>> Good afternoon, fellow cloud nerds and welcome back to AWS Reinvent 2022. We are live here from fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by Lisa Martin. So excited to be here Lisa, it's my first reinvent. >> Is it really? >> Yeah. >> I think it's only like my fourth or fifth. >> Only your fourth or fifth. >> Only. >> You're such a pro here. >> There's some serious veterans here in attendance that have been to all 11. >> I love that. >> Yeah. Wow, go them. I know, maybe we'll be at that level sooner. >> One day we will. >> Are you enjoying the show so far? >> Absolutely, it is. I cannot believe how many people are here. We've had 70,000 and we're only seeing what's at the foundation Expo Hall, not at the other hotel. So, I can only imagine. >> I mean, there's a world outside of this. >> Yes, and there's sunlight. There's actual sunlight outside of this room. >> Nobel idea. Well, Lisa, I'm very excited to be sitting here next to you and to welcome our fabulous guests, from TEKsystems, we have Brandon and Srini. Thank you so much for being here. How is the show going for you gentlemen so far? >> It's great. Lot of new insights and the customers are going to love what AWS is releasing in this reinvent. >> There is such a community here, and I love that vibe. It's similar to what we had at Cloud Native con in Detroit. So much collaboration going on. I assume most folks know a lot about TEKsystems who are watching, but just in case they don't, Brandon, give us the pitch. >> You bet. So full stack IT solutions firm, been in business for over 40 years, 80,000 global employees, really specializing in digital transformation, enterprise modernization services. We have partners in One Strategy, which is an an acquisition we made, but a well known premier partner in the Amazon partner ecosystem, as well as One North Interactive, who is our boutique brand, creative and digital strategy firm. So together, we really feel like we can bring full end-to-end solutions for digital and modernization initiatives. >> So, I saw some notes where TEKsystems are saying organizations need experienced AWS partners that are not afraid doing the dirty work of digital transformation, who really can advise and execute. Brandon, talk to us about how TEKsystems and AWS are working together to help customers on that journey which is nebulous of digital transformation. >> So, our real hallmark is the ability to scale. We partner with AWS in a lot of different ways. In fact, we just signed our strategic collaboration agreement. So, we're in the one percenter group in the whole partner network. >> Savanna: That's a pretty casual flex there. >> Not bad. >> I love that, top 1%, that no wonder you're wearing that partner pin so proud today. (speaking indistinctly) >> But we're working all the way on the advisory and working with their pro serve organization and then transforming that into large scale mass migration services, a lot of data modernization that Srini is an absolute expert in. I'm sure he can add some context too, but it's been a great partnership for many years now. >> In the keynote, Adam spent almost 52 minutes on data, right? So, it emphasizes how organizations are ready to take data to cloud and actually make meaningful insights and help their own customers come out of it by making meaningful decisions. So, we are glad to be part of this entire ecosystem. >> I love that you quantified how many minutes. >> I know. >> Talked about it, that was impressive. There's a little bit of data driven thinking going on here. >> I think so. >> Yeah. >> Well, we can't be at an event like this without talking about data for copious amounts of time, 52 minutes, has just used this morning. >> Right, absolutely. >> But every company these days has to be a data company. There's no choice to be successful, to thrive, to survive. I mean, even to thrive and grow, if it's a grocery store or your local gas station or what? You name it, that company has to be a data company. But the challenge of the data volume, the explosion in data is huge for organizations to really try to figure out and sift through what they have, where is all of it? How do we make sense of it? How do we act on it and get insights? That's a big challenge. How is TEKsystems helping customers tackle that challenge? >> Yeah, that's a great question because that's the whole fun of handling data. You need to ensure its meaning is first understood. So, we are not just dumping data into a storage place, but rather assign a meaningful context. In today's announcement, again, the data zone was unveiled to give meaning to data. And I think those are key concrete steps that we take to our customers as well with some good blueprints, methodical ways of approaching data and ultimately gaining business insights. >> And maybe I'll add just something real quick to that. The theme we're seeing and hearing a lot about is data monetization. So, technology companies have figured it out and used techniques to personalize things and get you ads, probably that you don't want half the time. But now all industries are really looking to do that. Looking at ways to open new revenue channels, looking at ways to drive a better customer experience, a better employee experience. We've got a ton of examples of that, Big Oil and Gas leveraging like well and machine data, coming in to be more efficient when they're pumping and moving commodities around. We work a lot in the medium entertainment space and so obviously, getting targeted ads to consumers during the right periods of TV or movies or et cetera. Especially with the advert on Netflix and all your streaming videos. So, it's been really interesting but we really see the future in leveraging data as one of your biggest corporate assets. >> Brilliant. >> So, I'm just curious on the ad thing, just real quick and I'll let you go, Lisa. So, do you still fall victim to falling for the advertising even though you know it's been strategically put there for you to consume in that moment? >> Most of the time. >> I mean, I think we all do. We're all, (indistinct), you're behind the curtain so to speak. >> The Amazon Truck shows up every day at my house, which is great, right? >> Hello again >> Same. >> But I think the power of it is you are giving the customer what they're looking for. >> That's it. >> And you know... >> Exactly. We have that expectation, we want it. >> 100%. >> We know that. >> Agree. >> We don't need to buy it. But technology has made it so easy to transact. That's like when developers started going to the cloud years ago, it was just, it was a swipe. It was so simple. Brandon, talk about the changes in cloud and cloud migration that TEKsystems has seen, particularly in the last couple of years as every company was rushing to go digital because they had to. >> So several years ago, we kind of pushed away that cloud first mentality to the side and we use more of a cloud smart kind of fashion, right? Does everything need to go to the cloud? No. Do applications, data, need to go to the cloud in a way that's modern and takes advantages of what the cloud can provide and all the new services that are being released this week and ongoing. So, the other thing we're seeing is initiatives that have traditionally been in the CTO, CIO organization aren't necessarily all that successful because we're seeing a complete misalignment between business goals and IT achievements, outcomes, et cetera. You can automate things, you can move it to the cloud, but if you didn't solve a core business problem or challenge, what'd you really do? >> Yeah, just to add on that, it's all about putting data and people together. And then how we can actually ensure the workforce is equally brought up to speed on these new technologies. That has been something that we have seen tremendous improvement in the last 24 months where customers are ready to take up new challenges and the end users are ready to learn something new and not just stick onto that status quo mindset. >> Where do you guys factor in to bringing in AWS in the customer's cloud journeys? What is that partnership like? >> We always first look for where the customer is in their cloud journey path and make sure we advise them with the right next steps. And AWS having its services across the spectrum makes it even easier for us to look at what business problem they're solving and then align it according to the process and technology so that at the end of the day, we want end user adoption. We don't want to build a fancy new gadget that no one uses. >> Just because you built it doesn't mean they'll come. And I think that's the classic engineering marketing dilemma as well as balance to healthy tension. I would say between both. You mentioned Srini, you mentioned workforce just a second ago. What sort of trends are you seeing in workforce development? >> Generally speaking, there are a lot of services now that can quantify your code for errors and then make sure that the code that you're pushing into production is well tested. So what we are trying to make sure is a healthy mix of trying to solve a business problem and asking the right questions. Like today, even in the keynote, it was all about how QuickSight, for example, has additional features now that tells why something happened. And that's the kind of mindset we want our end users to adopt. Not just restricting themselves to a reactive analytics, but rather ask the question why, why did it happen? Why did my sales go down? And I think those technologies and mindset shift is happening across the workforce. >> From a workforce development standpoint, we're seeing there's not enough workforce and the core skills of data, DevOps, standard cloud type work. So, we're actually an ATP advanced training partner, one of the few within the AWS network. So, we've developed programs like our Rising Talent Program that are allowing us to bring the workforce up to the skills that are necessary in this new world. So, it's a more build versus buy strategy because we're on talents real, though it may start to wane a little bit as we change the macroeconomic outlook in 2023, but it's still there. And we still believe that building those workforce and investing in your people is the right thing to do. >> It is, and I think there's a strong alignment there with AWS and their focus on that as well. I wanted to ask you, Brandon. >> Brandon: Absolutely. >> One of the things, so our boss, John Furrier, the co CEO of theCUBE, talked with Adam Selipsky just a week or maybe 10 days ago. He always gets an exclusive interview with the CEO of AWS before reinvent, and one of the things that Adam shared with him is that customers, CEOs and CIOs are not coming to Adam, to this head of AWS to talk about technology, they want to talk about transformation. He's talking about... >> The topic this year. >> Moving away from amorphous topic of digital transformation to business transformation. Are you seeing the same thing in your customer? >> 100%, and if you're not starting at the business level, these initiatives are going to fail. We see it all the time. Again, it's about that misalignment and there's no good answer to that. But digital, I think is amorphous to some degree. We play a lot with the One North partnership that I mentioned earlier, really focusing on that strategy element because consumer dollars are shrinking via inflation, via what we're heading into, and we have to create the best experience possible. We have to create an omnichannel experience to get our products or services to market. And if we're not looking at those as our core goals and we're looking at them as IT or technology challenges, we're not looking in the right place. >> Well, and businesses aren't going to be successful if they're looking at it in those siloed organizations. Data has to be democratizing and we've spent same data democratization for so long, but really, we're seeing that it has to be moving out into the lines of business because another thing Adam shared with John Furrier is that he sees and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, the title of data analysts going away because everybody in different functions and different lines of business within an organization are going to have to be data analysts to some degree, to use data whether it's marketing, ops, sales, finance, are you seeing the same? >> That is true. I mean, at this point, we are all in the connected world, right? Every data point is connected in some form or shape to another data point. >> Savanna: There are many data points, just sitting here, yeah. >> Absolutely, so I think if you are strategizing, data needs to be right in the center of it. And then your business problems need to be addressed with reliable data. >> No, I mean, advertising, supply chain, marketing, they're all interconnected now, and we're looking at ways to bring a lot of that siloed data into one place so we can make use to it. It goes back to that monetization element of our data. >> That's a lot about context and situational awareness. We want what we want, when we want it, even before we knew we needed it then. I think I said that right. But you know, it's always more faster, quicker and then scaling things up. You see a lot of different customers across verticals, you have an absolutely massive team. Give us a sneak peek into 2023. What does the future hold? >> 2023 is again, to today's keynote, I'm bringing it back because it was a keynote filled with vision and limitless possibilities. And that's what we see. Right now, our customers, they are no longer scared to go and take the plunge into the cloud. And as Brandon said, it's all about being smart about those decisions. So, we are very excited that together with the partnership that we recently acquired and the services and the depth, along with the horizontal domain expertise, we can actually help customers make meaningful message out of their data points. And that keeps us really excited for next year. >> Love that, Brandon, what about you? >> I think the obvious one is DevOps and a focus on optimization, financially, security, et cetera, just for the changing times. The other one is, I still think that digital is going to continue to be a big push in 2023, namely making sure that experience is at its best, whether that's employee and combating the war on talent, keeping your people or opening new revenue streams, enhancing existing revenue streams. You got to keep working on that. >> We got to keep the people happy with the machines and the systems that we are building as we all know. But it's very nice, it's been a lot of human-centric focus and a lot of customer obsession here at the show. We know it's a big thing for you all, for Amazon, for pretty much everyone who sat here. Hopefully it is in general. Hopefully there's nobody who doesn't care about their community, we're not talking to them, if that's the case, we have a new challenge on theCUBE for the show, this year as we kind of prepped you for and can call it a bumper sticker, you can call it a 30 second sizzle reel. But this is sort of your Instagram moment, your TikTok, your thought of leadership highlight. What's the most important story coming out of the show? Srini, you've been quoting the keynotes very well, so, I'm going to you first on this one. >> I think overall, it's all about owning the change. In our TEKsystems culture, it's all about striving for excellence through serving others and owning the change. And so it makes me very excited that when we get that kind of keynote resonating the same message that we invite culturally, that's a big win-win for all the companies. >> It's all about the shared vision. A lot of people with similar vision in this room right now, in this room, like it's a room, it's a massive expo center, just to be clear, I'm sure everyone can see in the background. Brandon >> I would say partnership, continuing to enhance our strategic partnership with AWS, continuing to be our customers' partners in transformation. And bringing those two things together here has been a predominance of my time this week. And we'll continue throughout the week, but we're in it together with our customers and with AWS and looking forward to the future. >> Yeah, that's a beautiful note to end on there. Brandon, Srini, thank you both so much for being here with us. Fantastic to learn from your insights and to continue to emphasize on this theme of collaboration. We look forward to the next conversation with you. Thank all of you for tuning in wherever you happen to be hanging out and watching this fabulous live stream or the replay. We are here at AWS Reinvent 2022 in wonderful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada with Lisa Martin. My name is Savannah Peterson, we are theCUBE, the leading source for high tech coverage.

>> 10, nine, eight, (clears throat) four, three. >> Good afternoon, fellow cloud nerds and welcome back to AWS Reinvent 2022. We are live here from fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by Lisa Martin. So excited to be here Lisa, it's my first reinvent. >> Is it really? >> Yeah. >> I think it's only like my fourth or fifth. >> Only your fourth or fifth. >> Only. >> You're such a pro here. >> There's some serious veterans here in attendance that have been to all 11. >> I love that. >> Yeah. Wow, go them. I know, maybe we'll be at that level sooner. >> One day we will. >> Are you enjoying the show so far? >> Absolutely, it is. I cannot believe how many people are here. We've had 70,000 and we're only seeing what's at the foundation Expo Hall, not at the other hotel. So, I can only imagine. >> I mean, there's a world outside of this. >> Yes, and there's sunlight. There's actual sunlight outside of this room. >> Nobel idea. Well, Lisa, I'm very excited to be sitting here next to you and to welcome our fabulous guests, from TEKsystems, we have Brandon and Srini. Thank you so much for being here. How is the show going for you gentlemen so far? >> It's great. Lot of new insights and the customers are going to love what AWS is releasing in this reinvent. >> There is such a community here, and I love that vibe. It's similar to what we had at Cloud Native con in Detroit. So much collaboration going on. I assume most folks know a lot about TEKsystems who are watching, but just in case they don't, Brandon, give us the pitch. >> You bet. So full stack IT solutions firm, been in business for over 40 years, 80,000 global employees, really specializing in digital transformation, enterprise modernization services. We have partners in One Strategy, which is an an acquisition we made, but a well known premier partner in the Amazon partner ecosystem, as well as One North Interactive, who is our boutique brand, creative and digital strategy firm. So together, we really feel like we can bring full end-to-end solutions for digital and modernization initiatives. >> So, I saw some notes where TEKsystems are saying organizations need experienced AWS partners that are not afraid doing the dirty work of digital transformation, who really can advise and execute. Brandon, talk to us about how TEKsystems and AWS are working together to help customers on that journey which is nebulous of digital transformation. >> So, our real hallmark is the ability to scale. We partner with AWS in a lot of different ways. In fact, we just signed our strategic collaboration agreement. So, we're in the one percenter group in the whole partner network. >> Savanna: That's a pretty casual flex there. >> Not bad. >> I love that, top 1%, that no wonder you're wearing that partner pin so proud today. (speaking indistinctly) >> But we're working all the way on the advisory and working with their pro serve organization and then transforming that into large scale mass migration services, a lot of data modernization that Srini is an absolute expert in. I'm sure he can add some context too, but it's been a great partnership for many years now. >> In the keynote, Adam spent almost 52 minutes on data, right? So, it emphasizes how organizations are ready to take data to cloud and actually make meaningful insights and help their own customers come out of it by making meaningful decisions. So, we are glad to be part of this entire ecosystem. >> I love that you quantified how many minutes. >> I know. >> Talked about it, that was impressive. There's a little bit of data driven thinking going on here. >> I think so. >> Yeah. >> Well, we can't be at an event like this without talking about data for copious amounts of time, 52 minutes, has just used this morning. >> Right, absolutely. >> But every company these days has to be a data company. There's no choice to be successful, to thrive, to survive. I mean, even to thrive and grow, if it's a grocery store or your local gas station or what? You name it, that company has to be a data company. But the challenge of the data volume, the explosion in data is huge for organizations to really try to figure out and sift through what they have, where is all of it? How do we make sense of it? How do we act on it and get insights? That's a big challenge. How is TEKsystems helping customers tackle that challenge? >> Yeah, that's a great question because that's the whole fun of handling data. You need to ensure its meaning is first understood. So, we are not just dumping data into a storage place, but rather assign a meaningful context. In today's announcement, again, the data zone was unveiled to give meaning to data. And I think those are key concrete steps that we take to our customers as well with some good blueprints, methodical ways of approaching data and ultimately gaining business insights. >> And maybe I'll add just something real quick to that. The theme we're seeing and hearing a lot about is data monetization. So, technology companies have figured it out and used techniques to personalize things and get you ads, probably that you don't want half the time. But now all industries are really looking to do that. Looking at ways to open new revenue channels, looking at ways to drive a better customer experience, a better employee experience. We've got a ton of examples of that, Big Oil and Gas leveraging like well and machine data, coming in to be more efficient when they're pumping and moving commodities around. We work a lot in the medium entertainment space and so obviously, getting targeted ads to consumers during the right periods of TV or movies or et cetera. Especially with the advert on Netflix and all your streaming videos. So, it's been really interesting but we really see the future in leveraging data as one of your biggest corporate assets. >> Brilliant. >> So, I'm just curious on the ad thing, just real quick and I'll let you go, Lisa. So, do you still fall victim to falling for the advertising even though you know it's been strategically put there for you to consume in that moment? >> Most of the time. >> I mean, I think we all do. We're all, (indistinct), you're behind the curtain so to speak. >> The Amazon Truck shows up every day at my house, which is great, right? >> Hello again >> Same. >> But I think the power of it is you are giving the customer what they're looking for. >> That's it. >> And you know... >> Exactly. We have that expectation, we want it. >> 100%. >> We know that. >> Agree. >> We don't need to buy it. But technology has made it so easy to transact. That's like when developers started going to the cloud years ago, it was just, it was a swipe. It was so simple. Brandon, talk about the changes in cloud and cloud migration that TEKsystems has seen, particularly in the last couple of years as every company was rushing to go digital because they had to. >> So several years ago, we kind of pushed away that cloud first mentality to the side and we use more of a cloud smart kind of fashion, right? Does everything need to go to the cloud? No. Do applications, data, need to go to the cloud in a way that's modern and takes advantages of what the cloud can provide and all the new services that are being released this week and ongoing. So, the other thing we're seeing is initiatives that have traditionally been in the CTO, CIO organization aren't necessarily all that successful because we're seeing a complete misalignment between business goals and IT achievements, outcomes, et cetera. You can automate things, you can move it to the cloud, but if you didn't solve a core business problem or challenge, what'd you really do? >> Yeah, just to add on that, it's all about putting data and people together. And then how we can actually ensure the workforce is equally brought up to speed on these new technologies. That has been something that we have seen tremendous improvement in the last 24 months where customers are ready to take up new challenges and the end users are ready to learn something new and not just stick onto that status quo mindset. >> Where do you guys factor in to bringing in AWS in the customer's cloud journeys? What is that partnership like? >> We always first look for where the customer is in their cloud journey path and make sure we advise them with the right next steps. And AWS having its services across the spectrum makes it even easier for us to look at what business problem they're solving and then align it according to the process and technology so that at the end of the day, we want end user adoption. We don't want to build a fancy new gadget that no one uses. >> Just because you built it doesn't mean they'll come. And I think that's the classic engineering marketing dilemma as well as balance to healthy tension. I would say between both. You mentioned Srini, you mentioned workforce just a second ago. What sort of trends are you seeing in workforce development? >> Generally speaking, there are a lot of services now that can quantify your code for errors and then make sure that the code that you're pushing into production is well tested. So what we are trying to make sure is a healthy mix of trying to solve a business problem and asking the right questions. Like today, even in the keynote, it was all about how QuickSight, for example, has additional features now that tells why something happened. And that's the kind of mindset we want our end users to adopt. Not just restricting themselves to a reactive analytics, but rather ask the question why, why did it happen? Why did my sales go down? And I think those technologies and mindset shift is happening across the workforce. >> From a workforce development standpoint, we're seeing there's not enough workforce and the core skills of data, DevOps, standard cloud type work. So, we're actually an ATP advanced training partner, one of the few within the AWS network. So, we've developed programs like our Rising Talent Program that are allowing us to bring the workforce up to the skills that are necessary in this new world. So, it's a more build versus buy strategy because we're on talents real, though it may start to wane a little bit as we change the macroeconomic outlook in 2023, but it's still there. And we still believe that building those workforce and investing in your people is the right thing to do. >> It is, and I think there's a strong alignment there with AWS and their focus on that as well. I wanted to ask you, Brandon. >> Brandon: Absolutely. >> One of the things, so our boss, John Furrier, the co CEO of theCUBE, talked with Adam Selipsky just a week or maybe 10 days ago. He always gets an exclusive interview with the CEO of AWS before reinvent, and one of the things that Adam shared with him is that customers, CEOs and CIOs are not coming to Adam, to this head of AWS to talk about technology, they want to talk about transformation. He's talking about... >> The topic this year. >> Moving away from amorphous topic of digital transformation to business transformation. Are you seeing the same thing in your customer? >> 100%, and if you're not starting at the business level, these initiatives are going to fail. We see it all the time. Again, it's about that misalignment and there's no good answer to that. But digital, I think is amorphous to some degree. We play a lot with the One North partnership that I mentioned earlier, really focusing on that strategy element because consumer dollars are shrinking via inflation, via what we're heading into, and we have to create the best experience possible. We have to create an omnichannel experience to get our products or services to market. And if we're not looking at those as our core goals and we're looking at them as IT or technology challenges, we're not looking in the right place. >> Well, and businesses aren't going to be successful if they're looking at it in those siloed organizations. Data has to be democratizing and we've spent same data democratization for so long, but really, we're seeing that it has to be moving out into the lines of business because another thing Adam shared with John Furrier is that he sees and I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, the title of data analysts going away because everybody in different functions and different lines of business within an organization are going to have to be data analysts to some degree, to use data whether it's marketing, ops, sales, finance, are you seeing the same? >> That is true. I mean, at this point, we are all in the connected world, right? Every data point is connected in some form or shape to another data point. >> Savanna: There are many data points, just sitting here, yeah. >> Absolutely, so I think if you are strategizing, data needs to be right in the center of it. And then your business problems need to be addressed with reliable data. >> No, I mean, advertising, supply chain, marketing, they're all interconnected now, and we're looking at ways to bring a lot of that siloed data into one place so we can make use to it. It goes back to that monetization element of our data. >> That's a lot about context and situational awareness. We want what we want, when we want it, even before we knew we needed it then. I think I said that right. But you know, it's always more faster, quicker and then scaling things up. You see a lot of different customers across verticals, you have an absolutely massive team. Give us a sneak peek into 2023. What does the future hold? >> 2023 is again, to today's keynote, I'm bringing it back because it was a keynote filled with vision and limitless possibilities. And that's what we see. Right now, our customers, they are no longer scared to go and take the plunge into the cloud. And as Brandon said, it's all about being smart about those decisions. So, we are very excited that together with the partnership that we recently acquired and the services and the depth, along with the horizontal domain expertise, we can actually help customers make meaningful message out of their data points. And that keeps us really excited for next year. >> Love that, Brandon, what about you? >> I think the obvious one is DevOps and a focus on optimization, financially, security, et cetera, just for the changing times. The other one is, I still think that digital is going to continue to be a big push in 2023, namely making sure that experience is at its best, whether that's employee and combating the war on talent, keeping your people or opening new revenue streams, enhancing existing revenue streams. You got to keep working on that. >> We got to keep the people happy with the machines and the systems that we are building as we all know. But it's very nice, it's been a lot of human-centric focus and a lot of customer obsession here at the show. We know it's a big thing for you all, for Amazon, for pretty much everyone who sat here. Hopefully it is in general. Hopefully there's nobody who doesn't care about their community, we're not talking to them, if that's the case, we have a new challenge on theCUBE for the show, this year as we kind of prepped you for and can call it a bumper sticker, you can call it a 30 second sizzle reel. But this is sort of your Instagram moment, your TikTok, your thought of leadership highlight. What's the most important story coming out of the show? Srini, you've been quoting the keynotes very well, so, I'm going to you first on this one. >> I think overall, it's all about owning the change. In our TEKsystems culture, it's all about striving for excellence through serving others and owning the change. And so it makes me very excited that when we get that kind of keynote resonating the same message that we invite culturally, that's a big win-win for all the companies. >> It's all about the shared vision. A lot of people with similar vision in this room right now, in this room, like it's a room, it's a massive expo center, just to be clear, I'm sure everyone can see in the background. Brandon >> I would say partnership, continuing to enhance our strategic partnership with AWS, continuing to be our customers' partners in transformation. And bringing those two things together here has been a predominance of my time this week. And we'll continue throughout the week, but we're in it together with our customers and with AWS and looking forward to the future. >> Yeah, that's a beautiful note to end on there. Brandon, Srini, thank you both so much for being here with us. Fantastic to learn from your insights and to continue to emphasize on this theme of collaboration. We look forward to the next conversation with you. Thank all of you for tuning in wherever you happen to be hanging out and watching this fabulous live stream or the replay. We are here at AWS Reinvent 2022 in wonderful sunny Las Vegas, Nevada with Lisa Martin. My name is Savannah Peterson, we are theCUBE, the leading source for high tech coverage.

(uptempo music) >> Narrator: Live from Anaheim, California it's The Cube! Covering Nutanix dot Next 2019 brought to you by Nutanix >> Welcome back everyone to The Cube's live coverage of Nutanix dot Next here in Anaheim California, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost John Furrier. We are joined by Dr. Ayanna Howard, she's the professor and chair of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Welcome Dr. Howard to The Cube! Thank you, thank you. I'm excited about this conversation. >> Yeah so you, you're a fascinating person, when you were a little girl, watching Bionic Woman you said "I wanna be a scientist," you started your career at NASA. >> Ayanna: Correct. >> You are an entrepreneur, a researcher. Tell us what you're doing today. >> So what I'm doing today, and what I'm really excited about is bringing robots into the home of children with special needs. So one of the things about kids and those that may have a developmental disability is that there's not enough contact hours with human clinicians. And so, how do you augment that in the home environment? How do you bring technology into the home to do therapy with them, to do even education? And so that's what I focus on. >> So, we want to hear so much more about that, but what are you gonna be talking about at this conference? It's the future of AI, and robots. >> Yes, I'm gonna talk about the things that make my robots work. And so, the future of AI and robotics and where it leads, it's a combination of things like wearables. So if you think about all the data around us, we have wearables with our phones, and our smart watches, all that data that's being collected about us, allows our machines to do very interesting personalized things with us and for us. The other thing is that if you think about collaborative AI, collaborative machines, we're going to the place where the workforce and how you do your work, you're going to have an AI as a companion, a robot as an assistant, so you might not be sitting next to a human, you might be sitting next to a robot. And so, what does that look like? And then, of course, emotional AI, and so, yes, machines do have emotions, which is, counts kind of weird, but in order for us to work with others, we typically have a bond, so why not have a bond with our machines? >> What's the software look like? I'm rifting in my mind here, I'm just thinking about, I'm gonna write some software that might be dynamic, a neural network, these kinds of words have been kicked around in the industry. How do you make software have emotion in AI? Because it has to be random, but yet not, it has to be programmable. >> It does. But think about it. Emotions are not necessarily random. Emotions are pretty repetitive, i.e., if you're hurt, what do you do? If you're young you cry, if you're older you hide the cry, right? I mean, it's very repetitive, if you're happy there's a certain emotion, what makes you happy? There are certain things that we can all say if I suddenly woke up and I won a prize, I'd be happy. Emotions are actually very predictable, they're not that hard to model. >> And the data sources could be coming off my Fit Bit, facial recognition, you know the morning... >> Well facial recognition, you can see it in the face, in fact your pulse, and you sweat a little bit when your emotions change. Remember the mood rings back in the day? (laughter) >> Sure! >> OK those were fake, but still, their concept about them was that your body gives a response based on the emotions inside. >> Yeah, that's so cool. So what's the state of the art, you look at bleeding edge and state of the art kind of mainstream, where are people with software, machine learning, AI, what's some of the things that are notable to you that are important to highlight? >> Yes, so I think that the two areas that are the furthest ahead, one is facial recognition and emotion detection, and it's because the application are out there. As an example, airports are putting in these systems, and so imagine, I mean, the positive is, is that you don't have to book or print out your ticket, right? You just walk into the airport, you walk though security, you don't get padded down, and you walk to your gate and get on the plane. I mean, just imagine that. You're like How would you do that? Well, if I know who you look like, and I can model you, and I grab your wearable, and your data, I know who you are! So, I don't have to make sure that you are who you are, I know. I mean, so that's kind of a benefit. Of course, there's some negatives, which we won't talk about, but that's one area, this facial recognition aspect. The other I think it's in healthcare, I think it's in the fact that our data, and about us, about our health, it's so much there, and as we mine it we just get better. There's, for example, some research that shows stress can be detected and I can then have a, think about it, I can have an AI that if I know you're stressed like, I'm not going to send you that email, I'm going to halt a little bit, until I realize that your stress level is a little bit better, and then I will give you the bad news. Right? Like, because we don't want to be stressed. >> I need that, I need that app. >> Rebeca: But that's a manager with really good intentions, I mean, you can really see the perils of this going... >> No, that's, that's the negative. That's the aspect of, all these things are, really have good return on investment, good quality, but the negatives are is that if you have nefarious manager or an organization like I just wanna make money, money, money, you can sway that, and I think, though, that most organizations are thinking about this. I think there's this push now to do things like regulations, to basically protect us, but still insure that we have a positive relationship with AI and robotics. >> What's the coolest thing you've seen or built recently that could tie into the robotics? >> So, I will personally say it's one of our machines, that has, it emotionally responds to you based on what you're doing, and so what does this mean? It means I have robots that are just looking so cute, right? You look at them, and anyone looks at them, and it's just , it's like, it's real, it's intelligent, it like understands me. Of course, it's programmed based on modeling but it's just as fascinating, and I watch people interact with robots, and it's like oh, my gosh, this person, this individual, is really engaged with my robotic creation. >> And you mean, in conversation or just in feeling the comradery? >> In conversation, in interaction, and the robots, they have a limited script, but people will adapt to that, right? And they will, it's just like when you talk to your phone, have you noticed that when your phone doesn't understand you, what do you do? You speak a little slower. You might choose different words, right? I see that with the robots, you change your behavior based on the limitations. >> Speaking with someone who doesn't speak lour language natively. >> Correct. Same thing with robots. >> So describe what you see... Returning to the beginning of our conversation talking in particularly with kids with special needs. >> Ayanna: Yes. >> Describe what you see, the changes in the child, who is developing a relationship, a bond with a robot. >> Yes, so what we've actually shown, not just seen and observed, is that when we have a child interacting with a robot their, and what we call, whatever milestone we're doing, so maybe it's movement therapy, which means I want them to say, move a little faster than their normal space of moving, what I see is with the robot there is a partner encouraging, guiding, providing them input on how well they're doing, or in terms of correcting, the child improves their behavior, and so between day zero and day n, the child has gotten better. We see that. We have the data that shows that. >> Incredible. I wanna also ask about women in technology, and this is, this is really a theme at every single tech conference you go to because it's such a problem, it's such an issue that is finally getting the attention it deserves. We know about the dearth of women leaders, the dearth of underrepresented minorities, particularly in management leadership positions, what do you see as you role in tackling this problem, as the head of an important department in technology and also as a woman of color? >> Yeah, so I think there's always been kind of two dilemmas, one is what they call the pipeline, which is now the pathway, like how do you get women to come into stem? And the data has shown that is not that girls are not interested in stem, it's that they lose interest because of their society, right? So that's one thing. It's like make sure that where they are in the society is encouraging. The other is that when you get older, you look up, you're like, okay there's no one there. Obviously, I'm not supposed to be here, or when things get tough, it's like, okay, I need to move out. And so the other is, how do you do mentorship and sponsorship, so that women are pushed forward as managers and supervisors. So those are kind of the two things. And so, as a, and I consider myself a leader in this space, I actually feel it's my duty to be up front, and be a mentor, and be a lead, and actually be vocal, and make others realize like, if I'm in a room, and we're deciding on, you know, a student or a candidate, and there's no representation, you know, I'm comfortable enough to say, hey, I should not be the one that says this, right? And eventually what you see is that people start looking and thinking about this, at every instance of time. >> Do you feel like it's getting better? >> I do. It's getting better. And it's not perfect but it's getting better. Like, if I look in the classrooms, I look in the computer science curriculums, I see more female students coming in, and lasting, and then going into corporate America and continue on to grad school. I see it being better, of course it's not on parity, but is is better. >> That's awesome. And the technology has shifted the definition. It's not programming, or electrical engineering, the surface area for tech is gaming to analytics, data science, it's huge. >> Human-centered interaction. >> There's new artistry around us, so I think it's a great surface area. >> It is, and I think one of the reasons why it's so important is that the world is diverse, I mean, in terms of all the different aspects. An so, if you're gonna create products for a diverse world, you should have individuals that are also diverse, creating them for everyone so that there's some equality in the process. >> As the analog world connects with the digital world, fascinating we talked before we came on camera around the technology in digital. So the human experience for me, whether having robots, detecting emotions, and having some sort of new notifications, like hey, you know, cheer up, or do something clever... >> Right >> Is that you can now immerse, so augmented reality has been the first killer app before virtual reality, but gaming is an indicator of what's happening onscreen, so, the onscreen digital realm is intersecting with our lives. >> Ayanna: It is. >> What's your view on this? Because this is an area that's new, it's cutting edge, it's a first generation problem, an opportunity. >> Opportunity. I think this, this blending of the, I would say, even, I would say the blending of the digital and physical and the gamefication aspects, is really gonna enhance two areas. One is education, and the retraining, and so what does that mean? It means that, instead of me having to, not to say go to college for four years, but instead of me trying to study everything in this one-semester course, it's like, I just need some basic knowledge and I can then work in the field, and I have my augment reality and so I see things and there's some scaffolding, there's some indication of here's step one, here's step two, ahh, you did that step two a little bit wrong, let's revise it. So you learn with real-time training and that's with doctors, well except for live patients, but you know, with doctors or residents, factory workers, or even teachers, teachers who are teaching say, calculus, that may have an English background. That's where it is. >> The progressions are not linear like they used to be. >> Ayanna: No! >> They are different, and now you have dated instrumentation with on-demand digital robots... >> Robots, agents... >> John: Agents, assistants... >> Adaptation, taking things from other places, so if I, for example, learn the best way to provide information to this human and this factory, well guess what, I can take that information, connect to the cloud, connect to the data centers, and apply that information to another worker in a different factory, but very similar characteristics, and so you have this transfer of knowledge as well. >> So education was one. What's the other one? Healthcare? >> Of course it's healthcare! (laughter) Of course. >> As someone who is immersed in it and a believer in technology, what do you do to disconnect? Well, first of all, do you disconnect? Do you worry about our over reliance on these little devices in our pockets, and what do you do to sort of leave the digital world behind for a while? >> Yeah, so I do worry about our over reliance because we've shown, and other researchers have shown, that there's actually an over trust factor. We will use devices, and of course these devices they have errors, right, even if it's you know 1% of the time, and that 1% of the time when they have errors we find that a lot of individuals will trust those errors, because they're over relying, they kind of go in zone mode, they're like, it worked all this time, so that 1%, they just don't question it. >> It must be real news! (laughter) >> But it's scary! >> Yeah, it is. >> It's scary. I do worry about that. And we're thinking about ways to try to mitigate that, 'cause that does worry me. How do I disconnect? I think that with anything mind, body and soul, so I love listening to music, although that's not disconnecting from technology 'cause I'm using technology to listen, but it's this zone period. Exercise, I think most of us think about exercise I'm fairly religious, even when I'm traveling, like okay, I'm going to find the gym and at least walk on the treadmill because we do have to have that combination, in order to be healthy ourselves. >> Finally, for that little girl, the little girl you, who's watching Bionic Woman I think that's the thing, we need more shows like that, to get, to get >> Click us interested >> Well exactly, what would be your advice to the smaller you, who says I want to be a scientist someday? >> So I would, and this is like some advice that people told me as I was growing up, and I didn't realize I had really good mentors, is one is, don't listen to the naysayers, i.e., believe in yourself, right? And I think that's the one thing we sometimes forget to do, like believe in that dream, even if others say that it's not possible, and it's like, no, everything is possible if you believe in yourself. >> Words to live by. Thank you so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> Rebeca: This was great conversation. >> Awesome! >> I'm Rebeca Knight for John Furrier. We will be back here tomorrow with more from Nutanix dot Next. We hope to see you then. (electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Accenture Interactive. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Vegas at the Adobe Summit 2019. I think there's about 17,000 people. The first time we've been here but we've been excited to be here. There's a crazy good buzz and energy and actually a ton of CUBE alumni here at Adobe. We're greeting old friends but it's always great to meet new friends. And coming off of great mention in the keynote this morning we're excited to have Santiago Aldana. He is the CDO and CTO of Avianca. Welcome. >> Thank you, John. >> So I was surprised this morning, we were watching the keynote and there's Satya Nadella and he has a shout-out for you guys. >> It was quite a surprise. It was very engaging and I'm happy to hear that. >> Yeah, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And a little fact, you guys are the second oldest commercial airline, he said. I had no idea. >> That's right, we've been flying for almost 100 years. It's our 100th anniversary this year. >> Awesome. >> So great, great. >> Well, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> So air travel's a really interesting industry because it's growing like crazy in terms of the total number of passenger miles, right? More people are flying all the time. But it's got to be super competitive. You got to worry about fuel costs. A seat mile is a seat mile. So there's all kinds of interesting ways to compete. You guys are really into it, you've been successful for 100 years, so how do you differentiate what you guys are doing and continue to evolve and be successful? >> So there's several things. If you look 10 years back we used to be a domestic airline. We used to have around 30 planes, now we're around 170 planes. We're the second largest airline in Latin America. That has been a huge growth. >> Wait, how long did you do that? >> That's for the last 10 years. >> 10 years you went from 30 planes to 170. >> To 170, 180. >> And domestic to international. >> To a Latin American airline. >> That's a big move. >> That's a big move but we're shifting our emphasis, going more, rather than growth, going to profitability. And to make that profitability we have to make the strong transformation to make that happen. >> So for profitability there's all kinds of things that go in there, there's higher utilization, there's hopefully everybody buys Teslas so the gas doesn't cost as much for the airplanes. How are you focusing on profitability? 'Cause here we're at Adobe, all the talk's about experience, experience, experience. If I'm flying on your plane, I want to get a good deal and keep everything good but I'm not necessarily that worried about your profitability. >> So let me tell you a little bit about that. If you think about an airline we're just the distance between our customers and their dreams. We're just the distance. So the customer doesn't want to go to security. The customer doesn't want to go to the whole hassle of planning the trip. Our purpose is reducing that distance, reducing that effort, and when we reduce that effort we're going to self-service, we're going to personalize, to make life easier for our customers. That's the basic challenge. And that has to do with three main areas. One, knowing our customer. The other one is, making sure that the value proposal for that customer journey is proper. So that's operational work. And the other one is providing our employees with enough information to make that happen. All of those are working along data, and data to be able to provide a real value proposal to making that happen. The customer has to be in the center of our strategy and that's where we have to be working all the time. And when you do this, it's not about technology, it's about the customer. And being that, about the customer, the strongest challenge is not technology but people, making people change so we that can provide the value proposals to our customers. >> So what are some of the things that you did to enable the experience of my engagement, whether it's electronic or whether it's when I'm talking to that person at the counter, checking in or getting on my flight, how have you helped them provide me a better experience? >> You talk as if it was part of the past. To be honest, it's a journey, we're still working on that. There are several things that we did last year, a whole bunch of things. We changed our app, we changed our website, we changed our interaction with our customers with data. And regarding Adobe, we're here at Adobe, we implemented a whole set of tools. So AEM, the website is a new thing. Regarding Microsoft we implemented a CRM to know about our customers. We changed our app, and the app is like a platform with which we're transforming the customer journey. What we have to do at the end of the game is changing those touch points so that those require less effort from our customer, they're more seamless and we are able to personalize and know in advance what the customer is looking for to provide alternatives. And that makes it more seamless. So we're in that process of doing data-centered decision making to reduce that effort from our customers and make things happen. >> So as you've gone through this journey to date what are some of the surprising things that came up that you just didn't expect at all, on a positive side? And then what were some of the negative things that you didn't know, that were so negative that now you've kind of removed? >> Okay, so I've been here in this business and Avianca just for the last two years, so if you talk about surprises this is my first time in airlines. I wasn't expecting this to be so challenging. >> Well, it's good to come at it from a fresh point of view, absolutely. >> I've been in banking, I've been in telcos. Believe me, there's a huge technical depth, there's a lot of complexity, and bringing this customer information up to the table, it's been challenging. Lots of things going together. Surprises, yeah, we have to work with our employees. We have to transform that culture. We have to move towards a more testing ... Having experiments iterating and learning from that process. And that takes time and that requires a lot change of culture. The other one is being more agile and that's more easily said than done. So making the teams be more collaborative. And working with partners. We decided to choose a handful of partners to make this transformation work. And those partners, that's not one thing that you just plug and play, you have to make it work and that requires a lot of effort. Even if it's big, strong, world-wide, world-level sponsors and partners, it requires engaging and making them work together. At the end it's about people in every part. And making people work together, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. >> You've got the whole gamut too, 'cause you've got the front line people that are directly engaged with the client, whether again it be at the gate agent or on the telephone or processing those things all the way back to the senior management and the operations which I'm sure are not only regulated and very very finely detailed for safety and everything else. So that's got to be hard to try to drive transformation in what was probably a pretty rigid situation. >> It is, that's why you have to choose what to do. And probably you don't know how to do it at the beginning but you know what you want to achieve. And that requires a more iteration way of learning, experimenting and finding a way. That's regarding agility. And that's where you work with partners to also leapfrog and move faster forward unto this. That's where we choose partners as Accenture, Adobe, Microsoft, SAP, and Amadeus. And they're moving us forward unto that. >> So what are some of the ways that you're trying to measure success? What are some of the things you're tracking as you go through this transformation? >> Well, several of them. Let me talk just about a couple of them. One of the things that we have to do is make the buying process easier. We're starting way behind, strong technical depth, and we have to decouple our systems to make those steps that our customer has to do, make them fewer, easier, and changing the whole booking flow. But to do that, we don't have the answer. First we have to decouple the system, the legacy systems, and then we have to learn from our customers. We have to do a lot of A/B testing to see what works better. Test and see if the process is better accepted by our customers, learn from that, probably fail, do it again, iterate it and do it again. And that process we have to engage unto that. The other one is ... So that's one of the areas. But the other one is, how can we make sure that the operational value proposal takes place? Since we have been growing for the last 10 years so much, we started from a local airline to the second biggest airline in Latin America, but that growth is a little bit disorganized and we have to set things up to make it happen. We have to provide a lot more data and connectivity to all our employees at the airports, at the counters, at the call center, and providing them with more customer information to make it happen. >> Right, so you're on that process, so you're starting to deliver new data to the gate agents and the people on the front line? >> Sure. >> So how are they reacting to that? Do they like to be empowered, are they afraid of being empowered, are they saying, "Ah, finally I have the information "in front of me that I can take care of this traveler?" >> So there's not one answer for that. In some cases we empower them and they enjoy a lot and they say, "Hey, finally we got this." For example, we are giving our ... This is a recent project that we launched at the airport. We're providing them data through mobility, making the turnaround of our planes faster, and we're giving them much more data. Before then, they had to call everywhere to find what was happening. Now they have it at their hands, and that's different. So that changes the whole thing and they look forward to that. At other times, we sometimes do mistakes also. We provided more information through the apps to our pilots. They were finding that awesome. But then some of the information that they used to have, we didn't get it. So we have to iterate it and give it and then they start loving it. Regarding our customers, which is the other side, it's not internal employees, we do some things in which we test and sometimes they say, "Oh, that was not what we were expecting." So we have to learn from that. I mean, it's not about making a huge waterfall project. It's about learning in the process, failing, and iterating and making it happen again and again. It's a whole journey. >> We just had our last guest, he talked about trying to move this stuff to the cloud. It's like, first time didn't work, second time didn't work, third time, hey, now it's working. So you don't know until you know, right? And what we hear over and over is as you start this top-level transformation project you uncover a bunch of stuff under the covers that has to be reworked to support what you're trying to do on the front end. >> That's right. >> I assume it's a lot of the same thing that you found? >> You're exactly right, there's a lot of things in that way. On all three areas. Customer, on customer we didn't have customer information, we didn't even have a CRM. So we implemented our CRM at a huge fast pace that we did it, in a year we already had it. The app and the website, we have to totally remake it, and getting more information from that and getting personalized information regarding that. That's technical depth, I was not expecting that to be there. >> So I'm just curious, what was the catalyst of this transformation and this growth? Were you trying to put in systems to support the growth that you did from going from a relatively small domestic airline to an international, or are you trying to set the table for continued growth, to continue on that growth path? That's a pretty aggressive growth path. >> It's a little bit more simple than that and I'm going to be blunt here. Three years ago the board at Avianca was doing a search for a new CEO. That's my boss right now. He came over three years ago. He used to be the president for Microsoft in Latin America. In the interviews they told him a lot of things. And after he was questioned and doing the interview, he said, "Okay, let me say this now. "Are you asking me to make Avianca "a digital company flying airplanes?" And they said, "Yeah, that's exactly right. "That's what we want." So that was the initial pace. That was three years ago. I joined the team two years ago. There was already a vision, and that vision is making things easier and effortless for the customer. That's part of what we're trying to build. And that is before, during, and after the trip. If we are able to do that we're reducing costs, we're making it simpler. The whole process is about being simpler, taking away complexity, making sure that our operations are better, and that's taking away complexity. You can do that through technology also. But again, the biggest challenge is probably not technology. It's a cultural change and it's the leadership required to move on and make our employees, our customers, take advantage of it. >> Bold move by the board and a bold move by the CEO but we hear it all the time. Everybody's a digital company now, it's just what product or service do you happen to wrap it around? So what a great story. >> Thank you. And yeah, again, we got to go more data-centered, we have to know our customer better. If we want to do something personalized the only way is through the data. We have to know in advance what our customers are requesting and trying to make it easier for all of them, and that's the data. >> Well Santiago, thanks for sharing your story. And again congratulations on the keynote shout-out. >> Thank you, thanks a lot. >> All right. He's Santiago, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Adobe Summit 2019 in Las Vegas. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (lively electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by Extension Interactive. >> Welcome back, everyone. Live cube coverage here in Las Vegas for adobe summat. Twenty nineteen. I'm John for With my Coast. Jeffrey for Yu here for two days. The wall, the wall coverage We're on day to our next guest. Marc Andre Sinclair, director of digital marketing Platform Content Strategy Export Development Canada E D. C. Welcome to the Cube. Thank you. So love your channel. Digital marketing platform content strategy. That's kind of in the center of all the action. So, you know, you've been doing some transformation. Tell us your story. What do you guys do? What was what was that? What's the story? >> So I joined E. C. Exported moment Cata two years ago, really helping them out on the overall digital transformation. So I've been fortunate, joined the organization as the moment that they're our position. We wanted to change like we weren't a mandate to gain back some relevance in the market. CDC exists how occasion businesses go beyond the borders, go international. So they really wanted to be relevant to the market because we're not competing with the markets were really just like a compliment in a market. So we've been on that journey distrust, transformation For the last two years, we've are now competing the first phase of a transformation and just about two years, which normally takes four years in the industry. And we're now add midway to our overall digital transformation. We want a critical the number of customers that we have in four years, but it's a very aggressive target what we call normal, like a stretch goal that are serious put. So that's what we've been up to in the last two years. >> And what >> was the catalyst? Why the change? Because, well, what was going on kind of behind the scenes t make such an aggressive, so aggressive move. If you look at >> the interest you overall, there's a major shift in what is export. So exporting means merchandising guys ing good for most of the people. When when you look at the shipping industry to software and services, these folks are not perceiving themselves as being on exporter like really, you build a software, you sell it. You don't think about your software getting beyond the borders. So the industry, the overall market size, are the number of companies that we could help in. The country has grown, but our number of customer remained flat. So we wanted to catch back at that market reach. And there was a theater in Perth. Is that forced us to change? But basically it started. What? Our CEO Putting forward a strong paper cultured like really forced people to think differently and change. >> What's the progress Like how you happy with the progress so far? Absolutely. What are what are some of the things you've knocked down already? What was the pick us through the steps? They could screw up the plan. What was the What is the plan? What is completed were how much how much is left. >> OK, so it started for us as a strong investments and over all the marketing tech stocks which started obviously where I will be summit. So we started in the vestments with the Adobe expense manager and it was about us changing the technology that we had in terms of delivering a customer experience. So your approach we took wass people processing technology. But at the middle, we really put the customer experience at the forefront of everything at the art of every decisions. Makings. So for us were Margaret, we're finishing the migration as we speak right now. That's the first phase. And now with the partner that we have X censure. We're looking in terms ofthe archaic. How can we build capabilities back in the business? Because we've outsourced are full function to our partner. And now it's about how do we get the right level of cost tower scalability for the future so we can deliver premium customer experience. So a lot of activities have happened. We went into natural transformation at the same time, the organization has embraced our job overall and now we're really thinking about was the future data customer experience. So these are the biggest shift that their condition is looking at As we stand right now, we've done the migration and we can now start to think about personalization experimentations. These are all the cool things that we have ahead of us. >> What was the heavy lifting hard part of getting this off the ground? What, some learning or any experiences where you, you know, failed miserably and rebooted or reset means you learned through it oration. We see these successful projects. What's the key learnings? Have you had any moments like that? >> Definitely So So, First of all, I would like to talk a bit about the fail approach because this is something that wasn't obviously part of the organization. And that is something fundamental to a change in organizations. So to quote my boss fail stance or first attempt and learning, So you got to get out and you got to try things and we gotta experiment. Otherwise, you're not really pushing the boundaries. Eso I'm proud of her failure and actually won an award about failure last year at our, um, organizations. So they have a corporate awards that recognise people that do fails but move on and fell fast, like that's a spirit. So for us as, say, at the beginning, the biggest part of a project was to get the what I call the M V P. Zero. So we have to change from a nun premise toe called architectures. And when you start to do these things at an organization that has never done cloud, you uncover a lot of stuff a lot of security protocols, firewalls kicking in. So our first BP zero just to set the infrastructure has been quite a challenge. I think we went three times out, and the third time was the right one. But this is the critical one where you start to build credibility. And even though for us we're working and agile every two weeks without ever cradle to grave, everything full blown experience, this one was really a longer one. And we were really made sure that the requisition understood that this is complicated When you do the foundation. This >> is company goes cousins to say its foundational. So I'm going to take your time. You've got to get that right. Can't have any cracks in the foundation because you're building on top of it. Exactly. So that three attempts you. You said you went out for forbid, or how did three attempts of building it was >> so the throughout That's R about us deploying the full Levi's serology in the clouds. So first time we went uncover a few things. Second time, not anything pop up weren't aware. And then the third time we went out. Third time's a charm to say we went >> out. It was good >> way. Nailed it on that >> time. It's the >> price I didn't invite you on stage. I don't know if you caught that in the Kino. Towards the end of his keynote, he said, We need to have an award for people that disproved their own hypothesis. Exactly so. But you said it's interesting. He said. The people part was hard in the process, and yet it was a top down initiative from the CEO. So was it not bought in a kind of the mid tier management level? The senior management? Why, if the COC and we need to do this, was it hard to move those different party organization? Well, >> I'd say the people part was more about having the right talent on the right mind sets. So one to CEO put forward the culture paper, the stretch goals. Really the organization started to organize themselves on. Are we going to make that thing happened now? Like we need to work differently. And this is not about just more cash, more at counts. We need to re engineer a bit the way we were working, so I wouldn't say that there was an issue with with the way or the people of today was just like you start through higher scrums, you start the heart coach to start our appeal. These are skills says that you've never had. Like at the beginning of the project, we had new marketing talent. We had new partner for the ritual that every we have a new partner for agile and we also have new technology. So you start with a lot of new stuff at the same time. So I'd say these are natural things that you have to do. Is it easy? No, not necessarily. But we had a lot of support from the sea level standpoint. >> It sounds like you guys have a very Dev ops oriented culture because talking about failing fast is a cultural cloud concept. I mean agile iterating scrums. This's a dev ops mindset, infrastructure. It's code. Did you guys have that built in Or you said you started three years ago. Was that was that the core cultural mindset? >> So I wouldn't say that we're a dev ups type of culture of mentality, I would say, actually, it's probably the part that we still need to invest hard because now we build a fully whole machine that scaring and pushing the machine you start uncover that once you go that full cycle, few things are popping up, so you know, and and the in the nineties are beginning of this of two thousands. Like when you were thinking about nal ticks, people were always like, Okay, let's let's do this on our techs use case. Our position at the end. Let's do your documentation at the end. It tends to be the same thing with Dev up. Sometimes like we have a strong architectural when in terms of regression, automation and all these things, we truly need to invest a bit more so we can have a because we're playing every single two weeks that we wanted or not. So that's a lot of pressure on all the people that do, que way you waited to make sure everything >> you want to get it right first, then kind of bolted on after as more of an operational models >> way had a very strong foundation, and now we're spinning everything. >> It's all I got to ask you about the export piece of it because, obviously, um, international global competitiveness is a big force. Right now, people have to be global and data privacy. You mentioned. We talk about genie pr before we came on camera you an opinion on this. Do you have anything? You? Could you please share your view on TV? I really Well, I thought it's valuable. >> Yeah, absolutely. So what I didn't mention when we chatted about that before is Wei thought a lot about you. We need to comply to GDP. Are because this is ah, European regulation. And we headed up that Yes, a CZ. Because we have prisons internationally and erupts. Not everyone that has that opinion that they need to comply. But what we've uncovered was one, one or two weeks before the D days on May twenty fits that We needed to be compliant. So what has happened is in two weeks, we stop everything. We worked twenty four hours for two weeks to restructure the platform to make sure that we were, like, compliant to do CPR. And then after that, we fought a lot. Next few months, we'LL look into it. Are we going to make that thing right? Because people are scared of gpr, but that you want it or not? This is just a beginning way. See it with the California Act Canada as a castle. I'm pretty sure they're going to be very aggressive, so you need to make sure that you really invest in. There are privacy management and all these things. At the end of the day, if it's well done, your customers will love it. The issue is people are being a bit sneaky without the use data. But if you're being transparent and you're being honest with the way you use the data and you're being fully disclosing what you're doing, it's not an issue you need to embrace it. Actually, I think that's a commis it embrace it because it's going to be part of our journey that we >> want to do the tough work up front for you. He was forced to because you are building something new. And then, well, the deadlines here, so is the struggles. Hard works. He had to grind it out. So you and then once you get over that, prepare for it, invested it, nurture the strategy for that. What's the advice to give someone sets there has to do the GPR and might not be into the time pressure, but it's starting out and saying Okay, I got to get my arms around this. What's the core issues well, getting started, not colour, but like what's playbook? >> So the playbook and say like if you think about G p r. This is basically for the European. You If they're not giving you the right tio leverage cookies and tracking and all these things, you should not be doing it. So it's simply thinking in your implementation of a piece of software that goes at the beginning that says, Do you want to have full functional thief, full personalization or not? And don't look at GDP R. But look at the customer experience. If you put the customer once again at the forefront and you really think about what does it make sense? You know if if you and I get on the Web sites and we see that thing that is fronting A, I know what you've done last summer like it's kind of creepy. You don't want to have these things. And so you just build that customer experience around their privacy management, and then everything will fall together. >> So build it into the product. >> Yeah, platform, yeah, and do it the right way and compliance will follow. Don't do it to be compliant. Don't >> exactly do it through a customer experience, >> right? Right. So how's this success band in terms of getting into some of these new markets for you in terms of software and services and some of the other export markets? So, so >> interesting question, because two years ago a DC was focused on to court things, financial products and insurance products. So right now we've expended our product line, and we're now having this what we call knowledge business. So if you think about occasion, business or any business that wants to go beyond the borders, this's quite scary to go in the international game. So now we're capable of offering them a lot of insights on international market out the exports virus key questions that haven't her journey. So we're not helping them to our journey and also as were wet and better than the international supply chains. We're helping them with connecting with big, big companies that are leveraging or looking for some capabilities that we have in the country. So we've really skilled up the product line that we have. We're really shifting the model. We're working a lot with the banks and the way we're supporting the Cajun businesses so like it's days and nights, the type of products that have a solution, the experience that were providing, uh, from two years ago. Do we still have work? Absolutely. Like digital transformation is never such a thing that is completed. The key essence here. The key message is, it's never done, and the customer experience has to be at the forefront if you think about the customer experience. It just happened that most of the experiences digital these days so test our mission is never handing. >> I think I think it's a great mind set. I think that's so smart. It's not just about mobile first or cloud for just customer center. From the beginning, I'm gonna ask you the question. What's it like working with a century Iraq? That what role that they play with a easy to work with the good? What's the story? >> Absolutely. I'm very pleased with the team that we had. We have strong people from Accenture were fully leveraging the network that they have because they're distributed in the global business. Axe Central, for us, is doing all the delivery stuff, the the very difficult stuff behind the scene that is normally like your function that you haven't an organization. So we've been extremely pleased on DH. Actually, I think that the fighter fact that were capable of delivering every single two weeks and agile were pure, agile. You will hear in the industry that some people think they're our job, but they're actually hybrid Elijah. So we're full blown, agile the organization. And they've been strong partner with us on that journey. >> That's awesome. Well, I love the story looking for to keep it in touch. Keep us posted on When you get this transformation. I look forward to chatting. And thanks for sharing your story. And inside here in the Cube, my pleasure. Mark Andreessen, Claire customer here inside the cute telling about the journey and the struggles and GDP are get on it and make it an advantage. Great. Great line there. And digital is the future. I'm Jeffery Jeffery. More day to coverage with the Cube after the short break

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by extension for interactive. >> Hey, welcome back it when Cube live coverage here in Las Vegas are doubly. Summit twenty nineteen. I'm John Murray with Jeffrey, my coz this week. Two days of wall to wall coverage. Our next guest is Glenn Hartman. North America lied for a censure Interactive. Thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me. Great beer. So you guys are doing some great stuff around the creativity, peace, doing great customer experience. Implement taste. We have a great walk through from a lot of the folks from your organization. You're designing up ideas and products, delivering them and then operating them. Nice model. Yeah, thanks. Is that your business model that has network, What century? Interactives business model. I mean center and >> really about one thing. It's about creating, delivering and running the best experiences on the planet. We help our clients do that for their own customers. And when >> we talk about experience, a lot of people have different definitions for that, especially at the conference here. It's not necessarily an experience of a website or a mobile app or u X is people use it. It's really anyway, a brand engages with a customer. It's not just marketing. Either it could be sales or customer service loyalty. Anything anyway. A brand promise can be delivered. Teo to customers. One of things that I've noticed with you guys is that it's a talk track and thought leaders around a new creative and new creativity. And Toby honestly with software that they haven't now the cloud you're seeing in the marketplace. We saw this at Sundance two years ago. A new kind of creative is, um, organically coming into the marketplace with more channels to direct to consumer, whether it be to be or be to see you and now have new kinds of mechanisms to take product, whether it's APS or content or movies, You start to see this democratization really starting to happen. How is that changing? How you guys helped us is because now they now have new capability. They can tell their story in a different way. They have access to new kinds of channels that weren't there before. How is that changing the business, in your opinion, die in a profound way? So I mean, everybody knows that marking is inextricably linked >> to technology and data. Everybody knows that. But when >> we are thinking about the new, creative and own ways that you can tell stories and create experiences. We look at experience very differently. I mentioned before that it was all about all the different touch points in the ways people interact with the brand. But when we look at experience, we call it the Big E. And the biggie actually stands for empathy. And it's understanding how to define what a brand experience means to that customer and defining success in terms of that customer. And you know, Jeff and John, you guys air not to find by your data set or what you bought last week. You could be very different types of people in different situations and understanding ways to empathize with you in the moment and having experiences change in the moment and having creative play, a part of that and data play. A part of that is the big hot. It's a new way of looking at things, and the last part of that, too. And the big is about emotion. So when you have a big brand that has some emotional connection, you know you love this brand for an automotive or you love this hotel chain or there's some brand a connection you have. How do you have that connection flow through every touch? Point and data and technology can enable that. But it's really empathy and emotion. That's the driver. How do you get empathy and creativity to work together? Because you now have an accelerant with data you mentioned getting to know people's empathizing with them in the moment it's contextual. I could be having a great day or a bad day or driving my kids to school of whatever's going on with me. It certainly there might be some data out. How do you get the creativity and the empathy to work together in your mind? You see that appointment? That's the nice parties. More than ever, we have different data sets that can help us do that. Just give you a couple of examples. Um, instead of understanding how to market >> to someone so they'LL buy the next product on basing. That may be on their demographic, maybe basing it on their preferences. You've hear all these terms and marketing for years, and you can understand what they bought. >> Instead of understanding that, why don't we try and look and use data which you could easily do today to understand why they bought something so it could be something as simple as like a I don't know, Cpg example. Maybe have shampoo and you could say, Well, they bought these kinds of things before, So maybe they'LL buy that champion. But if they know that, you know, maybe Jeff is equal friendly are John. Maybe you're more into things that maybe you buy that shampoo because you care about animals and they know they don't test them on animals. Or maybe it's something more about experience that that particular shampoo won't make your daughter cry when you ship your her hair. And it helps that experience that that's the reason why it actually helps me. You're empathizing in the moment with something that is meaningful that you care >> about. It's not about a better deal or >> better price or some kind of feature. It's something actually about you more meaningful, much very meaningful interaction. Data set is that because there's no data before, is it more? There's more signals, potentially to get exposed to that, because that's a hard data points to get. I mean, to find the why is a holistic kind of perspective. It's true, but I mean, I think it's more of a mind set. The date is there, but the mind set has been different. Over time, people were looking to technology every buzz word in the world use big data and personalization. Aye, aye. And then now it's a I and machine learning and like, Well, that's great. And they're all wonderful enablers, as I said, but it has to be driven by empathy first. So it all starts. >> I mean, we've been saying this forever customer, centrist city and a customer >> concerts. But really, I mean, for real. If you start to use those data sets, aunt have the mindset has to be a c M. O. R. A brand manager is someone who actually it's advocating for the customer, and they're willing to say, No, I don't need big data. I don't need all the data. I need this gold nugget part so I can speak to John. >> It's interesting plate, as you say, the emotional part of the biggie. Also, I think it is the old Coke commercial, right raw one world together, and we all cry and there's some great McDonald's commercials, right when you talk about you think beyond that to the to the empathy. I can't help but think of kind of the whole purpose. Purpose driven, mission driven companies. You know, kids coming out of college want to work for mission driven, cos we heard it over and over. And the key notes, you know, we're not a product company, not even really a service company. But we're committed to two, an ideal to the mission. Beep. Be partners with us, be our customer. Let's have a relationship that goes so much deeper and longer than any particular transaction is that kind of that tied it, that that is a part of it? >> Absolutely. Now, the interesting thing of what you said is that people are >> tied to a purpose and maybe something that's meaningful in a broad sense, absolutely. And that's a wonderful place to start. And you can start to align products and services in that way, >> the way he talked about, like, shampoo and, you know, animal testing, right? Well, >> it's a good one, but the next one is really getting a little bit Mohr down to you. So I think all that is great, but really understand what you need in the moment, because what happens is it. Some of those things may change if you are shopping at a grocery store every >> Saturday for your family and you're used to doing down your attitude. There might be different then when >> you're shopping, when your kid is sick and you got pulled out of work and you got to get there to get the prescription, you're into speed and your stress in the moment they're versus. Maybe >> on Saturday you're like all try some new coupons and try some new things and go by. The little tasting >> station is actually behaviors that you want to understand in the moment. That is a big part of that as well. But the key thing to hear is, let's think of this when you deal with empathy. It's not just getting to know all those things. Even if it gets to that level, it's actually changing the way marketers think about talking to communicating and relating to customers even the language that they use. I mean, think of it >> today. I mean, >> still, people use marketers are their marketing to people. It's, uh, that's acquire customers. Let's convert wind developers over good. We don't win their helpers over. And what was the last time you guys were real excited about getting converted? Okay, it's not a fun experience, right? So if you even changed, I might send you say, Let's market with someone or let's let's help them. You actually create experiences that are useful and helpful not about conversion and not a business metric. But success is defined by the customer. How are you guys playing this? Because this is really kind of ties on multiple threads. I mean, the whole nother community angle to people belong to communities in context to their life. And they engage. And when they engage his emotional connection to a group of this and some cohorts is the worker. Thank you. Okay, groups. But they're friends and colleagues, or whatever could be you guys were. The point is, with customers, take us through a use case day in the life of empathy, deployed into how you guys do business with the big Branson and one of the success. How do you make it happen? What's the engagement look like? How does someone do this? So they just wake up one morning, say Okay, I'm gonna have more empathy. They also call you guys up. What happens? Like what? Take us through What? Certain evidence was made in the slide. I could give you >> a little bit of it. An example of how stars we've been talking a little bit more dramatically about sick kids and testing on pets and animals and things like that. Not testing the pets. Can you imagine? I'd really be >> horrible. But single graphic of the users individual personal things is hard, right? So? Well, I mean, the whole point of this is that when you really get into the mechanics of how this works, I'll give you an >> example. It's a little bit less dramatic. OK, so it's a telecommunications company. Telco company. That's selling. You guys know what? Triple play? Yeah. Okay, So you have It's >> a cable and a phone, right? All it's it's like a commodity product writers. There's no emotional thing necessarily. But in that game, if you can just optimize certain parts of the journey, you can make a big difference, right so way got a benign request from a marketer. Teo say, Listen, we do a lot of paid search. Can you help us with this one product? Just if you move it even like one percent, it would be significant to the company. But when? So okay, we'LL do that, >> and it worked out. We go in and help them do their >> search. But because we're thinking about experience in a broader sense for so well, let's let's do it more. Let's make them be able to transact or engage in multiple ways. Well, you could. You could sign up for the service to email. Or maybe there's click to call or click to chat. Or you could even walk into a branch and do it there. Maybe through the call centre, right? It's what's all that's working together on the channel, though fun words you want easy. You're leveraging >> different technologies to do it and people, >> so the way this worked was you were coming in through search and then eventually a lot of them were converting in the call center. So it was all working. And you think that's great? Well, it wasn't great to the company at all. They were very upset. The people that we're buying the media, we're really bummed because they couldn't get the attribution of the credit for the thing was in the call center. So they came over the great idea. They said, OK, take the phone number off and take the the click to call off and will force the >> customer to convert in. Our channel, of >> course, is a brilliant company with great people and rational thinking prevailed and they didn't do that. But they said, Well, what do we do? I said, Well, you're going to eat and multi attribution model to be able to help you do that, Okay, but that's not enough because you also need a new sales incentive and commission structure inside the call center because those people are getting pit on that. But since it's such a low commodity product, that's not gonna work to change. That's that's a new sales kind of thing, then you wait. They can't talk for another three seconds to that person because you'LL bring the margins on. You got to get him back. All the turtleneck just screwed up. That's right. So there's a new business process is now a new operating model whose skills to get him back into the general. So all of a sudden it's benign. Request from a marketing team taken, you optimize my paint search becomes new business transformation. Okay, now, because that brand manager had the guts to say I'm going to advocate for this customer. This customer wants to come in through this channel. They want to convert over here, and we're gonna actually change the operating model, the sales structure to call the sales lead. I had to call the CFO on the CEO, and we're gonna make this happen, Gonna change the way we do business on behalf of that customer. That is weight world, I could tell you we see this all the time and marketers all the time that there's so married to their website analytics funnel that that's all about who gets credit coded earls and the customer experience is a brutal. It's like I'm not here on other sites are all over the place. I don't really need to go the site every day, right? Somebody only go there when Otto and the thing we were talking about before. If you're grocery shopping >> and Europe's have set on Tuesday and you want to get off >> for your kid at versus the nice leisurely thing we talked about on the weekend, there's a whole nother set of outcomes in Cape Yas you have to deal with. If you went into that supermarket on Tuesday and they figured out a way to get you in and out fast and just get those two or three autumns, you need it for your kid. That's a failed trip. According to the grocery industry. You need to be in there longer they want, so you stay in the back. That's right. Totally. That breaks the whole model, but it's wonderful for you. You'LL shop there forever because of that experience, what you're getting at the Morrises air, changing the business models of cos that's the bottom line. You're at the center. That could be a driver for the transformation. That's it. Empathy. Is the driver Absolutely no. You need to have the emotional connection to all that stuff to help also internally see emos. I don't need to just be relevant and customers that need to be relevant to the enterprise. They need to be relevant to the CEO, Doc in seconds and hear the screaming and kicking and screaming right now. Glenn, that's great. But man, that's a heavy lift way could do it. How do you How do you get it? Because now I can see a cultural reaction. The antibodies will come out and attack that notion because it's scary because now, like, whoa, yeah, well, I mean, it is hard, but the good news is, is that we see, even at this conference, and a lot of our clients are coming over to do that this incremental ways to get there. But I'll make it simple. So the advantages are we said this new technology, new data that allow you to do some of this stuff right? That's great. And you can see a lot of them consolidating, right? A lot of the stacks all now have content and analytics and commerce and all that, and in this nice ways that they come together and that consolidation can help, and there's other ones that can handle different data sets, and that helps to his automation. And but the thing is that what people miss is one of the ways to accelerate this is add a human centered approach to how you actually create the experience internally. And what I mean is, it's not enough to consolidate the data and figure out that Gold nugget and not enough to do with technology have to do with humans. It's a human centered approach, so we're bringing in integrated teams of humans that are pulling all the stuff together. It's someone who understands strategy. Maybe someone understands creative when it hit me in the club, basically their prime in the pump getting it. But they will sit together. They sent to get the analytics. People sit next to the creative people. It's in next you people. They work on it as they designed the experience. You don't do a strategy project and then do a A road map and then do an R P for technology enabled Waterfall does not work, but it's beyond even waterfall versus algebra. This is actually taking humans and consolidate that thinking New skill sets at the center in like an incubator way to do pilots to do prototyping to do things. If you want to create that new experience that we're talking about in any of these cases, you gotta hand CMO some kind of thing that can bring to the team and say, Look, here's an app that would enable this or he has a pilot We could try without boiling the ocean toe, actually create an experience that would move the needle or whatever. Lame corporate analogy. Just make more money and get some decent results in Get a beachhead, just small eatery through it. Glenn. Great Insights. This is a great time. We'd love to get you back on the Cuban girl down, and it's kind of design thinking, combined with execution on the front lines with customers. Center the value proposition. Great conversation before we and just give a quick plug for the business. What's going on with a sensor Interactive? How's the business going? What are your goals? How many people are working there? What's the geography is looked like? Give us enough. Thanks for asking So essential Interactive is enjoying its third year as being listed by at H magazine, is the largest digital agency in the world on the fastest growing Wei have coverage and a truly integrated global delivery model that hits every part of the of every market. And we're so excited. Tio have this growth because it's a way to show that the market is truly interested and being experienced lead and the way we're defining experience. We're seeing more and more clients moving from some of these incremental changes to really >> try to put the customer at the center of what they're doing. And, you know, X Ensure Interactive believes in this model it is. It's very much in some ways way. Call it a new kind of provider, like an experience agency for lack of a better term. TTO help companies drive that transformation, and it's >> done with people and technology, and we're been on a tear recently. Most are growth is organic, but we also do lots and lots of acquisitions to make these capabilities come together. All the creativity and the design and the strategy and the techniques and the run of it is all in one integrated team, and that is very, very helpful when you're trying to do some of the things we've been talking about and you're you guys. I think I'm the right way. This customer wave is really, really because with digital customers air in charge, they control their data. They're now going to shift is happening. We're starting to see some visibility into it. It was going to impact the economics process and business models, so I think it's just beginning. Congratulations really is thanks. And we're so excited because some of the >> client successes it's truly transformational somethings. You got it. Carnival or Marriott or or Subway. I >> mean, it's a whole different >> kind of way of looking at experience, and it's >> really helping people. It's not just for its good for the business, but we're really changing people's lives and helping have experiences be meaningful. It's been wonderful and fun for us. Glenn, Thanks so much for sharing this insights here in the Cube. Hey, thanks for going the data Here live adobe summat. Twenty nineteen, Jumper, jefe Rick, Stay tuned for more coverage after this short break

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen. Brought to you by X Ensure Interactive. >> Welcome back, everyone. Cube Live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit. Twenty nineteen. I'm John. For whichever Frick. My Coast. This week. Two days of wall to wall coverage. Our next guest is Janine Falcone. Is the marketing agency lead in North America for a center in Iraq? Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks for having >> me love having the conversation just talking on before we came on camera around the role of the agencies. You guys are doing a lot of big work for big brands. B to C B to B. There's a big shift going on with Cloud computing. We've seen that movie is happening right now. Amazon, as you are all going on, but that what? The marketing world. It's not just about marketing. Cloud is a lot more going on there. The impact to the marketing world and the agency relationships are impacted. That's what's going on. Give us >> the state of >> the market, >> happy to sew an extension. Interactive. You know, a lot of clients come to us and they're living in this world. I talk with my hands. Sorry, living in this world of, like chaos, as I like to call it, because there's so many things going on the technology landscape that you described. It's crazy out there. Remember, the landscape used to be this big announces big. So there's all that sort of market buzz and chaos around. I should buy this technology in that technology, and marketers and CEOs they've all been out there doing, that's that's one piece. The second piece is the customer affectation, right? All that is evolving and changes a customer's always expect. I don't really carry our retailer bank whatever. They kind of have that uber experience that they all expect regardless of product or service or anything like that. So marketers have always tried to deal with that in the way they knew how. But then the third component is business climate and what's happening in their worlds with either shrinking budgets or aging workforce. I don't even mean age necessarily as much a skill set. Aging skill sets things that used to matter. Don't they've got that they've got organizational silos, they've got all these things. So those three things, plus I'm a marketer. I still have to deliver that old brand promise that they're told to dio, It's a crazy crazy time. >> All theaters air on massive change over chips happening. Marketers and CMOS also relied on agencies for help. Tell them they have domain expertise in certain areas, A and agencies and the other thing. But now that the value equations shifting in the economics underlying economics behind it are getting some visibility around its digital different new ballgame, you got a I and Machine Learning has caused that shift. So the question is, How should your customer how are your customers dealing with agency relation? Because in today's value exchange, >> totally and that's all >> don't often come ask us that so not only they have all those silos and all those things. They could have seventeen different agencies across multiple product lines that may have been doing a great job in their own silo. But who's bringing all that together? And then it's not even and my just not spending my money right with these agencies, like What are they delivering for that? So when they come to us, tow holistically, look across all of that and help them. We start with the customer in the center of all those siloed crazy areas. You've got to start with the customer, and what do they expect and how do you deliver to them? So, yes, we're seeing this crazy world in the agency space two of brandade disease desolate all the different kinds of agency >> toss another piece of fruit in the blender makes it all. So I was talking with the sea so that the chief information security officer at some chief security officer at Microsoft reports to the board in cybersecurity, going through the same transformation that it's happening, marking where now you have technology and AP eyes and and tools technical tools. So he's shrinking his supplier base down because he doesn't want his skills gas to get widened by having to learn new tools. So there's now a new forcing function on the tech side, and now we see that kind of creeping into the adobe conversation where it's like this techno involved. Yes, we now have toes, shrink suppliers even more so how do you get from seventeen to three years at the train? So there seems to be a discussion around the impact attack your thoughts. >> Yeah, well, absolutely. That was one of the areas I talked about. So what happens? There is they'LL need marketers to understand technology which today many do. Let's be honest, right? Like, ten, fifteen years ago. They didn't. Today they do. But it also requires you both internally and externally, tohave multiple skill sets. And sometimes they'LL say, Should I be bringing this in house shivering that in house? What do I do with this technology? And there's never one answer. There's never like you should enforce this or that. And so technology has had that massive impact on Oh, I could do this myself and then they realise that can and then back to the But do I have the right skill sets internally externally to be able to do that. And it's often seventeen different still skill sets to do one thing where it used to be. A lot >> of Jeff and I talked on the cue before about you know, the classic business school conversation around core competency should be in house Horak outsource your non core competencies. How did you see that evolved? Because at some point there has to be a core concert on data and things of that nature. So what's your thoughts? How do you advise clients on Okay, if you're going to go in house and start putting a toe in the water and building it out, it's an investment. And all I think about, what's the core competency? >> I mean core competence to me or anything related specifically to your industry that people have to continue to get skilled in an expert in. And they want to do just that. One thing. Sometimes people that are broader generalists in marketing and data, they might get bored doing that. But if someone is like, I want to be really good at this and I'm going to continue to hone my skills in that one thing Data Analytics, whatever, then that may be. And you live in the right market. You don't live in kind of a part of the country where it be hard to find those skills. Be honest. I mean some parts of the country, it's easier than others, so that is one way to look at it. But anything that requires generalist knowledge across industry knowledge or or things that are constantly evolving and you want someone else to pay for the training. >> What's the CMO conversation like for you in clients these days is actually lets a lot of stuff going on. We just illustrated the game is still the same. They gotta pride that brand promise. Now they got the text taxing always new things. Hopefully, Ball will move down the field faster. But what is the CMO conversation that you have? How they stay ahead of the curve? What's their edge? >> Yeah, >> how they posturing right now? >> I mean, I think it's an amazing time to be in marketing. So CM owes to me that are the pioneering. CMO is the ones that are really focusing back is in on the customer and developed, you know, delivering those relevant experiences. They're the ones that are being ex successful because they try toe, not certainly not. Ignore all of us chaos that's surrounding, but stay focused and then they don't worry about Oh, this isn't in my silo. I have to kind of reach across, and I have to make sure I get this first. They have to be the leaders. They have to lead the industry like knowledge and business would be the leader in the organization, whether or not they are and just be the pioneer to get that done, that makes them successful. The ones that are excited about that they're the future, writes >> funny. We interviewed a guy from Clorox while ago, and you think of CPG has been data driven forever right there coming out of there coming out of Cincinnati. They all got trained Teo G. But this is a whole different level of kind of, of data, of data driven execution's been than what they've been doing for years and years and years. That's >> right, because potentially they were product centric. So they dealt with their product in CPD, and I'm going to sell toilet paper. That's I'm going to be the best market or there is. But the customer expectations surrounding that have changed, and they expect you to know them in a relevant, non creepy way. And product marketing to customer marketing is a big shift, and potentially I know a lot. I know a little about a lot of industries. CPG has been very product focused, which is difficult when you now have to be customer centric, regardless of product right that your company is trying to >> send the >> changing rule of distribution, especially in cpt. Anywhere before they would. They would ship the the toilet paper, whatever they were doing, and it goes out the door and they don't know anything else about it to the next. Word comes in correct. Now they know how the products are being used. They got a direct connection to the to the customer, and they need to establish a relationship beyond just the actual execution of the purchase of a very different >> kind of a chance. Crazy. I love it. I think it's a crazy time >> to be able to do that. And again, the blurring between marketing and commerce and sales and service. There's all sorts of debates on where marketing ends commerce sales service begins because it's all clustered together now. Then there's creativity and technology and data and analytics all converging. So to me, people that understand all of those things at a high enough level and are good collaborators and orchestrators that know how to get things done, they will be successful. >> Do you take a lot of people tried to buy their way out of the problem because you know Martek technology has been around for a long time. Arguably, you know, kind of leading edge in a lot of the the things in terms of a web experience. But this, you know, so many of them. >> You can't buy your way out of the problem. Yeah, Yeah, except that. And >> buy it quickly, right? I'm going to buy it, and I'm gonna plug the sand. I mean, I feel like that might have happened years ago, and now you're right there seeing that. Oh, my God. Now, that, too, is like its own silo. Now they have a technology silo to, in addition to potentially some organizational silos that they have to break down. So But, you know, the good news is that everybody sort of sees this now and kind of gets it. And if people are just sort of focused on to do the right thing for the customer because if you don't, someone else will. And sometimes going back to what used to work works like Now, if I call a company, I have no expectation they're going to answer the phone. And when they do, you're like, Wow, that was a great experience. I scheduled a vacation. It was It ended up being non refundable. And I'm like, I'm just going to try to call. It was one of the online. It wasn't Airbnb was one of those like services I caught. They answer the phone. If seven o'Clock on a Thursday night, >> no problem. You can count. Like this is the greatest experience I've had. I'm going to use them again because I didn't expect >> that. So it's not like what used to work doesn't work anymore, but has to work on the right. >> Pleasant surprises. Exactly. Relevancy. That's healthy. And you got it. Yeah. And then they >> said I said, Okay, well, I mean, they're like, we don't need your information, you know, I have your cell phone, so I don't >> know. And I wasn't creeped out by that. I don't >> thank God. Now I don't have to fill out a form >> I need to do mother's maiden name, like, six different times. >> And then, you know what? I saw how you guys make >> money. Like I was so fascinated by this that I just had to sort of figure out the business model because I'm a marker there. And my point is that was. I don't know how much it costs them to do that, but that was a positive experience, >> President. People call in >> there, Bryan. Nobody call it. And I don't know how they got around the company for all I know. So I gotta ask you, I gotta ask >> you with all these new changes you mentioned in one of the great example of how the world's changing KP eyes also change around what's really what's relevant. Because these new things air going on where may or may not have KP I. So how does the CMO get out in front of that? How did they evolve their skill set to either either grok that understand all this new k p I potential? Yeah, and have that front and center and working through the marketing mix. >> Yeah, you can have KP I overload to write. So remember, old school still works. Brand matters. Brandt. No one worried about measuring that stuff years ago, and part of that is still relevant. I had a session earlier today and people talked about CP eyes like customer related influence and things like that, because that matters and some things you absolutely I know This is a Dobie a mike in trouble. You maybe can't necessarily measure. But, you know, it matters to your brand, and some of that matters to know how much you spend on that, how you sort of track that and maybe track I'm all about, like, mixing gray and mixing, you know, qualitative and quantitative stuff. That's part of the trick >> on these signals. Their market, their data signals totally put on the agency front. Go back to the agency for second because with sass, APS and these new things, people answer the phone, which has blended kind of channels. Is there a new agency model emerging around cloud and sass applications that that this doesn't feel like an agency but acts like an agency? Because if you're an agency you're providing a service, you have software service models out there. Self service is there in the evolution of change over and how ages new agencies looked like. And how does the CMO know if someone's a new agency is going to be relevant or not? >> I mean, it totally depends on the kind of agents, and I would tell C Motor not necessarily worry about that. I wouldn't worry about. Do I need a new kind of agency at all? It's like, What am I getting? What are they delivering for me? I would go back to the first question and what do I need to keep as a core competency? And inside versus outside I wouldn't worry about it. Might be the technology question. Right now, I'm gonna have even the others other crazy agencies in What I would worry about is what do I know? I need toe outsource and have people help me with that are going to come up with the best ideas. And I mean, agencies still do that because to come up with a creative idea, you need that expertise that is outside of your industry. So I don't see that ever changing >> don't ask in terms of because, he said, cause brand matters. And I always like a Harley Davidson is kind of the extreme brand loyalty where people tattoo it on their bodies and there's a whole ecosystem outside of the motorcycle. That's a really, you know, passionate group of people. Should everybody strive for that kid everybody. I mean they can't get quite where every tattoo and brands on their arm. But you know where we're kind of the limits And is it, you know, kind of appropriate based on what the product is, how people think about that. Specter. >> Yeah, I might be a little biased on that. I always think brand matters. I always think that when you think of something, if you don't in your head, know what that stands for, whether or not it's a positive or negative is not really relevant. It's yes, I think it does now. Should they strive to be that? No. But they have to be differentiated, and they have to have people know what they do quickly, because if you have to figure it out like mean, people struggle with that today in terms of knowing where to go for what, So without a clear value proposition, differentiation and a brand that matches that and a brand you can live up to with every experience, it's going to be rough. You might have some early success, but it won't. I don't know that it lasts their time and strong brands kind of carry through some tough times, too, You know, if sales are down on the market changes, >> we'LL keep doing our and our interviews on events and get smart people really smart people. And all the answers come out community. Thanks >> so much for coming on, sharing these awesome insights. Final question. What's going on? The show for you? What? Some of the hallway conversations here. You're speaking. What's the top story line for you here at this show? >> It's two things. It's what's going on. The market with our clients is as we just talked about. It's what's going on in our own industry. I mean, there's craziness in our own industry, which is kind of fun. You know what players do, what and who's going to do what and you know, where's this all going? And it's fun. I mean, it's it's really, really fun and exciting to be part of this industry. >> Well, thanks for coming on, Mr. Q. Where we're extracting the signal from the noise at this event. Adobe Summit twenty nineteen Talking the smartest people bringing it to you. Bring that data to you. We right back with more coverage after this short break

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by X Ensure Interactive. >> Welcome back to the Cubes. Live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit. Twenty nineteen. I'm John Murray with Jeffrey Kerr. Next guest. Touch Wars. Who's a global delivery lead for Adobe with sent a censure interactive. That was a tongue twister. You for you, for the adobe relationship with a censure interactive. That's correct. Thank you. Global delivery lead. Thank you. That's right. Look into the Cube. Thankyou. So global. Big big landscape, cloud computing, Global impact delivery. That's hard corn nuts and bolts on the front lines. Tell us by what you do, what some of the issues around delivery, because that's where the rubber hits the road on all this. >> Well, that's exactly right. You know, when I think of my roll, think of me if someone who's out there working shoulder to shoulder with customers when it, you know from a delivery aspect, you know, providing the capability, providing the skills, providing the talent, making sure that we're getting the results that our clients are looking for and ultimately the quality that that we need to deliver for them. >> You guys do a lot of work. I mean, censure Interactive got a great team that sets up all the upgrade ideas, all the new business models. New tech is here. People process, culture change all going on. The end of the day comes into your I've gotta deliver it. And then the outcome is that the one has to accept that this is a core issue of people, talk about operational izing new things and sometimes has changed. Management involved his new culture shifts. So this is where we hear a lot. It's not. The tech problem is the people and the culture. Can you share your view on this because you're on the front lines on this one issue? >> It's a great point. And I think you know, one thing is standing up technology, and you can sort of get some of the nuts and bolts running. It's another thing to really get our clients and our customers enabled so they can unleash the power of some of these platforms. The technologies you know, there's a entire journey map on what their own people we need to go through from in a moment. There is a change management aspect around how we get those folks sort of feeling comfortable about that, and we often go through a couple different methods to do that. Sometimes we do it too, in the box where we'll sort of act with them and the same role other ways we'll sort of lead by example and do it and then they'll sort of shadow us and then eventually we just sort of make that transition. In some cases, they just frankly, you know, outsource it to us, right? And well take over that sort of feature and functionality a role in position on behalf of our customer. And that's okay. >> kind of horsepower. Do you bring to the table? And we just interviewed Nicky, who handles the essential interactive operations that seem like a great power source standing up fast, some operational capabilities. What else do you guys do bring to the table in terms of the delivery piece? >> Well, >> what Nikki and her team do is vital for us. So when you think about when I'm out there doing, I'm out there standing up these capabilities, empowering our customers, and then Nikki's with her team and everything we're doing an X century active operations is sort of operating that for that client, right? So once we sort of turn on some of those features and functions that Nicki's out there with her team, sort of running with it. And in that multiyear run in, getting those >> custom will hand the keys to her. Do so you, that's the hand off. Is that okay? >> Exactly. Right. So once we once we sort of power everything on with our client's power, all that integration on and then we leverage Nikki and her team in many ways to sort of take over that run. Tom, if you talk about the skills, that kind of the skills gap, if you will on some of the clients that you have and how are the skills and the rules evolving to execute with some of these new tooling in this kind of new process? It wasn't like build a campaign and slow roll it out. Now it's Go, go, go, go, go! Oh, you're absolutely right on that and I think I know that. But it's evolving, right? I mean, we data scientists are more important than they ever were. And so all of our customers and ourselves are investing on how we get data science because at the heart of it and If you think about what he's talking about in some of the new products that are coming out, it's about building that data layer right. And it's about taking that data later to the next level, too, around security and tradition. So helping our customers started get their arms around what it means to manage that data and all those aspects around the view of a customer is critical. Even the even the presentation tear you know it'LL be provides all those amazing technologies that allow customers to drive those rich experiences, whether it's on a tablet, whether it's on a mobile, whether it's on your desktop, ubiquitous doesn't matter. But that presentation tears is constantly changing. I mean, we didn't have, you know, the anger and the React ten years ago. Now you have all these other frameworks you have to begin to prepare for. >> About the one of his Aquino yesterday we've got my attention was the word and look, I love the way it sounds personalization at scale. And that's just just think about that concert for second. It's mind blowing. We love we love personalization doesn't like personalization. Yeah, but at scale a lot of moving parts. This is in your guy's wheelhouse. Century irregulars have large scale customers globally. What does that mean to you? Because I had us had happened best by so much. Send out forty million emails means insane the personalization experience. What does it mean? >> Well, what? >> When I hear something needs to be a scale, you gotta break it down to be a simple as possible. You got to figure out how you make that something super complex and dumb it down to where you truly can't scale it where you can enable people quickly. Um and sometimes you think big and start small so often What we'LL do is we'LL have our customers say, if you want to do one toe, one personalization we need to be thinking about how we can create content quickly, how we can create art quickly, how we can go and and operationalized that globally. Right, Because many times you need be working around the clock. So for me, when I think of that scale, it's how do we turn those capabilities on around the globe quickly for our clients and basically, you need to break it down. >> It's a place you go, though customs saying, Let's let's pick some use cases. That's a beachhead. Get that figured out. Make sure it's not a lot of moving parts. >> Yeah, and against >> software, because experience engine things of that nature >> and sort of start small, you know? So I you know, I would light up some teams take some initial use cases, maybe think about how you know, what are some of those you know, initial user journeys that end in journey. We wantto prove out. And then let's operationalize those. And then we'LL build on top of that overtime. >> Be asked by the Adobe announcements. What's getting you excited here? The event with some of the hallway conversations and conversations after hours, a lot different events going on. What are you talking about? What's the top conversation that you're involved in >> for sure AP when you talk about the new experience platform that's coming out and everything around there to me, I think that's a game changer in the marketplace, and I think it's also critical. Certainly OD eyes all wrapped in there and all the data theater aspects. But the new experience platform that Adobe is investing, it is sort of where I think our customers are driving towards and what's required in order to meet the demands of how to secure this data. How to wrap some permissions around it, how to take. You know what we would consider a P I and pH. I like data on be able to use it and more of their tools knowing that we have the security of the integrity of >> our CM taxi. Your job with customer experience. Platform >> right. Impact. Our job is it unleashes all kinds of potential. Uh, you know, when we do you think about what were out there helping our customers solution, it opens the gamut for us to go and sort of drive those next generation experiences in a much more you know, I guess, uh, formidable way, you know, I can >> more capabilities. Oh, absolutely. You know, >> execution. Exactly. What was super complex for me to build now just became a lot easier. Because now I have a frame, Eric and a structure and a platform that they're enabling it >> has impact the interview. The customer. I mean, so the partner landscape because you guys have a lot of partnerships, just always a key. One house. You hear Adobe Summit. But, you know, you might have some of these little Miss Provider's come in with a nice tool chain. Say, Hey, you know what? I want to plug this in the biggest center interactive engine. You guys got a lot of global breath. You're gonna probably get some impact on the ecosystem. How do you see partners? Because if it's an enabling platform and should be in the building something so that's going to tell Sign what? What's your view on the partner ecosystem? >> What's the first thing I'LL say about that is I think we're in a unique position because if you look at the scale we have at Accenture, so although I'm in extension interactive, I'm very focused on that digital and building the best experience on Planet I have this huge engine behind me of Broderick Center that has these capabilities. I mean, you know what we're dreaming up around, how we're working with Microsoft and happy Well, guess what? We already do that, too, so I can bring a lot of those vendor relationships and experiences capabilities and bring him right in house quickly. And when I need to go out to market and partner. I have those avenues, and I can go bring that niche that >> Lego blocks together now. Yeah, big things, auto integrate. Just put it together and >> adobes continue to invest in their io. And that allows us to integrate and plug in these things a lot quicker than we ever have before. >> What's the biggest challenge? You see it that adobe and the markers and and market is having the marketplace because a lot of new tech, a lot of great capabilities. Now emergency. There's a shift happening. Yeah, you know what kind of been going slow? You know, yard by yard, moved the chains like a football analogy. But now big movements gonna have we see happening Way. Siya shift coming. Big wave of innovation. What's the challenge? >> That definitely two challenges. I think one, uh, it's just the speed, right. The speed in which the market is moving. And how do you keep up with that speed? And how do you continue to invest in your own people? T learn it. And then, too, I think this year amount of data like the fact that we can store all this data. We have more data coming in than we've ever had before. I mean, just think of what I owe tea is doing to our our landscape and all the data that's coming in from a night and now we can use that as a as a whole, another level of, ah, sophistication and our analytics and our segmentation. And that's a tough job, right? That's how marketers keep up with that. It's, uh, it's changing their landscape, for sure. But what about just kind of the point of view when they get competition that comes out of complete left field, right, that you know, uber and lift or the obviously examples to get way overused. But you know, the company's heir now beating against companies that weren't even in their radar before that were purpose built on moving at light speed to your point. How do you help those legacy? Those legacy guys kind of take the big league, take the big step, get to hyperspeed personalization? I mean one thing. You can't be complacent, I think if you are complacent, your you know, one of those small, innovative companies is going to slowly eat your lunch on. So I think, you know, take advantage of that mindset that those small, you know, incubation type companies or this moth and maybe even think about How do I How do I build that same type of innovation within my own halls? And how do I take a manager? How that rapid development of that rapid change and oftentimes we're helping our customers go in and bootstrap that right started like, Let's go inside. And let's build a little innovation hub inside your own organization to go and compete with them. Otherwise, you know you're going to see what you know, like the case studies you just >> referenced right, because they're in the driver's seat, for sure. I mean, I think this is great innovation. Question. That week that came up in our last segment with Jim Leyland was you know, he talked about the vendor dynamics. Yes, When you have the world floating upside down, things have changed. Sweet vendors lead and enable. Now you have abs dictating terms, the infrastructure. That's a cloud model. He made a good point, he said. You know, a lot of the transformational stuff is great, but then it fails during integration and pointing out that they get to a certain point. It just crashes, not crashes. That's my word. But he said thiss challenges. It wasn't specific on outcomes of of transmission, we said pretty much its struggles and usually doesn't happen. Yeah, how do you see that? Because with now, automation machine learning Now you have agility in a marketing landscape, not just marketing cloud. You got all kinds of other things. It's like this sales and marketing. And there is everything you have agility. How does the integration impacts and has the delivery impact that transformation >> Goal? What ends? You're exactly right in the fact that when organizations make a big investment and Toby Technologies, they typically have a lot of other investor. It's another technologies as well. And so how do you create agility where you gotta plug and play sometimes more than one, and I'm sure Jim talk to you about our customer experience, engine and the beauty of that right where we can go and really bring a framework to our customers and our clients. That allows us to take the best of all these of all these experiences all these platforms, I should say, to build the best in class experience, and that's something we absolutely bring to the table. It's a framework. We've proved it out. And frankly, we have a whole bunch of connectors that already exist. So from my mind, when I'm trying to get them to be agility, I bring that type of thing to the table to help them move fast. >> I think that's a successful tell sign we see with successful, then vendors and partners and integrators is that you guys took your core competency and rose software and he packaged it up to automate the heavy lifting that I mean, why wouldn't >> you do the >> way you >> are accustomed there, >> buddy? I mean, I walk in our customers and I'm like, Well, they have a little this. They have a little that, then they're goingto go on, make this massive invest in Adobe, and it's like they're not going to just discard to retire some of those things. So way attempt to solve that problem. >> That's a real differentiate. Congratulations. Jim was great on that final question for you. Look going forward. What do you excited about? What's on your road map? What's what's next for you is the next leg of the journey for global delivery. Well, more delivery, you >> know. Honestly, it's it's to continue to build off scale around all of our locations. So when you look at its Centre Interactive were, you know, obviously a big North American business. But we have businesses all over the globe, and it's to continue to create, you know, to meet our customer's demands as they expand global. That's how do we deliver local and how do we deliver around the clock for them? And so for me, it's about build those capabilities everywhere you go South America, Australia, New Zealand in Eastern Europe, and, uh, and making sure that we create the same delivery patterns and we leverage the same assets and accelerators like the customer experience engine in all those places. >> And one final question. As you look at the arena of the all the vendors competing, what's the what's the winning formula? What's the posture that you see that's a successful vendor as they integrate it in this kind of these journeys in these experiences, what successful makeup of a successful supplier to customers >> from this from a from a technology >> that you look at all the players got Microsoft big part of the job you got Amazon, you got all these. You know, Marsh, Martek Stack is littered with logo's consolidations happening. There's a lot of battles battles on the field right now. Players of fighting for their future. >> Well, honestly, I think those who are going to make it as simple and as easy to empower their people to use is gonna be the winner. And I think you're you're seeing that certainly at at Adobe. But there's a lot of other formidable vendors out there who are creating very simple techniques to go on like this up. The more you could empower a business person and a marketer to do self service, the bigger win you're gonna have >> and to your point about scale. Simplicity. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Great insight. Thank you so much to share in the commentary. Appreciate Todd Schwarz here on the Cube Global delivery lead for the Adobe account for a censure Interactive Stevens. One more day to coverage after this short break. I'm John free with Jeffrey will be right back

live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering Adobe summit 2019 brought to you by Accenture Interactive okay welcome back everyone so cubes live coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe summit 2019 I'm John ferry with Jeff Frick our next guest is Jim LaLanne CX orchestration practice lead at Accenture customer experience engine welcome to the cube Thank You Forex for joining us customer experience engine CX e CX a yes that's your product I should we work on what's the importance of that what's the big deal so the big deal is there's a proliferation of technology in the world and and one of the main challenges is everything's silent everybody has a different lens when you talk to the sales folks they have a view of the customer when you talk to marketing day of you nobody ever talks and the problem is when these organizations they think technology is the answer so and one of the things that we're always asked inside of the Accenture interactive is well how do you bring all this stuff together and we kept getting asked the same question over and over and over again and so finally we decided you know what let's do something about it let's make this so that you move the discussion away from technology and how can you accelerate your transformation and use something like CX e to bring that to life Jim you've been a pro in this business know digital back we're gonna you're mister you've seen many ways of the hype and the reality you know the titles of customer success man and your orchestration practice manager you know we're relevant but now more than ever those actually means something look at orchestration that's a big term used in cloud computing around orchestrating workloads customer success that's the theme of the show sure experiences so now more than every we're starting to see some visibility into tech implementations to hard problems that were being tackled by pioneers on the bass now in front and center here how do you summarize that that market right now because do you believe that to be true and what is that visibility what are people looking at right now and then what's behind it well for far too long it was always about the technology providers themselves or the in the cusp who are our customers the organizations that hire Accenture to help them transform but what we've seen is just a complete seismic shift it's all about what is the customer or the consumer one it's not about what we as organizations want it's about what the consumers want so we do very much see that as a trend that's moving and in in order to do that you really need to decouple your systems of engagement from your systems of record and by doing that it allows organizations to experiment so there's new technology coming in everyday probably while we're sitting here at least a hundred others have come to life yeah but it becomes hard because when you're always having that technology come into play how can you plug it into your own ecosystem to let the consumer get done what they want to get done on their terms because that's their expectation they don't really care what your internal problems are they just want to be able to get done what they want to get done and if they can't with you it'll go somewhere else so the practice what you're seeing is the practices have an environment that allows you to try stuff yes without a lot of hurdles and you know integration yeah so the standard thing would be any time an organization wanted to try a new product it could take anywhere from 6 12 18 months just before they could even figure out does it work what we're trying to do with cxe is turn that into a matter of weeks in some cases in a matter of days so by having a platform or a capability set up so as a new application comes in great I already know about the customer information because I'm making that transparent to everything I can plug it in I can experiment I spend a month I measured does this actually work if it doesn't great get it out let me try the next thing so it gives that flexibility to organizations which marketers love because the last thing you want to do is tell us CMO is like that idea you have that's great that's what really agility exactly come talk to me in nine months different now in terms of the people process and technically been talking about 360 view of the customer is short for donkey years right so what's now is different is it just a perfect storm of some of these things finally coming together is there some particular process or kind of secret sauce to get us over this you know finally we're here you know we can finally get that view of the customer one of the things that that started to happen was you started moving the I the idea and the concept of a single view of a customer out of back-end master data management legacy hard really complex applications and with the poll earlier for Asian what they call customer data platform CDP's there are applications that are built natively in the cloud that are exposed through api's it makes it easier to stand up those capabilities so it really starts becoming a question of well why wouldn't you do this so in the past it would be well I gotta go get capital expenditure money and I gotta go through this whole business justification now it's I can have something stood up literally in a matter of Miss villains which is purpose-built and it gives you that capability to then plug in place so that gives especially for us as system integrators it makes it exciting for us because we can say you know what I can stand up a single view of your customer I can be couple that from the sales force the Adobe's the Marketo we are the world up that would never built for that right that's not their expertise take a minute to explain what is the customer experience engine the CSE what is it so in essence it's the plumbing it's all the stuff that nobody ever wants to do that always destroys transformations so again this was one of these things where every single transformation you had ever seen I don't care pick your vendor Adobe s AP Microsoft where they always fall down is in integration it's just it's just the nature of the business so what we did with CX II was we said you know what what I want to be able to do is I want to have a micro services based architecture that allows me to if I have a client telling app one week I can plug that in three weeks later I want to use something like tulip I'm going to unplug what I have I'm going to plug tulip in but the experience that the consumer sees on the glass it doesn't change so when I'm writing a mobile application I'm going to use the experience API what sits underneath it and this is what CXC provides is that system API layer to then say you know what I'm going to unplug tulip I'm going to plug in something else the consumer is done to what it's like it's like a Tesla versus a car there's all the software updates going on behind the scenes changing the configuration of the automobile yeah similar experience you're gonna automate creating mechanisms so that the application the workload for the user is not disrupted by you're making modifications under the hood so to speak well think of it this way so and we'll go with the car analogy which was probably why with the engine engine mechanism but I was explaining it to another another gentleman and he said he's like you guys are like to pimp my ride of ID I'm not changing my engine what I'm doing is I'm adding a spoiler here I'm adding new tires and rims here I'm you know putting on you know flames I'm doing all these things but the underlying engine or the heartbeat of the engagement that stays the same what you're enabling me to do as a business is tailor and adjust based on consumer expectations so if today they really want to engage with us with email next week it's through a RvR I they have that ability and I don't have to completely retrofit my entire IT architect and this is the modern approach that we see people that are winning take a take a certain formula and that is build software abstractions in their areas of expertise so here if I get this right the the CXC the customer experience engine is essentially your domain knowledge of the center interactive extract it away to make it easier for the vendors to work through your system yeah so you solve your own problems but unstop being a customer benefit right because what we firmly believe the hard part in a digital transformation is not the tech which is easy for me to say because I'm the propellerhead in the room but to me it's it's a much more fascinating conversation to say how do we transform your people and your process to be customer centric that's actually the hard part it's not the tech so by taking the tech difficulty off the table then that allows them to jumpstart and get to the actual meet of changing how they operate and the other piece of that which i think is ensuring you didn't touch on that specifically but I'm I'm sure it's got to be there is it democratizes the access apps and the ability to do things with that data to the people that aren't necessarily tied into the ERP and tied into these other systems so you can now have other people running out algorithms doing tests doing experimentation so really that democratization is so important well it's amazing the empowerment that you give people when you just provide transparency of the data so when when the sales staff if the retail rep in the store all of a sudden has transparency of what have been the engagements that have been going on with the consumer they can have a meaningful conversation and they're focused on how can they help that consumer in that moment so we look at it as you know the last moment that you engage with a consumer is usually the most telling because typically you are 20% more likely to maintain loyalty if it's a positive you're only four percent likely if it's negative yeah and if anything you will lose 32 percent of your population on one bad experience so you look at your thoughts on the vendor relationship and that's so much locking because I think lock-in is really about value you do a good job you get value because we will use you but with cloud tick tools and api's are becoming a very key part of the tool chest if you will for the users and your customer base and so we're seeing that the skills gap and the retraining that's trying to happen tends to focus on api's and tools so Amazon's got a cloud everybody's no one wants to learn ten different tool sets right how do you view that because I think we hear from practitioners all the time and they always say you know I just want it to work I want infrastructure as code I love DevOps I love agility but I don't want to learn all these new tool sets all right but I'm comfortable with this cloud I'm comfortable with this these kinds of tooling tool chains or api's how do you see that evolving is that going to be automated away will it be innovation there what's your thoughts there so my general feeling is I think you're going to continue to see more and more consolidation of adoptions in the rest based API space just because one it's easier on developers and developers win so if you make a developer's life difficult they're just going to move to something else so for the organizations that embrace that they're gonna continue to see that you will you will start to see more and more automation but I mean ultimately at the end of the day the economy that we work in runs off of api's and it's really the more you embrace it the more you share information are willing to share information within reason I mean there's you know legal and all sorts of things that have to have to be looked after but you know that's what that's what drives things so we as Accenture we look at application partners that embrace that methodology embrace that belief system of let's make it easy to share data that's one of the things that you know Adobe Microsoft and sa P are doing what the open data initiative is also trying to make it easier to share information amongst different stacks so it's a it's a variation of that and I I do believe that you're gonna continue to see more of that just because again the consumer that's what they expect and also the cloud native trend also that's a tailwind for that movement as well because they expect it to short standards I mean to a certain extent if you think about what's even cloud native it anymore cuz a lot of times people say well I'm on Fram well where are you I'm from ma well I've got my virtual cloud sitting over here or my privacy it's just distributed computing all right what's getting you excited here at Adobe summit I mean I'm impressed with the platform play I think they got that right I think they didn't over reach its laid out nice single view the customer got the data pipelining and semantic engine on the on the other side of it and a variety of app integrations looks solid to me what's your thoughts on Adobe I think it's a good first step to be fair I think it's a good first step I actually applaud them for for going down that path I'm excited about the possibilities it gives to our customers who are embracing the Adobe stack I'd like to see them go further especially with in terms of extending it out to other partners as well because it's one of those things of there's no one platform that solves everything that's a large reason why we established cxe is the days where you could just have all Adobe and that's going to solve everything across they'll service marketing and commerce that's there's no one provider that has that so you need to have that ability to transfer data and to drive that experience so I'm excited about where Adobe's going with the experience platform because I think it's a good first step especially on their side to try and make it easier again it's about how do you make it easier to deploy applications so that you can serve the purpose for the consumer so I think it I think it's a good first I would you describe the makeup of the ecosystem community breaking down from developers to integrators and partners because as you start to see this kind of enabling platforms as you said it's a first step is foundational you'll see how it kind of evolves sure ultimately developers will to me will be a canary in a coal mine on this one but how does has the makeup of the community on the development side what did what it's the personas are the developers the hardcore cloud guys are they mostly app developers is there some segmentation what's your view of this I think so what I'm seeing is developers turning more into cross utilization of skills if there's there's less and less of I'm just this type of developer it's usually more of I'm gonna experiment and do a little bit of everything what I've actually been finding interesting is a lot of developers are turning into people that sit in marketing or sit in sales operations or you know some people have turned it citizen integrators but it's people who do not come from a technical background but the tools that are being created today are enabling them to do more of the integration work on their own and that's one of the benefits when you have open API is recipes api's is you can put more of that power in the hands of less technical users there's that's not to say you're not going to ever need hard for developers but what I'm seeing is more and more non-technical people are getting into the developers of time cycles are changing they want to be closer to those customers that the closer to the front line is not in the back office kind of coding away right you just you don't with with consumer expectations shifting on a dime you can't wait and that's one of the things that we spend a lot of time trying to help our IT side of the house customers is how to be flexible how to be nimble so that when marketing where any business leader comes to you and says hey I want to try this out you don't say I'll get back to you in nine months it should be I'll get back to you next week yeah and that's really the goal of what we're trying to do with new titles we had a guest on the queue we've been doing the queue for 10 years first time we've ever had a guest with a title marketing CIO which was kind of business saying look I got I got to sit in the marketing team and be a CIO over here and translate and put projects together and make things happen to your point about it's an integrator kind of like putting it all together well I mean it's no different than you see more and more CIOs become much more business focused business savvy they're not just hey I'm going to keep the lights on from a technology perspective the the more successful CIOs have that business lens no different than the CMO the CMO czar having to get smarter on technology and a lot of times what we're saying is the CMOS are driving the tech agenda not the CIOs so as a result I'm not surprised to see I'm the would you say was a marketing CIO Marketing CIO thanks for the insights great to have you on yeah I think get the talk tech and under the hood marketing text great final question for you what's next for CXC customer experience engine what's going on what's the next leg of the journey for you so the next leg of a journey is we've already got the integration layer laid out so we can pretty much plug-and-play any application that is out there we're really diving into real time analytics real time segmentation taking some of the power of the capabilities that are in the CDP space to drive those engagements so it's really it's it's an expansion and then that data space and making it that much more accessible to our customers that's great you guys bring some abstraction some automation to the table for customers it's a cube bringing you all the data here and insights I'm chef Fred chef Rick stay with us more day 2 coverage after this short break

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Accenture Interactive. >> Welcome back everyone to our live coverage, CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, my cohost Jeff Frick, our next guest Mishel Justesen, Group Manager, Dynamics 365 and Marketing Technology at Avanade. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> So we were just talking before you came on camera that you're in charge of Global Marketing Practice for Avanade. >> Yeah, so I'm what you called a Global Marketing COP Lead at Avanade and so basically what that means is I'm in charge of our marketing technology community, our marketing technology community at Avanade. >> A lot of relationships forming in the industry, a lot of discussions around open data, open APIs. How has the landscape shifted in the marketing technology realm over the past three years? Because you're seeing a lot of cloud computing like vibe going on, you're seeing agility, real time, AI themes kind of creeping into content development marketing. >> Yes, yes. >> It's changed a lot, how do you see it? >> It has changed a lot and I've been in the marketing technology industry before Marketing Technologist even existed. So I've seen a lot of change and I think the thing that I'm most excited about is the way I'm looking at things right now is as a Marketing Technologist, you don't have to integrate anything anymore. You can put your data in the cloud and marketers have a specific need for a specific type of data, right? So I don't have to integrate my marketing technology anymore, I can put that data in the cloud, I can enable it with some AI, and then I can send it wherever I need to go. >> So data's been the big flashpoint, in terms of inflection point and changing the direction of the industry, it's how people are handling their data and the thinking around it almost is from an architecture standpoint or use cases. What are the key trends there around the data? What are the big moving parts? >> Well, I mean one of the things that's always a pain point for marketers is all of those data silos that happen from all the different marketing tools that you'll have to use, right? So it's painful, so how do you report on that, what do you do, right? So what I really love is I love seeing how as markers, we can now put data into a single source of truth, along with all the other data that we can use to enable our reporting. For me, as a marketer, I've always wanted to be able to get access to my ERP data so I can really see the ROI on my campaigns and how they're actually doing. And if I can marry that up with the sales data as well and I can pull all that data from one place, I'm a happy camper. >> I got to ask you about being a marketing technologist because also we've been doing theCUBEs, our tenth year, covering thousands of events we've done over the years. First time ever, someone yesterday came on, a guest, and their title was Marketing CIO. >> Wow, that's fabulous. >> And we think that's going to be a big spring but it brings up the conversation of what does IT do, what does systems people do, because the notion of systems and data is not so much just in IT, information technology department problem or opportunity. There's new roles changing and coming together. How do you, what's your take on-- >> I thought you were going to ask me hard questions, this is an easy one, right? (chuckling) >> We'll get to the hard ones later. >> Okay good, so what I've found is really interesting is the transformation of the IT department versus the Marketing IT department, right? So IT has always spoken a certain language, right? But marketing and the marketing lingo, it requires a certain amount of expertise and when you have marketing technology you need to understand the lingo of marketing and what type of data and what kind of strategies to go after. You can't expect an IT department to understand that. So that's why you're seeing a Marketing CIO, because they speak the language of technology, right, Marketing Technologists, marketing technology, and they understand how to implement that technology. So that's where there's a nice shift in that going on, I love to hear this. >> Okay so now the hard question. >> Okay. >> So all the people that are here with Adobe, Adobe's got an ecosystem, you're in it, Accenture Interactive, everyone else, they're out there to try to sell services and products and experiences to the customer, the consumer, or B to B brands. Who's their buyer now? Who actually, who are they selling to? Is the personas the same, who is the person who writes the checks and makes the decision? >> The CMO. >> CMO? >> The Marketing CIO, right? (John laughing) I actually look at that from a different angle, personally. What I am after is actually the marketing team, right? So of course as marketers we understand what the customer journey is, right? And we have to be able to, as marketers, I'm putting myself in that persona of course, right? As marketers we have to make sure that we can get to those potential customers, right? But one thing that I'd like to just bring up, if I may, is that I'm more concerned about how does the marketer get their job done, right? So for me, at Avanade, I'm super excited about how I can help them get their job done better. So there's two markets there now. >> Yeah, yeah, and the roles are changing radically-- >> They totally do. >> You're seeing a lot of new things happening. >> So Mishel, curious to get your take, you've been at this for a while, how things have changed from kind of everything lining up in a funnel type situation to get to the sale, to now the sale is just part of an ongoing relationship-- >> It's a part of an ongoing experience-- >> That people are trying to establish so how does that change kind of the things that marketers need to think about, the KPIs that they need to measure beyond simply correlating a campaign back to the ERP system to see if they got a good ROI on that effort? >> Well, I think what's really exciting about marketing now is that we have a bigger seat at the table, right, at that table for the business. And with the ability to report and really show the value of what we do, we're not just top of the funnel. Traditionally what happens is we can do all the work we do to brings leads into a sales ecosystem and then we're like okay there you go. Sales, do what you need to do, right? We don't have to stop there anymore. We can help with the entire sales process. And once that sales process is done and we have a customer, we can continue to help the business engage with that customer. So we're part of the entire journey. >> Right, and I'm curious too, your take, which I think is driven a lot by mobile where your touch points are shorter but more frequent, right, more diverse but a lot more of them, all different stages of that funnel. Cause they can get a lot of information on their own. So how has that kind of changed from a marketer perspective, how to think about content, how to think about that journey, not just as a simple funnel that drives to a transaction. >> Yeah, our jobs are not easy anymore. Yeah, we really have to be more strategic as marketers. So what's interesting about that is across that entire journey, we have to somehow be able to provide an experience in the moment, right? And the good news is, is that we have lots of marketing technology that can help us do that, right? It requires a lot of data, it requires a lot of engagement, and then being able to ingest that information and react to it as close to real time a we can is, I think it's a huge challenge, but that's what we have to be ready for. >> One of the things we heard from a lot of the practitioners that come on, customers of Adobe, and the ecosystem is getting more diverse data so they can get the blind spots identified, where they think they don't have any visibility and the-- >> The white space? >> In the white space, well they don't have enough, well they don't know what's going on. So what they were mentioning was is that okay funnel's great but they're going into this other journey past non-linear progressions, new-organic or in other channels and they want to try to identify what's going on there. So they need to instrument it, right? >> Yeah. So the challenging is how do I get that silo data that might be somewhere else? Or if it's new data, new first-party data, or third-party data, getting more data exposed into these new progressions is a real challenge. >> It is. And they want to keep iterating on it. So that seems to come up a lot. What's your reaction to that and how does this new kind of, let's say horizontal or horizontally scalable experience users are having? How do you guys view that? >> Well I, again I would love as a marketer to have access to all my data in one place, right? And not just my data, cause we have, marketers have special data, right? I would like to make sure I have all my data in one place. So, adjure, put it in the cloud on my data service, right? Put it there for me so I can then enable it, I can start throwing some AI at it so that I can have AI working for me, right? So I can help-- >> Talk about that dynamic, take a minute to explain why it's important to put the data in the cloud, because there's benefits to that-- >> Sure. >> You were mentioning earlier in the interview. Why is it important? Just take a minute to explain why it's important to put the data in the cloud. >> Well, because it gets rid of the data silos that you have, right? So if you can put your data in one place and then pull it into the systems, just the amount of data you need you can get to it in bite size pieces, right? So let me just inform the sales team with the information that just they need, right? And for the marketing team, let me give them just the data they care about, right? Cause it's very different. But if we have all of that in the same place then we can pull it in wherever we need it. >> Talk about your business and how you guys are doing in marketing. What's going on in the global landscape? What are some of the big trends that you're seeing? What wave are you riding? What's the big business benefits you guys are going after right now? >> Well right now at Avanade, we're really focused on this Adobe and Microsoft partnership. Right, for me, it's a really exciting time to be a marketer because well, to be a Marketing Technologist, to be at Avanade and helping with this whole new partnership. We now have the power of a whole marketing experience platform, Adobe experience platform, right, and the partnership with Microsoft and we can bring these two platforms together, right so-- >> And LinkedIn too, although technically Microsoft-- >> And LinkedIn, yeah. >> Still part of Microsoft, but you got the Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn which are kind of different groups, right? But still Microsoft. >> Yeah. Yeah and LinkedIn's a great example too. So LinkedIn has two places for marketers and sales to work. So marketers can do the LinkedIn lead gen, right? And then Sales can look at the LinkedIn profiles and the company profiles right on that lead record on Dynamics 365, right? So Marketing and Sales can work together. I can bring the leads in as a marketer and a sales person, and I can look at that lead on LinkedIn. So that's super exciting. >> What content types do you see as working, obviously videos, hot right now. I was just at the RSH Show, Jeff and I were there. We saw, everyone's doing videos from video blogging to full sets. Obviously we're streaming here. Video seems to be a hot format. >> What are, what other-- >> Video has been a hot format forever, I mean YouTube came into existence and all of a sudden you've got citizen videographers, right? And then you can put content out there like crazy. I see that it's still a very relevant platform but I personally would like to see how we can use AI to start targeting content to people who are doing some sort of activity online, it doesn't matter where you're at, to engage them, right? >> I think the machine learning is a big point for the AI. And you mentioned earlier, you don't have to worry about connecting stuff and I think if you look at the experience platform that they announced yesterday, they have all these connectors on the sides of their architecture cause that's where you guys are also connecting in, right, This is where you guys see that automation happening. >> Yes, yes. >> Is that what you meant by auto-integrating? >> Yes, exactly, yeah so as someone that builds marketing technology stacks, right, using Dynamics 365 as the hub of that, one of the biggest pain points back in the day, as in a couple years ago, right, was does this integrate with my CRM? Because that's a pain point, how am I going to integrate? I don't have to worry about that anymore, right? Again, going back to putting data in the cloud, I don't have to integrate technology directly into D365 anymore, right, and that-- >> What's the table stakes in the mar-tech stack, what's changed on the table stakes because it's funny as evolution comes, these new capabilities become table stakes like integration. You can't integrate, you're out. What new things are going on in the marketing technology field that was an exception or a luxury just a few months ago or years ago that are now table stakes for marketers? >> Table stakes in the marketing technology landscape, I think Adobe is really, let me shamelessly plug that cause I'm so excited about it, right, Adobe's really a leader in that. So how do you take an entire marketing technology platform, right, and it's not just, it's email marketing, it's your web space, it's your whatever other tool you have, right in your marketing technology stack. How do you aggregate them together in a way that makes sense for the marketer to use. So I think what you're going to see is things need to be really easy for the marketers to use on their own, right? Sometimes you need developers to do a lot of things, right? These pieces of technology can be really tech heavy in that respect, and I think you're going to see a lot of drag and drop capability, let's enable the marketer, the citizen marketer as I like to call them, to actually build what they need more on the fly. And you're seeing that a lot right now-- >> Well it's funny-- >> Marketo's very similar like that. >> Cause when you said the good news is the marketers have all these tools, I thought you were then going to say and the bad news is the marketers have all these tools. (John laughing) >> That's so true, yeah. >> Cause there's so many of them, right? >> There's such a, I know, influx of possibility, right? >> Right, so to have an integrated platform that pulls a lot of the core pieces together, you don't necessarily have to worry about the laundry list of potential tools that you might-- >> Exactly, exactly. >> That you might leverage. Already pre-integrated, ready to roll, super. Final thoughts on seeing the Satya on stage, that's got to help your enthusiasm for the partnership. >> 100%. (John and Jeff laughing) >> Good. >> I'm super happy to be here and I'm a huge advocate of the partnership so I'm really excited to see this happening. >> I think Adobe's done a great job. We're tough customers to please in terms of the tech but on the cloud side, the way they laid it out. The got all the things we think right, the first party-- >> Yeah, it's brilliant. >> Module, the data pipe lining and semantics was those are two, I think, beautiful architectural pieces. >> I agree. >> I think it's going to be, if they can get this thing automated and getting going, no more integration-- >> Thank you for making my life easier. (all laughing) I know, right? >> We'll see some acceleration on your end, with technologists. >> Yes, yup, I'll help, I'm here. >> Mishel, thank you for sharing the data and insights on theCUBE. >> Of course. >> Thanks. >> Of course. >> Great insights here on theCUBE, Adobe Summit, I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick, stay with us for more Day Two coverage after this short break. (techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by X Ensure Interactive. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. Cubes live coverage here in Las Vegas for W twenty nineteen. I'm Jeffery Jeffery, my co host. Next guy's a demon Danza whose the global president of a censure interactive operations Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. >> So learning a lot about the interactive piece I sent you. Interactive. What is the Centre Interactive operations? What does that do? What's the function? >> Extension Interactive Operations is the manage service arm of Accenture Interactive. And together we design, build and activate scale the best experiences on the planet for our clients. What we were finding is you know, a lot of clients were very happy with our design lead creation of experiences, but they really wanted more help to activate, operate and scale those experiences across the world. I think scale ability is now becoming the crux of many of our CMO conversations. And so it was very important for us to build out Accenture Interactive operations to scale those experiences for our clients, >> given example of what it entails. And I'm just trying to follow it through. So, like, operations, meaning like Okay, that interactive team sets up everything they hated off to you and you guys wired together is in the cloud. Isn't analytics think us through how the operations workflow is? >> Yeah, well, except your interactive very much design and build the solution for clients. And absolutely, we then come into play to make sure that way Developer, man and machine operating model. So basically, we spoke marketing engines for clients that a data powered and also we design hub and spoke models for clients across the world to give them their speed, scale and agility that they now need in their coms. So very much, you know, we architect the right or model that is needed. The client that's the marketing operating model as well as the content operating model, so that we can effectively taken experience and scale it across multiple touchpoints seamlessly with huge brand consistency across every single consumer touch. >> So they stand out very quickly then, so that their goal is okay. Get it into market quickly, stand it up, get it going >> absolutely. And rapid. Standard is really so important because there's a speed in in sort of compression of go to market, and now clients can't have weeks and months of lag time between a creation off a product and the deployment of the broader on DH. So that's why we critically have come to the party with a very man and machine and data driven model. Teo, Give them that speed. So it really is from idea mediation, proof of concept, out to market. We truncated that whole supply chain and marketing supply chain quite significantly >> so that you talked about scale and global reach. But at the same time, your warrants personalization, right? So the challenge of personalization at scale is very different than just scale for scale sake. So how are you helping clients address that part of the equation? >> Well, first and foremost with any approach to hyper personalization, the way that we actually consume and segment the data is critical. So at its centre, interactive operations will play a key role in dealing with first, second and third party data off a client to be able to devise the right cohort groups that they need to effectively target in a world of hyper personalization that's directly related to their growth ambitions. Then we will make sure that the data actually feed the content creation and customization, so that the right message conversation experiences going out to the right client at the right time in the right way. And I think that, you know, we've really hone that for a lot of clients. BMW, Disney, Malia Hotels, G S, k, Et cetera, et cetera. And it's proving unbelievably successful. >> You guys are a huge partner of Adobe and partner of the Year, pretty much every year. Great presence globally. You've got to be excited when you look at the charts on yesterday's Kino when they lay out the platform because they're setting up exactly the kinds of mechanisms around data pipeline ing, semantic translations and then really time personal. I mean, they're building everything into a platform to make a data driven, and that's the hard part of all this. I mean, what you just laid out is a hugely complex story, and to do that quickly is huge task. >> Oh, absolutely. You >> gotta like what adobes doing now with their Platform >> I am loving water job he's doing, and they're making it easier. They are almost accelerating. Where now referring to is the platform ization of marketing on DH. You know, marketing technology is now circle thirty percent off the marketing budget. That's a lot, that's I mean, that's obviously the highest it's ever been. And it's only going to go one way. So now, to be able to actually set up designed the right marketing technology, leverage it fully Onda. Also, once you've got foundational tech like Adobe Toe, also build additional vertical bespoke technology onto that really starts to get clients too competitive. And so >> that's some of the challenges markers have because we've seen the evolution of the Internet infrastructure since their Web one dot oto whatever version you call it now. But in my mind, I just see this montage of this Martek stack that logo slides that comes out every year and it's Oh my God, it's like, huge. So So So the question is, has Martek failed to live up to his expectations? All these point solutions? Or is it just natural evolution that these things are kind of consolidating into kind of pillars of of technologies with more business conversations over the top? Because that's the question that way. Here, a lot from practitioners. Just look, I don't need another platform. I don't need another tool. I got tons of tool, got tons of platform options. I just want this stuff to work. Absolutely. How do you see this? Key challenges from marketers >> I think I think it's incredibly challenging, just challenging into your reference to the Loom Escape. I mean, the Loomascape has over six thousand Martech and adtech companies in it, and we're going to see an acceleration of that consolidation in that landscape. You're absolutely right. The point solutions are going quickly accelerate to an end to end solution. So everyone is a bit of musical chairs going on at the moment. With regards to the M in a landscape on DH, it's getting more acute, actually buy them by the week. So market is a very, very challenged still, to be able to procure the right technology to be able to also make sure that they're getting maximum utilization from that technology. Some of that technology is very, very expensive, so they have bought the licenses. But actually they don't necessarily have the skills, the talent, the capabilities to drive the technology effectively. It's almost like having a Ferrari but not having a driving licence. So we're helping clients to be able to properly drive the technology and to be able to also ascertain if they have the right technology in the first place, because the landscape is moving so quickly >> or the more the wrong technology and repurpose it and re skill. I mean, it's a huge operational challenge. Absolutely. Your operation comes in and this is This comes up a lot in our conversations. I love the new capability. I just wish I knew howto implement it >> and >> then operationalize it and staff around it so that everything's in my marketing mix and in agility way, not a waterfall kind of >> completely. And that's what we do in terms of our human and machine model. We look at the ad tech Martek stacks that we're building for clients. Make sure that they're truly proprietary, bespoke doing the job that they're intended to do in terms of marketing for growth and then literally we help clients maximize everything that they can get out of that technology and making sure that really data and analytics is driving the content creation, driving the content customization cause you're now in a world of algorithmic optimization when it comes to atomic content, lots and lots of little pieces of content that I needed to fire at loading loads of different cohort groups. We could take that all on and actually make it pretty painless for a client to do that across multiple countries. >> Thank you. What about from the other side of the equation? The receiver of all this micro targeted atomic for major consumer? This's so much stuff. I was like It's like it's like driving through a snowstorm with your headlights at night. You know, it's just like, how do you get through the tent? How did you get people's attention? How are you helping people get attention in this increasingly cluttered, busy and just, you know, over sensitized, you know, kind of inbound world in which we live as consumers? And it's one thing for me to see. I think of the poor B to B marketers. Oh my goodness, what a crazy challenge they have now. >> Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question, and I think that now it's it's less about attention. Necessarily. It's more about relevance because if you manage to achieve hyper relevance in your communication, you know, customer first communication, then by default, you are going to get the right attention and you're going to get the right result from that experience, conversation, communication, etcetera, etcetera. So really, I think being able to really excel at hyper personalization is really what we're focused on now. And data is the answer to that. And data hand in hand with artificial intelligence and machine learning really gives us an unbelievable combination on puts hyper personalization on steroids. >> I'm gonna ask you on that point, cause content becomes a key part of the marketing mix at all at levels er known and all well paid all that good stuff. But content has is about data to because being relevant is also contextually aligned with targeted distribution of that of that that those audiences. So the question is we're seeing with our video's content drives a lot of community engagement. How are customs? Think about the role of community because as the users become part of their brand engine, this is now part of a new closed loop that's developing. How do you guys see that connecting? Because if you get the content right and you get the targeting through your operations, you then will they be able to put certain content in certain channels with the right data. That means the programming has to be relevant, which is another task. But if they get that right, the community engagement goes off the charts. How do you see the community part of developing? What is the brand marketers do after that? >> I think the community aspect is critically important, and it's hand in hand with the importance of first party data and everything that I mean, we really are gravitating towards a world of first party marketing activation. The first party data that clients hold is unbelievably potent, and there in lies your your the secrets of success to creating a highly engaged community. And, yes, we are taking a leadership role now in producing long and short form content. When it comes to making sure that it's laser focus to that particular Koval group, it has to be hyper relevant on DH. Absolutely, to your point, some of the community members want to create that content themselves. So we also play a part in whether it's the finer points of influence of marketing, making sure that we're helping thes stakeholders create the right content and then helping them distributed effectively and efficiently >> and then scoring users and reputation Relevant Reputation >> comes yes, because they become I mean, key influences in B to C and beater B to B are so important is when it as it pertains to the viral ity of the communication. So they're almost like channels, you know, the influences are almost like channels in off themselves, and they can actually, you know, put the communication on steroids if they are effective at there >> for the news. I think I get what you're saying. That the new formula is a collection of niches is the new reach number. It's a rather nice blast to the reaches. It's a collection of niches that are programmable, inexpressible >> absolutely. It's almost like the collection of cohort groups together gives you that mass communication. >> I'm curious kind of the take on softer some of the softer types of communications that content around, you know, mission. And we heard you know, sati and the keynote earlier today. Talking about mission and a lot of people are are really not so much concerned, but they care. They care about what the mission of the company is in some of these kind of social and, you know, not necessarily direct attributes of the product or direct benefits of using the product, but more of a private company, not necessarily product that they sell. How do you see that evolving in kind of the marketers tool kit and kind of the rising importance of that type of of engagement with community? >> Yeah, when we told took Teo client CM o's and CDO. Specifically, we talk about purpose as well as the product differentiation. I think in today's world, you have to have both on by purpose. You don't necessarily have to have a lofty purpose because not everyone can look at a lot of CPG clients. They can't have a lofty purpose, but they can be purposeful. They could be hyper relevant in your life, and that's what we try and attain and achieve. So I think it's very, very important reading a lot of work at the moment, with clients almost stepping back and saying, Well, what business are you actually in? What is your raison Detrol? What is your purpose in life and how do we amplify that then through all forms of communication? Because then once you've got that sussed. You really do have the the critical ingredients off designing, creating the best experiences on the planet and activating them. >> Transparency becomes a big part of the user trust equation as well as a user experience and relevance. Because of your transparent, they want to see the day that this becomes a whole new dynamic. >> Transparency is critical because anyone can find out anything in two minutes, you know, on the interweb. So you know, you have to. Transparency is not trust. Transparency is not >> enough. All right, so I gotta ask you about the conflict between innovation and regulation and market. A name is because we've seen innovation always run hard and fast, and then regulation tries to catch up and kind of fit in first party date. It's super important as this new shift digital was happening where it's kind of moving from the old, you know, email blast to the old communications static channels to more dynamic, You starting to see the rise of distribution platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, among other zillion other third party AP. I driven platform. They're all having third party data. So how do you How does the customer your customer brands balance The need for first party information that they have and or are now putting their content out in these channels is a huge thing because not everyone has opened data. So how do you guys review that trend? And how early is it? What needs to be done? Is it okay? >> Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, the clients that do have very rich first party data, particularly financial clients, telco clients, etcetera. We really helped them amplify that first party data to help them activate with clients that don't necessarily have rich first parties ater like a lot of CPG clients, we help them build that first party data. And that's also sometimes where the purpose comes in on the community building comes in because when you get those two things, you know when you hone those two things, you can actually start to build a community, and then you can start to build Richard first party data so that we can help clients activate off of that third party data. We're getting a little bit more forensic with regards to whether or not that third party data is truly additive. And sometimes it's the smaller third party verticals specific to travel, etcetera, farmer, et cetera, et cetera. Where the third party data is actually most potent. So it's important. Teo. Almost look att depth more than bread when it comes to you >> and blending the data together. >> Exactly. But it has to be additive because there are some third party data sources which aren't truly additive toe activation. Therefore, we can discard them. >> Nikki. Great content. You're amazing. Insights are broad and great. Really relevant. Thank you for sharing data here on the Q. Appreciate it. >> Thanks for having me. It's been fun. >> Live coverage here, too, Joe be summat. Twenty nineteen. I'm Jeffery, Jeff Frick, Dave Tune from or day to coverage after this short break.

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Adobe Summit twenty nineteen brought to you by X Ensure Interactive. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone. Day two of live coverage of the Cube here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit twenty nineteen. I'm John Career with Jeff Brick, Our next guest needing Stallman, managing director of a Censure Interactive. Welcome to the Cube. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> You can't miss your booth when you walk in. Got a nice set up there. You guys got a big prominent location to show. Tell us about Ascension Interactive. And what you guys doing the show? >> Oh, yeah. So thanks again for having us is a great a great summit. A great conference. It's one of our big kind of showcases for the year. We've got a couple of different experiences Were demo ing this year. We've got some really cool X are experiences that people are coming by the booth and putting device is on and it really interacting with and having fun with. We've got some interesting topics around Trends in content creation, headless content, train three D, etcetera. So some great topix around kind of Howard disrupting marketing and content with our clients today. >> Contest becomes so important now, Not only is it you have content development creatives. You have all kinds of applications now. Integrating was once kind of a cottage industry of creative doing cool stuff. Now that's kind of table stakes. It's a whole another level of cloud computing meets creative, so it's kind of an interesting growth curve right now, you're seeing a lot of adoption, a lot of the kind of tools from Tech in with the creative talk about that dynamic, because that's kind of the whole show here. It's all about not just marketing Cloud, and it's about creative experiences and now the new cool stuff out there and people try to figure out how to do it. I want that dynamic of creative tech coming together. >> Yeah, it's enemy from Accenture Interactive. That's really kind of where we've built our business around having that as a technology company that's really drawing a lot of specific talent to build out that creative tak kind of talent mindset. It's a different way of kind of operating and working and building those experiences, so we're kind of first and foremost and experience agency S O. We're all about building experiences for our clients, and it's a kind of ah maybe unique patch that we've we've carved out for ourselves. To say you have to consider technology is part of it and data and effectiveness and analytics. But then, actually, how do you build experiences that are really engage our customers and be really innovative? So certainly has its center at interactive. That's our That's our remit. And we're working out some really exciting work with clients in that area >> about the difference between center interactive and century proper. Because we've done a lot of enemies with center you guys, we're different talked about. The difference is that you guys have and what what's your mission? >> So it's enter. Active are first and foremost. We are an experience agencies. So again, those experiences could be everything from your typical kind of website experience. And how do you best in engage consumers at your site to commerce? Teo X are so we've got a Z mentioned it, several different applications of experiences and x r that we're demo ing here, and we're working on with our clients, um, a R V r as well as sale stools. So in the centre interactive, we take it, we take a creator first, like what is the experience. We really need to build, do the right type of research and then bring in the design, talent and the unique kind of optimization, talent and technology talent to be able to ensure that whatever we're building for a client is actually scaleable for more than just kind of that one exciting news case they've got. But how do you ensure that that's really going to be the right platform in experience? They can scale for other parts of the enterprise of the parts of the business, etcetera. We're proud of who we are >> seriously, because you guys are involved in a lot of things. You keep saying x r for extended reality, and I think it's interesting because some people think it's got to be one hundred percent immersive or not. But if you guys air pioneering, this is a lot of places to kind of extend reality. Blend the rial and the C g. I. And it kind of had this mixed combo experience. So where people using that what are some of the interesting opportunities beyond no trying on a dress from the computer with your with your avatar that you guys are working on >> right, So so definitely have our share of kind of cool consumer experiences and, you know, wanting interesting. That's things that's happening in the market is consumers. They're expecting as they start to engage with RVR, even like immersive commerce. And, um, you're online configurations for shopping and it kind of configuring your own products. They're expecting the same level of, like, hi and visualization that they're getting in the programs and media that they're consuming at home. So getting that right is that's That's a challenge for a lot of brands, and it's a challenge. And technologies, they're changing pretty rapidly to support that. So we've got an experience here were demo ing this week, which is is really on kind of that high end past, which is allowing your design your own your own bathroom experience with countertops, and it's so realistic that you can literally you feel like you could touch that. You could appreciate the textures. You can touch the experience. So it's it's really helping to kind of give customers give consumers back control, but they don't have to rely on a contractor and other types of design services. They really have many options. They can see what that looks like in their own space. I can do that from the convenience of my home, etcetera, and that's kind of one end around. And it's still consumer facing and how to brands create more amorous of shopping experience and make that pass to purchase easier, effective, faster like and, you know, close well. The other types of experiences that I think you're really, really powerful and really interesting is it's starting to use x r for training purposes. So we just want to go home. Oh, actually at Mobile World Congress for PR experience that we built to train foster care professionals on go on making incredibly complicated is around what to do with families and children and really trained them. So how do you take a very subjective experience and train people for the different scenarios to make the right judgment calls? And so that's an interesting kind of application of X r. We're also doing X are in the field of service service technician, so working on automotives and ensuring your using hand, our virtual technology to be able Tio I understand, is that the right party should be working on and what are the best practices around around, whether it's a home technician that's going out and trying to install our complex device or working at an automotive so >> so practical use cases. And then there's also the glamorous ones, like Game of Thrones. Talk about you guys. The relationship with game of thrones is a dynamic. Their share want the shows so that the Cube we Go game of thrones fan. So you guys were somewhat involved in that Such share. >> Yeah, so on. And it's very timely. Obviously, with the final season coming out of the fourteenth, and for like, super fans like myself, it's It's been an exciting year for us. So, um, Extension Interactive has done a very deliberate Siri's of acquisitions over the past ten years, and last year we acquired MCA Vision. So Maga Vision was renowned internationally for their CD I and special effects work on DH. No. One of the most exciting words they've received is an Emmy for outstanding visual effects for game of thrones. So So you got a lot of buzz at the time saying, What is extension interactive? What's what's the kind of thought process, their game of thrones, visual effects, and it really was all about this idea of, you know, again, consumers are expecting this level of visual and this level of experience in how they're interacting with you. So, Mac, a vision was a very we needed a way to be more innovative and how we're bringing the right talent and capabilities to building X. Our experiences, product configurations, etcetera and maka vision had unique capability around three visualisation CG I visual effects and really that again, that whole package of kind of art and technology to create these very high end visualization experiences. So So it's been a really exciting here for us. Um, and starting to now take that model and start to bring that Teo marketing teams that were working within the brands e commerce teams and starting to say, How do we create these type of >> bond? That >> it's It's a nice looking the MCA vision sight and and some of the you know, they have some of the cool movie stuff. But I was fascinated by the car stuff, right? They have these beautiful car shots for car commercials, and I'm curious after hearing about, you know, a be testing and you know all the things that you could do with your experience in the dental experience. Interactive are seeing that now with I got forty seven versions of that car commercial because now if I'm doing it with Mac Division, I don't have to shoot forty seven versions. I can manipulate the CG I car in a very different way because I know that you said super high gloss, super high glam. But it's programmable, so you can do stuff with it without having to call the team together and hope for a beautiful day in Carmel to go over the bridge. >> Exactly all those variables. So I mean brands right now, as they're trying to kind of create trying tio react and set up models to support hyper personalization programmatic content in it that is so challenging. It's so challenging because traditional >> means of >> going out and doing the shoot that you're talking about and doing. Even product shots and tons of photography like you have to create so many versions so expensive to be able to support all of your products. All the variations when you put global into the mix and you've got different labels and different languages etcetera. So, again, it's a It's a scale problem today. I think a lot of people think it's a technology problem, but it's actually it's actually that that's a solution. But it's definitely it's a human problem. And so in our practice, we focus on content creation models. And so this is why Macrovision acquisition so essential is we were disrupting the way continents created, whether it's for brands and their their commercial spots or it's their commerce content. Or or there social media content. By using this idea of taking a digital twin of, let's say, the Mercedes or the Mercedes car and being able to take engineering data and visualize a product digitally before it even exists before I mean literally, the prototype is not available. You know this amazing flexibility. Teo certainly configure that in many different ways, digitally. For these shoots, all you need is some some background in Madrid, etcetera, to be able to roll the car through, um, and Tamar and Magic. But you're able, Tio, you're now able Teo, represent that product, get your media created and put it into market to start generating buzz presales, et cetera. I mean, that's that's so powerful. You're getting ahead of product launch. >> How did how are the cost dynamics changing? Because before you said, it's expensive to do is shoot Yes, but now you can do multiple flavors within the computer is just radically different economics, because I'm sure when they come in and say, I want you guys to game of thrones I want that kind of production value like, yeah, that's really the expectancy. Yeah, To do it in software is a completely different kind of approach. >> I mean, I don't know how brands are not going to give it to this model because they cannot possibly they cannot. They're goingto exponential cross to be able Teo, keep pace with again, even just the variation of product, much less starting to now. Personalize that or be ableto dynamically. Render that so. The cost model today is is is exorbitant, and it's just growing. And so this because you're now able to configure things digitally and again used the right tools to be able tio represent different versions of product changed. The backgrounds, change, change, any of the factors that you need to be able to say this is a new piece of content that. I think it's better targeted at this segment. You want to test that out a little bit. I don't want to kind of double down on that and ending for all of that cost to go do this. You gives you a ton of flexibility, especially, and how you're bringing you no talent in wants to shoot it once and then and that enviable to swap. For example, I may change the bracelet on the talent to do five different ads out instead of >> risk management to a swells testing. Knowing what you're looking at, getsem visibility into what success looks like then, kind of figuring it out. One thing I want to ask you is that in the tech business, we've always been fascinated by Moore's law doubling the speed of the processors. That's Intel thing. But if you look at what you guys do with the game of thrones on the high end with CG, I see the C g I and all the cool stuff. The experiences that people have today become the expectations or the expectations become the new experiences. So you've seen an accelerated user experience. Visually, you got gaming, culture, gaming environments. I mean fortnight wasn't around two years ago. Right? Half the world pretty much plays the game or you got game of thrones. So he's now will soon become table stakes, these kinds of experience. So I got to see where you guys are going with that. How does that change how you guys operate because you gotta look at the expectations of the users consumer. That might be the new experience. How to figure out that dynamic is challenging. How do you guys do that? What's the What's the guiding philosophy around that? That trend? >> Yes. So we have, um we're maniacal about ensuring that the experience for designing is really well thought through with the right research in the right input from us. We're on the right contact. So while it may sound like a great idea and it may sound like something you need, like, how do we make sure we're doing the right thing? Right? Diligence, Tio to build the red experience and represent the product in the right way. And then we also a maniacal on the back end of testing and after optimizing that so being very realistic about is it effective is a driving is driving. Whatever the K p I is, even if it's just innovation, is it driving the KP eyes, uh, that you need and then adjusting? Because nothing could be stagnant? He's >> super exciting area. I mean, there's so much opportunity and change going on. Awesome final questions about the relationship with the job You guys are here. Adobes got a whole growth strategy in front, and that looks really strongly gotta cloud technology platform. Now they're integrating data across multiple their modules in their suites. How does that impact you guys? What's your relationship with Adobe? Yes, >> so we are. We are very big partner of Adobe. We've had a accolades throughout the years of being partner of the year. So we have a large practice dedicated Teo helping clients really look at how to implement the stack howto build content and campaign delivery models on top of that. So it's, um, both the technology and an implement implementation focus, but quite frankly, and I think what's unique is a is a process and kind of how do you operational as that focus? Like I said, you know, everyone's talking about atomic comic, the atomic content these days and certainly, I mean the adobe stack. Absolutely. Khun support that And really power personalized dynamic content for you is a brand but operational operational izing. That is a totally different story. So we're really working with the Adobe team closely on with our customers. Tio kind of build the model on top of the stack and say, How do you need to change your organization to really, really get the value out of out of these tools and really deliver the experiences that are going to be differentiated? >> We've heard that all along all week here and other events we go to is that it's not the tech problem. It's these new capabilities being operationalized older cultures as a people process problem. >> Yeah, it seems >> to be the big, big story. >> It's a it's it's. And I would say it's an ongoing challenge for the brands we work within, and they're constantly getting additional. Um, uh, market demands to be able to kind of continue changing their model. Like I said, programmatic particularly and hyper personalization is is really putting that into practice is is >> great practice Navy. Thanks for coming on. Sharing your insights here on the I do appreciate it. Thank you very much >> for having me >> live coverage here in Dopey Summit twenty nineteen in Las Vegas. To keep coverage day to continue. Stay with us for more after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone. I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto at our CUBE headquarters. We're here with John Del Santo, Senior Managing Director at Accenture for a Cube Conversation. John, welcome to theCUBE. Good to see you. >> Thanks, John. Great to be here. >> So we just talked before we came on camera about Accenture and all the stuff you guys are doing. You guys are in the cloud heavily. We've been following, you guys have probably one of the most comprehensive analytics teams out there. And global SI market and just, the world's changing. So it's pretty fun. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So I got to ask you first, before we get started. I want to jump in with a ton of questions. What is your role at Accenture? You're in the Bay Area. Take a minute to explain what you do for Accenture and what's your territory. >> I've got the best job at Accenture. So, Accenture's got close to half a million people right now and my job is, I'm responsible for our business on the West Coast, across all of our industries, et cetera. I've been here 32 years, so I've seen a lot of things happen in the Bay Area. And I now have the responsibility of making sure that we're doing great work for our clients. And we're doing great work in the community. And then we're providing great opportunities to the thousands of people that work for us here in the Bay Area and across the West Coast. So it's a lot of fun. >> Obviously, West Coast is booming. And for tech it's been a hotbed. And obviously the industry's across the board now is global. I got to ask you because, you know, you've been around multiple waves of innovation. And Accenture's been, had their hands in enabling a lot of value creation for clients. You guys have a great reputation. There's a lot of smart people. But the waves are always kind of different in their own way, but sometimes it's the same. What's different about the way we're living now? Because you can almost look back and see the major inflection points. Obviously the PC revolution, client server, interoperability, networking stacks went standard. Then you saw the Internet come. Now you've got Web 2.0. And now you got the whole global, you got things like cryptocurrency and blockchain. You have multiple clouds. You have a whole new game-changing dynamic going on with IT infrastructure combined with opensource at a whole 'nother level. So how is this wave different? Is it like the, how would you compare? >> Well, I think all the technologies that have waved through my career, at least, have been real enablers for the business model that the companies had at the time, and that they evolved. What we see now is epic disruption, right? So, the waves now are, we have digital native companies that are just disrupting the heck out of the industry or the company that we're trying to help. And so it's now about pulling all of those technologies together, and really figuring out a new business model for a client. Figuring out a new distribution channel, a new product that's maybe natively digital. And so it's very, very different, I feel, then it was five, 10, 15, 20 years ago, through some of the other waves. >> Talk about the things going on in the Bay Area before we get more in the global themes, because I think the Bay Area is always kind of a leading indicator. I call it a bellwether. Some cool things happened. You've got things like the Golden State Warriors got a stadium that's being built. I'm watching the World Series with the Red Sox, and you see Amazon stat cast, you're seeing overlays, you're seeing rosserial. All these things are changing the work and play. The Bay Area's got a lot of leading indicators. What are some of the projects that you've been involved in? What's happening now that you think is worth noting, that's exciting, that piques your interest? >> Yeah, I mean, we work across every industry, and we do a ton of work in tech, but I actually find some of the more interesting projects are the ones we're doing for healthcare companies in the Bay Area, some of the utilities in the Bay Area, some of the big resource companies, some of the financial services institutions, 'cause, like I said before, all of those industries have disruption coming or have been disrupted, and so we're doing some work right now around patient services in healthcare and in pharma that is really interesting. It's meant to change the experience that a patient has, that you and I have when we interact with our healthcare providers or, you know, the whole industry. And so those kinds of projects are real interesting cause a lot of these industries are old and sort of have a big legacy estate and model that they need to transform from. So they need to move fast, and we kind of describe it as a wise pivot. They sort of need to move, but they need to make sure they're moving at the right time. They can't hurt their existing business, but they got to pivot to the next business model, and that's happening in lots of places. And you're right, I think it is happening a lot in the Bay Area and the West Coast as sort of a bellwether. >> I want to get your thoughts on some of the moments that are going on in tech. You mentioned prior, before we came on camera, you worked for Apple in the old days. Tim Cook was just recently tweeting yesterday, and that tweet's going around, privacy. He was at this big GDPR conference. The role of regulatory now is changing some of the West Coast dynamics. Used to be kind of fast and loose West Coast, innovate, and then it gets operationalized globally with tech, tech trends. What's the tech enablers now that you see that are involved that actually have to deal with regulatory, and is regulatory an opportunity? You're mentioning utilities, finance, those are two areas you can jump out and say okay, we see something there. Privacy is another one. So you have a perfect storm with tech and regulatory frameworks. How has that impacted your job in the West Coast? >> Well, I mean, GDBR, we live with everyday. And clearly we're doing a ton of work in Europe. And I think that's one of the advantages Accenture has of being a big global company, and being able to take lessons learned from other parts of the world that are likely to come to the United States, et cetera, so, but I think the combination of tech and regulatory are going to be merging together here pretty quickly, especially when you talk about AI and data privacy, and that sort of thing. But it's definitely been an evolution. Great to hear Tim's point of view on what Apple thinks. And it's been really fun in my life to see Apple in the 80s when I worked there. They were a client of mine in the 80s. I worked with NEXT Computing in the 90s. And then obviously they're a big partner of ours now, so it's been a really interesting evolution. >> What are some of the growth accomplishments you guys have in the Bay Area? Obviously there's been growth here for you guys. Obviously, we've been seeing it. >> Well, I think the amount of tech-driven disruption, or digital transformation, we call it, is growing like crazy. So, you know, 20 years ago we were doing a lot of eCommerce work. We kind of shied away from doing Y2K work and a lot of our competitors saw that as a big opportunity. We didn't think it was a lot of value for our clients, fixing the old systems. And so we pivoted to eCommerce in a very aggressive way. And I would say now that's evolved even further, where more than close to 2/3 of our business here on the West Coast is what we call the new, which is clouds, security, digital analytics. And I really think it gets down to, we were talking a little bit earlier, about the data. And so we have more data scientists than we've ever had. We're probably hiring one or two every day out here on the West Coast. And it's about the data. Data is driving our consulting business. It's driving our technology business. It's driving what we're doing with AI, obviously, and things like that, so. The transformation's been pretty tremendous. >> So take a minute to explain the difference (mumbles), data, you mentioned a lot of things, you got data in there, you got cloud, and you mentioned earlier you got kind of cloud first companies, got born in the cloud, born in AI, AI first, data first, these new companies that are essentially disrupting incumbents, also your clients, that are kind of born before the cloud. And they got to transform. Is digital transformation one of those things or both of those things? How does digital transformation translate to the clients that you guys work with? >> Well, every client has a unique set of needs depending on where they came from. We do a lot of work with the digital natives. We do a lot of work with the unicorns out here on the West Coast. And their needs are different. You know, they need to learn how to scale globally. They need help in the back office. They need help sort of maturing their business model. We do a lot of work with legacy financial services companies, healthcare companies, that sort of thing. They need to figure out how to sort of, you know, pivot to digital products or digital interactions with their customers. We have a very large business now in Accenture Interactive around helping to find customer experiences for clients. And we think our mission is sort of help our clients really redefine that relationship with their customer, their supplier, their supply chain, and the experience is a key part of that. Given expectations means a lot. >> We have a lot of CUBE Conversations around IT transformation as well. And I had a CIO, big time firm, we won't say the name cause it'll out em, but he said, "We've been outsourcing IT for so many years, but now we got to build the core competency internally because now it's a competitive advantage." And they have to ramp up pretty quickly. Cloud helps them there, and they need partners that can help them move the needle on the top line. That this is not just cost control and operational scale or whether it's horizontally scalable scale-out or whatnot. Top line revenue. This is where the bread and butter of the companies are. >> Right. >> So how are you guys engaging with the clients? Give some examples of how you're helping them with the digital transition to drive their business, how do you engage them? Do you do the standard sales calls engagements? You bring them to a technology center? As the world starts to change, how do you guys help those clients meet those top lines? >> Well, a perfect client for us, you know, we're really good at helping clients cut costs and get really efficient and be good with their peers on cost structure. We love a client where they want us to help em with that and they want to pivot the savings to the new part. The way, one of the things that triggered a thought when you mentioned that was we like to bring our clients into our innovation hubs, so we've had labs here on the West Coast for a long time. We now have 10 innovation hubs in the U.S. We have a very large one in San Francisco now, and so we'll bring a client into our innovation hub and really roll up our sleeves with the client and over a week or two weeks or three period of time, we really brainstorm on envisioning their future for their company, build a minimal viable product if we have to out of our rapid prototyping capability and really envision what the target and state of their business could be, of their product could be or their customer interaction and we'll model it. Rather than sort of do a study, do another study, do a PowerPoint presentation, it's let's roll up our sleeves and figure out how to really pivot your business to the new and then take it from there. >> And they come to your location Absolutely. >> For an extended period of time? >> Yeah, so we'll have, any given day we'll have at least two different clients in our location doing either a couple a day workshop, a multi-week workshop, and it's co-creation. It's us collaborating with our client to figure out a solution. A good example is we had one of our large clients from the West Coast in there recently and we were trying to figure out how to use drone technology to drive analytics in, you know, over a geography to provide better data for them to minimize risk. And we've got a number of co-creation projects now going on with them to figure out how do we take that into a solution that not only helps their business but maybe it is a commercially available system. >> Yeah, our Wikibon research team brings us all the time with IOT and security you're starting to see companies leverage their existing assets, which is physical as well as digital and then figure out a model that makes them work together because these new use cases are springing up. So what if some of those use cases that you guys see happening, because you mentioned drones, cause that's an IOT device, right, essentially. There's all these new scenarios that are emerging and the speed is critical. It's not like, you can't do a study. There's no time to do a study. There's no time to do these things. You got to get some feet on the ground. You got to have product in market, you got to iterate. This is devops culture. >> Right. >> What is an example? >> So we did a project for a big ag company and not actually a West Coast based company but they came to our labs to look at it. And basically what we did was, we covered an area that's basically the size of Delaware in terms of drone video and we were able to drive analytics from that and ten times faster figure out for them where the forest was weak and where it wasn't. where they ought to worry about vegetation, where they might have disease issues or other risks that were facing them. And those analytics we were able to drive a lot faster and so rather than manually going around this huge square mile set of geography, they were able to sort of do it through technology a lot faster. >> Yeah, just a side note. I was talking to Paul Daugherty and interviewed him. We were celebrating, covering the celebration, your 30th anniversary of your labs. And one of the interviews I did was a wacky idea which made total sense, was during like a car accident or scene where there's been a car accident, they send drones in first and they map out the forensics- >> Sure. >> First. And you think, okay, who would have thought of that? I mean, these are new things that are happening that are changing the game on the road because they'll open up faster. They get the data that they need. They don't have to spend all that physical time laying things out. This is not just a one-off, this is like in every industry. Is there an industry that's hotter than another for you guys? (mumbles) oil and gas, utilities, financial services is kind of the big ones. What are some of the hot areas that you guys see the most activity on, on this kind of new way of taking existing industries and transforming them? >> I don't know if I could pinpoint an industry, I really don't. I mean, because I see what we're trying to do with anti-money laundering and banking is really moving the ball forward. What we're doing with patient services and pharma in health care is pretty aggressive. Even some of the things that we're doing for some of the states and governments around citizen services to make sure that ... Cause all of us have expectations now on how we want to interact with government and our expectations are not being met in just about every department, right? So we're doing a lot of work with states around how to provide a better experience to citizens. So I don't know if I could pinpoint an actual industry. One of the fun ones that we just, that we're involved with our here in our patch is one of the big gaming companies in Vegas. We are doing a lot of video analytics and technology and again, it's something like 20 times faster being able to detect fraud, being able to figure out what's going on on a gaming table and how to provide rewards quicker to their customers, keep em at the table faster or longer- >> He's got to nice stack of chips. Oh, he's going down. (laughs) Give him a comp through, he's feeling down. Look at his facial expression. I can (mumbles) imagine, I mean, this is the thing. I would agree. I think this every vertical we see is being disrupted. Just mentioned public sectors. Interesting. We were riffing at an Amazon event one time around who decides with the self-driving cars? These towns and cities don't have the budget or the bandwidth to figure out and reimagine the public services that they have, they're offering the citizens. The consumerization of IT hits the public sector. >> For sure. >> And they need help. So again every industry is going on. Okay, well I want to step back and get some time in for analytics because you guys have been investing as a company heavily in analytics in the past 10 years. Past, I think, seven years, you guys have been really, really ramping up the investment on data science, analytics. Give us an update on that. How is that going? How's that changed? And what's the update today? >> Yeah, and it's a good point. I mean, and again, you mentioned those labs being here for 30 years. A lot of our data scientists and big machine learning and big data folks frankly started at the labs here years and years ago and so, we've now got one of the largest analytics capabilities, I think, of any services company globally. We called it applied intelligence. It's a combination of our analytics capability and artificial intelligence, and we basically have an analytics capability that's built into all the different services that we provide. So we think it's, everything's about analytics just about. I mean, clearly you can't do a consulting project unless you've really got a unique analytical point of view and unique data around assessing a client's problem. You really can't really do a project or implement a system without a heavy data influence. So we are adding, frankly, I think every day I'm approving more analytics head count into our team on the West Coast in lots of different practices. And so it disbands industries, it spans all the platform sets, that sort of thing, but we're the largest of most of the big data players. >> I think one of the consistent trends with AI, which is now being the word artificial intelligence, AI, is kind of encapsulated the whole big data world because big data's now AI is the implementation of it. You're seeing everything from fraud. You mentioned anti-money laundering, know your customer, these kind of dynamics. But you get the whole dark web phenomenon going out there with fraud. All kinds of underground economies going on. So AI is a real value driver across all industries around one, understanding what's happening, >> Sure. >> And then how to figure out how to applications development could be smarter. >> Right. >> This is kind of relatively new concept for these scale out applications, which is what businesses do. So how is that going? Any color commentary on the impact of AI specifically around how companies are operationally changing and re-imagining their businesses? >> Well, I think it's very early days for most of our clients, most big companies. I think, we've done some recent surveys that say something like 78% of our clients believe that AI's really, really important and they're not at all prepared to deal with or apply it to their business. So I think it's relatively early days. There's a huge fight for skills, so we're building our team and that sort of thing. We're also classic Accenture. We grow skills pretty well too through both on-the-job training and real training. And so I think we're seeing sort of baby steps with AI. There's a lot of great vended solutions out there that we're able to apply to business problems as well. But I think we're in relatively early days. >> It's almost as if, you know, the old black-box garbage in, garbage out. You have good data, >> Exactly. >> and you got to understand data differently, and I think what I'm seeing is a lot of data architects going on, figuring out how do we take the role of data and put it in a position to be successful. It's kind of like, cause then you use AI and you go, that's great, but what about, oh, we missed this data set. >> Right. >> You'll have fully exposed data sets, so this is all new dynamics. >> So you have to iterate through it and you'll have to (mumble) solutions that'll start and restart. >> All right, so final question for you. Talk about this technology hubs again. So you have the labs, get that. So how many hubs do you have, technology hubs? >> Well, in the U.S., there's 10. But I would say in the West Coast it's really San Francisco and Seattle right now, with San Francisco being our flagship and frankly it's a flagship in the U.S. We've had the 30 year presence of our labs here on the West Coast and we've had design studios on the West Coast. We've had our what we call liquid studios, which is a big rapid prototyping sort of capability. We've had our research, et cetera. We've pulled all of those locations, so our lab started in Palo Alto, went to San Jose and is now in San Francisco. We've pulled all those locations together into what we're calling the innovation hub for the West Coast and it's a five-story marquee building in San Francisco and it's where we bring our clients and we expect to have literally, I think last year we had 200 and something client workshops and co-creation sessions there. This year we think the number's going to go to 400 and so it's really becoming a fabric of all our practices. >> How important is the co-creation, because you have a physical presence here and it's the flagship for the innovation hub and it's an accumulation of a lot of work you guys have done across multiple things you've done. Labs, liquid labs, all that stuff coming together. How important is the co-creation part as a mechanism for fostering collaboration with your clients? Co-creation's certainly hot. Your thoughts on co-creation. >> Great question, and I would tell you Accenture's kind of gone through waves as technology's gone through waves and so we were always an enabler for a client's projects and we did a lot of project work. I think we're in a wave now where we're going to be the innovation partner. We continue to sort of be named the innovation partner or the digital partner for certain clients. And we're going to do that through co-creating with them, and it's not just at their site, et cetera. It's going to be co-creation in our labs where we're taking advantage of the hundreds of data scientists and computer researchers and technical architects that we have in our labs to create something that's new and fresh and purpose-built for their particular business model. So we think co-creation is a huge part of the formula for us being successful with our clients over the next 10 years. And so that's why we've put this infrastructure in place, expect it to expand and to be sold out and that sort of thing. But it's a good way for us to build capability and really, really viable solutions for our clients going forward. >> So it's not just a sales development initiative. It's an operationalized engagement and delivery mechanism for you guys. >> Exactly, exactly. It's not, I mean it has, it self markets but it's not about marketing. It's about, we'll have tours and we'll have a little tourism through our center and so clients'll say, Wait, look at that maker lab. Look what you're doing with that client. I want one of those, right? I need to do that in my business, even though I'm in a different industry. So it's not really a marketing tool per se, it's a way for us to interact and engage with our clients. >> Well, it's a showcase in the sense of where you can showcase what you have and if clients see value, they can go to the next step. It's an accelerated path to outcomes re-imagining businesses. Okay, final question. What have you learned from all this? Because now you guys have a state of the art engagement model, delivery model, around cloud, all these things coming together, perfect storm for what you guys do. As you guys look back and see what you've built and where it's going to go, what are the key learnings that you guys came out of the West Coast team around pulling it all together over the years? What's the key learnings? >> Well, I think that our clientele is just thirsty for innovation and innovation now. It's now about sort of let's envision the future and we'll get to it some other day. It's what can we do right now and what journey, what glide path are we on to change our business? So the pace is just radically different than it used to be. And so it's about changing, rapidly changing, putting real innovation on it, and collaborating with clients in a pace that we've never seen before. I mean, I've been here 32 years and I've just never the pace of change. >> That's great, John. So (mumbles), really appreciate it. We'll get a quick plug in. What's coming up for you guys? What's going on in the West Coast? What's happening? >> Well, we're in event season right now, so we just finished all the ... We're wrapping up Oracle Open World. We just won five awards at Oracle Open World. We just did an acquisition on the West Coast to beef up our Oracle capabilities. We've got ReInvent and we have all kinds of events coming up but it's a, it's been a pretty busy season. >> So cloud and data have certainly helped rise the tide for your business. >> 100%. I mean, cloud is taking Accenture from kind of in the back of the office and put us into the front office over the last 10 years. >> Well, certainly it's awesome, (mumbles), leveling the playing field, allowing companies to scale out very rapidly, bringing a devops culture, new kinds of modern application developments, real value being created, super exciting time. Thanks for coming in and sharing your time. John Del Santo here in theCube for Cube Conversation, senior managing director at Accenture. I'm John Furrier here in theCube studios for Cube Conversation. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(electronic music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada it's the Cube! Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by The Cube! >> Hello, welcome back. Cube exclusive coverage here in Toronto for the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference. Two days of wall-to-wall with the Cube. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Valante, we're initiating this Blockchain coverage to all 2018 Cube events all around the world. You'll see us more and more talking to the most important people. Excited to have, here at The Cube, San Kim, CEO of Lucidity. on the front page of siliconangle.com, our journalism team, with news. Also doing the really interesting Blockchain advertising, if you can believe what that could be. We know about Brave and the attention token, a lot of activity going around on what is the benefit to the user around advertising. Certainly having having immutability and data might be interesting. Sam, welcome to The Cube >> Thank you. >> So, first of all, big news today on Silicon Angle. We covered you guys, you guys announced a strategic investor. >> Yes. >> What's the hard news? >> Yeah, well, thank you for covering us today. Today we announced our initial funding and our strategic investor is Pythia. Pythia represents the hard chain foundation, and so we're really excited about this opportunity, We believe our chain represents an incredible advancement of base protocol layers and so, we're looking, we'll be supporting them as we go forward, as we work closely with Pythia, our chain, and that community. >> Tell me about what you guys offer taken specific context, folks may or may not be familiar with what you do. What's the basic premise of your opportunity, technology and problems that you solve, and how do you use Blockchain for that? Yeah, so, we started, we were a digital advertising protocol. Effectively, we are a shared ledger for the digital advertising ecosystem, and if you know digital advertising, it operates at a tremendous scale. And so we have to build this Layer 2 technology that sits on top of the traditional, the base layer protocols, like Ethereum and Archain. In order to address the three challenges. The three challenges, one being scalability, the second is difficulty in sharing privacy, and the third is the high overhead cost of decentralizing a network. And so we've built this Layer 2 technology that uses a plasma sidechain, and we use something called a time series database, that solves those three problems. And, we're looking to support additional chains, in addition to Ethereum, and so obviously our chain is a natural extension for us. >> Yeah, and you guys obviously get, we cover you guys from a broad perspective, that's a big problem in advertising. >> But are you guys charting the user value proposition, or the digital marketer or agency proposition, or both? >> Yeah, so we're not trying to tokenize digital advertising. Our token is basically used internally as a proof of stake token. So, the advertiser, we're asking them to pay in fiat, and we convert that into a stable coin. And on our current instincts, it's the Dai token by MakerDAO. And so, what we are trying to solve is the transparency issue, that's rampant in the supply chain. So for example, when you run a digital ad today, you use anywhere from seven to 15 vendors, and those vendors, each of them have their own database, and they never communicate that data across to each other, and so there's discrepancies, and it also opens itself up to a lot of fraud. And so the industry is a 225 billion dollar industry, and the industry itself estimates that there's, like, 30% of that money is wasted. And a lot of that is because there's no reconciliation of that data, there's no transparency, and so we've created this protocol layer, for all 15 vendors to submit their data. And, in real time, we can understand, which impressions were valid, which ones were fraudulent, and, well, not just transparency, but now that we as industry participants don't have to argue with one another, we'll start to trust one another, and then we can move the industry forward. >> In the market it'll adjust the pricing as a result of that as well, right? >> Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and it's just about identifying where is the value created, right? So if you're a value creator in the supply chain, you could probably estimate that, the advertiser's going to eliminate the less valuable ones, and focus on the valuable and the adding ones. So basically, if you're fraudulent, like yeah, you might get hurt, but the real adders will benefit from it. >> Just to clarify a question, you talked about the overheads of decentralizing advertising. I infer from that that an advertising supply chain, by its inherent nature is decentralized? Or are you talking about more of a disruptive model? Can you explain? >> Yeah, so we're not re-creating a whole ecosystem, >> Right >> We're interoperable with the existing architecture. >> Which, is decentralized by its very nature, you're saying, or...? >> No, no, no, it's not decentralized >> Okay >> It's very centralized, like all the metrics are controlled by a few players. >> So it's no seven people in the supply chain, that form that central entity... >> Yes, it's all central entities, and we're asking them to submit their data, into this shared ledger, that works across all of the different industry structures. >> So it is disrupting that... >> Oh, it's highly disruptive in terms of that, but we're not trying to re-create the infrastructure like a lot of other blockchain architect companies. >> Oh, I see, so you're tapping into the existing, and you're providing good auditing, I imagine with this, right, so the benefit might be auditing. So give an example of how that would render itself. >> Yeah, so, one of the areas that we're focused on today, is just looking at the impressions, in a programmatic ad buying. And so, let's say, let's just focus, instead of talking about the 15 vendors, let's just talk about the four. The four is the advertiser, is the DSP, which is basically the buying platform, the SSP, which also represents the exchange, and then the publisher. Now there is, we were asked that all four submit their data into the smart contract, and we verify whether that impression was valid. If you think of a fraudulent example, like a bot, they will not be able to mimic the data across the whole supply chain. And so because we're looking at the data wholistically, rather than just the slices of it, we can identify those fraudulent behaviors. >> This is the benefit of horizontally scalable, integrated systems. Cloud can help you, Blockchain helps you. How's the uptake been? Give us an update on who's involved, what's been the successes, and how's your success going? >> So we've been really excited to work with the IAB, and the IAB stands for the Interactive Advertisement Bureau. They're the bodies that set standards in digital advertising and we're working very closely with them. We launched our pilot, the first official pilot with the IAB, and we have great advertisers that are working with us, we're working with a lot of the agencies, we're actually even working closely with the publishers, and the ad networks, and the exchangers. AppNexus is one of the major partners with us, and the reception's been really positive because I think everybody wants that transparency. >> Well, some of the status quo might not want that transparency, I mean, let's face it, right? >> The fraud is rampant, it really is. >> A 220 billion dollar industry, I betcha there's a lot of people in it that are like, oh boy, here comes lucidity! I mean, come on, what about that? >> I'm sure that exists, but we haven't really come across it because the advertiser, at the end of the day, has become really aware that there is this rampant fraud, there is this waste. And I don't want to attribute everything to fraud, I think some of it is just wasted, because of the quality of the data. And so, the advertiser is demanding and at the end of the day, we're here to serve the advertiser, right? We're here to deliver value to the advertiser, and I think the industry is mature enough now, to where we recognize that. And so we don't think of transparency as a threat to the business anymore. We think of it as a value enhancement to our customer, the advertiser. >> Yeah, and I would personally totally agree with that, because as I said, the market will correct itself. Higher quality advertising is going to deliver more revenue, ultimately, alone, because there's going to be better outcomes. Right, so if you can increase your hit rate, you'd be happy to lower the clicks, you know? >> Is there any benefit for publishers? >> Yeah, I mean, publishers today have to basically trust what their partners are paying them. There's no way for them to verify and validate it. And so, with our system, we enable publishers to look into, it's our sidechain, right? And so, they are able to look at the events, but we obscure the data, we hash the data that's there so that we make it anonymous. But then they're able to see, like, okay, these are the impressions I've manned, here are the ones that were considered valid and verified, and here's what I should get paid. So the publishers now get the transparency, that which they lack today. >> So much of that industry is a black box, you might have a big media buyer, who's got voodoo, you know, that sprinkles magic dust, sends you a big bill, and you're like whoa! Is this really worth it? >> Bots, fake traffic.. >> You can automate a lot of that... >> And you've been doing this for 20 years! This has been the status quo for 20 years! >> We need a change. So, talk about the company, how big, how much funding did you actually owe? Is it privately funded, what's the funding mechanism? How big are you guys, what's the story? >> So today we announced that we raised five million dollars, we did it in traditional means. We did not do an ICO. >> Venture capital? >> It's a mix of venture capital, and obviously Pythia is the fund for our chain, so, but it was an equity deal. And that's the brow we're going to continue with. We do have an internal token, but we are not looking at doing a public sale. >> So not a security token, preferred stock, classic funding. >> So wait, so you did a security token? >> No no, no, preffered stock, classic venture capital. Well, great! Yeah, that's awesome, congratulations. We'll keep in touch, it's great to have you come on. >> Thank you very much >> Thanks very much, appreciate the time. >> And thank you for covering us! >> Of course! We love innovative things, in advertising specifically because it's freaking broken, big time! We have no advertising on our site, because we want to get the best content possible. Of course, the Cube is supported by sponsors, we appreciate that. Thanks for coming on. Cube coverage here in Toronto for watching futurists, we'll be right back, stay with us, as we start to wind down day one. Be right back with more great interviews after this break. (light-hearted techno music)

>> [Announcer] Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE! Covering E3, 2018. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff right here at theCUBE. We're at the L.A. Convention Center in E3. It's our first time coming to this convention. It's 68,000 people and every single hall and outside, inside hotels. It's pretty crazy--pretty crazy scene. We're happy to be here. Well, we've got our next guest. She's been coming for a while. It's Katie Stone Perez. She's the director of Mixer Interactive. From Mixer, Katie, great to see you. >> Thanks so much for having me! >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, I'd love to get your perspective. You've been in this industry for-- >> 17 years. >> 17 years. I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say close to two decades. >> (Laughing) >> So as you've been in and watched this thing develop, what are your impressions today in 2018 and how it's transformed?-- >> Of the show? You know, the whole game industry has so fundamentally transformed over the last 17 years, right? I mean, at that point in time, we didn't even have services like Xbox Live where people were connecting and playing online together. Everything was really sold as a disc-based media. So you walked into a store to purchase your disk. Now we have so many digital purchases happening online. We had no player data. We had no way to actually know how far in the game our players were getting and all of this kind of stuff-- >> [Jeff] That's right. You just shipped the disc out, right? You didn't know. >> And now we have all of this telemetry, right? We have all of these experiences. You have the, you know, free-to-play has made a huge rise. We have mobile, right? Mobile gaming within the space. So the show has so transformed both from the people who are playing within the space, the technologies that people are using, and the growth. I mean, we can also just see-- years ago, it was really much more about a trade show so that the big people who are going to buy the disc can actually come to E3-- >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> Check out our games and place their disc orders. And now it's really much more of a consumer phenomenon as well. >> [Jeff] So I'm curious, we covered a ton of tech shows. Just I've been here before and data and the use of data is a huge part of the digital transformation story. >> Yeah. >> So I'm curious from your point of view from a game developer point of view, how did that change? Because you guys are a little bit ahead of the curve in getting the usage data, getting the tracking data. How did that impact the industry in the way you developed and shipped games? >> It's phenomenal. You know, all of a sudden, you can start to understand who your players are and so if you're gonna do an upsell offer, you know, you can understand, like, "Oh, this person has actually already purchased this type of material." So I'm gonna give him this type of upsell vs this type of upsell. Or, You know, "I see all of my players are really struggling on level three and no one is making it through. What's wrong with level three?" Let's look at changing that up a bit. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So data has actually really informed us in so many ways to re-look at our basic gameplay loops. Our retention mechanics and all of that kind of stuff and, you know, most game companies now have teams of data analysts who are just specifically focusing on those KPIs and just analyzing the data and learning. >> [Jeff] Right. >> But with that too, we've also then had to get more agile in our development and publishing processes because, you know, when you ship a disc and you just let it go, you can get data but then what are you gonna do about it, right? >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> Your next sequel is a couple of years out and so now, too, with the ability to push updates over the air and all of this kind of stuff, It changes it so we can actually take that information, have an immediate impact, and sometimes you can get that data within one or two days. Actually have an impact, you know? >> [Jeff] Right. >> So I actually work on mixer which is a game broadcasting platform so we have a live service. So we can just constantly update and make these changes. >> [Jeff] I'm gonna ask you a philosophical question that I'm always thinking about. In terms of difficulty and the right amount of difficulty, and just kind of generically but engage specifically-- >> Right. >> You want to be difficult enough so people feel challenged and want to continue the journey. >> Yeah. >> But obviously you can't make it so difficult that they just couldn't get through. So I just wondered if you had some-- >> Yeah! >> If there's some best practice or philosophy about what's the right level to the degree of difficulty? >> Yeah, you know funny enough, I gave a talk at GDC in, like, 2005 and it was called Let Me Win and so my background is actually in psychology and it was really as someone who has a psychology background who loves to play games. My issues of playing through so many games in our media because we're a very defeatist mentality. If you think about it, we started as an industry as this coin-op industry where we had to kill you off because we needed you to put another quarter in the machine. But now we carry that trope with us even though we have people put 60 quarters-- $60 worth of quarters in the machine in advance >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> But we're still killing you off in the same way. And so it's kind of crazy to me. And so we really as an industry, I do think, need to think about that more. Now there's certain games like Cuphead is one of my favorite games but it's really brutally hard but that was very much the intention, you know? >> [Jeff] Right. >> These dark souls and the cupheads in those games. Their genre is that they are super hard-- >> [Jeff] Right. >> So people kind of know that going into them. But I do think across our broader audience, we need to think about how we're being more inclusive in our design And that's everything from, you know, still giving people that harder experience but also an educational principal called scaffolding. So, you know, just like when you're teaching a kid to do something, you're not gonna say "Okay, do this and this and this and this and this." Because that's not fun. >> [Jeff] Right, right. >> So instead, if you can be, like, "Here's what the goal is. Here's your tools." And then within the game, we want to help do that. Now with data, actually, we can help scaffold better. Cause we can actually see "Oh, these players didn't do this" Or "This age group of players didn't do this." Or "This type of thing didn't do this." So we can actually use that to inform our decisions and actually do better scaffolding within the game. >> [Jeff] Okay, so before we get to mixer and streaming which is like the latest thing, I want to get to this middle step which was the Cloud. And really opening up the ability to do multi-player games, opening up the ability to go from just that consul out into the universe and play lots of other people. Again, how did that really transform the way you guys thought about designing and delivering games? >> I mean, fundamentally, you know, Xbox Live was a apart of our program. Very early on, Live came into the Xbox business and I think it was actually great because we had that as a Microsoft asset and strength that we can bring over that type of infrastructure. And we've seen it really just connect and bring people together in form community, right? And it's so much fun. There's some element that you get when you're sitting next to someone and playing but not everyone in the world has someone sitting next to them. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So we're doing that over Live by bringing people together and through different platforms and services like Mixer as well where we can bring these communities together. >> [Jeff] Right. >> So it's really, I really think about creating that essence of community. It just makes everything more fun. >> [Jeff] Right. So now we're in 2018 and actually, it's been going on for a little while which is a whole different level of community and that's streaming where someone's playing a game for those that aren't familiar and other people are invited to participate with them. >> Yeah. >> Again, another huge shift in the way that people interacting with the game. And more importantly, kind of the social aspects around their playing with the game. >> Yeah and that's what's so cool. So in traditional game streaming platforms too, there's quite a bit of latency so what the gamer-- the streamer's actually doing at the time, you know, by the time the viewers end up seeing it on a platform, and then, you know, they can comment on it and then the streamer kind of sees it. There's a lot of latency there. So Mixer was actually created by two young kids who actually were huge in the Minecraft community. They had already created a million dollar business actually hosting Minecraft servers and they had all these streamer friends that were Minecraft streamers and they were talking about how frustrating it was because they were streaming and people were like "Put the block over here, put the block over there." But by the time they saw that feedback from their fans, they had already moved on. They had already done something different. So Mixer created low latency streaming. So what we called our faster-than-light technology where we have sub-second latency. So exactly what's happening in the game, that's what people on Mixer are seeing. And then they can comment and the streamer immediately sees those comments and that then paved the way for this richer conversation. And from there, we had interactivity come about. So we have all of our new Mixplay experiences where people can actually come on to Mixer and not just watch. Now they are playing themselves. So you can actually be playing one of our games like Next Up Hero and I can actually choose to help heal you or I can choose to help throw in enemies. Then you'll see my gamer text "Sweets" go right across the screen, right? You can actually see as a gamer who's then broadcasting, you can see what I'm doing on Mixer and how that's having an impact within your game. >> Didn't the streamer kind of like the latency so that they had time to kind of split their attention between playing the game and interacting with the community? >> No because it's all->> streamers for them, It's all about community. Now there are certain competitive sports events and things like that that we do within the e-sports space, and so there might be certain instances in which you don't want to have low latency engaged. But for the most part, streamers want to be having that conversation and are faster- >> than-light technology on Mixer really enables that for them. >> [Jeff] Right. And it just seems like it's almost gonna come full circle so if I'm engaging with the streamer and I'm participating in the game to some degree, at some point, do I just step in and we're playing the game together? >> Yeah. I mean, really now, you can play on Mixer. That's really what we're talking about with our new Mixplay experiences. So we even have games that are playable only on Mixers so these games aren't even-- we were talking about distribution, right? These games aren't even shipping. There's no disc. They're not even shipping on any of these other platforms. They're playable only on Mixer and so you can actually go to mixer.com today and check out several of these game experiences and you can actually look for Mixplay experiences. We have filters and so you can actually find all of that content. >> [Jeff] Alright. So to get your perspective before we let you->> you've been at this for a while. So as storage and compute and networking, it gets infinite in scale and asymptotically approaches zero in cost. As you look forward, where do you see leveraging some of this new horsepower? >> Well, I think again, you know, Microsoft actually just had this amazing acquisition of PlayFab technology and I love seeing what they're doing within this space and bringing that into our portfolio of content as well. Because again, it's about having this data and being able to really respond and change your game instantly to really make sure that you're doing the best things for your business. And so it really just makes developers be informed and be able to be much more agile in their approach. And it's also democratizing that opportunity. Previously years ago, to get some of these insights, you would have had to be one of the largest game companies on the planet. And now with the democratization of these different game engines, and then then the democratization of this type of tooling and online services that are available, with things like Azure and things like PlayFab, it really creates an amazing opportunity for all developers everywhere. >> [Jeff] And to me, the democratization, the thing where you're over and over-- >> Yeah. >> More of data, more of the tools, and more of the ability to do something about it is distributed to a broader audience. Alright Katie, well thank you for-- >> We get more voices with that, right? >> Right, right. >> You get a much broader set of content that ends up like the content that you see here today is much more diverse and much broader. You know, we still have a long way to go as an industry but it's very different than my first E3 17 years ago. >> [Jeff] 17 years ago. Alright Katie, well thanks for taking-- >> Thank you! >> a few minutes out of your day and congrats on all the success. >> Thanks! >> Alright, this is Katie and I'm Jeff. You're watch theCUBE from E3, L.A. Convention Center. Thanks for watching. (upbeat, techno music)