>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cute conversation. Welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin pleased to be joined once again by the co CEO of mem sequel, Raj Verma, Raj, welcome back to the program. >>Thank you very much, Lisa. Great to see you as always. >>It's great to see you as well. I always enjoy our conversations. So why don't you start off because something that's been in the news the last couple of months besides COVID is one of your competitors, snowflake confidentially filed IPO documents with the sec a couple months ago. Just wanted to get your perspective on from a market standpoint. What does that signify? >>Yeah. Firstly, congratulations to the snowflake team. Uh, you know, I've, I have a bunch of friends there, you know, John McMahon, my explosives on the board. And I remember having a conversation with him about seven years ago and it was just starting off and I'm just so glad for him and Bob Mobileye. And, and as I said, a bunch of my friends who are there, um, they're executed brilliantly and, uh, I'm thrilled for that. So, um, we are hearing as to what the outcomes are likely to be. And, uh, it just seems like, uh, you know, it's going to be a great help. Um, and I think what it signifies is firstly, if you have a bit technology and if you execute well, good things happen and there's enough room for innovation here. So that is one, the second aspect is I think, and I think more importantly, what it signifies is a change of thought in the database market. >>If you really see, um, and know if my memory serves me right in the last two decades or probably two and a half buckets, we just had one company go public in the database space and that was Mongo. And, um, and that was in, I think October, 2017 and then, uh, two and a half years. So three years we've seen on other ones and uh, from the industry that we know, um, you know, there are going to be a couple that are going to go out in the next 18 months, 24 months as well. So the fact is that we had a, the iron grip on the database market for almost, you know, more than two decades. It was Oracle, IBM that a bit of Sybase and SAP HANA. And now there are a bunch of companies which are helping solve the problems of tomorrow with the technology of the month. >>And, uh, and that is, um, that is snowflake is a primary example of that. Um, so that's a, that's good change. God is good. I do think the incumbents are gonna find it harder and harder going forward. And also if you really see the evolution of the database market, the first sort of workloads that moved to the cloud with the developer workloads and the big benefactor that that was the no secret movement and one company that executed in my opinion, the best was Mongol. And they were the big benefactor of that, that sort of movement to the cloud. The second was the very large, but Moisey database data warehouse market, and a big benefactor of that has been snowflake big queries, the other one as well. However, the biggest set of tsunami of data that's we are seeing move to the cloud is the operational data, which is the marriage of historical data with real time data to give you real time insights as, or what we call the now are now. >>And that's going to be much, much bigger than, uh, than both the, you know, sequel or the developer data movement and the data warehouse. And we hope to be a benefactor of that. And then the shake up that happens in the database market and the change that's happening there, isn't a vendor take on market anymore, and that's good because you don't then have the stranglehold that Oracle had and you know, some of the ways that are treated as customers and help them to run some, et cetera, um, yeah. And giving customers choice so that they can choose what's best for the business is going to be, it's going to be great. And me are going to see seven to 10 really good database companies in large, in the next decade. And we surely hope them secret as one of them of, we definitely have the, have the potential to be one of them. >>You have the market, we have the product, we have the customers. So, you know, as I tell my team, it's up to us as to what we make of it. And, um, you know, we don't worry that much about competition. You did mention snowflake being advantage station. We, yeah, sure. You know, we do compete on certain opportunities. However, their value proposition is a little more single-threaded than ours. So they are more than the Datavail house space are. Our vision of the board is that, uh, you know, you should have a single store for data, whether it's database house, whether it's developer data or whether it's operational data or DP data. And, uh, you know, watch this space from orders. We make somebody exciting announcements. >>So dig into that a little bit more because some of the news and the commentary Raj in the last, maybe six weeks since the snowflake, um, IPO confidential information was released was, is the enterprise data warehouse dead. And you just had a couple of interesting things we're talking about now, we're seeing this momentum, huge second database to go public in two and a half bigots. That's huge, but that's also signifying to a point you made earlier. There's, there's a shift. So memes SQL isn't, we're not talking about an EDW. We're talking about operational real time. How do you see that if you're not looking in the rear view mirror, those competitors, how do you see that market and the opportunities? >>Yeah, I, I don't think the data warehouse market is dead at thought. I think the very fact that, you know, smoke makers going out at whatever valuation they go out, which is, you know, tens of billions of dollars is, um, is a testimony to the fact that, you know, it's a fancy ad master. This is what it is. I mean, data warehouses have existed for decades and, uh, there is a better way of doing it. So it's a fancy of mousetrap and, and that's great. I mean, that's way to money and it's clearly been demonstrated. Now what we are saying is that I think that is a better way to manage the organization's data rather than having them categorized in buckets of, you know, data warehouse, data developer, data DP, or transactional data, you know, uh, analytical data. Is there a way to imagine the future where there is one single database that you can quit eat, or data warehouse workloads for operational workloads, for OLTB work acknowledge and gain insights. And that's not a fancier mousetrap that is a data strategy reimagine. And, uh, and that's our mission. That's our purpose in life right now and are very excited about it's going to be hard. It's not, it's not a given it's a hard problem to solve. Otherwise, if you can solve it before we have the, uh, we have the goods to deliver and the talent, the deliberate, and, um, we are, we are trying it out with some very, very marquee customers. So we've been very excited about, >>Well, changing of the guard, as you mentioned, is hard. The opposite is easy, the opposite, you know, ignoring and not wanting to get out of that comfort zone. That's taken the easy route in my opinion. So it seems like we've got in the market, this, this significant changing of the guard, not just in, you know, what some of your competition is doing, but also from a customer's perspective, how do you help customers, especially institutions that have been around for decades and decades and decades pivot quickly so that the changing of the guard doesn't wipe them out. >>Yeah. Um, I actually think slightly differently. I think changing of the guard, um, wiping out a customer is if they stick or are resistant to the fact that there is a change of God, you know, and if they, if they hold on to, as we said in our previous conversation, if you stick onto the decisions of yesterday, you will not see the Sundays of tomorrow. So I do think that, uh, you know, change, you have a, God is a, is a symbolism, not even a symbolism as a statement to our customers to say, there is a better way of doing, uh, what you are doing to solve tomorrow's problem. And then doesn't have to be the Oracles and the BB tools and the psychosis of the world. So that's, that's one aspect of it. The second thing is, as I've always said, you're not really that obsessed about, uh, competition. >>The competition will do what they do. Uh, we are really very focused on having an impact in the shortest period of time on our customers and, uh, hopefully a positive impact. And if you can't do it, then, you know, I've had conversations with a few of them saying, maybe be not the company for you. Uh, it's not as if I have to sort of, software's a good one. I supply to the successful customers in the bag to do the unsuccessful with customers. The fact is that, you know, in certain, certain places there isn't an organizational alignment and you don't succeed. However, we do have young, we have in the last 14 months or so made tremendous investments into really ease of use of flexibility of architecture, which is hybrid and tactile, and that shrinking the total time to value for our customers. Because if I, if I believe you, if you do these three things, you will have an impact, a positive impact on the customer, in the sharpest, uh, amount of time and your Lindy or yourself. And I think that is more important than worrying needlessly about competition. And then the competition will do what they do. But if you keep your customers happy by having a positive impact, um, successes, only amount of time, >>Customers and employees are essential to that. But I like that you talked about customer obsession because you see it all over the place. Many people use it as descriptors of themselves and their LinkedIn profiles, for example, but for it actually to be meaningful, you talked about the whole objective is to make an impact for your customers. How do you define that? So that it's not just, I don't want to say marketing term, but something that everyone says they're customer obsessed showing it right within the pudding. >>It's easy to say we are customer obsessed. I mean, this organization is going to say we don't care about our customer. So, you know, of course we all want our customers to be successful. How do you, that's easy, you know, having a cultural value that we put our customers first is, was easy, but we didn't choose to do that. What we said is how do you have an impact on your customer in the shortest amount of time, right? That is, that is what you have. I'm sequel and Lee have now designed every process in mem sequel to align with that word. If, if that is a decision that we have to make a B essentially lenses through the fact of what is in the best interest of our customer and what will get us to have an impact, a positive impact on the customer in the shortest amount of time, that is a decision, which is a buy decision for us to make. >>A lot of times it's more expensive. It's a, a lot duffel. It stresses the, um, the, the, the organization, um, and the people in it. But that's, uh, that's what you have to do if you are. Um, if you are, you know, as, as they say, customer obsessed, um, it is, it's just a term which is easy to use, but very difficult to put here too. And we want to be a tactic. It right to be, we are going to continue to learn. It's a, it's not a destination, it's a journey. And we continue to take decisions and refine our processes do, as I said, huh, impact on our customers in the shortest amount of time. Now, obsessiveness, a lot of times is seen as a negative in the current society that we live in. And there's a reason for that because the, they view view obsession, but I view obsession and aggression is that is a punishing expression, which is really akin to just being cruel, you know, leading by fear and all the rest of it, which is as no place in any organization. >>And I actually think that in society at large, nothing, I believe that doesn't have any place in society. And then there's something which I dumb as instrumentalists, which is, this is where we were. This is where we are. This is where we are going and how do we track our progress on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? And if we, aren't sort of getting to that level that we believe we should get to, if our customers, aren't seeing the value of dramas in the shortest amount of time, what is it that we need to do better? Um, is that obsession, our instrumental aggression is, is, is what we are all about. And that brings with it a level of intensity, which is not what everyone, but then when you are, you know, challenging the institutions which have, uh, you know, the also has to speak for naked, it's gonna take a Herculean effort to ask them. And, uh, you know, the, the basically believed that instrumental aggression in terms of the, uh, you know, having an impact on customer in the shop to smile at time is gonna get us there. And a, and B are glad to have people who actually believe in that. And, uh, and that's why we've made tremendous progress over the course of last, uh, two years. >>So instrumental aggression. Interesting. How you talked about that, it's a provocative statement, but the way that you talk about it almost seems it's a prescriptive, very strategic, well thought out type of moving the business forward, busting through the old guard. Cause let's face it, you know, the big guys, the Oracles they're there, they're not easy for customers to rip and replace, but instrumental aggression seems to kind of go hand in hand with the changing of the guard. You've got to embrace one to be able to deliver the other, right. >>Yeah. So ducks, I think even a fever inventing something new. Um, I mean, yeah, it just requires instrumental aggression, I believe is a, uh, uh, anchor core to most successful organizations, whether in IP or anywhere else. That is a, that is a site to that obsession. And not, I'm not talking about instrumental aggression here, but I'm really talking about the obsession to succeed, uh, which, uh, you know, gave rise to what I think someone called us brilliant jerks and all the rest of it, because that is the sort of negative side of off obsession. And I think the challenge of leadership in our times is how do you foster the positivity of obsession, which needs to change a garden? And that's the instrumental aggression as a, as a tool to, to go there. And how do you prevent the negative side of it, which says that the end justifies the means and, and that's just not true. >>Uh, there is, there is something that's right, and there's something that's wrong. And, uh, and if that is made very clear that the end does not justify the meanings, it creates a lot of trust between, um, Austin, our customers, also not employees. And when their inherent trust, um, happens, then you foster, as I said, the positive side of obsession and, um, get away from the negative side of obsession that you've seen in certain very, very large companies. Now, the one thing that instrumental aggression and obsession brings to a company is that, uh, it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and this is what I continue to tell. Um, our, our employees and my audience is, um, you know, be comfortable being uncomfortable because what you're trying to do is odd. And it's going to take a, as I say, a Herculean effort. So let's, uh, let's be comfortable being uncomfortable, uh, and have fun doing it. If there's, uh, how many people get a chance to change, uh, industry, which was dominated by a few bears and have such a positive impact, not only on our estimates, but society at large. And, uh, I think it's a privilege. Pressure is a privilege. And, uh, I'm grateful for the opportunity that's been afforded to me and to my colleagues. And, uh, >>It's a great way. Sorry. That's a great way of looking at it. Pressure is a privilege. If you think about, I love what you said, I always say, get, you know, get comfortably uncomfortable. It is a heart in any aspect, whether it's your workouts or your discipline, you know, working from home, it's a hard thing to do to your point. There's a lot of positivity that can come from it. If we think of what's happening this week alone and the U S political climate changing of the old guard, we've got Kamala Harris as our first female VP nominee and how many years, but also from a diversity angle, from a women leadership perspective, blowing the door wide open. >>It's great to see that, um, you know, we have someone that my daughter's going to look up to and say that, uh, you know, yes, there is, there is a place for us in society and we can have a meaningful contribution to society. So I actually think that San Antonio versus nomination is, um, you know, it's a simple ism of change of God, for sure. Um, I have no political agendas, um, at all. Then you can see how it pans out in November, but the one thing is for sure, but it's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, a change of God, or this makes a lot of people. And, and, uh, and you know, I was reflecting back on something else and in everything that I've actually achieved, which is, is something I'm proud of. I had to go through a zone, but I was extremely uncomfortable. >>Uh, Gould only happens when you have uncomfortable, um, girl to happens in your conference room. And, um, whether it's, um, you know, running them sequel, uh, or are having a society change, uh, if you stick to your comfort zone, you stick to your prejudices and viruses because it's just comfortable there, there's a, uh, wanting to be awkward. And, uh, and, and I think that that's that essential change of God. As I said, at the cost of repeating myself will make a lot of people uncomfortable, but I honestly believe will move the society forward. And, uh, yeah, I, um, I couldn't be more proud of, uh, having a California San Diego would be nominated and it's a, she brings diversity multicultural. And what I loved about it was, you know, we talk about culture and all the rest of it. And she, she was talking about how our parents who were both, uh, uh, at the Berkeley when she was growing up, we were picking up from and she be, you know, in our, in our prime going to protests and Valley. >>And so it was just, uh, it was ingrained in her to be able to challenge the status school and move the society forward. And, uh, you know, she was comfortable being uncomfortable when she was in that, you know, added that. And that's good. Maybe not. I think we sort of, uh, yeah, I, yeah, let's see, let's see what November brings to us, but, um, I think just a nomination has, uh, exchanged a lot of things and, uh, if it's not this time, it can be the next time, but at the time off the bat, but you're going to have a woman by woman president in my lifetime. Um, that's um, I minced about them, uh, and that's just great. >>Well, I should hope so too. And there's so many, I know we've got to wrap here, but so many different data points that show that that technology company actually, companies, excuse me, with women in leadership position are significantly 10, 20% more profitable. So the changing of the guard is hard as you said, but it's time to get uncomfortable. And this is a great example of that as well as the culture that you have at mem sequel Raja. It's always a pleasure and a philosophical time talking with you. I thank you for joining me on the cube today. >>Thank you me since I'm just stay safe, though. >>You as well for my guest, Raj Burma, I'm Lisa Martin. Thank you for watching this cube conversation.

>> Announcer: From the CUBEs Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE Conversation. >> Welcome to this CUBE Conversation, I'm Lisa Martin. Today talking with the co CEO of MemSQL, Raj Verma. Raj, eelcome back to the CUBE. >> Thank you, Lisa. Good to see you again as always. >> You as well. So we're living in a really strange time, right? There is disruption coming at us from every angle we're used to talking about disruptors and technology as technology innovations like Cloud, for example, but now we've got this other disruption, this catalyst for more disruption with COVID-19. I wanted to ask you though, as we see so much changing in the business world for long storied businesses filing for chapter 11. What, why do companies get disrupted and how can they actually become... How can a company to become a disruptor? >> I think disruption is a tale of innovation, really, innovation from the incumbent or lack there off. And the fact that, you know, incumbents become a lot more inward focused. They become more about doing more of what got them to be successful, more process focused and outcome focused. And the disruptors are essentially again, all about innovation and all about solving the customer's problems for today and for tomorrow. So I do think disruption is at its very core, two tales of innovation, one cautionary and the other somehow legendary. And we see that in the Valley all the time. You see the favorite innovators of a decade ago, just limping along now and just being completely leapfrogged by the innovators of today. And that's really what the Valley is known for. I do think that a big part of being a disruptor or being disrupted, as I said, you know, two sides of the same sort of coin or a double edged sword really, I think for a disruptor, it's all about challenging the status quo and to be effectively able to challenge the status quo, you need a team which is United in purpose and in passion about waking up every morning and trying to, you know, as I said, challenge the status quo and not accept just because things were being done the way they were being done. And that's what tomorrow should be. I think that's really important. And I think there is a total elements to being disrupted or, you know, aiding the disruptors, which is a catalyst event of any sort that might be. You know, it was the internet for some, I mean, some really called itself, the network is a computer, one of my favorite companies and, you know, Scott G. McNealy, someone that I greatly admire and I've got to know over the years and they were preaching this gospel for 15 years and then the internet hit and they just went, they became a rocket ship and you know, Cisco, the same thing happened. A lot of companies and you know, one in particular that we even worked for together, at least I got completely disrupted and blindsided by the Cloud. I do believe that one such a disruptor right now, or one such catalyst, which will disrupt business. And you alluded to that a little while ago, is COVID-19 and the data deluge or the tsunami of data that our accompanies it you know, I was just talking to a friend and he said, you know, we are now living really in 2023, COVID-19, four months of living in COVID-19 as kind of ended up propelling us three years forward in terms of the problems that we had three years to solve, we need to solve it now. And I think, yeah, the innovation, a team that challenges the status quo and a catalyst is what disrupts companies and what aids disruptors. >> You brought up a really good point though, that there's such a huge component of the team to be able to not just react quickly, but be creative enough and confident enough to challenge that status quo. There's a lot of folks who are very comfortable in their swim lanes. memSQL has been a disruptor in the database space, but I think that team that you hit on is really essential. Without that, and without the right folks really focused together, the disruptors are going to be disrupted. >> I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think, I often say it town halls or in private meetings that we are in the talent business. We are only as good as our teams. No, if ands and buts about it. If not, you know, united in 4% in mission have immense diversity of thought and be okay to change our minds when presented with empirical evidence of something different, we will never succeed we will never disrupt. But I think a majority of majority of the population wakes up and it looks for evidence that further makes them comfortable in the prejudices and the biases that they have. And now whether that's in your professional life or in your personal life, that's majority of the population. That's why, you know, majority of the population does not innovate. If you have the courage to say that I was wrong, but the status quo is just not enough, there is a better way out there it's hard, but there is a better way out there. And that is going to add phenomenal value to our customer base, to the world at large. Now that's the kind of people that we are looking for. And we are very lucky to have. And if you are one of them, and if you really do want to make a dent in the database, universe, I know of a company. So give me a call (laughs) >> Well, challenging the status quo is hard, like you said. 'Cause getting up every day and just assuming things are going to be the same and align with your thought process, that's easy, but being willing to, as you said, be courageous is a whole other ball game. And as right now, data from yesterday is too late. You know, not only are we living in an on-demand culture, but now with the disruption, the microbial disruption data from yesterday, isn't good enough to help solve tomorrow's problems. Neither is yesterday's technology. How is memSQL helping your customers even, break the status quo? >> Lisa that's really most of the conversations I tend to have with CIO's and CEO's and given the digital work environment that we live in, there is a lot more availability because of lack of travel and other social obligations. So, you know, I have a number of these conversations with CEOs and CIOs on a weekly basis. And one of the things that most CEO's and CIO's ask for is large, how can I get the now, now? As I was saying that, you know, the COVID-19 crisis, so as to speak or event as really spurred and catalyzed, a lot of these digital innovations and something that could be for, you know, another year and another two years, maybe, or even three years needs to be done now. And the need for the now, has never been greater. Whether it be the responsiveness of your AI ML tools, or how close can we actually put a transaction? Do we, have AI ML Layer for near real time or other real, real time insights as to what's going on in the business? Because the one data point that you have, which can help you make informed decisions in this digital world is data. So how do you do it at speed? How do you do it at scale? How do you do it in a flexible environment? Is the need for the hour. Now, another aspect that they talk about is don't give me a fancier mousetrap as my CPO, the gentleman that we just hired from Google BigQuery is one of the founding members and head their engineering and product management even. And he actually put it really well. He said, you know, I, haven't come here to build a fancier mousetrap. I've come here to build in novel, new way of solving a customer's data problems and delivering the now when the customer needs us. As I said in the fastest, most economical, flexible, secure manner. That is in my opinion, the biggest need for the hour and someone who can deliver that, is going to be extremely successful in my humble opinion, because let me ask a question of any CIO or CEO or whoever is watching here. That if we could say that we would juice up your AI ML dashboard reports, you know, real time dashboards 4X in four weeks. How many of you are going to say no? How many of you are going to say that from a response time of 15 minutes, if he could give you subsecond response times like we've done for many of our vendors in the last three to four weeks, how many of the world would say, no, I stick to my slow dashboards. And that's what we are enabling Lisa, and that's why I am superbly excited about where we are and where we are headed. >> So companies that can work with innovative technology like memSQL, whether it be a retailer or a telco, for example, or healthcare organization, the companies that are going to be able to get the data, to get the now, now are those the next disruptors? >> Beyond doubt, beyond doubt. And we are already seeing like you and I were talking about defaulter show and we have you ever seen a lot of bankruptcies, amazing amount of bankruptcies for companies who did not have the infrastructure for delivering the now, now. And they essentially were feeding their own prejudices and biases by saying, oh no, I made the decision on our goal 15 years ago and I'm just going to stick by it because they're the biggest baddest database yet. But, they can solve the now problem. And guess what happened to your company? And those who were courageous enough to say, yeah, it's some of the problems of yesterday. If you had an unprecedented times and it would take a very hard and deep look and something which will shake up the status quo to be able to deliver the tomorrow for our company. For our company, to see the sunrise of tomorrow, we have to be courageous enough to question our prejudices and bias. And those are the companies which will not only survive, but they will thrive. We were talking to, you know, naturally I have a lot of conversations with investors here. You know, the SAS technology areas, is the new gold now, I mean, that's one segment of the market that's held up because that is what is enabling the courageous enterprises to deliver the tomorrow and help the employees and the customers see the sunrise of tomorrow. And those who don't, they just don't see the sunrise tomorrow. >> I know working and talking with customers is near and dear to your heart. How do you help businesses, like you mentioned a whole bunch of really big brands have filed for chapter 11 recently, brands that we've all known for decades and decades, maybe it's, you know, team, that's just not innovative enough. Like you said, Oracle, we're going to use it. How does memSQL come in? How do you, when you're talking with those customers who might be on the brink of not surviving, how do you help them from a, like a thought diversity perspective to understand what they need to do to not just survive but thrive? >> Yeah, you know, I would like to take too much of the credit here that we can be saviors of companies. The company, and the executive team needs to know their why, and we can deliver the how and we can deliver it faster, cheaper in a more secure fashion. But the courage of saying that if we don't change, we rather die and we will not see the sunrise of tomorrow has to come from the organizations. And I think that's the starting point. And we give them enough empirical evidence that there is a better way out there. And we were working with a very, very large electronic retailer. And for the retail telemetry as you pointed to, they could only get telemetry of their stores all over the world on a every day basis. I think I ran the report every 16 hours and that was just not enough of them. And they've got a very involved CEO. And they wanted sub-second response times. And the team actually taught it was not possible. And continue to say that to the executive team. Till they came across us and he showed that the 16 hour time difference was now 0.8 seconds and they jumped on it. And now their dashboards are powered by memSQL. And instead of running reports, every 16 hours, they run it every second. So you can query your retail telemetry every second. And those kinds of courageous asks and a team saying just because I made a decision two years ago now is the time actually for those teams to say, it was a different world. I made the right decision two years ago, but in the new world, there is a better way of doing things and better way of securing a future and delivering the now. And that's where we come in and we've helped a number of customers. And I actually urge a lot of the organizations who are looking for the now to have that introspective conversations internally. >> So how do you advise companies, whether it's your prospects or customers, or even memSQL to build a team that's poised for disruption? Is it generational? Is it more than that? >> I don't think it's generational at all. I don't think it's an age issue of, you know, seeing the future or having the ability to seek honors. I think it's ultimately, and I know I'm using this term a lot, it is... I've always found that very bright, intelligent self aware individuals have the ability to question their own prejudices and biases, and it requires courage and intelligence and all the rest of it. But I think that is the key that isn't that much more. And what greater impetus or reward would a company want than survival? Sometimes survival is a great impetus for innovation and we are seeing that happen a lot. And those that aren't, then don't do that. However, that said, teams which have focused from early on, on diversity of thought on, you know, different perspectives, just their DNA is more open to challenging the status quo. And that's where the organizations who've had the right cultural values of it's okay to question the status quo, it's okay to have diverse opinions, even though they drive a knife through your prejudices and biases at an organizational level and at an individual level, that DNA helps companies is coming in and paying off, you know, in spades because that cultural thought, you know, Think Tank is driving the new age of innovation and in doing so survival. So I do think that the companies that invested in the right cultural values, the right war shoes, that's being off in spades. And I think that those teams we are seeing, and those organizations with that kind of culture are jumping on the bandwagon of questioning the status quo, of using the technology of tomorrow to solve tomorrow's problems and not be steeped in heritage and even see those companies. And you can see who they will be actually I mentioned them, but they won't survive. And up here you're seeing a whole host of other companies who are so still sort of steeped in justifying that their original thought was the right thought, and I bet my bottom dollar, they don't survive. >> Next question for you, how have you been able to build your executive team at MemSQL? You've been able to build that diverse culture and how has it shaped your leadership style? >> Yeah, you know, I don't think we've... It's not as if we've gotten there, it's a constant journey and it's just something that starts off by saying, you know, we are not going to have a know-it-all culture, but we are going to have a learn-it-all culture. You know, we are going to listen and we are going to think, consider and respond. For me, diversity was a given, you know, I sort of grew up around diversity. Some of the influences of my life that have made me the person I am today came from a viewpoint of, you know, of women, you know, I had some very, very strong female influence in my life. And as I've said repeatedly, I wouldn't have been who I am or half the person I am today without that influence. So for me, it's a very natural sort of progression to have that diversity of thought and opinion as a, you know, weaved into the very fiber of any organization that I've been apart of. And we do that in a manner where we, it's not just good enough to say, we will hire the best team. I don't think that is the way that you are going to sort of address the historical imbalance, which has resulted in very single threaded thought cultures in organizations. We make it a point that at the top end of the funnel, of course, we, in our best candidate, right? However, at the top end of the funnel, we almost know legislate that there has to be X percentage of candidates who are, you know, diverse candidates. So candidates from minorities and then let the best, you know, candidates sort of get qualified. And also if there are two candidates who are equally qualified, then, you know, we encourage someone with a lot more diversity and, you know, to come onto the team. And ultimately that drives a lot of I've thought leadership in the organizations and helps us manage our blind spots a lot better. And I have so many examples of that. The amount of innovation that happens because of these working groups, which are very diverse working groups, is just, you know, unmeasurable. And we've been extremely clear about the fact of what candidates would survive, thrive, and enjoy being at memSQL. And those are the candidates who are here to build something build something for the ages, do right by each other and by the customer. You know, we don't accept the unacceptable challenge, the status quo, if you feel strongly about something stand up and your voice will be heard. You know, just because things were being done a certain way doesn't mean it has to be done the same way. And I'm very proud, very, very proud of the team that we have built and the one that we are building and, you know, it's a team that is united in purpose and very diverse in thought. And I have become a better person and a better professional with all the diversity of thought and the learnings that we have had as a consequence of that over the last a year and a half or so. And that is the cornerstone of what we are building here at memSQL and Lisa, you and I worked with one such individual, who's just made an unbelievable difference in our organization. And lastly, I think, you know, just on a personal note, the diversity angle becomes that much closer to my heart. I'm a father of two lovely girls and two lovely boys. And I just, you know, it's personal to me that if I can't leave the tech industry a better place for my daughters, then I found it, for that matter, even for my sons. But I think, you know, the daughters had their historical, you know, debts to pay. Then I don't think I would have really achieved the success that we all, as a team are hoping for. So yeah, this is extremely personal. >> And thank you for sharing all your insights. You tell a really interesting story. You know, we started talking about disruption, disruptors, how not to be disrupted, how to become a disruptor. And really some of the things that you talk about, it all really kind of comes down to the team, the DNA of the organization, and that thought diversity being courageous to break the status quo. Raj, I wish we had more time 'cause we could keep going on this, but thank you for sharing your insights. It's been really interesting conversation. >> Thank you, Lisa, it's been great to see you and stay safe and well. >> Likewise. For my guests, Raj Verma. I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching this CUBE Conversation. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. And today joining me is CUBE alumni, the co-CEO of Mem-SQL, Raj Verma. Raj, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you Lisa. It's great to be back, and it's so good to see you. >> Likewise. So since we last saw each other, a lot of changes going on everywhere. You're now the co-CEO of Mem-SQL. The CEO's role is changing dramatically in this year, and the last few months. Talk to us about some of those changes. >> Yeah. Where do I even start? I was just listening to something or watching something, and it said, in leadership one thing that they never tell you is, you don't find the event, the event finds you. And you know, it was four and a half, almost five months ago, we were at our SQL and if someone had said to me then that we'll be quarantined for five months following that, and most, more likely seven months, I probably wouldn't have believed them. And if I did, I would have gone and start crying. It's been sort of a lot of change for us. The one thing is for sure, as the CEO, I probably made more compelling decisions in the last four months than I probably made in the year prior to that. So there is a lot of decisions, important decisions that are being made now. I think the thing that's impressed me the most about just the human race per se in the last four and a half, five months is the resilience. The adaptability of just the community, and the race at large. There is a lot of goodness that we've seen happen. I think that is a greater appreciation for the life that we sort of had. And I think when everything does one day come back to normal, we would be a lot more appreciative and nicer just as individuals. Now as CEO, I think the first order of duty for me was to embrace our employees and my colleagues. It's a drawing set of circumstances for them, worrying about their health, the health of their aged parents, of their families well being, and whether they have a job or not, and how the economic environment would pan out. So I think it was just a ... My number one priority at the start and continues to be till today were our colleagues and the employees of Mem-SQL. And the first few decisions that we made were 100% employee centric. None of the big ones that was taking the pledge of no retrenchments or no workforce reduction for 90 days to begin with. And we've continued that. We haven't really reduced any employee headcount at all. The second was to go in turn embrace our customers and deliver to the promise that we had in normal times, and help them get back to as much of a normalcy as they could. And the third was to do whatever we could, to use our technology, our efforts, our resources, to help society at large. Whether it was to track and tracing projects that we did for a large telco or a telco in the Middle East, a telco in Asia. And we've put our resources there. Our aura is to just using our platform to heighten public awareness around Juneteenth, and other sort of social issues. Because I think in times of almost societal isolation, using your platform and being a voice for what you stand for is more important than ever before. And those were really the three things that stand out apart from just normal decisions, normal decisions that you make to make sure that you are well-capitalized, that you have enough cash to run your business, that all the fundamentals of the business are sound. So yeah. >> So lots of decisions on a massively accelerated scale, more than the last 10 years. But big strategic decisions made in a quick time period for employees, for customers, for how do we use our platform, what is the key that you need in order to make those decisions, as strategically as you can like that? >> Yeah, you got to lens it through, what is the why of your organization, Our advice is very simple, we want to be the platform of decision making, or what we call the platform of now. Where we can marry historical information with the real time operational data being streamed in to your organization, and be able to deliver up reports and insights that you need for quick decision making in other organizations. So delivering up the now. Internally, when sort of presented with options to make decisions, the lens that I've used is, what's in the best interest of our employees, what's in the best interest of our customers and what is in the best interest of our investors and stakeholders. And if you apply that lens, the decisions aren't actually that difficult. You will never have a 100% of the data that you need to make a decision. So, lensing it through your priorities becomes extremely, extremely important. The other aspect that having data though, having said that, having data now to make decisions is more important than ever before. Because you do not have the sort of physical cues to depend on or clues to depend on. I'm still finding it hard to read the digital clues on Zoom or Google Hangouts or Teams, or what have you. So you just have to have a very steeped-in data decision making, marrying it with, what is it that you stand for as an organization? And the third vector that we've put to this is very simple. We as an organization stand fort authenticity. We like to simplify rather than complicate. And we need to demonstrate courage over comfort. And those are the other vectors that we use to make the majority of our strategic decisions. >> So if data... For years, you've heard this all over the tech circuit, Raj, data's the new gold, data's the new oil. Now you're saying it's even more important than ever in this unprecedented time. How does Mem-SQL help customers get access to as much data as they can to make really fast strategic decisions. To not just survive in this mode, but thrive? >> Yeah, I think two questions, what is the data and the value of data? And you're absolutely right. The value of data now is more than ever before. And also the amount of data that is now being produced is more than ever before. So it's actually a pretty, pretty nontrivial issue to solve. And I think the first thought is that you can't solve the problems of tomorrow with the technology of yesterday. You cannot solve the problems of tomorrow, using a technology that was built for a different era, which was built 45 years ago, 25 years ago. And you know, some of the tenants of the technology are still steeped in. Let's just call it heritage. So first and foremost, the realization that the problems of tomorrow need the tools of now and the talent of now, and the management of now, and the leadership of now to solve it, is paramount. What we do as a technology company, and a lot of companies in our genre called hard tech is exactly that. It's hard tech. It takes a lot of talent, it takes a lot of time, resources, money, clarity of thought to build something which will solve the problems of today and of tomorrow. And today the challenges we actually have is, the real time nature of decision making of interactions, of experience, of security, of compliance, are more exaggerated than ever before. And how do you marry real time information with historical information in the cheapest, easiest to deploy flexible architecture is of paramount importance. And that's exactly what we do, Lisa. We give you a database that is arguably the fastest in the world from a query speed standpoint, the scale's more than any other database in our genre, it has data governance by virtue of us being sequel, it's hybrid multi-cloud so it doesn't lock you in, and it's a among the easiest to use. So, I don't know what the future would bring, Lisa, but one thing I can assure you is, there are five things which wouldn't change which is developers would prefer faster over slow, cheaper over fast, flexible over rigid, ease of use over complexity of use, and a secure, safe platform versus the alternative. And if you have those five tenants, I think you'd be pretty well-versed with solving the problems of today and tomorrow. >> You mentioned real time a minute ago, and that's, I think right now during the COVID-19 crisis, there's nothing that highlights the urgency of which we need information real time. It's not going to help us if it's 24 or 48 hours old. How does Mem-SQL deliver real time insights to customers, whether it's a telecommunications company looking to do contact tracing or a bank? >> Yeah. So let me start with a couple of examples, a very large telephone provider, telecommunication providers in the States, uses us for metric telemetry. So how many calls did Lisa make, how many texts did she send, what time? Without purpose, the privacy attached to it. When did she experienced a call drop, what's the coverage at her home, is the sort of a mobile tower close to her place going to go down, and what would be the inconvenience? All of that. So copious amounts of data required to really deliver a customer experience. And it's a hard enough problem because the amount of data as you can imagine is extremely, extremely, extremely large. But when COVID-19 struck, the data became that much more important, because now it was a tool that you could use as a company to be able to describe or follow cohorts of subscribers in hotbeds like New York at that time. And see which States they were actually, let's call it "fleeing" to or moving to. And to be able to do that in near real time was not good enough, because you had to actually do it in real time. To be able to track where the PPEs work in near real time was not good enough, it had to be real time. And to track where the ventilators were in near real time wasn't good enough. You just needed to do that. And I think that probably is one of the biggest examples of real time that we have in the recent past, and something that we are most proud of. How did we do that? We built this hard tech based on first principles. We didn't try and put a lipstick on a pig, we didn't try and re-architect a 45-year-old technology or a 15-year-old technology. We just said that if we actually had a plain sheet of paper, what would we do? And we said, the need of the future is going to be fast over slow, as I said, you know, cheap or expensive, flexible over rigid, safe over the other alternatives and ease of use. And that's what we've built. And the world will see the amount of difference that we make to organizations and more importantly to society, which is very near and dear to my heart. And yeah, that's what I'm extremely proud, and optimistic about. >> Talk to me about some of the customer conversations that you're having now. I've known you for many years. You're a very charismatic speaker. As you were saying a few minutes ago, it's hard to read body language on Zoom and video conferences. How are those customer conversations going, and how have they changed? >> A lot has changed. I think there are a couple of aspects that you touch upon. One is just getting used to your digital work day. Initially we thought it was two weeks and it's great. You don't have to commute and all the rest of it. And then you started to realize, and the other thing was, everyone was available. There's no one who was traveling. There were no birthday parties. There's no picking up a kid from baseball or school or swimming or whatever. So everyone was available. And we were like, "Wow, this is great, no commute, everyone's available. Let's start meeting and interacting." And then you realize after a while that this digital workday is extremely, extremely exhausting. And if you weren't deliberate about it, it can fill your entire day, and you don't get much done. So one of the things that I've started to do is, I don't get on a digital call unless of course it's a customer or something extremely, extremely important till 11:00 AM. That's my thinking time, it's just, you know, eight to 11 is untouched and people I want to call rather than my calendar describing what my priorities should be. And it's the same thing for our customers as well, in a slightly different way. They are trying to decide and come to terms with not only what today means to them, but what the realities of today means for tomorrow. I'll give you an example of a very, very large bank in the United States, a rich consumer bank, which is essentially believed in the fact that customer relations were the most and customer relationship managers were the most important role for them. They are thinking about moving to bots. So the fact that you would be interacting with bots when you reach your bank is going to be a reality. There is no if and and buts about it. A very, very large company providing financial services, is now trying to see, how do you make the digital platforms more responsive? How do you make analytics foster more responsive and collaborative? Those are really the focus of C-suite attention, rather than which building do we call after our company and add towers to it. Or what coffee machine should we buy for the organization, or should we have a whiskey bar or a wine bar in our office? Now the ... Just the mundaneness of those decisions are coming up. And now the focus is how do we not only survive, to your point, Lisa, but thrive in the digital collaboration economy. And it's going to be about responsiveness. It's going to be about speed. And it's going to be about security and compliance. >> At the end of the day, kind of wrapping things up here, COVID or not the customer experience is critical, right, it's the lifeblood of what your organization delivers. The success of your customers, and their ability to make major business impact is what speaks to Mem-SQL's capabilities. A customer experience I know is always near and dear to your heart. And it sounds like that's something that you have modified for the situation, that really Mem-SQL focused on, not just the customer experience, but your employee experience as well. >> That's exactly it. And I think if you do right by the employees, they'll do right by the customers. And I would any day, any day put the employee first lens to any decision that we make. And that's paid off for us in spades. We've got a family environment, I genuinely, genuinely care about every single employee of Mem-SQL and their families. And we've communicated that often, we have listened, we have learned, these are unprecedented times. There isn't a manual to go through COVID-19 work environment. And I think the realization that we just don't know what tomorrow would bring, it's actually very liberating because it just frees you from rinsing and repeating, and further feeding your prejudice and biases, to getting up every day and say, "Let me learn as much as I can about the current environment, current realities, lens it through our priorities, and make the best decision that we can." And if you're wrong, accept and correct it. Nothing too intellectual, but it's in the simplicity that sometimes you find a lot of solace. >> Yeah. Simplicity in these times would be great. I think you're ... I like how you talked about the opportunities. There's a lot of positive COVID catalysts that are coming from this. And we want to thank you for sharing some time with us today, talking about the changing role of the C-suite, and the opportunities that it brings. Raj it's been great to have you on theCUBE. >> As always Lisa. It's a pleasure. Thank you. >> For the co-CEO of Mem-SQL, Raj Verma, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE conversation.

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering DataWorks Summit 2017. Brought to by Hortonworks. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live, on day two of the DataWorks Summit. I'm Lisa Martin. #DWS17, join the conversation. We've had a great day and a half. We have learned from a ton of great influencers and leaders about really what's going on with big data, data science, how things are changing. My cohost is George Gilbert. We're joined by my old buddy, the COO of Hortonworks, Rajnish Verma. Raj, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> It's great to be here, Lisa. Great to see you as well, it's been a while. >> It has, so yesterday on the customer panel, the Raj I know had great conversation with customers from, Duke Energy was one. You also had Black Knight on the financial services side. >> Rajnish: And HSC. >> Yes, on the insurance side, and one of the things that, a couple things that really caught my attention, one was when Duke said, kind of, where they were using data and moving to Hadoop, but they are now a digital company. They're now a technology company that sells electricity and products, which I thought was fantastic. Another thing that I found really interesting about that was they all talked about the need to leverage big data, and glean insights and monetize that, really requires this cultural shift. So I know you love customer interactions. Talk to us about what you're seeing. Those are three great industry examples. What are you seeing? Where are customers on this sort of maturity model where big data and Hadoop are concerned? >> Sure, happy to. So one thing that I enjoy the most about my job is meeting customers and talking to them about the art of the possible. And some of the stuff that they're doing, and, which was only science fiction, really, about two or three years ago. And they're a couple of questions that you've just asked me as to where they are on their journey, what are they trying to accomplish, et cetera. I remember about, five, seven, 10 years ago where Marc Andreessen said "Software is eating the world." And to be honest with you, now, it's now more like every company is a data company. I wouldn't say data is eating the world, but without effective monetization of your data assets, you can't be a force to reckon with as a company. So that is a common theme that we are seeing irrespective of industry, irrespective of customer, irrespective of really the size of the customer. The only thing that sort of varies is the amount and complexity of data, from one company to the other. Now, when, I'm new to Hortonworks as you know. It's really my fifth month here. And one of the things that I've seen and, Lisa, as you know, are coming from TIBCO. So we've been dealing with data. I have been involved with data for over a decade and a half now, right. So the difference was, 15 years ago, we were dealing with really structured data and we actually connected the structured data and gleaned insights into structured data. Now, today, a seminal challenge that every CIO or chief data officer is trying to solve is how do you get actionable insights into semi-structured and unstructured data. Now, so, getting insights into that data first requires ability to aggregate data, right. Once you've aggregated data, you also need a platform to make sense of data in real-time, that is being streamed at you. Now once you do those two things, then you put yourself in a position to analyze that data. So in that journey, as you asked, where our customers are. Some are defining their data aggregation strategy. The others, having defined data aggregation, they're talking about streaming analytics as a platform, and then the others are talking about data science and machine learning and deep learning, as a journey. Now, you saw the customer panel yesterday. But the one point I'd like to make is, it's not only the Duke Energies and the Black Knights of the world, or the HSC, who I believe are big, large firms that are using data. Even a company like, an old agricultural company, or I shouldn't say old but steeped in heritage is probably the right word. 96, 97 year old agricultural company that's in the animal feed business. Animal feed. Multi-billion dollar animal feed business. They use data to monetize their business model. What they say is, they've been feeding animals for the last 70 years. Sp now they go to a farmer and they have enough data about how to feed animals, that they can actually tell the farmer, that this hog that you have right now, which is 17 pounds, I can guarantee you that I will have him or her on a nutrition that, by four months, it'll be 35 pounds. How much are you willing to pay? So even in the animal feed business, data is being used to drive not only insights, but monetization models. >> Wow. >> So. >> That's outstanding. >> Thank you. >> So in getting to that level of sophistication, it's not like every firm sort of has the skills and technology in place to do that. What are some of the steps that you find that they typically have to go through to get to that level of maturity? Like, where do they make mistakes? Where do they find the skills to manage on-prem infrastructure, if it is on-premmed? What about, if they're trying to do a hybrid cloud setup. How complex is that? >> I think that's where the power of the community comes through at multiple levels. So we're committed to the open-source movement. We're committed to the community-based development of data. Now, this community-based business model does a few things. Firstly, it keeps the innovation at the leading edge, bleeding edge, number one. But as you heard the panel talk about yesterday, one of the biggest benefits that our customers see of using open source, is, sure economics is good, but that's not the leading reason. Keeping up with innovation, very high up there. Avoiding when to lock in, again very, very high up there. But one of the biggest reasons that CIOs gave me for choosing open source as a business model is more to do with the fact that they can attract good talent, and without open source, you can't actually attract talent. And I can relate to that because I have a sophomore at home. And it just happened to me that she's 15 now but she's been using open source since she was 11. The iPhone and, she downloads an application for free. She uses it, and if she stretches the limit of that, then she orders something more in a paid model. So the community helps people do a few things. Be able to fail fast if they need to. The second is, it lowers the barriers of entry, right. Because it's really free. You can have the same model. The third is, you can rely on the community for support and methodologies and best practices and lessons learned from implementations. The fourth is, it's a great hiring ground in terms of bringing people in and attracting Millennial talent, young talent, and sought-after talent. So that's really probably the answer that I would have for that. >> When you talk about the business model, the open-source business model and the attraction on the customer side, that sounded like there's this analogy with sort of the agro-business customer in the sense that there are offering data along with their traditional product. If your traditional product is open-source data management, what a room started telling us this morning was the machine learning that goes along with operating not only your own sort of internal workloads but customers, and being to offer prescriptive advice on operations, essentially IT operations. Is that the core, will that become the core of sort of value-add through data for an open-source business model like yours? >> I don't want to be speculative but I'll probably answer it another way. I think our vision, which was set by our founder Rob Bearden, and he took you guys through that yesterday, was way back when, we did say that our mission in life is to manage the world's data. So that mission hasn't changed. And the second was, we would do it as a open-source community or as a big contributing part of that community. And that has really not changed. Now, we feel that machine learning and data science and deep learning are areas that we're very, very excited about, our customers are very, very excited about. Now, the one thing that we did cover yesterday and I think earlier today as well, I'm a computer science engineer. And when I was in college, way back when, 25 years ago, I was interested in AI and ML. And it has existed for 50 years. The reason why it hasn't been available to the common man, so as to speak, is because of two reasons. One is, it did not have a source of data that it could sit on top of, that makes machine learning and AI effective. Or at least not a commercially-viable option to do so. Now, there is one. The second is, the compute power required to run some of the large algorithms that really give you insights into machine learning and AI. So we've become the platform on which customers can take advantage of excellent machine learning and AI tools to get insights. Now, that is two independent sort of categories. One is the open source community providing the platform. And then what tools the customer has used to apply data science and machine learning, so. >> So, all right. I'm thinking something that is slightly different and maybe the nuance is making it tough to articulate. But it's how can Hortonworks take the data platform and data science tools that you use to help understand how to operate important works, whether it's on a customer prem, or in the cloud. In other words, how can you use machine learning to make it a sort of a more effective and automated manage service? >> Yeah, and I think that's, the nuance's not lost in me. I think what I'm trying to sort of categorize is, for that to happen, you require two things. One is data aggregator across on-prem and cloud. Because when you have data which is multi-tenancy, you have a lot of issues with data security, data governance, all the rest of it. Now, that is what we plan to manage for the world, so as to speak. Now, on top of that, customers who require to have data science or deep learning to be used, we provide that platform. Now, whether that is used as a service by the customer, which we would be happy to provide, or it is used inhouse, on-prem, on various cloud models, that's more a customer decision. We don't want to force that decision. However, from the art of the possible perspective, yes it's possible. >> I love the mission to manage the world's data. >> Thank you. >> That's a lofty goal, but yesterday's announcements with IBM were pretty, pretty transformative. In your opinion as chief operating officer, how do you see this extension of this technology and strategic partnership helping Hortonworks on the next level of managing the world's data? >> Absolutely, it's game-changing for us. We're very, very excited. Our colleagues are very, very excited about the opportunity to partner. It's also a big validation of the fact that we now have a pretty large open-source community that contributes to this cause. So we're very excited about that. The opportunity is in actually our partnering with a leader in data science, machine learning, and AI, a company that has steeped in heritage, is known for game-changing, next technology moves. And the fact that we're powering it from a data perspective is something that we're very, very excited and pleased about. And the opportunities are limitless. >> I love that, and I know you are a game-changer, in your fifth month. We thank you so much, Raj, for joining us. It was great to see you. Continued success, >> Thank you. >> at managing the world's data and being that game-changer, yourself, and for Hortonworks as well. >> Thank you Lisa, good to see you. >> You've been watching theCUBE. Again, we're live, day two of the DataWorks Summit, #DWS17. For my cohost, George Gilbert, I'm Lisa Martin. Stick around guys, we'll be right back with more great content. (jingle)

>> Narrator: Live from Munich, Germany it's the CUBE, covering Dataworks Summit Europe 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Okay, welcome back everyone here at day two coverage of the CUBE here in Munich, Germany for Dataworks 2017. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante. Two days of wall to wall coverage SiliconANGLE Media's the CUBE. Our next guest is Raj Verma, the president and COO of Hortonworks. First time on the CUBE, new to Hortonworks. Welcome to the CUBE. >> Thank you very much, John, appreciate it. >> Looking good with a three piece suit we were commenting when you were on stage. >> Raj: Thank you. >> Great scene here in Europe, again different show vis-a-vis North America, in San Jose. You got the show coming up there, it's the big show. Here, it's a little bit different. A lot of IOT in Germany. You got a lot of car manufacturers, but industrial nation here, smart city initiatives, a lot of big data. >> Uh-huh. >> What's your thoughts? >> Yeah no, firstly thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure and good chit chatting right before the show as well. We are very, very excited about the entire data space. Europe is leading many initiatives about how to use data as a sustainable, competitive differentiator. I just moderated a panel and you guys heard me talk to a retail bank, a retailer. And really, Centrica, which was nothing but British Gas, which is rather an organization steeped in history so as to speak and that institution is now, calls itself a technology company. And, it's a technology company or an IOT company based on them using data as the currency for innovation. So now, British Gas, or Centrica calls itself a data company, when would you have ever thought that? I was at dinner with a very large automotive manufacturers and the kind of stuff they are doing with data right from the driving habits, driver safety, real time insurance premium calculation, the autonomous drive. It's just fascinating no matter what industry you talk about. It's just very, very interesting. And, we are very glad to be here. International business is a big priority for me. >> We've been following Hortonworks since it's inception when it spun out of Yahoo years ago. I think we've been to every Hadoop World going back, except for the first one. We watched the transition. It's interesting, it's always been a learning environment at these shows. And certainly the customer testimonials speaks to the ecosystem, but I have to ask you, you're new to Hortonworks. You have interesting technology background. Why did you join Hortonworks? Because you certainly see the movies before and the cycles of innovation, but now we're living in a pretty epic, machine learning, data AI is on the horizon. What were the reasons why you joined Hortonworks? >> Yeah sure, I've had a really good run in technology, fortunately was associated with two great companies, Parametric Technology and TIBCO Software. I was 16 years at TIBCO, so I've been dealing with data for 16 years. But, over the course of the last couple of years whenever I spoke to a C level executive, or a CIO they were talking to us about the fact that structured data, which is really what we did for 16 years, was not good enough for innovation. Innovation and insights into unstructured data was the seminal challenge of most of the executives that I was talking to, senior level executives. And, when you're talking about unstructured data and making sense of it there isn't a better technology than the one that we are dealing with right now, undoubtedly. So, that was one. Dealing with data because data is really the currency of our times. Every company is a data company. Second was, I've been involved with proprietary software for 23 years. And, if there is a business model that's ready for disruption it's the proprietary software business model because I'm absolutely convinced that open source is what I call a green business model. It's good for planet Earth so as to speak. It's a community based, it's based on innovation and it puts the customer and the technology provider on the same page. The customer success drives the vendor success. Yeah, so the open source community, data-- >> It's sustainables, pun intended, in the sense that it's had a continuing run. And, it's interesting Tier One software is all open source now. >> 100%, and by the way not only that if you see large companies like IBM and Microsoft they have finally woken up to the fact that if they need to attract talent and if they want to be known as talk leaders they have to have some very meaningful open source initiatives. Microsoft loves Linux, when did we ever think that was going to happen, right? And, by the way-- >> I think Steve Bauman once said it was the cancer of the industry. Now, they're behind it. But, this is the Linux foundation has also grown. We saw a project this past week. Intel donated a big project to the Linux now it's taking over, so more projects. >> Raj: Yes. >> There's more action happening than ever before. >> You know absolutely, John. Five years ago when I would go an meet a CIO and I would ask them about open source and they would wink, they say "Of course, "we do open source. But, it's less than 5%, right? Now, when I talk to a CIO they first ask their teams to go evaluated open source as the first choice. And, if they can't they come kicking and screaming towards propriety software. Most organizations, and some organizations with a lot of historical gravity so as to speak have a 50/50 even split between proprietary and open source. And, that's happened in the last three years. And, I can make a bold statement, and I know it'll be true, but in the next three years most organizations the ratio of proprietary to open source would be 20 proprietary 80 open source. >> So, obviously you've made that bet on open source, joining Hortonworks, but open is a spectrum. And, on one end of the spectrum you have Hortonworks which is, as I see it, the purest. Now, even Larry Ellison, when he gets onstage at Oracle Open World will talk about how open Oracle is, I guess that's the other end of the spectrum. So, my question is won't the Microsofts and the Oracles and the IBM, they're like recovering alcoholics and they'll accommodate their platforms through open source, embracing open source. We'll see if AWS is the same, we know it's unidirectional there. How do you see that-- >> Well, not necessarily. >> Industry dynamic, we'll talk about that later. How do you see that industry dynamic shaking out? >> No, absolutely, I think I remember way back in I think the mid to late 90s I still loved that quote by Scott McNeely, who is a friend, Dell, not Dell, Digital came out with a marketing campaign saying open VMS. And, Scott said, "How can someone lie "so much with one word?" (laughs) So, it's the fact that Oracle calling itself open, well I'll just leave it at, it's a good joke. I think the definition of open source, to me, is when you acquire a software you have three real costs. One is the cost of initial procuring that software and the hardware and all the rest of it. The second is implementation and maintenance. However, most people miss the third dimension of cost when acquiring software, which is the cost to exit the technology. Our software and open source has very low exit barriers to our technology. If you don't like our technology, switch it off. You own the software anyways. Switch off our services and the barrier of exits are very, very low. Having worked in proprietary software, as I said, for 23 years I very often had conversations with my customers where I would say, "Look, you really "don't have a choice, because if you want to exit "our technology it's going to probably cost you "ten times more than what you've spent till date." So, it a lock in architecture and then you milk that customer through maintenance, correct? >> Switching costs really are the metric-- >> Raj: Switching costs, exactly. >> You gave the example of Blockbuster Camera, and the rental, the late charge fees. Okay, that's an example of lock in. So, as we look at the company you're most compared with, now that's it's going public, Cloudera, in a way I see more similarities than differences. I mean, you guys are sort of both birds of a feather. But, you are going for what I call the long game with a volume subscription model. And, Cloudera has chosen to build proprietary components on top. So, you have to make big bets on open. You have to support those open technologies. How do you see that affecting the long term distance model? >> Yeah, I think we are committed to open source. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I do feel that we are connected data platform, which is data at rest and data in motion across on prem and cloud is the business model the going to win. We clearly have momentum on our side. You've seen the same filings that I have seen. You're talking about a company that had a three year head start on us, and a billion dollars of funding, all right, at very high valuations. And yet, they're only one year ahead in terms of revenue. And, they have burnt probably three times more cash than we have. So clearly, and it's not my opinion, if you look at the numbers purely, the numbers actually give us the credibility that our business model and what we are doing is more efficient and is working better. One of the arguments that I often hear from analysts and press is how are your margins on open source? According to the filings, again, their margins are 82% on proprietary software, my margins on open source are 84%. So, from a health of the business perspective we are better. Now, the other is they've claimed to have been making a pivot to more machine learning and deep learning and all the rest of it. And, they actually'd like us to believe that their competition is going to be Amazon, IBM, and Google. Now, with a billion dollars of funding with the Intel ecosystem behind them they could effectively compete again Hortonworks. What do you think are their chances of competing against Google, Amazon, and IBM? I just leave that for you guys to decide, to be honest with you. And, we feel very good that they have virtually vacated the space and we've got the momentum. >> On the numbers, what jumps out at you on filing since obviously, I sure, everyone at Hortonworks was digging through the S1 because for the first time now Cloudera exposes some of the numbers. I noticed some striking things different, obviously, besides their multiple on revenue valuation. Pretty obvious it's going to be a haircut coming after the public offering. But, on the sales side, which is your wheelhouse there's a value proposition that you guys at Hortonworks, we've been watching, the cadence of getting new clients, servicing clients. With product evolution is challenging enough, but also expensive. It's not you guys, but it's getting better as Sean Connolly pointed out yesterday, you guys are looking at some profitability targets on the Ee-ba-dep coming up in Q four. Publicly stated on the earnings call. How's that different from Cloudera? Are they burning more cash because of their sales motions or sales costs, or is it the product mix? What's you thoughts on the filings around Cloudera versus the Hortonworks? >> Well, look I just feel that, I can talk more about my business than theirs. Clearly, you've seen the same filings that I have and you've see the same cash burn rates that we have seen. And, we clearly are ore efficient, although we can still get better. But, because of being public for a little more than two years now we've had a thousand watt bulb being shown at us and we have been forced to be more efficient because we were in the limelight. >> John: You're open. >> In the open, right? So, people knew what our figures are, what our efficiency ratios were. So, we've been working diligently at improving them and we've gotten better, and there's still scope for improvement. However, being private did not have the same scrutiny on Cloudera. And, some would say that they were actually spending money like drunken sailors if you really read their S1 filing. So, they will come under a lot of scrutiny as well. I'm sure they'll get more efficient. But right now, clearly, you've seen the same numbers that I have, their numbers don't talk about efficiency either in the R and D side or the sales and marketing side. So, yeah we feel very good about where we are in that space. >> And, open source is this two edged sword. Like, take Yarn for example, at least from my perspective Hortonworks really led the charge to Yarn and then well before Doctor and Kubernetes ascendancy and then all of a sudden that happens and of course you've got to embrace those open source trends. So, you have the unique challenge of having to support sort of all the open source platforms. And, so that's why I call it the long game. In order for you guys to thrive you've got to both put resources into those multiple projects and you've got to get the volume of your subscription model, which you pointed out the marginal economics are just as good as most, if not any software business. So, how do you manage that resource allocation? Yes, so I think a lot of that is the fact that we've got plenty of contributors and committers to the open source community. We are seen as the angel child in open source because we are just pure, kosher open source. We just don't have a single line of proprietary code. So, we are committed to that community. We have over the last six or seven years developed models of our software development which helps us manage the collective bargaining power, so as to speak, of the community to allocate resources and prioritize the allocation of resources. It continues to be a challenge given the breadth of the open source community and what we have to handle, but fortunately I'm blessed that we've got a very, very capable engineering organization that keeps us very efficient and on the cutting edge. >> We're here with Raj Verma, With the new president and COO of Hortonworks, Chief Operating Officer. I've got to ask you because it's interesting. You're coming in with a fresh set of eyes, coming in as you mentioned, from TIBCO, interesting, which was very successful in the generation of it's time and history of TIBCO where it came from and what it did was pretty fantastic. I mean, everyone knows connecting data together was very hard in the enterprise world. TIBCO has some challenges today, as you're seeing, with being disrupted by open source, but I got to ask you. As a perspective, new executive you got, looking at the battlefield, an opportunity with open source there's some significant things happening and what are you excited about because Hortonworks has actually done some interesting things. Some, I would say, the world spun in their direction, their relationship with Microsoft, for instance, and their growth in cloud has been fantastic. I mean, Microsoft stock price when they first started working with Hortonworks I think was like 26, and obviously with Scott Di-na-tell-a on board Azure, more open source, on Open Compute to Kubernetes and Micro Services, Azure doing very, very well. You also have a partnership with Amazon Web Services so you already are living in this cloud era, okay? And so, you have a cloud dynamic going on. Are you excited by that? You bring some partnership expertise in from TIBCO. How do you look at partners? Because, you guys don't really compete with anybody, but you're partners with everybody. So, you're kind of like Switzerland, but you're also doing a lot of partnerships. What are you excited about vis-a-vis the cloud and some of the other partnerships that are happening. >> Yeah, absolutely, I think having a robust partner ecosystem is probably my number one priority, maybe number two after being profitable in a short span of time, which is, again, publicly stated. Now, our partnership with Microsoft is very, very special to us. Being available in Azure we are seeing some fantastic growth rates coming in from Azure. We are also seeing remarkable amount of traction from the market to be able to go and test out our platform with very, very low barriers of entry and, of course, almost zero barriers of exit. So, from a partnership platform cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, are very, very important to us. We are also getting a lot of interest from carriers in Europe, for example. Some of the biggest carriers want to offer business services around big data and almost 100%, actually not almost, 100% of the carriers that we have spoken to thus far want to partner with us and offer our platform as a cloud service. So, cloud for us is a big initiative. It gives us the entire capability to reach audiences that we might not be able to reach ringing one door bell at a time. So, it's, as I said, we've got a very robust, integrated cloud strategy. Our customers find that very, very interesting. And, building that with a very robust partner channel, high priority for us. Second, is using our platform as a development platform for application on big data is, again, a priority. And that's, again, building a partner ecosystem. The third is relationships with global SIs, Extensia, Deloitte, KPMG. The Indian SIs of In-flu-ces, and Rip-ro, and HCL and the rest. We have some work to do. We've done some good work there, but there's some work to be done there. And, not only that I think some of the initiatives that we are launching in terms of training as a service, free certification, they are all things which are aimed at reaching out to the partners and building, as I said, a robust partner ecosystem. >> There's a lot of talk a conferences like this about, especially in Hadoop, about complexity, complexity of the ecosystem, new projects, and the difficulties of understanding that. But, in reality it seems as though today anyway the technology's pretty well understood. We talked about Millennials off camera coming out today with social savvy and tooling and understanding gaming and things like that. Technology, getting it to work seems to not be the challenge anymore. It's really understanding how to apply it, how to value data, we heard in your panel today. The business process, which used to be very well known, it's counting, it's payroll, simple. Now, it's kind of ever changing daily. What do you make of that? How do you think that will effect the future of work? Yeah, I think there's some very interesting questions that you've asked in that the first, of course, is what does it take to have a very successful big data, or Hadoop project. And, I think we always talk about the fact that if you have a very robust business case backing a Hadoop project that is the number one key ingredient to delivering a Hadoop project. Otherwise, you can tend to boil the ocean, all right, or try and eat an elephant in one bite as I like to say. So, that's one and I think you're right. It's not the technology, it's not the complexity, it's not the availability of the resources. It is a leadership issue in organizations where the leader demands certain outcomes, business outcomes from the Hadoop project team and we've seen whenever that happens the projects seem to be very, very successful. Now, the second part of the question about future of work, which is a very, very interesting topic and a topic which is very, very close to my heart. There are going to be more people than jobs in the next 20, 25 years. I think that any job that can be automated will be automated, or has been automated, right? So, this is going to have a societal impact on how we live. I've been lucky enough that I joined this industry 25 years ago and I've never had to change or switch industries. But, I can assure you that our kids, and we were talking about kids off camera as well, our kids will have to probably learn a new skill every five years. So, how does that impact education? We, in our generation, were testing champions. We were educated to score well on tests. But, the new form of education, which you and I were talking about, again in California where we live, and where my daughter goes to high school and in her school the number one, the number one priority is to instill a sense of learning and joy of learning in students because that is what is going to contribute to a robust future. >> That's a good point, I want to just interject here because I think that the trend we're seeing in the higher Ed side too also point to the impact of data science, to curriculum and learning. It's not just putting catalogs online. There's now kind of an iterative kind of non-linear discovery to proficiency. But, there's also the emotional quotient aspect. You mentioned the love of learning. The immersion of tech and digital is creating an interdisciplinary requirement. So, all the folks say that, what the statistic's like half the jobs that are going to be available haven't even been figured out yet. There's a value creation around interdisciplinary skill sets and emotional quotient. >> Absolutely. >> Social, emotional because of the human social community connectedness. This is also a big data challenge opportunity. >> Oh, 100% and I think one of the things that we believe is in the future, jobs that require a greater amount of empathy are least susceptible to automation. So, things like caring for old age people in the world, and nursing, and teaching, and artists, and all the rest will be professions which will be highly paid and numerous. I also believe that the entire big data challenge about how you use data to impact communities is going to come into play. And also, I think John, you and I were again talking about it, the entire concept of corporations is only 200 years old, really, 200, 300 years old. Before that, our forefathers were individual contributors who contributed a certain part in a community, barbers, tailors, farmers, what have you. We are going to go back to the future where all of us will go back to being individual contributors. And, I think, and again I'm bringing it back to open source, open source is the start of that community which will allow the community to go back to its roots of being individual contributors rather than being part of a organization or a corporation to be successful and to contribute. >> Yeah, the Coase's Penguin has been a very famous seminal piece of work. Obviously, Ronald Coase who's wrote the book The Nature of the Firm is interesting, but that's been a kind of historical document. You look at blockchain for instance. Blockchain actually has the opportunity to disrupt what the Nature of the Firm is about because of smart contracts, supply chain, and what not. And, we have this debate on the CUBE all the time, there's some naysayers, Tim Conner's a VC and I were talking on our Friday show, Silicon Valley Friday show. He's actually a naysayer on blockchain. I'm actually pro blockchain because I think there's some skeptics that say blockchain is really hard to because it requires an ecosystem. However, we're living in an ecosystem, a world of community. So, I think The Nature of the Firm will be disrupted by people organizing in a new way vis-a-vis blockchain 'cause that's an open source paradigm. >> Yeah, no I concur. So, I'm a believer in that entire concept. I 100%-- >> I want to come back to something you talked about, about individual contributors and the relationship in link to open source and collaboration. I personally, I think we have to have a frank conversation about, I mean machines have always replaced humans, but for the first time in our history it's replacing cognitive functions. To your point about empathy, what are the things that humans can do that machines can't? And, they become fewer and fewer every year. And, a lot of these conferences people don't like to talk about that, but it's a reality that we have to talk about. And, your point is right on, we're going back to individual contribution, open source collaboration. The other point is data, is it going to be at the center of that innovation because it seems like value creation and maybe job creation, in the future, is going to be a result of the combinatorial effects of data, open source, collaboration, other. It's not going to because of Moore's Law, all right. >> 100%, and I think one of the aspects that we didn't touch upon is the new societal model that automation is going to create would need data driven governance. So, a data driven government is going to be a necessity because, remember, in those times, and I think in 25, 30 years countries will have to explore the impact of negative taxation, right? Because of all the automation that actually happens around citizen security, about citizen welfare, about cost of healthcare, cost of providing healthcare. All of that is going to be fueled by data, right? So, it's just, as the Chinese proverb says, "May you live in interesting times." We definitely are living in very interesting times. >> And, the public policy implications are, your friend and one of my business heroes, Scott McNeally says, "There's no privacy in "the internet, get over it." We interviewed John Tapscott last week he said "That's unacceptable, "we have to solve that problem." So, it brings up a lot of public policy issues. >> Well, the social economic impact, right now there's a trend we're seeing where the younger generation, we're talking about the post 9/11 generation that's entering the workforce, they have a social conscience, right? So, there's an emphasis you're seeing on social good. AI for social good is one of the hottest trends out there. But, the changing landscape around data is interesting. So, the word democratization has been used whether you're looking at the early days of blogging and podcasting which we were involved in and research to now in media this notion of data and transparency and open source is probably at a tipping point, an all time high in terms of value creation. So, I want to hear your thoughts on this because as someone who's been in the proprietary world the mode of operation was get something proprietary, lock it dowm, build a fence and a wall, protect it with folks with machine guns and fight for the competitive advantage, right? Now, the competitive advantage is open. Okay, so you're looking at pure open source model with Hortonworks. It changes how companies are competing. What is the competitive advantage of Hortonworks? Actually, to be more open. >> 100%. >> How do you manage that? >> No absolutely, I just think the proprietary nature of software, like software has disrupted a lot of businesses, all right? And, it's not a resistance to disruption itself. I mean, there has never been a business model in the history of time where you charge a lot of money to build a software, or sell a software that you built and then whatever are the defects in that software you get paid more money to fix them, all right? That's the entire perpetual and maintenance model. That model is going to get disrupted. Now, there are hundreds of billions of dollars involved in it so people are going to come kicking and screaming to the open source world, but they will have to come to the open source world. Our advantage that we're seeing is innovation now in a closed loop environment, no matter what size of a company you are, cannot keep up with the changing landscape around you from a data perspective. So, without the collective innovation of the community I don't really think a technology can stay at par with the changes around them. >> This is what I say about, this is what I think is such an important point that you're getting at because we were started SiliconANGLE actually in the Cloudera office, so we have a lot of friends that work there. We have a great admiration for them, but one of the things that Cloudera has done through their execution is they have been very profit oriented, go public at all costs kind of thing that they're doing now. You've seen that happen. Is the competitive advantage that you're pointing out is something we're seeing that similar that Andy Jasseys doing at AWS, which is it's not so much to build something proprietary per se, it's just to ship something faster. So, if you look at Amazon's competitive advantage is that they just continue to ship product faster and faster and faster than companies can build themselves. And also, the scale that they're getting with these economies is increasing the quality. So, open source has also hit the naysayers on security, right? Everyone said, "Oh, open source is not secure." As it turns out, it's more secure. Amazon at scale is actually becoming more secure. So, you're starting to see the new competitive advantage be ship more, be more open as the way to do business. What do you think the impact will be to traditional companies whether it's a startup competing or an existing bank? This is a paradigm shift, what's the impact going to be for a CIO or CEO of a big company? How do they incorporate that competitive advantage? Yeah, I think the proprietary software world is not going to go away tomorrow, John, you know that. There so much of installed software and there's a saying from where I come from that "Even a dead elephant is worth a million dollars," right? So, even that business model even though it is sort of dying it'll still be a good investment for the next ten years because of the locked in business model where customers cannot get out. Now, from a perspective of openness and what that brings as a competitive differentiators to our customer just the very base at which, as I've said I've lived in a proprietary world, you would be lucky if you were getting the next version of our software every 18 months, you'd be lucky. In the open source community you get a few versions in 18 months. So, the cadence at which releases come out have just completely disrupted the proprietary model. It is just the collective, as I said, innovative or innovation ability of the community has allowed us to release, to increase the release cadence to a few months now, all right? And, if our engineering team had it's way it'll further be cut short, right? So, the ability of customers, and what does that allow the customer to do? Ten years ago if you looked for a capability from your proprietary vendor they would say you have to wait 18 months. So, what do you do, you build it yourself, all right? So, that is what the spaghetti architecture was all about. In the new open source model you ask the community and if enough people in the community think that that's important the community builds it for you and gives it to you. >> And, the good news is the business model of open source is working. So, you got you guys have been public, you got Cloudera going public, you have MuleSoft out there, a lot of companies out there now that are public companies are open source companies, a phenomenal change over. But, the other thing that's interesting is that the hiring factor for the large enterprise to the point of, your point about so proprietary not updating, it's the same is true for the enterprise. So, just hiring candidates out of open source is now increased, the talent pool for a large enterprise. >> 100%, 100%. >> Well, I wonder if I could challenge this love fest for a minute. (laughs) So, there's another saying, I didn't grow up there, but a dying snake can still bite you. So, I bring that up because there is this hybrid model that's emerging because these elephants eventually they figure it out. And so, an example would be, we talked about Cloudera and so forth, but the better example, I think, is IBM. What IBM has done to embrace open source with investing years ago a billion dollars into Linux, what it's doing with Spark, essentially trying to elbow its way in and say, "Okay, "now we're going to co-opt the ecosystem. "And then, build our proprietary pieces on top of it." That, to me, that's a viable business model, is it not? >> Yes, I'm sure it is and to John's point with the Mule going IPO and with Cloudera having successfully built a $250 million, $261 million business is testimony, yeah, it's a testimony to the fact that companies can be built. Now, can they be more efficient, sure they can be more efficient. However, my entire comment on this is why are you doing open source? What is your intent of doing open source, to be seen as open, or to be truly open? Because, in our philosophy if you a add a slim layer of proprietariness, why are you doing that? And, as a businessman I'll tell you why you increase the stickiness factor by locking in your customer, right? So, let's not, again, we're having a frank conversation, proprietary code equals customer lock in, period. >> Agreed. And, as a business model-- >> I'm not sure I agree with that. >> As a business model. >> Please. (laughs) We'll come back to that. >> So, it's a customer lock in. Now, as a business model it is, if you were to go with the business models of the past, yes I believe most of the analysts will say it a stickier, better business model, but then we would like to prove them wrong. And, that's our mission as open source purely. >> I would caution though, Amazon's the mother of all lock in's. You kind of bristled at that before. >> They're not, I mean they use a lot of open source. I mean, did they open source it? Getting back to the lock in, the lock in is a function of stickiness, right? So, stickiness can be open source. Now, you could argue that Horonworks through they're relationship with partnering is a lock in spec with their stickiness of being open. Right, so I come back down to the proprietary-- >> Dave: My search engine I like Google. >> I mean Google's certainly got-- >> It's got to be locked in 'cause I like it? >> Well, there's a lot of do you care with proprietary technology that Google's built. >> Switching costs, as we talked about before. >> But, you're not paying for Si-tch >> If the value exceeds the price of the lock in then it's an opportunity. So, Palma Richie's talking about the hardened top, the hardened top. Do you care what's in an Intel processor? Well, Intel is a proprietary platform that provides processing power, but it enables a lot of other value. So, I think the stickiness factor of say IBM is interesting and they've done a lot open source stuff to defend them on Linux, for example they do a (mumbles) blockchain. But, they're priming the pump for their own business, that's clear for their lock In. >> Raj wasn't saying there's not value there. He's saying it's lock in, and it is. >> Well, some customers will pay for convenience. >> Your point is if the value exceeds the lock in risk than it's worth it. >> Yeah, that's my point, yeah. >> 1005, 100%. >> And, that's where the opportunity is. So, you can use open source to get to a value projectory. That's the barriers to entry, we seen 'em on the entrepreneurship side, right? It's easier to start a company now than ever before. Why? Because of open source and cloud, right? So, does that mean that every startup's going to be super successful and beat IBM? No, not really. >> Do you thinK there will be a red hat of big data and will you be it? >> We hope so. (laughs) If I had my that's definitely. That's really why I am here. >> Just an example, right? >> And, the one thing that excites us about this this year is as my former boss used to say you could be as good as you think you are or the best in the world but if you're in the landline business right now you're not going to have a very bright future. However, the business that we are in we pull from the market that we get, and you're seeing here, right? And, these are days that we have very often where customer pool is remarkable. I mean, this industry is growing at, depending on which analyst you're talking to somewhere between 50 to 80% ear on ear. All right, every customer is a prospect for us. There isn't a single conversation that we have with any organization almost of any size where they don't think that they can use their data better, or they can enhance and improve their data strategy. So, if that is in place and I am confident about our execution, very, very happy with the technology platform, the support that we get from out customers. So, all things seem to be lining up. >> Raj, thanks so much for coming on, we appreciate your time. We went a little bit over, I think, the allotted time, but wanted to get your insight as the new President and Chief Operating Officer for Hortonworks. Congratulations on the new role, and looking forward to seeing the results. Since you're a public company we'll be actually able to see the scoreboard. >> Raj: Yes. >> Congratulations, and thanks for coming on the CUBE. There's more coverage here live at Dataworks 2017. I John Furrier, stay with us more great interviews, day two coverage. We'll be right back. (jaunty music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Jose, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE! Covering Data Works Summit 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host George Gilbert. We are live on day one of the Data Works Summit in San Jose in the heart of Silicon Valley. Great buzz in the event, I'm sure you can see and hear behind us. We're very excited to be joined by a couple of fellows from IBM. A very longstanding Hortonworks partner that announced a phenomenal suite of four new levels of that partnership today. Please welcome Asad Mahmood, Analytics Cloud Solutions Specialist at IBM, and medical doctor, and Linton Ward, Distinguished Engineer, Power Systems OpenPOWER Solutions from IBM. Welcome guys, great to have you both on the queue for the first time. So, Linton, software has been changing, companies, enterprises all around are really looking for more open solutions, really moving away from proprietary. Talk to us about the OpenPOWER Foundation before we get into the announcements today, what was the genesis of that? >> Okay sure, we recognized the need for innovation beyond a single chip, to build out an ecosystem, an innovation collaboration with our system partners. So, ranging from Google to Mellanox for networking, to Hortonworks for software, we believe that system-level optimization and innovation is what's going to bring the price performance advantage in the future. That traditional seamless scaling doesn't really bring us there by itself but that partnership does. >> So, from today's announcements, a number of announcements that Hortonworks is adopting IBM's data science platforms, so really the theme this morning of the keynote was data science, right, it's the next leg in really transforming an enterprise to be very much data driven and digitalized. We also saw the announcement about Atlas for data governance, what does that mean from your perspective on the engineering side? >> Very exciting you know, in terms of building out solutions of hardware and software the ability to really harden the Hortonworks data platform with servers, and storage and networking I think is going to bring simplification to on-premises, like people are seeing with the Cloud, I think the ability to create the analyst workbench, or the cognitive workbench, using the data science experience to create a pipeline of data flow and analytic flow, I think it's going to be very strong for innovation. Around that, most notable for me is the fact that they're all built on open technologies leveraging communities that universities can pick up, contribute to, I think we're going to see the pace of innovation really pick up. >> And on that front, on pace of innovation, you talked about universities, one of the things I thought was really a great highlight in the customer panel this morning that Raj Verma hosted was you had health care, insurance companies, financial services, there was Duke Energy there, and they all talked about one of the great benefits of open source is that kids in universities have access to the software for free. So from a talent attraction perspective, they're really kind of fostering that next generation who will be able to take this to the next level, which I think is a really important point as we look at data science being kind of the next big driver or transformer and also going, you know, there's not a lot of really skilled data scientists, how can that change over time? And this is is one, the open source community that Hortonworks has been very dedicated to since the beginning, it's a great it's really a great outcome of that. >> Definitely, I think the ability to take the risk out of a new analytical project is one benefit, and the other benefit is there's a tremendous, not just from young people, a tremendous amount of interest among programmers, developers of all types, to create data science skills, data engineering and data science skills. >> If we leave aside the skills for a moment and focus on the, sort of, the operationalization of the models once they're built, how should we think about a trained model, or, I should break it into two pieces. How should we think about training the models, where the data comes from and who does it? And then, the orchestration and deployment of them, Cloud, Edge Gateway, Edge device, that sort of thing. >> I think it all comes down to exactly what your use case is. You have to identify what use case you're trying to tackle, whether that's applicable to clinical medicine, whether that's applicable to finance, to banking, to retail or transportation, first you have to have that use case in mind, then you can go about training that model, developing that model, and for that you need to have a good, potent, robust data set to allow you to carry out that analysis and whether you want to do exploratory analysis or you want to do predictive analysis, that needs to be very well defined in your training stage. Once you have that model developed, then we have certain services, such as Watson Machine Learning, within data science experience that will allow you to take that model that you just developed, just moments ago, and just deploy that as a restful API that you can then embed into an application and to your solution, and in that solution you can basically use across industry. >> Are there some use cases where you have almost like a tiering of models where, you know, there're some that are right at the edge like, you know, a big device like a car and then, you know, there's sort of the fog level which is the, say, cell towers or other buildings nearby and then there's something in the Cloud that's sort of like, master model or an ensemble of models, I don't assume that's like, Evel Knievel would say you know, "Don't try that at home," but sort-of, is the tooling being built to enable that? >> So the tooling is already in existence right now. You can actually go ahead right now and be able to build out prototypes, even full-level, full-range applications right on the Cloud, and you can do that, you can do that thanks to Data Science Experience, you can do that thanks to IBM Bluemix, you can go ahead and do that type of analysis right there and not only that, you can allow that analysis to actually guide you along the path from building a model to building a full-range application and this is all happening on the Cloud level. We can talk more about it happening on on-premise level but on the Cloud level specifically, you can have those applications built on the fly, on the Cloud and have them deployed for web apps, for moblie apps, et cetera. >> One of the things that you talked about is use cases in certain verticals, IBM has been very strong and vertically focused for a very long time, but you kind of almost answered the question that I'd like to maybe explore a little bit more about building these models, training the models, in say, health care or telco and being able to deploy them, where's the horizontal benefits there that IBM would be able to deliver faster to other industries? >> Definitely, I think the main thing is that IBM, first of all, gives you that opportunity, that platform to say that hey, you have a data set, you have a use case, let's give you the tooling, let's give you the methodology to take you from data, to a model, to ultimately that full range application and specifically, I've built some applications specific to federal health care, specifically to address clinical medicine and behavioral medicine and that's allowed me to actually use IBM tools and some open source technologies as well to actually go out and build these applications on the fly as a prototype to show, not only the realm, the art of the possible when it comes to these technologies, but also to solve problems, because ultimately, that's what we're trying to accomplish here. We're trying to find real-world solutions to real-world problems. >> Linton, let me re-direct something towards you about, a lot of people are talking about how Moore's law slowing down or even ending, well at least in terms of speed of processors, but if you look at the, not just the CPU but FPGA or Asic or the tensor processing unit, which, I assume is an Asic, and you have the high speed interconnects, if we don't look at just, you know what can you fit on one chip, but you look at, you know 3D what's the density of transistors in a rack or in a data center, is that still growing as fast or faster, and what does it mean for the types of models that we can build? >> That's a great question. One of the key things that we did with the OpenPOWER Foundation, is to open up the interfaces to the chip, so with NVIDIA we have NVLink, which gives us a substantial increase in bandwidth, we have created something called OpenCAPI, which is a coherent protocol, to get to other types of accelerators, so we believe that hybrid computing in that form, you saw NVIDIDA on-stage this morning, and we believe especially for deploring the acceleration provided for GPUs is going to continue to drive substantial growth, it's a very exciting time. >> Would it be fair to say that we're on the same curve, if we look at it, not from the point of view of, you know what can we fit on a little square, but if we look at what can we fit in a data center or the power available to model things, you know Jeff Dean at Google said, "If Android users "talk into their phones for two to three minutes a day, "we need two to three times the data centers we have." Can we grow that price performance faster and enable sort of things that we did not expect? >> I think the innovation that you're describing will, in fact, put pressure on data centers. The ability to collect data from autonomous vehicles or other N points is really going up. So, we're okay for the near-term but at some point we will have to start looking at other technologies to continue that growth. Right now we're in the throws of what I call fast data versus slow data, so keeping the slow data cheaply and getting the fast data closer to the compute is a very big deal for us, so NAND flash and other non-volatile technologies for the fast data are where the innovation is happening right now, but you're right, over time we will continue to collect more and more data and it will put pressure on the overall technologies. >> Last question as we get ready to wrap here, Asad, your background is fascinating to me. Having a medical degree and working in federal healthcare for IBM, you talked about some of the clinical work that you're doing and the models that you're helping to build. What are some of the mission critical needs that you're seeing in health care today that are really kind of driving, not just health care organizations to do big data right, but to do data science right? >> Exactly, so I think one of the biggest questions that we get and one of the biggest needs that we get from the healthcare arena is patient-centric solutions. There are a lot of solutions that are hoping to address problems that are being faced by physicians on a day-to-day level, but there are not enough applications that are addressing the concerns that are the pain points that patients are facing on a daily basis. So the applications that I've started building out at IBM are all patient-centric applications that basically put the level of their data, their symptoms, their diagnosis, in their hands alone and allows them to actually find out more or less what's going wrong with my body at any particular time during the day and then find the right healthcare professional or the right doctor that is best suited to treating that condition, treating that diagnosis. So I think that's the big thing that we've seen from the healthcare market right now. The big need that we have, that we're currently addressing with our Cloud analytics technology which is just becoming more and more advanced and sophisticated and is trending towards some of the other health trends or technology trends that we have currently right now on the market, including the Blockchain, which is tending towards more of a de-centralized focus on these applications. So it's actually they're putting more of the data in the hands of the consumer, of the hands of the patient, and even in the hands of the doctor. >> Wow, fantastic. Well you guys, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. Congratulations on your first time being on the show, Asad Mahmood and Linton Ward from IBM, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> And for my co-host George Gilbert, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live on day one of the Data Works Summit from Silicon Valley but stick around, we've got great guests coming up so we'll be right back.