(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies: creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. You're watching theCUBE's Coverage day two of MWC 23. Check out SiliconANGLE.com for all the news, John Furrier in our Palo Alto studio, breaking that down. But we're here live Dave Vellante, Dave Nicholson and Lisa Martin. We're really excited. We're going to talk qubits. Vanessa Diaz is here. She's CEO of LuxQuanta And Antonio Acin is a professor of ICFO. Folks, welcome to theCUBE. We're going to talk quantum. Really excited about that. >> Vanessa: Thank you guys. >> What does quantum have to do with the network? Tell us. >> Right, so we are actually leaving the second quantum revolution. So the first one actually happened quite a few years ago. It enabled very much the communications that we have today. So in this second quantum revolution, if in the first one we learn about some very basic properties of quantum physics now our scientific community is able to actually work with the systems and ask them to do things. So quantum technologies mean right now, three main pillars, no areas of exploration. The first one is quantum computing. Everybody knows about that. Antonio knows a lot about that too so he can explain further. And it's about computers that now can do wonder. So the ability of of these computers to compute is amazing. So they'll be able to do amazing things. The other pillar is quantum communications but in fact it's slightly older than quantum computer, nobody knows that. And we are the ones that are coming to actually counteract the superpowers of quantum computers. And last but not least quantum sensing, that's the the application of again, quantum physics to measure things that were impossible to measure in with such level of quality, of precision than before. So that's very much where we are right now. >> Okay, so I think I missed the first wave of quantum computing Because, okay, but my, our understanding is ones and zeros, they can be both and the qubits aren't that stable, et cetera. But where are we today, Antonio in terms of actually being able to apply quantum computing? I'm inferring from what Vanessa said that we've actually already applied it but has it been more educational or is there actual work going on with quantum? >> Well, at the moment, I mean, typical question is like whether we have a quantum computer or not. I think we do have some quantum computers, some machines that are able to deal with these quantum bits. But of course, this first generation of quantum computers, they have noise, they're imperfect, they don't have many qubits. So we have to understand what we can do with these quantum computers today. Okay, this is science, but also technology working together to solve relevant problems. So at this moment is not clear what we can do with present quantum computers but we also know what we can do with a perfect quantum computer without noise with many quantum bits, with many qubits. And for instance, then we can solve problems that are out of reach for our classical computers. So the typical example is the problem of factorization that is very connected to what Vanessa does in her company. So we have identified problems that can be solved more efficiently with a quantum computer, with a very good quantum computer. People are working to have this very good quantum computer. At the moment, we have some imperfect quantum computers, we have to understand what we can do with these imperfect machines. >> Okay. So for the first wave was, okay, we have it working for a little while so we see the potential. Okay, and we have enough evidence almost like a little experiment. And now it's apply it to actually do some real work. >> Yeah, so now there is interest by companies so because they see a potential there. So they are investing and they're working together with scientists. We have to identify use cases, problems of relevance for all of us. And then once you identify a problem where a quantum computer can help you, try to solve it with existing machines and see if you can get an advantage. So now the community is really obsessed with getting a quantum advantage. So we really hope that we will get a quantum advantage. This, we know we will get it. We eventually have a very good quantum computer. But we want to have it now. And we're working on that. We have some results, there were I would say a bit academic situation in which a quantum advantage was proven. But to be honest with you on a really practical problem, this has not happened yet. But I believe the day that this happens and I mean it will be really a game changing. >> So you mentioned the word efficiency and you talked about the quantum advantage. Is the quantum advantage a qualitative advantage in that it is fundamentally different? Or is it simply a question of greater efficiency, so therefore a quantitative advantage? The example in the world we're used to, think about a card system where you're writing information on a card and putting it into a filing cabinet and then you want to retrieve it. Well, the information's all there, you can retrieve it. Computer system accelerates that process. It's not doing something that is fundamentally different unless you accept that the speed with which these things can be done gives it a separate quality. So how would you characterize that quantum versus non quantum? Is it just so much horse power changes the game or is it fundamentally different? >> Okay, so from a fundamental perspective, quantum physics is qualitatively different from classical physics. I mean, this year the Nobel Prize was given to three experimentalists who made experiments that proved that quantum physics is qualitatively different from classical physics. This is established, I mean, there have been experiments proving that. Now when we discuss about quantum computation, it's more a quantitative difference. So we have problems that you can solve, in principle you can solve with the classical computers but maybe the amount of time you need to solve them is we are talking about centuries and not with your laptop even with a classic super computer, these machines that are huge, where you have a building full of computers there are some problems for which computers take centuries to solve them. So you can say that it's quantitative, but in practice you may even say that it's impossible in practice and it will remain impossible. And now these problems become feasible with a quantum computer. So it's quantitative but almost qualitative I would say. >> Before we get into the problems, 'cause I want to understand some of those examples, but Vanessa, so your role at LuxQuanta is you're applying quantum in the communication sector for security purposes, correct? >> Vanessa: Correct. >> Because everybody talks about how quantum's going to ruin our lives in terms of taking all our passwords and figuring everything out. But can quantum help us defend against quantum and is that what you do? >> That's what we do. So one of the things that Antonio's explaining so our quantum computer will be able to solve in a reasonable amount of time something that today is impossible to solve unless you leave a laptop or super computer working for years. So one of those things is cryptography. So at the end, when use send a message and you want to preserve its confidentiality what you do is you destroy it but following certain rules which means they're using some kind of key and therefore you can send it through a public network which is the case for every communication that we have, we go through the internet and then the receiver is going to be able to reassemble it because they have that private key and nobody else has. So that private key is actually made of computational problems or mathematical problems that are very, very hard. We're talking about 40 years time for a super computer today to be able to hack it. However, we do not have the guarantee that there is already very smart mind that already have potentially the capacity also of a quantum computer even with enough, no millions, but maybe just a few qubits, it's enough to actually hack this cryptography. And there is also the fear that somebody could actually waiting for quantum computing to finally reach out this amazing capacity we harvesting now which means capturing all this confidential information storage in it. So when we are ready to have the power to unlock it and hack it and see what's behind. So we are talking about information as delicate as governmental, citizens information related to health for example, you name it. So what we do is we build a key to encrypt the information but it's not relying on a mathematical problem it's relying on the laws of quantum physics. So I'm going to have a channel that I'm going to pump photons there, light particles of light. And that quantum channel, because of the laws of physics is going to allow to detect somebody trying to sneak in and seeing the key that I'm establishing. If that happens, I will not create a key if it's clean and nobody was there, I'll give you a super key that nobody today or in the future, regardless of their computational power, will be able to hack. >> So it's like super zero trust. >> Super zero trust. >> Okay so but quantum can solve really challenging mathematical problems. If you had a quantum computer could you be a Bitcoin billionaire? >> Not that I know. I think people are, okay, now you move me a bit of my comfort zone. Because I know people have working on that. I don't think there is a lot of progress at least not that I am aware of. Okay, but I mean, in principle you have to understand that our society is based on information and computation. Computers are a key element in our society. And if you have a machine that computes better but much better than our existing machines, this gives you an advantage for many things. I mean, progress is locked by many computational problems we cannot solve. We can want to have better materials better medicines, better drugs. I mean this, you have to solve hard computational problems. If you have machine that gives you machine learning, big data. I mean, if you have a machine that gives you an advantage there, this may be a really real change. I'm not saying that we know how to do these things with a quantum computer. But if we understand how this machine that has been proven more powerful in some context can be adapted to some other context. I mean having a much better computer machine is an advantage. >> When? When are we going to have, you said we don't really have it today, we want it today. Are we five years away, 10 years away? Who's working on this? >> There are already quantum computers are there. It's just that the capacity that they have of right now is the order of a few hundred qubits. So people are, there are already companies harvesting, they're actually the companies that make these computers they're already putting them. People can access to them through the cloud and they can actually run certain algorithms that have been tailor made or translated to the language of a quantum computer to see how that performs there. So some people are already working with them. There is billions of investment across the world being put on different flavors of technologies that can reach to that quantum supremacy that we are talking about. The question though that you're asking is Q day it sounds like doomsday, you know, Q day. So depending on who you talk to, they will give you a different estimation. So some people say, well, 2030 for example but perhaps we could even think that it could be a more aggressive date, maybe 2027. So it is yet to be the final, let's say not that hard deadline but I think that the risk, that it can actually bring is big enough for us to pay attention to this and start preparing for it. So the end times of cryptography that's what quantum is doing is we have a system here that can actually prevent all your communications from being hacked. So if you think also about Q day and you go all the way back. So whatever tools you need to protect yourself from it, you need to deploy them, you need to see how they fit in your organization, evaluate the benefits, learn about it. So that, how close in time does that bring us? Because I believe that the time to start thinking about this is now. >> And it's likely it'll be some type of hybrid that will get us there, hybrid between existing applications. 'Cause you have to rewrite or write new applications and that's going to take some time. But it sounds like you feel like this decade we will see Q day. What probability would you give that? Is it better than 50/50? By 2030 we'll see Q day. >> But I'm optimistic by nature. So yes, I think it's much higher than 50. >> Like how much higher? >> 80, I would say yes. I'm pretty confident. I mean, but what I want to say also usually when I think there is a message here so you have your laptop, okay, in the past I had a Spectrum This is very small computer, it was more or less the same size but this machine is much more powerful. Why? Because we put information on smaller scales. So we always put information in smaller and smaller scale. This is why here you have for the same size, you have much more information because you put on smaller scales. So if you go small and small and small, you'll find the quantum word. So this is unavoidable. So our information devices are going to meet the quantum world and they're going to exploit it. I'm fully convinced about this, maybe not for the quantum computer we're imagining now but they will find it and they will use quantum effects. And also for cryptography, for me, this is unavoidable. >> And you brought the point there are several companies working on that. I mean, I can get quantum computers on in the cloud and Amazon and other suppliers. IBM of course is. >> The underlying technology, there are competing versions of how you actually create these qubits. pins of electrons and all sorts of different things. Does it need to be super cooled or not? >> Vanessa: There we go. >> At a fundamental stage we'd be getting ground. But what is, what does ChatGPT look like when it can leverage the quantum realm? >> Well, okay. >> I Mean are we all out of jobs at that point? Should we all just be planning for? >> No. >> Not you. >> I think all of us real estate in Portugal, should we all be looking? >> No, actually, I mean in machine learning there are some hopes about quantum competition because usually you have to deal with lots of data. And we know that in quantum physics you have a concept that is called superposition. So we, there are some hopes not in concrete yet but we have some hopes that these superpositions may allow you to explore this big data in a more efficient way. One has to if this can be confirmed. But one of the hopes creating this lots of qubits in this superpositions that you will have better artificial intelligence machines but, okay, this is quite science fiction what I'm saying now. >> At this point and when you say superposition, that's in contrast to the ones and zeros that we're used to. So when someone says it could be a one or zero or a one and a zero, that's referencing the concept of superposition. And so if this is great for encryption, doesn't that necessarily mean that bad actors can leverage it in a way that is now unhackable? >> I mean our technologies, again it's impossible to hack because it is the laws of physics what are allowing me to detect an intruder. So that's the beauty of it. It's not something that you're going to have to replace in the future because there will be a triple quantum computer, it is not going to affect us in any way but definitely the more capacity, computational capacity that we see out there in quantum computers in particular but in any other technologies in general, I mean, when we were coming to talk to you guys, Antonio and I, he was the one saying we do not know whether somebody has reached some relevant computational power already with the technologies that we have. And they've been able to hack already current cryptography and then they're not telling us. So it's a bit of, the message is a little bit like a paranoid message, but if you think about security that the amount of millions that means for a private institution know when there is a data breach, we see it every day. And also the amount of information that is relevant for the wellbeing of a country. Can you really put a reasonable amount of paranoid to that? Because I believe that it's worth exploring whatever tool is going to prevent you from putting any of those piece of information at risk. >> Super interesting topic guys. I know you're got to run. Thanks for stopping by theCUBE, it was great to have you on. >> Thank you guys. >> All right, so this is the SiliconANGLE theCUBE's coverage of Mobile World Congress, MWC now 23. We're live at the Fira Check out silicon SiliconANGLE.com and theCUBE.net for all the videos. Be right back, right after this short break. (relaxing music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(soothing music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to this event, "Build Your Cloud Center of Excellence." I'm your host, Lisa Martin. In the next 15 minutes or so my guest and I are going to be talking about redefining cloud operations, an application modernization for customers, and specifically how partners are helping to speed up that process. As you saw on our first two segments, we talked about problems enterprises are facing with cloud operations. We talked about redefining cloud operations as well to solve these problems. This segment is going to be focusing on how Hitachi Vantara's partners are really helping to speed up that process. We've got Johnson Controls here to talk about their partnership with Hitachi Vantara. Please welcome both of my guests, Prem Balasubramanian is with us, SVP and CTO Digital Solutions at Hitachi Vantara. And Suresh Mothikuru, SVP Customer Success Platform Engineering and Reliability Engineering from Johnson Controls. Gentlemen, welcome to the program, great to have you. >> Thank. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> First question is to both of you and Suresh, we'll start with you. We want to understand, you know, the cloud operations landscape is increasingly complex. We've talked a lot about that in this program. Talk to us, Suresh, about some of the biggest challenges and pin points that you faced with respect to that. >> Thank you. I think it's a great question. I mean, cloud has evolved a lot in the last 10 years. You know, when we were talking about a single cloud whether it's Azure or AWS and GCP, and that was complex enough. Now we are talking about multi-cloud and hybrid and you look at Johnson Controls, we have Azure we have AWS, we have GCP, we have Alibaba and we also support on-prem. So the architecture has become very, very complex and the complexity has grown so much that we are now thinking about whether we should be cloud native or cloud agnostic. So I think, I mean, sometimes it's hard to even explain the complexity because people think, oh, "When you go to cloud, everything is simplified." Cloud does give you a lot of simplicity, but it also really brings a lot more complexity along with it. So, and then next one is pretty important is, you know, generally when you look at cloud services, you have plenty of services that are offered within a cloud, 100, 150 services, 200 services. Even within those companies, you take AWS they might not know, an individual resource might not know about all the services we see. That's a big challenge for us as a customer to really understand each of the service that is provided in these, you know, clouds, well, doesn't matter which one that is. And the third one is pretty big, at least at the CTO the CIO, and the senior leadership level, is cost. Cost is a major factor because cloud, you know, will eat you up if you cannot manage it. If you don't have a good cloud governance process it because every minute you are in it, it's burning cash. So I think if you ask me, these are the three major things that I am facing day to day and that's where I use my partners, which I'll touch base down the line. >> Perfect, we'll talk about that. So Prem, I imagine that these problems are not unique to Johnson Controls or JCI, as you may hear us refer to it. Talk to me Prem about some of the other challenges that you're seeing within the customer landscape. >> So, yeah, I agree, Lisa, these are not very specific to JCI, but there are specific issues in JCI, right? So the way we think about these are, there is a common issue when people go to the cloud and there are very specific and unique issues for businesses, right? So JCI, and we will talk about this in the episode as we move forward. I think Suresh and his team have done some phenomenal step around how to manage this complexity. But there are customers who have a lesser complex cloud which is, they don't go to Alibaba, they don't have footprint in all three clouds. So their multi-cloud footprint could be a bit more manageable, but still struggle with a lot of the same problems around cost, around security, around talent. Talent is a big thing, right? And in Suresh's case I think it's slightly more exasperated because every cloud provider Be it AWS, JCP, or Azure brings in hundreds of services and there is nobody, including many of us, right? We learn every day, nowadays, right? It's not that there is one service integrator who knows all, while technically people can claim as a part of sales. But in reality all of us are continuing to learn in this landscape. And if you put all of this equation together with multiple clouds the complexity just starts to exponentially grow. And that's exactly what I think JCI is experiencing and Suresh's team has been experiencing, and we've been working together. But the common problems are around security talent and cost management of this, right? Those are my three things. And one last thing that I would love to say before we move away from this question is, if you think about cloud operations as a concept that's evolving over the last few years, and I have touched upon this in the previous episode as well, Lisa, right? If you take architectures, we've gone into microservices, we've gone into all these server-less architectures all the fancy things that we want. That helps us go to market faster, be more competent to as a business. But that's not simplified stuff, right? That's complicated stuff. It's a lot more distributed. Second, again, we've advanced and created more modern infrastructure because all of what we are talking is platform as a service, services on the cloud that we are consuming, right? In the same case with development we've moved into a DevOps model. We kind of click a button put some code in a repository, the code starts to run in production within a minute, everything else is automated. But then when we get to operations we are still stuck in a very old way of looking at cloud as an infrastructure, right? So you've got an infra team, you've got an app team, you've got an incident management team, you've got a soft knock, everything. But again, so Suresh can talk about this more because they are making significant strides in thinking about this as a single workload, and how do I apply engineering to go manage this? Because a lot of it is codified, right? So automation. Anyway, so that's kind of where the complexity is and how we are thinking, including JCI as a partner thinking about taming that complexity as we move forward. >> Suresh, let's talk about that taming the complexity. You guys have both done a great job of articulating the ostensible challenges that are there with cloud, especially multi-cloud environments that you're living in. But Suresh, talk about the partnership with Hitachi Vantara. How is it helping to dial down some of those inherent complexities? >> I mean, I always, you know, I think I've said this to Prem multiple times. I treat my partners as my internal, you know, employees. I look at Prem as my coworker or my peers. So the reason for that is I want Prem to have the same vested interest as a partner in my success or JCI success and vice versa, isn't it? I think that's how we operate and that's how we have been operating. And I think I would like to thank Prem and Hitachi Vantara for that really been an amazing partnership. And as he was saying, we have taken a completely holistic approach to how we want to really be in the market and play in the market to our customers. So if you look at my jacket it talks about OpenBlue platform. This is what JCI is building, that we are building this OpenBlue digital platform. And within that, my team, along with Prem's or Hitachi's, we have built what we call as Polaris. It's a technical platform where our apps can run. And this platform is automated end-to-end from a platform engineering standpoint. We stood up a platform engineering organization, a reliability engineering organization, as well as a support organization where Hitachi played a role. As I said previously, you know, for me to scale I'm not going to really have the talent and the knowledge of every function that I'm looking at. And Hitachi, not only they brought the talent but they also brought what he was talking about, Harc. You know, they have set up a lot and now we can leverage it. And they also came up with some really interesting concepts. I went and met them in India. They came up with this concept called IPL. Okay, what is that? They really challenged all their employees that's working for GCI to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems proactively, which is self-healing. You know, how you do that? So I think partners, you know, if they become really vested in your interests, they can do wonders for you. And I think in this case Hitachi is really working very well for us and in many aspects. And I'm leveraging them... You started with support, now I'm leveraging them in the automation, the platform engineering, as well as in the reliability engineering and then in even in the engineering spaces. And that like, they are my end-to-end partner right now? >> So you're really taking that holistic approach that you talked about and it sounds like it's a very collaborative two-way street partnership. Prem, I want to go back to, Suresh mentioned Harc. Talk a little bit about what Harc is and then how partners fit into Hitachi's Harc strategy. >> Great, so let me spend like a few seconds on what Harc is. Lisa, again, I know we've been using the term. Harc stands for Hitachi application reliability sectors. Now the reason we thought about Harc was, like I said in the beginning of this segment, there is an illusion from an architecture standpoint to be more modern, microservices, server-less, reactive architecture, so on and so forth. There is an illusion in your development methodology from Waterfall to agile, to DevOps to lean, agile to path program, whatever, right? Extreme program, so on and so forth. There is an evolution in the space of infrastructure from a point where you were buying these huge humongous servers and putting it in your data center to a point where people don't even see servers anymore, right? You buy it, by a click of a button you don't know the size of it. All you know is a, it's (indistinct) whatever that name means. Let's go provision it on the fly, get go, get your work done, right? When all of this is advanced when you think about operations people have been solving the problem the way they've been solving it 20 years back, right? That's the issue. And Harc was conceived exactly to fix that particular problem, to think about a modern way of operating a modern workload, right? That's exactly what Harc. So it brings together finest engineering talent. So the teams are trained in specific ways of working. We've invested and implemented some of the IP, we work with the best of the breed partner ecosystem, and I'll talk about that in a minute. And we've got these facilities in Dallas and I am talking from my office in Dallas, which is a Harc facility in the US from where we deliver for our customers. And then back in Hyderabad, we've got one more that we opened and these are facilities from where we deliver Harc services for our customers as well, right? And then we are expanding it in Japan and Portugal as we move into 23. That's kind of the plan that we are thinking through. However, that's what Harc is, Lisa, right? That's our solution to this cloud complexity problem. Right? >> Got it, and it sounds like it's going quite global, which is fantastic. So Suresh, I want to have you expand a bit on the partnership, the partner ecosystem and the role that it plays. You talked about it a little bit but what role does the partner ecosystem play in really helping JCI to dial down some of those challenges and the inherent complexities that we talked about? >> Yeah, sure. I think partners play a major role and JCI is very, very good at it. I mean, I've joined JCI 18 months ago, JCI leverages partners pretty extensively. As I said, I leverage Hitachi for my, you know, A group and the (indistinct) space and the cloud operations space, and they're my primary partner. But at the same time, we leverage many other partners. Well, you know, Accenture, SCL, and even on the tooling side we use Datadog and (indistinct). All these guys are major partners of our because the way we like to pick partners is based on our vision and where we want to go. And pick the right partner who's going to really, you know make you successful by investing their resources in you. And what I mean by that is when you have a partner, partner knows exactly what kind of skillset is needed for this customer, for them to really be successful. As I said earlier, we cannot really get all the skillset that we need, we rely on the partners and partners bring the the right skillset, they can scale. I can tell Prem tomorrow, "Hey, I need two parts by next week", and I guarantee it he's going to bring two parts to me. So they let you scale, they let you move fast. And I'm a big believer, in today's day and age, to get things done fast and be more agile. I'm not worried about failure, but for me moving fast is very, very important. And partners really do a very good job bringing that. But I think then they also really make you think, isn't it? Because one thing I like about partners they make you innovate whether they know it or not but they do because, you know, they will come and ask you questions about, "Hey, tell me why you are doing this. Can I review your architecture?" You know, and then they will try to really say I don't think this is going to work. Because they work with so many different clients, not JCI, they bring all that expertise and that's what I look from them, you know, just not, you know, do a T&M job for me. I ask you to do this go... They just bring more than that. That's how I pick my partners. And that's how, you know, Hitachi's Vantara is definitely one of a good partner from that sense because they bring a lot more innovation to the table and I appreciate about that. >> It sounds like, it sounds like a flywheel of innovation. >> Yeah. >> I love that. Last question for both of you, which we're almost out of time here, Prem, I want to go back to you. So I'm a partner, I'm planning on redefining CloudOps at my company. What are the two things you want me to remember from Hitachi Vantara's perspective? >> So before I get to that question, Lisa, the partners that we work with are slightly different from from the partners that, again, there are some similar partners. There are some different partners, right? For example, we pick and choose especially in the Harc space, we pick and choose partners that are more future focused, right? We don't care if they are huge companies or small companies. We go after companies that are future focused that are really, really nimble and can change for our customers need because it's not our need, right? When I pick partners for Harc my ultimate endeavor is to ensure, in this case because we've got (indistinct) GCI on, we are able to operate (indistinct) with the level of satisfaction above and beyond that they're expecting from us. And whatever I don't have I need to get from my partners so that I bring this solution to Suresh. As opposed to bringing a whole lot of people and making them stand in front of Suresh. So that's how I think about partners. What do I want them to do from, and we've always done this so we do workshops with our partners. We just don't go by tools. When we say we are partnering with X, Y, Z, we do workshops with them and we say, this is how we are thinking. Either you build it in your roadmap that helps us leverage you, continue to leverage you. And we do have minimal investments where we fix gaps. We're building some utilities for us to deliver the best service to our customers. And our intention is not to build a product to compete with our partner. Our intention is to just fill the wide space until they go build it into their product suite that we can then leverage it for our customers. So always think about end customers and how can we make it easy for them? Because for all the tool vendors out there seeing this and wanting to partner with Hitachi the biggest thing is tools sprawl, especially on the cloud is very real. For every problem on the cloud. I have a billion tools that are being thrown at me as Suresh if I'm putting my installation and it's not easy at all. It's so confusing. >> Yeah. >> So that's what we want. We want people to simplify that landscape for our end customers, and we are looking at partners that are thinking through the simplification not just making money. >> That makes perfect sense. There really is a very strong symbiosis it sounds like, in the partner ecosystem. And there's a lot of enablement that goes on back and forth it sounds like as well, which is really, to your point it's all about the end customers and what they're expecting. Suresh, last question for you is which is the same one, if I'm a partner what are the things that you want me to consider as I'm planning to redefine CloudOps at my company? >> I'll keep it simple. In my view, I mean, we've touched upon it in multiple facets in this interview about that, the three things. First and foremost, reliability. You know, in today's day and age my products has to be reliable, available and, you know, make sure that the customer's happy with what they're really dealing with, number one. Number two, my product has to be secure. Security is super, super important, okay? And number three, I need to really make sure my customers are getting the value so I keep my cost low. So these three is what I would focus and what I expect from my partners. >> Great advice, guys. Thank you so much for talking through this with me and really showing the audience how strong the partnership is between Hitachi Vantara and JCI. What you're doing together, we'll have to talk to you again to see where things go but we really appreciate your insights and your perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks Lisa, thanks for having us. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you so much for watching. (soothing music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Women in Tech: International Women's Day, 2022. I'm your host Lisa Martin. Clara Bidorini joins me next, a Business Developer for the startups team in Brazil at AWS. Clara, it's lovely to have you on the program. >> Hi Lisa, thank you for having me. >> I want to mention a couple accolades that you got just in 2021. You were one of the top 20 most influential women for open innovation in Brazil in 2021. And you were a finalist for Women in Tech Brazil Awards in the category of Ally in Tech 2021. Congratulations. >> Thank you so much, it was an awesome year and it's always important to be acknowledged for what you're doing in the market, right? >> Absolutely, everyone wants to be appreciated every now and then. Tell me a little bit about your role and your background. >> Of course. So I am living in Brazil, as you said, but actually I'm Italian. So I've been living abroad for the last, I will say 16 years. So I've been living in Portugal, I've been living in Switzerland and now in Brazil for the last, I will say 11 years. I'm a Social Entrepreneur and a Strategic Designer. I've been working with corporate ventures since 2014 and now I am Corporate Venture Manager for startups at Amazon Web Services. I've supported, throughout 10 years, enterprises, startups, public sector with corporate acceleration programs and open innovation initiatives within their customer throughout Latin America. >> What's the female representation like in the startup environment? >> Well it depends a lot, right? We have different trends globally speaking. If we look at, for example, global trends, and that includes United States for example, we see that the number of unicorns that for example are led by female is much lower than the number of total unicorn that you see. So if you talk about United States, for example, that has the highest number of unicorns, we see that between 2013 and 2021 the number of female at a unicorn is only 60 against 500 which is a total number of it. So we see that actually the percentage is 12% only, so we need much more representative in the female startup ecosystem. But numbers are changing, right? So this is promising. >> That is good, it is promising to see the numbers ticking up. In terms of positioning of women in leadership roles, what's the role that you see kind of commonly across startups, or maybe it varies by country. >> It varies by country you're right but definitely when we look at the trends and when we look at the data that we receive from National StartUp Association and startup organization in the different geos, you can see that startup that are founded by female leaders are, I will say as a proxy, from 4% to 12% in some countries, it gets to 18%, of the total number of startups to that country. So it's still a low number, but what we see which is interesting, is that much more startups that are led by both female and male co-founders are rising more and more. For example, in Brazil, it represents 28% which is almost 30% against the 12% of female-only founded startup and the 51% of the male founded startup. So I think it's promising to look at this mix of genders when we look at the foundations of startups because they're also getting, I will say, from five to six more investment than female founded startups. What does it mean? It means that we need to find I think more allies work in allyship with men in order to have more investment in startup by women. But it also means that unicorns and the biggest startup, the scale-up startups, are now starting for example to hire women in the leadership. So maybe we don't have so many startups that are founded by women, but we have more and more scale-ups and unicorns that are led by leaders which are women. So this is an interesting change, if we compare 2022 with 2013, for example. >> That's good that we've seen so much progress in that amount of time. And something that I've seen too, or looking at stats, we know that the number of females and technical roles is still pretty low below 25%, but there's a lot of data that show that companies with even 30% of the executive leadership team being female, are more performant and more profitable. So the data is there. Is that one of the reasons that you think that you're seeing a lot of these kind of co-CEOs, female-male counterparts in the startup community? >> Well, we already know that diversity and diverse teams are much more performative than I will say, non-inclusive ones. So it's always a matter of how you can thrive to success in every kind of environment you're working. So this is true for startups but this is also true for corporations. So it's just a matter of time. I think for the startup environment to start to be working faster with diversity and inclusion, then I will say the traditional corporate world. Many of those startups in Brazil, in these tests, are saying, "We want to work with inclusion. We want to have more equity throughout the journey. Not only in the leadership." They just need more resources. And this is something that is interesting for startup because resources is what a startup normally doesn't have. So we need to be really smart on where they put the resources and how we help them throughout this journey so that they can be as diverse as they can and therefore gain more profit, right? >> One of the things that we often say when we're talking about women in tech and here we are International Women's day is that we can't be what we can't see. And I think that's so important to have those female role models. It's also important to have male role models. Talk to me a little bit about your mentors and sponsors and how they've helped get you to where you are today. >> Okay. This is interesting, because I just had a nice conversation with some friends of mine and today we're going to launch a project which I'm very fond of which is called (foreign language) in Portuguese is leave it with them Them being a positive reinforce to women. And today we have launched the first episode, which is amazing. And we were talking about mentors. So how important are they? And we were discussing the fact that until now if we have to count the number of male mentors that we have of course it's much bigger than number of female mentors but from now on what about having more female role models for everybody in the startup ecosystems? This is not a motion in where women are becoming mentors for other women. Women can be mentors for everybody. And the fact that we are empowering more female founders and female leaders in the ecosystem is just bringing again more diversity and therefore more performance to the entire ecosystem. I had many different mentors from different worlds. I will tell a little bit more about myself. Originally I'm an architect and I've been working with building and houses and hospitals and library during the first part of my career. And that world was a male world actually and I had many great mentors that helped me out throughout my journey. When I changed my career into Service Design and starting working with systems and holistic approach for strategy, again, I found many male mentors especially in Switzerland, especially in Brazil. But when I started the startup ecosystem journey, I started meeting women that actually changed my career. So, I'm talking about investors, I'm talking about co-founders, I'm talking about leaders I'm talking about leaders in the community because we don't have to forget that we need always to rely on the personas that are working in the startup ecosystem such as accelerators, incubators, universities. And I could just tell you so many stories about my mentors, but I don't want to say here that we only need to focus on finding female mentors. We need to find the most meaningful relationship that we can and learn from them. It could be a woman, it could be a man, but we need to encourage more and more in women to have the strength and the courage to be mentored to, to speak up. >> I agree. You don't have to have mentors that are only female. I have many back in my day that were male that got me to where I am today that I just really looked up to. And that sponsored me. And that's important for women to know that you need to have your own personal board of directors, of mentors and sponsors. But I'd love to know a little bit more. You really pivoted in your career. Talk to me about how you got the courage to say, "You know what? I'm going to make a change here. I'm going to go in a different direction." >> Oh Lisa, that's such a question. Thank you so about asking me about this. So I've always have been this I will say status quo challenger. And at some point when I entered architecture I ended up making a master in complexity and using creativity to solve complex problem. So there was already a flag of me not working in architecture anymore in the future but I didn't notice at the time. So this idea of working with complexity and using creativity to work out complex problems in society brought me to start working more with design and then using design as a management approach to solve those problems. So I was pivoting but step by step from architecture to design, from design to branding, sorry, from branding to strategy. At certain point I was working with open innovation already, so was solving big challenges for big corporations. I was designing, innovation, planning, The step from here to join the startup ecosystem world is just really small. So from that moment on, I understood that business was the place where I was working and creating an understanding value proposition was actually the thing that was putting me on stage and letting me be more myself in terms of having more connections, being an agent of transformation in this ecosystem. And actually being the status quo challenger every day. So that's the way I pivoted, but it took a lot of courage and it also took a lot of curiosity. And this is something that I'm always telling the startups to have. You need to look at everything with the eyes of a tourist. You need to be curious about everything. That's also the reason why I've been changing countries. I love to learn about new cultures. I love to learn new expressions. I love to understand how other people think. And this is putting other people and other reality in the center of your attention. And this is what business is about. Building stuff that is interesting for people, for your customers, for your user. This is the center of building a value proposition >> Right you bring up several good points there. And one, the breadth of knowledge and experience that you have. There's so much value there in having that breadth, being courageous enough to be curious but you also bring up a point about some other skills like soft skills, for example, that are so valuable that you don't necessarily learn in school. For example, I think communication, relationship building, those are so important for women and men to have to really bring that breadth to what it is that they're doing so that they can do whatever it is that they want. >> Exactly. You're so, right. So many of these soft skills for women, I think have been censored throughout the years by society behaviors. Let's say negotiating or talking about finance or let's try to create something new and having the courage to say, "I'm going to fail several times before will bring my business to success." So all of these aspects that I'm trying to describe here were kind of silenced throughout century for women. And now the possibility not only to test those situations but also to speak up, to share this this knowledge, and to be mindful with other women that can help us to be courageous enough, to fail so many times that we need in order for us to be successful. This is something that I've learned from my colleagues in the startup ecosystem, both male and female founders. This is so important to fail. Failing first is important. And this is something that actually for women is contradicted, right? We are taught to be perfect. We are taught to be multitasking. We are taught to be everything that is not showing our vulnerabilities and learning from our mistakes. So these are the soft skills that I think are more important. And also sorry, I was forgetting one of the most important, which is resilience. Definitely (chuckles). >> Resilience is critical. But I always say that failure is not necessarily a bad F word and you bring up a good point. But if you think of the theme of International Women's Day this year which is #BreakTheBias where do you think we are with that in the startup entrepreneurial world? >> That's a good question, Lisa. I think we are in the middle of a big change. Many of the things that happened throughout the last two years all over the world brought society to rethink on what we want as a future. The pandemic, the killings of innocent people in the United States, in Brazil, what is happening right now in Ukraine. We are working together throughout the new future and we had to rethink to change completely the way we were controlling our daily life, when the pandemic started, right? I think we are in in the midst of a new change. In the startup ecosystem, more and more women are claiming their right to be mothers, to be workers, to be leaders, to be in the startup ecosystem stages like pitching and selling their businesses to investors or corporates, and at the same time to be part of a family and also our men. So I think we are at the point in which we are kind of looking at each other in the eyes and saying, "Okay, we need to compromise. We need to have a better quality of life. And we need to compromise in being core responsible at what we want to achieve in terms of business." And this is something that is happening in the startup ecosystem world as well. So it's impacting corporates and startup as well. So, I think it was a consequence of the last two three years of events throughout the world. But also we see more investors that are female investors and this is important because they're breaking the bias. If we have more female investors investing in more women, we can definitely have those entrepreneurs having raised more money or the same amount of money as men in less time. Now, as we are talking, it takes longer for women to raise less money than the men. So we need to break the bias in this sense. And I think it's happening already. >> We do need to break the bias and thank you for your insights and the work that you are doing to help that along the way. Clara, it was lovely to chat with you today. Thanks for sharing your background. >> Thank you again, Liz. It was wonderful to be here with you. And I just want to make a call to action for all the women and the men that are listening to us to be closer to the other gender, and to try to be an active listener of what's happening in the other gender's life. Because at the end of the day we are co-sharing this world together. Thank you very much >> Wise words, Clara. Thank you again. From Clara Bidorini, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching Women in Tech: International Women's Day, 2022. (upbeat music)

>>Hello, uh, welcome to everyone. Uh, my name is Carlos lights. I'm a HP managing director, Portugal. Um, I have the privilege today where we make Hable, which is the business to business director for Altis Portugal. Uh, Paul, thank you very much. I want to start by faith you for your presence and availability to be with us today and to be able to share a few words about our partnership in particular use of our it consumption model, uh, as a service. So HP ring like, Oh, uh, maybe it's a good, uh, is a good way to start explaining a little bit about Altis right out. This is a multinational organization. Uh, you have presence in four countries, France, Portugal, Israel, and Dominica in a week, but today we will focus on, uh, on Portugal. Right. So could you please polo, uh, tell us about the Altis Portugal and, uh, your company's vision follow. >>Okay. Hello, Carlos, thank you very much for the invitation and regarding your question. Well, all this protocol was born as a telephone operator and after a few decades of transformation, namely on the B2B markets is now the leading Portuguese player in ICT. We have positioned ourselves as the preferred partner for digital transformation of organizations, both private and public. We have a large portfolio of an ICT portfolio of products and customized solutions from IOT, BPO, security payments, and many other areas. And we are committed to achieve a more competitive, collaborative, digital, and low carbon economy through our in-house products and our partner solutions like HBA, uh, regarding cloud. We have a decade of cloud presence in the market, uh, based on five data centers network that we have here in Portugal that are operating since 1999. Uh, so we have made this cloud journey with a strong focus on managing value added services, serving both in years and also top organizations. Uh, we started to believe that as a country, we cannot achieve the level of modernization and automation of operational models, or even the relation of company's cost structure without the throng and widespread adoption of a model as a set of display, as you go a lot of liken services, >>Paul, um, you know, um, as well, companies are currently, uh, facing many challenge, uh, and looking for solutions that address to their needs, but also, uh, should be future proof. Right? So how do you see everybody's cloud role on the elping, uh, achieve business goals and requirements? >>Well, uh, cloud approach is, are becoming a priority on organizations and customers are increasingly aware of the, of their solutions to their needs. So what coffee has shown us is how important is the agility flexibility, and thank to markets we all needed to bring, as far as you could, new solutions to the market, increase digital means and accomplished the use new workplace information because we are all working now, I'm in the office, I mean at house. And so what we see here in Portugal is that cloud enabled organizations were better prepared to this challenge and prior management visitations within companies, I think that will probably be now overcome by new decision-makers and some, so some verticals like healthcare banking got public administration, they have tight retirements, tight requirements on compliance that the security control. And I think that these are some of the verticals where only in a nightmarish cloud approach we'll compare unite with all these called VC cities. >>And so I think that under the present situation, budgets constraints, efficiency, and predictability are even more present at decision-making process. And I don't think that traditional it models will no longer cope with this challenge. And so therefore, uh, every thought strategy are presently delivering customers the best of both worlds. They want simplified it provisioning and operational LSD city, but never, but then nevertheless are compelled to keep that close to home when that the protection is critical and compliance, and that the governments are to shop every cloud service services supported by the right partners tools like GreenLake central. I think that will be the key to achieve a single as a service experience from edge to plow. They allow the security and of control of a non-brand model, along with the corporate agility and the OPEX flexibility so much demanded by our clients. >>So BOLO, uh, regarding the experience, uh, fortunately we have a ready common contracts and common customers, right? And the, well, from your experience, uh, what do you think are the benefits customers are getting from each beaming? Like, can you share some examples use cases? >>Okay. Of course. Well, uh, as I said before, HBA brings to the table a key differentiator, which is the GreenLake central. We have one portal to manage all cloud on prem having at the same time, the control, the easy to use and better capacity to plan future needs. So it serves both it finance and legal teams giving the proper visibility to all of these stakeholders. In terms of examples, we have customers that are using GreenLake to suppose, suppose private and public sector. We have implementations both at Altis and customers' premises that the centers on a very diverse type of business apps from mission critical help, sometimes legacy to SAP or some cloud native apps. For instance, we have solutions of stars as a service for the energy sector on the transport sector and a data center as a service on public administration on customers that need to keep the it on prem because of compliance, but look for the cloud flexibility and the model as a service. >>Good. I see, uh, I see in fact, uh, a positive, a very positive future, uh, in our partnership, but, uh, w what is your opinion about that, uh, uh, how you see the partnership with HP and, uh, and the position to, to give you the ability to even have more success? >>Well, I'm putting this question, talking a little bit about the near future. I think that the short to medium term, the future, uh, will be concentrating on solving possible endemic crisis and sell both customers and ourselves service providers. Uh, we faced this challenge and I think that we were able to cope with these challenges on 2021. And we are very supported on technology and digital solutions. And I think that with the help of HPA, we are being able to, to pass this reality check, uh, and under such critical circumstances. But now we need to step forward. We need to leverage the increase e-comm levels. Remote work breath is a way of in there. So we need to go towards the digital transformation of organizations. We need to extend the infrastructure to where business happens. Uh, we have to infuse cloud closer to the network. We are telco allowing for a new class of cloud native and innovative applications for customers. >>Some verticals where LTC is aiming for a new position, also urge for closer collaboration with called partners like HPA, for instance, e-health will bring us new opportunities in the near future. And the proper ICT foundations are crucial for the new health care services, patient focused approaches and that the driven decisions and being cloud markets made sure. Now, I think that some companies still count on their partners to facilitate the cloud journey, helping them underline the business cases on cloud users apart consulting skills to facilitate change, bring peers use cases that can easily apply NHPA is the most value for out. It says much to bring the new cloud technology, but also the existing experience, the use casing, the use cases and helping us go through the learning curve in other markets. So, uh, for the future, we hope for the best, and we will count on a leading partner like HPA to drivers too, >>On these uncertain, but promising future. Good. I want to reinforce the, thank you very much for your shares. Share this content, this information with us. Uh, it was a real, it is a real pleasure to work with you. Uh, it's a pleasure for all your work without these as a company, but as well, personally, we, your follow and the, because I think it's important to wherever address relationship, and we have now the trust relationship with the organization and with personally as well. So thank you very much, Paulo, and have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much..

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum, DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are back this afternoon here in Washington, D.C., at the Walter Washington Convention Center. As we continue our coverage here of Inforum 2018 along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls, and we now welcome Mr. Cormack Watters to the program today, EVP of Emea and APAC at Infor. Cormack, good to see you sir. >> Nice to be here. >> So, we're going to talk about Guinness, over in Ireland (chuckling). Cormack's from Dublin, so we had a little conversation. We're getting a primer here. >> It's actually the best conversation we should have, right? >> Right, we'll save that for the end. How about that? So, you're fairly new, right? About a year or so. >> Ten months or so, not that I'm counting it by the day >> No no no, always going forward, never backward. But a big plate you have, right, with EMEA and APAC? Different adoptions, different viewpoints, different perspectives... We've talked a lot really kind of focusing domestically here for the past couple of days. Your world's a little different than that though, right? >> It is. It is. And it's very good that you've actually recognized it because that's actually the biggest challenge that we have. To be a little bit humble about it, I think we've got world-class products and solutions. I actually fundamentally believe that. But we have lots of different languages, cultures, and localization requirements in the multiple Countries that we look after. So, it's great to have great products, but it needs to be in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, Arabic, which most of them are. Customers realize that we are actually international and localized for many, many markets. But now we've become an intriguing option for them, if you're a multi-national business, with subsidiaries all over the world. So, it's good that Infor is big enough to do that. We need to do a better job of letting everybody know that we've done that, if that makes any sense. >> Sure. >> So what's happening in Europe? Europe's always pockets, there's no..I mean.. Yes, EU but there's really still no one Europe. What's going on? Obviously, we have Brexit hanging over our head. I felt like U.S. markets are maybe a little bit overheated in Europe has potential upside. >> Yeah >> And it seems like others seem to agree with that. What happening on the ground? Any specific, interesting areas? Is Southern Europe still a concern? Maybe you can give us an update? >> Yeah, so Brexit is quite a dominant conversation. I am from Ireland. I live in Dublin, but I'm working all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. So, I don't get to be at home very often, except the weekends. London is really our regional headquarters from a European perspective, and Brexit is on everybody's mind. Interestingly, when you go outside the UK, Brexit is not such a big topic because... That's Europe. And they kind of go, "Well if you don't want to be here, then you don't need to be here." Right? So it's a little bit of that, and they're saying, "Well, we'd like for them to stay, but if they don't want to stay, well, don't wait around." But in the UK, it's causing a lot of uncertainty. And the UK's one of our biggest markets. It's a lot of uncertainty, and what would be best is if we just knew what was going to happen, and then we could deal with it. And actually, once we know what's going to happen, that's going to bring a degree of change. And change, from our industry perspective means there's going to be some requirements that emerge. So, we need to be ready to serve those, which is opportunity. But the uncertainty is just slowing down investment. So, we need that to be resolved. >> So, clarity obviously is a good thing obviously a good thing in any market. Are there any hotspots? >> Yeah, actually for us, we're doing, for us the Hotspots right now, we're doing incredibly well in Germany. Which, one of our lesser known competitors is a small Company called SAP. And they're headquartered in Germany. It's quite interesting to see that we're actually taking a lot of market there in Germany, which is fantastic. That's a little bit unexpected, but it's going very well right now. We're seeing a ton of activity in the Asia Pacific, I would say that region is probably our fastest growing in all of Infor. And consistently so for several quarters and maybe past a year at this point. So Asia Pacific, Germany, U.K., and then as it happens, we are doing very well in Southern Europe, which is a combination of countries really. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Hard to put it down to which particular Country is doing well, but there seems to be a general uplift in that region. Because they were hit the hardest, arguably, by the crash back in 2008. So they've definitely come out of that now. >> And when they come out, excuse me I'm sorry John, but, they come out, Cloud becomes more important to them, Right? >> Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Anyone who's been delaying investment for years, can actually leapfrog what's been happening and jump straight to what you might call the future. So lots of Companies, lots of our Customers, are trying to simplify their Business. So Cloud is a great equalizer. We believe in your, what we call Last Mile of Functionality per industry. And that should make the projects shorter, more compact more predictable and the infrastructure worries go away, because that's our responsibility to the Customers. >> We definitely so that in the U.S., 2008-2009, CFO's came in said shift to the Cloud, because we want to shift Capx to Opx, and when we came out of the downturn, they said "wow this stuff works pretty well, double down on it" and then there were other business benefits that they wanted to accelerate, and so maybe Southern Europe was a little bit behind >> I think that may be the case right, and they are picking up. And what we're seeing are a lot of other advantages. Not to make this a sale's pitch, but, I am here so >> Go for it >> You've got a microphone >> I've got a microphone and I'm Irish, so I've got to talk right? What the Cloud is actually doing is, lots of Companies have put in big ERP over the years, the decades. And then they get stuck at various points and maybe years behind, because upgrades become painful and really want to avoid them. So what they're seeing is, if they can get onto the Cloud, they never need to upgrade again. Because it's always current, because we upgrade it every week, or every month and they're never falling behind. So they want to be ready to take advantage of the innovations that they know about and those that they don't even know about. So by keeping on the latest version, that opportunities open to them. Also, there's a big issue in Europe specifically about a thing called GDPR, which is data protection. Security. So we believe that we can do a better job of providing that, than any individual Company. Because we provide it for everybody, our resources can be deployed once and then deployed many times. Where as if you're an individual customer, you've got to have that speciality and put it in place. So GDPR is a genuine issue in Europe, because, the fines are absolutely huge if a Company is found to breach it. >> It's become a template for the globe now, California's started moving in that direction, GDPR has set the frame work. >> Well and just to follow up on that, and now you're dealing with a very different regulatory climate, then certainly here in the United States. And many U.S. Companies are finding that out, as we know. Overseas right now. So how do you deal with that in terms of, this kind of balkanized approach that you have, that you know that what's working here doesn't necessarily translate to overseas, and plus you have, you know, you're serving many masters and not just one or two. >> What's happening is the guys in our RND have done very well, is they understand the requirement of, in this instance, GDPR. They look at the other regulatory requirements, lets say in Australia, which is subtly different, but it is different, and they can take, well what do we have to do? What's the most extreme we have to achieve? And if we do that across our suite into our platform suite, the N4RS, that can then be applied to all the applications. And then becomes relevant to the U.S. So it's almost like some requirement across the seas, being deployed then becoming really relevant back here because over here you do need to be aware of the data protection, as well, it's just not as formalized yet. >> It's coming >> A Brewing issue right? >> What about Asia Pacific? So you have responsibility for Japan, and China, and the rest of the region. >> Right >> Which you are sort of re-distinct... >> Really are right? There are several sub regions in the one region. The team down there, as I say, arguably the most successful team in Infor right now, so Helen and the crew. So you see Australia, New Zealand then you see Southeast Asia, then you see China, Japan and so on. So different dynamics and different markets, some more mature than others, Japan is very developed by very specific. You do need very specialized local skills to succeed. Arguably Australia, New Zealand is not that similar from say some of the European Countries. Even though there are differences and I would never dream to tell an Australian or a New Zealander that they are the same as Europeans, cuz I get it. I smile when people say "you're from the U.K and you're not from Ireland?" I understand the differentiation. (laugher) And Southeast Asia, there's a ton of local custom, local language, local business practice that needs to be catered for. We seem to be doing okay down there. As I say, fastest growing market at scale. It's not like it's growing ridiculously fast but from a small base. It's as a big market already and growing the fastest. >> And China, what's that like? You have to partner up? >> Oh yeah >> To the JV in China? >> You have to partner up, there are several of the key growth markets that it's best to go in with partners. Customers like to see we've got a presence. So that they can touch and feel that Infor entity. We can't achieve the scale we need, and the growth we want fast enough without partnering. So we have to go with partners to get us the resources that we need. >> And in the Middle East, so my business partner, Co-Host, John Furrier, is on a Twenty Hour flight to Bahrain. The Cube Bahrain. Bahrain was the first Country in the Middle East to declare Cloud first. AWS is obviously part of that story, part of your story. So what's going on over there? Is it a growing market? Is it sort of something you're still cracking? >> No, no, again it's growing. We have several key markets down there, big in hospitality in that part of the world. Hotels, tourism obviously. Shopping, very interesting markets, and Healthcare, interestingly enough. I think arguably some of the worlds best Hospitals are in that region. Definitely the best funded Hospitals. >> Probably the most comfortable. (laughter) >> So again part of our stent is the number of industries we serve, so if you can put in our platform as it were, then you could have multiple of the industry flavors applied. Because what's interesting in that part of World, there seem to be a number of, I guess we call them conglomerates. So maybe family owned, or region owned, and they have just a different array of businesses all under the one ownership. So you would have a retailer that's also doing some tourism, that's also doing some manufacturing. So we can put our platform in, and then those industry flavors they can get one solution to cover it all. Which is a little bit unusual, and works for us. >> Your scope is enormous. I mean essentially you're the head of Non-U.S. I mean is that right? >> Yeah, and Latin America as well. >> That's part of it? That's not... >> Excluding the Americas. So there's Americas and then everything else, and you're everything else. >> I missed a meeting you see so they just gave it to me >> What you raised your hand at the wrong time? >> I wasn't there (laughter) >> So how do you organize to be successful? You obviously have to have strong people in the region. >> Right. So the key is people, right. We organize somewhat differently to over here. We've gone for a regional model, so I have six sub-regions, that I worry about. So four in Europe, the Nordic Countries. Scandinavian, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. We call Western, which is Ireland, U.K. and the Benelux. Germany is Central and East, and then Southern is the Latin Country, Spain, Portugal, Greece and so. Then we've got the Middle East, and Africa, and then we got Asia Pacific. I've got six regional teams, all headed by a regional leader, and each of them are trying to be as self contained as they can. And where we see we've got an opportunity to move into something new, we've got one team working with me directly as an incubator. For example, we're driving a specific focus on Healthcare, in our part of the world, because it's very big over here. We haven't quite cracked the code over there. When we get some scale, then it'll move into the regions, but for now that's incubating under me. >> And, what about in Country? Do you have Country Managers? One in the U.K., one in France, one in Germany. >> We have what we call local leaders, right? So in some cases it could be a sales oriented individual, it could be consulting, others it could be the local HR guy. So that's more for us to make sure we're building a sense of community within Infor. Rather than it being more customer facing. We're still trying to make sure that there is a reasonably scarcity of senior skills. So regionalizing lets us deploy across several Countries, and that works with the customer base, but for employees we need local leaders to give them a sense of feeling home and attached. >> So the regions are kind of expertise centers if you will? >> Yes >> So I was going to ask about product expertise, where does that come from? It's not parachuted in from the U.S. I presume? >> No, we're pretty much self-sufficient actually, which is great. So from both what we call solution consulting, which is the product expertise, and then consulting which is the product deployment. And we're doing more and more of our deployments with Partners. As I say, we need to really rapidly embrace that partner ecosystem to give us the growth opportunity. RND, is all over the World. That's not under my direct control. So for a major suites, take for example, LN, happens to be headquartered out of Barneveld, in the Netherlands. From a Historic perspective, which is great. And Stockholm, which is also great. But a lot of the development resource room in Nila and in India. So we work closely with the guys, even though they don't actually report to me. >> And out of the whole area, the area of your responsibility what's the best growth opportunity? We all think of China, but that's been fits and starts for a lot of people. >> Yeah, yeah I think we've got multiple opportunities, you can look at it a few ways. You can look at it geographically, and you would say China. You can look at Eastern Europe, and you can look at Africa. There's a ton of opportunity in those regions, geographically. Interestingly we are also at a point where I think the Nordics, and we've got a very solid base Historically, and so on. But we probably haven't put enough focus on there in recent times, that the opportunities are really scaled in Nordics is really quite significant. And then they can look at it from a Product Perspective. So for example, we have, what we believe to be World Leading, and actually a Company called Gartner would equally agree with us. Enterprise Asset Management, EAM, that's a product suite that can fit across all of our industries. I think that could well be the significant growth area for us across the entire six regions. And it's a huge focus for us here at the conference actually. So we can do it by product, EAM, Healthcare, or by Region. I think Eastern Europe, China, and Africa, as well as the Nordics. >> And the other big opportunity is just share gains, market share gains, particularly in Europe, I would think, with your background. >> Yup. Completely, I mean, that's why I said, it's really interesting that we are winning market share in Germany. Who'd of thought that a few years ago? That's a big market, I mean, Germany, U.K., France, Italy. They're huge. Right, I mean U.K., is what, Sixty-Five Million People? It's a big economy, so we've got many of the worlds G7, in our backyard. So we just really need to double down on those, and give them the opportunities to grow that we need. >> And just back to Japan for a second. Japan has traction, it takes a long time to crack Japan. I know it first from personal experiences. >> Yeah, Okay, Interesting. >> Yeah you just got to go many many times and meet people. >> That's it, Right. And it's a different culture, of when you think they're saying yes and you think they're there, that's just yes to the next step. (laughter) >> Alright, so it does take time to get there. We've actually cracked it to some extent, that we've now got some solid referenceability, and some good wind. We need local leaders in Japan, to really crack the code there. >> And then once you're in, you're in. >> I think that once you've proven yourself, it's a lot of word of mouth and referencing. >> Well I hope you get home this weekend. Are you headed home? >> Yes! Actually I'm lucky enough. My Wife is originally from Chicago. So she and our Daughter have come over for the weekend, to go sight seeing in Washington. So that'll be fun. So we'll be going home on Sunday. >> Your adopted home for the weekend then. >> That's exactly right. >> Well we'll talk Guinness in just a bit. Thanks for the time though, we appreciate it. >> Thank you Gentlemen. >> Good to see you, Sir. Alright, back with more here from Inforum 2018, and you're watching Live, on theCube, here in D.C. (electronic music)