>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. I'm john ferrier host of the cube. Got a great story here. Navigating Covid 19 with Watson advertising and weather channel conversations. Sherry back steen. Who's the gM of Watson advertising in the weather company. Sherry, thanks for coming on the cube. My favorite part of IBM think is to talk about the tech and also the weather company innovations. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi, happy to be here, john >>So COVID-19 obviously some impact for people that working at home. Um normally you guys have been doing a lot of innovation around weather weather data um certainly huge part of it. Right. And so lots been changing with AI and the weather company and IBM so let's first start before we jump in, just a little background about what your team has created because a lot of fascinating things here. Go ahead. >>Yeah. So when the pandemic started, you know we looked at the data that we were seeing and of course in weather accuracy and accurate data is really important trusted data. And so we created a COVID-19 hub on our weather channel app and on weather.com. And essentially what it was is an aggregated area where consumers could get the most up to date information on covid cases, deaths in their area, trends see heat maps uh information from the C. D. C. And what was unique about it. It was to a local level. Right so state level information is helpful but we know that consumers uh me included. I need information around what's happening around me. And so we were able to bring this down to a county level which we thought was really helpful for consumers >>share as watching sports on tv. And recently, a few months ago, the Masters was on and you saw people getting back into real life, It's almost like a weather forecast. Now. You want to know what's going on in the pandemic. People are sharing that. They're getting the vaccine. Um, really interesting. And so I want to understand how this all came together with you guys. Is was it something that has a weather data, a bunch of geeks saying, hey, we should do this for companies, but take us to the thought process with their team. Was it like you saw this as value? How did you get to this? Because this is an interesting user benefit. I want to know the weather, I want to know if it's safe. These are kind of a psychology of a user expectation. How did you guys connect the dots here for this project? >>Well, we certainly do have a very passionate team of people, um some weather geeks included, um and you're absolutely right watching the Masters a few months ago was amazing to see, you know, some sense of normality happening here. But you know, we looked at, you know, IBM, the weather company, like, how do we help during this pandemic? And when we thought about it, we looked at there's an amazing gap of information. And as the weather channel, you know, what we do is bring together data, give people insights and help them make decisions with that. And so it was really part of our mission. It's always been that way to give information to keep people safe. And so all we did is took a different data set and provided the same thing. And so in this case, the covid data set, which we actually had to, you know, aggregate from different sources whether it was the C. D. C. The World Health Organization uh State governments or county governments to provide this to consumers. But it was really really natural for us because we know what consumers want. You know we all want information around where we live, right? And then we want to see like where our friends live, where our relatives live to make sure that they're okay. And then that enables people to make the decisions that are right for their family. And so it was really really natural for us to do that. And then of course we have the technology to be able to scale to hundreds of millions of people. Which is really important. >>It's not obvious until you actually think about that. It's so obvious. Congratulations. What a great innovation. What were the biggest challenges you guys had to face and how did you overcome it? Because I'm curious. I see you've got a lot of, lot of large scale data dealing with diversity of data with weather. What was the challenges with Covid? And how did you overcome it? >>So again, without a doubt it was the data because you're looking at one, we wanted that county level data. So you're looking at multiple sources. So how do we aggregate this data? So first finding that trusted source that that we could use. But then how do you pull it in in an automated way? And the challenge was it with the State Department, the county departments that data came in all kinds of formats. Some counties used maps, some use charts, some use pds to get that information. So we had to pull all this unstructured data, uh, and then that data was updated at different times. So some counties did it twice a day, some did it once day, different time zones. So that really made it challenging. And so then, you know, so what we did is this is where the power of A I really helps because a I can take all of that data, bring in and organize it and then we could put it back out to the consumer in a very digestible way. And so we were able to do that. We built an automated pipeline around that so we can make sure that it was updated. It was fresh and timely, which was really important. But without a doubt looking at that structured data and unstructured data and really helping it to make sense to the consumer was the biggest challenge. And what's interesting about it. Normally it would take us months to do something like that. I challenged the team to say we don't have months, we have days. They turned that around in eight days, which was just an amazing herculean feat. But that's really just the power of, as you said, passionate people coming together to do something so meaningful. >>I love the COVID-19 success stories when people rally around their passion and also their expertise. What was the technology to the team used? Because the theme here at IBM think is transformation innovation, scale. How did you move so fast to make that happen? >>So we move fast by our Ai capabilities and then using IBM cloud and so really there's four key components are like four teams that worked on it. So first there was the weather company team um and because we are a consumer division of IBM, we know what consumers want. So we understand the user experience and the design, but we also know how to build an A. P. I. That can scale because you're talking about being able to scale not only in a weather platform. So in the midst of covid weather still happened, so we still had severe weather record breaking hurricane season. And so those A. P. S. Have to scale to that volume. Then the second team was the AI team. So that used the Watson AI team mixed with the weather Ai team to again bring in that data to organize that data. Um And we used Watson NLP so natural natural language processing in order to create that automated pipeline. Then we had the corralled infrastructure so that platform team that built that architecture and that data repository on IBM cloud. And then the last team was our data privacy office. So making sure that that data was trusted that we have permission to use it uh and just know really that data governance. So it's all of that technology and all of those teams coming together to build this hub for consumers. Um And it worked I mean we would have about four million consumers looking at that hub every single day. Um and even like a year later we still have a couple million people that access that information. So it's really kind of become more like the weather checking the weather's come that daily habit. >>That's awesome. And I gotta I gotta imagine that these discoveries and innovations that was part of this transformation at scale have helped other ways outside the pandemic and you share how this is connected to um other benefits outside the pandemic. >>Yeah so absolutely um you know ai for businesses part of IBM strategy and so really helping organizations to help predict um you know to help take workloads and automate them. So they're high valued employees can work on you know other work. And also you know to bring that personalization to customers. You know, it's really a i when I look at it for my own part of a IBM with the weather company, three things where I'm using this technology. So the first one is around advertising. So the advertising industry is at a really um you know, pivotal part right now, a lot of turmoil and challenges because of privacy legislation because big tech companies are um you know, getting rid of tracking pixels that we normally use to drive the business. So we've created a suite of AI solutions for publishers for you know, different players within the ad tech space, um which is really important because it protects the open web, so like getting covid information or weather information, all of that is free information to the public. We just ask that you underwrite it by seeing advertising so we can keep it free. So those products protect the open red. So really, really important. Then on the consumer side of my business, within the weather channel, we actually used Watson Ai um to connect health with weather. So we know that there's that connection, some health um you know, issues that people have can be impacted by weather, like allergies and flew. So we've actually used Watson Ai to build a um Risk of flu that goes 15 days out. So we can tell people in your local area this one actually goes down to the zip code level, um the risk of flu in your area or the risk of allergies. So help to manage your symptoms, take your prescription. So, um that's a really interesting way. We're using AI and of course weather dot com and our apps are on IBM cloud, so we have this strong infrastructure to support that. And then lastly, you know, our weather forecasting has always been rooted in a i you take 100 different weather models, you apply ai to that to get the best and most accurate forecasts that you deliver. Um and so we are using these technologies every day to, you know, move our business forward and to provide, you know, weather services for people. >>I just love the automation and as users have smartphones and more instrumentation on their bodies, whether it's wearables, people will plan their day around the weather, and retail shops will have a benefit knowing what the stock and or not have on hand and how to adjust that. This, the classic edge computing paradigm, fascinating impact. You wouldn't think about that, but that's a pretty big deal. People are planning >>around >>the weather data and making that available is critical. >>Oh, absolutely. You know, every business needs a weather strategy because whether it impacts your supply chain, um agriculture, should I be watering today or not even around, you know, um, if you think about energy and power lines, you know, the vegetation growth over power lines can bring power lines down and it's a disruption, you know, to customers and power. So there's just when you start thinking about it, you're like, wow, whether really impacts every business, um, not to say just consumers in general and their daily lives. >>And uh, and there's a lot of cloud scale to that can help companies whether it's um be part of a better planet or smarter planet as it's been called, and help with with global warming. I mean, you think about this is all kind of been contextually relevant now more than ever. Super exciting. Um Great stuff. I want to get your take on outside of um the IBM response to the pandemic more broadly outside of the weather. What are you guys doing um to help? Are you guys doing anything else with industry? How could you talk a little bit more about IBM s response more broadly to the pandemic? >>Yeah so IBM has been you know working with government academia, industry is really from the beginning uh in several different ways. Um you know the first one of the first things we did is it opened up our intellectual property. So R. I. P. And our technology our supercomputing To help researchers really try to understand COVID-19 some of the treatments and possible cures so that's been really beneficial as it relates to that. Um Some other things though, that we're doing as well is we created a chat bots that companies and clients could use and this chat but could either be used to help train teachers because they have to work remotely or help other workers as well. Um and also the chatbots was helping as companies started to re enter back to the workforce and getting back to the office. So the chatbots been really helpful there. Um and then, you know, one of the things that we've been doing on the advertising side is we actually have helped the ad council with their vaccine campaign. Um It's up to you is the name of the campaign and we delivered a ad unit that can dynamically assemble a creative in real time to make sure that the right message was getting out the right time to the right person. So it's really helped to maximize that campaign to reach people um and encourage them if it's the right thing for them, you know where the vaccines are available. Um and that you know, they could take those. So a lot of great work that's going on within IBM. Um and actually the most recent thing just actually in the past month is we release the Digital Health Pass in cooperation with the state of new york. Um and this is a fantastic tool because it is a way for individuals to keep their private information around their vaccines or you know, some of the Covid test they've been having on a mobile device that's secure and we think that this is going to be really important as cities start to reopen um to have that information easily accessible. >>Uh sure, great insight, um great innovation navigating Covid 19 a lot of innovation transformation at IBM and obviously Watson and the weather company using AI and also, you know, when we come out of Covid post, post Covid as real life comes back, we're still going to be impacted. We're gonna have new innovations, new expectations, tracking, understanding what's going on, not just the weather. So thanks >>for absolutely great >>work. Um, awesome. Thank you. >>Great. Thanks john good to see you. >>Okay. This is the cubes coverage of IBM. Think I'm john for a host of the cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>> Announcer: From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Oh, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual, I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got a great story here. Navigating COVID-19 with Watson advertising and weather channel conversations, Sheri Bachstein, who's the GM of Watson Advertising in the weather company. Sheri, thanks for coming on theCUBE. My favorite part of IBM Think is to talk about the tech and also the weather company innovations. Thanks for coming on. >> Hi, happy to be here John. >> So COVID-19 obviously some impact for people that working at home. Normally you guys have been doing a lot of innovation around weather, weather data, certainly huge part of it. And so lots been changing with AI and the weather company and IBM, so let's first start before we jump in just a little background about what your team has created because a lot of fascinating things here. Go ahead. >> Yeah, so when the pandemic started, we looked at the data that we were seeing and of course in weather accuracy and accurate data is really important trusted data. And so we created a COVID-19 hub on our weather channel app and on weather.com and essentially what it was is an aggregated area where consumers could get the most up-to-date information on COVID cases, deaths in their area, trends see heat maps, information from the CDC. And what was unique about it, it was to a local level, right? So state level information is helpful, but we know that consumers me included. I need information around what's happening around me. And so we were able to bring this down to a County level which we thought was really helpful for consumers >> Sheri's watching sports on TV. And recently a few months ago, the masters was on and you saw people getting back into real life. It's almost like a weather forecast. Now you want to know what's going on in the pandemic. People are sharing that they're getting the vaccine, really interesting. And so I want to understand how this all came together with you guys. Was it something that as a weather data and a bunch of geeks saying, Hey, we should do this for companies but take us to thought process 113. Was it like you saw this as value? How did you get to this? Because this is an interesting user benefit. I want to know the weather. I want to know if it's safe. These are kind of a psychology of a user expectation. How did you guys connect the dots here for this project? >> Well, we certainly do have a very passionate team of people some weather geeks included and you're absolutely right. Watching the masters a few months ago was amazing to see some sense of normality happening here. But we looked at IBM and the weather company like how do we help during this pandemic? And when we thought about it we looked at there's an amazing gap of information. And as the weather channel, what we do is bring together data give people insights and help them make decisions with that. And so it was really part of our mission. It's always been that way to give information to keep people safe. And so all we did is took a different data set and provided the same thing. And so in this case, the COVID data set which we actually had to aggregate from different sources whether it was the CDC, the world health organization, a state governments, our County governments to provide this to consumers. But it was really, really natural for us because we know what consumers want. We all want information around where we live, right? And then we want to see like where our friends live, where our relatives live to make sure that they're okay. And then if that enables people to make the decisions that are right for their family. And so it was really, really natural for us to do that. And then of course we have the technology to be able to scale to hundreds of millions of people, which is really important. >> Yeah, it's not obvious until you actually think about it, then it's so obvious. Congratulations, what a great innovation what were the biggest challenges you guys had to face and how did you overcome it? Because I'm curious, I see you got a lot of large scale data dealing with diversity of data with weather. What was the challenges with COVID and how did you overcome it? >> So again, without a doubt it was the data, because you're looking at one, we wanted that County level data. So you're looking at multiple sources. So how do we aggregate this data? So first finding that trusted source that we could use but then how do you pull it in, in an automated way? And the challenge was it with the state departments, the County departments, that data came in, all kinds of formats. Some counties used maps, some use charts some use PDFs to get that information. So we had to pull all this unstructured data and then that data was updated at different times. So some counties did it twice a day some did it once a day, different time zones. So that really made it challenging. And so then, so what we did is this is where the power of AI really helps, because AI can take all of that data bring it in, organize it, and then we could put it back out to the consumer in a very digestible way. And so we were able to do that. We built an automated pipeline around that so we can make sure that it was updated. It was fresh and timely, which was really important but without a doubt, looking at that structured data and unstructured data and really helping it to make sense to the consumer was the biggest challenge. And I'll, what's interesting about it. Normally it would take us months to do something like that. I challenged the team to say, we don't have months. We have days. They turned that around in eight days which was just an amazing Herculean feat but that's really just the power of as you said, passionate people coming together to do something so meaningful. >> I love the COVID-19 success stories when people rally around their passion and also their expertise, what was the technology did the team use? Because the theme here at IBM Think is, transformation, innovation, scale. How did you move so fast to make that happen? >> So we moved fast by our AI capabilities and then using IBM cloud. And so really there's four key components or like four teams that worked on it. So first there was the weather company team. And because we are a consumer division of IBM we know what consumers want. So we understand the user experience and the design but we also know how the build an API that can scale because you're talking about being able to scale not only in a weather platform. So in the midst of COVID weather still happen. So we still had severe weather record breaking hurricane season. And so those APIs have to scale to that volume. Then the second team was the AI team. So that used the Watson AI team mixed with the weather AI team to again bring in that data to organize that data. And we use Watson NLP. So natural language processing in order to create that automated pipeline. Then we had the collateral infrastructure. So that platform team that built that architecture and that data repository on IBM cloud. And then the last team was our data privacy office. So making sure that that data was trusted that we have permission to use it and just really that data governance. So it was all of that technology and all of those teams coming together to build this hub for consumers. And it worked, I mean we would have about 4 million consumers looking at that hub every single day. And even like a year later, we still have a couple million people that access that information. So it's really kind of become more like the weather checking the weather, that daily habit. >> That's awesome. And I got to imagine that these discoveries and these innovations that was part of this transformation that scale I've helped other ways outside of the pandemic. Can you share how this is connected to other benefits outside the pandemic? >> Yeah, so absolutely, AI for business is part of IBM strategy. And so really helping organizations to help predict, to help take workloads and automate them. So they're high valued employees can work on other work and also to bring that personalization to customers is really AI. When I look at it for my own part of a IBM with the weather company, three things where I'm using this technology. So the first one is around advertising. So the advertising industry is at a really pivotal part right now, a lot of turmoil and challenges because of privacy legislation because big tech companies are getting rid of tracking pixels that we normally use to drive the business. So we've created a suite of AI solutions for publishers, for different players within the ad tech space which is really important because it protects the open web. So like getting COVID information or weather information all of that is free information to the public. We just ask that you underwrite it by saying advertising so we can keep it free. So those products protect the open read. So really, really important. Then on the consumer side of my business within the weather channel we actually use Watson AI to connect health with weather. So we know that there's that connection. Some health issues that people have can be impacted by weather like allergies and flu. So we've actually used Watson AI to build a risk of flu that goes 15 days out. So we can tell people in your local area this one actually goes down to the zip code level the risk of flu in your area or the risk of allergies. So it help to manage your symptoms, take your prescription. So that's a really interesting way we're using AI and of course, weather.com and our apps are an IBM cloud. So we have this strong infrastructure to support that. And then lastly our weather forecasting has always been rooted in AI. You take a hundred different weather models you apply AI to that to get the best and most accurate forecast that you deliver. And so we are using these technologies every day to move our business forward and to provide weather services for people. >> I just love the automation as users have smartphones and more instrumentation on their bodies, whether it's wearables, people will plan their day around the weather and retail shops will have a benefit knowing what to stock or not have on hand and how to adjust that this the classic edge computing paradigm, fascinating impact. You wouldn't think about that, but that's a pretty big deal. People are planning around the weather data and making that available as critical. >> Oh, absolutely. Every business needs a weather strategy because whether it impacts your supply chain, agriculture should I be watering today or not, even around if you think about energy and power lines, the vegetation growth of our power lines can bring power lines down and it's a disruption, to customers and power. So there's just, when you start thinking about it you're like, wow, weather really impacts every business not to say just consumers in general and their daily life. >> Yeah, and there's a lot of cloud scale too, that can help companies whether it's be part of better planet or smarter planet as it's been called and help with, with global warming. I mean, you think about this is all kind of been contextually relevant now more than ever super exciting, great stuff. I want to get your take on outside of the IBM response to the pandemic, more broadly outside of the weather. What are you guys doing to help? Are you guys doing anything else with industry? How could you, talk a little bit more about IBM's response more broadly to the pandemic? >> Yeah, so IBM has been working with government academia industries really from the beginning in several different ways. The first, one of the first things we did is it opened up our intellectual property. So our IP and our technology, our super computing to help researchers, really try to understand COVID-19, some of the treatments and possible cures. So that's been really beneficial as it relates to that. Some other things though that we're doing as well is we created a Chatbot that companies and clients could use. And this Chatbot could either be used to help train teachers because they have to work remotely or help other workers as well. And also the Chatbot was helping as companies started to reenter back to the workforce and getting back to the office. So the Chatbot has been really helpful there. And then one of the things that we've been doing on the advertising side is we actually have helped the ad council with their vaccine campaign. It's up to you as the name of the campaign. And we delivered a ad unit that can dynamically assemble a creative in real time to make sure that the right message was getting out the right time to the right person. So it's really helped to maximize that campaign to reach people. And they encourage them if it's the right thing for them, where the vaccines are available and that they could take those. So a lot of great work that's going on within IBM and actually the most recent thing just actually in the past month is we released the digital health pass in cooperation with the state of New York. And this is a fantastic tool because it is a way for individuals to keep their private information around their vaccines, or some of the COVID tests they've been having on a mobile device that's secure. And we think that this is going to be really important as cities start to reopen to have that information easily accessible. >> Awesome Sheri, great insight, great innovation navigating COVID-19, lots of innovation transformation at IBM and obviously Watson and the weather company using AI. And also, when we come out of COVID post COVID, as real life comes back, we're still going to be impacted. We're going to have new innovations, new expectations, tracking, understanding what's going on not just the weather. So thanks for doing that great work. Awesome, thank you. >> Great, thanks John. Good to see you. >> This is theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think, I'm John Furrier, the host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. You're watching the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and this is day three of our wall-to-wall coverage of IBM's inaugural Think conference. Mary Glackin's here, she's the vice president of weather business solutions, public, private partnerships, IBM Watson, and she's joined by Sheri Bachstein as the global head of consumer business at the Weather Company, an IBM company. Ladies, welcome to the Cube, thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you, you're welcome. >> Thanks. >> Alright, Mary, going to start with the Weather Company. When IBM acquired the Weather Company, a lot of people were like, "What?", and they said, "Okay, data science, I get that.", and then, there was an IoT spin on that. Obviously, you have a lot of data, but, I got to ask you, what business are you in? >> So, what we like to say is we're in, not in the weather business, we're in the decision business. We're really dedicated, everyday, to help businesses, make the best decisions possible, and Sheri works on the consumer end of the business to do exactly the same thing. >> So, talk about your respective roles. Sheri, you're on the consumer side, as Mary just said, what does that entail? >> So, the consumer side is any touchpoint where we're bringing weather and weather insights to our consumers, whether it's on our weather channel app, whether it's on our web platform, mobile web, on wearables, so, it's anywhere where we're connecting with consumers, and, as Mary said, it's really about helping consumers make decisions. In our field, the forecast and some of the weather data has become a commodity almost, and we've actually shared our weather data with a lot of partners, and, so, now, we're using machine learning and data science to really come up with weather insights to help consumers make decisions, and it could be something just as simple as what to wear today, what's going to happen for a big event, or it can be around how do I keep people safe during severe weather. >> Yeah, I mean, we all look at the weather. I mean, I look at it everyday. >> Yeah. >> Of course, when you travel, like, what do I bring, what do I wear? Living in the East Coast these days, a lot of storms that we've >> That's right. >> encountered in the East Coast. I wonder if you could talk about life at IBM. I mean, again, it was a curious acquisition to a lot of people. Have you guys assimilated, how has it changed your business? >> I would say pretty dramatically. So, coming back to IBM acquiring us, they acquired us, really, for two reasons. One is we had some underlying technology that was really of interest to them that they're leveraging today, but the other part was because weather impacts so many businesses. So, as we've come into IBM, we've had alliances with IBM research. We're working on a pretty exciting project in bringing the next generation weather model to market, using high performance computing there. We've had alliances, definitely, through Watson in bringing AI into our products, and then, our product lines marry up with a lot of IBM product lines. So, we've rolled out a really exciting offering in closed captioning, and it really works well with some of the classical media business, weather media business that we have been providing. >> So, how do you guys make money? Maybe we could talk about the consumer side and the business side. A lot of people must ask that question. >> Yeah. >> They're advertising, okay, fine, >> Yeah. >> but that's not the core of what you guys do. >> Yeah, so, on the consumer side, a big majority of our revenue is drive by advertising, but we had to look at that business as well, 'cause as programmatic advertising has kind of taken up the landscape, how did we pivot to really generate more revenue, and, so, we've done that by creating Watson advertising, and that was one of the first implementations of Watson after the acquisition on the consumer side, and what we've done is we've created an open, scalable environment that, now, we can not only sell meaningful insights on our platform, but we can now give that to our partners, that they can go off our property and use the weather insights, we can use different data around location and media to help our partners really have a better experience, not only on our platform, but on any publisher's platform. >> So, that's your customers using Watson for advertising to drive their business. >> That's right. >> It's not like IBM is getting into the advertising business, per se, directly, is that right? >> Right, well, we're leveraging the power of Watson to create these insights. One of the products we created is called Weather FX, and, really, what it's doing, it's taking predictive analytics on the retail side, which is really an underused technology for retailers, but taking our historical weather data, mixing it with their retail data' to come up with insights so we can come up with interesting things that, say, in the northeast, like right now, during the winter, soda sells tremendously during very snowy or rainy winters. We can look at, you know, strawberry Pop-Tarts sell fairly well right before a hurricane, and, so, these are insights that we can bring to retailers, but it helps them with their supply chain, it helps them with their inventory, it can actually even help them with pricing, and, so, this is one of the ways we're taking our weather technology and marrying it with the advertising world to help provide those insights. >> For real, with the strawberry Pop-Tarts? >> For real, yeah, I guess, you know, you don't have to cook 'em or something. I don't know, so, yeah. >> Right, yeah, it's simple if the lights go out, okay. I mean, we want to ask you about your title, public and private partnerships. It's interesting, what is that all about? >> So, it's really about the fact that weather has really been something that's been shared globally around the world for hundreds of years at this point, and, so, the Weather Company and IBM take it very seriously that we be good partners in that community of weather providers. So, one of the things that we feel passionately about is we have a shared safety mission with national meteorological services globally. So, here in the US, we transmit, Sheri's team does, the warnings that come from the National Weather Service unaltered with attribution to the National Weather Service. We feel that it's really important that there's a sole authoritative voice when there's really danger. So, we share that safety mission, and then, we're trying to help in other parts of the world. We've had some partnerships to try to increase the observing in Africa which is really a part of the world that's under-observed. So, some of IBM's philanthropic efforts have been helping to fill in there and work with those national met services. So, it's really one of the really fun parts of my job. >> You know, we talk a lot about digital transformation, and Ginni Rometty was talking about the incumbent disruptors, and we've been riffing on that all week. We've made the observation that companies that are digital have data at their core, and they've organized, sort of, human expertise around that data. Most companies, Fortune 1000, are built around human expertise and built around other assets, the bottling plant or the factory, et cetera. I look at the Weather Company as a data company, that's probably fair. Did you evolve into that data is clearly at your core? Has it always been, and it's very interesting that IBM has acquired this company as it changes its DNA. I wonder if you could address that. >> Go ahead (laughs). >> So, I think there's a couple aspects around our data. There's obviously the weather data which is really powerful, but then, there's also location data. We're one of the largest location data providers besides Google and some of the others, because our weather accuracy starts with location which is really important. We have 250 million users that use our application, and we want to give them the most accurate forecast, and that starts with location. Because we add value, users will opt in to give us that data which is really important to us that we do keep their data private and opt in to that to get that location data. So, that's really powerful, because, now we can deliver products based on time and location and weather, and it just makes for better weather insights for, not only our consumers, but for our businesses. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Do you use, I mean, how do you use social? I mean, you know how Waze tells you where the traffic is and you report back. Do you guys rely heavily on that, or do you more rely on machines to help you with your forecast? Is it a combination? >> So, I could talk a little bit. One of our new market areas we've been going into is ground transportation. So, we do have a partner that's providing us some transportation, traffic information, but what we bring to it is being able to do, the predictive thing, is to take the weather piece and how that's going to influence that traffic. So, as the storm comes through, we know by looking at past events what that will mean and we bring that piece to the table. So, it's an example of how we go, not just giving you a weather forecast, but really forecasting the impacts and giving you insights, so that if you're running a large trucking operation, you can reroute fleets around it and avoid weather like that and keep people safe. >> Talk about, oh, go ahead, please. >> One of the brands within our portfolio is Weather Underground, and what they brought to the table for us is a personal weather station that works. So, we have about 270,000 around the world, and these are people that just really love the weather. They have a personal weather station in their backyard and they provide that data that then goes into Mary's team in helping looking at the forecast. So, that's one of the ways that we're using kind of a social network in sensoring to influence some of the work that we're doing. >> I mean, the weather forecast, for years, have been the butt of many jokes. You guys are data science oriented, data scientists, the data doesn't lie. We just keep iterating >> Yeah. >> and make it better and better and better. What could you tell us about the improvements of the forecast over the last decade? Maybe Bill Belichick makes jokes about the weather and you hear it, you say, "You know, actually "the weather's predictions have gotten much better." You guys measure it, what can you share with us? >> Oh, it's gotten so much better over the course of my career, it's pretty dramatic and it's getting better still. You're going to see some real breakthroughs coming up. So, one of the things that we've really put a lot of bets on in IBM is the internet of things, >> Dave: Right. >> and, so, we are, today, pulling off of cellphones atmospheric pressure data and that's going into our next generation model. So, this'll be more data than anybody has powering that model. So, you're able to augment traditional data sources like, you may or may not know, we still launch weather balloons twice a day to measure through the atmosphere, but, in our technology, we take data off of airplanes, we take data off of cellphones, we'll soon be taking data off of cars which will tell us when the windshield wipers are moving, is it raining or not, when the anti-lock brakes things lock, that roads are icy, all of that. So, all of that will come in to improve forecasting. >> So, this requires partnerships with all that and amazing supply chain. >> Absolutely. >> I presume IBM helps there as well, but did you have a lot of that in motion prior to the acquisition, how does that all work? >> I think we've really been empowered by IBM. >> Yep, absolutely. >> Yeah. >> There's no question about that, and it's about finding the win-win. When we work with car manufacturers they're looking to have safe experiences for their drivers and we can help in that regard, and, as we move into autonomous vehicles, there's just going to be even more demand for very high resolution, accurate weather information. >> Am I correct at all, the weather data from all these devices actually goes back to the IBM cloud, is that right, and that's where the models are iterated and developed, is that correct, or does some of it stay out in the network? >> It's all a cloud-based operation that's here. We do do some, I mentioned before that we're working with IBM research on next generation high-performance computing which is actually, it can be cloud-based, but it's also on Prim-based, because of the very large cores we need for computing these models. We're going to run a very high-resolution model globally at a very high frequency. >> So, thinking about some of the industries that you're helping, I mean, you mentioned retail before. Obviously, government's very interested in this. I would imagine investors are interested in the weather in a big way. >> Yeah. >> Maybe you could talk about some of the more interesting industries, use cases, business models. >> Yeah, there's a lot out there, there's traditional ones we've served for years like energy traders that are very interested in, you know, because they're trying to make decisions about that. The financial services sector is also very interested. When they can get some additional insights through footfall traffic, if they know certain stores are seeing more footfall traffic, that will give them some indication, a little edge up in the marketplace for that. So, we see those kind of things, and other traditional areas as well, agriculture, what you would expect there. >> So people, you know, you hear a lot of talk in the press about artificial intelligence and Elon Musk predictions and the like, but here's an example where machine intelligence, everybody welcomes, keeps getting better and better and better. How far could we take AI and weather? Where do you see this going in the next 10 years? >> So, on the consumer side, I think it's really about transforming the way that we're delivering weather on the digital platform, the new age of the weather app will say, and, really, users want a personalized experience. They want to know how the weather's going to impact me, but they don't want to personalize, right? So, that's where machine learning is coming in, that we can be able to provide those insights. We'll know that, maybe, you're an allergy sufferer or migraine sufferer, and we're going to tell you that the conditions are right for that you might have symptoms related to that around health. So, there's a lot of ways, on the consumer side, more personalized experience, giving you more assurance that you don't have to, necessarily, go to the app to find information. We're going to send it to you more proactively, and, so, machine learning is helping us do that cognitive science as well. So, it's a pretty exciting time to be part of the weather. >> Yeah, that bum knee I have, you know, you might want to get ahead of the pain. >> That's right, with the arthritis, yes, yes, so, definitely. >> Alright, Mary, we'll give you last word on IBM Think and, you know, the whole trend of AI and weather. >> So, I think it's really exciting. I think Ginni says it really well. It's about AI and the person as well. You know, AI doesn't take over. It's really finding the way to AI to really assist decision makers and that's we're going on the business end of things is really sorting through tons and tons of data to really provide the insights that people can make, businesses can make really great decisions. >> Well, it's always been a really fascinating acquisition to me, and, now, just to see how it's evolving is really amazing. So, Sheri and Mary, thanks very much for coming on the Cube >> Thank you. >> and sharing your experiences. >> Thanks so much. >> Great, thank you. >> You're welcome, alright, keep it right there, everybody, you're watching the Cube. We're live from Think 2018 and we'll be right back. (techno beat)

>>Yeah, yeah, yeah, >>already. Welcome back, Cube alum Dave Volante. We're covering the transformation of Oracle Consulting. Specifically focused on really, what is what I consider a rebirth from really staff augmentation to a much more strategic partner for customers and with me to explore that a little bit of Sherry Latin back. She is the senior vice president of Cloud Key accounts at Oracle, and we're also joined by Pat McGovern. Who's the group? EVP for the North American Cloud strategy. Also Oracle folks, welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks >>for having us. >>You're welcome. So, Sheri, you're out talking to customers a lot. Um, I'm curious as to what that conversation is like specifically as it relates to consulting. I talked about the rebirth of Oracle consulting. You? Probably not, you know, earlier, years ago, leading with staff augmentation. That's not strategic. But are you bringing Oracle consulting now into the conversation? What's that conversation like? >>Absolutely. In fact, every conversation we have relating to our cloud strategy. Oracle consultants part and parcel to that they are not staff augmentation. They're actually the digital transformation arm of what we do around cloud. So it's been really interesting to see what they've been able to do in terms of changing the narrative of what we do it Oracle from just a software company to really transform into. I thought provider >>and Chris I'm interested in Sorry, pat. I'm interested in your title group. VP Cloud strategy. Right? So gravity, obviously a fundamental part of any customer interaction. But what are you seeing? What underscores customer strategies? What are the business drivers for them right now? One of the catalysts that are driving their their technology spending decisions? >>Yeah, it's a great question, and I think a lot of it depends upon, especially in the times that we're in now depends upon the industry that they're in. But, um, most importantly, what we're seeing is right now is durability. So we want to make sure that the customers of our Oracle customers and others have an opportunity to have disaster recovery business continuity. Um, in this stage, right now, it's less about expansion per se. Unless in an industry that's uniquely positioned for that more about durability, of the overall strategy that when we look at that, your ability, we think about kind of the core missions we think about, um so the back office operations and continuity and then we think about transformational revenue generation. And so when we partner with us, yes, we want to make sure that we have both of those concepts in mind. So >>I want to ask you both. Um, you know, it was a lot of we have a lot of talk about in our community about cloud first. Um, big oracle is sort of put forth the gauntlet of Look, we're we're leading now with cloud. You both have cloud in your title. But obviously being cloud first is is more than that sharing. What if you could talk about your customers and your cloud journey and share with us and convince us that you are cloud first? >>That's a great question. And in fact, I joined Oracle about 11 months ago, was in the industry for about 25 years and enjoying simply because I believe in what Oracle is doing around this journey. We're in our second generation of cloud capabilities, and that's purposeful. And we do that because we realized that where cloud started and where we are today, are two totally different things. And so we have capabilities around security viability extensions with autonomous that other cloud providers just simply don't have built these ground up to make sure that we can run Oracle for blitz databases and applications far better than any other cloud provider. So that's super exciting time you got Oracle, and it's absolutely fascinating what our customers are going to a doctor. Apology? >>Yes, so s so pat. I wanna ask you, Ah, sort of similar question. How fundamental is, uh, you know, Cloud to organizations, strategies, and obviously everybody is a cloud strategy. But I'm specifically asking as it relates to mission critical workloads because, let's face it, that's been the hardest to move into the cloud. So when you're out talking to customers about their strategy and obviously dovetailing at the Oracle strategy, how do you align those two views? >>Yeah, so it's actually really fascinating question. So first I think I would respond in the following away. When I think about our portfolio, I don't necessarily say cloud First, I say customer first, and I really want the customer to make a decision based upon a deployment model that makes sense for that. Think of the customer whether it's a regulated industry or the public sector or, you know, any sort of compliance considerations. So Oracle's one of the very few, uh, you know, enterprise Last Mile providers that has obviously on premise capabilities as well. And so 99% of the cases that we see, with the exception of some of the sort of startup S and B five folks that are born in the cloud, we're dealing with the hybrid cloud model anyway. And so that's the kind of the first order priorities what's right for the customer. And let's make sure that we get the appropriate I'm all for that customer in terms of enterprise essentially the workloads that we have, whether it's cloud or on Prem or enterprise workloads. And those were kind of separated into two buckets, one of the core mission of the revenue generation side. And what would be mission critical sort of the back office, the oracles historically tremendous at the back office side, running finance, running operations, running supply chain, you know, doing those things that are mission critical on the core mission side. That's really where we're starting to focus now, which is getting out into the revenue generation. The mission of the entity with things like high performance. Compute on making sure that we have an ability to support our customers on both sides of those. >>You got a follow up question on strategy. You talked about hybrid. And you know the hybrid. Clearly, riel, whatever the big buzzword today is multi cloud. My question is, is multi cloud the actual strategy of customers or is it actually just an outcome of multi vendor and and shadow I t. But what if you could address that? Yeah, >>So another great question. So I think if you're on one side of the fence, you call it a strategy on maybe risk mitigation on the other side of the fence, you could say, you know, I don't When people talk about multi cloud, they tend to say, Hey, you know that one of the big names that you hear, whether it's Oracle or aws, um you know Microsoft etcetera? Uh huh. But the reality is anybody who's running those are also running, you know, hundreds of father for SAS applications. Whether the department allowed sort of that shadow, I t. I think in part you call it a strategy. In part, you'd say it's just sort of propagation of cloud capabilities that have sprung up, Do you think? Based on, you know, security integration, performance considerations as well as sort of the general expansiveness of enterprise class capabilities? You probably see if you're niche players over time and you'll see kind of the broader bets happening around enterprise class capabilities. >>So, Sheri, you're relatively new to the oracle of just under a year. But you've been around the industry, and you know that the chairman of a horrible loves technology you love speeds and feeds and shares that Oracle Open World but and, you know or was a product company. But the conversation is changing. You kind of alluded to that before. It's not just about feature function speeds and feeds. Maybe you could address that. And where does Oracle consulting fit in that equation? >>Right, So it kind of detail of what Pat was just saying around the hybrid notion. We firmly believe that every customer is gonna wanna have different options for what they do in the cloud and based on the providers. So we want. We've partnered with Microsoft. We actually can interconnect are clouds together to provide that kind of flexibility to our customers. Yeah, it is a key component of that Azure customers and talk about. I'm going to stop integration. Our partnership or consultant is the arm that does that work for us. So we are seeing them come, come about in a much different way in a way that's different, you know? And other consulting, you know, staff augmentation firms. >>Well, that Microsoft is interesting to us. Uh, actually, a lot of people in the press might have put food. It saw that and said, Wow, this is This is pretty curious both from a strategy standpoint, but it really. But I think it's premature on Oracle. So you got the Number one database. Everybody knows Oracle's got the native get this hyper cloud partner now saying, Yeah, we can run. You're kind of seamlessly. I know that's an overused word, but what is the reaction been in the customer base? That deal? >>It's phenomenal. It's infinite, especially for a lot of our retailers that are being Microsoft Cloud companies. They're seeing that they can put their Microsoft applications in the Microsoft class. They can run the Oracle databases in the Oracle Cloud and Inter Operability is tremendous and they're not any sort of service as it relates to putting, you know, using a multi cloud strategy. And for us, we're seeing that as a differentiator for us in the market. >>So what's the strategy behind that? I want you to talk about that a little bit, because, I mean, you know, it was it was an interesting chess move by Oracle you got, you know, Amazon's out there doing their thing, and there's plenty of Oracle running on on AWS. But there's a lot of head bashing going on, and then you guys partner up with Microsoft that caught a lot of people off guard. Can you help us, You know, give us a little color on the strategy behind that? >>Yeah, so I think that there's a There's a technical component of the strategy which Sherry alluded to, but I also think that there's a cultural component of the strategy and so, you know, obviously Microsoft has been around for a long time. ESX has Oracle that they have a substantial on from this friend. But as much as any other company on the Lana, probably Microsoft has this hybrid strategy just like Oracle. And so, as we look at, you know, the partner ecosystem and what makes sense the partner and how can we diversify the workloads like Microsoft is one of those companies? That's just sort of, Ah, very vertical industry focused great portfolio products. I'm slightly differentiated in terms of the space that they would buy in versus an Oracle. As you pointed out, So, uh, cultural standpoint, I think it's quite a good fit for us to find, you know, as we look at partners to find a partner like Microsoft to work with an integrated workloads. It >>was kind of a judo move for both companies in my mind, because you see a lot of companies that are predominantly on Prem, just like Oracle has been historically saying with Microsoft and basically kind of going on to hybrid, obviously they want on Prem and multi Cloud, which is okay, we're going to span multiple clouds. But both Oracle Now and Microsoft, with its hybrid strategy, as I call it, a judo move because essentially you're doing things that maybe some of the other cloud providers can't do because of your own prim present. So you're turning what may have been perceived as a disadvantage, you know, a legacy business. You know, it's funny in our business legacies of >>a >>bad word, but but it's usually as good connotations. But turning that on Prem legacy into an advantage. Cherry. Is that a reasonable premise that I'm putting forth and you having conversations with customers in that regard? >>Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's a very fair statement to make, because we do have again. I oversee the top 120 Oracle's and in that they have years and years of investment in Oracle databases in Oracle applications and for us agreeable by the capabilities to move that to your cloud. Integrate with other things such as Microsoft, you know, applications and whatnot is huge issue, and no other cloud provider can say that. So I do think that good to see that we are uniquely differentiated. >>I want to ask you about lock in because that's always the criticism of Oracle. I talked to a lot of work with customers in particular exit data. People say, Why would anybody buy exit data locks in what you by AWS and why would you buy any product. You, uh, disk drive a lock in. So So I want to ask you about that because my research shows that while there's a there's a segment of customers that are very much concerned about that, and that's a primary concern you lock in. It's actually a small percentage, maybe 10 15%. Most of the customers that I to talk to the Oracle world will say, Listen, I'm willing to risk that lock in If if If the business value overwhelms that And again I ask you, Is that is that something that is a viable conversation with your customers? Do you see the same thing? I mean, I see it as kind of a strong indication. If they kind of poo poo the lock in pieces, they look at the business value that I'm driving from my organization. I wonder if you could >>Yes. So I think value is the crux of the conversation. And if you look at sort of the legacy business, just put it that for a second. You know that what people would call legacy, uh, the US is a tremendous asset because we have 400,000 customers or so around the world. Those are folks that we're giving choice. You can run on Prem. You can run in the cloud. You can find an engineered systems or into the data box behind your firewall. You can run it as a data cloud at customer, which is behind your firewall, but leveraging Native Public Cloud services. Or you can run that same capability and exit out of service. So really again, that deployment model choice about what, folks? You how folks wanna consume their services in terms of lock in. I don't think it's so much lock in, as you point out, is value if a customer's deriving value from a given solution, especially in the cloud world, they're going to consume right, and if they're going to consume the probability and higher likelihood is that they'll expand as well. So I look it. I essentially look at consumption in the cloud world being value that's been realized, and once you have value that's been realized, it's critical conversation. I don't I don't view it is lock. In fact, there's a lot of fun, mobility and portability that can occur when you talk about hybrid cloud multi cloud environments. I view it much more is identifying the value and then executing against that value so that folks consume cloud services. >>Why, Cheri, why are customers wanting to put mission critical workloads in the cloud? Is it the same sort of cloud, agility and cost, etcetera, etcetera. I mean, why not just leave it on Prem and keep it protected and maybe spend a little bit more? What's the driver for moving mission Critical workloads? >>Well, I think it's it's dependent upon you know what? The initiatives are in the company right now. They're looking for cost reduction for top line growth, either looking for different capabilities around security that the cloud provides. The great thing about what we do is we have optimized all of our work lives but our database and our applications into our class of providing additional capabilities. But we're also seeing a lot more. So we, uh we say all the time you put us to the test, let us, you know, quantify what we would look like in the cloud with our workloads versus competitors, er and we will guarantee that will save you a lot of money. So I think that a lot of it has to do with one. It starts with potentially cost reduction, but then they start seeing additional business value driven out of and back to Oracle Consulting. What Oracle consultant provides in terms of business value in the cloud is transformative for our customers. >>Well, that this is valued to is a component of the business case that has to be risk mitigation. And, you know, if you just want to buy some object storage, you know, probably not gonna work is not going to be my first call. But if I have a mission critical set of workloads that are running on Oracle, I'm really going to think twice about migrating that, you know, somewhere else I'm either gonna leave it on, Prem, or I'm gonna look look hard that Oracle's same same approach. And we've done some research on this that the risk and cost of actually migrating to a new environment is is potentially really detrimental to companies. I wonder if you could talk about how that plays into your and customers strategies. >>Yeah, and I think, you know, is, um, reference in what? What Kerry said. So it depends on the choice of the customer, but what I would say is if a customer is driving a lot of value on premise, um, that might look something like exists ts and the cloud for D. R. So they're actually have a disaster recovery plan that's file based. I think Cloud is one of these sort of unicorn conversations. Everybody, everybody wants to have a cloud conversation. And so, making sure that that cloud of conversation in the context of the customer, um, is what's crucial for us. And so, you know, as you look at mission critical workloads, those are the workloads that we want. We want either core mission, our mission critical. It's just object storage or just something, you know, that people want to spin up and spin down. Yeah, that's interesting to Oracle, but for us, as a B two b, your B two b enterprise class, um, software company, we want to be in your core mission or in your back office, you know, helping you execute against that mission. >>So share here, going in with a stacked deck. I mean, you're not going in trying to go head to head with the hyper scale you going in saying, Look, this is our wheelhouse, and I think I'm hearing in your wheelhouse you'll take anybody on. But I wonder if you could sort of affirm that and maybe talk about how you lead in these customer conversations, >>right? Well, normally, our entry point is one. Understanding with business drivers are right. It has to be a business led recession. Really? Isn't a technology starting point right? It really is around what business problems we're trying to solve and how can we help you solve them? And because we know your environments, we know what data bases air deployed in. Other public. What is your lover? Dji to run your business? We can, I think, successfully position ourselves very, very competitively against other cloud providers. And I think that is something that resonated incredibly well with our customers and back. >>Yes, So it seems like Oracle Consulting is an important ingredient as part of that strategy, Cause again, If it was, you know, five years ago it was just stack staff augmentation. That's really not a compelling conversation to have with customers. But if you can come in with A with the mindset of strategic partner you're bringing in Deloitte, we've been talking to some of their professionals about the elevate program with with Oracle, that is, that's a nice lever that your you can take advantage of. >>Absolutely. And in fact, we've seen that that is a huge opportunity. For one, the partnership with Deloitte is incredibly strategic. We also partner with other companies like Accenture and DXC and IBM Candidly and Oracle is consulting is incredibly flexible in terms of what kind of partnerships and the line they have with our customers is really based. Yeah, >>I want to end on a growth path and maybe talk about everyone wants to weaken. Cloud Cloud is the growth business. You look at Oracle's business, you know everybody's business. This cloud is growing. Everything else is either hanging on or declining. So it's all about growth. How do you drive growth? What what is Cloud's role in terms of, you know, the growth strategy and maybe had some color to that narrative? >>Yeah, so from a from an execution standpoint, how we drive growth is we have a kind of a core part capability, its value volume, velocity burger. Those are very simplistic approach that we take in each of our line of businesses and then across each of the segments of the market size pass and I as an engineer systems as well. The values crucial If you're not, you're not selling with value and kind of positioning value at the up front part of it. You know, the customers may book, but it won't consume and don't consume. They're not going to renew. So ensuring that customers are realizing value from the process is essential. And then with volume and velocity, you know, our legacy business was much more kind of chunkier, so you could focus on big quarter ends or a big year end on. You had impending events through, you know, started compliance considerations or contract negotiations, etcetera. We have to be in a volume and velocity business in order to scale out and also the average transaction sizes. Historically, although it's growing for us, >>it >>is slightly lower than what a license on premise capability would be. As you'd expect, um, from, uh, from a product perspective, I think, you know, we were sort of a luxury of riches around the autonomous capabilities. If you haven't so that's something that's incredibly unique. Oracle. You know, the Economist database and all the economist services that we're rolling out and that Autonomous gets back to what we talked about earlier, around security, around performance, around scale, ability and all these things. Ultimately, we're positioning the capabilities of the future, but we're positioning them today. So we're a market leader in this space. You're not only is the Oracle database. As you pointed out, the market leader were market leaders here. If you found a bunch of the SAS areas, this eponymous segment of the market is crucial for us and crucial to our growth. >>Yeah, it really isn't enabling. What I've been saying. That you it's almost compulsory for Oracle to participate and compete in the cloud because it gives you that automation and that that scale. But you're talking about also setting up, you know, some future advantages of being able to take advantage of data. The combination of data ai and Cloud is the new superpower with within the industry. Sherry, I want O end on you. 11 months in an oracle. Let's say things work out great. You're here 234 years down the road. You look back. What does success look like? >>Success looks like everyone of our customers moving to the Oracle cloud and see incredible business value from that partnering with Oracle Consulting. That's what my successful curious >>guys. Thanks so much for coming on the Cube where we've been we've been tracking this transformation of Oracle consulting and one of the things that's very clear. There was Oracle's obviously serious about cloud, but also seriously about bringing in new talent and new skill sets really not only transform Oracle but help transform your customers. So thank you for your time. Really appreciate it. >>Thanks so much. >>You bet. Thank you. >>All right. Thank you. Everybody for watching. This is Dave Vellante for the Cube. We'll see you next time. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Announcer: Live from New York City It's theCUBE. Covering CyberConnect 2017. Brought to you by Centrify and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. >> Hey welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE's coverage of CyberConnect 2017. Live here in New York City at the Grand Hyatt downtown on 42nd street. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante. This is Centrify's inaugural event that they're presenting and they're underwriting. It's the industry event between industry and government and really around the crisis of our generation which is cyber security and it's impact to the transformation to global society and our coverage here. Our next guest is Shira Rubinoff who is the President of SecureMySocial, which is really cutting edge human aspect of social engineering meets security. Primetech partners, Cybersecurity, IoT and an influencer but also doing some great work advising start-ups great participant in the community and certainly great to have you back on theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Shira: Thank you, pleasure. >> So, you're in the front row. I saw you and Dave, I couldn't get a seat I was in the back of the bus here at the General Keith Alexanders keynote, among other great keynotes here. Really an inaugural event and inaugural events are great because it's the sign of the trends but also you know if they do a second even, it worked. Right, so you never know there's never going to be another event so an inaugural event means something. It means that the world has to the realization that the world is changed, the realities are here and that the old way isn't good enough. >> Shira: Yup. >> And you're in the middle of it. What's your thoughts? What's your reaction to the program? >> Well you know it's interesting, it also even goes back to the old technology days when you buy by brand. No ones going to fault you for buying the brand names. Everyone just went along with buying the trend, buying the brand. And as technology advanced itself as well we started seeing doing it the old way is just not going anywhere today. Especially with the millennials entering the workforce, how things are done, how people approach technology and security is very different. The human factors of information security is taking a front row today, in terms of security, in terms of the weakest link of the chain. Whether it being phishing, finding the entree into an organization through the human ... the weak link of the human, or in terms of tricking people for doing other things while they're downloading malware or even circumventing different technologies that are layered upon each other because there's just too many layers of security on each other and not making it easy for somebody to use the technology and keeping it strong. >> This year you bring up a good point about the human aspect of it. There's an old joke in IT where there's a fork with a cork in it and someone says why is that there? So they don't stick the fork in their eye. And that's a joke on the old system admin joke around human error, around updating. That's been around for a while, but now there's a whole other social engineering going on around the business of cyber attacks. Whether it's mafias or organized hacker units that do it for business, for profit to state governments where the social engineering around the human vulnerabilities are key. This isn't your area, it's your wheelhouse. What is the key thing that's happening? What should people be aware of? What's your analysis? >> Well I think people have to be careful of oversharing. I think there's many different entrees into finding, again when we talk about the human factors whether being government, whether being a technology company, whether being a seasuite, whether it being through social media. It's being trusted the wrong people, trusting the wrong sources, and just being open and not being over careful in checking your sources and making sure you're actually linking up whether it being on the LinkedIn. Also, I was talking to someone earlier that people were accepting LinkedIn invitations from non-trusted sources. And they seemed to look okay but again, a social engineering piece that comes in that allowed others in to actually see context and find a breech within an organization. Sometimes, somewhat like a government it can always be across all communities. >> So that's a very nuance point, lets take LinkedIn for example, mind if I picked on LinkedIn but Facebook I'm an oversharer so I'm probably being hacked 10 ways from Sunday but you can have whatever you want. But lets take LinkedIn as an example. A practitioner could say I work on the servers for Chase Bank and I handle the Apache whatever project. That's metadata that can be used against that person. He's putting it out there, he or she, for a job potentially to showcase their skills. Yet, the bad actors can use that and figure out what communities they're ... >> Exactly. >> And github their participants so it's a gesture signal point, that you ... Am I right, am I getting it right? >> Correct. Correct. And that's what some of the companies actually put allowances around what people are allowed to share on LinkedIn, however there's the double-edged sword because they're telling their employees do not overshare and say specifically what you're doing. The employee themselves are saying, hey I want to be open to recruiters to come find me because who knows what my next gig is. So they're going to over share what they're doing to show all the experience that they have so they're open to other job opportunities. >> This is a really interesting conflict, and again I'm torn because religiously I'm a big believer in the democratization of media and society but what you're talking about really is a counter against the democratization because that's based on sharing, which that's where open sources from and so this is going to be some sort of shift. >> Correct. Correct. Well, that also plays into the whole millennial shift. Of how it's approached through the workforce. Millennial generation share everything, everything is open. My whole life is opening itself up on social media. I want you to know what I'm having for breakfast because you might want to have it too. By the way, this is what I'm working on at work because you might find it interesting. Whether it being their boss or saying don't do this they're saying don't tell me what to do and I'm going to work from home half the time. It's millennial shift and we have to shift with it. It's going that route. >> So to what degree can we take bad human behavior out of the equation? Toiling, technology, maybe it's process education. >> Well I think it has to be many factors. You know, there has to be the education around it. There also has to be implementing the right technology. To warn users if they're doing things the wrong way. For example, my company SecureMySocial, we are a technology assisted self-monitoring company for allow for employers to give employees to self monitor across social media based on compliance organization real time warnings. So it would warn the employee if they the employee themselves would be doing something wrong. So implementing technologies of that sort whether being whatever the organization may be open to. So you have the education piece, you have the partnerships with the right technology companies, and you also have allowing the employees to have the right types of security around what they're doing themselves. Without being so involved in what they're doing because then they're going to have a big push back. So there's a very fine line you have to walk here. >> And the psychology is interesting you mention the millennials too, because that's their norm. >> Shira: Correct. And they want to be part of a tribe, right? >> Shira: Yes. >> So that the belonging aspect of social is becoming a norm. But now we have to have practices. So what do you, what's your vision of this? Because that probably won't stop, that's a behavior that will constantly be there. Is that going to come in a form of product? Solutions? A better identity? I mean ... >> Well it's going to come everywhere, if you look across all generations from the boomers, gen x, millennials. Things shift with the generations as it comes down the path. So certainly through technology is going to shift to, easy to use, no extra steps to download. As Centrify has, they want a one point to contact. They don't want to overlay technologies on technologies which is what I speak about a lot. My background is heavily in psychology and the human aspect. So make things as strong as they can be without cumbersome to the employee. You want them to use it, not break it, not go around it and not just throw it out the window. >> Gee, you're a great guest and music to our ears because as Dave knows, I've been on this rant for a long time. User experience is really about user expectations. And as expectations shift, that's kind of where the puck will be or whether you're skating through the puck or skating with the puck, as some people are. The question comes down to this young generation because General talked about this new cyber warfare but there's West Point, there's no Navy SEAL, and that's going to come from a gamer culture potentially or the younger generation, so I got to ask ya. Do you think that we're going to have a counter culture? Because in every revolution, take the 60's. We're the 50's parents now, right? We're the 50's generation, or are we? So I've been kind of speculating that I think we're on the cusp of a counter culture revolution. The summer of love of digital is coming. Or maybe not, what do you think? >> You know, I think it's very interesting the way it's shifting across generations. I think that the generation, our generation before us are trying to take this millennial generation and put them in a box and saying follow my rules or else you're out and the millennial generations like make me. So it's not going to happen that way. They're going to actually drive the force of how technology is going to be created and how the business world is actually going to react and act towards them and how things are going to flow after them. And just wait for the following generation, things are going to be a lot looser. >> So you think there's going to be some massive change being shifted from their expectations. >> Shira: Correct. Correct. Yes. >> Well, I feel like millennials are in for a great awakening because now they don't have a ton to lose. >> Shira: Yes. >> As they get older and accrue more wealth. >> John: Well millennials are generally lazy, right? (laughter) >> You've got to be careful when you say that. >> As my son would say, they're smart or they're lazy. >> They're the make me generation. >> Exactly >> Alright, fine. Be careful what you wish for. But is there a gamification involved. The psychology of getting humans to behave the way that you need them to behave in order to have good security practices. >> Yes, no I think that's a great question. I think that based on what the millennials are doing now and how the shift is happening through the gen x and millennials kind of intertwining the businesses and the way technology is created and moved forward. I think that it's going to somehow have to combine forces. I think there's going to have to be a little give and take. And I think as time progresses and things mature that it's going to be understood and it's going to be adapted by them and adopted by them, as well. >> So, talk a little bit more about your company. MySocial ... >> Shira: SecureMySocial, yes. >> What does it do? How does it help solve some of these issues? >> So SecureMySocial is just technology assisted self monitoring tool for employers to give employees to self monitor across social media, based on compliance and regulations of the organization. With real time warnings and auto-delete capabilities. Basically, the organization would buy it. Based on where a person would fall in the organization there will be specific rules set to apply to them. Whether it being group rule sets for C level people, marketing and the like, you don't want false positives. And they the people themselves would get a real time warning to their known device. But I will back track a little bit because most organizations, if not all today have certain criteria. What you can and can't do across social media. But the most of the problems, if not 98 or more percent of data loss or reputation happen outside of the office. It happens on lunch breaks, vacations, weekends. We can't monitor peoples personal accounts. So we're making the users themselves, they would get the real time warnings. There's nothing to download, nothing to install. They don't give over any personal information, yet they're protected and we're able to keep it across the whole thing. >> So it's an insurance policy for the employee saying, look here's a little notification because you know that if you say that drunk tweet, let's get real right or do something that's at a concert ... >> The CFO of Twitter mistakenly tweeted out the earnings of Twitter instead of doing a direct tweet. Things happen, mistakes happen. It's the human factors of it all. >> Dave: And your technology could have stopped that? >> We could have stopped it, we could have actually auto deleted it before it even went out. >> It's almost, I don't know if it's happening on the west coast, but around where I live there's all these ... There's speed signs going up. Tells you how fast you're going. >> It's like that angel on your shoulder saying, do you really want to do this? >> It might be 25 and you see it and you go, you're going too fast and it's flashing and you slow down, and it actually works. >> We use ways in California that's more ... >> It lets you know where the cops are. (John laughing) >> There's no cops! There's no cops around. >> I know that's the same, it's just more effective. You get there faster, you don't ... >> If you don't mind I'd like to ... >> It's this subliminal message, says hey whoa yo slow down. >> Like that angel on your shoulder tapping you on the shoulder letting you know. >> Like you said, it's the good angel. >> Now I just wanted to mention also a new venture actually launching at the end of the month. It's called Prime Tech Partners. We're an incubator here in New York City. Near the flat iron district. We're going to be launching the end of November. Focusing on augmented reality, cyber security, information security and e-commerce. Opening up to start-ups. And please check it out, Prime Tech Partners. >> Shira you did some great work, I got to ask you the question because start-ups are the canary in the coal mine. >> Shira: Yup. >> They'll tell you kind of what's happening, give you a barometer. What is going on in the start-up areas around security because there's now a range, diverse range opportunities from lock chain all the way to enterprise. >> Sheri: Sure. >> So, and everything in between. What's the chirping happening in the mines of the start-ups as they create new ventures. >> Well it's interesting because when you talk about what's out there we talk about almost like an umbrella. Sometimes people would put cyber security over the whole umbrella and then fit artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain. Everything kind of falls under there. So, you know it's actually moving along with the system. There's a lot of artificial intelligences making a big play. IoT world, there's quite a bit of technology coming out there. All finding the whole problems and if you look at everything there's a lot of the human aspects of information security that they have to take into account when developing and when pushing it out because at the end of the day, it's all social engineering. It's the human factor, whatever you're creating. >> And we're seeing the same thing on theCUBE entries. We go to hundreds of shows a year. The trend is every part of the stack is impacted by this. >> Shira: Exactly. >> At the infrastructure low level, from multi factor authentication all the way up to Docker and Cooper and Eddies at the dev ops level, the app level. To wearables ... >> Well, wearables certainly. Right? Gaining some ones information. >> John: Geo information. >> Right. Well, here was an interesting ... I went into, I have a law firm that contacted me. They wanted me to some consulting for them. They implement this most beautiful, high-tech, gorgeous office. So I was in there talking to some of the partners and they were plugging in their new smart TV's and their smart fridges. Everything into their network. You don't have breech their network to get their information, we'll breech Sony! You breech into Sony, whatever whoever the manufacturer of the TV, the fridge, whatever it is. They're thinking IoT, well they can gain access into that law firm, gain information and just take all that information and utilize that. So there's so much thought to be put around even the IoT world, artificial intelligence. The human factor takes a step back. >> If it's a network device it can be hacked. >> Exactly. Yes. >> So is part of your mission just to make people aware of humans role in bad security practices? Is that a big part of this? >> Shira: Yes. >> This sort of shining a light on it. >> Yes, I think there's almost like a stop and pause. When you're creating a technology, whatever it is, and people are looking, Oh I'm going to make this stronger. I'm going to make this better, I'm going to make this faster. Oh here let me put another control over it, and here's another control, and by the way they have to go around this and do five things, we're going to have the best thing out there. They're not going to use it, they're going to break it and circumvent it. Stop, there's a person there. How are we going to make the person use this to the best capacity? How's it going to be strong without giving them all those extra layers? Anything you're doing, there's a person there. You got to stop and think and figure out how to utilize the best way. >> Shira, give us some predictions for next year, the end of the year, so predictions are coming. We had our meeting this week, or last week on our predictions, so we're going to put you in the hot seat. Your predictions for next year. Hot trends you expect to see. What are you expecting? What's your prediction for next year? Well, I think IoT is going to take a big forefront. Especially with the smarter cities, the smarter homes. As you're talking about the wearables. Artificial intelligence is going to kind of play into that as well, but I think the people are very excited about becoming let's quote unquote smart, no extra steps, right? When you have the no extra steps, remember you're opening yourself up for something, do it smart. But IoT is really expanding itself into every infrastructure whether it being utilizing, engineering. Whether it being cities itself, whether it being homes. And the wearables are also ... If you look at what's going on with Fitbit, then you have the next Apple and then there's something else every other day that you could put on yourself and you could get any information that you want. >> So people are connecting the IoT to the industrial side of their analog to digital. >> Exactly. Yes. Yes. And I think that's going to become a forefront in the next year. >> Right. What do you think of the event here, so far? >> I think the event is terrific. We've had some amazing speakers here and I think they're all highlighting the fact that we have to share expertise and really come together to bypass the problems that are out there and work as a unit, and certainly Centrify is doing a great job here. I'm very happy to be here. >> Great. Well, good luck with everything next year. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, we really appreciate it. >> Shira: Thank you. Happy to be here. That was commentary, great analysis. An opinion here on theCUBE, here at Centrify's event that they're underwriting for the industry as an industry event called CyberConnect presented by Centrify. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, stay tuned for more live coverage here in New York City after this short break. (electronic music)