>> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, Welcome to Wikibon's Action Item. (slow techno music) Once again Wikibon's research team is assembled, centered here in The Cube Studios in lovely Palo Alto, California, so I've got David Floyer and George Gilbert with me here in the studio, on the line we have Neil Raden and Jim Kobielus, thank you once again for joining us guys. This week we are going to talk about an issue that has been dominant consideration in the industry, but it's unclear exactly what direction it's going to take, and that is the role that open source is going to play in the next generation of solving problems with technology, or we could say the role that open source will play in future digital transformations. No one can argue whether or not open source has been hugely consequential, as I said it has been, it's been one of the major drivers of not only new approaches to creating value, but also new types of solutions that actually are leading to many of the most successful technology implementations that we've seen ever, that is unlikely to change, but the question is what formal open source take as we move into an era where there's new classes of individuals creating value, like data scientists, where those new problems that we're trying to solve, like problems that are mainly driven by the role that data as opposed to code plays, and that there are new classes of providers, namely service providers as opposed to product or software providers, these issues are going to come together, and have some pretty important changes on how open source behaves over the next few years, what types of challenges it's going to successfully take on, and ultimately how users are going to be able to get value out of it. So to start the conversation off George, let's start by making a quick observation, what has the history of open source been, take us through it kind of quickly. >> The definition has changed, in its first incarnation it was fixed UNIX fragmentation and the high price of UNIX system servers, meaning UNIX the proprietary UNIX's and the proprietary servers they were built, that actually rather quickly morphed into a second incarnation where it was let's take the Linux stack, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, and substitute that for the old incumbents, which was UNIX, BEA Web Logic, the J2E server and Oracle Database on an EMC storage device. So that was the collapse of the price of infrastructure, so really quickly then it morphed into something very, very different, which was we had the growth of the giant Internet scale vendors, and neither on pricing nor on capacity could traditional software serve their needs, so Google didn't quite do open source, but they published papers about what they did, those papers then were implemented. >> Like Map Produce. Yeah Map Produce, Big Table, Google File System, those became the basis of Hadoop which Yahoo open sourced. There is another incarnation going, that's probably getting near its end of life right now, which is sort of a hybrid, where you might take Kafka which is open source, and put sort of proprietary bits around it for management and things like that, same what Cloudera, this is called the open core model, it's not clear if you can build a big company around it, but the principle is, the principle for most of these is, the value of the software is declining, partly because it's open source, and partly because it's so easy to build new software systems now, and the hard part is helping the customer run the stuff, and that's where some of these vendors are capturing it. >> So let's David turn our attention to how that's going to turn into actual money. So in this first generation of open source, I think up until now, certainly Red Hat, Canonical have made money by packaging and putting forward distributions, that have made a lot of money, IBM has been one of the leaders in contributing open source, and then turning that into a services business, Cloudera, Horton Works, NapR, some of these other companies have not generated the same type of market presence that a Red Hat or Canonical have put forward, but that doesn't mean there aren't companies out there that have been very successful at appropriating significant returns out of open source software, mainly however they're doing it as George said, as a service, give us some examples. >> I think the key part of open source is providing a win-win environment, so that people are paid to do stuff, and what is happening now a lot is that people are putting stuff into open source in order that it becomes a standard, and also in order that it is maintained by the community as a whole. So those two functions, those two capabilities of being paid by a company often, by IBM or by whoever it is to do something on behalf of that company, so that it becomes a standard, so that it becomes accepted, that is a good business model, in the sense that it's win-win, the developer gets recognition, the person paying for it achieves their business objective of for example getting a standard recognized-- >> A volume. >> Volume, yes. >> So it's a way to get to volume for the technology that you want to build your business around. >> Yes, what I think is far more difficult in this area is application type software, so where open source has been successful, as George said is in the stacks themselves, the lower end of the stacks, there are a few, and they usually come from very very successful applications like Word, Microsoft Word, or things like that where they can be copied, and be put into open source, but even there they have around them software from a company, Red Hat or whoever it is, that will make it successful. >> Yes but open office wasn't that successful, get to the kind of, today we have Amazon, we have some of the hyper scalars that are using that open core model and putting forward some pretty powerful services, is that the new Red Hat, is that the new Canonical? >> The person who's made most money is clearly Amazon, they took open source code and made it robust, and made it in volume, those are the two key things you to have for success, it's got to be robust, it's got to be in volume, and it's very difficult for the open source community to achieve that on its own, it needs the support of a large company to do that, and it needs the value that that large company is going to get from it, for them to put those resources in. So that has been a very successful model a lot of people decry it because they're not giving back, and there's an argument-- >> They being Amazon, have not given back quite as much. >> Yes they have relatively very few commiters. I think that's more of a problem in the T&Cs of the open source contract, so those should probably be changed, to put more onus on people to give back into the pool. >> So let me stop you, so we have identified one thing that is likely going to have to be evolved as we move forward, to prevent problems, some of the terms and conditions, we try to ensure that there is that quid pro quo, that that win-win exists. So Jim Kobielus, let me ask you a question, open source has been, as David mentioned, open source has been more successful where there is a clear model, a clear target of what the community is trying to build, it hasn't been quite successful, where it is in fact is expected that the open source community is going to start with some of the original designs, so for example, there's an enormous plethora of big data tools, and yet people are starting to ask why is big data more successful, and partly it's because putting these tools together is so difficult. So are we going to see the type of artifacts and assets and technologies associated with machine learning, AI, deep learning et cetera, easily lend themselves to an open source treatment, what do you think? >> I think were going to see open source very much take off in the niches of the deep learning and machine learning AI space, where the target capabilities we've built are fairly well understood by our broad community. Machine learning clearly, we have a fair number of frameworks that are already well established, with respect to the core capabilities that need to be performed from modeling and training, and deployment of statistical models into applications. That's where we see a fair amount of takeoff for Tensor Flow, which Google built in an open source, because the core of deep learning in terms of the algorithm, in terms of the kinds of functions you perform to be able to take data and do feature engineering and algorithm selection are fairly well understood, so those are the kinds of very discreet capabilities for which open source code is becoming standard, but there's many different alternative frameworks for doing that, Tensor Flow being one of them, that are jostling for presence in the market. The term is commoditized, more of those core capabilities are being commoditized by the fact that there well understood and agreed to by a broad community. So those are the discrete areas we're seeing the open source alternatives become predominant, but when you take a Tensor Flow and combine it with a Spark, and with a Hadoop and a Kafka and broader collections of capabilities that are needed for robust infrastructure, those are disparate communities that each have their own participants committed and so forth, nobody owns that overall step, there's no equivalent of a lamp stack were all things to do with deep learning machine learning AI on an open source basis come to the fore. If some group of companies is going to own that broadening stack, that would indicate some degree of maturation for this overall ecosystem, that's not happening yet, we don't see that happening right now. >> So Jim, I want to, my bias, I hate the term commoditization, but I Want to unify what you said with something that David said, essentially what we're talking about is the agreement in a collaborative open way around the conventions of how we perform work that compute model which then turns into products and technologies that can in fact be distributed and regarded as a standard, and regarded as a commodity around which trading can take place. But what about the data side of things George, we have got, Jim's articulated I think a pretty good case, that we're going to start seeing some tools in the marketplace, it's going to be interesting to see whether that is just further layering on top of all this craziness that is happening in the big data world, and just adding to it in the ML world, but how does the data fit into this, are we going to see something that looks like open source data in the marketplace? >> Yes, yes, and a modified yes. Let me take those in two pieces. Just to be slightly technical, hopefully not being too pedantic, software used to mean algorithms and data structures, so in other words the recipe for what to do, and the buckets for where to put the data, that has changed in the data in terms of machine learning, analytic world where the algorithms and data are so tied together, the instances of the data, not the buckets, that the data changed the algorithms, the algorithms change the data, the significance of that is, when we build applications now, it's never done, and so you go, the construct we've been focusing on is the digital twin, more broadly defined than a smart device, but when you go from one vendor and you sort of partially build it, it's an evergreen thing, it's never done, then you go to the next vendor, but you need to be able to backport some core of that to the original vendor, so for all intents and purposes that's open source, but it boils down to actually the original Berkeley license for open source, not the Apache one everyone is using now. And remind me of the other question? >> The other issue is are we going to see datasets become open source like we see code bases and code fragments and algorithms becoming open source? >> Yes this is also, just the way Amazon made infrastructure commoditized and rentable, there are going to be many datasets were they used to be proprietary, like a Google web crawl, and Google knowledge graph of disambiguation people, places and things, some of these things are either becoming open source, or openly accessible by API, so when you put those resources together you're seeing a massive deflation, or a massive shrinkage in the capital intensity of building these sorts of apps. >> So Neil, if we take a look at where we are this far, we can see that there is, even though we're moving to a services oriented model, Amazon for example is a company that is able to generate commercial rents out of open source software, Jim has made a pretty compelling case that open source software can be, or will emerge out of the tooling world for some of these new applications, there are going to be some examples of datasets, or at least APIs to datasets that will look more open source like, so it's not inconceivable that we'll see some actual open source data, I think GDPR, and some other regulations, we're still early in the process of figuring out how we're going to turn data into commodity, using Jim's words. But what about the personnel, what about the people? There were reasons why developers moved to open source, some of the soft reasons that motivated them to do things, who they work with, getting the recognition, working on relevant projects, working with relevant technologies, are we going to see a similar set of soft motivators, diffuse into the data scientist world, so that these individuals, the real ones who are creating the real value, are going to have some degree of motivation to participate with each other collaborate with each other in an open source way, what do you think? >> Good question, I think the answer is absolutely true, but it's not unique to data scientists, academics, scientists in molecular biology, civil engineers, they all wannabe recognized by their peers, on some level beyond just their, just what they're doing in their organization, but there is another segment of data scientists that are just guys working for a paycheck, and generating predictive analysis and helping the company along and so forth, and that's what they're going to do. The whole open source thing, you remember object programming, you remember JavaBeans, you remember Web Services, we tried to turn developers into librarians, and when they wanted to develop something, you go to Github, I go to Github right now and I say I'm looking for a utility that can figure out why my face is so pink on this camera, I get 1000 listings of programs, and have no idea which ones work and which ones don't, so I think the whole open source thing is about to explode, it already has, in terms of piece parts. But I think managing in an organization is different, and when I say an organization, there's the Googles and the Amazons and so forth of the world, and then there's everybody else. >> Alright so we've identified an area where we can see some consequence of change where we can anticipate some change will be required to modernize the open source model, the licensing model, we see another one where the open source communities going to have to understand how to move from a product and code to a data and service orientation, can we think of any others? >> There is one other that I'd like to add to that, and that is compliance. You addressed it to some extent, but compliance brings some real-world requirements onto code and data, and you were saying earlier on that one of the options is bringing code and data so that they intermingle and change each other, I wonder whether that when you look at it from a compliance point of view will actually pass muster, because you need from a compliance point of view to prove, for example, in the health service, that it works, and it works the same way every time, and if you've got a set of code and data that doesn't work the same every time, you probably are going to get pushed back from the people who regularly health that this is not, you can't do it that way, you'll have to find another way to do it. But that again is, is at the same each time, so the point I'm making-- >> This is a bigger issue than just open source, this is an issue where the idea if continuous refinement of the code, and the data-- >> Automatic refinement. >> Automatic refinement, could in fact, we're going to have to change some compliance laws, is open source, is it possible the open source community might actually help us understand that problem? >> Absolutely, yes. >> I think that's a good point, I think that's a really interesting point, because you're right George, the idea of a continuous development, is not something that for example Serr Banes actually says I get this, Serr Banes actually says "Oh yeah, I get this." Serr Banes actually is like, yes the data, I acknowledge that this date is right, and I acknowledge the process by which it was created was read, now this is another subject, let's bring this up later, but I think it's relevant here, because in many respects it's a difference between an income statement and balance sheet right? Saying it's good now, is kind of like the income statement, but let's come back to this, because I think it's a bigger issue. You're asserting the open source community in fact may help solve this problem by coming up with new ways of conceiving say versioning of things, and stamping things and what is a distribution, what isn't a distribution, with some of these more tightly bound sets of-- >> What we find normally is that-- >> Jim: I think that we are going to-- >> Peter: Go on Jim. >> Just to elaborate on what Peter was talking about, that whole theme, I think what we're going to see is more open source governance of models and data, within distributed development environments, using technologies like block chain as a core enabler for these workflows, for these as it were general distributed hyper ledgers indicate the latest and greatest version of a given dataset, or a given model being developed somewhere around some common solution domain, I think those kinds of environments for governance will become critically important, as this pipeline for development and training and deployment of these assets, gets ever more distributed and virtual. >> By the way Jim I actually had a conversation with a very large open source distribution company a few months ago about this very point, and I agree, I think blockchain in fact could become a mechanism by which we track intellectual property, track intellectual contributions, find ways to then monetize those contributions, going back to what you were saying David, and perhaps that becomes something that looks like the basis of a new business model, for how we think about how open source goes after these looser, goosier problems. >> But also to guarantee integrity without going through necessarily a central-- >> Very important, very important because at the end of the day George-- >> It's always hard to find somebody to maintain. >> Right, big companies, one of the big challenges that companies today are having is that they do open source is that they want to be able to keep track of their intellectual property, both from a contribution standpoint, but also inside their own business, because they're very, very concerned that the stuff that they're creating that's proprietary to their business in a digital sense, might leave the building, and that's not something a lot of banks for example want to see happen. >> I want to stick one step into this logic process that it think we haven't yet discussed, which is, we're talking about now how end customers will consume this, but there still a disconnect in terms of how the open source software vendor's or even hybrid ones can get to market with this stuff, because between open source pricing models and pricing levels, we've seen a slow motion price collapse, and the problem is that, the new go to market motion is actually made up of many motions, which is discover, learn, try, buy, recommend, and within each of those, the motion was different, and you hear it's almost like a reflex, like when your doctor hit you on the knee and your leg kind of bounced, everybody says yeah we do land and expand, and land was to discover, learn, try augmented with inside sales, the recommend and standardizes still traditional enterprise software where someone's got to talk to IT and procurement about fitting into the broader architecture, and infrastructure of the firm, and to do that you still need what has always been called the most expensive migratory workforce in the world, which is an enterprise sales force. >> But I would suggest there's a big move towards standardization of stacks, true private cloud is about having a stack which is well established, and the relationship between all the different piece parts, and the stack itself is the person who is responsible for putting that stack and maintaining that stack. >> So for a moment pretend that you are a CIO, are you going to buy OpenStack or are you going to buy the Vmware stack? >> I'm going to buy Vmware stack. >> Because that's about open source? >> No, the point I'm saying is that those open source communities or pieces, would then be absorbed into the stack as an OEM supplier as opposed to a direct supplier and I think that's true for all of these stacks, if you look at the stack for example and you have code from Netapp or whatever it is that's in that code and they're contributing It You need an OEM agreement with that provider, and it doesn't necessarily have to be open source. >> Bottom line is this stuff is still really, really complicated. >> But this model of being an OEM provider is very different from growing an enterprise sales force, you're selling something that goes into the cost of goods sold of your customer, and that the cost of goods sold better be less than 15 percent, and preferably less than five percent. >> Your point is if you can't afford a sales force, an OEM agreement is a much better way of doing it. >> You have to get somebody else's sales force to do it for you. So look I'm going to do the Action Item on this, I think that this has been a great conversation again, David, George, Neil, Jim, thanks a lot. So here's the Action Item, nobody argues that open source hasn't been important, and nobody suggests that open source is not going to remain important, what we think based on our conversation today is that open source is going to go through some changes, and those changes will occur as a consequence of new folks that are going to be important to this like data scientists, to some of the new streams of value in the industry, may not have the same motivations that the old developer world had, new types of problems that are inherently more data oriented as opposed process-oriented, and it's not as clear that the whole concept of data as an artifact, data as a convention, data as standards and commodities, are going to be as easy to define as it was in the cold world. As well as ultimately IT organizations increasingly moving towards an approach that focused more on the consumption of services, as opposed to the consumption of product, so for these and many other reasons, our expectation is that the open source community is going to go through its own transformation as it tries to support future digital transformations, current and future digital transformations. Now some of the areas that we think are going to be transformed, is we expect that there's going to be some pressure on licensing, we think there's going to be some pressure in how compliance is handled, and we think the open source community may in fact be able to help in that regard, and we think very importantly that there will be some pressure on the open source community trying to rationalize how it conceives of the new compute models, the new design models, because where open source always has been very successful is when we have a target we can collaborate to replicate and replace that target or provide a substitute. I think we can all agree that in 10 years we will be talking about how open source took some time to in fact put forward that TPC stack, as opposed to define the true private cloud stack. So our expectation is that open source is going to remain relevant, we think it's going to go through some consequential changes, and we look forward to working with our clients to help them navigate what some of those changes are, both as commiters, and also as consumers. Once again guys, thank you very much for this week's Action Item, this is Peter Barris, and until next week thank you very much for participating on Wikibon's Action Item. (slow techno music)

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the Cube. On the ground with Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration. >> Hello and welcome back to our special on the ground coverage of Accenture Labs 30 year celebration. Here's to the next 30 years is their slogan and I'm John Ferry with the Cube and I'm here with Marc Carrel-Billiard who's the Senior Manger that runs R&D Global for Accenture Labs. Welcome to the Cube conversation. Thanks for joining me. >> Marc: Thanks, John. >> So, I got to ask you, Accenture 30 years, they weren't called Accenture back then, it was called Arthur Anderson or Anderson Consulting and then it became Accenture, now you got Accenture Lab. But you have had labs all throughout. >> You're right. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And I think this is absolutely right. So we had this organization for 30 years, believe it or not. And that organization is doing applied research. So what we do is we leverage new technology innovations and everything to really solve business challenges or societal pacts and social changes and everything. >> State of the art back then, if I remember correctly my history was converting an S&A gateway to a technet to a TCP/IP network. >> Yeah we just improved a little bit. We went to quantum computing, to Blockchain, to different type of things like that. >> What a magical time it is right now >> It is magic. >> Share some color on today's culture, the convergence of all this awesomeness happening. Open source, booming. Cloud, unlimited compute. You have now more developers than ever, Enterprise is looking more and more like consumers. So a lot of action. What's the excitement? Share the cutting edge lab's activity. I think you said something absolutely right. I mean, I think there's a combinatorial effect of two different technology working very well together, and is a compression on time, all those technology waves that are maturing very fast. So one thing that we been doing is a great example for that, is quantum computing. You heard about quantum computing, you know? >> Of course. >> That's the new Paradigm of computing power. Leveraging like, quantum mechanics, you know? I mean it's really amazing stuff. And believe it or not, we've been working with D-Wave, they have a quantum computer in Vancouver, and a companies called 1QBit, it's a software company, and we've built, on top of that, an algorithm that has molecule comparison. And we worked with Biogen, a pharmaceutical company, to work on this. Now, the really staggering thing about it, is that we talked about it like six months ago, we build the pilot in two months time. Done. And then now, I mean, it's already made. >> Well, this is amazing. This is what highlights to me what's exciting. What you just described is a time frame that's really short. >> That's right! >> Back in the old days, it was these projects were months and months, and potentially years. >> Absolutely. >> What is the catalyst for that? Is it the technology leverage? Is it the people? Is it the process? All three? What's the take? >> I think it's all three. I would say that definitely the technology, as I said, get combined faster. You said very right, there's a lot of capability in term of high performance computing we can get through the Cloud, the storage as well. The data that we're going to be accessing, and then I think the beauty is that, putting all the people together for the quantum work. We had mathematicians, we have from Biogen, we have our own labs, and all people together, they make the magic happen. >> 30 years ago, just a little history 'cause I'm old enough to actually talk about 30 years ago, the Big Six Accounting Firms, accounting firms, ran all the big software projects. How ironic is that, that today Blockchain disrupts the even need for an accounting firm, because with Smart Contracts, Blockchain is turning out to be a very, very disruptive operation in technology, because you don't need an accounting firm to clear out contracts. Blockchain is very disruptive. What are you guys doing on Blockchain? >> You're absolutely right, John. And you know, the first thing. So, we have seven labs in Accenture Labs. And we have one lab didn't get it on Blockchain, and it's Sophia Antipolis inside of France, where I'm from, by the way. We're doing a lot of things with Blockchain. A lot of people are thinking about Blockchain as a system that's going to regulate, basically, transfer a transaction, financial transaction. We want to take Blockchain to the next level. And one thing we're doing, for example, We're using Blockchain for Angels. How we're track, basically, donation you're going to do. We going to use Blockchain for-- >> Well that's because people want to know their money's actually going to good. >> That's right! That's right! >> Not to scams that have been out there. >> You got it. >> We going to use Blockchain as a DRM system, Digital Rights Management system. We're going to use that in manufacturing industry, in many industry, and it goes on and on and on. >> What is the big buzz right now with Cryptocurrency? You're seeing a lot of these ICOs out there. Are those legit? In your mind, is it just a bubble? Is it just a normalization's going to come, what's your take on Initial Coin Offerings? >> I think, to be honest with you, I think this is a progress with thing. I mean, we discuss about Blockchain and everything. We see some trains going there. I think it's accelerating as well, because it's got a lot of take up and everything. We see, also, the world changing, and I think we need to look at the geo-political context of the world and what could happen. So I think those kind of new regulation, the way it's going to work. I mean, it's coming on time, people's going to leverage it, so I think it's not some fad stuff. This is something that's going to stay. >> It's just a Wild West. >> But it was, exactly. Right now, we need to work on the right standard, we need to figure out how it's going to work and everything. >> What is the exciting things that you see out there right now? I mean, Blockchain just kind of gets us excited 'cause you can imagine different new things happening. But the clients that I talk to, customers, your clients, or CIOs, they have to reimagine the future. >> That's right. >> With preexisting conditions called legacy infrastructure. >> Exactly >> Legacy software. How do they get the best of the magic and manage the preexisting conditions? >> So, there's a lot of innovation in term of software development. You take energy in everything that we have, basically, to connect to your legacy, and leverage it as much as you can. You know, there's a big progress in artificial intelligence today. I mean, I've live a lot of winters of artificial intelligence. I think finally, maybe there's going to be some spring. Why? Because of what we talk about. The iPad from one's computing the data available, and then also, some new type of algorithm like deep learning and everything. That data that is somewhere into this company called the Dark Data, people is going to be able to leverage it, and then make those artificial intelligence systems even more intelligence, smarter, and everything. So, legacy's here, but we're going to leverage it, and we're going to give a second life to those legacy environment. So those technology like artificial intelligence, new analytics and all those different things. >> So I got to ask you a kind of politically hot question, which is the digital transformation. >> Yes. >> So there's doubt we're in a digital transformation. No brainer. Yet, I go to conferences over and over again, and I see Gartner Magic Quadrant. I'm number one on the Magic Quadrant, and everybody's number one in the Magic Quadrant. So, the question is, what's the scoreboard of the new environment? Because, if you use the old scoreboard, and the world's horizontally scalable, you're going to have a blending of Magic Quadrants. So there's going to be a disruption, and that's causing confusion to the CIOs and CXOs because you got Chief Data Officer, Chief Security Officer, you got no perimeter for security, you have quantum computing, you have Cloud. So, people are trying to squint through all the nonsense and saying, how do you measure success? >> Yeah. >> Certainly customers is a good one. >> I think this is the typical question. I mean, this whole digital transformation, I understand that is important, and we need to understand. I mean, Accenture, and especially the lab, it's all about result. And you know what? The mission of the lab is new, it's applied, is now. New technology applied for real challenges, and I want to deliver it now, and I want to work for six months. So my word is that our research is outcome driven, and that's exactly what we're seeing. So, I told you about the quantum computing, and I have other example where we are really laser-focused on making an outcome. I think that's where-- >> So, to your point, people shouldn't buy promises. >> No. >> They should buy results. >> That's right. >> So, Peter Barris, who runs our research, said to me, and I asked him the question, he goes, ah, that's just a bunch of BS. The ultimate metric is how many customers you have. So, someone should be touting their customers. >> Sorry? >> They should be touting their customers, not some survey. >> No, absolutely. And I'm really for that. >> I want to tell you something, that I'm a very pragmatic person. I'm coming from the field, where I was serving 400 clients doing, every day, project delivery, you know? >> John: God bless you. >> And I've always been doing innovation at the same time, but my view was that innovation needs to be scalable, it needs to be tangible, it needs to be outcome driven. So again, this is really the matter of the lab, and if you look at how the lab works with the rest of the organization of Accenture, this is exactly what we're doing. We connect with our studio, where we can do prototyping front of the eyes of our client. We connect with Open Innovation, where we connect with the best start ups in the world. I think, you remember when I told you combinatorial effect. There's a combinatorial effect with technology that is a combinatorial effect with people. If you put the people from start up, the best guys from the lab, the best guys from the studios and everything, that's where the magic happens. >> So this is a new configuration? >> We collect the innovation architecture. >> So this is a scalable model for being agile, and the results are what? Faster performance? >> Faster performance, innovative performance, and tangible outcome. >> Okay Marc, you're an excitable guy, I like talkin' with you, what are you most excited about right now in this world that you're living in? So, I told you about the technology, and there's one thing that the lab is doing, and we'll be launching that this year, and we'll continue expanding. It's what we call Tech For Good. Tech For Good is how we're going to apply technology to change society. What we're going to do for fighting hunger in India. How we're going to give situational awareness to blind people using augmented reality immersion learning. That keeps me awake at night, because this is technology for best usage, it allows for our people to sleep well at night. My kids are proud of me, and I think we can-- >> Change the world! >> That's right! We can attract great people. >> Alright, final question. Here at the celebration, at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, what's the big scene here? Share with the folks who are watching, who aren't here, what's happening. >> I think, first of all, the venue is amazing. Computer Historic Museum is probably one of my favorite museum here in Silicon Valley. I mean, you need to understand that, 15 years old I started to work on a IBM 360 of my uncle, so the machine over there, I know it. I worked on it. And when I see the completed progress where we are today, when we see the Cray, when we see the quantum and everything, I feel so lucky that we're celebrating 30 years. Now I'd to go for the next 30 years of the lab. That's what I want to do. >> Let's get that on our next interview. Marc, thanks for sharing, here's to the next 30 years. This is the Cube coverage of Accenture Lab's 30 year celebration. The Computer History Museum, I'm John Ferry. Thanks for watching.

>>live from San Francisco. It's the Q covering in dramatic. A World 2017 brought to you by Inform Attica. Welcome >>back, everyone. We live here in San Francisco at the Mosconi West with In From Attica. World 2017. This is Cubes Exclusive coverage. I'm John Furry with the Cube and Peter Barris with vicky bond dot com General manager we have on research. Our next guest is Tracy Ring, specialist leader at Deloitte Consulting in the trenches. Put it all together. Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for joining us today. Appreciate it. >>Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. >>So your specialist, But in the system global system, integrated world, that means you basically globally look at the solutions. And And what's interesting is why I'm excited. Conversation with you is that, you know, point solutions can come and go. But now we're in this compose herbal world of cloud data, etcetera, where ah, holistic view has to be looked at. So what? I want to get your thoughts on in from Attica and what you guys are doing because we've heard it's the heartbeat. But yet there's also a hygiene issue. So you got this heart surgeon and the hygienist, and you have all kinds of specialty rolls of and data. It's pretty broad, but yet supercritical. How do you look at the holistic big picture? >>Absolutely. I mean, we're seeing the view of ecosystems being so much more important. Were so Maney technology disruptors. I mean, three years ago, we weren't even hearing about Kafka, and Duke was really new, and and so I think demystifying, simplifying, helping customers understand the art of the possible what can be done? What are leading practice organizations doing and then really making it real? How do you so this complex story together, how do you best leverage and get your investment out of technologies like in from Attica in their complimentary tools >>is interesting. IBM has Watson in from Attica. Has Claire ASAP has Leonardo s A P has Einstein. >>It would be >>great to get them all together >>and have dinner, right? So I mean, but this speaks >>well, You got Alexa and Amazon and Google. I mean, this is an interface issues you're talking about. Ah, cognitive. A real time new user interface and machine interface into data that is completely out of the possible. It's what's happening in the world is changing. Developers is changing. Practitioners, architects. Everyone's impacted your reaction to all this. >>You know, I think it's probably the most exciting time that we've seen in so long, and I think you so well articulated all of the players that air there. I think when you add in I, O. T. And Device Management, you know it's really an exciting time. And I think it's really driving some amazing things with regard to how organizations are literally transforming themselves. And in both our clients as well as the ecosystem of technologies, companies air are literally shifting their entire business model. It's it's very exciting. >>So one of the things that the typified system integrator types behavior like to elect a lawyer big consulting firm was big application. Let's deploy the big application for accounting for finance for HR whatever. Also culminating in New York, which was the Grand pa of everything. Right now we're talking about analytics where we have to focus on the outcome's not just a big package for a function, but really a complex, ideally strategic differentiating outcome. Yeah, typically using a whole bunch of smaller tools that have to be bought together similar. What John was talking about as a specialist who looks at these tools take us through kind of a new thought process, outcome, capability to tool in the entire journey to get there. >>Absolutely. I think one of the things that delight does that is really, really unique is having conversations that start with art of the possible, what could be done? What are leading practice organizations doing Help me set a strategy? Yeah, and I think the real answer is there's less about sort of benchmarking what everyone else is doing and more about >>really, You got it, You got >>it. It's really about revolutionizing, you know, and and going into a new angle of what is truly, truly possible. And I think, ah, lot of the things that were sort of table stakes and in the way that we would look at success totally turned on its head. And we're looking at organizations monetizing their data and, you know, creating new business ventures because of the insights that they're deriving and a lot of times will use. Delight has an insight studio and a greenhouse, and a couple of really highly collaborative spaces that we take clients to. Ah, well, you know, plan 123 day workshops, depending on how difficult of problem they're trying to solve and help them charter road map. And take that road map, which is in many cases, business oriented business results driven and help them so in and layer in the technologies that are gonna make that reality possible. What's >>the opportunities for cognitive? I mean, you guys talk a lot of Deloitte about a Friday different things, but specifically there's some key opportunity around. Call the cognitive or you guys call the cognitive. IBM also used that word cognition, but really a I artificial augmented intelligence are signs of a new kind of opportunity landscape. Whether you see for customer opportunities out there, >>absolutely, we talk a lot about what we consider the inside driven advantage. And that's really about using all of the tools in the toolkit to make that insight driven, data driven, better decisions around what organizations conduce. Oh, and kind of. It is a huge component of that, you know, it's we've been hearing stories for years about companies sort of predicting the next best offer and you know, we're seeing this move so much further, removing into robotics process automation. You know, the space is getting, I think, even more complex. But I think what's interesting is when we talk to organizations about, you know, they're not hiring tons of people to go out and do data integration through wonderful organizations. Confirm Attica. That's really been solved. So companies were able to both take their technical resource is and shift them into solving Maur difficult problems, hairier technology opportunities and use that to help shape their business. >>That's like compose abilities. So in dramatic, a world's got a set of solutions and technologies. Some sass ified someone fram. But here it is. But you're deluded you. That's just one element to your mix of things composed for clients. You mention those three years opportunities. Digital transformation is kind of the categorical wave >>Iran, but the end of >>the day it's business transformation. You mentioned changing the business model. >>How do >>customers take advantage of those business opportunities in whether it's robotics or industrial i ot or insights and analytics? What What is the customer impact and how did they get those business benefits? >>Yeah, I mean, I think again like I said, a lot of times it starts with, you know, what is their goal? What do they want to be known for in the marketplace and that value branding of Of what is it that they see themselves differentiating amongst their competitors and using a pretty solid process and rigorous approach to that strategy? Tea set? You know, what are the pillars to achieve? That is, I think, a big piece of it. I think the other component is we see a lot of organizations sort of challenging themselves to do more. And we'll have organizations say I believe that I can doom or what? What could I do? And I think that's interesting that >>we'll just fall upon that because Pete and I were talking earlier before we came on about what gets customers excited when the iPad came out. That was the first kind of visual of >>I gotta have my analytics on the dashboard. Let's start. I >>call the dashboard wave now with bots and aye aye. You're seeing another reaction. >>Yeah, I gotta have that. Automated. Do you see it the same way? And how does that >>translate to the custom when they see these this eye candy and the visualization stuff. How does that impact your world and the impact of the customer? Your customer? >>Absolutely. I mean, we used to live in a world where if I needed to have my data extracted, I would, you know, submit a request. And it was this very long, lengthy process. And, you know, when you think about the robotic single and and process automation, you know, automated data pools are are there. And I think the interesting part is is that it's not about just cost out of i t. It's not about, you know, getting off of on premise hardware. It's about driving better customer satisfaction, driving better business outcomes. You know, the implications. I think whether you're in life sciences or you're in retail, you can touch your customer in a way that is. You know what I would say? Sort of delighting them versus just giving them what they asked for. >>So I wanna I wanna test of theory on you and see how live and see how this seals lines up with thinking and where you see your customers going. So we have this notion that wicked bond, our research of what we call systems of agency. And by that we mean effectively that historically we did we create systems that recorded action big t p e r p. More recently, as you said, we're now creating systems that suggest action predictive analytics, those types of things. And now we're moving in the world were actually going to have systems that take action. Yeah, where authority and data have to move together so that the system is acting as an agent on behalf of the brand now in from Attica has done some really interesting things here with some of their new tooling, some of the metadata tooling to ensure that that type of meeting can move with the data. So if you think about where Deloitte and customers are going, are they starting to move into this new realm where we're building systems, take action on behalf of the brand and what does that mean for the types of tooling? But we're gonna have to find for customers so they can make it, you >>know? I mean, this morning we were delighted to hear the latest announcement around how metadata is really such a core component, and and I think of it is metadata is in many cases where most organizations do see the monetization of their data payoff. Right? We're not only do I have highest golden record like we talked about 10 years ago, I have data lineage. I have data traceability. I have the whole entire story. So it's really much more cost justified. Uh, you know, hearing the announcement today of Claire, and you know how we now have the Aye Aye of our clairvoyance is really exciting. And, you know, I I don't know that we're completely there. And I think we'll continue to innovate as in from Attica. Always does. But we certainly are a whole lot closer. And I would say, you know, your concept is you know, certainly we're all going to the park for >>good. My final question. Let's get your thoughts on because you have a global perspective. You work with the ecosystem partners. You heard all the stories. You've heard all the raps and all the Kool Aid injectors from the different suppliers. But there's two things going on that that's interesting. One is we're kind of going back to the end to end solution. Absolutely. I'm seeing five g with Intel Smart cities I ot So everyone wants to get back to that end to an accountability with data and packets moving. All that could step with applications over the top. But yet there's not one single vendor owning it, so it's kind of a multi vendor world, yet it's gotta be in tow end and bulletproof secure. I mean, >>that's your world. It's not derailed. I mean, you got to be busy, your reaction to that. And what's that? What's that >>mean to the industry? And how should customers? I'd look at that Say okay, Want to get some stability? I want great SL ways, but I want a flexibility for compose ability I want and empower my app developers Dr Top Line Revenue. This is the Holy Grail. We're kind of in the wheelhouse right now. >>Yeah, 100%. I think it's a very exciting time and the like, I said, the fabric of what organizations need to sew together two really achieve their analytic insights and, uh, you know, leveraging their data. I think data is just becoming more and more important, and it's a phenomenal place toe to be in both for where I sit on the consulting side helping all of our customers and certainly where globally we're seeing our client's going >>and your and your message to the client is what we got your back on. This >>has to look, that's what you guys do. You sew it together. It's got to be more than that. It's got ideas for you could see. I think it's a >>lot. I think it's that it's not just about bolting in a technology or 10 technologies. It's about solving the most difficulty technology problems with, you know, with data helping. >>You gotta be savvy to, as they say in the swim lanes of the different firms and got to bring your expertise to the table with some of your own tech. >>Absolutely. And and I think for us we never sort of a ra missed that there is a huge business, and if you if you don't take the business aspect of it, what business problem are we solving? What value are regenerating? How are we ultimately impacting our customers customers, you know? Then you know you're sort of missing the what we consider the most important piece of the pie. >>Tracey Ring with the Lloyd. Great to have you on. Thanks for your insight. Very insightful. That all the data's right there. We're gonna make sense of it here in the Cube. Thanks for sharing, Dee Lloyd. Really put it all together. Composing the future Cloud Data Mobile. It's all here. Social is the que bringing all the live action from San Francisco. I'm John for Peter Burst more after this short break.

>> Narrator: It's The Cube covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by S.A.P. Cloud Platform and Honna Interprise Cloud. >> Hello there, and welcome to The Cube conversation here in Palo Alto Studios, I'm John Furrier with The Cube, and we have a special guest here. Susie Wee, who's the vice president and CTO of DevNet at Cisco Systems for a Cube conversation around what's happening in cloud, and really some of the most important trends that are generating out of a new event that she's starting called DevNet Creative, which The Cube will be there. Susie, welcome to this Cube conversation. >> Hi, John. Thanks, it's great to be here. >> So, you were a pioneer within Cisco. You know, superstar technologist, CTO. You helped really put the Cisco DevNet Developer program together. Which as been a huge success. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And that's been, you know, Cisco has a big community of geeks. They're super smart. They like to surf the web and learn, and develop new stuff on Cisco, but there's also a whole nother world, and you created an event called DevNet Create as a new initiative. A new pioneering effort. >> Absolutely. >> Why a new event? What's the big news here? >> It's really interesting. I think that what's going on is in the world of, kind of, the infrastructure, right? So the infrastructure has our networking, our compute, our storage, and all of that is changing in that it's becoming programmable, and so once it's programmable, you're like, "What?" My infrastructure has APIs. Once it has APIs, you can do things like DevOps, right? You can start to do things like really have good flexibility with how you deploy your applications, you can get much more rapid deployment of apps, and you can get, just, fundamentally, different, and improved applications. So, the big thing that's going on is that there's this huge industry transformation in front of us, and the transformation is in how applications meet infrastructure, and this has happened as applications go to the cloud, then how applications meet the cloud, apps are changing, right? Then as the infrastructure becomes programmable, there's APIs into it, so there's this really kind of fresh ground that's ahead of us, and we can make the most of this, and that's what DevNet Create is all about. >> You know, people always ask me, this is our eighth year doing The Cube, "John, you and Dave do such a good job with The Cube." "You always pick the events that are going to be good." (laughter) We did some when we were first on, I do parole, I mean, with Cloud Air, and nobody had heard of Cloud Air. We can sniff the trends out, and to me, I think you're onto something really big here, and this is why I'm excited to bring The Cube to your event. I know it's small, it's inaugural, and it's very community-oriented, but I think you guys are on fault line of a massive shift, and I think you're on the right side of this, and I think the app dynamics acquisition that Cisco did points to some of the things that going to give Cisco, I think, a big lift, and that is, by looking at the plumbing as being automated, certainly relevant, that's not going away, but as you move up the stack, there's going to be the need for rapid, rapid application deployment. >> Susie Wee: Absolutely. >> Conceive, build, ship in minutes. It could be automated with bots and AI and whatnot, so this is the trend. Talk about that dynamic, 'cause that requires a fundamental rethinking and reimagining of the Cloud, security, how packets move. >> Susie Wee: Absolutely. >> Do you agree with that, and obviously, you're running the event, so you probably have some bias there, but more importantly, this big trend. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, kind of the applications themselves, we take apps for granted these days, and we've had applications forever, right? But the applications are how people interact with the system, with the Cloud, with all the surfaces that they use everyday, so we know that everyone's lives have been transformed with apps, and then we also know that the Cloud has been huge. You know, work loads are moving with the Cloud. The Cloud has instant deployment, global resources, again, big stuff there as well, but that's going to shift again, right? So what happens is now that the Cloud is as awesome as it is, now that applications are great as they are, we're going to go to this next generation where the applications get even better, the Cloud gets even better, the way they meet, and therefore, the surfaces that people use get better. Let's have some examples of like, what could be better? Well, now that you have things like app dynamics, you can start to get information from your applications in the infrastructure that give you business insights, so let's say that you have your application running, and then you know how many times different APIs have been called. You know what parts of your systems, or your applications, are called the most. You know who's using them. You know how often they're being used, by whom, and so on. What order are they being used? All of this can start to give you business insight, so then you say, oh, the infrastructure's not just about delivering, compute, network, and storage, it's also about giving the insights into how people are using my stuff, so I can get business insights all of a sudden, and then it's a whole new world. >> Talk about how you got here, and your journey with Cisco being creating the DevNet and now DevNet Create, 'cause I think there's some trends in the industry, and we're going to be covering Sapphire, which is SAP's big show coming up in Orlando, and Cisco has some announcements, I know, I was brief under NDA on that so I really can't talk about it right now, but I do know for a fact it's going to be some significant innovations that's Cisco's bringing to the table, and they're an app provider. Now, they're older version, they're the big ERP, and the big software and framewares, and they announced Cloud Native with iOS development. This notion of, like a new breed of developers is not a mutually exclusive argument against IT, it's just the continuation. There's a dynamic going on between software developments and apps, and not only just on the business model side, but actually, technically. >> Yeah, absolutely. There's a few different things. So, first of all, an app developers can, so we have something called Meraki. Meraki is our wireless access points, it was a big acquisition we did a few years ago, and you can think of, you know, wireless access points as giving you connectivity, wireless connectivity, but now imagine that it also, you have APIs into it and it tells you how many mobile devices are connected. Where are they connected from? And where are the mobile devices located? If someone comes into your store, how many people have been there before? And how many people is it their first time there? So, this is all stuff that you can get from your wireless access points and you can start to do really interesting stuff. I think any app developer would love to have that information of what can I get? Who's in my store, or who's in my venue? And the infrastructure gives you that. >> And you guys run most, if not all the networks in the world. An IOT device and your other things that's connected to a network, wireless or wired. >> Yeah. >> And packets are moving around, so you have that data. >> We have that data, yes. So, yes, exactly. Cisco infrastructure is everywhere. >> But it's been hard to expose that over the years because Cisco's always had this notion that we play at a certain part of the stack and now it's almost like finally, after decades of conversations, I know from folks I talked to at Cisco, let's move up the stack. There's always been this push that does Cisco move up the stack and how? >> Yes, and basically the way that the way and the reason that Cisco can move up the stack now is because the infrastructure is programmable, so now, our kit, the network, is programmable. Now there's analytics that are being built into the network as things are running around, so like having a programmable network, having analytics, where you can either gather information together on how applications and things are being used, or a key, and then how do we move up the stack is when we work with the ecosystem. We work with the community, is that we have a developer program like DevNet, which is why we founded it, is we're going to enable those app developers to come to the world of the enterprise, so right now, when you have an enterprise, you know, who can write an awesome IOT app for a building, or for a casino, or for a mall, or for a hotel, it's whoever that hotel works with. Whatever system integrator they have, and that's all amazing, 'cause, you know, your building's instrumented, >> Yeah, so you don't have to >> Susie Wee: You know where people are. >> It's a horizontal market of developers versus a specific Cisco community, which you have to nurture in and of itself. >> Exactly. >> In the course of business, guys who know how to handle the packets and the networking gear, and know someone who's, hey, I know Cisco's a network provider, a network supplier, I just don't want to have to go get a training certification to get some data; just give it to me. >> That's right, and so what we can do is say, hey, here's the APIs, go to developer.cisco.com. Everything's there. Everything's free. Here's learning labs on how to use the different APIs. Here's use cases. We actually have kit in the clouds so we have a sandbox that lets people use stuff. If you want to write an app for a contact center, 'cause we sell contacts in our stuff, we have a contact center that you can write and deploy your app on. You don't have to buy one to test it, right? So it's really interesting when these apps hit these places, which is that, you know, you need a contact center, well, we'll have one for you. >> Here's the hard question. I want to put you on the spot and bring the heat, if you will. You guys have been great in your own ecosystem. Dominant for Cisco as a company. As you move into this new ecosystem, because ecosystems are now business-model parts of public companies. Cloud Air just went public. Ortenwer's went public. Viewelsoft. A new class of new kind of open-source companies are going public. You guys are not necessarily an open-source company. You have open-source initiatives. You have to now embrace a new kind of ecosystem. >> Absolutely. >> Where's the progress on this? How early is it? 'Cause I think that's what DevNet created to me, and Cisco is now going into a new market and being proactive. >> Absolutely >> The question is are you ready? Do you have the chops? Where are you in the progress of that? (laughter) >> We're ready. Now, it's going to take work to work with the community to get there, but let me just go back 'cause when we first started DeveNet three years ago, we said, hey, are those networkers and those infrastructure guys, are they really ready for programmability and software? We didn't know, and then we had out first DevNet event, and it was packed. We're like, oh my gosh, these guys are so ready, and we didn't know that at the time, so we've made good progress there, but now that we're sitting there to work with the community, I think that I'm hoping that they're going to be embracing so we're certainly going to be open. We've actually opened up, kind of, the thinking within Cisco. We've done a lot of cultural change within Cisco because people have seen the success of DevNet and of the developers outside in the world who are actually jumping in and ready to embrace programmability. >> So, it's the old data. It started home. What you did. >> It started home. >> You did with your own core. >> And then used that to then build out. >> And you guys have apps, we know, again, we go to a lot of events. I've seen Cisco around in a lot of some of the open-stores events. I was at the Nix Foundation. You guys had some presence, but it seemed like a toe in the water. How are you guys going to go big in this? >> That's what changed, is actually Cisco has had some little developer efforts and a lot of heroics done by people within Cisco. Like, hey, I have this great product, I want to run a hackathon, right? So, we've had all of these heroic attempts, but until DevNet came along, we didn't have one centrally funded program with a mandate from the CEO to go and get that programmability and develop our ecosystem out there. That's what we had now for the last three years with DevNet, so now is we go to the next layer. You're right, we do have the people who are out working with the Cloud Native, working with OpenStock, working with OpenDaylight, working in the SDN, the Lennox foundation, and what we're doing is now bringing that to the next level. Again, adding the DevNet power, now that we have kind of established our base to really embrace this, so we hope that we're going to provide a lot more, kind of, foundation so that we can go big in these cases. >> How big is the cultural change within Cisco, just give some color without giving away too many trade secrets, but I know Cisco have, and a lot of my friends worked there I've known for years, from the beginning, I've been intimate with the company's culture, and they've been a case study of dominance, just the way their competitiveness has been, the products have been great. They run the networks, but now they have to move into this open source and the community world. Talk about some of the cultural changes. Any conversations? The CEO, when you talk to him, what's the conversation like there? >> I just met with our CEO, Chuck Robins, a couple weeks ago, updated him on our progress. He actually, he an John Chambers, together, helped found DevNet, so they understand the need for it, and they helped break down the barriers and create the funding and the organization to do it, and we had to do some re-orgs to get it going originally. >> It's not just lip service, they're putting their muscle behind it. >> They're putting their effort behind it and they're dedicated to it, and they understand it. Chuck is fully behind it. He sees the importance of programmability. He actually understands the applications meet infrastructure and the transformation that can happen there, so he is super supportive all the way. He sent me a text this morning and said, "Yeah, when is DevNet Create again?" >> Great. >> So he's on top of it. He knows what we're doing. >> We'll have him on The Cube for sure. >> Absolutely. >> So applications meets infrastructure is the DevOps ethos, and that really highlights your theme. >> It does. Now, some of the other cultural change that has happened is, for example, we have something called systems engineers in our sales force. So what happens is, in our sales force, we have technical folks. We have 6,000 sales engineers around the world. Systems engineers, and they understand the technical side. They're all taking DevNet training. They're taking DevNet learning labs. They're learning to code. They're learning to use our APIs and now, the other thing is that they're now running DevNet events around the world. These guys are not only getting trained, but they are running their own developer events, and so they've picked it all up. This is a transformation that, you know, we've partnered with them on, and that's really changed what they're doing and they're realizing that, hey, there's a conversation, like, we can finally have the assets to help out app developers, and the app developers, they do need help. People have been rating mobile apps for years. Not that many of them are making money, right? The question is how do you do good to those app developers? How do you bring those app developers into the enterprise? How do you take it and make sure that when you have the newest things, like... >> I've always said: feed it data. >> Feed it data. >> Data is a great life blood of applications. >> Absolutely, and so then the applications have data. Then you start to analyze it, you get the intelligence from it right there, and then all new insight. >> The automation around provisioning all that network plumbing is really, really hard and nuanced. If you can automate that away, developers will just have parade to your door. >> Absolutely. >> Alright, so, personal question. You've been very successful in building DevNet. Building developer programs is everyone's holy grail right now. There are people in companies: "We got to build a developer program." "Throw some money at it." They might have some lip service from the CEO or full commitment. What is the key to success. To get the companies and to actually conceive, to build, and deploy a successful developer program for a company? >> Yeah, that's a good question. I have to say that building the developer program is not as easy as you would think. I would think it should be easy, like get out there, go find some web service that's running free developer community stuff >> Someone creates a free code. >> Give 'em code, and that's it? But it's actually not that at all. There is actually a few things that have been key to what we've done. One of them, and actually, I spoke about this at the Evan's developer relations conference a few weeks back, but one of the keys there is just be entrepreneurial. You actually have to be an entrepreneur even if you're in a big company, then you especially have to be entrepreneurial. >> John: You got to hustle harder. >> And what I mean is you have to hustle hard and, with few resources, you have to show quick wins fast, and you have to make bets, right? What are the kind of things we do? Well, when we first started, we actually didn't have an organization. It was me. It was a couple rebels from different parts of the org who are like, we need this, and we were making proposals. >> Skull and crossbones kind of thing going on, yeah, big time. >> And we pretended that, hey, just pretend that we have a full-blown developer program. What would you do? What we did was, we went out there, we went made developer.cisco.com, we made one site, we brought all of the APIs into one place so that developers could access it, and it was just going through and kind of building that site, which is really hard in a big company like Cisco with APIs all over the place, and we just silently launched it, and then people started discovering it. Like, oh, all of Cisco's stuff is here. Holy Cow. That was one thing. >> Go humble early. Learned from Lennox himself. >> And we actually got kind of blasted on the Twittershpere because actually on our developer page, we had one section that was actually going to just product information and not having APIs in it, and so this guy was like, that's all product stuff. That's not about APIs, so we got blasted. We were like holy crap, he's right. We went, we changed it. Got rid of all that. >> That's agile. >> And fixed it and then he became our biggest fan, right? We changed and we learned from feedback from the community. >> You applied the entrepreneurial hustle. Hustle hard and make bets. >> Susie: Make bets. >> What's your big bet that your hustling now for, and I mean hustle in a good way, DevNet Create. What's your bet? >> Our first bet back then, big bet, was the DevNet's own at Cisco Live, was let's have a developer conference at Cisco Live. We have no idea if people are going to be interested, but let's just do it. So, we got second floor of Mosconi's. >> You're going big or going home. >> Yeah, exactly, so we like boom! Kind of got the same place they have Google IO and Dreamforce. We got the space, kind of created it, didn't know if anybody would come. It was jampacked. We're like, oh my God. John Chambers came by. He told his whole staff, like, you guys have to see what's happening. The DevNet zone's now the busiest part of Cisco Live. That was our big bet then, and fortunately it paid off, and I think that's what made us part of the fabric that let us continue on, but now our big bet is DevNet Create. It's about applications hitting the infrastructure and really ensuring that the infrastructure is giving benefit to app developers. >> John: Real benefit. >> Real benefit. It's not just for the sake of business, it's actually because, to me, there's a real inflection going on in the industry. Apps can just ride on top, and then just do whatever the infrastructure can provide for them, and that'll get us to one place, but once you really think about it, then you say, okay, where does the data for the apps need to sit? Oh my gosh, there's data sovereignty issues, so it can't just sit anywhere. How do we scale out? Like, when we scale out, and you could just say, oh yeah, just go buy it and Amazon, Google, someone else will take care of it for me. Well, some of it will, and you should absolutely use... We're using all of those >> The policy stuff. >> As well, but there's policy, there's, you know, so when you're really working to scale out and understand what's critical for your business, there's more that can be had, and then now you can go to the next level of where apps can get value added business insights from the network like what we were talking about before, and then, a really big thing is just when I kind of think forward to the world of IOT, and you say again, this building is now IOT enabled. This building has APIs. It's the infrastructure, and app developers would love to get access to that. >> Peter Barris and I were talking at The Cube about a new standard we want to see. All data should be presented in less than 100 milliseconds from any database. >> Susie: Nice, nice. >> That's a moon shot, but let's think about that. That's what we want. Okay, so final question. Congratulations on all your success, and I do believe that a trend is there, the question is when will it get there. Upcoming for DevNet Create, what do you hope to bring to the community? What do you want the community to look for and expect? And what will they see? >> Absolutely. What we want is, we hope that DevNet Create is just a catalyst for this to happen. For this transformation that's happening, and we want it to help drive things with the community in a faster way than if we just let it go itself. There's basically going to be two tracks at DevNet Create. One is on Cloud and DevOps, and the other is on IOT and apps. With Cloud, there's all these questions of how are we going to take monolithic legacy apps and turn them into micro surfaces? We have the world of containers. We have the world of container orchestration and everything there. That's all really hot stuff, but the way that we move this together, bring it into full production and get all of the apps really embracing that is key. What we're hoping will happen at DevNet Create is that the world of Cloud developers, the world of app developers, IOT developers will come together with those that are working in DevOps, those in the infrastructure to really understand what are the benefits that can happen across these layers? I'm not saying that every app developer needs to become an infrastructure developer, right? I'm not saying that every developer must be an operator, but there's benefits that can happen in the right way. Really, what we're hoping is that with DevNet Create, we can drive that conversation at the event itself and then continue with the ongoing community. >> And who are you targeting specifically to the event? Non-Cisco developers or Cisco developers with a plus, with a twist, or? >> Non-Cisco developers as well as some Cisco developers as well, but it's really about the industry. Where as when you go to a traditional DevNet event, you're going to be hearing all about Cisco APIs and Cisco products and how they play together in these solutions, but at DevNet Create, 90% or more of the talks are non-Cisco. We had a call for papers. I was really nervous when we had the call for papers and I was super relieved because we had great papers come in. Actually, the only problem is that we didn't have enough slots for the great papers. We even had to turn around some really good ones. Turn away some really good ones. We have a really strong agenda, and we actually said no to more Cisco talks because we wanted it from the ecosystem. We have people from Google, from Amazon, from Howdy. There's just lots of... >> And so will this be a Cisco event going forward? Or an industry event? Because there's a trend in the event world where people are going in for the big DreamForce and the big one show, big tent, zillion people, and then a series of industry shows around open-source communities with governance. Are you guys going to make this a Cisco managed show? Or thinking about opening it up to the community to manage? What's your thoughts on the vision of that? >> We're hoping to catalyze it. We will continue to have our other Cisco DevNet events that are really about the Cisco APIs themselves and really training and bringing along that core community, and we invite all the developers to attend that as well, but we really view DevNet Create to really be an event for the community. We'd be open to doing this with cosponsors and hosting it with others. >> So you're open. >> We're open. We're actually doing this with Lennox Foundation as well, so we have them involved. Many of them are on our advisory board. We are very open. We're actually working with SiliconANGLE and The Cube. We want to do it in the most open way as possible. >> As I said, we like to sniff out all the hot events. This is one inaugural event. I think it's really, really important because it really shows Cisco's commitment to open source in a way that's been toe in the waters in the past, like you said, little rebels in the organization doing their thing trying to get the word inside Cisco, but now with the cultural shift, I think you guys have it with app dynamics. There's a business path. I see a path there and I think the community only benefits. >> Absolutely, and if the community benefits, and our goal is to actually make our community and our developers successful. That's actually our only goal. For them to be successful in their careers and their business, and that will, in turn, make Cisco successful, but really, it's really about making the community successful. >> I mean if you think about the 5G end-to-end. I mean, end-to-end architectures are winning. We do a whole segment on end-to-end, but to make it end-to-end work that's not just one company, you'd need to have a strong developer community, and I think this is kind of where I see the event's importance is true network transformation and programmability. The ethos of DevOps needs to go to the next level so cars can program themselves. I mean, everything. 5G's coming too, so a lot of new stuff happening. >> Absolutely. I don't think any major industry transformation happened with one company alone. It really takes a community, right? Be it a community of product makers, a community of solutions providers, surface providers, and consumers themselves. This is really about the community. >> Susie, congratulations on all your success, and we're looking forward to seeing DevNet Create's inaugural opening in May. Appreciate it, and great to talk to you about some of the mega trends and your perspective on that. >> And thank you for helping to drive this vision and agenda. I think that we'll be able to do this together. >> Susie, with CTO at Cisco Systems, DevNet creator and pioneer with her team of rebels, now a full on group. Really talking about the app meets infrastructure total transformation enabling all the AI in terms of vehicles, smart cities, smart home. Thanks for joining us. This is a Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier and thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas! It's the CUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. >> Welcome back, and we are here live at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for Oracle's Modern CX. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle. This is the CUBE and my co-host, Peter Burris here for two days of wall-to-wall coverage, day two. Doug Kennedy, Vice President of Business Development and Partner Strategy of Oracle, former Oracle, left Oracle, went to NetSuite, now back at Oracle running partners... Great to have you on the CUBE. >> Yeah great to be here. >> Thanks for joining us. We were just talking before we rolled live about some of the history and some of the dynamics in the industry, and it's a very interesting time, because the partner landscape is becoming a critical linchpin for this digital transformation as the vendors get Cloud and the suppliers become "Cloudified" if you will. The roll of the partners is beyond strategic, it's actually technical. >> Well you've got to look at actually the expertise that you need to actually work with the customer. Always sit in the customer's seat and look back at the vendors and the partner eco-system to determine what they need to be successful. And candidly, we bring part of it as Oracle, partners bring the rest of it, whether it's industry expertise, vertical expertise, they deeply understand agencies, whatever that expertise is, we have to figure out the right partnership with them to go be successful together, and that's the trick, and that's why partners are so important right now. >> And what's the message and focus here at Modern CX? Obviously it's not just pillars of solutions, it's, you got a little bit of a unification, you have this Modern CX, who's got a platform (mumbles). What's the conversation like with partners here? >> So, the ones that I've been having this week... So I've been back all of seven weeks, so I'm rolling out a new partner strategy pretty quickly here, and I introduced it to several of our top partners here this week, and it really is to specialize and focus on the prioritization you can bring to our partnerships. That it's back to specialization. I roll everything back, I've done partnering for, good lord, a couple of decades now. The number one question is, How do we both be profitable? We're in partnerships actually each make money and win together. So back it up to that and look at how they specialize, and don't get too thin, don't get too wide, but look at what you're successful at doing as a partner, and for us to then figure out how to work together in that partnership to go win. So I've been amplifying that up with the partners this week. You'll fail if you're spread too thin and trying to be everything to everyone, and I'm pushing the partners to make sure they bring that to the forefront with us first, before we actually go engage the prospects and customers. So I'm kind of backing up again with a lot of these partners. >> So it's not a general purpose philosophy? >> Doug: Nope. >> It's really, find some swim lanes... Everyone's got a unique specialty, I mean PWC has got their thing, now Deloitte, Accenture, they all kind of have their swim lanes developing, but specialism, it seems to have much more domain expertise, now I was talking to Accenture CTO of analytics, Jean-Luc Chatelain, and they have tons of data scientists. They're coding away! Before they used to be project managers, now they got coders, so seeing that transformation, is that also a dynamic you're seeing? >> Yeah, definitely seeing that. If you look at our eco-system, we've got a little over a thousand partners right now that focus on OMC, the Marketing Cloud. They're ISV's, they're the old traditional SI's shifting into more manage services vein, and still doing implementations. Then you get the agencies, which is unique in and of itself because they're running on behalf of their customers. They understand the marketing industry deeply, so now they're taking our solutions and running on behalf of customers, but they're also a partner type. So it's determining which type you are, and some, by the way, are all three. So how do we work with them most effectively? Cause this is a co-sell model. >> And what's the plan? Can you give any details to the strategy? >> Well the strategy is, first of all, there is an ideal partner profile for each of those partner categories. And to replicate that, the programs we're putting in place, we want more of those that fit what I call the ideal partner profile, which comes, at the end of the day, they're going to be profitable, we're going to be profitable. But if you look at the agency model, you know, how do they actually have the reach in coverage with the customers that they currently actually service? How can we actually work with them to introduce our solutions into that product mix that they already use in their managed operations environment? How do we make sure we're bringing that to the forefront in a way that values the agency's business and then also values their customers? Right? So that's unique just 'cause we're in a sense dealing with two customers. We're dealing with the agencies as a partner who's running on behalf of their customers, but we have to have a solution that fits that equation. Think of it that way. >> But there's something else going on, I want to test you with this. >> Sure. >> That is, it used to be that the traditional partner model, you know, the on-premise orientated partnership model was that the partner was a channel partner, they might embed their software on top of the product, et cetera, but Oracle could be good, and the partner could be good. If Oracle's really good and the partner's okay, it still could work out. This more deeply integrated world where data is the asset, and how you flow it and the speed with which it flows, and the degree to which you can show that end to end coherence is going to determine winners or losers. That means that whoever is the weakest link is the weakest link for every, or sets the quality for everybody to a degree. How is that going to change the way you talk to partners? Because they're going to have to step up their game in a big way for Oracle to be able to step up the game. >> Right, now great question. So we have a co-selling model first of all, right? We have indirect in certain markets--Japan and some of the southeast Asia markets are indirect-- so we will rely on the partners to do most of the selling as well as the delivery and managed services. The rest of the world's co-sell. So with our co-sellers, half of the equation is our own people, so I'm doing a couple different things. First of all, on our side, we're defining roles and responsibities of co-selling and making sure that our own sales people know, not who to engage, how to engage the partner. Going back to the basics of how early you pull them in, do you have them do pre-sales? Do you do pre-sales? Who does the demos? Basically through the entire sales cycle, defining roles and responsibilities. And taking that same set of rules to the partners. So we actually have ground rules on how we want to engage through the sales cycle. The last, and this important point, the last thing you want is for the partner and our own sales rep to meet each other in the prospects lobby at the 11th hour of a sales cycle. We're trying to fix that, but more importantly you raised a really good point. What am I asking the partners to step up and do? We're just putting in place, depending on the partner type, six different criteria, there's also a seventh criteria, that I'm measuring our best partners by. It's around capability to execute locally on both pre-sales and technical implementations and operations. I'm looking at revenue, I'm looking at number of customer ads so you're not just out shooting elephants once a year, but you're also bringing in a volume with us. I'm looking at references. That's the proof in the pudding, that you're capable of maintaining that environment and you're helping your customers derive the most value out of the service and solution. And then the last one is really looking at are you in an industry in a vertical and can you bring that to the forefront effectively in co-selling. So I'm putting a bar out there that says, these are the criteria, you've got to get to over this bar to be one of the partners I take into my co-selling engine and promote you to my sales force. So extremely prescriptive on who we're going to co-sell with. >> So it's sales synergy, not conflict. >> Doug: Exactly. >> So you're trying to identify hand-in-glove kind of fit points. >> Doug: Defining how and who. >> Let me offer one other one and see if this resonates with you, make one other suggestion, is that especially for partners that are part of the Cloud mix, have you talked about end-to-end performance, end-to-end effectiveness, end-to-end efficiency, and start to benchmark some of these partners and say, you're doing okay, but we got other folks over here who (crosstalk). I mean the time of execution, the number of errors that are generated, all these other things, because we're now talking about an integration that is not just in the marketing function, not just in the selling function, not just in the service function, but in the execution. That that's where the customer's going to determine whether the partnership is working. Are you starting to look at some of those measures as well? >> Yes, so the back end of this, I'm now looking at a report that says where are we churning? Where are we actually having down sales, in other words the subscription's not renewd at the same level, and I'm correlating that report for the first time back to the associated partner. Then I could sit back down with them and say, look, we're correlating you to a certain percentage of churn, what do we need to do to fix this? Is it better education? Are you not focusing on the whole life cycle of the customer? So we'll be able to come back at that with the partners as well. We haven't done a very good job of that, candidly. It's kind of the front of the sale, move through, get 'em running and then once in a while we turn up to make sure they're delighted, and that they're renewing. You can't do that any more. >> The interesting thing that you're getting at is, I hate to say, eat your own dog food or drink your own champagne or whatever you want to call it. You guys are saying here, use data and change business practices. >> Doug: Exactly. Exactly. >> So you're going to look at the data and bring that in, but the data model is first, if I hear you correctly is, identify clearly your parameters for ideal partnership. >> Doug: Yup. >> On a profitable win/win scenario. >> Yup, who we're working with, and then define how we're working together so our field can effectively co-sell with them. >> Okay so what's the reaction? I mean, the agency I can see has a potential, a lot of moving parts there, so I think that's challenging in general, just agencies are different than more committed partners, (mumbles), I don't mean to put down the agency, but agencies have a lot of moving parts. >> Doug: Yeah. >> What has been the reaction from agencies and the other different types of partners? >> And this is literally this week for the past three days have been meeting with a lot of the top partners. >> John: Standing ovation? >> They're very pleased, they said we want this approach. 'cause candidly if I say, Look, here's why I'm going to bet on you and here's why I'm going to work with you, you can invest ahead of the curve. Most partners aren't going to invest ahead of the curve. They kind of look in the rear view mirror and go, Yeah I got a couple of deals last month, I'm going to maybe start adding capacity. I could say, Look we're committing to you in these regions in these areas and here's how we're working together. It gives them more confidence to start investing ahead of the curve with us. And that's the best, you don't want them lagging behind the demand. >> And what about the swim lanes we talked about, I call swim lanes, you said specialty? Because that seems to be on the partner, not saying, well you could bring a lot to the table and say, here's how we think you might be fit based on the parameters, but that's a transformation that the partners are going through. Are you being proactive in recommending? Are they coming to you? They seem to be kind of in swim lanes... >> If you leave it up to the partner, they'll come to you. And I swim in every lane and I do everything. In a past life, what I was able to do and I've done a little bit now we're going to finish this job, I was able to run transactions through D & B for the past three years of my partner system. And partners would say, I play in every industry and every vertical, and I'd bring data back and say, actually, no you don't. Here's where you focus. >> John: They hope to be in every vertical. >> Right, they want to, they want to, and that's how they fail, they spread themselves too thin. But we come back with the data to say, look, here's where your references are, here's where the majority of your revenue has come from. I'm going to promote you in these swim lanes. You can move into another swim lane over time, but let's focus here. And we've done that. We've actually, we're about 95% through this exercise over the past six weeks. I've taken some of the maps back to some of the partners to say, here's where we believe we're going to win with you. That's an exercise we're going to finish over the next couple of months, and it'll evolve over time, but those are going to be the swim lanes. I'm glad you use that, I use that privately. Which swim lanes are they in and how do I promote those to be the swim lanes my co-sellers are going to work with them on? And that's the way we work. By the way, it helps them with capacity too. If I'm missing somebody in a swim lane, I will first of all try to take somebody out of the lane and get 'em into an adjacent lane for capacity. They like that, instead of just bringing somebody new in. >> I mean I always say the partner business is pretty straight forward, it comes down to money right? What's in it for me, I want to make some cash. Profitability is really important. I think it's cool that you're being transparent about it, saying, hey we're in business to make money, let's just put that on the table. 'Cause, they're going to posture and, at the end of the day, it's what's in it for me? >> I still think that this notion of moving from a product orientation to a service orientation which Cloud describes means a churn, CX, those types of measures, at the end of the day if Oracle's going to win, it has to be able to demonstrate to the marketplace, our eco-system operates better than anybody else's eco-system. >> Doug: Right. >> And starting to bake some of those measures and bake some of those ways of thinking into the relationship so the partners are lifting their game up, it's going to be really crucially important. >> Well the eco-system thing is going to be tested by the fact that, at the end of the day, at least my experience in talking to customers and experience in dealing with the partners, is at the end of the day, the 11th hour sales conflict is ultimately the indicator of if it's working or not. If this conflict with the customer and trust, like, wait a minute, this guy's not going to deliver, that's an undertone that, if that sentiment's there, it's not working. If it's working, pass, shoot, score! Everyone's happy! Sales guy gets comped on the Oracle side, feeding more business to the partner, you know this is a relationship where it flows to the good partners. >> Right, that's why you don't deal with... all thousand can play in the eco-system, but you place your bets on the top ones and get that right, and that's where your growth is going to come from. >> John: It's gamification. >> Also, also, think of it another way is that, I'd rather give the next dollar to one of my top partners that fits my ideal partner profile and can drive growth with me, than to give it to the person on the tail end of the tail, because they can't turn that same dollar into more revenue together. The guys at the top of the pyramid are more capable of reinvesting in our business. >> And the emerging ones that have an ascention vision of sending up and to be a partner will see the cash being doled out and will align... >> And we're going to be transparent of where the bar is. You want to get there? Here's the things you've got to be able to do. >> Right, and how are you guys helping them with any kind of soft, this is to say, partners say, hey Oracle, thanks for the mentoring thanks for the clarity, I really want to be in the swim lane, and I'm willing to invest. What are you going to do for me? >> So the education and training for them... Some of them, as we look at their profile and how successful they are, we will grandfather them in to certain lanes as well. Like, this isn't, go off into a dark room and prove to me you're successful and pop your head up and I may like you. We're going to still look at that next trench of partners that want to get above that bar and work with them, because if we get them over the bar we'll be successful, we'll be more successful, so we have to help them through training and education and enablement as well to be able to do that, and some opportunities to participate in different marketing programs and campaigns. >> Well you're a pro. It's good to co-sell and it's challenging, and it's got a great, I like the formula. Seven days in... >> Doug: Seven weeks. >> Seven weeks in. What's your feedback on the show? Thoughts? >> No this is very good. It's good for a variety of reasons. Obviously the customer focus is extremely good. The other thing it does for our partners is it gives them a chance to network. Because a customer doesn't just buy one solution from one partner. Typically our sales involve three or four partners at times. It gives them a networking opportunity and I'm trying to aggregate those solutions together into more of a complete offering, and we're just one part of that equation. So these type of events help those partners network together and we drive some of that networking as well. >> Doug Kennedy. So next year when we're sitting on the CUBE at a location, maybe here, maybe somewhere else, what's success in your mind for one year out in terms of in your mind's eye, what do you want to see happening, envision happening for next year's event? >> Well a stake in the ground for our own eco-system is we've doubled the impact of our co-selling through our top line with partners. That's a pretty big challenge, but that's what I'm committing to. It's a big net that we're going to go after. But also here you're going to have a partner eco-system, to be blunt, they're more profitable. They're doing better. They actually want more. I would argue we're going to have more people attending here from my partner eco-system next year, hungry for more information and more opportunities to work together. That's success. >> You're going to grow it up top line and grow the eco-system. >> Yup, and other partners that are not part of that growth, wanting it. 'Cause if you make some poster children, the rest are going to want more of that. So we'll see more of a herd mentality start. >> Doug Kennedy in charge of Business Development and Partners here at Oracle on the CUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Barris. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break.

>> Voiceover: Live, from Las Vegas, It's theCUBE. Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. (techno beats) >> Hello everyone, welcome to SiliconANGLE's theCUBE, with flagship programming, we go out to the events, and extract the signal and noise. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, my cohost this week at Oracle Modern Customer Experience, in Las Vegas. A lot going on in Las Vegas, at the NAB Show, down the street where the Cube is, also we're here, for the second year in a row at the Oracle Modern Customer Experience, #ModernCX. Tweet at us @theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Barris. Kicking off two days of wall-to-wall coverage, we have some amazing guests. We have the top executives at Oracle Marketing Cloud, as well as some of their customers, as well as some other guests in the industry. Peter, we've been covering this marketing cloud kind of, as part of the bigger picture of the systems of engagement that is growing out of cloud infrastructure and big data. There's really a collision going on between accelerating applications with infrastructure, powered by the cloud, powered by hybrid cloud, and data's at the center of the value proposition, and literally is the key point in all this. So, I want to get your thoughts, and we talked about this last year, what's different from last year to this year, with Oracle Marketing Customer Experience, from your perspective? >> Well, I think there's three things that are different, John. The first thing that's different is that, the reality of how difficult it is to integrate technology into the marketing function is setting in, in a lot of marketers. So, we're not hearing anymore comments or promises about how marketing expenditure is going to exceed IT expenditures for technology. So, there's a reality set in about, what does it really mean to incorporate technology in the working market? The second thing that's happening is AI. We're going to hear a lot about AI, we're going to hear a lot about these new ways of taking big data and making them more useful to the business, and that's going to have an enormous impact on marketing, for a variety of different reasons. When you talk about next best action, predicting customer experience, prognosticating value propositions, all those other things, AI is going to have a role to play. How fast it gets adopted, we'll see, but we're going to hear a lot about it. >> John: It's interesting, we always talk on the cube here, if you follow the Cube you know, we always kind of, always pontificate on this notion of horizontally-scalable, and we talked about it last year, but there's an era of specialization, that you need to have vertically-oriented into some of these industries. But what's interesting, Pete, and I want to get your thoughts on this, because I was commenting last year at the show that, marketing was always a silo, and Oracle has had a integration strategy that's been kind of horizontal, and the trends in cloud computing and data is horizontal-scalability, with value propositions differentiate at the applications So, this begs the question, what does that mean for marketing in a digital business? If you go digital all the way, from the beginning of the journey to the moment of truth to the customer, sales or conversion, it's all digital, marketing's in every piece of the equation along the way, and that's what Mark Hurd was saying yesterday. >> Peter: Well, customer engagement's in every piece of the equation along the way and then the question is, is marketing going to evolve to become primary in customer engagement? It's not going to be just your direct sales force, customers are going to move amongst different channels. We've heard a lot about on the channel, so, to what role, to what degree will marketing become primary? And the third point I was going to make, John, is related to this, and that is, one of the big changes between this year and last year, is that Oracle has really thrown the tiller over, and tacked towards the cloud. And it's going to be interesting to see whether or not the cloud customer experience story, or the marketing cloud customer experience story, in the cloud, is lining up with the rest of Oracle's cloud story. >> John: It's as with, Don Clien, from our team, who last night in the hallway conversations here, in the Mandalay Bay with the convention, that the conference is happening, it's interesting, we were talking about the role of platforms, and you can't see in the news these days, anything from Facebook's relative to fake news, to some of the killings on Facebook Live, to YouTube and moderating comments, these emergence of platforms has been a very interesting dynamic, but at the end of the day, content needs to have an authentic piece to it. So, you now blending in a marketing and conversion, with customers, we're living in a content world. I'm wearing a wearable, my content is my interface to wherever I am in real time. My experience at the rental car dealership, or wherever I'm at, is going to be all about, the content is not some siloed, "Hey, hello, buy this." It's everything is content-driven. >> Well everything is value-driven, right? And the question is, is the content going to be valuable? And if there's a big, going back to that first point, what's the big issue about marketing? We thought that if we just through technology, we could automate the same ways that marketing is already, always done stuff, but the reality is marketing does a lot of stuff that is not valuable to customers. It may be valuable to the organization or their ways, but it's not valuable to customers. And often it's really annoying, and so marketing has to decide, if in fact they are going to take a primary role in engagement across channel over time, as customers move amongst organizations, then they're going to have to start dedicating themselves to creating content that's valuable to the customer, in the form that the customer needs, when the customer needs it, where the customer needs it. And that's a challenge. >> And the engagement piece is critical, I love that angle, but let's take it to the next level. Every example of marketing cloud or any kind of digital experience use case has data in it. It's data-driven. Even Mark Hurd, on his keynote, talked about his experience at the rental car place, that's data-driven. You got to know, that's the CEO of Oracle. So, this is again, the data is at the center of this. It's flowing through all the apps, and has to be available, has to be real time, this is fundamental. >> Peter: And digital assets are data as well, and applications, when you go back to what computer science says, applications themselves are data. So, increasingly, it's all data. Customers want to be engaged digitally. They want to be able to take their digital experience, whatever channel, the data has to follow them. You have to anticipate what data you're going to generate in the form of content. You have to be able to capture data without annoying them. So, in many respects, John, this all comes down, the challenge for marketing is, how do we capture data without being annoying? How do we provision data in a way that's valuable, so that we increase the view of the brand. >> John: I want to put you on the spot, because I know marketing's a lot of different components to it, but one of the things that everyone in the industry is talking about, is the role that salesforce.com has taken in its SaaS cloud platform, vis-a-vis an app, where you just put your contacts in, and you manage your relationships, and how that's grown and shifted over to being a SaaS platform. And here's the question I want to ask, and get your thoughts on, and just riff here in real time. Back in the old days, analog sales needed a system to provide automation for those sales guys. Boom. Salesforce.com is born. Marketing would provide email marketing and content, here's a package of content, if you're interested, click on it and we'll get you more information. Marketing department sends those leads to the analog sales team. The leads aren't good enough, the leads are crap. Glengarry, Glen Ross kind of thing going on there. Now that's shifted with the digital fabric, end to end, from initiation to moment of truth. Digital. That kind of goes away. So, sales cloud and marketing cloud are blurring, yes or no, what're your thoughts on the role of sales kind of thing, and the marketing piece? >> Well, it all comes down to, and again this is one of the precepts of the whole notion of customer experience, it all comes down to the customer is on a journey to solve a problem, to generate some utility out of the purchase that they're making, whether it's a product or service. They go through discovery process, they go through a buying process, they go through a utilization process. All of that requires engagement. And so the data, and they way you provision your resources, to that customer has to fit naturally in the way the customer does stuff. So one of the reasons why this is blurring is because customers themselves are demanding that they be treated digitally in some coherent manner. Now, institutionally and organizationally, there's still a lot of tensions, as you said, between sales and marketing, and it's not enough to just say we're going to do a marketing cloud because there's marketing budgets, and we're going to do a sales cloud, because the sales budgets, and a product cloud because of product budgets, etc. This has to come together. We have to render this coherently in front of customers, or in front of businesses because businesses have to render themselves coherently in front of customers as they go through their journey. >> Great observation, I would just add that this notion of a platform is an indicator of where the market's going. Certainly we're seeing in the mainstream some things are being tweaked, and Facebook admitted in the New York Times that they're working on it. They're going to work on these things. But let's bring that platform, if what you say is true, which I believe it is, everything has to come together, because it's not one or the other, there's not mutually exclusive. Now, sales guys had the data from the old days, but now it's all digital, so the question is, that shifts the scales, because in the old days, marketing was to provide value to the organization, the enterprise itself, the business value of the enterprise, and that comes from selling something. >> Peter: Right, right, right, right. >> John: And so, to your value point, which I think that this market shifts the value to the marketing team because they have a broader perspective in that journey. Or have more touch points in the engagement of the customer. >> Peter: And that's key. The question is can they be the orchestrator of a coherent and holistic engagement strategy with a customer. >> John: So, I'm a CIO, I'm looking at a complete replatforming. I think that's a better approach than trying to take Salesforce and make it work over here, and if you look at Salesforce, they've done a bunch of different acquisitions, not always kind of tightly coupled, a little bit of awkwardness here, chatter, all these components. Oracle's taking a different approach, they're saying we're going to integrate all this stuff, and you pick and choose. I think, if I'm a CIO, I might want to take a more holistic view from initiation, to moment of truth with the customer, and the lifecycle that journey. There's more marketing touch points in there, so I'm probably designed that way, your thoughts. >> Peter: Well, so, it's interesting John. The whole CRM industry went through an extremely challenging birth. One of the biggest challenges is that, as you said, we used to be analog. Sales people would go on a call, they'd write up a trip report, they'd hand it to and administrator, and the administrator would do the data entry, and we'd get it into the system someway. But the minute you start automating that, now the sales guys are doing data entry. And if you talk to sales organizations today, one of the biggest problems is how much time are my folks doing data entry, how much time are my folks generating content for customers, how much time are they doing all these other things, and not selling, and that's an issue. So, when we think about where this is going to go, at the end of the day, Salesforce has done the best job of presenting CRM to the marketplace, for a variety of different reasons. But it still is a let's capture sales activity kind of a platform. The question is, are we actually going to get to a platform that is truly able to provide coherent, holistic value at the moment that the customer wants it, and that includes delivery. And I think Oracle has an opportunity in all of this. It's to actually utilize their various clouds, to provide a way of engaging customers across the entire journey, because they can do the discovery piece, they can do the sales piece, and they can also do digital products, and digital capabilities anyway, the delivery piece. >> Well, Peter Burris from Wikibon.com, head of research over there. Check out some of the work they're doing with the digital, role of the digital business and assets, digital experiences, they're all assets, whether it's content, engagement, or an experience that someone has, it's all a data asset, it's a digital asset, and that needs to be harnessed and looked at holistically in a way. You got some great research over at Wikibon.com, check it out. I'm John Furrier, here for two days at Oracle Modern Customer Experience Show. Should be great, really cutting edge stuff, really as the world replatforms in the cloud, content and experiences will be fundamental, and data's at the center of it. We'll bring you all the coverage here. We'll be right back with more great coverage after this short break. (techno beats)