, people who did the hard work, on these things that I've shown. So my group, including graduate students, Edwin Ng, Daniel Wennberg, Ryatatsu Yanagimoto, and Atsushi Yamamura have been working, in close collaboration with, Surya Ganguli, Marty Fejer and Amir Safavi-Naeini. All of us within the department of applied physics, at Stanford university and also in collaboration with Yoshihisa Yamamoto, over at NTT-PHI research labs. And I should acknowledge funding support, from the NSF by the Coherent Ising Machines, expedition in computing, also from NTT-PHI research labs, army research office, and ExxonMobil. That's it. Thanks very much.