>> from the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the Cube covering Cooper inspired 2019. Brought to you by Cooper. >> Hey, welcome to the Cube. Lisa Martin on the ground in Las Vegas at Cooper Inspired 19. Excited to welcome to the program. And gentlemen from Staples, a place I go to all the time we have Christy Oreo, VP of strategic sourcing. Hey, Chris, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. Glad to be here, >> So I was just a staples the other day getting office supplies. It's a go to Penn's files Folders, Inc et cetera. You name it. That is a place I think everybody on the planet knows. But I >> want to >> talk to you about the Staples business and how you guys now have control over 8000 suppliers. You've got this visibility in control, which I think every human wants and every element of life you know of 100% of your indirect spend under management. So given those big business outcomes, let's dissect that. Obviously, you're a cool customer. That's why you're here. Talk to us about a little bit about Staples. All the different suppliers you guys have, and some of the challenges that you came to Cooper to help erase >> Well, we had a lot of issues with Roque spend. Everybody was doing what they wanted in every location. We had no verification. We weren't consolidating our spend to get the best deals and get the best outcomes, lack of consistency, all the stuff you hear about. And since we've ruled out Cooper, we've got a lot of structure in place now, and we've got much better uniformity, much better consistency. We've dramatically lowered our costs through the use of the tool and some of the some of the rules that we've put in place as a result of of launching Cooper a couple years ago now. So we're really pleased with how it's helped us organize our business and really bring visibility to where we're spending money and showing us the opportunities and where we could go after her and save even more money. >> You know, you talk about rogue spending. >> One of >> the interesting disrupters of procurement and finance is consumer ization we all have. Whether we're going on staples dot com or something else, we're on Amazon. I need to buy this. We have this expectation as consumers in our private lives that we can get anything we want. We have to check with anybody. I one click. So then when we go in as business buyers, we sort of have the same mentality. But obviously the challenge there is, a lot of organizations don't have visibility into. Where has every single dollar going? How many different suppliers are we working with? Do we have duplicates triple kits everywhere to talk to me >> a little >> bit about the with a kind of cultural strategic shift that you guys are making now that you have this visibility? Well, >> everybody's happy with the results. That's >> always good right >> when he had his. When you have some success and you start to tell the story, then all of a sudden people's eyes get opened, and what's interesting is I don't think anyone does anything with malice. But if you have a general manager of a warehouse who believes that ex widget is what he needs to really Pel perform and do better, he's doing that with the right intentions. What he doesn't understand is everything else that's going on behind the scenes, and we have deals in place with suppliers and there's a level of consistency that we expect that our suppliers expecting that our customers expect and we can't have that experience be different. So once we can't explain that story and the tool helps us see where that spend is coming from, we go back. We have a conversation, and all of a sudden it's enlightening like, Oh, I didn't know. Now that I know Okay, I get it. Let me do what you want me to do or what you need me to do. So that's been the biggest shift I think is just sharing information and putting a spotlight on things when they come up and it happens even still. You know, we've rolled out now a little over two and 1/2 years ago, and we still have these things come up because you get new people and people change roles and, you know, as a business person there's folks I've done business with in the past that have earned my trust, and I want to do business with them again because I know what. When people get new roles, they do the same thing, and sometimes that's not what we need them to do. So once you explain the story and you tell them about it and you show him the results, they come onboard. It's phenomenal. >> Everything goes back to the user experience with customer, whether your customer is an individual buyer or a business of 20 people to a Fortune 500. Everybody in an organization is ultimately, in some form or fashion touching the customer. The customer experience is critical to delight the customer to drive higher customer lifetime value from that customer. Um, so having the employees onboard understanding we still want you to be able to manage your Ware house even more efficiently. But we need you to understand how we're gonna give you the tools to do it better. Ultimately, the end of the day, it's goes back to that customer and making sure you can keep extracting value from them. >> One of our core values is put the customer first, always, and that's at the heart of everything we do. It's not about buying things cheap. It's about buying things at the right value and giving the customer the best possible experience they can, so there may be less expensive ways to do it, but it may not deliver the outcomes we want, so it's not always about buying cheap. It's about buying and getting the best value for us so that we can deliver the right experience to our customers. >> Was that a >> mentality that staples had prior to bringing on Cooper? Or now? Because suddenly you're starting to You have visibility into everything you're going? Oh, cheaper isn't necessarily better in some of these areas. I think it's >> a It's a corporate philosophy that we've had. I think we we realize that people can shop anywhere for anything they wanted. Anytime. Cooper has helped highlight some some discrepancies that we've been able to kind of take out. I would say that Cooper's help with that, but it's also been just a core philosophy of the company for a long time. Cooper's helping us execute against >> that now, but you're right. Consumers can buy >> whatever it >> is. If it's a product like something you want to buy on Amazon or service. Maybe it's your Internet service provider. We have so much choice. Think vendors of any product testers that recognize that and sounds like Staples does. From a core cultural perspective. You're already in a better position to understand. I really need to find Tune everything under the hood here because they could go somewhere else like that. They can't. It's good to >> understand that. But Cooper gives us the data and the facts and the analytics to help prove out where we can make a change and where we can help the company and help our customers. So it's a combination of both. >> Let's Dig into that data was in one of the things that Robert seemed shared this morning was about. Since Cooper's been public, which was 2016 they have a five x increase in the amount of spend that is being managed in the Cooper platform. I think the number was is now 1.2 trillion dollars, a tremendous amount of data in this group of community that everybody can leverage and share. We often hear data is gold. It's the new oil it is and you're smiling if you can actually see it, right extracted value, Yes, talk to us about the amount of value that Staples is getting by this group of community with a ton of valuable data. >> I would say we're at the infancy of going into the Cooper community in terms of sharing information and gaining information. I'm excited about the little bit that I've seen, and I'm one of things I want to learn. Here is more about how it will work and how it can help us. What Rob shared this morning was very interesting to me, and I'm very excited to learn more about >> it. Sounds and you're right And even Cooper says, they're at the infancy of it. I think they have. A couple of 100 customers are starting to use the community to share intelligence. Eso It is early days, but it's also something that I think of when I go to events and we talk about, you know, devil's Community. It's a very collaborative that not only is it customer centric, also, supplier centric Staples is a supplier of a lot of other businesses. So imagine there's kind of double and did benefit. It's that could be gleaned by you guys from them. We hope so. >> I think we're you know, we're probably a more unique customer than many that Cooper has and that we are. We are a customer. We use the tools, we love the tool, but we're also a cellar to you guys and two other Cooper uses in the community. So we see both sides of the equation with Cooper, and it is interesting. T gain those insights and see how we can help both sides of the company. Help group is customers and our customers more >> if you look at >> the platform for procurement invoices, expenses. Heymans, where did you start a few years ago with Cooper and where are you now? In terms of all the different elements that are running through it? >> We started with a simple PIO management secure to pay. Then we instituted a no P o no pay policy, and everyone started using the tools. It really helped us change things We don't use it for. Expenses wear starting like, as I said, to start to use some of the analytics. I'm very interested in learning more about Cooper pay or out here virtual card usage. That's very interesting to me, so I'm curious to learn about that on. We'll see where we go from there. >> Cooper Pay was, I think I know it's just a few months ago in London, and we are excited to hear some more news about that tomorrow, how they're expanding that. But there's this visibility and control idea is so critical because of any type of organization. Whether it's a retailer manufacturer, it's a hospital. There's so much shatter, weighty going. But I t is really big challenge of reining in the cats, if you will in all these cats. Because we all know now that Robert likes cats. But it's one of the things that they're announced with Amazon is wow. I t can have access to buy all of this software, control it, deploy it, manage it through the Amazon marketplace. And you suddenly think, Wow, how procurement and t are gonna be aligning, joining forces and really affecting top line of of any industry. >> Yeah, I think in Staples are our relationship between procurement and our i t S t s department has been strong from day one. They were the biggest advocates of us getting the tool to help them gain control and kind of eliminates a lot of the shadow I t organizations issue. Does you mentioned so in our environment, we are excited about that. We embrace that we're trying. Thio forced that out. So we've always had that sort of very strong partnership with our I T team, and that's really what's helped progress the tool through the company with great success with them in the beginning. And then you start to tell the story, and more and more people are interested in. Wait a minute. You can help them save how much into the budget and where we can reallocate that money and what can I do with it? So it's been really exciting and sort of fun to be part of the transformation. >> And you guys have, what north of 17,000 users on the platform, >> today's wave? A lot, A lot. >> That's pretty quick >> adoption in a few years, a lot of people to train, to educate and and to have it become part of their normal everyday activities. >> Well, we're going through a relaunch now, and the Cooper team has been phenomenal in terms of training and helping my team with all the work that goes on behind the scenes that nobody sees and helping us develop training for all of our associates as we relaunch it, because we're really gonna change the tool. We were a couple of revisions behind Ah, now we're getting caught up. So there's a lot of change coming in September to my company and to Cooper and thrilled with the help that the Cooper team has given us the launch. This >> last question for you. Chris Staples, a 34 year young business. I was just talking with a gentleman from procurement and Lulu Lemon and much younger business. And you >> kind of think, Well, a younger business Have more nimble mind sets. Give your advice your best lessons learned to your peers >> at older, more established organizations, going through a change of really looking at getting complete visibility and all your spent advice to them. >> It's a bit of a cliche, but don't do what you did yesterday. You know, you've got to be open to change. You've got to let the you know, I always say, the month the numbers tell the story, and where is where you're spending too much and how do you fix that? And just because you love a supplier today doesn't mean you can't love somebody else just as much tomorrow. If they can deliver a better value, and a lot of times you can find out that your current supplier can give you a better value than you. Then you had before if you just start poking around a little bit. So my advice would be not to stick with the status quo. Just cause it's easy. Challenge yourself. Challenger team. Challenge the people you work with. Change is good. >> Change is good. Chorus. What a pleasure to have you on the Cube. Big. Thanks. So much for joining me. >> Thank you. Very nice. I appreciate it. >> All right. For Christie. Oreo. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube from Kucha. Inspire 19. Thanks for watching.

>> live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's the King covering via World 2016 brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem sponsors. Now here's your host stew minimum. Welcome back to the Cube here at VM World 2016. Happy to welcome back to the PO program. Christos Caramel analysts. Who's the fellow in CTO of the V A more storage and availability business unit. Thank you for joining us again. >> About to be buck >> Storage is a big focus here. Big announcements around. Not only the sand, but everything happened in the storage room. Tell us what you've been working on the last year. >> Yeah, quite a few things. As you know, Miss Olsen has become practically mainstream product now, especially since we saved the very same 6.2 back in March 2016 with a number of new enterprise grade features for space efficiency. New availability. Fisher's with the razor calls right 56 The product is really taking off. Taking off, especially in old flask configurations, is becoming the predominant model that our customers are using. So ultimately, of course, customers buy a new product like this on and hyper converts product because of the operational efficiencies and brings to their data centers. The way I present this is you have the personal efficiency off public clouds into your private data center now. But this is for me is thus the stepping stone for even a longer term term, bolder vision will have around the stores, the data management. So, the last several months now, I have been working on a new range of projects. Main theme. There is moving up the stock from stores and the physical infrastructure implications. It has two data management on starting with data protection on overall and managing the life cycle of your data for protection, for disaster recovery, for archival, so that you can have tools to be able to effectively and efficiently discover your data. Mine your data. Use them by new applications, including cloud native applications and a dent even know that this may sound a little controversial coming from Vienna, where sitio even moving your data to public clouds and allow application mobility freely between private public clouds. >> Yeah, it's really interesting and wonder if you can packed out a little bit for us, Veum, where, of course, really dominant, the Enterprise Data Center. We're trying to understand where Veum, where fits into the public cloud on how you cut both support the existing ecosystem and move forward. So, you know, it's interesting off >> course. There are silences. There are many open questions. I do not claim that we have the answers to everything. Everything. But you do see that we put a lot of emphasis on that because it is obvious that the I T world is evolving. Our own customers are gradually slowly, but certainly there start incorporating public clouds into the bigger I T organizations that have. So our goal is to start delivering value to our customers based on clouds, starting with what they have today into the data centers. Let me give you a specific example in the case of Virtual San, who have some really cool tools for Mona's in your infrastructure in a holistic way, computer networking and now stores a SZ part of that you have ah solutions and tools that allow the customer to monitor constantly there covered infrastructure, the configuration of that. The class is the network servers controller's down to individual devices, and we provide a lot of data to the customers, not only for the health but also for the performance off the off the infrastructure data to the customer can today used to perform root cause analysis of potential issues to decide how to optimize there. Infrastructure in the world clothes. But that is actually pretty no sophisticated house. You cannot expect a lot 500 thousands 1000 customers. Of'em were to be ableto do this kind of sophisticate analysis. So what we're working on right now is a set off analytics tools that do all this data Kranz ink and analysis a root cause analysis on DDE evaluation of the infrastructure on because of the customer instead of providing data now we're providing answers and suggestions now way want to be able to deliver those analytics in a very rapid cadence. So what we do is we develop all those things in via Morse. Cloud will collect data from the customer side through telemetry, the emir's phone home product, and we get off the data up in our club. We crunch the data on because of the customer, and we use really sophisticated methods that will be evolving over time and eventually will be delivering feedback and suggestions at a kind level to the customer that can be actionable. For example, weekend point out that certain firm were the 1st 1 off certain controllers, and the infrastructure is falling behind. I may have problems or point out to a certain SS thes uh, a problem getting close to the end off life. For more sophisticated thing. Starts us reconfigure your application with a different policy for data distribution to achieve better performers. The interesting thing is that going to be, you're going to be combining data from must multiple sites, multiple customers to be able to do this holistic analytics and say, You know what? Based on trance, I see. Another customer says. It says You also do that. Now they're really coursing out of this is that the customer does not have to go and use yet another portal on a public cloud to take advantage of that. But they in fact, we send all that feedback through the this fear you. I own premise to the customers, so really cool. So you have the best of both wars. There are big development off analytics using actually behind the senses a really complex cloud native application with the existing tools that the customers are usedto in on premise. So this is just one example >> crystals. Could you give us a little bit of insight as the guiding light for your development process? Do you use that kind of core customers that you're pulling in and working in? Is it a mandate from above that says, you know, Hey, we need to build a more robust and move up the stack. You know, what are some of the pieces that lead to the development that you >> know? This is a very interesting point. I must start by stating that vehement has always bean admitting they're driven company. Um, and look for products were, you know, ideas that were, you know, Martin by engineers, while others thought that was not your not even visible, of course, Mutualization in several stages. But features like the Muslim or stores of emotion Oreo even, you know, ideas kind of ritual, son, right. Claiming that I could do very effectively rate six in software was something that was not really, you know, appreciated in the industrial area stages. So a lot of the innovation is a grassroots innovation. We have our engineers exposed directly to customers customer problems off course. They also understand what is happening in the industry. The trends, whether that is encounter as its case these days with a new generation off first or its cover that is emerging, or where that that is a trend. Samoan customers, for example, using public clouds in certain ways where that is for doing testing dead or archiving their data way. Observe those things and then through a grassroots. Therefore, all this get amalgamated into some concrete ideas. I'm not saying that all those ideas result into products, but we definitely have a very open mind in letting engineers experiment and prove sometimes common sense to be wrong. So this is the process thesis. How Virtual Son started were a couple of us went to our CEO back then for marriage and suggested we do this drastic thing that is called no softer stores on that you can run the soft store of stock in software on the same servers that we visualize, and we're under V. M. So this is really how the process has always been working and this is still the case and we're very proud of this culture. This is one way we're actually tracking opens enduring talent in the competent. >> Yeah, I was loved digging into some of the innovation processes. Had a good chat with Steve Harris, former CEO of GM, where if I remember right? One of the thing processes user called flings, whereas you can actually get visibility from the outside it to some of those kind of trials and things that are going on that aren't yet fully supported yet. >> Absolutely. And that is still the case. Probably the best known fling these days is the HTML five days they you I for your sex, which is used extensively, both internally in the humor where it actually started as a tool for that purpose, but now wild by the community. And that Flynn gave us a lot off insides and how to evolve our mainstream user interface for for this fear, proper notes, Astoria sex. So this is exactly this alternative process that leads us to test the water and feel much more confident when we make bigger and investments in in Ireland, >> right architecturally via Moore has been around for quite a while now. I had a good talk with such a Pagani Who? I m f s earlier today and we were talking about, you know, new applications and new architectures when vms foot fest was built. You know, nobody's thinking about containers. You know, they weren't thinking about applications like duper some of these more cloud native applications. How do you take into consideration where things were going? How did these fit into, you know, kind of traditional VM wear V sphere. You know what things need to change? How do you look at kind of the code basis? >> Right. So first of all of'em affairs, I must say it's probably the most mature and most widely adopted class. The file system in the industry for over 10 years now has been used to visualize enterprise grade store, its stores, alien networks, and it was going to have a role for many years to come. But on the other hand, we all are technologists, and we understand that the product is designed with certain assumptions and constraints, and the EM affairs was designed back in the meat to thousands toe address the requirements for ritual izing lungs, and you know the traditional volumes that you'd be consuming from a disgrace. Now the world is changing, right. We have a whole new generation off solid state devices for stores. Servers on softer on commodity servers with Commodity stores Devices is becoming as your own reports that have been indicating the predominant no mortal of delivering stores in there in the enterprise that the sender and off course in even public clouds with copper scale storage. So what? The requirements there? Some things are changing. You need the store. Its plot from that can really take out the violence of the very low latency is off those devices. I was at Intel Developer for form a couple of weeks ago, and their intel announced for first time performance numbers for the new generation off Envy Me devices obtained that include the three D Chris Point technology under the covers. Latents is at around 10 microseconds, right and Iost per second scruples that are in the several kinds of thousands, if not millions so completely young game changer. And that is not the only company that is coming up with this technology. So you need to invest now in new technologies that can take the can harness the capabilities of this new devices, lightweights protocols like Envy me. In fact, I see envy me as the protocol is not just a protocol to accident device, but I can see a future for that off. Replacing Scott Z into the software start soon, and this is committing specific days. But soon will be sipping a vision off this fear that comes with ritual and via me in the guest visual ization of envy Me. So you can see here where we're heading and envy me, becoming a predominant protocol for the transport and for brutalizing stores. >> Interesting. And we've got a long history of things that start on. The guests Usually then takes a lot of engineering work to get them down to the hyper visor themselves. So, you know, without having to give away too much, is that we see that kind of progression sometime in the future. For some of these new memory, architectures >> certainly certainly are the sex store stock, and this is the stuff that is used by Veum infest by ritual son. It has been designed again for another era off stores. Now we are regarding a lot of these things there, and I cannot disclose too much detail, obviously, but I can tell that it's going to be a very different software stock. Much leaner, much more optimized for local, very fast devices and ultimately envying me is going to be a key technology in this new store stock. >> All right, so just last follow up on that topic. I think about kind of a new memory architectures. What's going on? As of September 7th, Del will acquire TMC. There's the relationship between A. M, C and V M wear. So could we expect some of these new memory technologies impacting things to be something that you'll work even closer with a deli emcee? And >> that is definitely case irrespective off the deal between the emcee and Dell, which, as you said, it's going to be closing. It seems pretty soon. From what I read in the newspapers, >> Michael confirmed, it's finally official. Some of the pathetic ALS. >> Yes, we're moving ahead with this new technologists, and we're working closely with all the partners micro intel and many of the other car vendors that are introducing such technologies to incorporate them into our systems into our software, for example, I see great opportunities for this very fast Cayenne dude owns but still quite expensive technologies to be used, for example, to store meta data. Things like duplication. Costabile is those kind off meta data that have an impact through because of my own verification to the performance that is perceived by the application by moving meta data like that into those tears are going to make a great difference in terms of performance consistent, late and see predictability of the day for the application. Now, thanks to the relations with del Auntie em. See, I can hope that some of these technologies will find their way into several platforms sooner than later. So all of us and our customers would benefit from that. >> All right? What? Christos really appreciate getting the update from you. Lots happening on the storage world. We're kind of talking about. One of my things coming into this this'll week was, if we can really simplify storage, we might actually have a storage. This world doesn't mean it reduces the value of storage or the importance of it, but gonna help the users to be able to move beyond that, we'll be back with lots more coverage here from the emerald 2016. You're watching the Cube. Glad to be here. Whatever. Apply from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It's the King covering via World 2016 brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem sponsors. Now here's your host stew minimum. Welcome back to the Cube here at VM World 2016. Happy to welcome back to the PO program. Christos Caramel analysts. Who's the fellow in CTO of the V A more storage and availability business unit. Thank you for joining us again. >> Glad to be back.

okay welcome back we're live here in Las Vegas this is the cube silicon angles exclusive coverage of IBM's information on demand I'm John Farid founder silicon I am John mecos day volante and we're talking social business and our next guest is Renee ducrai decree from IBM welcome welcome to the q thank you you know I was having trouble those names but social business yesterday we were teasing it up and you know we were riffing on that because the date topic was big data analytics which shows the value sign up at the insights all the all that greatness and that's going to have the impact on business of the conversation today is social business so I want you to just take the folks through what's the new orientation towards social business it's not like it hasn't been around awhile collaboration connecting with phones and an email has been kind of the old way what's the new direction of social business why is it important now all right thank you John so I'm great question so once again my name is Renee decree and the director of marketing for IBM social business unit and you know as we're looking at social business and we think about you know the unprecedented growth and innovation that it's really been driving over the last you know really five plus years right and some of the trends that we've been seeing with a lot of the smarter planet implementations that we've done there's really some key trends that have been emerging around you know how people inform the decisions that they're making as well as you know how they're delivering value to clients and really leveraging you know one of the big payoffs of social business is really social data right and now they're leveraging the social data much better in you know really to make product and service innovation you know much more robust and what are they able to deliver to clients good so even a couple short years ago business let's say what's the point of twitter why do you even bother can you get any value out of it and what's changed you talk about that change and what's change in your customer base yeah and really you know as we look at social business it's it's so much more than you know the typical when you think of social the typical tools like Twitter and Facebook and it's really about applying social networking tools to really you know improve your business drive better you know more productivity across your your workforce just as an example you know one of the implementations that we've done working with Boston Children's Hospital classic example of how you know you take social technologies and really apply it to business right so working with Boston's Children's Hospital we've created a social networking hub that allows them to share all kinds of you know surgical procedures you think of how you know physicians were trained there's such an explosion of data right there's medical journals that are creating you know all kinds of learnings that these exploding rates doctors having a hard time keeping up with all the information as well as all the new procedures out there so now we've helped them create the social networking hub that houses all that information so now physicians all over the world are able to share that information with each other and what we're hearing are you know very good when you talk about you know return on investment right we're hearing very good anecdotal stories around you know doctors and remote locations being able to you know through a mobile device plug into that social networking hub now and actually you know see procedures being done real time instead of you know in in the world of old you had to do all of that training person-to-person very expensive not scalable now they're able to share that through this networking hub at unprecedented rates which is really helping physicians you know save lives right so we're hearing anecdotal stories about how they're able to save lives by leveraging this networking hub Renee how would you characterize this in the strategy is it really to take the best of social networking concepts maybe improve upon them you know replicate them in certain ways and as I say prove upon certainly from a maybe a security standpoint and collaboration maybe integration with other technology products and do that in sort of a walled garden type of safe approach or is it more of a hybrid between sort of what I just described and sort of the public social networks in here again I think it's um so you know a great question i think it's you know based on the needs of the client really as well you know one of the things that we're seeing is definitely a need to have a secure social infrastructure right so working with clients to deliver that based on their needs whether it needs to be you know highly secure we're not the other thing that's interesting in your question is you know leveraging all the social data providing you know social analytics around that data to really help you know here again people make better decisions as well as you know to really inform the you know the value that they're delivering so you think about crowdsourcing for example right and a lot of the examples that we see out there with various vendors crowdsourcing product development so you know being able to improve upon upon their products by being able to look to leverage these social communities if you will okay so it's really sort of both and I guess it probably depends on the industry some highly regulated industry exactly one of the little bit more private yet others like consumer packaged goods maybe they're trying to do some some testing and that's that's an industry that you came out of exactly you cut your teeth the exact dr. gamble so so I I would imagine that there's a lot of momentum in that industry what if we could talk about that a little bit how that's changed since I mean when you know the 90s it really wasn't any kind of public social networks yes I talk about that industry specifically and they would get into some other one so consumers always very you know very interesting right there's so much on that you can do especially around social right if you look at you know procter gamble has always been you know a leader in using social networks and you know social communities to you know really tap into what people like about their products what makes a product good why people you know what performance people are getting out of the products and making sure that they also improve upon that every you know kind of turn of the crank you'll see a new release around tide or you know some new innovation so they're very good at you know leveraging kind of social networks and I think as social technologies have improved and advanced they've been able to leverage that the other thing that's interesting is just when I look at you know other consumers right other consumer products companies you know one that we we point to all the time has really haven't done something spectacular was oreo at the super bowl right and we look at their real time marketing that they did with Twitter and even now they're doing some very innovative things to drive engagement with clients and really kind of improve their you know kind of relationships with clients online a lot of things on Twitter that I think are very clever and really getting people almost to to innovate and come up with you know different desserts and that kind of thing and then take pictures of them actually leveraging Twitter and vine that are you know some very clever implementations that are seeing as well so we had a comment i just posted on Twitter what is the value of Twitter I asked on the queue and some comments from the crowd captain traditional media is about building brands if I'm selling you know I see nachos you name it you see the ad on TV you sure to buy it later you kind of offline and mobile and Twitter you can not do that online so the dynamics there how does use how do you see Twitter for instance changing the game for consumers and in the in this in the spirit of brand advertising or brand marketing yeah so one thing that you know I've raised you with Twitter and for business it's I think it's really a very net way of getting information right so in our you know attention sand deficit you know environment that we live in where you know attention is definitely a commodity right that everyone's trying to win I think Twitter is a way you know in a very number of characters and people tend to like it for you know those aspects because you can really hone in on the news channels that you're interested in the topics that you're interested in and get feedback real-time very succinctly you know with a very short blurb and a point to you know an article so I see it as like four companies a way to you know very quickly send out information so now keep messages links to demos I also think it's a great way like Oreo has done with the Super Bowl you know to really get things to go viral very quickly and so you know being able to leverage now you know actually I was just on a panel at it was a real time marketing event in New York and one of the things that is always a challenge with organizations though in using Twitter is the real time aspect of it right and so I think for Oreo I actually read an article for what they did the super bowl and for those that are not familiar with it you know they did a tweet when the lights went out at the Super Bowl this year or they actually said you know you can still dunk an Oreo in the dark right there was a perfectly time and but the thing that went into that like I read this article about and you know how did they pull it off and they actually had like all of their senior executives sitting around a table that you know made the decision that you know go we're going to you know post this tweet and so you think about large organizations like IBM and you know other you know vendors would I be able to get all of our senior leaders around a table to you know approve a tweet for the you know in the evening of the Super Bowl that would probably like a very career limiting think if that was to happen right so the flash mob essentially an exact negative trend and it was amazing but you know you think about that in large organizations would be pretty hard to pull off so there's always that real-time nature of Twitter that's a challenge for large organization we have big data Alex on Twitter Alex Phillips so so it was a great great friend of the cube and he says the new commodity is attention and one wants to win it my comment was to that which I agree with the new currency is I'm a scarce resource yeah cuz there's so much information we heard from dr. Tim Buchanan yes they talk about all the alarms going off in the hospital there's so many notifications going on you could be bombarded with no noise out there so that's the new week scarce resources time do you agree with that and do you agree the attention game is what people are trying to fight for how do businesses you know extract that state from the noise of you body how people break through that yeah i think you know social technologies are a key way to do that because there's so many new sources right there's so many things that you know you really are trying to achieve that cut through right to it to an audience so definitely towards a way to do that you know in the instance that i gave you with Boston's Children's Hospital for example so taking those social technologies and applying it to a business you know from a business standpoint I think one of the things that's great is your able to you know allow people to collaborate across the world you know by doing a social technology home like we did for Boston Children's Hospital where now people in very remote locations can upload information you know download information to share so I think you know when you think about that attention deficit and attention is a key commodity one thing that I think social kind of levels the playing field with on that is being able to allow people to cut through to the things that they really care about and want to hear about so like on Twitter you know another example you know people are always wondering how do I get more followers how to get more followers if you are tweeting things that are authentic that people are that are that's relevant it's amazing the followers will come the brings up that brings up a good point i want to chill down we also have brainy on twitter who was making crowd chatter making a comment about twitter is also a huge listening funnel Jake poor way shared that Twitter data is used to identify flu breakouts we saw that yesterday here in the keynote so I asked you two questions on that and that come up you mentioned people want to try to get more followers so there's really two concepts one is the tooling available right now still early I want you to talk about kind of a vision and how you guys see that evolving on the tooling and the platforms for customers what's going to be automated what in the future will and make you know social media monitoring obsolete is it's going to be plug and play and to the gamification aspect of it people are gaming Twitter and social networks to get more followers or click on a heads okay so you can use big data solved society problems or get more followers so but gamification sees it so there the tooling kind of where we're at in your mind and also the concept of gamification and user experience okay so all very good questions so you know from a platform perspective we have a social business platform there are solutions around smarter workforce which here is you know a lot of round talent management we have an acquisition that we deal with kenexa around talent management workforce management a lot of robust solutions there there's also a lot of social analytics solutions that we offer on a platform as well as you know we're trying to expand that so you'll see you know announcements coming from us in the future really around including smarter workforce or smarter commerce solutions as well as the overall umbrella underneath the umbrella of social business now from a gaming gamification standpoint yeah I think gay like engagement is key and really trying to figure out ways to increase you know engage meeting with employees or you know with with our customers and gamification I think is a key way to do that right so I was actually out meeting with a client on maybe a week and a half ago superior group and you're actually going to interview tomm their CEO later on today and one of the things that they talked about was using a gamification element and kind of like the training of their workforce and you know kind of making it fun you know to learn aspects of the company when people first come in which I thought was a very clever use of gamification right and then there's always the you know all the contests that you see you know across all the different vendors out there we've been looking at doing you know some gamification elements at some of the conference's going forward like anyone that's going to connect you so you know some gamification there's gamification over here in the corner as well so we have voting on crowd chats a little gamification tweaking people I mean it's so this is the gesture economy right i mean where people are clicking on things and and and making their sentiment known we there with hashtags or votes so i got to ask you about the real time aspect of it you mentioned crowdsourcing earlier this is a new phenomenon the notion of actually measuring crowds i mean marketing is kind of tried to do sampling and you know most of the research analyst we talked to have old-school meant that we sampled 250 people well now you can sable turn 50,000 people so you now have instrumentation which creates interesting crowd sourcing opportunities yeah definitely in real time so you gotta do both you can't talk about those two concepts yeah so the thing that's interesting with crowdsourcing there's a miles reading an article and and uh mmm there was a statement in the article that said you know nowadays you know who's the smartest person in the room you know yesterday it used to be you know they used to point to a person right now it's the wisdom of the crowd or fifth grader exactly so you know I think I just thought that was kind of an interesting way as they opened up the article but it was speaking to crowd sourcing and how really you know we look at like product development and you know a lot of the crowdsourcing models that are out there right now you know my boss part Scott Hebner has small you know children that are like in their teens and he talks about a crowdsourcing model where his son has already bought like an airplane you know that's going to be part of like a game and you know the game's not coming for like another year and a half but they've already crowd sourced millions of dollars by getting people to buy a component that'll be used as a part of the game so you know I think there's a lot of very interesting crowd sourcing models out there and I think we're just going to see more and more of it as well well the crowd has always been a very you know efficient I'm wearing Las Vegas handicapper right i mean young people always say Oh either the football game wow that Las Vegas really got it right you know what's the crowd who actually got it right because they bet you know they make a market and the crowds determining what that line should be essentially right and so you know they really make the market and so I have to ask you a question about the philosophy of IBM regarding social is it is it my understanding that essentially you want to make social every part of an application experience is that ultimately where you're headed exactly so you know you and you'll start seeing more of that as different offerings come forward you'll see more social technologies that are being brought forward so and a lot of our solutions were you know baking in same time for example where there's the real-time collaboration piece so we're baking into a lot of the solutions so definitely as you think of being a smarter Enterprise being a social enterprise leveraging all of the social collaboration tools is a must yeah so that talks to a complete change in the user experience ok do you think you think ultimately that the the social user experience is going to dominate application design I mean you know five ten years down the road yeah you know what I think there's no going back like you know we're at a point where and actually our latest c-suite study that was just released maybe two weeks ago it's called the customer activated enterprise and it really talks about how you know you have to listen to the wisdom of the crowd and your clients in order to you know make sure their clients are always delighted right with with the products that you're delivering to market and just really the importance of listening to you know to clients going forward and I think it's um you know we're seeing that in the marketplace we're seeing that and you know solutions that people are bringing forward that different vendors are bringing forward so I think you know all boats arise we're at a point where we're never going to go back I believe and you know client you know feedback and insights into your products it's here to stay well we got we got a smart crowd smarter crowd on crouch at night and one of the questions I'll ask before we end the segment is all comment Isabel says crowdsourcing scales where the like-minded people saying with you connecting with that that came up yesterday as well as in communities you want to put you know smart people with the audience within its customers or or the chem so great comment there but the question I want to ask you and the segment is does IBM plan on crowd sourcing solutions in the smarter cloud and is the social business portfolio going to be kind of part of that smarter cloud initiative well that's a great question crowdsourcing I think we'll always crowdsource innovation piece of it so making sure that we listen to clients and factor you know all of those key learnings into the next river of our products I'm assuming that you're not saying from a funding standpoint from browser using technology like what kind what we're doing here and with the cube is some people are engaged they want to engage and you're seeing people do tweet chats and as we mentioned earlier there is an active crowd out there yeah that is activated by other people yeah and i think you know now i think crowdsourcing is like the buzz word for it but we've been doing that for a long time you know listen to clients making sure you know that we factor that into the next row of offerings that are coming out and I think you know social technologies are enabling us to you know just further evolve you know how we've listened to customers over time I remember to reiterate we said yes there's a folks you know Jonah white I was running comms back in two thousand five times room when I first started I did the first podcast with a team over there yeah back in the day and I remember they were doing crowdsourcing internally IBM had huge blogging great internal collaboration going back with it seems like a decade ago it's almost a decade ago I mean so you're not you that's not new to you yeah so final comment i want to ask you but boy rap before we wrap here is what is the new resurgence within IBM around social business okay you've been doing it internally even doing with customers that's a long time ago was you know really before Facebook and Twitter even came about what's the new tweak on the model for you guys and how do you guys look at going forward to build on your expertise ok so I think it's you know it's a couple things one it's you know really kind of harnessing here again kind of the wisdom of the crowd here and as we you know go forward with our social business platform baking in a lot of the social collaboration tools that we have into you know other solutions across the corporation it's you know leveraging one of the big payoffs is around social data so making sure that we you know provide our clients with all the social analytics you know to leverage all the data that they've been collecting over years that they may have been sitting on and not using to better engage with clients to you know deliver exceptional client experience be able to you know innovate around the product so that they're delivering you know and then finally the other piece that you know no one ever thinks about is kind of the elephant in the room but you know based on you know we talked about you know regulatory requirements or what are their needs are but just making sure that you know it's in a secure kind of social infrastructure and being able to you know help our clients with that you know I think those are some of the key things that were focused on and you know making sure that as clients you know deliver value that they're able to you know really you know here again leverage the social data and they do create here live on the cube director of marketing for social business here at IBM great conversation great engagement online there on the on the Twitter comment and how you talked about these new channels these new opportunities it's exciting times and certainly this interest and for businesses out there it's fun to watch and then opportunities so this the cube right back with our next guest after this short break the queue