(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to this special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE. We are not in the Palo Alto studio, We are in Napa Valley for a special CUBE event. And we have a great CUBE alumni guest remoting in from Seattle, Napa, Seattle. Venkat Krishnamachari, CEO and Co-founder of MontyCloud, CUBE alumni. Venkat, welcome back to the CUBE. Great to see you. >> It is great to see you again, John. Thank you for taking time. >> So we've had previous conversations on the CUBE. You guys were advanced technology partner with AWS. And startup showcase is going on again, we're back for a revisit there for special session. We're going to go into deep dive on MontyCloud. You've had tremendous success with very large enterprises with your product. Congratulations, and you're just emerging really into rapid growth. Take a minute to explain for the viewers who is MontyCloud and what's going on. >> Sure thing, John. So we are an autonomous cloud operations company. Like you call it, we are also an advanced technology partner, a public sector partner, and an Amazon certified cloud management partner. What we do is we help IT teams simplify their cloud operations. With our platform, our customers, without adding any specialized cloud skills or adding any multiple point tools, they can still enable their teams to provision, manage, operate the Cloud and reduce the ongoing cloud operations cost by 70%. That's what we do for our customers. >> You guys are solving a real problem that's emerging very quickly. It's actually a more of an opportunity, less of a problem, but it means a problem if you don't address it. And that is the cloud migration is going next level. Meaning, people are re platforming to the cloud with cloud operations. But now they're starting to leverage the cloud services and there's more and more coming on every day. Look at what server less is doing and the impact of microservices, just everything is changing fast and people are refactoring their businesses with cloud services. This is where it starts to get into what they call day two operations, where you got to be day one every day and create innovation. But now you've got this day two, where reliability, security, new things have to be nailed down and secured and stabilized. And so this is a big trend. You guys have a solution here. Could you take a minute and talk about the specific problem that you see customers and how you guys solve it? >> Sure thing. So customers like you rightly say, John, they're rapidly adopting the cloud. And what we are seeing here is there is a challenge of not just onboarding and consistent provisioning, which they perform on the metaphorical day one. They are also burdened with multiple operations. Like you called out, right? Keeping the security of your application, high compliance, maintaining visibility into who's using what, why some things are costing more or sometimes, sometimes they're not costing appropriately, right? Having a position on all of that is now an increasing burden and the responsibility on the IT team and the IT teams are increasingly being held accountable to the business objectives because business objectives are getting closely tied with cloud and digital transformation. That's the area we help and solve. >> So I want to ask you one of the questions that's come up a lot. And this is, and I don't mean to put you on the spot here at Venkat, but I think it's important to address a lot of people say, Hey, I'm buying into this misdirection. I just don't have the staff. My IT guys can't be trained fast enough. I got them on a re-skilling track. I got to find some talent. This is becoming not just how to provision stand up applications, put them in the cloud and grow them talent, the talent equation. Can you talk about how you see that problem being solved and how, what are you guys doing to help them? >> Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. I might skip some things to go directly to some of the value we'll be at, right? With our platform, imagine adding a highly skilled cloud solutions architect in under 10 minutes to your teams. That's one of the value of our platform. Customers are trying to hire more and more cloud solution architects. They're trying to upscale their own team members so that they can enable the rest of the company to consume the cloud safely, which means a cloud solutions architect role is not only the safe building blocks that others can reuse, but also put governance guardrails, and drive for accountability so that developers can move fast. That's one of the areas customers are struggling to hire and up-skill with our platform within 10 minutes, you can turn on autonomous cloud solution architect, which comes in, helps you fast track provisioning. Customers can deploy any kind of application pattern from networking to data services, to Silva based or container based applications. We have pre-built well architected solutions in the platform that acts like your own cloud solution architect. We address that skill gap immediately, their platform on the day one aspect of things. >> Yeah, I love it. It's like, you know, the old joke AI bots are bots are automating things. You're essentially automating like key specialized roles that traditionally were expensive. I mean, it's hard to find talent at that level. So I think that's a major wave coming and I think you guys are on top of it. So definitely want to hear more about that. I do want to get your thoughts while I have you here about cloud operations day one operations, day two operations, Venkat, define for me what you consider day one operations. >> Yeah. Day one operations involve helping your teams consume the cloud and fast track your digital transformation would an ability to have developers move fast, right? That's kind of day one, right? The top-down leadership decides let's go to the cloud. They have the enabled teams to consume it, and safely. That is an area we help. One, a typical thing we've learned in our conversations with customers, John, is this. Right, It's very expensive to let teams provision like the wild wild west, right? And then later pull back control. Later, drive for accountability. Oftentimes we see that customers end up in a spot where they wonder why this is costing them so much more than they originally taught. A lot of that is because consuming the cloud from day one itself has to be thought through, has to have well-architected principles in mind. So we help in that area. We call this shifting left, right? Customers, if they... the best way, right? The best way to consume the cloud and the right way to do it is to ensure that when you provision itself, there is a notion of well-architected principles in place security compliance costs are being addressed in the provisioning aspects. So we help there, for example, a fortune hundred customers for us, right? They were looking to fast track the application modernization and they were under pressure to do that. They use MontyCloud's pre-built templates, which are well-architected. That teams were able to fast track provisioning of the resources, enable the developers with the CICB pipeline that they needed and they could move their application fast. The key thing here is post moving the application. They found that the approach we took to solve in the day, one problem automatically reduces the amount of time they need to spend to drive for who owns the resources. Why is it costing so much? All those problems go away to a certain degree. If you think about day one, the right way. That's one area we helped with. And that's how we think about day one, reduce the ongoing burden from day one itself. >> Day one's great. You give them a blank, check the provisioning, all the services. And next thing you know, you're racking up a big bill. The engineers are building and they're waiting, but what do we build? Great stuff. First of all, engineers want to get access that's critical. And we know that that's where the innovation comes from Right, now, I want you to talk about day two operations because this, this where it starts to get really interesting when you start to reign it in, you know, the old expression, let chaos reign and then rein in the chaos. So define day two operations for us, what is day two operations mean for you? >> Okay. So this is our deep, you know, hypothesis that was driven by a really rich conversation with customers, right? Ongoing operations in the cloud is the responsibility of multiple teams. And the cloud providers are expecting consumers and the customers in this case to have a shared portion of their responsibility, right? Security is a shared responsibility. Compliance is a shared responsibility. Cost management is a shared responsibility. And then the ongoing uptime and MTTR, like the meantime to resolution, they are all responsibilities are wholly sitting on the customer side. All of this put together impact the bottom line of the business because more and more businesses are now cloud businesses powered by cloud applications, managing this entire set of problems, and challenges, is what we call us day two operations. >> One of the things you guys have been known for in the industry, in your customer base and within some of the geek community is you guys turn it teams into cloud powerhouses that's been said, what does that mean? What can you take me through that? Because I mean, we know what IT teams do. They could provision gear, they'd be mostly on premises. And they move to the cloud. They still got to do all the things that it stands to do, but then they got cloud and they got automation. So, but explain to me how you guys have transformed IT teams into cloud powerhouses. >> Sure. So maybe the customer example will help. Right? One of her fortune funded launch, you know, global customer before they're at the cloud, they had a five member team watching over a farm of servers, right? More 10,000 servers for compliance needs. Their physician wants to move those servers to the cloud. And, and in essence, move applications to the cloud and continue to provide compliance to their entire organization. In that they started up-skilling the five member team. When they met MontyCloud, we offered them a solution that not only help them govern those servers in the cloud with a very simple no-code approach, we also gave them four of their headcount back. They were able to repurpose four members on the team to other projects because we attached them that we attached with them compliance bot. We asked this question right to customers. Wouldn't it be? Wouldn't it be awesome, if you're able to quickly add a cloud operations engineer, a cloud security engineer, a cloud compliance engineer, to every application in a dedicated manner? Customers go, how do we do that, right? Well, we have anonymous bots that have been built for this purpose and the comprehensive real-time bots that customers can fine- tune to their environments, and it's as if you added a dedicated cloud compliance engineer. In this particular case, there's a large customer is now operating a 10,000 plus server farm with MontyCloud compliance bot with another individual on the team. And the other four individuals were given back to other projects. This is what we mean by empowering our customers and making that cloud team, the traditional IT teams into cloud powerhouses. They can do more with less and they can keep track of the cloud consumption in the right way. And they can do that without having to write a single line of code. That's what our platform promises. >> Awesome. Well, great stuff. As enterprise buyers are out there looking at solutions, you know, they always try to, you know, separate the winners from the not so good winners, if you will, that'd be, be polite. Jerry Chen regionally has been talking about this paper castles in the cloud where you can build moats within the cloud and build on other people's clouds. So that brings up the question that I wanted to ask you about MontyCloud. Your competitive advantage and how you compare vis-a-vis the competition and how should customers would potentially evaluating your platform and your services look at you long-term are you going to, what kind of value proposition are you offering them? Cause that's always top of mind in enterprise, you know, these guys got to be around, what, are they like me? They're going to solve my problem and help me transform. Will they deliver the value? So the question is, how are you guys competing? Can you address that please? >> Yeah. Like we, like, we have been sharing, you know, more than competition. It's the customer, right? That is so much more customer challenge to solve and solve it in a way that's most meaningful to customers. The competition is good to have because they sometimes show us the way, but customers really tell us both their stated needs and the implied needs that we find out, right? John, we are the only comprehensive cloud management platform that enables our customers in every step of the cloud transformation, right? You will find a, you will find in the market, point tools that help with security, point tools that help with compliance, provisioning infrastructure as code solutions that you have to learn and write code and do. There's a lot going on. We are the only comprehensive platform that thinks about customers from the day one. From onboarding to provisioning and consumption to governance, to security, compliance, and ongoing operations with costs and context in mind, we are the only platform that offers that to our customers. And all of that, without the customers having to write a single line of code, they can fast track as if they onboarded a cloud center of excellence in their team with the MontyCloud platform. That's our biggest differentiation. And this comes from deep understanding of the customers, interconnected problems, because you don't only solve provisioning and then forget context, you don't solve only context and cost and forget security. All of these are interconnected challenges. So you need an interconnected solution. That's what we're building. >> I think that interconnected systems, mindset really is about the bridge to the future. And if you can be with the customer together and build that bridge and cross over together, that's to me is a relationship oriented value proposition. I think that's really needed in this transformative market. So congratulations. I love the mindset there. I've got to ask you. I know you've got a lot of customers and you can't say their names on camera. A lot of large enterprises give us a taste of some of the things they say to you like, "Hey, Venkat, I love your service because blank. What do they, what are some of the anecdotal sayings that customers say about MontyCloud? >> Oh, we have some customers we can talk about. Some of the customers are going to come back on the stage actually St. Louis university is going to be coming on the QV event that's coming up soon, right? So a bunch of customers, we can talk about some customers. We are, you know, deeply working with them and we've solved some problems for them. So what we typically hear from customers is this, right? A lot of vendors come in and ask our teams to up-skill and they teach our teams how to manage cloud. Your solution helps us focus on our KPIs. That's what we repeatedly hear from customers, right? Being able to help the customer. Look, it's not the customers, you know, primary focus to build and maintain a cloud center of excellence that also involves dealing with multiple point tools that involves constantly keeping up with the growing footprint, that involves up-skilling the team constantly. You know, it's great that you have a cloud focus, but every customer that we've engaged with, even the large customers tell us that the fact that they can go back to focusing on their KPIs, whether the application is providing services to their customers, how much uptime is, is, is directly impacting their business. What are the costs of per transaction? Those are the important things they really want to focus on. So consistently our customers are able to come back and validate that when MontyCloud gets involved with them, they're able to shift that focus back to their business, as opposed to trying to focus on things that is basically becoming an essential problem. They need to solve. That's the common theme. We get us feedback and we continuously learn from that and continue to improve that. >> Awesome, great stuff. Venkat, great to have you on again, the CUBE Conversation at The Update, while I got you, take a minute to put a plug in for the company where you guys at on status, state of the company, are you guys looking to hire... sound bites? Anything you want to share? Give a quick minute plug for MontyCloud. >> Yeah, sure thing, John. Hey, we are a startup. We are always hiring. We're always trying to find the smartest people that we want to work with. We want people to come in and kind of show us what to do, right? So give us a shout out. From a growth perspective, John, the market is, you know, booming, right? We are, we are with the small team, which I will give a shout out to my team, right? We have like 23, 23 member team, right? Being able to go deliver to a world-class cloud management platform, expectations and deliver to fortune hundred companies means they are thinking about the problem space deeply. So those who are interested in that kind of, you know, accelerated delivery to customers, you know, do more with less attitude are welcome to engage with us from a self look to the company perspective. Here's what we offer. We offered a free trial today. Our platform can be turned on and start delivering value to customers. In under 10 minutes, we can go to MontyCloud.com, sign up for a free trial, connect their cloud accounts. Within few minutes, they're going to get free recommendations on where they can optimize costs. Where they can improve security. What are the compliance issues they can solve? And they'll get full visibility into the environment, all in just about a few clicks. And that is a value prop our platform offers on an ongoing basis. They can further customize the platform to their needs. So I invite everybody to go try MontyCloud.com. >> All right, Venkat, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Great example of how the cloud can enable startups to be a supplier for the biggest companies in the world. MontyCloud again, start-up successful in the cloud. This is what it's all about. The new model, new, new manufacturing. It's the cloud. I'm John Furrier with The CUBE. Thanks for watching this CUBE Conversation.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, It's theCUBE! Covering Fortinet Security Summit, brought to you by Fortinet. >> And welcome to the cube coverage here at the PGA champion-- Fortinet championship, where we're going to be here for Napa valley coverage of Fortinet's, the championships security summit, going on Fortinet, sponsoring the PGA, but a great guest Merritt Baer, who's the principal in the office of the CISO at Amazon web services. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Merritt: Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. >> So Fortinet, uh, big brand now, sponsoring the PGA. Pretty impressive that they're getting out there with the golf. It's very enterprise focused, a lot of action. A lot of customers here. >> Merritt: It seems like it, for sure. >> Bold move. Amazon, Amazon web services has become the gold standard in terms of cloud computing, seeing DevOps people refactoring. You've seen the rise of companies like Snowflake building on Amazon. People are moving not only to the cloud, but they're refactoring their business and security is top of mind for everyone. And obviously cybersecurity threats that Fortinet helps cover, you guys are partnering with them, is huge. What is your state of the union for cyber? What's the current situation with the threat landscape? Obviously there's no perimeter in the cloud. More end points are coming on board. The Edge is here. 5G, wavelength with outpost, a lot happening. >> That was a long question, but I'll, I'll try. So I think, you know, as always business in innovation is the driver. And security needs to be woven into that. And so I think increasingly we're seeing security not be a no shop, but be an enabler. And especially in cloud, when we're talking about the way that you do DevOps with security, I know folks don't like the term DevSecOps, but you know, to be able to do agile methodology and be able to do the short sprints that are really agile and, and innovative where you can-- So instead of nine months or whatever, nine week timelines, we're talking about short sprints that allow you to elastically scale up and down and be able to innovate really creatively. And to do that, you need to weave in your security because there's no like, okay, you pass go, you collect $200. Security is not an after the fact. So I think as part of that, of course the perimeter is dead, long live the perimeter, right? It does matter. And we can talk about that a little bit. You know, the term zero trust is really hot right now. We can dig into that if that's of interest. But I think part of this is just the business is kind of growing up. And as you alluded to we're at the start of what I think is an S curve that is just at the beginning. >> You know, I was really looking forward to Reinforced this year. It was got canceled last year, but the first inaugural event was in Boston. I remember covering that. This year it was virtual, but the keynote Steven gave was interesting, security hubs at the center of it. And I want to ask you, because I need you to share your view on how security's changed with the cloud, because there's now new things that are there to take advantage of if you're a business or an enterprise, yeah on premises, there's a standard operating procedure. You have the perimeter, et cetera. That's not there anymore, but with the cloud, there's a new, there's new ways to protect and security hub is one. What are some of the new things that cloud enables for security? >> Well, so just to clarify, like perimeters exist logically just like they do physically. So, you know, a VPC for example, would be a logical perimeter and that is very relevant, or a VPN. Now we're talking about a lot of remote work during COVID, for example. But one of the things that I think folks are really interested with Security Hub is just having that broad visibility and one of the beauties of cloud is that, you get this tactile sense of your estate and you can reason about it. So for example, when you're looking at identity and access management, you can look at something like access analyzer that will under the hood be running on a tool that our, our group came up with that is like reasoning about the permissions, because you're talking about software layers, you're talking about computer layer reasoning about security. And so another example is in inspector. We have a tool that will tell you without sending a single packet over the network, what your network reach ability is. There's just like this ability to do infrastructure as code that then allows you to do security as code. And then that allows for ephemeral and immutable infrastructures so that you could, for example, get back to a known good state. That being said, you know, you kill a, your web server gets popped and you kill it and you spin up a new one. You haven't solved your problem, right? You need to have some kind of awareness of networking and how principals work. But at the same time, there's a lot of beauties about cloud that you inherit from a security perspective to be able to work in those top layers. And that's of course the premise of cloud. >> Yeah, infrastructure as code, you mentioned that, it's awesome. And the program ability of it with, with server-less functions, you're starting to see new ways now to spin up resources. How is that changing the paradigm and creating opportunities for better security? Is it, is it more microservices? Is it, is, are there new things that people can do differently now that they didn't have a year ago or two years ago? Because you're starting to see things like server-less functions are very popular. >> So yes, and yes, I think that it is augmenting the way that we're doing business, but it's especially augmenting the way we do security in terms of automation. So server-less, under the hood, whether it's CloudWatch events or config rules, they are all a Lambda function. So that's the same thing that powers your Alexa at home. These are server-less functions and they're really simple. You can program them, you can find them on GitHub, but they are-- one way to really scale your enterprise is to have a lot of automation in place so that you put those decisions in ahead of time. So your gray area of human decision making is scaled down. So you've got, you know, what you know to be allowable, what you know to be not allowable. And then you increasingly kind of whittled down that center into things that really are novel, truly novel or high stakes or both. But the focus on automation is a little bit of a trope for us. We at Amazon like to talk about mechanisms, good intentions are not enough. If it's not someone's job, it's a hope and hope is not a plan, you know, but creating the actual, you know, computerized version of making it be done iteratively. And I think that is the key to scaling a security chain because as we all know, things can't be manual for long, or you won't be able to grow. >> I love the AWS reference. Mechanisms, one way doors, raising the bar. These are all kind of internal Amazon, but I got to ask you about the Edge. Okay. There's a lot of action going on with 5G and wavelength. Okay, and what's interesting is if the Edge becomes so much more robust, how do you guys see that security from a security posture standpoint? What should people be thinking about? Because certainly it's just a distributed Edge point. What's the security posture, How should we be thinking about Edge? >> You know, Edge is a kind of catch all, right, we're talking about Internet of Things. We're talking about points of contact. And a lot of times I think we focus so much on the confidentiality and integrity, but the availability is hugely important when we're talking about security. So one of the things that excites me is that we have so many points of contact and so many availability points at the Edge that actually, so for example, in DynamoDB, the more times you put a call on it, the more available it is because it's fresher, you've already been refreshing it, there are so many elements of this, and our core compute platform, EC2, all runs on Nitro, which is our, our custom hardware. And it's really fascinating, the availability benefits there. Like the best patching is a patching you don't have to do. And there are so many elements that are just so core to that Greengrass, you know, which is running on FreeRTOS, which has an open source software, for example, is, you know, one element of zero trust in play. And there are so many ways that we can talk about this in different incarnations. And of course that speaks to like the breadth and depth of the industries that use cloud. We're talking about automotive, we're talking about manufacturing and agriculture, and there are so many interesting use cases for the ways that we will use IOT. >> Yeah. It's interesting, you mentioned Nitro. we also got Annapurna acquisition years ago. You got latency at the Edge. You can handle low latency, high volume compute with the data. That's pretty powerful. It's a paradigm shift. That's a new dynamic. It's pretty compelling, these new architectures, most people are scratching their heads going, "okay, how do I do this, like what do I do?" >> No, you're right. So it is a security inheritance that we are extremely calculated about our hardware supply chain. And we build our own custom hardware. We build our own custom Silicon. Like, this is not a question. And you're right in that one of the things, one of the north stars that we have is that the security properties of our engineering infrastructure are built in. So there just is no button for it to be insecure. You know, like that is deliberate. And there are elements of the ways that nature works from it running, you know, with zero downtime, being able to be patched running. There are so many elements of it that are inherently security benefits that folks inherit as a product. >> Right. Well, we're here at the security summit. What are you excited for today? What's the conversations you're having here at the Fortinet security summit. >> Well, it's awesome to just meet folks and connect outside. It's beautiful outside today. I'm going to be giving a talk on securing the cloud journey and kind of that growth and moving to infrastructure as code and security as code. I'm excited about the opportunity to learn a little bit more about how folks are managing their hybrid environments, because of course, you know, I think sometimes folks perceive AWS as being like this city on a hill where we get it all right. We struggle with the same things. We empathize with the same security work. And we work on that, you know, as a principal in the office of the CISO, I spend a lot of my time on how we do security and then a lot of my time talking to customers and that empathy back and forth is really crucial. >> Yeah. And you've got to be on the bleeding edge and have the empathy. I can't help but notice your AWS crypto shirt. Tell me about the crypto, what's going on there. NFT's coming out, is there a S3 bucket at NFT now, I mean. (both laughing) >> Cryptography never goes out of style. >> I know, I'm just, I couldn't help-- We'll go back to the pyramids on that one. Yeah, no, this is not a, an advertisement for cryptocurrency. It is, I'm a fangirl of the AWS crypto team. And as a result of wearing their shirts, occasionally they send me more shirts. And I can't argue with that. >> Well, love, love, love the crypto. I'm big fan of crypto, I think crypto is awesome. Defi is amazing. New applications are going to come out. We think it's going to be pretty compelling, again, let's get today right. (laughing) >> Well, I don't think it's about like, so cryptocurrency is just like one small iteration of what we're really talking about, which is the idea that math resolves, and the idea that you can have value in your resolution that the math should resolve. And I think that is a fundamental principle and end-to-end encryption, I believe is a universal human right. >> Merritt, thank you for coming on the cube. Great, great to have you on. Thanks for sharing that awesome insight. Thanks for coming on. >> Merritt: Thank you. >> Appreciate it. Okay. CUBE coverage here in Napa valley, our remote set for Fortinet's security cybersecurity summit here as part of their PGA golf Pro-Am tournament happening here in Napa valley. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.

>>From around the globe. It's the cube covering Fortinet security summit brought to you by Fortinet. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage of 40 net championship security summit from beautiful Napa valley. Lisa Martin here with John farrier, John, and has been phenomenal to do an event in person outdoors and Napa valley. >>You're so bright. We have to wear shades. It's been sunny and it's been hot. It's been great. It's been a great, it's been a great day. I mean, I think Fordanet stepping up to that sponsorship for the PGA is a bold move they're doing well on the business front. They're expanding it. It's good for their customers. It's a new, bold marketing step. Affordanet honestly, they're doing extremely well on the business front. As I mentioned, they got a lot of cash coming in. They got happy customers and they're all here. And golf is a great environment for tech buyers. We know that. So it's great to have the cube on the sports circuit and, uh, we'll be doing more of them. It's it's awesome. >>Good. I, it is great to be on this sport circuit. One of the things that I talked with several folks about today, John Madison being one that CEO, CFO, COO, and then Kenzie, the CEO of Fordanet about the cultural synergies between the PGA and Ford nine. It was really nice to hear how both of these companies, both of these organizations are so invested in things like women in technology and steam and stem programs, and they really align on those two cultures. >>Yeah, there's a, it's a, it's a, it's a culture fit. I mean, they basically, it's a winning formula. Look at Ford and net. Um, you know, and having that kind of representation is good. They, they have a great reputation put in. It does PGA does as well and it's quality, right? So people like, like quality and they want to line that. So it's a great business move for Fordanet to, uh, to do the, uh, the golf sponsorship, uh, multiple years. I think it's six years, five or six years, they get they're doing this. Um, it's phenomenal. I think they're going to Fortnite is going to turn into a marketing powerhouse. I think you're going to start to see John Madison and the team, uh, really gin up some nice new things, because you can do a lot with the PGA. Again, this foundations is charities, again, a lot of causes that are involved in, in fundraising around the PGA and you got the tour players and honestly the tech scene. So I think tech and sports has always been something that I've loved. And I think, you know, we'd love to come and bring our sets here and having the cube here is just a really fun kind of winning formula as well. We'd love it. And we, and we wish we could eat it for more days this year. I think we will, but this has been so much, >>It has been so much fun. There's been about over 300 customers and partners here. Fortnite is a, is a hundred percent partner driven organization. Lot of innovation being discussed the last eight hours or so, but one of the things that you definitely feel is the strength in their partner, community and Fortinets commitment to it. Also something that really impresses me is their commitment to helping to fill the cybersecurity skills gap. This is a gap that has been growing for the last five years. They last week announced a pledge to train 1 million people in the next five years to help shorten that gap. And as we know that the threat landscape is only continuing to expand. So the great combination there, >>And it's a, cause that's a good business logic behind it because there's a of negative unemployment. They need more people to do cybersecurity careers, but also you mentioned women in tech, you know, a lot of that's a big movement too. You start to see a much more women in tech scene here. We had, uh, Merritt bear on principal office of the CSO at Amazon web services on she's amazing. She's wearing the Amazon Krypto shirts. That was a home run, love that interview, but you started to see them afford a net with the whole scene. Here is they're taking their message directly to their customers and they're including their customers. So the magic of this formula that they have with the PGA and this whole program is they don't have live concert series. They got a pavilion here with all their top partners, with customers that doing a summit behind us with their top marquee customers. And they're telling the story direct and you're going, I think you need to shift to see Fordanet really do more of that. What we love in the key, which is take that direct to, to media model, to their customers and contents data. We had great conversations here. I mean, that's all you, you know, viewing the, uh, head VP SVP of at and T cybersecurity, uh, amazing, uh, uh, candidate there's great cube guests. And he was just traveling some serious wisdom. So great guests all along. Fantastic. >>Well, it's, it's been an inspiring day. It's nice that 40 minute has taken the step to do an in-person event. Obviously they did it extremely safely. We were outdoors, but people are, I think a lot of people and I'm speaking for myself, for sure, ready for this to come back and meet the threat landscape that changes that that 40 net has seen in the last 18 months are phenomenal. The growth in ransomware, nearly 11 X in a year. And you had this massive shift to work from home. And now they're talking about how they're partnering with links us, for example, to help enterprises, to really make that remote work environment far more secure, faster, and optimize for the worker. Who's on video conferencing, communication tools. All the kids at home gaming are probably going to be pretty bummed about this, but it really shows coordinates commitment to this. There's a lot of permanence to what we're seeing here in this model. >>I know you and I have done ton of interviews together and, uh, with great guests around cybersecurity and the phrase always comes up and over the past decade, there's there is no more perimeter here. You couldn't, you couldn't, it was louder than ever here because now you have so much going on connected devices. The future of work is at home with the virtual, uh, issues with the pandemic. And now with the Delta variant, uh, continuing at forward, it's a reality, we're in a hybrid world and, um, everything's going hybrid. And I think that's a new thing for companies to operationalize. So they got, there's no playbook. So there is a security playbook. And what these guys are doing is building an ecosystem to build product that people can wrap services around and to solve the key security problems. And that's that, that to me is a good business model. And the SAS is, again, you're seeing everyone go SAS. They want to go SAS product, or, you know, uh, some sort of business models involved in cloud. So cloud security, SAS all kind of rolled up. It's really kinda interesting trend. >>Yeah. We've talked about a whole bunch of trends today. One of them is just one of the marketing terms I've been using and I don't like to use it, but around for years as a future ready people, tech companies always describing solutions and technologies and products is future ready? Well, what does that really mean? Well, when the pandemic struck, none of us were future ready, but what we did hear and see and feel today from 40 net and their partners is how much acceleration they've done. So that going forward, we are going to be future ready for situations that arise like in this challenging cybersecurity landscape that businesses in every industry can prepare for. >>I think, I think the talks here in the cyber security summit behind us, it's interesting. Uh, Tufin one of their customers on a lot of the talks were the same thing, talking about the cultural shift, the cultural shift and security departments has to become more agile. And so that is a big untold story right now is that security departments. Aren't well-liked, they slow things down. I mean, you know, app review everything's gotta be looked at and it takes weeks. That is not good for developers. So app developers in the cloud, they want minutes, you know, shift left is something that we talk about all the time in our events with the developers dev ops movement is putting pressure on the security teams, culturally, who moves first. You don't go faster. You're going to be replaced, but you can't replace a security team. So I find that whole security cloud team dynamic, real organizational challenges. That's something I'm going to look into is one of my key takeaways from this this week. Yeah. >>A huge organizational change. And with that comes, you know, obviously different cultures with these organizations, but at the same time, there really is no more choice. They have to be working together. And as Kenzie and I were talking about, you know, security is no longer an ITP, this is a board level initiative and discussion businesses in every industry, whether it's a retailer or PGA tour have to be prepared. >>Yeah. I mean, I'm a security Hawk. I think every company needs to be prepared to take an offensive strike and be ready on the defense. And this is a huge agility and speed cause ransomware, you get taken down, you know, I mean that's business critical issue. You're dead, you're dead in the water. So, so again, this is all part of his quote digital transformation, uh, that everyone's talking about and is a do over, everyone's doing it over and doing it with the cloud. And I remember just recently in 2012, people were saying, oh, the cloud is not secure. It's now some more secure than anything else. So we starting to see that shift so that realities hit everybody. So it's been great. >>What are some of the things that excited you about the conversations that you had today? >>I was pretty impressed by the fact that one was a physical advantage. You mentioned. So, you know, people in personal, I found it refreshing. I think people here, I noticed we're one relieved to be out and about in public and talking on the cube. Um, but I was really impressed with, uh, the guests from Amazon web services. She was a crypto shirt that got me there. But I think this idea that security is not just a guy thing, right? So to me, women in tech was a, was a big conversation. I thought it was very positive this week, um, here and still a lot more work to do, but I think that's, what's cool. And just the talks were great. I mean, it's cutting edge concepts here. And I thought at, and T was great. I thought, uh, Tufin was a great conversation and again, all the guests that were awesome. So what did you think, what was your take? >>Just how much acceleration we've seen in the last year on innovation and partnerships that really jumped out that when, like I said, we talked about future ready and go, wow. So much of the world wasn't future ready a year and a half ago when this came out and all of the innovation and the positivities that have come out of technology companies creating, because we don't have a choice. We have to figure out secure work from home. For example, we know that some amount of it's going to persist hybrid maybe here to stay, to see what 40 net and their partner ecosystem have done in a short time period. Given the fact that you mentioned ransomware and their global threat landscape, I was talking with Derek, nearly X increased in ransomware and just, >>And they've got four to guard. They got all this. I think your interview with Ken, the CEO, I thought it was really compelling. It was one point he said, um, we're making a lot more investments when you asked him a pointed question. And I think that theme comes across really strong in all of our interviews today. And the conversations in the hallway here is that people that are making the investments are doing well. And so there's more investments being made and that's like, people kind of say, oh yeah, we can do this one, but you have to now. And so the other thing that I thought was awesome with John Madison, talking about their strategy around the PGA, it's a bold move, but it's kind of got this mindset of always innovating, but they're not, they go step at a time, so they get better. So I'm, I'm expecting next year to be better than this year, bigger, uh, and more integrated because that's what they do. They make things better. Um, I think that's gonna be fun to watch, but I think that's a bold move for Affordanet to be doing this kind of marketing. It's really, they haven't done that in the, in the past. So I think this is a really bold move. >>I agree. And they've spun this out of their accelerate event, which is an event that we've covered for years in person. So this was the first time that they've pulled the security summit out as its own event. And clearly there was a great buzz behind us all day. Lots of, lots of topics, a lot of discussions, a lot of partnership. And you're right. A lot of talk about investment investment in their partner ecosystem and investment internally. Yes. >>It's fun too. On a personal note, we've been following Fordanet for many, many years. You and I both got doing the interviews and you do and go to the events is watching them grow and be successful. And it's kind of proud though. I, yeah, I'll go for it. And that kind of rooting for him. And I want to thank them for inviting the cube here because we're so psyched to be here and be part of this awesome event. And again, golf, the cube kind of go together, right? Sports, the cubes. We love it. So always fun. So thanks to, for, to net out there for, uh, supporting us and being, being part of the cube. >>Well, you got the gear, you got your Fordanet Gulf t-shirt I got one too. And pink. It's beautiful. Yeah. You got some shades, but we also have some gear here help us in the morning for our next shows. Be caffeinated. Yeah. But no, it's been great. It's been great to be here. Great to hook co-host with you again in person if for 20 months or so, and looking forward to seeing how 49 and how back >>He was back up the vents. Thanks to the crew. Chuck Leonard, every one's era, Brendan. Right. Well done. Fordanet thank you. Thank you for >>John's been great. Thanks for having me up here today. Looking forward to the next time from Napa valley, Lisa Martin, for John farrier, you've been watching the cube

>>From around the globe. It's the cube covering Fortinet security summit brought to you by Fortinet. >>Welcome back to the cube. Lisa Martin here at the Fordham het championship security summit. Napa valley has been beautiful and gracious to us all day. We're very pleased to be here. I'm very pleased to welcome a first-timer to the cube. Rupesh Chuck Chuck Xi, VP a T and T cybersecurity and edge solutions at, at and T cybersecurity. Refresh. Welcome. >>Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Lisa, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. >>Me too. First of all, it's we're in Napa we're outdoors. It's beautiful venue, no complaints, right? We're at a golf PGA tournament. Very exciting. Talk to me about the at and T Fordanet relationship. Give me, give me an, a good insight into the partnership. >>Sure, sure. So, as you said, you know, beautiful weather in California, Napa it's my first time. Uh, so it's kind of a new experience for me going back to your question in terms of the relationship between eight P and T and Ford in that, uh, a long lasting, you know, 10 plus years, you know, hand in hand in terms of the product, the technology, the capabilities that we are brought together in the security space for our customers. So a strategic relationship, and I'm so thrilled to be here today as a, Fordanet invited us to be part of the championship. Tommy, >>Talk to me. So your role VP of, and T cybersecurity and edge solutions, give me an, a deep dive into what's in your purview. >>Sure, sure. So I, uh, sort of, you know, run the PNL or the profit and loss center for product management for all of at and T cybersecurity and ed solutions and the whole concept behind putting the teams together is the convergence in networking and security. Um, so, you know, we are supporting the entire customer continuum, whether it's a fortune 50, the fortune 1000 to mid-market customers, to small businesses, to, you know, government agencies, you know, whether it's a local government agency or a school district or a federal agency, et cetera. And my team and I focus on bringing new product and capabilities to the marketplace, you know, working with our sales team from an enablement perspective, go to market strategy. Um, and the whole idea is about, uh, you know, winning in the marketplace, right? So delivering growth and revenue to the business, >>Competitive differentiation. So we've seen so much change in the last year and a half. I know that's an epic understatement, but we've also seen the proliferation at the edge. What are some of the challenges that you're seeing and hearing from customers where that's concerned >>As you stated, right. There's a lot happening in the edge. And sometimes the definition for edge varies when you talk with different people, uh, the way we look at it is, you know, definitely focused on the customer edge, right? So if you think about many businesses, whether I am a, a quick serve restaurant or I'm a banking Institute or a financial services or an insurance agency, or I'm a retail at et cetera, you know, lots of different branches, lots of different transformation taking place. So one way of approaching it is that when you think about the customer edge, you see a lot of virtualization, software driven, a lot of IOT endpoints, et cetera, taking place. So the cyber landscape becomes more important. Now you're connecting users, devices, capabilities, your point of sale system to a multi-cloud environment, and that, you know, encryption of that data, the speed at which it needs to happen, all of that is very important. And as we think ahead with 5g and edge compute and what that evolution revolution is going to bring, it's going to get even more excited because to me, those are kind of like in a playgrounds of innovation, but we want to do it right and keep sort of, you know, cyber and security at the core of it. So we can innovate and keep the businesses safe. >>How do you help customers to kind of navigate edge cybersecurity challenges and them not being synonymous? >>That's a great, great question. You know, every day I see, you know, different teams, different agendas, different kinds of ways of approaching things. And what I tell customers and even my own teams is that, look, we have to have a, a blueprint and architecture, a vision, you know, what are the business outcomes that we want to achieve? What the customer wants to achieve. And then start to look at that kind of technology kind of convergence that is taking place, and especially in the security and the networking space, significant momentum on the convergence and utilize that convergence to create kind of full value stack solutions that can be scaled, can be delivered. So you are not just one and done, but it's a continuous innovation and improvement. And in the security space, you need that, right. It's never going to be one and done. No >>We've seen so much change in the last year. We've seen obviously this rapid pivot to work from home that was overnight for millions and millions of people. We're still in that too. A fair amount. There's a good amount of people that are still remote, and that probably will be permanently there's. Those that are going to be hybrid threat landscape bloated. I was looking at and talking with, um, 40 guard labs and the, the nearly 11 X increase in the last 12 months in ransomware is insane. And the ransomware as a business has exploded. So security is a board level conversation for businesses I assume in any. >>Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with you, it's a board level conversation. Security is not acknowledged the problem about picking a tool it's about, you know, the business risk and what do we need to do? Uh, you mentioned a couple of interesting stats, right? So we've seen, uh, you know, two things I'll share. One is we've seen, you know, 440 petabytes of data on the at and T network in one average business day. So 440 petabytes of data. Most people don't know what it is. So you can imagine the amount of information. So you can imagine the amount of security apparatus that you need, uh, to Tofino, protect, and defend and provide the right kind of insights. And then the other thing that VOC and along the same lines of what you were mentioning is significant, you know, ransomware, but also significant DDoSs attacks, right? So almost like, you know, we would say around 300% plus said, DDoSs mitigations that we did from last year, you know, year over year. >>So a lot of focus on texting the customer, securing the end points, the applications, the data, the network, the devices, et cetera. Uh, the other two points that I want to mention in this space, you know, again, going back to all of this is happening, right? So you have to focus on this innovation at the, at the speed of light. So, you know, artificial intelligence, machine learning, the software capabilities that are more, forward-looking have to be applied in the security space ever more than ever before, right. Needs these do, we're seeing alliances, right? We're seeing this sort of, you know, crowdsourcing going on of action on the good guys side, right? You see the national security agencies kind of leaning in saying, Hey, let's together, build this concept of a D because we're all going to be doing business. Whether it's a public to public public, to private, private, to private, all of those different entities have to work together. So having security, being a digital trust, >>Do you think that the Biden administrations fairly recent executive order catalyst of that? >>I give it, you know, the president and the, the administration, a lot of, you know, kudos for kind of, and then taking it head on and saying, look, we need to take care of this. And I think the other acknowledgement that it is not just hunting or one company or one agency, right? It's the whole ecosystem that has to come together, not just national at the global level, because we live in a hyper connected world. Right. And one of the things that you mentioned was like this hybrid work, and I was joking with somebody the other day that, and really the word is location, location, location, thinking, network security, and networking. The word is hybrid hybrid hybrid because you got a hybrid workforce, the hybrid cloud, you have a hybrid, you have a hyper-connected enterprise. So we're going to be in this sort of, you know, hybrid for quite some time are, and it has to >>Be secure and an org. And it's, you know, all the disruption of folks going to remote work and trying to get connected. One beyond video conference saying, kids are in school, spouse working, maybe kids are gaming. That's been, the conductivity alone has been a huge challenge. And Affordanet zooming a lot there with links to us, especially to help that remote environment, because we know a lot of it's going to remain, but in the spirit of transformation, you had a session today here at the security summit, talked about transformation, formation plan. We talk about that word at every event, digital transformation, right? Infrastructure transformation, it security. What context, where you talking about transformation in it today? What does it transformation plan mean for your customers? >>That's a great question because I sometimes feel, you know, overused term, right? Then you just take something and add it. It's it? Transformation, network, transformation, digital transformation. Um, but what we were talking today in, in, in the morning was more around and sort of, you know, again, going back to the network security and the transformation that the customers have to do, we hear a lot about sassy and the convergence we are seeing, you know, SD van takeoff significantly from an adoption perspective application, aware to experiences, et cetera, customers are looking at doing things like internet offload and having connectivity back into the SAS applications. Again, secure connectivity back into the SAS applications, which directly ties to their outcomes. Um, so the, the three tenants of my conversation today was, Hey, make sure you have a clear view on the business outcomes that you want to accomplish. Now, the second was work with a trusted advisor and at and T and in many cases is providing that from a trusted advisor perspective. And third, is that going back to the one and done it is not a one and done, right? This is a, is a continuous process. So sometimes we have to be thinking about, are we doing it in a way that we will always be future ready, will be always be able to deal with the security threats that we don't even know about today. So yeah, >>You bring up the term future ready. And I hear that all the time. When you think of man, we really weren't future ready. When the pandemic struck, there was so much that wasn't there. And when I was talking with 49 earlier, I said, you know, how much, uh, has the pandemic been a, uh, a catalyst for so much innovation? I imagine it has been the same thing that >>Absolutely. And, you know, I remember, you know, early days, February, March, where we're all just trying to better understand, right? What is it going to be? And the first thing was, Hey, we're all going to work remote, is it a one week? Is it a two week thing? Right? And then if you're like the CIO or the CSO or other folks who are worried about how am I going to give the productivity tools, right. Businesses in a one customer we work with, again, tobacco innovation was said, Hey, I have 20,000 call center agents that I need to take remote. How do you deliver connectivity and security? Because that call center agent is the bloodline for that business interacting with their end customers. So I think, you know, it is accelerated what would happen over 10 years and 18 months, and it's still unknown, right? So we're still discovering the future. >>There's a, there will be more silver linings to come. I think we'll learn to pick your brain on, on sassy adoption trends. One of the things I noticed in your abstract of your session here was that according to Gardner, the convergence of networking and security into the sassy framework is the most vigorous technology trend. And coming out of 2020, seeing that that's a big description, most vigorous, >>It's a big, big description, a big statement. And, uh, we are definitely seeing it. You know, we saw some of that, uh, in the second half of last year, as the organizations were getting more organized to deal with, uh, the pandemic and the change then coming into this year, it's even more accelerated. And what I mean by that is that, you know, I look at sort of, you know, three things, right? So one is going back to the hybrid work, remote work, work from anywhere, right. So how do you continue to deliver a differentiated experience, highly secure to that workforce? Because productivity, human capital very important, right? The second is that there's a back and forth on the branch transformation. So yes, you know, restaurants are opening back up. Retailers are opening back up. So businesses are thinking about how do I do that branch transformation? And then the third is explosive business IOT. So the IOT end points, do you put into manufacturing, into airports in many industries, we continue to see that. So when you think about sassy and the framework, it's about delivering a, a framework that allows you to protect and secure all of those endpoints at scale. And I think that trend is real. I've seen customer demand, we've signed a number of deals. We're implementing them as we speak across all verticals, healthcare, retail, finance, manufacturing, transportation, government agencies, small businesses, mid-sized businesses. >>Nope, Nope. Not at all. Talk to me about, I'm curious, you've been at, at and T a long time. You've seen a lot of innovation. Talk, talk to me about your perspectives on seeing that, and then what to you think as a silver lining that has come out of the, the acceleration of the last 18 months. >>She and I, I get the question, you know, I've been with at and T long time. Right. And I still remember the day I joined at T and T labs. So it was one of my kind of dream coming out of engineering school. Every engineer wants to go work for a brand that is recognized, right. And I, I drove from Clemson, South Carolina to New Jersey Homedale and, uh, I'm still, you know, you can see I'm still having the smile on my face. So I've, you know, think innovation is key. And that's what we do at, at and T I think the ability to, um, kind of move fast, you know, I think what the pandemic has taught us is the speed, right? The speed at which we have to move the speed at which we have to collaborate the speed at which we have to deliver, uh, to agility has become, you know, the differentiator for all of us. >>And we're focusing on that. I also feel that, uh, you know, there have been times where, you know, product organizations, technology organizations, you know, we struggle with jumping this sort of S-curve right, which is, Hey, I'm holding onto something. Do I let go or not? Let go. And I think the pandemic has taught us that you have to jump the S-curve, you have to accelerate because that is where you need to be in, in a way, going back to the sassy trend, right. It is something that is real, and it's going to be there for the next three to five years. So let's get ready. >>I call that getting comfortably uncomfortable, no businesses safe if they rest on their laurels these days. I think we've learned that, speaking of speed, I wanna, I wanna get kind of your perspective on 5g, where you guys are at, and when do you think it's going to be really impactful to, you know, businesses, consumers, first responders, >>The 5g investments are happening and they will continue to happen. And if you look at what's happened with the network, what at and T has announced, you know, we've gotten a lot of kudos for whatever 5g network for our mobile network, for our wireless network. And we are starting to see that, that innovation and that innovation as we anticipated is happening for the enterprise customers first, right? So there's a lot of, you know, robotics or warehouse or equipment that needs to sort of, you know, connect at a low latency, high speed, highly secure sort of, you know, data movements, compute edge that sits next to the, to the campus, you know, delivering a very different application experience. So we're seeing that, you know, momentum, uh, I think on the consumer side, it is starting to come in and it's going to take a little bit more time as the devices and the applications catch up to what we are doing in the network. And if you think about, you know, the, the value creation that has happened on, on the mobile networks is like, if you think about companies like Uber or left, right, did not exist. And, uh, many businesses, you know, are dependent on that network. And I think, uh, it will carry on. And I think in the next year or two, we'll see firsthand the outcomes and the value that it is delivering you go to a stadium at and T stadium in Dallas, you know, 5g enabled, you know, that the experience is very different. >>I can't wait to go to a stadium again and see it came or live music. Oh, that sounds great. Rubbish. Thank you so much for joining me today, talking about what a T and T is doing with 49, the challenges that you're helping your customers combat at the edge and the importance of really being future. Ready? >>Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you having me. Thanks for 49 to invite us to be at this event. Yes. >>Thank you for refresh talk. She I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube at the 40 net championship security summits.

>>from around the globe. >>It's the cube >>covering fortunate security summit brought to you by ford in it. >>Welcome back to the cubes coverage, affording that security summit at the ford championship here in napa. I'm lisa martin and I'm very pleased to welcome back to the cube kenzi founder and chairman and ceo affording that, ken. Welcome back to the program. >>Thank you is uh, we're happy to be here after almost two years and uh, >>I know it's great to see you in person. I was saying before we went live, I forgot how tall you are. So this is a great event. But I want you to talk to me a little bit about some of the amazing growth. The Fortinet has seen 500,000 customers close to 30% year on year growth continuing to post solid earnings stock is more than double this year. What are some of the things that you attribute this group to and what do you think in your opinion differentiates format? >>I think some of the more strategic long term investment we made started paying off like uh, we're still the only company actually develop basic chip which can making a huge computing power advantage compared to using software to all the security function computing Because security tend to need about like 1300 times more company in power to process the same data as a routing switching. So that's where for the network security definitely a chap, a huge advantage And we invested very early and take a long term and also a big investment and so far started paying off the other thing we also keeping a lot of innovation and the internal organic growth for the company instead of do a lot of acquisition and that's also started making all these different products integrate well ultimately to get well. And that's also driving a huge growth, not just that was security, but also we see the fabric also has global fast, >>interesting. So you're really keeping it organic, which is not common a lot of these days we see a lot of acquisitions, but one of the things, a lot of growth, another thing that we do know that's growing is the threat landscape I was mentioning before we went live that I spoke with Derek Manky a couple times this summer and John Madison and the global threat landscape report showing ransomware up nearly 11 times in the last year. Of course we had this rapid transition to work from home and all these devices on accessing corporate networks from home. Talk to me about some of the security challenges that you're helping customers deal with. >>I think during the pandemic, definitely you see a lot of security issues that come up because work from home with your remote access a lot of important information, a lot of important data there At the same time. The ransomware attacks studying like a mentioning 11 times compared to like one or two years ago all this driving all there's a new technology for security. So now you cannot just secure the board anymore. So you have a secure the whole infrastructure. Both internal to a lot of internal segmentation And also go outside security when like I see when the 5G. Connection and how to secure work from home and they trust their trust access environment all these drive a lot of security growth. So we see the yeah it's a it's a pretty healthy market >>it's definitely a healthy market that's one thing looking at it from that lens. What are some of the customer conversation? How have the customer conversations changed? Are you now talking with different levels and organizations security Being a board level conversation discussion and talk to me about how those conversations have evolved. >>Security now become very important part of I. T. And uh pretty much all top one top two on the 80 spending now and the same time what to work from home or some other uh definitely seeing the board level conversation right now because you can see if there's a security issue for the company the damage could be huge. Right? So that's where the secure awareness especially ransomware is very very huge And plus the supply chain issues some other attack on the infrastructure. So we see a lot of security conversation in the bowl level in the Ceo in the in the executive level now compared to before more I. T. Conversation. So it's to drive the huge awareness of security and that's also we see everybody citing concerns security now. >>But I'm sure I imagine that's across every industry. Yes. >>Yeah pretty much all the vertical right? And especially a lot of new area traditionally they don't have much security like some smb some consumer some traditional Ot IOT space now it's all security studying that very important for them now. >>So let's talk about, here we are. The security summit at the fortunate championship. Give me your perspective on the P. G. A. Ford in that relationship. >>Uh first I think it's a golf is also event sports especially during the epidemic that's probably become the most favorite spot. And for me also I'm a golfer for 30 years. Never market golfer but I love the sport on the other side we see sometimes it's uh working with a lot of a customer a lot of a partner they behave if we can combine some business and there was certain like activity especially outdoor that's also be great. And also helping Brandon and that's another way we can contribute back to the community. So they say hey then then that's that's the first time for us. We just love it gets going. >>It's great to be outdoors right at 40 minutes doing an event outdoors showing that yes you can do that safely. But also I also hear from some of your other team members that it's a very culturally synergistic relationship. The pgn format. >>Yes. Exactly. Yeah that's where we love this golf and especially working with a different partner and different partner and also all the team working together. So it's a team sport kind of on the other side it's all do and enjoy a combined working uh activity altogether. Everybody love it. >>Something that so many of us have missed Ken for the last 18 months or so. So we're at the security summit, there's over 300 technology leaders here. Talk to me about some of the main innovations that are being discussed. >>Uh definitely see security starting uh little covered whole infrastructure and uh especially in a lot of environment. Traditionally no security cannot be deployed like internal segmentation because internal network can be 10, 200 faster than the one connection. So it has to be deployed in the in the internal high speed environment whether inside the company or kind of inside the data center, inside the cloud on the other side, like a lot of one connection traditionally like whether they see one or the traditional like cuba more than the S E O. They also need to be combined with security and also in the zero trust access environment to really supporting work from home and also a lot of ot operation technology and a lot of other IOT space utility. All these different kind of like environment need to be supported, sometimes recognized environment. So we see security studying deport everywhere whether the new small city or the like connected car environment and we just see become more and more important. That's also kind of we studying what we call in a secure driven networking because traditionally you can see today's networking just give you the connectivity and speed so they treat everything kind of uh no difference but with security driven network and you can make in the networking decision move based on the security function, like a different application or different content, different user, different device, even different location, you can make a different kind of level decision so that we see is a huge demand right now can make the whole environment, whole infrastructure much secure. >>That's absolutely critical that pivot to work from home was pretty much overnight a year and a half ago and we still have so many people who are permanently remote, remote but probably will be permanently and a good amount will be hybrid in the future, some TBD amount. Uh and one of the challenges is of course you've got people suddenly from home you've got a pandemic. So you've got an emotional situation, you've got people multitasking, they've got kids at home trying to learn maybe spouses working, they're trying to do Everything by a video conferencing and collaboration tools and the security risks. There are huge and we've seen some of that obviously reflected in the nearly 11 x increase in ransomware but talk to me about what 14 announced yesterday with links is to help on that front in a considerable way. >>That's where we totally agree with you the work from home or kind of hybrid way to work in. Pretty much will become permanent. And that's where how to make a home environment more kind of supporting is a remote working especially like when you have a meeting, there are some other things going on in the whole activity and also sometimes data you access can be pretty important, pretty confidential. That's where whether in the zero trust environment or making the home connection more reliable, more secure. It's all very, very important for us. Uh, that's where we were happy to partner with Lynxes and some other partner here uh, to support in this hybrid working environment to make work from home more secure. And uh, as we see is a huge opportunity, >>huge opportunity and a lot of industries, I had the pleasure of talking with links to Ceo Harry do is just an hour or so ago and I asked him what are some of the vertical, since we know from a security and a ransomware perspective, it's just wide open. Right, Nobody's safe anymore from it. But what are some of the verticals that you think are going to be early adopters of this technology, government health care schools, >>I think pretty much all vertical start and see this work from home and it's very, very important for us. There's a few top vertical, traditionally finance service, uh, spend a lot of money healthcare, spend a lot of money on security. So they are still the same? We don't see that change March on the other side. A lot of high tech company, which also one of the big vertical for us now, I say maybe half or even more than half the employee they want to work for home. So that's also making they say uh they call home branch now, so it's just make home always just secure and reliable as a branch office and at the same time of Southern government and the sort of education vertical and they all started C is very, very important to do this, remote their trust access approach and the same time working with a lot of service providers to supporting this, both the D. N. A. And also the sassy approach. So we are only companies on the saturday company partner, a lot of IT service provider. We do believe long term of the service provider, they have the best location, best infrastructure, best team to supporting Sassy, which we also build ourselves. If customers don't have a service provider, we're happy to supporting them. But if they have a service provider, we also prefer, they go to service provider to supporting them because we also want to have a better ecosystem and making everybody like uh benefit has women's situation. So that's what we see is whether they trust no access or sassy. Very happy to work with all the partners to making everybody successful. >>And where our customers in that evolution from traditional VPN to Z T and a for example, are you seeing an acceleration of that given where we are in this interesting climate >>uh definitely because work from home is uh if you try to access use VPN, you basically open up all the network to the home environment which sometimes not quite secure, not very reliable. Right? So that's where using a Z T N A, you can access a certain application in a certain like environment there. And the same leverage ste when there's other huge technology advantage can lower the cost of the multiple link and balance among different costs, different connection and uh different reliability there. Uh it's a huge advantage, >>definitely one of the many advantages that reporting it has. So this afternoon there's going to be a, as part of the security summit, a panel that you and several other Fortinet execs are on taking part in A Q and a, what are some of the topics that you think are going to come up? And as part of that Q and >>A. I see for certain enterprise customer, definitely the ransomware attack, how to do the internal segmentation, how to securely do the remote access work from home. So we are very important For some service provider. We also see how to supporting them for the sassy environment and certain whole infrastructure security, whether the 5G or the SD went because everyone has a huge demand and uh it's a group over for us, we become a leader in the space. It's very very important for them. We also see uh like a different vertical space, Some come from healthcare, some from come from education. Uh they all have their own kind of challenge. Especially like there's a lot of uh oh T IOT device in healthcare space need to be secured and the same thing for the O. T. IOT space, >>Tremendous amount of opportunity. One thing I want to ask it, get your opinion on is the cybersecurity skills gap. It's been growing year, over year for the last five years. I know that just last week 14 that pledge to train one million professionals in the next five years, you guys have been focused on this for a while. I love that you have a veterans program. I'm the daughter of a Vietnam combat veterans. So that always warms my heart. But is that something, is the cybersecurity skills got something that customers ask you ken? How do you recommend? We saw this? >>Yes, we have been doing this for over 10 years. We have the program, we call the network secured expert program a different level. So we have 24 million people. We also commit a traditional million people because there's a huge shortage of the scale separate security expert there. So we do work in with over like a 4500 university globally at the same time. We also want to offer the free training to all the people interested, especially all the veterans and other Like even high school graduate high school student there and at the same time anyone want to learn several security. We feel that that's, that's very good space, very exciting space and very fast-growing space also still have a huge shortage globally. There's a 3-4 million shortage of skilled people in the space, which is a or fast growing space. And so we were happy to support all the train education with different partners at the same time, try to contribute ourselves. >>I think that's fantastic. Will be excited to see over the next five years that impact on that training one million. And also to see it to your point with how much the industry is changing, how much, how fast supporting that's growing. There's a lot of job opportunity out there. I think it was Sandra who said that I was talking to her this morning that there's no job security like cybersecurity. It's really true. If you think about it. >>Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. Like remember a few years ago when we started the first time to do all this interview, I said, hey, it's a barber hot space now, let's get harder and harder, more people interested now. And I really thank you cube and you give all the support it all these years and we're happy to be here. >>Absolutely. It's our pleasure. Well, I know you are paired up. You said tomorrow with Phil Mickelson for the pro am. That's pretty exciting, ken. >>I'm not sure I'm a very good golfer, but I will try my best. >>You try your best. I'm sure it will be a fantastic experience. Thank you for having the cube here for bringing people back together for this event, showing that we can do this, we can do this safely and securely. And also what Fortinet is doing to really help address that cyber security skills gap and uh, really make us more aware of the threats and the landscape and how we, as individuals and enterprises can help sort to quiet that storm >>also will be happy to be here and also being honored to be part of the program at the same time. We also want to thank you a lot of partner model customer and join us together for this big PJ event and thank you for everyone. >>Absolutely. And you guys are a big partner driven organization. I'm sure the partners appreciate that, ken, Thank you so much. >>Thank you. Thank you lisa >>for kenzi. I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cue from the Fortinet security summit in napa valley. >>Yeah. Mhm

>>From around the globe. It's the cube covering Fortinet security summit brought to you by Fortinet. >>Okay. Welcome back everyone. To the cubes, coverage of Fortinets championship golf tournament, we're here for the cybersecurity summit. David got a great guest, Ruby cutoff CEO, and co-founder of Tufin great to have you on. Thank you for coming on the cube. We were chatting before. Came on. Camera, big talk. You just gave it. Thanks mom. Thanks >>For having me >>Not a bad place here. Golf tournament, golf and cybersecurity, kind of go together. You know, keep the ball in the middle of the fairway. You know, don't let it get out of bounds, you know, >>And it's a beautiful place. So, uh, very happy to be here and be a premier sponsor of the event. >>Congratulations and a good, good to have you on let's get into the cybersecurity. We were talking before we came on camera around how transformation is really hard. We went to the cloud is really hard refactoring. You're just really hard, but security is really, really hard. That's true. So how do you look at how security is perceived in companies? Is there dynamics that are being amplified by the rapid moved movement to the cloud? You seeing apps being developed really fast changes fast. What's the, what's the barometer of the industry right now? Sure, >>Sure. It's interesting. And this hasn't really changed in the past, but we've seen like exacerbated getting worse and worse. I think a lot of companies security is actually seen as a blocker and frankly security is probably the most hated department in the organization because a lot of times, first of all, the security says no, but also they just take their time. So if you think about organizations, enterprises, they run on top of their enterprise applications. They have applications that their own in-house developers are writing, and those developers are changing their apps all the time. They're driving change in it as well. So you end up having dozens of change requests from developers want to open connectivity. You want to go from point a to point B on the network. They open a ticket. It reaches the network security team that ticket might take several days until it's implemented in production. So the level of service that security provides the application teams today is really not very high. So you can really understand why security is not, um, looked upon favorably by the rest of the organization. >>And some organizations. My perception is, is that, you know, the hardcore security teams that have been around for awhile, they've got standards and they're hardcore, a new app comes in, it's gotta be approved. Something's gotta get done. And it's slower, right? It slows people down the perception. It could be slow. How is it changing? Yes, >>So it changing because when you're moving to the cloud and a lot of organizations are adopting the cloud in many ways, private cloud, public cloud hybrid cloud, you know, they're working in cloud native environments and those environments, you know, the developers are, they own the keys to the kingdom, right? They're managing AWS Azure, Google cloud to managing get hub. You know, they got the place to themselves. So they're pushing changes in their apps without asking it for permission. So they're suddenly exposed to this is how fast it can really be. And while anything that they do in the on-prem or sort of traditional applications is still moving very slowly unless they're using an automated approach to policy. So one of the things that I spoke about today is the need for organizations to adopt a policy centric approach. So they need to define a policy of who can talk to whom and what conduct to what across the entire organizational network, whether it's firewalls routers, which is cloud platforms. >>And then once you have that policy, you can start automated based on the policy. So the concept is somebody opens a ticket, a developer wants to make a change. They want a ticket in service. Now remedy that ticket reaches, uh, some system that's going to check for compliance against the policy. If you're able to immediately tell if that change is compliant or not, then you're able to make that split-second decision, which might take an analyst a couple of days, and then you can design the perfect minimal change to implement on the network. That is really agile, right? That's what developers want to see. And a lot of security departments are really struggling with that today. >>Why, why are they? That seems like a no brainer because policy-based innovation has been around in the network layer for many, many years decades. Right? We'll see, makes things go better, faster. Why would they be against it? Where were they? >>Yeah. So they're not really against it. I think it's just the sheer complexity and size of today's networks is nothing compared to where it was 10 years ago. So you have tens to hundreds of firewalls in large enterprises, thousands of routers and switches, load balancers, private cloud SDN, like NSX and ACI public cloud Kubernetes. It's just a plethora of networking. So we're thinking of it as proliferation of networking is getting worse and worse, especially with IOT and now moving to the cloud. So it is just so complex that if you don't have specialized tools, there's absolutely no way they'll, you'll be able to. >>So your talk must so gone over well, because I do a lot of interviews and I hear developers talking about shift left, right? Which is, you know, basically vernacular for do security in the dev CIC D pipelining. So while you're there rather than having to go fix the bugs later, this seems to be a hot trend. People like it, they want it, they want to check it off, get it done, move on this policy-based automation, help them here. >>It does in some ways, I mean, so you need a policy for the cloud as well, but there's a different challenge that I see altogether in the cloud. And one of the challenges that we're saying is that there's actually a political divide. You have network security folks who are managing, you know, firewalls routers, switches, and maybe the hub to the cloud. And then inside the spokes inside the cloud itself, you have a different team, cloud operators, cloud security folks. And those two teams don't really talk to each other. Some companies have set up centers of excellence, where they're trying to bring all the experts together. But most companies, network security, folks who want to understand what's happening inside the cloud are sort of given the Heisman. They're not invited to meetings. Um, and there's lack of which I think is tragic because it's not going to go over well. So there's huge challenges in security in the cloud. And unless these two departments are going to talk to each other and work together, we're not going to get anywhere near the level of security that we need. >>The cloud team, the cloud guys, if you will, you know, quote guys or gals and the security guys and gals, they're not getting along. What's the, what's the, is it historical? Just legacy structures? Is it more of my department? I own the keys to the kingdom. So go through me kind of the vibe, or is it more of just evolution of the, developer's going to say, I'm going to go around you like shadow it, um, created the cloud. Is there like a shadow security, but trend around this? >>Yeah, there is. And I think it stems from what we covered in the beginning, which is, you know, app developers are now used to and trained to fear security. Every change they want on the on-prem network takes a week, right? They're moving to the cloud. Suddenly they're able to roam freely, do things quickly. If network security folks come by and say, oh, we want to take a look at those changes. What they're hearing, the music is all we're going to slow you down. And the last thing cloud guys want to hear is that we're going to slow you down. So they have they're fearfully. You know, they're, they're rightly afraid of what's going to happen. If they enable a very cumbersome and slow process, we got to work differently. Right? So there's new paradigms with dev DevSecOps where security is built into the CIC pipeline, where it doesn't slow down app developers, but enables compliance and visibility into the cloud environments at the same time. Great stuff. >>Great insight. I want to ask you your, one of your things in your top that I found interesting. And I like to have you explain it in more detail is you think security can be an enabler for digital transformation. Digital transformation can kick the wrong yeah. With transforming. Okay. Everyone knows that, but security, how does security become that enabler? >>So, I mean, today security is a, um, as a blocker to digital transformation. I think anybody that claims, Hey, we're on a path to digital transformation. We're automated, we're digitally transformed. And yet you asked the right people and you find out every change takes a week on the network. You're not digitally transformed, right? So if you adopt a, a framework where you're able to make changes in a compliant secure matter and make changes in minutes, instead of days, suddenly you'll be able to provide a level of service to app developers like they're getting in the cloud, that's digital transformation. So I see the network change process as pretty much the last piece of it that has not been digitally transformed yet. >>And this is where a lot of opportunity is. Exactly. All right. So talk about what you guys are doing to solve that problem, because you know, this is a big discussion. Obviously security is on everyone's mind. They're reactive to proactive that buying every tool they can platforms are coming out. You're starting to see a control plane. You're starting to see things like collective intelligence networks forming, uh, what's the solution to all this, >>Right? So what we've developed is a security policy layer that sits on top of all the infrastructure. So we've got, uh, four products in the two for an orchestration suite where we can connect to all the major firewalls, router, switches, cloud platforms, private cloud SDN. So we see the configuration in all those different platforms. We know what's happening on the ground. We build a typology model. That is one of the industry's best apology models that enables us to query and say, okay, from point a to point B, which firewalls, router switches and cloud platforms will you traverse. And then we integrate it with ticketing system, like a remedy or service now, so that the user experiences a developer opens a ticket for a change that ticket gets into Tufin. We check it against the policy that was defined by the security managers, the security manager defined a policy of who can talk to whom and what conducted what across the physical network and the cloud. >>So we can tell within a split second, is this compliant or not? If it's not compliant, we don't waste an engineer's time. We kick it back to the original user. But if it is compliant, we use that typology model to perform network change design. So we design the perfect minimal change to implement an every firewall router switch cloud platform. And then the last mile is we provision that change automatically. So we're able to make a change in minutes, instead of days would dramatically better security and accuracy. So the ROI on Tufin is not just security, but agility balanced with security at the same time. So you like the rules of the road, >>But the roads are changing all the time. That's how do you keep track of what's going on? You must have to have some sort of visualization technology when you lay out the topology and things start to be compliant, and then you might see opportunity to do innovative buckets. Hey, you know, I love this policy, but I'm, I'm going to work on my policy because sure. Got to up your game on policy and continue to iterate. Is that how do they, how do your customers Daniel? >>So listen, we we're, uh, we're not a tiny company anymore. We've grown. We went public in April of 2019 race and capital. We have over 500 employees, we sold over 2000 customers worldwide. So, um, you know, when customers ask us for advice, we come in and help them with consulting or professional services in terms of deployment. And the other piece is we gotta keep up all the time with what's happening with Fortnite. For example, as, as one of our strategic partners, every time fortnight makes the change we're on the beta program. So we know about a code change. We're able to test them the lab we know about their latest features. We got to keep up with all that. So that takes a lot of engineering efforts. We've hired a lot of engineers and we're hiring more. Uh, so it takes a lot of investment to do this at scale. And we're able to deliver that for our customers. >>I want the relationship with 400. I see you're here at the golf tournament. You're part of the pavilion. You're part of the tournament by the way. Congratulations. Great, great, great event. Thank you. What's the relationship with food and air from a product and a customer technology standpoint, >>We're working closely with Fortnite, where they're a strategic partner of ours. We're integrated into their Fordham manager, APIs. We're a fabric ready solution for them. So obviously working closely. Some of our biggest customers are fortnight's biggest customers will get the opportunity to sponsor this event, which is great tons of customers here and very interesting conversations. So we're very happy with that relationship. >>This is good. Yeah. So that ask you, what have you learned? I think you got great business success. Looking back now to where we are today, the speed of the market, what's your big takeaway in terms of how security changed and it continues to be challenging and these opportunities, what was the big takeaway for you? >>Well, I guess if you were like spanning my career, uh, the big takeaway is, uh, first of all, and just in startup world, patients think things come to those away, but also, um, you know, just, you got to have the basics, right? What we do is foundational. And there were times when people didn't believe in what we do or thought, you know, this is minor. This is not important as people move to the cloud, this won't matter. Oh, it matters. It matters not just in on-prem and it matters in the cloud as well. You gotta have a baseline of a policy and you gotta base everything around that. Um, and so w we've sort of had that mantra from day one and we were right. And we're, we're very happy to be where we are today. Yeah. >>And, you know, as a founder, a co-founder of the company, you know, most of the most successful companies I observed is usually misunderstood for a long time. That's true. Jesse's favorite quote on the cube. He's now the CEO of Amazon said we were misunderstood for a long time. I'm surprised it took people this long to figure out what we were doing. And, and that was good. A good thing. So, you know, just having that north star vision, staying true to the problem when there were probably opportunities that you are like, oh, we, you know, pressure or sure. Yeah. I mean, you stayed the course. What was the, what was the key thing? Grit focused. Yes. >>Looking to startup life. It's sorta like being in sales. We, we got told no, a thousand times before we got told yes. Or maybe a hundred times. So, uh, you gotta, you gotta be, um, you got to persevere. You gotta be really confident in what you're doing and, uh, just stay the course. And we felt pretty strongly about what we're building, that the technology was right. That the need of the market was right. And we just stuck to our guns. >>So focus on the future. What's the next five, five years look like, what's your focus? What's the strategic imperative for you guys. What's your, what's your, what do you mean working on? >>So there's several things that on the business side, we're transitioning to a subscription-based model and we're moving into SAS. One of our products is now a SAS based product. So that's very important to us. We also are now undergoing a shift. So we have a new version called Tufin Aurora Tufin Aurora is a transformation. It's our next generation product. Uh, we're rearchitected the entire, uh, underlying infrastructure to be based on microservices so we could be cloud ready. So that's a major focus in terms of engineering, uh, and in terms of customers, you know, we're, we're selling to larger and larger enterprises. And, uh, we think that this policy topic is critical, not just in the on-prem, but in the cloud. So in the next three years, as people move more and more to the cloud, we believe that what we do will be, become even more relevant as organization will straddle on-premise networks and the cloud. So >>Safe to say that you believe that policy based architecture is the key to automation. >>Absolutely. You can't automate what you don't know, and you can't people, like I mentioned this in my talk, people say, oh, I can do this. I can cook up an Ansible script and automate, all right, you'll push a change, but what is the logic? Why did you make that decision? Is it based on something you've got to have a core foundation? And that foundation is the policy >>Really great insight. Great to have you on the cube. You've got great success and working knowledge and you're in the right place. And you're skating to where the puck is and will be, as they say, congratulations on your success. Thank >>You very much. Thanks for having >>Me. Okay. Keep coming here. The Fortinet championship summit day, cybersecurity summit, 40 minutes golf tournament here in Napa valley. I'm John Firmicute. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Security Summit, brought to you by Fortinet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin here live in Napa Valley at the Fortinet Championship. This is the site of kickoff to the 2021-22 FedEx Cup regular series. We're here with Fortinet and we're here with one of our distinguished alumni, John Madison, the CMO and EVP of products. John, it's great to see you in person. >> Yes, Lisa it's been a while. >> It has been a while. >> Good to be back here, live. >> I know, you're not on Zoom, you're actually right six feet across from me. >> Yep, look, yes, it's definitely physical. >> It does, talk to me about the PGA and Fortinet. What are some of the synergies? >> There's a lot. I think one of the biggest ones is the culture of the two companies. So I mean, PGA tour, I think they've donated almost $3 billion to charities over the last 15 years, 20 years and we're the same. We would definitely want to give back to the community. We want to make sure we're providing training and education. We're trying to re-skill some of the veterans, for example, over 2000, also women in technology, you may have heard one of the key notes today about that, attempts from a education and training perspective. So there's a lot of synergies between the PGA Tour, and Fortinet from a cultural perspective. >> I love that. Cultural synergy is so important but also some of the initiatives, women in tech, STEM, STEAM, those are fantastic. Give our audience a little overview of what's going on here. We've got over 300 partners and customers here. What are some of the key themes being discussed today? >> Yeah, we're going to try and keep it smaller, this event. We don't want 10,000, 20,000 people. We'll keep it smaller. So about 300 customers and partners, and what we want to do is bring together, you know, the top people in cybersecurity and networking, we want to bring in customers so they can net with each other, we want to bring the partners here. And so, what you're going to see is you can see the tech expo behind you there, where people are talking technology. Some of the keynotes focus on areas like ransomware, for example, and cyber security in different industries. So definitely it's a smaller gathering, but I think it's very focused on cybersecurity and networking. >> Well, that's such an important topic these days. You know, you and I have spoken a number of times this summer by Zoom, and talking about the threat landscape and the changes-- >> Yep. >> And the work from anywhere. When you and I spoke, I think it was in June, you said 25% we expect are going to go back to the office, 25% permanently remote and the other 50 sort of transient. Do you still think given where we are now in September that that's still-- >> Yeah, I'm going to modify my prediction a bit, I think it's going to be hybrid for some time. And I don't think it's just at home or not at home or at work or not at work, I think it's going to be maybe one or two days, or maybe three days versus five days. And so, we definitely see the hybrid mode of about 50% for the next couple of years at least. I think that, you know, ransomware has been in the news a lot. You saw the Colonial, the ransomware has increased. We did a threat report recently. Showed about a 10X increase in ransomware. So, I think customers are very aware of the cybersecurity threats. The damage now is not just sucking information out and IP, it's causing damage to the infrastructure. So definitely the, you know, the attack surface is increased with people working from home, versus in the office, and then you've got the threat landscape, really, really focused on that ransomware piece. >> Yeah, ransomware becoming a household word, I'm pretty sure even my mom knows what that is. And talking about the nearly 11X increase in, what was that, the first half of 2021? >> Yeah, over the last 12 months. And I think what's also happened is ransomware used to be a broad attack. So let me send out, and see if I can find a thousand companies. Again, you saw with the Colonial attack, it's very targeted now as well. So you've got both targeted and broad ransomware campaigns going on. And a lot of companies are just rethinking their cybersecurity strategy to defend against that. And that work from home component is another attack surface. So a lot of companies that were operational technology companies that had air gaps and people would come to work, now that you can remotely get into the network, it's again, you can attack people at home, back into the network. >> Is that a direct correlation that you've saw in the last year, in terms of that increase in ransomware and this sudden shift to working from home? >> Well, I also think there's other components. And so, I think the ransomware organizations, the gangs, could use crypto more reasonably than checks and dollars and stuff like that. So they could get their money out. It became very profitable versus trying to sell credit card data on the dark web. So you saw that component. You also saw, as I said, the attack surface be larger for companies, and so those two things unfortunately have come together, and you know, really seen an exponential rise in attacks. >> Perfect storm. Let's talk about some of your customer conversations and how they've changed and evolved in the last 18 months. Give me a snapshot of when you're talking with customers, what are some of the things that they're coming to you for help, looking for the most guidance? >> Yeah, well I think, you know, the digital innovation transformation is almost accelerated because of, you know, COVID. They've accelerated those programs, especially in industries like retail, where it becomes almost essential now to have that digital connectivity. So they can't stop those programs. They need to accelerate those programs, but as they move those programs faster, again they expand their attack surface. And so, what I'm definitely seeing is a convergence of traditional kind of networking, connectivity, and cybersecurity teams like the CIO and the CSO working on projects jointly. So whether it be the WAN connectivity, or whether it be endpoint, or whether it be cloud, both teams are working much more closely going forward. >> Synergies there that are absolutely essential. Talk to me about what you guys announced with Linksys yesterday, speaking of work from home and how that has transformed every industry. Talk to us about the home work solution powered by Fortinet. >> Yeah, well, we definitely see work from home being there for some time. And so the question is, what do you do there? So I think initially 18 months ago, what happened was companies turned on their, what they call a VPN, which gives them an encrypted access when they went from 5% to a 100% people on the VPN. I speak to customers now and they're saying, that was kind of a temporary solution. It puts an end point security there. It was kind of temporary and now I need a longer-term solution because I can see this at least 50% for the next two years, being this hybrid work from home, and some of them are saying, "Well, let's look at something. Let's try and take the best of enterprise networking and security, and then try and match that with an easy to set up Wi-Fi or routing system." So the two companies, you know, have come together with this joint venture. We're taking Linksys technology from an ease of use at home, it's very simple to set up, you can do it on an app or whatever. And then we integrate the Fortinet technology inside there from a security and enterprise networking. The enterprises can manage themselves, the enterprise component and the consumer can manage their piece. What's very important is that separation as well. So the privacy of your home network, and then to make sure the enterprise piece is secure, and then also introducing some simple, what we call quality of service. So for a business person, things like Teams or Zoom as preference over some of the gaming and downloads of the family. So I think it brings the best of both worlds: ease of use and enterprise security together. >> I'm sure the kids won't like that it's not optimized for gaming, but it is optimized for things like video conferencing which, in the last year we've been dependent on for collaboration and communication. Tell me a little bit about the tuning for video conferencing and collaboration. >> Yeah, so we announced both Zoom and Microsoft Teams, probably the two biggest apps, which I use from a work from home business perspective. And definitely if you've got a normal system at home and your kids they've been downloading something, a new game or something like that, they can just take the whole bandwidth. And so the ability to kind of scale that back and make sure the Zoom meeting or the Teams meeting is first priority, I think is very important, to get that connectivity and that quality of service, but also have that security component as well. >> Yeah, the security component is increasingly important. Talk to me about why Linksys, was COVID the catalyst for this partnership? >> Well, I think we looked at it and we have our own work from home solutions as well. I mean, our own gear. We definitely wanted to find something where we could integrate into more of a ease of use solution set. And it just so happened we were speaking to Linksys on some other things and as soon as we started talking, it was very, very clear that this would be a great relationship and joint venture and so we made the investment. Not just "here's some of our code", we made a substantial investment in Linksys and yeah, we see some other things coming in the future as well. >> Can you talk to me a little bit about what the go to market will be, how can enterprises and consumers get this? >> Yeah. So it's more of an enterprise sale. I know some people think Linksys, they think consumer straight away. For us, this is a sale to the enterprises. So the enterprises buy it, it's a subscription service. So they just pay a monthly fee and they can have different levels of service inside there as well. They will get, you know, for each employee they'll get one, two or three nodes. And then so the, so the enterprise is paying for it, which I think will help a bit and they will manage it through their system, but the consumer will get this kind of a game that's very easy to use, very high speed connectivity, mesh technology. So yes, Linksys will sell some of it as well. But I think, you know, actually Fortinet will be the major kind of go to market because of our 500,000 business customers we have out there. >> Right. And your huge partner network. >> Yes. >> So let's talk about, give me a little bit of a view in terms of the benefit that IT will get leveraging the Linksys home work solution. I imagine that centralized visibility of all the devices connected to the corporate network, even though, wherever the devices are? >> Yeah, it actually extends the corporate network. So not in this initial release, in the second release. In the first release, they can go to a cloud portal and they can manage what they can manage from an enterprise perspective. The employee can go to the same portal, but gets a different view, can manage their piece. In the second release, we'll actually have support in our management systems. So if you're an existing Fortinet customer and you've got our management systems and say you've got, I don't know, 250 sites, and you're managing some of our firewalls or SD WAN systems, You'll be able to see all the employees links as systems as well, in that same management system. But again, there's a separation of duty and privacy where they can just manage the enterprise components, not they can't see the traffic from the employees' side, from the non-business transactions. >> Good. That privacy is key there. Do you think that in a perfect world, would help quiet down some of the perfect storm that we're seeing with ransomware and this explosion, this work from anywhere, work from home, going to be persisting technologies, like what you're doing with Linksys, is going to help make a dent in that spike? >> I think it's a component. So for us, the long term strategy for users, end point, this kind of Linksys component is an element. We also feel like there needs to be a transition of VPN technology into zero trust. So you're limiting again, the access to applications versus the network. And then definitely the third component would be a technology like EDR, which is more behavioral-based versus signature-based. And so you bring all those three together. Absolutely we'll make a dent in ransomware because you're just reducing the attack surface greatly, but also scanning the technology to make sure if you see something, you can act straight away. >> And then pair that with what you guys are doing and the investment that Fortinet's been making for a while in training and helping to fill that cybersecurity skills gap, which is growing year on year. >> Yeah. I speak to a lot of CSOs and CIOs and they go "What's the latest technology? What can you do next?" I say, well, the most important thing you can do is train your people. Train them not to click on that phishing link, right? Because still our numbers are around 6% of employees click on things and it doesn't matter what company you are. And so the education and the training is the one of the core, the most basic steps. We're introducing what we call an IT awareness program as part of NSC, which allows companies to download some tools. And they'll try some phishing emails that go out there, they'll see the response, see how they can (mumbles). So I always say that the people, the social engineering is the first step to try and fix and reduce. That's the biggest attack surface you will have. >> It's getting so sophisticated and so personalized. I mean I've seen examples with training that I've done for various companies where you really have to look 2, 3, 4 times at it and have the awareness alone to know that this might not be legitimate. >> Yeah, especially when people are just clicking on more things because they're going to more places. And so you have to be very careful. You can stop a bunch of that with some rule sets. So the systems, but if they're faking the domain, spear phishing, where they know exactly the context of where the email's coming out, it's hard, but you've just got to be very, very careful. If in doubt don't click on it. >> I agree if in doubt, don't click it. Well, John, it's always great talking to you. Exciting to hear the growth of Fortinet, what you're doing with PGA tour, the synergies there, the cultural synergies and the growth in customers and partners, lots of stuff to come. Can't wait till our next conversation, which I hope is also in person. >> Yes, yes, yes, for sure. You know, I think this is a great venue in that it's- as you can see it's open, which helps a lot. >> Yeah. >> It's not far from our headquarters, just down the road there, we've committed to this event for six or seven years. And so this is our first time, but definitely we're hoping to get out a bit more as we go forward. >> Excellent. I'm glad to see to see a company like Fortinet taking the lead and you look like you're dressed for golf. You said you have meetings, but I'm going to let you go because you probably have to get to that. >> I have a few more meetings. I wish they would leave a little gap for some golf. I'll try and work one as we go forward. >> Yeah. Anyway, John, thank you for joining me, great to see you. For John Madison, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from the Fortinet Championship Security Summit in Napa. (Upbeat music)

>> It's The Cube covering Fortinet Security Summit brought to you by Fortinet. >> Hey and welcome back to the cubes coverage of Fortinets championship series. Cybersecurity summit here in Napa valley Fortinet is sponsoring the PGA tour event, kicking off the season here, and the cubes here as part of the coverage. And today is cybersecurity day where they bring their top customers in. We got Glenn Katz SVP, general manager, Comcast Enterprise Solutions. Glenn, thanks for coming on The Cube. Thanks for taking time out of your day. - Thank you no This is great. This is great. >> Interviewer: Tell me to explain what you guys do in the Comcast business enterprise group. >> That's our Comcast business. We're a part of Comcast overall. I always like to explain what Comcast really is. If you look at Comcast, it's a technology innovation company by itself that happens to focus on communications and media type of, of markets, right? And if you look at the Comcast side there on the communication side, it's really everything residential with customers. Then there's the us Comcast business and we're the fastest growing entity over the last 15 years within Comcast. And we started in small business, voice, video, and data to small businesses. Then we moved up to provide fiber ethernet type of a transport to mid-market. And then my group started in 2014. And what we do is focus on managed services. It doesn't matter who the transport layer is for enterprise Fortune 1000 type companies. And then when you layer in all these managed wider network services. So that's my business unit. >> Interviewer: Well, we appreciate it we're a customer by the way in Palo Alto >> Glen: Oh great >> So give a shout out to you guys. Let's get into the talk you're giving here about cybersecurity, because I mean, right now with the pandemic, people are working at home. Obviously everyone knows the future of work is hybrid now you're going to see more decentralized defy and or virtual spaces where people are going to want to work anywhere and businesses want to have that extension, right? What people are talking about, and it's not new, but it's kind of new in the sense of reality, right? You've got to execute. This is a big challenge. >> Glen: It is - What's your thoughts on that, >> Well it's a big challenge. And one of the things that I'll try to, I'll speak to this afternoon here, which is at least from the enterprise perspective, which includes the headquarters, the enterprise, the branch locations, the digital commerce, everywhere else, commerce is being done. It's not just at a store anymore. It's everywhere. Even if you only have a store and then you have the remote worker aspect. I mean, they do that to your point earlier. We're not in that fortress sort of security mentality anymore. There's no more DMZs it's done. And so you've got to get down to the zero trust type of network architecture. And how do you put that together? And how does that work? Not just for remote workers that have to access the enterprise applications, but also for simple, you know, consumers or the business customers of these, of these enterprises that have to do business from over the phone or in the store. >> Interviewer: What are the some of the challenges you hear from your customers, obviously, business of the defend themselves now the, the, the attacks are there. There's no parameters. You mentioned no fortress. There's more edge happening, right? Like I said, people at home, what are the top challenges that you're hearing from customers? >> So the biggest challenge, and this is, I would think this is, this is mostly focused on the enterprise side of it is that the is two interesting phenomenons going on. This is sort of beginnings before the pandemic. And then of course the pandemic, the role of the CIO has been elevated to now, they have a real seat at the table. Budgets are increasing to a point, but the expertise needed in these, in these it departments for these large enterprises, it's, it's impossible to do what you were just talking about, which is create a staff of people that can do everything from enterprise applications, e-commerce analytics, the network. How do you secure that network all the way down to the end users? Right? So it's that middle portion. That's the biggest challenge because that takes a lot of work and a lot of effort. And that's where folks like Comcast can come in and help them out. That's their biggest challenge. They can handle the enterprise, they can handle the remote workers. They can handle their own applications, which are continually trying to be, you know, have to be it's competitive out there. It's that middle area, that communications layer that their challenged with. >> Interviewer: Yeah. And John Madison's EVP, CMO Ford. It's always talking about negative unemployment in cybersecurity. Nevermind just the staff that do cyber >> Glen: That's exactly right, that's given. If you're a business, you can't hire people fast enough and you might not have the budget for you want to manage service. So how do you get cyber as a service? >> Glen: Well, so it's even bigger than that. It's not just the cyber as a service because it's now a big package. That's what SASE really is SASE is Secure Access Service Edge. But think of it where I think of it is you've got remote users, remote workers, mobile apps on one side, you've got applications, enterprise or commercial that are now moved into different cloud locations. And in the middle, you've got two real fundamental layers, the network. And, and that includes uh, the actual transport, the software defined wide area, networking components, everything that goes with that, that's the network as a service. And then you've got the secure web gateway portion, which includes everything to secure all the data, going back and forth between your remote laptop, the point of sales. And let's say the cloud based applications, right? So that's really the center stage right there. >> Interviewer: And the cloud has brought more service at the top of the stack. I mean, people thought down stack up stack is kind of like a geeky terms. You're talking about innovation. If you're down stack with network and transport, those are problems that you have to solve on behalf of your customers And make that almost invisible. And that's your job >> That's our job. That's our job is to service provider What's interesting is though back in the day, I mean, when, I mean, back in the day, it could have been 10 years ago in 20. You really, you know, you had stable networks, they were ubiquitous, they were expensive and they were slow. That's kind of the MPLS legacy TDM. Yeah. So you just put them in and you walked away and you still did all your enterprise. You still did all of your applications, but you had your own private data centers. Everything was nicer. It was that fortress mentality right now. It's different. Now everybody needs broadband. Well guess what? Comcast is a big company, but we don't have broadband everywhere. ATT doesn't have it. Verizon doesn't have it Charter doesn't have it. Right. So you need, so now to think about that from enterprise, I'm going to go, I'll give you an example. All of our customers to fulfill a nationwide network, just for the broadband infrastructure, that's, you know, redundant. If you want to think of it that way we, we source probably 200 to 300 different providers to provide an ubiquitous network nationwide for broadband. Then we wrap a layer of the SD wan infrastructure for that, as an example, over the top of that, right? You can't do that by yourself. I mean, people try and they fail. And that's the role of a managed service provider like us is to pull all that together. Take that away. We have that expertise. >> Interviewer: I think this is a really interesting point. Let's just unpack that just for a second. Yeah. In the old days, we want to do an interconnect. You had an agreement. You did, you have your own stuff, do an interconnected connect. >> Glen: Yep. >> Now this, all this mishmash, you got to traverse multiple hops, different networks. >> Glen: That's right >> Different owners, different don't know what's on that. So you guys have to basically stitch this together, hang it together and make it work. And you guys put software on the top and make sure it's cool is that how it works? >> Glen: Yeah. Software and different technology components for the SD wan. And then we would deliver the shore and manager all that. And that's, that's where I really like what's happening in the industry, at least in terminology, which is they try, you have to try to simplify that because it's very, very complicated, but I'm going to give you the network as a service mean, I'm going to give you all the transport and you have to don't have to worry about it. I'm going to rent you the, the SD wan technology. And then I'm going to have in my gateways all these security components for a firewall as a service, zero trust network access, cloud brokerage services. So I will secure all of your data as you go to the cloud and do all of that for you. That's really what we, that's what we bring to the table. And that's what is really, really hard for enterprises to do today. Just because they can't, the expertise needed to do that is just not there. >> Interviewer: Well, what's interesting is that first you have to do it now because the reality of your business now is you don't do it. You won't have customers, but you're making it easier for them. So they don't have to think about it. - [Glen] That's right. >> But now you bring in hybrid networking hybrid cloud, they call it or multi-cloud right. It's essentially a distributed computing and essentially what you're doing, but with multiple typologies, >> Glen: that's right. >> Interviewer: I got an edge device. - [Glen] That's right. If I'm a business. - [Glen] That's right. >> That's where it could be someone working at home >> Glen: That's right. - Or it could be my retail >> Or whatever it could be. So edge is just an extension of what you guys already do. And is that right? Am I getting that right? >> Glen: Yeah that's exactly right. And, and, but the point is, is to make it economic and to make it really work for the end user. If you're a branch, you may have a, a application that's still being run via VPN, but you also need wifi internet for your customers because you want to use your mobile device. They've entered into your store and you want to be able to track that right. And push something to them. And then you've got the actual store applications could be point of sales could be back of house comparing that's going up to AWS. Azura whatever. Right. And that all has to be, it all has to come from one particular branch and someone has to be able to manage that capability. >> Interviewer: It's funny, - Its so different >> Interviewer: just as you're talking, I'm just thinking, okay. Facial recognition, high, high bandwidth requirements, >> Glen: Huge high bandwidth requirements >> Processing at the edge becomes huge. >> Glen: It does. >> So that becomes a new dynamic. >> Glen: It does. It's got to be more dynamic. It's not a static IP end point. >> Glen: Well, I'll give you another an example. Let's say it's, it seems silly, but it's so important from a business perspective, your quick service restaurant, the amount of digital sales from applications are just skyrocketing. And if you yourself, and particularly in the pandemic, you order something, or that goes up to the cloud, comes back through, goes to the point of sales. And then the, the back of house network in a particular restaurant, if that doesn't get there, because one line of you only have one internet connection and it's down, which sometimes happens, right? You lose business, you lose that customer. It's so important. So what's being pushed down to the edge is, you know, reliable broadband hybrid networks, where you have a primary wire line and a secondary wire line, maybe a tertiary wireless or whatever. And then a box, a device that can manage between those two so that you can keep that 99.9, 9% availability at your branch, just for those simple types of applications. >> Interviewer: You know Glenn, you as you're talking most people, when we talk tech, like this is mostly inside the ropes, Hey, I can get it. But most people can relate with the pandemic because they've ordered with their phone on - [Glen] Exactly right >> With the QR code. - [Glen] That's exactly right >> They see the menu - [Glen] That's right >> They get now what's happening - [Glen] That's right that their phone is now connected to the service. >> Glen: That's right >> This is not going away. The new normal. >> Glen: No, it's absolutely here. And what I've seen are there are many, many companies that already knew this and understood this pre pandemic. And they were, they had already changed their infrastructure to really fit what I was calling that network as a service in the SASE model, in different ways. Then there were a bunch that didn't, and I'm not going to name names, but you can look at those companies and you can see how they're, they're struggling terribly. But then there was this. Now there's a, a much bigger push and privatization again, see, I was sending, Hey, I asked for this before. It's not like the CIO didn't know, but management said, well, maybe it wasn't important. Now it is. And so you're seeing this actual amazing surge in business requests and requirements to go to the model that we're all talking about here, which is that SASE type of implementation high-speed broadband. That's not going away for the same reason. And you need a resilient network, right? Yes. >> Interesting. Best practice. Let's just take that advice to the, to the audience. I want to get your thoughts because people who didn't do any R and D or experimentation prior to the pandemic, didn't have cloud. Wasn't thinking about this new architecture got caught flat-footed. -Exactly. >> And they're hurting and or out of business. >> Correct. >> If people who were on the right side of that took advantage as a tailwind and they got lifts. >> That's exactly right. >> So what is the best practice? How should a business think about putting their toe in the water a little bit or jumping in and getting immersed in the new, new architecture? What advice would you give? Because people don't want to be in the wrong side of history. >> No, they don't. >> What's your guy's best practice? >> I may sound biased, but I'm really not trying to be biased. And this'll be some of the I'll speak about here later today. You have to try it. You, as the end user, the enterprise customer, to, to fulfill these types of needs, you've got to really probe your managed service providers. You've got to understand which ones, not just can give you a nice technology presentation and maybe a POC, but who's going to be there for the longterm who has the economic wherewithal to be able to give the resources needed to do what I was talking about, which is you're going to outsource your entire network to me and your sh, and a good portion of your security for the network to a service provider. that service provider has to be able to provide all that has to be able to have the financial capabilities, to be able to provide you with an operating type of model, not you have to buying equipment all the time. That service provider has to be able to have teams that can deliver all of that 200 to 300 different types of providers aggregate all that, and then be there for day two. Simple thing. Like if you know, most companies, if you're not a really large location, you can't afford to, you know, double types of routers that are connected. And if one fails you have fail over, right, most of them will have one router and they'll have, but they'll have two backup paths. Well, what happens is that router or switch, single switch fails? You need to have a meantime to repair a four hours. I mean, that's kind of basic and well do that. How do you do that? You've got to have depots around the entire country. These are the types of questions that any enterprise customers should be probing their managed service provider, right? It's not just about the technology. It's about how can you deliver this and assure this going forward. >> And agility too cause when, if, if things do change rapidly, being agile... >> Exactly >> means shifting and being flexible with your business. >> That's exactly right. And that's important. That's a really important question. And the agility comes from this financial agility, right? Like new threat, new box. I want, I want this old one. I'm going to upgrade to a different type of service. The service providers should be able to do that without me having to force you to go get some more CapEx and buy some more stuff. Cause that's number one. But the other agility is every enterprise is different. Every enterprise believes that its network is the only network in the world and they have opinions and they've tested different technologies. And you're going to have to adapt a little bit to that. And if you don't, you're not going to get out of this. >> It's funny. The old days non-disruptive operations was like a benefit, we have non-disrupt- now it's a table stakes. You can't disrupt businesses. - You can't. You can't at the branch at the remote worker. If you're on a zoom call or whatever, or you're on a teams call, we've all been there. We're still doing it. If it breaks in the middle of a presentation to a customer that's problem. >> Glenn thanks for coming on the cube with great insight. >> Oh great. This was fun. >> Are you exciting and plays golf? You're going to get out there on the range? >> I played, I played golf a lot when I was younger, but I haven't. And so I have a few other things I do, but I guess I'm going to have to learn now that we're also a sponsor of PGA, so yeah, for sure. >> Great. Well, great to have you on - All right thank you and great talk. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insight. >> This was great. I appreciate okay. >> Keep coverage here. Napa valley with Fortinet's Cybersecurity Summit as part of their PGA tour event, that's happening this weekend. I'm John for the Cube. Thanks for watching.

>> Hello, welcome to the special Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier, your host to the cube here and our special Napa Valley remote location, connecting with Palo Alto as well as in Massachusetts, and VMware in Palo Alto. We've got a great conversation about edge technology with Dell technologies and VMware and the cube of course. Here Pierluca Chiodelli, vice-president product manager at the edge at Dell. And Munyeb Minhazuddin, VP of edge computing at VMware, joining me for this edge conversation, gentlemen, thank you for joining us in the cube. >> Thank you. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So it's like the edge is the hottest thing we've been talking about forever. Now it's important because you're starting to see the technologies come together with multicloud on the horizon, and hybrid cloud in full enterprise mode right now with 5G, consumer size expanding. On the business side, connecting the edge is becoming a cloud product cloud operations product. That also includes the on premises components. So we're in full distributed computing mode right now. And everyone's not denying this a lot too. Everyone's agreeing on it. So it's happening. So let's get into what's going on at the edge. How do you guys see edge evolving in the marketplace right now? >> Yeah, let me get started there, John pleasure to be here and partnering with your Pierluca. What's happened through the pandemic, I know you kind of said we're all sitting far apart and talking, right? So a lot of the edge has been here forever, but the pandemic has accelerated a lot of the edge initiatives, right? So people started working from home remotely, workloads now starting to move towards towards the edge. So as every industry retailers think about socially disintermediated, omni-channel retail experiences. Manufacturers think about, localized supply chains and efficiencies of that. As their global supply chains get all stressed, they're all, inventing and doing two things at the edge. So what's this driven, even though it has been there all along, it's to driving innovation towards the edge. Business processes, outcomes, new applications, we call them edge native applications are being built, now purpose for business outcomes at the edge. That's kind of a big change and acceleration the last, 15 months that we've seen. >> What's the trends driving this because you know, obviously that is making a lot of sense and modernization of the enterprise, it's happening a lot faster than many people had predicted, day one operations, day two operators are buzzwords now. I mean, day one just basically means cloud and innovation. But now there's an operating aspect to this. What's the trend driving this edge native mindset and product requirement. Can you guys share that, any thought on reaction to that? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think the main trend as Munyeb said, the restoration is bream because they use case and the transformation that needs to happen at the edge. This is, was thinking before, right? All of us, when we go to a store now we interact in different way. When we buy online, when we do all the normal things in life that we need today, we doing different. This is required to bring more things at the edge. If you look at some data, we know that 50% of what is going to be happening in 2023, will be at the edge with 90% of what is from an application point of view, exploding at the edge. That to your point, why is that as important, as you see around all the verticals, manufacturing, and also other verticals, for example, the machinery manufacturing was not connected because at that time there was no need to be connected. Now we see more and more machinery need to be connected, not only on the manufacturing floor, but also send things outside of manufacturing floor connected to other compute. So the necessity to bring more close, in Dell, we have this notion of, well, what is the edge you wear a lot? What is the edge? The edge is everything where you need to act upon the information that you create. It's really makes sense to bring things more there because you need to act on them. And so the necessity to have more compute latency, it's very big things that we need to solve. Security, and also the days operation day one day, two operation, and be able to drive everything from the cloud to the edge in the same way and same experience. >> Yeah. I mean, you basically laid out the enterprise requirements for most things, which is pretty complicated, but it has to run at scale, but also, Munyeb was as mentioning edge native. So I want to get your guys' reaction to our thoughts around this concept. I love this edge native conversation, but as customers much migrate to the cloud, okay. Migration workloads with containerization, stateful data, these are real issues. So migrating is one thing, but now if I migrate, what's (indistinct) migrating an app or workloads versus edge native, and how does someone get from migrating or re-platforming to edge native? Can you guys share your thoughts on this evolution of migrating and then becoming truly edge native? >> Yeah, John, I think it's an interesting thing, right? So it's not, it's easy to say, I have a continuum from data center to the public cloud, to the edge. What we're finding is some of the applications you've migrated to the cloud. If you think about it, both data center and clouds are very centralized compute models, right? So when you actually re-platforming refactoring applications for the cloud, what you're doing is you're fundamentally, building for elastic scale, elastic growth of compute, elastic shrink of compute. When you actually moving.. So it's more compute heavy, and you know, the plasticity of compute. When you actually moving these workloads towards the edge, they're actually data dense, they are data heavy, because to what Pierluca was saying before as well, there's a huge volume of data coming at you. And that volume of data needs to be processed. That volume of data needs to be in real-time and streamed and outcomes driven out of that. Now, do you want to take a lot of that data and then push it all the way to the cloud or the data center to get processed? Or do you want to get it processed locally and come to some actions? Now Pierluca's example of the manufacturing plant, that time delay in latency could cost you millions of dollars of bad quality product, because you missed the quality control in not replacing parts fast enough. So what we're seeing in this emergence of this new edge native applications is people are having to re-platform, refactor applications to work them at the edge because of the attributes being different, higher data density, real-time process requirements, scale. We talked about scale. We're all used to doing thousands of maybe hundreds of data centers, but not tens of thousands of edge locations. Right? So it's a different level of scale and security that you need. And that's where, when we call edge native, is fundamentally it has to operate, very closely with the operation technology rather than the typical IT stance we take. >> You're looking at it. I mean, tell about the product features that are requirements there, because you mentioned a few things in there. I'll just jump, pick one thing out, which is data. Moving data around is very expensive and everyone knows that. But you got to move compute now and with serverless, okay. And in the cloud, you want that same kind of agility and capability at the edge. So you got to have the devices at the edge, be smart enough and be software enabled to handle this. How do you deal with this in the product management side of things? Because you've got to prioritize all this. >> Absolutely John to take on what Munyeb was saying, we think of why someone should look at the Dell and VMware together is because for be successful, there are a lot of POC going on and a lot of try and buy in a lot of also verticalization of the use case. So what gear to offer is really what they say, generate insight, where they need, and also consolidate it. Cause we hear more, as Munyeb pointed out, you buy on the edge for the outcome, you buy for, security, you buy for an outcome. For example, for predictive maintenance. Now that buy of the outcome also prescribe a certain orchestration in a certain out and in software that need to run, right? If certain deployment model now in the same place, you can buy an outcome, for example, for smart buildings. All of us that we have in the advanced or most of it at home right now, but think about the buildings where you need to control that you have solar panel and stuff like that. So that outcome, if you buy today, it runs on another thing. So you end up with a very silos approach where you have a prolification actually of infrastructure. What we are proposing here is really that we need to simplify. We need to start with the building block approach that allow us to also bring the security. As you can think it, as the devices expand as the compute, you pointed out the expanding thousands or hundreds of thousand, security becomes a big deal. And in some place you need to also be, I've got things away because you don't want even to go to the internet at all. So that's a very important is this is how we perceive the things that we need to simplify the edge for our customers. >> Let's get specific now. How can customers, whether they're Dell technologies and VMware customers or new customers, leverage the combination of VMware and Dell technologies for the edge, what is the solution? What can they do? What are the things they can start with today? >> Pierluca, you want to get started with the platform on the app side. Go ahead. >> Today what really is the approach we have is, building block approach, as I said. So in Dell, we can cover a lot of things for the edge. We can cover from as small as a gateway, to large, to a plaster to multiple plasters forming an entire data center and connect all of that. And then don't forget about our apex project, where you can buy all of these as a service as well. So that layer that we have where we have ruggedized server, we have the gateways, we have also software assets that they are very important for the edge like our streaming data platform. So you need to collect this data. We need to stream this data and collect and have insight about this data. So we can bring our streaming data platform, in all of these, by the way, it runs on top of VMware. So that's where VMware is coming to play. >> Yeah, no, I think, you know, building on the foundation there, John is really about, us providing then, having the platform T-shirt sizing, as you know, pure Pierluca went from small to large is important because what we recognize is not one size fits all at the edge because they're going to be all sizes requirements. Second, what we're doing is providing the multi-cloud connectivity, multilevel cloud services that VMware knows. So bringing our software layer on top, providing developers to build applications, both VMs and containers on the edge when they can use services from any cloud provider to build those applications. So VMware provides that multi-cloud platform, which gives the ability for folks to build applications and get services from any choice of their cloud providers and run it on top of Dell, portfolio and connect that all together with, very importantly I would say, in a distributed lifecycle management and operations everywhere. Because you're not going to find IT skillsets at the edge. This is at a retail store, at a manufacturing plant. So what you don't get is very, skilled IT skillsets. So the control plane happens to be in the cloud, which is centrally operated. Whereas the data plane is all running at the edge and we're able to between VMware and Dell, bring our portfolios together to effectively deliver upon this and provide what I would call, a secure software supply chain. You can build applications securely and, deliver them from the data center to the cloud, to the edge and manage it provision it and troubleshoot it end to end. That's only possible with VMware and Dell technologies, right? >> And John, let me call it out that one of the most important things, obviously with VMware, our VxRail product, obviously is our running horse for most of the edge use case, including our server, ruggedized server. But I will say that on the VMware we are spending with the satellites nodes, that they are basically nodes that you can put in your edge location and centralized, you can manage and you can do all the life cycle management, also if you don't need the storage part. So that's a key things that expand the as with the common also reference, if you guys will follow our session, we have a joint customer actually explain our such industry, how you will run the entire things with the edge and run VMware across with the VxRail. So great example. >> That's a great answer, great call out to one of the things that's impressive. And I think this better together message comes out in that conversation is that you have a building block approach. You have a platform, these two things work together. And I think one of the things that's interesting to me, just as a, student of the industry over the years, it's kind of an operating system in itself, it's the cloud, right? It's like one big thing. So the customers can build applications on top of it and get the benefits of it. I think this is kind of a systems thinking mindset, not just design thinking, but it's a systems architecture, if you will. it's not directly a systems like a computer system, but holistically, you can look at it as a systems design problem. So customers are having more and more of these conversations around systems thinking. Can you guys share your reaction to that? Because we all saw the benefits of design thinking, oh yeah. Design thinking, you know, greatest movement. Now we're in a new era I think where, we're starting to see people talk about the systems thinking. >> You, you actually, it's a great thing, John. I think you have to have system thinking, everything we're been talking about so far is, if you don't have system thinking you won't scale to tens of thousands of locations, in a systematically, right? So design thinking is brilliant because it gives you a very user interface, user experiences where users and developers get in and have a flexibility on usage and all of that. What you're talking about here is tens of thousands of locations. And those locations don't have any skilled IT folks. So we're not used to breaking things down. So what do you want to think about is more of a scalable system design, which is like cookie cutter, push it out, and then, it has got zero touch provisioning, zero trust for architecture, with security built in and distributed lifecycle management. So you are making the edge simple to operate for that to happen, you need system thinking where it is, scalable, secure, and scalable not large, small, and highly distributed in a lot of locations, you have a proper system thinking and design system put in, then it'll operate itself. This is how we've done industry for a long time. Right? >> And the consequences have to be factored in. If something breaks there's consequences in systems, it's a ripple effect or network of what kinds of things are going on. Great stuff. You're looking at a comment on the systems thinking, I'd love to get your reaction to that. >> Yeah. Let me say one things about the system thinking. So system thinking is very important also on top of the solution that we put together, as we discussed before, right? Normally in the vertical, like the manufacturing, people by outcome. So at the end of the day, the people, they interact directly with the outcome, they look at the solution and we will offer together the solution. So we have the VMware layer, we are partnering with other people to, offer an end to end solution, to Munyeb's point The manufacturing floor person will not really care if he's interact with VxRail or VMware, but he wants to interact with the end application. So that's why it's very important beside that we need to make the infrastructure transparent and easy. So that's really good point. That's how the things going. That's why you need to system architect the things and system think the things. >> I think this edge conversation is bringing up a new modern era of opportunity and there are problems to solve and work the problem. The data is when we talked earlier. Are there considerations that you guys see out there for how architects in the enterprise who are thinking about the future of their business, how they want to set themselves up for the modern era? It's coming as here for edge for low latency, built insecurity. These are table stake enterprise features now. So, also the data obviously the cost of data and the tsunami of more data. Local data to be processed, leveraging the benefits of the cloud in a systematic way. These are all new hard problems that if solved create huge opportunities. Or as Jerry Chen, former VMware CTO of the cloud said, castles on the cloud. You can have the best of the cloud if you do this right. What are some considerations that people should think about from an architecture standpoint? >> I think from my perspective, and then let Munyeb speak about this. Think about how you can standardize from the beginning. So don't end up with the thousand of different option because then it's difficult to manage. And then have a wide approach, look at all the different edge sites, as a building block of that big edge thing. And also look at how you can not only scale, but bring security in all the things that you think, right. This is fundamental. In the past we always left security as the last of things that we thought about, at the edge is fundamental. And edge is changing, the requirement. As I explained at the beginning of this interview, edge has a very different requirement. And if we satisfy those requirement, then we are successful not only at the edge, but we are successful at the core and in the cloud, because we can bring as many application in and out, in and out where it's needed. So with that, Munyeb you want to say something about that? >> Sure, Thanks Pierluca And I think, Pierluca was absolutely right. I think you have to standardize, you have to scale, only then you can standardize easily without doing (indistinct). As an architect, one of the key things to consider, also there is, you know, I think, John you brought up 5G at the beginning, but we didn't follow up with that. Right? So we actually do believe that the service provider market for building out the next generation 5G, they have capacity, they have connectivity closest to the edge as well. So I actually do think that as architects think about it, a player as you build out your data center, your cloud, and now towards the edge, the last mile between the cloud and the edge is actually owned by the service providers, the service providers will play a critical role in placing these workloads closer to the edge, but not necessarily all far away from the cloud. So, architect design think about scalability, intrinsic security, and having different sizes. But one important factor, I actually do believe that the service providers have the opportunity of a lifetime in front of them to become like the hyper scalers for the edge, because if they can provide not just infrastructure network services, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, they will be able to deliver extensively whole amount of edge compute services for the enterprises, which is something that architects have to think about to actually not make a bottleneck, to all go up to the cloud where they can actually be distributed as the service provider. >> Yeah. I totally agree. The service providers, they have the real estate, they got the facilities, they've got the connectivity at the edge and the footprint, what used to be a base station is becoming smaller and smaller and higher density. So it's going to start to see, and there is by the way more edges. It's not the one tower anymore. It's everywhere. These little points of access points, are thousands of points of millions of points of light, if you will to the network. Huge. Okay, gentlemen, thank you so much. I want to just say, I really appreciate this conversation. A systems thinking, edge it's the future and an edge is an architectural shift where there's only advantages, not a lot of downside if you plan it right. The opportunity with the cloud is amazing. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights here on the Cube conversation. >> Thank you very much John. >> Thank you for having us John. >> This is John Furrier with the cube here in Napa remotely in Palo Alto and Palo Alto in Massachusetts for a remote interview. Great conversation with great guests. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi everybody, welcome to this CUBE conversation. This is Dave Vellante, and as part of my CEO and CXO series I've been bringing in leaders around the industry and I'm really pleased to have Sudheesh Nair, who is the CEO of ThoughtSpot Cube alum. Great to see you against Sudheesh, thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure Dave. Thank you so much for having me. I hope everything is well with you and your family. >> Yeah ditto back at you. I know you guys were in a hot spot for a while so you know we power on together, so I got to ask you. You guys are AI specialists, maybe sometimes you can see things before they happen. At what point did you realize that this COVID-19 was really going to be something that would affect businesses globally and then specifically your business. >> Yeah it's amazing, isn't it? I mean we used to think that in Silicon Valley we are sitting at the top of the world. AI and artificial intelligence, machine learning, Cloud, IOT and all of a sudden this little virus comes in and put us all in our places basically. We are all waiting for doctors and others to figure these things out so we can actually go outside. That tells you all about what is really important in life sometimes. It's been a hard journey for most people because of what a huge health event this has been. From a Silicon Valley point of view and specifically from artificial intelligence point of view, there is not a lot of history here that we can use to predict the future, however early February we had our sales kick off and we had a lot of our sellers who came from Asia and it became sort of clear to us immediately during our sales kick off in Napa Valley that this is not like any other event. The sort of things that they were going through in Asia we sort of realized immediately that us and when it gets to the shores of the US, this is going to really hurt. So we started hunkering down as a company, but as you mentioned early when we were talking, California in general had a head start, so we've been hunkered down for almost five weeks now, as a company and as the people and the results are showing. You know it is somewhat contained. Now obviously the real question is what next? How do we go out? But that's probably the next journey. >> So a lot of the executives that I've talked to, of course they start with the number one importance is the health and well-being of our employees. We set up the work from home infrastructure, et cetera. So that's I think, been fairly well played in the media and beginning to understand that pretty well. Also, you saw I talked to Frank Slootman and he's sort of joked about the Sequoia memos, that you know eliminate unnecessary expenses and practices. I've always eliminated unnecessary expenses, keep it to the essentials, but one of the things that I haven't probed with CEOs and I'd love your thoughts on this is, did you have to rethink sort of the ideal customer profile and your value proposition in the specific context of COVID? Was that something that you deliberately did? >> Yeah so it's a really important question that you asked, and I saw the Frank interview and I a 100% agree with that. Inside the company we have this saying, and our co-founder Ajeet actually coined the phrase of living like a middle-class company, and we've always lived that, even though we have, 300 plus million dollars in the bank and we raised a big round last year. It is important to know that as a growth stage company, we are not measured on what's in the bank. It's about the value that we are delivering and how much I'll be able to collect from customers to run the business. The living like a middle-class family has always been the ethos of the company and that has been a good thing. However, I've been with ThoughtSpot for a little more than 18 months. I joined as the CEO. I was an early investor in the company and there are a couple of big changes that we made in the last 18 months, and one of is moving to Cloud which we can talk. The other one has been around narrowing our focus on who we sell to, because one of the things that, as you know very well Dave, is that the world of data is extremely complex. Every company can come in and say, "We have the best solution out there" and it can just be in the world, but the reality is no single product is going to solve every problem for a customer when it comes to a data analytics issue. All we can hope for is that we become part of a package or solution that solves a very specific problem, so in that context there's a lot of services involved, a lot of understanding of customer problems involved. We are not a bi-product in the sense of Tableau or click on Microsoft, but they do. We are about a use case based outcomes, so we knew that we can't be everywhere. So the second change we made is actually a narrower focus, exclusively sell to global. That class, the middle class mentality, really paid off now because almost all the customers we sell to are very large customers and the four work verticals that we were seeing tremendous progress, one was healthcare, second was financial sector, the third was telecom and manufacturing and the last one is repair. Out of these four, I would say manufacturing is the one where we have seen a slowdown, but the other verticals have been, I would say cautiously spending. Being very responsible and thus far, I'm not here to say that everything is fine, but the impact if you take Zoom as a spectrum, on one end of the spectrum, where everything is doing amazingly well, because they are a good product market fit to hospitality industry on the other side. I would say ThoughtSpot and our approach to data analytics is closer to this than that. >> That's very interesting Sudheesh because, of course health care, I don't think they have time to do anything right now. I mean they're just so overwhelmed so that's obviously an interesting area that's going to continue to do well I would think. And they, the Financial Services guys, there's a lot of liquidity in the system and after 2009 the FinTech guys or the financial, the banks are doing quite well. They may squeeze you a little bit because they're smart negotiators, but as you say manufacturing with the supply chains, and in retail, look, if your ecommerce I mean Amazon hit, all-time highs today up whatever, 20% in the last two weeks. I mean just amazing what's happening, so it's really specific parts of those sectors will continue to do well, won't they? >> Absolutely, I think look, I saw this joke on Twitter, what's the number one cost? What is in fact (mic cuts out). Very soon people will say it is COVID and even businesses that have been tried to, sort of relatively, reluctant to really embrace the transformation that the customers have been asking for. This has become the biggest forcing function and that's actually a good thing because consumers are going to ultimately win because once you get groceries delivered to you into your front doors, it's going to be hard to sort of go back to standing in the line in Costco, when InstaCart can actually deliver it for you and you get used to it, so there are some transformation that is going to happen because of COVID. I don't think that society will go back from, but having said that, it's also not transformation for the sake of transformation. So speaking from our point of view on data analytics, I sort of believe that the last three to four years we have been sort of living in the Renaissance of enterprise data analytics and that's primarily because of three things. The first thing, every consumer is expecting, no matter how small or the big business, is to get to know them. You know, I don't want you to treat me like an average. I don't want you treat me like a number. Treat me like a person, which means understand me but personalize the services you are delivering and make sure that everything that you send me are relevant. If there's a marketing campaign or promo or customer support call, make sure it's relevant. The relevance and personalization. The second is, in return for that. customers are willing to give you all sorts of data. The privacy, be damned, so to a certain extent they are giving you location information, medical information,-- And the last part is with Cloud, the amount of data that you can collect and free plus in data warehouse like Snowflakes, like Redshift. It's been fundamentally shifted, so when you toggle them together the customers demand for better actors from the business, then amount of data that they're willing to give and collect to IOT and variables and then cloud-based technologies that allows you to process and store this means that analyzing this data and then delivering relevant actions to the consumers is no longer a nice to have and that I think is part of the reason why ThoughtSpot is finding sort of a tailwind, even with all this global headwind that we are all in. >> Well I think too, the innovation formula really has changed in our industry. I've said many times, it's not Moore's law anymore, it's the combination of data plus AI applied to that data and Cloud for scale and you guys are at the heart of that, so I want to talk about the market space a little bit. You look at BI and analytics, you look at the market. You know the Gartner Magic Quadrant and to your point, you know the companies on there are sort of chalk and cheese, to borrow a phrase from our friends across the pond. I mean, you're not power BI, you're not SaaS. I mean you're sort of search led. You're turning natural language into complex sequel queries. You're bringing in artificial intelligence and machine intelligence to really simplify and dramatically expand and put into the hands of business people analytics. So explain a little bit. First of all, do I have that sort of roughly right? And help us frame the market space how you think about it. >> Yeah I mean first of all, it is amazing that the diverse industry and technologies that you speak to and how you are able to grasp all of them and summarize them within a matter of seconds is a term to understand in itself. You and Stew, you both have that. You are absolutely right. So the way I think of this is that BI technologies have been around and it's played out really well. It played it's part. I mean if you look at it the way I think of BI, the most biggest BI tool is still Excel. People still want to use Excel and that is the number one BI tool ever. Then 10 years ago Tableau came in and made visualizations so delightful and a pic so to speak. That became the better way to consume complex data. Then Microsoft came in Power BI and then commoditized and the visualization to a point that, you know Tableau had to fight and it ended up selling to the Salesforce. We are not trying to play there because I think if you chase the idea of visualization it is going to be a long hard journey for ThoughtSpot to catch Tableau in visualization. That's not what we are trying to do. What we are trying to do is that you have a lot of data on one hand and you have a consumer sitting here and saying data doesn't mean you treated me well. What is my action that is this quote, very customized action quote. And our question is, how does beta turn into bespoke action inside a business? The insurance company is calling. You are calling an insurance company's customer support person. How do you know that the impact that you are getting from them is customized. But turning data into insight is an algorithmic process. That's what BI does, but that's like a few people in an organization can do that. Think of them like oil. They don't mix with water, that's the business people. The merchandising specialist who figures out which one should become site and what should be the price what should be ranking. That's the merchandiser. Their customer support person, that's a business user. They don't necessarily do Python or SQL, so what happens is in businesses you have the data people like water and the business people who touch the customer and interact with them every day, they're like the water. They don't mix. The idea of ThoughtSpot is very simple. We don't want this demarcation. We don't want this chasm. We want to break it so that every single person who interact with the customer should be able to have an interactive storytelling with the data, so that every decision that they make takes data into insight to knowledge to action, and that decision-making pipeline cannot be gut driven alone. It has to be enabled by data science and human experience coming together. So in our view, a well deployed data platform, decision-making platform, will enhance and augment human experience, as opposed to human experience says, this data says that, so you've got to pick one. That's an old model and that has been the approach with natural language based interactive access with the BI being done automated through AI in the backend, parts what we are able to put very complex data science in front of a 20 year experienced merchandising specialist in a large e-commerce website without learning Python, without learning people, without understanding data warehouse >> Right so, a couple of things I want to pick up on. I mean data is plentiful, insights aren't. That's really the takeaway from one of the things that you mentioned and this notion of storytelling is very, very important. I mean, all business people, they better be storytellers in some way shape or form and what better way to tell stories than with data, and so, because as you say it's no longer gut feel, it's not the answer anymore. So it seems to me Sudheesh, that you guys are transformative. The decision to focus on the global 2000 and really not, get washed up in the Excel, well I could just do it in Excel, or I'm going to go get Power BI, it's good enough. It's really, you're trying to be transformative and you've got a really disruptive model that we talked about before, search led and you're speaking to the system, or, typing in a way that's more natural, I wonder if you could comment on that and particularly that disruption of that transformation. >> Remember we are selling to global 2000. Almost all of them will have Tableau or one of these power BI or one of these solutions already, so you're not trying to go right and change that. What we have done is very clearly focus on use cases. We're transforming data into action. We will move the needle for the bit, but for example with the COVID situation going on, one of the most popular use cases for us is around working capital management. Now a CFO who's been in the business for 20 or 30 years is an expert and have the right kind of gut feeling about how her business is running when it comes to working capital. However, imagine now she can do 20 what-if scenarios in the next five seconds or next 10 minutes without going to the SPN 18, without going to the BI team. She can say what if we reduce hiring in Japan and instead we focus them on Singapore? What if we move 20% of marketing dollars from Germany to New York? What would be the impact of AR going up by 1% versus AP going down by 1%? She needs to now do complex scenarios, but without delay. It's sort of like how do I find a restaurant through Yelp versus going to the lobby to talk to a specialist who tells me the local restaurant. This interactive database storytelling for gut enhances the decision-making is very powerful. This is why, customer have, our largest customer has spent more than $26 million with ThougthSpot and this is not small. Our average is around close to 700k. This week for example, we are having a webinar where Verizon's SVP of Analytics specifically focused on finance. He's actually going to be on a webinar with our CFO. Our CFO Sophie, one of our financial specialists and Jeff Noto from Verizon are going to be on this talking about working capital management. What parts ThoughtSpot is a portion of, but they are sharing their experience of how do we manage, so that kind of varies, like extremely rigid focus on use cases, supply chain, modeling different things so that someone who knows Asia can really interact with the data to figure out if our supply chain from Bangladesh is going to be impacted because of COVID can we go to Ecuador? What will that look like? What will be the cost? What's the transportation cost, the fuel cost, Business has become so complex you don't have time to take five, six days to look at the report, no matter how pretty that report is, you have to make it efficient. You need to be able to make a lightning fast decision and something like COVID is really exposing all of that because day by day situation on the ground is changing. You know, employees are calling in sick. The virus is breaking out in one place, other place. If it's not, curves are going up and down so you cannot have any sort of delay between human experience and data signs and all of that comes down to your point telling visual stories so that the organization can rally behind the changes that they want to make. >> So these are mission-critical use cases. They are big problems that you're solving and attacking. As you said, you're not all things to all people. One of the things you're not is a data store, right? So you've got a partner, you've got to have an ecosystem, whether it's cloud databases, the cloud itself. I wonder if you could talk about some of the key partnerships that you're forming and how you're going to market and how that's affecting your business. >> Yeah, I mean one of the things that I've always believed in Silicon Valley is that companies die out of indigestion, not out of starvation. You try to do everything. That's how you end up dying and for us in the space of data, it's an extremely humbling space because there is so much to do, data prep, data warehousing, you know a mash-up of data, hosting of data, We have clearly decided that our ability is best spent on making artificial intelligence to work, interactive storytelling for business use and that's it. With that said, we needed a high velocity agility partner in the back end and Cloud based data warehouse have become a huge tailwind for us because our entire customer deployments are on Cloud, and the number one, obviously as you know from Frank's thing, the Snowflake has actually given, customers have seen Snowflakes plus ThoughtSpot is actually a good thing and we are exclusive in global 2000 and the Snowflake is climbing up there and we are able to build a good mutual partnership, but we are also seeing a really creative partnership all the way from product design to go to market and compensation alignment with Amazon on their push on Redshift as well. Google, we have announced partnership. There is a little bit of (mic cuts out) in the beginning we are getting, and just a couple of weeks ago we started working with Microsoft on their Azure Synapse algo. Now I would say that it's lagging, we still have work to do but Amazon and Snowflake are really pushing in terms of what customers want to see, and it completely aligns with our value popular, one plus one equals three. It really works well for our customers >> And Google is what, BigQuery plus Google Cloud, or what are you doing there? >> Yep so both Amazon and Google. Well, what we are doing at three different pieces. One if obviously the hosting of their cloud platforms. Second is data warehouse and enterprise data warehouse, which is Redshift and BigQuery. Third, we are also pretty good at taking machine learning algorithms that they have built for specific verticals. We're going to take those and then ingest them and deliver better. So for example if you are one of the largest supply companies in the world and you want to know what's the shipment rate from China and it shows and then the next thing you want to know is what the failure rate on this based on last behavior when you compressed a shipment rate, and that probably could use a bit of specific algorithms and you know Google and others have actually built a library of algorithms that can be injected into ThoughtSpot. We will simply answer the question of we may have gotten that algorithm from the Google library, sort of the business use is concerned. It doesn't really matter, so we have made all that invisible and we are able to deliver democratized access to Bespoke Insights to a business user, who are too sort of been afraid to deal with the sector data. >> Since you mentioned that you've got obviously several hundred million dollars in cash. You've raised over half a billion. You've talked previously about potential acquisitions, about IPO, are you considering acquisitions? M&A at this point in time? I mean there may be some deals out there. There's certainly some talent out there, but boy the market is changing so fast. I mean, it seems to, certain sectors are actually doing quite well. Will you consider M&A at this point? >> Yes, so I think IPO and M&A are two different-- IPO definitely, it will be foolish to say that this hasn't pushed our clients back a little bit because this is a huge event. I think there will be a correction across valuation and all of that. However, it is also important for us we use this opportunity to look at how we are investing our resources and investment for long-term versus the short-term and make sure that we are more focused and more tightening at the belt. We are doing that internally. Having said that, being a private company our valuation is, you know at least in theory, frozen, and then we have a pretty good cash position of close to $300 million, which means that it is absolutely an opportunity for us to seriously consider M&A. The important thing going back to my adage of, companies don't die out of starvation. It is critical to make sure that whatever we do, we do it with clarity. Are we doing it for talent? Are we doing it for tech? Or are we doing it for market? When you have a massive event like this, it is a poor idea to go after new market. It is important to go to our existing customers who are very large global 2000 firms and then identify problems that we cannot solve otherwise and then add technology to solve those problems, so technology acquisitions are absolutely something to consider, but it needs some more time to settle in because, the first two weeks were all people who were blindsided by this, then the last two weeks we have now gotten the mojo back in sales and mojo back in engineering, and now I think it is time for us to digest and prepare for these next two, three quarters of event and as part of that, companies like us who are fortunate enough to be on a good cash position, we'll absolutely look for interesting and good deals in the M&S space. >> Yeah, it makes sense, is tell and tech and, post IPO you can worry about Tam expansion. You'll be under pressure to do that as the CEO, but for now that's a very pragmatic approach. My last question is, there's some things when you think about, you say five weeks now you've been essentially on lockdown. You must, as many of us start thinking about wow, a lot of this work from home which came so fast people wouldn't even think about it earlier. You know, some companies mandated the beehive approach. Now everybody's open to that. There are certain things that are likely to remain permanent post COVID. Have you thought much about that? Generally and specifically how it might affect your business, the permanence of post COVID. Your thoughts. >> Yeah I've thought a lot about it. In fact, this morning I was speaking with our CRO Brian McCarthy about this. I think the change will happen, think of like an onion's inner most layer, I think the most, my hope is, that the biggest change will be in every one of us internally, as a what sort of a person am I and what does my position in the world means. The ego of each one of us that we carry because if this global event in one shot did not make you rethink your own sort of position in this big universe I think that's a mess. So the first thing has to be about being a better person. The second thing is, I had this two, three days of fever which was negative for COVID but I isolated myself, but that gave me sort of an idea of dipping in the dark room where I'm hoping my family won't get infected and you know my parents are in India so I sort of also realized that what is really important for you in life and how much family should mean to you, so that goes to the first, yourself second, your relationship with family, but having said that, the third thing when it comes to business building is also the importance for building with quality people, because when things go wrong it is so critical to have people who believe in the purpose of what you are trying to build. People with good faith and unshakable faith, personal faith and unshakable faith in the purpose of the company and most importantly you mentioned something which is the story telling. People, leaders who can absolutely communicate with clarity and certainty. It becomes the most important thing to lead an organization. I mean, you are a small business owner. You know we are in a small company with around 500 people. There is nothing like sitting at home waiting to see how the company is doing over email if you're a friend line engineer or a seller. Communication becomes so critical, so having the trust and the respect of organization and have the ability to clearly and transparently communicate is the most important thing for the company and over communicating due to the time of crisis. These things are so useful even after this crisis is over. Obviously from a technology point of view, you know people have been speaking a lot about working remotely and technology changes, security, those things will happen but I think if these three things were to happen in that order. Be a better person, be a better family member and be a better leader, I think the world will be better off and the last thing I'll also tell you, that you know in Silicon Valley sometimes we have this disregard for arts and literature and fight over science. I hope that goes away, because I can't imagine living without books, without movies, without Netflix and everything. Art makes yourself creative and enriches our lives. You know, sports is no longer there on TV and the fact that people are able to immerse their imagination in books and fiction and watch TV. That also reminds you how important it is to have a good balance between arts and science in this world, so I have a long list of things that I hope we as a people and as a society will get better. >> Yeah, a lot more game playing in our household and it's good to reconnect in that regard. Well Sudheesh, you've always been a very clear thinker and you're in a great spot and an awesome leader. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It was really great to see you again. All the best to you, your family and the broader community in your area. >> Dave, you've been very kind with this. Thank you so much, I wish you the same and hopefully we'll get to see face-to-face in the near future. Thanks a lot. >> I hope so, thank you. All right and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Interconnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Okay, welcome back everyone we're here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay, theCUBE's exclusive three day coverage of IBM Interconnect 2017, I'm John Furrier. My co-host, Dave Velliante. Our next guest is Harley Davis, who's the VP of decision management at IBM. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, happy to be here. >> Thanks for your time today, you've got a hot topic, you've got a hot area, making decisions in real-time with data being cognitive, enterprise strong, and data first is really, really hard. So, welcome to theCUBE. What's your thoughts? Because we were talking before we came on about data, we all love, we're all data geeks but the value of the data is all contextual. Give us your color on the data landscape and really the important areas we should shine a light on, that customers are actively working to extract those insights. >> So, you know, traditionally, decisions have really been transactional, all about taking decisions on systems of record, but what's happening now is, we have the availability of all this data, streaming it in real-time, coming from systems of record, data about the past, data about the present, and then data about the future as well, so when you take into account predictive analytics models, machine learning, what you get is kind of data from the future if I can put it that way and what's interesting is how you put it all together, look for situations of risk, opportunity, is there a fraud that's happening now? Is there going to be a lack of resources at a hospital when a patient checks in? How do we put all that context together, look into the future and apply business policies to know what to do about it in real-time and that's really the differentiating use cases that people are excited about now and like you say, it's a real challenge to put that together but it's happening. >> It's happening, and that's, I think that's the key thing and there's a couple megatrends going on right now that's really propelling this. One is machine learning, two is the big data ecosystem as we call it, the big data ecosystem has always been, okay, Hadoop was the first wave, then you saw Spark, and then you're seeing that evolving now to a whole nother level moving data at rest and data in motion is a big conversation, how to do that together, not just I'm a batch only, or real-time only, the integration of those two. Then you combine that with the power of cloud and how fast cloud computing, with compute power, is accelerating, those two forces with machine learning, and IOT, it's just amazing. >> It's all coming together and what's interesting is how you bridge the gap, how you bring it all together, how you create a single system that manages in real-time all this information coming in, how you store it, how you look at, you know, history of events, systems of record and then apply situation detection to it to generate events in real-time. So, you know, one of the things that we've been working on in the decision management lab is a system called decision server insights, which is a big real-time platform, you send a stream of events in, it gets information from systems of records, you insert analytics, predictive analytics, machine learning models into it and then you write a series of situation detection rules that look at all that information and can say right now this is what's happening, I link it in with what's likely to happen in the future, for example I can say my predictive analytics model says based on this data, executed right now, this customer, this transaction is likely, 90% likely to be a fraud and then I can take all the customer information, I can apply my rule and I can apply my business policy to say well what do I do about that? Do I let it go through anyway? Because it's okay, do I reject it? Do I send it to a human analyst? We got to put all that together. >> So that use case that you just described, that's happening today, that's state of the art today, so one of the challenges today, and we all know fraud detection's got much, much better in the last several years, it used to take, if you ever found it, it would take six months, right? And it's too late, but still a lot of false positives, that'll negate a transaction, now that's a business rule decision, right? But are we at the point where even that's going to get better and better and better? >> Well, absolutely. I mean the whole, there have been two main ways to do fraud detection in the past. The first one is kind of long scale predictive analytics that you train every few months and requires, you know, lots and lots of history of data but you don't get new use cases that come up in real-time, like you don't have the Ukrainian hacker who decides, you know, if I do a payment from this one website then I can grab a bunch of money right now and then you have the other alternative, which is having a bunch of human analysts who look for cases like that guy and put it in as business rules and what's interesting is to combine the two, to retrain the models in real-time, and still apply the knowledge that the human analysts can get in real-time, and that's happening every day in lots of companies now. >> And that idea of combining transactional data and analytics, you know, has become popularized over the last couple of years, one obvious use case there is ad-tech, right? Making offers to people, marketing, what's the state of that use case? >> Well, let's look at it from the positive perspective. What we are able to do now is take information about consumers from multiple sources, you can look at the interaction that you've had with them, let's say you're a financial services company, you get all sorts of information about a company, about a customer, sorry, from the CRM system, from the series of interactions you've had with them, from what they've looked at on your website, but you can also get additional information about them if you know them by their Twitter handle or other social media feeds, you can take information from their Twitter feeds, for example, apply some cognitive technology to extract information from that do sentiment analysis, do natural language processing, you get some sense of meaning about the tweets and then you can combine that in real-time in a system like the one I talked about to say ah, this is the moment, right here, where this guy's interested in a new car, we think he just got a promotion or a raise because he's now putting more money into the bank and we see tweets saying "oh I love that new Porsche 911, "can't wait to go look at it in the showroom," if we can put those things together in real-time, why not send him a proactive offer for a loan on a new car, or put him in touch with a dealer? >> No and sometimes as a consumer I want that, you know, when I'm looking for say, scarce tickets to a show or a play-off game or something and I want the best offer and I'm going to five or six different websites, and somebody were to make me an offer, "hey, here are better seats for a lower price," I would be thrilled. >> So geographic information is interesting too for that, so let's say, for example, that you're, you're traveling to Napa Valley and let's say that we can detect that you just, you know, took out some money from the bank, from your ATM in Napa, now we know you're in Napa, now we know that you're a good customer of the bank, and we have a deal with a tour operator, a wine tour operator, so let's spontaneously propose a wine tour to you, give you a discount on that to keep you a good customer. >> Yeah, so relevant offers like that, as a consumer I'd be very interested in. All too often, at least lately, I feel like we're in the first and second innings of that type of, you know, system, where many of the offers that you get are just, wow, okay, for three weeks after I buy the dishwasher, I'm getting dishwasher ads, but it's getting better, you can sort of see it and feel it. >> You can see it getting a little better. I think this is where the combination of all these technologies with machine learning and predictive analytics really comes to the fore and where the new tools that we have available to data scientists, things like, you know, the data scientist experience that IBM offers and other tools, can help you produce a lot more segmented and targeted analytics models that can be combined with all the other information so that when you see that ad, you say oh, the bank really understands me. >> Harley, one of the things that people are working on right now and most customers, your customers and potential customers that we talk to is I got the insights coming, and I'm working on that, and we're pedaling as fast as we can, but I need actionable insight, this is a decision making thing, so decisions are now what people want to do, so that's what you do, so there's some stats out there that decision making can be less than 30 minutes based on good data, the life of the data, as short as six seconds, this speaks to the data in motion, humans aside of it, I might be on my mobile phone, I might be looking at some industrial equipment, whatever, I could be a decision maker in the data center, this is a core problem, what are you guys doing in this area, because this is really a core problem. Or an opportunity. >> Well this all about leveraging, you know, event driven architectures, Kafka, Spark and all the tools that work with it so that we can grab the data in real-time as it comes in, we can associate it with the rest of the context that's relevant for making a decision, so basically with action, when we talk about actionable insights, what are we talking about? We're talking about taking data in real-time, structured, unstructured data, having a framework for managing it, Kafka, Spark, something like decision server insights in ODM, whatever, applying cognitive technology to turn some of the unstructured data into structured data, applying machine learning, predictive analytics, tools like SPSS to create a kind of prediction of what happens in the future and then applying business rules, something like operational decision management, ODM, in order to apply business policies to the insights we've garnered from the rest of the cycle so that we can do something about it, that's decision manager, that's-- >> So you were saying earlier on the use case about, I get some event data, I bring it in to systems of record, I apply some rules to it, I mean, that doesn't sound very hard, I mean, it's almost as if that's happening now-- >> It's hard. >> Well it's hard, let me get, this is my whole point, this is not possible years ago so that's one point, I want to get some color from you on that because this is ungettable, most of the systems, we even go back ten, five years ago, we siloed, so now rule based stuff seems trivial, practically, okay, by some rules, but it's now possible to put this package together and I know it's hard but conceptually those are three concepts that some would say oh, why weren't we doing this before? >> It's been possible for a long time and we have, you know, we have plenty of customers who combine, you know, who do something as simple as when you get approved for a loan, that's based on a score, which is essentially a predictive analytics model combined with business rules that say approve, not approve, ask for more documentations and that's been done for years so it's been possible, what's even more enabled now is doing it in real-time, taking into account a much greater degree of information, having-- >> John: More data sources. >> Data sources, things like social media, things like sensors from IoT, connected car applications, all sorts of things like that and then retraining the models more frequently, so getting better information about the future, faster and faster. >> Give an example of some use cases that you're working with customers on because I think that's fascinating and I think I would agree with you that it's been possible before but the concepts are known, but now it's accelerating to a whole nother level. Talk about some of the use cases end-to-end that you guys have done with customers. >> Let's think about something like an airline, that wants to manage its operations and wants to help its passengers manage operational disruptions or changes. So what we want to do now is, take a series of events coming from all sorts of sources, and that can be basic operational data like the airplanes, what's the airplane, is it running late, is it not running late, is the connection running late, combining it with things about the weather, so information that we get about upcoming weather events from weather analytics models, and then turning that into predicting what's going to happen to this passenger through his journey in the future so that we can proactively notify him that he should be either, we can rebook him automatically on a flight, we can provide him, if we know he's going to be delayed, we can automatically provide him amenities, notify the staff at the airport where he's going to be blocked, because he's our platinum customer, we want to give him lounge access, we want to give him his favorite drink, so combine all this information together and that's a use case-- >> When's this going to happen? >> That's life, that's life. >> I want to fly that airline. Okay, so we've been talking a lot about-- >> Mr. American Airlines? I'm not going to put you on the spot there, hold up, that'll get you in trouble. >> Oh yeah, it's a real life use case. >> And said oh hey, you're not going to make your connection, thanks for letting me know. Okay, so, okay we were talking a lot about the way things used to be, the way things are, and the way things are going to be or actually are today, in that last example, and you talked about event driven workloads. One of the things we've been talking about, at SiliconANGLE and on theCUBE is, is workloads, with batch, interactive, Hadoop brought back batch, and now we have what you call, this event driven workloads, we call it the continuous workloads, right? >> All about data immersion, we all call it different things but it's the same thing. >> Right, and when we look at our forecast, we're like wow, this is really going to hit, it hasn't yet, but it's going to hit the steep part of the s-curve, what do you guys expect in terms of adoption for those types of workloads, is it going to be niche, is it going to be predominant? >> I think it should be predominant and I think companies want it to be predominant. What we still need, I think, is a further iteration on the technology and the ability to bring all these different things together. We have the technologies for the different components, we have machine learning technology, predictive analytics technology, business rules technology, event driven architecture technology, but putting it all together in a single framework, right now it's still a real, it's both a technology implementation challenge, and it's an organizational challenge because you have to have data scientists work with IT architects, work with operational people, work with business policy people and just organizationally, bringing everybody-- >> There's organizational gap. That's what you're talking about. >> Yeah, but every company wants it to happen, because they all see a competitive advantage in doing it this way. >> And what's some of the things that are, barriers being removed as you see them, because that is a consistent thing we're hearing, the products are getting better, but the organizational culture. >> The easy thing is the technology barriers, that's the thing, you know? That's kind of the easy thing to work on, how do we have single frameworks that bring together everything, that let you develop both the machine learning model, the business rules model, and optimization, resource optimization model in a single platform and manage it all together, that's, we're working on that, and that's going to be-- >> I'll throw a wrinkle into the conversation, hopefully a spark, pun intended. Open source and microservices and cloud native apps are coming, that are, with open source, it's actually coming in and fueling a lot more activity. This should be a helpful thing to your point about more data sources, how do you guys talk about that? Because that's something you have to be part of, enabling the inbound migration of new stuff. >> Yeah, we have, I mean, everything's part of the environment. It's been the case for a while that open source has been kind of the driver of a lot of innovation and we assimilate that, we can either assimilate it directly, help our customers use it via services, package it up and rebrand open source technology as services that we manage and we control and integrate it for, on behalf of our customers. >> Alright, last question for you. Future prediction, what's five years out? What's going to happen in your mind's eye, I'm not going to hold you, I mean IBM to this, you personally, just as you see some of this stuff unfolding, machine learning, we're expecting that to crank things up pretty quickly, I'm seeing cognitive, and cognitive to the core, really rocking and rolling here, so what's your, how'd you see the next five years playing out for decision making? >> The first thing is, I don't see Skynet ever happening, I think we're so-- >> Mark Benioff made a nice reference in the keynote about Terminator, I'm like no one pick up on that on Twitter. >> I don't think that's really, nearly impossible, as a scenario but of course what is going to happen and what we're seeing accelerating on a daily basis, is applying machine learning, cognitive technology to more and more aspects of our daily life but I see it, it's in a passive way, so when you're doing image recognition, that's passive, you have to tell the computer tell me what's in this image but you, the human, as the developer or the programmer, still has to kick that off and has to say okay, now that you've told me there's a cat in an image, what do I do about that and that's something a human still has to do and that's, you know, that's the thing that would be scary if our systems started saying we're going to do something on behalf of you because we understand humans completely and what they need so we're going to do it on your behalf, but that's not going to happen. >> So the role of the human is critical, paramount in all this. >> It's not going to go away, we decide what our business policies are and-- >> But isn't, well, autonomous vehicles are an example of that, but it's not a business policy, it's the car making a decision for us, cos we can't react fast enough. >> But the car is not going to tell you where you want to go. If it started, if you get in the car and it said I'm taking you to the doctor because you have a fever, maybe that will happen. (all laugh) >> That's kind of Skynet like. I'd be worried about that. It may make a recommendation. (all laugh) >> Hey, you want to go to the doctor, thank you, no I'm good. >> I really don't see Skynet happening but I do think we're going to get more and more intelligent observations from our systems and that's really cool. >> That's very cool. Harley, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, sharing the insights, really appreciate it. theCUBE, getting the insights here at IBM Interconnect 2017, I'm John Furrier, stay with us for some more great interviews on day three here, in Las Vegas, more after this short break. (upbeat music)