(intro music) >> Good afternoon guys and gals. Welcome back to The Strip, Las Vegas. It's "theCUBE" live day four of our coverage of "AWS re:Invent". Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante. Dave, we've had some awesome conversations the last four days. I can't believe how many people are still here. The AWS ecosystem seems stronger than ever. >> Yeah, last year we really noted the ecosystem, you know, coming out of the isolation economy 'cause everybody had this old pent up demand to get together and the ecosystem, even last year, we were like, "Wow." This year's like 10x wow. >> It really is 10x wow, it feels that way. We're going to have a 10x wow conversation next. We're bringing back DataStax to "theCUBE". Please welcome Thomas Bean, it's CMO. Thomas welcome to "theCUBE". >> Thanks, thanks a lot, thanks for having me. >> Great to have you, talk to us about what's going on at DataStax, it's been a little while since we talked to you guys. >> Indeed, so DataStax, we are the realtime data company and we've always been involved in technology such as "Apache Cassandra". We actually created to support and take this, this great technology to the market. And now we're taking it, combining it with other technologies such as "Apache Pulse" for streaming to provide a realtime data cloud. Which helps our users, our customers build applications faster and help them scale without limits. So it's all about mobilizing all of this information that is going to drive the application going to create the awesome experience, when you have a customer waiting behind their mobile phone, when you need a decision to take place immediately to, that's the kind of data that we, that we provide in the cloud on any cloud, but especially with, with AWS and providing the performance that technologies like "Apache Cassandra" are known for but also with market leading unit economics. So really empowering customers to operate at speed and scale. >> Speaking of customers, nobody wants less data slower. And one of the things I think we learned in the in the pan, during the pandemic was that access to realtime data isn't nice to have anymore for any business. It is table stakes, it's competitive advantage. There's somebody right behind in the rear view mirror ready to take over. How has the business model of DataStax maybe evolved in the last couple of years with the fact that realtime data is so critical? >> Realtime data has been around for some time but it used to be really niches. You needed a lot of, a lot of people a lot of funding actually to, to implement these, these applications. So we've adapted to really democratize it, made super easy to access. Not only to start developing but also scaling. So this is why we've taken these great technologies made them serverless cloud native on the cloud so that developers could really start easily and scale. So that be on project products could be taken to the, to the market. And in terms of customers, the patterns is we've seen enterprise customers, you were talking about the pandemic, the Home Depot as an example was able to deliver curbside pickup delivery in 30 days because they were already using DataStax and could adapt their business model with a real time application that combines you were just driving by and you would get the delivery of what exactly you ordered without having to go into the the store. So they shifted their whole business model. But we also see a real strong trend about customer experiences and increasingly a lot of tech companies coming because scale means success to them and building on, on our, on our stack to, to build our applications. >> So Lisa, it's interesting. DataStax and "theCUBE" were started the same year, 2010, and that's when it was the beginning of the ascendancy of the big data era. But of course back then there was, I mean very little cloud. I mean most of it was on-prem. And so data stacks had, you know, had obviously you mentioned a number of things that you had to do to become cloud friendly. >> Thomas: Yes. >> You know, a lot of companies didn't make it, make it through. You guys just raised a bunch of dough as well last summer. And so that's been quite a transformation both architecturally, you know, bringing the customers through. I presume part of that was because you had such a great open source community, but also you have a unique value problem. Maybe you could sort of describe that a little. >> Absolutely, so the, I'll start with the open source community where we see a lot of traction at the, at the moment. We were always very involved with, with the "Apache Cassandra". But what we're seeing right now with "Apache Cassandra" is, is a lot of traction, gaining momentum. We actually, we, the open source community just won an award, did an AMA, had a, a vote from their readers about the top open source projects and "Apache Cassandra" and "Apache Pulse" are part of the top three, which is, which is great. We also run a, in collaboration with the Apache Project, the, a series of events around the, around the globe called "Cassandra Days" where we had tremendous attendance. We, some of them, we had to change venue twice because there were more people coming. A lot of students, a lot of the big users of Cassandra like Apple, Netflix who spoke at these, at these events. So we see this momentum actually picking up and that's why we're also super excited that the Linux Foundation is running the Cassandra Summit in in March in San Jose. Super happy to bring that even back with the rest of the, of the community and we have big announcements to come. "Apache Cassandra" will, will see its next version with major advances such as the support of asset transactions, which is going to make it even more suitable to more use cases. So we're bringing that scale to more applications. So a lot of momentum in terms of, in terms of the, the open source projects. And to your point about the value proposition we take this great momentum to which we contribute a lot. It's not only about taking, it's about giving as well. >> Dave: Big committers, I mean... >> Exactly big contributors. And we also have a lot of expertise, we worked with all of the members of the community, many of them being our customers. So going to the cloud, indeed there was architectural work making Cassandra cloud native putting it on Kubernetes, having the right APIs for developers to, to easily develop on top of it. But also becoming a cloud company, building customer success, our own platform engineering. We, it's interesting because actually we became like our partners in a community. We now operate Cassandra in the cloud so that all of our customers can benefit from all the power of Cassandra but really efficiently, super rapidly, and also with a, the leading unit economies as I mentioned. >> How will the, the asset compliance affect your, you know, new markets, new use cases, you know, expand your TAM, can you explain that? >> I think it will, more applications will be able to tap into the power of, of "NoSQL". Today we see a lot on the customer experience as IOT, gaming platform, a lot of SaaS companies. But now with the ability to have transactions at the database level, we can, beyond providing information, we can go even deeper into the logic of the, of the application. So it makes Cassandra and therefore Astra which is our cloud service an even more suitable database we can address, address more even in terms of the transaction that the application itself will, will support. >> What are some of the business benefits that Cassandra delivers to customers in terms of business outcomes helping businesses really transform? >> So Cassandra brings skill when you have millions of customers, when you have million of data points to go through to serve each of the customers. One of my favorite example is Priceline, who runs entirely on our cloud service. You may see one offer, but it's actually everything they know about you and everything they have to offer matched while you are refreshing your page. This is the kind of power that Cassandra provide. But the thing to say about "Apache Cassandra", it used to be also a database that was a bit hard to manage and hard to develop with. This is why as part of the cloud, we wanted to change these aspects, provide developers the API they like and need and what the application need. Making it super simple to operate and, and, and super affordable, also cost effective to, to run. So the the value to your point, it's time to market. You go faster, you don't have to worry when you choose the right database you're not going to, going to have to change horse in the middle of the river, like sixth month down the line. And you know, you have the guarantee that you're going to get the performance and also the best, the best TCO which matters a lot. I think your previous person talking was addressing it. That's also important especially in the, in a current context. >> As a managed service, you're saying, that's the enabler there, right? >> Thomas: Exactly. >> Dave: That is the model today. I mean, you have to really provide that for customers. They don't want to mess with, you know, all the plumbing, right? I mean... >> Absolutely, I don't think people want to manage databases anymore, we do that very well. We take SLAs and such and even at the developer level what they want is an API so they get all the power. All of of this powered by Cassandra, but now they get it as a, and it's as simple as using as, as an API. >> How about the ecosystem? You mentioned the show in in San Jose in March and the Linux Foundation is, is hosting that, is that correct? >> Yes, absolutely. >> And what is it, Cassandra? >> Cassandra Summit. >> Dave: Cassandra Summit >> Yep. >> What's the ecosystem like today in Cassandra, can you just sort of describe that? >> Around Cassandra, you have actually the big hyperscalers. You have also a few other companies that are supporting Cassandra like technologies. And what's interesting, and that's been a, a something we've worked on but also the "Apache Project" has worked on. Working on a lot of the adjacent technologies, the data pipelines, all of the DevOps solutions to make sure that you can actually put Cassandra as part of your way to build these products and, and build these, these applications. So the, the ecosystem keeps on, keeps on growing and actually the, the Cassandra community keeps on opening the database so that it's, it's really easy to have it connect to the rest of the, the rest environment. And we benefit from all of this in our Astra cloud service. >> So things like machine learning, governance tools that's what you would expect in the ecosystem forming around it, right? So we'll see that in March. >> Machine learning is especially a very interesting use case. We see more and more of it. We recently did a, a nice video with one of our customers called Unifour who does exactly this using also our abstract cloud service. What they provide is they analyze videos of sales calls and they help actually the sellers telling them, "Okay here's what happened here was the customer sentiment". Because they have proof that the better the sentiment is, the shorter the sell cycle is going to be. So they teach the, the sellers on how to say the right things, how to control the thing. This is machine learning applied on video. Cassandra provides I think 200 data points per second that feeds this machine learning. And we see more and more of these use cases, realtime use cases. It happens on the fly when you are on your phone, when you have a, a fraud maybe to detect and to prevent. So it is going to be more and more and we see more and more of these integration at the open source level with technologies like even "Feast" project like "Apache Feast". But also in the, in, in the partners that we're working with integrating our Cassandra and our cloud service with. >> Where are customer conversations these days, given that every company has to be a data company. They have to be able to, to democratize data, allow access to it deep into the, into the organizations. Not just IT or the data organization anymore. But are you finding that the conversations are rising up the, up the stack? Is this, is this a a C-suite priority? Is this a board level conversation? >> So that's an excellent question. We actually ran a survey this summer called "The State of the Database" where we, we asked these tech leaders, okay what's top of mind for you? And real time actually was, was really one of the top priorities. And they explained for the one that who call themselves digital leaders that for 71% of them they could correlate directly the use of realtime data, the quality of their experience or their decision making with revenue. And that's really where the discussion is. And I think it's something we can relate to as users. We don't want the, I mean if the Starbucks apps take seconds to to respond there will be a riot over there. So that's, that's something we can feel. But it really, now it's tangible in, in business terms and now then they take a look at their data strategy, are we equipped? Very often they will see, yeah, we have pockets of realtime data, but we're not really able to leverage it. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> For ML use cases, et cetera. So that's a big trend that we're seeing on one end. On the other end, what we're seeing, and it's one of the things we discussed a lot at the event is that yeah cost is important. Growth at all, at all cost does not exist. So we see a lot of push on moving a lot of the workloads to the cloud to make them scale but at the best the best cost. And we also see some organizations where like, okay let's not let a good crisis go to waste and let's accelerate our innovation not at all costs. So that we see also a lot of new projects being being pushed but reasonable, starting small and, and growing and all of this fueled by, by realtime data, so interesting. >> The other big topic amongst the, the customer community is security. >> Yep. >> I presume it's coming up a lot. What's the conversation like with DataStax? >> That's a topic we've been working on intensely since the creation of Astra less than two years ago. And we keep on reinforcing as any, any cloud provider not only our own abilities in terms of making sure that customers can manage their own keys, et cetera. But also integrating to the rest of the, of the ecosystem when some, a lot of our customers are running on AWS, how do we integrate with PrivateLink and such? We fit exactly into their security environment on AWS and they use exactly the same management tool. Because this is also what used to cost a lot in the cloud services. How much do you have to do to wire them and, and manage. And there are indeed compliance and governance challenges. So that's why making sure that it's fully connected that they have full transparency on what's happening is, is a big part of the evolution. It's always, security is always something you're working on but it's, it's a major topic for us. >> Yep, we talk about that on pretty much every event. Security, which we could dive into, but we're out of time. Last question for you. >> Thomas: Yes. >> We're talking before we went live, we're both big Formula One fans. Say DataStax has the opportunity to sponsor a team and you get the whole side pod to, to put like a phrase about DataStax on the side pod of this F1 car. (laughter) Like a billboard, what does it say? >> Billboard, because an F1 car goes pretty fast, it will be hard to, be hard to read but, "Twice the performance at half the cost, try Astra a cloud service." >> Drop the mike. Awesome, Thomas, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank for having me. >> Pleasure having you guys on the program. For our guest, Thomas Bean and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching "theCUBE" live from day four of our coverage. "theCUBE", the leader in live tech coverage. (outro music)

(bright, upbeat music playing) >> Hello, Brilliant Cloud community and welcome back to AWS re:Invent, where we are live all day everyday from the show floor, here in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm Savannah Peterson joined by my beautiful co-host, Lisa Martin here on theCUBE. Lisa, you're smiling, you're radiating, day three, you would think it was day one. How you doing? >> Amazing. I can't believe the energy that has been maintained >> It's been a theme. on this show floor, since Monday night at 4:00 pm. >> I know, and I kind of thought today we might see some folks trickling out. It is packed, as our guests and I were, we were all just talking about, right before the segment, almost too packed which is a really great sign for AWS. >> It is. We're hearing north of 55,000 people here. And of course, we only get a little snapshot of what's at the Venetian. >> Literally this corner, yeah. We don't get to see anything else around The Strip, that's going on, so it's massive. >> Yeah, it is very massive. I'm super excited. We've got two guests from Infosys with us on this last segment from this stage today. David and Anant, welcome to the show. How you doing? >> Awesome. >> You're both smiling and I am really excited. We have our first prop of the show, (David and Anant laughing) and it's a pretty flashy, sexy prop. Anant, what's going on here? >> Oh, so this is something that we are very proud of. Last year we won one award, which was very special for us because it was our first award with AWS, and that was, "The Industry Partner of The Year Award." And on the back of that, this year we won three awards and this is super awesome for us, because all of them are very special. One was in collaboration, second was in design, and third was in sustainability. So we are very proud, and we thank AWS, and it's a fantastic partnership. >> Yeah, congratulations. >> Anant: Yes. I mean that's huge. >> Yes, it's absolutely huge. And the second one is, we are the Launch Partner for MSK, which again is a very proud thing for us. So I think those are the two things that we wanted to talk about. >> How many awards are you going to win next year then? (all laughing) >> We want to target more than three. (Savannah chuckles) >> Keep it going up. >> Probably five, right? >> So it's the odd numbers, one, three, five, seven, ten. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Savannah: There you go. >> I think we got that question last year and we said we'd get two, and we ended up over-delivering with three, so who knows? >> Hey, nothing wrong with setting the bar low and clearing it. And I mean, not setting it low, setting it with one and clearing it with three is pretty fantastic. We talk about it as an ego thing sometimes with awards and it feels great for internal culture, but David, what does it mean on the partnership side to win awards like that? >> So what's really important for us with our partners is to make sure that we're achieving their goals, and when their goals are achieved in our partnership it's just the byproduct that we're achieving our own with our clients. The awards are a great representation of that to see, you know, again, being recognized in three different categories really shows that we've had success with AWS, and in turn, you know, Anant and I can attest to it. We've been very successful at the partnership on our side. >> Yeah, and I bet it's really exciting for the team. Just speaking for Energy (indistinct) >> And there's celebration, you know, there's been a few cocktails being raised... >> Has there? In Las Vegas? >> David: I know. Cocktails? >> Lisa Martin: Shocking! I'm shocked! >> Lisa Martin: I know! (all laughing) I wouldn't mind one right now to be really, really honest. Let's dig into the product a little bit. Infosys Cobalt. What's the scoop, Anant? >> Yeah, so first of all, we were the first ones to actually launch a Cloud brand called Cobalt, right? We were the first ones in the world. In fact, one of our competitor followed us soon after. So essentially what we did was we brought all our Cloud offerings into one brand called Cobalt. It becomes very clear to our customers on what our proposition is. It is very consistent to the market in terms of what our narrative is. And it's a little easy for our customers to understand what we bring to the table. So Cobalt is not one product or what one platform it's a set of services, solutions and platforms that we bring to accelerate customer's journey where they're leveraging Cloud. So that's what Cobalt is. >> Awesome, everyone wants to do everything faster. >> Yes. >> Lisa Martin: Yeah. >> And the booth was packed. I walked by earlier, it was absolutely buzzing. >> Yes. >> Yeah. Nobody wants to do, you know, wants less data slower. >> Anant: Yes. (Savannah laughs) >> It's always more faster. >> Anant: More faster. And we're living in this explosion unlike anything this swarm of data unlike anything that we've ever seen before. Every company, regardless of industry has to be a data company. >> Anant: Yes. But they have to be able to work with the right partners to extract, to first of all harness all that data, extract insights in real time, because of course on the consumer side we're not patient anymore. >> Anant: Yes. We expect a personalized, realtime, custom experience. >> Anant: Absolutely. >> How do you work with AWS to help deliver that and how do the partners help deliver that as well? >> Well I'll start with on the partner side of it. You walk through the hallways here or down the aisles you see partners like MongoDB, Snowflake, Databricks and such, they're all attesting their commitment and their strong partnership with AWS, and coincidentally they're also very good partners of our own. And as a result... >> Savannah: One big happy family here at AWS when you met. >> And this is something that I'm calling, coining the phrase sub-ecosystems. These are partnerships where one is successful with each other, and then the three come together, and we go together with an integrated solution. And it's really taking off. It's something that's really powerful. The fun thing about re:Invent here is isn't just that we're having amazing discussions with our clients and AWS, but we're also having with the other partners here about how we can all work together so... And data analytics is a big one, security is another hot one-- >> Lisa Martin: Security is huge. >> Savannah: Yeah. Cost optimization from the start. >> Absolutely. And Ruba was saying this, right? Ruba said, like she was giving example of a marathoner. Marathon is not a single man or a single woman sport, right? So similarly Cloud journey is a team's, sort of you know, team journey, so that's why partners play a big role in that and that's exactly what we are trying to do. >> So you guys get to see a lot of different companies across a lot of different industries. We're living in very interesting times, how do you see the Cloud evolving? >> Oh, yeah. So what we did when we launched Cobalt in 2020 we have now evolved our story. We call it Cobalt 2.0. And essentially what we wanted to do was to focus on industry Clouds. So it's not just about taking a workload and moving it from point A to point B or moving data to Cloud or getting out of data centers, but it's also being very specific to the industry that this specific customer belongs to, right? So for example, if we go to banking they would say we want to better our security posture. If we go to a retailer they want to basically have smart stores. If we go to a manufacturing customer they want to have a smart factory. So we want to make sure that there are specific industry blueprints and specific reference architectures that we bring and start delivering outcomes. So we call it something called... >> Savannah: I know you're hot on business outcomes. >> Yes. >> Savannah: Yes. So we call it something called the link of life forces. So there are six technologies; Cloud, Data, Edge, IOT, 5G, and AI. They will come together to deliver business outcomes. So that's where we are heading with Cobalt 2.0, And that's essentially what we want to do with our customers. >> Savannah: It's a lot to think about. >> Yes. >> David: Yes. >> And, yeah, go for it David. >> I was just saying from a partnering perspective, you know prior to Cloud, we were talking about transactional type businesses where if you ask a technology company who their partner is its generally a reseller where they're just basically taking one product and selling it to their client. What's happened with cloud now it's not about the transaction upfront it's about the actual, you know, the consumption of the technology and the bringing together all of these to form an outcome, it changes the model dramatically, and quite honestly, the global system integrators like Infosys are in great position because we can pull that together to the benefit of our partners, put our own secret sauce around it and take these solutions to market and drive consumption because that's what the Cloud's all about. >> Right. Well, how are you helping customers really treat Cloud as a strategic focus? You know we often hear companies talk about we're Cloud first. Well not everything belongs in the Cloud. So then we hear companies start talking about being Cloud smart. >> Anant: Yes. How are you helping, and so we'll go with that. How are you helping enterprises really become Cloud smart and where is the partner angle? So we'll start with you and then we'll bring the partner angle in. >> Oh yeah, big time. I think one of the things that we have been educating our customers is Cloud is not about cost takeout. So Cloud is about innovation, Cloud is about growth. And I'll give two examples. One of the beauty products companies they wanted to set up their shop in US and they said that, you know, "we don't have time to basically buy the infrastructure, implement an ERP platform, and you know, or roll it out, test it and go into production. We don't have so much time. Time to market is very important for us." And they embarked on the Cloud journey. So expanding into new market, Cloud can play a big role. That is one of the ways to expand and you know, grow your business. Similarly, there is another company that they wanted to go into retail banking, right? And they didn't have years to launch a product. So they actually use AWS and it's a joint Infosys and AWS customer. A pretty big bank. They launched retail banking and they did it in less than six months. So I think these are some of the examples of cloud not being cost takeout but it's about innovation and growth. So that's what we are trying to tell customers. >> Savannah: Big impacts. >> Big impact. Yes, absolutely. >> And that's where the Cobalt assets come into play as well. You know, as Anant mentioned, we have literally thousands of these industries specific and they're derived in a lot of cases in partnership with the companies you see down the aisles here, and AWS. And it accelerates the deployments and ensures a successful adoption, more so than before. You know, we have clients that are coming to us now that used to buy, run their own procurement. You know they would have... Literally there was one bank that came to us with a over a hundred products >> The amount of work. I'm just seeing it... >> A list of a hundred products. Some they bought directly from a vendor, some they went through a distributor, some they went through a reseller and such, >> Savannah: It's so ad-hoc. And they're looking at this in a completely different way and they're looking to rationalize those technologies, again, look for companies that will contract for a business outcome and leverage the cloud and get to that next era, and it's a fun time. We're really excited. >> I can imagine you're really a part of the transformation process for a lot of these companies. >> Anant: Absolutely. Anant when we were chatting before we went live you talked about your passion for business outcomes. Can you give us a couple examples of customers or business outcomes that really get you and the team excited? Same thing to you David, after. >> Well, absolutely. Even our contractual structures are now moving into business outcomes. So we are getting paid by the outcomes that we are delivering, right? So, one of the insurance customers that we have we actually get paid by the number of claims that we process, right? Similarly there is a healthcare customer where we actually get paid by the number of customers that we cater to from a Medicare and Medicaid standpoint, right? >> Savannah: Tangible results processed and projected-- >> Successful process of claims. >> Interesting. >> Anant: Exactly. >> Yeah. (indistinct) reality. >> Yeah, reality, (chuckles) What a novel idea. >> Yeah. (Savannah and Lisa chuckle) >> One of the great examples you hear about airplane engines now that the model is you don't buy the engine, you basically pay for the hours that it's used, and the maintenance and the downtime, so that you take the risk away. You know, you put that in the context of the traditional business. You're taking away the risk of owning the individual asset, the maintenance, any of the issues, the bug fixes. And again, you're partnering with a company like Infosys, we'll take on that based upon our knowledge and based upon our vast experience we can confidently contract in that way that, you know, years ago that wasn't possible. >> Savannah: It's kind of a sharing economy at scale style. >> David: Exactly. >> Anant: Absolutely. >> Yeah, which is really exciting. So we have a new challenge here on theCUBE this year at re:Invent. We are looking for your 32nd Instagram real sizzle soundbite. Your hot take, your thought leadership on the biggest theme or most important thing coming out of this year's show. David, we'll start with you. We've been starting with Anant, so I'm going to go to you. We're making eye contact right now so you're in the hot seat. (all laugh) >> Well, I think there was a lot of time given to sustainability on the stage this week, and I think that, you know, every CEO that we talk to is bringing that up as a major priority and that's a very important element for us as a company and as a service provider. >> Savannah: I mean, you're obviously award winning in the sustainability department. >> Exactly. Nice little plug there. >> Yeah. >> You know, and I think the other things that have come up we saw a lot about data analytics this week. You know, I think new offerings from AWS but also new partnerships that we're going to take advantage of. And again, security has been a hot topic. >> Absolutely. Anant, what's your hot take? >> Yeah. I think one very exciting thing for partners like us is the re-imagining that is being done by Ruba for the partners, right? The AWS marketplace. I think that is a big, big thing that I took out. Of course, sustainability is huge. Like Adam said, the fastest way to become sustainable is to move to Cloud, right? So rather than overthinking and over-engineering this whole topic just take your workloads and move it to Cloud and you'll be sustainable, right? So I think that's the second one. And third is of course cybersecurity. Zscaler, Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, these are some of the big companies that are at the event here, and we have been partnering with them. Many more. I'm just calling out three names, but many more. I think cybersecurity is the next one. So I think these are three on top of my mind. >> Just a few things you casually think about. That was great. Great responses from both of you Anant, David, such a pleasure to have you both with us. We hope to have you back again. You're doing such exciting things. I'm sure that everything we talked about is going to be a hot topic for many years to come as people navigate the future as well as continue their business transformations. It is always a joy to sit next to you on stage my dear. >> Likewise. And thank all of you, wherever you're tuning in from, for joining us here at AWS re:Invent live from Las Vegas, Nevada. With Lisa Martin, I'm Savannah Peterson, and for the last time today, this is theCUBE, the leader in high tech coverage. (bright, upbeat music playing)

>> from Washington, D. C. It's the queue covering science logic. Symposium twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Science Logic >> Hi, I'm student men and this is the Cubes coverage of Science Logic. Symposium twenty nineteen here at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D. C. First of all, want Welcome back to the program. Roger Putnam, Who's the vice president of Global Solutions? That science logic Thanks for coming back and what with programme A first time Rob Gruner listed is this loosened architect from Telstra. But >> Rob, I actually had >> a chance to talk to some of your co ords there, they said. Arav robs a wizard. He's an engineer that does everything. So you know, solutions. Architect. Of course, we know that they're out there. They do a lot of different things and asleep, leased. Your peers say you're somebody that does quite a lot of different >> things. Did Jack of All trades master of none unfortunate >> way? It's all right, don't you know it is in vogue now to be, you know, a generalist. It's, you know, we've gone from specialties to well, oh no, it's it's platforms and everything's going to be everything, so I have plenty of background with Telstra, but maybe talk a little bit about you know, your role in the organization and what what kind of things you're involved in. Since you know some of those trades that you >> are jack of all, >> probably our spies have come into Telstra's an acquisition. So, you know, working for small company, you tend to do everything on. For some reason, I've been allowed to continue to do that on developing expertise around science logic. And that means I've been involved across a lot of areas of the business as we've been adopting science logic more widely, and it's been quite interesting. Process means eye contact, that expertise and then see how it's applied across the organization. So it's been quite interesting, >> awesome. One of things that's been interested in me and in talking to service Friday is talking to the enterprise customers is two. You know how many tools they had, how many they replaced with science logic, but also what things it's integrating with and working with. It was a big focus on the keynote this morning is, you know, integrations with Sam and you know all these various pieces, so maybe give us a little bit of kind of the scope. You know how long's tells me you've been using science logic, How broads the deployment and you know what? What? What does it do in? What does it tie into >> a tte? The mammoth is more enterprise focused. So on. That's the area. Tell Stur I come from so it's really around delivering services to her customers. Quite recently, we've seen then looking in deploying science logic across their carriage spokes and managing services there. That's quite a large deployment. You know, we're quite happy with that in terms of what is going to be doing for the business on the integrations, their endless. So Telstra, like a lot of large organizations, has a lot of different systems to talk to. A lot of different service dis, depending on the operational areas. So in service now is one of those. But it's a hollow of other stuff on, so that's a very challenging process. And sounds objects being pretty good at, you know, spreading itself around. Those >> give us a little insight as to you know, how fast things are changing. You know, hear Kafka and Streams and, you know, constantly moving I've been looking at the, you know, communities and container stuff that's happening, which is which is fast moving. So >> are definitely say it. And Telstra's trying as hard as akin to move as quickly as the market can allowed. So definitely it's virtual izing. ITT's automating II ops is a big component of what we're doing. It is extremely important for the business. >> Okay, so Alps is something you're doing have to We're not as mature as we'd like to video. I'm not sure if you saw the keynote this morning, but they put out a maturity models So would love for you to, you know, where are you when you look at that? They kind of had the three criterias there is. There's kind of the the machine learning, there's the automation and I'm trying to remember the third piece that was there, but you know where where are you today? You know, how'd you get there? And you know what? What's what's a little bit of the road map going forward? >> I think it might be probably our ambitions to be in that the upper end of the spectrum and into remediation, But that's an ambition and I think we've got a while to go with that. So, uh, more than that, I can't coming off >> its interests. So they have that The keynote tomorrow they're going. Jean Kim speaking on the deaf ops. And, you know, I'm a big fan of the Phoenix project and they talked about, you know, the jack of all trades that does it all. He could sometimes be the bottleneck in the system. Absolutely. Because you can't be up. I need something fixed. Well, we'LL go to Rob Rob all fix it. That's great. That fire floating mode. I know I've done that in my career, and it's one of those things. Oh, jeez, you're never going to move at this job because you're replaceable. It's like that's a dangerous place to be. >> It is s >> o. You know, we talk a little bit about, you know, you said, you know, science logic. You know that they position themselves as this is going to help you move that, you know, machine speed and keep up with that. Give us a little bit the reality of what you're seeing. How what does that impact your job? Your organization? >> Look, I think sounds logic has done a wonderful job within the organization. It's it's the legacy infrastructure within any organization, particularly tells her scale. That's really holding you back on. There's a lot of Well, I think people level with Intel Street. Move as quickly as we can, but we have such a large number of legacy systems to deal with. You know, we're looking at one deployment of Sands object. We were looking at IDing systems to kill, So it's a big task >> the wonderful technical death that we've all inherited. So So you know, Roger, you know, this something we hear from all customers. It'd be lovely if I had the mythical, you know, unicorn that, you know, start from the ground up and you know, he can start afresh. But we always have to have that mix and give it a little bit about what you're seeing. You know, about the Telstra in a little bit broader, You know, >> I think what tell us she has done really well with taking advantage of our technology was they didn't come in with this attitude of would rip out everything that we have and just have a magic easy bun. Software doesn't work that way. I think we've all learned the lessons of tough deployments when you try to stay out of fix everything. So they came in with a really gradual, phased approach of Get a couple pieces done where they had gaps. You start to fill those gaps. What's happening during the last few years as we've seen the shift greater change and they've taken advantage of the platforms, nationalities a hole as they go through their digitization efforts. And so as they digitize, they taking this step by step by step approach to you know what you were saying earlier with Rob does. He doesn't answer the question of being the one man band, but they did was they build it all process wise, using software to drive the automation. So once it's done one time, you're not stuck on the person anymore. And so I think when we look at our most successful customers like Telstra, it's because they've had this gradual, phased approach where they're using software rather than single person bottlenecks. And rather than having these tiger teams to try to solve problems and moving towards a better process to take advantage of the world, we're in today. So how >> do you measure success? You know, what are some of the business outcomes or, you know, k p I's that you understand how you're moving from kind of where you were to where you want to be. >> Uh, that's a difficult one to answer because particularly sounds, logic was used in so many different context. So for a certain part of the business, we might say, Are we monitoring the full stack? I were giving customers real value invisibility through the whole dynamic of the business. And then, in another context, we using sound subject. We were just saying, We just need to deploy its scale. We need two one board as quickly as possible. We need to keep the cost down to a minimum. We need to keep events that's allow as possible. Okay, so it's more about the efficiency argument, so it's really depends and way we're trying to use it and how we're deploying it. So >> how do you have visibility across how everybody is doing and getting trained on the latest things and keeping up to date and sharing best practices? How do you manage that internally, and how do you how do you do you network with your peers on some of that? >> Well, we've tried Teo really within. Tell us we have a concept of centre of excellence. So it's really about, you know, being recognizes the business experts in particular area and allowing the business to understand. That's that. That's where the expertise sits on a certain we've done a very good job with that and then allowing and communicating that after the business as well. So it's a very tough asked. It's a big business. We have thirty thousand people so often one person doesn't know about another person, another floor on the buildings, you know, to try and spread it across the biz, since we have fifty officers worldwide. So it's a process, you >> know? I mean, Roger just want one of things that here is, you know, science logic. It's not a widget, and it's, you know, can fit in a lot of different environments and a lot of different uses. You know, I heard of, you know, strong emphasis in into training had your CEO on where in his wizard tat for for for the that the learning knowledge that was gonna happen. So you know you talk a little bit about how science logic is looking to address this, especially for some you know, large customers like Telstra. >> You know, I think there's a general skills gap in is a whole beyond our technology beyond what's taking place in the world today. And you know, I've been in the business for quite a while, and we've long focused on training the operator on how to utilize the technology to solve their specific problems. And while that those aspects really powerful, some of the things we've done recently to go a step further is when we hear similar questions. We started record all of those so our customers could watch videos of how to solve problems instead of just going onto some form and let me type some question and hope somebody responds to in the future. You have read it for that. So we've got a look at a better mechanism and video based training handheld handling the customers we can build out these use cases drives the platform value, and what Telstra does it's really unique is they use the platform less so from a perspective of can I manage X y Z technology. But what can I build on top of it? How can I break the platform to some extend? And Rob is a mad scientist for us here. I mean, could jump into this more. But they've broken the platform to solve those business needs by addressing them individually. And what we've done is we've taken his best practices, and we rolled them back out to the rest of our customers. So with Robin, tell Hsia and a couple of other really great customers were driving a better community and sense of community so less question, answer form, less traditional support, more video, more community, more share ability. And that's where you're going to get additional quality. Coming out from the products are being delivered. Makes sense to you, Robert. Absolutely. >> Yeah, Rob. I mean, I love any commentary on that. You know, the network effect of software especially would talk about Sasser as a service type things, you know, that's what sales force really came out. It was like a weight one customer. Ask for something and wake everybody. You can take advantage of that or something similar. So are you seeing that kind of dynamics today with science logic and with others >> well, perfectly within the Telstra business. Absolutely so by building a capital into one area, you can share it across. And we found that we've been able to then sell the system internally, your internal stakeholders, so they appreciate the value of it and we can build on that. And then our customers, whilst we don't necessarily lady with the product they can. They see what's going on, and they basically then take it on as a service as well. So it's very, very interesting process. >> So one thing we haven't talked about yet, but you talk about data, you know, what's the role of data in your environment is something that you know key to the platform from science logic. How you leveraging it? How's that changing in your environment? One of the opportunities there. >> It's interesting questions. So as the telco, we collect a lot of data on DA. Obviously we have federal agencies who make that a requirement as well. So we have an existing data like initiative on that's very full of moment, and science logic is where we're looking at how we can add to that the value, valuable information and provides, but like everyone else, is a lot of data to collect, and it's an interesting process to try and make sense out of it and react accordingly. I mean, as a business, we were responding to millions and millions events of a day. So it's, you know, it's a difficult thing. >> Yeah, one of things. When we look at things like you know, anything that requires training like machine learning or the like, There's the balance between I want to learn from everybody. But you know, you're in a competitive marketplace. I don't want my competitors necessarily to get things. So you know the software products usually Well, I can isolate, and it doesn't have specific information. But how do you look at that dynamic of making sure that you gain from what the industry is doing, but that, you know, you could still stay competitive in ahead of your competition? >> Uh, >> no. I don't have a necessary can answer that. I suppose my head's tied into really what I could do with a platform and how I can then bring new technologies into the company's. So that's really are spies remind spaces on, Really, it's what I'm focused on. So you know what we do with the daughter probably is. He's not necessarily big concerns. How >> about that? There was quite a lot of announcements this week. The number of integrations as well as you know, update to the product. Anything specifically that you've been waiting for or that has caught your eye, >> the service now integration. I think it is far more advanced than has been in the past. On we have aspect of the business used thinks over quite heavily. So the fact that that's now matured and much more robust and you know which sort of offering that'LL have a lot of impact on the business. So I definitely mean the machine learning is another great thing on the question of then how that develops over time. So we'LL see how that goes. You >> know, Roger loves you know what? When I've been digging into some is the feedback you've been getting from customers and what's been leading toe, you know, some of the enhancement. So I would love, love your take on what you're saying. >> You know, I think one of the things that tell Sharpe pushed us towards a few years back was we're going to build. We already have a data like we don't need you to function. Is there Data Lake? So its multiple different Veda lakes And this concept of how do I move later From one day to lake to a different data Lake lakes within lakes ponds. Whatever the terminology is today the data ocean, our family perfect. And I'm getting to that data ocean from our lake. We have to go get streaming data. So now I'm going to extremes against really geographic here. But, you know, Rob really pushed us to make sure we could go right to Kaka buses and pushed data out. So what do you do with the data? And so tell Strip has been a, you know, an early adopter of a lot of our technology. And by being an early adopter, they've pushed us in a number of directions. So I think when you see a lot of the functionality that we've released this week and we've announced, it's been because of our customer base because of our partners like Telstra, that need to drive the business for further and forward, especially the industry like Telco World, where everything is mobile everything's moving so fast and aggressively. They're really like a good sounding board for where we need to go and how do we get there and and that drive And that partnership is What I think I'm most excited about working with tell sure is they demand from us to be excellent, and that gets great product coming out. And we see the results this week with all of our customers excitingly looking at stream treating capability that Rob was pushing us for well in advance of anyone else. >> Yeah, Robin, I want to give you the final word. You know, I can't help but notice you actually co branded shirts you've got tell star on your arm wither with science logic there. So, obviously, more than just a vendor relationship there, maybe close us out with you know how important science logic is. Two to your business >> job, Critical part of the business. I mean, particularly where we're looking at the commodity aspect of many services, you know, we can't survive unless we can provide quality, invaluable information where customers and really sounds. Logic has been the key platform for that. So in some respects, we're resting, you know, an aspect of the business entirely and Scientology's hands and we're hoping they'LL deliver >> well, Robin Raj, Thank you so much for joining us. Just sharing all the progress that you've made in. You know where things were going? Thanks so much, thanks to all right. And I'm student men. This is the Cube at Science Logic Symposium twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE! Covering Inforum D.C. 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Good afternoon, and welcome back to the Walter Washington Convention Center, we're at Inforum 2018, here live on theCUBE, John Walls with Dave Vellante, and it's a pleasure now to welcome the CEO of Infor, Charles Phillips with us. Charles, good to see ya! >> Good to see you guys again, another year. It's great, it's great. >> Yeah, I tell ya, you are a man of demand aren't you? I mean, tell me about the week so far for you, how it's gone, and just your overall thoughts about the show? >> Yeah, it's been a fun Inforum for 2018 here. Great attendance, and a lot of energy level, and the common feedback we get is you guys just keep innovating and bringing new things, this is great, and that's why they come, they want to see what we're working on and kind of dream the art of the possible. We know what you, what we think you get a couple years ago, but if we don't have someone pushing us and painting a picture of what we could be doing, and we just think we might be missing it, so we want to hear it first hand. So that's what the conference is about, and hopefully they got that. >> Well, certainly thematically, human potential, you talk about that, you see that on the keynote stage, that's been a very consistent theme with our guests here, we've heard that a lot, you hear it down on the show floor. Talk about the theme if you would, a little bit, in terms of it's development, where that came from, and in how you think that's being expressed here this week. >> Well, we're one of the few companies that build mission critical operational systems, be it manufacturing or hospital operations, but we're also in HCM in a big way. And so we were talking to kind of both sides of the house, for some applications you're talking to the line of business manager, but for HCM you're talking to the CHRO, and rarely were those two people talking, and we saw obvious synergies. Don't you want to know how your people are doing, how to allocate people, and how they're performing, how they're changing the outcomes on a manufacturing floor or in a hospital, and a lot of HR directors weren't thinking like that because they think of HR, and they have their own world, they go to HR conferences and that's it. And the manufacturing guys are the same thing, and so we're trying to bring these two worlds together and say "Actually, you're in the same business, it's the same goals, and you actually could help each other a lot." And so by focusing on putting the employee at the center of all these applications and mapping all these operational processes to HR data, it's a different way of thinking about the role of HR. They can actually help drive the business, not just be an administrative function, and so it's resonating with a lot of the CHROs we met with, 'cause they want a seat at the table, they want to be more strategic, and this is a way for them to do that and at the same time the operational people want to know how their people are doing, want to develop talent, and want to know what are the tools out there I could be doing differently, and how am I doing, and which employees are working the best So, I think we can bring both sides together. >> So I first met Infor through AWS, at re:Invent, Pam Murphy came on, and we were like Infor? Back then it was like 2012, 2013 was kind of Infor who? And then we were invited to New Orleans, and then started to learn more about your micro-vertical strategy and a little bit about the platform, it was somewhat opaque to me. And now, fast forward last year and this year it's really starting to come in to view. The OS, the platform vision, the Birst acquisition, and of course Coleman, and I'm a sucker for platform plays especially when there's real R&D behind it that's actually having a business impact. So I wonder if you could talk about that piece of the strategy, I love the stack, was that sort of always your vision and now you're getting aggressive in it, did it sort of come together serendipitously, how'd we get here? >> Having our own stack and a platform was always the vision, but it's a lot harder to do than it sounds like, and it takes time. And so, when we arrived almost eight years ago, there were different applications, all had their own separate stacks and would say "This is not going to work." So, we need, just to be able to scale, to be able to serve multiple industries with different products, we can't have every development organization building their stack as well. So we set about taking that away from the development groups we're going to do this as a shared service, but it takes time, and as we build it you will adopt components of it. So what's changed is we've built out the entire stack, so, starting with ION, with integration, then we added document management, workflow, analytics, now AI and a lot of other services, Mongoose, platform as a service, on and on and on, in collaboration, those things took time, they're all on a single platform, federated security, single siloed across it all, and now it makes the developers job who's developing apps so much simpler. So they have Infor OS for the immediate platform, for cloud services they have AWS, I don't have to worry about any of those things anymore, just go and develop industry functionality. So, it's come together nicely, but the fact that we had the time to do it and the money to do it, and we weren't public, and we told our investors "This is the only way this is going to scale, this is the future, and it'll pay out later, you just got to trust us." And now that we've gotten there, they're seeing the synergy and go "Okay, now we see why you did that." >> So, Michael Dell's been on theCUBE many times, he used to talk about the 90 day shot clock, we obviously see what he's done in terms of transforming; but I want to talk about your business a little bit, because you've had that patient capital, I mean you're a quasi-public company in the sense that you do report so we can see the numbers on the income statement, but the income statement doesn't really tell the whole story It's about three billion in revenue, several hundred billion dollars on the balance sheet, but if you look at the SaaS component of it it looks rather small, maybe about 25% of the business, but from a booking standpoint I'm sure it's much, much larger than that. So how should we interpret the income statement in terms of the momentum in your business, where is all the action? >> So as a percentage of our sales, it's the highest of any of our competitors, so, about 70% of our new sales are on SaaS, we have about a $700 million SaaS business, so it's growing. There's nothing we can do about the maintenance piece of it, if it's related to perpetual, so if you take that out, it's a big percentage of our business. And over time the maintenance will turn into SaaS, so that's one of our big opportunities to look at that maintenance space and say "Move those over to cloud customers." and that's usually a financially lucrative thing for us to do, because we do even more for them, because they usually add on four or five other products when they move, they replace these third party products and so we get a bigger suite of products if they decide to move to the cloud. So that's part of the strategy, that's what UpgradeX is, let's move you from on-premise, so that maintenance revenue will turn into SaaS revenue, but bigger SaaS revenue over time. >> So let me make sure I understand, so it's not the classic case where you see a lot of software companies that are going from a perpetual model to a ratable model, you're goin' from a maintenance model which is ratable to a ratable model which is SaaS, but there's cohorts sales which increase the top line, is that correct? >> Exactly. So usually, because of what we do, we're doing something mission critical. So if you're going to take that, then you should do ACM financials, all the other things around it. So why would I move to core and leave the edge on-premise? So, almost by definition we have to do the whole suite. So when we do that it expands the deal, 'cause on-premise we may have been one vendor with 30 other ones existing, but the whole reason they want to get out of all of that is to move to the cloud and simplify. So we can't take all that with us, so we have to have the full suites, we've built that now. So now we can move them, but, it expands the size of the deal because we're replacing all these other products. >> Okay, and then some of the stats, just correct me if I don't get this right. Your SaaS business grown 50% faster than Oracle's, growing at a rate, I'd say 2X SAP's and a rate comparable to Workday, are those correct figures? >> Those are correct, and profitable. >> Oh, and profitable. >> Throw that in. (all laugh) >> Right, so okay. And then last year Koch Industries invested, so you kind of recap the company, you've made a big deal about that. One of the things that we've noted is you're seeing a tailwind there in terms of guys like Accenture and Capgemini, we've asked them "Do you guys service Koch Industries?" they said "Yep!" they helped us see the opportunity, and they said "Look, look for something substantive, we're not going to try to force you to do something, but we want you to take a look." So that's been helpful. Talk about that and maybe other things Koch has brought to the table? >> It's a, the relationship with the integrators is evolving, it probably was not a plus for us in the first four, five years. More recent years we've won enough deals where they had to say "Okay, we can't keep losin' these deals." And where they wanted to get engaged. Koch helped, because they had relationships and they wanted to run that business, that's why they're implementing our products globally, and so, they're a large customer for all of these guys, and one of the largest for Deloitte for instance, but what's really more-- that helped, but it was more the, what was happening in the market, the fact that we're in a Liberty Steel and replace SAP, or that we're in a Travis Perkins interview with SAP and Microsoft, so, if you're on the wrong side of those deals enough times your manager starts to ask you what's goin' on, and you got all these people on the bench here, okay, we train them for Infor if they're winning in that region, or in that industry. So, we just had to earn our way into it, our initial strategy was not one that, at least on the surface, looked like it was integrator-friendly because we were trying to take all those mods they like to do and put 'em in the product, and that's the whole thesis, let's the take the vertical industry features and let's put it in there once, I don't want everybody customizing my apps, we do that. And so now they've had to move up, okay we can do other things, configuration, changed management, there's AI, there's other things you can do, but you're not going to do that. So now that they've accepted that, there's a basis for us to work together, and, it just had to take time to get there. >> What can you tell us about where you want to go with this? I mean you've presided over public companies before, you know that business well, you were a rockstar analyst, is there an advantage to being a public company, is that something that you eventually want to do? >> I would say there are pluses and minuses, our board is evaluating that, that's going to be their call. The upside is, it would solve probably our biggest challenge which is brand recognition, almost instantly, because would be a top 10 tech IPO. It makes it a little easier to hire people because they can see public currency, they can value more quickly, and it gives you some acquisition currency; so those are the positives. But then you're on the 90 day cycle, and we're kind of on that anyway, 'cause we report publicly and we have publicly traded bonds. So for us it's, in some sense we have the worst of all worlds, right? We have the discipline of being a public company, and the scrutiny, without the capital, (laughs) and the branding, so. I think that's what everybody's evaluating. Every bank on Wall Street's visiting us telling us to go now, the window's great, you have the numbers. >> Oh, of course. (Dave and John laugh) >> And so, so we could do it, I just don't know what their decision's going to be. The advantages to being private as well, you have a little more flexibility obviously, and, we don't need the capital, we have plenty of capital coming from Koch and others who want to invest. >> Well, the flip side of that too, is you get to write your own narrative, right? >> Yeah. >> I mean, we're talkin' about the nuances of the income statement, the Street is obviously right now hooked on growth heroin, and if you got the transition in the base it doesn't become a tailwind, so, no rush from that standpoint. I want to pivot to the theme of this event, which is the human potential. My understanding is you sort of were instrumental in coming up with that. HCM this year got a big play on stage, where's that come from? >> Yeah, just as I talk to CEOs who are struggling to find talent, like I mentioned on stage 6.7 million jobs that are unfulfilled. It's not like we don't have people here, we have people here with their own skills, so, you're not going to fill those jobs any other way, we're not doing immigration to any degree and scaling more, that's been shut down. We have an aging population with the baby boomers, so the most logical thing that you would do is train people who are already here who want to work. And, let's take people who have jobs that they probably aren't thrilled about, and give them different skills so they can fill these 6.7 million jobs. So to do that, you have to make these applications easier to use, and I felt like we're probably in the best position to do it because we actually know what they do for a living, 'cause we wrote all those last features in those industries, we understand what they do. And if you're just doin' HR replication or financials, you actually have no idea what they do. So, we had to learn those jobs to automate those jobs, so we can find ways to use our HCM applications to better train people, professional development, coaching, take all these HR skills, and put them as part of the applications in the context of while you're working. >> We had Anne Benedict on just a little bit ago talking about really a test case that you can be for yourself. So how are you putting these things to practice yourself, and how are you working out maybe some kinks before you take them out to somebody else? And so, you can leverage your own success for your own success, and also learn from mistakes too I would think. >> We do. So we have this program called Infor at Infor, where everything we do, we want it to be on an Infor product, which was not the case when we arrived. Like a lot of companies, a mish mash of different things, and so we've implemented not only HR Financials of course, Birst, but the big innovation has really been talent science, that every employee we hire has to take that test, and all the executives have taken it as well. And what we've discovered is, is that, when people hire and go against the talent science recommendation, 68% of the time they end up being wrong. So it's better at judging people than people are sometimes, and you can't use it exclusively, but it'll tell you these are the things you should look into, some questions you might want to ask, here's how they rate on certain skillsets, they're very well meshed for this job, they look like they'd see their best performance in this area, but ask these questions. And so people don't know how to interview and how to think about this, and so, having a guide to go into an interview is actually pretty helpful. We hire much better people now by using that. >> So it's like StrengthsFinder in a way? >> No, it's different from that, this is AI, it's kind of Moneyball for business people. >> Well you're talking about that today, almost there. >> Yeah so it's 39 personality attributes, behavioral attributes we call them, so, empathy, resistance to authority, do you have the ambition or not, and depending on the job, you think all those things are good, depends on the job, so. For some jobs, it's actually better to have low ambition because, a lot of our customers who have low wage, fast food service jobs, people who have ambition are going to leave in four months, right? They're not going to stay, so, okay we're not going to be here long, at least know that going in, and know who wants to get promoted, and other people are fine with it. And so it depends on the mix of skills, just like I said, 39 attributes, and for that job role, you tune it to the people who like that job, they look like this. And, we've also found that it's 60% more diverse when you hire using science, because you don't know that when you're looking at the data, what they look like. >> It must've been super interesting getting those reports. You took it, obviously right? >> Yeah I took it. >> How'd you do? (laughs) >> Uhhh, nobody really likes their profile. (all laugh) >> I was going to say, I imagine I would be really defensive about this, oh I don't know. >> This can't be right! >> That is not me! I am not like that! (all laughing) >> Every person on our executive team said the same thing so. That's what it's for is to, you have certain perceptions even about yourself, and it calls it out, right? And there's no gaming the system because the questions have no right or wrong answer, it just puts you in scenarios that you answer what would you do, how do you feel about this? You're not clear what they're trying to get at, and you only have 27 minutes or 22 minutes to do the test. >> So you can't game it? >> You can't game it. >> Data doesn't lie! >> And we built the science, we know when someones trying to game it, they're taking to long on multiples, and changing their answers too much, so it's-- And we've now, I think we've tested some 200 million people over time, over years, so we have 20 years of data about people. >> That's, I mean, sounds unique, certainly unique of being infused into enterprise software, I've not seen anything like this from another enterprise software company. Can you confirm that, or? >> Yeah, so, we're the only ones that do this at scale, there's a few startups trying to do it, but they're trying to do it all facial recognition which is, we think pretty ridiculous, we're trying to get away from physical attributes not use that. So there's a company out there doing that, depending on your facial movements, but this is, we're eliciting responses about your personality in response to situations that we give you, and have a bunch of scientists that crunch the data and they basically shape it to the job role. And they test your best performance, and you get a DNA profile for your best performance for that job role, and then, that's what you're matching, and it's highly accurate. So we had a company on the Las Vegas Strip use it, because they have to hire in volume a lot, and essentially what they wanted to do was get better blackjack dealers. You need somebody that's good at math, good under pressure, not too emotive, don't give away anything; and so we did that, fine tuned the test, they call us back nine months later and said "We need you to change the test." We said "We did exactly what you wanted, what happened?" He said well, the winnings went up 30%, but everybody's leaving the hotel in 24 hours 'cause they lost all their money, so we don't need them to be that good. (all laugh) >> Dial it down a little bit. >> Which we did. And so that's part of the service is we fine tune it, you tell us what your goals are, and we'll tune to that. >> That's a great story. The other surprise for me this week has been the emphasis on robotic process automation, it's a space that we've kina looked at. And a lot of people are scared about software robots replacing humans, but if you talk to people who are using RPA, they love it. It's taking away these mundane tasks, I didn't realize that you guys had such capabilities there? >> Yeah, so we built that as part of a Coleman RPA platform, and not only can we automate and use RPA for ourselves, but we've built a whole development environment for our customers to build their own, 'cause we can't think of every process that they might want to automate, and we gave that platform to our partners as well, so. We don't want them doing database schema work anymore, and they used to get paid for that, there's other things you can do up the stack in AI, here's what we want you to focus on. So we had that meeting on Monday with the partners, and they all agreed that's what we're going to do. But there's tons of mundane things that people shouldn't be spending time on, and they can be much more productive, it makes them more loyal to the company, they're enjoying their job more, and they're thinking and innovating more. So I don't see it as replacing people, as making people better. And giving that engagement that I talked about during the keynote, they're engaged now, because they can do things that are more value adding now. >> So, back to New Orleans next year? That's the first Inforum that theCUBE was ever at was in N'Orleans, and, jazz, you like jazz, obviously, right? >> I like jazz, I met with the mayor when I was down there, Mitch Landrieu at the time, and he became a customer after that meeting, so the city of New Orleans runs on Infor software, it's another reason to go there; so thank you. >> You've get--nice. >> Yeah, thank you Mitch, so that worked well. And so as a thank you we're going back down there, they're a big customer now, and it's always fun, you know what I mean, you know. >> That's great. >> Just, before you go, you mention, I watched in the keynote this morning, Brooks Koepka. >> Yes. So you're working with him. I do a little bit of work on the golf side as well, so I was just intrigued because, he's not the, well he's not Tiger, right? >> Yeah. >> U.S. Open Champion, twice over. What was the attraction to him, and then can you play in the golf world a little bit, and with those brands, and is that an entry into that world? >> Well, we always like to bet on the scrappy guy, the next up and coming generation guy, and that's kind of our brand that's what we are, the Brooklyn Nets, someone who's not quite there yet, but they're moving up, that's kind of our scrappiness, that's why we like the whole Brooklyn image as well. And we started talkin' to him, like I said, before he won the U.S. Open, because he was ranking pretty high, moving up, but wasn't well known. A quite guy, very personable when you meet him, we thought he'd be good in front of clients, let's bet on his career, and we're going to work with him; and literally three weeks later he wins the U.S. Open, we go "Okay." (all laugh) >> Good grab! >> We'll take it! (laughs) So, we didn't even think it'd happen that quickly, and now he's a rockstar so. We were planning on hosting a CX event with him, and, we're not sure how many people are going to come, but when that happened, now, everybody RSVP'd right away of course. So now it's doing exactly what we wanted. >> Do you play golf? >> I don't play golf, I just started playing, 'cause we were doing these golf tournaments with customers over the last year, but I haven't had enough time to get out there yet. >> I'll bet Brooks would give you a lesson or two. (laughs) >> Yeah, he, a lot of people want to lesson from him. >> Charles thank you >> Alright, thank you guys, >> for the time, great show. >> Good to see ya again. See ya in New Orleans. >> Thank you, yeah. >> Congratulations. >> Alright guys, see ya. >> Wonderful week here in Washington, D.C. Back with more live on theCUBE here from D.C. right after this. (bubbly music)

(click) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. It's 2018. We just got out of the CES show and all the rage is autonomous vehicles. You can't get away from it. It's what everybody's talking about. Tesla just announced their autonomous truck, their autonomous Roadster. We're here in Palo Alto, right on San Antonio Road. Googleplex and Waymo's are right up the street. So everyone is all about autonomous vehicles, but we're excited to be here at Phantom Auto and they're taking a slightly different approach for a slightly different problem. We're excited to have Shai Magzimof. He's the co-founder and CEO of Phantom Auto. Shai, great to see you. >> Nice talking to you, yeah. Thanks for having me. >> So Phantom Auto, you guys just got back from CES. You were giving demos, but you weren't stuck in, like, the little lane that was protected. You were actually driving people all over the streets. >> We were driving on the Strip, yeah, yeah. We actually were picking people from the hotel lobby, so the valet guys would let us in with an empty vehicle. These videos are actually also online, and we drove them off the Strip and back to the hotel, or to another destination. >> So you're doing a whole different thing. You do not have an autonomous vehicle. >> It's not an autonomous vehicle. >> You were the ultimate chauffeur driven vehicle. >> Right. Right. So again, for the show, we did our job to show that the vehicle can drive without a driver in the driver's seat, but what we do is actually a safety solution for autonomous vehicles. And that safety is basically what happens if an autonomous vehicle artificial intelligence doesn't work. Let's say there's something that it cannot see, or something that, you know, an unidentified object, road construction areas, severe weather conditions, all this stuff happens all the time. And autonomous vehicles may struggle with the situation so Phantom Auto provides a solution that we work with these companies. We provide them that solution that allows remote operations, so someone will connect remotely. >> So let's back up a couple steps. Autonomous vehicles are meant for no driver. You guys have a driver but you're really assisted driving with a person from a remote location. So how do you describe that in a short category? I'm sure the analysts will want you to have a category. >> The category would be the same way you think about air traffic control, right, or any type of control center, like call control centers. Any type of support for customers, you would have a bunch of people sitting in front of computers, in our case they're sitting at computers with steering wheels, we'll see that later, and they can connect to a vehicle remotely, and when they move the steering wheel or press the gas or brake, it would actually happen in realtime. So we have this software that allows this realtime, critical communication for autonomous vehicles. >> Now what's weird is when we first heard about you guys, I'm thinking, okay what is the use case? Am I going to send the Phantom Auto to go pick up my hundred-year old grandfather who probably shouldn't be driving anymore, where you're escorting it. But really it's a very different application, and I don't think most people understand that, in autonomous vehicles, there's a whole lot of use cases still that they haven't quite figured out. My favorite one is when two of them pull up to a four-way stop, and neither of them wants to go first. They get stuck in a friendly lock, right, they get paper-logger, some poor kid has his foot in the intersection and is trying to wave the car through and it won't go through. So it's corner cases that you guys are all about, to really enable that next-stage of machinery. >> When I started a company, right, I'm a big believer in autonomous vehicle, I wanted to make them happen faster and sooner because it's life-saving technology. This is going to change the world. We all want it faster. Now, the reason why we're still not there yet is because there are many corner cases, edge cases, these situations where the machine didn't train enough for, and in this situation they provide a cover. So we have a person that would sit in an office, he doesn't have to be so close nearby. When we were in Vegas a couple weeks ago, the driver was in Mountain View, so Mountain View, California, Silicon Valley to Vegas, and he moves the steering wheel and he moves it real time. >> But he's driving the car. >> Yeah. >> So one of the great knocks on cloud, right, is latency, and clearly the use case that's always brought up is if you're in a self-driving car, you don't have time for the data to get it to the cloud and back to make a decision if a little ball rolls out into the street. So latency is a big issue. How do you guys deal with the latency issue? >> That's our secret sauce, obviously, but I'm happy to share as much as I can. The high level description would be, we connect multiple networks at the same time. We would usually have only AT&T in your cellphone, right, or in your car, and then we have AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and a few networks, all of these together are bonded, and once they're bonded they get a much stronger connection. It sounds maybe easy, okay so let's plug a few phones and then get a really good connection, but it's much more complicated than that. We share and split the data across multiple networks at the same time, we prioritize the data. So, like a brake, it's very important, right, so if the remote operator is pressing the brake, you want it to be first in the vehicle, where the right side of the camera is not as critical, so lower latency for the brake, and then a little bit higher latency for something less important. >> So you've got dynamic, kind of, latent distribution. >> It's all dynamic, realtime, you know, so that's what we do, our real core. We provide this communication, real time, critical layer of communication for the video streaming and back of the data from the remote operator, back and forth all the time. >> So that's one big piece of it. Another big piece of it is the communications between the occupants in the vehicle and the driver. Another really important piece that obviously most people aren't thinking about for autonomous vehicles because they don't have that use case. But that's a pretty important piece of your solution. >> Yeah, that's a big one. I'd say that for this, you don't need to do a lot of innovation. It could be a simple call with the driver remotely. But, we're all about safety, right, and we're all about giving passengers this psychological trust, and it is true, you want to sit in a car that drives 100% of the time. If I tell you that your car today would go in and drives only 95% of the time, you would not buy this car. Same thing with autonomous vehicles. So we provide a safety and service layer. On the safety side, it's about assisting the vehicle when there's an emergency. It could be post-emergency or before it happens. Let's say you're just stuck in the middle of the lane and you don't know what happens. Even if the driver remotely wouldn't actually drive the car, you still want to be able to talk to somebody, right. So, I'd start with first the person, the driver, the human being would greet you when you enter the vehicle. It's an autonomous vehicle, he would say hello, how are you, nice to meet you, my name is let's say Ben- >> Ben is going to be your driver. >> Your driver soon, and Ben is going to tell you that whenever you have a problem, if you need any assistance, he would be there for you. That already gives you like a whole different type of experience, and when you leave the vehicle too, he's not going to be there all the time engaged with the car. The car is going to drive on an autonomous AV system, but at least he's there in case you need him. >> And again, the attention thing, which is an issue, you see with some of the test autonomous cars out there we were talking before we turned the cameras on, where the engineer's got his hands ready to grab the wheel if there's an emergency. That's not really Ben's role here. The car is going to take evasive action in terms of emergency. It's more to get out of like these weird corner cases as you said. >> Correct, it's not a test driver. Today, most autonomous vehicle companies still require and mandate it, it's actually illegal. By the regs, you have to have a person in the car. We also have a person in the car, and we do that same thing, although when Ben is driving, he's not replacing that person. He's just assisting when the autonomous vehicle system would have an issue. >> Right. So the next thing I think that's pretty interesting about your company, as you said, you're a software company. There is hardware components, you can see the back of the car, we'll take some film of the driving station, but you use a lot of off the shelf, really simple hardware to execute this. There's Logitech, little steering wheels are over there, it feels like a big video game, you've got the big, curved Samsung screens, basic cameras on the car, so talk about the opportunity to build a software company and you're leveraging somebody else's autonomous vehicle technology to really get in the middle of this with just software, a pretty cool opportunity. >> I'll tell you what. The best time of my life was earlier this year, when I was just putting this whole thing together because it was plugging in the hardware and the software, I did it together with a team that's also here in the office. Obviously, it was more challenging because from a software person to try and build this hardware, you know, is more challenging, but I'd say today, you can get anything on Amazon, you buy on eBay a part you need, you plug it in and it would just work. So, again, we did a lot of iteration, I'd say we spent a bit more money than we were supposed to. But, that works. >> Right. And then the last piece of the puzzle that I think is fascinating is the way you're going to integrate in with other people's autonomous vehicle, so again, we talked about Waymo up the street, the Google one, Uber is working on theirs, Volvo, every day you read about BMW, et cetera et cetera, so you really get to take advantage of those hardware systems, the sensor systems, the control systems, not only from those autonomous vehicles, but you're seeing now all this stuff that's coming in factory, right, avoidance collision and radar and all types of sensors, so you will have to be able to take advantage of those different platforms and integrate your system into those various platforms. >> Right. So we would work with a company, let's say if it's one of the big OEMs or ride-sharing companies, we would know how their vehicle is set up, all we need for our solution to work is a bunch of cameras and a few modems, right, so cameras everybody have, it's one of the most essential things in an autonomous vehicle- >> Right, right. >> We would just tag into these cameras, use the modems that we need for the software to run, and that's about it. So it's a pretty straightforward solution to allow remote control assistant for autonomous vehicles. >> I'm just curious, when you're talking to customers or potential partners, what is the piece that really resonates with them when you kind of explain your solution and how it fits with what they're trying to accomplish? >> Right, so our solution is really trying to help them reach market faster, so we're not replacing anybody's work. We're adding another layer of support and safety so when yous computer crashed, when your software crashed in the car, we're going to be there with another redundancy system to support with a driver remotely. So, that's what we do at the service level. >> Okay, so can I go take a drive? >> Yeah, sure. Let's do it. >> All right, we're going to check it out, we're going to take a drive. We'll see you in the car. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(click) >> Hey, Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at Google for the Sixth Annual CloudNOW Top Women in Cloud Awards Event, our second year covering this, very excited to be joined by tonight's emcee, Becky Wanta, the founder of RSW1C. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> It's great to have you here. So tell us a little bit about what you do and your background as a technology leader. >> So, I've been in technology for close to 40 years. I started out as a software. >> Sorry, I don't even, what? (laughing) >> Ha, ha, ha, it's a long time ago, yeah. So I started out as a developer back in the Department of Defense. So it wasn't rocket science in the early days when I began because it was back when computers took up whole rooms and I realized I had an affinity for that. So, I leveraged that, but then I got into, at that time, and I'm from northern California, if you remember right, the Department of Defense was drawing down. And so I decided I was going to leverage my experience in IT to get into either integrative financial services or healthcare, right. So I took over running all of tech for the Money Store at the time which you would have no idea who that is. And then that got acquired by Wells Fargo First Union, so I took over as their Global CTO for Wells Fargo. And what you'll see is, so let me just tell you about RSW1C because what it is is it's a technology consulting firm that's me. And the reason I have it is because tech changes so much that it's easy to stay current. And when I get brought into companies, and you'll look at me, so I've been the executive officer for tiny little companies like PepsiCo, Wells Fargo, Southwest Airlines. >> The small ones. >> Yeah, tiny, not really, MGM Resorts International, the largest worker's comp company in California, a company that, unborn midsize SMB in southern California that just wrapped up last year. And when I get brought into these companies, I get brought in to transform them. It's at a time in the maturation of these companies, these tiny little brands we've mentioned, where they're ready to jettison IT. So I take that very seriously because I know technology is that gateway to keep that competitive advantage. And the beauty is of that the companies I've mentioned, they're all number one in their markets. And when you're number one, there's only one direction to go, so they take that very seriously. >> How do you come in there and help an MGM Grand Resorts transform? >> So what happened in MGM's case and probably in the last five CIO positions that I've taken, they've met me as a consultant, again, from RSW1C. And then when I look into what needs to happen and I have the conversation, because everybody thinks they want to do digital transformation, and it's not an easy journey and if you don't have the executive sponsorship, don't even try it at home, right? And so, in MGM's case, they had been talking. MGM's the largest taxpayer in Nevada. People think about it as MGM Grand. It's 19 brands on The Strip. >> Is that right? >> It's Bellagio, MGM, so it's the largest taxpayer in Nevada. So it owns 44,860 rooms on The Strip. So if I just counted now, you have Circa Circa, Slots of Fun, Mirage, Bellagio, Monte Carlo, New York, New York, um, MGM Grand Las Vegas, MGM Grand Detroit. They're in the countries and so forth. So it's huge. And that includes Mandalay, ARIA, and all those, so it's huge, right? And so in MGM's case, they knew they wanted to do M life, so M life game changes their industry. And I put that in. This will be our nine year anniversary coming up on Valentine's Day. Thirty years they talked about it, and I put in with a great team And that was part of the transformation into a new way of running their business. >> Wow, we have a couple of minutes left. I'd love to get your perspective on being a female leader in tech. Who were your mentors back in the day? And who are your mentors now? >> So, I don't have any mentors. I never did. Because when I started in the industry, there wasn't a lot of women. And obviously, technology was fairly new which is why one of my passions is around helping the next generation be hugely successful. And one of the things that's important is in the space of tech, I like this mantra, this mantra that says, "How about brains "and beauty that gets you in the door? "How about having the confidence in yourself?" So I want to help a lot of the next generation be hugely successful. And that's what Jocelyn has built with CloudNow, her and Susan. And I'm a big proponent of this because I think it's a chance for us to give back and help the next generation of leaders in a non-traditional way be hugely successful in brands, in companies that are going to unleash their passion and show them how to do that. Because, the good news is that I'm a total bum, Lisa. I've never had a job. I love what I do, and I do it around the clock, so. >> Oh, if only more people could say that. That's so cool. But what we've seen with CloudNow, this is our second year covering it, I love talking to the winners and even the folks that are keynoting or helping to sponsor scholarships. There's so much opportunity. >> There really is. >> And it's so exciting when you can see someone whose life is changing as a result of finding a mentor or having enough conviction to say, "You know what? "I am interested in a STEM field. "I'm going to pursue that." >> Right. >> So, we thank you so much Becky for stopping by theCUBE. And your career is amazing. >> Thanks. >> And I'm sure you probably are mentors to countless, countless men and women out there. >> Absolutely. >> Well, thanks again for stopping by. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Google with the CloudNow Sixth Annual Top Women in Cloud Awards Event. Stick around, we'll be right back.

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE. Covering AWS re:Invent 2017, presented by AWS, Intel and our ecosystem of partners. >> Hey welcome back to AWS Reinvent 2017. I'm Lisa Martin, very well-caffeinated today, so is David Floyer, we're really excited to be joined by two newcomers to the CUBE. We have Ryan Baxter, the director of cloud and verticals from Micron, welcome. >> Thank you. And Mo Farhat, director of SSD business line management, a marketing guy, welcome guys. >> Ryan: Thank you. >> Mo: Thank you, thank you. >> So Micron, a 35-year-old business. You must have seen massive changes in the last 35 years, but tell us what you guys are doing with AWS. What's exciting you about the announcements coming out, how are you partnering with them? >> Well, as you're seeing around you today, the rise of hyper scale is the true story in IT. And we're closely engaged with AWS to support their storage, memory, and emerging memory technologies as well. And we're tremendously excited by the potential that AWS that can bring to the market and is bringing to the market today. >> So let's unwrap that a little bit more. One of the things that seems to be happening is that the traditional nexus of networking, storage, going all the through the central processor is breaking up. >> Mo: Right. >> And you've got some very interesting stuff with the NVDIMMS. Can you talk a little bit about that and what does it mean to architecture? >> Sure, so I don't know what line isn't blurring these days, when it comes to computing, so we are certainly developing and pushing and product today called NVDIMM. It is the first example of persistent memory which we believe will really usher in a completely new model, and really a way of thinking about, the way folks do compute. It really requires some change on the system side, but the advantages are significant. With just a little bit of investment in terms of adjustments and software, and the way you use hardware, what you can gain from a performance perspective is enormous. >> By having large amounts of D-RAM and behind it, a large amount of Nand storage, and that combination of the two together on the same piece that goes in the computer suddenly multiplies by, how many, 10 times? >> Oh gosh, at least an order of magnitude. We're pretty excited about where this can go, and obviously it doesn't come for free. There will be some investment as far as the application stack, and how things need to change from a hardware enablement perspective, but yeah, things are changing very quickly. The traditional model of really memory and storage is very much at risk and very much blurring these days, and we're excited about where it's going. >> So let's talk about the SSDs. I've been following the flash market for a long time, and saying what a difference it makes to applications in the amount of data that they can get into them, both from the memory side and the storage side. So what's happening on the SSD side? What are you focusing on? >> Well what's most exciting about the developments in SSD today isn't just that they're accelerating existing workloads, but they're enabling all new workloads. Things like real-time analytics to drive our AI engines have revolutionary potential for our daily lives, and not just in the data center. And so when we take a look at what's happening in the SSD market today, the big story is the ramp in adoption in PCIE-connected or NVME SSDs. And we believe that we're at a turning point right now you know, led by AWS and other hyperscalers, and truly driving this adoption. And what NVME allows you to do is really harness the inherent parallelism of solid memory technology, solid state memory technology, and enable better control, enable lower latency, higher throughput and really move away from the legacy IO stack that was built for the hard drive era. Or as we like to call it at Micron, spinning rust. >> Ryan: Yeah. (laughs) >> And that's really amazing, isn't it? If you can have real-time analytics connecting to systems of record at the same time, that ushers in a complete, what we call at Wikibon, systems of intelligence, a completely new way of being able to provide much, much more data to those systems and drive productivity by an order, again, really very high level's difference of the type of applications that you can have. So let me ask you, this is a lot of change that we talked about, where we're taking out the network side, we're taking out the storage side, and the memory side. What's some of the most important things about getting this to happen over the next few years? >> Right, well I think, I'll start I guess. One of the most important things in our minds is paying attention to the customers, and really what drives them, what provides the most value for their deployments in the cloud. We have the privilege of working with folks like AWS because these customers, at the end of the day, challenge us to be better. They challenge us to maintain or improve our quality levels. They challenge us to be more flexible from a go-to-market and business model perspective. And frankly, a lot of the features that they're looking at incorporating into otherwise standard products today, actually end up finding their way into the next generation products that we design tomorrow. So it informs a lot of the way we need to think about traditional memory and storage models in the future. >> What about the standards that are required? >> The standards? >> Yeah. >> Yeah so, the standards bodies are alive and well, and are absolutely necessary for what we need to do to push our products into the market on a daily basis. Oftentimes those standards are too rigid, or not feature-laden enough to be able to get enough benefit for the particular end customer. So in those cases, we're sort of having to bend the model a little bit. Our products are based on a relatively straightforward set of foundational standards, but from there, we listen to the customer to enable new features, new capability of our otherwise standard products. >> Absolutely and in fact, Micron today is really working with our customers up front in helping drive the standards, with deep technical engagement on next generation, NVME features, as well as next generation form factors. You know, really our technology leadership in D-RAM, Nand, everything in between really positions Micron very strongly to shape the future here, and we can't do it without strong customer engagement, and we're really very excited about the potential for a future here. >> Yeah. >> Fantastic. >> How does the standards focus that you guys have, how does that set Micron apart from your competition? >> Well it helps us be a good player in the industry. It helps cement leadership. It allows us to have a playing field that goes to the benefit of our customers, our partners, and delivering predictability to the market, delivering overall lower cost to the market, and all the other ancillary benefits, that agreement our standards provide. >> I loved what you talked about with respect to working together in partnership with your customers. We hear a lot about that from AWS. They're very customer-centric. There was an article on siliconangle.com this morning, it was the third installation of John Furrier's exclusive with Andy Jassy. And I love their kind of backwards approach to product development. Which is really is surprisingly still revolutionary. The customer is such a driving force into what Amazon has become, and it sounds like what you're both saying, that's really very much paralleled at Micron. >> Absolutely, you know leading is hard. When you're firmly looking forward and really blazing new trails in technology, in our product set here, and really driving the revolution towards the solid state data center. You can't do it looking in the rear view mirror. You've got to go in collaboration. It's really some of the most exciting things that we do here is really enabling our customers to succeed. >> And your focus at the moment, I'm putting words in your mouth, I presume that's really weird that cloud providers, the hyperscale people like AWS, like Microsoft, like Google, are those sort of where you're starting the conversations and then that will come down into the enterprise as well after that. Is that the model? >> You know, we provide solutions to a broad range of customers. >> Okay, yeah. >> There is no doubt that hyperscale is in the driver's seat in terms of demand now and into the future for IT technology of all stripes. So we're very focused on it. >> Yeah and there are cloud models that obviously are heavily supported by our OEM customers as well. So maintaining engagement and really being best in class in their eyes is also extremely important for us. >> So this event, I actually heard this morning, 44,000 people here across the entire Strip. Last year, it was around 30,000 or so. How does this massive momentum that AWS has, how does that inspire Micron, and what can people see, feel, touch and experience at your booth here in the expo? >> Again, the growth in the number of attendees is nothing compared to the growth in AWS's business overall. These numbers are truly inspiring. They're changing the landscape of IT today, and so you know, encourage everybody to come by our booth and look at the variety of solutions that we have, both on the SSD side, memory side, as well as the all-popular NVDIMMs. >> And I think what events like this help to do is mobilize 44,000 of the brightest people in the world that come from all different walks of life, not just from a technical perspective, but software, hardware, application-oriented marketing to really have a meeting of the minds, if you will. And it really does, it challenges the traditional way of thinking of how we design our solutions, and how we support customers like AWS. >> Well guys, thank you so much for stopping by and chatting with David and me. >> Thank you very much. >> Really exciting to hear what you guys are doing, and we wish you continued success. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you, Lisa. (crosstalk) >> For Mo and Ryan, and my co-host David Floyer, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching the CUBE live on Day 2 at SWA 2017 re:Invent. Stick around, we'll be right back. (electronic music)