>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm coming to you from our Boston area studio. I'm happy to welcome to the program someone we've known for many years, but a first time on the program. Priyanka Sharma, thank you so much for joining us. >> Hi, Stu. Thank you so much for having me. >> All right, and Priyanka, let's not bury the lead or anything. The reason we're talking to you is the news. You've got a new job, but in an area that you know really well. So we've known you through the cloud native communities for a number of years. We see you at the shows. We see you online. So happy to share with our community you are now the general manager of the CNCF, so congratulations so much on the job. >> Thank you so much. I am so honored to have this opportunity, and I can't wait to work even more closely with the cloud native community than I have already. I mean, as you said, I've been involved for a long time. I actually just saw on my LinkedIn today that 2016 was when my conversation within the CNCF started. I was then working on the OpenTracing Project, which was the third project to join the foundation, and CNCF had started in 2015, so it was all very new. We were in conversations, and it was just such an exciting time, and that just kept getting bigger and bigger, and then with GitLab I served, I actually still serve, until the 31st, on the board. And now this, so I'm very, very excited. >> Yeah, well right. So you're a board member of the CNCF, but Priyanka, if you go back even further, we look at how did CNCF start. It was all around Kubernetes. Where did Kubernetes come from? It came from Google, and when I dug back far enough into your CV I found Google on there, too. So maybe just give us a little bit of your career arc, and what you're involved with for people that don't know you from all these communities and events. >> Sure, absolutely. So my career started at Google in Mountain View, and I was on the business side of things. I worked with AdSense products, and around that same time I had a bit of the entrepreneurial bite, so the bug bit me, and I first joined a startup that was acquired by GoDaddy later on, and then I went off on my own. That was a very interesting time for me, because that was when I truly learned about the power of opensource. One of the products that me and my co-founder were building was an opensource time tracker, and I just saw the momentum on these communities, and that's when the dev tools love started. And then I got involved with Heavybit Industries, which is an accelerator for dev tools. There I met so many companies that were either in the cloud space, or just general other kinds of dev tools, advised a few, ended up joining LightStep, where the founders, them and a few community members were the creators of the OpenTracing standard. Got heavily, heavily involved in that project, jumped into cloud native with that, was a project contributor, organizer, educator, documentarian, all kinds of things, right, for two-plus years, and then GitLab with the board membership, and that's how I saw, actually, the governance side. Until then it had all been the community, the education, that aspect, and then I understood how Chris and Dan had built this amazing foundation that's done so much from the governance perspective. So it's been a long journey and it all feels that it's been coming towards in this awesome new direction. >> Well, yeah. Congratulations to you, and right, CNCF, in their press release I see Dan talked about you've been a speaker, you've been a governing board member, you participate in this, and you're going to help with that next phase, and you teased out a little bit, there's a lot of constituencies in the CNCF. There's a large user participation. We always love talking at KubeCon about the people not only just using the technology, but contributing back, the role of opensource, the large vendor ecosystem, a lot there. So give us your thought as to kind of where the CNCF is today, and where it needs to continue and go in the future. >> Absolutely. So in my opinion the CNCF is a breakout organization. I mean, we're approaching 600 members, of which 142 are end users. So with that number the CNCF is actually the largest, has the largest end user community of all opensource foundations. So tremendous progress has been made, especially from those days back in 2016 when we were the third project being considered. So leaps and bounds, so impressive. And I think... If you think about what's the end user storyline right now, so the CNCF did a survey last year, and so 84% of the people surveyed were using containers in production, and 78% were using Kubernetes in production. Amazing numbers, especially since both are up by about 15, 20% year over year. So this move towards devops, towards cloud native, towards Kubernetes is happening and happening really strong. The project has truly established itself. Kubernetes has won, in my opinion, and that's really good. I think now when it comes to the second wave, it is my perspective that the end user communities and the... Just the momentum that we have right now, we need to build and grow it. We need deeper developer engagement, because if you think about it, there's not just one graduated project in CNCF. There are 10. So Kubernetes being one of them, but there's Prometheus, there's Envoy, Jaeger, et cetera, et cetera. So we have amazing technologies that are all gaining adoption. Being graduated means that they have fast security audits, they have diverse contributors, they have safe, good governance, so as an end user you can feel very secure adopting them, and so we have so much to do to expand on the knowledge of those projects. We have so much to make software just better every day, so that's my one vector in my opinion. The second vector, I would say it has been more opportunistic. As you know, we are all living in a very unprecedented time with a global pandemic. Many of us are sheltering in place. Many are... Generally, life is changed. You are in media. You know this much better than me, I'm sure, that the number of, the amount of digital consumption has just skyrocketed. People are reading that many more articles. I'm watching that many more memes and jokes online, right? And what that means is that more and more companies are reaching that crazy web scale that started this whole cloud native and devops space in the first time, first place with Google and Netflix being D-to-C companies just building out what eventually became cloud native, SRE, that kind of stuff. So in general, online consumption's higher, so more and more companies need to be cloud native to support that kind of traffic. Secondly, even for folks that are not creating content, just a lot of the workflows have to move online. More people will do online banking. More people will do ecommerce. It's just the shift is happening, and for that we, as the foundation, need to be ready to support the end users with education, enablement, certifications, training programs, just to get them across that chasm into a new, even more online-focused reality. >> Yeah, and I say, Priyanka, that tees up one of the ways that most people are familiar with the CNCF is through the event. So KubeCon and CloudNativeCon, really the signature event. Tremendous growth over the last few years. You actually had involvement in a virtual event, the Cloud Native Summit recently. For KubeCon-- >> Yes. >> The European show is announced virtual. We know that there's still some uncertainty when it comes to the North America show. Supposed to be in my backyard here in Boston, so we'd love for it to happen. If it happens-- >> Of course. >> If not, we'll be there virtually or not. Give us a little bit your experience with the Cloud Native Summit, and what's your thinking today? We understand, as you said, a lot of uncertainty as to what goes on. Absolutely, even when physical events come back in the future, we expect this hybrid model to be with us for a long time. >> I definitely hear that. Completely agree that everything is uncertain and things have changed very rapidly for our world, particularly when it comes to events. We're lucky at the CNCF to be working with the LF Events team, which is just best in class, and we are working very hard every day, them, doing a lot of the lion's share of the work of building the best experience we can for KubeCon, CloudNativeCon EU, which, as you said, went virtual. I'm really looking forward to it because what I learned from the Cloud Native Summit Online, which was the event you mentioned that I had hosted in April, is that people are hungry to just engage, to see each other, to communicate however they can in this current time. Today I don't think the technology's at a point where physical events can be overshadowed by virtual, so there's still something very special about seeing someone face-to-face, having a coffee, and having that banter, conversations. But at the same time there are some benefits to online. So as an example, with the Cloud Native Summit, really, it was just me and a few community folks who were sad we didn't get to go to Amsterdam, so we're like, "Let's just get together in a group, "have some fun, talk to some maintainers," that kind of thing. I expected a few hundred, max. Thousands of people showed up, and that was just mind blowing because I was like, "Wait, what?" (chuckling) But it was so awesome because not only were there a lot of people, there were people from just about every part of the globe. So normally you have US, Europe, that kind of focus, and there's the Asia-PAC events that cater to that, but here in that one event where, by the way, we were talking to each other in realtime, there were folks from Asia-PAC, there were folks from Americas, EU, also the African continent, so geo meant nothing anymore. And that was very awesome. People from these different parts of the world were talking, engaging, learning, all at the same time, and I think with over 20,000 people expected at KubeCon EU, with it being virtual, we'll see something similar, and I think that's a big opportunity for us going forward. >> Yeah, no, absolutely. There are some new opportunities, some new challenges. I think back to way back in January I got to attend the GitLab event, and you look at GitLab, a fully remote company, but talking about the benefits of still getting together and doing things online. You think of the developer communities, they're used to working remote and working across different timezones, but there is that need to be able to get together and collaborate, and so we've got some opportunities, we've got some challenges when remote, so I guess, yeah, Priyanka. Give me the final word, things you want to look forward to, things we should be expecting from you and the CNCF team going forward. I guess I'll mention for our audience, I guess, Dan Kohn staying part of Linux Foundation, doing some healthcare things, will still stay a little involved, and Chris Aniszczyk, who's the CTO, still the CTO. I just saw him. Did a great panel for DockerCon with Kelsey Hightower, Michelle Noorali, and Sean Connelly, and all people we know that-- >> Right. >> Often are speaking at KubeCon, too. So many of the faces staying the same. I'm not expecting a big change, but what should we expect going forward? >> That's absolutely correct, Stu. No big changes. My first big priority as I join is, I mean, as you know, coming with the community background, with all this work that we've put into education and learning from each other, my number one goal is going to be to listen and learn in a very diverse set of personas that are part of this whole community. I mean, there's the board, there is the technical oversight committee, there is the project maintainers, there's the contributors, there are the end users, potential developers who could be contributors. There's just so many different types of people all united in our interest and desire to learn more about cloud native. So my number one priority is going to listen and learn, and as I get more and more up to speed I'm very lucky that Chris Aniszczyk, who has built this with Dan, is staying on and is going to be advising me, guiding me, and working with me. Dan as well is actually going to be around to help advise me and also work on some key initiatives, in addition to his big, new thing with public health and the Linux Foundation. You never expect anything average with Dan, so it's going to be amazing. He's done so much for this foundation and brought it to this point, which in my mind, I mean, it's stupendous the amount of work that's happened. It's so cool. So I'm really looking forward to building on this amazing foundation created by Dan and Chris under Jim. I think that what they have done by not only providing a neutral IP zone where people can contribute and use projects safely, they've also created an ecosystem where there is events, there is educational activity, projects can get documentation support, VR support. It's a very holistic view, and that's something, in my opinion, new, at least in the way it's done. So I just want to build upon that, and I think the end user communities will keep growing, will keep educating, will keep working together, and this is a team effort that we are all in together. >> Well, Priyanka, congratulations again. We know your community background and strong community at the CNCF. Looking forward to seeing that both in the virtual events in the near term and back when we have physical events again in the future, so thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> All right. Be sure to check out thecube.net. You'll see all the previous events we've done with the CNCF, as well as, as mentioned, we will be helping keep cloud native connected at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon Europe, the virtual event in August, as well as the North American event later in the year. I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE. (smooth music)

>> Narrator: At the DataWorks Summit, Europe 2017. Brought to you by Hortonworks. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live from Munich, Germany at DataWorks 2017, Hadoop Summit formerly, the conference name before it changed to DataWorks. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Dave Vellante. Our next guest, we're excited to have Alan Nance who flew in, just for the CUBE interview today. Executive Vice President with Virtual Clarity. Former star, I call practitioner of the Cloud, knows the Cloud business. Knows the operational aspects of how to use technology. Alan, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the CUBE. >> Thank you for having me again. >> Great to see you, you were in the US recently, we had a chance to catch up. And one of the motivations that we talked with you today was, a little bit about some of the things you're looking at, that are transformative. Before we do that, let's talk a little about your history. And what your role is at Virtual Clarity. >> So, as you guys have, basically, followed that career, I started out in the transformation time with ING Bank. And started out, basically, technology upwards. Looking at converged infrastructure, converged infrastructure into VDI. When you've got that, you start to look at Clouds. Then you start to experiment with Clouds. And I moved from ING, from earlier experimentation, into Phillips. So, while Phillips, at that time had both the health care and lighting group. And then you start to look at consumption based Cloud propositions. And you remember the big thing that we were doing at that time, when we identified that 80% of the IT spend was non differentiating. So the thing was, how do we get away from almost a 900 million a year spend on legacy? How do we turn that into something that's productive for the Enterprise? So we spent a lot of time creating the consumption based infrastructure operating platform. A lot of things we had to learn. Because let's be honest, Amazon was still trying to become the behemoth it is now. IBM still didn't get the transition, HP didn't get it. So there was a lot of experimentation on which of the operating model-- >> You're the first mover on the operating model, The Cloud, that has scaled to it. And really differentiated services for your business, for also, cost reductions. >> Cost reductions have been phenomenal. And we're talking about halving the budget over a three year period. We're talking about 500 million a year savings. So these are big, big savings. The thing I feel we still need to tackle, is that when we re-platform your business, it should leave to agile acceleration of your growth path. And I think that's something that we still haven't conquered. So I think we're getting better and better at using platforms to save money, to suppress the expenditure. What we now need to do is to convert that into growth platform business. >> So, how about the data component? Because you were CIO of infrastructure at Phillips. But lately, you've been really spending a lot of time thinking about the data, how data adds value. So talk about your data journey. >> Well if I look at the data journey, the journey started for me, with, basically, a meeting with Tom Ritz in 2013. And he came with a very, very simple proposition. "You guys need to learn how to create "and store, and reason over data, "for the benefit of the Enterprise." And I think, "Well that's cool." Because up until that point, nobody had really been talking about data. Everyone was talking about the underlying technologies of the Cloud, but not really of the data element. And then we had a session with JP Rangaswami, who was at Salesforce, who basically, also said, "Well don't just think "about data lakes, but think also "about data streams and data rivers. "Because the other thing that's "going to happen here is that data's "not going to be stagnant in a company like yours." So we took that, and what happened, I think, in Phillips, which I think you see in a lot of companies, is an explosion across the Enterprise. So you've got people in social doing stuff. You got CDO's appearing. You've got the IOT. You've got the old, legacy systems, the systems of record. And so you end up with this enormous fragmentation of data. And with that you get a Wild West of what I call data stewardship. So you have a CDO who says, "Well I'm in charge of data." And you got a CMO who says, "Well I'm in charge of marketing data." Or you've got a CSO, says, "Yeah, "but I'm the security data guy." And there's no coherence, in terms of moving the Enterprise forward. Because everybody's focused on their own functionality around that data and not connecting it. So where are we now? I think right now we have a huge proliferation of data that's not connected, in many organizations. And I think we're going to hybrid but I don't think that's a future proof thing for most organizations. >> John: What do you mean by that? >> Well, if I look at what a lot of those suppliers are saying, they're really saying, "The solution "that you need, is to have a hybrid solution "between the public Cloud and your own Cloud." I thought, "But that's not the problem "that we need to solve." The problem that we need to solve is first of all, data gravity. So if I look at all the transformations that are running into trouble, what do they forget? When we go out and do IOT, when we go out and do social media analysis, it all has to flow back into those legacy systems. And those legacy systems are all going to be in the old world. And so you get latency issues, you get formatting issues. And so, we have to solve the data gravity issue. And we have to also solve this proliferation of stewardship. Somebody has to be in charge of making this work. And it's not going to be, just putting in a hybrid solution. Because that won't change the operating model. >> So let me ask the question, because on one of the things you're kind of dancing around, Dave brought up the data question. Something that I see as a problem in the industry, that hasn't yet been solved, and I'm just going to throw it out there. The CIO has always been the guy managing IT. And then he would report to the CFO, get the budget, blah, blah, blah. We know that's kind of played out its course. But there's no operational playbook to take the Cloud, mobile data at scale, that's going to drive the transformative impact. And I think there's some people doing stuff here and there, pockets. And maybe there's some organizations that have a cadence of managers, that are doing compliance, security, blah, blah, blah. But you have a vision on this. And some information that you're tracking around. An architecture that would bring it to scale. Could you share your thoughts on this operational model of Cloud, at a management level? >> Well, part of this is also based on your own analyst, Peter Boris. When he says, "The problem with data "is that its value is inverse to its half life." So, what the Enterprise has to do is it has to get to analyzing and making this data valuable, much, much faster then it is right now. And Chris Sellender of Unifi recently said, "You know, the problem's not big data. "The problem's fast data." So, now, who is best positioned in the organization to do this? And I believe it's the COO. >> John: Chief Operating Officer? >> Chief Operating Officer. I don't think it's going to be the CIO. Because I'm trying to figure out who's got the problem. Who's got the problem of connecting the dots to improving the operation of the company? Who is in charge of actually creating an operating platform that the business can feed off of? It's the C Tower. >> John: Why not the CFO? >> No, I think the CFO is going to be a diminishing value, over time. Because a couple of reasons. First of all, we see it in Phillips. There's always going to be a fiduciary role for the CFO. But we're out of the world of capex. We're out of the world of balancing assets. Everything is now virtual. So really, the value of a CFO, as sitting on the tee, if I use the racquetball, the CFO standing on the tee is not going to bring value to the Enterprise. >> And the CIO doesn't have the business juice, is your argument? Is that right? >> It depends on the CIO. There are some CIO's out there-- >> Dave: But in general, we're generalizing. >> Generally not. Because they've come through the ranks of building applications, which now has to be thrown away. They've come through the ranks of technology, which is now less relevant. And they've come through the ranks of having huge budgets and huge people to deploy certain projects. All of that's going away. And so what are you left with? Now you're left with somebody who absolutely has to understand how to communicate with the business. And that's what they haven't done for 30 years. >> John: And stream line business process. >> Well, at least get involved in the conversation. At least get involved in the conversation. Now if I talk to business people today, and you probably do too, most of them will still say there's this huge communication gulf. Between what we're trying to achieve and what the technology people are doing with our goals. I mean, I was talking to somebody the other day. And this lady heads up the sales for a global financial institution. She's sitting on the business side of this. And she's like, "The conversation should be "about, if our company wants to improve "our cost income ratio, and they ask me, "as sales to do it, I have to sell 10 times "more to make a difference. "Then if IT would save money. "So for every Euro they save. "And give me an agile platform, "is straight to the bottom line. "Every time I sell, because of our "cost income ratio, I just can't sell against that. "But I can't find on the IT side, "anybody who, sort of, gets my problem. "And is trying to help me with it." And then you look at her and what? You think a hybrid solution's going to help her? (laughs) I have no idea what you're talking about. >> Right, so the business person here then says, "I don't really care where it runs." But to your point, you care about the operational model? >> Alan: Absolutely. >> And that's really what Cloud should be, right? >> I think everybody who's going to achieve anything from an investment in Cloud, will achieve it in the operating world. They won't just achieve it on the cost savings side. Or on making costs more transparent, or more commoditized. Where it has to happen is in the operating model. In fact, we actually have data of a very large, transportation, logistics company, who moved everything that they had, in an attempt to be in a zero Cloud. And on the benchmark, saved zero. And they saved zero because they weren't changing the operating model. So they were still-- >> They lifted and shifted, but didn't change the operational mindset. >> Not at all. >> But there could have been business value there. Maybe things went faster? >> There could have been. >> Maybe simpler? >> But I'm not seeing it. >> Not game changing. >> Not game changing, certainly yes. >> Not as meaningful, it was a stretch. >> Give an example of a game changing scenario. >> Well for me, and I think this is the next most exciting thing. Is this idea of platforms. There's been an early adoption of this in Telco. Where we've seen people coming in and saying, "If you stock all of this IT, as we've known it, "and you leverage the ideas of Cloud computing, "to have scalable, invisible, infrastructure. "And you put a single platform on top of it "to run your business, you can save money." Now, I've seen business cases where people who are about to embark on this program are taking a billion a year out of their cost base. And in this company, it's 1/7th of their total profit. That's a game changer, for me. But now, who's going to help them do that? Who's going to help them-- >> What's the platform look like? >> And a million's a lot of money. >> Let's go, grab a sheet of paper how we-- >> So not everybody will even have a billion-- >> But that gets the attention of certainly, the CEO, the COO, CFO says, "Tell me more." >> You're alluding to it, Dave. You need to build a layer to punch, to doing that. So you need to fix the data stewardship problem. You have to create the invisible infrastructure that enables that platform. And you have to have a platform player who is prepared to disrupt the industry. And for me-- >> Dave: A Cloud player. >> A Cloud player, I think it's a born in the Cloud player. I think, you know, we've talked about it privately. >> So who are the forces to attract? You got Microsoft, you got AWS, Google, maybe IBM, maybe Oracle. >> See, I think it's Google. >> Dave: Why, why do you think it's Google? >> I think it's because, the platforms that I'm thinking of, and if I look in retail, if I look in financial services, it's all about data. Because that's the battle, right. We all agree, the battle's on data. So it's got to be somebody who understands data at scale, understands search at scale, understands deep learning at scale. And understands technology enough to build that platform and make it available in a consumption model. And for me, Google would be the ideal player, if they would make that step. Amazon's going to have a different problem because their strategy's not going down that route. And I think, for people like IBM or Oracle, it would require cannibalizing too much of their existing business. But they may dally with it. And they may do it in a territory where they have no install base. But they're not going to be disrupting the industry. I just don't think it's going to be possible for them. >> And you think Google has the Enterprise chops to pull it off? >> I think Google has the platform. I would agree with Alan on this. Something, I've been very critical on Google. Dave brings this up because he wants me to say it now, and I will. Google is well positioned to be the platform. I am very bullish on Google Cloud with respect to their ability to moon shot or slingshot to the future faster, than, potentially others. Or as they say in football, move the goal posts and change the game. That being said, where I've been critical of Google, and this is where, I'll be critical, is their dogma is very academic, very, "We're the technology leader, "therefore you should use Google G Suite." I think that they have to change their mindset, to be more Enterprise focused, in the sense of understand not the best product will always win, but the B chip they have to develop, have to think about the Enterprise. And that's a lot of white glove service. That's a lot of listening. That's not being too arrogant. I mean, there's a borderline between confidence and arrogance. And I think Google crosses it a little bit too much, Dave. And I think that's where Google recognizes, some people in Google recognize that they don't have the Enterprise track record, for sure on the sales side. You could add 1,000 sales reps tomorrow but do they have experience? So there's a huge translation issue going on between Google's capability and potential energy. And then the reality of them translating that into an operational footprint. So for them to meet the mark of folks like you, you can't be speaking Russian and English. You got to speak the same language. So, the language barrier, so to speak, the linguistics is different. That's my only point. >> I sense in your statements, there's a frustration here. Because we know that the key to some really innovative, disruption is with Google. And I think what we'd all like to do, even while I was addressing the camera. I'd love to see Diane, who does understand Enterprise, who's built a whole career servicing Enterprises extremely well, I'd like to see a little bit of a glimpse of, "We are up for this." And I understand when you're part of the bigger Google, the numbers are a little bit skewered against you to make a big impact and carry the firm with you. But I do believe there's an enormous opportunity in the Enterprise space. And people are just waiting for this. >> Well Diane Greene knows the Enterprise. So she came in, she's got to change the culture. And I know she's doing it. Because I have folks at Google, that I know that work there, that tell me privately, that it's happening, maybe not fast enough. But here's the thing. If you walked in the front door at Google, Alan Nance, this is my point, and he said, "I have experience and I have a plan "to build a platform, to knock a billion "dollars off seven companies, that I know, personally. "That I can walk in and win. "And move a billion dollars to their "bottom line with your platform." They might not understand what that means. >> I don't know, you know I was at Google Next a few weeks ago, last month. And I thought they were more, to your point, open to listening. Maybe not as arrogant as you might be presenting. And somewhat more humble. Still pretty ballsy. But I think Google recognizes that it needs help in the Enterprise. And here's why. Something that we've talked about in the past, is, you've got top down initiatives. You've got bottom up initiatives. And you've got middle out. What frequently happens, and I'd love for you to describe your experiences. The leaders say, the top CXO's say, "Okay we're going." And they take off and the organization doesn't follow them. If it's bottoms up, you don't have the top down in premature. So how do you address that? What are you seeing and how do you address that problem? >> So I think that's a really, really good observation. I mean, what I see in a lot of the big transformations that I've been involved in, is that speed is of the essence. And I think when CEO's, because usually it's the CEO. CEO comes in and they think they've got more time than they actually have to make the impact in the Enterprise. And it doesn't matter if they're coming in from the outside or they've grown up. They always underestimate their ability to do change, in time. And now what's changed over the past few years, is the average tenure of a CEO is six years. You know, I mean, Jack Welch was 20 years at GE. You can do a lot of damage in 20 years. And he did a lot of great things at GE over a 20 year period. You've only got six years now. And what I see in these big transformation programs is they start with a really good vision. I mean Mackenzie, Bain, Boston. They know the essence of what needs to happen. >> Dave: They can sell the dream. >> They can sell the dream. And the CEO sort of buys into it. And then immediately you get into the first layer, "Okay, okay, so we've got to change the organization." And so you bring in a lot of these companies that will run 13 work streams over three years, with hundreds of people. And at the end of that time, you're almost halfway through your tenure. And all you've got is a new design. Or a new set of job descriptions or strategies. You haven't actually achieved anything. And then the layer down is going to run into real problems. One of the problems that we had at the company I worked at before, was in order to support these platforms you needed really good master data management. And we suddenly realized that. And so we had to really put in an accelerated program to achieve that, with Impatica. We did it, but it cost us a year and 1/2. At a bank I know, they can't move forward because they're looking at 700 million of technology debt, they can't get past. So they end up going down a route of, "Maybe one of these big suppliers "can buy our old stuff. "And we can tag on some transformational "deal at the back end of that." None of those are working. And then what happens is, in my mind, if the CEO, from what I see, has not achieved escape velocity at the end of year three. So he's showing the growth, or she's showing the digital transformation, it's kind of game over. The Enterprise has already figured out they've stalled it long enough, not intentionally. And then we go back into an austerity program. Because you got to justify the millions you've spent in the last three years. And you've got nothing to show for it. >> And you're preparing three envelopes. >> So you got to accelerate those layers. You got to take layers out and you've got to have a really, I would say almost like, 90 day iteration plans that show business outcomes. >> But the technology layer, you can put in an abstraction layer, use APIs and infrastructure as code, all that cool stuff. But you're saying it's the organizational challenges. >> I think that's the real problem. It is the real problem, is the organization. And also, because what you're really doing in terms of the Enterprise, is you're moving from a more traditional supply chain that you own. And you've matriculated with SAP or with Oracle. Now you're talking about creating a digital value chain. A digital value chain that's much more based on a more mobile ecosystem, where you would have thin text in one area or insurance text, that have to now fit into an agile supply chain. It's all about the operating model. If you don't have people who know how to drive that, the technology's not going to help you. So you've got to have people on the business side and the technology side coming together to make this work. >> Alan, I have a question for you. What's you're prediction, okay, knowing what you know. And kind of, obviously, you have some frustrations in platforms with trying to get the big players to listen. And I think they should listen to you. But this is going to happen. So I would believe that what you're saying with the COO, operational things radically changing differently. Obviously, the signs are all there. Data centers are moving into the Cloud. I mean this is radical stuff, in a good way. And so, what's your prediction for how this plays out vis a vis Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform Azure, IBM Cloud SoftLayer. >> Well here's my concern a little bit. I think if Google enters the fray I think everybody will reconfigure. Because if we'd assume that Google plays to its strengths and goes out there and finds the right partners. It's going to reconfigure the industry. If they don't do that, then what the industry's going to do is what it's done. Which means that the platforms are going to be hybrid platforms that are dominated by the traditional players. By the SOPs, by the Oracles, by the IBMs. And what I fear is that there may actually be a disillusionment. Because they will not bring the digital transformation and all the wonderful things that we all know, are out there to be gained. So you may get, "We've invested all this money." You see it a little bit with big data. "I've got this huge layer. "I've got petabytes. "Why am I not smarter? "Why is my business not going so much better? "I've put everything in there." I think we've got to address the operating problem. And we have to find a dialogue at the C Suite. >> Well to your point, and we talked about this. You know, you look at the core of Enterprise apps, the Oracle stuff is not moving in droves, to the Cloud. Oracle's freezing the market right now. Betting that it can get there before the industry gets there. And if it does-- >> Alan: It's not. >> And it might, but if it does, it's not going to be that radical transformation you're prescribing. >> They have too much to lose. Let's be honest, right. So Oracle is a victim of it's own success, pretty much like SAP. It has to go to the Cloud as a defensive play. Because the last thing either of those want is to be disintermediated by Amazon. Which may or may not happen anyway. Because a lot of companies will disintermediate if they can. Because the licensing is such a painful element for most enterprises, when they deal with these companies. So they have to believe that the platform is not going to look like that. >> And they're still trying to figure out the pricing models, and the margin models, and Amazon's clearly-- >> You know what's driving the pricing models is not the growth on the consumer side. >> Right, absolutely. >> That's not what's driving it. So I think we need another player. I really think we need another player. If it's not Google, somebody else. I can't think who would have the scale, the money to-- >> The only guys who have the scale, you got 10 cents, maybe a couple China Clouds, maybe one Japan Cloud and that's it. >> To be honest, you raise a good point. I haven't really looked at the Ali Baba's and the other people like that who may pick up that mantle. I haven't looked at them. Ali Baba's interesting, because just like Amazon, they have their own business that runs on platforms. And a very diverse business, which is growing faster than Amazon and is more profitable than Amazon. So they could be interesting. But I'm still hopeful. We should figure this out. >> Google should figure it out. You're absolutely right. They're investing, and I thought they put forth a pretty good messaging at the Google Next. You covered it remotely but I think they understand the opportunity. And I think they have the stomach for it. >> We had reporters there as well, at the event. We just did, they came to our studio. Google is self aware that they need to work on the Enterprise. I think the bigger thing that you're highlighting is the operational model is shifting to a scale point where it's going to change stewardship and COO meaning to be, I like that. The other thing I want to get your reaction to is something I heard this morning, on the CUBE from Sean Connelly. Which that goes with some of the things that we're seeing where you're seeing Cloud becoming a more centralized view. Where IOT is an Edge case. So you have now, issues around architectural things. Your thoughts and reaction to this balance between Edge and Cloud. >> Well I think this is where you're also going to have your data gravity challenge. So, Dave McCrory has written a lot about the concept of data gravity. And in my mind, too many people in the Enterprise don't understand it. Which is basically, that data attracts more data. And more data you have, it'll attract more. And then you create all these latency issues when you start going out to the Edge. Because when we first went out to the Edge I think, even at Phillips, we didn't realize how much interaction needed to come back. And that's going to vary from company to company. So some company's are going to want to have that data really quickly because they need to react to it immediately. Others may not have that. But what you do have is you have this balancing act. About, "What do I keep central? "And what do I put at the Edge?" I think Edge Technology is amazing. And when we first looked at it, four years ago, I mean, it's come such a long way. And what I am encouraged by is that, that data layer, so the layer that Sean talks about, there's a lot of exciting things happening. But again, my problem is what's the Enterprise going to do with that? Because it requires a different operating model. If I take an example of a manufacturing company, I know a manufacturing company right now that does work in China. And it takes all the data back to its central mainframes for processing. Well if you've got the Edge, you want to be changing the way you process. Which means that the decision makers on the business need to be insitu. They need to be in China. And we need to be bringing, systems of record data and combining it with local social data and age data, so we get better decisions. So we can drive growth in those areas. If I just enable it with technology but don't change the business model the business is not going to grow. >> So Alan, we always loved having you on. Great practitioner, but now you've kind of gone over to the dark side. We've heard of a company called Virtual Clarity. Tell us about what you're doing there. >> So what we're vested in, what I am very much vested in, with my team at Virtual Clarity, is creating this concept of precision guided transformation. Where you work on the business, on what are the outcomes we really need to get from this? And then we've combined, I would say it's like a data nerve center. So we can quickly analyze, within a matter of weeks, where we are with the company, and what routes to value we can create. And then we'll go and do it. So we do it in 90 day increments. So the business now starts to believe that something's really going to happen. None of these big, insert miracle here after three year programs. But actually going out and doing it. The second thing that I think that we're doing that I'm excited about is bringing in enlightened people who represent the Enterprise. So, one of my colleagues, former COO of Unilever, we just brought on a very smart lady, Dessa Grassa, who was the CDO at JP Morgan Chase. And the idea is to combine the insights that we have on the demand side, the buy side, with the insights that we have on the technology side to create better operating models. So that combination of creating a new view that is acceptable to the C Suite. Because these people understand how you talk to them. But at the same time, runs on this concept of doing everything quickly. That's what we're about right now. >> That's awesome, we should get you hooked up with our new analyst we just hired, James Corbelius, from IBM. Was focusing on exactly that. The intersections of developers, Cloud, AI machine learning and data, all coming together. And IOT is going to be a key application that we're going to see coming out of that. So, congratulations. Alan thank you for spending the time to come in. >> Thanks for allowing me. >> To see us in the CUBE. It's the CUBE, bringing you more action. Here from DataWorks 2017. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Dave Vallante, here on the CUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's flagship program. Where we've got the events, straight from SiliconANGLE. Stay with us for more great coverage. Day one of two days of coverage at DataWorks 2017. We'll be right back.