>>Hey everyone. Lisa Martin of the cube here, HPE and AMD better together with Shi is the name of our segment. And I'm here with four guests. Please. Welcome Charlie Mulrooney global presales engineering manager at Athi John saws also of Shi joins this global pre-sales technical consultant. And back with me are Terry Richardson, north American channel chief and Dr. John Fry, chief technologist, sustainable transformation at HPE. Welcome gang. Great to have you all here. >>Thank you, Lisa. Thanks. You good to be here? >>All right, Charlie, let's go ahead and start with you. Keeping the earth sustainable and minimizing carbon emissions. Greenhouse gases is a huge priority for businesses, right? Everywhere. Globally. Can you talk Charlie about what Shi is seeing in the marketplace with respect to sustainable? It? >>Sure. So starting about a year and a half, two years ago, we really noticed that our customers certainly our largest enterprise customers were putting into their annual reports, their chairman's letters, their sec filings that they had sustainability initiatives ranging from achieving carbon neutral or carbon zero goals starting with 2050 dates. And then since then we've seen 20, 40, and 2030 targets to achieve net neutrality and RFPs, RFIs that we're fielding. Certainly all now contain elements of that. So this is certainly top of mind for our largest customers, our fortune two 50 and fortune 500 customers. For sure. We're, we're seeing an onslaught of requests for this. We get into many conversations with the folks that are leading these efforts to understand, you know, here's what we have today. What can we do better? What can we do different to help make an impact on those goals? >>So making an impact top of mind, pretty much for everyone, as you mentioned, John SAS, let's bring you into the conversation. Now, when you're in customer conversations, what are some of the things that you talk about with respect tohis approach to sustainability, sustainable it, are you seeing more folks that are implementing things tactically versus strategically what's going on in the customer space? >>Well, so Charlie touched on something really important that, you know, the, the wake up moment for us was receiving, you know, proposal requests or customer meeting requests that were around sustainability. And it was really around two years ago, I suppose, for the first time. And those requests started coming from European based companies, cuz they had a bit of a head start over the us based global companies even. And what we found was that sustainability was already well down the road and that they were doing very interesting things to use renewable energy for data centers utilize the, they were already considering sustainability for new technologies as a high priority versus just performance cost and other factors that you typically have at the top. So as we started working with them, I guess at beginning it was more tactical cuz we really had to find a way to respond. >>We were starting to be asked about our own efforts and in regards to sustainability, we have our headquarters in Somerset and our second headquarters in Austin, Texas, those are lead gold certified. We've been installing solar panels, reducing waste across the company, recycling efforts and so forth charging stations for electric vehicles, all that sort of thing to make our company more sustainable in, in, in our offices and in our headquarters. But it's a lot more than that. And what we found was that we wanted to look to our vast number of, of customers and partners. We have over 30,000 partners that would work with globally and tens of thousands of customers. And we wanted to find best practices and technologies and services that we could talk about with these customers and apply and help integrate together as a, as a really large global reseller and integrator. We can have a play there and bring these things together from multiple partners that we work with to help solve customer problems. And so over time it's become more strategic and we've been as a company building the, the, the, the, the forward efforts through organizing a true formal sustainability team and growing that, and then also reporting for CDP Ecova and so forth. And it's really that all has been coming about in the last couple of years. And we take it very seriously. >>It sounds like, and it also sounds like from the customer's perspective, they're shifting from that tactical, maybe early initial approach to being more strategic, to really enabling sustainable it across their organization. And I imagine from a business driver's perspective, John saws and Charlie, are you hearing customers? You talked about it being part of RFPs, but also where are customers in terms of, we need to have a sustainable it strategy so that we can attract and retain the right investors we can attract and retain customers. Charlie, John, what are your thoughts on that? >>Yeah, that's top of mind with, with all the folks that we're talking to, I would say there's probably a three way tie for the importance of attracting and retaining investors. As you said, plus customers, customers are shopping, their customers are shopping for who has aligned their ESG priorities and sustainable priorities with their own and who is gonna help them with their own reporting of, you know, scope two and ultimately scope three reporting from greenhouse gas emissions and then the attracting and retaining talent. It's another element now of when you're bringing on new talent to your organization, they have a choice and they're thinking with their decision to accept a role or not within your organization of what your strategies are and do they align. So we're seeing those almost interchangeable in terms of priorities with, with the customers we're talking to. And it was a little surprising, cuz it, we thought initially this is really focused on investors attracting the investors, but it really has become quite a bit more than that. And it's been actually very interesting to see the development of that prioritization >>More comprehensive across the organization. Let's bring Dr. John Fry into the conversation and Terry your next. So stay tuned. Dr. Fry, can you talk about HPE and S H I partnering together? What are some of the key aspects of the relationship that help one another support and enable each other's aggressive goals where sustainability is concerned? >>Yeah, it's a great question. And one of the things about the sustainability domain in solving these climate challenges that we all have is we've got to come together and partner to solve them. No one company's going to solve them by themselves and for our collective customers the same way. From an HPE perspective, we bring the expertise on our products. We bring in sustainable it point of view, where we've written many white papers on the topic and even workbooks that help companies implement a sustainable it program. But our direct sales forces can't reach all of our customers. And in many cases we don't have the local knowledge that our business partners like Shi bring to the table. So they extend the reach, they bring their own expertise. Their portfolio that they offer to the customer is wider than just enterprise products. So by working together, we can do a better job of helping the customer meet their own needs, give them the right technology solutions and enhance that customer experience because they get more value from us collectively. >>It really is better together, which is in a very appropriate name for our segment here. Terry, let's bring you into the conversation. Talk to us about AMD. How is it helping customers to create that sustainable it strategy? And what are some of the differentiators that what AMD is doing that, that are able to be delivered through partners like Shi? >>Well, Lisa, you used the word enabling just a short while ago. And fundamentally AMD enables HPE and partners like Shi to bring differentiated solutions to customers. So in the data center space, we began our journey in 2017 with some fundamental design elements for our processor technology that were really keenly focused on improving performance, but also efficiency. So now the, the most common measure that we see for the types of customers that Charlie and John were talking about is really that measure of performance per wat. And you'll continue to see AMD enabled customers to, to try to find ways to, to do more in a sustainable way within the constraints that they may be facing, whether it's availability of power data center space, or just needing to meet overall sustainability goals. So we have skills and expertise and tools that we make available to HPE and two Shi to help them have even stronger differentiated conversations with customers. >>Sounds like to me, Terry, that it's, that AMD can be even more of an more than an enabler, but really an accelerator of what customers are able to do from a strategic perspective on sustainability. >>You you're right about that. And, and we actually have tools, greenhouse gas, TCO tools that can be leveraged to really quantify the impact of some of the, the new technology decisions that customers are making to allow them to achieve their goals. So we're really proud of the work that we're doing in partnership with companies like HPE and Shi >>Better together. As we said at the beginning in just a minute ago, Charlie, let's bring you back in, talk to us a little bit about what Shi is doing to leverage sustainable it and enable your customers to meet their sustainability goals and their initiatives. >>So for quite a while, we've had some offerings to help customers, especially in the end user compute side. A lot of customers were interested in, I've got assets for, you know, let's say a large sales force that had been carrying tablets or laptops and, you know, those need to be refreshed. What do I do with those? How do I responsibly retire or recycle those? And we've been offering solutions for that for quite some time. It's within the last year or two, when we started offering for them guarantees and assurances assurances of how they can, if that equipment is reusable by somebody else, how can we issue them? You know, credits for carbon credits for reuse of that equipment somewhere else. So it's not necessarily going to be e-waste, it's something that can be recycled and reused. We have other programs with helping extend the life of, of some systems where they look at well, I have a awful lot of data on these machines where historically they might want to just retire those because the, the, the sensitivity of the data needed to be handled very specifically. We can help them properly remove the sensitive data and still allow reuse of that equipment. So we've been able to come up with some creative solutions specifically around end user compute in the past, but we are looking to new ways now to really help extend that into data center infrastructure and beyond to really help with what are the needs, what are the, the best ways to help our customers handle the things that are challenging them. >>That's a great point that you bring up. Charlie and security kind of popped into my head here, John Saul's question for you when you're in customer conversations and you're talking about, or maybe they're talking about help us with waste reduction with recycling, where are you having those customer conversations? Cause I know sustainability is a board level, it's a C level discussion, but where are you having those conversations within the customer organization? >>Well, so it's a, it's a combination of organizations within the customer. These are these global organizations. Typically when we're talking about asset life cycle management, asset recovery, how do you do that in a sustainable green way and securely the customers we're dealing with? I mean, security is top sustainability is right up there too. O obviously, but Charlie touched on a lot of those things and these are global rollouts, tens of thousands of employees typically to, to have mobile devices, laptops, and phones, and so forth. And they often are looking for a true managed service around the world that takes into consideration things like the most efficient way to ship products to, to the employees. And how do you do that in a sustainably? You need to think about that. Does it all go to a central location or to each individual's home during the pandemic that made a lot of sense to do it that way? >>And I think the reason I wanted to touch on those things is that, well for, for example, one European pharmaceutical that states in their reports that they're already in scope one in scope two they're fully net zero at this point. And, and they say, but that only solves 3% of our overall sustainability goals. 97% is scope three, it's travel, it's shipping. It's, it's, it's all the, the, all these things that are out of their direct control a lot of times, but they're coming to us now as a, as a supplier and as, and, and we're filling out, you know, forms and RFPs and so forth to show that we can be a sustainable supplier in their supply chain because that's their next big goal >>Sustain sustainable supply chain. Absolutely. Yes. Dr. John Fry and Terry, I want to kind of get your perspectives. Charlie talked about from a customer requirements perspective, customers coming through RFP saying, Hey, we've gotta work with vendors who have clear sustainability initiatives that are well underway, HPE and AMD hearing the same thing Dr. Fry will start with you. And then Terry >>Sure, absolutely. We receive about 2,500 customer questionnaires just on sustainability every year. And that's come up from a few hundred. So yeah, absolutely accelerating. Then the conversations turn deeper. Can you help us quantify our carbon emissions and power consumption? Then the conversation has recently gone even further to when can HPE offer net zero or carbon neutral technology solutions to the customer so that they don't have to account for those solutions in their own carbon footprint. So the questions are getting more sophisticated, the need for the data and the accuracy of the data is climbing. And as we see potential regulatory disclosure requirements around carbon emissions, I think this trend is just gonna continue up. >>Yeah. And we see the same thing. We get asked more and more from our customers and partners around our own corporate sustainability goals. But the surveying that survey work that we've done with customers has led us to, you know, understand that, you know, approximately 75% of customers are gonna make sustainability goals, a key component of their RFIs in 2023, which is right around the corner. And, and, you know, 60% of those same customers really expect to have business level KPIs in the new year that are really related to sustainability. So this is not just a, a kind of a buzzword topic. This is, this is kind of business imperatives that, you know, the company, the companies like HPE and AMD and the partners like I, that really stand behind it and really are proactive in getting out in front of customers to help are really gonna be ahead of the game. >>That's a great point that you make Terry there that this isn't, we're not talking about a buzzword here. We're talking about a business imperative for businesses of probably all sizes across all industries and Dr. Far, you mentioned regulations. And something that we just noticed is that the S E C recently said, it's proposing some rules where companies must disclose greenhouse gas emissions. If they were, if that were to, to come into play, I'm gonna pun back to Charlie and John saws. How would Shi and, and frankly at HPE and AMD be able to help companies comply if that type of regulation were to be implemented. Charlie. >>Yeah. So we are in the process right now of building out a service to help customers specifically with that, with the reporting, we know reporting is a challenge. The scope two reporting is a challenge and scope three that I guess people thought was gonna be a ways out now, all of a sudden, Hey, if you have made a public statement that you're going to make an impact on your scope three targets, then you have to report on them. So that, that has become really important very quickly as word about this requirement is rumbling around there's concern. So we are actually working right now on something it's a little too early to fully disclose, but stay tuned, cuz we have something coming. That's interesting. >>Definitely PED my, my ears are, are, are perk here. Charlie, we'll stay tuned for that. Dr. Fry. Terry, can you talk about together with Shi HPE and AMD enabling customers to manage access to the da data obviously, which is critical and it's doing nothing but growing and proliferating key folks need access to it. We talked a little bit about security, but how are from a better together perspective, Dr. Fry will start with you, how are you really helping organizations on that sustainability journey to ensure that data can be accessible to those who need it when they need it? And at these days what it's real time requirements. >>Yeah. It's, it's an increasing challenge. In fact, we have changed the H HP story the way we talk about H HP's value proposition to talk about data first modernization. So how often do you collect data? Where do you store it? How do you avoid moving it? How do you make sure if you're going to collect data, you get insights from that data that change your business or add business value. And then how long do you retain that data afterward and all of that factors into sustainable it, because when I talk to technology executives, what they tell me again, and again, is there's this presumption within their user community, that storage is free. And so when, when they have needs for collecting data, for example, if, if once an hour would do okay, but the system would collect it once a minute, the default, the user asks for of course, once a minute. And then are you getting insights from that data? Or are we moving it that becomes more important when you're moving data back and forth between the public cloud or the edge, because there is quite a network penalty for moving that equipment across your network. There's huge power and carbon implications of doing that. So it's really making a better decision about what do we collect, why do we collect it, what we're gonna do with it when we collect and how we store it. >>And, and for years, customers have really talked about, you know, modernization and the need to modernize their data center. You know, I, I fundamentally believe that sustainability is really that catalyst to really drive true modernization. And as they think forward, you know, when we work with, with HPE, you know, they offer a variety of purpose-built servers that can play a role in, you know, specific customer workloads from the largest, super computers down to kind of general purpose servers. And when we work with partners like Shi, not only can they deliver the full suite of offerings for on premise deployments, they're also very well positioned to leverage the public cloud infrastructure for those workloads that really belong there. And, and that certainly can help customers kind of achieve an end to end sustainability goal. >>That's a great point that, that it needs to be strategic, but it also needs to be an end to end goal. We're just about out of time, but I wanted to give John saws the last word here, take us out, John, what are some of the things Charlie kind of teased some of the things that are coming out that piqued my interest, but what are some of the things that you are excited about as HPE AMD and Shi really help customers achieve their sustainability initiatives? >>Sure. Couple comments here. So Charlie, yeah, you touched on some upcoming capabilities that Shi will have around the area of monitoring and management. See, this is difficult for all customers to be able to report in this formal way. This is a train coming at everybody very quickly and they're not ready. Most customers aren't ready. And if we can help as, as a reseller integrator assessments, to be able to understand what they're currently running compare to different scenarios of where they could go to in a future state, that seems valuable if we can help in that way. That's, those are things that we're looking into specifically, you know, greenhouse gas, emissions, relevant assessments, and, and, and within the comments of, of, of Terry and, and John around the, the power per wat and the vast portfolio of, of technologies that they, that they had to address various workloads is, is fantastic. >>We'd be able to help point to technologies like that and move customers in that direction. I think as a, as an integrator and a technical advisor to customers, I saw an article on BBC this morning that I, I, I think if, if we think about how we're working with our customers and we can help them maybe think differently about how they're using their technology to solve problems. The BBC article mentioned this was Ethereum, a cryptocurrency, and they have a big project called merge. And today was a go live date. And BBC us news outlets have been reporting on it. They basically changed the model from a model called power of work, which takes a, a lot of compute and graphic, GPU power and so forth around the world. And it's now called power of stake, which means that the people that validate that their actions in this environment are correct. >>They have to put up a stake of their own cryptocurrency. And if they're wrong, it's taken from them. This new model reduces the emissions of their environment by 99 plus percent. The June emissions from Ethereum were, it was 120 telos per, per year, a Terra terat hours per year. And they reduced it actually, that's the equivalent of what the net Netherlands needed for energy, so comparable to a medium sized country. So if you can think differently about how to solve problems, it may be on-prem, it may be GreenLake. It may be, it may be the public cloud in some cases or other, you know, interesting, innovative technologies that, that AMD HPE, other partners that we can bring in along, along with them as well, we can solve problems differently. There is a lot going on >>The opportunities that you all talked about to really make such a huge societal impact and impact to our planet are exciting. We thank you so much for talking together about how HPE AMD and SSHA are really working in partnership in synergy to help your customers across every organization, really become much more focused, much more collaborative about sustainable it. Guys. We so appreciate your time and thank you for your insights. >>Thank you, Lisa. Thank you. My >>Pleasure. Thank you, Lisa. You're watching the cube, the leader in high tech enterprise coverage.

(futuristic music) >> Hey everyone. Lisa Martin here for theCUBE back with you, three guests join me. Dan Molina is here, the co-president and chief technology officer at NTH Generation. And I'm joined once again by Terry Richardson, North American channel chief for AMD and Dr. John Fry, chief technologist, sustainable transformation at HPE. Gentlemen, It's a pleasure to have you on theCUBE Thank you for joining me. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Dan. Let's have you kick things off. Talk to us about how NTH Generation is addressing the environmental challenges that your customers are having while meeting the technology demands of the future. That those same customers are no doubt having. >> It's quite an interesting question, Lisa, in our case we have been in business since 1991 and we started by providing highly available computing solutions. So this is great for me to be partnered here with HPE and the AMD because we want to provide quality computing solutions. And back in the day, since 1991 saving energy saving footprint or reducing footprint in the data center saving on cooling costs was very important. Over time those became even more critical components of our solutions design. As you know, as a society we started becoming more aware of the benefits and the must that we have a responsibility back to society to basically contribute with our social and environmental responsibility. So one of the things that we continue to do and we started back in 1991 is to make sure that we're deciding compute solutions based on clients' actual needs. We go out of our way to collect real performance data real IT resource consumption data. And then we architect solutions using best in the industry components like AMD and HPE to make sure that they were going to be meeting those goals and energy savings, like cooling savings, footprint reduction, knowing that instead of maybe requiring 30 servers, just to mention an example maybe we're going to go down to 14 and that's going to result in great energy savings. Our commitment to making sure that we're providing optimized solutions goes all the way to achieving the top level certifications from our great partner, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Also go deep into micro processing technologies like AMD but we want to make sure that the designs that we're putting together actually meet those goals. >> You talked about why sustainability is important to NTH from back in the day. I love how you said that. Dan, talk to us a little bit about what you're hearing from customers as we are seeing sustainability as a corporate initiative horizontally across industries and really rise up through the C-suite to the board. >> Right, it is quite interesting Lisa We do service pretty much horizontally just about any vertical, including public sector and the private sector from retail to healthcare, to biotech to manufacturing, of course, cities and counties. So we have a lot of experience with many different verticals. And across the board, we do see an increased interest in being socially responsible. And that includes not just being responsible on recycling as an example, most of our conversations or engagements that conversation happens, 'What what's going to happen with the old equipment ?' as we're replacing with more modern, more powerful, more efficient equipment. And we do a number of different things that go along with social responsibility and environment protection. And that's basically e-waste programs. As an example, we also have a program where we actually donate some of that older equipment to schools and that is quite quite something because we're helping an organization save energy, footprint. Basically the things that we've been talking about but at the same time, the older equipment even though it's not saving that much energy it still serves a purpose in society where maybe the unprivileged or not as able to afford computing equipment in certain schools and things of that nature. Now they can benefit and being productive to society. So it's not just about energy savings there's so many other factors around social corporate responsibility. >> So sounds like Dan, a very comprehensive end to end vision that NTH has around sustainability. Let's bring John and Terry into the conversation. John, we're going to start with you. Talk to us a little bit about how HPE and NTH are partnering together. What are some of the key aspects of the relationship from HPE's perspective that enable you both to meet not just your corporate sustainable IT objectives, but those of your customers. >> Yeah, it's a great question. And one of the things that HPE brings to bear is 20 years experience on sustainable IT, white papers, executive workbooks and a lot of expertise for how do we bring optimized solutions to market. If the customer doesn't want to manage those pieces himself we have our 'As a service solutions, HPE GreenLake. But our sales force won't get to every customer across the globe that wants to take advantage of this expertise. So we partner with companies like NTH to know the customer better, to develop the right solution for that customer and with NTH's relationships with the customers, they can constantly help the customer optimize those solutions and see where there perhaps areas of opportunity that may be outside of HPE's own portfolio, such as client devices where they can bring that expertise to bear, to help the customer have a better total customer experience. >> And that is critical, that better overall comprehensive total customer experience. As we know on the other end, all customers are demanding customers like us who want data in real time, we want access. We also want the corporate and the social responsibility of the companies that we work with. Terry, bringing you into the conversation. Talk to us a little about AMD. How are you helping customers to create what really is a sustainable IT strategy from what often starts out as sustainability tactics? >> Exactly. And to pick up on what John and and Dan were saying, we're really energized about the opportunity to allow customers to accelerate their ability to attain some of their more strategic sustainability goals. You know, since we started on our current data center, CPU and GPU offerings, each generation we continue to focus on increasing the performance capability with great sensitivity to the efficiency, right? So as customers are modernizing their data center and achieving their own digital transformation initiatives we are able to deliver solutions through HPE that really address a greater performance per watt which is a a core element in allowing customers to achieve the goals that John and Dan talked about. So, you know, as a company, we're fully on board with some very public positions around our own sustainability goals, but working with terrific partners like NTH and HPE allows us to together bring those enabling technologies directly to customers >> Enabling and accelerating technologies. Dan, let's go back to you. You mentioned some of the things that NTH is doing from a sustainability approach, the social and the community concern, energy use savings, recycling but this goes all the way from NTH's perspective to things like outreach and fairness in the workplace. Talk to us a little bit about some of those other initiatives that NTH has fired up. >> Absolutely, well at NTH , since the early days, we have invested heavily on modern equipment and we have placed that at NTH labs, just like HPE labs we have NTH labs, and that's what we do a great deal of testing to make sure that our clients, right our joint clients are going to have high quality solutions that we're not just talking about it and we actually test them. So that is definitely an investment by being conscious about energy conservation. We have programs and scripts to shut down equipment that is not needed at the time, right. So we're definitely conscious about it. So I wanted to mention that example. Another one is, we all went through a pandemic and this is still ongoing from some perspectives. And that forced pretty much all of our employees, at least for some time to work from home. Being an IT company, we're very proud that we made that transition almost seamlessly. And we're very proud that you know people who continue to work from home, they're saving of course, gasoline, time, traffic, all those benefits that go with reducing transportation, and don't get me wrong, I mean, sometimes it is important to still have face to face meetings, especially with new organizations that you want to establish trust. But for the most part we have become a hybrid workforce type of organization. At the same time, we're also implementing our own hybrid IT approach which is what we talk to our clients about. So there's certain workloads, there are certain applications that truly belong in in public cloud or Software as a Service. And there's other workloads that truly belong, to stay in your data center. So a combination and doing it correctly can result in significant savings, not just money, but also again energy, consumption. Other things that we're doing, I mentioned trading programs, again, very proud that you know, we use a e-waste programs to make sure that those IT equipment is properly disposed of and it's not going to end in a landfill somewhere but also again, donating to schools, right? And very proud about that one. We have other outreach programs. Normally at the end of the year we do some substantial donations and we encourage our employees, my coworkers to donate. And we match those donations to organizations like Operation USA, they provide health and education programs to recover from disasters. Another one is Salvation Army, where basically they fund rehabilitation programs that heal addictions change lives and restore families. We also donate to the San Diego Zoo. We also believe in the whole ecosystem, of course and we're very proud to be part of that. They are supporting more than 140 conservation projects and partnerships in 70 countries. And we're part of that donation. And our owner has been part of the board or he was for a number of years. Mercy House down in San Diego, we have our headquarters. They have programs for the homeless. And basically that they're servicing. Also Save a Life Foundation for the youth to be educated to help prevent sudden cardiac arrest for the youth. So programs like that. We're very proud to be part of the donations. Again, it's not just about energy savings but it's so many other things as part of our corporate social responsibility program. Other things that I wanted to mention. Everything in our buildings, in our offices, multiple locations. Now we turn into LED. So again, we're eating our own dog food as they say but that is definitely some significant energy savings. And then lastly, I wanted to mention, this is more what we do for our customers, but the whole HPE GreenLake program we have a growing number of clients especially in Southern California. And some of those are quite large like school districts, like counties. And we feel very proud that in the old days customers would buy IT equipment for the next three to five years. Right? And they would buy extra because obviously they're expecting some growth while that equipment must consume energy from day one. With a GreenLake type of program, the solution is sized properly. Maybe a little bit of a buffer for unexpected growth needs. And anyway, but with a GreenLake program as customers need more IT resources to continue to expand their workloads for their organizations. Then we go in with 'just in time' type of resources. Saving energy and footprint and everything else that we've been talking about along the way. So very proud to be one of the go-tos for Hewlett Packard Enterprise on the GreenLake program which is now a platform, so. >> That's great. Dan, it sounds like NTH generation has such a comprehensive focus and strategy on sustainability where you're pulling multiple levers it's almost like sustainability to the NTH degree ? See what I did there ? >> (laughing) >> I'd like to talk with all three of you now. And John, I want to start with you about employees. Dan, you talked about the hybrid work environment and some of the silver linings from the pandemic but I'd love to know, John, Terry and then Dan, in that order how educated and engaged are your employees where sustainability is concerned? Talk to me about that from their engagement perspective and also from the ability to retain them and make them proud as Dan was saying to work for these companies, John ? >> Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we see in technology, and we hear it from our customers every day when we're meeting with them is we all have a challenge attracting and retaining new employees. And one of the ways that you can succeed in that challenge is by connecting the work that the employee does to both the purpose of your company and broader than that global purpose. So environmental and social types of activities. So for us, we actually do a tremendous amount of education for our employees. At the moment, all of our vice presidents and above are taking climate training as part of our own climate aspirations to really drive those goals into action. But we're opening that training to any employee in the company. We have a variety of employee resource groups that are focused on sustainability and carbon reduction. And in many cases, they're very loud advocates for why aren't we pushing a roadmap further? Why aren't we doing things in a particular industry segment where they think we're not moving quite as quickly as we should be. But part of the recognition around all of that as well is customers often ask us when we suggest a sustainability or sustainable IT solution to them. Their first question back is, are you doing this yourselves? So for all of those reasons, we invest a lot of time and effort in educating our employees, listening to our employees on that topic and really using them to help drive our programs forward. >> That sounds like it's critical, John for customers to understand, are you doing this as well? Are you using your own technology ? Terry, talk to us about from the AMD side the education of your employees, the engagement of them where sustainability is concerned. >> Yeah. So similar to what John said, I would characterize AMD is a very socially responsible company. We kind of share that alignment in point of view along with NTH. Corporate responsibility is something that you know, most companies have started to see become a lot more prominent, a lot more talked about internally. We've been very public with four key sustainability goals that we've set as an organization. And we regularly provide updates on where we are along the way. Some of those goals extend out to 2025 and in one case 2030 so not too far away, but we're providing milestone updates against some pretty aggressive and important goals. I think, you know, as a technology company, regardless of the role that you're in there's a way that you can connect to what the company's doing that I think is kind of a feel good. I spend more of my time with the customer facing or partner facing resources and being able to deliver a tool to partners like NTH and strategic partners like HPE that really helps quantify the benefit, you know in a bare metal, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and a TCO tool to really quantify what an implementation of a new and modern solution will mean to a customer. And for the first time they have choice. So I think employees, they can really feel good about being able to to do something that is for a greater good than just the traditional corporate goals. And of course the engineers that are designing the next generation of products that have these as core competencies clearly can connect to the impact that we're able to make on the broader global ecosystem. >> And that is so important. Terry, you know, employee productivity and satisfaction directly translates to customer satisfaction, customer retention. So, I always think of them as inextricably linked. So great to hear what you're all doing in terms of the employee engagement. Dan, talk to me about some of the outcomes that NTH is enabling customers to achieve, from an outcomes perspective those business outcomes, maybe even at a high level or a generic level, love to dig into some of those. >> Of course. Yes. So again, our mission is really to deliver awesome in everything we do. And we're very proud about that mission, very crispy clear, short and sweet and that includes, we don't cut corners. We go through the extent of, again, learning the technology getting those certifications, testing those in the lab so that when we're working with our end user organizations they know they're going to have a quality solution. And part of our vision has been to provide industry leading transformational technologies and solutions for example, HPE and AMD for organizations to go through their own digital transformation. Those two words have been used extensively over the last decade, but this is a multi decade type of trend, super trend or mega trend. And we're very proud that by offering and architecting and implementing, and in many cases supporting, with our partners, those, you know, best in class IT cyber security solutions were helping those organizations with those business outcomes, their own digital transformation. If you extend that Lisa , a Little bit further, by helping our clients, both public and private sector become more efficient, more scalable we're also helping, you know organizations become more productive, if you scale that out to the entire society in the US that also helps with the GDP. So it's all interrelated and we're very proud through our, again, optimized solutions. We're not just going to sell a box we're going to understand what the organization truly needs and adapt and architect our solutions accordingly. And we have, again, access to amazing technology, micro processes. Is just amazing what they can do today even compared to five years ago. And that enables new initiatives like artificial intelligence through machine learning and things of that nature. You need GPU technology , that specialized microprocessors and companies like AMD, like I said that are enabling organizations to go down that path faster, right? While saving energy, footprint and everything that we've been talking about. So those are some of the outcomes that I see >> Hey, Dan, listening to you talk, I can't help but think this is not a stretch for NTH right? Although, you know, terms like sustainability and reducing carbon footprint might be, you know more in vogue, the type of solutions that you've been architecting for customers your approach, dates back decades, and you don't have to change a lot. You just have new kind of toys to play with and new compelling offerings from great vendors like HPE to position to your customers. But it's not a big change in what you need to do. >> We're blessed from that perspective that's how our founders started the company. And we only, I think we go through a very extensive interview process to make sure that there will be a fit both ways. We want our new team members to get to know the the rest of the team before they actually make the decision. We are very proud as well, Terry, Lisa and John, that our tenure here at NTH is probably well over a decade. People get here and they really value how we help organizations through our dedicated work, providing again, leading edge technology solutions and the results that they see in our own organizations where we have made many friends in the industry because they had a problem, right? Or they had a very challenging initiative for their organization and we work together and the outcome there is something that they're very, very proud of. So you're right, Terry, we've been doing this for a long time. We're also very happy again with programs like the HPE GreenLake. We were already doing optimized solutions but with something like GreenLake is helping us save more energy consumption from the very beginning by allowing organizations to pay for only what they need with a little bit of buffer that we talked about. So what we've been doing since 1991 combined with a program like GreenLake I think is going to help us even better with our social corporate responsibility. >> I think what you guys have all articulated beautifully in the last 20 minutes is how strategic and interwoven the partnerships between HP, AMD and NTH is what your enabling customers to achieve those outcomes. What you're also doing internally to do things like reduce waste, reduce carbon emissions, and ensure that your employees are proud of who they're working for. Those are all fantastic guys. I wish we had more time cause I know we are just scratching the surface here. We appreciate everything that you shared with respect to sustainable IT and what you're enabling the end user customer to achieve. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> My pleasure. From my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. In a moment, Dave Vellante will return to give you some closing thoughts on sustainable IT You're watching theCUBE. the leader in high tech enterprise coverage.

foreign [Music] Lisa Martin of the cube here hpe and AMD better together with Shi is the name of our segment and I'm here with four guests please welcome Charlie mulrooney Global pre-sales engineering manager at SHI John saw is also of shi joins us Global pre-sales Technical consultant and back with me are Terry Richardson North American Channel Chief and Dr John Fry Chief technologist of sustainable transformation at hpe welcome gang great to have you here all here Thank you Lisa thank you good to be here all right Charlie let's go ahead and start with you keeping the Earth sustainable and minimizing carbon emissions greenhouse gases is a huge priority for businesses right everywhere globally can you talk truly about what Shi is seeing in the marketplace with respect to sustainable I.T sure so starting about a year and a half two years ago we really noticed that our customers certainly our largest Enterprise customers were putting into their annual reports their Chairman's letters their SEC filings that they had sustainability initiatives ranging from achieving carbon neutral uh or carbon zero goals starting with 20 50 dates and then since then we've seen 20 40 and 2030 targets to achieve net neutrality and rfps rfis that we're Fielding certainly all now contain elements of that so this is certainly top of mind for our largest customers our Fortune 250 and Fortune 500 customers for sure where we're seeing an onslaught of requests for this we get into many conversations with the folks that are leading these efforts to understand you know here's what we have today what can we do better what can we do different to help make it an impact on those goals so making an impact top of Mind pretty much for everyone as you mentioned John Sal's let's bring you into the conversation now when you're in customer conversations what are some of the things that you talk about with respect to shi's approach to sustainability sustainable I.T are you seeing more folks that are implementing things tactically versus strategically what's going on in the customer space well so Charlie touched on something really important that you know the the wake-up moment for us was receiving you know proposal requests or customer meeting requests that were around sustainability and it was really around two years ago I suppose for the first time and those requests started coming from european-based companies because they had a bit of a head start uh over the U.S based global companies even um and what we found was that sustainability was already well down the road and that they were doing very interesting things to uh use renewable energy for data centers uh utilized they were already considering sustainability for new technologies as a high priority versus just performance costs and other factors that you typically had at the top so as we started working with them uh I guess that beginning was more tactical because we really had to find a way to respond uh we were starting to be asked about our own efforts and in regards to sustainability we have our headquarters in Somerset and our second Headquarters in Austin Texas um those are the gold certified we've been installing solar panels producing waste across the company recycling efforts and so forth charging stations for electric vehicles all that sort of thing to make our company more sustainable in in uh in our offices and in our headquarters um but it's a lot more than that and what we found was that we wanted to look to our vast number of supply of customers and partners we have over 30 000 partners that would work with globally and tens of thousands of customers and we wanted to find best practices and Technologies and services that we could uh talk about with these customers and apply and help integrate together as a as a really large Global uh reseller and integrator we can have a play there and bring these things together from multiple uh partners that we work with to help solve customer problems and so over time it's become more strategic and we've been uh as a company building the uh the the the forward efforts through organizing a true formal sustainability team and growing that um and then also reporting for CDP echovatus and so forth and it's really that all has been coming about in the last couple of years and we take it very seriously it sounds like it also sounds like from the customer's perspective they're shifting from that tactical maybe early initial approach to being more strategic to really enabling sustainable I.T across their organization and I imagine from a business driver's perspective John saws and Charlie are you hearing customers you talked about it being part of rfps but also where are customers in terms of we need to have a sustainable I.T strategy so that we can attract and retain the right investors we can attract and retain customers Charlie John what are your thoughts on that yeah that's top of mind with uh with all the folks that we're talking to uh I would say there's probably a three-way tie for the importance of uh attracting and retaining investors as you said plus customers customers are shopping their customers are shopping for who has aligned their ESG priorities in sustainable priorities uh with their own and who is going to help them with their own reporting of you know spoke to and ultimately scope three reporting from greenhouse gas emissions and then the attracting and retaining Talent uh it's another element now of when you're bringing on a new talent to your organization they have a choice and they're thinking with their decision to accept a role or not within your organization of what your strategies are and do they align so we're seeing those almost interchangeable in terms of priorities with with the customers we're talking to it was a little surprising because we thought initially this is really focused on investors attracting the investors but it really has become quite a bit more than that and it's been actually very interesting to see the development of that prioritization more comprehensive across the organization let's bring Dr John Fry into the conversation and Terry your neck so stay tuned Dr Frey can you talk about hpe and Shia partnering together what are some of the key aspects of the relationship that help one another support and enable each other's aggressive goals where sustainability is concerned yeah it's a great question and one of the things about the sustainability domain in solving these climate challenges that we all have is we've got to come together and partner to solve them no one company's going to solve them by themselves and for our Collective customers the same way from an hpe perspective we bring the expertise on our products we bring in a sustainable I.T point of view where we've written many white papers on the topic and even workbooks that help companies Implement a sustainable I.T program but our direct sales forces can't reach all of our customers and in many cases we don't have the local knowledge that our business partners like Shi bring to the table so they extend the reach they bring their own expertise their portfolio that they offer to the customer is wider than just Enterprise Products so by working together we can do a better job of helping the customer meet their own needs give them the right Technology Solutions and enhance that customer experience it's because they get more value from us collectively it really is better together which is a very appropriate name for our segment here Terry let's bring you into the conversation talk to us about AMD how is it helping customers to create that sustainable I.T strategy and what are some of the differentiators that what AMD is doing that that are able to be delivered through Partners like Shi well Lisa you use the word enabling um just a short while ago and fundamentally AMD enables hpe and partners like Shi to bring differentiated solutions to customers so in the data center space We Begin our journey in 2017 with some fundamental Design Elements for our processor technology that we're really keenly focused on improving performance but also efficiency so now the the most common measure that we see for the types of customers that Charlie and John were talking about was really that measure of performance per watt and you'll continue to see AMD enable um customers to to try to find ways to to do more in a sustainable way within the constraints that they may be facing whether it's availability of power data center space or just needing to meet overall sustainability goals so we have skills and expertise and tools that we make available to hpe and to Shi to help them have even stronger differentiated conversations with customers sounds like to me Terry that it's that AMD can be even more of an more than an enabler but really an accelerator of what customers are able to do from a strategic perspective on sustainability you're right about that and and we actually have tools greenhouse gas TCO tools that can be leveraged to really quantify the impact of some of the the new technology decisions that customers are making to allow them to achieve their goals so we're really proud of the work that we're doing in partnership with companies like hpe and Shi Better Together as we've said at the beginning and just a minute ago Charlie let's bring you back in talk to us a little bit about what Shi is doing to leverage sustainable I.T and enable your customers to meet their sustainability goals and their initiatives so for quite a while we've had uh some offerings to help customers especially in the end user compute side a lot of customers were interested in I've got assets for you know let's say a large sales force that had been carrying tablets or laptops and you know those need to be refreshed what do I do with those how do I responsibly retire or recycle those and we've been offering solutions for that for quite some time it's within the last year or two when we started offering for them guarantees and Assurance assurances of how they can if that equipment is reusable by somebody else how can we issue them you know credits for uh carving credits for reuse of that equipment somewhere else so it's not necessarily going to be E-Waste it's uh something that can be recycled and reused we have other programs with helping extend the life of of some systems where they look at boy I have an awful lot of data on these machines where historically they might want to just retire those because the the sensitivity of the data needed to be handled very specifically we can help them properly remove the sensitive data and still allow reuse of that equipment so we've been able to accomplish some Creative Solutions specifically around end user compute in the past but we are looking to new ways now to to really help extend that into Data Center infrastructure and Beyond to really help with what are the needs what are the the best ways to help our customers handle the things that are challenging them [Music] that's a great point that you bring up Charlie and the security kind of popped into my head here John saw his question for you when you're in customer conversations and you're talking about or maybe they're talking about help us with waste reduction with recycling where are you having those customer conversations I know sustainability is a board level it's a c-level discussion but where are you having those conversations within the customer organization well so it's a it's a combination of um organizations within the customer these are these Global organizations typically when we're talking about asset like cycle management asset recovery how do you do that in a sustainable Green Way and securely the customers we're dealing with I mean security is top sustainability is right up there too obviously but uh um Charlie touched on a lot of those things and these are Global rollouts tens of thousands of employees typically to to have mobile devices laptops and phones and so forth um and they often are looking for a true managed service around the world that takes into consideration things like the most efficient way to ship products to to the employees and how do you do that in a sustainable way you need to think about that does it all go to a central location um or to each individual's home during the pandemic that made a lot of sense to do it that way I think the reason I wanted to touch on those things is that well for for example one European pharmaceutical that the states and their reports that they are already in scope one in scope two they're fully uh Net Zero at this point and and they say but that only solves three percent of our overall sustainability goals uh 97 is scope three it's travel it's shipping it's it's uh it's all the all these things that are out of their direct control a lot of times but they're coming to us now as a as a supplier and ask and and we're filling out forms and rfps and so forth uh to show that we can be a sustainable supplier in their supply chain because that's their next big goal so sustainable supply chain absolutely Dr John Fry and Terry I want to kind of get your perspectives Charlie talked about from a customer requirements perspective customers coming through RFP saying hey we've got to work with vendors who have clear sustainability initiatives that are well underway hpe and AMD hearing the same thing Dr Fry will start with you and then Terry sure absolutely we receive about 2500 customer questionnaires just on sustainability every year and that's come up from a few hundred so yeah absolutely accelerating then the conversations turn deeper can you help us quantify our carbon emissions and power consumption then the conversation has recently gone even further to when can hpe offer Net Zero or carbon neutral Technology Solutions to the customer so that they don't have to account for those Solutions in their own carbon footprint so the questions are getting more sophisticated the need for the data and the accuracy of the data is climbing and as we see potential regulatory disclosure requirements around carbon emissions I think this trend is just going to continue up yeah and we see the same thing uh we get asked more and more from our customers and partners around our own corporate sustainability goals but the surveying that the survey work that we've done with customers has led us to you know understand that you know approximately 75 percent of customers are going to make sustainability goals a key component of their rfis in 2023 which is right around the corner and you know 60 of those same customers really expect to have business level kpis uh in the new year that are really related to sustainability so this is not just a a kind of a buzzword topic this is this is kind of business imperatives that you know the company the companies like hpe and AMD and the partners like Shi that really stand behind it and really are proactive in getting out in front of customers to help are really going to be ahead of the game that's a great point that you make Terry there that this isn't we're not talking about a buzzword here we're talking about a business imperative for businesses of probably all sizes across all Industries and Dr Farr you mentioned regulations and something that we just noticed is that the SEC recently said it's proposing some rules where companies must disclose greenhouse gas emissions um if they were if that were to to come into play I'm going to come back to Charlie and John saws how would Shi and frankly at hpe and AMD be able to help companies comply if that type of Regulation were to be implemented Charlie yeah so we are in the process right now of building out a service to help customers specifically with that with the reporting we know reporting is a challenge uh the scope 2 reporting is a challenge and scope three that I guess people thought was going to be a ways out now all of a sudden hey if you have made a public statement that you're going to make an impact on your scope three uh targets and you have to report on them so that that has become really important very quickly uh as word about this requirement is rumbling around uh there's concern so we are actually working right now on something it's a little too early to fully disclose but stay tuned because we have something coming that's interesting definitely peaked my ears are are parked here Charlie well stay tuned for that Dr Brian Terry can you talk about together with Shi hpe and AMD enabling customers to manage access to the data obviously which is critical and it's doing nothing but growing and proliferating key folks need access to it we talked a little bit about security but how are from a Better Together perspective Dr Fry will start with you how are you really helping organizations on that sustainability journey to ensure that data can be accessible to those who need it when they need it and these days what is real-time requirements yeah it's an increasing challenge in fact we have changed the HP Story the way we talk about hpe's value proposition to talk about data first modernization so how often do you collect data where do you store it how do you avoid moving it how do you make sure if you're going to collect data you get insights from that data that change your business or add business value and then how long do you retain that data afterward and all of that factors into sustainable I.T because when I talk to technology Executives what they tell me again and again is there's this presumption within their user community that storage is free and so when when they have needs for collecting data for example if if once an hour would do okay but the system would collect it once a minute the default the user asks for of course is once a minute and then are you getting insights from that data or are we moving it that becomes more important when you're moving data back and forth between the public cloud or the edge because there is quite a network penalty for moving that equipment across your network there's huge power and carbon implications of doing that so it's really making a better decision about what do we collect why do we collect it what we're going to do with it when we collect and how we store it and for years customers have really talked about you know modernization and the need to modernize their data center you know I fundamentally believe that sustainability is really that Catalyst to really Drive true modernization and as they think forward um you know when we work with with hpe you know they offer a variety of purpose-built servers that can play a role in you know specific customer workloads from the larger supercomputers down to kind of general purpose servers and when we work with Partners like Shi not only can they deliver the full Suite of um offerings for on-premise deployments they're also very well positioned to leverage the public Cloud infrastructure for those workloads that really belong there and that certainly can help customers kind of achieve an end-to-end sustainability goal that's a great point that that it needs to be strategic but it also needs to be an end-to-end goal we're just about out of time but I wanted to give John saws the last word here take us out John what are some of the things Charlie kind of teased some of the things that are coming out that piqued my interest but what are some of the things that you're excited about as hpe AMD and Shi really help customers achieve their sustainability initiatives sure um a couple of comments here um so Charlie yeah you touched on some upcoming capabilities uh that uh Shi will have around the area of monitoring and management see this is difficult for all customers to be able to report in this formal way this is a train coming at everybody very quickly and um they're not ready most customers aren't ready and if we can help um as as a reseller integrator assessments to be able to understand what they're currently running compared to different scenarios of where they could go to in a future state that seems valuable if we can help in that way that's those are things that we're looking into specifically uh you know greenhouse gas emissions relevant assessments and and um and what in the comments uh of Terry and John around the power per watt and um the vast um uh portfolio of technologies that they that they had to address various workloads is uh is fantastic we'd be able to help point to Technologies like that and move customers in that direction I think as a as an integrator and a technical advisor to customers I saw an article on BBC this morning that I I think if we think about how we're working with our customers and we can help them maybe think differently about how they're using their technology to solve problems um the BBC article mentioned this was ethereum a cryptocurrency and they have a big project called merge and today was a go live date and BBC US news outlets have been reporting on it they basically changed the model from a model called The Power of work which takes a a lot of compute and graphic GPU power and so forth around the world and it's now called a power of stake which means that the people that validate that their actions in this environment are correct they have to put up a stake of their own cryptocurrency and if they're wrong it's taken from them this new model reduces the emissions of their um uh environment by 99 plus percent the June emissions from ethereum were it was 120 uh terawatts per per year terawatt hours per year and they reduced it um actually that's the equivalent of what the Netherlands needed for energy so the comparable to a medium-sized country so if you can think differently about how to solve problems it may be on-prem it may be extremely it may be that may be the public cloud in some cases or other you know interesting Innovative Technologies that the AMD hpe other partners that we can bring in along along with them as well we can solve problems differently there is a lot going on the opportunities that you all talked about to really make such a huge societal impact and impact to our planet are exciting we thank you so much for talking together about how hpe AMD and sha are really working in partnership in Synergy to help your customers across every organization really become much more focused much more collaborative about sustainable I.T guys we so appreciate your time and thank you for your insights Thank you Lisa thank you my pleasure for my guests I'm Lisa Martin in a moment Dan Molina is going to join me he's the co-president and chief technology officer of nth generation you're watching the cube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music]

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Lisa Martin here of theCUBE. I have three guests now here with me. Please welcome Dave Fafel, chief technology officer at WEI. And welcome back to the program, Terry Richardson, North American channel chief at AMD, and Dr. John Fry, chief technologist, sustainable transformation at HPE. Gentlemen, it's great to have you on the program. Thanks so much for hopping on. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> (indistinct) >> So, Dave, let's start with you, a lot of acronyms here. Talk to us about WEI and its approach to sustainability. >> Yeah, absolutely, sure. So, WEI is a innovative, full service, customer-centric, IT solutions provider. We're experts in business technology improvement, in driving efficiency, helping our customers to optimize their IT environments. That's what we do. And of course, sustainability is really now part of the core function in architecting IT solutions these days. It has to be. I look at sustainability and I hear the word sustainability and I think efficiency. And that's the way that our organization designs solutions for our customers today. >> Talk about the impetus. You mentioned being customer centric you talked about efficiency, all incredibly important to all of us on this Zoom, but Dave, talk about the impetus for WEI to develop and implement this sustainability initiative. Well, I mean, so look, for WEI, it's part of our business model, it's part of our culture. So it's natural that that comes out in the solutions that we design for our customers, but we're trying to solve business problems for our customers, We're not just geeks building something really cool with the latest technology, we're trying to solve real world problems and sustainability addresses real world issues. And so, our customers are looking for us to help them either implement their sustainability programs, or to mature their sustainability programs. And IT has a big responsibility in that. And so, when we're working with them to solve these problems we're really solving that business problem, solving that sustainability, IT initiative that they have. >> And we're going to dig and unpack that in a little bit. John, I want to bring you into the conversation. HPE and AMD have been long partnering on advancing sustainability goals for quite a long time now. Can you talk about how HPE and WEI are partnering? What are some of the key aspects of the relationship that help support not only the goals that Dave talked about but HPE's sustainability goals? >> Yeah, absolutely. One of the things in sustainability is partnership is really leadership. No one company can do this by themselves, and customers really need that input and perspective from all of their partners as part of this process. So, for us as HPE, 65% of our carbon footprint, for example, is when our customers use our technology products. So, for us to lower our carbon footprint, it also requires us helping the customer do that. And that's where the power of the AMD and HPE relationship comes together, but we can't give our expertise widely to every customer in the world. And so, we use our channel partners like WEI to not only extend our reach, but they bring that deep knowledge of the customer and all of their operations across technology, even places where HPE does not offer that technology, in the client space, for example, or in the printer space. And so, what it allows us to do is develop better solutions for the customer. WEI has a deep relationship with the customer. They have a deep expertise in local nuances if there's regulations or local constraints. In fact, in many cities in the world, you can't, for example, build new data centers because of power infrastructure constraints. So, that's where we leverage partners like WEI to improve the customer experience and make sure that we give the best solutions to the customer. >> All about improving those customer experiences as demand for technology does nothing but increase. Terry, let's bring you into the conversation now. Speaking of customer centricity, we find that sustainability is very complicated, that a lot of large companies might have the resources to figure it out, but some of the smaller and mid-size companies might not quite have the boots on the street. What should some of the smaller organizations do, Terry, in your perspective to get started where sustainability is concerned? >> Well, I first off, appreciate the opportunity to be here and it's really terrific to have such a strong partnership with both HPE and WEI in order to deliver innovative solutions to customers. I think what AMD brings to the table is a real choice for customers that they haven't had. All of our personnel are really expert in articulating a differentiated value proposition that hits on a little bit what John talked about which is higher performance but with very, very efficient systems. And we've been offering those to the market since 2017 and we continued to get better. And now, there's an absolute opportunity to do more with same amount of servers, or do a workload with far fewer servers, that require far less energy. So, bringing in the AMD resources to assist the efforts of HPE and WEI, I would say, would be a good step for customers. >> Are there any Terry, sticking with you, any recommendations or tools particularly that you've seen really help customers get kicked off well, and strategically? >> Yeah, there actually are a couple that are readily available and I would encourage through WEI, customers take a close look. Two that really come to mind. We have a virtualization TCO tool that helps optimize configurations for virtual environments. And one of our newest tools is one that's focused on bare metal and greenhouse gas emissions TCO. So, really quantifying the impact to customers and expressed in terms that are familiar and help them achieve their sustainability initiatives. >> Excellent, that's great that those resources are available for customers, especially those smaller ones that might need a bit more guidance and handholding. Dave, let's come back to you. Let's now unpack the sustainability initiatives at WEI that you're really leveraging and implementing to meet the demands of customers and their future technology demands. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a great question, what we're getting to. So, look, we're going to combine, the advancements in technology from an AMD and from an HPE into an architecture that's really usable for a customer. So, 10 years ago, we were all looking at consolidation ratios for virtualization as one driver to a more efficient IT environment. And so, look, we've done this over the last decade, where we've added as many virtual machines to a server as we can get and as many containers to a physical machine as we can get, and now we've got to find other ways to drive efficiency. And so, when we see technology from AMD that's maybe having the socket count from a CPU perspective with a 30 plus percent reduction in power consumption and heat output, that's huge. So, we're architecting these solutions, using that best of breed technology but also implementing technology that was previously consumed more by larger enterprise customers for that small and medium customer base that you mentioned earlier. And that is implementing infrastructure as a service as a way to more efficiently utilize IT resources. So, we'll design the right systems, we'll put them into a consumption model that allows us to dial up and down when we need to, as opposed to having to build oversized environments that consume too much power, that produce too much heat and that aren't really driving toward those sustainability initiatives. So, we want to change not only the technology but also the models of which we consume IT. That's how we're driving that forward with customers today. >> And Dave, another question for you. How are you seeing from a cultural perspective this be adopted and accepted across the customer base? 'Cause change management is challenging but we all know sustainability is a focus of pretty much every business on the planet. >> It is, but fortunately we've got good partners like AMD and HPE, so they make it easy for the channel to implement these things. If you take a look at HPE's GreenLake solutions, for instance. These are tool sets that allow us to go and easily implement that for customers and reduce that change or cost of change for them. In fact, it actually allows them to take the models that they're currently used to and yet still leverage that new consumption model that I just referred to. >> Got it, awesome, thank you. John, let's go back to you. There's a tremendous opportunity here for customers from a sustainability standpoint, across every industry. And I was looking at some data that HPE shared that said for example, 25% of compute in data centers is comatose. First of all, I think the description is brilliant. What are some of the outcomes that customers can expect in working with HPE and AMD and WEI in terms of better leveraging their technology investments today and in the future? >> Yeah, it's a great question. And we do see a tremendous amount of equipment in the average data center that's not doing any useful work. And so, comatose is a great name for that. We also see a tremendous amount of equipment that's being dramatically underutilized as well. So, when the three companies come together and share that expertise with the customer and the customer follows through on that you can expect a whole lot of things. So, you reduce over-provisioning, you have the IT assets in your infrastructure doing useful work for you. The second thing you you tend to see is utilization levels going up. So, where the average utilization level across compute today even in a virtualized or containerized environment is about 30%. You see that almost doubling, for example, in good scenarios where the customer has that equipment doing a tremendous amount of additional work, keeping them from needing to add additional assets to the infrastructure. So, all of that drives cost savings, both CapEx and OPEX, cost savings opportunities. It drives efficiency savings. If you have less equipment being more well utilized and better managed, you tend not to have over temperature situations or equipment that goes down for no explainable reason that then drives staff work to go find out and fix workloads that go down. In fact, many of our customers are measured on service level agreements. They want to keep that infrastructure running all the time to keep their customers happy as well. And finally, one that sometimes is missed is employee satisfaction. Technology companies are having a tough enough time finding and attracting and retaining employees to start with but those employees want to see how what they're doing contributes to purpose. So, as our customers can use these employees to do more productive work, show them how it connects to the purpose of their company and show them how it makes the world a better place at the same time, they can do a better job of holding on to those employees that they so value. >> That's such a great point, John, that you bring up that employee retention but also talent attraction and retention for your customers. Dave, back to you. Are you seeing more and more customers come to WEI, saying, "We have sustainability initiatives. "We can only partner with companies that are also really focused on this because we need to make sure that our employees are satisfied and that we can attract and retain customers." Is that something that you're seeing an increase of? >> Yeah, absolutely. So very often, we're asked to explain how we're implementing sustainability in our business, that the partners that we work with are also doing the same and I'll give you an example of that. So, we've been talking about IT efficiency and good utilization of IT equipment but let's not forget that life cycles of IT equipment result in that equipment leaving a customer site eventually. So, we've got to be responsible in the way that we handle that. And so, this is the area where WEI has put together programs to connect the sustainability aspect of IT recycling, if you will, with the social aspect of corporate social responsibility. And that is, what do we do with this stuff? So, we offer programs to customers where we say, "Hey, look, let's take back some of that IT equipment, there's value in this." It may be that we need to go and recycle this in a responsible way. And we can extract valuable components out of this that result in funds to do something with. Well, what can we do with those funds? Can we put those towards social programs? So, this is where we, again, tie together sustainability and social responsibility. We've been talking about data centers but this also extends to other IT devices. So, if we're pulling back laptops, as an example, from a customer environment, well, those may still have a useful life someplace. Can we bring those to disadvantaged communities and utilize those for educational purposes and other things? Again, this is how WEI connects our customers with these opportunities to enhance their CSR programs. >> Tremendous opportunities there for customers across every industry. Dave, sticking with you for a second. From a differentiation perspective, talk about what the partnership with HPE and AMD delivers WEI from a unique value prop perspective. >> Yeah, so we touched on it a little bit already, and that is, you've got the incredible technology from AMD and from HPE that work seamlessly together but is also focused on driving down the cost of computing. I mean, just the overall efficiency built into design of these solutions makes it easy for an IT consultant like us to build an efficient architecture. But it's not just the technology. It's also the models, or the IT provisioning and consumption models that are important. And again, that's where the relationship between HPE and WEI comes together, because we get to leverage some of these other programs. I mentioned before GreenLake, as an example. This gives us the opportunity to build that infrastructure as service model for our customers who would otherwise maybe go out to a hyperscaler for a similar solution. But as we know, most of our customers even small and medium businesses, can't move everything out to the cloud. They have to use their own data centers. They have to keep data on site and on-prem. So, building that model for them drives efficiency and quite honestly, that's the thing that they're looking for, it's driving cost savings, it's driving efficiency, it's aiding their CSR initiatives. >> Got it. Let's chat now about the strategic versus the tactical. Terry, I would like to get your feedback and then John, yours as well. We talked a little bit about this already but how do you help advise organizations that might be in that tactical mode, approaching sustainability from a tactical mode and really up level that to a strategy that's around sustainable IT? Terry, what are some of the things that you're seeing in the marketplace? Well, at AMD we're fortunate to be passionate about partnerships and sustainability. We're fortunate to work with companies of all shapes and sizes and in different geographies around the world. Some are a little bit more advanced in the way they think about this, but it really is becoming a strategic imperative for companies. And I think certain companies don't know exactly how to proceed. So, the opportunity to educate and open their eyes to the way that you can do both, you can meet your IT goals and objectives, but also do it in a very socially responsible and sustainable way, to me is a win-win. And we welcome the opportunity to just have those conversations. I think some customers are not necessarily understanding how much IT can really contribute to their ability to meet their current and future sustainability goals. And we look forward to having as many conversations as possible 'cause it goes in the category of just the right thing to do. If you can power your IT and do things that are good for the planet and good for all. >> That's a great point. It really is the right thing to do. John, just question, last question for you, is similar to what I asked Terry, but I would like to know where are your customer conversations when it comes to really looking at IT as a big driver of sustainability? Who in the organization really needs to be the spearheads around that initiative? >> Yeah, great question. Often we see customers have one organization that sometimes is a sustainability organization. Sometimes the facility's a real estate organization or sometimes IT is spearheading this and often doing that in isolation. To your point, we really need to think about this as a sustainable IT strategy and get all the right organizations involved together. So, for example, for us, after seeing many customers that didn't know how to develop this strategy, we wrote a workbook called "Six Steps For Implementing A Sustainable IT Strategy." And the steps are things like figure out what your company goals already are that you've made public to your customers then grab the right stakeholders and bring them together. For example, you know you're going to have cost savings, so have the finance team in the room, You know this is going to save utilities, have the real estate team in the room. You know it's going to generate a sustainability benefit, have the sustainability team involved so that they can quantify the benefit in a meaningful manner. Have the communication and marketing teams because when companies implement a sustainable IT strategy they have a great story that they can then tell their customers about how they're doing a better job from an efficiency perspective and from an environmental perspective as well. So, when you bring all of those stakeholders together you can have a much broader and deeper strategy. It becomes a strategic imperative. And when your institutional investors, if you're publicly traded, or your customers come asking about your programs, you're ready to answer those questions in a credible manner. >> Sounds like it really needs to truly be a collaborative effort across the organization. You mentioned John's story and that goes back to employee retention, talent attraction and retention for your companies and your customers as well. We could go off on that but we're almost out of time. So, I want to go back to Dave to take us home here. You walked us through what WEI is doing from a sustainability initiative perspective, the impetus to develop that. What are some of the things that we can expect to see on the horizon from WEI where sustainability is concerned? What are you excited about? >> Well, that's a good question. So, we're excited about how we can continue to deploy those infrastructure as a service models. That's the next step in the direction. How do we automate these things, and then how do we quantify them? So, you've got to build the environment but then you've got to be able to measure it. And that's another area where WEI really adds value to this whole solution set is how are we measuring these things in the long term and developing a program that extends beyond just the implementation of this, but through its entire life cycle and the value of it? Because if you can quantify the value and if you can show what the savings really is and how it's helping customers meet their sustainability goals, well, guess what? They're going to want to implement more of this So, it's good business, and that's what we're excited about, is that next mile of implementation after we developed the initial architecture. >> That measurement is key. It sounds like then it really becomes a flywheel of sustainability. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today talking about from your three perspectives and how you're partnering together to really enable businesses across any industry to develop a sustainable IT strategy that they can implement and then create a flywheel of optimization. We appreciate your insights and your time. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Lisa. >> Thank you. >> All right, my pleasure for my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. In a moment, John and Terry and I are going to be joined by Charles Mulrooney, global presales engineering manager at SHI and John Sahs, global presales technical consultant at SHI. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in global tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Sustainability has become one of the hottest topics, not just in enterprise tech, but across all industries. The relentless pace of technology improvement over the decades and orders of magnitude increases in density have created heat, power and cooling problems that are increasingly challenging to remediate. Intense efforts have been implemented over the years around data center design techniques to dissipate heat, use ambient air, liquid cooling and many other approaches that have been brought to bear to get power usage effectiveness, PUE, as close to one as possible. Welcome to Better Together Sustainability, presented by the CUBE and brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and AMD. In this program we'll lay out today's challenges and how leading companies are engineering solutions to the problems just introduced, along with some recommendations, best practices and resources as to how you can initiate or enhance your sustainability journey. First up to help us better understand this important topic are John Fry, senior technologist IT efficiency and sustainability at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Terry Richardson, North America channel chief for AMD. Gents, welcome. >> Great to be here. >> (indistinct). >> John, let's start at the high level here. Why is sustainability such an important topic today? Why now? Why is it such a challenge for customers and, and how are you guys approaching the solutions? >> The topic has been an important topic for a number of years, but what we're seeing across the world is more and more corporations are putting in place climate targets and sustainability goals. And at the same time, boards and CEOs are starting to be asked about the topic as well, making this topic much more important for technology leaders across the globe. At the same time, technology leaders are fighting with space, power and cooling constraints that caused them to rethink their approach to IT. To get a better sense of how wide this challenge is, we did a survey last year and we asked 500 technology leaders across the globe if they were implementing sustainable IT goals and metrics and programs within their infrastructure. Personally, I thought the answer would be about 40% of them had these programs. Actually it turned out to be 96% of them. And so when we asked them why they were implementing these programs and what was the primary driver, what we heard from them was three things. Those of them that were the early adopters and the ones that move were moving the fastest told us they were putting these programs in place to attract and retain institutional investors. If they're a publicly traded company, their investors were already asking their boards, their CEOs, wanting to know what their company was doing to drive efficiency within their technology operations. Those companies in the middle, the ones that were just moving along at the same pace as many other companies around the world, told us they were putting these programs in place to attract and retain their customers. Customers are increasingly asking the companies they do business with about their sustainability aspirations specifically how technology contributes to their carbon emissions and their sustainability goals. And so these customers want to make sure that they can keep their own customers. And finally, a third group, the digital followers, that group of companies that's a little slower adopting programs, more conservative in nature. They said they were implementing these programs to attract and retain employees. In fact, over the last year or so, every customer we've talked to when they describe their pain points and their challenges that we can try to help them meet, has had a difficulty in finding employees. And so what we know is these younger employees coming into the workforce, if you can show them how what they are going to be doing connects to the purpose of their company and connects to making the world a better place, you can attract them easier and you can retain them longer. So a variety of business reasons why companies are looking at these programs, but what we know is when they implement these programs they often reduce over-provisioning. They save money, they have a lower environmental footprint, and again they have an easier time attracting and retaining employees. So for all of these reasons, driving sustainability into your IT operations is a great thing to do. >> Yeah, I never would've expected 96%. And of course, investors, customers and employees. I mean, this is the big three. Terry what's AMD's perspective on this topic? In other words, what do you bring to the table and the partnership? I mean, I know processors, but what's unique about AMD's contribution? >> Yeah. Thanks Dave. And, and John, great to be with you. Appreciate the opportunity and the partnership. You know, we too are very focused on sustainability and enjoy our partnership with HPE very much in this area. You know, since 2017, when AMD introduced its epic processor family, there's been a couple of core design elements in that technology. One has to do with performance. And the second has to do with efficiency. Both are critically important to today's topic of sustainability because increasingly, customers are understanding and measuring performance per watt and fortunately, AMD really excels in this area. So whether we're talking about the larger super computers in the world, or even general purpose servers, customers can fundamentally do more with fewer AMD servers than competitive alternatives. And so, so we, we really bring a technology element on the processor side, CPU and GPU, to play a role in delivering real ability for customers to meet some of their core sustainability goals. And of course, in partnership with HPE, together we have really a compelling story. >> Great. Thank you, Terry. And, and John, wonder if you could talk to the differentiation that you bring from HPE's perspective, the total package. >> Yeah, of course. The first thing as partnership. As Terry mentioned, AMD and HPE have been working together since HPE was founded actually, to drive power efficiency up to meet the demands of our customers. At the same time, as our customers have asked more and more questions around technology sustainability, we've realized that we needed to not only develop a point of view on that from an HPE perspective, but actually write the white papers that give the customer guidance for sustainable IT strategies, for tech refresh cycles, give them some guidance on what are the right questions to ask technology vendors when they're buying technology equipment. So a series of white papers and you might not appreciate why, but this is a topic that you can't go get a college degree in and frankly can't even buy a book on. So for customers to get that knowledge, they want to get it from experienced professionals around the globe. And in fact, in the survey that I mentioned earlier, we asked customers, where's the number one place that you expect to get your sustainable IT information from? And they said, our technology vendors. So for us, it's really about driving that point of view, sharing it with customers, helping customers get better and even pointing out some of the unintended consequences. So a great example, Dave, you mentioned PUE earlier. Many customers have been driving PUE down for a number of years, but often the way that they did that was optimizing the data center building infrastructure. They got PUE pretty low. Now, one of the things that happens and customers need to be aware of this, particularly if they're focused on PUE as their primary metric, is when they optimize their IT stack and make that smaller, PUE actually goes up. And at first they think, well, wait a minute, that metric is going in the wrong direction. But when you remember it's a ratio, if you get that IT stack component smaller, then you're driving efficiency even if PUE goes the wrong direction. So part of the conversation then is you might want to look at PUE internally, but perhaps you've outgrown PUE and now have an opportunity to look at other metrics like carbon emissions per workload, or or power consumption per piece of equipment or rack. So all of this drives back to that upward trajectory that Terry was talking about where customers are really interested in power performance. So as we share those stories with customers, share the expertise how to move along this journey, that really provides great differentiation for HPE and AMD together. >> So that's interesting. So PUE is not necessarily the holy grail metric. There are other metrics that you, you should look at. Number one, and number two the way you interpret PUE is changing for the better. So thank you for that context. I wonder Terry, do, do you have any like proof points or examples that you can share? >> Yeah, so one that immediately comes to mind that was a manifestation of some terrific collaboration between AMD and HPE was their recently announced implementation of the Frontier supercomputer. That was a project that we collaborated on for a long time. And, and where we ended up was turning over to the government a supercomputer that is currently the highest performing in the world, broke the exaFLOP barrier. And probably even more importantly is number one on the Green500 list of the top super computers. And, and together we enjoy favorable rankings in other systems, but that's the one that, that really stands out in terms of at scale implementation to shine really a spotlight on what we can do together. Certainly for other customers doesn't have to be the world's largest super computer. It's not uncommon that we see customers just kind of in general purpose business applications in their data centers to be able to do more with less, you know, meaning, you know, you know a third of the servers oftentimes delivering not only a very strong TCO but the environmental benefit that gets associated with significantly reduced energy that can be expressed in reduction in, in overall CO2 emissions and other, other ways to express the benefit, whether it's, you know the equivalent of, of planting you know, acres of forest or whatever. So we're really proud of the proof points that we have and and look forward to the opportunity to together explain this more fully to customers and partners. >> Right? So John, Terry sort of alluded to this being more broad based. I know HPE has a very strong focus on HPC. Sorry for all the acronyms, but high performance computing. But the, so this is more broad based than just the super computing business, right John? >> Yeah, absolutely. We see these performance benefits for customers and industry standard servers as well. In fact, many customers, that's the primary type of equipment they use and they want better power performance. They either want to as Terry alluded to, use less equipment to do the same amount of work, or if they've run into a space or power or cooling constraint in their data centers, they want to be able to increase workloads in the same footprint. So it allows them to take better use of their data centers. And for some customers even the data center enclosure that they started with they can actually use a much smaller amount of space. In fact, we have some that even move over to co-location facilities as they improve that performance per watt, and can do more work in the smaller space. So it starts an industry standard server, but increasingly we're seeing customers considering liquid cooling solutions and that generally moves them into the high performance compute space as well right now. So those performance improvements exist across that entire spectrum. >> So since you brought up liquid cooling John, I mean can you share any best practices? I mean, like what do you do with all that heated liquid? >> Yeah, it's a great, great question. And we have seen a lot more interest from customers in liquid cooling and there's a variety of things that you can do, but if you're considering liquid cooling the opportunities to think broader than just the IT stack. So if you're going to use a cooling loop anyhow and you're going to generate warm liquid coming off the it equipment as waste, think about what you can do with that. We have a, a government customer here in the United States that designed their high performance computer while they were designing the building it went in. So they're able to use that hot air, hot water, excuse me coming off the IT equipment to heat the entire building. And that provides a great use of that warm water. In many parts of the world, that warm water can either be used on a hot water utility grid or it can even be used on a steam grid if you can get it warm enough. Other places we're aware of customers (indistinct) and greenhouses next to data centers and using both the warm air and the warm water from the data center to heat the greenhouse as well. So we're encouraging customers to take a step back, look at the entire system, look at anything coming out of that system that once was waste and start to think about how can we use that what was waste now as an input to another process. >> Right, that's system thinking and some, some pragmatic examples there. Can, can you each summarize, maybe start Terry, with you AMD's and HPE's respective climate goals that may, Terry then John chime in please. >> Yeah, I'll go first. We actually have four publicly stated goals. The first one is I think very aggressive but we've got a track record of doing something similar in our client business. And, and so kind of goal number one is a 30 X increase in energy efficiency for AMD processors and accelerators powering servers for AI and HPC by 2025. The second is broad based across the corporation is a 50% absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from AMD operations by 2030. And then the third is 100% of AMD manufacturing suppliers will have published greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals by 2025. And we've declared that 80% or greater of our manufacturing suppliers will source renewable energy by 2025. Those are the, those are the four big publicly stated goals and objectives that we have in this area. >> You know what I like about those Terry? A lot of, a lot of these sustainability goals these moonshot goals is like by 2050, it's like, okay. But I, I like the focus on '25 and then of course there's one in there at the end of the decade. All right, John, maybe you could share with us HPE's approach. >> Yeah, absolutely. And we've had almost two decades of emissions reduction goals and our current goals, which we accelerated by 10 years last year, are to be carbon new or excuse me, net zero by 2040. And that's a science based target-approved goal. In fact, one of the first in the world. And we're doing that because we believe that 2050 is too long to wait. And so how we reach that net zero goal by 2040, is by 2030, an interim step is to reduce our scopes one and two, our direct and energy related emissions by 70% from 2020. And that includes sourcing 100% renewable energy across all of our operations. At the same time, the bigger part of our footprint is in our supply chain and when our customers use our products, so we're going to leverage our as a service strategy HPE GreenLake and our energy efficient portfolio of products to reduce our scope three carbon emissions 42% over that 2020 baseline by 2030, and as with AMD as well, we have a goal to have 80% of our suppliers by spend have their own science based targets so that we know that their commitments are scientifically validated. And then the longer step, how we reach net zero by 2040 is by reducing our entire footprint scopes one, two and three by 90% and then balance the rest. >> Yeah. So again, I mean, you know 2030 is only eight years away, a little more. And so if, if, if you have a, a target of 2030 you have to figure out, okay, how are you going to get there? The, if you say, you know, longer, you know in the century you got this balloon payment, you know that you're thinking about. So, so great job, both, both companies and and really making more specific goals that we can quantify you know, year by year. All right, last question, John. Are there any resources that you can share to help customers, you know, get started maybe if they want to get started on their own sustainability strategy or maybe they're part way through and they just want to see how they're doing. >> Yeah, absolutely much of what Terry and I have talked about are available in an executive workbook that we wrote called "Six Steps For Implementing a Sustainable IT Strategy" and that workbook's freely available online and we'll post the URL so that you can get a copy of it. And we really developed that workbook because what we found is, although we had white papers on a variety of these topics, executives said we really need a little bit more specific steps to work through this and implement that sustainable IT strategy. And the reason for that, by the way is that so many of our customers when they start this sustainable IT journey, they take a a variety of tactical steps, but they don't have an overarching strategy that they're really trying to drive. And often they don't do things like bring all the stakeholders they need together. Often they make improvements without measuring their baseline first. So in this workbook, we lead them step by step how to gather the right resources internally, how to make the progress, talk about the progress in a credible way, and then make decisions on where they go next to drive efficiencies. >> Yeah, really that system thinking is, is, is critical. Guys. Thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Okay guys, thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it. In a moment, We're going to toss it over to Lisa Martin out of our Palo Alto studio and bring in Dave Faffel, chief technology officer at WEI, along with John and Terry, to talk about what WEI is doing in this space to address sustainability challenges. You're watching Better Together Sustainability brought to you by HPE and AMD in collaboration with the CUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (lilting music)

>>from the cube studios in Palo alto in boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. >>This is a cute conversation. Welcome to the cubes coverage of HP discover 2021 I'm lisa martin. I've got three guests with me here. They're going to be talking about the partnership between HP and AMG. Please welcome George hope worldwide Head of partner sales at HP terry, Richardson north american channel chief for AMG and Peter chan, the director of media channel sales at AMG Gentlemen, it's great to have you on the cube. >>Well, thanks for having us lisa. >>All right, >>we're excited to talk to you. We want to start by talking about this partnership terry. Let's go ahead and start with you. H P E and M D have been partners for a very long time, very long history of collaboration. Talk to us about the partnership >>HB named, He do have a rich history of collaboration spinning back to the days of chapter on and then when A M. D brought the first generation AMG equity process department back in 2017, HP was a foundational partner providing valuable engineering and customer insights from day one AmY has a long history of innovation that created a high performance CP roadmap for value partners like HP to leverage in their workload optimized product portfolios, maximizing the synergies between the two companies. We've kicked off initiatives to grow the chain of business together with workload focused solutions and together we define the future. >>Thanks terry George, let's get your perspective as worldwide had a partner sales at HP. Talked to me about H P S perspective of that AMG partnership. >>Yeah, they say it's uh the introduction of the third generation AMG Epic processors, we've we've doubled our A. M. D. Based Pro Lion portfolio. We've even extended it to our follow systems. And with this we have achieved a number of world records across a variety of workloads and are seeing real world results. The third generation am the epic processor delivers strong performance, expand ability and the security our customers need as they continue their digital transformation, We can deliver better outcomes and lay a strong foundation for profitable apartment growth. And we're incorporating unmatched workload optimization and intelligent automation with 360° security. And of course, uh with that as a service experience. >>But as a service experience becoming even more critical as is the security as we've seen some of the groundbreaking numbers and data breaches in 2020 alone. Peter I want to jump over to you now. One of the things that we see H P E and M. D. Talking about our solutions and workloads that are key areas of focus for both companies. Can you explain some of those key solutions and the value that they deliver for your customers? >>Absolutely. It's from computing to HPC to the cloud and everything in between and the young HB have been focused on delivering not just servers but meaningful solutions that can solve customer challenges. For example, we've seen here in India, the DL- 325 has been really powerful for customers that want to deploy video. Hp nmD have worked together with icy partners in the industry to tune the performance and ensure that the user experience is exceptional. Um This just one example of many of course, for instance, the 3 45 with database 3 65 for dense deployments, it's key the 35 That has led the way in big data analytics. Um the Apollo 60 500 breaking new path in terms of AI and Machine learning, quite a trending topic and m D H p are always in the news when it comes to groundbreaking HPC solutions and oh by the way, we're able to do this due to an unyielding commitment to the data center and long term laser focused execution on the M the road map. >>Excellent. Thanks. Peter. Let's talk about the channel expansion a little bit more terry with you. You know, you and the team here. Channel Chief focused on the channel. What is A. M. D. Doing specifically to expand your channel capabilities and support all of the Channel partners that work with Andy >>great question lisa Campbell is investing in so many areas around the channel. Let's start with digital transformation. Our Channel partners consistently provided feedback that customers need to do more with less between A and B and H P. E. We have solutions that increase capabilities and deliver faster time to value for the customer looking to do more with less. We have a tool on our website called the and metrics server virtualization, Tco estimation tool and those who have visually see the savings. We also have lots of other resources such as technical documentation, A and E arena for training and general CPU's departments can take advantage of aside from solution examples, AMG is investing in headcount internally and at our channel part race. I'm actually an example of the investment MD is making to build out the channel. One more thing that I'll mention is the investment that are, you know, lisa su and Andy are making to build out the ecosystem from head Count to code development and is investing to have a more powerful user experience with our software partners in the ecosystem. From my discussions with our channel partners, they're glad to see A and d expanding our our channel through the many initiatives and really bringing that ecosystem. >>Here's another question for you as channel chief. I'm just curious in the last year, speaking and you talked about digital transformation. We've seen so much acceleration of the adoption of that since the last 15 months has presented such challenges. Talk to me a little bit about some of the feedback from your channel partners about what you am, D N H B are doing together to help those customers needed to deliver that fast time to value, >>you know, so really it's all about close collaboration. Um we we work very closely with our counterparts at H P. E just to make sure we understand partner and customer requirements and then we work to craft solutions together from engaging, technically to collaborating on on, you know, when products will be shipped and delivered and also just what are we doing to uh to identify the next key workloads and projects that are going to be engaged in together? So it's it's really brought the companies I think even closer together, >>that's excellent as a covid catalyst. As I say, there's a lot of silver linings that we've seen and it sounds like the collaboration terry that you mentioned has become even stronger George. I want to go to you. Let's HP has been around for a long time. My first job in tech was Hewlett Packard by the way, many years ago. I won't mention how long but talk to me about the partnership with AMG from H P s perspective, is this part of H P S D N A? >>Absolutely. Partnering is our D N A. We've had 80 years of collaboration with an ever expanding ecosystem of partners that that all play a key role in our go to market strategy. We actually design and test our strategic initiatives in close collaboration with our partners so that we can meet their most pressing needs. We do that through like farmer advisory boards and things of that nature. Um but we have we have one of the most profitable partner programs in the industry, 2-3 times higher rebates than most of our competitors. And we continue to invest in the partner experience in creating that expertise so partners can stand out in a highly competitive market. Uh And Andy is in direct alignment with that strategy. We have strong synergies and a common focus between the two companies. >>And I also imagine George one question and one question to that there's tremendous value in it for your end user customers, especially those that have had to everyone pivot so many times in the last year and have talked to me a little bit about George What you're saying from the customer's perspective. >>Well as Antonio Neri said a couple of years back, the world is going to be hybrid and uh, he was right. We continue uh we continue to see that evolution and we continue to deliver solutions around a hybrid digital world with, with Green Lake and the new wave of digital transformation that we refer to now as the age of insight customers want a cloud experience everywhere. And 70% of today's workloads can easily be re factored for the public cloud or they need to stay physically close to the data and other apps at the emerging edge or in polos are in the data centers. So as a result, most organizations are forced to deal with the complexity of having two divergent operating models and they're paying higher cost to maintain them both with Green Lake, we provide one consistent operating model with visibility and control across public clouds and on prem environments. And that applies to all workloads, you know, whether it's cloud native or non cloud native applications. Um we also have other benefits like no cloud block in or no data. Egress charges, so you have to pay a steep price just to move workloads out of the public cloud. And then we're expanding collaboration opportunities within for our partner ecosystem so that we can bring that cloud experience to a faster growing number of customers worldwide. So we've launched new initiatives uh in support of the core strategy as we accelerate our as a service vision and then work with partners to unlock better customer outcomes with Green Lake and of course, hb compute of which I am d is part of is, is the underlying value added technology. >>Can you expand on some of those customer outcomes as we look at, as I mentioned before, this very dynamic market in which we live. It's all about customer outcomes. What are some of those that from a hybrid cloud environment perspective with Green like that you're helping customers achieve? >>Well, at least Greenland has come out with with about 30 different different offerings that package up some solutions. So you're not just buying infrastructure as a service. We have offerings like HPC as a service. We have offerings like uh, V D I as a service, ml, ops as a service. So we're packaging in technology, some are are some are not ours, but into completing some solutions. So that creates the outcome that the customers are looking for. >>Excellent. Thanks, George and Peter, last question to you again with the hybrid cloud environment being something that we're seeing more and more of the benefits that Green Lake is delivering through the channel. What's your perspective from a. M decide? >>Absolutely lisa. So, so I mean I think it's clear with a MD based systems, customers get the benefit of performance, security and fast time to value whether deployed on prem and cloud on a hybrid model. So please come try out our HP system based on name the processors and see how we can accelerate and protect your applications. Thank you lisa. >>Excellent, Peter George terry, thank you for joining me today. I'm sure there's a lot more that folks are going to be able to learn about what AM D and H. P. Are doing together on the virtual show floor. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Yeah, for my guests, I'm lisa martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of HP discover 2021 Yeah.

>> Voiceover: Live from San Diego, California. It's the CUBE, covering Cisco Live U.S. 2019, brought to you by Cisco, and its EcoSystem Partners. >> Welcome back to San Diego, day two here, of Cisco Live 2019, I'm Dave Villante with my co-host Stu Miniman, Lisa Martin is also here. You're watching the Cube, the leader live tech coverage, we're here in the DevNet zone, which is a very happenin' place, and all the action is here the CCIE folks are getting trained up on how to do Infrastructure as Code. Terry Ramos is here, he's the Vice President of Alliances, at Cohesity, hot company, achieving escape velocity. Terry great to have you on. Good to see you again. >> Great to be here, really enjoy it. >> So Cisco is a big partner of yours, perhaps the biggest I know you don't like to say that, you love all your partners like you love your kids, but clearly a lot of good action going on with you guys. Talk about the partnership, where it started, how it's evolved. >> Sure so first off a little bit about Cohesity, I think would be helpful right, we're in the data management space, really helping customers with their data management, and how do they deal with the problem of mass data fragmentation, right if you think about the traditional data silos that enterprises have, we really take and level that out into one platform, our platform, and really allows customers to get the most out of their data. If we talk about the partnership with Cisco, it's actually a really good partnership. They have been an investor with us, both series C and D rounds. We recently, about three months ago announced that we were on the price book, so now a customer has the ability to go buy a Cisco UCS, Hyperflex, and Cohesity, as a cohesive bundle to solve their problems, right, to really help them grow. And then we are working on some new things, like Cisco Solutions Plus Support, where customers has a single call place, where they get all their support needs addressed. >> That's huge Stu, I remember when the, remember the Vblock when it first came out. It's a V support, I forget how many VMs, like thousands and thousands of VMs, and I just have one question, how do you back it up? And they went, and they were staring at their feet, so the fact that now you're bundled in to UCS HyperFlex, and that's part of the SKU, or its a different SKU or? >> Terry: Yeah they're all different SKUs, but it is bundled together. >> Yeah, so it's all integrated? It's a check box item, right okay? >> What we did was came up with the CVD, validated design so customers can get a validated design that says HyerFlex, UCS, Cohesity, here's how to deploy it, here's the best use cases, and they can actually go buy that, then it's a bundled solution. >> Terry brings us inside a little bit that go to market, because it's one thing to be partnered with CBDs, they're great but Cisco as you know hundred of these, if not more, but you know when you've got access to that Cisco channel out there, people that are transforming data centers, they talked about conversion infrastructure, hyper conversion infrastructure, Cisco UCS, tip of the spear for Cisco in that Data Center world, what does it mean to be that oh hey you know that whole channel, they are going to help get paid on that not just say oh yeah yeah that works. >> Yeah, I think that there's a few things for the channel for us, one is just Cisco's team themselves right, they don't have a backup solution so we are really the next gen backup and that's really helped them out. When we talk about Channel as well Channel partners are looking for a solution that differentiates them from everybody else. So we are a high touch sales team, but we are a hundred percent channel so working with the channel, giving them new ways actually to go out a sell the solution. >> So lets talk a little bit about backup, data protection, data insurance you know sort of we're trying to pass between, all right, what's the marketing and what's the reality for customers, so we remember the VM where Ascendancy days, it caused people to really have to rethink their backup and their data protection. What's driving it now? Why are so many customers kind of reassessing their backup approach and their overall data protection and data management? >> Yeah, I think it's the best analogy to last one is data management right, everybody has thought of data protection, it's just protecting your data. Backup and recovery. What we've done is really looked at it as it's data, you should be able to use your data however you want to. So, yeah we made do data protection on the platform, but then we do tests that, we do file shares, we do things like that, and we make it this cohesive data management platform, where customers get various use cases, but then they can look at their entire dataset, and that is really the key anymore. And when you talk about the data protection as it was, it was very silo. You data protect one set of systems, and data protect the next, and data protect the next. They never talked you couldn't do management across them. >> Dave: Okay so. >> Yeah yeah Terry. So I love when you're talking about the silos there, back in Barcelona we heard Cisco talking about HyperFlex anywhere, and some of the concerns of us have is, is multi-cloud the new multi vendor, and oh my gosh have I just created a whole bunch of silos that are just outside of my data center, like I used to do inside my data center. How's Cohesity helping to solve that solution for people from your. >> Yeah I think that's a interesting one. Cloud is really come along, right? Everybody thought we'll see what cloud does, it's really come a long way and people are using multi-cloud, so they are doing cloud on prem. Then they're archiving out to public cloud providers, and they're archiving out to other silos where they, or other data services where they have it, and that's really been the approach lately, is you can't just have your data in one location, you're going to move it out to the Cloud, you're going to store it on UCS and HyperFlex, and Cohesity. And again its how do you use that data, so that's the key is really that. But it is a cloud world for sure, where you're doing On-prem Cloud and Public Cloud. >> So today a lot of that focus, correct me it I am wrong, is infrastructure as a service? >> Yes >> Whether it's AWS, Google, you know Azure. Do you, have you started to think about, or are customers and partners asking you to think about, all the protecting all the data in SAS, is that something that's sort of on the road map are you hearing that for customers, or to is it still early for that? >> No I think that actually a great use case, if you talk about I'll just pick on one, Office 365 right, if you think about what they really provide it's availability right it's not backup so, if you need to back a year and get that critical email that you need for whatever reason, that's really not what they're doing. They're making sure it's up and running, and available to the users. So data protection for SAS apps is actually a new use case that I think is enormous. >> Okay so take Office 365 as an example, is that something you can protect today, or is that kind on the road map? >> That's something we can do today. >> So explain to our audience, why if I am using Office 365 which is in the Cloud, isn't Microsoft going to take care of that for me, why do I need Cohesity explain? >> Yeah, I think it is really comes down to that, it's they're really providing availability, yeah they have some backup services, but even if they do it's not tying into your overall data management solution. And so backing up O-365 gives you access to all that data as well, so you can do algorithms on it, analytics all those things once it's part of the bigger platform. >> And you probably have more facile recovery, which is, backup is one thing, recovery Stu. >> Is a everything. >> There you go. >> It is. (laugh) >> Terry talk to us about your customers, how about any big you know Cisco joint customers that you can talk about but would love to hear some of the latest from your customers? >> Yeah I think when we started this partnership awhile ago, what we really focused on Cohesity on UCS, and we got some traction there. When we went on the price sheet that really changed, things because the customers are now able to buy on a single price sheet. When you talk about the large customers it's been incredible the last three, four months, the numbers of joint customers that we've been in, and Cisco's been in, and its enterprise customers, it's the fortune five hundred customers that we're going after. A customer that's here later today, Quantium is a great use case. They're data analytics, they're AI, and they're providing a lot of information to customers on supply chain. And he's here later today on the CUBE, and it's a really great use case to what they are doing with it. >> Yeah we're excited to talk to him so lets do a little prep for him, what, tell us about Quantium, what do you know about them so we, gives us the bumper sticker so we're ready for the interview. >> Craig will do a much better job of it, but my understanding is they're looking at data, supply chain data, when to get customers in, when they should have product there, propensity to buy, all of those things, and they are doing all that for very large enterprise customers, and then they're using us to data protect all that they do. >> So, so the reason I asked that is I wanted to double click on that, because you've been stressing Terry, that it's not just backup. It's this notion of data management. You can do Analytics, you can do other things. So when you, lets generalize and lets not make it specific to Quantium, we'll talk to them later, but what specifically are customers doing beyond backup? What kind of analytics are they doing? How is affecting their business? What kind of outcomes are they trying to drive? >> Yeah I think it's a great question, we did something about four months ago, where we replaced released the market place. So now we've gotten all this data from data protection, file shares, test-dev, cloud as we talked about. So we've got this platform with all this data on top of it, and now partners can come in and write apps on top to do all sorts of things with that data. So think of being able to spin up a VM in our platform, do some Analytics on it, looking at it for any number of things, and then destroy it right, destroy the backup copy not the backup the copy that's made, and then be able to go to the next one, and really get deep into what data is on there, how can I use that data, how can I use that data across various applications? >> Are you seeing, I've sort have always thought the corpus, the backup corpus could be used in a security context, not you know, not to compete with Palo Alto Networks but specifically to assess exposure to things like Ransomware. If you see some anomalous behavior 'cause stuff when it goes bad it goes bad quickly these days, so are you seeing those types of use cases emerging? >> Absolutely, ransomware is actually a really big use case for us right now, where customers are wanting data protection to ensure Ransomware's not happening, and if they do get hit how do we make sure to restart quickly. Give you another example is we have a ClamAV so we can spin up a VM and check it for anitivirus. Right in their data protection mode so not without, not touching the production systems but touching the systems that are already backed up. >> I think you guys recently made an acquisition of a Manas Data which if I recall correctly was a specialized, sort of data protection company focused on things like, NoSQL and maybe Hadoop and so forth, so that's cool. We had those guys on in New York City last fall. And then, so I like that, building out the portfolio. My question is around containers, and all this cloud native stuff going on we're in the DevNet zone so a lot DevOps action, data protection for containers are you, your customers and your partners are they sort of pushing you in that direction, how are you responding? >> Yeah I think when you talk about cloud in general right, there's been a huge amount of VMs that are there, containers are there as well so yeah customers are absolutely talking about containers. Our market place is a container based market place, so containers are absolutely a big thing for us. >> So what else can you share with us about you know conversations that you're having with customers and partners at the show? What are the, what's the narrative like? What are some of the big concerns, maybe that again either customers or partners have? >> Yeah I don't want to sound like a broken record but I think the biggest thing we hear always is the data silos, right? It's really breaking down those silos, getting rid of the old legacy silos where you can't use the data how you want to, where you can't run analytics across the data. That is the number one talk track that customers tell us. >> So how does that fit in, you know the old buzz word of digital transformation, but we always say the difference between a business and a digital business is how they use data. And if you think about how a traditional business looks at it's data, well that data's all in silos as you pointed out and there's something in the middle like a business process or a bottling plant or... >> That's right. >> manufacturing facility, but the data's all dispersed in silos, are you seeing people, as at least as part of their digital transformation, leveraging you guys to put that data in at least in a logical place that they can do those analytics and maybe you could add some color to that scenario. >> Yeah, for sure, I mean the data from I'll give you a great example. The CBD we just did with Cisco, the updated one has Edge. So now when you're talking about plants and branch offices and those things, now we can bring that data back in to the central core as well, do analytics on it, and then push it to other offices for updated information. So absolutely, it is a big use case of, it's not just looking at that core central data center. How do you get that data from your other offices, from your retail locations, from your manufacturing plants. >> Final thoughts. San Diego, good venue you know great weather. >> Beautiful. >> Cisco Live. >> Yeah. >> Dave: Put a bumper sticker on it. >> I'm impressed with Cisco Live. I haven't been here in several years. It's an impressive show, 26 thousand people, great, beautiful weather, great convention center. Just a great place to be right now. >> All right and we're bring it all to you live from the CUBE. Thank you Terry for coming on. Dave Villante, for Stu Miniman, Lisa Martin is also here. Day two, Cisco Live, 2019. You're watching the CUBE, we'll be right back. (upbeat techno music)

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host David on tape hi everybody this is Dave a latte from our studios in Marlborough Massachusetts you're watching the cube I'm here with Terry Richardson who's the vice president of North America alliances and channels for Hewlett Packard Enterprise we're gonna talk about a program that HPE has called HPE complete Terry good to see you thanks for having me Dave really good to be here you're welcome HPE complete what's that all about HP complete is our way to extend our portfolio to customers and partners so we essentially work with leading technology Alliance vendors and ISPs to certify their solutions with HPE infrastructure and we and we go kind of two steps further once that certification is complete we add those offerings to our price book so they become available to customers and partners you know it allows us to sell complete solutions to customers but we also we also take advantage of the opportunity to develop joint go to market programs with these vendors because that kind of last mile execution is what really matters how often do you have something that's available in a price book but kind of gets no attention so the complete program is really end to end and it allows us to as I said develop solutions for customers that that the components may not exist in the HP completely eportfolio so by leveraging complete we have I think the industry's most complete portfolio of offerings across the infrastructure this is really important because you have some companies some vendors will say okay we're gonna create a stack and be our stack and sort of a closed stack and I'm sure there's some advantage to that level of integration but one of them is not horizontal you know scale and and penetration in various markets so it allows you to say oK we've got some white space here and some gaps we're gonna fill that through partnerships and as you said there go to market implications as well so so I would think that partners actually really love that because they love choice they love flexibility right and and I think we we allow for it to be easier for partners if they take advantage of these technology offerings that are all available through HPE right because one of the challenges a traditional business partner has is how many different vendors can they contract with how many vendor certification programs can they go through how many different you know kind of hoops can they can they jump through this way they can kind of do everything through HPE and there's certainly some financial benefits for you know when they do so and so does that mean there's a SKU for all of these offerings kind of gets queued up in the HPE price book and and they contribute towards the partners attainments of their annual revenue commitment HPE that allows them to achieve their medallion status whether it's platinum gold or or silver so let's say a name so we're some of the partners that you work on so I don't have time to probably name them all but I'll give you a couple of examples we'll just talk about in the infrastructure category specific to storage so HPE portfolio is pretty complete led by you know kind of three part technology and nimble and the associated info site software as well as our you know backup data protection products but we have some gaps right we have gaps in file and objects so companies like accumulo Scalla t really start to fill in the in the blanks there we looked at the trend towards Software Defined and it brought us to a company called doTERRA that that we have for software-defined storage kind of you know continuing to extend our reach into kind of virtualized backup would be technologies with a company like like Veeam so you know just and then you know kind of the exploding secondary data market has led us to partner collaboratively with Co he city so our value prop to these vendors is they can tap into HP's global channel and kind of get you know much broader scale than they could as smaller companies and they also get a selling force at HPE that's motivated to deliver the solutions that our customers and partners need and and dragging those technologies along so it really becomes a win-win yeah from your standpoint you don't have to go out and you'll make acquisitions but you're not to buy every company who's known there and try to figure out how to stitch it together you can do some integration I mean cumulus unev Isilon they're doing very well in the market I know Jerome Ellicott known him for years great skill any CEO from skaila Tico he cities like killing it with modern data protection you got V was really well established you know almost a billion-dollar company now maybe even they'd be surpassed that and in de Tierra when you start talking about Software Defined and we talked about the edge in one of our earlier conversations starts to play kind of an interesting you know great potential technology and so love to see you guys partnering and stitching together and I'm sure like you say there are many more we just don't have time we don't have time to cover them all but those are examples and I think there's a real not only do the partners get to deal with a HPE broader portfolio but in in their go to market execution when they're in partnership with those vendors they tend to be hungrier selling organizations kind of the proverbial hunter analogy because they're focused on kind of rapid growth and market adoption to take advantage of a window in time so partners appreciate the fact that not only will HPE be hunting but a lot of these vendors are hunting too and the partners of the beneficiary what do they have to go through to complete HPE guns there's a pretty thorough certification process that our team goes through to to certify those offerings working on our infrastructure product platform so it's not just signed the contract in your in its as it's a series of technical testing that that goes on so then we put our name and brand behind something we have high confidence that it'll deliver the intent of results to customers and partners so there may be some engineering changes this imaginary work to take advantage of the capabilities in many of these cases it may be HPE compute infrastructure so taking advantage of all the capabilities of our compute flatform and ultimately management there's some integration work that gets done critical for partners simplifies their portfolio by working with HPE Terri thanks so much thank you Dave appreciate the explanation of HPE complete alright and thank you everybody for watching we'll see you next time you're watching the cube [Music]

>> From the SiliconANGLE media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Velante. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Velante. Welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. Years ago, large computer companies would set up shop, direct sales, in NFL cities. Well, that's changed quite dramatically and there's been a lot of other changes. We're moving from a world of pure box selling to where partners and channel partners are adding value in new ways, and the cloud has really accelerated that move with focus on things like security and infrastructure value added, and other factors that can bring margin for the channel partners. We're here to talk about that with Terry Richardson, who is the vice president of North America Channels and Alliances at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Terry, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me Dave. Pleasure to be here. >> So I was saying up front how things have changed a lot in the channel. We're kind of moving from a box selling mentality to a value add. Is that accurate? What's happening in the channel? What are really the market trends? So I think that's absolutely accurate. There's really three things happening simultaneously. Vendors like HPE are transforming, channel partners themselves are transforming, and customers are transforming. And for the first time, at least in my career, over three decades in this industry, it's all happening simultaneously. So with respect to the partners, their business is absolutely needing to shift from one that's product centric to one that's much more software and services centric. In order to continue to be the trusted advisor to their customers, they need to evolve and deliver solutions to customers that are addressing today's business problems. >> And channel partners have always been very customers focused, very close to the customers, they have intimate relationships with them. So when you talk about the customers transforming, everybody talks about digital transformation, it sounds like a big buzzword, but every company you go to is trying to get digital right, aren't they? >> They're trying to get digital right either to take advantage of market opportunity leadership, or frankly because of the threat of being disrupted and playing defense, and so they're absolutely focused on their own transformations. And it's hard because most customers IT budgets are locked up in just running the infrastructure they have today, and they're trying to figure out a way to innovate and bring on new applications that can be revenue drivers or allow them to compete in new and different ways, and it's difficult to get that balance right. And so partners play a critical role in advising how clients can achieve their goals in the constraints of the budgets they have today. >> And so from an infrastructure standpoint, the applications and data have traditionally been locked and loaded and hardened in these silos, which was kind of the right thing to do when you wanted to optimize on availability and reliability and security. But now people wanna share data across the enterprise, with partners, there's no more perimeter, and that's a real challenge for customers from an infrastructure perspective, isn't it? >> Right, and the way that not only vendors like HPE but our partners address their client needs, it's rapidly changing. In reality, to use a term that I've heard in the past, applications follow data, and infrastructure follows applications. So you really need to understand what the clients intended outcome is, and what are the business objectives that they're trying to achieve, and that will allow you to focus more on workloads and applications, which ultimately will lead to an infrastructure sale, but starting with infrastructure is the wrong way to do it. >> Let's talk about some of the channel concerns. Obviously the channel wants to make margins, they want a partner that's not gonna head fake them, and change the rules of the game, and they want to work with a leader. Talk about what you're hearing from channel partners. What are their major concerns today? Is it cloud taking over their business? Is it the things I just mentioned? Elaborate. >> I think you hit on a few. Certainly, cloud is an an enabler for some customers in some ways, but it's a potential disruptor to channel partners. And their business has to morph to take advantage of what the cloud brings and position themselves not to be disrupted by it. So that's certainly a change in partners, and the other thing that partners are struggling with is how do they keep their technical talent, not only how do they retain the talent, but how do they acquire the requisite skills that are necessary for today's market demands? And just having a strong set of network engineers, or security experts, or storage resources is frankly not enough. Now you're looking at people with DevOps skills, and people that really know how to architect the 2.0 and 3.0 solutions for customers today. So that retaining, acquiring, and ultimately training that technical talent becomes a real challenge, and then of course finding salespeople that can sell in a solution centric manner as opposed to a product centric manner, is also a challenge. >> So, Terry, how specifically is HPE addressing those concerns with partners? >> So, a couple ways, the cloud becomes an enabler, right? One of the premises of our overriding business strategy is around making hybrid IT simple for customers. So part of that is acknowledging that public clouds have a place. There'll be workloads that are appropriate with SaaS providers, and helping the customer navigate what applications and data need to remain on-prem, and what should be in the cloud and how to manage that, and how to potentially move workloads from off-prem to on-prem and vice versa is really a challenge. But one of the big attractions when there was a race to the cloud, was a different way to consume technology. The public cloud providers made it very easy, kind of pay-as-you-go, pay-what-you-use, and so HPE innovated with a technology that we call GreenLake, which essentially offers the customer the same experience from a consumption standpoint, only pay for what you use, there's capacity available to meet peak requirements already on-site, but the customer has a very predictable way to pay for it, which we're starting to see real market traction. >> Yeah, we always talk about, on theCUBE, bringing the cloud experience to your data, wherever it lives, that's an example. When you talk about making hybrid IT simple, and of course I've heard this tagline from HPE for a while now, it's interesting because hybrid IT is anything but simple, so the channel partners must love that narrative, because they're part of making it simple. >> They're part of making it simple and we've actually extended our outreach to partners. We recently announced something called Tech Pro Community, which is a way to, we've outreached to all the technical constituents at our partner, it's actually around the globe, not just in North America. And we've created a community where we train our partner's technical resources exactly the same way we train our own engineers. So, they're consuming the same content in the same training sessions together, so it provides multiple benefits, not the least of which is building strong relationships, because we often see our technical resources and partner's technical resources collaborating in front of customers to deliver real world solutions. And that's important. >> You're essentially saying that's transparent to customers. They don't really see the difference or? >> Because the training is so substantially similar. So often times a partner may be in alone, completely representing HPE, often at times we're together, or they may be times where a partner doesn't have resources in a city, they may ask HPE to augment their own capabilities. >> So a partner, if they choose, can essentially white label your expertise and services? >> They absolutely can if they choose to do that, or the other end of the spectrum, if we allow partners partners to build services, practices, around our infrastructure. So if they choose to deliver their own services around our infrastructure, that's an option, too. >> I could see it going both ways. I could see partners wanting to draft off the HPE brand, I could see partners saying hey, we want the customer to just see us. >> Because that's part of their value prop to their customers. >> Is that unique in the marketplace, where you're able to give the partners that flexibility? I know, for instance, some vendors say no, it's our brand, and that brand, the color scheme, etc., has to be front and center. >> I don't think it's completely unique. What I think is unique is HPE continues to show itself, not only as being the vendor that is fully committed to the channel and have been for decades, but really showing the flexibility to adapt with the changing times. So we tend not to dictate, thou shalt do it this way, thou must do it this way. >> From a channel perspective, this is kind of an out in left field question, but it just popped in my head; when HPE split in two, and you guys focused on infrastructure, was that good news for the channel? Or was it harder for you as the channel partner because you got less in the bag to offer? >> I think it was a little bit of a mixed bag. It was initially harder for customers 'cause they now had to deal with two vendors instead of one, but I think the overwhelming benefit, it certainly played out with the success of our counterparts at HP Inc., that equity's done very well and the company's done terrific in the market, as has HPE. So, still a broad enough portfolio because we cover all the infrastructure elements from compute to storage networking and services, that's certainly enough to keep us busy and keep the partner's focused. >> And I would think that you're more focused as well. >> Absolutely. We're building deeper relationships with our partners, we're being focused and as we transition from selling products to delivering effective solutions to customers in this new hybrid world, and let's not ignore the opportunity at the edge, it really gives us an opportunity to really zero in on what the partners need in order to successfully scale their businesses. >> I'm glad you brought up the edge, because a couple misconceptions where the cloud was just going to take over and swipe a credit card and you don't have to worry about IT anymore, cloud brought a lot of complexities, particularly in terms of governance, security, data migration, >> Sovereignty. >> Sovereignty, right. Now you've got the edge which is kind of redefining what the cloud is all about. >> It's redefining, really, the definition of data center. >> Right. >> Right, because for many customers, what they're recognizing is with the technology advances, and the requirements on their business to make decisions with the data that's produced outside the data center at the edge, processing storage, analytics have to happen right there, real time. And then, it's really a booming part of the market, so we're starting to see partners that have historically been data center focused taking advantage of this redefinition of what the data center is, and how IT operations, and traditional systems and application vendors that operated outside the data center, are really now relevant in order to allow that customer to achieve their business objective. So it just kind of widens the opportunity for channel partners. >> In thinking about the edge, I know HPE was one of the first to really go hard after the edge in terms of starting to build an ecosystem in its early days, but I've talked to a number of HPE and ecosystem partners that are more IOT related or edge related. So, what does that mean for the partners? Are they able to tap into that ecosystem? Is it still too early? >> No, I think we're definitely in the earlier days, Dave, but partners are able to tack into the ecosystem. We have edge specific products on the server in compute and storage side, we have technologies that brand under the name Edgeline. We certainly have Aruba because wireless networking at the edge is a pervasive technology and the associated security and other software elements that the Aruba team brings. That's available now, and we've been on the forefront of forming new partnerships with entities that have relevant business applications to allow customers to complete their edge projects. And it's cutting across industry, so it's an exciting time on the one hand, on the other hand, it's putting pressure on the partners to learn yet something new, and like any business, you kind of have to make your bets, where you wanna invest, 'cause not all partners are gonna be expert in everything. >> Yeah, they gotta be careful about getting stretched too thin. At the same time, they want new opportunities that they can lean into. Alright, bring us home here. I'd love you to summarize why HPE, talk to the partners out there and explain to them, why HPE? >> Well, really I think it's a multifaceted set of reasons. I think number one, HPE is a vendor that you can trust. We've certainly earned that over more than three decades of being fully committed to the channel. We have invested in infrastructure, if you wanna take trust all the way to the customer, that we focus on security like nobody else, down to the silicon level. So there's real comfort in the solutions that HPE produces for clients and for partners to sell. We have a portfolio that's better than ever, and it's comprised really of three distinct elements. We continue to invest in R&D, so organic development innovation. We've done some really smart acquisitions that allow us to further deliver on our stated strategies. And we're approaching partnerships like never before. So, companies of all types, whether it's ISV software providers, global systems integrators, kind of everybody in between, and that technology partnership approach is allowing us to extend the portfolio. So partners have never had a better suite of offerings to provide to customers. We continue to have the industry's richest program when it comes to partner compensation, and we have increased commitment to sell with, co-sell with the channel. >> Well, Terry, partners are a critical part of the value chain, very clearly as I said before, a lot of intimate customer relationships, they gotta move fast to stay competitive. Thanks so much for coming to theCUBE and talking about some of these trends. >> Thanks for having me. >> You're welcome. Alright and thank you for watching, we'll see you next time. This is Dave Velante, you're watching theCUBE. (bright techno music)

>> Hi, everybody, this is Dave Vellante of theCUBE. Everybody talks about digital transformation, and yeah, it's a buzzword. But the difference is going business in a digital business is how it uses data. So we're doing a series of episodes with HPE and it's channel partners, and one of them is on data driven. I'm here with Terry Richardson. Terry, what can you tell us about H P E and data driven? >> Data--and Big Data Analytics is a very important part of our strategy.  Watch this session to learn what we're doing with big data and AI to benefit our customers and partners. >> It's one of the hottest topics going. Keep watching this crowd chat will be flowing. All kinds of resource is videos, white paper snippets. We'll see you in the CrowdChat.

>> Announcer: Live from Washington, DC, it's the Cube, covering .conf2017, brought to you by Splunk. (busy electronic music) >> Welcome back to the Washington Convention Center, the Walter Washington Convention Center, in our nation's capital as our coverage continues here of .conf2017. We're here at Splunk along with Dave Vellante. I'm John Walls, and kind of coming down the home stretch, Dave. There's just something about the crowd's lingering still, the show for, still has that good vibe to it, late second day, hasn't let off yet. >> Oh, no, remember, the show goes on through tomorrow. There's some event tonight, I think. I don't know, the band's here. >> Yeah, but-- >> Be hanging out, partying tonight. >> But you can tell the Splunkers are alive and well. We have Terry Ramos with us, who's going to join us for the next 15 minutes or so, the VP of Business Development of Palo Alto Networks. Terry, good to see you, sir. >> Good, really appreciate you having me here. >> You bet, you bet, thanks for joining us. You've got a partnership now, you've synced up with Splunk. >> Terry: Yes. >> Tell us a little bit about that. Then we'll get into the customer value after that. But first off, what's the partnership all about? >> Sure. We've actually been partners for about five years, really helping us solve some customer needs. We've got about several thousand customers who are actually using both products together to solve the needs I'll talk about in a minute. The partnership is really key to us. We've invested a ton of time, money, effort into it, we have executive level sponsorship all the way down to sales. In the field, we have reps working together to really position the solution to customers, both us and Splunk and then how we tie together. We're the number one downloaded app for Splunk by far that's a third party, so they have a couple that are more downloaded than us, but for third party, we've done that. We develop it all in house ourselves. For customers out there who think the app's great, I'll talk about the new version coming, I'd love any feedback on what should we do next, what are the next things we should do in the app, because we're really developing this and making this investment for customers to get the value out of it. >> What about the business update for Palo Alto Networks? I mean, can you give us the sort of quick rundown on what's going on in your world? >> Sure. I think most people know Palo Alto Networks has done pretty well. We just finished our FY '17, finished with about 42,500 customers. Revenue was, I think, 1.8 billion, approximately. We're still a very high growth company, and been growing the product set pretty well, from products next-gen firewall, all the attached subscriptions. Then we've got things like the Endpoint Traps now that's really doing well in the market, where customers need help on preventing exploits on the endpoint. That's been a growing market for us. >> It's the hottest space in the data center right now, and everybody wants to partner with you guys. Obviously, Splunk, you go to all the big shows, and they're touting their partnerships with Palo Alto. What do you attribute that sort of success to? >> Customers, truly. I run the partnerships for the company. If we do not have a customer who will be invested in the integration and the partnership, we don't do it. The number one thing we ask when somebody says, I want to partner with you, is, who's the customer, what's the use case, and why, right. Then if we can get good answers to that, then we go down the path of a partnership. Even then, though, we're still pretty selective. We've got 150 partners today that are technology partnerships. But we've got a limited number, Splunk's a big one, that we really invest heavily in, far more than the others, far more than just an API integration, the stuff of getting out to customers in the field the development of apps and integration, those things. >> Talk about, we laugh about Barney deals sometimes, I love you, you love me, let's do a press release. What differentiates that sort of Splunk level of partnership? Is it engineering resources? Is it deeper go to market? Maybe talk about that a little. >> Yeah, I hate Barney partnerships completely. If I do those, fire me, truthfully. I think the value that we've done with Splunk that we've really drawn out is, we've built this app, right, so BD has a team of developers on our team that writes the app for Splunk. We have spent four years developing this app. We were the first company to do adaptive response before it was called adaptive response. You see something in Splunk, you can actually take action back to a firewall to actually block something, quarantine something, anything like that. The app today is really focused on our products, right, through Endpoint, WildFire, things like that, right, so it's very product focused. We're actually putting in a lot of time and effort into a brand new app that we're developing that we're showing off now that we'll ship in about a month a half that's really focused on adversaries and incidents. We have something called the adversary score card where it'll show you, this is what's actually happening on my network, how far is this threat penetrating my network and my endpoints, is it being stopped, when is it being stopped. Then we've got an incident flow, too, that shows that level down to Traps prevented this, and here's how it prevented it. Then if we go back to the adversary score card, it ties into what part of the kill chain did we actually stop it at. For a CISO, when you come in and you say, there's a new outbreak, there's a new worm, there's a new threat that's happening, how do I know that I'm protected? Well, Splunk gives you great access to that data. What we've done is an app on top of it that's a single click. A SOC guy can say, here's where we're at, here's where we've blocked it. >> I guess I've been talking to a lot of folks here the last two days, and we've got a vendor right over here, we're talking, they have a little scorecard up, and they tell you about how certain intrusions are detected at certain intervals, 190 days to 300 and some odd days. Then I hear talk about a scorecard that tells you, hey, you've got this risk threat, and this is what's happened. I mean, I guess I'm having a hard time squaring that all up with, it sounds like a real time examination. But it's really not, because we're talking about maybe half a year or longer, in some cases, before a threat is detected. >> Yeah, so as a company, we've really focused on prevention. Prevent as much as you can. We have a product called WildFire, where we have tens of thousands of customers who actually share data with us, files and other things, files, URLs, other things. What we do is we run those through sandboxing, dynamic analysis, static analysis, all sorts of stuff, to identify if it's malicious. If it's malicious, we don't just start blocking that file, we also send down to the firewall all the things that it does. Does it connect to another website to download a different payload, does it connect to a C&C site, command and control site? What's that malware actually doing? We send that down to the customer, but we also send it to all of our customers. It may hit a target, right, the zero day hit one customer, but then we start really, how do we prevent this along the way, both in the network and at the endpoint? Yeah, there are a lot of people that talk about breaches long term, all that, what we're trying to make sure is we're preventing as much as we can and letting the SOC guys really focus on the things that they need to. A simple piece of malware, they shouldn't be having to look at that. That should be automatically stopped, prevented. But that advanced attack, they need to focus on that and what are they doing about it. >> The payloads have really evolved in the last decade. You mentioned zero day. Think about them, we didn't even know what it was in the early 2000s. I wonder if you could talk about how your business has evolved as the sophistication of the attackers has evolved from hacktivist to organized crime to nation state. >> Yeah, yeah. It has evolved a lot, and when you think about the company, 42,500 customers says a lot. We've been able to grow that out. When you talk about a product, something like WildFire that does this payload analysis, when we launched the product it was free. You'd get an update about every 24 hours, right. We moved it down to, I think it was four hours, then it was an hour, 20 minutes, and now it's about five minutes. In about five minutes, we do all that analysis and how do we stop it. Back to the question is, when you're talking about guys that are just using malware and running it over and over, that's one thing. But when you're talking about sophisticated nation states, that's where you've got to get this, prevent it as quickly as you possibly can. >> If we're talking about customer value, you've kind of touched on it a little bit, but ultimately, you said you've got some to deal with Splunk, some to deal with you, some are now dealing with both. End of the day, what does that mean to me, that you're bringing this extra arsenal in? How am I going to leverage that in my operations? What can I do with it better, I guess, down the road? >> Yeah, I think it really comes down to that, how quickly can you react, how do you know what to react to. I mean, it's as simple as that, I know it sounds super simple, but it is that. If I'm a SOC guy sitting in a SOC, looking at the threats that are happening on my network, what's happening on my endpoints, and being able to say, this one actually got through the firewall. It was a total zero day, we had never seen it before. But it landed at the endpoint, and it tried to run and we prevented it there. Now you can go and take action down to that endpoint and say, let's get it off the endpoint, the firewall's going to be updated in a few minutes anyway. But let's go really focus on that. It's the focus of, what do you need to worry about. >> Dave: Do you know what a zero day is? >> You've kind of, yeah, I mean, it's the movie, right? >> He's going, no, no, there was a movie because of the concept-- >> Because of the idea. >> David's note, there's been zero days of protection. But you can explain it better than I can. >> Yeah, zero day means it's a brand new attack, never seen before, whether it be-- >> Unique characteristics and traits in a new way that infiltrate, and something that's totally off from left field. >> When you think about it, those are hard to create. They take a lot of time and effort to go find the bugs in programs, right. If it's something in a Microsoft or an Oracle, that's a lot of effort, right, to go find that new way to do a buffer overflow or a heap spray or whatever it is. That's a lot of work, that's a lot of money. One of the things we focused on is, if we can prevent it faster, that money, that investment those people are making is out the window. We really, again, are going to focus on the high end, high fidelity stuff. >> The documentary called "Zero Days," but there was, I don't know how many zero day viruses inside of Stuxnet, like, I don't know, four or five. You maybe used to see, the antivirus guys would tell you, we maybe see one or two a year, and there were four or five inside of this code. >> Loaded into one invasion, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> It's the threat from within. I mean, one of the threats, if I recall correctly, was actually, they had to go in and steal some chip at some Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer, so they had to have a guy infiltrate, who knows, with a mop or something, stick a, had to break in, basically. These are, when you see a payload like that, you know it's a nation state, not just some hacktivist, right, or even organized crime doesn't necessarily have the resources for the most part, right? >> It's a big investment, it is. Zero days are a big investment, because you've got to figure it out, you may have to get hardware, you have to get the software. It's a lot of work to fund that. >> They're worth a lot of money on the black market. I mean, you can sell those things. >> That's why, if we make them unusable fairly quickly, it stops that investment. >> We were talking with Monte Mercer earlier, just talking about his comments this morning, keynotes about you could be successful defending, right. It's not all bets are off, we're hopeless here. But it still sounds as if, in your world, there are these inherent frustrations, because bad guys are really smart. All of a sudden, you've got a whole new way, a whole new world that you have to combat, just when you thought you had enough prophylactic activity going on in one place, boom, here you are now. Can you successfully defend? Do you feel like you have the tools to be that watch at the gate? >> I'd be a liar if I say you can prevent everything, right. It's just not possible. But what you've got to be able to prevent is everything that's known, and then take the unknown, make it known as quickly as possible, and start preventing that. That's the goal. If anybody out here is saying they prevent everything, it's just not true, it can't be true. But the faster you take that unknown and make it known and start preventing it, that's what you do. >> Well, and it's never just one thing in this world, right? Now there's much more emphasis being placed on response and predicting the probability of the severity and things of that nature. It really is an ecosystem, right. >> Terry: It is, that's what I do. >> Which is kind of back to what you do. How do you see this ecosystem evolving? What are your objectives? >> I think that from my standpoint, we'll continue to build out new partnerships for customers. We really focus on those ones that are important to customers. We recently did a lot with authentication partners, right, because that's another level of, if people are getting those credentials and using them then what are they doing with them, right? We did some new stuff in the product with a number of partners where we look at the credentials, and if they're leaving the network, going to an unknown site, that should never happen, right? Your corporate credentials should never go to some unknown site. That's a good example of how we build out new things for customers that weren't seen before with a partner. We don't do authentication, so we rely on partners to do that with us. As we continue to talk about partnership and BD, we're going to continue to focus on those things that really solve that need for our customer. >> Well, I don't know how you guys sleep at night, but I'm glad you do. >> Dave: No, we don't. What do you mean? I'm glad you don't. >> It's 24/7, that's for sure. >> Terry: Yes. >> Terry, thanks for being with us. >> Thank you very much. >> We appreciate the time, glad to have you on the Cube. The Cube will continue live from Washington, DC, we're at .conf2017. (busy electronic music)

>> Voiceover: Live from the Javits Center in New York City, it's The Cube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of Inforum. I am your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Terry Wise. He is the Vice President of Alliances for AWS. Thanks so much for coming on the program again. >> It's great to be here, yeah, thanks. >> So we are now a few years into this relationship with Infor. Where are we? Put things in perspective for us. >> Oh it's a great question. I think in some respects, this is arguably the most mature and strategic relationship we have. We've been working with Infor for, I've been at Amazon now nine years, and a better part of my nine years, we've been working with Infor, you know. In the early days it was awesome, before Infor bought the company. And, they've always done a great job of pushing us to be more enterprise-centric, more innovative in our platform and services. So it's very mature from that perspective. But I'd say, also at the same time, we're just entering a whole new days. We'd like to call it Day One at Amazon. If you look at some of the things that Charles and the team announced today with Coleman, and some of the new functionality and the growth of the cloud, I mean, we really are still at the early stages of this relationship, which is exciting. >> You know what's interesting to me Terry is, you know, Andy always talks about the fly wheel. He was, sort of, the first to use that terminology. And I was sitting in the endless meeting yesterday, and Infor was going through its architecture. And I just saw a lot of fly wheel in there. I mean, there is DynamoDB in there. I certainly saw S3. I think there was Kinesis, in terms of time series stuff. I think I saw Redshift in there. And so I wonder if you could talk about how this company, specifically, but generally, how people are leveraging net fly wheel of innovation to drive value for their customers. >> Yeah. And again, I think this goes back to the relationship we've had with Infor for so many years. Cloud is not just about cheap computing storage. It's really about platform and innovation that comes from that platform. And, you know, and partners and customers, like Infor, that have been with us a while, and they've got the skillsets internally, they've got great vision for how they want to take their customers with application functionality. They're really ripe to be able to take advantage of all the innovative platform services we build. Kinesis, Lambda for serverless computing. We're talking about some neat things around Edge. You heard Charles and Duncan today talk about Lex and some of the AI capabilities we have that are underpinning Coleman and some other new offerings. So they really are, kind of, the poster child for adopting our new services and driving innovation on top of our platform for their customer base. >> So where, if you can, look into your crystal ball a little bit. Where will we be a year from now, three years from now, with these technologies? >> So if I look out a year, I think, you know, rapid global expansion. You know, we're long past in many respects, sort of the, the early questions around cloud. Is it secure? Is it cost-effective? Is it robust and reliable? We're really past that if I look out across the globe. And now it's a question of how can we help enterprises adapt faster. And that's really, probably, the single biggest question I get from enterprise customers is, "This is great. Help me move quickly." And I think one of the neat things about the Infor relationship is, because they've packaged all of this innovation, into a set of business applications, they're actually helping customers move to the cloud quite a bit faster, and get that great value prop of cost efficiency, security, innovation, et cetera. Looking out three years, I think Duncan and the team did a very nice job today talking about the interaction ad user experience of how you're going to engage with business software moving forward. It's going to be very voice-driven. It's going to be predictive in nature so it's actually going to tell you what you need to think about versus going to a terminal or even a mobile device. So much left to do in that space. But I really do think, you know, three years from now, machine-learning won't be a buzz word, nor will artificial intelligence. It'll just be a bigger part of our daily lives. >> We were talking to Chip Coyle a little bit about trying to debunk some of the myths in cloud, specifically Amazon cloud. And I mentioned Oracle, saying that core enterprise apps really aren't going to the cloud, that's why you need Oracle. And they've got a strategy to do that, you've seen it. But then you going to see Infor, 55% of their business is in your cloud. They look like core enterprise apps. So is it, my question is, help us debunk that myth. But is it narrowly confined to companies like Infor, or are there examples of others? I mean, certainly there are companies, you guys have unbelievable logo chart. But when you peel back the onion, many of those apps are cloud-native or emerging apps. Those core of enterprise apps, we're seeing it from Infor. I wonder if you can add some color to that and are there other examples? >> Absolutely, I mean, I think there's others in the market that may be uncomfortable with the change that's happening with cloud, and therefore might be incented to try to slow that down. But I will say, the vast majority of all software companies we're engaging with are moving mission-critical enterprise apps to AWS. Some built natively in SaaS, like Infor is done. Others that are enabling, certifying their applications, SAP is another good example. You can kind of go across the stack, Adobe, AutoDesk, Siemens PLM, for product lifecycle management. And if you think about, you know, that's putting companies' core IP, the product development into the cloud to take advantage of all this agility, scale, cost-savings, et cetera. So it's been happening for a long time. Di-so is another great one, very innovative but somewhat conservative french company. They were very early on in the journey with us. And again, that's, you know, IP used to design airplanes, the things we fly around it. So it's been happening for a long time. It's accelerating. And I would say the other trend we're seeing is the companies out there that are resisting, we're hearing more and more from customers that, "Hey, that company is not helping move me to the future. Can you help me find an alternative?" So there's this big movement for enterprises to actually migrate out of legacy platforms, whether that's hardware or software, and move in to the cloud-native platforms, which are the future. >> So we see, we've been talking on The Cube for years about this whole digital transformation and how it's going to allow companies to play in different industries. Amazon, obviously. Retailer just purchased Whole Foods, getting into grocery. It's a content company. So Walmart said, "Alright, we're not going to put our stuff "in the Amazon cloud." Netflix obviously does. How do you deal with that? The obvious competitive fears of some of the customers that you have for AWS? How do you message that? And what do you tell the world? >> Sure, the first thing is, I mean, AWS, while it is part of Amazon.com, we are a separate operating group. And we've been that way since the beginning. So yeah, Amazon is a customer, just like Netflix or Nordstrom, or any of the other, you know, millions that we serve. Now a very hard customer and a very good customer. And they help drive our innovation road map. But we don't treat them any differently than we do, Netflix or the others. And part of that has to do with how we protect and secure the information that those companies put on AWS. So there's some companies out there, the one you just mentioned, that's still may be a bit uncomfortable, for whatever reasons, competitive reasons, putting information or having third parties put information related to their business on AWS. Yeah, I think that's unfortunate, I think. And it also talks about two different philosophies. We take very much a customer-centric view of the business. What's best for the customer. And if one of our partners has a better capability, we've got plenty of partners that have similar products to what we offer, but if it's the better product for the customer, we're more than happy to support that. Whereas others out there take a very competitive focus to the market. Where it's, they're watching what their competitors are doing. They're trying to head them off at the pass, or copy what their competitors are doing. In the long term, I don't think that's a fantastic strategy 'coz you're never really innovating on behalf of the customer. You're never giving them the best solution. You're actually preventing them from getting something that could be beneficial to that customer. And we just don't believe that's a long-term great business strategy for our customers and for ourselves. >> We recently saw the announcement of Amazon purchasing Whole Foods. Can you talk a little bit about this for our viewers. And talk about where, how you see the future of grocery and retail, where it's going. >> Sure, so we've announced our intention to purchase Whole Foods. It has not happenned. There's still some work to do there. But I think, you know, anytime we look at, you know, how we're going to expand, either organically or through acquisition, it's about, what are the synergies between our existing business, what the customers are looking for, and how can we create a better experience for that customer. How can we do it at scale? How can we innovate around that model? And then, you know, how can we make that a great long-term experience for the customer that ultimately drives the success and growth of our business, but also the partners that we bring in, whether again through acquisition or through third party partnership. This is kind of a, you look at this as a natural move as we look at what our customers are telling us, "Hey make it easier for us to purchase groceries and "household items." You know, and do it in a hybrid way, both, you know, combination of online and more from the physical presence. >> Terry I wonder if you could talk about, we mentioned the Edge before. And as you build out your partner strategy and the partner ecosystem. Talk more about the Edge, where it fits. Analytics at the Edge, and Amazon being the cloud, so what's your point of view on what happens at the Edge, what moves back to the cloud, the expense of moving things back to the cloud. What's your thought on that whole thing? >> Well, there's so many use cases for Edge computing. I mean, take the mining industry. You're putting huge trucks in the middle of nowhere that may have limited or very expensive connectivity. And they're capturing all kinds of, you know, information, during the natural operation of that machine. And it just makes sense that you want some level of data processing, storage, and analytics to happen on that machine. It could be a cruise ship, it could be a naval vessel, it could be an airplane. There's, you know, lots and lots of different applications there. But by doing some of that processing at the Edge, you're actually limiting the amount of data you have to send back to the central cloud. But of course, if you want to take full advantage of the analytics, you actually have to match that data with all the historical data and other real-time data that's resided in the cloud to get the result you're looking for. So it really becomes, you know, kind of this hybrid computing model. So some of it is efficiency around how much data you're sending back and forth. Some of it is just efficiency around processing, the point of data capture. Some due to connectivity reasons. Some due to other. It really is kind of this interesting new extension of hybrid cloud, if you will. We're very excited about it. >> You've made some moves in that area. I mean, Snowball was, I think, you know, one of the first. And there are other sort of Edge, what I would consider Edge-like devices or solutions. How dogmatic are you about everything living in the cloud? I mean, those are steps. Should we expect, you know, increasingly extending the reach of the cloud or is it just really going to all, your world come back to the AWS clouds? >> Yeah, yeah. It'll certainly be an extension of the cloud. That's already been happening. I mean, if you look at hybrid cloud. I think we've always been a supporter of hybrid cloud if you look at our roadmap going back many, many years with virtual private cloud, with Direct Connect, with some of the newer capabilities like Snowball, and, of course, Greengrass, our Edge capabilities. We're really extending the reach out to be much more of a hybrid store. 'Coz we recognize that not all the data today exist in the cloud or AWS in the future, you know. We think most applications will run in the cloud because the value proposition is so strong across so many different dimensions. But today, there's plenty of other places we have to connect to, again to capture the data. Now, I do think the vast majority of the data that we're capturing will be either pre-processed or sent natively into AWS to create a massive data leg so that you can start to drive these innovative machine-learning and artificial intelligence applications. The predictive analytics, the algorithms. They just don't work if you don't, they don't work effectively if you don't have massive amounts of data and you continuously refresh that data so that the algorithms can continue to learn. >> I want to double click on something you said about the value. To capture most of the value, your belief is that it's going to be in the cloud, one cloud. And others obviously have different view for a variety of different reasons. I buy the cost argument. You didn't make that argument, I'm making it. The marginal cost of having a single cloud. You know, standard, how much an A it is, superior. I'll grant that. What else is there though? Is it speed? Is it innovation? Is it standardization across the base? >> The single biggest value that I hear from customers today, but they love it, they love the cheap hosting fees, the efficiency part of it, but it really is the speed and agility. It's certainly the security model as well. I would say that most, almost every organization now that we talk to, once we've had the chance to educate them, if they haven't already done so themselves, has determined that the cloud-computing security model is much more effective than they could deliver on their own. We can just invest more. We can experiment more. We can have have multiple certifications across different industries, which every customer gets to take advantage of. But I would just come back, it's the ability to move quickly whether it's moving into new market. I was just in Europe, we were talking about it. It's so volatile there right now on so many dimensions with Brexit and some of the nationalistic politics things that are happening. Potentially the opening up more of the Middle East with the sovereign wealth funds comin' into play. There's just so much opportunity that enterprises need to be able to move quickly. And if they have to go stand up a data center somewhere else, or they can't deploy the software quickly, they're at a competitive disadvantage. So the single biggest driver from what I hear from customers and what I'm seeing is agility. >> Yeah, okay, so just to clarify, I said, cost not price. But we can debate that some other time. (Terry laughs) You just came back from Europe. You mentioned Brexit. What about things like GDPR which has taken effect but the penalties go in effect May of 18. Obviously that puts a lot of pressure on the cloud provider, as well as your customers. What are you hearing in Europe? And generally and specifically GDPR. >> Yeah, I mean, I would say the regulatory environment everywhere, but specifically in Europe, continues to evolve and it's fairly fluid. We've spent many years working with the various different regulatory bodies. The Article 29 Working Party. That's actually been crafting a lot of this legislation. So we're heavily influencing, because, if you step back, people said you couldn't do cloud, but they didn't explicitly say you could. (Rebecca and Dave laugh) So, customers are meant to, "How do I interpret this?" And some, you know, like, if I look at Nel, and I look at Societe Generale, and I look at BMW, and some of, you know, our forward-leaning European customers, Siemens is another great one, who was one of the original companies to put PII in the cloud. Here's a big German company putting PII in AWS a number of years ago. So we figured out how to get, not get around, but interpret the regulations, and then also ensure that we've got the features and capabilities to make sure that they comply with those regulations. So the full audit trail, the ability to encrypt data, the ability to make sure that data storage and localization is complying with, whether it's a country-level regulation or an industry-level regulation. So we continue to spend a lot of time and effort, monitoring and influencing that. And then building the services to make sure our customers fully comply. >> Well, you've always done well with permutations and complexity and automating that, so it's going to be fun to watch. >> Rebecca: It will indeed. >> Great. >> Terry thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun talking to you. >> Yeah, great, thanks, appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. We will have more from Inforum just after this. (upbeat music)

the queue presents on the ground here's your host John furrier hi everyone I'm John furrow it still can angle the cube we're here in San Francisco the ritz-carlton for the exclusive coverage of Amazon Web Services AWS is big announcement with VMware CEO Pat Cal singer with the CEO of Amazon Web Start sandy chasse a year on the big announcement of VMware managing a cloud on Amazon a lot of good stuff and our next guest is Terry wise who's the vice president of global alliances great to see you good to see you John thanks for having us so you're the man I'm at bout town and he came on stage we delivered a great performance kind of humbly like he always is but this is a really big deal and you guys obviously get learning on the public cloud but this is like you know almost sweeping the double header you know game one you win the public cloud game to enterprise cloud is pretty much in your back pocket with the size of VMware you got to be happy with this deal yeah we're very pleased with it I mean if you look at it we don't look at it in the terms you just articulated it certainly entertaining but we really look at it is how we're gonna best serve customers and at the beginning at the end of the day this all came about you know really by customer demand you heard both Andy and Pat talk about it enterprise customers have been talking to us for years hey we want to run these workloads across multiple environments help make us help make that happen and now is the right time in place and the right marketing conditions to make that yeah yeah tongue-in-cheek side nice nice political answer on the Amazon front but but in reality we've been covering both Amazon and VMware both in a very deep way over the past years and I was questioning myself why is Andy Jesse coming to San Francisco to announce a deal with VMware it seems like VMware is groping a lot of criticism on the false starts of the cloud I obviously knew something big was going on so I felt that but this my question but you're innovating so much at Amazon I slowed down to go work with VMware obviously it's the customers talk about the customer impact because this is important it's not that you guys are straying from the vision of AWS which is in the cloud a lot of innovation sets the services is this just another service for AWS well it's another service but it's a very different service you know to your point this is really gonna accelerate customer adoption then we're gonna make it easier for enterprise customers to move to the public cloud environment because they can leverage the same software licenses skill sets and tools that they've used to virtualize and build private clouds so now naturally extends in the V AWS environment and it should help everybody move faster and get all the goodness and the benefits of the cloud much quicker so you have two customers on there on the stage one was Western Digital they got a huge integration it's interesting the use case for him was analytics yes so that's an Amazon benefit tutor so it's not just VMware so the deal is VMware customers get to run the VMware stuff on to Amazon so you give them a lifeline for their business models Raghu was alluding to ours being more specific this allows them to preserve their licenses as well as give their customers a bridge to the future but the reality is there's a ton of services on the Amazon side that they're going to take advantage of it's not just they're gonna get Amazon they're naturally gonna use what services do you guys see the VMware customers using the most oh that's a great question and I think I mean it really runs the gamut if you look at you know analytics for sure I mean that's a no-brainer if you look at more of the innovation use cases that are happening around IOT the things that you know don't fit night they use cases that don't fit nicely into kind of your private data center because of the constraints that you have their Big Data obviously the variable kinds of workloads massive amounts of storage all that data that's coming off these IOT centers has to go somewhere that's three redshift I mean all of these things are just natural extension so you have to be completely candid I have a hard time thinking of any that would not you know be an extension to the because Dave Olave says there's a lot of cloud native agility and innovation coming on Amazon how is that going to connect into the VMware so the customers just say hey I'm a VMware customer I'm now gonna use vCenter and I got all my comfortable dashboarding and tooling and stacks technology of VMware mm-hmm now I go to Amazon I just plug into Amazon services directly yes I'll have an AWS account that's gonna spin up the AWS native services will run those alongside the VMware offering and through V Center and the management tools you leverage our API is into cloud wash logs and all of our different management functionality so to get a single view across that integrated landscape so the number one question I had coming into today was why it's Andy Jesse coming to San Francisco so in your own words how would you describe the magnitude of this deal for both AWS and for VMware but certainly you know perhaps the most unique deal we've done we've done a lot of strategic alliances we announced one last year at this time with Accenture that's one step shy of a joint venture that's been a big deal you know we've got a number of others we just announced one with sa P a few weeks ago here in San Francisco around the BW for Hana launch but in comparison in Mississippi you know obviously a big deal and the enterprise adoption has been up - can you comment on any color around uptake with the enterprises you know prior and visa V this announcement I'm sure it's gonna be a lot more this is an on-ramp of three million customers but in general Amazon was already winning in the enterprise correct yeah I mean the fastest-growing segments for us clearly are the enterprise and public sector I want to make sure we conclude public sector in there it's probably the first time in a series of Carlton great great doing a great job they're probably the first time in history of the IT world that the public sector in many cases is moving faster than the private sector it's one of my favorite stories to tell and yeah I noticed on the on the on the region map you had a gov cloud on there that is the public sector cloud so VMware customers in public sector can tap into that is that similar before it is on the roadmap to support our Dell cloud initiative you know I think that'll come in a kind of phase two but absolutely and we're finding - is most of the government's we're working with now government agencies don't require gov cloud they want you want to run in our public cloud because it's equally secure more secure more capacity more flexibility more choice Terry thanks so much for coming on sharing your thoughts here at the exclusive announcement in a nutshell what's the big takeaway for AWS folks customers and VMware customers what's the key message that you'd like this decision here yeah I think you know today we're you know even more relevant than we were yesterday in terms of the ability to actually serve at enterprise customers full suite of workloads faster more innovative and cost-effective awesome great thanks so much appreciate your time John Ferrier here in San Francisco the risk call for the exclusive Amazon Web Services in VMware big partnership thanks for watching [Music]

>>Hey everyone. Hello from Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here with you, and I'm on the show floor at Reinvent. But we have a very special program series that the Cube has been doing called Women of the Cloud. It's brought to you by aws and I'm so pleased to have an excellent panel of women leaders in technology and in cloud to talk about their tactical recommendations for you, what they see as found, where they've helped organizations be successful with cloud. Please welcome my three guests, Tara Kapor, president and Chief Revenue Officer, consulting and Digital Transformations, NTT Data. We have Rachel Mu, aws, head of North America, partner sales from aws, and Jimmy Barnes joins us as well, managing director, investment banking engineering at Goldman Sachs. It is so great to have you guys on this power panel. I love it. Thank you for joining me. >>Thank >>You. Let's start with you. Give us a little bit of, of your background at NTT Data and I, and I understand NTT has a big focus on women in technology and in stem. Talk to us a little bit about that and then we'll go around the table. >>Perfect, thank you. Thank you. So brand new role for me at Entity Data. I started three months back and it's a fascinating company. We are about 22 billion in size. We work across industries on multiple innovative use cases. So we are doing a ton of work on edge analytics in the cloud, and that's where we are here with aws. We are also doing a ton of work on the private 5G that we are rolling out and essentially building out industry-wide use cases across financial services, manufacturing, tech, et cetera. Lots of women identity. We essentially have women run cloud program today. We have a gal called Nore Hanson who is our practice leader for cloud. We have Matine who's Latifa, who's our AWS cloud leader. We have Molly Ward who leads up a solutions on the cloud. We have an amazing lady in Mona who leads up our marketing programs. So a fantastic plethora of diverse women driving amazing work identity on cloud. >>That's outstanding to hear because it's one of those things that you can't be what you can't see. Right. We all talk about that. Rachel, talk a little bit about your role and some of the focus that AWS has. I know they're big customer obsession, I'm sure obsessed with other things as well. >>Sure. So Rachel Muir, pleased to be here again. I think this will be my third time. So a big fan of the Cube. I'm fortunate enough to lead our North America partner and channel business, and I'll tell you, I've been at AWS for a little under two years, and honestly, it's been probably the best two years of my career. Just in terms of where the cloud is, where it's headed, the business outcomes that we can deliver with our customers and with our partners is absolutely remarkable. We get to, you know, make the impossible possible every day. So I'm, I'm thrilled to be here and I'm thrilled to, to be part of this inaugural Women of the Cloud panel. >>Oh, I'm prepared to have all three of you. One of the things that feedback, kind of pivoting off what, Rachel, one of the things that you said that one of our guests, some of several of our guests have said is that coming out of Adams keynote this morning, it just seems limitless what AWS can do and I love that it gives me kind of chills what they can do with cloud computing and technology, with its ecosystem of partners with its customers like Goldman Sachs. Jimmy, talk to us a little bit about you, your role at Goldman Sachs. You know, we think of Goldman Sachs is a, is a huge financial institution, but it's also a technology company. >>Yeah. I mean, since the age of 15 I've been super passionate about how we can use technology to transform business and simplify modernized business processes. And it's, I'm so thrilled that I have the opportunity to do that at Goldman Sachs as an engineer. I recently moved about two years ago into the investment banking business and it's, you know, it's best in class, one of the top companies in terms of mergers and acquisitions, IPOs, et cetera. But what surprised me is how technology enables all the businesses across the board. Right? And I get to be leading the digital platform for building out the digital platform for in the investment banking business where we're modernizing and transforming existing businesses. These are not new businesses. It's like sometimes I liken it to trying to change the train while it's moving, right? These are existing businesses, but now we get to modernize and transform on the cloud. Right. Not just efficiency for the business by efficiency for technologists as >>Well. Right, right. Sticking with you, Jimmy. I wanna understand, so you've been, you've been interested in tech since you were young. I only got into tech and accidentally as an adult. I'm curious about your career path, but talk to us about that. What are some of the recommendations that you would have for other women who might be looking at, I wanna be in technology, but I wanna work for some of the big companies and they don't think about the Goldman Sachs or some of the other companies like Walmart that are absolutely technology driven. What's your advice for those women who want to grow their career? >>I also, growing up, I was, I was interested in various things. I, I loved doing hair. I used to do my own hair and I used to do hair for other students at school and I was also interested in running an entertainment company. And I used actually go around performing and singing and dancing with a group of friends, especially at church. But what amazed me is when I landed my first job at a real estate agent and everything was being done manually on paper, I was like, wow, technology can bring transformation anywhere and everywhere. And so whilst I have a myriad of interest, there's so many ways that technology can be applied. There's so many different types of disciplines within technology. It's not, there's hands on, like I'm colder, I like to code, but they're product managers, there are business analysts, there are infrastructure specialist. They're a security specialist. And I think it's about pursuing your passion, right? Pursuing your passion and identifying which aspects of technology peak your interest. And then diving in. >>Love that. Diving in. Rachel, you're shaking your head. You definitely are in alignment with a lot of what >>Duties I am. So, you know, interesting enough, I actually started my career as a civil engineer and eventually made it into, into technology. So very similar. I saw in, you know, heavy highway construction how manual some of these processes were. And mind you, this was before the cloud. And I sat down and wrote a little computer program to automate a lot of these manual tasks. And for me it was about simplification of the customer journey and really figuring out how do you deliver value. You know, on fast forward, say 20 plus years, here I am with AWS who has got this amazing cloud platform with over 200 services. And when I think about what we do in tech, from business transformation to modernizing to helping customers think about how do they create new business models, I've really found, I've really found my sweet spot, and I'll say for anyone who wants to get into tech or even switch careers, there's just a couple words of advice that I have. And it's really two words, just start. >>Yes, >>That's it. Just start. Because sometimes later becomes never. And you know, fuel your passion, be curious, think about new things. Yes. And just >>Start, I love that. Just start, you should get t-shirts made with that. Tell me a little bit about some of your recommendations. Obviously just start is great when follow your passion. What would you say to those out there looking to plan the letter? >>So, you know, my, my story's a little bit like jus because I did not want to be in tech. You know, I wanted an easy life. I did well in school and I wanted to actually be an air hostess. And when I broke that to my father, you know, the standard Indian person, now he did, he, you know, he wanted me to go in and be an engineer. Okay? So I was actually push into computer engineering, graduated. But then really two things today, right? When I look back, really two pieces, two areas I believe, which are really important for success. One is, you know, we need to be competent. And the second is we need to be confident, right? Yes, yes. It's so much easier to be competent because a lot of us diverse women, diverse people tend to over rotate on knowing their technical skills, right? Knowing technical skills important, but you need to know how to potentially apply those to business, right? Be able to define a business roi. And I see Julie nodding because she wants people to come in and give her a business ROI for programs that you're executing at Goldman Sachs. I presume the more difficult part though is confidence. >>Absolutely. It's so hard, especially when, when we're younger, we don't know. Raise your hand because I guarantee you either half the people in the, in the room or on the zoom these days weren't listening or have the same question and are too afraid to ask because they don't have the confidence. That's right. Give me, let's pivot on confidence for a minute, Jim, and let's go back to how would you advise your younger self to find your confidence? >>That's, that's a tough one because I feel like even this older self is still finding exercise to, to be real. But I think it's about, I would say it's not praise. I think it's about praising yourself, like recognizing your accomplishments. When I think about my younger self, I think I, I like to focus more on what I didn't do or what I didn't accomplish, instead of majoring and focusing on all the accomplishments and the achievements and reminding myself of those day after day after day. And I think it's about celebrating your wins. >>I love that. Celebrating your wins. Do you agree, Rachel? >>I do. Here's the hard part, and I look around this table of amazing business leaders and I can guarantee that every single one of us sometime this year woke up and said, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that. Oh >>Yeah. But >>What we haven't followed that by is, I don't know how to do that yet. Right. And here's the other thing I would tell my younger self is there will be days where every single one of us falls apart. There will be days when we feel like we failed at work. There will be days when you feel like you failed as a parent or you failed as a spouse. There'll be days where you have a kid in the middle of target screaming and crying while you're trying to close a big business deal and you just like, oh my gosh, is this really my life? But what I would tell my younger self is, look, the crying, the chaos, the second guessing yourself, the successes, every single one of those are milestones. And it's triumphant, it's tragic, but every single thing that we have been through is fiercely worthwhile. And it's what got us >>Here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Think of all the trials and tribulations and six and Zacks that got you to this table right now. Yep. So Terry, you brought up confidence. How would you advise the women out there won't say you're gonna know stuff. The women out there now that are watching those that are watching right there. Hi. How would you advise them to really find their, their ability to praise themselves, recognize all of the trials and the tribulations as milestones as Rachel said, and really give themselves a seat at the table, raise their hand regardless of who else is in the room? >>You know, it's a, it's a more complex question just because confidence stems from courage, right? Confidence also stems from the belief that you're going to be treated fairly right now in an organization for you to be treated fairly. You need to have, be surrounded by supporters that are going to promote your voice. And very often women don't invest enough in building that support system around them. Yeah. Right. We have mentors, and mentors are great because they come in and they advise us and they'll tell us what we need to go out and do. We really need a team of sponsors Yes. Who come in and support us in the moment in the business. Give us the informal channel because very often we are not plugged into the informal channel, right. So we don't get those special projects or assignments or even opportunities to prove that we can do the tough task. Yeah. So, you know, my, my advice would be to go out and build a network of sponsors. Yes. And if you don't have one, be a sponsor for someone else. That's right. I love that. Great way to win sponsorship is by extending it todos. >>And sometimes too, it's about, honestly, I didn't even know the difference between a mentor and a sponsor until a few years ago. And I started thinking, who are I? And then I started realizing who they were. That's right. And some of the conversations that we've had on the cube about women in technology, women of the cloud with some of the women leaders have said, build, and this is kind of like, sort of what you were saying, build your own personal board of directors. Yeah. And that, oh, it gives me chills. It's just, it's so important for, for not just women, but anybody, for everybody. But it's so important to do that. And if you, you think about LinkedIn as an example, you have a network, it's there, utilize it, figure out who your mentors are, who your sponsors are, who are gonna help you land the next thing, start building that reputation. But having that board of directors that you can kind of answer to or have some accountability towards, I think is hugely very >>Important. Yeah. >>Very important. I think, you know, just for, just for those that are listening, a really important distinction for me was mentors are people that you have that help you with, Hey, here's the situation that you were just in. They advise you on the situation. Sponsors are the people that stick up for you when you're not in the room to them. Right. Sponsors are the ones that say, Hey, I think so and so not only needs to have a seat at the table, but they need to build the table. And that's a really important delineation. Yeah. Between mentors and sponsors. And everybody's gotta have a sponsor both within their company and outside of their company. Someone that's advocating for them on their behalf when they don't even know it. Yeah. Yeah. >>I love that you said that. Build the table. It reminds me of a quote that I heard from Will I am, I know, very random. It was a podcast he did with Oprah Winfrey on ai. He's very into ai and I was doing a panel on ai, so I was doing a lot of research and he said, similar for Rachel to build the table, don't wait for a door to open. You go build a door. And I just thought, God, that is such brilliant advice. It is. It's hard to do. It is. Especially when, you know, the four of us in this room, there's a lot of women around here, but we are in an environment where we are the minority women of color are also the minority. What do you guys think where tech is in terms of de and I and really focusing on De and I as as really a very focused strategic initiative. Turner, what do you think? >>So, you know, I just, I, I spoke earlier about the women that we have at Entity Data, right? We have a fabulous team of women. And joining this team has been a moment of revelation for me coming in. I think to promote dni, we all need to start giving back, right? Yes. So today, I would love to announce that we at Entity would like to welcome all of you out there. You know, folks that have diverse ideas, you know, ISV, partners with diverse solutions, thought leaders out there who want to contribute into the ecosystem, right? Customers out there who want to work with companies that are socially responsible, right? We want to work with all of you, come back, reach out to us and be a part of the ecosystem because we can build this together, right? AWS has an amazing platform that gives us an opportunity to do things differently. Yes. Right. Entity data is building a women powered cloud team. And I want to really extend that out to everyone else to be a part this ecosystem, >>But a fantastic opportunity. You know, when we talk about diversity and inclusion and equity, it needs to be intentional for organization. It sounds very intentional at ntt. I know that that intention is definitely there at AWS as well. What are your thoughts on where tech is with respect to diversity? Even thought diversity? Because a lot of times we tend to go to our comfort zones. We do. And so we tend to start creating these circles of kind of like, you know, think tanks and they think alike people to go outside of that comfort zone. It's part of building the table, of building the, is the table and getting people from outside your comfort zone to come in and bring in diverse thought. Because can you imagine the potential of technology if we have true thought diversity in an organization? >>Right? It's, it's incredible. So one of the things that I always share with my team is we've got the opportunity to really change the outcome, right? As you know, you talked about Will I am I'm gonna talk about Bono from you too, right? One of, one of his favorite quotes is, we are the people we've been waiting for. Oh, I love that. And when you think about that, that is us. There is no one else that's gonna change the outcome and continue to deliver some of the business outcomes and the innovation that we are if we don't continue to raise our hand and we don't continue to, to inspire the next generation of leaders to do the same thing. And what I've found is when you start openly sharing what your innovation ideas are or how you're leveraging your engineering background, your stories and your successes, and, and frankly, some of your failures become the inspiration for someone you might not even know. Absolutely. And that's the, you know, that's the key. You're right. Inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility, yes. Have to be at the forefront of every business decision. And I think too often companies think that, you know, inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility is one thing, and business outcomes are another. And they're not. No, they are one in the same. You can't build business outcomes without also focusing on inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility. That's the deliberate piece. >>And, and it has to be deliberate. Jimmy, I wanna ask you, we only have a couple of minutes left, but you're a woman in tech, you're a woman of color. What was that like for you? You, you were very intentional knowing when you were quite young. Yeah. What you wanted to do, but how have you navigated that? Because I can't imagine that was easy. >>It wasn't. I remember, I always tell the story and the, the two things that I really wanted to emphasize today when I thought about this panel is rep representation matters and showing up matters, right? And there's a statement, there's a flow, I don't know who it's attributed to, but be the change you want to see. And I remember walking through the doors of Goldman Sachs 15 years ago and not seeing a black female engineer leader, right? And at that point in time, I had a choice. I could be like, oh, there's no one look like, there's no one that looks like me. I don't belong here. Or I could do what I actually did and say, well, I'm gonna be that person. >>Good, >>Right? I'm going to be the chain. I'm going to show up and I am going to have a seat at the table so that other people behind me can also have a seat at the table. And I think that I've had the privilege to work for a company who has been inclusive, who has had the right support system, the right structures in place, so that I can be that person who is the first black woman tech fellow at Goldman Sachs, who is one of the first black females to be promoted up the rank as a, from analysts to managing director at the company. You know, that was not just because I determined that I belong here, but because the company ensure that I felt that I belong. >>Right. >>That's a great point. They ensure that you felt that. Yeah. You need to be able to feel that. Last question, we've only got about a minute left. 2023 is just around the corner. What comes to your mind, Jimmy will stick with you as you head into the new year. >>Sorry, can you repeat >>What comes to mind priorities for 2023 that you're excited about? >>I'm excited about the democratization of data. Yeah. I'm excited about a lot of the announcements today and I, I think there is a, a huge shift going on with this whole concept of marketplaces and data exchanges and data sharing. And I think both internally and externally, people are coming together more. Companies are coming together more to really de democratize and make data available. And data is power. But a lot of our businesses are running, running on insights, right? And we need to bring that data together and I'm really excited about the trends that's going on in cloud, in technology to actually bring the data sets together. >>Touro, what are you most excited about as we head to 2023? >>I think I'm really excited about the possibilities that entity data has right here, right now, city of Las Vegas, we've actually rolled out a smart city project. So saving citizens life, using data edge analytics, machine learning, being able to predict adverse incidents before they happen, and then being able to take remediation action, right? So that's technology actually working in real time to give us tangible results. We also sponsor the Incar races. Lots of work happening there in delivering amazing customer experience across the platform to millions of users real time. So I think I'm just excited about technology coming together, but while that's happening, I think we really need to be mindful at this time that we don't push our planet into per right. We need to be sustainable, we need to be responsible. >>Absolutely. Rachel, take us out. What are you most excited about going into 2023? >>So, you know, there are so many trends that are, that we could talk about, but I'll tell you at aws, you know, we're big. We, we impact the world. So we've gotta be really thoughtful and humble about what it is that we do. So for me, what I'm most excited about is, you know, one of our leadership principles is about, you know, with what broad responsibility brings, you know, you've got to impact sustainability and many of those other things. And for me, I think it's about waking up every day for our customers, for our partners, and for the younger generations. And being better, doing better, and making better for this planet and for, you know, the future generations to come. So >>I think your tag line just start applies to all of that. It does. It has been an absolute pleasure. And then really an honor to talk to you on the program. Thank you all for joining me, sharing your experiences, sharing what you've accomplished, your recommendations for those others who might be our same generation or older or younger. All really beautiful advice. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. We appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching The Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Thanks for watching.

>>Hey, everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner, showcase women in tech. I'm Lisa Martin from the cube. And today we're gonna be looking into the exciting evolution of women in the tech industry. I'm going to be joined by Danielle GShock, the ISP PSA director at AWS. And we have the privilege of speaking with some wicked smart women from Teradata NetApp. JFI a 10th revolution group, company and honeycomb.io. We're gonna look at some of the challenges and biases that women face in the tech industry, especially in leadership roles. We're also gonna be exploring how are these tech companies addressing diversity, equity and inclusion across their organizations? How can we get more young girls into stem earlier in their careers? So many questions. So let's go ahead and get started. This is the AWS partner showcase women in tech. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase. This is season one, episode three. And I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got two great guests here with me to talk about women in tech. Hillary Ashton joins us the chief product officer at Terry data. And Danielle Greshaw is back with us, the ISV PSA director at AWS ladies. It's great to have you on the program talking through such an important topic, Hillary, let's go ahead and start with you. Give us a little bit of an intro into you, your background, and a little bit about Teradata. >>Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Hillary Ashton. I head up the products organization. So that's our engineering product management office of the CTO team. Um, at Teradata I've been with Terra data for just about three years and really have spent the last several decades. If I can say that in the data and analytics space, um, I spent time, uh, really focused on the value of, of analytics at scale, and I'm super excited to be here at Teradata. I'm also a mom of two teenage boys. And so as we talk about women in tech, I think there's, um, uh, lots of different dimensions and angles of that. Um, at Teradata, we are partnered very deeply with AWS and happy to talk a little bit more about that, um, throughout this discussion as well. >>Excellent. A busy mom of two teen boys. My goodness. I don't know how you do it. Let's now look, Atter data's views of diversity, equity and inclusion. It's a, the, it's a topic that's important to everyone, but give us a snapshot into some of the initiatives that Terra data has there. >>Yeah, I have to say, I am super proud to be working at Teradata. We have gone through, uh, a series of transformations, but I think it starts with culture and we are deeply committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. It's really more than just a statement here. It's just how we live our lives. Um, and we use, uh, data to back that up. Um, in fact, we were named one of the world's most ethical companies for the 13th year in a row. Um, and all of our executive leadership team has taken an oath around D E and I that's available on LinkedIn as well. So, um, in fact, our leadership team reporting into the CEO is just about 50 50, um, men and women, which is the first time I've worked in a company where that has been the case. And I think as individuals, we can probably appreciate what a huge difference that makes in terms of not just being a representative, but truly being on a, on a diverse and equitable, uh, team. And I think it really, uh, improves the behaviors that we can bring, um, to our office. >>There's so much value in that. It's I impressive to see about a 50 50 at the leadership level. That's not something that we see very often. Tell me how you, Hillary, how did you get into tech? Were you an engineering person by computer science, or did you have more of a zigzaggy path to where you are now? >>I'm gonna pick door number two and say more zigzaggy. Um, I started off thinking, um, that I started off as a political science major or a government major. Um, and I was probably destined to go into, um, the law field, but actually took a summer course at Harvard. I did not go to Harvard, but I took a summer course there and learned a lot about multimedia and some programming. And that really set me on a trajectory of how, um, data and analytics can truly provide value and, and outcomes to our customers. Um, and I have been living that life ever since. Um, I graduated from college, so, um, I was very excited and privileged in my early career to, uh, work in a company where I found after my first year that I was managing, um, uh, kids, people who had graduated from Harvard business school and from MIT Sloan school. Um, and that was super crazy, cuz I did not go to either of those schools, but I sort of have always had a natural knack for how do you take technology and, and the really cool things that technology can do, but because I'm not a programmer by training, I'm really focused on the value that I'm able to help, um, organizations really extract value, um, from the technology that we can create, which I think is fantastic. >>I think there's so much value in having a zigzag path into tech. You bring Danielle, you and I have talked about this many times you bring such breadth and such a wide perspective. That really is such a value. Add to teams. Danielle, talk to us from AWS's perspective about what can be done to encourage more young women to get and under and underrepresented groups as well, to get into stem and stay. >>Yeah, and this is definitely a challenge as we're trying to grow our organization and kind of shift the numbers. And the reality is, especially with the more senior folks in our organization, unless you bring folks with a zigzag path, the likelihood is you won't be able to change the numbers that you have. Um, but for me, it's really been about, uh, looking at that, uh, the folks who are just graduating college, maybe in other roles where they are adjacent to technology and to try to spark their interest and show that yes, they can do it because oftentimes it's really about believing in themselves and, and realizing that we need folks with all sorts of different perspectives to kind of come in, to be able to help really, um, provide both products and services and solutions for all types of people inside of technology, which requires all sorts of perspectives. >>Yeah, the diverse perspectives. There's so much value and there's a lot of data that demonstrates how much value revenue impact organizations can make by having diversity, especially at the leadership level. Hillary, let's go back to you. We talked about your career path. You talked about some of the importance of the focus on de and I at Tarana, but what are, what do you think can be done to encourage, to sorry, to recruit more young women and under groups into tech, any, any carrot there that you think are really important that we need to be dangling more of? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I'll build on what Danielle just said. I think the, um, bringing in diverse understandings, um, of, of customer outcomes, I mean, I, the we've really moved from technology for technology's sake and I know AWS and entirety to have had a lot of conversations on how do we drive customer outcomes that are differentiated in the market and really being customer centric and technology is wonderful. You can do wonderful things with it. You can do not so wonderful things with it as well, but unless you're really focused on the outcomes and what customers are seeking, um, technology is not hugely valuable. And so I think bringing in people who understand, um, voice of customer who understand those outcomes, and those are not necessarily the, the, the folks who are PhD in mathematics or statistics, um, those can be people who understand a day in the life of a data scientist or a day in the life of a citizen data scientist. And so really working to bridge the high impact technology with the practical kind of usability, usefulness of data and analytics in our cases, I think is something that we need more of in tech and sort of demystifying tech and freeing technology so that everybody can use it and having a really wide range of people who understand not just the bits and bites and, and how to program, but also the value in outcomes that technology through data and analytics can drive. >>Yeah. You know, we often talk about the hard skills, but this, their soft skills are equally, if not more important that even just being curious, being willing to ask questions, being not afraid to be vulnerable, being able to show those sides of your personality. I think those are important for, for young women and underrepresented groups to understand that those are just as important as some of the harder technical skills that can be taught. >>That's right. >>What do you think about from a bias perspective, Hillary, what have you seen in the tech industry and how do you think we can leverage culture as you talked about to help dial down some of the biases that are going on? >>Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, and, and there's some interesting data out there that says that 90% of the population, which includes a lot of women have some inherent bias in their day, day behaviors when it comes to to women in particular. But I'm sure that that is true across all kinds of, of, um, diverse and underrepresented folks in, in the world. And so I think acknowledging that we have bias and actually really learning how, what that can look like, how that can show up. We might be sitting here and thinking, oh, of course I don't have any bias. And then you realize that, um, as you, as you learn more about, um, different types of bias, that actually you do need to kind of, um, account for that and change behaviors. And so I think learning is sort of a fundamental, um, uh, grounding for all of us to really know what bias looks like, know how it shows up in each of us. >>Um, if we're leaders know how it shows up in our teams and make sure that we are constantly getting better, we're, we're not gonna be perfect anytime soon. But I think being on a path to improvement to overcoming bias, um, is really, is really critical. And part of that is really starting the dialogue, having the conversations, holding ourselves and each other accountable, um, when things aren't going in, in a, in a Coptic way and being able to talk openly about that, that felt, um, like maybe there was some bias in that interaction and how do we, um, how do we make good on that? How do we change our, our behavior? Fundamentally of course, data and analytics can have some bias in it as well. And so I think as we look at the, the technology aspect of bias, um, looking at at ethical AI, I think is a, a really important, uh, additional area. And I'm sure we could spend another 20 minutes talking about that, but I, I would be remiss if I didn't talk more about sort of the bias, um, and the over the opportunity to overcome bias in data and analytics as well. >>Yeah. The opportunity to overcome it is definitely there you bring up a couple of really good points, Hillary. It, it starts with awareness. We need to be aware that there are inherent biases in data in thought. And also to your other point, hold people accountable ourselves, our teammates, that's critical to being able to, to dial that back down, Daniel, I wanna get your perspective on, on your view of women in leadership roles. Do you think that we have good representation or we still have work to do in there? >>I definitely think in both technical and product roles, we definitely have some work to do. And, you know, when I think about, um, our partnership with Teradata, part of the reason why it's so important is, you know, Teradata solution is really the brains of a lot of companies. Um, you know, the what, how, what they differentiate on how they figure out insights into their business. And it's, it's all about the product itself and the data and the same is true at AWS. And, you know, we really could do some work to have some more women in these technical roles, as well as in the product, shaping the products. Uh, just for all the reasons that we just kind of talked about over the last 10 minutes, um, in order to, you know, move bias out of our, um, out of our solutions and also to just build better products and have, uh, better, you know, outcomes for customers. So I think there's a bit of work to do still. >>I agree. There's definitely a bit of work to do, and it's all about delivering those better outcomes for customers at the end of the day, we need to figure out what the right ways are of doing that and working together in a community. Um, we've had obviously a lot had changed in the last couple of years, Hillary, what's your, what have you seen in terms of the impact that the pandemic has had on this status of women in tech? Has it been a pro is silver lining the opposite? What are you seeing? >>Yeah, I mean, certainly there's data out there that tells us factually that it has been, um, very difficult for women during COVID 19. Um, women have, uh, dropped out of the workforce for a wide range of, of reasons. Um, and, and that I think is going to set us back all of us, the, the Royal us or the Royal we back, um, years and years. Um, and, and it's very unfortunate because I think we we're at a time when we're making great progress and now to see COVID, um, setting us back in, in such a powerful way. I think there's work to be done to understand how do we bring people back into the workforce. Um, how do we do that? Understanding work life balance, better understanding virtual and remote, working better. I think in the technology sector, um, we've really embraced, um, hybrid virtual work and are, are empowering people to bring their whole selves to work. >>And I think if anything, these, these zoom calls have, um, both for the men and the women on my team. In fact, I would say much more. So for the men on my team, I'm seeing, I was seeing more kids in the background, more kind of split childcare duties, more ability to start talking about, um, other responsibilities that maybe they had, uh, especially in the early days of COVID where maybe daycares were shut down. And, um, you had, you know, maybe a parent was sick. And so we saw quite a lot of, um, people bringing their whole selves to the office, which I think was, was really wonderful. Um, uh, even our CEO saw some of that. And I think, um, that that really changes the dialogue, right? It changes it to maybe scheduling meetings at a time when, um, people can do it after daycare drop off. >>Um, and really allowing that both for men and for women makes it better for, for women overall. So I would like to think that this hybrid working, um, environment and that this, um, uh, whole view into somebody's life that COVID has really provided for probably for white collar workers, if I'm being honest for, um, people who are in a, at a better point of privilege, they don't necessarily have to go into the office every day. I would like to think that tech can lead the way in, um, you know, coming out of the, the old COVID. I don't know if we have a new COVID coming, but the old COVID and really leading the way for women and for people, um, to transform how we do work, um, leveraging data and analytics, but also, um, overcoming some of the, the disparities that exist for women in particular in the workforce. >>Yeah, I think there's, there's like we say, there's a lot of opportunity there and I like your point of hopefully tech can be that guiding light that shows us this can be done. We're all humans at the end of the day. And ultimately if we're able to have some sort of work life balance, everything benefits, our work or more productive, higher performing teams impacts customers, right? There's so much value that can be gleaned from, from that hybrid model and embracing for humans. We need to be able to, to work when we can, we've learned that you don't have to be, you know, in an office 24, 7 commuting, crazy hours flying all around the world. We can get a lot of things done in a ways that fit people's lives rather than taking command over it. Wanna get your advice, Hillary, if you were to talk to your younger self, what would be some of the key pieces of advice you would say? And Danielle and I have talked about this before, and sometimes we, we would both agree on like, ask more questions. Don't be afraid to raise your hand, but what advice would you give your younger self and that younger generation in terms of being inspired to get into tech >>Oh, inspired and being in tech? You know, I think looking at technology as, in some ways, I feel like we do a disservice to, um, inclusion when we talk about stem, cuz I think stem can be kind of daunting. It can be a little scary for people for younger people. When I, when I go and talk to folks at schools, I think stem is like, oh, all the super smart kids are over there. They're all like maybe they're all men. And so, um, it's, it's a little, uh, intimidating. Um, and stem is actually, you know, especially for, um, people joining the workforce today. It's actually how you've been living your life since you were born. I mean, you know, stem inside and out because you walk around with a phone and you know how to get your internet working and like that is technology right. >>Fundamentally. And so demystifying stem as something that is around how we, um, actually make our, our lives useful and, and, and how we can change outcomes. Um, through technology I think is maybe a different lens to put on it. So, and there's absolutely for, for hard sciences, there's absolutely a, a great place in the world for folks who wanna pursue that and men and women can do that. So I, I don't want to be, um, uh, setting the wrong expectations, but I, I think stem is, is very holistic in, um, in the change that's happening globally for us today across economies, across global warming, across all kinds of impactful issues. And so I think everybody who's interested in, in some of that world change can participate in stem. It just may be through a different, through a different lens than how we classically talk about stem. >>So I think there's great opportunity to demystify stem. I think also, um, what I would tell my younger self is choose your bosses wisely. And that sounds really funny. That sounds like inside out almost, but I think choose the person that you're gonna work for in your first five to seven years. And it might be more than one person, but be, be selective, maybe be a little less selective about the exact company or the exact title. I think picking somebody that, you know, we talk about mentors and we talk about sponsors and those are important. Um, but the person you're gonna spend in your early career, a lot of your day with a lot, who's gonna influence a lot of the outcomes for you. That is the person that you, I think want to be more selective about, um, because that person can set you up for success and give you opportunities and set you on course to be, um, a standout or that person can hold you back. >>And that person can put you in the corner and not invite you to the meetings and not give you those opportunities. And so we're in an economy today where you actually can, um, be a little bit picky about who you go and work for. And I would encourage my younger self. I actually, I just lucked out actually, but I think that, um, my first boss really set me, um, up for success, gave me a lot of feedback and coaching. Um, and some of it was really hard to hear, but it really set me up for, for, um, the, the path that I've been on ever since. So it, that would be my advice. >>I love that advice. I it's brilliant. I didn't think it choose your bosses wisely. Isn't something that we primarily think about. I think a lot of people think about the big name companies that they wanna go after and put on a resume, but you bring up a great point. And Danielle and I have talked about this with other guests about mentors and sponsors. I think that is brilliant advice and also more work to do to demystify stem. But luckily we have great family leaders like the two of you helping us to do that. Ladies, I wanna thank you so much for joining me on the program today and talking through what you're seeing in de and I, what your companies are doing and the opportunities that we have to move the needle. Appreciate your time. >>Thank you so much. Great to see you, Danielle. Thank you Lisa, to see you. >>My pleasure for my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the AWS partner showcase season one, episode three. Hey everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase. This is season one, episode three, with a focus on women in tech. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got two guests here with me, Sue Peretti, the EVP of global AWS strategic alliances at Jefferson Frank, a 10th revolution group company, and Danielle brushoff. One of our cube alumni joins us ISV PSA director, ladies. It's great to have you on the program talking about a, a topic that is near and dear to my heart at women in tech. >>Thank you, Lisa. >>So let's go ahead and start with you. Give the audience an understanding of Jefferson Frank, what does the company do and about the partnership with AWS? >>Sure. Um, so let's just start, uh, Jefferson Frank is a 10th revolution group company. And if you look at it, it's really talent as a service. So Jefferson Frank provides talent solutions all over the world for AWS clients, partners and users, et cetera. And we have a sister company called revelent, which is a talent creation company within the AWS ecosystem. So we create talent and put it out in the ecosystem. Usually underrepresented groups over half of them are women. And then we also have, uh, a company called rubra, which is a delivery model around AWS technology. So all three companies fall under the 10th revolution group organization. >>Got it. Danielle, talk to me a little bit about from AWS's perspective and the focus on hiring more women in technology and about the partnership. >>Yes. I mean, this has definitely been a focus ever since I joined eight years ago, but also just especially in the last few years we've grown exponentially and our customer base has changed. You know, we wanna have, uh, an organization interacting with them that reflects our customers, right. And, uh, we know that we need to keep pace with that even with our growth. And so we've very much focused on early career talent, um, bringing more women and underrepresented minorities into the organization, sponsoring those folks, promoting them, uh, giving them paths to growth, to grow inside of the organization. I'm an example of that. Of course I benefit benefited from it, but also I try to bring that into my organization as well. And it's super important. >>Tell me a little bit about how you benefited from that, Danielle. >>Um, I just think that, um, you know, I I've been able to get, you know, a seat at the table. I think that, um, I feel as though I have folks supporting me, uh, very deeply and wanna see me succeed. And also they put me forth as, um, you know, a, represent a representative, uh, to bring more women into the organization as well. And I think, um, they give me a platform, uh, in order to do that, um, like this, um, but also many other, uh, spots as well. Um, and I'm happy to do it because I feel that, you know, if you always wanna feel that you're making a difference in your job, and that is definitely a place where I get that time and space in order to be that representative to, um, bring more, more women into benefiting from having careers in technology, which there's a lot of value there, >>A lot of value. Absolutely. So back over to you, what are some of the trends that you are seeing from a gender diversity perspective in tech? We know the, the numbers of women in technical positions, uh, right. There's so much data out there that shows when girls start dropping up, but what are some of the trends that you are seeing? >>So it's, that's a really interesting question. And, and Lisa, I had a whole bunch of data points that I wanted to share with you, but just two weeks ago, uh, I was in San Francisco with AWS at the, at the summit. And we were talking about this. We were talking about how we can collectively together attract more women, not only to, uh, AWS, not only to technology, but to the AWS ecosystem in particular. And it was fascinating because I was talking about, uh, the challenges that women have and how hard to believe, but about 5% of women who were in the ecosystem have left in the past few years, which was really, really, uh, something that shocked everyone when we, when we were talking about it, because all of the things that we've been asking for, for instance, uh, working from home, um, better pay, uh, more flexibility, uh, better maternity leave seems like those things are happening. >>So we're getting what we want, but people are leaving. And it seemed like the feedback that we got was that a lot of women still felt very underrepresented. The number one thing was that they, they couldn't be, you can't be what you can't see. So because they, we feel collectively women, uh, people who identify as women just don't see enough women in leadership, they don't see enough mentors. Um, I think I've had great mentors, but, but just not enough. I'm lucky enough to have a pres a president of our company, the president of our company, Zoe Morris is a woman and she does lead by example. So I'm very lucky for that. And Jefferson, Frank really quickly, we put out a hiring a salary and hiring guide a career and hiring guide every year and the data points. And that's about 65 pages long. No one else does it. Uh, it gives an abundance of information around, uh, everything about the AWS ecosystem that a hiring manager might need to know. But there is what, what I thought was really unbelievable was that only 7% of the people that responded to it were women. So my goal, uh, being that we have such a very big global platform is to get more women to respond to that survey so we can get as much information and take action. So >>Absolutely 7%. So a long way to go there. Danielle, talk to me about AWS's focus on women in tech. I was watching, um, Sue, I saw that you shared on LinkedIn, the Ted talk that the CEO and founder of girls and co did. And one of the things that she said was that there was a, a survey that HP did some years back that showed that, um, 60%, that, that men will apply for jobs if they only meet 60% of the list of requirements. Whereas with females, it's far, far less, we've all been in that imposter syndrome, um, conundrum before. But Danielle, talk to us about AWS, a specific focus here to get these numbers up. >>I think it speaks to what Susan was talking about, how, you know, I think we're approaching it top and bottom, right? We're looking out at what are the, who are the women who are currently in technical positions and how can we make AWS an attractive place for them to work? And that's all a lot of the changes that we've had around maternity leave and, and those types of things, but then also, um, more flexible working, uh, can, you know, uh, arrangements, but then also, um, early, how can we actually impact early, um, career women and actually women who are still in school. Um, and our training and certification team is doing amazing things to get, um, more girls exposed to AWS, to technology, um, and make it a less intimidating place and have them look at employees from AWS and say like, oh, I can see myself in those people. >>Um, and kind of actually growing the viable pool of candidates. I think, you know, we're, we're limited with the viable pool of candidates, um, when you're talking about mid to late career. Um, but how can we, you know, help retrain women who are coming back into the workplace after, you know, having a child and how can we help with military women who want to, uh, or underrepresented minorities who wanna move into AWS, we have a great military program, but then also just that early high school, uh, career, you know, getting them in, in that trajectory. >>Sue, is that something that Jefferson Frank is also able to help with is, you know, getting those younger girls before they start to feel there's something wrong with me. I don't get this. Talk to us about how Jefferson Frank can help really drive up that in those younger girls. >>Uh, let me tell you one other thing to refer back to that summit that we did, uh, we had breakout sessions and that was one of the topics. What can cuz that's the goal, right? To make sure that, that there are ways to attract them. That's the goal? So some of the things that we talked about was mentoring programs, uh, from a very young age, some people said high school, but then we said even earlier, goes back to you. Can't be what you can't see. So, uh, getting mentoring programs, uh, established, uh, we also talked about some of the great ideas was being careful of how we speak to women using the right language to attract them. And some, there was a teachable moment for, for me there actually, it was really wonderful because, um, an African American woman said to me, Sue and I, I was talking about how you can't be what you can't see. >>And what she said was Sue, it's really different. Um, for me as an African American woman, uh, or she identified, uh, as nonbinary, but she was relating to African American women. She said, your white woman, your journey was very different than my journey. And I thought, this is how we're going to learn. I wasn't offended by her calling me out at all. It was a teachable moment. And I thought I understood that, but those are the things that we need to educate people on those, those moments where we think we're, we're saying and doing the right thing, but we really need to get that bias out there. So here at Jefferson, Frank, we're, we're trying really hard to get that careers and hiring guide out there. It's on our website to get more women, uh, to talk to it, but to make suggestions in partnership with AWS around how we can do this mentoring, we have a mentor me program. We go around the country and do things like this. We, we try to get the education out there in partnership with AWS. Uh, we have a, a women's group, a women's leadership group, uh, so much that, that we do, and we try to do it in partnership with AWS. >>Danielle, can you comment on the impact that AWS has made so far, um, regarding some of the trends and, and gender diversity that Sue was talking about? What's the impact that's been made so far with this partnership? >>Well, I mean, I think just being able to get more of the data and have awareness of leaders, uh, on how <laugh>, you know, it used to be a, a couple years back, I would feel like sometimes the, um, uh, solving to bring more women into the organization was kind of something that folks thought, oh, this is Danielle is gonna solve this. You know? And I think a lot of folks now realize, oh, this is something that we all need to solve for. And a lot of my colleagues who maybe a couple years ago, didn't have any awareness or didn't even have the tools to do what they needed to do in order to improve the statistics on their, or in their organizations. Now actually have those tools and are able to kind of work with, um, work with companies like Susan's work with Jefferson Frank in order to actually get the data and actually make good decisions and feel as though, you know, they, they often, these are not lived experiences for these folks, so they don't know what they don't know. And by providing data and providing awareness and providing tooling and then setting goals, I think all of those things have really turned, uh, things around in a very positive way. >>And so you bring up a great point about from a diversity perspective, what is Jefferson Frank doing to, to get those data points up, to get more women of, of all well, really underrepresented minorities to, to be able to provide that feedback so that you can, can have the data and gleamy insights from it to help companies like AWS on their strategic objectives. >>Right? So as I, when I go back to that higher that, uh, careers in hiring guide, that is my focus today, really because the more data that we have, I mean, the, and the data takes, uh, you know, we need people to participate in order to, to accurately, uh, get a hold of that data. So that's why we're asking, uh, we're taking the initiative to really expand our focus. We are a global organization with a very, very massive database all over the world, but if people don't take action, then we can't get the right. The, the, the data will not be as accurate as we'd like it to be. Therefore take better action. So what we're doing is we're asking people all over the, all over the world to participate on our website, Jefferson frank.com, the se the high, uh, in the survey. So we can learn as much as we can. >>7% is such a, you know, Danielle and I we're, we've got to partner on this just to sort of get that message out there, get more data so we can execute, uh, some of the other things that we're doing. We're, we're partnering in. As I mentioned, more of these events, uh, we're, we're doing around the summits, we're gonna be having more ed and I events and collecting more information from women. Um, like I said, internally, we do practice what we preach and we have our own programs that are, that are out there that are within our own company where the women who are talking to candidates and clients every single day are trying to get that message out there. So if I'm speaking to a client or one of our internal people are speaking to a client or a candidate, they're telling them, listen, you know, we really are trying to get these numbers up. >>We wanna attract as many people as we can. Would you mind going to this, uh, hiring guide and offering your own information? So we've gotta get that 7% up. We've gotta keep talking. We've gotta keep, uh, getting programs out there. One other thing I wanted to Danielle's point, she mentioned, uh, women in leadership, the number that we gathered was only 9% of women in leadership within the AWS ecosystem. We've gotta get that number up, uh, as well because, um, you know, I know for me, when I see people like Danielle or, or her peers, it inspires me. And I feel like, you know, I just wanna give back, make sure I send the elevator back to the first floor and bring more women in to this amazing ecosystem. >>Absolutely. That's not that metaphor I do too, but we, but to your point to get that those numbers up, not just at AWS, but everywhere else we need, it's a help me help use situation. So ladies underrepresented minorities, if you're watching go to the Jefferson Frank website, take the survey, help provide the data so that the woman here that are doing this amazing work, have it to help make decisions and have more of females and leadership roles or underrepresented minorities. So we can be what we can see. Ladies, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing what you guys are doing together to partner on this important. Cause >>Thank you for having me, Leah, Lisa, >>Thank you. My pleasure for my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of the AWS partner showcase. Thanks for your time. Hey everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase season one, episode three women in tech. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. We've got two female rock stars here with me next. Stephanie Curry joins us the worldwide head of sales and go to market strategy for AWS at NetApp and Danielle GShock is back one of our QM ISV PSA director at AWS. Looking forward to a great conversation, ladies, about a great topic, Stephanie, let's go ahead and start with you. Give us an overview of your story, how you got into tech and what inspired you. >>Thanks so much, Lisa and Danielle. It's great to be on this show with you. Um, thank you for that. Uh, my name's Stephanie cur, as Lisa mentioned, I'm the worldwide head of sales for, uh, AWS at NetApp and run a global team of sales people that sell all things AWS, um, going back 25 years now, uh, when I first started my career in tech, it was kind of by accident. Um, I come from a different background. I have a business background and a technical background from school, um, but had been in a different career and I had an opportunity to try something new. Um, I had an ally really that reached out to me and said, Hey, you'd be great for this role. And I thought, I'd take a chance. I was curious. Um, and, uh, it, it turned out to be a 25 year career, um, that I'm really, really excited about and, and, um, really thankful for that person, for introducing me to the, to the industry >>25 years in counting. I'm sure Danielle, we've talked about your background before. So what I wanna focus on with you is the importance of diversity for high performance. I know what a machine AWS is, and Stephanie'll come back to you with the same question, but talk about that, Danielle, from your perspective, that importance, um, for diversity to drive the performance. >>Yeah. Yeah. I truly believe that, you know, in order to have high performing teams, that you have to have people from all different types of backgrounds and experiences. And we do find that oftentimes being, you know, field facing, if we're not reflecting our customers and connecting with them deeply, um, on, on the levels that they're at, we, we end up missing them. And so for us, it's very important to bring people of lots of different technical backgrounds experiences. And of course, both men, women, and underrepresented minorities and put that forth to our customers, um, in order to make that connection and to end up with better outcomes. So >>Definitely it's all about outcomes, Stephanie, your perspective and NetApp's perspective on diversity for creating highly performant teams and organizations. >>I really aligned with Danielle on the comment she made. And in addition to that, you know, just from building teams in my, um, career know, we've had three times as many women on my team since we started a year ago and our results are really showing in that as well. Um, we find the teams are stronger, they're more collaborative and to Danielle's point really reflective, not only our partners, but our customers themselves. So this really creates connections, which are really, really important to scale our businesses and, and really, uh, meet the customer where they're at as well. So huge proponent of that ourselves, and really finding that we have to be intentional in our hiring and intentional in how we attract diversity to our teams. >>So Stephanie let's stay with you. So a three X increase in women on the team in a year, especially the kind of last year that we've had is really incredible. I, I like your, I, your thoughts on there needs to be a, there needs to be focus and, and thought in how teams are hired. Let's talk about attracting and retaining those women now, especially in sales roles, we all know the number, the percentages of women in technical roles, but what are some of the things that, that you do Stephanie, that NetApp does to attract and retain women in those sales roles? >>The, the attracting part's really interesting. And we find that, you know, you, you read the stats and I'd say in my experience, they're also true in the fact that, um, a lot of women would look at a job description and say, I can't do a hundred percent of that, that, so I'm not even going to apply with the women that we've attracted to our team. We've actually intentionally reached out and targeted those people in a good way, um, to say, Hey, we think you've got what it takes. Some of the feedback I've got from those women are, gosh, I didn't think I could ever get this role. I didn't think I had the skills to do that. And they've been hired and they are doing a phenomenal job. In addition to that, I think a lot of the feedback I've got from these hires are, Hey, it's an aggressive sales is aggressive. Sales is competitive. It's not an environment that I think I can be successful in. And what we're showing them is bring those softer skills around collaboration, around connection, around building teams. And they do, they do bring a lot of that to the team. Then they see others like them there and they know they can be successful cuz they see others like them on the team, >>The whole concept of we can't be what we can't see, but we can be what we can't see is so important. You said a couple things, Stephanie, that really stuck with me. And one of them was an interview on the Cub I was doing, I think a couple weeks ago, um, about women in tech. And the stat that we talked about was that women will apply will not apply for a job unless they meet 100% of the skills and the requirements that it's listed, but men will, if they only meet 60. And I, that just shocked me that I thought, you know, I, I can understand that imposter syndrome is real. It's a huge challenge, but the softer skills, as you mentioned, especially in the last two years, plus the ability to communicate, the ability to collaborate are incredibly important to, to drive that performance of any team of any business. >>Absolutely. >>Danielle, talk to me about your perspective and AWS as well for attracting and retaining talent. And, and, and particularly in some of those challenging roles like sales that as Stephanie said, can be known as aggressive. >>Yeah, for sure. I mean, my team is focused on the technical aspect of the field and we definitely have an uphill battle for sure. Um, two things we are focused on first and foremost is looking at early career women and that how we, how can we bring them into this role, whether in they're in support functions, uh, cl like answering the phone for support calls, et cetera, and how, how can we bring them into this organization, which is a bit more strategic, more proactive. Um, and then the other thing that as far as retention goes, you know, sometimes there will be women who they're on a team and there are no other women on that team. And, and for me, it's about building community inside of AWS and being part of, you know, we have women on solution architecture organizations. We have, uh, you know, I just personally connect people as well and to like, oh, you should meet this person. Oh, you should talk to that person. Because again, sometimes they can't see someone on their team like them and they just need to feel anchored, especially as we've all been, you know, kind of stuck at home, um, during the pandemic, just being able to make those connections with women like them has been super important and just being a, a long tenured Amazonian. Um, that's definitely one thing I'm able to, to bring to the table as well. >>That's so important and impactful and spreads across organizations in a good way. Daniel let's stick with you. Let's talk about some of the allies that you've had sponsors, mentors that have really made a difference. And I said that in past tense, but I also mean in present tense, who are some of those folks now that really inspire you? >>Yeah. I mean, I definitely would say that one of my mentors and someone who, uh, ha has been a sponsor of my career has, uh, Matt YK, who is one of our control tower GMs. He has really sponsored my career and definitely been a supporter of mine and pushed me in positive ways, which has been super helpful. And then other of my business partners, you know, Sabina Joseph, who's a cube alum as well. She definitely has been, was a fabulous partner to work with. Um, and you know, between the two of us for a period of time, we definitely felt like we could, you know, conquer the world. It's very great to go in with a, with another strong woman, um, you know, and, and get things done, um, inside of an organization like AWS. >>Absolutely. And S I've, I've agreed here several times. So Stephanie, same question for you. You talked a little bit about your kind of, one of your, uh, original early allies in the tech industry, but talk to me about allies sponsors, mentors who have, and continue to make a difference in your life. >>Yeah. And, you know, I think it's a great differentiation as well, right? Because I think that mentors teach us sponsors show us the way and allies make room for us at the table. And that is really, really key difference. I think also as women leaders, we need to make room for others at the table too, and not forget those softer skills that we bring to the table. Some of the things that Danielle mentioned as well about making those connections for others, right. And making room for them at the table. Um, some of my allies, a lot of them are men. Brian ABI was my first mentor. Uh, he actually is in the distribution, was in distribution, uh, with advent tech data no longer there. Um, Corey Hutchinson, who's now at Hashi Corp. He's also another ally of mine and remains an ally of mine, even though we're not at the same company any longer. Um, so a lot of these people transcend careers and transcend, um, um, different positions that I've held as well and make room for us. And I think that's just really critical when we're looking for allies and when allies are looking for us, >>I love how you described allies, mentors and sponsors Stephanie. And the difference. I didn't understand the difference between a mentor and a sponsor until a couple of years ago. Do you talk with some of those younger females on your team so that when they come into the organization and maybe they're fresh outta college, or maybe they've transitioned into tech so that they can also learn from you and understand the importance and the difference between the allies and the sponsors and the mentors? >>Absolutely. And I think that's really interesting because I do take, uh, an extra, uh, approach an extra time to really reach out to the women that have joined the team. One. I wanna make sure they stay right. I don't want them feeling, Hey, I'm alone here and I need to, I need to go do something else. Um, and they are located around the world, on my team. They're also different age groups, so early in career, as well as more senior people and really reaching out, making sure they know that I'm there. But also as Danielle had mentioned, connecting them to other people in the community that they can reach out to for those same opportunities and making room for them >>Make room at the table. It's so important. And it can, you never know what a massive difference and impact you can make on someone's life. And I, and I bet there's probably a lot of mentors and sponsors and allies of mine that would be surprised to know, uh, the massive influence they've had Daniel back over. Let's talk about some of the techniques that you employ, that AWS employees to make the work environment, a great place for women to really thrive and, and be retained as Stephanie was saying. Of course that's so important. >>Yeah. I mean, definitely I think that the community building, as well as we have a bit more programmatic mentorship, um, we're trying to get to the point of having a more programmatic sponsorship as well. Um, but I think just making sure that, um, you know, both everything from, uh, recruit to onboard to ever boarding that, uh, they they're the women who come into the organization, whether it's they're coming in on the software engineering side or the field side or the sales side that they feel as that they have someone, uh, working with them to help them drive their career. Those are the key things that were, I think from an organizational perspective are happening across the board. Um, for me personally, when I run my organization, I'm really trying to make sure that people feel that they can come to me at any time open door policy, make sure that they're surfacing any times in which they are feeling excluded or anything like that, any challenges, whether it be with a customer, a partner or with a colleague. Um, and then also of course, just making sure that I'm being a good sponsor, uh, to, to people on my team. Um, that is key. You can talk about it, but you have to start with yourself as well. >>That's a great point. You you've got to, to start with yourself and really reflect on that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and look, am I, am I embodying what it is that I need? And not that I know they need that focused, thoughtful intention on that is so importants, let's talk about some of the techniques that you use that NetApp uses to make the work environment a great place for those women are marginalized, um, communities to really thrive. >>Yeah. And I appreciate it and much like Danielle, uh, and much like AWS, we have some of those more structured programs, right around sponsorship and around mentorship. Um, probably some growth there, opportunities for allies, because I think that's more of a newer concept in really an informal structure around the allies, but something that we're growing into at NetApp, um, on my team personally, I think, um, leading by example's really key. And unfortunately, a lot of the, um, life stuffs still lands on the women, whether we like it or not. Uh, I have a very, uh, active husband in our household, but I still carry when it push comes to shove it's on me. Um, and I wanna make sure that my team knows it's okay to take some time and do the things you need to do with your family. Um, I'm I show up as myself authentically and I encourage them to do the same. >>So it's okay to say, Hey, I need to take a personal day. I need to focus on some stuff that's happening in my personal life this week now, obviously to make sure your job's covered, but just allowing some of that softer vulnerability to come into the team as well, so that others, um, men and women can feel they can do the same thing. And that it's okay to say, I need to balance my life and I need to do some other things alongside. Um, so it's the formal programs, making sure people have awareness on them. Um, I think it's also softly calling people out on biases and saying, Hey, I'm not sure if you know, this landed that way, but I just wanted to make you aware. And usually the feedback is, oh my gosh, I didn't know. And could you coach me on something that I could do better next time? So all of this is driven through our NetApp formal programs, but then it's also how you manifest it on the teams that we're leading. >>Absolutely. And sometimes having that mirror to reflect into can be really eye-opening and, and allow you to, to see things in a completely different light, which is great. Um, you both talked about, um, kind of being what you, uh, can see, and, and I know both companies are upset customer obsessed in a good way. Talk to me a little bit, Danielle, go back over to you about the AWS NetApp partnership. Um, some of that maybe alignment on, on performance on obviously you guys are very well aligned, uh, in terms of that, but also it sounds like you're quite aligned on diversity and inclusion. >>Well, we definitely do. We have the best partnerships with companies in which we have these value alignments. So I think that is a positive thing, of course, but just from a, from a partnership perspective, you know, from my five now plus years of being a part of the APN, this is, you know, one of the most significant years with our launch of FSX for NetApp. Um, with that, uh, key key service, which we're making available natively on AWS. I, I can't think of a better Testament to the, to the, um, partnership than that. And that's doing incredibly well and it really resonates with our customers. And of course it started with customers and their need for NetApp. Uh, so, you know, that is a reflection, I think, of the success that we're having together. >>And Stephanie talk to, uh, about the partnership from your perspective, NetApp, AWS, what you guys are doing together, cultural alignment, but also your alignment on really bringing diversity into drive performance. >>Yeah, I think it's a, a great question. And I have to say it's just been a phenomenal year. Our relationship has, uh, started before our first party service with FSX N but definitely just, um, uh, the trajectory, um, between the two companies since the announcement about nine months ago has just taken off to a, a new level. Um, we feel like an extended part of the family. We worked together seamlessly. A lot of the people in my team often say we feel like Amazonians. Um, and we're really part of this transformation at NetApp from being that storage hardware company into being an ISV and a cloud company. And we could not do this without the partnership with AWS and without the, uh, first party service of Fs XM that we've recently released. Um, I think that those joint values that Danielle referred to are critical to our success, um, starting with customer obsession and always making sure that we are doing the right thing for the customer. >>We coach our team teams all the time on if you are doing the right thing for the customers, you cannot do anything wrong. Just always put the customer at the, in the center of your decisions. And I think that there is, um, a lot of best practice sharing and collaboration as we go through this change. And I think a lot of it is led by the diverse backgrounds that are on the team, um, female, male, um, race and so forth, and just to really, uh, have different perspectives and different experiences about how we approach this change. Um, so we definitely feel like a part of the family. Uh, we are absolutely loving, uh, working with the AWS team and our team knows that we are the right place, the right time with the right people. >>I love that last question for each of you. And I wanna stick with you Stephanie advice to your younger self, think back five years. What advice would you seen what you've accomplished and maybe the thet route that you've taken along the way, what would you advise your youngest Stephanie self. >>Uh, I would say keep being curious, right? Keep being curious, keep asking questions. And sometimes when you get a no, it's not a bad thing, it just means not right now and find out why and, and try to get feedback as to why maybe that wasn't the right opportunity for you. But, you know, just go for what you want. Continue to be curious, continue to ask questions and find a support network of people around you that wanna help you because they are there and they, they wanna see you be successful too. So never be shy about that stuff. >><laugh> absolutely. And I always say failure does not have to be an, a bad F word. A no can be the beginning of something. Amazing. Danielle, same question for you. Thinking back to when you first started in your career, what advice would you give your younger self? >>Yeah, I think the advice I'd give my younger self would be, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Um, it's certainly, you know, coming from an engineering background, maybe you wanna stay behind the scenes, not, not do a presentation, not do a public speaking event, those types of things, but back to what the community really needs, this thing. Um, you know, I genuinely now, uh, took me a while to realize it, but I realized I needed to put myself out there in order to, um, you know, allow younger women to see what they could be. So that would be the advice I would give. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. >>Absolutely. That advice that you both gave are, is so fantastic, so important and so applicable to everybody. Um, don't be afraid to put yourself out there, ask questions. Don't be afraid of a, no, that it's all gonna happen at some point or many points along the way. That can also be good. So thank you ladies. You inspired me. I appreciate you sharing what AWS and NetApp are doing together to strengthen diversity, to strengthen performance and the advice that you both shared for your younger selves was brilliant. Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Thank you >>For my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the AWS partner showcase. See you next time. Hey everyone. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase season one, episode three women in tech. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got two female rock stars joining me. Next Vero Reynolds is here engineering manager, telemetry at honeycomb, and one of our cube alumni, Danielle Ock ISV PSA director at AWS. Join us as well. Ladies. It's great to have you talking about a very important topic today. >>Thanks for having us. >>Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. >>Of course, Vera, let's go ahead and start with you. Tell me about your background and tech. You're coming up on your 10th anniversary. Happy anniversary. >>Thank you. That's right. I can't believe it's been 10 years. Um, but yeah, I started in tech in 2012. Um, I was an engineer for most of that time. Uh, and just recently as a March, switched to engineering management here at honeycomb and, um, you know, throughout my career, I was very much interested in all the things, right. And it was a big FOMO as far as trying a few different, um, companies and products. And I've done things from web development to mobile to platforms. Um, it would be apt to call me a generalist. Um, and in the more recent years I was sort of gravitating more towards developer tool space. And for me that, uh, came in the form of cloud Foundry circle CI and now honeycomb. Um, I actually had my eye on honeycomb for a while before joining, I came across a blog post by charity majors. >>Who's one of our founders and she was actually talking about management and how to pursue that and whether or not it's right, uh, for your career. And so I was like, who is this person? I really like her, uh, found the company. They were pretty small at the time. So I was sort of keeping my eye on them. And then when the time came around for me to look again, I did a little bit more digging, uh, found a lot of talks about the product. And on the one hand they really spoke to me as the solution. They talked about developers owning their coding production and answering questions about what is happening, what are your users seeing? And I felt that pain, I got what they were trying to do. And also on the other hand, every talk I saw at the time was from, uh, an amazing woman <laugh>, which I haven't seen before. Uh, so I came across charity majors again, Christine Y our other founder, and then Liz Jones, who's our principal developer advocate. And that really sealed the deal for me as far as wanting to work here. >>Yeah. Honeycomb is interesting. This is a female founded company. You're two leaders. You mentioned that you like the technology, but you were also attracted because you saw females in the leadership position. Talk to me a little bit about what that's like working for a female led organization at honeycomb. >>Yeah. You know, historically, um, we have tried not to over index on that because there was this, uh, maybe fear awareness of, um, it taking away from our legitimacy as an engineering organization, from our success as a company. Um, but I'm seeing that, uh, rhetoric shift recently because we believe that with great responsibility, uh, with great power comes great responsibility, and we're trying to be more intentional as far as using that attribute of our company. Um, so I would say that for me, it was, um, a choice between a few offers, right. And that was a selling point for sure, because again, I've never experienced it and I've really seen how much they walk that walk. Um, even me being here and me moving into management, I think were both, um, ways in which they really put a lot of trust and support in me. And so, um, I it's been a great ride. >>Excellent. Sounds like it. Before we bring Danielle in to talk about the partnership. I do wanna have you there talk to the audience a little bit about honeycomb, what technology it's delivering and what are its differentiators. >>Yeah, absolutely. Um, so honeycomb is an observability tool, uh, that enables engineers to answer questions about the code that runs in production. And, um, we work with a number of various customers. Some of them are Vanguards, slack. Hello, fresh, just to name a couple, if you're not familiar with observability tooling, it's akin to traditional application performance monitoring, but we believe that observability is succeeding APM because, uh, APM tools were built at the time of monoliths and they just weren't designed to help us answer questions about complex distributed systems that we work with today, where things can go wrong anywhere in that chain. And you can't predict what you're gonna need to ask ahead of time. So some of the ways that we are different is our ability to store and query really rich data, which we believe is the key to understanding those complex systems. >>What I mean by rich data is, um, something that has a lot of attributes. So for example, when an error happens, knowing who it happened to, which user ID, which, um, I don't know, region, they were in, um, what, what, what they were doing at the time and what was happening at the rest of your system. And our ingest engine is really fast. You can do it in as little as three seconds and we call data like this. I said, kind of rich data, contextual data. We refer it as having high ality and high dimensionality, which are big words. But at the end of the day, what that means is we can store and we can query the data. We can do it really fast. And to give you an example of how that looks for our customers, let's say you have a developer team who are using comb to understand and observe their system. >>And they get a report that a user is experiencing a slowdown or something's wrong. They can go into comb and figure out that this only happens to users who are using a particular language pack with their app. And they operated their app last week, that it only happens when they are trying to upload a file. And so it's this level of granularity and being able to zoom in and out, um, under your data that allows you to understand what's happening, especially when you have an incident going on, right. Or your really important high profile customer is telling you that something's wrong. And we can do that. Even if everything else in your other tools looks fine, right? All of your dashboards are okay. You're not actually getting paged on it, but your customers are telling you that something's wrong. Uh, and we believe that's where we shine in helping you there. >>Excellent. It sounds like that's where you really shine that real time visibility is so critical these days. Danielle, Danielle, wanna bring you into the conversation. Talk to us a little bit about the honeycomb partnership from the AWS lens. >>Yeah. So excuse me, observability is obviously a very important, uh, segment in the cloud space, very important to AWS, um, because a lot of all of our customers, uh, as they build their systems distributed, they need to be able to see where, where things are happening in the complex systems that they're building. And so honeycomb is a, is an advanced technology partner. Um, they've been working with us for quite some time and they have a, uh, their solution is listed on the marketplace. Um, definitely something that we see a lot of demand with our customers and they have many integrations, uh, which, you know, we've seen is key to success. Um, being able to work seamlessly with the rest of the services inside of the AWS platform. And I know that they've done some, some great things with people who are trying to develop games on top of AWS, uh, things in that area as well. And so, uh, very important partner in the observa observability market that we have >>Back to you, let's kind of unpack the partnership, the significance that honeycomb ha is getting from being partners with an organization as potent and pivotal as AWS. >>Yeah, absolutely. Um, I know this predates me to some extent, but I know for a long time, AWS and honeycomb has really pushed the envelope together. And, um, I think it's a beneficial relationship for both ends. There's kind of two ways of looking at it. On the one side, there is our own infrastructure. So honeycomb runs on AWS and actually one of our critical workloads that supports that fast query engine that I mentioned uses Lambda. And it does so in a pretty Orthodox way. So we've had a longstanding conversation with the AWS team as far as drawing outside those lines and kind of figuring out how to use this technology in a way that works for us and hopefully will work for other customers of theirs as well. Um, that also allows us to ask for early access for certain features when they become available. >>And then that way we can be sort of the Guinea pigs and try things out, um, in a way that migrates our system and optimizes our own performance, but also allows again, other customers of AWS to follow in that path. And then the other side of that partnership is really supporting our customers who are both honeycomb users and AWS users, because it's, as you imagine, quite a big overlap, and there are certain ways in which we can allow our customers to more easily get their data from AWS to honeycomb. So for example, last year we built a tool, um, based on the new Lambda extension capability that allowed our users who run their applications in Lambdas to get that telemetry data out of their applications and into honeycomb. And it man was win, win. >>Excellent. So I'm hearing a lot of synergies from a technology perspective, you're sticking with you, and then Danielle will bring you in, let's talk about how honeycomb supports D and I across its organization. And how is that synergistic with AWS's approach? Yeah, >>Yeah, absolutely. So I sort of alluded to that hesitancy to over index on the women led aspect of ourselves. Um, but again, a lot of things are shifting, we're growing a lot. And so we are recognizing that we need to be more intentional with our DEI initiatives, and we also notice that we can do better and we should do better. And to that, and we're doing a few things differently, um, that are pretty recent initiatives. We are partnering with organizations that help us target specific communities that are underrepresented in tech. Um, some examples would be after tech hu Latinas in tech among, um, a number of others. And another initiative is DEI head start. That's something that is an internal, um, practice that we started that includes reaching out to underrepresented applicants before any new job for honeycomb becomes live. So before we posted to LinkedIn, before it's even live on our job speech, and the idea there is to kind of balance our pipeline of applicants, which the hope is will lead to more diverse hires in the long term. >>That's a great focus there. Danielle, I know we've talked about this before, but for the audience, in terms of the context of the honeycomb partnership, the focus at AWS for D E and I is really significant, unpack that a little bit for us. >>Well, let me just bring it back to just how we think about it, um, with the companies that we work with, but also in, in terms of, you know, what we want to be able to do, excuse me, it's very important for us to, you know, build products that reflect, uh, the customers that we have. And I think, you know, working with, uh, a company like honeycomb that is looking to differentiate in a space, um, by, by bringing in, you know, the experiences of many different types of people I genuinely believe. And I'm sure Vera also believes that by having those diverse perspectives, that we're able to then build better products for our customers. Um, and you know, it's one of, one of our leadership principles, uh, is, is rooted in this. I write a lot, it asks for us to seek out diverse perspectives. Uh, and you can't really do that if everybody kind of looks the same and thinks the same and has the same background. So I think that is where our de and I, um, you know, I thought process is rooted and, you know, companies like honeycomb that give customers choice and differentiate and help them, um, to do what they need to do in their unique, um, environments is super important. So >>The, the importance of thought diversity cannot be underscored enough. It's something that is, can be pivotal to organizations. And it's very nice to hear that that's so fundamental to both companies, Barry, I wanna go back to you for a second. You, I think you mentioned this, the DEI head start program, that's an internal program at honeycomb. Can you shed a little bit of light on that? >>Yeah, that's right. And I actually am in the process of hiring a first engineer for my team. So I'm learning a lot of these things firsthand, um, and how it works is we try to make sure to pre-load our pipeline of applicants for any new job opening we have with diverse candidates to the best of our abilities, and that can involve partnering with the organizations that I mentioned or reaching out to our internal network, um, and make sure that we give those applicants a head start, so to speak. >>Excellent. I like that. Danielle, before we close, I wanna get a little bit of, of your background. We've got various background in tag, she's celebrating her 10th anniversary. Give me a, a short kind of description of the journey that you've navigated through being a female in technology. >>Yeah, thanks so much. I really appreciate, uh, being able to share this. So I started as a software engineer, uh, back actually in the late nineties, uh, during the, the first.com bubble and, uh, have, have spent quite a long time actually as an individual contributor, um, probably working in software engineering teams up through 2014 at a minimum until I joined AWS, uh, as a customer facing solutions architect. Um, I do think spending a lot of time, hands on definitely helped me with some of the imposter syndrome, um, issues that folks suffer from not to say I don't at all, but it, it certainly helped with that. And I've been leading teams at AWS since 2015. Um, so it's really been a great ride. Um, and like I said, I'm very happy to see all of our engineering teams change, uh, as far as their composition. And I'm, I'm grateful to be part of it. >>It's pretty great to be able to witness that composition change for the better last question for each of you. And we're almost out of time and Danielle, I'm gonna stick with you. What's your advice, your recommendations for women who either are thinking about getting into tech or those who may be in tech, maybe they're in individual positions and they're not sure if they should apply for that senior leadership position. What do you advise them to do? >>I mean, definitely for the individual contributors, tech tech is a great career, uh, direction, um, and you will always be able to find women like you, you have to maybe just work a little bit harder, uh, to join, have community, uh, in that. But then as a leader, um, representation is very important and we can bring more women into tech by having more leaders. So that's my, you just have to take the lead, >>Take the lead, love that there. Same question for you. What's your advice and recommendations for those maybe future female leaders in tech? >>Yeah, absolutely. Um, Danielle mentioned imposter syndrome and I think we all struggle with it from time to time, no matter how many years it's been. And I think for me, for me, the advice would be if you're starting out, don't be afraid to ask, uh, questions and don't be afraid to kind of show a little bit of ignorance because we've all been there. And I think it's on all of us to remember what it's like to not know how things work. And on the flip side of that, if you are a more senior IC or, uh, in a leadership role, also being able to model just saying, I don't know how this works and going and figuring out answers together because that was a really powerful shift for me early in my career is just to feel like I can say that I don't know something. >>I totally agree. I've been in that same situation where just ask the question because you I'm guaranteed, there's a million outta people in the room that probably has the, have the same question and because of imposter syndrome, don't wanna admit, I don't understand that. Can we back up, but I agree with you. I think that is, um, one of the best things. Raise your hand, ask a question, ladies. Thank you so much for joining me talking about honeycomb and AWS, what you're doing together from a technology perspective and the focus efforts that each company has on D E and I, we appreciate your insights. Thank you so much for having us great talking to you. My pleasure, likewise for my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the AWS partner showcase women in check. Welcome to the AWS partner showcase I'm Lisa Martin, your host. This is season one, episode three, and this is a great episode that focuses on women in tech. I'm pleased to be joined by Danielle Shaw, the ISV PSA director at AWS, and the sponsor of this fantastic program. Danielle, it's great to see you and talk about such an important topic. >>Yes. And I will tell you, all of these interviews have just been a blast for me to do. And I feel like there has been a lot of gold that we can glean from all of the, um, stories that we heard on these interviews and good advice that I myself would not have necessarily thought of. So >>I agree. And we're gonna get to set, cuz advice is one of the, the main things that our audience is gonna hear. We have Hillary Ashton, you'll see from TETA there, Reynolds joins us from honeycomb, Stephanie Curry from NetApp and Sue Paris from Jefferson Frank. And the topics that we dig into are first and foremost, diversity equity and inclusion. That is a topic that is incredibly important to every organization. And some of the things Danielle that our audiences shared were really interesting to me. One of the things that I saw from a thematic perspective over and over was that like D Reynolds was talking about the importance of companies and hiring managers and how they need to be intentional with de and I initiatives. And that intention was a, a, a common thing that we heard. I'm curious what your thoughts are about that, that we heard about being intentional working intentionally to deliver a more holistic pool of candidates where de I is concerned. What are your, what were some of the things that stuck out to you? >>Absolutely. I think each one of us is working inside of organizations where in the last, you know, five to 10 years, there's been a, you know, a strong push in this direction, mostly because we've really seen, um, first and foremost, by being intentional, that you can change the, uh, the way your organization looks. Um, but also just that, you know, without being intentional, um, there was just a lot of, you know, outcomes and situations that maybe weren't great for, um, you know, a healthy, um, and productive environment, uh, working environment. And so, you know, a lot of these companies have made a big investments and put forth big initiatives that I think all of us are involved in. And so we're really excited to get out here and talk about it and talk about, especially as these are all partnerships that we have, how, you know, these align with our values. So >>Yeah, that, that value alignment mm-hmm <affirmative> that you bring up is another thing that we heard consistently with each of the partners, there's a cultural alignment, there's a customer obsession alignment that they have with AWS. There's a D E and I alignment that they have. And I, I think everybody also kind of agreed Stephanie Curry talked about, you know, it's really important, um, for diversity on it, on, on impacting performance, highly performant teams are teams that are more diverse. I think we heard that kind of echoed throughout the women that we talked to in >>This. Absolutely. And I absolutely, and I definitely even feel that, uh, with their studies out there that tell you that you make better products, if you have all of the right input and you're getting all many different perspectives, but not just that, but I can, I can personally see it in the performing teams, not just my team, but also, you know, the teams that I work alongside. Um, arguably some of the other business folks have done a really great job of bringing more women into their organization, bringing more underrepresented minorities. Tech is a little bit behind, but we're trying really hard to bring that forward as well to in technical roles. Um, but you can just see the difference in the outcomes. Uh, at least I personally can just in the adjacent teams of mine. >>That's awesome. We talked also quite a bit during this episode about attracting women and underrepresented, um, groups and retaining them. That retention piece is really key. What were some of the things that stuck out to you that, um, you know, some of the guests talked about in terms of retention? >>Yeah. I think especially, uh, speaking with Hillary and hearing how, uh, Teradata is thinking about different ways to make hybrid work work for everybody. I think that is definitely when I talk to women interested in joining AWS, oftentimes that might be one of the first, uh, concerns that they have. Like, am I going to be able to, you know, go pick my kid up at four o'clock at the bus, or am I going to be able to, you know, be at my kids' conf you know, conference or even just, you know, have enough work life balance that I can, um, you know, do the things that I wanna do outside of work, uh, beyond children and family. So these are all very important, um, and questions that especially women come and ask, but also, um, you know, it kind of is a, is a bellwether for, is this gonna be a company that allows me to bring my whole self to work? And then I'm also gonna be able to have that balance that I need need. So I think that was something that is, uh, changing a lot. And many people are thinking about work a lot differently. >>Absolutely. The pandemic not only changed how we think about work, you know, initially it was, do I work from home or do I live at work? And that was legitimately a challenge that all of us faced for a long time period, but we're seeing the hybrid model. We're seeing more companies be open to embracing that and allowing people to have more of that balance, which at the end of the day, it's so much better for product development for the customers, as you talked about there's, it's a win-win. >>Absolutely. And, you know, definitely the first few months of it was very hard to find that separation to be able to put up boundaries. Um, but I think at least I personally have been able to find the way to do it. And I hope that, you know, everyone is getting that space to be able to put those boundaries up to effectively have a harmonious, you know, work life where you can still be at home most of the time, but also, um, you know, have that cutoff point of the day or at least have that separate space that you can feel that you're able to separate the two. >>Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of that from a work life balance perspective leads into one of the next topics that we covered in detail with, and that's mentors and sponsors the differences between them recommendations from, uh, the women on the panel about how to combat imposter syndrome, but also how to leverage mentors and sponsors throughout your career. One of the things that, that Hillary said that I thought was fantastic, advice were mentors and sponsors are concerned is, is be selective in picking your bosses. We often see people, especially younger folks, not necessarily younger folks. I shouldn't say that that are attracted to a company it's brand maybe, and think more about that than they do the boss or bosses that can help guide them along the way. But I thought that was really poignant advice that Hillary provided something that I'm gonna take into consideration myself. >>Yeah. And I honestly hadn't thought about that, but as I reflect through my own career, I can see how I've had particular managers who have had a major impact on helping me, um, with my career. But, you know, if you don't have the ability to do that, or maybe that's not a luxury that you have, I think even if you're able to, you know, find a mentor for a period of time or, um, you know, just, just enable for you to be able to get from say a point a to point B just for a temporary period. Um, just so you can grow into your next role, have a, have a particular outcome that you wanna drive, have a particular goal in mind find that person who's been there and done that and can really help you get through. If you don't have the luxury of picking your manager mentor, who can help you get to the next step. >>Exactly. That, that I thought that advice was brilliant and something that I hadn't really considered either. We also talked with several of the women about imposter syndrome. You know, that's something that everybody, I think, regardless of gender of your background, everybody feels that at some point. So I think one of the nice things that we do in this episode is sort of identify, yes, imposter syndrome is real. This is, this is how it happened to me. This is I navigated around or got over it. I think there's some great advice there for the audience to glean as well about how to dial down the imposter syndrome that they might be feeling. >>Absolutely. And I think the key there is just acknowledging it. Um, but also just hearing all the different techniques on, on how folks have dealt with it because everybody does, um, you know, even some of the smartest, most confident men I've, I've met in, uh, industry still talk to me about how they have it and I'm shocked by it oftentimes, but, um, it is very common and hopefully we, we talk about some good techniques to, to deal with that. >>I think we do, you know, one of the things that when we were asking the, our audience, our guests about advice, what would they tell their younger selves? What would they tell young women or underrepresented groups in terms of becoming interested in stem and in tech and everybody sort of agreed on me, don't be afraid to raise your hand and ask questions. Um, show vulnerabilities, not just as the employee, but even from a leadership perspective, show that as a leader, I, I don't have all the answers. There are questions that I have. I think that goes a long way to reducing the imposter syndrome that most of us have faced at some point in our lives. And that's just, don't be afraid to ask questions. You never know, oh, how can people have the same question sitting in the room? >>Well, and also, you know, for folks who've been in industry for 20, 25 years, I think we can just say that, you know, it's a, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint and you're always going to, um, have new things to learn and you can spend, you know, back to, we talked about the zing and zagging through careers, um, where, you know, we'll have different experiences. Um, all of that kind of comes through just, you know, being curious and wanting to continue to learn. So yes, asking questions and being vulnerable and being able to say, I don't know all the answers, but I wanna learn is a key thing, uh, especially culturally at AWS, but I'm sure with all of these companies as well, >>Definitely I think it sounded like it was really ingrained in their culture. And another thing too, that we also talked about is the word, no, doesn't always mean a dead end. It can often mean not right now or may, maybe this isn't the right opportunity at this time. I think that's another important thing that the audience is gonna learn is that, you know, failure is not necessarily a bad F word. If you turn it into opportunity, no isn't necessarily the end of the road. It can be an opener to a different door. And I, I thought that was a really positive message that our guests, um, had to share with the, the audience. >>Yeah, totally. I can, I can say I had a, a mentor of mine, um, a very, uh, strong woman who told me, you know, your career is going to have lots of ebbs and flows and that's natural. And you know that when you say that, not right now, um, that's a perfect example of maybe there's an ebb where it might not be the right time for you now, but something to consider in the future. But also don't be afraid to say yes, when you can. <laugh> >>Exactly. Danielle, it's been a pleasure filming this episode with you and the great female leaders that we have on. I'm excited for the audience to be able to learn from Hillary Vera, Stephanie Sue, and you so much valuable content in here. We hope you enjoy this partner showcase season one, episode three, Danielle, thanks so much for helping >>Us with it's been a blast. I really appreciate it >>All audience. We wanna enjoy this. Enjoy the episode.

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's three day coverage of Snowflake Summit 22. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We have been here as I said for three days. Dave, we have had an amazing three days. The energy, the momentum, the number of people still here speaks volumes for- >> Yeah, I was just saying, you look back, theCUBE, when it started, early days was a big part of the Hadoop ecosystem. You know Cloudera kind of got it started, the whole big data movement, it was awesome energy, and that whole ecosystem has been, I think, just hoovered into the Snowflake ecosystem. They've taken over as the data company, the data cloud, I mean, that was Cloudera, it could have been Cloudera, and now they didn't, they missed it, it was a variety of factors, but Snowflake has nailed it. And now it's theirs to lose. Benoit talked about that on our previous segment, how he knew that technically Hadoop was too complex, and was going to fail, and they didn't know it was going to do this. They were going to turn their company into what we see here. But the event itself, Lisa, is almost 10,000 people, the right people, people are doing business, we've had a number of people tell us that they're booking deals. That's why people come to face-to-face shows, right? That's the criticism of virtual. It takes too long to close business. Salespeople want to be belly-to-belly. And this is a belly-to belly-show. >> It absolutely is. When you and I were trying to get into the keynote on Tuesday, we finally got in standing room only, multiple overflow rooms, and we're even hearing that, so this is day four of the summit for them, there are still queues to get into breakout sessions. The momentum, but the appetite for this flywheel, and what they're creating, but also they're involving this massively growing ecosystem in its evolution. It's that synergy was really very much heard, and echoed throughout pretty much all of our segments the last couple days. >> Yeah, it was amazing actually. So we like to go, we want to be in the front row in the keynotes, we're taking notes, we always do that. Sometimes we listen remotely, but when you listen remotely, you miss some things. When you're there, you can see the executives, you can feel their energy, you can chit chat to them on the side, be seen, whatever. And it was crazy, we couldn't get in. So we had to do our thing, and sneak our way in, and "Hey, we're media." "Oh yeah, come on in." And then no, they were taking us to a breakout room. We had to sneak in a side door, got like the last two seats, and wow, I'm glad we were in there because it gave us a better sense. When you're in the remote watching rooms you just can't get a sense of the energy. That's why I like to be there, I know you do too. And then to your point about ecosystem. So we've said many times that what Snowflake is developing is what we call supercloud. It's not just a SaaS, it's not just a cloud database, it's a new layer that they're creating. And so what are the attributes of that layer? Well, it hides the underlying complexity of the underlying primitives of the cloud. We've said that ad nauseam, and it adds new value on top. Well, what's that value that they're adding? Well, they're adding value of being able to share data, collaborate, have data that's governed, and secure, globally. And now the other hallmark of a cloud company is ecosystem. And so they're building that ecosystem much more rapidly than we saw at ServiceNow, which is Slootman's previous company. And the key to me is they've launched an application development platform, essentially a super PaaS, so that you can develop applications on top of the data cloud. And we're hearing tons about monetization. Duh, you could actually make money with data. You can package data into data products, and data services, or feed data products and services, and actually sell that in a cloud, in a supercloud. That's exactly what's happening here. So that's critical. I think my one question mark if I had to lay one out, is the other hallmark of a cloud is startup, startups come into that cloud. And I think we're seeing that, maybe not at the pace that AWS did, it's a little different. Snowflake are, they're whale hunters. They're after big companies. But it looks to me like they're relying on the ecosystem to be the startup innovators. That's the important thing about cloud, cloud brings scale. It definitely brings lower cost 'cause you're eliminating all this undifferentiated labor, but it also brings innovation through startups. So unlike AWS, who sold the startups directly, and startups built businesses on AWS, and by paying AWS, it's a little bit indirect, but it's actually happening where startups in the ecosystem are building products on the data cloud, and that ultimately is going to drive value for customers, and money for Snowflake, and ultimately AWS, and Google, and Azure. The other thing I would say is the criticism or concern that the cost of goods sold for cloud are going to be so high that it's going to force people to come back on-prem. I think it's a step in the wrong direction. I think cloud, and the cloud operating model is here to stay. I think it's going to be very difficult to replicate that on-prem. I don't think you can do cloud without cloud, and we'll see what the edge brings. >> Curious what your thoughts are. We were just at Dell technologies world a month or so ago when the big announcement, the Snowflake partnership there, cloud native companies recognizing, ah, there's still a lot of data that lives on-prem. Given that, and everything that we've heard the last couple of days, what are your thoughts around that and their partnerships there? >> So Dell is, I think finally, now maybe they weren't publicly talking like this, but certainly their marketing was defensive. But in the last year or so, Dell has really embraced cloud, not just the cloud operating model, Dell has said, "Look, we can build value on top of all these hyperscalers." And we saw some examples at Dell Tech World of them stepping their toe into supercloud. Project Alpine is an example, and there are others. And then of course the Snowflake deal, where Snowflake and Dell got together, I asked Frank Slootman how that deal came about. And 'cause I said, "Did the customer get you into a headlock?" 'Cause I presume that was the case. Customer said, "You got to do this or we're not going to do business with you." He said, "Well, no, not really. Michael and I had a chat, and that's how it started." Which was my other scenario, and that's exactly what happened I guess. The point being that those worlds are coming together. And so what it means for Dell is as they embrace cloud, as they develop supercloud capabilities, they're going to do a lot of business. Dell for sure knows how to sell, they know how to execute. What I would be doing if I were Dell, is I would be trying to substantially replicate what's happening in the cloud on-prem with on-prem data. So what happens with that Snowflake deal is, it's read-only data, you read the data into the cloud, the compute is in the cloud. And I should've asked Terry this, I mean Benoit. Can there be an architecture on-prem? We've seen at Vertica has one, it's called Vertica Eon where you separate compute from storage. It doesn't have unlimited elasticity, but you can grow, compute, and storage independently, and have a lot more. With Dell doing APEX on demand, it's cloudlike, they could begin to develop a little mini data cloud, or a big data cloud within on-prem that connects to the public cloud. So what Snowflake is missing, a big part of their TAM that they're missing is the on-prem. The Dell and Pure deals are forays into that, but this on-prem is massive, and Dell is the on-prem poster child. So I think again what it means for them is they've got to continue to embrace it, they got to do more in software, more in data management, they got to push on APEX. And I'd say the same thing for HPE. I think they're both well behind this in terms of ecosystems. I mean they're not even close. But they have to start, and they got to start somewhere, and they've got resources to make it happen. >> You said in your breaking analysis that you published just a few days ago before the event that Snowflake plans to create a de facto standard in data platforms. What we heard from our guests on this program, your mainstage session with Frank Slootman. Still think that? >> I do. I think it more than I believed it coming in. And the reason I called it that is because I am a super fan of Zhamak Dehghani and her data mesh. And what her vision is, it's kind of the Immaculate Conception, where she wants everything to be open, open standards, and those don't exist today. And I think she perfectly realizes the practicality of de facto standards are going to get to market, and add value sooner than open standards. Now open standards over time, and I'll come back to that, may occur, but that's clear to me what Snowflake is creating, is the de facto standard for data platforms, the data cloud, the supercloud. And what's most impressive, or I think really important, is they're layering applications now on top of that. The metric to me, and I don't know if we can even count this, but VMware used to use it. For every dollar spent on VMware license, $15 was spent in the ecosystem. It started at 1 to 1.5, 1 to 2, 1 to 10, 1 to 15, I think it went up to 1 to 30 at the max. I don't know how they counted that, but it's countable. Reasonable people can make estimates like that. And I think as the ecosystem grows, what Snowflake's doing is it's in many respects modeling the cloud, what the cloud has. Cloud has ecosystems, we talked about startups, and the cloud also has optionality. And optionality means open source. So what you saw with Apache Iceberg is we're going to extend to open technologies. What you saw with Hybrid tables is we're going to extend a new workloads like transactions. The other thing about Snowflake that's really impressive is you're seeing the vertical focus. Financial services, healthcare, retail, media and entertainment. It's very rare for a company in this tenure, they're only 10 years old, to really start going vertical with their go-to-market, and building expertise around that. I think what's going to happen is the GSIs are going to come in, they love to eat at the trough, the trough here is maybe not big enough for them yet, but it will be. And they're going to start to align with the GSIs, and they're going to do really well within those industries, connecting people, collaborating with data. But I think it's a killer strategy, but they're executing on it. >> Right, and we heard a lot of great customer stories from all of those four verticals that you talked about, and then some, that that direction and that pivot from a customer perspective, from a sales and marketing perspective is all aligned. And that was kind of one of the themes as well that Frank talked about in his keynote is mission alignment, mission alignment with customers, but also with the ecosystem. And I feel that I heard that with every customer conversation, with every partner conversation, and Snowflake conversation that we had over the last I think 36 segments, Dave. >> Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's the power of many versus the resources of one. And even though Snowflake tell you they have $5 billion in cash, and assets on the balance sheet, and that's fine, that's nothing compared to what an ecosystem has. And Amazon's part of that ecosystem. Azure is part of that ecosystem. Google is part of that ecosystem. Those companies have huge resources, and Snowflake it seems has figured out how to tap those resources, and build value on top of it. To me they're doing a better job than a lot of the cloud databases out there. They don't necessarily have a better database, in fact, I could argue that their database is less functional. And I would argue that actually in many cases. Their database is less functional if you just want a database. But if you want a data cloud, and an ecosystem, and develop applications on top of that, and to be able to monetize, that's unique, and that is a moat that they're building that is highly differentiable, and being able to do that relatively easily. I mean, I think they overstate the simplicity with which that is being done. We talked to some customers who said, he didn't say same wine, new bottle. I did ask him that, about Hadoop complexity. And he said, "No, it's not that bad." But you still got to put this stuff together. And I think in the early parts of a market that are immature, people get really excited because it's so much easier than what was previous. So my other question is, okay, what's somebody working on now, that's looking at what Snowflake's doing and saying, I can improve on that. And what's going to be really interesting to see is, can they improve on it in a way, and can they raise enough capital such that they can disrupt, or is Snowflake going to keep staying paranoid, 'cause they got good leaders, and keep executing? And then I think the other wild card is edge. Snowflake doesn't really have an edge strategy right now. I think they will develop one. >> Through the ecosystem? >> And I don't think they're missing the boat, and they'll do it through the ecosystem, exactly. I don't think they're missing the boat, I think they're just like, "Well, we don't know what to do today." It's all distributed data, and it's ephemeral, and nobody's storing the data. You know anything that comes back to the cloud, we get. But new architectures are emerging on the edge that are going to bring new economics. There's new silicon, you see what's happening with Apple, and the M1, the M1 Ultra, and the new systems that they've just developed. What Tesla is doing with custom silicon, and amazing things, and programmability of the arm model. So it's early days, but semiconductors are the mainspring of innovation in this industry. Without chips, you got nothing. And when you get innovations in silicon, it drives innovations in software, because developers go, "Wow, I can do that now?" I can do things in parallel, I can do things faster, I can do things more simply, and programmable at scale. So that's happening. And that's going to bring a new set of economics that the premise is that will eventually bleed into the data center. It will, it always does. And I guess the other thing is every 15 years or so, the world gets disrupted, the tech world. We're about 15, 16 years in now to the cloud. So at this point, everybody's like, "Wow this is insurmountable, this is all we'll ever see. Everything that's ever been invented, this is the model of the future." We know that's not the case. I don't know how it's going to get disrupted, but I think edge is going to be part of that. It could be public policy. Governments could come in and take big tech on, seems like Sharekhan wants to do that. So that's what makes this industry so fun. >> Never a dull moment, Dave. This has been a great three days hosting this show with you. We've uncovered a lot. Your breaking analysis was great to get me prepared for the show. If you haven't seen it, check it out on siliconangle.com. Thanks, Dave, I appreciate all of your insights. >> Thank you, Lisa, It's been a pleasure working with you. >> Always good to work with you. >> Awesome, great job. >> Likewise. Great job to the team. >> Yes, thank you to our awesome production team. They've kept us going for three days. >> Yes, and the team back, Kristin, and Cheryl, and everybody back at the office. >> Exactly, it takes a village. For Dave Vellante, I am Lisa Martin. We are wrappin' up three days of wall-to-wall coverage at Snowflake Summit 22 from Vegas. Thanks for watching guys, we'll see you soon. (upbeat music)

>> Welcome back everyone. CUBE live coverage here in Las Vegas for AWS Amazon Web Services, reinvent 2021. In person event on the floor, back in business, theCUBE. Two live sets pumping out content left and right. Three and a half days of wall to wall overage, over 120 interviews, stream 28 hours literally on the main site as well as on the CUBE zone. Go to CUBEreinvent.com to get all the action, all the videos will be there. Of course theCUBE.net. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Dave Nicholson my cohost this week and Sarbjeet Johal cloud strategist, influencer, all around great guy, CUBE alumni, here to break down reinvent in context to the cloud industry. Sarbjeet, great to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Good to see you guys in person finally. >> I'm so excited. I did all these interviews the past two years in person and I've been remote, now were in person, great to do it, everyone's excited. 27,000 people here at reinvent. Stand in line for classes. By the way, they're not offering these classes online, only the leadership classes and the keynote. If you're not here, you're not getting the classes. >> I like the vibe actually. I thought it would be more subdued but it is better than what I thought and energy is here. It's not like 2019, it's not. >> That's 60,000 people, you couldn't even get through the hallway. Any company would love to have 27,000 people but I got to say, this year we were just talking earlier on the segment this morning, I wanted to get your thoughts on this, you go back 15 years ago when AWS rolled out, you have EC2, S3, SQS, you had to roll your own. Basically your alternative was better than building a data center or hosting on a colo. So great, check, you don't have to buy the technology tax. I think you had to fill in the glue layers, you had to kind of roll your own and build it up. Now everyone is scaling up and next gen cloud is a completely different architecture. You got serverless, you got all the glue layers pretty much there, and you can still add stuff on it, so a completely different mindset. Changing the startup speed game. Changing the enterprise. Looking pretty good. What's your reaction to the new architecture in cloud vis a vis where it came from? >> My reaction to the new architecture is that number one it's just new. We change stuff all the time in software stacks and what I was grasping within myself sitting in my hotel in the morning listening to Warner's keynote was that we have started to accumulate the technology debt even in cloud. We cooked up some some stuff with the scripts and we automated stuff with programing, language of your choice, or CLIs. Then became the cloud formation automation, orchestration of your cloud stack, if you will. Then Hashicorp are like, so Hashicorp are sitting on the side there. But now there's another abstraction layer on top of that which was announced during Warner's keynote today. I think the new abstraction layers leave the pervious architectures a little stale. It's always like, what should you do? Should you refactor your existing stacks or should you not touch that? Just go from now on on the new architecture? I think it's getting busy, complicated, a lot of number of services. >> What do you think other people are saying? I saw you did a little snippet with Dion Hinchcliffe online, nice Tweet there, you got a big video coming out. As you talk to other folks and influencers and people in the front lines, what are they saying about Amazon Reinvent this year? >> I think almost everybody's saying that number of services is expanding exponentially. I was thinking that 200 plus number of services or whatever that number is today, it's mind boggling. I totally understand that when you have two teams that they want to take the credit for creating a new service and they want to publish it. They want to do a press release and all that. But my request to all cloud providers, mainly three, is to not call everything a new service. Call that feature of a service. So number of services has to be reduced, collapsed if you will. We need umbrella services and then under that there should be features of services, that's one thing. Another feedback I got from some second tier partners is that they have the competency program for partners. They announced that. They had that earlier but new competencies. It leaves the second or third tier partners in the cold. Only the first tier partners can get those competencies because for that they have to send a lot of money, train people, then they get that check box, oh, you can do this. >> This whole services thing and what you call a service, if you called everything a service a new feature of DNS or a new thing here and there, serverless, there's be thousands of features, services. I think Amazon, I think they culled it down to like, 200, is the number we hear. >> But isn't that part of the role of the partner, the services provider, the consultancy, to act as a bridge between all of those services and features, whatever you want to call them and figuring out exactly what the end user customer actually needs? The idea that AWS is messaging here is targeted directly towards end user customers. There's a lot to be desired there because how do you translate that? I'm thinking, compare and contrast that with the Steve Jobs approach of there shall be three. There will be a large, a medium and a small. I know that this is more complex, but when you come out and you say, 475 different kinds of instances, you're leaving that to your partners to translate. To your point, if you're segregating those partners into categories where only a top tier has access to everything, interesting place to be. >> A couple of discussions I had with partners was that I actually suggested them to create a bank of reference architectures, we call that in Amazon terms. But it's not only technical side of things, but business as well. They need to create some principle based architectures and have a bank of that and then prescribe that to their customers base. I think that's the only way to simplify these things because as you said, if you have 200 different types of instances, for instance, (laughs), it is hard. It is really hard. >> I want to get your thoughts, we talk about this on Twitter all the time so the folks watching, if you want to follow our rants and raves on Twitter, follow us on Twitter you'll get all the action, all the influencers are there. Competition. I've been ranting all week and been saying it for a long time, Microsoft's not even close to Amazon. I'm a bit over the top but I'll just say that if Amazon goes unchecked, Microsoft's ecosystem's going to get decimated. Why would I want to run software, my software, on a suboptimal performance infrastructure? Microsoft had Windows back in the day and had the system software and the application suite but they encouraged developers to build on top of Windows. Their "dot net" or ecosystem. That game's over. I guess Window's runs on Amazon too, whatever. But now the cloud is the Windows. The cloud is the system software. So developers are running on top of the cloud. >> Yes. >> So who wins? >> I think Open wins. Not Open-source. Open-source and Open are different things, we always discuss that. I think Open wins, the close systems have this problem of protectionism which doesn't work, with our little kids at home or your economy as whole. When you protect your local industry, the economy goes down. I've seen that, I'm an economist by education as you guys know. >> Yes. >> I think it's the same, when you protect too much of whatever you have, I think it's has a worse effect. But there's one narrative, Satya sort of narrates if you will, he says that, hey, when you use Windows, you keep everything, 100%. We are not taking a cut. When you're sitting in a cloud marketplace, somebody's getting a cut. That's the argument. >> Terry Chen said, because he puked on what I said, he said better could win. >> Yes. >> That's one thing. Okay, I buy that. Azure could be better in some use cases. But I think over all Amazon wins hands down currently. Certainly with the custom processors. >> You haven't mentioned GCP. >> Actually GCP. >> What can you say about it? >> What you could say is that AWS right now has either constructed or is benefiting from the highest barrier to entry to any business in the history of our planet. You can look at the investment that GCP is making to the tune of six billion dollars a year to go after market share. Are they going after current market share which is arguably the 20% of IT that's in cloud now? Or are they going for future market share which is a piece of the larger pie? When you talk about who wins, I think it's still possible for- >> Hold on, hold on. >> You left Oracle out. I think it's still possible. >> Hold on, hold on, hold on. >> I can tell you about Oracle. >> Hold on, hold on. This is a thought exercise, I'm going to ask you guys this question. It may be rhetorical, you don't need to answer it. If you went to all the people out there buying Azure and GCP, no offense guys, and you said, "Put aside all your credits you've been given, how much are you actually using?" If you take the incentives away, why are you on those clouds from a performance perspective? >> Sorry to cut you off. We know that Oracle uses incentives, X codes, leads for sale, and all that stuff, we know that. A lot of people know that. So cloud became shelfware there, we know the story. I'm leaving Oracle to the side. But I think Google has legs. Google's cloud has legs. They are a very enduring focus company. They are more open-source friendly and data science friendly as well. I think they are actually a number two, personally I believe. I'm a developer by heart, so they are number two developer cloud after Amazon. >> I think it's well know, I agree with you by the way. I think people may not know this but it's well known in the industry that Amazon has been mostly afraid of Google more than Microsoft. I think now because of this market share, the ecosystem war that's going to happen in a very short period of time, Microsoft's more of a threat on paper. But Google's got more threat to sling shot back and front technically because if you look at Graviton, the stack that they're building for ISVs and developers, Amazon's clearly winning. Google can pull that off. If they get it, they got to have their own way. >> Let me tell you, the one thing actually, if we want to know what was the fumble this time? I have some, actually I will talk about it in my radio, if you have enough time here. I think Google will do better because they're open and Amazon is complex. I was thinking during the keynotes, what are the clues to Amazon, AWS, leaving which is helping Google and Azure, mainly Google. Google is simple actually, a lot simpler to use, but again having said that, there's one thing actually, the new term I'm trying to define is the feature proximity. Amazon has feature proximity, like the best. When you are doing one thing and you want to do another thing, they have that all right there. They're ahead of the game. They have their 5G, private 5G on all their stuff, it's very futuristic. >> By the way, I got Amazon to agree to get me some private 5G for when we go back home. We're going to setup an outdoor area for some open CUBE action with some 5G. >> Actually we could put that on a nice van with the logos and all that. We could move around. >> We'll park it right there on El Camino, right next to Stanford University. Maybe we could live in one of those things too. >> Make it a taco truck and I'll join you guys. >> (laughs) Taco truck for free food. >> Yeah, let's do that. >> All seriousness guys, I want to get your thoughts as we wrap up this segment on the analysis of the cloud industry. What do you guys think, your opinion, it's going to take, I'll start by saying I think Amazon, if not contested for their leadership in the performance of silicon and the stack for software developers and owners to run the fastest they can run away with this. I think Microsoft and Google better be cranking right now to make it easy and have silicon advantage as well. I think clearly if the ecosystem's going to be at play, because the shift is happening to modernize software development, low code, no code, every shift everyone will go to the best performance, independent of cost and incentives. Amazon's got lower cost too so they got the fly wheel going. >> I can make mine short. I think GCP can also be successful. But I think already the amount of momentum that AWS has, the wind behind it's sails, I was at EMC for many years and we used to joke about our arch nemesis Hitachi Data Systems and saying that they were quite discouraged every morning as they woke up learning that they were a year further behind. Every night they went to sleep. They woke up the next day and they were a year further behind. Watching the announcements coming out of this event this week, I think there are some people at GCP and Microsoft and others who have that sense. But having said that, we're at the dawn of at era of cloud. There's plenty of room for a lot of players. When you give us your thoughts, I'd like your answer to the question, how much are consumers in the driver's seat today? Will the customers be able to demand multi sourcing? >> I think customers, you work with your money. Customers can demand that but at the same time customers can get stuck in a platform and they can't get out. We usually talk about when to lock in. There's one thing that Amazon keeps saying that we are open, we are open and the other vendors are like, these brands. I think that kind of narrative can come bite back to them. It's not a good thing to say. You don't want to be cocky about your features or you are the best and all that stuff. I think you want to stay humble and respect the other guys as well because they are coming right behind you. I think the key is developers. I have the bias towards developers because I was a developers but I totally believe deep down, actually I have tried to put my developer hat off and still think that way about these constructs. Developers are the people who call the shots. If you are not developer friendly you can't do much. >> That's a good point. >> That's my warning to Amazon. Don't go away from developers. You are number one developer cloud, stay there. This refocus is good, but put that to the side, not make that front center. Google has made that front center, I think that's a mistake. >> Yeah, you have the features, the right features, but again, speed, performance. Developers, capture the opportunity. Developers want to move fast. That's the entrepreneurship. Sarbjeet, great to have you on theCUBE, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me here, I enjoyed it. Great set here. >> All right, Dave Nicholson's here. Dave Nicholson, CUBE host. I'm John Furrier. You're watching theCUBE, the world leader in technology coverage. We'll be back with more live coverage from Reinvent after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. We're wrapping up four days of coverage, two sets. Two remote sets, one in Boston, one in Palo Alto. And really, it's a pleasure to introduce Benoit Dageville. He's the Press Co-founder of Snowflake and President of Products. Benoit, thanks for taking some time out and coming to theCUBE. >> Yeah, thank you for having me, Dave. >> You know, it's really a pleasure. We've been watching Snowflake since, maybe not 2012, but mid last decade you hit our radar. We said, "Wow, this company is going to go places." And yeah, we made that call correctly. But it's been a pleasure to sort of follow you. We've talked a little bit remotely. I kind of want to go back to some of the fundamentals. First of all, I wanted mention your earnings last night. If you guys didn't see it, again, triple digit growth, $1.8 billion RPO, cashflow actually looking pretty good. So, pretty amazing. Oh, and 173% NRR, you know, wow. And Mike Scarpelli is kind of bummed that you did so well. And I know why, right? Because it's going to be at some point, and he dials it down for the expectations and Wall Street says, "Oh, he's sandbagging." And then at some point you're actually going to meet expectations and people are going to go, "Oh, they met expectations." But anyway, he's a smart guy, he know what he's doing. (Benoit laughing) I loved it, it was so funny listening to him last night. But anyway, I want to go back to, when I talked to practitioners about data warehousing pre-cloud, they would say sound bites like, it's like a snake swallowing a basketball, they would tell me. And the other thing they said, "We just chased the chips. Every time a new Intel chip comes out, we have to bring in new servers, and we're struggling." The cloud changed all that. Your vision and Terry's vision changed all that. Maybe go back to the fundamentals of what you saw. >> Yeah, we really wanted to address what we call the data challenges. And if you remember at that time, data challenge was first of the volume of data, machine-generated data. So it was way more than just structured data, right? Machine-generated data is weblogs, and it's at petabyte scale. And there was no good solution for that type of data. Big data was not a great solution, Hadoop was really bad. And there was no good solution for that. So we thought we should do something for big data. The other aspect was concurrency, right? Everyone wants to use these data analytic platform in an enterprise, right? And you have more and more workload running against the same data, and the systems that were built were not scaling for these workloads. So you had to silo data, right? That's the only way big enterprise could deal with that, is to create many different silos, Oracle, Teradata, data mass, you would hear data mass. All of it was to afloat, right, this data? And then there was the, what do we call, data sharing. How to get access to data which is not born inside the enterprise, right? So with Terry, we wanted to solve all these challenges and we thought the only way to solve it was the cloud. And the cloud has really two free aspects. One is the elasticity, for all of a sudden, you can run every workload that you want concurrently, in parallel, on different computer resources, and you can run them against the same data. So this is kind of the data lake model, if you want. At the same time, you can, in the cloud, create a service. So you can remove complexity from users and make it really easy for new workloads to be added to the system, because you can manage, you can create a managed service, where all the sudden our customers, they don't need to manage infrastructure, they don't need to patch, they don't need to tune. Everything is done by Snowflake, the service, and they can just load in and run their query. And the third aspect is really collaboration. Is how to connect data sets together. And that's almost a new product for Snowflake, this data sharing. So we really at Snowflake was all about combining big data and data warehouse in one system in the cloud, and have only one single system where you can put all your data and all your workload. >> So you weren't necessarily trying to solve the data warehouse problem, you were trying to solve a data problem. And then it just so happened data warehouse was a logical entry point for you. >> It's really not that. Yes, we wanted to solve the data problem. And for us big data was a really important problem to solve. So from day one, Snowflake was all about machine generated data, petabyte scale, but we wanted to do it right. And for us, right was not compromising on data warehouse principle, which is a CDT of transaction, which is really fast response time, and which is also simplicity. So as I said, we wanted to solve kind of all the problems at the time of volume of data, concurrency, and these sharing aspects. >> This was 2012. You knew at that time that Hadoop wasn't going to be the answer. >> No, I mean, we were really, I mean, everyone knew that. Everyone knew Hadoop was really bad. You know, complex to manage, really slow. It had good aspects, right? This was the only system that could manage petabyte scale data sets. That's the only thing- >> Cheaply. >> Yeah, and cheaply which was good. And we wanted really to do that, plus have all the good attributes of data warehouse system. And at the same time, we wanted to build a system where if you are data warehouse customer, if you are coming from Teradata, you can migrate to Snowflake and you will get to a system which is faster than what you had on-premise, right. That's why it's pretty cool. So we wanted to do big data without compromising on data warehouse. >> So several years ago we looked at the hyperscalers and said, "Wow, last year they spent $100 billion in CapEx." And so, we started to think about this abstraction layer. And then we saw what you guys announced with the data cloud. We call it super clouds. And we see that as exactly what you're building. So that's clearly not just a data warehouse or database, it's technology that really hides the underlying complexity of all those clouds, and it allows you to have federated governance and data sharing, all those things. Can you talk about sort of how you think about that architecture? >> So for me, what I say is that really Snowflake is the worldwide web of data. And we are indeed a super cloud, or we are super-posed to the infrastructure cloud, which is our friends at Amazon, and of course, Azure, I mean, Microsoft and Google. And as any cloud, we have regions, Snowflake regions all over the world, and located on different cloud providers. At the same time, our platform is global in the sense that every region interconnects with all the other regions, this is our snow grid and data mesh, if you want. So that as an organization you can have your presence on several Snowflake region. It doesn't matter which cloud provider, so you can mix AWS with Azure. You can use our cloud like that. And indeed you can, this is a cloud where you can store your data, that's the thing that really matters, and data is structured, but it's machine structure, as I say, machine generated, petabyte scale, but there's also unstructured, right? We have added support for images, text, videos, where you can process this data in our system, and that's the workload spout. And workload, what is very important is that you can run this workload, any number of workloads. So the number of workloads is effectively unlimited with Snowflake because each workload can have its dedicated set of compute resources all operating on the same data set. And the type of workloads is also very important. It's not only about dashboards and data warehouse, it's data engineering, it's data science, it's building application. We have many of our customers who are building full-scale cloud applications on top of Snowflake. >> Yeah so the other thing, if you're not familiar with Snowflake, I don't know, maybe your head has been in the sand for a while, but separating compute and storage, I don't know if you were the first, but you were certainly the first to popularize it. And that allowed you to solve that chasing the chips problem and the swallowing the basketball, right? Because you have virtually infinite resources now at your disposal. >> Yeah, this is really the concurrency challenge that I was mentioning. Everyone wants to access the data. And of course, if everyone runs on the same set of compute resources, you have a bottleneck. So Snowflake was really about this multi-workload. We call it Multi-Cluster Shared Data Architecture. But it's not difficult to run multiple cluster if you don't have consistency of data. So how to do that while maintaining transactional property of data as CDT, right? You cannot modify data from different clusters. And when you commit, every other cluster will immediately see the change, right, as if everyone was running on the same cluster. So that was the challenge that we solve when we started Snowflake. >> Used the term data mesh. What is data mesh to Snowflake? Is it a concept, is it fabric? >> No, it's a very interesting point. As much as we like to centralize data, this becomes a bottleneck, right? When you are a large organization with different independent units, everyone wants to manage their own data and they have domain-specific expertise about that data. So having it centralized in IT is not practical. At the same time, you really want to be able to connect these different data sets together and join different data together, right? So that's the data mesh architecture. Each data set is managed independently by business owners, and then there is a contract which is exposed to others, and you can combine. And Snowflake architectures with data sharing, right. Data sharing that can happen within an organization, or across organization, allows you to connect any data with any other data on our platform. >> Yeah, so when I first heard that term, you guys using the term data mesh, I got very excited because it was kind of the data mesh is, my view, anyway, is going to be the fundamental architecture of this decade and beyond. And the principles, if I understand it correctly, you're applying the principles of Jim Octagon's data mesh within Snowflake. So decentralized data doesn't have to be physically in one place. Logically it's in the data cloud. >> It's logically decentralized, right? It's independently managed, and the reason, right, is the data that you need to use is not produced by your, even if in your company you want to centralize the data and having only one organization, let's say IT managing that, let's say, pretend. Yet you need to connect with other datasets, which is managed by other organizations. So by nature, the data that you use cannot be centralized, right? So now that you have this principle, if you have a platform where you can store all the data, wherever it is, and you can connect these data very seamlessly, then we can use that platform for your enterprise, right? To have different business units independently manage their data sets, connects these together so that as a company you have a 360 view of your customers, for example. But you can expand that outside of your enterprise and connect with data sets, which are from your vertical, for example, financial data set that you don't have in your company, or any public data set. >> And the other key principles, I think, that you've touched on really is the line of business now. Increasingly they're building data products that are creating value, and then also there's a self-service component. Assuming there's the fourth principle, governance. You got to have federated governance. And it seems like you've kind of ticked the boxes, more than tick the boxes, but engineered a solution to solve for those. >> No, it's very true. So Snowflake was really built to be really simple to use. And you're right. Our vision was, it would be more than IT, right? Who is going to use Snowflake is going now to be business unit, because you do not have to manage infrastructure. You do not have to patch. You do not have to do these things that business cannot do. You just have to load your data and run your queries, and run your applications. So now business can directly use Snowflake and create value from that. And yes, you're right, then connect that data with other data sets and to get maximum insights. >> Can you please talk about some of the things you do with AWS here at the event. I'm interested in what you're doing with your machine learning initiatives that you've recently announced, the AI piece. >> Yes, so one key aspects is data is not only about SQL, right? We started with SQL, but we expanded our platform to what we call data programmability, which is really about running program at scale across a large volume of data. And this was made popular with a programming model which was introduced by Pendal, DataFrames. Later taken by Spark, and now we have DataFrames in Snowflake, Where we are different than other systems, is that these DataFrame programs, which are in Python, or Java, or Scala, you program with data. These DataFrames are compiled to our single execution platforms. So we have one single execution platform, which is a data flow execution platform, which can run both SQL very efficiently, as I said, data warehouse speed, and also these very complex programs running Python and Java against this data. And this is a single platform. You don't need to use two different systems. >> Now so, you kind of really attack the traditional analytics base. People said, "Wow, Snowflake's really easy." Now you're injecting AI and machine intelligence. I see Databricks coming at it from the other angle. They started with machine learning, now they're sort of going after the analytics. Does there need to be a semantic layer to connect, 'cause it's the same raw data. Does there need to be a semantic layer to connect those two worlds? >> Yes, and that's what we are doing in our platform. And that's very novel to Snowflake. As I said, you interact with data in different program. You pick your program. You are a SQL programmer, use SQL. You are a Python programmer, use DataFrames with Python. It doesn't really matter. And then the semantic layer is our compiler and our processing engine, is going to translate both your program and my program in Python, your program in SQL, to the same execution platform and to the same programming language that Snowflake internally, we don't expose our programming language, but it's a data flow programming language that our execution platform executes. So at the end, we might execute exactly the same program, potentially. And that's very important because we spent all our IP and all our time, engineering time to optimize this platform, to make it the fastest platform. And we want to use that platform for any type of workloads, whether it's data programs or SQL. >> Now, you and Terry were at Oracle, so you know a lot about bench marketing. As Larry would stand up and say, "We killed the competition." You guys are probably behind it, right. So you know all about that. >> We are very behind it. >> So you know a lot about that. I've had some experience, I'm not a technologist, but I'm an observer and analyst. You have to take benchmarking with a very big grain of salt. So you guys have generally stayed away from that. Databricks came out and they came up with all these benchmarks. So you had to respond, because otherwise it's out there. Now you reran the benchmarks, you took out the materialized views and all the expensive stuff that they included in your cost, your price performance, but then you wrote, I thought, a very cogent blog. Maybe you could talk about sort of why you did that and your general philosophy around bench marketing. >> Yeah, from day one, with Terry we say never again we will participate in this really stupid benchmark war, because it's really not in the interest of customers. And we have been really at the frontline of that war with Terry, both of us, really doing special tricks, right? And optimizing this query to death, this query that no one runs apart from the synthetic benchmark. We optimize them to death to have the best number when we were at Oracle. And we decided that this is really not helping customers in the end. So we said, with Snowflake, we'll not do that. And actually, we are not the only one not to do that. If you look at who has published TPC-DS, you will see no one, none of the big vendors. It's not because they cannot run TPC-DS, Oracle can run it, I know that. And all the other big data warehouse vendor can, but it's something of a little bit of past. And TPC was really important at some point, and is not really relevant now. So we are not going to compete. And that's what we said is basically now our blog. We are not interesting in participating in this war. We want to invest our engineering effort and our IP in solving real world issues and performance issues that we have. And we want to improve our engine for these real world customers. And the nice thing with Snowflake, because it's a service, we see exactly all the queries that our customers are executing. So we know where we are struggling as a system, and that's where we want to invest and we want to improve. And if you look at many announcements that we made, it's all about under-the-cover improving Snowflake and getting the benefit of this improvement to our customer. So that was the message of that blog. And yes, the message was okay. Mr. Databricks, it's nice, and it's perfect that, I mean, everyone makes a decision, right? We made the decision not to participate. Databricks made another decision, which is very fine, and that's fine that they publish their number on their system. Where it is not fine is that they published number using Snowflake and misrepresenting our performance. And that's what we wanted also to correct. >> Yeah, well, thank you for going into that. I know it's, look, leaders don't necessarily have to get involved in that mudslide. (crosstalk) Enough said about that, so that's cool. I want to ask you, I interviewed Frank last spring, right after the lockdown, he was kind enough to come on virtually, and I asked him about on-prem. And he was, you know Frank, he doesn't mix words, He said, "We're not getting into a halfway house. That's not going to happen." And of course, you really can't do what you do on-prem. You can't separate compute, some have tried, but it's not the same. But at the same time that you see like Andreessen comes out with this blog that says a huge portion of your cost of goods sold is going to be the cloud, so you're going to have to repatriate. Help me square that circle. Is it cloud forever? Is it will you never say never? What can you share of that? >> I will never say never, it's not my style. I always say you can always change your mind, and maybe different factors can change your mind. What was true at some point might not be true at a later point. But as of now, I don't see any reason for us to go on-premise. As you mentioned at the beginning, right, Snowflake is growing like crazy. The world is moving to the cloud. I think maybe it goes both ways, but I would say 90% or 99% of the world is moving to the cloud. Maybe 1% is coming back for some very specific reasons. I don't think that the world is going to move back on-premise. So in the end we might miss a small percentage of the workload that will stay on-premise and that's okay. >> And as well, if you dig into some of the financial statements you'll see, read the notes where you've renegotiated, right? We're talking big numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of cost reduction, actually more, over a 10 year period. Billions of your cloud bills. So the cloud suppliers, they don't want to lose you as a customer, right? You're one of their biggest customer. So it's awesome. Last question is kind of, your work now is to really drive the data cloud, get adoption up, build that supercloud, we call it. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how you see the future. >> The future is really broadened, the scope of Snowflake, and really, I would say the marketplace, and data sharing, and services, which are directly built natively on Snowflake and are shared through our platform, and can operate, it can mix data on provider-side with data on consumer-side, and creating this collaboration within the Snowflake data cloud, I think is really the future. And we are really only scratching the surface of that. And you can see the enthusiasm of Snowflake data cloud and vertical industry We have nuanced the final show data cloud. Industry, complete vertical industry, latching on that concept and collaborating via Snowflake, which was not possible before. And I think you talked about machine learning, for example. Machine learning, collaboration through machine learning, the ones who are building this advanced model might not be the same as the one who are consuming this model, right? It might be this collaboration between expertise and consumer of that expertise. So we are really at the beginning of this interconnected world. And to me the world wide web of data that we are creating is really going to be amazing. And it's all about connecting. >> And I'm glad you mentioned the ecosystem. I didn't give enough attention to that. Because as a cloud provider, which essentially you are, you've got to have a strong ecosystem. That's a hallmark of cloud. And then the other, vertical, that we didn't touch on, is media and entertainment. A lot of direct-to-consumer. I think healthcare is going to be a huge vertical for you guys. All right we got to go, Terry. Thanks so much for coming on "theCUBE." I really appreciate you. >> Thanks, Dave. >> And thank you for watching. This a wrap from AWS re:Invent 2021. "theCUBE," the leader in global tech coverage. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)