(upbeat music playing) >> Narrator: theCUBE presents Ignite 22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >> Hey guys, girls, welcome back. It's theCUBE Live in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand for Palo Alto Networks Ignite 22. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, We've had some great conversations. This is day one of two days of cube coverage. We're talking with Palo Alto executives, their partner network, their customers, going to be learning a lot about what they've been doing to really be that golden nugget. >> Yeah. We've talked, Lisa, about how Palo Alto Networks is affecting a TAM expansion strategy through acquisitions and integration and company CDW, that I remember, you know, been around a long time. I remember back in the Comdex days talk about transformation of a company. Really excited to have them on. >> We're going to talk about that. Stephanie Hagopian is here, the VP of Security at CDW. >> Stephanie, >> Hey it's great to have you on the program. >> It's so nice to be here. Thank you. >> So lots going on. CDW has made several acquisitions in the past couple of quarters alone as it relates to security. Talk to us about what's going on. >> Yes. So we are way more than the computer warehouse that you used to know. The computer catalog days, we've moved beyond that. We've made a lot of strategic acquisitions in the past several quarters. The reason for that is we're trying to change our image and our brand and how, more importantly, we engage with our customers in security. We used to traditionally be, you know, kind of at the end of the procurement cycle with our customers, and we want to be an advisor. We want to really sell solutions and help influence the outcomes that our clients are trying to achieve when it comes to, not just security, but also risk, governance, threatened vulnerability management, how are they dealing with major issues around zero trust and building a zero trust framework for a company. >> Lisa: And I imagine these acquisitions, that really from a catalyst perspective was really driven >> Yeah. by the customers and what they were >> absolutely wanting to see and feel and hear and be able to do. >> Absolutely. So the acquisitions have given us over 400 delivery resources, consultants, advisors people who can actually engage with our clients who have real life experience, have worked with global organizations, some of the biggest companies in the world in order to solve their problems. And using that experience to be able to to really create higher value, you know as we interact and engage. >> Dave: You were telling us, Stephanie, that you actually came into CDW through an acquisition. >> I did. >> And I think if you go back 10 years ago when the cloud was just sort of hitting its steep steep ramp, and it looked, it was pretty obvious. And at the same time you had what we affectionately called you know, box sellers. And it was very clear that if they didn't transform their businesses and you know, the, they a lot of 'em were small, regional companies. They had the owners had big houses and big boats but the companies were going to go away if they didn't transform. So it's interesting to me that you've chosen security and governance in some of the really most difficult areas to as part of that transformation. Where did that come from, from your perspective and you know, why security and why such challenging areas? >> Well, I've been part of security in the security industry for over 20 years, and I've loved the fact it is challenging. It's what, it's what makes us so important and critical to our clients. Security's not an easy problem to solve. And it, it's because the landscape keeps changing. The advent of cloud and now hybrid infrastructure creates endless challenges for our customers. Threat actors change. We have insider threats, we have external threats. There's all sorts of risk when you talk about third parties and how third parties interact with organizations. We have supply chain management. And now that we've moved into this hybrid work environment of virtual, not virtual. You know, we have people kind of engaging within organizations in different ways. There's just a lot of risk associated with that. It's not easy and you have to engage with stakeholders across the entire organization. You have to understand how legal thinks of this and compliance and HR. It's not just an IT issue, it's a business issue. And we understand that and it's just, it's so interesting for us to engage with our customers on critical initiatives and security is at the top of the list. It's not just a, a CISO or even a CIO problem anymore. Boards care about this, >> Lisa: Right? >> We make or break companies with cybersecurity and risk strategies. That's why it's so critical. So we consider ourselves to be a high priority for every single organization, big or small. >> Lisa: From a security perspective, what's the common denominator among industries that you're seeing? >> Oh, I mean, we see, in terms of common denominator, I think every single organization's contending with ransomware. >> Ah >> That's probably number one. Breaches. You know, how do you prevent bad actors from doing something, you know, that's threatening to information sensitive data, especially consumer data. Third party risk is a big topic, and how to secure hybrid cloud infrastructures which is a key part of, you know, Palo's strategy as well. And we realize that. >> Why do they buy from CDW? Pitch me. I'm a customer, what can you do for me? >> Yeah. Because we want to partner. So we, we provide true advisory and consulting services to our customers. We aren't there just to make a sale and walk away. We want long-term commitments and long-term partnerships with our customer base. We're there to, to give them outcomes, right? And to align to their priorities and their challenges. It's, it's not a one and done for us. This is about a long-term partnership and that's what makes us so different. And we're now through the acquisition strategies. We're the largest security integrator in North America in terms of our revenue and our size just our sheer size and capability and the amount of full-time employees we have dedicated to this part of our business. So they know they can trust us and that we can scale. >> Dave: Do you? Is is it a, a teach me how to fish strategy? Or is it also if >> Yeah, >> if you want to have, if I, if I as a customer want to have you continue to manage or at least provide some kind of managed services, where's the the line? >> Stephanie: Yeah. So we are incredibly unique in the way we've built out our security practice in that we, we do both. And we want our clients to understand that there are going to be elements of what they do that they want to keep in house from a security perspective. That is why, and it also came from an acquisition, we have a workforce development team for security. We actually are a Palo authorized training partner. And we're incredibly proud of that fact because we don't just want to configure technology. We want to enable our customers to enhance and maintain their investments with Palo and with all technologies, with all of security. At the same time, we know they can't do everything in-house, and it just might make more sense to do manage through us. So we have end-to-end managed capabilities as well and we continue to enhance that part of our business. >> So a lot, a lot of opportunities for customers there. Talk a little bit about the Palo Alto Network's extension of the value prop that you just talked about. >> Oh yes. We love, you know, Palo is taking a platform approach and really focusing on helping customers rationalize their IT infrastructure around security. We're doing the same exact thing and focusing on zero trust is huge. We're, we're having those conversations with our customers as well. We want them to take their Palo investment and try to create a platform approach because there's simplicity and cost savings in that. The security conversations becoming a CFO conversation, right? We love rationalizing those technology investments in a way that makes sense. And we're right in line with Palo in that we want to provide those capabilities end to end and we want to ensure they integrate and use that all of the capabilities within your platform to the extent of that investment, right? We want them to use everything and not just parts of the technology or just do a partial deployment. We want them to use everything that it functionally is available to them through that investment. >> Dakesh, in his keynote this morning, said the answer is not just more people. I know there's this, this, this gap between the number of required number of cyber professionals that we need and >> Stephanie: Oh yeah. >> And how many employees we have, et cetera, et cetera. However, you just can't get there overnight. So that's where service providers, you know, come in. >> Stephanie: It's huge. >> I saw a stat recently, I think it said 50% of organizations in North America don't have a SOC. >> That's true. >> Okay. So they, they need managed services. So, >> Stephanie: They do. >> What are you seeing with some of the small and mid-size companies >> Stephanie: Managed >> and, and and how does, how is that, how is that going? We're entering a new era with, >> Stephanie: Yeah with, you know, cloud can can be a, a great help and and reduce the IT load internally. >> Yeah. >> Dave: What, what's the dynamic like in the customer base? >> Smaller customers especially they just can't attract the cyber talent. It's a high demand field because there just aren't many people who have that capability, right? For us, providing managed a managed SOC is huge. One of our key acquisitions, Sirius, was our largest acquisition recently, brought us a 24 7 managed SOC capability. And that's exactly what our mid-size customers want and demand and what they need, and it's more cost effective. And now they don't have to worry about being a security business. That's not what they are. They need to run their businesses and that's what we provide through managed capabilities especially for that customer base in particular. >> Lisa: And and >> Dave: How about the really small customers, right? Who, who, you know, they're in some ways the most vulnerable. >> Yeah >> Right? >> In many ways >> They don't have the budgets they're kind of working hand to mouth. How, how do you help them? >> Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we provide cost effective managed capabilities. So there's managed for enterprise, there's managed for mid-market, but then for small medium businesses they want something that is at the right price point. And that's what we're doing actually in co-development with Palos. That's why we're expanding, not just our professional services capabilities with the Palo platform, but also providing managed support for every aspect of the platform so that customers don't need to invest in full-time employees to do that. They can, they have a predictable cost model that's affordable, that they can leverage over time. So we're very intent on making sure we're fulfilling that not just for our big customers but also for SMB and our, and small businesses as well. >> So you really have that whole suite taken care of >> The whole suite, yeah. I want to talk about some of the the large enterprises for a second. I saw a survey recently that, you know, you talked about security is a board level conversation. It is. >> Stephanie: Very much so. >> We talk about that all the time, CFO conversation but the survey that I saw recently was that there's not there's lack of alignment on boards with the executive suite where security is concerned. Are you seeing that and how can CDW and the Palo Alto partnership help gain that important alignment? >> Stephanie: Yeah So we, we face this all the time. What's on the CISO whiteboard might not be on the CFO's whiteboard or the, the board's whiteboard right? We love, and this is the whole part of our strategy and our strategy partnering with Palo, is that we want to engage further up on the, on the cycle. The, you know, we don't want to to talk to them at the end of the purchasing cycle because we're not providing value. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> We want to help advise them and build the business case. And by them, I mean our CISOs are, you know the heads of network security. You know, their are various stakeholders that we want to engage with to help them build the business case and the justification so that they are speaking the same language as the board member, the CFO. And we do that in many ways. I think the biggest is that we've we've built a global security strategy office that encompasses practitioners. So these are former CISOs, CIOs CTOs who have sat in their shoes and done what they've done. And we bring that experience to bear, coincidentally but not so coincidentally, Palo has the same capability. So Palo's also has a team of field CISOs and former practitioners. So we're partnering together to make sure that we're enabling our customers in, in providing the right value statements and the the right ROI within the the board meetings so that they get that investment right. And they're able to do what they need to do to secure the infrastructure. >> Dave: I mean, historically the business case has been we're going to help you not get breached, and you're going to reduce your, your, your loss >> Stephanie: (indistinct) still relevant. >> And, and I'm, and it's still very relevant. Is there any sort of on the other side of the algebra algebraic equation where actually having this kind of security practice can actually drive productivity >> Absolutely. >> Or or even drive revenue and can you talk about that part of the equation? >> Stephanie: Yeah, security as an industry, we're we've gotten a lot smarter. We understand it's not just about the compliance aspect or the data privacy aspect. It's very important to your point, you know breach prevention is certainly, you know, a a great justification. It's also about automation. So you think of SOAR, right? Providing automation and visibility and dashboard views into who's doing what actually really reduces administrative overhead. We, you know, we want to re-allow our clients to repurpose individuals because there are a finite amount of people in the security industry to focus on higher value tasks. So we're enabling just a lot of cost savings through that. Self-service is a big piece of this. You know, when you think about security we bring along a lot of automation, self-service automation of business logic, and business process. There's a huge value in cost savings attached to that. So that's huge. That's a huge part of the security conversation. >> I was reading, you talked about the cybersecurity skills gap and I was reading some interesting numbers that there's 26 million developers in the world less than 3 million cybersecurity professionals. >> Stephanie: Yeah. >> Talk to us about one of your favorite customer stories where you think CDW and Palo really nailed it in terms of helping organization drive that value the top line value, the bottom line value while enabling them with your expertise. >> Oh my gosh, I don't even want to focus on one because since we became a Palo authorized training partner we have worked with over a hundred clients. We just started this this year and we've helped over a hundred clients and thousands of people get enabled on on Palo firewall configuration and training and development. So we've co, we've partnered together as and we've impacted over a hundred organizations this year in making sure their people are enabled and they're, they're going from that I'm a developer generic to I'm a security professional. So we're helping to close that cybersecurity workforce gap. And we're just so excited at the scale we've been able to do that in such a short amount of time that, I mean, if you think about next year and the year following I mean it's going to be thousands of different clients. But you think about each client, we're impact we're, we're holding classes with 30 plus people. So we've already impacted thousands of people which is amazing. >> Right? So the idea to scale the program in in calendar year 2023 >> Absolutely. We're going to, we, we tried it. This was a trial run and it was amazingly successful trial run. So we're incredibly excited to scale this even more and continue to provide, you know, that element, that workforce development element, that training element for the entire Palo's stack, not just elements of it. >> Lisa: Excellent. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on the program. >> Stephanie: Thank you. >> Sharing what CDW and Palo Alto Networks are doing together. The what's in it for me from a customer perspective, big impact there. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you so much. >> Dave: Great to have you >> Lisa: Our pleasure. >> It's great to have, great to be here. >> Yeah. For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to Chicago theCUBE is live on the floor at AnsibleFest 2022, the first in-person Ansible event that we've covered since 2019. Lisa Martin here with John Furrier. John, great to be here. There's about 1400 to 1500 people here in person, the partner ecosystem is growing and evolving, and that's going to be one of the themes of our next conversation. >> CloudScale is continuing to change the ecosystem, and this segment with AWS is going to be awesome. >> Exactly, we've got one of our alumni back with us, Stefanie Chiras joins us again, senior vice president, partner ecosystem success at Red Hat. and Manasi Jagannatha is also here Global Alliance Manager at AWS. Ladies, welcome to the program. >> Both: Thank you. >> Manasi: Nice to be here. >> Stefanie: Yeah. >> So some exciting news that came out. First of all was great to see you on stage. >> Thank you. >> In front of a live audience. The community is, you talked about this before we went live. The Ansible is nothing, if not the community. So I can only imagine how great that felt to be on stage in front of live bodies announcing the next step with Ansible and AWS. Tell us about that. >> I mean, you can't compete with the energy that comes from a live event. And I remember the first AnsibleFest I came to, it's just this electric feeling born out of the community, born out of collaboration and getting together feeds that collaboration in a way that like nothing else. >> Lisa: Can't do it by video alone. >> You cannot. And so it was so fun cuz today was big news. We announced that Ansible will be available through the AWS marketplace, the next step in our partnership journey. And we've been hearing like most of our announcements, we do these because customers ask for them. And that's really what is key. And the combination of what Red Hat brings to the table and what AWS brings to the table. That's what underpins this announcement this morning. >> Talk about it from a customer demand perspective and how you are not only meeting customers where they are, but you're speaking their language. >> Manasi: Yeah. >> Yeah, there's a couple of aspects and then I want to pass it to Manasi because nothing speaks better than a customer experience. But the specifics I think of what come together is this is where technology, procurement, experience, accessibility all come together. And it took both of us in order to do that. But we actually talked about a great example today, the TransUnion. >> So we have TransUnion, they are a credit reporting company and they're a giant customer. They use RHEL, they use AWS services. So while they were transitioning to the cloud, the first thing they wanted to know was compliance, right? Like, how do we have guardrails around compliance? That was a key feature for them. And then the other piece was how do we scale without increasing the complexity? And then the critical piece was being able to integrate with the depth of AWS services without having to do it over and over again. So what TransUnion did was they basically integrated Ansible automation platform with the AWS Cloud Control API that gave them the flexibility To basically integrate with what, 200 plus services? And it's amazing to see them grow over time. >> What's interesting is that Amazon, obviously cloud has been awesome. We've been covering it since the beginning. DevOps infrastructures code was the dream. Now it's app says code, you have configuration code before that. As cloud goes next level here, we're starting to see a lot more higher level services on AWS being adopted by customers. And so I want to get into how the marketplace deal works. So what's in it for the customer? Because as they bring Ansible across the enterprise and edge, now we're seeing that develop. If I'm the customer, am I buying it through the marketplace? What's the mechanics of the deal? Can I just tap into the bill, explain the marketplace workflow or how it works? >> Yeah, I'd love to do that. So customers come to the marketplace for three key benefits, right? Like one is the consumption based model, pay as you go, you can get hourly, annual, and spot instances. For some services you even get per second billing, right? Like, that's amazing, that's one. And then the other piece is John and Stefanie, as you know, customers would love to draw down on their EDPs, right? Like they want a single- >> EDPs, explain that with acronym. >> It's enterprise discount program. So they want a single bill where they can use third party services and AWS services and they don't have to go through the hustle of saying, "Hey, let me combine all these different pieces." So combining that, and of course the power of Ansible, right? Like customers love Ansible, they've built playbooks. The beauty of it is whatever you want to build on AWS, there is most likely a playbook or a module that already exists. So they can just tap into that and build into- >> Operationally it's a purchasing through marketplace. >> And you know, I mean, being an engineer myself, we always often get caught up in the technology aspect. Like what's the greatest technology? And everyone, as Manasi said, everyone loves the technology of Ansible, but the procurement aspect is also so important. And this is where I think this partnership really comes together. It is natively, Ansible is now, natively integrated into AWS billing. So one bill, you go and you log in. Now you have a Red Hat subscription, you get all the benefits from Red Hat that comes along with that subscription. But the like Ansible is all about simplicity. This brings simplicity to that procurement model and it allows you to scale within your AWS cloud environment that you have set up. And as Manasi mentioned, pull in those other native services from AWS. It's Great. >> It's interesting one of the things that buzzword Lisa and I were just talking as in the industry is the word multiplayer. I've heard people say that's multiplayer software, kind of a gaming analogy. But what you guys are doing is setting up, once they go with Ansible in the marketplace, they're just buying as things get more collaborative off the marketplace. So it kind of streamlines, if I get this right. >> Stefanie: Yep. >> The purchasing process. So they're already in, they just use it's on the bill. Is that kind of how it works? >> Yep. >> Absolutely done, yeah. >> So it the customer has a partnership with us more on the technology side and this particular case and with AWS and the procurement side, it brings that together. >> So multiplayer software, is it multiplayer software? >> We like to talk about multi-partner solutions and I think this provides a new grounding for other partners to come in and build upon that with their services capabilities, with their other technology capabilities. So well clearly in my world, we talk about multi-partner. (both laughs) >> Well, what you're doing is empowering the developers. I know that Red Hat is one of its goals is let's make things much more seamless, much smoother for the developers as the buyer's journey has changed. And John, you've talked about that quite a bit. You're empowering those buyers to actually have a much simpler, streamlined process and to be able to start seeing automation become democratized across organizations. >> Yeah, and one of the things I love about the announcement as well is it pulls in the other values of Ansible automation platform in that simplicity model that you mentioned with like things like certified collections, certified collections that have been built by partners. We have built certified collections, to go along with this offering as well as part of the AWS offering that pulls in these other partner engagements together. And as you said, democratizes not only what we've done together, but what we've done with other partners together. >> Lisa: Right. >> Yeah. >> Can you kind of talk kind of about the depths of the partnership, the co-engineering, and sort of the evolution and the customer involvement in the expansion of the partnership? >> Yeah, I'd love to walk you through that. So we've had a longstanding partnership coming up on 15 years now Stefanie, can you believe it? >> Stefanie: Yeah. (laughs) >> 15 years we've been building, to give you some historical context, right? In back in 2008 we launched RHEL and in 2015 we supported SAP workloads on RHEL. And then the list goes on, right? Like we've been launching Graviton instances, Arm instances, Nitro. The key to be noted here is that every new instance Launch, RHEL has always been supported on day one, right? Like that's been our motto. So that's one. And then in 2021, as you know, we launched Rosa Red Hat OpenShift service on AWS. And that's helped customers with their modernization journey to AWS. So that's been context historically around where we were and where we are today. And now with Ansible, it just gives customer another tool in their arsenal, right? And then the goal is to make sure we meet customers where they are, give them all the Red Hat products that they love using on their hybrid workloads. >> Sounds like a lot is coming maybe at re:Invent too, coming up. >> Yeah. >> What's next? >> This is the beginning, right? We'll continue to grow and based upon not only laying the building blocks for what customers can build with, and you mentioned Lisa, right? We follow this journey that Manasi talked about because of what customers ask for. So it's always a new adventure to determine what'll come next based upon what we hear from our joint customers. >> On that front though, Stefanie, talk about the impact of the broader ecosystem that this is just scratching the surface. >> One of the things, and we've been going through a whole transformation at Red Hat about how we engage with the ecosystem. We've done organizational shifts, we've done a complete revamp of how we engage with the ecosystem. One of our biggest focus is to make sure that the partnerships that we have with one partner bring value to the rest of our partners. No better example than something like this when we work with AWS to create accessibility and capability through a procurement model that we know is important to customers. But that then serves as a launch point for other partners to build certified collections around or now around validated content, which we talked about today at AnsibleFest, that allows other partners to engage. And we're seeing a huge amount in services partners, right? Automation is so pervasive now as customers want to go out and scale. We're seeing services partners really come in and help customers go from, it's always challenging when you have a broad set of IT. You have cloud native over here, you have bare metal over here, you have virtual, it's complex. >> John: Yeah. >> There's sometimes an energy activation barrier to get over that initial automation. We're seeing partners come in with really skilled services capabilities to help customers get over that hump to consolidate with an automation plan. It gets them better equipped to do day one automation and day two automation. And that's where Ansible automation platform is going. It's not just about configuration management, it's about day two management as well. >> Talk about those barriers a little bit more and how Ansible and AWS together are helping customers really knock those out of the park. Another baseball reference for you. We see that a lot of organizations, the skills gap, which we've talked about already on the conversation today, but Ansible as being a facilitator of helping organizations to attract talent, to retain talent, but also customers that maybe don't know where to start or don't know how to determine the ROI that automating processes will bring. How can this partnership help customers nock those out of the park? >> So I'll start and then I'll pass it to Manasi here. But I think one of the key things in this particular partnership is just plain old accessibility. Accessibility, which public cloud has taught the world a new way to get fast access that consumption based pricing. Right you can get your hands on it, you can test it out, you can have a team go in and test it out, and then you can see it's built for scale. So then you can scale it as far as you want to go forward. We clearly have an ecosystem of services partners, so does AWS to help people then sort of take it to the next level as they want to build upon it. But to me the first step is about accessibility, getting your hands dirty. You can build it into those committed spend programs that you may have with AWS as well to try new things. But it's a great test bed. >> Absolutely. And then to add to what Stefanie said, together Red Hat and AWS, we have about a hundred thousand partners combined, right? Like resellers, sis, GSI, distributors. So the reach the combined partnership has just amplifies. >> Yeah, it's huge news. I think it's a big deal because you operationalize the heavy lifting of procurement for all your joint customers and the scale piece is huge. So congratulations. I think it's going to make a lot of money for Ansible. So good call there. My question is, as we hear here, the next level's edge. So AWS has been doing a ton of hybrids since outpost announcement years ago. Now you got all kinds of regional expansions, you've got local zones, you've got all kinds of new edge activity. So are there dots connecting here with the edge with Red Hat Ansible? >> Do you want- >> Yeah, so I think we see two trends with our customers, right? Like mainly I'm specifically talking about our RHEL customer base on AWS. We have almost hundreds to thousands of customers using RHEL on AWS. These are 90% of fortune 500 companies use RHEL, right? So with that customer base, they are looking to expand your point into the edge. There's outposts, there are so many hybrid environments that they're trying to expand in. So just adding Ansible, RHEL, Rosa, OpenShift, that entire makes, just gives customers that the plethora of products they need to run their workloads everywhere, right? Like we have certifications outpost, we have certifications with OpenShift, right? So it just completes the puzzle, if you- >> So it's a nice fit. >> Yeah. >> It is a really nice fit. And I love Edge and Edge once you start going distributed, this automation aspect is key for all the reasons, for security reasons to make sure you do it the same way every single time. It's just pervasive in it. But things like the Cloud Control API allow it to bridge into things like Outpost. It allows a simple way, one clean way to do API and then you can expand it out and get the value. >> So this is why you are on stage and you said that Ansible's going to expand the scope to be more enterprise architecture. >> Stefanie: That's right. >> That's essentially what you're getting at. This is now a distributed computing fabric at cloud scale on AWS. >> Stefanie: That's right. >> Did I get that right? >> Yep, and it touches all the different deployments you may have, on-prem, virtual, cloud native, you name it. >> So how do the people turn into architects? Cuz this is, again, we had this earlier conversation with Tom, multi-tool players, a baseball analogy I used. It's like signifies the best player, your customers are becoming multiple tool players or operators. The new operator is now the top talent. They got to run Ansible, they got to automate, they got to provide services to the cloud native developers. So this new role is emerging, it's not a cloud architect but it's, if it's going to be system architecture wide, what's this new person look like that's going to run all this? >> I think it's an interesting question. We were talking yesterday, actually, Tom and I were talking with the partners. We had Partner Day, the first ever at AnsibleFest yesterday, which was great. We got a lot of insight. They talked a lot about this platform focus, right? Customers are looking to create that platform so that the developers can come in and build upon it without compromising what they want to do. So I do think there's a move in that direction to say how do you create these platforms at a company that no compromises, but it provides that consistency. I would say one thing in partnerships like this, I think customer expectations on the partner ecosystem to have it be trusted is increasing. They expect us as we've done to have our engineers roll up their sleeves together to come to the table together. That's going to show up in our curated content. It's going to show up in our validated content. Those are the places I think where we come up from the bottom through our partnership and we help bridge that gap. >> John: Awesome. >> And trust was brought up a number of times this morning during the keynote. We're almost out of time here, but I think it's one of those words that a lot of companies use. But I think what you're showing is really the value in it from Ansible's perspective from AWS's perspective and ultimately the value in it for the customer. >> Stefanie: Yes. >> So I got to ask you one final question. >> Stefanie: Absolutely. >> And maybe as as reinvent is around the corner, what's next for the partnership? Obviously big news today, Manasi, looking down down the pipe- >> Stefanie: Big news today. >> What are some of the things that you think are going to become next that you can share? >> I mean at this point, and I'll pass it to Manasi to close us out, but we are continuing to follow, to meet our customers where they want to be. We are looking across our portfolio for different ways that customers want to consume within AWS. We'll continue to look at the procurement models through the partner programs that Manasi and the team have had. And to me the next step is really bringing in the rest of the ecosystem. How do we use this as a grounding step? >> Yeah, absolutely. So we are always listening to customer feedback and they want more Red Hat products in the marketplace. So that's where we'll be. >> In the marketplace. >> Congratulations great deal. >> Yes great work there guys. And customers always want more. That's the thing. But that's what keeps us going. So we love it. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you so much for joining John and me on the program today. It's been great to have you. And congratulations again. >> It's a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> For our guests and for John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Chicago at AnsibleFest 2022. This is only day one of our coverage. We'll be back after a short break for more. (upbeat music)

>>Hey everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase season one, episode three women in tech. I'm your host. Lisa Martin. We've got two female rock stars here with me next. Stephanie Curry joins us the worldwide head of sales and go to market strategy for AWS at NetApp and Danielle GShock is back one of our QM ISV PSA director at AWS. Looking forward to a great conversation, ladies, about a great topic, Stephanie, let's go ahead and start with you. Give us an overview of your story, how you got into tech and what inspired you. >>Thanks so much, Lisa and Danielle. It's great to be on this show with you. Thank you for that. My name's Stephanie curs. Lisa mentioned I'm the worldwide head of sales for AWS at NetApp and run a global team of sales people that sell all things AWS going back 25 years now, when I first started my career in tech, it was kind of by accident. I'd come from a different background. I have a business background and a technical background from school, but had been in a different career. And I had an opportunity to try something new. I had an ally really that reached out to me and said, Hey, you'd be great for this role. And I thought, I'd take a chance. I was curious. And it, it turned out to be a 25 year career that I'm really, really excited about and, and really thankful for that person for introducing me to the, to the industry >>25 years in counting. I'm sure Danielle, we've talked about your background before. So what I wanna focus on with you is the importance of diversity for high performance. I know what a machine AWS is, and Stephanie, I'll come back to you with the same question, but talk about that, Danielle, from your perspective, that importance for diversity to drive the performance. >>Yeah. I truly believe that, you know, in order to have high performing teams, that you have to have people from all different types of backgrounds and experiences. And we do find that oftentimes being, you know, field facing, if we're not reflecting our customers and connecting with them deeply on, on the levels that they're at, we, we end up missing them. And so for us, it's very important to bring people of lots of different technical backgrounds experiences. And of course, both men, women, and underrepresented minorities, and put that forth to our customers in order to make that connection and to end up with better outcomes. So >>Definitely it's all about outcomes, Stephanie, your perspective and NetApp's perspective on diversity for creating highly performing teams and organizations. >>I really aligned with Danielle on the comment she made. And in addition to that, you know, just from building teams in my career note, we've had three times as many women on my team since we started a year ago and our results are really showing in that as well. We find the teams are stronger, they're more collaborative and to Danielle's point really not only our partners, but our customers themselves. So this really creates connections, which are really, really important to scale our businesses and, and really meet the customer where they're at as well. So huge proponent of that ourselves, and really finding that we have to be intentional in our hiring and intentional in how we attract diversity to our teams. >>So Stephanie let's stay with you. So a three X increase in women on the team in a year, especially the kind of last year that we've had is really incredible. I, I like your, I, your thoughts on there needs to be a, there needs to be focus and, and thought in how teams are hired. Let's talk about attracting and retaining those women now, especially in sales roles, we all know the number, the percentages of women in technical roles, but what are some of the things that, that you do Stephanie, that NetApp does to attract and retain women in those sales roles? >>The, the attracting part's really interesting. And we find that, you know, you, you read the stats and I'd say in my experience, they're also true in the fact that a lot of women would look at a job description and say, I can't do a hundred percent of that. So I'm not even going to apply with the women that we've attracted to our team. We've actually intentionally reached out and targeted those people in a good way to say, Hey, we think you've got what it takes. Some of the feedback I've got from those women are, gosh, I didn't think I could ever get this role. I didn't think I had the skills to do that. And they've been hired and they are doing a phenomenal job. In addition to that, I think a lot of the feedback I've got from these hires are, Hey, it's an aggressive sales is aggressive. Sales is competitive. It's not an environment that I think I can be successful in. And what we show them is bring those softer skills around collaboration, around connection, around building teams. And they do, they do bring a lot of that to the team. Then they see others like them there and they know they can be successful cuz they see others like them on the team. >>The whole concept of we can't be what we can't see, but we can be what we can see is so important. You said a couple things, Stephanie, that really stuck with me. And one of 'em was an, an interview on the cube I was doing, I think a couple weeks ago about women in tech. And the stat that we talked about was that women will apply will not apply for a job unless they meet 100% of the skills and the requirements that it's listed, but men will, if they only meet 60. And I, that just shocked me that I thought, you know, I, I can understand that imposter syndrome is real. It's a huge challenge, but the softer skills, as you mentioned, especially in the last two years, plus the ability to communicate, the ability to collaborate are incredibly important to, to drive that performance of, of any team of any business. >>Absolutely. >>Danielle, talk to me about your perspective in AWS as well for attracting and retaining talent and, and, and particularly in some of those challenging roles like sales that as Stephanie said, can be known as aggressive. >>Yeah, for sure. I mean, my team is focused on the technical aspect of the field and we definitely have an uphill battle for sure. Two things we are focused on first and foremost is looking at early career women and that how we, how can we bring them into this role, whether in they're in support functions, cl like answering the phone for support calls, et cetera, and how, how can we bring them into this organization, which is a bit more strategic, more proactive. And then the other thing that as far as retention goes, you know, sometimes there will be women who they're on a team and there are no other women on that team. And, and for me, it's about building community inside of AWS and being part of, you know, we have women at solution architecture organizations. We have, you know, I just personally connect people as well and feel like, oh, you should meet this person. Oh, you should talk to that person. Because again, sometimes they can't see someone on their team like them and they just need to feel anchored, especially as we've all been, you know, kind of stuck at home during the pandemic, just being able to make those connections with women like them has been super important and just being a long tenure Amazonian, that's definitely one thing I'm able to, to bring to the table as well. >>That's so important and impactful and spreads across organizations in a good way. Daniel let's stick with you. Let's talk about some of the allies that you've had sponsors, mentors that have really made a difference. And I said that in past tense, but I also mean in present tense, who are some of those folks now that really inspire you? >>Yeah. I mean, I definitely would say that one of my mentors and someone who ha has been a sponsor of my career has Matt ion, who is one of our control tower GMs. He has really sponsored my career and definitely been a supporter of mine and pushed me in positive ways, which has been super helpful. And then other of my business partners, you know, Sabina Joseph who's cube alum as well. She definitely has been, was a fabulous partner to work with. And, you know, between the two of us for a period of time, we definitely felt like we could, you know, conquer the world. It's very great to go in with a, with another strong woman, you know, and, and get things done inside of an organization like AWS. >>Absolutely. And know S I've had, I've been agreed here several times. So Stephanie, same question for you. You talked a little bit about your kind of, one of your original early allies in the tech industry, but talk to me about allies sponsors, mentors who have, and continue to make a difference in your life. >>Yeah. And, you know, I think it's a great differentiation as well, right? Because I think that mentors teach us sponsors show us the way and allies make room for us at the table. And that is really key difference. I thinks also as women leaders, we need to make room for others at the table too, and not forget those softer skills that we bring to the table. Some of the things that Danielle mentioned as well about making those connections for others, right. And making room for them at the table. Some of my allies, a lot of them are men. Brian ABI was my first mentor. He actually is in the distribution, was in distribution with advent tech data no longer there, Cory Hutchinson, who's now at Hashi Corp. He's also another ally of mine and remains an ally of mine, even though we're not at the same company any longer. So a lot of these people transcend careers and transcend different positions that I've held as well and make room for us. And I think that's just really critical when we're looking for allies. And when allies are looking for us, >>I love how you described allies, mentors and sponsors Stephanie. And the difference, I didn't understand the difference between a mentor and a sponsor until a couple of years ago. Do you talk with some of those younger females on your team so that when they come into the organization and maybe they're fresh outta college, or maybe they've transitioned into tech so that they can also learn from you and understand the importance and the difference between the allies and the sponsors and the mentors? >>Absolutely. And I think that's really interesting because I do take an extra approach and extra time to really reach out to the women that have joined the team. One, I wanna make sure they stay right. I don't want them feeling, Hey, I'm alone here and I need to, I need to go do something else. And they are located around the world, on my team. They're also different age groups. So early in career, as well as more senior people and really reaching out, making sure they know that I'm there. But also as Danielle had mentioned, connecting them to other people in the community that they can reach out to for those same opportunities and making room for them >>Make room at the table. It's so important. And it can, you never know what a massive difference and impact you can make on someone's life. And I, and I bet there's probably a lot of mentors and sponsors and allies of mine that would be surprised to know the massive influence they've had Danielle back. Let's talk about some of the techniques that you employ that AWS employs to make the work environment, a great place for women to really thrive and, and be retained as Stephanie was saying. Of course that's so important. >>Yeah. I mean, definitely I think that the community building, as well as we have a bit more programmatic mentorship, we're trying to get to the point of having a more programmatic sponsorship as well. But I think just making sure that, you know, both E everything from recruit to onboard to ever boarding that they they're the women who come into the organization, whether it's they're coming in on the software engineering side or the field side or the sales side that they feel as though they have someone working with them to help them drive their career. Those are the key things that were, I think from an organizational perspective are happening across the board. For me personally, when I run my organization, I'm really trying to make sure that people feel that they can to me at any time open door policy, make sure that they're surfacing any times in which they are feeling excluded or anything like that, any challenges, whether it be with a customer, a partner, or with a colleague. And then also of course, just making sure that I'm being a good sponsor to, to people on my team. That is key. You can talk about it, but you have to start with yourself as well. >>That's a great point. You you've got to, to start with yourself and really reflect on that and, and look, am I, am I embodying what it is that I need? And not that I know they need that focused, thoughtful intention on that is so importants, let's talk about some of the techniques that you use that NetApp uses to make the work environment, a great place for those women are marginalized communities to really thrive. >>Yeah. And I appreciate it. And it much like Danielle and much like AWS, we have some of those more structured programs, right around sponsorship and around mentorship, probably some growth there, opportunities for allies, because I think that's more of a newer concept in really an informal structure around the allies, but something that we're growing into at NetApp on my team personally, I think leading by example is really key. And unfortunately, a lot of the life stuff still lands on the women, whether we like it or not, I have a very active husband in our household, but I still carry when it push comes to shove it's on me. And I wanna make sure that my team knows it's okay to take some time and do the things you need to do with your family. I'm I show up as myself authentically and I encourage them to do the same. >>So it's okay to say, Hey, I need to take a personal day. I need to focus on some stuff that's happening in my personal life this week. Now obviously make sure your job' covered, but just allowing some of that softer vulnerability to come into the team as well, so that others, men and women can feel they can do the same thing. And that it's okay to say, I need to balance my life and I need to do some other things alongside. So it's the formal programs, making sure people have awareness on them. I think it's also softly calling people out on biases and saying, Hey, I'm not sure if you know, this landed that way, but I just wanted to make you aware. And usually the feedback is, oh my gosh, I didn't know. And could you coach me on something that I could do better next time? So all of this is driven through our NetApp formal programs, but then it's also how you manifest it on the teams that we're leading. >>Absolutely. And sometimes having that mirror to reflect into can be really eye-opening and, and allow you to, to see things in a completely different light, which is great. You both talked about kind of being what you can see. And, and I know both companies are obsess customer obsessed in a good way. Talk to me a little bit, Danielle, go back over to you about the AWS NetApp partnership. Some of the maybe alignment on, on performance on obviously you guys are very well aligned in terms of that, but also it sounds like you're quite aligned on diversity and inclusion. >>Well, we definitely do. We have the best partnerships with companies in which we have these value alignments. So I think that is a positive thing, of course, but just from a, from a partnership perspective, you know, from my five now plus years of being a part of the APN, this is, you know, one of the most significant years with our launch of FSX for NetApp, with that key key service, which we're making available natively on AWS. I, I can't think of a better Testament to the, to the partnership than that. And that's doing incredibly well and it really resonates with our customers. And of course it started with customers and their need for NetApp. So, you know, that is a reflection, I think, of the success that we're having together. >>And Stephanie talk to about the partnership from your perspective, NetApp, AWS, what you guys are doing together, cultural alignment, but also your alignment on really bringing diversity into drive performance. >>Yeah, I think it's a, a great question. And I have to say it's just been a phenomenal year. Our relationship has started before our first party service with FSX N but definitely just the trajectory between the two companies since the announcement about nine months ago has just taken off to a, a new level. We feel like an extended part of the family. We worked together seamlessly. A lot of the people on my team often say we feel like Amazonians, and we're really part of this transformation at NetApp from being that storage hardware company, into being an ISV and a cloud company. And we could not do this without the partnership with AWS and without the first party service of Fs XM that we've recently released. I think that those joint values that Danielle referred to are critical to our success, starting with customer obsession and always making sure that we are doing the right thing for the customer. >>We coach our team teams all the time on if you are doing the right thing for the customers, you cannot do anything wrong. Just always put the customer at the dis in the center of your decisions. And I think that there is a lot of best practice sharing and collaboration as we go through this change. And I think a lot of it is led by the diverse backgrounds that are on the team, female, male race, and so forth, and just to really have different perspectives and different experiences about how we approach this change. So we definitely feel like we're part of the family. We are absolutely loving working with the AWS team and our team knows that we are the right place, the right time with the right people. >>I love that last question for each of you. And I wanna stick with you Stephanie advice to your younger self, think back 25 years. What advice would you seen what you've accomplished and maybe the, the turns and, and serendipitous route that you've taken along the way, what would you advise your younger Stephanie self? >>I would say keep being curious, right? Keep being curious, keep asking questions. And sometimes when you get a no, it's not a bad thing, it just means not right now and find out why and, and try to get feedback as to why maybe that wasn't the right opportunity for you, but, you know, just go for what you want. Continue to be curious, continue to ask questions and find a support network of people around you that wanna help you because they are there and they are, they wanna see you be successful too. So never be shy about that stuff. >>Absolutely. And I always say failure does not have to be a bad F word. A no can be the beginning of something. Amazing. Danielle, same question for you. Thinking back to when you first started in your career, what advice would you give your younger self? >>Yeah, I think the advice I'd give my younger self would be, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. It's certainly, you know, coming from an engineering background, maybe you wanna stay behind the scenes, not, not do a presentation, not do a public speaking event, those types of things, but back to what the community really needs. This thing, you know, I genuinely now took me a while to realize it, but I realized I needed to put myself out there in order to, you know, allow younger women to see what they could be. So that would be the advice I would give. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. >>Absolutely. That advice that you both gave are, is so fantastic, so important and so applicable to everybody. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there, ask questions. Don't be afraid of a, no, that it's all gonna happen at some point or many points along the way. That can also be good. So thank you ladies. You inspired me. I appreciate you sharing what AWS and NetApp are doing together to strengthen diversity, to strengthen performance and the advice that you both shared for your younger was brilliant. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you >>For my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the AWS partner showcase. See you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We're covering Red Hat Summit 2022. We're going to wrap up now, Dave Vellante, Paul Gillin. We want to introduce you to Stephanie Chan, who's our new correspondent. Stephanie, one of your first events, your very first CUBE event. So welcome. >> Thank you. >> Up from NYC. Smaller event, but intimate. You got a chance to meet some folks last night at some of the after parties. What are your overall impressions? What'd you learn this week? >> So this has been my first in-person event in over two years. And even though, like you said, is on the smaller scale, roughly around 1000 attendees, versus it's usual eight to 10,000 attendees. There's so much energy, and excitement, and openness in these events and sessions. Even before and after the sessions people have been mingling and socializing and hanging out. So, I think a lot of people appreciate these in-person events and are really excited to be here. >> Cool. So, you also sat in some of the keynotes, right? Pretty technical, right? Which is kind of new to sort of your genre, right? I mean, I know you got a financial background but, so what'd you think of the keynotes? What'd you think of the format, the theater in the round? Any impressions of that? >> So, I think there's three things that are really consistent in these Red Hat Summit keynotes. There's always a history lesson. There's always, you know, emphasis in the culture of openness. And, there's also inspirational stories about how people utilize open source. And I found a lot of those examples really compelling and interesting. For instance, people use open source in (indistinct), and even in space. So I really enjoyed, you know, learning about all these different people and stories. What about you guys? What do you think were the big takeaways and the best stories that came out of the keynotes? >> Paul, want to start? >> Clearly the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 is a major rollout. They do that only about every three years. So that's a big deal to this audience. I think what they did in the area of security, with rolling out sigstore, which is a major new, I think an important new project that was sort of incubated at Red Hat. And they're trying to put in to create an open source ecosystem around that now. And the alliances. I'm usually not that much on partnerships, but the Accenture and the Microsoft partnerships do seem to be significant to the company. And, finally, the GM partnership which I think was maybe kind of the bombshell that they sort of rushed in at the last minute. But I think has the biggest potential impact on Red Hat and its partner ecosystem that is really going to anchor their edge architecture going forward. So I didn't see it so much on the product front, but the sense of Red Hat spreading its wings, and partnering with more companies, and seeing its itself as really the center of an ecosystem indicates that they are, you know, they're in a very solid position in their business. >> Yeah, and also like the pandemic has really forced us into this new normal, right? So customer demand is changing. There has been the shift to remote. There's always going to be a new normal according to Paul, and open source carries us through that. So how do you guys think Red Hat has helped its portfolio through this new normal and the shift? >> I mean, when you think of Red Hat, you think of Linux. I mean, that's where it all started. You think OpenShift which is the application development platforms. Linux is the OS. OpenShift is the application development platform for Kubernetes. And then of course, Ansible is the automation framework. And I agree with you, ecosystem is really the other piece of this. So, I mean, I think you take those three pieces and extend that into the open source community. There's a lot of innovation that's going around each of those, but ecosystems are the key. We heard from Stefanie Chiras, that fundamental, I mean, you can't do this without those gap fillers and those partnerships. And then another thing that's notable here is, you know, this was, I mean, IBM was just another brand, right? I mean, if anything it was probably a sub-brand, I mean, you didn't hear much about IBM. You certainly had no IBM presence, even though they're right across the street running Think. No Arvind present, no keynote from Arvind, no, you know, Big Blue washing. And so, I think that's a testament to Arvind himself. We heard that from Paul Cormier, he said, hey, this guy's been great, he's left us alone. And he's allowed us to continue innovating. It's good news. IBM has not polluted Red Hat. >> Yes, I think that the Red Hat was, I said at the opening, I think Red Hat is kind of the tail wagging the dog right now. And their position seems very solid in the market. Clearly the market has come to them in terms of their evangelism of open source. They've remained true to their business model. And I think that gives them credibility that, you know, a lot of other open source companies have lacked. They have stuck with the plan for over 20 years now and have really not changed it, and it's paying off. I think they're emerging as a company that you can trust to do business with. >> Now I want to throw in something else here. I thought the conversation with IDC analyst, Jim Mercer, was interesting when he said that they surveyed customers and they wanted to get the security from their platform vendor, versus having to buy these bespoke tools. And it makes a lot of sense to me. I don't think that's going to happen, right? Because you're going to have an identity specialist. You're going to have an endpoint specialist. You're going to have a threat detection specialist. And they're going to be best of breed, you know, Red Hat's never going to be all of those things. What they can do is partner with those companies through APIs, through open source integrations, they can add them in as part of the ecosystem and maybe be the steward of that. Maybe that's the answer. They're never going to be the best at all those different security disciplines. There's no way in the world, Red Hat, that's going to happen. But they could be the integration point. And that would be, that would be a simplifying layer to the equation. >> And I think it's smart. You know, they're not pretending to be an identity in access management or an anti-malware company, or even a zero trust company. They are sticking to their knitting, which is operating system and developers. Evangelizing DevSecOps, which is a good thing. And, that's what they're going to do. You know, you have to admire this company. It has never gotten outside of its swim lane. I think it's understood well really what it wants to be good at. And, you know, in the software business knowing what not to do is more important than knowing what to do. Is companies that fail are usually the ones that get overextended, this company has never overextended itself. >> What else do you want to know? >> And a term that kept popping up was multicloud, or otherwise known as metacloud. We know what the cloud is, but- >> Oh, supercloud, metacloud. >> Supercloud, yeah, here we go. We know what the cloud is but, what does metacloud mean to you guys? And why has it been so popular in these conversations? >> I'm going to boot this to Dave, because he's the expert on this. >> Well, expert or not, but I mean, again, we've coined this term supercloud. And the idea behind the supercloud or what Ashesh called metacloud, I like his name, cause it allows Web 3.0 to come into the equation. But the idea is that instead of building on each individual cloud and have compatibility with that cloud, you build a layer across clouds. So you do the hard work as a platform supplier to hide the underlying primitives and APIs from the end customer, or the end developer, they can then add value on top of that. And that abstraction layer spans on-prem, clouds, across clouds, ultimately out to the edge. And it's new, a new value layer that builds on top of the hyperscale infrastructure, or existing data center infrastructure, or emerging edge infrastructure. And the reason why that is important is because it's so damn complicated, number one. Number two, every company's becoming a software company, a technology company. They're bringing their services through digital transformation to their customers. And you've got to have a cloud to do that. You're not going to build your own data center. That's like Charles Wang says, not Charles Wang. (Paul laughing) Charles Phillips. We were just talking about CA. Charles Phillips. Friends don't let friends build data centers. So that supercloud concept, or what Ashesh calls metacloud, is this new layer that's going to be powered by ecosystems and platform companies. And I think it's real. I think it's- >> And OpenShift, OpenShift is a great, you know, key card for them or leverage for them because it is perhaps the best known Kubernetes platform. And you can see here they're really doubling down on adding features to OpenShift, security features, scalability. And they see it as potentially this metacloud, this supercloud abstraction layer. >> And what we said is, in order to have a supercloud you got to have a superpaz layer and OpenShift is that superpaz layer. >> So you had conversations with a lot of people within the past two days. Some people include companies, from Verizon, Intel, Accenture. Which conversation stood out to you the most? >> Which, I'm sorry. >> Which conversation stood out to you the most? (Paul sighs) >> The conversation with Stu Miniman was pretty interesting because we talked about culture. And really, he has a lot of credibility in that area because he's not a Red Hat. You know, he hasn't been a Red Hat forever, he's fairly new to the company. And got a sense from him that the culture there really is what they say it is. It's a culture of openness and that's, you know, that's as important as technology for a company's success. >> I mean, this was really good content. I mean, there were a lot, I mean Stefanie's awesome. Stefanie Chiras, we're talking about the ecosystem. Chris Wright, you know, digging into some of the CTO stuff. Ashesh, who coined metacloud, I love that. The whole in vehicle operating system conversation was great. The security discussion that we just had. You know, the conversations with Accenture were super thoughtful. Of course, Paul Cormier was a highlight. I think that one's going to be a well viewed interview, for sure. And, you know, I think that the customer conversations are great. Red Hat did a really good job of carrying the keynote conversations, which were abbreviated this year, to theCUBE. >> Right. >> I give 'em a lot of kudos for that. And because, theCUBE, it allows us to double click, go deeper, peel the onion a little bit, you know, all the buzz words, and cliches. But it's true. You get to clarify some of the things you heard, which were, you know, the keynotes were, were scripted, but tight. And so we had some good follow up questions. I thought it was super useful. I know I'm leaving somebody out, but- >> We're also able to interview representatives from Intel and Nvidia, which at a software conference you don't typically do. I mean, there's the assimilation, the combination of hardware and software. It's very clear that, and this came out in the keynote, that Red Hat sees hardware as matter. It matters. It's important again. And it's going to be a source of innovation in the future. That came through clearly. >> Yeah. The hardware matters theme, you know, the old days you would have an operating system and the hardware were intrinsically linked. MVS in the mainframe, VAX, VMS in the digital mini computers. DG had its own operating system. Wang had his own operating system. Prime with Prime OS. You remember these days? >> Oh my God. >> Right? (Paul laughs) And then of course Microsoft. >> And then x86, everything got abstracted. >> Right. >> Everything became x86 and now it's all atomizing again. >> Although WinTel, right? I mean, MS-DOS and Windows were intrinsically linked for many, many years with Intel x86. And it wasn't until, you know, well, and then, you know, Sun Solaris, but it wasn't until Linux kind of blew that apart. And the internet is built on the lamp stack. And of course, Linux is the fundamental foundation for Red Hat. So my point is, that the operating system and the hardware have always been very closely tied together. Whether it's security, or IO, or registries and memory management, everything controlled by the OS are very close to the hardware. And so that's why I think you've got an affinity in Red Hat to hardware. >> But Linux is breaking that bond, don't you think? >> Yes, but it still has to understand the underlying hardware. >> Right. >> You heard today, how taking advantage of Nvidia, and the AI capabilities. You're seeing that with ARM, you're seeing that with Intel. How you can optimize the operating system to take advantage of new generations of CPU, and NPU, and CPU, and PU, XPU, you know, across the board. >> Yep. >> Well, I really enjoyed this conference and it really stressed how important open source is to a lot of different industries. >> Great. Well, thanks for coming on. Paul, thank you. Great co-hosting with you. And thank you. >> Always, Dave. >> For watching theCUBE. We'll be on the road, next week we're at KubeCon in Valencia, Spain. We're at VeeamON. We got a ton of stuff going on. Check out thecube.net. Check out siliconangle.com for all the news. Wikibon.com. We publish there weekly, our breaking analysis series. Thanks for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for Paul Gillin, and Stephanie Chan. Thanks to the crew. Shout out, Andrew, Alex, Sonya. Amazing job, Sonya. Steven, thanks you guys for coming out here. Mark, good job corresponding. Go to SiliconANGLE, Mark's written some great stuff. And thank you for watching. We'll see you next time. (calm music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone and welcome to theCUBE. In this special power panel we're going to dig into and take a peek at the future of cloud. You know a lot has transpired in the last decade. The cloud itself, we've seen a data explosion. The AI winter turned into machine intelligence going mainstream. We've seen the emergence of As-a-Service models. And as we look forward to the next 10 years we see the whole idea of cloud expanding, new definitions occurring. Yes, the world is hybrid but the situation is more nuanced than that. You've got remote locations, smaller data centers, clandestine facilities, oil rigs, autonomous vehicles, windmills, you name it. Technology is connecting our world, data is flowing through the pipes like water, and AI is helping us make sense of the noise. All of this, and more is driving a new digital economy. And with me to talk about these topics are three great guests from IBM. Maia Sisk is the Director of SaaS Offering Management, at IBM Data and AI. And she's within the IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software Group. Stephanie Walter is the Program Director for data and AI Offering Management, same group IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. And Daniel Berg is a Distinguished Engineer. He's focused on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. He's in the Cloud Organization. And he's going to talk today a lot about IBM's cloud Satellite and of course Containers. Wow, two girls, two boys on a panel, we did it. Folks welcome to theCUBE. (chuckles) >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Glad to be here. >> So Maia, I want to start with you and have some other folks chime in here. And really want to dig into the problem statement and what you're seeing with customers and you know, what are some of the challenges that you're hearing from customers? >> Yeah, I think a big challenge that we face is, (indistinct) talked about it earlier just data is everywhere. And when we look at opportunities to apply the cloud and apply an As-a-Service model, one of the challenges that we typically face is that the data isn't all nice cleanly package where you can bring it all together, and you know, one AI models on it, run analytics on it, get it in an easy and clean way. It's messy. And what we're finding is that customers are challenged with the problem of having to bring all of the data together on a single cloud in order to leverage it. So we're now looking at IBM and how we flip that paradigm around. And instead of bringing the data to the cloud bring the cloud to the data , in order to help clients manage that challenge and really harness the value of the data, regardless of where you live. >> I love that because data is distributed by its very nature it's silo, Daniel, anything you'd add? >> Yeah, I mean, I would definitely echo that, what Maia was saying, because we're seeing this with a number of customers that they have certain amount of data that while they're strategically looking that moving to the cloud, there's data that for various reasons they can not move itself into the cloud. And in order to reduce latency and get the fastest amount of processing time, they going to move the processing closer to that data. And that's something that we're looking at providing for our customers as well. The other services within IBM Cloud, through our notion of IBM Cloud Satellite. How to help teams and organizations get processing power manage them to service, but closer to where their data may reside. >> And just to play off of that with one other comment. Then the other thing I think we see a lot today is heightened concerned about risks, about data security, about data privacy. And you're trying to figure out how to manage that challenge of especially when you start sending data over the wire, wanting to make sure that it is still safe, it is still secure and it is still resident in the appropriate places. And that kind of need to manage the governance of the data kind of adds an additional layer of complexity. >> Right, if it's not secure, it's a, non-starter, Stephanie let's bring you into the conversation and talk about, you know, some of the waves that you're seeing. Maybe some of the trends, we've certainly seen digital accelerate as a result of the pandemic. It's no longer I'll get to that someday. It's really, it become a mandate you're out of business, if you don't have a digital business. What are some of the markets shifts that you're seeing? >> Well, I mean, really at the end of the day our clients want to infuse AI into their organizations. And so, you know, really the goal is to achieve ambient AI, AI that's just running in the background unchoosibly helping our clients make these really important business decisions. They're also really focused on trust. That's a big issue here. They're really focused on, you know, being able to explain how their AI is making these decisions and also being able to feel confident that they're not introducing harmful biases into their decision-making. So I say that because when you think about, you know digital organization going digital, that's what our customers want to focus on. They don't want to focus on managing IT. They don't want to focus on managing software. They don't want to to have to focus on, you know, patching and upgrading. And so we're seeing more of a move to manage services As-a-Service technologies, where the clients can really focus on their business problems and using The technologies like AI, to help improve their businesses. And not have to worry so much about building them from the ground up. >> So let's stay on that for a minute. And maybe Maia, Daniel, you can comment. So you, Stephanie, you said that customers want to infuse AI and kind of gave some reasons why, but I want to stay on that for a minute. That, what is that really that main outcome that they're looking for? Maybe there are several, they're trying to get to insight. You mentioned that trynna be more efficient it sounds like they're trynna automate governance and compliance, Maia, Daniel can you sort of add anything to this conversation? >> Yeah, well, I would, I would definitely say that, you know at the end of the day, customers are looking to use the data that they have to make smarter decisions. And in order to make smarter decisions it's not enough to just have the insight. The insight has to, you know, meet the business person that needs it, you know in the context, you know, in the application, in the customer interaction. So I think that that's really important. And then everything else becomes like the the superstructure that helps power, that decision and the decision being embedded in the business process. So we at IBM talk a lot about a concept we call the Ladder to AI. And the the short tagline is there is no AI without IA. You know, there is no Artificial Intelligence without Information Architecture. It is so critical, you know, Maia's version this is the garbage in garbage out. You have to have high quality data. You have to have that data be well-organized and well-managed so that you're using it appropriately. And all of that is just, you know then becomes the fuel that powers your AI. But if you have the AI without having that super structure, you know, you're going to end up making, get bad decisions. And ultimately, you know our customers making their customers experience less than it could and should be. And in a digital world, that's, you know, at the end of the day, it's all about digitizing that interaction with whoever the end customer whoever the end consumer is and making that experience the best it can be, because that's what fuels innovation and growth. >> Okay. So we've heard Arvind Krishna talk about, he actually made this statement IBM has to win the architectural battle for cloud. And I'm wondering maybe Daniel you can comment, on what that architectural framework looks like. I mean Maia just talked about the Information Architecture. You can't have AI without that foundation but we know what does Arvind mean by that? How is IBM thinking about that? >> Yeah, I mean, this is where we're really striving to allow our customers really focusing on their business and focusing on the goals that they're trying to achieve without forcing them to worry as much about the IT and the infrastructure and the platform for which they're going to run. Typically, if you're anchored by your data and the data is not able to move into the cloud, generally we would say that you don't have access to cloud services. You must go and install and run and operate your own software to perform the duties or the processing that you require. And that's a huge burden to push onto a customer because they couldn't move their data to your cloud. Now you're pushing a lot of responsibilities back onto them. So what we're really striving for here is, how can we give them that cloud experience where they can process their data? They can run their run book. They can have all of that managed As-a-Service so that they could focus on their business but get that closer to where the data actually resides. And that's what we're really striving for as far as the architecture is concerned. So with IBM Cloud Satellite, we're pushing the core platform and the platform services that we support in IBM Cloud outside of our data centers and into locations where it's closer to your data. And all of that is underpinned by Containerizations, Containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift. Is fundamentally the platform for which we're building upon. >> Okay. So that, so really it's still it's always a data problem, right? Data is you don't want to move it if you don't have to. Right. So it's, so Stephanie, should we think about this as a new emergent data architecture I guess that's what IA is all about. How do you see that evolving? >> Well I mean, I see it evolving as, I mean, first of all our clients, you know, we know that data is the lifeblood of AI. We know the vast majority of our clients are using more than one cloud. And we know that the client's data may be located in different clouds, and that could be due to costs, that could be due to location. So we have to ask the question, how are our clients supposed to deal with this? This is incredibly complex environments they're are incredibly complex reasons sometimes for the data to be where it is. It can include anything from costs to laws, that our clients have to abide by. So what we need to do, is we need to adapt to these different environments and provide clients with the consistent experience and lower complexity to be able to handle data and be able to use AI in these complex environments. And so, you know, we know data, we also know data science talent is scarce. And if each one of these environments have their own tools that need to be used, depending on where the data is located, that's a huge time sink, for these data scientist and our clients don't want to waste their talents time on problems like this. So what we're seeing is, we're seeing more of a acceptance and realization that this is what our clients are dealing with. We have to make it easier. We have to do Innovative things like figure out how to bring the AI to the data, how to bring the AI to where the clients need it and make it much easier and accessible for them to take advantage of. >> And I think there's an additional point to make on this one, which is it's not just easy and accessible but it's also unified. I mean, one of the challenges that customers face in this multicloud environment and many customers are multicloud, you know, not necessarily by intent but just because of how, you know, businesses have adopted as a service. But to then have all of that experience be fragmented and have different tools not just of data, but different pools of, again catalog, different pools of data science it's extremely complex to manage. So I think one of the powerful things that we're doing here, is we're kind of bringing those multiple clouds together, into more of an integrated or a unified, you know window into the client's data in AI state. So not only does the end-user not have to worry about you know, the technologies of dealing with multiple individual clouds, but also, you know it all comes together in one place. So it can be give managed in a more unified way so that assets can be shared across, and it becomes more of a unified approach. The way I like to think of it is, you know, it's true hybrid multicloud, in that it is all connected as opposed to multi-cloud, but it's pools of multiple clouds, one cloud at a time. >> So it can we stay on that for a second because it's, you're saying it's unified but the data stays where it is. The data is distributed by nature. So it's unified logically, but it's decentralized. Is that, am I getting that right? Correct. Okay. Correct. All right. I'm really interested in how you do this. And maybe we can talk about maybe the approach that you take for some of your offerings and maybe get specific on that. So maybe Stephanie, why don't you start, you know, Yes so, what do you have in your basket? Like Cloud Pak So what we have in our basket I mean lets talk about that. >> We have, so Cloud Pak for Data as a Service. This is our premier data and AI platform. It's offered as a service, its fully managed, and there's roughly, there's 30 services integrated services in our services catalog and growing. So we have services to help you through the entire AI life cycle from preparing your data, which is Maia was saying it's very, very, very important. It's critical to any successful AI project. From building your models, from running the models and then monitoring them to make sure that as I was saying before, you can trust them. You don't have to make sure that, you need to make sure that there's not biased. You need to be able to manage these models and then the life cycle them retrain them if needed. So our platform handles all of that. It's hosted on IBM Cloud. And what we're doing now, which is really exciting, is we're going to use, and you mentioned before IBM Cloud Satellite, as a way for us to send our AI to data that perhaps is located on another cloud or another environment. So how this would work is that the services that are integrated with Cloud Pak for Data as a Service they'll be able to use satellite locations to send their AI workloads, to run next to the data. And this means that the data doesn't need to be moved. You don't have to worry about high egress charges. You can see, you can reduce latency and see much stronger performance by running these AI workloads where it counts. We're really excited to to add this capability to our platform. Because, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about earlier all of these challenges that our clients have and this is going to make a big difference in helping them overcome them. Okay. So Daniel, how to Containers fit in? I mean, obviously the Red Hat acquisition was so strategic. We're seeing the real, the ascendancy of OpenShift in particular. Talk about Containers and where it fits into the IBM Cloud Satellite strategy. >> Yeah. So a lot of this builds on top of how we run our cloud business today. Today the vast majority of the services that are available in IBM cloud catalog, actually runs as Containers, runs in a Kubernetes based environment and runs on top of the services that we provide to our customers. So the Container Platform that we provide to our customers is the same one that we're using to run our own cloud services. And those are underpinned with Containers, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. And IBM cloud satellite, based on the way that the designed our Container Platform using Kubernetes and Containers and OpenShift, allows us to take that same design and the same principles and extended outside of our data centers with user provided infrastructure. And this, this goes back to what Stephanie was saying is a satellite location. So using that technology, that same technology and the fact that we've already containerized many of our services and run them on our own platform, we are now distributing our platform outside of IBM Cloud Data Centers using satellite locations and making those available for our cloud service teams, to make their services available in those locations. >> I see and Maia, this, it is as a service. It's a OPEX. Is that right? Absolutely Okay. Absolutely >> Yeah, it's with the two different options on how we can run. One is we can leverage IBM Cloud Satellite and reach into a customer's operating environment. They provide the infrastructure, but we've provide the As-a-Service experience for the Container on up. The other option that we have is for some of our capabilities like our data science capability, where, you know customer might need something a little bit more turnkey because it's, you know, more of a business person or somebody in the CTO's office consuming the As-a-Service. We'll also offer select workloads in an IBM own satellite and environment. I, you know, so that it kind of soup to nuts managed by us. But that is the key is that other than, you know providing the operating environment and then connecting what we do to, you know, their data sources, really the rest is up to us. We're responsible for, you know everything that you would expect in an As-a-Service environment. That things are running, that they're updated, that they're secure, that they're compliant, that's all part of our responsibility. >> Yeah. So a lot of options for customers and it's kind of the way they want to consume. Let's talk about the business impact. You know, you guys, IBM, very consultative selling, you know, tight relationships with customers. What's the business case look like when you go into a client? What's the conversation like? What's possible? What can you share? Stephanie, can you maybe start things off there? Any examples, use-cases, business case, help us understand the metrics. >> Yeah. I mean, so let's talk about a couple of use cases here. So let's say I'm an investment firm, and I'm using data points from all kinds of data sources right? To use AI, to create models to inform my investment decisions. So I'm going to be using, I may be using data sources you know, like regulatory filings, newspaper articles that are pretty standard. I may also be using things like satellite data that monitors parking lots or maybe even weather data, weather forecast data. And all of this data is coming together and being, it needs to be used for models to predict, you know when to buy, sell, trade, however, due to costs, due to just availability of the data they may be located on completely different clouds. You know, and we know that especially capital markets things are fast, fast, fast. So I need to bring my AI to my data, and need to do it quickly so that I can build these models where the data resides, and then be able to make my investment decisions, very fast. And these models get updated often because conditions change, markets change. And this is one way to provide a unified set of AI tools that my data scientists can use. We don't have to be trained on I'm told depending on what cloud the data is stored on. And they can actually build these models much faster and even cheaper. If you would take into egress charges into consideration, you know, moving all the all this data around. Another use case that we're seeing is you know, something like let's say, a multinational telecommunications company that has locations in multiple countries and maybe they want to reduce their customer churn. So they have say customer data that it's stored in different countries and different countries may have different regulations, or the company may have policies that, that data can't be moved out to those country. So what can we do? Again, what we can do is we can send our AI to this data. We can make a customer churn prediction model, that when my customer service representative is on the phone with a customer, and put their information, and see how likely they are to stop using my service and tailor my phone interaction and the offers that I would offer them as this customer service representative to them. If there's a high likelihood that they're going to churn I will probably sweeten the deal. And I can do all that while I'm being fast, right. Because we know that these interactions need to happen quickly. But also while complying with whatever policies or even regulations that are in place for my multinational company. So you know, if you think back to the use cases that I was just talking about you know, latency, performance, reducing costs and also being able to comply with any policy or regulations that our customers might have are really, are really the key pieces of the use cases that we've been seeing. >> Yeah. So Maia there's a theme here. I bring five megabytes of code to a petabyte of data kind of thing. And so Stephanie was talking about speed. There's a an inherent compliance and governance piece. It's it sounds like it's not a bolt on, it's not an afterthought, it's fundamental. So maybe you could add to the conversation, just specifically interested in, you know, what should a client expect? I mean, you're putting data in the hands of you know domain experts in the line of business. There's a self-serve component here, presumably. So there's cross selling is what I heard in some of what Stephanie was just talking about. So it was revenue, there's cost cutting, there's risk reduction, that I'm seeing the business case form. What can you add? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think that the only other thing I would add, is going back to the conversation that we had about, Oh you know, a lot of this is being driven by, you know the digitization of business and you know even moreso this year. You know, at the end of the day there's a lot of costs benefits to leveraging and As-a-Service model, you know, to leveraging that experience in economies of scale from a service provider, as well as, you know leveraging satellite kind of takes that to the next level of, you know, reducing some other costs. But I always go back to, you know at the end of the day, this is about customer experience. It's about revenue creation, and it's about, you know, creating, you know enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty. So there's a top-line benefits here, you know, of having the best possible AI, you know plugging that into the customer experience, the application where that application resides. So it's not just about where the data resides. You can also put it on the other side and say, you know, we're bringing the AI, we're bringing the machine learning model to the application so that the experiences at excellent the application is responsive there's less latency and that can help clients then leverage AI to create those revenue benefits, you know, of having the the satisfied customer and of having the, you know the right decision at the right time in order to, you know propel them to, to spend and spend more. >> So Daniel bring us home. I mean, there's a lot of engineering going on here. There's the technology, the people in the process if I'm a client, I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to rely on IBM R&D to cut my labor costs, to drive automation, to help me, you know, automate governance and reduce my risks, you know, take care of the technology. You know, I'll focus my efforts on my process, my people but it's a journey. So how do you see that shaping out in the next, you know several years or, or the coming decade, bring us home. >> Yeah. I mean what we're seeing here is that there's a realization that customers have highly skilled individuals. And we're not saying that these highly skilled individuals couldn't run and operate these platforms and the software themselves, they absolutely could. In some cases, maybe they can't but in many cases they could. But we're also talking about these are they're highly skilled individuals that are focusing on platform and platform services and not their business. And the realization here is that companies want their best and brightest focused on their business, not the platform. If they can get that platform from another vendor that they rely on and can provide the necessary compute services, in a timely and available fashion. The other aspect of this is, people have grown to appreciate those cloud services. They like that on demand experience. And they want that in almost every aspect of what they're working on. And the problem is, sometimes you have to have that experience in localities that are remote. They're very difficult. There's no cloud in some of these remote parts of the world. You might think that clouds everywhere, but it's not. It's actually in very specific locations across the world, but there are many remote locations that they want and need these services from the cloud that they can get. Something like IBM Cloud Satellite. That is what we're pursuing here, is being able to bring that cloud experience into these remote locations where you can't get it today. And that's where you can run your AI workloads. You don't have to run it yourself, we will run it and you can put it in those remote locations. And remote locations don't actually have to be like in the middle of a jungle, they could be in your, on your plant floor or within a port that you have across the world, right? It could be in a warehouse. I mean, there's lots of areas where there's data that needs to be processed quickly, and you want to have that cloud experience, that usage pay model for that processing. And that's exactly what we're trying to achieve with IBM Cloud Satellite and what we're trying to achieve with the IBM Cloud Pak for Data as a Service as well. Running on satellite is to give you those cloud experiences. Those services managed as a service in those remote locations that you absolutely need them and want them. >> Well, you guys are making a lot of progress in the next decade is not going to look like the last decade. I can pretty confident in that prediction. Guys thanks so much for coming on the cube and sharing your insights, really great conversation. >> Absolutely. Thank you, Dave. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante from the cube. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(calm music) >> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm Lisa Martin, and today, I'm talking to Ivanti again and Intel, some breaking news. So please welcome two guests, the EVP and Chief Product Officer of Ivanti, Nayaki Nayyar. She's back, and we've also got the VP and GM of Business Client Salute Platforms for Intel, Stephanie Hallford. Nayaki and Stephanie, it's great to have you on the program. >> It's great to be back here with you Lisa, and Stephanie glad to have you here with us, thank you. >> Thank you, we're excited >> Yeah, you guys are going to break some news for us, so let's go ahead and start. Nayaki, hot off the presses is Ivanti's announcement of its new hyper-automation platform, Ivanti Neurons, helping organizations now in this new next normal of so much remote work. Now, just on the heels of that, you're announcing a new strategic partnership with Intel. Tell me about that. >> So Lisa, like we announced, our Ivanti Neurons platform that is helping our customers and all the IT organizations around the world to deal with this explosive growth of remote workers, the devices that would work is used, the data that it's getting from those devices, and also the security challenges, and Neurons really help address what we call discover all the devices, manage those devices, self-heal those devices, self-secure the devices, and with this partnership with Intel, we are extremely excited about the potential our customers and the benefits that customers can get. Intel is offering what they call Device as a Service, which includes both the hardware and software, and with this partnership, we are announcing the integration between Intel's vPro platform and Ivanti's Neurons platform, which is what we are so excited about. Our joint customers, joint enterprises that are using both the products can now benefit from this out of the box integration to take advantage of this Device as a Service combined offer. >> So Stephanie, talk to us from Intel's perspective. This is an integration of Intel's Endpoint Management Assistant with Ivanti Neurons. How does this drive up the value for the EMA solution for your customers who are already using it? >> Right, well, so vPro is just to step everyone back, vPro is the number one enterprise platform trusted now for over 14 years. We are in a vast majority of enterprises around the world, and that's because vPro is essentially our best performing CPUs, our highest level of security, our highest level manageability, which is our EMA or "Emma" manageability solution, which Ivanti is integrating, and also stability, so that is the promise to IT managers for a stable, the Intel Stable Image platform, and what that allows is IT managers to know that we will keep as much stability and fast forward and push through any fixes as quickly as possible on those vPro devices because we understand that IT networks usually QUAL, you know, not all at one time, but it's sequential. So vPro is our number one enterprise built for business, validated, enabled, and we're super excited today because we're taking that remote manageability solution that comes with vPro, and we are marrying it with Ivanti's top class in point management solution, and Ivanti is a world leader in managing and protecting endpoints, and today more than ever, because IT's remote and Intel. For instance, our IT over one weekend had to figure out how to support a hundred thousand remote workers, so the ability for Ivanti to now have our remote manageability in band, out of band, on-prem, in the cloud, it really rounds out. Ivanti's already fantastic world-class solution, so it's a fantastic start to what I foresee is going to be a great partnership. >> And probably a big target install base. Now, can you talk to me a little bit about COVID as a catalyst for this partnership? So many companies, the stuff they talked about a great example of Intel pivoting over a weekend for a hundred thousand people. We're hearing so many different numbers of an explosion of devices, but also experts and even C-suite from tech companies projecting maybe 30 to 40% of the workforce only will go back, so talk to me about COVID as really driving the necessity for organizations to benefit from this type of technology. >> Yeah, so Lisa, like Stephanie said, right, as Intel had to take hundred thousand employees remote over a weekend, that is true for pretty much every company, every organization, every enterprise independent of industry vertical that they had to take all their workforce and move them to be primarily remote workers, and the stats of BFC is what used to be, I would say, three to four percent before COVID of remote working. Post-COVID or during COVID, as we say, it's going to be around 30, 40, 50%, and this is a conversation and a challenge. Every IT organization, every C-level exec, and, in most cases, I'm also seeing this become a board conversation that they're trying to figure out not just how to support remote workers for a short time, but for a longer time as this becomes the new normal or the next normal, whatever you call that, Lisa, and really helping employees through this transition and providing what we call a seamless experience as we employees are working from home or on the move or location agnostic, being able to provide a experience, a service experience that understands what employee's preferences are, what their needs are, and providing that consumer with experiences, what this joint offering between Intel and Ivanti really brings together for our joint customers. >> So you talked about this being elevated to the board level conversation, you know, and this is something that we're hearing a lot of that suddenly there's so much more visibility and focus on certain parts of businesses, and survival is, so many businesses are at risk. Stephanie, I'd like to get your perspective on how this joint solution with Intel and Ivanti, do you see this as an opportunity to give your customers not just a competitive advantage, but for maybe some of those businesses who might be in jeopardy like a survival strategy? >> Absolutely, I mean, the, you know, while we both Ivanti and Intel have our own IT challenges and we support our workers directly, we are broadly experienced in supporting many many companies that frankly, perhaps, weren't planning for these types of instances, remote manageability overnight, security and cyber threats getting more and more sophisticated, but, you know, tech companies like Ivanti, like Intel, we have been thinking about this and experiencing and planning for these things and bringing them out in our products for some time, and so I think it is a great opportunity when we come together and we bring that, you know, IP expertise and IT expertise, both IP technical and that IT insight, and we bring it to customers who are of all industries, whether it be healthcare or financial or medium businesses who are increasingly being managed by service providers who can utilize this type of device as a service and endpoint manageability. Most companies and certainly all IT managers will tell you they're overwhelmed. They are traditionally squeezed on budget, and they have the massive requirement to take their companies entirely cloud and cloud oriented or maybe a hybrid of cloud and on-prem, and they really would prefer to leave network security and network management to experts, and that's where we can come in with our platform, with our intelligence, we work hard to continue to build that product roadmap to stay ahead of cyber threats. Our vPro platform, for instance, has what we call Intel Hardware Shield to set up technologies that actually protects against cyber attack, even under the OS, so if the OS is down or there's a cyber attack around the OS, we actually can lock down the BIOS and the Firmware and alert the OS and have that communication, which allows the system to protect those areas that need to be protected or lock down or encrypt those areas, so this is the type of thing we bring to the party, and than Ivanti has that absolute in Point Management credibility that there's just, I think, ease, So if IT managers are worried about moving to the cloud and getting workers remote and, you know, managing cyber threats, they really would prefer to leave this management and security of their network to experts like Ivanti, and so we're thrilled to kind of combine that expertise and give IT managers a little bit of peace of mind. >> I think it's even more than giving IT managers a peace of mind, but so talk to me, Nayaki, about how these technologies work together. So for example, when we talked about the Neurons and the hyper-automation platform that you just announced, you were talking about the discovery, the self-healing, self-securing of all these devices within an organization that they may not even know they have EDGE devices on-prem cloud. Talk to me about how these two technologies work together. Is it discovering all these devices first, self-security, self-healing? How does then EMA come into play? >> So let me give an analogy in our consumer world, Lisa. We all are used to or getting used to cars where they automatically heal themselves. I have a car sitting in my garage that I haven't taken to a workshop for last four years since I bought it, so it's almost a similar experience that combined offering things to our customers where all these endpoints, like Stephanie said, we are, I would say, one of the leading providers in the endpoint management where we support today. Ivanti supports over 40 million endpoints for our customers, and combining that with a strong vPro platform from Intel, that combined offering, which is what we call Device as a Service, so that the IT departments or the enterprises don't have to really worry about how we are discovering all of those devices, managing those devices. Self-healing, like if there's any performance issues, configuration drift issues, if there are any security vulnerabilities, anomalies on those devices, it automatically heals them. I mean, that is the beauty of it where IT doesn't have to worry about trying to do it reactively. These neurons detect and self-heal those devices automatically in the background, and almost augmenting IT with what I call these automation bots that are constantly running in the background on these devices and self-healing and self-securing those devices. So that's a benefit every organization, every company, every enterprise, every IT department gets from this joint offering, and if I were on their side, on the other side, I can really sleep at night knowing those devices are now not just being managed, but are secure because now we are able to auto-heal or auto-secure those devices in the background continuously. >> Let's talk about speed cause that's one of the things, speed and scale, we talk about with every different technology, but right now there's so much uncertainty across the globe, so for joint customers, Stephanie talked about the, you know, the large install base of customers on the vPro platform, how quickly would they be able to leverage this joint solution to really get those endpoints under management and start dialing down some of the risks like device sprawl and security threats? >> So the joint offering is available today and being released the integration between both the platforms with this announcement, so companies that have both of our platforms and solutions can start implementing it and really getting the benefit out of it. They don't have to wait for another three months or six months. Right after this release, they should be able to integrate the two platforms, discover everything that they have across their entire network, manage those, secure those devices and use these neurons to automatically heal and service those endpoints. >> So this is something that could get up and running pretty quickly? >> It's an AutoBox connection and integration that we worked very closely, Stephanie's team and my team had been working for months now, and, yeah, this is an exciting announcement not just from the product perspective, but also the benefit it gives our customers, the speed, the accuracy, and the service experience that they can provide to their end user, employees, customers, and consumers, I think, that's super beneficial for everyone. >> Absolutely, and then that 360 degree view. Stephanie, we'll wrap it up with you. Talk to us about how this new strategic partnership is a facilitator or an accelerant of Intel's device as a service vision. >> Well, you know, first off, I wanted to commend Nayaki's team because our engineers were so impressed. They, you know, felt like they were working with the PhD advanced version of so many other engineering partners they'd ever come across, so I think we have a very strong engineering culture between our two companies and the speed at which we were able to integrate our solutions, and at the same time start thinking about what we may be able to do in the future, should we put our heads together and start doing a joint product roadmap on opportunities in the future, network connectivity, wifi connectivity, all sorts of ideas, so huge congratulations to the engineering teams because the speed at which we were able to integrate and get a product offering out was impressive, but, you know, secondarily, on to your question on device as a service, this is going to be by far where the future moves. We know that companies will tend to continue to look for ways to have sustainability in their environments, and so when you have Device as a Service, you're able to do things like into end supporting that device from its start into a network to when you end of life a device and how you end of life that device has severe, some sustainability and costs, you know, complexities, and if we're able to manage that device from end to end and provide servicing to alert IT managers and self-heal before problems happen, that helps obviously not only with business models and, you know, protecting data, but it also helps in keeping systems running and being alert to when systems begin to degrade or if there are issues or if it's time to refresh because the hardware is not new enough to take advantage of the new software capabilities, then you're able to end of life that device in a sustainable way, in a safe way, and, even to some degree, provide some opportunity for remediation of data and, you know, remote erase and continue to provide that security all the way into the end, so when we look at device as a service, it's more than just one aspect. It's really taking a device and being responsible for the security, the manageability, the self-healing from beginning to end, and I know that all IT managers need that, appreciate that, and frankly don't have the time or skillsets to be able to provide that in their own house. So I think there's the beginnings today, and I think we have a huge upside to what we can do in the future. I look at Intel's strengths in enterprise and how long we have been, you know, operating in enterprises around the world. Ivanti's, you know, in the vast majority of Fortune 100s, and when you've got kind of engineering powerhouses that are coming together and brainstorming it's, I think, it's a great partnership for relief for customer pain points in the future, which unfortunately there's going to be more probably. >> And this is just the beginning. >> I think that's one thing we can guarantee. It's what, sorry? >> Yeah, and it's just the beginning. This partnership is just the beginning. You will see lot more happening between both the companies as we define the roadmap into the future, so we are super excited about all the work, the joint teams, and, Stephanie, I want to take this opportunity to thank you, your leadership, and your entire organization for helping us with this partnership. >> We're excited by it, we are, we know it's just the beginning of great things to come. >> Well, just the beginning means we have to have more conversations. The cultural fit really sounds like it's really there, and there's tight alignment with Ivanti and Intel. Ladies, thank you so much for joining me. Nayaki, great to have you back on the program. >> Thank you, thank you, Lisa. Thank you for hosting us, and, Stephanie, it's always a pleasure talking to you, thank you. >> Likewise, looking forward to the launch and all the customer reactions. >> Absolutely. >> Yes, all right, thanks Nayaki, thanks Stephanie. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching this CUBE Conversation. 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(upbeat music) >> Producer: From around the globe, it's the CUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld Inspire. Brought to you by Pegasystems. >> Hello, everybody. This is Dave Volante. Welcome back to our coverage of PegaWorld Inspire 2020. This is the preview show, and you're watching the CUBE. Stephanie lewis is here. She's the Senior Director of Community and developer relations or a programs actually at at Pega. Stephanie, good to see you. >> Thank you so much for having me Dave. I'm very happy to be here today. >> Yeah, so you know, let's get into it. I infer from your role that obviously all about community, which is critical developers are all about community, but talk a little bit more about kind of how you spend your time. >> Sure. So I am really excited about my role. I've been here for a year and a half, and I transitioned from the product world. So I really understand what developers need and how they use the product, and if we had just but developers don't know how to use them that it's kind of pointless. So I am truly passionate about ensuring that every individual understands how to use the product, and feels inspired to use the product and then also gives back to the community and builds a better ecosystem helping everyone around them to build better software. >> So product knowledge obviously crucial in this role. But developers they want access to the tools that they want to be productive. So tell us more about what you're finding that developers need. >> Let's say just in time, type of situation. So I'm going to plug my own agenda here as well, in addition to PegaWorld, but we're launching a brand new >> Great. >> Pega menu, which is where our developers get enabled and we are supporting them just in time. So we have the curated learning paths because picking your journey and your career path is critical, like where do you want to go? What credentials do you want to have? What job do you want to have? That's absolutely important. But when you're on the job, and you have a question, how do I do this? Or when do I use this? That's absolutely just as important, and I want to ensure that everybody can easily do that when they need it. >> So PegaWorld big show we had Alan on recently, we're talking about I mean, I just thought I said to him, you're going to miss that during your keynote, because he's such a great speaker, but you're also involved in the keynote. You're going to be interviewing Kerim, who's the head of products, and you guys going to be digging into that, obviously with your product background, but set that up for us, what should we expect? >> Sure. So there's a couple of different sessions that I want to highlight. One is Kerim is one of the biggest highlights in addition to Alan with the keynotes at the in person PegaWorld and we're going to continue that in the virtual aspect. So he's going to have his own standalone keynote, highlighting the product capabilities that people need to be aware of as they're enhancing their own digital transformation, and right now we're in a disrupted world. So he's going to talk about how our three key things of our products can really help companies not only adjust to the current environment if future proof. So he'll talk about those themes. He'll bring a customer on stage to talk about how they have used those, and then I'll also give a demo of the latest capabilities. That's just the beginning, and then at the end, I will be able to come on and put him on the hot seat. So ask him about the product roadmaps. I'm going to take questions from the community to be like, hey, Kerim, the community's asking about this, what do you think? And then we'll take questions live, that he'll have to answer at live during that session as well. >> And of course, you know, the thing about PegaWorld is it's got a lot of customer content in there. So I assume you're going to have some customers, some clients interacting as well. >> That's true. Yeah. So not only in the keynotes, when we bring customers on to talk about their stories and put the, you know, theoretical products capabilities to life with how they've used those. But then we also have, we've taken the tech pavilion, which is kind of where you go around and you see the different product capabilities. So we will have customers that are part of that as well as part of what are the breakouts where they will be telling their story, and talk about taking digital transformation and turn their business around. >> Love it. Product talk, architecture, roadmap, you know, showing off a little bit of the future. That's fantastic. So talk to me, like I'm a developer. Why should I go to this event? What's in it for me? >> So I think it's always important to understand the trends, right? As a developer, if you just take what someone tells you is a requirement, and you just go code that, then you're not a true engineer, or an innovator, right? It's not, it's in the problems that you're solving. So I think that is something to take to heart and that is something that you'll truly receive by coming to PegaWorld and hearing the end to end story. In addition to that, this tech pavilion that we've turned into the Innovation Hub is more than just looking at recorded demos, you'll be able to participate with product experts live coding and ask them questions. So you'll see them build an application, or build a chat bot or utilize a feature and ask them questions. To witch style, you are asked to participate, and then take that back to your job the next day, and utilize those new capabilities and the innovation that we're able to show you with this new virtual event. >> So Stephen, I got to ask you, you mentioned requirements, Docs, and a lot has changed there, right? I mean, it used to be, you'd have these big tomes and you'd hand down, you know, the edict from the business, talk about how that whole dynamic has changed. >> It has changed quite a bit with the Pega platform and the technology that we have across our products, because it's not just a like you said, it's the edict that you hand down and the developers just implement don't ask the why, and then don't get the opportunity to think about how to better that. So all of this is done now within the technology itself. So nothing is lost, and as you start to iterate on, why are you doing this? How is this good for the customer? What performance improvements? Or what are you trying to automate? And better all those questions are answered and then can be put right in there and allows developers to put their own innovation into the why, and the how, and the what, which I feel like will end up as a better result for the end customer and their end to end experience. >> So maybe this is a sign of progress, would be something to be optimistic about. Because six weeks ago, we did we started with COVID. That's all we talked about. Now we're going to end with COVID. I wanted to ask you about the whole work from home and remote workers. You know, developers are collaborative. They do a lot of whiteboarding. So how have you seen developers sort of responding to this pandemic and what kind of things are they doing to actually maintain that productivity and that collaborative spirit? >> So I've seen a couple of things there. One is utilizing some of the frameworks that we've put out for like the starter of some of the COVID tracking apps, we've put some of those out on our marketplace. So businesses, we've had several businesses use those and go live really quickly to just help respond to the pandemic, and operate and track the safety of their employees, and developers then have taken that in addition to what they need to do to progress their career. So they've used that then they've used our academy to continue their enablement as well as the collaboration. So we've got a great forum, a very active forum, where people are able to post questions and answer them and stay connected in this virtual environment. We've increased webinars, we just launched a virtual hackathon that's focused around doing good. So it's not just about hackathon to prove your skills and win the prizes, but we remind all the folks on how in the world respond to the situation. So we're trying to intertwine all of it because I think I truly believe that every person not only wants to progress their own career, but also give back and do good, and if you combine those two together, that's how you achieve the optimal results. >> Stephanie how about new developers coming into the Pega? you community platform? What's that experience like? Can you update us on that? >> Yeah, I'm glad you asked. Because we just launched some very new like I'm new to Pega, what do I need to do? So we've got the curated courses, which we're going to call missions around those, but we also have a trial. So if you just want to figure out and get your feet where you're not quite sure what this Pega thing is, sign up for the trial, and then we have guided tours. So it shows you what the different capabilities are and really guide you through that experience, and then if you are experienced, you can skip those tours and like, No, I know and I don't. I just want to dive in. But for those new people, we have those curated tours. So you're able to orient yourself and be more comfortable before you start to play around. >> But how functional is that? I mean, is it a lot of the trials are neutered, or you know, can I get the full picture? How does that work? >> Absolutely. I think that's a really good point is that we don't handicap anyone. Like there's no limited functionality. If you want the trial, you want to figure out app studio and have that guided experience, you can do that. If you want to unlock all of it, just go wild and play with all of it. You can do it as limited 30 days. You want to renew it, go ahead. But we don't restrict any of that because we want you to get access to the capability so that you can do your job better and that you learn the true power of the technology. >> Well, we're excited for PegaWorld 2020 it's on June 2 starts at 9 am East Coast time. So just google it and go sign up. This automation economy, it's going to kick in, in a big way already has actually but it's going to accelerate in this post COVID era. Stephanie thanks so much for coming to the CUBE and give us a preview of PegaWorld Inspire 2020. >> Thank you, and I hope to see you there. >> All right, you will, and thanks for watching everybody, and we'll see you at PegaWorld Inspire 2020. This is Dave Volante for the CUBE. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston. It's the Cube covering empowering the autonomous enterprise brought to you by Oracle Consulting. >>Hello, everyone. And welcome to this Cube special presentation where we're covering the rebirth of Oracle Consulting. So this is a digital event where we're going around and identifying subject matter experts in different locations. We're currently here in Chicago, and I'm here with Stephanie Trunzo, who's the head of transformation and offerings at Oracle Consultants. Definitely. Great to see you >>again. Yeah. So Oracle Consulting. You know, you guys have been quiet lately. Yeah, >>well, we were quiet because I wasn't >>here yet. Yeah, exactly. >>Here to make some noise. So I love the way you said rebirth. I think it's really accurate. Oracle Consulting has been around for quite some time, but as you said, maybe not high on the radar and one of the things that we're learning And one of the reasons I'm here in this transformation role is to help us transform ourselves to better match the transformation that our clients are going >>through. So was there an >>internal transformation? Or is there an internal transformation taking place as well? And then you're sort of pointed to the marketplace. Maybe you could describe that. >>Absolutely. So we're undergoing our own transformation at the same time that we're helping our clients undergo their transformation. And so, for us what that looks like, it is things like a traditional services organization, which is kind of what Oracle Consulting had been in the past, was looking at the expertise that was necessary to drive clients business forward. But delivering it in what I would call a pretty traditional way, time of materials based kinds of contracting, determining the skills that were necessary, and and conversing with clients and feature function kinds of discussions. And our transformation is now about rebuilding the organization around offerings. And those offerings are things that we're doing to match the way that our clients are consuming. Let's say cloud technology. So if you might purchase of natural language processing service from a cloud platform, we want to also make sure that we're matching the humans to those technology services and enabling our clients to buy from us in a very similar way. >>We're also bringing in some new blood. Obviously, Oracle large organization, A lot of DNA there, but yourself you came from IBM, you got people coming in from AWS. You've got folks from Accenture and all over the place. So describe that and how that's affecting the culture of Oracle consulting. >>There's an influx of talent that is necessary to change the way that you think. And I believe that one of the reasons I myself came to join Oracle Consulting was I was excited about this new adventure. So when you're working in a certain style in a certain way, in a certain team for some amount of time, can maybe forget to get introspective and forget to look at what's right in front of you and the changes you need to make, so bringing in new talent from outside is as much a part of our transformation as the way that we're shaping our offerings is bringing in those new ideas, bringing in people who have you've been there, done it in other experiences so that they can infuse our thinking with some of what's going on >>in the market around us. How >>would you summarize the mission of Oracle Consulting? >>The mission of Oracle Consulting is extremely simple. It's dead simple. It's help our clients succeed on Oracle >>Cloud Technology, period >>because Oracle's, known as a product company, is still suffer products that generate most of your revenue. So and you've got your cloud, you've got things like Cloud a customer and exit data that's really driving you get. The Oracle database is certainly a huge application portfolio. How is Oracle consulting? Aligning with the products >>as a product company? Our goal is still to help our clients achieve miracles, right? And so Consulting is looking at our Oracle products that to make sure that we're always the deepest and the busted understanding so we can help leverage that technology to its fullest capacity for our clients, it's not just good enough to buy a tool. You have to know how to use it, right? And so our objective is to align with Oracle products. Make sure we know what's going to be hot off the press that we're driving from our client Experience is back into the product sets as well. So we're informing our product development of what's really happening out in the world with our clients implementations. >>My last question is, how you gonna define success when you look back, you know a couple years from now, what will success look like? >>Success to me will look like being the go to for any solution. That is an Oracle driven answer to our clients that Oracle Consulting is driving consumption in a way that is extremely valuable to the client because in the end, cloud consumption technology consumption in and of itself is not very interesting. It's when we're telling stories that our client stories on stage is because we've helped them achieve new business outcomes, things that >>weren't possible before. It's great to have >>you. Thank you so much for coming on, and it's good to have you at the helm. Bring credibility to Oracle Consulting and we'll be watching So >>awesome. Thank you. >>Thank you for watching. We'll be right back with our next guest.

from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering empowering the autonomous enterprise brought to you by Oracle consulting hello everyone and welcome to this cube special presentation where we're covering the rebirth of Oracle consulting so this is a digital event where we're going around and identifying subject matter experts in different locations we're currently here in Chicago and I'm here with Stephanie trunzo who's the head of transformation and offerings at Oracle consulting is definitely great to see you again yeah you too so Oracle consulting you know you guys have been quiet lately where you been yeah well we were quiet because I wasn't here yet yeah make a noise yeah exactly here to make some noise so I love the way you said rebirth I think it's really accurate work while consulting has been around for quite some time but as you said maybe not high on the radar and one of the things that we're learning and one of the reasons I'm here in this transformation role is to help us transform ourselves to better match the transformation that our clients are going through so was there an internal transformation or is there an internal transformation taking place as well and then just sort of pointed to the marketplace maybe you could describe that absolutely yeah so we are undergoing our own transformation at the same time that we're helping our clients undergo their transformation and so for us what that looks like it is things like a traditional services organization which is kind of what Oracle consulting had been in the past was looking at the expertise that was necessary to drive clients business forward but delivering it in what I would call a pretty traditional way time and materials based kinds of contracting determining the skills that were necessary and and conversing with clients and feature function kinds of discussions and our transformation is now about rebuilding the organization around offerings and those offerings are things that we're doing to match the way that our clients are consuming let's say cloud technology so if you might purchase natural language processing service from a cloud platform we want to also make sure that we're matching the humans to those technology services and enabling our clients to buy from us very similar way you're also bringing in some some new blood I mean obviously Oracle a large organization a lot of DNA there but yourself you came from IBM you got people coming in from AWS you got folks from Accenture and all over the place so describe that and how that's affecting the culture of Oracle consulting there's an influx of talent that is necessary to change the way that you think and I believe that one of the reasons I myself came to join Oracle consulting was I was excited about this new adventure so when you're working in a certain style in a certain way in a certain team for some amount of time you can maybe forget to get introspective and forget to look at what's right in front of you and the changes you need to make so bringing in new talent from outside is as much a part of our transformation as the way that we're shaping our offerings is bringing in those new ideas bringing in people who have you know been there done it in other experiences so that they can infuse our thinking with some of what's going on in the market around us how would you summarize the mission of Oracle consulting the mission of Oracle consulting is extremely simple it's dead simple it's helped our clients succeed on Oracle cloud technology period of course Oracle's known as a product company is sell software products that's how you generate most of your revenue so and you've got your cloud you've got you know things like cloud a customer and you know Exadata that's really driving you got the Oracle database certainly a huge application portfolio how is Oracle consulting aligning with the products as a product company our goal is still to help our clients achieve their goals right and so consulting is looking at our Oracle products that to make sure that we are always the deepest and the best at understanding so we can help leverage that technology to its fullest capacity for our clients it's not just good enough to buy a tool you have to know how to use it right and so our objective is to align with Oracle products make sure we know what's going to be hot off the press that we're driving from our client experiences back into the product sets as well so we're informing our product development of what's really happening out with our clients implementations my last question Stephanie is how are you gonna define success when you look back you know a couple years from now what will success look like success to me will look like being the go-to for any solution that is an Oracle driven answer to our clients that Oracle consulting is driving consumption in a way that is extremely valuable to the client because in the end cloud consumption technology consumption by in and of itself is not very interesting it's when we're telling stories that are our client stories on stages because we've helped them achieve new business outcomes things that weren't possible for them before well it's great to have you thank you so much for coming on and it's good to have you at the helm sort of bring credibility to Oracle consulting and we'll be watching so thank you awesome thank you all right thank you for watching we'll be right back with our next guest [Music] you [Music]

>>  Welcome back to theCUBE everybody. This is a special digital presentation sponsored by Oracle Consulting. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise and we're going to multiple locations to really try to understand better the rebirth of Oracle Consulting. Stephanie Trunzo is here. She is the head of transformation and offerings at Oracle consulting North America. Stephanie, good to see you. >> Yeah, good to see you. >> Okay so we talked about sort of the mission of Oracle Consulting, now let's get into it and talk about some of what the customers are seeing. There's this theme in the industry that Gartner brought up about Bimodal IT and you guys are talking about Trimodal IT, so what is that all about? >> Well, two wasn't good enough so we had to add a third. (laughs) So Bimodal IT, two speed IT, the idea there is a lot of modern enterprises are struggling with this challenge between the systems of record that they have that have to be sources of truth. They're often slow to change. There's a lot of rigger around transforming those systems of record. And then on the second side, on the Bimodal side, there are the systems of interaction or systems of engagement, they're sometimes called. And those systems are things like the applications where there's users, customers at the other end. And they need to move at the speed of business. And so the idea of Bimodal IT and what a lot of our clients are struggling with currently is how do you serve both of those needs at the same time? There's complications in the processes, the tools, and certainly in the budget. And at the same time, there's kind of looming out there, this threat almost, that if you aren't in the AI NML data driven world yet, you're going to fall behind. And so our clients are struggling with the fact that they have not yet successfully addressed Bimodal IT, but still have to figure out how to get into this AI space. So our third system, hence Trimodal IT is the systems of intelligence. And that's what we've added. >> So, to make sure I've got the Bimodal right, >> Yeah sure. >> Is that, You've got people who are handling the systems of record you said. And so they have knowledge, they've got tribal knowledge, deep expertise, which may not be widespread. Kids coming out of school don't necessarily have that same expertise. And then there's sort of the systems of engagement kind of the new fun stuff. Did customers in your sense, buy into that? Or did they try to sort of cross-pollinate, as practitioners? >> Yeah they do buy into it. But they're really still struggling with the idea of Bimodal IT without even getting into the third system yet. So they are buying into it. The challenge, it's not even really about buying into it. It's addressing the challenge, because they have to overcome this legacy stuff, that they have in their system in order to address the speed of business. >> So the third piece, obviously relates to machine intelligence, AI, NML. It seems like that type of capability would apply to both systems of record and systems of engagement. Is that how you're looking at it? >> Yes, and so the Trimodal IT concept is kind of three different systems and how they interlock and relate to one another. If you think about systems of record, the currency, so to speak, for system of record are processes. If you think about the currency for systems of interaction it's the people, it's the users, it's the humans. And the currency for the system of intelligence is data, to your point. So when you're talking about systems of intelligence, collecting and leveraging data from all three systems is going to be what fuels your system of intelligence going forward. >> And that's the common thread between all three. And it just seems to me, that is ultimately the underpinning of modernization. I wonder what your customers, how do they view, and how do you view modernization? >> So the awesome thing about being at Oracle is data is our DNA. That's where Oracle started from, that's where we still are today is data underpins everything we do, all of the technology that we build is built on the understanding that it must be data-driven. And so when we're looking at all three of those systems and you're looking at it from an Oracle perspective, data is at the heart of even systems of record. Even systems of interaction, not only the systems of intelligence. When our clients are looking at modernization, they are trying to figure out a way to kind of leapfrog this story and get the whole way to a place where they are getting intelligence and insights out of their data. They're not just unlocking it. They're not just moving workloads in a lift and shift kind of model. They're doing it, because they want to serve the ultimate outcome that they get smarter as a business. >> So data is kind of like raw material, the AI or machine intelligence allows you to take data and create insights, if you will. And then cloud gives you scale and agility and all of those things. So Cloud's again another fundamental piece of, just from an infrastructure standpoint, and I think you guys define Cloud as sort of an experience, not a place. So it includes the on prime workloads, of course. So, talk about Cloud. Customers want to go from where they are today, to some outcome, some end point. And they don't want to spend a zillion dollars. And they don't want to disrupt their business. They are going to have to make investments, clearly. How do they get from point A to point B on that Cloud journey? >> So we've built something called a Cloud evolution framework. That Cloud evolution framework has several different phases and stages. And it's intended to be a skeleton to have that conversation with clients. Are you thinking about all of the things that you need to consider to make a healthy decision that has a real road map behind it. To your point on budget, and this is part of the Trimodal IT conversation is. They're struggling, I've talked to so many CIOs who are struggling to figure out. I right now am spending, 90% of my spend is on maintenance of systems versus on innovation. So how do I shift that spending story to something that is actually going to move the needle on getting the business ahead. That's going to serve my stakeholders, who are the lines of business, in a way that is not additive to my budget. But actually a shift of the budget. So we're looking at it from a Cloud perspective, helping our clients make that monetary shift. Make the shift of the budget where they're self-financing their own innovation by getting smarter and faster on moving their workloads to the Cloud. >> That's interesting, I want to come back to that self-financing. It reminds me of Y2K where you had all these activities going on, and the boom times. And then people wanted to go through an application rationalization exercise so they could self-fund really the innovation. >> Stephanie: Right. >> And when you're in the tenth year of a boom cycle, here. I wonder if there are similar things going on. Is that where the self-funding comes in? >> That's exactly it. So, I kind of use this example as a way of helping people consume and understand this. Marie Kondo, KonMari method is a popular, she wrote a best-selling book. She's on Netflix. The premise of her concept is helping to declutter your life. And her premise is you should hold each object in your hand and say, "Does it bring me joy?" And if it does, I'm going to keep it. And if it doesn't, I'm going to thank it for it's service, and get rid of it. And so we're talking to our clients about something very similar. You said, rationalization exercise and it's precisely the same thing. We're kind of using the KonMari method, if you will, to help our clients make those determinations. What are the things that they still need? What are the things that they can de-commission? What are the things that can stay where they are? And you don't have to do anything with, because they are serving the purpose just fine. >> Yeah, we're kind of hoarders by nature, and creatures of habit, so you have all these applications that nobody's using, but you're still spending maintenance and-- >> Stephanie: Correct. >> Keeping them up and it may not be delivering, and many aren't delivering value to the organization. So you want to double down on those that do. You guys use this concept and other do as well, of the autonomous enterprise. You have the autonomous database, I wonder if we could drill into that. Get passed the buzz words. What is the autonomous enterprise and what is Oracle's fit there? >> Yeah, I think one of the big misconceptions when people here autonomous, is that they think it means without people. And that's not right. (laughs) So, autonomous means that you're helping elevate all the parts of the system to their highest value. Which means, you don't need to worry about security patches. You don't need to worry about repairing things on the database. Those kinds of autonomous things is the technology helping heal and serve itself. That doesn't mean you don't need people anymore. What it means is two things. You need the experts that can help make sure that you're optimizing the value you get out of the autonomous tooling, but it also means that the humans are now freed up to do different kinds of high value work. So, an autonomous enterprise would be one where they're really sort of self-actualized. In the sense that their technology is feeding itself. It's getting smarter, and they're getting insights out of that, so that the people in their business are as valuable as they can be, leveraging the insights from the technology. >> So I can see how that trickles into IT. No questions about it. Can the autonomous IT organization trickle into the autonomous enterprise? And I mean I know it's sort of early days, but how do you see that shaping up? >> So, these kind of transformations, I believe are fundamentally across the whole company. And this is true at Oracle as well. We have something called Oracle@Oracle. And it's about drinking our own champagne and applying our own technology in house. So it's not just in an IT organization capacity. It's across HR, Procurement, Legal, every supporting function you can imagine. So that cultural change bleeds out across the entire body of the company. And I believe fully that if you're going after something like an AI mission or an autonomous enterprise state, which is an evolution that you need to involve everyone in the company in different roles. >> So what's that future state look like? >> I think the future state looks like a place where you're not just getting incremental gains on business processes or tasks that already exist. You're fundamentally seeing shifts in the way the business runs itself, as a result of the technology learning and getting smarter. And the people who are benefiting from that technology changing the way they operate in the company as well. >> So you mentioned the sort of decluttering example before, which I love, I'm getting that book. And are there other examples that inspire you? >> There are. So there was an anecdote, a client told me this story, which is a fantastic story, kind of triggered a thought for me. Told a story about a guy who was retiring. And at his retirement dinner, he told a story that 30 years ago when he started at the company. He remembers his dad teaching him, how to use the application that he then spent his entire career building and maintaining. As I heard that story, and they jokingly said at this point, our only solution is to get him out of retirement or find his son. (laughs) I thought about that, and I thought about 23 and me. You know 23 and me? >> Yes. >> So it's a DNA testing, tells you your heritage, lineage. And we're kind of at a state now, where a lot of our enterprise clients legitimately have these systems of record applications that are generations old, human generations old. So getting into the weeds on what that looks like, I've been telling clients pretty often lately. Institutional knowledge is the enemy, right? It's the enemy of the autonomous enterprise. If you have a challenge where you keep referring to the same name (laughs). If Bob leaves, we're in big trouble. If Sally isn't here anymore, that's a trigger for you to know that that's something you need to pay attention to. Because that institutional knowledge is not getting built into your technology. >> So what do you guys do? Do you put some kind of abstraction layer around that system of record, so that it can be automated? Is that part of what you do? >> Sure. So we're looking at, there's a couple different ways you can go about it. So you can look at the systems of record as a partial move that you do over time to the Cloud. And so you have to be pretty smart about the pattern and how you do that. Moving the workloads, kind of whole, will give you a little bit of that self-financing ability to dig in deeper and start transforming them. >> Okay, Trimodal IT. We'll be watching. (laughs) All right, Stephanie, thanks so much. It was great to see you. >> Absolutely, thanks. >> And thank you for watching. You're watching theCUBE at the special digital presentation. We'll be right back after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)

>>Yeah, >>yeah, yeah. >>Hello, everyone. And welcome to this Cube special presentation where we're covering the rebirth of Oracle Consulting. So this is a digital event where we're going around and identifying subject matter experts and different locations. We're currently here in Chicago, and I'm here with Stephanie Trunzo, who's the head of transformation and offerings at Oracle Consulting. Stefanie, Great to see you again. >>Yeah, you too. >>So, Oracle Consulting. You know, you guys have been quiet lately. >>Where you Yeah, >>well, we were quiet because I wasn't here >>yet. And I think the noise. Yeah, exactly. >>Here to make some noise. So I love the way you said rebirth. I think it's really accurate work. Will. Consulting has been around for quite some time, but as you said, maybe not high on the radar and one of the things that we're learning And one of the reasons I'm here in this transformation role is to help us transform ourselves to better match the transformation that our clients are going through. So that rebirth, which kind of makes me the mother, I guess of our consulting organization here is helping match our offerings to the kind of language that our clients are now using, which is really outcome driven. >>So was there an internal transformation, or is there an internal transformation taking place as well? And then you're sort of pointed to the marketplace. Maybe you could describe that. >>Absolutely. Yeah, So we're undergoing our own transformation at the same time that we're helping our clients undergo their transformation. And so, for us what that looks like it is things like the traditional services organization, which is kind of what Oracle Consulting had been in the past, was looking at the expertise that was necessary to drive clients business forward. But delivering it in what I would call a pretty traditional way, time of materials based kinds of contracting, determining the skills that were necessary, and and conversing with clients and feature function kinds of discussions. And our transformation is now about rebuilding the organization around offerings. And those offerings are things that we're doing to match the way that our clients are consuming. Let's say cloud technology. So if you might purchase of natural language processing service from a cloud platform, we want to also make sure that we're matching the humans to those technology services and enabling our clients to buy from us in a very similar way. >>So let's drill into this a little bit, because I'm gonna explain to people. So you talked about outcome driven. It used to be sort of a T and M model, which was staff augmentation. Hey, just just keep paying us. And, you know, if we capture the flag, great. If not, well, too bad. So now you're sort of starting at the outcome, and that's kind of working back right from their >>exactly right. Okay, so you know, clients people are transforming their businesses. They have goals. Those goals are, too. Serve their own clients differently to think about how to gain efficiencies within their organization. The change management that comes with it. Maybe it's to open up new revenue streams. Those are the outcomes that they're looking to achieve. They're not looking to say I need three database administrators for four months. That's not an outcome, right? And so we're thinking about how do we better shape our language, our organizational body posture to be the kind of force that can help them accelerate their own disruptions and their own transformations instead of, as you said kind of Here's a couple people for a couple of months, but here's the outcome. We're gonna help you achieve. >>Now. You're also bringing in some new blood. I mean, obviously Oracle large organization. A lot of DNA there but yourself. You came from IBM, you got people coming in from AWS. You've got folks from Accenture and all over the place. So describe that and how that's affecting the culture of Oracle consulting. >>And again, I think it's really a miracle how much our own transformation mirrors what's going on in our clients businesses. There's an influx of talent that is necessary to change the way that you think. And I believe that one of the reasons I myself came to join Oracle Consulting was I was excited about this new adventure. So when you're working in a certain style in a certain way, in a certain team for some amount of time, you can maybe forget to get introspective and forget to look at what's right in front of you and the changes you need to make. So bringing in new talent from outside is as much a part of our transformation as the way that we're shaping our offerings is bringing in those new ideas, bringing in people who have, you know, been there, done it in other experiences so that they can infuse our thinking with some of what's going on in the market around us. >>How would you summarize the mission of Oracle Consulting? >>The mission of Oracle Consulting is extremely simple. It's dead simple. It's help our clients succeed on Oracle Cloud Technology, period. >>Okay, now, part of that success comes with partners. You talk a little about the ecosystem and how that's evolving and what your vision is, how that transforms. >>I'm a huge ecosystem proponent. I love partnerships. I think it's a really important thing to build a healthy, strong channel. And so, while we're transforming our own consulting organization, we're also looking at our partner ecosystem to find where we can identify strategic partners. So there's always multiple partners in our Oracle Channel that we work with to be able to deliver broader solutions to our clients because they may have capabilities. We don't and vice versa. But when you can find sort of the Venn diagram where your strengths and their strengths together give us a broader solution for the client those were the special ones. And so to name a couple, we have a great partnership with Deloitte. We just announced that actually, fairly recently. We also have a partnership with an logica is another one of our strategic partners. And so they are bringing to the table some stories where we don't play, and then we're able to extend that story for our clients so that we can get to those outcomes that we were talking about. >>Where do you leave off and where the partners pick up? What's the sort of swim lane, if you will? >>Yep, so it depends on every partnership is a little bit different when we are helping with what I call our cloud evolution framework and is kind of a journey of How do you get to cloud? And there's lots of different components to it. Our partners play in different parts of that cloud evolution journey. So as an example, Deloitte is, ah, fantastic example. Our partnership with Deloitte when we're helping our clients modernize, move workloads to the cloud. Deloitte can help them continue to maintain and optimize that after we finish the first wave of modernization. So that's one example with M Logical. We have a different pattern where M Logica is helping with take outs of different technologies on the front end, and then we're going to pick up and help with the innovation piece after the take out is over. >>So you really way replay that. Tell me what you're really the deep technology expertise, whereas some of your partners not only they have technology expertise but they can help with business transformations and sort of other organizational changes is that, Is that right? >>That's absolutely true. We have the deep technology experience, the Oracle expertise, but we also are able to help build and kind of umbrella plan around our cloud evolution framework and then pull in the partners to their strengths. And it also really helps us when we're in an ecosystem discussion to make sure that we're understanding how we're also benefiting the partner. There's always got to be a win win, right? So it's not just about how do we fit in and play, but that we're growing their business because by growing our partners businesses, we're growing. Overall, our Oracle story, >>because Oracle's known as a product company and still suffer products that you generate most of your revenue, so and you've got your cloud. You've got things like Cloud a customer and exit data that's really driving you got. The Oracle database is certainly a huge application portfolio. How is Oracle Consulting? Aligning with the >>products? >>Yeah, that's a great question. So as a product company, our goal is still to help our clients achieve their goals. Right? And so consulting is looking at our Oracle products that to make sure that we're always the deepest and the busted understanding so we can help leverage that technology to its fullest capacity for our clients. It's not just good enough to buy a tool. You have to know how to use it, right? And so our objective is to align with Oracle products. Make sure we know what's gonna be hot off the press that we're driving from. Our client experience is back into the product sets as well. So we're informing our product development of what's really happening out in the world with our clients implementations. >>My last question is, how are you gonna define success when you look back a couple years from now? What will success look like to you >>Yeah, that's a great question. Success to me will look like being the go to for any solution. That is an Oracle driven answer to our clients that Oracle Consulting is driving consumption in a way that is extremely valuable to the client. Because in the end, cloud consumption technology consumption brought in and of itself is not very interesting. It's when we're telling stories that our client stories on stage is because we've helped them achieve new business outcomes, things that weren't possible for them before. >>Well, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for coming on. And it's good to have you at the helm. Bring credibility to Oracle Consulting. And we'll be watching. So thank you. >>Awesome. Thank you. >>Thank you for watching. We'll be right back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching the cube. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

from Chicago it's the cube covering Oracle transformation day 2020 not to you by Oracle consulting hello everyone and welcome to this cube special presentation where we're covering the rebirth of Oracle consulting so this is a digital event where we're going around and identifying subject matter experts in different locations we're currently here in Chicago and I'm here with Stephanie trunzo who's the head of transformation and offerings at Oracle consulting is definitely great to see you again yeah you too so Oracle consulting you know you guys have been quiet lately where you good yeah well we were quiet because I wasn't here yet okay make a noise yeah exactly here to make some noise so I love the way you said rebirth I think it's really accurate work will consulting has been around for quite some time but as you said maybe not high on the radar and one of the things that we're learning and one of the reasons I'm here in this transformation role is to help us transform ourselves to better match the transformation that our clients are going through so that rebirth which kind of makes me the the mother I guess over our consulting organization here is helping match our offerings to the kind of language that our clients are now using which is really outcome driven mm-hmm so was there an internal transformation or is there an internal transformation taking place as well and then just sort of pointed to the marketplace maybe you could describe that absolutely yeah so we are undergoing our own transformation at the same time that we're helping our clients undergo their transformation and so for us what that looks like it is things like a traditional services organization which is kind of what Oracle consulting had been in the past was looking at the expertise that was necessary to drive clients business forward but delivering it in what I would call a pretty traditional way time and materials based kinds of contracting determining the skills that were necessary in and conversing with clients and feature function kinds of discussions and our transformation is now about rebuilding the organization around offerings and those offerings are things that we're doing to match the way that our clients are consuming let's say cloud technology so if you might purchase natural language processing service from a cloud platform we want to also make sure that we're matching the humans to those technology services and enabling our clients to buy from us in a very similar way so let's drill into this a little bit because I want to explain to people so you talked about outcome driven yeah and it used to be sort of a t and M model which was staff augmentation hey just just keep paying us and you know if we capture the flag great if not well too bad so now you're sort of starting at the outcome and that's kind of working back right from there exactly right okay so you know clients people are transforming their businesses they have goals those goals are to serve their own clients differently to think about how to gain efficiencies within their organization the change management that comes with it maybe it's to open up new revenue streams those are the outcomes that they're looking to achieve they're not looking to say I need three database administrators for four months that's not an outcome right and so we're thinking about how do we better shape our language our organizational body posture to be the kind of force that can help them accelerate their own disruptions and their own transformations instead of as you said kind of here's a couple people for a couple months but here's the outcome we're gonna help you achieve now you're also bringing in some some new blood I mean obviously Oracle a large organization a lot of DNA there but yourself you came from IBM you got people coming in from AWS you got folks from Accenture and all over the place so I described that and how that's affecting the culture of Oracle consulting and again I think it's really a miracle how much our own transformation mirrors what's going on in our clients businesses there's an influx of talent that is necessary to change the way that you think and I believe that one of the reasons I myself came to join Oracle consulting was I was excited about this new adventure so when you're working in a certain style in a certain way in a certain team for some amount of time you can maybe forget to get introspective and forget to look at what's right in front of you and the changes you need to make so bringing in new talent from outside is as much a part of our transformation as the way that we're shaping our offering is bringing in those new ideas bringing in people who have you know been there done it in other experiences so that they can infuse our thinking with some of what's going on in the market around us how would you summarize the mission Oracle consulting the mission of Oracle consulting is extremely simple it's dead simple its help our clients succeed on Oracle cloud technology period ok now part of that success comes with partners absolutely talk a little bit about the ecosystem and how that's evolving and what your vision is to how that you know transforms I'm a huge ecosystem proponent I love partnerships I think it's a really important thing to build a healthy strong channel and so while we're transforming our own consulting organization we're also looking at our partner ecosystem to find where we can identify strategic partners so there's always multiple partners in our Oracle channel that we work with to be able to deliver broader solutions to our clients because they may have capabilities we don't and vice versa but when you can find sort of the Venn diagram where your strengths and their strengths together give us a broader solution for the client those are the special ones and so to name a couple we have a great partnership with Deloitte we had just announced that actually fairly recently we also have a partnership with M logica is another one of our strategic partners and so they are bringing to the table some stories where we don't play and then we're able to extend that story for our clients so that we can get to those outcomes that we were talking about where do you leave off and where do the partners pick up what's the sort of swim lane if you will yep so it depends on every partnership is a little bit different when we are helping with what I call our cloud evolution framework and is kind of a journey of how do you get to cloud and there's lots of different components to it our partners play in different parts of that cloud evolution journey so as an example Deloitte is a fantastic example our partnership with Deloitte when we're helping our clients modernize move workloads to the cloud Deloitte can help them continue to maintain and optimize that after we finish the first wave of modern is so that's one example with em Logica we have a different pattern where M logica is helping with takeouts of different technologies on the front end and then we are going to pick up and help with the innovation piece after the takeout is over so you really replay that tell me if I gotta share you're really the the tech deep technology expertise whereas some of your partners not only they have technology expertise but they can help with business transformations and sort of other organizational changes is that is that right that's absolutely true we have the deep technology experience the Oracle expertise but we also are able to help build an kind of umbrella plan around our cloud evolution framework and then pull in the partners to their strengths and it also really helps us when we're in an ecosystem discussion to make sure that we're understanding how we are also benefiting the partner there's always got to be a win-win right so it's not just about how do we fit in and play but that we're growing their business because by growing our partners businesses we're growing overall our Oracle story of course Oracle's known as a product company is sell software products that's how you generate most of your revenue so and you've got your cloud you've got you know things like cloud a customer and you know Exadata that's really driving you got the Oracle database certainly a huge application portfolio how is Oracle consulting aligning with the products yeah that's a great question so as a product company our goal is still to help our clients achieve their goals right and so consulting is looking at our Oracle products that to make sure that we are always the deepest and the best at understanding so we can help leverage that technology to its fullest capacity for our clients it's not just good enough to buy a tool you have to know how to use it right and so our objective is to align with Oracle products make sure we know what's going to be hot off the press that we're driving from our client experiences back into the product sets as well so we're informing our product development of what's really happening out in the world with our clients implementations my last question step is how are you gonna define success when you look back you know a couple years from now what will success look like to you yeah that's a great question success to me will look like being the go-to for any solution that is an Oracle driven answer to our clients that Oracle consulting is driving consumption in a way that is extremely valuable to the client because in the end cloud consumption technology consumption by in and of itself is not very interesting it's when we're telling stories that are our clients stories on stages because we've helped them achieve new business outcomes things that weren't possible for them before well it's great to have you thank you so much for coming on and it's good to have you at the helm sort of bring credibility to Oracle consulting and we'll be watching so thank you awesome thank you all right and thank you for watching we'll be right back with our next guest right after this short break you watching the cube

from Chicago it's the cube covering Oracle transformation day 2020 not to you by Oracle consulting welcome back to the queue of everybody this is a special digital presentation sponsored by Oracle consulting we go out to the events we extract the signal from the noise and we're going to multiple locations to really try to understand better the rebirth of or consulting Stephanie trunzo is here she's the head of transformation and offerings at or consulting North America Stephanie good to see you yeah good to see you okay so we talked about sort of the mission of Oracle consulting now let's get into it and talk about what some of the customers are seeing there's this you know theme in the industry the Gartner brought up about bimodal lights yeah you guys are talking about trimodal eyes yeah so what is that all about well ii wasn't good enough so we had a third so bimodal IT two-speed IT the idea there is a lot of modern enterprises are struggling with this challenge between the systems of record that they have that are have to be sources of truth they're often slow to change there's a lot of rigor around transforming those systems of record and then on the the second side on the bimodal side there are the systems of interaction or systems of engagement they're sometimes called and those systems are things like the applications where there's users customers at the other end and they need to move at the speed of business and so the idea of bimodal IT and what a lot of our clients are struggling with currently is how do you serve both of those needs at the same time there's complications in the processes the tools and certainly in the budget and at the same time there's kind of looming out there this you know threat almost that if you aren't in the a IML data-driven world yet you're going to fall behind and so our clients are struggling with the fact that they have not yet successfully addressed by modal IT but still have to figure out how to get into this AI space so our third system hence trimodal IT as the systems of intelligence and that's what we've added so should I get the bimodal right yes that you know people that are handling the the systems of record you said hmm and so they have knowledge they got you know tribal knowledge yes DJ BIA which may not be you know widespread it's not kids kids coming out of school don't necessarily have that that same expertise and then there's sort of the systems of engagement kind of the new fun stuff did customers in your sense buy into that or did they try to sort of cross pollinate as practitioners yeah they they do buy into it but they're really alright they're still struggling with the idea of bimodal IT without even getting into the third system yet and so they are buying into it the challenge I don't it's not even really about buying into it it's addressing the challenge because they have to overcome this legacy stuff that they have in their system in order to address the speed of business so the third piece obviously relates to machine intelligence AI nml it seems like that type of capability would apply to both systems of record and systems of engagement is that is that how you're looking at yes and so the trimodal IT concept is kind of three different systems and how they interlock and relate to one another if you think about systems of record the currency so to speak for systems of record or processes if you think about the currency for systems of interaction it's the people it's the users it's the humans and this is the currency for the system of intelligence is data to your point so when you're talking about systems of intelligence collecting and leveraging data from all three systems is going to be what fuels your system of intelligence going forward and that's the common thread between you know all three and it just seems to me that is ultimately the underpinning of modernization I wonder what do your customers how do they view and how do you view modernization so the awesome thing about being at Oracle is data is our DNA that's where Oracle started from that's where we still are today is data underpins everything we do all of the technology that we build is built on the understanding that it must be data driven and so when we're looking at all three of those systems and you're looking at it from an Oracle perspective data is at the heart of even system a record of even systems of interaction not only the systems of intelligence when our clients are looking at modernization they're trying to figure out a way to kind of leapfrog this story and get the whole way to a place where they're getting intelligence and insights out of their data they're not just unlocking it they're not just moving workloads and a lift and shift kind of model they're doing it because they want to serve the ultimate outcome that they get smarter as a business so data is kind of like raw material the AI or machine intelligence provides it allows you to take data and create insights if you will and then cloud gives you scale and agility and all those things so so clouds again another fundamental piece of just from an infrastructure standpoint and I think you guys define cloud as sort of an experience not a place so includes the on-prem workloads of course so talk about cloud customers want to go from where they are today to somehow become some ending point and they don't want to spend a zillion dollars and they don't want to disrupt their business they're gonna have to make investments clearly how do they get from point A to point B on that cloud journey so we've built something called a cloud evolution framework that cloud evolution framework has several different phases and stages and it's intended to be kind of a skeleton to have that conversation with clients are you thinking about all of the things you need to consider to make a healthy decision that has a real roadmap behind it to your point on budget and this is part of the trimodal IT conversation is there struggling I've talked to so many CIOs who are struggling to figure out I right now I'm spending you know 90% of my spend is on maintenance of systems versus on innovation so how do I shift that spending story to something that's actually going to move the needle on getting the business ahead that's gonna serve my stakeholders who are the lines of business in a way that is not additive to my budget but actually a shift of the budget and so we're looking at from a cloud perspective helping our clients make that monetary shift make the shift of the budget where they're self financing their own innovation by getting smarter and faster on moving their workloads to the cloud it's a - I want to come back to that self financing via y2k where you had all these activities going on in the boom times and then people wanted to go through an application rationalization exercise yes it could self fund really the innovation right and we're in a tenth year of a boom cycle here I wonder are there similar things going on is that where the self funding comes in that's exactly it so you know I kind of used this example as a way of helping people consume and understand this Marie Kondo konmari method is a popular she wrote a best-selling book she's on Netflix the premise of her concept is helping to declutter your life and her premises you should hold each object in your hand and say does it bring me joy and if it does I'm going to keep it and if it doesn't I'm gonna thank it for its service and get rid of it and so we're talking to our clients about something very similar you said rationalization exercise and it's precisely the same thing we're kind of using the konmari method if you will to help our clients make those determinations what are the things that they still need what are the things that they can decommission what are the things that can stay where they are and you don't have to do anything with because they're serving the purpose just fine yeah we're kind of hoarders by nature in creature habit so you have all these applications that nobody's using but you're still spending maintenance and correct keeping them up and and they may not be delivering and in problem any aren't delivering value for the organization so you want to double down on those that do you guys use this concept and others do as well of the autonomous enterprise you have autonomous database I wonder if we could you know drill into that get past the buzz words what is the autonomous enterprise and and what's Oracle's fit there yeah I think one of the big misconceptions when people hear autonomous is that they think it means without people and that's not right so autonomous means that you're helping elevate all the parts of the system to their highest value which means you don't need to worry about security patches you don't need to worry about repairing things on the the database those kinds of autonomous things is is the technology helping heal and serve itself that doesn't mean you don't need people anymore what it means is two things you need the experts that can help make sure that you're optimizing the value you get out of autonomous tooling but it also means that the humans are now freed up to do different kinds of high-value work so an autonomous enterprise would be one where they're really sort of self actualized in the sense that their technology is feeding itself it's getting smarter and they're getting insights out of that so that the people in their business are as valuable as they can be leveraging the insights from the technology so I can see how that trickles into IT no question about it can can the autonomous IT organization trickle into the autonomous enterprise and I mean I know it's early days but how do you see that you know shaping up so the these kinds of transformations I believe are fundamentally across the whole company and and this is true at Oracle as well we have we have something called Oracle at Oracle and it's about drinking our own champagne and applying our own technology in-house so it's not just in an IT organization capacity its across you know HR procurement legal every supporting function that you can imagine so that cultural change bleeds out across the entire body of the company and I believe fully that if you're going after something like an AI mission or an autonomous enterprise you know state which is an evolution that you need to involve everyone in the company in different roles so what's that future state look like I think the future state looks like a place where you're not just getting incremental gains on business processes or tasks that already exist you're fundamentally seeing shifts and the way the business runs itself as a result of the technology learning and getting smarter and the people who are benefiting from that technology changing the way they operate in the company as well so you mentioned the hood decluttering example yeah which I love are there other examples that inspire you there are so I there was an anecdote a client told me this story which is a fantastic story kind of triggered a thought for me a told a story about a guy who was retiring at his retirement dinner he told a story that thirty years ago when he'd started at the company he remembers his dad teaching him how to use the application that he then spent his entire career building and maintaining as I heard that story and they jokingly said at this point our only solution is to get him out of retirement or find his son I thought about that and I thought about 23andme have you know yes so it's a you know kind of DNA testing tells you your heritage lineage and we're kind of at a state now where a lot of our enterprise clients legitimately have these systems of record applications that are generations old human generations old so getting into the weeds on what that looks like I've been telling clients pretty often lately institutional knowledge is the enemy right if and it's the enemy of the autonomous enterprise if you have if you have a challenge where you keep referring to the same name you know if Bob leaves we're in big trouble if Sally isn't here anymore that's a trigger for you to know that that's something you need to pay attention to because that institutional knowledge is not getting built into your your technology so what do you guys do you put some kind of abstraction layer around that system of Records so that it can be automated does that part of sure so so we are looking at there's a couple different ways you can go about it so you can look at the systems of record as a partial move that you do over time to the cloud and so you have to be pretty smart about the pattern and how you do that moving think the workloads kind of whole will give you a little bit of that self financing ability to dig in deeper and start transforming them ok trimodal IT will be watching hey Stephanie thanks so much it's great yeah absolutely Thanks thank you for watching you watching the queue at this special digital presentation we'll be right back right after this short break

>> Announcer: From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE studios, in Palo Alto, California for another CUBE conversation where we go in depth with though leaders driving innovation across tech industry. I'm your host, Peter Burris. The whole concept of self service analytics has been with us decades in the tech industry. Sometimes its been successful, most times it hasn't been. But we're making great progress and have over the last few years as the technologies matures, as the software becomes more potent, but very importantly as the users of analytics become that much more familiar with what's possible and that much more wanting of what they could be doing. But this notion of self service analytics requires some new invention, some new innovation. What are they? How's that going to play out? Well, we're going to have a great conversation today with Stephanie McReynolds, she's Senior Vice President of Marketing, at Alation. Stephanie, thanks again for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks for inviting me, it's great to be back. >> So, tell us a little, give us an update on Alation. >> So as you know, Alation was one of the first companies to bring a data catalog to the market. And that market category has now been cemented and defined depending on the industry analyst you talk to. There could be 40 or 50 vendors now who are providing data catalogs to the market. So this has become one of the hot technologies to include in a modern analytics stacks. Particularly, we're seeing a lot of demand as companies move from on premise deployments into the cloud. Not only are they thinking about how do we migrate our systems, our infrastructure into the cloud but with data cataloging more importantly, how do we migrate our users to the cloud? How do we get self-service users to understand where to go to find data, how to understand it, how to trust it, what re-use can we do of it's existing assets so we're not just exploding the amount of processing we're doing in the cloud. So that's been very exciting, it's helped us grow our business. We've now seen four straight years of triple digit revenue growth which is amazing for a high growth company like us. >> Sure. >> We also have over 150 different organizations in production with a data catalog as part of their modern analytics stack. And many of those organizations are moving into the thousands of users. So eBay was probably our first customer to move into the, you know, over a thousand weekly logins they're now up to about 4,000 weekly logins through Alation. But now we have customers like Boeing and General Electric and Pfizer and we just closed a deal with US Air Force. So we're starting to see all sorts of different industries and all sorts of different users from the analytics specialist in your organization, like a data scientist or a data engineer, all the way out to maybe a product manager or someone who doesn't really think of them as an analytics expert using Alation either directly or sometimes through one of our partnerships with folks like Tableau or Microstrategy or Power BI. >> So, if we think about this notion of self- service analytics, Stephanie, and again it's Alation has been a leader in defining this overall category, we think in terms of an individual who has some need for data but is, most importantly, has questions they think data can answer and now they're out looking for data. Take us through that process. They need to know where the data is, they need to know what it is, they need to know how to use it, and they need to know what to do if they make a mistake. How is that, how are the data catalogs, like Alation, serving that, and what's new? >> Yeah, so as consumers, this world of data cataloging is very similar if you go back to the introduction of the internet. >> Sure. >> How did you find a webpage in the 90's? Pretty difficult, you had to know the exact URL to go to in most cases, to find a webpage. And then a Yahoo was introduced, and Yahoo did a whole bunch of manual curation of those pages so that you could search for a page and find it. >> So Yahoo was like a big catalog. >> It was like a big catalog, an inventory of what was out there. So the original data catalogs, you could argue, were what we would call from an technical perspective, a metadata repository. No business user wants to use a metadata repository but it created an inventory of what are all the data assets that we have in the organizations and what's the description of those data assets. The meta- data. So metadata repositories were kind of the original catalogs. The big breakthrough for data catalogs was: How do we become the Google of finding data in the organization? So rather than manually curating everything that's out there and providing an in- user inferant with an answer, how could we use machine learning and AI to look at patterns of usage- what people are clicking on, in terms of data assets- surface those as data recommendations to any end user whether they're an analytics specialist or they're just a self- service analytics user. And so that has been the real break through of this new category called data cataloging. And so most folks are accessing a data catalog through a search interface or maybe they're writing a SQL query and there's SQL recommendations that are being provided by the catalog-- >> Or using a tool that utilizes SQL >> Or using a tool that utilizes SQL, and for most people in a- most employees in a large enterprise when you get those thousands of users, they're using some other tool like Tableau or Microstrategy or, you know, a variety of different data visualization providers or data science tools to actually access that data. So a big part of our strategy at Alation has been, how do we surface this data recommendation engine in those third party products. And then if you think about it, once you're surfacing that information and providing some value to those end users, the next thing you want to do is make sure that they're using that data accurately. And that's a non- trivial problem to solve, because analytics and data is complicated. >> Right >> And metadata is extremely complicated-- >> And metadata is-- because often it's written in a language that's arcane and done to be precise from a data standpoint, that's not easily consumable or easily accessible by your average human being. >> Right, so a label, for example, on a table in a data base might be cust_seg_257, what does that mean? >> It means we can process it really quickly in the system. >> Yeah, but as-- >> But it's useless to a human being-- >> As a marketing manager, right? I'm like, hey, I want to do some customer segmentation analysis and I want to find out if people who live in California might behave differently if I provide them an offer than people that live in Massachusetts, it's not intuitive to say, oh yeah, that's in customer_seg_ so what data catalogs are doing is they're thinking about that marketing manager, they're thinking about that peer business user and helping make that translation between business terminology, "Hey I want to run some customer segmentation analysis for the West" with the technical, physical model, that underlies the data in that data base which is customer_seg_257 is the table you need to access to get the answer to that question. So as organizations start to adapt more self- service analytics, it's important that we're managing not just the data itself and this translation from technical metadata to business metadata, but there's another layer that's becoming even more important as organizations embrace self- service analytics. And that's how is this data actually being processed? What is the logic that is being used to traverse different data sets that end users now have access to. So if I take gender information in one table and I have information on income on another table, and I have some private information that identifies those two customers as the same in those two tables, in some use tables I can join that data, if I'm doing marketing campaigns, I likely can join that data. >> Sure. >> If I'm running a loan approval process here in the United States, I cannot join that data. >> That's a legal limitation, that's not a technical issue-- >> That's a legal, federal, government issue. Right? And so here's where there's a discussion, in folks that are knowledgeable about data and data management, there's a discussion of how do we govern this data? But I think by saying how we govern this data, we're kind of covering up what's actually going on, because you don't have govern that data so much as you have to govern the analysis. How is this joined, how are we combining these two data sets? If I just govern the data for accuracy, I might not know the usage scenario which is someone wants to combine these two things which makes it's illegal. Separately, it's fine, combined, it's illegal. So now we need to think about, how do we govern the analytics themselves, the logic that is being used. And that gets kind of complicated, right? For a marketing manager to understand the difference between those things on the surface is doesn't really make sense. It only makes sense when the context of that government regulation is shared and explained and in the course of your workflow and dragging and dropping in a Tableau report, you might not remember that, right? >> That's right, and the derivative output that you create that other people might then be able to use because it's back in the data catalog, doesn't explicitly note, often, that this data was generated as a combination of a join that might not be in compliance with any number of different rules. >> Right, so about a year and a half ago, we introduced a new feature in our data catalog called Trust Check. >> Yeah, I really like this. This is a really interesting thing. >> And that was meant to be a way where we could alert end users to these issues- hey, you're trying to run the same analytic and that's not allowed. We're going to give you a warning, we're not going to let you run that query, we're going to stop you in your place. So that was a way in the workflow of someone while they're typing a SQL statement or while they're dragging and dropping in Tableau to surface that up. Now, some of the vendors we work with, like Tableau, have doubled down on this concept of how do they integrate with an enterprise data catalog to make this even easier. So at Tableau conference last week, they introduced a new metadata API, they introduced a Tableau catalog, and the opportunity for these type of alerts to be pushed into the Tableau catalog as well as directly into reports and worksheets and dashboards that end users are using. >> Let me make sure I got this. So it means that you can put a lot of the compliance rules inside Alation and have a metadata API so that Alation effectively is governing the utilization of data inside the Tableau catalog. >> That's right. So think about the integration with Tableau is this communication mechanism to surface up these policies that are stored centrally in your data catalog. And so this is important, this notion of a central place of reference. We used to talk about data catalogs just as a central place of reference for where all your data assets lie in the organizations, and we have some automated ways to crawl those sources and create a centralized inventory. What we've added in our new release, which is coming out here shortly, is the ability to centralize all your policies in that catalog as well as the pointers to your data in that catalog. So you have a single source of reference for how this data needs to be governed, as well as a single source of reference for how this data is used in the organization. >> So does that mean, ultimately, that someone could try to do something, trust check and say, no you can't, but this new capability will say, and here's why or here's what you do. >> Exactly. >> A descriptive step that says let me explain why you can't do it. >> That's right. Let me not just stop your query and tell you no, let me give you the details as to why this query isn't a good query and what you might be able to do to modify that query should you still want to run it. And so all of that context is available for any end user to be able to become more aware of what is the system doing, and why is recommending. And on the flip side, in the world before we had something like Trust Check, the only opportunity for an IT Team to stop those queries was just to stop them without explanation or to try to publish manuals and ask people to run tests, like the DMV, so that they memorized all those rules of governance. >> Yeah, self- service, but if there's a problem you have to call us. >> That's right. That's right. So what we're trying to do is trying to make the work of those governance teams, those IT Teams, much easier by scaling them. Because we all know the volume of data that's being created, the volume of analysis that's being created is far greater than any individual can come up with, so we're trying to scale those precious data expert resources-- >> Digitize them-- >> Yeah, exactly. >> It's a digital transformation of how we acquire data necessary-- >> And then-- >> for data transformation. >> make it super transparent for the end user as to why they're being told yes or no so that we remove this friction that's existed between business and IT when trying to perform analytics. >> But I want to build a little bit on one of the things I thought I heard you say, and that is that the idea that this new feature, this new capability will actually prescribe an alternative, logical way for you to get your information that might be in compliance. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, that's right. Because what we also have in the catalog is a workflow that allows individuals called Stewards, analytics Stewards to be able to make recommendations and certifications. So if there's a policy that says though shall not use the data in this way, the Stewards can then say, but here's an alternative mechanism, here's an alternative method, and by the way, not only are we making this as a recommendation but this is certified for success. We know that our best analysts have already tried this out, or we know that this complies with government regulation. And so this is a more active way, then, for the two parties to collaborate together in a distributed way, that's asynchronous, and so it's easy for everyone no matter what hour of the day they're working or where they're globally located. And it helps progress analytics throughout the organization. >> Oh and more importantly, it increases the likelihood that someone who is told you now have self- service capability doesn't find themselves abandoning it the first time that somebody says no, because we've seen that over and over with a lot of these query tools, right? That somebody says, oh wow, look at this new capability until the screen, you know, metaphorically, goes dark. >> Right, until it becomes too complicated-- >> That's right-- >> and then you're like, oh I guess I wasn't really trained on this. >> And then they walk away. And it doesn't get adopted. >> Right. >> And this is a way, it's very human centered way to bring that self- service analyst into the system and be a full participant in how you generate value out of it. >> And help them along. So you know, the ultimate goal that we have as an organization, is help organizations become our customers, become data literate populations. And you can only become data literate if you get comfortable working with the date and it's not a black box to you. So the more transparency that we can create through our policy center, through documenting the data for end users, and making it more easy for them to access, the better. And so, in the next version of the Alation product, not only have we implemented features for analytic Stewards to use, to certify these different assets, to log their policies, to ensure that they can document those policies fully with examples and use cases, but we're also bringing to market a professional services offering from our own team that says look, given that we've now worked with about 20% of our installed base, and observed how they roll out Stewardship initiatives and how they assign Stewards and how they manage this process, and how they manage incentives, we've done a lot of thinking about what are some of the best practices for having a strong analytics Stewardship practice if you're a self- service analytics oriented organization. And so our professional services team is now available to help organizations roll out this type of initiative, make it successful, and have that be supported with product. So the psychological incentives of how you get one of these programs really healthy is important. >> Look, you guys have always been very focused on ensuring that your customers were able to adopt valued proposition, not just buy the valued proposition. >> Right. >> Stephanie McReynolds, Senior Vice President of Marketing Relation, once again, thanks for being on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> And thank you for joining us for another CUBE conversation. I'm Peter Burris. See you next time.

>> Narrator: Live from San Diego, California, it's The Cube! Covering Cisco Live U.S. 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and it's eco system partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Cisco Live, Day 3 from buzzy, sunny San Diego. I'm Lisa Martin, my co-host is Stu Miniman and Stu and I are pleased to welcome to the Cube Stephanie Wible, Senior Product Manager, hybrid networking and SD-WAN, from CenturyLink. Stephanie, welcome to the Cube! >> Thank you, I'm glad to be here. >> Yeah, so welcome to the buzzy dev nut zone. This place has been buzzing for three days now. >> It is definitely an active session over here today. >> It is, so let's talk about SD-WAN. We've heard a lot the last few days about the massive transformations to the network. Changing customer demands, changing customer needs, talk to us about the SD-WAN marketplace, overall. >> So we don't have a conversation with any of our customers these days that don't include some kind of a conversation about SD-WAN. Everybody is looking to transform their networks and their looking for the next best thing. They're also trying future-proof their networks. Some of the customer drivers that we see are folks looking to augment existing MPLS networks with lower cost access, making the best use of their assets, both from an equipment perspective as well as a network perspective. And then having that sort of centralized command and control capability that SD-WAN provides them. >> Alright, so Stephanie the SD-WAN space, while most customers are familiar with it, it's not a monolithic space. It's not like there's five products on the market and there all very similar. There's a few different areas and even Cisco has two primary products that your offering. Can you give us a little bit about the lay of the land as to what use cases there are for the various pieces? How do you decide which there are? Or I know I've talked to customers that have had multiple SD-WAN solutions. >> That's a good point. So, when we initially started looking at SD-WAN, we kind of did a RFI on about 15 or so different vendors. The market has compressed a little bit since then through acquisitions and mergers but we at CenturyLink, in particular, recognized that one size does not fit all for all customers. So we wanted to offer a choice of services for our customers and most of the vendors have very similar kind of capability but some have other features that some don't. For example, the Meraki one, we typically have our branch customers, our customers that have many homogenous kind of like sites that they want something simple and something easy and not something that has a lot of bells and whistles. That's a perfect fit for them. It's very easy to install and get it up and running. Where something like Viptela that has a lot more capability and a lot more customization available would be perfect for some of our larger customers. The Telepher, for example, is we have a large install base of customers already using Cisco gear, the ASR and the ISR, where that's very attractive to those folks where they can just lay the software on top of their existing assets without having to do a full network swap out. And then our other option is our Versa which was our initial launch which was in 2016. Again, that's a full-featured SD-WAN capability. So it kind of depends and we try to bring the customers and have that conversation. Understand what theirs drivers are so that we can help tailor them and select and help them select one of the options that we have. >> Yeah I have to imagine that most of the time you're really helping the customer down there. It's not, "Okay there's a catalog, choose which one." That's some of the reason we would go to a CenturyLink is so that you listen to them, understand that, and you've helped filter a lot of that for them and maybe get them down to some of the just what size they're buying. >> Yep, and its not just the vendors. The pure play vendors talk about we call it the tip of the iceberg. So they talk about the SD-WAN capability. Where CenturyLink can add a lot of value to that is we also provide hybrid WAN solution and PLS, we also do. That's the public, the private section. And we recently, with the introduction of our SD-WAN services, started offering public connectivity in broadband and WIFI. So we can offer the mix of access along with the overlay service. We can be the single button to push for that but we also have had extensive history in managed services. So we have done managed routers and managed iads for our voice or data. And then the other big portion of that is we are a global provider, so for those customers looking to expand they're already in our global network. We've got one of the largest global backbones in the world. >> So let's give our audience a view from a customer who is in the process of needing to upgrade their network being able to future-proof it, as you said a few minutes ago, be ready for WIFI sites. Say it's a bank with many different retail branches. What would be the ideal solution for them? Would it be something more like Viptela that, is that more customizable? That in one branch you might need a much smaller pipe than you do in a much larger branch? What goes through that for a customer that's going through that upgrade process to modernize their network? >> Yep, so we try to have our technical experts go in and sit down with the customer and kind of do a question and answer session and try to understand what their business drivers are, what solutions that they're trying to solve for, and provide guidance and expertise along that lines and try to suss out. We also have what we call a Transformation Workshop where we like to bring customers in and have a kind of in-depth conversation, one-on-one conversation, show them some of the demos of the services that we offer and try to suss out what their real requirements are. And then, again, we can offer solutions and say, "Hey, based on the footprint that you have, "based on the connectivity options that you want, "based on your time frame, based on your cost," all of those things are factors to where would direct a customer. >> So giving them sort of a prescriptive, customized pathway for that upgrade based on all the analysis about what they, what their current lay of their WAN looks like and where they want to get to. >> Exactly, exactly. >> So, Stephanie I knew you'd do those in-depth discussions with customers. One the great opportunities about a show like Cisco is you've got 28,000 people here coming by the booth, coming into to sessions, so you get to speed date on some of these things, but what are some of the top things that they're asking for? What are some of the pain points that your hearing from customers? Is SD-WAN one of the top things bringing them to you? Or what are some of those key conversations? >> SD-WAN is, that's been kind of the industry term and so everybody knows a little bit about it and the crazy part is a lot people coming in have really done their homework and know a lot about the differences between the different platforms. Security is at the top of everybody's mind and that is another really big driver that everybody wants to have a conversation about. Security, how can I get a security patches out to my endpoints faster and better and quicker? How do I integrate my security with an SD-WAN solution? And so we see those a lot. We have answers for those questions and we can help folks figure that out. >> So here we are at the 30th annual Cisco customer partner event. A lot of evolution in the last 30 years. A lot of work has been done by Cisco to transition from just a hardware network gear provider to hardware, now software. Challenging for large organizations with the history and the product depth and the networking expertise-- >> Absolutely. >> that a company like Cisco has. I want to get your opinion. You've been with CenturyLink for a long time. CenturyLink and Cisco also go way back. >> Stephanie: Yep >> What are some of the advantages is CenturyLink seeing by Cisco's transition to more of a software provider? >> Cisco's always been a great hardware provider partner for us and I hadn't worked in that space too much. However, the folks that we have been working with, both on the Meraki side and Viptela side, super responsive, super willing to help. They're always available. What questions can we answer? Can we get in? Is there training that we can provide? They've been great. Super partners to work with. >> In terms of the customer reaction though, is it giving you guys a leg up, an advantage, that there is more of a software lead approach of looking at an old legacy company that is much more modernized? If you think of how Cisco would compete with a born-in-the-cloud company, what is that kind of competitive advantage like for you guys? >> That's an interesting thing too. So where Cisco has traditionally been a hardware provider, a lot of our customers are very familiar. They're CCIE network certified. It's funny trying to get those folks over. Some are very, its usually the younger set that's willing to go the whole software designed route. So its a challenge. Some folks are very, very much old school and they want to stick with the hardware-based solutions and they don't want to move to the digital world. However, things, cloud computing and all the applications moving to the cloud is kind of forcing them there. So its kind of a slow cycle on some of those and then some of their smaller groups. And we, the early adopters were the ones that were, "Yeah, let's just jump in "and go directly the software route," so it's-- >> Yeah, Stephanie you bring up a great point. I used to give presentations and when you would talk about rollout of technology in the network world, we would measure it in a decade. >> Right, yeah. >> It was like, "Okay, here comes 10 gig and there's the standard "and here's the piece," and all the things like that. What are some of those drivers in your customers because are they moving? You know we found, in general, they are moving faster. Speed is one of the things that we talk about. That agility to be able to respond. So what are some of those drivers from your companies that your work with that's helping them refresh faster, look at new technologies, and be open to some change? >> I think it's just keeping up with the industry. Like you said, it used to take years to do things and now its changing on a monthly and a weekly basis. And people are, I think, they're a little bit scared. It's like if we don't do something, we're going to get left behind. And it, the industry, is kind of forcing people to make those changes. Cost driver is another one that we see and people having to hit their fiscal numbers and everything else like that. But network transformation is not a simple thing. It's not a quick go in, run something. It's something that requires a lot of planning, a lot of analysis, and you want to, what do the old carpenters say? You measure twice and cut once, right? You want to plan, you want to plan, you want to plan and then you implement. So it does take time and people are getting there. When we first start talking about SD-WAN there was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk and all a sudden then you start seeing, and it seems to be speeding up. People wanting to make decisions. We've had people that have had experiences and have shared experiences, and I think that has helped people make their decisions to actually go. >> What are some of the factors, like security, as an accelerator of a business that maybe might be on the slower side to migrate and start moving to a multi-cloud? Which a lot of businesses live in. Security also just the threat of being Uber-ized by a smaller company that isn't taking advantage-- >> They can move fast. >> Right, of whether it's network automation, SD-WAN, taking advantage of the expansion of 5G. What are some of those, how are some of the security and some of those other threats, are they catalysts that you guys are leveraging with customers to help them understand why the transition is imperative? >> I think they are. I think the iPhones and the laptop devices where you can click and have that immediate user experience, that's starting to build people's expectations that you can get things that quickly. And for the old legacy companies that aren't willing to get in there and to start thinking about doing that migration and change, they will get left behind. It's just where the industry is today. >> Great, Stephanie, why don't I give you the, give us the take-away from Cisco Live. You know, Cisco plus CenturyLink, what's that mean for customers? >> I'm sorry, I didn't catch all, I'm sorry. >> Cisco plus CenturyLink, the take-away for customers. >> Yeah, we're great partners. We've been partners for years. We continue to be partners. I think we bring a great marriage of the SD-WAN services and our hybrid network and all of our managed services together. Lots of years of experience and we love helping our customers, both of us. We want to delight and provide that great customer experience. >> Well. Stephanie, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Cube talking about all things SD-WAN, marketplace, the drivers, the opportunities, and the benefits. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks so much you guys. Have a great show. >> Thank you. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube Live from Cisco Live, San Diego. (electronic music)

>> live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's the two you covering. Citric Synergy. Atlanta 2019. Brought to You by Citrix >> Welcome back to the Cubes. Continuing coverage of Citrix Energy, 2019 from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm Lisa Martin. My co host for the event is Keith Townsend and Keith and I are excited to talk. Teo, one of the Citrix Innovation Award nominees, Indiana University, with a couple of folks from Indiana University joining us. Stephanie Cox, manager, a Virtual Platform Services and Mat Link, associate vice president of research Technologies Guys, thanks so much for joining Keith and me, Thank you. And congratulations on Indiana University being nominated for an innovation award. I was talking with Tim in hand there CMO yesterday, saying there was over a thousands nomination. So to even get down to being in the top three is pretty exciting stuff. Talk to us a little bit about Indiana University. Us. This is a a big, big organization. Lots of folks accessing the network through lots of devices. Matt, let's start with you. Give us that picture of what's going on there. Yes, so I >> u is about 130,000 students across seven campuses. We've got about 20,000 faculty and staff across those seven campuses. One of the things that makes us a little unique is were consolidated shop. So there are 1,200 of us and I you that support the entire university and all the campuses and anyone point in time, there could be 200,000 devices touching the network and using those services. >> That's a Big 70 talk. Talk to us about your virtual a footprint. How How big is the location? Data centers? What's the footprint? >> Well, we have two data centers. One of them is in Indianapolis, which is my home. It's one of our larger campus is calling Indiana University Purdue University affectionately, I U P y. There is a data center there, but our large danna center is at the flagship campus, which is in Bloomington, Indiana, >> and to support 100,000 plus people and to hundreds of any given the 2nd 200,000 devices. How have you designed that virtual infrastructure to enable access to students, faculty, etcetera and employees. >> So from the network perspective, we have several network master plans that have rolled, and we're in our 2nd 10 year next network master plan, and the network master plan is designed to continually upgrade the network. Both the physical network, the infrastructure and the wireless network in our last 10 year budget, for that was around $170,000,000 of investment just to support the network infrastructure. And then Stephanie rides on top of that as the virtual platform with Citrix to deliver the images anywhere on campus. Whether it's wirelessly or whether it's connected via network connection >> kill seven campuses is already a bit. If you ever look at a map, Indiana sits Christ map damp in the middle of the country. It's a big space. Right before we hit record, we were just talking about that. Drive off I 65 from Indianapolis to Chicago is just a lot of rules area, and I'm sure part of your mission is to make sure technology and education is the sensible thing. Everyone in Indiana talk to us about the challenges of getting connective ity and getting material virtual classrooms to those remote areas. >> Yeah, it's really one of the major strengths of our partnership with Citrix. They are really at the premiere Remote solution connectivity offering at Indiana University. So we built our citrix environment. Teo encompass everyone. We wanted to make sure we could have enough licenses and capacity for all of our 130,000 faculty, staff and students to use the service. Do they all show up at the same time? No, thank goodness. But we do offer it to everyone, which is I found in the education. You're in a very unique tin Indiana University. Another another thing to have consolidated I t. And then to be able to offer a service like ours to everyone and not just restricted to specific pockets of the university. With that, we've been able to them extend offering of any application or something that you might need for a class to any of our other remote location. So if you're a student who is working in or go, you know, lives in rule Indiana and you want Teo get in Indiana University degree, you can do that without having to travel to one of our campus sites or locations. We I have a very nice of online program, just a lot of other options that that we've really tried Teo offer for remote access. >> So Citrix has really enabled this. I think you call it the eye. You anywhere. Indiana University anywhere Program. Tell us about opening up this access to everyone over the time that you've been ascetics Customer, how many more people can you estimate have access now, that didn't hurt not too long ago. >> Yeah, I think initially, and Matt was probably no more before me before I Even before I even came on the scene, I believe that the original youth case was really just trying. Teo, extend what we were already doing on premise in what we call just our Indiana University lab supported areas. Right? So just your small, like the old days you would goto your college campus and you go into your computer lab with it. We just really wanted Teo the virtual Isar expand the access to just those specific types of APS and computers. And that was an early design. Since then, over the years, we've really kind of, you know, just really expanded. Really. We used the Citrix platform to redesign and distribute how we deliver the applications and the virtual desktops. So now not only do we service those students who would who would normally come onto the campus just to use your traditional computer lab. Wait do a lot, especially programs for other schools. Like we, we deliver a virtual desktop for our dentistry. Students may actually use that whole platform in the dental clinic to see real patients are third tier. Third year doctors do that way. Also replicated that same thing and do it in our speech and hearing sciences for our future audiologist. We have certain professors that have wanted to take a particular course that they're teaching and extended to different pockets all over the world. So we might host a class from Budapest or Africa somewhere else. You know, wherever that faculty and staff has three sources that they know they need to get to in their content already virtualized. We worked to make that happen all the time. >> That's a lot of what you just said is first of all, initially, maybe before Citrix being able to provide support in the computer labs for your maybe seven core campuses. Now you get your giving 130,000 plus individuals anywhere, anytime. Access that is the ex multiplier on that is massive, but you're also gone global It's not just online, it's you're able to enable professors to teach in other parts of the world where it was before. It was just people that were in Indiana, but master and and >> you're just limited by the network. So that's the only draw back. When you go to the rule areas way out, you're just limited by the network. You know, the initial program was really you really thought of as a cost saving measure way we're goingto put thin clients out. We wouldn't have to do life cycle replacements for desktop machines that were getting more expensive and more expensive, you know, 10 years ago, and now the way that we look at it is I you wants to provide services across the breath of the organization and make those services at no additional cost and open to everybody open access to everybody. The desktop, for example, is one of you know Stephanie is, is the brainchild behind the desktop, took three years of dedicated hard work to create an environment to support the visually impaired. >> Talk to us more about that because that was part of the video and that captured my intention immediately. What is 80 accessibility, technology, accessibility technology is inaccessible to get that. So I'm just, you know, hundreds thousands, and not just those that are sight and hearing. >> So one of the things then I think it's just a wonderful thing about working at a university. We're able to buy software licenses in a big quantity, large quantity, right? Because we have that kind of buying power software that I normally never would see or get access to, even in my private sector. Administer tricks engineer for a long time. But when you come to a university and then you're selling or you're getting licenses for 50 60 70 80,000 you get to see some of these products that you don't normally as a regular consumer. You'd like it, but you know you can't really afford it. So with that, when we started looking at all of the different applications that they could buy in a large quantity site licence, you know, the way we thought, Oh my goodness, let's virtualized these and make sure everybody gets access to them and the ones that were really attractive to us, where the ones for the visually impaired, sure they're in niche and They're very, very expensive, but we but let's just try it. We'll see how well they perform in a virtual environment. And with that, our Citrix infrastructure underneath they performed quite well. Plus, the apse have evolved a great deal over just the last four years. So we're really proud to offer our virtual desktop to our blind students. We had to work really hard to make sure that the speech recognition software was fast enough for them. It turns out that blind people listen to speech really, really, really, really, really fast, and so we had to make sure that we kept our platform while we're working on it to keep it sped an updated so that it's usable to them right since functional to me. But they really need it to be like, 10 times faster. I found that out after even shooting the award video and spending even more time with them, I thought, Why don't you guys tell me it was slow to you? But yeah, it's, uh, it's been an honor, really, Teo to be up for that award. But tow work with those students to learn more about their needs to learn more about the city different applications that people write for people with old disabilities. I hope we can do more in that space. >> So the young man in it and why I don't remember his name. >> Priscilla, Bela, Chris. So >> share just quickly about Chris's story. >> Yeah, and he watches the Cube. I hope he's listening because I >> think I think this whole >> kind of >> really put a little bit icing on the cake because you're taking an environment and urine empowering a student to do what they want to do versus what they are able or not able to do. So Christmas story is pretty cool of where he wants to go with his college career. >> Yeah, I won't say he's a big, you know, proponent, user of the virtual desktop, because he's just so advanced. He's like, way beyond everything We're learning from him. But he is Indiana University's believe. I'm saying this right, very first biomedical chemical engineer who is blind and fourth completely blind, Yes, wow and is quite a brilliant young man, and we were lucky to have him be r. He will test anything for me and and Mary Stores, who was featured in the video Chris Meyer. And he's also featured in the video. Gonna remember their names? I mean, it's a hole. I'm lucky to have a whole community of people that will Yeah, they know where we want to be there for them. We don't always get it right. What? We're gonna listen and keep trying to move forward. So >> But if you kind of think of even what a year or two ago not being able to give any of this virtualized desktop access to this visually impaired and how many people are now using it? >> Um, well, we open it up to everyone. We have hundreds and hundreds of users, but we know not everyone who uses it is blind. People like you can use it if you want it or not way. Don't really understand why some people prefer to use that one over there. The other But it does have some advantages. I mean, there there are different levels of sight impairment, too, as I've just been educated right. There are some people who are just at the very beginning of that journey of just losing their site. So we if if that happens to be, you know, someone that we can extend our environment to. It's probably better t use it now and get really familiar with that issue. Transition to losing your sight later in life. I've been told so >> So you ask a little bit about the scope of of the desktop, so I'll layer on a little bit of the scope of eye you anywhere. Last year, around 65,000 individual unique users over well over 1,000,000 Loggins and 8,000,000 and the average session time was around 41 minutes. That's so our instructors teach with it. Are clinicians treat people with it? We've built it in two. How's Elektronik protected health data? Er hit. The client's gonna be critical, writes the hip a standard because you can't say compliance anymore because you can't be compliant with a standard change. That wording several times way are very familiar with meeting hip. A standard we've been doing that for about 12 years now with where I came from was the high performance computing area of the university. So that's my background, and I >> so one thing we didn't get a chance to talk, uh, touch 12 100,000 devices were a citrus citrus is a Microsoft partner. Typically, when those companies think of 200,000 users, they think for profit. There's, you know, this is a niche use case for 200,000 users. Obviously, you guys have gotten some great pricing as part of being a educational environment. What I love to hear is kind of the research stories, because the ability to shrink the world, so to speak, you know, hi HPC you're giving access to specialized equipment to people who can't get their normally. You know, you don't have to be physically in front of GPU CPUC century. What other cool things have been coming out of the research side of the house because of the situation able? >> So this is cool. I mean, >> I get it. So >> So one of our group's research software solutions stole the idea from Stephanie to provide a research desktop. Barr >> imitation. Highest form of flattery, Stephanie. Absolutely. So what we've >> done is is is we always continually to try to reduce the barriers of entry and access? Uh, you know, supercomputing. Before you had to be this tall to ride this ride. Well, now we're down to here and with the hopes that will get down even farther. So what we've done is we've taken virtualized desktop, put it in front of the supercomputers, and now you can be wherever you want to be and have access to HPC. Untie you and that's all the systems. So we have four super computers and we have 40 petabytes of spinning disc ah, 160 petabytes of archival tape library. So we're we're a large shop and, you know, we couldn't have done it without looking at what Stephanie has done and and really looking in that model differently. Right? Because to use HPC before, you'd have to use a terminal and shell in and now, looking at you anywhere that gives you just the different opportunity to catch a different and more broad customer base. And I call on customers because we try to treat him as customers and and helps the diversity of what you're doing. So last year alone, our group research technologies supported a 151 different departments way were on 937 different grants, and we support over 330 different disciplines. Uh, it I you and so it's It's deep, but it's also very broad. First, larger campus we are. And as a large organization as we are, you know, we're fairly nimble. Even a 1,200 people. >> Wow! From what I've heard, it's no wonder that what you've done at Indiana University has garnered you the Innovation Award nominee. I can't imagine what is next. All that you have accomplished. Stephanie. Matt, thank you so much for joining Key to me. We wish you the best of luck and good a citric scott dot com Search Innovation Awards where you can vote for the three finalists. We wish you the very best of luck will be waiting with bated breath tomorrow to see who wins. >> So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Keep >> our pleasure for Keith Townsend. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube live from Citrix. Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching

>> Live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's theCUBE covering Citrix Synergy Atlanta 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019 from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm Lisa Martin, my co-host for the event is Keith Townsend and Keith and I are excited to talk to one of the Citrix Innovation Award nominees, Indiana University. We have a couple of folks from Indiana University joining us, Stephanie Cox, Manager of Virtual Platform Services and Matt Link, Associate Vice President of Research Technologies. Guys, thanks so much for joining Keith and me. >> Thank you Lisa. >> Thank you. >> And thank you Keith. >> It's an honor to be here, yeah. >> And congratulations on Indiana University being nominated for an innovation award. I was talking with Tim Minahan, their CMO yesterday saying there was over a thousand nominations, so to even get down to being in the top three is pretty exciting stuff. >> Yeah. >> Awesome. >> So talk to us a little bit about Indiana University. You guys, this is a big, big big organization lots of folks accessing the network through lots of devices. Matt, let's start with you, give us that picture of what's going on there. >> Yeah, so IU is about 130,000 students across seven campuses. We got about 20,000 faculty and staff across those seven campuses. One of the things that makes us a little unique is, we're a consolidated IT shop. So, there are 1200 of us at IU that support the entire university and all the campuses. And at any one point in time, there could be 200,000 devices touching the network and using those services. >> Big, that's big. >> Big. >> Wow, that is big. Stephanie talk, talk to us about your virtual imp, footprint and how big is the location. How many data centers? What's the footprint? >> Well we have two data centers, one of them is in Indianapolis which is my home. It's one of our larger campuses, we call it Indiana University Purdue University, affectionately IUPUI. There is a data center there but our larger data center is at the flagship campus which is in, Bloomington, Indiana. >> And, to support 100,000 plus people and, you said at any given second, 200,000 devices. How have you designed that Virtual Integral Structure to enable access to students, faculty, et cetera and employees? >> So from the network perspective we have several network master plans that have rolled and we're in our second 10 year network master plan. And, the network master plan is designed to continually upgrade the network, both the physical network, the infrastructure, and the wireless network. In our last 10 year budget for that was around $170 million of investment just to support the network infrastructure. And then, Stephanie rides on top of that as the Virtual Platform with Citrix to deliver the images anywhere on campus, whether it's wirelessly or whether it's connected via network connection. >> Yep. >> So seven campuses is already a bit. If you ever look at a map, Indiana sits right smack dab in the middle of the country. It's a big space, right before we hit record, we were just talking about that drive up I-65 from Indianapolis to Chicago is just, a lot of rural area and, I'm sure part of your mission is to make sure technology and education is accessible to everyone in Indiana. Talk to us about the challenges of getting connectivity and getting material, virtual classrooms to those remote areas. >> Yeah, that's really one of the major strengths of our partnership with Citrix. They are really the premier remote solution connectivity offering at Indiana University. So, we built our Citrix environment to encompass everyone. We wanted to make sure we could have enough licenses and capacity for all of our 130,000 faculty, staff, and students to use the service. Now do they all show up at the same time? No, thank goodness. >> Thankfully. >> But we do offer it to everyone which is, I found, in the education arena, very unique to Indiana University. Another thing to have the consolidated IT and then to be able to offer a service like ours to everyone and not just restrict it to separate pockets of the university. With that, we've been able to then extend, offering of any application or something that you might need for a class to any of our other remote locations. So, if you're a student who is working in or lives in rural Indiana and you want to get an Indiana University degree, you can do that without having to travel to one of our campus sites or locations. We have a very nice online program and just a lot of other options that we've really tried to offer for remote access. >> So Citrix has really enabled this, I think you call it the IUanyWare, Indiana University Anywhere Program. >> Yeah. >> Tell us about opening up this access to everyone over the time that you've been a Citrix customer how many more people can you guesstimate have access now that didn't not too long ago? >> Yeah, I think initially, and Matt would probably know more before me, before I even came on the scene, I believe that the original use case was really just trying to extend what we were already doing on premise in what we call just our Indiana University lab supported areas. Right, so just your small, like the old days when you would go to your college campus and you go into your computer lab, we just really wanted to virtualize, or expand, the access to just those specific types of apps and computers. And that was an early design, since then over the years we've really kind of, just really expanded. Really use the Citrix platform to redesign and distribute how we deliver the applications and the virtual desktops. So, now not only do we service those students who would normally come onto the campus just to use your traditional computer lab, we do a lot of specialty programs for other schools. Like we deliver a virtual desktop for our dentistry students, they actually use that whole platform in the dental clinic to see real patients our, third tier, third year doctors do that. We also replicated that same thing and do it in our speech and hearing sciences for our future audiologists. We have certain professors that have wanted to take the particular course that they're teaching and extend it to different pockets all over the world so we might host a class from Budapest or Africa somewhere else, wherever that faculty and staff has resources that they know they need to get to and their content already virtualized. We work to make that happen all the time. >> That's, a lot of what you just said is first of all, initially, maybe before Citrix being able to provide support in the computer labs for your maybe seven core campuses, now you're giving 130,000 plus individuals anywhere, anytime access. That is, the X multiplier on that is massive. But you're also gone global, it's not just online, you're able to enable professors to teach in other parts of the world, where it was before it was just people that were in Indiana. >> Right. >> That's massive. >> And you're just limited by the network. So that's the only drawback when you go to the rural areas way out, you're just limited by the network. The initial program was really, really thought of as a cost saving measure. We were going to put thin clients out, we wouldn't have to do life cycle replacements for desktop machines that were getting more expensive and more expensive 10 years ago, and now the way that we look at it is IU wants to provide services across the breadth of the organization, and make those services at no additional cost. And open to everybody. Open access to everybody, the AT desktop, for example is one of, Stephanie is, the brainchild behind the AT desktop. Took three years of dedicated hard work to create an environment to support the visually impaired. >> Talk to us more about that, because that was part of the video and that captured my attention immediately. What is AT? >> Accessibility. >> Technology. >> Technology. >> Accessibility Technology. >> Accessible, is it Accessible Technology? >> Accessible Technology. >> Yeah, I always get that wrong. (laughs) >> So, hundreds, thousands, and not just those that are sight and hearing. >> Right. >> Yeah, so one of the things that I think was, it's just a wonderful thing about working at a university, we're able to buy software licenses in a big quantity, large quantity right, because we have that kind of buying power. Software that I normally never would see or get access to even in my private sector, I've been a Citrix engineer for a long time, but when you come to a university and then you're selling or you're getting licenses for 50, 60, 70, 80,000, you get to see some of these products that you don't normally, as a regular consumer, (laughs) you like it but you know you can't really afford it. So, with that when we started looking at all of the different applications that they could buy in a large quantity site license way we thought oh my goodness, let's virtualize these and make sure everybody gets access to them. And the ones that were really attractive to us were the ones for the visually impaired. Sure they're a niche and they're very, very expensive but we thought let's just try it. We'll see how well they perform in a virtual environment and with our Citrix infrastructure underneath they performed quite well, plus the apps have evolved a great deal over just the last four years. So, we were really proud to offer our virtual desktop to our blind students. We had to work really hard to make sure that the speech recognition software was fast enough for them. It turns out that blind people listen to speech really, really, really, really, really, fast and so we had to make sure that we kept our platformer working on it, to keep it sped and updated so that it's usable to them, right. Seems functional to me, but they, it really needed to be like, 10 times faster. After I found that out, after even shooting the award video and spending even more time with them I thought, why did you guys tell me it was slow to you? But yeah it's been an honor, really, to be up for that award but to work with those students, to learn more about their needs, to learn more about the different applications that people write for people with all disabilities. I hope we can do more in that space. >> So the young man, in, at IUPUI. >> Yes. >> I don't remember his name. >> Chris Lavilla. >> Chris. >> Yes. >> So share, just quickly about Chris' story. >> If, he watches theCUBE I hope he's listening 'cause I think he's kind of remarkable. >> I think this'll really put some, a little bit of icing on that cake because you're taking an environment and you're empowering a student to do what they want to do, versus what they are able or not able to do, so Chris' story is pretty cool of where he wants to go with his college career. >> Yeah, now I won't say he a big proponent user of the virtual desktop because he's just so advanced, he's like way beyond everything. We're learning from him, but he is Indiana University's I believe I'm saying this right, very first biomedical chemical engineer who is blind since birth, completely blind, yes. >> Wow. >> He is, and he's quite a brilliant young man and we're lucky to have him be our, he will test anything for me, and Mary Stores, who's featured in the video Chris Mire, he's also featured in the video I got to remember their names, I mean, it's a whole, I'm lucky to have a whole community of people that will. Yeah, they know, we want to be there for them, we don't always get it right, but we're going to listen and keep trying to move forward, so. >> But, if you kind of think of, even a what, a year or two ago, not being able to give any of this virtualized desktop access to the visually impaired and how many people are now using it? >> Well we open it up to everyone. We have hundreds and hundreds of users but we know not everyone who uses it is blind. People can, you can use it if you want it or not. We don't really understand why some people prefer to use that one over any other but it does have some advantages, there are different levels of sight impairment too, as I've just been educated right. There are some people who are just at the very beginning of that journey of just losing their sight so, if that happens to be someone that we can extend our environment to it's probably better to use it now and get really familiar with that as you transition to losing your sight later in life, I've been told so. >> So you asked a little bit about the scope of the AT desktop, so I'll layer on a little bit of the scope of IUanyWare. Last year around 65,000 individual unique users over, well over a million logins and-- >> 1.4 million. >> 1.4 million. And the average session time was around 41 minutes. >> That's long. >> So. >> Yeah. >> Our instructors teach with it, our clinicians treat people with it, we've built it to house electronic protected health data. >> So HIPA compliance, got to be critical, right? >> It meets the HIPA standard. >> Right. >> Because you can't say compliance anymore because you can't be compliant with a standard. (Stephanie laughing) They've changed that wording several times in the course of the year. >> We know this. >> So, and we are very familiar with meeting the HIPA standard, we've been doing that for about 12 years now, with, where I came from was the high performance computing area of the university so that's my background that I. >> So, one thing we didn't get a chance touch on, 200,000 devices. We're at Citrix, Citrix is a Microsoft partner. Typically when those companies think of 200,000 users they think for profit, this is a niche use case for 200,000 users. Obviously you guys have gotten some great pricing as part of being an education environment. What I would love to hear is, kind of the research stories because the ability to shrink the world, so to speak high HPC, you're giving access to specialized equipment to people who can't get there normally, you have to be physically in front of GPUs, CPUs, et cetera. What other cool things have been coming out of the research side of the house because of the Citrix enablement? >> So, this is cool I mean. >> You got to, got to. (laughs) >> Right, so one of our groups, Researched Software and Solutions stole the idea from Stephanie to provide a research desktop. >> Borrowed. >> Borrowed. >> Imitation, highest form of flattery, Stephanie. >> That's right, absolutely. So what we've done is we always continually to try to reduce the barriers of entry and access. Supercomputing before, you had to be this tall to ride this ride, well now we're down to here. And, with the hopes that we'll go down even farther. So what we've done is we've taken a virtualized desktop, put it in front of the supercomputers, and now you can be wherever you want to be, and have access to HPC at IU. And that's all the systems, so we have four supercomputers And we have 40 petabytes of spinning disc, 160 petabytes of archival tape library so, we're a large shop. And, we couldn't have done it without looking at what Stephanie has done and really looking at that model differently, right? Because to use HPC before you'd have to use a terminal and shell in. And now, looking at IUanyWare, that gives you just the different opportunity to catch a different and more broad customer base. And I call them customers because we try treat them as customers >> Right. >> And it helps the diversity of what you're doing so last year alone our group, Research Technologies supported 151 different departments. We were on 937 different grants. And we support over 330 different disciplines at IU and so it's deep, but it's also very broad, for as large a campus we are and as large an organization as we are, we're fairly nimble even at 1200 people. >> Wow, from what I've heard it's no wonder that what you've done at Indiana University has garnered you the Innovation Award nominee. I can't imagine what is next with all that you have accomplished. Stephanie, Matt, thank you so much for joining Keith and me, we wish you the best of luck. You can go to Citrix.com, search Innovation Awards where you can vote for the three finalists. We wish you the very best of luck. We'll be waiting with bated breath tomorrow to see who wins. >> So will we, thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you Lisa. Thank you Keith. >> Our pleasure. For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live from Citrix Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> live from Anaheim, California. It's the queue covering nutanix dot next twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, everyone to the cubes. Live coverage of nutanix dot Next here in Anaheim, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Furrier. We have two guests for this next segment. We have Stephanie Scare Aldi. She is the director of operations and support for Electra. Thank you so much for coming on the cues. And we have James Ellery, director innovation and governance at Electra. Thank you, James. >> Thanks for having us. >> So I want to start with you, James. Tell our viewers a little bit about electorates. Ontario, based for our viewers who are not familiar. What do what do you do? What do you about? >> So we are a energy solutions provider in Ontario, Canada. Basically, we are an ldc a local distribution company, but we're trying to transition from the poles and wires into really energy solutions provider. We We're about a million customers are approaching a million customers right now and wear actually four utility companies that came together to form Electra. And we just recently emerged with a fifth now, so We're rapidly growing in the in Ontario, and we have very much more growth to come. >> It's all those mergers. How does I t all fit together? Different systems, all kind of legacy. Mishmash. What's what's What's the environment like? >> So the environment Right now there is a tremendous amount of data center Stephanie's actually leading our data center consolidation project. There are tremendous amount of data centers across a fast geographical location, and we're using NUTANIX actually to consolidate everything onto a single platform right now. So there's a lot of work to be done. Definitely a lot of integration to be done, but we're confident that we'LL get it all done and we want to move to new tanks by phone. >> So right now we have about, I think, eleven data centers and we've been mandated to get down to two. So we're use up utilizing technology like nutanix too kind of, you know, get down and scale ability. So wait >> here for a lot of customs from nutanix around, how it's been a great system for manageability and also getting rid of some older gear, whether it's old GMC Cem Dale stuff. So we're seeing a lot of, you know, go from twenty four racks to six. This is kind of the ratios pushing stuff from eight weeks. Tow two hours, new operational benefits. How close are you guys up to that now? Because you get all this stuff you consolidating down the merger's makes a lot of sense. What's some of the operational benefits you seeing with nutanix That you could share, >> I think, is a per example that you just gave. We're working on a front office consolidation project and we're moving. We're doubling our VD i environment, and we actually just got three new nodes in a few weeks ago and it took a matter of two hours to get everything spun up and ready. So traditionally, it would take us weeks of planning and getting someone in and specialized technicians and now make a phone call a few hours and it's done. So you see, like already the benefits of you know growing are our infrastructure, and it's enabling us to merge faster with different utilities. >> I want to actually back up now and talk about the journey to Nutanix and talk about life before nutanix and now life after it. What was that what were sort of the problems that you were trying to solve? And why was Nutanix the answer >> So I could speak to that way back in twenty fifteen? We're looking at video, and we're implementing it across organization. And we're running its issues on three tier architecture where whenever there was a performance issue, we would talk to the sand guy and we'LL talk to the server guy and we talked to the networking guy. And although everyone's trying to help everyone sort of looking at each other, saying, Okay, where is this problem? Really, really land? And the issue with that is, as you guys know what VD I I mean, user performance and user experience is key, right? That's King. So you know, when you're trying to take away someone's physical desktop and give him a virtual desktop, they want the same or better performance. And anytime we had an issue, we had to resolve it rapidly. So when we look at everything we said, Okay, this is okay, but it's not sustainable for the scale, ability in the growth that we had, especially because with, you know, ah media environment, its scales very rapidly and If the application scares wrapped scales rapidly, you need the infrastructure to scale as rapidly as your application and perform just as good. So what happened was we looked at nutanix. We said, You know what? If we can look at a single pane of glass to figure out where any performance issues lie, that makes operations much more operations, that management administration much easier for us. And that's really where we started our journey with nutanix. We went from a three note cluster to start and we're up to fourteen nodes now, just in our VD I cluster alone. >> And what about about the future? What? What is the future hold in terms of this partnership, >> I think for us were really hoping to go to fully H V in the next six or twelve months. Uh, I know, James. We're really pushing it and trying to get that in because, you know, way want to simplify our technologies. And I think by moving to a Chevy, I think, you know, we'LL save some money. >> So what we're looking to do with Nutanix isn't you know, there's been a lot of wins for us moving to NUTANIX, especially with regards to support Support's been fantastic. I mean, you know, although we don't like to call support because I mean something's probably wrong way love calling you guys because every time we call support, it's, you know, everyone's always there to help. And I'm not only the support from the support team, but also through our venders or a vendor are counts, you know, I've or who we love way love the whole team because they're there for you to help me. We run into some pretty significant issues. One of the things that happened to us was we had some changing workloads in our media environment. Through no fault of nutanix is you know when when we introduce some additional workloads, we didn't anticipate some of the challenges that would come along with introducing those workloads. And what happened was we filled up our hot storage rather rapidly. Nutanix came in right away because we call them up and said, You know, we're having big performance issues. We need some help and they brought in P E O. C notes to help us get over the hump. They were there for us. I mean, within a week, they got us right back up and running and fully operational and even better performance than we had before. So until we could get our own notes procured and in house, which was fantastic, I've never seen that levels from another organization. So we love the support from Nutanix on DH. Since then, we've grown. So we've actually looked at nutanix for General server computer platform as well. And we're doing Christ Cross hyper visor Support across high provides a replication Sorry from production to D. R. So we're actually running Acropolis. Indy are running GM. Where in production. But has Stephanie alluded to? We're trying to get off of'Em were completely, you know, everyone talks about the attacks. We don't like the V attacks with Phil on a baby anywhere for something that's commodity. And we're looking to repurpose that money so we can look at other things such as you ten exciting way very much. Want to move to the cloud for D R. And that's sort of our direction. >> OK, so you guys have the m we're now, not you Not yet off the anywhere, but you plan to be >> playing to be Yes. >> Okay, So what's it going to look like How long is that gonna take or what is that? We're >> really hoping at the next six to twelve months. So I think we're really gonna push hard at. We've been talking to some people and it seems like it's gonna be a pretty smooth transition, So looking forward to it. And I think our team is really looking for true as well. That's >> one of the challenges right. That the team is really is one of the challenges because we've merged and there's a lot of change going on organization. It's difficult to throw more change at people, right? There's a whole human component, Teo everything that we do. So you know Well, that's why we moved GHB into d. R. To start because we said, You know what, give the operations folks time to look at it, timeto play with it, time to get familiar with it. And then we'LL make the change in production. But like we said, you know, moving over age, he's going to save us a ton of money like a ton of money that we can repurpose elsewhere to really start moving the business forward >> about operations for second. Because one of the things you told earlier is that consolidation? You're leading the project at the VD. I think we're new workloads. There's always gonna be problems. Always speed bumps and hot spots, as they say. But what has changed with the advent of software and Dev ops and automation starts to come into it. How do you see that playing out? Because you tell this is a software company. So you guys knew them when they were five years ago Now, But this is the trend in I t. Operations have clean program ability for the infrastructure. What's your view on that? What's your reaction to that? And you guys getting theirs at the goal >> that is >> like part of our road map. And we're gonna be working with our NUTANIX partners t build a roll map, actually, the next coming few weeks. So because we are emerging all these utilities, we'd love to get automation and orchestration, and we actually have another budget in three years. So it is on our road map. We want to get there right, because we want to have her staff work on business strategy. We don't want their fingers to keyboards. We want them actually working with the business and solution ing and not, you know, changing tapes or working on supporting a system when we don't have to do that anymore. Because now there's so it's so much simpler running any tennis environment. I know James is saying a lot of change for employees. There used to be M where Nutanix is new to a lot of them. I think they're quickly seeing the benefit of managing it because now they get to do things that are a little bit more fun than just managing an environment. >> And this is point cost to repurpose what you're paying for a commodity for free. And if you can repurpose and automata way the manual labor that's boring and repetitive, moving people to a higher value activity. >> Exactly. And we love the message we heard today about being invisible. >> Yeah, I love that >> way, Lovett. I mean, that's essentially we wanted. The business doesn't really care what you're doing behind the scenes, right? They just want their applications to work. They want everything to work seamlessly. So that's what we want to get, too. We want to get to that invisibility where we're moving the business, Ford. We're enabling them through technology, but they don't need to worry about the back end of what's actually going on. >> Stephanie, I want to ask you about both a personal and professional passion of yours, and that is about bringing more women into technology. You are a senior woman in technology, and we know we know the numbers. There is a dearth of female leaders. There is a dearth of underrepresented minorities, particularly in in high level management roles. So I want to hear from you both from a personal standpoint in terms of what your thoughts are on this problem and why, why we have this problem and then also what you, an elector are doing to remedy it. >> Yeah, I think you know, I'm really lucky to work at Electra because we actually have a diversion inclusion committee that I'm part of with a lot of stem organizations. But I think you know, there's all these great programs going on, and but I still don't see enough women in this in this industry, and I think a lot of it stems from you walk into a room, and if you're the only one of you it's really intimidating. So I think we really need to work on making people feel more welcome. You know, getting more women in cedar senior leadership positions and kind of bring them to events like this, gaming them on the Internet. Going to the university is going to the schools and talking to education and talking to, you know, CEOs and seals that don't have sea level women executives and saying, You know, there's a business benefit toe having diversity of all kinds in an organization, you know, you know, strength lies in differences, not in similarities. And I think we can really grow businesses and have that value if we have different types of opinions. And I think there's, you know, statistic shows when you have more diversity, your business is more successful. So I think senior leaders should pay attention and, you know, purposely try to hire more a more diverse workforce >> and what do you have anything to add to that? I mean, I know that it that it's maybe tougher for a man to weigh in on this issue, but at the same time it is one that affects all of us. >> Absolutely. And I think seventy, said it best right when you bring in, you know, multiple bill from different ethnicities from different genders. I mean, it's it's that wealth of knowledge and everyone brings from the different experiences they have in life, and I think that's what you need. You don't want to know the collective all thinking the same way you want the collective that bring the diversity into your organization. And I think you know, when I was in school, we had one woman in my entire computer engineering class, and you know that you wanted to see that change, right? I love to see more of that disease. More women being in the work force, especially within technology. >> I >> think that's Ah, it's fantastic for technology. >> Stephanie, What's your advice for young girls out there? Maybe in high school college, who are having gravitating towards either it's computer science or some sort of stem related field that might be intimidated? >> I think the one important thing you can do is like really rely on your family and friends for encouragement, cause I think sometimes it is gonna be intimidating, you know, For me I'd walk into a course and I was the only female my computer networking class. But I had, like my father, always encouraged me to push me to say, like, Don't ever be intimately. Don't ever be scared and you need a little bit of a fix. Came because for a little bit it is going to be just you in a room. But I think the more you speak up and the more you just kind of push yourself, I think it is going to get better. And I think it's almost kind of cool when you're the only female. Because you feel that pride. I want to do better. I want to do better for all of us to say like we can be. Not just a good, even better. >> Great. So great advice. Yeah. Stephanie James. Thank you both. So much for coming on. Thanks for having us. Pleasure talking, Teo. Thanks. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have so much more of nutanix dot Next coming up in just a little bit

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering the IBM Think 2019, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to the redone Moscone Center here in San Francisco. I'm Stu Miniman with my co-host, Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE's wall to wall coverage of IBM Think 2019. >> Happy to welcome back to the program, a CUBE alumni Stephanie Trunzo, who's the Global Head of IBM Cloud Garage. >> Stephanie, thanks for joining us again. >> Yeah, yeah, great to be here. >> Good to see you. >> So, you're one of the IBM boomerangs. >> So you've worked for IBM before >> Indeed, that's right. and you're back now. So tell us a little about, we've had some interviews about the IBM Cloud Garage but tell us about your role, what you are doing. >> So I was with IBM for 13 years. >> I left and started a company called Point Source. >> We were a business partner and we did a lot of work in mobile and digital transformation and I sold that company and I kind of thought, "Well what's next?" and this opportunity presented itself. >> And it's perfect because the Cloud Garage is taking a new approach to how we interact with our clients from an IBM perspective and a lot of it is very similar to what we did at Point Source which is take this digital transformation, digital agency approach to looking at business outcomes first. >> Yeah, so one of our favorite topics, you know, cause it's a buzzword for a few years but when we talked to companies, I mean it's real. >> A few years back it was like, right, >> I'm doing a mobile app. I'm doing things like that. >> Bring us inside. It's a spectrum and every company is different but tell us what digital transformation means to the costumers that you're working with and how IBM and the Cloud Garage is helping them along that journey >> Yeah >> You know it's funny that you say that. Digital transformation can feel like a buzzword, right? >> And I think it's because there's so many things that are broader than just digital about transformation. So we talk in the Cloud Garage about guided transformation as a way of helping our clients not only think about how do they take Legacy applications, how do they take a new modern approach to their technology? How do they apply digital to processes that they already have in place? >> But also think about culture, new ways of working. >> Those aren't necessarily digital topics but we think about it as a guided transformation approach, meaning, can we teach along the way? >> So we're not just helping our clients see rapid outcomes and develop MVPs but are we helping them also learn along the way? >> So clients are really looking for people to help them, coach them on making decisions, bring expertise to the table so that they also have sustainable frameworks and you know, they're skilling people up in these new modern technologies as well. >> So digital transformation, of course, it is the buzzword of the day but every CEO you talk to is trying to get digital transformation right. >> So, what do you think some of the common ways in which people are pursuing the right path of digital transformation and maybe the question is what's perhaps some of the mistakes that people are making? >> Yeah, yeah, so I think if we think about it from the side of some challenges or mistakes or you know maybe missteps that people have along the way, is probably not spending enough time focusing on users, you know, taking the time to take a real outside-in approach. What is necessary to interact with your clients differently? >> What are the new capabilities that you could be offering? But instead of just daydreaming about all of the cool stuff that technology could do, really grounding it in an understanding of what your users want, what your users need, the data that will help inform those decisions. So I think that that's one misstep, is that people get excited about new technologies and so often it's like a solution looking for a problem and so we try to help make sure that we're really identifying business outcomes and what are the things that they want to test, to learn more so it's real iterative learning. >> And I think something you said is also really important, getting it right. >> What does that mean? >> Getting it right, it's a journey, it's this evolution so I'm not sure you ever hit a stage were you say, "Ah-ha, I've done it." (laughing) But more you can identify milestones where you can learn and apply that learning to keep evolving. >> Yeah. Often when we talk to users, the long pole to tent that transformation is that application portfolio. There's some stuff that can move pretty quick and we've seen that happen in the industry but boy, there's some stuff that I shoved it into VM and I kept it running five or 10 years longer than I should. >> How are companies doing along that line? >> How do we help get, because that's one of the challenges for users is, "Ugh, I have to use this horrible application." >> Yes. >> "That just can't move this at the speed that we need it to." >> Yeah, so when I talk with clients about this, one of the things that we often discuss is that you look backwards at your legacy architectures or your systems, like, core systems that take forever to migrate and often they were architected with time, not intention, right? So one microdecision after another took place over 10, 15, 20 years and your architecture, it reflects that. So I think that Cloud offers this really unique opportunity to look at your architecture going forward with an intentional mindset. So, kind of resetting the clock on all those architectural decisions that have accrued over a time. And I think that one of the aspects of getting people moving, even on the sticky projects, is breaking it down to consumable pieces. So one of the things we do in the Cloud Garage is help our clients figure out how to identify an actionable MVP. A minimum viable product that we can show quick success against. They've got a hypothesis they need to test. Let's just take one application, let's take one work load, and let's move that and see what happens. So we're going to do that learning, we're going to test that hypothesis and that starts you down a path that's a little quicker. >> How do I engage with the IBM Cloud Garage? >> If I'm interested, how do I get started? Is it a set of services? How does it all work? >> Yes, so we have 15 locations globally so they're built for purpose, built for activity spaces around the world. You can come into one of those spaces and we can do a tour, we can do a framing workshop which helps identify business opportunities, that first piece, the first step in the journey and get you moving really quickly. >> We also will do a couple different kinds of models if one of those locations doesn't work for a client or isn't a good geographical location. We'll also do pop-up Garages where we'll go to the client and work directly onsite with them. >> We've heard a lot about how Cloud fits into a lot of the digital transformation? >> What I haven't heard as much, but I would expect IBM is doing is how AI fits into that activity. >> Absolutely. Yeah, so in fact, I kind of lump that all together, to be honest, because part of the journey is identifying, again, if you're starting from business outcomes, you're working back to the technology solution so maybe the objective is to, you're in insurance industry and you need to develop policy quotes quicker. In order to develop that solution, that might necessarily involve us figuring out how to not only get their core systems to clouds so that they can extract data faster but also get more intelligent about underwriting processes so they can get quotes out quickly. So all of those technologies come into our process almost as a subplot to the business outcome that we're trying to drive for our clients. >> How much do you get involved in helping with the data strategy specifically? I mean, we think of the innovation sandwich that is data plus machine intelligence plus Cloud for scale, how involved are you in the data strategy? >> Is that part of the initiative? >> Absolutely. In fact, I think there's a really great symbiotic relationship and we see this pattern really often where clients will come to us because they want to do some application modernization as a starting point. >> As soon as we get into that conversation, you realize you actually need to modernize your data strategy as well. So there's a cyclical relationship and either entry point ends up involving the other, so if you're modernizing your data, what are you doing with it? You're probably surfacing it in an application, now we're back into an application discussion again. So we do definitely get involved in that and in fact, we have several offerings that are specifically geared towards data and analytics. >> Stephanie, about how long is a typical engagement? >> Is there an ending point or are there follow-ups that you have to make sure you're tweaking ... >> It never ends. It never ends. Yeah. (laughing) >> So, a typical engagement is we would start with the framing workshop I mentioned to identify the business opportunity. Design thinking workshop to take that business opportunity. Take all these great big ideas that people come up with and funnel it into something that's actionable. >> So take all the big ideas then and turn it into the one that we're going to pursue. >> And then an MVP workshop where we co-create with the client so we're teaching those skills, pair programming and working directly with them and a product owner to develop an MVP, test that hypothesis. And at the end, sometimes the MVP is something that is ready to roll in to production. >> Sometimes the MVP is something that leads to a learning that produces a second MVP. >> A typical engagement, end to end, for us, is probably around three months to get that first MVP and that's a pretty rapid pace to go the whole way from, and sometimes it's just as short as three weeks. So it just depends on the scope. But to go the whole way from identifying an opportunity and to testing it and having a real results, it's pretty fast. >> Are there specific KPI's that the customer can usually have coming out of that? >> Three months. That's a great window. >> You used to think about these engagements that used to roll out. >> Three years! >> It used to be more. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah, so we do look at... >> It really depends on what it is that they're trying to achieve. But we do define success criteria upfront. Those success criteria then are the things that we're testing as part of the MVP process. And so at the end, you will have actionable results. You'll have information that you've learned from as a result of developing that MVP. >> Sometimes it's something like understanding whether certain security protocols internally can be met with moving a workload in a certain way. Sometimes it's actually about user conversion. So it could be a marketing goal. >> It really depends on what they're trying to achieve. >> Where do you want to see this go? I mean, obviously, you're riding the waves. Digital transformation, AI, data. Where do you see this going over the next two to five years? >> Yeah. So I think some of the fascinating things that we've been doing and the Garage is a great place because so much innovation is happening there. Our clients are kind of testing boundaries. So we get to see a lot of the pretty far, out-there things. >> We've had projects with blockchain tracking fish in streams like a farm to table scenario but marry that with Watson image recognition so we can tell what the fish is and digitally imprint an ID on it. The sky's the limit on the kinds of things that we can come up with and build an MVP for. But I think some of the stuff that I would see in the next few years is really more around what I'll say ambient computing. We're adding additional senses, it's no longer just sight. Now we have so much voice. >> There's all of these other ways that we are interacting in context. >> And so I think we're going to keep exploring this kind of ambient notion of the things that are going on around us, whether that's data, artificial intelligence, and forming things, and then incorporating that into how technology interacts with consumers, users, et cetera. >> You're really taking the notion of digital transformation to the next level. >> That's right. >> Say, sensing. >> Exactly. >> Acting on behalf of the brand. >> That's right. >> Injecting intelligence layer- >> You got it. >> Into that all. >> Exactly. >> Nice. >> Yeah. >> Alright. Stephanie, there's tons of users here at the show. Are there customer stories that people get to hear throughout the week? >> What highlights? >> Yeah, definitely. So, we really are big on storytelling because it's the easiest way to understand these things. Some of these technologies are difficult, you know. They're intense concepts. >> So we have a lot of our clients come and share their stories onstage. There's a keynote on Thursday where we're talking about how to take an idea to MVP and we've got several clients joining us to talk about the Cloud Garage and how we actually impacted their business so, yeah. >> Alright. Well, Stephanie, we really appreciate all the updates on IBM Cloud Garage. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Congratulations. >> Thanks for having me back! Five years. Great. >> Alright. Well, we always love to tell the stories of what's happening at all the big shows. Help extract the signal from the noise. From Dave Vallente, I'm Stu Miniman. >> We'll be right back. Thanks for watching theCube.