>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hi I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, we're here for a special CUBE Conversation. Obviously we're remote, we're in the studio most of the time but on the weekends I get an opportunity to talk to friends and experts. And here I wanted to really dig in with an awesome case study around AWS Cloud in a use case that I think is game changing for local communities, especially in this time of COVID. You have local communities where local journalism is suffering, but also connectedness. And connected experience is what's going to make the difference as we come out of this pandemic as a societal impact. But there's a real tech story here I want to dig into. We're here with Dan Drew who is the vice president of engineering for Clinical Didja, they make an app called Local BTV which basically takes over the air television and streams it to an app in your local area, enabling access to linear TV and on demand as well for local communities. It's a phenomenal project and it's unique. Somewhat misunderstood right now, but I think it's going to be something that's going to be very important. Dan, thank you for coming on and chatting with me. >> Thanks for having me, appreciate it. >> Okay so I'm a big fan, I've been using the app in San Francisco. I know New York's on the docket, it might even be deployed. You guys have a unique infrastructure capability that's powering this new app location, and this is the focus of this conversation in this CUBE Talk. Amazon is a big part of this. Talk about your local BTV that you are protecting, this platform for broadcast television, it has a unique hybrid cloud architecture. Can you tell us about that? >> Yeah certainly, I mean, one of our challenges, as you know, is that we are local television. So unlike a lot of products on the market, you know like your Hulus or other VMPV products, which primarily service sort of national feeds and things like that. We have to be able to receive over-the-air signals in each market. Many channels that serve local content are still over the air. And that is why you don't see a lot of them on those types of services. They tend to get ignored and unavailable to many users. So that's part of our value proposition is to not only allow more people to get access to these stations, but allow the stations themselves to reach more people. So that means that we have to have a local presence in each market in order to receive those signals. So that sort of forces us to have this hybrid model where we have local data centers, but then we also want to be able to effectively manage those in a central way, and we do that in our cloud platform which is hosted on Amazon and using Amazon services. >> All right let me take a breath here. You have a hybrid architecture on Amazon so since you're using a lot of the plumbing, take us through what the architecture of this ram is on using a variety of their services. Can you unpack that? >> Yeah, so obviously it starts with some of the core services like EC2, S3, RDS, which everybody on the planet uses. We're also very focused on using ECS; we're completely containerized which allows us to more effectively deploy our services and scale them. And one of the benefits on that front that Amazon provides is that because their container service is wired into all the other services like cloudwatch metrics, auto-scaling policies, IM policies, things like that. It means it allows us to manage those things in a much more effective way, and use those services to much more effectively make those things reliable and scalable. We also use a lot of their technologies, for example, for collecting metrics. So we use Kinesis and Redshift to collect realtime metrics from all of our markets across the U.S. That allows us to do that reliably and at scale without having to manage complex ETL systems like Kafka and other things. As well as store it in a large data lake like Redshift and Corid for analytics and things like that. We also use technologies like Media Tailor, so for example, one of the big features that most stations do not have access to is realtime targeted advertising. In the broadcast space, many ads are sold and placed weeks in advance, and not personalized obviously for that reason. Whereas one of the big features we can bring to the table using our system and technologies like Media Tailor is we can provide realtime targeted advertising which is a huge win for these stations. >> What are some of the unique capabilities that you guys can offer broadcast station partners 'cause you're basically going in and partnering with broadcast stations as well. But also you're enabling new broadcasters to jump in as well. What are some of the unique capabilities that you're delivering, what is Amazon bringing to the table there and what are you doing that's unique? >> Well again, it allows us, because we can do things centrally as well as the local reception, it allows us to do some interesting things like if we have channels that are allowed to broadcast even outside their market, then we can easily put them in other markets and get them even more viewers that way. We have the ability to even do hyper local or community channels that are not necessarily broadcasting all of the standard antennas, but can get us a feed from whatever zip code in whatever market, and we can give them a way to reach viewers in the entire market, in other markets, or even just in their local area. So consider the case where maybe a high school or a college wants to show games or local content, we provide a platform where they can now do that, and reach more people using our app and our platform very very easily. So that's another area that we want to help expand is not just your typical view of local of what's available in Phoenix, but what's available in a particular city in that area or a local community where they want to reach their community more effectively or even have content that might be interesting to other communities in Phoenix or one of the other markets. >> Now I think, just going on a side tangent here, I talked with your partner, Jim Long, who's the CEO, you guys have an amazing business opportunity. Again, I think it's kind of misunderstood, but it's very clear to me that someone who follows and has huge passion about local journalism, you know you see awesome efforts out there like Charlie Sennott from the Ground Truth Project Report for America, they take a journalism kind of print view, but if you add that Didja business model onto this local journalism, you can enable more video locally. I mean, that's really the killer app, video. And now COVID more than ever, I really want to know things like there's a mural in downtown Palo Alto, Black lives matter, I want to know what's going on with the local summer restaurants, putting people out on the sidewalks. Right now I'm limited to like next door or very laggy media, whether it's the website, so again, I think this is an opportunity for that, plus education. I mean, Amazon educate for instance, you can get a degree on computing by sitting on the couch. So again, this is a paradigm shift from an application standpoint that you're providing essentially linear TV to that. >> Exactly. >> In the local economy. So I just want to give you a shout-out for that because I think it's super important. I think people should get behind this, so congratulations. Okay I'm off on my little rant there. Let's get back down to some of that cloud stuff 'cause I think what's super interesting to me is you guys can stand up infrastructure very quickly, and what you've done here, you've leveraged the benefits of Amazon and the goodness of cloud, you essentially can stand up a metro region pretty quickly and pretty impressive. So I got to ask you, what Amazon services are most important for your business? >> Well like I said, I think for us, it's managing the central services so we sort of talked about managing the software, the APIs, and those are kind of the glue, so for us standing up a new metro is obviously getting the data center contracts and all the other messy stuff you have to deal with, just to have a footprint. But essentially once we have that in place, we can spin up the software in the data center and have it hooked into our central service within hours. And we can be starting channels literally within half a day. So that's the real win for us is having all that central glue and that central management system and the scalability where we can just add another 10, 20, 50, 100 markets and the system is set up to scale centrally where we can start collecting metrics through Cloud watch from those data centers, we're collecting logs and diagnostic information so we can detect health and everything else centrally and monitor and operate all of these things centrally in a way that is sane and not crazy. We don't need a 24/7 knock of a thousand people to do this, you know, and do that in a way that we, as a relatively small company, can still scale and do that in a sensible way, and a cost-effective way, which is obviously very important for us at our size, but at any size, you want to make sure if you're going to go into 200 plus markets that you have a really good cost model and that's one of the things where Amazon has really really helped us is allow us to do some really complex things, and in an efficient, scalable, reliable, and cost-effective way. The cost for us to go into a new metro now is so small relatively speaking that that's really what allows us to do as a business and now we just opened up New York and we're going to keep expanding on that model so that's been a huge win for us is evaluating what Amazon can bring to the table versus other third parties or building our own obviously-- >> So Amazon gives you the knock basically leverage and scale. The data center you're referring to, that's pretty much just to get an origination point in the territory. >> Dan: Exactly, that's right. >> So it's not like it's a super complex data center. You can just go in, making sure that they got all the normal path to recovery and the normal stuff, it's not like a heavy duty buildup. Can you explain that? >> Yeah, so one thing we do do in our data centers is because we are local, we have sort of primary data centers where we do do transcoding and origination of the video so we receive the video locally and then we want to transcode and deliver it locally and that way we're not sending video across the country and back type of thing. So that is sort of the hybrid part of our model. So we stand that up, but then that is all managed by the central service. So we essentially have another container cluster using Kubernetes in this case. But that Kubernetes cluster is essentially told what to do by everything that's running in Amazon. So we essentially stand up the Kubernetes cluster, we wire it up to the central service, and then from then on, we just go into the central service and say stand up these channels and it all pops up. >> Well my final question on the Amazon piece is really about the future capability besides having a CUBE channel which we'd love to have on there, I told my guys we'll get there. But we're just too busy working around the clock as you guys are with COVID-19. (overlapping chatter) I could almost see a slew of new services coming out, just on the Amazon side. If I'm on the Amazon side I'm thinking, okay I'll post this as an opportunity for me. I can see sage making and machine learning coming in and adding value for the user experience. And also enabling their own stuff. They've got a ton of stuff with Prime and moving people around and delivering things. I mean the headroom for Amazon in this thing is off the charts. But that being said, that's Amazon, I could see them winning with this. I know certainly I know you're using Elemental as well, but for you guys on the consumer side, what features and what new things do you see on the roadmap or what you might envision the future looking like? >> Well, I think part of it I think there's two parts. One of it is what are we going to deliver ourselves so we talked about adding community content and continuing to evolve the local BTV product. But we also see ourselves primarily as a local TV platform. For example, you mentioned Prime and a lot of people are now realizing, especially with COVID and what's going on, the importance of local television and so we're in discussions on a lot of fronts with people to see how we can be the provider of that local TV content. And that's really a lot of stations are super excited about that too 'cause you know, again, looking to expand their own footprint and their own reach, we're basically the way that we can join those two things together between the stations, the other video platforms, and distribution mechanisms, and the viewers obviously at the end of the day, we want to make sure local viewers can get more local content and stuff that's interesting to them. Like you said with the news, it is not uncommon that you may have your Bay area stations but the news is still maybe very focused on LA or San Francisco or whatever. And so being able to enable the smaller regional outlets to reach people in that area in a more local fashion is definitely a big way that we can facilitate that from the platform and viewer perspective. So we're hoping to do that in any way we can. Our main focus is make local great and get the broadcast world out there and that's not going anywhere especially with things like HSE3 on the front, and we just want to make sure those people are successful and enrich people and make revenue. >> Yeah, you got a lot of (mumbles) but I think one of the things that's interesting about your project that I find is a classic case of people who focus in on just current market value investing, versus kind of the game-changing shifts is that you guys are horizontally enabling in the sense that there's so many different use cases I was pointing out from my perspective, journalism, and I look at that and I'm like, okay that's a huge opportunity just there, changing the game on societal impact on journalism, huge education opportunity for court cutters. You're talking about a whole nother thing around TV so I got to ask ya, pretend I'm an idiot for a minute. Pretend, let's make it, I am an idiot. I don't understand, isn't this just TV? What are you doing different because it's only local. I can't watch San Francisco if I'm in Chicago and I can't watch Chicago if I'm in San Francisco, I get that. But why is this important? Isn't this just TV? Can't I just get it on YouTube, TikTok, what is this? >> Yes and no. There's TV and then there's TV as you know. If you look at the TV landscape, it's pretty fractured but typically when you're talking about YouTube or Hulu, you're talking about sort of cable TV channels. You know, you're going to get your A&E, you're going to get some of your local through ABC and whatnot, but you're not really getting local content. So for example, in our Los Angeles market, there are about 100 and something over-the-air channels. If you look at the cross section of which of those channels you can get on your other big name products like your Hulus or your YouTube TV, you're talking about maybe half a dozen or a dozen. So we're talking about 90 plus channels that are local to LA that you can only get through an antenna. And those are hitting the type of demographics that, quite frankly, some of these other players just don't see as important. >> Under different minorities or immigrants, the each entrepreneurs of our country. >> Yes exactly, so we might see a lot of Korean channels or Spanish channels or other minority channels that you just won't get over your cable channels or your typical online video providers. So that's, again, why we feel like we've got something that is really unique and that is really under-served as far as on a television standpoint. The other side that we bring to the table is that a lot of these broadcast channels are under served themselves in terms of technology. If you look at ad insertion and a lot of the technical discussions about how to do live TV and how to get live TV out there, it's very focused on the OTT market, so again, going back to the Hulus and the YouTubes. >> OTT, over-the-top you mean. >> Over the top, yeah. And so this broadcast market basically had no real evolution on that front in a while and I sort of mentioned the way ad buying works. It's still sort of the traditional ad buying that happens a couple weeks in front, not a lot of targeted or anything ability. And even when we get to HSE3, you're now relying on having an HES3 TV and you're still tied to an antenna, etc, etc, which is, again, a good move forward, but still not covering the spectrum of what these guys really want to reach and do. So that's where we kind of fill in the gaps using technology and filling in the gap of receiving a signal and bringing these technologies to not only the ad insertion and the stuff we can do for the livestream, but providing analytics and other tools to the stations that they really don't have right now unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money for Nielsen, which a lot of local small stations don't do. So we can provide a lot of analytics on viewership and targeting and things like that that they're really looking forward to and really excited about. >> All right, I got to ask you, put you on the spot here, 'cause I always see Andy Jassy at (mumbles) hopefully I'll see him this year if they do an in-person event. He's really dynamic and you should send him an email; he tends to read his emails a lot, and if you're a customer and I know you are, but I've got to ask you, if you bumped into Andy Jassy on the elevator and he's like, hey why should I pay attention to Didja? Why is it important for Amazon and why is it important for the world? How does it raise the bar on society? >> Well I think part of what Amazon's goal, especially if you get into their work in public sector and education, that's really where we see we're focusing with the community and local television and enabling new types of local television. So I think there's a lot of advantage and I hate the word synergy, but I'm going to use the word synergy. As far as our goals in those areas around really helping, one of the terms flying around now is the double bottom line where it's not just about revenue, it's about how do we help people in communities be better as well? So there's a bottom line in terms of people, benefit, and revenue in that way, not just financial revenue. And that's very important to us as a business as well is that's why we're focused on local TV and we're not just doing another Fubo where it's really easy to get an IP national fee. It's really important to us to enable the local community and the local broadcasters and the local channels and the local viewers to get the content that they're missing out on right now. So I think there's a, I hate it but I'm going to use it, synergy on that front as far as-- >> Synergy and the new normal. >> Synergy and the new normal? I think COVID and some of the other things that have been happening in the news with the Black Lives Matter and a lot of the things going around where local and community has been in the spotlight and getting the word out and having really local things versus I'm just seeing this thing from three counties away which I don't really care about and it's not telling me what's happening down the street like you said. And that's really what we want to help improve and support. >> Yeah it's a great mission, and it's one we care a lot about theCUBE. We've seen the data: content drives community engagement, and community's where the truth is. So in an era when we need more transparency and more truth, you get more cameras on the street, you're going to start to see things. That's what we're seeing a lot of things. And as more data's exposed, as you turn the lights on, so to speak, that kind of data will only help communities grow, heal, and thrive. So to me, big believer in what you guys are doing. Local BTV has a great mission. I wish you guys well and thanks for explaining the infrastructure on Amazon. I think you guys have a really killer use case technically. I mean to me, I think the technical superiority of what you've done give ability to stand up to these kinds of network with massive number of potential reach out of the gate, that's pretty impressive, congratulations. >> Great, thank you very much and thanks for taking the time. (upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. Hi, I'm John Furrier with the Cube. We're here for a special cube conversation about seeing with remote where Studio most of the time. But on the weekends we get an opportunity to talk to friends and experts, and he I wanted to really dig in with an awesome case study around AWS Cloud in a use case that I think is game changing for local community, especially this time of Cove. It you have local community work, local journalism suffering, but also connectedness and connected experiences was going to make. The difference is we come out of this pandemic a societal impact. But there's a real tech story here I want to dig into. We're here with Dan. True is the vice president of engineering for chemical Didja. They make an app called local Be TV, which basically takes over the air television and stream it to an app in your local area, enabling access to linear TV and on demand as well. For local communities. It's a phenomenal project, and it's unique, somewhat misunderstood right now, but I think it's going to be something that's going to really put Dan, thank you for coming on and chatting with >>Thanks for having me appreciate it. >>Okay, so I'm a big fan. I've been using the APP in San Francisco. I know New York's on the docket might be deployed. You guys have a unique infrastructure capability that's powering this new application, and this is the focus of the conversations. Q. Talk Amazon is a big part of this talk about your local BTV that you architect with this platform for broadcast television as a unique hybrid cloud architecture. Can you tell us about that? >>Certainly. I mean, one of our challenges, as you know, is that we are local television eso. Unlike a lot of products on the markets, you know, like your Hulu's or other VM PV products, which primarily service sort of national feeds and things like that, we have to be able to receive, um, over the air signals in each market. Um, many channels that serve local content are still over the air, and that is why you don't see a lot of them on those types of services. They tend to get ignored and available to many users. So that's part of our value. Proposition is to not only allow more people to get access to these stations, but, uh, allow the stations themselves to reach more people. So that means that we have to have a local presence in each market in order to receive those signals. Uh, so that's sort of forces us to have this hybrid model where we have local data centers. But then we also want to be able to effectively manage those in a central way. Uh, and we do that in our cloud platform, which is hosted on Amazon and using Amazon services. >>Let me take take a breath. Here. You have a hybrid architecture on Amazon so that you're using a lot of the plumbing, take us through what the architecture is. RAM is on using a variety of their services. Can you unpack that? >>Yeah. So, um, obviously it starts with some of the core services, like easy to s three RDS, which everybody on planet uses. Um, we're also very focused on using e CS. We're completely containerized, which allows us to more effectively deploy our services and scale them. Um, and one of the benefits on that front that Amazon provides is that because they're container services wired into all the other services, like cloud watch metrics, auto scaling policies, I am policies, things like that. It means it allows us to manage those things in a much more effective way. Um, and use those services too much more effectively make those things reliable and scalable. Um, we also use a lot of their technologies, for example, for collecting metrics. So we use kinesis and red shift to collect real time metrics from all of our markets across the US that allows us to do that reliably and at scale without having to manage complex detail systems like Kafka and other things. Um, as well, it's stored in a large data lake like red shift in Korea for analytics. And you know, things like that. Um, we also use, um, technologies like media Taylor s. So, for example, one of the big features that most stations do not have access to Israel. Time targeted advertising in the broadcast space. Many ads are sold and placed weeks in advance. Um, and not personalized, obviously. You know, for that reason, where is one of the big features we can bring to the table using our system and technologies like Media Taylor is we can provide real time targeted advertising, which is a huge win for these stations. >>What are some of the unique capabilities that you guys offer? Broadcast station partners? Because you're basically going in and partnering with broadcast ages as well. But also you're enabling new broadcasters to jump in, and it's well, what are some of the unique capabilities that you're delivering? What is Amazon brings to the table there. What are you doing that >>well again, it allows us because we can do things centrally. You know as well as the local reception. It allows us to do some interesting things. Like if we have channels that, um, are allowed to broadcast even outside their market, Um, then we could easily put them in other markets and get them even more of years. That way we have the ability to even do, like hyper local or community channels, you know that are not necessarily broadcasting over the standard antennas, um, but can get us a feed from, you know, whatever zip code and whatever market and we can give them a way to reach viewers in the entire market and other markets, or even just in their local area. So, you know, consider the case where maybe a high school or college you know, wants to show games or local content. Um, we provide a platform where they can now do that and reach more people, Um, using our app in our platform very, very easily. So that's another area that we want help Expand is not just your typical view of local of what's available in Phoenix, Um, but what's available in a particular city in that area or a local community where they want to reach their community more effectively or even have content that might be interesting to other communities in Phoenix or one of the other markets. >>You know, I think just is not going to side tangent here. I talked with your partner, Jim Long, who's the CEO? You guys have an amazing business opportunity again. I think it's kind of misunderstood, but it's very clear to me that follows in. It has huge passion of local journalism. You see awesome efforts out there by Charlie Senate from the Ground Truth Project report for America. They take a journalism kind of friend view. But if you add like that digital business model onto this local journalism, you can enable more video locally. I mean, that's really the killer app of video. And now it Koven. More than ever. I really want to know things like this. A mural downtown Palo Alto. Black lives, matters. I want to know what's going on. Local summer restaurants, putting people out of sidewalks. Right now I'm limited to, like, next door or very Laghi media, whether it's the website. So again, I think this is an opportunity to that plus education. I mean, Amazon education, for instance. You can get a degree cloud computing by sitting on the couch. So you know, this is again. This is a paradigm shift from an application standpoint, but you're providing essentially linear TV to app because in the local economy, So I just want to give you a shout out for that because I think it's super important. I think you know, people should get behind this, so congratulations, Okay, I'm often my little rant there. Let's get back down to some of that cloud stuff. So I think it's super interesting to me is you guys can stand up infrastructure very quickly. And what you've done here, you can leverage the benefits of Amazon. Goodness of cloud. You essentially can stand up a metro region pretty quickly. Try it. And it pretty impressive. So I gotta ask you what? Amazon services are most important for your business. >>Um, well, like I said, I think for us it's matching the central services. So we sort of talked about, uh, managing the software, the ap eyes, Um, and those are kind of the glue. So, you know, for us standing up a new metro is obviously, you know, getting the data center contracts and all the other you know, >>and >>ask yourself, you have to deal with just have a footprint. But essentially, once we have that in place, we can spin up the software in the data center and have it hooked into our central service within hours. Right? And we could be starting channels literally, literally within half a day. Um, so that's the really win for us is, um, having all that central blue and that central management system and the scalability where, you know, we can just add another 10 20 5100 markets. And the system is set up to scale centrally, um, where we can start collecting metrics the cloudwatch from those data centers. We're collecting logs and diagnostic information s so we can detect health and everything else centrally and monitor and operate all of these things centrally in a way that is saying and not crazy. We don't need a 24 7 knock of 1000 people to do this. Um, you know, and do that in a way that, you know, we as a relatively small company can still scale and do that in a sensible way in a cost effective way, which is obviously very important for us at our size. But at any size, um, you want to make sure if you're gonna go into 200 plus markets, that you have a really good cost model. Um and that's one of the things that where Amazon has really really helped us is allow us to do some really complex things in an efficient, scalable, reliable and cost effective way. You know, the cost for us to go into the new metro now is so small, you know, relatively speaking, but that's really allows. What allows us to do is the business of now. We just opened up New York, you know, and we're going to keep expanding on that model. So that's been a huge win for us. Is evaluating what Amazon can bring to the table versus other third parties, and we're building our own, you know, obviously which >>So Amazon gives you the knock, basically leverage and scale the data center you're referring to. That's pretty much just to get an origination point in the Derek. Exactly. That's right. So it's not like it's a super complex data center. You can just go in making sure they got all the normal backup recovery in the normal stuff. It's not like a heavy duty build up. Can you explain that? >>Yeah. So one thing we do do in our data centers is because we are local. Um, we have sort of primary data centers where we do do trans coding and origination of the video. So we receive the video locally, and then we want to transport and deliver it locally. And that way we're not sending video across the country and back try to things so that That is sort of the hybrid part of our model. Right? So we stand that up, but then that is all managed by the central service. Right? So we essentially have another container cluster using kubernetes in this case. But that kubernetes cluster is essentially told what to do by everything that's running in Amazon. So we essentially stand up the kubernetes cluster, we wire it up to the Central Service, and then from then on, it just we just go into the Central Service and say, Stand up these channels. Um and it all pops up >>with my final question on the Amazon piece is really about future capabilities Besides having a Cube channel, which I would love to have gone there. And I told my guys, We'll get there, but it's just too busy working around the clock is You guys are with Kobe tonight? Yeah, sand. I can almost see a slew of new services coming out just on the Amazon site. If I'm on the Amazon site, I'm thinking, okay, Outpost is the opportunity for me. I got stage maker machine learning coming in and value for user experience and also, you know, enabling their own stuff. They've got a ton of stuff with prime moving people around and delivering the head room for Amazon. This thing is off the charts. But that being said, that's Amazon could see them winning with this and certainly, you know, using elemental as well. But for you guys on the consumer side, what features and what new things do you see on the road map or what? You might envision the future looking like, >>Well, I think part of it. I think there's two parts. One is what are we gonna deliver ourselves, you know. So we talked about adding community content and continuing to evolve the local beauty product. Um, but we also see ourselves primarily as a local TV platform. Um, and you know, for example, you mentioned prime. And a lot of people are now realizing, especially with Cove, it and what's going on the importance of local television. Uh, and so we're in discussions on a lot of fronts with people to see how how we can be the provider of that local TV content. You know, um and that's really a lot of stationed. Are super excited about that, too, because, you know, again looking to expand their own footprint and their own reach. You know, we're basically the way that we can join those two things together between the stations, the other video platforms and distribution mechanisms and the viewers. Obviously, at the end of the day, um, you know, we want to make sure local viewers can get more local content and stuff that's interesting to them. You know, Like you said with the news, it is not uncommon that you may have your Bay Area stations, but the news is still may be very focused on L. A or San Francisco or whatever, Um and so being able to enable, uh, you know, the smaller regional outlets to reach people in that area in a more local fashion. It is definitely a big way that we can facilitate that from the platform. And you were perspective. So we're hoping to do that in any way we can. You know, our main focus is make local great, you know, get the broadcast world out there, and that's not going anywhere, especially with things like HSC tree. Uh, you know, on that front, um, and you know, we just want to make sure that those people are successful, um, and can reach people and revenue and, you know, >>you got a lot of uncertainty, But I think one of the things that's just think about your project that I find is a classic case of people who focus in on that just the current market value, investing versus kind of game changing shifts is that you guys are horizontally enabling in the sense that there's so many different use cases. I was pointing out from my perspective, journalism. I'm like, I look at that and I'm like, Okay, that's a huge opportunity. Just they're changing the game on Societal impact on journalism, Huge education, opportunity for cord cutters. You're talking about a whole nother thing around TV. So I gotta ask you, you know, pretend I'm an idiot for a minute. Why are pretending that this person from this making I am entity after I don't understand it? Isn't this just TV? What are you doing Different? Because it's only local. I can't watch San Francisco. I'm in Chicago and I can't watch Chicago. I'm in San Francisco. I get that. You know why? Why is this important? Isn't this just TV can I just get on YouTube? I mean, tech talk. Well, talk about the yes >>or no. I mean, there's a TV, and then there's TV, You know, as you know, um and, you know, if you look at the TV landscape just pretty fracture. But typically, when you're talking about YouTube or who you're talking about, sort of cable TV channels, you know you're going to get your Andy, you're gonna get some of your local to ABC and what not? Um, but you're not really getting local contact. And So, for example, in our Los Angeles market, um, we there are There are about 100 something over the air channels. If you look at the cross section of which of those channels you can get on your other big name products like you lose your YouTube TV, you're talking about maybe half a dozen or a dozen, right? So there's like 90 plus channels that are local to L. A. That you can only get through an antenna, right? And those were hitting the type of demographics. You know, quite frankly, some of these other players or just, you know, don't see is important >>under other minorities exact with immigrants. You know, the entrepreneurs of our country? Yes, >>exactly. You know, So, you know, we see a lot of Korean channels or Spanish channels or other. You know, um, minority channels that you just won't get over your cable channels or your typical online video providers. So that's again Why, You know, we feel like we've got something that is really unique. Um, and that is really underserved, you know, as far as on a television sampling, Um, the other side that we bring to the table is that a lot of these broadcast channels, our underserved themselves in terms of technology, Right, if you look at, you know, ad insertion, um and you know a lot of the technical discussions about how to do live TV and how to get live TV out there. It's very focused on the OT market. So again, going back to who lose, and >>then you take a little over the top with the >>over the top. Yeah. Um and so this broadcast market basically had no real evolution on that front in a while. You know, I sort of mentioned like the way ad buying works, you know, it's still sort of the traditional and buying that happens a couple weeks in front, Not a lot of targeted or anything ability. Um, And even when we get to the HSC three, we're now relying on having an h A street TV and you're still tied to an antenna, etcetera, etcetera, which is again, a good move forward, but still not covering the spectrum of what these guys really want to reach and do. So that's where we kind of fill in the gaps, you know, using technology and filling in the gap of receiving a signal and bringing these technologies. So not only the ad insertion and stuff we can do for the live stream, Um, but providing analytics and other tools to the stations, uh, that they really don't have right now, unless you're willing to shell out a lot of money for Neilson, which a lot of local small stations don't do. Uh, so we can provide a lot of analytics on viewership and targeting and things like that that really looking forward to and really excited >>about. I gotta ask you put you on the spot here because I don't see Andy Jassy at reinvent might Hopefully I'll see in this year. They do a person event. He's really dynamic. And you just said, I mean, I think he tends to read his emails a lot. And if you're a customer and you are. But if you bumped into Andy Jassy on the elevators like okay, why should I pay attention to digital? What's why is it important for Amazon? And why is it important for the world? How do you raise the bar on society? >>Well, I think part of what Amazon's goal. And you know, especially if you get into, you know, their work in public sector on education. Um, you know, that's really where we see we're focusing with the community on local television and enabling new types of local television. So I think there's a lot of advantage, and, um, I hate the word synergy, but I'm gonna use the word synergies, you know, um, this for us, You know, our goals in those areas around really helping, you know, uh, you know, one of the terms flying around now is the double bottom line where it's not just about revenue. It's about how do we help people in communities be better as well. Um, so there's a bottom line in terms of uh huh. People benefit and revenue in that way, not just financial revenue. Right. And you know, that's very important to us as a business as well is, you know, that's why we're focused on local TV. And we're not just doing another food. Go where it's really easy to get a nightie national feed. You know, it's really important to us to enable the local community and the local broadcasters and local channels and the local viewers to get the content, um that they're missing out on right now. Um, so I think there's a your energy on that front. Um, as >>far synergy and the new normal to have energy in the new normal. You know, I think I think >>of it. And, you know, um, and some of the other things that have been happening in the news of the black lives matter And, um, you know, a lot of things going around where you know, local and community has been in the spotlight, right? And getting the word out and having really local things versus hundreds. Seeing this thing from you know, three counties away which I don't really care about. It's not telling me what's happening down the street, like you said, Um, and that's really what we want to help improve and support. >>Yeah, no, it's a great mission is one. We care a lot about the Cube. We've seen the data content drives, community engagement and communities where the truth is so in an era where we need more transparency and more truth, you get more cameras on the street, you're going to start to see things, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of things. And as more data is exposed as you turn the lights on, so this week that kind of data will only help communities grow, heal and thrive. So to me, a big believer in what you guys are doing local BTV is a great mission. I wish you guys well, and thanks for explaining the infrastructure on Amazon. I think you guys have a really killer use case. Technically, I mean to me, I think the technical superiority, what you've done, the ability to stand up these kinds of networks with massive number potential reach out of the gate. It's just pretty impressive. Congratulations, >>right? Thank you very much. And thanks for taking the time. >>Okay. Dan Drew, vice president of Jennifer. Did you start up That a lot of potential will. See. Let's go check out the comments on YouTube while we're here. Since we got you, let's see what's going on in the YouTube front year. Yeah, The one question was from someone asked me Was from TV serious that Dan, Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time on Sunday and testing out this new zoom home recording my home studio. But you got to get cleaned up. Thanks for taking the time Problem. Okay, Take care. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stuart Miniman and welcome to this episode of CUBE conversations. I'm here from our Boston area studio. Happy to welcome to the program, Doug Matthews. He's the vice president of product management with Veritas coming to us from Atlanta. Doug, thanks so much for joining us. Nice to see you. >> Hey, great to see you Stuart and thanks for having me today. >> Yeah, so Doug obviously, 2020, there's a lot of change going on, globally, a lot of things happening financially, but one of the ongoing changes that we've been watching and has had huge ripple effects, is of course the impact on cloud. So why don't you bring us in a little bit. Tell us, what you work on, and how cloud has been impacting, what's happening with the data protection or resiliency in your world? >> Sure, so, Veritas Technologies is a long brand of focus on data protection. And we are highly focused on protecting data regardless of where it lives, whether it lives on a customer's premise or whether it lives in a cloud, public cloud architecture, or even in a cloud application. So, for us, this has been a transformational change as more and more people begin to adopt cloud services as the work from home trend starts and we're seeing them much higher emergence of ransomware. >> Yeah, so cloud of course, it is a unevenly distributed if you look at, if look at a countries, if you look at industries, >> Right. >> I'm wondering what you're hearing from customers, what's kind of the 2020 snapshot of where we are with the overall cloud wave. >> Sure, yeah. What we're seeing is a much more rapid adoption of cloud services as businesses and organizations begin to wrestle with the fact that they can't bring people into the office. So the work from home trend, the access to resources needs to be delivered through the cloud applications, even data centers. We're now beginning to see you some supply chain hiccups that are causing the supply chain fulfillment of server orders beginning to slow down. So customers are beginning to think more broadly about cloud gives you agility, operational ability to react to change. So people are accelerating their adoption of cloud resources because they're almost being forced to. >> Yeah, is there anything specific you're seeing are you getting any data maybe with coronavirus as to what service is in the cloud and what impact that's having on your customers? >> Yeah, so dramatic change, right. So for example, Azure Cloud Services are up something like 775%, which is just astounding number, VDI, Virtual Desktops up over 300%, and just massive of these cloud resources is just a continuing component trim. >> Yeah, and how about from a data protection standpoint and security. Obviously, we've seen that the malicious attacks have increased, unfortunately, and when you have more people outside of the enterprise walls itself, there's more things we need to make sure that our data is secure. >> Yeah, absolutely. And we have without a doubt seen a rise in ransomware attacks and malware attacks. What's interesting to note is increasingly the consumer is placing the blame for these attacks, less on the perpetrators and more on the organization and business leaders. For example, over 40% of consumers actually hold the business leader responsible where ransomware attack that their business suffers And (indistinct) percent would actually say that they would stop buying from an organization that suffers from a malware or has been a victim of an attack. So the mindset here is no longer place blame on the perpetrators, but on the business leader and owner that didn't protect their data in such a way that kept the user from being exposed. >> Yeah, Doug, why don't you bring us inside and explain how Veritas is helping in these environments to protect our data? >> Yeah, so I think the first thing is as a business leader begins to think about their cloud contract, they need to understand their SLAs and how that maps to what that cloud provider is going to provide for them. We actually found, recently, we produced a report called the "Truth in Cloud Report" and in that report, we talked to cloud architects and business leaders over 1600 of them that respond, and one of the things that we found pretty interesting is that 85% of the respondents said that the cloud service provider is responsible for protecting their data, but that's completely disconnected from the actual fact that over 53% or so of those that responded actually had an SLA that was higher than their cloud service provider would provide. So they believe it's supposed to be done by the cloud provider, but it isn't being done by the cloud provider to meet their needs. So people really need to think about and analyze who's protecting their data and how they're protected when they move into that cloud architecture. >> Yeah, I have to say I'm a little surprised to hear those results, the drum beat that I've heard from the security industry for the last couple of years has been about the shared responsibility model, there have been some rather public and highly visible failures where say somebody made a false assumption that was something would be turned on and the cloud service providers have come back and said, "Hey, you all, if there's these things you need to do and just because there's a lock on the door, if you don't lock it, we're not responsible for it". It is kind of the analogy I use. Shouldn't we, by 2020 now, where cloud is not new. I would have thought that we would have gotten through some of these rather basic understanding of who's responsible for what and ultimately who needs to answer for these things. >> Yeah, I think we're still in that adoption life cycle and I think there was the... We mapped this as a hype cycle of our own... We're people right in the adoption of cloud and we believe that classically cloud architects, probably 20 to 25% of organizations, have actually fully adopted cloud at this point and are aggressively adopting cloud, but there is such a rush now to get in from these business leaders and architects, who haven't really you've taken the time to frame and understand things that they're now being pulled along in this journey and rediscovering this thing. So we have to keep that drum beat up as some of the cloud laggers or more mainstream technology adopters are beginning to adopt cloud 'cause they haven't stayed aware. I completely agree with you. We've been talking about the shared responsibility model for a long time, but these survey results showed that it's still a problem. >> Doug, you make a great point. You talk about companies have had to compress their cycles and while normally they would have been able to really plan things, walk through what they were going to do, they're often rushing into things a little bit more. So what advice would you give other companies that are now been dipping their toe, but jumping into cloud or they need to accelerate what they're doing, what advice would you make sure that people don't get in a little over their skis or do something that they're going to regret? >> Sure, so the first thing I would say is, have a recovery plan and make sure you rehearse it. Again, back to the blame here is falling on business leaders, so don't get caught by it, make sure that you understand your recovery plan, make sure that you rehearse it and that it works. The second thing is, I would absolutely read that fine print of your contract and make sure that your required SLAs match up with what your cloud services provider provides, or you need to adapt technology that helps you to adjust to make sure that you achieve that SLA. And then the final thing as you're doing all this, so many people look at cloud for cost optimization as an outcome, make sure you don't overpay because the there are various levels of cloud storage, cloud storage is extremely expensive, cloud resources are expensive. Typically people think about the actual host itself or the instance itself, make sure that you think about the storage as well. So use things like deduplication or lower tiers of storage to optimize your cost efficiency. >> All right, so Doug as we mentioned earlier in the discussion Veritas has been around for awhile really well understood how you help customers, help connect us as to what you're doing for the cloud specifically. >> Sure, so specifically for cloud, let's focus on an upcoming release. I think most people that are probably watching this are familiar with our product called NetBackup, it's the enterprise leader in data protection. NetBackup is designed to solve the data protection challenges across all infrastructure whether it's your typical on premise infrastructure or new cloud architectures. So in these new cloud architectures, we've done things to make sure that you efficiently utilize cloud storage. So we do things like deduplication, we also control network bandwidth and make sure that you minimize rather your impact on network bandwidth. So you've minimize your overall cost requirements associated with cloud or data protection. The other thing that we're doing in this next release, which I think is really exciting is, we're going to take our cloud point solution and our resiliency platform solution, these solutions are designed to help customers, efficiently recover in cloud as well as do it in a very quick and automated fashion. And we're going to bake those into our NetBackup product. So the NetBackup consumer will automatically have access to these two new technologies that we've been developing for the last several years. So that's really exciting for us to be including those with our NetBackup product. >> All right, and Doug, when we talk about cloud, is this supported across any cloud or there are specific integrations that we should understand or just where does this fit in the entire, on a multicloud ecosystem? >> Yeah, so the one other thing, again, about NetBackup being a platform, it support over 1400 different data sources, over 800 different data targets, and that includes over 60 cloud providers, so it supports us this broad ecosystem of cloud architecture but where that makes sense, we always go deep. So we go deep with your traditional cloud providers, like AWS or Azure and provide that deeper level capability for those those cloud providers. >> All right, great. What else should we know about what's new from Veratis's cloud offering? >> Yeah, I think when we build our cloud solutions, we focus on a four stage lifecycle of a customer. For example, we realized that customer wants to migrate the cloud, they want to protect their resources in cloud, they want to be able to recover when the time comes and then optimize their cloud footprint. So we tend to focus in those four pillars to achieve success for our customers. >> Yeah, a question on that, I think about moving to the cloud, there's a lot of discussion about how do I modernize my environment and often it's I move to the cloud, but then how do I really become cloud native, if you will. So I'm making updates and I'm making changes. If I think about backup traditionally, it was, let me get something, let me put it in place and I'm going to run it that way for years. So how does Veritas make sure that as I'm modernizing as I'm making changes that my data is still going to be protected no matter where I am along that journey. >> Sure, so I think as customers are migrating to and adopting cloud, their first stage on the train or their first station that they come to on the train is that lift and shift approach. We're going to take everything from on premise and we're going to move it to the cloud. So we have technologies that will help our customer do that with automated failback, so they can set up the replication solution, push a button now they're up and running in cloud, hey, it didn't work, push the button and they're back down in their on premise environment, adjust and do it when it makes sense and they're ready to make it make it work. So we have a fairly robust set of technologies that can help in that lift and shift process, lift and shift process. The other thing that we provide is for those infrastructure as code guys, the guys that are further out that are thinking, how do I natively build cloud based solutions? We have a very full suite of APIs so that the customer can implement their infrastructure as code requirements right there through that Swagger interface that you would expect and deploy infrastructure as code environments in cloud, utilizing our enterprise class API. So we're purpose built to be able to help customers get the cloud, and then also support those cloud applications that are built there natively. >> Yeah, Doug, I'm wondering, do you have either a customer example, maybe anonymized you can share, or just any general cloud learnings about where your customers are and how Veritas is helping them? >> Sure, so one of the first things that we see customers try to accomplish is the move of their backup storage infrastructure into a longterm storage in cloud. So they might use it as a replacement for tape, they might use it as a replacement for disk, and they want to live in the cloud environment. So we have a capability, we call it CloudCatalyst that moves data very efficiently from on prem into the cloud, keeps it deduplicated, optimizes it for wide area network transmit, and really efficiently moves that data in the cloud, and then really what's important is once it gets in the cloud, it doesn't touch that data. So we have a large customer who's got over a couple of petabytes of data in Europe that wanted to make that migration to cloud, they were using another provider at the time, so we came in and we were actually able to save them over 98% of their overall operational cost associated with moving and migrating that data just based on this one capability. So that's a key element, right. As people are moving that data to cloud, make sure that it stays efficient, optimized, deduplicated in stored efficient. >> All right, Doug, I'll give you the final word. >> Yeah, I think my warning for customers is to make sure that they are well-protected with their data state in cloud. Understand what your cloud service provider provides, make sure that your SLOs, your service level objectives are going to be met by the technologies that you deploy in order to solve your cloud problems. And then think about things holistically, think about it first from the migration, then how you protect it, then once you get there, what do you do to recover, make you test that. And then once you've got everything kind of thought through and ready to implement, make sure that you've optimized it to be efficient in it's cost utilization and in it's operations. >> All right, well, Doug Matthews, thank you so much for the updates, we really appreciate you sharing us some important tips for customers as they go along their cloud journey. >> Thank you so much, Stuart. >> All right, I'm Stuart Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (gentle music)

>> From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusets, it's theCUBE! (techno music) Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> Hi. I'm Stu Miniman and this is a Cube Conversation from our Boston area studio. Welcome back to the program. Bobby Patrick, who is the Chief Marketing Officer of UiPath. Bobby, good to see you. >> Great to be here Stu. >> Alright. Bobby, we're going to tackle head-on an interesting discussion that's been going on in the industry. Of course, Artificial Intelligence is this wave that is impacting a lot when you look at earnings reports, everyone's talking about it. Most companies are understanding how they're doing it. It is not a new term. I go back reading my history of technology, Ada Lovelace, 150 years ago when she was helping to define what a computer was. She made the Lovelace objective, I believe they said - >> Right. >> Which was later quoted by Turing and the like is that if we can describe it in code, it's probably not Artificial Intelligence cause their not building new things - >> Right. >> And being able to change on there, so there's hype around AI itself, but UiPath is one of the leaders in Robotic Process Automation and how that fits in with AI and Machine Learning, all of these other terms it can get a bit of an acronym soup and we all can't agree on what the terms are. So, let's start with some of the basics Bobby. Please give us RPA and AI and we'll get into it from there. >> Well, Robotic Process Automation, according to the analysts, like Forester are part of the overall AI broader kind of massive, massive market. AI itself has many different, different, routes. Deep learning right, and machine learning, natural language processing, right and so on. I think AI is a term that covers many different grounds. And RPA, AI applies two ways. It applies within RPA and that we have a technology called Computer Vision. It's how a robot looks at a screen like how a human does, which is very, very difficult actually. You look at a citrix terminal session, or a VDI session, different than an Excel sheet, different than as SASAB, and most processes across all of those, so a robot has to be able to look at all of, all of those screen elements, and understand them right. AI within Computer Vision around understanding documents, looking at unstructured data, looking at handwriting. Conversational understanding. Looking at text in an email determining context, helping with chatbots. But a number of those components, doesn't mean we have to build that all ourselves. What RPA does is we bring it all together. We make it easy to automate and build and create the data flow of a process. Then you can apply AI to that, right. So, I think, two years ago when I first joined UiPath, putting RPA and AI in the same sentence people laughed. Year ago we said, ya know what, RPA is really the path to AI in business operations. Now, ya know we say that we're the most highly valued AI company in the world and no one has ever disagreed. >> Yeah, so it's good to lay out some of the adopting cause one of the things to look at and say if I looked at this product two or three years ago, it's not the product that it is today. We know how fast software - >> Right. Is making changes along the line. Second thing, automation itself is something we've been talking about my entire career. >> Right. When I look at things we were doing 5, 10, 15 years ago, and calling automation, we kind of laugh at it. Because today, automation absolutely is making a lot of changes. RPA is taking that automation in a very strategic direction for many companies there. It's the conversation we had last year at your conference was, RPA is the gateway drug if you will. >> Right. >> Of that environment because automation has scared a lot of people. Am I just doing scripts, what do I control, what do I set? Maybe just give us that first grounding of where that automation path is, has come and is going. >> So, there's different kinds of automation right as you said. We've had automation for decades, primarily in IT. Automation was primarily around API to API integration. And that's really hard, right. It requires developers, engineers, it requires them to keep it current. It's expensive and takes a longer time. Along comes the technology, RPA and UiPath, right were you can automate fairly quickly. There's built in recorders and you can do it with a drag and drop, like a flow chart. You can automate a process, and that, that automation is immediately beneficial. Meaning that outcome, is immediate. And, the cost to doing that is small in comparison. And I think, maybe it's the longtail of automation in some ways. It's all of these things that we do around a SAP process. The reality is if you have SAP, or you have Oracle, or you have Workday, the human processes around that involve still a Spreadsheet. It involves PDF documents. A great, one of my favorite examples right now on YouTube with Microsoft is Chevron. Chevron has hundreds of thousands of PDF's that is generated from every oil rig every day. It has all kinds of data in different formats. Tables, different structured and semi-structured data. They would actually extract that data, manually. To be able to process that and analyze that, right. Working with Microsoft AI and UiPath RPA they're able to automate that entire massive process. And now they're on stage talking about it, Microsoft and UiPath events right. And, they call that AI. That's applying AI to a massive problem for them. They need the robot to be completely accurate though. You don't to worry that the data that is being extracted from the PDF's is inaccurate, right. So, Machine Learning goes into that. There's exception management that's a part of that process as well. They call it AI. >> Yeah, some of this is just, people in the industry, the industry watchers is, we get very particular on different terminology. Let's not conflate Artificial Intelligence, or Augmented Intelligence with Machine Learning, because their different environments. I've heard Forester talk about, right, it's a spectrum though, there's an umbrella for some of these. So, we like to get not too pedantic on individual terms itself. >> Right. >> Um - >> Let me give you more examples. I think the term robotic and RPA, yes, it's true that the vast majority of the last couple of years with RPA have been very rules based, right. Because most processes today like in a call center, there's a rule. Do this and this, then this and this. And so, you're automating that same rules based structure. But once that data's flowing through, you can actually then look at the history of that data and then turn a rules based automation into an experience based automation. And how do you do that? You apply Machine Learning algorithms. You apply Data Robot, LMAI, IBM Watson to it, right. But, it's still the RPA platform that is driving that automation, it's just no longer rules based it's experience based. A great example at UiPath Together Dubai recently, was Dubai customs. They had a process where when you declared something, let's say you box of chocolate, they had to open up a binder and find a classification code for that box of chocolate. Well, they use our RPA product and they make a call out to IBM Watson as a part of the automation, and they just write in, pink box of candy filled chocolate. And it takes its Deep Learning, it comes back with a classification code, all part of an automated process. What happens? Dubai customs lines go from being a two hours to a few minutes, right. It's a combination of our RPA capability and our automation board capability and the ability to bring in IBM Watson. Dubai customs says they applied AI now and solved a big problem. >> One of the things I was reading through the recent Gartner Magic Quadrant on RPA, and they had two classifications. One was, kind of the automation does it all, and the other was the people and machines. Things like chatbox, some of the examples you've been giving there seem to be that combination. Where do those two fit together or are those distinctions that you make? >> Yeah, I mean Gartner's interesting. Gartner's a very IT-centric analyst firm, right and IT often in my view are often very conventional thinkers and not the fastest to adopt breakthrough technologies. They weren't the fastest to adopt Cloud, they weren't the fastest to adopt on-demand CRM, and they weren't the fastest to jump onto RPA because they believe, why can't we use API for everything. And the Gartner analysts is kind of, in the beginning of the process of the Magic Quadrant, they spent a lot of time with us and they were trying hard to say that was, you should solve everything with an API. That's just not reality, right? It's not feasible, and it's not affordable, right? But, RPA is just not the automation of a task or process, it's then applying a whole other set of other technologies. We have 700 partners today in our ecosystem. Natural Language processing partners, right. Machine learning partners. Chatbox partners, you mentioned. So we want to be, we want to make it very easy. In a drag and drop way. To be able to apply these great technologies to an automation to solve some big problem. What's fun to me right now is there's a lot of great startups. They come out of say insurance, or they come out of financial services and they've got a great algorithm and they know the business really well. And they probably have one or two amazing customers, and they're stuck. We, for them, this came from a partner of ours, you're becoming, you UiPath, you're becoming our best route to market because you have the data. You have the work flow. Our job I think in some ways, is to make it easy to bring these technologies together to apply them to an automation to make that through a democratized way where a non-engineer can do this, and I think that's what's happening. >> Yeah, those integrations between environments can be very powerful something we see. Every shop has lots of applications, has lots of technical data and they're not just sweeping the floor of everything they have. What are some of the limits of AI and RPA today, what do you see things going? >> I think, Deep Learning we see very little of that. It's probably applied to some kind of science project and things within companies. I think for the vast majority of our customers, they use machine learning within RPA for Computer Vision by default. But, ya know they're still not really at a stage of mass adoption of what algorithms do I want to apply to a process. I think we're trying to make it easier for you to be able to drag and drop AI we call it, to make it easier to apply. But, I think we're in very early days. And as you mentioned, there's market confusion on it. I know one thing from our 90 plus customers that are in our advisory boards. I know from them they say their companies struggles with finding an ROI in AI, and, you know, I think we're helping there cause we're applying to real operations. They say the same thing about Blockchain. I don't know Stu. Do you know of a single example of a Blockchain ROI, great example? >> Yeah, it reminds me, Big Data was one of those, over half of the people failed to get the ROI they want. It's one of those promises of certain technology - >> Right. >> That high-level, you know let's poo-poo Bobby things that actually have tangible results - >> Yeah. >> And get things done. But you weren't following the strict guidelines of the API economy. >> Right, well true, exactly right. What I find amazing is, I mentioned in another one of our talks conversations that 23,000 have come to UiPath events this year. To our own events, not trade events and other shows, that's different. They want to get on stage and talk. They're delighted about this. And their talking about, generally speaking, RPA's helping them go digital. But they're all saying their ambition is to apply AI to make those processes smarter. To learn from - to go from rules based to experience based. I think what's beautiful about UiPath, is that we're a platform that you can get there overtime. You can apply - you can predict perhaps the algorithm 's you're going to want to use in two or three years. We're not going to force you, you can apply any algorithm you want to an automation work going through. I think that flexibility is actually for customers, they find it very comforting. >> It's one of those things I say, most companies have a cloud strategy. That needs to be written in, not etched in stone. You need to revisit it every quarter. Same thing with what happening AI and in your space things are changing so fast and they need to be agile. >> That's right. >> They need to be able to make changes. In October, you're going to have a lot of those customers up on stage talking. Where will this AI discussion fit into UiPath forward in Las Vegas. We talk a lot about our AI fabric, framework it's around document understanding, getting heavy robots getting smarter and smarter, what they see on the screen, what they see on a document, what they see with handwriting, and improving the accuracy of visual understanding. Looking at the, face recognition and other types of images and being able to understand the images. Conversational understanding. The tone of an email. Is this person really upset? How upset? Or, a conversational chatbot. Really evolving from mimicking humans with RPA to augmenting humans and I think that story, both in the innovations, the customer examples on stage, I think you're going to see the sophistication of automation's that are being used through UiPath grow exponentially. >> Okay, so I want to give you the final word on this. And I don't want to talk to the people that might poo-poo or argue RPA and AI and ML and all these things. Bring us inside your customers. What...where, how does that conversation start? Are they coming it from AI, ML, RPA or is there, ya know a business discussion that usually catalyzes this engagement? >> Our customer's are starting with digital. They're trying to go digital. They know they need digital transformation, it's been very, very hard. There's a real outcome that comes quickly from taking a mundane task that is expensive, and automating that. The outcomes are quick, often projects that involve our partners like Accenture and others. The payback period on the entire project with RPA can be 6 months, it's self-funding. What other technologies doing B2B is self-funding in one year? That's part of the incredible adoption birth. But, every single customer doesn't stop there. They say okay, I also want to know that this automation is, I want to know that I can go apply AI to this. It's in every conversation. So there's two big booms with UiPath and our RPA. The first is when you go digital, there's some great outcome. There's productivity gain, it's immediate, right. I guess I said the payback period is quick. The second big one is when you go and turn it from a rules based to an experience based process, or you apply AI to it, there's another set of business benefits down the road. As more algorithms come out and things, you keep applying to it. This is sort of the gift that keeps on giving. I think if we didn't have that connection to Machine Learning or AI, I think the enthusiasm level of the majority of our customers would not be anywhere near what it is today. >> Alright, well Bobby really appreciate digging into the customerality, RPA, AI all the acronym soup that was going on and we look forward to UiPath Forward at the Bellagio in Las Vegas this October. >> It'll be fun. Alright, I'm Stu Miniman, as always thank you so much for watching theCube.

>> Live from the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering the 12th Annual MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of MIT CDOIQ here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my cohost Peter Burris. We have two guests on this segment. We have Cortnie Abercrombie, she is the founder of the nonprofit AI Truth, and Carl Gerber, who is the managing partner at Global Data Analytics Leaders. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE Cortnie and Carl. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So I want to start by just having you introduce yourselves to our viewers, what you do. So tell us a little bit about AI Truth, Cortnie. >> So this was born out of a passion. As I, the last gig I had at IBM, everybody knows me for chief data officer and what I did with that, but the more recent role that I had was developing custom offerings for Fortune 500 in the AI solutions area, so as I would go meet and see different clients, and talk with them and start to look at different processes for how you implement AI solutions, it became very clear that not everybody is attuned, just because they're the ones funding the project or even initiating the purpose of the project, the business leaders don't necessarily know how these things work or run or what can go wrong with them. And on the flip side of that, we have very ambitious up-and-comer-type data scientists who are just trying to fulfill the mission, you know, the talent at hand, and they get really swept up in it. To the point where you can even see that data's getting bartered back and forth with any real governance over it or policies in place to say, "Hey, is that right? Should we have gotten that kind of information?" Which leads us into things like the creepy factor. Like, you know target (laughs) and some of these cases that are well-known. And so, as I saw some of these mistakes happening that were costing brand reputation, our return on investment, or possibly even creating opportunities for risk for the companies and for the business leaders, I felt like someone's got to take one for the team here and go out and start educating people on how this stuff actually works, what the issues can be and how to prevent those issues, and then also what do you do when things do go wrong, how do you fix it? So that's the mission of AI Truth and I have a book. Yes, power to the people, but you know really my main concern was concerned individuals, because I think we've all been affected when we've sent and email and all of a sudden we get a weird ad, and we're like, "Hey, what, they should not, is somebody reading my email?" You know, and we feel this, just, offense-- >> And the answer is yes. >> Yes, and they are, they are. So I mean, we, but we need to know because the only way we can empower ourselves to do something is to actually know how it works. So, that's what my missions is to try and do. So, for the concerned individuals out there, I am writing a book to kind of encapsulate all the experiences that I had so people know where to look and what they can actually do, because you'll be less fearful if you know, "Hey, I can download DuckDuckGo for my browser, or my search engine I mean, and Epic for my browser, and some private, you know, private offerings instead of the typical free offerings. There's not an answer for Facebook yet though. >> So, (laughs) we'll get there. Carl, tell us a little bit about Global Data Analytics Leaders. >> So, I launched Analytics Leaders and CDO Coach after a long career in corporate America. I started building an executive information system when I was in the military for a four-star commander, and I've really done a lot in data analytics throughout my career. Most recently, starting a CDO function at two large multinational companies in leading global transformation programs. And, what I've experienced is even though the industries may vary a little bit, the challenges are the same and the patterns of behavior are the same, both the good and bad behavior, bad habits around the data. And, through the course of my career, I've developed these frameworks and playbooks and just ways to get a repeatable outcome and bring these new technologies like machine learning to bear to really overcome the challenges that I've seen. And what I've seen is a lot of the current thinking is we're solving these data management problems manually. You know, we all hear the complaints about the people who are analysts and data scientists spending 70, 80% of their time being a data gatherer and not really generating insight from the data itself and making it actionable. Well, that's why we have computer systems, right? But that large-scale technology in automation hasn't really served us well, because we think in silos, right? We fund these projects based on departments and divisions. We acquire companies through mergers and acquisitions. And the CDO role has emerged because we need to think about this, all the data that an enterprise uses, horizontally. And with that, I bring a high degree of automation, things like machine learning, to solve those problems. So, I'm now bottling that and advising my clients. And at the same time, the CDO role is where the CIO role was 20 years ago. We're really in it's infancy, and so you see companies define it differently, have different expectations. People are filling the roles that may have not done this before, and so I provide the coaching services there. It's like a professional golfer who has a swing coach. So I come in and I help the data executives with upping their game. >> Well, it's interesting, I actually said the CIO role 40 years ago. But, here's why. If we look back in the 1970s, hardcore financial systems were made possible by the technology which allowed us to run businesses like a portfolio: Jack Welch, the GE model. That was not possible if you didn't have a common asset management system, if you didn't have a common cached management system, etc. And so, when we started creating those common systems, we needed someone that could describe how that shared asset was going to be used within the organization. And we went from the DP manager in HR, the DP manager within finance, to the CIO. And in many respects, we're doing the same thing, right? We're talking about data in a lot of different places and now the business is saying, "We can bring this data together in new and interesting ways into more a shared asset, and we need someone that can help administer that process, and you know, navigate between different groups and different needs and whatnot." Is that kind of what you guys are seeing? >> Oh yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well you know once I get to talking (laughs). For me, I can going right back to the newer technologies like AI and IOT that are coming from externally into your organization, and then also the fact that we're seeing bartering at an unprec... of data at an unprecedented level before. And yet, what the chief data officer role originally did was look at data internally, and structured data mostly. But now, we're asking them to step out of their comfort zone and start looking at all these unknown, niche data broker firms that may or may not be ethical in how they're... I mean, I... look I tell people, "If you hear the word scrape, you run." No scraping, we don't want scraped data, no, no, no (laugh). But I mean, but that's what we're talking about-- >> Well, what do you mean by scraped data, 'cause that's important? >> Well, this is a well-known data science practice. And it's not that... nobody's being malicious here, nobody's trying to have a malintent, but I think it's just data scientists are just scruffy, they roll up their sleeves and they get data however they can. And so, the practice emerged. Look, they're built off of open-source software and everything's free, right, for them, for the most part? So they just start reading in screens and things that are available that you could see, they can optical character read it in, or they can do it however without having to have a subscription to any of that data, without having to have permission to any of that data. It's, "I can see it, so it's mine." But you know, that doesn't work in candy stores. We can't just go, or jewelry stores in my case, I mean, you can't just say, "I like that diamond earring, or whatever, I'm just going to take it because I can see it." (laughs) So, I mean, yeah we got to... that's scraping though. >> And the implications of that are suddenly now you've got a great new business initiative and somebody finds out that you used their private data in that initiative, and now they've got a claim on that asset. >> Right. And this is where things start to get super hairy, and you just want to make sure that you're being on the up-and-up with your data practices and you data ethics, because, in my opinion, 90% of what's gone wrong in AI or the fear factor of AI is that your privacy's getting violated and then you're labeled with data that you may or may not know even exists half the time. I mean. >> So, what's the answer? I mean as you were talking about these data scientists are scrappy, scruffy, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of people, and they are coming up with new ideas, new innovations that sometimes are good-- >> Oh yes, they are. >> So what, so what is the answer? Is this this code of ethics? Is it a... sort of similar to a Hippocratic Oath? I mean how would you, what do you think? >> So, it's a multidimensional problem. Cortnie and I were talking earlier that you have to have more transparency into the models you're creating, and that means a significant validation process. And that's where the chief data officer partners with folks in risk and other areas and the data science team around getting more transparency and visibility into what's the data that's feeding into it? Is it really the authoritative data of the company? And as Cortnie points out, do we even have the rights to that data that's feeding our models? And so, by bringing that transparency and a little more validation before you actually start making key, bet-the-business decisions on the outcomes of these models, you need to look at how you're vetting them. >> And the vetting process is part technology, part culture, part process, it goes back to that people process technology trying. >> Yeah, absolutely, know where your data came from. Why are you doing this model? What are you doing to do with the outcomes? Are you actually going to do something with it or are you going to ignore it? Under what conditions will you empower a decision-maker to use the information that is the output of the model? A lot of these things, you have to think through when you want to operationalize it. It's not just, "I'm going to go get a bunch of data wherever I can, I put a model together. Here, don't you like the results?" >> But this is Silicon Valley way, right? An MVP for everything and you just let it run until... you can't. >> That's a great point Cortnie (laughs) I've always believed, and I want to test this with you, we talk about people process technology about information, we never talk about people process technology and information of information. There's a manner of respects what we're talking about is making explicit the information about... information, the metadata, and how we manage that and how we treat that, and how we defuse that, and how we turn that, the metadata itself, into models to try to govern and guide utilization of this. That's especially important in AI world, isn't it? >> I start with this. For me, it's simple, I mean, but everything he said was true. But, I try to keep it to this: it's about free will. If I said you can do that with my data, to me it's always my data. I don't care if it's on Facebook, I don't care where it is and I don't care if it's free or not, it's still my data. Even if it's X23andMe, or 23andMe, sorry, and they've taken the swab, or whether it's Facebook or I did a google search, I don't care, it's still my data. So if you ask me if it's okay to do a certain type of thing, then maybe I will consent to that. But I should at least be given an option. And no, be given the transparency. So it's all about free will. So in my mind, as long as you're always providing some sort of free will (laughs), the ability for me to having a decision to say, "Yes, I want to participate in that," or, "Yes, you can label me as whatever label I'm getting, Trump or a pro-Hillary or Obam-whatever, name whatever issue of the day is," then I'm okay with that as long as I get a choice. >> Let's go back to it, I want to build on that if I can, because, and then I want to ask you a question about it Carl, the issue of free will presupposes that both sides know exactly what's going into the data. So for example, if I have a medical procedure, I can sit down on that form and I can say, "Whatever happens is my responsibility." But if bad things happen because of malfeasance, guess what? That piece of paper's worthless and I can sue. Because the doctor and the medical provider is supposed to know more about what's going on than I do. >> Right. >> Does the same thing exist? You talked earlier about governance and some of the culture imperatives and transparency, doesn't that same thing exist? And I'm going to ask you a question: is that part of your nonprofit is to try to raise the bar for everybody? But doesn't that same notion exist, that at the end of the day, you don't... You do have information asymmetries, both sides don't know how the data's being used because of the nature of data? >> Right. That's why you're seeing the emergence of all these data privacy laws. And so what I'm advising executives and the board and my clients is we need to step back and think bigger about this. We need to think about as not just GDPR, the European scope, it's global data privacy. And if we look at the motivation, why are we doing this? Are we doing it just because we have to be regulatory-compliant 'cause there's a law in the books, or should we reframe it and say, "This is really about the user experience, the customer experience." This is a touchpoint that my customers have with my company. How transparent should I be with what data I have about you, how I'm using it, how I'm sharing it, and is there a way that I can turn this into a positive instead of it's just, "I'm doing this because I have to for regulatory-compliance." And so, I believe if you really examine the motivation and look at it from more of the carrot and less of the stick, you're going to find that you're more motivated to do it, you're going to be more transparent with your customers, and you're going to share, and you're ultimately going to protect that data more closely because you want to build that trust with your customers. And then lastly, let's face it, this is the data we want to analyze, right? This is the authenticated data we want to give to the data scientists, so I just flip that whole thing on its head. We do for these reasons and we increase the transparency and trust. >> So Cortnie, let me bring it back to you. >> Okay. >> That presupposes, again, an up-leveling of knowledge about data privacy not just for the executive but also for the consumer. How are you going to do that? >> Personally, I'm going to come back to free will again, and I'm also going to add: harm impacts. We need to start thinking impact assessments instead of governance, quite frankly. We need to start looking at if I, you know, start using a FICO score as a proxy for another piece of information, like a crime record in a certain district of whatever, as a way to understand how responsible you are and whether or not your car is going to get broken into, and now you have to pay more. Well, you're... if you always use a FICO score, for example, as a proxy for responsibility which, let's face it, once a data scientist latches onto something, they share it with everybody 'cause that's how they are, right? They love that and I love that about them, quite frankly. But, what I don't like is it propagates, and then before you know it, the people who are of lesser financial means, it's getting propagated because now they're going to be... Every AI pricing model is going to use FICO score as a-- >> And they're priced out of the market. >> And they're priced out of the market and how is that fair? And there's a whole group, I think you know about the Fairness Accountability Transparency group that, you know, kind of watch dogs this stuff. But I think business leaders as a whole don't really think through to that level like, "If I do this, then this this and this could incur--" >> So what would be the one thing you could say if, corporate America's listening. >> Let's do impact. Let's do impact assessments. If you're going to cost someone their livelihood, or you're going to cost them thousands of dollars, then let's put more scrutiny, let's put more government validation. To your point, let's put some... 'cause not everything needs the nth level. Like, if I present you with a blue sweater instead of a red sweater on google or whatever, (laughs) You know, that's not going to harm you. But it will harm you if I give you a teacher assessment that's based on something that you have no control over, and now you're fired because you've been laid off 'cause your rating was bad. >> This is a great conversation. Let me... Let me add something different, 'cause... Or say it a different way, and tell me if you agree. In many respects, it's: Does this practice increase inclusion or does this practice decrease inclusion? This is not some goofy, social thing, this is: Are you making your market bigger or are you making your market smaller? Because the last thing you want is that the participation by people ends with: You can't play because of some algorithmic response we had. So maybe the question of inclusion becomes a key issue. Would you agree with that? >> I do agree with it, and I still think there's levels even to inclusion. >> Of course. >> Like, you know, being a part of the blue sweater club versus the (laughs) versus, "I don't want to be a convict," you know, suddenly because of some record you found, or association with someone else. And let's just face it, a lot of these algorithmic models do do these kinds of things where they... They use n+1, you know, a lot... you know what I'm saying. And so you're associated naturally with the next person closest to you, and that's not always the right thing to do, right? So, in some ways, and so I'm positing just little bit of a new idea here, you're creating some policies, whether you're being, and we were just talking about this, but whether you're being implicit about them or explicit, more likely you're being implicit because you're just you're summarily deciding. Well, okay, I have just decided in the credit score example, that if you don't have a good credit threshold... But where in your policies and your corporate policy did it ever say that people of lesser financial means should be excluded from being able to have good car insurance for... 'cause now, the same goes with like Facebook. Some people feel like they're going to have to opt of of life, I mean, if they don't-- >> (laughs) Opt out of life. >> I mean like, seriously, when you think about grandparents who are excluded, you know, out in whatever Timbuktu place they live, and all their families are somewhere else, and the only way that they get to see is, you know, on Facebook. >> Go back to the issue you raised earlier about "Somebody read my email," I can tell you, as a person with a couple of more elderly grandparents, they inadvertently shared some information with me on Facebook about a health condition that they had. You know how grotesque the response of Facebook was to that? And, it affected me to because they had my name in it. They didn't know any better. >> Sometimes there's a stigma. Sometimes things become a stigma as well. There's an emotional response. When I put the article out about why I left IBM to start this new AI Truth nonprofit, the responses I got back that were so immediate were emotional responses about how this stuff affects people. That they're scared of what this means. Can people come after my kids or my grandkids? And if you think about how genetic information can get used, you're not just hosing yourself. I mean, breast cancer genes, I believe, aren't they, like... They run through families, so, I-- >> And they're pretty well-understood. >> If someone swabs my, and uses it and swaps it with other data, you know, people, all of a sudden, not just me is affected, but my whole entire lineage, I mean... It's hard to think of that, but... it's true (laughs). >> These are real life and death... these are-- >> Not just today, but for the future. And in many respects, it's that notion of inclusion... Going back to it, now I'm making something up, but not entirely, but going back to some of the stuff that you were talking about, Carl, the decisions we make about data today, we want to ensure that we know that there's value in the options for how we use that data in the future. So, the issue of inclusion is not just about people, but it's also about other activities, or other things that we might be able to do with data because of the nature of data. I think we always have to have an options approach to thinking about... as we make data decisions. Would you agree with that? Yes, because you know, data's not absolute. So, you can measure something and you can look at the data quality, you can look at the inputs to a model, whatever, but you still have to have that human element of, "Are you we doing the right thing?" You know, the data should guide us in our decisions, but I don't think it's ever an absolute. It's a range of options, and we chose this options for this reason. >> Right, so are we doing the right thing and do no harm too? Carl, Cortnie, we could talk all day, this has been a really fun conversation. >> Oh yeah, and we have. (laughter) >> But we're out of time. I'm Rebecca Knight for Peter Burris, we will have more from MIT CDOIQ in just a little bit. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Veritas Vision 2017. Brought to you by Veritas. >> Dave: We're here at Veritas Vision, #VtasVision, The Truth in Information. This is a company that was founded in 1983 and has gone through a very interesting history, acquired by Symantec for around 15 or 16 billion dollars and then spun back out and purchased by a private equity Carlyle Group in 2005 for about 7 billion net of cash; it's about a two and a half billion dollar company with a really interesting growth plan, one that involves transforming from what many consider to be a legacy backup company into a multi cloud, hyperscale, data protection, value of information organization. My name is Dave Valente and I'm here with Stu Miniman. Stu! Good to see you. >> Stu: Great to be here with you, Dave. It's interesting, yeah, Veritas Company, I've known for, I don't know, gosh, about 20 years and they kind of went under the radar a little bit, under the Symantec piece and now back at it, but you know gosh, felt like a time warp hearing about like Netbackup, you know? A product that you know well, entrenched in the market, has lots of customers, so you know, in talking to the people here, people on board Veritas, some, you know, very veteran to the company, a lot of new faces though, and you know, they say it's energy, innovation, bringing as Bill Coleman who we're going to have on shortly, it's about the software-defined, multi cloud, hyperscale word so you know, A for hitting all the buzzwords and excited to, in the next two days, to kind of dig in and see where the reality is. >> Dave: Yeah, and you know, Stu, you know me, Stu. I like to look at the structure and the organizational structure and the market caps and things like that, but I always felt like, you know Veritas kind of disappeared under Symantec's governance and now, it is breaking out. I love the new private equity play, I want to hear from Bill Coleman about that, what the relationship is with Carlyle, you know it used to be that private equity would come in and they would just suck all the cash out of a company, I mean the classic example was ZA, right? They would maybe do some acquiring companies, they would maybe buy cashflow positive companies, take on more debt, suck all of the cash out and leave the carcass. That's not the new private equity way. We see that with Riverbed, we see that with Infor, VMC, and many, many others have said, you know what, the public markets aren't going to give us the love that we need, we're going to go private, we're going to get a deal on the company, we're going to invest in that company, invest in R&D, build the asset value of that company, maybe even in some cases do acquisitions, grow it, and then maybe do another exit, and that is a great way, a better way in fact, for these private equity firms to really cash in and I think Veritas is an interesting asset from that regard. >> Stu: Yeah, absolutely, I think back, you know, Dave, when I worked at EMC, you know Veritas was one of those competitors that EMC was like, we got to keep an eye on them. Veritas would put out, you know, billboards and have people running around in shirts that said No Hardware Agenda. One of the reasons I think that Veritas also disappeared a little bit under Symantec, is while they were great for lots of environments, they didn't really hit hard that wave of virtualization. Interesting thing is that, you know, EMC bought VMware, everybody knows, but the company that almost bought VMware was Symantec, and lots of us say, what if? What if Symantec had bought Vmware, would they, as a software company, really kind of squash that, you know, could Veritas have then really, integrated very deep here, and now as, Dave, you and I were at the Veem show earlier this year, and they said Veem and VREN, you know, the tenures of virtualization, and now hopping on multi cloud, well, you know, a lot of that message I hear from companies like Veem, companies like NetApp, you know, software-based storage companies, if you're not living in that multi cloud world, you know, what is your future, so. >> Dave: Well, to your point. >> Stu: Microsoft and Google, Amazon, and how those all fit. >> Dave: To your point, with no hardware agenda, Veritas was always viewed as the company with that sort of open software glue to bring together the data management pieces, and as I said, it sort of got lost over the last several years under Symantec. When you hear the keynotes this morning, you hear a story of information, information value, leveraging that information, information governance, a lot of talk about GDPR, obviously a lot of talk about backup, multi cloud, really an entirely new vision from the brand that has frankly become Veritas over the last decade, and new management really trying to affect that brand and send a message to customers that we hear you, that we're self-deprecating, talking about their UX not being what it should be, listening to customers, and putting forth the vision around not just the backup, but data management, now, that's always been the Holy Grail. Can you use that data protection backup corpus of data to really leverage that, to turn information into an asset, that's something that we're going to be unpacking all week with executives, partners, customers, analysts and the like. Last thought before we get to our next guest. >> Stu: Yeah, Dave, absolutely, you know, a bunch of new products are out there, it's that balance of how do they build off of their brand, all of their customer adoption, and now they have a lot of new things going on, so how do they fit in that environment, how do they differentiate, because everyone's trying to partner with the mega clouds, and it's not just the big three that we talk about. IBM and Oracle are two big partners that Veritas is talking about here, and something like hyperconverged infrastructure, Veritas has a play there. They came out with an object story, you know, you're asking me like wait, is this an array, or is it, well no, it's Veritas, it's software, it's always going to be software. Joseph Skorupa who was giving one of the super sessions, we're going to have him on to say your infrastructure does not differentiate you, it is your data, and that is what they want to highlight to the top. I think a message that we in general agree with, and looking forward to digging into it. >> Dave: Okay, so we'll be here for the next two days and what we like to do in theCUBE is what we hear in the messaging, and then we like to test that messaging, poke at it a little bit with the executives, talk to the customers about it, see how well it aligns, and then opine on where we think this is going, but if you were at Vmworld, you knew that data protection was the hottest category, it's an exploding area, a lot of dynamism, because it's all about the data, so we'll be talking about that, digital business. Keep right there everybody, this is theCUBE. Veritas Vision, #VtasVision. We'll be right back with our next guest, right after this short break. (electronic music)

(upbeat happy music) >> Hello, and welcome to a special CUBEConversations here at theCUBE Studio in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier here for a special Women in Tech and Technovation conversation with Tara Chklovski founder and CEO of Iridescent also runs TechNation and Anar Simpson global ambassador of TechNation. Great Women in Tech conversation and you guys have done amazing work, you're both rock stars. Thanks for spending the time. We just had a great chat about your event you had the 2017 World Pitch competition for girls in entrepreneurship in coding and everything else. Congratulations, so tell us about Technovation. What do you guys do and you guys are doing some amazing work. Tara start us off, where are you guys and what's going on? >> So Technovation is the world's largest technology entrepreneurship program for girls and girls aged middle school and high school are challenged that you have to find a problem in your community, to learn how to code a mobile application and learn how to start a startup from scratch all the way to the pitch video business plan. And through that process they are partnered with a woman in tech mentor and they go through a hundred hour learning experience. At the end of it they have to submit their apps and business plans for judging, and we have thousands of judges who are experts in tech from all over the world, review those and then we have a quarter final, semi final and then the big World Pitch competition that was held last week here in Silicon Valley. >> And this sounds so progressive and cutting edge. It sounds like what Palo Alto high school would do with Menlo and Sacred Heart and Castilleja, but this is not just Silicon Valley this is, I mean talk to us a little bit about the scope of the program. How do people get involved? Share some of the data. >> Yeah, totally, and so it is all over the world. We run in a hundred different countries, primarily brought and expanded through our work that our global ambassador Anar has done, and most of it is really trying to bring girls who would have never been exposed to technology entrepreneurship careers. And the way we work is really through partnerships, amazing organizations and visionary leaders who do the hard work of actually supporting these girls, getting these girls interested. So these girls would typically never go into careers in tech because they never see themselves as being interested and so the hook is that you want to find a problem in your community. You have to go out, talk to people, try to understand what is a big problem that is worth solving, and then we say, "Oh by the way, you know you could solve "this problem using technology." And so you get in a whole another group of people that would not normally access these careers. >> So is it an application process? Is it in the US? >> Anybody can. >> So anyone in the US. >> Anybody. >> So my daughter who wants to get some community hours could actually go take it to a whole other level. >> Totally, so you can just register. We haven't launched the new season yet but it'll be out live in October. Sign up, find a team of girls, and there's actually a documentary, an award-winning documentary done about the program. So the same woman who did Inconvenient Truth wanted to profile Women in Tech and she did a whole documentary about Technovation and it's called CodeGirl and you can get it on any online video platform. >> That's awesome, well congratulations. It's super impressive work, very inspirational. And Anar, you're bringing the global perspective in and we were talking before we came on camera that you had a goal. Share with us your five year goal and an update of where you are in taking this out beyond the United States. >> Sure, so you know five years ago I was a mentor for Technovation. It was my first time and it was an amazing experience, and we won in the local competition and the regional competition and then placed third in the final competition. And after that I had a conversation with Tara about the amazing experience that I had, and we were chatting and she said she'd love to take this globally. And being the type A enthusiast that I am, I said oh, well okay that's fine, you know, I come from Kenya. I've lived in Canada, so we've got three-- >> John: The perfect mix. >> Yeah, three countries already, but I'm sure we can take it global. Well in fact with our work together, I was able to take Technovation to 18 countries in the first year, 34 countries in the second year, 72 countries in the third year and this year we're at over a hundred countries. And it hasn't been an easy road. We keep saying this to each other, we just keep trying. Our focus is on getting this program. We don't get caught into anything politics or any otherwise, and we just want to get to as many girls as we can. And as Tara said, partnerships have played an immense role in getting Technovation all over the world. So initially it was just cold calls, people I knew in Kenya, people I knew in Canada, people I knew in LinkedIn, my little circle. But then my circle got bigger and bigger and then lots and lots of opportunities presented themselves and one of them was the Tech Women program that's run by the State Department. They bring in senior technical women to Silicon Valley for an internship and then I said to them, Oh and when they go back home, what do they do? Shouldn't they do Technovation? And so we've done good partnerships with them, we've done a good partnership with the UN women. We've been profiled in the United Nations high-level panel report, and these things keep happening and the... But it's not just because of the community or the relationships we're building. Our program works. It is credible. Our impact reports show that these girls end up in tech-related fields as they progress, and that's the whole point of our purpose, right? Is to say look, girls everywhere should be entering technology fields and what Technovation does it it's building a pipeline of young girls to enter these careers all over the globe. >> Well it's no secret that the folks that know me and watch theCUBE and know the show know that I'm a huge proponent for computer science and you know it's kind of similar, we kind of fell into that in the '80s. It's now become very interesting in that the surface area for computer science has increased a lot, and it's not just coding heads down and squashing bugs and writing code. There's been a whole nother evolution of soft skills, Agile, Cloud, you're seeing a full transformation with the potential unlimited compute available. With mobile now 10 years plus into the iPhone, you see new infrastructure developing. So it creates the notion that okay, you can bring the science of computers to a whole nother level. That must be attractive as you guys have that capability to bring that to bear in the programs. Can you guys comment on how you guys see just the role of computer science playing out? This is not a gender thing, just more of, as I have a young daughter I try to say it's not just writing code you can certainly whip out a mobile app but it's really bringing design to it or bringing a personal passion that you might have. So what are some of the patterns you're seeing in this surface area of what's now known as computer science? >> I think it's super important because as technology has progressed we've been able to provide this program. If we were still programming with you know, the in front of screens and doing the what you see is what you get kind of thing without, we would not be there. I think the big thing that's happened in the last 10 years is the mobile phone. I mean if you find a girl anywhere today in the world, chances are she'll have a mobile phone on her and she's going to be loathe for you to take that one thing from her. You could take other things from her, but try taking that phone away from her, she will not let you. And so the fact that she's so attached to that mobile phone means that you can then tell her, hey you don't have to be just a consumer of that thing. You can be a producer of that thing. Anything that you see on there, you can actually design. This is power. This is your thing to good and great and better, and if we can shift that in their minds that this is their link to the world that's wide open, we're seeing that. >> Well the world in consumed by it, I mean a lot of women in the world will be consumers of product. Certainly with AI, the conversation over the weekend I was having with folks is the role of women. It's super important not just in AI, but as software becomes cognitive, you have to align with half the audience that's out there. So it'd be hard for a guy to program something that's going to be more oriented towards a woman. But it brings up the question of application, and whether it's self-driving cars or utility from work to play and everything in between. Software, and the role of software's going to be critical and that seems to be pretty clear. The question is how do you inspire young girls? That's the question that a lot of fellow males that I talk to who are fathers of daughters and or are promoting Women in Tech and see that vision, what are some of the inspiration areas? How do you really shake the interest and how do you have someone really kind of dig in and enjoy it and taste it and feel it? >> Right, right. >> So there is some research to back what the formula is that works and to drive change in behavior. And so there is this, one of the biggest sort of names in cognitive psychology is Albert Bandura. He's a professor at Stanford. But basically it's the same principles that drives say the addiction from alcohol or weight loss or any kind of new behavior change. So the first is you need to have exposure to someone who you respect showing that this is something of meaning. So the key words are someone you respect, right? And so media can play a very big role here for scale, right otherwise it's only maybe your teacher or your parent and if they're not exposed to technology, they can't really affect your, and so media can play a huge role there. Second is the experience itself, right. Like how do you make it easy to get started, and then it's like learning from video games, right. So you make it very very easy, like the first step is just come over here it'll be fun, there's pizza, come right, like your friends are coming. But then the feedback has to be very fast, so the first step and that's where a good curriculum matters, right. So that's where also working on a mobile phone is very appealing even though many apps is-- >> John: It's relatable. >> It's relatable but the feedback is instantaneous, and so the programming language that the girls use is block based so even though you don't have any prior programming background you can still build a working app so that's critical. Then human beings get tired very easily and so the feedback needs to keep changing. It has to be unpredictable. The third piece is that of expectations, and so you have to have very high expectations, and so that's why this current discussion around cognitive differences in gender I feel is missing the point because it's not what you're born with, what are you capable of? And so if we looked at our genetics we would never go to space, we would never go to the deepest parts of the ocean because we are not meant for that, right? But we had really high visions and expectations and so human beings rose to that. And then the last piece is less relevant in developed countries but it's still important so, it's sort of the human energy. We are not a brain dissociated from the body. We are connected, right, and so if you're hungry and tired and sleepy, not the right time to sort of make a dramatic change in your interests. So this is relevant, if for us, we try to figure out which countries are we going to work in, so post conflict, war torn areas are not the best areas to start a new program in. You need the right partners. >> So you're saying the biological argument of, of course they're different, men and women. >> Yes. >> But it's the capability, that's where people are missing the boat. >> And the support system, right? So have high expectations, provide them with the right support, but the most important thing is your own beliefs in that. >> Let's get your thoughts on that because I think you guys have a great program with Technovation. You mentioned mentors, key part of the formula most likely. What we hear in the conversations I've had with women peers has been you know, there's a real call to arms at the executive level now, folks my age in their fifties who made it who are there succeeding. They really want to give back and they really have recognized the value of having that peer mentorship and then inspiring the young generation. Whether it's part of the things we cover like Grace Hopper or Technovation things that you do. Or even just mentoring in their own communities. What does that mentorship look like that you guys see, that you'd like to see doubled down on or areas you'd like to see tweaked or perceptions that need to change. What's your thoughts on mentorship and the role of inspiring young girls? >> Mentorship from men? >> John: Men and women, I mean. >> From both. >> John: Well I see the mentoring with women, that's the first step. >> Right. >> I have a whole nother conversation in my opinion that the men need training. Not just like go to class and learn how to talk but how to empathize. >> Well my big thing has been that you know when you wanted to encourage women up the ladder in your companies or you want to encourage women to actually get in to technical roles. That intent should not be placed in the CSR department of your organization 'cause that speaks volumes, right. To say oh, well that's in the social responsibility department or the HR, that just says okay, so you're not really, you don't think we're capable of helping you with your product or service. We're sort of part of this and it's like, no, you know. So I think you want to mainstream it, which is what a lot of I and D things are trying to do now. >> John: Inclusion and diversity. >> Inclusion and diversity techs. >> To make it part of the fabric not a department checkbox. >> Exactly, and-- >> That's what you're getting at right? >> Exactly, and you know the evolvement of these departments to include everybody and to make it more diverse is going to be not frictionless, it will be friction until a time where it won't even be necessary. I and D departments should have one goal, which is to work themselves out of a job. If they can work themselves out of a job, then the company would have done what it needs to be done. But I think-- >> John: Meaning it's self sufficient, it's self governing. People are humans, there's respect for individuals. >> Yes. >> I mean this is basically comes down to if you look at it as humans it takes, every conversation could be tabled as, what? There's a person on the other side, it's a human being. Not a woman or a white male or whatever. >> And you know-- >> There's not there yet, but I mean certainly that would be the end game, so in that scenario that department's out of business the I and R, the inclusion and diversity department has done it's job. >> You don't need one, because exactly. You don't need one because you know, you're okay, and I think capabilities is really important. In corporations, and this isn't anybody's fault. This is just how it's been done. This has just been the culture of it, right? Who gets invited to which meetings? Who gets invited to which conferences, right? And so we heard the CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki saying you know, she had to sort of elbow a little bit to say why am I not allowed at a certain conference? And it's like, maybe just wake up to that and say, well why aren't you involving more people at conferences and think tanks because you know, I come from a oil and gas background, and people used to do a lot of deals on the golf course because oil and gas people play golf a lot and a lot of deals used to happen. Well in the Valley we don't play golf a lot but we do do other things, conferences or get togethers and if you don't include the people in your team as groups or representationally well then they're not going to be there when you make these decisions. So maybe just be a little bit-- >> Exclusionary is a problem and Kleiner Perkins was taken to task. They had ski trips apparently planned and they didn't, well mostly guys and they didn't invite the woman partner. It was a big scandal. This is where they kind of make that, it's a normative thing they've got to change the norms. >> It's change the norms and if you actually want your company which is made of all kinds of people, to move really far ahead, don't be like that. Include everybody because the only goodness about that is you'll go forward. You don't include somebody, well you're going to hurt them and then they won't be able to contribute because they just can't and then your product or your service is going to fail. It's really simple. >> You mentioned the Susan Wojcicki post, was an article in Fortune magazine where she wrote a guest article and she mentioned her daughter. >> Yes. >> Was feeling the narrative which by the way changed from the original Google memo to have a different meaning, but that's what she heard. So the question to you guys that I have on that is with Technovation and the work that you're doing, you're exposed to a lot of the ecosystem, across the world not just in the US from young girls. >> Yes. >> They see what's coming down from the top or the media, so certainly it's the game of telephone as things translate down to the level of the girls. Is there a pattern that you see emerging in their eyes as they look at this nonsense of narratives that are moving around. It's kind of a moving train the narrative of gender, Women in Tech but ultimately they have to internalize it and what patterns do you see and what do you guys do to either nullify that misperception and how do you amplify the real perceptions? >> Can I take that one? I was in Nairobi at the Safaricom headquarters. I don't know if you know Safaricom but these are the people who came up with M-PESA, and this is the currency that you can do on your mobile phone and Kenya uses M-PESA, like almost everybody in Kenya uses M-PESA. So Safaricom is a big tel-co and it's a big deal in Kenya, and Safaricom has taken Technovation, it has embraced Technovation in a big way. And the people who embraced Technovation at Safaricom in a big way are both male. So Josephine who is a tech woman fellow who came here and then went back and started Technovation. Her director, Clibeau Royal, he's male and the CEO of Techno, CEO of Safaricom is Bob Collymore and he's also male and these men, if I could clone these men in every country with every company you would see this sort of moving away and shifting away that women aren't good engineers or can't be good engineers. They are embracing it in such a way, not because they like Technovation because they know for their business having more women and equal women and a diverse company is making their product and their goods better. >> John: Yeah, their arbitraging the labor pool, why would you ignore talent? >> Exactly. >> Whether they're over 50 or they're women, it doesn't matter. >> I want to add to that, so there's quite a bit of data, so the pattern's are not anything different from what the message girls get from school and parents, right. So if you look at the data, there are a hundred countries that legally discriminate against women. And so what industry, what message industry is telling is really firstly doesn't filter through to the larger population. Silicon Valley is a completely different bubble. But overall the message is girls are given is like, this is not for you, right, and so especially in some of the more sort of populous dense countries in the world. And so we have to fight a lot of these kinds of perceptions from the ground up, and the number one sort of gatekeeper is the father and so a key part of what we have now done to date is to provide sort of education and training to the parents because... There's a very moving story that, we work in a remote town in South India and a mentor who's very dedicated has been trying to get these girls to participate in Technovation. He did that and then there were, one girl was actually offered a job but the father kept sort of saying no, not needed, no girl in my family ever needs to work, but he fought it. And then so then the girl actually gets a job, and then a year later the father calls the mentor and said, "You know what, I'm so grateful that you did it "because a day after she got the job I got hit in "an accident and I lost my job." But it's these kind of perceptions that have to be changed one person at a time, which is what makes this very hard. Unless you actually are able to get the media to change sort of the messaging. And I think in the US which is, there is some very interesting studies on that question, right. If you were to think, would there be more women in STEM in poorer developing countries versus richer highly developed countries, where would you see more women in STEM? The answer is actually the women in poorer countries like Iran, Malaysia. The reason is because in an individualistic society like in the US where there's a lot of emphasis on materialistic but it's also about are you happy? The conversation has changed to, from parents telling children do what makes you happy, and then you're very prone to advertising, and advertising works when it's highly targeted and highly gendered. And so in the '60s there was no such thing as pink and blue, now there is pink and blue, right? And so now we have just made our entire society entirely susceptible to advertising, and girls are passive and compliant and boys are aggressive. And so then when you are looking at the board structures, there's no, it's very very hard to fix the problem right there, right? You have to go down deeper because you don't get leaders who are compliant, maybe secretaries are compliant. But you have to fix the message that teachers give girls, that parents give their baby girls when they're born. And so industry is just sort of in the spotlight right now, but the issue is not that of industry it's also that of society. >> Industry (mumbles) are supporting you guys is interesting that this industry seems to be chipping, and certainly Silicon Valley's a little bit different as you said, but in general it is a cultural parent thing. Any plans there with Technovation to have a parent track? (laughing) >> Yes totally, I mean I think right now 10% of parents actually volunteer to be mentors, kind of like say Girl Scout troop leaders and so we are trying to figure out okay what is a way to involve parents and to make them part of the discussion. >> Well we'll keep the conversations going with Technovation you guys do incredible work. I'll just end the segment here by just telling a little bit about what you're working on right now? What are your goals? What are you passionate about? What are some of the things you'd like to do in the next half of the year, next year? What are some of the things going, Tara, you start. >> I think for us is to go deeper, so we are just launching a partnership with MIT to increase sort of the rigor of the curriculum, the rigor of the training and also provide more personalized learning and so this is the power of technology so we don't want to have girls drop out of the program because it's a hard program. So really trying to bring the best from industry to support that. >> Right and so you know my goal is to get Technovation to all the countries in the world, but keeping in mind we're making sure that it's delivered in a really good way and so girls complete the program et cetera, and the model that I hope to replicate in many other countries is the model that we're trying within Canada. So the new Canadian government is very interested in making sure that all of its citizens are you know, innovative, ready for the technology change that's coming there, and they launched a new fund called CanCode and so we have been part of that application process and we hope to have Technovation in almost every city in Canada, across Canada, and to really get this going and we, right now Canada is, everybody's like, you know, favorite country. And we hope that if we can do this in Canada, then other countries will follow and so that this program will get to as many girls as it can. >> Well you know how I feel. I feel computer science training in general should be standard in curriculums, because of all the conversation around automation. Automation is the fear is that jobs will go away. The data we have from our research over at Wikibon shows that the billions being automated away is non-differentiated labor. >> Right. >> Which implies that a working knowledge of those machines will shift to the value side. So you know I'm on the pro side of AI and automation personally. Especially I think it's great for-- >> But there's an education side too. >> There's the education side and I think this is a real fun area. You guys are at the cutting edge of it, both doing great work. I appreciate you taking the time and we'll have you back in for an update. Tara, Inar thanks so much. This is theCUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat happy music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. (uptempo techno music) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2016. This is SiliconANGLE Media, this is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with our guest host inside the community, Keith Townsend who's with CTO advisors, and our next guest is Bask Iyer, who's the SVP and CIO of VMware. Both of you, welcome to theCUBE. Your first host as an analyst here on theCUBE, Keith, thanks for coming on. Bask, great to see you again. >> Thank you, good to see you. >> You're not like just any old CIO. You're at VMware, it's a big company, it's a vendor in the landscape, but you also have been on the other side. You've been a practitioner, you've run for over decades, real infrastructure, really going back through the cycles of innovation. Now you're on this side serving customers on the other in this transformation stage. What a couple years it's been. Since last year when you were on theCUBE, we talked about digital transformation, eating your own dog food. First question is, what's changed this year with VMware? Obviously, a lot going on with the technologies, post-federation world. What's going on technically in the landscape for VMware? 'Cause I know you guys do a lot of early stuff inside VMware. >> Yeah, so, I think we are eating even more dog food. In fact, we are calling it drinking your own champagne because I don't like dog food, even if you make it, I'm not going to eat dog food. I've been drinking a lot of champagne. What that puts you as an IT practitioner is, I mean, you're showcasing private cloud, you're showcasing hybrid, and most of the things that we are talking about we have influence from inside. You can go to the executive staff and say, "I need to go to Amazon, I need to go to Google, "I need to connect, "I cannot be locked into a single cloud strategy "or a device strategy," and so on. I feel like our team is very much part of it. Our team is also getting more into new product development. We've developed a whole line of mobile technologies right now that makes it easier to sell something like AirWatch. It's easier to always talk about applications. Here's what you can do with applications on the mobile side. >> A lot of, certainly VMware as a company has changed, but some big executives have departed. Carl, Bill Fog, among others. Sanjay is still there, but he had the AirWatch, but now, this any cloud, any application, any device. This is not a new messaging, but there's been some product turnover. V sphere has been changing, V cloud air, we're not hearing much about that, more management layer. How has that impacted some of the champagne or your own internal incubation of the technologies? What's new there, what's shifted? >> Yeah, so what you are seeing is the change in technology is even faster, and I keep telling my team is yesterday's news wraps fish. So unless it changes, why are we here? I love the fact that we are pushing technology. The thing I see in my experience is technology always changes, but the last few years, it's faster and faster, and I don't think it's going to slow down. What has changed from last year to this year is we were the leaders in private cloud last time. I came and talked about how VMworld has one of the biggest private clouds. All the hands-on lab is run on our private clouds. But we want to go beyond that, we want to go from private cloud, hook it to the public cloud, or any cloud. I want to come back. And if you think about, when I talk to the CIO friends, while they like every cloud provider, they don't want to necessarily be locked into anybody. It's a big fear everybody has, and for people who don't believe it can happen, I've been here long enough. In the 2000, we had these guys called ASPs, if you remember. >> John: Applicant Service Providers. >> Artifice migrated to the ASP providers, and a lot of them went out of business because they lowered, they were all competing for the bottom line. Not that that's going to happen in the public cloud story, but different workloads have different needs, and you want to provide the maximum flexibility as possible. If you run a private cloud effectively, even as of today, it's definitely more cost-effective than any public cloud, but you may not want to do that. So, what do you go and tell my colleagues to say, you want a public cloud, you got it. You want Amazon, you got it. You want IBM, you got it. >> John: Choice. >> Choice. And I think VMware, if you remember, made our mark by giving the choice for you, so you can in on HP, you can go in Dell, you can go in on NetApp, you can go in on EMC. Even when EMC was the owner, still the owner, we still did not exclude you from running it on a competitive. >> And that built the ecosystem, basically. >> That built the ecosystem, the things that you see here. And Michael reiterated it today, so we are going to be available on every cloud, every platform, that helps, it creates a lot of money for people. And for CIO, just go back into the practitioner, that's what I want. I may stick to a vendor, but don't lock me in. That should be my choice. >> So, talking about fast change, VMware, infrastructure-focused company from the outside, internally, you have to deal with both developers and infrastructure guys. Martin Casedel famously said that developers are much more involved with that purchasing cycle. How has the relationship with your internal developers and your infrastructure folks? >> It's very good. I mean, but I can see Martin's point. I've worked on other companies where the developers actually worked around the infrastructure folks, because you won't get the things provisioned on time. If you run an effective infrastructure, which we do, I actually challenged my developers, developers reporting to me as well, and say, "Do whatever you want, "because I want to know what you like doing." And a lot of them work on our infrastructure because it is effective. If you do a good job, people will want to use somebody who manages (indistinct talking), but it's not true in most of the cases. Most of our infrastructure is still run the old IT way, where people just say, you know, it's going to take me years. I have to fill out the paperwork for me to get the virtual machine, I'm out of here. What I internally see is my developers actually do a lot of development, continuous development. We roll out ASAP, not that it's a big use, everybody seems to do it. But we have zero issues on infrastructure. I mean, we never talked about infrastructure, we never talked about is this going to be available, not available, how does disaster recovery work? That's what developers want. They want to just worry about continuous improvement, continuous development, does it work on mobile. Infrastructure should just handle it, right? We're able to do that internally, but I'm also telling people use Docker. I mean, it's a good one, use Containers. Use Amazon web services, use IBM. 'Cause you don't want to restrict-- >> The freedom of choice is really, >> The freedom of choice is very important. The developers are in charge. >> Bask: Exactly. >> We're pretty much on that whole. >> That's like invisible infrastructure is there to support what developers do. >> Invisible infrastructure is invisible only until it's broken. But your point is well taken, yeah. >> DevOps is great, but you still need five-nines ops, so operational focus we've seen this year, where I'm kind of smelling the theme this year is all about Dev, the operational side of cloud. So I got to ask you, we were in our, last week at a meeting at SiliconANGLE offices, we're talking about, oh, VMware. And I'm like, guys, it's all about the SDDC experience. They're like, what the hell's SDDC? Okay, it's a software defiant data center. But that was the theme a couple years ago, and then, someone else raised their hand, and what the hell does SDDC mean anyway? I want to ask you what does SDDC experience, we heard it on the keynote, actually mean? >> So, I think Ragoud defined it well as in order to react to the needs of today, you cannot hope to put in a hardware and hope that box runs. You need to free the intelligence away from the box. Let me give a practical example. You get attacks from security. Typically, their response is buy my box, put it in, and it'll take care of it. Humans cannot respond to the speed at which these attacks are happening, so you have to write algorithms, so that's software. So, the attacks to be done in software. The configuration has to be done in software. The whole idea is freeing the intelligence from all the boxes you have, and define a software layer on top of it because software will trump hardware. I mean, you need good hardware, let's not, I mean, things have to run some way. >> One experience is the guy gets to go to the beach because everything's automated? That's one experience, automated. >> That's one experience, yeah, I just think you get more work. I always say you should hire smart but lazy people because they will automate what they're doing. But what ends up happening is no good deed goes unpunished, so you just get more to do. But look, in my own case, I did every job in IT. I started in hardware, automated it, people said can you do software? Yeah, I can do it. Well, you automated this. Can you do DSEIO, can you do end-user computing? Can you run real estate, can you run shared services, can you do this? Your job becomes bigger. I don't think I'm going to sit on the beach, but you're doing more-- >> Yeah, but you're freed, essentially. I use that as a metaphor, but the idea of the beach is being excited about not being in the weeds fixing stuff and being, tired all the time. >> See, I get to do this, right? I talk to customers. The only reason I get to do this is because my infrastructure's working. If it's not working, I'm not mistaken, I have to go back and fix it. If you free up your time, then you go talk to your customers, your advisory panel. They've given me internet of things as another business unit to run. It's exciting, you're getting to the front office but I never forget it's because your back office is working. >> Stole a little bit about thunder by mentioning internet of things. Talking to customers and one of the things when I talk to customers is internet of things. What are some of the challenges you've had internally around internet of things and how has VMware solved some of those challenges. >> Yeah, so a lot of internet of things. It's coming out of hype cycle now into reality so a lot of talks where how do you control the home thermostat. Your Amazon Echo device and so and so, but what is happening now is buildings have to be automated and they have to get another 30% more efficiency. You only get 30% more efficiency. It's not just turning the light bulbs off and on when you want. You want to know what's your occupancy and do I really need this bigger building all the time. That requires intelligence. So if you have intelligence, you can really figure out do I need 400 buildings or do you need only 100 buildings. And the reason I picked something Monday as buildings is that's where a lot of people spend a lot of their money in actual buildings. For example, so the thing I tell from the IT standpoint is I think we have gone from kind of pilot stages to now you're going to get go to scale. When you get to scale, it's not fun anymore. It has to work all the time. It has to be secure. So I was talking to a bunch of CIOs a week ago and I told them how many of you have multi printers. Multi scanners and the multi devices. Everybody says that. So how many of you know that they send information on whether the toner is out to the manufacturer? Everybody puts their hands up. How many of you know that it's not sending the whole thing that you're standing over to the manufacturer? And people said, "Does it happen?" I said, I don't know. I don't know if it doesn't happen or it doesn't happen. >> John: It's a question. >> This is where you need to pay attention because your coffee machine is going to say you're out of coffee beans. Are they just sending that information or not? If you take it seriously, manufacturing. The folks actually work around IT sometimes because they don't want IT to slow it down. So if IT doesn't get involved internal things right now. Define the architecture and so on. You're opening a door for shadow IT. >> I want to just drill down that you mention IT going slow but that's exactly the point. Machine learning AI and software. There's been a huge acceleration of things like asking those kinds of questions and the infrastructure has been slowing. Certainly the network has, so for all the CXO out there. Whether it's CIO, chief data officer, chief compliant. There's a lot of CXO's out there. They're trying to figure it out. So what's you're advice to them and looking at the message of multi cloud and inter clouding and all that stuff. They got a job to do. At the end of the day they don't really care what a VMware is doing in the business. They want to know what their business is doing. How do they apply the stuff going on here at VMworld if you had to look at this VMworld this year and talk to the CXOs. What's in it for them? What's your thoughts? >> The first thing I say is have the curiosity. What happens in my job is I hear so many vaperware that you become skeptical. The problem with skeptical and being too pragmatic is your mind becomes close. So when you look at interrupt things you say, ah, is that really going to to happen. I got things to do. I can't worry about it. You can't have that. That's how you let the sass get out of your hand. That's how you come back later on the cloud. That's why BYD happened. Because we started to think Blackberry is good enough. You don't need any other phones. So you need to have this open mindset, so internal things, I tell people. >> John: Be opened. >> Be open. There's a tornado coming here and you better be involved. Now to be involved you have to take a solution for them. You can't go and say stop all projects. Let me look at architectural. Let me review them. So I tell them go with an architecture. So couple of things I tell them is there's so many gateways, so many sensors, you need to go with some ways to manage these gateways. Because like it or not they're coming to you and they're going to expect you to manage it. After the initial set up is done, they're going to say, "Hey, IT guy, you run it for me." You better be there. Go with an architect, so it's a private cloud, public cloud or it's a combination. How you manage Edge? So I tell people to get involved and there's couple of things that we're doing is manage your gateways with software. Go with the cloud in the box for IoTs, so people can give it to our manufacturing guy or your operations guy. You need to take something there. You need to be involved. >> So balancing the hopeful and the optimist. I'm hopeful that this may happen with the pragmatic. I got to make it make it run at scale, which is good. This is all about scale now with cloud. It kind of brings back the kind of looking back at history of IT which you would certainly be involved in. Lived personally is you see a sprawl of something. PCs, LANs whatever and then consolidation. Single throat to choke. Single pane of glass. These are the buzz words. We're seeing that now. We're seeing there's been a sprawl of APIs, a sprawl of microservices. A sprawl of mobile. Now are we getting to that phase where we got to manage it. >> Bask: Yeah. So you're hearing things like single, choke to throat, single pane of glass for management. What's your thoughts on that and this is really mind boggling to the customer because the CXOs are out there going. Hell, I still got to get top line revenue in these new apps for my banking app or my oil and gas application. So right now we're in a really interesting position. How do you describe that environment and what do you prescribe specifically to that CXO? >> It's a challenge or opportunity depending on how you look at it. It's very exciting to me that you have all these things exploring and there's so much more you can do in the business. So if you're an IT practitioner or CTO, this is a good time to be excited and add value to it. If you get too pragmatic, you're going to lose it or if you're a blocker. Say please hang on. Let me define the architecture for you. Let me do this for you. You're going to lose it because people are going to work around you. And my belief is the CIOs I meet right now are a lot more progressive. They realize the mistakes they made by being a little to pragmatic sometimes on technology. Not getting on it and they are jumping onboard. So the hope is I'm at a stage in my career where I want to make sure my community of CIOs do the right thing and I'm telling them this is coming. >> So you're seeing progressive mindset now-- >> I'm seeing very, very progressive minds. I see a ton more CIOs who are acting like the digital guys, pushing it and so on. The other thing to remember is, it's not always about technology. You can do the pilots but to make a change. You need people, process and technology and the CIOs are best equipped to do that. So the best for the company is to make sure you get the right CIOs. The people that are involved in the technology change start going around. >> So from a technology perspective. A lot of great news from, at least exciting news coming from Pat this morning. >> Yeah. Cloud services, cloud foundation. With your team internally, which product or what direction are you most excited to enable your team? >> Anything that makes my development go faster, I'm excited so that's why I'm interested in cloud foundation and cloud services, very much because I don't have to think about where to go and I can do it faster, good, right. The things I'm very excited about is you haven't seen the end user computing announcement which comes tomorrow or the day after. It's fantastic. I believe that enterprise mobility has not really not happened. I mean you've got what two to three million applications on the android store and the app has gone up to three million on the Apple store. But you go to most enterprises, they'll just give the email and calendar. >> John: Right. >> Email and calendar, we give access in 1999 with Blackberrys because for 17 years, You're still getting email and a calendar on your iPhone now instead of the Blackberry. That's not good progress. People haven't been created to look at mobilized enterprise platforms to develop. That's going to change. I think people are going to wake up and say how we make productive on the phone. I challenge my team and we come up the 50 yard at productivity applications. That should take a long time to develop and I can show sometime. When I showed the VCI, they also didn't want it. They wanted to go to one place to approve all the purchase orders. They don't want to go to SAP and Oracle and Sales Force and 40 different places to approve. So the mobile the revolution I think is starting to happen. In enterprise it's very, very light. You'll see that. I mean you don't want to be carrying necessarily these when you're traveling, right. >> I want to ask you, we have about a minute left and more of a personnel kind of conversation we're seeing in the industry. And one of the things that we're very passionate about SiliconANGLE is our new fellowship with the Crown Truth, our partner. We have this new fellowship called the Tech truth where we're funding fellowships in journalism. We're also going to be at the Anita Borg conflict in November for the third year. Where we're funding a special assignment on women in tech. >> Bask: Yeah. >> IT has been one of those areas where it's been mostly male dominated like developers. But yet IT isn't the old stack and rack anymore like it used to be. It's changing, shifting. How has the role of STEM and Women in Tech in science changed IT? Can you share some, I know you're involved with Anita Borg. >> Bask: Yeah. >> Thoughts on that because this is again, it's not just the IT anymore. IT is now at a global stance. Your thoughts on women in tech. >> Yeah, in the sense. We haven't done enough. I mean we are, most companies are talking and I guess compared to where we were. We make progress. It's not good enough. Having 20% in tech when you can go up to 50% is not good. The thing with STEM I say sometimes, we say we support science and sometimes we mislead women. I know a lot of people with science degrees, women with science degrees in biology or something else who are not getting employment like the coders. So we got to get through the language. Are you looking for coders? Are you looking for STEM? >> Coders. >> Right. >> Well now you have different analytics and you sort of. There's new stuff going on that's interesting. Right, I mean like coders. Not to say biology, doctors. >> I think it's really unfair if you tell people we let science possible and women actually go to classes. And they come out, the first question we ask is do you know Python? Do you know this? I'm not saying it's right or wrong that's what the industry is doing. >> John: Yeah. >> And you need to actually respect every science but if not, don't mislead people. So that's one. Silicon Valley has a problem with older gentlemen, older people. >> John: Agism. >> Agism, so that's an issue. There are not too many African Americans in Silicon Valley. So these are the elephants. I think the first steps is we haven't talk about these things. People are afraid to talk about it. That's not a good sign. You got to come back and put it, I mean, Anita Borg, I liked them because they're put the show on the table. Which is the first step and it's like an alcoholic. You are to say I'm basking in alcoholic. If you don't even say that. We're not solving it. >> I got to tell you. I was there last year. This will be our third year. It is 12,000 women and it's a great time. It's the great time-- >> Yeah, my daughter's is going. I wanted to go alone but we have to do more. So I don't want to sound down on the last minute. We've made definite progress but if you go to most Silicon Valley companies, we can't say we've done it. >> Well my wife and I just talked about men from Mars, that whole stick, but the role of IT is a lot. First there is a lot of women that are involved in tech but necessarily coding as you said, because a lot of roles in IT are changing. For instance, the data science role moves to data analyst which by the way is the F ford base. So that's kind of becoming an IT role. >> Right. Very interesting some of these jobs personas per say-- >> Yeah, yeah so last one I'll leave it with you is they could log the help desk. We used outsource the help desk. We used to treat it as not important whatever and then we find that a lot of knowledge workers are struggling for simple stuff. That can fit in my PC so that I can do my job. So we brought it back like how the Apple have genius bars. We have our own things inside but we recruited it from a organization call You're Up. And what they do is there are a lot of kids from under privileged families who don't get to finish high school. So why can't they work on help desk? Why do you need a degree? Why can't they go to a finishing school? I've worked with a lot of them. They're very passionate about what they do, very satisfying so we can talk for hours, 'cause I'm very passionate about this. We should do more with under privileged folks. We should do more with diversity in the true sense of the word. >> We'd love to have you. We're going to recruit you as a volunteer for our theCUBE team in Silicon Valley. We're doing a lot of coverage there. Certainly the fellowship has been great and we're going to be at Anita Borg Grace Hopper celebration in Houston. theCUBE will there. I'm John Furrier here with Keith Townsend. Here live at VMworld breaking it down sharing all the data. CIOs are really interested in the Cloud and certainly got the play book. Bask thanks so much for sharing your insight again. Great, great insight. Thanks for sharing the data. >> Thank you John for sharing-- >> We'll be right back with more live coverage from Las Vegas from VMworld 2012. This is SiliconANGLES theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back. (uptempo techno music)