live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering IBM think 2018 brought to you by IBM hello everyone welcome back to the cube coverage here at IBM think 2018 in Las Vegas Nevada the Mandalay Bay it's a cubes exclusive covers three days of wall-to-wall interviews thought leaders experts entrepreneurs people making an impact and our next guest artists ani who's the co-founder of hosh io h OS h o de Ojo kayo advisor at the pink sky capital he's a cube alumni a walk in off the streets cuz he lives in Las Vegas but very instrumentals are connected to this community because of his pioneering work in in crypto blockchain and the future of money architects great to see you thanks for coming by thank you for having me it's good to be back on the cube great second time and second time yeah only couple we just saw each other the Bahamas the first security token conference yeah I bike on I I be on IBM's really big on supply chain this is their visitor old school you know generations of providing software for businesses b2b and now blockchains their big thing but blockchains yeah pretty straightforward yeah you know you get efficiencies but they're not talking about token economics because they talk about something execs here they're like well that implies the general public in their world thinks cryptocurrency they think Bitcoin so I want to connect the networks together our network IBM's network your network because the melting pot of this trend is really about blockchain cryptocurrency in the sense of the value around tokens and how tokens can be harnessed to capture the values I want to get your perspective as these worlds collide so I think that IBM is doing a great job by spearheading a blockchain movement and they're very they're focusing on the fortune 500 and the key with Fortune 500 companies right now is that they have rooms full of Java developers Java engineers and aetherium is the protocol right now that is most commonly found the majority of icos and token generation events that have occurred to date have all been on etherium x' network and etherium is the most and they found in blockchain however the etherium blockchain the language to build and launch token generation events on aetherium you have to write in a language called solidity and solidity is a new language and iBM has made a smart move by doing everything in Java and JavaScript similar to a lot of the new block chains that are aiming to compete with aetherium and the key distinction just to kind of put it out there when I get your reaction to and get some commentary around is IBM is not competing with public block chains they're looking at a in a different way they're saying hey you know you can have I guess private blockchains I mean it's not a really a dirty word they because they have a different use case correct I think it's very important especially when it comes to things like healthcare you look at the health care industry healthcare records will not be going on public block chains and so the hyper ledger fabric framework may make sense for things that need to be HIPAA compliant for example so reliability is key so what's their jannat like say hashed crafts got a lot of traction in their performance and their speed they got time stamps that's not a native blockchain yet that's kind of getting some traction IBM's got something similar for those markets that require the reliability the performance and the security so help the audience understand IBM's moves here because IBM's conservative so they don't really want to throw the word cryptocurrency out there because it might be misunderstood but this is gonna end up in token economics how are you explaining what the moves ibm's making to the average person that might not know the inside nuances in baseball for say the crypto market I think what's interesting is that iBM has a more mature focus on this space and you know they have direct ties historically to the fortune 500 companies the way others do not and so they've taken a much more sophisticated and a much much more conservative approach you don't see IBM throwing around the word cryptocurrency and that's a smart move because it's about the cryptography that secures block chains in a decentralized ecosystem and it's that the discussion of just tokens and token sales and leveraging tokens as a currency it's a premature time in this entire industry to be having that discussion so although it's going on it's a distraction for IBM you saying yeah because we but it's more interesting for smart contracts to be written that our functional smart contracts that for the first time ever white collared middlemen are being cut out of the picture in a new trustless decentralized ecosystem so talk about where IBM could take this with token economists obviously do you think that it's all leads to some sort of tokenization is that gonna be where the value capture is gonna be how does IBM get there in your mind I think they get there by having fortune 500 companies launch legitimate decentralized applications on their blockchain and that's just what Java JavaScript it's because most fortune 500 companies already have a plethora of Engineers globally that they can simply have start working on IBM's blockchain whereas you don't see that as a risk for IBM no that's that's IBM's advantage because today if the fortune 500 companies aren't building on aetherium whose blockchain mainly because of the learning curve it takes for a current full stack engineer to become a solidity engineer what's the etherium future now obviously they have they're working on lightning seeing some things going on that area the Lightning is Bitcoin is plasma yeah plasma sorry I got them confused so they got to go through the work this and some real work that's got to get done the theory of childs a big developer community the biggest the biggest so do those merge with the IBM communities downstream at some point or is it okay to be separate and does it matter I think they'll remain separate and in this case I I highly doubt that a theory IBM hyper ledger will go down the route that route stock has gone root stock essentially is the etherium virtual machine sidechain to the Bitcoin blockchain enabling smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time and rootstock is a very interesting project however IBM is its own ecosystem and the way in which they're catering to the fortune 500 is extremely intriguing and from Hojo's perspective we want to be auditing smart contracts that are functional that are written by more sophisticated players in the industry centralized ecosystem our main focus is just security auditing and there's gonna be a lot more smart contracts written by more sophisticated players on IBM's blockchain then possibly the other ones right now we have we have not seen a plethora of Fortune 500 companies by any means launching smart contracts on the theorems blockchain and blue chips banks or whatever as they try to disrupt themselves need to get us to partner governments okay so how about for a minute I just take a second to talk about your business I know we covered this at polycon and the Bahamas but for the sake of the context to IBM yeah talk about what you guys are doing we're specifically in the marketplace of partners would you sit if you were parting with IBM and and your role that you could possibly take with IBM so to take a step back quick host show the word itself hosho and means security in japanese and we started this company eight months ago my co-founder yo Kwon and I and our laser focus is blockchain security and being the global leader within the blockchain security space so as far as we see there's new blockchains being made new protocol tokens being launched as well as new tokens being launched as well as do smart contracts being written that are functional for the entire business and no matter what blockchain a smart contract is written on that smart contract is code that has been written and that code has to be audited by a professional third party and we are that professional third party that there's a line-by-line code review of the smart contract and finds all security vulnerabilities and we've been building proprietary tooling to find vulnerabilities faster and faster and faster we do a gas analysis to make sure that that blockchain is not being clogged we conduct the static analysis to find any hidden functionality within the framework of the smart contract and the last part which is very crucial is that yeah very uniquely qualified full stack engineer with a unique QA mindset and a security background who knows the language in which this is coded which currently most projects that were auditing our aetherium ERC 20 tokens written in solidity someone has to marry the source of truth which in the case of an ICO is a white paper and marry the white paper to the smart contract and make sure is the smart contract doing what the white paper says codify the white paper basically this process of auditing is gonna be ever more crucial within the the business that IBM does with Fortune 500 businesses because when a publicly traded company launches a smart contract for a decentralized application security is the highest priority and abilities is where the hackers could come in just be on a time to market getting those smart contract codes written it was fully baked it's irreversible once the smart contract is launched and millions of dollars are gonna go through this smart contract it's been regular practice in the cybersecurity world to type up code and to have it reviewed by a third party auditor we're simply applying the exact same logic to the blockchain space and it's exciting to see more blockchains by sophisticated players like IBM come to fruition and we're looking forward to actual projects from big players around the world launch on IBM's blockchain and hosho is looking to be a preferred partner of IBM's to do all their security work whether it's smart contract auditing or penetration testing and real quick on penetration testing that's our other core service that we provide and penetration testing is both for websites and for crypto currency exchanges in which we're making sure there's no security vulnerabilities within your website and finding every way possible to penetrate your website or your exchange and every time code is changed you open up the doors to more vulnerabilities and so in the crypto currency exchange space right now we're seeing that new exchanges are being made but sophisticated investors don't know if this is a safe place to trade hundreds of millions of dollars or not yeah and so when you got commerce being John I mean IBM as folk as you mentioned is legit and they're doing a great job by the way props to IBM for doing what they're doing they've been in for multiple years now and they're supporting the Apache project they're putting their their weight behind it but these are real-world examples granted supply chain might be boring to some audiences but not to others I mean you're moving real product around this is commerce with digital fingerprints and code and potentially tokens that's a highly gonna accelerate the payment process I mean the notion of clearing goes away it's instant yes this is a highly accelerated money transfer value capture value Tran for environment you can't take me chances yes and security is primal concern and we're excited that companies like IBM value security and this space is one that the dust has yet to settle and what's gonna help the dust settle within the blockchain ecosystem is more priority on security so what's your take if you are gonna give a talk here we're doing talking here in the cube so it's awesome it's gonna be alive and on-demand as well your advice to people saying you know we got a tokenizer our business I need to start with blockchain I can see some areas to create some efficiencies around some inefficient processes and create new business models I got to get started your thoughts my thoughts are take a step back and first evaluate do you have a business what problem are you solving once your business is actually generating some revenue and you've evaluated why the concept of a blockchain could be interesting for your business then pick a blockchain and stick to it and then when you start building on that block chain you've figured out that a token could actually be leveraged within this decentralized application that you're building then you can start figuring out what the token economics of it would actually be I think what people are doing nowadays is rushing to create a token because of their excitement about the fundraising mechanism that an ICO is and an ICO is democratizing to some extent at least global capital raising and I think that fundraising mechanism is not going anywhere that that fundraising mechanism is here to stay however the majority of ICO projects that we're seeing occurring today I don't think these companies will be around in the next couple of years which shows how immature to some extent the industry actually is whereas maybe the projects that are built and launched on IBM's block chains that they develop maybe they're more sophisticated and will be companies that have gone through a more rigorous process of making sure security was a primary concern and they wrote quality code for quality businesses that are actually leveraging decentralization in the appropriate way not the other way around of we want to raise capital so let's invent a reason to have a token or you have a big case right now in Silicon Valley at least is you have companies that are very serious a and B and decided let's do an icy overseer you see and that that's tricky it's not always the right solution when you're saying is don't confuse the ico crazy fundraising arbitrage and new new model to applying supply chain tokens and blockchain to a durable business agreed and on the same token we have people in the space whether they're investors they're lawyers PR firms exchanges they all need to mitigate their risk by keeping security as a concern for them both in-house and for the companies that they're working with yeah lawyers don't want to be doing lawyer work for a company that will turn out to be a scam coin and someone has to do a security audit of that token the same goes for a PR firm a marketer and in exchange exchanges should not be listing tokens that have not gone through a smart contract audit well it's good to know we got a cube alumni here in the cube to help us with our security audit yeah well the answers the life were in a cube interview so do we got one right here I want to just get into in topic you and I were talking of dinner the other night when we had we saw each other a few nights ago about the problem of picks and shovels and tools and maturity in this new emerging area can you um can you just take a minute to explain what that we were talking about there and I thought you had a good point I mean maturity of the space is not mature it's growing it's embryonic but moving fast and there's need for tools let's unpack that just share your thoughts vision so I think that a lot of people have been more excited to join in an IC o---- a token generation event and do more quick money grabs but to me what's more exciting is the infrastructure that's needed for this industry to actually grow and mature an infrastructure is infamously known as picks and shovels because when the gold rush happened the people who made the real money or the people selling the shovels to the gold diggers and what's included in that is businesses like our own hosho which is selling security audits of smart contracts doing penetration testing bringing maturity and making making things less risky for for everybody in this space so we start we see ourselves as selling picks and shovels on the other hand I'll give you an example Goldman Sachs has a trading desk today it's not 24/7 stock market Oh at 9:00 closes at 5:00 what happens tomorrow when a 24/7 crypto currency trading desk is turned on at Goldman Sachs do the traders that are now 24/7 have the appropriate tools and the governance built into software to manage a team of 24/7 traders at Goldman Sachs today when you have traders trading in the stock market they have a plethora of tools that make them snipers and you have certified market technicians telling hedge funds that this isn't gonna go up two points here in three points they're reading candlesticks in the cryptocurrency space it's like poking a stick you go from being a sniper to having a stick find by Wars like a blind man so companies there's a dozen companies that can be made building the infrastructure for just what I just said the governance with four trading floors this is a really good point and I wanted to bring it up because in these emerging markets these white spaces for tools and technology to help the overall trend grow faster has always been a successful man however you mentioned something about the goldman sachs trading this and that is it literally could be turned down overnight right so that's the problem you can accelerate things too fast and not be prepared that seems Oldman honest I'd know Goldman's done a great job at being very much forward-thinking they've been at every money 20/20 since the beginning of that FinTech conference and they're definitely in this pickle this exercise the analogy is a company can turn on a new model fairly quickly faster than the old days which we're taking months and then now you can do it really on a much shorter timeframe that means they potentially could be exposed if they go too fast yeah this is where the ecosystem has to help yeah I think the bulge bracket banks are treading the water very carefully JPMorgan is doing things they're involved with aetherium Z cash - JPMorgan has a lot going on on this front but these are publicly traded monster banks they're not going to take any risks these are they have a they have stockholders to to answer to they have the US government we have over 150 regulatory arms just regulating the finance industry in the United States and so I think it the American citizen citizen is quick to point fingers to bulge bracket banks and those banks are answering to too many regulatory arms this is one of the downsides of the United States right now in general is the increasingly coercive environment of the government ybm certainly got the blue chip company got the the fortune 500 but they also have a marketplace and that's where they could really kind of change the game feeling in those white spaces yeah IBM's marketplace sounds very exciting and my mind just goes to who's handling the security for everything to do with IBM blockchain we're hoping at Osho arch edge thanks for joining us thanks for sharing your your insight here in the queue with an IBM think conference breaking down all the top news that's really around blockchain at AI would date at the sin of the value proposition all being disrupted by new decentralized technologies blockchain being the beginning and a lot more is happening and certainly we're in and bring it to you on the cube no matter where it is will be there I'm John furrow here and Las Vegas for IBM think coverage we'll be back with more coverage after this short break [Music]

>> Narrator: Live from Nassau in the Bahamas. It's The Cube! Covering PolyCon 18. Brought to you by PolyMath. >> Welcome back everyone, we're live here in the Bahamas with The Cube's exclusive coverage of PolyCon 18, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Dave Vellante, both co-founders of SiliconANGLE. We start our coverage of the crypto-currency ICO, blockchain, decentralized world internet that it is becoming. It's the beginning of our tour, 2018. Our next guest is Hartej Sawhney who's the advisor at Pink Sky Capital, but also the co-founder of Hosho.io. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you so much. >> Hey thanks for coming on. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks guys. >> We had a great chat last night, and you do some real good work. You're one of the smartest guys in the business. Got a great reputation. A lot of good stuff going on. So, take a minute to talk about who you are, what you're working on, what you're doing, and the projects you're involved in. >> So first of all, thank you so much for having me, it's really exciting to see the progress of high-quality content being created in the space. So my name is Hartej Sawhney. We have a team based in Las Vegas. I've been based in Las Vegas for about five years. But I was born and raised in central New Jersey, in Princeton. And my co-founder is Yo Sup Quan. We started this company about seven months ago and my co-founder's background was he's the co-founder of Coin Sighter in Exchange out of New York, which exited to Kraken. After that he started Launch Key which exited to Iovation. And prior to this company, my previous company was Zuldi, Z-U-L-D-I .com where we had a mobile point of sale system specifically for high volume food and beverage companies and businesses. So we were focused on Fintech and mobile point of sale and payment processing. So both of us have a unique background in both Fintech and cyber-security and my co-founder Yo, he's a managing partner of a crypto hedge fund named Pink Sky Capital. And he was doing diligence for Pink Sky, and he realized that the quality of the smart contracts he was seeing for deals that he wanted to participate as an investor in, and I'm an advisor in that hedge fund, we both realized that essentially the quality of these smart contracts is extremely low. And that there was nobody in this space that we saw laser focused on just blockchain security. And all the solutions that would be entailed in there. And so we began focusing on just auditing smart contracts, doing a line-by-line code review of each smart contract that's written, conducting a GAS analysis, and conducting a static analysis, making sure that the smart contract does what the white paper says, and then putting a seal of approval on that smart contract to mitigate risk. So that the code has not been changed once we've done an analysis of it, that there's no security vulnerabilities in this code, and that we can mitigate the risks for exchanges and for investors that someone has done a thorough code analysis of this. That there's no chance that this is going to be hacked, that money won't be stolen, money won't be lost, and that there's no chance of a security vulnerability on this. And we put our company's name and reputation on this. >> And what was the problem that is the alternative to that? Was there just poorly written code? Was it updated code? Was it gas was too expensive? They were doing off-chain transactions. I mean what are some of the dynamics that lead you guys down this path? I mean this makes sense. You're kind of underwriting the code, or you're ensuring it or I don't know what you call it, but essentially verifying it. What was the problem? And what were some of the use cases of problems? >> I would say that the underlying problem today in this whole industry, of the blockchain space, is that the most commonly found blockchain is Ethereum. The language behind Ethereum is called Solidity. Solidity is a brand new software language that very few people in the world are sufficient programmers in Solidity. On top of that, Solidity is updated, as a language on a weekly basis. So there are a very limited number of engineers in the world who are full-stack engineers, that have studied and understand Solidity, that have a security background, and have a QA mindset. Everything that I just said does exist on this Earth today and if it does, there's a chance that that person has made too much money to want to get out of bed. Because Ethereum's price has gone up. So the quality of smart contracts that we're seeing being written by even development shops, the developers building them are actually not full-stack engineers, they're web developers who have learned the language Solidity and so thus we believe that the quality of the code has been significantly low. We're finding lots of critical vulnerabilities. In fact, 100% of the time that Hosho has audited code for a smart contract, we have found at least a couple of vulnerabilities. Even as a second or the third auditor after other companies conduct an audit, we always find a vulnerability. >> And is it correct that Solidity is much more easy to work with than say, Bitcoin scripting language, so you can do a lot more with it, so you're getting a lot more, I don't want to say rogue code, but maybe that's what it is. Is that right? Is that the nature of the theory? >> Compared to Bitcoin script, yes. But compared to JavaScript, no. Because Fortune 500 companies have rooms full of Java engineers, Java developers. And now the newer blockchains are being written, are being written on in block JavaScript, right? So you have IBM's Hyperledger program, you have EOS, you have ICX, Cardano, Stellar, Waves, Neo, there's so many new projects that are coming, that all of them are flexing about the same thing. Including Rootstock, RSK. RSK is a project where they're allowing smart contracts to be tied to the Bitcoin blockchain for the first time ever. Right, so Fortune 500 companies may take advantage of the fact that they have Java developers to take advantage of already, that already work for them, who could easily write to a new blockchain, and possibly these new blockchains are more enterprise grade and able to take more institutional capital. But only time will tell. And us as the auditor, we want to see more code from these newer blockchains, and we want to see more developers actually put in commits. Because it's what matters the most, is where are the developers putting in commits and right now maximum developers are on the Ethereum blockchain. >> Is that, the numbers I mean. Just take a step there. So the theory of blockchain. Percentage of developers vis-a-vis other platforms percentages-- >> By far the most is on developed on Ethereum. >> And in terms of code, obviously the efficiencies that are not yet realized, 'cause there's not enough cycles of coding going on, it's evolution, right? >> Yes. >> Seems to be the problem, wouldn't you say? So a combination of full-stack developer requirements, >> Yes. >> To people who aren't proficient in all levels of the stack. >> Yes. >> Just are inefficient in the coding. It's not a ding on the developers, it's just they're writing code and they miss something, right? Or maybe they're not sufficient in the language-- >> It's a new language. The functions are being updated on a weekly basis, so sometimes you copied and pasted a part of another contract, that came from a very sophisticated project, so they'll say to us, well we copied and pasted this portion from EOS, so it should be great. But what that's leading to is either A, they're using a function that's now outdated, or B, by copying and pasting someone else's code from their smart contract, this smart contract is no longer doing what you intended it to do. >> So now Hartej, how much of your capability is human versus machine? >> Yeah I was going to ask that. >> ML, AI type stuff? >> So we're increasingly becoming automated, but because of the over, there's so much demand in the space. And we've had so much demand to consistently conduct audits, it's tough to pull my engineers away from conducting an audit to work on the tooling to automate the audit, right? And so we are building a lot of proprietary tooling to speed up the process, to automate conducting a GAS analysis, where we make sure you're not clogging up the blockchain by using too much GAS. Static analysis, we're trying to automate that as fast as possible. But what's a bit more difficult to automate, at least right now, is when we have a qualified full-stack engineer read the white paper or the source of truth and make sure the smart contract actually does it, that is, it's a bit longer tail where you're leveraging machine learning and AI to make that fully automated. (talking over each other) >> But maybe is that, I'm sorry John. Is that the long term model or do you think you can actually, I mean there's people that say augmented intelligence is going to be a combination of humans and machines, what do you think? >> I think it's going to be a combination for a long time. Every single day that we audit code, our process gets faster and faster and faster because once we find a vulnerability, finding that same vulnerability next time will be faster and easier and faster and easier. And so as time goes on, we see it as, since the bundle of our work today is ICOs, token generation events, there are ERC 20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. And we don't know how long this party will last. Like maybe in a couple years or a couple months, we have a big twist in the ICO space that the numbers will drastically go down. The long tail of Hosho's business for us, is to keep track of people writing smart contracts, period. But we think they are going to become more functional smart contracts where the entire business is on a smart contract and they've cut out sophisticated middle men. Right and it may be less ICOs, and in those cases I mean, if you're a publicly traded company, and you're going from R&D phase where you wrote a smart contract and now actually going to deploy it, I think the publicly traded company's going to do three to five audits. They're going to do multiple audits and take security as a very major concern. And in the space today, security is not being discussed nearly as much as it should. We have the best hedge funds cutting checks into companies, before the smart contract is even written, let alone audited. And so we're trying to partner with all the biggest hedge funds and tell the hedge funds to mandate that if you cut a check into a company that is going to do a token generation event, that they need to guarantee that they're going to at least value security, both in-house for the company and for the smart contract that's going to be written. >> How much do you charge for this? I mean just ballpark. Is it a range of purchase price, sales price? What's the average engagement go for, is it on a scope of work? Statement of work? Or is it license? I mean how does it work? >> So first it depends is it a penetration test of the website or the exchange? Penetration testing of exchanges are far more complex than just a website. Or if it's a smart contract audit, is it an ICO or is it a functional smart contract? In either case for the smart contract audit, we have to build a long set of custom tooling to attack each and every smart contract. So it's definitely very case-by-case. But a ballpark that we could maybe give is somewhere around the lines of 10 to 15 thousand dollars per 100 lines of functional code. And we ask for about three weeks of lead time for both a smart contract audit and a penetration test. And surprisingly in this space, some of the highest caliber companies and high caliber projects with the best teams, are coming to us far too late to get a security audit and a penetration test. So after months of fundraising and a private pre-sale and another pre-sale, and going and throwing parties and events and conferences to increase the excitement for participating in their token sale, what we think is the most important part, the security audit for a smart contract is left to the last week before your ICO. And a ridiculous number of companies are coming to us within seven days of the token sale, >> John: Scrambling. >> Scrambling, and we're saying but we've seen you at seven conferences, I think that we need to delay your ICO by two or three weeks. We can assure you that all of your investors will say thank you for valuing security, because this is irreversible. Once this goes live and the smart contract is deployed. >> Horse is out of the barn. >> It's irreversible. >> Right right. >> And once we seal the code, no one should touch it. >> It's always the case with security, it's bolted on at the last minute. >> It's like back road recovery too, oh we'll just back it up. It's an architectural decision we should have made that months ago. So question for you, the smart contract, because again I'm just getting my wires crossed, 'cause there's levels of smart contracts. So if we, hypothetical ICO or we're doing smart contracts for our audience that's going to come out soon. But see that's more transactional. There's security token sales, >> Yes. >> That are essentially, can be ERC 20 tokens, and that's not huge numbers. It could be big, but not massive. Not a lot transaction costs. That's a contract, right? That's a smart contract? >> People are writing smart contracts to conduct a token generational event, most commonly for an ERC 20 token, that's correct. >> Okay so that's the big, I call that the big enchilada. That's the big-- >> Right now that is the most important, the most common. >> Okay so as you go in the future, I can envision a day where in our community, people going to be doing smart contracts peer-to-peer. >> Sure. >> How does that work? Is that a boiler plate? Is is audited, then it's going to be audited every time? Do the smart contracts get smaller? I mean what's your vision on that? Because we are envisioning a day where people in our audience will say hey Hartej, let's do a white paper together, let's write it together, have a handshake, do a smart contract click, click. Lock it in. And charge a dollar a download, get a million downloads, we split it. >> I envision a day where you can have a more drag and drop smart contract and not need a technical developer to be a full-stack engineer to have to write your smart contract. Yes I totally envision that day. >> John: But that's not today. >> We are very far from that today. >> Dave, kill that project. >> We're so far, we're very far from that. We're light years far from that. >> Okay well look. If we can't eliminate the full-stack engineers, I'm okay with that. Can we eliminate the lawyers? At least minimize them. >> We can minimize them possibly, but we have five stacks of lawyers for our company, I don't see them going anywhere. We need lawyers all the time. >> I see that in the press sometimes, yeah it's going to get disrupted. I don't see it happening. Okay we were having a great conversation off-camera about what makes a good ICO. You see, you have a huge observation space. And you were very opinionated. A lot of companies are out there just floating a token because they're trying to raise money. And they could do the same thing with Ethereum or Bitcoin. >> That's correct. >> Your thoughts? >> My thoughts are that it's very important for companies who are sophisticated, I think, to start by giving away a little bit of equity in the business. And that if you want to be in the blockchain space, and you really firmly believe you have a model to have a token within a decentralized application, I would still start by finding quality investors in the space, in the world. They might be still in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley didn't just disappear overnight now that the blockchain is out. I am all for the fact that Silicon Valley no longer has as much of a grip on tech because of their blockchain world. And they're not seeing as much deal flow, and there's not as much reliance on venture capitalists, that's exciting to me. But let's not forget the value, that top-tier VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and Vinod Khosla. and Fintech VCs like Commerce Ventures and Nyca Partners in New York, Propel VC, these are good Fintech VC arms that continue to time and time again add immense value to companies. >> And they have networks. They add value. >> They have strong-valued networks, but they're just not going to disappear. And those VCs, if they've invested into a company, took a board seat, fostered their growth, taught them what it means to actually be a real business that's growing at 7-15% week over week, maybe two years down the line, after they've given away a board seat to someone like Nyca Partners, I would be interested in understanding what your token economics look like. Now that you have a revenue generating business, how you've placed a token model into this already running business that makes 25 to 50 grand a month and you have a team of 10, self-sustaining themselves off of revenue. Much more intriguing of a conversation. What's happening today in the space is, hey my buddy Jim and Steve and I came up with an idea for this business. There's going to be a token, and we're starting a private pre-sale tomorrow. I'm going to give you 300% bonus and will you be my advisor? And they're going to start raising capital because of an idea. You know what we used to say in the Silicon Valley startup world, you can raise on just a PowerPoint. I think in the blockchain world, you could raise on just an idea? And then maybe a white paper? And the white paper is one page? And so you've raised a bunch of capital, you have a white paper. >> Now you got to build it. >> Now you got to build, you got to write a smart contract, you got to build it, you got to do it, and then everyone loses excitement and it goes back to our previous conversation the development talent. So, another thing not being discussed in the space is company employee retention, right? So if you have a growing number of ICOs, that have very large budgets because investors have found a way to sink millions of dollars into a company early, you've got $5 million in the hands of a company to start, well this company can afford to pay someone a very ridiculous salary to come join them to write the smart contract now. So they could offer an engineer 500 Eth a month to come join them for three months. So you have good engineers just bouncing from one ICO to the next and as soon as the ICO goes live, they quit. This is a problem to companies who are-- >> It's migration, out migration. >> How do you retain, even capital? >> Companies like Hosho, ShapeShift, companies that are selling picks and shovels of the industry, that want to be household names in the space, we have to really think about how we're going to retain our employees in the space. >> So the recruitment and bringing on the new generation, we were also talking off camera about Bill Tye and the younger generation and kind of riffing on the notion that, because there is a new set of mission-driven developers and builders, on the business side as well. Your thoughts and reaction to what you see and what you see that's good and what you see that we need more of? >> So the most powerful thing in the blockchain space that I think is so exciting is that you have a lot of people between the age of 25 and 35 that don't come from money, that didn't go to Stanford, didn't go to Y Combinator, they're probably not white, from-- >> John: Ivy League schools. >> Ivy League schools. I'm not trying to make it about race, but if you're a white male and went to Stanford and went to Y Combinator, chances of you raising VC money on sand hill are a lot higher, right? And you have a guy looking like me who didn't go to Stanford, doesn't come from money, running up and down sand hill, I have personally faced that battle and it wasn't easy. And we were based in Vegas and so being based in Vegas, I'd also have to deal with so why do you live in Vegas? When are you going to move to Silicon Valley? And if we invest in you, you're going to open an office in sand hill right? And now in the blockchain world, what's exciting is you have so many heavy-hitters running as founders, some of the most successful companies in the space, who don't come from money and a big prestigious background, but they're honest, they're hard-working, they're putting in 12 to 15 hours of work every single day, seven days a week. And to space, six weeks is like six years. And we all have a level of trust that goes back to times when we were all running struggling startups. And so our bond is, to me, even more significant than what must have been between Keith Rabois and Peter Thiel in the PayPal Mafia. We have our own mafias being formed of much stronger bonds of younger people who will be able to share much more significant deal flow so if the PayPal Mafia was able to join forces to punch out companies like eBay and Square, wait 'til companies in this space, we have young, heavy-hitters right now who are non-reliant on some of the more traditional older folks. Wait 'til you see what happens in the next couple years. >> Hartej, great conversation. And I want to get one more question in. We've seen Keiretsu Forum, mafias, teams more than ever as community becomes an integral part of vetting and by the way trust, you have unwritten rules. I mean baseball, Dave and I used to do sports analogies. >> Self-governance. >> Reggie Jackson talked about unwritten rules and it works. If you beam the batter, the other guy, your best star, your side's going to get beamed. That's an unwritten rule. These are what keeps things going, balanced through the course of a season. What are the unwritten rules in the Ethos right now? >> Honesty, transparency, and that's the key. We need self-governance. This is a very unregulated market. There's rules being broken by people who are ignorant to the rules. The most common rule I've seen being broken is by people who are not broker dealers, running around fundraising capital, they don't even know what an institutional advisor license is. They don't know what a Series 7 and a Series 63 is. I asked a guy just last night, he said I'm pooling capital, I'm syndicating, let me know if you want in on the deal. And I said when did you take your Series 7? He goes what's that? Get away from me. You're an American, you need to look up what US securities laws are and make sure that you're playing by the rules and if someone who doesn't know the rules has entered our inner circle of investors, of advisors, of people sharing deal flow, we have a good network of people that are closing the loop for companies, whether it's lawyers, investors, exchanges, security auditors, people who write smart contracts, dev shops, people who write white papers, PR marketing, people who do the road show, there's a full circle-- >> So people are actually doing work to put into the community, to know your neighbor if you will, know the deals that are going down, to identify potential trip wires that are being established by either bad actors or-- >> KYC, AML, this is a new space that's also attracting people that have a criminal background. Right? And that's just a harsh reality of the space. That in the United States if you have a felony on your record, maybe getting a job has become really difficult and you figured let's do an ICO, no one's going to check my record. That is a reality of the space. Another reality is the money that was invested into this entire ICO clean. Right, that's a massive issue for the US government right now. It's been less than 15 hours since the SEC has issued actually subpoenas to people on this exact topic, today. >> This is a great topic, we'd like to do more on. >> Dozens of them. >> We'd like to continue to keep in touch with you on The Cube. Obviously you're welcome anytime, loved your insight. Certainly we'd love to have you be an advisor on our mission, you're welcome anytime. >> For sure, let's talk about it. Come out to Las Vegas. Hosho's always happy to host you. >> John And Dave: We're there all the time. >> The Cube lives at the sands. >> It's our second home. >> Come by Hosho's office and let us know. Vegas is our home. We are hosting a conference in Vegas after DEFCON. So DEFCON is the biggest security conference in the world. You have the best black hats and white hats show up as security experts in Vegas and right on the tail end of it, Hosho's going to host a very exclusive invite-only conference. >> What's it called? Just Hosho Conference? >> Just Blockchain. It'll be called the just, it'll be by the Just Blockchain Group and Hosho's the main backer behind it. >> Well we appreciate your integrity and your sharing here on The Cube, and again you're paying it forward in the community, that's great. Ethos we love that. That's our mission here, paying it forward content. Here in the Bahamas. Live coverage here at PolyCon 18. We're talking about securitized token, a decentralized future for awesome things happening. I'm Jeff Furrier, Dave Vellante. We'll be back with more after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE covering Service Now Knowledge 17 brought to you by Service Now. >> Welcome back to Orlando everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage and this is Knowledge 17 #know17. Daniel Pink is here, best selling author, speaker at the CIO forum here. Daniel, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> It's great to be here. >> So, you were tellin' us about an audience of a hundred CIOs hanging out, kicking back, listening to you. Give him the love on the Persuasion, the Art of Persuasion and Selling. He wrote a book to sell us humans. So, share with us the premise and what you were talking to the CIOs about. >> Well, I mean the premise was that a lot of persuasion influenced in selling is more science than art. There's this rich body of social science that gives us some clues about how to be more persuasive, whether we're persuading up, whether we're persuading down in an organization, whether we're persuading side to side. And, these CIOs are persuading in multiple, multiple directions. They're talking to their CEO. They're talking to their Board. They're talking to their team. They're talking to other business units. They're talking to vendors and so, I want to look at what does the science tell us about how to persuade effectively. >> Well, I mean typically you don't think of, now maybe this is different, a little bit different for CIOs, but IT people generally are not great salespeople. >> That's what we think, right. Yeah, exactly. And yet, it you look at some of the data we have, we find that in general, this is the whole swath of the U.S. work force, people in a variety of functions are spending about 40 percent of their time persuading, influencing and selling, in general. They might not necessarily be, not necessarily selling a product or service in a cash exchange, but they are doing things. They are at a meeting and they are trying to persuade someone to do something different or do something in a different way. They're a boss trying to get their employee to do something. They're an employee trying to get their boss to stop doing something. They're dealing with people they need to get, enlist help from someone in another department. You need to recruit someone to come and work for you rather than for a competitor. And so, if you look at the content of a lot of white collar work, a huge portion of it is this thing that's kind of, sort of, like selling. It's not denominated in dollars, but the transaction is the denomination is time, effort, attention, energy, zeal, belief, whatever and it's a big part of what we do. And, as I said, you don't have to go with your intuitions about what's effective and what's not, you can actually look to this rich body of social science for some clues about how to do it more effectively. >> So, why does selling have the black eye when it's really persuasion and, as you said, we're all persuading all the time? Not only at work, but also at home with our kids, our spouse, everybody. >> I would say it's a black eye and a bloody nose. I mean, it's looked at, people really really look at sales in a negative way. It's quite remarkable. I think that that's. I'll give you the reason and I'll tell you why the reason is outdated. The reason is that most selling and buying for most of our lifetimes, for most of human civilization has been in a world of information assymetry where the seller always had more information than the buyer. When the seller had more information than the buyer the seller can rip you off. Alright, when the seller has more information than the buyer, the buyer doesn't have any choices. The buyer doesn't have a way to talk back. The seller can really rip you off. Information assymetry is why we have the principle of buyer beware. Buyers have to beware 'cause they're at a disadvantage because of information. Alright, this is basically the history of commerce until like ten years ago when all of a sudden, we went from a world of information assymetry to a world of information parity. And so, and this is true in every domain. It's true for selling a product, you know, selling a car, selling b to b services. It's true in the dating market. It's true in the hiring market. It's true at a meeting where, it drives baby boom managers crazy, they'll be in a meeting and they'll say something and some 28 year old sitting in the back will say, excuse me, and hold up her phone and say, no, what you said isn't right. Alright, and so the reason it has this black eye and bloody nose is because we're used to this world of information assymetry. One of my points was, okay we're in a totally different era now of information parity and that's a different terrain. And so, again you can use the science to navigate this terrain. >> So, people ask me what's this digital transformation all about. I say, well it's attempt by brands to achieve assymetry again. >> I mean listen, if you are a seller assymetry is awesome, alright. I mean, you want to do everything you can to preserve it. What I'm saying is that the tide is so ferocious here that it's a very difficult thing to hold back. So, it's possible in certain kinds of industries and certain kinds of products and services, you can do some things to kind of hold back that tide. My view is like holding back tides is difficult work. And, usually in the long run it doesn't work very well. So, my view is like, okay what do you in this world of information parity and this world, you know the old world was buyer beware, I think this new world is seller beware. And, I think that today what sellers have to do is they have to take the high road. I mean, you want to take the high road because it's the right thing to do, but now there's a very pragmatic reason to take the high road. It's 'cause the low road doesn't lead anywhere. >> Right. Well, the other thing that you're touching on which is again, within the last ten years it's instinct versus data base decision making and processing. So as you said, you don't have to make this up. There's plenty of science to support this effort and the instinctual guy in the corner is no longer necessarily the authority. >> Absolutely right, and what's interesting is a lot of this, some of this research confirms our instincts. Some of this research doesn't. For instance, we tend to believe that strong extroverts make the best sales people. Not true, it's an absolute abject myth. Strong extroverts, in general, are terrible sales people. Now, it doesn't mean that strong introverts are better. People who are the best, and I was talking to these somewhat more introverted CIOs, the people who are the best, and there's some good research on this, are what are called ambiverts, which are people who are in the middle, not heavily extroverted, not heavily introverted. And, the great thing about the ambiverts is that they are ambidextrous, so they know when to speak up, they know when to shut up. They know when to push, they know when to hold back. So, even though the mythology or instincts, to use your word, is that, oh strong extroverts make better sales people. If I want to sell more I got to be more extroverted. The evidence doesn't say that. The evidence says, in fact, to the contrary. The evidence points to ambiverts as having an edge in selling. >> So, what's the formula for the high road? Is it transparency a part of that? >> Well, on a personal level, yeah, I think transparency is getting to be not even a choice. It's basically like, transparency is no more a choice than say, oxygen is a choice. >> Yeah, okay, stable stakes. So, yeah, exactly. So, if you look at the research there are three personal qualities that seem to be important. Attunement, which is, can you get out of your own head into someone else's head, understand their perspective? Okay, so you don't have any coercive power today. Buoyancy, they're a b c, attunement, buoyancy, total luck, attunement, buoyancy and clarity. Buoyancy is in any kind of persuasive effort there's a huge amount of rejection and human beings don't like rejection. I don't like rejection, nobody likes rejection. So, one sales person who I interviewed described his job as looking out into an ocean of rejection. So, buoyancy is, how do you stay afloat in that ocean of rejection. How do you deal with rejection? And, there's some good science behind that. And then, clarity has two dimensions. Clarity is, it used to be that if you had access to information, you had an edge. But, now everybody has access to information. >> Right, right. >> So, the edge comes from being able to curate information, being able to make sense of information. Separate out the signal from the noise and information. The other thing is that you were talking again, this goes directly to your point about instinct versus data and machine. You know, a lot of sales people like to say, old fashioned sales people say, oh, I'm a problem solver, and that's cool. It's just that problem solving is becoming less important. Because if your customer or your prospect knows exactly what their problem is they can find a solution without you. They don't need you. You know, and so the premium has shifted to the skill of problem finding. Can you service latent problems? Can you look down the road and anticipate problems? Can you see around corners? And, that's going to be incredibly important in this world of machine learning and AI, where simply expressed problems will be solved that way. And, what we human beings have to do is figure out the right problems to solve, anticipate problems, you know really, see around corners and do that kind of thing. >> So, you basically advised the COs to tune in, deal with rejection and make things more clear and curate. >> Absolutely, absolutely, right, right, right. And, the information thing is big because, you know, in anything, not only the CIOs but in any realm. It used to be that expertise came from having access to information. Think about in the world of finance, at a certain point only stock brokers could find out what the stock price was. Only stock brokers had certain kinds of information about how a company was performing. So, I'm an expert. Why? 'Cause I have the key where the information is locked up. Now, everybody does, so what do you do if you want to be a financial professional? Well, you'd better be really good at synthesizing information, making sense of it, separating the signal and the noise from the information. >> What were some of the more interesting question that you got from the CIOs audience? >> There was a couple of interesting questions about well, there was a couple of questions about introversion, extroversion and how much you can change your personality, which is minimally. I mean, you can make a small move to, you can make a small move to the middle. There was a question about, a very good question for these CIOs in particular 'cause most of them are dealing with multi-national firms and employees and customers all around the world, is how much national differences make a, how much national differences are important. And, there is some, there's some very interesting stuff on that. For instance, if you look at, it's not a shocker, but if you look at like if you're selling or persuading say in a Japanese, East Asian culture, very much more hierarchical than it would be here. Like you guys would not be Jeff and Dave from the get go, you know. >> Right, right. >> It would be like, oh wait a second, wait a second. These guys have ear pieces and ties. Whoa, wait a second, I better you know, be much more hierarchical in how I deal with them. Or, in certain Latin cultures, Brazil is a good example, if you and I were to do business together we wouldn't even talk business at our first meeting. We would go out to dinner. We would have a meal. So, there's that kind of cultural nuance stuff. There's one thing that I tried to explain to them that Americans stink at. It's one of the biggest cognitive errors that Americans make and it's this. When we Americans try to explain people's behavior or predict people's behavior we almost always overstate the importance of someone's personality and understate the importance of the context that they're in. So, we look at, oh, Jeff did that 'cause he's a jerk. Dave did that 'cause he's a nice guy. Freida did that because she's mean, you know. And, we don't and we disregard what context they're in and when we look at our own behavior we behave very differently in different contexts. If you were to drive with me you would think I was the worst person on the planet. I mean, truly, like in that context I'm just miserable, I'm mean spirited 'cause I can't stand doing it. Otherwise, I'm okay, you know. And so, again if you go to East Asian cultures, East Asian cultures will look at the entire fish tank rather than the fish that's in the foreground. And so, as a consequence, they say, oh well, Pink Sun was you know, maybe he was having a bad day or maybe Pink Sun doesn't like to drive or when Pink Sun's with his family he's a nicer guy and that kind of stuff. Americans, they say, that guy's a jerk. >> Alright, we got to wrap up. What Jeff really and I want to know is, does this work on our kids? >> The short answer, absolutely. >> Alright, Terry. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Alright, thanks you guys. >> Alright, keep it right there. We're going to be back with our next guest right after this. This is Knowledge17. Be right back.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE live in Miami on the floor of IFS Unleashed. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Had some great conversations. Have more great conversations coming your way. I have two guests joining me. Please welcome Martin Schirmer, the President of Enterprise Service Management, IFS Assyst. And Parminder Khosa, the Senior IT Manager at Parexel. Guys, it's great to have you on the program. >> Lovely to be here. >> It's good to be here. >> Martin, talk to me a little bit... tell the audience a little bit about Assyst so that that get that context before we start asking questions. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So IFS Assyst is a recent acquisition. It's an acquisition we made about a year ago. And fundamentally, it's a platform that takes care of IT service management, enterprise service management and IT operations management. So think of it, of managing sort of the ERP for IT and then broadening that out into the sort of enterprise where you're driving enterprise use cases for all lines of businesses like HR, finance, facilities, so on and so forth. >> Got it. And then Parminder, give the audience just a little bit of a flavor of Parexel, who you guys are, what you do. >> Sure. >> Maybe the impact that you make. >> Yeah, so Parexel is a clinical research organization. And what that means is that we manage drug trials for big pharmaceutical companies. So we're a big company. We're 25,000 people. We have offices in 150 locations all the way from Japan and the east through to the West Coast of the USA. >> Big company. >> Yeah, we are. We are a lot of people. >> And let's start chatting now Martin with some of the questions that you have so we get the understanding of how IFS and Parexel are working together. >> Yeah. Absolutely. I suppose... I mean the first thing is and thank you for traveling here all the way from the UK. (Lisa chuckles) Appreciate it and great energy and vibe. So just what the first question I had really was, you're customer of ours for the last 15 years plus. Maybe just give the audience a bit of context into your journey and how you've evolved from the sort of early years to where you're going into the future. >> Sure. So our history, I was part of a company that Parexel acquired that was already using Assyst. And as Parexel acquired us, they were in the process of also buying Assyst. So it became a kind of natural fit where I carried on with Assyst. And we started relatively small, sort of just the service desktop. And throughout the ongoing 15 years or so, we've just grown and expanded into kind of being a critical tool for Parexel right now. >> Okay, that's fantastic. I mean part of that journey, I know you started in sort of the more they call a ticketing space or IT service management space. Expand a little bit how you've expanded out of that and really moved into the enterprise. >> Sure. So yeah. So when we first rolled Assyst out, it was as I say, purely IT. And eventually we reached out to other business units to say asking questions like, Are you managing your workload through email? Are you managing your workload through Excel spreadsheets? In which case, if you are, we've got a solution for you that will make it a much better experience for your customers. They're all internal. It'll make it much easier for you because you will have official tracking going on through our system. I'll make it better for your management because we can drive metrics from all of the data that we're getting. So if you imagine finance we're getting, kind of 200 miles a day because of the size of our company. And they were just working through them one by one responding, and they becomes just a mess. So we developed forms for them to say, "Okay, Larry raise all your requests here. We will pick it up. We will manage it. We will communicate with you. And once the piece of work that you've asked for is done, we will let you know." And as we go through that process, we'll make it better for us because as I say we're getting those metrics. And we'll make it better for you because we can spot where our gaps are. If a request is taking three days, and of that three days, two days is waiting for someone on our end to respond to you or is waiting for us waiting for a customer to respond, we can iron those out and make it a much better experience for everyone. >> That's fantastic. It's really music to my ears because we always pushing the industry to say move away from just the IT side and really get into the enterprise. And it sounds like you've really gotten a lot of sort of productivity and efficiency gains out of that. >> Definitely, definitely. And it becomes kind of a happy circle. So the finance guys will work with the procurement guys. And they also look... Well, we're doing all of our work through Assyst now. So procurement's a little turnaround. So, well we're using this big spreadsheet to manage all of ours. Can we do the same? And they'll reach out to us and we'll say, "Of course we can. What is your process?" For example, they will say, okay, if someone asks for a new laptop, we need to get the approval from their line manager, from the supplier. We need to do our own internal work and then we will send it out. So imagine if you're doing that in a an email chain. It just becomes chaos. >> Yeah. >> So we will build all of that out for them. And then procurement will talk to HR and it just becomes a snowball. And before you know it, we are doing about 4,000 tickets per day in our Assyst system. And of those, 50% perhaps maybe more than 50% now will be non IT related. >> Oh, that's fantastic. Really music to my ears. And it really breaking down the boundaries or silos within an organization. It's really good. Let the teams work together. Right? >> Definitely. And that's one of the key things that we've learned is that we have to engage completely with our business partners. And our business partners are becoming more and more IT literate as well. So for example, we had a recent big HR solution provided to us. And as part of that, we know there are going to be questions, and queries and perhaps even issues to do with our HR system. So we have to work with us guys, the Assyst front end, the IT HR guys who look after the databases, all of the technology in the background. Then there'll be IT HR who are Workday experts. And then kind of not necessarily at the bottom of the chain will be the HR people themselves who are in their own way, experts in their area, experts in IT in a certain way. So all of those people have to work together. We become the front end, but we have to work with all of those parts of the business. >> That's really great. It's basically what you just said is taking business, IT processes and underpinning solutions. Effectively digital transformation, right? >> Exactly. Yeah. So HR is a great example. They used to have paper flying around with leave request, with sickness requests, with all of those kind of issues. And you said, well if you have an issue with your HR system, you can't raise a leave request, or you can't raise a sickness request, tell us. We will take care of it. We will fix it for you. We will give you the instructions. And we will get rid of all of that paper. >> That's brilliant. Just sort of turning the attention. And all of that, how do you drive the sort of, we'll talk about the autonomous enterprise. How do you drive automation in that process? >> Yeah. Of course, we have to map all of those processes out. Because we're not the experts in HR or procurement or whatever the business area may be. We have to really dig into their work methods, their working areas. What is necessary for them? What is a must have? What is a like to have? What is we don't really need? So we really drive into that processes. Once we've got those, we will automate them. We will build them out in Assyst with the process designer. It's very intuitive now. The latest version is really good to work with. We will do some pretty clever stuff in there. We'll say, okay the manager approval. If the manager is not there, then escalate it to the next person. Then we go to HR and say, okay HR have taken two days to do this. We're not particularly okay with that. So we will escalate it to the next person. And all of that process is completely automated, completely in Assyst. >> Brilliant. I mean obviously, we have a codeless workflow engine with a designer. And if you look at one of the trends from post covid is a war in talent in particular developers. The IDC says there's going to be around 4 million shortage of developers. What is your view on, how easy... Do I need developers? Is it easy, is it difficult to do these workflow extensions and automations? >> Definitely not, no. So the two key areas that you mentioned that with the customizer to develop the forms to make them available to our end users, drag and drop. Really easy to do. You can put some nice filters in there. You can put some nice variables in there. You can drive intelligent drive the forms from there as well. So if option A is correct, then don't show me option B, show me option C. And all of that is codeless, entirely codeless. I don't need to type any code. And when we move on to a process designer that hooks in nicely with the form customizer because we can say, "Okay, if option B on that form is selected, then runs this process." And all of that process is entirely codeless as well. Drag and drop. Creates some tasks. Create some decisions. >> Fantastic. >> Brilliant. >> Sounds really good. Switching gears a little bit. You spoke about experience, and that's also obviously very topical post, well, Covid becoming a remote workforce. Clearly, we need to be digitally connected to our business and organization because the hybrid workforce, as we all know, is here to stay. And that employee experience is fundamental because it is their sort of channel to the engagement of the organization. Of course, that has retention impacts and productivity impact. So just from your perspective, how was Covid, from your perspective, and how easy or difficult was it to get your employees engaged and productive and working? >> Yeah. And for us, it's a double edged sword Covid was. Because of the nature of our business. We do covid stuff. We do drug stuff. So we may have issues with some trials that are related to that. So we need to escalate those. We need to be aware of them and move them to the top of the chain as soon as possible. And then Assyst becomes a source of truth. Everybody knows that if I've got an issue with the current environment that we're living in, I can raise it in Assyst. And everybody knows that's where that information is. There's no need to have huge conference calls or huge email chains to try and follow those around. So with our Assyst platform, with our employees as well, everybody knew that this is where the source of truth was. We didn't have any dropouts. We didn't have any concerns with our system or performance. We knew it was there. We had to do some work like, as I say, around covid issues just to make sure they get pushed up to the top of the chain. But otherwise, we were fine. And great credit to our IT operations team as well who managed that pretty much seamlessly. >> That's brilliant. That's good news. >> Yeah. >> It really is. Just taking a little bit further and talking a little bit about what next. My team has been, I know, talking to your team about the whole area of asset management. Maybe talk to us a little bit about that journey. >> Sure, sure. So we're an ITOM customer as well. So all of our hardware data is stored within the ITOM platform. So we've pushed out the agents to all of our end user machines, so 25,000 agents. And we're in the process of integrating that into our Assyst platform to make that the single source of truth. And that part of that we're working on the software asset management side as well. So we've got a really good idea of where our software assets are. It comes to all license auditing, we know exactly how much we've got there. And the more complex side of it is of course server. So software management management as well. So we're in the process of getting all of that data as well. So once we've done all that, there is other all as the next step. The next step will be to perhaps do monitoring or pushing out software using the ITOM platform and getting rid of some of the disparate systems that we have right now. >> Well that's good news. And I think I saw a study. I think, every single person as an employee carries around 15 or 20 assets with him at any one time. Be it from a PC, phone, physical software licenses, so on and so forth. In that context, I can imagine the business case around it. >> Definitely. Yeah. And every, again, we map every user to their assets and (indistinct) their assets. And again Assyst as a source of truth for that. So if you want to look at my record, so, all right. Pam's got a laptop. He's got a mobile phone. We're thinking about giving him a tablet, but we'll find out. That he's in the process of getting a tablet as well. So I can have a look at my user record and know exactly what I've got with all of the asset tags and the various links that it has to the software pieces so it becomes a big tree of my assets. >> That's wonderful. Just the question I had was, we spoke about breaking down silos and the enterprise use cases and the effect that has. Do you envisage that Assyst can really get to being enterprisewide as, when I say enterprisewide, everybody in the organization effectively using this tool as their sort of source of experience, and level of automation of process? >> Definitely, definitely. As I say, we're getting... We're really pushing to get to that. As I say, 4,000 tickets a day with a user base of 25,000 kind of means that everybody will interact with the system perhaps every two weeks or so. So we're getting to that point and with the new functionality that's coming out with the Assyst product, with the team's integration, and the bot and everything that will bring to us because we are a big. We use teams. We use bots. We use that kind of technology. It will just fit in seamlessly. And trying to break down the silos, as I say finance, procurement, all of the big beasts within our company already are using the Assyst tool. And we want to bring in more and more of those processes as we mature. >> Brilliant. I think Omnichannel's critical. We want to connect from any device from anywhere. It's just the way we work. So I think that's critical. Teams is of course a a tool that most of us have become too familiar with. >> Yup. (chuckles) >> To be fair. (chuckles) It's better to be here in person finally, right? >> Yeah. >> So I think, that's all exciting news. And it's really fantastic. >> Great. >> So I suppose maybe in the time that we have left, what's next? >> What's next for us is that we're in the process of migrating our solution to the cloud, to the IFS cloud. That will open up a huge new user base for us. If we think all of our customers, all of our people who work on studies will have the ability to connect to Assyst and ask questions. That's a lot of it is just ask a question, or raise an issue or ask for something. So we're talking, it could be expanded by hundreds of thousands of new users that will meet more people on the backend to manage those requests as well. So yeah. It's just going to get bigger and bigger. And as you say, with the CMDB work that we're doing as well, that's another big ongoing stream for us. >> It's great because as you know, with Assyst we have a disruptive licensing model. >> Yeah. >> We have a t-shirt size pricing. All you can need based a number of employees. So there's no barriers to entry for you. >> There really is. And that really helps us because as I said initially, particularly when finance came on board and now they're expanding, there is no cost implication for it. The more that we use it, the better it is for. The more bang for buck that we get. >> Yep. That's our mantra. Enterprise users, right? For the price of a cup of coffee, for the price of a user. That's our mantra. >> I love it. You guys have done such a great job of articulating the synergies in the relationship that IFS Assyst has with Paraxel. You talked about the great outcomes that you're achieving. And it's all about Martin, I know, from IFS Assyst perspective, it's all about helping customers achieve those outcomes and those moments of service that are so critical to your customers on the other end staying with you, doing more business. Whether it's the end user customer, whether it's the actual employee. You talked a lot about the customer experience, the employee experience, and what you guys are doing together to enable that. And I always think that the employee experience and the customer experience are like this. They're inextricably linked. You can't, you shouldn't. Otherwise you're going to have problems. >> Yeah, no, absolutely. And there's actually a study on that saying that, 70% of customers generally don't feel they get what they want from organizations. >> 70. Wow! >> And if you take that one step further to what you said, the interconnectivity between customer employee, employee shops on Amazon, right? It's on those websites. So you can't be rolling out and digitally connect to the employee with something that is clunky and has the wrong experience. Like I said, it really affects that level of engagement the employee has with the company which happens to be largely these days remote. >> It does. Last question Martin, is for you. Talk to us about what's next for IFS Assyst. Obviously, we're back in person. There's a lot of momentum about the company. I was talking with Darren, the growth and first half was great. He kind of gave us some teaser about second half, but what's next from your perspective? >> Yeah. So what's next for us is achieving our goal. We are here to disrupt the industry. It's an industry that's dominated by one player and a fair amount of legacy players. We've disrupted the business model as I've told you. We here to do more because it's a simple thing. And that's the word simple. We want to keep things simple. We're going to keep engineering and driving our product forward, right? We've made sure that our platform is up there with the best. Yeah. We've just been certified by pink. Pink is a verification of ITIL four they call it. So it's a body. And the top level is you can get 20 out of 20. We got 17 out of 20. There's only one other vendor that has more than us and it's only by little. And after it's a big white space, the next one is 14. So we on the right track. We are going to of course drive and capture the market. So watch this space. We here to grow. >> We will watch this space. Congratulations on being that disrupter. >> Thank you. >> Parminder great work with what you guys are doing. You did a great job of articulating, as I said, the customers tour here. We appreciate your insights, your time. >> Thank you very much. >> Pleasure. >> All right, my pleasure. >> Thank you. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube live from Miami on the show floor of IFS Unleashed. We'll be back after a short break.

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM thing brought to you by IBM we're back this is the cubes coverage of the IBM think 20/20 digital experience my name is Dave Volante is a wall-to-wall coverage over the multi-day event Harish promise here he's the general manager of the IBM public cloud rishi welcome back to the cube good to see you sorry we're not face to face but this will do yeah thank you great to see you again as well and you know it is the times what do you do you know I want to start by asking you you did a stint at a large bank I'd love to talk to you about that but but I want to stay focused you said last year on the cube you can't do everything in the public cloud certain things need to remain on Prem I'm interested in how your experience at the large financial institution and your experience generally working with you know your colleagues in in the banking industry how that shaped your vision of the IBM public cloud yeah I think that's a great question you know if you think about trying to transform yourself to a public cloud a lot of people what they try to do is you know they take applications that I've been running their enterprise and they try to redo them in its entirety with micro services using as level services I mean trying to put it all up in the public cloud now you know just think about some of these applications that are running your large institution right some of them will have regulatory ruled around it some of them have latency requirements or low latency requirements I should say some of them need to be close to the back end because that's where the data is so for all these reasons you know you have to think about a holistic cloud picture of which public cloud is you know integral to it but some of the things will need to remain on Prem right so when I build my public cloud out for IBM I kind of keep those in in the back of my mind as I get the team to work on it to ensure that we have the right capabilities on the public cloud and then where it makes sense you know have the right capabilities on the hybrid side as well working with my colleagues in IBM well you know the doc Ovid 19 pandemic that we've been talking to a lot of CISOs and CIOs we had a couple of roundtables with our data partner ETR and it was interesting you know organizations that maybe wouldn't have considered the cloud certainly as aggressively maybe they put some test dev in the cloud but you know have said well we're really reconsidering that one CIO actually said you know I'd love to delete my data center but but to your point you can't just delete the data center um first of all you don't want to necessarily move stuff second of all we've got a lot of experience from a consulting standpoint looking at this if you have to migrate migrates like an evil word especially with mission critical systems if you have to freeze code and you can't upgrade you know for some number of months you may be out of compliance or you're not remaining competitive so you have to really be circumspect and thoughtful with regard to what you do move I wonder if you could comment on that no I completely agree with what you're saying you know if you think about to your point right with Kovac things that really changed I've been speaking with a lot of cloud transformers I would say you know in the various industries but specifically with banks as well and the cloud leader for one of the large European banks said to me he said this was amazing because for four years he's been trying to get his he shows organization and risk and compliance etc to get their heads around moving applications to the cloud and he said that you know one month of kovat and having everyone locked down and home has been able to unblock more than what he's tried in the last four years so that's telling in itself right so look you know I've been working on public clouds for a good long time now both from a provider side as well as a consumer side and while you know you certainly just can't close your data centers that are running your large enterprise overnight you certainly can take a lot of stuff over there and move it to the public cloud in a meaningful fashion where you're able to take the pieces that really iterate more rapidly where you can get the end while keeping your data safe and you know being able to connect back into your back-end systems which will run a lot of your large processes in your enterprise as well so I think there is a balance to be had here and people especially banks I would say haven't been moving so much to the public cloud and I think this is the time where they're starting to realize that there is a time and place for a bunch of applications that can safely move and that gives them the agility and the productivity while everyone's locked at home and I think that's the eye opening so I'd love to have a frank conversation about why the IBM cloud I mean you know you got the the big guys you know Amazon Microsoft and Google maybe not as large people put them sort of in a category of hyper scalars great fair enough that people oftentimes dismiss you know the IBM public cloud however your point that you just made is critical and Ginni Rometty you was the first to kind of make this point Arvin's picked up on it that 80% of the workloads still are on trem and and it's that hard to move stuff that hasn't moved so and that's kind of IBM's wheelhouse I mean let's face it that the hard stuff it's the mission-critical you're kind of running the the banks and the insurance companies and the manufacturers and airlines around the world so what's the what's the case for the IBM cloud why the IBM cloud and why even move that stuff why not just leave it where it is yeah so I think there's a couple of answers here right one of them is the fact that when you talk to the hyper scalars and by the way I can't stress enough or a hyper scaler as well right people have taken a look at iCloud from about two plus years ago which you know at which point in time we were not but we certainly are and we can provision via size and so on and so forth as best as the best guys can so I want to just get that out of the way but to your point you know the reason why you would consider the IBM public cloud is when you talk to the other people they come at it from a very narrow perspective right they think about you know use vs is on x86 using cloud native pass services now you know I want to stress again that we do all three of those things extremely well but if you think about how large enterprises work nothing is as clean as that I did say there is a lot of applications that I've been running your institution that you can just willingly rewrite and then you have bare metal you'll have power systems whether it's AIX or I you'll have some Z in there Z Linux in there and then there's containers and then there's the VMware stack and there's containers running on bare metal containers running on vsi containers running on you know the VMware stack as well as the other architectures that I mentioned so we really meet our customers where they are in their journey and we give them a wide variety of capabilities and choices and flexibility to do their applications on the public cloud and that's what we mean by saying our cloud is enterprise ready as opposed to the nano answer of you'll do everything with vs is x86 and a service yeah I like that and I want to I want to circle back on that thank you for clarifying that point about hyper skills having said that it I've often said and I wonder if you could confirm or deny it's not IBM strategy to go head-to-head on cost per bit even though you you will you'll price it very competitively but your your game is to add value in other ways through your your very large software portfolio through AI things like blockchain and differentiable services that you can layer on top I've often made the point I think a lot of people don't understand that that insulates IBM from a race to the bottom with the alcohol traditional a cloud suppliers I wonder if you could comment yeah you know so I have to stress the point that just because I talk about all our other distinguishing capabilities that people don't walk away with the impression that we don't do what any of the other large cloud service providers do you know to your point we have AI we have IOT we've got a hundred ninety API driven cloud native pass services where you can write a cloud native application just like you build on the hyper scale other hyper scalars as well right so we give nothing away but for us the true value proposition here is to give you all of those capabilities in a very secure environment you know whether it is the fact that we are the only cloud where we don't have access to your data or your code because we have a keep your own key mechanism where we as a cloud service provider have no access to your key nobody else can say that so it is those Enterprise qualities of service and security that we bring to the table and the other architectures and the other you know constructs around bare metal and containers etc that distinguishes us further right and that's how it really so these are really important points that you're making and I know I'm kind of bringing out probably parts of the landscape that IBM generally doesn't want to talk about but I think it's important again to have that frank conversation because I think a lot of people misunderstand IBM is in the cloud game not only in the cloud game to your point but has very competitive you know from an infrastructure standpoint so many companies in the last decade we saw HP tried to get in they exited very quickly Joe to cheese's the CEO of EMC said we will be in the cloud you know they're buying mozi and you know exiting that so Dell right now doesn't you know it won't have a cloud play VMware tried to get in and now its course big partner of yours so you got in and that to me is critical just in terms of positioning for the next decade and beyond and and the other piece of differentiation that I want to drill into is the financial services cloud so what is that you obviously have a strong background there let's let's dig into that a little bit yeah if you look at the way most banks or actually every bank uses a public cloud is they build guardrail right they build guardrails from where their data center ends to where the public cloud begins but once you get into the public cloud then it really depends on the security that the cloud service providers provide and the csps will tell you that they have a lot of secure mechanisms there but if you ever speak with a bang you know they will never put their highly confidential data bearing apps with PII on a public cloud because they don't feel that the security that the cloud service providers provide is good enough for them to be able to put it there safely number one and number two prove to their regulators that they are in fact and compliant so what we've done is we work with a Bank of America and now you know a whole bunch of other banks that I'm not allowed to mention by name as yet where we're building a series of controls right these are both controls during your dev Sakharov cycle when you're building your app and another 400-plus controlled and the runtime that allow you is the bank to securely take your apps that have highly confidential data in III and put it on the public cloud and will give you the right things whether it's the isolation of the control plane and the data plane or it's their data loss prevention mechanisms the right auditing points the right logging points the right monitoring points the right reporting data sovereignty so we have controls built into the cloud that enable you to do all of this now banks will be quick to tell you that the onus of proof is on them alone to the regulators and we can claim that for them and they're absolutely right but today they spend hundreds of millions of dollars collecting all of that in providing that proof to the regulators you use our cloud we automate a whole bunch of that so you're not number one as a bank trying to implement these controls on a public cloud because that's not your job that's not your core expertise and number two when you actually build these compliance report you spending you know millions and millions of dollars trying to put it together whether compliance regulator will say yes this is okay we automate a large part of that for you and I think that's the key is the key issue we're solving you I want to follow up and just make sure I understand it is when I talk to executives in the financial services industry and other industries those they'll say things like look it's not that the cloud security is is bad it's just that I can't map the edicts of my organization into it certainly easily or even at all because I'm getting a sort of standard set of capabilities and it may not fit with what I need what I'm what I what I'm hearing is that IBM you know you guys are enterprise-c you used the specials but but so that's part of it but you also said you know they feel sometimes the cloud is that the security is not good enough and I want to understand what that is specifically if IBM is doing something differently so two things there one is your willingness whether it's auditability transparency mapping to corporate edicts and it may be other things that you're doing that make it better relative to go together yeah absolutely so one of the things is as I mentioned it's the mechanisms like keep your own key which is fundamental to building some of these compliance safeguards in but the the fundamental different thing we've done here is we work with the Bank of America and we've defined these controls to use your language that maps to their edicts right which should map to every banks edicts no you know there'll be a couple of extra controls here or there but largely they're all regulated by the same regulator so what satisfies one bang for the most part satisfies every other bank of the US as well right and so specifically what we've done is we've built those controls whether they are preventative controls or compensating controls in the CI CD pipeline as well as in the runtime on the cloud and that gives them a path to automation to produce the right results and the right reports to their auditors and that's really what we've helped them do so I know I'm pushing you here a little bit I'm gonna keep pushing if that's okay I was a great conversation when when IBM completed the acquisition of Red Hat you know the marketing was all about cloud cloud cloud and I came out and said yeah okay fine but what it's really about is application modernization that's the near-term opportunity for IBM you certainly saw that in the last earnings report where I think you're working with a hundred plus you know clients in terms of their application modernization so I said that is the way in which this thing becomes a creative which by the way it's already a creative and from a cash cash flow standpoint but but but but I'm gonna press you on on the cloud piece so talk about Red Hat and why it is cloud in terms of a cloud play yeah so you know this is the power of Red Hat and the IBM public cloud and of course Red Hat works or the other cloud print service providers as well so if you think about modernizing your application you know the industry pretty much has standardized around containers right as the best way to modernize their applications and those containers are orchestrated by kubernetes that's the orchestrator that's basically won the battle and Red Hat has OpenShift which is a industry-leading capability you know it's a coupon IDs control plane that manages containers and we from IBM we've put our content we've read backer a content into containers and we've made it run on an open ship and we have a cloud managed open ship server on the IBM public cloud as well as an on-prem that really helps bring our content to people who are trying to modernize their applications now think about an application that most people try to modernize you know the rough rule of thumb about 20 to 25 percent of it there's application code that is the onus is on the client to go and modernize that and they've chosen containers and turbidities and the other 75 to 80% arguably is middleware that they've got right and we've really tected in refactor that middleware into containers managed by open ship and we've done 80% of the work for them so that's how this whole thing comes together and you can run that on Prem you can run it on the IBM public cloud and I give you a cloud managed openshift service to do that effectively honor so that's interesting yeah that's very interesting I think there are you know probably at least three sort of foundational platforms one is obviously easy mainframe it's still much of IBM's customer base you know the tied to the Z and it drives all kinds of other software and so what the second is middleware to your point and you're saying you refactored and I think the third really is your choice of hybrid cloud strategy you kind of made the point you threw an on-prem it's to me it's that end-to-end that's your opportunity and your challenge if you can show people that look we've got this cloud-like experience of from cloud all the way to RM multi clouds that is a winning strategy it's jump ball right now nobody really owns that space and I think IBM's intent is to try to go after that I think you've called it a trillion-dollar market opportunity and it's obviously growing yes that's exactly right and the P spot so that I've been describing to you the you know the way people modernize our applications all fit very nicely into that now if you speak with the analysts they're going towards a whole different category called distributed cloud which basically means you know how do you bring these capabilities that run on your public cloud do on-prem and do other people's clouds and you know what I hinted at here is that's exactly where we're going with our set of capabilities and that is a technical journey I mean kubernetes is necessary but insufficient condition to have that sort of Nirvana of this distributed massive distributed system bring in edge edge systems as well so this is a you know at least a multi-year maybe even a decade-long journey there's a lot of work to be done there what would you say are their strategic imperatives for IBM cloud over the next several years so I think for us really it is you know building on this notion of the distributed cloud as I talked about it is you know fully building out the FSS cloud most of which we've already done and you know some of these things will never be at end of job because regulations keep changing and you keep adding to it and so you have to keep adding to it as well so a focus on FSS to begin with but then also to other industries as well right because there are other regulated industries here that can benefit from the same kind of automation that we're doing for FSS so we'll certainly do that and we're in a good position because it's not only our technology but it's our services practice it's a premonitory that deals with regulators etc so we have the whole package so we want to continue to build out on that branch into other industry verticals using our industry expertise across the board services product everything and then of course you know if there's one thing I BM has market permission for it is understanding the enterprise and building a secure product so we clearly want to evolve on that as well the IBM is a lot of arrows in its quiver including as we discuss cloud you know you just got to get her done as they say so iris thanks so much for coming to the cute great discussion appreciate your your transparency and and stay well Thank You YouTube thank you so much re welcome and thank you for watching everybody this is the cubes coverage of the IBM pink 2020 digital event experience we'll be right back right after this short break [Music]

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios on this kind of continuing leadership series that we've put together. Reaching out to the community for tips and tricks on kind of getting through what is, this kind of ongoing COVID crisis and situation as it continues to go weeks and weeks and weeks. And I'm really excited to have one of my favorite members of our community, is Nick Mehta, the CEO of Gainsight. Had the real pleasure of interviewing him a couple times and had to get him on. So Nick, thanks for taking some time out of your very busy day to join us. >> Jeff, honored to be here, thank you. >> Pleasure, so let's just jump into it. One of the reasons I wanted to get you on, is that Gainsight has been a distributed company from the beginning, and so I think the COVID, suddenly everyone got this work from home order, there was no prep, there was no planning, it's like this light switch digital transformation moment. So love to hear from someone who's been doing it for awhile. What are some of the lessons? How should people think about running a distributed company? >> Yeah, it's really interesting, Jeff, 'cause we are just by happenstance, from the beginning, distributed where we have, our first two offices were St. Louis and Hyderabad, India. So two places you cannot get there through one flight. So, you have to figure out how to collaborate asynchronously and then over time, we have offices in the Bay Area. We have tons of people that work from home. And so we try to tell people we don't have a headquarters. The headquarters is wherever you are, wherever you live and wherever you want to work. And so we've always been super flexible about come in to the office if you want, don't come in, et cetera. So different than some companies in that respect. And because of that, pre-COVID, we always a very heavy video culture, lots of video conferencing. Even if some people were in an office, there's always somebody else dialing in. One benefit we got from that is you never had to miss your kids' stuff or your family things. I would go to my daughter's performance in the middle of the day and know I can just dial into a call on the way there. And so we always had that. But what's amazing is now we're all on a level playing field, there's nobody in our office. And I got to say, this is, in some ways, even better 'cause I feel like when you're the person dialed in, and a lot of people are in a room, you probably had that experience, and it feels like you're kind of not on the same playing field, right? Hard to hear the jokes or the comments and you might not feel like you're totally in crowd, so to speak, right? But now everyone's just at their computer, sitting there in a chair all day doing these Zooms and it does feel like it's equalizing a little bit. And what it's caused us to do is say, hey, what are ways we can all recreate that community from home? So as an example, every 7:45 a.m. every day, we have a Zoom call that's just pure joy and fun. Trivia, pets, kids. The employees' kids announce people's birthdays and the weather. And so these ways we've been able to integrate our home and our work that we never could before, it's really powerful. It's a tough situation overall, and we feel for all the people affected. But even in tough situations, there are silver linings, and we're finding 'em. >> Yeah, it's funny, we just had Darren Murph on the other day. I don't know if you know Darren. He is the head of Remote Work at GitLab, and he-- >> Oh, yeah. >> And he talked about kind of the social norms. And one of the instances that he brought up was, back in the day when you had some people in the office, some people joining via remote, that it is this kind of disharmony because they're very different situations. So one of his suggestions was have everybody join via their laptop, even if they're sitting at their desk, right? So, as you said, you get kind of this level playing field. And the other thing which dovetails off what you just said is he always wanted executives to have a forcing function to work from home for an extended period of time, so they got to understand what it's all about. And it's not only looking through a little laptop or this or that, but it's also the distractions of the kids and the dogs and whatever else is happening around the house. So it is wild how this forcing function has really driven it. And his kind of takeaway is, as we, like say, move from can we get it into cloud to cloud first? And does it work on mobile to mobile first? >> Now it's really-- >> Yeah. >> It's really remote first. And if you-- >> Remote first. >> A remote first attitude about it and kind of turn it on it's head, it's why shouldn't it be remote versus can it be remote? It really changes the conversation and the dynamic of the whole situation. >> I love that. And just, GitLab, by the way, has been a true inspiration 'cause they are the most remote, remote company. And they share so much, I love what you said. As just two examples of reacting to what you said, pre-COVID, we always wanted to keep a level playing field. So we actually moved our all-hands meetings to be instead of being broadcast from one room, and you're kind of seeing this small screen with all these people, we all just were at computers presenting. And so everyone's on a level playing field. So I thought what GitLab said is great. And then the other point, I think post-COVID we have learned is the kids and the dogs aren't distractions, they're part of our life. And so embracing those and saying, hey, I see that kid in the background, bring them onto the screen. Even during work meetings, even customer meetings, you know? And I'm seeing, I'm on a customer meeting and the customer's bringing their kids onto the screen and it's kind of breaking this artificial wall between who we are at home and who we are at work 'cause we're human beings all throughout. At Gainsight, we talk about a human first approach to business and we've never been more human as a world than we are right now. >> Love it, love it. So another, get your thoughts on, is this whole idea of measurement and productivity at home. And it's really, I have to say, disturbing to see some of the new product announcements that are coming out in terms of people basically snoopin' on people. Whether it's trackin' how many hours of Zoom calls they're on, or how often are they in the VPN, or having their camera flip on every so many minutes or something. We had Marten Mickos on, who's now the CEO of HackerOne. He was CEO at MySQL years ago before it went to Sun and he had the great line, he said, it's so easy to fake it at the office, but when you're at home and you're only output is your deliverable, it makes it a lot easier. So I wonder if you can share some of your thoughts in terms of kind of managing output, setting expectations, to get people to get their work done. And then, as you see some of these new tools for people that are just entering this thing, it's just not right (chuckles). >> Yeah, I agree with you and Marten. I'm a huge fan of Marten, as well, I totally agree with both of it. And I think there's an older approach to work, which is more like a factory. It's like you got to see how many widgets you're processing and you got to micromanage and you got to monitoring and inspecting. Look, I don't run a factory, so maybe there are places where that model makes sense. So I'm not going to speak for every leader, but I could say if you're in a world where your job is information, services, software, where the value is the people and their knowledge, managing them that way is a losing battle. I go back to, some folks probably know, this famous TED Talk by Dan Pink on basically what motivates people. And in these knowledge worker jobs, it's autonomy, mastery and purpose. So autonomy, we have the freedom to do what we want. Mastery, we feel like we're getting better at jobs. And purpose, which is I have a why behind what I do. And I think, take that time you spend on your micromanagement and your Zoom, analyzing the Zoom sessions, and spend it on inspiring your team, on the purpose. Spend it on enabling your team in terms of mastery. Spend it on taking away barriers so they have more autonomy. I think you'll get way more out of your team. >> Yeah, I agree. I think it's, as Darren said, again, he's like, well, would you trust your people if you're on the fourth floor and they're on the sixth? So just-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> If you don't trust your people, you got to bigger issue than worrying about how many hours they're on Zoom, which is not the most productive use of time. >> People waste so much time in the office, and getting to the office. And by the way, I'm not saying that it's wrong, it's fine too. But it's not like the office is just unfettered productivity all the time, that's a total myth. >> Yes, so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about events. So, obviously, the CUBE's in the event business. We've had to flip completely 'cause all the events are, well, they're all going digital for sure, and/or postponing it or canceling. So we've had to flip and do all dial-ins and there's a whole lot of stuff about asynchronous. But for you, I think it's interesting because as a distributed company, you had Gainsight Pulse as that moment to bring people together physically. You're in the same boat as everybody else, physical is not an option this year. So how are you approaching Gainsight Pulse, both because it's a switch from what you've done in the past, but you at least had the benefit of being in a distributed world? So you probably have a lot of advantages over people that have never done this before. >> Yeah, that's a really interesting, insightful observation. So just for a context, Pulse is an event we do every year to bring together the customer success community. 'Cause, as you observed, there is value in coming together. And so this is not just for our employees, this is for all the customer success people, and actually increasingly product management people out there, coming together around this common goal of driving success for your customers. And it started in 2013 with 300 people, and last year, we had 5,000 people at our event in San Francisco. We had similar events in London and Sydney. And so it's a big deal. And there's a lot of value to coming together physically. But obviously, that's not possible now, nor is it advisable. And we said, okay, how do we convert this and not lose what's special about Pulse? And leverage, like you said, Jeff, the fact that we're good at distributed stuff in general. And so we created what we call Pulse Everywhere. We didn't want to call it Pulse Virtual or something like that, Pulse Webinar, because we didn't want to set the bar as just like, oh, my virtual event, my webinar. This is something different. And we called it Everywhere, 'cause it's Pulse wherever you are. And we joke, it's in your house, it's in your backyard, it's on the peloton, it's walking the dog. You could be wherever you are and join Pulse this year, May 13th and 14th. And what's amazing is last year we had 5,000 people in person, this year we already have 13,000 people registered as of the end of April. And so we'll probably have more than three times the number of people at Pulse Everywhere. And we're really bringing that physical event concept into the virtual, literally with, instead of a puppy pit, where you're in a physical event, you'll bring puppies often, we have a puppy cam where you can see the puppies. We're not giving up on all of our silly music videos and jokes and we actually ship cameras and high-end equipment to all the speakers' houses. So they're going to have a very nice digital experience, our attendees are. It's not going to be like watching a video conference call. It's going to be like watching a TV show, one much like what you try to do here, right? And so we have this amazing experience for all of our presenters and then for the audience. And we're really trying to say how do we make it so it feels like you're in this really connected community? You just happen to not be able to shake people's hands. So it's coming up in a few weeks. It's a big experiment, but we're excited about it. >> There's so many conversations, and we jumped in right away, when this was all going down, what defines a digital event? And like you, I don't like the word virtual. There's nothing fake or virtual. To me, virtual's second to life. And kind of-- >> Yeah. >> Video game world. And like you, we did, it can't be a webinar, right? And so, if you really kind of get into the attributes of what is a webinar? It's generally a one-way communication for a significant portion of the allocated time and you kind of get your questions in and hopefully they take 'em, right? It's not a truly kind of engaged process. That said, as you said, to have the opportunity to separate creation, distribution and consumption of the content, now opens up all types of opportunity. And that's before you get into the benefits of the democratization, as you said, we're seeing that with a lot of the clients we work with. Their registration numbers are giant. >> Totally. >> Because-- >> You're not traveling to spend money, yeah. >> It'll be curious to see what the conversion is and I don't know we have a lot of data there. But, such a democratizing opportunity. And then, you have people that are trying to force, as Ben Nelson said on, you know Ben from Minerva, right? A car is not a mechanical horse, they're trying to force this new thing into this old paradigm and have people sit for, I saw one today, 24 hours, in front of their laptop. It's like a challenge. And it's like, no, no, no. Have your rally moment, have your fun stuff, have your kind of your one-to-many, but really there's so much opportunity for many-to-many. >> Many-to-many. >> Make all the content out there, yeah. >> We've created this concept in this Pulse Everywhere event called Tribes. And the idea is that when you go to an event, the goal is actually partially content, but a lot of times it's connection. And so in any given big event, there's lots of little communities out there and you want to meet people "like you". Might be people in a similar phase of their career, a similar type of company, in our case, it could be companies in certain industry. And so these Tribes in our kind of Pulse Everywhere experience, let people break out into their own tribes, and then kind of basically chat with each other throughout the event. And so it's not the exact same thing as having a drink with people, but at least a little bit more of that serendipitous conversation. >> Right, no, it's different and I think that's really the message, right? It's different, it's not the same. But there's a lot of stuff you can do that you can't do in the physical way, so quit focusing on what you can't do and embrace what you can. So that's great. And good luck on the event. Again, give the plug for it. >> Yeah, it's May 13th and 14th. If you go to gainsightpulse.com you can sign up, and it's basically anything related to driving better success for your customers, better retention, less churn, and better product experience. It's a great event to learn. >> Awesome, so I want to shift gears one more time and really talk about leadership. That's really kind of the focus of this series that we've been doing. And tough times call for great leadership. And it's really an opportunity for great leaders to show their stuff and let the rest of us learn. You have a really fantastic style. You know I'm a huge fan, we're social media buddies. But you're very personable and you're very, kind of human, I guess, is really the best word, in your communications. You've got ton of frequency, ton of variety. But really, most of it has kind of this human thread. I wonder if you can share kind of your philosophy behind social, 'cause I think a lot of leaders are afraid of it. I think they're afraid that there is reward for saying something stupid is not worth the benefit of saying okay things. And I think also a lot of leaders are afraid of showing some frailty, showing some emotion. Maybe you're a little bit scared, maybe we don't have all the answers. And yet you've really, you're not afraid at all. And I think it's really shines in the leadership activities and behaviors and things you do day in and day out. So how do you think about it? What's your strategy? >> Yeah, it's really interesting you ask, Jeff, because I'm in a group of CEOs that get together on a regular basis, and I'm going to be leading a session on social media for CEOs. And honestly, when I was putting it together, I was like, it's 2020, does that still need to exist? But somehow, there is this barrier. And I'll talk more about it, but I think the barrier isn't just about social media, it's just about how a CEO wants to present herself or himself into the world. And I think, to me, the three things to ask yourself are, first of all, why? Why do you want to be on social media? Why do you want to communicate to the outside? You should have a why. Hopefully you enjoy it, but also you're connecting from a business perspective with your customers. And for us, it's been a huge benefit to really be able to connect with our customers. And then, who are you targeting? So, I actually think an important thing to think about is it's okay to have a micro-audience. I don't have millions of Twitter followers like Lady Gaga, but within the world of SaaS and customer success and retention, I probably have a decent number. And that means I can really connect with my own specific audience. And then, what. So, the what is really interesting 'cause I think there's a lot of non-obvious things about, it's not just about your business. So I can tweet about customer success or retention and I do, but also the, what, about you as an individual, what's happening in your family? What's happening in the broader industry, in my case of SaaS? What's happening in the world of leading through COVID-19? All the questions you've asked, Jeff, are in this lens. And then that gets you to the final which is the, how. And I think the, how, is the most important. It's basically whether you can embrace the idea of being vulnerable. There's a famous TED Talk by Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability is the greatest superpower for leaders. I think the reason a lot of people have a hard time on social media, is they have a hard time really being vulnerable. And just saying, look, I'm just a human being just like all of you. I'm a privileged human being. I have a lot of things that luckily kind of came my way, but I'm just a human being. I get scared, I get anxious, I get lonely, all those things. Just like all of you, you know. And really being able to take off your armor of, oh, I'm a CEO. And then when you do that, you are more human. And it's like, this goes back to this concept of human first business. There's no work persona and home persona, there's just you. And I think it's surprising when you start doing it, and I started maybe seven, eight, nine years ago, it's like, wow, the world wants more human leaders. They want you to just be yourself, to talk about your challenges. I had the kids, when we got to 13,000 registrations for Pulse Everywhere, they pied me in the face. And the world wants to see CEOs being pied in the face. Probably that one, for sure, that's a guaranteed crowd pleaser. CEOs being pied in the face. But they want to see what you're into outside of work and the pop culture you're into. And they want to see the silly things that you're doing. They want you to be human. And so I think if you're willing to be vulnerable, which takes some bravery, it can really, really pay off for your business, but I think also for you as a person. >> Yeah, yeah. I think it's so insightful. And I think people are afraid of it for the wrong reasons, 'cause it is actually going to help people, it's going to help your own employees, as well, get to know you better. >> Totally, they love it. >> And you touched on another concept that I think is so important that I think a lot of people miss as we go from kind of the old broadcast world to more narrow casting, which is touching your audience and developing your relationship with your audience. So we have a concept here at theCUBE that one is greater than 1% of 100. Why go with the old broadcast model and just spray and you hope you have these really ridiculously low conversion rates to get to that person that you're trying to get to, versus just identifying that person and reaching out directly to those people, and having a direct engagement and a relative conversation within the people that care. And it's not everybody, but, as you said, within the population that cares about it it's meaningful and they get some value out of it. So it's a really kind of different strategy. So-- >> I love that. >> You're always get a lot of stuff out, but you are super prolific. So you got a bunch of projects that are just hitting today. So as we're getting ready to sit down, I see you just have a book came out. So tell us a little bit about the book that just came out. >> Sure, yeah, it's funny. I need to get my physical copy too at my home. I've got so a few, just for context. Five years ago, we released this first book on "Customer Success" which you can kind of see here. It's surprising really, really popular in this world of SaaS and customer success and it ties, Jeff, to what you just said which is, you don't need to be the book that everyone in the world reads, you need to be the book that everyone in your world reads. And so this book turned out to be that. Thousands of company management teams and CEOs in software and SaaS read it. And so, originally when this came out, it was just kind of an introduction to what we call customer success. Basically, how do you retain your customers for the long-term? How do you get them more value? And how do you get them to use more of what they've bought and eventually spend more money with you? And that's a mega-trend that's happening. We decided that we needed an update. So this second book is called "Customer Success Economy." It just came out, literally today. And it's available on Amazon. And it's about the idea that customer success started in tech companies, but it's now gone into many, many industries, like healthcare, manufacturing, services. And it started with a specific team called the customer success management team. But now it's affecting how companies build products, how they sell, how they market. So it's sort of this book is kind of a handbook for management teams on how to apply customer success to your whole business and we call it "Customer Success Economy" 'cause we do think the future of the economy isn't about marketing and selling transactional products, but it's about making sure what your customers are buying is actually delivering value for them, right? That's better for the world, but it's also just necessary 'cause your customers have the power now. You and I have the power to decide how to transport ourselves, whether it's buying a car or rideshare, in the old world when we could leave our house. And we have the power to decide how we're going to stay in a city, whether it's a hotel or Airbnb or whatever. And so customers have the power now, and if you're not driving success, you're not going to be able to keep those customers. And so "Customer Success Economy" is all about that. >> Yeah, and for people that aren't familiar with Gainsight, obviously, there's lots of resources that they can go. They should go to the show in a couple weeks, but also, I think, the interview that we did at PagerDuty, I think you really laid out kind of a great definition of what customer success is. And it's not CRM, it has nothing to do with CRM. CRM is tracking leads and tracking ops. It's not customer success. So, people can also check that. But I want to shift gears again a little bit because one, you also have your blog, MehtaPhysical, that came out. And you just came out again recently with a new post. I don't know when you, you must have a army of helper writers, but you talk about something that is really top of mind right now. And everyone that we get on theCUBE, especially big companies that have the benefit of a balance sheet with a few bucks in it, say we want to help our customers, we want to help our people be safe, obviously, that's first. But we also want to help our customers. But nobody ever really says what exactly does that mean? And it's pretty interesting. You lay out a bunch of things that are happening in the SaaS world, but I jumped on, I think it's number 10 of your list, which is how to think about helping your customers. And you give some real specific kind of guidance and guidelines and definitions, if you will, of how do you help our customers through these tough times. >> Yeah, so I'll summarize for the folks listening. One of the things we observed is, in this terrible tough times right now, your customers are in very different situations. And for simplicity, we thought about three categories. So the companies that we call category one, which are unfortunately, adversely affected by this terrible crisis, but also by the shutdown itself, and that's hotels, restaurants, airlines, and you can put other folks in that example. What do those customers need? Well, they probably need some financial relief. And you have to figure out what you're going to do there and that's a hard decision. And they also just need empathy. It's not easy and the stress level they have is massive. Then you've got, on the other extremes, a small number of your customers might be doing great despite this crisis or maybe even because of it, because they make video conferencing technology or remote work technology, or they make stuff for virtual or telemedicine. And those folks actually are likely to be super busy because they're just trying to keep up with the demand. So what they need from you is time and help. And then you got the people in between. Most companies, right, where there may be a mix of some things going well, some don't. And so what we recommended is think about your strategy, not just inside out, what you want, but outside in, what those clients need. And so as an example, you might think about in that first category, financial relief. The second category, the companies in the middle, they may need, they may not be willing to spend more money, but they may want to do more stuff. So maybe you unlock your product, make it available, so they can use everything in your suite for a while. And maybe in that third category, they're wiling to spend money, but they're just really busy. So maybe you offer services for them or things to help them as they scale. >> Yeah, so before I let you go, I just want to get your reaction to one more great leader. And as you can tell, I love great leaders and studying great leaders. Back when I was in business school we had Dave Pottruck, who at that time was the CEO of Schwab, come and speak and he's a phenomenal speaker and if you ever get a chance to see him speak. And at that point in time, Schwab had to reinvent their business with online trading and basically kill their call-in brokerage for online brokerage, and I think that they had a fixed price of 19.99, whatever it was. This was back in the late 90s. But he was a phenomenal speaker. And we finished and he had a small dinner with a group of people, and we just said, David, you are a phenomenal speaker, why, how, why're you so good? And he goes, you know, it's really pretty simple. As a CEO, I have one job. It's to communicate. And I have three constituencies. I kind of have the street and the market, I have my internal people, and then I have my customers and my ecosystem. And so he said, I, and he's a wrestler, he said, you know I treated it like wrestling. I hired a coach, I practiced my moves, I did it over and over, and I embraced it as a skill and it just showed so brightly. And it's such a contrast to people that get wrapped around the axle with their ego, or whatever. And I think you're such a shiny example of someone who over communicates, arguably, in terms of getting the message out, getting people on board, and letting people know what you're all about, what the priorities are, and where you're going. And it's such a sheer, or such a bright contrast to the people that don't do that that I think is so refreshing. And you do it in a fun and novel and in your own personal way. >> That's awesome to hear that story. He's a inspirational leader, and I've studied him, for sure. But I hadn't heard this specific story, and I totally agree with you. Communication is not something you're born with. Honestly, you might know this, Jeff, or not, as a kid, I was super lonely. I didn't really have any friends and I was one of those kids who just didn't fit in. So I was not the one they would pick to be on stage in front of thousands of people or anything else. But you just do it over and over again and you try to get better and you find, I think a big thing is finding your own voice, your own style. I'm not a super formal style, I try to be very human and authentic. And so finding your style that works for you, I agree, it's completely learnable. >> Yeah, well, Nick, thank you. Thanks for taking a few minutes. I'm sure you're super, super busy getting ready for the show in a couple weeks. But it's always great to catch up and really appreciate you taking some time to share your thoughts and insights with us. >> Thank you, Jeff, it's an honor. >> All right, he's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>Live from Copenhagen, Denmark. It's the cube covering new Tanex. Dot. Next 2019 brought to you by Nutanix. >>Welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Nutanix dot. Next we are here in Copenhagen. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside Stu Miniman. We are joined by Dhiraj Penn day. He is the CEO and founder of Nutanix. Thank you so much for returning to our program. You are a Cuba. Thank you. So I want to talk to you about what we're here to do is celebrate 10 years of Nutanix. Ben Gibson, when he was up there on the main stage, he's the head of marketing. He was talking about watching you backstage, saying that I saw in him a lot of pride and emotion because this is really your baby. You started 10 years ago. There's been a lot of nostalgia, uh, bringing up some of your first employees. There's even a picture of you poised with a ping pong ball ready to play a little beer pong back in the early days. So talk a little bit about what this means to you to be here 10 years after you founded this couple. >>Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to come here. Um, err, it looks like an era, 10 years as an error. We've built a family of customers and employees and partners and uh, yet it feels like a, we haven't achieved a thing. So, you know, to me the more I make it look like it's 2010 back again, you can go back to being like a startup again and you know, growing from here because you know, growth is a very relative term. You know, it's a, it's a mindset thing and um, I think the new day and age of multicloud and what we have to do to virtualize all these different silos that have been merged and to virtualize, simplify and integrate, you know, virtualize, simplify, integrate clouds is going to be a journey of a lifetime actually. >>Yeah. Deer Ridge. I think back to some of our earliest discussions, uh, you know, you would bring us in and talking about, you know, the, the, the challenge of our era is building software for the distributed architecture that we need. And that was as relevant in 2010 or 2012 as it is here in 2019. Um, HCI helps simplify that deployment of virtualization. We are definitely a point that we need to simplify. Cloud. Cloud is here, it's growing. The hybrid pieces are there. So maybe prednisone side, you know, kind of what's the same about the journey and some of it is, you know, making one click upgrades in today's environment is way more complex, uh, than, than it would have been back when it was just a, you know, an appliance. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think talking >>about the whole concept of hyperconvergence initially started out as converging compute with storage. How do you keep them close together? Because, uh, machines need a locality, you know, applications need a local data because the network is the real enemy. And uh, the same was true of human performance. You know, like lots of teams, lots bureaucracy, very little autonomy. So when you brought data close to applications, application, people became autonomous, you know, they could do things on their own and that was the power of hyperconvergence. You know, you're able to provide performance to data and machines and you're able to provide performance to people because they became autonomous. I think that is not changing even in the hyperscaler data center environment and anything, the fact that you have to hop multiple switches to get to data. Uh, I think it's recreating the same problems that we started out this company with, you know, almost 10 years ago. >>In fact, if anything, the hyperscaler networks are worse than the networks that private clouds actually had or even on prem data centers had. So keeping data close to applications is, is relevant and it's fashionable one more time. And the fact that you can provide that autonomy to application folks to go launch their apps in the public cloud through this new architecture, using the bare metal service offerings to the public cloud where the bare metal offerings look like HP server or Dell server to us, I think recreates the same. So I think I'm a big proponent of the saying that says the more things change, the more they remain the same. And they actually look very much the same as 10 years ago. >>So how do you think that you describing the technolog technology, technological changes that have taken place, but really we're sort of back to where we started from, but how would you describe the ways, the differences in the ways that people work together, talking about the human beings who are actually using this technology? >>Well, uh, for one, uh, this notion of uh, converging teams and people is similar to the notion of converging, uh, machines, you know, hardware to pure software. I think, you know, what ever happened in our personal lives with the iPhone and the Android, uh, O S it's exactly what hyperconvergence data is. You know, we had all these gadgets and they were special special purpose, single purpose gadgets and we made them as apps and they were all together in this one, uh, sort of device. And then the device connected to cloud services. I think that's what happened in the enterprise computing as well. You know, compute, storage, networking, security, everything coming together as pure software is running the apps. And I think that has created the notion of generalists in it as well. Because as it matures, you can't have so many specialists. And just like in healthcare, you know, you can't have so many uh, specialist doctors when you need like a ton of primary care physicians and generalist practitioners and that's what it is going through as well. >>And so that's changing the skills that are in demand too from employers because you are looking for people who are sort of a mile wide and inch deep. >>Yeah. And in fact a, the inch deep is actually not a pejorative. I would say that it's a good thing because with automation and a lot of layering of software, you don't need to get deeper into the details. The weeds, especially if infrastructure computing goes, you know, what's our, is to really elevate it to go figure out things that really matter to the business, you know, which is applications and services as opposed to going and stitching together stuff that really can be done with pure software and a standardization. I know the level of standardization that operating models can bring with a commodity servers and fewer software select people go and do things that really are more relevant in this age actually. Yup. >>I was wondering if he did the close of the keynote, there was discussion of the tech preview of XY clusters. You and I've spoken a little bit off camera, uh, about this, but there is a lot of interest out there. You know, everything when you know, uh, Azure first announced Azure stack, it got everyone excited. Uh, to be honest, Rebecca and I were at the Microsoft, uh, one of the Microsoft shows last year and most of the attendees, we're really talking about it. So it's that kind of the buzz versus the reality of what customers are actually using. Where do you see, where are we with kind of that, that hybrid discussion and you know, why is Nutanix taking a slightly different approach, uh, than, than some of the others out there? >>Yeah, I mean, you know, this a hybrid cloud is another word for hyperconverged clouds and whatever HCI was in 2010 is what hybrid is today. So imagine 10 years from 2010 we're still talking about HCI, especially in the large enterprise as they won't barely begun to say look, private cloud equals at CA. I think that's been a sort of an epiphany moment for most of the CEOs of the global 2000 companies just in the last three years. You've been talking about it for 10 years now. So there's a bell curve of technology adoption. We are in the very early stages of what hyperconverged clouds will mean or what hybrid cloud should mean. I think doing it right is important because the market is large, you know, the ability to really move, uh, applications and infrastructure. I call them apps now, you know, the hypervisor is now in half because it can run in the Amazon platform, it can run in the Azure platform and that platform that they provided, billing identity, you know, recommendations and things of that nature. >>So on top of that, back from how do you go and in a put your app in the catalog, I think that's the overall, uh, sort of metaphor that I use. So in that sense, I don't look at the platform as a zero sum game for us. We just have to look at it as a platform where our apps can actually go and run. how does a company, you've grown quite a bit, but if you look at the overall market, you're still a small player compared to a Microsoft or Cisco or a Google out there. So we definitely think you have that opportunity to help simplify that, that cloud hyperconverged cloud experience as you said. Um, but uh, you know, how, how does the Nutanix, uh, get there? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, um, and I say this to people who followed virtualization, the history of virtualization. >>Uh, when VMware was building virtualization, silver market was $55 billion. Storage was 30 billion, networking was 25 billion and not $110 billion market. When they meant to $4 billion, they just had to think about what does it mean to put a layer of software on top of all this stuff so people can drag and drop experience from one server to another from one storage array to another and so on. So there's enough value to add on top of that 110 billion with your own 4 billion in 2012 there are $4 billion company. Actually not right now. We're thinking about, okay, these things are the new platform. Where is the value in going and virtualizing simplifying and integrating the mall with a layer of software that becomes the new integration software for all things multi cloud. Yeah. So it's interesting when I connect the dots with that to Nutanix is going to be going through its own transformation and you've talked publicly a lot about, you know, you sit on the board of Adobe that moved from software scripted is challenging. >>What I want to understand is what does that end result of these subscription model? What does that mean for your customers and how they can, you know, change that relationship. Okay. I talked about this in my keynote as well. The why of subscription. I think the very fact that we've decoupled the entitlement, uh, from hardware was the first change for us. You know, the fact that software can live anywhere. And on top of that, what subscription delivers is this notion of residual value where you can say, look, if I have unused products and unused, uh, terms on, on some of these products, can I use them for other things? Actually. So it provides a very agile procurement framework that is very new to the world of infrastructure actually. And yet we've had a ton of shelfware in infrastructure in general and a on-prem software in general, even in the public cloud that a lot of shelfware do. I think the ability to really go and repurpose stuff for new things that you want to buy provides a lot of optionality to our customers. You know, subscription also is about bite sizing thing so you don't have to buy big things, you know, and delivering it in real time. So I think, uh, you will see more and more of a consumption model change towards subscription in the coming years. >>It talking about the value of Nutanix in this multi-cloud world and you're, and you're talking about how customers really want that optionality. We're here in Copenhagen. How would you say the U S customers are different from the European customers in terms of what they're looking for or are they different? You >>know, uh, they're very similar because there's ton of global companies out there who have local offices and such in the global 2000 has tentacles everywhere. Uh, I think in some ways where they do differ is when it comes to the partner community and the channel and the system integrators, they're actually more influential here in Europe and Asia Pacific than in the U S because most of the talent in the U S goes and works for companies like us. And, uh, most of the talent in Europe, in Asia Pacific, they work for the channel and the system integrators. So how we actually work with them and learn from them and educate them on the, on the transformation I think is basically the only thing that's different. All right. Steerage, uh, w one of the feedback I got from customers is something that I hear at the Amazon show. I'm inundated with so much new stuff, you know, I can't keep up with it. >>Um, what might you explain a little bit kind of the portfolio and also if you can just organizationally how you think of this. You know, when we hear, you know, Amazon does their two pizza teams and they scale is very different from a traditional software infrastructure companies. So it's a great, uh, a point in, one of my favorite sort of things to think about these days is how do you not sell things that sell an experience. It's very, very important to differentiate the two because you know, you can build a ton of things. And then the question is if you've left the integration as an exercise to the reader or to the customer and you're basically telling them, look, you can as well buy best of breed from other companies in integrated on your own. So the job of integration and to really sell an experiences has to be left, shifted to companies like us. >>And that's what we've been doing with our products. You know, we are really bringing them together. When you say all together now it's also about our products actually it's the portfolio around data, making sure that we are really bringing them all together. They can leverage each other. One sits on top of the other one tiers to the other. They can share common policy policy engines and things like that. I mean what we're doing with security for example, is bringing multicloud with the old world of micro segmentation. Actually, you know, there's a lot of integration that's going on yet we want to provide each of these GMs autonomy because you know, at some level, uh, they are all looking for individual use cases and workflows and they're looking for mastery, which is like how do I master, uh, what I do well with my customers, but in the purpose has to be more than their own actually know. >>And like you think about autonomy, mastery, purpose, you know, one of Dan Pink's philosophies of motivation are general managers. They're motivated if you give them amp, you know, autonomy, mastery and purpose. But at the end of the day, the purpose is customer driven. It's not driven by products is driven by customers. It's during my customer's experience rather than the general managers, things they're actually building to the customers. Just one followup. When I think about, you know, one of the challenges I hear inside customers and I thought we'd made more progress is still a lot of silos. I talked to customers that are like, well, you know, I, I've deployed Nutanix and I love it, but there's this group over here and they're doing something different and they're certified or they're starting to use it, or Oh my God, this developer team spun something up and didn't pay any attention. So, you know, it was supposed to get everything back under control and, and manage it and work with the business. >>But, you know, I feel like the customers haven't made a lot of progress on that journey in the last 10 years. What's your feedback from customers? It's very true. Look, I think, uh, what you just said is also about autonomy for the developers and autonomy for that other team and such. So you can't force fit everything into single size. You know, this one size fits all kind of a philosophy. That's where there's a bell curve of adoption in any technology. I mean, even today, if you think of the hyperscalers, you know, you might think that they have it all. They have 2% of the market, you know, and that's how big this market really is. So I think going back to understanding that each of these groups actually has skill sets that are different. They're used to doing things a certain way and unless you go and weave it with them, you know what I tell people is you want to walk to where the customer is before you walk with them to where you want them to be actually. >>So walking to where the customer is not going to the private cloud. You know, we could easily have said, look, let's banish all this. Let's build everything as an off prem cloud service 10 years ago. But he said, the market is not there yet. Similarly, we said we got to build appliances because right now the white box market is not there yet for the enterprise. Then when we came out of it, we said, look, the market is already there. Let's walk with them with pure software now subscription. We did the same with the underlying marginalization software below Nutanix. We said, let's walk the world where the customers, let's run on top of VMware if that's what it takes, and then walk with them to where we want them to be, which is an invisible hypervisor and such. So I think we've got to keep doing this. You know, where, let's remove the hubris from a innovation in Silicon Valley and a lot of hubris about these things that we know it all. I think when you try to go and understand and have the entity for the customer is when magical things happening. >>That's a fantastic note to end on a dear AJ, thank you so much for coming back on the cube. It's always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more from Nutanix dot. Next.

(upbeat techno music) >> Live from Las Vegas. Its theCUBE, covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019 here in Sin City Nevada. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host John Furrier. We have two guests for this segment: we have Pinkrose Hamilton, she is the VP Business Intelligence at Hackensack Meridian Health. Thanks for coming on the show. >> Thank you for having me. >> And we have Andy Crago, he is the Managing Consultant at Infoverity, thanks so much Andy. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell us a little bit about this partnership between Hackensack and Infoverity. >> Well we were looking for an implementation partner, we were looking for the skills to come in and help us really implement MDM specifically, we're also implementing a few other technologies that we can probably speak about, but that's how we got connected. >> So tell us a little bit about what life was like before MDM. What were sort of the obstacles, the challenges that you were wrestling with? >> So Hackensack Meridian Health is the largest health system in New Jersey, and we are a very fast-growing, we like to consider ourselves disruptive, health industry in New Jersey, and so because of that we were growing and acquiring mergers acquisitions, and many different EMRs, many different physician credentialing systems were involved in this so we had to make a decision of do we wait 'til we're all on one system, which we all know will never happen, or never happen in time sometimes, so we decided to do the MDM approach which makes the most sense to us. >> One of the things that's interesting we talked, we go to hundreds of events, we talk to a lot of experts and practitioners, and everyone buys into cloud at some level, cloud natives, certainly born in the cloud, great benefits. Data's critical because in SAS, data's great if you have it because you can feed machine learning, you can take more risks, be agile, and more risk more reward. And the apps, it's all good, right? On the enterprise side, on premises, legacy kind of kicks in. If data can't feed machine learning or can't feed the app, AI really can't be enabled. This becomes a key challenge in the industry. How do you guys look at that? Because as you lay out, it's not a simple answer go to the cloud, just do on prem, you got to think about architecture. What do you guys doing with regards to where the data's stored, how do you think about it, what's some advice, best practice can you share? >> Well, I consider data storage being more like a house you're living in, right? So we buy our starter homes and we start our families. And then we outgrow this house, and then we have to say okay, I need a bigger house and we start growing. And so data's run pretty much the same way. We start outgrowing our on prem houses, and so now we're moving out, and we're moving to bigger and better things, which is cloud. And so I think hybrid is where we start, right? We can't start with okay, everybody move out and move into this new house, it's let's go build this new house somewhere else, let's test it out and see if we like it. So that's my thought process around it. >> So you've got the addition, that's got to work with all the plumbing, right? >> Right! >> So it's the same thing And then you got more track homes, and you got electronic cars that go in between. >> Exactly. >> Automation. So this is more of a systems view? >> Yes. Take care of the operational piece. >> Absolutely. >> Then think about developer angle, what's that, how does that architecture look? >> So in terms of what we're trying to do right now, I mean, it has to be kind of short-term vision with kind of a larger scale architecture, so you know as Pink was saying in terms of the hybrid architecture, if we are able to develop reusable cleanse functions such as the address doctor funtionality, we're were reaching out to a third party service, bringing in more enriched information, we have that in an on prem model right now. But in the future, that configuration and work will easily transition into that cloud architecture, so we're trying to keep our eye on the future and make sure that things are reusable as we move forward. >> And how do you two work together? I mean, this is such an interest, in this age of co-opetition, you're not necessarily competitors of course, but how do you work together to come up with the right solutions? What does that look like, the partnership? >> Well, we totally hate each other. >> That's right. (laughs) >> It's the first we've talked in a while. >> No, the partnership, I think, we hit it off right from the beginning. It was just a matter of you know, when we acquire new technologies and that decision of how much time and effort is it going to take for me to train my team and to identify the right folks on my team and what work am I going to take away from them in order to give them this additional work and this learning curve that needs to go into place. So I think we have to augment our teams with experts like Infoverity to come in and say, this is how this tool functions, and sometimes we bring in the technologies and we kind of just crack it open, but we don't really get the full use of it to understand exactly every bell and whistle we can take advantage of, and these guys are the experts that help us do that. >> And it's always a challenge, I mean, I think data's been center of the version for many many years, it's kind of mainstream now, and you can't look at the headlines these days without hearing one year anniversary of GDPR, privacy, so there's always been that risk management compliance stuff that's been around, certainly you guys know that. But everyday there's a new thing. Oh, you've got cloud, you got georegions, you're in this country, you're in that country. So as more regulatory things creep up, who knows, maybe blockchain's out there. So again, all these things are circling around complexity, which constrains data, not necessarily frees it so much. Well maybe build software. Do how does Informatica and customer deal with this, because I'd imagine you have to build an extraction layer, has to be some tooling around it, monitoring. >> Yeah. >> What's your take on this complexity? >> So in terms of an architecture perspective, we consolidate all of the different silos of patient data into a centralized repository. Historically, you would build a lot of point to point feeds based on a certain application. We built some custom work and we ship them off some data. But really what we want to do is be able to master once and publish to a canonical model that's more self-service and hub and spoke so as consumers and customers of the data need to come and get it, they can come to a centralized place, we can augment what data's available there, and kind of scale that with the architecture across real time capabilities, cloud, and other use cases that we come across. >> Do you feel good, data's frictionless, it's out there, it's addressable. >> In terms of the vision that we're on? So I mean, it's a couple steps at a time. But in terms of; >> It's that addition to the house. The journey and set of tools that we have, that's definitely where we're going, so. >> I want to ask you about the skills gap. One of the things that has emerged is that in the healthcare industry, it is much more evolved in the sense of there's an understanding of how to work with data. And perhaps because you've just always worked with more data than say a retail company or a consumer products company. So first of all, how big a problem is this for Hackensack Meridian Health? Is it as bad as the headlines suggest? And also what are you doing to combat it? >> So our main goal is to take care of the patient, right? So when a patient is introduced to our system, we want to be able to take care of that patient and their family members in the best possible way that we can. So if we're working with a very disparate organization, where we're on multiple EMRs specifically, it's hard for us to identify that episode of care for that patient. So the MDM piece particularly, with the patient domain allows us to do that. It allows us to view the entire episode of care for that patient, to see you went to these doctor's offices, you had these things done, you went to this lab, you had these tests done, you went to the hospital, you had this procedure, and this is what your follow-up looked like. So from a; and we're also conscious of the patient's expense in all of this as well as you know what's the provider's expense, what's the payer's expense, so you want to make it cost-effective. You want to make it accessible so that are there services that a certain zip code or patient population needs that we're not providing? That we can provide? And so this is the whole entire continuity of care. To take care of our patients the best way we can. >> My daughter just graduated college this week in Cal, the first ever data analysis college class, inaugural class so it shows how early it is. Cal's a great school, been doing data for a while. Data's a huge opportunity. Whether it's women in tech, new service area comes up. You don't need to be a hardcore programmer to get into the data business. But there's certain patterns we're seeing emerge, that you don't have to have a certain degree, because the jobs that are open, there's no degree for. There's only the first class has graduated from Berkeley. So I got to ask you for the folks in high school, or parents out there or anyone looking to reskill, what specific foundational and/or advanced skill sets should people be looking at if they really want to get into data? It could be anything. So I'd love to get your take on what you think those skills are for people out there that they want to learn something new and ride the wave. >> I'll start a little bit. I think a lot of people get really technical with data, but I think you really have to understand data within business contexts. I mean, if you're looking at a physician record, understanding the type of physician, maybe where the care was administered. You have to really think about okay, what am I trying to solve, what pain point am I looking at. So it's not about relational databases and writing sequel, you really have to understand the functional purpose of data within the business problem that you're considering. >> So machine learning's hot, the nerds go there, the geeks go there, but there's a bigger picture than just coding. >> Exactly. There's a whole data strategy that you need to consider and kind of plug and play as you go along and really understanding the data within the business context is key. >> I'm so glad you asked that question, because I'm going to give a different viewpoint from this. I have a daughter who's a junior in high school, and she's preparing her career path, and so she wants to follow mom's career path and wants to do data science, so it's very exciting for me, you know? I'm actually a role model, which you never expect your children to think of you as one. >> Congratulations. >> But yeah, she picked up a few sequel classes early on in high school. And I think that the underlining foundation of coding is probably a little bit important to get that piece of it, because when you're leading the function, and definitely knowing the business knowledge. When we start any project, we go in and we start with discovery, right? What is it that you do, how do you do it, what are your workflows, what do they look like? So that's definitely key. But adding in that technical piece makes you that perfect data science human that I would look for as an employer. >> It's certainly evolving. There's no one yet playbook, 'cause there's so many diverse opportunities to take in from visualization to ethics to coding to business value, unbelievable. >> Yeah. >> Great. Well Pink and Andy thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Lots of great advice for newly minted graduates! >> That's right >> Yes. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for John Furrier, you are watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music).

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone. It's the live CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2018, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We got two sets. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Stu Miniman. Our next guest is Adam Rasner, who is Vice-President of Technology Operation of AutoNation. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Yeah thanks for having me. >> So you guys are a customer of all this virtualization stuff. What's going on in your company? Tell us what's happening at AutoNation. What are you guys at now with IT operations? Where you guys going? How you guys building into the Cloud? What's the strategy? >> Sure, so AutoNation is exploding. We have 280 new car dealerships. We have 80 collision centers. We just launched our own precision parts line. We're also looking at other technologies to automate the car buying experience. So we want to make like an Amazon-like car buying experience online, so that requires a lot new technology and digitalization. >> Yeah, talk a little bit about that. 'Cause I know, I've looked at cars in the last couple of years and now you know, I do so much of it online. I feel like I could do the whole experience from my phone if I wanted. So how much are you a technology company? And how much of that's cloud? And what are those dynamics that you've been going through the last couple of years? >> Yeah I think the millennials this day, they're willing to go online and do the whole car buying experience end-to-end, from the buying of the car to the financing of the car all online. And we can roll a flat-bed up to their house, and deliver a car, and they sign on an iPad, and they're good to go. And I think that's where things are going. So to do all that requires a lot of technology on the back-end. So we have a lot of on-prem infrastructure. I'd say we're still 90% on-prem, 10% in an Azure, AWS infrastructure. But that's going to change in time as a lot of these new applications are written. >> As you guys are doing the digital transformation, and it sounds like there's a lot of action going on, new things happening, you're in the app business. You got to build apps for user experience. So you've got to make the infrastructure work for you, and make it be failover, fall-tolerant, all that good stuff, recovery, how do you look at that? How do you run at the speed you need to run at? What are some of they key things you guys have to do to keep on that treadmill, but yet not drop the ball in delivering apps to the users that drive the business? >> I think there's a few things. I think one is, we have to be able to keep the lights on with our existing infrastructure, our existing apps while we build these next generation of applications. We have to be able to scale up as needed and scale down, be able to support some of the new mobile platforms that we're going to be working on. So there's a lot of work going on and DR is a big part of this too. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Because data is at the core here. So, can you tell us that role of data, and then you say data protection. How is that changing, what was it like before you went through this transformation? Then we'll of course get into what you're using. >> Sure, so we actually, were using an old Microsoft data protection manager product and just didn't scale the way we needed to, we were having some performance issues. And so, data protection, while not very sexy, it's something you have to do. It's table stakes in IT. It doesn't innovate, it doesn't make me sell more cars, it doesn't help the business sell more cars, but it's something we have to do. So we looked out there at what I call the legacy players and also the nextgen players and went through a full proof of concept with several of them. >> All right, and what were you looking for? What was kind of the key objective you said? Data protection doesn't make you money, or didn't make you money. We've talked to some customers, that's like, wait, might do some cool snapshotting, I can leverage that data, I can do some more things with my developers, and everything. So what was the goal of this transformation and then what was the criteria that you went through to make a decision? >> Yeah, so the data protection was the initial piece and we just needed a rock solid backup and recovery solution. And we started off with just a simple, hey, we wanted an integrated hardware software solution, we wanted something that could scale infinitely, we wanted a predictive cost model. And so a lot of those older legacy players don't play well in that space, they're expensive to support, eventually you hit a wall on hardware limitations and you have to use forklift upgrades. So we wanted something that was a little bit more nimble and then down the road, as we got into it, once the backup and recovery piece was kind of under control we started using our new solution for other things and secondary storage which was an added bonus. >> So you haven't mentioned, what is the solution that you chose and what were the key things that led to that? >> Yeah, so after going through several POCs with you know, NetBackup, Rubric and Cohesity, we ultimately chose Cohesity for performance, cost, ease of implementation, ease of the user interface, ease of management. >> And what was the comparison, on the floor here you see Rubric and Cohesity next in the huge booths. What's the difference between those two? >> Yeah, so we actually put them side by side in our data center, full blown POCs, and there was some performance differences, there were some technical challenges that we had with some of the other products. And ultimately the team, our engineering team felt most comfortable with Cohesity after spending six or eight months in a really in-depth POC. >> Big bake-off. I love the bake-offs. It's the only way to have the answer like that. So when you look at the solutions, are you guys mostly interested in the software side of the business that they had? What was they key piece of it? >> I think we're interested in the whole thing. I had been at other places where we had done the NetBackup and data domain story and you know, you're having a problem at three o'clock in the morning and you got the finger pointing, is it a software issue, is it a hardware issue? We wanted the one throat to choke kind of solution, and so, you know, that was a requirement right off the bat. Whatever we chose was going to be an integrated hardware software platform. >> Adam, walk us through from the deployment to the day two action. How did it go? What surprised you? What, you know, thrilled you? You know, what challenges did you have? >> Yeah, we've been a customer for- I think we were very early customer, probably almost about two years now. So, there's a lot we didn't know. There was a lot of things in the product that actually weren't fully mature when we first started the POC. And so we went through a full, a full blown bake-off, and one of the things we noticed it was much easier to implement, we didn't require any professional services to get it up and running and the technical support we were super impressed with. So I think, you know, the team, after going through the motions, really felt like this was the product for us. And again, really mainly around backup and recovery, but ultimately decided that we were going to use it for other things too. >> Adam, I was walking through the hallways yesterday, Stu and I were both checking out the booths. And I hear a lot of conversations and it comes up around the Cohesity, Rubric, all these different cloud solutions. Some are rinsed and repeat old models that just have, you know, not mostly those guys are, but the customers are concerned about I don't want the old way, I want the new way, I want to be cloud native, I want to work with cloud, One choke to throw, I need software, I need to have agility, and I need to have auto, you know, healing, all this kind of stuff. How do you sort through that? I know you've been through the POC but your peers that are out here at VMworld, they're squinting through the noise going okay, I got to really dig in here. What's your advice to those guys and gals? >> I think it's really challenging for the people that are, you know, neck deep in some of these other legacy products because it's a little bit hard to move. You know, it's costly, it's expensive, and it's a significant effort. I was in a rare position where I was able to start net new, and so that made it a little bit easier. But I think you start with a slow migration, start setting up your new infrastructure on a nextgen platform and then slowly migrate off. These next, these legacy players are very expensive, and they don't scale very well. That's probably one of our biggest challenges. >> One of the things you said, you started with a couple of use cases but you're now doing a bunch more. Talk about that, what more, what are the new things you're doing and what's the road map look forward at AutoNation? >> Sure. So we had a, a lot of apps, that we're probably not needing. Tier one, NetApp, all SSD, high performance SAN. I call it my Cadillac of storage, you know. It's our highest performance applications and we were having some apps that the hardware was starting to, you know, just go bad. And so the only place I could put it was either on my NetApp, or I didn't have any place else. So the story changed over time. Cohesity became not only our backup and recovery data protection appliance, we started landing some of our tier two storage on Cohesity. So moving things that we would normally put on NetApp, putting it on Cohesity for 40 percent of the cost and it's a win-win. >> All right, so, Adam, I couldn't help noticing you've got the Drive Pink pin on. >> Yes. >> So, maybe tell our audience a little bit about the, you know, AutoNation Drive Pink initiative and you know, do you have relationships with the suppliers here? Pat Gelsinger this morning talked about you know, we need to be as a technology community more doing good. It's foundational to what we're doing. >> Autonation, it's one of our core charities is cancer awareness. I think we've donated almost 30 million dollars. Every car that you buy, we try to put the Drive Pink license plate. And I think not only for business, I think in IT we also have to have a lens to some of these charities and some of these things that need our help. >> Issue driven businesses are doing well now, people expect that. Not just for profit, but the people involved. >> Yeah. >> Anyone can work anywhere these days, talent, it's also good. I mean, it's one of those things. >> Yeah, yeah, absolutely. >> All right, so, takeaway from this show, so far, your impression as a practitioner in the IT footprint space, looking at a cloud on the horizon, we just had Andy Bechtolsheim just on, been part of the early days. Cloud's coming fast, networking's got to get better, you got to, you know, seeing what solutions, integrating well together. How do you make sense of all this content coming out of VMworld? >> Yeah, I think what I get out of this and kind of AWS, all of these conferences, is that everything we buy has to be extendable to the cloud. You know, we still have a lot of on-premise infrastructure but everything we implement has to be cloudable, it has to be able to be used in our future use cases. >> I would love, we're talking a lot here in the keynote this morning it's like, right, this move, we know it's going to take time and Amazon's doing some things, VMware's doing some things, how's the industry doing, how do you see the progression, what would you like to see them do more better if we come back in a year, if I kind of give you that magic wand? >> Yeah. You know, I always leave a lot of these conferences and I feel like I'm behind the eight ball, in our cloud migration, but, companies like us that have a lot of legacy apps, they're slow to move. And so, I leave the conference, I feel like I'm behind the eight ball, but I get back and I talk to my peers and many of them are in the same situation I am. They're still maturing, but I think, yes, I think the net new generation apps that we're going to build are going to be in the cloud because the capabilities to autoscale and so I think that anything we buy, anything we implement we have to have a lens to that going forward. >> Well, thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate, sounds like you're happy with Cohesity? >> They've done a great job, we're really happy customers. >> How long was that bake-off by the way, that you ran that? >> We did it about six months. >> That's pretty good and long. >> Yeah, we actually had some, again we were very early to the game so there were features in the product that we needed that they didn't have yet and our agreement was we'll proceed after you can meet these requirements and they did. >> Yeah. And Pat Gelsinger and Andy Jassy on the stage, one of the things Andy Jassy, who's been on theCUBE talks about all the time is listening to customers. Sounds like they're listening to you guys. >> Absolutely, absolutely. You have to, it's such a competitive environment now. You know, if you can't meet the customer's minimal requirements, there's somebody else that can. >> You got to be cloud compatible. AutoNation breaking it down here, here at Vmworld bringing the practitioner perspective, the customer perspective, all of these suppliers try to bring cloud and on-premises together. It's theCUBE bringing you all the action here at Vmworld 2018. I'm John Furrier. Stu Miniman. Stay with us for more coverage after this short break.

(upbeat techno music) >> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida. It's The Cube. Covering ServiceNow Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. (upbeat techno music) >> We're back at Knowledge17. Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick. Josh Gluck is here, he's the deputy CIO of Weill Cornell Medical College in the big apple. Thanks for coming to The Cube. >> Thanks very much for having me. >> Tell us about Weill Cornell, It's a collaboration with Sloan Kettering, originally, and ... >> Yeah, we're a three part, mission-oriented institution. Patient care, being first. Our physician organization delivers patient care in New York City. We're partnered with New York Presbyterian Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and also the hospital for special surgery. >> So, let's get right into it. CIO, you were probably doing some of the CIO activities here, this week. Love to hear about that. But let's get right into how you're, you know, using automation, how you're using the ServiceNow platform. Let's talk in the context of IT transformation. >> Yeah. So we've been a ServiceNow customer since 2012. We actually went live on 12/12/12. Everybody thought that was a joke, but it turned out to be the real "go live" date. You know, and as the platform's matured, and as our organization's matured, you know, we started focused on ITSM, strictly. Over the last few years though, we've found that, you know, our focus for ServiceNow should be the equivalent of building a 3-1-1 platform for the administrative departments. So we've onboarded folks in HR. We're doing case management now with ServiceNow. Obviously all the ITSM, ITIL-based processes. We've worked with our Department of Environmental Health and Safety. To help them with some of the regulatory compliance, about workflows that they need to have in place. We've also built out Project and Portfolio Management in ServiceNow, and we've been doing it, actually, since the beginning. We worked with ServiceNow pretty intimately to build out those functions. And now, we're actually at the point where, the platform has surpassed what we custom developed back in the early days. And we're really focused on understanding where we can unwrap some of those customizations, and just go to the native portfolio. >> Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. >> Yeah. >> So, that's not an uncommon story and how complicated is it to unwrap that stuff? 'Cause obviously, you don't want the custom mods there if you don't have to have them. >> Yeah, well you know we spent, what, five, six years now, focused on developing the platform to meet our needs, meet our process. You know, we're academics at heart. Right, being part of Cornell University. So, I think we have a habit of sometimes overthinking solutions. So, our customizations are pretty complex. We also though, understand that it's a heavy lift for us to keep it up. So, we partner with ServiceNow, we've had them come in and help us to an evaluation of what really could be done with a slight change to our process. Or, even just direct support for our process, straight out of the box. We're really excited about the stuff that's coming out of Jakarta. >> Okay, so it's fair to say, I mean, we've all been there. Where you have software development problems, and you go "ah, jeez, I wish I had done it differently." But, when we talk to folks like you, that are unwrapping, unraveling, custom mods, there's no regrets. You got a lot of value >> Josh: Yeah, no. >> out of 'em. And now you're moving forward, right? >> Josh: Yep. Yeah we >> That's interesting. >> Josh: Definitely did the right thing, at the right time. You know, we went through an evolution, in the way that we did Project and Portfolio Management internally at Weill Cornell. And we're focused on some of the high-level problems, high-order problems today, that some organizations may not get to. Right, we're doing resource management, proactive scheduling, and you know, for us to get to the next level, the enhancements that are available in Jakarta are around time-carding and resource management, are really going to help us, I think, not overthink the problem. And come to some standard that the rest of the industry, or other verticals are using, in how they do their resource management. >> And Josh, the 3-1-1 concept is interesting. When did you go from "this is our an ITSM tool, that's going to be pretty cool." >> Yeah. >> To "this is a platform, that we can now take this kind of 3-1-1 approach, and use that as kind of an overarching mission, >> Yeah. >> for that which you're trying to accomplish"? >> I think the concept ... I think when we first went into partnership with ServiceNow, we knew that we wanted it to be more than just a replacement for heat, right? I've actually been with two different organizations. New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell, who have come from other ITIL platforms, ITSM platforms, and moved to ServiceNow. I was a BMC Remedy customer for a long time at New York Presbyterian. We were a heat customer at Weill Cornell, prior to going to ServiceNow. So, I think we were all familiar with the fact that it doesn't make sense to buy these point products, to do all of these different workflows. Let's buy a platform. ServiceNow represented that platform. Even in its early stages, we knew that we wanted to do more with it. We had conversations about process users. And I know you guys were talking a little bit before about changes to the license model that are happening. >> Dave: Yep. >> But we really wanted it to be something we could develop further. Our first project just happened to be, in both cases "we have an ITSM platform that isn't working." Remedy at NYP, heat at Weill Cornell. "Let's get off of it, and get onto ServiceNow." But I think, we didn't start calling it the 3-1-1 until maybe a year or two ago. >> Okay. >> And it really started with Case Management. I think that was a big deal. >> It's a good little marketing, CIO selling. >> Josh: Yeah. >> You know, Daniel Pink. How large of an organization ... >> Josh: Is, IT, or Weill Cornell itself? >> Weill Cornell. >> We're between ... We're about five-thousand and change. >> Okay, so not enormous. But, the reason for the question is, at what point does it make sense to bring in a ServiceNow? You know, our little fifty-person company. You know, we're trying ... >> Josh: Yeah. But it's still not there yet. Is it size of company? Is it size of problem? What is your advice there? >> You know, I think it's actually a good idea for most mid-level companies to talk to ServiceNow. And I think there's even a play for some small businesses. It depends on what you want to get out of the tool. Right? I mean, if you're going to use it as just a simple incident-response system, which isn't really the value that ServiceNow provides, it might be a hard sell. But, because it's a hosted system, because there is such a wealth of partners in the community now, and such a following for ServiceNow, I don't know. If you were a ten-person organization and you were customer focused, and you wanted to use it to do ... >> Jeff: Yep, yeah, that makes sense. A couple of different business processes, it could actually make sense for you. >> Josh, really tight schedule today, we'll give you the last word on Knowledge17, some of the things that have excited you, what's the bumper sticker on K17 for you? >> I think the keynotes have been great. I think you guys at The Cube have been doing a great job, of also, >> Dave: Thank you very much, appreciate that. >> you know, getting people up here and asking 'em tough questions and stuff. I appreciate you going easy on me. Than you. But, it's been great. It's been a really good show. >> Well come back again, and we'll really go at it. So, thanks very much Josh, >> Josh: Thank you. appreciate your time. Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest, right after this short break. (upbeat techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube, covering ServiceNow, Knowledge 17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back to Orlando, everybody, my name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host, Jeff Frick. This is day two of ServiceNow, Knowledge, and this is the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. Bart Murphy is here, he's the CTO of York Risk Services, and he's the CIO and CTO of CareWorks, Cube alum. Bart, good to see you again. >> Great to see you guys. So we were talking off camera, Mark came over, we're talking about the CIO Decisions, you participated in that last year as well. What have you been doing at the conference? What are you seeing that's interesting? >> Well I've been attending the sessions and you just mentioned the CIO Decisions, that was my day yesterday. Great opportunity to get you know, great speakers, we mentioned a few of them that spoke yesterday, but also there were some customer round tables that allowed you to collaborate with your peers over a few areas, and sort of discuss what's working for them, what's not. You know, what their road map looks like, how they're selling that to the board, those type of things. It was a very productive day. >> So, since we last talked, what have you been working on? We had a great discussion last year on security, I'm sure things have changed there, they keep evolving. What kind of things you've been working on, what are some of the initiatives that are new? >> Yeah, so last year we did talk about that and my desire, I was somewhat excited when I started to see the new play into SecOps with ServiceNow. So we've now gone live with SecOps. We're continuing to mature our security posture as a company, and I think that's, when you look at a road map or you're looking at things, what we want to see is continual capability maturity in our security space. One, we need to be there, right? As an organization, we're a services organization. We also want to just make sure that we're continuing to get better and automate. So we saw SecOps as a real opportunity for that. So we've now gone live, we've deployed that. We did it and integrated that with certain tools that we have, Tanium, LogRhythm, Symantec, some of our scanning tools. What that's allowing us to do is look at a wide range of log information, parse through that in order to automate certain types of work flows and cases. So whether it be as simple as finding an end point that say has an outdated Symantec update and having that automatically update, or create a case because it can't push the automation, those type of things we're trying to do now to try to raise the level of our security and start weeding through all the noise that's out there, that's provided with all the tools that we have. >> How did you find the integration? >> Well, we did the integration ourselves, and we found the integration, compared to some other products that we've done in the past, to be much smoother. You know, I think this is a later product that they've built into their platform. I think they've taken into account implementation, so some of the integrations were out of the box like the Tanium, others, we built those integrations. So, and we also, I think I may have mentioned this, not sure if I did, when I looked at my incident security response plan and the way I developed that, I developed it very closely to what was coming out of the box with ServiceNow. I wanted to make sure that our policies, procedures, process for that really just met out-of-the-box functionality, so we didn't have to do a lot of customization and configuration there, and we could focus on the technical integrations that really provide some of the power of the automation with the CMBB. >> Speaking of sort of custom work, you talk about M and A, you mention you get a mulligan coming. >> Bart: Yeah. >> Talk about that a little bit, kind of unwinding some of the custom mods. >> Yeah, so we have multiple instances of ServiceNow, and over the last year we've been building our newest instance with York Risk Services Group, that's our total company. And I'm in the process now of taking what we built for CareWorks, you know, we have been a customer since 2010, and really learning what we did well there and what we didn't do well. In addition to the fact that a lot of customization that we did on that platform is no longer really required, that's how much the platform has matured with ServiceNow. >> Which one was it, which release, do you remember? >> Oh gosh, Berlin, probably. >> Berlin, right, right. >> Early, early on if I'm accurate, from the very beginning. And you know GRC was an example where we did a lot of customization because that product just is night and day compared from where it is today. >> Jeff: Right >> So now we get a new opportunity to look at our process to see, say, is this something that we really need to keep the customization, or can we leverage the platform better, and by the way, even if we do have to do customization, can we do it a better way? So it is a little bit of a mulligan, from that standpoint, we get a sort of fresh start on a platform that we understand even better now, and we're doing it at a larger scale, so we're trying to really look at those automation opportunities so we can gain the efficiencies that we need. >> So I wonder if you can talk about the sort of business impact that you've seen over the years. You've been a long-time ServiceNow customer, and it just feels like this whole ecosystem is on the steep part of the s-curve now. Maybe describe the sort of business impact in whatever terms make sense. >> Well, I think partly supporting consolidated shared services, whether it's in IT or other areas of the business, and even finding areas of the business that aren't doing a good job of tracking their work today. And it still exists, in I think every organization. I was mentioning, you know, another area that we're looking at that we'll most likely deploy this year or early next year, I would assume this year, is the HR Case Management. >> Dave: Mmm hmm. >> That's an area very similar to IT, very similar to other areas that we've built use cases within ServiceNow, where things are done primarily through email. It's very inefficient, they don't have very good metrics to understand how much support they're providing the organization. They're pressured just as I am from an SG&A perspective, to do more with less. And the only way we're going to be able to continue to do more with less is to provide some level of automation and stay consistent with it. So when I started looking at ServiceNow, and yes, we're probably on that s-curve too. We've done some really good work on the automation side, but now with the platform, with what they're doing with some of the analytics, what they're, you know, I know what they're going to do with machine learning, what we can do with some of the predictive stuff. How can we take a security instance, for example, have it remediate itself and then inform us on what it did? Those are the type of things that I think's going to bring us way sharp up on that curve. I mean we've done a good job, we're very technical, we've done a good job automating, I'm not, but for what we can do I think over the next three to four years with this platform and the automation, is going to be a game changer for us and we're going to need that. 'Cause you know our SG&A can't grow at the same rate. You want to have that margin improvement, and this is one of the areas that we can use a platform to do that. >> It's interesting, you're, always a lot of talk about automation when we're here. >> Yeah. >> Different automated processes and make them easier. But you mentioned before we went on air, you just mentioned it again, that the desire to get measurement on the process as the primary driving factor, 'cause you just can't measure that which is in email and all these disparate systems, and now you can actually use the motivation of measurement so then you can get improvement as a primary driver to implement it. >> Yeah, I mean one of our core values is to be a data-driven decision making company. And you can't improve what you can't measure. And there's still to this day a lot of these processes that we take for granted. You know, SecOps, HR, operation service center, claim setup. We think we're doing a good job managing it and understanding the productivity of it, but we don't have really good tools in place or they're very disparate. So if we can get that into one CMDB, we can start to leverage automation. Once we start to measure it, we truly can start to see that business value, 'cause we can see those measurements go down. So whether we're using out-of-the-box performance analytics now, you know we started originally, performance analytics was a separate product. On the new York one, again, that's another benefit, we just turn it on, right? And there's already really good, rich data that it's giving us to stay, and we can compare that against our previous performance, whether it's incidents, closing rate, you know all these type of things out of the box. So I can start to show improvement. It's not to say that we don't have areas to improve, we do. There are things outside of ServiceNow that we need to do to improve our overall capability. So whether you're talking leveraging orchestration within ServiceNow but then I need a deployment tool to actually go and do that work. So that's where Tanium comes into play, so there's other strategies we're deploying to say where can we get the full life-cycle of that automation? And that's where engineering discipline and bringing that to your supply chain of activities is key. >> The other thing that you mentioned that kind of flipped it on its head, is you talked about your incidents response plan and trying to make it pretty much as out of the box from ServiceNow as possible. Was that because you just kind of went with the custom, or now are they delivering more best practices in the way that configuration comes out of the box that you don't really have to think about it. >> Yeah, I mean absolutely. >> You can presume best practices, because that's how it's preconfigured out of the box. >> Yeah, and I don't think they tout that, and I understand why, but they're getting feedback from a ton of customers on how to build a process in the most efficient way. I don't think they're doing it in a vanilla way. I think they're doing it in an efficient, robust way. So I think they are at that point where there's a lot of things that come out of the box that people really need to pay attention to. Like I understand that we may have done it this way, but this way is more than sufficient. And if it means that I don't have to customize and I can make my upgrades even easier than they are today, 'cause they aren't that painful at all, on the ServiceNow front, then why not? And then we can benefit from their maturity on the platform, because they're going to continue to add in releases and add in functionality just like we saw over the last two days. >> Back to the sort of s-curve, it sounds like you're getting in the position now to get real operating leverage almost like Metcalf's Law. The first one you get some benefit, but the nth one, boy that's when it really kicks in. >> I hope so. That's what I'm, I think right now we've spent a lot of time and energy getting onto one platform, right? Whether it's from all the acquisitions, whether it's from an older instance to a newer instance. I think once we get critical mass on that platform, yes, the automation stuff will make a marketable difference. We've done some great things for our business but I think once we get everybody on one platform and we get that true understanding of how we want to do our enterprise process and we have some other uplift in our areas and systems. You know, Tanium's a new product that we have. We're looking potentially HRIS, there's other things at play that will play in the ecosystem. And as we mature those and really understand what our end game's going to be, I think that's where we have that power. >> One of the speakers at CIO Decisions this week was author Daniel Pink. We had him on the Cube, talk about selling is human. When you run a business case, you talked about the HR, moving into HR, do you go sell, do you make the business case, are they coming to you, is it push/pull, how does it work? >> A little bit of both. As a CTO and as any executive, I listen to Daniel as well and I'm a firm believer that we're all in sales. All of us are part of some type of revenue-generating company, okay, and if we don't take that to heart, and we just think that we're some cog in a wheel in somebody else's problem, shame on you. No company's going to grow without a full company of great sales people. They're either advocates for their brand, they understand the mission, they understand what they're doing for the mission. So from a sales perspective, certainly I'm going around trying to tell people about the capability of ServiceNow. I saw the CEO speak yesterday too and one thing that struck me that I think a lot of people need to do, is he's spent a lot of time over the last 49 days trying to understand the vernacular of IT. You know, he was the CEO at some large companies, they all had IT, now he's at an IT company. And so he's trying to really understand the speak and some of the capabilities that you have to understand. He's got a better appreciation of it. It's my job, really, to be able to do that type of evangelism within our company to say here are some of the platforms that we have and here are some of the capabilities and at least start the conversation. I will tell you that other times I have people come to me because they've either heard from someone else that they're using it at their company and their HR team loves it, or what's it about? But I need to go around and say I see you guys doing this and we have a platform that's totally made for that. It's why it was built. Let's have a demo or let's start looking at how you think that would improve your guys' productivity. You're stretched for resources, I'm stretched for resources, and just come at it from a common problem statement perspective. Then we build the business case from there. >> I see. So we hear a lot of the announcements this morning, Jacarta, another release. What do you, and so there's a lot of things they did in there, performance improvements, UI improvements and things like that, bringing in intelligent automation, a lot of really good, cool things in there. What's, from your mind, on their to-do list? What kinds of things, I mean, are they doing the types of things that you want them to do, is there something big that could really make a difference to your business? >> Yeah, I wish I was like the ServiceNow product visionary. (laughing) But I'm not, I got to commend 'em. I think they're doing some pretty darn good things. When you start to look at SecOps and its play into GRC and the way that you really start to automate some of your controls, which are a huge component of, I'm not going to say waste within your organization, but they take a lot of time, and they bring value, don't get me wrong, but they aren't bringing...they're not bringing in revenue, they're a lot of compliance and they're good practices, so the more we can automate some of those they're high value but you want your team working on other innovation type of stuff, I think the better. When they start looking at what they're doing with the data now, everybody's becoming a data company, everybody's talking about machine learning. Everybody's talking about AI. I think that is the next place that they got to get to. If they can start to generate, again, some of that low value work, whether it's automating an entire incident end to end. I mean, there's insurance companies out there that are doing that, right, trying to automate a claim end to end. So I think the more they can look at their domain and determine ways to automate an entire workflow, which they are well on their path. They've been doing that from a workflow automation perspective for years. Now take it into AI to do it, I think they're going to be in a good position, a better position than I am in, probably if I was to develop that myself. >> Right. >> So I think that will help me scale from a user support perspective and just workflow in general, service management perspective. >> So you might not be the product guru going forward, but the thing you know probably better than a lot of people under the 15,000 is how to get people to adopt a platform. I wonder if you can share some of your tips and tricks to fellow practitioners to convince the people to don't pick up the phone, you know, put it in the platform? >> Yeah, it's evangelism. You got to get out and educate people on what the platform's about. As a procurer of the platform, you know and ServiceNow is not a cheap solution, and nor should it be. I think you need to go and justify, I'm getting this platform and it's up to me to make sure that we're going to leverage those dollars as much as possible. So anything I buy I want to make sure we're leveraging it as much as we can within the organization. I'm also a firm believer, I understand that reality hits and it's not going to happen overnight. So how do you build a backlog and start really working through that? We do an agile process, we're doing releases every two weeks. We're trying to, I may take an opportunity in IT but then the next one I want to do is going to be in the business. Or it's going to be with security or it's going to be with HR. Trying to get winds across the spectrum instead of trying to take big projects. Big projects take time, you know, there's a lot of little things that I can do to whet their appetite, on boarding, off boarding, transfers, HR started to get familiar with ServiceNow and what it could o just in that space. That whet their appetite, then, to have a more serious discussion about case management, right, which we're still having. So I think trying to figure out how you can handle a backlog of smaller hit items to get winds, will allow you to get a little bit more credibility if you start looking at a more wholesale change to their entire business, which this would be, a wholesale change to their business. >> You have kind of this dual role of CTO and CIO. Over the last several years, so much has changed in information technology, cloud, infrastructures, code and now you're seeing containers explode, the whole sassification of softwares eating the world, obviously service management is playing a big part there. Now AI, the whole big data meme. How has the CIO role evolved and changed and how has that affected you? Particularly the CIO piece, and you know, the CTO piece as well, I guess. Technology's always there, the CTO has got to be following that. But the CIO role seems to be changing quite dramatically. >> I think each organization's a little different. The way I look at it is, and some organizations, and maybe it's just me, some people see a CIO as an operational guy or girl, and some of them see their CTO as going out and looking at new technology. The way I, and why I sort of have the title of the CTO is I never want to have a build and run type of organization. I don't want to have a marginalized CIO that's basically just keeping the lights running, maybe keeping enterprise systems up. We need to be innovative as an entire team and those assets that we build, the same people need to support them, because, man, they build much better assets if they have to support them, let me tell you. (laughing) I think the role is changing whether you use the term CTO, CIO, you know, who is that person that's going to help ensure that you're not only looking at new platforms but not, I don't want to just spend all my time looking at new platforms or looking at new innovations. And certainly want to be aware of the trends. What's the right time to look at that for your organization? Some would say you always need to be on top of all of that, and I don't need to be on top of every AI vendor or data analytics company. What I need to understand is within the context of our organization, our financial structure, where we are as a maturity as an organization, where are the tools right now that can really make a major lift? And sometimes those aren't the most recent platforms. Sometimes they aren't the gold-standard platforms, sometimes they're just grunt and hard work. So I think the role, I hope the role evolves into where somebody takes ownership of all that and it's not carved up. Now, I think there are, even in our organization, there's a place. We have a Chief Innovation Officer, who is staying on top of some of the front-end stuff dealing with our industry. And that's a fine model as well. But I don't like breaking up between operations and development work and innovation. I like to make sure that those are all in sync. I think that's where you don't get a lot of rogue IT, a lot of shadow IT, because ultimately somebody's got to support it, and we want to make sure that that support cost is as lean as possible. >> That's a great answer, steeped in accountability, Bart. It's always great having you on the Cube. Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you guys, it's a pleasure to see you. >> All right, good to see you. All right, keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest, this is the Cube live from Knowledge 17. Be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering ServiceNow Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> We're back. This is Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick. Chris Bedi is here, he's the CIO of ServiceNow. Chris, good to see you again. >> Good to see you as well. >> Yeah, so, lot going on this week, obviously. You said you're getting pulled in a million different directions. One of those, of course, is the CIO event, CIO Decisions, it's something you guys host every year. I had the pleasure of attending parts of it last year. Listened to Robert Gates and some other folks, which was great. What's happened this year over there? >> So, CIO Decisions, it's really where we bring together our forward thinking executives. We keep it intimate, about a hundred, because really it's about the dialogue. Us all learning from each other. It really doesn't matter, the industry, I think we're all after the same things, which is driving higher levels of automation, increase the pace of doing business, and innovating at our companies. So we had Andrew McAfee, MIT research scientist, really helping push the boundaries in our imagination on where machine learning and predictive analytics could go. And then we had Daniel Pink talking about his latest book, To Sell is Human. And really as CIOs, we often find ourselves selling new concepts, new business models, new processes, new analytics, new ways of thinking about things. And so, really trying to help, call it exercise, our selling muscle, if you will. Because we have to sell across, up, down, and within our own teams, and that is a big part of the job. Because as we move into this new era, I think the biggest constraint is actually between our own ears. Our inability to imagine a future where machines are making more decisions than humans, platforms are doing more work on behalf of humans. Intellectually, we know we're headed there, but he really helped to bring it home. >> Well, you know, it's interesting, we talk about selling and the CIOs. Typically IT people aren't known as sales people, although a couple years ago I remember at one of the Knowledges, Frank Slootman sort of challenged the CIO to become really more business people, and he predicted that more business people would become CIOs. So, do you consider yourself a sales person? >> I do. Selling people on a vision, a concept, the promise of automation. You know, technology, people fear it, right? You know, when you're automating people's work the fear and the uncertainty endowed, or what I call the organizational anti-bodies, start to come out. So you have to bust through that, and a large part of that is selling people on a promise of a better future. But, it's got to be real. It's got to be tied to real business outcomes with numbers. It can't be just a bunch of PowerPoint slides. >> So we always like to take the messaging from the main tent and then test it with the practitioners, and this year there's this sort of overall theme of working at lightspeed, you and I have talked about this, how does that resonate with CIOs and how do you put meaning behind that? 'Cause, you know, working at lightspeed, it's like, ooh that sounds good, but how do you put meat on that bone? >> So, the way I think about working at lightspeed is three dimensions, velocity, intelligence, and experience. And velocity is how fast is your company operating? I read a study that said 40% of Fortune 500 companies are going to disappear in the next 10 years. That's almost half, right? But I think what's going to separate the winners from the losers is the pace at which they can adapt and transform. And, with every business process being powered by IT platforms, I think CIOs and IT are uniquely positioned to explicitly declare ownership of that metric and drive it forward. So velocity, hugely important. Intelligence. Evolving from the static dashboards we know today, to real time insights delivered in context that actually help the human make decisions. And, BI in analytics as we know it today, needs to evolve into a recommendation engine, 'cause why do we develop BI in analytics? To make decisions, right? So why can't the platform, and it can, is the short answer, with the ability to rapidly correlate variables and recognize complex patterns, give recommendations to the humans, and I would argue, take it a step further, make decisions for the humans. ServiceNow did a study that said 70% of CIOs believe machines will make more accurate decisions than humans, now we just got to get the other 30% there. And then on experience, I think the right experience changes our behavior. I think we in IT need to be in the business of creating insanely great customer and employee experiences. Too often we lead with the goal of cost reduction or efficiency, and I think that's okay, but if we lead with the goal of creating great experiences, the costs and the inefficiencies will naturally drop out. You can't have a great experience and have it be clunky and slow, it's just impossible. >> And it's interesting on the experience because the changing behavior is the hardest part of the whole equation. And I always think back to kind of getting people off an old solution. People used to say, for start ups, you got to be 10x better or 1/10th the cost. 2x, 3x is not enough to get people to make the shift. And so to get the person to engage with the platform as opposed to firing off the text, or firing off an email, or picking up the phone, it's got to be significantly better in terms of the return on their investment. So now they get that positive feedback loop and, ah, this is a much better way to get work done. >> It has to. And we can't, you know, bring down the management hammer and force people to do things. It's just not the way, you know, people work. And very simple example of an experience driving the right behavioral outcome, so ServiceNow is a software company, very important for us to file patents. The process we had was clunky and cumbersome. You know, we're not perfect at ServiceNow either. So we re-imagined that process, made it a mobile first experience built on our platform, of course. But by simply doing that, there was no management edict, you have to, no coercion, if you will, we saw an 83% increase in the number of patent applications filed by the engineers. So the right experience can absolutely give you the right desired economic behavior. >> You talked about 70% of CIOs believe that machines will make better decisions than humans. We also talked about Andrew McAfee, who wrote a book with Eric Brynjolfsson. And in that book, The Second Machine Age, they talked about that the greatest chess player in the world, when the supercomputer beat Garry Kasparov, he actually created this contest and they beat the supercomputer with a combination of man and other supercomputers. So do you see it as machine, sort of, intelligence augmenting human intelligence, or do you actually see it as machines are going to take over most of the decisions. >> So, I actually think they are going to start to take over some basic decision making. The more complex ones, the human brain, plus a machine, is still a more, you know, advanced, right? Where it's better suited to make that decision. But I also think we need to challenge ourselves in what we call a decision. I think a lot of times, what we call a decision, it's not a decision. We're coming to the same conclusion over and over and over again, so if a computer looked at it, it's an algorithm. But in our brains, we think a human has to be involved and touch it. So I think it's a little bit, it'll challenge us to redefine what's actually a decision which is complex and nuanced, versus we're really doing the same thing over and over again. >> Right, and you're saying the algorithm is a pattern that repeats itself and leads to an action that a machine can do. >> Yeah. >> It doesn't require intuition >> And we don't call that a decision anymore. >> Right, right. So, in thinking about you gave us sort of the dimensions of lightspeed, what are some of the new metrics that will emerge as a result of this thinking? >> Yeah, I don't think any of the old metrics go away. I'll talk about a few. You know, in lightspeed, working at lightspeed, we need to start measuring, for one, back on that velocity vector, what is the percentage of processes in your company that have a cycle time of zero, or near zero. Meaning it just happens instantaneously. We can think of loads of examples in our consumer life. Calling a car with Uber, there's no cycle time on that process, right? So looking at what percentage of your processes have a cycle time of zero. How much work are you moving to the machines? What percentage of the work is the platform proactively executing for you? Meaning it just happens. I also think in an IT context of percentage of self healing events, where the service never goes down because it's resilient enough and you have enough automation and intelligence. But there are events, but the infrastructure just heals itself. And I think, you know, IT itself, we've long looked at IT as a percentage of revenue. I think with all of the automation and cost savings and efficiencies we drive throughout the enterprise, we need to be looking at IT as a margin contribution vehicle. And when we change that conversation, and start measuring ourselves in terms of margin, I think it changes the whole investment thesis, in IT. >> So that's interesting. Are you measured on margin contribution? >> We're doing that right now. I don't, if an IT organization is waiting for the CFO or CEO to ask them about their margin contribution, they're playing defense. I think IT needs to proactively measure all of it's contributions and express it in terms of margin. 'Cause that's the language the CEO, and COO, and CFO are talking about, so meet them in a language that they understand better. >> So how do you do, I mean, you certainly can create some kind of conceptual value flow. IT supports this sort of business process and this business process drives this amount of revenue or margin. >> So I stay away from revenue, because I think any time IT stands up and says, we're driving revenue, it's really hard. Because there's so many external and internal factors that contribute to that. So we more focus on automation, in terms of hours saved, expressing and dollarizing that. Hard dollars, that we're able to take out of the organization and then bubbling that into an operating margin number. >> Okay, so you sort of use the income statement below the revenue line to guide you and then you fit into that framework. >> Absolutely. >> When you talk to other CIOs about this, do they say, hey, that sounds really interesting, how do I get started on that, or? >> I think it resonates really well, because, again, IT as percentage of revenue is an incredibly incomplete metric to measure our contribution. With everything going digital, you want to pour more money into technology. I mean, studies have shown, and Andrew McAfee talked about this, over the last 50, 100 years, the companies that have thrived have poured more, disproportionally more, into technology and innovation than their competitors. So, if we only measure the cost side of the equation we're doing ourselves a disservice. >> And so, how do you get started on this path, I mean, let's call this path, sort of, what we generally defined as lightspeed, measured on margin, how do you get started on that? >> First step is the hardest. But, it's declaring that your going to do it. So we've come up with a framework, you know, that maps at a process level, at a department level, and at a company level, where are we on this journey to lightspeed? If lightspeed is the finish line, where are we? And I define three stages, manual, automated, cloud, before you get to lightspeed. And then, using those same three dimensions of velocity, intelligence, and experience, to tell you where you are. And, the very first thing we did was baseline all of our business processes, every single one, and mapped it. But once you have it mapped on that framework then you can say, how do we advance the ball to the next level? And, it's not going to magically happen overnight. This is hard work. It's going to happen one process at a time, right? But pretty soon everything starts to get faster and I think things will start to really accelerate. >> When you think about, sort of, architecting IT, at ServiceNow versus some other company, I mean, you come into ServiceNow as the CIO, everything runs on ServiceNow, that is part of the mandate, right? But that's not the mandate at every company, now increasingly may be coming that way in a lot of companies, but how is your experience at ServiceNow differ from the some of the traditional G2000? >> Probably the unique part about being the CIO at ServiceNow is actually really fun, in that I get to be customer zero in that I implement our products before all of our customers. You know, get to sit down with the product managers, discuss real business problems that all of our customers are facing, and hopefully be their voice inside the four walls of service now, and be the strategic partner to the product organization. Now implementing everything, our goal is to be the best possible implementation of ServiceNow on the planet. And that's not just demonstrated by go lives, it's demonstrated by, again, the economic and business outcomes we're deriving from using the platform. So, that part is fun, challenging, and hard work all at the same time. >> So how's Jakarta lookin'? >> Fantastic. We're super excited about everything that's coming out, whether it's the communities on customer service, or our software asset management. That's been a pain, right, for IT organizations for a long time, which is these inbound software audits, from other companies, and you're responding to them and it's a fire drill. In my mind, our software asset management transforms software audits from a once a year, twice a year event, to always-on monitoring, where you're just fixing it the whole time. And it's not an event anymore. I mean, the intelligence that we're baking into the platform now, super exciting around the machine learning and the predictive analytics concepts, we have more analytics than we had before, I mean there's just so much in there, that's just exciting. We're already using it, I can't wait for our customers to get a hold of it. >> Well, CJ this morning threw out a number of 30-plus percent performance improvement. I had said to myself, your saying that with conviction, that's 'cause you guys got to be running it yourselves. >> Yeah, we are. >> What are you seeing there? >> That's not a trivial number, and I think the product teams have done a great job really digging in and makin' sure our platform operates at lightspeed. >> One of the things that Jeff and I have been talking about this week, and really this is your passion here, is adoption, how do you get people to stop using all these other tools like email, and kind of get them to use the system? >> I think, showing them the promise of what it can bring. I think it's different conversations at different levels. I think, too, an operator, someone who's using the email to manage their work, they're hungry for a different solution. Life, working, and email, and managing your business that way, it's hard, right? To a mid-level manager, I think the conversation is maybe about the experience, how consumers of their service will be happier and more satisfied. At executive level, it gets maybe more into some of the economic outcomes, of doing it. Because implementing our platform, you know, you're going to burn some calories doing it, not a lot. Our time to value is really really quick, but still, it's a project and it's initiative and it's got to have an outcome tied to it. >> You know, Chris, as you're saying that it's always tough to be stuck kind of half way. You know, you're kind of on the tool internally and it's great. >> We don't use the word tool. >> Excuse me, not the tool. The app, the platform, actually. But then you still got external people that are coming at you through text, email, et cetera. I mean, is part of the vision, and maybe it's already there, I'm not as familiar with the parts I should be, in terms of enabling kind of that next layer of engagement with that next layer of people outside the four walls, to get more of them in it as well. Because the half-pregnant stage is almost more difficult because you're going back and forth between the two. >> And our customer service product does a lot of that. If you look at what Abhijit showed today, which is fantastic, Communities is another modality to start to interact with people. Certainly, we have Connect, part of our platform, is a collaboration app within the overall platform, so you can chat, just like you would with any consumer app, in terms of chatting capabilities, and that mobile first experience. We're thinking about other modalities too. Should you be able to talk to ServiceNow, just like you talk to Alexa, and converse with ServiceNow, Farrell touched on this a little bit, through natural language, right? We all know it's coming, and it's there, it's just pushing in that direction. >> How about the security piece? You know, Shawn shared this morning, you guys are well over year in now, and he talked about that infamous number of 200 plus days-- >> Chris: Nine months, yeah. >> Yeah, compressing that. Are you seeing that internally in your own? >> We are. We use Shawn's product, we're a happy customer. The vulnerability management, the security incident response, and very very similar results. And just like the customer who was on stage said, go live in Iterate, and that's exactly what we did. Everyone has a vulnerability management tool, like a Qualys, that's feeding in. Bring in all those Qualys alerts, our platform will help you normalize them and just start to reduce the level of chaos for the SOC and IT operations. Then make it better, then drive the automation, so we're seeing very similar benefits. >> How do you manage the upgrade side, we've been asking a lot of customers this week in the upgrade cycle. Some say, ah, I'll do in minus one just to sort of let the thing bake a little bit. You guys are in plus one. How do you manage that in production, though? >> Sure, so we upgrade before our customers, and that's part of our job, right? To make sure we test it out before our customers. But I'll say something in general about enterprise software upgrades, which is, there is a cost to them and the cost is associated with business risk. You want to make sure you're not going to disrupt your business. There is some level of regression testing you just have to do. Now, strategies I think that would be wise are automating as much of that testing as you can, through a testing framework, which we're helping our customers do now. And I think with some legacy platforms, that was incredibly expensive and hard and you could never quite get there. Us being a modern cloud platform, you can actually get there pretty quickly to the point where the 80, 90% of your regression testing is automated and you're doing that last 10 to 20%. 'Cause at the end of the day, IT needs to make sure the enterprise is up and running, that's job number one. But that's a strategy we employ to make upgrades as painless as possible. >> That's got to be compelling to a lot of the customers that you talk to, that notion of being able to automate the upgrade process. >> For sure, it is. >> You're eliminating a lot of time and they count that as money. >> It is money, and automating regression testing, it's a decision and a strategy but the investment pays off very very quickly. >> Dave: So there's an upfront chunk that you have to do to figure out how to make that work? >> Just like anything worth doing. >> Dave: Yeah, right. >> Right? >> Excellent. What's left for you at the show? >> What's left for me? I love interacting with customers. I got to talk with a lot of CIOs at CIO Decisions. I actually enjoy walking through the partner pavilion and meeting a lot of our partners and seeing some of the innovation that their driving on the platform. And then just non-stop, I get ideas all day from meeting with customers. It's so fun. >> Dave: Chris, thanks very much for coming to theCube. >> Thank you. >> We appreciate seeing you again. >> Chris: Good seeing you. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. Jeff and I will be back with our next guest. This is theCube, we're live from Knowledge17. We'll be right back.

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering ServiceNow, Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Hi everybody, we're back. This is theCUBE and we're live from Knowledge17, I'm Dave Vellante with Jeff Frick. Michael Dippolito, did I say that right? >> D'Ippolito, close enough. >> D'Ippolito, sorry about that. A fellow Italian, I should get that right. D'Ippolito is assistant Vice President of Run Services Delivery, infrastructure and operations for Nationwide Insurance. Nationwide is on your side. >> You got it. It's in our heads right? >> I remember that. >> What a great marketing campaign. Michael, great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So how's Knowledge going for ya? >> Very good, very good. I'm really excited about some of the new things coming out with the newest release that was just announced this morning. And as a matter of fact I'm ready to go back and say let's jump to that version right? Because it sounds really exciting. >> So where are you right now? Which version are you on? Are you on the Helsinki? >> We are on the Helsinki release now. We usually like to jump a couple and stay as current as we can, usually you know one release behind maybe but if we find there's good functionality in jumping one we'll do it. >> I want to come back and talk about that, because we like to pick your brains about what's the best practice there, but before we do maybe set up your role at Nationwide. >> Yeah, RunService is a pretty large organization for Nationwide, through acquisitions and through our legacy environments, we have lots of application systems, you know, keeping all those running is a monumental task. So, our group is kind of sitting mainly in the middle of the applications, the infrastructure, the process, and trying to help everything stay running smoothly. >> Okay and you started with IT service management change management, like most customers, is that right? And then, you've been evolving that. Can you talk about that a little bit? >> Yeah we just implemented, about a year ago actually, we installed a year ago. >> Okay. >> We went with the Fuji release that we implemented then we've already jumped to Helsinki, and we pretty much went all processes all at once and kind of a big bang. We actually did ask that management at first does a little bit of a pilot, but then we actually went through all the other ITSM functionality, big bang after that. >> Jeff: So you're all in. >> Michael: Yeah. >> So what was life like, you know, give us a before and after, and maybe take us through the business case and how that all came about. >> I'll give you a perfect example, I just kind of did an after action review for our senior management, on our previous platform, which was an on prem heavily customized platform, to take a release would require a year and a half with a lot of planning and about a million dollars. >> Jeff: To do an upgrade. >> To do an upgrade. (Jeff Laughing) This last release to Helsinki went about six weeks, and about $100,000. So, that's a huge business case right there. Being able to be in the cloud, not having to worry about the infrastructure ourselves, and really we drove a model of zero customization so we wanted to stay out of box as much as possible, just for that reason so we could take releases fast and stay current. >> Wow, I'm sure that benefits. >> In the, you know, was situtation, the cost was predominantly people cost, programming cost, license cost, maintenance, consultants? >> It was mostly hours of effort. >> Yeah. >> The amount of customization we had and then to retrofit and test all those changes back into the release from the vendor was a monumental task and we never want to get into that situation again. >> And so with the ServiceNow upgrade, it's not out of pocket cost as much, you're quantifying time, is that correct? >> Correct. >> Yeah okay. >> It's mostly our internal cost. >> You said the time it took was a year and a half and then, like a typical upgrade in ServiceNow is, >> Michael: Less than two months. >> Okay. >> For us to bring it in test it, exercise it, making sure all our customizations, or configurations actually I should say, are working well. And a lot of it is more just the change management around it, you know, putting out the word, the communications, doing a little bit of training, or whatever it takes to get ready for a smooth launch. >> And some of the upfront planning of that as well. Now, when we talk to customers, there seems to be, we heard today that 90% of customers are adopting service catalog, CMDB, I don't know. It's mixed, right? We hear some yes, some no. Maybe tell us your experiences. >> We have a huge focus on CMDB right now. We think that CMDB is basically the foundation to all your other processes to run more smoothly right? So good trustworthy data enables faster incident resolution, better problem solving, more rigorous change management so you asses your risk of change better. So really when we sold our CMDB project, we didn't sell it based on the CMDB, we sold it based on all those other things, >> All the benefits. >> That get a ramp off of it. You know, from doing that effort. So, we're putting a lot of effort on CMDB maturity. >> So you were talking before about some of the things you saw today in Jakarta that were of interest before we go there, you had mentioned you started with Fuji, and now you're on Helsinki. What was the, you didn't double leapfrog did you? Or did you? What's your upgrade strategy? You said you might be an N minus one, but you like to stay pretty current. What's your strategy in regards to upgrades? >> Right now, we're looking at trying to be N minus one >> Uh huh. >> and taking two per year. So looking at two releases a year. We're trying to plan our schedules around maybe spring and fall. So we organize our work and our patterns around that. But something like that. We haven't really solidified that yet. A lot of it depends on what we see coming up, and what we can take advantage of. Like for example, we're getting ready to implement Work Day. And we want to make sure we have great integration between Work Day and ServiceNow. Some of the things that Jakarta is going to offer us is going to integrate nicely into Work Day. So, we may jump to that version because of that. >> So we heard this morning that the big things, well CJ set up the big things in Jakarta were going to be performance, obviously everybody better performance, maybe some UX stuff in there too, vendor risk management, and then the software asset management, which got the big cheers and the whoohoo! >> Yeah. (Jeff chuckling) >> Yeah, so, what in Jakarta is appealing to you? >> This software as a management I'd say, is very interesting because we're looking at that very closely right now in terms of our strategy around that. The other one I really like is the performance analytics and the predictive analytics that are coming out. I'd really love to be able to benchmark ourselves against other companies in terms of how we're doing. I feel we beat ourselves up a lot internally around things like availability or performance. But then, when I look and talk to others, we're not so bad. (Jeff chuckling) We're actually doing pretty good. So it'd be nice to get that benchmarking. >> Right, right. >> And some of that trend analysis that's offered. And then, finally, how do we get into a more predictive analytics mode where we can prevent incidents from happening before they do? So that's key. >> It was interesting, listening to Farrell Hough this morning talk about sort of the evolution of automation. How do you look at automation? Some shops are afraid of automation, but it seems like the ServiceNow customers we talk to really can't go fast enough. What is your thought, and how are you evolving automation? >> Well, one of our key drivers right now is how do we increase the speed of delivery to the marketplace? But, we also have to stay safe and reliable, right? And the key to speed is through automation. You can't really get that speed if you're not highly automated. And, to be highly automated, you need really high trustworthy data. So that enables fast decision making, and accuracy. >> Jeff: And that ties back to your CMDB commitment. >> Exactly, so, that all entailed enables speed, which we really want because in today's world speed is everything in terms of how you're constantly adapting your systems of engagement out there with your customers. Constantly learning from their patterns and adjusting on the fly. And that requires new mindsets. >> So you start with IT service management, you've got HR as well, is that right? >> We don't have the HR model. Right now we're only IT service management. >> Okay, straight IT services. >> We're looking at other modules, as we speak. >> Okay, so you want to make sure you get the value out of the initial ITSM, and then, how do you see that, you know, evolving? What is the conversation like internally? Do the business lines say, wow, all of a sudden we're getting improved service, and how are you doing that? Or is it more of a push where you go out to the business and say hey, here are some ideas. How does that all work? >> I'll tell you what we're really starting to see is a really change in what's driving innovation. And it's more coming from IT versus, the former models where IT was kind of like the order taker, and the business came up with everything they needed. Now, with the pace of change with technology, new business models are coming from IT to the business. And we're actually almost seeing ourselves more of an IT company than we are an insurance company. And, you starting to see those patterns especially with things like, now we're talking about metered insurance for auto, right? So basically, pay by the mile insurance, versus paying the same rate for six months. With the data we're getting out of vehicles today we can adjust your rates on the fly as you drive. Why should you pay the same rate if your car sits in the garage all weekend, versus you take it out and drive it 200 miles, right? So with the kind of data, big data and analytics that are coming from the vehicles we can do that now. >> So how is that conversation taking place? Is it being initiated by somebody in the IT staff that says hey, did you know that we have this data and we can do this? Let's take it to the business unit. Or does the business unit saying, I just saw Flo, the competitor, sticking the little thing in the dashboard? (Michael chuckling) Can we do that too? You know, there's a lot of talk about IT taking a seat at the business table >> Right. >> But how have you seen it actually been executed inside of Nationwide? >> Actually what we're seeing is, the lines are very blurry now between IT and the business. Almost to where, we're just a team working together versus the silos you used to have, and throwing the ideas over the fence. So we actually have a team that their goal is strategy and innovation. They report up through our CIO, and then business line teams have similar organizations, and they all work in a matrix fashion together. So anybody can bring any type of idea to the table, regardless of who you report up through. And we take those into consideration and we look for partners, we've got partners coming to us all the time that want to join us in innovation. And so it doesn't have to be our own solution. It could just be us on the back end of somebody else's front end, right? So, there's a lot of interesting ideas coming at us. >> What's happening in the business Mike? I mean you've got, obviously you're supporting the big systems or claims, you've got your agents systems, but mobile has exploded onto the scene. >> Yes. >> How has that affected you? What are some of the drivers in the insurance business these days? >> Well, definitely we're in this digital world now so, mobile first is critical. Everything has to be mobile enabled. We have to think of our strategy in a digital way constantly so we have a whole digital strategy that we work on. The traditional models of agency sold insurance won't ever really go away, per se, but they are shrinking. You see the demands and needs of the millennials coming up, very differently and changing. You have to compete on price to get in the door. That's important, so again we're trying to find all those interaction or intercept points with our customers as they need us. People don't really like to think of insurance, it's not on top of mind in their day to day life. But, when certain events happen like oh, I'm going to get married, or I'm going to take a trip, or you know, those kinds of things. >> Jeff: Right, kid turns sixteen. >> Yeah, we have different ways to interact with our customers, and offer some solutions that meet their need at the time. >> Well it seems like you're right, to be competitive, you've got to have the right price for those that say okay, I've got to get insurance, I need to start somewhere, great, but are you able to, as an industry, sell value? I mean, increasingly you're seeing some companies I would say Nationwide is one, where you're selling value. >> Yeah. >> Is that a trend in the business? >> Absolutely, I'll give you an example. One of the things that, normally the insurance model used to be I buy insurance and I'm protected when something bad happens. then when something bad happens, you compensate me. You pay my claim. But what about, if we can help you prevent the bad thing from even happening? So with products like our Smart Home package that you can buy now with internet of things, we can put sensors on those hot water tanks or on those pipes, or connected to your alarm system so that maybe we could alert you when we see your pipe is about to break. >> Right so, we cover, as you know our audience, we cover big data a lot. And the data business, and the insurance business have come mashing together, right? You had mentioned before, Mike, in many regards you're becoming an IT company and digitization is all about data. And the data allows you guys to build new products, to offer new services, to be more competitive and at the end of the day it's all about speed. >> Correct, speed and then that helps drive that value equation, right? So it's not so much being the lowest price, although you have to have a good price to be in the game, but then after that how can you provide that value? >> I'm curious Mike, from an insurance point of view, where before the business was based on, you know you didn't have so much data, right? So you had some big swaths, Age, sex, smoker, not smoker, but now as you're able to get data to the individual level, how that changes the way you look at it? Because it's very different than just kind of aggregating to the bulk, and then the poor unfortunate soul who has a car wreck, you pay the claim. But now, like you said, you know if I'm driving on the weekends, or if I'm parking my car. How is that really shaping the way that you guys look at the marketplace and the opportunities? >> Well you know, in the old days, you used to be able to take basically a subset of data from the past, and make your decisions based on that. >> A subset of data from the past, I love that. >> Now we're taking all the data in real time. >> In real time. >> So that puts more demands on the need for the technologies to provide that. It's critical, like especially if we're going to change your rates daily on how we insure your car, we have to have all the data, all the time. >> I remember Abhi Mehta, one of our early big data CUBE interviews, he made the statement in 2010 he said, "Sampling is dead." And, now, some people will debate that but the point he was making is just the same one you just made Michael is that you've got that data coming in, streaming it in real time. Some consumers, you know, have an issue with sticking that little meter in their car, but ultimately, that's the trend. It's going to happen. >> And you know we're seeing, and you're probably seeing it in other businesses as well, if you can provide that value, customers will give you the access and the data, because they see a value in return. So, it's that value equation. If it's good enough, they'll give you the value, and they'll give you the data. >> Dave: Yeah, you see it every day in mobile apps, right? >> Correct. >> You know, you're in New York City trying to get somewhere and it's like, turn on location services and I can help you. >> When you download any app, there's a big screen that comes up and you say I accept at the bottom, and then it has access to your pictures, access to your location and you're free to hit that accept because you see the value in that application. >> It's a quid pro quo, you know it's interesting we had the author on yesterday, Pink, Daniel Pink? >> Jeff: Pink, Mr. Pink, yes. >> And he was pointing out, he said look there used to be that the brand used to have all the information, and now there's parody in information, but in many regards, this whole digitization is an attempt by the brand to provide, to use more data and to give the consumers more value, and to create differentiation in the marketplace, and that's kind of what you're describing in your business. Last question, what's on ServiceNow's to-do list? What do you want to see a year, year and a half in? >> Well, after we implemented, we partnered with ServiceNow in a project they call Inspire, and basically it's to, what are we going to do next? You know, that very question, how do we leverage now what we've implemented, and take advantage of what the platform has to offer? We see lots of opportunities, as a matter of fact our list is so long we just don't have the bandwidth to do it all (Jeff chuckling) and we have to prioritize, but we see a lot of integration points, we see a lot of APIs coming in, we are in a kind of a really big phase in automation right now, we're trying to automate as much as possible, so for our on prem technology, we really want to go into automated provisioning of our assets, which means being able to connect those into the CMDB as they're provisioned, all automatically, and we want to really shorten those cycle times for when we have to provision infrastructure and support our applications. So ServiceNow is setting us up to do just that. >> Inspire is a great program, it's one of the best freebies in the business, and it leads, it's a win win. The customer gets the best experts, they come in and obviously, the hope is they're going to buy more stuff from ServiceNow, and if the value's there you will. Why not? It's going to drive to the bottom line. >> Using cloud to provision on prem resources, I like that. (all laughing) >> Mike thanks very much for coming to theCUBE, it was really a pleasure having you. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> Jeff: Thanks for sharing the insight. >> Alright keep it right there buddy we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break, there's a CUBEr live from Knowledge, be right back. (techno music)