>> Narrator: Live from Nice, France. Its the Cube, covering .Next Conference 2017, Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching, Silicon Angle Medias production of the Cube. World Wide leader in live tech coverage. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest, Anja Manuel, who's a Co-founder and partner at, Rice Hadley Gates. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Anja: Thank you for having me, Stu. >> So, I've attended all five of the Nutanix conferences. And definitely, when we get a speaker at the Key Note from R.H.G. is one of the highlights. So, Condoleezza Rice, everybody's like, how does Nutanix get Condie Rice to come in? Robert Gates, we've actually had the pleasure of having him on the Cube. We've had Stephen Hadley on in D.C. also. And a little bit different conversation than some of the, kind of, in the weeds technical discussion. So, Anja for our audience that's not familiar, give us a little bit about your background, what you led you in to be one of the founders. >> Absolutely. Well, I've done a bit of everything. I've been an investment banker, a lawyer doing international cases. I have worked at the State Department for Condie Rice, mostly on Asia issues. And, then at the very end of 2008, Condie, Steve and I founded this firm. And we feel very lucky to be working with each other and some of the great, young and already, some already large, some fast growing tech companies in the Valley. And helping them expand around the world. And it's been a particular pleasure to work with Dheeraj and his team at Nutanix. When we started with them, they were a couple hundred people. And now look around, you've got 2,000 people at this conference. So, we're very proud of them. >> Yeah, absolutely. Great growth for Nutanix, their eco-system's blossoming. One of the jokes I always have here on the Cube is, when I talk to any end user customers, its like, well your industry's not changing that much, right? And of course, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. Digital disruption is more than just what it's affecting. Globalization is just a fact of life. It brings, especially for a lot our audiences, USA based, we reach a global audience. But when we come to some of these international events, it really puts a point on some of the things going on globally. What're you talking to, when you speak to the CIOs and you're talking to Nutanix customers and partners, what are some of the big challenges? What are the things that they need to be looking at? >> Sure, globalization is happening and of course, it's more pronounced in tech. This is the first industry that really shows no sectoral boundaries. The big platform companies can basically go into any industry sector and no geographic boundaries. It's very easy to expand internationally. So, what I'm going to be talking about today on the main stage is just globalization and its backlash. As you know we've seen, after decades of evermore, open boarders, increase trade, easier immigration, and the last year or two, you've seen really the West in sort of, what I would call a defensive crouch. And there are real reasons for it in the US where you and I both live. If you are a white male, who has a high school education or less, you live on average, 10 years less than all of the very highly educated people in this room. And there is a real issue of people being left behind. And you can see that impact politically. You see it in the US, with Trump, and I would also argue on the left with Bernie Sanders. You see it with Brexit. You see it in the impact that Marine Le Pen and Aten a Tiva for Deutschland and others have had on European politics. And I would say that impact is strong, even though those right wing parties in Europe didn't win, they're setting the agenda much more than you would've seen 10 years ago. So it's something for the tech companies to consider as they keep expanding. >> Yeah, it's a trade. On the one hand, you said that there's no boundaries for tech, but one of the things a lot of the tech community, we look at, is some of those fragments that are happening. So, like, the internet. Is the internet a global internet or does China have their own internet? Will Germany just create their own internet? And how much is governance, and having data something we look and Nutanix looks at a lot, require that you have it within those boarders, and the boundaries between government and corporations now? There's certain countries where governments are heavily involved and certain ones where it almost feels that they're fighting. In the US, it's, is the government actually helping business or stopping business? >> That's right. >> Is something that we ask a lot. So I'm curious, your thoughts. >> Well, right now, we still have one global interoperable internet and that has been a huge boon to economies all around the world. Not just the American one. And it's this little known organization called ICANN, which was started in the 1990s. It has a convoluted thing called the multi stake holder model, where they say, we're going to get people, the technologists who are working on this and GOs and governments and everyone talking about how do we actually manage this thing and make sure that it stays interoperable and global. And I'm quite happy that that system of internet governance still stands and that it hasn't been taken over by individual governments or by the United Nations. You talked about data localization. It's a real issue. We see this with a lot of the tech companies that we work with out in California. More and more. You see the Russians doing it. You see the Chinese doing it. And I worry that if that trend really continues, you will have less interaction, for example, between Chinese and Americans, which is something we so dramatically need, now that our governments seem to be more and more at odds with each other. It's more important than ever that the companies and the people are talking to each other. >> Yeah, I actually, we interviewed the former president of ICANN, Fadi Chehade, a couple of years ago and he was raising red flags as to concern about would the US step back. Cause really, it put that in place, and had a very strong connection there. So would the US, kind of, advocate from some of this or how would that be involved? So you're happy with the way ICANN's going and kind of the global discussion? >> I was very happy to see that the United States allowed it to be privatized. Which is something that'd been planned for a long time. So we're quite happy that it happened the way it did. And that even the new Trump administration didn't stop that from going through, yeah. >> All right, you've written a lot about India, some of the others. How do companies, even in the global market place? Do they have to specialize in what they're doing? Certain regionalizations, that they need to do or how do they, global company, interact in some of the more emerging markets? >> Yeah, they do have to specialize. And I think sometimes, in Silicon Valley, we're so confident in our own abilities that sometimes we think, well if it's invented here, naturally the world will love it. That worked for Facebook. It worked for Google. It doesn't necessarily work for every technology company. And so, yes, of course you have to tailor it to the local market. And there are some innovations coming out of China and India that are, frankly, really impressive and we should adopt some of them. And China, the web payments infrastructure is much more advanced than what you see in the US. Lots of people do everything through their WeChat account. They pay, they interact, they talk. It's not just texting. It's a whole echo system in a way that we haven't really seen as much in the US and Europe. So we can learn from them as well. >> Yeah so another interesting topic is, Silicon Valley prides itself on being the center of innovation. What're you seeing globally, are there certain areas or pockets? Can there be other Silicon Valleys for different technologies or is Silicon Valley going to be the Silicon Valley for all of these waves? >> Well, we are the biggest Silicon Valley. And it is a very unique eco-system. I'm lucky enough to teach at Stanford and to work with some of these tech companies. The idea that a university and a venture capital eco-system and entrepreneurs all work together in something that isn't directed by the state is very very important. And you do see these springing up everywhere. You have it in Bangalore. You have it in Boston, where you're from. You have it outside of London. You're seeing a little bit in Berlin happening. You're seeing it in China in a much bigger way than I think people appreciate. I'll give you one story. I was at the Chinese World Internet Forums, sort of their vision of the world internet, a year and a half ago. And I get back to my hotel at midnight, ready to just go to bed, and there are a thousand people in the lobby. All with their phones out. And I'm wondering, who's coming? Is it Xi Xin Ping? Is it some rock star? In walks Jack Ma and the CEO of Xiaomi phones. And a huge shout goes up as if it's the Beatles. So if you're a young millennial Chinese person, you want to be Jack Ma. So innovation fever has captured them as well. >> Yeah, what about companies being global versus being based in a country? What advice do you give to how they balance that headquarters versus being a global company? >> Yeah, this is one of the ironies and all the protectionist talk you see from governments because I think the cat is out of the bag. So to speak. Every company we work with, even the very young ones, they're global from the very beginning. Even if you think your headquarters are in New York or in California, you're supply chain most likely, incorporates 10 different countries. Your customers are somewhere else. Maybe you don't advertise it because you try to be an all American company or all European company, but there's actually no such thing as a domestic company anymore. >> I want to give you the final word. Nutanix, you give some advice. I'm sure there's things we can't talk about. But how are they doing as being a global company? What are some of the things a company like Nutanix that they'll face as they expand globally? >> Yeah, Nutanix is very impressive. First of all, if you look at Dheeraj and Sudheesh and their senior management team, what I love about working with them, is that they are good technically, they're great at the people to people skills and they are instantly global just like we just talked about. If you look at their management team, they're from all over the world. And they very quickly got people out into all the different regions. I think they try to be sensitive to how their product would be used in different places around the world. So I'm quite optimistic about what they're going to be able to achieve. >> Okay, I do have one last question for you. I was just thinking about that globalization. One of the concerns we have these days is getting enough women in tech and with your global viewpoint, just women in the workforce is still something that we're challenged with in many parts of the globe. What's your take? >> Yeah, strangely, women in the workforce are doing better in China, for example, than in the US, Europe, India, other places. I love living and working in Silicon Valley. We really have a problem. And we need to do more. And it's on the stem side. It's on the investor side. You've seen all of the news coming out about how it's so much harder for a woman entrepreneurs to get funded. There's no reason. There's actually a recent study done saying that women who get funded, their companies do, on average, far better than companies founded by men. So clearly there's some problem going on here and I'm happy that Silicon Valley's finally paying attention. >> Well Anju Manuel, really appreciate you joining us for this segment. I'm Stu Miniman and we will be back with more coverage here from Nutanix .Next in Nice, France. You're watching the Cube.

(upbeat electronic music) >> Narrator: Live, from Santa Clara, California, it's theCube. Covering Open Networking Summit 2017. Brought to you by The Linux Foundation. >> Woman: Sure. Um, so, yeah, as you were saying, OpenDaylight really kind of kicked things off from a open source networking standpoint. I mean, there were certainly other open source controllers earlier, in sort of the market life cycle, but they kind of never really made their way out of the universities. OpenDaylight was the first that really had a lot of commercial participation and uptake, kind of in the real world, so to speak. Um, so with that, I think there was a lot of learning that happened, both on the vendor's side, with regard to open source, as well as on the user side. Um, and as the OpenDaylight platform matured and started coming to fruition, we started seeing a lot of other projects sort of both below at the platform layer as well as further up the stack. So at this point, and we've been talking about this quite a bit here at ONS, um, we've been talking a lot about the whole open networking stack that has sort of come to fruition now. You know, really low level stuff, DPDK was just announced today. Fido, which is sort of big data for networking. Then all the way up the stack to ONAP, which was just announced last month. ONAP is a bringing together of the ECOMP Project that was started by AT&T and then they brought it to The Linux Foundation and Open-O, which actually sort of germinated within The Linux Foundation with a lot of input from, um, a number of small vendors, as well as major carriers, particularly in Asia. So, um, bringing those things together at the orchestration layer, and so now we've got this sort of whole stack. Some of it, a lot of it is Linux Foundation projects, some of it is other projects with other open source foundations. All of which we work with very collaboratively across all those different projects. >> Man: Right, right. >> But at this point, we're really kind of looking at how do we enable people to consume this a little bit more easily from the user side? And then also from the developer side. There are a lot of developers who are involved in multiple different projects. Which of course means that they're spread very thin across all those projects. And we're looking at how do we make it a more feasible and scalable activity for them? >> Right. >> So for example, you know, OpenDaylight is upstream of a lot of other projects. There are a lot of other projects that have a lot of dependencies on OpenDaylight. So how do we streamline the release train in such a way that, you know, everybody gets what they need at the time that they need it, so they can do their releases on a timely basis and so forth and so on. And that just, you know, that makes things a lot easier from a developer standpoint. That also sort of naturally increases the, improves the integration points between those projects which is, of course, better for users. >> Man: Right. >> Um, so those are a lot of the things that we have in motion sort of across the Linux Foundation, um, and I think that the other thing that we've really seen over the last year come to fruition is a lot of the early adopters of OpenDaylight in particular have now spent enough time working with the open source community, either through their vendors or increasingly directly themselves, that they kind of get this open source thing, and they understand kind of what the processes are and why we do things they way they do. >> Right. >> And so they're willing to take a much more active role. AT&T is a prime example of that. They were working on ECOMP themselves internally, and they, very quickly, came to the realization that in order to scale it as quickly as they needed to, I mean, they were putting tens of thousands of their developers through specialized boot camps, right? >> Man: Right, right. >> The networking people to become networking developers. But at the same point, you just can't push people through the system that fast enough, nor can you hire enough people that fast enough. And so that's why this has decided to bring it to the open source community. >> Man: It seems like there's kind of an acceleration of carving out some piece of what was proprietary and putting it out to continue the development in an open source world. >> Any "why", you kind of answered the question just now in terms of there's not enough people. But more interestingly, you talked about some open source stuff just never gets going. What are some of the real secrets that make an open source project run? >> Yeah. >> Versus those that don't, or you know, die on the vine. >> Yeah. Um, there are a lot of different components, of course, like with anything. Some of it is technical, right? Do you have the right architecture? Is it one that can scale? Is it extensible? Are the right kinds of people involved in the project? Is the project being informed by the right kinds of people? So if you go and build something that nobody needs, either because you don't have the right people involved, or because you're not open to that feedback, it's going to die on the vine. So, you know, a successful project really has to have a strong community around it. And it's a-- >> Jeff: Chicken and egg. >> Chicken and egg thing, right? How do you get a strong community? Well, you have the right processes in place, but you also make sure that you have the right people involved so that they can build the right kind of thing. And that they have the skills to do it effectively. >> Right. And then the other interesting trend we're seeing is, The Linux Foundation is becoming kind of the hub where you put these things, um, to grow, and as you said, really to cross-pollinate with the other open source projects that have all these interdependencies. >> And that seems to be an accelerating trend as well, as least from the outside looking in. >> Lisa: Yeah, no, it absolutely is. And I think we learned a lot with, with OpenDaylight and also with OpenStack. You know, when OpenStack started, and OpenStack of course is even older than OpenDaylight, but when OpenStack started, I think there was all kinds of euphoria in the industry because open source was relatively new to infrastructure, and infrastructure people, it was like, "Oh, I can build everything "that I ever wanted to build now!" Um, and so there was this sort of irrational exuberance about feature proliferation. In some ways, kind of at the expense of platform stability initially. And at a certain point, the users, again, started getting involved and said, "That's great. We need the thing to actually work. "At scale, in real world environments. "Please focus on that." And you know, that's the real beauty and strength of open source, is when you have users who care, and see the possibility of a project, they can be actively involved and actively influence where the focus of the project is going to be. And that's how you get to something that's going to be useful to people quickly. >> Thank you. >> Well, it'd be great to hear a little bit more about how you-- on these, I'm always kind of mystified as an analyst or a journalist or whatever, when you see these things. The press release comes out, "ONAP is the new thing", right? There's a new thing every week. How do you ensure the success? How do you get the momentum behind it? I imagine there's a lot of stuff that's been happening behind the scenes for ONAP. >> Lisa: Yep. We try not to keep it too behind the scenes. It has always been part of open source culture and what's proven to be a best practice is openness and transparency of not just the code itself but the processes around it. >> Scott: Mhm. >> Um, if people feel like they understand what's going on, that things aren't being hidden from them, that they can have a voice. >> Scott: Right. >> They're much more actively willing to participate. So that's really kind of the key to building any kind of community. >> And how do you work with a big carrier, like, I mean, the fascinating part about this for me is for our viewers who don't know what ONAP and ONOS and ODL are, it's basically all this carrier software that's becoming open source and they're just putting it out there, saying, "It's no longer our family jewels. "Everybody can use it." I mean, that's a big leap for an AT&T, you know? Tell us how you work with AT&T or Verizon or some of these big, gigantic organizations. Like, they just hand you a thumb drive? (laughter) How do you get the intellectual property? How's that process start? >> In the case of AT&T, they reached out to The Linux Foundation and said, "We want and need to do this. "Help us do it. We don't know how this works. "Help us, teach us." But it's very much a, you know, a big part of the role of The Linux Foundation in all of this project proliferation and so forth is teaching people how to do open source effectively. Because, again, it's not just about throwing coders at a problem, 'cause you can do that inside your own organization as well. It's understanding how to do that in a collaborative manner, how to carve off what parts to open source, 'cause AT&T's ECOMP platform, not all of it has been open source. Some portion of it, the stuff that's really important and proprietary and is considered the crown jewels, that has stayed internal, but they've shared a reasonable, fairly large percentage of the base platform with the open source community. And learning to draw that line is an art. And figuring out what is commodity and really could and should be shared with the rest of the world so we're not all reinventing the same wheel. >> Scott: Right. >> But rather than having ten developers here doing that and ten developers here and duh duh duh dah, we can put 30 developers, all working together, to get the same thing more quickly. That shifted mindset can take a little bit of time, a bit of education, and that's kind of part of what The Linux Foundation brings to that process of onboarding new open source projects. >> Jeff: Right. And then on the other end, I always think of Randy Bias. He's one of our favorite guests, Especially with OpenStack, and he knows a couple OpenStack Silicon Valleys ago, where he was somewhat critical on the other end, saying we also have to kind of reign things in, and you have all this risks of stuff going all over the place, and how do you kind of have some organization at the top end because of successful growth can drive a bunch of different agendas and things can get forked. It's not a simple thing to manage. >> No, and we've tried different models and different approaches within different projects and we've learned a lot from that. OpenDaylight was very much a, you know, you guys figure it out, hands-off kind of model. Other open source projects have been very top-down, from their governant structure to everything else. Others, like Open-O are kind of in-between where they did specifically set up an architecture committee that was composed of the leading members of the project because, again, Open-O in particular is touching the business layer of these carriers. So they really need that architecture to be meeting their specifications. >> Right, right. >> Sort of a lower layer, so it's a little bit less critical. There are lots of different models and sort of a gradation of top-down versus bottom-up and, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom. (chuckling) There are pluses and minuses to all of them. I think that we've been sort of learning as we go through all of these different projects what works. And different--sometimes it's worth shifting the model and starting out one way and shifting as you go along as the project matures, too. >> Jeff: But the net-net, which I think, you said at the beginning, is that big companies are now really learning how to operate effectively in this world, in this open source paradigm. It's matured way, way, way beyond what, we used to always joke, years ago, is a free puppy, you know? (laughing) >> You know, I mean, I think Tokus understand now that it is, yes, it's a free puppy. You still have to do lots of work. I think that understanding is sort of starting to trickle into the enterprise. I still have, every time I do a briefing, people will ask me to tell them about my product, and I say, "I don't have a product. I can't sell you anything." I help bring together a bunch of building blocks that you and your vendors can put together. But I don't have a product. And that, you know, that's a major mind shift for, especially, enterprise IT, where they're used to buying things off the shelf. >> Right. >> So larger enterprises, um, are starting again. They tend to take their cues from the carriers as things get proven out in the carrier world. And so we're starting to see that the same level of understanding and also, drivers in large, especially very distributed types of organizations, where they have 50, a hundred, hundreds of different sites around the world that they need to have a centralized few of in some fashion. And the only way they can get there is with SDN and they have a very strong preference, very clear preference for open source. >> Scott: How big is The Linux Foundation now? >> Lisa: By what metric? >> Uh, people, I guess. >> Lisa: Oh, people. Um... We're a few hundred, no more. But it's not just--we're not the ones doing all the work, right? We organize things. We help things happen. We help teach people. We provide the infrastructure. >> It seems to be growing very fast, like new projects are being added and merged. >> Lisa: But again, it's vendors and it's users. >> Very grassroots. >> Yeah. We help provide the ground, the legal framework, and the technical test facilities and things like that, and kind of the organizational guide rails. But we're here to help, we're not the ones doing the work. >> Right, right. Alright, Lisa, so I'll give you the last word before we sign off here. As you look forward to 2017, what are some of your top priorities for this next year? >> Lisa: Yeah, so, several things. First order is really enabling our users to really be successful with the projects that they already have in hand. In many cases, they're well through the phase of proof of concept and all the way onto production, and we just want to make sure that they're continuing to get everything they want out of the project and supporting them and supporting their vendors. And really building out the commercial ecosystem around it, so that they have a strong base of support. So that's one thing. Certainly on the OpenDaylight side, with some of the newer projects, it's really about figuring out what are the best practices that we can implement for this project, for this project, and for this project in order to make sure that they're successful. And a lot of that, again, is that whole harmonization effort that we have going on. >> Right, right. Alright, Lisa Caywood. She knows all about bringing open source to the enterprise, and thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Absolutely. I'm Jeff Frick, he's Scott Raynovich. You're watching theCube from Open Networking Summit 2017 in Santa Clara, California. We'll be back after the short break. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Commentator: Live from Stanford University it's theCUBE covering the Women in Data Science Conference 2017. (jazzy music) >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin live at Stanford University at the second annual Women in Data Science WiDS tech conference. We are here with Ann Rosenberg from SAP. She's the VP head of Global SAP Alliances and SAP Next-Gen. Ann, welcome to the program. >> Thank you so much. >> So SAP is a sponsor of WiDS. Talk to us a little bit about that, and why is it so important for SAP to be involved in this great womens organization. >> So first of all, in my role as working with SAP's relationship to academia and also building up innovation network we see that data science is a very, very key skill set, and we also would like to see many more women get involved into this. Actually (mumbling) right now as we speak we are at the same time in 20 different countries around the world, 24 events we have. So we are both in Berlin, we are in New York, we are all over the world. So it's very important. I call it kind of a movement what we are doing here. It's important that all over the world that we inspire women to go into data science and into tech in general. So it is important thing for SAP. First of all, we need a lot of data science interested people. You also need our entire SAP ecosystem to go out to universities and be able to recruit a data science student both from a diversity perspective, whatever you are a female or a man of course. >> Absolutely, you're right. This is a very inspiring event. It's something that you can really actually feel. You're hearing a lot of applause from the speakers. When you're looking enabling even SAP people to go out and educate and recruit data scientists, what are some of the key skills that you're looking for as the next generation of data scientists? >> This is an interesting thing because you can say that you need like a very strong technical skill set, but we see more and more, and I saw that after I moved to Silicon Valley for two years that also the whole thing about design thinking, the combination of design thinking and data science is becoming something which is extremely important, but also the whole topic about empathy and also, so when you build solution you need to have this whole purpose driven in mindset. So I think what we're seeing more and more is that it's great to be a great data science, but it takes more than that. And that's what I see Stanford and Berkeley are doing a lot, that they're kind of mixing up kind of like the classes. And so you can be a strong data science, but at the same time you also have the whole design thinking background. That's some of the things that we look for at SAP. >> And that's great. We're hearing more and more of that, other skills, critical thinking, being able to not only analyze and interpret the information, but apply it and explain it in a way that really reflects the value. So I know that you have a career, you've been in industry, but you've also been a lecturer. Is this career that you're doing now, this job in alliances and next-gen for SAP sort of a match made in heaven in terms of your background? >> I actually love that question, probably the best question I ever got because it is definitely my dream job. When I was teaching in Copenhagen for some years ago I saw the mind of young people. I saw the thesis, the best of master thesis. I saw what they were able to do, and I'm an old management consultant, and I kept on thinking that the quality of work, the quality of ideas and ideations that the students come with were something that the industry could benefit so much from. So I always wanted to do this matchmaking between the industries and the mind of young people. And it's actually right now I see that it's started kind of, what I at least saw for the last two years that the industries that go to academia, go to universities to educate or to students to work on new ideas. And of course in Silicon Valley this has been going on for some time now, but we see all over the world. And the network that I'm responsible for at SAP, we work in more than 106 countries around the world, with 3,100 universities. And what I really want to do now, I call it the Silicon Valleys of the world where you are mapping the industries with academia with the accelerators and start ups. It's just an incredible innovation network, and this is what I see is just so much growing right now. So it's a great opportunity for academia, but equally also for the industry. >> I love that. Something that caught my eye, I was doing some research, and April 2016 SAP announced a collaboration with the White House's Computer Science for All Initiative. Tell us about that. >> I mean the whole DNA of SAP is in education. And therefore we do support a number of entity around the world. Whatever we talk about building up a skill set within data science, building skill set in design thinking, or in any kind of development skills is really, really important for us. So we do a lot of work together with the governments around the world. Whatever you talk about the host communication, for example, we have programs called Young Thinkers, Beatick, where you go out to high schools or you go into academia, to universities. So when this institute came up, we of course went in and said we want to support this. So if I look at United States, so we have a huge amount of universities part of the network that I'm driving with my team. So we have data curriculums, education material, we have train to train our faculties, boot camps. We do hackathons, coach games. We do around 1,200 to 1,600 hackathon coach games per year around the world. We engage with the industries out to the universities. So therefore it was a perfect match for us to kind of support this institute. >> Fantastic. Are there any things that SAP does as we look at the conference where we are, this Women in Data Science, are there things that you're doing specifically to help SAP, maybe even universities bring in more females into the programs, whether it's a university program or into SAP? >> Yeah, so for SAP in our whole recruiting process we definitely are looking into that. There is a great mix between female and male people who get hired into the company, but we also, it all start with that you actually inspire young women to go into a data science education or into a development education. So my team, we actually go in before SAP recruiting get involved where we, that's why we build up the strong relationships with universities where we inspire young women, like we do at this event here to why should they go in and have a career like this. So therefore you can see there's a lot of pre=work we need to be done for us to be able to go in and go into the recruiting process afterwards. So SAP do a lot of course in the United States, but all over the world to inspire young women to go into tech. And SAP does what we see today all over the world we have huge amount of female from SAP, female speakers at all our events who stand as role models to show that they are women, they are working for SAP, and are very, very strong female speakers and are female role models for all young women to get involved. So we do a lot of stuff to show that to the next generation of data science of whatever it is in tech. >> Yeah, and I can imagine that that's quite symbiotic. It's probably a really nice thing for that female speaker to be able to have the opportunity to share what she's doing, what she's working on, but also probably nice for her to have the opportunity to be a mentor and to help influence someone else's career. So you mentioned accelerators a minute ago, and I wanted to understand a little bit more about SAP Next-Gen Consulting, this collaboration of SAP with accelerators or start ups. How are you partnering to help accelerate innovation, and who is geared towards? Is it geared more towards student? Or is SAP also helping current business leaders to evolve and really drive digital transformation within their companies? >> So the big (mumbling) I'm working on right now too is as mentioned you said SAP Next-Gen is called SAP Next-Gen Innovation With Purpose. So it's linked to the 17 U.N. global goals. We've seen from now in Silicon Valley when you innovate you actually make innovation web purposes included. And that's why we kind of agreed on in SAP why don't we make an innovation network where the main focus is that all the innovation we get out of this is purpose driven linked to the 17 global goals. Like the event here is the goal number five, gender equality. In that network we actually do the matchmaking between academia. We look at all the disrupted new technologies, experience the technologies like machine learning like what's being discussed a lot here, block chain IOT. And then we look at the industry out there because the industries, they need all the new ideas and how to work with all the new opportunities that technology can provide, but then we also look into accelerator start ups. The huge amount, and often when you're in Silicon Valley you kind of think this is the world of the start ups of the world. So when you travel around the world, that's we we looked into a lot the last two years. We call the Silicon Valleys of the world, any big city around the world, or even smaller cities, they have tech hub. So you have Ferline Valley, you have Silicon Roundabout in London, you have Silicon Alley in New York, and that is where there is a huge amount of gravity of start ups and accelerators. And when you begin to link them together with the university network of the world and together with the industry network of the world, you suddenly realize that there is an incredible activity of creativity and ideations and start ups, and you can begin to group that into industries. And that give industries the opportunity not only to develop solution inside the company, but kind of like go in and tap into that incredible innovation network. So we work a lot with seeding in start up, early start ups into corporates, and also crowd source out to academia and the mind of young people all Next-Gen Consulting project where you similar work with students at universities on projects. It could be big data science project. It could be new applications. So I see like as the next generation type of consultancy and research what is happening in that whole network. But that is really what SAP Next-Gen is, but it is linked to the 17 U.N. global goals. It is innovation with purpose, which I'm really happy to see because I think when you build innovation, you really think about in the bigger, the whole (mumbling) thing that we know from singularity. You should think about a bigger purpose of what you're doing. >> Right, right. It sounds like though that this Next-Gen Consulting is built on a foundation of collaboration and sharing. >> It is, it is, and we have three Next-Gen lab types we set up. In this year we built, last year, we are a new year now, we built 20 Next-Gen labs at university campuses and at SAP locations. And here in the new year more labs is being set up. We are opening up a big lab in New York. We just recently opened up one in Valdov at SAP's headquarter. We have one here in Silicon Valley, and then we have a number of universities around the world where SAP's customers go in and work with academia, with educators and students because what do you do today if you're in industry? You need to find students who are strong in machine learning and all the new technologies, right? So there's a huge need for in industry now to engage with academia, an incredible opportunity for both sides. >> Right, and one last question. Who are you, in the spirit of collaboration, who do you collaborate back with at SAP corporate? Who are all the beneficiaries or the influencers of Next-Gen Consulting? >> So I collaborate, inside SAP I collaborate, SAP have a number of, we have ICN, Innovation Center Network. We have our start up focus program. We have a number of innovation, the labs, a number of basically do all our software developments, so they're heavily involved. We have our whole go to market organization with all our SAP customers and industry, I call them clubs. And then externally is of course academia, universities, and then it is the start up communities, accelerators and of course, the industry. So it is really like a matchmaking. That's like, when people ask me what do you do, and I'm a matchmaker. That's really what I am. (Lisa laughs) >> I like that, a matchmaker of technology and people all over. So you're on the planning committee for WiDS. Wrapping things up here, what does this event mean to you in terms of what you've heard today? And what are you excited about for next year's event? >> So for me, one year ago when I heard about this year I kind of said this is important, this is very important. And it's not just an event, it's a movement. And so that was where I went in and said you know, we want to be part of this, but it must be more than just an event here. It's staying for the need to be much more than that. And this is where we all teamed up, all the sponsors together with ISMIE, and we said okay, let us crowd source it out, let us live stream it out much more than ever. And this is also what the assignment is now, that we to so many locations. This is just the beginning. Next year is going to be even bigger, and it's not like that we will wait to next year. We this week announced the SAP Next-Gen global challenges linked to the 17 U.N. global goals. So we are inspiring everybody to go in and work on those global challenges, and one of them is goal number five, which is linked to this event here. So for us and for me this is just the beginning, and next year is going to be even bigger. But we are going to do so many event and activity up to next year. My team in APJ, because of the Chinese New Year, have already been planned coming up here. >> Lisa: Fantastic. >> And we have been doing pre-event, (mumbling) events. So again, it is a movement, and it's going to be big. That's for sure. >> I completely can feel that within you. And you're going to be driving this momentum to make the movement even louder, ever more visible next year. >> Ann: Yeah. >> Well Ann, thank you so much for joining us on The Cube. We're happy to have you. >> Thank you so much for the opportunity. >> And we thank you for watching The Cube. I am Lisa Martin. We are live at Stanford University at the second annual Women in Data Science Conference. Stick around, we'll be right back. (jazzy music)