>> Announcer: From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and after many travels around the globe with theCUBE, really happy to be back in the Boston area studio, and happy to welcome to the program first time guest and first time we've had OpenLink on the program, Rich Grossi who's the CEO. Coming up from Long Island, appreciate you joining me up here and looking forward to discussing with you. >> Understood. >> So, first OpenLink, as I said, company, first time we've had on theCUBE. Why don't you give the audience a little bit of background, how long the company's been existing and what the focus is. >> Well, we're celebrating this year our 25th anniversary. So we serve the energy, financial, trading and treasury markets. We're based in Long Island with offices around the world serving about 500 clients or so in those different markets. I'm happy to be here today to talk about some of the innovation that we have going on. >> Great. Before we get into the OpenLink, Rich, give us a little bit about your background. You've been with OpenLink for a good part of the journey. >> I have. I've been with the company for 21 years in a variety of different roles. I've spent some time in operations, in development. Prior to the CEO position I spent some time in operations and prior to this role I was the CTO of the company. >> Okay, well congrats on the new role, Rich. So tell me, what is OpenLink today? You talked about kind of the industries you focus on. How do you fit in the markets today? >> So we are the market leader for the categories I mentioned. So we'll play in the energy and the commodity space. I will plan the financial services, banking, treasury space. We're well-known for our risk management capabilities and we serve top-tier clients in all those markets around the globe. >> Yeah, Rich, it's interesting. I think there's not a single segment in the market that's not going through some significant change. Disruption is on everyone's mind. What's changing for your customers and how is OpenLink really kind of adjusting to meet those needs? >> Yeah, it's always been a high degree of sensitivity towards risk. That's been our strong point as a company for a long time, and we serve the clients through kind of advanced analytics that provide them with that capability. But more frequently, we're seeing total cost of ownership driving a lot of the decisions made by our clients, right. So in markets that have some head wounds coming in and just kind of steady-state markets, looking for how to use technology to benefit them but also reduce the total cost of ownership. >> Okay, and so explain what that means. You say things like risk, things like analytics, you know, data, super important to all customers. How do we make sure they have the right data, how do they make sure that they're not getting a tax on what they have. Where does OpenLink help their-- what do the products look like? >> Yes, I mean, so we have a pretty advanced trading and risk-management platform. We also provide treasury and cash management solutions. And in those spaces what we're doing is we're providing our clients with the ability to manage their risk, manage their positions, take a peek ahead to see what's coming in the markets. Do sensitivity analysis to ensure that as they trade and as they train dex, and to your point, as they manage to the logistics. It's all done with a system capture from front to back, and it's all done with a view towards the risk of the application and a risk of the markets that they're in. >> Okay, you had a recent launch that was OpenCloud. Maybe explain what that is, how that fits with the broader discussion of Cloud. >> Sure, OpenLink's been in the private Cloudspace now for about 11 years. So this was our hosting application. And through those years, we built up the technology to support more of the, kind of, online, so predominantly we're a perpetual-based company, on-prem. And now our clients are looking for a little bit more ownership. A little bit more security. And they're looking for that single vendor to manage their applications within the could. So there's a big transformation in our markets where many of our large tier one energy financial services clients are looking for that reduction of total cost, and they're looking for OpenLink to be the provider that can offer them that service within the could environments. >> Okay, so is this a SAS offering? Is it living on some of the public Clouds? Help us, kind of, get our weeds a little bit. You're a former CTO. >> Sure, so, I mean, it's a similar technology to what we've built over the years. So, we're still managing scaleability and performance. We still have created security in the application. Still managing a lot of the monitoring and logging in application security within that. But it is in the Microsoft Azure environment, so we're working with Microsoft, partnered with them to build up a Cloud environment for our customers, such as they can manage this remotely as you would in any Cloud environment, and then provide all the advantages of Microsoft Azure on top of the technology that OpenLinks built over time. >> Okay, so it sounds, you know, similar to what you were doing before, but a lot of changes. How organizationally do you have to change for this, and maybe walk us through a customer, why would they choose one versus the other? What are the big advantages of the new way? >> Sure, so organizationally, we do have Cloud-dedicated teams now, right? So a lot of knowledge required to take your product, not only Cloud-enable it, but make it feature functionality-rich for the clients within the could. So we've built Cloud operations teams, we built SOx and NOx. We leverage our employee base around the world. We put a lot of technology advantages into the new software that is Cloud enabled. So, things like performance is just a big topic for us. So, allowing our clients to drive greater performance through scaleability and dynamic scaleability within the could. That's a big advantage to our clients. >> Yeah, you think back a couple of years ago if you talked about Microsoft and Google, and the Amazons of the world, it's like, 'Well, I'm worried about the security, the government is challenging.' I was just at one of the bigger Cloud shows and they said security is actually opportunity. You get to kind of get a re-do on security. Government seems to be something that we're sort of doing-- what's your customer's experiences? Is there still hesitancy, or are people, you know, kind of jumping in the waters nice? >> Well, I think there's still the question, and I think it's changing very rapidly for our client base. So, a couple years ago our clients were interested in the could but not necessarily moving to the could. And I think you're absolutely right in the sense that some of them were concerned about the security of their trading data being out in something like Microsoft Azure. Many of them recognize today that the security benefits of a Microsoft Azure, as an example, could be far greater than what they're doing in-house today. And as you look at the technology of OpenLink we've built layers of security on top of everything we used to have within the core application, encryption and the like. And now using some of the key vault technologies and some of the scaleability technologies of Microsoft Azure, we feel like we're able to provide a higher level of security than they even have on-prem using the could up close. >> Yeah, one of the other big advantages if you plug into, kind of, that ecosystem and platform of the public Cloud, what opportunities there-- Microsoft, you think of, like, you know, active directory, all of the business functionality. What do you gain today and maybe give us a little roadmap as to what this looks like down the road? >> Yeah, so our clients are looking for a handful of things. So they're looking for that reductioning of ownership. We've been able to save them on average about 30 per cent, just coming from them their on-prem or their data centers today. They're also looking for that single source of support. So today, we're working with their network engineers and they're DBAs. In the could version we're able to provide them with those same services, coupled with our support applications so that we're providing single line of visibility into their overall trading and risk-management application. And they're also looking for performances, I mentioned before, and security. So with the could application, we're not only able to provide them with the feature functionality of our application, but also the could technology that sits around it. >> One of the other things if you look at, kind of managing the environment versus going to the public Cloud, usually the public Cloud, you know the joke I have is: What version of Azure are you running on? Well, Microsoft takes care of it. A similar thing in your environment? >> Very similar. So, the ability to upgrade, the ability to leverage the scaleability of Microsoft Azure, the new technology coming out in Microsoft Azure. All the could feature functionality, that all comes with it for free. And to your point, providing our clients with a manage service so that we can manage not only their day-to-day environment, but we can also manage the infrastructure and the business needs that they have in using our application. So, all that combined has provided our clients with a great leg up in terms of how they use our software and how they manage it moving forward. >> Yeah, I'm curious: do the customers have to choose one over the other? The on-prem or the could? Do you have some customers that may be migrating, being to the Hybrid Multi-Cloud is kind of a big issue for a lot of customers these days. >> Yeah. So we have a large number of clients today that are still on-prem, and they're probably staying on-prem for awhile. But the evolution of the could as it relates to our client-base is quite rapid. So, a couple years ago we would talk to our clients and they were interested. Last year we announced our proof of concept coming and what we were building. We launched our public Cloud just in quarter three of this year. And the feedback from our client-base was dramatic. So now they're all looking to migrate over. We respond to ROPs quite often and I would estimate maybe about nine per cent of those coming have some interest in the public cloud moving forward. >> Okay, Rich, what do you want your clients to really know about OpenLink? And, the two pieces, just kind of today, and if they knew OpenLink, say, five years ago. You know, what's the big change? >> Yeah, well I think, well we have a tagline that says we like to solve the complex, right? And make it simple. You'll see many of our clients, the bigger names, avengers that are out there using our software to solve really complicated problems, right? So our software is pretty configurable and also addresses some of the larger challenges that we have within the spaces that OpenLink sits in. So, our clients are well-known in that area, and OpenLink is well-known in there, and our ability to solve those problems. When you take that, and you take the total cost of ownership, and you take the public Cloud capabilities and you build all that technology that we've advanced over the past, you know, 25 years, it's a pretty compelling application and company that we work for. >> Alright, well, Rich, appreciate the updates on everything happening at OpenLink. Wish you the best of luck with the could offering. We'll be back with more coverage here. Always check out thecube.net for all the coverage, and thanks for watching this, theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)