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Nancy Wang & Kate Watts | International Women's Day


 

>> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE been profiling the leaders in the technology world, women in technology from developers to the boardroom, everything in between. We have two great guests promoting in from Malaysia. Nancy Wang is the general manager, also CUBE alumni from AWS Data Protection, and founder and board chair of Advancing Women in Tech, awit.org. And of course Kate Watts who's the executive director of Advancing Women in Tech.org. So it's awit.org. Nancy, Kate, thanks for coming all the way across remotely from Malaysia. >> Of course, we're coming to you as fast as our internet bandwidth will allow us. And you know, I'm just thrilled today that you get to see a whole nother aspect of my life, right? Because typically we talk about AWS, and here we're talking about a topic near and dear to my heart. >> Well, Nancy, I love the fact that you're spending a lot of time taking the empowerment to go out and help the industries and helping with the advancement of women in tech. Kate, the executive director it's a 501C3, it's nonprofit, dedicating to accelerating the careers of women in groups in tech. Can you talk about the organization? >> Yes, I can. So Advancing Women in Tech was founded in 2017 in order to fix some of the pathway problems that we're seeing on the rise to leadership in the industry. And so we specifically focus on supporting mid-level women in technical roles, get into higher positions. We do that in a few different ways through mentorship programs through building technical skills and by connecting people to a supportive community. So you have your peer network and then a vertical sort of relationships to help you navigate the next steps in your career. So to date we've served about 40,000 individuals globally and we're just looking to expand our reach and impact and be able to better support women in the industry. >> Nancy, talk about the creation, the origination story. How'd this all come together? Obviously the momentum, everyone in the industry's been focused on this for a long time. Where did AWIT come from? Advancing Women in Technology, that's the acronym. Advancing Women in Technology.org, where'd it come from? What's the origination story? >> Yeah, so AWIT really originated from this desire that I had, to Kate's point around, well if you look around right and you know, don't take my word for it, right? Look at stats, look at news reports, or just frankly go on your LinkedIn and see how many women in underrepresented groups are in senior technical leadership roles right out in the companies whose names we all know. And so that was my case back in 2016. And so when I first got the idea and back then I was actually at Google, just another large tech company in the valley, right? It was about how do we get more role models, how we get more, for example, women into leadership roles so they can bring up the next generation, right? And so this is actually part of a longer speech that I'm about to give on Wednesday and part of the US State Department speaker program. In fact, that's why Kate and I are here in Malaysia right now is working with over 200 women entrepreneurs from all over in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia Philippines, Vietnam, Borneo, you know, so many countries where having more women entrepreneurs can help raise the GDP right, and that fits within our overall mission of getting more women into top leadership roles in tech. >> You know, I was talking about Teresa Carlson she came on the program as well for this year this next season we're going to do. And she mentioned the decision between the US progress and international. And she's saying as much as it's still bad numbers, it's worse than outside the United States and needs to get better. Can you comment on the global aspect? You brought that up. I think it's super important to highlight that it's just not one area, it's a global evolution. >> Absolutely, so let me start, and I'd love to actually have Kate talk about our current programs and all of the international groups that we're working with. So as Teresa aptly mentioned there is so much work to be done not just outside the US and North Americas where typically tech nonprofits will focus, but rather if you think about the one to end model, right? For example when I was doing the product market fit workshop for the US State Department I had women dialing in from rice fields, right? So let me just pause there for a moment. They were holding their cell phones up near towers near trees just so that they can get a few minutes of time with me to do a workshop and how to accelerate their business. So if you don't call that the desire to propel oneself or accelerate oneself, not sure what is, right. And so it's really that passion that drove me to spend the next week and a half here working with local entrepreneurs working with policy makers so we can take advantage and really leverage that passion that people have, right? To accelerate more business globally. And so that's why, you know Kate will be leading our contingent with the United Nations Women Group, right? That is focused on women's economic empowerment because that's super important, right? One aspect can be sure, getting more directors, you know vice presidents into companies like Google and Amazon. But another is also how do you encourage more women around the world to start businesses, right? To reach economic and freedom independence, right? To overcome some of the maybe social barriers to becoming a leader in their own country. >> Yes, and if I think about our own programs and our model of being very intentional about supporting the learning development and skills of women and members of underrepresented groups we focused very much on providing global access to a number of our programs. For instance, our product management certification on Coursera or engineering management our upcoming women founders accelerator. We provide both access that you can get from anywhere. And then also very intentional programming that connects people into the networks to be able to further their networks and what they've learned through the skills online, so. >> Yeah, and something Kate just told me recently is these courses that Kate's mentioning, right? She was instrumental in working with the American Council on Education and so that our learners can actually get up to six college credits for taking these courses on product management engineering management, on cloud product management. And most recently we had our first organic one of our very first organic testimonials was from a woman's tech bootcamp in Nigeria, right? So if you think about the worldwide impact of these upskilling courses where frankly in the US we might take for granted right around the world as I mentioned, there are women dialing in from rice patties from other, you know, for example, outside the, you know corporate buildings in order to access this content. >> Can you think about the idea of, oh sorry, go ahead. >> Go ahead, no, go ahead Kate. >> I was going to say, if you can't see it, you can't become it. And so we are very intentional about ensuring that we have we're spotlighting the expertise of women and we are broadcasting that everywhere so that anybody coming up can gain the skills and the networks to be able to succeed in this industry. >> We'll make sure we get those links so we can promote them. Obviously we feel the same way getting the word out. I think a couple things I'd like to ask you guys cause I think you hit a great point. One is the economic advantage the numbers prove that diverse teams perform better number one, that's clear. So good point there. But I want to get your thoughts on the entrepreneurial equation. You mentioned founders and startups and there's also different makeups in different countries. It's not like the big corporations sometimes it's smaller business in certain areas the different cultures have different business sizes and business types. How do you guys see that factoring in outside the United States, say the big tech companies? Okay, yeah. The easy lower the access to get in education than stay with them, in other countries is it the same or is it more diverse in terms of business? >> So what really actually got us started with the US State Department was around our work with women founders. And I love for Kate to actually share her experience working with AWS startups in that capacity. But frankly, you know, we looked at the content and the mentor programs that were providing women who wanted to be executives, you know, quickly realize a lot of those same skills such as finding customers, right? Scaling your product and building channels can also apply to women founders, not just executives. And so early supporters of our efforts from firms such as Moderna up in Seattle, Emergence Ventures, Decibel Ventures in, you know, the Bay Area and a few others that we're working with right now. Right, they believed in the mission and really helped us scale out what is now our existing platform and offerings for women founders. >> Those are great firms by the way. And they also are very founder friendly and also understand the global workforce. I mean, that's a whole nother dimension. Okay, what's your reaction to all that? >> Yes, we have been very intentional about taking the product expertise and the learnings of women and in our network, we first worked with AWS startups to support the development of the curriculum for the recent accelerator for women founders that was held last spring. And so we're able to support 25 founders and also brought in the expertise of about 20 or 30 women from Advancing Women in Tech to be able to be the lead instructors and mentors for that. And so we have really realized that with this network and this individual sort of focus on product expertise building strong teams, we can take that information and bring it to folks everywhere. And so there is very much the intentionality of allowing founders allowing individuals to take the lessons and bring it to their individual circumstances and the cultures in which they are operating. But the product sense is a skill that we can support the development of and we're proud to do so. >> That's awesome. Nancy, I want to ask you some never really talk about data storage and AWS cloud greatness and goodness, here's different and you also work full-time at AWS and you're the founder or the chairman of this great organization. How do you balance both and do you get, they're getting behind you on this, Amazon is getting behind you on this. >> Well, as I say it's always easier to negotiate on the way in. But jokes aside, I have to say the leadership has been tremendously supportive. If you think about, for example, my leaders Wayne Duso who's also been on the show multiple times, Bill Vaas who's also been on the show multiple times, you know they're both founders and also operators entrepreneurs at heart. So they understand that it is important, right? For all of us, it's really incumbent on all of us who are in positions to do so, to create a pathway for more people to be in leadership roles for more people to be successful entrepreneurs. So, no, I mean if you just looked at LinkedIn they're always uploading my vote so they reach to more audiences. And frankly they're rooting for us back home in the US while we're in Malaysia this week. >> That's awesome. And I think that's a good culture to have that empowerment and I think that's very healthy. What's next for you guys? What's on the agenda? Take us through the activities. I know that you got a ton of things happening. You got your event out there, which is why you're out there. There's a bunch of other activities. I think you guys call it the Advancing Women in Tech week. >> Yes, this week we are having a week of programming that you can check out at Advancing Women in Tech.org. That is spotlighting the expertise of a number of women in our space. So it is three days of programming Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday if you are in the US so the seventh through the ninth, but available globally. We are also going to be in New York next week for the event at the UN and are looking to continue to support our mentorship programs and also our work supporting women founders throughout the year. >> All right. I have to ask you guys if you don't mind get a little market data so you can share with us here at theCUBE. What are you hearing this year that's different in the conversation space around the topics, the interests? Obviously I've seen massive amounts of global acceleration around conversations, more video, things like this more stories are scaling, a lot more LinkedIn activity. It just seems like it's a lot different this year. Can you guys share any kind of current trends you're seeing relative to the conversations and topics being discussed across the the community? >> Well, I think from a needle moving perspective, right? I think due to the efforts of wonderful organizations including the Q for spotlighting all of these awesome women, right? Trailblazing women and the nonprofits the government entities that we work with there's definitely more emphasis on creating access and creating pathways. So that's probably one thing that you're seeing is more women, more investors posting about their activities. Number two, from a global trend perspective, right? The rise of women in security. I noticed that on your agenda today, you had Lena Smart who's a good friend of mine chief information security officer at MongoDB, right? She and I are actually quite involved in helping founders especially early stage founders in the security space. And so globally from a pure technical perspective, right? There's right more increasing regulations around data privacy, data sovereignty, right? For example, India's in a few weeks about to get their first data protection regulation there locally. So all of that is giving rise to yet another wave of opportunity and we want women founders uniquely positioned to take advantage of that opportunity. >> I love it. Kate, reaction to that? I mean founders, more pathways it sounds like a neural network, it sounds like AI enabled. >> Yes, and speaking of AI, with the rise of that we are also hearing from many community members the importance of continuing to build their skills upskill learn to be able to keep up with the latest trends. There's a lot of people wondering what does this mean for my own career? And so they're turning to organizations like Advancing Women in Tech to find communities to both learn the latest information, but also build their networks so that they are able to move forward regardless of what the industry does. >> I love the work you guys are doing. It's so impressive. I think the economic angle is new it's more amplified this year. It's always kind of been there and continues to be. What do you guys hope for by next year this time what do you hope to see different from a needle moving perspective, to use your word Nancy, for next year? What's the visual output in your mind? >> I want to see real effort made towards 50-50 representation in all tech leadership roles. And I'd like to see that happen by 2050. >> Kate, anything on your end? >> I love that. I'm going to go a little bit more touchy-feely. I want everybody in our space to understand that the skills that they build and that the networks they have carry with them regardless of wherever they go. And so to be able to really lean in and learn and continue to develop the career that you want to have. So whether that be at a large organization or within your own business, that you've got the potential to move forward on that within you. >> Nancy, Kate, thank you so much for your contribution. I'll give you the final word. Put a plug in for the organization. What are you guys looking for? Any kind of PSA you want to share with the folks watching? >> Absolutely, so if you're in a position to be a mentor, join as a mentor, right? Help elevate and accelerate the next generation of women leaders. If you're an investor help us invest in more women started companies, right? Women founded startups and lastly, if you are women looking to accelerate your career, come join our community. We have resources, we have mentors and who we have investors who are willing to come in on the ground floor and help you accelerate your business. >> Great work. Thank you so much for participating in our International Women's Day 23 program and we'd look to keep this going quarterly. We'll see you next year, next time. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >> Thanks so much John. >> Thank you. >> Okay, women leaders here. >> Nancy: Thanks for having us >> All over the world, coming together for a great celebration but really highlighting the accomplishments, the pathways the investment, the mentoring, everything in between. It's theCUBE. Bring as much as we can. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.

Published Date : Mar 7 2023

SUMMARY :

in the technology world, that you get to see a whole nother aspect of time taking the empowerment to go on the rise to leadership in the industry. in the industry's been focused of the US State Department And she mentioned the decision and all of the international into the networks to be able to further in the US we might take for Can you think about the and the networks to be able The easy lower the access to get and the mentor programs Those are great firms by the way. and also brought in the or the chairman of this in the US while we're I know that you got a of programming that you can check I have to ask you guys if you don't mind founders in the security space. Kate, reaction to that? of continuing to build their skills I love the work you guys are doing. And I'd like to see that happen by 2050. and that the networks Any kind of PSA you want to and accelerate the next Thank you so much for participating All over the world,

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John Purcell, DoiT International & Danislav Penev, INFINOX Global | AWS re:Invent 2022


 

>>Hello friends and welcome back to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, where we are live from the show floor at AWS Reinvent. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by my fabulous co-host John Furrier. John, how was your lunch? >>My lunch was great. Wasn't very complex like it is today, so it was very easy, >>Appropriate for the conversation we're about >>To have. Great, great guests coming up Cube alumni and great question around complexity and how is wellbeing teams be good? >>Yes. And, and and on that note, let's welcome John from DeWit as well as Danny from Inox. I swear I'll be able to say that right by the end of this. Thank you guys so much for being here. How's the show going for you? >>Excellent so far. It's been a great, a great event. You know, back back to pre Covid days, >>You're still smiling day three. That's an awesome sign. John, what about you? >>Fantastic. It's, it's been busier than ever >>That that's exciting. I, I think we certainly feel that way here on the cube. We're doing dozens of videos, it's absolutely awesome. Just in case. So we can dig in a little deeper throughout the rest of the segment just in case the audience isn't familiar, let's get them acquainted with your companies. Let's start with do it John. >>Yeah, thanks Savannah. So do it as a global technology company and we're partnering with deleted cloud providers around the world and digital native companies to provide value and solve complexity. John, to your, to your introductory point with all of the complexities associated with operating in the cloud, scaling a business in the cloud, a lot of companies are just looking to sort of have somebody else take care of that problem for them or have somebody they can call when they run into, you know, into problems scaling. And so with a combination of tech, advanced technology, some of the best cloud experts in the world and unlimited tech support or we're offloading a lot of those problems for our customers and we're doing that on a global basis. So it's, it's an exciting time. >>I can imagine pretty much everyone here on the show floor is dealing with that challenge of complexity. So a couple customers for you in the house. What about you Danny? >>I, I come from a company which operates in a financial industry market. So we essentially a global broker, financial trading broker. Which what this means for those people who don't really understand, essentially we allow clients to be able to trade digitally and speculate with different pricing, pricing tools online. We offer a different products for different type of clients. We have institutional clients, we've got our affiliates, partners programs and we've got a retail clients and this is where AWS and Doit comes handy allows us to offer our products digitally across the globe. And one of the key values for us here is that we can actually offer a product in regions where other people don't. So for example, we don't compete in North America, we don't compete in EME in Europe, but we just do it in AWS to solve our complex challenges in regions that naturally by, depending on where they base, they have like issues and that's how we deliver our product. >>And which regions, Latin >>America, Latin, the entire Africa, subcontinent, middle East, southeast Asia, the culture is just demographic is different. And what you used to have here is not exactly what you have over there. And obviously that brings a lot of challenges with onboarding and clients, deposit, trading activities, CDN latency, all of >>That stuff. It's interesting how each region's different in their, their posture with the cloud. Someone roll their own, someone outta the box. So again, this brings up this theme this year guys, which is about end to end seeing purpose built like specialty solutions. A lot of solutions going end to end with data makes kind of makes it more complicated. So again, we got more complexity coming, but the greatest the cloud is, you can abstract that away. So we are seeing this is a big opportunity for partners to innovate. You're seeing a lot of joint engineering, a lot more complexities coming still, but still end to end is the end game so to speak. >>A absolutely John, I mean one, one of the sort of ways we describe what we try to do for our customers like Equinox is to be your co-pilot in the cloud, which essentially means, you know, >>What an apt analogy. >>I think so, yeah, >>Well, well >>Done there. I think it works. Yvanna. Yeah, so, so as I mentioned, these are the majority or almost all of our customers are pretty sophisticated tech savvy companies. So they don't, you know, they know for most, for the most part what they're trying to achieve. They're approaching scale, they're at scale or they're, or they're through that scale point and they, they just wanna have somebody they can call, right? They need technology to help abstract away the complex problem. So they're not doing so much manual cloud operational work or sometimes they just need help picking the next tech right to solve the end to end use case that that they're, that they're dealing with >>In business. And Danny, you're rolling out solutions so you're on, you're on the front lines, you gotta make it easier. You didn't want to get in the weeds on something that should be taken care of. >>Correct. I mean one of the reasons we go do it is you need to, in order to involve do it, you need to know your problems, understand your challenges, also like a self review only. And you have to be one way halfway through the cloud journey. You need to know your problems, what you want to achieve, where you want to end up a roadmap for the next five years, what you want to achieve. Are we fixing or developing a building? And then involve those guys to come and help you because they cannot just come with magic one and fix all your problems. You need to do that yourself. It's not like starting the journey by yourself. >>Yeah. One thing that's not played up in this event, I will say they may, I don't, they missed, maybe Verner will hit it tomorrow, but I think they kind of missed it a little bit. But the developer productivity's been a big issue. We've seen that this year. One of the big themes on the cube is developer productivity, more velocity on the development side to keep pace with what's on, what solutions are rolling out the customers. And the other one is skills gap. So, and people like, and people have old skills, like we see VMware being bought by Broadcom for instance, got a lot of IT operators at VMware, they gotta go cloud somewhere. So you got new talent, existing talent, skill gaps, people are comfortable, yet the new stuff's there, developers gotta be more productive. How do you guys see that? Cuz that's gonna be how that plays now, it's gonna impact the channel, the partnership relationship, your ability to deliver. >>What's your reaction to that first? Well I think we obviously have a tech savvy team. We've got developers, we've got dev, we've got infrastructure guys, but we only got so much resource that we can afford. And essentially by evolving due it, I've doubled our staff. So we got a tech savvy senior solution architects which comes to do the sexy stuff, actually develop and design a new better offering, better product that makes us competitive. And this is where we involved, essentially we use the due IT staff as an staff employees that our demand is richly army of qualified people. We can actually cherry pick who we want for the call to do X, Y, and Z. And they're there to, to support you. We just have to ask for help. And this is how we fill our gap from technical skills or budget constrained within, you know, within recruitment. >>And I think, I think what, what Danny is touching on, John, what you mentioned is, is really the, the sort of the core family principle of the company, right? It's hard enough for companies like Equinox to hire staff that can help them build their business and deliver the value proposition that they're, that they see, right? And so our reason for existence is to sort of take care of the rest, right? We can help, you know, operate your cloud, show you the most effective way to do that. Whether they're finops problems, whether they're DevOps problems, whether dev SEC ops problems, all of these sort of classic operational problems that get 'em the way of the core business mission. You're not in the business of running the cloud, you're in the business of delivering customer value. We can help you, you know, manage your cloud >>And it's your job to do it. >>It is to do it >>Can, couldn't raise this upon there. How long have y'all been working together? >>I would say 15 months. We took, we took a bit of a conservative approach. We hope for the baseball, prepare for the worst. So I didn't trust do it. I give them one account, start with DEF U A C because you cannot, you just have to learn the journey yourself. So I think I would, my advice for clients is give it the six months. Once you establish a relationship, build a relationship, give them one by one start slowly. You actually understand by yourself the skills, the capacity that they have. And also the, for me consultants is really important And after that just opens up and we are now involving them. We've got new project, we've got problem statement. The first thing we do, we don't Google it, we just say do it. Log a ticket, we got the team. You're >>A verb. >>Yeah. So >>In this case we have >>The puns are on list here on the Cuban general. But with something like that, it's great. >>I gotta ask you a question cuz this is interesting John. You know, we talked last year on the cube and, and again this is an example of how innovations playing out. If you look at the announcements, Adam Celski did and then sw, he had 13 or so announcements. I won't say it's getting boring, but when you hear boring, boring is good. When you start getting into these, these gaps in the platforms as it grows. I won't say they was boring cause that really wasn't boring. I like the data >>Itself. It's all fascinating, John, >>But it, but it's a lot of gap filling, you know, 50 connectors you got, you know, yeah. All glue layers being built in AI's critical. The match cloud is there. What's the innovation? You got a lot of gaps being filled, boring is good. Like Kubernetes, we say there boring means, it's being invisible. That means it's going away. What's the exciting things from your perspective in cloud here? >>Well, I think, I mean, boring is an interesting word to use cuz a company with the heritage of AWS is constantly evolving. I mean, at the core of that company's culture is innovation, technology, development and innovation. And they're building for builders as, as you know, just as well as I do. Yeah. And so, but what we find across our customer base is that companies that are scaling or at scale are using maybe a smaller set of those services, but they're really leveraging them in interesting ways. And there is a very long tail of deeper, more sophisticated fit for purpose, more specific services. And Adam announced, you know, who knows him another 20 or 30 services and it's happening year after year after year. And I think one of the things that, that Danny might attest to is, I, I spoke about the reason we exist and the reason we form the company is we hold it very, a very critical part of our mission is to stay abreast of all of those developments as they emerge so that Danny and and his crew don't have to, right? And so when they have a, a, a question about SageMaker or they have a question about sort of the new big data service that Adam has announced, we take it very seriously. Our job is to be able to answer that question quickly and >>Accurately. And I notice your shirt, if you could just give a little shirt there, ops, cloud ops, DevOps do it. The intersection of the finance, the tuning is now we're hearing a lot of price performance, cost recovery, not cost recovery, but cost management. Yeah. Optimizing. So we're seeing building scale, but now, now tuning almost a craft, the craft of the cloud is here. What's your reaction to that? It, >>It absolutely is. And this is a story as old as the cloud, honestly. And companies, you know, they'll, they'll, companies tend to follow the same sort of maturity journey when they first start, whether they're migrating to the cloud or they were born in the cloud as most of our customers are. There's a, there's a, there's an, there's an access to visibility and understanding and optimization to tuning a craft to use your term. And, and cost management truly is a 10 year old problem that is as prevalent and relevant today as it was, you know, 10 years ago. And there's a lot of talk about the economics associated with the cloud and it's not, certainly not always cheaper to run. In fact, it rarely is cheaper to run your business from any of the public cloud providers. The key is to do it and right size it and make sure it's operating in accordance and alignment with your business, right? It's okay for cloud process to go up so long as your top line is also >>Selling your proportion. You spend more cloud to save cloud. That's it's >>Penny wise, pound full. It's always a little bit, always a little bit of a, of a >>Dilemma on, on the cost saving. We didn't want to just save money. If you want to save money, just shut down your services, right? So it's about making money. So this is where do it comes, like we actually start making, okay, we spend a bit more now, but in about six months time I will be making more money. And we've just did that. We roll out the new application for all the new product offering host to AWS fully with the guys support, a lot of long, boring, boring, boring calls, but they're productive because we actually now have a better product, competitive, it's tailored for our clients, it's cost effective. And we are actually making money >>When something's invisible. It's working, you know, talking about it means it's, it's, it's operational. >>It's exactly, it's, >>Well to that point, John, one of the things we're most proud of in, you know, know this year was, was the launch of our product we called Flex Save, which essentially does exactly what you've described. It's, it's looking for automation and, and, and, and automatic ways of, yes. Saving money, but offering the opportunities to, to to improve the economics associated with your cloud infrastructure. >>Yeah. And improving the efficiency across the board. A hundred percent. It, it's, oh, it's awesome. Let's, and, and it's, it's my understanding there's some reporting and insights that you're able to then translate through from do it to your CTO and across the company. Denny, what's that like? What do you get to see working >>With them? Well, the problem is, like the CTO asked me to do all of that. It is funny he thinks that he's doing it, but essentially they have a excellent portal that basically looks up all of our instances on the one place. You got like good analytics on your cost, cost, anomalies, budget, costal location. But I didn't want to do that either. So what I have done is taken the next step. I actually sold this to the, to my company completely. So my finance teams goes there, they do it themselves, they log in, check, check, all the billing, the costal location. I actually has zero iteration with them if I don't hear anything from them, which is one of the benefits. But also there is lot of other products like the Flexe is virtually like you just click a finger and you start saving money just like that. Easy >>Is that easy button we've been talking about on >>The show? Yeah, exactly, exactly how it is. But there is obviously outside of the cost management, you actually can look at what is the resource you using do actually need it, how often you use it, think about the long term goal, what you're trying to achieve, and use the analytics to, and actually I have to say the analytics much better than AWS in, in, in, in cmp. It's, it's just more user friendly, more interactive as opposed to, you know, building the one in aws. >>It's good business model. Make things easy for your customers. Easy, simple >>To use. >>It's gotta be nice to hear John. >>Well, so first of all, thank you daddy. >>We, we work, but in all seriousness, you know, we, we work, Danny mentioned the trust word earlier. This is at the core of if we don't, if we're not able to build trust with our clients, our business is dead. It, it just doesn't exist. It can't scale. In fact, it'll go the opposite direction. And so we're, we work very, very hard to earn that trust and we're willing to start small to Danny's example, start small and grow. And that's why we're very, one of the things we're most proud of is, is how few customers tend to leave us year over year. We have customers that have been with us for 10 years. >>You know, Andy, Jesse always has, I just saw an interview, he was on the New York Times event in New York today as a CEO of Amazon. But he's always said in these build out phases, you gotta work backwards from the customer and innovate on behalf of the customer. Cause that's the answer that will always be a good answer for the outcome versus optimizing for just profit, you know what I'm saying? Or other things. So we're still in build out mode, >>You know, as a, as a, as a core fundamental sort of product concept. If you're not solving important problems for our customer, what are you, why, why are you investing? It just >>Doesn't make it. This is the beauty we do it. We actually, they wait for you to come to do the next step. They don't sell me anything. They don't bug me with emails. They're ready. When you're ready to make that journey, you just log a ticket and then come and help you. And this is the beauty. You just, it's just not your, your journey. >>I love it. That's a, that's a beautiful note to lead us to our new tradition on the cube. We have a little bit of a challenge for the both of you. We're looking for your 32nd Instagram real thought leadership sizzle anecdote. Either one of you wanna go first. John looks a little nauseous. Danny, you wanna give it a go? >>Well, we've got a few expressions, but we don't Google it. We just do it. And the key take, that's what we do now at, at, and also what we do is actually using their stuff as an influence employees richly. Like that's what we do. >>Well done, well done. Didn't even need the 30 seconds. Fantastic work, Danny. I love that. All right, John, now you do have to go. Okay, >>I'll goodness. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll I'll go back to what I mentioned earlier, if that's okay. I think we, you know, we exist as a company to sort of help our customers get back to focusing on why they started the business in the first place, which is innovating and delivering value to customers. And we'll help you take care of the rest. It's as simple as that. Awesome. >>Well done. You absolutely nailed it. I wanna just acknowledge your fan club over there watching. Hello everyone from the doit team. Good job team. I love, it's very cute when guests show up with an entourage to the cube. We like to see it. You obviously deserve the entourage. You're, you're both wonderful. Thanks again for being here on the show with Oh yeah, go ahead >>John. Well, I would just like to thank Danny for, for agreeing to >>Discern, thankfully >>Great to spend time with you. Absolutely. Let's do it. >>Thank you. Yeah, >>Yeah. Fantastic gentlemen. Well thank you all for tuning into this wonderful start to the afternoon here from AWS Reinvent. We are in Las Vegas, Nevada with John Furier. My name's Savannah Peterson, you're watching The Cube, the leader in high tech coverage.

Published Date : Nov 30 2022

SUMMARY :

from the show floor at AWS Reinvent. Wasn't very complex like it is today, so it was very easy, Great, great guests coming up Cube alumni and great question around complexity and how is wellbeing teams be I swear I'll be able to say that right by the end of this. You know, back back to pre Covid days, John, what about you? It's, it's been busier than ever in case the audience isn't familiar, let's get them acquainted with your companies. in the cloud, scaling a business in the cloud, a lot of companies are just looking to sort of have I can imagine pretty much everyone here on the show floor is dealing with that challenge of complexity. And one of the key values for us here is that we can actually offer a product in regions And what you used to have here So again, we got more complexity coming, but the greatest the cloud is, you can abstract that you know, they know for most, for the most part what they're trying to achieve. And Danny, you're rolling out solutions so you're on, you're on the front lines, you gotta make it easier. I mean one of the reasons we go do it is you need to, And the other one is skills gap. And this is how we fill our gap from We can help, you know, operate your cloud, show you the most effective way to do that. Can, couldn't raise this upon there. start with DEF U A C because you cannot, you just have to learn The puns are on list here on the Cuban general. I like the data But it, but it's a lot of gap filling, you know, 50 connectors you got, you know, yeah. I spoke about the reason we exist and the reason we form the company is we hold it very, The intersection of the finance, the tuning is now we're hearing a lot of price performance, that is as prevalent and relevant today as it was, you know, 10 years ago. You spend more cloud to save cloud. It's always a little bit, always a little bit of a, of a We roll out the new application for all the new product offering host It's working, you know, talking about it means it's, it's, it's operational. Well to that point, John, one of the things we're most proud of in, you know, know this year was, was the launch of our product we from do it to your CTO and across the company. Well, the problem is, like the CTO asked me to do all of that. more interactive as opposed to, you know, building the one in aws. Make things easy for your customers. This is at the core of if we don't, if we're not able to build trust with our clients, the outcome versus optimizing for just profit, you know what I'm saying? You know, as a, as a, as a core fundamental sort of product concept. This is the beauty we do it. for the both of you. And the key take, All right, John, now you do have to go. I think we, you know, we exist as a company to sort of help our customers get back to focusing Thanks again for being here on the show with Oh yeah, go ahead Great to spend time with you. Thank you. Well thank you all for tuning into this wonderful start to the afternoon here

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Supercloud – Real or Hype? | Supercloud22


 

>>Okay, welcome back everyone to super cloud 22 here in our live studio performance. You're on stage in Palo Alto. I'm Sean fur. You're host with the queue with Dave ante. My co it's got a great industry ecosystem panel to discuss whether it's realer hype, David MC Janet CEO of Hashi Corp, hugely successful company as will LA forest field CTO, Colu and Victoria over yourgo from VMware guys. Thanks for coming on the queue. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. So realer, hype, super cloud David. >>Well, I think it depends on the definition. >>Okay. How do you define super cloud start there? So I think we have a, >>I think we have a, like an inherently pragmatic view of super cloud of the idea of super cloud as you talk about it, which is, you know, for those of us that have been in the infrastructure world for a long time, we know there are really only six or seven categories of infrastructure. There's sort of the infrastructure security, networking databases, middleware, and, and, and, and really the message queuing aspects. And I think our view is that if the steady state of the world is multi-cloud, what you've seen is sort of some modicum of standardization across those different elements, you know, take, you know, take confluent. You know, I, I worked in the middleware world years ago, MQ series, and typical multicast was how you did message queuing. Well, you don't do that anymore. All the different cloud providers have their own message, queuing tech, there's, Google pub sub, and the equivalents across the different, different clouds. Kafka has provided a consistent way to do that. And they're not trying to project that. You can run everything connected. They're saying, Hey, you should standardize on Kafka for message cuing is that way you can have operational consistency. So I think to me, that's more how we think about it is sort of, there is sort of layer by layer of sort of de facto standardization for the lingo Franco. >>So a streaming super cloud is how you would think of it, or no, I just, or a component of >>Cloud that could be a super cloud. >>I just, I just think that there are like, if I'm gonna build an application message, queuing is gonna be a necessary element of it. I'm gonna use Kafka, not, you know, a native pub sub engine on one of the clouds, because operationally that's just the only way I can do it. So I think that's more, our view's much more pragmatic rather than trying to create like a single platform that you can run everywhere and deal with the networking realities of like network, you know, hops missing across those different worlds and have that be our responsibility. It's much more around, Hey, let's standardize each layer, operational >>Standardized layer that you can use to build a super cloud if that's in your, your intent or, yeah. Okay. >>And it reminds me of the web services days. You kind of go throwback there. I mean, we're kind of living the next gen of web services, the dream of that next level, because DevOps dev SecOps now is now gone mainstream. That's the big challenge we're hearing devs are doing great. Yep. But the ops teams and screen, they gotta go faster. This seems to be a core, I won't say blocker, but more of a drag to the innovation. >>Well, I I'll just get off, I'll hand it off to, to you guys. But I think the idea that like, you know, if I'm gonna have an app that's running on Amazon that needs to connect to a database that's running on, on the private data center, that's essentially the SOA notion, you know, w large that we're all trying to solve 20 years ago, but is much more complicated because you're brokering different identity models, different networking models. They're just much more complex. So that's where the ops bit is the constraint, you know, for me to build that app, not that complicated for the ops person to let it see traffic is another thing altogether. I think that's, that's the break point for so much of what looks easier to a developer is the operational reality of how you do that. And the good news is those are actually really well solved problems. They're just not broadly understood. >>Well, what's your take, you talk to customers all the time, field CTO, confluent, really doing well, streaming data. I mean, everyone's doing it now. They have to, yeah. These are new things that pop up that need solutions. You guys step up and doing more. What's your take on super cloud? >>Well, I mean, the way we address it honestly is we don't, it's gonna be honest. We don't think about super cloud much less is the fact that SAS is really being pushed down. Like if we rely on seven years ago and you took a look at SAS, like it was obvious if you were gonna build a product for an end consumer or business user, you'd do SAS. You'd be crazy not to. Right. But seven years ago, if you look at your average software company producing something for a developer that people building those apps, chances are you had an open source model. Yeah. Or, you know, self-managed, I think with the success of a lot of the companies that are here today, you know, snowflake data, bricks, Colu, it's, it's obvious that SaaS is the way to deliver software to the developers as well. And as such, because our product is provided that way to the developers across the clouds. That's, that's how they have a unifying data layer, right. They don't necessarily, you know, developers like many people don't necessarily wanna deal with the infrastructure. They just wanna consume cloud data services. Right. So that's how we help our customers span cloud. >>So we evenly that SAS was gonna be either built on a single cloud or in the case of service. Now they built their own cloud. Right. So increasingly we're seeing opportunities to build a Salesforce as well across clouds tap different, different, different services. So, so how does that evolve? Do you, some clouds have, you know, better capabilities in other clouds. So how does that all get sort of adjudicated, do you, do you devolve to the lowest common denominator? Or can you take the best of all of each? >>The whole point to that I think is that when you move from the business user and the personal consumer to the developer, you, you can no longer be on a cloud, right. There has to be locality to where applications are being developed. So we can't just deploy on a single cloud and have people send their data to that cloud. We have to be where the developer is. And our job is to make the most of each, an individual cloud to provide the same experience to them. Right. So yes, we're using the capabilities of each cloud, but we're hiding that to the developer. They don't shouldn't need to know or care. Right. >>Okay. And you're hiding that with the abstraction layer. We talked about this before Victoria, and that, that layer has what, some intelligence that has metadata knowledge that can adjudicate what, what, the best, where the best, you know, service is, or function of latency or data sovereignty. How do you see that? >>Well, I think as the, you need to instrument these applications so that you, you, you can get that data and then make the intelligent decision of where, where, where this, the deploy application. I think what Dave said is, is right. You know, the level of super cloud that they talking about is the standardization across messaging. And, and are you what's happening within the application, right? So you don't, you are not too dependent on the underlying, but then the application say that it takes the form of a, of a microservice, right. And you deploy that. There has to be a way for operator to say, okay, I see all these microservices running across clouds, and I can factor out how they're performing, how I, I, life lifecycle managed and all that. And so I think there is, there is, to me, there's the next level of the super cloud is how you factor this out. So an operator can actually keep up with the developers and make sense of all that and manage it. Like >>You guys that's time. Like its also like that's what Datadog does. So Datadog basically in allows you to instrument all those services, on-prem private data center, you know, all the different clouds to have a consistent view. I think that that's not a good example of a vendor that's created a, a sort of a level of standardization across a layer. And I think that's, that's more how we think about it. I think the notion of like a developer building an application, they can deploy and not have to worry where it exists. Yeah. Is more of a PAs kind of construct, you know, things like cloud Foundry have done a great job of, of doing that. But underneath that there's still infrastructure. There's still security. There's still networking underneath it. And I think that's where, you know, things like confluent and perhaps at the infrastructure layer have standardized, but >>You have off the shelf PAs, if I can call it that. Yeah. Kind of plain. And then, and then you have PAs and I think about, you mentioned snowflake, snowflake is with snow park, seems to be developing a PAs layer that's purpose built for their specific purpose of sharing data and governing data across multiple clouds call super paths. Is, is that a prerequisite of a super cloud you're building blocks. I'm hearing yeah. For super cloud. Is that a prerequisite for super cloud? That's different than PAs of 10 years ago. No, but I, >>But I think this is, there's just different layers. So it's like, I don't know how that the, the snowflake offering is built built, but I would guess it's probably built on Terraform and vault and cons underneath it. Cuz those are the ingredients with respect to how you would build a composite application that runs across multiple. And >>That's how Oracle that town that's how Oracle with the Microsoft announcement. They just, they just made if you saw that that was built on Terraform. Right. But, but they would claim that they, they did some special things within their past that were purpose built for, for sure. Low latency, for example, they're not gonna build that on, you know, open shift as an, as an example, they're gonna, you know, do their own little, you know, >>For sure, for sure. So I think what you're, you're pointing at and what Victoria was talking about is, Hey, can a vendor provided consistent experience across the application layer across these multiple clouds? And I would say, sure, just like, you know, you might build a mobile banking application that has a front end on Amazon in the back end running on vSphere on your private data center. Sure. But the ingredients you use to do that have to be, they can't be the cloud native aspects for how you do that. How do you think about, you know, the connectivity of, of like networking between that thing to this thing? Is it different on Amazon? Is it different on Azure? Is it different on, on Google? And so the, the, the, the companies that we all serve, that's what they're building, they're building composited applications. Snowflake is just an example of a company that we serve this building >>Composite. And, but, but, but don't those don't, you have to hide the complexity of that, those, those cloud native primitives that's your job, right. Is to actually it creates simplicity across clouds. Is it not? >>Why? Go ahead. You. >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean that in fact is what we're doing for developers that need to do event streaming, right. That need to process this data in real time. Now we're, we're doing the sort of things that Victoria was just talking about, like underneath the covers, of course, you know, we're using Kubernetes and we're managing the differences between the clouds, but we're hiding the, that, and we've become sort of a defacto standard across the cloud. So if I'm developing an app in any of those cloud, and I think we all know, and you were mentioning earlier every significant company's multi-cloud now all the large enterprises, I just got back from Brazil and like every single one of 'em have multiple clouds and on-prem right. So they need something that can span those. >>What's the challenge there. If you talk to those customers, because we're seeing the same thing, they have multiple clouds. Yeah. But it was kind of by default or they had some use case, either.net developers there with Azure, they'll do whatever cloud. And it kind of seems specialty relative to the cloud native that they're on what problems do they have because the complexity to run infrastructure risk code across clouds is hard. Right? So the trade up between native cloud and have better integration to complexity of multiple clouds seems to be a topic around super cloud. What are you seeing for, for issues that they might have or concerns? >>Yeah. I mean, honestly it is, it is hard to actually, so here's the thing that I think is kind of interesting though, by the way, is that I, I think we tend to, you know, if you're, if you're from a technical background, you tend to think of multicloud as a problem for the it organization. Like how do we solve this? How do we save money? But actually it's a business problem now, too, because every single one of these companies that have multiple clouds, they want to integrate their data, their products across these, and it it's inhibiting their innovation. It's hard to do, but that's where something like, you know, Hatchie Corp comes in right. Is to help solve that. So you can instrument it. It has to happen at each of these layers. And I suppose if it does happen at every single layer, then voila, we organically have something that amounts to Supercloud. Right. >>I love how you guys are representing each other's firms. And, but, but, and they also correct me if I'm a very similar, your customers want to, it is very similar, but your customers want to monetize, right. They want bring their tools, their software, their particular IP and their data and create, you know, every, every company's a software company, as you know, Andreesen says every company's becoming a cloud company to, to monetize in, in the future. Is that, is that a reasonable premise of super cloud? >>Yeah. I think, think everyone's trying to build composite applications to, to generate revenue. Like that's, that's why they're building applications. So yeah. One, 100%. I'm just gonna make it point cuz we see it as well. Like it's actually quite different by geography weirdly. So if you go to like different geographies, you see actually different cloud providers, more represented than others. So like in north America, Amazon's pretty dominant Japan. Amazon's pretty dominant. You go to Southeast Asia actually. It's not necessarily that way. Like it might be Google for, for whatever reason more hourly Bob. So this notion of multi's just the reality of one's everybody's dealing with. But yeah, I think everyone, everyone goes through the same process. What we've observed, they kind of go, there's like there's cloud V one and there's cloud V two. Yeah. Cloud V one is sort of the very tactical let's go build something on cloud cloud V two is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I have some stuff on Amazon, some stuff on Azure, some stuff on, on vSphere and I need some operational consistency. How do I think about zero trust across that way in a consistent way. And that's where this conversation comes into being. It's sort of, it's not like the first version of cloud it's actually when people step back and say, Hey, Hey, I wanna build composite applications to monetize. How am I gonna do that in an industrialized way? And that's the problem that you were for. It's >>Not, it's not as, it's not a no brainer like it was with cloud, go to the cloud, write an app. You're good here. It's architectural systems thinking, you gotta think about regions. What's the latency, you know, >>It's step back and go. Like, how are we gonna do this, this exactly. Like it's wanted to do one app, but how we do this at scale >>Zero trust is a great example. I mean, Amazon kind of had, was forced to get into the zero trust, you know, discussion that, that wasn't, you know, even a term that they used and now sort of, they're starting to talk about it, but within their domain. And so how do you do zero trust trust across cost to your point? >>I, I wonder if we're limiting our conversation too much to the, the very technical set of developers, cuz I'm thinking back at again, my example of C plus plus libraries C plus plus libraries makes it easier. And then visual BA visual basic. Right. And right now we don't have enough developers to build the software that we want to build. And so I want, and we are like now debating, oh, can we, do we hide that AI API from Google versus that SQL server API from, from Microsoft. I wonder at some point who cares? Right. You know, we, I think if we want to get really economy scale, we need to get to a level of abstraction for developers that really allows them to say, I don't need, for most of most of the procedural application that I need to build as a developer, as a, as a procedural developer, I don't care about this. Some, some propeller had, has done that for me. I just like plug it in my ID and, and I use it. And so I don't, I don't know how far we are from that, but if we don't get to that level, it fits me that we never gonna get really the, the economy or the cost of building application to the level. >>I was gonna ask you in the previous segment about low code, no code expanding the number of developers out there and you talking about propel heads. That's, that's what you guys all do. Yeah. You're the technical geniuses, right. To solve that problem so that, so you can have low code development is that I >>Don't think we have the right here. Cause I, we, we are still, you know, trying to solve that problem at that level. But, but >>That problem has to be solved first, right before we can address what you're talking about. >>Yeah. I, I worked very closely with one of my biggest mentors was Adam Bosworth that built, you know, all the APIs for visual basics and, and the SQL API to visual basic and all that stuff. And he always was on that front. In fact that his last job was at my, at AWS building that no code environment. So I'm a little detached from that. It just hit me as we were discussing this. It's like, maybe we're just like >>Creating, but I would, I would argue that you kind of gotta separate the two layers. So you think about the application platform layer that a developer interfaces to, you know, Victoria and I worked together years ago and one of the products we created was cloud Foundry, right? So this is the idea of like just, you know, CF push, just push this app artifact and I don't care. That's how you get the developer community written large to adopt something complicated by hiding all the complexity. And I think that that is one model. Yeah. Turns out Kubernetes is actually become a peer to that and perhaps become more popular. And that's what folks like Tanza are trying to do. But there's another layer underneath that, which is the infrastructure that supports it. Right? Yeah. Cause that's only needs to run on something. And I think that's, that's the separation we have to do. Yes. We're talking a little bit about the plumbing, but you know, we just easily be talking about the app layer. You need, both of them. Our point of view is you need to standardize at this layer just like you need standardize at this layer. >>Well, this is, this is infrastructure. This is DevOps V two >>Dev >>Ops. Yeah. And this is where I think the ops piece with open source, I would argue that open source is blooming more than ever. So I think there's plenty of developers coming. The automation question becomes interesting because I think what we're seeing is shift left is proving that there's app developers out there that wanna stay in their pipelining. They don't want to get in under the hood. They just want infrastructure as code, but then you got supply chain software issues there. We talked about the Docker on big time. So developers at the top, I think are gonna be fine. The question is what's the blocker. What's holding them back. And I don't see the devs piece Victoria as much. What do you guys think? Is it, is the, is the blocker ops or is it the developer experience? That's the blocker. >>It's both. There are enough people truthfully. >>That's true. Yeah. I mean, I think I sort of view the developer as sort of the engine of the digital innovation. So, you know, if you talk about creative destruction, that's, that was the economic equivalent of softwares, eating the world. The developers are the ones that are doing that innovation. It's absolutely essential that you make it super easy for them to consume. Right. So I think, you know, they're nerds, they want to deal with infrastructure to some degree, but I think they understand the value of getting a bag of Legos that they can construct something new around. And I think that's the key because honestly, I mean, no code may help for some things. Maybe I'm just old >>School, >>But I, I went through this before with like Delphy and there were some other ones and, and I hated it. Like I just wanted a code. Yeah. Right. So I think making them more efficient is, is absolutely good. >>But I think what, where you're going with that question is that the, the developers, they tend to stay ahead. They, they just, they're just gear, you know, wired that way. Right. So I think right now where there is a big bottleneck in developers, I think the operation team needs to catch up. Cuz I, I talk to these, these, these people like our customers all the time and I see them still stuck in the old world. Right. Gimme a bunch of VMs and I'll, I know how to manage well that world, you know, although as lag is gonna be there forever, so managing mainframe. But so if they, the world is all about microservices and containers and if the operation team doesn't get on top of it and the security team that then that they're gonna be a bottleneck. >>Okay. I want to ask you guys if the, if the companies can get through that knothole of having their ops teams and the dev teams work well together, what's the benefits of a Supercloud. How do you see the, the outcome if you kind of architect it, right? You think the big picture you zoom as saying what's the end game look like for Supercloud? Is that >>What I would >>Say? Or what's the Nirvana >>To me Nirvana is that you don't care. You just don't don't care. You know, you just think when you running building application, let's go back to the on-prem days. You don't care if it runs on HP or Dell or, you know, I'm gonna make some enemies here with my old, old family, but you know, you don't really care, right. What you want is the application is up and running and people can use it. Right. And so I think that Nirvana is that, you know, there is some, some computing power out there, some pass layer that allows me to deploy, build application. And I just like build code and I deploy it and I get value at a reasonable cost. I think one of the things that the super cloud for as far as we're concerned is cost. How do you manage monitor the cost across all this cloud? >>Make sure that you don't, the economics don't get outta whack. Right? How many companies we know that have gone to the cloud only to realize that holy crap, now I, I got the bill and, and you know, I, as a vendor, when I was in my previous company, you know, we had a whole team figuring out how to lower our cost on the one hyperscaler that we were using. So these are, you know, the, once you have in the super cloud, you don't care just you, you, you go with the path of least the best economics is. >>So what about the open versus closed debate will you were mentioning that we had snowflake here and data bricks is both ends of the spectrum. Yeah. You guys are building open standards across clouds. Clearly even the CLO, the walled gardens are using O open standards, but historically de facto standards have emerged and solved these problems. So the super cloud as a defacto standard, versus what data bricks is trying to do super cloud kind of as an, as an open platform, what are you, what are your thoughts on that? Can you actually have an, an open set of standards that can be a super cloud for a specific purpose, or will it just be built on open source technologies? >>Well, I mean, I, I think open source continues to be an important part of innovation, but I will say from a business model perspective, like the days, like when we started off, we were an open source company. I think that's really done in my opinion, because if you wanna be successful nowadays, you need to provide a cloud native SAS oriented product. It doesn't matter. What's running underneath the covers could be commercial closed source, open source. They just wanna service and they want to use it quite frankly. Now it's nice to have open source cuz the developers can download it and run on their laptop. But I, I can imagine in 10 years time actually, and you see most companies that are in the cloud providing SAS, you know, free $500 credit, they may not even be doing that. They'll just, you know, go whatever cloud provider that their company is telling them to use. They'll spin up their SAS product, they'll start playing with it. And that's how adoption will grow. Right? >>Yeah. I, I think, I mean my personal view is that it's, that it's infrastructure is pervasive enough. It exists at the bottom of everything that the standards emerge out of open source in my view. And you think about how something like Terraform is built, just, just pick one of the layers there's Terraform core. And then there's a plugin for everything you integrate with all of those are open source. There are over 2000 of these. We don't build them. Right. That's and it's the same way that drove Linux standardization years ago, like someone had to build the drivers for every piece of hardware in the world. The market does not do that twice. The market does that once. And so I, I I'm deeply convicted that opensource is the only way that this works at the infrastructure layer, because everybody relies on it at the application layer, you may have different kinds of databases. You may have different kind of runtime environments. And that's just the nature of it. You can't to have two different ways of doing network, >>Right? Because the stakes are so high, basically. >>Yeah. Cuz there's, there's an infinite number of the surface areas are so large. So I actually worked in product development years ago for middleware. And the biggest challenge was how do you keep the adapter ecosystem up to date to integrate with everything in the world? And the only way to do it in our view is through open source. And I think that's a fundamental philosophical view that it we're just, you know, grounded in. I think when people are making infrastructure decisions that span 20 years at the customer base, this is what they think about. They go which standard it will emerge based on the model of the vendor. And I don't think my personal view is, is it's not possible to do in a, in >>A, do you think that's a defacto standard kind of psychological perspective or is there actual material work being done or both in >>There it's, it's, it's a network effect thing. Right? So, so, you know, before Google releases a new service service on Google cloud, as part of the release checklist is does it support Terraform? They do that work, not us. Why? Because every one of their customers uses Terraform to interface with them and that's how it works. So see, so the philosophical view of, of the customers, okay, what am I making a standardize on for this layer for the next 30 years? It's kind of a no brainer. Philosophically. >>I tend, >>I think the standards are organically created based upon adoption. I mean, for instance, Terraform, we have a provider we're again, we're at the data layer that we created for you. So like, I don't think there's a board out there. I mean there are that creating standards. I think those days are kind of done to be honest, >>The, the Terraform provider for vSphere has been downloaded five and a half million times this year. Yeah. Right. Like, so, I >>Mean, these are unifying moments. This are like the de facto standards are really important process in these structural changes. I think that's something that we're looking at here at Supercloud is what's next? What has to unify look what Kubernetes has done? I mean, that's essentially the easy thing to orchestra, but people get behind it. So I see this is a big part of this next, the two. Totally. What do you guys see that's needed? What's the rallying unification point? Is it the past layer? Is it more infrastructure? I guess that's the question we're trying to, >>I think every layer will need that open source or a major traction from one of the proprietary vendor. But I, I agree with David, it's gonna be open source for the most part, but you know, going back to the original question of the whole panel, if I may, if this is reality of hype, look at the roster of companies that are presenting or participating today, these are all companies that have some sort of multi-cloud cross cloud, super cloud play. They're either public have real revenue or about to go public. So the answer to the question. Yeah, it's real. Yeah. >>And so, and there's more too, we had couldn't fit him in, but we, >>We chose super cloud on purpose cuz it kind of fun, John and I kind came up with it and, and but, but do you think it's, it hurts the industry to have this, try to put forth this new term or is it helpful to actually try to push the industry to define this new term? Or should it just be multi-cloud 2.0, >>I mean, conceptually it's different than multi-cloud right. I mean, in my opinion, right? So in that, in that respect, it has value, right? Because it's talking about something greater than just multi-cloud everyone's got multi-cloud well, >>To me multi-cloud is the, the problem I should say the opportunity. Yeah. Super cloud or we call it cross cloud is the solution to that channel. Let's >>Not call again. And we're debating that we're debating that in our cloud already panel where we're talking about is multi-cloud a problem yet that needs to get solved or is it not yet ready for a market to your point? Is it, are we, are we in the front end of coming into the true problem set, >>Give you definitely answer to that. The answer is yes. If you look at the customers that are there, they won, they have gone through the euphoria phase. They're all like, holy something, what, what are we gonna do about this? Right. >>And, but they don't know what to do. >>Yeah. And the more advanced ones as the vendor look at the end of the day, markets are created by vendors that build ed that customers wanna buy. Yeah. Because they get value >>And it's nuance. David, we were sort talking about before, but Goldman Sachs has announced they're analysis software vendor, right? Capital one is a software vendor. I've been really interested Liberty what Cerner does with what Oracle does with Cerner and in terms of them becoming super cloud vendors and monetizing that to me is that is their digital transformation. Do you guys, do you guys see that in the customer base? Am I way too far out of my, of my skis there or >>I think it's two different things. I think, I think basically it's the idea of building applications. If they monetize yeah. There and Cerner's gonna build those. And you know, I think about like, you know, IOT companies that sell that sell or, or you think people that sell like, you know, thermostats, they sell an application that monetizes those thermostats. Some of that runs on Amazon. Some of that runs a private data center. So they're basically in composite applications and monetize monetizing them for the particular vertical. I think that's what we ation every day. That's what, >>Yeah. You can, you can argue. That's not, not anything new, but what's new is they're doing that on the cloud and taking across multiple clouds. Multiple. Exactly. That's what makes >>Edge. And I think what we all participate in is, Hey, in order to do that, you need to drive standardization of how you do provisioning, how you do networking, how you do security to underpin those applications. I think that's what we're all >>Talking about, guys. It's great stuff. And I really appreciate you taking the time outta your day to help us continue the conversation to put out in the open. We wanna keep it out in the open. So in the last minute we have left, let's go down the line from a hash core perspective, confluent and VMware. What's your position on super cloud? What's the outcome that you would like to see from your standpoint, going out five years, what's it look like they will start with you? >>I just think people like sort under understanding that there is a layer by layer of view of how to interact across cloud, to provide operational consistency and decomposing it that way. Thinking about that way is the best way to enable people to build and run apps. >>We wanna help our customers work with their data in real time, regardless of where they're on primer in the cloud and super cloud can enable them to build applications that do that more effectively. That's that's great for us >>For tour you. >>I, my Niana for us is customers don't care, just that's computing out there. And it's a, it's a, it's a tool that allows me to grow my business and we make it all, all the differences and all the, the challenges, you know, >>Disappear, dial up, compute utility infrastructure, ISN >>Code. I open up the thought there's this water coming out? Yeah, I don't care. I got how I got here. I don't wanna care. Well, >>Thank you guys so much and congratulations on all your success in the marketplace, both of you guys and VMware and your new journey, and it's gonna be great to watch. Thanks for participating. Really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Okay. This is super cloud 22, our events, a pilot. We're gonna get it out there in the open. We're gonna get the data we're gonna share with everyone out in the open on Silicon angle.com in the cube.net. We'll be back with more live coverage here in Palo Alto. After this short break.

Published Date : Aug 9 2022

SUMMARY :

Thanks for coming on the queue. So I think we have a, So I think to me, that's more how we think about it is sort of, there is sort of layer by layer of it. I'm gonna use Kafka, not, you know, a native pub sub engine on one of the clouds, Standardized layer that you can use to build a super cloud if that's in your, your intent or, yeah. And it reminds me of the web services days. But I think the idea that like, you know, I mean, everyone's doing it now. a lot of the companies that are here today, you know, snowflake data, bricks, Or can you take the make the most of each, an individual cloud to provide the same experience to them. what, what, the best, where the best, you know, service is, or function of latency And so I think there is, there is, to me, there's the next level of the super cloud is how you factor this And I think that's where, you know, things like confluent and perhaps And then, and then you have PAs and I think about, it. Cuz those are the ingredients with respect to how you would build a composite application that runs across multiple. as an example, they're gonna, you know, do their own little, you know, And I would say, sure, just like, you know, you might build a mobile banking application that has a front end And, but, but, but don't those don't, you have to hide the complexity of that, those, Why? just talking about, like underneath the covers, of course, you know, we're using Kubernetes and we're managing the differences between And it kind of seems specialty relative to the cloud native that It's hard to do, but that's where something like, you know, Hatchie Corp comes in right. and create, you know, every, every company's a software company, as you know, Andreesen says every company's becoming a cloud And that's the problem that you were for. you know, Like it's wanted to do one app, but how we do this at scale you know, discussion that, that wasn't, you know, even a term that they used and now sort of, they're starting to talk about I don't need, for most of most of the procedural application that I need to build as a I was gonna ask you in the previous segment about low code, no code expanding the number of developers out there and you talking Cause I, we, we are still, you know, trying to solve that problem at that level. you know, all the APIs for visual basics and, and the We're talking a little bit about the plumbing, but you know, Well, this is, this is infrastructure. And I don't see the devs There are enough people truthfully. So I think, you know, they're nerds, they want to deal with infrastructure to some degree, So I think making them more efficient is, I know how to manage well that world, you know, although as lag is gonna be there forever, the outcome if you kind of architect it, right? And so I think that Nirvana is that, you know, there is some, some computing power out only to realize that holy crap, now I, I got the bill and, and you know, So what about the open versus closed debate will you were mentioning that we had snowflake here and data bricks I think that's really done in my opinion, because if you wanna be successful nowadays, And you think about how something like Terraform is built, just, just pick one of the layers there's Terraform Because the stakes are so high, basically. And the biggest challenge was how do you keep the adapter ecosystem up to date to integrate with everything in So, so, you know, before Google releases I think the standards are organically created based upon adoption. The, the Terraform provider for vSphere has been downloaded five and a half million times this year. I mean, that's essentially the easy thing to orchestra, but you know, going back to the original question of the whole panel, if I may, but do you think it's, it hurts the industry to have this, try to put forth this new term or is it I mean, conceptually it's different than multi-cloud right. Super cloud or we call it cross cloud is the solution to that channel. that needs to get solved or is it not yet ready for a market to your point? If you look at the customers that are there, that build ed that customers wanna buy. Do you guys, do you guys see that in the customer base? And you know, I think about like, you know, IOT companies that That's what makes in order to do that, you need to drive standardization of how you do provisioning, how you do networking, And I really appreciate you taking the time outta your day to help us continue the I just think people like sort under understanding that there is a layer by layer of view super cloud can enable them to build applications that do that more effectively. you know, I don't wanna care. Thank you guys so much and congratulations on all your success in the marketplace, both of you guys and VMware and your new

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Domenic Ravita, SingleStore | AWS Summit New York 2022


 

(digital music) >> And we're back live in New York. It's theCUBE. It's not SNL, it's better than SNL. Lisa Martin and John Furrier here with about 10,000 to 12,000 folks. (John chuckles) There is a ton of energy here. There's a ton of interest in what's going on. But one of the things that we know that AWS is really well-known for is its massive ecosystem. And one of its ecosystem partners is joining us. Please welcome Domenic Ravita, the VP of Product Marketing from SingleStore. Dominic, great to have you on the program. >> Well, thank you. Glad to be here. >> It's a nice opening, wasn't it? (Lisa and John laughing) >> I love SNL. Who doesn't? >> Right? I know. So some big news came out today. >> Yes. >> Funding. Good number. Talk to us a little bit about that before we dig in to SingleStore and what you guys are doing with AWS. >> Right, yeah. Thank you. We announced this morning our latest round, 116 million. We're really grateful to our customers and our investors and the partners and employees and making SingleStore a success to go on this journey of, really, to fulfill our mission to unify and simplify modern, real time data. >> So talk to us about SingleStore. Give us the value prop, the key differentiators, 'cause obviously customers have choice. Help us understand where you're nailing it. >> SingleStore is all about, what we like to say, the moments that matter. When you have an analytical question about what's happening in the moment, SingleStore is your best way to solve that cost-effectively. So that is for, in the case of Thorn, where they're helping to protect and save children from online trafficking or in the case of True Digital, which early in the pandemic, was a company in Southeast Asia that used anonymized phone pings to identify real time population density changes and movements across Thailand to have a proactive response. So really real time data in the moment can help to save lives quite literally. But also it does things that are just good commercially that gives you an advantage like what we do with Uber to help real time pricing and things like this. >> It's interesting this data intensity happening right now. We were talking earlier on theCUBE with another guest and we said, "Why is it happening now?" The big data has been around since the dupe days. That was hard to work with, then data lakes kicked in. But we seem to be, in the past year, everyone's now aware like, "Wow, I got a lot of data." Is it the pandemic? Now we're seeing customers understand the consequences. So how do you look at that? Because is it just timing, evolution? Are they now getting it or is the technology better? Is machine learning better? What's the forces driving the massive data growth acceleration in terms of implementing and getting stuff out, done? (chuckles) >> We think it's the confluence of a lot of those things you mentioned there. First of all, we just celebrate the 15-year anniversary of the iPhone, so that is like wallpaper now. It's just faded into our daily lives. We don't even think of that as a separate thing. So there's an expectation that we all have instant information and not just for the consumer interactions, for the business interactions. That permeates everything. I think COVID with the pandemic forced everyone, every business to try to move to digital first and so that put pressure on the digital service economy to mature even faster and to be digital first. That is what drives what we call data intensity. And more generally, the economic phenomenon is the data intensive era. It's a continuous competition and game for customers. In every moment in every location, in every dimension, the more data hat you have, the better value prop you can give. And so SingleStore is uniquely positioned to and focused on solving this problem of data intensity by bringing and unifying data together. >> What's the big customer success story? Can you share any examples that highlight that? What are some cool things that are happening that can illustrate this new, I won't say bit that's been flipped, that's been happening for a while, but can you share some cutting edge customer successes? >> It's happening across a lot of industries. So I would say first in financial services, FinTech. FinTech is always at the leading edge of these kind of technology adaptions for speeds and things like that. So we have a customer named IEX Cloud and they're focused on providing real time financial data as an API. So it's a data product, API-first. They're providing a lot of historical information on instruments and that sort of thing, as well as real time trending information. So they have customers like Seeking Alpha, for instance, who are providing real time updates on massive, massive data sets. They looked at lots of different ways to do this and there's the traditional, transactionals, LTP database and then maybe if you want to scale an API like theirs, you might have a separate end-memory cache and then yet another database for analytics. And so we bring all that together and simplify that and the benefit of simplification, but it's also this unification and lower latency. Another example is GE who basically uses us to bring together lots of financial information to provide quicker close to the end-of-month process across many different systems. >> So we think about special purpose databases, you mentioned one of the customers having those. We were in the keynote this morning where AWS is like, "We have the broadest set of special purpose databases," but you're saying the industry can't afford them anymore. Why and would it make SingleStore unique in terms of what you deliver? >> It goes back to this data intensity, in that the new business models that are coming out now are all about giving you this instant context and that's all data-driven and it's digital and it's also analytical. And so the reason that's you can't afford to do this, otherwise, is data's getting so big. Moving that data gets expensive, 'cause in the cloud you pay for every byte you store, every byte you process, every byte you move. So data movement is a cost in dollars and cents. It's a cost in time. It's also a cost in skill sets. So when you have many different specialized data sets or data-based technologies, you need skilled people to manage those. So that's why we think the industry needs to be simplified and then that's why you're seeing this unification trend across the database industry and other parts of the stack happening. With AWS, I mean, they've been a great partner of ours for years since we launched our first cloud database product and their perspective is a little bit different. They're offering choice of the specialty, 'cause many people build this way. But if you're going after real time data, you need to bring it. They also offer a SingleStore as a service on AWS. We offer it that way. It's in the AWS Marketplace. So it's easily consumable that way. >> Access to real time data is no longer a nice-to-have for any company, it's table stakes. We saw that especially in the last 20 months or so with companies that needed to pivot so quickly. What is it about SingleStore that delivers, that you talked about moments that matter? Talk about the access to real time data. How that's a differentiator as well? >> I think businesses need to be where their customers are and in the moments their customers are interacting. So that is the real time business-driver. As far as technology wise, it's not easy to do this. And you think about what makes a database fast? A major way of what makes it fast is how you store the data. And so since 2014, when we first released this, what Gartner called at the time, hybrid transaction/analytical processing or HTAP, where we brought transactional data and analytical data together. Fast forward five years to 2019, we released this innovation called Universal Storage, which does that in a single unified table type. Why that matters is because, I would say, basically cost efficiency and better speed. Again, because you pay for the storage and you pay for the movement. If you're not duplicating that data, moving it across different stores, you're going to have a better experience. >> One of the things you guys pioneered is unifying workloads. You mentioned some of the things you've done. Others are now doing it. Snowflake, Google and others. What does that mean for you guys? I mean, 'cause are they copying you? Are they trying to meet the functionality? >> I think. >> I mean, unification. I mean, people want to just store things and make it, get all the table stakes, check boxes, compliance, security and just keep coding and keep building. >> We think it's actually great 'cause they're validating what we've been seeing in the market for years. And obviously, they see that it's needed by customers. And so we welcome them to the party in terms of bringing these unified workloads together. >> Is it easy or hard? >> It's a difficult thing. We started this in 2014. And we've now have lots of production workloads on this. So we know where all the production edge cases are and that capability is also a building block towards a broader, expansive set of capabilities that we've moved onto that next phase and tomorrow actually we have an event called, The Real Time Data Revolution, excuse me, where we're announcing what's in that new product of ours. >> Is that a physical event or virtual? >> It's a virtual event. >> So we'll get the URL on the show notes, or if you know, just go to the new site. >> Absolutely. SingleStore Real Time Data Revolution, you'll find it. >> Can you tease us with the top three takeaways from Revolution tomorrow? >> So like I said, what makes a database fast? It's the storage and we completed that functionality three years ago with Universal Storage. What we're now doing for this next phase of the evolution is making enterprise features available and Workspaces is one of the foundational capabilities there. What SingleStore Workspaces does is it allows you to have this isolation of compute between your different workloads. So that's often a concern to new users to SingleStore. How can I combine transactions and analytics together? That seems like something that might be not a good thing. Well, there are multiple ways we've been doing that with resource governance, workload management. Workspaces offers another management capability and it's also flexible in that you can scale those workloads independently, or if you have a multi-tenant application, you can segment your application, your customer tenant workloads by each workspace. Another capability we're releasing is called Wasm, which is W-A-S-M, Web Assembly. This is something that's really growing in the open source community and SingleStore's contributing to that open source scene, CF project with WASI and Wasm. Where it's been mentioned mostly in the last few years has been in the browser as a more efficient way to run code in the browser. We're adapting that technology to allow you to run any language of your choice in the database and why that's important, again, it's for data movement. As data gets large in petabyte sizes, you can't move it in and out of Pandas in Python. >> Great innovation. That's real valuable. >> So we call this Code Engine with Wasm and- >> What do you call it? >> Code Engine Powered by Wasm. >> Wow. Wow. And that's open source? >> We contribute to the Wasm open source community. >> But you guys have a service that you- >> Yes. It's our implementation and our database. But Wasm allows you to have code that's portable, so any sort of runtime, which is... At release- >> You move the code, not the data. >> Exactly. >> With the compute. (chuckles) >> That's right, bring the compute to the data is what we say. >> You mentioned a whole bunch of great customer examples, GE, Uber, Thorn, you talked about IEX Cloud. When you're in customer conversations, are you dealing mostly with customers that are looking to you to help replace an existing database that was struggling from a performance perspective? Or are you working with startups who are looking to build a product on SingleStore? Is it both? >> It is a mix of both. I would say among SaaS scale up companies, their API, for instance, is their product or their SaaS application is their product. So quite literally, we're the data engine and the database powering their scale to be able to sign that next big customer or to at least sleep at night to know that it's not going to crash if they sign that next big costumer. So in those cases, we're mainly replacing a lot of databases like MySQL, Postgre, where they're typically starting, but more and more we're finding, it's free to start with SingleStore. You can run it in production for free. And in our developer community, we see a lot of customers running in that way. We have a really interesting community member who has a Minecraft server analytics that he's building based on that SingleStore free tier. In the enterprise, it's different, because there are many incumbent databases there. So it typically is a case where there is a, maybe a new product offering, they're maybe delivering a FinTech API or a new SaaS digital offering, again, to better participate in this digital service economy and they're looking for a better price performance for that real time experience in the app. That's typically the starting point, but there are replacements of traditional incumbent databases as well. >> How has the customer conversation evolved the last couple of years? As we talked about, one of the things we learned in the pandemic was access to real time data and those moments that matter isn't a nice-to-have anymore for businesses. There was that force march to digital. We saw the survivors, we're seeing the thrivers, but want to get your perspective on that. From the customers, how has the conversation evolved or elevated, escalated within an organization as every company has to be a data company? >> It really depends on their business strategy, how they are adapting or how they have adapted to this new digital first orientation and what does that mean for them in the direct interaction with their customers and partners. Often, what it means is they realize that they need to take advantage of using more data in the customer and partner interaction and when they come to those new ideas for new product introductions, they find that it's complicated and expensive to build in the old way. And if you're going to have these real time interactions, interactive applications, APIs, with all this context, you're going to have to find a better, more cost-effective approach to get that to market faster, but also not to have a big sprawling data-based technology infrastructure. We find that in those situations, we're replacing four or five different database technologies. A specialized database for key value, a specialized database for search- >> Because there's no unification before? Is that one of the reasons? >> I think it's an awareness thing. I think technology awareness takes a little bit of time, that there's a new way to do things. I think the old saying about, "Don't pave cow paths when the car..." You could build a straight road and pave it. You don't have to pave along the cow path. I think that's the natural course of technology adaption and so as more- >> And the- pandemic, too, highlighted a lot of the things, like, "Do we really need that?" (chuckles) "Who's going to service that?" >> That's right. >> So it's an awakening moment there where it's like, "Hey, let's look at what's working." >> That's right. >> Double down on it. >> Absolutely. >> What are you excited about new round of funding? We talked about, obviously, probably investments in key growth areas, but what excites you about being part of SingleStore and being a partner of AWS? >> SingleStore is super exciting. I've been in this industry a long time as an engineer and an engineering leader. At the time, we were MemSQL, came into SingleStore. And just that unification and simplification, the systems that I had built as a system engineer and helped architect did the job. They could get the speed and scale you needed to do track and trace kinds of use cases in real time, but it was a big trade off you had to make in terms of the complexity, the skill sets you needed and the cost and just hard to maintain. What excites me most about SingleStore is that it really feels like the iPhone moment for databases because it's not something you asked for, but once your friend has it and shows it to you, why would you have three different devices in your pocket with a flip phone, a calculator? (Lisa and Domenic chuckles) Remember these days? >> Yes. >> And a Blackberry pager. (all chuckling) You just suddenly- >> Or a computer. That's in there. >> That's right. So you just suddenly started using iPhone and that is sort of the moment. It feels like we're at it in the database market where there's a growing awareness and those announcements you mentioned show that others are seeing the same. >> And your point earlier about the iPhone throwing off a lot of data. So now you have data explosions at levels that unprecedented, we've never seen before and the fact that you want to have that iPhone moment, too, as a database. >> Absolutely. >> Great stuff. >> The other part of your question, what excites us about AWS. AWS has been a great partner since the beginning. I mean, when we first released our database, it was the cloud database. It was on AWS by customer demand. That's where our customers were. That's where they were building other applications. And now we have integrations with other native services like AWS Glue and we're in the Marketplace. We've expanded, that said we are a multi-cloud system. We are available in any cloud of your choice and on premise and in hybrid. So we're multi-cloud, hybrid and SaaS distribution. >> Got it. All right. >> Got it. So the event is tomorrow, Revolution. Where can folks go to register? What time does it start? >> 1:00 PM Eastern and- >> 1:00 PM. Eastern. >> Just Google SingleStore Real Time Data Revolution and you'll find it. Love for everyone to join us. >> All right. We look forward to it. Domenic, thank you so much for joining us, talking about SingleStore, the value prop, the differentiators, the validation that's happening in the market and what you guys are doing with AWS. We appreciate it. >> Thanks so much for having me. >> Our pleasure. For Domenic Ravita and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, live from New York at AWS Summit 22. John and I are going to be back after a short break, so come back. (digital pulsing music)

Published Date : Jul 14 2022

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Sajjad Rehman & Nilkanth Iyer, Unstoppable Domains | Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase


 

(bright upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This segment in this session is about expansion into Asia Pacific and Europe for Unstoppable Domains. It's a hot startup in the Web3 area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs, crypto, single sign-on, and digital identity, giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, Sajjad Rehman, Head of Europe, and Nilkanth, known as Nil, Iyer, head of Asia. Sajjad, Nil, welcome to this CUBE, and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really an expansion, the global economy is global, but showcase here about Unstoppables going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for inviting us. >> Thanks John, for inviting us. >> So we're living in a global world, obviously, crypto, blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming, and it means more infrastructure, and things got to get easier, right? So, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff, makes the wallets better, give people more secure access and control of their data. This is what Unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it, you're on this wave. What is the potential of Web3 with Unstoppable, and in general, in Asia and in Europe? >> I can go first. So, now, let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically, we see the US market, the Europe markets, for typical Web 2.0 software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets, with US typically accounting for about 60%, and Europe about 20 to 30%, and Asia has always been small. But we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto, Web 3.0, Asia already has about 160 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries, in terms of the rate of adoption, many of the Asian countries, which probably you'd have never even heard of, like Vietnam, actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening, again, if you go through the Asian Development Bank's latest report, you have these Gen Zs and millennials, of that's 50% of the Asian population. And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion Gen Z and millennials that you have have in the world. And these folks are digitally native, they're people, in fact, the Gen Zs are mobile first, and millennials, many of us, like myself, at least, are people who are digital, and 20% of the world's economy is currently digital, and the rest, 40 to 50%, which is going to happen in the Web 3.0 world, and that's going to be driven by millennials and Gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting, because it's being driven by the users, by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this whole thing. >> Before we get get this started, I want to just comment, Asia, also, in other areas where mobile first came, you had the younger demographics absolutely driving the change, because they're like, "Well, I don't want the old way." They go right from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies. That has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say, in Europe, for instance, and even North America, I think Europe's more advanced than North America, in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. Sajjad, take us through your thoughts on... As head of Europe, for our audience. >> Absolutely, so, Nil's right. I think Asia is way ahead in terms of Gen Z user adopting crypto, Europe is actually a distant second, but it's surprising to note that Europe actually has the highest transactional activity in crypto over the last year and a half. And if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, for Europe, I think the opportunity in Web3 is perhaps the largest. And then perhaps it can mean the most for Europe. Europe, for the last decade, has been trailing behind Asia and North America, when it comes to birthing unicorns, and I think Web3 can provide a StepChain opportunity. This belief, for me, stems from the fact that Europe's policy, right, like, for example, GDPR, is focused on enabling your data ownership. And I think I recently read a very good paper out of Stanford, by Patrick Henson. He speaks about Web3 being the best part, here, for Europe enabling patient sovereignty. So what that means is users control the data, they're paying to enter it, and they harness the value from it. And on one hand, while Europe is enabling that regulation, that's entered in that code, Web3 actually brings it into action. So I think with more enablement, better regulation, and we'll see more hubs, like the Crypto Valley in Switzerland pop up, that will bring, I think, I'd rather be careful, better to say, not over-regulation, the right regulation. We can expect more in prop capital, more builder talent, that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders, are quite bright. >> Yeah, and I think, also, you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia, the demographics, even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture-backed startups, and the young generation building companies! And again, cloud computing is a big part of that, obviously. But look at, compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders. And it kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational... It's like the digital hippies changing the world. The Web3, it's kind of, "I don't want to be Web2, Web2 is so old, I don't want to do that." And then it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things inadequate with Web2, on the naming system. Also the arbitrage around fake information, bots, users being manipulated, and also merchandised and monetized through these portals. Okay, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of Web2, 3, at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies, who build applications. They're going to shift and be forced, in our opinion, and I want to get your reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be Web3, or users will reject them? >> Yeah, I think that I'll jump in and add to there in Nil's part. I think the Web3 is built on three principles, right? They're decentralization, ownership, and composability. And I think these are not binary. So if I look further on in the future, I don't see a future where you have just Web3. I think there's going to be coexistence or cooperation between Web2 companies, Web3, building bridges. I think there's going to be... There's a sliding scale to decentralization, versus centralization. Similarly, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what Unstoppable is doing is essentially providing the identity system for Web3, and that's way more powerful when it comes to being built on blockchains, than with the naming system we had for Web2, right? The identity system can serve the purpose of taking a user's personal identifier, password, blockchain, domain name, and attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, both in the physical and digital world, and filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think the users would, as we go to a no-code and low-code future, right, where in Web2, more of the users were essentially consumers, or readers of the internet. And in Web3, with more low-code and no-code technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation, you would see more users being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they would value owning their data, and to harness the most amount of value from it. So I think that's the power concept, and I think that's the future I see, where Web3 will dominate. Nil, what do you think? >> Well, I think you put it very, very nicely, Sajjad. I think you covered most of the points, I think. But I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening at the ground. I think a lot of the governments, a lot of the Web 2.0 players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There are a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I mean, I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest examples is in my home state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is. They actually partnered with Polygon (MATIC), right? Actually built a private blockchain-based capability to kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code, right? And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that short a time, with the kind of user control, the user control the user has on the data. That could only be possible because of blockchain. Of course, it's still private, because it's healthcare data, they still want to keep it, something that's not fully on a blockchain. But that is something. Similarly, there is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional, Web 2.0 world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time-taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain-based capability, again, in a pilot stage, to kind of reduce the transaction costs. For example, if you just look at the trade finance days where there are 14 million traders, who do 2.4, 5 trillion dollars, of transaction, they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days, to about two to three days. And so, to add on to what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet, and meet very soon. And when they meet, what they need is a single digital identity, a human-readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see Unstoppable Domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds, so that's my thought on all the logistics. >> That was a great point. I was going to get into which industries, and kind of what areas, you see in your geographies. But it's a good point about saving time. I like how you brought that up, because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps it takes to do something, or save time, make it easy. And this is the successful formula, in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And what about Unstoppable are they attracted to? Is it because of the identity? Is it because of the apps? Is it because of the single sign-on? What is the reason that they're leaning in, and unpacking this further into their pilots? >> Sajjad, do you want to take that? >> Yeah, absolutely, man. >> Because. >> Yeah, I'm happy. Please jump in if you want. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John, you're talking about Web2 companies, looking to partner in software, or potential partnerships, right? >> Yeah, what are they seeing, and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Nilkanth around the financial industry? And obviously, gaming's one, it's obvious. Huge: financial, healthcare, I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. What are they seeing as value? What's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why are they jumping in, with both feet, if you will, on these projects? Is it because it's saving money, is it time, or both, is it ease of use, is it the user's expectations? Trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving. >> Yeah, yeah, I think... This is still, the space is, the movement is going very fast, but I think the space is still young. And right now, a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that Web3 offers. And I think the key, key dimensions, right, composability, decentralization, and ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in EU is these Web2 companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that by enabling bridges to Web3. One of the key trends in Europe has been Fintech, I think over the last five to six years, we have the Revolut, N26, e-TOTAL creating platforms, new banks and super finance, super apps rising to the forefront. And they are all enabling, or also connecting a bridge with Web3 in some shape and form, either enabling creating of crypto, some are launching their own native wallets, and these are, essentially, ways that they can, one, attract users. So the Gen Z who are looking for more friction in finance, to get them on board, but also to look to enable more adoption by their own users, who are not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams, and create allocation of capital that they could not access, to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one trend I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is, in Europe, at least, has been games. And again, dead links or damaged, web creators would call the metaverse. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into Game Fire, which is, again, a completely different business model to what traditional game companies used to use. Similarly, metaverse is where again, ownership creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future would want to engage with that, versus just being monetized on the basis of subscription or ads. And I think that's something that they're becoming aware of, and moving quickly in the space, launching their own metaverses, or game by applications. Or creating interoperability with these decentralized applications. >> You know, I wanted to get into this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation, 'cause digital identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web3 is very community-centric. But you mentioned gaming, I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world, like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, over 15 years. Community, games, currency, in-game activity, has been out there, right, but siloed within the games themselves. So now, it seems that that paradigm's coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? How are communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >> Yeah, I can maybe take that, Sajjad. So, I mean, I must have heard of Axie Infinity, I mean, 40% of their user base is in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month, out of playing this game, is more than the national, daily or minimum wage that is there, right? So that's the kind of potential. Actually, going back, as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, and I think over and above what Sajjad said, what's very unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion, and 24% of that is in Asia, so almost 375 million people are in Asia. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is, how do we get these people on to a banking system, onto peer-to-peer lending, or peer-to-peer finance kind of capabilities. I think, again, Unstoppable Domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look at the pure Web 3.0 world, and the complex, technical way in which money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an unbanked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, to actually be able to do it. But something that's very human-readable, something that's very easy for him to understand, something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile. With 2G network, we are not talking of... The world is talking about 5G, but there are parts of Asia, which are still using 2G and 2.5G kind of network, right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. And, sorry, I actually went back a little bit, to your earlier question, but coming to this whole community-building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called this Women of Web3, or, oh, that is WoW3, right? This is basically to, again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, women need a lot of training, they need a lot of enablement, for them to be able to leverage the power of Web 3.0. I can talk about India, of course, being from India. A lot of the women do not... They do all the small businesses, but the money is taken by middlemen, or taken by their husbands. With Web 3.0, fundamentally, the money comes to them, because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities, communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably will take 10 more years, if we go through the normal Web1 to Web 2.0 progression, where the power is with corporations, and not with the individuals. >> And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for... This is democratization, it's what it's all about. Again, this is a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing. So great stuff, more education, more learning. And going to get the banks up and running, get those people banking, 'cause once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallets. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges, 'cause that's... They're not in the United States. There's a few of them there, but most of them outside the United States. And you've got a lot of dApps developing, decentralized applications, okay? So you got all this coming together in your territory. What's the strategy, how you going to attack that? You got the wallets, you got the exchanges, and you got D applications. DApps. >> Yeah, I'm happy to (indistinct). So I think, and just quickly there, I think one point is, and Nil really expressed it beautifully, is finding inclusion. That is something that has inspired me, how Web3 can make the internet more inclusive. That inspired my move here. Yeah, I think, for us, I think we are at the base start when it comes to Europe, right? And the key focus, in terms of our approach in Europe would be that, we want to do two things. One, we want to increase the utility of these domain names. And the second thing is, we will invite proliferation with our partners. So when I speak about utility, I think utility is when you have a universal identifier, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What then defines your identity. So in the context, in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. And that adds value for users, in terms of acquiring these domains and new clients. And on the other end, when it comes to proliferation, I think it's about working with all those crypto, and crypto and Web3, Web3 participants as well as Web3-adjacent companies, brands, and services, who can help us educate current and future, and upcoming Web3 users about the utility of domain names, and help us onboard them to the decentralized internet. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that, as, oh, and hopefully, we'll be having one, overarching regulation, EU, that allowed us to do this at a vision level. But I would say I think it's going to be tackling it country by country, identifying countries where there's deeper penetration for Web3, and then making sure that we are partnered with local, trusted partners that are already developing for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view and Nil, I believe those are wants in, for Asia. >> Oh, I think, yeah, so again, in Asia, one is you have a significant part of humanity living in Asia, right? So obviously, all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time governments, regulations, large banking, financial companies move, but if you can get the larger population into this whole space, it's good for them, so they are first movers in that space. I think we are doing a lot of things on this, worldwide. I think we've done more than 100 past podcasts, just educating people on what is Web 3.0, what are NFT domains? What is DeFi, and so on and so forth. I think it would need some bit of localization, customization, in Asia, given that India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which, each of them with their own local languages and syntax, semantics and all those things, right? So I think that that is very important, to be able to disseminate the knowledge, although it's global, but I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work there. I think also building communities, I think, John, you talked about communities, so did Sajjad talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities, because communities create ideation. It talks about... People share their challenges, so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. So I think it's very important to build communities based on interest. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities around Elegram, Telegram, Discord, Twitter spaces, and all those things. But, again, when you're talking of financial inclusion, you're talking of a different kind of community-building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will kind of, primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us. Just as an example, MATIC. They had, until September of last year, about 3,500 apps. In just one quarter, it doubled to 7,000 dApps on their platform. But that is the pace, or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole 3.0 space. I think it's very important to get those key partners, Who are developing those dApps. See the power of single sign-on, having a human-readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer all your assets, digital assets, across multiple cryptos, across multiple NFT marketplaces, and so on and so forth. >> Yeah, and I think the whole community thing, too, is also you seeing the communities being part of, certainly in the entertainment area, and the artistry, creator world, the users are art of the community, they own it, too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace, too, as well, because you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy, versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with... And no one knows what the tagalong has been around. So the whole inadequacy of Web2, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it evolution looks like, next abstraction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is, where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is, 'cause that's... This is like the nerd problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What's your guys' reaction to that? The killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable? >> Yeah, I think it's a nerd problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move. Again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked, those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see... You will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disrupters. I think that would be the people, Fintechs, I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >> Sajjad, you heard. >> Yeah, I think- >> Go ahead. >> I mean, absolutely. I think, I mean, I touched on creators, right? So, like I said earlier, right, we are heading to a future where more people will be creators on the internet. Whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content, and that means that they have data they own, but that's their data, they bring it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be able to transact on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that, and they will increasingly look to do so. And as they do that, they would want these systems that enable them to hold permission to their data. They will want to be able to control what their permission and what they want to provide, dApp. And at the end of the day, these applications have to work backwards from customers, and the customer's looking for that. That's where... That's what they will build. >> The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected, and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume, and not feel arbitraged. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. >> They don't want to be the product, right, so. >> They don't want to be the product. Gentlemen, great to have you on, great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift, and this big wave that's coming. It's here, it's mainstream. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, John. >> Thanks, John, Thanks for the opportunity, have a good day. >> Okay, okay, great conversation. All the action's moving and happening real fast. This is theCUBE Unstoppable Domains Partner Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (contemplative music)

Published Date : Mar 10 2022

SUMMARY :

and let's talk about the expansion. for inviting us. So, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff, and the rest, 40 to 50%, That has propelled the crypto world. is perhaps the largest. and the young generation So if I look further on in the future, I mean, one of the biggest examples Is it because of the identity? clarify the question, John, is it the user's expectations? and gamers of the future I guess that's the question. fundamentally, the money comes to them, You guys are in the So in the context, and the opportunities that we talk about, and the artistry, creator world, I think that's not where you'll see... and the customer's looking It's the new normal. the product, right, so. We see the entrepreneurial activity, Thanks for the opportunity, All the action's moving

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>>Everyone welcome back to the cubes, unstoppable domains partner showcase. I'm John furrier, host of the cube. This segment, this session is about expansion into Asia, Pacific and Europe for unstoppable domains. It's a hot start-up in the web three area, really creating a new innovation around NFTs crypto, single sign-on and digital identity giving users the power like they should. We've got two great guests, the Jod ramen head of Europe and Neil Katz on is Neil I, our head of Asia. So John Neil, welcome to this cube and let's talk about the expansion. It's not really expansion. The global economy is global, but showcase here about unstoppable was going to Europe. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks John. >>So we're living in a global world, obviously crypto blockchain, decentralized applications. You're starting to see mainstream adoption, which means the shift is happening. There are more apps coming and it means more infrastructure and things got to get easier, right? So, you know, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff makes the Wallace better. Give people more secure. Access can control the day. This is what unstoppable is all about. You guys are in the middle of it. You're on this wave. What is the potential of web three with unstoppable and in general in Asia and in Europe, >>I can go first. So now let's look at the Asia market. I mean, typically we see the us market, the Europe markets for typical web two.zero software and infrastructure is definitely the larger markets with us, typically accounting for about 60% and you know, Europe about 20 to 30% and Asia has always been small, but we see in this whole world of blockchain, crypto web three.zero Asia already has about 116 million users. They have more than 35 local exchanges. And if you really look at the number of countries in terms of the rate of adoption of many of the Asian countries, which probably would have never even heard of like Vietnam actually topping the list, right? One of the reasons that this is happening again, if you go through the Asian development banks, latest report, you have these gen Z's and millennials of that's 50% of the Asian population. >>And if you really look at 50% of the Asian population, that's 1.1 billion people out of the total, 1.8 billion gen Z and millennials that you have in the world. And these folks are digital native they're people. In fact, our mobile first and millennials. Many of us like myself at least are people who are digital. And 20% of the world's economy is currently digital and the rest 40 to 50%, which is going to happen. It's going to happen in the web three dot four world. And that's going to be driven by millennials and gen Zs. I think that's why this whole space is so exciting because it's being driven by the users by the new generation. I mean, that's my broad thought on this little thing. >>I want to just comment on Asia also in the other areas where mobile first came, you had the end, the younger demographics, absolutely driving the change because they're like, well, I don't want the old way. They've got, they can write, write from scratch at the beginning, they're using the technologies that has propelled the crypto world. I mean, that is absolutely true. Everyone's kind of seeing that. And that's now influencing some of these developer nations, like say in Europe, for instance, and even north America, I think years more advanced than north America in my opinion, but we'll get to that. Oh, so potential in Europe. So John could take us through your thoughts on as head of Europe for >>Absolutely so news, right? I think the issue is way ahead in terms of gen Z user golfing, critical Jordan was actually a distant second, but it's a rising tool that actually has the highest transaction. Like they will be retro or last year and a half. And you know, if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, I think the opportunity in web three is perhaps the largest and perhaps it can mean the most withdrawal Jora for the last decade has been trailing behind Asia and north America when it comes to. But I think unicorns and I think that we can provide a step change opportunity. This belief for me, stems from the fact that Jordan on a seat, right? Like for example, GDPR is focused on enabling real data ownership. And I think I recently read a paper out of Stanford by Patrick Henson speaks about being the best bot paper, enabling patient sovereign. >>So what that means is you just spend tool the data they've been to the internet and they harness the value from it. And on one hand while, you know, verb is enabling that regulation that could bring that forward when she actually brings it into action. So I think with what enablement better regulation, and we'll see more hubs like the crypto valley in Switzerland popup that we're bring, I think normal regulation, the right regulation. We can expect what info capital for builder talent that then drives more adoption. So I think the prospects for Europe in terms of usage, as well as builders are quite right. >>Yeah. And I think also you guys are in areas where the cultural shift is so dramatic. You mentioned Asia that they have demographics. Even the entrepreneurial culture in Europe right now is booming. You look at all the venture back startups and the young generation building companies. And again, cloud computing is a big part of that as obviously. But look at compared to the United States, you go back 15 years ago, Europe was way behind on, on the startup scene. Now it's booming and pumping on all cylinders and kind of points at this cultural shift. It's almost like a generational, you know, it's like the digital hippies changing the world. You know, they're web three. It's kinda, I don't want to be web to web two is so old. You know, I don't want to do that. And it's all because it's changing, right? And there are things that inadequate with web two on the naming system, also the arbitrage around fake information, bots users being manipulated, and also, you know, merchandise and monetize through these portals. And that's, that's kind of ending. So talk about the dynamic of web two, three at those areas. You've got users and you've got companies who build applications, they're going to shift and be forced in our opinion, and want to get a reaction to that. Do you think applications are going to have to be web three or users will reject them? >>Yeah, I think I jumped in and I'm not Neil's sport. I think the, the back is built on Q principles, right? Decentralization or ship and compostability. And I think these are binary. So, you know, if, if I look far down the future, I don't see a future where you have just whipped V I think there's gonna be a coexistence or cooperation between bamboo companies. I think there's going to be a sliding scale to decentralization versus PlayStation similarity, you know, ownership. And I think users will find what works best for them in different contexts. I think what installed this link is potentially providing the identity system correctly and that's, we were powerful that account being better on blockchains, then the naming system we had for web, right? The, the identity system serve focus, Paul, taking that you as a personal identifier that, so blockchain to me mean they're attaching all kinds of attributes that define who you are, the physical and digital world, and then filling out information that you can transact on the basis of. And I think that users would as the or future, right with, you know, InBev to more of the users were essentially consumers or readers of the internet and in bed with more technology platforms taking shape and getting proliferation that you would see more than just being actually writers, publishers, and developers on the internet. And they were value owning the data and to harness the most model valuable. So I think a basketball with bonds, and I think that's the future. I see that >>Well, I think you put it very, very nicely. So the other thing you've covered most of the points, I think, but I'm seeing a lot of different things that are happening in the ground. I think a lot of the garments, a lot of the web two.zero players, the traditional banks, these guys are not sitting quiet on the blockchain space. There's a lot of pilots happening in the blockchain space, right? I'm mean I can give you real life examples. I mean, one of the biggest example is in my home state of Maharashtra and Mumbai is they actually partnered with the polygon MarTech, right? Actually built a private blockchain based capability to, you know, kind of deliver your COVID vaccination certificates with the QR code it. And that's the only way they could deliver that kind of volumes in that shorter time. But the kind of user control the user control the user has on the data that could only be possible because of blockchain. >>Of course, it's still private because it's healthcare data. Now, they still want to keep it, or, you know, something that's not fully on a blockchain, but that is something, a similarly view. There is a consortium of about nine banks who have actually been trying to work on making things like remittances or trade finance, much, much easier. I mean, remittances through a traditional web two.zero world is very, very costly. And especially in the Asian countries, but a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across the world and send back money home. It's a very costly and a time taking affair. So they have actually partnered and built a blockchain based capability. Again, in a pilot stage, we kind of reduce the transaction costs. Like for example, if we just look at the trade finance space where there are 14 million traders who do 2.4, $5 trillion of transaction, now they were able to actually reduce the time that it takes from eight to nine days to about two to three days. So to add onto what you're saying, I think these two worlds are going to meet and meet very soon. And when they meet what they need is a single digital identity, a human readable way of being able to send and receive and do commerce. I think that's where I see unstoppable domains, very nicely positioned to be able to integrate these two worlds. So that's, that's my thought on >>Great point. I was going to get into which industries and kind of what areas you see in your air and geographies, but it's a good point about saving time. I liked how you brought that up because in these new waves, you either got to reduce the steps. It takes to do something or save time, make it easy. And these are the, this is the successful formula in anything, whether it's an app or UI or whatever, but what specifically are they doing in your areas? And, and what about unstoppable? Are they attracted to, is it because of the identity? Is it because of the, the apps is because of the single sign on what is that? What is the reason that they're leaning in and unpacking this further into their pilots? >>Do you want to take that because >>I am having these dumping it'd be warranted. So I think, and let me clarify the question, John you're, you're talking about companies looking at departments of our production partner. >>Yeah. What are they seeing and what are they seeing as the value that these pilots we heard from Neil Canada around the, the, the financial industry and obviously gaming gaming's one it's obvious, huge financial healthcare. I mean, these are obviously verticals that are going to be heavily impacted in a positive way. Where, what are they seeing as the value what's getting them motivated to do these pilots? Why they, why they jumping in with, with both feet, if you will, on these projects, is it because it's saving money? Is it time? What, or, or both, is it ease of use? Is it the, is it the user's expectations trying to tease out how you guys see that evolving? >>Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the, the, this is still spaces. The movement is going very fast, but I think the space has been young. And right now a lot of these companies are seeing the potential that, that few offers. And I think the key dimensions, like the possibility isn't leadership ownership. So I think the key thing I'm seeing in you is these web companies seeing the momentum and looking to harness that book by enabling bridges web. One of the key trends in water has been FinTech. I think over the last five to six years, we'll have the Revolut and 26 platforms, new banks and super finance. So perhaps rising to the forefront and they are all enabling or connecting a page with them in some shape and form either any of them creating a crypto, some are launching their own native wallets. And these are essentially ways that they can one crack users. >>So the gen Z who are looking for war with finance to get them on board, but also to look to, you know, enable more adoption by data on users, one, not using these services that potentially create new revenue streams and, and create allocation of capital that they could not access to have access to otherwise. So I think that's one brand I'm seeing over here. I think the other key trend is in your use has been games. And again, that links are damaged. We have to, that is called the MetAware. So a lot of game companies are looking to step into game five, which is again, completely different. This is more work traditional game companies use use similarly metal versus we, again, worship creates a different business model and they see that users and gamers of the future were born to engage with that versus just being more eyes on the business of question or our ads. And I think that's something that they're, you know, becoming a bit off and quickly the space launching the one better versus, or are gained by applications or creating a comfortability with these, these, these, >>You know, I wanted to get it to this point, but I was going to ask about the community empowerment piece of this equation because she's identity is about the user's identity, which implies they're part of a community. Web three is very convenient community centric, but you mentioned gaming. I mean, people who have been watching the gaming world like ourselves, know that communities and marketplaces have been very active for years, many years, you know, over 15 years community, you know, games, currency in game activity has been out there. Right. But siloed within the games themselves. So now it seems that that paradigm is coming in and empowering all communities. Is this something that you guys see and agree with? And if so, what's different about that? What, how are our, how our communities being empowered? I guess that's the question. >>Yeah. I can maybe take that too. So, I mean, I've also heard of vaccine I'm in a 40% of their user base in Vietnam. And the average earning that a person makes in a month out of playing this game is more than the, you know, national daily or, you know, minimum wage that is there. Right. So that's the kind of potential actually going back as a combination of actually answering your earlier question, I think, or, and about what Sadat said, what's really unique in Asia is we still have a lot of unbanked people, right? So if you really look at the total unbanked population of the world, it's 1.6 billion and 24% of that as a nation, almost 375 million people are an issue. So these are people who do not have access to finance or credit. So the whole idea is how do we get these people on to a banking system on to peer peer, to peer lending out kind of peer to peer finance kind of capabilities? >>I think, you know, again, unstoppable domains kind of helps in that, right? If you just look@thepurethatthree.zero world and the complex, you know, technical way in which, you know, money or other crypto is transferred from one wallet to the other, it's very difficult for an un-banked person who probably cannot even do basic communication, cannot read and write, but actually be able to do it, but something that's very human readable, something that's very easy for him to understand something that's visual, something that he can see on his mobile with, you know, two G network. We are not talking of the world is talking about 5g, but there are parts of Asia which are still using two G and you know, two point 5g kind of network. Right? So I think that's one key use case. I think the banks are trying to solve because for them, this is a whole new customer segment. >>And sorry, I actually went back a little bit to your earlier question, but you know, coming back to this whole community building, right? So on March 8th, we're launching something called us women of web 3.0, that is three. This is basically to again, empower. So if you, again, look at Asia, you know, women, you know, need a lot of training. They need a lot of enablement for them to be able to leverage the power of that three.zero. I can talk about India because being from India, a lot of the women do not, you know, they, they do all the, you know, small businesses, but the money is not taken by middlemen or taken by their husbands, but fundamentally the money comes to them because that's what they use to educate their children. And it's the same thing in a lot of other, Southeast Asian countries as well. I think it's very important to build those communities or communities of women entrepreneurs. I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, which probably, you know, will take 10 more years. If we go for the normal one to web two.zero progression where the power is with corporations and not with the individual. >>And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for this is democratization is what it's all about. Again, this is, you know, a new revolution. I mean, this is a new thing, so great stuff, more education, more learning, and can get the banks up and running, get those people banking because once they're banking, they get wallets, right? So they need the wallet. So let's get to the real meat here. You guys are in the territory, Europe and Asia, where there's a lot of wallets. There's a lot of exchanges because that's, they're not in the United States is few of them there, but most of them outside the United States and you got a lot of di apps developing, you know, decentralized applications. Okay. So you've got all this coming together and your territory, what's the strategy is that what's the strategy. How are you gonna attack that? You've got the wallets, you've got the exchanges and you've got D applications. You, >>Yeah. so I think just quickly there, I think one point is the Neil very expressive, beautifully is the final conclusion that that is something that has been inspired me, how better we can make it more inclusive that inspired mine. Yeah. I think for us, I think when a bit at the base star, when it comes to your right and the, the key focus in, in, in terms of our approach would be that the more do two dates, one, we want increase the utility of these domains. And the second thing is we weren't via proliferation with, with, with our partners. So when I speak on utility, I think utility is when you have a universe like depart, which is a domain name, and then you have these attributes around it, right? What, what that defines your identity. So in, in the context in Europe, we would look to find partners to help us enrich that identity around the domain name. >>And that adds value for users in terms of acquiring new leads and new blinds. And all the other element comes proliferation. I think it's about working with all those crypto and participants, as well as the adjacent companies, parents services who can help us educate current and future upcoming three users about the utility of domain names and help us onboard them to the, the. So I think that's going to be the general focus. I think the key is that as well, and hopefully it will be having watch regulation, you that allow us to do this at a visual level, but at the outset, I think it's going to be tackling it. Can't be by, can't be identified on this where there's deeper, better patient for and then making sure that we are partnering with local project partners that are demanding for local communities there. So, yeah, that's my view in, >>Oh, I think, yeah. So again, in Asia, once you have a significant part of Manatee living in Asia, right? So obviously I know obviously all the other challenges and the opportunities that we talk about, I think the first area of focus would be educating the people on the massive opportunity that they can not, they have, and if you're able to get them in early, I think it's great for them as well, right? Because by the time, you know, governments regulations and a large banking financial companies move, but if we can get the larger population or, you know, into this whole space, it's, it's good for them. So they are first movers in that space. I think we're doing a lot of things on this worldwide. I think we have done more than a hundred Pasco podcast, just educating people on water's web feed or, or, you know, waters, what are NFP domains, what is defy and, you know, so on and so forth. >>I think it would need some bit of localization customization in Asia, given that, you know, India itself has about 22 languages. And then there are the other countries which each of them have their own local languages and, you know, syntax, semantics and all those things. So I think that that is very important to be able to disseminate the knowledge or though it's it's global. But I think to get the grassroot people to understand the opportunity, I think it would need some amount of work that I think also building communities. I think John, you talked about communities so that such I'd talk about communities. I think it's very important to build communities because communities create ideation. It talks about people share their challenges so that people don't repeat the same mistakes. Also. I think it's very important to build communities based on impressed. I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities and on telegram, telegram, discard, Twitter spaces and all those things. >>But, you know, again, when we're talking about financial inclusion, we're talking of a different kind of community building. I think that that would be important. And then of course I will, you know, kind of primarily from a company perspective, I think getting the 35 odd exchanges in Asia, the wallets to partner with us, just as an example, you know, they hired till September of last year, about 3,500 apps in just one quarter at double two, 7,000 tabs on their platform. But that is the pace or the speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole, you know, three dot old space. I think it's very important to get those key partners. We're developing those dots or see the power of single sign on having a human readable, digital identity, being able to seamlessly transfer your assets, digital assets across multiple crypto's across multiple NFT when the market places and so on. So >>Yeah, and I think the whole community thing too is also you seeing the communities being part of certainly in the entertainment area and the artistry creator world, the users are part of the community own it too. So it goes both ways, but this brings up the marketplace too, as well, because you ha you guys have the opportunity to have trust built into the software layer, right? So now you can keep the reputation data. You don't, you can be anonymous, but it's trustworthy versus bots, which we all know bots can be killed and then started again with, and no one knows what the timeline has been around. So, you know, the whole inadequacy of web too, which is just growing pains, right? This is what it'll evolution looks like, you know, next to them, traction layer. So I love that vibe. How advanced do you think that thinking is where people are saying, Hey, we need this abstraction layer. We need this digital identity. We need to start expanding our applications so that the users can move across these and break down those silos where the data is cause that's, this is like the problem, right? It's the data silos that are holding it back. What'd you guys' reaction to that? The, the killing the silos and making it horizontally scalable. >>Yeah, I think it's, it's not problem. It is a problem of people who understand technology. It's a problem of a lot of the people in the business who want to compete effectively against those giants, which are holding all the data. So I think those are the people who will innovate and move again, coming back to financial inclusion, coming back to the unbanked and those guys just want to do their business. They want to live their daily life. I think that's not where you'll see, you will see innovation in a different form, but they're not going to disrupt the disruptors. I think that would be the people that are fintechs. I think they would be the first to move on to something like that. I mean, that's my humble opinion. >>Absolutely. I, I got you on creators, right? So like I said earlier, right, we are heading for a future where more creators on the internet, whether you're publishing, writing something, you're creating video content. And that means that the data they own, because that's their data, they're bringing it to the internet. That's more powerful, more useful, and they should be reprocessed on that basis. So I think people are recognizing that and they've been using the proposal and as they do that, they were warranties systems that enabled them to work permissions with data. They will want to be able to control what the permission and what they want to provide, adapt. And at the end of the day, you know, these applications have to work backwards from customers and keep the customers looking for, but that then, and ask where passport for >>The users want freedom. They want to be able to be connected and not be restricted. They want to freely move around the global internet and do whatever they want with the friends and apps that they want to consume and not feel arbitrage. They don't want to feel like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and, you know, stuck there and having to come back. It's the new normal. If >>They don't want to be the, they don't want to be the product. They >>Don't want to be the perfect gentlemen. Great to have you on great conversation. We're going to continue this later. Certainly want to keep the updates coming. You guys are in a very hot area in Europe and Asia Pacific. That's where a lot of the action is happening. We see the entrepreneurial activity, the business transformation, certainly with the new paradigm shift and this big wave that's coming. It's here. It's mainstream. Thanks for coming on, sharing your insights. Appreciate it. >>Thanks for the opportunity. >>Great conversation. All the actions moving and happening real fast. This is the cube unstoppable debates partner showcase with I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching.

Published Date : Feb 22 2022

SUMMARY :

It's a hot start-up in the web three area, reduce the steps it takes to do stuff makes the Wallace better. One of the reasons that this is happening again, if you go through the Asian out of the total, 1.8 billion gen Z and millennials that you have in the world. I want to just comment on Asia also in the other areas where mobile first came, you had the end, And you know, if you dig a bit deeper, I'd say, arguably, So what that means is you just spend tool the data they've been to So talk about the dynamic of web two, if, if I look far down the future, I don't see a future where you have I mean, one of the biggest example is in my home state And especially in the Asian countries, but a lot of people from Southeast Asia work across I was going to get into which industries and kind of what areas you see in your air and geographies, and let me clarify the question, John you're, you're talking about companies looking at departments of our Is it the, is it the user's expectations trying to tease out how you guys see I think over the last five to six years, we'll have the Revolut and 26 but also to look to, you know, enable more adoption I guess that's the question. is more than the, you know, national daily or, you know, minimum wage that is I think, you know, again, unstoppable domains kind of helps in that, I think this is a big opportunity to really get the section of society, And that's a great announcement, by the way, you mentioned the $10 million worth of domains being issued out for So in, in the context in Europe, we would look to find partners to So I think that's going to be the general focus. by the time, you know, governments regulations and a large banking financial companies move, I think we all know in the technology world, you can build communities and speed of innovation that we are seeing on this whole, you know, three dot old space. Yeah, and I think the whole community thing too is also you seeing the communities being part of certainly in the entertainment I think that would be the people that are fintechs. And at the end of the day, you know, these applications have to work backwards like they're kind of nailed into a walled garden and, you know, stuck there and They don't want to be the, they don't want to be the product. Great to have you on great conversation. This is the cube unstoppable debates partner

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Scott Warren, Capgemini | AWS re:Invent 2021


 

(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's continuous coverage of "AWS re:Invent 2021". I'm Dave Nicholson, and here at theCUBE, we're running one of the most important largest events in tech industry history with two live sets right here, live in Las Vegas, along with our two studios. And I'm delighted here in our studio to welcome Scott Warren US AWS practice, vice president for Capgemini. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Dave: How's the show been going for you so far? >> Very, very good so far. It's great to be back in person. >> So tell me about your role at Capgemini. What you focus on. You're responsible for the relationship with AWS? >> Absolutely. So managing the relationship with AWS and how we partner, and then probably more importantly, kind of how we go to market with the AWS offering for our customers. So kind of understanding what the customer demand is, how we can help accelerate and get them moving faster out to the cloud, and then building that up as well as kind of industry specific offers on how we can accelerate cloud adoption. >> So when you talk about acceleration often in an organization like yours, there is the tug of war between the spoke solution hearing and pre-packaged things that serve to be accelerators. How do you go about balancing those things and tell us about some of the accelerators that you've developed? >> Absolutely. I think it's always kind of going to be a hybrid between the bespoken out of the box solutions. The out of the box solutions are inevitably always going to take some sort of customization or something like that to make them applicable within a customer's environment. But we all know it's very time consuming and expensive to build something completely bespoke from the ground up. So the way we really address that is we've built something at Capgemini we called it the cloud boost library. It is an online get lab library of thousands of code templates, infrastructure as code snippets that solve deploying your infrastructure and provision your infrastructure on the cloud, microservice design for healthcare and financial services and manufacturing and automotive. >> So industry specific? >> Not just specific and cloud in general. And so we bring that to every cloud engagement we work on. It's our real motto around that is we should never be starting on zero, starting from ground zero and anything we push out to AWS and we can always borrow, steal, modify, and change part of that library specific to that customer demand and need, and really speed up the implementation and get them out to AWS faster. >> Can you kind of double click on that? Give us an example of an accelerator inaction. You don't have to necessarily, if you've got a customer name, fantastic, or you can keep it generic. >> Yeah, absolutely. So we work for a big financial services company that's doing kind of an online data dissemination system, so thousands of public API is to disseminate data out to their customers and partners and vendors and things like that. So we were able to use that library to kind of get the framework for every single one of those APIs. A template, a kind of base function for that, and then use that kind of repeatably across those thousands of API. So we never really started from zero and said, provided 70, 80% kind of efficiency gain on that project versus kind of building it from the ground up. >> So with a customer like that, how did the initial engagement start? Was this a preexisting Capgemini relationship? Was this AWS at the table strategizing bringing in Capgemini. How does that work with your relationships with customers? >> So this was an existing customer of ours that we'd been doing application management in their data center for years. And several years ago, they had a kind of a leadership change happened and a new CTO came in and he laid down the edict that they're now a cloud first organization. So of course all his direct reports and managers started asking, what does that really mean? And they came to us as a trusted partner. And so we started walking them through our framework and template of how we bring our customers from ground zero completely in the data center, completely to a cloud first organization. And at that same time, we also began engaging our counterparts at AWS because we want to make sure we're in lockstep with what they're doing at AWS and kind of one consistent message out to our customer and doing the things the way they want them to be done. We want to unlock the funding programs available from AWS to incentivize that customer, to move out to the cloud. And then really having that kind of three legged partnership with us, the customer and AWS, puts them on the right path for success and in faster adoption of the cloud. >> Capgemini didn't just roll out of college a couple of years ago. (laughs) >> Been around a while. Been around a while. >> So you have an interesting perspective because you just mentioned being involved in the management of a customer's environment and IT landscape that is outside the purview of cloud, at least at some stage of the game. How do you turn being a legacy provider of services into a superpower instead of a liability? >> Absolutely. Yeah. >> How do you do that? And the reason why I say that superpower is because you said cap earlier and I thought in America, but it's a serious question. Some would say, well, Capgemini legacy. No, no, no. What's your reply? >> Absolutely. So what we found is the most important thing about a move to the cloud is understanding the entire application portfolio and landscape and the best way to move into the cloud. Some applications that are very prime for lift and shift. We just want to get them out of the data center, into the cloud very quickly. Other ones that are very mission critical on customer facing very important for the future of an organization. Really need to be looked at with a more modern lens in the clouds. How do we modernize this, make it cost effective, and in a long-term asset, that's going to run in the cloud in a PaaS or SaaS based service offering rather than just IaaS. So all of the legacy work under the previous work we've done for our customers, we understand their application and in data center landscape better, they do in most scenarios. So having all of that data allows us to feed that into kind of some of our tooling around assessing applications and figuring out the best migration path or modernization path. So all of that legacy knowledge kind of puts us in the driver's seat for being the best partner to actually help them with that cloud modernization. >> So with your AWS responsibility as part of Capgemini, it's a bit like having a foot on the dock and a foot on the boat? >> Scott: Yep. >> In terms of an individual customer's requirements, obviously Capgemini can continue to manage what we would refer to as legacy infrastructure while helping to modernize and migrate to cloud. What about this sort of combination of the two that represents the future specifically, AWS is support of hybrid cloud technology. The idea of Outposts, is that something that you are involved with? >> Absolutely. We're seeing kind of Outpost adoption trend up recently, actually. So when we see in certain sectors where a lot of kind of work is being done on the edge, a great example is an agriculture company we work for that has field in soil and weather sensors all over the planet. So monitoring the moisture in the soil, the nitrogen levels, the wind air pressure and temperature and humidity. And oftentimes those fields are in very remote disconnected locations. So we're seeing things like Outpost and snowball edge and different services like that become more and more prevalent for those edge use cases where compute can actually be done on the field and decisions can be made by the farmers that are planters in the field like real time. And then when connectivity comes back around, they can actually beam that back to AWS if necessary. The other kind of scenario we see Outposts really being prevalent is in very sensitive data scenarios. So we have customers in federal government work or things like that. There's just some data due to regulatory compliance that cannot be on the public cloud node yet, yet being the key word there. So Outposts becomes really important in those scenarios where the vast majority of the data and the assets go out to AWS, but the very, very sensitive data due to regulatory reasons, we keep in the Outpost can still kind of harness the power of AWS on that. >> You know, that brings up another interesting subject, the difference between where technology actually exists today and where people exist culturally today in terms of their acceptance and adoption of technology. There are absolutely cases where data residency, data governance requires that it be onsite. >> Scott: Absolutely. >> Then again, there are a lot of cases where people are just concerned about not having their arms around the data. So the perception that it isn't as safe in the cloud, as it is in the customer's data center is often a misguided, >> Scott: Very much so. >> Perception. So that's obviously an inhibiting factor to cloud adoption in some way. What are some of the other things that you see that are headwinds? Because it's been talked about widely here 80% or more of IT spend is still what we would think of as on-premises. >> Scott: Data center. Yeah. >> Not cloud. Those lines are being blurred with things like Outpost. I contend that in five years, when we talk about cloud, that's going to be sort of an irrelevant term. >> Yeah. >> It's really like, well, because it doesn't matter where it is. It's all virtualized. >> Compute and storage somewhere. Yeah. >> The headwinds that you're seeing. And again, they can be irrational headwinds or they can be technical bottlenecks. >> Yeah. I think the biggest one is business understanding what the cloud is and them adopting it. I've had a couple meetings that were a new thing for me this week, where I met with the chief marketing officer for one of our customers. So we're meeting with CTO, CIO, VPs, directors in the IT space, but this marketing officer wanted to meet with us. And she was kind of very cloud knowledgeable. She understood IaaS, SaaS, PaaS and the costing models of cloud consumption and some of the services. In her organization is kind of already all in on AWS. And she had seen this happen, this transformation happened on the IT side. And she wanted to know how can I, as the head of my marketing department start to harness the power of the public cloud to drive business outcomes within my area. And that was a really interesting conversation for me and kind of got me thinking that I think the business is going to start understanding, and that the lines between IT and business are going to begin to get blurred a little bit with the power of AWS and other hyperscalers and all the capability that's available to our customers once they get moved out there. >> In today's keynote, Swami talked a lot about data and the data-driven companies, or rather companies that are not data-driven. >> Yep. >> Are going to be left behind. And I thought it was interesting in the survey. He mentioned 9% of companies reported not looking at data at all for their decision-making process. We need a list of those companies so we can short their stocks. (laughs) And we can help them out. (laughs) Or you can help out, or you can help them out. Exactly. I'll refer a half to you, and I'll short the rest. How's that feel? Is that a deal? So within your world of things you do with AWS, with Capgemini on behalf of the customers, what are some of the tip of the spear things that are the most exciting from a buzz perspective and what are sort of the next gen things that you're thinking of? It could be something you literally just heard about announced over the last couple of days. What does the future hold? >> Absolutely. We kind of look at that is what we classify our intelligent industry offering. And so it's really industry specific offers and services that are going to kind of change how specific industries do business. A really good example is we do a lot with the automotive industry. We started working with the OEMs that are kind of producing electric vehicles and autonomous driving vehicles. And we've actually built a framework that lives on top of AWS called connected mobility solutions. So connecting all of the driverless functions of a car back to the mothership or the cloud, the cloud instance. And I think things like that are really kind of tip of the spear where it's, again, out on the edge, not in a data center or in a cloud, but gathering all that data from connected devices in different areas and kind of how we're going to manage that and enable that and make it secure and safe and reliable and things like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. I have direct experience with some of that. I have a car that won't allow me to access all of its self-driving features. I bet I can guess because of the way I drive. (laughs) Yep. The cloud is not all wonderful. It's not all lollipops and rainbows. There is a bit of a downside to it if you're a crazy maniac like myself. So Capgemini, hasn't just been a standalone organization. You've absorbed and merged with all sorts of different organizations. I imagine you have organizations that are specifically focused on AWS in addition to other clouds. >> Scott: Absolutely. I can manage that culturally. >> That's a good question. So three years ago, me as the Capgemini group as a whole entered into a three-year partnership called Project Liberty with AWS. And it was a three-year plan we had targets and numbers on both sides, but it really kind of unified how we were going to do AWS and cloud work across the Capgemini organization, all working under one program towards one common goal, on developing accelerators and solutions and go to market offerings, kind of with one thing in mind to drive that AWS partnership and growth. So that's really been kind of the big driver for us within Capgemini over the past three years, is that what we call Project Liberty internally. And then just recently about a year and a half, maybe two years ago, we acquired one of the world's leading digital engineering firms called Altron. Big presence in Europe, Southeast Asia and North America. And they brought kind of a whole new flavor of how we do cloud when we're talking about digital twin in the cloud, on the factory floor and actually engineering of products and in driverless vehicles and electric vehicles and things like that. So bringing all training and being able to include them in our overall kind of cloud AWS message and bringing their book of offers in has really expanded our offering as well. >> How has talent recruitment and acquisition been for you guys? Are you faced with the same challenges that others are? Which is we need educated people. Give the pitch, so my kids hear it. So they understand. The graduate was plastics, right? That's the future? >> Yeah. >> Cloud services, without Capgemini, all the technology that AWS produces is essentially worthless. If you can't connect it to business value and outcome, and that's what you do. So how has that looked for you? >> Yeah, we hae the same talent challenges as everyone right now. So we're really taking the thought process of let's take people who aren't traditionally in the technology field and begin training them up on the cloud and the different technology areas. >> You do that at Capgemini? >> We do that at Capgemini, yeah. So we're running in conjunction with AWS big boot camps where we bring people in and- >> Who are this people? Not to interrupt, just a few seconds left. What's the profile of somewhere? >> Yeah. So a lot of- >> I want to hear the unconventional ones, not the computer science person who doesn't know cloud. Who are you bringing in on this one? >> New college hires who majored in the non-related IT field completely psychology, social sciences, whatever it may be. But who had the aptitude and then kind of the one to learn cloud in IT. So we bring them in. And then looking in our Capgemini Organization internally at our recruiting organization, our marketing organization, our partnership organization, and some of those people who are early on in their careers and may want to pivot to the technology side. We're starting to ramp them up as well. So it's been a very effective program for us. And I think something we're going to continue to invest in further. >> That's a very satisfying part of what you do to be a part of. >> Absolutely. >> Well, Scott, I got to tell you it's been a great conversation. For the rest of us here at theCUBE our continuous coverage continues here at AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm Dave Nicholson signing off for a moment. But keep it right here theCUBE is your technology hybrid event leader. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Dec 1 2021

SUMMARY :

I'm Dave Nicholson, and here at theCUBE, great to be back in person. the relationship with AWS? So managing the relationship the spoke solution hearing So the way we really address and get them out to AWS faster. You don't have to necessarily, it from the ground up. how did the initial engagement start? and in faster adoption of the cloud. a couple of years ago. Been around a while. that is outside the purview of cloud, Yeah. And the reason why I say that superpower So all of the legacy work that represents the future that cannot be on the and adoption of technology. So the perception that it What are some of the Yeah. I contend that in five years, It's really like, well, Compute and storage somewhere. The headwinds that you're seeing. and that the lines between IT and business and the data-driven companies, that are the most exciting So connecting all of the of the way I drive. I can manage that culturally. of the big driver for us That's the future? and that's what you do. in the technology field We do that at Capgemini, yeah. What's the profile of somewhere? not the computer science in the non-related IT field completely to be a part of. For the rest of us here at theCUBE

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Rajesh Garg, Landmark Group | UiPath FORWARD IV


 

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

Published Date : Oct 6 2021

SUMMARY :

It's the cube. Thank you so much. a little bit about landmark. So landmark is one of the largest, uh, non-food primarily When was the company founded, Legacy institution you were mentioning before we went live that you guys have been working with UI path Uh, I mean, you know, I've been in this industry with my past employers, so that's, so that's very, I, you know, we've now got a pretty large, uh, robotic process automation And as a retailer, I'm curious as to what your cloud strategy But overall, the company also has a very pro you know, And I got to ask you because everybody's freaked out on wall street about power automate, Um, you know, what, it kind of seemed more When you evaluate it as CFO, You know, you do look at the hard dollars. now we've, we are proudly talking, you know, that, Hey, we've got a lot of people, And you look at that as hard dollars. So, so let's put it, uh, you know, I was looking at applied science, Uh, we're going to, you know, and then as a CFO, you might say let's defend that a little bit. So I think once the, the, the hard dollars that you can bank are out of the way, I say, Hey, wait, well, right then, you know, but so you have four years of data on this, I mean, I'll give you an example in none of our largest markets, right. I think about some of the IDC data that was, did you see that that was presented this morning, looking at, I think there is, you know, you have to take all these projections with a pinch of salt, All the projects add up to more value. I mean, you know, I kind of talk about the Luddites, you know, my productivity goals? W what do you mean? So that's kind of, you know, a bit more intelligent than just a simple copy paste They don't know how that decision is made. would be, you know, the next best thing since sliced water and people have lost fit. It's one of the failures of the tech industry is the broken promises. See, I mean, we, we took, you know, the bottoms up and top down approach, uh, I love it. Um, I mean, somehow I have kind of, you know, created the skunkworks team. Uh, you know, sorry, I got to get my crypto question. you know, we have enough other face too, you know? And then the last 30 seconds, or so for your peers in any industry who are accelerated if you first put RPLs, because that is the A predecessor, or just thank you for joining Dave and me on the program today, talking about what you're, Thank you so much. I'm Lisa Martin live in Las Vegas UI

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Jim Cushman, CPO, Collibra


 

>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE, covering Data Citizens'21. Brought to you by Collibra. >> We're back talking all things data at Data Citizens '21. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage, virtual coverage #DataCitizens21. I'm here with Jim Cushman who is Collibra's Chief Product Officer who shared the company's product vision at the event. Jim, welcome, good to see you. >> Thanks Dave, glad to be here. >> Now one of the themes of your session was all around self-service and access to data. This is a big big point of discussion amongst organizations that we talk to. I wonder if you could speak a little more toward what that means for Collibra and your customers and maybe some of the challenges of getting there. >> So Dave our ultimate goal at Collibra has always been to enable service access for all customers. Now, one of the challenges is they're limited to how they can access information, these knowledge workers. So our goal is to totally liberate them and so, why is this important? Well, in and of itself, self-service liberates, tens of millions of data lyric knowledge workers. This will drive more rapid, insightful decision-making, it'll drive productivity and competitiveness. And to make this level of adoption possible, the user experience has to be as intuitive as say, retail shopping, like I mentioned in my previous bit, like you're buying shoes online. But this is a little bit of foreshadowing and there's even a more profound future than just enabling a self-service, that we believe that a new class of shopper is coming online and she may not be as data-literate as our knowledge worker of today. Think of her as an algorithm developer, she builds machine learning or AI. The engagement model for this user will be, to kind of build automation, personalized experiences for people to engage with data. But in order to build that automation, she too needs data. Because she's not data literate, she needs the equivalent of a personal shopper. Someone that can guide her through the experience without actually having her know all the answers to the questions that would be asked. So this level of self-service goes one step further and becomes an automated service. One to really help find the best unbiased in a labeled training data to help train an algorithm in the future. >> That's, okay please continue. >> No please, and so all of this self and automated service, needs to be complemented with kind of a peace of mind that you're letting the right people gain access to it. So when you automate it, it's like, well, geez are the right people getting access to this. So it has to be governed and secured. This can't become like the Wild Wild West or like a data, what we call a data flea market or you know, data's everywhere. So, you know, history does quickly forget the companies that do not adjust to remain relevant. And I think we're in the midst of an exponential differentiation in Collibra data intelligence cloud is really kind of established to be the key catalyst for companies that will be on the winning side. >> Well, that's big because I mean, I'm a big believer in putting data in the hands of those folks in the line of business. And of course the big question that always comes up is, well, what about governance? What about security? So to the extent that you can federate that, that's huge. Because data is distributed by its very nature, it's going to stay that way. It's complex. You have to make the technology work in that complex environment, which brings me to this idea of low code or no code. It's gaining a lot of momentum in the industry. Everybody's talking about it, but there are a lot of questions, you know, what can you actually expect from no code and low code who were the right, you know potential users of that? Is there a difference between low and no? And so from your standpoint, why is this getting so much attention and why now, Jim? >> You don't want me to go back even 25 years ago we were talking about four and five generational languages that people were building. And it really didn't re reach the total value that folks were looking for because it always fell short. And you'd say, listen, if you didn't do all the work it took to get to a certain point how are you possibly going to finish it? And that's where the four GLs and five GLs fell short as capability. With our stuff where if you really get a great self-service how are you going to be self-service if it still requires somebody right though? Well, I guess you could do it if the only self-service people are people who write code, well, that's not bad factor. So if you truly want the ability to have something show up at your front door, without you having to call somebody or make any efforts to get it, then it needs to generate itself. The beauty of doing a catalog, new governance, understanding all the data that is available for choice, giving someone the selection that is using objective criteria, like this is the best objective cause if it's quality for what you want or it's labeled or it's unbiased and it has that level of deterministic value to it versus guessing or civic activity or what my neighbor used or what I used on my last job. Now that we've given people the power with confidence to say, this is the one that I want, the next step is okay, can you deliver it to them without them having to write any code? So imagine being able to generate those instructions from everything that we have in our metadata repository to say this is exactly the data I need you to go get and perform what we call a distributed query against those data sets and bringing it back to them. No code written. And here's the real beauty Dave, pipeline development, data pipeline development is a relatively expensive thing today and that's why people spend a lot of money maintaining these pipelines but imagine if there was zero cost to building your pipeline would you spend any money to maintain it? Probably not. So if we can build it for no cost, then why maintain it? Just build it every time you need it. And it then again, done on a self-service basis. >> I really liked the way you're thinking about this cause you're right. A lot of times when you hear self self-service it's about making the hardcore developers, you know be able to do self service. But the reality is, and you talk about that data pipeline it's complex a business person sitting there waiting for data or wants to put in new data and it turns out that the smallest unit is actually that entire team. And so you sit back and wait. And so to the extent that you can actually enable self-serve for the business by simplification that is it's been the holy grail for a while, isn't it? >> I agree. >> Let's look a little bit dig into where you're placing your bets. I mean, your head of products, you got to make bets, you know, certainly many many months if not years in advance. What are your big focus areas of investment right now? >> Yeah, certainly. So one of the things we've done very successfully since our origin over a decade ago, was building a business user-friendly software and it was predominantly kind of a plumbing or infrastructure area. So, business users love working with our software. They can find what they're looking for and they don't need to have some cryptic key of how to work with it. They can think about things in their terms and use our business glossary and they can navigate through what we call our data intelligence graph and find just what they're looking for. And we don't require a business to change everything just to make it happen. We give them kind of a universal translator to talk to the data. But with all that wonderful usability the common compromise that you make as well, its only good up to a certain amount of information, kind of like Excel. You know, you can do almost anything with Excel, right? But when you get to into large volumes, it becomes problematic and now you need that, you know go with a hardcore database and application on top. So what the industry is pulling us towards is far greater amounts of data not that just millions or even tens of millions but into the hundreds of millions and billions of things that we need to manage. So we have a huge focus on scale and performance on a global basis and that's a mouthful, right? Not only are you dealing with large amounts at performance but you have to do it in a global fashion and make it possible for somebody who might be operating in a Southeast Asia to have the same experience with the environment as they would be in Los Angeles. And the data needs to therefore go to the user as opposed to having the user come to the data as much as possible. So it really does put a lot of emphasis on some of what you call the non-functional requirements also known as the ilities and so our ability to bring the data and handle those large enterprise grade capabilities at scale and performance globally is what's really driving a good number of our investments today. >> I want to talk about data quality. This is a hard topic, but it's one that's so important. And I think it's been really challenging and somewhat misunderstood when you think about the chief data officer role itself, it kind of emerged from these highly regulated industries. And it came out of the data quality, kind of a back office role that's kind of gone front and center and now is, you know pretty strategic. Having said that, the you know, the prevailing philosophy is okay, we got to have this centralized data quality approach and that it's going to be imposed throughout. And it really is a hard problem and I think about, you know these hyper specialized roles, like, you know the quality engineer and so forth. And again, the prevailing wisdom is, if I could centralize that it can be lower cost and I can service these lines of business when in reality, the real value is, you know speed. And so how are you thinking about data quality? You hear so much about it. Why is it such a big deal and why is it so hard in a priority in the marketplace? You're thoughts. >> Thanks for that. So we of course acquired a data quality company, not burying delete, earlier this year LGQ and the big question is, okay, so why, why them and why now, not before? Well, at least a decade ago you started hearing people talk about big data. It was probably around 2009, it was becoming the big talk and what we don't really talk about when we talk about this ever expanding data, the byproduct is, this velocity of data, is increasing dramatically. So the speed of which new data is being presented the way in which data is changing is dramatic. And why is that important to data quality? Cause data quality historically for the last 30 years or so has been a rules-based business where you analyze the data at a certain point in time and you write a rule for it. Now there's already a room for error there cause humans are involved in writing those rules, but now with the increased velocity, the likelihood that it's going to atrophy and become no longer a valid or useful rule to you increases exponentially. So we were looking for a technology that was doing it in a new way similar to the way that we do auto classification when we're cataloging attributes is how do we look at millions of pieces of information around metadata and decide what it is to put it into context? The ability to automatically generate these rules and then continuously adapt as data changes to adjust these rules, is really a game changer for the industry itself. So we chose OwlDQ for that very reason. It's not only where they had this really kind of modern architecture to automatically generate rules but then to continuously monitor the data and adjust those rules, cutting out the huge amounts of costs, clearly having rules that aren't helping you save and frankly, you know how this works is, you know no one really complains about it until there's the squeaky wheel, you know, you get a fine or exposes and that's what is causing a lot of issues with data quality. And then why now? Well, I think and this is my speculation, but there's so much movement of data moving to the cloud right now. And so anyone who's made big investments in data quality historically for their on-premise data warehouses, Netezzas, Teradatas, Oracles, et cetera or even their data lakes are now moving to the cloud. And they're saying, hmm, what investments are we going to carry forward that we had on premise? And which ones are we going to start a new from and data quality seems to be ripe for something new and so these new investments in data in the cloud are now looking up. Let's look at new next generation method of doing data quality. And that's where we're really fitting in nicely. And of course, finally, you can't really do data governance and cataloging without data quality and data quality without data governance and cataloging is kind of a hollow a long-term story. So the three working together is very a powerful story. >> I got to ask you some Colombo questions about this cause you know, you're right. It's rules-based and so my, you know, immediate like, okay what are the rules around COVID or hybrid work, right? If there's static rules, there's so much unknown and so what you're saying is you've got a dynamic process to do that. So and one of the my gripes about the whole big data thing and you know, you referenced that 2009, 2010, I loved it, because there was a lot of profound things about Hadoop and a lot of failings. And one of the challenges is really that there's no context in the big data system. You know, the data, the folks in the data pipeline, they don't have the business context. So my question is, as you it's and it sounds like you've got this awesome magic to automate, who would adjudicates the dynamic rules? How does, do humans play a role? What role do they play there? >> Absolutely. There's the notion of sampling. So you can only trust a machine for certain point before you want to have some type of a steward or a assisted or supervised learning that goes on. So, you know, suspect maybe one out of 10, one out of 20 rules that are generated, you might want to have somebody look at it. Like there's ways to do the equivalent of supervised learning without actually paying the cost of the supervisor. Let's suppose that you've written a thousand rules for your system that are five years old. And we come in with our ability and we analyze the same data and we generate rules ourselves. We compare the two themselves and there's absolutely going to be some exact matching some overlap that validates one another. And that gives you confidence that the machine learning did exactly what you did and what's likelihood that you guessed wrong and machine learning guessed wrong exactly the right way that seems pretty, pretty small concern. So now you're really saying, well, why are they different? And now you start to study the samples. And what we learned, is that our ability to generate between 60 and 70% of these rules anytime we were different, we were right. Almost every single time, like almost every, like only one out of a hundred where was it proven that the handwritten rule was a more profound outcome. And of course, it's machine learning. So it learned, and it caught up the next time. So that's the true power of this innovation is it learns from the data as well as the stewards and it gives you confidence that you're not missing things and you start to trust it, but you should never completely walk away. You should constantly do your periodic sampling. >> And the secret sauce is math. I mean, I remember back in the mid two thousands it was like 2006 timeframe. You mentioned, you know, auto classification. That was a big problem with the federal rules of civil procedure trying to figure out, okay, you know, had humans classifying humans don't scale, until you had, you know, all kinds of support, vector machines and probabilistic, latent semantic indexing, but you didn't have the compute power or the data corpus to really do it well. So it sounds like a combination of you know, cheaper compute, a lot more data and machine intelligence have really changed the game there. Is that a fair assumption? >> That's absolutely fair. I think the other aspect that to keep in mind is that it's an innovative technology that actually brings all that compute as close into the data as possible. One of the greatest expenses of doing data quality was of course, the profiling concept bringing up the statistics of what the data represents. And in most traditional senses that data is completely pulled out of the database itself, into a separate area and now you start talking about terabytes or petabytes of data that takes a long time to extract that much information from a database and then to process through it all. Imagine bringing that profiling closer into the database, what's happening in the NAPE the same space as the data, that cuts out like 90% of the unnecessary processing speed. It also gives you the ability to do it incrementally. So you're not doing a full analysis each time, you have kind of an expensive play when you're first looking at a full database and then maybe over the course of a day, an hour, 15 minutes you've only seen a small segment of change. So now it feels more like a transactional analysis process. >> Yeah and that's, you know, again, we talked about the old days of big data, you know the Hadoop days and the boat was profound was it was all about bringing five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data, but that didn't happen. We shoved it all into a central data lake. I'm really excited for Collibra. It sounds like you guys are really on the cutting edge and doing some really interesting things. I'll give you the last word, Jim, please bring us on. >> Yeah thanks Dave. So one of the really exciting things about our solution is, it trying to be a combination of best of breed capabilities but also integrated. So to actually create a full and complete story that customers are looking for, you don't want to have them worry about a complex integration in trying to manage multiple vendors and the times of their releases, et cetera. If you can find one customer that you don't have to say well, that's good enough, but every single component is in fact best of breed that you can find in it's integrated and they'll manage it as a service. You truly unlock the power of your data, literate individuals in your organization. And again, that goes back to our overall goal. How do we empower the hundreds of millions of people around the world who are just looking for insightful decision? Did they feel completely locked it's as if they're looking for information before the internet and they're kind of limited to whatever their local library has and if we can truly become somewhat like the internet of data, we make it possible for anyone to access it without controls but we still govern it and secure it for privacy laws, I think we do have a chance to to change the world for better. >> Great. Thank you so much, Jim. Great conversation really appreciate your time and your insights. >> Yeah, thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. >> All right and thank you for watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of Data Citizens'21. My name is Dave Vellante. Keep it right there for more great content. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Jun 17 2021

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PTC | Onshape 2020 full show


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good, brought to you by on shape. >>Hello, everyone, and welcome to Innovation for Good Program, hosted by the Cuban. Brought to You by on Shape, which is a PTC company. My name is Dave Valentin. I'm coming to you from our studios outside of Boston. I'll be directing the conversations today. It's a very exciting, all live program. We're gonna look at how product innovation has evolved and where it's going and how engineers, entrepreneurs and educators are applying cutting edge, cutting edge product development techniques and technology to change our world. You know, the pandemic is, of course, profoundly impacted society and altered how individuals and organizations they're gonna be thinking about an approaching the coming decade. Leading technologists, engineers, product developers and educators have responded to the new challenges that we're facing from creating lifesaving products to helping students learn from home toe how to apply the latest product development techniques and solve the world's hardest problems. And in this program, you'll hear from some of the world's leading experts and practitioners on how product development and continuous innovation has evolved, how it's being applied toe positive positively affect society and importantly where it's going in the coming decades. So let's get started with our first session fueling Tech for good. And with me is John Hirschbeck, who is the president of the Suffers, a service division of PTC, which acquired on shape just over a year ago, where John was the CEO and co founder, and Dana Grayson is here. She is the co founder and general partner at Construct Capital, a new venture capital firm. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for coming on. >>Great to be here, Dave. >>All right, John. >>You're very welcome. Dana. Look, John, let's get into it for first Belated congratulations on the acquisition of Von Shape. That was an awesome seven year journey for your company. Tell our audience a little bit about the story of on shape, but take us back to Day zero. Why did you and your co founders start on shape? Well, >>actually, start before on shaping the You know, David, I've been in this business for almost 40 years. The business of building software tools for product developers and I had been part of some previous products in the industry and companies that had been in their era. Big changes in this market and about, you know, a little Before founding on shape, we started to see the problems product development teams were having with the traditional tools of that era years ago, and we saw the opportunity presented by Cloud Web and Mobile Technology. And we said, Hey, we could use Cloud Web and Mobile to solve the problems of product developers make their Their business is run better. But we have to build an entirely new system, an entirely new company, to do it. And that's what on shapes about. >>Well, so notwithstanding the challenges of co vid and difficulties this year, how is the first year been as, Ah, division of PTC for you guys? How's business? Anything you can share with us? >>Yeah, our first year of PTC has been awesome. It's been, you know, when you get acquired, Dave, you never You know, you have great optimism, but you never know what life will really be like. It's sort of like getting married or something, you know, until you're really doing it, you don't know. And so I'm happy to say that one year into our acquisition, um, PTC on shape is thriving. It's worked out better than I could have imagined a year ago. Along always, I mean sales are up. In Q four, our new sales rate grew 80% vs Excuse me, our fiscal Q four Q three. In the calendar year, it grew 80% compared to the year before. Our educational uses skyrocketing with around 400% growth, most recently year to year of students and teachers and co vid. And we've launched a major cloud platform using the core of on shape technology called Atlas. So, um, just tons of exciting things going on a TTC. >>That's awesome. But thank you for sharing some of those metrics. And of course, you're very humble individual. You know, people should know a little bit more about you mentioned, you know, we founded Solid Works, co founded Solid where I actually found it solid works. You had a great exit in the in the late nineties. But what I really appreciate is, you know, you're an entrepreneur. You've got a passion for the babies that you you helped birth. You stayed with the salt systems for a number of years. The company that quiet, solid works well over a decade. And and, of course, you and I have talked about how you participated in the the M I T. Blackjack team. You know, back in the day, a zai say you're very understated, for somebody was so accomplished. Well, >>that's kind of you, but I tend to I tend Thio always keep my eye more on what's ahead. You know what's next, then? And you know, I look back Sure to enjoy it and learn from it about what I can put to work making new memories, making new successes. >>Love it. Okay, let's bring Dana into the conversation. Hello, Dana. You look you're a fairly early investor in in on shape when you were with any A And and I think it was like it was a serious B, but it was very right close after the A raise. And and you were and still are a big believer in industrial transformation. So take us back. What did you see about on shape back then? That excited you. >>Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. I was lucky to be a early investment in shape. You know, the things that actually attracted me. Don shape were largely around John and, uh, the team. They're really setting out to do something, as John says humbly, something totally new, but really building off of their background was a large part of it. Um, but, you know, I was really intrigued by the design collaboration side of the product. Um, I would say that's frankly what originally attracted me to it. What kept me in the room, you know, in terms of the industrial world was seeing just if you start with collaboration around design what that does to the overall industrial product lifecycle accelerating manufacturing just, you know, modernizing all the manufacturing, just starting with design. So I'm really thankful to the on shape guys, because it was one of the first investments I've made that turned me on to the whole sector. And while just such a great pleasure to work with with John and the whole team there. Now see what they're doing inside PTC. >>And you just launched construct capital this year, right in the middle of a pandemic and which is awesome. I love it. And you're focused on early stage investing. Maybe tell us a little bit about construct capital. What your investment thesis is and you know, one of the big waves that you're hoping to ride. >>Sure, it construct it is literally lifting out of any what I was doing there. Um uh, for on shape, I went on to invest in companies such as desktop metal and Tulip, to name a couple of them form labs, another one in and around the manufacturing space. But our thesis that construct is broader than just, you know, manufacturing and industrial. It really incorporates all of what we'd call foundational industries that have let yet to be fully tech enabled or digitized. Manufacturing is a big piece of it. Supply chain, logistics, transportation of mobility or not, or other big pieces of it. And together they really drive, you know, half of the GDP in the US and have been very under invested. And frankly, they haven't attracted really great founders like they're on in droves. And I think that's going to change. We're seeing, um, entrepreneurs coming out of the tech world orthe Agnelli into these industries and then bringing them back into the tech world, which is which is something that needs to happen. So John and team were certainly early pioneers, and I think, you know, frankly, obviously, that voting with my feet that the next set, a really strong companies are going to come out of the space over the next decade. >>I think it's a huge opportunity to digitize the sort of traditionally non digital organizations. But Dana, you focused. I think it's it's accurate to say you're focused on even Mawr early stage investing now. And I want to understand why you feel it's important to be early. I mean, it's obviously riskier and reward e er, but what do you look for in companies and and founders like John >>Mhm, Um, you know, I think they're different styles of investing all the way up to public market investing. I've always been early stage investors, so I like to work with founders and teams when they're, you know, just starting out. Um, I happened to also think that we were just really early in the whole digital transformation of this world. You know, John and team have been, you know, back from solid works, etcetera around the space for a long time. But again, the downstream impact of what they're doing really changes the whole industry. And and so we're pretty early and in digitally transforming that market. Um, so that's another reason why I wanna invest early now, because I do really firmly believe that the next set of strong companies and strong returns for my own investors will be in the spaces. Um, you know, what I look for in Founders are people that really see the world in a different way. And, you know, sometimes some people think of founders or entrepreneurs is being very risk seeking. You know, if you asked John probably and another successful entrepreneurs, they would call themselves sort of risk averse, because by the time they start the company, they really have isolated all the risk out of it and think that they have given their expertise or what they're seeing their just so compelled to go change something, eh? So I look for that type of attitude experience a Z. You can also tell from John. He's fairly humble. So humility and just focus is also really important. Um, that there's a That's a lot of it. Frankly, >>Excellent. Thank you, John. You got such a rich history in the space. Uh, and one of you could sort of connect the dots over time. I mean, when you look back, what were the major forces that you saw in the market in in the early days? Particularly days of on shape on? And how is that evolved? And what are you seeing today? Well, >>I think I touched on it earlier. Actually, could I just reflect on what Dana said about risk taking for just a quick one and say, throughout my life, from blackjack to starting solid works on shape, it's about taking calculated risks. Yes, you try to eliminate the risk Sa's much as you can, but I always say, I don't mind taking a risk that I'm aware of, and I've calculated through as best I can. I don't like taking risks that I don't know I'm taking. That's right. You >>like to bet on >>sure things as much as you sure things, or at least where you feel you. You've done the research and you see them and you know they're there and you know, you, you you keep that in mind in the room, and I think that's great. And Dana did so much for us. Dana, I want to thank you again. For all that, you did it every step of the way, from where we started to to, you know, your journey with us ended formally but continues informally. Now back to you, Dave, I think, question about the opportunity and how it's shaped up. Well, I think I touched on it earlier when I said It's about helping product developers. You know, our customers of the people build the future off manufactured goods. Anything you think of that would be manufacturing factory. You know, the chair you're sitting in machine that made your coffee. You know, the computer you're using, the trucks that drive by on the street, all the covert product research, the equipment being used to make vaccines. All that stuff is designed by someone, and our job is given the tools to do it better. And I could see the problems that those product developers had that we're slowing them down with using the computing systems of the time. When we built solid works, that was almost 30 years ago. If people don't realize that it was in the early >>nineties and you know, we did the >>best we could for the early nineties, but what we did. We didn't anticipate the world of today. And so people were having problems with just installing the systems. Dave, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to install these systems. You need toe speck up a special windows computer, you know, and make sure you've got all the memory and graphics you need and getting to get that set up. You need to make sure the device drivers air, right, install a big piece of software. Ah, license key. I'm not making this up. They're still around. You may not even know what those are. You know, Dennis laughing because, you know, zero cool people do things like this anymore. Um, and it only runs some windows. You want a second user to use it? They need a copy. They need a code. Are they on the same version? It's a nightmare. The teams change, you know? You just say, Well, get everyone on the software. Well, who's everyone? You know, you got a new vendor today? A new customer tomorrow, a new employee. People come on and off the team. The other problem is the data stored in files, thousands of files. This isn't like a spreadsheet or word processor, where there's one file to pass around these air thousands of files to make one, even a simple product. People were tearing their hair out. John, what do we do? I've got copies everywhere. I don't know where the latest version is. We tried like, you know, locking people out so that only one person can change it At the time that works against speed, it works against innovation. We saw what was happening with Cloud Web and mobile. So what's happened in the years since is every one of the forces that product developers experience the need for speed, the need for innovation, the need to be more efficient with their people in their capital. Resource is every one of those trends have been amplified since we started on shape by a lot of forces in the world. And covert is amplified all those the need for agility and remote work cove it is amplified all that the same time, The acceptance of cloud. You know, a few years ago, people were like cloud, you know, how is that gonna work now They're saying to me, You know, increasingly, how would you ever even have done this without the cloud. How do you make solid works work without the cloud? How would that even happen? You know, once people understand what on shapes about >>and we're the >>Onley full SAS solution software >>as a service, >>full SAS solution in our industry. So what's happened in those years? Same problems we saw earlier, but turn up the gain, their bigger problems. And with cloud, we've seen skepticism of years ago turn into acceptance. And now even embracement in the cova driven new normal. >>Yeah. So a lot of friction in the previous environments cloud obviously a huge factor on, I guess. I guess Dana John could see it coming, you know, in the early days of solid works with, you know, had Salesforce, which is kind of the first major independent SAS player. Well, I guess that was late nineties. So his post solid works, but pre in shape and their work day was, you know, pre on shape in the mid two thousands. And and but But, you know, the bet was on the SAS model was right for Crick had and and product development, you know, which maybe the time wasn't a no brainer. Or maybe it was, I don't know, but Dana is there. Is there anything that you would invest in today? That's not Cloud based? >>Um, that's a great question. I mean, I think we still see things all the time in the manufacturing world that are not cloud based. I think you know, the closer you get to the shop floor in the production environment. Um e think John and the PTC folks would agree with this, too, but that it's, you know, there's reliability requirements, performance requirements. There's still this attitude of, you know, don't touch the printing press. So the cloud is still a little bit scary sometimes. And I think hybrid cloud is a real thing for those or on premise. Solutions, in some cases is still a real thing. What what we're more focused on. And, um, despite whether it's on premise or hybrid or or SAS and Cloud is a frictionless go to market model, um, in the companies we invest in so sass and cloud, or really make that easy to adopt for new users, you know, you sign up, started using a product, um, but whether it's hosted in the cloud, whether it's as you can still distribute buying power. And, um, I would I'm just encouraging customers in the customer world and the more industrial environment to entrust some of their lower level engineers with more budget discretionary spending so they can try more products and unlock innovation. >>Right? The unit economics are so compelling. So let's bring it, you know, toe today's you know, situation. John, you decided to exit about a year ago. You know? What did you see in PTC? Other than the obvious money? What was the strategic fit? >>Yeah, Well, David, I wanna be clear. I didn't exit anything. Really? You >>know, I love you and I don't like that term exit. I >>mean, Dana had exit is a shareholder on and so it's not It's not exit for me. It's just a step in the journey. What we saw in PTC was a partner. First of all, that shared our vision from the top down at PTC. Jim Hempleman, the CEO. He had a great vision for for the impact that SAS can make based on cloud technology and really is Dana of highlighted so much. It's not just the technology is how you go to market and the whole business being run and how you support and make the customers successful. So Jim shared a vision for the potential. And really, really, um said Hey, come join us and we can do this bigger, Better, faster. We expanded the vision really to include this Atlas platform for hosting other SAS applications. That P D. C. I mean, David Day arrived at PTC. I met the head of the academic program. He came over to me and I said, You know, and and how many people on your team? I thought he'd say 5 40 people on the PTC academic team. It was amazing to me because, you know, we were we were just near about 100 people were required are total company. We didn't even have a dedicated academic team and we had ah, lot of students signing up, you know, thousands and thousands. Well, now we have hundreds of thousands of students were approaching a million users and that shows you the power of this team that PTC had combined with our product and technology whom you get a big success for us and for the teachers and students to the world. We're giving them great tools. So so many good things were also putting some PTC technology from other parts of PTC back into on shape. One area, a little spoiler, little sneak peek. Working on taking generative design. Dana knows all about generative design. We couldn't acquire that technology were start up, you know, just to too much to do. But PTC owns one of the best in the business. This frustrated technology we're working on putting that into on shaping our customers. Um, will be happy to see it, hopefully in the coming year sometime. >>It's great to see that two way exchange. Now, you both know very well when you start a company, of course, a very exciting time. You know, a lot of baggage, you know, our customers pulling you in a lot of different directions and asking you for specials. You have this kind of clean slate, so to speak in it. I would think in many ways, John, despite you know, your install base, you have a bit of that dynamic occurring today especially, you know, driven by the forced march to digital transformation that cove it caused. So when you sit down with the team PTC and talk strategy. You now have more global resource is you got cohorts selling opportunities. What's the conversation like in terms of where you want to take the division? >>Well, Dave, you actually you sounds like we should have you coming in and talking about strategy because you've got the strategy down. I mean, we're doing everything said global expansion were able to reach across selling. We got some excellent PTC customers that we can reach reach now and they're finding uses for on shape. I think the plan is to, you know, just go, go, go and grow, grow, grow where we're looking for this year, priorities are expand the product. I mentioned the breath of the product with new things PTC did recently. Another technology that they acquired for on shape. We did an acquisition. It was it was small, wasn't widely announced. It, um, in an area related to interfacing with electrical cad systems. So So we're doing We're expanding the breath of on shape. We're going Maura, depth in the areas were already in. We have enormous opportunity to add more features and functions that's in the product. Go to market. You mentioned it global global presence. That's something we were a little light on a year ago. Now we have a team. Dana may not even know what we have. A non shape, dedicated team in Barcelona, based in Barcelona but throughout Europe were doing multiple languages. Um, the academic program just introduced a new product into that space that z even fueling more success and growth there. Um, and of course, continuing to to invest in customer success and this Atlas platform story I keep mentioning, we're going to soon have We're gonna soon have four other major PTC brands shipping products on our Atlas Saas platform. And so we're really excited about that. That's good for the other PTC products. It's also good for on shape because now there's there's. There's other interesting products that are on shape customers can use take advantage of very easily using, say, a common log in conventions about user experience there, used to invest of all they're SAS based, so they that makes it easier to begin with. So that's some of the exciting things going on. I think you'll see PTC, um, expanding our lead in SAS based applications for this sector for our our target, uh, sectors not just in, um, in cat and data management, but another area. PTC's Big and his augmented reality with of euphoria, product line leader and industrial uses of a R. That's a whole other story we should do. A whole nother show augmented reality. But these products are amazing. You can you can help factory workers people on, uh, people who are left out of the digital transformation. Sometimes we're standing from machine >>all day. >>They can't be sitting like we are doing Zoom. They can wear a R headset in our tools, let them create great content. This is an area Dana is invested in other companies. But what I wanted to note is the new releases of our authoring software. For this, our content getting released this month, used through the Atlas platform, the SAS components of on shape for things like revision management and collaboration on duh workflow activity. All that those are tools that we're able to share leverage. We get a lot of synergy. It's just really good. It's really fun to have a good time. That's >>awesome. And then we're gonna be talking to John MacLean later about that. Let's do a little deeper Dive on that. And, Dana, what is your involvement today with with on shape? But you're looking for you know, which of their customers air actually adopting. And they're gonna disrupt their industries. And you get good pipeline from that. How do you collaborate today? >>That sounds like a great idea. Um, Aziz, John will tell you I'm constantly just asking him for advice and impressions of other entrepreneurs and picking his brain on ideas. No formal relationship clearly, but continue to count John and and John and other people in on shaping in the circle of experts that I rely on for their opinions. >>All right, so we have some questions from the crowd here. Uh, one of the questions is for the dream team. You know, John and Dana. What's your next next collective venture? I don't think we're there yet, are we? No. >>I just say, as Dana said, we love talking to her about. You know, Dana, you just returned the compliment. We would try and give you advice and the deals you're looking at, and I'm sort of casually mentoring at least one of your portfolio entrepreneurs, and that's been a lot of fun for May on, hopefully a value to them. But also Dana. We uran important pipeline to us in the world of some new things that are happening that we wouldn't see if you know you've shown us some things that you've said. What do you think of this business? And for us, it's like, Wow, it's cool to see that's going on And that's what's supposed to work in an ecosystem like this. So we we deeply value the ongoing relationship. And no, we're not starting something new. I got a lot of work left to do with what I'm doing and really happy. But we can We can collaborate in this way on other ventures. >>I like this question to somebody asking With the cloud options like on shape, Wilmore students have stem opportunities s Oh, that's a great question. Are you because of sass and cloud? Are you able to reach? You know, more students? Much more cost effectively. >>Yeah, Dave, I'm so glad that that that I was asked about this because Yes, and it's extremely gratified us. Yes, we are because of cloud, because on shape is the only full cloud full SAS system or industry were able to reach. Stem education brings able to be part of bringing step education to students who couldn't get it otherwise. And one of most gratifying gratifying things to me is the emails were getting from teachers, um, that that really, um, on the phone calls that were they really pour their heart out and say We're able to get to students in areas that have very limited compute resource is that don't have an I T staff where they don't know what computer that the students can have at home, and they probably don't even have a computer. We're talking about being able to teach them on a phone to have an android phone a low end android phone. You can do three D modeling on there with on shape. Now you can't do it any other system, but with on shape, you could do it. And so the teacher can say to the students, They have to have Internet access, and I know there's a huge community that doesn't even have Internet access, and we're not able, unfortunately to help that. But if you have Internet and you have even an android phone, we can enable the educator to teach them. And so we have case after case of saving a stem program or expanding it into the students that need it most is the ones we're helping here. So really excited about that. And we're also able to let in addition to the run on run on whatever computing devices they have, we also offer them the tools they need for remote teaching with a much richer experience. Could you teach solid works remotely? Well, maybe if the student ran it had a windows workstation. You know, big, big, high end workstation. Maybe it could, but it would be like the difference between collaborating with on shape and collaborate with solid works. Like the difference between a zoom video call and talking on the landline phone. You know, it's a much richer experience, and that's what you need. And stem teaching stem is hard, So yeah, we're super super. Um, I'm excited about bringing stem to more students because of cloud yond >>we're talking about innovation for good, and then the discussion, John, you just had it. Really? There could be a whole another vector here. We could discuss on diversity, and I wanna end with just pointing out. So, Dana, your new firm, it's a woman led firm, too. Two women leaders, you know, going forward. So that's awesome to see, so really? Yeah, thumbs up on that. Congratulations on getting that off the ground. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Okay, so thank you guys. Really appreciate It was a great discussion. I learned a lot and I'm sure the audience did a swell in a moment. We're gonna talk with on shaped customers to see how they're applying tech for good and some of the products that they're building. So keep it right there. I'm Dave Volonte. You're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader in digital tech event coverage. Stay right there. >>Oh, yeah, it's >>yeah, yeah, around >>the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good. Brought to you by on shape. >>Okay, we're back. This is Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good. A program on Cuba 3 65 made possible by on shape of PTC company. We're live today really live tv, which is the heritage of the Cube. And now we're gonna go to the sources and talkto on shape customers to find out how they're applying technology to create real world innovations that are changing the world. So let me introduce our panel members. Rafael Gomez Furberg is with the Chan Zuckerberg bio hub. A very big idea. And collaborative nonprofit was initiative that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and really around diagnosing and curing and better managing infectious diseases. So really timely topic. Philip Tabor is also joining us. He's with silver side detectors, which develops neutron detective detection systems. Yet you want to know if early, if neutrons and radiation or in places where you don't want them, So this should be really interesting. And last but not least, Matthew Shields is with the Charlottesville schools and is gonna educate us on how he and his team are educating students in the use of modern engineering tools and techniques. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cuban to the program. This should be really interesting. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi. Or pleasure >>for having us. >>You're very welcome. Okay, let me ask each of you because you're all doing such interesting and compelling work. Let's start with Rafael. Tell us more about the bio hub and your role there, please. >>Okay. Yeah. So you said that I hope is a nonprofit research institution, um, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Um, and our main mission is to develop new technologies to help advance medicine and help, hopefully cure and manage diseases. Um, we also have very close collaborations with Universe California, San Francisco, Stanford University and the University California Berkeley on. We tried to bring those universities together, so they collaborate more of biomedical topics. And I manage a team of engineers. They by joining platform. Um, and we're tasked with creating instruments for the laboratory to help the scientist boats inside the organization and also in the partner universities Do their experiments in better ways in ways that they couldn't do before >>in this edition was launched Well, five years ago, >>it was announced at the end of 2016, and we actually started operation with at the beginning of 2017, which is when I joined, um, So this is our third year. >>And how's how's it going? How does it work? I mean, these things take time. >>It's been a fantastic experience. Uh, the organization works beautifully. Um, it was amazing to see it grow From the beginning, I was employee number 12, I think eso When I came in, it was just a nem P office building and empty labs. And very quickly we had something running about. It's amazing eso I'm very proud of the work that we have done to make that possible. Um And then, of course, that's you mentioned now with co vid, um, we've been able to do a lot of very cool work attire being of the pandemic in March, when there was a deficit of testing, uh, capacity in California, we spun up a testing laboratory in record time in about a week. It was crazy. It was a crazy project, Um, but but incredibly satisfying. And we ended up running all the way until the beginning of November, when the lab was finally shut down. We could process about 3000 samples a day. I think at the end of it all, we were able to test about 100 on the order of 100 and 50,000 samples from all over the state. We were providing free testing toe all of the Department of Public Health Department of Public Health in California, which at the media pandemic, had no way to do testing affordably and fast. So I think that was a great service to the state. Now the state has created that testing system that would serve those departments. So then we decided that it was unnecessary to keep going with testing in the other biopsy that would shut down. >>All right. Thank you for that. Now, Now, Philip, you What you do is mind melting. You basically helped keep the world safe. Maybe describe a little bit more about silver sod detectors and what your role is there and how it all works. >>Tour. So we make a nuclear bomb detectors and we also make water detectors. So we try and do our part thio keep the world from blowing up and make it a better place at the same time. Both of these applications use neutron radiation detectors. That's what we make. Put them out by import border crossing places like that. They can help make sure that people aren't smuggling. Shall we say very bad things. Um, there's also a burgeoning field of research and application where you can use neutrons with some pretty cool physics to find water so you could do things. Like what? A detector up in the mountains and measure snowpack. Put it out in the middle of the field and measure soil moisture content. And as you might imagine, there's some really cool applications in, uh, research and agronomy and public policy for this. >>All right, so it's OK, so it's a It's much more than, you know, whatever fighting terrorism, it's there's a riel edge or I kind of i o t application for what you guys >>do. We do both its's to plowshares. You might >>say a mat. I I look at your role is kind of scaling the brain power for for the future. Maybe tell us more about Charlottesville schools and in the mission that you're pursuing and what you do. >>Thank you. Um, I've been in Charlottesville City schools for about 11 or 12 years. I started their teaching, um, a handful of classes, math and science and things like that. But Thescore board and my administration had the crazy idea of starting an engineering program about seven years ago. My background is an engineering is an engineering. My masters is in mechanical and aerospace engineering and um, I basically spent a summer kind of coming up with what might be a fun engineering curriculum for our students. And it started with just me and 30 students about seven years ago, Um, kind of a home spun from scratch curriculum. One of my goals from the outset was to be a completely project based curriculum, and it's now grown. We probably have about six or 700 students, five or six full time teachers. We now have pre engineering going on at the 5th and 6th grade level. I now have students graduating. Uh, you know, graduating after senior year with, like, seven years of engineering under their belt and heading off to doing some pretty cool stuff. So it's It's been a lot of fun building a program and, um, and learning a lot in the process. >>That's awesome. I mean, you know, Cuba's. We've been passionate about things like women in tech, uh, diversity stem. You know, not only do we need more, more students and stem, we need mawr underrepresented women, minorities, etcetera. We were just talking to John Herstek and integrate gration about this is Do you do you feel is though you're I mean, first of all, the work that you do is awesome, but but I'll go one step further. Do you feel as though it's reaching, um, or diverse base? And how is that going? >>That's a great question. I think research shows that a lot of people get funneled into one kind of track or career path or set of interests really early on in their educational career, and sometimes that that funnel is kind of artificial. And so that's one of the reasons we keep pushing back. Um, so our school systems introducing kindergartners to programming on DSO We're trying to push back how we expose students to engineering and to stem fields as early as possible. And we've definitely seen the first of that in my program. In fact, my engineering program, uh, sprung out of an after school in Extracurricular Science Club that actually three girls started at our school. So I think that actually has helped that three girls started the club that eventually is what led to our engineering programs that sort of baked into the DNA and also our eyes a big public school. And we have about 50% of the students are under the poverty line and we e in Charlottesville, which is a big refugee town. And so I've been adamant from Day one that there are no barriers to entry into the program. There's no test you have to take. You don't have to have be taking a certain level of math or anything like that. That's been a lot of fun. To have a really diverse set of kids enter the program and be successful, >>that's final. That's great to hear. So, Philip, I wanna come back to you. You know, I think about maybe some day we'll be able to go back to a sporting events, and I know when I when I'm in there, there's somebody up on the roof looking out for me, you know, watching the crowd, and they have my back. And I think in many ways, the products that you build, you know, our similar. I may not know they're there, but they're keeping us safe or they're measuring things that that that I don't necessarily see. But I wonder if you could talk about a little bit more detail about the products you build and how they're impacting society. >>Sure, so There are certainly a lot of people who are who are watching, trying to make sure things were going well in keeping you safe that you may or may not be aware of. And we try and support ah lot of them. So we have detectors that are that are deployed in a variety of variety of uses, with a number of agencies and governments that dio like I was saying, ports and border crossing some other interesting applications that are looking for looking for signals that should not be there and working closely to fit into the operations these folks do. Onda. We also have a lot of outreach to researchers and scientists trying to help them support the work they're doing. Um, using neutron detection for soil moisture monitoring is a some really cool opportunities for doing it at large scale and with much less, um, expense or complication than would have been done. Previous technologies. Um, you know, they were talking about collaboration in the previous segment. We've been able to join a number of conferences for that, virtually including one that was supposed to be held in Boston, but another one that was held out of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. And, uh, this is sort of things that in some ways, the pandemic is pushing people towards greater collaboration than they would have been able to do. Had it all but in person. >>Yeah, we did. Uh, the cube did live works a couple years ago in Boston. It was awesome show. And I think, you know, with this whole trend toward digit, I call it the Force march to digital. Thanks to cove it I think that's just gonna continue. Thio grow. Rafael. What if you could describe the process that you use to better understand diseases? And what's your organization's involvement? Been in more detail, addressing the cove in pandemic. >>Um, so so we have the bio be structured in, Um um in a way that foster so the combination of technology and science. So we have to scientific tracks, one about infectious diseases and the other one about understanding just basic human biology, how the human body functions, and especially how the cells in the human body function on how they're organized to create tissues in the body. On Ben, it has this set of platforms. Um, mind is one of them by engineering that are all technology rated. So we have data science platform, all about data analysis, machine learning, things like that. Um, we have a mass spectrometry platform is all about mass spectrometry technologies to, um, exploit those ones in service for the scientist on. We have a genomics platform that it's all about sequencing DNA and are gonna, um and then an advanced microscopy. It's all about developing technologies, uh, to look at things with advanced microscopes and developed technologies to marry computation on microscopy. So, um, the scientists set the agenda and the platforms, we just serve their needs, support their needs, and hopefully develop technologies that help them do their experiments better, faster, or allow them to the experiment that they couldn't do in any other way before. Um And so with cove, it because we have that very strong group of scientists that work on have been working on infectious disease before, and especially in viruses, we've been able to very quickly pivot to working on that s O. For example, my team was able to build pretty quickly a machine to automatically purified proteins on is being used to purify all these different important proteins in the cove. It virus the SARS cov to virus Onda. We're sending some of those purified proteins all over the world. Two scientists that are researching the virus and trying to figure out how to develop vaccines, understand how the virus affects the body and all that. Um, so some of the machines we built are having a very direct impact on this. Um, Also for the copy testing lab, we were able to very quickly develop some very simple machines that allowed the lab to function sort of faster and more efficiently. Sort of had a little bit of automation in places where we couldn't find commercial machines that would do it. >>Um, eso Matt. I mean, you gotta be listening to this and thinking about Okay, So someday your students are gonna be working at organizations like like, like Bio Hub and Silver Side. And you know, a lot of young people they're just don't know about you guys, but like my kids, they're really passionate about changing the world. You know, there's way more important than you know, the financial angles and it z e. I gotta believe you're seeing that you're right in the front lines there. >>Really? Um, in fact, when I started the curriculum six or seven years ago, one of the first bits of feedback I got from my students is they said Okay, this is a lot of fun. So I had my students designing projects and programming microcontrollers raspberry, PiS and order we nose and things like that. The first bit of feedback I got from students was they said Okay, when do we get to impact the world? I've heard engineering >>is about >>making the world a better place, and robots are fun and all, but, you know, where is the real impact? And so um, dude, yeah, thanks to the guidance of my students, I'm baking that Maurin. Now I'm like day one of engineering one. We talk about how the things that the tools they're learning and the skills they're gaining, uh, eventually, you know, very soon could be could be used to make the world a better place. >>You know, we all probably heard that famous line by Jeff Hammer Barker. The greatest minds of my generation are trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads. I think we're really generally generationally, finally, at the point where young students and engineering a really, you know, a passionate about affecting society. I wanna get into the product, you know, side and understand how each of you are using on shape and and the value that that it brings. Maybe Raphael, you could start how long you've been using it. You know, what's your experience with it? Let's let's start there. >>I begin for about two years, and I switched to it with some trepidation. You know, I was used to always using the traditional product that you have to install on your computer, that everybody uses that. So I was kind of locked into that. But I started being very frustrated with the way it worked, um, and decided to give on ship chance. Which reputation? Because any change always, you know, causes anxiety. Um, but very quickly my engineers started loving it, Uh, just because it's it's first of all, the learning curve wasn't very difficult at all. You can transfer from one from the traditional product to entree very quickly and easily. You can learn all the concepts very, very fast. It has all the functionality that we needed and and what's best is that it allows to do things that we couldn't do before or we couldn't do easily. Now we can access the our cat documents from anywhere in the world. Um, so when we're in the lab fabricating something or testing a machine, any computer we have next to us or a tablet or on iPhone, we can pull it up and look at the cad and check things or make changes. That's something that couldn't do before because before you had to pay for every installation off the software for the computer, and I couldn't afford to have 20 installations to have some computers with the cat ready to use them like once every six months would have been very inefficient. So we love that part. And the collaboration features are fantastic, especially now with Kobe, that we have to have all the remote meetings eyes fantastic, that you can have another person drive the cad while the whole team is watching that person change the model and do things and point to things that is absolutely revolutionary. We love it. The fact that you have very, very sophisticated version control before it was always a challenge asking people, please, if you create anniversary and apart, how do we name it so that people find it? And then you end up with all these collection of files with names that nobody ever remembers, what they are, the person left. And now nobody knows which version is the right one. A mess with on shape on the version ING system it has, and the fact that you can go back in history off the document and go back to previous version so easily and then go back to the press and version and explore the history of the part that is truly, um, just world changing for us, that we can do that so easily on for me as a manager to manage this collection of information that is critical for our operations. It makes it so much easier because everything is in one place. I don't have to worry about file servers that go down that I have to administer that have to have I t taken care off that have to figure how to keep access to people to those servers when they're at home, and they need a virtual private network and all of that mess disappears. I just simply give give a person in accounting on shape and then magically, they have access to everything in the way I want. And we can manage the lower documents and everything in a way that is absolutely fantastic. >>Feel what was your what? What were some of the concerns you had mentioned? You had some trepidation. Was it a performance? Was it security? You know some of the traditional cloud stuff, and I'm curious as to how, How, whether any of those act manifested really that you had to manage. What were your concerns? >>Look, the main concern is how long is it going to take for everybody in the team to learn to use the system like it and buy into it? Because I don't want to have my engineers using tools against their will write. I want everybody to be happy because that's how they're productive. They're happy, and they enjoyed the tools they have. That was my main concern. I was a little bit worried about the whole concept of not having the files in a place where I couldn't quote unquote seat in some server and on site, but that That's kind of an outdated concept, right? So that took a little bit of a mind shift, but very quickly. Then I started thinking, Look, I have a lot of documents on Google Drive. Like, I don't worry about that. Why would I worry about my cat on on shape, right? Is the same thing. So I just needed to sort of put things in perspective that way. Um, the other, um, you know, the concern was the learning curve, right? Is like, how is he Will be for everybody to and for me to learn it on whether it had all of the features that we needed. And there were a few features that I actually discussed with, um uh, Cody at on shape on, they were actually awesome about using their scripting language in on shape to sort of mimic some of the features of the old cat, uh, in on, shaped in a way that actually works even better than the old system. So it was It was amazing. Yeah, >>Great. Thank you for that, Philip. What's your experience been? Maybe you could take us through your journey within shape. >>Sure. So we've been we've been using on shaped silver side for coming up on about four years now, and we love it. We're very happy with it. We have a very modular product line, so we make anything from detectors that would go into backpacks. Two vehicles, two very large things that a shipping container would go through and saw. Excuse me. Shape helps us to track and collaborate faster on the design. Have multiple people working a same time on a project. And it also helps us to figure out if somebody else comes to us and say, Hey, I want something new how we congrats modules from things that we already have put them together and then keep track of the design development and the different branches and ideas that we have, how they all fit together. A za design comes together, and it's just been fantastic from a mechanical engineering background. I will also say that having used a number of different systems and solid works was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Before I got using on shape, I went, Wow, this is amazing and I really don't want to design in any other platform. After after getting on Lee, a little bit familiar with it. >>You know, it's funny, right? I'll have the speed of technology progression. I was explaining to some young guns the other day how I used to have a daytime er and that was my life. And if I lost that daytime, er I was dead. And I don't know how we weigh existed without, you know, Google maps eso we get anywhere, I don't know, but, uh but so So, Matt, you know, it's interesting to think about, you know, some of the concerns that Raphael brought up, you hear? For instance, you know, all the time. Wow. You know, I get my Amazon bill at the end of the month that zip through the roof in, But the reality is that Yeah, well, maybe you are doing more, but you're doing things that you couldn't have done before. And I think about your experience in teaching and educating. I mean, you so much more limited in terms of the resource is that you would have had to be able to educate people. So what's your experience been with With on shape and what is it enabled? >>Um, yeah, it was actually talking before we went with on shape. We had a previous CAD program, and I was talking to my vendor about it, and he let me know that we were actually one of the biggest CAD shops in the state. Because if you think about it a really big program, you know, really big company might employ. 5, 10, 15, 20 cad guys, right? I mean, when I worked for a large defense contractor, I think there were probably 20 of us as the cad guys. I now have about 300 students doing cat. So there's probably more students with more hours of cat under their belt in my building than there were when I worked for the big defense contractor. Um, but like you mentioned, uh, probably our biggest hurdle is just re sources. And so we want We want one of things I've always prided myself and trying to do in this. Programs provide students with access two tools and skills that they're going to see either in college or in the real world. So it's one of the reason we went with a big professional cad program. There are, you know, sort of K 12 oriented software and programs and things. But, you know, I want my kids coding and python and using slack and using professional type of tools on DSO when it comes to cat. That's just that That was a really hurt. I mean, you know, you could spend $30,000 on one seat of, you know, professional level cad program, and then you need a $30,000 computer to run it on if you're doing a heavy assemblies, Um and so one of my dreams And it was always just a crazy dream. And I was the way I would always pitcher in my school system and say, someday I'm gonna have a kid on a school issued chromebook in subsidized housing, on public WiFi doing professional level bad and that that was a crazy statement until a couple of years ago. So we're really excited that I literally and you know, March and you said the forced march, the forced march into, you know, modernity, March 13th kids sitting in my engineering lab that we spent a lot of money on doing cad March 14th. Those kids were at home on their school issued chromebooks on public WiFi, uh, keeping their designs going and collaborating. And then, yeah, I could go on and on about some of the things you know, the features that we've learned since then they're even better. So it's not like this is some inferior, diminished version of Academy. There's so much about it. Well, I >>wanna I wanna ask you that I may be over my skis on this, but we're seeing we're starting to see the early days of the democratization of CAD and product design. It is the the citizen engineer, I mean, maybe insulting to the engineers in the room, But but is that we're beginning to see that >>I have to believe that everything moves into the cloud. Part of that is democratization that I don't need. I can whether you know, I think artists, you know, I could have a music studio in my basement with a nice enough software package. And Aiken, I could be a professional for now. My wife's a photographer. I'm not allowed to say that I could be a professional photographer with, you know, some cloud based software, and so, yeah, I do think that's part of what we're seeing is more and more technology is moving to the cloud. >>Philip. Rafael Anything you Dad, >>I think I mean, yeah, that that that combination of cloud based cat and then three d printing that is becoming more and more affordable on ubiquitous It's truly transformative, and I think for education is fantastic. I wish when I was a kid I had the opportunity to play with those kinds of things because I was always the late things. But, you know, the in a very primitive way. So, um, I think this is a dream for kids. Teoh be able to do this. And, um, yeah, there's so many other technologies coming on, like Arduino on all of these electronic things that live kids play at home very cheaply with things that back in my day would have been unthinkable. >>So we know there's a go ahead. Philip, please. >>We had a pandemic and silver site moved to a new manufacturing facility this year. I was just on the shop floor, talking with contractors, standing 6 ft apart, pointing at things. But through it all, our CAD system was completely unruffled. Nothing stopped in our development work. Nothing stopped in our support for existing systems in the field. We didn't have to think about it. We had other server issues, but none with our, you know, engineering cad, platform and product development in support world right ahead, which was cool, but also a in that's point. I think it's just really cool what you're doing with the kids. The most interesting secondary and college level engineering work that I did was project based, taken important problem to the world. Go solve it and that is what we do here. That is what my entire career has been. And I'm super excited to see. See what your students are going to be doing, uh, in there home classrooms on their chromebooks now and what they do building on that. >>Yeah, I'm super excited to see your kids coming out of college with engineering degrees because, yeah, I think that Project based experience is so much better than just sitting in a classroom, taking notes and doing math problems on day. I think it will give the kids a much better flavor. What engineering is really about Think a lot of kids get turned off by engineering because they think it's kind of dry because it's just about the math for some very abstract abstract concept on they are there. But I think the most important thing is just that hands on a building and the creativity off, making things that you can touch that you can see that you can see functioning. >>Great. So, you know, we all know the relentless pace of technology progression. So when you think about when you're sitting down with the folks that on shape and there the customer advisor for one of the things that that you want on shape to do that it doesn't do today >>I could start by saying, I just love some of the things that does do because it's such a modern platform. And I think some of these, uh, some some platforms that have a lot of legacy and a lot of history behind them. I think we're dragging some of that behind them. So it's cool to see a platform that seemed to be developed in the modern era, and so that Z it is the Google docks. And so the fact that collaboration and version ing and link sharing is and like platform agnostic abilities, the fact that that seems to be just built into the nature of the thing so far, That's super exciting. As far as things that, uh, to go from there, Um, I don't know, >>Other than price. >>You can't say >>I >>can't say lower price. >>Yeah, so far on P. D. C. S that work with us. Really? Well, so I'm not complaining. There you there, >>right? Yeah. Yeah. No gaps, guys. Whitespace, Come on. >>We've been really enjoying the three week update. Cadence. You know, there's a new version every three weeks and we don't have to install it. We just get all the latest and greatest goodies. One of the trends that we've been following and enjoying is the the help with a revision management and release work flows. Um, and I know that there's more than on shape is working on that we're very excited for, because that's a big important part about making real hardware and supporting it in the field. Something that was cool. They just integrated Cem markup capability. In the last release that took, we were doing that anyway, but we were doing it outside of on shapes. And now we get to streamline our workflow and put it in the CAD system where We're making those changes anyway when we're reviewing drawings and doing this kind of collaboration. And so I think from our perspective, we continue to look forward. Toa further progress on that. There's a lot of capability in the cloud that I think they're just kind of scratching the surface on you, >>right? I would. I mean, you're you're asking to knit. Pick. I would say one of the things that I would like to see is is faster regeneration speed. There are a few times with convicts, necessities that regenerating the document takes a little longer than I would like. It's not a serious issue, but anyway, I I'm being spoiled, >>you know? That's good. I've been doing this a long time, and I like toe ask that question of practitioners and to me, it It's a signal like when you're nit picking and that's what you're struggling to knit. Pick that to me is a sign of a successful product, and and I wonder, I don't know, uh, have the deep dive into the architecture. But are things like alternative processors. You're seeing them hit the market in a big way. Uh, you know, maybe helping address the challenge, But I'm gonna ask you the big, chewy question now. Then we maybe go to some audience questions when you think about the world's biggest problems. I mean, we're global pandemics, obviously top of mind. You think about nutrition, you know, feeding the global community. We've actually done a pretty good job of that. But it's not necessarily with the greatest nutrition, climate change, alternative energy, the economic divides. You've got geopolitical threats and social unrest. Health care is a continuing problem. What's your vision for changing the world and how product innovation for good and be applied to some of the the problems that that you all are passionate about? Big question. Who wants toe start? >>Not biased. But for years I've been saying that if you want to solve the economy, the environment, uh, global unrest, pandemics, education is the case. If you wanna. If you want to, um, make progress in those in those realms, I think funding funding education is probably gonna pay off pretty well. >>Absolutely. And I think Stam is key to that. I mean, all of the ah lot of the well being that we have today and then industrialized countries. Thanks to science and technology, right improvements in health care, improvements in communication, transportation, air conditioning. Um, every aspect of life is touched by science and technology. So I think having more kids studying and understanding that is absolutely key. Yeah, I agree, >>Philip, you got anything to add? >>I think there's some big technical problems in the world today, Raphael and ourselves there certainly working on a couple of them. Think they're also collaboration problems and getting everybody to be able to pull together instead of pulling separately and to be able to spur the ideas on words. So that's where I think the education side is really exciting. What Matt is doing and it just kind of collaboration in general when we could do provide tools to help people do good work. Uh, that is, I think, valuable. >>Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And along those lines, we have some projects that are about creating very low cost instruments for low research settings, places in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, so that they can do, um, um, biomedical research that it's difficult to do in those place because they don't have the money to buy the fancy lab machines that cost $30,000 an hour. Um, so we're trying to sort of democratize some of those instruments. And I think thanks to tools like Kahn shape then is easier, for example, to have a conversation with somebody in Africa and show them the design that we have and discuss the details of it with them on. But it's amazing, right to have somebody, you know, 10 time zones away, Um, looking really life in real time with you about your design and discussing the details or teaching them how to build a machine, right? Because, um, you know, they have a three D printer. You can you can just give them the design and say like, you build it yourself, uh, even cheaper than and, you know, also billing and shipping it there. Um, so all that that that aspect of it is also super important. I think for any of these efforts to improve some of the hardest part was in the world for climate change. Do you say, as you say, poverty, nutrition issues? Um, you know, availability of water. You have that project at about finding water. Um, if we can also help deploy technologies that teach people remotely how to create their own technologies or how to build their own systems that will help them solve those forms locally. I think that's very powerful. >>Yeah, the point about education is right on. I think some people in the audience may be familiar with the work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the second machine age where they sort of put forth the premise that, uh, is it laid it out. Look, for the first time in history, machines air replacing humans from a cognitive perspective. Machines have always replaced humans, but that's gonna have an impact on jobs. But the answer is not toe protect the past from the future. The answer is education and public policy that really supports that. So I couldn't agree more. I think it's a really great point. Um, we have We do have some questions from the audience. If if we could If I can ask you guys, um, you know, this one kind of stands out. How do you see artificial intelligence? I was just talking about machine intelligence. Um, how do you see that? Impacting the design space guys trying to infuse a I into your product development. Can you tell me? >>Um, absolutely, like, we're using AI for some things, including some of these very low cost instruments that will hopefully help us diagnose certain diseases, especially this is that are very prevalent in the Third World. Um, and some of those diagnostics are these days done by thes armies of technicians that are trained to look under the microscope. But, um, that's a very slow process. Is very error prone and having machine learning systems that can to the same diagnosis faster, cheaper and also little machines that can be taken to very remote places to these villages that have no access to a fancy microscope. To look at a sample from a patient that's very powerful. And I we don't do this, but I have read quite a bit about how certain places air using a Tribune attorneys to actually help them optimize designs for parts. So you get these very interesting looking parts that you would have never thought off a person would have never thought off, but that are incredibly light ink. Earlier, strong and I have all sort of properties that are interesting thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning in particular >>yet another. The advantage you get when when your work is in the cloud I've seen. I mean, there's just so many applications that so if the radiology scan is in the cloud and the radiologist is goes to bed at night, Radiologist could come in in the morning and and say, Oh, the machine while you were sleeping was using artificial intelligence to scan these 40,000 images. And here's the five that we picked out that we think you should take a closer look at. Or like Raphael said, I can design my part. My, my, my, my, my you know, mount or bracket or whatever and go to sleep. And then I wake up in the morning. The machine has improved. It for me has made it strider strider stronger and lighter. Um And so just when your when your work is in the cloud, that's just that's a really cool advantage that you get that you can have machines doing some of your design work for you. >>Yeah, we've been watching, uh, you know, this week is this month, I guess is AWS re invent and it's just amazing to see how much effort is coming around machine learning machine intelligence. You know Amazon has sage maker Google's got, you know, embedded you no ML and big query. Uh, certainly Microsoft with Azure is doing tons of stuff and machine learning. I think the point there is that that these things will be infused in tow R and D and in tow software product by the vendor community. And you all will apply that to your business and and build value through the unique data that your collecting, you know, in your ecosystems. And and that's how you add value. You don't have to be necessarily, you know, developers of artificial intelligence, but you have to be practitioners to apply that. Does that make sense to you, Philip? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I think your point about value is really well chosen. We see AI involved from the physics simulations all the way up to interpreting radiation data, and that's where the value question, I think, is really important because it's is the output of the AI giving helpful information that the people that need to be looking at it. So if it's curating a serious of radiation alert, saying, Hey, like these air the anomalies. You need to look at eyes it, doing that in a way that's going to help a good response on. In some cases, the II is only as good as the people. That sort of gave it a direction and turn it loose. And you want to make sure that you don't have biases or things like that underlying your AI that they're going to result in less than helpful outcomes coming from it. So we spend quite a lot of time thinking about how do we provide the right outcomes to people who are who are relying on our systems? >>That's a great point, right? Humans air biased and humans build models, so models are inherently biased. But then the software is hitting the market. That's gonna help us identify those biases and help us, you know? Of course. Correct. So we're entering Cem some very exciting times, guys. Great conversation. I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us and sharing with our audience the innovations that you're bringing to help the world. So thanks again. >>Thank you so much. >>Thank you. >>Okay. Welcome. Okay. When we come back, John McElheny is gonna join me. He's on shape. Co founder. And he's currently the VP of strategy at PTC. He's gonna join the program. We're gonna take a look at what's next and product innovation. I'm Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader. Digital technology event coverage. We'll be right back. >>Okay? Okay. Yeah. Okay. >>From around >>the globe, it's the Cube. Presenting innovation for good. Brought to you by on shape. >>Okay, welcome back to innovation. For good. With me is John McElheny, who is one of the co founders of On Shape and is now the VP of strategy at PTC. John, it's good to see you. Thanks for making the time to come on the program. Thanks, Dave. So we heard earlier some of the accomplishments that you've made since the acquisition. How has the acquisition affected your strategy? Maybe you could talk about what resource is PTC brought to the table that allowed you toe sort of rethink or evolve your strategy? What can you share with us? >>Sure. You know, a year ago, when when John and myself met with Jim Pepperman early on is we're we're pondering. Started joining PTC one of things became very clear is that we had a very clear shared vision about how we could take the on shape platform and really extended for, for all of the PTC products, particular sort of their augmented reality as well as their their thing works or the i o. T business and their product. And so from the very beginning there was a clear strategy about taking on shape, extending the platform and really investing, um, pretty significantly in the product development as well as go to market side of things, uh, toe to bring on shape out to not only the PTC based but sort of the broader community at large. So So So PTC has been a terrific, terrific, um, sort of partner as we've we've gonna go on after this market together. Eso We've added a lot of resource and product development side of things. Ah, lot of resource and they go to market and customer success and support. So, really, on many fronts, that's been both. Resource is as well a sort of support at the corporate level from from a strategic standpoint and then in the field, we've had wonderful interactions with many large enterprise customers as well as the PTC channels. So it's been really a great a great year. >>Well, and you think about the challenges of in your business going to SAS, which you guys, you know, took on that journey. You know, 78 years ago. Uh, it's not trivial for a lot of companies to make that transition, especially a company that's been around as long as PTC. So So I'm wondering how much you know, I was just asking you How about what PCP TC brought to the table? E gotta believe you're bringing a lot to the table to in terms of the mindset, uh, even things is, is mundane is not the right word, but things like how you compensate salespeople, how you interact with customers, the notion of a service versus a product. I wonder if you could address >>that. Yeah, it's a it's a really great point. In fact, after we had met Jim last year, John and I one of the things we walked out in the seaport area in Boston, one of things we sort of said is, you know, Jim really gets what we're trying to do here and and part of let me bring you into the thinking early on. Part of what Jim talked about is there's lots of, you know, installed base sort of software that's inside of PTC base. That's helped literally thousands of customers around the world. But the idea of moving to sass and all that it entails both from a technology standpoint but also a cultural standpoint. Like How do you not not just compensate the sales people as an example? But how do you think about customer success? In the past, it might have been that you had professional services that you bring out to a customer, help them deploy your solutions. Well, when you're thinking about a SAS based offering, it's really critical that you get customers successful with it. Otherwise, you may have turned, and you know it will be very expensive in terms of your business long term. So you've got to get customers success with software in the very beginning. So you know, Jim really looked at on shape and he said that John and I, from a cultural standpoint, you know, a lot of times companies get acquired and they've acquired technology in the past that they integrate directly into into PTC and then sort of roll it out through their products, are there just reached channel, he said. In some respects, John John, think about it as we're gonna take PTC and we want to integrate it into on shape because we want you to share with us both on the sales side and customer success on marketing on operations. You know all the things because long term, we believe the world is a SAS world, that the whole industry is gonna move too. So really, it was sort of an inverse in terms of the thought process related to normal transactions >>on That makes a lot of sense to me. You mentioned Sharon turns the silent killer of a SAS company, and you know, there's a lot of discussion, you know, in the entrepreneurial community because you live this, you know what's the best path? I mean today, You see, you know, if you watch Silicon Valley double, double, triple triple, but but there's a lot of people who believe, and I wonder, if you come in there is the best path to, you know, in the X Y axis. If if it's if it's uh, growth on one and retention on the other axis. What's the best way to get to the upper right on? Really? The the best path is probably make sure you've nailed obviously the product market fit, But make sure that you can retain customers and then throw gas on the fire. You see a lot of companies they burn out trying to grow too fast, but they haven't figured out, you know that. But there's too much churn. They haven't figured out those metrics. I mean, obviously on shape. You know, you were sort of a pioneer in here. I gotta believe you've figured out that customer retention before you really, You know, put the pedal to the >>metal. Yeah, and you know, growth growth can mask a lot of things, but getting getting customers, especially the engineering space. Nobody goes and sits there and says, Tomorrow we're gonna go and and, you know, put 100 users on this and and immediately swap out all of our existing tools. These tools are very rich and deep in terms of capability, and they become part of the operational process of how a company designs and builds products. So any time anybody is actually going through the purchasing process. Typically, they will run a try along or they'll run a project where they look at. Kind of What? What is this new solution gonna help them dio. How are we gonna orient ourselves for success? Longer term. So for us, you know, getting new customers and customer acquisition is really critical. But getting those customers to actually deploy the solution to be successful with it. You know, we like to sort of, say, the marketing or the lead generation and even some of the initial sales. That's sort of like the Kindle ing. But the fire really starts when customers deploy it and get successful. The solution because they bring other customers into the fold. And then, of course, if they're successful with it, you know, then in fact, you have negative turn which, ironically, means growth in terms of your inside of your install. Bates. >>Right? And you've seen that with some of the emerging, you know, SAS companies, where you're you're actually you know, when you calculate whatever its net retention or renew ALS, it's actually from a dollar standpoint. It's up in the high nineties or even over 100%. >>So >>and that's a trend we're gonna continue. See, I >>wonder >>if we could sort of go back. Uh, and when you guys were starting on shape, some of the things that you saw that you were trying to strategically leverage and what's changed, you know, today we were talking. I was talking to John earlier about in a way, you kinda you kinda got a blank slate is like doing another startup. >>You're >>not. Obviously you've got installed base and customers to service, but But it's a new beginning for you guys. So one of the things that you saw then you know, cloud and and sas and okay, but that's we've been there, done that. What are you seeing? You know today? >>Well, you know, So So this is a journey, of course, that that on shape on its own has gone through it had I'll sort of say, you know, several iterations, both in terms of of of, you know, how do you How do you get customers? How do you How do you get them successful? How do you grow those customers? And now that we've been part of PTC, the question becomes okay. One, There is certainly a higher level of credibility that helps us in terms of our our megaphone is much bigger than it was when we're standalone company. But on top of that now, figuring out how to work with their channel with their direct sales force, you know, they have, um, for example, you know, very large enterprises. Well, many of those customers are not gonna go in forklift out their existing solution to replace it with with on shape. However, many of them do have challenges in their supply chain and communications with contractors and vendors across the globe. And so, you know, finding our fit inside of those large enterprises as they extend out with their their customers is a very interesting area that we've really been sort of incremental to to PTC. And then, you know, they they have access to lots of other technology, like the i o. T business. And now, of course, the augmented reality business that that we can bring things to bear. For example, in the augmented reality world, they've they've got something called expert capture. And this is essentially imagine, you know, in a are ah, headset that allows you to be ableto to speak to it, but also capture images still images in video. And you could take somebody who's doing their task and capture literally the steps that they're taking its geo location and from their builds steps for new employees to be, we'll learn and understand how todo use that technology to help them do their job better. Well, when they do that, if there is replacement products or variation of of some of the tools that that they built the original design instruction set for they now have another version. Well, they have to manage multiple versions. Well, that's what on shape is really great at doing and so taking our technology and helping their solutions as well. So it's not only expanding our customer footprint, it's expanding the application footprint in terms of how we can help them and help customers. >>So that leads me to the tam discussion and again, as part of your strategist role. How do you think about that? Was just talking to some of your customers earlier about the democratization of cat and engineering? You know, I kind of joked, sort of like citizen engineering, but but so that you know, the demographics are changing the number of users potentially that can access the products because the it's so much more of a facile experience. How are you thinking about the total available market? >>It really is a great question, You know, it used to be when you when you sold boxes of software, it was how many engineers were out there. And that's the size of the market. The fact that matter is now when, When you think about access to that information, that data is simply a pane of glass. Whether it's a computer, whether it's a laptop, UH, a a cell phone or whether it's a tablet, the ability to to use different vehicles, access information and data expands the capabilities and power of a system to allow feedback and iteration. I mean, one of the one of the very interesting things is in technology is when you can take something and really unleash it to a larger audience and builds, you know, purpose built applications. You can start to iterate, get better feedback. You know there's a classic case in the clothing industry where Zara, you know, is a fast sort of turnaround. Agile manufacturer. And there was a great New York Times article written a couple years ago. My wife's a fan of Zara, and I think she justifies any purchases by saying, You know, Zara, you gotta purchase it now. Otherwise it may not be there the next time. Yet you go back to the store. They had some people in a store in New York that had this woman's throw kind of covering Shaw. And they said, Well, it would be great if we could have this little clip here so we can hook it through or something. And they sent a note back toe to the factory in Spain, and literally two weeks later they had, you know, 4000 of these things in store, and they sold out because they had a closed loop and iterative process. And so if we could take information and allow people access in multiple ways through different devices and different screens, that could be very specific information that, you know, we remove a lot of the engineering data book, bring the end user products conceptually to somebody that would have had to wait months to get the actual physical prototype, and we could get feedback well, Weaken have a better chance of making sure whatever product we're building is the right product when it ultimately gets delivered to a customer. So it's really it's a much larger market that has to be thought of rather than just the kind of selling A boxes software to an engineer. >>That's a great story. And again, it's gonna be exciting for you guys to see that with. The added resource is that you have a PTC, Um, so let's talk. I promise people we wanna talk about Atlas. Let's talk about the platform. A little bit of Atlas was announced last year. Atlas. For those who don't know it's a SAS space platform, it purports to go beyond product lifecycle management and you You're talking cloud like agility and scale to CAD and product design. But John, you could do a better job than I. What do >>we need to know about Atlas? Well, I think Atlas is a great description because it really is metaphorically sort of holding up all of the PTC applications themselves. But from the very beginning, when John and I met with Jim, part of what we were intrigued about was that he shared a vision that on shape was more than just going to be a cad authoring tool that, in fact, you know, in the past these engineering tools were very powerful, but they were very narrow in their purpose and focus. And we had specialty applications to manage the versions, etcetera. What we did in on shape is we kind of inverted that thinking. We built this collaboration and sharing engine at the core and then kind of wrap the CAD system around it. But that collaboration sharing and version ING engine is really powerful. And it was that vision that Jim had that he shared that we had from the beginning, which was, how do we take this thing to make a platform that could be used for many other applications inside of inside of any company? And so not only do we have a partner application area that is is much like the APP store or Google play store. Uh, that was sort of our first Stan Shih ation of this. This this platform. But now we're extending out to broader applications and much meatier applications. And internally, that's the thing works in the in the augmented reality. But there'll be other applications that ultimately find its way on top of this platform. And so they'll get all the benefits of of the collaboration, sharing the version ing the multi platform, multi device. And that's an extremely extremely, um, strategic leverage point for the company. >>You know, it's interesting, John, you mentioned the seaport before. So PTC, for those who don't know, built a beautiful facility down at the Seaport in Boston. And, of course, when PTC started, you know, back in the mid 19 eighties, there was nothing at the seaport s. >>So it's >>kind of kind of ironic, you know, we were way seeing the transformation of the seaport. We're seeing the transformation of industry and of course, PTC. And I'm sure someday you'll get back into that beautiful office, you know? Wait. Yeah, I'll bet. And, uh and but I wanna bring this up because I want I want you to talk about the future. How you how you see that our industry and you've observed this has moved from very product centric, uh, plat platform centric with sass and cloud. And now we're seeing ecosystems form around those products and platforms and data flowing through the ecosystem powering, you know, new innovation. I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of what the future looks like to you from your vantage point. >>Yeah, I think one of the key words you said there is data because up until now, data for companies really was sort of trapped in different applications. And it wasn't because people were nefarious and they want to keep it limited. It was just the way in which things were built. And, you know, when people use an application like on shape, what ends up happening is there their day to day interaction and everything that they do is actually captured by the platform. And, you know, we don't have access to that data. Of course it's it's the customer's data. But as as an artifact of them using the system than doing their day to day job, what's happening is they're creating huge amounts of information that can then be accessed and analyzed to help them both improve their design process, improve their efficiencies, improve their actual schedules in terms of making sure they can hit delivery times and be able to understand where there might be roadblocks in the future. So the way I see it is companies now are deploying SAS based tools like on shape and an artifact of them. Using that platform is that they have now analytics and tools to better understand and an instrument and manage their business. And then from there, I think you're going to see, because these systems are all you know extremely well. Architected allow through, you know, very structured AP. I calls to connect other SAS based applications. You're gonna start seeing closed loop sort of system. So, for example, people design using on shape, they end up going and deploying their system or installing it, or people use the end using products. People then may call back into the customers support line and report issues, problems, challenges. They'll be able to do traceability back to the underlying design. They'll be able to do trend analysis and defect analysis from the support lines and tie it back and closed loop the product design, manufacture, deployment in the field sort of cycles. In addition, you can imagine there's many things that air sort of as designed. But then when people go on site and they have to install it. There's some alterations modifications. Think about think about like a large air conditioning units for buildings. You go and you go to train and you get a large air conditioning unit that put up on top of building with a crane. They have to build all kinds of adaptors to make sure that that will fit inside of the particulars of that building. You know, with on shape and tools like this, you'll be able to not only take the design of what the air conditioning system might be, but also the all the adapter plates, but also how they installed it. So it sort of as designed as manufactured as stalled. And all these things can be traced, just like if you think about the transformation of customer service or customer contacts. In the early days, you used to have tools that were PC based tools called contact management solution, you know, kind of act or gold mine. And these were basically glorified Elektronik role in Texas. It had a customer names and they had phone numbers and whatever else. And Salesforce and Siebel, you know, these types of systems really broadened out the perspective of what a customer relationship? Waas. So it wasn't just the contact information it was, you know, How did they come to find out about you as a company? So all of the pre sort of marketing and then kind of what happens after they become a customer and it really was a 3 60 view. I think that 3 60 view gets extended to not just to the customers, but also tools and the products they use. And then, of course, the performance information that could come back to the manufacturer. So, you know, as an engineer, one of the things you learn about with systems is the following. And if you remember, when the CD first came out CDs that used to talk about four times over sampling or eight times over sampling and it was really kind of, you know, the fidelity the system. And we know from systems theory that the best way to improve the performance of a system is to actually have more feedback. The more feedback you have, the better system could be. And so that's why you get 16 60 for example, etcetera. Same thing here. The more feedback we have of different parts of a company that a better performance, The company will be better customer relationships. Better, uh, overall financial performance as well. So that's that's the view I have of how these systems all tied together. >>It's a great vision in your point about the data is I think right on. It used to be so fragmented in silos, and in order to take a system view, you've gotta have a system view of the data. Now, for years, we've optimized maybe on one little component of the system and that sometimes we lose sight of the overall outcome. And so what you just described, I think is, I think sets up. You know very well as we exit. Hopefully soon we exit this this covert era on John. I hope that you and I can sit down face to face at a PTC on shape event in the near term >>in the seaport in the >>seaport would tell you that great facility toe have have an event for sure. It >>z wonderful >>there. So So John McElhinney. Thanks so much for for participating in the program. It was really great to have you on, >>right? Thanks, Dave. >>Okay. And I want to thank everyone for participating. Today we have some great guest speakers. And remember, this is a live program. So give us a little bit of time. We're gonna flip this site over toe on demand mode so you can share it with your colleagues and you, or you can come back and and watch the sessions that you heard today. Uh, this is Dave Volonte for the Cube and on shape PTC. Thank you so much for watching innovation for good. Be well, Have a great holiday. And we'll see you next time. Yeah.

Published Date : Dec 10 2020

SUMMARY :

for good, brought to you by on shape. I'm coming to you from our studios outside of Boston. Why did you and your co founders start on shape? Big changes in this market and about, you know, a little Before It's been, you know, when you get acquired, You've got a passion for the babies that you you helped birth. And you know, I look back Sure to enjoy And and you were and still are a What kept me in the room, you know, in terms of the industrial world was seeing And you just launched construct capital this year, right in the middle of a pandemic and you know, half of the GDP in the US and have been very under invested. And I want to understand why you feel it's important to be early. so I like to work with founders and teams when they're, you know, Uh, and one of you could sort of connect the dots over time. you try to eliminate the risk Sa's much as you can, but I always say, I don't mind taking a risk And I could see the problems You know, a few years ago, people were like cloud, you know, And now even embracement in the cova driven new normal. And and but But, you know, the bet was on the SAS model was right for Crick had and I think you know, the closer you get to the shop floor in the production environment. So let's bring it, you know, toe today's you know, I didn't exit anything. know, I love you and I don't like that term exit. It's not just the technology is how you go to market and the whole business being run and how you support You know, a lot of baggage, you know, our customers pulling you in a lot of different directions I mentioned the breath of the product with new things PTC the SAS components of on shape for things like revision management And you get good pipeline from that. Um, Aziz, John will tell you I'm constantly one of the questions is for the dream team. pipeline to us in the world of some new things that are happening that we wouldn't see if you know you've shown Are you able to reach? And so the teacher can say to the students, They have to have Internet access, you know, going forward. Thank you. Okay, so thank you guys. Brought to you by on shape. where you don't want them, So this should be really interesting. Okay, let me ask each of you because you're all doing such interesting and compelling San Francisco, Stanford University and the University California Berkeley on. it was announced at the end of 2016, and we actually started operation with at the beginning of 2017, I mean, these things take time. of course, that's you mentioned now with co vid, um, we've been able to do a lot of very cool Now, Now, Philip, you What you do is mind melting. And as you might imagine, there's some really cool applications do. We do both its's to plowshares. kind of scaling the brain power for for the future. Uh, you know, graduating after senior year with, like, seven years of engineering under their belt I mean, you know, Cuba's. And so that's one of the reasons we keep pushing back. And I think in many ways, the products that you build, you know, our similar. Um, you know, they were talking about collaboration in the previous segment. And I think, you know, with this whole trend toward digit, I call it the Force march to digital. and especially how the cells in the human body function on how they're organized to create tissues You know, there's way more important than you know, the financial angles one of the first bits of feedback I got from my students is they said Okay, this is a lot of fun. making the world a better place, and robots are fun and all, but, you know, where is the real impact? I wanna get into the product, you know, side and understand how each of that person change the model and do things and point to things that is absolutely revolutionary. What were some of the concerns you had mentioned? Um, the other, um, you know, the concern was the learning curve, right? Maybe you could take us through your journey within I want something new how we congrats modules from things that we already have put them together And I don't know how we weigh existed without, you know, Google maps eso we I mean, you know, you could spend $30,000 on one seat wanna I wanna ask you that I may be over my skis on this, but we're seeing we're starting to see the early days I can whether you know, I think artists, you know, But, you know, So we know there's a go ahead. it. We had other server issues, but none with our, you know, engineering cad, the creativity off, making things that you can touch that you can see that you can see one of the things that that you want on shape to do that it doesn't do today abilities, the fact that that seems to be just built into the nature of the thing so There you there, right? There's a lot of capability in the cloud that I mean, you're you're asking to knit. of the the problems that that you all are passionate about? But for years I've been saying that if you want to solve the I mean, all of the ah lot to be able to pull together instead of pulling separately and to be able to spur the Um, you know, availability of water. you guys, um, you know, this one kind of stands out. looking parts that you would have never thought off a person would have never thought off, And here's the five that we picked out that we think you should take a closer look at. You don't have to be necessarily, you know, developers of artificial intelligence, And you want to make sure that you don't have biases or things like that I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us and sharing And he's currently the VP of strategy at PTC. Okay. Brought to you by on shape. Thanks for making the time to come on the program. And so from the very beginning not the right word, but things like how you compensate salespeople, how you interact with customers, In the past, it might have been that you had professional services that you bring out to a customer, I mean today, You see, you know, if you watch Silicon Valley double, And then, of course, if they're successful with it, you know, then in fact, you have negative turn which, know, when you calculate whatever its net retention or renew ALS, it's actually from a dollar standpoint. and that's a trend we're gonna continue. some of the things that you saw that you were trying to strategically leverage and what's changed, So one of the things that you saw then you know, cloud and and sas and okay, And this is essentially imagine, you know, in a are ah, headset that allows you to but but so that you know, the demographics are changing the number that could be very specific information that, you know, we remove a lot of the engineering data book, And again, it's gonna be exciting for you guys to see that with. tool that, in fact, you know, in the past these engineering tools were very started, you know, back in the mid 19 eighties, there was nothing at the seaport s. I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of what the future looks like to you from your vantage point. In the early days, you used to have tools that were PC I hope that you and I can sit down face to face at seaport would tell you that great facility toe have have an event for sure. It was really great to have you on, right? And we'll see you next time.

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Rafael Gómez-Sjöberg, Philip Taber and Dr. Matt Shields | Onshape Innovation For Good


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting innovation for good. Brought to you by on shape. >>Okay, we're back. This is Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good. A program on Cuba 3 65 made possible by on shape of BTC company. We're live today really live TV, which is the heritage of the Cuban. Now we're gonna go to the sources and talkto on shape customers to find out how they're applying technology to create real world innovations that are changing the world. So let me introduce our panel members. Rafael Gomez Fribourg is with the Chan Zuckerberg bio hub. A very big idea. And collaborative nonprofit was initiative that was funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, and really around diagnosing and curing and better managing infectious diseases. So really timely topic. Philip Tabor is also joining us. He's with silver side detectors which develops neutron detective detection systems. Yet you want to know if early if neutrons and radiation or in places where you don't want them, so this should be really interesting. And last but not least, Matthew Shields is with the Charlottesville schools and is gonna educate us on how he and his team are educating students in the use of modern engineering tools and techniques. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cuban to the program. This should be really interesting. Thanks for coming on. >>Hi. Or pleasure >>for having us. >>You're very welcome. Okay, let me ask each of you because you're all doing such interesting and compelling work. Let's start with Rafael. Tell us more about the bio hub and your role there, please. >>Okay. Yes. As you said, the Bio Hope is a nonprofit research institution, um, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Um and our main mission is to develop new technologies to help advance medicine and help, hopefully cure and manage diseases. Um, we also have very close collaborations with Universe California, San Francisco, Stanford University and the University California Berkeley on. We tried to bring those universities together, so they collaborate more of biomedical topics. And I manage a team of engineers in by joining platform. Um, and we're tasked with creating instruments for the laboratory to help the scientist boats inside the organization and also in the partner universities do their experiments in better ways in ways that they couldn't do before >>in this edition was launched five years ago. It >>was announced at the end of 2016, and we actually started operations in the beginning of 2017, which is when I joined um, so this is our third year. >>And how's how's it going? How does it work? I mean, these things >>take time. It's been a fantastic experience. Uh, the organization works beautifully. Um, it was amazing to see it grow from the beginning. I was employee number 12, I think eso When I came in, it was just a nem p off his building and MP labs. And very quickly we had something running about from anything. Eso I'm very proud of the work that we have done to make that possible. Um And then, of course, that's you mentioned now, with co vid, um, we've been able to do a lot of very cool work, um, very being of the pandemic In March, when there was a deficit of testing, uh, capacity in California, we spun up a testing laboratory in record time in about a week. It was crazy. It was a crazy project. Um, but but incredibly satisfying. And we ended up running all the way until the beginning of November, when the lab was finally shut down, we could process about 3000 samples a day. I think at the end of it all, we were able to test about 100 on the road, 150,000 samples from all over the state. We were providing free testing toe all of the Department of Public Health Department of Public Health in California, which, at the media pandemic, had no way to do testing affordably and fast. So I think that was a great service to the state. Now the state has created a testing system that will serve those departments. So then we decided that it was unnecessary to keep going with testing in the other biopsy that would shut down, >>right? Thank you for that. Now, Now, Philip, you What you do is mind melting. You basically helped keep the world safe. Maybe you describe a little bit more about silver side detectors and what your role is there and how it all works. >>Tour. So we make a nuclear bomb detectors and we also make water detectors. So we try and do our part. Thio Keep the world from blowing up and make it a better place at the same time. Both of these applications use neutron radiation detectors. That's what we make. Put them out by a port border crossing Places like that they can help make sure that people aren't smuggling, shall we say, very bad things. Um, there's also a burgeoning field of research and application where you can use neutrons with some pretty cool physics to find water so you can do things like but a detector up in the mountains and measure snowpack. Put it out in the middle of the field and measure soil moisture content. And as you might imagine, there's some really cool applications in, uh, research and agronomy and public policy for this. >>All right, so it's OK, so it's It's much more than you know, whatever fighting terrorism, it's there's a riel edge, or I kind of i o t application for what you guys do. >>You do both Zito shares. You might >>say a mat. I I look at your role is kind of scaling the brain power for for the future. Maybe tell us more about Charlottesville schools and in the mission that you're pursuing and what you do. >>Thank you. Um, I've been in Charlottesville city schools for about 11 or 12 years. I started their teaching, Um, a handful of classes, math and science and things like that. But Thescore board and my administration had the crazy idea of starting an engineering program about seven years ago. My background is an engineering is an engineering. My masters is in mechanical and aerospace engineering. And, um, I basically spent a summer kind of coming up with what might be a fun engineering curriculum for our students. And it started with just me and 30 students about seven years ago, Um, kind of a home spun from scratch curriculum. One of my goals from the outside was to be a completely project based curriculum, and it's now grown. We probably have about six or 700 students, five or six full time teachers. We now have pre engineering going on at the 5th and 6th grade level. I now have students graduating. Uh, you know, graduating after senior year with, like, seven years of engineering under their belt and heading off to doing some pretty cool stuff. So it's It's been a lot of fun building up a program and, um, and learning a lot in the process. >>That's awesome. I mean, you know, Cuba's. We've been passionate about things like women in tech, uh, diversity stem. You know, not only do we need more more students in stem, we need mawr underrepresented women, minorities, etcetera. We were just talking to John her stock and integrate Grayson about this is do you do you feel is though you're I mean, first of all, the work that you do is awesome, but but I'll go one step further. Do you feel as though it's reaching, um, or, you know, diverse base and And how is that going? >>That's a great question. I think research shows that a lot of people get funneled into one kind of track or career path or set of interests really early on in their educational career. And sometimes that that funnels kind of artificial. And so that's one of the reasons we keep pushing back. Um, so our school systems introducing kindergartners to programming on DSO. We're trying to push back how we expose students to engineering and to stem fields as early as possible, and we've definitely seen the fruits of that in my program. In fact, my engineering program, uh, sprung out of an after school in Extracurricular Science Club that actually three girls started at our school. So I think that actually has helped that three girls started the club That eventually is what led our engineering programs that sort of baked into the DNA and also are a big public school. And we have about 50% of the students are under the poverty line, and we should I mean, Charlottesville, which is a big refugee town. And so I've been adamant from Day one that there are no barriers to entry into the program. There's no test you have to take. You don't have to have be taking a certain level of math or anything like that. That's been a lot of fun. To have a really diverse set of kids and or the program and be successful, >>that's phenomenal. That's great to hear. So, Philip, I wanna come back to you. You know, I think about maybe some day we'll be able to go back to a sporting events, and I know when I when I'm in there, there's somebody up on the roof looking out for me, you know, watching the crowd. And they have my back. And I think in many ways, the products that you build, you know, our similar I may not know they're there, but they're keeping us safe or they're measuring things that that that I don't necessarily see. But I wonder if you could talk about a little bit more detail about the products you build and how they're impacting society. >>Sure, So there are certainly a lot of people who are who are watching, trying to make sure things were going well in keeping you safe that you may or may not be aware of. And we try and support ah lot of them. So we have detectors that are that are deployed in a variety of variety of uses with a number of agencies and governments that dio like I was saying, ports and border crossing some other interesting applications that are looking for looking for signals that should not be there and working closely to fit into the operations these folks do Onda. We also have ah lot of outreach to researchers and scientists trying to help them support the work they're doing, um, using neutron detection for soil moisture monitoring is a some really cool opportunities for doing it at large scale and with much less, um, expense or complication then would have been done previous technologies. Mhm. You know, they were talking about collaboration in the previous segment. We've been able to join a number of conferences for that, virtually including one that was supposed to be held in Boston. But another one that was held, uh, of the University of Heidelberg in Germany. And, uh, this is sort of things that in some ways, the pandemic is pushing people towards greater collaboration than there would have been able to do. Had it all but in person. >>Yeah, we did. Uh, the cube did live works a couple years ago in Boston. It was awesome show. And I think, you know, with this whole trend toward digit, I call it the forced march to digital. Thanks to cove it I think that's just gonna continue. Thio grow Raphael one. If you could describe the process that you used to better understand diseases and what's your organization's involvement? Been in more detail, addressing the cove in pandemic. >>Um, so so we have the bio be structured in, Um um, in a way that foster So the combination of technology and science. So we have to scientific tracks, one about infectious diseases and the other one about understanding just basic human biology how the human body functions and especially how the cells in the human body function on how they're organized to create teachers in the body. Um, and then it has the set of platforms. Um, mind is one of them by engineering that are all technology. Read it. So we have data science platform, all about data analysis, machine learning, things like that. Um, we have a mass spectrometry platform is all about mass spectrometry technologies to, um, exploit those ones in service for the scientists on. We have a genomics platform. That is all about sequencing DNA in our DNA. Um, and then an advanced microscopy. It's all about developing technologies, uh, to look at things with advanced microscopes and the little technologies to marry computation on microscope. So, um, the scientists said the agenda and the platforms we just serve their needs, support their needs, and hopefully develop technologies that help them do their experiments better, faster, or allow them to the experiment that they couldn't do in any other way before. Um And so with cove, it because we have that very strong group of scientists that work on. I have been working on infectious disease before, and especially in viruses, we've been able to very quickly pivot to working on that s O, for example, my team was able to build pretty quickly a machine to automatically purified proteins, and it's being used to purify all these different important proteins in the cove. It virus the SARS cov to virus on Dwyer, sending some of those purified proteins all over the world. Two scientists that are researching the virus and trying to figure out how to develop vaccines, understand how the virus affects the body and all that. So some of the machines we built are having a very direct impact on this. Um, Also for the copy testing lab, we were able to very quickly develop some very simple machines that allowed the lab to function sort of faster and more efficiently. Sort of had a little bit of automation in places where we couldn't find commercial machines that would do it. >>Um, God s o mat. I mean, you gotta be listening to this in thinking about, Okay? Some. Someday your students are gonna be working at organizations like Like like Bio Hub and Silver Side. And you know, a lot of young people that just have I don't know about you guys, but like my kids, they're really passionate about changing the world. You know, there's way more important than, you know, the financial angles and that z e I gotta believe you're seeing that you're right in the front lines there. >>Really? Um, in fact, when I started the curriculum six or seven years ago, one of the first bits of feedback I got from my students is they said Okay, this is a lot of fun. So I had my students designing projects and programming microcontrollers raspberry, PiS and order We nose and things like that. The first bit of feedback I got from students was they said Okay, when do we get to impact the world? I've heard engineering is about making the world a better place, and robots are fun and all, but, you know, where is the real impact? And so, um do Yeah, thanks to the guidance of my students, I'm baking that Maurin. Now I'm like Day one of engineering one. We talk about how the things that the tools they're learning and the skills they're gaining eventually you know, very soon could be could be used to make the world a better place. >>You know, we all probably heard that famous line By Jeff Hammond Barker. The greatest minds of my generation are trying to figure out how to get people to click on ads. E. I think we're really generally generationally finally, at the point where you know young students and engineering and really you know it passionate about affecting society. I wanna get into the product, you know, side and understand how each of you are using on shape and and the value that that it brings. Maybe Raphael, you could start how long you've been using it. You know, what's your experience with it? Let's let's start there. >>I begin for about two years, and I switched to it with some trepidation. You know, I was used to always using the traditional product that you have to install on your computer, that everybody uses that. So I was kind of locked into that, but I started being very frustrated with the way it worked, um, and decided to give on ship chance. Which reputation? Because any change always, you know, causes anxiety. But very quickly my engineers started loving it. Uh, just because it's it's first of all, the learning curve wasn't very difficult at all. You can transfer from one from the traditional product to entree very quickly and easily. You can learn all the concepts very, very fast. It has all the functionality that we needed, and and what's best is that it allows to do things that we couldn't do before or we couldn't do easily. Um, now we can access the our cat documents from anywhere in the world. Um, so when we're in the lab fabricating something or testing a machine, any computer we have next to us or a tablet or on iPhone, we can pull it up and look at the cad and check things or make changes that something that couldn't do before because before you had to pay for every installation off the software for the computer, and I couldn't afford to have 20 installations to have some computers with the cat ready to use them like once every six months would have been very inefficient. So we love that part. And the collaboration features are fantastic. Especially now with Kobe, that we have to have all the remote meetings, eyes fantastic, that you can have another person drive the cad while the whole team is watching that person change the model and do things and point to things that is absolutely revolutionary. We love it. The fact that you have very, very sophisticated version control before it was always a challenge asking people, please, if you create anniversary and apart, how do we name it so that people find it? And then you end up with all these collection of files with names that nobody remembers, what they are, the person left and now nobody knows which version is the right one m s with on shape on the version ING system it has, and the fact that you can go back in history off the document and go back to previous version so easily and then go back to the press and version and explore the history of the part that is truly, um, just world changing for us, that we can do that so easily on for me as a manager to manage this collection of information that is critical for our operations. It makes it so much easier because everything is in one place. I don't have to worry about file servers that go down that I have to administer that have to have I t taken care off that have to figure how to keep access to people to those servers when they're at home. And they need a virtual private network and all of that mess disappears. I just simply give give a personal account on shape. And then, magically, they have access to everything in the way I want. And we can manage the lower documents and everything in a way, that is absolutely fantastic. >>Rafael, what was your what? What were some of the concerns you had mentioned? You had some trepidation. Was it a performance? Was it security? You know, some of the traditional cloud stuff and I'm curious as to how How whether any of those act manifested were they really that you had to manage? What were your concerns? >>Look, the main concern is how long is it going to take for everybody in the team? to learn to use the system like it and buy into it because I don't want to have my engineers using tools against their will write. I want everybody to be happy because that's how they're productive. They're happy and they enjoyed the tools they have. That was my main concern. I was a little bit worried about the whole concept of not having the files in a place where I couldn't quote unquote seat in some serving on site, but that that's kind of an outdated concept, right? So that took a little bit of a mind shift. But very quickly. Then I started thinking, Look, I have a lot of documents on Google Drive like I don't worry about that. Why would I worry about my cat on on shape? Right is the same thing. So I just needed to sort of put things in perspective that way. Um, the other, um, you know, their concern was the learning curve right is like how is he will be for everybody to and for me to learn it on whether it had all of the features that we needed and there were a few features that I actually discussed with, um uh, Cody at on shape on. They were actually awesome about using their scripting language in on shape to sort of mimic some of the features of the old cat, uh, in on shaped in a way that actually works even better than the old system. So it was It was amazing. Yeah. >>Great. Thank you for that, Phillip. What's your experience been? Maybe you could take us through your journey with on shape? >>Sure. So we've been we've been using on shaped Silver Side for coming up on about four years now, and we love it. We're very happy with it. We have a very modular product line, so and we make anything from detectors that would go into backpacks? Two vehicles, two very large things that a shipping container would go through and saw. Excuse me. Shape helps us to track and collaborate faster on the design, have multiple people working a same time on a project. And it also helps us to figure out if somebody else comes to us and say, Hey, I want something new. How we congrats modules from things that we already have. Put them together and then keep track of the design development and the different branches and ideas that we have, how they all fit together. A za design comes together and it's just been fantastic from a mechanical engineering background. I will also say that having used a number of different systems and solid works was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Before I got using on shape, I went, Wow, this is amazing. And I really don't want to design in any other platform after after getting on Lee a little bit familiar with it. >>You know, it's funny, right? I will have the speed of technology progression. I was explaining to some young guns the other day how e used to have a daytime er and that was my life. And if I lost that day, timer, I was dead. And I don't know how we weigh existed without, you know, Google Maps. Eso did we get anywhere? I don't know, but, uh, but so So, Matt, you know, it's interesting to think about, um, you know, some of the concerns that Raphael brought up, you hear? For instance, you know, all the time. Wow. You know, I get my Amazon bill at the end of the month It's through the roof in. But the reality is that Yeah, well, maybe you are doing more, but you're doing things that you couldn't have done before. And I think about your experience in teaching and educating. I mean, you so much more limited in terms of the resource is that you would have had to be able to educate people. So what's your experience been with With on shape and what is it enabled? >>Um, yeah, it was actually talking before we went with on shape. We had a previous CAD program and I was talking to my vendor about it, and he let me know that we were actually one of the biggest CAD shops in the state. Because if you think about it a really big program, you know, really big company might employ 5, 10, 15, 20 cad guys, right? I mean, when I worked for a large defense contractor, I think there were probably 20 of us as the cad guys. I now have about 300 students doing cat. So there's probably more students with more hours of cat under their belt in my building than there were when I worked for the big defense contractor. Um, but like you mentioned, uh, probably our biggest hurdle is just re sources. And so we want We want one of things I've always prided myself and trying to do in this programs provide students with access two tools and skills that they're going to see either in college or in the real world. So it's one of the reason we went with a big professional cad program. There are, you know, sort of k 12 oriented software and programs and things. But, you know, I want my kids coding and python and using slack and using professional type of tools on DSO when it comes to cat. That's just that that was a really hurt. I mean, you know, you could spend $30,000 on one seat of, you know, professional level cad program, and then you need a $30,000 computer to run it on if you're doing a heavy assemblies, Um, and so one of my dreams and it was always just a crazy dream. And I was the way I would always pitcher in my school system and say someday I'm gonna have a kid on a school issued chromebook in subsidized housing on public WiFi doing professional level bad and that that was a crazy statement until a couple of years ago. So we're really excited that I literally and, you know, march in, um, you said the forced march the forced march into, you know, modernity, March 13th kids sitting in my engineering lab that we spent a lot of money on doing. Cad March 14th. Those kids were at home on their school shoot chromebooks on public WiFi, uh, keeping their designs going and collaborating. And then, yeah, I could go on and on about some of the things you know, the features that we've learned since then they're even better. So it's not like this is some inferior, diminished version of the cat. And there's so much about it, E >>wanna I wanna ask you that I may be over my skis on this, but we're seeing we're starting to see the early days of the democratization of CAD and product design. It is the the citizen engineer. I mean, maybe insulting to the engineers in the room, but but is that we're beginning to see that >>I have to believe that everything moves into the cloud. Part of that is democratization that I don't need. I can whether you know, I think artists, you know, I could have a music studio in my basement with a nice enough software package. And Aiken, I could be a professional for now. My wife's a photographer. I'm not allowed to say that I could be a professional photographer with, you know, some cloud based software. And so, yeah, I do think that's part of what we're seeing is more and more technology is moving to the cloud >>Philip or Rafael anything. Your dad, >>I think I mean yeah, that that that combination of cloud based cat and then three D printing that is becoming more and more affordable on ubiquitous It's truly transformative, and I think for education is fantastic. I wish when I was a kid I had the opportunity to play with those kinds of things because I was always the late things. But, you know, the in a very primitive way. So, um, I think there's a dream for kids Thio to be able to do this. And, um, yeah, there's so many other technologies coming on, like Arduino and all of these electronic things that live. Kids play at home very cheaply with things that back in my day would have been unthinkable. >>So we know there's a go ahead. Philip Way >>had a pandemic and silver site moved to a new manufacturing facility this year. I was just on the shop floor, talking with contractors, standing 6 ft apart, pointing at things. But through it all, our CAD system was completely unruffled. Nothing stopped in our development work. Nothing stopped in our support for existing systems in the field. We didn't have to think about it. We had other server issues, but none with our, you know, engineering cad, platform and product development and support world right ahead, which was cool, but also a That's point. I think it's just really cool what you're doing with the kids. The most interesting secondary and college level engineering work that I did was project based. It's an important problem to the world. Go solve it and that is what we do here. That is what my entire career has been. And I'm super excited to see See what your students are gonna be doing, uh, in there home classrooms on their chromebooks now and what they do. Building on that. >>Yeah, I'm super excited to see your kids coming out of college with engineering degrees because yeah, I think that project based experience is so much better than just sitting in a classroom, taking notes and doing math problems on. And I think he will give the kids a much better flavor What engineering is really about. Think a lot of kids get turned off by engineering because they think it's kind of dry because it's just about the math for some very abstract abstract concept, and they are there. But I think the most important thing is just that. Hands on a building and the creativity off, making things that you can touch that you can see that you can see functioning. >>Great. So you know, we all know the relentless pace of technology progression. So when you think about when you're sitting down with the folks that on shape and there the customer advisor for one of the things that you want on shape to do that it doesn't do today >>I could start by saying, I just love some of the things that does do because it's such a modern platform and I think some of these, uh, some some platforms that have a lot of legacy and a lot of history behind them. I think we're dragging some of that behind them. So it's cool to see a platform that seemed to be developed in a modern era. And so that's, you know, it is the Google docks. And so the fact that collaboration and version ing and link sharing is, and, like, platform agnostic abilities the fact that that seems to be just built into the nature of the thing so far, that's super exciting as far as things that it to go from there, Um, I don't know. >>Other than price, >>you can't say I >>can't say lower price. >>Yeah, so far on a PTC s that worked with us. Really well, so I'm not complaining. There. You there? >>Yeah. Yeah. No Gaps, guys. Whitespace, Come on. >>We've been really enjoying the three week update Cadence. You know, there's a new version every three weeks and we don't have to install it. We just get all the latest and greatest goodies. One of the trends that we've been following and enjoying is the the help with a revision management and release work flows. Um, and I know that there's more than on shape is working on that we're very excited for, because that's a big important part about making real hardware and supporting it in the field. Um, something that was cool. They just integrated Cem markup capability In the last release that took, we were doing that anyway, but we were doing it outside of on shapes, and now we get to streamline our workflow and put it in the CAD system where we're making those changes anyway, when we're reviewing drawings and doing this kind of collaboration. And so I think from our perspective, we continue to look forward toa further progress on that. There's a lot of capability in the cloud that I think they're just kind of scratching the surface on you. >>I would. I mean, you're you're asking to knit. Pick. I would say one of the things that I would like to see is is faster regeneration speed. There are a few times with comics necessities that regenerating the document takes a little longer than I would like to. It's not a serious issue, but anyway, I'm being spoiled, >>you know. That's good. I've been doing this a long time and I like toe Ask that question of practitioners and to me, it it's a signal like when you're nit picking and that you're struggling to knit. Pick that to me is a sign of a successful product. And And I wonder, I don't know, uh, have the deep dive into the architecture, But are things like alternative processors? You're seeing them hit the market in a big way. Uh, you know, maybe a helping address the challenge, But I'm gonna ask you the big, chewy question now, then would maybe go to some audience questions when you think about the world's biggest problems. I mean, we're global pandemics. Obviously top of mind. You think about nutrition, you know, feeding the global community. We've actually done a pretty good job of that. But it's not necessarily with the greatest nutrition climate change, alternative energy, the economic divides. You've got geopolitical threats and social unrest. Health care is a continuing problem. What's your vision for changing the world and how product innovation for good can be applied to some of the the problems that that you all are passionate about? Big question. But who wants toe start >>not biased. But for years I've been saying that if you want to solve the economy, the environment, uh, global unrest, pandemics education is the case If you wanna if you want to, um, make progress in those in those realms, I think funding funding education is probably gonna pay off pretty well. >>Absolutely. And I think stem is key to that. I mean, all of the, ah lot of the well being that we have today and then industrialized countries, thanks to science and technology, right, improvements in health care, improvements in communication, transportation, air conditioning. Um, every aspect of life is touched by science and technology. So I think having more kids studying and understanding that is absolutely key. Yeah, I agree, >>Philip, you got anything they had? >>I think there's some big technical problems in the world today, Raphael and ourselves there certainly working on a couple of them. Think they're also collaboration problems and getting everybody doing ableto pull together instead of pulling, pulling separately and to be able to spur the idea is onwards. So that's where I think the education side is really exciting. What Matt is doing and and it just kind of collaboration in general when we could do provide tools to help people do good work? Uh, that is, I think, valuable. >>Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And along those lines, we have some projects that are about creating very low cost instruments for low research settings places in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America so that they can do, um, um, biomedical research that it's difficult to do in those place because they don't have the money to buy the fancy lab machines that cost $30,000 an hour. Um, so we're trying to sort of democratize some of those instruments. And I think thanks to tools like Kahn shaped and is easier, for example, to have a conversation with somebody in Africa and show them the design that we have and discuss the details of it with them. Andi, that's amazing. Right? To have somebody you know, 10 time zones away, Um, looking really life in real time with you about your design and discussing the details or teaching them how to build a machine. Right? Because, um, you know, they have a three d printer. You can you just give them the design and say, like, you build it yourself, uh, even cheaper than and, you know, also billing and shipping it there. Um, so all that that that aspect of it is also so super important, I think, for any of these efforts to improve, um, some of the hardest part was in the world from climate change. Do you say, as you say, poverty, nutrition issues? Um, you know, availability of water. You have that project at about finding water. Um, if we can also help deploy technologies that teach people remotely how to create their own technologies or how to build their own systems that will help them solve those forms locally. I think that's very powerful. >>Yeah, that point about education is right on. I think some people in the audience may be familiar with the work of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, the second machine age where they sort of put forth the premise that, uh, is it laid it out. Look, for the first time in history, machines air replacing humans from a cognitive perspective. Machines have always replaced humans, but that's gonna have an impact on jobs. But the answer is not toe protect the past from the future. Uh, the answer is education and public policy. That really supports that. So I couldn't agree more. I think it's a really great point. Um, we have We do have some questions from the audience. If if we can. If I can ask you guys, um, you know, this one kind of stands out. How do you see artificial intelligence? I was just talking about machine intelligence. Um, how do you see that? Impacting the design space guys trying to infuse a I into your product development. What can you tell me? >>Um, absolutely. Like, we're using AI for some things, including some of these very low cost instruments that will hopefully help us diagnose certain diseases, especially this is that are very prevalent in the Third World. Um, and some of those diagnostics are these days done by thes armies of technicians that are trained to look under the microscope. But, um, that's a very slow process. Is very error prone and having machine learning systems that can, to the same diagnosis faster, cheaper and also little machines that can be taken to very remote places to these villages that have no access to a fancy microscope to look at a sample from a patient that's very powerful, and I we don't do this. But I have read quite a bit about how certain places air, using a Tribune attorneys to actually help them optimize designs for parts. So you get these very interesting looking parts that you would have never thought off. A person would have never thought off, but that are incredibly light ink earlier strong and I have all sort of properties that are interesting thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning in particular, >>yet another, uh, advantage you get when when your work is in the cloud I've seen. I mean, there's just so many applications that so if the radiology scan is in the cloud and the radiologist is goes to bed at night, radiologist could come in in the morning and and say, Oh, the machine while you were sleeping was using artificial intelligence to scan these 40,000 images. And here's the five that we picked out that we think you should take a closer look at or like Raphael said. I can design my part. My, my, my, my, my you know, mount or bracket or whatever and go to sleep. And then I wake up in the morning. The machine has improved. It for me has made it strider strider stronger and lighter. Um And so just when your when your work is in the cloud, that's just that's a really cool advantage that you get that you can have machines doing some of your design work for you. >>Yeah, we've been watching, uh, you know, this week is this month, I guess is aws re invent and it's just amazing to see how much effort is coming around machine learning machine intelligence. You know, Amazon has sage maker Google's got, you know, embedded you no ML and big query. Certainly Microsoft with Azure is doing tons of stuff and machine learning. I think the point there is that that these things will be infused in tow R and D and in tow software products by the vendor community. And you all will apply that to your business and and build value through the unique data that your collecting you know, in your ecosystems. And and that's how you add value. You don't have to be necessarily, you know, developers of artificial intelligence, but you have to be practitioners to apply that. Does that make sense to you, Philip? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I think your point about value is really well chosen. We see AI involved from the physics simulations all the way up to interpreting radiation data, and that's where the value question, I think, is really important because it's is the output of the AI giving helpful information that the people that need to be looking at it. So if it's curating a serious of radiation alert, saying, Hey, like these are the anomalies you need to look at eyes it, doing that in a way that's going to help a good response on. In some cases, the II is only as good as the people. That sort of gave it a direction and turn it loose. And you want to make sure that you don't have biases or things like that underlying your AI that air going to result in, uh in less than helpful outcomes coming from it. So we spend quite a lot of time thinking about how do we provide the right outcomes to people who are who are relying on our systems? >>That's a great point, right? Humans, air biased and humans build models, so models are inherently biased. But then software is hitting the market. That's gonna help us identify those biases and help us, you know? Of course. Correct. So we're entering Cem some very exciting times, guys. Great conversation. I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us and sharing with our audience the innovations that you're bringing to help the world. So thanks again. >>Thank you so much. >>Thank you. >>Okay. You're welcome. Okay. When we come back, John McElheny is gonna join me. He's on shape. Co founder. And he's currently the VP of strategy at PTC. He's gonna join the program. We're gonna take a look at what's next and product innovation. I'm Dave Volonte and you're watching innovation for good on the Cube, the global leader. Digital technology event coverage. We'll be right back

Published Date : Dec 10 2020

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by on shape. and his team are educating students in the use of modern engineering tools and techniques. Okay, let me ask each of you because you're all doing such interesting and compelling San Francisco, Stanford University and the University California Berkeley on. in this edition was launched five years ago. was announced at the end of 2016, and we actually started operations in the beginning of 2017, I think at the end of it all, we were able to test about 100 on the road, 150,000 Now, Now, Philip, you What you do is mind melting. can use neutrons with some pretty cool physics to find water so you can do things like but All right, so it's OK, so it's It's much more than you know, whatever fighting terrorism, You do both Zito shares. kind of scaling the brain power for for the future. One of my goals from the outside was to be a completely I mean, you know, Cuba's. And so that's one of the reasons we keep pushing back. And I think in many ways, the products that you build, you know, our similar I may not know they're there, trying to make sure things were going well in keeping you safe that you may or may not be aware of. And I think, you know, with this whole trend toward digit, I call it the forced march to digital. machines that allowed the lab to function sort of faster and more efficiently. You know, there's way more important than, you know, the financial angles and robots are fun and all, but, you know, where is the real impact? I wanna get into the product, you know, side and understand that person change the model and do things and point to things that is absolutely revolutionary. You know, some of the traditional cloud stuff and I'm curious as to how How Um, the other, um, you know, their concern was the learning curve right is like how is he will be Maybe you could take us through your journey with And I really don't want to design in any other platform after And I don't know how we weigh existed without, you know, I mean, you know, you could spend $30,000 on one seat of, I mean, maybe insulting to the engineers in the room, but but is that we're I can whether you know, I think artists, you know, Philip or Rafael anything. But, you know, So we know there's a go ahead. you know, engineering cad, platform and product development and support world right ahead, Hands on a building and the creativity off, making things that you can touch that you can see that one of the things that you want on shape to do that it doesn't do today And so that's, you know, it is the Google docks. Yeah, so far on a PTC s that worked with us. Whitespace, Come on. There's a lot of capability in the cloud that I mean, you're you're asking to knit. maybe a helping address the challenge, But I'm gonna ask you the big, chewy question now, pandemics education is the case If you wanna if you want to, of the well being that we have today and then industrialized countries, thanks to science and technology, and it just kind of collaboration in general when we could do provide And I think thanks to tools like Kahn shaped and is easier, I think some people in the audience may be familiar with the work of Erik Brynjolfsson and I have all sort of properties that are interesting thanks to artificial intelligence machine learning And here's the five that we picked out that we think you should take a closer look at or like Raphael You don't have to be necessarily, you know, developers of artificial intelligence, And you want to make sure that you don't have biases or things like that I can't thank you enough for spending the time with us and sharing And he's currently the VP of strategy at PTC.

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Noel Kenehan, Ericsson | Micron Insight 2019


 

>>Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering my groin insight 2019 brought to you by micron. >>We're back at pier 27 in San Francisco. This is the cube, the leader in live tech coverage and we're covering micron insight 2019 I'm Dave Vellante with my cohost David Floyd and this event is kind of interesting. David, it basically intersperses cube interviews with big tent discussions, thought leadership, we've heard from automotive, healthcare and and 5g discussions and no Han is here. He's the vice president and CTO of the emerging business at Erickson. And you were just on a panel. Welcome to the cube. Thanks. Great to be here. You were talking about five G, we're going to talk about five G. so first of all, talking about the emerging business at Ericsson, >>your whole group, you know, so Ericsson, we, you know, 99 a lot of our business today has done what operators emerging business group, we're sort of looking at the intersection of industry, cloud computing, our traditional mobile network operator customers, and how do we, how do we put those together and look for new either products or business models. And really create something new for customers. >>So we tell him when he's talking about five G, everybody gets all excited. Certainly the technology community is excited about it. There's a whole value chain and an ecosystem that's that's pumping right along. The carriers are adopting and the users are just waiting. So what should we know about? >>So I, you know, I think there's a couple of different things. One is from a consumer perspective, you're definitely looking at faster, you know, better. All of the things we've got from the other GS at older things. You know, today, you know, faster downloads of movies. I think what we're, and I'm, I'm in the tech business, not in the prediction business, you know. So I think what we've learned from previous technologies is we almost don't know what the new applications are. We're trying to make the platform as easy as possible for developers to utilize what the network actually has to offer. So I think that's a big part of what we're trying to do. The other part is enhancing what you have today as a consumer is massive, but also industries is a huge pull on 5g. So we talked about industry four. Dot. Zero and really transforming industries and cutting the cables in production lines, allowing monitoring of systems that never happened before. >>A lot of use cases that can be out there. So a, I have a younger son of 22 and I look at my a bill every month. Yeah, I do have him downloading 10 times more data. It doesn't fill me with uh, duty or just the excise to carriers. I mean while we've seen with every, every end. And of course that was the question how much of a down, yeah, how much low is the price going to be on this baffled breeze you go to invest an awful lot. Absolutely. So I mean we're going to see it tens, 10 orders of magnitude cheaper. So even as it is now with 4g, we're seeing a lot of the unlimited plans coming available and so on. I think we're just going to see more of that. And then the question, actually a big question for five G is what will you pay for? >>You know, if we talk about age compute and low latency, if you're a gamer and I can give you X milliseconds of latency versus you know, a two X milliseconds, how much would you pay for that? So I think what we know at the moment is people will pay for that. We don't know exactly how much, and that's where you need the ecosystem and you need to get stuff out there. And actually some of the economic impact is fuzzy. But in thinking past, there's no prologue. But if you think about the other GS as they sort of were adopted, what can we learn from those? And how do you think five G will be different in terms of its adoption and economic impact? Let's say if you look at adoption, I mean just a number of contracts. We have the number of deployments we have globally, just off the charts in terms of where we are with 4g Korea launched and a few months ago, just just before the summer, within two months they had a million 5g subscribers with smart phones in their eyes and two months later they added a second million subscribers. >>I mean for a market to go from zero to that in, in that period of time with smartphones, if we go back to 4g, all of that was with dongles and sort of hotspots on routers, you know, so to jump directly to smartphones, huge adoption, it's going to happen fast. Well what do you, what are the sequence, what's the sequence of events that have to occur for adoption to really take off? >> So obviously you need to build out the networks and the operators are doing that are pretty high speed. You need to have the devices ready and all the devices. Now it's not like you have a 5g only device. It's obviously capable of all the four G things. And then it's better when you have 5g. So the devices are going to come and take and fast. So all your new devices, most of the high end devices have 5g capability already in there. >>Um, and then the networks just getting built out more and more. And then of course the application developers actually understanding how can I take advantage of those new capabilities? And then you'll start to see, okay, wow, you know, I didn't, this wasn't possible before. It's not just a faster download. It's really, there's just new experiences happening >> from a development standpoint. How much access do they have to the technology? Do they have to wait until this is all built out? Obviously not, but, but, but what's the status of sort of the devs? So we're, we're trying to, and we're working with a lot of the ecosystem. We have, we call it the D 15 studio in our Santa Clara office. We're bringing developers in there and really trying to understand, because you know, we talk Telekom as well. So we want to expose things. We want to understand, do you know what variable, if we say quality of service, what does that mean for you? You know, how do you translate that? So, and we're working with, you know, the cloud players where to developers live to some extent to bring in that ecosystem and understand how it all plays together. So >>ahead. Yup. Um, so if really, if you're looking at it longterm, obviously it's going to happen, but the experience is as I go around the States, is that you've got all these different four G three GS edges still in a very, very patchy a level of it. Is this going to be different? Is this going to actually go into different places because there's a big investment that has to be made, a lot of things very close together. Yes, yes. That seems to be a recipe for everything being or right in the cities. But as soon as you go outside the urban areas, it's going to be very patchy. How does that compare, for example, with Elon Musk's idea of a doing stuff from the sky? >>Well, everything comes down to economics. So you know, it's, it's obviously you're going to have denser deployments in the cities, then you are in the countryside and so on. One of the big advantages would 5g is am, and not to get too deep into the technical part, but you can use all the spectrum that's available. And spectrum is super important as we get, you know, when we have lower frequency spectrum, you can cover a hundred miles Wade, one base station as you get to the millimeter wave, which is you get super high bandwidth, then you're add hundreds of meters. Yeah. And so obviously one is more suitable for a rural environment, the other is more suitable for. So for an urban environment, so obviously having those working together in one technology allows you to deploy everything and get the benefits in a much broader area than we had for any of the previous. >>There's choice there in terms of how you deploy or, or leverage the spectrum. So you're saying that the higher performance end of the spectrum, it's gonna require a greater density of other components. And absolutely. When people talk about oil, there's going to be a lot more distributed, you know, pieces of the five G network that has to get built out. So who does that? Who's putting those pieces of the value chain in? So different players, obviously the mobile network operators, the 18 Ts and Verizons of the world are doing a lot of the heavy lifting and know what our support to actually put the, the radios and the towers in place. And then there's an edge compute piece as well, which is different players are putting in that. Um, so, so a lot of that infrastructure has been done. I think one thing that we've been pushing quite a lot, all our install base of radios is um, 5g upgradable via software. >>So that means that a lot of the already installed, uh, radios and infrastructure, you're just softer upgrade, you know, an hour later it's now 5g ready. So I think that's a big piece of basin. Back to your question of how quickly and and can reach all those areas, are there any specific commercial blockers that you see, um, that you're thinking through? I am I, I think the, just understanding some of the more challenging when you look at, if you're deploying edge compute and you have to invest billions and really getting that far out to the edge, I think there's some questions still there. Like I said, how much would you pay for 20 milliseconds versus 15 milliseconds. And that might sound like a lot, but that's a lot of extra infrastructure you would need to put out. So I think that's still being worked true. >>And obviously some of that will happen quicker in a downtown San Francisco than it will in a, you know, middle of Nevada plays well and the others that you've mentioned before, it's unclear what new applications are going to emerge here. And so it's almost like build it and they will come and then we'll figure it out and then we'll figure out how to charge for it. Like you say the gamers, how much will they pay for it? Yeah, so those are some of the uncertainties but they'll shake themselves out. So absolutely. I was a pretty smart about doing. What about micron and the role of memory players and storage players? How will this affect them? Eight say a huge opportunity when you ah, yeah, I mean invest no and Bardy hats. >> Yeah, I think it's a, when you look at the number of devices and, okay, what's the device? >>The devices are smartphone. Well the devices now your car, it's every IOT device and down to your toaster and all the crazy stuff people are talking about too. I mean to every industrial application tool that age, computers. So you're distributing now a lot of different compute memory storage across different parts of the network. So I mean they talked earlier in the panel about phones having terabytes of data. You know, it's in, it's just unimaginable. The amount of data storage. Remember you're going to need in a vehicle, you know, they're looking at terabytes per hour of data and then how much of that should they shift off the vehicle? How much did it keep there? So huge opportunity. >> Well, I'd be willing to pay for, um, some memory in my appliances. They tell me when they're going to break. I just got a new dishwasher and I can program it with my, my remote. I don't want to program. I just want to know that on Thanksgiving morning it was that it works. But in a week before it's going to break, I want to know so I can deal with vending and maintenance. That's a big use case. Can't wait until that happens. The last question, so >>I was going to be, I was following up on that last point you were making. Um, uh, so again, this cost of everything, this, this value that you're going to get out of it. Um, it seems to me that, um, that this is gonna take a long time to push out. Um, and, and before it actually down. And people will actually know whether they can pay for this. And then one thing in particular is there's a lot of resistance in, in the, in the States anyway, to all of these devices being put very, very close, you know, to the, to, to it for example, putting all the devices down, download a row for example, that, that, that seems to be very expensive and, and going to get a lot of reaction from consumers is, is that not the case? >>So I actually, we're not seeing it that much. I mean if you look across the globe, um, China obviously is a slightly unique situation. Massive deployments already happening there. Like I said, Southeast Asia, South Korea being among the, you know, the forefront, big deployments already there. And we're seeing big pull from industries already and the operators here in U S are announcing new cities, you know, every month practically. So they are really full on into this. And to some extent it's, it's really just, there's a capacity need to have the spectrum. They need to make the investments and they're, they're doing it as we speak. >>So I think it depends on me. Why was it a meeting the other day in Boston with a lot of city officials and folks that worked for the mayor's office? They're envisioning Boston, you know, for the next 50 years, smart cities and five G was like, if you did a word cloud 5g was that the number one topic? You know, we talked earlier about sports stadiums. You can see that being, you know, use cases going to be these >>hotspots where it's of very, very high >>of the city in this case in Boston's case are they're going to invest, right? And they're gonna think that's going to be a differentiator for cities. >>You have this amazing infrastructure, you know, five G infrastructure that allows you to take advantage of that, be it just from, they talked about traffic congestion and what the city can do and then what the businesses and the consumers can do in that area that that can end up being a differentiator for innovation companies going there and so on. >>Right. All right. We're going to go before they blow us out. No, thanks very much for coming to the queue very much. All right, great. To have you on. I keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest after this short break. You're watching the cube live from micron insight 2019 from San Francisco right back.

Published Date : Oct 24 2019

SUMMARY :

my groin insight 2019 brought to you by micron. And you were just on a panel. And really create something new for customers. So what should we know about? So I, you know, I think there's a couple of different things. the price going to be on this baffled breeze you go to invest an awful lot. X milliseconds of latency versus you know, a two X milliseconds, dongles and sort of hotspots on routers, you know, So the devices are going to come and take and fast. And then of course the application developers So, and we're working with, you know, the cloud players where to developers But as soon as you go outside the urban areas, So you know, it's, it's obviously you're going to have denser deployments in the When people talk about oil, there's going to be a lot more distributed, you know, And that might sound like a lot, but that's a lot of extra infrastructure you would you know, middle of Nevada plays well and the others that you've mentioned before, it's unclear what new applications I mean to every industrial application tool that age, computers. I just got a new dishwasher and I can program it with my, very close, you know, to the, to, to it for example, putting all the devices down, and the operators here in U S are announcing new cities, you know, They're envisioning Boston, you know, for the next 50 years, of the city in this case in Boston's case are they're going to invest, right? You have this amazing infrastructure, you know, five G infrastructure that allows you to take To have you on.

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Brian Shield, Boston Red Sox | Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019


 

>> Announcer: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's The Cube, covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Welcome back everyone. We are here with The Cube coverage for two days. We're wrapping up, getting down on day one in the books for the Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host of The Cube. We are in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel. I'm personally excited for this next guest because I'm a huge Red Sox fan, even though I got moved out to California. Giants is in a different area. National League is different than American League, still my heart with the Red Sox. And we're here with an industry veteran, seasoned professional in IT and data, Brian Shield. Boston Red Sox Vice President of Technology and IT. Welcome to The Cube, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> John: So congratulations on the rings. Since I moved out of town, Red sox win their World Series, break the curse of the Bambino. >> Hey we appreciate that. Thank you. >> My family doesn't want me back. You got to show >> Yeah, maybe I'll put this one up for the, maybe someone can zoom in on this. Which camera is the good one? This one here? So, there ya go. So, World Series champs for at least for another week. (laughter) >> Bummer about this year. Pitching just couldn't get it done. But, good team. >> Happens. >> Again, things move on, but you know. New regime, new GM going to come on board. >> Yup. >> So, but in general, Red Sox, storied franchise. Love it there. Fenway Park, the cathedral of baseball parks. >> Brian: Defnitely. >> And you're seeing that just play out now, standard. So just a great place to go. We have tickets there. So, I got to ask you. Technology, sports, really is modernized faster than I think any category. And certainly cyber security forced to modernize because of the threats. But sports, you got a business to run, not just IT and making the planes run on time. >> Sure. >> Scouts, money, whatever. >> Fans. >> You got fan experience. >> Stadium opportunities. >> Club management, scouts are out there. So you got business, team, fans. And data's a big part of it. That's part of your career. Tell us what the cutting edge innovation is at the Red Sox these days. >> I think baseball in general, as you indicated, it's a very evolving kind of environment. I mean historically I think people really sort of relish the nostalgia of sports and Fenway Park being as historic as it is, was probably the pinnacle of that, in some respects. But Red Sox have always been leaders and baseball analytics, you know. And everyone's pretty familiar with "Moneyball" and Brad Pitt. >> John: Is that a true story, he turned down the GM job? >> I'm told it is. (laughter) I don't know if I fully vetted that question. But over the last six, seven years, you know we've really turned our attention to sort of leveraging sort of technology across the businesses, right? Not just baseball and analytics and how we do scouting, which continues to evolve at a very rapid pace. But also as you pointed out, running a better business, understanding our fans, understanding fan behavior, understanding stadiums. There's a lot of challenges around running an effective stadium. First and foremost to all of us is really ensuring it's a great fan experience. Whether it's artificial intelligence, or IoT technologies or 5G or the latest Wifi, all those things are coming up at Fenway Park. You and I talked earlier about we're about to break ground for a new theater, so a live theater on the outside, beyond the bleachers type of thing. So that'll be a 5,400-seat arena, 200 live performances a year, and with e-sports, you know, complementing it. It just gives you an example of just how fast baseball is sort of transitioning. >> And the theater, is that going to be blown out from where that parking garage is, structure and going towards >> So the corner of Landsdown and Ipswich, if you think of that sort of corner back there, for those that are familiar with the Fenway area. So it's going to be a very big change and you'll see the difference too from within the ballpark. I think we'll lose a couple of rows of the bleachers. That'll be replaced with another gathering area for fans and things like that, on the back end of that theater. So build a great experience and I think it really speaks to sort of our ability to think of Fenway as more of a destination, as a venue, as a complementary experience. We want people to come to the area to enjoy sports and to enjoy entertainment and things. >> You know Brian, the consumerization of IT has been kicked around. Last decade, that was a big buzzword. Now the blending of a physical event and digital has certainly consumed the world. >> Absolutely. >> And we're starting to see that dynamic. You speak to a theater. That's a physical space. But digital is also a big part of kind of that complementary. It's not mutually exclusive for each other. They're integrated business models. >> Absolutely. >> So therefore, the technology has to be seamless. The data has to be available. >> Yup. >> And it's got to be secure. >> Well the data's got to be ubiquitous, right? I mean you don't want to, if we're going to have fans attending theater and then you're going to go to Fenway Park or they leave a game and then go to some other event or they attend a tour of Fenway Park, and beyond maybe the traditional what people might think about, is certainly when you think about baseball and Fenway Park. You know we have ten to twelve concerts a year. We'll host Spartan games, you know. This Christmas, I'm sorry, Christmas 2020 we now have sort of the Fenway Bowl. So we'll be hosting the AAC ACC championship games there with ESPN. >> John: Hockey games? >> Hockey games. Obviously we have Liverpool soccer being held there so it's much more of a destination, a venue for us. How we leverage all the wonderful things about Fenway Park and how we modernize, how we get basically the best of what makes Fenway Park as great as it is, yet as modern as we can make it, where appropriate to create a great fan experience. >> It's a tough balance between balancing the brand and having things on brand as well. >> Sure. >> Does that come into your job a lot around IT? Saying being on brand, not kind of tearing down the old. >> Yeah absolutely. I think our CEOs and leadership team, I mean it's not success for us if you pan to the audience and everyone is looking at their phone, right? That's not what we aspire to. We aspire to leverage technology to simplify people's experience of how do you get to the ballpark, how do I park, how do I get if I want to buy concessions or merchandise, how do I do it easily and simply? How do we supplement that experience with maybe additional data that you may not have had before. Things like that, so we're doing a lot of different testing right now whether it's 4D technologies or how we can understand, watch a play from different dimensions or AI and be able to perhaps see sort of the skyline of Boston since 1912, when Fenway Park launched... And so we sort of see all these technologies as supplemental materials, really kind of making it a holistic experience for fans. >> In Las Vegas, they have a section of Las Vegas where they have all their test beds. 5G, they call it 5G, it's really, you know, evolution, fake 5G but it's a sandbox. One of the challenges that you guys have in Boston, I know from a constraint standpoint physically, you don't have a lot of space. How do you sandbox new technologies and what are some of the things that are cool that people might not know about that are being sandboxed? So, one, how do you do it? >> Yeah. >> Effectively. And then what are some of the cool things that you guys are looking at or things they might not know about that would be interesting. >> Sure. Yeah so Fenway Park, we struggle as you know, a little bit with our footprint. You know, honestly, I walk into some of these large stadiums and I get instant jealousy, relative to just the amount of space that people have to work with and things. But we have a great relationship with our partners so we really partner, I think, particularly well with key partners like Verizon and others. So we now have 5G partially implemented at Fenway Park. We expect to have it sort of fully live come opening day next year. So we're really excited about that. We hope to have a new version of Wifi, the latest version of Wifi available, for the second half of the year. After the All-Star Break, probably after the season's over. But before our bowl game hopefully. We're looking at some really interesting ways that we can tease that out. That bowl game, we're really trying to use that as an opportunity, the Fenway Bowl, as an opportunity to make it kind of a high-tech bowl. So we're looking at ways of maybe doing everything from hack-a-thons to a pre-egaming sort of event to some interesting fan experiential opportunities and things like that. >> Got a lot of nerds at MIT, Northeastern, BU, Bentley, Babson, all the schools in the area. >> Yeah, so we'll be reaching out to colleges and we'll be reaching out to our, the ACC and AACs as well, and see what we can do to kind of create sort of a really fun experience and capitalize on the evolving role of e-sports and the role that technology can play in the future. >> I want to get to the e-sports in a second but I want to just get the plug in for Acronis. We're here at their Global Cyber Summit. You flew down for it, giving some keynote speeches and talks around security. It's a security company, data protection, to cyber protection. It is a data problem, not a storage appliance problem. It's a data problem holistically. You get that. >> Sure. Sure. >> You've been in the business for a long time. What is the security kind of posture that you guys have? Obviously you want to protect the data, protect privacy. But you got to business. You have people that work with you, supply chain, complex but yet dynamic, always on environment. >> That's a great question. It's evolving as you indicated. Major League Baseball, first and foremost, does an outstanding job. So the last, probably last four plus years, Major League Baseball has had a cyber security program that all the clubs partake in. So all 30 clubs are active participants in the program. They basically help build out a suite of tools as well as the ability to kind of monitor, help participate in the monitoring, sort of a lot of our cyber security assets and logs And that's really elevated significantly our posture in terms of security. We supplement that quite a bit and a good example of that is like Acronis. Acronis, for us, represents the ability for us to be able to respond to certain potential threats like ransom-ware and other things. As well as frankly, what's wonderful about a tool like this is that it allows us to also solve other problems. Making our scouts more efficient. We've got these 125 scouts scattered around the globe. These guys are the lifeblood of our, you know, the success of our business. When they have a problem, if they're in Venezuela or the Dominican or someplace else, in southeast Asia, getting them up and running as quickly as we can, being able to consume their video assets and other things as they're scouting prospects. We use Acronis for those solutions. It's great to kind of have a partner who can both double down as a cyber partner as well as someone who helps drive a more efficient business. >> People bring their phone into the stadiums too so those are end points now connecting to your network. >> Definitely. And as you pointed out before, we've got great partnerships. We've got a great concession relationship with Aramark and they operate, in the future they'll be operating off our infrastructure. So we're in the point of rolling out all new point-of-sale terminals this off-season. We're excited about that 'cause we think for the first time it really allows us to build a very comprehensive, very secure environment for both ourselves and for all the touchpoints to fans. >> You have a very stellar career. I noticed you were at Scudder Investments back in the '80s, very cutting-edge firm. FTD that set the whole standard for connecting retailers. Again, huge scale play. Can see the data kind of coming out, they way you've been a CIO, CTO. The EVP CIO at The Weather Channel and the weather.com again, first mover, kind of pioneer. And then now the Red Sox, pioneering. So I got to ask you the modernization question. Red Sox certainly have been cutting-edge, certainly under the last few owners, and the previous Henry is a good one, doing more and more, Has the business model of baseball evolved, 'cause you guys a franchise. >> Sure. >> You operate under the franchisor, Major League Baseball, and you have jurisdictions. So has digital blurred the lines between what Advanced Media unit can do. You got communities developing outside. I watch the games in California. I'm not in there but I'm present digitally. >> Sure. Sure. >> So how has the business model flexed with the innovation of baseball? >> That's a great question. So I mean, first off, the relationship between clubs like ours and MLB continue to evolve. We have a new commissioner, relatively new commissioner, and I think the whole one-baseball model that he's been promoting I think has been great. The boundaries sometimes between digital assets and how we innovate and things like that continues to evolve. Major League Baseball and technology groups and product groups that support Major League Baseball have been a fantastic partner of ours. If you look at some of the innovations with Statcast and some of the other types of things that fans are now becoming more familiar with. And when they see how fast a runner goes or how far a home run goes and all those sort of things, these kinds of capabilities are on the surface, but even like mobile applications, to make it easy for fans to come into ballparks and things like that really. What we see is really are platforms for the future touchpoints to all of our customers. But you're right, it gets complicated. Streaming videos and people hadn't thought of before. >> Latin America, huge audience for the Red Sox. Got great players down there. That's outside the jurisdiction, I think, of the franchise agreement, isn't it? (laughs) >> Well, it's complicated. As this past summer, we played two games in England, right? So we enjoy two games in London, sadly we lost to the Yankees in both of those, but amazing experience and Major League Baseball really hats off to those guys, what they did to kind of pull that together. >> You mentioned Statcast. Every year when I meet with Andy Jassy at AWS, he's a sports fan. We love to talk sports. That's a huge, kind of shows the power of data and cloud computing. >> No doubt. >> How do you guys interface with Statcast? Is that an Amazon thing? Do they come to you? Are they leveraging dimensions, camera angles? How does that all work? Are you guys involved in that or? >> Brian: Oh yeah, yeah. >> Is that separate? >> So Statcast is just one of many data feeds as you can imagine. One of the things that Major League Baseball does is all that type of data is readily available to every club. So every club has access to the data. The real competitive differentiator, if you will, is how you use it internally. Like how your analysts can consume that data. We have a baseball system we call Beacon. We retired Carmine, if you're familiar with the old days of Carmine. So we retired Carmine a few years ago with Beacon. And Beacon for us represents sort of our opportunity to effectively collapse all this information into a decision-making environment that allows us to hopefully to kind of make the best decisions to win the most games. >> I love that you're answering all these questions. I really appreciate it. The one I really want to get into is obviously the fan experience. We talked about that. No talent on the field means no World Series so you got to always be constantly replenishing the talent pool, farm system, recruiting, scouting, all these things go on. They're instrumental. Data's a key driver. What new innovations that the casual fan or IT person might be interested in what's going on around scouting and understanding the asset of a human being? >> Right. Sure. I mean some of this gets highly confidential and things, but I think at a macro level, as you start to see both in the minor leagues and in some portions of the major leagues, wearable technologies. I think beyond just sort of player performance information that you would see traditionally with you might associate it with like Billy Beane, and things like that with "Moneyball" which is evolved obviously considerably since those days. I mean understanding sort of player wellness, understanding sort of how to get the most out of a player and understanding sort of, be able to kind of predict potential injuries and accelerate recoveries and being able to use all of this technology where appropriate to really kind of help sort of maximize the value of player performance. I mean, David Ortiz, you know, I don't know where we would have been in 2018 without, you know, David. >> John: Yeah. >> But like, you know >> Longevity of a player. >> Absolutely. >> To when they're in the zone. You wear a ring now to tell you if you're sleeping well. Will managers have a visual, in-the-zone, don't pull 'em out, he can go an extra inning? >> Well, I mean they have a lot of data. We currently don't provide all that data to the clubhouse. I mean, you know, and so If you're in the dugout, that information isn't always readily available type of thing. But players know all this information. We continue to evolve it. At the end of the day though, it's finding the balancing act between data and the aptitudes of our coaching staff and our managers to really make the wise decisions. >> Brian, final question for you. What's the coolest thing you're working on right now? Besides the fan having a great experience, 'cause that's you kind of touched on that. What's the coolest thing that you're excited about that you're working on from a tech perspective that you think is going to be game-changing or interesting? >> I think our cloud strategy coming up in the future. It's still a little bit early stage, but our hope would be to kind of have clarity about that in the next couple months. I think is going to be a game-changer for us. I think having, you know, we enjoy a great relationship with Dell EMC and yet we also do work in the cloud and so being able to leverage the best of both of those to be able to kind of create sort of a compelling experience for both fans, for both player, baseball operations as well as sort of running an efficient business, I think is really what we're all about. >> I mean you guys are the poster child for hybrid cloud because you got core, data center, IoT, and >> No doubt. So it's exciting times. And we're very fortunate that with our relationship organizations like Dell and EMC, we have leading-edge technologies. So we're excited about where that can go and kind of what that can mean. It'll be a big step. >> Okay two personal questions from me as a fan. One is there really a money-counting room like in the movie "The Town"? Where they count a big stack of dollar bills. >> Well, I'm sure there is. I personally haven't visited it. (laughs) I know it's not in the room that they would tell you it is on the movie. (laughter) >> And finally, can The Cube get press passes to cover the games, next to NESN? Talk tech. >> Yeah, we'll see what we can do. >> They can talk baseball. We can talk about bandwidth. Right now, it's the level five conductivity. We're looking good on the pipes. >> Yeah we'll give you a tech tour. And you guys can sort of help us articulate all that to the fans. >> Thank you so much. Brian Shield, Vice President of Technology of the Boston Red Sox. Here talking about security and also the complications and challenges but the mega-opportunities around what digital and fan experiences are with the physical product like baseball, encapsulates kind of the digital revolution that's happening. So keep covering it. Here in Miami, I'm John Furrier. We'll be right back after this short break. (techno music)

Published Date : Oct 15 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Acronis. We are in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel. It's great to be here. John: So congratulations on the rings. Hey we appreciate that. You got to show Which camera is the good one? Bummer about this year. Again, things move on, but you know. Fenway Park, the cathedral of baseball parks. because of the threats. So you got business, team, fans. sort of relish the nostalgia of sports But over the last six, seven years, you know and I think it really speaks to sort of and digital has certainly consumed the world. You speak to a theater. So therefore, the technology has to be seamless. Well the data's got to be ubiquitous, right? about Fenway Park and how we modernize, and having things on brand as well. Saying being on brand, not kind of tearing down the old. that you may not have had before. One of the challenges that you guys have in Boston, that you guys are looking at Yeah so Fenway Park, we struggle as you know, Bentley, Babson, all the schools in the area. and the role that technology can play in the future. to cyber protection. What is the security kind of posture that you guys have? These guys are the lifeblood of our, you know, so those are end points now connecting to your network. for both ourselves and for all the touchpoints to fans. So I got to ask you the modernization question. So has digital blurred the lines So I mean, first off, the relationship of the franchise agreement, isn't it? really hats off to those guys, That's a huge, kind of shows the power of data One of the things that Major League Baseball does What new innovations that the casual fan or IT person and in some portions of the major leagues, You wear a ring now to tell you if you're sleeping well. and our managers to really make the wise decisions. that you think is going to be game-changing and so being able to leverage the best of both of those and kind of what that can mean. like in the movie "The Town"? I know it's not in the room that they would to cover the games, next to NESN? We're looking good on the pipes. articulate all that to the fans. and also the complications and challenges

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George Gagne & Christopher McDermott, Defense POW/MIA Account Agency | AWS Public Sector Summit 2019


 

>> Live from Washington, DC, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit, here in our nation's capital. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with John Furrier. We have two guests for this segment, we have George Gagne, he is the Chief Information Officer at Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, George. And we have Christopher McDermott, who is the CDO of the POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, Chris. >> Thank you. >> Thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> So, I want to start with you George, why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about the POW/MIA Accounting Agency. >> Sure, so the mission has been around for decades actually. In 2015, Secretary of Defense, Hagel, looked at the accounting community as a whole and for efficiency gains made decision to consolidate some of the accounting community into a single organization. And they took the former JPAC, which was a direct reporting unit to PACOM out of Hawaii, which was the operational arm of the accounting community, responsible for research, investigation, recovery and identification. They took that organization, they looked at the policy portion of the organization, which is here in Crystal City, DPMO and then they took another part of the organization, our Life Sciences Support Equipment laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, and consolidated that to make the defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Under the Office of Secretary Defense for Policy. So that was step one. Our mission is the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. personnel to their families and to our nation. That's our mission, we have approximately 82,000 Americans missing from our past conflicts, our service members from World War II, Korea War, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War. When you look at the demographics of that, we have approximately 1,600 still missing from the Vietnam conflict. We have just over a 100 still missing from the Cold War conflict. We have approximately 7,700 still missing from the Korean War and the remainder of are from World War II. So, you know, one of the challenges when our organization was first formed, was we had three different organizations all had different reporting chains, they had their own cultures, disparate cultures, disparate systems, disparate processes, and step one of that was to get everybody on the same backbone and the same network. Step two to that, was to look at all those on-prem legacy systems that we had across our environment and look at the consolidation of that. And because our organization is so geographically dispersed, I just mentioned three, we also have a laboratory in Offutt, Nebraska. We have detachments in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and we have a detachment in Germany. And we're highly mobile. We conduct about, this year we're planned to do 84 missions around the world, 34 countries. And those missions last 30 to 45 day increments. So highly mobile, very globally diverse organization. So when we looked at that environment obviously we knew the first step after we got everybody on one network was to look to cloud architectures and models in order to be able to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate, so we developed a case management system that consist of a business intelligence software along with some enterprise content software coupled with some forensics software for our laboratory staff that make up what we call our case management system that cloud hosted. >> So business challenges, the consolidation, the reset or set-up for the mission, but then the data types, it's a different kind of data problem to work, to achieve the outcomes you're looking for. Christopher, talk about that dynamic because, >> Sure. >> You know, there are historical different types of data. >> That's right. And a lot of our data started as IBM punchcards or it started from, you know, paper files. When I started the work, we were still looking things up on microfiche and microfilm, so we've been working on an aggressive program to get all that kind of data digitized, but then we have to make it accessible. And we had, you know as George was saying, multiple different organizations doing similar work. So you had a lot of duplication of the same information, but kept in different structures, searchable in different pathways. So we have to bring all of that together and make and make it accessible, so that the government can all be on the same page. Because again, as George said, there's a large number of cases that we potentially can work on, but we have to be able to triage that down to the ones that have the best opportunity for us to use our current methods to solve. So rather than look for all 82,000 at once, we want to be able to navigate through that data and find the cases that have the most likelihood of success. >> So where do you even begin? What's the data that you're looking at? What have you seen has had the best indicators for success, of finding those people who are prisoners of war or missing in action? >> Well, you know, for some degrees as George was saying, our missions has been going on for decades. So, you know, a lot of the files that we're working from today were created at the time of the incidents. For the Vietnam cases, we have a lot of continuity. So we're still working on the leads that the strongest out of that set. And we still send multiple teams a year into Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia. And that's where, you know, you try to build upon the previous investigations, but that's also where if those investigations were done in the '70s or the '80s we have to then surface what's actionable out of that information, which pathways have we trod that didn't pay off. So a lot of it is, What can we reanalyze today? What new techniques can we bring? Can we bring in, you know, remote sensing data? Can we bring GIS applications to analyze where's the best scenario for resolving these cases after all this time? >> I mean, it's interesting one of the things we hear from the Amazon, we've done so many interviews with Amazon executives, we've kind of know their messaging. So here's one of them, "Eliminate the undifferentiated heavy lifting." You hear that a lot right. So there might be a lot of that here and then Teresa had a slide up today talking about COBOL and mainframe, talk about punch cards >> Absolutely. >> So you have a lot of data that's different types older data. So it's a true digitization project that you got to enable as well as other complexity. >> Absolutely, when the agency was formed in 2015 we really begin the process of an information modernization effort across the organization. Because like I said, these were legacy on-prem systems that were their systems' of record that had specific ways and didn't really have the ability to share the data, collaborate, coordinate, and communicate. So, it was a heavy lift across the board getting everyone on one backbone. But then going through an agency information modernization evolution, if you will, that we're still working our way through, because we're so mobilely diversified as well, our field communications capability and reach back and into the cloud and being able to access that data from geographical locations around the world, whether it's in the Himalayas, whether it's in Vietnam, whether it's in Papua New Guinea, wherever we may be. Not just our fixed locations. >> George and Christopher, if you each could comment for our audience, I would love to get this on record as you guys are really doing a great modernization project. Talk about, if you each could talk about key learnings and it could be from scar tissue. It could be from pain and suffering to an epiphany or some breakthrough. What was some of the key learnings as you when through the modernization? Could you share some from a CIO perspective and from a CDO perspective? >> Well, I'll give you a couple takeaways of what I thought I think we did well and some areas I thought that we could have done better. And for us as we looked at building our case management system, I think step one of defining our problem statement, it was years in planning before we actually took steps to actually start building out our infrastructure in the Amazon Cloud, or our applications. But building and defining that problem statement, we took some time to really take a look at that, because of the different in cultures from the disparate organizations and our processes and so on and so forth. Defining that problem statement was critical to our success and moving forward. I'd say one of the areas that I say that we could have done better is probably associated with communication and stakeholder buy-in. Because we are so geographically dispersed and highly mobile, getting the word out to everybody and all those geographically locations and all those time zones with our workforce that's out in the field a lot at 30 to 45 days at a time, three or four missions a year, sometimes more. It certainly made it difficult to get part of that get that messaging out with some of that stakeholder buy-in. And I think probably moving forward and we still deal regarding challenges is data hygiene. And that's for us, something else we did really well was we established this CDO role within our organization, because it's no longer about the systems that are used to process and store the data. It's really about the data. And who better to know the data but our data owners, not custodians and our chief data officer and our data governance council that was established. >> Christopher you're learnings, takeaways? >> What we're trying to build upon is, you define your problem statement, but the pathway there is you have to get results in front of the end users. You have get them to the people who are doing the work, so you can keep guiding it toward the solution actually meets all the needs, as well as build something that can innovate continuously over time. Because the technology space is changing so quickly and dynamically that the more we can surface our problem set, the more help we can to help find ways to navigate through that. >> So one of the things you said is that you're using data to look at the past. Whereas, so many of the guests we're talking today and so many of the people here at this summit are talking about using data to predict the future. Are you able to look your data sets from the past and then also sort of say, And then this is how we can prevent more POW. Are you using, are you thinking at all, are you looking at the future at all with you data? >> I mean, certainly especially from our laboratory science perspective, we have have probably the most advanced human identification capability in the world. >> Right. >> And recovery. And so all of those lessons really go a long ways to what what information needs to be accessible and actionable for us to be able to, recover individuals in those circumstances and make those identifications as quickly as possible. At the same time the cases that we're working on are the hardest ones. >> Right. >> The ones that are still left. But each success that we have teaches us something that can then be applied going forward. >> What is the human side of your job? Because here you are, these two wonky data number crunchers and yet, you are these are people who died fighting for their country. How do you manage those two, really two important parts of your job and how do you think about that? >> Yeah, I will say that it does amp up the emotional quotient of our agency and everybody really feels passionately about all the work that they do. About 10 times a year our agency meets with family members of the missing at different locations around the country. And those are really powerful reminders of why we're doing this. And you do get a lot of gratitude, but at the same time each case that's waiting still that's the one that matters to them. And you see that in the passion our agency brings to the data questions and quickly they want us to progress. It's never fast enough. There's always another case to pursue. So that definitely adds a lot to it, but it is very meaningful when we can help tell that story. And even for a case where we may never have the answers, being able to say, "This is what the government knows about your case and these are efforts that have been undertaken to this point." >> The fact there's an effort going on is really a wonderful thing for everybody involved. Good outcomes coming out from that. But interesting angle as a techy, IT, former IT techy back in the day in the '80s, '90s, I can't help but marvel at your perspective on your project because you're historians in a way too. You've got type punch cards, you know you got, I never used punch cards. >> Put them in a museum. >> I was the first generation post punch cards, but you have a historical view of IT state of the art at the time of the data you're working with. You have to make that data actionable in an outcome scenario workload work-stream for today. >> Yeah, another example we have is we're reclaiming chest X-rays that they did for induction when guys were which would screen for tuberculosis when they came into service. We're able to use those X-rays now for comparison with the remains that are recovered from the field. >> So you guys are really digging into history of IT. >> Yeah. >> So I'd love to get your perspective. To me, I marvel and I've always been critical of Washington's slowness with respect to cloud, but seeing you catch up now with the tailwinds here with cloud and Amazon and now Microsoft coming in with AI. You kind of see the visibility that leads to value. As you look back at the industry of federal, state, and local governments in public over the years, what's your view of the current state of union of modernization, because it seems to be a renaissance? >> Yeah, I would say the analogy I would give you it's same as that of the industrial revolutions went through in the early 20th century, but it's more about the technology revolution that we're going through now. That's how I'd probably characterize it. If I were to look back and tell my children's children about, hey, the advent of technology and that progression of where we're at. Cloud architecture certainly take down geographical barriers that before were problems for us. Now we're able to overcome those. We can't overcome the timezone barriers, but certainly the geographical barriers of separation of an organization with cloud computing has certainly changed. >> Do you see your peers within the government sector, other agencies, kind of catching wind of this going, Wow, I could really change the game. And will it be a step function into your kind of mind as you kind of have to project kind of forward where we are. Is it going to a small improvement, a step function? What do you guys see? What's the sentiment around town? >> I'm from Hawaii, so Chris probably has a better perspective of that with some of our sister organizations here in town. But, I would say there's more and more organizations that are adopting cloud architectures. It's my understanding very few organizations now are co-located in one facility and one location, right. Take a look at telework today, cost of doing business, remote accessibility regardless of where you're at. So, I'd say it's a force multiplier by far for any line of business, whether it's public sector, federal government or whatever. It's certainly enhanced our capabilities and it's a force multiplier for us. >> And I think that's where the expectation increasingly is that the data should be available and I should be able to act on it wherever I am whenever the the opportunity arises. And that's where the more we can democratize our ability to get that data out to our partners to our teams in the field, the faster those answers can come through. And the faster we can make decisions based upon the information we have, not just the process that we follow. >> And it feeds the creativity and the work product of the actors involved. Getting the data out there versus hoarding it, wall guarding it, asylumming it. >> Right, yeah. You know, becoming the lone expert on this sack of paper in the filing cabinet, doesn't have as much power as getting that data accessible to a much broader squad and everyone can contribute. >> We're doing our part. >> That's right, it's open sourcing it right here. >> To your point, death by PowerPoint. I'm sure you've heard that before. Well business intelligence software now by the click of a button reduces the level of effort for man-power and resources to put together slide decks. Where in business intelligence software can reach out to those structured data platforms and pull out the data that you want at the click of a button and build those presentations for you on the fly. Think about, I mean, if that's our force multiplier in advances in technology of. I think the biggest thing is we understand as humans how to exploit and leverage the technologies and the capabilities. Because I still don't think we fully grasp the potential of technology and how it can be leveraged to empower us. >> That's great insight and really respect what you guys do. Love your mission. Thanks for sharing. >> Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Ferrer. We will have much more coming up tomorrow on the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, DC. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Jun 11 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. of the AWS Public Sector Summit, for coming on the show. about the POW/MIA Accounting Agency. and look at the consolidation of that. the reset or set-up for the mission, You know, there are historical so that the government can in the '70s or the '80s we have to then one of the things we hear project that you got to enable and into the cloud and being as you guys are really doing and store the data. and dynamically that the more we can So one of the things you said is capability in the world. At the same time the cases But each success that we What is the human side of your job? that's the one that matters to them. back in the day in the '80s, '90s, at the time of the data recovered from the field. So you guys are really You kind of see the visibility it's same as that of the Wow, I could really change the game. a better perspective of that with some And the faster we can make decisions and the work product in the filing cabinet, That's right, it's open and pull out the data that you really respect what you guys do. for coming on the show. on the AWS Public Sector

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Casey Clark, Scalyr | Scalyr Innovation Day 2019


 

>> from San Matteo. It's the Cube covering scaler. Innovation Day. Brought to You by Scaler >> Ron Jon Furry with the Cube. We're here for an innovation day at Scale ER's headquarters in San Mateo, California Profile in the hot startups, technology leaders and also value problems. Our next guest is Casey Clark, whose chief customer officer for scale of great to See You See >> you as well. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for coming in. >> So what does it talk about the customer value proposition? Let's get right to it. Who are your customers? Who you guys targeting give some examples of what they're what they're doing with >> you. We sell primarily to engineering driven companies. So you know, the top dog is that the CTO you know, their pride born in the cloud or moving heavily towards the cloud they're using, you know, things like micro services communities may be starting to look at that server list. So really kind of forward thinking, engineering driven businesses or where we start with, you know, some of the companies that we work with, you know, CareerBuilder, scripts, networks, Discovery networks, a lot of kind of modern e commerce media B to B B to C types of sass businesses as well. >> I want it. I want to drill down that little bit later. But, you know, basically born the cloud that seems to be That's a big cloud. Native. Absolutely. All right, So you guys are startup. Siri's a funded, which is, you know, Silicon Valley terms. You guys were right out of the gate. Talk about the status of the product. Evolution of the value proposition stages. You guys are in market selling two customers actively. What's the status of the products? Where Where is it from a customer's standpoint? >> Sure, Yeah, we've got, you know, over 300 customers and so fairly mature in terms of, you know, product market status. We were very fortunate to land some very large customers that pushed us when we were, you know, seven. So on employees, maybe three or four years ago, and so that that four system mature very quickly. Large enterprises that had anyway, this one customers alando in Germany. They're one of the largest commerce businesses in Europe and they have 23 1,000 engineers. He's in the product on the way basis, and we landed them when it was seven employees, you know, three or four years ago. And so that four system insurance it was very easy for us to go to other enterprises and say, Yeah, we can work with you And here's the proof points on how we've helped >> this business >> mature, how they've improved kind of their their speed to truth there. Time to answer whenever they have issues. >> And so the so. The kind of back up the playbook was early on, when had seven folks and growing beta status was that kind of commercially available? When did it? When was the tipping point for commercially available wanted that >> that probably tipped. When I joined about a little under four years ago, I had to convince Steve that he was ready to sell this product, right, as you'd expect with a kind of technical founder. He never thought the product was ready to go, but already had maybe a dozen or so kind of friends and family customers on DH. So I kind of came in and went on my network and started trying to figure out who are the right fit for this. Andi, we immediately found Eun attraction, the product just stood up and we started pushing. And so >> and you guys were tracking some good talent. Just looking. Valley Tech leaders are joining you guys, which is great sign when you got talent coming in on the customer side. Lots changed in four years. I'll see the edge of the network on digital transformation has been a punchline been kind of a cliche, but now I think it's more real. As people see the power of scale to cloud on premises. Seeing hybrid multi cloud is being validated. What is the current customer profile when you look at pure cloud versus on premise, You guys seeing different traction points? Can you share a little bit of color on that? >> Yeah, So I talked a little bit about our ideal customer profile being, you know, if he's kind of four categories e commerce, media BTB, sas B to see sass. You know, most of these companies are running. Some production were close in the cloud and probably majority or in the cloud. When we started this thing and it was only eight of us and Jesus has your were never talked about. We're seeing significant traction with azure and then specific regions. Southeast Asia G C. P. Is very hot. Sourcing a high demand there and then with the proliferation of micro services communities has absolutely taken off. I mean, I'll raise my hand and say I wasn't sure if it was going to communities and bases two years ago. I was say, I think Mason's going to want to bet the company on. Thank God we didn't do that. We want with communities on DH, you know? So we're seeing a lot more of kind of these distributed workloads. Distributed team development. >> Yeah, that's got a lot of head room now. The Cube Khan was just last week, so it's interesting kind of growth of that whole. Yet service measures right around the corner. Yeah, Micro Service is going to >> be a >> serviceman or data. >> Yeah, for sure it's been, and that's one of the big problems that we run in with logs that people just say that they're too voluminous. It's either too hard to search through it. It's too expensive. We don't know what to deal with it. And so they're trying to find other ways to kind of get observe ability and so you see, kind of a growth of some of the metrics companies like data dog infrastructure monitoring, phenomenal infrastructure, modern company. You've got lots of tracing companies come out and and really, they're coming out because there's just so many logs that's either too expensive, too hard, too slow to search through all that data. That's where your answers live on DH there, just extracting, summarizing value to try to kind of minimize the amount of search. You have to >> talk about the competition because you mentioned a few of them splunk ce out there as well, and there public a couple years ago and this different price point they get that. But what's why can't they scale to the level of you guys have because and how do you compare to them? Because, I mean, I know that is getting larger, but what's different about you guys visited the competition? >> Absolutely. This is one of the reasons why I joined the company. What excites me the most is I got to go talk to engineers and I could just talk shop. I don't really talk about the business value quite as much. We get there at some point, obviously, but we made some very key decisions early on in the company's history. I mean, really, before the company started to kind of main back and architectural decisions. One we don't use elastics search losing any sort of Cuban indexing, which is what you know. Almost every single logging tool use is on the back end. Keyword indexes. Elastic search are great for human legible words. Relatively stale lists where you're not looking through, you know, infinite numbers of high carnality kind of machine data. So we made an optimized decision to use no sequel databases Proprietary column in our database. So that's one aspect of things. How we process in store. The data is highly efficient. The other pieces is worse, asked business, But we're true. SAS were true multi tenant. And so when you put a query into the scaler, every CP corn every server is executing on just that quarry is very similar way. Google Search works. So not only do we get better performance, we get better costume better scalability across all of our customers, >> and you guys do sail to engineering led buyer, and you mentioned that a lot of sass companies that are a lot of time trying to come in and sell that market bump into people who want to build their own. Yeah, I don't need your help. I think I might get fired or it might make me look good. That seems to be a go to market dynamic or and or consumption peace. What's your response to that? How does that does that fared for you guys? >> Engineers want to engineer whether it's the right thing or not, right? And so that is always hard. And I can't come in and tell your baby's ugly right because your baby is beautiful in your eyes and so that is a hard conversation have. But that's why I kind of go back to what I was saying. If we just talk shop, we talk about, you know, the the engineering decisions around, you know, is that the right database? Is this the right architecture? And they think that they started nodding and nodding, nodding, And then we say, And the values are going to be X y and Z cost performance scale ability on dso when you kind of get them to understand that like Elastics, which is great for a lot of things. Product search Web search. Phenomenal, but log management, high card. Now that machine did. It's not what it's designed for. Okay. Okay, okay. And then we start to get them to come around and say, Not only can you reallocate I mean, we talked about how getting talent is. It's hard. Well, let's put them back on mission critical business, You know, ensuring objectives. And we get, you know, service that this is all we do. Like you gonna have a couple people in there part time managing a long service. This is all we do. And so you get things like like tracing that were rolling out this quarter, you know, better cost optimization, better scalability. Things you would never get with an >> open. So the initial reaction might be to go in and sell on hey, cheaper solution. And is an economic buyer. Not really for these kinds of products, because you're dealing with engineers. Yeah. They want to talk shop first. That seems to be the playbook. >> Are artists is getting that first meeting and the 1st 1 is hard because that, you know, they're busy. Everybody's busy, They just wave you off. They ignore the email, the calls in and we get that. But once we get in, we have kind of this consultation, you know, conversation around. Why, why we made these technology decisions. They get it. >> Let's do a first meeting right now. People watching this video, What's the architectural advantages? Let's talk shop. Yeah, why, you guys? >> Yeah, absolutely so kind of too technical differentiators. And then three sort of benefits that come from those two technical choices. One is what I mentioned this proprietary, you know, columnar. No sequel database specifically designed for kind of high card in ality machine, right? There is no indexes that need to be backed up or tuned. You know, it's it's It's a massively parallel grab t its simplest form. So one pieces that database. The other piece is that architecture where we get, you know, one performance benefits of throwing every CP corn every several unjust trickery. Very someone way. Google Search works If I go say, How do I make a pizza and Google? It's not like it goes like Casey server in a data center in Alaska and runs for a bit. They're throwing a tonic and pure power every query. So there's the performance piece. There is the scale, ability piece. We have one huge massive pool of shared compute resource is And so you're logged, William. Khun, Spike. But relative to the capacity we have, it means nothing. Right? But all these other services, they're single tenant, you know, hosted services. You know, there's a capacity limit. And you a single customer. If you're going, you know, doubles. Well, it wasn't designed to handle that log falling, doubling. And then, you know, the last piece is the cost. There is a huge economies of scale shared services. We we run the system at a significantly lower cost than what anybody else can. And so you get, you know, cost, benefits, performance by defense and scale, ability >> and the life of the engineer. The buyer here. What if some of the day in the life use case pain in the butt so they have a mean its challenges. There's a dead Bob's is basically usually the people who do Dev ups are pretty hard core, and they they love it and they tend to love the engineering side of it. But what of the hassles with them? >> Yeah, Yeah, >> but you saw >> So you know, kind of going back to what we're all about were all about speed to truth, right? In kind of a modern environment where you're deploying everyday multiple times per day. Ah, lot of times there's no que es your point directly to the production, right? And you're kind of but is on the line. When that code goes live, you need to be able to kind of get speed to truth as quickly as possible, right? You need to be able to identify one of problem went wrong when something went wrong immediately, and they needed to be able to come up with a resolution. Right? There's always two things that we always talk about. Meantime, to restore it meantime, to resolution right there is. You know, maybe the saris are responsible for me. Time to restore. So they're in scaler. They get alert there, immediately diving through the logs to regret. Okay, it's this service. Either we need to restart it. Or how do we kind of just put a Band Aid on top? It's to make sure customers don't see it right. And then it gets kicked over to developer who wrote the code and say, Okay, now. Meantime, the resolution, How long until we figure out what went wrong and how do we fix it to make sure it doesn't happen again? And that's where we help. >> You know, It's interesting case he mentioned the resolution piece. A lot of engineers that become operationalized prove your service, not operations. People just being called Deb ops is that they have to actually do this as an SL a basis when they do a lot of AP AP and only gets more complicated with service meshes right now with these micro services framework, because now you have service is being stood up and torn down and literally, without it, human intervention. So this notion of having a path of validation working with other services could be a pain in the butt time. >> Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult. We've, you know, with some of the large organizations we work with you worked with. They've tried to build their own service, mashes and they, you know, got into a massive conference room and try to write out a letter from services that are out there in the realities they can't figure out. There's no good way for them to map out like, who talks toe what? When and know each little service knows, like Okay, well, here's the downstream effects, and they kind of know what's next to them. They know their Jason sees, but they don't really know much further than that on the nice thing about, you know, logs and all kind of the voluminous data that is in there, which makes it very difficult to manage. But the answers are are in there, right? And so we provide a lot of value by giving you one place to look through all of >> that cube con. This has been a big topic because a lot of times just to be more hard core is that there could be downtime on the services They don't even know about >> it. Yeah. Yeah, That's exactly >> what discovering and visualizing that are surfacing is huge. Okay, what's the one thing that people should know about scaler that haven't talked you guys or know about? You guys should know about you guys Consider. >> Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is everybody's trying to move as quickly as possible. And there is a better way, you know, observe, ability, telemetry, monitoring, whatever you call your team Is court of the business right? Its core to moving faster, its core to providing a better user experience. And we have, you know, spent a significant amount of time building. You need technology to support your business is growth. Andi, I think you know you can look at the benefits I've talked about them cost performance, scalability. Right? But these airline well, with whatever you're looking at it, it's PML. If it's, you know, service up time. That's exactly what we provide. Is is a tool to help you give a better experience to your own customers. >> Casey. Thanks for spend the time. Is sharing that insight? Of course. We'd love speed the truth. It's our model to Cuba. Go to the events and try to get the data out there. We're here. The innovation dates scales Headquarters. I'm John for you. Thanks for watching

Published Date : May 30 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to You by Scaler Mateo, California Profile in the hot startups, technology leaders and also value problems. Who you guys targeting give some examples of what they're what they're doing with the top dog is that the CTO you know, their pride born in the cloud or moving heavily towards the cloud But, you know, basically born the cloud that seems to be That's a big cloud. and we landed them when it was seven employees, you know, three or four years ago. Time to answer whenever they have issues. And so the so. I had to convince Steve that he was ready to sell this product, right, as you'd expect with a kind of technical and you guys were tracking some good talent. Yeah, So I talked a little bit about our ideal customer profile being, you know, if he's kind of four categories Yeah, Micro Service is going to Yeah, for sure it's been, and that's one of the big problems that we run in with logs that people just say that they're too voluminous. Because, I mean, I know that is getting larger, but what's different about you guys And so when you put a query into the scaler, and you guys do sail to engineering led buyer, and you mentioned that a lot of sass And we get, you know, service that this is all we do. So the initial reaction might be to go in and sell on hey, cheaper solution. Are artists is getting that first meeting and the 1st 1 is hard because that, you know, they're busy. Yeah, why, you guys? And then, you know, the last piece is the cost. and the life of the engineer. So you know, kind of going back to what we're all about were all about speed to truth, right? meshes right now with these micro services framework, because now you have service is being And so we provide a lot of value by giving you one place to look through all of the services They don't even know about that haven't talked you guys or know about? you know, observe, ability, telemetry, monitoring, whatever you call your team Is court of the business right? Thanks for spend the time.

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Cormac Watters, Infor | Inforum DC 2018


 

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum, DC 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> We are back this afternoon here in Washington, D.C., at the Walter Washington Convention Center. As we continue our coverage here of Inforum 2018 along with Dave Vellante, I'm John Walls, and we now welcome Mr. Cormack Watters to the program today, EVP of Emea and APAC at Infor. Cormack, good to see you sir. >> Nice to be here. >> So, we're going to talk about Guinness, over in Ireland (chuckling). Cormack's from Dublin, so we had a little conversation. We're getting a primer here. >> It's actually the best conversation we should have, right? >> Right, we'll save that for the end. How about that? So, you're fairly new, right? About a year or so. >> Ten months or so, not that I'm counting it by the day >> No no no, always going forward, never backward. But a big plate you have, right, with EMEA and APAC? Different adoptions, different viewpoints, different perspectives... We've talked a lot really kind of focusing domestically here for the past couple of days. Your world's a little different than that though, right? >> It is. It is. And it's very good that you've actually recognized it because that's actually the biggest challenge that we have. To be a little bit humble about it, I think we've got world-class products and solutions. I actually fundamentally believe that. But we have lots of different languages, cultures, and localization requirements in the multiple Countries that we look after. So, it's great to have great products, but it needs to be in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Finish, Arabic, which most of them are. Customers realize that we are actually international and localized for many, many markets. But now we've become an intriguing option for them, if you're a multi-national business, with subsidiaries all over the world. So, it's good that Infor is big enough to do that. We need to do a better job of letting everybody know that we've done that, if that makes any sense. >> Sure. >> So what's happening in Europe? Europe's always pockets, there's no..I mean.. Yes, EU but there's really still no one Europe. What's going on? Obviously, we have Brexit hanging over our head. I felt like U.S. markets are maybe a little bit overheated in Europe has potential upside. >> Yeah >> And it seems like others seem to agree with that. What happening on the ground? Any specific, interesting areas? Is Southern Europe still a concern? Maybe you can give us an update? >> Yeah, so Brexit is quite a dominant conversation. I am from Ireland. I live in Dublin, but I'm working all over Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. So, I don't get to be at home very often, except the weekends. London is really our regional headquarters from a European perspective, and Brexit is on everybody's mind. Interestingly, when you go outside the UK, Brexit is not such a big topic because... That's Europe. And they kind of go, "Well if you don't want to be here, then you don't need to be here." Right? So it's a little bit of that, and they're saying, "Well, we'd like for them to stay, but if they don't want to stay, well, don't wait around." But in the UK, it's causing a lot of uncertainty. And the UK's one of our biggest markets. It's a lot of uncertainty, and what would be best is if we just knew what was going to happen, and then we could deal with it. And actually, once we know what's going to happen, that's going to bring a degree of change. And change, from our industry perspective means there's going to be some requirements that emerge. So, we need to be ready to serve those, which is opportunity. But the uncertainty is just slowing down investment. So, we need that to be resolved. >> So, clarity obviously is a good thing obviously a good thing in any market. Are there any hotspots? >> Yeah, actually for us, we're doing, for us the Hotspots right now, we're doing incredibly well in Germany. Which, one of our lesser known competitors is a small Company called SAP. And they're headquartered in Germany. It's quite interesting to see that we're actually taking a lot of market there in Germany, which is fantastic. That's a little bit unexpected, but it's going very well right now. We're seeing a ton of activity in the Asia Pacific, I would say that region is probably our fastest growing in all of Infor. And consistently so for several quarters and maybe past a year at this point. So Asia Pacific, Germany, U.K., and then as it happens, we are doing very well in Southern Europe, which is a combination of countries really. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Hard to put it down to which particular Country is doing well, but there seems to be a general uplift in that region. Because they were hit the hardest, arguably, by the crash back in 2008. So they've definitely come out of that now. >> And when they come out, excuse me I'm sorry John, but, they come out, Cloud becomes more important to them, Right? >> Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Anyone who's been delaying investment for years, can actually leapfrog what's been happening and jump straight to what you might call the future. So lots of Companies, lots of our Customers, are trying to simplify their Business. So Cloud is a great equalizer. We believe in your, what we call Last Mile of Functionality per industry. And that should make the projects shorter, more compact more predictable and the infrastructure worries go away, because that's our responsibility to the Customers. >> We definitely so that in the U.S., 2008-2009, CFO's came in said shift to the Cloud, because we want to shift Capx to Opx, and when we came out of the downturn, they said "wow this stuff works pretty well, double down on it" and then there were other business benefits that they wanted to accelerate, and so maybe Southern Europe was a little bit behind >> I think that may be the case right, and they are picking up. And what we're seeing are a lot of other advantages. Not to make this a sale's pitch, but, I am here so >> Go for it >> You've got a microphone >> I've got a microphone and I'm Irish, so I've got to talk right? What the Cloud is actually doing is, lots of Companies have put in big ERP over the years, the decades. And then they get stuck at various points and maybe years behind, because upgrades become painful and really want to avoid them. So what they're seeing is, if they can get onto the Cloud, they never need to upgrade again. Because it's always current, because we upgrade it every week, or every month and they're never falling behind. So they want to be ready to take advantage of the innovations that they know about and those that they don't even know about. So by keeping on the latest version, that opportunities open to them. Also, there's a big issue in Europe specifically about a thing called GDPR, which is data protection. Security. So we believe that we can do a better job of providing that, than any individual Company. Because we provide it for everybody, our resources can be deployed once and then deployed many times. Where as if you're an individual customer, you've got to have that speciality and put it in place. So GDPR is a genuine issue in Europe, because, the fines are absolutely huge if a Company is found to breach it. >> It's become a template for the globe now, California's started moving in that direction, GDPR has set the frame work. >> Well and just to follow up on that, and now you're dealing with a very different regulatory climate, then certainly here in the United States. And many U.S. Companies are finding that out, as we know. Overseas right now. So how do you deal with that in terms of, this kind of balkanized approach that you have, that you know that what's working here doesn't necessarily translate to overseas, and plus you have, you know, you're serving many masters and not just one or two. >> What's happening is the guys in our RND have done very well, is they understand the requirement of, in this instance, GDPR. They look at the other regulatory requirements, lets say in Australia, which is subtly different, but it is different, and they can take, well what do we have to do? What's the most extreme we have to achieve? And if we do that across our suite into our platform suite, the N4RS, that can then be applied to all the applications. And then becomes relevant to the U.S. So it's almost like some requirement across the seas, being deployed then becoming really relevant back here because over here you do need to be aware of the data protection, as well, it's just not as formalized yet. >> It's coming >> A Brewing issue right? >> What about Asia Pacific? So you have responsibility for Japan, and China, and the rest of the region. >> Right >> Which you are sort of re-distinct... >> Really are right? There are several sub regions in the one region. The team down there, as I say, arguably the most successful team in Infor right now, so Helen and the crew. So you see Australia, New Zealand then you see Southeast Asia, then you see China, Japan and so on. So different dynamics and different markets, some more mature than others, Japan is very developed by very specific. You do need very specialized local skills to succeed. Arguably Australia, New Zealand is not that similar from say some of the European Countries. Even though there are differences and I would never dream to tell an Australian or a New Zealander that they are the same as Europeans, cuz I get it. I smile when people say "you're from the U.K and you're not from Ireland?" I understand the differentiation. (laugher) And Southeast Asia, there's a ton of local custom, local language, local business practice that needs to be catered for. We seem to be doing okay down there. As I say, fastest growing market at scale. It's not like it's growing ridiculously fast but from a small base. It's as a big market already and growing the fastest. >> And China, what's that like? You have to partner up? >> Oh yeah >> To the JV in China? >> You have to partner up, there are several of the key growth markets that it's best to go in with partners. Customers like to see we've got a presence. So that they can touch and feel that Infor entity. We can't achieve the scale we need, and the growth we want fast enough without partnering. So we have to go with partners to get us the resources that we need. >> And in the Middle East, so my business partner, Co-Host, John Furrier, is on a Twenty Hour flight to Bahrain. The Cube Bahrain. Bahrain was the first Country in the Middle East to declare Cloud first. AWS is obviously part of that story, part of your story. So what's going on over there? Is it a growing market? Is it sort of something you're still cracking? >> No, no, again it's growing. We have several key markets down there, big in hospitality in that part of the world. Hotels, tourism obviously. Shopping, very interesting markets, and Healthcare, interestingly enough. I think arguably some of the worlds best Hospitals are in that region. Definitely the best funded Hospitals. >> Probably the most comfortable. (laughter) >> So again part of our stent is the number of industries we serve, so if you can put in our platform as it were, then you could have multiple of the industry flavors applied. Because what's interesting in that part of World, there seem to be a number of, I guess we call them conglomerates. So maybe family owned, or region owned, and they have just a different array of businesses all under the one ownership. So you would have a retailer that's also doing some tourism, that's also doing some manufacturing. So we can put our platform in, and then those industry flavors they can get one solution to cover it all. Which is a little bit unusual, and works for us. >> Your scope is enormous. I mean essentially you're the head of Non-U.S. I mean is that right? >> Yeah, and Latin America as well. >> That's part of it? That's not... >> Excluding the Americas. So there's Americas and then everything else, and you're everything else. >> I missed a meeting you see so they just gave it to me >> What you raised your hand at the wrong time? >> I wasn't there (laughter) >> So how do you organize to be successful? You obviously have to have strong people in the region. >> Right. So the key is people, right. We organize somewhat differently to over here. We've gone for a regional model, so I have six sub-regions, that I worry about. So four in Europe, the Nordic Countries. Scandinavian, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark. We call Western, which is Ireland, U.K. and the Benelux. Germany is Central and East, and then Southern is the Latin Country, Spain, Portugal, Greece and so. Then we've got the Middle East, and Africa, and then we got Asia Pacific. I've got six regional teams, all headed by a regional leader, and each of them are trying to be as self contained as they can. And where we see we've got an opportunity to move into something new, we've got one team working with me directly as an incubator. For example, we're driving a specific focus on Healthcare, in our part of the world, because it's very big over here. We haven't quite cracked the code over there. When we get some scale, then it'll move into the regions, but for now that's incubating under me. >> And, what about in Country? Do you have Country Managers? One in the U.K., one in France, one in Germany. >> We have what we call local leaders, right? So in some cases it could be a sales oriented individual, it could be consulting, others it could be the local HR guy. So that's more for us to make sure we're building a sense of community within Infor. Rather than it being more customer facing. We're still trying to make sure that there is a reasonably scarcity of senior skills. So regionalizing lets us deploy across several Countries, and that works with the customer base, but for employees we need local leaders to give them a sense of feeling home and attached. >> So the regions are kind of expertise centers if you will? >> Yes >> So I was going to ask about product expertise, where does that come from? It's not parachuted in from the U.S. I presume? >> No, we're pretty much self-sufficient actually, which is great. So from both what we call solution consulting, which is the product expertise, and then consulting which is the product deployment. And we're doing more and more of our deployments with Partners. As I say, we need to really rapidly embrace that partner ecosystem to give us the growth opportunity. RND, is all over the World. That's not under my direct control. So for a major suites, take for example, LN, happens to be headquartered out of Barneveld, in the Netherlands. From a Historic perspective, which is great. And Stockholm, which is also great. But a lot of the development resource room in Nila and in India. So we work closely with the guys, even though they don't actually report to me. >> And out of the whole area, the area of your responsibility what's the best growth opportunity? We all think of China, but that's been fits and starts for a lot of people. >> Yeah, yeah I think we've got multiple opportunities, you can look at it a few ways. You can look at it geographically, and you would say China. You can look at Eastern Europe, and you can look at Africa. There's a ton of opportunity in those regions, geographically. Interestingly we are also at a point where I think the Nordics, and we've got a very solid base Historically, and so on. But we probably haven't put enough focus on there in recent times, that the opportunities are really scaled in Nordics is really quite significant. And then they can look at it from a Product Perspective. So for example, we have, what we believe to be World Leading, and actually a Company called Gartner would equally agree with us. Enterprise Asset Management, EAM, that's a product suite that can fit across all of our industries. I think that could well be the significant growth area for us across the entire six regions. And it's a huge focus for us here at the conference actually. So we can do it by product, EAM, Healthcare, or by Region. I think Eastern Europe, China, and Africa, as well as the Nordics. >> And the other big opportunity is just share gains, market share gains, particularly in Europe, I would think, with your background. >> Yup. Completely, I mean, that's why I said, it's really interesting that we are winning market share in Germany. Who'd of thought that a few years ago? That's a big market, I mean, Germany, U.K., France, Italy. They're huge. Right, I mean U.K., is what, Sixty-Five Million People? It's a big economy, so we've got many of the worlds G7, in our backyard. So we just really need to double down on those, and give them the opportunities to grow that we need. >> And just back to Japan for a second. Japan has traction, it takes a long time to crack Japan. I know it first from personal experiences. >> Yeah, Okay, Interesting. >> Yeah you just got to go many many times and meet people. >> That's it, Right. And it's a different culture, of when you think they're saying yes and you think they're there, that's just yes to the next step. (laughter) >> Alright, so it does take time to get there. We've actually cracked it to some extent, that we've now got some solid referenceability, and some good wind. We need local leaders in Japan, to really crack the code there. >> And then once you're in, you're in. >> I think that once you've proven yourself, it's a lot of word of mouth and referencing. >> Well I hope you get home this weekend. Are you headed home? >> Yes! Actually I'm lucky enough. My Wife is originally from Chicago. So she and our Daughter have come over for the weekend, to go sight seeing in Washington. So that'll be fun. So we'll be going home on Sunday. >> Your adopted home for the weekend then. >> That's exactly right. >> Well we'll talk Guinness in just a bit. Thanks for the time though, we appreciate it. >> Thank you Gentlemen. >> Good to see you, Sir. Alright, back with more here from Inforum 2018, and you're watching Live, on theCube, here in D.C. (electronic music)

Published Date : Sep 27 2018

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Infor. Cormack, good to see you sir. Cormack's from Dublin, so we had a little conversation. So, you're fairly new, right? domestically here for the past couple of days. and localization requirements in the multiple Countries So what's happening in Europe? And it seems like others seem to agree with that. And the UK's one of our biggest markets. So, clarity obviously is a good thing arguably, by the crash back in 2008. And that should make the projects shorter, more compact We definitely so that in the U.S., 2008-2009, Not to make this a sale's pitch, the Cloud, they never need to upgrade again. It's become a template for the globe now, here in the United States. the N4RS, that can then be applied to all the and the rest of the region. and growing the fastest. We can't achieve the scale we need, and the growth we want in the Middle East to declare Cloud first. of the world. Probably the most comfortable. So again part of our stent is the number of industries I mean is that right? That's part of it? Excluding the Americas. So how do you organize to be successful? So four in Europe, the Nordic Countries. One in the U.K., one in France, one in Germany. it could be consulting, others it could be the local from the U.S. I presume? But a lot of the development resource And out of the whole area, the area of your responsibility So for example, we have, what we believe to be And the other big opportunity is just share gains, So we just really need to double down And just back to Japan for a second. of when you think they're saying yes and you think We've actually cracked it to some extent, that we've now it's a lot of word of mouth and referencing. Well I hope you get home this weekend. So she and our Daughter have come over for the weekend, Thanks for the time though, we appreciate it. Good to see you, Sir.

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Dave Abrahams, Insurance Australia Group | Red Hat Summit 2018


 

from San Francisco it's the queue covering Red Hat summit 2018 brought to you by Red Hat hey welcome back everyone's two cubes live coverage here in San Francisco California at Moscone West I'm John for a co-host of the cube with my analyst this week co-host John Troy a co-founder of tech reckoning our next guest is Dave Abrams executive general manager of data at Insurance Australia group welcome to the cube thanks for having me we were just you know talking on an off-camera before we came on about the challenges of data as cloud scale you guys have been around for many many years yeah you're dealing with a lot of legacy yeah you guys out right on the front step what's going on with you take a minute to explain what you guys do in your role in your environment absolutely now it's you know so we're we're large insurance trying we we've got offices in New Zealand and across Southeast Asia so we're kind of expanding out in our in our reach but um we've been around for a hundred odd years and and we've really grown a lot through merger and acquisition over time and so what that's meant ah this is a bit of a byproduct of those kind of merge and acquisition process is that data has been siloed and fragmented in different brands and different products and so it's been hard to get for example just a holistic view of a customer what does the customer have all the products they hold you know are they a personal customer as well as a business caste and all that sort of stuff doesn't kind of line up so we've had that big challenge in we've been working over the last couple of years to even just kind of consolidate all that unify that data into one platform so that we can see across the group from from a holistic perspective and and build that single view of customer and that's now helped us sort of understand you know what our customers are doing in and what's important to them and how we can better support them and yeah and offer better services and what are you doing here at Red Hat this week what's what's the objective what are you doing what do you have you know I'm speaking you talking the folk what's the what's the solution with Red Hat well so yeah we're primarily here as a result of the Innovation Awards so we you know we were nominated and we're successful in our in our award for that category in our region which was wonderful we we're really honored with that so we're here because of that we sharing our customer story with the rest of the Red Hat team and the rest of the open-source community around really what it's meant for us to use open source within a big corporate that's kind of traditionally been based on a lot of vendor technology right a live Ben driven predominantly by the big tech vendors you know that have come in and sort of helped us build big solutions and platforms which which were great and wonderful in the fact that you know they they were there and they lasted like ten years plus and that was all good but now because things are changing so fast we need to be more adaptable and and unfortunately those platforms become so entrenched into the organization and and and sort of lock you in that it's a to adjust into it to be adaptable you can't you can't take it out very easily it doesn't even stack up sometimes from a business case so why would we take that technology out we'll just have to dig deeper and we'll just have to spend more right so we're trying to we're trying to re reverse-engineer some of that and the role open source for you guys have been part of new systems recruiting talent everything director what's been a benefit the impact of absolutely it's huge inand you're right I think one of the biggest benefits for us that that really plays out is there is in the talent side right for our people to say not only are we transitioning our organization as a whole and the way we the way we operate but we're really transitioning out people we're transition from kind of the work force that we that we had and they've got us to where we are today but we're now setting ourselves up for the workforce of the future and it is a different skill set it is a different way of approaching problems so you know bringing bring this new technology to the table and allowing people to experiment to learn and to update their skills and capabilities exactly what we what we need for our company so we're pushing that hard yeah that's great it's like a real cultural shift give me maybe transfer transfer over a little bit to the actual tech problem you had right so you multiple countries multiple data warehouses multiple systems yours so what were you looking at and then what was the solution that you kind of figured out and then when yeah when so when I first started the roll a couple of years back we had something like 23 different separate individual data warehouses there were all sort of interconnected and dependent on each other and had copies of each other in each other and it was just it was a little bit of a mess so so the first challenge was to really sort of rationalize and clean up a lot of that so so that's that's what we spent a fair bit of time upfront doing which was basically really acquiring the organization's data from a massive amount of call source systems so in the vicinity of I think we take data from roughly about 150 to 200 call systems and we want to take that data essentially in as close to real time as we possibly can and pump that into her into a and to a new clean unified data Lake right just to make that data all line up so that was the big challenge in the first instance and then the second instance was really a scale problem right so getting the right technology that would help us scale into you know because we've predominately been using our own data centers and keeping a lot of stuff you know in that sort of on-prem mode but we really wanted to be able you know self scale to not only to be able to you know take advantage of cloud infrastructure just to give us that extra computing that extra storage and processing but really also to be able to leverage the the commoditization that's happening in cloud right because you know all all cloud companies around the world commoditizing technology like machine learning and you know artificial intelligence so that it's it's it's available to lots of organizations and the way we see it is really that that we're not going to be able to compete or out engineer those those companies so we need to make it you know accessible and available for our people to be able to use and leverage that innovation on our work as well as is you know do some some smart stuff ourselves are using infrastructures of service OpenStack or what's your solution I mean what are you guys doing solution is yet to use I've been stack is is our first sort of real step into infrastructure-as-a-service so that's really helped us set up like I was showing this morning set up the capability for us to turn our scale in a really cost-efficient way and we've ported a lot of our traditional dedicated you know applications on infrastructure that you know was like appliance based and things like that on to OpenStack now so that we can it gives us a lot more portability and we can move that around and put that in the place where we think gets us the best value so so that's really helped I'm kind of curious you work with Red Hat consulting and was I was I was curious about that process did you was that the result of a kind of a bake-off or we were already Red Hat customers and said oh hey by the way can you give us some advice yeah it really came about I mean we've been working with Red Hat for many years you know and it started back just sort of in the support area of Linux and and rel and using that kind of capability and rit has been there for us for quite a long time now and I think we've sort of done some some Explorer exploratory type exercise with them around you know I've been shifting and The Container well but but what really started the stick was just getting their expertise in from our OpenStack perspective and when you that was a key platform that we really wanted to dive into an enable and so having them there is our partner and helping us provide that extra consulting knowledge and expertise was was what we really needed helped us deliver on that project and we delivered in a mazing ly tight timeframe so it was a fast delivery faster live what about the business impact why people look at OpenStack and some of these new technologies and certainly with the legacy stuff going on you have got all these things everywhere what was the actual business benefits can you highlight like did you get like faster time-to-market was it like a claims issue and what were the key things that you look back and saying well we kicked ass and we did these three things I mean really what it boils down to as faster time-to-market right and just the ability to move quicker so to give you an example the way we used to work is it would take you say probably weeks maybe even longer to to provision and get infrastructure stood up and ready to go for different projects so I meant that there was all this lead time that projects nearly go through before they could start to write code and even start to add value to to customer so we wanted to sort of take that away and and and and that was a that was a big hindrance to to be able to experiment and to be on a play we think so again we want to take that out of the picture in and really free people up to sort of say well the infrastructure is done and it spins up in a matter of seconds now on OpenStack and you can get on with the job of trying something out experimenting and actually delivering and writing code that will that will produce an outcome to launch new applications what was a specific outcome that came from standing up putting that over stack together I see you experimenting result not adding yeah not only in the app spice but more so the biggest the biggest sort of benefit with God is really in the data space where we've now been able to essentially stand up our entire data stack using open source technology and we've never been able to do that before and this is you know this is this is the environment it's allowed us to do that by just allowing for us to do that test and trial and say you know he's kafir you're gonna be the right tool for us is it you know is he gonna we're gonna use Post Chris whatever that is it's allowed us to sort of really do that in a rapid way and then figure that thing out and start to move forward so you know ask our kiss you guys have done a lot of work out there good work so I gotta ask you the question with kubernetes containers now part of the discussion as a real viable way to handle legacy but also new software development projects how do you look at that what it's what's the your your reaction to that as that practitioner yeah you guys excited yeah yeah things in motion what's your what's your color um absolutely it's in fact it's been something that we've kind of had on the radar for quite a while because we've we've we've been working with containers so dock in particular and and and one of the things that you know you come across this just management of containers and just ongoing maintenance of of those kind of things where they start to get a little bit unwieldy a little bit out of control so you know we've been trying to we try to start which started off trying to build our own you know in solution to that is there's a lot of corporates are doing quickly found out less that's it that's a huge engineering challenge so things like kubernetes that have now come along and the investment that's been put in that platform will really open up that avenue for and even seeing just the the new innovation that's been put into our OpenShift here that sort of takes a lot of that management and service you know administration out of the out of the equation few is wonderful for a company like us because at the end of the day we're an insurance company right we're not a we're not a technology engineering company while although we have some capability it's never going to be our our strengths right we're really here to service our customers and and to help them in the times when they need our help you guys are a data company data is critical for any trivet yeah how how is you how we've become more data-driven as a result of all this yeah so so now that we've got our data all in one place and we're able to get their single views of customers we're able to put that data now into the hands of people that can really add value to us so for example into our analytics teams and get them to look for optimization in price or in service claims processing all those kind of good things that that are helping our customers reduce the the time frames that they would normally go through in that part of that experience and I think one of the other things is not only that but also enrich our digital capability right and rich that digital channel so make it more convenient for customers you know where it used to be that customers would come along and it's literally like coming to the organization for the first time every time you know I say fill in that form again from blank you're like we don't know anything about you but now we're able to enrich your form exactly it's very painful I see your name and you know you wanted to show your house tell us all about that house you know what does it made of you know what what type of roof material what's the wall we know all that we've probably seen that house ten times already so why wouldn't we just be able to pre-populate that kind of information and make it more convenient forecasting personalization becomes critical absolutely absolutely I like the way you underscored and told the story just like with cloud you just can't take your broken old IT apps and just throw them up at the cloud you had to you had to do a data exercise and you had to do a consolidation and the cleaning strong and sure that involved open source but you didn't get the tech stack first first you have to picture picture data app and and that was a key part here yeah so that's difficult and that's you know that's one of the things that I think we really we really invested in it was because a lot of the time what we've seen is organizations have sort of attacked the low-hanging fruit like the the the kind of the external the digital data that they might be able to get but not that offline data that's been you know one and and generated by the branch and the call centers and all those kind of areas and we dug in deep and invested in that space and got that right first which really helped us a lot to accelerate and now we're I think we're in a better position we can definitely take advantage of that yeah thanks for sharing your insights here in the cube I gotta ask you a final question as the folks watching that they're looking at you say wow this guy he got down and dirty fixed some things he's gone forward innovative what advice would you give someone watching is pregnant practitioner what have you learned what's the learnings that you've that have been magnified out of this process for you and your view going forward yeah yeah there's a there's a lot of learnings we can share but I think some of the key ones is you know I think there's sometimes a bit of a bit of a sort of attempt to try and solve everything yourself right and and we definitely did that where I try and build it all yourself and do everything right but it's it's a challenge and and use partners and look for look for you know things that are kind of gonna help you accelerate and give you some of the foundational work you don't have to build yourself right you don't have to build everything yourself and I think that acknowledgement is really key so that was one of the big things for us the other thing is you know just just investing early and getting things right upfront life pulling your data and consolidating it into into a single platform even though that takes a lot of time and and it's and it's quite challenging to sort of go back and redo things that's actually a huge investment in a big winter to really help you accelerate at the end that investment upfront does does pay off so congratulations on your Innovation Award thank you Davis is general manager at I I AG insurance Australia group here inside the cube sharing the best practices it's it's a world you got to do the homework upfront open source is the way it's and it's an operating model for innovation the cube bringing you all the action here on day two of coverage stay with us for more live right after this short break

Published Date : May 9 2018

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Daniele Manusco, TI Sparkle | .NEXT Conference EU 2017


 

>> Narrator: Live, from Nice, France, it's theCUBE. Covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE live coverage of Nutanix .NEXT Conference in Nice, France. Happy to welcome to the program a first time guest, Daniele Mancuso who's fresh off the keynote stage. The Director of Innovation and Engineering at TI Sparkle. According to your website, TI Sparkle's the world's communication platform, so thank you so much for joining me. >> Thank you. >> So for those of us that aren't familiar, give us a little bit of outline of the company first. >> Yeah, so TI Sparkle is a fully-owned company belonging to Telecom Italia Group. Spinoff by the mother company back in 2003 with a mission to develop wholesale and corporate multinational retail and enterprise business abroad. 37 countries present office. 125 pubs all around the world that becomes around 1000 if we consider also the partnership with other operators. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of fiber optics spreads between southeast Asia to Europe to North America and also South America via private backbones via [Inaudible] cable in consortia bilateral. In the top rank for IP transit with our Seabone Backbone, we are number 7 in the world and I think number 9 at the moment for voice in terms of minutes exchanged with international carriers. >> And so, innovation and engineering, what's under your purview, what's the relationship with kind of the IT Department? >> Basically, I am a peer within a division called ICT Engineering. I am a peer with IT responsible. Her role is basically to develop the new digital OSS and BSS of the company as well as the, let's call it, East/West API for the internet working with other peer operators. My role is instead to make this world speaking with the network elements, the network domains. The cloud domains, all the infrastructure. We are undergoing a severe transformation altogether because things much be very much synchronized in this new crazy world that is accelerating day by day. >> Yeah, I follow Telecom. A lot of my careers I worked for one of the companies that spun out of AT&T back in the US, so many companies talk about digital disruption. Digital has had a huge impact on telecom. You know, transformation, you talk about fiber roll outs used to be. I remember in the 90's it was like, oh, we're going to have infinite band width, and you know, prices are going to go there. >> The bubble. >> Things like that, so what are some of the key drivers, you know, what's changing in your business, the stresses and opportunities? >> Well, we need to realize in two part rationale, One is the wholesale business in which we were a pioneer, we are still having a severe, big role in the market But the issues is that wholesale is starting not to pay anymore. We face a severe, dramatic price decline year over year and therefore, in order to get sustainability of the company, you need to start turning the bar in a strong way toward the enterprises because it's there that is the money. So, this doesn't mean that of course you go out from the wholesale. We are a wholesale player. Our strategic plan involves us to consolidate and to reach the offering of wholesale services. As well as developing the new services focused for the enterprises, therefore with high capability of execution, very strong and fast time to market and enriched with a plethora of plugins that make the customer feeling the Sparkle Experience, as we call it. Most of the actions of which we are active at the moment, are the new dynamic services that are provided as part of the Metro Internet Forum, therefore the on demand paradigm, new connectivity, connectivity towards the cloud platforms, connectivity and reach by cloud experience. In order to reach these targets, you need to abandon a little bit the concept of network infrastructure. You need to scale it up. You need to softwareize it. You need to make it closer to IT. And at the same time, IT needs to come closer to the network And the two need to interwork together in an orchestrated way. This is the new world. The fashionite work, orchestration. In reality we like to speak more of choreography because orchestration is something that we see just residing within the company. Meaning, if you think an orchestra director is making all the instruments, all the artists that are within the company to play in a harmonized way, but in reality we want to export towards our customer this experience, and therefore we see it more as a ballet. So the orchestration is the baseline, but in reality we want the customer to feel embraced by what Sparkle can offer to him. >> Alright, so connect the dots for us as to where Nutanix came into it, how that discussion started and what you're using with them. >> So, this let's say paradigm of the digital transformation at Sparkle started around 2 years ago. We stopped one moment and said, okay, what should we do? How can we do it? How can we embrace it? Of course there are a lot of issues that are related to business processes, organization skills, but also the technologies a fundamental driver and these are most important, so, we started to design a new data center initially for our internal purpose, and we decided that in this data center, all new technology, all new software driven capabilities of the company should be deployed, but if you see the numbers of Sparkle, Sparkle is a lean and clean company. We have just 700 people, despite a global presence and so we cannot approach the transformation using the old paradigm of the best of breed, which is a traditional way of approaching things for tech providers. We instead decided to go completely to a new world. We started to do strong analysis on IPEX convergence and we came to term with Nutanix. Finally the new data center for works on all unit application is based on Nutanix notes and we forced all our vendors to certify their application on Acropolis so everything is AHVA based. And when we say everything, we're speaking about applications like Voice over IP Monitoring probes, we're speaking about lifecycle service orchestrator, we're speaking about Network Domains Orchestrator, cloud automation and brokerage platform, everything is running on Nutanix on this huge cluster with different nodes that are, more or less, powerful depending which application we been offered. But the main driver there is easier views, predictability, easy capacity management, everything runs in a very orchestrated and simple way. >> So, you know, relatively lean organization, simplicity is something we talk about, kind of, base hyper converged. I have to imagine one of the reasons you looked at HCI and is that way Nutanix is the one that you chose? >> Yeah. Absolutely. Those are fundamental features for us and in the development that we are doing with Nutanix, we are working very close with their engineering to develop also new feature that our customized for our solutions, we see that at the moment they are a perfect fir for our working model. They are also very fast company in developing things. Agile development. They are kind of having some predictability of what customer needs in future. Back at the keynote a few minutes ago, we were discussing about the usage of Nutanix for arranging public cloud environments, we just said that HV needs a further step of maturation, but Sunile was immediately coming out with Microsoft implementation and multi features that, in our opinion, were the small missing tip to complete HV as a complete cloud solution, so we are going there, also, this is our direction. >> Yeah, so absolutely, in your keynote you spoke a lot of HV, getting certified on all the platforms, want to talk about the cloud strategy, what are you using from Nutanix, are you, do public clouds fit into your picture? Kind of paint us your cloud strategy. >> So, let's always remind that we are a telecom. Are we going to compete with the big guys? It's not in our court. It's not in our interest and it's not possible for ISP. >> Let me ask, there's lots of telecoms that tried and failed >> Yeah, we're not even trying we're not even trying. In a telecom like us, that basically does not have a real captive market, we are operating abroad, so theoretically, we are the small guy that is going to face the incumbent in the market. But we have regions in which we have a consolidated presence especially in Europe, and we have data centers In Italy, Greece and Turkey. These data centers were traditionally addressing co-location business both for [Inaudible] and enterprises. So we decided when, the direction was, let's focus on enterprise to start the cloud journey but focusing initially on those markets. Again, we started with the best of breed approach, because this is what is in the telco court. The telco, needs to provide a service with a guaranteed SLA with an infinite number of 9 behind it. So at the beginning the first choice is okay, let's choose and let's pick the best pieces from each technology. It works. You arrange the solution. The problem is that you need to operate in the service. And when you create a cloud infrastructure with the best of breed approach, but you want to maintain lean and clean operations, then it's becoming complicated because you need to have a plethora, a bunch of specialists for each technology that you are going to implement. Meaning that you have storage specialists, storage network specialists, backup specialists, it cannot work like this. If you don't have the ability to scale globally, you will never be able to get sustainability there. So, in our cloud 2.0 strategy, which we are started already to apply from last year, Nutanix came to help because basically we did the analysis, we did several proof of concepts and we found out that we can get the same SLA, the same predictability, the same, or even better quality of service to our customer but using something that first of all is manageable by generalist IT skilled people, you can simply expand by scaling more bricks and at the end of the day, it's also more cost effective in terms of ratio between [Inaudible] You don't have [Inaudible] of optics. You have only one player to speak, fight, negotiate but finally get results. So that is the current scenario. On the cloud, as I said, we are still visphere shop, but we are starting already to move to HV, especially after this announcement of Microsoft implementation coming through. What is our future in cloud? We are going to address a transformation of our pubs all around the world. They will essentially become micro data centers from which we can offer data proximity, data locality to customers. Especially taking into consideration the GDPR entering from next year on world, I expect that many customers will feel a little it more relaxed and to disperse their data on centralized data centers without their having control of where really the data stays. So, we are starting also with Nutanix very small and compact solution that we can install in one of our cabinets in the pubs. And this will come also with the strategy of integrating the services with network vitralization solid balancing firewall, everything residing on the same stack. And SD1. In this way, we are quite confident that we can for sure leverage on our existing customer bases but also try to attract more customers that at the moment are not interconnected to our network via local loops. Simply using the internet as a new means of communication. >> Alright, so Daniele, lot of pieces here, just a final, get a brief statement from you, looked like you're looking at Nutanix, you know, they would call it kind of the core, their cloud, even the Edge, starting there, Why Nutanix? >> We have done some analysis, we have done a few proof of concepts also with competitors or with former competitors, let's say. What we really missed in our opinion, was the comprehensive vision. We understood from Nutanix, I mean, apart the numbers of performances, that somehow you can also get with other solutions, but what was missing in the others was that focus, the strategy, the vision and the certainty of the target they wanted to get. Speaking with Sunil, speaking with Benny Hill, speaking with all the guys, we see that they have a strong vision of where they want to be in a couple of years from now, and we have seen that they have a high capacity of execution and fast. And we basically have the same targets, we want to get the same achievements, so for us, it is a very reliable partner to work with in the next few years. >> Alright, well Daniele Mancuso, really appreciate you joining us. We know Nutanix always looks for the customers that are helping to move that digital transformation, be a partner with them. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from the acropolis in Nice, France. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE.

Published Date : Nov 8 2017

SUMMARY :

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Dr Min Wanli, Alibaba | The Computing Conference


 

>> Announcer: SiliconANGLE Media presents theCUBE! covering Alibaba Cloud's annual conference, brought to you by Intel. Now here's John Furrier.... >> Hi I'm John Furrier, with SiliconANGLE, Wikibon and theCUBE. I'm the co-founder based in Silicon Valley, California, Palo Alto, California, and I am here in Hangzhou, China for the Alibaba Cloud conference in Cloud City, it's the biggest cloud computing conference here in China. I'm excited to be here with Dr. Min Wanli, who's the Chief Data Scientist and General Manager of Big Data division at Alibaba Cloud. Dr. Wanli, thank you for spending time. >> Thank you for having me. >> We have seen a lot of data in the conversation here at the show, data technology's a big part of this new revolution, it's an industrial revolution that we've never seen before, a whole 'nother generation of technology. What does data technology mean to Alibaba? >> Okay, it means everything. So first off, our internal technical speaking, it's technology handling massive real-time data and streaming data, and that's of different variety. For instance the app for the mobile app, for system knock, the customer behavior, they click, and they click browsing of the digital image of each merchant and asking for the price and compare against another similar product. All these behaviors are translated as data, and this data will be further merged with the archived data and try to update the profile of this customer's interests, and then try to detect whether there's a good match of they current merchant with the customer intent. If the match is good, then will flash this to the top priority, the top spot. So that try to increase the conversion rate. So if the conversion rate is high, then our sales is high. So DT, data technology means everything to Alibaba. >> It's interesting, I find my observation here, it's so fascinating because in the old days, applications produced data, that was stored on drives. They'd go to data warehouses, and they'd analyze them. You guys, in Alibaba Cloud are doing something fundamentally different, that's exciting in the sense that you have data, people call it data exhaust or data in general, but you're reusing the data in the development in real-time. So it's not just data exhaust, or data from an application. You're using the data to make a better user experience and make the systems smarter and more intelligent. Did I get that right? >> Exactly, exactly. This is a positive feedback loop, in a way, so in the old-fashioned way, you archived the data for offline analysis and for post-event analysis, and trying to identify whether there's any room for improvement. But that's fine. But now people cannot wait, and we cannot wait. Offline is not enough. So we have to do this in real time, online, in a feedback version, in search of a way that we could capture exactly at the right moment, understand the intent of the customer, and then try to deliver the right content to the customer on the fly. >> Jackie Ma, or Jack Ma, your boss, and also Dr. Wong who I spoke with yesterday, talk about two things. Jack Ma talks about a new revolution, a new kind of industrial revolution, a smarter world, a better society. Dr. Wong talks about data flowing like a river, and you hear Hangzhou as an example, but it highlights something that's happening across the world. We're moving from a batch, slow world with data to one that's in motion and always real time. They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they're different. A data lake or a data river, whatever word you want, I don't really like the word data lake personally, I think it means, it's batch to me. But batch has been around for a while. Real time mixed streaming. This is something that's happening, and it's impacting the architecture and the value proposition of applications, and it's highlighted in Internet of Things, it's highlighted in examples that we're seeing that's exciting like the ET Brains. Can you share your view in your project around ET Brains, because that is not just one one vertical. It's healthcare, it's industrial, it's transportation, it's consumer, it's everything. >> Yeah, good question, so first of all I concur with you that data lake already exists, will continue to exist, because it's got its own value because our ET Brain for example, actually emerged from data lake, because it has to learn all the benchmark, the baseline model, the basic knowledge from the existing archive data, which is a data lake. However, that's not enough. Once you have the knowledge, you have the capability but you need to put that in action. So we are talking about data in motion, data in action. How do we do that? So once you have the training example, all the training data from data lake, and you train the brain, the brain is mature enough and in the next step you want to push the brain coupled with real-time streaming data, and then to generate real-time action in real-time manner in preemptive way, rather than posting in a reactive way. So for example, in transportation and travel, T and T, travel and transportation, and traffic management. So currently, all the authorities, they have access to real-time information, and then they do a post-event analysis if there's a traffic jam, and then they want to do some mitigation. However, the best scenario is, if you can prevent the traffic jam from happening in the first place, right, how can you foresee there will be, there would be, there could be traffic jam happen in 10 minutes from now, and then you take a preemptive strike, and then try to prevent that from happening. That's the goal ET Brain, in traffic management want to achieve. Like for example, you see the ambulance case, and once the ET Brain receives the message say the ambulance is going to go to Point A, pick up a patient, and carry that patient, rush them to Hospital B, and then it immediately calculates the right routing, the driving direction, and the calculate the ETA to every intermediate intersection and then try to coordinate with the traffic lights, traffic signal. All this systematic integration will create on demand a green wave for ambulance, but in the past ambulance is just by the siren, right. >> Yeah, this is fascinating, and also I'd like to get your thoughts, because you bring us something that's important, and that is, and I'd like to connect the dots for the audience, and that is, real time matters. If you're crossing the street, you can't be near real time, because you could get hit by a car. But also latency's important, also the quality of the data is good. I was talking to an executive who's laying out an architecture for a smart city, and he said, "I want the data in real time," and the IT department said, "Here it is, "it's in real time", and he says, "No, that's last year's data." And so the data has to be real time and the latency has to be low. >> Exactly. I completely agree. The latency has to be low. Unfortunately, in the current IT infrastructure, very often the latency exist. You cannot eliminate that, right? And then you have to live with that, so the ET Brain acknowledge the fact, in fact we have our own algorithm designed in a way that it can make a shortened prediction. So based on five minutes ago data, the data collected five minutes ago, and then it can project the next five minutes, next 10 minutes, what would be the data, and then use that to mitigate, or to conquer, to offset the latency. So we find that to be a good strategy, because it's relatively easy to implement, and it is fast and efficient. >> Dr. Wanli, fascinating conversation. I'd like to get your thoughts on connecting that big data conversation or data conversation to this event. This is a cloud computing event. We at theCUBE and SiliconANGLE and our Wikibon research team we go to all the events. But sometimes the big data events are about big data, Hadoop, whatever, and then you have cloud, talking about DevOPs, and virtual machines. This conference is not just a siloed topic. You have cloud computing, which is the compute, it's the energy, it's the unlimited compute potential, but it's also got a lot of data. You guys are blending it in. >> Exactly. >> Is that by design, and why is that important? >> It's by design. Actually, you cannot separate cloud from data, big data. Or you cannot talk big data without referring to cloud, because once the data is big, you need a huge computation power. Where does that come from? Cloud computing. So that means that data intelligence, all the value has to require a good technological tool to unleash the value. What's the tool? Cloud computing. For example, the first time IBM come up with a smart plan, a smart city, that's 2005 or 2006, around that time, there's no cloud computing yet, at the earliest emerging stage. And then we see what happens. And the smarter city and then gradually become IT infrastructure construction. But it's not DT, data technology. So they invested billions of dollars in the infrastructure level, and they collect so much data, but all the data become a burden to the government, to save, to archive the data or protect the data from hacking, right. Now, these days, if you have the cloud computing available, you can do real-time analytics to unleash the value in the first place, at the first moment you receive the data and then later on you know which data is more valuable, which data is of less value, and then you know how much you want to archive. >> Our Wikibon research team put out research this past year that said IT is no longer a department, it's everywhere, >> It's everywhere >> it supports your DT, data technology, it's a fabric. But one thing that's interesting going back to 2005 to now is not only the possibility for unlimited compute, is that now you're seeing wireless technologies significantly exploding in a good way, it's really happening. That's also going to be a catalyst for change. >> Definitely. >> What's your thoughts on how wireless connectivity, 'cause you have all these networks, you have to move data around, it has to be addressable, you have to manage security. That's a heavy load.\ what do you do, how are you guys doing that? >> Okay, very good question. We faced this challenge a couple of years ago, we realized that, because in Chinese domestic market, the users they are migrating from PC to mobile, and this create the mobile phone has wi-fi, right, so interacts with another AP, Access Point, right. So then how do we recognize our tracking, and recognizes ID identification, all this stuff, create huge headache to us, and this time, in this conference, we announce our solution for mobile, for mobile cloud. So what does that mean? So essentially, we have a cloud infrastructure product designed in order to do a real-time integration and do a data cleansing of the mobile data. I mean by mobile, and wireless as well. Wireless means even bluetooth, or even IoT, IoT solution also supported there. So this is a evolving process in the way. The first solution probably is less than perfect, but gradually, as we are expanding into more and more application scenario, and then we will amalgamate the solution and try to make it more robust. >> You guys have a good opportunity, and Alibaba Cloud certainly met with Karen Liu about the opportunity in North America and United States where I'm from. But Alibaba Cloud, and Alibaba Group, in the Alibaba Cloud has had a great opportunity, almost a green field, almost a clean sheet of paper, but you have a very demanding consumer base here in China. They're heavily on mobile as you pointed out, but they love applications. So the question I want to ask you is, and I'd love your thoughts on this. How do you bring that consumerization, its velocity, the acceleration of the changing landscape of the consumer expectation and their experience to small businesses and to enterprises? >> Ok, very good question. So user not just customer base, and the demanding customers in China trying to help us to harden our product, harden our solution, and to reduce the cost, the overall cost, and the economy of mass scale, economy of scale, and then once we reach that critical point, and then our service is inexpensive enough, and then the small and medium, SMB, small and medium business they could afford that. And in old days, SMB, they want to have access to high performance computing, but they do not have enough budget to afford the supercomputer. But these days now, because our product, our computation product, cloud product, big data product is efficient enough, so the total cost is affordable. And then you see that 80% of our customers of Alibaba, at least 80%, are actually SMB. So we believe the same practice can be applied to overseas market as well. >> You bring the best practices of the consumer and the scale of Alibaba Cloud to the small and medium-sized enterprises, and they buy as they grow. >> Exactly. >> They don't buy a lot upfront. >> Yeah, yeah, they buy on demand, as they need. >> That's the cloud, the benefit of the cloud. >> Exactly. >> Okay, the compute is great, you've got greatness with the compute power, it's going to create a renaissance of big data applications where you see that. What is your relationship with Intel and the ecosystem, because we see, you guys have the same playbook as a lot of successful companies in this open source era, you need horsepower and you need open source, what is Alibaba's strategy around the ecosystem, relationship with Intel, and how are you guys going to deal with partners? >> Yeah, first of all, so we really happy that we have Intel as our partner. In our most recent big data hackathon for the medical AI competition, and we just closed that competition, that data hackathon. Okay, very fascinating event, okay. Intel provided a lot of support. All the participants of this data hackathon, they do their computing leveraging on the Intel's products, because they do their image process. And then we provided the overall computing platform. Okay, this is a perfect example of how we collaborated with our technology partners. Beyond Intel, in terms of the ecosystem, first of all, we are open. We are building our ecosystem. We need partners. We need partners from pure technology perspective, and we also need partners from the traditional vertical sectors as well, because they provide us domain knowhow. Once we couple our cloud computing and big data technology with the domain knowhow, the subject matter expertise, well together the marriage will generate a huge value. >> That's fantastic, and believe me, open source is going to grow exponentially, and by 2025 we predict that it's going to look like a hockey stick. From the Linux foundation that's doing amazing work, you're seeing the Cloud Native Foundation. I want to get your thoughts on the future generation. >> Yeah, you mean open source? >> The future generation that's using open source, they're younger, you guys have tracked, you know the demographics in your employee base, you have a cloud native developer now emerging. They want to program the infrastructure as they go. They don't want to provision servers, they want the street lights to just work, whatever the project, the brains have to be in the infrastructure, but they want to be creative. You're bringing two cultures together. And you've got AI, it's a wonderful trend, machine learning is doing very well. How do you guys train the younger generation, what's your advice to people looking at Alibaba Cloud, that want to play with all the good toys? You got machine learning, you got AI, they don't want to necessarily baby, they don't want to program either. They don't want to configure switches. >> Yeah, very good question. Actually this is related to our product strategy. So in a way, like today we announce our ET Brain, so we are going to release this and share this as a platform to nurture all the creative mind, creative brains, okay, people, trying to leverage on this brain and then do the creative job, rather than worry about the underlying infrastructure, the basic stuff. So this is that part which we want to share with the young generation, tell them that unleash your creativity, unleash your imagination, don't worry about the hard coding part, and we already build the infrastructure, the backbone for you. And then image anything you think possible and then try to use ET Brain, try to explore that. And we provide the necessary tool and building blocks. >> And the APIs. >> And the APIs as well, yes. >> Okay, so I want to get your thoughts on something important to our audience, and that is machine learning, the gateway to AI. AI, what is AI? AI software, using cloud. Some will argue that AI hasn't really yet come on the scene but it's coming. We love AI, but machine learning is really where the action is right now, and they want to learn about how to get involved in machine learning. So what's your view on the role of machine learning, because now you have the opportunity for a new kind of software development, a lot of math involved, that's something that you know a lot about. So is there going to be more libraries? What's your vision on how machine learning moves from a bounded use case to more unbounded opportunities, because, I'm a developer, I want the horizontally scalable resource of the cloud, but I'm going to have domain expertise in a vertical application. So I need to have a little bit of specialism, and I want the scalability. So data's got to move this way and it's got to be up this way. >> Yes, yeah, okay, let me put it this way. So first off, for people who are really interested in AI, or they want to work on AI, my recommendation first of all, you got to learn some mathematics. Why, because all the AIs and machine learnings is talking about algorithms, and those algorithms are actually all about math, mathematics, the formula, and also the optimization, how to speed up the convergence of the algorithms, right. So all this maths is important, okay. And then if you have that math background, and then you have the capability to judge or to see next, which algorithm, or which machine software is suitable to solve the vertical problems. Very often the most popular algorithm may not be the right one to solve the specific vertical problems. So you're going to the way, capability to differentiate and to see that and make the right choice. That's the first recommendation. The second recommendation, try to do as many type of examples as possible, try to get your hands on, don't stop at looking at the function specification and oh, this is a function and input, output, da da da, but you need to get your hands dirty, get your hands on the real problem, the real data. So that you can have a feeling about how powerful it is or how bad or how good it is. Once you have this kind of experience, and then you do have capability, you gradually build up a cumulative capability to make a right choice. >> This is fascinating, Dr. Wanli, this is fantastic. I want to follow up on that because you're bringing up, in my mind I can almost see all these tools. There's an artisan culture coming on. You're seeing that. Dr. Wong discussed that with me yesterday. Artisans meeting technologists, scientists and creatives. UI, we're seeing evolutions in user experience that's more art. And so culture's important. But the machine learners of the algorithms, sometimes you have to have a lot of tools. If you have one tool, you shouldn't try to use tools for other jobs. So bring this up. How should a company who's architecting their business or their application look at tooling, because on one hand, there's the right tool for the right job, but you don't want to use a tool for a job that it's not designed for. To your point. Tools, what's your advice and philosophy on the kinds of toolings and when to engage platforms, relationship between platforms and tools. >> Okay, then put it this way. So, this is a decision based on a mixture of different criteria together. So first of all, from technology perspective, and secondly from the business perspective. From technology perspective I would say if your company's critical competence is technical stuff, and then you've got to have your own tool, your own version. If you only rely on some existing tool from other companies, your whole business actually is dependent on that, and this is the weakest link, the most dangerous link. But however, very often to develop your own version of the tool takes forever, and market wouldn't give you so much time. And then you need too strike a balance, how much I want to get involved for self development and how much for in-house development, and it's how much I want to buy in. >> And time. >> And time as well, yes. And another one is that you've got to look at the competitive landscape. If this tool actually has already existed for many years and many similar product in the market, and the problem is not a good idea to reproduce or reinvent, and then you're going to why not buy it, you take that for granted. And it think that's a fact, and then you build a new fact, right. So this is another in terms of the maturity of the tool, and then you need to strike a balance. And in the end, in the extreme case, if your business, your company is doing a extremely new, innovative, first of a kind study or service, you probably need some differentiate, and that differentiator probably is a new tool. >> Final question for you. For the audience in America, in Silicon Valley, what would you like to share from your personal perspective about Alibaba Cloud that they should know about? Or they might not know about and should know about. >> Okay, 'cause I worked in the US for 16 years. To be frank, I knew nothing about Alibaba until I came back. So as a Chinese overseas, I'm so ignorance about Alibaba until I came back. So I can predict, I can guess, more or less, in the overseas market, in US customers, they probably know not that much about Alibaba or Alibaba Cloud. So my advice and from my personal experience, I say, first of all, Alibaba is a global company, and Alibaba Cloud is a global company. We are going to go global. It's not only a Chinese company, for example. We are going to serve customers overseas market in Europe and North America and Southeast Asia. So we want to go global first. And second, we are not only doing the cloud. We are doing blending of cloud and big data and vertical solutions. I call this VIP. V for vertical, I for innovation. P for product. So VIP is our strategy. And the innovation is based upon our cloud product and big data product. >> And data's at the center of it. >> Data is the center of this, and we already got our data technique, our data practice from our own business, which is e-commerce. >> And you're solving some hard problems, the ET Brain's a great playground of AI opportunity. You must be super-excited. >> Yeah, yeah, right, right, okay. >> Are you having fun? >> Yes, a lot of fun. Very rewarding experience. A lot of dreams really come true. >> Well, certainly when you come to Silicon Valley, I know you have a San Mateo office, we're in Palo Alto, and this is theCUBE coverage of Alibaba Cloud. I'm John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE, Wikibon research and theCUBE, here in China covering the Alibaba Cloud, with Dr. Wanli, thanks for watching.

Published Date : Oct 26 2017

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Intel. it's the biggest cloud computing conference here in China. We have seen a lot of data in the conversation here So if the conversion rate is high, then our sales is high. and make the systems smarter and more intelligent. so in the old-fashioned way, you archived the data and it's impacting the architecture and in the next step you want to push the brain and the latency has to be low. And then you have to live with that, it's the energy, it's the unlimited compute potential, in the first place, at the first moment you receive the data That's also going to be a catalyst for change. it has to be addressable, you have to manage security. and do a data cleansing of the mobile data. So the question I want to ask you is, and the demanding customers in China and the scale of Alibaba Cloud to the because we see, you guys have the same playbook All the participants of this data hackathon, and by 2025 we predict that it's going to the infrastructure, but they want to be creative. and then try to use ET Brain, try to explore that. and that is machine learning, the gateway to AI. and then you have the capability to judge for the right job, but you don't want to use a tool and secondly from the business perspective. and the problem is not a good idea to reproduce what would you like to share from your personal perspective And the innovation is based upon our cloud product and we already got our data technique, the ET Brain's a great playground of AI opportunity. Yes, a lot of fun. here in China covering the Alibaba Cloud,

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Alastair Cooke, vBrownBag Ltd | VMworld 2017


 

(light peppy electronic music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman And I'm here with John Troyer. And you're watching theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's live production of VMworld 2017. We're in Las Vegas. Happy to have back to the program Alastair Cooke, who is the Chief Video Officer of vBrownBag. Al, great to see you, thanks so much. It is of course not only great to see you, but great to see vBrownBag here at VMworld which was for I think 24 or 48 hours, actually in question. >> It was probably the most stressful 48 hours of my life when it looked like we might not be as welcome on the floor here at VMworld as we have been for the last five years prior. >> Yeah, you know, Pat Gelsinger last year said I couldn't imagine VMworld without theCUBE. I think most of the community couldn't imagine the show without vBrownBag. So we don't need to hash through all of it. Everybody in IT knows that sometimes you get those stressful periods and you look back and say we went through it. The outcome worked. >> The outcome is awesome. So for those who have not come across what we do, vBrownBag is a community podcast. You guys have followed the rise, and John's been instrumental in part of the rise. The podcast is about education for the practitioner of IT, the person working in data centers or designing solutions to go into data centers. We focus on education, so we're a video podcast. I was looking at our stats. There's a couple of thousand videos sitting in our YouTube channel that we've produced over the last six or seven years. And in the last six years at VMworld, we've had an open stage. We sort of set a little bit of a parallel to the rise of theCUBE at VMworld, the massive estate that you have here now. We also have grown over the years, not nearly as massive, but we have an open stage for those same IT practitioners, the hands-on engineering people to come and share the things they've learned with the rest of the community. >> Could you speak a little on the breadth and depth of the offering that you'll do during this week here? One of the differences here, we get a lot of people that come take photos, they'll come watch for a few minutes. You guys have an audience coming through the entire time, participating and the like. >> Well this year, we have a big upswing in our audience because all of our sessions are listed in the schedule folder. So normal attendees at the show are seeking out our content and saying that's interesting, I want to hear about that. And that's always been previously our issue, was discoverability. Nobody knew that there were these really awesome speakers who were presenting at VMworld. Now they're in the schedule folder, and so we have a space for 50 people. We've had a few talks where pretty much every seat's been full. And the walkway past our stage has been filled with another 30 people wanting to see and consume the content that we produce. >> That's super nice. How many videos over the course of the week? >> We have 77 booked in for this week. >> I think you'll have more than us then. >> Yes, so we're already at 16. We do a much lower production standard than you do here on theCUBE. But we do a really high velocity. So as I walked away from my station to come to yours, I'd already uploaded the previous presenter's videos up onto YouTube. So as I walked away, 16 presentations were complete, 16 videos were on YouTube. My awesome crew still manning the stage while I'm away, and while I've been here I think we're now into the second video that's been produced as I've been watching you guys talking with your previous guest. >> Come on, video's all in. As long as the internet's solid, we get 'em up pretty fast too. >> Oh yeah. The key thing for us is that we do it with next to nothing. We do it on a shoestring compared to what... Your rent and people bill here is probably larger than my equipment bill. >> Well hey, that's the beautiful thing about tech, right? I started filming stuff at VMworld years ago, right? And you just buy a consumer camera and just go. And you can stream, and you built it up from there. It's a sort of affordable tech that anybody can do. And even, you use CommonWeb, GoToMeeting, and things like that on your weekly podcast. This is super. You don't need a lot of money to reach a global audience. What are some of the themes that you're seeing this year at VMworld in terms of the tech talks? >> It's a little challenging to try and work out a theme out of the 77... Because there isn't so much coherence to what we get. We don't have streams or anything like that. On the stage, we accept everything that comes in. And my acceptance criteria is chronology. The order in which you submit your session is the priority in which it's scheduled, rather than doing a lot of reviewing. I've seen quite a bit of container stuff in there. There's a lot of interest in AWS, and vSphere on AWS. And there's quite a lot of interest in free tools. So we had two sessions today on free tools for vSphere adminstrators. They're things that can get you going in your job without having to go asking cap-in-hand for money to buy a new tool. >> Which is nice, because these are things that might not be in an official session at VMworld with 800 people in it, but free tools are very relevant to the technical community. >> And that's the thing. Our audience is all about that engineer who's going to be hands on the keyboard, building things. Quite possibly you're still going to be racking and stacking hardware. And configuring the products that are being bought that are being chosen by somebody further up the management chain. >> I know some of the more popular sessions are when you touch on certification type issues. Did those happen here, or is that different pieces? Maybe speak a bit to the broader charter of vBrownBag. >> So the broader objective is that the virtualization community and the data center infrastructure community can teach one another. We all feel like we know a little tiny amount of this vast amount that everyone around us knows. The reality is that each of us has our own little island. And if I share my island of knowledge with you, and you share your island of knowledge with me, then we all learn more. And the internet and the use of podcasts and the rise of iTunes has given us the ability to do that at massive scale. We only need a very small number of people who are prepared to share their circle of knowledge, to be able to educate a vast number of people. >> But what I also think is interesting, you started with VMware certs, right? >> We did. >> That was a brownbag to learn and study for our certifications together. And now, over the years, it's brought OpenStack, it's brought AWS, containers. Can you talk about some of all the different topics that you're dealing with? >> So we absolutely cover as far as I'm aware, every released VMware certification we've got some content for. And have done since ESX 3. Those kinds of days. And that's how long the podcast has been running. We've always been helping community members to study for their VMware certifications. And then we found that VMware didn't release certifications as fast as we could produce training for them. And so we started looking broader, and started looking at, well, you work in virtualization, you need to know storage, you need to know networking. And so we started covering some elements of those. And then, oh, there are certifications in these things! And that's good for career advancement for the engineer. And so we started covering some of the Cisco certifications. And we did have the foray into OpenStack, because Cody Bunch, the guy who started the podcast, who I refer to as the Podfather, his work took him from building a product based on vSPhere, for a large hosting provider, to a product based on OpenStack. And so he was very much keen on OpenStack. Unfortunately our audience weren't so keen. So the OpenStack series went for a little while and didn't get a huge traction. But we started doing AWS last year. We covered the Solution Architect Associate certification early last year. Huge interest from the community! Really popular content. Another popular certification content is NSX. One of the top videos for a long time was Frank Buchsel doing an introduction to VMware's NSX. We're covering the VCP-NV certification. >> That's really interesting. What kind of people attend a vBrownBag? What are the characteristics? Obviously there are people who, some are of sort of driven, they want to expand their horizons, they want to advance their careers. I mean, any comments on that? >> I see a split between those of us who produce the content who are very much forward looking, getting excited about the next thing, and so now we're doing Kubernetes, and we're just starting a series on API's. Every Christmas we do a thing called Commitmas where we cover source code management in Git. With Git commits. So we've got this whole group of forward thinking, telling the infrastructure people, these are the skills we're going to need to be relevant in the future. If the cloud is eating your lunch in your data center, here's a whole set of skills that you're going to need in order to still be able to learn. What we see is there's a huge middle audience who are just starting virtualization. So crazy as it seems, there are customers who are just starting to virtualize now. And they're not all in Southeast Asia. >> Stu: Laggards! >> But the people who are coming into the industry, also younger people coming into the industry who don't have 20 years of virtualization or 200 years of virtualization in their back pockets. Using the vBrownBags is a way of getting some education and getting education that they don't need to get a purchase order for. >> John: This is all free, right? Everything you do is free. >> Everything we do is free to consume. That's one of our core principles. All the content we produce is free to consume. We do produce... in a typical month we'll produce six hours of video training content. And stack that up over a few years. >> So Al, put your consultant hat on. What so far, I mean we're only day one here. But what's your take on what VMware is saying, Pat Gelsinger gave his morning keynote, applause for Andy Jassy coming out. We spend a lot of time talking about VMware and AWS. But kind of across the board, what's your take so far? What are you liking, what aren't you liking? >> Well I'm liking that the video production on the vBrownBag stage has been really smooth so far and that I have an awesome team of volunteers there. To be honest, that's been the biggest thing because that's what I'm here for. The keynote... To an engineer the keynote's not hugely interesting because the keynote is a business-focused message. And I want to know, when I am deploying a vSphere on AWS environment, what does it look like? So there's some quiet briefings going on that you can book in for if you get the invitation to see how it's actually going to work. That's the stuff that would, if I were still doing regular day-to-day working for a company, that's the stuff I'd be wanting to get while I was here at VMworld. Yes, we've got Andy Jassy here, well that's great, there's a serious commitment from AWS to the conference. >> Pivoting back a little bit to new technology, video is really democratizing at some level. The affordability of the equipment and the ability to do it from anywhere. vBrownBag to support itself does have sponsors. You have some sponsors here. So the webinar's all free, and mostly very educational. You're here on site. You also do several tech events throughout the year, all around the world. And you've actually started a new exercise where you go and you work with a vendor or something as a technologist, and basically it's build day, where you build something with your hands, some system, some rack of something, and stream the whole thing live. Can you talk a little... Again, fascinating from a production and technology point of view. But can you talk a little bit about what you're trying to bring as a trainer and an educator and a community member with that kind of an offering. >> Sure, so vBrownBag's content is all free to consume, but it's not free to produce. And so we have wonderful sponsors that help us to be here, make sure I can bring a crew of people here to be able to make those 77 videos. And I haven't done the count of how many we're doing in Barcelona, but I'm doing an outrageous number of miles in a month because I'm going home to New Zealand in between the two VMworlds. I've got to pick up my wife and take her to Barcelona. So awesome sponsors for that, and we go to other events. This is I think the second event in Vegas where we've been making TechTalks this year. But John you're talking about the wonderful new thing we started doing this year of the vBrownBag build days. And the objective is really to show day one experience of implementing a piece of technology. And it's the engineer's day one experience. So we're very used to seeing keynote demonstrations. I'll show you this wonderful new technology, and it is an awesome piece of technology. It's just that A, you're not going to get it fr two years' time. And B, when you do get it, it's going to be possibly very difficult to deploy, or possibly really easy. A lot of vendors say, our technology's really easy. And so we put them to the test on that. We work with a vendor, they bring us in to usually their site. The two that we've done, we go to their site. I bring in a customer's vSphere environment. So I have a pelican case full of servers, and we turn up with that, and then on top of that vSphere environment we deploy whatever the technology is. Be it a hyper-converged platform, a storage platform, management platform. And we livestream that process. So the requirement for them is we need to start as it arrives to the customer from the factory. And we need to go through the actual deployment process. We need to hit the fissures that real customers are going to hit. Because I've been the engineer who turns up on site thinking he's going to deploy Product A, when the salesman said he was going to be deploying Product A, and in fact he's deploying Product Cucumber. And that's what he's got to go and push out. And that terror, of I've got to not make this go wrong, I've got to look good deploying this and give my customer a good experience, when I've not really had any preparation. Now it wouldn't help me if it was the day that I arrived, but often it's a new piece of technology. The first time we deploy it, we're rather concerned. And we don't believe what's in the marketing, and we don't necessarily believe that the steps in the installation guide are current. So vBrownBag's objective is to go through that process and take an educational approach to showing you how that first day goes. And as you mentioned John, my background is as a trainer. I taught VMware's public sector training courses for years. And so I very much like to go into this process as training. And you can see that reflected out in what we do with vBrownBag. It's all about education. That's part of what attracted me. >> One last question I have for you is vBrownBag has been doing this for many years. Any major shifts, changes... Of course the scope has broadened quite a bit, you're talking about things like NSX and everything like that. Anything else in kind of the community, in educating, and what people look for from your organization that you could share? >> So there's sort of different angles on that. We definitely have seen that move from being, I really need to get my VCP or my VCAP certifications, and then my career will be complete. Which of course we know is a little naive. Now we've seen a diversification that there are additional skills required. The other thing that we're seeing is that although VMworld is home base for this community, it's not the only place this community is. And so as I go to other conferences, I'm often surprised by the proportion of the people there that are actually my friends from the virtualization, the VMware community are at other things. And I suspect if I was to go to AWS re:Invent I would find a fair few of my friends there. >> Absolutely. Lots of them. Especially I'd say last year was where I saw a significant uptick. Are we going to see you at re:Invent this year? >> I've not had any interest from AWS to bring me there and I can't afford to come out to these conferences on my own dime until I sell a few more build days. >> I really appreciate everything that vBrownBag's been doing here with the community. Always a pleasure to catch up with you. Here on theCUBE we always love to support the community and many of those organizations. We will be at AWS re:Invent. Definitely lots of need for education there, lots of growth in what's happening there. And here, so for John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman. We'll be back with lots more coverage here at VMworld 2017. You're watching theCUBE. (light peppy electronic music)

Published Date : Aug 28 2017

SUMMARY :

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Day 1 Wrap - SAP SAPPHIRE NOW - #SAPPHIRENOW #theCUBE


 

(bombastic music) >> Narrator: It's theCUBE, covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. >> Lisa Martin: Journey to the Cloud requires empathy, requires transparency, and we've both kind of chatted about... Empathy is kind of an interesting thing. >> George Gilbert: Yeah. >> We don't necessarily hear a lot of CEOs talk about that. They also really talked about and drove home the point that software is now a strategy. Being open is a game-changer. So, a couple of things I kind of wanted to recap with you was there was two initiatives that they, SAP, launched, or announced, today, reinforcing the pledge to listen to customers. And one of them is the SAP Cloud Trust Center, this public website that offers real-time information on the current operations of Cloud solutions from SAP. Along the lines of empathy and transparency and really listening to the customers, what, in your take, is the SAP Cloud Trust Center, and what does it really mean? >> Okay, maybe start with an analogy. We used to call people who did not want to outsource their infrastructure, we called them "server-huggers," you know, they wanted to own their infrastructure. And part of allowing your software, mission critical software, to migrate off your... out of your data centers, off-prem, requires a certain amount of trust that takes awhile... takes awhile to earn, because you're going from infrastructure that you've tuned and that only supports your app to infrastructure in the Cloud that's shared. And that's a big change. So, essentially, SAP is saying, "We'll give you a window onto how we operate this, so that we can earn your trust over time." You know, sort of like a marriage: through thick and thin, richer or for poorer, because there are going to be hiccups and downtimes. But ideally, SAP is taking responsibility and risk off the customer. And over time, that should be... Since they know better how to run their software than anyone else, that should work. So they're taking what they believe is a very reasonable risk in saying, "We'll show you how well we do, and we'll show you we do it better than you." >> So there are, right now, there will be three operations, three services, that will be visible, where customers can see planned maintenance schedules, four weeks of historical data, as well as real-time availability, security, and data to privacy. You brought up a great point that I think in many, many contexts, this transcends industries. This transcends peoples. That trust has to be earned. Does this set SAP apart, or differentiate them, in the market? >> Gilbert: I actually think that this was the sincerest form of flattery in terms of copying Salesforce.com. >> Martin: Ah. >> Because they've had this for awhile. And SAP is far more mission-critical, because it's sort of your system of record. It keeps track of everything that happens in your business, whereas Salesforce, it's not really a transactional system. It's more of keeping track of your opportunities, you know, and your customers. If SAP goes down, your business goes down. >> Right. Right. So another thing that they announced regarding, or along the same lines of, this pledge to customers about being empathetic, about being transparent, is the Transformation Navigator. Now, this came actually directly out of comments that Bill McDermott made at SAP Sapphire 2016, where SAP really wanted to start looking at the world through the customer's perspective, through their lens. So talk to us about the Transformation Navigator. Who is it for, what does it do, and what can people or companies expect to get from it? >> I think that one way to look at it is SAP made a bunch of very large and very important acquisitions, like Concur for expense reporting, SuccessFactors for... HR measurement and talent management, and Ariba for procurement. And I don't think they had put together a compelling case for why you buy them all together. And I think that was the first objective of the Transformation Navigator, because it says that it outlines the business value, helps you with transformation services, explains how all the Cloud apps, which were the ones they bought, integrate with the existing ERP, whether on-prem or in the Cloud, and shows you a roadmap. So it sounds to me like it's their first comprehensive attempt to say, "Buy our product family." I would say that the empathy part, the Cloud Trust Center, is a much deeper attempt to say, "Hey, we're going to make all this stuff work together." The first is a value proposition. >> Martin: Right. We should mention that there are two sessions at SAP Sapphire Now that attendees can take advantage of under the auspices of the SAP Transformation Navigator. There is a session on digital transformation, a concept session, and there's also digital transformation deep-dive sessions. So if you're around and you've got time, check those out. Another thing that we talked a lot about today, and that we heard a good amount of today, George, was this expanded Leonardo. That was brought up in the keynote on main stage this morning. And we know that Leonardo was really the brand for IoT, but now it's got new ingredients, it's got these new systems of intelligence, machine learning, artificial intelligence, analytics, blockchain. What are the keys of getting value from these technologies with this new, expanded Leonardo capability? >> I guess one way to think about it is... So the SAP core, which they call, I believe they call the... either "digital core" or just "core," which is the old system of record, and then all these new capabilities around it, which is how to extend that system of record into a system of intelligence. Again, used to be just... Last year, it was IoT, but now there's so much more richness that goes around it. These are all building blocks that customers can sort of ultimately mix and match. Like, you could use blockchain as a way of ensuring that there's no tampering or fraud from the bananas in Peru, all the way till the grocery store in New Jersey. But if you use that in conjunction with supply chain, machine learning, replenishment, you get much better asset utilization. I guess... they're trying to say, "We have your system of record. We have your mission-critical data and business processes." Now it's easy to build around on the edges, around the edge of that, to add the innovative processes. >> So it sounds like, from a value perspective, by embedding Leonardo into business applications... >> Gilbert: Yeah. >> There are innovations that customers can achieve, asset management, you talked about that, so there's clear business value. As you mentioned, it's maybe like a pick-and-choose that customers can decide which of these new systems of intelligence that they need, but there's clearly a business value derivation there. >> You could think of... Yeah, where all these new services enable transformative business outcomes, the old system of record was more, as we've talked about before, was about efficiency. So it makes sense to position these capabilities as transformative. And to say that they leverage the system of record, core, makes SAP appear to be the more natural provider of these new services. >> So in this route, they did announce that they are partnering with Deloitte. What do you think they're doing here? What's the advantage that provides to SAP's install base? >> When you're... embarking on these transformational business outcomes, there is... severe, challenging change management that has to be done. It's not just that it's... We always have products, processes, and technologies, or people, products, and technologies. Here, your processes and your people have to go through much more radical change than they would in an efficiency application, which was the old system of record. We all remember back when SAP R/3 was taking off, the big system integrators got spectacularly wealthy over the change management requirements to do the efficiency roll-outs. Now, to do the transformational ones are far more challenging right now. >> So, another thing that we chatted about earlier was that SAP has embedded machine learning into a new wave of applications. What are those applications, and what is this really for SAP as a business? >> Well, my favorite analogy is something I guess I heard from one of the SIs back in the heyday of the original SAP R/3, which was, you know... Traditional business intelligence and reporting was really about steering a ship by looking backwards at its wake. And machine learning is all about predictive... answers and solutions. So you pivot now, and we've heard a lot about this concept of "software's eating the world," but now data is eating software, because it's the data that programs the software about how to look forward. And some of those forward-looking things are figuring out how to route a service ticket, like, if something goes wrong, where does it go into the support organization? A really important top-line one is customer retention, where you predict if a customer is about to churn, what type of offer do you have to make? >> Martin: Right. >> Then there's a cash application, which, to me, is kind of administrative, where it makes it easy to match a receivable, like an invoice, with a bank statement. Still kind of clerical, and yes, you get productivity out of it, but it's not a top-line thing like the customer churn function. There's a brand impact one where it's like, "I've spent x amount to promote my brand at a sporting event, used machine vision to find out how many logos were out there, and did it have impact that I can measure?" There are a whole bunch of applications like this, and there will be more. And when I say more, I think the more impactful ones that relate to, like, supply chain, where it's optimizing the flow of goods, choosing strategic suppliers... >> So this may be, with SAP embedding machine learning into this new wave of apps, is, like, a positive first step, entry level, for them to get up the chain of value? >> Gilbert: Yeah. The first... Yes. Yes. Yes. The first ones look to be sort of like baby steps, but SAP is in a position to implement more impactful ones. But it's worth saying, though, that in the spirit of "data is eating software," the people who have the most data are not the enterprise application vendors. They're the public Cloud vendors. >> Martin: Right. >> And they are the... sort of... unacknowledged future competitors, mortal competitors, for machine learning apps. >> Okay. Interesting. So, another thing that I wanted to switch gears, see if we could get a couple more topics in before we wrap here... The digital twin for IoT devices. So the relaunching of Leonardo as SAP's digital brand, they've expanded this definition. What does that mean? What is the digital twin? >> Okay, so digital twin is probably the most brilliant two-word marketing term that's come out of our industry in awhile. >> (chuckling) >> Because GE came up with it to describe, with their industrial Internet of Things, any industrial asset or device where, you took a physical version, and then you created a very high-fidelity software representation of it, or digital representation. I don't want to say replica, because it'll never be that perfect. >> Martin: Okay. >> But they would take the design information from a piece of CAD software, like maybe PTC or Autodesk. So that's as designed. There would be information from how it was manufactured. That particular instance, in addition to, let's say all aircraft engines of this... (sudden musical interlude) ...track, each instance. >> (coughing) Excuse me. >> Then, how it was shipped or who it was sent to, how it was operated, how it was maintained, so then you could... The aircraft engine manufacturer could provide proactive fleet maintenance for all the engines. It would be different from the... very different from having the airlines looking in their manuals, saying, "Okay, every 50,000 miles I got to change the oil." Here, the sensors and the data go back to the aircraft engine manufacturer. And they can say, "Well, the one that's been flying in the Middle East is exposed to sand." So that needs to be proactively maintained at a much shorter interval. And the one that's been flying across the Atlantic, that gets very little gunk in it, can have a much larger maintenance window. So you can optimize things in a way that the current capabilities wouldn't allow you to. >> And they showed an example of that with the Arctic Wind pilot project, which is very interesting. >> Yeah. Where it showed windmills, and not just the wind farm. You saw the wind farm, but you also see the different wear and tear, or the different optimizations of individual windmills. >> Martin: Right. >> And that's pretty interesting. Because you can also reorient them based on climate conditions, microclimate conditions. >> Exactly. So last topic I wanted to dig in with you today is blockchain. So you and I chatted about this, kind of chatted about... What is blockchain, this distributed ledger technology? In the simplest definition, a reliable record of who owns what, and who transacts what. So from what we heard today, and from our conversation, it seems like maybe SAP is dipping a toe into the water here. Give us a little bit of insight about what it is they're doing with blockchain, and maybe a couple of key use cases that they shared in supply chain, for example. >> Okay. So the definition you gave, I think distills it really well, with one caveat. Which is, if it's a record of who owns what, who's done what, in the past we needed an intermediary to do that. The bank. Like, when you're closing on your house, you know, someone puts the money in, you know, someone signs the contract. And only when both are done does it exchange hands. With a blockchain, you wouldn't need someone in the middle because the transaction's not complete until, on one part of the ledger, someone has put the money in, and, on the other part, someone's put the title in. And, not to sound too grandiose, but I've heard people refer to this as the biggest change in how finance and trust operates since Italian double-entry bookkeeping was invented in, like, the 1300s, or somewhere way, way back. And so, if we take it to a modern usage scenario, we could take... foodstuffs that are grown, let's say in Southeast Asia, they get put in a container that's locked. And then we can know that it's tamper-proof, because any attempt to open that would be reflected as a transaction in the blockchain. There are other, probably better, examples, but the idea is, we can have trust in so many more scenarios without having a middleman. And so the transaction costs change dramatically. And that allows for much more friction-free transactions and business processes than we ever thought possible. Because having someone like a bank or a lawyer in the middle is expensive. >> Right. And I'm glad that you kind of brought that back to trust as we wrap up. That was kind of the key theme that we heard today. >> Gilbert: Yeah. >> And a lot of great announcements. So George, thanks so much for spending the day with me, analyzing day one of SAP Sapphire Now 2017. >> Gilbert: Thank you, Lisa. >> And we thank you for watching. George and I will be back tomorrow analyzing day two and talking about great things that are going on, again, coverage from SAP Sapphire Now 2017. For George Gilbert, I'm Lisa Martin. We'll see you next time. (fanfare)

Published Date : May 16 2017

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by SAP Cloud Platform Lisa Martin: Journey to the Cloud requires empathy, reinforcing the pledge to listen to customers. and risk off the customer. real-time availability, security, and data to privacy. the sincerest form of flattery you know, and your customers. is the Transformation Navigator. it outlines the business value, helps you with What are the keys of getting value from these technologies around the edge of that, to add the innovative processes. So it sounds like, from a value perspective, There are innovations that customers can achieve, So it makes sense to position these capabilities What's the advantage that provides to SAP's install base? that has to be done. So, another thing that we chatted about earlier because it's the data that programs the software the customer churn function. that in the spirit of "data is eating software," And they are the... So the relaunching of Leonardo as the most brilliant two-word marketing term to describe, with their industrial Internet of Things, So that's as designed. in the Middle East is exposed to sand." And they showed an example of that with the You saw the wind farm, but you also see the different Because you can also reorient them based on So you and I chatted about this, kind of chatted about... So the definition you gave, I think distills it really well, to trust as we wrap up. So George, thanks so much for spending the day with me, And we thank you for watching.

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Doug Kennedy, Oracle Marketing Cloud - Oracle Modern Customer Experience #ModernCX - #theCUBE


 

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas! It's the CUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. >> Welcome back, and we are here live at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for Oracle's Modern CX. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle. This is the CUBE and my co-host, Peter Burris here for two days of wall-to-wall coverage, day two. Doug Kennedy, Vice President of Business Development and Partner Strategy of Oracle, former Oracle, left Oracle, went to NetSuite, now back at Oracle running partners... Great to have you on the CUBE. >> Yeah great to be here. >> Thanks for joining us. We were just talking before we rolled live about some of the history and some of the dynamics in the industry, and it's a very interesting time, because the partner landscape is becoming a critical linchpin for this digital transformation as the vendors get Cloud and the suppliers become "Cloudified" if you will. The roll of the partners is beyond strategic, it's actually technical. >> Well you've got to look at actually the expertise that you need to actually work with the customer. Always sit in the customer's seat and look back at the vendors and the partner eco-system to determine what they need to be successful. And candidly, we bring part of it as Oracle, partners bring the rest of it, whether it's industry expertise, vertical expertise, they deeply understand agencies, whatever that expertise is, we have to figure out the right partnership with them to go be successful together, and that's the trick, and that's why partners are so important right now. >> And what's the message and focus here at Modern CX? Obviously it's not just pillars of solutions, it's, you got a little bit of a unification, you have this Modern CX, who's got a platform (mumbles). What's the conversation like with partners here? >> So, the ones that I've been having this week... So I've been back all of seven weeks, so I'm rolling out a new partner strategy pretty quickly here, and I introduced it to several of our top partners here this week, and it really is to specialize and focus on the prioritization you can bring to our partnerships. That it's back to specialization. I roll everything back, I've done partnering for, good lord, a couple of decades now. The number one question is, How do we both be profitable? We're in partnerships actually each make money and win together. So back it up to that and look at how they specialize, and don't get too thin, don't get too wide, but look at what you're successful at doing as a partner, and for us to then figure out how to work together in that partnership to go win. So I've been amplifying that up with the partners this week. You'll fail if you're spread too thin and trying to be everything to everyone, and I'm pushing the partners to make sure they bring that to the forefront with us first, before we actually go engage the prospects and customers. So I'm kind of backing up again with a lot of these partners. >> So it's not a general purpose philosophy? >> Doug: Nope. >> It's really, find some swim lanes... Everyone's got a unique specialty, I mean PWC has got their thing, now Deloitte, Accenture, they all kind of have their swim lanes developing, but specialism, it seems to have much more domain expertise, now I was talking to Accenture CTO of analytics, Jean-Luc Chatelain, and they have tons of data scientists. They're coding away! Before they used to be project managers, now they got coders, so seeing that transformation, is that also a dynamic you're seeing? >> Yeah, definitely seeing that. If you look at our eco-system, we've got a little over a thousand partners right now that focus on OMC, the Marketing Cloud. They're ISV's, they're the old traditional SI's shifting into more manage services vein, and still doing implementations. Then you get the agencies, which is unique in and of itself because they're running on behalf of their customers. They understand the marketing industry deeply, so now they're taking our solutions and running on behalf of customers, but they're also a partner type. So it's determining which type you are, and some, by the way, are all three. So how do we work with them most effectively? Cause this is a co-sell model. >> And what's the plan? Can you give any details to the strategy? >> Well the strategy is, first of all, there is an ideal partner profile for each of those partner categories. And to replicate that, the programs we're putting in place, we want more of those that fit what I call the ideal partner profile, which comes, at the end of the day, they're going to be profitable, we're going to be profitable. But if you look at the agency model, you know, how do they actually have the reach in coverage with the customers that they currently actually service? How can we actually work with them to introduce our solutions into that product mix that they already use in their managed operations environment? How do we make sure we're bringing that to the forefront in a way that values the agency's business and then also values their customers? Right? So that's unique just 'cause we're in a sense dealing with two customers. We're dealing with the agencies as a partner who's running on behalf of their customers, but we have to have a solution that fits that equation. Think of it that way. >> But there's something else going on, I want to test you with this. >> Sure. >> That is, it used to be that the traditional partner model, you know, the on-premise orientated partnership model was that the partner was a channel partner, they might embed their software on top of the product, et cetera, but Oracle could be good, and the partner could be good. If Oracle's really good and the partner's okay, it still could work out. This more deeply integrated world where data is the asset, and how you flow it and the speed with which it flows, and the degree to which you can show that end to end coherence is going to determine winners or losers. That means that whoever is the weakest link is the weakest link for every, or sets the quality for everybody to a degree. How is that going to change the way you talk to partners? Because they're going to have to step up their game in a big way for Oracle to be able to step up the game. >> Right, now great question. So we have a co-selling model first of all, right? We have indirect in certain markets--Japan and some of the southeast Asia markets are indirect-- so we will rely on the partners to do most of the selling as well as the delivery and managed services. The rest of the world's co-sell. So with our co-sellers, half of the equation is our own people, so I'm doing a couple different things. First of all, on our side, we're defining roles and responsibities of co-selling and making sure that our own sales people know, not who to engage, how to engage the partner. Going back to the basics of how early you pull them in, do you have them do pre-sales? Do you do pre-sales? Who does the demos? Basically through the entire sales cycle, defining roles and responsibilities. And taking that same set of rules to the partners. So we actually have ground rules on how we want to engage through the sales cycle. The last, and this important point, the last thing you want is for the partner and our own sales rep to meet each other in the prospects lobby at the 11th hour of a sales cycle. We're trying to fix that, but more importantly you raised a really good point. What am I asking the partners to step up and do? We're just putting in place, depending on the partner type, six different criteria, there's also a seventh criteria, that I'm measuring our best partners by. It's around capability to execute locally on both pre-sales and technical implementations and operations. I'm looking at revenue, I'm looking at number of customer ads so you're not just out shooting elephants once a year, but you're also bringing in a volume with us. I'm looking at references. That's the proof in the pudding, that you're capable of maintaining that environment and you're helping your customers derive the most value out of the service and solution. And then the last one is really looking at are you in an industry in a vertical and can you bring that to the forefront effectively in co-selling. So I'm putting a bar out there that says, these are the criteria, you've got to get to over this bar to be one of the partners I take into my co-selling engine and promote you to my sales force. So extremely prescriptive on who we're going to co-sell with. >> So it's sales synergy, not conflict. >> Doug: Exactly. >> So you're trying to identify hand-in-glove kind of fit points. >> Doug: Defining how and who. >> Let me offer one other one and see if this resonates with you, make one other suggestion, is that especially for partners that are part of the Cloud mix, have you talked about end-to-end performance, end-to-end effectiveness, end-to-end efficiency, and start to benchmark some of these partners and say, you're doing okay, but we got other folks over here who (crosstalk). I mean the time of execution, the number of errors that are generated, all these other things, because we're now talking about an integration that is not just in the marketing function, not just in the selling function, not just in the service function, but in the execution. That that's where the customer's going to determine whether the partnership is working. Are you starting to look at some of those measures as well? >> Yes, so the back end of this, I'm now looking at a report that says where are we churning? Where are we actually having down sales, in other words the subscription's not renewd at the same level, and I'm correlating that report for the first time back to the associated partner. Then I could sit back down with them and say, look, we're correlating you to a certain percentage of churn, what do we need to do to fix this? Is it better education? Are you not focusing on the whole life cycle of the customer? So we'll be able to come back at that with the partners as well. We haven't done a very good job of that, candidly. It's kind of the front of the sale, move through, get 'em running and then once in a while we turn up to make sure they're delighted, and that they're renewing. You can't do that any more. >> The interesting thing that you're getting at is, I hate to say, eat your own dog food or drink your own champagne or whatever you want to call it. You guys are saying here, use data and change business practices. >> Doug: Exactly. Exactly. >> So you're going to look at the data and bring that in, but the data model is first, if I hear you correctly is, identify clearly your parameters for ideal partnership. >> Doug: Yup. >> On a profitable win/win scenario. >> Yup, who we're working with, and then define how we're working together so our field can effectively co-sell with them. >> Okay so what's the reaction? I mean, the agency I can see has a potential, a lot of moving parts there, so I think that's challenging in general, just agencies are different than more committed partners, (mumbles), I don't mean to put down the agency, but agencies have a lot of moving parts. >> Doug: Yeah. >> What has been the reaction from agencies and the other different types of partners? >> And this is literally this week for the past three days have been meeting with a lot of the top partners. >> John: Standing ovation? >> They're very pleased, they said we want this approach. 'cause candidly if I say, Look, here's why I'm going to bet on you and here's why I'm going to work with you, you can invest ahead of the curve. Most partners aren't going to invest ahead of the curve. They kind of look in the rear view mirror and go, Yeah I got a couple of deals last month, I'm going to maybe start adding capacity. I could say, Look we're committing to you in these regions in these areas and here's how we're working together. It gives them more confidence to start investing ahead of the curve with us. And that's the best, you don't want them lagging behind the demand. >> And what about the swim lanes we talked about, I call swim lanes, you said specialty? Because that seems to be on the partner, not saying, well you could bring a lot to the table and say, here's how we think you might be fit based on the parameters, but that's a transformation that the partners are going through. Are you being proactive in recommending? Are they coming to you? They seem to be kind of in swim lanes... >> If you leave it up to the partner, they'll come to you. And I swim in every lane and I do everything. In a past life, what I was able to do and I've done a little bit now we're going to finish this job, I was able to run transactions through D & B for the past three years of my partner system. And partners would say, I play in every industry and every vertical, and I'd bring data back and say, actually, no you don't. Here's where you focus. >> John: They hope to be in every vertical. >> Right, they want to, they want to, and that's how they fail, they spread themselves too thin. But we come back with the data to say, look, here's where your references are, here's where the majority of your revenue has come from. I'm going to promote you in these swim lanes. You can move into another swim lane over time, but let's focus here. And we've done that. We've actually, we're about 95% through this exercise over the past six weeks. I've taken some of the maps back to some of the partners to say, here's where we believe we're going to win with you. That's an exercise we're going to finish over the next couple of months, and it'll evolve over time, but those are going to be the swim lanes. I'm glad you use that, I use that privately. Which swim lanes are they in and how do I promote those to be the swim lanes my co-sellers are going to work with them on? And that's the way we work. By the way, it helps them with capacity too. If I'm missing somebody in a swim lane, I will first of all try to take somebody out of the lane and get 'em into an adjacent lane for capacity. They like that, instead of just bringing somebody new in. >> I mean I always say the partner business is pretty straight forward, it comes down to money right? What's in it for me, I want to make some cash. Profitability is really important. I think it's cool that you're being transparent about it, saying, hey we're in business to make money, let's just put that on the table. 'Cause, they're going to posture and, at the end of the day, it's what's in it for me? >> I still think that this notion of moving from a product orientation to a service orientation which Cloud describes means a churn, CX, those types of measures, at the end of the day if Oracle's going to win, it has to be able to demonstrate to the marketplace, our eco-system operates better than anybody else's eco-system. >> Doug: Right. >> And starting to bake some of those measures and bake some of those ways of thinking into the relationship so the partners are lifting their game up, it's going to be really crucially important. >> Well the eco-system thing is going to be tested by the fact that, at the end of the day, at least my experience in talking to customers and experience in dealing with the partners, is at the end of the day, the 11th hour sales conflict is ultimately the indicator of if it's working or not. If this conflict with the customer and trust, like, wait a minute, this guy's not going to deliver, that's an undertone that, if that sentiment's there, it's not working. If it's working, pass, shoot, score! Everyone's happy! Sales guy gets comped on the Oracle side, feeding more business to the partner, you know this is a relationship where it flows to the good partners. >> Right, that's why you don't deal with... all thousand can play in the eco-system, but you place your bets on the top ones and get that right, and that's where your growth is going to come from. >> John: It's gamification. >> Also, also, think of it another way is that, I'd rather give the next dollar to one of my top partners that fits my ideal partner profile and can drive growth with me, than to give it to the person on the tail end of the tail, because they can't turn that same dollar into more revenue together. The guys at the top of the pyramid are more capable of reinvesting in our business. >> And the emerging ones that have an ascention vision of sending up and to be a partner will see the cash being doled out and will align... >> And we're going to be transparent of where the bar is. You want to get there? Here's the things you've got to be able to do. >> Right, and how are you guys helping them with any kind of soft, this is to say, partners say, hey Oracle, thanks for the mentoring thanks for the clarity, I really want to be in the swim lane, and I'm willing to invest. What are you going to do for me? >> So the education and training for them... Some of them, as we look at their profile and how successful they are, we will grandfather them in to certain lanes as well. Like, this isn't, go off into a dark room and prove to me you're successful and pop your head up and I may like you. We're going to still look at that next trench of partners that want to get above that bar and work with them, because if we get them over the bar we'll be successful, we'll be more successful, so we have to help them through training and education and enablement as well to be able to do that, and some opportunities to participate in different marketing programs and campaigns. >> Well you're a pro. It's good to co-sell and it's challenging, and it's got a great, I like the formula. Seven days in... >> Doug: Seven weeks. >> Seven weeks in. What's your feedback on the show? Thoughts? >> No this is very good. It's good for a variety of reasons. Obviously the customer focus is extremely good. The other thing it does for our partners is it gives them a chance to network. Because a customer doesn't just buy one solution from one partner. Typically our sales involve three or four partners at times. It gives them a networking opportunity and I'm trying to aggregate those solutions together into more of a complete offering, and we're just one part of that equation. So these type of events help those partners network together and we drive some of that networking as well. >> Doug Kennedy. So next year when we're sitting on the CUBE at a location, maybe here, maybe somewhere else, what's success in your mind for one year out in terms of in your mind's eye, what do you want to see happening, envision happening for next year's event? >> Well a stake in the ground for our own eco-system is we've doubled the impact of our co-selling through our top line with partners. That's a pretty big challenge, but that's what I'm committing to. It's a big net that we're going to go after. But also here you're going to have a partner eco-system, to be blunt, they're more profitable. They're doing better. They actually want more. I would argue we're going to have more people attending here from my partner eco-system next year, hungry for more information and more opportunities to work together. That's success. >> You're going to grow it up top line and grow the eco-system. >> Yup, and other partners that are not part of that growth, wanting it. 'Cause if you make some poster children, the rest are going to want more of that. So we'll see more of a herd mentality start. >> Doug Kennedy in charge of Business Development and Partners here at Oracle on the CUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Barris. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break.

Published Date : Apr 27 2017

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Oracle. Great to have you on the CUBE. of the dynamics in the industry, and that's the trick, and that's why partners What's the conversation like with partners here? and I'm pushing the partners to make sure but specialism, it seems to have much and some, by the way, are all three. And to replicate that, the programs we're I want to test you with this. and the degree to which you can show that end to end What am I asking the partners to step up and do? So you're trying to identify hand-in-glove and start to benchmark some of these partners and I'm correlating that report for the first time I hate to say, eat your own dog food or drink your Doug: Exactly. and bring that in, but the data model is first, and then define how we're working together I don't mean to put down the agency, of the top partners. And that's the best, you don't want Because that seems to be on the partner, for the past three years of my partner system. of the partners to say, at the end of the day, it's what's in it for me? to the marketplace, our eco-system operates into the relationship so the partners Well the eco-system thing is going to be and get that right, I'd rather give the next dollar to one of my And the emerging ones that have an ascention Here's the things you've got to be able to do. Right, and how are you guys helping them and prove to me you're successful and pop and it's got a great, I like the formula. What's your feedback on the show? it gives them a chance to network. on the CUBE at a location, maybe here, Well a stake in the ground for our own eco-system and grow the eco-system. the rest are going to want more of that. and Partners here at Oracle on the CUBE.

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