>> Announcer: Live from the Javits Center in New York City It's theCube covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Inforum. >> Welcome back to theCube's coverage of Inforum 2017 here in New York City. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Dave Ballante. We're joined by Mike Rodgers. He is the CSIO of Pilot Flying J. Thanks so much for coming on theCube. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit about Pilot Flying J and your relationship with Inforum. >> So Pilot Flying J is a travel center. We cater to basically over the road truckers and we do have a big gas business too. We operate about 700 locations. Most of them are owned fully by Pilot Flying J. Some of them are dealers where they have a relationship with us. They're in our network but we don't know them. So we run the majority of the locations and we own about 40% of the overall road diesel market. >> Rebecca: In the US and Canada? >> In the US and Canada. >> Okay and talk about your relationship with Inforum. >> So our relationship with Inforum really goes back to Lawson. I've been with the company for about two years. We run Lawson. David Clo-thy will tell you probably 25 years. The company has very rapidly. Started off as a small little Tennessee company. Well now it's a rather large company and we felt we knew we had to make a change relative to our human capital management and our financial systems is because we basically outgrew it. And we like to write a lot of things so we wrote a lot of applications out of our desperate sylo. And of course it's a lot of technical debt that goes along with them. So when I start with the company. We started on valuation process and picked for as the partner to replace all of our financial systems, and all of our human capital management systems. >> And so you migrating from traditional legacy lawson to the cloud suite. >> Pretty much, I would characterize it as a migration but we had very little in the vein of human capital management. And what we did have, we wrote ourselves. For example, we wrote our own applicant tracking system, which we'll of course have to integrate into lawson. So we have an integration layer that we have to support there and that's just one. There was a slide put up this morning that showed that we're going to eliminate 26 systems that we either bought as the best of breed type of application or we wrote ourselves. >> So how painful is that? Is that why you-- >> It's extremely painful. >> They brought you in for this task and you obviously knew this coming in or just-- >> Oh I knew this coming in. >> Dave: No surprise. >> No surprise and by the way, pilot is no different than a lot of other retailers in other companies out there. We've got a lot of technical there and I will tell you the more I see about Inforum. The more I think we made the right decision. I really like the cloud strategy. I'd like the integration associated with all the different functions specifically within the HCM suite. It's not a roll up like some of the other guys have rolled up. They bought but whether it's PeopleSoft or whatever and they many talk about it being integrated, bit it's not as integrated as the Inforum suite. >> So if I may, sorry. We want to stay on the migrations for a second because it's non-trivial and people. The conundrum of migrations is nobody wants to do them because it's just such a heavy lift. But the longer you wait, the more technical debt you accrue. >> I use to say you have to get off the treadmill. You have to stop and say we're not going to keep digging ourself in this ditch and it's going to be painful. It's going to be expensive. It's going to be disruptive and I use to say the (indistinct speaking) usually get fired. That really is, I might say that laughingly but-- >> Dave: You got a got attitude about-- >> It's hard, okay. It's a hard thing not just for the IT guys. It's a hard thing for the organization with respect to change management. >> So incredible amount of planning obviously. You knew your freezing code. >> Pretty much because why would we continue to develop something. I wouldn't say we were 100% frozen. Things come out especially in HR where there's a regulation thing. >> Dave: Compliance, right. >> Right compliance and you got to do it so we got pretty good at saying we're not going to, we're going to wait for Inforum. And we've got a lot of it implemented. We're continuing. We got a nice plan. An iterative plan, we're not trying to blow the ocean and convert everything all at once. Very good engagement from the business. We have a lot of business partners here with us. Like the IT representation at this conference. It's the smallest compared to the business. >> So I would think a key there though is because when you freeze code. It slows your business down, but then when you actually go to the new platform. You want to be able to move faster and leap frog your competition. >> I would argue that really, because we really didn't have much. It really hasn't slow much down. Where we had to do something from a compliance perspective, we've done it. But it hasn't really slowed us down. The leap frog that we're going to do when we implement the whole cloud suite is going to be enormous. >> Sorry about. >> I wanted you to step back a little bit and tell our viewers about some of the specific HCM challenges you have and what you, talk about the pain, I guess is what I want you to describe. >> We run travel service. We're open 365 days a year, 24/7. They never close. They're all on food operations. >> Rebecca: Of the three quick services food operations. >> It could be up to three. If we don't have three in every stores someone said that. We may have one in every store plus a deli operation that we run ourselves and we actually create the food. Whether it's pizza, meatloaf whatever the truck drivers really want with respect to our food offering. They want something different, more variety. So yeah, it's a very complex business. It's hard and we're very spread out throughout the country. We're not necessarily in a big cities like New York. you're not going to see a pilot in New York City. You're going to see a pilot or a flying J on major interstates throughout the country. So there were spread out. So connecting with our team members has been a challenge for us. And our owner Jimmy Haslam will tell you that we probably have not any give himself a vibe. And we are connecting with the team member so we're doing a lot to facilitate that connection. We'd actually partner with the Disney Institute to help us with that. And we've actually called Inforum for project connect. So it's going to provide that connection platform to those team members that are spread throughout the country and Canada for that matter. That we don't get to see that very often, if ever. >> We're hearing a lot at the keynote retail has been highlighted a lot and Pilot J is a form of retail in that sense. And talking about how important it is for the customer experience. The trucker themselves who come in to apply at Pilot Flying J. >> Our strategy is focused on making it a great place to work. In other words, doing the right things for our team member and the investment at Inforum is really going to provide that platform. The other part is making it a great place to shop, and we want our customer to come back. Okay we sell a commodity, let's face it. We sell diesel. You can buy it down the road. We want the experience when they come into our store. We want to take care of our guest like nobody else takes care of them. We got a truck driver. There was an article written in New York Times but you don't throw away people. These guys, you got it, you're wearing it. Your tie, your shirt, whatever came on a truck, and these guys, they're great people. I've talked to a million of them. We want to be the place where they come that feels like home and we want to make a better day for the truck or the driver. It's a tough job. They work hard. They're waking their families. When they come into a pilot. It should feel like somewhat of an oasis. >> Right so, it's super clean I understand. >> Yeah, we try to make them clean. Remember If you're a truck driver and you're away for week's on end. You're going to shower at our locations and so the showers are cleaned and maintained after every shower. Nobody gets in a dirty shower. The rest it's challenging. We have 3000 people come through our doors every day at every location so it's challenging to keep the rest rooms in particular clean. But the showers are cleaned before anybody gets in them. >> And you own the real estate or you lease it? >> We own. >> Dave: Really. >> I'm sure we lease some of this. I've got a question for Dave. We own most of our-- >> But your in the real estate business too. >> Oh yeah. We're definitely in the real estate business. >> What about the data? How is the way in which you use data evolving? >> It's evolving very rapidly and we are a data rich company especially with respect to the professional driver which is the majority of our profitable business. They scan their loyalty card whenever they come. We have a 92% swipe rate and that's because they use those points to buy food, buy showers. >> Rebecca: They're rewarded. >> They're rewarded and it's lucrative to them. They're managing a business so they use that as currency. So that data provides us with the ability to solve. We needed utility along the customer journey. For example, we may know when a guy needs a shower and we may have a fuel buying advantage at a certain location. Offer them a free shower if he fuels at location X because it's beneficial for him and us. Okay we're going to give him a free shower or a free slice of pizza if we feel we have an advantage with respect to purchasing petroleum. >> You're building loyalty. >> Right and builds loyalty so that's on the customer side. >> Rebecca: That's the nudge they need to walk in-- >> To be able to use our digital platforms, our digital properties to take the data and drive behavior, and loyalty. It's really about loyalty. We want to give good things to our loyal customers, take good care of them and solve the problems they have. 'Cause they'll come back. And Jimmy says we want them to come back. He says it and we do things that are going to solve the problem they have. They're going to come back because it's the least friction. >> Are you using data for the logistics in any way, for these truckers in other ways? >> Yeah, that's not Inforum, however well for the truckers. We're using logistics with respect to how we procure petroleum. And I'm probably not going to get into a lot of that because we feel it's a competitive thing there with respect to how we do it. And we are investing a good bit of money into how we procure and manage how we distribute petroleum to our various locations. >> That's a data lever. You got advantage better than-- >> That's where a lot of data reach and we can use data very effectively. >> So data literally is oil. We had a guest on. >> Well data is abundant insights aren't necessarily so that's where you're making money. You've mentioned before Mike that you said you are more confident after you go through this migration, but Inforum was the right decision. What gives you that confidence? Can you double click on that? >> Yeah, it's a couple of things. Number one, and we talked about the technical debt right. So lifting everything to the cloud give me a unique opportunity to eliminate the technical debt 'cause we're not going to write it. We're going to stay current on the latest release of the software. Whereas if you looked around here, everybody will tell you they're behind releases, releases, releases on enterprise software that they've purchased from somebody else that's not in the cloud. So number one elimination of technical debt and staying current on the existing platforms. You really can't customize it. You can customize it within the tool so with the customization or configuration or extensibility carries along as they operate the software. That's the biggest events and I think being in the cloud. I was showing some data to my boss the other day regarding how our infrastructure investment has gone up. Really been able to manage the actual investment with the number of servers, VMware and all that we're running has grown exponentially. That's 'cause we hadn't retire anything. We're going to, with Inforum we're retire 26 platforms. They're going away. They'll be out of the infrastructure and it will be in the cloud. I don't have to manage anymore. >> You're getting rid of stuff, wow. >> Mike: Getting rid of it. >> GRS recall, that never happens in IT. >> I took personal responsibility for the decommissioning aspect of the project. >> I'm going to ask you another IT question is that latest release because you're in the cloud and you're multi-tenet, you have to go essentially into the next release. Does that create down stream problems for you. How do you plan for that? >> Well we're new into it, okay. We're working with Inforum on that and it's perfect now but they get it. We got to be careful when we make the release so we can be prepared for it. So far there have been upgrades and it's been nerve racking. A new release of code that we hadn't really tested or whatever but I think we'll get that route resolved. I said it's new, we got to become efficient in how that happens. We need a little bit of prior notice. >> Dave: Forced agile. >> Yeah, forced agile. Here it comes. (laughing) >> There's a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence here at Inforum. Where would you say Pilot Flying J is with regard to using artificial intelligence as part of your workforce. Giving your workers access to it and also more tools to make the right decision at the right time. >> I think it's at the stage now where it's really cool and it's somewhat of a buzz thing. AI when machine learning. I think it's going to be very relevant and probably not the too distant future. It's not on my immediate road map to worry about artificial intelligence. We thought about doing a project with IBM on fuel procurement and pricing with Lawson. It's just really not quite ready yet. What we can develop is deep insights with the data we have to make better decisions, and put power in the hands of our pricing team or our logistics team to make really good decisions. I think that's for us. Let's get that perfected and then we talked about the voice recognition that we heard yesterday. That I think is imminent and I think it's important for us and it's going to be on our road map because as a truck driver. I'm driving and if I can have the ability to ask questions of our app and purvey information back to that driver, without him having to touch his phone. There's a value of that. Most that has to be architected through the right type of data. How we structure our data to be able to access via natural speech but it is something that is on our road map. >> How large is your IT organization? Roughly. >> In number of people? >> Dave: Yeah. We have about 250 people in our IT organization but we do have a significant use of partners. >> And they're distributed or? >> No, they're in Tennessee. And for the notes popping now we use offshore resources with certain integration partners. We have a couple primary integration partners that we're using. >> So reason I'm asking so as you move to this cloud sass platform. How are you thinking about protecting your data and is it changing. >> It's a good question. And all of a sudden, for awhile there I think we do a great as securing it. We invested a significant amount of money protecting our data. I think I'd be naive to say that we could do a better job than Amazon web services. >> Dave: I would agree, no offense. >> And I think one of the gentleman was speaking yesterday said the same thing. And one of my guys looked at me says that's what we've been saying. I think there's always a risk. Security is a big deal especially with what's happened with one-acry and the subsequent problem. There's going to be more. I think that Amazon could be on top of it. I think together we can do a good job on security. It doesn't worry me anymore than it worries me everyday with respect to my own infrastructure. And it does worry me just not anymore. >> Great, well Mike, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a really enlightening conversation. >> Okay, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Ballante. We'll have more from Inforum in a little bit. (uptempo piano music)

>>from Santa Clara, California. In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the queue covering altitude 2020. Brought to you by aviatrix. >>Next panel is the aviatrix certified engineers, also known as Aces. This is the folks that are certified their engineering. They're building these new solutions. Please welcome Toby Foster Informatica Stacy Linear from terror data. And Jennifer read with Victor Davis to the stage. >>So we're gonna show you a jacket. Yeah, I get it. >>I was just gonna I was just gonna really rib you guys. See? Where's your jackets? And Jen's got the jacket on. Okay. >>Good. Love. The aviators. Aces, Pilot gear. They're above the clouds. Storage to new heights. So guys, aviatrix pace is love the name. I think it's great. Certified. This is all about getting things engineered. So that level of certification I want to get into that. But first take us through the day in the life on a SAS. And just to point out, Stacy's a squad leader. So he's He's like Squadron leader, quadrant leader, quadrant leader. So it's got a bunch of pieces underneath him, but share your perspective day in the life. We'll start with you. >>Sure, So I have actually a whole team that works for me both in the in the North America, both in the U. S. And in Mexico. And so I'm eagerly working to get them certified as well, so I can become a squad leader myself. But it's important because one of the critical gaps that we found is people having the networking background. Because there you graduate from college and you have a lot of computer science background. You can program. We've got python, but now working and packets they just don't get. And so just taking them through all of the processes that it's really necessary to understand when you're troubleshooting is really critical. And, um, because you're going to get an issue where you need to figure out where, exactly is that happening on the network, you know, is by my issue just in a vpc is on the instant side is a security group or is it going on prim? And is this something actually embedded within Amazon itself? I mean, I trouble shot an issue for about six months going back and forth with Amazon, and it was the VW VPN because they were auto scaling on two sides, and we ended up having to pull out the Cisco's and put in aviatrix so I could just say OK, it's fixed and actually actually help the application teams get to that and get it solved. But I'm taking a lot of junior people and getting them through that certification process so they can understand and see the network The way I see the network, I mean, look, I've been doing this for 25 years, but I got out when I went in the Marine Corps. That's what I did and coming out The network is still the network, but people don't get the same training they get. They got >>just so he just write some software that takes care of itself, but we'll come back to that. I want to come back to that problem solve with Amazon, but I think the only thing I have to >>add to that is that it's always the network as long as I've been in. Networking has always been the network's fault. If you're in the I'm even to this day, you know, still, networks fault, and part of being a network guy is that you need to prove when it is and when It's not your fault. And that means you need to know a little bit about 100 different things. Make that >>And now you got a full stack. Dev Ops, you know, a lot more time. Another 100 times are changing your squadron leader. I get that right. What is? What is the squadron leader first? Could you describe what it is? I think probably just leading off with network components of it. But they from my perspective when you think about what you asked them was it's about no issues and the escalations off my days like that. That's a good outcome. That's a good day. Is a good day's a good day for you. Mention the Amazon. This brings up a good point when you have these new waves come in. You have a lot of new things. New use cases, a lot of the finger point against that guy's problem that girls problems. So what? How do you solve that? And how do you get the young guns up to speed? Is there training is that this with a certification comes in, >>whatever the certification is really going to come in I know when we, uh, we got together at reinvent one of the questions that that we had with with Steven the team was What? What should our certification look like? You know, she would just be teaching about what aviatrix troubleshooting brings to bear. But what should that be like? And I think Toby and I was like, No, no, no, no, that's going a little too high. We need to get really low because the better someone can get actually understanding what's actually happening in the network and where to actually troubleshoot the problem, how to step back each of those processes. Because without that, it's just a big black box and they don't know, you know, because everything is abstracted in Amazon and a Net and Azure and Google, it's abstracted in there. These virtual gateways they have VPN is that you just don't have the logs on is you just don't know. And so then what tools can you put in front of them of where they can look because there are full logs? Well, as long as they turned on the flow logs when I built it, you know, and there's like each one of those little things that well, if they had decided to do that when they built it, it's there. But if you can come in later to really supplement that with training to actual troubleshoot and do a packet capture here as it's going through the teaching them how to read act. Even >>so, we were talking before we came on up on stage about your career. You've been networking all your time, and then, you know, you're no mentoring a lot of younger people. How is that going? Because the people who come in fresh, they don't have all the old war stories they don't talk about, You know, it's never fall. I walk in bare feet in the snow when I was your age, so easy now, right? They say, What's your take on how you train the young piece? >>So I've noticed two things. One is that they are up to speed a lot faster in generalities of networking. They can tell you what network is in high school level now where I didn't learn that until midway through my career, and they're learning it faster, but they don't necessarily understand why it's that way here, you know, everybody thinks that it's always slash 24 for a submit, and they don't understand why you can break it down. Smaller. What? It's really necessary. So the ramp up speed is much faster for these guys that are coming in, but they don't understand why. And they need some of that background knowledge to see where it's coming from. And why is it important? And that's old guys. That's where we thrive. >>Jennifer, you mentioned you got in from the Marines helps. But when you got into networking, how what was it like that? And compare it now? Almost like we heard earlier. Static versus Dynamic. Don't be static. And then you just set the network. You got a perimeter? >>Yeah. No, there was no such thing. Yeah, no. So, back in the day, I mean, yeah, I mean, we had banyan vines for email, you know, we had token ring and I had to set up token ring networks and figure out why that didn't work. Because how many of things were actually sharing it, But then actually, just cutting fiber and running fiber cables and dropping them over, you know, shelters to plug them in, and Oh, crap. They swung it too hard and shattered. And I got a great polish this thing and actually shoot like to see if it works. I mean, that was the network crypt. Five cat, five cables to run an Ethernet, you know? And then from that to set network switches. Dumb switches like those were the most common ones you had then, actually configuring routers and, you know, logging into a Cisco router and actually knowing how to configure that. And it was funny because I had gone all the way up. It was a software product manager for a while, So I've gone all the way up the stack. And then, ah, two and 1/2 3 years ago, I came across, too, to work with NTT Group that became Victor Davis. But we went to help one of our customers, Avis, and it was like, Okay, so we need to fix the network. Okay, I haven't done this in 20 years, but all right, let's get to it, you know, because it really fundamentally does not change. It's still the network. I mean, I've had people tell me Well, you know, when we go to containers, we will not have to worry about the network. And I'm like, Yeah, you don't I >>dio. And then with this with program ability is really interesting. So I think this brings up the certification. What are some of the new things that people should be aware of that come in with the aviatrix? A certification? What are some of the highlights? Can you guys share some of the highlights around certifications? >>I think some of the importance is that its it doesn't need to be vendor specific for network generality or basic networking knowledge. And instead of learning how Cisco does something or how Palo Alto does something, we need to understand how and why it works as a basic model and then understand how each vendor has gone about that problem and solve it in a general. That's true in Multi Cloud as well. You can't learn how cloud networking works without understanding how AWS and Measure and GC P r. All slightly the same, but slightly different and some things work and some things don't. I think that's probably the number one take. >>I think having a certification across clouds is really valuable because we heard the global outside of the business issues. What does it mean to do? That code is that networking is the configurations that aviatrix what is the state matrix is a certification, but what is it about the multi cloud that makes it multi networking and multi vendor? But the >>easy answer is yes, >>yes, it's >>all got to be a general. Let's get your hands and you have to be >>right. And it takes experience because it's every every cloud vendor has their own certification. Um, whether that stops and, um, advanced networking and events, security or whatever it might be. Yeah, they can take the test, but they have no idea how to figure out what's wrong with that system in the same thing with any certification. But it's really getting your hands in there. And actually having to troubleshoot the problems, you know, actually work the problem, you know, and calm down. It's going to be OK because I don't know how many calls I've been on or even had aviatrix join me on. It's like, Okay, so everyone calm down. Let's figure out what's happening. It's like we've looked at that screen three times looking at it again. It's not going to solve that problem, right, But at the same time, remaining calm. But knowing that it really is, I'm getting a packet from here to go over here. It's not working. So what could be the problem, you know, and actually stepping them through those scenarios. But that's like, you only get that by having to do it, you know, and and seeing it and going through it. And >>I have a question. So, you know, I just see it. We started this program maybe six months ago. We're seeing a huge amount of interest. I mean, where oversubscribed on all the training sessions, we've got people flying from around the country, even with Corona virus flying to go to Seattle to go to these events were over >>subscribed. Good is that originally they would put their Yeah. Is >>that something that you see in your organizations? Are you recommending that two people do you see? I mean, I'm just I guess I'm surprised. I'm not surprised, but I'm really surprised by the demand, if you would of this multi cloud network certification. Is there really isn't anything like that? Is that something you guys could comment on? That do you see the same things in your organization I see from >>my side Because we operate in a multi cloud environments that really helps. It's beneficial. Yeah, >>I think I would add that, um, networking guys have always needed to use certifications to prove that they know what they know. It's not good enough to say. Yeah, I know. I p addresses are I know how the network works and a couple little check marks. Our little letters by your helps give you validity. So even in our team, we can say, Hey, you know, we're using these certifications to know that you know enough of the basics and enough of the understandings that you have the tools necessary, >>right? So I guess my final question for you guys is why and a certification is relevant. And then second part is share with Livestream folks who aren't yet a certified or might want to jump in to be aviator certified engineers. Why is it important? So why is it relevant? And why should someone want to be a certified engineer? >>I think my V is a little different. I think certification comes from proving that you have the knowledge not proving that you get a certification to get. I mean, they're backwards. So when you've got the training and the understanding in the you use that to prove and you can, like, grow your certification list with it versus studying for a test to get a certification and have no understanding of >>that. So that who is the right person that look at this and saying I'm qualified is a network engineer. Is that a Dev ops person? What your view? Is it a certain >>you know, I think Cloud is really the answer. It's the as we talked like the edge is getting eroded. So is the network definition getting eroded? We're getting more and more of some network. Some develop some security lots and lots of security. Because network is so involved in so many of them, that's just the next progression. >>You want to add something there, I would say expand that to more automation engineers because we have those now, so I'm probably extended >>Well, I think the training classes themselves are helpful, especially the entry level ones for people who maybe quote unquote cloud architects. But I've never done anything in networking for them to understand why we need those things to really work, Whether or not they go through it. Eventually get a certification is something different. But I really think fundamentally understanding how these things work. It makes them a better architect. Make some better application developer, but even more so as you deploy more of your applications into the cloud. Really getting an understanding even from our people have tradition down on Prem networking. They can understand how that's gonna work in the cloud. >>I know we've got just under 30 seconds left. I want to get one more question than just one more for the folks watching that are maybe younger than I don't have. The networking training from your experience is, each of you can answer. Why should they know about networking? What's the benefit? What's in it for them? Motivate them, share some insights and why they should go with the deeper and networking space we'll start with. You know, I would say it's probably fundamental right after delivery solutions networking. Use the very top. I >>would say. If you fundamental of an operating system running on a machine, how those machines talk together, um, is a fundamental change is something that starts from the base and work your way up. >>Well, I think it's a challenge because you've come from top down. Now you're going to start looking from bottom up, and you want those different systems to cross, communicate and say you built something and your overlapping eyepiece space. Not that that doesn't happen. But how can I actually make that still operate without having to re? I re platform? It's like those challenges, like those younger developers or Cisco engineers can really start to get their hands around and understand those complexities and bring that forward in their careers. >>And, you know, the pipes are working plumbing. >>That's right. >>And they know how it works. How to code it. >>That's right. >>Awesome. Thank you, guys for great insights. Ace certified engineers, also known as aces, give a round of applause. >>Yeah, Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Okay, alright, that >>concludes my portion. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for having >>on. Thank you very much. That was fantastic. Everybody >>running with John Furrier. Yeah. So Great event. Great event. I'm >>not gonna take along with that. We got lunch outside for the people here. Just a couple of things. I just called action, right? So we saw the aces. You know, for those of you out of the stream here, become a certified. It's great for your career. Is great for not knowledge is is fantastic. It's not just an aviatrix thing. It's going to teach you about cloud networking, multi cloud networking with a little bit of aviatrix, exactly what the Cisco CC IE program was for I p Network. That type of the thing that's number one second thing is, is is learn, right? So there's a There's a link up there for the for to join the community, get like I started this. This is a community. This is the kickoff to this community, and it's a movement. So go to what may be community dot IBM dot com. Starting a community of multi cloud. So you get trained learn. I'd say the next thing is we're doing over 100 seminars in across the United States and also starting into Europe. Soon we will come out and we'll actually spend a couple hours and talk about architecture and talk about those beginning things. For those of you on the you know, on the live stream in here as well. You know, we're coming to a city near you. Go to one of those events. It's a great way to network with other people that are in the industry as well is to start to learn and get on that multi cloud journey. And then I'd say the last thing is, you know, we haven't talked a lot about what aviatrix does here, and that's intentional. We want you, you know, leaving with wanting to gnome or and schedule get with us and schedule a multi our architecture workshop sessions. So we we sit down with customers and we talk about where they're at in that journey and, more importantly, where they're going and define that end state architecture from networking, compute storage, everything and everything you've heard. Today. Every panel kept talking about architecture, talking about operations. Those are the types of things that we saw. We help. You could define that canonical architecture that system architecture, that's yours. So for so many of our customers, they have three by five plotted lucid charts, architecture, drawings, and it's the customer name slash aviatrix our network architecture, and they put it on the whiteboard that's what we and that's the most valuable thing they get from us. So this becomes there 20 year network architecture, drawing that. They don't do anything without talking us. And look at that architecture. That's what we do in these multi hour workshop sessions with customers. And that's super super powerful. So if you're interested, definitely call us. And let's schedule that with our team. So anyway, I just want to thank everybody on the livestream. Thank everybody here. Hopefully it was It was very useful. I think it waas and join the movement. And for those of you here, join us for lunch and thank you very much. >>Yeah, >>yeah, yeah.

(electronic music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada it's the Cube! Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by The Cube! >> Hello, welcome back. Cube exclusive coverage here in Toronto for the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference. Two days of wall-to-wall with the Cube. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Valante, we're initiating this Blockchain coverage to all 2018 Cube events all around the world. You'll see us more and more talking to the most important people. Excited to have, here at The Cube, San Kim, CEO of Lucidity. on the front page of siliconangle.com, our journalism team, with news. Also doing the really interesting Blockchain advertising, if you can believe what that could be. We know about Brave and the attention token, a lot of activity going around on what is the benefit to the user around advertising. Certainly having having immutability and data might be interesting. Sam, welcome to The Cube >> Thank you. >> So, first of all, big news today on Silicon Angle. We covered you guys, you guys announced a strategic investor. >> Yes. >> What's the hard news? >> Yeah, well, thank you for covering us today. Today we announced our initial funding and our strategic investor is Pythia. Pythia represents the hard chain foundation, and so we're really excited about this opportunity, We believe our chain represents an incredible advancement of base protocol layers and so, we're looking, we'll be supporting them as we go forward, as we work closely with Pythia, our chain, and that community. >> Tell me about what you guys offer taken specific context, folks may or may not be familiar with what you do. What's the basic premise of your opportunity, technology and problems that you solve, and how do you use Blockchain for that? Yeah, so, we started, we were a digital advertising protocol. Effectively, we are a shared ledger for the digital advertising ecosystem, and if you know digital advertising, it operates at a tremendous scale. And so we have to build this Layer 2 technology that sits on top of the traditional, the base layer protocols, like Ethereum and Archain. In order to address the three challenges. The three challenges, one being scalability, the second is difficulty in sharing privacy, and the third is the high overhead cost of decentralizing a network. And so we've built this Layer 2 technology that uses a plasma sidechain, and we use something called a time series database, that solves those three problems. And, we're looking to support additional chains, in addition to Ethereum, and so obviously our chain is a natural extension for us. >> Yeah, and you guys obviously get, we cover you guys from a broad perspective, that's a big problem in advertising. >> But are you guys charting the user value proposition, or the digital marketer or agency proposition, or both? >> Yeah, so we're not trying to tokenize digital advertising. Our token is basically used internally as a proof of stake token. So, the advertiser, we're asking them to pay in fiat, and we convert that into a stable coin. And on our current instincts, it's the Dai token by MakerDAO. And so, what we are trying to solve is the transparency issue, that's rampant in the supply chain. So for example, when you run a digital ad today, you use anywhere from seven to 15 vendors, and those vendors, each of them have their own database, and they never communicate that data across to each other, and so there's discrepancies, and it also opens itself up to a lot of fraud. And so the industry is a 225 billion dollar industry, and the industry itself estimates that there's, like, 30% of that money is wasted. And a lot of that is because there's no reconciliation of that data, there's no transparency, and so we've created this protocol layer, for all 15 vendors to submit their data. And, in real time, we can understand, which impressions were valid, which ones were fraudulent, and, well, not just transparency, but now that we as industry participants don't have to argue with one another, we'll start to trust one another, and then we can move the industry forward. >> In the market it'll adjust the pricing as a result of that as well, right? >> Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and it's just about identifying where is the value created, right? So if you're a value creator in the supply chain, you could probably estimate that, the advertiser's going to eliminate the less valuable ones, and focus on the valuable and the adding ones. So basically, if you're fraudulent, like yeah, you might get hurt, but the real adders will benefit from it. >> Just to clarify a question, you talked about the overheads of decentralizing advertising. I infer from that that an advertising supply chain, by its inherent nature is decentralized? Or are you talking about more of a disruptive model? Can you explain? >> Yeah, so we're not re-creating a whole ecosystem, >> Right >> We're interoperable with the existing architecture. >> Which, is decentralized by its very nature, you're saying, or...? >> No, no, no, it's not decentralized >> Okay >> It's very centralized, like all the metrics are controlled by a few players. >> So it's no seven people in the supply chain, that form that central entity... >> Yes, it's all central entities, and we're asking them to submit their data, into this shared ledger, that works across all of the different industry structures. >> So it is disrupting that... >> Oh, it's highly disruptive in terms of that, but we're not trying to re-create the infrastructure like a lot of other blockchain architect companies. >> Oh, I see, so you're tapping into the existing, and you're providing good auditing, I imagine with this, right, so the benefit might be auditing. So give an example of how that would render itself. >> Yeah, so, one of the areas that we're focused on today, is just looking at the impressions, in a programmatic ad buying. And so, let's say, let's just focus, instead of talking about the 15 vendors, let's just talk about the four. The four is the advertiser, is the DSP, which is basically the buying platform, the SSP, which also represents the exchange, and then the publisher. Now there is, we were asked that all four submit their data into the smart contract, and we verify whether that impression was valid. If you think of a fraudulent example, like a bot, they will not be able to mimic the data across the whole supply chain. And so because we're looking at the data wholistically, rather than just the slices of it, we can identify those fraudulent behaviors. >> This is the benefit of horizontally scalable, integrated systems. Cloud can help you, Blockchain helps you. How's the uptake been? Give us an update on who's involved, what's been the successes, and how's your success going? >> So we've been really excited to work with the IAB, and the IAB stands for the Interactive Advertisement Bureau. They're the bodies that set standards in digital advertising and we're working very closely with them. We launched our pilot, the first official pilot with the IAB, and we have great advertisers that are working with us, we're working with a lot of the agencies, we're actually even working closely with the publishers, and the ad networks, and the exchangers. AppNexus is one of the major partners with us, and the reception's been really positive because I think everybody wants that transparency. >> Well, some of the status quo might not want that transparency, I mean, let's face it, right? >> The fraud is rampant, it really is. >> A 220 billion dollar industry, I betcha there's a lot of people in it that are like, oh boy, here comes lucidity! I mean, come on, what about that? >> I'm sure that exists, but we haven't really come across it because the advertiser, at the end of the day, has become really aware that there is this rampant fraud, there is this waste. And I don't want to attribute everything to fraud, I think some of it is just wasted, because of the quality of the data. And so, the advertiser is demanding and at the end of the day, we're here to serve the advertiser, right? We're here to deliver value to the advertiser, and I think the industry is mature enough now, to where we recognize that. And so we don't think of transparency as a threat to the business anymore. We think of it as a value enhancement to our customer, the advertiser. >> Yeah, and I would personally totally agree with that, because as I said, the market will correct itself. Higher quality advertising is going to deliver more revenue, ultimately, alone, because there's going to be better outcomes. Right, so if you can increase your hit rate, you'd be happy to lower the clicks, you know? >> Is there any benefit for publishers? >> Yeah, I mean, publishers today have to basically trust what their partners are paying them. There's no way for them to verify and validate it. And so, with our system, we enable publishers to look into, it's our sidechain, right? And so, they are able to look at the events, but we obscure the data, we hash the data that's there so that we make it anonymous. But then they're able to see, like, okay, these are the impressions I've manned, here are the ones that were considered valid and verified, and here's what I should get paid. So the publishers now get the transparency, that which they lack today. >> So much of that industry is a black box, you might have a big media buyer, who's got voodoo, you know, that sprinkles magic dust, sends you a big bill, and you're like whoa! Is this really worth it? >> Bots, fake traffic.. >> You can automate a lot of that... >> And you've been doing this for 20 years! This has been the status quo for 20 years! >> We need a change. So, talk about the company, how big, how much funding did you actually owe? Is it privately funded, what's the funding mechanism? How big are you guys, what's the story? >> So today we announced that we raised five million dollars, we did it in traditional means. We did not do an ICO. >> Venture capital? >> It's a mix of venture capital, and obviously Pythia is the fund for our chain, so, but it was an equity deal. And that's the brow we're going to continue with. We do have an internal token, but we are not looking at doing a public sale. >> So not a security token, preferred stock, classic funding. >> So wait, so you did a security token? >> No no, no, preffered stock, classic venture capital. Well, great! Yeah, that's awesome, congratulations. We'll keep in touch, it's great to have you come on. >> Thank you very much >> Thanks very much, appreciate the time. >> And thank you for covering us! >> Of course! We love innovative things, in advertising specifically because it's freaking broken, big time! We have no advertising on our site, because we want to get the best content possible. Of course, the Cube is supported by sponsors, we appreciate that. Thanks for coming on. Cube coverage here in Toronto for watching futurists, we'll be right back, stay with us, as we start to wind down day one. Be right back with more great interviews after this break. (light-hearted techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this special CUBEConversation here in the Palo Alto CUBE studio. I'm John Furrier, the co-host, theCUBE co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media. In theCUBE we're here with Alan Cohen, CUBE alumni, joining us today for a special segment on the future of technology and the impact to society. Always good to get Alan's commentary, he's the Chief Commercial Officer for Illumio, industry veteran, has been through many waves of innovation and now more than ever, this next wave of technology and the democratization of the global world is upon us. We're seeing signals out there like cryptocurrency and blockchain and bitcoin to the disruption of industries from media and entertainment, biotech among others. Technology is not just a corner industry, it's now pervasive and it's having some significant impacts and you're seeing that in the news whether it's Facebook trying to figure out who they are from a data standpoint to across the board every company. Alan, great to see you. >> Always great to be here, I always feel like, I can't tell whether I'm at the big desk at ESPN or I've got the desk chair at CNBC, but that's what it's like being on theCUBE. >> Great to have you on extracting the signal noises, a ton of noise out there, but one of things of the most important stories that we're tracking is, that's becoming very obvious, and you're seeing it everywhere from Meed to all aspects of technology. Is the impact of technology to people in society, okay you're seeing the election, we all know what that is, that's now a front and center in the big global conversation, the Russian's role of hacking, the weaponizing of data, Facebook's taking huge brand hits on that, to emerging startups, and the startup game that we're used to in Silicon Valley is changing. Just the dynamics, I mean cryptocurrency raises billions of dollars but yet (laughs) something like 10, 20% of it's been hacked and stolen. It's a really wild west kind of environment. >> Well it's a very different environment. John, you and I have been in the technology industry certainly for a whole bunch of lines under our eyes over the years have gone there. My friend Tom Friedman has this phrase that he says, "Everybody's connected and nobody's in control," so the difference is that, as you just said, the tech industry is not a separate industry. The tech industry is in every product and service. Cryptocurrency is like, the concept of that money is just code. You know, our products and services are just code, it raises a couple of really core issues. Like for us on the security point of view, if I don't trust people with the products they're selling me, that I feel like they're going to be hacked, including my personal data, so your product now includes my personal information, that's a real problem because that could actually melt down commerce in a real way. Obviously the election is if I don't trust the social systems around it, so I think we're all at an, and I'd like to say world is still kind of like iRobot moment, and if you remember iRobot, it's like, people build all these robots to serve humankind and then one day the robots wake up and they go, "We have our own point of view on how things are going to work" and they take over, and I think whether it's the debate about AI, whether cryptocurrency's good or bad, or more importantly, the products and services I use, which are now all digitally connected to me, whether I trust them or not is an issue that I think everyone in our industry has to take a step back because without that trust, a lot of these systems are going to stop growing. >> Chaos is an opportunity, I think that's been quoted many times, a variety-- >> You sound like Jeff Goldblum in like Jurassic Park, yeah. (laughing) >> So chaos is upon us, but this is an opportunity. The winds are shifting, and that's an opportunity for entrepreneurs. The technology industry has to start working for us but we've got to be mindful of these blind spots and the blind spots are technology for good not necessarily just for profits, so that also is a big story right now. We see things like AI for good, Intel has been doing a lot of work on that area, and you see stars dedicated to societal impact, then young millennials, you see the demographic shift where they want to work on stuff that empowers people and changes society so a whole kind of new generation revolution and kind of hippie moment, if you look at the 60s, what the 60s were, right? >> Well there's people out in the street protesting, right? There were a couple of million women out in the street this weekend, so we are in that kind of moment again, people are not happy with things. >> And I believe this is a signal of a renaissance, a change, a sea change at enormous levels, so I want to get your thoughts on this. As technology goes out in mainstream, certainly from a security standpoint, your business Illumio is in that now where there's not a lot of control, just like you were mentioning before we came on that all the spends happening but no one has more than 4% market share. These are dynamics and this is not just within one vertical. What's your take on this, how do you view this sea change that's upon us, this tech revolution? >> Well, you know, think about it. You and I grew up in the era where clients server took over from main frame, right? So remember there was this big company called IBM and they owned a lot of the industry, and then it blew up for client server and then there were thousands of companies and it consolidated its way down, but when those thousands of new companies, like you didn't know what was going to be Apollo and what was going to be Oracle right? Like you didn't know how that was going to work out, there was a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty. I think now we're seeing this on a scale like that's 10x of this that there's so much innovation and there's so much connectedness going on very rapidly, but no one is in control. In the security market, you know, what's happening in our world is like, people said, okay I have to reestablish control over my data, I've lost that control, and I've lost it for good reasons, meaning I've evolved to the cloud, I've evolved to the app economy, I've done all of these things, and I've lost it for bad reasons because like am I, like I'm not really running my data center the way I should. We're in the beginning of a move in of people kind of reasserting that control, but it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle because the world itself is so much more dynamic and more distributed. >> It's interesting, I've been studying communities and online communities for over a decade in terms of dynamics. You know, from the infrastructural level, how packets move to a human interaction. It's interesting, you mentioned that we're all connected and no one's in control, but you now see a ground swell of organic self-forming networks where communities are starting to work together. You kind of think about the analog world when we grew up without computers and networks, you kind of knew everyone, you knew your neighbor, you knew who the town loony was, you kind of knew things and people watch each other's kids and parents sat from the porch, let the kid play, that's the way that I grew up, but it was still chaotic but yet somewhat controlled by the group. So I got to ask you, when you see things like cryptocurrency, things like KYC, know your customer, anti money laundering, which is, you know these are policy based things, but we're in a world now where, you know, people don't know who their neighbors are. You're starting to see a dynamic where people are-- >> Put the phone down. >> Asserting themselves to know their neighbor, to know their customer, to have a connected tissue with context and so your trust and reputation become super important. >> Well I think people are really, so like every time there is a shift in technology, there's scary stuff. There's the fuddy-duddy moment where people are saying, "Oh we can't use that," or "I don't know that," and you know, clearly we're in this kind of new kam-ree and explosion of this cloud mobile blah blah blah type of computing thing and ... Blah blah blah is always a good intersection when you don't have a term. Then things form around it, and just as you said, so if you think about 25 years ago, right, people created The WELL and there was community writing first bulletin boards and like now we have Facebook and you go through a couple of generations and for a while, things feel out of control and then it reforms. I personally am an optimist. Ultimately I believe in the inherent goodness of people, but inherent goodness leaves you open and then, you know, could be manipulated, and people figure these things out. Whether it's cryptocurrency or AI, they are really exciting technologies that don't have any ground rules, right? What's going to happen I believe is that people are going to reestablish ground rules, they're going to figure out some of the core issues, and some of these things may make it, and some of these things may not make it. Like cryptocurrency, like I don't know whether it makes it or not, but certainly the blockchain as a technology we're going to be incorporating in what we do, and maybe the blockchain replaces VPNs and last generation's way of protecting zeros and ones. If AI is figuring out how to read an MRI in five minutes, it's a good thing, and if the AI is teaching you how to exclude old folks for me finding jobs, it's a bad thing. I think as technology forms, there's always Spectre and 007, right? There's always good and bad sides and you know, I think if you believe-- >> I'm with you on that. I think value shifts and I think ultimately it's like however you want to look at it will shift to something, value activity will be somewhere else. Behind me in the bookshelf is a book called The World is Flat and you're quoted in it a lot as a futurist because you have inherently that kind of view, well that's not what you do for a living, but you're kind of in an opt-- >> Alan: Marketing, futurist, kind of same thing. >> Thomas Friedman, the book, that was a great book and at that time, it was game changing. If you take that premise into today where we are living in a flat world and look at cryptocurrency, and then over with the geo political landscape, I mean I just can't see why the Federal Reserve wouldn't reign in this cryptocurrency because if Japan's going to control a bunch of, or China, it's going to be some interesting conversations. I mean I would be like all over that if I was in the Federal Reserve. >> I think people-- Look, cryptocurrency's really interesting and I think people a little over-rotated. If you look at the amount of GDP that's invested in cryptocurrency, it's like, I don't know, there might've been, you know 20 years ago the same amount involved invested in Beanie Babies, right? I mean things show up for a while and the question is is it sustainable over time? Now I'm trained as an economist, you and I have had this conversation, so I don't know how you have a series of monetary without kind of governmental backing, I just don't understand. But I do understand that people find all kinds of interesting ways to trade, and if it's an exchange, like I mean what's the difference between gold and cryptocurrency? Somebody has ascribed a value to something that really has no efficacy outside of its usage. Yeah I mean you can make a filling or bracelets out of gold but it doesn't really mean anything except people agree to a unit of value. If people do that with cryptocurrency, it does have the ability to become a real currency. >> I want to pick your perspective on this being an economist, this is is the hottest area of cryptocurrency, it's also known as token economics, is a concept. >> Alan: Token economics. >> You know that's an area that theCUBE, with CUBE coins, experimenting with tokens. Tokens technically are used for things in mobile and whatnot but having a token as a utility in a network is kind of the whole concept, so the big trend that we're seeing and no one's really talking about this yet is instead of having a CTO, Chief Technology Officer, they're looking for a CEO, a Chief Economist Officer, because what you're seeing with the MVP economy we're living in and this gamification which became growth hack which didn't really help users, the notion of decentralized applications and token economics can open the door for some innovation around value and it's an economic problem, how you have a fiscal policy of your token, there's a monetary policy, what's it tied to? A product and a technology, so you now have a now a new, twisted, intertwined mechanism. >> Well you have it as part of this explosion, right? We're at a period of time, it feels like there's a great amount of uncertainly because everything's, you know, there's a lot of different forces and not everybody's in control of them, and you know, it's interesting. Google has this architecture, they call it BeyondCorp, where the concept is like networks are not trusted so I will just put my trust in this device, Duo Security's a great example of a company that's built a technology, a security technology around it which is completely antithetical to everything we know about networks and security. They're saying everything's the internet, I'll just protect the device that it's on. It's a kind of perfect architecture for a world like where nobody is in charge, so just isolate those, buy this, what is a device? It's a token too, it's a person, your iPhone's your personal token. Then over time, systems will form around it. I think we just have to, we always have to learn how to function in a different type of economy. I mean democracy was a new economy 250 years ago that kind of screwed around with most of the world, and a lot of people didn't think it would make it, in fact we went through two World War wars that it was a little on the edge whether democracy was going to make it and it seems to have done okay, like it was pretty good IPO to buy into. You know, in 1776. But it's always got risks and struggles with it. I think if, ultimately it comes together, it's whether a large group of people can find a way to function socially, economically, and with their personal safety in these systems. >> You bring up a great point, so I want to go to the next level in this conversation which is around-- >> Alan: You've got the wrong guy if you're going to the next level because I just tapped out. >> No, no, no we'll get you there. It's my job to get you there. The question is that everyone always wants to look at, whether it's someone looking at the industry or actors inside the industries across the board, mainly the tech and we'll talk about tech, is the question of are we innovating? You brought up some interesting nuances that we talk about with token economics. I mean Steve Jobs had the classic presentation where he had street signs, technology meets liberal arts. That's a mental image that people who know Steve Jobs, know Apple, was a key positioning point for Apple at that time which was let's make computers and technology connect with society, liberal arts. But we were just talking about is the business impact of technology, the economics, and that's just not like just some hand waving, making technology integrate with business. You're in the security business, There are some gamification technology, gamification that's business built into the products. So the question is, if we have the integration of business, technology, economics, policy, society rolling into the product definitions of innovation, does that change the lens and the aperture of what innovation is? >> I think it does, right? The IT industry's somewhere between three and four trillion dollars depends on how it counts in. It grows pretty slowly, it grows by a low single digit. That tells me as composite, like is that, that slow growth is a structural signal about how consumers of technology think in a macro sense. On a micro sense, things shift very rapidly, right? New platforms show up, new applications show up, all kinds of things show up. What I don't think we have done yet, to your point, is in this new integrated world, the role of technology is not just technology anymore. I don't think, you know you said you need Chief Economical Officer, what about Chief Political Officer? What about a Chief Social Officer? How many heads of HR make decisions about the insertion of systems into their business? And that's what this kind of iRobot concept is in my mind which is that you know, we are exceeding control of things that used to be done by human beings to systems and when you see control, the social mores, the political mores, the cultural mores, and the human emotional mores have to move with it. We don't tend to think about things like that. We're like, "I win and my competitors lose." Like technology used to be much more of a zero sum, my tech's better than yours. But the question is not just is my tech better than yours, is my customer better off in their industry for the consumption of my technology of inserting it into their offering or their service? You know what, that is probably going to be the next area of study. The other thing that's very important in whether, any of you have read Peter Thiel's book Zero to One, the nature of competition technology used to feel like a flat playing field and now the other thing that's rising is do you have super winners? And then what is the power of the super winners? So you mentioned whether it's Facebook or Google or Amazon or you know, or Microsoft, the FANG companies right? Their roles are so much more significant now than the Four Horsemen of the Nasdaq were in 2000 when you had Intel and Cisco and Oracle and Saht-in it's a different game. >> You're seeing that now. That's a good point, so you're reinforcing kind of this notion that the super players if you will are having an impact, you're mentioning the confluence of these new sectors, you know, government, policy, social are new areas. The question is, this sounds like a strategic imperative for the industry, and we're early so it's not like there's a silver bullet or is there, it doesn't sound like there, so to me that's not really in place yet, I mean. >> Oh no. We're not even in alpha. We have demo code for the new economy and we're trying to get the new model funded. >> John: That's the demo version, not the real version. It's the classic joke. >> Yeah this not the alpha or the beta version that like you're going to go launch it. If people think they're launching it, I think it's a little preliminary and you know, it's not just financial investment, it's like do I buy in? I'll tell you something that's really interesting. I've been visiting a bunch of our customers lately and the biggest change I'd say in the last two years is they now have to prove to their customers they're going to be good custodians of their data. Think about that, like you could go to any digital commerce you do, any website you use and you give them basically the ticket to the Furrier family privacy, you do, but you don't spend a lot of time questioning whether they're really going to protect your data. That has changed. And it's really changing in B2B and in government organizations. >> The role of data to us is regulation, GDPR in Europe, but this is a whole new dynamic. >> It's not just my data because I'm worried about my credit card getting hacked, I'm worried about my identity. Like am I going to show up as a meme in some social media feed that's substituted for the news? I don't want to use the FN word, but you know what I mean? It is a really brave new world. It's like a hyper-democracy and a hyper-risky state at the same time. >> We're living in an area of massive pioneering, new grounds, this is new territory so there's a lot of strategic imperatives that are yet not defined. So now let's take it to how people compete. We were talking before we came on camera, you mentioned the word we're in an MVP economy, minimum viable product concept, and you're seeing that being a standard operating procedure for essentially de-risking this challenge. The old way of you know, build it, ship it, will it work? We're seeing the impact from Hollywood to big tech companies to every industry. >> Well you've got a coffee mug for a company that does both. Amazon does MVP in entertainment, like we'll create one pilot and see if it goes as opposed to ordering a season for 17 million dollars to hey, let's try this feature and put it out on AWS. What's interesting is I don't think we've completely tilted but the question is will buyers of technology, of entertainment products, of any product start to say, "I'll try it." You know like, look, I've done four startups and I always know there's somebody I can go to get and try my early product. There are people that just have an appetite, right? The Jeffrey Moores, early adapter, all the way to the left of the-- >> They'll buy anything new. >> They'll try it, they're interested, they have the time and the resources, or they're just intellectually curious. But it was always a very small group of people in the IT industry. What I think that the MVP economy is starting to do is look, I Kickstarted my wallet. I don't know if I'm the only person who bought that skinny little wallet on Kickstarter, it doesn't matter to me, it had appeal. >> What's the impact of the MVP economy? Is it going to change to the competitive landscape like Peter Thiel was suggesting? Does it change the economics? Does it change the makeup of the team? All of the above? What's your thoughts on how this is going to impact? Certainly the encumbrance will seem to be impacted or not. >> I think two things happen. One, it attacks the structural way markets work. If you go back to classical economics, land, labor, and capital, and people who own those assets, now you add information as a fourth. If those guys were around now they would say that would be the fourth core asset, production, I'm sorry, means of production is the term. The people who can dominate that would dominate a market. Now that that's flattened out, you know, I think it pushes against the traditional structures and it allows new giants to kind of show up overnight. I mean the e-commerce market is rife with companies that have, like look at Stich Fix. A company driven by AI, fashions, tries to figure out what you like, sends it to you every month, just had a monster IPO. We invented, by the way the Spiegal Catalog, except like with a personal assistant and you know, it's changed that in just a short number of years. I think two things happen. One is you'll get new potential giants but certainly new players in the market quickly. Two, it'll force a change in the business model of every company. If you're in a cab in any city in the world, I'm not saying whether the app works there or not, Uber and Lyft has forced every cab company to show you here's the app to call the cab. They haven't quite caught up to the rest of the experience. What I think happens is ultimately, the larger players in an industry have to accommodate that model. For people like me, people who build companies or large technology companies, we may have to start thinking about MVPing of features early on, working with a small group, which is a little what the beta process is but now think about it as a commercial process. Nobody does it, but I bet sure a lot of people will be doing it in five years. >> I want to get your take on that approach because you're talking about really disrupting, re-imagining industry, the Spiegal catalog now becomes digital with technology, so the role of technology in business, we kind of talked about the intertwine of that and its nuance, it's going to get better in my opinion. But specifically the IT, the information technology industry is being disrupted. Used to be like a department, and the IT department will give you your phone on your desk, your PC on your desk or whatever, now that's being shattered and everyone that's participating in that IT industry is evolving. What's your take on the IT industry's disruption? >> Well look, it started 20 years ago when Marc Benioff and Salesforce decided to sell the sales forces instead of IT people, right? They went around to the end buyer. I don't think it's a new trend, I think a lot of technology leaders now figure out how to go to the business buyer directly and make their pitch and interestingly enough, the business buyer, if the IT team doesn't get on board, will do that. >> John: Because of cloud computing and ... >> Because of everything. The modern analog I think in our world is that the developers are increasingly in control. Like my friend Martin Casado up in Andreessen talks about this a lot. The traditional model on our industry is you build a product, you launch it, you launch your company, you work with the traditional analyst firms, you try to get a little bit of halo, you get customer references, those are the things you do and there was a very wall structured, for example, enterprise buying cycle. >> And playbook. >> Playbook, and there's the challenger sale and there's Jeffrey Moore and there's like seeing God. You've got your textbooks on how it's been done. As everything turns into code, the people who work with code for a living increasingly become the front end of your cycle and if you can get to them, that changes. Like I mean think about like, you know, Tom wrote about this actually in The World is Flat, like Linux started as a patchy. It didn't start with the IT department, it started with developers and there was the Linux foundation and now Linux is everything. >> There's a big enemy called the big mini computer, and not operating systems and work stations. >> Wiped out whole parts of Boston and other parts of the world, right? >> Exactly, that's why I moved out here. >> You filed client's server out here. >> I filed a smell of innovation. No but this is interesting because this location of industries is happening, so with that, so they also on the analog, so Martin's at Andreessen, so we'll do a little VC poke there at the VCs because we love them of course, they're being dislocated-- >> I don't (mumbles) my investors. >> Well no, their playbook is being challenged. Here's an example, go big or go home investment thesis seems not to be working. Where if you get too much cash on the front end, with the MVP economy we were just riffing on and with the big super powers, the Amazons and the Googles, you can't just go big or go home, you're going to be going home more than going big. >> I think they know that. I mean Dee-nuh Suss-man who's I think Chief Investment Officer at Nasdaq has a very well known talking line that there are half as many public companies as there were 10 years ago, so the exit scenario for our industry is a little bit different. We now have things like acqui-hires, right we have other models for monetization, but I think what the flip side of it is, we're in the-- >> Adapt or die because the value will shift. Liquidity's changing, which acqui-hires-- >> I think the investment community gets it completely and they spend a lot more time with the developer mindset. In fact I think there's been a doubling down focus on technical founders versus business founders for companies for just that reason because as everything turns to code, you got to hang out with the code community. I think there are actually-- >> You think there'll be more doubling down on technical founders? You do, okay. >> Yeah I think because that is ultimately the shift. There are business model shifts, but it's, you know, I mean like Uber was a business model shift, I mean the technology was the iPhone and GPS and they wrote an app for it, but it was a business model shift, so it can be a business model shift. >> And then scale. >> And then scale and then all of those other things. But I think if you don't think about developers when you're in our, and it's like we built Illumio because a developer could take the product and get started. I mean you can, developers actually can write security policy with our product because there's a class of customers, where as not everyone where that matters. There's other people where the security team is in charge or the infrastructure team is in charge but I think everything is based on zeros and ones and everything is based on code and if you're not sensitive to how code gets bought, consumed, I mean there's a GitHub economy which is I don't even have to write the code, I'll go look at your code and maybe use pieces of it, which has always been around. >> Software disruption is clear. Cloud computing is scale. Agile is fast, and with de-risking capabilities, but the craft is coming back and some will argue, we've talked about on theCUBE before is that, you know, the craftsmanship of software is moving to up the stack in every industry, so-- >> I think it's more like a sports league. I love the NBA, right? In the old days, your professional team, you'd scout people in college. Now they used to scout them in high school, now they're scouting kids in middle school. >> (laughs) That's sad. >> Well what it says is that you have to-- >> How can you tell? >> You know but they can, right? I think you know, your point about it craft, you're going to start tracking developers as they go through their career and invest and bet on them. >> Don't reveal our secrets to theCUBE. We have scouts everywhere, be careful out there. (laughs) >> But think about that, imagine it's like there's such a core focus on hiring from college, but we had an intern from high school two years ago. We hire freshman. >> Okay so let's go, I want to do a whole segment on this but I want to just get this point because we're both sports fans and we can riff on sports all day long. >> I'm just not getting the chance >> And the greatness of Tom Brady >> to talk about the Patriots. >> And Tom Brady's gotten his sixth finger attached to his hands for his sixth ring coming up. No but this is interesting. Sports is highly data driven. >> Alan: Yep. >> Okay and so what you're getting at here, with an MVP economy, token economics is more of a signal, not yet mainstream, but you can almost go there and think okay data driven gives you more accuracy so if you can bring data driven to the tech world, that's kind of an interesting point. What's your thoughts on that? >> Yeah I mean look, I think you have to track everything. You have to follow things, and by the way, we have great tools now, you can track people through LinkedIn. There's all kinds of vehicles to tracking individuals, you track products, you track everything, and you know look, we were talking about this before we went on the show right, people make decisions based on analytics increasingly. Now the craft part is what's interesting and I'm not the complete expert, I'm on the business side, I'm not an engineer by training, but look a lot of people understand a great developer is better than five bad developers. >> Well Mark Andris' 10x is a classic example of that. >> There's clearly a star system involved, so if I think in middle school or in high school, you're going to be a good developer, and I'm going to track your career through college and I'm going to try to figure out how to attach. That's why we started hiring freshmen. >> Well my good friend Dave Girouard started a company that does that, will fund the college education for people that they want to bet on. >> Sure, they're just taking an option in them. >> Yeah, option on their earnings. Exactly. >> They are. >> It sounds like token economics to me. (laughs) >> You know you can sell anything. We are in that economy, you can sell those pieces. The good news is I think it can be a great flattener, meaning that it can move things back more to a meritocracy because if I'm tracking people in high school, I'm not worrying whether they're going to go to Stanford or Harvard or Northwestern, right? I'm going to track their abilities in an era and it's interesting, speaking about craft, you know, what are internships? They're apprenticeships. I mean it is a little bit like a craft, right? Because you're basically apprenticing somebody for a future payout for them coming to work for you and being skilled because they don't know anything when they come and work, I shouldn't say that, they actually know a lot of things. >> Alan, great to have you on theCUBE as always, great to come in and get the update. We'll certainly do more but I'd like to do a segment on you on the startup scene and sort of the venture capital dynamics, we were tracking that as well, we've been putting a lot of content out there. We believe Silicon Valley's a great place. This mission's out there, we've been addressing them, but we really want to point the camera this year at some of the great stuff, so we're looking forward to having you come back in. My final question for you is a personal one. I love having these conversations because we can look back and also look forward. You do a lot of mentoring and you're also helping a lot of folks in the industry within just your realm but also startups and peers. What's your advice these days? Because there's a lot of things, we just kind of talked a lot of it. When people come to you for advice and say, "Alan, I got a career change," or "I'm looking at this new opportunity," or "Hey, I want to start a company," or "I started a company," how is your mentoring and your advisory roles going on these days? Can you share things that you're advising? Key points that people should be aware of. >> Well look, ultimately ... I never really thought about it, you just asked the question so, ultimately, I think to me it comes down to own your own fate. What it means is like do something that you're really passionate about, do something that's going to be unique. Don't be the 15th in any category. Jack Welch taught us a long time ago that the number one player in a market gets 70% of the economic value, so you don't want to play for sixth place. It's like Ricky Bobby said, if you're not first, you're last. (John chuckles) I mean you can't always be first, but you should play for that. I think for a lot of companies now, I think they have to make sure that, and people participating, make sure that you're not playing the old playbook, you're not fighting yesterday's battle. Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind said, "There's a lot of money in building up an empire, "and there's even more money in tearing it down." There are people who enter markets to basically punish encumbrance, take share because of innovation, but I think the really inspirational is you know, look forward five years and find a practical but aggressive path to being part of that side of history. >> So are we building up or are we taking down? I mean it seems to me, if I'm not-- >> You're always doing both. The ocean is always fighting the mountains, right? That is the course of, right? And then new mountains come up and the water goes someplace else. We are taking down parts of the client server industry, the stack that you and I built a lot of our personal career of it, but we're building this new cloud and mobile stack at the same time. And you're point is we're building a new currency stack and we're going to have to build a new privacy stack. It's never, the greatest thing about our industry is there's always something to do. >> How has the environment of social media, things out there, we're theCUBE, we do our thing with events, and just in general, change the growth plans for individuals if you were, could speak to your 23 year old self right now, knowing what you know-- >> Oh I have one piece of advice I give everybody. Take as much risk as humanly possible in your career earlier on. There's a lot of people that have worked with me or worked for me over the years, you know people when they get into their 40s and they go, "I'm thinking about doing a startup," I go, "You know when you got two kids in college "and you're trying to fund your 401K, "working for less cash and more equity may not be "the most comfortable conversation in your household." It didn't work well in my household. I mean I'm like Benjamin Button. I started in big companies, I'm going to smaller companies. Some day it's just going to be me and a dog and one other guy. >> You went the wrong way. >> Yeah I went the wrong way and I took all the risk later. Now I was lucky in part that the transition worked. When I see younger folks, it's always like, do the riskiest thing humanly possible because the penalty is really small. You have to find a job in a year, right? But you know, you don't have the mortgage, and you don't have the kids to support. I think people have to build an arc around their careers that's suitable with their risk profile. Like maybe you don't buy into bitcoin at 19,000. Could be wrong, could be 50,000 sometime, but you know it's kind of 11 now and it's like-- >> Yeah don't go all in on 19, maybe take a little bit in. It's the play and run-- >> Dollar cost averaging over the years, that's my best fidelity advice. I think that's what's really important for people. >> What about the 45 year old executive out there, male or female obviously, the challenges of ageism? We're in economy, a gig economy, whatever you want to call, MVP economics, token economics, this is a new thing. Your advice to someone who's 45 who just says "Hey you're too old for our little hot startup." What should they do? >> Well being on the other side of that history I understand it firsthand. I think that you have an incumbent role in your career to constantly re-educate yourself. If you show up, whether you're a 25, 35, 45, 55, or 65, I hope I'm not working when I'm 75, but you never know right? (mumbles) >> You'll never stop working, that's my prediction. >> But you know have you mastered the new skills? Have you reinvented yourself along the way? I feel like I have a responsibility to feed the common household. My favorite part of my LinkedIn profile, it says, "Obedient worker bee at the Cohen household," because when I go home, I'm not in charge. I've always felt that it's up to me to make sure I'm not going to be irrelevant. That to me is, you know, that to me, I don't worry about ageism, I worry about did I-- >> John: Relevance. >> Yeah did I make myself self-obsolescent? I think if you're going to look at your career and you haven't looked at your career in 15 years and you're trying to do something, you may be starting from a deficit. So the question, what can I do? Before I make that jump, can I get involved, can I advise some small companies? Could I work part time and on the weekends and do some things so that when you finally make that transition, you have something to offer and you're relevant in the dialogue. I think that's, you know, nobody trains you, right? We're not good as an industry-- >> Having a good community, self-learning, growth mindset, always be relevant is not a bad strategy. >> Yeah, I mean because I find increasingly, I see people of all ages in companies. There is ageism, there is no doubt. There's financial ageism and then there's kind of psychological bias ageism, but if you keep yourself relevant and you are the up to speed in your thing, people will beat a path to want to work for you because there's still a skill gap in our industry-- >> And that's the key. >> Yeah, make sure that you're on the right side of that skill gap, and you will always have something to offer to people. >> Alan, great to have you come in the studio, great to see you, thanks for the commentary. It's a special CUBEConversation, we're talking about the future of technology impact the society and a range of topics that are emerging, we're on a pioneering, new generational shift and theCUBE is obviously covering the most important stories in Silicon Valley from figuring out what fake news is to impact to the humans around the world and again, we're doing our part to cover it. Alan Cohen, CUBEConversation, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Javits Center in New York City. It's the Cube, covering the Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are wrapping up the Cube's day two coverage of conference here in New York City at Inforum. My name is Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost Dave Vellante. We're joined by Dan Barnhardt. He is the Infor Vice President of Communications. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Yes, thank you for having me. Thank you for being here two days in a row. >> It's been a lot of fun. We've had a great time. So yeah, congratulations, it's been a hugely successful conference, a lot of buzz. Recap it for us, what's been most exciting for you? >> Sure, this was our second year having a forum in New York, which is our home town. I think it was a more exciting conference than last year. We unveiled some incredible development updates, led by Coleman, our AI offering, which is an incredible announcement for us, as well as Networked CloudSuites, which takes the functionality from our GT Nexus commerce network, and bakes it into our CloudSuites, the mission critical industry CloudSuites, that we offer on the Amazon Web Services cloud. Those were really exciting developments, as well as some other announcements we made with regard to product. And then, in addition to product, we had a lot of customer momentum that we shared. Last year, we had customers like Whole Foods and Travis Perkins up here. We continued the momentum with big enterprise customers making big bets on Infor, led by Koch Industries who invested more than two billion dollars this year at Infor, and are now modernizing their human resources and their financial operations with Infor CloudSuites. Moving to the cloud HR for 130,000 employees at Koch Industries which is an incredible achievement for the product, and for cloud HR. And, that's very exciting, as well as other companies like FootLocker, which were recognized with the Innovation Award for our Progress Makers Award. They're using talent science, data science to power their employees, not to power their employees, but to drive their employees towards greater productivity and greater happiness, because they've got the right people in the right fit for FootLocker, that's very exciting. And, of course, Bank of America, our Customer of the Year, which uses our HR solutions for their workforce, which obviously is exceptionally large. >> Yes, there was a great ceremony this morning, with a lot of recognition. So, let's talk a little bit more about Coleman, this was the big product announcement, really the first product in AI for Infor. Tell us a little bit about the building blocks. >> For certain. We have a couple of AI offerings now, like predictive hotel pricing, predictive demand and assortment planning in retail, but we have been building towards Coleman and what we consider the age of networked intelligence for multiple years. Since we architected Infor CloudSuite to run mission critical ERP in the cloud, we developed the capability of having data, mission critical data that really runs a business, your manufacturing, finance, distribution core functions, in the cloud on AWS, which gives us hyper-scale compute power to crunch incredible data. So, that really became possible once we moved CloudSuite in 2014. And then in 2015, we acquired GT Nexus, which is a commerce network that unites, that brings in the 80 percent of enterprise data that lies outside the four walls, among suppliers, and logistics providers, and banks. That unified that into the CloudSuite and brought that data in, and we're able to crunch that using the compute power of AWS. And then last year at Inforum, we announced the acquisition of Predictix, which is a predictive solutions for retail. And when building those, Predictix was making such groundbreaking development in the area of machine learning that they spun off a separate group called Logicblox, just to focus on machine learning. And Inforum vested heavily, we didn't talk a lot about Logicblox, but that was going to deliver a lot of the capabilities along with Amazon's developments with Lex and Alexa to enable Coleman to come to reality. So we were able then to acquire Birst. Birst is a BI program that takes, and harmonizes, the data that comes across CloudSuite and GT Nexus in a digestible form that with the machine learning power from Logicblox can power Coleman. So now we have AI that's pervasive underneath the application, making decisions, recommending advice so that people can maximize their potential at work, not have to do more menial tasks like search and gather, which McKenzie has shown can take 20 percent of your work week just looking for the information and gathering the information to make decisions. Now, you can say Coleman get me this information, and Coleman is able to return that information to you instantly, and let you make decisions, which is very, very exciting breakthrough. >> So there's a lot there. When you and I talked prior to the show, I was kind of looking for okay, what's going to be new and different, and one of the things you said was we're really going to have a focus on innovation. So, in previous Inforums it's really been about, to me anyway, we do a lot of really hard work. We're hearing a lot about acquisitions, certainly AI and Coleman, how those acquisitions come together with your, you know, what Duncan Angove calls the layer cake, you know the wedding cake stack, the strategy stack, I call it. So do you feel like you've achieved those objectives of messaging that innovation, and what's the reaction then from the customer base? >> Without a doubt. I wouldn't characterize anything that we said last year as not innovative, we announced H&L Digital, our digital transformation arm which is doing some incredible custom projects, like for the Brooklyn Nets, essentially money balling the NBA. Look forward to seeing that in next season a little bit, and then more in the season to come. Some big projects with Travis Perkins and with some other customers, care dot com, that were mentioned. But this year we're unveiling Coleman, which takes a lot of pieces, as Duncan said sort of the wedding cake, and puts them together. This has been a development for years. And now we're able to unveil it, and we've chosen to name it Coleman in honor of Katherine Coleman Johnson, one of the ladies whose life was told in the movie Hidden Figures, and she was a pioneer African-American woman in Stem, which is an important cause for us. You know, Infor years ago when we were in New Orleans unveiled the Infor Education Alliance program so that we can invest in increasing Stem education among young people, all young people with a particular focus on minorities and women to increase the ranks of underrepresented communities in the technology industry. So this, Coleman, not only pays honor to Katherine Johnson the person, but also to her mission to increase the number of people that are choosing careers in Stem, which as we have shown is the future of work for human beings. >> So talk a little bit more about Infor's commitment to increasing number to increasing, not only Stem education, but as you said increasing the number of women and minorities who go into Stem careers. >> Certainly. We, you know Pam Murphy who is our chief operating officer, this has been an incredibly important cause to her as well as Charles Phillips our CEO. We launched the Women's Infor Network, WIN, several years ago and that's had some incredible results in helping to increase the number of women at Infor. Many years ago, I think it was Google that first released their diversity report, and it drew a lot of attention to how many women and how many minorities are in technology. And they got a lot of heat, because it was about 30, 35 percent of their workforce was female, and then as other companies started rolling out their diversity report, it was a consistent number between 30 to 35 percent, and what we identified from that was not that women are not getting the jobs, it's that there aren't as many women pursuing careers in this type of field. >> Rebecca: Pipeline. >> Yes. So in order to do that, we need to provide an environment that nurtures some of the specific needs that women have, and that we're promoting education. So we formed the WIN program to do that first task, and this year on International Women's Day in early March, we were able to show some of the results that came from that, particularly in senior positions, SVP, VP, and director level positions at Infor. Some have risen 60 percent the number of women in those roles since we launched the Women's Infor Network just a couple of years ago. And then we launched the Education Alliance Program. We partnered with institutions, like CUNY the City University of New York, the New York Urban League, and universities now across the globe, we've got them in India, in Thailand and China, in South Korea to help increase the number of people who are pursuing careers in Stem. We've also sponsored PBS series and Girls Who Code, we have a hack-athon going on here at Inforum with a bunch of young people who are building, sort of, add-on apps and widgets that go to company Infor. We're investing a lot in the growth of Stem education, and the next generation. >> And by the way, those numbers that you mentioned for Google and others at around 30, 34 percent, that's much better than the industry average. They're doing quote, unquote well and still far below the 50 percent which is what you would think, you know, based on population it would be. So mainly the average is around, or the actual number's around 17 percent in the technology business, and then the other thing I would add is Amazon, I believe, was pretty forthcoming about its compensation, you know. >> Salesforce really started it, Marc Benioff. >> And they got a lot of heat for it, but it's transparency is really the starting point, right? >> It was clear really early for companies like Salesforce, and Amazon, and Google, and Infor that this was not something that we needed to create talking points about, we were going to need to effect real change. And that was going to take investment and time, and thankfully with leadership like Charles Phillips, our CEO, and Marc Benioff were making investments to help make sure that the next generation of every human, but particularly women and minorities that are underrepresented right now in technology, have those skills that will be needed in the years to come. >> Right, you have to start with a benchmark and then know where you're moving from. >> Absolutely, just like if you're starting a project to transform your business, where do you want to go and what are the steps that are going to help you get there? >> Speaking of transforming your business, this is another big trend, is digital transformation. So now that we are at nearing the end of day two of this conference, what are you hearing from customers about this jaunting, sometimes painful process that they must endure, but really they must endure it in order to stay alive and to thrive? >> Without a doubt. A disruption is happening in every industry that we're seeing, and customers across all of the industries that Infor serves, like manufacturing, healthcare, retail, distribution, they are thinking about how do we survive in the new economy, when everything is digital, when every company needs to be a technology company. And we are working with our customers to help first modernize their systems. You can't be held back by old technology, you need to move to the cloud to get the flexibility and the agility that can adapt to changing business conditions and disruptions. No longer do you have years to adapt to things, they're happening overnight, you must have flexible solutions to do that. So, we have a lot of customers. We just had a panel with Travis Perkins, and with Pilot Flying J, who was on the Cube earlier, talking about how their, and Cook Industries our primary investor now, talking about how they're re-architecting their IT infrastructure to give them that agility so they can start thinking about what sort of projects could open up new streams of revenue. How could we, you know, do something else that we never thought of, but now we have the capability to do digitally that could be the future of our business? And it's really exciting to have all the CIOs, and SVPs of technology, VPs of technology, that are here at Inforum talking about what they're doing, and how they're imagining their business. It's really incredible to get a peek at what they're doing. >> You know, we were talking to Debbie earlier. One of the interesting things that I, my takeaway is on the digital transformation, is you know, we always say digital is data and then what we talked about was the ability to traverse industry value change, not just vertically but horizontally. Amazon buying Whole Foods is a perfect example, Amazon's a content company, Apple's getting into financial services. I wonder if you could comment on your thoughts on because you're so deep into micro-verticals, and what Debbie said was well I gave a consumer package good example to a process manufacturing company. And they were like what are you talking about, and she said look, let me connect the dots and the light bulbs went off. And they said wow, we could take that CPG example and apply it, so I wonder when we talk about digital transformation, if you see or can foresee your advantage in micro-verticals as translating across those verticals. >> Without a doubt. We talk about it as adjacent innovation. And Charles points back to an example, way back from the creation of the niche in glass, and how that led to additional businesses and industries like eyeglasses and fire preparedness, and we look at it that way for certain. We dive very deep into key industries, but when we look at them holistically across and we say oh, this is happening within the retail industry, we can identify key functionality that might change the industry of disruption, not disruption, distribution. Might disrupt the distribution industry, and we can apply the lessons learned by having that industry specialization into other industries and help them realize a potential that they weren't aware of before, because we uncovered it in one place. That's happening an awful lot with what we do with retail and assortment planning and healthcare. We run 70 percent of the large hospitals in the US, and we're learning a lot from retail and how we might help hospitals move more quickly. When you are managing life and death situations, if you are planning assortment or inventory for those key supplies within a hospital, and you can make even small adjustments that can have huge impact on patient care, so that's one of the benefits of our industry-first strategy, and the adjacent innovation that we cultivate there. >> I know we're not even finished with Inforum 2017, but we must look ahead to 2018. Talk a little bit about what your goals for next year's conference are. >> For sure. You're correct, we're not finished yet with Inforum. I know everyone here is really excited about Bruno Mars who's entertaining tonight, but we are looking forward to next year's conference as well, we're already talking about some of the innovative things that we'll announce, and the customer journeys that are beginning now, which we'd like to unveil there. We are going to be moving the conference from New York, we're going to move to Washington DC in late-September, September 24th to 27th in Washington DC, which we're very excited about to let our customers, they come back every year to learn more. We had seven thousand people attending this year, we want to give them a little bit of a variety, while still making sure that they can reach, you know, with one stop from Europe and from Asia, cause customers are traveling from all over the world, but we're very excited to see the growth that would be shared. This year, for instance, if you look at the sponsors, we had our primary SI partner Avaap was platinum partner last year. In addition to Avaap this year, we were joined by Accenture, and Deloitte, Capgemini, Grant Thorton, all of whom have built Infor practices over the last 12 months because there's so much momentum over our solutions that that is a revenue opportunity for them that they want to take advantage of. >> And the momentum is just going to keep on going next year in September. So I'll see you in September. >> Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate you guys being here with us for the third year, second year in a row in New York. >> Indeed, thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante, we will have more from Inforum 2017 in a bit.

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California, it's The Cube, covering Big Data Silicon Valley 20-17. (rhythmic music) >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. We're live in Silicon Valley for Big Data SV, Big Data Silicon Valley in conjunction with Strata + Hadoob. This is the week where it all happens in Silicon Valley around the emergence of the Big Data as it goes to the next level. The Cube is actually on the ground covering it like a blanket. I'm John Furrier. My cohost, George Gilbert with Boogie Bond. And our next guest, we have two executives from Zeloni, Ben Sharma, who's the founder and CEO, and Tony Fischer, SVP and strategy. Guys, welcome back to The Cube. Good to see you. >> Thank you for having us back. >> You guys are great guests. You're in New York for Big Data NYC, and a lot is going on, certainly, here, and it's just getting kicked off with Strata-Hadoob, they got the sessions today, but you guys have already got some news out there. Give us the update. What's the big discussion at the show? >> So yeah, 20-16 was a great year for us. A lot of growth. We tripled our customer base, and a lot of interest in data lake, as customers are going from say Pilot and POCs into production implementation so far though. And in conjunction with that, this week we launched what we call a solution named Data Lake in a Box, appropriately, right? So what that means is we're bringing the full stack together to customers, so that we can get a data lake up and running in eight weeks time frame, with enterprise create data ingestion from their source systems hydrated into the data lake and ready for analytics. >> So is it a pretty big box, and is it waterproof? (all laughing) I mean, this is the big discussion now, pun intended. But the data lake is evolving, so I wanted to get your take on it. This is kind of been a theme that's been leading up and now front and center here on The Cube. Already the data lake has changed, also we've heard, I think Dave Alante in New York said data swamp. But using the data is critical on a data lake. So as it goes to more mature model of leveraging the data, what are the key trends right now? What are you guys seeing? Because this is a hot topic that everyone is talking about. >> Well, that's a good distinction that we like to make, is the difference between a data swamp and a data lake. >> And a data lake is much more governed. It has the rigor, it has the automation, it has a lot of the concepts that people are used to from traditional architectures, only we apply them in the scale-out architecture. So we put together a maturity model that really maps out a customer's journey throughout the big data and the data lake experience. And each phase of this, we can see what the customer's doing, what their trends are and where they want to go, and we can advise to them the right way to move forward. And so a lot of the customers we see are kind of in kind of what we call the ignore stage. I'd say most of the people we talk to are just ignoring. They don't have things active, but they're doing a lot of research. They're trying to figure out what's next. And we want to move them from there. The next stage up is called store. And store is basically just the sandbox environment. "I'm going to stick stuff in there." "I'm going to hope something comes out of it." No collaboration. But then, moving forward, there's the managed phase, the automated phase, and the optimized phase. And our goal is to move them up into those phases as quickly as possible. And data lake in a box is an effort to do that, to leapfrog them into a managed data lake environment. >> So that's kind of where the swamp analogy comes in, because the data lake, the swamp is kind of dirty, where you can almost think, "Okay, the first step is store it." And then they get busy or they try to figure out how to operationalize it, and then it's kind of like, "Uh ..." So your point, they're trying to get to that. So you guys get 'em to that set up, and then move them quickly to value? Is that kind of the approach? >> Yeah. So, time to value is critical, right? So how do you reduce the time to insight from the time the data is produced by the date producer, till the time you can make the data available to the data consumer for analytics and downstream use cases. So that's kind of our core focus in bringing these solutions to the market. >> Dave often and I were talking, and George always talk about the value of data at the right time at the right place, is the critical lynch-pin for the value, whether it's an app-driven, or whatever. So the data lake, you never know what data in the data lake will need to be pulled out and put into either real time or an app. So you have to assume at any given moment there's going to be data value. >> Sure >> So that, conceptually, people can get that. But how do you make that happen? Because that's a really hard problem. How do you guys tackle that when a customer says, "Hey, I want to do the data lake. "I've got to have the coverage. "I got to know who's accessing stuff. "But at the end of the day, "I got to move the data to where it's valuable." >> Sure. So the approach we have taken is with an integrated platform with a common metadata layer. Metadata is the key. So, using this common metadata layer, being able to do managed ingestion from various different sources, being able to do data validation and data quality, being able to manage the life cycle of the data, being able to generate these insights about the data itself, so that you can use that effectively for data science or for downstream applications and use cases is critical based on our experience of taking these applications from, say, a POC pilot phase into a production phase. >> And what's the next step, once you guys get to that point with the metadata? Because, like, I get that, it's like everyone's got the metadata focus. Now, I'm the data engineer, the data NG or the geek, the supergeek and then you've got the data science, then the analysts, then there will probably be a new category, a bot or something AI will do something. But you can have a spectrum of applications on the data side. How do they get access to the metadata? Is it through the machine learning? Do you guys have anything unique there that makes that seamless or is that the end goal? >> Sure, do you want to take that? >> Yes sure, it's a multi-pronged answer, but I'll start and you can jump in. One of the things we provide as part of our overall platform is a product called Micah. And Micah is really the kind of on-ramp to the data. And all those people that you just named, we love them all, but their access to the data is through a self-service data preparation product, and key to that is the metadata repository. So, all the metadata is out there; we call it a catalog at that point, and so they can go in, look at the catalog, get a sense for the data, get an understanding for the form and function of the data, see who uses it, see where it's used, and determine if that's the data that they want, and if it is, they have the ability to refine it further, or they can put it in a shopping cart if they have access to it, they can get it immediately, they can refine it, if they don't have access to it, there's an automatic request that they can get access to it. And so it's a onramp concept, of having a card catalog of all the information that's out there, how it's being used, how it's been refined, to allow the end user to make sure that they've got the right data, they can be positioned for their ultimate application. >> And just to add to what Tony said, because we are using this common metadata layer, and capturing metadata every instance, if you will, we are serving it up to the data consumers, using a rich catalog, so that a lot of our enterprise customers are now starting to create what they consider a data marketplace or a data portal within their organization, so that they're able to catalog not just the data that's in the data lake, but also data that's in other data stores. And provide one single unified view of these data sets, so that your data scientists can come in and see is this a data set that I can use for my model building? What are the different attributes of this data set? What is the quality of the data? How fresh is the data? And those kind of traits, so that they are effective in their analytical journey. >> I think that's the key thing that's interesting to me, is that you're seeing the big data explosions over the past ten years, eight years, we've been covering The Cube since the dupe world started. But now, it's the data set world, so it's a big data set in this market. The data sets are the key because that's what data scientists want to wrangle around with, and sling data sets with whatever tooling they want to use. Is that kind of the same trend that you guys see? >> That's correct. And also what we're seeing in the marketplace, is that customers are moving from a single architecture to a distributed architecture, where they may have a hybrid environment with some things being instantiated in the Cloud, some things being on PRIM. So how do you not provide a unified interface across these multiple environments, and in a governed way, so that the right people have access to the right data, and it's not the data swamp. >> Okay, so lets go back to the maturity model because I like that framework. So now you've just complicated the heck out of it. Cause now you've got Cloud, and then on PRIM, and then now, how do you put that prism of maturity model, on now hybrid, so how does that cross-connect there? And a second follow-up to that is, where are the customers on this progress bar? I'm sure they're different by customer but, so, maturity model to the hybrid, and then trends in the customer base that you're seeing? >> Alright, I'll take the second one, and then you can take the first one, okay? So, the vast majority of the people that we work with, and the people, the prospects customers, analysts we've talked to, other industry dignitaries, they put the vast majority of the customers in the ignore stage. Really just doing their research. So a good 50% plus of most organizations are still in that stage. And then, the data swamp environment, that I'm using it to store stuff, hopefully I'll get something good out of it. That's another 25% of the population. And so, most of the customers are there, and we're trying to move them kind of rapidly up and into a managed and automated data lake environment. The other trend along these lines that we're seeing, that's pretty interesting, is the emergence of IT in the big data world. It used to be a business user's world, and business users built these sandboxes, and business users did what they wanted to. But now, we see organizations that are really starting to bring IT into the fold, because they need the governance, they need the automation, they need the type of rigor that they're used to, in other data environments, and has been lacking in the big data environment. >> And you've got the IOT code cracking the code on the IOT side which has created another dimension of complexity. On the numbers of the 50% that ignore, is that profile more for Fortune 1000? >> It's larger companies, it's Fortune, and Global 2000. >> Got it, okay, and the terms of the hybrid maturity model, how's that, and add a third dimension, IOT, we've got a multi-dimensional chess game going here. >> I think they way we think about it is, that they're different patterns of data sets coming in. So they could be batched, they could be files, or database extracts, or they could be streams, right? So as long as you think about a converged architecture that can handle these different patterns, then you can map different use cases whether they are IOT and streaming use cases versus what we are seeing is that a lot of companies are trying to replace their operational analytics platforms with a data lake environment, and they're building their operational analytics on top of the data lake, correct? So you need to think more from an abstraction layer, how do you abstract it out? Because one of the challenges that we see customers facing, is that they don't want to get sticky with one Cloud service provider because they may have multiple Cloud service providers, >> John: It's a multi-Cloud world right now. >> So how do you leverage that, where you have one Cloud service provider in one geo, another Cloud service provider in another geo, and still being able to have an abstraction layer on top of it, so that you're building applications? >> So do you guys provide that data layer across that abstraction? >> That is correct, yes, so we leverage the ecosystem, but what we do is add the data management and data governance layer, we provide that abstraction, so that you can be on PREM, you can be in Cloud service provider one, or Cloud service provider two. You still have the same controls, and same governance functions as you build your data lake environment. >> And this is consistent with some of the Cube interviews we had all day today, and other Cube interviews, where when you had the Cloud, you're renting basically, but you own your data. You get to have a nice ... And that metadata seems to be the key, that's the key, right? For everything. >> That's right. And now what we're seeing is that a lot of our Enterprise customers are looking at bringing in some of the public cloud infrastructure into their on-PRAM environment as they are going to be available in appliances and things like that, right? So how do you then make sure that whatever you're doing in a non-enterprise cloud environment you are also able to extend it to the enterprise-- >> And the consequences to the enterprise is that the enterprise multiple jobs, if they don't have a consistent data layer ... >> Sure, yeah. >> It's just more redundancy. >> Exactly. >> Not redundancy, duplication actually. >> Yeah, duplication and difficulty of rationalizing it together. >> So let me drill down into a little more detail on the transition between these sort of maturity phases? And then the movement into production apps. I'm curious to know, we've heard Tableau, XL, Power BI, Click I guess, being-- sort of adapting to being front ends to big data. But they don't, for their experience to work they can't really handle big data sets. So you need the MPP sequel database on the data lake. And I guess the question there is is there value to be gotten or measurable value to be gotten just from turning the data lake into you know, interactive BI kind of platform? And sort of as the first step along that maturity model. >> One of the patterns we were seeing is that serving LIR is becoming more and more mature in the data lake, so that earlier it used to be mainly batch type of workloads. Now, with MPP engines running on the data lake itself, you are able to connect your existing BI applications, whether it's Tableau, Click, Power BI, and others, to these engines so that you are able to get low-latency query response times and are able to slice-and-dice your data sets in the data lake itself. >> But you're essentially still, you have to sample the data. You can't handle the full data set unless you're working with something like Zoom Data. >> Yeah, so there are physical limitations obviously. And then there are also this next generation of BI tools which work in a converged manner in the data lake itself. So there's like Zoom Data, Arcadia, and others that are able to kind of run inside the data lake itself instead of you having to have an external environment like the other BI tools, so we see that as a pattern. But if you already are an enterprise, you have on board a BI platform, how do you leverage that with the data lake as part of the next-generation architecture is a key trend that we are seeing. >> So that your metadata helps make that from swamp to curated data lake. >> That's right, and not only that what we have done, as Tony was mentioning, in our Micah product we have a self-service catalog and then we provide a shopping cart experience where you can actually source data sets into the shopping cart, and we let them provision a sandbox. And when they provision the sandbox, they can actually launch Tableau or whatever the BI tool of choice is on that sandbox, so that they can actually-- and that sandbox could exist in the data lake or it could exist on a relational data store or an MPP data store that's outside of the data lake. That's part of your modern data architecture. >> But further to your point, if people have to throw out all of their decision support applications and their BI applications in order to change their data infrastructure, they're not going to do it. >> Understood. >> So you have to make that environment work and that's what Ben's referring to with a lot of the new accelerator tools and things that will sit on top of the data lake. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on The Cube. Really appreciate it. I'll give you guys the final word in the segment ... What do you expect this week? I mean, obviously, we've been seeing the consolidation. You're starting to see the swim lanes of with Spark and Open Source and you see the cloud and IOT colliding, there's a huge intersection with deep learning, AI is certainly hyped up now beyond all recognition but it's essentially deep learning. Neural networks meets machine learning. That's been around before, but now freely available with Cloud and Compute. And so kind of a interesting dynamic that's rockin' the big data world. Your thoughts on what we're going to see this week and how that relates to the industry? >> I'll take a stab at it and you may feel free to jump in. I think what we'll see is that lot of customers that have been playing with big data for a couple of years are now getting to a point where what worked for one or two use cases now needs to be scaled out and provided at an enterprise scale. So they're looking at a managed and a governance layer to put on top of the platform. So they can enable machine learning and AI and all those use cases, because business is asking for them. Right? Business is asking for how they can bring intenser flow and run on the data lake itself, right? So we see those kind of requirements coming up more and more frequently. >> Awesome. Tony? >> What he said. >> And enterprise readiness certainly has to be table-- there's a lot of table stakes in the enterprise. It's not like, easy to get into, you can see Google kind of just putting their toe in the water with the Google cloud, tenser flow, great highlight they got spanner, so all these other things like latency rearing their heads again. So these are all kind of table stakes. >> Yeah, and the other thing, moving forward with respect to machine learning and some of the advanced algorithms, what we're doing now and some of the research we're doing is actually using machine learning to manage the data lake, which is a new concept, so when we get to the optimized phase of our maturity model, a lot of that has to do with self-correcting and self-automating. >> I need some machine learning and some AI, so does George and we need machine learning to watch the machine learn, and then algorithmists for algorithms. It's a crazy world, exciting time for us. >> Are we going to have a bot next time when we come here? (all laughing) >> We're going to chat off of messenger, we just came from south by southwest. Guys, thanks for coming on The Cube. Great insight and congratulations on the continued momentum. This is The Cube breakin' it down with experts, CEOs, entrepreneurs, all here inside The Cube. Big Data Sv, I'm John for George Gilbert. We'll be back after this short break. Thanks! (upbeat electronic music)