(dynamic music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another CUBEConversation. This is another very special CUBEConversation in that it's part of a product launch. Today, BMC has come on to theCUBE to launch Helix, a new approach to thinking about cognitive services management. And we're, over the course of the next 20 minutes or so, gonna present some of the salient features of Helix and how it solves critical business problems. And at the end of the segment, at the end of this video segment, we're gonna then go into a CrowdChat and give you, the community, an opportunity to express your thoughts, ask your questions, and get the information that you need from us analysts, from BMC, and also from your peers about what you need to do to exploit cognitive systems management in your business. Now this is a very real problem, this is not something that's being made up. The reality is we're looking at a lot of data-first technologies that are transforming the way business works. Technologies like AI, and machine learning, and deep learning, technologies like big data, having an enormous impact about how businesses behave. These technologies invoke much greater complexity at the application at the systems level and Wikibon strongly believes that we do not understand how businesses can pursue these technologies and these richer applications without finding ways to apply elements of them directly into the IT service management stack. And the reason why is if you don't have high-quality, lower-cost, speedy automation inside how you run your service management overall platform, then it's going to create uncertainty up hiring stack and that's awful for digital business. So to better understand and take us through this launch today, we've got some great guests. And it starts, obviously, with the esteemed Nayaki Nayyar who is the President of the Digital Services Management business unit at BMC, CUBE alum. Nayaki, thanks very much for being here. >> Thank you, Peter, really excited to be here and look forward to our conversation. We are too excited about the launch of BMC Helix and happy to share the details with you. >> So let's start with the why. Obviously, there's a... You know, I've articulated kind of a generalization of some of the challenges that businesses face but it goes deeper than that. Take us through some of the key issues that your customers are facing as they think about this transition to a new way of running their business. >> So, let's put ourselves in the customers' shoes. Then you look at what their journey looks like. Customers are evolving from the online world into the digital world and what we see is, what we call, cognitive world. And the way their journey looks like, especially as customers are entering into the digital world, there are proliferation of clouds. They don't have just one cloud, they have private clouds, hybrid clouds, managed clouds, we call it multi-cloud. So they're entering into a multi-cloud world. In addition, there's also proliferation of devices. It's not just phones that we have to worry about now. As IoT's getting more and more relevant and prevalent, how you help customers manage all the devices and how you provide the service through not just one channel but channel of our customers' or consumers' preference. It could be a Slack as a channel, SMS as a channel, Skype as a channel. So across this multi-cloud, multi-device, and multi-channel, this explosion of technology that is happening in every customer's landscape, and to address this explosion, is where AIML, chatbots, and virtual agents really play a role for them to handle the complexities. So the automation that AIML, chatbots, and virtual agents bring to help customers address these multi-cloud, multi-channel, multi-device world is what we call how we have them evolve from ITSM to cognitive services management. >> Let's talk about that a little bit. We'll get into exactly what you're announcing in a second but historically when we thought about service management we thought about devices. What you're really describing, this transition is, again that notion of how all of these different elements come together in, sometimes, very unique ways and that's what's driving the need for the cognitive. It's not just, you can do multiple clouds, multi-devices, multiple channels, it's your business can put them together in ways that serve your business' needs the best. And now we need a service management capability that can attend to those resources. >> Absolutely. So if you go 10, 15 years back, BMC had a great portfolio. We had Remedy Service Management Suite. We also had Discovery to help customers discover the on-prem assets and provide its service to remedy service management. That's what we had, we were very successful. ITSM, as a category, was created for that whole space. But in this new world of multi-cloud, right, where customers have private clouds, managed clouds, hybrid clouds, multi-devices where IoT is becoming more and more relevant, and multi-channel, customers now have to discover these assets. We call it Discovery as-a-Service but now they can discover the assets across AWS, Azure, OpenStack, and Cloud Foundry and evolve into providing service from reactive to proactive service, and that's what we call Remedy as-a-Service, and then extend that service beyond IT to also lines of business. Now you wanna also provide that service to HR, and procurement, and also various lines of business. And the most important thing is how you provide that experience to your end-users and your end-customers is what we call Digital Workplace-as-a-Service where now customers can consume that service in channel of their preference. They can consume that service through mobile device, of course through web, but also Slack, SMS, chatbots, and virtual agents. So that's what we are combining all of that, that entire suite, we are containerizing that suite using Dockers and Kubernetes so that now customers can run in their choice of cloud. They can run it in AWS cloud, Azure cloud, or in BMC cloud. This whole suite is what we call BMC Helix and helps our customers evolve from ITSM to what we call cognitive services management. >> So that's what BMC's announcing today. >> Yes. >> It's this notion of BMC Helix. >> Yes. >> And it's predicated on the idea, if I can, also of, not only you're going to use these technologies to manage new stuff, we have to bring the old stuff forward. Additionally, we're gonna see a mix of labor, or people, and automation as companies find the right mix for them. >> Right. >> And so we wanna bring and sustain these practices and these approaches forward. Nobody likes a forced migration, especially not in an IT organization. >> Right. >> So that's how we see Helix. if I got this right. >> Yes. >> Helix is gonna help customers bring their existing assets, existing practices, modernize them using some of the new technologies and that's how we get to this new cognitive vision. >> Absolutely. The investments customers have already made in their on-prem assets, in their managing their IT assets, that same concepts come into this new multi-cloud, multi-device, and multi-channel world but now it extends beyond that. It extends beyond just IT to also lines of business and also all these, what we call, omni-channel experiences that you can provide. And this whole suite is, what we call, 3 C's, Helix stands for 3 C's. Everything as a service, Remedy as-a-Service, Discovery as-a-Service, Business Workplace as-a-Service, containerized so that customers can run this in the choice of their cloud, they can run in AWS cloud, Azure cloud, or our cloud with cognitive capabilities, with AIML, and chatbots. And that's how we help them evolve from that existing implementations to this whole new world as they enter into the cognitive world. >> Exciting stuff. >> Absolutely. We are very excited about it. We've been working with a lot of customers already, and we have made really, really good traction. >> So let's do this, Nayaki, let's take a look at a product video that kinda describes how this all comes together in a relatively simple, straightforward way. >> Absolutely. (upbeat music) >> Hi, Peter Burris again, welcome back. We're talking more about BMC's Helix announcement. Great product video. Once again, we're here with Nayaki Nayyar, but we're also being joined by Vidhya Srinivasan who's in Marketing within the Digital Services Management unit at BMC. Thank you very much for joining us in theCUBE. >> Great to be here, thank you. >> So we've heard a lot about the problems, we've heard a lot about BMC Helix as a solution, but obviously it's more than just the technology. There's things that customers have to think about, about how these technologies, how service management, cognitive service management's going to be impacting the business. As businesses become more digital, technology and related services get dragged more deeply into functions. So, Nayaki, tell us a little bit more about how the outcomes within business, the capabilities of businesses are gonna change as a consequence of applying these technologies. >> Absolutely, Peter. So if you look at, traditionally, IT service management was a very reactive process. Every ticket that came in was manually created, assigned, and routed. That was a very reactive process. But as we enter into this cognitive world and you apply intelligence, AIML, you evolve into what we call a proactive and predictive. Before an issue actually happens, you want to resolve that issue. And that's what we call the cognitive services management. And the real business outcomes, you put yourself in a customer's shoes who's providing this service and evolving into this proactive, predictive, and cognitive world, they wanna provide that service at the highest accuracy, at the highest speed, and the lowest cost. That's what is gonna become competitive advantage for every company indifferent of the industry. They could be in a telco, they could be in high-tech, or pharmaceutical. It doesn't matter which industry they are in, how they provide this service at the highest accuracy, highest speed, and lowest cost is gonna be fundamentally a competitive advantage for these customers. >> And when we talk about accuracy, again we're not just talking about accuracy in a technology context. We're talking about accuracy in terms of a brand promise, perhaps. >> Absolutely. >> Or a service promise, or a product promise. >> Yes. >> That's the context. We wanna make sure that the customer is getting what they expect fast, with accuracy, and at low cost. >> Right, every time you tweet or you're SMS-ing your service provider, you expect that response to be at the highest accuracy, at the speed, and the cost. >> So when we start talking about multi-channel, Vidhya, what we're really saying is that this is not just your, you know, this is not just service management for the traditional technology service desk. We're talking about service management for other personas, other individuals, other consumers as well. Take us through that a little bit. >> Yeah, that's right. So we actually take a very holistic approach, right, across the enterprise. So we have end-users who are, at the end of the day, the key subscribers or consumers of our service and we wanna make sure they're very happy with what we provide. We have the agents which kinda goes to the IT persona that people know about in the service desk. But then, as Nayaki said earlier, it's also about extending to a lines of business so you have HR agents, right, people who support HR requests, people who support facilities or procurement request. So making sure that the agent persona is able to do everything that they need to do at the most efficiency level that they can so that they can meet their SLAs to their end consumers is a big part of what Helix, BMC Helix and cognitive service management can provide. And ultimately, when you think about this transformation and where they wanna go, there's a lot of custom applications and custom needs that businesses have. So really thinking about the developer persona and how you actually embed and build intelligent applications through our cognitive microservices that BMC Helix provides is a big part of that value proposition we provide. So as you navigate through this journey and become a cognitive enterprise, how do you make sure that all of these personas throughout your enterprise is able to deliver and get value out of this is what BMC Helix provides for the whole enterprise. >> So the whole concept of incorporating these cognitive capabilities into a service management stack allows us to not only envision, in a traditional way, more complex applications but actually extend this out to new classes of users because we are masking a lot of the complexity and a lot of the uncertainty associated with how this stuff works from that customer. >> That's correct. >> For end-users, for agents, and for developers, and consumers, and customers too. >> Great. >> That's good. >> So you know what... Great conversation. But let's hear what a customer has to say about it, shall we? >> Absolutely, okay. >> My name is Marco Jongen. I work for a company called DSM. And I'm the Director for Service Management within the Global Business Services department. Royal DSM is a global science-based company active in health, nutrition, and materials. And by connecting our unique competencies in life science and in material sciences, DSM is driving economic prosperity, environmental progress, and social advance to create sustainable value for all stakeholders simultaneously. The Global Business Service department is serving the 20,000 employees of DSM spread over 200 locations globally. We are handling, annually, about 600,000 tickets, and we are supporting four business functions: finance, HR, procurement, and IT. We started together with BMC on a shared services transformation across IT, HR, finance, and procurement. And we created a unified ticketing system and a self-service portal using the Remedy system and the Digital Workplace environment. And with this, we are now able to handle all functions in one unified ticketing tool and giving visibility to all our employees with questions related to finance, HR, purchasing, and IT. We were still have and involved with BMC in bringing this product to the next level and we are very excited in the work we have done with BMC so far. >> That was great to hear Royal DSM is transforming its shared services organization with cognitive services management. But, Nayaki, there's no such thing as an easy transformation especially one of this magnitude. We're talking about digital business which is, we're using data assets differently, it's affecting virtually every feature of business today. And now we've got a technology set that's gonna have potentially an enormous impact on IT but everything that IT is being, or everywhere that IT is being employed. That kind of a transformation is not something that people do lightly. They expect their suppliers to help them out. So what is BMC gonna do to ensure that customers are successful as they go through this transformation to cognitive services management? >> Absolutely, Peter. I always say these transformations are not one-month, two-month transformations. These are multi-year transformations and it's a journey that customers go through. We partner very closely with customers in this journey, assessing their requirements, understanding what their future looks like, and helping them every step of the way. Especially in service management, this change, this transformation that is happening, is gonna be very disruptive to their end-to-end processes. Today, all service desks are manned by individuals. Every ticket that comes in gets manually created, assigned, and routed. But if you fast forward into the future world in the next two to three years, that service desk function, which is especially level zero, level one, level two, service desk function, will completely get replaced by bots or virtual agents. It could be 50-50, 70-30, you can pick what the percentage-- >> Whatever the business needs. >> Right? But it is coming. And it is very important for customers to see that change and that transformation that is happening and to be ready for it. And that's where we are working very closely with them in making sure it's not just a system transformation. It's also the people side and the process that have to change. And companies who can do that, what we call cognitive service management using bots and virtual agents at the highest accuracy, highest speed, and the lowest cost, I keep coming back to that because that is what is gonna give them the highest competitive advantage. >> Lot to think about. >> Absolutely. >> Exciting future, crucial for IT if it's gonna succeed moving forward, but even if the business choose to use cloud, you're going to need to be able to discover and sustain service management at a very, very high level. >> Absolutely. How we discover, how we help them discover, how we help them provide that service proactively, predictively, and provide that experience through omni-channel experiences, what this whole thing brings together for our customers. >> Excellent, this has been a great conversation. Nayaki Nayyar, President of BMC's Digital Services Management business unit. Thank you very much for being here on theCUBE and working with us to help announce Helix. Now don't forget folks, that immediately after this, we'll be running the CrowdChat. And in that CrowdChat, your peers, BMC experts, us analysts will be participating to help answer your questions, share experience, identify simpler ways of doing more complex things. So join us in the CrowdChat. Once again, Nayaki, thank you very much. >> Thank you, Peter, and thank you everyone. Thank you all.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCube, covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back to The Cube's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18, I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my cohost, Dave Vellente. The biggest conference of ServiceNow, 18,000 people here at the Venetian. We're joined now by Marc Talluto, he is the DXC Fruition Global Practice Lead at DXC. Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you for having me, appreciate it. >> So let's start out by telling our viewers a little bit about what you do in your role within the organization. >> Sure, you know, just a brief history, so I was one of the co-founders and CEO of Fruition Partners. So we were acquired by CSC, now DXC, about almost three years ago and within DXC, you know, DXC made a very conscious decision to use ServiceNow as kind of a pivot point to digital transformations for the customers. So by acquiring Fruition and then further investments, so we've done acquisitions in Australia, mainland Europe, the Netherlands, we've really consolidated a lot of the best regional partners inside one DXC Fruition practice. So within this practice, that's where we do a lot of our transformation work with customers that are starting or continuing their ServiceNow journey. >> Marc you and I met in the early part of this decade when this show was a lot smaller and it was, you know, well under, maybe around 5,000, probably even a little bit smaller than that. And it was companies like Fruition that got in early. You didn't see the CSC/DXCs and the other big systems integrators and this thing has just exploded. What's your perspective on the last five, six years? >> Oh boy, well I will say a lot of this is driven, a lot of the growth, not just from ServiceNow but from the GSIs, the global system integrators, that really see ServiceNow, how it can really be applied to their customer base. And so in the last five years you went from people that were interested but really didn't understand what it could mean, 'cause you know, if it's perceived only as a ticketing tool it's like, oh, that's not important. But as it's now seen as a, really a service manager platform, that getting in and servicing IT is just a way to go help HR, to go help suck ups, all these other venues. So what we're seeing is really an explosion of the GSI community here trying to do acquisitions like we've done. So there's been about, in the last five years, 17 different acquisitions of all those regional players into those various global SIs. But then those global SIs themselves, as we've seen on some of the presentations here, I and DXC ourselves, we're now using ServiceNow internally as a way to automate a lot of our internal processes. Used to be what we called Customer Zero or the Lighthouse Account is now the GSI themselves. So I think they've really embraced the message we've been kind of saying all along, which is, yes it's good for IT, but it's really good for how you operate all your shared services' businesses. So that's been, and it's been just accelerating every year. >> Yeah, remind me, so when you started Fruition did you start with ServiceNow or did you have, had you had experience with other platforms before that? >> Yeah, so we actually started in 2003, so about five years before we ever met ServiceNow. >> Dave: There was no ServiceNow, really. >> No, yeah, so we were used to using the remedies of the world, I mean, the other kind of various tools that were out there. But we also weren't a system integrator when we started. We were an, it's funny 'cause you hear the messaging now, organizational change is more important, customer success is more important. Those are really the roots of our company. We were like, listen, the process needs to be better. You know, we're pouring in to governance and all these things, we could use Remedy, we could use other tools but we need to really figure out why people are choosing to engage to do service management or they just kind of go off and do their own thing. So for those five years that's all we did was talk to organizations about crawl, walk, run. How are you maturing from fragmented service offerings, fragmented support, to really kind of being able to centralize those operations and then extend outside of IT? And when we met ServiceNow it was like, it's like they were telling us what we've been telling customers for years so I was like, that's great. >> The lack of a tool, a platform, that really does what ServiceNow does, in a way it might've been a tailwind for your business 'cause complexity, but on the other hand you had to respond and you jumped on it early. I mean I would think a lot of SIs might've said, oh no, that takes complexity out, complexity is cash for us. You guys had a different philosophy, you said were going to get in early, talk about that journey, that position. >> True, well you know when we first met ServiceNow, like I said, 2008 when they were about 40 people total, you know, their entire company. And I think we were 10. So we were almost, you know, similar sizes. But you know what we were able to provide ServiceNow was explaining the customer journey. That the technology was very important, it was very lightweight and nimble but that customer journey, that customer needed to understand, what should I do first, what should I do next? What should my one year, two year, three year look like? And that's something that we've always kind of held, that we saw ServiceNow also as being this platform. We believed in the Glidefast story which was ServiceNow before ServiceNow, maybe we were one of the first ones to say, there's IT service managers, let's just talk about cloud service management, enterprise service management. So I feel like their story and our story, we've kind of been maturing together as we've seen customers really adopt the platform. And some of the great case studies that we've seen over the years, those have been our customers that we've helped encourage to say, what's the difference between an asset that's in IT and an asset that's in manufacturing, right? These are the same disciplines so let's help them go out there and do that. So it's been, it's obviously been a tidal wave of work. It's been very interesting expanding globally and you know, this is just a result of a lot of hard work on everybody's part. >> We're sort of, at this conference we're hearing that this is a real moment in time, when you were describing talking to companies, trying to understand those who were sort of happy to operate in this fragmented way versus those that were truly committed to a technological change and bringing things together. Is that true in your mind, that there really is a recognition on the part of companies and employers? This is, we need to get better at this. >> You know what we're hearing? We're hearing from very large enterprises, some of them and even Aerospace and Defense that are like, we have to recruit younger talent. They do have aging populations that'll be exiting their workforce. I see this from universities that recruit, obviously students, but it's then the workforce. The expectation is now so much higher that their experience with IT inside their employer is much closer to their experience as a consumer. We've been saying it for years but now it's really become a business imperative as customers, I should say as our customers, they are trying to make their workforce happier. Well not only just more productive, more engaged, but also, you know, retention. It's, I feel like it's the moment of the worker themselves. And look at other economic factors, unemployment's at a historic low. Finding people, you're competing for your own workforce to come work for you. They can't show up and you give them a Windows 95 machine or like an Office 2001 product suite, they're like, that's a reflection of how you as a company actually operate so all of those are kind of coming together in to this consumer like experience for the employees of our customers. >> And a lot of talk about new ways to work, the future of work. So what's your expectation going forward for how that affects business, affects your business, organizations? Sounds like they're closing the gap between consumer experiences and enterprise experiences, what's next? >> So you know, big word, friction, been frictionless. Right, like where's the efficiency, what is the friction in different departments working together? I think as people really do adopt this, call it the service manager platform, that system of engagement, once those silos start to come down, once they start to share that data, we see it in individual customers, they kind of go through this aha moment. They've cleaned up their data sources, they realize everything's on one platform, and then they're like, can't I build this, can't I build that, can't I build that? Yeah, you can, and it really starts to accelerate. So I think we'll see the barriers of these business units really fall, I think IT's role is going to shift to be almost a, we talk about a service management office not a project management office. So the service management office is, how well are all of my services, whether it's HR, whether it's finance, how are those services being consumed by my employees? So I think we'll see that pivot, it gets away from IT being more T, the technology, and more to the I. Like what information and services am I providing? I think really we are at that catalyst and as people start to adopt that it moves much more quickly from here. >> What's next, what is, going forward what do you see as the DXC ServiceNow strategy? >> Boy, so this is something that we've been working, so DXC's only been in existence for one year, right? But it came from HBES, it came from CSC, right, 26 billion dollar company, 180,000 people. DXC is putting all of their investment strategy around digital transformation, behind ServiceNow. So we have another team here that focuses completely on building ServiceNow offerings that are behind all the other DXC offerings. So what do I mean by that? The difference is whereas Fruition will go up to a customer and say, we'll help you do ServiceNow work, the platform DXC team says, we want to deliver cloud orchestration, we want to deliver desktop and mobility workforce call centers, but all of those are powered by ServiceNow at the back end, all of our analytics so we do a lot of other things as DXC, obviously billions of dollars worth but we're switching that all to be standardized on ServiceNow. So we're actually breaking down the silos in our own company of how our different departments work together. So if a customer buys a cloud orchestration platform and they're also a workplace and mobility customer and they also have maybe the HR BPO, that's all on ServiceNow. The DXC platform, DXC, built on ServiceNow. So that's everything DXC's throwing at it is to be that player. >> And do you see ServiceNow, is that the platform of platforms? >> Marc: Yes. >> And I mean, you guys really are a technology agnostic. But if it fits you'll use it. >> Well we're an independence offer provider. We don't create our own products like an IBM might or somebody else might and basically put those products in front of a customer when they're really not the right fit. >> So, I mean, you think we had John Donaho on early and he said, look, there's WorkDay and there's SalesForce and there's SAP, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We want to be the connective tissue to those platforms. Software companies are funny though, they all want to be the connective tissue. But if this is what ServiceNow does, so, do you feel like they are in a unique position to be that platform of platforms and-- >> I really do, and we've worked with a lot of other software companies that want to connect in to that ServiceNow ecosystem because what we find is other software products are like, listen, I might be really good at security, intrusion detection, but do I want to create a work flow? And I want to create the CMDB, that means that I have to go build an entire almost secondary product to my core competency. So if I'm really good at anti virus, if I'm really good at intrusion detection, even if I'm really good at reporting I still need people to act on the information I'm providing them. But I don't want to build that action engine, so that's what they're almost setting up their own boundary, saying let ServiceNow be the action engine for me and we'll just plug in to them. They're becoming the standard for how customers work between silos. >> Great, well Marc, thank you so much for coming on the show, this has been really fun talking to you. >> It's my pleasure, thank you, great to see you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante, we will have more from ServiceNow Knowledge18 just after this. (upbeat techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2017. Presented by AWS, Intel and our ecosystem of partners. >> Welcome back, we are live here in Las Vegas, located at the Sands. Day three of our coverage here at re:Invent. AWS starting to wrap things up, but still, I think, making a very major statement about the progress they're making in their making in their market. 45,000 plus attendees here, thousands of exhibitors and exhibit space being used here in hundreds of thousands of square footage. Sort of a reflection of the vibrancy of that market. I'm with James Kobielus, who's the lead analyst at Wikibon and we're joined, once again, second appearance on theCUBE in one day, how 'bout that for Nayaki Nayyar, who is the President of Digital Services Management at BMC. Glad to have you back, we appreciate the time. >> Thank you, John, thank you, Jim. Great to be here and I'm becoming a pro at this, right? >> You are. >> My second time of the day. >> We'll punch your card and you win a prize by being on theCUBE more than once a day. >> Twice in four hours, I mean, that's a pretty good track record. >> We'll pick up your toy, you know. >> Tell me about, first off, just your thought about the show in general. I mean, you've been in this environment for some time now, but I'm kind of curious what you think about what you're seeing here and the sense of how this thing's really taking off. >> So, first of all, it's just the energy, the vibe, the fun that we're having here is just amazing. But, I do want to drop to the keynote that Andy did yesterday, it's just phenomenal the pace at which AWS is innovating. Just to be releasing over 1300 features in a year, that is phenomenal. >> James: I think he said innovations in a year. >> Features a year. >> Did he say features, okay. >> Yeah, I think so. But, independent of that, I'm just saying the pace at which, and their model of new stuff that they're bringing to the market is just phenomenal. For customers like us, vendors, it's just phenomenal. >> We hear a lot about, I mean, it's the buzzword, digital transformation and all that. So, what does it really mean to service? What transformation is happening in that, what is that pushing you on that side of the fence to have to be thinking about now? >> You said the word, digital, and sometimes it's very hyper-used. And what we have done at BMC, since our core is service management, we have defined what service management looks like for our customers in this digital age. And we have defined it, because we were primarily in I.T. service management for the last 10-15 years, the future of the service management in this digital world is what we call cognitive service management. Where service management is no longer just reactive, it is proactive and it is also a conversational through various agents like chatbots, or Alexa or virtual agents. So, it's a complete transformation that we are experiencing and we are driving most of that change for our customers right now. >> And, of course, the word cognitive signals the fact that there's some artificial intelligence going on behind the scenes, possibly to drive that conversational UI. With that in mind, I believe that, at BMC, you are one of AWS's partners for Alexa for businesses, is that true? And you're bringing it into an I.T. service management context. That's sounds like an innovation, can you tell us more about that? >> Absolutely, so we announced partnership with AWS on multiple fronts. One of them is with Alexa, Alexa for Business, where we do integrate with Alexa for providing that end user experience. So, Alexa was known for consumer world, my son used it all the time. >> Tell me the temperature? >> But now, we are looking at how we could bring it into the enterprise world, especially to provide service to all employees. So that, you don't actually have to send an email or pick up the phone to call a service agent, now you can actually interact with Alexa or a chatbot to get any service you need. So that's what we call omni-channel experience for providing that experience for end users, employees, customers, partners, anyone. >> So, do you have, right now, any reference customers, it's so new? Or, can you give us a sense for how this capability is working in the field in terms of your testing? Do business people understand, or are they comfortable, with using essentially a consumer appliance as an interface to some serious business infrastructure? Like, being able to report a fault in a server, or whatnot. There's a risk there of bringing in a technology, like a consumer technology, before it's really been accepted as a potential business tool. Tell us how that's working. >> That's a very interesting. We are actually seeing a very fast pace at which customers are adopting it. As we speak, I have three customers I'm working with right now, who not only wants to use a chatbot, or a virtual agent, for providing service, not just to employees but to the end customers, also want to use Alexa inside their company for providing service to their employees. So, it's starting the journey, we already have the integration that is working with Alexa. Customers have gotten very excited about it, they're doing POCs, they're starting their journey. I think in the next couple of years, we'll see a huge uptake with customers wanting to do that across the board. >> Well, give me an example, if I'm working and I need to go to Alexa Business, how deep can I go? What kind of problems can be solved? And then, at what point where does that shut off and then we trip over to the human element? >> James: Don't forget where the A.I. fits in to the picture. If you could just have a little bit of the plumbing, not too much. >> So, let me give you like two segments, one is the experience through Alexa, the second one is, where does deep learning get embedded into the process. So, usually every company has level one, level two service desk agents who are taking the calls, are responding to emails for resetting passwords or fixing foreign issues, laptop issues. So, that level one, level two service desk process is what is being replaced through a chatbot or an Alexa. So, now you can take the routine kind of a task away from having a human respond to it, you can have Alexa or a chatbot respond, do that work. The second piece, for high-complex scenarios, is where it switches. So, being able to automatically switch between an Alexa to a live agent, is where the beauty comes in and how we handle the transition. It has all the historical interaction through the whole journey for the customer. >> But then, Alexa forwards any information it has gained from the conversations- >> That interaction history we call it. >> To a human being who takes it to the next step. >> Nayaki: So when I- >> Can a human kick it back to Alexa at some point? >> No, no, we haven't seen that go back. It's usually, level one, level two is where Alexa takes care and then level three is where the human takes care and goes forward. Now, the second piece, the A.I.-ML piece. In a service management, there are a lot of processes that are very, I would say, routine and very manual. Like, every ticket that comes in, customers have millions of tickets that come in on a periodic basis. Every ticket that comes in, how you assign the ticket to the right individual, log the ticket and categorize the ticket is a very labor intensive and expensive process. So, we are embedding deep learning capabilities into that so we can automate, customers can automate all of those. >> James: Natural language processing, is that? >> With NLP embedded into it. Now, customers can choose to use an NLP engine of their choice, like Watson, or Amazon, or Cortana. And then, that gets fed back into the service management process. >> In fact, that's consistent with what AWS is saying about the whole deep learning space. They are agnostic as to the underlying deep learning framework you use to build this logic, whether it be TensorFlow or MXNet, or whatever. So, what you're saying is very consistent with that sort of open framework for plugging deep learning, or A.I., into the, in this case, the business application. Very good. So, developers within your customer base, what are you doing, BMC, to get developers up to speed on what they'll need to do to build the skills to be able to drive this whole service management workflow? >> So, all this work that we're doing with, what we call these cognitive services, they're all micro services that we are built into our platform. That, not only we are using in our own applications, like in Remedy, like in, what we call digital workplace, but also we have made it available for all the developers, partners, ecosystems, to consume it in their own applications. Just like what Amazon is doing with their micro services strategy, we have micro services for every one of these processes that developers can now consume and build their own special use cases, or use cases that are very unique to their business or to their customers. >> So who, I mean we were talking about this before we started the interview, about invent versus innovation, so, on the innovation side, what's driving that? I mean, are these interactions that you're having with customers and so you're trying to absorb whatever that input is, that feedback? Or, are you innovating almost in a vacuum, or in space a little bit, and are providing tools that you think could get traction? >> No, in fact, no, we are not just dreaming in our labs and saying, "This is what we should go do." (laughing) >> James: Dreaming in our labs. >> That's not where the driver is. What's really happening, independent of the industry, you pick any industry like telcos or financial industry, any industry is going through a major transformation where they are under competitive pressure to provide a service at the highest efficiency, highest speed, at the lowest cost. So if I'm a bank, or if I'm a telco, when a customer calls me and they have an issue, the pace at which I provide the service, the speed, and the cost at which I provide that service, and the accuracy at which I provide that service, is my competitive advantage. So, that is what is actually driving the innovations that we are bringing to market. And, all the three things that I talked about, end user experience through bots or through virtual agents, how we are automating the processes inside the service management, and how we are also providing it for the developers. All these three, create a package for our customers in every one of those industries, to address the speed, the efficiency and the cost for their service management. >> John: Go ahead James. >> At this show, AWS, among their many announcements that are building on their A.I., they have a new product called, and it's related to this, the accuracy, it's called Amazon Comprehend. Which is able to build on Polly, their NLP, their Natural Language Processing, to be able to identify in a natural language, entities like, "Hey, my PC doesn't work "and I think it's the hard drive," those are entities. But, also identify sentiment, whether the customer is very angry, mildly miffed, and so forth. Conceivably, you could use, or your customers could use that information in building out skills that are more fine-grained in terms of handing off to level two or level three support, "Okay, we've identified with a high degree of confidence "that the problem might reside in this particular component "of the system, the customer is really out of joint, "you need to put somebody on this right away." So forth and so on. Any thoughts about possibly using this new functionality within the context of Alexa for Business as you were deploying it at BMC? In the future? Your thoughts? >> Absolutely, in fact that was what I was very excited about that, when they announced that. You know, in an NLP, NLP has been around for many years now and there's been a lot of experiments around NLP. >> The first patent for NLP was like in the late '50s. >> But the maturity of NLP now, and the pace at which, like Amazon, they're innovating is just phenomenal. And the real beauty of it would be, when an NLP engine can really become intelligent when it can understand the sentiment of the customer, when the customer is saying something, it should detect that the customer is angry, happy, or on the edge. We are not there yet, I'm really excited to see the announcements from AWS on the Comprehend side. If they really can deliver on that understanding sentiment, I think it would be phenomenal. >> I don't want to get us off the tracks, but it's a fascinating point. Because, as you know words, in a static environment can be misinterpreted one of 50,000 ways. So, how do you get this A.I. to apply to emotional pitch, tone, agitation? How do you recognize that? >> That is where NLP, the maturity of an NLP, is what's gonna be game changing in the long term. For it to be able to know what the underlying sentiment. >> Anger, excitement, joy, despair, I mean, all those things. "I've had enough," can be said many different ways. >> And that's when we'll switch to a live agent, if it's not able to do it, we will quickly switch to a live agent. (laughing) >> The bot gives up, right? (laughing) >> Or is it emotion threshold where a human being might be the best immediate front-line support. >> Just curious, it's fascinating. Well, thank you for the time, we certainly appreciate that. And, we promise, this'll be it for the day. (laughing) All right, no more CUBE duty. But, we certainly wish you all the best down the road. And, like you, I think we've certainly seen, and have a deeper appreciation for what's happening in this marketplace with what we've seen here this week. It was extraordinary. >> Fascinating. >> Thank you, John, it was a pleasure. And really excited to have two CUBE interviews in a day. >> John: How 'bout that? >> But, I think it's a great forum for us to get our message out and get the world to know what we are doing as BMC and the innovations we're beginning. >> We're excited to talk to real innovators in the business world, so, all power to you. >> Thanks for the time. >> Thank you. >> Nice to meet you. Back with more, we are live here at re:Invent AWS in Las Vegas. Back with more live here on theCUBE right after this break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCube covering AWS re:Invent 2017 presented by AWS, Intel and our ecosystem of partners. >> Hey! Welcome back to theCube's continuing coverage of AWS re:Invent 2017 from beautiful Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with my co host Keith Townsend. We're very excited to welcome back Cube alumni Nayaki Nayyar from BMC. The president of Digital Services Management. Welcome back to theCube! >> Thank you Lisa. Thank you Keith. Really excited to be here. I've been here before and I love this forum and how you are able to scale this and get our word around the world on this forum; thank you. >> Well fantastic. So one of the first things I wanted to ask you, you know, we hear buzz words all the time. Every event that we're at no matter what and I wanna know what is Multi-Cloud? What does it mean to your customers? Or do they say "Nayaki, what is Mutli-Cloud? "Do we need one?" >> Yes. So you know that's a very good question. Every customer I go talk to the number one challenge they have is what we call this Multi-Cloud challenge. Because now customers are evolving their workloads. We heard from Andy how everyone is evolving the workloads into cloud. But it's not one cloud. They have hybrid clouds, managed clouds, private clouds you name it. The privilege of clouds is becoming a norm now. And how you help them manage the complexity of these Multi-Cloud is what is very unique for BMC and all the technology that they are releasing in the market is that's our sweet spot right now. >> So when a customer comes and says "help me navigate this process." Where do you start? >> Yeah, so you know the number one. You'd be surprised. When customers are planning the migration or they're in the journey of migrating their workloads to cloud the first thing is they have to know what they own. Discovering their assets and it'd be interesting for most of the CIOs or heads of technology that I talk to they don't even know what they own across all the data centers. So we have a product called Discovery for Mutli-Cloud. Where it can discover all assets customers have on-prim but also assets across AWS. That is a partnership we announced with AWS. And with Azure or any other clouds that they have. And it actually builds a relationship across all of these assets so you can plan if you move one of those assets what is the impact on the rest of the service. That is the beauty of it. >> So Nayaki, I really love the discovery conversation and it is a big challenge for most enterprises. AWS announcing 1,300 features this year alone. Amazing skill. But those assets don't look like traditional CI, configuration items, that we've seen in the past. There's server-less, there's databases. What does an asset look like in BMC so that we normalize that and look at it across multiple clouds. >> There are like technology assets but most importantly when we took a look at an asset it is a business asset. You're providing a service. End to end service. The service could be listing as a service for an eBay website. And for that service you have databases. You have application service. You have code running on various parts. That is what discovery does. Being able to discover for that service. That business service that you have. Delivering to your customers or to your business what all is mapped to that service. So when you actually asses that impact. If you move any one of them or bring any one of them down. What is the impact to that business service. >> So obviously something like a dependency. If I have a listing service for eBay and it's designed for eBay process but I move it somewhere else what does that mean towards basically the employee that needs to go and list an item on eBay their job is impeded. >> Yeah so it immediately detects what impact any one of those assets are moved or brought down or shut down for whatever reason what is the impact on the rest of the relationships and also the business outcome or business service that you are providing. >> So one of the things that John likes to take on is the concept of Multi-Cloud. Getting more into this definition of Mutli-Cloud. Is that we're not running workloads everywhere, are we? Saying that we can't defeat gravity and the speed of light. That you're not going to have AI running and AWS and across object storage and Google. Multi-cloud. How are customers using Multi-cloud? >> Yeah, so I would not say you would not have like 20 clouds that you are using. Typically companies have, of course on-prim, everyone has on-prim, all large enterprises. But then they also have a private cloud of their own. But then have one or two public clouds that they may have workloads. They may have AWS for sure and Azure. So typically that's what a customer landscape looks like. But even within these four or five clouds that you have to manage it's still a big landscape that technology leaders have to manage and secure. >> Talk to us about what you guys have heard this week from AWS. One of the things that you mentioned this year alone over 1,300 new services and features. Last year I think it was 1,117. So the accelerated pace of innovation at AWS is mind blowing. Do you think they probably need like a neck brace? They're going at such warp speed. But I'm wondering how does their pace of innovation with your strategic partnership. How does that influence BMC and what are some of the things that excite you about what you've heard this week. >> So a couple of things. The very first one is for our customers, BMC has what we call Remedy, one of the largest suite for helping customers manage ITSM or IT Service Management. Most of our customers are moving that workload into public clouds like AWS so for us instead of trying to run it our own cloud or in our data centers it's easier for our customers to just move that workload into clouds. So with the pace of innovation that AWS is releasing with 1,300 new features, we don't have to invest in all that. Or our customers don't have to invest on the infrastructure there. We can just focus on the app side, the Remedy side. That's one. The second one I was so excited about was Arora. The announcement of Arora on Postgres. We were actually working very closely with AWS right now on certifying Remedy with Arora and Postgres. We are like few weeks, few months away from that announcment and that release and once that gets out all of our customers should be able to migrate to their gravity system onto Arora with using Postgres as a database which is a huge cost savings for companies on the database side. So those are the two big announcements we are very excited about. >> So, I know this talks to the pace of change. So you guys cutting edge to move Remedy to Postgres on Arora. Serverless for Arora was just announced yesterday. How does that impact? >> That even makes it our job even more easier right? For it to be able to just scale elastically without being like dependent on any one instance or one server is I think this tremendously futuristic and can help our customers and for us not to manage those server assets in AWS. Absolutely. >> So reducing friction. What does it mean to consume Remedy as a service versus worrying about all of that infrastructure. What does that actually mean to your customer? >> So it's not consuming Remedy as a service. It's service management as a service. Right. So if you look at customers want to provide IT Service Management to their employees. How they consume that with a combined solution from BMC and AWS is the beauty of our partnership coming together. >> Let me ask you on that front, what is some of the feedback that you're getting from customers that helps reinforce the partnership with AWS and improve it? >> Yeah, in fact, after we announced the partnership with AWS I would say the intake. The flood of questions I got from customers around the world is they're so happy to hear the partnership because now they can have BMC and AWS at the table discussing how we move their workload, which they had on-prim into AWS and leverage the strength and the power of what AWS gives along with the power of what Remedy gives. >> So service management a huge. You know I've heard CEOs and CIOs call Service Management the ERP of IT. Meaning this is the central point where I go to consume IT services. How does Mutli-Cloud impact the consumption of IT services through something like Remedy. >> Yes. So think of it right. In the past you were providing service management for all your on-prim assets. Now your assets are all over Mutli-Cloud. So it is like Multi-Cloud service management. So we do have the next iteration of Remedy which we call Mutli-Cloud Service Management. So now customers can use launches to provide service for their on-prim assets but all their cloud assets through one service management tool. That's one. But even more little futuristic that Viore announced with AWS is what we call Cognitive Service Management. Is service management a future is not reactive, it's proactive. You detect an issue before it actually happens and proactively provide that service and that is where our integration with Alexa and the AI services come from Amazon. >> So as customers prepare to get ready for Multi-Cloud and the interface into Service Management, what are some of the things that they should be thinking about today? >> So as customers, first of all discover, making sure you discover all the assets, plan the phase at which those assets will move into cloud but then don't forget that at the end of the day you're providing a service to your end customers or end employees. How that service is provided through a single, I would say technology set or single suite, will take them a long ways. So that's where AWS and BMC's suite really becomes very powerful as customers are planning this journey. >> You mentioned Alexa for business and of course we heard all about that this morning. I see a smile on your face. What is that gonna mean for BMC? >> So in fact we announced a partnership with Amazon on Alexa for Business. Well think of it when you go to work and instead of typing a ticket for requesting a service, you just ask Alexa. Alexa, my laptop's not working or my phone is having an issue and it automatically >> Alexa, my laptop. (laughing) >> So that is where we call Alexa for Business where it's not just for consumer world it's not entering into what I call the enterprise world and being able to provide that experience, that end user experience right, through what we call virtual agents and virtual assistants like Alexa for customers and employees to just ask a question and the entire service will be fulfilled right through Alexa. >> So obviously some of the first thoughts that come to my mind when it comes to that type of service. I had an Alexa at home for a little while and I should probably start calling it Echo cause we're setting off a bunch of echos all across the world here. But I quickly got rid of it because my nine year old would come in the room and would say "Order ten cases of bubble gum." And there's no authentication. So, how are those types of enterprise issues getting addressed? >> So, that's what we call enterprise grade. How do you bring enterprise rigor into the technology that is coming from the consumer world. That's why when you ask Alexa for a certain service or a request. It will validate whether you have the authorization to get that service. And all of that integration inside our core ITSM Suite is already done and that's where the power of Alexa plus Remedy really becomes powerful. >> So how many cases of gum do you actually have? >> I don't even like gum so it's gonna take her a while to chew through all of that. (laughing) >> Oh well if only we had more time to explore that. Nayaki, thank you so much for coming back visiting us on theCube and sharing the excitement at BMC. Your energy and excitement for what you guys are doing is electric so thank you for sharing that. >> Thank you Lisa. Thank you Keith. It was an absolutely pleasure and thank you everyone. Thanks a bunch. >> Awesome. And we want to thank you for sticking around with us for my co-host Keith Townsend I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCube live at AWS re:Invent 2017. Don't go anywhere. We have great more segments coming back. (pop tech music)

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

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering ServiceNow Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> We're back in Orlando, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. We're here at Knowledge17. I'm Dave Vellante, with my cohost Jeff Frick. Donna Woodruff is here, she's the service enablement leader at Cox Automotive. Donna, thanks for coming to theCUBE. >> Hi, thank you for having me. >> Good to see you, you're welcome. Tell us a little bit about Cox Automotive, and specifically your role. Are you an IT practitioner by trade, or business process person? Share with us. >> A little bit of everything, actually. First of all, Cox Automotive is a large, privately-held organization that's part of the Cox Enterprises family. We are changing the way the world buys, sells, and owns vehicles. We are made up of five key solution group areas. Everything from inventory solutions, which includes our auto auctions, and everything to get cars from dealerships to our auctions and back out again for their inventory. We have financial services, which provides floor planning to our dealerships so they can buy cars from our auctions. We have media services, which are all about how do you connect the cars that you're selling to retail customers, so autotrader.com, Kelley Blue Book are some notable brands as part of our organization. We develop software around analytics, and an ERP system for dealerships, to help them move their inventory and do their floor planning, so they can maximize sales in their dealerships. And then of course we have international. We are a global company. We have over 34,000 team members that we support. We're a very heterogeneous organization, and that can drive complexity into the organization. My role is, I am the service enablement leader. I am based out of technology, but I look at my role as much broader than that. It's about solving problems for our business and being able to deliver services internally and externally, and help the organization run more efficient and effectively. >> So you've seen, you know, the narrative in IT, and ServiceNow's described that very well over the years, IT getting beat up, and you only call IT when there's a problem, and obviously the platform and the adoption of that have changed a lot of organizations, presumably you experience something similar. So, take us back to the beginning days, the early days of what it was like, the before and after ServiceNow. What led you to that decision? What were some of the drivers, how'd you get there? >> Absolutely. Well, Kelley Blue Book was an acquisition for Autotrader group of companies about four or five years ago, and they had implemented ServiceNow as a help desk ticketing system. When we acquired them, we saw some great wins with the platform that we thought, hey, this really should be our help desk ticketing system. And so it brought under cross that small group of companies, but it was always viewed as a help desk ticketing system. Over time, just like many other platforms, it starts to get highly customized. Fast-forward to a couple of years ago, we had a need. I was supporting HR and communications from a technology liaison perspective. The problem that they were trying to solve was that they have two employee service centers, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, that were staffed by analysts, and they primarily helped our auto auction personnel deal with their benefits and questions around just HR. All the way down to time sheet corrections and things like that. They came to me with this problem, and they said, "You know, we've been using Remedy to some extent." We were in a transitional time in the organization where we were collapsing our help desk tools onto ServiceNow, and they said, "We need some help, here." "We just want to do a few requests." Well, we identified early on as that liaison that I really think that this ticketing platform can do what you need it do. Myself along with a business analyst and an intern sat down with the business, we understood the requirements, and that was the launch of our HR portal. While we were in there-- >> Just you, an analyst, and an intern. >> That's correct. That's correct. And we weren't developers. It was all about configuration. But we understood the tool, we understand that this is really no different than any other business process, and we set out to deliver the first service catalog around HR services. Since then, we haven't looked back. We learned a lot about the platform. We diagrammed out what was wrong with how the service desk had been highly customized, we sat down with our VP and we just showed him the diagram and said, "We think that this platform can do a lot more." He listened to us, and he turned to us, and he said, "Well, do you guys want the platform?" And I turned to my team, and I said, "Do you guys want it?" We took it on, and since then, in the last 18 months, we have expanded the platform very broadly. We've implemented performance analytics to improve our help desk services. Beyond the HR portal, we are now implementing governance risk compliance, a vulnerability management. We're now doing PPM as well. We are re-looking at our CMDB because we want to do more with automation. We've done some orchestration with storage agility and how we can get those engineers more productive by doing zero-touch ticket requests from our developers to expand file shares and to sunset file shares, or to request new file shares with other applications. >> So what'd you do with all the custom mods, when you talked about the Kelley Blue Book coming over. Did you sort of scrub the hose and start over, or-- >> Well, you know what, we took it back to out of the box, and it wasn't difficult to do. We just rationalized the things that were duplicated across requests and incident, we pulled it back to out of the box, we took an agile approach. My team now is very agile. We do weekly releases on the platform. By bringing it back to out of the box, it allows us to upgrade to the latest major feature releases within a two-week period. Because of that, we're able to adopt and consume the new product enhancements that ServiceNow has to offer very, very quickly. >> So, obviously you had success, or you wouldn't have been able to expand the footprint so radically. How are you measuring success, how did you go from a little bitty thing to a very large thing? >> I think it's about visibility. Visibility and strong leadership support, and showing how we're getting better incrementally over time. I think one of the strategic things that we've done, probably in the last six months, is implement performance analytics, which that started to show the behaviors of how people were working within the platform, how they were addressing incidents, how they were responding to our mean time to response, to our mean time to closure of a ticket, the aging of these tickets. When we first implemented performance analytics, we found a lot of anomalies in the platform. We found orphaned assignment groups, which to the behavior of the organization, they weren't necessarily working the system the way they should be. >> Jeff: Orphaned assignment groups. >> Orphaned assignment groups. Tickets were going in and they were backing up, and nobody was working them. So, allowed us to change the behavior of the organization, to drive consistency in how they were using this, which then made the metrics more meaningful. Now people are running their areas of operation from the platform. >> So the next thing I got to ask you, we talked about it in the open, is behavior. Tech's hard, but it's not that hard compared to people and process. How did you get people at that moment of truth, when I need something, to not send an email like I'm used to, and to actually execute my work through this tool? >> Well, one thing we did that was very unique, and we've continued to do that is as we roll out major feature functionality, we actually create commercials about ServiceNow, about the platform. Internally, we call it Service Station. Everything is associated with a vehicle. We've promoted our brand around the platform as well, and our brand is about doing things more simply, getting things routed to the right people, that's why it's better than email, and demonstrating the power of what it will do to you, and getting those answers more quickly instead of going to your favorite IT person or your favorite HR person. How this platform is helping you get to your answers more quickly, as well as all the self-service capabilities and the knowledge articles around, hey, fix it yourself. You don't have to talk to somebody on the phone. But we still give that personalized touch if they really need help and they want to talk to an individual. >> So really, a lot more carrots than sticks. >> Lot more carrots than sticks, absolutely. It's if you can solve your problem faster, why not? 'Cause at the end of the day, that's ultimately what you want to do. Solve your problem, and get on to the rest of your day. >> How long does it take for a typical employee to go, "Ah, this is fantastic!", and to really shift their behavior and buy in and start selling it, as your advocate? >> I think we're doing a better job now, introducing it to our new hires as soon as they get engaged in the organization, about this is your platform to go to when and if you need help. And here's how easy it is to find the things that you need. It's something that just happens over time, and I think if you address some of those small wins, you create advocates in the organization, and when they have a good experience, they tell others. So some of it's word-of-mouth, some of it is internal promotion. A big part of it is leveraging the platform to get the work done and having a great user experience along the way. >> Donna, you mentioned Service Catalog and CMDB, these are consistently two components that allow customers like you to get more leverage out of the ServiceNow platform. So, specifically as it relates to CMDB, what are you doing there? Do you have a single CMDB across the organization? Is that something you're considering? >> That's probably one of our next big transformational areas. We do have a CMDB within the platform that's been used primarily around the linkages for incident, problem, and change management. But we know that we need to do more with it, and like I said before, we've grown through acquisition, so there's a number of other CMDBs. And we are in the process of bringing that all together onto the ServiceNow platform. Because we're seeing the power of everything else that that connects to. And that's also going to be a key on how we promote more orchestration, more automation, more about the health of our services. >> So, ServiceNow's obviously promoting you guys throughout this event, showcasing some of the things that you've been doing. What've you been talking to other customers about? What are you most proud of? >> Honestly, I'm really proud of my team (laughs), because we are responding to the needs of the organization, and the fact that you can add value through what you do on a day-to-day basis is great. I think one of the most unique things that, in terms of the application, is we actually built an application for our safety auctions. So, as you can imagine, we have a hundred auctions. There's a lot of people working in the auctions. We have everything that a dealership would have, and we have lanes of vehicles running through to be auctioned off with our dealerships. So we have service areas, we have vehicles and people moving about the auction. So safety is a very critical thing for our organization. About a year ago, the safety director came and said, "You know, we have this problem. "We are doing these auctions' safety checklist "around compliance, how can we make "our auctions a safer place?" "You know, we don't have a lot of money, "but we think there's a better way to do it." And they explained the process where they had six area safety managers that were distributed across these hundred auctions, and trying to get the safety message out there through making sure people were wearing their goggles, or that they had all the appropriate OSHA standards in place. So after having a lot of conversations around this, again, we found ServiceNow would be a great solution. We did work with a partner to help us build it, but we took a very manual process and we automated it on the platform. Now we've moved the safety business process to the auctions themselves, where they own it. The general manager's involved, the shop leads are involved in it. And what it's done, it's been a catalyst to reducing our workers' comp claims. We've seen a two basis point improvement over the number of workers' comp claims, which is cost-avoidance, you know. When your average worker comp claim can be around $10,000, that's a significant saving. With a very, very small investment, we saw a 3,000% ROI on this initiative alone. We're bringing visibility to the process, using the platform and the reporting capabilities. It's gotten the general managers and the shop leads engaged and having the conversation about safety. >> This is great, 'cause you got the platform piece of it, and went from basic application delivery to seeing that it is just a workflow tool. >> Donna: Exactly. >> And the benefit of the automation, and now applying it to, I don't think they announced a auto auction safety module this morning. >> No. (laughing) >> Not yet, but we are doing a session... (Donna laughs) >> It's pretty impactful that you were able to see that, execute it with a really small investment, like you said, your initial one with you, an analyst and an intern, and now, really grow and expand the footprint within the organization. >> Yeah, it's really just about business processes in general. You've got everything you need to collect some attributes, or some information, you need to route it or get approvals around it, and then you can measure it. And you can see what's going on with that business process, and then you focus on, how do we improve the business process? The tool helps enable that and facilitate that. >> And how has the conversation around IT value changed, since you started this journey, right? >> Yeah. >> It used to be very cost-focused, I'm sure. Has it evolved to more of a, you mentioned ROI? >> It is, look at it, it's still cost-focused. It's still about savings, but it's also about how do we get things done in an organization more efficiently, with less people pushing paper, and actually focused on solving problems. And being able to measure how we get better in the activities that we're supporting. And then the dollars will follow. >> Dave: Is there a recognition in the business units, that things are changing? >> You know, there really is. One of the areas that we're starting to see real recognition is we're now dipping our toe into customer service management. We brought two platforms together with one of our business units that we acquired in the last year. They were doing some things on Zendesk, they were doing some things on another tool, and they were the same team. So, we've taken that experience, we've brought those agents onto the platform. We didn't change the experience for the customer just yet, because we wanted our agents to be very successful and help them work differently than through email. We pull those channels onto the platform, and now they have a dashboard of these issues in supporting our lenders, who are our customers. Next is really around the portal, in changing the experience for those end customers. Moving it out of the reply to all with email and making it more measurable. We've gotten halfway there, and we see a big growth area there for us, and making a better experience around our customers' support. >> And are you sunsetting some of these other systems as you bring stuff in? >> We absolutely are. I mean, our goal is to eliminate all other ticketing-type systems. In fact, all of the people that are on those ticketing systems, like, "When can we get on the platform?" "We want to be there now." "Help us get there." But bringing things together is going to help us across all of our functional areas, in supporting our customers and our team members much more effectively. It really is becoming our system of action, where you go to get things done. >> Donna, what, from your perspective, is on ServiceNow's to-do list? >> ServiceNow's to-do list. You know, and I've been pretty vocal with ServiceNow, it's like, make it easier for us to use and consume the other capabilities of the platform much more quickly. Allow us to use the great capabilities with some of our external collaborators a little bit more effectively. And I think that's where it is. I think ServiceNow does a fantastic job of bringing more capabilities and maturing all of their service areas. I like the fact that they have two major feature releases a year, and we consume them as quickly as they can send them out, probably faster than some other customers do. And continue to listen to your customers. Just, listen to what our problems are, and our needs are, and continue to answer them. They're doing a good job of that. >> Well, Donna, I have to say thanks for all the great products you guys build. The Kelley Blue Book, we've used it for years-- >> Oh, wonderful! >> And Autotrader, it's a great way to shop for vehicles. So thanks for that! >> You're welcome! >> Dave: Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much. >> Thanks for sharing your story. >> Keep it right there, everybody. Jeff and I will be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from Knowledge17. We'll be right back. (energetic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Palo Alto. It's the Cube, Covering Women Transforming Technology 2017. Brought to you by VMware. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host. I'm joined by Colleen Kapase, she is the vice president of Partner Go to Market Programs and Incentives here at VMware. Colleen thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. >> So you are a Channel Chief, that sounds so, it's a great title I love it. (laughs) Can you explain to our viewers a little bit about what you do? >> Absolutely, and maybe my mom will watch this cause she still doesn't quite understand. >> Mom are you listening, okay. >> What I do. Channel Chief is a wonderful opportunity to drive the sales strategy inside a technology vendor through multiple different partners who sell our technology around the world. What many people don't know in the technology industry is trillions and trillions of dollars of our sales go through partners. In fact we even partner with ourselves. VMware partners with Google and Amazon and Dell and everyone else in the industry to help ourselves sell because customers don't buy a technology, they buy a solution. So much like the retail industry, where clothes are made by a brand, it's not necessarily sold by that brand. It's sold Nordstrom's or Bloomingdale's etc. Same thing in technology. So my role as a Channel Chief is to manage those relationships. VMware has about 60,000 partners worldwide, and so our focus as a Channel Chief is how do I get those partners to sell our technology, and not just sell it, but deliver it, and install it, and architect it, and put a whole solution together because VMware is often sold with many other technologies. The server side, the networking side, the storage side, and put a solution together for our customers. So that's what I get up and think about every day, is how do I get these partners to sell VMware. >> So you, it's a sales role. >> Colleen: It is. >> And are there many other, and you're also in corporate. >> Colleen: Yes. >> Channel Chief. Are there many other women in these leadership roles? >> Yeah, not as much as I would like to see today. But I think it's beginning to grow as a career that's well suited, frankly, for women. It is a corporate role, in many cases, and there's different kinds of Channel Chief. There's a field Channel Chief that's out there meeting with all the different partners, putting together the business cases and how can we sell more in the future. My role, and one that's really growing in the industry is a corporate Channel Chief. We think though the incentives. Almost like the comp plan for a sales person, but it's what's the comp plan for a partner. How do we pay them, what behaviors do we want to reward for. What behaviors do we want to stop rewarding for. And how do we want to move the cheese, if you will, on the sales team that happens every year, it's a very natural thing but we're thinking about these for businesses versus individuals. Another piece is what's the legal requirements of working with us, what's the training requirements, which technology do you need to know, how do we need to increase those technologies. The wonderful thing is a Channel Chief, really, we touch the marketing department, the legal department, the finance department, the sales department, most importantly, the business unit department that creates the technology. How do we sell it. You're almost like a mini CEO within the company. But if you do it at a corporate level, it's also a role that doesn't require a lot of travel. And that seems to be one of the main inhibitors for women that I see in sales, is the road warrior piece is something that just doesn't work for a lot of women. So being a corporate Channel Chief you can be involved in the strategy, doing the research, setting the direction. But have a bit more of a stable home life as well, so you can balance work and home. >> Right, and you can get to a certain point of influence in your career without having to be out there as much. >> Absolutely, but I always refer to it again as that mini CEO because you're really that hub and spoke, you touch so many different departments and you're solving so many company problems that are really at the central piece. Hey, it's amazing, we've created networking virtualization, how are we going to sell it? Who do we sell it with? What does it displace, what does it replace? How do we explain it to customers? Who was selling networking already that could help us do this? Really it's the hub of everything. >> And because you're collaborating with all these different business units, as you say, gets your brain working in different ways too which is fun. >> Absolutely. >> And, not to be generic, but having that collaborative spirit that many of us women have, it really works well for you. You have to be able to understand, and put yourself in the position of finance, of the business unit, of the legal team, and be able to communicate with all of 'em, okay this is how we're going to bring this technology to market. >> So for a viewer out there, that sounds like something I'd like to do, how did you get started? How did you become a Channel Chief? >> Yep, not so interesting story but I'll share with you anyways. >> Rebecca: We only want interesting stories Colleen. >> I came from a family that had a doctor, and a teaching background from my parents. So when I said I wanted to go into business I think they wanted to disown me somewhat, and didn't really know how to guide me, so I was really on my own. Went to the University of Washington Business School and really went to the career center and saw consulting. And in my mind I'm like, ah consulting, I can try different things, do different things and learn more about business to find my niche, and it happened to be a channel consulting company based out of Seattle, Washington. So I actually started as an intern. And there are multiple different channel consulting companies that still exist, especially in the Bay area, in Boston are two of the main headquarters of those. I got to see what is a channel strategist do in hardware vendors, software vendors. I worked for Compaq, I worked in HP, I worked in Inktomi. I quickly learned that software had more monies so that seemed like a good direction to go. There's a small group of folks that understand channel. But they're very willing to train the next generation. So it's a very niche, really profession. If you understand it, and if you listen to the partners, and you bring back their voice within your vendor, you can be very well respected in the industry as well. >> Now you're also on the diversity council here at VMware. >> Colleen: Yes. >> What are some of the things you're working on to make this a more inclusive work environment? >> Great question. Some of the things that we're working on within VMware, that I think is very important, especially because VMware has our engineering background is the math behind the problem statement. How are we doing as a company? We have created wonderful dashboards that really sit down with our leaders and really look at diversity. How many women to we have in the company? How many do we have at individual contributors all the way up in to the vice president level. How many come in from a recruitment standpoint, how many do we promote and how many do we lose? What I've found is, sitting down with our leadership, male and female and looking at the math and the dashboards of where we stand as a company gives us a single foundation to start from, and then figure out how are we going to continue to improve that? I'm sure, as you know, VMware's recently come out with our statistics of being 23%, for instance female. And then we're constantly looking at how can we improve upon that. We have educating people in the programs that we have. People of Difference, our PODS for instance. We have a VM inclusion, People of Difference, POD, around women and that's when we get together and talk about how can we support each other, what are some tactics that we can come with to support each other even just in a meeting. You know you can sit in a meeting, and you know that old adage of you can say something and then possibly a male repeats it and you weren't listened the first time. But what's amazing to watch in VMware, now other women are trained to stop in that meeting, say, ah, actually I think Colleen just said that, so nice of you to repeat that. Handled in a nice almost fun kind of way. >> That's not always easy to do though. >> No it's not. >> I mean, that takes a deft touch. So are you also in those training sessions? Are you, is there sort of an EQ component to it? >> Absolutely, and we practice. So we literally have groups of ourselves, that we go through the training and we practice, and we hold each other accountable, and say in two weeks find one example where that happened to a colleague or yourself and how did you correct the situation or not correct the situation. Let's talk about it, why did you or didn't you. Holding each other accountable seems to be a big, big piece of, I think, the success at VMware. Cause you can discuss the problem and have a support group of agreeing on what the issue is, but not take action to fix it. And so those support groups, and coming together, and saying here's the issue, and here's how I addressed it in my small way, in my one meeting, and those death by a thousand cuts starts to stop, and you find you have alliances with other women who are supporting women, and we're all trying to come together to further the cause, which is a great feeling. >> So, I mean, this sounds as though things are, that VMware is aware of this and is trying to improve the culture. But Silicon Valley gets a lot of bad press, particularly lately, particularly this last week. >> Colleen: Yes. >> Of being an intolerant place, or being sexist. Is it as bad as we're hearing? >> I've certainly heard some of the stories at some of the other tech vendors recently. I'd hate to think it's that way at every single company. I know that Uber's story is recently come up, that's pretty serious, I think. Do I think everyone experiences it as a female at some level, whether it's the joke or the football talk, or not feeling included, or the cigar lounge. I think that happens to some extent everywhere. Did the seriousness of what we're hearing come out in the press happen everywhere, I hope not. I haven't had those types of experience. But I think almost everyone has had it. You know, just a mispositioning of a statement that did offend, or hey, how was maternity leave handled by male leadership. And there's something I'm pretty, pretty passionate about, that we're beginning discussion at VMware, which is a reverse mentor. So we're really asking some of our male leaders to look at having a female or diverse candidate reverse mentor. So someone lower than you, honestly, in the pecking order, telling you, or being there as someone you can bounce something off of. Hey I was thinking of doing this, would this bother you as a woman? Or when they see you say something or do something, or hey did you notice you, you know, leader, you had a panel and it was all men. Really having a relationship where they can have those conversations, cause sometimes what we're finding is the men just really aren't aware. And you want to think that they are, and I think we're so super aware and more vigilant of it that they would be more aware, but I think having the ability as a leader to learn from your team or someone specifically on you team that you have trust. >> But the people who have the reverse mentors, aren't they already a self selecting group in the sense of their already the ones who are aware that there are problems. I mean, I'm just thinking about it, >> Yeah >> It sounds like a great idea, but how do you get that leader who maybe is a little more bullheaded or just unaware, oblivious, to say you need this, you need someone of, who has a different perspective than you, telling you how it is, or telling you what his or her experiences. >> I think that's a great question. Something we're pretty focused on is diversity. We're not necessarily doing it to be nice. We're doing it for business outcomes. I think the hope is, you have, maybe the leaders who are self selecting who come and do the reverse mentoring, are aware of their organization and how they need to improve. But what we can show is, if they work on it over time, they get better business outcomes. And in sales business outcomes is very clear and easy to see. (Rebecca laughing) So the teams that have the more diverse teams, and lean in to the issue, even if they were more self selecting, if they have the better business outcomes, if they have the better sales over time, it becomes less of a, hey the person who is bullish who doesn't want to, he needs you to do this to be nice, it's more, this person got better sales results than you did, so why don't we take a page out of what they did and try some of these things. And I think if we can keep in on business outcomes, that's part of the way we can win. In sales, that's a little easier than on the technical side. >> There's a clear ROI >> Colleen: Absolutely. When you look at it. No, and I think that's a really good point because you do think of diversity training as kind of this squishy thing, that you can't necessarily always quantify. >> Colleen: Yeah. >> What are you, what are you seeing, and what are you hearing from your colleagues, your other Channel Chiefs in terms of what's happening? (sighs) >> Great question. There's not enough of us, so I actually just met with four of them yesterday from Brocade, and Riverbed, and Sungard, and we had a discussion of what's working or what's not working. I think we're seeing a better understanding from all of our peers on male and female, of there's an issue, we're not diverse. The statistics are being published now. We're seeing companies come out, VMware published, where are we at. And you can just kind of look at the numbers and say we have a ways to go. >> So you're benchmarking yourself, but then you're also benchmarking yourself against, >> Against others. >> Yes. >> I think more people are coming out and, you know, I think Facebook, and Apple sort of started some of that trend, but Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, they're all publishing now their percent of leadership that is women. So I think we have an agreement on, we've got an issue, we could see mathematically we have a problem. We need to improve that. I don't think some of the smaller companies have the assets and the resources to solve the problem yet. And they're looking at some of the larger companies, what are you doing, and what tools are you developing and how can we learn from you. Cause when you talk to some of those smaller companies that maybe are more likely to have some of the female leaderships in those positions, they still don't know how they are going to solve this problem completely. >> Thinking about the top women in Silicon Valley, or top women in the technology industry, the names we know that are in the press all the time, the Sheryl Sanberg's, and Jenny Remedy's, who do you think are some of the unsung heroes? >> Oh, unsung heroes. You know, I, in my world, in the channel world I see a much smaller community of women. I see the women in VMware frankly. I think Betsy and what she's done at VMware as our chief people officer, and really taking the issue on, pretty head on, and even, you know, to the point of having the Women Transforming Technology event here at VMware and sponsoring it, and getting Dell to sponsor it, and Pivotal and the other sponsors. I think that's been huge, and that's been a journey watching her on as well. Cause she's been at VMware 12 to 14 years, I think. And having a female founder of VMware wasn't an issue, you didn't think of it, that was actually one of the things used to recruit me here, that i was very excited about at VMware. But over time we saw things change and maybe the dynamics as we grew fast, diversity didn't necessarily grow. And she was the one who said we need to stop, if we need to be thoughtful about this, we need to think. This isn't going to get VMware the best business outcomes, and she's really been pushing the issue quite strongly at VMware. I'm in awe of her. I don't see her discussed as much as Sheryl Sanberg and the luminaries out there, but I've been seeing her battles within VMware and she's been making a huge difference. >> Colleen Kapase, thank you so much for joining us. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, I appreciate it. >> We're at Women Transforming Technology here at VMware. I'm Rebecca Knight, we'll be right back. (techno music) (techno music)