>> Live from Miami Beach, Florida. It's theCUBE, covering VeeamON 2019. Brought to you by Veeam. >> Welcome to sunny Miami, everybody. This is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante I'm here with Peter Burse. This is day one of VeeamON, theCUBE's third year covering VeeamON. First year was Enola, last year was in Chicago, they chose Miami at the Fontainebleau Hotel. >> Bummer. >> Yeah, which is a real bummer here. A lot of swankiness, a lot of fun people, A lot of big boats Peter, and this morning we're here at the Keynotes, theCUBE is going to be covering wall to wall coverage. We like to go out to the events extract the signal from the noise. Peter and I have done a number of shows together. Peter, I love working with you cause you bring great insights and I want to start off with Veeam. The company, the host company here. We saw when we started Wikibon, we saw the ascendancy of Veaeam kind of coincide with virtualization, and it was all about making backup simpler and easier to use for small to medium size businesses. That's what Ratmir Timashev , the co-founder called Act One. Now, they try to really ride the wave of cloud to create Act Two, of course they're not alone. You've got companies like Rubrik and Cohesity, and then established players, like Dell EMC and Veritas and IBM. All trying to hang on and get a piece of the 15 billion dollar business. But we're seeing the notion of backup and recovery move beyond just a insurance policy into this idea of data protection, what some people call, data management, which, you and I have talked about, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people And a concept that you've sort of coined called data assurance. I don't know if you've coined it, but you've certainly talked about it articulary. I want to unpack some of those trends with you. You've been studying this market. You've written about this notion of data protection. Your take on the event here, 2000 people, but most importantly, what's going on in the marketplace. >> Let's make one single point about Veeam. Ten years ago, you remember, the whole notion of backing up and restoring virtual machines was really hard. It's still something that we take for granted today, but it's pretty amazing technology that we can actually do this. Take these software images of physical devices and actually generate backup that can be very very quickly restored at very very high fidelity. It still is something magical. The reason why I say that is because the degree of complexity and the direction we're going. As state gets associated with different parts of the computing system or not associated with different parts of the computing system, it's going to become that much more challenging. We talked about Kubernetes clusters, for example. They're supposed to be stateless. They're supposed to be, you know, spin 'em up, spin 'em down. Spin 'em up, spin 'em down. Minimize the amount of state. Places that much more pressure on how you handle your data and do data management. Where I like to start, Dave, is we talk about what's going to happen next. Number one, folks have gotten the cloud wrong. Cloud was not strategy for centralizing computing. It really is a strategy for distributing computing with control, with services, with protection, with a common management type of mind. >> What do you mean by that? People think of cloud as putting everything into the public cloud in some kind of central location. Explain the distributed notion. >> The thing that's really interesting about the cloud is that these standards evolve, and as the experience evolves, and as the technology gets built and invented, that we now can see that we can bring cloud services to where the data resides. That's probably, well that's not probably. That's what's going to happen. The cloud is increasingly going to recognize the data, the cost of data state and the cost of data movement, are two of the biggest costs in any computing system. We want to keep data proximate to the activity it's going to support. Not just where it's created, but the activities it's going to support. That's how you associate data and business value. >> You're specifically talking about the services following the data in a consistent manner. Whether it's on-prem, in the cloud, or-- >> That's what it has to be able to do. We have to not just put the data where it's located, but that data as an asset has certain services associated, certain metadata associated with it, and often certain code associated with it. The whole notion is to be able to assure that when I spin up one of these new modern applications that don't know a lot about state, that the data is there. The services that make that data integress, secure, viable, backup and restorable, et cetera, are resonant. Very importantly, that that metadata that describes policy and other types of things also is easily invoked and easily applied without an enormous amount of administrative headache. So ultimately we can get to greater distribution of data with greater automation, lower administration, and greater security. >> We talked at the top about Veeam is really trying to ride the wave of cloud, just the same way it rode the wave of virtualization. There were three announcements today. The first was that Veeam hit a billion dollars in a trailing 12 month basis. That's big for pureplace software company traditionally in backup. Billion dollars is quite a milestone. >> Big range back up. >> Yeah really, it really SMB backup. >> 350 thousand customers. >> 350 thousand customers. Like 4000 a month. They also announced Veeam Availability Orchestrator v2, which is all about fast recovery. We asked Danny Allen in the briefing this morning, how they do that. It's complicated. It's a function of architecture, metadata management, but essentially doing fast recovery without necessarily having to rely on replication. There are some other components of that. Automated testing, dynamic documentation. We're going to dig into that a little bit more. Then there's this notion of with Veeam, a set of open APIs, which is cloud-like. When you think of riding the cloud wave, what do you think of Peter? You think of open, you think of, you mentioned Kubernetes and microservices. You think of an ecosystem. You think of simple. You think of cloud-like pricing. Can, in your opinion, Veeam take that success it's had in virtualization and kind of replicate that in the cloud? >> You and I have been on the phone with customers where we've argued to the customer that there's going to be greater specialization of data services based on greater specialization of a customer's data needs. Some people argue with us a lot. Just as some people used to argue with us about the whole notion of hybrid cloud. For a long time, You guys are crazy when you say that. When I saw that with Veeam, which I think is an especially important feature of today's announcement, it opens up the possibility that I can have a common platform for data assurance, data protection, but allow an ecosystem to create value in response to different classes of needs because data protection is going to be a strategic capability with any digital business. If I'm a business that's not treating data as an asset, as a basis for differentiating from my competitors, I have to protect that data and everything that it means and assure that it's available. That has now become a strategic business capability. Like every single strategic business capability, and I'm talking about it from an architectural sense here, there's going to be specialization and specificity to that business. With Veeam, creates an opportunity for an ecosystem to create additional layers of value and function on top of that core set of services to better map Veeam to specific customer needs. That's a good thing. >> When you talk about the ecosystem, I'm glad you brought that up. You got partners like HPE, Cisco, NetApp, Lenovo, Nutanix. Those are sort of the top tier partners that these guys have mentioned and a number of other partners as well. Veeam has become that billion dollar company, and is now attracting and building out this ecosystem in a pretty big way. Ratmir put up a chart that the market's 15 billion. They're not alone, as they say, you've got established players like Dell EMC, certainly Veritas, IBM with the old Tivoli products and then some other new stuff. Then you've got Cohesity and Rubrik just announced, maybe earlier this year, 250 million dollar investments, actually late last year and early this year. Veeam countered that with a 500 million dollar investment. It's a little unclear exactly where all that money is going. Private company, three private companies. But the big point is. >> Close to Miami. (mumbles) >> The point is, a lot of money coming into this space. In the enterprise, data protection is very very hot. Why is that, you mentioned it, is because of digital business and the need to protect data, assure data, be able to recover transparently and very quickly. >> And using some of these new modern application development styles that are intended to create as many options to the developer as possible. That's where you get the agility. >> Your point about Kubernetes and being stateless and some of the security challenges that we were talking about last night. This notion of data assurance, being able to spin up and automatically spin down containers so that they're not a threat. Raising the bar, raising the cost for the bad guys to get in and hack your systems, making it more complex, making it less attractive because Kubernetes, microservices, containers. Sometimes microservices, as one pundit once said, it's so micro. It's some important stuff in there. >> Oh look, you can build really crappy applications with virtually any technology, right. But microservices, when you sit down with a senior guy in a development organization and you ask him about microservices, or her about microservices, it all starts with the observation that microservices is an approach to doing application development. Just as client services started off as an approach to doing application development, where you think about, well I'm going to put all the application function here and all the database function here and we'll make database calls between the two. That's basically what microservices is. If you think about it any other way, you're missing the starting point. It's a way of thinking about how you break down a problem. Increasingly business wants to break down problems into smaller parts that are more segmented, more compartmentalized. But also that don't necessarily persist for any number of different reasons. Resource consumption, change and the need to change, security, et cetera. The whole concept that overtime we're going to see applications being comprised of containers that thought through the microservices approach built with languages that are supportive of containers and utilizing containers as the infrastructure. The other thing is, going back to the first point, virtual machines virtualized hardware. Containers virtualized operating systems. It's a really interesting technology when you come right down to it. Backing up and restoring all that is going to be challenging. Real beauty of this is that ultimately containers are going to reduce threat surface. Not just by the dimensions of location, identity, but also time, because I can vary containers out. It's going to be a multi-dimensional approach to improving security, enhancing function, and getting greater productivity out of IT investments. >> You got to protect that stuff. So we're here, VeeamON, day one. We got two days of wall to wall coverage with theCUBE. Veeam, a billion dollar company, going after a 15 billion dollar pie. We're going to hear from Ratmir Timashev, who's the co-founder of Veeam, and a number of customers and partners. Keep it right there, you're watching theCUBE. Dave Vellante with Peter Burse. We'll be right back after this short break. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, its theCUBE. Covering Pentaho World 2017. Brought to you by Hitachi Vantara. >> We are kicking off day one of Pentaho World. Brought to you, of course, by Hitachi Vantara. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-hosts. We have Dave Vellante and James Kobielus. Guys I'm thrilled to be here in Orlando, Florida. Kicking off Pentaho World with theCUBE. >> Hey Rebecca, twice in one week. >> I know, this is very exciting, very exciting. So we were just listening to the key notes. We heard a lot about the big three, the power of the big three. Which is internet of things, predictive analytics, big data. So the question for you both is where is Hitachi Vantara in this marketplace? And are they doing what they need to do to win? >> Well so the first big question everyone is asking is what the heck is Hitachi-Vantara? (laughing) What is that? >> Maybe we should have started there. >> We joke, some people say it sounds like a SUV, Japanese company, blah blah blah. When we talked to Brian-- >> Jim: A well engineered SUV. >> So Brian Householder told us, well you know it really is about vantage and vantage points. And when you listen to their angles on insights and data, anywhere and however you want it. So they're trying to give their customers an advantage and a vantage point on data and insights. So that's kind of interesting and cool branding. The second big, I think, point is Hitachi has undergone a massive transformation itself. Certainly Hitachi America, which is really not a brand they use anymore, but Hitachi Data Systems. Brian Householder talked in his keynote, when he came in 14 years ago, Hitachi was 80 percent hardware, and infrastructure, and storage. And they've transformed that. They're about 50/50 last year. In terms of infrastructure versus software and services. But what they've done, in my view, is taken now the next step. I think Hitachi has said, alright listen, storage is going to the cloud, Dell and EMC are knocking each others head off. China is coming in to play. Do we really want to try and dominate that business? Rather, why don't we play from our strengths? Which is devices, internet of things, the industrial internet. So they buy Pentaho two years ago, and we're going to talk more about that, bring in an analytics platform. And this sort of marrying IT and OT, information technology and operation technology, together to go attack what is a trillion dollar marketplace. >> That's it so Pentaho was a very strategic acquisition. For Hitachi, of course, Hitachi data system plus Hitachi insides, plus Pentaho equals Hitachi Vantara. Pentaho was one of the pioneering vendors more than a decade ago. In the whole open source analytics arena. If you cast your mind back to the middle millennium decade, open source was starting to come into its own. Of course, we already had Linux an so forth, but in terms of the data world, we're talking about the pre-Hadoop era, the pre-Spark era. We're talking about the pre-TensorFlow era. Pentaho, I should say at that time. Which is, by the way, now a product group within Hitachi Vantara. It's not a stand alone company. Pentaho established itself as the spearhead for open-source, predictive analytics, and data mining. They made something called Weka, which is an open-source data mining toolkit that was actually developed initially in New Zealand. The core of their offering, to market, in many ways became very much a core player in terms of analytics as a service a so forth, but very much established themselves, Pentaho, as an up and coming solution provider taking a more or less, by the book, open source approach for delivering solutions to market. But they were entering a market that was already fairly mature in terms of data mining. Because you are talking about the mid-2000's. You already had SaaS, and SPSS, and some of the others that had been in that space. And done quite well for a long time. And so cut ahead to the present day. Pentaho had evolved to incorporate some fairly robust data integration, data transformation, all ETL capabilities into their portfolio. They had become a big data player in their own right, With a strong focus on embedded analytics, as the keynoters indicated this morning. There's a certain point where in this decade it became clear that they couldn't go it any further, in terms of differentiating themselves in this space. In a space that dominated by Hadoop and Spark, and AI things like TensorFlow. Unless they are part of a more diversified solution provider that offered, especially I think the critical thing was the edge orientation of the industrial internet of things. Which is really where many of the opportunities are now for a variety of new markets that are opening up, including autonomous vehicles, which was the focus of here all-- >> Let's clarify some things a little bit. So Pentaho actually started before the whole Hadoop movement. >> Yeah, yeah. >> That's kind of interesting. You know they were young company when Hadoop just started to take off. And they said alright we can adopt these techniques and processes as well. So they weren't true legacy, right? >> Jim: No. >> So they were able to ride that sort of modern wave. But essentially they're in the business of data, I call it data management. And maybe that's not the right term. They do ingest, they're doing ETL, transformation anyway. They're embedding, they've got analytics, they're embedding analytics. Like you said, they're building on top of Weka. >> James: In the first flesh and BI as a hot topic in the market in the mid-200's, they became a fairly substantial BI player. That actually helped them to grow in terms of revenue and customers. >> So they're one of those companies that touches on a lot of different areas. >> Yes. >> So who do we sort of compare them to? Obviously, what you think of guys like Informatica. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Who do heavy ETL. >> Yes. You mentioned BI, you mentioned before. Like, guys like Saas. What about Tableau? >> Well, BBI would be like, there's Tableau, and ClickView and so forth. But there's also very much-- >> Talend. >> Cognos under IBM. And, of course, there's the business objects Portfolio under SAP. >> David: Right. And Talend would be? >> In fact I think Talend is in many ways is the closest analog >> Right. >> to Pentaho in terms of predominatly open-source, go to market approach, that involves both the robust data integration and cleansing and so forth from the back end. And also, a deep dive of open source analytics on the front end. >> So they're differentiation they sort of claim is they're sort of end to end integration. >> Jim: Yeah. >> Which is something we've been talking about at Wikibon for a while. And George is doing some work there, you probably are too. It's an age old thing in software. Do you do best-of-breed or do you do sort of an integrated suite? Now the interesting thing about Pentaho is, they don't own their own cloud. Hitachi Vantara doesn't own their own cloud. So they do a lot of, it's an integrated pipeline, but it doesn't include its own database and other tooling. >> Jim: Yeah. >> Right, and so there is an interesting dynamic occurring that we want to talk to Donna Perlik about obviously, is how they position relative to roll your own. And then how they position, sort of, in the cloud world. >> And we should ask also how are they positioning now in the world of deep learning frameworks? I mean they don't provide, near as I know, their own deep learning frameworks to compete with the likes of TensorFlow, or MXNet, or CNT or so forth. So where are they going in that regard? I'd like to know. I mean there are some others that are big players in this space, like IBM, who don't offer their own deep learning framework, but support more than one of the existing frameworks in a portfolio that includes much of the other componentry. So in other words, what I'm saying is you don't need to have your own deep learning framework, or even open-source deep learning code-based, to compete in this new marketplace. And perhaps Pentaho, or Hitachi Vantara, roadmapping, maybe they'll take an IBM like approach. Where they'll bundle support, or incorporate support, for two or more of these third party tools, or open source code bases into their solution. Weka is not theirs either. It's open source. I mean Weka is an open source tool that they've supported from the get go. And they've done very well by it. >> It's just kind of like early day machine leraning. >> David: Yeah. >> Okay, so we've heard about Hitachi's transformation internally. And then their messaging today was, of course-- >> Exactly, that's where I really wanted to go next was we're talking about it from the product and the technology standpoint. But one of the things we kept hearing about today was this idea of the double bottom line. And this is how Hitachi Vantara is really approaching the marketplace, by really focusing on better business, better outcomes, for their customers. And obviously for Hitachi Vantara, too, but also for bettering society. And that's what we're going to see on theCUBE today. We're going to have a lot of guests who will come on and talk about how they're using Pentaho to solve problems in healthcare data, in keeping kids from dropping out of college, from getting computing and other kinds of internet power to underserved areas. I think that's another really important approach that Hitachi Vantara is taking in its model. >> The fact that Hitachi Vantara, I know, received Pentaho Solution, has been on the market for so long and they have such a wide range of reference customers all over the world, in many vertical. >> Rebecca: That's a great point. >> The most vertical. Willing to go on camera and speak at some length of how they're using it inside their business and so forth. Speaks volumes about a solution provider. Meaning, they do good work. They provide good offerings. They're companies have invested a lot of money in, and are willing to vouch for them. That says a lot. >> Rebecca: Right. >> And so the acquisition was in 2015. I don't believe it was a public number. It's Hitachi Limited. I don't think they had to report it, but the number I heard was about a half a billion. >> Jim: Uh-hm >> Which for a company with the potential of Pentaho, is actually pretty cheap, believe it or not. You see a lot of unicorns, billion dollar plus companies. But the more important thing is it allows Hitachi to further is transformation and really go after this trillion dollar business. Which is really going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. Because while Hitachi has a long-term view, it always takes a long-term view, you still got to make money. It's fuzzy, how you make money in IOT these days. Obviously, you can make money selling devices. >> How do you think money, open source anything? You know, so yeah. >> But they're sort of open source, with a hybrid model, right? >> Yeah. >> And we talked to Brian about this. There's a proprietary component in there so they can make their margin. Wikibon, we see this three tier model emerging. A data model, where you've got the edge in some analytics, real time analytics at the edge, and maybe persists some of that data, but they're low cost devices. And then there's a sort of aggregation point, or a hub. I think Pentaho today called it a gateway. Maybe it was Brian from Forester. A gateway where you're sort of aggregating data, and then ultimately the third tier is the cloud. And that cloud, I think, vectors into two areas. One is Onprem and one was public cloud. What's interesting with Brian from Forester was saying that basically said that puts the nail in the coffin of Onprem analytics and Onprem big data. >> Uh-hm >> I don't buy that. >> I don't buy that either. >> No, I think the cloud is going to go to your data. Wherever the data lives. The cloud model of self-service and agile and elastic is going to go to your data. >> Couple of weeks ago, of course we Wikibon, we did a webinar for our customers all around the notion of a true private cloud. And Dave, of course, Peter Burse were on it. Explaining that hybrid clouds, of course, public and private play together. But where the cloud experience migrates to where the data is. In other words, that data will be both in public and in private clouds. But you will have the same reliability, high availability, scaleability, ease of programming, so forth, wherever you happen to put your data assets. In other words, many companies we talk to do this. They combine zonal architecture. They'll put some of their resources, like some of their analytics, will be in the private cloud for good reason. The data needs to stay there for security and so forth. But much in the public cloud where its way cheaper quite often. Also, they can improve service levels for important things. What I'm getting at is that the whole notion of a true private cloud is critically important to understand that its all datacentric. Its all gravitating to where the data is. And really analytics are gravitating to where the data is. And increasingly the data is on the edge itself. Its on those devices where its being persistent, much of it. Because there's no need to bring much of the raw data to the gateway or to the cloud. If you can do the predominate bulk of the inferrencing on that data at edge devices. And more and more the inferrencing, to drive things like face recognition from you Apple phone, is happening on the edge. Most of the data will live there, and most of the analytics will be developed centrally. And then trained centrally, and pushed to those edge devices. That's the way it's working. >> Well, it is going to be an exciting conference. I can't wait to hear more from all of our guests, and both of you, Dave Vellante and Jim Kobielus. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll have more from theCUBE's live coverage of Pentaho World, brought to you by Hitachi Vantara just after this.

>> Voiceover: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's The Cube, covering Sapphire Now, headlining sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform as a service, with support from Consolink, the cloud internet company. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burse. >> Welcome back everyone, we are here live in Orlando, Florida for Sapphire Now, SiliconeANGLE Media's exclusive coverage of Sapphire. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burse. This is our flagship program, we go out to the events, and extract the citizen noise, you're watching The Cube. I want to do a shout-out to our sponsors. Without their help, we would not be here. SAP HANA Cloud Platform, Consolink at CONSOL Cloud, hot start up in Silicone Valley, and also we have Cap Gemini, we have EMC. Thanks so much for your support. Our next guest is Gaby Corin, who's the EVP of the Americas for Panaya, accompanied about a year ago by Infosys, now a part of Infosys. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you so much. >> Congratulations on the acquisition over a yeah ago, but you guys are to a part of the big machinery of Infosys, which is tier one systems integrated part of SAP's global channel, as they call it, but essentially, you're out serving customers all over the world. >> Gaby: That is correct, yes. >> At Infosys, what's your role in the Infosys organization, and what does your company do? >> Okay, so, I'll start with the company. Panaya was founded ten years ago. Our quest is to help customers to perform all their changes in their ERP environment. We basically analyze the environment, create that mapping, that baseline that helps them understand exactly what they're dealing with, then we support them in scoping out the changes, and then, we work with them throughout the journey of executing on all the testing cycles associated with all the changes. We serve about two thousand customers, and we are a hundred percent cloud-based solution. My role as EVP for the Americas is to support all customers in the region, and we're working very closely with Infosys into bringing Panaya as part of their offering to accelerate the processes, to bring innovation, and to bring much more efficiency to all the SAP projects and activities that they perform with our customers. >> We had the global partner person on earlier, and that was the big point, innovation's now at the center, not just delivery, which Infosys has been great at, but also other things, innovation, time is very important. >> Exactly. >> Your solution speeds things up, so share with us what it is, is it a SAS space? Is it code analyzers? Is it for QA? Is it for testing? What specifically do you guys solve? What problem do you solve? >> Great question. First of all, we are a SAS-based solution, so we do everything in the cloud. This helps, as you said, perform all the tasks faster and more efficiently. The pain that we're coming to address is the fact that change is constant in the ERP. The ERP is never an island, never an isolated solution. It's always in changes, the core of a lot of the businesses that we meet here, so change is their reality, they need to change all the time. They are highly customized, so every change that come from the vendor or from the business requires a lot of preparation and very fast execution, and this is where Panaya plays. We simulate the change virtually in the cloud, and we tell customers in advance what is going to happen to their environment all the way to the code line level what exactly is going to break, how to fix it, what to test, and we support them, again, throughout all the testing cycles from the unit test or the technical test all the way to user-acceptance test, UATs, that is a big pain to organization because of the collaboration. >> It's faster is the point. So, you guys speed up the process. >> Absolutely, we speed up the process, we reduce costs, we bring customers faster to market by about fifty percent, and we allow them to do their projects at the budget that they establish or lower. >> Give me an example of someone who has the problem, and what their environment looks like. Because everyone's trying to get to the cloud, and your solution is tailor-made perfectly for the cloud because it's very dev-ops-like. It makes things go faster, it's part of that whole agile iteration speed game, which we love, but the people trying to get there that are figuring it out, what's their environment, people who have the problem? What's their environment look like? Paint the picture. >> Virtually any SAP customer needs Panaya. >> John: That's a good plug. It's complicated. >> Yes. Their environment can have one instance, or multiple instances of SAP ECCs. They all have the need for testing because they perform testing all the way. They are trying to bring some of the applications to the cloud, but not necessarily. Most of our customers still are heavily on-premise based, so what we do is that we do all the analysis in the cloud, and this is how we help them do things much faster. >> So I got to ask you the Infosys question, because I'm a big fan of Vishal Sikka. For many years, I've watched his work at SAP, certainly. He was very, very early on and very right on a lot of technical decisions around how things played out. I watched him during the SOA days, going back to the web services days, which is the late 90's, early 2000s, he had the right call and vision on web services, and then service-oriented architectures. >> Yes. >> He brought a lot of great mojo to SAP and has always been very open-source driven. >> Right. >> John: And he's just a cool guy, so what's it like working there? I mean, is he always on top of the employees? Do you talk to him? What's it like inside the company at Infosys, and specifically Vishal, what's he up to? >> First of all, he's such a visionary. You listen to him and his vision. His vision is people and software. And he wants to make a difference when it comes to supporting customers, being an SI, being at a company that creates and makes a difference. He's also very personal, so he's very approachable. He loves ideas as innovation, and he believes that the innovations come from within, so he's a huge supporter of Panaya and bringing Panaya to every single Infosys customer and opportunity, but he has that vision that you don't replace a thing, you don't replace stuff. You take something, and you bring, but you learn to collaborate, and you understand that the environments needs to be flexible, and the only way to bring that flexibility is to take the existing environment and continue to bring innovation, even if it's in small steps, you bring that innovation to the table. And this is what makes it so unique to work for a guy like him. >> The traditional systems integrator relationship, there's always been tension, a lot of tension between customers and systems integrators. >> Gaby: Yes. >> Customers say they want something. Systems integrators have the expertise to do it. Customers want it fast, systems integrators sometimes use their experience to inflate billings, but the customer increasingly is in charge in almost all global markets. The question is are you helping your customers stay more in control of Infosys engagements? And if the answer is yes, how does that improve the value proposition of Infosys? >> Okay, that's a great question. One of the reasons that Panaya remains an independent and contained organization within Infosys is, besides commitment to support that, we sell direct a lot to our customers, and we support, we remain objective, whoever the customer chooses to work with, whether it's to do it in house or to use system integrators. And we have more and more projects that there are three, four, or five system integrators that are involved, and each one does a piece of the solution, and Panaya gives that control because of their analysis, because of the support on the planning stage. We paint the right picture of where you are today, where do you want to go, and in the journey of doing that. This is one of the claims of victory of Panaya is that we bring that control back to the hands of the customers exactly as they want to, because they want to understand what are they dealing with, what are the pricing, and SIs on the other hand, also understand that prices cannot continue to be cut forever and ever. But if you don't bring that innovation, that people plus software, it will be impossible to continue to compete in this market. >> They get more net contract value on the sales as they deliver value. >> Gaby: Exactly, to the customers. >> So if they're helping their customers drive more cash and revenue-- >> Well, I would presume that it actually starts with the contracting process for a lot of these efforts is itself very, very expensive and often leads to not a lot of value, and so I presume that in response to what you just mentioned, John, that you're generating artifacts to make it easy for the customer, the SAP customer, to envision where they need to go, and those artifacts then help the SAP customer manage the integrator and the company doing it, which then dramatically reduces the contracting process. >> Gaby: Exactly. >> Because it's a lot clearer, which means I can focus more on the management of the partner-- >> You release resources, correct. >> As a set of capabilities because because it always changes along the way. >> That is correct. >> As I change, I can envision that using some of the technologies you're bringing to bear. >> That is correct, we create these assets that can be reused time and again, and then we free up resources so they can focus on innovation and additional activities. That is exactly our value proposition, you got it absolutely right. >> So, are you a consultant management system in the SAP world? >> We don't claim to be, no, we bring solutions. We're not in the consulting business at all. >> Peter: No, managing the consulting business. >> Oh, absolutely, we help to manage that process. >> Helping the customer manage those consultants. >> That is correct, that is correct. Yes, you're absolutely right. >> My final question for you, thanks for coming on The Cube, by the way, I know it's short notice. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> Great to have the insight. What's the biggest change in the ecosystem are you seeing today? Because you're close to the code, so you're close to all the action at Panaya and certainly Infosys is massive and global. What is the biggest change that's happening in the ecosystem, with SI's and generally across the board? >> That's a great question. One thing that we're seeing is much more competition. The customer is much more educated, exactly as you, Peter, said. The customers are much more educated, they know what they want, and they're coming in with much more control and knowledge, so we're seeing this. Customers are looking for much more long-term activities. This is why HANA is becoming such a strong, we're seeing this also here in this show how everybody's talking HANA, because it's not something that you do for the next year. It's something that is going to be with these customers for a long term. They are looking for long-term type of engagements. >> They don't have to buy a lot of HANA. They can actually put their toe in the water, if you will. The old days it was you buy SAP, and you hired the SI's, project management, delivery over a long period of time. They don't have to do that today. They can still have a long view with HANA, right? I mean, are you seeing that, too? >> Yes, and what we're seeing is, a move on this regard, we're seeing a move from best of suite into best of breed. We want on each area the best solution possible. >> Without ballooning integration and training costs. >> Correct, correct, and we fit perfectly into that story. >> Well, thanks so much. Real quick question for you. You guys have a big end-user event like Sapphire. >> Gaby: Yes. >> Didn't you just have one in San Francisco recently? Or do you have one coming up? What's going on with the events for Infosys? >> We participated in Confluence, which is a very large event of Infosys, just a couple of weeks ago. Very, very well-attended, and we-- >> John: Is that a global conference in San Francisco or is it in other areas? >> It's a global event in which the largest, the biggest customers of Infosys attend, once a year, they get together. It's all about thought leadership and sharing ideas, design thinking, which Vishal is leading very strongly. That was the main theme of the event, so we had the chance to meet a lot of our customers and prospects. Now, of course, Sapphire. >> Thank you so much for coming on, Gaby. Great to have you on The Cube, and welcome to the Cube alumni now that you're on The Cube. We are live here in Orlando for SAP Sapphire Now. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burse with the Cube. You're watching SiliconANGLE' The Cube. (futuristic music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's TheCUBE covering Sapphire Now. Headline sponsored by SAP HANA Cloud, the leader in platform-as-a-service with support from Console Inc., the cloud Internet company. Now, here are your hosts: John Furrier and Peter Burse. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We are here live in Orlando, Florida for Sapphire Now SAP show exclusive coverage from SiliconANGLE Media is TheCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Peter Burris, Head of Research at SiliconANGLE Media. I want to give a shout out to our sponsors, SAP HANA Cloud platform, Console Inc., Virtustream, EMC and Capgemini. Thanks for your support, we really appreciate it. Our next guest is Michael Bruchey, who is the SAP Global VP of Partner Solutions, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. >> The theme of the ecosystem has been pretty big, but the ecosystem, as we've been learning on theCUBE, is that the channels, the VARs, the VAS, the ISVs, all that stuff going on there, but the global channel, your involvement is the big integrated, it's the much more advanced traditional SAP partners... >> Michael: Sure. >> Back in the old days of Big Six accounting firms that we're doing in the early day of deployments. Now, they're doing the cloud. So what's different now? What are you guys doing? Share with the audience some of the things that you guys are doing today and you're talking about at Sapphire this week? >> You know I think one of the big changes and I, one of the things I'm always curious of is time, and over generations, how the element of time has changed. And in the old days, when you talked about the Big Six or the Big Eight, it was probably more about implementations. It was more about how do I get this software to actually run and do something for me. And while that's still an important element that has to get done, a lot of it today is really about innovation. And it's how does SAP and how do our business partners help our customers innovate their business. So it's not just about implementing a piece of financial software. It's about how do they innovate their business so that they can create a competitive advantage for themselves. So I look at it and say, implementations are important. And we absolutely have to go do that. But if we don't help our customers innovate then they might as well just be standing still because our competition or somebody that doesn't even exist yet is going to come up with an idea or a way to go do something that's going to pass them by. >> It's interesting too that the global challenge is obviously very effective in terms of obviously, delivering value to the market. But it's interesting, you have a customer who has a customer. Your customer, customer, customer. So it's like three levels down, but the partner's closed to the customer. So Peter said something on Monday, I thought it was interesting about the trend we're on. I want to get your thoughts on this and how it relates to the innovation piece. In the old days, it was known processes. You used unknown technologies that were being figured out to automate those processes, deliver those technologies, accounting, ERP. Now you have unknown processes developing with known technology. >> Michael: Sure. >> And technology's obviously getting developed more and more. But the unknown processes, like IoT, these are used cases where it's a complete digital transformation on the workflow. So it's kind of unknown. So this is where the innovation comes in. I want to get your thoughts, what innovation aspects do you see and processes are developing that are getting a clear line of sight for the partners? Obviously, Big Data is one, we see that all the time. But what would you share? What insights? Spend a minute to talk about that. >> Yeah, I, it's a great, I'm glad, it's a great question because I believe that this is one of the big differentiators that SAP is bringing to the market in that, we talked, I talked a little bit about time and the importance of getting information on a real-time basis. It's interesting, I learned from one of my colleagues this morning that the R in our earlier products was for real time. But their perspective on real time was the fact that it wasn't on punch guards. I mean this was at the beginning of our company, and you think about where we are today. For our customers, when they innovate the business, and you look at things like the Internet of Things and you want that connectivity, it's not good enough to connect to the systems they have today because if I can't process that data in real time, then it doesn't, what do I do with it? What service can I provide to my customer? And that's part of the innovation or the enabling of innovation that SAP brings to the table with, as for HANA. It's the fact that, not only can I help you connect those devices, those Internet of Things, but I can help you do something with those devices, do it in real time and provide that feedback directly to you, as an organization, and to your customer immediately. >> And what's interesting too on the ecosystem playing, this is highlighted as well. And I want to get your thoughts on is as the, these discoveries come up, people in the trenches who see customer needs in a vertical or a domain, specific expertise, set, they see an opportunity to innovate then they got to actually program it. So they need a developer approach. >> Michael: Absolutely. >> So the developer approach becomes a pretty big deal so now they see an opportunity of problem to obstruct the way, the complexity and deliver it. So again, time is important. But they have to program it. It makes you break software. >> Peter: Yeah. >> So take a step back and say, "Okay. How long is that going to take?" So what's interesting, the ecosystem you guys are putting together is a time to value equation. What's the perspective on that? I mean cause that becomes now a developer cloud concept, the cloud from the servers and the ecosystem. What are you guys seeing there? And what used cases can you share? >> I'll give you a real live example for me and what we do and how we operate our business with our global business partners. When we decide to go to market with a global systems integrator to address this specific business problem, it's important for us to be able to track and measure whether what we're doing is being effective or not. If we create some sort of a campaign that distributes that message to our customers or our prospects, how many of them come forth or actually interested in it, and do we create business opportunity? And once we've created a business opportunity, we get it closed. Now we really want to track and measure where is it in the implementation? When do they go live? Once they've gone live, let's create a story so we can share that with the rest of the marketplace so that people can see the value that other customers are getting for what we do. We didn't really have a system to be able to track that. I came into this role about two years ago, and for the first year, we took something we had and we sort of got the duct tape out and we wrapped it up and we used it to do the best that we could. But we realized it really wasn't adequate for what we wanted to go do. So we actually contracted with one of our business partners. And we had them develop an application for us utilizing HANA Cloud platform. So it's a HANA Cloud platform-based application. It's fully integrated with our CRM system. And the beauty of it is, in the old world, if you didn't look at the innovative tools that SAP has available today, if you went back to the old way of doing things, it probably would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. >> Peter: And you wouldn't have gotten it done? >> We would not, well, and that's part of the reason why we didn't have anything. >> That's right. >> That's because we could never get it done. >> That's right. >> So we contract with one of our business partners who is an expert with HANA Cloud platform, and they developed an application for us in literally weeks. >> John: That's awesome. >> We defined our business requirements. We used, we used our own technology, worked with a third-party company, that's a business partner to go develop an application that solves a business problem. Yeah, now we had to go through the exercise of defining what our business requirements were. But the fact that we could do that, and we were able to do it economically, that's one of those big differences between the way that we used to do things and the way that we can do things today. And that's the important message for our customers is that if you have to take months or years and spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get things done, your competition will pass you by. Somebody you don't know even know exists today will pass you by. We need to enable them, so that they can be innovative, they can be quick. And they can respond to the requirements that are happening in the marketplace so that they can create their own innovations. We did that for ourselves. We used our own technology to get it done. >> But the other thing I'm presuming, I'll bet you, well, let me put it this way, there's been a consistent theme here that the platform approach allows that back end, that traditional SAP, that stable, that secure, that compliant foundation, that it allows innovation to occur in a way that doesn't freak out the IT organization. >> Michael: Exactly. >> And when I say that you probably weren't going to be able to get it done a few years ago is that someone within the IT organization would have come and whacked you with a hammer. But because you're using your own technology, and this is a test, this is the question, to what degree were you no longer, did you no longer have to run that traditional gauntlet of getting it up and running and into production and integrated with the rest of the system? >> Yeah, so we hadn't spoken about this before. >> Peter: Yes. >> And your question's great because I'd indicated that there was a solution that we had. I hesitated using the word solution because it really wasn't designed for what we were trying to go do. It was built on technology from somebody else. It wasn't built on SAP technology. And there were probably two driving factors to move off of that system. Number one, it didn't adequately meet our business requirements. But number two, the IT department said the clock is ticking. >> Yeah. >> We'll only support this for so long. You need to move to HANA, and you need to utilize SAP tools in order to get the support that you're looking for. So in some respects, we were forced to go do it. But we were able to embrace and adopt the new technologies that we have available. And by doing that, we got ourselves back into something that was standard, that our IT operation could support. And get it done much more quickly and get it much, done much more economically, where in the past, we could never get it done. >> So one of the things that's been occurring here at, on TheCUBE over the past couple of days, John, we have a lot of interviews with a lot of people that are part of the overall ecosystem. And SAP has an enormous amount of talent that's devoted to try and drive the productivity and the success and the value of partners and the whole ecosystem for customers. As you look forward, when you think about collaboration, you heard Hasso talk this morning about some of the new tech, in his keynotes, some of the new technologies, some of the ways, that's going to be, that's going to make it easier for smart, high quality, high-success people to work together. Talk a little bit about how you think technology's going to make it easier for you to work with all of the SAP experts and folks who are trying to bring value to the ecosystem for customers. >> Yeah, so today, pretty much all of our global systems integrators are creating innovation centers that will allow them to take advantage of these tools and to quickly develop and deploy assets that will help customers solve specific business problems. And so I believe what we'll be able to have, and I'm envisioning one in particular that happens to be in the same town that I live in, we will be able to work very, very quickly with that organization and integrate that group on a global basis. So it doesn't matter if the business problem is in the United States or if the business problem is in Asia Pacific or in Latin America. We can create those assets in a single location and deploy them anywhere across the globe. And it's interesting when I go around the globe and I meet with business partners, sometimes the challenge that they have is to understand all of the assets that are available within their own organization. And with the way that they're setting up these, and some of them will call them solution centers, some of them will call them innovation centers. But essentially, these centers of excellence, where they had the ability to bring the right resources together, who have the industry knowledge, they have the line of business knowledge. They've got the technical expertise that they can develop these kinds of solutions, that could be deployed in the cloud and can be deployed anywhere across the globe. >> Big buzz this week has been the Apple announcement. >> Sure. >> Obviously, that's going to impact you guys cause it's one great sexy announcement. Everyone loves Apple. They have billions in the cash, 2/3 overseas. But then you guys are global company, Hope we take advantage of that. That's going to bring a lot of attention to the ecosystem and more, and certainly put a spring in the step for developers. That's going to attract a non-SAP set of... >> Michael: Yeah. >> Folks. Yet you guys have an open choice model where you can buy SAP end to end, do all the greatness and goodness of SAP. But for the most part, you might get new customers. How is that impacting the game? Cause that's now, opens to SAP. You have the ecosystem up to a boat load of new opportunities. How are you guys structured for that? What's your thoughts on that? How are you guys organizing and capture that opportunity? Are you going to double down the marketing budgets and go all in? Cause Apple, you've got a window of opportunity. The wind's at your back on this one. >> Michael: Sure. >> So it's great opportunity. How are you organizing it? And how are you taking that to market? >> I think that one of the things certainly, as we work with our business partners especially, it's not about just working with them where they have their SAP expertise. That's not, they're not the only people that communicate either with our customers or with prospects. People who aren't our customers. And so one of the things that we're really trying to do is to ensure that where they have digital practices, and those digital practices aren't necessarily within the SAP practice at all. A matter of fact, they're not. It's really working in collaborating with them and helping them understand how the SAP today has the ability to work with them and to work with customers who haven't necessarily implemented anything of SAP today, whether you're the smallest enterprise or you're the largest global corporation, we have solutions that we can jointly come in together and solve business problems. >> And the consumerization of IT's happening, so that's certainly, is an exclamation point on that. >> Yeah, I thought Hasso's example today was outstanding. Because it took something that he's absolutely got on his app and say you wouldn't be able to do this any other way. >> Peter: That's right. >> And to be able to open SAP up... >> John: It's huge. >> To the user regardless of whether it's somebody just walking down the street or it's somebody within the four walls of the corporation and to be able to use those Apple devices in order to access that information and to make decisions that have an impact on what they do day in and day out, it's pretty significant. >> I mean, I mean it's going to be a competitive advantage for you guys. And I think one of the things that's not being discussed heavily, maybe because it's one of those things people don't like to talk about is money making, huge money making opportunity, exposing the SAP customer base to all those white space developer opportunities could be... >> Sure. >> Fantastic. >> Yeah, well yeah. And it also opens it up to a set of developers who may not have historically even looked at developing on an SAP platform. >> Michael, thanks so much for spending the time on TheCUBE. We really appreciate great conversations, great insights, sharing the data here on TheCUBE. TheCUBE ecosystem's growing at a new CUBE alumni, Michael, welcome to TheCUBE, appreciate it. We're live here at SAP Sapphire. You're watching TheCUBE. (chill-out music)