(bright music) >> Hello everyone and welcome back to AWS re:Invent, here in wonderful Las Vegas, Nevada. We're theCUBE. I am Savannah Peterson. Joined with my co-host, Dave Vellante. Day four, you look great. Your voice has come back somehow. >> Yeah, a little bit. I don't know how. I took last night off. You guys, I know, were out partying all night, but - >> I don't know what you're talking about. (Dave laughing) >> Well, you were celebrating John's birthday. John Furrier's birthday today. >> Yes, happy birthday John! >> He's on his way to England. >> Yeah. >> To attend his nephew's wedding. Awesome family. And so good luck, John. I hope you feel better, he's got a little cold. >> I know, good luck to the newlyweds. I love this. I know we're both really excited for our next guest, so I'm going to bring out, Lena Smart from MongoDB. Thank you so much for being here. >> Thank you for having me. >> How's the show going for you? >> Good. It's been a long week. And I just, not much voice left, so. >> We'll be gentle on you. >> I'll give you what's left of it. >> All right, we'll take that. >> Okay. >> You had a fireside chat, at the show? >> Lena: I did. >> Can you tell us a little bit about that? >> So we were talking about the Rise, The developer is a platform. In this massive theater. I thought it would be like an intimate, you know, fireside chat. I keep believing them when they say to me come and do these talks, it'll be intimate. And you turn up and there's a stage and a theater and it's like, oh my god. But it was really interesting. It was well attended. Got some really good questions at the end as well. Lots of follow up, which was interesting. And it was really just about, you know, how we've brought together this developer platform that's got our integrated services. It's just what developers want, it gives them time to innovate and disrupt, rather than worry about the minutia of management. >> Savannah: Do the cool stuff. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, so you know Lena, it's funny that you're saying that oh wow, the lights came on and it was this big thing. When when we were at re:Inforced, Lena was on stage and it was so funny, Lena, you were self deprecating like making jokes about the audience. >> Savannah: (indistinct) >> It was hilarious. And so, but it was really endearing to the audience and so we were like - >> Lena: It was terrifying. >> You got huge props for that, I'll tell you. >> Absolutely terrifying. Because they told me I wouldn't see anyone. Because we did the rehearsal the day before, and they were like, it's just going to be like - >> Sometimes it just looks like blackness out there. >> Yeah, yeah. It wasn't, they lied. I could see eyeballs. It was terrifying. >> Would you rather know that going in though? Or is it better to be, is ignorance bliss in that moment? >> Ignorance is bliss. >> Yeah, yeah yeah. >> Good call Savannah, right? Yeah, just go. >> The older I get, the more I'm just, I'm on the ignorance is bliss train. I just, I don't need to know anything that's going to hurt my soul. >> Exactly. >> One of the things that you mentioned, and this has actually been a really frequent theme here on the show this week, is you said that this has been a transformative year for developers. >> Lena: Yeah. >> What did you mean by that? >> So I think developers are starting to come to the fore, if you like, the fore. And I'm not in any way being deprecating about developers 'cause I love them. >> Savannah: I think everyone here does. >> I was married to one, I live with one now. It's like, they follow me everywhere. They don't. But, I think they, this is my opinion obviously but I think that we're seeing more and more the value that developers bring to the table. They're not just code geeks anymore. They're not just code monkeys, you know, churning out lines and lines of code. Some of the most interesting discussions I've had this week have been with developers. And that's why I'm so pleased that our developer data platform is going to give these folks back time, so that they can go and innovate. And do super interesting things and do the next big thing. It was interesting, I was talking to Mary, our comms person earlier and she had said that Dave I guess, my boss, was on your show - >> Dave: Yeah, he was over here last night. >> Yeah. And he was saying that two thirds of the companies that had been mentioned so far, within the whole gamut of this conference use MongoDB. And so take that, extrapolate that, of all the developers >> Wow. >> who are there. I know, isn't that awesome? >> That's awesome. Congrats on that, that's like - >> Did I hear that right now? >> I know, I just had that moment. >> I know she just told me, I'm like, really? That's - >> That's so cool. >> 'Cause the first thing I thought of was then, oh my god, how many developers are we reaching then? 'Cause they're the ones. I mean, it's kind of interesting. So my job has kind of grown from, over the years, being the security geek in the back room that nobody talks to, to avoiding me in the lift, to I've got a seat at the table now. We meet with the board. And I think that I can see that that's where the developer mindset is moving towards. It's like, give us the right tools and we'll change your world. >> And let the human capital go back to doing the fun stuff and not just the maintenance stuff. >> And, but then you say that, you can't have everything automated. I get that automation is also the buzzword of the week. And I get that, trust me. Someone has to write the code to do the automation. >> Savannah: Right. >> So, so yeah, definitely give these people back time, so that they can work on ML, AI, choose your buzzword. You know, by giving people things like queriable encryption for example, you're going to free up a whole bunch of head space. They don't have to worry about their data being, you know harvested from memory or harvested while at rest or in motion. And it's like, okay, I don't have to worry about that now, let me go do something fun. >> How about the role of the developer as it relates to SecOps, right? They're being asked to do a lot. You and I talked about this at re:Inforce. You seem to have a pretty good handle on it. Like a lot of companies I think are struggling with it. I mean, the other thing you said said to me is you don't have a lack of talent at Mongo, right? 'Cause you're Mongo. But a lot of companies do. But a lot of the developers, you know we were just talking about this earlier with Capgemini, the developer metrics or the application development team's metrics might not be aligned with the CSO's metrics. How, what are you seeing there? What, how do you deal with it within Mongo? What do you advise your customers? >> So in terms of internal, I work very closely with our development group. So I work with Tara Hernandez, who's our new VP of developer productivity. And she and her team are very much interested in making developers more productive. That's her job. And so we get together because sometimes security can definitely be seen as a blocker. You know, funnily enough, I actually had a Slack that I had to respond to three seconds before I come on here. And it was like, help, we need some help getting this application through procurement, because blah, blah, blah. And it's weird the kind of change, the shift in mindset. Whereas before they might have gone to procurement or HR or someone to ask for this. Now they're coming to the CSO. 'Cause they know if I say yes, it'll go through. >> Talk about social engineering. >> Exactly. >> You were talking about - >> But turn it around though. If I say no, you know, I don't like to say no. I prefer to be the CSO that says yes, but. And so that's what we've done. We've definitely got that culture of ask, we'll tell you the risks, and then you can go away and be innovative and do what you need to do. And we basically do the same with our customers. Here's what you can do. Our application is secure out of the box. Here's how we can help you make it even more, you know, streamlined or bespoke to what you need. >> So mobile was a big inflection point, you know, I dunno, it seems like forever ago. >> 2007. >> 2007. Yeah, iPhone came out in 2007. >> You remember your first iPhone? >> Dave: Yeah. >> Yeah? Same. >> Yeah. It was pretty awesome, actually. >> Yeah, I do too. >> Yeah, I was on the train to Boston going up to see some friends at MIT on the consortium that I worked with. And I had, it was the wee one, 'member? But you thought it was massive. >> Oh, it felt - >> It felt big. And I remember I was sitting on the train to Boston it was like the Estella and there was these people, these two women sitting beside me. And they were all like glam, like you and unlike me. >> Dave: That's awesome. >> And they, you could see them like nudging each other. And I'm being like, I'm just sitting like this. >> You're chilling. >> Like please look at my phone, come on just look at it. Ask me about it. And eventually I'm like - >> You're baiting them. >> nonchalantly laid it on the table. And you know, I'm like, and they're like, is that an iPhone? And I'm like, yeah, you want to see it? >> I thought you'd never ask. >> I know. And I really played with it. And I showed them all the cool stuff, and they're like, oh we're going to buy iPhones. And so I should have probably worked for Apple, but I didn't. >> I was going to say, where was your referral kickback on that? Especially - >> It was a little like Tesla, right? When you first, we first saw Tesla, it was Ray Wong, you know, Ray? From Pasadena? >> It really was a moment and going from the Blackberry keyboard to that - >> He's like want to see my car? And I'm like oh yeah sure, what's the big deal? >> Yeah, then you see it and you're like, ooh. >> Yeah, that really was such a pivotal moment. >> Anyway, so we lost a track, 2007. >> Yeah, what were we talking about? 2007 mobile. >> Mobile. >> Key inflection point, is where you got us here. Thank you. >> I gotchu Dave, I gotchu. >> Bring us back here. My mind needs help right now. Day four. Okay, so - >> We're all getting here on day four, we're - >> I'm socially engineering you to end this, so I can go to bed and die quietly. That's what me and Mary are, we're counting down the minutes. >> Holy. >> That's so sick. >> You're breaking my heart right now. I love it. I'm with you, sis, I'm with you. >> So I dunno where I was, really where I was going with this, but, okay, there's - >> 2007. Three things happened. >> Another inflection point. Okay yeah, tell us what happened. But no, tell us that, but then - >> AWS, clones, 2006. >> Well 2006, 2007. Right, okay. >> 2007, the iPhone, the world blew up. So you've already got this platform ready to take all this data. >> Dave: Right. >> You've got this little slab of gorgeousness called the iPhone, ready to give you all that data. And then MongoDB pops up, it's like, woo-hoo. But what we could offer was, I mean back then was awesome, but it was, we knew that we would have to iterate and grow and grow and grow. So that was kind of the three things that came together in 2007. >> Yeah, and then Cloud came in big time, and now you've got this platform. So what's the next inflection point do you think? >> Oh... >> Good question, Dave. >> Don't even ask me that. >> I mean, is it Edge? Is it IOT? Is there another disruptor out there? >> I think it's going to be artificial intelligence. >> Dave: Is it AI? >> I mean I don't know enough about it to talk about it, to any level, so don't ask me any questions about it. >> This is like one of those ignorance is bliss moments. It feels right. >> Yeah. >> Well, does it scare you, from a security perspective? Or? >> Great question, Dave. >> Yeah, it scares me more from a humanity standpoint. Like - >> More than social scared you? 'Cause social was so benign when it started. >> Oh it was - >> You're like, oh - I remember, >> It was like a yearbook. I was on the Estella and we were - >> Shout out to Amtrak there. >> I was with, we were starting basically a wikibond, it was an open source. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Kind of, you know, technology community. And we saw these and we were like enamored of Facebook. And there were these two young kids on the train, and we were at 'em, we were picking the brain. Do you like Facebook? "I love Facebook." They're like "oh, Facebook's unbelievable." Now, kids today, "I hate Facebook," right? So, but social at the beginning it was kind of, like I say, benign and now everybody's like - >> Savannah: We didn't know what we were getting into. >> Right. >> I know. >> Exactly. >> Can you imagine if you could have seen into the future 20 years ago? Well first of all, we'd have all bought Facebook and Apple stock. >> Savannah: Right. >> And Tesla stock. But apart from, but yeah apart from that. >> Okay, so what about Quantum? Does that scare you at all? >> I think the only thing that scares me about Quantum is we have all this security in place today. And I'm not an expert in Quantum, but we have all this security in place that's securing what we have today. And my worry is, in 10 years, is it still going to be secure? 'Cause we're still going to be using that data in some way, shape, or form. And my question is to the quantum geniuses out there, what do we do in 10 years like to retrofit the stuff? >> Dave: Like a Y2K moment? >> Kind of. Although I think Y2K is coming in 2038, isn't it? When the Linux date flips. I'll be off the grid by then, I'll be living in Scotland. >> Somebody else's problem. >> Somebody else's problem. I'll be with the sheep in Glasgow, in Scotland. >> Y2K was a boondoggle for tech, right? >> What a farce. I mean, that whole - >> I worked in the power industry in Y2K. That was a nightmare. >> Dave: Oh I bet. >> Savannah: Oh my God. >> Yeah, 'cause we just assumed that the world was going to stop and there been no power, and we had nuclear power plants. And it's like holy moly. Yeah. >> More than moly. >> I was going to say, you did a good job holding that other word in. >> I think I was going to, in case my mom hears this. >> I grew up near Diablo Canyon in, in California. So you were, I mean we were legitimately worried that that exactly was going to happen. And what about the waste? And yeah it was chaos. We've covered a lot. >> Well, what does worry you? Like, it is culture? Is it - >> Why are you trying to freak her out? >> No, no, because it's a CSO, trying to get inside the CSO's head. >> You don't think I have enough to worry about? You want to keep piling on? >> Well if it's not Quantum, you know? Maybe it's spiders or like - >> Oh but I like spiders, well spiders are okay. I don't like bridges, that's my biggest fear. Bridges. >> Seriously? >> And I had to drive over the Tappan Zee bridge, which is one of the longest, for 17 years, every day, twice. The last time I drove over it, I was crying my heart out, and happy as anything. >> Stay out of Oakland. >> I've never driven over it since. Stay out of where? >> Stay out of Oakland. >> I'm staying out of anywhere that's got lots of water. 'Cause it'll have bridges. >> Savannah: Well it's good we're here in the desert. >> Exactly. So what scares me? Bridges, there you go. >> Yeah, right. What? >> Well wait a minute. So if I'm bridging technology, is that the scary stuff? >> Oh God, that was not - >> Was it really bad? >> It was really bad. >> Wow. Wow, the puns. >> There's a lot of seems in those bridges. >> It is lit on theCUBE A floor, we are all struggling. I'm curious because I've seen, your team is all over the place here on the show, of course. Your booth has been packed the whole time. >> Lena: Yes. >> The fingerprint. Talk to me about your shirt. >> So, this was designed by my team in house. It is the most wanted swag in the company, because only my security people wear it. So, we make it like, yeah, you could maybe have one, if this turns out well. >> I feel like we're on the right track. >> Dave: If it turns out well. >> Yeah, I just love it. It's so, it's just brilliant. I mean, it's the leaf, it's a fingerprint. It's just brilliant. >> That's why I wanted to call it out. You know, you see a lot of shirts, a lot of swag shirts. Some are really unfortunately sad, or not funny, >> They are. >> or they're just trying too hard. Now there's like, with this one, I thought oh I bet that's clever. >> Lena: It is very cool. Yes, I love it. >> I saw a good one yesterday. >> Yeah? >> We fix shit, 'member? >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> That was pretty good. >> I like when they're >> That's a pretty good one. >> just straightforward, like that, yeah yeah. >> But the only thing with this is when you're say in front of a green screen, you look as though you've got no tummy. >> A portal through your body. >> And so, when we did our first - >> That's a really good point, actually. >> Yeah, it's like the black hole to nothingless. And I'm like wow, that's my soul. >> I was just going to say, I don't want to see my soul like that. I don't want to know. >> But we had to do like, it was just when the pandemic first started, so we had to do our big presentation live announcement from home. And so they shipped us all this camera equipment for home and thank God my partner knows how that works, so he set it all up. And then he had me test with a green screen, and he's like, you have no tummy. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? He's like, come and see. It's like this, I dunno what it was. So I had to actually go upstairs and felt tip with a magic marker and make it black. >> Wow. >> So that was why I did for two hours on a Friday, yeah. >> Couldn't think of another alternative, huh? >> Well no, 'cause I'm myopic when it comes to marketing and I knew I had to keep the tshirt on, and I just did that. >> Yeah. >> In hindsight, yes I could have worn an "I Fix Shit" tshirt, but I don't think my husband would've been very happy. I secure shit? >> There you go, yeah. >> There you go. >> Over to you, Savannah. >> I was going to say, I got acquainted, I don't know if I can say this, but I'm going to say it 'cause we're here right now. I got acquainted with theCUBE, wearing a shirt that said "Unfuck Kubernetes," 'cause it was a marketing campaign that I was running for one of my clients at Kim Con last year. >> That's so good. >> Yeah, so - >> Oh my God. I'll give you one of these if you get me one of those. >> I can, we can do a swapskee. We can absolutely. >> We need a few edits on this film, on the file. >> Lena: Okay, this is nothing - >> We're fallin' off the wheel. Okay, on that note, I'm going to bring us to our challenge that we discussed, before we got started on this really diverse discussion that we have had in the last 15 minutes. We've covered everything from felt tip markers to nuclear power plants. >> To the darkness of my soul. >> To the darkness of all of our souls. >> All of our souls, yes. >> Which is perhaps a little too accurate, especially at this stage in the conference. You've obviously seen a lot Lena, and you've been rockin' it, I know John was in your suite up here, at at at the Venetian. What's your 30 second hot take? Most important story, coming out of the show or for you all at Mongo this year? >> Genuinely, it was when I learned that two-thirds of the customers that had been mentioned, here, are MongoDB customers. And that just exploded in my head. 'Cause now I'm thinking of all the numbers and the metrics and how we can use that. And I just think it's amazing, so. >> Yeah, congratulations on that. That's awesome. >> Yeah, I thought it was amazing. >> And it makes sense actually, 'cause Mongo so easy to use. We were talking about Tengen. >> We knew you when, I feel that's our like, we - >> Yeah, but it's true. And so, Mongo was just really easy to use. And people are like, ah, it doesn't scale. It's like, turns out it actually does scale. >> Lena: Turns out, it scales pretty well. >> Well Lena, without question, this is my favorite conversation of the show so far. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Dave: Great to see you. >> It's always a pleasure. >> Dave: Thanks Lena. >> Thank you. >> And thank you all, tuning in live, for tolerating wherever we take these conversations. >> Dave: Whatever that was. >> I bet you weren't ready for this one, folks. We're at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, Nevada. With Dave Vellante, I'm Savannah Peterson. You're washing theCUBE, the leader for high tech coverage.

(lively music) >> Good afternoon and welcome back to beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada, where we're here live from the show floor, all four days of AWS re:Invent. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined with my co-host Dave Vellante. Dave, how you doing? >> Good. Beautiful and chilly Las Vegas. Can't wait to get back to New England where it's warm. >> Balmy, New England this time of year in December. Wow, Dave, that's a bold statement. I am super excited about the conversation that we're going to be having next. And, you know, I'm not even going to tee it up. I just want to bring Dilip on. Dilip, thank you so much for being here. How you doing? >> Savannah, Dave, thank you so much. >> Hey, Dilip. >> Excited to be here. >> It's joy to have you. So, you have been working at Amazon for about 20 years. >> Almost. Almost. >> Yes. >> Feels like 20, 19 1/2. >> Which is very exciting. You've had a lot of roles. I'm going to touch on some of them, but you just came over to AWS from the physical retail side. Talk to me about that. >> Yup, so I've been to Amazon for 19 1/2 years. Done pricing, supply chain. I was Jeff Bezos technical advisor for a couple years. >> Casual name drop. >> Casual name drop. >> Savannah: But a couple people here for that name before. >> Humble brag, hashtag. And then I, for the last several years, I was leading our physical retail initiatives. We just walk out Amazon One, bringing convenience to physical spaces. And then in August, with like as those things were getting a lot of traction and we were selling to third parties, we felt that it would be better suited in AWS. And, but along with that, there was also another trend that's been brewing, which is, you know, companies have loved building on AWS. They love the infrastructure services, but increasingly, they're also asking us to build applications that are higher up in the stack. Solving key, turnkey business problems. Just walk out Amazon One or examples of that, Amazon Connect. We just recently announced supply chain, so now there's a bevy interesting services all coming together, higher up in the stack for customers. So it's an exciting time. >> It was interesting that you're able to, you know, transfer from that retail. I mean, normally, in historically, if you're within an industry, retail, manufacturing, automotive whatever. You were kind as locked in a little bit. >> Dilip: Siloed a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Because they had their own, your own value chain. And I guess, data has changed that maybe, that you can traverse now. >> Yeah, if you think about the things that we did, even when we were in retail, the tenants was less about the industries and more about how can we bring convenience to physical spaces? The fact that you don't like to wait in line is no more like likely, you know, five years from now than it is today. So, it's a very durable tenant, but it's equally applicable whether you're in a grocery store, a convenience store, a stadium, an airport. So it actually transcends any, and like supply chain, think of supply chain. Supply chain isn't, you know, targeted to any one particular industry. It has broad applicability. So these things are very, you know, horizontally applicable. >> Anything that makes my life easier, I'm down. >> Savannah: We're all here for the easy button. We've been talking about it a bit this week. I'm in. And the retail store, I mean, I'm in San Francisco. I've had the experience of going through. Very interesting and seamless journey, honestly. It's very exciting. So tell us a little bit more about the applications group at AWS. >> Yup. So as I said, you know, we are, the applications group is a combination of several services. You know, we have communication developer services, which is the ability to add simple email service or video and embed video, voice chat using a chime SDK. In a higher up in the stack, we are taking care of things that IT administrators have to deal with where you can provision an entire desktop with the workspaces or provide a femoral access to it. And then as you go up even higher up in the stack, you have productivity applications like AWS Wicker, which we just did GA, you know, last week in AWS Clean Rooms which we announced as a service in preview. And then you have, you know, Connect, which is our cloud contact center, AWS supply chain. Just walk out Amazon One, it just feels like we're getting started. >> Just a couple things going on. >> So, clean rooms. Part of the governance play, part of data sharing. Can you explain, you know, we were talking offline, but I remember back in the disk drive days. We were in a clean room, they'd show you the clean room, you couldn't go near it unless you had a hazmat suit on. So now you're applying that to data. Explain that concept. >> Yeah, so the companies across, you know, financial services or healthcare, advertising, they all want to be able to combine and pull together data`sets with their partners in order to get these collaborative insights. The problem is either the data's fragmented, it's siloed or you have, you know, data governance issues that's preventing them from sharing. And the key requirement is that they want to be able to share this data without exposing any of the underlying data. Clean rooms are always emerged as a solution to that, but the problem with that is that they're hard to maintain. They're expensive. You have to write complex privacy queries. And if you make a mistake, you risk exposing the same data that you've been, you know, studiously trying to protect. >> Trying to protect. >> You know, take advertising as an industry, as an example. You know, advertisers care about, is my ad effective? But it turns out that if you're an advertiser and let's say you're a Nike or some other advertiser and your pop, you know, you place an ad on the website. Well, you want to stop showing the ad to people who have already purchased the product. However, people who purchased the product,- >> Savannah: It happens all the time. >> that purchasing data is not accessible to them easily. But if you could combine those insights, you know, the publishers benefit, advertisers benefits. So AWS Clean Rooms is that service that allows you very easily to be able to collaborate with a group of folks and then be able to gain these collaborative insights. >> And the consumers benefit. I mean, how many times you bought, you search it. >> It happens all the time. >> They know. And like, I just bought that guys, you know? >> Yeah, no, exactly. >> Four weeks. >> And I'm like, you don't need to serve me that, you know? And we understand the marketing backend. And it's just a waste of money and energy and resources. I mean, we're talking about sustainability as well. I don't think supply chain has ever had a hotter moment than it's had the last two and a half years. Tell me more about the announcement. >> Yup, so super excited about this. As you know, as you said, supply chains have always been very critical and very core for companies. The pandemic exacerbated it. So, ours way of sort of thinking about supply chains is to say that, you know, companies have taken, over the years many, like dozens, like millions and millions of dollars of investment in building their own supply chains. But the problem with supply chains is that the reason that they're not as functional as they could be is because of the lack of visibility. Because they're strung together very many disparate systems, that lack of visibility affects agility. And so, our approach in it was to say that, well, if we could have folks use their existing supply chain what can we do to improve the investment on the ROI of what they're getting? By creating a layer on top of it, that provides them that insights, connects all of these disparate data and then provides them insights to say, well, you know, here's where you overstock, here's where you under stock. You know, this is the, you know, the carbon emission impact of being able to transfer something. So like rather without requiring people to re-platform, what's the way that we can add value in it? And then also build upon Amazon's, you know, years of supply chain experience, to be able to build these predictive analytics for customers. >> So, that's a good, I like that you started with the why. >> Yes. >> Right now, what is it? It's an abstraction layer and then you're connecting into different data points. >> Yes, that's correct. >> Injecting ML. >> Feel like you can pick in, like if you think about supply chain, you can have warehouse management systems, order management systems. It could be in disparate things. We use ML to be able to bring all of this disparate data in and create our unified data lake. Once you have that unified data lake, you can then run an insights layer on top of it to be able to say, so that as the data changes, supply chain is not a static thing. Data's constantly changing. As the data's changing, the data lake now reflects the most up-to-date information. You can have alerts and insights set up on it to say that, what are the kinds of things that you're interested in? And then more importantly, supply chain and agility is about communication. In order to be able to make certain things happen, you need to be able to communicate, you need to make sure that everyone's on the same page. And we allow for a lot of the communication and collaboration tools to be built within this platform so that you're not necessarily leaving to go and toggle from one place to the other to solve your problems. >> And in the pie chart of how people spend their time, they're spending a lot less time communicating and being proactive. >> That's correct. >> And getting ahead of the curve. They're spending more time trying to figure out actually what's going on. >> Yes. >> And that's the problem that you're going to solve. >> Well, and it ensures that the customer at the other end of that supply chain experience is going to have their expectations managed in terms of when their good might get there or whatever's going to happen. >> Exactly. >> I feel like that expectation management has been such a big part of it. Okay, I just have to ask because I'm very curious. What was it like advising Jeff? >> Quite possibly the best job that I've ever had. You know, he's a fascinating individual. >> Did he pay you to say that? >> Nope. But I would've, like, I would've done it for like, it's remarkable seeing how he thinks and his approach to problem solving. It is, you know, you could be really tactical and go very deep. You could be extremely strategic. And to be able to sort of move effortlessly between those two is a unique skill. I learned a lot. >> Yeah, absolutely. So what made you want to evolve your career at Amazon after that? 'Cause I see on your LinkedIn, you say, it was the best job you ever had. With curiosity? >> Yeah, so one of the things, so the role is designed for you to be able to transition to something new. >> Savannah: Oh, cool. >> So after I finished that role, we were just getting into our foray with physical stores. And the idea between physical stores is that, you and I as consumers, we all have a lot of choices for physical stores. You know, there's a lot of options, there's a lot of formats. And so the last thing we wanted to do is come up with another me too offering. So, our approach was that what can we do to improve convenience in physical stores? That's what resulted in just walk out to Amazon Go. That's what resulted in Amazon One, which is another in a fast, convenient, contactless way to pay using the power of your palm. And now, what started in Amazon retail is now expanded to several third parties in, you know, stadiums, convention centers, airports. >> Airport, I just had, was in the Houston airport and got to do a humanless checkout. >> Dilip: Exactly. >> And actually in Honolulu a couple weeks ago as well too. Yeah, so we're going to see more and more of this. >> Yes. >> So what Amazon, I think has over a million employees. A lot of those are warehouse employees. But what advice would you give to somebody who's somewhere inside of Amazon, maybe they're on AWS, maybe they're Amazon. What advice would you give somebody inside that's maybe, you know, hey, I've been at this job for five, six years, three, four years, whatever it is. I want to do something else. And there's so much opportunity inside Amazon, right? What would you advise them? >> My single advice, which is actually transferable and I use it for myself is choose something that makes you a little uncomfortable. >> Dave: Get out of your comfort zone. >> It's like, you got to do that. It's like, it's not the easiest thing to hear, but it's also the most satisfying. Because almost every single time that I've done it for myself, it's resulted in like, you don't really know what the answer is. You don't really know exactly where you're going to end up, but the process and the journey through it, if you experience a little bit of discomfort constantly, it makes you non complacent. It makes you sort of not take the job, sort of in a stride. You have to be on it to do it. So that's the advice that I would give anyone. >> Yeah, that's good. So something that's maybe adjacent and maybe not completely foreign to you, but also something that, you know, you got to go dig a little bit and learn. >> You're planning a career change over here, Dave? >> No, I know a lot of people in Amazon are like, hey, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next. I mean, I love it here. I live by the LPS, you know, but, and there's so much to choose from. >> It is, you know, when I joined in 2003, there were so many things that we were sort of doing today. None of those existed. It's a fascinating company. And the evolution, you could be in 20 different places and the breadth of the kinds of things that, you know, the Amazon experience provides is timeless. It's fascinating. >> And, you know, you look at a company like Amazon, and, you know, it's so amazing. You look at this ecosystem. I've been around- >> Even a show floor. >> I've been around a lot of time. And the show floor says it all. But I've seen a lot of, you know, waves. And each subsequent wave, you know, we always talk about how many companies were in the Fortune 1000 and aren't anymore. And, but the leaders, you know, survive and they thrive. And I think it's fascinating to try to better understand the culture that enables that. You know, you look at a company like Microsoft that was irrelevant and then came back. You know, even IBM was on death store for a while and they come back and so they. And so, but Amazon just feels, you know, at the moment you feel like, "Oh wow, nothing can stop this machine." 'Cause everybody's trying to disrupt Amazon and then, you know, only the paranoid survive, all that stuff. But it's not like, past is not prologue, all right? So that's why I asked these questions. And you just said that a lot of the services today that although the ideas didn't even exist, I mean, walkout. I mean, that's just amazing. >> I think one of the things that Amazon does really well culturally is that they create the single threaded leadership. They give people focus. If you have to get something done, you have to give people focus. You can't distract them with like seven different things and then say that, oh, by the way, your eighth job is to innovate. It just doesn't work that way. It's like it's hard. Like it can be- >> And where were the energy come from that? >> Exactly. And so giving people that single threaded focus is super important. >> Frank Slootman, the CEO of Snowflake, has a great quote. He wrote on his book. He said, "If you got 14 priorities, you got none." And he asks,- >> Well said. >> he challenges people. If you had to give up everything and do only one thing for the next 365 days, what would that be? It's a really hard question to answer. >> I feel like as we're around New Year's resolution times. I mean when we thinking about that, maybe we can all share our one thing. So, Dilip, you've been with the the applications team for five months. What's coming up next? >> Well, as I said, you know, it feels like it's still day one for applications. If you think about the things, the news that we introduced and the several services that we introduced, it has applicability across a variety of horizontal industries. But then we're also feeling that there's considerable vertical applications that can be built for specific things. Like, it could be in advertising, it could be in financial services, it could be in manufacturing. The opportunities are endless. I think the notion of people wanting applications higher up in the stack and a little more turnkey solutions is also, it's not new for us, but it's also new and creative too. You know, AWS has traditionally been doing. >> So again, this relates to what we were sort of talking about before. And maybe, this came from Jazzy or maybe it came from Bezos. But you hear a lot, it's okay to be misunderstood or if we were misunderstood for a long time. So when people hear up the stack, they think, when you think about apps, you know, in the last 10 years it was taking on-prem and bringing it into the cloud. Okay, you saw that with CREM, email, CRM, service management, you know, data warehouses, et cetera. Amazon is thinking about this in a different way. It's like you're looking at the world saying, okay, how can we improve whatever? Workflows, people's lives, doing something that's not been done before? And that seems to be the kind of applications that you guys are thinking about building. >> Yeah. >> And that's unique. It's not just, okay, we're going to take something on-prem put it in the cloud. Been there, done that. That S-curve is sort of flattening now. But there's a new S-curve which is completely new workflows and innovations and processes that we really haven't thought about yet. Or you're thinking about, I presume. >> Yeah. Having said that, I'd also like to sort of remind folks that when you consider the, you know, the entire spend, the portion of workloads that are running in the cloud is a teeny tiny fraction. It's like less than 5%, like 4% or something like that. So it's a very, there's still plenty of things that can sort of move to the cloud. But you're right that there is another trend of where in the stack and the types of applications that you can provide as well. >> Yeah, new innovation that haven't well thought of yet. >> So, Dilip, we have a new tradition here on theCUBE at re:Invent. Where we're looking for your 30 minute Instagram reel, your hot take, biggest key theme, either for you, your team, or just general vibe from the show. >> General vibe from the show. Well, 19 1/2 years at Amazon, this is actually my first re:Invent, believe it or not. This is my, as a AWS employee now, as re:Invent with like launching services. So that's the first. I've been to re:Invent before, but as an attendee rather than as a person who's, you know, a contributing number of the workforce. >> Working actually? >> If you will. >> Actually doing your job. >> And so I'm just amazed at the energy and the breadth. And the, you know, from the partners to the customers to the diversity of people who are coming here from everywhere. I had meetings from people in New Zealand. Like, you know, the UK, like customers are coming at us from like very many different places. And it's fascinating for me to see. It's new for me as well given, you know, some of my past experience. But this is a, it's been a blast. >> People are pumped. >> People are pumped. >> They can't believe the booth traffic. Not only that quality. >> Right. All of our guests have talked about that. >> Like, yeah, you know, we're going to throw half of these leads away, but they're saying no, I'm having like really substantive conversations with business people. This is, I think, my 10th re:Invent. And the first one was mostly developers. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And, you know, so. Now it's a lot more business people, a lot of developers too. >> Yeah. >> It's just. >> The community really makes it. Dilip, thank you so much for joining us today on theCube. >> Thank you for having me. >> You're fantastic. I could ask you a million questions. Be sure and tell Jeff that we said hi. >> Will do. >> Savannah: Next time you guys are hanging out. And thank all of you. >> You want to go into space? >> Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. I'm perhaps the most space obsessed on the show. And with that, we will continue our out of this world coverage shortly from fabulous Las Vegas where we are at AWS re:Invent. It is day four with Dave Vellante. I'm Savannah Peterson and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (lively music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, brilliant cloud community, and welcome back to AWS re:Invent. We are here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm Savannah Peterson, joined by my co-host Dave Vellante. Dave, how you doing? >> I'm doing well, thanks, yeah. >> Yeah, I feel like... >> I'm hanging in there. >> you've got a lot of pep in your step today for the fourth day. >> I think my voice is coming back, actually. >> (laughs) Look at you, resilient. >> I was almost lost yesterday, yeah. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> So, I actually, at a Hitachi event one time almost completely lost my voice. The production guys pulled me off. They said, "You're done." (Savannah laughing) They gave me the hook. >> You got booted? >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, yeah, you actually (laughs) got the hook, wow. >> So, I have good memories of Hitachi. >> I was going to say (Dave laughing) interesting that you mentioned Hitachi. Our two guests this morning are from Hitachi. Sid and KP, welcome to the show. >> Thank you. >> Savannah: How you guys doing? Looking great for day four. >> Great. Thank you. >> Great. >> Hanging in there. >> Thank you, Dave and Savannah. (Savannah laughing) >> Dave: Yeah, cool. >> Savannah: Yeah. (laughs) >> Yeah, it was actually a Pentaho thing, right? >> Oh, Pentaho? Yeah. >> Which kind of you guys into that software edge. It was right when you announced the name change to Hitachi Vantara, which is very cool. I had Brian Householder on. You remember Brian? >> Yeah, I know. >> He was explaining the vision, and yeah (indistinct). >> Yeah. Well, look at you a little Hitachi (indistinct). >> Yeah, I've been around a long time, yeah. >> Yeah, all right. (Dave laughing) >> Just a casual flex to start us off there, Dave. I love it. I love it. Sid, we've talked a lot on the show about delivering outcomes. It's a hot theme. Everyone wants to actually have tangible business outcomes from all of this. How are customers realizing value from the cloud? What does that mean? >> See, still 2007, 2008, it was either/or kind of architecture. Either I'm going to execute my use cases on cloud or I'm going to keep my use cases and outcomes through edge. But in the last four or five years and specifically we are in re:Invent, I would talk about AWS. Lot of the power of hyperscalers has been brought to edge. If you talk about the snowball family of AWS, if you talk about monitor on edge devices, if you talk about the entire server list being brought into Lambda coupled inside snowball, now the architecture premise, if I talk about logical shift is end. Now the customers are talking about executing the use cases between edge and cloud. So, there is a continuum rather than a binary bullion decision. So, if you are talking about optimizing a factory, earlier I'll do the analytics at cloud, and I'll do machine on edge. Now it is optimization of a factory outcome at scale across my entire manufacturing where edge, private cloud, AWS, hyperscalers, everything is a continuum. And the customer is not worried about where, which part of my data ops, network ops, server ops storage ops is being executed. >> Savannah: It's like (indistinct). >> The customer is enjoying the use cases. And the orchestration is abstracted through an industrial player like Hitachi working very collaboratively with AWS. So, that is how we are working on industrial use cases right now. >> You brought up manufacturing. I don't think there's been a hotter conversation around supply chain and manufacturing than there has been the last few years. I can imagine taking that guessing game out for customers is a huge deal for you guys. >> Big because if you look at the world today, right from a safety pin, to a cell phone jacket, to a cell phone, the entire supply chain is throttled. The supply chain is throttled because there are various choke points. >> Savannah: Yeah. >> And each choke points is surrounded by different kind of supply and geopolitical issues. >> Savannah: 100%. >> Now, if we talk about the wheat crisis happening because of the Ukraine-Russia war, but the wheat crisis actually creates a multiple string of impacts which impact everything. Silicon, now we talk about silicon, but we then forget about nickel. Nickel is also controlled in one part of that geopolitical conflict. So, everything is getting conflagrated into a very big supply issue. So, if your factories are not performing beyond optimum, if they are not performing at real, I'm, we are talking about factory, hyperscale of the factory. The factory needs to perform at hyperscale to provide what the world needs today. So, we are in a very different kind of a scenario. Some of the economists call it earlier the recession was because of a demand constraint. The demand used to go down. Today's recession is because the supply is going down. The demand is there, but the supply is going down. And there is a different kind of recession in the world. The supply is what is getting throttled. >> And the demand is somewhat unpredictable too. People, you know, retailers, they've... >> Especially right now. >> kind of messed up their inventory. And so, the data is still siloed. And that's where, you know, you get to, okay, can I have the same experience across clouds, on-prem, out to the edge? Kind of bust those silos. >> Yep. >> You know, I dunno if it's, it's certainly not entirely a data problem. There's (laughs), like you say, geopolitical and social issues. >> Savannah: There's so much complexity. >> But there's a data problem too. >> Yes. >> Big. >> So, I wonder if you could talk about your sort of view of, point of view on that cross-cloud, hybrid, out to the edge, what I call super cloud? >> Absolutely. So, today, if you look at how enterprises are adopting cloud or how they're leveraging cloud, it's not just a hosting platform, right? It is the platform from where they can draw business capabilities. You heard in the re:Invent that Amazon is coming up with a supply chain service out of the box in the cloud. That's the kind of capabilities that business wants to draw from cloud today. So, the kind of multicloud or like hybrid cloud, public cloud, private cloud, those are the things which are kind of going to be behind the scenes. At the end of the day, the cloud needs to be able to support businesses by providing their services closer to their consumers. So, the challenges are going to be there in terms of like reliability, resilience, cost, security. Those are the ones that, you know, many of the enterprises are grappling with in terms of the challenges. And the way to solve that, the way how we approach our customers and work with them is to be able to bring resilience into the cloud, into the services which are running in cloud, and by driving automation, making autonomous in everything that you do, how you are monitoring your services, how we are making it available, how we are securing it, how we are making it very cost-effective as well. It cannot be manually executed; it has to be automated. So, automation is the key in terms of making the services leveraged from all of this cloud. >> That's your value add. >> Absolutely. >> And how do I consume that value add? Is it sort of embedded into infrastructure? Is it a service layer on top? >> Yeah, so everything that we do today in terms of like how these services have to be provided, how the services have to be consumed, there has to be a modern operating model, right? I think this is where Hitachi has come up with what we are calling as Hitachi Application Reliability Center and Services. That is focusing on modern operating, modern ways of like, you know, how you support these cloud workloads and driving this automation. So, whether we provide a hyper-converged infrastructure that is going to be at the edge location, or we are going to be able to take a customer through the journey of modernization or migrating onto cloud, the operating model that is going to be able to establish the foundation on cloud and then to be able to operate with the right levels of reliability, security, cost is the key. And that's the value added service that we provide. And then the way we do that is essentially by looking at three principles: one, to look at the service in totality. Gone are the days you look at infrastructure separately, applications separately, data and security separately, right? >> Savannah: No more silos. >> No more silos. You look at it as a workload, and you look at it as a service. And number two is to make sure that the DevOps that you bring and what you do at the table is totally integrated and it's end to end. It's not a product team developing a feature and then ops team trying to keep the lights on. It has to be a common backlog with the error budget that looks at you know, product releases, product functionalities, and even what ops needs to do to evolve the product as well. And then the third is to make sure that reliability and resiliency is inbuilt. Cloud offers native durability, native availability. But if your service doesn't take advantage of that, it's kind of going to still be not available. So, how do you kind of ingrain and embed all of these things as a value add that we provide? >> There's a lot of noise. We've got hybrid cloud. We've got multicloud. We've got a lot going on. It adds to the complexity. How do you help customers solve that complexity as they begin their transformation journey? I mean, I'm sure you're working with the biggest companies, making really massive change. How do you guide them through that process? >> So, it is to look at the outcome working backwards, like what AWS does, right? Like, you know, how do you look at the business outcome? What is the value that you're looking to drive? Again, it's not to be pinned through one particular cloud. I know there is lot of technology choices that you can make and lot of deployment models that you can choose from. But at the end of the day, having a common operating model which is kind of like modern, agile, and it is kind of like keeping the outcomes in the mind, that is what we do with our customers to be able to create that operating model, which completes the transformation, by the way. And cloud is just one part of the LEGO blocks which provides that overall scheme and then the view for driving that overall transformation. >> So, let's paint a picture. Let's say you've got this resilient foundation; you've kind of helped the customers build that out. How do they turn that into value for their customers? Do you have any examples that you can share? That'd be great. >> Yeah, I can start with what we're doing for one of the, you know, world's largest facility, infrastructure, power, cooling, security, monitoring company that has their products deployed in 2,000 locations across the globe. For them, and always on business means you are monitoring the temperature. You are monitoring the safety of people who are within the facility, right? A temperature shift of one to two degree can affect even the sustainability goals of NARC, our customer, but also their end consumers. So, how do you monitor these kind of like critical parameters? How do you have a platform? >> Savannah: Great example, yeah. >> How you have cloud resources that are going to be always on, that are going to be reliable, that are going to be cost-effective as well is what we are doing for one of our customers. Sid can talk about another example as well. >> Great. >> Yeah, go for it, Sid. >> So, there are examples: rail. We are working with a group in England; it's called West Coast Partnership. And they had a edge device which was increasing in size. Now, this edge device was becoming big because the parameters which go into the edge device were increasing because of regulation and because the rail is part of national security infrastructure. We have worked with West Coast Partnership and Hitachi Rail, which is a group company, to create a miniaturization of this edge device, because if the size of the edge device is increasing on the train, then the weight of the train increases, and the speed profile, velocity profile, everything goes down. So, we have miniaturized the edge device. Secondly, all the data profiles, signal control, traction control, traction motors, direction control, timetable compliance, everything has been kept uniform. And we have done analytics on cloud. So, what is the behavior of the driver? What is a big breaking parameter of the driver? If the timetable has being missed, is there an erratic behavior being demonstrated by the driver to just meet the timetable? And the timetable is a pretty important criteria in rail because if you miss one, then... So, what we have done is we have created an edge-to-cloud environment where the entire rail analytics is happening. Similarly, in another group company, Hitachi Energy, they had a problem that arguably one of the largest transformer manufacturer in the world. The transformer is a pretty common name now because you're seeing what is happening in Ukraine. Russia went after the transformers and substations before the start of the winter so that their district heating can be meddled with. Now, the transformer, it had a lead time of 17 weeks before COVID. So, if you put me an order of a three-phase transformer, I can deliver it to you in 17 weeks. After and during COVID, the entire lead time increased to 57 to 58 weeks. In cases of a complex transformer, it even went up to something like two years. >> Savannah: Ooh! >> Now, they wanted to increase the productivity of their existing plant because there is only that much sheet metal, that much copper for solenoid, that much microprocessor and silicon. So, they wanted to increase the output of their factory from 95 to 105, 10 more transformers every day, which is 500 and, which is 3,650 every- >> Savannah: Year. >> Year. Now, to do that, we went to a very complex machine; it's called a guard machine. And we increased the productivity of the guard machine by just analyzing all the throttles and all the wastages which are happening there. There are multiple case studies because, see, Hitachi is an industrial giant with 105 years of body of work. KP and I just represent the tip of the digital tip of the arrow. But what we are trying to do through HARC, through industry cloud, through partnership with AWS is basically containerizing and miniaturizing our entire body of work into a democratized environment, an industrial app store, if I may say, where people can come and take their industrial outcomes at ease without worrying about their computational and network orchestration between edge and cloud. That's what we are trying to do. >> I love that analogy of an industrial app cloud. Makes it feel easier in decreasing the complexity of all the different things that everyone's factoring into making their products, whatever they're making. So, we have a new challenge here on theCUBE at AWS re:Invent, where we are looking for your 30-second hot take, your Instagram reel, sound bite. What's the most important story or theme either for you as a team or coming out of the show? You can ponder it for a second. >> It might be different. See, for me, it is industrial security. Industrial OT security should be the theme of the Western world. Western world is on the crosshairs of multiple bad actors. And the industrial security is in the chemical plants, is in the industrial plants, is in the power grids, is in our postal networks and our rail networks. They need to be secured; otherwise, we are geopolitically very weak. Gone are the days when anyone is going to pick up a battle with America or Western world on a field. The battle is going to be pretty clandestine on an cyber world. And that is why industrial security is very important. >> Critical infrastructure and protecting it. >> Absolutely. >> Well said, Sid. KP, what's your hot take? >> My take is going to be a modern operating model, which is going to complete the transformation and to be able to tap into business services from cloud. So, a modern operating model through HARC, that is going to be my take. >> Fantastic. Well, can't wait to see what comes out of Hitachi next. Sid, KP... >> KP: Thank you. >> thank you so much for being here. >> Sid: Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Dave: Thanks, guys. >> Savannah: This is I could talk to you all about supply chain all day long. And thank all of you for tuning in to our continuous live coverage here from AWS re:Invent in fantastic Sin City. I'm Savannah. Oh, excuse me. With Dave Vellante, I'm Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (digital xylophone music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Well, hello everybody. John Walls is here on "the CUBE". Great to have you with us as we continue our series here at the AWS Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. And today we're talking about public service and not just a little slice of public service but probably the largest public sector offering in the UK and for with us or with us. Now to talk about that is Lianne Anderton, who is in with the Intelligent Automation Garage Delivery Lead at the UK Department of Work and Pension. Lianne, good to see you today. Thanks for joining us here on "the CUBE". >> Hi, thanks for having me. >> And also with this us is Amar Narayan, who is a Manager Director at Accenture the AWS Business Group for the Lead in Health and Public Sector, also UK and Ireland. And Amar, I think, you and Lianne, are in the same location, Newcastle, I believe in the UK, is that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yep, yeah, we're, here in the northeast of UK. >> Well, thank you for being with us. I appreciate the time. Lianne, let's talk about what you do, the Department of Work and Pension, the famous DWP in England. You have influence or certainly touchpoints with a huge amount of the British population. In what respects, what are you doing for the working class in England and what does technology have to do with all that? >> Sure, so for the Department for Work and Pensions I think the pensions bit is fairly self explanatory so anybody who is over state pension age within the UK. for the work part of that we also deal with people of working age. So, these are people who are either in employment and need additional help through various benefits we offer in the UK. Those people who are out of work. And we also deal with health related benefits as well. And we are currently serving over 20 million claimants every year at this moment in time. So, we're aware of a huge part of the UK government. >> All right, so say that number again. How many? >> 20 million claimants every year. >> Million with an M, right? >> Yeah. >> So, and that's individuals. And so how many transactions, if you will, how many do you think you process in a month? How, much traffic basically, are you seeing? >> An extraordinary amount? I'm not even, I don't think I even know that number. (Lianne laughing) >> Mind blowing, right? So, it's- >> A huge, huge amount. >> Mind blowing. >> Yeah, so, basically the we kind of keep the country going. So, you know, if the department for Work and Pensions kind of didn't exist anymore then actually it would cause an infinite number of problems in society. We, kind of help and support the people who need that. And, yeah, so we play a really vital role in kind of you know, social care and kind of public service. >> So, what was your journey to Accenture then? What, eventually led you to them? What problem were you having and how have you collaborated to solve that? >> So, in terms of how we work with Accenture. So, we had in around 2017 DWP was looking at a projected number of transactions growing by about 210 million which was, you know, an extraordinary amount. And, you know, I think as we've kind of covered everything that we do is on a massive scale. So, we as DWP as an organization we had absolutely no idea how we were going to be able to handle such a massive increase in the transactions. And actually, you know, after kind of various kind of paths and ideas of how we were going to do that, automation, was actually the answer. But the problem that we have with that is that we have, like many governments around the world, we have really older legacy systems. So, each of these benefits that we deal with are on legacy systems. So, whatever we were going to develop had to, you know, connect to all of these, it had to ingest and then process all of these pieces of data some of which, you know, given the fact that a lot of these systems have a lot of manual input you have data issues there that you have to solve and whatever we did, you know, as we've talked about in terms of volumes has to scale instantly as well. So, it has to be able to scale up and down to meet demand and, you know, and that down scaling is also equally as important. So yeah, you've got to be able to scale up to meet the volumes but also you've got to be able to downscale when when it's not needed. But we had nothing that was like that kind of helped us to meet that demand. So, we built our own automation platform, The Intelligent Automation Garage and we did that with Accenture. >> So Amar, I'd like you to chime in here then. So, you're looking at this client who has this massive footprint and obviously vital services, right? So, that's paramount that you have to keep that in mind and the legacy systems that Lianne was just talking about. So, now you're trying to get 'em in the next gen but also respecting that they have a serious investment already in a lot of technology. How do you approach that kind of problem solving, those dynamics and how in this case did you get them to automation as the solution? >> Sure, so I think I think one of the interesting things, yeah as Lianne has sort of described it, right? It's effectively like, you know the department has to have be running all of the time, right? They can't, you know, they can't effectively stop and then do a bunch of IT transformation, you know it's effectively like, you know, changing the wheels of a jumbo jet whilst it's taking off, right? And you've got to do all of that all in one go. But what I think we really, really liked about the situation that we were in and the client relationship we had was that we knew we had to it wasn't just a technology play, we couldn't just go, "All right, let's just put some new technology in." What we also needed to do was really sort of create a culture, an innovation culture, and go, "Well how do we think about the problems that we currently have and how do we think about solving them differently and in collaboration, right?" So, not just the, "Let's just outsource a bunch of technology for to, you know, to Accenture and build a bunch of stuff." So, we very carefully thought about, well actually, the unique situation that they're in the demands that the citizens have on the services that the department provide. And as Lianne mentioned, that technology didn't exist. So, we fundamentally looked at this in a different way. So, we worked really closely with the department. We said, Look, actually what we ultimately need is the equivalent of a virtual workforce. Something where if you already, you know all of a sudden had a hundred thousand pension claims that needed to be processed in a week that you could click your fingers and, you know in a physical world you'd have another building all of your kits, a whole bunch of trained staff that would be able to process that work. And if in the following week you didn't need that you no longer needed that building that stuff or the machinery. And we wanted to replicate that in the virtual world. So, we started designing a platform we utilized and focused on using AWS because it had the scalability. And we thought about, how were we going to connect something as new as AWS to all of these legacy systems. How are we going to make that work in the modern world? How are we going to integrate it? How we going to make sure it's secure? And frankly, we're really honest with the client we said, "Look, this hasn't been done before. Like, nowhere in Accenture has done it. No one's done it in the industry. We've got some smart people, I think we can do it." And, we've prototyped and we've built and we were able to prove that we can do that. And that in itself just created an environment of solving tricky problems and being innovative but most importantly not doing sort of proof of concepts that didn't go anywhere but building something that actually scaled. And I think that was really the real the start of what was has been the Garage. >> So, And Lianne, you mentioned this and you just referred to it Amar, about The Garage, right? The Intelligent Automation Garage. What exactly is it? I mean, we talked about it, what the needs are all this and that, but Lianne, I'll let you jump in first and Amar, certainly compliment her remarks, but what is the IAG, what's the... >> So, you know, I think exactly what kind of Amar, has said from a from a kind of a development point of view I think it started off, you know, really, really small. And the idea is that this is DWP, intelligent automation center of excellence. So, you know, it's aims are that, you know, it makes sure that it scopes out kind of the problems that DWP are are facing properly. So, we really understand what the crux of the problem is. In large organizations It's very easy, I think to think you understand what the problem is where actually, you know, it is really about kind of delving into what that is. And actually we have a dedicated design team that really kind of get under the bonnet of what these issues really are. It then kind of architects what the solutions need to look like using as Amar said, all the exciting new technology that we kind of have available to us. That kind of sensible solution as to what that should look like. We then build that sensible solution and we then, you know as part of that, we make sure that it scales to demand. So, something that might start out with, I dunno, you know a few hundred claimants or kind of cases going through it can quite often, you know, once that's that's been successful scale really, really quickly because as you know, we have 20 million claimants that come through us every year. So, these types of things can grow and expand but also a really key function of what we do is that we have a fully supported in-house service as well. So, all of those automations that we build are then maintained and you know, so any changes that kind of needed to be need to be made to them, we have all that and we have that control and we have our kind of arms wrapped around all of those. But also what that allows us to do is it allows us to be very kind of self-sufficient in making sure that we are as sufficient, sorry, as efficient as possible. And what I mean by that is looking at, you know as new technologies come around and they can allow us to do things more effectively. So, it allows us to kind of almost do that that kind of continuous improvement ourselves. So, that's a huge part of what we do as well. And you know, I think from a size point of view I said this started off really small as in the idea was this was a kind of center of excellence but actually as automation, I think as Amar alluded to is kind of really started to embed in DWP culture what we've started to kind of see is the a massive expansion in the types of of work that people want us to do and the volume of work that we are doing. So, I think we're currently running at around around a hundred people at the moment and I think, you know we started off with a scrum, a couple of scrum teams under Amar, so yeah, it's really grown. But you know, I think this is here to stay within DWP. >> Yeah, well when we talk about automation, you know virtual and robotics and all this I like to kind of keep the human element in mind here too. And Amar, maybe you can touch on that in certain terms of the human factors in this equation. 'Cause people think about, you know, robots it means different things to different people. In your mind, how does automation intersect with the human element here and in terms of the kinds of things Lianne wants to do down the road, you know, is a road for people basically? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. I think fundamentally what the department does is support people and therefore the solutions that we designed and built had to factor that in mind right? We were trying to best support and provide the best service we possibly can. And not only do we need to support the citizens that it supports. The department itself is a big organization, right? We're up to, we're talking between sort of 70 and 80,000 employees. So, how do we embed automation but also make the lives of the, of the DWP agents better as well? And that's what we thought about. So we said, "Well look, we think we can design solutions that do both." So, a lot of our automations go through a design process and we work closely with our operations team and we go, well actually, you know in processing and benefit, there are some aspects of that processing that benefit that are copy and paste, right? It doesn't require much thought around it, but it just requires capturing data and there's elements of that solution or that process that requires actual thought and understanding and really empathy around going, "Well how do I best support this citizen?" And what we tended to do is we took all of the things that were sort of laborious and took a lot of time and would slow down the overall process and we automated those and then we really focused on making sure that the elements that required the human, the human input was made as user friendly and centric as we possibly could. So, if there's a really complex case that needs to be processed, we were able to present the information in a really digestible and understandable way for the agents so that they could make a informed and sensible decision based around a citizen. And what that enabled us to do is essentially meet the demands of the volumes and the peaks that came in but also maintain the quality and if not improve, you know the accuracy of the claims processing that we had. >> So, how do you know, and maybe Lianne, you can address this. How do you know that it's successful on both sides of that equation? And, 'cause Amar raised a very good point. You have 70 to 80,000 employees that you're trying to make their work life much more efficient, much simpler and hopefully make them better at their jobs at the end of the day. But you're also taking care of 20 million clients on the, your side too. So, how do you, what's your measurement for success and what kind of like raw feedback do you get that says, "Okay, this has worked for both of our client bases, both our citizens and our employees?" >> Yeah, so we can look at this both from a a quantitative and a qualitative point of view as well. So, I think from a let take the kind figures first. So we are really hot on making sure that whatever automations we put in place we are there to measure how that automation is working what it's kind of doing and the impact that it's having from an operational point of view. So I think, you know, I think the proof of the fact that the Intelligent Automation Garage is working is that, you know, in the, in its lifetime, we've processed over 20 million items and cases so far. We have 65 scaled and transitioned automations and we've saved over 2 million operational hours. I was going to say that again that's 2 million operational hours. And what that allows us to do as an organization those 2 million hours have allowed us to rather than people as Amar, said, cutting and pasting and doing work that that is essentially very time consuming and repetitive. That 2 million hours we've been able to use on actual decision making. So, the stuff that you need as sentient human being to make judgment calls on and you know and kind of make those decisions that's what it's allowed us as an organization to do. And then I think from a quality point of view I think the feedback that we have from our operational teams is, you know is equally as as great. So, we have that kind of feedback from, you know all the way up from to the director level about, you know how it's kind of like I said that freeing up that time but actually making the operational, you know they don't have an easy job and it's making that an awful lot easier on a day to day basis. It has a real day to day impact. But also, you know, there are other things that kind of the knock on effects in terms of accuracy. So for example, robot will do is exactly as it's told it doesn't make any mistakes, it doesn't have sick days, you know, it does what it says on the tin and actually that kind of impact. So, it's not necessarily, you know, counting your numbers it's the fact that then doesn't generate a call from a customer that kind of says, "Well you, I think you've got this wrong." So, it's all that kind of, these kind of ripple effects that go out. I think is how we measure the fact that A, the garage is working and b, it's delivering the value that we needed to deliver. >> Robots, probably ask better questions too so yeah... (Lianne laughing) So, real quick, just real quick before you head out. So, the big challenge next, eureka, this works, right? Amar, you put together this fantastic system it's in great practice at the DWP, now what do we do? So, it's just in 30 seconds, Amar, maybe if you can look at, be the headlights down the road here for DWP and say, "This is where I think we can jump to next." >> Yeah, so I think, what we've been able to prove as I say is that is scaled innovation and having the return and the value that it creates is here to stay, right? So, I think the next things for us are a continuous expand the stuff that we're doing. Keeping hold of that culture, right? That culture of constantly solving difficult problems and being able to innovate and scale them. So, we are now doing a lot more automations across the department, you know, across different benefits across the digital agenda. I think we're also now becoming almost a bit of the fabric of enabling some of the digital transformation that big organizations look at, right? So moving to a world where you can have a venture driven architectures and being able to sort of scale that. I also think the natural sort of expansion of the team and the type of work that we're going to do is probably also going to expand into sort of the analytics side of it and understanding and seeing how we can take the data from the cases that we're processing to overall have a smoother journey across for our citizens. But it's looking, you know, the future's looking bright. I think we've got a number of different backlogs of items to work on. >> Well, you've got a great story to tell and thank you for sharing it with us here on "the CUBE", talking about DWP, the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK and the great work that Accenture's doing to make 20 million lives plus, a lot simpler for our friends in England. You've been watching ""the CUBE"" the AWS Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. (bright upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Well, hello everybody. John Walls is here on "the CUBE". Great to have you with us as we continue our series here at the AWS Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. And today we're talking about public service and not just a little slice of public service but probably the largest public sector offering in the UK and for with us or with us. Now to talk about that is Lianne Anderton, who is in with the Intelligent Automation Garage Delivery Lead at the UK Department of Work and Pension. Lianne, good to see you today. Thanks for joining us here on "the CUBE". >> Hi, thanks for having me. >> And also with this us is Amar Narayan, who is a Manager Director at Accenture the AWS Business Group for the Lead in Health and Public Sector, also UK and Ireland. And Amar, I think, you and Lianne, are in the same location, Newcastle, I believe in the UK, is that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yep, yeah, we're, here in the northeast of UK. >> Well, thank you for being with us. I appreciate the time. Lianne, let's talk about what you do, the Department of Work and Pension, the famous DWP in England. You have influence or certainly touchpoints with a huge amount of the British population. In what respects, what are you doing for the working class in England and what does technology have to do with all that? >> Sure, so for the Department for Work and Pensions I think the pensions bit is fairly self explanatory so anybody who is over state pension age within the UK. for the work part of that we also deal with people of working age. So, these are people who are either in employment and need additional help through various benefits we offer in the UK. Those people who are out of work. And we also deal with health related benefits as well. And we are currently serving over 20 million claimants every year at this moment in time. So, we're aware of a huge part of the UK government. >> All right, so say that number again. How many? >> 20 million claimants every year. >> Million with an M, right? >> Yeah. >> So, and that's individuals. And so how many transactions, if you will, how many do you think you process in a month? How, much traffic basically, are you seeing? >> An extraordinary amount? I'm not even, I don't think I even know that number. (Lianne laughing) >> Mind blowing, right? So, it's- >> A huge, huge amount. >> Mind blowing. >> Yeah, so, basically the we kind of keep the country going. So, you know, if the department for Work and Pensions kind of didn't exist anymore then actually it would cause an infinite number of problems in society. We, kind of help and support the people who need that. And, yeah, so we play a really vital role in kind of you know, social care and kind of public service. >> So, what was your journey to Accenture then? What, eventually led you to them? What problem were you having and how have you collaborated to solve that? >> So, in terms of how we work with Accenture. So, we had in around 2017 DWP was looking at a projected number of transactions growing by about 210 million which was, you know, an extraordinary amount. And, you know, I think as we've kind of covered everything that we do is on a massive scale. So, we as DWP as an organization we had absolutely no idea how we were going to be able to handle such a massive increase in the transactions. And actually, you know, after kind of various kind of paths and ideas of how we were going to do that, automation, was actually the answer. But the problem that we have with that is that we have, like many governments around the world, we have really older legacy systems. So, each of these benefits that we deal with are on legacy systems. So, whatever we were going to develop had to, you know, connect to all of these, it had to ingest and then process all of these pieces of data some of which, you know, given the fact that a lot of these systems have a lot of manual input you have data issues there that you have to solve and whatever we did, you know, as we've talked about in terms of volumes has to scale instantly as well. So, it has to be able to scale up and down to meet demand and, you know, and that down scaling is also equally as important. So yeah, you've got to be able to scale up to meet the volumes but also you've got to be able to downscale when when it's not needed. But we had nothing that was like that kind of helped us to meet that demand. So, we built our own automation platform, The Intelligent Automation Garage and we did that with Accenture. >> So Amar, I'd like you to chime in here then. So, you're looking at this client who has this massive footprint and obviously vital services, right? So, that's paramount that you have to keep that in mind and the legacy systems that Lianne was just talking about. So, now you're trying to get 'em in the next gen but also respecting that they have a serious investment already in a lot of technology. How do you approach that kind of problem solving, those dynamics and how in this case did you get them to automation as the solution? >> Sure, so I think I think one of the interesting things, yeah as Lianne has sort of described it, right? It's effectively like, you know the department has to have be running all of the time, right? They can't, you know, they can't effectively stop and then do a bunch of IT transformation, you know it's effectively like, you know, changing the wheels of a jumbo jet whilst it's taking off, right? And you've got to do all of that all in one go. But what I think we really, really liked about the situation that we were in and the client relationship we had was that we knew we had to it wasn't just a technology play, we couldn't just go, "All right, let's just put some new technology in." What we also needed to do was really sort of create a culture, an innovation culture, and go, "Well how do we think about the problems that we currently have and how do we think about solving them differently and in collaboration, right?" So, not just the, "Let's just outsource a bunch of technology for to, you know, to Accenture and build a bunch of stuff." So, we very carefully thought about, well actually, the unique situation that they're in the demands that the citizens have on the services that the department provide. And as Lianne mentioned, that technology didn't exist. So, we fundamentally looked at this in a different way. So, we worked really closely with the department. We said, Look, actually what we ultimately need is the equivalent of a virtual workforce. Something where if you already, you know all of a sudden had a hundred thousand pension claims that needed to be processed in a week that you could click your fingers and, you know in a physical world you'd have another building all of your kits, a whole bunch of trained staff that would be able to process that work. And if in the following week you didn't need that you no longer needed that building that stuff or the machinery. And we wanted to replicate that in the virtual world. So, we started designing a platform we utilized and focused on using AWS because it had the scalability. And we thought about, how were we going to connect something as new as AWS to all of these legacy systems. How are we going to make that work in the modern world? How are we going to integrate it? How we going to make sure it's secure? And frankly, we're really honest with the client we said, "Look, this hasn't been done before. Like, nowhere in Accenture has done it. No one's done it in the industry. We've got some smart people, I think we can do it." And, we've prototyped and we've built and we were able to prove that we can do that. And that in itself just created an environment of solving tricky problems and being innovative but most importantly not doing sort of proof of concepts that didn't go anywhere but building something that actually scaled. And I think that was really the real the start of what was has been the Garage. >> So, And Lianne, you mentioned this and you just referred to it Amar, about The Garage, right? The Intelligent Automation Garage. What exactly is it? I mean, we talked about it, what the needs are all this and that, but Lianne, I'll let you jump in first and Amar, certainly compliment her remarks, but what is the IAG, what's the... >> So, you know, I think exactly what kind of Amar, has said from a from a kind of a development point of view I think it started off, you know, really, really small. And the idea is that this is DWP, intelligent automation center of excellence. So, you know, it's aims are that, you know, it makes sure that it scopes out kind of the problems that DWP are are facing properly. So, we really understand what the crux of the problem is. In large organizations It's very easy, I think to think you understand what the problem is where actually, you know, it is really about kind of delving into what that is. And actually we have a dedicated design team that really kind of get under the bonnet of what these issues really are. It then kind of architects what the solutions need to look like using as Amar said, all the exciting new technology that we kind of have available to us. That kind of sensible solution as to what that should look like. We then build that sensible solution and we then, you know as part of that, we make sure that it scales to demand. So, something that might start out with, I dunno, you know a few hundred claimants or kind of cases going through it can quite often, you know, once that's that's been successful scale really, really quickly because as you know, we have 20 million claimants that come through us every year. So, these types of things can grow and expand but also a really key function of what we do is that we have a fully supported in-house service as well. So, all of those automations that we build are then maintained and you know, so any changes that kind of needed to be need to be made to them, we have all that and we have that control and we have our kind of arms wrapped around all of those. But also what that allows us to do is it allows us to be very kind of self-sufficient in making sure that we are as sufficient, sorry, as efficient as possible. And what I mean by that is looking at, you know as new technologies come around and they can allow us to do things more effectively. So, it allows us to kind of almost do that that kind of continuous improvement ourselves. So, that's a huge part of what we do as well. And you know, I think from a size point of view I said this started off really small as in the idea was this was a kind of center of excellence but actually as automation, I think as Amar alluded to is kind of really started to embed in DWP culture what we've started to kind of see is the a massive expansion in the types of of work that people want us to do and the volume of work that we are doing. So, I think we're currently running at around around a hundred people at the moment and I think, you know we started off with a scrum, a couple of scrum teams under Amar, so yeah, it's really grown. But you know, I think this is here to stay within DWP. >> Yeah, well when we talk about automation, you know virtual and robotics and all this I like to kind of keep the human element in mind here too. And Amar, maybe you can touch on that in certain terms of the human factors in this equation. 'Cause people think about, you know, robots it means different things to different people. In your mind, how does automation intersect with the human element here and in terms of the kinds of things Lianne wants to do down the road, you know, is a road for people basically? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. I think fundamentally what the department does is support people and therefore the solutions that we designed and built had to factor that in mind right? We were trying to best support and provide the best service we possibly can. And not only do we need to support the citizens that it supports. The department itself is a big organization, right? We're up to, we're talking between sort of 70 and 80,000 employees. So, how do we embed automation but also make the lives of the, of the DWP agents better as well? And that's what we thought about. So we said, "Well look, we think we can design solutions that do both." So, a lot of our automations go through a design process and we work closely with our operations team and we go, well actually, you know in processing and benefit, there are some aspects of that processing that benefit that are copy and paste, right? It doesn't require much thought around it, but it just requires capturing data and there's elements of that solution or that process that requires actual thought and understanding and really empathy around going, "Well how do I best support this citizen?" And what we tended to do is we took all of the things that were sort of laborious and took a lot of time and would slow down the overall process and we automated those and then we really focused on making sure that the elements that required the human, the human input was made as user friendly and centric as we possibly could. So, if there's a really complex case that needs to be processed, we were able to present the information in a really digestible and understandable way for the agents so that they could make a informed and sensible decision based around a citizen. And what that enabled us to do is essentially meet the demands of the volumes and the peaks that came in but also maintain the quality and if not improve, you know the accuracy of the claims processing that we had. >> So, how do you know, and maybe Lianne, you can address this. How do you know that it's successful on both sides of that equation? And, 'cause Amar raised a very good point. You have 70 to 80,000 employees that you're trying to make their work life much more efficient, much simpler and hopefully make them better at their jobs at the end of the day. But you're also taking care of 20 million clients on the, your side too. So, how do you, what's your measurement for success and what kind of like raw feedback do you get that says, "Okay, this has worked for both of our client bases, both our citizens and our employees?" >> Yeah, so we can look at this both from a a quantitative and a qualitative point of view as well. So, I think from a let take the kind figures first. So we are really hot on making sure that whatever automations we put in place we are there to measure how that automation is working what it's kind of doing and the impact that it's having from an operational point of view. So I think, you know, I think the proof of the fact that the Intelligent Automation Garage is working is that, you know, in the, in its lifetime, we've processed over 20 million items and cases so far. We have 65 scaled and transitioned automations and we've saved over 2 million operational hours. I was going to say that again that's 2 million operational hours. And what that allows us to do as an organization those 2 million hours have allowed us to rather than people as Amar, said, cutting and pasting and doing work that that is essentially very time consuming and repetitive. That 2 million hours we've been able to use on actual decision making. So, the stuff that you need as sentient human being to make judgment calls on and you know and kind of make those decisions that's what it's allowed us as an organization to do. And then I think from a quality point of view I think the feedback that we have from our operational teams is, you know is equally as as great. So, we have that kind of feedback from, you know all the way up from to the director level about, you know how it's kind of like I said that freeing up that time but actually making the operational, you know they don't have an easy job and it's making that an awful lot easier on a day to day basis. It has a real day to day impact. But also, you know, there are other things that kind of the knock on effects in terms of accuracy. So for example, robot will do is exactly as it's told it doesn't make any mistakes, it doesn't have sick days, you know, it does what it says on the tin and actually that kind of impact. So, it's not necessarily, you know, counting your numbers it's the fact that then doesn't generate a call from a customer that kind of says, "Well you, I think you've got this wrong." So, it's all that kind of, these kind of ripple effects that go out. I think is how we measure the fact that A, the garage is working and b, it's delivering the value that we needed to deliver. >> Robots, probably ask better questions too so yeah... (Lianne laughing) So, real quick, just real quick before you head out. So, the big challenge next, eureka, this works, right? Amar, you put together this fantastic system it's in great practice at the DWP, now what do we do? So, it's just in 30 seconds, Amar, maybe if you can look at, be the headlights down the road here for DWP and say, "This is where I think we can jump to next." >> Yeah, so I think, what we've been able to prove as I say is that is scaled innovation and having the return and the value that it creates is here to stay, right? So, I think the next things for us are a continuous expand the stuff that we're doing. Keeping hold of that culture, right? That culture of constantly solving difficult problems and being able to innovate and scale them. So, we are now doing a lot more automations across the department, you know, across different benefits across the digital agenda. I think we're also now becoming almost a bit of the fabric of enabling some of the digital transformation that big organizations look at, right? So moving to a world where you can have a venture driven architectures and being able to sort of scale that. I also think the natural sort of expansion of the team and the type of work that we're going to do is probably also going to expand into sort of the analytics side of it and understanding and seeing how we can take the data from the cases that we're processing to overall have a smoother journey across for our citizens. But it's looking, you know, the future's looking bright. I think we've got a number of different backlogs of items to work on. >> Well, you've got a great story to tell and thank you for sharing it with us here on "the CUBE", talking about DWP, the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK and the great work that Accenture's doing to make 20 million lives plus, a lot simpler for our friends in England. You've been watching ""the CUBE"" the AWS Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. (bright upbeat music)

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

>>Hey everyone. Welcome back to the cubes day two coverage of VMware Explorer, 22 from San Francisco. Lisa Martin, back here with you with Dave Nicholson, we have a couple of guests from VMware. Joining us, please. Welcome Jay Workman, senior director, cloud partner, and alliances marketing, and Jeff Thompson, VP cloud provider sales at VMware guys. It's great to have you on the program. >>Ah, good to be here. Thanks for having us on. >>We're gonna be talking about a really interesting topic. Sovereign cloud. What is sovereign cloud? Jeff? Why is it important, but fundamentally, what is >>It? Yeah, well, we were just talking a second ago. Aren't we? And it's not about royalty. So yeah, data sovereignty is really becoming super important. It's about the regulation and control of data. So lots of countries now are being very careful and advising companies around where to place data and the jurisdictional controls mandate that personal data or otherwise has to be secured. We ask, we have to have access controls around it and privacy controls around it. So data sovereign clouds are clouds that have been built by our cloud providers in, in, in VMware that specifically satisfy the requirements of those jurisdictions and regulated industries. So we've built a, a little program around that. We launched it about a year ago and continuing to add cloud providers to that. >>Yeah, and I, I think it's also important just to build on what Jeff said is, is who can access that data is becoming increasingly important data is, is almost in it's. It is becoming a bit of a currency. There's a lot of value in data and securing that data is, is becoming over the years increasingly important. So it's, it's not like we built a problem or we created a solution for problem that didn't exist. It's gotten it's, it's been a problem for a while. It's getting exponentially bigger data is expanding and growing exponentially, and it's becoming increasingly important for organizations and companies to realize where my data sits, who can access it, what types of data needs to go and what type of clouds. And it's very, very aligned with multi-cloud because some data can sit in a, in a public cloud, which is fine, but some data needs to be secure. It needs to be resident within country. And so this is, this is what we're addressing through our partners. >>Yeah, I, yeah, I was just gonna add to that. I think there's a classification there there's data residency, and then there's data sovereignty. So residency is just about where is the data, which country is it in sovereignty is around who can access that data. And that's the critical aspect of, of data sovereignty who's got control and access to that data. And how do we make sure that all the controls are in place to make sure that only the right people can get access to that data? Yeah. >>So let's, let's sort of build from the ground up an example, and let's use Western Europe as an example, just because state to state in the United States, although California is about to adopt European standards for privacy in a, in a unique, in a unique, unique way, pick a country in, in Europe, I'm a service provider. I have an offering and that offering includes a stack of hardware and I'm running what we frequently refer to as the STDC or software defined data center stack. So I've got NEX and I've got vs N and I've got vSphere and I'm running and I have a cloud and you have all of the operational tools around that, and you can spin up VMs and render under applications there. And here we are within the borders of this country, what makes it a sovereign cloud at that? So at that point, is that a sovereign cloud or? >>No, not yet. Not it's close. I mean, you nailed, >>What's >>A secret sauce. You nailed the technology underpinning. So we've got 4,500 plus cloud provider partners around the world. Less than 10% of those partners are running the full STDC stack, which we've branded as VMware cloud verified. So the technology underpinning from our perspective is the starting point. Okay. For sovereignty. So they, they, they need that right. Technology. Okay. >>Verified is required for sovereign. Yes. >>Okay. Cloud verified is the required technology stack for sovereign. So they've got vSphere vs. A NSX in there. Okay. A lot of these partners are also offering a multitenant cloud with VMware cloud director on top of that, which is great. That's the starting point. But then we've, we've set a list of standards above and beyond that, in addition to the technology, they've gotta meet certain jurisdiction requirements, certain local compliance requirements and certifications. They've gotta be able to address the data re data residency requirements of their particular jurisdiction. So it's going above and beyond. But to your point, it does vary by country. >>Okay. So, so in this hypothetical example, this is this country. You a stand, I love it. When people talk about Stan, people talk about EMIA and you know, I, I love AMEA food. Isn't AIAN food. One. There's no such thing as a European until you have an Italian, a Britain, a German yep. In Florida arguing about how our beer and our coffee is terrible. Right. Right. Then they're all European. They go home and they don't like each other. Yeah. So, but let's just pretend that there's a thing called Europe. So this, so there's this, so we've got a border, we know residency, right. Because it physically is here. Yep. But what are the things in terms of sovereignty? So you're talking about a lot of kind of certification and validation, making sure that, that everything maps to those existing rules. So is, this is, this is a lot of this administrative and I mean, administrative in the, in the sort of state administrative terminology, >>I I'm let's build on your example. Yeah. So we were talking about food and obviously we know the best food in the world comes from England. >>Of course it does. Yeah. I, no doubt. I agree. I Don not get that. I do. I do do agree. Yeah. >>So UK cloud, fantastic partner for us. Okay. Whether they're one of our first sovereign cloud providers in the program. So UK cloud, they satisfied the requirements with the local UK government. They built out their cloud verified. They built out a stack specifically that enables them to satisfy the requirements of being a sovereign cloud provider. They have local data centers inside the UK. The data from the local government is placed into those data centers. And it's managed by UK people on UK soil so that they know the privacy, they know the security aspects, the compliance, all of that wrapped up on top of a secure SDDC platform. Okay. Satisfies the requirements of the UK government, that they are managing that data in a sovereign way that, that, that aligns to the jurisdictional control that they expect from a company like UK cloud. Well, >>I think to build on that, a UK cloud is an example of certain employees at UK, UK cloud will have certain levels of clearance from the UK government who can access and work on certain databases that are stored within UK cloud. So they're, they're addressing it from multiple fronts, not just with their hardware, software data center framework, but actually at the individual compliance level and individual security clearance level as to who can go in and work on that data. And it's not just a governmental, it's not a public sector thing. I mean, any highly regulated industry, healthcare, financial services, they're all gonna need this type of data protection and data sovereignty. >>Can this work in a hyperscaler? So you've got you, have, you have VMC AVS, right? GC V C >>O >>CVAs O CVS. Thank you. Can it be, can, can a sovereign cloud be created on top of physical infrastructure that is in one of those hyperscalers, >>From our perspective, it's not truly sovereign. If, if it's a United States based company operating in Germany, operating in the UK and a local customer or organization in Germany, or the UK wants to deploy workloads in that cloud, we wouldn't classify that as totally sovereign. Okay. Because by virtue of the cloud act in the United States, that gives the us government rights to request or potentially view some of that data. Yeah. Because it's, it's coming out of a us based operator data center sitting on foreign soil so that the us government has some overreach into that. And some of that data may actually be stored. Some of the metadata may reside back in the us and the customer may not know. So certain workloads would be ideally suited for that. But for something that needs to be truly sovereign and local data residency, that it wouldn't be a good fit. I think that >>Perspectives key thing, going back to residency versus sovereignty. Yeah. It can be, let's go to our UK example. It can be on a hyperscaler in the UK now it's resident in the UK, but some of the metadata, the profiling information could be accessible by the entity in the United States. For example, there now it's not sovereign anymore. So that's the key difference between a, what we view as a pro you know, a pure sovereign cloud play and then maybe a hyperscaler that's got more residency than sovereignty. >>Yeah. We talk a lot about partnerships. This seems to be a unique opportunity for a certain segment of partners yeah. To give that really is an opportunity for them to have a line of business established. That's unique from some of the hyperscale cloud providers. Yeah. Where, where sort of the, the modesty of your size might be an advantage if you're in a local. Yes. You're in Italy and you are a service provider. There sounds like a great fit, >>That's it? Yeah. You've always had the, the beauty of our program. We have 4,500 cloud providers and obviously not, all of them are able to provide a data, a sovereign cloud. We have 20 in the program today in, in the country. You you'd expect them to be in, you know, the UK, Italy, Italy, France, Germany, over in Asia Pacific. We have in Australia and New Zealand, Japan, and, and we have Canada and Latin America to, to dovetail, you know, the United States. But those are the people that have had these long term relationships with the local governments, with these regulated industries and providing those services for many, many years. It's just that now data sovereignty has become more important. And they're able to go that extra mile and say, Hey, we've been doing this pretty much, you know, for decades, but now we're gonna put a wrap and some branding around it and do these extra checks because we absolutely know that we can provide the sovereignty that's required. >>And that's been one of the beautiful things about the entire initiative is we're actually, we're learning a lot from our partners in these countries to Jeff's point have been doing this. They've been long time, VMware partners they've been doing sovereignty. And so collectively together, we're able to really establish a pretty robust framework from, from our perspective, what does data sovereignty mean? Why does it matter? And then that's gonna help us work with the customers, help them decide which workloads need to go and which type of cloud. And it dovetails very, very nicely into a multi-cloud that's a reality. So some of those workloads can sit in the public sector and the hyperscalers and some of 'em need to be sovereign. Yeah. So it's, it's a great solution for our customers >>When you're in customer conversations, especially as, you know, data sovereign to be is becomes a global problem. Where, who are you talking to? Are you talking to CIOs? Are you talking to chief data officers? I imagine this is a pretty senior level conversation. >>Yeah. I it's, I think it's all of the above. Really. It depends. Who's managing the data. What type of customer is it? What vertical market are they in? What compliance regulations are they are they beholden to as a, as an enterprise, depending on which country they're in and do they have a need for a public cloud, they may already be all localized, you know? So it really depends, but it, it could be any of those. It's generally I think a fair, fairly senior level conversation. And it's, it's, it's, it's consultancy, it's us understanding what their needs are working with our partners and figuring out what's the best solution for them. >>And I think going back to, they've probably having those conversations for a long time already. Yeah. Because they probably have had workloads in there for years, maybe even decades. It's just that now sovereignty has become, you know, a more popular, you know, requirements to satisfy. And so they've gone going back to, they've gone the extra mile with those as the trusted advisor with those people. They've all been working with for many, many years to do that work. >>And what sort of any examples you mentioned some of the highly regulated industries, healthcare, financial services, any customer come to mind that you think really articulates the value of what VMware's delivering through its service through its cloud provider program. That makes the obvious why VMware an obvious answer? >>Wow. I, I, I get there's, there's so many it's, it's actually, it's each of our different cloud providers. They bring their win wise to us. And we just have, we have a great library now of assets that are on our sovereign cloud website of those win wires. So it's many industries, many, many countries. So you can really pick, pick your, your choice. There. That's >>A good problem >>To have, >>To the example of UK cloud they're, they're really focused on the UK government. So some of them aren't gonna be referenced. Well, we may have indication of a major financial services company in Australia has deployed with AU cloud, one of our partners. So we we've also got some semi blind references like that. And, and to some degree, a lot of these are maintained as fairly private wins and whatnot for obvious security reasons, but, and we're building it and building that library up, >>You mentioned the number 4,500, a couple of times, you, you referencing VMware cloud provider partners or correct program partners. So VCP P yes. So 45, 4500 is the, kind of, is the, is the number, you know, >>That's the number >>Globally of our okay. >>Partners that are offering a commercial cloud service based at a minimum with vSphere and they're. And many of 'em have many more of our technologies. And we've got little under 10% of those that have the cloud verified designation that are running that full STDC, stack >>Somebody, somebody Talli up, all of that. And the argument has been made that, that rep that, that would mean that VMware cloud. And although some of it's on IAS from hyperscale cloud providers. Sure. But that, that rep, that means that VMware has the third or fourth largest cloud on the planet already right now. >>Right. Yep. >>Which is kind of interesting because yeah. If you go back to when, what 2016 or so when VMC was at least baned about yeah. Is that right? A lot of people were skeptical. I was skeptical very long history with VMware at the time. And I was skeptical. I I'm thinking, nah, it's not gonna work. Yeah. This is desperation. Sorry, pat. I love you. But it's desperation. Right. AWS, their attitude is in this transaction. Sure. Send us some customers we'll them. Yeah. Right. I very, very cynical about it. Completely proved me wrong. Obviously. Where did it go? Went from AWS to Azure to right. Yeah. To GCP, to Oracle, >>Oracle, Alibaba, >>Alibaba. Yep. Globally. >>We've got IBM. Yep. Right. >>Yeah. So along the way, it would be easy to look at that trajectory and say, okay, wow, hyperscale cloud. Yeah. Everything's consolidating great. There's gonna be five or six or 10 of these players. And that's it. And everybody else is out in the cold. Yeah. But it turns out that long tail, if you look at the chart of who the largest VCP P partners are, that long tail of the smaller ones seem to be carving out specialized yes. Niches where you can imagine now, at some point in the future, you sum up this long tail and it becomes larger than maybe one of the hyperscale cloud providers. Right. I don't think a lot of people predicted that. I think, I think people predicted the demise of VMware and frankly, a lot of people in the VMware ecosystem, just like they predicted the demise of the mainframe. Sure. The storage area network fill in the blank. I >>Mean, Jeff and I we've oh yeah. We've been on the, Jeff's been a little longer than I have, but we've been working together for 10 plus years on this. And we've, we've heard that many times. Yeah. Yeah. Our, our ecosystem has grown over the years. We've seen some consolidation, some M and a activity, but we're, we're not even actively recruiting partners and it's growing, we're focused on helping our partners gain more, share internally, gain, more share at wallet, but we're still getting organic growth in the program. Really. So it, it shows, I think that there is value in what we can offer them as a platform to build a cloud on. >>Yeah. What's been interesting is there's there's growth and there's some transition as well. Right? So there's been traditional cloud providers. Who've built a cloud in their data center, some sovereign, some not. And then there's other partners that are adopting VCP P because of our SA. So we've either converted some technology from product into SA or we've built net new SA or we've acquired companies that have been SA only. And now we have a bigger portfolio that service providers, cloud providers, managed service providers are all interested in. So you get resellers channel partners. Who've historically been doing ELAs and reselling to end customers. They're transitioning their business into doing recurring revenue and the only game in town where you really wanna do recurring revenues, VCP P. So our ecosystem is both growing because our cloud providers with their data center are doing more with our customers. And then we're adding more managed service providers because of our SA portfolio. And that, that, that combo, that one, two punch is creating a much bigger VCP P ecosystem overall. >>Yeah. >>Impressive. >>Do you think we have a better idea of what sovereign cloud means? Yes. I think we do. >>It's not Royal. >>It's all about royalty, >>All royalty. What are some of the things Jeff, as we look on the horizon, obviously seven to 10,000 people here at, at VMwares where people really excited to be back. They want to hear it from VMware. They wanna hear from its partner ecosystem, the community. What are some of the things that you think are on the horizon where sovereign cloud is concerned that are really opportunities yeah. For businesses to get it right. >>Yeah. We're in the early days of this, I think there's still a whole bunch of rules, regulatory laws that have not been defined yet. So I think there's gonna be some more learning. There's gonna be some top down guidance like Gaia X in Europe. That's the way that they're defining who gets access and control over what data and what's in. And what's out of that. So we're gonna get more of these Gaia X type things happening around the world, and they're all gonna be slightly different. Everyone's gonna have to understand what they are, how to interpret and then build something around them. So we need to stay on top of that, myself and Jay, to make sure that we've got the right cloud providers in the right space to capitalize on that, build out the sovereign cloud program over time and make sure that what they're building to support aligns with these different requirements that are out there across different countries. So it's an evolving landscape. That's >>Yeah. And one of the things too, we're also doing from a product perspective to better enable partners to, to address these sovereign cloud workloads is where we have, we have gaps maybe in our portfolio is we're partner partnering with some of our ISVs, like a, Konic like a Forex vem. So we can give our partners object storage or ransomware protection to add on to their sovereign cloud service, all accessible through our cloud director consult. So we're, we're enhancing the program that way. And to Jeff's point earlier, we've got 20 partners today. We're hoping to double that by the end of our fiscal year and, and just take a very methodical approach to growth of the program. >>Sounds great guys, early innings though. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me talking about what software and cloud is describing it to us, and also talking about the difference between that data residency and all the, all of the challenges and the, in the landscape that customers are facing. They can go turn to VMware and its ecosystem for that help. We appreciate your insights and your time. Guys. Thank >>You >>For >>Having us. Our >>Pleasure. Appreciate it >>For our guests and Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching the cube. This is the end of day, two coverage of VMware Explorer, 2022. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you tomorrow.

>> From the theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is "Breaking Analysis", with Dave Vellante. >> The recent security breach of an Okta third party supplier has been widely reported. The criticisms of Okta's response have been harsh, and the impact on Okta's value has been obvious, investors shaved about $6 billion off the company's market cap during the week the hack was made public. We believe Okta's claim that the customer technical impact was, "Near zero," may be semantically correct. However, based on customer data, we feel Okta has a blind spot. There are customer ripple effects that require clear action which are missed in Okta's public statements, in our view. Okta's product portfolio remains solid, it's a clear leader in the identity space. But in our view, one part of the long journey back to credibility requires Okta to fully understand and recognize the true scope of this breach on its customers. Hello, and welcome to this week's Wikibon "CUBE Insights", powered by ETR. In this "Breaking Analysis", we welcome our ETR colleague, Erik Bradley, to share new data from the community. Erik, welcome. >> Thank you, Dave, always enjoy being on the show, particularly when we get to talk about a topic that's not being well covered in the mainstream media in my opinion. >> Yeah, I agree, you've got some new data, and we're going to share some of that today. Let's first review the timeline of this hack. On January 20th this year, Okta got an alert that something was amiss at one of its partners, a company called Sitel, that provides low-level contact center support for Okta. The next day, Sitel retained a forensic firm to investigate, which was completed, that investigation was completed on February 28th. A report dated March 10th was created, and Okta received a summary of that from Sitel on March 17th. Five days later, Lapsus$ posted the infamous screenshots on Twitter. And later that day, sheesh, Okta got the full report from Sitel, and then responded publicly. Then the media frenzy in the back and forth ensued. So Erik, you know, there's so much wrong with this timeline, it's been picked apart by the media. But I will say this, what appeared to be a benign incident and generally has turned into a PR disaster for Okta, and I imagine Sitel as well. Who I reached out to by the way, but they did not provide a comment, whereas Okta did. We'll share that later. I mean, where do we start on this, Erik? >> It's a great question, "Where do we start?" As you know, our motto here is opinions only exist due to a lack of data, so I'm going to start with the data. What we were able to do is because we had a survey that was in the field when the news broke, is that we were able to observe the data in realtime. So we sequestered the data up until that moment when it was announced, so before March 23rd and then after March 23rd. And although most of the responses came in prior, so it wasn't as much of an end as we would've liked. It really was telling to see the difference of how the survey responses changed from before the breach was announced to after, and we can get into a little bit more- >> So let's... Sorry, sorry to interrupt, let's bring that up, let's look at some of that data. And as followers of this program know... Let me just set it up, Erik. Every quarter, ETR, they have a proprietary net score methodology to determine customer spending momentum, and that's what we're talking about here. Essentially measuring the net number of customers spending more on a particular product or platform. So apologize for interrupting, but you're on this data right here. >> Not at all. >> So take us through this. >> Yeah, so again, let's caveat. Okta is still a premier company in our work. Top five in overall security, not just in their niche, and they still remained extremely strong at the end of the survey. However, when you kind of look at that at a more of a micro analysis, what you noticed was a true difference between before March 23rd and after. Overall, their cumulative net score or proprietary spending intention score that we use, was 56% prior. That dropped to 44% during the time period after, that is a significant drop. Even a little bit more telling, and again, small sample size, I want to be very fair about that. Before March 23rd, only three of our community members indicated any indication of replacing Okta. That number went to eight afterwards. So again, small number, but a big difference when you're talking about a percentage change. >> Yeah, so that's that sort of green line that was shown there. You know, not too damaging, but definitely a noticeable downturn with the caveat that it's a small end. But here's the thing that I love working with you, we didn't stop there. You went out, you talked to customers, I talked to a number of customers. You actually organized a panel. This week, Erik hosted a deep dive on the topic with CISOs. And we have, if we could bring up that next slide, Alex. These are some of the top CISOs in the community, and I'm going to just summarize the comments and then turn it over to you, Erik. The first one was really concerning, "We heard about this in the media," ooh, ooh, ouch. Next one, "Not a huge hit, but loss of trust." "We can't just shut Okta off like SolarWinds." So there's definitely a lock in effect there. "We may need to hire new people," i.e, "There's a business impact to us beyond the technical impact." "We're rethinking contract negotiations with Okta." And bottom line, "It's still a strong solution." "We're not really worried about our Okta environment, but this is a trust and communications issue." Erik, these are painful to read, and in the end of the day, Okta has to own this. Todd McKinnon did acknowledge this. As I said at the top, there are domino business impacts that Okta may not be seeing. What are your thoughts? >> There's a lot we're going to need to get into in a little bit, and I think you were spot on earlier, when McKinnon said there was no impact. And that's not actually true, there's a lot of peripheral, derivative impact that was brought up in our panel. Before we even did the panel though, I do want to say we went out quickly to about 20 customers and asked them if they were willing to give an opinion. And it was sort of split down the middle where about, you know, half of them were saying, "You know, this is okay. We're going to stand by 'em, Okta's the best in the industry." A few were cautious, "Opinion's unchanged, but we're going to take a look deeper." And then another 40% were just flat out negative. And again, small sample size, but you don't want to see that. It's indicative of reputational damage right away. That was what led us to say, "You know what, let's go do this panel." And as you know, from reading it and looking at the panel, well, a lot of topics were brought up about the derivative impact of it. And whether that's your own, you know, having to hire people to go look into your backend to deal with and manage Okta. Whether it's cyber insurance ramifications down the road, there's a lot of aspects that need to be discussed about this. >> Yeah now, so before I go on... And by the way, I've spent a fair amount of time just parsing, listening very carefully to Todd McKinnon's commentary. He did an interview with Emily Chang, it was quite useful. But before I go on, I reached out to Okta, and they were super responsive and I appreciate that. And I do believe they're taking this seriously, here's a statement they provided to theCUBE. Quote, "As a global leader in identity, we recognize the critical role Okta plays for our customers and our customers' end users. Okta has a culture of learning and improving, and we are taking the steps to prevent this from happening again. We know trust is earned, and building back our customers' trust in Okta through our actions and our ongoing support as their secure identity partner is our top priority." Okay, so look, you know, what are you going to say, right? I mean, I think they do own it. Again, the concern is the blind spots. So we put together this visual to try to explain how Okta is describing the impact, and maybe another way to look at it. So let me walk you through this. Here's a simple way in which organizations think about the impact of a breach. What's the probability of a breach, that's the vertical axis, and what's the impact on the horizontal. Now I feel as though business impact really is the financial, you know, condition. But we've narrowed this to map to Todd McKinnon's statements of the technical impact. And they've said the technical impact in terms of things customers need to do or change, is near zero, and that's the red dot that you see there. Look, the fact is, that Okta has more than 15,000 customers, and at most, 366 were directly impacted by this. That's less than 3% of the base, and it's probably less than that, they're just being conservative. And the technical impact which Todd McKinnon described in an interview, again, with Emily Chang, was near zero in terms of actions the customers had to take on things like reporting and changes and remediation. Basically negligible. But based on the customer feedback outside of that 366, that's what we're calling that blind spot and that bracket. And then we list the items that we are hearing from customers on things that they have to do now, despite that minimal exposure. Erik, this is new information that we've uncovered through the ETR process, and there's a long list of collateral impacts that you just referred to before, actions that customers have to take, right? >> Yeah, there's a lot, and the panel really brought that to life even more than I expected to be quite honest. First of all, you're right, most of them believe that this was a minimal impact. The true damage here was reputational, and the derivatives that come from it. We had one panelist say that they now have to go hire people, because, and I hate to say this, but Okta isn't known for their best professional support. So they have to go get people now in to kind of do that themselves and manage that. That's obviously not the easiest thing to do in this environment. We had other ones express concern about, "Hey I'm an Okta customer. When I have to do my cyber insurance renewal, is my policy going to go up? Is my premium going to go up?" And it's not something that they even want to have to handle, but they do. There were a lot of concerns. One particular person didn't think the impact was minimal, and I just think it's worth bringing up. There was no demand for ransom here. So there were only two and a half percent of Okta customers that were hit, but we don't know what the second play is, right, this could just be stage one. And I think that there was one particular person on the panel who truly believes that, that could be the case, that this was just the first step. And in his opinion, there wasn't anything specific about those 366 customers that made him feel like the bad actor was targeting them. So he does believe that this might be a step one of a step two situation. Now that's a, you know, bit of an alarmist opinion and the rest of the panel didn't really echo it, but it is something that's kind of worth bringing up out there. >> Well, you know, it just pays to be paranoid. I mean, you know, it was reported that supposedly, this hack was done by a 16-year-old in England, out of his, you know, mother's house, but who knows? You know, other actors might have paid that individual to see what they could do. It could have been a little bit of reconnaissance, throw the pawn in there and see how, you know, what the response is like. So I want to parse some of Todd McKinnon's statements from that Bloomberg interview. Look, we've always, you and I both have been impressed with Okta, and Todd McKinnon's management. His decisions, execution, leadership, super impressive individual. You know, big fans of the company. And in the interview, it looked like (chuckles) the guy hadn't slept in three weeks, so really you have to feel for him. But I think there are some statements that have to be unpacked. The first one, McKinnon took responsibility and talked about how they'll be transparent about steps they're taking in the future to avoid you know, similar problems. We talked about the near-zero technical impact, we don't need to go there anymore. But Erik, the two things that struck me as communication misfires were the last two. Especially the penultimate statement there, quote, "The competitor product was at fault for this breach." You know, by the way, I believe this to be true. Evidently, Sitel was not using Okta as its identity access platform. You know, we're all trying to figure out who that is. I can tell you it definitely was not CyberArk, we're still digging to find out who. But you know, you can't say in my view, "We are taking responsibility," and then later say it was the competitor's fault. And I know that's not what he meant, but that's kind of how it came across. And even if it's true, you just don't say that later in a conversation after saying that, "We own it." Now on the last point, love your thoughts on this, Erik? My first reaction was Okta's throwing Sitel under the bus. You know, Okta's asking for forgiveness from its customers, but it just shot its partner, and I kind of get it. This shows that they're taking action but I would've preferred something like, "Look, we've suspended our use of Sitel for the time being pending a more detailed review. We've shut down that relationship to block any exposures. Our focus right now is on customers, and we'll take a look at that down the road." But I have to say in looking at the timeline, it looks like Sitel did hide the ball a little bit, and so you can't blame 'em. And you know, what are your thoughts on that? >> Well, I'll go back to my panelists again, who unanimously agreed this was a masterclass on how not to handle crisis management. And I do feel for 'em, they're a fantastic management team. The acquisition of Auth0 alone, was just such a brilliant move that you have to kind of wonder what went wrong here, they clearly were blindsided. I agree with you that Sitel was not forthcoming quickly enough, and I have a feeling that, that's what got them in this position, in a bad PR. However, you can't go ahead and fire your partner and then turn around and ask other people not to fire you. Particularly until a very thorough investigation and a root cause analysis has been released to everyone. And the customers that I have spoken to don't believe that, that is done yet. Now, when I ask them directly, "Would you consider leaving Okta?" Their answers were, "No, it is not easy to rip and replace, and we're not done doing our due diligence." So it's interesting that Okta's customers are giving them that benefit of the doubt, but we haven't seen it, you know, flow the other way with Okta's partner. >> Yeah, and that's why I would've preferred a different public posture, because who knows? I mean, is Sitel the only partner that's not using Okta as its identity management, who knows? I'd like to learn more about that. And to your point, you know, maybe Okta's got to vertically integrate here and start, you know, supporting the lower level stuff directly itself, you know, and/or tightening up those partnerships. Now of course, the impact on Okta obviously has been really serious, big hit on the stock. You know, they're piling on inflation and quantitative tightening and rate hikes. But the real damage, as we've said, is trust and reputation, which Okta has earned, and now it has to work hard to earn back. And it's unfortunate. Look, Okta was founded in 2009 and in over a decade, you know, by my count, there have been no major incidents that are obvious. And we've seen the damage that hackers can do by going after the digital supply chain and third and fourth party providers. You know, rules on disclosure is still not tight and that maybe is part of the problem here. Perhaps the new law The House just sent over to President Biden, is going to help. But the point, Erik, is Okta is not alone here. It feels like they got what looked like a benign alert. Sitel wasn't fully transparent, and Okta is kind of fumbling on the comms, which creates this spiraling effect. Look, we're going to have to wait for the real near-term and midterm impacts, but longterm, I personally believe Okta is going to be fine. But they're going to have to sacrifice some margin possibly in the near to midterm, and go through more pain to regain the loyalty of its customers. And I really would like to hear from Okta that they understand that customers, the impact of this breach to customers, actually does go beyond the 366 that were possibly compromised. Erik, I'll give you the final word. >> Yeah, there's a couple of things there if I can have a moment, and yes, Okta... Well, there was a great quote, one of the guys said, "Okta's built like a tank, but they just gave the keys to a 16 year old valet." So he said, "There is some concern here." But yes, they are best of breed, they are the leader, but there is some concern. And every one of the guys I spoke to, all CISOs, said, "This is going to come up at renewal time. At a minimum, this is leverage. I have to ask them to audit their third parties and their partners. I have to bring this up when it comes time." And then the other one that's a little bit of a concern is data-wise. We saw Ping Identity jump big, from 9% net score to 24% net score. Don't know if it's causative or correlated, but it did happen. Another thing to be concerned about out there, is Microsoft is making absolutely massive strides in security. And all four of the panelists said, "Hey, I've got an E5 license, why don't I get the most out of it? I'm at least going to look." So for Okta to say, you know, "Hey, there's no impact here," it's just not true, there is an impact, they're saying what they need to say. But there's more to this, you know, their market cap definitely got hit. But you know, I think over time if the market stabilized, we could see that recover. It's a great management team, but they did just open the door for a big, big player like Microsoft. And you and I also both know that there's a lot of emerging names out there too, that would like to, you know, take a little bit of that share. >> And you know, but here's the thing, I want to keep going here for a minute. Microsoft got hit by lapses, Nvidia got hit by lapses. But I think, Erik, I feel like people, "Oh yeah, Microsoft, they get hit all the time." They're kind of used to it with Microsoft, right? So that's why I'm saying, it's really interesting here. Customers want to consolidate their security portfolio and the number of tools that they have, you know. But then you look at something like this and you say, "Okay, we're narrowing the blast radius. You know, maybe we have to rethink that and that creates more complexity," and so it's a very complicated situation. But you know, your point about Microsoft is ironic, right. Because you know, when you see Microsoft, Amazon, you know, customers get hit all the time and it's oftentimes the fault of the customer, or the partner. And so it seems like, again, coming back to the comms of this, is that really is the one thing that they just didn't get right. >> Yeah, the biggest takeaway from this without a doubt is it's not the impact of the breach, it was the impact of their delay and how they handled it and how they managed it. That's through the course of 25 CISOs I've spoken to now, that's unanimous. It's not about that this was a huge damaging hit, but the damage really came from their reaction or lack thereof. >> Yeah, and it's unfortunate, 'cause it feels like a lot of it was sort of, I want to say out of their control because obviously they could have audited the partners. But still, I feel like they got thrown a curve ball that they really had a, you know, difficult time, you know, parsing through that. All right, hey, we got to leave it there for now. Thank you, Erik Bradley, appreciate you coming on, It's always a pleasure to have you >> Always good talking to you too, Dave, thanks a lot. >> ETR team, you guys are amazing, do some great work. I want to thank Stephanie Chan, who helps me with background research for "Breaking Analysis". Kristen Martin and Cheryl Knight, help get the word out, as do some others. Alex Myerson on production, Alex, thank you. And Rob Hof, is our EIC at SiliconANGLE. Remember, all these episodes, they are available as podcasts. Wherever you listen, just search, "Breaking Analysis podcast." I publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. Check out etr.ai, it's the best in the business for real customer data real-time, near real-time, awesome platform. You can reach out to me at david.vellante@siliconangle.com, or @DVellante, or comment on my LinkedIn post. This is Dave Vellante, for Erik Bradley, and "theCUBE Insights", powered by ETR. Thanks for watching, be well, and we'll see you next time. (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> Okay, we're here talking about how you can better understand and manage the risks associated with the digital supply chain. How in this day and age where software comes from so many different places and sources throughout the ecosystem, how can organizations manage the risks associated with our dependence on software? And with me now are two great guests, Andrea Hall, who is a specialist solution architect and project manager for security and compliance at Red Hat. She's going to focus on public sector. And Andrew Block who's a distinguished architect at Red Hat Consulting, folks welcome. >> Welcome >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> You're very welcome. Andrea, let's start with you. Let's talk about regulations. What exists today that we should be aware of that organizations should be paying attention to? >> Oh sure, so the thing that comes to mind first being in the US is the presidential executive order on cybersecurity that came out a few months ago. Organizations are really paying attention to that. And in the US, it's having a ripple effect with policy, but we're also seeing policy considerations pop up in other countries, Australia and England. The supply chain is a big focus right now, of course, but we see these changes coming down the road as more and more government organizations are trying to secure their critical infrastructure. >> Is there kind of a leadership, or probably in other words, is somebody saying seeing what the UK does and say, okay, we're going to follow that template? Or is it just a variety and a mish mash with no sort of consolidation? How is that sort of playing out? >> I see a lot of organizations kind of basing their requirements on (indistinct) However, each organization has its own nuances. Each agency has its own nuances to how it wants them implemented. >> Andrew, maybe you could chime in here. What are you seeing when you talk to customers that are tuned into this issue? >> You know, as Andrea had just mentioned having that north star in terms of regulations is so fundamentally great for them because many of them especially in regulate industries, look to these regulations on how they apply their own policies. So at least it has some guidance on how to move forward because as we all know the secure software supply chain is getting news every day and how they react to it is something that I know all their leaders are asking themselves, especially those IT leaders. >> Andrea, when I talk to practitioners, sometimes they're frustrated. They understand they have to comply. They know new regulations are coming out, but sometimes it's hard for them to keep up. It would be helpful if you're sitting across the table from somebody who's frustrated and they ask you, what are your expectations? What are the trends in regulations? How do you see the current regulations evolving to specifically accommodate the digital supply chain and the security exposures and corollary requirements there? >> We see a lot of organizations struggling in the sense of trying to understand what the policy actually wants. Definitions are still a little bit vague, but implementation is also difficult because sometimes organizations will add more tools to their toolkit, adding a layer of complexity there. Really automation has to be pulled in. That's key to implementing this instead of adding more workload and more burden to your folks. It's really important for these organizations to pull stakeholders in the organization together. So the IT leaders bring together the developers, the security operations sit at the same table, talk about whether or not what needs to be implemented or what's proposed to be implemented, will affect the mission or in any way or disrupt operations. It's important for everybody to be on the same page so it doesn't slow anything down as you're trying to roll it out. >> And one of the things here is that we're seeing a lot of change with these new regulations and with a lot of organizations, any type of change is scary. And that is one area that they're looking for guidance not only in the tooling, but also how they apply it in the organization. >> I'll add on. >> Please. >> I'll add onto that and say, organizations really need to take into account the people side of things too. People need to understand what the impact is to the organization, so that they don't try to find the loopholes, they're buying into what needs to be done. They understand the why behind it. You for example, if you walk into your house, you normally close the door behind you. Security needs to be seen as that, as well, that's the culture and it's the habit. And it's ingrained in the fabric of the organization to live this way, not just implement the tools to do it. >> Right, and the number of doors you have in your infrastructure are a lot more than just a couple. Andrew mentioned sort of guidance and governments are obviously taking a more active role. I mean, sometimes I'm a cynic. I mean, the president Biden signs an executive order, but swipe of a pen doesn't really give us enough to go on. Do you think Andrea, that we're going to see new guidance from governments in the very near future? What are you expecting? >> I expect to see more conversations happening. I know that agencies who developed the policies are pulling together stakeholders and getting input. But I do see in the not too distant future, that mandates will be rolling out, yes. >> Well, so Andrew of course, Andrea, if you have a thought on this as well, but how do you see organizations dealing with adopting these new policies. >> Slowly, don't boil the ocean is one thing I tell a lot to every one of them, because a lot of these tooling, a lot of these concepts are foreign to them, brand new. How they adopt those and how they implement them, needs to be done in a very agile fashion, very slow and prescriptive. Go ahead and try to find one area of improvement and go ahead and work upon it and build upon it. Because not only does that normally make your organization more successful and secure, but also helps your organization just from a more out standpoint. One thing that you need to emphasize is that don't blame anyone. 'Cause a lot of times when you're going through this, you're reassessing your own supply chain. You might find where you could see improvements that need to be done. Don't blame things that may have occurred in the past. See how you can benefit from these lessons learned in the future. >> It's interesting you say that the blame game, I mean it used to be that failure meant you get fired and that's obviously has changed. As many have said, you know you're going to have incidents. It's how you respond to those incidents. What you learn from them. Do you have Andrew, any insights from specifically working with customers on securing their software supply chain? What can you tell us about what leading practitioners are doing today? >> They're going in and not only assessing what their software components consist of. Using tools like an SBOM, a software bill of materials, understand where all the components of their ecosystem and their lineage comes from. We're hearing almost every single day, new vulnerabilities that are being introduced in various software packages. By having that understanding of what is in your ecosystem, you can then better understand how to mitigate those concerns moving forward. >> Andrea, Andrew was just saying, one of the things is you don't just dive in. You've got to be careful. There's going to be ripple effects is what I'm inferring, but at the same time, there's a mandate to move quickly. Are there things that could accelerate the adoption of regulation or even the creation of regulations and that guidance in your view? What could accelerate this? >> As far as accelerating it goes, I think it's having those conversations proactively with the stakeholders in your organization and understanding the environment like Andrew said. Go ahead and get that baseline. And just know that whatever changes you make are maybe going to be audited down the road, because as we were moving towards this kind of third-party verification, that you're actually implementing things in order to do business with another organization. The importance of that, if organizations see that gravity to this, I think they will try to speed things up. I think that if organizations and the people in those organizations understand that why, that I talked about earlier and they understand how things like solar winds or things like the oil disruption that happened earlier this year. The personal effect to cyber events will help your organization move forward. Again, everybody's bought into the concept, everybody's working towards the same goals and they understand that why behind it. >> In addition to that, having tooling available, that makes it easy for them. You have a lot of individuals who this is all foreign, providing that base level tooling that aligns to a lot of the regulations that might be applicable within their real realm and their domain, makes it easier for them to start to complying and taking less burden off of them to be able to be successful. >> So it's a hard problem because Andrew, how do you deal with sort of the comment more tools, okay. But I look at that the Optiv map, if you've seen that. It makes your eyes cross. You've got so many tools, so much fragmentation, you're introducing new tools. Can automation help that? Is there hope for consolidation of that tools portfolio? >> Right now, this space is very emerging. It's very emerging, it's very fluid to be honest, 'cause there is actually mandates only a year or two old. But as they come over the course of time, however, I do see these types of tooling starting to consolidate where right now it seems like every vendor has a tool that tries to address this. It's being able to have the people work together, have more regulations that will come out that will allow us to start to redefine and solidify on certain tools like ISO standards. There are certain ones that I mentioned on as balance previously, there's now a ISO standard on SBOM there wasn't previously. So as more and more of these regulations come out, it makes it easier to provide that recommended set of tooling that organizations can start leveraging instead of vendor A, vendor B. >> Andrea, I said this before I was a cynic, but will give you the last word, give us some hope. I mean, obviously public policy is very important. A partnership between governments and industry, both the practitioners, the organizations that are buying these tools, as well as the technology industry got to work together in an ecosystem. Give us some hope. >> The hope I think will come from realizing that as you're doing this, as you are implementing these changes, you're in a sense trying to prevent those future incidents from happening. There's some assurance that you're doing everything that you can do here. It's a situation, it can be daunting, I'll put it that way. It can be really daunting for organizations, but just know that organizations like Red Hat are doing what we can to help you down the road. >> And really it's just continuing this whole shifting left mentality. The top of supply chain is just one component, but the introducing dev sec ops security at the beginning, that really will make the organizations become successful because this is not just a technology problem, It's a people issue as well. And being able to kind of package them all up together will help organizations as a whole. >> Yeah, so that's a really important point. You hear that term shift left. For years, people say, hey, you can't just bolt security on, as an afterthought, that's problematic. And that's the answer to that problem, right? Is shifting left meaning designing it in at the point of code, infrastructure as code, dev sec ops. That's where it starts, right? >> Exactly, being able to have security at the forefront and then have everything afterwards. Propagate from your security mindset. >> Excellent, okay, Andrea, Andrew, thanks so much for coming to the program today. >> Thank you for having us. >> Very welcome, thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante for The Cube. Your a global leader in enterprise tech coverage. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Okay, we're here talking about how you can better understand and manage the risks associated with the digital supply chain. How in this day and age where software comes from so many different places and sources throughout the ecosystem, how can organizations manage the risks associated with our dependence on software? And with me now are two great guests, Andrea Hall, who is a specialist solution architect and project manager for security and compliance at Red Hat. She's going to focus on public sector. And Andrew Block who's a distinguished architect at Red Hat Consulting, folks welcome. >> Welcome >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> You're very welcome. Andrea, let's start with you. Let's talk about regulations. What exists today that we should be aware of that organizations should be paying attention to? >> Oh sure, so the thing that comes to mind first being in the US is the presidential executive order on cybersecurity that came out a few months ago. Organizations are really paying attention to that. And in the US, it's having a ripple effect with policy, but we're also seeing policy considerations pop up in other countries, Australia and England. The supply chain is a big focus right now, of course, but we see these changes coming down the road as more and more government organizations are trying to secure their critical infrastructure. >> Is there kind of a leadership, or probably in other words, is somebody saying seeing what the UK does and say, okay, we're going to follow that template? Or is it just a variety and a mish mash with no sort of consolidation? How is that sort of playing out? >> I see a lot of organizations kind of basing their requirements on (indistinct) However, each organization has its own nuances. Each agency has its own nuances to how it wants them implemented. >> Andrew, maybe you could chime in here. What are you seeing when you talk to customers that are tuned into this issue? >> No as Andrea had just mentioned having that north star in terms of regulations is so fundamentally great for them because many of them especially in regulate industries, look to these regulations on how they apply their own policies. So at least it has some guidance on how to move forward because as we all know the secure software supply chain is getting news every day and how they react to it is something that I know all their leaders are asking themselves, especially those IT leaders. >> Andrea, when I talk to practitioners, sometimes they're frustrated. They understand they have to comply. They know new regulations are coming out, but sometimes it's hard for them to keep up. It would be helpful if you're sitting across the table from somebody who's frustrated and they ask you, what are your expectations? What are the trends in regulations? How do you see the current regulations evolving to specifically accommodate the digital supply chain and the security exposures and corollary requirements there? >> We see a lot of organizations struggling in the sense of trying to understand what the policy actually wants. Definitions are still a little bit vague, but implementation is also difficult because sometimes organizations will add more tools to their toolkit, adding a layer of complexity there. Really automation has to be pulled in. That's key to implementing this instead of adding more workload and more burden to your folks. It's really important for these organizations to pull stakeholders in the organization together. So the IT leaders bring together the developers, the security operations sit at the same table, talk about whether or not what needs to be implemented or what's proposed to be implemented, will affect the mission or in any way or disrupt operations. It's important for everybody to be on the same page so it doesn't slow anything down as you're trying to roll it out. >> And one of the things here is that we're seeing a lot of change with these new regulations and with a lot of organizations, any type of change is scary. And that is one area that they're looking for guidance not only in the tooling, but also how they apply it in the organization. >> I'll add on. >> Please. >> I'll add onto that and say, organizations really need to take into account the people side of things too. People need to understand what the impact is to the organization, so that they don't try to find the loopholes, they're buying into what needs to be done. They understand the why behind it. You for example, if you walk into your house, you normally close the door behind you. Security needs to be seen as that, as well, that's the culture and it's the habit. And it's ingrained in the fabric of the organization to live this way, not just implement the tools to do it. >> Right, and the number of doors you have in your infrastructure are a lot more than just a couple. Andrew mentioned sort of guidance and governments are obviously taking a more active role. I mean, sometimes I'm a cynic. I mean, the president Biden signs an executive order, but swipe of a pen doesn't really give us enough to go on. Do you think Andrea, that we're going to see new guidance from governments in the very near future? What are you expecting? >> I expect to see more conversations happening. I know that agencies who developed the policies are pulling together stakeholders and getting input. But I do see in the not too distant future, that mandates will be rolling out, yes. >> Well, so Andrew of course, Andrea, if you have a thought on this as well, but how do you see organizations dealing with adopting these new policies. >> Slowly, don't boil the ocean is one thing I tell a lot to every one of them, because a lot of these tooling, a lot of these concepts are foreign to them, brand new. How they adopt those and how they implement them, needs to be done in a very agile fashion, very slow and prescriptive. Go ahead and try to find one area of improvement and go ahead and work upon it and build upon it. Because not only does that normally make your organization more successful and secure, but also helps your organization just from a more out standpoint. One thing that you need to emphasize is that don't blame anyone. 'Cause a lot of times when you're going through this, you're reassessing your own supply chain. You might find where you could see improvements that need to be done. Don't blame things that may have occurred in the past. See how you can benefit from these lessons learned in the future. >> It's interesting you say that the blame game, I mean it used to be that failure meant you get fired and that's obviously has changed. As many have said, you know you're going to have incidents. It's how you respond to those incidents. What you learn from them. Do you have Andrew, any insights from specifically working with customers on securing their software supply chain? What can you tell us about what leading practitioners are doing today? >> They're going in and not only assessing what their software components consist of. Using tools like an SBOM, a software bill of materials, understand where all the components of their ecosystem and their lineage comes from. We're hearing almost every single day, new vulnerabilities that are being introduced in various software packages. By having that understanding of what is in your ecosystem, you can then better understand how to mitigate those concerns moving forward. >> Andrea, Andrew was just saying, one of the things is you don't just dive in. You've got to be careful. There's going to be ripple effects is what I'm inferring, but at the same time, there's a mandate to move quickly. Are there things that could accelerate the adoption of regulation or even the creation of regulations and that guidance in your view? What could accelerate this? >> As far as accelerating it goes, I think it's having those conversations proactively with the stakeholders in your organization and understanding the environment like Andrew said. Go ahead and get that baseline. And just know that whatever changes you make are maybe going to be audited down the road, because as we were moving towards this kind of third-party verification, that you're actually implementing things in order to do business with another organization. The importance of that, if organizations see that gravity to this, I think they will try to speed things up. I think that if organizations and the people in those organizations understand that why, that I talked about earlier and they understand how things like solar winds or things like the oil disruption that happened earlier this year. The personal effect to cyber events will help your organization move forward. Again, everybody's bought into the concept, everybody's working towards the same goals and they understand that why behind it. >> In addition to that, having tooling available, that makes it easy for them. You have a lot of individuals who this is all foreign, providing that base level tooling that aligns to a lot of the regulations that might be applicable within their real realm and their domain, makes it easier for them to start to complying and taking less burden off of them to be able to be successful. >> So it's a hard problem because Andrew, how do you deal with sort of the comment more tools, okay. But I look at that the Optiv map, if you've seen that. It makes your eyes cross. You've got so many tools, so much fragmentation, you're introducing new tools. Can automation help that? Is there hope for consolidation of that tools portfolio? >> Right now, this space is very emerging. It's very emergent, it's very fluid to be honest, 'cause there is actually mandates only a year or two old. But as they come over the course of time, however, I do see these types of tooling starting to consolidate where right now it seems like every vendor has a tool that tries to address this. It's being able to have the people work together, have more regulations that will come out that will allow us to start to redefine and solidify on certain tools like ISO standards. There are certain ones that I mentioned on as balance previously, there's now a ISO standard on SBOM there wasn't previously. So as more and more of these regulations come out, it makes it easier to provide that recommended set of tooling that organization is leveraging instead of vendor A, vendor B. >> Andrea, I said this before I was a cynic, but will give you the last word, give us some hope. I mean, obviously public policy is very important. A partnership between governments and industry, both the practitioners, the organizations that are buying these tools, as well as the technology industry got to work together in an ecosystem. Give us some hope. >> The hope I think will come from realizing that as you're doing this, as you are implementing these changes, you're in a sense trying to prevent those future incidents from happening. There's some assurance that you're doing everything that you can do here. It's a situation, it can be daunting, I'll put it that way. It can be really daunting for organizations, but just know that organizations like Red Hat are doing what we can to help you down the road. >> And really it's just continuing this whole shifting left mentality. The top of supply chain is just one component, but the introducing dev sec ops security at the beginning, that really will make the organizations become successful because this is not just a technology problem, It's a people issue as well. And being able to kind of package them all up together will help organizations as a whole. >> Yeah, so that's a really important point. You hear that term shift left. For years, people say, hey, you can't just bolt security on, as an afterthought, that's problematic. And that's the answer to that problem, right? Is shifting left meaning designing it in at the point of code, infrastructure as code, dev sec ops. That's where it starts, right? >> Exactly, being able to have security at the forefront and then have everything afterwards. Propagate from your security mindset. >> Excellent, okay, Andrea, Andrew, thanks so much for coming to the program today. >> Thank you for having us. >> Very welcome, thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante for The Cube. Your a global leader in enterprise tech coverage. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Okay, we're here talking about how you can better understand and manage the risks associated with the digital supply chain. How in this day and age where software comes from so many different places and sources throughout the ecosystem, how can organizations manage the risks associated with our dependence on software? And with me now are two great guests, Andrea Hall, who is a specialist solution architect and project manager for security and compliance at Red Hat. She's going to focus on public sector. And Andrew Block who's a distinguished architect at Red Hat Consulting, folks welcome. >> Welcome >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> You're very welcome. Andrea, let's start with you. Let's talk about regulations. What exists today that we should be aware of that organizations should be paying attention to? >> Oh sure, so the thing that comes to mind first being in the US is the presidential executive order on cybersecurity that came out a few months ago. Organizations are really paying attention to that. And in the US, it's having a ripple effect with policy, but we're also seeing policy considerations pop up in other countries, Australia and England. The supply chain is a big focus right now, of course, but we see these changes coming down the road as more and more government organizations are trying to secure their critical infrastructure. >> Is there kind of a leadership, or probably in other words, is somebody saying seeing what the UK does and say, okay, we're going to follow that template? Or is it just a variety and a mish mash with no sort of consolidation? How is that sort of playing out? >> I see a lot of organizations kind of basing their requirements on (indistinct) However, each organization has its own nuances. Each agency has its own nuances to how it wants them implemented. >> Andrew, maybe you could chime in here. What are you seeing when you talk to customers that are tuned into this issue? >> No as Andrea had just mentioned having that north star in terms of regulations is so fundamentally great for them because many of them especially in regulate industries, look to these regulations on how they apply their own policies. So at least it has some guidance on how to move forward because as we all know the secure software supply chain is getting news every day and how they react to it is something that I know all their leaders are asking themselves, especially those IT leaders. >> Andrea, when I talk to practitioners, sometimes they're frustrated. They understand they have to comply. They know new regulations are coming out, but sometimes it's hard for them to keep up. It would be helpful if you're sitting across the table from somebody who's frustrated and they ask you, what are your expectations? What are the trends in regulations? How do you see the current regulations evolving to specifically accommodate the digital supply chain and the security exposures and corollary requirements there? >> We see a lot of organizations struggling in the sense of trying to understand what the policy actually wants. Definitions are still a little bit vague, but implementation is also difficult because sometimes organizations will add more tools to their toolkit, adding a layer of complexity there. Really automation has to be pulled in. That's key to implementing this instead of adding more workload and more burden to your folks. It's really important for these organizations to pull stakeholders in the organization together. So the IT leaders bring together the developers, the security operations sit at the same table, talk about whether or not what needs to be implemented or what's proposed to be implemented, will affect the mission or in any way or disrupt operations. It's important for everybody to be on the same page so it doesn't slow anything down as you're trying to roll it out. >> And one of the things here is that we're seeing a lot of change with these new regulations and with a lot of organizations, any type of change is scary. And that is one area that they're looking for guidance not only in the tooling, but also how they apply it in the organization. >> I'll add on. >> Please. >> I'll add onto that and say, organizations really need to take into account the people side of things too. People need to understand what the impact is to the organization, so that they don't try to find the loopholes, they're buying into what needs to be done. They understand the why behind it. You for example, if you walk into your house, you normally close the door behind you. Security needs to be seen as that, as well, that's the culture and it's the habit. And it's ingrained in the fabric of the organization to live this way, not just implement the tools to do it. >> Right, and the number of doors you have in your infrastructure are a lot more than just a couple. Andrew mentioned sort of guidance and governments are obviously taking a more active role. I mean, sometimes I'm a cynic. I mean, the president Biden signs an executive order, but swipe of a pen doesn't really give us enough to go on. Do you think Andrea, that we're going to see new guidance from governments in the very near future? What are you expecting? >> I expect to see more conversations happening. I know that agencies who developed the policies are pulling together stakeholders and getting input. But I do see in the not too distant future, that mandates will be rolling out, yes. >> Well, so Andrew of course, Andrea, if you have a thought on this as well, but how do you see organizations dealing with adopting these new policies. >> Slowly, don't boil the ocean is one thing I tell a lot to every one of them, because a lot of these tooling, a lot of these concepts are foreign to them, brand new. How they adopt those and how they implement them, needs to be done in a very agile fashion, very slow and prescriptive. Go ahead and try to find one area of improvement and go ahead and work upon it and build upon it. Because not only does that normally make your organization more successful and secure, but also helps your organization just from a more out standpoint. One thing that you need to emphasize is that don't blame anyone. 'Cause a lot of times when you're going through this, you're reassessing your own supply chain. You might find where you could see improvements that need to be done. Don't blame things that may have occurred in the past. See how you can benefit from these lessons learned in the future. >> It's interesting you say that the blame game, I mean it used to be that failure meant you get fired and that's obviously has changed. As many have said, you know you're going to have incidents. It's how you respond to those incidents. What you learn from them. Do you have Andrew, any insights from specifically working with customers on securing their software supply chain? What can you tell us about what leading practitioners are doing today? >> They're going in and not only assessing what their software components consist of. Using tools like an SBOM, a software bill of materials, understand where all the components of their ecosystem and their lineage comes from. We're hearing almost every single day, new vulnerabilities that are being introduced in various software packages. By having that understanding of what is in your ecosystem, you can then better understand how to mitigate those concerns moving forward. >> Andrea, Andrew was just saying, one of the things is you don't just dive in. You've got to be careful. There's going to be ripple effects is what I'm inferring, but at the same time, there's a mandate to move quickly. Are there things that could accelerate the adoption of regulation or even the creation of regulations and that guidance in your view? What could accelerate this? >> As far as accelerating it goes, I think it's having those conversations proactively with the stakeholders in your organization and understanding the environment like Andrew said. Go ahead and get that baseline. And just know that whatever changes you make are maybe going to be audited down the road, because as we were moving towards this kind of third-party verification, that you're actually implementing things in order to do business with another organization. The importance of that, if organizations see that gravity to this, I think they will try to speed things up. I think that if organizations and the people in those organizations understand that why, that I talked about earlier and they understand how things like solar winds or things like the oil disruption that happened earlier this year. The personal effect to cyber events will help your organization move forward. Again, everybody's bought into the concept, everybody's working towards the same goals and they understand that why behind it. >> In addition to that, having tooling available, that makes it easy for them. You have a lot of individuals who this is all foreign, providing that base level tooling that aligns to a lot of the regulations that might be applicable within their real realm and their domain, makes it easier for them to start to complying and taking less burden off of them to be able to be successful. >> So it's a hard problem because Andrew, how do you deal with sort of the comment more tools, okay. But I look at that the Optiv map, if you've seen that. It makes your eyes cross. You've got so many tools, so much fragmentation, you're introducing new tools. Can automation help that? Is there hope for consolidation of that tools portfolio? >> Right now, this space is very emerging. It's very emergent, it's very fluid to be honest, 'cause there is actually mandates only a year or two old. But as they come over the course of time, however, I do see these types of tooling starting to consolidate where right now it seems like every vendor has a tool that tries to address this. It's being able to have the people work together, have more regulations that will come out that will allow us to start to redefine and solidify on certain tools like ISO standards. There are certain ones that I mentioned on as balance previously, there's now a ISO standard on SBOM there wasn't previously. So as more and more of these regulations come out, it makes it easier to provide that recommended set of tooling that organization is leveraging instead of vendor A, vendor B. >> Andrea, I said this before I was a cynic, but will give you the last word, give us some hope. I mean, obviously public policy is very important. A partnership between governments and industry, both the practitioners, the organizations that are buying these tools, as well as the technology industry got to work together in an ecosystem. Give us some hope. >> The hope I think will come from realizing that as you're doing this, as you are implementing these changes, you're in a sense trying to prevent those future incidents from happening. There's some assurance that you're doing everything that you can do here. It's a situation, it can be daunting, I'll put it that way. It can be really daunting for organizations, but just know that organizations like Red Hat are doing what we can to help you down the road. >> And really it's just continuing this whole shifting left mentality. The top of supply chain is just one component, but the introducing dev sec ops security at the beginning, that really will make the organizations become successful because this is not just a technology problem, It's a people issue as well. And being able to kind of package them all up together will help organizations as a whole. >> Yeah, so that's a really important point. You hear that term shift left. For years, people say, hey, you can't just bolt security on, as an afterthought, that's problematic. And that's the answer to that problem, right? Is shifting left meaning designing it in at the point of code, infrastructure as code, dev sec ops. That's where it starts, right? >> Exactly, being able to have security at the forefront and then have everything afterwards. Propagate from your security mindset. >> Excellent, okay, Andrea, Andrew, thanks so much for coming to the program today. >> Thank you for having us. >> Very welcome, thanks for watching. This is Dave Vellante for The Cube. Your a global leader in enterprise tech coverage. (soft music)

>>Hello from Las Vegas. It's the cube live at AWS reinvent 2021, Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson here. We're in our fourth day, Dave, we have two live sets of the kid. There's a dueling set right across from us, kind of like dueling pianos, only a little bit louder. We have had about a hundred guests on the program at AWS reinvent this year. And we're pleased to welcome back. One of our alumni, Richard Potter joins us the CEO of peak. Richard. Welcome back to the cube. >>Great to be here. Talk to >>Us. So we haven't seen you in a couple of years. Talk to us about what's going on at pink. I know there's some news. >>Yeah, yeah. Loads of things going on at peak. I mean, we've been growing really quick. So since the last time you saw us, which was yeah, in London a few years ago, uh, we've grown to be the, sort of essentially the global leader in decision intelligence systems. Um, us as an AI company, we specialize in putting artificial intelligence right into the heart of how companies run their businesses and make their day-to-day decisions, which is why we call it decision intelligence. We think it's the biggest thing in software and, uh, probably the biggest new category of software. Um, we will see this decade. So it's super exciting to be in that position and great to be back chatting to you guys on the cube. When were you based founded? We were founded in 2016. Uh, and, uh, yeah. And you can probably tell by my accent English company headquartered in Manchester, but we're global. Now we have operations in India. We have a couple of development centers in India. We have a growing customer base in Asia and a growing customer base in the U S as well. Uh, so yeah, we're kind of international, but born out of, uh, Northern English roots. >>I like it. Talk to me about back in 2016, what were some of the gaps in the market that you saw from a, because you know, as, as here we are in almost 20, 22, every company is a data company. They have to be being able to extract intelligence timely hard. What gaps did you see back in 2016 >>Back then a read on the market was really simple, which was the companies that are going to harness data to run themselves well, we'll win, but the most companies were struggling to make that change to be data-driven. So our rich was, you know, as founders, there's three of us who started the business was trying to explore that problem. Like what, what, what stops companies running on data? And there's loads of reasons, right? Tech ones, uh, skills, ones, even just like business people using data in their day-to-day decision-making rather than say their gut-feel, which I think is also a data-driven decision. They just don't understand that necessarily. Uh, so we really honed in on that problem and we grew quite quickly to be the leading business in that sort of applied data space in the UK, you know, a market leader in, uh, helping companies perform better with data. And over time that has taken us on this journey to be the sort of global leader in decision intelligence, which is really cool. But the itch we were scratching was that, Hey, you know, there's something in this, we think companies that do this and do it well are gonna win, but no one's doing it. So why is that? And then, and then we've built software that effectively responds to that opportunity. >>You mentioned harnessing data. Yeah. How do you balance the harnessing of data successfully with being harnessed by data? Because, because if you're talking about the concept of Dai yeah. Who's making the decision. If the machine is making the decision, I better trust it. Why should I trust it? So how do you, how do you strike that balance to get people to trust what you're doing? The work you're doing for them behind the scenes? Yeah, >>I think it's, it's really important that humans trust the machines that they're working alongside. And I think that's the big change we're seeing, right? So this is a new industrial revolution, the intelligence era that we're in, but all previous industrial revolutions have all amplified human potential. They've amplified like a physical potential, whether it was, you know, machinery, steam, power and so on, or computers have amplified our cognitive capability, but humans have always controlled those machines. If you think about it now in the intelligence era, our machines can think with us, they can think alongside us. So we have to learn how to, as people, how to co-exist with those machines and then let those machines amplify us and essentially make us superhuman and what we do. And that's a part of the challenge we face at peak as to how do we make, how do we humanize that? >>How do we make it such that everyone trusts the machine? Uh, and we always have that human in the loop is the way we think about it. Uh, decision intelligence empowers us to be awesome at our jobs, make the great decisions all the time. If we trust the machine so much that we just want it to make the decision for us, we can let it, but we're always in control and we're in control of how it thinks and what it does. And it's our job as a software company to build software that lets you understand why that recommendation or that decision is being suggested to you. So I think, I think the coexistence of our machines alongside people in a new way that a human to machine interface is going to completely change with artificial intelligence and decision intelligence and, and us as people we're going to have to relearn how we, how we work with our technology. >>You just mentioned a couple of really good words in terms of, of the people, part of people, process and technologies, amplify and empower. Those are two things that stuck out at me is that's what you're giving people in any, whether they're an operations or finance or marketing, it's the amplification to do their jobs, empowering them to do their jobs with data that will help make them more skilled and better able to make decisions that benefit themselves, the company. >>That's exactly right. Yeah, because if you, if you redact doing business to its basics, it's, it's actually just making decisions, right. Companies are make great decisions. They win and those decisions could be anything, you know, they could be product decisions, they could be pricing decisions, operational supply chain decisions, but it's a sequence of decisions that creates value for my company. And so that's why I believe this technology is so empowering because as people we're, we're actually great at making those decisions. What we're not great at is making those decisions 24 by seven really, really quickly, very consistently. So, you know, humans are awesome at forecasting. They're awesome at choosing pricing that would appeal to other people, but alongside this technology, we can have machines that do a lot of that thinking for us, speed us up and help us make more, um, quick, great consistently awesome decisions. And then that just makes us great at our jobs. If you're a marketeer or in finance or in supply chain, you, you become awesome. And I think that that, that empowerment is key to the sort of humanization of AI in business. And actually that's what it means in practice. It isn't AI coming for peoples' jobs or replacing jobs. It's it's AI helping us all be gray. And our companies grow faster with wider profit margins when we do that, which creates more jobs for people, which is really cool. >>So, um, we talk about people trusting machines to do things for them. Uh, it's, it's not necessarily a new concept. We just sort of take some of those things for granted. Um, I trust my refrigerator at home to measure the internal temperature and make adjustments as necessary. Turn the compressor on, turn the compressor off. And I'm sorry, I you're from England refrigerators, this thing, it's a box. We use it to refrigerate our beer, which I took to make it >>Cold, which I know. >>So it's kind of a, you know, got to love those cliches, but so can you give us an example of a situation where a customer is trusting something that it's gotten from DEI from peak, where if you, as the CEO heard that anecdotal story, you would be absolutely delighted. >>Well, I think the earth is loads of great examples of that. So, um, the reason we call it decision intelligence decision intelligence is because it's the, it's applying AI into the active decision making, right? Uh, artificial intelligence or machine learning is making a prediction or a categorization over a huge data set. Right? But that on its own is kind of useless. You need to take that prediction that forward looking view and then effectively infuse it with business logic constraints and like knowledge of how your company works to give you a recommendation. Right? So let's just say I'm a marketeer and I'm trying to work out who I should send a particular offer to on black Friday over email, or even not even over email over any channel. When, if I, if I was CEO and I heard one of my teams say, Hey, what I've done is I've used the decision intelligence platform to tell me who buy, who are my customers that are in market for X type of products at why kind of price and what channels do they like to be communicated to over? >>Uh, I would think that's awesome. And then that market here, we're typically infuse that message with the sort of language and content that would appeal to that customer. But they're using the artificial intelligence to be super targeted and really like deliver the message to that person in the way they want to consume it, which creates a really enjoyable experience as a customer. You don't feel spammed or you don't feel like it's effectively used. You feel like you're having a direct one-to-one personal communication with the brand or retailer. That's talking to you, which in itself creates loyalty and like increases the lifetime value of that relationship, which is great for the retailer. But I think using AI for those kinds of decisions is essentially like a great example of like amplifying the human potential of a marketing team for this. >>Absolutely. Because what we expect as consumers, regardless of what the product or service is, is that we want brands to know who we are, what we want. Don't if I just bought a tent on Amazon, don't show me more tests, show me other things that go with it. I want you to know that. And so we have this expectation that brands when whatever industry they're in, no, oh, Richard bought this. >>Exactly, exactly. So, and I think that it starts to really jar. Now you've got some retailers and brands doing this really well, and you get really enjoyable, uh, communications at the frequency you want with the offers and the promotions that were irrelevant to you. When you just start to get trapped, you know, effectively stalked around the internet for something you've already bought, it becomes really jarring and frustrating. And then that actually creates a negative brand effect for that particular brand. So it's super important that these retailers, CPG com everyone really moves to this way of thinking and tries to have a direct. And that's the beauty of AI and decision intelligence. I think for retail, if we get into retail specifically, it allows us to treat every individual customer individually because we can use the machine to make decisions on a per customer basis. And then our marketing can be amplified by that. Whereas in the past, we bucketed customers into groups and just treated them all the same, which does create a rather impersonal experience. >>Yeah. Which can be a negative for a brand, as you mentioned, but give them the ability to treat people individually, but at scale, and in real time, one of the things we learned in the pandemic is that real-time data access isn't no is not a nice to have. It's an essential one of the themes too, that Dave and I have been talking about the last few days is that we're hearing at re-invent is every company has to be a data company. Yep. Talk to me about with that in mind, are you talking to more chief data officers, chief digital officers, where are your customer conversations as we've we're in this explosion of data? >>It's a great question though. So if every company has to be a data company and a company that's powered by AI, that means you have to be talking to everyone really. So your chief data, chief chief information officers, chief data officers, CEO, CFOs, and every sort of head of business, head of line of business, it's really important. So what we do at peak is as a decision intelligence platform, peak itself, unifies everything you need in one cloud platform, into a single software product that gives you all the infrastructure for your technical teams to process data for your data scientists to create the intelligence, but then it gives you a place to work for your business teams. So unifies your whole business around a platform. And then that means our conversations. As you know, as the provider of that technology are with technical teams, they're with business teams, they're with business leaders because it has to permeate everything. So I think it's, I think that's the future companies will have to effectively run alongside they'll create their own intelligence, basically on a dedicated platform like peek. And that intelligence will then be distributed across the whole business, um, with w w you know, in the way we do it. So I think it's really cool and exciting. Yeah. >>Let let's say hypothetically, now this is something that would never happen, but just hypothetically say I'm an American goes to England to take over coaching, a British soccer, soccer, or football. Okay. I sounds crazy, but how would I, how would I use peak and Dai and BI to help improve my winning percentage if I cared about winning? Because it's possible that I would, I I'm really only interested in the personal development of my, of my team as individuals, but, but, but what would in athletics? Is that something that is a, >>I think possible? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you're seeing an explosion of data science and analytics and AI techniques being used in sport. Right. I mean, peak we're very much focused on the commercial application of AI with our platform. So we, we work with, uh, commercial businesses and so on, but in that space, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, if you think about it, what do you need to create that intelligence? You need data and you can see it on the back of every players share. They've got the little devices that are gathering data in training in matches, constantly monitored. Those data points, feed algorithms. Those algorithms can show us if a player is fatigued, you know, where they are, or they can even show us, uh, deep learning techniques can help us see patterns of play and understand like how should we better set our teams up? How should we get players to interact in for, you know, on a soccer field? Um, and yeah, and you're seeing premier league clubs use those sort of techniques all the time. We don't do that at peak, but yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I think those sort of things are readily available now for, uh, those kinds of clubs to do that kind of stuff. >>I think Dave is angling to be a consultant on Ted last. So I think what I'm hearing last question for you, you guys are from an AWS relationship perspective. Richard, you guys were announced just yesterday, you're named by AWS as an ISB partner, APN partner of the year for 2021 for UK. And I, congratulations. Talk to us a little bit about that. >>Yeah, it was really, I kind of, yeah, it's super exciting for us. It's a great recognition. Obviously they give one of those awards out every year, uh, as a global company, it's nice to have that sort of stamp of approval that AWS sees us as their independent software vendor partner of the year. It's a, it's a great recognition for us because we come from a heritage of, uh, starting peak as a consulting company, actually just to do whatever it took to help our customers be successful. And in doing that, we had an idea for a software platform. Uh, we got some venture funding to do that, and we've turned into a, you know, we became a software company a couple of years after we founded, uh, and to get to this point now a few years later where AWS are recognizing us as their software vendor partner of the year is, um, a huge team. Fantastic. It's a huge Testament to, uh, to our engineering teams and the, and the, and the technical teams at peak that we've built something so impactful. Yeah, >>Absolutely. That validation is really, really critical. And last question in our last 30 seconds or so what are some of the things on the roadmap that you're excited for for, for peak for 20 22, 22 >>Is going to be a huge year for us. Cause I think it's the year that, uh, our platform goes out there into the wild, into the mainstream. So we made a couple of big announcements in the last few weeks. Uh, we've launched some new products on the pig platform. So there's three big platform, product sets. Now, one very much geared around creating your AI ready data set. That's called doc, uh, one that's very much geared around creating your intelligence, which is factory. And then an area where our business like the business teams of our customers go to work, which is called work actually. So those three big feature sets are going to be available from January. And the platform is being totally opened up as a self-serve platform for anyone anywhere to build upon. So I think it's a huge moment for decision intelligence. Garner is saying decision intelligence is the big tech trend of next year. And we feel as the market leader, we've got the platform that can help everyone get on, get on that trend really. So I think we're really looking forward to 2022 and what it brings. And, um, we think that our platform and our company is in a great shape to help more and more businesses take that leap into being powered by decision Intel. >>It sounds exciting, Richard, so we'll have to follow up with you next year and see what's going on. We appreciate you joining us on the cube, talking about peep, what you're doing, your relationship with AWS and how impactful decision intelligence can be for everybody. We appreciate it. Thanks for Dave Nicholson. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube, the global leader in live tech coverage.

>>Mhm Yeah, this is Dave valentin. I'd like to welcome you back to the cubes coverage of couch base connect online with the theme of this event is modernized now and one of the big announcements is Capella which of course as you all undoubtedly know is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, which is latin for charioteer, yep, you can find that in the constellation of that constellation of the night sky in late february, early March in the northern hemisphere. So with that little tidbit, I'd like to welcome in scott Anderson to the cube, who is the senior vice president of product management and business operations. That couch base scott welcome. Good to see you. >>Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. >>That's our pleasure. So you've launched couch based cappella if I understand correctly, it's built on couch based server seven which he launched just a few months ago in the middle of the summer. Can you give us an overview of Capella? >>Yeah, absolutely. So couch based Capellas are fully managed databases. Service for enterprise applications. One of the goals of launching Capella and our databases is service offering that we just announced today is about increasing the accessibility of couch base so it's about making it easy for a developer or an enterprise to get up and running in just a few clicks in a couple of minutes Um and about making it more affordable and accessible through the development phase through the test phase, the production phase. So really it's about ease of use having the right offerings aligned to the phase of development that customers in and eventually into the production of their enterprise application leveraging capella and couch based Server seven. >>So let me ask you, I I went pretty deep with ravi on the, on the technical side and I want to understand what makes Capella different from some of the competitive offerings. Is it the sort of the fundamentals that I learned from Ravi about how you guys have have have really done an awesome focus on on on sequel but been able to maintain acid compliance deal with distributed architectural challenges and then bringing that over to database as a service. Is that the fundamental, what are some of the other differentiators? >>Yeah, that that is the fundamental, we have an amazing platform that Roddy and our core engineering team built and we've talked about that and I think Robbie mentioned that the ease of sequel and applying that to a documented oriented database, then combining some of those capabilities with the ease of use, the ability that you can get up and running, signing up for our free trial couple minutes later you've got a database endpoint that is fully managed by couch base. And so we're doing the monitoring, we're doing alerting, we have calls to action based off what events are occurring within the database environment, ensuring it's always available as well as doing kind of the mundane tasks of backup and recovery, uh scaling the environment, upgrades and so forth. So it's really about ease of use, making it um leveraging are incredibly robust, broad platform um and then making that in different consumable model for our customers and developers and getting started really easily. The other thing that we have done is really leverage the best practices over the last 10 or 11 years of some of the largest enterprises in the world using couch based for the mission critical applications. So we've codified those best practices and that's how we keep that service, high performance, always on highly available. And that's one of the core value propositions that were able to bring with Capella. It's really about management capability, global visibility of your clusters coupled with what we believe is the best no sequel database in the marketplace today. >>What about what about cost, total cost of ownership as you scale a lot of times when you scale out, you get dis economies of scale, it's kind of like, you know, you get that negative curve, uh what are you seeing? >>Yeah, we've done a third party benchmark studies which have proven out how we are able to literally scale the environment uh and continue on that curve as you add notes, you're getting that incremental performance that you would expect. The other thing that we do that's really unique within couch bases are multidimensional scaling and this allows you to place our services, things like data index, query, full text search indexes and analytics, you can co locate those on single nodes within a cluster or you can have dedicated notes for each one of those services. The reason that is important is you get work line isolation for those specific services within our cluster. The other thing that you can do is you can match the compute infrastructure to the needs of each one of those services. So some services like query are much more core, compute intensive and that allows you to have a specific instance type that is optimized for that, reducing your costs, indexes where you want very fast performance, you may want to have a higher amount of memory relative to the number of course. So that ability to mix and match the infrastructure with an existing cluster allows us to lower overall costs. That coupled with their blazing fast performance with our in memory architecture allows people to get incredible performance at scale. Um, what we've proven out in the study that I mentioned earlier is we have that linear scalability and you're able to do more for less at the end of the day, you're getting more operations per second per dollar if you want to use that as a metric. >>Got it. Thank you for that. What do customers need to think about when they want to get started with Capela? How difficult is it for people to jump in? >>It is incredibly simple. It's as simple as going to couch base dot com clicking on start your free trial, You're going to that free trial, you provide a minimal set of information for us and it's literally a few clicks and you're going to have a database endpoint within three minutes and that's really been a foundation of, of what we've been focused on over the last 6-9 months is removing any friction we can in the process because our goal is to give a tremendous user experience and get people up and running as quickly as possible. So we're really, really proud of that. And then from a paid offering perspective, we have a number of offerings which are really aligned to the needs of each customer, some individuals who want a larger cluster and they want to be able to pay for that. We've optimized service levels around that in terms of level support and the features that we think are appropriate for a dev cycle, a test cycle and then into production and lastly we will be announcing a number of promotional starter pack bundles, really trying to couple the overall service that we have with Capella with some of our expertise, so helping new users get up and running in terms of things like index definitions, what's the best way to do document design and schema within within couch base. Our end goal is to match these services and bundles with the life cycle of application development. So in my development phase what's the offering for me as I move for production readiness, what services capabilities I need and then production and the ongoing if I expand my use. So we've been really focused on, how do we get people up up and running as quickly as possible and how do we get them to production as quickly as possible at the lowest total cost? >>That's nice. That's a nice accelerant for customers. Um, so as you heard upfront, I did a little research about the name Capella. How did you choose it and why? >>Well, one thing I learned early in my career is naming is not a strong suit of mine. I leave that to John or our chief marketing officer in the overall team. Um, we all have opinions, but I trust John and we went through, I think it was over 60 names, seven rounds of debate to come up with capella, but we want to name of strength. We like the alliteration couch, basic capella together. Um, one of the little facts may have tipped it over is I believe in latin, it means little goats. So we kind of played from the barriers. Always think to jerry rice goat, greatest of all time. So that was a nice play on that also. Um, but I leave it to them and really happy with the overall name, love the liberation, Love some of the hidden meanings within that. Um, and we're really, really excited about getting going. So you wouldn't want me to pick the name. Um, I get a vote. Um, but I would say my overall influence is a little bit lower than where john's is and matt cain, who I know you spoke with previously. >>I love it, jerry rice definitely is a little go because I'm from New England. So of course tom we think tom brady is the big goat. I >>know we've, I grew up in that joe Montana era, so maybe you can take that off line after this interview. We can have our own debate, but I guess super bowl trophies or the ultimate measure at the end of the day. >>Now I've got a little stat for you. So, so Capella is also one of the 88 modern constellations as adopted by the International Astronomical Union. I. E. Not one of the ancient constellations. Pretty clever. Right. >>Exactly. >>Scott is great to have you on the cube. Thanks so much. Really, >>thank you so much. >>All right. And thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Our pleasure. Thank you much of the cubes coverage of couch based connect 2021. Keep it right there for more great content. Mm mhm

>>Hello, and welcome back to the cubes coverage of splunk.com here in the virtual studios in Silicon valley broadcasting around the world's a virtual event. Um, John four-year host of the queue. We've got a great guest, Zach brown, chief executive officer of McLaren racing, really looking forward to this interview, Zach, welcome to the queue. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. So we have a huge fan base in the tech community. A lot of geeks love the neurons. They love the tech behind the sport. Uh, and Netflix is driving to survive. Series has absolutely catapulted the popularity of F1 in the tech community. So congratulations on all the success in that program and on, and then on the >>Thank you very much, it's been a, it's been a good run. We've won our first race in a while, but we still have a ways to go to get in that, uh, world championship that, uh, >>So for the techies out there and the folks in our audience that aren't familiar with, the specifics of the racing team and the dynamics, take a minute to explain what you guys do. >>Uh, so McLaren racing, uh, which has a variety of, uh, racing teams, uh, a formula one team in indie car team and extremely team and an e-sports team. Uh, we're the second most successful form of the one team in the history of sport. Now 183 wins 182, uh, when I joined 20 world championships and, uh, we're, we're close to a thousand people to, to run a couple of racing cars and, uh, currently third in the championship, uh, with Lando Norris and, uh, Daniel, Ricardo. >>So talk about the, um, the, the dynamics of the spore. Obviously data is big part of it. Uh, we see the, a lot of the coverage. You can see anything can happen overnight. It's very quick. Um, technology has been being, uh, playing a big role in sport. What's your vision on how that's evolving? Are you happy with where things are, uh, and where do you see it going? >>Yeah, it does some interesting stats. So, um, the car that qualifies first at the beginning of the year, if you didn't touch, it would be last by the end of the year. So that's the pace of a development of a, of a formula one car. We change a, uh, and develop a new part on the car every 14 minutes, 365 days, days a year. Um, and technology plays a huge role. Uh, it's, it's probably the most technical, um, evolved sport in the world. Uh, both safety data, uh, the innovation it's it's awesome. And what a lot of people don't know is a lot of what we develop in a formula. One car ends up in other parts of the world, whether it was a ventilators that we helped develop for the UK government, uh, to working with our, uh, various partners or safety and innovation in the automotive industry. >>You know, I love it. I always loved the IOT internet of things, story around cars, because sensors or instrumentation is a big part of it. Um, and it all comes together. So it's pretty, it's not simple. No, give it feel, give it a taste a little bit about what's it. How complicated is it, how you guys pay attention to the details? What's important. Take us through some of the, some of the inside the ropes around the IOT of the sensors and all the data. >>Yeah. So we have over 300 sensors on our race car. We collect the one and a half terabytes of data. Every race weekend, we have a thousand people, um, and the strong majority of those are working around data and technology, as opposed to physically touching the car out of those thousand people, you probably only have about 60 or 70. They're actually touch the race card at a race weekend. We've been doing connected cars for about 25 years. So that's kind of a new thing here to, to most people, but we've been communicating back and forth with our race car for, for decades all around the world. And what a lot of people don't realize is it all starts in our mission control back in our factory in Woking, England. So wherever we are around the world, the racing team actually starts in England. >>So I want to ask you about the personalities on the team. How big is the staff? What's the makeup of the personnel has to get the drivers. They're critical. They're a very dynamic personalities. We'll come to the side question on that later, but what's the staff look like on when you guys put this together. So you get, you get race day and you got back office support. >>What's the team look like? Yeah. So you've got about a thousand people that, that make up the collective team. You'll have about a hundred in marketing. Uh, you'll have about a hundred in finance, HR, and then you kind of get to the, the racing team. If you'd like 800 people, you have about a hundred people traveling to each race, uh, about 50 people back at the factory, working with data and communications that are grand Prix weekend. And then everybody else is designing manufacturing, production laminating. So we run 24, 7 shifts, uh, three shifts, uh, in certain parts. Uh, we develop, uh, 85% of the car changes of what's allowed to be changed start of the year to the, the end of the year. So the development is, is unbelievable. >>I know you're here in the U S for the U S grand Prix in Austin. Um, coming up, I'm just curious how cars get transported. >>Uh, w when we're traveling around the world, uh, they, they travel on 7 47 and are flown around the world. And then when we're in Europe, we have about 18 trucks that were communing around when we're kind of in the European part of the circuit is usually in the middle of the year. But when we're going to Australia or Singapore, Bahrain, those are, those are on planes form of the one actually does that. They give us an allocation of, of space, and then we have to write a check if we need more space than where >>Yeah. We're allowed. Yeah. And that brings up the security question, because honestly, there's a lot of fans, a lot of people are into it. Also, this potentially security risks. Have you guys thought about that obviously like physical moving the supply chain around from event event, but also technology risk. Um, how do you guys think about security? >>Yeah, it's, it's critically important. We've had, uh, fortunately we've not had any breach of our technology. We have had a breach in the late nineties of our radio communications and, uh, it was in Australia, Mika Hakkinen and a fan, uh, who I think was probably having some fun and were able to break into our radio channel and actually asked Mika to pit. He pitted team wasn't ready. And fortunately, we will run in one, two, but we actually had to reverse the drivers. So security is >>Critically important, probably Katie Scrivener, and they all look, I just hack the radio, was talking to the driver. That is a funny story, but it could be serious. I mean, now you have all kinds of >>The stuff going on and, and, you know, there's a lot of money at stake, you know, so, you know, we're fortunate in this particular instance, it didn't hurt us cause we were running one, two, so we could reverse the drivers and the right guide one. Um, but you know, that could decide, uh, a world championship and you have, you know, tens of millions of dollars online, but even besides the economics, we want to win races. >>You know, what's funny is that you guys have a lot of serious on the line stakes with these races, but you're known for having a lot of fun, the team team dynamic. I have to ask you, when you finish on the podium one and two, there's a Shui with the drivers. How'd that go down. It was pretty, pretty a big spectacle online and >>Yeah, it was, it was good, fun. That's something, obviously Daniel Ricardo is kind of developed as his thing when he, uh, when he wins. And, uh, when we were, uh, before we went on the podium, he said to me, you're going to do the shoe. Yes, of course. In the car show you got to do, we have to like a bunch of 12 year old kids, uh, on the podium, but that's where we're just big kids going, motor racing and >>The end of the day. Well, I gotta say you guys come across really strong as a team, and I love the fun and, you know, competitive side. So congratulations on that, I think is good on the competitive side, take me through the advantage, driving the advantage with data, because that's really the theme here at.com, which is Splunk, which they're a big partner, as well as your other sponsors. Data's big, you know, and it's striving an advantage. Where do you see that coming from? Take us through where you guys see the advantages. Yes. >>So, you know, everything we do is, is precision and, you know, every second, every 10th counts and, um, you know, you can get all this data in, but what do you do with this data? And the humans can, uh, real, uh, react as quickly as is, you know, people like Splunk who can help us, uh, not only collect data, but help us understand data. And, um, you know, typically there's one pit stop, which can be the difference between winning and losing. Um, you have all these different scenarios playing out with weather with tire wear competition. And so, you know, we live by data. We didn't, uh, when, in, in Russia, when we, uh, could have, and it was because we got a bit emotionally caught up in the excitement of trying to win the race instead of staying disciplined and focused on, on data. And so it's a very data-driven sport when I'm on the pit wall, there's a thing called racer instinct, which is my 30 years in the sport. And, uh, your experience and your kind of your gut to make decisions. And every time our team makes a decision that I'm sitting there going, I'm not sure that was the right decision. They're staring at data. I'm not, I'm trusting my 30 years of experience. They'd beat me nine out of 10. >>Yeah. I mean, you know, this is a huge topic too, in the industry, explainable AI is one of the hottest trends in computer science where there's so much algorithms involved. The gut instinct is now coming back. What algorithms are available, knowing when to deploy what algorithms or what data to pay attention to is a huge new gut factor. Yep. Can you explain how the young drivers and the experience folks in the industry are dealing with this new instinct full data-driven? >>Yeah. That's, you know, that's what we have 50 people back at the factory doing, and they're looking at all sorts of information coming in, and then they're taking that information and they're feeding it to our head of strategy. Who's then feeding it to our racing director. Who's getting all these data points in from tire to performance, to reliability, and then the human data from both drivers coming through their engineers. And then he gets all that information in. He has to process it immediately and make decisions, but it's, it's a data-driven sport. >>I saw Lando walking around, got a selfie with them. It's great. Everyone's loving it on Twitter. My family, like get an autograph, the future of the sport. He's a young young driver. So that instincts coming in the future sport comes up all the time. The tires are a big discussion point, but also you've got a lot of presets going on, a lot of data, a lot of going on and you see the future where there's remote, you know, kind of video game you're in the pit wall and you can make decisions and deploy on behalf of the drivers. Is that something that >>Well, that technology is there and we used to do that, but now it's been outlawed because there's a real push to make sure the drivers are driving the car. So that technology is here. It has been deployed in the past. We could do it, but we're trying to find as a sport, the balance between, you know, letting the driver do it. So he, or she might make a mistake and a little bit of excitement to it. So, um, we now there are certain protocols on what we communicate. Um, we can't, um, everything has to be driver fed into the car. So we can now you'll hear all sorts of codes that we're talking through, which there are, um, about 300 different adjustments the driver can make on the steering wheel, which is unbelievable. And so that's us seeing information, getting data in coming to conclusions that we're giving him or her information that we think will help make the car >>A lot of new dimensions for drivers to think about when they're being successful with the gut, that the track data everything's kind of coming together. >>Yeah. It's amazing. Um, when you listen to these drivers on the radio, you forget that they're going 200 plus miles an hour. Cause they sound quite relaxed in this very, you know, open and easy communication of here's what I'm feeling with. Again, we're talking all these codes and then we all, because we can hear each other, there's a lot of trickery that goes on. So for a driver to be going to turn a miles an hour, taking this information and then know what code we're talking, are we kind of throwing a code out there to put the competition off is pretty amazing that they can take this all in. >>You know, I wish I was younger again, like we're old school and the younger generation, I was having a few conversations with a lot of the young audience. They wanted me to ask you, when are you guys going to metaverse the tracks? When can I get involved and participate and maybe even make the team, or how do I become more active, engaged with the McLaren racing team? >>And that technology is almost, we're actually, um, that's in development. So I, I think it won't be long before, you know, Sunday you can log on, uh, and, and race Lando around Monaco and be in the race. So that, that technology is around the corner. >>That's the shadow thing to developing. I see that. E-sports just quick. I know you've got to go on, but last minute we have here, e-sports, what's the future of e-sports with the team, >>But e-sports been great for the sport. You know, it's gone from, you know, when I was growing up, it was video games and now it's real simulation. And, uh, so we've held, I think we're going four years into it. Now we were the first team to really develop any sports platform and we've had competitors go on to help us with our simulation. So it's, it's real racially developed the race car before it goes on the racetrack it's in simulation. And that's where e-sports, >>And this is the new advantage. This is a new normal, this is where you guys see the data driving. The >>Definitely. And I think the other thing it is, you know, somewhat stick and ball sports, you can play in school. And motor racing has historically been partying, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now with e-sports you have a less expensive platform to let young men and women around the world, but a steering wheel in their hand and go motor racing. So I think it's also going to kind of bring that younger generation of fan and >>There's so much collective intelligence, potentially competitive advantage data. Again, data coming up final word to end the segment, Splunk, big partner on the data side, obviously helping you guys financially, as well as you do need some sponsorship support to make the team run. Um, what's the relationship with Splunk? Take a minute to talk about the plug. >>It's been a, it's been great, you know, they're, they're two big contributors. We need a lot of money to run the racing team. So they're a great partner in that respect, but more importantly, they're helping us with our whole data journey, making smarter, quicker decisions. So their contribution to being part of the race team. And, uh, we used our technology. Um, it has been great. And I think, um, you know, if I look at our technology partners, uh, we have many that all contribute to making a >>Yeah. I mean, it really is nice. It's data inaction, it's teamwork, it's competitive, it's fun. That's kind of a good, good, >>I think fun is the center of everything that we do. It's the center of everything spunk does. Cause I think if you have fun, people enjoy going to working a little bit harder. We're seven days a week. And uh, you know, a lot of teammates you've got to work well together. So I think if you're having fun, you enjoy what you're doing and it doesn't feel like work. >>Congratulations on climbing up in the rankings and everything on your team. Two great drivers. Thanks for coming on the cube. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right. We're here. The key. We like to have fun here and get all the action on the tech side. Honestly, F1 is technology enabled data, driving the advantage and driving to is a great Netflix series. Check it out. McLaren's featured heavily in there and got a great team. Zach brown Siegel. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. I'm sure for your host. Thank you for watching.

>>From the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, it's the cube covering UI path forward for brought to you by UI path >>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube. We are here with UI path at forward for I'm Lisa Martin, with Dave Volante and a lovely setting at the Bellagio. We're going to be talking about automation from the CFO's perspective. Our next guest is our jet guard group financial officer at landmark group, or just welcome to the program. >>Thank you so much. Thank >>You. Before we dig into your transformation strategy and how automation is a key to that, help the audience understand a little bit about landmark. >>Absolutely. So landmark is one of the largest, uh, non-food primarily retailer in the middle east and Asia, India, and now increasingly in Southeast Asia. So we've got about 50 brands, uh, more than half of them, which are homegrown our own brands and some franchise brands. So about 2,200 stores, uh, across 20 countries, 55,000 employees. Um, so 30 million square feet of retail space >>They company. When was the company founded, >>Uh, 48 years ago, >>Legacy institution you were mentioning before we went live that you guys have been working with UI path since 2017. So talk to me about that legacy institution, embracing cloud digital transformation and automation as a, from a visionary strategic perspective. >>Yeah. So look, I mean, you know, you get so many technologies that are being thrown at you. So I would say you have packed or robotic process automation was just another one like that. So I wouldn't say it was like part of a grand strategy. You know, it comes as it looks like, Hey, this is cool. You know, in the, in the back office, when somebody showed me first 10 desks with nobody sitting on them, it's kind of spooky. So he said, Hey, this, this looks very interesting. So it started off like that, but then it has just grown because we've stayed with it. So we've amongst things in the early part of your parts customers and, and it's been phenomenal, you know, what, uh, what we're able to do with, uh, with, uh, robotic process automation. Uh, I mean, you know, I've been in this industry with my past employers, like Proctor and gamble and Cadbury, Schweppes, and all, and essentially we used to follow the part of, you know, you eliminate all the non-value add you, then try and automate whatever your ERP system, then all allowed you to automate. >>Then what's left, you consolidate, and then you find the right shore, right. It can be offshore or wherever. So that was the sequence. But I think a lot could not be automated because there are huge gaps in the systems that are being offered and you have a mosaic of systems, every company will have. Right. Um, and then we would end up doing lot more offshore or, you know, other kinds of tactics, but then once RPA showed up on the scene, it's suddenly disrupted everything because now whatever the systems can do, or when you have to move data from one system to the other or make sense out of it, that's where this technology sits. And so that's, so that's very, I, you know, we've now got a pretty large, uh, robotic process automation practice. And, and, you know, we are touching started with finance and now we are pretty much enterprise wide. So all the, >>These technologies are coming together, automation, RPA, cloud AI, they're all sort of converging. And as a retailer, I'm curious as to what your cloud strategy is and how that fits and all, there's always a lot of sensitivity from retailers that don't want to be on Amazon, maybe some do. And they say, Hey, we've, we've we compete in other ways, what's your posture in that? >>So we've also been an early adopter of cloud, both. If I talk within the UI path thing, we were, I think the first ones to put it on the cloud, because we just saw, even before you are part, uh, we saw how people could tamper with it, you know, attended robots, you know, on the desktop one. So we went on the cloud and that was good, uh, way back. But overall, the company also has a very pro you know, Val defined cloud strategy. So we are, you know, pretty much all a large part of our systems are on the cloud with Azure. >>Yeah. So, which makes sense, right. As a retailer, go, go with Azure, plus somebody, Microsoft, you know, X, such a lot of Microsoft expertise out there that you can leverage. And I got to ask you because everybody's freaked out on wall street about power automate, you know, competing with UI path. And I've told people they kind of different parts of the spectrum, but I've talked to a lot of customers this week. So yeah, we use both. We use UI path for end-to-end automation. We use power automate for a lot of our personal productivity stuff. How do you guys, do you use, uh, the power automate? How do you see those two? Yeah, >>No, I think, look, it's inevitable. A lot of technologies will keep evolving. I think Microsoft is a fantastic company. I mean, the way they perfected teams right in time, you know, and pretty, always hit, uh, a year before COVID hit teams was not ready, you know? So I think I know power automate is good. We use it, but not as you know, it's not ready for enterprise wide. So I think more, I'm not an expert in power automate yet. Um, you know, what, it kind of seemed more like when it's linked to the office automation versus linking major enterprise wide or >>Which is really where you're headed. Yeah. Talk about the results that you've seen, the higher you're measuring the return and the whole business case. When you evaluate it as CFO, >>See it being a CFO, I wear two hats. Right. I'm trying to help digital transformation. Although I must say I'm not the only one our company has. Every function is these days talking digital. Right. Because it's almost like table stakes. Yeah. Uh, you, you can't be in business a leader and we are like a leader in all the markets we are, and there's no choice, but to be fully digital. Right. Uh, but being a CFO absolutely. You know, you do look at the hard dollars. Right. Um, and initially when you're pushing any technology to any functional head or your colleague or the CEO or the board, they do want to see the dollars because a lot of softwares talk about the soft benefits. Um, I think they gotta pay for themselves. So I think it's like, yes, if I can get the hard dollars and then I can demonstrate softer benefits, whether it is the quality of work, less errors, better compliance, right. >>Or I think employee, uh, work work-life balance, right. I mean, in, in, uh, we are, uh, in a growing company we've been growing for the last four decades and there's a constant struggle to help colleagues maintain better work life balance. So I think once the basic return is off the table, everyone's talking about the quality of work enabling. And I think now we've, we are proudly talking, you know, that, Hey, we've got a lot of people, um, we've hired them. But what we are using of them is their fingers, their eyes, ears, and that's about it. Can we now get them to use their brain? So it's like, Hey, it's a freebie. You got so many people let's start using the gray matter. And that's, I think what this technology does, it takes away the Gronk and you can then tell them, Hey, analyze the data, look at it, better business outcomes. And I think that's where the real value is. >>That is, so we've heard a lot about time saved hours saved. That's kind of the key, a key metric. And you look at that as hard dollars. How, how do you translate that to the income statement? >>So, so let's put it, uh, you know, I was looking at applied science, applied materials presentation, and they had a 150,000 hours saved. Uh, I just did our math. I mean, so we've so far saved 342,000 hours per annum removed out of the system. Right. But I would say not all I can say, I took them to the bottom line. So probably 70% of that, because the rest is probably gone back to people doing more value added stuff. >>So how does it hit the income statement? Is it hit it as new revenue or cost savings or savings reduction in >>Yeah. Or are you don't hire as many as you needed to? Uh, >>Yes. That's the missing link. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Is I was going to need to hire or what 1,100 people hire 10 or whatever it is. Okay. Now I'm sorry. Does that, is that, does that get into a debate? Like, cause I can see a lot of people, if we don't do this, we're going to, you know, and then as a CFO, you might say let's defend that a little bit. >>Seek cost avoidance is always debated. Yep. And that's why I said, as long as you can prove that the hard dollars taken to the bottom line are visible and you can put your finger on them, then people become more comfortable saying, okay, as long as you know, I've got my payback, I've got something I can, you know, make sure that my cost line is not going up because it's very easy to do, you know, kind of say, Hey look, all this soft benefits and now your cost has also gone up. So I think once the, the, the hard dollars that you can bank are out of the way, then you can talk about costs avoided, and then you can talk about the softer benefits. Are there, there is no doubt because you try and what we do is we tell people if they're in a cell, okay, we'll shut, shut it down. >>I say, Hey, wait, well, right then, you know, but so you have four years of data on this, so you can prove it. And by the way, soft dollars are where the real money is. I don't mean to denigrate that, but I get into a lot of discussions with CFO's like, okay, show me the hard dollars first and then the hard, the soft dollars or telephone numbers. Yeah. >>Yeah. I think I look at it as an inverted pyramid. Yeah. Where you start with the cost saved, which is the smaller part of the pyramid. And then you get speed, right. Because speed is actually a big thing, which is very difficult to measure. Right? I mean, I'll give you an example in none of our largest markets, right. In the middle of COVID, they announced all products that are being imported, which is for us about 80,000 of them, um, uh, need to have a whole bunch of compliance forms on the government portal, import certifications. And you got like a month to do all that work. So now you'll get an army of 20, 30 people train them. We did nothing. We built the barns and we were ready ahead of competition. And I think, and, and life continues. Now the supply chain officer will sign on the dotted line for you saying he would have had to hire 30 people. And he, it's not easy to hire suddenly, but we were compliant and, and now that's cost avoided. But I would say a big business benefit because we were the first ones to have all our products compliant with the market requirements. That's a >>Great example. >>I think about some of the IDC data that was, did you see that that was presented this morning, looking at, you know, the positive outlook as, as RPA being a jobs creator over time. Talk to me a little bit about how you've navigated that through the organization and even done upskilling of some of those folks so that they're not losing, but they're gaining. >>I think there is, you know, you have to take all these projections with a pinch of salt, you know, I mean, saying you will, the world will save $150 billion and all, I mean, if you add all the soft dollars. Yes. But in reality, you know, I lose joke about it. If you take all the technology initiatives in a company and you add all the MPVs and that they have submitted, that would be larger than the market cap of the company. >>It's true. All the projects add up to more value. >>I think, I think, you know, we don't get carried away by these major projections, but I think some of it is true. I mean, you know, I kind of talk about the Luddites, right? I mean, when the first, you know, weaving machines game in, in Northern England, near Manchester and these Luddites, they were called, they were going around breaking down these machines because they were supposed to take away jobs. Now reality is a lot of people did lose jobs who could not make the transition, could not retrain themselves. It is inevitable. It will happen. But over time I would say yes, there have been lot more employment. So I think both go hand in hand. Um, but yes, the more one can help retrain people, get them to, you know, say, Hey, you don't need to spend the rest of your life. Copy pasting and just doing data entry. Uh, you can look at the data and make sense out of it. How much >>Of that was a part of your strategic vision years ago? >>I think years ago we knew it, but it was more, let's get these, you know, simple. When you have hundreds of people in a, in a back office, how do I get them to do more work or have slate or meet my, you know, my productivity goals? I would say it starts with that. Okay. Uh, if you start, uh, deep down because I, I am, you know, I believe in technology, I knew it, it would happen that we would eventually go from, let's say, robotic process automation to intelligent process automation. Right. Which is coming for us. It's we are able to see it, you try and sell that as the lead in and people shut down >>Because they're seen by intelligent process automation. W what do you mean? And, and >>So it's look, if I've got, uh, my robots and the tech, the RP infrastructure, which is processing whole bunch of transactions right now, if I'm able to add in some machine learning or AI, or what have you on top of it, and then I can read the patterns I can, for example, you know, we, we now have built on top of all the various security in our payment systems. If you've got a bot, which then does a final check, which goes and checks the history of that particular vendor as to what is the typical payments being done to that. And then it flags, if it's V out and it stops the payment, for example, right? So, or it goes and does a whole bunch of tests. We're building constantly building tools. So that's kind of, you know, a bit more intelligent than just a simple copy paste or, or doing a transaction >>Because why that's their job or because they it's a black box. They don't know how that decision is made. Or >>I think a lot of these have been sold previously similar technologies and things that would be, you know, the next best thing since sliced water and people have lost fit. So you got to show them the money and then take them along the journey. If you go too fast and try and give this whole, you know, people are smart enough and it, it turns them off. >>It's one of the failures of the tech industry is the broken promises. I can, I can rattle many off >>Cultural shift. It is. It is. How did you help facilitate that? See, I mean, we, we took, you know, the bottoms up and top down approach, uh, you know, the top down was, uh, I have my whole leadership team and as a joke, we locked them up in the boardroom and we got them to build bonds a long ago. And we said, let each of you, you know, download your bank statement and send yourself, uh, you know, if you say any transaction above 10,000, whatever, um, send, send an email to yourself. So as simple as that, or download the electricity bill and, and send it to your wife, you know, something like that. And half of them were able to build a bot in that couple of hours. The other half looked at it, and obviously are, you know, many of them are not as tech savvy, but it helped build the kind of it's aha moment three years ago that, wow, you know, I can build a bot. Um, for some people it was like, oh, they taught these metallic 10 bots are going to walk into the room. >>I love it. The bottom who's responsible for governance. >>So we've got a, we've got a team across it and finance. Um, I mean, somehow I have kind of, you know, created the skunkworks team. The S the center of excellence sits with me. Um, uh, but overall it's a combination and they now run governance, uh, you know, 24 7, >>Uh, you know, sorry, I got to get my crypto question. I ask every CFO's, when are you going to put crypto in the balance sheet? I know I'm teasing, but what you see companies doing this? Has it ever come up in conversation? Is it sort of tongue in cheek joke? Or what do you make of the crypto? >>Yeah, I think personally I'm a big believer, uh, but not for, uh, for a company. I think the, the benefit case of a company, we are not that, you know, we have enough other face too, you know? Um, uh, I think, uh, it's a bit further out for a company to start taking balance sheet position because that's then a speculation, right? Because, so I'm a believer in the benefit of the blockchain technology. We actually did a blockchain experiment a couple of years ago, moving goods, uh, from China to Dubai and also making the payments through a blockchain to, um, so we see huge benefits. We are working with our bankers on certain other initiatives, but I think on the balance sheet sounds like speculation and use of capital. So yeah, if it brings efficiency, if it brings transparency, which is what blockchains do, uh, I think absolutely it's, it is here to stay >>Last question. And then the last 30 seconds, or so for your peers in any industry who are it was, we saw some of the stats yesterday, the amount of percentage of processes that are automateable that aren't automated. What's your advice, recommendations to peers about pulling automation into their digital transformation strategy? >>I think, um, digital transformation can be hugely aided and accelerated if you first put RPLs, because that is the layer, which goes between the humans and whatever technology is out there or whatever you keep buying. So I think because they will be in every area, new technologies coming up, it's better to put RPA first because you can then get more benefit from whatever other technologies you're bolting on. So I would say it's a predecessor to your broader digital transformation, rather than just a part of it. >>Got it. A predecessor, or just thank you for joining Dave and me on the program today, talking about what you're, how you're transforming landmark. Good luck in your presentation this afternoon. I'm sure a lot of folks will get some great takeaways from your talk. >>Thank you so much. It's been >>Great. Our pleasure for Dave Volante. I'm Lisa Martin live in Las Vegas UI path forward for it. We'll be right back after a break.

(upbeat music) >> This is Dave Vellante, and I'd like to welcome you back to The Cube's coverage of Couchbase ConnectONLINE, where the theme of this event is Modernize Now. And one of the big announcements is Capella, which of course, as you all undoubtedly know, is the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, which is Latin for Charioteer. Yup, you can find that in the constellation, that constellation in the night sky in late Feb, early March, in the Northern hemisphere. So with that little tidbit, I'd like to welcome in Scott Anderson to The Cube, who's the Senior Vice President of Product Management and Business Operations at Couchbase. Scott, welcome. Good to see you. >> Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. >> Yeah, it's our pleasure. So, you've launched Couchbase Capella. If I understand correctly, it's built on Couchbase server 7, which you launched just a few months ago in the middle of the Summer. Can you give us an overview of Capella? >> Yeah, absolutely. So Couchbase Capella, is our fully managed databases service for enterprise applications. One of the goals of launching Capella and our database as a service offering that we just announced today is, about increasing the accessibility of Couchbase. So, it's about making it easy for a Developer or an Enterprise to get up and running in just a few clicks and a couple of minutes. And about making it more affordable and accessible through the development phase, through the test phase, the production phase. So really it's about ease of use, having the right offerings aligned to the phase of development that a customer's in, and eventually into the production of their enterprise application, leveraging Capella and Couchbase Server 7. >> So let me ask you, I went pretty deep with Ravi on the, the technical side, and I want to understand, what makes Capella different from some of the competitive offerings? Is it the, sort of the fundamentals that I learned from Ravi about how you guysbhave really done a awesome focus on SQL. But been able to maintain acid compliance, deal with distributed architectural challenges, and then bringing that over to database as a service? Is that the fundamental? What are some of the other differentiators? >> Yeah, that, that is the fundamental. We have an amazing platform that Ravi and our core engineering team have built. And we've talked about that, and I think Ravi mentioned that, the ease of SQL and applying that to a documented oriented database. and combining some of those capabilities with the ease of use. The ability that you can get up and running, signing up for our free trial. Couple of minutes later, you've got a database endpoint that is fully managed by Couchbase. And so we're doing the monitoring. We're doing alerting. We have calls to action based off what events are occurring within the database environment, ensuring it's always available, as well as doing kind of some of the mundane tasks of backup and recovery, scaling the environment upgrades and so forth. So it's really about ease of use making it, leveraging our incredibly robust broad platform, and then making that in different consumable model for our customers and developers and getting started really easily. The other thing that we've done, is really leveraged the best practices over the last 10 or 11 years, if some of the largest enterprises in the world using Couchbase for the mission critical applications. So we've codified those best practices. And that's how we keep that service high performant, always on, highly available. And that's one of the core value propositions that we're able to bring with Capella. It's really that management capability, global visibility of your clusters, coupled with what we believe is the best, no SQL database in the marketplace today. >> What about, what about costs total cost of ownership as you scale, a lot of times when you scale out and you get diseconomies of scale, it's kind of like, you know, you get that negative curve. What are you seeing? >> Yeah, we've done third party benchmark studies, which have proven out how we were able to linearly scale the environment and continue on that curve, as you add nodes, you're getting that incremental performance that you would expect. The other thing that we do that's really unique within in Couchbase is, our multi-dimensional scaling. And this allows you to place our services, things like data index query, full-text search, indexes and analytics. You can co-locate those on single nodes within the cluster, or you can have dedicated nodes for each one of those services. The reason that is important is, you get work-life isolation for those specific services within our cluster. The other thing that you can do is, you can match the compute infrastructure to the needs of each one of those services. So some services like query are much more core compute intensive, and that allows you to have a specific instance type that is optimized for that, reducing your cost. Indexes, where do you want very fast performance? You may want to have a higher amount of memory relative to the number, of course. So that ability to mix and match the infrastructure within the existing cluster, allows us to lower overall costs. That coupled with our blazing fast performance with our in-memory architecture, allows people to get incredible performance at scale. What we've proven out in the study that I mentioned earlier is we have that linear scalability, and you're able to do more for less, at the end of the day. You're getting more operations per second, per dollar, if you want to use that as a metric data. >> Thank you for that. What do customers need to think about when they want to get started with Capella? How difficult is it for people to jump in? >> It is incredibly simple. It's as simple as going to couchbase.com Clicking on start your free trial. You go into that free trial. You provide a minimal set of information for us, and it's literally a few clicks and you're going to have a database endpoint within three minutes. And that's really been a foundation of, of what we've been focused on over the last six to nine months is removing any friction we can in the process. Cause our goal is to give a firm a tremendous user experience and get people up and running as quickly as possible. So we're really, really proud of that. And then from a paid offering perspective, we have a number of offerings which are really aligned to the needs of each customer. Some individuals who want a larger cluster and they want to be able to pay for that, we've optimized service levels around that, in terms of level of support and the features that we think are appropriate for a dev cycle, a test cycle, and then inner production. And lastly, we'll be announcing a number of promotional starter pack bundles. Really trying to couple the overall service that we have with Capella, with some of our expertise. So helping new users get up and running in terms of things like index definitions, what's the best way to do document design and schema within Couchbase. Our end goal, is to match these services and bundles with the life cycle of application development. So in my development phase, what's the offering for me, as I move for production readiness, what services capabilities I need and then production and the ongoing, if I expand my use. So we've been really focused on how do we get people up and running as quickly as possible and how do we get them to production as quickly as possible at the lowest total cost. >> That's nice. That's a nice accelerant for, for customers. So as you heard upfront, I did a little research about the name, Capella. How did you choose it and why? >> Well, one thing I learned early in my career is naming is not a strong suit of mine. I leave that to John our Chief Marketing Officer in the overall team. We all have opinions, but I trust John. And we went through, I think it was over 60 names, seven rounds of debate to come up with Capella. But we wanted a name of strength. We liked the alliteration, Couchbase and Capella together. One of the little facts may have tipped it over is, I believe in Latin, it means little goats. So we kind of played, I'm from the bay area. So I was thinking to Jerry Rice, goat, greatest of all times. So that was nice play on that also. But I leave it to them and really happy with the overall name, love the, literation, love some of the hidden meanings within that. And we're really, really excited about getting it going. So you wouldn't want me to pick the name. I get a vote, but I would say my overall influence is a little bit lower than where John's is and, and Matt Cain, who I know you spoke with previously. >> I love it. Jerry Rice definitely is the little goat. I'm from New England. So of course, we think Tom Brady is the big goat. >> I know, I grew up in that Joe Montana era. So maybe you can take that offline after this interview, we're going to have around debate, but I guess a Superbowl trophies are the ultimate measure at the end of the day. >> Oh wait, I got a little stat for you. So, so Capella is also one of the 88 modern constellations as adopted by the international astronomical union. I.e not one of the ancient constellations. Pretty clever, right? >> Yeah, exactly. >> Scott, it's great to have you on the cube. Thanks so much, really appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it All right. Thank you for watching. Our pleasure. Thank you for watching The Cubes coverage of Couchbase Connect 2021. Keep it right there for more great content. (upbeat music)