>> From around the globe, it's The Cube, presenting Cube on Cloud, brought to you by SiliconANGLE. >> Welcome back to Cube on Cloud. I'm Paul Gillin, enterprise editor of SiliconANGLE. As we look ahead at what is in store for the cloud this year, one of the intriguing possibilities that has emerged is the rise of vertical clouds. IBM has been a leader in this area with its launch in late '19 of the IBM Financial Services cloud. That's a services-ready public cloud with exceptional security, as well as a policy framework for certifying compliance and services from the IBM subsidiary, Promontory. Now, with the IBM Financial Services cloud, that has been a major focus of our next guest, Hillery Hunter. She is the Vice President and CTO of IBM Cloud, an IBM Fellow, and a veteran of, I believe, three previous appearances on The Cube. Am I right, Hillery? >> Yep, sounds about right. Great to be back here today. >> Thanks for joining us. So let's start with getting an update on the IBM Financial Services cloud. What progress have you made in signing up customers and your ecosystem of partners? >> Yeah, we've made really significant progress advancing the IBM Cloud for Financial Services since we last talked, and we're really at that place of establishing a trusted platform for the industry. Just in some specifics, in addition to Bank of America which we had talked about as our U.S. anchor partner for the program, we've announced several global banks that are partnering with us for the global expansion of the program, including BNP party bar, which is one of Europe's largest banks. More than 70 ASVs are signed up with us now as part of the program and adopting IBM Cloud for Financial Services. This level of ecosystem is exciting because it means that banks will have the opportunity to transform what they're doing, but do so in a way which is driven by security and compliance so that they can be confident in those deployments on IBM Cloud for Financial Services. We also released the IBM Cloud policy framework for Financial Services. This is both the security and compliance posture of the environment, as well as guidance on controls, reference architectures, automation to help people onboard. And so both ISVs and banks now are able to onboard to this environment, and offer their wares and deploy their workloads. So it's a really exciting state for us on the program, and we're really in a place where there'll be an ongoing cadence of additional releases and announcements of additional partnerships and clients. So it's an exciting time in the program. >> One of the distinctive features, I think, of this launch is that you're working actively with your customers. They're working with you on building policy frameworks, as well as, I imagine, the features that you're offering on the cloud. How do you orchestrate all of these different customers and get them involved in, actually, co-development. >> Yeah, the ecosystem conversation and the partnership conversation are two of the fundamental aspects of the program. Like you said, this isn't just us sitting off in a bubble and inventing the future. We're working internally with partners within IBM, like IBM Promontory, which is a consultancy that has deep, deep regulatory expertise in jurisdictions globally, with IBM Security Services, and then with these individual partners and banks and clients. One of the ways that we bring everything together is through our council. So our council, our Cloud Council for Financial Services, is where we have global, systemically important financial institutions partnered with us and working together with one another, and that covers CIOs, it covers chief security officers, risk officers, et cetera. So we have some formality around how we work with all of these partners, really, as a body and as a group. >> And what have you learned from this experience? If you were to go into other vertical clouds, what have been the lessons? >> Ecosystem is so important. As I look at this space, I see that everyone has an existing business. They have a platform they're running, they have clients they're trying to service, but the software providers into this space are looking, themselves, to transform. They're looking to transform from being software vendors to being SaaS providers. The banks and financial institutions themselves are looking to transform from working on their own premises to benefit from the elasticity and the scale and the optionality that being in public cloud provides. So there's a lot of parties themselves that are trying to transform, and a lot of vendors into the financial space that are looking to transform. And in that time of a lot of change, ecosystem is absolutely key. And so the ISE and SaaS providers providing their wares on the cloud for financial services is really just as important as those financial services institutions, so that everyone can make that transition together, and so that banks that are looking to digitally transform can leverage partners that are really at the forefront of that change and that innovation in platforms for the industry. >> Would you say that there are- Is this the first of many? Are there going to be other vertical IBM clouds, or is the range of industries that really need that kind of specificity, limited? I think it's actually not limited, though I will say that within the space of industries that are heavily regulated, there's obviously a deeper need for specific cloud embodiments and cloud implementation, so regulated industries like insurance, like telco, health care, et cetera, these are the ones, I think, where there's the greatest opportunity to do verticals that are specific to industry. But as we look at this, this is absolutely part of an IBM Cloud strategy to deliver industry-specific clouds. And this comes from our decades of expertise. Even in financial services, being able to leverage those other entities within IBM that I mentioned, our regulatory background with companies, having helped them address regulatory needs for specific industries, and then translating that into cloud and cloud technologies. And then coming up from the other side, in terms of the technologies themselves, we've partnered with key industries to deliver security, and data protection, and cryptography technologies, and such, on premises, and we're contextualizing that now for cloud and public cloud deployments. And so it brings together the pieces of decades of expertise in platforms, and technology, and regulations, and contextualizes it into cloud, and I absolutely think that's an opportunity for other industries as well. >> Can you give us a bit of a preview? Do you have specific industries in mind? Is there a timeframe? >> Yeah, so late last year we did announce a second industry-specific cloud initiative, and that was IBM Cloud for Telco. So we have in that ecosystem, now, over 40 partners that are now, that are working with IBM and with Red Hat, especially with clients and partners that are looking to help with that transition into 5G and increasing use of IOT. 5G is really this disruptive opportunity for that industry, and also just for many other different types of companies and institutions that are looking to deploy with more efficiency, better operational efficiency, deploy with AI capabilities, really being able to do things at cellular network EDGE, and the places that they're doing business using IOT devices, and 5G will enable much of that to really transform and flourish. So a couple of the partners, initially, in addition to that ecosystem that I mentioned in Cloud for Telco, we've got Samsung working with us, Nokia, AT&T, et cetera, and so these partnerships and capabilities around network EDGE and specific capabilities in Cloud for Telco are that second public announcement that we've made around industry-specific cloud. >> And as far as your competitive position is concerned, are you taking away business from your competitors when you partner with these telcos and these banks, or is this an entirely new line of business that was not previously in the cloud? >> Yeah, these are really, I think, in, by and large, new opportunities. As we look at, for example, how we, as customers, expect to engage with our bank, we are looking to increasingly engage with a bank in a digital way, use our applications, use mobile devices. We're looking for individual bank outlets, branch outlets of a banking institution, to be increasingly smart, to service our needs more quickly, et cetera. And so as we look at 5G and telco EDGE, it's about delivery of smarter capabilities and such. I think much of it really is about, in this digital transformation space, about creating new capabilities, creating new experiences, creating new ways of engagement, and engagement and opportunity to customize and personalize, I think most of those are new experiences and new capabilities for most companies. >> So speak about IBM's positioning right now. You're not one of the big three cloud providers, unlikely to become one, but you do have a big cloud business, and you've got the verticals, you've got the multicloud. I know IBM has been a big champion of multicloud. How is IBM distinctively positioned in the cloud market right now? >> Yeah, we are all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, and if you listen to our CEO and chairman, you'll hear that. It is a really consistent message since he came into his role as as our CEO. So being all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, we really are looking to help our clients transform into holistic cloud architecture. So when I say all-in on hybrid cloud, I mean that there's been a lot of, I jokingly say, random acts of cloud usage. People have ended up using cloud because there's some SaaS function that they want, or some particular line of business has been highly motivated to pursue some service on a particular cloud. And hybrid cloud is really about taking a step back, having a holistic architecture for cloud consumption. And in that sense, clouds are IBM's partners. And we're really looking to enable our clients to have consistency in their deployments, to consolidate across their IT estate and across their cloud deployments so that they can have a common platform, so they can have efficiency in how their developers deploy capabilities, so they can deploy more quickly with security and compliance patterns, and have oversight over everything that's going on in a consistent way that really enables them to have that velocity in their business. And so when we then position things like industry cloud, we're leveraging IBM-specific technologies to deliver differentiated capabilities in data privacy, data protection, security and compliance, for these industries, in public cloud, yes, but it's in the context of helping our clients overall across all the different things, some of which may not need all of that data privacy or be leveraging particular SaaS content. We're looking to help them really have cloud architecture, have a holistic conversation across hybrid cloud, and yet to still be able to choose particular cloud deployments on our cloud for industries that enables data protection and policy for the most sensitive and enterprise grade things that they're looking to do at the core of their business. >> So speaking of hybrid hybrid cloud, the major cloud providers, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle's another one, all have on-premises offerings right now. Several of them are working with telcos to expand their reach out into co-location and into telecom data centers, all of this being to enable this distributed cloud fabric, a hybrid cloud fabric. What's IBM's play in this area? Do you have a similar strategy or is it different? >> Yeah, I really think, and I think you maybe wanted to get a little bit into trends and predictions here in this conversation, and we absolutely see that need for distributed cloud, for cloud to really be alive in all the places where it needs to be, in all the places that someone is doing business, and in a consistent way across cloud environments, to be one of those major trends that's emerging as a really hot conversation. We have introduced IBM Cloud Satellite, that is IBM's hybrid cloud, as a service platform. It enables our clients to leverage OpenShift and Kubernetes environments, developer tooling, consistency in a cloud catalog, visibility and control over all their resources across different environments, and to be able to run end-to-end with consistency from on-premises, to EDGE, to different public cloud providers, and this is absolutely something that, across industries but within, also, those industries, that we're focused on in particular, that we're seeing a lot of interesting conversations emerge, because if cloud is everywhere, if cloud is distributed and can be on premises and in public cloud, it enables this consistency and this parity, really that brings together that seamlessness, not just the random acts of cloud usage. It means that using cloud can be something that drives speed of release of new product. It means that you can deliver more capability and functionality into a retail outlet where you're doing business, or a banking brick-and-mortar location. You can have AI for IT ops and understand what's going on across those different environments, and ensure things are kept secure, and patched, and updated, and you're responding to incidents in efficient ways. And so, really, having a consistent cloud environment and a distributed cloud environment across different locations, it's really key to leveraging the promises of what everyone had originally hoped to get out of cloud computing. >> And of course, one of IBM's distinctive advantages in this area is, you've got a huge hardware install base out there. How do all those 360 mainframes figure into this? >> Yeah, with the OpenShift capabilities and our (audio skips) relations with Red Hat in this area, we are able to actually help our clients leverage Kubernetes, and Linux, and all those things, even on the mainframe. So across the mainframe family, the IBM power family, where folks may also have AIX or IBM i deployments, people can now do Linux, they can do OpenShift, they can do Kubernetes, and we have core technologies that enable that really to be stitched together, and I think that's one of the unique perspectives that IBM has in this whole conversation about hybrid cloud. There are many different definitions of hybrid cloud, but we really view it as stretching from the traditional enterprise IT, like you said, there's a lot of IT out there, and being able to also incorporate OpenShift and Kubernetes in a common cloud platform, on traditional enterprise IT, on private cloud, on fresh deployments, on private cloud, Amazon public cloud, that really is the whole IT estate. So when we talk about hybrid cloud, when we talk about distributed cloud, we're really talking about the entirety of the IT state, not just new deployments of SaaS, or something like that. >> So as someone who's on the front lines of what customers are asking about cloud, do you see customer, the questions that they're asking, changing? Are their decision criteria changing for how they choose a cloud provider? >> Yeah, I think that there's definitely a lot more conversation, and especially in this current era where there's an accelerated rate of cloud adoption, there's a lot more conversation around things like security, data protection, data privacy, being able to run in an environment that you trust not just, is it a cloud and what does it do, but can I trust it? Do I understand how my data is protected, how my workloads are secured? That's really why we started Cloud for Financial Services, because that industry shepherds such vital data, so the reason that they are highly regulated is because of the importance of what they are stewarding, very important data and financial information. So we began there with the Cloud for Regulated Industries, there with with Financial Services, but I see that across all industries. I was participating on a panel with a bunch of CIOs, and I was there interviewing some CIOs who were from a much more consumer-facing, and also from from foods industry, et cetera, and their conversation was exactly the same as I have with many other clients, which is that their cloud choices, their efficiency in cloud deployment, now are largely driven by the ability to get to a secure posture and the ability to demonstrate to their internal security and risk teams that they understand their data protection and data privacy posture. So we are seeing lots of pickup and conversation opportunity around confidential computing, specifically, and that's really about enabling our clients to have full authority and privacy in their computing, in their code, in their data, even when running in a cloud environment. And so I do see a shift. Everyone's more concerned about security, and I think we have great technologies, and we've been working with core partners to establish, and harden, and create generations of technology that can really answer those questions. >> I have to ask you about that term, confidential computing. I haven't heard that before. What does that involve? >> Yeah, it is a buzzword to watch out here for in 2021. So confidential computing means being able to run in an environment where there are others, in a cloud computing environment, for example, but still have full privacy and authority over what you're doing. So you are effectively in an enclave. Imagine yourself protected and secured. And so our confidential computing technology is, we're actually on, basically, our fourth generation of the hardware and software technologies to create that strong degree of isolation. This enables us to deliver a really rich portfolio, frankly, the richest portfolio in the industry, of actual services delivered using confidential computing and secure enclaves. And so we can enable our customers to solution things in a way, for example, where their data can not even be visible to our cloud operators, or where they retain full control over a database, and have full privacy as they're running in that environment. These are really great considerations, but they impact everything from health care, financial services. We have other partners and clients who are working to protect consumer data through these means, et cetera. And so across different industries, everyone's really looking at this topic of data privacy and data protection. And so we have a whole suite and a whole family of confidential computing-based services that we're able to offer, to offer those assurances and that privacy to them in their cloud computing. >> I do have to ask you about the multicloud, because this is a topic of constant debate in the industry of whether customers want to shift workloads across multiple clouds to protect themselves from lock-in. Is that a fantasy? Is that too restrictive? This has been a key part of IBM strategy is enabling the multicloud. How do you see customer attitudes developing right now? How do they want to use multiple clouds, or, in fact, do they? Are they concentrating perhaps more of their workloads in one or two? >> Yeah, we believe vendor lock-in goes against the true spirit of hybrid cloud, that desire to have consistency across environments, that desire to- and the business need to have continuity and resiliency and operations, et cetera, and so I do see this as a really important topic. From the perspective of managing environments, I think in multicloud, I think folks are starting to realize that multicloud isn't necessarily a strategy, it's a reality. People have deployments in lots of different cloud environments that happen somewhat organically, in many cases, and so the key question is how to then get to visibility and control over those resources. I think two of the core topics in that are multicloud management, being able to understand clusters, and virtual machines, and other things that are deployed across different environments, and manage them with a common set of policies, for example. And then, in addition to multicloud management, AI for IT operations is another really important topic in multicloud, being able to respond to incidents, understand and analyze and leverage AI for understanding what's going on across those environments is another really core topic. And then as you said, distributed cloud is a means of getting that consistency. Having a common control and deployment plane across those different environments can help it not just be accidental usage of multiple cloud environments, but very intentional deployment, based on the needs of particular workloads to the environment that they're best suited to. And that's really what you want to aim for. Not that multicloud is necessarily, I guess I would say, is a- It is a complexity that is manageable through these new types of technologies and multicloud management, and such like that, and distributed cloud. >> Well, Hillery 'tis the season for predictions, it's January. Everyone's prognosticating about what the future will look like. What do you think are going to be the main trend lines in cloud this year? >> Yeah, I sprinkled a few in there as we were talking, but I really do think that the conversation around hybrid cloud, number one, how to have an open innovation ecosystem for cloud, where you have consistency across environments, not just random acts of cloud usage, but intentional and holistic architecture. I really see that as the transition, as the second wave of of cloud adoption. And then, secondly, is we were talking earlier about security. Everyone is wondering about data policy, data privacy. We've always taken a strong stance that our client's data is their data. We are not going to be using their data to further develop our AI services on our cloud, or something. We have deployed technologies in confidential computing that enable them to keep full control over their keys so that even our cloud operators don't have access to data, computing in secure enclaves where they have a strong degree of isolation and full privacy and authority over their workload. I really think these two topics, open and secure hybrid computing and with consistency across environments, with distributed cloud technology, and secondly, security. I think these are really important topics for 2021. And they may seem a little bit obvious, but I think it's important as people look at this to look for technologies that are multiple generations into this journey, partner with folks who are committed very clearly to an open ecosystem and open source innovation on the one hand, and secondly, when we talk about security and data protection, you want to know that that provider is several generations into that journey so you really know that that technology has been vetted out, is at production scale, and has a stable basis. And so I think this is the year when folks are transitioning from cloud adoption to consistency in cloud, and security and privacy in cloud. >> A final question, and it has nothing to do with cloud. You're an IBM Fellow, and I see that term turn up occasionally with other other people I've spoken to from IBM. What is an IBM Fellow, how do you become one, and what privileges and responsibilities does it entail? >> Yeah, it's an exciting opportunity to be an IBM Fellow. There's about a hundred active IBM Fellows right now, so there aren't too many of us, but there is a small community of us. IBM Fellow is IBM's highest technical designation within our technical population, so I do have a role within our cloud business, but as one of our technical leaders, get to interact with the other Fellows, work on strategy for IBM in technology overall as a company, and I also get to be a trusted advisor to many of our clients, and so I get to work with CTOs and CIOs and VP of Application Development profiles, and VP of IT, and things like that, in our different clients, and really help them wrestle through those struggles of future IT transformation. And so part of what I enjoy most about the role, and the Fellow role, is being able to be that trusted advisor to many of our clients. There's been so much change in this last year for everyone, and being able to also help our technical population through that, in various means, and then help our clients through all of that change, and really being able to take and grasp onto the opportunities that this last year has had in the way that we work has changed, and the way that companies are looking to deliver capabilities has changed. So that's, for me, the exciting part of the role. >> Well, you're one in a hundred, then, and you do a great job of articulating the IBM strategy, and also the cloud landscape. Hillery Hunter, VP and CTO, excuse me, CTO of IBM Cloud, thank you so much for joining us today on Cube on Cloud. >> Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >> I'm Paul Gillin, stick with us. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante, and back in 2013, when it was becoming pretty obvious that the cloud was going to have a major impact on our industry, the IT industry, I wrote at the time that the way incumbents were going to have to compete was to really go into vertical markets and build ecosystems for their own clouds, and that's exactly what IBM did late last year, when it announced a major partnership with Bank of America in the financial services cloud, and guess what, Hillery Hunter is back in the house, she's the vice president and CTO of the IBM cloud, and an IBM fellow, Hillery, great to see you again, thanks for coming back on. >> Thanks so much for having me again, always a pleasure to be here. >> So we had an awesome conversation, I think we got into the FS cloud a little bit, but as I was saying, you guys announced last year, Bank of America, but let me start here. Why does the industry need a financial services cloud? >> Yeah, you know, it's key that we ground ourselves in that question of why a financial services cloud, and I think it really goes back to the sensitivity of the workloads and the data that that industry stewards. The financial services industry stewards the data of millions and millions of customers, and they are heavily regulated because of that, and they handle very high value transactions, and being able to take that context and translate that into what does it mean to do high value transactions, sensitive data, consumer data computing, also with all those benefits of elasticity and the value proposition of different deployment locations, is really what financial cloud is about. And those needs of that industry are a little bit different, the regulations are higher, the bar and data protection is higher, and the need to interlock across workload characteristics and the cloud deployment is a bit different. And so, we are bringing what we know about that industry to bear in the context also of cloud computing. >> Okay, so you're making some new announcements, there's some hard news here, but I want to know, if you're an executive, or business leader in the financial services industry, what's in it for me in these announcements? >> Yeah, what's in it for you is that we are moving into the next phase of financial services cloud in making the policy framework that has been developed through an enormous amount of work available to additional industry participants, and we're also moving into a phase of global expansion, and so being able to take this value proposition of an end to end considered secure and confine environment for financial services, out to more players in the industry, out to additional geographies and deployment locations, it's an exciting moment because everyone's really not looking just for a cloud, but they're looking for a choice of deployment locations, they're looking to move more workload to the cloud, and this is really about providing a cloud solution that more workload can move to, not just the first couple phases of analytics and things like that, but also moving into more transformation of the core of banking and the core of banking business, so it is about getting more workload to the cloud, getting that done faster, and getting it done at a net improved security and compliance posture. >> Got it, so I want to ask you about some learnings, now you're the double whammy of learnings here. When you announced the collaboration with B of A, obviously one of the top banks of the world, you've obviously made some progress since then, but the other part of that whammy was COVID. So what did you learn from the collaboration with B of A, and have you guys, how have you expanded your thinking BC, from before COVID, versus AC, after COVID? >> Yeah, you know, the initial motivation for this program was about having trust and transparency in public cloud, and having a public cloud suited also to sensitive and even core banking workloads. We have seen this conversation and the need for it and the urgency for it only pick up since COVID. A lot of things in the world kind of took a pause, but cloud computing really accelerated. We're seeing that businesses need to digitally transform their banking, so core banking transformation is a very hot topic. They need to deal with elasticity, we worked with banks during COVID that were having to suddenly stand up their national equivalent of the Payroll Protection Program. Banks that had to suddenly have three times the elasticity, because all of a sudden consumers were interacting with them purely digitally. And cloud can enable all of those kind of things, and so COVID has really accelerated the motivation toward banking in the cloud, and also toward core banking transformation, which is at the heart of setting a very high security bar in public cloud, to be able to also enable those kind of workloads. >> Yeah, so many changes as a result of COVID, I mean the volume of loans, like you said, everything was digital. I know a lot of older people that always still like to go into the bank, that like to see people, and they knew people and people knew them, well they had no choice but to go digital, so that's huge, if you didn't have a digital solution, and cloud is fundamental in that equation. But let's get into it a little bit more. We talked a little about this at IBM Think, but what are the key attributes that make the IBM financial services cloud suitable for financial services, is it the certifications, I wonder if you could add some color there. >> Yeah, so the key elements of the financial services cloud program are number one, a policy framework, which is a set of controls that are customized to the financial services industry, so this isn't about some existing standard, this is a customization of controls and security for the financial services industry, and that's a major element of what we're announcing right now. In addition to the policy framework is also the way that the different elements of the industry and of regulatory expertise are coming together, so this cloud, and these public cloud offerings, were co-developed and co-designed with IBM Promontory, with IBM Security Services that work with banks, with our anchor partner, and moving forward, we'll be advised by an advisory council of CSOs who have that day to day experience with security and with regulations. And so that is also a very unique context for not this being just a point in time with a policy framework, but being an ongoing initiative that will stay up to date, as security concerns and as regulatory concerns change. And the third aspect is a really unique set of technologies that make all of that possible, so you have to define how the cloud is going to be secure, and then you have to actually do it, and the unique capabilities that we have in IBM public cloud that have enabled this program include a number of things, but amongst them, the industry's highest standard for data protection, with our FIPS-140-2 Level 4 based key protect service, it includes capabilities that we'll be releasing through our acquisition of Spanugo around cloud security and compliance posture management, mapped back to that context of financial services. And so it's really three things, it's a policy framework custom and optimized for the financial services industry, the forward evolution of that through industry expertise, and participation of multi parties in that, and then core technologies that enable folks to accomplish that security posture through data protection, through cloud security posture management, et cetera. >> I forgot about the Promontory, you guys made that acquisition several years ago, that's a nice little feature of the FS cloud. But I want to ask, how hard is it to get these certifications? I mean it's obviously not a layup. Lot of work, lot of time, my reason of my question, is this a moat for you, as you guys start to scale? How difficult is it? >> Yeah, so we have been putting in the time and effort, and so that's why this is an exciting moment for us with the initial work product of this effort. And so our intention really is not for that to be a moat, but for us having traversed the moat, to now have a bridge there through the methodology that we built, through the control framework that we built, for others to now get across that moat. And so this is really about taking what is an extensive amount of work, and an extensive amount of expertise, IBM Promontory, you just mentioned, but they monitor over 70 regulatory obligations in over 20 jurisdictions globally, right? I mean this is a tremendous depth of expertise, and so having crossed the moat, and having built the bridge across it, this is where we can then help others to save time in this process of adopting public cloud for further workloads. >> You've mentioned workloads, you've talked about core financial workloads, but maybe give us a little insight on what type of workloads are the most suitable for the financial services cloud, because let's face it, most of the hardcore mission-critical workloads haven't moved, actually probably none of 'em have moved to the cloud, you kind of referenced that before. Ginni Rometty talks about that all the time. But what are the right workload strategic fits for your cloud? >> Yeah, you know you mentioned Ginni Rometty, and so I'll take a quick note there from some of the language that you'll hear her use, she talks about, there was chapter one of the cloud journey, and stuff that was on less sensitive data, analytics, some things on public information, were certainly done, also in finance and also in regulated industries in the cloud. And she talks about chapter two, chapter two being mission-critical workloads. And this program really is the definition of chapter two for the financial services industry. It is the enabling expertise, the enabling control set, the enabling security technologies, the enabling cloud services, for that chapter two, right, for that next layer of adoption of things that had been kept behind the firewall, had been kept in a private cloud context, can now be considered also for public cloud. And so easing that adoption, streamlining that process, et cetera, is really what we're looking to accomplish. >> I mean obviously IBM, huge presence in the banking community, is this really for just big banks? What about the ecosystem, what do you got in there for ISVs and SaaS providers? >> Yeah, you know, you asked me a question at the beginning here about COVID and what's happened, and I think, the transformation of ISV providers to become SaaS providers, the expansion of their capabilities being needed in payments and digital client experiences and such, also for regionals and second and third tier banking institutions and such, is as much of what is happening right now as anything else, amongst the first tiers, because there's just as much pressure for transformation and digital consumer experience, and other things like that, also in the regionals and second and third tiers. So part of our announcement is around the ecosystem of partners that we have now for the financial services cloud program. And that includes ISVs and SaaS providers that are servicing many different types of needs of institutions large and small, so we're seeing those that are servicing core banking, and payments, those that are servicing analytics use cases for this industry, and even HR function, just because of that concern about stewarding data well for these industries and those first tier banks, and so that transition to digital, that drive to infuse AI capabilities, the need to transform core banking, is something that's very much also happening within the ISV and SaaS providers, and we're thrilled with the wide variety of partner base that we're seeing develop there within our ecosystem for this program. >> I was talking to a CIO friend of mine several years ago, and he said to me, "You know, this idea of lifting and shifting, "it's fine, you get little cost savings, maybe, "but unless you change your operating model "and you drive an innovation agenda, "you really aren't going to get the type "of telephone number returns from cloud "that you would want or expect." So my question is around innovation, and we've said many times in theCUBE that the new innovation cocktail, it's not Moore's law anymore, it's the combination of data applying machine intelligence and then the cloud, and the reason why the cloud is important is scale, okay, there's maybe a little bit of cost as well, but it's also innovation. It's the ability to attract people into an ecosystem, and that resonates with line of business. If your cloud is just about making IT's life better, well that's nice, but what's in this announcement and in this initiative for the line of business? >> Yeah, it is all about the workloads. I always say that to me the cloud journey is about, number one your platform, which is the thing onto which you modernize. It is what are you going to get out of moving to containers, what are you going to get out of moving to microservices, how does that help all of those cloud metrics that you mentioned? But number two, it's about the workload, right, which workloads are we talking about, how will they deliver, how will those workloads be able to because of cloud deliver not just TCO but improvement in customer experience, how will those workloads be able to meet elasticity, resiliency, cybersecurity concerns, changes in the way the workforce is working these days, et cetera. And from the line of business perspective, there is a tremendous need to consume, for example, fintech-based innovation. But a lot of folks have struggled to move past POCs because of concerns about security and compliance, for those deployment scenarios, and so being able to bring the ISVs and SaaS providers, and then also fintechs into an ecosystem with a prescriptive and proactive security and compliance context is really what we're all about here. And that will enable a flourishing of adoption of innovation. >> You know, I always love to talk about the competition on these episodes. But I want to ask differentiation, how different is this, can I just go to any cloud supplier and get this, will I eventually be able to, what's IBM's differentiation, Hillery? >> Yeah, so you want to think of it that, in financial services, you are concerned, and you have to be concerned about everything. You have to be concerned about things into the details of the cloud itself, you have to be concerned about things that are related to the behavior and the permissions of your developers in that environment. Financial services cloud really has to be an end to end, soup to nuts conversation, and so this is a program of our public cloud, where end to end, we can stand behind and provide trust and resiliency and this policy framework, end to end within an environment that can be trusted for mission-critical workload. And so when we look at differentiation, our investments are in bringing together IBM's expertise all the way going back to regulations and security consulting that we've been doing for decades in this industry, applying that to that cloud context, taking capabilities that are developed all the way down into the transistors, investments we've made even into the silicon around how cryptography is done, bringing that into the cloud context. And so having brought those things together into our public cloud context, that's how we're able to solution this in a different way, because it really is end to end about the expertise, from all of that regulatory advising, that security context, all the way down into the silicon and the transistors, and I think that's a very unique value proposition, as a cloud provider, it's a tremendous opportunity for us to bring together those pieces. And to continue to be a trusted partner to these companies that we have long been a trusted partner of. >> Now of course you guys have a relationship with VMware, you were the first, actually, to announce a VMware cloud relationship. And so let's say, okay, I got some VMware workloads, I move 'em into your FS cloud. Make sure that I've got the security and compliance checked. Six months down the road, so I've done that sort of first step, what's next for me, is that the end, or are there other things on my journey? >> Yeah, so absolutely, I mean VMware is part of what we are solution financial services clients to, but also cloud-native, and OpenShift, containerization, that modernization journey, is an ongoing journey for everyone, and so to your point of what's next, we're seeing a continual conversation of balancing lift and shift and modernization across workloads, and there are different reasons at different points in time, for people to consider that. I think the key is that they trust where they are taking that data, and whatever the form is that the workload goes, it needs to be in the context of that trust around the data in a security context, and so we're absolutely seeing everything, honestly, from financial services institutions looking to engage with us, also in our new research innovation lab, where we're engaging directly with financial services clients that are trying to work through this differentiation, is it virtualization, is it containerization, is it even serverless? What is the right and most effective balance of how workloads are programmed and run for the next generation of banking. >> You know, Hillery, I've been doing a lot of interviews in the last decade, and it's been interesting to see the ascendancy of cloud, of course, but also the change in perception, particularly in financial services, in the early days of cloud, cloud was an evil word. The C that should not be named. And so I want to understand if I'm, and of course COVID has also changed the perception, because if you weren't digital and you didn't have cloud, you couldn't really transact businesses as well, you didn't have that business resiliency. So, what if I'm a financial services person now, okay, I'm through the knothole, I want to get started, where do I start? >> Yeah, well call us first, but past that, I think that the conversations, the first conversations that we're having with our clients are, number one, do you have an architecture? So is cloud not just a place, like I like to say, but is cloud a plan, is there an architectural plan to enable you to have consistency, for example, in your developer experience between your private cloud environment and your public cloud environment? Architecturally are there those foundational choices around common services about being able to deploy capabilities in one location, and develop them in another, et cetera. All those value propositions of what we have been creating around OpenShift and Cloud Paks in our public cloud, and consistency across different environments and such, I think that's the first thing to start with is architecting a cloud, not accidental usage of multiple environments, but architecting use of multiple environments. And then I think the second conversation is to make a security and compliance plan that is going to be robust enough to withstand even the intense scrutiny of a regulated industry CCO and risk team, and so that's the other foundational conversation that we're having with our clients, and helping them with, so we can provide services and reference architectures, and all that other kind of thing, to enable them to stabilize planning on both fronts, both architecturally for what cloud means in its entirety, not just a cloud, but in its entirety, all clouds, multicloud, hybrid cloud, et cetera. And then secondly, then, a comprehensive security plan for that public cloud choice, and that's what we're really locking down with this policy framework, is bringing standardization on that for public cloud. >> Well, lot of innovation for the financial services community, which is again your wheelhouse. I wrote a piece right around Think that IBM's future rests on its innovation agenda, and I'm glad you brought up the notion of private, public, and then the whole hybrid thing, because I see OpenShift as a key, and RedHat as a key enabler of that across whether it's cloud, on-prem, edge, across multiple clouds. That's an ambitious agenda, as somebody who's responsible for cloud. That is something that is real innovation, and really differentiable I think, in the marketplace, and probably pretty expensive to build out across all those different platforms. >> Yeah, it is, but I think on the word innovation, my mind, as an IBMer, goes to the IBM research division. Thousands of researchers globally, and they've very much been a part of this journey with us. The journey with us on containerization, the journey on workload modernization from monolith to microservices, the journey of our public cloud, and now also very much a part of our work in financial services, so our research division is this incredible gift and asset that we have, that is working with us also on our cloud security and compliance posture management, that security and compliance control center that we're talking about in this announcement, et cetera, and so them being a part of this innovation stream for us is a really exciting part, again, of bringing together all these different pieces that IBM has to offer in this space to make it all stack up, to be a cloud for financial services. >> I got a couple of little housekeeping items before we close here. This is announced for the US first, right? What about other regions, first of all, is that correct, and what about other regions? >> That's correct, and we are also announcing additional participation of global banking partners as well in this announcement. And so this is also again our initial public statement of our expansion past the US. >> Last question, so just give us a glimpse of the future, where do you want to be in a few years, thinking about let's say three years down the road, what's that outcome look like? >> Yeah, you know I think that three years from now, we would love to see that people are able to make a decision, going back to your question about the line of business owners, make a decision about what they're trying to accomplish with a workload, and not be held back by security and compliance concerns in terms of putting that workload where it needs to be, where it will be most efficient, and where it can be embraced by a set of cloud capabilities that enable it to move in a competitive pace forward, infusing AI into everything that is done. Leveraging the latest in technologies, and serverless computing and all these other kind of things that can facilitate a line of business delivering more value so that cloud really continues, but also realizes its promises in that chapter two version of the story, also for regulated industries and also for their mission-critical workloads. >> Well Hillery, good luck with this, I mean congratulations on the progress that you've made, really since you guys announced this late last year, and really excited to see this start to take off, and you're a great guest, love having you on, thank you so much. >> Thanks so much for having me, pleasure talking to you as always. >> All right, cheers. And thank you everybody for watching, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (calm music)

>> Narrator: theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital experience. We've been covering Think since the beginning and this is the first year that they've gone to the virtual conference, obviously with the COVID situation. We're excited to have our next guest. She's Sarah Diamond, the Global Managing Director for Banking and Financial Markets for IBM. Sarah, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> Great, so, let's just jump into it. You've been dealing with financial services and financial markets for a long time. In getting ready for this interview, I stumbled across some old stuff you did in 2016, kind of talking about cloud adoption in financial services. But we all know financial services has special restrictions in terms of privacy and regulations, and making sure that stuff stays stable and fulfills the obligations, reporting obligations. But, there's so many great things that come from cloud in terms of speed of innovation, cost, and all these other things. You've been working in this space for a long time. There's some exciting work that you've been doing. How are you helping financial institutions leverage cloud in a better way? >> Yeah, it's a great place to start. As you say, financial services clients have been looking at the cloud for several years. But actually, it's interesting that notwithstanding the great focus on the opportunity presented by cloud, in terms of the agility of the architecture, speed, resiliency, and cost savings, are less than 10% of their workload has actually moved to the cloud. And that's because, as you say, there are very, very strict requirements over what workload can move to the cloud, as it relates to data privacy, security, et cetera. And so, as we looked at how much our clients were struggling to be able to move their workloads over to the cloud, we realized the need to come up with a financial services specific cloud. And we've been very fortunate to do that in conjunction with one of our main clients, Bank of America. And we will be launching the first Financial Services Cloud for the industry. >> Wow, that is wow. First, I'm shocked that you say only 10% of the workloads have made the conversion to the cloud in the current situation, which seems very, very low. >> Actually, I said less than 10%. >> Less than 10% not even 10%. >> Even less than that. >> So what are some of the specific attributes of the Financial Services Cloud that IBM's rolling out, that will enable them to move that number, hopefully well north of 10% in the not too distant future? >> Yeah, well I think the first place to start is secure and really at a enterprise grade level for financial services so that, the financial services can provide the level of security and resiliency that's needed as they run mission-critical systems for the world. Wrapped around that then, is being absolutely sure that the way the cloud is built meets all of the regulatory requirements as it relates to both risk analysis, and again, security. And we acquired, three years ago, Promontory, which is the preeminent regulatory advisory company for financial services. And one of the huge benefits of having Promontory in our portfolio is to be able to leverage their expertise to do this. And then there's things like making sure that the cloud will support a rich catalog of the ISVs and the SaaS providers that our clients want to be able to work with and that it dovetails seamlessly into other infrastructure services, whether it's VMware, Cloud native, Red Hat OpenShift, et cetera. >> I'm just curious there, to get your take on kind of the complexity of the regulatory environment, 'cause clearly just knowing the US regulations per se, very, very complicated in financial services. But you guys are dealing with global, multinationals, as well as banks established all around the world. >> Yeah. >> Just for the laymen, how much delta is there between the various regulations that either apply to a bank within a particular country, as well as when banks do business across a lot of countries, do they have to comply with every single regulatory infrastructure in the markets in which they serve? That's got to be a crazy mess >> Absolutely. >> Yeah, absolutely, they do. So they both have to comply with the regulator of their home country and they have to comply with the regulations in any other country that they do business. And whilst there's definitely a level of consistency across the regulations, they're not a single set of regulations. So it requires a great deal of knowledge, insight and preparation to make sure that they're going to remain compliant in every country in which they do business. >> A lot of boxes to check. >> Exactly. >> And again, that interview that I saw, it was 2016, we're now in 2020, right? So it's been four or five years. And what's interesting is, on kind of the pace on digital transformation is not super, super fast. But here we are with COVID-19. And COVID-19 has just been this light switch moment that nobody had time to prepare for. So whether it's working from home or we're participating here in a digital conference, Think is not a physical event like it's been in the past. So it's been this kind of light switch forcing function on a lot of things. As you look at your client base, within the financial services industry, what are some of the impacts that maybe people aren't thinking about, of COVID, on their ability to deliver their services? >> Yes, and I think there's two parts to your question, as I think of it. One is, which of the financial services clients were able to adapt most quickly to the requirements of being able to operate in essentially, the lockdown work from home environment imposed by COVID-19? And then the second part is, what are the waves that we see going forward for the industry? It's really interesting because clearly those clients that had moved already to a much more agile, hybrid environment were much more digital in their capabilities, had much better security around their data assets, were ones that were able to make the shift quickest. And those that were somewhat behind, lagged in those areas, are the ones that struggled, or took longer to make the shift. I think the shift has come, initially, all around how to move the predominant workforce to work from home. Most clients now, 70 or 80% or more of their workforce are working from home. And that's a huge shift for most of the banks, where notwithstanding the offshore work they were doing, still virtually all of their staff are onshore. So that was a huge effort. And with that, they needed both extra security, to make sure that there was not going to open up any security risks in doing it, capacity, because obviously capacity peaked. And then obviously just the tools and the knowhow to know how to work from home. So that was a huge piece. Those clients that had significant trading operations saw huge peaks and troughs in the trading, so you got this huge volatility around trading, as well as, of course, the huge volatility around the results. And then I think a third category of this, is just how to continue to service their clients, their customers, in a remote way. And when you look at banks, for example in Italy, some of the Italian banks have closed down up to 70% of their branches, again, to create the security that was needed to withstand the epidemic. In the U.S., you hear numbers more in the 50% range. But that's a huge shift in terms of how to support your customers in a continuous way. And just with that, as you might imagine, huge peaks in call center volumes, and challenges in terms of how to deal with that. And these are all things, as you pointed out earlier, that bring intense focus on the ability to leverage digital technology and be able to support both the employees and the customers in a seamless, secure way, online. >> There's so many, kind of facets to this, if you will, and the one that strikes me, as you're talking about the work from home, we've had a lot of work from home conversations over the last several weeks, right? A big piece of this is enabling your workforce to do that. What strikes me, the difference about banks and financial institutions is, not only do they have digital security, but they have a lot of physical security. And physical security of assets that is not so easily digitized. So, where are some of those kind of physical operations, literally like moving cash around and taking deposits and some of those things? Are they just trying to consolidate those operations to fewer points of presence? How are they kind of managing that piece of it? >> Yeah, and you bring to mind a great story that one of our managing directors who supports a client in Brazil just shared with us, because this client is a huge retail bank in Brazil, and supports the Brazilian population throughout the country. And as you say, a lot of the movement of assets, cash, is still physical. So indeed, they had to put together teams that would continue to be able to take cash to different sites, up and down the Amazon River, not withstanding all the concerns about moving around in the COVID environment. So, what you've seen is that mission-critical needs are still obviously having to be done by teams, physically onsite or moving around. And typically the way the banks have bene able to do that is they've created two or three teams that basically mirror or parallel each other, so that if one team got infected, then the second or the third team could fill in. So they've created this redundancy, or this contingency, in their team structures. >> Yeah, it's really, yeah, a unique challenge 'cause that money's got to move, right? It's got to go. Again, back to the digital transformation, one of the themes that we've seen happen over the course of time is kind of going to your point, kind of from a, where can we use cloud, to kind of a cloud first. And I guess financial services is lagging that a little bit. We saw it kind of in mobile applications too, where mobile was an afterthought, and now for a lot of people, it's mobile first. And I think in a lot of underdeveloped countries, the phone, a mobile phone, is the primary conduit to a lot of services like banking and those things. So I wonder now, as you look forward and as we get used to this behavior, and as systems and infrastructure get put in place over time to support the work from home, the lockdown, and just less people moving around, how do you see that changing? Will it get to, from a workload point of view, kind of a work from home first, versus work from home is kind of this adjunct. Do you see that taking hold over the course of several months of being in this new normal? How do you think it's going to reshape the financial services industry, as we get out of this over some period of months, or maybe many, many months? >> Yes, and I think again, you're pointing to two aspects of this. So first is, how banks will continue to support their customers. And as we've just said, many customers have started to use much more online, digital banking than they had before. And so what we expect to see is now an acceleration of the banks moving to digital online services for their clients. Because there's been a breakthrough here, which has been forced by the circumstances, and suddenly, the opportunities are opened up and they'll become even more competitive advantages to be able to do that. Both because of the client experience, but also because of the cost implications and the speed and agility to market around that. And then the other part is always the employees. So it's the clients and it's the employees. And we're already hearing our clients are engaged in conversations with our client, where they're saying, "Look, even when this epidemic passes and we'll feel confident about asking our employees to return to the office, we no longer want to just go back to where we were." And there's a lot of work already being done to look at different job categories to decide which ones can be done remotely, just as effectively as onsite, and which ones will need to be onsite or in front of the client. So to your point, I think this is going to really, really, accelerate the digitization of the industry on all fronts. >> Yeah, it is kind of this new way to think of it, not can it go remote, but why can't it not? >> Exactly. >> And I can't help but think of the infrastructure for someone in financial services in terms of the VPNs and the security on those systems, and I'm sure there's all kinds of crazy firewalls and stuff within a bank's physical four walls that is just not that easy to pick that up and go stick it in somebody's house, especially with no real opportunity for planning, or resourcing, or rolling out. And then we've seen the same thing, as you mentioned, in the call centers, which are another huge piece of the customer service experience, which again, all those people are now moved out. And we're hearing those same things, how much of them can stay moved out and stay remote, and what will it take to support them to give that same level of service. >> Well, and also, how much can move to actual automation, right? So one of the things we've seen, given not just the move of the call center employees to work remotely but even more importantly, I think given the volume of call center inquiries that have been occurring, is much more eagerness to start to use automation in that. So for example, our Watson capabilities that have been used in call centers. For some years now, there's been a big uptick in the demand of using those in the call centers so that you're agents can focus on the truly complex questions and the routing questions can get answered digitally. >> Right. >> I think the other point that we should bring out in this conversation is just the financial impact on the industry, right? We've already seen huge degradation in terms of the likelihood of huge credit exposure and what's that going to mean for the financial services industry. Loss of revenue today, given the market challenges. And so, we are seeing right now, huge focus on how to take cost out of the industry dramatically. And you're hearing banks talk about needing to take up to 40% of their cost structure down, which is going to require, yet again, a massive shift in terms of how the banks operate. >> Wow, 40%, that is a huge number. But it also just begs the question for those who got ahead of the curve a little bit. They're the ones that are going to come out of this. I would assume, in a much better position because banks, we think of them as the old state institution with the fancy building down on the corner, downtown, with the columns. But in fact, they've been at the cutting edge of technology for a really long time. It's such a hyper-competitive market, the margins are so thin, the benefits, the speed and better customer experience are so huge when you're basically trading in the commodity of cash and trying to build all those services around it. So do you expect it'll really kind of a shake out between those that were already kind of on the bandwagon a little bit and really driving forward on their digital transformation, versus the laggers that just were kind of slow to the party and now suddenly, the door to the party is closing? >> Yeah, I think you'll see some of that. I also think you're going to see more, if you like, model shift. So, one of the things that has been a constant topic of conversation is, what are core competencies that banks should be in, and what are capabilities that the banks no longer need to provide? They may have provided in the past, but they no longer need to provide in the future. And, how can they leverage a broader ecosystem, right, to be able to tap into expertise that is maybe better elsewhere and doesn't need to be a core expertise of the bank? So, I think you'll see, yes, those banks that have been moved faster, have had bigger technology investment and have been able to move faster on the digital journey doing better coming out of this. I think, very importantly for the industry as a whole, you'll start to see even more of those shifts in terms of what are core competencies that the banks need to provide, versus where do they leverage an ecosystem to provide those capabilities or services for them. And again, some of the most innovative banks are quite far down, thinking in that road. And that's again, where the role of Vintex come in, right? Because banks don't need to build and develop all of their own technology assets. They create the platform, they create the access to their customer base and then other technology firms provide products onto those platforms. >> Right. Well, rough seas for financial services as it is for everybody, as we navigate these uncharted waters. We're five or six weeks into it, things seem to be settling a little bit down. And at least in terms of the daily shocks that we were going through, through the course of March. And I think we are helping to define a new normal. I don't think, and I would imagine you would agree, that coming out of this is not going to be the same as going into it. January 2021 is not going to look like January 2020 did, at all. So just give you the final word as you look forward with some hope and enthusiasm and a smile. For your clients, what do you see as some of the positive benefits that we're going to realize in the post-COVID world? >> Well, I think when you go through huge shocks like this, which have obviously had huge, huge personal impact, but they've also had huge system impact, there's always a flight to quality, and there's a flight to those players that really represent the trust and the core of a industry. And so, I think the same will be for the financial services industry. There's been a lot of discussion about non-traditional entrants into financial services. At the end of the day, I think this is also an opportunity for banks to stand up and uphold the fact that they're trusted sources of service to their customer base, they do understand how to navigate through, as you've said, these unprecedented times, securely, protecting their customers' data and their assets. So I think you will see a resurgence of the role of a trusted industry in the path forward. >> Well Sarah, thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and perspectives, and your ongoing expertise in the field. Really enjoyed the conversation, and stay safe out there. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. >> All right. She's Sarah Diamond. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE's continuing coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital experience. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. (bright upbeat music)