>> Man: Live from Madrid, Spain, it's the Cube! Covering HPE Discover Madrid, 2017. Brought to you by: Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid, everybody, this is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with my co-host, Peter Burris, and this is our second day of coverage of HPE's Madrid Conference, HPE Discover. Sharad Singhal is back, Director of Machine Software and Applications, HPE and Corps and Labs >> Good to be back. And Mike Woodacre is here, a distinguished engineer from Mission Critical Solutions at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube, welcome back. Good to see you, Mike. >> Good to be here. >> Superdome Flex is all the rage here! (laughs) At this show. You guys are happy about that? You were explaining off-camera that is the first jointly-engineered product from SGI and HPE, so you hit a milestone. >> Yeah, and I came into Hewett Packard Enterprise just over a year ago with the SGI Acquisition. We're already working on our next generation in memory computing platform. We basically hit the ground running, integrated the engineering teams immediately that we closed the acquisition so we could drive through the finish line and with the product announcement just recently, we're really excited to get that out into the market. Really represent the leading in memory, computing system in the industry. >> Sharad, a high performance computer, you've always been big data, needing big memories, lots of performance... How has, or has, the acquisition of SGI shaped your agenda in any way or your thinking, or advanced some of the innovations that you guys are coming up with? >> Actually, it was truly like a meeting of the minds when these guys came into HPE. We had been talking about memory-driven computing, the machine prototype, for the last two years. Some of us were aware of it, but a lot of us were not aware of it. These guys had been working essentially in parallel on similar concepts. Some of the work we had done, we were thinking in terms of our road maps and they were looking at the same things. Their road maps were looking incredibly similar to what we were talking about. As the engineering teams came about, we brought both the Superdome X technology and The UV300 technology together into this new product that Mike can talk a lot more about. From my side, I was talking about the machine and the machine research project. When I first met Mike and I started talking to him about what they were doing, my immediate reaction was, "Oh wow wait a minute, this is exactly what I need!" I was talking about something where I could take the machine concepts and deliver products to customers in the 2020 time frame. With the help of Mike and his team, we are able to now do essentially something where we can take the benefits we are describing in the machine program and- make those ideas available to customers right now. I think to me that was the fun part of this journey here. >> So what are the key problems that your team is attacking with this new offering? >> The primary use case for the Superdome Flex is really high-performance in memory database applications, typically SAP Hana is sort of the industry leading solution in that space right now. One of the key things with the Superdome Flex, you know, Flex is the active word, it's the flexibility. You can start with a small building block of four socket, three terabyte building block, and then you just connect these boxes together. The memory footprint just grows linearly. The latency across our fabric just stays constant as you add these modules together. We can deliver up to 32 processes, 48 terabytes of in-memory data in a single rack. So it's really the flexibility, sort of a pay as you grow model. As their needs grow, they don't have to throw out the infrastructure. They can add to it. >> So when you take a look ultimately at the combination, we talked a little bit about some of the new types of problems that can be addressed, but let's bring it practical to the average enterprise. What can the enterprise do today, as a consequence of this machine, that they couldn't do just a few weeks ago? >> So it sort of builds on the modularity, as Lance explained. If you ask a CEO today, "what's my database requirement going to be in two or three years?" they're like, "I hope my business is successful, I hope I'm gonna grow my needs," but I really don't know where that side is going to grow, so the flexibility to just add modules and scale up the capacity of memory to bring that- so the whole concept of in-memory databases is basically bringing your online transaction processing and your data-analytics processing together. So then you can do this in real time and instead of your data going to a data warehouse and looking at how the business is operating days or weeks or months ago, I can see how it's acting right now with the latest updates of transactions. >> So this is important. You mentioned two different things. Number one is you mentioned you can envision- or three things. You can start using modern technology immediately on an extremely modern platform. Number two, you can grow this and scale this as needs follow, because Hana in memory is not gonna have the same scaling limitations that you know, Oracle on a bunch of spinning discs had. >> Mike: Exactly. >> So, you still have the flexibility to learn and then very importantly, you can start adding new functions, including automation, because now you can put the analytics and the transaction processing together, close that loop so you can bring transactions, analytics, boom, into a piece of automation, and scale that in unprecedented ways. That's kind of three things that the business can now think about. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, that's exactly right. It lets people really understand how their business is operating in real time, look for trends, look for new signatures in how the business is operating. They can basically build on their success and basically having this sort of technology gives them a competitive advantage over their competitors so they can out-compute or out-compete and get ahead of the competition. >> But it also presumably leads to new kinds of efficiencies because you can converge, that converge word that we've heard so much. You can not just converge the hardware and converge the system software management, but you can now increasingly converge tasks. Bring those tasks in the system, but also at a business level, down onto the same platform. >> Exactly, and so moving in memory is really about bringing real time to the problem instead of batch mode processing, you bring in the real-time aspect. Humans, we're interactive, we like to ask a question, get an answer, get on to the next question in real time. When processes move from batch mode to real time, you just get a step change in the innovation that can occur. We think with this foundation, we're really enabling the industry to step forward. >> So let's create a practical example here. Let's apply this platform to a sizeable system that's looking at customer behavior patterns. Then let's imagine how we can take the e-commerce system that's actually handling order, bill, fulfillment and all those other things. We can bring those two things together not just in a way that might work, if we have someone online for five minutes, but right now. Is that kind of one of those examples that we're looking at? >> Absolutely, you can basically- you have a history of the customers you're working with. In retail when you go in a store, the store will know your history of transactions with them. They can decide if they want to offer you real time discounts on particular items. They'll also be taking in other data, weather conditions to drive their business. Suddenly there's going to be a heat wave, I want more ice cream in the store, or it's gonna be freezing next week, I'm gonna order in more coats and mittens for everyone to buy. So taking in lots of transactional data, not just the actual business transaction, but environmental data, you can accelerate your ability to provide consumers with the things they will need. >> Okay, so I remember when you guys launched Apollo. Antonio Neri was running the server division, you might have had networking to him. He did a little reveal on the floor. Antonio's actually in the house over there. >> Mike: (laughs) Next door. There was an astronaut at the reveal. We covered it on the Cube. He's always been very focused on this part of the business of the high-performance computing, and obviously the machine has been a huge project. How has the leadership been? We had a lot of skeptics early on that said you were crazy. What was the conversation like with Meg and Antonio? Were they continuously supportive, were they sometimes skeptical too? What was that like? >> So if you think about the total amount of effort we've put in the machine program, and truly speaking, that kind of effort would not be possible if the senior leadership was not behind us inside this company. Right? A lot of us in HP labs were working on it. It was not just a labs project, it was a project where our business partners were working on it. We brought together engineering teams from the business groups who understood how projects were put together. We had software people working with us who were working inside the business, we had researchers from labs working, we had supply chain partners working with us inside this project. A project of this scale and scope does not succeed if it's a handful of researchers doing this work. We had enormous support from the business side and from our leadership team. I give enormous thanks to our leadership team to allow us to do this, because it's an industry thing, not just an HP Enterprise thing. At the same time, with this kind of investment, there's clearly an expectation that we will make it real. It's taken us three years to go from, "here is a vague idea from a group of crazy people in labs," to something which actually works and is real. Frankly, the conversation in the last six months has been, "okay, so how do we actually take it to customers?" That's where the partnership with Mike and his team has become so valuable. At this point in time, we have a shared vision of where we need to take the thing. We have something where we can on-board customers right now. We have something where, frankly, even I'm working on the examples we were talking about earlier today. Not everybody can afford a 16-socket, giant machine. The Superdome Flex allows my customer, or anybody who is playing with an application to start small, something that is reasonably affordable, try that application out. If that application is working, they have the ability to scale up. This is what makes the Superdome Flex such a nice environment to work in for the types of applications I'm worrying about because it takes something which when we had started this program, people would ask us, "when will the machine product be?" From day one, we said, "the machine product will be something that might become available to you in some form or another by the end of the decade." Well, suddenly with Mike, I think I can make it happen right now. It's not quite the end of the decade yet, right? So I think that's what excited me about this partnership we have with the Superdome Flex team. The fact that they had the same vision and the same aspirations that we do. It's a platform that allows my current customers with their current applications like Mike described within the context of say, SAB Hana, a scalable platform, they can operate it now. It's also something that allows them to involve towards the future and start putting new applications that they haven't even thought about today. Those were the kinds of applications we were talking about. It makes it possible for them to move into this journey today. >> So what is the availability of Superdome Flex? Can I buy it today? >> Mike: You can buy it today. Actually, I had the pleasure of installing the first early-access system in the UK last week. We've been delivering large memory platforms to Stephen Hawking's team at Cambridge University for the last twenty years because they really like the in-memory capability to allow them, as they say, to be scientists, not computer scientists, in working through their algorithms and data. Yeah, it's ready for sale today. >> What's going on with Hawking's team? I don't know if this is fake news or not, but I saw something come across that said he says the world's gonna blow up in 600 years. (laughter) I was like, uh-oh, what's Hawking got going now? (laughs) That's gotta be fun working with those guys. >> Yeah, I know, it's been fun working with that team. Actually, what I would say following up on Sharad's comment, it's been really fun this last year, because I've sort of been following the machine from outside when the announcements were made a couple of years ago. Immediately when the acquisition closed, I was like, "tell me about the software you've been developing, tell me about the photonics and all these technologies," because boy, I can now accelerate where I want to go with the technology we've been developing. Superdome Flex is really the first step on the path. It's a better product than either company could have delivered on their own. Now over time, we can integrate other learnings and technologies from the machine research program. It's a really exciting time. >> Excellent. Gentlemen, I always love the SGI acquisitions. Thought it made a lot of sense. Great brand, kind of put SGI back on the map in a lot of ways. Gentlemen, thanks very much for coming on the Cube. >> Thank you again. >> We appreciate you. >> Mike: Thank you. >> Thanks for coming on. Alright everybody, We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is the Cube, live from HGE Discover Madrid. Be right back. (energetic synth)

>> Narrator: Live from Nice, France, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe, brought to you by Nutanix. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back. I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching theCUBE's live coverage of Nutanix .NEXT here in Nice. Happy to welcome back to the program Sunil Potti. Fresh off the keynote here, 2200 in attendance here at the second annual European show. Sunil is the chief product and development officer, and Sunil, your team's been busy. >> Yes. >> Product development-- >> Sunil: I hope so. >> 5.5, ton of new features in development, a lot of things going on. So let's step back for a second though, and it's a year after the IPO, I watched The Wall Street guys, they're always like, "Wait, are they boxes, or are they software, "are they infrastructure, are they cloud?" You know, you kind of step back, it's, I liked it, it was, "simplicity takes real genius," and then you're like, to try to appeal to the European cloud, it was "more tea, less clicks." So what's the kind of, as people think of Nutanix, when do we think of you, why do we think of you? >> Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I think there's a bunch of moving parts there, but I think our core thesis hasn't changed from where it was pre-IPO, post-IPO, multiple conferences. I think the core thesis as you know, Stu, is that we fundamentally think folks talk about hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud, the first step is we know public clouds exist, true private clouds haven't been built yet. And they have to be first standardized, commoditized, and then harmonized with the public clouds, right? So I think, from our perspective, the core thesis is the fact that, if you can bottle up the AWS or GCP experience and funnel it inside the data center, there'll be a ton of workloads that stay inside. But with the right experience, for the right cost, right? >> Yeah. >> And essentially, that journey hasn't wavered from our perspective, right? So we're still on that. >> Yeah, absolutely, at Wikibon, we said, you know, cloud isn't a destination, it's really more of an operational model. >> Sunil: Sure, sure. >> So, if we can capture that, as you say, true private cloud, we said, we're starting to get there, and we actually credit Nutanix. So you know, of course, the messaging of enterprise cloud was probably a little bit aspirational-- >> Sure, sure. >> At the beginning, but you're filling in the pieces, you've got the partnerships, you've got the products rolling out, so, let's talk about your bread and butter. You know, what's new, what's launching now, I like that you're as a software company, you show a little bit more. Here's when we test some things out, it's that balance of, for the enterprise it's like, "Wait, is this going to work the way I think it is?" You put stuff out like the community edition first, let people play with it and then you GA it-- >> I think we talked a little bit about it and essentially, rather than me list out a whole series of functionality, I think the way we are also looking at it as well as building it, as well as rolling it out is in the form of what a customer can consume. So we are investing at Nutanix, like, capabilities that cross the life cycle, right? So we're investing and ensuring that communication gets a lot more emphasis because we think this paradigm of one-click data centers is something that people need the ubiquity to kind of play around with, right? So you see community relation from a learning side, then we're looking for capabilities for people to actually say and compare, "Look, Nutanix is one architecture, "we experienced another architecture, "three tiers in other architecture, "maybe public cloud." At some point in time people need the flexibility to actually have in the old world of TPC benchmarks the new world of what I would call production world benchmarks so we had a whole bunch of tools such as X-Ray coming out, then rather than leave it to professional services and so forth, rather than just worry about reducing the number of clicks once you have Nutanix, even before you get to Nutanix, how do you reduce the number of clicks? You get to Nutanix, right? That's where Xtract, which is a very popular tool from us again, that has been shipping for a month, for now, where you can actually click at a certain VM environment, at a certain database environment, and essentially, literally, without a whole bunch of lift and shift move into a private cloud environment, right? >> And my understanding, Xtract is, I could take my VMs really from VM environment to an AHV environment-- >> That's correct. And it also works on databases as well, like SQL databases, and so forth, right? >> Yeah, absolutely, that migration is something that, you know, it's like a four letter word for most people in IT. One of the things that we were early on kind of beating the drum on, is traditional three-tier architecture with the storage, your migration cost was at least 30% of the total cost of ownership because you had to bring data on, eventually you had to take data off, as opposed to, if you really have more like a pool, which is what HCI does, you know, that first, once I get on to it, that's the last time you need to do a migration because now I can move and add, remove, it knows, and we just kind of manage it there. Absolutely the other company I hear talking a lot about this thing is Amazon. You know, they've been working on database migration lots of companies, changing away their environment, and it's something that customers are looking for. >> Yeah, and it's almost like, for us with the public cloud at least you have a genuine sort of big hop in lift and shift, just because of the boundaries. It's a shame if we can't solve that problem without what we call make lift and shift invisible inside the data center at least so that's why we invest in things like Xtract so that people can, look, we're still less than one percent of the market so we expect a whole lot of migration to happen over the next few years. So anything that we can do to kind of accelerate customers to the point of ensuring that their architectural integrity is preserved in terms of environment I think it's a big focus for us. So you're going to see as emphasize Xtract not just for there for VM's or databases to Nutanix on pRAM. We're also going to see that as a fundamental construct for app mobility because imagine Calm as a construct that you're able to go in, proficient work loads and it's on pRAM or off pRAM but at some point in time you want to move them back and forth. You know the thing that we used to always say? "App mobility is slowly coming to fruition "with some of these constructs." >> Calms is the centerpiece of really your multi-cloud strategy. We've talked to some customers that some of the early folks pretty excited about it. A lot of the others have been like, "Okay, well, I've seen some slides and a demo," kind of squinting, looking at it. Reminds me of the early days, "I bet it can't really "do what they say it does." >> I think they have to taste the wine, just like everything else. There were a bunch of early believers who saw the product, who used the product, which we used as an early access program. But we took a step back when we acquired Calm a year ago, we had the choice of releasing a reasonably big product to mainstream. It's been seven years building our product, they had rewritten it two times. So they had already done a rewrite or two. What we took was, we took the time to ensure that it was burned into the Nutanix fabric. It had to fit into a Prism, it had to fit into a life cycle manager, it had to fit into a one-click update. It needs to look and feel like a natural extension versus a power-sucking alien, which is what we've seen with many of our competitor's products where you just buy some things and you put it in there and the more successful it is, the harder it is to homogenize. So we took our time, and that's what you're going to see in 5.5, customers can now actually genuinely use the product. And day one it'll have AHV support, AWS support, very quickly it'll have ESX, and GCP and Azure and it's a separate code train by the way, in a sense that the same code-base but it's being delivered as a service and you're going to see more and more of that paradigm where Nutanix is no longer going to be this blob of capabilities that in itself comes out fast but there's a bunch of microservices now that are going to be released. Not just on the cloud, but also on pRAM. So AFS is a good example, Xtract is a good example, Calm is a good example and now with 5.5 even Prism Central is going to be detached so that you can consume that at a different velocity than the code. >> How do you make sure that you balance that with the simplicity that really is the core piece of your business proposition? >> Yeah, yeah. I mean I think this is where we just have to be measured in ensuring that it's still one single code-base for example. What we want, we can't afford to have 18 different branches. So simple things like that will actually go a long way to make sure that somebody can still go to a console and say upgrade, it checks the right provisions. It's a little bit invisible, sort of like version mismatch of that is our problem, not a customer problem. >> Absolutely, so a lot in 5.5, which we haven't touched there but also really unveiling some of the next step in the journey, what you're working on for the next six months. What's the focus there, ya know cloud is, I think you talked about visible infrastructure to invisible cloud so looks like kind of expanding out and building out some of those cloud services. Take us through some of that. >> So I think the general theme is continue to fulfill our ambition around making infrastructure more invisible and then at the same time in parallel try to make clouds invisible and I'll break it down into three kinds of products. The first one is, we still have our journey, our things cut out to actually fulfill what I would call the A block, the Amazon block for the enterprise, and you can call it the Azure block or you can call it the Alphabet block now that we support multiple clouds. The point being that simple things suggest, we've done a great job of computer storage and virtualization. What about networking? And we've always said look, the problem is not in the data plane not working, top of the ax switches are pretty commodity, they work, you name it. The issue is always in the control plane, when something goes wrong, what are doing wrong, so that's one of the big things coming in 5.5 is built in network virtualization, provisioning, and one-click micro segmentation. And again the point being rather than buy very expensive products such as NSX or some other overlay products where you're virtualizing the network to secure the network. If you go to Amazon, or you go to Google, or you go to Azure not only do they not require to virtualize, the way that micro segmentation is built is genuinely with the simplicity of one click. You take out 10 VM's, put them in a secular group you're off to the races right? And the same paradigm then basically moves to us so in that vein of fulfilling that stack is one dimension. And a couple of key things that are new there that are in the next six months timeframe, not in the 5.5, the fact that when everything's said and done we've got a file service, we've got blocks, we've got containers, everything else, but what about object storage? Sounds obvious, right? So we've taken our time to kind of build a next generation object storage service, not a first generation one that can scale obviously to the levels of webscale that these days customers want, but is deployed with gentle requirements. An example of a gentle requirement is, you can't build an object story service that is simply on pRAM or simply off pRAM anymore. It has to be hybrid from day one. My primary needs to be data locality quote unquote to be invisible under the cover so my primary stuff is closer to my compute whereas my secondary and backup can be pulled out into the cloud. And the same thing applies on, even something much more simpler, which is EC2. What about EC2 for the enterprise? And that's where I think we were inspired to actually go build us Acropolis Compute Cloud, AC2, which essentially says you can take my Nutanix class, computer storage, and all of that, but then only have compute only nodes, and you could have SAB, SK lab requirements, you could have IBM power, you could have Oracle running on those, but they are essentially being managed with that single pane of glass. So this is the first time that you're seeing, based on a customer demand, now EH3 is now almost one of the three nodes being shipped is an EH3 node. We've come a long way in the last two years right? So people covet that simple virtualization, especially if we can, we extend it from a computer only fabric to the hyper-con only fabric. So I think that's one dimension-- >> It's interesting, just happenstance, that in the news recently, Amazon just announced that they're switching from Zen to KVM base so similar. Come on, you couldn't get Amazon to just sign on for AHV? >> No, see I think see what it is is that frankly AHV from our perspective was all about just ruggedizing KVM right, make it storage, Iops work well, the management plan work well, in fact, the fact that AWS is doing that is actually a good sign for us to go deeper with them frankly just as a tangent, rather than just go deeper with say Zi or GCP and so forth just natively as well now with C-fi instances there's an opportunity for Nutanix fabric to kind of seamlessly leverage that because the core constructs are similar with KBM right? So you're going to see some interesting stuff come up there, maybe that's for the next CUBE, the next conference. >> Sunill, it's interesting I've had a chance to talk to a few customers already and we talk about kind of that cloud, everything from the Germans that well I've got governance and compliance and I'm not not doing public cloud to, you've got a customer speaking today in a session that's like "I'm going to do "everything SAS and what I can't do SAS "I'll do infrastructure service," and then there's a little bit of stuff I can't do because I don't have enough network or things like that, and that's when Nutanix fit in for me. Making products and dealing with customers on such a broad spectrum is a little challenging and trying to fit where Nutanix is on that cloud because right if they're buying SAS from a lot of pieces it's like well you're not going to be as critical as opposed to somebody that's like well hey my data center is really my temple and you can help there so-- >> Yeah I think the philosophy that we use in terms of our product strategy and roadmap there is to maybe just give some color on it is it's the curse of the platform. The wealth of the platform which is like we are a platform company and we've internalized that, we're not a simple product company, so a lot of this comes down to what do we not do as well right which is versus what we just do. And one simple filter that we use is, is it directionally in a secular motion for enterprises or not. So a simple example is look, a lot of customers, and we would have probably quite a bit of sales if we simply said look I can take my existing Nutanix class serve, I just bought a three part array, I've bought a narat box, why don't you guys just co-exist with that. But then if you really think about it, it's like AWS coming to you and saying, "Oh by the way, take my service environment, "put my AWS software on it." It's like Apple coming out and saying, "Here's iOS, "I want it on Blackberry." So one click upgrades won't work, it's not the right thing. So there are things like that that we stayed away from that allows us to, even if we are stretched, lean in on the forward looking circular motions such as first, continue to finish the job inside, then harmonize inside and outside, and then go provide specialized services like Zi, in addition to what we're doing with DCP or Amazon, and others. >> Alright, last question I have for you, what's exciting you in the marketplace today, getting your engineers kind of fired up as kind of this next wave? >> Yeah I think look, I think some of the biggest thing is around how apps are now being re-platformed themselves, not just infrastructure and people used to word pass and all that other stuff but essentially I think we are now getting into the golden era, or the initial golden era where IAS re-platforming is more or less known. Now, of course it's going to take you five, 10 years to do it, but I don't think people are debating the way to do that. It's no longer open stack inside, it's no longer hosted clouds and all that crap right? It's two clouds, right? I think that wave has to emerge on the application side as well, you're starting to see some of that with communities, now becoming a defacto for one sliver of it, but there's so many other services that are up for grabs. So I think you're going to see in the next 12 to 18 months and you're obviously going to see Nutanix play a role there, is what does it mean to not hybridize my data center but what does it mean to hybridize my app. And I think there's a lot of interesting opportunity, interesting inspirational stuff there from an innovation perspective that keeps our guys going. >> Absolutely well Sunil, always a pleasure to chat with you, look forward to catching up with you at the next time and we'll be back with lots more coverage here from the Nutanix .NEXT conference in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE.

>> Announcer: Live, from San Francisco. It's The Cube, covering Oracle Open World 2016. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your host, John Furrier and Peter Burris. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, we are live here in San Francisco. This is SiliconANGLE Media's The Cube. It's our flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the CEO of SiliconANGLE Media, joined by co-host Peter Burris all week. Three days of wall-walk of day three. He's the head of research at SiliconeANGLE Media Inc., as well as the general manager of Wikibon research. Our next guest is Roddy Martin, VP of SC Supply Chain Cloud Product Marketing at Oracle. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you very much for the opportunity. I look forward to the discussion. >> Thanks for coming on. Really want to hear your thought leadership around the supply chain transformation, because it might be a little bit bumpy depending upon your perspective. But is a huge opportunity going on in every single theater of where software used to be a point solution. The cloud is now an opportunity for customers to think differently, and is a catalyst for essentially a business model change as well as a fundamental data-driven change. Your thoughts on this? What do you see going on? What are the key inflection points? >> So a very interesting part of my background is I came out of the brewing industry in South Africa. and then I led the supply chain practice at AMR Research, which today is Gartner. And we did a lot of studies on, what are companies doing to lead this transformation? Because it's a transformation of the interim business operating model of a company. This is not stitching data together in the traditional supply chain system sense. So one of the very first foundations that is really fundamental, and Gartner has done a great job of carrying the search forward, is the idea that every company progresses to an interim operating model in five stages of capability, and every one of those builds on the other. So they're either reacting in stage one's problem and never saw the shortage coming and ran out of product. Stage two is I performance improve around projects. Stage three is I drive functional excellence. And stage four I start working as an engine outside an operating model. In other words, I'm driving the business from what's happening in the market and I'm making sure that supply is matching demand. So it's very interesting and it's very important to consider that as the base foundation for this whole discussion. >> So that outside is interesting, we've heard this before, a lot of people are going that way, but there's no shortcuts. Can you talk about, cause you talk about the endpoint is then outside-in. >> Right, when you're operating as a demand-driven interim supply channel operating model, you can't run out of supply, right? So if you saw a change happening in the marketplace but there's nothing to supply, you've really just messed up the business. And so, each of these stages builds on every other stage. So functional excellence is: Am I good at planning? Am I good at product management? Am I good at logistics? Because those are the foundations for operating in the interim business model. This is why the Oracle's blanching in the cloud, in fact all of Oracle's developments in the cloud are so important because you're effectively building a new process oriented operating model that spins the entire business. If I started off with ERP systems and then I put logistics in place and tied it together, there's all sorts of disconnects in the business. When you pick it up in cycle times, you pick it in disconnect sometimes, they don't see changes to the marketplace for weeks. So, this overarching end to end supply chain operating model in the cloud is a fundamental enabler. >> So how do you gauge a customer? First of all, I buy everything that you said, but I want to bring up a point, because it seems to me that the theme of Oracle OpenWorld that traditional applications and I won't say, I'll just say the word Silo just to use it as a point, has been a specific domain specific thing. But to be end to end and be outside-in, which is the end game, you have to know how to talk and integrate with other systems which might have been a problem if you built the most badass end to end system. >> That is a part of the challenge and in fact, a lot of companies that I've worked with over the 15 years I've been researching this, they get stuck for that very reason. In other words, this is a re-engineering of the whole IT infrastructure versus having a thousand consultants come in and tie all my data together over a question of four years and move 15 instances of whatever system you want to one. >> So, if I question on the journey thing, you mentioned thousands of consultants, which customers are now seeing. They want faster mile posts, they want to see faster agility but a lot of the customers actually outline the journey for the customer. So they're saying, here's your journey and they shorten the mile posts for the deliverables. But they're the one getting paid for it so is that the right model, should they be outlining the journey for the customer? >> And they are. It's been very interesting because I was a partner with a major global consulting company for four years and I've been mixing with them here, they suddenly recognizing that this path to the cloud is something they've better get on the bandwagon because they're not going to have a thousand consultants deploying whatever ERP system you talk about as the future of IT. So, what's happening is the business is having much more of a say in this fast deployment, fast time to value, putting these new-- >> So they're driving the journey for parameters? >> They are gearing up for this new journey, the consultants are. >> So, let's get to the fundamentals behind all this and ask a question about it. At the end of the day, digital technologies give customers an option to do their journeys very differently whether in a B2B sense or a consumer sense. And as they use digital technologies, they're also giving data up and so we have now a combination where customers are getting something out of digital, they are demanding it as part of the engagement model. They are giving up data along the way, and the technologies for sensing and doing something with that data in business are now, we're not figuring out how that impacts business design, process design, and offering design. >> So, that's stage 4S, what we talk about is people, process, and technology versus, in the past, when you had stage one, two, and three. People as one set of projects, process as another set of projects, and technology as another set of projects. >> Yeah, I may or may not take some middlings with the model you put out, but it does matter. At the end of the day, what is driving this increasingly is that it used to be that the dominant consideration in, I think, and I'm testing you, the dominant consideration was assets. Where is the physical asset, where are the materials, where is the machine, and we'll focus our returns on this things and then presume that there's a demand for it and now we're getting all this data about demand and that is having an impact on how we talk about arranging the assets. >> That is the inside-out to outside-in. So, let me give you an example without mentioning companies. A major retailer and a major pharmaceutical company. They share pollen data, they share weather data, they mine Facebook to find out what are people saying about allergies, let's say in New England. And the ragweed's busting and they say, do we have the right levels of inventory, and they're moving inventory to make sure that people who aren't on Facebook are saying we can't buy this particular product. They're moving inventory, that's the difference. >> So, they're sharing data amongst themselves. >> Yes, and they're collaborating between retailers. >> Arguably a similar example, and a retailer that's actually not moving inventory but moving pointers and offering new channel options so that someone decides may not, that they know somebody's going to come into the store, the size may not be there but they can still get it to them that day. >> So, it's very interesting, Procter and Gamble, who I did a lot of work with, and this is public domain information, the CEO drove two fundamental transformation messages in the business. And they called it the two moments of truth. He said, we will always have our product when we say we've got a product. So, if we promote a new product, the consumer goes to the shelf, it will be there. Moment of truth number two, we understand why consumers choose and use our products. And you don't fix number two until you fix number one because if I wanted a small tube of toothpaste and I went in and there were only big ones, it's the wrong buying signal. So, what you're seeing is that whole flip to measuring what the market's looking for and shaping their demand and then making sure that the assets and the supply system is geared to deliver. >> Right, I want to ask you a question. First of all, I love that point, I love your point about the data, but here's the question: cause supply chain has been very instrumentation drive, okay, and that certainly is transforming but now you mention Procter and Gamble. We are living in an era where, in the history of business, you can actually now potentially measure everything. So how does that impacting the reconfiguration of the business model? I mean, Procter and Gamble has those moments of truth, every company will have a moment of truth which is, everything is now measurable so, advertising to employee things and everything. >> So let's take the asset story versus the on shelf thing, right, so when I have assets and I'm getting all the data out of my assets, what am I doing with all of that data, right? Because it's not connected to demand. What I got to know is what demand data do I really want to be able to move my assets to the right place. >> Peter: By the way, the shelf is an asset. >> Of course it is, yes. It's a sensing point and it's an asset. They own it, they replenish that shelf. So the point is, data is everywhere and now these, the consulting and the BPM organizations supporting and companies doing their own business process manner, they got to know what data is really important and what data from the outside-in is going to allow me to leverage a new operating model for my business and become digital. >> So, this is really awesome, I was talking with an Oracle executive last night at one of their customer parties and we had a conversation around this data sharing. This is a new, different behavior. This is a theme of the show that no one's really talking about but it's in plain sight which is there is a data sharing aspect of systems and vendors and companies. >> Roddy: That's why the cloud is so important. >> John: This is now impacting everything. >> Everything. >> How do companies go forward and do this? What are you seeing, is there a best practice, is there a starting point? Is there a five step process on that? >> Well, first of all, these transformations are being lead by the C level executive team in a business. This is now longer somebody who decides to buy a new IT system and plug it in to the business. So, the business is saying, how do we change the operating model of the way we work, right? So, and then, what are the capabilities, and this is where that five stage model comes in, what capabilities do we need to look at building over the next three years so that we can operate in this intent way because you can't wake up tomorrow and go from an inside-out asset driven business to an outside-in demand driven business in two weeks. It ain't going to happen. >> So what's the progression? What's the progress bar look like when you have that moment of an epiphany and say, you know, I'm the CEO-- >> What's the earning point of the business? If it's Procter and Gamble, I want X number of one billion dollars brands. If you're a pharmaceutical company, you want to launch brand new drugs and you want to do it at half the price and half the speed that you're used to. It's the business articulating, this is why the leadership teams are so fundamental, articulating what's the burning platform and then translating that back into the capabilities-- >> So you get a reverse engineer. >> Outside-In. >> Outside-In, I love it. >> The way our research says it, and it's very similar but I want to test this because it's, we say start with context. >> Yes. >> What are you going to do with your customer that you have to do better than everybody else? And then identify the community that you're going to do it with and identify the capabilities that are going to delight that community. So it's context, community, and capabilities. >> Now here's the context, further piece to context. If context changes, how quickly do I sense that change and how fast can I respond to that change? Because if I've got all my asset capabilities and my supply capabilities locked into one set of context and that changes and I now have to re-engineer my whole business, I may lose the whole show in the process. I got to see those changes as they are happening, literally in real time. This is where the internet of things, this is where demand shaping, demand sensing, retailers collaborating, supplies connected into supply chain, everybody sharing that information and the fact that not many people, they don't know how to do it. The culture of business is not yet at the points-- >> That's why the measurement thing I brought up, I mean Procter and Gamble, they used to say to their agencies, we know that 50% of our advertising is good, we don't know which half. So now they can measure it all just like in every other aspect so this is where the business model-- >> You also have to be careful about whether or not, again going back to context changes, measurements change, data can blow you away. You have to be very smart about how you do it so a lot of these intelligent things, machine learning, how the models get built, how the insides get delivered, all become very very important. Very quickly, I have two quick questions for you. One is really approximate to the conversation, one less so but the approximate one: IOT. IOT is, has many many applications. Certainly turning analogue data into digital data so you can build models is a crucial piece of it. But it also has another implication in how you enact the output of that model back into the real word. How does supply chain and IOT come together? >> So if you look at the studies that are being done by Oracle and Gartner et cetera on what's important to the supply chain, two things come up. One is visibility and the other is analytics. Right, so there's tons of data available, to your point just now. That data could cause massive noise to the business unless you know what you're looking at. I know companies that will say, 95% visibility of changes on their demand side is good enough but I'm good enough on the supply side to be able to adjust. But you got to know which data to look at. So I'm looking at on shelf. I'm looking at what consumers are choosing and using, I'm looking to see what of my contract manufacturers-- >> Peter: Analyze key constraints. >> Bingo, so it's not about, I think what we're all going to have to learn in the internet of things is we need, again, a cloud based internet of things platform that does the analytics. >> Because we can rewire things faster. >> Exactly, you can adjust the business to new scenarios based on what you're reading from the demand side and what you're reading from the supply side. >> So you're a great foil for my second question. My second question is you look back at the history, or the recent history let's call it, of strategy, very asset based, Porter said pick the industry that has the best returns, pick your position in that industry, then choose your games based on the five factor analysis that you want to play to get to that position. Very asset oriented, we're in control, that's going to dictate how things change. What you just suggested was a very very different way of thinking about strategy. >> Same fundamentals. It's the same fundamentals but it's allowing yourself to adjust those fundamentals based on what's happening in the market place. >> Peter: But you're not going to base it on just the assets. >> No, we're not going to base it on the assets unless you've focused on, like if you're an engineering company and that's all you make is machines, you can't suddenly start producing toothpaste, for example. There are, that's why I say it's a reconfiguration of those same principles but flexible enough to meet demand. >> So how does, how does the world of design and the world of strategy start to come together in C suite? >> Fundamentally, because it's the voice of the customer that starts to count. It's the voice of the customer that dictates the strategy. So if my customers don't want green Guinness for Saint Patrick's Day, don't make any, because it's going to hang around and get thrown away, right? So, the voice of the customer determines what's happening on the demand side and the supply side has to be agile enough to meet that need. >> So, I would suggest keep Guinness the way it is because it's damn good the way it is, so personally I would agree on the Guinness comment. No green Guinness. >> So, what's the South Africa beer? >> Castle Lager. Well, SAB, South African Brewery, has been bought by Anheuser-Busch InBrev, a massive big giant. >> We love beer and if there's any beer sponsors out there, we're happy looking for our Budweiser. We want a, maybe an IPA in there. Roddy, thanks for spending the time, coming in with you, appreciate it. Some thought leadership here on Reconfiguration and looking at some of the nuances that are really going to impact the buyers here on The Cube. Oracle Open will be back with more live coverage from SiliconANGLE's The Cube after this short break.