(bright, upbeat music) >> Hello, brilliant humans and welcome to this special programming on theCUBE featuring Women of the Cloud, brought to you by AWS. My name is Savannah Peterson, and I am very excited to be joined by a brilliant woman both in supply chain as well as digital transformation. Please welcome Jeanette Barlow, VP of Product at Instacart. Jeanette, thank you so much for joining us from Boston today. How you doing? >> Thank you. I'm doing well, thank you. And thank you to the Amazon team for letting me join you. I'm excited to participate in this. I think it's such an important topic to learn all about how as women we're helping shape the future of business, supply chain, consumer experiences. So thank you very much. >> That's fantastic to have you and to be really celebrating women of the cloud properly. To start us off, how long, let's just, let's run with this. How long have you been a woman of the cloud? (Jeanette and Savannah laugh) >> Oh, probably since there, before there was a cloud, actually I have spent my entire career in enterprise technology and I spent nearly 25 years actually with IBM. And, you know, I remember when the internet really took off as far as a highly accessible thing and then the very beginnings of e-commerce where it was really the wild west and it was such a different experience than you get now. And I've been very fortunate throughout that journey to have a variety of roles from sales, marketing, communications. I eventually landed in product management and that's pretty much where I stayed. >> Savannah: At least for now. >> At least for now. >> Sounds like you're very curious. I can tell that you are a very curious person. Since you've been around for what I would consider a, an impressive period of time in an industry, especially when there were not a ton of women to reference or receive mentorship from, what was the initial catalyst or spark or inspiration for you to pursue a career in technology? >> I'll be really honest, getting out of college with college debt, money. (Savannah laughs) The best salary, I'm not going to sugarcoat that but once I landed there, it just was so amazing how technological advance advances were fundamentally changing the way businesses would work or how humans could get things done. And that whole, my whole career trajectory has been very much working at the forefront of new areas whether that be collaboration, software or supply chain which is, obviously we're all well aware, such a deep and important area and even low-code workflow automation before I came to Instacart. >> I love the transparency there. It's a indicator of a great leader and that level of authenticity. Were there any hurdles that you felt you had to overcome in the beginning or was the curiosity enough to power through the initial first few years that are always tough for anyone, no matter their gender or career? >> I think I was a very fortunate person. I do want to say that, sure, there are a lot of long hours and I often felt that I had to be more prepared, maybe than some of my colleagues that were men back, way back in the day. But I had the very good fortune of working for companies throughout my history that really believed in an equitable and respectful workplace. And I had wonderful mentors, both women and men, along the way who really were there to help develop talent. So I never felt that I had sort of a glass ceiling. I definitely felt that I had to to sit there and assert a point of view, at times. >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> But, I've seen this whole industry and space change and it's not just gender, but also racial backgrounds educational backgrounds, that neurodiversity I'm now seeing much greater respect for listening to that chorus of voices because we do get better, much better outcomes that way. >> Absolutely. I couldn't agree more and I'm happy to hear that you've been supported along your journey. I think the industry can definitely get a bad rap and there are a lot of people paving the way for us. I want to talk a little bit about supply chain because I don't know about you, but for me I don't think there were as many people talking about the industry and probably what you do, say four years ago, as are now. How did you find your way into supply chain and what is it about helping that be more efficient that excites you? >> Yes. There's nothing like a shortage of toilet paper to get people to. (Savannah laughs) Or to understand what supply chain means. And I, as tough as those times were, especially at the beginning of the pandemic and the uncertainty, it was so exciting for those of us in supply chain because suddenly people got what we did like- >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> And they were interested in hearing about it. So I really, I really have, we did enjoy that. I got exposed to that because ultimately I served as the Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for IBM, Sterling Supply Chain which was a very large brand within the IBM portfolio, serving over 10,000 clients worldwide, really focused on their omnichannel order management and their other supply chain processes around order to cash, procure to pay, logistics and things like that. And when you start to learn about the intricacies and that choreography needed across so many players in the value chain, it's an absolutely fascinating puzzle. And- >> Savannah: Yeah. >> Often the further away from the consumer experience you got, the more analog it became. And so the opportunity to start to digitize and transform that was really something that was very, very intriguing. And now here at Instacart, the opportunity to sort of parlay that into one of probably the most complex supply chains that there are, grocery, food just adds another level- >> Yeah. >> Of excitement intrigue to the work. >> I can only imagine there are, I'm just thinking about it right now. I'm not sure there are many supply chains, if any that touch as many lives as food does, as, I mean so is that what brought you, you joined Instacart relatively recently if I'm not mistaken, within the last year. Is that what brought you to them? Was the complexity of that global challenge? >> Absolutely. That was definitely the start of it, was so intriguing to me to see, to, the more I learned about Instacart when they approached me was also they're really changing an industry that's been very static for many, many years, right? And they're fundamentally reshaping that industry. One that's, as you said, is crucial to the everyday lives of pretty much everyone. And I was intrigued by that. But I was also intrigued by the breadth at which they're approaching this, not just the marketplace, but how we are helping retailers through our Instacart platform actually reach their consumers in ways that they like to shop whether it's online or in the store. We are also very, very committed to not just serving from a convenience standpoint, but actually improving access to healthy and nutritious food for as many people as might need that. So it just, core to the complexity of the problem the criticality of it, but also just frankly speaking to the core of who Instacart is as a company, I, it just felt like it was like a culmination of a lot of things to have this opportunity to work here. >> Sounds like a fantastic opportunity. I want to dive a little bit deeper into the technology side there. How is Instacart's technology helping grocers with varying levels of scale and geographical challenges and I'm sure a variety of other things and even a digital skillset. How are you helping them navigate their digital transformation? >> You know, this is probably one of the sectors that lags behind other retail sectors as far as digital transformation. And when the progress that's been made over the last four years is tremendous. And the road ahead is still before us is still a long way to go. I mean Instacart built the world's largest grocery marketplace, if you want to think about that. And so we have more than 10 years of experience in understanding the complexity of that. With, again a supply chain that is very, very complex. So last spring we announced the Instacart platform as a way of really putting a name to a lot of work we were already doing. And it's all about opening up the capability and the technology that we have to help grocers reach their customers directly as well as through our marketplace. So we help grocers like Publix, Wegmans, The Fresh Market just hundreds of grocers build out their own storefronts, their own mobile apps and that we are actually powering for them. We help them create some very unique fulfillment models that might serve customers or be new market opportunities. Certainly we have the traditional full service shop, but we also have virtual convenience that can enable delivery in minutes. And in certain geographies and demographics, that's, you know, really important. We are even going in the store with our connected stores technologies that we announced earlier this year, and that is everything from smart cards to scan and pay to wayfinding that it just, it's a lot of very interesting work we're doing and we're very, very fortunate to be able to partner with some of the best and brightest grocery retailers out there as well as retailers and other verticals as well. But grocery store is sort of our core. >> Yeah, I can only imagine some of the conversations that you have and the user behaviors that you get to learn about as people are on their food journey. You teased a little bit there about what's coming next. What else do you think is in our food future? >> Well, I think, you know, the pandemic pushed the grocery industry to get online to start to digitally transform itself, but we believe it's not an either or. There are virtually no one that's exclusively online and we know more and more there's no one that's exclusively you know, only in the store. We really expect to have that blend and I think as long as we're very, very savvy about understanding the, our retailers' needs as well as their customers' needs on how they can really traverse seamlessly between whether they're online or in store, how they can have an engaging experience that's consistent to the brand of the retailer. >> Savannah: Mm-Hm. >> How they can be rewarded for their loyalty. How they can be encouraged to try new things and just have a much more engaging experience with that grocer because food is a very emotional sort of buy, right? I mean, it's a very sensory rich. And so how- >> Sort of? I think you can go ahead and just make that claim. Just for a lot of people, yeah, yeah. We'll endorse that. >> You're right, yeah, it is. Right, we're passionate about our brand of this or that or we want to touch or smell or do things like that. So there's a tremendous amount of innovation you get online, like personalization and other things that you don't get when you get, you walk into the store, everybody's got the same end cap like I see the same end cap as you see and we might be very different. And then vice versa. I get a very much a sensory experience when I'm in the store, right? That I don't have, how do we blend that? And so there's some really interesting things that we're working on with our retail partners to embrace that omnichannel approach. So we create that flywheel of experience and innovation between the two. So I think you're going to see a lot more focus on an omnichannel experience that traverses between the on and the in, online and the in-store. >> Yeah, I, so I love this because you know, we, there's a continued debate around remote and in-person, working remote and in-person events, but it sounds like hybrid is here to stay when it comes to food and and how we eat, which is very exciting. Last question for you, Jeanette. What would you say to someone, a woman of any age who is looking at this video or maybe dreaming about a career in cloud technology? What's your moment of inspiration? >> You know, I think my best advice is all, you know, stay curious. Just be in love with not even just the technology for technology's sake, but what the technology can unlock as far as an experience and focus on building those experiences. Not only for your direct customer in my case, retailers, grocers, but for their customer. Trying to understand that. And I think if you can connect those dots, you know the cloud is the limit, let's put it that way. (Jeanette and Savannah laugh) >> I'll take it upon that. I love that. Jeanette Barlow, thank you so much for joining us. The team at Instacart is lucky to have you. And thank you to our audience for joining us for this special program on theCUBE featuring Women of the Cloud. My name is Savannah Peterson and I look forward to celebrating more brilliant women like Jeanette with you all soon. (upbeat, happy music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Madrid, Spain it's The Cube, covering HPE Discover Madrid 2017. Brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Welcome back to Madrid, everyone. This is The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here, this is Day Two of of HPE Discover 2017. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host for the week Peter Burris. Ana Pinczuk is here, she's the Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Pointnext Group. >> That's right, that's right. >> Welcome back to The Cube. >> Glad to be here. >> Many time Cube alum. >> That's right, that's right. >> Pre-HPE and second time since, when did you start, in February? >> Yes, I know it's been nine months, I'm a veteran. >> You're a vet, right. (laughs) How's the gig going, you hitting your groove swing? >> Yes. >> Dave: Looked great up on stage yesterday. >> Thank you so much, yeah I appreciate it. Yeah I think we are, I came on board in February and it's been a run ever since. We launched a brand in February, so that's when I think when we sort of talked last. And then since then, we've just launched another brand which is HPE GreenLake for flexible consumption model stuff. And we've been doing a lot of great things, we've been doing partnerships with folks, I've been going out to each one of the regions talking to different customers, it's been going really well. >> Well so Pointnext has become a linchpin of HPE strategy. After the spin-merges, things became more clear when you talk about making hybrid IT simple, getting to the intelligent edge, services is now front and center. Meg talks about it, Antonio talks about it. >> That's right. >> Why is services so important and how do you see that scaling in the organization? >> So first of all, I definitely believe the world is turning to be a services-led world and I tell folks that it's really two things, it's services-led and then advisory-led, really advisory. And particularly because our customers want to really undergo these new digital journeys. I was just on stage talking to one of our customers, the Tottenham Hotspurs, and they're redoing their whole stadium and they're trying to increase the interaction and the engagement that they have with fans. So that's where services come in, and so we're really services-led that way and the second thing that's a phenomenon is really the cloud has really helped us learn to want everything instantaneously and to want things when we need them and when we think we need them. And so a lot of services is really about enabling those experiences in a consumption model. So that's the transformation I think that HPE is going through right now, just being a product company, but really moving to being services-led to deliver these digital experiences. >> Well one of the things that we've observed over the years, as folks who work with customers in thinking about their technology, is that there's a co-mingling, a bringing together of the idea of invention. And one of the things that's most attractive to me about a services-led, or acknowledging the role of services, is it really, innovation, is a two-part process. There's an invention, which is the engineering element, and enters the innovation, which is the social, the change. And one of the beauties of taking a services as opposed to a product approach, is that you end up focusing on the social change. >> That's right. >> You end up focusing on what does it mean to use this, apply it, make it happen, and it accelerates the innovation process. I'm wondering if by having a more services-approach, HP's able to look at this significant new range of problems you're going to try to address, but address them as a social innovation challenge as opposed to just getting product into market. >> Yeah, no and that's absolutely right. I'll give you another cool example, we have a customer Yoox Net-A-Porter, and they're a digital sort of online experience provider. They support brands like all of the expensive luxury brands that we know and love. And they're trying to help stores innovate, so let's say you're Prada or Marni or Louis Vuitton, they're helping provide a social experience to their luxury brand consumer. And being able to do that, not just mirroring what you would get in a store, but really innovating in how do you engage with that kind of a consumer online. And so for example, they allow you to shop online but then they'll bring the product to you, it'll be all wrapped really nice, they wait for you to try it on to make sure it's okay. So that's an example of social innovation, not just thinking about how to provide product to enable a website, but how do you actually then help a customer innovate in that whole engagement model? >> It's innovation that is made possible by a whole lot of technology combined with simple ways of introduce change, not just to consumers, but also the people who are ultimately responsible for providing that service. >> Ana: That's right, that's right, that's exactly right. >> Peter: Is that one of the basis then for thinking about Pointnext? >> It is, yeah, it is because people ask me, you know we've always done services and a lot of our services were product-attached services, you do support services, operational services, data center care, those sorts of things. And then we decided to sort of launch Pointnext, and the idea is that this is more than just what we've traditionally done as product-attached. This is really coming at it from a completely different angle, which is recognizing that there is an element of social and management of change that comes through digital. And that's why we talk about advisory-led. Part of that advisory-led is really helping companies figure out what is that new phenomenon, how do I actually shift the experience that I want to enable and how do I bring social innovation with a set of partners, too, because experiences really require us to work not just with our own products, but with software providers, with inside and others. >> Peter: And your customer's partners too. >> And our customer's partners as well, I mean who the customer is is shifting as we put this together. I'll give you an example, when we work with automotive companies, we've gotta think not just about, let's say, the car company and their connected car, but we also have to think about how the consumer of the car is going to interact with the IT environment in the car. >> How the dealers are going to sell it, >> Ana: And how the dealers are gonna sell it. >> how they're gonna make money, the whole thing. >> How they're gonna do predictive maintenance on it >> Exactly. >> So you start to think not just about one experience, but all the elements that come from that single experience. >> Well we just had Deloitte on talking about retail experiences and transforming brick and mortar stores, so that's a key part of it. So partnerships is also something critical, 'cause you can't do everything. >> Ana: That's right. >> So I want to come back to some of the invention piece. When you were up on stage talking about flexible consumption models, you know, cloud, when we went into the downturn it was kinda a tap on the shoulder. Coming out of the downturn it became a kick in the butt to a lot of tradtional IT players. So you've had to respond to that. And you have, flexible consumption models, pay-as-you-go models. So I started to make a list because we've been talking all week about two ends of the spectrum. We've got here at HPE Discover, AWS re:Invent's going on this week, completely different philosophies about what customers want and how to serve those customers. And so you've got to a great degree mimic the cloud experience. And you can't do it 100%. At the same time, the cloud can't mimic what you guys can do. So I kinda wanted to go through a list and think about where have you closed those gaps, where do you still have advantages for customers. So things like pay-as-you-go, flexible capacity, you've done a lot of work there. Can you give us the update on that and how big is that gap when you talk to customers? >> So first of all, it's interesting because when some of our competitors talk about pay-as-you-go, they start by talking about just a leasing arrangement. They say "Okay, it's a lease." And this is far beyond a lease. I think I can eliminate quite a few of our competitors, (laughs) not cloud competitors, just by saying we've gone beyond that, right. And we provide a full service. So it's the hardware, the software, the data center care, the operational management. And then we turn that service into a pay-as-you-go model. So that's the first sort of innovation and differentiation. And we do that on-prem or in a hosted environment, that's the first thing. The second thing is that part of what we do is we help to manage that environment for the customer. So in a flexible capacity model, we over-provision in a sense and we have a buffer and we understand where the customer's going, how much their utilization is, and then we automatically sort of manage that whole thing for them, up or down depending on what happens. I think the third thing, which is part of the innovation, which is a little different, is we also do the integration of other technologies into the offer. So yesterday I was talking about private backup as a service. There we've got the hardware, the software, it could be Commvault let's say backup software, all the management associated with that, including the support that you need for that, offered in an outcome-based service. So what we're doing there is we're also innovating in the metering, what we're saying is we're going to really provide you an outcome, and that outcome is a successful backup. So you don't actually have to worry about the equipment, you don't have to worry about is it infrastructure-as-a-service? You know, AWS, whatever, we're actually providing a full solution in an outcome-based. And I think that's a little bit of what differentiates us from maybe some of the solutions that are out there, from others. That said, I view this as providing the right mix to our customers, so although, yes, you can say that we're competing with the public cloud, because customers have choice, at the same time part of what we're trying to do also is bring those two together, which I think is unique for us. >> Makes more same philosophy, different approaches. >> Different approaches, and by the way, if you're customer-centric, then what you wanna do is provide customer choice and do the right thing for the customer, and to say where does it make sense to be on the public cloud, or in a private environment, and optimize for the customer benefits that you're going after. >> Well I think it's fair to say that the world has learned a lot from what AWS has done, and said "Hey, we can take that "and we can apply it to our customers' businesses "on-prem or in a hybrid environment." >> And by the way, AWS, especially with our CTP acquisition, they've been a long-term AWS partner and we're having conversations with AWS that say okay, if we're going to really focus on customers, and we're really customer-centric, then how do we work together? Not just AWS, but Microsoft and Google and others, how do we work together and look at where we can optimize our solutions to be able to do the right thing for the customer. >> So our clients are sick and tired of hearing me say this, or us say this, but we believe that where we're going is the cloud experience for your data demands. >> That's right. >> So the way we think about it and I'm wondering if you would agree, is that the first conversation we have with a customer is what's the outcome, what data is required to serve that outcome, how're you gonna package it up as a workload, and where do you naturally need to run that based on latency, other types of issues. Is that kind of how Pointnext is working with customers as well? >> Yeah absolutely right, so we wanna come in, customer in, so you wanna be able to say "What is it that you're trying to do from an outcome?" I described a backup outcome, another outcome might be I'm trying to accelerate my ability to roll out new agile solutions, or microservices-based applications. So we have that conversation with a customer, we then say okay, for that kind of workload, what are you requirements? What are you trying to do? We might also come in and actually, 'cause sometimes what people think they do and what they actually do in their environment is different. So we can come in and say okay, let me actually measure what you're doing and see what you're doing and then bring that information back to them. And then have a conversation about what to do with your workload and what makes sense. So I think it's a very close engagement with the customer, it's based on real data about what the customer's trying to do. And frankly that was one of the reasons that we made the CTP acquisition, as well, because it started to complement our portfolio. A lot of the capabilities that we had were very robust, in particular around private cloud, but just having the public cloud angle there and sort of strengthening that piece was super important to be able to have that conversation and truly enable the right mix. >> Well now that brings up the topic of multi-cloud, which kinda, to use a sports analogy, it's jump ball. It's kind of a free-for-all, everybody wants that business. I guess with the exception of some of the big cloud guys aren't interested. But certainly, Hewlett-Packard >> Peter: Well don't believe it, want to avoid it. >> Yeah well, but that's the reality is there's gonna be multiple clouds, we know this. Particularly with SaaS. So a company like Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, obviously has to play in that space. So I wonder if you could talk about the strategy there, why you feel confident that HPE is in a good position. >> Yeah well a couple things, first of all I think it's really good to be, we're somewhat independent, we're not totally independent because we've got a whole set of products, but we're somewhat independent in the sense that if we wanna be truly hybrid and enable other public and private solutions, we wanna be able to give customers choice in terms of the public domains that they can work with. And so we're sort of in a great position as a large provider and with the relations that we have in the enterprise in particular, with our customer base, to be a little bit of Switzerland and be able to say, okay, let's have that conversation about the right mix and enable these multi-cloud solutions, that's the first thing. The second thing is we have relationships and great partnerships with many of these providers. So take Microsoft, we've got an Azure relationship, an Azure stack opportunity, so we've got the ability and by the way, we do many of their applications as well. So we've got the ability to help have that conversation with our customers to say okay, do you wanna be on-prem or do you wanna be in the cloud? Even with one provider, and to do that, and so we have the opportunity to provide robust solutions even with one private and public provider. And on top of that, we've got a consultancy with our professional services. We wanna be responsive to our customers, we've got now HPE OneSphere. And with HPE OneSphere we can be data-driven and actually provide our customers a view of their environment and help to be a little bit of that Switzerland to say look, here's what would be best for you and help to have workload mobility together with OneSphere. So I think we're well-positioned, I tend to call it my stairway to Heaven. In a sense we start out at the bottom talking about infrastructure and support, and we've got great relationships there with our customers. If I launch the flexible capacity offers, we're starting to deliver outcome-based solutions. When I bring in CTP, we'd go up the stack and we now provide advisory and the consumption solutions. And with OneSphere now you go up the stacks just a little bit more and say not only are we gonna advise you and provide you those executables with consumption models, but we now have capabilities that allow you to sort of optimally choose what's the right thing for you. So I think we're well-positioned, by the way, with CTP we've got sort of a managed, sort of cloud sort of capability as well. We manage compliance and other elements. So we're able to have in our portfolio sort of value-added services above and beyond that help with multi-cloud and making sure that customers can be compliant, secure, and have the right experience on a multi-cloud environment. >> Yeah I think a lot of people that don't know CTP don't understand how deep their expertise is. They're only a few hundred people, if that. But they're rockstars. >> They're over 200 people. >> Serious thought leaders with real deep connections. I've gotta change subjects to the last topic area. As you know, The Cube from day one has always been a fan of having women on, and promoting women in tech. We first met you at the Anita Borg Institute of the Grace Hopper Conference. Meg Whitman is obviously a woman leader in tech and she's leaving HP. We've got Meg and we've got Ginni. And Ginni's coming to the end, I don't know, she's getting to the age where typically IBM retires its CEOs. You've got two prominent women in tech now leaving. Now maybe IMB will replace Ginni with a woman. HPE has chosen Antonio, great choice. But your thoughts on a leader like Meg, obviously has done some great work. But we're losing one. >> I know, and so >> How do you feel about that? >> I mean, you know, I'm very conflicted if I've gotta be honest. One one hand, as I joined HPE I had never worked for a female CEO so I've really enjoyed watching. You know it's always great to have mentors and to have people that are advocating for women, so I really enjoyed being part of Meg's organization, I'm really sorry to see her go. And she's an icon as well, so she does a lot, in fact this afternoon we're gonna be doing a session for women just here at the conference. So very sad to see her go, at the same time I think we as women, and men by the way, have a responsibility to build the next generation of leaders. And I think that's where I focus my energy and I know that I'm gonna be sort of a high profile female in the HPE environment so I feel that sense of responsibility, not just within HPE, but within the industry, to help to cultivate an environment that takes advantage of half of the population and enables innovation through them as well. So I think we've gotta get more women up there. I think part of it is really bringing up the next generation and frankly this next generation, they don't have tolerance for waiting for things, whatever, and they feel like they're super entitled to have the right and the choice >> Peter: They are. >> And they are, right. But that seems like an easy thing to say, but in some sense we come from a generation, many women as well, which have had challenges especially in the tech world, in terms of really breaking that glass ceiling. And I think we've got some amazing women and some amazing leaders as well. I'm part of the Anita Borg Board of Trustees as well, and we were at Grace Hopper and we had Debbie Sterling, some really great women that are coming up the ranks that are CEOs, that are CTOs, that are really leading the way and so I'm very hopeful that the conversation, by the way, about women in tech is really prominent right now. And that I think it'll open up opportunities for women to shine going forward and I think that should happen for HPE as well. In fact right now its me and then Archie Deskus is the CIO for HPE. So we're trying to do our part to sort of make sure that there's other women in leadership as well. >> Well you're a great example of a current and future leader. >> Thank you so much. >> Really appreciate you coming onto The Cube, Ana. >> I appreciate it, thank you. >> Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, great to see you, thank you so much. >> Alright keep it right there everyone. This is The Cube, we're live from HPE Discover Madrid, we'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Grace Hopper's Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Rory Budnick. She is the engineering manager at Procore. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit more about Procore. >> Sure, so, we make cloud-based construction project management software. So what that means is everything in your construction project can be stored in Procore, everything from the budget for the project, to the drawings that your subcontractors need to see on the job site. >> And so these are two, it's mixing construction and engineering, two very male dominated fields all in one. So, talk a little bit about what your experience at Procore has been so far in your career. >> Sure, so, I joined Procore when there were 150 people, which was a little over three years ago, and now there are over 1000, we're in international markets, it's a whole different ballgame. It's been an awesome experience. I feel like I've gotten to grow with the company. I started out as an individual contributor and now I'm a manager. I've been involved in a lot of hiring at Procore, and so, we talk about two things here at Grace Hopper, in terms of getting more women in tech, more female software engineers. One of those is the pipeline, and two being retention. So, in terms of the pipeline, being in hiring is important, right? Being here, having a Procore booth, making sure that we are having our recruiters talk to female software engineers in the first place. And, in terms of retention, Procore has been just a really supportive place to work. I mean, me being here is a testament to that, but things like unlimited time off. >> Unlimited time off? >> Yeah, it's one of the many perks. I mean, it's just a comfortable office space, where we're making diversity a priority, and realizing that our employees need to be happy to get the best work done. It's definitely the most supportive company I've ever worked at in that respect. >> Now, research shows that women engineers really go into this field because they like to solve real world problems. So, can you talk a little bit about the kind of technology challenges that engineers face at Procore? >> Sure, that's one of the things I love about Procore is that we work on really tangible problems, so you see the payoff, you hear it directly from the customers. So, like, I work on the Drawings team. Drawings is one of our flagship tools. People upload all their drawings for a project, and we make sure that people are always working off the current set, which is really important, so that you don't have to do any rework, and you stay on budget and on time. >> And these are the headaches of any major home project too, is the fact that the timeline always slips and the budget always balloons. >> Yes, whether it's a home project or it's La Guardia Airport, which is one of the projects that's in Procore, it's the same problems. So, we get to work on things like making sure that clients are working off of that current set. What's the best way to do that? We hear their real world problems, like different ways to keep track of drawing revisions, and we make sure we adjust for whatever their method is of doing that. The biggest thing that we're working on right now, technically, is scaling, which is an exciting problem. We're working a lot on performance. We have about two million users, so it's sort of like the best problem to have where we have such high demand that now we need to meet it. So, a lot of the real world problems that we're solving, we have pretty solid solutions in place, we just need to scale to meet that demand. >> And as you said, the company is growing so much, so how are you making sure that it stays and remains that comfortable place to work as it gets bigger? >> That has been very interesting to watch. It's just been a great professional development experience for me, as a growing manager. And I think that the key thing we're doing is, in hiring, we look for three qualities, and they are ownership, optimism, and openness. They all start with Os, so it's easy to remember. But we really do look for those qualities in people, and find people that, you know, demonstrate that ownership, want to run with a project, feel like they're showing, that they put their self-worth in the project, and so they're willing to go the extra mile. In terms of optimism, doing well with change. I mean, growing that quickly, we're looking for people who work well with change, are excited about our growth. >> Rebecca: Are adaptable. >> Exactly, and then-- >> Rebecca: Openness. >> Openness, yeah, I almost forgot the last one. Openness, for me, where I see that the most at Procore is just communication from the executives. No matter who you are, you could go up to one of them and start a conversation, and they make a point of doing, you know, all hands meetings where they're communicating what the top company priorities are, what our investors are saying, things that you wouldn't think that an individual contributor would even be aware of. They lay it all out there. >> So, I mean, it sounds great, the idea that the lowest person on the totem pole can go up to a senior manager and give her input on a new idea, or pitch something. How does it really work, though? I mean, how do you empower that junior employee? >> I mean, I think a lot of that's individual management, but an example I can think of, in terms of empowering individuals' ideas at Procore is we just started a diversity and inclusion council as part of our efforts to kind of begin tackling the problem of increasing the number of women in tech. So, that means that 20 employees are meeting, they're funded by the company, and they get to figure out their takeaways, figure out their initiatives, and that's fully supported by the executives. >> Great, great, great. So, here you are at Grace Hopper. This is your second Grace Hopper. What is your takeaway from this conference? How would you describe the energy? >> It's incredibly inspiring. It's like being in a bubble for a few days. You know, it makes me want to extend that out into the real world. Melinda Gates yesterday was amazing, Debbie Sterling this morning. >> Rebecca: Who's the founder of GoldieBlox. >> Yeah, it's just, it just reminds me of that saying, you can't be what you can't see, and this is the opportunity for people to see. Procore sent about 30 women, and this is showing them, here are these women in leadership, here are women who have had really long careers in tech, so it's possible for you too. >> And, you know, you're not one of the new entrants to this field. You're already having a successful career, but you're also not a veteran. What keeps you going, even in spite of the Google manifesto, and the headlines that we read about the bleak numbers of women in leadership roles? >> I mean, I would be lying if I said those things didn't hurt, and it's really a mind game, where you have to sort of self-manage, and believe in yourself despite what other people are saying, not give people's opinions power over what your abilities actually are. >> And what's your advice to the young women here at Grace Hopper, who maybe it's their first time being here? >> I mean, my advice for actually attending the conference would be just make the most of it. >> Rebecca: And how does one make the most of it? I mean, it is big, it's overwhelming, 18000 people. >> Yeah, it definitely is. I think, for me, I'm a big note taker. I write down those big takeaways and I revisit them. So, you know, in six months, when another one of these articles comes out with negative news about women in tech, I can revisit that and kind of feel bolstered by that. >> Rebecca: Are you hopeful that things are changing? >> Yes, I am hopeful-- >> And you're on the ground floor here. I mean, you're one of the women fighting the good fight every day. >> That's nice to hear, and I think, you know, last year's Grace Hopper, there were 13000 people, this year there's 18000. Things are trending in the right direction. For me, I think that pipeline problem is something I think about a lot, and getting young girls interested in technology. For me, I didn't start coding until I was done with college, so it's important to me that people are aware of the possibilities at a young age. >> Well, Rory, thanks so much for joining us. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. >> Yeah, great talking to you too. >> Thank you. We will have more from the Grace Hopper Conference, just after this.

>> Narrator: It's theCUBE, covering Sapphire Now 2017. Brought to you by SAP Cloud platform and HANA Enterprise Cloud. >> Welcome, this is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier. Special Sapphire Now 2017 coverage here in theCUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier and I'm with Frank Pulambo with Cisco, on my left Margaret Anderson with SAP and Gary Gauba with CenturyLink. Some significant news announcing, in conjunction with Sapphire is the relationship between you guys around a significant cloud and cloud computing deal. Margaret, congratulations. This is significant because customers want more flexibility. They want to have a cloud native, they want to have the flexibility of a data center. Frank, talk about the deal from a Cisco perspective and the relationship to the context of this deal. >> John, we're super excited to be part of it, and especially with CenturyLink and a vendor like SAP. Really, our role in it is to help our customers run on print, run in the cloud and really our infrastructure products need to provide the simplicity to performance and the security for them to do that. >> Margaret, talk about the deal specifics. What does the deal entail? >> Well, it's a unique deal, because CenturyLink was already on of our partners for the HANA Enterprise cloud business. Then when the Cisco team came along and said, "You know what? "If we put our gear into the CenturyLink data centers "and power the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, "that would be a tremendous win for everybody." And so, we're very excited about that. >> Gary, I find this deal interesting because you have the engine of the SAP, you have the network and all the benefits that Cisco brings to the table. You're dealing with the implementation and manage to serve the customers. What's the important takeaway from this announcement? >> To me, I think if you take a step back, as we're siting down with some of the top SAP execs, and Chuck from Cisco and our CEO, Glen Post. We're talking, "Okay, how do we leverage "our joint assets together? "How do we create more value for our customers?" If you look at today, every customer the number one priority is digital transformation. The cloud obviously is part of that equation, right. The other bigger priority is, "Okay, how do I monetize this data "in this new connected world?" You're looking at 1.8 trillion connected objects by the year 2020, which will be generating 43 zetabytes of data. But let me quiz you out, how many zeros in a zetabyte? >> I think I knew this answer going in, since I got it wrong on our previous take. So, 12, it's 21. >> Maybe. (panel laughs) >> Okay. >> It's a lot. >> All right, I'm going to say 21 too. >> All right. >> Well, just a lot. It's a lot of data, a lot of devices. >> Yeah, I got to go with 21. It sounds like a good number. >> These are my cheat sheets, right. Anyway, they had-- >> Too many zeros. >> Too many zeros. >> Margaret: Yeah, too many zeros. >> And a significant, it's getting worse, the data tsunami is coming, it's already happening. >> It's happening. You think about the amount of data which is being generated. What we want to do is we want to provide highly secure, automated and in this case SAP certified private cloud platform from CenturyLink. Where we can really have the customers laser focus on the business they do. We help them with the deep platform which can help them monetize their data, help them drive their top line, increase the bottom line. Mitigate the rest in a fast manner and a highly secure manner as well, I'll talk more about that. >> Gary, you bring up a good point, and I want to get Frank involved in this and next I want to double down on the data comment. Because you factor in even the IoT, Internet of Things growth. It's going to be even more significant. Then, the security question pops up, because as the data centers move to the cloud and the hybrid and or pure cloud, the perimeter is gone. Now, the perimeter is how we managed security in the past. But now with the perimeter-less environments security is critical. How does this customer feel secure? And if you guys comment on the security aspect of how this relationship will roll out and the non-disruptive nature that you guys bring to the table? Because that's what customers want to know. >> John, from a Cisco perspective and Gary mentioned, when we talk about the digital transformation. And that's the buzzword in the industry, but most customers are looking for a business outcome. Really, to get that business outcome they have to make a business decision probably based off the technology like SAP HANA. This is mission critical information. At Cisco that's why we're in tune for what the network can do, because it's going to provide security at a lot of layers. Whether it's at the edge, whether it's at the aggregation point or all the way back to the data center, or into the cloud. The security at multi-layers and multiple places. With the bad actors out there that's the way you need to implement it. So you can start to bring this stuff together and give the customers the confidence that, "Hey, this transactionous data is going to be secure." >> Gary, the outcome that we're talking about is no hacks, no breaches, secure? >> Yeah, well it is highly secure, but you got to always be prepared. If you think about it, CenturyLink, we have 550,000 miles of fiber. Once we complete the level three acquisition, we'll add another 200,000 miles of fiber. You're talking about 750,000 miles of fiber touching 100 countries over six continents and 35 person of the global internet traffic going to our network. Once the level three acquisition is complete, we'll be the second largest network and we're critical to countries' infrastructure. There's a deep focus on cyber threats, things we do to avoid the bad actors getting in. >> I think that network intelligence too is going to give you more data to fight the actors as well. >> Absolutely, but to your earlier point, we truly, the situation gets compounded with this connected world revolution. When you are connecting these 1.8 trillion objects, you got to ensure each of these objects is secure. This is where the intersection of cyber security and IoT kicks in, and that's right in our wheel house. >> Don't forget latency, a word that's reering its head. More importantly it has people move across with IoT and across the cloud. Margaret, talk about the role that the HANA Enterprise Cloud plays in all of this. Is it the glue, is it the connecting tissue? What's the role of the HANA Cloud platform? HANA Enterprise Cloud, sorry. >> Yeah, I was just going to say. From a HANA Cloud perspective, it's a private managed cloud. We do an awful lot of work from an SAP perspective to make sure that the customer's environment is totally secure, but is also accessible all of the time for the customer. Because today, most businesses run 24/7 and they run all around the globe. When some team is working and this is their prime business day, later in the US business day, it's prime business time out in Asia, it's prime business time in Europe. You need a cloud that's always available, always up and it's secure. You can guarantee that no other data is leaking into it or out of it. That's really important for our customers, because if you think about it, we have customers today that are SAP customers running in the HANA Enterprise Cloud that are competitors to each other. You have to make sure that you can guarantee that there's not going to be any, data is going to sneak out the back door here or something is going to get in the back door over there. We have a fairly large security team at SAP. We have very stringent standards at SAP. Every time we form partnership with somebody, we say, "Here are our standards. "If you can't comply to these, "we can't do business with you as a partner." From our perspective, it's very important to know that anybody that we work with takes security as serious as we do. >> Well, certainly these guys are big partners, they're known companies, Cisco and CenturyLink. This is big. Talk about the unified, how you guys are going to help with the unified competing architecture that Cisco has. Because you guys have mastered this in the data center and you guys have a lot of experience with now the cloud. What's your vision on how this is going to play out from a Cisco standpoint? >> As Margaret described, their multi-tenancy in the SAP environment is a pillar for them, they have to make that work for the customer and that's something we've been driving at Cisco for a long time. When it comes to the computer platform, which we call UCS, we've been really the leader in converge infrastructure platforms for a long time with UCS and most recently now we're the number one platform for SAT with UCS in the converge environment. It's those attributes that have enabled us to really get inserted there to provide the customer value. >> You get the packet level of the network transformations, >> Yeah, John. >> So picked very nicely. >> You're more of a geek than I know. You're pretty good. >> Well, we follow Looking at the 5G network transformation you're seeing a lot of end-to-end architectures really winning out. I think why I'm excited about this new is essentially it's a partnership that's providing an need-to-end solution. Gary you are in the front line, you're the manager of service. Talk about the impact that you see this deal, because now you have to turn up services and have that customer touch point. >> If you look at how we're pulling together the solution. Obviously if look on the compute side we're using the UCS and on the switches there's the Cisco networking switches and then you're looking at the-- >> Nexus, Gary, Nexus. >> Nexus, all right. >> I didn't get to that. >> I wanted to make sure Frank is paying attention. (panel laughs) Then you're looking at the net app storage and the VMWare for virtualization. Then another key element we're using is Winamix, which integrates with the UCS and is pretty much integrating all the APIs for all these components. Obviously the powerful in memory HANA engine. All these things are pulled together to create a platform which we are providing to the customers, so that they can really focus on what they are good at, their business and they're delivering a powerful rally to their customers. What it does is, with the UCS and the Winamix and some of the other elements, we can onboard customers within this. What used to take us 32, 33 days now we can do that within 9 to 11 days which is a big big plus when a customer approaches us. >> It's a huge shape in the business model first of all, the client delivery on your end and service is significant. There's a lot of automation involved. In fact I was talking to a venture capitalist recently here in Silicon Valley and we were talking about network transformation, digital transformation and they invest in infrastructure. He goes, "Oh no, not a lot of new companies are coming out "with an infrastructure making hardware just as the cloud." He says plumbers are turning into machinists kind of indicating that a lot of automation is happening at the lower end of the stack and the action is happening higher up in the stack to your point. Things are happening faster in terms of level of services. >> Absolutely and I think another thing which we also bring to the table is that the deep essence expartice if you look at some of the mission critical applications whether it is SVOHANA, suite on HANA the ECC or the entire BI suite enterprise portal and the list goes on right. And that becomes critical so we can get them up and running very quickly and give us all in one on to the country. >> A significant endorsement with you, make a comment? >> Am just saying when you're talking about the visibility of the SAP platform this is something the customers thought about right. Its going to get to all levels of the organization and really they're making critical business decisions off of the SAP HANA platform its got to be there. I mean and that's obviously our challenge to meet that for customers. >> Margaret, HANA Enterprise cloud is the engine and you guys are providing significant on it. How do you see this collaboration playing out for customers? What should they expect from the collaboration of Cisco and CenturyLink? >> Well what we want the customer to have is a seamless experience. We tell them upfront that we have this partnership and that we're going to work together but we really want to keep them focused on the value that they get from running their applications. Because, think about it this way, when you get in the car and you turn on the engine, you want to drive away right? You know the engine is there, you know that the engine, depending on how much horse power you've invested in, depending on what kind of make and model, you get different things from it. But you know it's going to always be there, it's always going to work. Then if you want to enhance the engine, shall we say you want to know that the right people have the skillset for those enhancements. When customers come into the HANA Enterprise Cloud, sometimes they start off with the migration. One of the things you're doing is you're kind of sunsetting all the old stuff and you're helping them move on to our HANA platforms whether is S4, whether it's Suite on HANA, whether it's our VI suite, you're helping the customer get started. But that's the start, because after that there's all this other wonderful stuff that we develop at SAP being that we're a software house, like IoT and our Leonardo that's being announced in Sapphire and we want customers to be ready to take advantage of that. We tell the customers, "You need to move away from all the "old stuff because it's not reliable any more, "we want to move you into a different level "of reliability so that you're ready "to scale up your organization. "And so that you can do more business." And in the end the customer says, "Okay, I need to know the cloud is there for me, "I don't want to have to be thinking about it everyday. "What I want to be thinking about is "how can I do new business, how can I open up offices "in other parts of the world, "how can I transact business globally?" They're not really thinking about, okay, I need more stuff. If they need to expand we call up our partners and we say, Okay the customer wants five more terabits or something, 10 more terabits of whatever, and they just want it to happen. They don't want to have really long projects, they just want it to be there for them, they want to know that they can scale out and scale up. >> One thing just to add, I think Richard mentioned, it just becomes critical that the redundancy is there. This is where the MetroDR capabilities which we bring to the table. That becomes very powerful and if you look at what we have done is, we have created 10 parts, in the US you have those in Santa Clara, Dallas, Chicago and the Dc Sterling area. Then Singapore and the London market. The MetroDr capabilities are available in all the three markets. Which is a very critical element that the customers know. >> This is, the recovery certainly is really a big deal because you can think about after effect, you've got to think about the upfront in the service. You cannot just say, "Oh I forgot that thing about DR." >> The thing is, you get into a lot more preventive maintenance because this is where there are dedicated teams which are doing nothing. Once the bill processes down you get them up and running and how do you ensure we are able to predict before anything? >> I think this news is significant, one the size of the players involved but two, it speaks to the transformation that's happening in the market place. Customers are moving to a new way to operate their business and at the end of the day you guys are making it easier to run some of the core software that can scale. But it comes down to, how do you migrate and scale without having any kind rip and replace or lift and shift. Lift and shift, I would have said is codeword for rip and replace, but customers are on an evolution journey, there is no silver bullet in the cloud in my opinion, some we've covered that with you. You're thoughts on this, do you guys see it the same way? Customers aren't just going to move tomorrow, they're going to want an evolutionary approach, but they're going to want to have a scale. >> It's a journey, oftentimes customers say to us, what's the safest thing to do first? What pieces of my environment can I take into the cloud and then gradually over time, whether it's a few months, whether it's six months increments. It depends on how the customer is running their business. Can I keep moving it in there so I can keep getting value and at some point his is all done, goes away and now I'm fully transformed into the cloud. We see some customers who can do really quick projects, they're very agile and they're very nimble and so we can migrate them in and get them going and running very quickly. We've got other customers who are more risk adverse. They want to proceed a little slowly. We can do all of the flavors, depending on what they want to do and so when we first talk to customers about the HANA enterprise cloud, we talk about the options. We talk about what they can do, we make recommendations from an SAP perspective as to what we think their speed could be and then we help them get into the cloud. Because they might get left behind if they don't make that move. >> The modernization trend is key, people want to be modern, the apps are being written differently, the more the relevance is more towards agile and speed. I think I like this announcement you've got the reliability that Cisco would move in packets around the data center rock solid, the software, core engine on Enterprise cloud and scale the manage service level that can give you the flexibility to run whatever you want. I think that's interesting, did I get that right? >> I think the other thing is, it's not like we've been working on this thing for a week, we've bene working together on this solution for years now that you've got to make it right. There's different stages along the way. >> What are some of those key stages that a customer should know about? >> We were just talking about HANA Enterprise Cloud, could you run HANA in the cloud now? No, that's faded completely, it's already done you certainly can't. Customers can make decisions now to say, "Hey am I going to start on prime, am I going to start "in the cloud?" And go though that whole kind of process of what's the best thing. We're providing that flexibility but this is something we've been working on for a while and I think, when you look at the other solutions out there of customers making the right evaluation, you want to go with a CenturyLink SAP and Cisco to say, "Hey, this is the right muscle, "the right process behind us." >> This is amazing, you guys are a great deal, again Frank, senior vice president Cisco and Gary who is the chief relationship officer and president of the Advanced Solution Group and Margaret. All the senior executives, the principals here congratulation on this news, we'll wait to see how it plays out. >> Margaret: Thank you for having us today. >> Special keep coverage of Sapphire 2017, I'm John Furrier. Back with more live coverage after this short break. (electronic music)