>>from around the globe. It's the cube >>With digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by IBM. Welcome to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm lisa martin. Terrence WAmpler joins me next General manager at Workday financial management at workday Terrance. Welcome to the cube. >>Well thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I appreciate it. >>Nice that we can still do these events virtually even though we are quite socially distance. So the last year has brought lots of changes. One of them being at B. M. Thinking the cube being virtual. I'm curious to get your perspectives and your observations. We've seen many finance organizations have to rapidly pivot and accelerate their digital transformation making it a priority. What are some of the key priorities that you've seen that the C suite the CFO are dealing with? >>Yeah. Well I think what's happening is what we've seen our new ways to work and using remote access, having to do mobile technologies. What's happening is that's actually driving more risk for companies. And so as companies get more risk that's driving the needs to have more scrutiny on those business processes and that's forcing them to want to accelerate what they're doing in terms of the digital transformation, other stuff like that. It's also forcing them to think more about the data they have and the information they have looking forward and how they're doing planning and how they can do planning in terms of bringing people back to work in terms of new business models, in terms of what may be next, in terms of opportunity for them or even doing catastrophe planning as they, as they work through this stuff and as they start to look at that they're really thinking about how to make their business process and much more agile. And so it's kind of a complicated thread that you start to pull as people start to change how things work. >>Yeah, that risk is a big factor in that pivot was so quick for so many businesses where suddenly so many of us and so many of us are still remote. I'm curious what some of the things are though that you're hearing with respect to organizations looking to start opening things back up and bringing some of the folks back on campus. >>Yeah, it's a very interesting dilemma because what's happening is people have learned how to work remotely now and so they're trying to figure out how they're going to bring people back to be more collaborative. But at the end of the day, the first and most important thing they've learned is that especially for a finance function, they no longer want to be transaction operators. What they want to start doing is pushing that work to more automated tools to have that be done for them and try to promote themselves to be more like analysts or even advisors to the business or even a partner to the business. And as they go through that evolution, what they're really trying to do is unlock all of the potential of the people they have of the processes they have and if the data they have. So what is really made companies do is look at everything in its entirety and want to change all of it. But they have to go at different paces, >>definitely talk to me about what worked and IBM are doing together to help customers tackle these challenges, adjust their priorities and accelerate that transformation. >>Yeah, certainly. So one of the things that we've done is gotten together and created this go to market strategy called enterprise finance and what enterprise finance does is it really tries to meet the customer where they are. So while all of these customers are looking to accelerate their digital transformation, they come from very different places, right? And their journey to that transformation is going to be very different and that means that some of them are going to want to be able to do a full transformation right away and do it globally and make a big change because they've just been hit very hard by this or they see it as an opportunity to grow and others are going to come from a very complex environment. And that complex environment could include complicated manufacturing components in their solution. And they need to look at something like just a corporate finance layer that has kind of an integrated planning solution, consolidation, close capabilities for them to be able to run their business and be a little bit more agile at the top line. >>So a spectrum of of use of meeting them where they are. There's a lot of customers in different places. I'm curious what some of the things are that you've observed over the last year, that really are kind of unique ways that finance leaders are approaching this, this new way of working. >>Yeah, so there's probably two examples I can give you. One is a generic example where we have customers that have participated in merger or acquisition activity over the past year as it happens to be. Or customers that have even spun up new divisions with new business models trying to introduce new services or think about things that they can take advantage of or even shifting away from all this months that have been impact by what's happening And as they do that they will look to do a transformation around finance in that function only or for that subsidiary or for that division. And so that's probably the first example. The second example that I'll give you is companies having to do something they never thought they would do before. I'll give you a simple example. We have a large number of insurance companies here in the United States as customers and we all probably got our rebate check from the insurance company for automobiles. Right? So what happened is most of the large insurance companies identified that, hey, we actually don't have much risk because people aren't driving and they're paying us these big premiums. And so the insurance regulatory bodies put pressure on those insurance companies. So they had to figure out a business process model, any mechanism by which to go out forecast what the premium reduction should be, what the business should look like, what that risk should be, do all of that planning and then think about it for their future, actually, really old stuff and then figure out a process by which to get those rebates delivered out to customers. So there's interesting things like that happening in process. And if somebody wasn't running a remote system that didn't have good agility, they wouldn't be able to make that quick pivot and get us all those rebate checks that we were so happy to have. >>Yes, very happy to have that. It sounds like that was done in a pretty, pretty fast turnaround time. So imagine you're also dealing with customers who have sort of a TBD time schedule where there's still so much dynamics going on in the market today. >>Well, that's exactly right. I mean because you're looking at different business models in different industries. I picked insurance there, but you can pick other extremes like how are retailers reopening? What are they thinking? You can look at hospitality places, how are they going to reopen? How are they going to generate revenue? How are they going to do planning, How are they going to account for things? Right. So it's a range. So what's happened is everybody has looked at this as it's now an opportunity to not think in terms of years or even longer range plans, it's really an opportunity to be much more agile and think about being able to dynamically move in quarters or half, half year. Kind of, >>we've been having a lot of conversations about how that timetable has shifted and it's getting smaller and smaller because there's been so much flux and so much change that these organizations are really figuring out, how do we actually shift? Um and not just organizations but culturally as well to be able to adapt to these changes. That can be pretty sudden and pretty significant. I am curious to workday has historically focused its financial management solutions on really very much people intensive industries, but you do have customers that are outside of that and the services you talked about insurance getting value from work. They talk to me about um some of those other expansion of opportunities there are in the more services oriented industries. >>That makes a lot of sense. And so I'll call it product based industries but you can think about it as manufacturing or other components, but it's people that have systems around product and while they might have complex supply chains that Workday isn't able to support for them right now, they are looking at doing either that corporate transformation layer or they're looking at a solution we have around the county center. What accounting center allows them to do is bring in high volume of data from those source transaction systems and then generate accounting from it. But it gives them the ability to mix that operational data with that accounting data to do exactly what you're describing. Be able to pivot more quickly and do more planning because they have a better foundation from their data accuracy than the consistency of that data. So they may be running multiple E. R. P. Systems and as they're running those they can bring that data together through accounting center kind of a Federated way and get better insight into what they need to do to plan more rapidly to roll things out so they can kind of keep that execution system of record system and then they can basically promote this to more of operational planning and analysis type. >>Have you noticed in your conversations with customers? The financial management changing in terms of being elevated up to the C suite or a board level conversation with businesses. Now suddenly being very laser focused on understanding that reducing risk and did that any of that change and shift in terms of visibility in the last year? >>Yes it did. And the primary reason is because finance has always been the stewards of that information. They curate the data, they do all of that word and then other people take it and do analysis. The Finance department has taken more control of not only being the curator of that information but also being the team that does more of the analysis and has engaged more with corporate strategy or the chief revenue officers trying to bring forward the ability to do analysis and have a voice in terms of what are the business models we should be doing? What are the strategic growth initiatives we should be doing? How should we be looking at running the business, not just doing a finance function, but really doing that advisory role. And it really has become because the data is so important to make those decisions. Everyone wants these data german decisions and they are the curator of that data or the steward of that data. So they kind of helped promote themselves to do. >>What are some of the things that if you look out into your crystal ball for the rest of 2021, but are some of the things that you can that you think we're going to see in some of the key industries that are, that are working hard to return retail, manufacturing, the supply chain. We just had that big traffic jam in the Suez Canal and a lot of challenges there. What are some of the things that you think are opportunities that we're gonna see unfolding this year? >>Yeah, so I think it's going to be first around getting back to work, so it's back to office stuff which will start on the HR side, but it's going to lead to facility costs. It's going to lead to, you know, work or safety stuff and reporting, it's going to lead to how you manage health care or other tracking of things is going to lead to how you engage with customers remotely. It's going to be a number of factors that are related to how do we transition back into real life? Because what we started to see is in different parts of the country or the world, even parts of retail open up. But we haven't seen mass return to lots of offices like here in the United States. And I think that will drive a lot of different processes in terms of about how people do working shifts, how they do meetings, how they do analysis. And there will be a desire then to have those business processes automated the results of the transaction that comes from that, etc. >>That's a good point that you bring up that there's so many things that I hadn't really considered in terms of what it's going to take for businesses to return and have folks come back to campus. The extroverted me just wants to go back but you bring up a great point. There's so many other facets that they had to deal with rapidly last year. They have to be reconsidered. And so it makes sense that automation is something that they're looking at is coming in and really helping to automate certain processes to help reduce risk, reduce costs. Last question for you Terrence. Working customers go if they are looking to get back on the track, how can they engage IBM and workday together to help transform. >>Yeah. So the the best and easiest way is we have some joint blogs that we've worked together but first there's this cube and then there is the joint blogs that we've worked together to talk about enterprise finance and how we're going to market and that enterprise finance talks about the spectrum of a full finance transformation to a division to a corporate layer. >>Excellent. And I did see your blog. It sounds like you've been very busy in the last year which is excellent but thanks so much Terrence for coming by and sharing with us all the dynamics that are going on in financial management and beyond and the the acceleration of elements of transformation that organizations have to look at now. It's very interesting. We appreciate your time. >>No, thank you for having me >>for Terrence Wobbler. I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cube. >>Mhm.

>>from around the globe. It's the cube >>with digital coverage >>of IBM Think >>2021 >>brought to you by IBM. >>Welcome to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm lisa martin. Terrence Wobbler joins me next General manager at workday financial management at workday Terrance. Welcome to the cube. >>Well thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I appreciate it. >>Nice that we can still do these events virtually even though we are quite socially distance. So the last year has brought lots of changes. One of them being IBM think and the cube being virtual. I'm curious to get your perspectives and your observations. We've seen many finance organizations have to rapidly pivot and accelerate their digital transformation making it a priority. What are some of the key priorities that you've seen that the C suite the CFO are dealing with? >>Yeah. Well I think what's happening is what we've seen our new ways to work and using remote access, having to do mobile technologies. What's happening is that's actually driving more risk for companies. And so as companies get more risk that's driving the needs to have more scrutiny on those business processes and that's forcing them to want to accelerate what they're doing in terms of the digital transformation, other stuff like that. It's also forcing them to think more about the data they have and the information they have looking forward and how they're doing planning and how they can do planning in terms of bringing people back to work in terms of new business models, in terms of what may be next, in terms of opportunity for them or even doing catastrophe planning as they, as they work through this stuff and as they start to look at that they're really thinking about how to make their business process and much more agile. And so it's kind of a complicated thread that you start to pull as people start to change how things work. >>Yeah, that risk is a big factor in that pivot was so quick for so many businesses where suddenly so many of us and so many of us are still remote. I'm curious what some of the things are though that you're hearing with respect to organizations looking to start opening things back up and bringing some of the folks back on campus. >>Yeah, it's a very interesting dilemma because what's happening is people have learned how to work remotely now and so they're trying to figure out how they're going to bring people back to be more collaborative. But at the end of the day, the first and most important thing they've learned is that especially for a finance function, they no longer want to be transaction operators. What they want to start doing is pushing that work to more automated tools to have that be done for them and try to promote themselves to be more like analysts or even advisors to the business or even a partner to the business. And as they go through that evolution, what they're really trying to do is unlock all of the potential of the people they have of the processes they have and if the data they have. So what is really made companies do is look at everything in its entirety and want to change all of it. But they have to go at different paces, >>definitely talk to me about what worked and IBM are doing together to help customers tackle these challenges, adjust their priorities and accelerate that transformation. >>Yeah, certainly. So one of the things that we've done is gotten together and created this go to market strategy called enterprise finance and what enterprise finance does is it really tries to meet the customer where they are. So while all of these customers are looking to accelerate their digital transformation, they come from very different places, right? And their journey to that transformation is going to be very different and that means that some of them are going to want to be able to do a full transformation right away and do it globally and make a big change because they've just been hit very hard by this or they see it as an opportunity to grow and others are going to come from a very complex environment. And that complex environment could include complicated manufacturing components in their solution. And they need to look at something like just a corporate finance layer that has kind of an integrated planning solution, consolidation, closed capabilities for them to be able to run their business and be a little bit more agile top one. >>So a spectrum of of use of meeting them where they are. There's a lot of customers in different places. I'm curious what some of the things are that you've observed over the last year, that really are kind of unique ways that finance leaders are approaching this, this new way of working. >>Yeah, So there's probably two examples I can give you. One is a generic example where we have customers that have participated in merger or acquisition activity over the past year as it happens to be. Or customers that have even spun up new divisions with new business models trying to introduce new services or think about things that they can take advantage of or even shifting away from all of this must have been impact by what's happening and as they do that they will look to do a transformation around finance in that function only or for that subsidiary or for that division. And so that's probably the first example, The second example that I'll give you is companies having to do something they never thought they would do before. I'll give you a simple example. We have a large number of insurance companies here in the United States as customers and we all probably got our rebate check from the insurance company for automobiles. Right? So what happened is most of the large insurance companies identified that, hey, we actually don't have much risk because people aren't driving and they're paying us these big premiums. And so the insurance regulatory bodies put pressure on those insurance companies. So they had to figure out a business process model any mechanism by which to go out forecast what the premium reduction should be, what the business should look like, what that risk should be. Do all of that planning and then think about it for their future, actually, really old stuff and then figure out a process by which to get those rebates delivered out to customers. So there's interesting things like that happening in process. And if somebody wasn't running a remote system that didn't have good agility, they wouldn't be able to make that quick pivot and get us all those rebate checks that we were so happy to have. >>Yes, very happy to have that. It sounds like that was done in a pretty, pretty fast turnaround time. So imagine you're also dealing with customers who have sort of a TBD time schedule where there's still so much dynamics going on in the market today. >>Well, that's exactly right. I mean, because you're looking at different business models in different industries. I picked insurance there, but you can pick other extremes like how are retailers reopening? What are they thinking? You can look at hospitality places, how are they going to reopen? How are they going to generate revenue? How are they going to do planning? How are they going to account for things? Right. So it's a range. So what's happened is everybody has looked at this as it's now an opportunity to not think in terms of years or even longer range plans. It's really an opportunity to be much more agile and think about being able to dynamically move in quarters or half, half year. Kind of, >>we've been having a lot of conversations about how that timetable has shifted and it's getting smaller and smaller because there's been so much flux and so much change that these organizations are really figuring out, how do we actually shift? Um and not just organizations, but culturally as well to be able to adapt to these changes that can be pretty sudden and pretty significant. I am curious to workday has historically focused its financial management solutions on really very much people intensive industries, but you do have customers that are outside of that in the services, You talked about insurance, getting value from work. They talk to me about um some of those other expansion of opportunities there are in the more services oriented industries. >>That makes a lot of sense and so I'll call it product based industries but you can think about it as manufacturing or other components but it's people that have systems around product and while they might have complex supply chains that Workday isn't able to support for them right now, they are looking at doing either that corporate transformation layer or they're looking at a solution we have around the counting centre. What accounting center allows them to do is bring in high volume of data from those source transaction systems and then generate accounting from it. But it gives them the ability to mix that operational data with that accounting data to do exactly what you're describing. Be able to pivot more quickly and do more planning because they have a better foundation from their data accuracy than the consistency of that data. So they may be running multiple E. R. P. Systems and as they're running those they can bring that data together through accounting center kind of in a Federated way and get better insight into what they need to do to plan more rapidly to roll things out so they can kind of keep that execution system of record system and then they can basically promote this to more of operational planning and analysis type function. >>Have you noticed in your conversations with customers, the financial management changing in terms of being elevated up to the C suite or a board level conversation with businesses. Now suddenly being very laser focused on understanding that reducing risk and did that any of that change and shift in terms of visibility in the last year? >>Yes it did. And the primary reason is because finance has always been the stewards of that information. They curate the data, they do all of that word and then other people take it and do analysis. The Finance department has taken more control of not only being the curator of that information but also being the team that does more of the analysis and has engaged more with corporate strategy or the Chief revenue officers trying to bring forward the ability to do analysis and have a voice in terms of what are the business models we should be doing? What are the strategic growth initiatives we should be doing? How should we be looking at running the business, not just doing a finance function, but really doing that advisory role. And it really has become because the data is so important to make those decisions. Everyone wants these data driven decisions and they are the curator of that data or the steward of that data. So they kind of helped promote themselves to do that. >>What are some of the things that if you look out into your crystal ball for the rest of 2021? But are some of the things that you can that you think we're going to see in some of the key industries that are that are working hard to return retail, manufacturing, the supply chain. We just had that big traffic jam in the Suez Canal and a lot of challenges there. What are some of the things that you think are opportunities that we're going to see unfolding this year? >>Yeah, so I think it's going to be first around getting back to work, so it's back to office stuff which will start on the HR side, but it's going to lead to facility costs. It's going to lead to, you know, worker safety stuff and reporting, it's going to lead to how you manage health care or other tracking of things. It's going to lead to how you engage with customers remotely. It's going to be a number of factors that are related to how do we transition back into real life? Because what we started to see is in different parts of the country or the world, even parts of retail open up. But we haven't seen mass return to lots of offices like here in the United States. And I think that will drive a lot of different processes in terms of about how people do working shifts, how they do meetings, how they do analysis. And there will be a desire then to have those business processes automated the results of the transaction that comes from that, etc. >>That's a good point that you bring up that there's so many things that I hadn't really considered in terms of what it's going to take for businesses to return and have folks come back to campus. The extroverted just wants to go back. But you bring up a great point. There's so many other facets that they had to deal with rapidly last year. They have to be reconsidered. And so it makes sense that automation, it's something that they're looking at is coming in and really helping to automate certain processes to help reduce risk, reduce costs. Last question for you terrence. Working customers go if they are looking to get back on the track, how can they engage IBM and work together to help transform. >>Yeah. So the the best and easiest way is we have some joint blogs that we've worked together but first there's this cube and then there is the joint blogs that we've worked together to talk about enterprise finance and how we're going to market and that enterprise finance talks about the spectrum of a full finance transformation to a division to a corporate layer. >>Excellent. And I did see your blog. It sounds like you've been very busy in the last year which is excellent but thanks so much Terrence for coming by and sharing with us all the dynamics that are going on in financial management and beyond and the the acceleration of elements of transformation that organizations have to look at now. It's very interesting. We appreciate your time. >>No, thank you for having me >>for terrence Wobbler. I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cube.

>>from Santa Clara, California. In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the queue covering altitude 2020. Brought to you by aviatrix. >>Okay, welcome back. Altitude 2020 for the digital event for the live feed. Welcome >>back. I'm John Furrier with the Cube with Steve Mullaney, CEO aviatrix for the next panel from global system integrators of folks who are building and working with folks on their journey to multi cloud and cloud native networking Got a great panel. George Buckman with D XY and Derek Monaghan with W W t. Welcome to the stage. >>Okay, right. Yeah. Yeah. >>Okay. You guys are the ones out there advising, building and getting down and dirty with multi cloud and cloud native networking. We just heard from the customer panel You can see the diversity of where people come into the journey of cloud. It kind of depends upon where you are, but the trends are all clear. Cloud native networking, Dev. Ops up and down the stack. This has been the main engine. What's your guys take of the journey to multi cloud what you're seeing? No. >>Yeah, it's critical. I mean, we're seeing all of our enterprise customers enter into this. They've been >>through >>the migrations of the easy stuff, you know? Now they're trying to optimize and get more improvement. So now the tough stuff is coming on, right? And you know, they need their data processing near where their data is, so that's driving them to a multi cloud environment. >>We heard some of the edge stuff you guys are. You're seeing this movie before, but now it's >>a whole new >>ballgame. What's your take? >>Yeah, so I'll give you a hint. Our practices not called the cloud practice. It's the multi cloud practice. And so if that gives you a hint of how we approach things very consultative. And so when we look at what the trends are a little over a year ago, about a year ago we're having conversations with customers. Let's build a data center in the cloud. Let's put some VP sees that sort of firewalls. Put some DNS and other infrastructure out there, and let's hope it works. This isn't a science project, so we're trying to, We're starting to see is customers are starting to have more of a vision. We're helping with that consultative nature, but it's totally based on the business, and you got to start understanding how the lines of business are using the APS. And then we evolve into that next journey, which is a foundational >>approach to what are some of the problem statement that your customers are solving when they come to you? One of the top things that are on there, my house to the ease of use, agility, all that stuff. But what specifically they did, digging into >>some complexity? I think when you look at a multi cloud approach, in my view is network requirements are complex. You know, I think they are. But I think the approach can be Let's simplify that. So one thing that we try to do and this is how we talk to customers. Let's just like you. Simplifying aviatrix simplifies the automation orchestration of cloud networking. We're trying to simplify the design, the planning, implementation of infrastructure across multiple workloads across multiple platforms. And so the way we do it is we sit down. We look at not just use cases and not just the questions in common. We anticipate we actually build out based on the business and function requirements. We build out a strategy and then create a set of documents. And guess what? We actually build in the lab. And that lab that we platform built proves out this reference architecture actually >>work? Absolutely. We we implement similar concepts. I mean, they're proven practices. They work great. So, >>George, you mentioned that the hard part is now upon us. Are you referring to networking? What specifically are you getting? And Terrence is the easy part. Done that before the >>enterprises themselves, migrating their more critical APS or more difficult taps into the environments. You know, they just we just scratched the surface. I believe on what enterprises they're doing to move into the cloud, to optimize their environments, to take advantage of the scale and speed, to deployment and to be able to better enable their businesses. So they're just now really starting the >>you get. You guys see what I talked about in terms of the Cambrian explosion? I mean, you're both monster system integrators with, you know, top fortune Enterprise customers, you know, really rely on you for guidance and consulting and so forth and deploy their >>networks. Is that something that you have seen? Does that resonate? Did you notice a year and 1/2 ago. All of a sudden, the importance of cloud for enterprise shoot up. >>Yeah. I mean, we're seeing it in our internal environment. You know, we're a huge company or those customer zero r and D. So we're experiencing that internal, Okay? Every one of our other >>customers. So I have another question, but I don't know the answer to this. And the lawyer never asked the question that you don't know the answer to, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. DXC and WWD massive system integrators. >>Why aviatrix >>So great question, Steve. So I think the way we approach things, I think we have a similar vision of similar strategy. How you approach things, how we approach things, that world wide technology number one. We want to simplify the complexity. And so that's your number. One priority is let's take the networking, but simplify it. And I think part of the other point I'm making is we have ah, we see this automation piece as not just an afterthought anymore. If you look at what customers care about, visibility and automation is probably the top three. Maybe the third on the list and I think that's where we see the value. Now I think the partnership that we're building and what I would I get excited about is not just putting years in our lab and showing customers how it works is co developing a solution with figuring out Hey, how can we >>make this better? Visibility's a huge thing In security alone network. Everything's around visibility. What automation you see happening in terms of progression, Order of operations, if you will. What's the low hanging fruit? What are people working on now? What are you What are some of the aspirational goals around when you start thinking about multi cloud and automation? Yep. So I wanted to get back to answer that question. >>I want to answer your question. You know what led us there and why aviatrix, you know, in working some large internal I t projects and looking at how we're gonna integrate the solutions, you know, we like to build everything with recipes where network is probably playing catch up in the Dev ops world, but with a Dev ops mindset looking to speed to deploy support all those things. So when you start building your recipes to take a little of this, a little of that, and you mix it all together. Well, when you look around, you say, Wow, look, there's this big bag of 88. Let me plot that in. That solves a big part of my problems that I have to speed to integrate, speed to deploy and the operational views that I need to run. This. So that was the 11 years about reference architectures. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, they came with a a full slate of reference architectures already out there and ready to go. That fit our needs. So it's very, very easy for us to integrate those into our recipes. What >>do you guys think about all the multi vendor interoperability conversations that have been going on? Choice has been a big part of multi cloud in terms of, you know, customers want choice didn't put a workload in the cloud that works. But this notion of choice and interoperability has become a big conversation. >>It is, and I think, the approach, and that's why we talk to customers. It's let's let's speed and the risk of that decision making process, and how do we do that cause interoperability is key. You're not just putting. It's not just a single vendor. We're talking, you know, many, many vendors. I mean, think about the average number of cloud applications. The customer uses a business and enterprise business today. You know, it's it's above 30. It's skyrocketing. So what we do and we look at it from the interoperability approach is how to things Inter operate. We test it out, we validate it. We build a reference. Architectures says. These are the critical design elements. Now let's build one with aviatrix and show how this works with aviatrix. And I think the important part there, though, is the automation piece that we had to it in visibility. So I think the visibility is what I see. Lacking cross >>industry today, Cloud native, that's been a big topic. Okay, in terms of aviatrix that you guys see them coming in, they're one of the ones that are emerging and the new brands emerging with multi cloud. You still got the old guard incomes with huge footprints. How are customers dealing with that kind of component and dealing with >>both of them? Yeah. I mean, where we have customers that are ingrained with a particular vendor. And, you know, we have partnerships with many vendors. So our objective is to provide a solution that meets that client. >>And you they all want multi vendor. They all want interoperability. Correct. Alright. So I got to ask you guys a question. What? We're defining day two operations. What does that mean? I mean, you guys are looking at the big business and technical components of architecture. What is day to operations? I mean, what's the definition of that? >>Yeah. So I think from our perspective, my experience, we, you know, day to operations, whether it's not just the, you know, the orchestration piece and setting up and let it lot automate and have some, you know, change control. You're looking at this from a data perspective. How do we support this ongoing and make it easy to make changes as we evolved. The cloud is very dynamic. The the nature of how the fastest expanding the number of features is astonishing trying to keep up to date with number of just networking capabilities and services that are added. So I think Day two operations starts with a fundamental understanding of, you know, building out supporting customers environments and making it the automation piece Easy >>from from, you know, distance. Yeah, and you know, taking that to the next level of being able to enable customers to have catalog items that they can pick and choose. Hey, I need this network connectivity from this cloud location back to this on Prem and being able to have that automated and provisioned just simply by ordering >>for the folks watching out there. Guys take a minute to explain, As you guys are in the trenches doing a lot of good work. What are some of the engagement that you guys get into? How does that progress? What is the what's what happens there? They call you up and say, Hey, I need a multi cloud or you already in there and >>take us through. Why? How >>someone can engage to use a global less side to come in and make this thing happen? What's the typical engagement look like? >>Yeah, So from our perspective, we typically have a series of workshops and a methodology that we kind of go along the journey Number one. We have a foundational approach and I don't mean foundation, meaning the network Foundation That's a very critical element. We got a factor in security. We got a factor in automation. So we think about foundation. We do a workshop that starts with education. A lot of times we'll go in and we'll just educate the customer. What is VPC share? You know what is a private Lincoln Azure? How does that impact your business? We have customers. I want to share services out in an ecosystem with other customers and partners. Well, there's many ways to accomplish that. So our goal is to understand those requirements and then build >>that strategy with them. Yeah, I mean, I'm one of the guys. It's down in the weeds making things happen. So I'm not the guy on the front line interfacing with the customers every day. But we have a similar approach. You know, we have a consulting practice that will go out and apply their practices to see what >>and when do you parachute in? >>Yeah, And when I say is I'm on the back end working with our offering. Development leads for the networking. So we understand are seeing what customers are asking for and we're in the back end developing the solutions that integrate with our own offerings as well as enable other customers that just deploy quickly to meet their connectivity needs. So the patterns air similar. >>All right, final question for you guys. I want to ask you to paint a picture of what success looks like. And you know, the name customers, you know, to get and reveal kind of who they are. But what does success look like in multi cloud? You paint a picture for the folks here and watching the livestream. If someone says, Hey, I want to be multi cloud. I have my operations agile. I want Full Dev ops. I want program ability. Security built in from day zero. What does success look like? Yeah, >>I think success looks like this. So when you're building out a network, the network is a harder thing to change than some other aspects of cloud. So what we think is even if you're thinking about that second cloud which we have, most of our customers are on to public clouds. Today they might be dabbling is you build that network foundation an architecture that takes in consideration where you're going. And so once we start building that reference architecture out that shows this is how to approach it from a multi cloud perspective, not a single cloud. And let's not forget their branches. Let's not forget our data centers. Let's not forget how all this connects together cause that's how we define multi cloud. It's not just in the cloud, it's on Prem and it's off Prem. And so, collectively, I think the key is also is that we provide them in HLD. You got to start with a high level design that can be tweaked. You go through the journey, but you got to give a salad structural foundation and that networking, which we think most customers think as not not the network engineers put as an afterthought. We want to make that the most critical >>element. Before you start the journey, George, from your seat had a success look for you. >>So you know, it starts out on these journeys often start out people not even thinking about what is gonna happen with what their network needs are when they start their migration journey to the cloud. So I want the success to me. Looks like them being able to end up not worrying about what's happening in the network when they move to the cloud. >>Guys, great insight. Thanks for coming on. Sharing a round of applause for the global >>system integrators, right? >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

live from Boston it's the cube covering IBM chief data officer summit brought to you by IBM welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of the IBM CDO summit here in Boston Massachusetts I'm your host Rebecca Knight and I'm joined by co-host Paul Gillan we have a guest today John Thomas he is the distinguished engineer and director at IBM thank you so much for coming returning to the cube you're a cube veteran so tell our viewers a little bit about your distinguished engineer there are only 672 in all of IBM what do you do what is your role that's a good question distinguished engineer is kind of a technical execute a role which is a combination of applying the technology skills as well as helping shape by the inscriber gene in a technical way working with clients etcetera right so it is it is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades but also deep skills in some specific areas and I love what I do so you get to work with some very talented people brilliant people in terms of shaping IBM technology and strategy products for energy that is part of it we also work very closely with clients in terms of how do you apply that technology in the context of the clients use cases we've heard a lot today about soft skills the importance of organizational people skills to being a successful chief data officer but there's still a technical component how important is the technical side what is what are the technical skills that the cdos need oh this is a very good question Paul so absolutely so navigating the organizational structure is important it's a soft skill you're absolutely right and being able to understand the business strategy for the company and then aligning your data strategy to the business strategy is important right but the underlying technical pieces need to be solid so for example how do you deal with large volumes of different types of data spread across the company how do you manage the data how do you understand the data how do you govern that data how do you then mast are leveraging the value of the data in the context of your business right so and understand deep understanding of the technology of collecting organizing and analyzing that data is needed for you to be a success for CBL so in terms of in terms of those skill sets that you're looking for and one of the things that Interpol said earlier in his keynote is that they're just it's a rare individual who truly understands the idea of how to collect store analyze curate eyes monetize the data and then also has the the soft skills of being able to navigate the organization being able to be a change agent is inspiring yeah inspiring the rank-and-file yeah how do you recruit and retain talent it seems to be a major tech expertise is not getting the right expertise in place and Interpol talked about it in his keynote which was the very first thing he did was bring in Terrence sometimes it is from outside of your company maybe you have a kind of talent that has grown up in your company maybe you have to go outside buddy God bring in the right skills together form the team that understands the technology and the business side of things and build esteem and that is essential for you to be a successful CTO and to some extent that's what Interpol has done that's what the analytic CEOs office has done a set up in my boss is the analytics EDF and he and the analytic CDO team actually engineering skills data science skills visualization skills and then put this team together which understands the how to collect govern curate and analyze the data and then apply them in specific situations a lot of talk about AI at this conference what seems to be finally happening what do you see in the field or perhaps projects that you've worked on examples of AI that are really having a meaningful business impact yeah Paul it's a very good question because you know the term AI is overused a lot as you can imagine a lot of hype around it but I think we are past that hype cycle and people are looking at how do i implement successful use cases and I stressed the word use case right in my experience these how I'm going to transform my business in one big boil the ocean exercise does not work but if you have a very specific bounded use case that you can identify the business tells you this is relevant the business tells you what the metrics for success are and then you focus your your attention your your efforts on that specific use case with the skills need for that use case then it's successful so you know examples of use cases from across the industries right I mean everything that you can think of customer-facing examples like how do I read the customers mind so when when if I'm a business and I interact with my customers can I anticipate what the customer is looking for maybe for a cross-sell opportunity or maybe to reduce the call handling time and a customer calls in to my call center or trying to segment my customer so I can do a proper promotion or a campaign for that customer all of these are specific customer facing examples there are also examples of applying this internally to improve processes capacity planning for your infrastructure can I predict when a system is likely to have an outage and or can I predict the traffic coming into my systems into my infrastructure and provision capacity that on-demand so all these are interesting applications of AI in the enterprise so when you're trying I mean one of the things we keep hearing is that we need data to tell a story the data needs to the data needs to be compelling enough so that the people the data scientists get it but then also that the other kinds of business decision makers get it - so what are sort of the best practices that have emerged from your experience in terms of being able to for your data to tell the story that you wanted to tell yeah well I mean if the pattern doesn't exist in the data then no amount of fancy algorithms can help you know so and sometimes it's like searching for a needle in a haystack but assuming I guess the first step is like I said what is the a use case once you have a clear understanding of your use case and success metrics for the use case do you have the data to support that use case so for example if it's fraud detection do you actually have the historical data to support the fraud use case sometimes you may have transactional data from your your transaction data from your current or PI systems but that may not be enough you may need to augment it with external data third party data may be unstructured data that goes along with the transaction data so question is can you identify the data that is needed to support the use case and if so can I do is that data clean is that is that data do you understand the lineage of the data who has touched and modified the data who owns the data so that I can then start building predictive models and machine learning be planning models with that data so use case do you have the data to support the use case do you understand how the data reached you then comes the process of applying machine learning algorithms and deep learning algorithms against that data one of the risks of machine learning and particularly deep learning I think is it becomes kind of a black box and people can fall into the trap of just believing what comes back regardless of whether the algorithms are really sound or the data is somewhat what is the responsibility of data scientists to sort of show their work yeah Paul this is a fascinating and not completely solved area right so bias detection can I explain how my model behaved can I ensure that the models are fair in their predictions so there's a lot of research lot of innovation happening in the space iBM is investing a lot in the space we call trust and transparency being able to explain a model it's got multiple levels to it you need some level of AI governments itself so just like we talked about data governance there is the notion of AI governance which is what version of the model was used to make a prediction what were the inputs that went into that model what were the decisions that are that what were the features that were used to make a certain prediction what was the prediction and how did that match up with ground truth you need to be able to capture all that information but beyond that we have got actual mechanisms in place that IBM Research is developing to look at bias detection so pre-processing during execution post-processing can I look for bias in how my models behave and do I have mechanisms to mitigate that so one example is the open source Python library called AI F 360 that comes from IBM's research on its contributor to the open source community you can look at there are mechanisms to look at bias and and and provide some level of bias mitigation as part of your model building exercises and is the bias mitigation does it have to do with and I'm gonna use an IBM term of art here at the human in the loop I mean is how much are you actually looking at the humans that are part of this process humans are at least at this point in time humans are very much in the loop this this notion of P or AI where humans are completely outside the loop is we're not there yet so very much something that the system can it provide a set of recommendations can it provide a set of explanations in can someone who understands the business look at it and make corrective take corrective action as needed there has been however to Rebecca's point some prominent people including Bill Gates who have have speculated that AI could ultimately be a negative for humans are what is the responsibility of companies like IBM to ensure that humans are kept in the loop I think at least at this point IBM's V was humans are an essential part of AI in fact we don't even use the term artificial intelligence that much we call it augmented intelligence where the system is presenting a set of recommendations expert advice to the human who can then make a decision so for example you know my team worked with a prominent healthcare provider on you know models for predicting patient death death in in the case of sepsis sepsis onset this is we're talking literally life and death decisions being made and this is not something that you can just automate and throw it into a magic black box and have a decision be made right so this is absolutely a place where people with deep domain knowledge are supported are augmented with with AI to make better decisions that's where that's where I think we are today as to what will happen five years from now I can't predict that yet the role so you are helping doctors make these decisions not just this is what the computer program says about this patients symptoms here but this is really you're helping the doctor make better decisions what about the doctors gut and the ease into his or her intuition too I mean what is what is the role of that in the future I think it goes away I mean I think the intuition really will be trumped by data in the long term because you can't argue with the facts much as some some people do these days the perspective on that is there will there all should there always be a human on the front lines who is being supported by the backend or would would you see a scenario where an AI is making decisions customer-facing decisions that are really are life and death so I think in the consumer industry I can definitely see AI making decisions on its own right so you know if let's say a recommender system which says you know I think you know John Thomas bought these last five things online he's likely to buy this other thing let's make an offer team you know I don't even in the loop for no harm it's it's it's it's pretty straightforward it's already happening in a big way but when it comes to some of these mortgage yeah about that one even that I think can be can be automated can be automated if the thresholds are said to be what the business is comfortable with where it says okay about this probability level I don't really need a human to look at this but and if it is below this level I do want someone to look at this that's you know that is relatively straightforward right but if it is a decision about you know life-or-death situations or something that affects the the very fabric of the business that you are in then you probably want to domain expert to look at it and most enterprises enterprise use cases will for lean towards that category these are big questions they're hard questions are questions yes well John thank you so much oh absolutely thank you we've really had a great time with you yeah thank you for having me I'm Rebecca night for Paul Gillen we will have more from the cubes live coverage of IBM CDO here in Boston just after this