>>live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube covering Splunk dot com. 19. Brought to You by spunk. >>Hey, welcome back. Everyone's live Cube coverage in Las Vegas. That's plunks dot com. 2019 thistles their annual customer conference, where they unleash all the new technologies, announce all the new things. Everyone's here. It's the 10th anniversary of Splunk dot com cubes. Seventh year we've been covering slung been quite the journey from scrappy, startup going public growth phase. Now market leader on Outside has to come to success from the products and the engineering. And, of course, the people in the field that that served customers. And we're here with Susan St Leger, who's the president of worldwide field operations. Thanks for coming back to see you. >>Thank you, John. It's exciting to be here. >>So in the keynote, bringing data to every outcome is really the theme. Um, you seem to got a spring to your step here. You excited this year? What an amazing successful show because you got a platform. But the proof is out there. You got that ecosystem. You got people building APS on top of it. It's kind of all coming together this year, >>It sure is experience. It's it's it's just it's a huge leap forward, and I think so. Much of it is a vision of data to everything. And if you think about it, we talk about. We want to bring data to every question, every problem in every action. And the biggest thing you're going to see that you did see in the show is it's no longer just about the Splunk index. We're going to help you get you get value out of data wherever it lives. >>You had some big news on acquisition front Signal FX. Big chunk of change for that company. Private hot category. Observe ability, which really taste is out. That next 20 mile stare in the marketplace, which is cloud native. >>That's a >>cloud Service is, which comes together in the platform with logging coming together. >>Yeah, so exciting Way looked hard at that entire market, and signal FX was definitely the right answer. They operated a scale similar to us. They know how to how to operate it that scale, and so they're gonna be able to serve our customers well. And our view of the world is it's going to be hybrid for a very long time. But they serve that new cloud native world better than anybody else. It's It's when you do monitoring the cloud native world. It's really interesting to think about it. It's all made up of Micro service is right. So thousands of Micro Service's hundreds, thousands of Micro Service's and so in traditional monitoring, it's always you're tryingto monitor things you know could go wrong. In a microt service landscape, you don't know everything that could possibly go wrong. And so it's a level of complexity that's just very different. And so it's all about instrument ing, so that when something does go wrong, you can solve it. >>You guys have a very loyal based customer base, and that's again testament success. But the product has changed, and the value problems is emerging even further with data. That's a big theme. Data to everywhere, everything and security has come up on the radar a few years ago, here, the show. But this almost is a full blown security show at this point, because security center of everything you can't ignore it's become a centerpiece of everything data, the access to the diversity, How is that impacting the field because you're not. I mean, I guess you're a security company enabler and solve security problems. Date is a big part of it. Sure, I was at shaping your operations, >>So I think the thing to understand is correct. We're not just a security company, but we are number one in the security Magic quadrant. We're number one in both I. D. C and Gardner, and so that's important. But what happens is all the data the equal act for security can also be used for all these other use cases. So, generally speaking, whatever you're collecting for security is also valuable for I t operations, and it's also valuable for many other use cases. So I'll give you an example. Dominoes, which is a great customer of ours. They're gone 65% of their orders now come in digitally, okay? And so they monitor the entire intend customer experience. But they monitor it not only from a nightie operations perspective. That same data that they used righty operations also tells them you know what's being ordered, what special orders are being made and they use that data for promotions based upon volume and traffic and timing. they actually create promotion. So now you're talking about the same data that he collected for security night operations you can actually use for promotions, which is marketing is >>not a lot of operating leverage in data. You're getting out this. The old model was is a database. Make a queer. You get a report. Little time problem there. But now you have. Well, that other date is over there in another database. Who runs that data? So the world has certainly changes now, data needs to be addressable. This seems to be a big theme here on undercurrent. I know data to everywhere is kind of global theme, but don't diverse data feeds a I cracked and address ability allows for application access. >>Correct. So we look at the entire data landscape and say, we want to help you get data value out of your data wherever it lives. And it's right now, we've changed to the point where we are operating on data in motion, which is with data stream processor, which is hugely beneficial. You mentioned you know, a I m l way actually do something so unique from an ML perspective because we're actually doing the ml on the live streaming so, so much more valuable than doing it in batch mode. And so the ability to create those ML models by working on live data is super powerful. >>Good announcement. So you guys had the data processor. You have the search fabric, >>data fabric search, >>real time and acceleration our themes there. I want to get your thoughts on your new pricing options. Yes. Why now? What's that mean for customers? >>So if we want to bring data to everything, we have to allow them to actually get all the data right? So we needed to give them more flexible models and more alternative models. So for some people and just motto is very comfortable. But what they want it was more flexibility. So if you look at our new traunch pricing are predictable pricing, there's a couple of things that we've done with it. Number one is from 125 gig all the way up to unlimited. We'll show your predictable pricing so you don't have to guess. Well, if I move from 20 terabytes 2 50 what's that gonna cost me? We're gonna tell you, and you're gonna know and so That's one. The second thing is you don't have to land on the exact ingest. So before, if you bought a terabyte, you got a terabyte. Right now there's a traunch from 1 to 2 terabytes. There's a trunk from 2 to 5 terabytes. And so it gives the customers flexibility so that they don't have to worry about it coming back to buy more right away. >>So that's kind of cloud by as you go variable pricing. Exactly. I want your thoughts on some of the sales motions and position and you guys have out in the field. Visa VI. The industry has seen a lot of success and say Observe ability. For instance, Southern to Rick and Kartik About this. Yes, you guys are an enterprise software cloud and on premises provider you Enterprise sales motion. >>Yes, >>there's a lot of other competition up there that sells for the SNB. They're like tools. What's the difference between an offering that might look like Splunk but may be targeting the SNB? Small means business and one that needs to be full blown enterprise. >>Yeah, so I think the first and foremost most of the offerings that we see land in S and B. They have scale issues over time, I and so what we look at it and say is and they're mostly point products, right? So you can you can clutter up your environment with a bunch of point products, doing all these different things and try and stitch them together. Or you can go with this fun clock for him. So which allows you thio perform all of the same operations, whether B I t Security or Data Analytics in general. But it really isn't. It's about having the platform. >>You guys, what reduced the steps it takes to implement our What's the value? I guess. Here's Here's the thing. What's the pitch? So I'm on Enterprise. I'm like, Okay, I kept Dad. I got a lot of potential things going on platform. I need to make my data work for me any day to be everywhere. I au g Enterprise Cloud. What's the Splunk pitch? >>So our pitches were bringing dated everything, and first and foremost it's important. Understand why? Because we believe at the heart of every problem is a data problem. And we're not just talking t and security. As you know, you saw so many examples. I think you talk to his own haven earlier this week. Right? Wildfires is a data problem New York Presbyterian is using using us for opioid crisis. Right? That's a data problem. So everything's a data problem. What you want is a platform that can operate against that data and remove the barriers between data and action. And that's really what we're focused on. >>He mentions own haven that was part of Splunk Ventures Fund. You have a social impact fund? Yes, what's the motivation line that is just for social good? Is there a business reason behind it or both? >>What's this? So we actually have to social focuses. One is long for good, and that is non profit. What we announced this, what we announced a couple weeks ago that we reiterated yesterday was the spunk, social impact funds, a splint venture social impact fund, and this is to invest in for profit companies using data for social good. And the whole reason is that we look at it and so we say we're a platform. If you're a platform, you want to build out the ecosystem, right? And so the Splunk Innovation Fund splint Ventures Innovation Fund is to invest in new technology focused on that that brings value out of data. And on the other side, it's the spunk. Social impact. Thio get data companies that are taking data and creating such a >>Splunk for good as Splunk employees or a separate nonprofit. And >>it's not a separate nonprofit entity, but it is what we what we invest in. Okay. >>Oh, investing in >>investing in non for profit. Exactly like when we talked about the Global Emancipation Network right, which uses Splunk to fight human trafficking. That's on the nonprofit side. >>So take me through. This is a really hot area we've been covering for good because all roads I want now is for bad. Mark Zuckerberg's testifying from the Congress this morning kind of weird to watch that, actually, but there's a lot of good use cases. Tech tech can be shaped for good. A lot of companies are starting and getting off the ground for good things, but they're kind of like SMB, but they want the Splunk benefit. How do they engage with spunk if I'm gonna do ah social impact thing say cube for good? I got all this Tech. How do I engage punk? I wanted, but I don't know what to do. Have access to tools? How do I buy or engage with Splunk? >>Yes, start parties. Fund managers is making sure it's not just money, right? It's money, its access to talent. It's access to our product. And it's, you know, help with actually thinking through what they're trying to achieve, so it really is the entire focus. It's not just about the tech, Thea. Other thing I would say is you saw that we put out a Splunk investigate, and you also saw us talking about spunk, business slow and mission control. Those air now all built on a native SAS platform. And so the ability for our ecosystem now to go build on a native son platform is going to be incredibly powerful. >>So you expect more accelerated opportunities that all right, what's your favorite customer success stories? I know it's hard to pick your favorites, like picking a favorite child may be filled with the categories. Most ambitious class clown class favorite me. What's the ones you would call a really strong, >>so hit on a couple of my lover Domino story and the other one that I love, that I touched on. But I want to expand on because I think it's an amazing story. Is New York Presbyterian on using the Yes See you sprung for traditional security for private patient privacy. They also use it for medical devices. But here's the thing they use it for to help the opioid crisis. And you're like, How is opioid crisis a data problem? What they do is they actually correlate all the data that so doctors are prescribing the opioids who they're prescribing them to a number of prescriptions being building their pharmacy and then the inventory of opioids. Because they actually have sensors on all the cabinets where they get the opioids, they correlate all the data, and they make sure that if they understand if opioids being stolen from the hospital, because what people don't understand is that the opioid a lot of big part of the opioid crisis starts with hospitals to say of such a big volume of opioids. And so that, to me, is just I guess I love it because it's a great customer success story. But it's also again, it's so much fun doing good problem. >>A lot of deaths. I gotta ask you around your favorite moments here dot com, and you're a lot of conversations in your customer conversations this year. Let's do a little Splunk of the Cube right now can take the patterns, all the data, your meetings. What's the top patterns that are emerging? What are some of the top conversation themes that just keep popping up with customer? Specifically, >>I think the biggest thing is that they have seen more innovation unleash this year than they have ever seen in one year from Splunk. The other thing is that we've gone far outside of our traditional spunk index right and that the portfolio has grown so much and that we're allowing them to operate and get value out of the data wherever it lives. So data in motion and then you saw in data fabric search. We'll let you query not only the Splunk indices, but also H D. F s and s three buckets and more buckets to come. So more sinks if you will. So, really, what we're trying to do is say, we're just going to be your date a platform to help you get value >>Susan, you're a great leader and slung. Congratulations on your success again. They continue to grow every year. Splunk defies the critics. Now you're a market leader. Culture is a big part of this. What is your plans this year To take it to the next level? You're president of field worldwide, field operations, global business landscape. What are some of your goals and objectives on culture >>and the culture? So thank you, Jon. First of all, for your comments and were so committed to our culture, I think you know, as you grow so quickly, it takes a real effort to stay focused on culture way, have an incredible diversity and inclusion program. Onda We do way. It's a business imperative for us. Every single leader has diversity, diversity, inclusion, focuses and targets. And so I think that's a huge part of our culture. And the reason I say that, John, I don't know if you've ever heard about a 1,000,000 data points. Did anybody ever way Always talk about, you know in different different settings will share a couple of our 1,000,000 data points. What we want to make sure is a culture is that way. >>We >>have our employees showing up with their authentic self and because you do your best work when you can show up is your authentic self. And so we have people share a handful of their 1,000,000 data points at all different times throughout the year to get to know each other as individuals, as human beings and really understand what matters to each other. And I love that 1,000,000 data points culture, and I got that. We truly live it. And again it's It's about authenticity. And so I think that's what makes us incredibly special. >>And inclusion helps that trust >>fund elaboration, yes, and also just add to that. We're very proud of the fact that we made the fortune list this year for best places to work for women. So it shows that our focus, you know, we started. We started revealing our metrics just about two years ago, and we've had significant improvement way. Believe that what you focus on what you measure is what you improve. So we started measuring and improving it, and this year we made the list for a fortune that's called walking. It is Congratulations. Thank you. We're very excited about >>awesome on global expansion. I'm assuming is on the radar. Well, >>always, especially at this point. We're ready to double down and some of the tier one mark. It's a lovely for sure >>wasn't saying. Legend. President of worldwide field operations here inside the Cube. Where day to slung dot com 10th anniversary of their customer conference Our seventh year covering Splunk Amazing Ride They continue to ride the big wave. Thats a Q bring you all the data on insights here. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching.

live from Orlando Florida it's the cube covered conf 18 got to you by Splunk welcome back to our land Oh everybody I'm Dave Volante with my co-hosts two minima and you're watching the cube the leader in live tech coverage we're brought here by Splunk toises Splunk off 18 hashtag spunk conf 18 Susan st. Leger is here she's the president of worldwide field operations at Splunk Susan thanks for coming on the cube thanks so much for having me today so you're welcome so we've been reporting actually this is our seventh year we've been watching the evolution of Splunk going from sort of hardcore IT OPSEC ops now really evolving in doing some of the things that when everybody talked about big data back in the day and spunk really didn't they talked about doing all these things that actually they're using Splunk for now so it's really interesting to see that this has been a big tailwind for you guys but anyway big week for you guys how do you feel I feel incredible we had you know we've it announced more innovations today just today then we have probably in the last three years combined we have another big set of innovations to announce tomorrow and you know just as an indicator of that I think you heard Tim today our CTO say on stage we to date have 282 patents and we are one of the world leaders in terms of the number of patents that we have and we have 500 pending right so if you think about 282 since the inception of the company and 500 pending it's a pretty exciting time for spunk people talk about that flywheel we were talking stew and I were talking earlier about some of the financial metrics and you know you have a lot of a large deal seven-figure deals which which you guys pointed out on your call let's see that's the outcome of having happy customers it's not like you turn to engineer that you just serving customers and that's what what they do I talk about how Splunk next is really bringing you into new areas yeah so spike next is so exciting there's really three three major pillars if you will design principles to spunk next one is to help our customers access data wherever it lives another one is to get actionable outcomes from the data and the third one is to allow unleash the power spunk to more users so there really the three pillars and if you think about maybe how we got there we have all of these people within IT and security that are the experts on Splunk the swing ninjas ful and their being they see the power of spunk and how it can help all these other departments and so they're being pulled in to help those other departments and they're basically saying Splunk help us help our business partners make it easier to get there to help them unleash the power spunk for them so they don't necessarily need us for all of their needs and so that's really what's what next is all about it's about making it again access data easier actionable outcomes and then more users and so we're really excited about it so talk about those new users I mean obviously the ITA ops they're your peeps so are they sort of advocating to you into the line of business or are you probably being dragged into the line of business what's that dynamic like yeah it's definitely we're customer success first and we're listening to our customers and they're asking us to take them that should go there with them right there being pulled that they know that what we what we say with our customers what are what our deepest customers understand about us is everybody needs funk it's just not everyone knows it yet and I said they're teaching their business why they need it and so it's really a powerful thing and so we're partnering with them to say how do we help them create business applications more which you'll see tomorrow in our announcements to help their business users you know one of the things that strikes us if we were talking it was the DevOps gentleman when you look at the companies that are successful with so-called digital transformation they have data at the core and they have sort of I guess I don't want to say a single data model but it's not a data model of stovepipes and that's what he described and essentially if I understand the power of Splunk just in talking to some of your customers it's really that singular data model that everybody can collaborate on with get advice from each other across the organization so not this sort of stovepipe model it seems like a fundamental linchpin of digital transformation even though you guys haven't been using that overusing that term thank you sort of a sign of smug you didn't use the big data term when big data was all hot now you use it same thing with digital transformation you're a fundamental it would seem to me to a lot of companies digital transformation that's exactly if you think about we started nineteen security but the reason for that is they were the first ones to truly do digital transformation right those are just the two the two organizations that started but exactly the way that they did it now all the other business units are trying to do it and that same exact platform that same exact platform that we use there's no reason we can't use it for those other areas those other functions but but if we want to go there faster we have to make it easier to use spunk and that's what you're seeing with spunk next you know I look at my career the last couple of decades we've been talking about oh well there's going to we're gonna leverage data and there's go where we want to be predictive on the models but that the latest wave of kind of AI ml and deep learning what I heard what you're talking about and in the Splunk next maybe you could talk a little bit about why it's real now and why we're actually going to be able to do more with our data to be able to extract the value out of it and really enable businesses sure so I think machine learning is that is at the heart of it and you know we we actually do two things from a machine learning perspective number one is within each of our market groups so IT security IT operations we have data scientists that work to build models within our applications so we build our own models and then we're hugely transparent with our customers about what those models are so they can tweak them if they like but we pre build those so that they have them in each of those applications so that's number one and and that's part of the actionable outcomes right ml helps drive actionable outcomes so much faster the second aspect is the ML TK right which is we give the our customers in ml TK so they can you know build their own algorithms and leverage everything all of the models that are out there as well so I think that two-fold approach really helps us accelerate the insights that we give to our customers Susan how are you evolving your go-to-market model as you think about Splunk next and just think about more line of business interactions so what are you doing on the go-to-market side yeah so the go to market when you think about reaching all of those other verticals if you will right it's very much going to be about the ecosystem all right so it's it's going to be about the solution provider ecosystem about the ISV ecosystem about the big the si is both boutique and the global s is to help us really Drive Splunk into all the verticals and meet their needs and so that will be one of the big things that you see we will obviously still have our horizontal focus across IT and security but we are really understanding what are the use cases within financial services what are the use cases within healthcare that can be repeated thousands of times and if you saw some of the announcements today in particular the data stream processor which allows you to act on data in motion with millisecond response that now puts you as close to real-time as anything we've ever seen in the data landscape and that's going to open up just a series of use cases that nobody ever thought of using spoil for so I wonder what you're hearing from customers when they talk about how do they manage that that pace of change out there I really like I walked around the show floor stuff I've been hearing lots people talking about you know containers and we had one of the your customers talking about how kubernetes fits into what they're doing seems like it really is a sweet spot for spunk that you can deal with all of these different types of information and it makes it even more important for customers to come to you yeah as you heard from Doug today in our keynote our CEO and the keynote it is a messy world right and part of the message just because it's a digital explosion and it's not going to get any slower it's just going to continue to get faster and I know you met with some of our customers earlier today and if'n carnival if you think about the landscape of NIF right I mean their mission is to protect the arsenal of nuclear weapons for the country right to make them more efficient to make them safer and if you think about all of it they not only have traditional IT operations and security they have to worry about but they have this landscape of lasers and all these sensors everywhere and that and when you look at that that's the messy data landscape and I think that's where Splunk is so uniquely positioned because of our approach you can operate on data in motion or at rest and because there is no structuring upfront I would I want to come back to what you said about real-time because that you know I oh I've said this now for a couple years but never used to use the term when Big Data was at its the peak of what does a gardener call it the hype cycle you guys didn't use that term and and so when you think about the use cases and in the Big Data world you've been hearing about real time forever now you're talking about it enterprise data warehouse you know cheaper EDW is fraud detection better analytics for the line of business obviously security and IT ops these are some of the use cases that we used to hear about in Big Data you're doing like all these now and sort of your platform can be used in all of these sort of traditional Big Data use cases am i understanding that problem 100% understanding it properly you know Splunk has again really evolved and if you think about again some of the announcements today think about date of fabric search right rather than saying you have to put everything into one instance or everything into one place right we're saying we will let you operate across your entire landscape and do your searches at scale and you know spunk was already the fastest at searching across your global enterprise to start with and when we were two to three times faster than anybody who compete it with us and now we improve that today by fourteen hundred percent I don't I don't even know where like you just look at again it ties back to the innovations and what's being done in our developer community within our engineering and team in those traditional use cases that I talked about in big data it was it was kind of an open source mess really complex zookeeper is the big joke right and always you know hive and pig and you know HBase and blah blah blah and we're practitioners of a lot of that stuff that's it's very complex essentially you've got a platform that now can be used the same platform that you're using in your traditional base that you're bringing to the line of business correct okay right it's the same exact platform we are definitely putting the power of Splunk in in the users hand so by doing things like mobile use on mobile and AR today and again I wish I could talk about what's coming tomorrow but let's just say our business users are going to be pretty blown away by what they're going to see tomorrow in our announcements yeah so I mean I'm presuming these are these are modern it's modern software micro services API base so if I want to bring in those open source tool tools I can in fact what you'll actually see when you understand more about the architecture is we're actually leveraging a lot of open-source and what we do so you know capabilities a spark and flink and but what we're doing is we're masking the complex the complexity of those from the user so instead of you having to do your own spark environment your own flink environment and you know having to figure out Kafka on your own and how you subscribe to what we're giving you all that we're we're masking all that for you and giving you the power of leveraging those tools so this becomes increasingly important my opinion especially as you start bringing in things like AI and machine learning and deep learning because that's going to be adopted both within a platform like use as yours but outside as well so you have to be able to bring in innovations from others but at the same time to simplify it and reduce that complexity you've got to infuse AI into your own platform and that's exactly what you're doing it's exactly what we're doing it's in our platform it's in our applications and then we provide the toolkit the SDK if you will so users can take it to another level all right so you've got 16,000 customers today if I understand the vision of SPARC next you're looking to get an order of magnitude more customers that you of it as addressable market talk to us about the changes that need to happen in the field is it just you're hitting an inflection point you've got those you know evangelists out there and I you know I see the capes and the fezzes all over the show so how is your field get ready to reach that broader audience yeah I think that's a great question again once again it will I'll tell you what we're doing internally but it's also about the ecosystem right in order to go broader it has to be about this this Splunk ecosystem and on the technology side we're opening the aperture right it's micro services it's ap eyes it's cloud there's there's so much available for that ecosystem and then from a go-to-market perspective it's really about understanding where the use cases are that can be repeated thousands of times right that the the the big problems that each of those verticals are trying to solve as opposed to the one corner use case that you know you could you could solve for one customer and that was actually one of the things we found is when we did analysis we used to do case studies on Big Data number one use case that always came back was custom because nothing was repeatable and that's how we were seeing you know a little bit more industry specific issues I was at soft ignite last week and you know Microsoft is going deep on verticals to get specific as to you know for IOT and AI how they can get specific in those environments I agreed I think again one of the things that so unique about Splunk platform is because it is the same platform that's at the underlying aspect that serves all of those use cases we have the ability in my opinion to do it in a way that's far less custom than anybody else and so we've seen the ecosystem evolve as well again six seven years ago it was kind of a tiny technology ecosystem and last year in DC we saw it really starting to expand now you walk around here you see you know some big booths from some of the SI partners that's critical because that's global scale deep deep industry expertise but also board level relationships absolutely that's another part of the the go-to markets Splunk becomes more strategic this is a massive Tam expansion that where we are potentially that we're witnessing with Splunk how do you see those conversations changing are you personally involved in more of those boardroom discussions definitely personally involved in your spot on to say that that's what's happening and I think a perfect example is you talk to Carnival today right we didn't typically have a lot of CEOs at the Splunk conference right now we have CEOs coming to the spunk conference right because it is at that level of strategic to our customers and so when you think about Carnival and yes they're using it for the traditional IT ops and security use cases but they're also using it for their customer experience and who would ever think you know ten years ago or even five years ago of Splunk as a customer experience platform but really what's at the heart of customer experience it's data so speaking of the CEO of Carnival Arnold Donald it's kind of an interesting name and and so he he stood up in the States today talking about diversity doubling down on diversity as an african-american you know you frankly in our industry you don't see a lot of african-americans CEOs you don't see a ton of women CEOs you don't see the son of women with with president in their title so he he made a really kind of interesting statement where he said something to the effect of forty years ago when I started in the business I didn't work with a lot of people like me and I thought that was a very powerful statement and he also said essentially look at if we're diverse we're gonna beat you every time your thoughts as an executive and in tech and a woman in tech so first of all i 100% agree with him and i can actually go back to my start i was a computer scientist at NSA so i didn't see a lot of people who looked like me and so from that perspective I know exactly where he's coming from and I am I'll tell you at Splunk we have a huge investment in diversity and not because it's a checkbox but because we believe in exactly what he says it's a competitive edge when you get people who think differently because you came from a different background because you're a different ethnicity because you were educated differently whatever it is whether it's gender whether it's ethnicity whether it's just a different approach to thinking all differentiation puts a different lens and and that way you don't get stove you don't have stovepipe thinking and I what I love about our culture at spunk is that we we call it a high growth mindset and if you're not intellectually curious and you don't want to think beyond the boundaries then it's probably not a good fit for you and a big part of that is having a diverse environment we do a lot of spunk to drive that we actually posted our gender diversity statistics last year because we believe if you don't measure it you're never going to improve it and it was a big step right to say we want to publish it we want to hold herself accountable and we've done a really nice job of moving it a little over 1% in one year which for our population is pretty big but we're doing really unique things like we have all job descriptions are now analyzed there's actually a scientific analysis that can be done to make sure that the job description does not bias whether men are women whether men alone or whether it's you know gender neutral so that that's exciting obviously we have a big women in technology program and we have a high potential focus on our top women as well what's interesting about your story Susan and we spent a lot of time on the cube talking about diversity generally in women in tech specifically we support a lot of WI t and we always talk him frequently we're talking about women and engineering roles or computer science roles and how they they oftentimes even when they graduate with that degree they don't come into tech and what strikes me about your path is your technical and yet now you've become this business executive so and I would imagine that having that background that technical background only helped in terms of especially in this industry so there are paths beyond just the technical role one hundred percent it first of all it's a huge advantage I believe it's the core reason why I am where I am today because I have the technical aptitude and while I enjoyed the business side of it as much and I love the sales side and the marketing side and all of the above the truth of the matter is at my core I think it's that intellectual curiosity that came out of my technical background that kept me going and really made me very I took risks right and if you look at my career it's much more of a jungle gym than a ladder and the way you know I always give advice to young people who generally it's young women who ask but oh sometimes it's the young men as well which is like how did you get to where you are how do I plan that how do I get and the truth of the matter is you can't if you try and plan it it's probably not going to work out the exactly the way you plan and so my advice is to make sure that you every time you're going to make a move your ask yourself what am I going to learn Who am I going to learn from and what is it going to add to my experience that I can materially you know say is going to help me on a path to where I ultimately want to be but I think if you try and figure it out and plan a perfect ladder I also think that when you try and do a ladder you don't have what I call pivots which is looking at things from different lenses right so me having been on the engineering side on the sales side on the services side of things it gives me a different lens and understanding the entire experience of our customers as well as the internals of an organization and I think that people who pivot generally are people who are intellectually curious and have intellectual capacity to learn new things and that's what I look for when I hire people I love that you took a nonlinear progression to the path that you're in now and it's speaking of you know the the technical I think if you're in this business you better like tech or what are you doing in this business but the more you understand technology the more you can connect the dots between how technology is impacting business and then how it can be applied in new ways so well congratulations on your careers you got a long way to go and thanks so much for coming on the queue so much David I really appreciate it thank you okay keep it right - everybody stew and I'll be back with our next guest we're live from Splunk Don Capcom 18 you're watching the cube [Music]