>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C. it's the Cube covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Aileen Gemma Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Vizalytics Technology. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. >> Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. >> Let's start by telling our viewers a little bit about Vizalytics, there's a story there about how you founded it. >> Thank you, the mission of Vizalytics is enabling change with data and we saw tremendous opportunity in open and public available data to say, let's make a difference for communities and the whole reason why we started was in 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit my home town of Staten Island and I saw firsthand digital divide, people need access to information, it's not put together in a format that they can use, but it actually is there, so I said, we've got to do something to make a difference. Our first product was a mobile app for shopkeepers. We had thousands of users throughout New York City and then that led on to out first enterprise client being the City of New York. >> The mobile app for shopkeepers could do what? What did it do? >> It let you know everything that was going on outside and around your business that could make a difference to your bottom line, so imagine all you had to do is business name, business address, I'm going to tell you here's your risk for fines, here's when there's going to be public works, here's when someone's filed for a different permit, et cetera, and shopkeepers loved it because we didn't have to do anything to get that information, you told me exactly what I needed to know and you made it really easy to share. >> And now you are a woman founder, a female founder with a she builds t-shirt on and an AWS Hero medallion. Tell me more about this. >> Absolutely, it is a distinct privilege to be an AWS Community Hero. Community Heroes are evangelists for the community where we're talking about how can we build and create more diverse and inclusive communities. I'm privileged and honored to be the only female hero in the Australia and New Zealand region, so I'm determined to say, how can we support more women, how can we support more underestimated founders and tech developers? We have this whole series called She Builds on AWS. We've got events in Sydney, Melbourne, soon to be in Perth, et cetera and that's how we're doing more for our community and as a Community Hero how can I find more voices who aren't me, give them a platform to say, we need to hear what you're building and what you're doing and how can we all support one another as we want to build on on AWS. >> What is it to be like at event like this, where as you said you're the only female Community Hero here, how often are you getting together, collaborating, learning, and how are best practices emerging and what are those best practices? >> First off I want to mention that we have the first ever developer's lounge here in the main hall which is great because we need to see that here in public sector and having those opportunities to meet and greet and talk with folks, hey, you're working on this as well? Tell me more about what you're doing, let me surface out what kind of solutions you're doing, that's where all of the energy and the excitement happens because then you start to discover, oh, I didn't know. Folks are working on this and this, hey we've got the same problem and especially in public sector where folks so often have the challenge of different siloes. I didn't know what I didn't know, how can we bring them all together, so seeing that here in public sector where we can champion, you've got all of these different folks who are working together, it's just a wonderful opportunity. >> And what are you hearing? The big theme here is about IT modernization in the public sector, the public sector, for better or for worse has a reputation of being a little slow or a little more antiquated, there's certain divisions of the government in particular and educational institutions that are incredibly innovative. >> Absolutely. >> Rebecca: Where do you think things stand right now? >> There's absolutely positive change and I like to celebrate here are the leaders and here are the folks that are doing more, yes, public sector does, for good reasons in some cases take a long time to say, how do we want to change, do we feel safe for this change, et cetera, but then you see pockets of excellence. I'm currently based in Sydney, Australia. Transport for New South Wales is one of our clients and I am honored and excited by all that they're doing where at the executive level you have buy-in and you have support. You have support for saying we need organizational change. You have support for saying, let's do proof of concept, let's do these explorations, let's actually have a startup accelerator hub so we as public sector can interact with startups and early-stage founders or university students to make that kind of a difference. When you see that, that's part of why, okay great, we're in Australia now because there's this energy and action and a willingness to move so that's where I think look to those centers of excellence and say, how can we do that within our organization and what can we do better. >> But not saying that we're not seeing quite that energy in the US or how did you think about the differences? >> Again, it depends district by district. Different municipalities have different challenges, different size, et cetera. When you look at this, for example, in San Francisco where you have the Startup in Residence program, started off small, cohort, five or six companies, great, now how can we scale that program and make it national where they had something like 700 applications for maybe a cohort of 50 or 60 companies that are working. That's where you start to see there's an energy that's flowing through, so I think the opportunity for change comes in that kind of cross collaboration and if you have an event like this where you've got public sector folks from all over the world saying, really interesting, you feel my pain, how can we work together on this, what's your team doing, how can I learn from that, how can I take that back to my teams or where can we think about some of the harder problems of organizational change and what do we do if we don't have that executive champion, how can we start to get there? I think that's the kind of energy and opportunity of all the things we're seeing here at Public Sector Summit. >> But as you said, it's also looking for the rest of us, looking at these centers of excellence, see what they're doing, see how they're experimenting, getting those proofs of concept and then saying, hey, we've got something there, let's see if we can replicate this. >> Absolutely, and within public sector, when you have that opportunity to say, and look at how we're doing this in London, look at how we're doing this in Toronto, look at how we're doing this in Sydney and how we're doing this in Melbourne then you can suddenly go back to New York and say, okay great, we do have these other examples, it is being done so we can use that as a guide for what we wanted to do as we continue to innovate. >> What are some of the most exciting things that you're seeing here, some new public sector initiatives, technology, services that you think are really going to be game changers. >> How much time do we have? (laughing) First off, the energy to we want to collaborate, we want to be more agile, we want to make a difference. The sense that this event has grown from just a small cohort to 1,000, couple of thousand, now I believe there's something like 15,000 attendees. >> 18,000 according to Theresa Carlson. >> Think about the fact that we're all willing to be here together, that's a line in the sand that we need to be able to do more, so it's not about a particular technology per se, but willingness to say, we need to be here, we need to face these problems. We've got this challenge of should we bring these legacy systems over, should we think about how we want to work together in public product partnerships that we can all come together and start to work at this and also think about, we've got Public Sector Summits throughout the world, please join us at Canberra Summit that's going to be going on in late August. We've got Tokyo Summit going on right now, so it's not just all here in D.C., you're starting to see these clusters move out and that's really wonderful and exciting for us. >> It's wonderful and exciting on the one hand and yet this summit is taking place against a backdrop where we're seeing a real backlash against technology. The public sentiment has really soured, regulators and lawmakers are sharpening their blades and saying, hey, maybe we should pay attention more to what these technology companies are doing and just how powerful they've become in all of our daily lives. What's the sentiment that you're hearing on the ground, particularly as the founder yourself. >> I think that's where knowledge can be powerful. Can we empathize with some of the challenges? I hope that all companies choose to act with integrity, not necessarily that they do, but there are a lot of folks saying, we need to be able to do more. From a policy perspective, how can tech companies partner with policymakers who may not understand how all of these technologies work and what they're capable of or not capable of, we need more clarity on that because I think that's where it becomes a black box of conflict and if you can change it to say, this is challenges that you have with facial recognition or sentiment analysis or what have you, let's really think about do the systems today do, what are the guard rails that we need to put in and how can we work as partners with policymakers so it's not just driven by lobbyists but there's actually an understanding of, this is the implication of these systems. >> Here are the unintended consequences. >> Absolutely and if I can come back to New York for a second, New York City has one of the strongest open data logs in the nation. Part of that is because Gale Brewer, the Borough President of Manhattan said we need to formalize this. How do we put this together? She didn't come from a tech background, but she saw a problem that needed to be solved and she said, how do we put this together and how do we get the right folks to the table to think about doing this in a really scalable, meaningful way, so the more that we see those opportunities in that backdrop of tensions and concerns, that's how we move forward, facing those hard questions. It's not Rome was built in a day, it's not. It's going to take us a lot of time and there's a lot of unanswered ethical questions as well that we have to start really thinking deeply about. >> But it starts, as you said, with making the data visible and then getting more voices who-- >> Making it visible and also understanding what's not included in the data. Coming back to when I started my company, there was a lot of, but this isn't being counted and what happens when you're saying, I'm making a bias based on this particular dataset that leaves out this whole community over here. Can we think about what's not included in that data or how the data collection itself or the organization itself is changing things, so that's why, coming back to, you need more female founders, you need more underrepresented populations to have those voices of have you considered this, have you given representation to this particular group, to this population. Without doing that, then you're just reinforcing the same siloes and the same biases and we have an obligation to our community and to one another to change that. >> I know you have a keen interest in diversity issues and, as you're talking about, bringing in more women and more underrepresented minorities to lend their perspective to these very important issues that are shaping our lives. How do we solve this problem? Technology has such a bro culture and we're seeing the problems with that. >> First off, from a founder's point of view, you have to know when not to listen, you have to know when not to let someone shut you down because they'll say-- >> The noise. >> Oh my goodness, the noise of, we've got ageism, we've got sexism, we've got racism, we've got elitism. I went to Brooklyn College, I'm very proud of that fact. I had venture capitalists say, I don't want to invest in you, you're too old and you didn't go to a pedigree school, well guess what, my company's still here, some of the folks you've invested in, they folded a long time ago, so part of it is a willingness to drive forward but it's also building networks of support. Coming back to being the community hero, how can I elevate these voices and say, we need to give them an opportunity to be here, we need to change this, so part of it is we want more seats at the table, but if that table's not going to welcome me, I'm creating a whole 'nother table over here where we can start to have that cluster effect and that's where the dedication, the tenacity and you see things like we power tech, where we're really looking to elevate those voices. That change can't happen unless we keep doing that and unless the folks who are like, but this is how we've always done it, are willing to say, actually, shortcoming here, let's think about changing this and broadening the conversation. >> Is that changing though? >> We were talking a lot about how there's a new generation of workers coming up who do think differently and they do grow up with this stuff and they say, we don't need this red tape, why is this taking so long? They're impatient and maybe a more willingness to listen to other voices, are you seeing a difference? >> Absolutely, I'm seeing a difference for sure. That doesn't mean sexism, ageism, elitism has gone away. It has not, but you're starting to see, again, clusters of excellence and I think if you really want to make change you focus on where that traction is, use that as your foothold to build and scale and then start to be able to do more because that's the only way. We've got some barriers that for other founders I empathize with how insurmountable it can be, but if you've got that dedication, if you refuse to be defined by what someone else says you are or what your company is capable of being and then you find those great partners to say, let's do this together, the whole conversation changes. >> Aileen Gemma Smith those are great words to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >> Absolute pleasure, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we will have much more of the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington D.C. coming up in just a bit. (techno music)

>> Presenter: Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE! Covering Dell Technologies World 2018! Brought to you by Dell EMC, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube! We are live at Day One of Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante, and we are joined by two guests. We have Shannon Champion, Product Marketing of HCI at Dell EMC, and we have her customer, from Celtic Manor, Chris Stanley, IT Manager. Hey Chris! >> Hi. >> Welcome to the Cube, you guys! >> Thank you, thank you very much! >> And we just timed this perfect music intro for you! >> They knew, they knew! >> So Chris, Celtic Manor, you're based in Wales, talk to us about Celtic Manor, what it is that you do, before we start talking about your IT and Digital Transformations. >> Yeah sure, so we're a collection of hotels, four, in South Wales. Within that four, there is a resort hotel, with a conference center. We offer lots of facilities to our guests, golf courses, spas, all the niceties, bars, restaurants, and as well as the conference business being quite a big side of that. And we've got a lot of growth coming on with new hotels and a new convention center. Yeah, and we've got a staff of around about a thousand at the moment, half of those being PC end-users, and a small IT team of eight supporting all those people. >> So a lot of locations, a lot of stuff, a lot of data. Talk to us about what you're doing with Dell EMC, where did you start from, infrastructure-wise? And where are you now? >> Infrastructure-wise, we've been a Dell Partner probably since 2014. That was, we were the previous vendor before, and now at Dell EMC House, always good news, eh! (chuckles) And, our VxRail journey has begun, probably the last eight months, with a new convention center opening, which is an international one, International Convention Center Wales, a joint venture with the Welsh government there. And it's something that's, whereas we've got a lot of conference business now, we do very well at it, we have to turn away a lot of conference business because we're not big enough. So this facility can offer up to 4,000 people in the main room, 1,500-seat auditorium, as well as other breakout rooms. So sort of 6,000 potential guests on-site. And we needed some technology to support that, so we engaged with Dell EMC, and VxRail was our choice. We briefly evaluated others, but Dell EMC, we had a proven past with a great support and strategic partnership, so it was an easy decision. >> So we're going to get into sort of the details there, but Shannon, let me bring you into the conversation. Last time we really spent any time together was in the 14G Launch. You helped orchestrate a lot of the messaging of that, so give us the update on HCI and VxRail, did that awesome marketing package that you put together, is it living up to the marketplace! (all laughing) >> Well thank you for that softball, Dave! Yes, yeah! So in November we were talking to you about HCI and 14th-generation PowerEdge servers, and how PowerEdge is really designed with software-defined storage in mind, and how that really set itself up well for HCI. And what it does is open up doors to being applicable for even more mainstream workloads and applications because of the power and predictability that provides, and Celtic Manor is a perfect example of that, in terms of, initially, using VxRail to scale quickly and reliably for a majority of their workloads and applications, actually. And now, are moving to VDI where, historically, VDI has really been the entry point for HCI. So it's really exciting to see that sort of flip-flop use case here. >> Right, it was like the obligatory workload or use case, right? >> Chris: We like to be different. (laughing) >> Well, I mean, your business is different, right? >> Yes! >> I wonder if you could start with some of the business drivers, right? I mean, obviously, very competitive industry, but you've got some unique differentiators, right, experiences that you're offering customers is somewhat different. But what's driving your business? Speed, digital disruption, maybe you could talk about that a little bit. >> Organizational growth was a key one. With new hotels and conference centers coming on we were bursting at the seams with our current environment. >> Good problem! >> Yeah, so we're all very good. But it was supporting that for customers going forward as well as our staff, supporting with the systems and reliability that we can, to ensure that we get the businesses doing, you know, its utmost. And then, yeah, going on from there, we offer all these different kinds of facilities on-site, golf, bedrooms, spas, all needing different systems, from booking systems through to your VOIP systems, your big databases, Oracle databases, on these servers. So quite a hard workload on them. And we're looking for something that was easy for us to manage, you know, going forward. >> So Chris in terms of IT transformation, Michael Dell talked this morning about these four transformative elements that a company should take to be successful. Digital, IT, workforce, security, talking about the opportunity for IT innovation, to really convert IT into a profit center. And where IT innovation is successful is where customers are looking at it as a business strategy. Talk to us about the stakeholders, maybe, from the CFO's perspective, of, "Hey, we have a great opportunity here "to capture more business and be more competitive." What was that conversation like, the IT folks to the CFO to get budget and approval to help transform? >> Always a tough conversation. (chuckling) Going from the past experience where we'd initially gone with a converge solution back in 2014 with Dell, that alone saved us a significant amount in power alone, so it was something that paid for itself. >> So the CFO was already like, "Alright guys"-- >> Yeah, you know what you're doing, so yeah. We took that, we could see where our pain points were in the environment we currently had, and with it, all the additional hotels, conference centers, coming on, we were at a key stage where we needed to, from the core, build outwards. So VxRail was and obvious-er choice, I should say, in the end. But it was key to transformation, because it enables us now to look at other methods. It's freed up a lot of time for IT staff, so we're looking at deploying a virtual desktop solution now which we don't currently have. And that could be initially anything from up to 300 virtual desktops, so big load, but we now have the core capacity there to do it. And we're looking at other things for our guests, where we can give them a better experience. So Artificial Intelligence, AI, is very big on the agenda, so we look at everything. There's face recognition systems now that can recognize the guests when they come in, ping a message, we haven't deployed these yet, we're still looking at them. But it's enabled us to look at these now with the power behind us of the 14G service. So it's all, it's a key enabler for us, the VxRail solution. >> Opening up the potential for emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning... >> Yes, very much so. >> How do you differentiate from your HCI competition? What are some of the touchpoints there? >> Well, from a VMware focus perspective, you know, Celtic Manor has deployed VxRail. Our differentiator is that we're the only provider through our strategically-aligned business relationship that is jointly engineered with VMware. And so what that means, from a customer point of view, is a more seamless experience, right. Familiar tools they already know and love, that they use day to day, from a VMware perspective, for day-to-day management. But then also the automation that's built in. Automated deployment, ability to upgrade with one click, seamless process to scale quickly when you have new hotels coming online, for example. And then have a single point of support. So we take one single call, whether it's hardware or software, for VxRail. If there's an issue, call Dell EMC and a lot of customers find a lot of value in that. >> So, okay, Chris, now I've got to ask you. So you heard that from Dell EMC, but a lot of companies would say, "Well, we get along great with VMware, "we get the SDKs early, "yeah, those guys overplay all that stuff." What, from your perspective, how important is what Shannon just laid out? And how real is it? >> It's very real. And Shannon basically, yeah, all those points there were literally what we were struggling with. We had the one support telephone company to call, imperative to us. We'd been ringing, in the past we'd be ringing Sand Storage, we were ringing ESX, VMware, all blaming each other, and you're going back and forth and you're wasting key time. With one support number now, you know, you've one call, you've got a one-stop-shop to sort it. So that was a big, big call for us. The 14G service as well, we also get the recover points which enables us to have two environments where we can lose one, and one total environment lost, but still operate as a business. So all of these, keeping, giving us uptimes to close to 100% as we can. >> Have your had to test that yet? Or, when I say test, has it actually, have you had to fail over? I mean, you probably tested it, hopefully you tested it, but-- >> We have-- >> Dave: Has it tested you yet, let me put it that way! >> Yeah, we have failed over servers. We haven't failed over a whole cluster, because you hope it's one of the things you hope you never have to do. (Shannon laughing) We've tested the procedure between nodes, as you would, and there is, we have tested recently with the Recover Point software, where we have lost servers, and it's a decision then, do we try to troubleshoot the problem or do we just go back a few minutes when it was working and we just, we gave it an hour to sort it out, it was impacting, so we just rolled back as if it never happened! >> It worked! >> Yeah, which was a nice reaffirmation that what we did was right! >> So Shannon you talked about resiliency, speed. There was an analyst report, recently, that I'd like you to kind of enlighten us on. And kind of look at one of the thing Chris said, in terms of getting back to the business cost savings. How does Celtic Manor's achievement so far kind of align with what you're seeing in terms of customers being able to leverage HCI to be more budget friendly? >> Yeah, so, I think you're referring to our IT Maturity Study. And what we're seeing is that the majority of customers, almost all of them, are telling us that if they don't transform in their industry, then they'll no longer be competitive. So I think all of our customers are kind of coming to that realization. One of the key aspects to that is that a year ago, when we asked the same question, a significantly lower number was mentioned. So I think that just speaks to the speed and the urgency that customers are coming to the realization that it's really important to transform, and we need to do it sooner rather than later. We have a lot of proof points around VxRail, particularly, in terms of the automation. You know, 73% faster to deploy, that means value to customers. That's money that they're saving, directly. And lower serviceability costs overall, over 40% lower. So that translates into real TCO, goes back to the CFO, you know, that helps understand the investment that they're making, lets them reprioritize in other areas of the business that helps them transform and stay innovative in their industry. >> I want to follow up on that last point that Shannon just made. And a lot of times, when you're bringing in some kind of consolidation, the staff says, "Uh oh, "that means I'm going to lose my job, "because I'm really good at revisioning LANs" or whatever it is. How did you address that, was there organizational tension, what did you do with the time that was freed up? >> Yeah, I think it's helped transform the IT team. If anything, it's freed up time, but that time is now taken, it's given us more time to look at innovative products and going forwards. There is, our staff has a tendency to specialize more as opposed to generalize, which is nice. As in, the VxRail has sat there, and it's pretty much doing what you would do with minimal amounts of watching over them, with the remote support, who also watch your environment, if you enable it. If you have any outages there, they can potentially draw your attention to it before you even know. So lots of time's been freed up, and now you can see the staff are embracing it there, they're happy they've got this additional time not to be doing the not-so-important stuff, as we say, although it is very important, to keep it going. But they have more time now to specialize in what they mostly enjoy. So it's brought it on full circle now, so it's really, yeah, we're really seeing some positives. >> And hang out with their families on the weekends. (everyone speaking at once in agreement) So since they're not doing that, and they have more time to innovate, where are you on this data center modernization journey? And where, we talked about VDI, but where do you think you are in that journey? >> With respect to, with VDI, we are imminently doing it. We finished deploying the second VxRail cluster, the five S Series nodes, probably only a couple weeks ago, after a full migration of all the existing VMs. So it's now enabling us to look at VDI, which, ironically, when we get back, the week I get back, we have a meeting with Dell EMC on, do we need another node, all flash, or do we, we have specced within five nodes, some capacity for virtual desktops. But it's, again, something that, with all these additional hotels coming on, the conference centers, virtual desktop is the way to go. Even centralizing the data more so people aren't taking all data off of their laptops, so we're a more secure environment. So again, a great enabler for us, and finally, after four or five years, I get the virtual desktop! Done it the other way around, but-- >> Do you golf? >> I used to golf a lot. >> Okay, so you know what a mulligan is. >> Yeah. >> So, if you had a mulligan, what would you do differently? >> Um, what would I do differently? Good question! >> I mean, specific to this project. (chuckling) >> Nothing, really. I think everything pretty much has been done as I would expect. When we first deployed the conference center, the new conference center environment, it was a bit disjointed, because the conference center wasn't built and in full use. It kind of gave us some time to test the environment fully, which we also did with the Dell VxRail test drives, which I know the guys offer you were you can go into a classroom facility for a day and see it in action before you actually purchase and use it. >> Same question, different spin. Advice for your peers. Because obviously you had some successes. What would you tell them, to be successful? >> Just go for it! If you're thinking it, I mean, it is, as far as I can see, it is the future product, and it's not going to go in any other direction. The management side of things is far more simplistic than everything else we've experienced in the past. And it's baked-in VMware so, you know, you have the best chef and the best ingredients with the best thing as opposed to another chef taking the best ingredients and trying to do something. So yeah, it's just seamless integration now, and it gives us a lot of confidence that we have everything there with Dell, and this environment, to go forward and grow even bigger as a business. >> And then we've cued your outro music. >> Perfect! >> Timed that perfectly! Chris, thank you so much for sharing what you're doing at Celtic Manor to innovate, making your IT transformation. Shannon, thank you for sharing what's new with HCI. Dave, thank you for sharing with me the word "mulligan", I just looked it up. In case you don't know what a mulligan is, it is an extra stroke allowed after a poor golf shot. I probably would be like the mulligan queen. >> You get a few. (chuckles) >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube, we are live on Day One of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante, stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (electronic music)

>> Hi I'm Peter Burris. Welcome to Action Item. (upbeat electronic music) Every week I bring the Wikibon research team together to talk about some of the issues that are most important in the computing industry and this week is no different. This week I'm joined by four esteemed Wikibon analysts, David Floyer, Neil Radon, Jim Kobielus, Ralph Finos, and what we're going to do is we're going to talk a few minutes about some of the predictions that we did not get into, our recent predictions webinar. So, I'd like to start off with Jim Kobielus. Jim, one of the things that we didn't get a chance to talk about yesterday in the overall predictions webinar was some of the new AI frameworks that are on the horizon for developers. So, let's take a look at it. What's the prediction? >> Prediction for 2018, Peter, is that the AI community will converge on an open framework. An open framework for developing, training and deploying deep learning and machine learning applications. In fact, in 2017, we've seen the momentum in this direction, strong momentum. If you were at AWS re:Invent just a few weeks ago, you'll notice that on the main stage, they discuss what they're doing in terms of catalyzing an open API, per building AI, an open model interchange format, and an open model compilation framework, and they're not the only vendor who's behind this. Microsoft has been working with AWS, as well as independently and with other partners to catalyze various aspects of this open framework. We also see Intel and Google and IBM and others marching behind a variety of specifications such as Gluon (mumbles) NNVM and so forth, so we expect continued progress along these lines in 2018, and that we expect that other AI solution provider, as well as users and developers will increasingly converge on this, basically, the abstraction framework that will make it irrelevant whether you build your model in TensorFlow or MXNet or whatever, you'd be able to compile it and run it in anybody else's back end. >> So Jim, one question then we'll move on to Neil really quickly but one question that i have is the relationship between tool choice and role in the organization has always been pretty tight. Roles have changed as a consequence of the availability of tools. Now we talked about some of the other predictions. How the data scientist role is going to change. As we think about some of these open AI development frameworks, how are they going to accommodate the different people that are going to be responsible for building and creating business value out of AI and data? >> Pete, hit it on another level that i didn't raise in my recent predictions document, but i'll just quickly touch on it. We're also seeing the development of open devops environments within which teams of collaborators, data scientists, subject matter experts, data engineers and so forth will be able to build and model and train and deploy deep learning and so forth within a standard workflow where each one of them has task-oriented tools to enable their piece but they all share a common governance around the models, the data and so forth. In fact, we published a report several months ago, Wikibon, talking about devops for data science, and this is a huge research focus for us going forward, and really, for the industry as a whole. It's productionizing of AI in terms of building and deploying the most critical applications, the most innovative applications now in business. >> Great, Jim, thanks very much for that. So Neil, I want to turn to you now. One of the challenges that the big data and the computing industry faces overall is that how much longer are we going to be able to utilize the technologies that have taken us through the first 50 years at the hardware level, and there is some promise in some new approaches to thinking about computing. What's your prediction? >> Well in 2018, you're going to see a demonstration of an actual quantum computer chip that's built on top of existing silicone technology and fabrication. This is a real big deal because what this group in the University of New South Wales came up with was a way to layer traditional transistors and silicon on top of those wacky quantum bits to control them, and to deal with, I don't want to get too technical about that, but the point is that quantum computing has the promise of moving computing light years ahead of where we are now. We've managed to build lots of great software on things that go on or off, and quantum computing is much more than that. I think what you're going to see in 2018 is a demonstration of actual quantum computing chips built on this, and the big deal in that is that we can take these existing machines and factories and capital equipment designed for silicone, and start to produce quantum chips without basically developing a whole new industry. Now why is this important? It's only the first step because these things are not going to be based on the existing Intel i86 instruction set, so all new software will have to be developed, software engineers are going to have to learn a whole new way of doing things, but the possibilities are endless. If you can think about a drug discovery, or curing disease, or dealing with the climate, or new forms of energy to propel us into space, that's where quantum computing is likely to take this. >> Yeah, quantum computing, just to bring a, kind of a fine point on it, allows, at any given time, the machine to be in multiple different states, and it's that fact that allows, in many respects, a problem to be attacked from a large number of directions at the same time, and then test each of them out, so it has a natural affinity with some of the things that we think about in AI, so it's going to have an enormous impact over the course of the next few years and it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. So David Floyer, I now want to turn to you. We're not likely to see quantum computing at the edge anytime soon, by virtue of some of the technologies we face. More likely it'll be specialized processors up in the cloud service provider in the near term. But what are you going to talk about when we think about the role that the edge is going to play in the industry, and the impacts it's going to have on, quite frankly, the evolution of de facto standards? >> Well, I'd like to focus on the economics of edge devices. And my prediction is that the economics of consumer-led volume will dominate the design of IoT devices at the edge. If you take an IoT device, it's made up of sensors and advanced analytics and AI, and specifically designed compute elements, and together with the physical setup of fitting it into wherever you're going to put it, that is the overall device that will be put into the edge, and that's where all of the data is going to be generated, and obviously, if you generate data somewhere, the most efficient way of processing that data is actually at the edge itself, so you don't have to transport huge amounts of data. So the prediction is that new vendors with deep knowledge of the technology itself, using all the tools that Jim was talking about, and deep knowledge of the end user environments and the specific solutions that they're going to offer, they will come out with much lower cost solutions than traditional vendors. So to put a little bit of color around it, let's take a couple of real-world examples where this is already in place in the consumer world, and will be the basis of solutions in the enterprise. If we take the Apple iPhone X, it has facial recognition built-in, and it has facial recognition built-in on their A11 chips, but they're bionic chips. They've got GPUs, they've got neural networks all in the chip itself, and the total cost of that solution is around a hundred dollars in terms of these parts, and that includes the software. So if we take that hundred dollars and put it into what it would actually be priced at, that's around $300. So that's a much, much lower cost than a traditional IT vendor could ever do, and a much, at least an order of magnitude, and probably two orders of magnitude cheaper than an IT department could produce for its own use. So that leaves (mumbles) inclusions, going to be a lot of new vendors. People like Sony, for example, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Honeywell. Possibly people like Apple and Microsoft. Nvidia, Samsung, and many companies that we'll predict are going to come out of India, China and Russia who have strong mathematical educational programs. So the action item is for CIOs, is to really look carefully at the projects that you are looking at, and determine, do I really have the volume to be unique in this area? If that volume, if it's a problem which is going to be industry-wide, the advice we would give is wait for that device to come out from a specialized vendor rather than develop it yourself. And focus investment on areas where you have both the volume of devices and the volume of data that will allow you to be successful. >> All right, David, thank you very much. So let me wrap this week's Action Item, which has been kind of a bridge, but we've looked specifically at some of the predictions that didn't make it into our recent predictions webinar, and if I want to try to summarize or try to bring all these things together, here's what I think what we'd say. Number one, we'd say that the development community has to prepare itself for some pretty significant changes as a consequence of having an application development environment that's more probabilistic, driven by data and driven by AI and related technologies, and we think that there will be new frameworks that are deployed in 2018, and that's just where it's going to start, and will mature over the next few years as we heard from Jim Kobielus. We've also heard that there is going to be a new computing architecture that's going to drive change, perhaps for the next 50 years, and the whole concept of quantum computing is very, very real, and it's going to have significant implications. Now it will take some time to roll out, but again, software developers have to think about the implications of some these new architectures on their work because not only are they going to have to deal with technology approaches that are driven by data, but they're also going to have to look at entirely new ways of framing problems because it used to be about something different than it is today. The next thing that we need to think about is that there still is going to be the economics of computing that are going to ultimately shape how all of this plays out. David Floyer talked about, specifically at the edge, where Wikibon believes it's going to have an enormous implication on the true cost of computing and how well some of these complex problems actually find their way into commercial and other domains. So with a background of those threee things, we think, ultimately, that's an addendum to the predictions that we have and once again, i'm Peter Burris. Thank you very much for joining us for Action Item, and we look forward to working with you more closely over the course of the next year, 2018, as we envision the new changes and the practice of how to make those changes a reality. From our Palo Alto theCUBE studios, this has been Action Item. (bright electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering NetApp Insight 2017, brought to you by NetApp. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay. This is The Cube's exclusive coverage of NetApp Insight 2017. I'm John Furrier, the cohost of The Cube, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media with my cohost, Keith Townsend with CTO Advisors. Our next guest is Jean English. She's the Chief Marketing Officer of NetApp. Great to see you, thanks for having us, and thanks for coming on The Cube. >> Oh, thank you, thank you guys for being here. >> So NetApp is no longer a storage company, we learned. But then last year, now this year, you're a data company. >> Jean: (laughs) That's right. >> The brand promise is still the same. Take us through, as the Chief Marketing Officer, you have to, it's a complex world. One of your concepts here we've been seeing is winning while in a tough environment and IT is a tough environment. I got application development going on. I got DevOps. I got data governance. I got security issues, internet of things. It's a challenging time for our customers. How is your brand promise evolving? >> So we really see that NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud, and the amazing thing is is that what we see is our customers aren't talking to us about storage anymore. They're talking to us about data, and what their data challenges are, and most companies are trying to think through if they're going to transform, how are they going to harness the wealth of the data. What are they going to do to maximize the value of the data? >> And the cloud too is center stage, 'cause the cloud is a forcing function that's changing the relationship of your partners, VARs who has a lot of folks on talking about the dynamics with customers around multiple clouds. We saw on stage the announcement with Microsoft. Congratulations. >> Jean: Thank you. >> So you've been in Amazon for a while. We've been covering that, but the on-premise work still is growing, where you have the data from Wikibon Research came out shows that the on-premise true private cloud, which is defined as cloud operation business model is actually growing. However, the decline in automation of non-differentiated labor is declining by 1.5 billion over the next five years, which means the SAS market is going to continue to explode and grow, so the on-premise is actually growing, as is the cloud. How does that change the narrative for you guys, or does it, or is that a tailwind for NetApp? >> We think it's a complete tailwind in for NetApp. When we think about data today, we see that it's really becoming more distributed across environments. It's definitely more dynamic, as you're looking for the latest source of truth. And the diversity of data, especially with machine learning. I mean, it is exploding. So, how do you start to be able to build that data together? We really think of it as that our customers want to maximize that value and the only way to do that is to start to think about how do they bring it together, and how do they get more insight from that data, and then how do they have more access and control of that data, and then the most questions we usually get from our customers around, how do I make sure it's secure? But the really big point is is that, as we think about what NetApp is doing, it has been about three things that we see with our customers. They have to make sure that they're modernizing what they have today, and that goes to the on-prem environment, so if it's going to be that they got to accelerate applications, they want to make sure that they have that. But this notions of building clouds, even building private clouds. And we think of that as a next-generation data center, especially with DevOp environments. Then harnessing the power of the cloud and hybrid cloud world. And if they are not able to really leverage the cloud for SAS applications, if they're leveraging the cloud for backup, or even disaster recovery, data protection, that's where we see that these three imperatives, when they come together, that they're truly, truly able to unleash the power. >> So we saw on stage, CEO George Kurian talking about his personal situations in light of what's happened in Las Vegas here. Data is changing the world, and your tagline is "Change the world with data." So I got to ask you, obviously, data, we see a lot of examples in society and also personal examples of data being harnessed for value. The cloud can be great there, it's all on-prem. How do you guys position NetApp as a company? I know there's a lot of positioning exercises in marketing you do, but positioning is really important. That's what you do. The tagline is kind of the emotional aspect of it, okay, changing the world, let's change the world with data. I believe that. But what's the positioning of NetApp? How would you say that the positioning- What's the positioning statement of NetApp? >> The positioning statement of NetApp, I think we've really seen a big break in the positioning in the last couple of years. And why is because the customers are demanding something different. They're really looking for more hybrid cloud data services. And what are those data services that accelerate and integrate data, and that notion of on-prem and in the cloud, that's where we see what's going to happen to accelerate digital transformation. And so, this notion of yes, thought about as storage before, customers are demanding more for their data and they need data services, especially in hybrid environments to really be able to drive their business. >> The old expression, "Position it, they will come." And you guys have done a good job with the data. Okay, now let's get to the customer reality. You have to go out and do the tactical marketing. They're busy, right? There's a lot of noise out there. We just came back from New York and our Big Data NYC event that we ran in conjunction with Strata, which is a separate event, and it's clear they don't want the hype. They want reality. The rubber's hitting the road because they're so busy, and with the the security and the governance challenges- GDPR, for instance, in Europe is a huge pressure point for data. A lot of challenges but they want the magic. (laughter) It should be easy, right? But it's not. How do you guys go out day to day and take that to the field message? What's your strategy? >> Well, you talked about changing the world with data. And it feels like a lofty promise, but we really believe that when we come down to the purpose of why NetApp exists, it is to empower our customers to change the world with data and that's something that NetApp has been focused on not just for today, but the 25 years of history, and then also into the future. So what makes that the reality? Well number one, they want something that's simple. And so this notion of simplicity, and no matter how they think about managing or optimizing their data, it's got to be simple and easy to manage. Optimized to protect, I think data protection is critically important. Things about safeguarding data across its life cycle. and I think that NetApp has always been focused on how to make sure data is secure and protected. And that now is what we're seeing in the cloud too. So, all the relationships and partnerships that we've been creating and solidifying, AWS has been for the last couple years, we've had some latest`announcements of what we're doing to really make sure we have stronger data protection in multi-cloud environments. Obviously, today from what we're doing with Microsoft Azure, in really providing- Not even having to know how to manage storage, you can do it easily in Azure, and- >> No, I'm sorry. I really love this, this message from NetApp. As a traditional technologist, I understand NetApp disrupting the original storage CN Market with Fowlers, you guys were one of the first in the cloud with AWS, so from a trusted partner inside of the infrastructure team, I understand the vision of NetApp. But the transformation also means that you're starting to expand that conversation beyond just that single customer of the storage admin, of the infrastructure group. How is that messaging been going towards that new group of customers within your customers who have said, "NetApp? Isn't that a storage company?" How is that transformation been going? >> (laughs) You know, when we talk about reinventing, NetApp is reinventing itself. And that's what we're going through right now. And what we see is, is that the customers that we know and love, the storage admins and the storage architects, those are definitely tried-and-true and we love our relationships with them. But we see that the demands around data are growing and those demands are starting to reach more into DevOps, application developers, definitely into cloud enterprise architects as we think about cloud environments. The CIO is now under more pressure to think through how- They have a mandate to move to the cloud. Now what? But who do they want to move with? Someone that they've trusted before, and by the way, because we've been first, and because we're so open with all our relationships with the cloud providers, why not move with us? Because we can help them think through it. >> So you're keeping the core. You're not pivoting off the core, you're building on top of the core, extending that. Is that what you're saying? >> We're building off of a really great foundation of who we've had as customers all along. We're establishing new relationships, though, as well, with cloud enterprise architects, and today, we actually just had here at Insight our first executive summit, where we brought together CIOs and CTOs and really talked about what's happening with data and organizations, what's happening with data that's being disruptive, what's happening if you want to thrive, based on data as well. >> There used to be an old expression back in the day when Polaroid was around, "What's the new Polaroid picture of something?" Now it's Instagram, so I have to ask this question. What is the new Instagram picture of NetApp with the customers that you have and for customers now in the data space, there's a lot of data conversations happening. What is that picture of NetApp? What should they know about NetApp? >> NetApp is in the cloud. >> Yeah, I love that messaging that NetApp is in the cloud. And how important is that moving forward? Especially as we look at technology such as ONTAP. They have been there from the beginning. I love the NFS on Azure story, but that's powered by ONTAP, which I kind of- It took me a few minutes to kind of get it, because I'm thinking, "ONTAP in Azure, that's bringing the old to the new." But that's not exactly what it is. What messaging do you want customers to get out of something like an NFS in Azure? >> We want them to understand that they don't have to know anything about storage to be able to protect and manage their data. No matter what environment that they're in. >> And by the way, we've been looking at and commenting critically on The Cube many events now that multi-cloud is a pipe dream. Now I say that only as folks know me. It's real. Customers want multi-cloud, but multi-cloud has been defined as, "Oh, I run 365 on Azure, and I got some analytics on Redshift on Amazon, I do some stuff on-prem. That's considered multi-cloud because there happen to be stuff on multiple clouds. You guys are doing something with cloud orchestrate that's quite interesting. It truly is multiple clouds in the sense that you can move data, if I get this right, across clouds. >> Jean: That's right. >> So it's in a complete transparent way, seamless way, so I don't have to code anything. Is that true? If that's true, then you might be one of the first multi-cloud use cases. >> We are one of the first multi-cloud use cases. We have created the data fabric, which is really looking at how do you seamlessly integrate across multiple clouds or on-prem environments? The data fabric, we've been talking about this vision for a couple of years. What we're seeing now is customers are seeing it come to reality. And now that we have more and more relationships expanding, as we mentioned we've been building SAS offerings with AWS for a couple years, we just had the big announcement today with Microsoft Azure. We're working with IBM Cloud. We're also working with Google Cloud, Alibaba, so as we think about a seamless data fabric, they want frictionless movement in and out of the cloud. >> Jean, I got to change gears for a second, because one of the things we've been observing over the past couple of months, certainly we were at the Open Source Summit, Linux Foundation. Open source is growing exponentially now. You've seen the new onboarding of developers in general and enterprise is going to take the bulk of that. Companies are supplying personnel to contribute on open source projects. That's continuing to happen. Nothing new there. But it's starting to change the game. You see Blockchain out there, getting some traction, ICOs and all that hype, but it points to one thing. Communities are really valuable. So as a marketer, I know you were at IBM, very community-oriented, very open source oriented, the role of communities is going to be super important as customers discover- So marketing is changing from batch marketing, you know, surge email marketing to real-time organic with communities. It's not just have a social handle. Really, have you guys looked at the B2B marketing transformation as customers start to make selections and take opinions in the new organic communities, because you have people in these projects, in open source, who are making decisions based on content. What's your view on communities and the importance of communities? >> Well, we believe highly in communities. Our A-Team is a community with us that is so strong, and they're our biggest advocates. They get brought in very, very early on in terms of learning about our new technologies and learning our story and understanding our strategy and where we're moving. I think you may have talked to some of our A-Team members before. >> John: Quite strong, very strong. >> But they are an amazing group of people and we believe highly that their advocacy is what is really going to help us to stay in touch and be really close to these new buyers as well. >> And you've got to really internalize that too in the company. Operationally, any best practices you can share with other CMOs? 'Cause this is a challenge for a lot of marketers is, how do you operationalize something new? >> Yes, well, we're finding that this notion of reinvention and it starts with the company itself. And it starts with their own employees. So when we talk about the shift from storage to data, we're even having our own employees talk about their own data story and how do they connect data. George talked about his data story, actually, on the main stage in our keynote the other day. But connecting to that's been really important. This notion of transforming to think about these new customers and new buyers, it starts with the customer needs, it's not about a product-out discussion. And so, a new story to a new buyer, relevancy, what's happening in their industry, and then engagement, engagement, engagement. >> I've been following NetApp since they were start-up and they went public, great story. They have a DNA of reinvention. David Hitz is going to to come out, I'm sure. We'll talk about that, because he's been an entrepreneur, but he's also had that entrepreneurial DNA. It's kind of still in the company, so my question to you is, from a personal perspective, what have you learned or observed at NetApp during this reinvention, not a pivot, it's not at all. It's more of an inflection point for NetApp and a new way, a new way to engage with customers, a new way to build products, a new way to do software development, a new way to use data. This is a theme we're seeing. What's your personal observation, learnings that you could share? >> Well, in my first month, what I really learned is just the absolute amazing culture of what NetApp has and this notion of we're always embracing what our customers want to where we move. So what our customer wants, we move with it. We embrace it holistically. Years and years ago, you know, Linux and Windows. A couple of years later, virtualization, virtualized environments. Could've killed us. Made us stronger. Now, embracing the cloud. A lot of our customers say, "I would have canceled the meeting with you, but now I understand that you're interested in the cloud and that you're in the cloud, I've totally changed my mind." And we say, "We love the cloud. We embrace the cloud holistically." >> You guys are progressive. I've noticed it's a competitive strategy kind of theory but as the old expression goes, "You got to eat your own to get to the new market. Some companies will milk the market share dry and then can't get to the new model. This is the reinvention challenge. When do you stop making profits to build for the future? It's a tough call. >> It is, but that's why we listen to what our customers say. And so, when they talked about wanting to move to the cloud a few years ago, we said, "We're going to be the first to holistically embrace the cloud." >> Okay, so you got the NetApp Insight 2017 going on in Berlin. Okay, that brings up the question, because it's in Germany, so I have to ask. GDPR has been super hot. The global landscape, how is that going on for NetApp? Obviously you have some experience in outside the US. It's not always the US, North America centric world. What's the global story for NetApp? >> It's not. I lived in China and Singapore, and I know that there are demands that are not just US-centric. When we talk about Germany, I was just there a few months ago, and this notion of how do we start to address the articles that are in GDPR that help to make sure that we have the right compliance and protection for data inside of a country and inside of Europe. We actually have expertise in that area. We've been actually consulting and talking with customers about what they want to do with data compliance and we're being asked now to say, "How does NetApp help address those articles? How do we come back with solutions to help control data and make sure we have the right access of data?" So, we're already consulting with customers. We know it's a top priority, and we have expertise to be able to help. >> We had Sheila FitzPatrick on. She's the Chief Privacy Officer. Very colorful, very dynamic, a lot of energy. >> Jean: She is. (laughs) >> She's going to slap anyone around who says you don't bolt on privacy. Good policy conversations, the policies converging in with that. It's interesting, the global landscape- The Cube will be in China next week for the Alibaba Cloud Conference, so we're going to go report, see what's going on there, so huge international challenge around regulations and policy. Does that affect the marketing at all? Because policy kind of is data privacy and security. Security super hot, obviously. Data security is number- A big thing. How does policy intersect with the technology? How as a CMO do you get that realized and put into action? >> Well, I think basing on the foundation that we're always optimized to protect. That's one of our key foundations of why people choose NetApp. We definitely know that there are other demands that are happening in local markets. I was just in Australia few weeks ago and was meeting with the New South Wales government, which they've had a mandate that all of the agencies need to use their own cloud platform. They've been working with NetApp to ensure that they can have the right data management solutions on that platform. And from a marketing perspective, we embrace that. And so we work with, whether it's Telstar, we're working with New South Wales, we're thinking about how do we ensure that that message is strong, because we know customers there have different demands than just what's in the US. >> So when you get CIOs and and senior executives together at a summit like you guys had over the past few days, ideas start to percolate, problem start to come across. What was some of the biggest policy concerns throughout those conversations? Was it GDPR? Was it something else? What's top-of-mind? >> What we're hearing top-of-mind right now is data governance. And I think that that could be towards data compliance in terms of GDPR for Europe. I think it expands beyond Europe, though. I just heard, like I said, in Australia, where they're having demands based on the government of what's needed to be really driven through a cloud platform. We're hearing through our customers in the last couple weeks about if I'm moving to the cloud, number one, I want to have seamless transition during the move in or out of the cloud, but I got to make sure I've got the right governance model in place. >> So we've heard this repeatedly. Customers moved into the cloud. How many customer are coming to you saying, "You know what, for whatever reason, whether it's cost, agility, the overall capability we thought we'd have available in the cloud, not really what we thought it would be. We need help moving it back." And what is that conversation like? >> Well, it's a conversation that we're able to help with pretty easily. Right now, we have had customers that have either had one, a cloud mandate, so they got to think about how am I going to move all my data to the cloud. Once they actually start getting into the detail, we do a design workshop where we help them think about maybe there's not all workloads going to the cloud. Maybe some workloads go in the cloud. We have had a customer who did move the majority of workloads in the cloud and then decided, actually, we think we'll get better cost performance and better efficiencies if we actually have those back on-prem. We said, "No problem. We can help you with that too." And I think that's the beauty of what we talked about with data fabric is, we're able to help them think through, no matter where they want their data, on-prem or in the cloud, we can help them. >> Jean, thanks for coming up here. I know your time is super valuable. I got to get one more point in, 'cause I want to make sure we get that out there. Public sector. NetApp's position strong, getting better? What's your thoughts? A quick update on public sector. >> We are very, very strong on public sector. We've actually had a strong presence in public sector with our customers for many years. And we're continuing to help them think about too how they start to look at cloud environments. >> All right, Jean English, CMO here on The Cube. Getting the hook here in the time. She's super busy. Thanks for coming. Congratulations- >> Jean: Thank you. >> On great positioning and looking forward to chatting further at The Cube. Live coverage here, Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. I'm John Furrier, Keith Townsend. We'll be right back with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)