>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering A W s reinforce 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back and run cubes. Live coverage of A W S Amazon Webster's reinforced their inaugural conference around security here in Boston. Messages. I'm John for a day. Volante Day we've been talking about Blockchain has been part of security, but no mention of it here. Amazon announced a Blockchain intention, but was more of a service model. Less of a pure play infrastructure or kind of a new game changes. So we thought we would get our friends to come on, the Cuban tell. Tell us about it. Val Birch, Avicii CEO and founder. A pencil day that Cube alumni formerly of NetApp, among other great companies, and Ed You, founder and CEO of Strong Salt. Welcome to the Q. Tell us why aren't we taught him a Blockchain at a security conference on cloud computing, where they always resource is different. Paradigm is decentralized. What's your take? >> So maybe having been in this world for about 18 24 months now, Enterprise lodging reinvents about six months ago and jazz he mentioned that he finally understood US enterprise an opportunity, and it was the integrity value, finest complex, even announced a specific product announced database available, >> maybe bythe on cryptographic verifiability of transactions minus the complexity of smart contract wallets. Wait, you party with Amazon way too. Versions right? One for distributed use cases. When I call, everyone rises. Never like you need to know what >> the Amazon wants to be that hard on top like complexity. But the reality is, they're they're They're world is targeting a new generation star 14 show is the new generation of developing >> a >> new generation of David. They were. Some of those are in trouble, and I'm hard core on this because it's just so obvious. >> I just can't get him behind myself if you don't >> see this out quicker. The new developers are younger and older systems people. There's a range of ages doing it. They're they're seeing the agility, and it's a cultural shift, not just the age thing. Head this. They're not here right now. This is the missing picture of this show, and my criticism of reinforces big, gaping hole around crypto and blocks, >> and I actually know that people I don't see anything here because it is difficult to currency. >> Blocking is very important that people understand way. Launch strong allows you to see the launching. I don't think that works. Basically, Just like Well, well said everything you do, you always have a single source. I think that's something that people doing this thing here. You want to get your thoughts on this because you made a comment >> about security native being the team here and security native implying that Dev ops what they did for configuration hardening the infrastructures code. You have to consider this token economic business model side of it with the apple cases, a decision application is still an application. Okay. Blockchain is still in infrastructure dynamic their software involved. I mean, we're talking about the same thing is they're lost in translation. In your opinion? >> Well, yeah, I think that you know, to your point, Val, if you can abstract that complexity away, But the fundamentals of of cryptography and software engineering and game theory coming together is what always has fascinated me about this space. And so you're right. I think certainly enterprise customers don't wanna you know, they hear crypto, though no, although it's interesting it was just a conference IBM yesterday. They talk a lot about Blockchain. Don't talk about crypto to me. They go together. Of course, IBM. They don't like to talk a lot about job loss and automation, but But the reality is it's there and it's it's it's has a lot of momentum, which is why you started the company. >> Yeah, we're actually seeing it all over right now. And again, our thing is around reducing, If not eliminating the friction towards adopting Blockchain so less is more. In our case, we're explicitly choosing not to do crypto wallets or currency transactions. It's that Andy Jassy observation the integrity value, the core integrity, value for financial reconciliation, for detecting supply chain counterfeiting for tracking assets and inventory across to your distribution. Unifying multiple source systems of record into a shared state. Those are the kinds of applications received >> culture, and there's so many different use cases, obviously, so >> an Amazon likes to use that word. Words raised the bar, which is more functionality, but on the other, phrases undifferentiated, heavy lifting. There's a lot of details involved in some of those complexity exactly what you're talking about that can be automated away. That's goodness. But you still have a security problem of mutability, which is a beautiful thing with Blockchain. >> Actually, a lot of times people actually forgot to mention one thing that blotchy and all you do that's actually different before was Actually privacy is actually not just security is also privacy, which actually is getting bigger and bigger. As we know, it's something that people feel very strongly about because it's something they feel personal about. And that's something that, in fact, took economics encourages a lot of things that enables privacy that was not able to do before. >> Well, look at Facebook. What do you think about >> face? I'm wonder that you know, I'm a public face book critic. I think they've been atrocious job on the privacy front so far in protecting our data. On the other hand, if you know it's kind of like the mullahs report, if you actually read Facebook's white paper, it's a it's not a launch. It's an announcement. That's a technical announcement. It's so well written, designed so far, and it's Facebook doesn't completely control it. They do have a vision for program ability. They're evolving it from being a permissions toe, ultimately a permission less system. So on paper, I like what I read. And I think it will start to, you know, popularizing democratize the notion of crypto amongst the broader population. I'm going to take a much more weight see approach. Just you know, >> I always love Facebook. I think the den atrocious job. But I'm addicted. I have all my stuff on there, um, centralized. They're bringing up, they bring in an education. Bitcoin is up for a reason. They're bringing the masses. They're showing that this is real market. This is kind of like when the web was still viewed as Kitty Playground for technologists say, Oh, well, it's so slow. And that was for dummies. And you had the Web World Wide Web. So when that hit, that same arguments went down right this minute, crypto things for years. But with Facebook coming, it really legitimizes that well, you bring 2,000,000,000 people to the party. Exactly a lot of good. Now the critics of Facebook is copied pass craft kind of model and there's no way they're gonna get it through because the world's not gonna let Facebook running run commerce and currents. It's like it's like and they don't do it well anyway. So I think it's gonna be a game changing market making move. I think they'll have a play in there, but I don't think that's not gonna have a global force. Says a >> lot that you get 100 companies to put up 10 >> 1,000,000 Starship is already the first accomplice. >> They don't need any more money. We have my dear to us, but >> still the power but the power of that ecosystem to me. I was a big fan of this because I think it gives credibility. So many companies get get interested in it, and I'm not sure exactly what's gonna come out of it. It's interesting that, you know, Bitcoins up. They said, Oh, cell, you're becoming like No, no, no, this is This is a very mature >> Well, I I think open is gonna always win. If you look at you know, the Web's kind of one example of kind of maturity argument. I think the rial analog for me, at least my generation value probably relate to this. David, you as well, you know, I've been born yet you are But, you know, T c p I p came after S n a which IBM on the deck net was the largest network at that time to >> not serious. Says >> mammal. Novell was land all three proprietary network operating systems. So proprietary Narcisse decimated by T c p i p. So to me, I think even their Facebook does go in there. They will recognize that unless they stay open, I think open will always win. I think I think this is the beginning of the death of the closed platform. >> Yeah, they're forced her. I think they have to open it up because if you didn't open up, people won't trust them, and people will use them. And if a Blockchain if you don't have a community behind it, there will be nothing. >> Well, so the thing about the crypto spraying everywhere with crypto winter, But but to your point d c p i p h t t p d >> N s SMTP >> Those were government funded or academic funded protocols. People stop spending money on him, and then the big Internet companies just co opted. No, no, that's what G mails built on. >> Well, I've always said >> so But when you finish the thought, is all this crypto money that came in drove innovation? Yeah, So you're seeing, you know, this new Internet emerge, and I think it's it's really think people, you know, sort of overlooked a lot of the innovation that's >> coming. I have always said, Dave, that Facebook is what the Web would look like if Tim Berners Lee took venture financing. Okay, because what they had at the time was a browser and the way that stand up websites for self service information. They kept it open and it drives. Facebook became basically the Web's version of a, well, lengthen does the same Twitter has opened. They have no developer community. So yeah, I think it is the only company in my opinion, actually does a good job opening up their data. Now they charge you for that. It brings up way still haven't encrypt those. The only community that's entire ethos is based on openness and community you mentioned. And that is a key word >> in traditional media. Of course, focus on the bad stuff that happens, but you know those of us in the business who will pay attention to it, see There's a lot of goodness to is a lot of mission driven, a lot of openness, and it's a model for innovation. What do you guys think about the narrative now to break up big tech? You know you're hearing Facebook, Amazon, Google coming under fire. What are your thoughts on that? >> So I wrote a block, maybe was ahead of its time about 18 months ago. Is coincided with Ginny Rometty, a Davos and 2018 2019 talking about data responsibility. Reason we're having this conversation is at the tech industry. By and large and especially the fang stocks or whatever we're calling them now have been irresponsible with our data. The backlash is palpable in Europe. It's law in Europe. Backlash we knew was going to start at the state level here. There's already ahead of my personal schedule. Federal discussions, FTC DOJ is in a couple weeks ago, so it's inevitable that this sort of tech reckoning is coming in. Maur responsibility is gonna have to be demonstrated by all the custodians of our data, and that's why we're positioning. Check it as a chain of custody is a service to demonstrate to the regulators your customers, your partners, suppliers, you know, transparency, irrefutable transparency, using Blockchain for how you're handling data. You know, if you don't have that, transparency can prove it. Or back to the same old discussions were back Thio Uninformed old legislators making you know Internet, his tubes type regulations. So here, here >> and DOJ, you could argue that they may be too slow to respond to Microsoft back in the nineties. I'm not sure breaking up big tech is the right thing, because I think it's almost like a t. The little Tex will become big checks again, but they should not be breaking the law. >> I think there's a reason why is there's actually a limitation off. What is possible in technology because they understand and also Facebook understands well, is that it's actually very, very hard to have data that's owned by your customers. But you are the one who's keeping track over everything, and you are the one using the data right. It's like a no win, because if you think about encryption cryptography, yes, you can make the data encrypted. That way, the customer has the key. They control it, but then Facebook can offer the service is. So now you have a Congress thinking, Well, if there's no technological way of doing this, what can you do in a legal perspective on a, you know, on the law perspective, toddy make it so that the customer actually owned the data. We actually think that is a perfect reason why you have to actually fix the book. Actually, technical should be built on our platform because we actually allow them to have a day that's encrypted and stupid able to operations holiday tha if the customer give them the permission to do so. And I think that's the perfect word way to go forward. And I think Blockchain is the fundamental thing that brings everybody together, you know, way that actually benefits everyone knows >> and take him into explain strong salt your project. What's it about? What's the mission? Where you >> so so we see strong saw as actually privacy. First, we literally are beauty, a platform where developers including Facebook linked and salesforce can't you build on top of platform, right? So what happens when you do this is that they actually give the data governess to the customers, customers Mashona data. But because our cryptography they actually can offer service is to the customers. When a customer allowed them to do so, for example, we have something. All search of encryption allows you to encrypt the data and still give the search. Aubrey on the data without decrypting the data. First, by giving the power to developers and also the community there, you can have our abstract you currently use. But they're not hard to use that frictionless and still offer the same service that Frank Facebook or sell stolen offer the favor. >> You could do some discovery on it. >> You can't do things >> some program ability around >> exactly, even though the data is encrypted. But custom owns the day. So the customer has to give them permission to do so Right this way. Actually, in fact, launched the first app that I told you it's called strong vote. You can Donald ios or Andrew it And you can't you see the Blockchain play little You can see the rocking your fingerprint. I think a fingertip to see what happens to a data. You see everything that happens when Sheriff I or you open a fire or something, I guess. >> Congratulations, Val. Give a quick plug for your project chain kid into the new branding. They're like it. Pencil data. Where are you on your project? >> So after nine months of hard selling, we're finding out what customers actually paying for right now. In our case, it's hardening their APS, their data and their logs and wrapping the chain of custody around those things. And the use case of the security conference like this is actually quite existential When you think about it, One of the things that the industry doesn't talk enough about is that every attack we read about in the headlines was three privilege escalation. So the attackers somehow hacked. Your Web server managed to get administrative credentials and network or domain administrative credentials. And here's what professional attackers do once they have godlike authority on your network. They identify all the installed security solutions, and they make themselves invisible because they can. After that, they operate with impunity. Our technology, the security use case that we're seeing a lot of traction is, is we can detect that we're applying Blockchain. We're agnostic, so bring your own Blockchain in our case. But we're able >> chain kit a product. Is it a development environment >> globally. Available service Jose on AWS rest ful AP eyes and fundamentally were enabling developers to harden their app stuff to wrap a chain of custody around key data or logs in their laps so that when the attacker's attempt a leverage at administrative authority and tamper with locks tamper >> with service, not a software, >> it's a apply. It's a developer oriented service, but >> this is one of the biggest problems and challenges security today. You see the stat after you get infiltrated. It takes 250 or 300 days to even detect, and I have not heard that number shrink. I've heard people aspire number streaking this. >> We can get it down to realize a crime tip of the spear. That's what we're excited to be here. We're excited to talk about One of the dirty secrets of the security industry is that it shouldn't take a year to detect in advance attack. >> Guys, Thanks for coming on. Cuban sharing your insight. Concussions in your head. Well, great to see you. >> Likewise. And thank you, j for having us on here, and we're looking forward to coming back and weigh. Appreciate. Absolutely >> thankful. Spj Thanks for you. >> It was always paying it forward. Of course, really the most important conversation, that security is gonna be a Blockchain type of implementation. This is a reality that's coming very soon, but we're here. They do is reinforce. I'm talking about the first conference with Amazon Web sources dedicated to sightsee. So's Cee Io's around security jumper. Develop the stables for more coverage. After this short break, >> my name is David.

(light adventurous music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, the co-host of theCUBE, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. This is our CUBE Conversation Thought Leader Thursday and I'm here with Val Bercovici, who's the founder and CEO of a new startup called PencilDATA. Val, CUBE alumni, been on many times with NetApp and then a variety of other great startups, but now you're doing your own thing around cryptocurrency, blockchain, enterprise-like technical infrastructure. You've been a CTO, now entrepreneur, founder and CEO of PencilDATA. Congratulations, you're on the crypto wave, this wave is coming. >> I believe it's here. >> It's here. >> Timing couldn't be better. >> So, I interviewed Dr. Jian Wang who's the chairman of Alibaba's technology steering committee, also the founder of Alibaba Cloud, just recently in China. Presented by Intel, plug for Intel there, thanks Intel for supporting theCUBE. He said to me, and I put the clip out on Twitter, natively on the video clip, which was, I asked him about blockchain, you know China, they blocked the ICOs, he said, "Blockchain is fundamental, part of the Internet. "It's as fundamental as TCP/IP was." This is the nuance that is attracting a lot of tier one entrepreneurs. Obviously the money side is hyped up beyond all recognition right now. As Don Klein on our team was saying, "It's melting up in terms of hype." But this really speaks to the transformation of the web, and the Internet now, the web is the Internet, from distributed and decentralized. This is a big sea change. Kind of building on the fundamentals of the internet, formerly called the information superhighway, before the web came along, but the web was designed to withstand nuclear disaster, be resilient, be decentralized. >> It reminds me of Back to the Future in many, many ways, because if you're as old as we are, you remember those DARPA origins of the Internet and exactly that decentralized nature, and we've gone away from that, right? As Tim Berners-Lee brought on the HTTP protocol, we've had web protocols, and as major, the FANG vendors have really dominated their usage of that existing layer of technology we've gone away, we've gone to a very, very centralized approach, which as we're seeing with the tech hearings this week, carries all sorts of risks, it's not just business and legal and political. >> And you're referring to the senate hearings, where Facebook, Google, or Alphabet, and Twitter were in front of the senate committee, you're going to tell them about the Russians, the Russian political thing, but they're bringing up the issue of the role of these mega platforms that have all this data and the problem is that this is not what the users bargained for. I mean, I use Facebook as a free app, I love Facebook, Facebook, we love you, WhatsApp here and there, and Instagram, but you know, my bargain was simple. I'll use your free app and I'll let you use some of my data but now you're making billions, $10 billion quarter, fake news has infiltrated the country, I have a poor user experience every day, it's getting worse and worse, a lot of hate and division. This is not what I bargained for. >> Val: Exactly. >> So the world's kind of revolting against these mega-siloed platforms. >> That's the risk of having such centralized control of the technology. If you remember in the old days when Microsoft's dominance was rising, all you had to do was target Windows as a virus platform and you're able to impact thousands of businesses, even in the early Internet days, within hours. And it's the same thing happening right now, there's a weaponization of these social media platforms and Google's search engine technology and so forth. It's the same side effect now, the centralization of that control is the problem. One of the reasons I love the blockstack technology, and blockchain in general is the ability to decentralize these things right now, and the most passionate thing I care about nowadays is being driven out of Europe, where they have a lot more maturity in terms of handling these new scenarios. >> You mean the tech being driven out of Europe. >> The laws. >> The laws, okay. >> Being driven out of Europe. >> Be specific, we'd like an example. >> The major deadline that's coming up in May 25th of 2018 is GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, where European citizens now in any company, American or otherwise, catering to European citizens, has to respond to things like the right to be forgotten request. You've got 24 hours, as a global corporation with European operations, to respond to European citizens', EU citizens', right to be forgotten request, where all the personally identifiable information, the PII, has to be removed and an audit trail, proving it's been removed, has to be gone from two, three hundred internal systems within 24 hours. And this has teeth by the way, it's not like the $2.7 billion fine that Google just flipped away casually, this has up to 4% of your global profits per incident where you don't meet that requirement. >> Well you bring up a good point, the GDPR is a good one, it has teeth and it's kind of in the weeds with the folks who might not know that regulation, but really it's about the privacy and the rights of the individual. But coming back to Facebook, to connect another dot is, what we're seeing with Facebook, Twitter, and Alphabet with the senate hearings is, and this is why the industry and the media is crumbling, publications are dying, the newspapers, the media's changing, is because knowing your customer is a really important thing. The people who want to be served need to have a closed loop with the publication, and these platforms are bogarting all the data, and so the right of the customer, the users are suffering, and that's what people are generally talking about. You know, personally, a guy can rent a truck and go mow people down in Manhattan, we should know who these people are, like the neighbors, so I think there's going to be a trend towards knowing who your neighbor is, knowing who the customers are, at a level that's not scary privacy violation, but we're going to know who the crazies are, we're going to know what's going on and then that's kind of out there, that's kind of my general feeling. But now, getting back to the impact. GDPR, these big mega platforms where the users are at the center of the value proposition, really comes down to the shift in user expectations around a decentralized Internet. That means agile goes to a whole other level. If I'm a user and I say, "Hey Facebook, "delete my digital exhaust or digital footprints "from Facebook over the past 10 years." I mean, that's hard to do. >> That's hard for them. >> That's not, technically is a really serious problem. >> And it's actually not just a technology challenge, I always love to go back to Conway's Law in these discussions, the org chart, you know, how information, infrastructure is budgeted for, and managed through various different departments within any large enterprise, data-savvy or not, is a challenge, as is coordinating these efforts, actually going beyond the talking phase, towards implementing a master data model. Those are the main challenges right now, and it's a movement that I believe now has political strength to actually migrate across the pond. Over here as well there's a groundswell movement called Digital Sovereignty as a response to GDPR in Europe, where people are realizing that they have the right to be sovereign over their data, their digital exhaust, their digital footprints online and that's a two-way street. You want and demand control over your data, but on the other hand your identity, which you control, has to be authentic as opposed to a fake identity, and your reputation has to be out there as well. >> These signals and these trends you were just referring to, to me are just like little tremors of the tectonic plates that are going to be changing, because if you look at the major shift in technology, let's take blockchain for instance, and look at the impact of a decentralized internet, now global, immutability with the ability now for more agile capability and not just permanent, "I want to erase things" that you're talking about, but three, the younger generation, if we look at what the young kids are doing, I have four kids, my oldest is 22, it's a gaming culture, right? It's a gaming culture, they're online all the time. They're not old like us, my son's like, "Dad, Google Search is for old people." I mean, that's a general sentiment, over-categorizing, but a combination of the new user experience, this younger generation, entrepreneurs and users, and these tremors we're seeing in the marketplace, signaling that, "hey Facebook, you might be too big for your britches," or, "hey Twitter, you got a bot problem, "hey all you gamers using Twitch," this is now a signal, where is it leading to? And where does blockchain in particular impact it? Because this is kind of where everything's converging to. >> So what I'd like to say right now is, you've got Marc Andreessen's premise that software is eating the world. If you extend that, data is feeding it, blockchain is valuing it, and it's AI that's automating it. So in my mind, particularly in my experience earlier this year in the AI industry, you realize that AI today really boils down to machine learning, which in itself boils down to deep learning, which boils down to data, your access to data. Professor Andrew Wang did this at the recent O'Reilly conference up in the city, he got up and lectured as the keynote instead of sharing slides and his number one, two, and three advice to everyone in the audience was, get the right datasets to train your model. If you don't have that you don't have a differentiated business, and that's what inspired PencilDATA, is my encountering of the cold start AI problem where the IP's in a public domain, public datasets are ubiquitous which is fantastic for academics, but as a business you can't differentiate unless you have access to the right datasets to train your models more specifically. >> Okay, as the founder and CEO of PencilDATA, that's your new startup, let's get into some of the reasons why you're starting it. What problem are you attacking? Obviously a pencil, I can see pencil and you erase things, it's got data... >> The internet is no longer written in ink, that's the premise. Now with Pencil you can erase some data. >> Well blockchain is immutable, so this is conflicting in my mind. Help me kind of rationalize this. The benefit of blockchain is everything's permanent, if you're on-chain as they say. >> Exactly. >> If you're off-chain, you could do some things. Is that kind of what we're getting at? >> We're mixing the best of both. So our premise is that again, whether you're an organization or an individual, you need to have, to survive in a new digital economy, control over your data. The blockchain part of it is the visibility side. If you don't know who's doing what to your data, you're far less likely to share it. And once you know who's doing what to your data, in an immutable blockchain, with a detailed audit trail, with strong authentication, of literally who's doing what to your data, gives you that visibility. Then you do what modern asset managers do. You can't really value an asset until you fully control it. And our premise is, you can't control something until you can take it back. So the notion of PencilDATA is the ability to go on-chain for the visibility and off-chain for managing data in encrypted containers, and if a data owner or publisher doesn't like how the subscriber's consuming their data, they have the power to revoke all downloaded copies. >> So is this kind of like a shadow blockchain model? I'm trying to find a mental model because I remember the old days back, I was breaking into the industry in the late '80s, early '90s, WORM drives, write once, read many. And you write it once, it's a laser, it was optical drives at the time. Also, demilitarized zones in networking was an area where there was a safe harbor kind of thing, where people could play around. What metaphor, what mental model can people take away from some of the things that you're trying to solve? Is it like a DMZ, is it like a-- >> The implementation's a lot like a DMZ and the business challenge and opportunity is that there's a lot of tension between protecting data, because we have an epidemic of data breaches right now, I think you're foolish if you're assuming that you haven't been breached yet but you might be, because everyone has been breached, personally and organizationally, so we have to deal with the rising need to protect data more and more. But at the same time, you can't stay in business if you don't optimize the monetization of the data you have. And so PencilDATA walks that fine line between letting you do both, letting you not just protect infrastructure, that's a whole other industry that we're not involved in, but literally protect data at the data level. If you look up terms like crypto anchor you'll see some of the technologies we're taking advantage of there. But being able to monetize data by unlocking all that latent value of data hidden behind firewalls. If you use a physics analogy of potential and kinetic energy, applied to data behind firewalls, there's hundreds of billions of dollars of value in latent data basically, potential data hiding behind firewalls, and when you can safely share it, give the owners control they've never had before, then you expose the value of that data for the first time. >> Alright, so let's take us through where you're at. Obviously super exciting, you're leveraging the blockchain and you've got an ICO, initial coin offering coming up but you're not just doing that for the sake of doing, there's a lot of scams out there, you're taking a little bit more of a pragmatic approach. Give us the status because you're the founder and CEO, what's the makeup of the team, how big are you guys, what are you guys looking for, obviously you're looking for team members most likely. >> We're looking for developers obviously. >> Where in the process are you? >> We are a two-month-old company. We're at the seed stage. And we've actually assembled a world-class team. You hear that a lot, but I'm really, really proud of the team members we have right now. >> World-class, are they from around the world and then they have class? Define world-class. >> They're worldly, like myself, I travel a lot. (laughter) An example, my chief privacy officer is Sheila Fitzpatrick, she's a worldwide recognized leader in data privacy, she's on many, many privacy boards in the US and EU and so forth, and she now is traveling nonstop lecturing on GDPR, itself specifically. She's one of those recognized-- >> Should you see yourself as a solution for GDPR, because that's, again, it does have teeth, I'll just say that we've been reporting on this through Wikibon, our research team as well as theCUBE, it comes up all the time and there's heavy fines associated with it, so it's not like- >> GDPR is the perfect use case because on the one hand, we have that audit trail that proves what you're doing with data. On the other hand we have a kill switch, that revocable use clause for data where you can literally comply with GDPR in minutes or seconds, as opposed to take a full 24 hours to scour database and delete selected records. >> Alright, so what about the product? Give us an example of the product. Will you be, first of all that's right around the corner, it's next year. >> Val: Yeah. >> I think it was a March or April's timeframe, I don't have the exact date but it's pretty soon. >> Public beta before the end of this year, version 1.0 first of second quarter next year. >> For you guys, PencilDATA. >> Yes. >> Clients, are you working with anyone right now, you have a handful? >> So we've actually got really interesting distribution partnerships that we're not in a position to announce right now but the top-tier brand name enterprise cloud vendors, both on the SaaS and infrastructure and database side, they're lining up to work with us. Because we're enabling amazing use cases in healthcare and life sciences, the ability to selectively share patient data with insurers, with healthcare providers, clinical trials now to share more information through differential privacy and collectively have more data to be processed and analyzed. Use cases are just off the charts. >> Well you know we go to all the big data shows, we're horizontally scaled on the event site circuit, but this is the number one thing that comes up, I want to move from batch marketing, batch process, batch business to real-time business, speed is essential, but it's always been a conflict between, how do I enable data to move really fast and be available for applications but protecting the privacy. >> Yeah. >> Do you solve that problem, is that something that you see yourselves solving? >> We aren't necessarily innovating on speed, of data movement, it's going to be a SaaS service. >> So it's availability model. >> It's availability of data that's really never been shared before and I think that's the key here, is we know there's a lot of value locked up behind corporate firewalls. The irony is, we don't even have to sell this outside firewalls initially, when you go to any medium-to-large size enterprise that has more than one site or more than one department, Sales doesn't trust Marketing and vice versa, Engineering doesn't trust Customer Support, neither of the four of them trust each other, so we're actually going to enable more data shared within an enterprise at first. >> So that's a starting point for you guys. >> That's a starting point, that's the easiest low-hanging fruit sale we have. >> Well PencilDATA, it's great stuff, Val, congratulations on that startup. I mean, you've got a world-class management team, and this kind of brings up a point that I've been banging on theCUBE pretty much every time I go out I'll talk about blockchain and ICO because you know, theCUBE is a very decentralized audience and that's a value that we're looking at as well with blockchain. I've got to ask you the personal question, from your own personal perspective, experience, executive and CTO, why is blockchain attracting so many A players? Because you're seeing a lot of what I call A players, entrepreneurs, technical geeks, really jumping into this because they can see it, they can smell the opportunity, and also, it also attracts the scammers as well, but specifically, why are these A players coming in? Is it, what are you hearing, what's the general vibe, what's the anecdotal reason? >> So as you said earlier on, it's a fundamental evolution of the core internet as a technology, as fundamental as HTTP and web was on top of TCP/IP back 20 years ago, but it's got that rare combination of not only being a technical innovation that empowers new use cases on the web, on the internet, it's also got immediate, amazing business applications as a store of value initially, as an actual valuation of various business processes, or datasets in my case, as an ability to exchange that value so transparently, so, in such a friction-less liquid manner, those are some of the amazing innovations it brings to the table and I think the most important thing is not to think of this as being able to do digital transformation or faster analog, it's about completely reimagining the exchange of value, measurement of value, and new kinds of businesses that just weren't possible before. >> And at all points of the stack, not the low levels and at the application level, the business logic, and to the geek side, right? >> Absolutely. >> You agree. I mean, that's great and as you know, theCUBE is looking at a blockchain ICO on down the horizon so keep an eye out for that, CUBEcoins could be in everyone's future, so we're super excited like you. >> I'm looking forward to your presale, just like I'm looking forward to mine. (laughing) >> Well, we'll see. But the bottom line is that this is what the reality is, you know, reimagining the applications is what people are thinking and I think people should beware of the scams out there, and then final question I want to ask you is, obviously we're both in the community together, with our teams. Share your perspective on the ecosystem, because obviously decentralization will change the nature of traditional ecosystems. >> Very much so. >> What's your vision on how the ecosystem will evolve, and how big is it now relative to these early markets? >> We're actually starting to enter the middle innings of the cloud game, if you will, we're seeing a very good maturity, a good diversification of profitable earnings and outcomes for the major cloud players, so I think we've gone well down the cloud path so far. But the decentralized world is in its infancy. It's embryonic right now. And I've always been a proponent of the multi-cloud environment and a multi-cloud world, and decentralization fundamentally is based on and depends on a multi-cloud, not just multi-region, but multi-data-center-in-a-closet scenario as well, to be able to actually have a democratic model for determining where the value is, where the value isn't, blockchain node style. And that is incredibly exciting to me, because that really cements this rebalancing of the pendulum between core and edge in terms of where processing and value happens. >> Yeah, and value exchange obviously now, markup links are becoming the du jour way to exchange value, users are in control, infrastructure equilibrium is interesting. Great stuff. And I'll say, perfect storm for innovation. The waves are coming. (laughing) >> You know, one thing I've learned over the years is, the innovation, change never stops. There's always an opportunity to innovate, and that's what I love about this movement. >> Blockchain, ICO, PencilDATA, check 'em out, Val Bercovici, founder and CEO, great friend of theCUBE, also really strong CTO, check these guys out. This wave of innovation around blockchain ICOs and infrastructure, reimagining, the future is here upon us at theCUBE, be right back with more, thanks for watching. (electronic music)