(lively music) >> Thank you, Frank, for kicking us off, setting the stage, and providing the vision for the Snowflake Data Cloud. Hi, everyone, I hope you're all doing well and staying safe. Thank you for joining me at the Snowflake Summit today to dive into the role of the Data Cloud in mobilizing data at Disney Streaming. Together, we're going to discuss data governance and how to leverage some of the unique benefits of Snowflake's data platform to unlock business value for better customer experiences. I am Anita Lynch, Vice President of Data Governance at Disney Streaming, home of Disney+. I fell in love with technology at an early age. My family is originally from Chicago and we came to the Bay Area when my dad's sales career led him to Silicon Valley. Because of the exciting advancements he saw in the devices he sold and the engineers he worked with, I am so fortunate that my father created the early opportunities for me to learn about technology, like starting to code when I was 10. Decades later, over the course of my career spanning tech startups, business school, strategy consulting, and leading data at global enterprises, I have learned it is not enough to create a technology solution. It takes a real understanding of what problems your customers are trying to solve, and what resources or capabilities they can mobilize to do it. Today, this is the focus of my career in data. At Disney Streaming, we pride ourselves on delighting our customers. We commit each day to bringing beloved characters, timeless stories, and epic sporting events to a global audience. I am one member of a global data team at Disney Streaming, continuing to work through these challenging times for our world. We are deeply appreciative to be able to continue doing our part to deliver the entertainment people love on Disney+, including my new, personal favorite series, "The Mandalorian." It is important to all of us that we maintain our viewers' highest level of trust. As our data volume grows continuously on a daily basis, we need to ensure data is compliant, secure, and well-governed. Therefore, how we execute is critical. Our work ensures our business is guiding decisions with high-quality data. Doing this empowers us to challenge convention and innovate, which brings us to the role of the organization I lead at Disney Streaming. I lead data governance, which includes instrumentation, compliance, integrations, and data architecture. Collectively, we are responsible for the value, protection, and mobilization of data for Disney+. With data volumes in the thousands of petabytes after just one year and global teams depending on us to be able to perform their analysis, data science modeling, and machine learning, it is critical to maintain compliance protocols and governance standards. However, our approach to locking down the data and limiting access without becoming a blocker to critical information needs is key. Poorly informed business decisions could ultimately lead to suboptimal customer experiences. Recognizing this, I've established eight operating principles to maintain a balance between technology, people, and process. Data lifecycle, stewardship, and data quality together define the mechanisms by which we maintain, measure, and improve the value of data as an asset. Regulatory compliance and data access establish key partnerships with our legal and information security to help us ensure data complies with internal and external legal guidelines in each region. Auditability, traceability, and risk management ensure we monitor, educate, influence, and enforce best practices. And lastly, data sharing, which serves to socialize valuable datasets and shared definitions in a secure, easy way that allows us to keep pace with the fast-moving and rapidly changing nature of our world today. Principles serve only as guardrails. In real practice, we measure the value data governance delivers based on these six, quantifiable goals for the teams we serve. Underpinning all of them is the Snowflake Data Cloud. It is our platform to store, secure, integrate, and mobilize data across the organization. It enables us to make compliant data accessible for teams to collaborate without copying, moving, or reprocessing. Going beyond the notion of a single source of truth, Snowflake's Data Cloud allows us to truly have a single copy of the data, plus the ability to scale to support a near-unlimited number of concurrent users without contention for resources, and the flexibility to prioritize or deprioritize compute workloads where concurrency matters less than our ability to manage cost. What does this mean to me? Put simply, it means the ability to support business intelligence, analytics, data science, and machine learning use cases on-demand, exceeding expectations for speed and performance where they matter without sacrificing anything on governance. And that is how we deliver value through data governance for Disney+. Data sharing is at the heart of how we make this work. We'll look at three important use cases, data clean rooms that enable restricted data sharing, data discovery that ensures data is easily found and understood, and partner data management for collaboration outside of our team. Data sharing creates the opportunity to access the power of the integrated dataset in an environment that ensures both quality and compliance. Let's start with data clean rooms and the example of restricted data sharing. Better understanding the interests and preferences of our audience through analysis is how we improve experiences for our customers, such as in-app personalization or making a recommendation on what to watch. The challenge is to mobilize the right data as it is needed while blocking distribution of any data that is not required, preventing the disclosure of sensitive information and prohibiting the merging of data that should not be combined. Simultaneously, while we seek to deliver compliance, we also want to avoid the typical process delays and enormous manual repetitive work that often comes with it. Data clean rooms enable the secure sharing of data, again, without creating copies, the combining of datasets without PII or sensitive information, and the restricting of queries by use of parameterized inputs and filtered query outputs, so only permissible data can be extracted. Outlining in advance how data will be used properly ensures consistency and execution of our compliance workflows and improves transparency on constraints, so teams don't waste their valuable time. This accelerates our ability to act on data insights. Decisions can be made for the benefit of our customers. For example, for me on Disney+, I would see right away the season two trailer for "The Mandalorian," including exciting scenes with Baby Yoda, more formerly known to some of you as the Child. Sometimes unintended data silos arise due to architectural complexities. In a traditional model for data infrastructure, complexity can evolve over time as various teams need to access, integrate, and transform data from different data sources in ways that uniquely serve their specific stakeholders. This proliferation in the analytical supply chain could result in multiple instances of copying, loading, and transforming the same data and introduce significant risks to data quality throughout the system, such as a lack of traceability. For example, changing one data pipeline may create unforeseen consequences in the calculations that occur in downstream tables and reports with no clear resolution. In the spirit of challenging convention to innovate, we knew we had to do better. With the Snowflake Data Cloud, our teams are able to discover the data sources they need through a centrally organized platform for data management and data sharing. Each user knows the data visible to them is available to them. They know they can trust it, and they know how it can properly be used to drive broader customer insights. And if a team wants to share their insights for further collaboration, they can easily publish those datasets to the Data Cloud, where they benefit from the protection of our managed platform, making sure all governance protocols are in place, including who can access for what purpose and at what level of granularity. This facilitates data sharing without the administration worry that comes with sharing files. And since there is one single copy, future updates happen at once for all consumers of the data, keeping it fresh for everyone without sacrificing business continuity. Finally, data sharing improves the performance of our partner relationships with the same degree of simplicity. In this model, our partner teams can also participate in the Data Cloud by invitation to access data specifically shared to them. Or conversely, a partner can request to share their data, and upon authorization for quality and compliance, we can safely publish that data, making it simultaneously available to all the right teams who need it. As a thought exercise, one way for us to envision making it easier to work with partners is in the way we collect and analyze data from media serving and content distribution networks. Today, customer stream Disney+ on more than 13 different types of devices. Their streaming is made possible through a collection of services that vary by geography and consumer choice. Better understanding the experience for an individual client may require integration of data collected across the unique combination of services available to that customer. To better serve our content and delight our customers, data-driven analysis to detect anomalies and service impacts might benefit from a data management platform for partner data that requires a high level of data governance similar to what we do today through our Snowflake Data Cloud. Now in closing, data is at the core of our mission at Disney Streaming to delight our customers. And when it comes to data governance, we strive to always hold ourselves to the highest standard. With the Data Cloud, we power our business with a single source of truth. As we grow, it enables data sharing with data governance at massive scale and performance. I will also leave you with this often quoted African proverb I like. "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." We share an important cultural value. Commitment to innovation accelerated our ability to address unique use cases and the successful growth of Disney+. It was both the technology and the commitment to meet our data governance needs that has resulted in more than just another cloud data platform. We have a solution that works for us. Thank you for joining me on this journey, and thank you to Snowflake for the ongoing partnership. With the product keynote coming up next, I'm excited to see how future innovation will continue to enable us to challenge convention going forward.

>> Hello everybody. And welcome back to, theCUBE coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2020. We're tracking the rise of the Data Cloud, and fresh off the keynotes here, Frank Slootman, the Chairman and CEO of Snowflake and Anita Lynch, the Vice President of data governance at Disney streaming services. Folks Welcome. >> Thank you >> Thanks for having us Dave. >> Anita Disney plus awesome. You know, we signed up early, watched all the Marvel movies, Hamilton, the new Pixar movie soul. I haven't gotten it to the Mandalorian yet, your favorite. But really appreciate you guys coming on. Let me start with Frank. I'm glad you're putting forth this vision around the Data Cloud, because I never liked the term enterprise data warehouse. What you're doing is so different from the sort of that legacy world that I've known all these years. But start with why the Data Cloud? What problems are you trying to solve? And maybe some of the harder challenges you're seeing. >> Yeah, you know, we have a, we've come a long way in terms of workload execution. Right? In terms of scale and performance, and concurrent execution. We've really taken the lid off, sort of the physical constraints that have existed on these type of operations. But there's one problem that we're not yet solving, and that is the siloing and bunkering of data. And essentially, data is locked in applications, it's locked in data centers, it's locked in cloud, cloud regions. Incredibly hard for data science teams to really unlock the true value of data, when you can't address patterns that exist across data sets. So where we perpetuate a status we've had for forever since the beginning of computing. If we don't start to crack that problem now we have that opportunity. But the notion of a Data Cloud is like basically saying, "Look folks, we have to start on siloing and unlocking the data, and bring it into a place, where we can access it across all these perimeters, and boundaries that have historically existed. It's very much a step level function. Like the customers have always looked at things, one workload at a time, that mentality really has to go. You really have to have a Data Cloud mentality, as well as a workload orientation towards managing data. >> Anita, it was great hearing your role at Disney and in your keynote, and the work you're doing, the governance work. and you're serving a great number of stakeholders, enabling things like data sharing. You got really laser focused on trust, compliance, privacy. This idea of a data clean room is really interesting. Maybe you can expand on some of these initiatives here, and share what you're seeing as some of the biggest challenges to success, and of course, the opportunities that you're unlocking. >> Sure. In my role leading data governance, it's really critical to make sure that all of our stakeholders not only know what data is available and accessible to them. They can also understand really easily and quickly, whether or not the data that they're using is for the appropriate use case. And so that's a big part of how we scale data governance, and a lot of the work that we would normally have to do manually is actually done for us through the data clean rooms. >> Thank you for that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the role of data and how your data strategy has evolved and maybe discuss some of the things that Frank mentioned about data silos. And I mean, obviously you can relate to that having been in the data business for a while, but I wonder if you can elucidate on that. >> Sure. I mean, data complexities are going to evolve over time in any traditional data architecture simply because you often have different teams at different periods and time trying to analyze and gather data across a whole lot of different sources. And the complexity that just arises out of that is due to the different needs of specific stakeholders. There are time constraints and quite often, it's not always clear how much value they're going to be able to extract from the data at the outset. So what we've tried to do to help break down those silos is allow individuals to see upfront how much value they're going to get from the data by knowing that it's trustworthy right away. By knowing that it's something that they can use in their specific use case right away. And by ensuring that essentially as they're continuing to kind of scale the use cases that they're focused on, they're no longer required to make multiple copies of the data, do multiple steps to reprocess the data. And that makes all the difference in the world. >> Yeah, for sure. I'm a copy Creek because it'd be the silent killer. Frank I followed you for a number of years, you're a big thinker, you and I have had a lot of conversations about the near-term, mid-term and long-term, I wonder if you could talk about, in your keynote you're talking about eliminating silos and connecting across data sources. Which is really powerful concept but really only if people are willing and able to connect and collaborate. Where do you see that happening? Maybe what are some of the blockers there? >> Well, there's certainly a natural friction there. I still remember when we first started to talk to, Salesforce, you know, they had discovered that we were a top three destination of Salesforce data and they were wondering why that was, and the reason is of course, that people take Salesforce data push it to snowflake because they want to overlay it with what data outside of Salesforce. Whether it's Adobe or any other marketing dataset. And then they want to run very highly scaled processes on it. But the reflexes in the world of SaaS is always like no, we're an Island, we're a planet down to ourselves. Everybody needs to come with us, as opposed to we go to a different platform to run these types of processes. It's no different for the public cloud vendor. They didn't only, they have massive moats around their storage to really prevent data from leaving their orbit. So there is natural friction in terms for this to happen. But on the other hand there is an enormous need. We can't deliver on the power and potential of data unless we allow it to come together. Snowflake is the platform that allows that to happen. We were pleased with our relationship with Salesforce because they did appreciate why this was important and why this was necessary. And we think, other parts of the industry will gradually come around to it as well. So the idea of a Data Cloud has really come, right. When people are recognizing why this matters now. It's not going to happen overnight. It is a step while will function a very big change in mentality and orientation. >> Yeah. It's almost as though the the SaaS suffocation of our industry sort of repeated some of the application silos and you build a hardened top around it, all the processes are hardened around it and okay, here we go. And you're really trying to break that, aren't you? >> Yep, exactly. >> Anita, again, I want to come back to this notion of governance. It's so it's so important. It's the first role in your title and it really underscores the importance of this. You know, Frank was just talking about some of the hurdles and this is a big one. I mean, we saw this in the early days of big data where governance was just afterthought. It was like bolted on the kind of wild wild West. I'm interested in your governance journey. And maybe you can share a little bit about what role snowflake has played there in terms of supporting that agenda and kind of what's next on that journey. >> Sure. Well, I've led data teams in numerous ways over my career. This is the first time that I've actually had the opportunity to focus on governance and what it's done is allowed for my organization to scale much more rapidly. And that's so critically important for our overall strategy as a company. >> Well, I mean, a big part of what you were talking about at least my inference in your talk was really that the business folks didn't have to care about, you know, wonder about they cared about it, but they don't have to wonder about, and about the privacy concerns, et cetera. You've taken care of all that it's sort of transparent to them. Is that right?| >> Yea That's right absolutely. So we focus on ensuring compliance across all of the different regions where we operate. We also partner very heavily with our legal and information security teams. They're critical to ensuring that we're able to do this. we don't do it alone. But governance includes not just the compliance and the privacy, it's also about data access, and it's also about ensuring data quality. And so all of that comes together under the governance umbrella. I also lead teams that focus on things like instrumentation, which is how we collect data. We focus on the infrastructure and making sure that we've architected for scale and all of these are really important components of our strategy. >> I got a...So I have a question maybe each of you can answer. I sort of see this, our industry moving from products, to then, to platforms and platforms even evolving into ecosystems. And then there's this ecosystem of data. You guys both talked a lot about data sharing but maybe Frank, you can start, Anita you can add on to Frank's answer. You're obviously both passionate about the use of data and trying to do so in a responsible way. That's critical but it's also going to have business impact. Frank, where's this passion come from on your side. And how are you putting into action in your own organization? >> Well, you know I'm really going to date myself here, but many, many years ago, I saw the first glimpse of multidimensional databases that were used for reporting really on IBM mainframes. And it was extraordinarily difficult. We didn't even have the words back then in terms of data warehouses and business. All these terms didn't exist. People just knew that they wanted to have a more flexible in way of reporting and being able to pivot data dimensionally and all these kinds of things. And I just bought whatever this predates windows 3.1, which really, set off the whole sort of graphical, way of dealing with systems which there's now a whole generations of people that don't know any different right? So I've lived the pain of this problem and sort of had a front row seat to watching this transpire over a very long period of time. And that's one of the reasons, why I'm here, because I finally seen, a glimpse of, I also, as an industry fully, fully just unleashing and unlocking to potential. We're now in a place where the technology is ahead of people's ability to harness it. Which we've never been there before. It was always like, we wanted to do things that technology wouldn't let us. It's different now. I mean, people are just, their heads are spinning with what's now possible, which is why you see markets evolve, very rapidly right now we were talking earlier about how you can't take past definitions and concepts and apply them to what's going on in the world. because the world's changing right in front of your eyes right now. >> So Anita maybe you could add on to what Frank just said and share some of the business impacts and outcomes that are notable since you've really applied your your love of data and maybe, maybe touch on, on culture. Data culture, any words of wisdom for folks in the audience who might be thinking about embarking on a Data Cloud journey, similar to what you've been on. >> Yeah sure. I think for me, I fell in love with technology first and then I fell in love with data. And I fell in love with data because of the impact that data can have on both the business and the technology strategy. And so it's sort of that nexus, between all three. And in terms of my career journey and some of the impacts that I've seen. I mean, I think with the advent of the cloud, before, well, how do I say that. Before the cloud actually became so prevalent and such a common part of the strategy that's required it was so difficult, you know, so painful. It took so many hours to actually be able to calculate the volumes of data that we had. Now we have that accessibility, and then on top of it, with the snowflake Data Cloud it's much more performance oriented from a cost perspective because you don't have multiple copies of the data, or at least you don't have to have multiple copies of the data. And I think moving beyond some of the traditional mechanisms for for measuring business impact, has only been possible with the volumes of data that we have available to us today. And it's just, it's phenomenal to see the speed at which we can operate. And really, truly understand our customer's interests and their preferences and then tailor the experiences that they really want and deserve for them. It's, been a great feeling to get to this point in time. >> That's fantastic. So, Frank, I got to ask you this. So in your spare time you decided to write a book, I'm loving it. I don't have a signed copy so I'm going to have to send it back and have you sign it. But, and you're, I love the inside baseball. It's just awesome. So really appreciate that. So, but why did you decide to write a book? >> Well, there were a couple of reasons, obviously we thought of as an interesting tale to tell for anybody, who is interested in what's going on, how did this come about? Who are the characters behind the scenes and all this stuff. But from a business standpoint because this is such a step function it's so non incremental, we felt like, we really needed quite a bit of real estate to really lay out what the full narrative and context is. And, we thought, the books titled the "Rise of the Data Cloud." That's exactly what it is. And we're trying to make the case for that mindset, that mentality, that strategy because all of us, I think as an industry, were at risk of, persisting, perpetuating where we've been since the beginning of computing. So we're really trying to make a pretty forceful case for a look. There's an enormous opportunity out there but there's some choices you have to make along the way. >> Guys, we got to leave it there. Frank, I know you and I are going to talk again Anita, I hope we have a chance to meet face to face and talk in theCUBE live someday. You're phenomenal guests and what a great story. Thank you both for coming on. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there. You're watching the, Snowflake Data Cloud Summit, on theCUBE.

>> Hello everybody and welcome back to the cubes coverage of the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit 2020. We're tracking the rise of the Data Cloud, and fresh off the keynotes here, Frank Slootman, the chairman and CEO of Snowflake and Anita Lynch, the vice president of Data Governance at Disney Streaming Services. Folks, welcome. >> Thank you Thanks for having us, Dave, >> I need a Disney plus awesome. You know, we signed up early, watched all the Marvel movies, Hamilton, the new Pixar Movie saw, I haven't gotten into the Mandalorian yet, your favorite, but, (woman laughing) really appreciate you guys coming on. Let me start with Frank. I'm glad you're putting forth this vision around the data cloud, because I never liked the term Enterprise Data Warehouse, what you're doing is so different from the sort of that legacy world that I've known all these years, but start with why the Data Cloud, what problems are you trying to solve? And maybe some of the harder challenges you're seeing. >> Yeah I know, you know we've come a long way in terms of workload execution, right? In terms of scale and performance, you know, concurrent execution, we really taken the lid off sort of the physical constraints that have existed on these types of operations. But there's one problem, that we're not yet solving. And that is the siloing and bunkering of data. And especially in a data is locked in application it is locked data centers, is locked in cloud regions, incredibly hard for data science teams to really, you know, unlock the true value of data. When you can address patterns that exist across a data set. So we're perpetuate, a status we've had forever since the beginning of computing. If we don't start to crack that problem now we have that opportunity. But the notion of a Data Cloud is like basically saying, look folks, you know, we have to start unsiloing and unlocking the data, and bring it into a place, you know, where we can access it, you know, across all these parameters and boundaries that have historically existed. It's very much a step level function. Now the customers have always looked at things one workload at a time, that mentality really has to go. You really have to have a Data Cloud mentality, as well as a workload orientation towards managing data. >> Anita was great hearing your role at Disney, and your keynote, and the work you're doing, the governance work, and you're serving a great number of stakeholders, enabling things like data sharing, you got really laser focused on trust, compliance, privacy. Is this idea of a data clean room is really interesting. You maybe you can expand on some of these initiatives here and share what you're seeing as some of the biggest challenges to success. And of course, the opportunities that you're unlocking. >> Sure. I mean, in my role, leading Data Governance, it's really critical to make sure that all of our stakeholders, not only know what data is available and accessible to them, they can also understand really easily and quickly, whether or not the data that they're using is for the appropriate use case. And so, that's a big part of how we scale data governance, and a lot of the work that we would normally have to do manually, is actually done for us through the data clean rooms. >> Thank you for that. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the role of data and how your data strategy has evolved and maybe discuss some of the things that Frank mentioned about data silos, and obviously you can relate to that, having been in the data business for awhile, but wonder if you can elucidate on that. >> Sure. I mean, data complexities are going to evolve over time in any traditional data architecture, simply because you often have different teams at different periods in time, trying to analyze and gather data across a whole lot of different sources. And the complexity that just arises out of that, is, due to the different needs of specific stakeholders. There are time constraints, and quite often it's not always clear, how much value they're going to be able to extract from the data at the outset. So what we've tried to do to help break down those silos, is, allow individuals to see upfront how much value they're going to get from the data, by knowing that it's trustworthy right away . By knowing that it's something that they can use in their specific use case right away. And by ensuring that essentially, as they're continuing to kind of scale the use cases that they're focused on, they're no longer required to make multiple copies of the data, do multiple steps to reprocess the data. And that makes all the difference in the world. >> Yeah, for sure. I mean copy creek, cause it'd be the silent killer. Frank I followed you for a number of years. You're a big thinker. You and I have had a lot of conversations about the near term, mid term and long term. I wonder if you could talk about, you know, when your keynote, you talked about eliminating silos, and connecting across data sources, which really powerful concept, but it really only, if people are willing and able to connect and collaborate, where do you see that happening? Maybe what are some of the blockers there? >> Well, there's certainly a natural friction there. I still remember when we first started to talk to Salesforce, you know, they had, discovered that we were a top three destination of Salesforce data and they were wondering, you know, why that was? And the reason is of course that people take Salesforce data, push it to Snowflake, because they want to overlay it with data outside of Salesforce. You know what it is Adobe or any 6other marketing dataset. And then they want to run very highly skilled processes, you know, on it. But the reflexes in the world of SAS, is always like, no, we're an Island, we're a planet onto ourselves. Everybody needs to come with us as opposed to, we go to a different platform to run these types of processes. It's no different for thee public cloud vendor. They did only, they have, you know, massive moats around, you know, their storage to, you know, to really prevent data from leaving their orbit. So there is natural friction in terms of for this to happen. But on the other hand, you know, there is an enormous need, you know, we can't deliver on the power and potential of data, unless we allow it to come together. Snowflake is the platform that allows that to happen. You know, we were pleased with our relationship with Salesforce because they did appreciate, you know, why this was important and why this was necessary. And we think, you know, other parts of the industry will gradually come around to it as well. So the idea of a Data Cloud has really come. Right, people are recognizing, you know, why does this matters now. It's not going to happen overnight. It is a step what will function a very big change in mentality and orientation. You know? >> Yeah. It's almost as though the sussification of our industry sort of repeated some of the application silos, and build a heart on to and all the processes of(mummers) Okay, here we go. And you're really trying to break that aren't you? >> Yep, exactly. >> Anita, again, I want to come back to this notion of governance. It's so important. It's the first rule in your title, and it really underscores the importance of this. You know, Frank was just talking about some of the hurdles and this is a big one. I mean we saw this in the early days of big data where governance was this afterthought. It was like bolted on kind of wild west. I'm interested in your governance journey. And maybe you can share a little bit about what role Snowflake has played there in terms of supporting that agenda, and kind of what's next on that journey. >> Sure. Well, you know, I've led data teams, in numerous ways over my career, this is the first time, that I've actually had the opportunity to focus on governance. And what it's done, is allowed for my organization to scale much more rapidly. And that's so critically important for our overall strategy as a company. >> Well, I mean, a big part of what you were talking about, at least my inference in your talk, was really that the business folks didn't have to care about, your wonder about they cared about it, but they don't have to wonder about, and about the privacy concerns, et cetera, you've taken care of all that. It's sort of transparent to them. >> Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. So we focus on ensuring compliance across all of the different regions where we operate. We also partner very heavily with our legal and information security teams. They're critical, to ensuring you know, that we're able to do this. We don't do it alone. But governance includes not just, you know, the compliance and the privacy. It's also about data access. And it's also about ensuring data quality. And so all of that comes together under the governance umbrella. I also lead teams that focus on things like instrumentation, which is how we collect data, we focus on the infrastructure, and making sure that we've architected for scale , and all of these are really important components of our strategy. >> So I have a question maybe each of you can answer it. I sort of see this, our industry moving from products to then, to the platforms and platforms even evolving into ecosystems. And then there's this ecosystem of data. You guys both talked a lot about data sharing, but, but maybe Frank, you can start and Anita you can add onto Frank's answer. You obviously both passionate about the use of data and trying to do so in a responsible way, that's critical, but it's also going to have business impact. Frank, where's this passion come from on your side? And how are you putting into action in your own organization? >> Well, you know, I'm really going to date myself here, but you know many years ago, you know, I saw the first glimpse of multidimensional databases that were used for reporting really on IBM mainframes. And it was extraordinarily difficult. We didn't even have the words back then in terms of data, warehouses and business, all these terms didn't exist. People just knew that they want to have a more flexible way of reporting and being able to pivot data, dimensionally, all these kinds of things. And I just by whatever this predates, you know, windows 3.1, which really, you know, set off the whole sort of graphical, you know, way of dealing with systems, which there's not whole generations of people that don't know any different. Right? So I've lived the pain of this problem, and sort of had a front row seat, to watching this transpire over a very long period of time. And that's one of the reasons, you know, why I'm here because I finally seen, you know, a glimpse of, you know, I also, as an industry fully, just unleashing and unlocking the potential. We're not at a place where the technology is ahead of people's ability to harness it. Right. Which we'd never been there before. Right. It was always like we wanted to do things and technology wouldn't let us, it's different now. I mean, people are just, heads are spinning with what's now possible, which is why you see Marcus evolve, you know, very rapidly right now, we were talking earlier about how you can't take, you know, past definitions and concepts and apply them to what's going on in the world. The world's changing right in front of your eyes right now, >> So Anita maybe you could add on to what Frank just said and share some of the business impacts, and outcomes that are notable since you've really applied your love of data and maybe touch culture, data culture. Any words of wisdom for folks in the audience who might be thinking about embarking on a Data Cloud journey, similar to what you've been on. >> Yeah Sure. I think for me, I fell in love with technology first, and then I fell in love with data and I fell in love with data because of the impact that data can have, on both the business, and the technology strategy. And so it's sort of that nexus between all three. And in terms of my career journey and some of the impacts that I've seen. I think with the advent of the Cloud, you know, before, well, how do I say this? Before the cloud actually became so prevalent and such a common part of the strategy that's required, it was so difficult, you know, so painful. It took so many hours to actually, be able to calculate, you know, the volumes of data that we had. Now we have that accessibility. And then on top of it, with the Snowflake Data Cloud, it's much more performance oriented from a cost perspective because you don't have multiple copies of the data, or at least you don't have to have multiple copies of the data. And I think, moving beyond some of the traditional mechanisms for measuring business impact, has only been possible with the volumes of data that we have available to us today. And it's just, it's phenomenal to see the speed at which we can operate and really, truly understand our customer's interests and their preferences, and then tailor the experiences that they really want and deserve for them. It's been a great feeling to get to this point in time. >> That's fantastic. So, Frank, I got to ask you to do so in your spare time you decided to write a book am loving it. I have a signed copy, so I'm going to have to send it back and have you sign it. But, and I love the inside baseball. It's just awesome. So really appreciate that. So, but why did you decide to write a book? >> Well, there were a couple of reasons. Obviously we thought it was an interesting tale to tell for anybody, you know, who is interested in, you know, what's going on? How did this come about? You know, or the characters behind the scenes and all this kind of stuff. But, you know, from a business standpoint, you know, because this is such a step function, it's so non incremental, we felt like we really needed quite a bit of real estate to really lay out, what the full narrative and context is. And, you know, we thought, you know, books titled the rise of the Data Cloud. That's exactly what it is. And we're trying to make the case for that mindset, that mentality, that strategy, because all of us, you know, I think as an industry we're at risk of, you know, persisting, perpetuating, you know, where we've been since the beginning of computing. So we're really trying to make a pretty forceful case for look, you know, there's an enormous opportunity out there, but there's some choices you have to make along the way. >> Guys, we got to leave it there. Frank. I know you and I are going to talk again, Anita, I hope we have a chance to meet face to face and in the cube live someday, your phenomenal guest and what a great story. Thank you both for coming on. Thanks Dave, >> Thank you >> You're welcome to keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with the next guest right after this short break. (upbeat music)

From around the globe. It's theCUBE covering HPE's Discover Virtual Experience. Brought to you by HPE. >> Hello and welcome back to the CUBE's coverage of HPE discover Virtual Experience. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, your host, we're here in the Palo Alto Studio for the remote interviews. We have a great innovation story here with Disney and HPE, Alice Taylor, Vice President of Content Innovation with studioLAB at Disney. And Soumyendu Sarkar, distinguished technologist director of AI at HPE. Thanks for coming on Alice. Samandiyu thank you for taking the time. >> No worries. Great to be here. Hi. >> Hi >> I love this story. I think it's an innovation story and I think it's going to be one that we'll experience in our life going forward, and that is media, video, and its experiences and these innovation about AI, It's a lot to do with the collaboration between Disney studioLAB, Alice, that you're running, and it's super, super important and fun as well and very relevant and Cool. So first before we get started, Alice, take a minute to explain a little about yourself and how StudioLAB came about. >> Oh my goodness. StudioLAB is just in its second year of operation. It was an idea that was had by our CTO. I'm going to say three years ago, And at the time, just previously before that, I had a startup company that came through the Disney accelerator. So I was already inside the building and the team there said well, the CTO there, and the boss said, you know, we need to start up an innovation lab that will investigate storytelling through emerging technology. And that's basically being the majority of my background. So I said, yes. And then since then we've been growing a team. We opened the lab in may of 2018 and here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, but it has grown like crazy. It's just a wonderful place to be and to operate. And we've been doing some amazing projects with some amazing partners, >> And it's not unusual that an entrepreneur has this kind of role to think outside the box. We'll get at some of that. Talk about your experience as an entrepreneur, how you got into this position, because you came in as an entrepreneur, you're doing some creative things. Tell us that story real quick. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, so as you can tell, I'm British. My actual background started, my whole career started in technology in the mid 90s. As I started as a trainee video editor, but then switched very quickly in 95 to building websites and from there on, and it was internet all the way. But I've always focused on storytelling and I, you know, much of my background is working for broadcasters and media and content creators. So I was five years at the BBC in their R and D department. And I'm actually out here as VP of digital media for them, and then Channel 4 as well. And throughout the whole process, I was always interested in how to tell stories with new technology and the new mediums as they emerged. So yeah, slight side story and doing a startup, which was actually in toys and video games, but again, big digital storytelling environments for children. And then I came round Robin, if you like into Disney and here we are still looking at how to make films and episodic content, even more, you name it faster, better, more exciting, using the best and greatest in emerging tech as we find it. >> The lab that you're doing, it's an accelerant almost for new technologies. Your job is to what? look out over the horizon next 10 years or so to figure out? >> Yeah >> what's next. It's not a structured thing. You have some reign to be creative and experiment? >> Well, yeah, I mean, the studioLAB, at the studios, well, Disney has eight studios at the moment, And what we do is we look at actually the whole breadth of storytelling. So right from the moment when a creative has an idea through to how our guests and fans might be receiving the end product out in the world, and we segregate that whole breadth into three categories; Ideate, when, you know, the process of generating the idea and building it, Make, how we make it, where we make it, what we make it with and then Experience. How we experience it out in the world. So we have a whole slew of projects, the studio level works with some of the best technology companies in the world. And we call those our innovation partners and we sign these partnerships really to bring what we like to call Superpowers to the system. We like to think that the combination of those companies and what comes out of these projects is going to give our filmmakers superpowers, but also that combinatorial effect of Disney, you know, in this case, for instance, working with HPE, like producing something that Disney couldn't necessarily do on its own or the HBE couldn't necessarily do on his own either. So yeah, it's a huge remit and we don't look quite so far out, generally speaking as 10 years, it's more like three to now. We don't do day to day operational work, but we try to pick something up a couple of years before it's going to be operationally ready and really investigate it then and get a bit of a headstart. >> Well, it's great to have HPE as partner and having that bench of technology, software, and people, and it's just a nice power source for you as well. >> Exactly So Soumyendu talk about HPE relationship with Disney, because you got a lot of deep technical from the lab standpoint to resilient technology. How are you involved? What's your role, you guys sitting around you riffing and put a whiteboard together and say, Hey, we're going to solve these big problems? ... Here's the future of consumption, here's the future of video... What goes on? Tell us the relationship between you guys. >> Yeah, it's a good question. At HPE We can not only make the servers, but what we also do is we work quite a lot on optimizing some of the Artificial Intelligence solutions and algorithms on the GPUs and scale it across Servers. So this opportunity came up from Disney where Disney came up with a very innovative solution where they were solving the video quality problem. As you know, there are a lot of blemishes in the Video that can come up and Disney wanted to fix all of them. And they came up with great algorithm, but what happens is, like with great algorithm comes a huge amount of computational complexity which needs quite a bit of heterogeneous input in both in Parallel Processing and in Sequential Processing. So we thought that it's a perfect, I'd say combination of two skillsets to make this video quality software execute at speeds which are needed for production in Disney. >> So it's good to have a data center whenever you need it to, you guys have some great technology. We'll hear a lot more from the Execs at HPE. On our reporting Alice, we want to to get your thoughts. We're covering some of those new edge technologies, we're talking about new experiences. I gave a talk at Sundance a few years ago called the new creative class, and it's really about this next wave of art and filmmakers who are using the tools of the trade, which is a cellphone, you know, really easy to set up a studios and use the technology. Can you give us some examples of how the studioLAB collaborates with filmmakers and the Execs to push the art and technology of storytelling to be fresh, Because the sign of the times, are Instagram and Tik Tok, this is just very elementary, the quality and the storytelling is pretty basic dopamine driven, but you can almost imagine that the range of quality that's going to come, so access to more people, certainly more equipment and cameras, et cetera. What's next? How do you guys see And what some examples can you share? >> Oh, that's an amazing question. I mean, where working on Films and Episodics rather than very short form content , Obviously. But you're absolutely right. There's a lot of consumer grade technology that is entering the production pipeline in many ways and in many areas, whether it's phones or iPads, using certain bits of software. One of the things that we're building at the moment is the ability to generate photometrical models, capturing with consumer drones or even iPhones, and then getting that data into a 3-D model as soon as possible. There's a really big theme of what we want to do. It's like make the process more efficient so that our creatives and the folks working on productions, aren't having to slog through something that's and tedious. They want to get to the storytelling and the art and the act of storytelling as much as possible. And so waiting for a model to render or waiting for the QC process to finish is what we want to kind of get rid of. So they can really get to the meat of the problem much, much faster. And just going back to what Soumyendu was saying about the AI project here, I mean, it was about finding the dead pixels on the screen when we do all finished prints, which would you believe we do with humans? Humans are the best, or historically have been the best at finding dead pixels, but what a job to have to do at the end of the process. To go through quality control and then have to go and manually find the little dead pixels in each frame of our print, right? Nobody actually wants to be doing that job. So the algorithm goes and looks for those automatically. And then HPE came in and sped that whole process up by 9X. So now it actually runs fast enough to be used on our final prints. >> You know, it's interesting in the tech trend for the past 10, 15 years that I've been covering cloud technology even in the early days, it was kind of on the fringe and then become mainstream. But all the trends were more agility, faster, take away that heavy lifting so that the focus on the job at hand, whether its creative or writing software. This is kind of a a success formula, and you're kind of applying it to film and creation, which is still, like software, it's kind of the same thing almost. >> Yeah >> So you know, when you see these new technologies, I'd love to get both of your reactions to this. One of the big misses, that people kind of miss is the best stuff is often misunderstood until it's understood. >> Yes >> And we're kind of seeing that now with Covid and everyone's like no way I could've seen this. No, no one predicted it. So what's an example of something that people might be misunderstanding. That's super relevant, that might become super important very quickly. Any thoughts? >> Gosh, that's a great one. Well, I can give an example of something that has come and gone and then come and potentially gone, except it hasn't. You'll see. It's VR. So it came whenever it was, 20 years ago and then 10 years ago, and everybody was saying VR is going to change the world. And then it reappeared again, six years ago. And again, everybody said it was going to change the world. And in terms of film production, it really has. But that's slightly gone unnoticed. I think, because out in the market, everyone is expecting VR to have been a huge consumer success. And I suspect it still will be one day a huge consumer success. But meanwhile, in the background, We are using VR on a daily basis in film production, Virtual production is one of the biggest emerging processes that is happening. If you've seen anything to do with Jungle Book, Lion King , the Mandalorian, anything that industrial light and magic work on, you're really looking at a lot of virtual production techniques that have ended up on the screen. And it is now a technology that we can't do without. I'm going to have to think two seconds for something that's emerging. AI and ML is a huge area. Obviously, we're scratching it. I don't think anyone is going to to say that it's going to come and go this one. This is huge, but we're already just beginning to see where and how we can apply AI and ML. >> Yeah. >> So Soumyendu, did you want to jump in on that one? >> Yeah, Let me take it from the technology standpoint. I think Alice sort of puts out some very cool trends. Now what happens in tHE AI and ML spaces, people can come up with creative ideas, but one of the biggest challenges is how do you take those ideas for commercial usage and make it work at a speed, as Alice was mentioning, makes it feasible in production. So accelerating AI/ML and making it in a form, which is usable is super important. And the other aspect of it is, just see, for instance, video quality, that Alice was mentioning. Dead pixel is one type, And I know that Disney is working on certain other video qualities to fix the blemishes, but there is a whole variety of these blemishes and with human operators, Its kind of impossible to scale up the production and to find all these different artifacts, and especially now, as you can see, the video is disseminated in your phones, in your iPads. Like, you know, in just streaming. So this is a problem of scale and to solve this is also like, you know, a lot of computers, and I'd say a lot of collaboration with complementary skillsets that make AI real. >> I was talking with a friend who was an early Apple employee. He's now retired, good friend. And we were talking about, you know, all the dev apps, agile, go fast, scale up. And he made a comment. I want to get your reaction to it. He said, "you know, what we're missing is craft." And software used to be a craft game. So when you have speed, you lose craft. And we see that certainly with cloud and agility and then iterate, and then you get to a good product over time. But I think one of the things that's interesting and you guys are kind of teasing out is you can kind of get craft with the help from some of these technologies, where, you can kind of build crafting into it. >> Yap Alice, what's your reaction to that? >> One of our favorite anecdotes from the lion King is, so Jon Favreau the director, built out the virtual production system with his team to make the film. And it allowed for a smaller production team acting on a smaller footprint. What they didn't do was shorten the time to make the film, what the whole system enabled was more content created within that same amount of time. So effectively Jon had more tapes and more material to make his final film with. And that's what we want people to have. We want them to not ever to have to say, Oh, I missed my perfect shot because of, I don't know what, you know, we ran out of time, so we couldn't get the perfect shot. That's it, that's a terrible thing. We never want that to happen. So where technology can help gather as much material as possible in the most efficient way, basically at the end of the day for our our creatives, that means more ability to tell a story. >> So Soumyendu, this is an example of the pixel innovation, the video QC, it's really a burden if you have to go get it and chase it, you can automate that. That's back to some of the tech trends. A lot of automation action in there. >> Yeah, absolutely. And as Alice was mentioning, if you can bridge the gap between imagination and realization then you have solved the problem. That way, the people who are creative can think and implement something in a very short time. And that's fair, like, you know, some of these scientists come in >> Well, I also very impressed and I'm looking forward to coming down and visiting studio labs when the world gets back to work, >> Alright. >> You guys are in the part of Burbank and all the action. I know you're a little sort of incubate. It's really kind of R and D meet commercially. Commercial is really cool. But I have to ask you what the COVID-19 going on, how are you guys handling the situation? Certainly impacted people coming to work. >> Yeah >> How has your team in been impacted and how are you guys continuing the mission? >> Well, the lab itself is obviously a physical place on the lot. It's in the old animation building. But there's also this program of innovation that we have with our partners. To be honest, we didn't slow down at all the team carried on the next day from home. And in fact, we have expanded even, because new projects came rolling in as folks who were stuck at home suddenly had needs. So we had editors needing to work remotely, you name it, folks with bad home connections, wondering if we had some 5G phones hanging around, that kind of thing. And so everything really expanded a bit. We are hoping to get back into physical co-location as soon as possible, not least to be able to shoot movies again. But I think that there will be an element of this remote working that's baked in forever from here on then. Not least, coz it was just a round, this kind of, what this has done is accelerated things like the beginning of cloud adoption properly, in the beginning of remote teleworking and remote telepresence, and then also ideas coming out of that. So you know, again, the other day I heard Holograms coming up, like, can we have holograms yet? >> Yeah, we can do that, we've done that, Lets do it. Bring that back. >> And so it's that kind of thing. Exactly, that's going to come around again. Yeah. But you know what? The team have all been amazing. But we'll miss each other, you know, there's something about real life that can't be replaced by technology. >> Well, You know, we were talking earlier on theCUBE last week about, the future got pulled to the present, not the present accelerated the future. Which exposes some of these things that are really important and you mentioned it. So I have to ask you Alice, as you guys got more work, obviously it makes sense. What have you learnt as adapting and leading your team through this change? Any learnings you can share with folks? >> Well, yes, that's a good one. But mainly resilience. It's been a nonstop and quite relentless and the news out there is extraordinary. So we're also trying to balance a very full pipeline of work with understanding that people are struggling to balance their lives as well at home, You know, kids, pets, BLM, like you name it, everything is affecting everybody. So resilience and empathy is really top of my mind at the moment as we try to continue to succeed, but making sure that everybody stays healthy and sane. >> Yeah. And in great news, you got a partner here with HPE, the innovation doesn't stop there. You still have to partner. How do you keep up with these technologies and the importance of partners, comments, and Soumyendu your comment as well. >> Yeah. So HPE has been a great leader in accommodating all HPE employees to work from remote and in the process, what we also discovered is, we humans are innovative. So we discover the innovative ways where we can still work together. So we increased the volume of our virtual collaborations, and I have worked with Erica from Disney, who is a tremendous facilitator and a technologist of mine, to have this close collaboration going, and we almost missed nothing. But yes, we would like to, you know the feel each other to be in close proximity, look at each other's eyes. Probably that's the only missing thing, a crest of it, You know, we created an environment where we can collaborate and work pretty well. And to Alice's point in the process, we also discovered a lot of things which can be done in remote considering the community of Silicon Valley. >> You know, I'd love. The final question I want to get your thoughts on is your favorite technologies that you're excited about. But some Soumyendu, you know, we were talking amongst us nerds and geeks here in Silicon Valley around, you know, what Virtualization... Server Virtualization has done. And HPE knows a lot about server virtualization. You're in the server business, that created cloud, because with virtualization, you could create one server and great many servers, but I think this COVID-19 and the future beyond it, virtualization of life, an immersion of digital is going to bring and change a lot of things. You guys highlighted a few of them. This virtualization of life, society, experiences, play, work. It's not just work it's experiences. So Internet of Things, devices, how I'm consuming, how I'm producing, it's really going to have an impact. I'd love to get your, both of your thoughts on this kind of "virtualization of life" because it certainly impacts studioLAB, because you think about these things, Alice, and HP has to invent the tech to get scaling up. So final question. What do you think about virtualization of life and what technologies do you see that you're excited about to help make our lives better? >> Wow. Goodness, me. I think we're only beginning to understand the impact that things like video conferencing has on folks. You know, I don't know whether you've seen all of the articles flying around about how it's a lot more work to do, video conferencing, that you don't have the same subtle cue as you have in real life. And again, you know, virtual technologies like VR and similar, are not going to solve that immediately. So what will have to happen is that humans themselves will adapt to the systems. I think though, fundamentally we're about to enter a radical period. We basically have already a radical period of innovation because as folks understand what's at their fingertips and then what's missing, we're going to see all sorts of startups and new ideas come rushing out. As people understand this new paradigm and what they can do to solve, for the new pains that come out of it. I mean, just from my perspective, I have back-to-back nine hours of etc a day. And by the end of the day, I can barely walk. What are we going to do about that? I think we're going to see, >> Holograms, I like that Idea. >> right, we're going to see home exercise equipment combined with like, you know, really good ones. Like you've seen pellets on the shares going crazy. There's going to be tons of that. So I'm just really excited at the kind of three years or so. I think that we're going to see of radical innovation, the likes of which we have always usually been held back by other reasons, maybe not enough money or not enough permission. Whereas now people are like, we have to fix this problem. >> Well, you got a great job. I want to come, just quit my job and come join studio lab, sounds like that's a playground of fun. They have great stuff. >> Ton of fun. >> Soumyendu, close this out here. What are you excited about as we virtualize. You're in the labs, creating new technology, you're a distinguished technologist and director of AI. I Wean, you're on the cutting edge. You're riding the wave too. What's your take on this virtual center? >> I think, you know the COVID experience, what it has done is it has pushed the edge to the home. So now, if you really see a home is one of the principle connectivity to the outside world, as far as professionalism goes. And with that, what AI also offers is like a better experience. Right now we are all Gaga about zoom being able to do a video conferencing, but as Alice was pointing out, there is that ER, and the VR. Now consider combining the augmented reality. And the way that we do review a conference and all the other AI innovations that we can bring in so that the interactions becomes much more real. And that is like, you know, I'd say, where the world is moving. >> I can't let this go. I have to go one more step in because you guys brought that up. Alice, you mentioned the fatigue and all these things. And if you think about just the younger generations, we have to invest in our communities and our young people. I mean, think about all the kids who have to go back to school in September, in the fall, what their world's like. And you talk about, you know, we can handle video, but learners? So the transformation that's going to come down the path really fast is how do you create an experience for education and for learning and connecting. This is huge. Thoughts and reactions to that. So it's something that I've been thinking a lot about, but I'm sure a lot of other parents have as well. >> My take on that, kids, I've worked a lot with kids and kids media. And over the years, you often find that when a new media does come in, there's a lot of fear around it, but kids are plastic and incredibly good at adapting to new media and new technology and new ways of working. The other thing is, I think this generation of kids have really had to live through something, you know, and it's going to have, with luck, taught them some resilience. I think, if there's one thing that teachers can be focusing on, it is things like resilience and how to cope under very unusual and very unpredictable circumstances, which is never good for things like anxiety. But it's also the reality of the world, you know, be adaptive and learn, keep learning. These are great messages to give to kids. I think if anything, they are the ones who'll figure out how to socialize online successfully and healthily. So we're going to have to learn from them. >> Yeah. They're going to want to make it to be fun too. I mean, you have to make it entertaining. I mean, I find my personal experience, if it's boring, it ain't going to work. Thank you so much, Alice. Well, thank you very much for that comment and insight really enjoy. Congratulations on studioLAB, you got a great mission and very cool and very relevant. Soumyendu thank you very much for sharing the insights on HPE's role in that. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. >> Thanks. It's nice. >> Okay. >> Thanks John. >> This is theCUBE virtual covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Stay tuned for more coverage from HPE Discover Virtual Experience after this break.

(upbeat music) >> From the Silicon Angle Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCube. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to the first interview of theCube in our Boston area studio for 2020. And to help me kick it off, Jeremy Daly who is the host of Serverless Chats as well as runs the Serverless Day Boston. Jeremy, saw you at reInvent, way back in 2019, and we'd actually had some of the people in the community that were like hey, "I think you guys like actually live and work right near each other." >> Right. >> And you're only about 20 minutes away from our office here, so thanks so much for making the long journey here, and not having to get on a plane to join us here. >> Well, thank you for having me. >> All right, so as Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes says, "It's a new decade, but we don't have any base on the moon, "we don't have flying cars that general people can use, "but we do have serverless." >> And our robot vacuum cleaners. >> We do have robot vacuum cleaners. >> Which are run by serverless, as a matter of fact. >> A CUBE alum on the program would be happy that we do get to mention there. So yeah, you know serverless there are things like the iRobot, as well as Alexa, or some of the things that people, you know usually when I'm explaining to people what this is, and they don't understand it, it's like, Oh, you've used Alexa, well those are the functions underneath, and you think about how these things turn on, and off, a little bit like that. But maybe, we don't need to get into the long ontological discussion or everything, but you know you're a serverless hero, so you know give us a little bit, what your hearing from people, what are some of the exciting use cases out there, and you know where serverless is being used in that maturity today. >> Yeah, I mean well, so the funny thing about serverless and the term serverless itself, and I do not want to get into a long discussion about this, obviously. I actually wrote a post last year that was called stop calling everything serverless, because basically people are calling everything serverless. So it really, what it, what I look at it as, is something where, it just makes it really easy for developers to abstract away that back end infrastructure, and not having to worry about setting up Kubernetes, or going through the process of setting up virtual machines and installing software is just, a lot of that stuff is kind of handled for you. And I think that is enabled, a lot of companies, especially start-ups is a huge market for serverless, but also enterprises. Enabled them to give more power to their developers, and be able to look at new products that they want to build, new services they want to tackle or even old services that they need to, you know that may have some stability issues or things like long running ETL tasks, and other things like that, that they found a way to sort of find the preferal edges of these monolithic applications or these mainframes that they are using and find ways to run very small jobs, you know using functions as a server, something like that. And so, I see a lot of that, I think that is a big use case. You see a lot of large companies doing. Obviously, people are building full fledged applications. So, yes, the web facing user application, certainly a thing. People are building API's, you got API Gateway, they just released the new HEDP API which makes it even faster. To run those sort of things, this idea of cold starts, you know in AWS trying to get rid of all that stuff, with the new VPC networking, and some of the things they are doing there. So you have a lot of those type of applications that people are building as well. But it really runs the gambit, there are things all across the board that you can do, and pretty much anything you can do with the traditional computing environment, you can do with a serverless computing environment. And obviously that's focusing quite a bit on the functions as a service side of things, which is a very tiny part of serverless, if you want to look at it, you know sort of the broader picture, this service full or managed services, type approach. And so, that's another thing that you see, where you used to have companies setting up you know, mySQL databases and clusters trying to run these things, or even worse, Cassandra rings, right. Trying to do these things and manage this massive amount of infrastructure, just so that they could write a few records to a database and read them back for their application. And that would take months sometimes, for them to get it setup and even more time to try to keep running them. So this sort of revolution of managed services and all these things we get now, whether that the things like managed elastic search or elastic search cloud doing that stuff for you, or Big Table and Dynamo DB, and Manage Cassandra, whatever those things are. I'm just thinking a lot easier for developers to just say hey, I need a database, and okay, here it is, and I don't have to worry about the infrastructure at all. So, I think you see a lot of people, and a lot of companies that are utilizing all of these different services now, and essentially are no longer trying to re-invent the wheel. >> So, a couple of years ago, I was talking to Andy Jassy, at an interview with theCube, and he said, "If I was to build AWS today, "I would've built it on serverless." And from what I've seen over the last two or three years or so, Amazon is rebuilding a lot of there servers underneath. It's very interesting to watch that platform changing. I think it's had some ripple effect dynamics inside the company 'cause Amazon is very well known for their two pizza teams and for all of their products are there, but I think it was actually in a conversation with you, we're talking about in some ways this new way of building things is, you know a connecting fabric between the various groups inside of Amazon. So, I love your view point that we shouldn't just call everything serverless, but in many ways, this is a revolution and a new way of thinking about building things and therefore, you know there are some organizational and dynamical changes that happen, for an Amazon, but for other people that start using it. >> Yeah, well I mean I actually was having a conversation with a Jay Anear, whose one of the product owners for Lambda, and he was saying to me, well how do we sell serverless. How do we tell people you know this is what the next way to do things. I said, just, it's the way, right. And Amazon is realized this, and part of the great thing about dog fooding your own product is that you say, okay I don't like the taste of this bit, so we're going to change it to make it work. And that's what Amazon has continued to do, so they run into limitations with serverless, just like us early adopters, run into limitations, and they say, we'll how do we make it better, how do we fix it. And they have always been really great to listening to customers. I complain all the time, there's other people that complain all the time, that say, "Hey, I can't do this." And they say, "Well what if we did it this way, and out of that you get things like Lambda Destinations and all different types of ways, you get Event Bridge, you get different ways that you can solve those problems and that comes out of them using their own services. So I think that's a huge piece of it, but that helps enable other teams to get past those barriers as well. >> Jeremy, I'm going to be really disappointed if in 2020, I don't see a T-shirt from one of the Serverless Days, with the Mandalorian on it, saying, "Serverless, this is the way." Great, great, great marketing opportunity, and I do love that, because some of the other spaces, you know we're not talking about a point product, or a simple thing we do, it is more the way of doing things, it's just like I think about Cybersecurity. Yes, there are lots of products involved here but, you know this is more of you know it's a methodology, it needs to be fully thought of across the board. You know, as to how you do things, so, let's dig in a little bit. At reInvent, there was, when I went to the serverless gathering, it was serverless for everyone. >> Serverless for everyone, yes. >> And there was you know, hey, serverless isn't getting talked, you know serverless isn't as front and center as some people might think. They're some people on the outside look at this and they say, "Oh, serverless, you know those people "they have a religion, and they go so deep on this." But I thought Tim Wagner had a really good blog post, that came out right after reInvent, and what we saw is not only Amazon changing underneath the way things are done, but it feel that there's a bridging between what's happening in Kubernetes, you see where Fargate is, Firecracker, and serverless and you know. Help us squint through that, and understand a little bit, what your seeing, what your take was at reInvent, what you like, what you were hoping to see and how does that whole containerization, and Kubernetes wave intersect with what we're doing with serverless? >> Yeah, well I mean for some reason people like Kubernetes. And I honestly, I don't think there is anything wrong with it, I think it's a great container orchestration system, I think containers are still a very important part of the workloads that we are putting into a cloud, I don't know if I would call them cloud native, exactly, but I think what we're seeing or at least what I'm seeing that I think Amazon is seeing, is they're saying people are embracing Kubernetes, and they are embracing containers. And whether or not containers are ephemeral or long running, which I read a statistic at some point, that was 63% of containers, so even running on Kubernetes, or whatever, run for less than 10 minutes. So basically, most computing that's happening now, is fairly ephemeral. And as you go up, I think it's 15 minutes or something like that, I think it's 70% or 90% or whatever that number is, I totally got that wrong. But I think what Amazon is doing is they're trying to basically say, look we were trying to sell serverless to everyone. We're trying to sell this idea of look managed services, managed compute, the idea that we can run even containers as close to the metal as possible with something like Fargate which is what Firecracker is all about, being able to run virtual machines basically, almost you know right on the metal, right. I mean it's so close that there's no level of abstraction that get in the way and slow things down, and even though we're talking about milliseconds or microseconds, it's still something and there's efficiencies there. But I think what they looked at is, they said look at we are not Apple, we can't kill Flash, just because we say we're not going to support it anymore, and I think you mention this to me in the past where the majority of Kubernetes clusters that were running in the Public Cloud, we're running in Amazon anyways. And so, you had using virtual machines, which are great technology, but are 15 years old at this point. Even containerization, there's more problems to solve there, getting to the point where we say, look you want to take this container, this little bit of code, or this small service and you want to just run this somewhere. Why are we spinning up virtual containers. Why are we using 15 or 10 year old technology to do that. And Amazon is just getting smarter about it. So Amazon says hay, if we can run a Lambda function on Firecracker, and we can run a Fargate container on Firecracker, why can't we run, you know can we create some pods and run some pods for Kubernetes on it. They can do that. And so, I think for me, I was disappointed in the keynotes, because I don't think there was enough serverless talk. But I think what they're trying to do, is there trying to and this is if I put my analyst hat on for a minute. I think they're trying to say, the world is at Kubernetes right now. And we need to embrace that in a way, that says we can run your Kubernetes for you, a lot more efficiently and without you having to worry about it than if you use Google or if you use some other cloud provider, or if you run on-prem. Which I think is the biggest competitor to Amazon is still on-prem, especially in the enterprise world. So I see them as saying, look we're going to focus on Kubernetes, but as a way that we can run it our way. And I think that's why, Fargate and Kubernetes, or the Kubernetes for Fargate, or whatever that new product is. Too many product names at AWS. But I think that's what they are trying to do and I think that was the point of this, is to say, "Listen you can run your Kubernetes." And Claire Legore who showed that piece at the keynote, Vernor's keynote that was you know basically how quickly Fargate can scale up Kubernetes, you know individual containers, Kubernetes, as opposed to you know launching new VM's or EC2 instances. So I thought that was really interesting. But that was my overall take is just that they're embracing that, because they think that's where the market is right now, and they just haven't yet been able to sell this idea of serverless even though you are probably using it with a bunch of things anyways, at least what they would consider serverless. >> Yeah, to part a little bit from the serverless for a second. Talk about multi-cloud, it was one of the biggest discussions, we had in 2019. When I talk to customers that are using Kubernetes, one of the reasons that they tell me they're doing it, "Well, I love Amazon, I really like what I'm doing, "but if I needed to move something, it makes it easier." Yes, there are some underlying services I would have to re-write, and I'm looking at all those. I've talked to customers that started with Kubernetes, somewhere other than Amazon, and moved it to Amazon, and they said it did make my life easier to be able to do that fundamental, you know the container piece was easy move that piece of it, but you know the discussion of multi-cloud gets very convoluted, very easily. Most customers run it when I talk to them, it's I have an application that I run, in a cloud, sometimes, there's certain, you know large financials will choose two of everything, because that's the way they've always done things for regulation. And therefore they might be running the same application, mirrored in two different clouds. But it is not follow the sun, it is not I wake up and I look at the price of things, and deploy it to that. And that environment it is a little bit tougher, there's data gravity, there's all these other concerns. But multi-cloud is just lots of pieces today, more than a comprehensive strategy. The vision that I saw, is if multi-cloud is to be a successful strategy, it should be more valuable than the sum of its pieces. And I don't see many examples of that yet. What do you see when it comes to multi-cloud and how does that serverless discussion fit in there? >> I think your point about data gravity is the most important thing. I mean honestly compute is commoditized, so whether your running it in a container, and that container runs in Fargate or orchestrated by Kubernetes, or runs on its own somewhere, or something's happening there, or it's a fast product and it's running on top of K-native or it's running in a Lambda function or in an Azure function or something like that. Compute itself is fairly commoditized, and yes there's wiring that's required for each individual cloud, but even if you were going to move your Kubernetes cluster, like you said, there's re-writes, you have to change the way you do things underneath. So I look at multi-cloud and I think for a large enterprise that has a massive amount of compliance, regulations and things like that they have to deal with, yeah maybe that's a strategy they have to embrace, and hopefully they have the money and tech staff to do that. I think the vast majority of companies are going to find that multi-cloud is going to be a completely wasteful and useless exercise that is essentially going to waste time and money. It's so hard right now, keeping up with everything new that comes out of one cloud right, try keeping up with everything that comes out of three clouds, or more. And I think that's something that doesn't make a lot of sense, and I don't think you're going to see this price gauging like we would see with something. Probably the wrong term to use, but something that we would see, sort of lock-in that you would see with Oracle or with Microsoft SQL, some of those things where the licensing became an issue. I don't think you're going to see that with cloud. And so, what I'm interested in though in terms of the term multi-cloud, is the fact that for me, multi-cloud really where it would be beneficial, or is beneficial is we're talking about SaaS vendors. And I look at it and I say, look it you know Oracle has it's own cloud, and Google has it's own cloud, and all these other companies have their own cloud, but so does Salesforce, when you think about it. So does Twilio, even though Twilio runs inside AWS, really its I'm using that service and the AWS piece of it is abstracted, that to me is a third party service. Stripe is a third-party service. These are multi-cloud structure or SaaS products that I'm using, and I'm going to be integrating with all those different things via API's like we've done for quite some time now. So, to me, this idea of multi-cloud is simply going to be, you know it's about interacting with other products, using the right service for the right job. And if your duplicating your compute or you're trying to write database services or something like that that you can somehow share with multiple clouds, again, I don't see there being a huge value, except for a very specific group of customers. >> Yeah, you mentioned the term cloud-native earlier, and you need to understand are you truly being cloud-native or are you kind of cloud adjacent, are you leveraging a couple of things, but you're really, you haven't taken advantage of the services and the promise of what these cloud options can offer. All right, Jeremy, 2020 we've turned the calendar. What are you looking at, you know you're planning, you got serverless conference, Serverless Days-- >> Serverless Days Boston. >> Boston, coming up-- >> April 6th in Cambridge. >> So give us a little views to kind of your view point for the year, the event itself, you got your podcast, you got a lot going on. >> Yeah, so my podcast, Serverless Chats. You know I talk to people that are in the space, and we usually get really really technical. So if you're a serverless geek or you like that kind of stuff definitely listen to that. But yeah, but 2020 for me though, this is where I see what is happened to serverless, and this goes back to my "Stop calling everything serverless" post, was this idea that we keep making serverless harder. And so, as a someone whose a serverless purist, I think at this point. I recognize and it frustrates me that it is so difficult now to even though we're abstracting away running that infrastructure, we still have to be very aware of what pieces of the infrastructure we are using. Still have setup the SQS Queue, still have to setup Event Bridge. We still have to setup the Lambda function and API gateways and there's services that make it easier for us, right like we can use a serverless framework, or the SAM framework, or ARCH code or architect framework. There's a bunch of these different ones that we can use. But the problem is that it's still very very tough, to understand how to stitch all this stuff together. So for me, what I think we're going to see in 2020, and I know there is hints for this serverless framework just launched their components. There's other companies that are doing similar things in the space, and that's basically creating, I guess what I would call an abstraction as a service, where essentially it's another layer of abstraction, on top of the DSL's like Terraform or Cloud Formation, and essentially what it's doing is it's saying, "I want to launch an API that does X-Y-Z." And that's the outcome that I want. Understanding all the best practices, am I supposed to use Lambda Destinations, do I use DLQ's, what should I throttle it at? All these different settings and configurations and knobs, even though they say that there's not a lot of knobs, there's a lot of knobs that you can turn. Encapsulating that and being able to share that so that other people can use it. That in and of itself would be very powerful, but where it becomes even more important and I think definitely from an enterprise standpoint, is to say, listen we have a team that is working on these serverless components or abstractions or whatever they are, and I want Team X to be able to use, I want them to be able to launch an API. Well you've got security concerns, you've got all kinds of things around compliance, you have what are the vetting process for third-party libraries, all that kind of stuff. If you could say to Team X, hey listen we've got this component, or this piece of, this abstracted piece of code for you, that you can take and now you can just launch an API, serverless API, and you don't have to worry about any of the regulations, you don't have to go to the attorneys, you don't have to do any of that stuff. That is going to be an extremely powerful vehicle for companies to adopt things quickly. So, I think that you have teams now that are experimenting with all of these little knobs. That gets very confusing, it gets very frustrating, I read articles all the time, that come out and I read through it, and this is all out of date, because things have changed so quickly and so if you have a way that your teams, you know and somebody who stays on top of the learning this can keep these things up to date, follow the most, you know leading practices or the best practices, whatever you want to call them. I think that's going to be hugely important step from making it to the teams that can adopt serverless more quickly. And I don't think the major cloud vendors are doing anything in this space. And I think SAM is a good idea, but basically SAM is just a re-write of the serverless framework. Whereas, I think that there's a couple of companies who are looking at it now, how do we take this, you know whatever, this 1500 line Cloud Formation template, how do we boil that down into two or three lines of configuration, and then a little bit of business logic. Because that's where we really want to get to. It's just we're writing business logic, we're no where near there right now. There's still a lot of stuff that has to be done, around configuration and so even though it's nice to say, hey we can just write some business logic and all the infrastructure is handled for us. The infrastructure is handled for us, if we configure it correctly. >> Yeah, really remind me some of the general thread we've been talking about, Cloud for a number of years is, remember back in the early days, is cloud is supposed to be inexpensive and easy to use, and of course in today's world, it isn't either of those things. So serverless needs to follow those threads, you know love some of those view points Jeremy. I want to give you the final word, you've got your Serverless Day Boston, you got your podcast, best way to get in touch with you, and keep up with all you're doing in 2020. >> Yeah, so @Jeremy_daly on Twitter. I'm pretty active on Twitter, and I put all my stuff out there. Serverless Chats podcast, you can just find, serverlesschats.com or any of the Pod catchers that you use. I also publish a newsletter that basically talks about what I'm talking about now, every week called Off by None, which is, collects a bunch of serverless links and gives them some IoPine on some of them, so you can go to offbynone.io and find that. My website is jeremydaly.com and I blog and keep up to date on all the kind of stuff that I do with serverless there. >> Jeremy, great content, thanks so much for joining us on theCube. Really glad and always love to shine a spotlight here in the Boston area too. >> Appreciate it. >> I'm Stu Miniman. You can find me on the Twitter's, I'm just @Stu thecube.net is of course where all our videos will be, we'll be at some of the events for 2020. Look for me, look for our co-hosts, reach out to us if there's an event that we should be at, and as always, thank you for watching theCube. (upbeat music)