>>Hello, welcome back to the cubes coverage of Monaco, crypto summit presented by digital bits. It's a conference where a lot of the people using digital bits and the industry coming together around the future of crypto in the applicates got a great guest garage, rod cot, founder, and CEO of an innovative company. Love this co I love this company, Luke mogul, Rob, thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Oh, >>Thank you for having >>Us. Yeah. So I checked out what you guys are doing. You've got the sports metaverse angle going on with super valuable, cuz sports is super entertaining. Uh, people are engaged. There's huge fan base, huge online now, digital convergence going on with the physical, you know, you see all kinds of sports betting going on now everything's going digital. There's a whole nother consumer experience going on with sports and the game is still the same on the, on the field or so to, or the court. That's correct. Yeah. Now it's going to digital take a minute to explain what you guys are working on. >>Yeah, so yes, we are building out a sports ERs where we are bringing athletes, whether they're NBA stars, NFL stars, w N B a many of those athletes into meows giving them the ownership of the entire, um, meows commerce along with gameplay. So that's something from our perspective, this, uh, this is something that we're focused on. We're building out stadiums. Athletes can own stadiums. Athlete can create their own training centers, media hubs. Um, and imagine Lisa, Leslie for example, is building out a woman leadership sports academy, right? We have Michael Cooper building out defensive academy. So those are all the brands. We have 174 NBA w N B stars. And, um, and we are building out this, >>The brand is the brand, is the platform that's correct. That's the trend we're seeing. And it's, it's also an extension of their reach in community. So there's, they can convert their star power and athlete with owner's approval. If they probably write it on to the contracts, he, they can imagine all the complications, but they bring that online and extend that energy and brand equity yep. To fans and social network. Yeah. >>And many of these athletes are tremendous successful in their web two careers, right? Yeah. Um, some are current athletes, some are former athletes, but they have built such a brand persona where people are following them on Instagram. For example, Carlos Boozer. He has like almost 6 million followers between Twitter and Instagram and those kind of brands are looking or how do I give back to the community? How do I engage with my community and web three? And especially with our platform, we are giving that power back to the players. >>So you guys got some big names booers on there. You mentioned Carlos Boozer. You mentioned that Lisa, Leslie others among others, Michael Cooper throw back to the old Lakers, uh, magic. Johnson's kind actually here in crypto. We just saw him in the lobbies and in dinner and the other night, um, at Nobu, um, you got a lot of NBA support. Take a take, take, even explain how you're working this angle. Uh, you got some great traction, uh, momentum. Um, you got great pedigree, riot games in your career. Uh, you kind of get the world, the tech world, the media world, as it comes together. What's the secret sauce here? Is it the NBA relationship combination of the team explained >>It's really focusing on what, uh, we are building on me was focusing on players first, right? So players are literally, we call our platform as, uh, owned by the players, made for the players. Uh, and engagement is really all done through the players, right? So that's our key sauce. And when we worked out with NBA, we, we are part of the NBA BPA acceleration program for 2022 that is funded by a six Z, uh, and, and many others. Um, and our partnership with league is very critical. So it's not only partnered with player association partnered with leagues, whether it's NBA, w N B a NFL. So those are the venues. And this becomes almost a program, especially for athletes to really generate this lifetime engagement and royalty model because some of this famous athletes really want to give back to the communities. So like for example, I use Lisa Leslie a lot, but Lisa, Leslie really wants to empower women leadership, leadership, and really help, um, women in sports, for example. Right? So those are the angles that, um, that really people are excited about. >>Well, for the people watching that might not understand some of the ins and outs of sports and, and rod, your background in your team, it's interesting. The sports teams have been on the big day to train for many, many years. You look at all the stadiums. Now they've got mobile devices, they got wifi under the chairs. They use data and technology to manage the team. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> manage the stadium and venue and operations suppliers, whatnot. And then also the fans. So you, they, they got about a decade or so experience already in the digital world. This is not new to the, to the sports world. Yeah. So you guys come to the table kind of at a good time. >>Yeah. Especially the defi of the sports, right? So there's a defi of the finance, but this is the really, uh, a, a decentralization of the sports is something that there's a lot of traction. And there are many companies that are really focusing on that. Our focus obviously is players first, right? How do we give power to the players? Uh, and those are really driving the entire engagement. And also the brands >>How's the NBA feel about this because, you know, you got the NBA and you get the team, you got the owners. I mean, the democratization of the players, which I love by the way that angle kind of brings their power. Now's the new kind of balance of power. How is the NBA handling this? What's some of the conversations you've had with the, the organization. >>Yeah. So obviously there are a lot of things that, uh, people have to be careful about, right? They have existing contracts, existing, digital media rights. Um, so that's something that, uh, we have to be very tactful when we are working with NBA and NPA, uh, on what we can say, we cannot say. So that is obviously they have a lot of existing multimillion or billion dollar contracts that they cannot void with the web because the evolution of web three, >>You know, I love, uh, riffing on the notion of contract compliance when there's major structural change happening. Remember back in baseball, back in the days before the internet, the franchise rights was geographic territory. Mm-hmm <affirmative> well, if you're the New York Yankees, you're doing great. If you're Milwaukee, you're not doing too good, but then comes the internet. That's good. That's no geography. There's no boundaries. That's good. So you're gonna have stadiums have virtual Bo. So again, how do they keep up with the contracts? Yeah. I mean, this is gonna be a fundamental issue. >>That's >>Good. Good. And I think if they don't move, the players are gonna fill that void. >>That's correct. Yeah. And especially with this, this an IL deal, right. That happened for the players, uh, especially college athletes. So we are in process of onboarding 1.5 million college athletes. Uh, and those athletes are looking for not only paying for the tuition for the colleges, but also for engagement and generating this early on, uh, >>More okay. Rod, we're gonna make a prediction here in the cube, 20, 20 we're in Monaco, all the NBA, NHL, the teams they're gonna be run by player Dows. Yeah. What do you think? A very good prediction. Yeah. Very good prediction. Yeah. I mean you, I mean, that's a joke, I'm joking aside. I mean, it's kind of connecting the dots, but you know, whether that happens or not, what this means is if this continues to go down this road, that's correct. Get the players collectively could come together. Yeah. And flip the script. >>Yeah. And that's the entire decentralization, right. So it's like the web three has really disrupted this industry as you know. Um, and, and I know your community knows that too. >>Of course, course we do. We love it. >>Something from sports perspective, we are very excited. >>Well, I love it. Love talking. Let's get to the, to the weeds here on the product, under the hood, tell about the roadmap, obviously NFTs are involved. That's kind of sexy right now. I get the digital asset model on there. Uh, but there's a lot more under the coverage. You gotta have a platform, you gotta have the big data and then ultimately align into connecting other systems together. How do you view the tech roadmap and the product roadmap? What's your vision? >>Yeah. So the, the one thing that you had to be T full, uh, as a company, whether it's LUT, mogul or any other startup, is you have to be really part of the ecosystem. So the reason why we are here at Monaco is that we obviously are looking at partnership with digital bits, um, and those kind of partnership, whether it's fourth centric, centric are very critical for the ecosystem in the community to grow. Um, and that's one thing you cannot build a, another, uh, isolated metaverse right? So that's one thing. Many companies have done it, but obviously not. >>It's a wall garden doesn't work. >>Exactly. So you have to be more open platform. So one things that we did early on in our platform, we have open APIs and SDKs where not only you as an athlete can bring in your, uh, other eCommerce or web, uh, NFTs or anything you want, but you can also bring in other real estate properties. So when we are building out this metaverse, you start with real estate, then you build out obviously stadiums and arenas and academies training academies, but then athletes can bring their, uh, web commerce, right. Where it's NFT wearables shoe line. So >>Not an ecosystem on top of Luke Mo. So you're like, I'm almost like you think about a platform as a service and a cloud computing paradigm. Yeah. Look different, not decentralized, but similarly enabling others, do the heavy lifting on their behalf. Yeah. Is that right? >>So that's correct. Yes. So we are calling ourself as the sports platform as a service, right. So we want to add the word sports because we, uh, in, in many contexts, right. When you're building metaverse, you can get distracted with them, especially we are in Los Angeles. Right. >>Can I get a luxury box for the cube and some of the metaverse islands and the stadiums you're doing? >>We, we are working >>On it. We're >>Definitely working on, especially the, uh, Los Angeles, uh, stadium. Yeah. >>Well, we're looking for some hosts, anyone out there looking for some hosts, uh, for the metaverse bring your avatar. You can host the cube, bro. Thanks for coming on the cube. Really appreciate. What's the, what's next for you guys, obviously, continuing to build momentum. You got your playful, how many people on the team what's going on, give a plug for the company. What are you looking for share with the audience, some of the, some of your goals. Yeah. >>So, uh, the main thing we're looking for is really, um, from a brand perspective, if you are looking at buying properties, this would be an amazing time to buy virtual sports stadium. Um, so we are, obviously we have 175 stadiums in roadmap right now. We started with Los Angeles. Then we are in San Francisco, New York, Qatar, Dubai. So all those sports stadiums, whether they're basketball, football, soccer are all the properties. And, uh, from a community perspective, if you want to get an early access, we are all about giving back to the community. Uh, so you can buy it at a much better presale price right now. Uh, so that's one, the second thing is that if you have any innovative ideas or a player that you want to integrate into, we have an very open platform from a community engagement perspective. If you have something unique from a land sale perspective yeah. Or the NFD perspective plug, contact us at, at Raj lumo.com. >>And I'm assuming virtual team, you in LA area where where's your home. >>So, yeah, so I live in Malibu, um, and our office is in Santa Monica. We have an office in India. Uh, we have few developers also in Europe. So, uh, and then we are team of 34 people right now >>Looking to hire some folks >>We are looking for, what >>Are you, what are you looking for? >>So, uh, we are looking for a passionate sports, uh, fanatics. >>It's a lot, not hard to find. Yeah. >><laugh> who knows how to also code. Right? So from blockchain perspective, we are, uh, chain agnostic. Uh, but obviously right now we are building on polygon, but we are chain agnostic. So if you have any blockchain development experience, uh, that's something we, we are looking for. Yeah. >>RA, thanks for coming out. Luke Mo check him out. I'm John furry with the cube here in Monaco for the mono crypto summit presented by digital bits. We got all the action, a lot of great guests going on, stay with us for more coverage. Um, John furrier, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2017. Brought to you by Informatica. (light techno music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We're here at Informatica World 2017. We're going from the morning to the night, today and tomorrow, to talk about some of the things that are happening in the world of data management, analytics, master data management, etc. Very, very important topics. And I'm Peter Burris, and we're going to spend a few minutes now talking with Ansa Sekharan... >> Got it, Sekharan >> Sekharan, sorry Ansa, I got it earlier. Ansa Sekharan, who's the executive vice president of Informatica global customer support and the head of the Informatica University. Thank you for coming on theCUBE . >> Good afternoon, Peter. Thank you for having me on theCUBE . >> So, global customer support. Big issue when a company's going through a lot of transformation, compounded by the fact that your customer base is going through a lot of transformation. Business as well as technology. When you take a look at what's happening, 3000 people to show, what is the most important set of messages coming out about global customer support? >> At Informatica, the tagline says great products are just the beginning. As customers make this investment, we have a great services arc which looks at the investments customers make, and see how they can help their desired outcomes. At Informatica, when you look at innovation, you hear a lot about products. You see a lot of great launches. We have a very similar strategy in support. Every four years, we kind of come up with a major version of support offerings to keep up in line with our product innovations, and also to meet customer innovations. Right, so in every two years we have a minor release. So we look at our services as a product. Like the saying goes, we want to make sure our customers do not have to call in. So we have a lot of emphasis on quality, and the great interlock with RND. Make sure, we have been ranked number one in customer loyalty for eleven straight years in that regard. So, we want our customers to take away that support and services is viewed as a product here at Informatica. >> Well I want to push you on that a little bit, and I think this is an important point. In the world of, characterized by a significant amount of change, it's important, I think, that we draw distinction between inventing something and innovating, where invention's an engineering duty, or an activity, and then innovating is a social activity. So we create something new, and then through the innovation process, we get people to use it. So I like the idea of looking at support as a source of innovation in of itself, but talk about how that lines up with the idea of support to help make or ensure that customers are successful. >> Right, it's two parts. It's like how you build the relationships, along with automation. In this age of customers, a lot of emphasis is placed on how customers can do self-service and so on. So a lot of great innovation has been built on the portal. We leverage machine learning and AI, and we have built a great platform to have the customers learn best practices, and find the needs and answers for the most common questions. But, we're an enterprise software company. About 85% of business comes from existing customers, and we enjoy great renewal rates of about mid-nineties. This is only possible if customers are realizing value from our products. So, we pride ourselves on our relationship. We have a customer success team, which also is emphasizing how do we drive desired outcomes. People ask what is desired outcomes? When you make a purchase, there is an expectation of an outcome. That outcome, in conjunction with your effort, the experience makes it desired. So, that is where as we pivot to a subscription company, that is all the more important. Customers now sort of rent our software, when they are on subscription. The onus is on the vendor to make sure you build on the relationship, and you deliver value back to our customers. That is where we our very different. I think, to answer your question around innovation and we combine that with relationships, it's a great combination. >> So let me push you on one other feature there. So, the difference is in innovation on premise or license software is a little bit different than the innovation process associated with Cloud oriented or subscription oriented software. On the one, you get the invention, customer installs it, you might help them install it, you might help with a little bit of support on it, or they are largely responsible. But in the Cloud, the whole notion is you're actually getting the service itself and not necessarily the software. How does the concept of customer support change as you move in to a subscription Cloud oriented world. >> So when you are on the Cloud solutions, you have the meta data of the customer. You can measure every click, you know exactly what the customer is doing and not doing. So we have a product called Discovery IQ, which mines that information and offers recommendations on how the customers could better leverage our products. >> To your team. >> To your team and back to the customer. >> And back to the customer. >> Now on an on-prem product, we help in installation configuration. But the software is running on the customer's premises. That's where we have built in supportability tools which can share meta data back, so that we can understand what phase of the project the customer is in. You heard of a product called Ops Insight, which we just launched. That's a Cloud based product which connects with our on-prem products so that it gives you a window into what the customer is even doing on-prem. The more we know about the customer, the better we can serve them. Some customers are very forthcoming to partner with us, and whenever we have a customer success manager we have great collaboration, we know the milestones, we can orchestrate, how we should march the customers towards the milestones. But, if that level of communication is not there then we have to rely on supportability tools to get the meta data back, and then we push information back to the customer. >> And that notion of a road map or a journey to get to the outcome is crucially important. >> Extremely important, and in fact, we want to build those features in the product. Today if you take a master data management product, the data model is the foundation. Today we are able to collect the data model and look for patterns to see if there is a better data model that we can recommend to the customers. Because if the foundation is not right, months later, potentially there could be issues around scale and so on. What we've been able to do is detect that very early on to offer better solutions to customers and we're talking about solutions data models varied by life sciences, varied by health care, financials. We are able to leverage this knowledge and share across customers. This is not customer proprietary information, just the foundation data models and this what our consulting services team is also able to go on-site and leverage it further. >> So the historical interaction between a software vendor and a customer, typically was around those characteristics of the product. The speeds, the performance of the product, what was required of it, how to configure, how users used it, the interfaces what not. As you move more towards solutions, especially in a period of significant transformation. Now you're talking about how a product does or does not support a business capability. In the world of analytics, it's becoming increasingly obvious that is a strategic business capability that has to be put in place. That means that your support people are moving from deep understanding of the product, and being able to convey that, to having to have a better understanding of the capabilities that the customer is trying to achieve and helping them work through that process. Have I got that right? >> Right, so one of our focus areas currently is the topic of services convergence. In the past customers would make a product investment, support is mandatory, it gets bundled in. They have to make separate purchases for professional services and education. As we pivot to subscription, we're kind of bundling the services along with the subscription. So we are coming up with some innovative solutions later in the year, where as part of the subscription which the customer is signing up for, we're going to offer a five-day consulting services package, or a ten-day services consulting package, included in the subscription. Why are we doing that? When we talk about driving business outcomes, we are talking about, if you are really serious about accelerating those outcomes, you ought to make that investment up-front. And in the case of ... >> Both parties do. >> Both parties. It's a partnership you got to build. >> In many respects, it's a test of almost the seriousness of the customers. That the customers. Are you going to invest your time, and not just your money in to this process. >> Ansa: It's not a one-way relationship. >> Absolutely >> It has to happen both ways. So when the professional services goes on-site, tries to understand what's the business imperative the customer is embarking on. That information is shared back with customer support. So we have an idea. The support folks are still going to be product line focused but the domain knowledge, in terms of solutions, we're trying to address it through our solution architects in professional services. So what is unique is, beginning of this year we launched something called a Support Accelerator. >> Peter: Support >> Accelerator >> Peter: Okay, Accelerator, yup. >> Yes, so you talk about big data. In my experience, like I said, I have been with Informatica for 21 years. When it comes to big data, I have never seen a technology which is changing so rapidly. It's getting disrupted every quarter I would say. So we realized customers have to look at security, the hadoop distribution, and those hadoop distributions change pretty rapidly. It used to take them, could take them weeks, just to install and configure the product. >> Peter: Correct >> No fault of Informatica. Just the complex ecosystem. So we come up with the Support Accelerator, we have some checklist. We'll get this information from the customer, we'll remotely install and configure the product in days. >> So you just gave a great example of exactly what I mean by the difference between invention and innovation, where hadoop is constantly inventing but the customers need help with the innovation side. To get it adopted, to get it applied, to get it used. So they can create value in and of itself embedded in their business practices, and that's essentially what your focusing on with some of the support regimes. >> This notion of support accelerator is focused on installation and configuration. With the example I gave you, we just could shave off a couple of weeks. We are expanding this to other product lines, ideal EIC, and then we are going to be offering upgrade services. When I talk to CIOs, they want to know as I upgrade to the latest version, you have my meta data. Tell me what value am I going to get with the upgrade. I know it's going to be supported, the latest certifications if you can tell me if this feature is going to run X times faster. If there is some configuration that I need to change so that I am better leveraging the features in the product. That's the path we are on. I think we have made great strides on the Cloud side of the house. We have a product called Informatica Discovery IQ, which can make the recommendations we have to replicate the success on our on-premises solutions. That's what we're trying to do with Ops Insight product. >> So I used to do a lot of research around a particular topic, and that was a customer journey with an IT organization. Turns out, that the CIO is most involved in the discovery process, and then that first application process. Discovering the characteristics solution and then ensuring that they are going to get value out of the product, that first project plan. And the reason for the discovery is because the business is typically is finding out that something is not working right, and brings it to the CIO's attention. But interestingly, it's not at the moment that they buy, it's after they buy and sitting down with the team and making sure that the business gets value out of the purchases, and that's where your guys shine. >> Right, and do you know? We want to come up with a success plan with the right milestones along the journey. Through our customer success team, we want to orchestrate this journey. The role of customer success management is like, how do you orchestrate this journey as you go through these various steps. Customers' outcomes are also evolving. Especially in the case of big data. I read an article that said companies, only if they have a business strategy which leverages big data, they have a higher degree of success. Not the other way around. >> Peter: Right >> You know what I'm saying. >> Peter: Oh totally, 100%! >> And when customers make this investment sometime it comes from top down and working with the customer success team understanding with what they want to do. The good news is most of our customers are very happy with our current implementation strategy. So they have a mandate to go big data. So we kind of tell them, "Hey what's your work loads? "You want to do data warehouse optimization, "you're going to shift from teradata to hadoop. "Here is how we will do it, here is the blue print." We've been able to share some of our success stories with other customers to them. It's all about accelerating the journey for them. >> But it certainly is not about getting a cluster. >> Ansa: No >> Deploying hadoop and looking at it and say, we are done. >> Ansa: That's step point one. >> That's exactly right. And increasingly because you can now buy a lot of that as a service, it may not even be step one anymore. >> Ansa: Exactly >> It's an option that you may not choose. So as you think about where customer support, in the context of Informatica's journey, can you give us just a couple of insights as to where you think the customer support concept is going to be in a couple of years? >> A lot of emphasis is going to be on service automation, and the other big board level priority at Informatica is this customer experience. You talked about the journey mapping. It has a story-telling element, and it has a visualization element. As customers come to our website, have awareness, become a prospect, a lead, make a purchase, we land, adopt, expand and renew. A gamut of interactions across the board. We're now going to be focusing on optimization, every step of the journey. We're going to find the moment of truth, which would yield the biggest value to the customer have an outset in approach to validate that. What this has given us, the customer experiences have a cohesive strategy which cuts across all functions. Before we had KPIs on a functional basis, now we have KPIs on a horizontal basis. >> Peter: Tied back to customer experience. >> Tied back to customer success. Can we get them to go live faster. >> Right. >> Are we getting them to renew on time. So these are metrics which are shared by every function within Informatica, not just the renewals team, not just the support team. I think with the emphasis from the board and with the support and investments we are making, I think this is going to take us to the next level and I'm pretty excited about it. >> Excellent! So Ansa Sekharan. >> Sekharan >> Thank you very much. Just to let everybody know, with Informatica longer than Derek Jeter was with the New York Yankees. >> Here you go. >> 21 years. >> Thank you Peter. >> Thank you very much for coming on theCUBE . So, Ansa Sekharan is the executive vice president of Informatica's global support and service organization. Once again, thank you for being here and we'll be right back with more from Informatica World 2017, in a few moments. >> Ansa: Thank you. (light techno music)