(light music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's special presentation with Horizon3.ai with Rainer Richter, Vice President of EMEA, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific, APAC Horizon3.ai. Welcome to this special CUBE presentation. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for the invitation. >> So Horizon3.ai, driving global expansion, big international news with a partner-first approach. You guys are expanding internationally. Let's get into it. You guys are driving this new expanse partner program to new heights. Tell us about it. What are you seeing in the momentum? Why the expansion? What's all the news about? >> Well, I would say in international, we have, I would say a similar situation like in the US. There is a global shortage of well-educated penetration testers on the one hand side. On the other side, we have a raising demand of network and infrastructure security. And with our approach of an autonomous penetration testing, I believe we are totally on top of the game, especially as we have also now starting with an international instance. That means for example, if a customer in Europe is using our service, NodeZero, he will be connected to a NodeZero instance, which is located inside the European Union. And therefore, he doesn't have to worry about the conflict between the European GDPR regulations versus the US CLOUD Act. And I would say there, we have a total good package for our partners that they can provide differentiators to their customers. >> You know, we've had great conversations here on theCUBE with the CEO and the founder of the company around the leverage of the cloud and how successful that's been for the company. And obviously, I can just connect the dots here, but I'd like you to weigh in more on how that translates into the go-to-market here because you got great cloud scale with the security product you guys are having success with. Great leverage there, I'm seeing a lot of success there. What's the momentum on the channel partner program internationally? Why is it so important to you? Is it just the regional segmentation? Is it the economics? Why the momentum? >> Well, there are multiple issues. First of all, there is a raising demand in penetration testing. And don't forget that in international, we have a much higher level number or percentage in SMB and mid-market customers. So these customers, typically, most of them even didn't have a pen test done once a year. So for them, pen testing was just too expensive. Now with our offering together with our partners, we can provide different ways how customers could get an autonomous pen testing done more than once a year with even lower costs than they had with a traditional manual pen test, and that is because we have our Consulting PLUS package, which is for typically pen testers. They can go out and can do a much faster, much quicker pen test at many customers after each other. So they can do more pen test on a lower, more attractive price. On the other side, there are others or even the same one who are providing NodeZero as an MSSP service. So they can go after SMP customers saying, "Okay, you only have a couple of hundred IP addresses. No worries, we have the perfect package for you." And then you have, let's say the mid-market. Let's say the thousand and more employees, then they might even have an annual subscription. Very traditional, but for all of them, it's all the same. The customer or the service provider doesn't need a piece of hardware. They only need to install a small piece of a Docker container and that's it. And that makes it so smooth to go in and say, "Okay, Mr. Customer, we just put in this virtual attacker into your network, and that's it and all the rest is done." And within three clicks, they can act like a pen tester with 20 years of experience. >> And that's going to be very channel-friendly and partner-friendly, I can almost imagine. So I have to ask you, and thank you for calling out that breakdown and segmentation. That was good, that was very helpful for me to understand, but I want to follow up, if you don't mind. What type of partners are you seeing the most traction with and why? >> Well, I would say at the beginning, typically, you have the innovators, the early adapters, typically boutique-size of partners. They start because they are always looking for innovation. Those are the ones, they start in the beginning. So we have a wide range of partners having mostly even managed by the owner of the company. So they immediately understand, okay, there is the value, and they can change their offering. They're changing their offering in terms of penetration testing because they can do more pen tests and they can then add others ones. Or we have those ones who offered pen test services, but they did not have their own pen testers. So they had to go out on the open market and source pen testing experts to get the pen test at a particular customer done. And now with NodeZero, they're totally independent. They can go out and say, "Okay, Mr. Customer, here's the service. That's it, we turn it on. And within an hour, you are up and running totally." >> Yeah, and those pen tests are usually expensive and hard to do. Now it's right in line with the sales delivery. Pretty interesting for a partner. >> Absolutely, but on the other hand side, we are not killing the pen tester's business. We are providing with NodeZero, I would call something like the foundational work. The foundational work of having an ongoing penetration testing of the infrastructure, the operating system. And the pen testers by themselves, they can concentrate in the future on things like application pen testing, for example. So those services, which we are not touching. So we are not killing the pen tester market. We are just taking away the ongoing, let's say foundation work, call it that way. >> Yeah, yeah. That was one of my questions. I was going to ask is there's a lot of interest in this autonomous pen testing. One because it's expensive to do because those skills are required are in need and they're expensive. (chuckles) So you kind of cover the entry-level and the blockers that are in there. I've seen people say to me, "This pen test becomes a blocker for getting things done." So there's been a lot of interest in the autonomous pen testing and for organizations to have that posture. And it's an overseas issue too because now you have that ongoing thing. So can you explain that particular benefit for an organization to have that continuously verifying an organization's posture? >> Certainly. So I would say typically, you have to do your patches. You have to bring in new versions of operating systems, of different services, of operating systems of some components, and they are always bringing new vulnerabilities. The difference here is that with NodeZero, we are telling the customer or the partner the package. We're telling them which are the executable vulnerabilities because previously, they might have had a vulnerability scanner. So this vulnerability scanner brought up hundreds or even thousands of CVEs, but didn't say anything about which of them are vulnerable, really executable. And then you need an expert digging in one CVE after the other, finding out is it really executable, yes or no? And that is where you need highly-paid experts, which where we have a shortage. So with NodeZero now, we can say, "Okay, we tell you exactly which ones are the ones you should work on because those are the ones which are executable. We rank them accordingly to risk level, how easily they can be used." And then the good thing is converted or in difference to the traditional penetration test, they don't have to wait for a year for the next pen test to find out if the fixing was effective. They run just the next scan and say, "Yes, closed. Vulnerability is gone." >> The time is really valuable. And if you're doing any DevOps, cloud-native, you're always pushing new things. So pen test, ongoing pen testing is actually a benefit just in general as a kind of hygiene. So really, really interesting solution. Really bringing that global scale is going to be a new coverage area for us, for sure. I have to ask you, if you don't mind answering, what particular region are you focused on or plan to target for this next phase of growth? >> Well, at this moment, we are concentrating on the countries inside the European Union plus United Kingdom. And of course, logically, I'm based in the Frankfurt area. That means we cover more or less the countries just around. So it's like the so-called DACH region, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, plus the Netherlands. But we also already have partners in the Nordic, like in Finland and Sweden. So we have partners already in the UK and it's rapidly growing. So for example, we are now starting with some activities in Singapore and also in the Middle East area. Very important, depending on let's say, the way how to do business. Currently, we try to concentrate on those countries where we can have, let's say at least English as an accepted business language. >> Great, is there any particular region you're having the most success with right now? Sounds like European Union's kind of first wave. What's the most- >> Yes, that's the first. Definitely, that's the first wave. And now with also getting the European INSTANCE up and running, it's clearly our commitment also to the market saying, "Okay, we know there are certain dedicated requirements and we take care of this." And we are just launching, we are building up this one, the instance in the AWS service center here in Frankfurt. Also, with some dedicated hardware, internet, and a data center in Frankfurt, where we have with the DE-CIX, by the way, the highest internet interconnection bandwidth on the planet. So we have very short latency to wherever you are on the globe. >> That's a great call out benefit too. I was going to ask that. What are some of the benefits your partners are seeing in EMEA and Asia Pacific? >> Well, I would say, the benefits for them, it's clearly they can talk with customers and can offer customers penetration testing, which they before even didn't think about because penetration testing in a traditional way was simply too expensive for them, too complex, the preparation time was too long, they didn't have even have the capacity to support an external pen tester. Now with this service, you can go in and even say, "Mr. Customer, we can do a test with you in a couple of minutes. We have installed a Docker container. Within 10 minutes, we have the pen test started. That's it and then we just wait." And I would say we are seeing so many aha moments then. On the partner side, when they see NodeZero the first time working, it's like they say, "Wow, that is great." And then they walk out to customers and show it to their typically at the beginning, mostly the friendly customers like, "Wow, that's great, I need that." And I would say the feedback from the partners is that is a service where I do not have to evangelize the customer. Everybody understands penetration testing, I don't have to describe what it is. The customer understanding immediately, "Yes. Penetration testing, heard about that. I know I should do it, but too complex, too expensive." Now for example, as an MSSP service provided from one of our partners, it's getting easy. >> Yeah, and it's great benefit there. I mean, I got to say I'm a huge fan of what you guys are doing. I like this continuous automation. That's a major benefit to anyone doing DevOps or any kind of modern application development. This is just a godsend for them, this is really good. And like you said, the pen testers that are doing it, they were kind of coming down from their expertise to kind of do things that should have been automated. They get to focus on the bigger ticket items. That's a really big point. >> Exactly. So we free them, we free the pen testers for the higher level elements of the penetration testing segment, and that is typically the application testing, which is currently far away from being automated. >> Yeah, and that's where the most critical workloads are, and I think this is the nice balance. Congratulations on the international expansion of the program, and thanks for coming on this special presentation. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> Okay, this is theCUBE special presentation, you know, checking on pen test automation, international expansion, Horizon3.ai. A really innovative solution. In our next segment, Chris Hill, Sector Head for Strategic Accounts, will discuss the power of Horizon3.ai and Splunk in action. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech enterprise coverage. (steady music)

>> Hi everyone, my name is Michael Swan and I'm the global director of business development for HPE Financial Services, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to speak with you today. In this session, I will provide you with an overview of how we help our customers create investment capacity to help fuel their cloud in digital transformation initiatives. I will then share with you three customer use cases to talk about the types of solutions that we've implemented to help our customers move their businesses forward. Now, it wasn't that long ago that businesses were prioritizing their 2020 digital transformation projects. And executives were telling us that they thought 2020 was going to be a year where they were going to see a significant ramp in their spending on digital transformation projects. Businesses were already starting to plan to make investments in cloud and security and AI and machine learning to help improve their customer experience, help to advance employee productivity, and help them to get an overall better competitive edge. Then of course, we were all hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. And in response to the pandemic, businesses have had to think really hard about how do they enable workforce productivity when they have nearly all of their employee base working from home. They've also had to think about some of the challenges around ensuring connectivity, security, and maintaining a very high degree of customer support and customer experience. And the economic impact of COVID put a lot of pressure on companies to maintain their cash positions and preserve capital. Now Gartner's forecasted that IT spending will increase to about $3.7 trillion in 2021, which is up about a little more than 4% from last year. And investment in cloud-based IT infrastructure in particular is expected to surge to more than 27% this year. So what all this is telling us is that customers are ready to move beyond the pandemic. They're thinking about how can I take my company to the next level? Where are the investments that I need to be making to advance and grow? Now to advance and grow requires investment capacity. Investment capacity is really the lifeblood of any business, and without that, you can't invest in your digital transformation, and you can't invest in the long-term future of your business. So this is where HPE Financial Services can help. We're working with businesses to help create the investment capacity that they need to move their business ahead. And we're doing this in three ways. Firstly, we're creating financial vitality. In the last two years alone, we've injected more than $640 million back into our customers' budgets to help fuel their investments. And we provide a range of investment solutions that help our customers to increase their ability to invest and do so in a way that actually results in better financial outcomes. Secondly, we're able to manage any tech, anytime, anywhere. We are recognized by both IDC and Gartner as a global leader in asset lifecycle supporting the circular economy. And in the last two years alone, we've taken in more than eight million assets into our technology renewal centers with more than 90% of those assets being designated for reuse before recycle. And thirdly, we are your CIFO. With nearly 30 years of IT Asset economic experience in our DNA, we work with you to understand where you want to go, what you need, and to help you put an investment strategy in place to help you get there. Let's now look at some of the solutions that we are delivering to our customers. Now, many of our customers seek to defer or reduce the expense of investing in IT in order to preserve their capital, or to try to do more with their available budgets. So we offer a range of Payment Deferral programs which enable our customers to delay the upfront costs of modernizing their IT. And in response to COVID, in 2020 we introduced the Payment Relief Program which enables customers to keep those critical IT projects moving forward while deferring more than 90% of the cost into the next calendar year. We're also helping customers to create investment capacity by generating cash from assets. And we're doing this based on the value of equipment that they already own. With our Accelerated Migration offer, we're converting existing, client-owned IT into an incremental source of capital, while enabling them to continue to use that equipment for its remaining useful life. And with our Tech Buyback program, we're managing the disposition of older legacy equipment returning value back to our customers and helping them to contribute to their sustainability initiatives. Now in each of our IT investment solutions, we aim to help our customers match their payments with the use of the technology. Our Extended Deployment solution is a phased deployment program that allows our customers to acquire the critical technology that they need today upfront. But we allow them time to get the equipment stood up in place, configured and tested, up and running before they actually have to begin making any payments for that equipment. And then lastly, we help enterprises relieve capacity strain or delivery delays that might be caused by supply chain disruptions or limitations in their capital budget, ar perhaps they're just simply looking to maintain existing legacy systems that are running critical business applications. And we do this by sourcing HPE certified pre-owned equipment that can be used to help maintain existing legacy systems. Now, all of the pre-owned equipment that we make available is available with a warranty, and is also eligible for HPE support services. Now, with that, as an overview, I'd like to transition to a brief video, which highlights how we help customers create investment capacity. (bright music) HPE and HPE Financial Services are meeting customer demands across the IT life cycle, while also contributing to the circular economy. And we're doing this in three ways. First HPE designs solutions and sources components with the aim to maximize reuse before recycle, and to minimize environmental impacts. Second, HPE's GreenLake Cloud services helps customers to acquire and consume only the capacity that they need for the period of time that they need to use it, and have the flexibility to refresh technology in an environmentally friendly way. We are committed to taking back 100% of all technology that is deployed within the HPE GreenLake Services contract. And last, HPE has industry leading experience and capabilities to renew IT assets, keeping them in the circular economy longer, and thus minimizing waste. We are committed to helping each one of our customers contribute to the circular economy, and this is one of the more important reasons why customers choose to partner with HPE. So let's now look at three customer use cases to help explain how we have helped customers create the investment capacity that they needed to move their business ahead. This first example involves an agricultural company based in Turkey. Their objective was to prevent COVID from disrupting their operations. They needed to ensure that they could preserve cash while at the same time, they wanted to continue to move ahead with a critical IT modernization project. They sought creative approaches to do more with their IT budget and to keep the project moving on track. HPE Financial Services made it possible for MAY Tohum to continue modernizing their IT estate while deferring the cost of the project into the following fiscal year, by utilizing our Payment Relief program. As a result, the infrastructure transformation project went forward, they were able to preserve their cash position and most importantly, MAY was able to continue to bring its innovative seed products to market without any disruption. The next customer example involved a large bank in New Zealand. Now, it might come as a surprise to you to think about a bank seeking additional investment capacity. Well banks understand well the importance of maximizing the return on their capital, and they also need to comply with regulations requiring certain capital funding commitments. Therefore banks as a whole comprise one of our largest set of customers. Now this bank in particular sought to transform the management of IT for their business to an as-a-service model. They sought additional investment capacity, and they wanted a single approach to managing their IT infrastructure. HPE Financial Services helped the bank to generate cash from their existing assets and transition them into the new GreenLake Services contract. This solution helped ensure not only that the ongoing business operations would not be disrupted, but it also provided an additional source of capital to help fund the project, and it helped to accelerate their move to an as-a-service model. And the last example I would like to share with you involves a hospital based in Austria. Now like most healthcare facilities around the world, this hospital's operations were severely impacted by COVID in the increased demand for their services. They experienced IT system constraints that were created by increased patient workloads, and sought immediate access to additional computing power to ensure they could continue to deliver critical care to their patients. HPE Financial Services sourced 14 Gen9 C7000 Blades, pre-owned equipment to match the existing systems that they already had in place. And this enabled the hospital to ensure that they could provide uninterrupted operations and critical care to their patients. HPE Financial Services also works closely with partners, whether they be IT solution providers, system integrators, or channel partners to help them create investment capacity for their customers. So now I'd like to share a brief video with a few stories from some of our partners. >> We had a client who needed to roll out a more robust identity and access management solution to support their efforts of enabling their remote workforce. The project wasn't budgeted, but quickly moved to the top of the priority list. And we were able to structure a deal that allowed them to acquire the technology they needed in the timeframe required, while deferring payments over an extended period. >> I think what's really important for the HPE at Tech Data structure shift, it allows us to offer an enterprise class solution as a true partnership, addressing some of their requirements and needs of the enterprise market plus. >> Obviously the customer was very pleased, we were very happy, and it was a way for us to get much closer to that customer, become their trusted advisor, and set us up for the future where we can continue to add value to that customer with HPE. >> Now we do believe that Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has a very strong and competitive offering to our customers when it comes to especially asset upcycling services, and also offering certified pre-owned products on the Nordic market. >> We leveraged HPEFS to acquire millions of dollars of hardware to stock up our data center to provide instant on-demand for a virtual desktop environment for remote users for several of our manufacturing and financial clients. (light music) >> As a recap, HPE provides the solutions and services to accelerate your business transformation. With HPE GreenLake, you can deploy any workload as-a-service and achieve cloud-like speed, agility, in the as-a-service model, wherever your apps and your data reside today, whether that be in a co-location facility, or within your own data center. With HPE Pointnext Services, you gain access to more than 15,000 experts, and an ecosystem of partners to help you at every stage of your digital transformation journey. And HPE Financial Services helps you create investment capacity to drive your digital transformation initiatives. We help you overcome financial barriers to your transformation, we help you unlock the value of your entire IT estate, and we are your business and technology partner. Maintaining flexibility and creating financial capacity are key to achieving your digital transformation objectives. I encourage you to reach out to HPE Financial Services to discuss your IT investment strategy and explore ways that we can help you achieve your desired business outcomes. Included here are a few QR codes where you can learn more or even view a virtual tour of one of our technology renewal centers. Thank you again for joining me in this session. I wish you a great rest of the day, and I hope you keep well, bye.

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum, DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are back this afternoon here in Washington, D.C., at the Walter Washington Convention Center. As we continue our coverage here of Inforum 2018 along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls, and we now welcome Mr. Cormack Watters to the program today, EVP of Emea and APAC at Infor. Cormack, good to see you sir. >> Nice to be here. >> So, we're going to talk about Guinness, over in Ireland (chuckling). Cormack's from Dublin, so we had a little conversation. We're getting a primer here. >> It's actually the best conversation we should have, right? >> Right, we'll save that for the end. How about that? So, you're fairly new, right? About a year or so. >> Ten months or so, not that I'm counting it by the day >> No no no, always going forward, never backward. But a big plate you have, right, with EMEA and APAC? Different adoptions, different viewpoints, different perspectives... We've talked a lot really kind of focusing domestically here for the past couple of days. Your world's a little different than that though, right? >> It is. It is. And it's very good that you've actually recognized it because that's actually the biggest challenge that we have. To be a little bit humble about it, I think we've got world-class products and solutions. I actually fundamentally believe that. But we have lots of different languages, cultures, and localization requirements in the multiple Countries that we look after. So, it's great to have great products, but it needs to be in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, Arabic, which most of them are. Customers realize that we are actually international and localized for many, many markets. But now we've become an intriguing option for them, if you're a multi-national business, with subsidiaries all over the world. So, it's good that Infor is big enough to do that. We need to do a better job of letting everybody know that we've done that, if that makes any sense. >> Sure. >> So what's happening in Europe? Europe's always pockets, there's no..I mean.. Yes, EU but there's really still no one Europe. What's going on? Obviously, we have Brexit hanging over our head. I felt like U.S. markets are maybe a little bit overheated in Europe has potential upside. >> Yeah >> And it seems like others seem to agree with that. What happening on the ground? Any specific, interesting areas? Is Southern Europe still a concern? Maybe you can give us an update? >> Yeah, so Brexit is quite a dominant conversation. I am from Ireland. I live in Dublin, but I'm working all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. So, I don't get to be at home very often, except the weekends. London is really our regional headquarters from a European perspective, and Brexit is on everybody's mind. Interestingly, when you go outside the UK, Brexit is not such a big topic because... That's Europe. And they kind of go, "Well if you don't want to be here, then you don't need to be here." Right? So it's a little bit of that, and they're saying, "Well, we'd like for them to stay, but if they don't want to stay, well, don't wait around." But in the UK, it's causing a lot of uncertainty. And the UK's one of our biggest markets. It's a lot of uncertainty, and what would be best is if we just knew what was going to happen, and then we could deal with it. And actually, once we know what's going to happen, that's going to bring a degree of change. And change, from our industry perspective means there's going to be some requirements that emerge. So, we need to be ready to serve those, which is opportunity. But the uncertainty is just slowing down investment. So, we need that to be resolved. >> So, clarity obviously is a good thing obviously a good thing in any market. Are there any hotspots? >> Yeah, actually for us, we're doing, for us the Hotspots right now, we're doing incredibly well in Germany. Which, one of our lesser known competitors is a small Company called SAP. And they're headquartered in Germany. It's quite interesting to see that we're actually taking a lot of market there in Germany, which is fantastic. That's a little bit unexpected, but it's going very well right now. We're seeing a ton of activity in the Asia Pacific, I would say that region is probably our fastest growing in all of Infor. And consistently so for several quarters and maybe past a year at this point. So Asia Pacific, Germany, U.K., and then as it happens, we are doing very well in Southern Europe, which is a combination of countries really. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Hard to put it down to which particular Country is doing well, but there seems to be a general uplift in that region. Because they were hit the hardest, arguably, by the crash back in 2008. So they've definitely come out of that now. >> And when they come out, excuse me I'm sorry John, but, they come out, Cloud becomes more important to them, Right? >> Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Anyone who's been delaying investment for years, can actually leapfrog what's been happening and jump straight to what you might call the future. So lots of Companies, lots of our Customers, are trying to simplify their Business. So Cloud is a great equalizer. We believe in your, what we call Last Mile of Functionality per industry. And that should make the projects shorter, more compact more predictable and the infrastructure worries go away, because that's our responsibility to the Customers. >> We definitely so that in the U.S., 2008-2009, CFO's came in said shift to the Cloud, because we want to shift Capx to Opx, and when we came out of the downturn, they said "wow this stuff works pretty well, double down on it" and then there were other business benefits that they wanted to accelerate, and so maybe Southern Europe was a little bit behind >> I think that may be the case right, and they are picking up. And what we're seeing are a lot of other advantages. Not to make this a sale's pitch, but, I am here so >> Go for it >> You've got a microphone >> I've got a microphone and I'm Irish, so I've got to talk right? What the Cloud is actually doing is, lots of Companies have put in big ERP over the years, the decades. And then they get stuck at various points and maybe years behind, because upgrades become painful and really want to avoid them. So what they're seeing is, if they can get onto the Cloud, they never need to upgrade again. Because it's always current, because we upgrade it every week, or every month and they're never falling behind. So they want to be ready to take advantage of the innovations that they know about and those that they don't even know about. So by keeping on the latest version, that opportunities open to them. Also, there's a big issue in Europe specifically about a thing called GDPR, which is data protection. Security. So we believe that we can do a better job of providing that, than any individual Company. Because we provide it for everybody, our resources can be deployed once and then deployed many times. Where as if you're an individual customer, you've got to have that speciality and put it in place. So GDPR is a genuine issue in Europe, because, the fines are absolutely huge if a Company is found to breach it. >> It's become a template for the globe now, California's started moving in that direction, GDPR has set the frame work. >> Well and just to follow up on that, and now you're dealing with a very different regulatory climate, then certainly here in the United States. And many U.S. Companies are finding that out, as we know. Overseas right now. So how do you deal with that in terms of, this kind of balkanized approach that you have, that you know that what's working here doesn't necessarily translate to overseas, and plus you have, you know, you're serving many masters and not just one or two. >> What's happening is the guys in our RND have done very well, is they understand the requirement of, in this instance, GDPR. They look at the other regulatory requirements, lets say in Australia, which is subtly different, but it is different, and they can take, well what do we have to do? What's the most extreme we have to achieve? And if we do that across our suite into our platform suite, the N4RS, that can then be applied to all the applications. And then becomes relevant to the U.S. So it's almost like some requirement across the seas, being deployed then becoming really relevant back here because over here you do need to be aware of the data protection, as well, it's just not as formalized yet. >> It's coming >> A Brewing issue right? >> What about Asia Pacific? So you have responsibility for Japan, and China, and the rest of the region. >> Right >> Which you are sort of re-distinct... >> Really are right? There are several sub regions in the one region. The team down there, as I say, arguably the most successful team in Infor right now, so Helen and the crew. So you see Australia, New Zealand then you see Southeast Asia, then you see China, Japan and so on. So different dynamics and different markets, some more mature than others, Japan is very developed by very specific. You do need very specialized local skills to succeed. Arguably Australia, New Zealand is not that similar from say some of the European Countries. Even though there are differences and I would never dream to tell an Australian or a New Zealander that they are the same as Europeans, cuz I get it. I smile when people say "you're from the U.K and you're not from Ireland?" I understand the differentiation. (laugher) And Southeast Asia, there's a ton of local custom, local language, local business practice that needs to be catered for. We seem to be doing okay down there. As I say, fastest growing market at scale. It's not like it's growing ridiculously fast but from a small base. It's as a big market already and growing the fastest. >> And China, what's that like? You have to partner up? >> Oh yeah >> To the JV in China? >> You have to partner up, there are several of the key growth markets that it's best to go in with partners. Customers like to see we've got a presence. So that they can touch and feel that Infor entity. We can't achieve the scale we need, and the growth we want fast enough without partnering. So we have to go with partners to get us the resources that we need. >> And in the Middle East, so my business partner, Co-Host, John Furrier, is on a Twenty Hour flight to Bahrain. The Cube Bahrain. Bahrain was the first Country in the Middle East to declare Cloud first. AWS is obviously part of that story, part of your story. So what's going on over there? Is it a growing market? Is it sort of something you're still cracking? >> No, no, again it's growing. We have several key markets down there, big in hospitality in that part of the world. Hotels, tourism obviously. Shopping, very interesting markets, and Healthcare, interestingly enough. I think arguably some of the worlds best Hospitals are in that region. Definitely the best funded Hospitals. >> Probably the most comfortable. (laughter) >> So again part of our stent is the number of industries we serve, so if you can put in our platform as it were, then you could have multiple of the industry flavors applied. Because what's interesting in that part of World, there seem to be a number of, I guess we call them conglomerates. So maybe family owned, or region owned, and they have just a different array of businesses all under the one ownership. So you would have a retailer that's also doing some tourism, that's also doing some manufacturing. So we can put our platform in, and then those industry flavors they can get one solution to cover it all. Which is a little bit unusual, and works for us. >> Your scope is enormous. I mean essentially you're the head of Non-U.S. I mean is that right? >> Yeah, and Latin America as well. >> That's part of it? That's not... >> Excluding the Americas. So there's Americas and then everything else, and you're everything else. >> I missed a meeting you see so they just gave it to me >> What you raised your hand at the wrong time? >> I wasn't there (laughter) >> So how do you organize to be successful? You obviously have to have strong people in the region. >> Right. So the key is people, right. We organize somewhat differently to over here. We've gone for a regional model, so I have six sub-regions, that I worry about. So four in Europe, the Nordic Countries. Scandinavian, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. We call Western, which is Ireland, U.K. and the Benelux. Germany is Central and East, and then Southern is the Latin Country, Spain, Portugal, Greece and so. Then we've got the Middle East, and Africa, and then we got Asia Pacific. I've got six regional teams, all headed by a regional leader, and each of them are trying to be as self contained as they can. And where we see we've got an opportunity to move into something new, we've got one team working with me directly as an incubator. For example, we're driving a specific focus on Healthcare, in our part of the world, because it's very big over here. We haven't quite cracked the code over there. When we get some scale, then it'll move into the regions, but for now that's incubating under me. >> And, what about in Country? Do you have Country Managers? One in the U.K., one in France, one in Germany. >> We have what we call local leaders, right? So in some cases it could be a sales oriented individual, it could be consulting, others it could be the local HR guy. So that's more for us to make sure we're building a sense of community within Infor. Rather than it being more customer facing. We're still trying to make sure that there is a reasonably scarcity of senior skills. So regionalizing lets us deploy across several Countries, and that works with the customer base, but for employees we need local leaders to give them a sense of feeling home and attached. >> So the regions are kind of expertise centers if you will? >> Yes >> So I was going to ask about product expertise, where does that come from? It's not parachuted in from the U.S. I presume? >> No, we're pretty much self-sufficient actually, which is great. So from both what we call solution consulting, which is the product expertise, and then consulting which is the product deployment. And we're doing more and more of our deployments with Partners. As I say, we need to really rapidly embrace that partner ecosystem to give us the growth opportunity. RND, is all over the World. That's not under my direct control. So for a major suites, take for example, LN, happens to be headquartered out of Barneveld, in the Netherlands. From a Historic perspective, which is great. And Stockholm, which is also great. But a lot of the development resource room in Nila and in India. So we work closely with the guys, even though they don't actually report to me. >> And out of the whole area, the area of your responsibility what's the best growth opportunity? We all think of China, but that's been fits and starts for a lot of people. >> Yeah, yeah I think we've got multiple opportunities, you can look at it a few ways. You can look at it geographically, and you would say China. You can look at Eastern Europe, and you can look at Africa. There's a ton of opportunity in those regions, geographically. Interestingly we are also at a point where I think the Nordics, and we've got a very solid base Historically, and so on. But we probably haven't put enough focus on there in recent times, that the opportunities are really scaled in Nordics is really quite significant. And then they can look at it from a Product Perspective. So for example, we have, what we believe to be World Leading, and actually a Company called Gartner would equally agree with us. Enterprise Asset Management, EAM, that's a product suite that can fit across all of our industries. I think that could well be the significant growth area for us across the entire six regions. And it's a huge focus for us here at the conference actually. So we can do it by product, EAM, Healthcare, or by Region. I think Eastern Europe, China, and Africa, as well as the Nordics. >> And the other big opportunity is just share gains, market share gains, particularly in Europe, I would think, with your background. >> Yup. Completely, I mean, that's why I said, it's really interesting that we are winning market share in Germany. Who'd of thought that a few years ago? That's a big market, I mean, Germany, U.K., France, Italy. They're huge. Right, I mean U.K., is what, Sixty-Five Million People? It's a big economy, so we've got many of the worlds G7, in our backyard. So we just really need to double down on those, and give them the opportunities to grow that we need. >> And just back to Japan for a second. Japan has traction, it takes a long time to crack Japan. I know it first from personal experiences. >> Yeah, Okay, Interesting. >> Yeah you just got to go many many times and meet people. >> That's it, Right. And it's a different culture, of when you think they're saying yes and you think they're there, that's just yes to the next step. (laughter) >> Alright, so it does take time to get there. We've actually cracked it to some extent, that we've now got some solid referenceability, and some good wind. We need local leaders in Japan, to really crack the code there. >> And then once you're in, you're in. >> I think that once you've proven yourself, it's a lot of word of mouth and referencing. >> Well I hope you get home this weekend. Are you headed home? >> Yes! Actually I'm lucky enough. My Wife is originally from Chicago. So she and our Daughter have come over for the weekend, to go sight seeing in Washington. So that'll be fun. So we'll be going home on Sunday. >> Your adopted home for the weekend then. >> That's exactly right. >> Well we'll talk Guinness in just a bit. Thanks for the time though, we appreciate it. >> Thank you Gentlemen. >> Good to see you, Sir. Alright, back with more here from Inforum 2018, and you're watching Live, on theCube, here in D.C. (electronic music)

>> Live from Midtown Manhattan, it's the CUBE. Covering Big Data New York City 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem sponsors. >> Fifth year of coverage of our own event Big Data NYC where we cover all the action in New York City. For this week in big data, in conjunction with Strata Data which was originally Hadoop World in 2010. We've been covering it for eight years. It became Strata Conference, Strata Hadoop, now called Strata Data. Will probably called Strata AI tomorrow. Who knows, but certainly the trends are going in that direction. I'm John Furrier, your co-host. Our next guest here in New York City is Sergei Rabotai, who is the Head of Business Development at InData Labs from Belarus. In town, doing some biz dev in the big data ecosystem. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Yeah. Good morning. >> Great to have you. So, obviously Belarus is becoming known as the Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe. A lot of great talent. We're seeing that really explode. A lot of great stuff going on globally, even though there's a lot of stuff, you know GDPR and all these other things happening. It's clearly a global economy with tech. Silicon Valley still is magical. I live there in Palo Alto but you're starting to see peering points within these ecosystems of entrepreneurship and now big companies are taking advantage of it as well. What do you guys do? I mean you're in the middle of that. What is InData Labs do in context of all this? >> Well, InData Labs is a full stack data science company. Which means that we provide professional services for data strategy, big data engineering and the data science. So, yeah, like you just said, we are based - my team is based in Minsk, Belarus. We are about 40 people strong at the moment. And in our recent years we have been very successful starting this business and we have been getting customers from all over the world, including United States, Great Britain, and European Union. The company was launched about four years ago and very important thing, that it was launched by two tech leaders who come from very data-driven industries. Our CEO, Ilya Kirillov, has been running several EdTech companies for many years. Our second founder, Marat Karpeko, has been holding C-Level positions in one of the most successful gaming companies in the world. >> John: So they know data. They're data guys. >> Yeah they're data guys. They know data from different aspects and that brings synergy to our business. >> You guys bring that expertise now into professional services for us. Give me an example of some of the things someone might want to call you up on, because the thing we're hearing here in New York City this week is look, we need more data sciences and they got to be more productive. They're spending way too much time wrangling and doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing. In the old days, sysadmins were built to let people be productive and they ran the infrastructure. That's not what data scientists should be doing. They're the users. There's a level of setting things up and then there's a level of provisioning, it's actually data assets, but then the data scientists just want to do their job. How do you help companies do that? >> Well I would probably, if I take all of our activities, I would split them into two big parts. First of all, we are helping big companies, who already have a lot of data. We help them in managing this data more effectively. We help them with predictive analytics. We help them with, helping them build the churn prediction and user segmentation solutions. We have been recently involved into several natural language processing projects. In one of our successful key studies we helped one of the largest gaming companies to automate their customer feedback processing. So, like, a couple years ago they were working manually with their customer feedback and we built them a tool that allows them to instantly get the sentiment of what the user says. It's kind of like a voice of a customer, which means they can be more effective in developing new things for their games. So, we-- >> So what would someone engage? I'm just trying to peg a order of magnitude of the levels of engagements you do. Startups come in? Is it big companies? What kind of size scoped work do you do? >> So I would say at the moment we work with startups, but it's a bit of a different approach than we have with big or well-established companies. When startups typically approach us with asking to help them implement some brand new technologies like neural networks or deep learning. So they want to be effective from the start. They want to use the cutting edge technology to be more attractive, to provide a better value on the market and just to be effective and to be a successful business from the start. The other part, the well-established companies, who already have the data but they understand that so far their data might not be used that effectively as it should have been used. Therefore, they approach us with a request to help them to get more insights out of the data. Let's say, implement some machine learning that can help them. >> How about larger companies? What kind of projects do you work for them? >> It could be a typical project like churn prediction, that is very actual for the companies who have got a lot of customer data. Then it could be companies from such industries like betting industry, where churn is a very big issue. And, the same probably applies to companies who do trading. >> So is scale one of the things you differentiate around? It sounds like your founders have an EdTech background obviously must be a larger, large data set. Is your profile of engagements large scale? Is it ... I'm just trying to get a handle of if someone's watching who, what is the kind of engagements people should be calling you for? Give us an example of that. >> Like, let's say there is a company who has got a lot of customer data, has got some products and they have a problem of churn, or they have a problem of segmenting their customers so they can later address the specific segments of the customers with the right offers at the right time and through the right marketing channel. Then it could be customers or requests where natural text processing is required where we have to automate some understanding of the written or spoken text. Then I should say that we have been getting recently some requests where computer vision skills are required. I think the first stage of AI being really intelligent was the speech recognition and I think nowadays we manage to reach to the level of what we earlier saw in fantastic movies or sci-fi movies. Computer vision is going to be the next leap in all that AI buzz we're having at the moment. >> So you solve, the problem that you solve for customers is data problems. If they're swimming in a lot of data, you can help them. >> Sergei: Yep. >> If they actually want to make that data do things that are cutting edge, you guys can help them. >> Sergei: Yeah. That's-- >> Alright, so here's a question for you. I mean, Belarus has obviously got good things going on. I've heard the press that you guys have been getting, the whole area, and you guys in particular. So I'm a buyer, one of the questions I might ask is "Hey Sergei, how do I know that you'll keep that talent because the churn is always a big problem. I've dealt with outsourcing before and in the US it's hard to keep talent but I've heard there's a churn." How do you guys keep the talent in the country? How do you keep talent on the projects? Is there certain economic rules over there? What's happening in Belarus? Give us the economical. >> Yeah, so, basically what you're saying. The churn problem has always been known for companies who have their development teams in Asian regions. That's a known problem because I have a lot of meetings with clients in the UK and the US, potential prospects, I would say. So they say it is a problem for them. With Belarus, I don't think we have that because from what I know, we have an average churn of under 10 percent. That's the figures across the industry. In smaller companies, the churn is even less and there are specific reasons for that. First of all, that due to Belarusian mentality, we always try to keep to a job that we're having. Yeah? So we do not-- >> John: That's a cultural thing. >> That's just the cultural thing. We do not ... >> You honor, you honor a code, if you will. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, that's one of the things. Another thing is that Belarusian IT industry is very small. We have, I would say, no more than 40 thousand people being involved in different IT companies. The community is very small, so if somebody is hopping jobs from one job to another, it is going to be known and this person is not likely to have like, a good career. >> So job hoppers is kind of like a code of community, honor. Silicon Valley works that way too, by the way. >> Yeah. >> You get identified, that's who you are. >> Yeah. And so nowadays-- >> Economic tax breaks going on over there? What's the government to get involved? >> One of the key things is, the special tax and legal regulations that Belarus has got at the moment. I can definitely say that there is no country in the world that has got the same tax preferences, and the same support from the government. If a Belarusian company, IT company, becomes a part of Belarusian High Tech Park it means the company becomes automatically exempt from BET tax, corporate income tax. The employees of that company having the reliefs on their income, personal income tax rate, and there are a lot more reliefs that make the talent stay in the country. Having this relief for the IT business allows the companies to provide better working conditions for the employees and stop the people from migrating to other parts of the world. That's what we have. >> Sort of created an environment where there's not a lot of migration out of the area. The tech community kind of does it's own policing of behavior for innovation. >> Yeah but I think before those initiatives were adopted there was a certain percentage of people migrating but I think that nowadays even if it happens, yes, you're right, it's not that substantial. >> Great. Tell us ... Great overview of the company and congratulations, it's a good opportunity for folks watching to explore new areas of talent, especially ones that have the work ethic and knowledge you guys have over there. New York here, there's codes here too. Get the job done. Be on time. What's your experience like in New York here? What's your goal this week? What's some of the meetings you're having? Share with the folks kind of your game plan for Big Data NYC. >> Well, yeah, I've really enjoyed my stay here. It, so far, has been a very enjoyable experience. From the business perspective, I had over 10 meetings with the prospective customers. And we are likely to have follow-ups coming in the next couple of weeks. I can definitely say there is a great demand for professional services. You can see that if you go to whichever center you can see there's a lot of jobs being posted on the job boards. It means that there is lack of knowledge here in the US, yeah? One more important thing that I wanted to share with you from my personal observations that USA, UK and maybe Nordic countries, they have very, very strong background for creating the business ideas but Eastern Europe or Eastern European countries and Belarus in particular, they are very strong in actually implementing those ideas. >> Building them. >> Yes, building them. I think we have lots of synergies and we can ... we can ... >> John: Great. >> We can work together. I also got some meetings with our existing customers here in the US and so far we had good experiences. I can see that New York is moving fast. I travel a lot. I've been to over 40 countries in the previous five years and I just ... New York is different. >> It's fun. >> Different. Even different from many other cities in the US. >> Lot of banks are here. Lot of business in New York. New York is a great town. Love New York City. It's one of my favorites. Love coming here as I grew up right across the river in New Jersey. >> Yeah. But, great town, obviously California, Palo Alto, >> Yeah. >> Is a little more softer in terms of weather, but they have a culture there too. Sounds a lot like what's going on in Belarus, so congratulations. If we get some business for you, should we give them theCUBE discount, tell them John sent you and you get 10 percent off? Alright? >> Alright, yes. Sounds great. We can make it a good deal. (laughter) >> Tell them John sent you, you get 10% off. No I'm only kidding because it's services. Congratulations. Final question. What's the number one thing that people are buying for service from you guys? Number one thing. What's the most requested service you provide? >> The most requested services ... First of all, many customers they understand that they have got a lot of data. They want to do something with their data. But before you actually do some implementation you have to do a lot of discovery or preparatory work. I would say, no matter how we end up with a customer, this stage is basically ... The idea of that stage is to identify the ways data science can be implemented and can provide benefits to the business. That's the most important. I think that, like, 95 percent of the customers they approach us with this thing in the first place. And based on the results of that preparatory stage we can then advise the customers. What can they do? Or how they can actually benefit from the existing data? Or what other things they should collect in order to make their business more effective. >> Sergei, thanks for coming on. Belarus has got a lot of builders there. Check 'em out. >> Thanks a lot. >> Builders are critical in this new world. Lots of them with clout, a lot of great opportunities. A lot of builders in Belarus. This is theCUBE, bringing you all the action from New York City. More after this short break. We'll be right back. (theme music) (no audio) >> Hi, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of theCUBE. I've been in the tech ...