(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Welcome to the CUBE studios for another CUBE Conversation. We go in depth with thought leaders driving business outcomes with technology. One of the biggest challenges that every business faces is how do I navigate these significant transformations that are taking place on a global scale as a consequence of digital opportunities? And then how do I utilize marketing as a basis for engaging my customers differently? It's a significant problem that affects virtually all business of all size and all segments. So to have that conversation, we've got a great guest here with us today, Alicia Tillman is the CMO of SAP. Alicia, welcome to theCUBE. >> Peter, thank you so much for having me here today. >> All right, so, Alicia, I want to start with your perspective on some of the big changes that SAP sees occurring in the marketplace, and then we'll kind of talk about how that informs an evolving role for marketing. >> Well, I mean, look, everybody is transforming something, right, you know? And we are very much in the thick of a digital transformation. I think we've gone past the point where it was education on what does it mean and why I need to get onboard, how is it affecting my business? To now, real application. And it comes in many forms. The definitely of digital transformation is extremely broad and there's application of it across your entire business. One of the things that I will say that really is what companies need to solve for is the business of delivering exceptional customer experiences. Customer service has been taken to a whole new level of competition, a lot of it is because of choice that exists and because of how much digital has impacted, on a positive level, our ability to do many things. Personalization is one option to really delivering enhanced experience, and so that is, I think, the biggest focus in the marketplace today that companies of all sizes are trying to figure out, which is how do we win in the experience economy that we're living in right now? >> Now, the experience economy has a lot of different implications. But certainly one of them is your customers need to have a better experience and that's going to be a feature of your overall sustainable differentiation or not, but also it's the idea that I have expertise that you can use within your business so that you can be more competitive and more successful in dealing with your customers. I know that's been a major feature of SAP strategy over the last 20, 30 years is bringing that deep understanding of how a business should operate and the role that software should play in making businesses operate really well. Talk a little bit about how overall the SAP approach in the experience economy informs how you think about marketing. >> Yeah, I mean, what companies are trying to solve for is how can I be an experience company that thrives in this experience economy that we're living in? And SAP is about helping companies understand that outcome and understand the marketplace and where they need to compete, number one, and then secondly, we help companies learn and embrace how to succeed and be competitive and successful in the marketplace that we're in, and when you think about the how, we live also in an intelligence era. We've gone from big data and access to data and how do we derive the appropriate insights from data to now be able to apply it in a way that allows me as a company to run it my best so that I can succeed in the experience economy that we live in, and this is really the hallmark of SAP, we're a technology company, a 47 year old brand that has always been in the business of helping companies run at their best. And whether you're an HR professional to a head of marketing to a head of sales to a CIO, a CFO, having a very unified integrated technology to run your applications with the most embedded intelligence, so that your operations are running at their best, that enables you to then deliver at your best for your customers, which is very tied to, overall, the experience that you're ultimately delivering. >> So one of the challenges that we have here, especially as we think about a company that's supplying the core operational capabilities to customers, is what is it that marketing must do to help customers transform their business? There's a couple of things that I always like to talk about, let me start with one. Increasingly, we think that marketing needs to take a more active role in demonstrating a company's expertise and thought leadership to help customers establish an agreement about how to move forward in periods of significant transformation. Would you agree with that? >> Absolutely, I mean, look. This is a marketer's dream, the environment that we live in right now, and it is up to marketing to grab hold of it and really chart their destiny in terms of the leadership that they can bring to their companies. This is an era where it's about intelligence, it's about insight, and it's about experiences. And when you think about the role of the marketer, and let's talk about the core role. No matter what company you ask, there's certain things that come to mind when they think about what the role of marketing should be. The one thing that you typically hear time and time again is marketing should be representative of the voice of the customer. And I don't think that there is any bigger function to serve the needs and to respond and to help inform the company on what's necessary, but also to help shape the story, to help our customers understand where they can best compete in this environment, and so I think that understanding those needs, combining it with insights of what's happening in the marketplace, and then help to architect how our value proposition works in support, both of what the customer needs are together with what's happening in the marketplace, it's a beautiful role. And not to mention, the other piece of it, which is every company wanting to invest in some way in someone else that has a purpose. That is focused on doing something good above and beyond what we contribute every day, and I also believe that there's no better functioning than marketing as well to help companies understand their purpose and to articulate the purpose of your own company so that your customer sees values, shared value and common purpose that you share with each other. >> So it sounds as though it's important that marketing become an overall advocate for engaging across the entire customer journey. Helping the customer understand the problem and hopefully biasing them towards your solutions, of course, but even after the sale, helping the customer envision what the outcome is, helping the customer comprehend and establish approaches to change the way the business operates and embed things and working with those many, many, that multitude of actual users out there that are ultimately going to dictate whether or not a solution succeeds or is abandoned within the business. Do you see marketing play a more active role across the entire life cycle? >> Have to, have to. I mean, you know, marketing obviously plays a significant role in driving awareness around a company's brand, and then driving increased understanding to lead to purchase decisions in a company, but now even more when you think of the second half of that life cycle, that focuses on retention and implementation and engagement, which ultimately leads to a desire and an ability for you to keep customers for life, that has got to be an inherent part of the role that marketing plays, because even if you think about it in comparison to something like social media, we've gone from a platform that allowed you to share your opinion and frankly have a voice to now measuring the effectiveness based on how much engagement you get from the voice and the opinions that you're sharing, I mean, that is really the evolution that we also need to think about in terms of marketing's role as it relates to the customer journey. There's been so much effort that's been put in the front half of the journey, which is to get the customer to buy, but now it's equally as important, especially in this economy that we live in right now, that you have to focus on renewal. You have to focus on retention, and the way to do that is in helping through the implementation and the engagement process, and one such opportunity for marketing to play that role is find those use cases. Showcase those customers who are using the products, engaging with the products, make it relevant. Make it relevant so that the customer can really optimize how they're engaging with your brand, how they're engaging with your products, and I don't think there's any better department in the organization than marketing to lead that effort for their organization. >> Alicia, I was at Sapphire recently and one of the things that I really enjoyed about the way you presented SAP there is that you actually celebrated customer success. You didn't just talk about it and reveal it, you actually celebrate it, and I totally agree with you, I think that's a crucially important part of the evolving marketing experience as customers take increasingly center stage in determining success or failure. So let me ask you one more question here, Alicia. We've just described a changed, an evolved role for marketing that's made possible in part because we now can engage customers through data without ever losing the sight that data is not the person, is not the brand, but that suggests a different set of, you know, a different mission, of all a different mission for the CMO. How do you think the CMO's job is going to evolve over the course of the next couple of years in light of what we're talking about? >> So I think it's about balance. I think that we live in a world today that also everybody wants to be heard. They want to embrace brands that are relevant to them, that care about them, that are creating services and products and solutions that really help them solve problems or make them better at what they're trying to accomplish, and there's a fair bit of data that helps you gain that understanding, understand that sentiment, and that is incredibly important. That we use that data so that we know what products and services we need to build to support customer need. On the other half, though, of that equation is always this notion of empathy, and often times the data isn't going to give you that empathy that is such a big part of connecting at a human level. How you create that story, you know, how you respond to the needs of the customer, so there has to be a balance. And I think that, you know, where marketers can once, you know, believe that we've lived in a world where data didn't exist and we had to operate purely on instinct and empathy, we live in a world now where we have more data than ever that can help inform what we're creating, but how we deliver it and how it creates relevancy to the customer, that's where the empathy and the intuition and your understanding of the customer really needs to go hand in hand, and I think that that's a beautiful role for marketing to play. >> And so CMOs increasingly have to be able to lead the organization on the data oriented activities, but also sustain a clear company focus, empathetic focus on customer needs and outcomes. >> That's exactly, right, and you said a very key word, Peter, it's about outcomes. You know, we as marketers have to transition from being representations of products and more leaders of experiences. It's how do the products that we create help to enhance an experience which is the ultimate outcome that we're working to support. We want to deliver memorable experiences through each and every engagement that we have with out brand. We have to create a sense of community. And so if we can start to think about how we market, how we tell our story, how we support the customer journey, end to end, from awareness to retention, think about it in terms of the ultimate outcome that we're working to deliver to our customers, and what I have found is when you focus more there, you focus less on the product itself and more about the outcome and the experience it creates, that is really where you increase the value overall of marketing, because you're increasing the relevancy with your customer. >> Excellent, Alicia Tillman, CMO of SAP. Thank you very much for being on the CUBE. >> Peter, thank you so much for having me today, I really enjoyed it. >> And once again, I'm Peter Burris, you've been watching a CUBE Conversation, until next time. (upbeat music)

>>Hello, everyone. This is not appropriate to lapse of America. I'm going to talk about the motivation. For zero knowledge goes back to the heart off, winding down identity, ownership, community and control. Much of photography exists today to support control communications among individuals in the one world. We also consider devices as extensions of individuals and corporations as communities. Here's hoping you're not fit in this picture. What defines the boundary off an individual is the ability to hold a secret with maybe, it says, attached to the ownership. Off some ethic, we want the ability to use the secret to prove ownership of this asset. However, giving up the secret itself essentially announced ownership since then, anybody else can do the same. Dear Knowledge gives us tools to prove ownership without revealing the secret. The notion of proving ownership off a digital object without revealing it sounds very paradoxical outside the model off. So it gives us a surprise when this motion was formalized and constructed by Goldwasser Miccoli and back off in the late eighties, we'll focus on the non interactive >>version of Siri, a knowledge our music in the >>stock, which was first developed by blow Tillman and Peggy, where the general it can span multiple rounds of communications music only allows a single message to be trusted. No, let's get into some technical details for musics. The objective of for music is to show that an object X, which you can think off as the public footprint, often asset, belonging clan and the language without revealing its witness. W, which you can think off as the Future Analytics team consists off three algorithms, video proof and very. The key generation process is executed by a trusted third party and the very opposite, resulting in a common >>random string, or steers, which is made public. The >>true vendor produces a proof by based on the CIA's X and the very fine with the checks. The proof against X and accepts or rejects music off course has to satisfy some properties. We needed to be correct, which basically says that when everyone follows the protocol correctly on, so we can expect, we need to be thought, which says that a false statement cannot be proven. The channel is a trickier properly to form this. How do we capture the intuition behind saying that the proof there is no knowledge of the witness. One way to capture that is to imagine their tools is the real world where the proof is calculated. Using the witness on there's a simulation worth where the proof is calculated without a witness. To make this possible, the simulator may have some extra information about the CIA's, which is independent off the objectives. The property then requires that it is not possible to effectively distinguish these words Now. It is especially challenging to construct music's compared to encryption signature schemes, in particular in signature schemes. The analog off the Hoover can use a secret, and in any case, the analog off the very fire can use a secret. But in is it's none of the crew layer and the verifier can hold a secret. Yeah, in this talk, I'm going to focus on linear subspace languages. This class is the basis of hardness. >>Assumptions like GH and deliver >>on has proved extremely useful in crypto constructions. This is how we express DD it and dealing as linear software. We will use additive notation on express the spirit logs as the near group actions on coop elements. You think the syntax we can write down Deitch on dealing Jupiter's very naturally a zoo witness sector times a constant electric so we can view the language as being penetrated by a constant language. Metrics really was hard by many groups in our instructions. What does it mean? S while uh, Standard group allows traditions and explain it off by in your group also allows one modification In such groups, we can state various in yourself facing elections. The DDN is the simplest one. It assumes that sampling a one dimensional space is indistinguishable from something full professional. The decisional linear assumption assumes the theme from tours is three dimensional spaces generalizing the sequence of Presumptions. The scaling the resumption asks to distinguish between gay damaged examples and full it and >>examples from a K plus one national space. >>Right, So I came up with a breakthrough. Is the construction in Europe 2008 in particular? There? Music for many years Off Spaces was the first efficient >>construction based on idiots and gear. Structurally, >>it consisted of two parts Our commitment to the witness Andre question proof part and going how the witness actually corresponds to the object. The number of elements in the proof is linear in the number >>of witnesses on the number of elements in the object. >>The question remains to build even shorter visits. The Sierras itself seemed to provide some scoop Rosa Russo fix. See how that works for an entire class of languages? Maybe there's a way to increase proof efficiency on the cost of having had Taylor Sierra's for each year. This is what motivates quality and after six, where we let the solace depend on the language itself. In particular, we didn't require the discrete logs of the language constants to generate this, Yes, but we did require this constant student generated from witness sample distributions. This still turns out to be sufficient for many applications. The construction achieved a perfect knowledge, which was universally in the sense that the simulator was independent. However, soundness is competition. So here's how the construction differed from roots high at a very high level, the language constants are embedded into the CIA s in such a way that the object functions as it's only so we end up not needing any separate commitment in the perfect sense. Our particular construction also needed fewer elements in the question proof, as there On the flip side, the CIA's blows up quadratic instead of constant. Let's get into the detail construction, which is actually present with this script. Let the language apparently trace by Giovanni tricks with the witness changing over time, we sat down and matrices >>D and B with appropriate damages. >>Then we construct the public series into what C. S. D is meant to be used. By the way. On it is constructed by >>multiplying the language matrix with D and being worse, Sierra's V is the part that is meant to be used by the very fair, and it is constructed using details be on be embedded in teaching. >>Now let's say you're asked to computer proof for a candidate X with fitness number we computed simply as a product of the witness with CSP. The verification of the truth is simply taking with the pairing off the candidate and the proof with the Sierras. Seeming threats is equal to zero. If you look carefully. Sierra's V essentially embedded in G to the kernel of the Matrix, owned by the language metrics here and so to speak. This is what is responsible for the correctness. The zero knowledge property is also straightforward, >>given the trapdoor matrices, D and B. Now, >>when corrected journalism relatively simple to prove proving illnesses strictly The central observation is that, given CSP, there is still enough entropy. >>India and me to >>random I seriously in particular Sierra's we Can we expand it to have an additional component with a random sample from the kernel allows it. This transformation is purely statistical. No, we essentially invented idiots are killing their talent in the era of kernel part in this transform sitting within show that an alleged proof on a bad candidate and we used to distinguish whether a subspace sample was used for a full space >>sample was used at the challenge. The need >>to have the kernel of the language in this city. That's the technical >>reason why we need the language to come from a witness. Sample. >>Uh, let's give a simple illustration >>of the system on a standard Diffie Hellman, which g one with the hardness assumption being idiot. >>So the language is defined by G one elements small D, E and F, with pupils off the phone due to the W. After that ugly, the CIA is is generated as follows example D and >>B from random on Compute Sierra speak as due to the day after the being verse and Sierra's V as G to do to do the big on day two of the video. The >>proof of the pupil >>detail that I do after the bill is computed using W. As Sierra Speed race to the party. I know that this is just a single element in the group. The verification is done by bearing the Cooper and the proof with the Sierras VMS and then checking in quality. The >>similar can easily compute the proof using trapdoors demand without knowing that what we are expecting. People leave a Peter's die and reduce the roof size, the constant under a given independent of the number of witnesses and object dimensions. Finally, at Cryptocurrency 14 we optimize the proof toe, one group >>element under the idiots. In both the works, the theorists was reduced to linear sites. The >>number of bearings needed for ratification was also industry in years. This is the crypto Ford in construction in action, the construction skeleton remains more or less the famous VR turkey. But the core observation was that many of the Sierras elements could were anomaly. Comite. While still >>maintaining some of this, these extra random items are depicted in red in this side. >>This round of combination of the Sierras elements resulted in a reduction of boat, Bruce says, as also the number of clearings required for education in Europe in 2015 kills, and we came up with a beautiful >>interpretation of skill sets based on the concept of small predictive hash functions. >>This slide is oversimplified but illustrated, wanting, uh, this system has four collecting >>puzzle pieces. The goodness of the language metrics okay again and a key Haider when >>the hidden version of the key is given publicly in the Sears. Now, when we have a good object, the pieces fit together nicely into detectable. However, when we have a bad object, the pieces no longer fit and it becomes >>infeasible to come up with convincing. Zero knowledge is demonstrable by giving the key to the simulator on observing that the key is independent of the language metrics. >>Through the years, we have extended >>enhanced not mind to be six system, especially with our collaborators, Masayuki Abby Koko Jr. Born on U. >>N. Based on your visits, we were able to construct very efficient, identity based encryption structure, resulting signatures >>public verifiable CCS, secure encryption, nine signatures, group signatures, authorities, key extremes and so on. >>It has also been gratifying to see the community make leaps and bounces ideas and also use queuing visits in practical limits. Before finishing off, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about >>some exciting activities going on Hyper ledger, which is relevant for photographers. Hyper >>Leisure is an open source community for enterprise. Great. It's hosted by the minute formation on enjoys participation from numerous industry groups. Uh, so difficult funded to efforts in Africa, we have versa, which is poised to be the crypto home for all. Blocking it and practice a platform for prospecting transactions are part of the legs on the slide here, >>we would love participation from entity inference. So >>that was a brief history of your analytics. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. And thanks for listening

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are just wrapping up day two at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Keith, this event is enormous. We were just comparing our step goals. This event size is 16 American football fields. Enormous, 20,000 people. I think, combined, we have around 15,000 steps today. >> That sounds about right. >> Quite a few of them go to your longer legs than mine but this event is really been incredible, the energy that SAP's CEO Bill McDermott kicked off with yesterday morning has really been carried through this event and with our guests on the show for the last two days. >> No, we did 23, 24 interviews and every last one of them was high-energy. The guests were extremely excited about the products, the solutions, and the problems they're solving for, not just enterprise, but for society. I thought that was a really great theme of the guests today specifically. >> It's amazing, and you talk about, you know, the impact on society and SAP wants to be one of the top world's most valuable brands like Apple, Google, Coca Cola, who are all customers of SAP's and who all sell products that we can interact with, that we can taste, you know, Mercedes Benz, we can drive. They've got this invisible software product. They've been around for 46 years. And to your point, the stories that we have heard about how these invisible product, products, are transforming industries, are saving lives, was really something that I did not expect. >> Well when you make a great product that impact lives or... I compare it to making great content. theCUBE makes great content, that content would be found, people would take notice, you make a great product that impacts people's lives. It's no wonder that SAP is near the top of that brand recognition, brand value, 17th on the list. If they continue to do that, if they become the product, the ERP solution that you can talk to and you can ask a question, you know, not just business questions of what were the numbers the last quarter for Chicago, but you can ask a question, you know what, where is the best place to take my family to live in Eastern Europe during the summer months? That becomes value-add that people wouldn't be able to ignore. >> They've done a tremendous job building this partner ecosystem. There were hundreds of partner sessions alone. We've heard from a lot of their partners. We're in the NetApp booth, thanks to NetApp for having theCUBE here. NetApp is a customer and a partner of SAP and we heard a lot about how SAP is transforming to the cloud dramatically with the help of this massive partner ecosystem. >> You know what, we've had Microsoft, Fujitsu, SAP, NetApp, Nvidia, the list goes on and on of customers and partnerships of examples of companies that have come together and they've been consistent. In some areas, obviously Microsoft competes with SAP. In some areas, Microsoft competes with NetApp. But they recognize that without these alliances, without these partnerships, they can't solve these large, complex problems of ridding parts of Africa with mosquitoes. SAP can't do that by themselves. Microsoft can't do that by themselves. And this week was a great acknowledgement and a example of how the ecosystem works. >> They also talked a lot at this event about the intelligent enterprise where it's, you know, it's not just about digital transformation as table stakes. Companies that do it well have, or are working towards getting, this true 360-degree view of the customer which is essential. They talked about enabling that via certain things that they're leading in, or pioneering, which is connecting the demand chain and the supply chain. They really talked about enabling this new, this current SAP that's built for this fourth generation customer experience. Our lives as consumers have dramatically influenced business. We expect to have the ability to, you know, try and buy an app if we want it, right? And they're using that model very well to give customers in many industries, they have 390,000 customers, choice and flexibility. And the partner ecosystem is just part of that flexibility that they have to give. And they do a great job of listening to their customers who really are helping with a lot of the co-development in a very symbiotic way. >> Yeah, SAP is reentering this people-centric view of ERP, CRM, of data, saying that their relationship is about people. Bill McDermott spent a lot of time talking about trust. One of the reasons why people trust the brand of theCUBE is because we're on the ground, we're talking to the users, we're talking to the people. People can reach out and touch and feel you, there's a personal relationship between that brand and the community. The same thing with, got the same feel for what SAP is trying to do of, you know, obviously with over 20,000 people, I dunno if the number is 21,000, 22,000, but more than 20,000 people, a million people online watching the event, SAP the serious about this C/4HANA move, of being able to say, you know what, we are going to create a ecosystem of trust. We talked about trust with the app center and being able to validate applications on the platform. SAP has long been one of those companies that's serious about their partnerships and validation and certification of platforms. So whether it's HCI, storage with NetApp, the deep relationship with NetApp, SAP is going to put its brand upfront and say that if you're going to engage with one of our partnerships, there's a transient trust that goes from SAP to their partners. >> And we talked with a number of folks working in different groups within SAP focused on the customer. This morning we had on their Chief Customer, a guy from their Chief Customer Office who talked about these, kinda top 100 strategic accounts that they partner with who then also they take that information, those learnings and don't just improve the technologies but they also use them to influence much greater than a hundred customers. They're strategically utilizing that data. We talked yesterday with one of the gentlemen running the SAP four, S/4HANA community rather, and the Leonardo community and the amount of engagement that they have in that community, especially in Leonardo which has only been around for a year. The customer engagement is key but also their reaction to it, and I would say even, I think we heard a lot of how they're being proactive with creating content and enabling their customers to be able to learn at the same time as they're learning from their customers. >> Yeah some hero numbers that we heard this week: 6,000 people in that HANA, the S/4HANA community. While the Customer Success Group focuses on the top 100 customers, there were, I think 38,000 people following the Twitter account, so there's obviously outreached stretch. The Leonardo and S/4 communities have created a thousand videos on how-to. So obviously the impact of and the reach of SAP has ambitions of not just raising brand awareness and getting into that Top 10 with Apple and Google, they also have the ambitions of becoming a platform, a ecosystem. You know, we look at Microsoft as kinda one of the ultimate platform companies. Microsoft partners make more money off of Windows than Microsoft makes off of Windows. SAP seems to have the same goal of their partners, there's a hundred partners on the show floor, that should generate more revenue than SAP which would be impressive. SAP, I looked the other day, $136 billion market capital, not a small company at all. >> So you have an interesting perspective, for many reasons, but one you've run large SAP infrastructures before. And here you are now at SAPPHIRE from the press and media, the analyst perspective. What are some of the things that really surprised you in all of your experience as a user of SAP to now covering it from this angle. >> You know what, I don't know if it was a year ago. It was not even a full year, my anniversary for running my company is August. So less than a year ago I ran SAP for a large pharmaceutical. And we're in the throes of selecting where our next platform was gonna be hosted. Cloud was a possibility and it is amazing how the conversations have changed from my peers a year ago, or a year and a half or even a year ago, to now to how readily acceptable customers are of running mission-critical, the core of the business, 77% of the world's transactions, we heard today, goes through SAP, how willing customers are at running those work goals in the cloud. Second piece, which was probably a proof point, how much SAP has improved SAP in the cloud. SAP has marketed SAP HANA and SAP as cloud-ready applications, it was more of something that you... I took legacy application, I installed it on VMs in the cloud, cloud-ready. No we've given examples from the hyperscalers, specifically Google, of how, and Microsoft of how, customers are coming whipping their credit card up, spinning up instances of HANA, spinning them down. Google talked about how you can migrate your whole ECC on HANA to the cloud within 30 minutes to two hours, amazing movement in cloud. I think it's by far my biggest surprise coming to this show. I didn't expect SAP to accelerate their cloud adoption as fast as they have. >> I'm curious to your thoughts too about simplicity, simplicity of message, you know, what's their best-run businesses campaign? Best-run businesses run on SAP. Simplicity has long been part of their messaging. As we look at the SAP cloud platform and some of the announcements there today and you look at, they've got Ariba, and Concur, and Fieldglass, and SuccessFactors, with the C/4 announcement from yesterday, what is your impression on, have they been able to sort of simplify and kind of reduce customer confusion in terms of this breadth of products and technologies that SAP now delivers? >> You know, SAP is a big company and they have a lot of products. They've been around for 46 years. You know, we didn't talk about any legacy database stuff. They still own Siebel so they still own a traditional database company. It's easier said than done to simplify the message. When you come to... You know, we talked to interviewee after interviewee, customers are still overwhelmed when they look at a overall problem. They can even identify SAP as the potential partner to solve it, but 300 products is still 300 products. It's very... You can help simplify the message by throwing those products in categories, sales force, which product you lead with, so new customers, you know, sales force will help you with that. Traditional customers that don't have deep relationships with their sales force and solution providers, maybe, I think there's still a little difficulty around understanding the messaging around all of 300 products. I mean, it's 300 products. >> Well, there's always work to be done and well we have... There was a lot of product announcements, a lot of energy, and evangelicalism that you and I heard consistently throughout the event and on-set here. A third area that I think really struck me is, SAP has been very vocal about having an initiative to raise the profile of women in technology. They did an excellent job of getting women onstage during both keynote sessions, yesterday and today. From their CMO, Alicia Tillman, to Lindsey Vonn and a whole suite of women Olympic athletes that were yesterday in the general session, to some of the women that were doing some of these outstanding demos and I, I really tip my hat to SAP because for being as large and as lengthy of an incumbent as they are, they're really able to focus on some of these key areas and we at theCUBE love to cover that because it's something that really needs consistent awareness. >> Well, I dunno if people would notice but we probably, both of us, are very vested in diversity and Silicon Valley, in general, is always appreciated when companies go, not just acknowledge the challenge of diversity, it is a very, very difficult problem. It's probably one of the most difficult problems in our industry. So to actually put some meat on a bone, announce the problem, announce the challenge, and go forth and put, you know, obviously, extremely capable women and minorities in the forefront. >> Yeah. Well Keith, always a pleasure hosting with you. Thanks so much for working with me the last couple of days, it's been-- >> I always enjoy it. >> I do too. It's really been a really fun, energetic show so thanks for all of your help. >> Thank you. >> Keith and I wanna thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend, we're from SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. Thanks for watching. (energetic music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to the CUBE we are in Orlando, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018, I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend as my co-host. We're in the NetApp booth, and we are very excited to talk to the VP of the Chief Customer Office at SAP, Mark Marcus, Mark, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, glad to be here I appreciate it. >> This event is enormous. One of the things that really struck me in Bill McDermott's key note was, you know, we always here about, oh we are expecting 20 thousand people, he talked about a million people engaging with SAP SAPPHIRE this week, via the in person, and the live, and the on demand video experiences. Massive! 390 thousand customers, hundreds of customer sessions the voice of the customer validating SAP as one of the world's most valuable brands is not only pervasive here its palpable. So talk to us about the Chief Customer Office. What is it, what's it's mission, why was it created? >> Yes, okay that's a great, a great way, so first of all thank you, I appreciate you being here, I live in Orlando so it's great to see this event in my-- People wonder why SAPPHIRE is actually in Orlando, it's because I live here. (all laughing) >> You're the reason! >> You're the reason. >> I'm the reason SAPPHIRE is in Orlando, Florida. >> Okay, you heard it, Mark Marcus, you're the reason. >> No, so what happened is, when Bill McDermott came to SAP, he was a different type of leader, and what he wanted to do immediately is start meeting with customers. So what he did is, he started meeting with customers, and he said if you have any questions or problems, give me a call. And so what happened is, his phone started ringing, people needed help, so he needed somebody that could help him with the customers when he ran North America. And so that was the genesis to Chief Customer Office. So we started off, first, we were extremely reactive. And so what I mean by that is, if the customer had a problem, we'd have to go in, and we'd have to help them. And it's much more difficult when you have a problem, then try to prevent a problem. So what we've been doin' the last several years, is trying to be much more proactive, so instead of waiting for the phone to ring, we've been getting with customers, and making sure, you know, as their project start, begin their steering committee meetings and make sure that things go well. >> So, you've taken that more proactive approach, it's almost how the organization's evolved. What is the focus today? >> Yes, well the focus has always been the customer, but I think it's more of, taking the best practices that we've learned, and actually sharing those with the customers, and helping them explain how other people have done their journey, because what you'll find, is people are in different phases of their journey, and what they like to hear more of is, you know, what did other customers do, what did they do right, what did they do wrong, and how can we be more successful? So we've been able to, over the years, if you think about, just to put it in perspective again, there are, SAP North America has 158 thousand customers, and we're only on, my particular team only has about a hundred of those customers, that we have. So it's a very, very small amount, they're are ones that, you know, are strategic to SAP, that we get involved in. But what we're able to do though, is, through social media and other areas is, customers wanna hear what happened, again, in the past, and how we can, you know, learn from that and move forward. >> So, I'm a big social media fan. Twitter handle has 38 thousand followers, which a lot for your focus on a hundred customers, so I think that, that you're echoing the, the theme very well. Talk to us about how it's changed over the past, 14 or so years, shift has focused from on-premises solutions to hybrid-cloud, to cloud analytics, AI, what's the, what are customers talking about? >> I'll tell you what, you're talkin' my language now, (Keith laughing) okay, because what happened is what we did is, actually what I'm in part, what I'm a part of is actually the cloud ambassador program. And so what that is, is it's focusing on our cloud customers so, you know, success factors, Ariba, Concur, and those kinda things, and so, really what happened, is, you know, when SAP, when I came to SAP 14 years ago, it was all on-premise ERP, alright? So it's very contained, very controlled with what people had now there's Cloud's, we're not really sure what customers are doing, how they're interacting with the solutions, and so what we have to do is we really focus, and again, my group is 100% focused in on that, so. What part of our mission has been is, we're not necessarily know what customers are doing, so we're helping to understand what they're doing, and trying to help educate groups inside SAP to be more responsive and help them. >> So you mentioned having responsibility for some strategic accounts, about a hundred. Do those represent kind of a subset of some of the key areas in which you're looking for the voice of the customer, and their practice using your technology to influence the direction of some of the key technologies? >> Yes, 'cause I'd say they're some of the biggest, most strategic customers that we have, and so what we do a lot of is, we're able to, we align directly with the executives, at the customer, so one of things with Chief Customer Office, is we're aligned at the C level, so it's, the CIO, the CEO, the CFO, at that level, so we're able to say we heard directly from the leaders of the companies, our most important customers, key customers, and we're able to take that back the other areas of SAP, and say, this is the what the leadership's demanding, and that's what we're able to help them with. >> So, as we're going through this phase of digital transformation, through a lot of organizations, that audience is even more important than, what?! (chuckles) Tell me how, as digital transformation has become, more than just a buzzword but a imperative from the C-suite, from CEOs to CIOs, CMOs, CDO, all the C's, CXO! How has the conversation between those groups changed, from the SAP perspective? >> Yeah, I'll tell ya, that is, again, I'm not just sayin' that you are, you're hitting exactly what we focus in on because, traditionally SAP has been focused more on the CIO level, so it's more the IT groups of implemented ERP, it's been more of a back-office type solution, well now, what we're finding is the line of businesses are the people that are actually making the decisions. So what we're finding out is that, it's not necessarily so much that the, technically, how they work, it's more the business processes they have, and how we can help actually, basically automate, and help them run more smoothly. >> Yeah, Hasso Plattner actually, and some of the guys this morning during the keynote talked about that, in terms of, customers were saying, you know, I'm getting kind of confused, there's so many different product names, a lot of acquisitions, he was talking about that, we heard from customers that there was confusion there. So when he was talking about, in the context of C4 for example of, making things simpler to understand, but also to your point, the back office and the front office now has to be connected so they also talked about that, in terms of, the integration with SAP Cloud, and how they really focused on enabling wholistic integration because it's the processes that have to now communicate together, so that, a whole, kind of proactive, customer responsiveness, that was really apparent this morning. 46 years young SAP, you have a new initiative about the customer for life, tell us about that. >> Okay, so customer for life is a new initiative that we have, so what I told you, at the Chief Customer Office we've done, we're able to touch very few customers, but, you know, again, you know we have 156 thousand, in SAP North America, you know, multiply that all over the world, I mean, it's many customers, okay. So what we've tried to do, is take what we've done on a small scale in the Chief Customer Office, and make that pervasive throughout the whole company. And so what we're really good at too is actually, you know, understanding what the customers do, finding them a solution, but now what we wanna do is go through the whole life-cycle of what we do so, I mentioned, you know, having a customer executive assigned to every customer. Being able to be part of the steering committees that we have, and being able to follow them through so we can help guide them, so it's not only selling the solutions but actually helping them through all the way, so the new initiative we set is customer for life, it's something that we're rolling out right now, and we've had, and again, it's taking what we did in the Chief Customer Office and, you know, propagating that through the rest of SAP. >> So, this facility, you like to say it, 16 football fields, American football fields, so that's a big facility. I walked the facility this morning, got in about three thousand steps. Hundred plus partners on the floor, ranging from system integrators, technology partners, and infrastructure space, software SIs. Help us understand as SAP, 20 thousand plus people here at the show, a million people online engaging on SAPPHIRE, SAP is becoming a platform company. How has that changed your role, your conversations? >> Well, I think what has happened a lot is, especially in the cloud projects, again I'm gonna focus more on what I'm a part of is, you know, there's a lot of new partners that come up. Because what happened is that, you know, we acquired several companies, we did, you know Concur, Ariba, SuccessFactors, a lot of big companies, and a lot of different partners. So really what our role is, in the Chief Customer Office is, to basically, to help these partners to understand how to work together, and we do a lot of things in meetings, we have, what we do, is, it's usually like the three legged stool, it is, you know, it's SAP, the partner, and the customer together, and we all do that together. And what I've found is, some of the problems that we've had is not neces-- you know, I always say like, how can take the exact same solution, and it works well in one company, and it doesn't work in another company? And what it is, to your point, with all the partners here, is it's communication, are they working together, you know, is the partner, and SAP, and the customer all working together, and so that's what I'm really focused on today is meeting with all the, you know, do the SAPPHIREs, to meet with the partners, to make sure we're aligned, you know, talk about our key customers, and make sure that we're all working together. >> We talked to one of the gentleman yesterday who was running some of the communities around HANA and Leonardo and, just the massive amount of content that is being generated to enable and educate customers across 25 plus industries, was massive, as well as, leveraging that peer validation from customers, like you're saying, you know, some customers in certain industries have a ton of success with the same thing that others customers struggle, depending on a lot of different variables. So that sort of collaboration and communication, even within the SAP communities alone, was very apparent yesterday that that's one of the big drivers, of I'm sure, the customer for life initiative is, as you have evolved, so have your customers. One thing that struck me yesterday was, you know, looking at, you're now number 17 of the World's top most valuable brands up there with Apple, you know, products that we can engage with and, I saw on a bus yesterday some of the messaging, and ERP you can talk to, and hear from. (Keith laughing) So SAP really set a very lofty ambition of being up there with the Amazons, and the Coca-Colas, and the Googles, and now you have technology that people can, you know, like at home with their digital assistant, talk to and communicate with. I thought that was very powerful message. >> And I'd say that's, I'd say too that, you know, I've worked with SAP for 14 years, and when I came to SAP, nobody had really heard of SAP and what they were, they thought maybe, you know, sometimes on TV when you see SAP when it's translated in other languages or something, that's what they think of SAP, they don't really know what the company is but, yeah, it's been great to see how, you know, people would stop you, you know, whether you're wearin', you know, they'll see somethin' on your laptop, on your shirts or somethin' like that, yeah so it's been good. I think that's been a big focus of getting it out because, one thing is is we have 150 million cloud users, that's a lot of people, so a lot of people use SAP, so. Again, one of the cloud products that we have is called Concur, it's for expense and reporting, and so a lot of times people might not've heard of SAP, but they've heard of Concur, because they all do their expenses, that kinda stuff. So, exactly right, it is pretty good, you know, when you have even family members know who SAP is now. They've done a great job, you know, hiring, you know, with the market department and the people they've hired, it's been great, it's been good. >> So, okay, we talked a little bit about analytics and the customer experience as we're looking at intelligent business. Is that a message that's actually resonating with customers in that top 100 strategic accounts, are they using analytics to actually power business, What are some of the data analysis success stories? >> Yeah, I would say that, what I would say is that, what I've found a lot of times is that, you know, people can get the information in, but they need to be able to get the information out. And so, everybody across that has done it, so, I would just say almost every customer we have has basically needed to get that out, and do reporting and those kinda things, you know? So, part of what we do at the Chief Customer Office is, you know, not only, you know, help them with the reports that they have, but to be able to run that kinda stuff. >> You guys also have, you know, some really interesting use-cases, I'm a Formula One fan, I've worked with Formula One before, I'm, I understand it from a fan perspective. You guys are really involved in McLaren Motorsport, for example, from finance, to procurement, to manufacturing. How are you seeing some of these really big use-cases like Formula One, or Coca-Cola, infuse into some of the, you know, the mid-sized businesses, who, you say, might be using Concur for example. What is some of the value that a small company can get from the massive users? >> Yeah, well I'd say there's a lot of things, because what happens is that from those big massive customers that we have, we're able to put together as we call model company. And so what a model company is, is it takes the best practices you have and puts it into more of a, I'd say nothings out-of-the-box, but makes it much more easier to implement, to be able to do it, so what we're able to do is, you know, with the massive amounts of info like McLaren, I think Hasso mentioned what, there's 400 sensors that they're getting on their cars, and that kind of stuff. So basically being able to take all the information that we have, and then from that, distill it down into where it's a very, repeatable type instance we can use for other customers. So there's a lot, I mean that's what we do with a lot of the, what the customers have, we try to get that back to where other people can use it. >> A Formula One car is basically an IOT device. You said 400 sensors, generating a ton of data, per race weekend, times three days, times 20 events a year. I read from Gartner just the other day that by 2020, which is around the corner, there's expected to be 20 billion IOT devices. What are you hearing from your customer base regarding IOT and being able to synchronize this, you know, modern next-gen data center with myriad devices? >> Yeah, so that is one of our top initiatives that we have right now. Because, one of the things that we've done is, we have an offering that we have called Leonardo, and what Leonardo is, it was named after the inventor Leonardo da Vinci, alright? So, you know, in his time he was, you know, a great innovator, actually went and saw his house and went over to Europe, and I've done a lot with Leonardo, you know what I'm sayin'? To be able to do that, right? But what that is, is that's basically all about, you know, getting devices to be able to get that information in. Because what you do is, you have you know, thousands of sensors and stuff like that and a good, you asked me earlier about a good success story on that, is one of the ones that I think resonates the most on that is in Buenos Aires, they have a massive problem with rain, you know, it rains a lot, and they have severe flooding, and the architecture is antiquated. But what they've found, is the reason that they were having these flooding problems, is because the sewers and the drains were all getting clogged up. So what they did was, they put a sensor in every one of the drains to be able to make sure that they were unclogged and they were flowing freely. So what they did is, they were able to, if the water flow started going down they were able to empty out the drains, even with an antiquated sewer system, because they were keeping it aligned with, you know, using Leonardo now, they can go and keep it cleaned out, they've had massive rains and the flooding hasn't really been there where it is, so now, what's interesting is every time I go by and see a gutter that's all clogged up, I think, you know, they need Leonardo to be able to help! >> I was reading as well about Alicia Tillman, your CMO, who's been at the helm for about nine months now and, in the context of this desire to become one of the top global brands with an invisible product, she said, you know, that one of the most important things for SAP right now is brand narrative, messages and campaigns will change quarterly or, every six months as they should but, she said, you know, to be able to show the value of basically under-the-hood software, you've gotta be able to show how it transforms countries, lives, industries, and that's one of the things that I think is very, very palpable here at the event is how much impact SAP is making in, whether it's rhino conservation in Africa or, you know, helping water scarcity in India, the impact, which is really the most, the biggest validation that you get, right from the voice of your customers is massive. >> Yeah, and I'd say to that, you know I like to say that, you know, it sounds like, you know, yes we're a software company, and, you know, that kinda stuff, but, it is really a noble endeavor, because we are doing a lot of things to help people's lives, and to run their businesses better, and what you realize is that, Chief Customer Office sometimes we see that other side when the systems aren't running properly at times, you know, they're usually runnin' right, but sometimes they have problems, and when they do, you can just see the impact you have on, you know, people's lives and businesses and stuff like that, that it is really running, you know, it is core to what you have, you know. So I'll tell you one of the interesting things that SAP's involved in is, they do a lot with instant messaging, so they have a part of, one of the acquisitions we have does instant messaging, well, you don't think about that but like, when you use, let's say, Facebook Messenger, or something like that, those messages go inside an SAP infrastructure at times, right? So imagine, you know, if you can't change messages, or doin' those kinda things, you know, so. You're exactly right, it definitely does, what we're doing does really impact a lot of peoples lives, so it's important. >> Well mark, thanks so much for taking some time to stop by theCUBE and chat with us about what SAP is doing with customers, how they're really symbiotically working together with you to evolve and transform this company. >> I wanna say one other thing too, it's great to work with two professionals here, you guys have really helped me a lot. >> Aww! >> I don't do this a lot, but it really made me feel comfortable, so you, I appreciate your help, thank you. >> Our pleasure, thanks so much! And, so you're the reason SAPPHIRE's in Orlando, are you also the reason they got Justin Timberlake tomorrow night?! (Mark laughing) >> I would like that. But I would like to say real quick, one thing before we cut real quick, I would like to say one thing just about the NetApp partnership we have. So RJ Bibby is the person that I work with at NetApp, and, just what he's done to basically, because NetApp really helps run a lot of our infrastructure inside SAP, so it's success factors, some of the high-availability in things that we have, and just working with RJ, and kinda learning how we, how we work and can help other customers, they've really volunteered to help a lot of our customers, and so, I just wanna thank NetApp again for helping us sponsor this. >> Great, great closing. We wanna thank NetApp for having theCUBE in their booth. Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend, we are at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018, thanks for watching! (bubbly music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I am Lisa Martin, with Keith Townsend. We have been here all day at SAP Sapphire 2018. Keith, this venue in Orlando is so huge. It's the equivalent of 16 American football fields. >> Yeah, probably should not have worn a pair of new shoes. >> No, but you did close your rings, so it's a trade-off, right? >> It's a trade-off, yeah. >> So, the keynote this morning started out with a bang. Bill McDermott, the CEO of SAP, is probably the most energetic, evangelical, C-level I've ever seen on stage. You really could feel the excitement, the momentum. They also followed that with some great announcements. You know, they've been saying for awhile, being pretty bullish about wanting to not just disrupt the Sierra market, but wanting to become one of the world's most valuable brands. They wanna be up there with the Apples, and the Googles, and Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, who all have products that we all see, and touch, and feel, and buy. And they announced that the brands e-rankings just came out the other day, that they're number 17, up four spots from last year. So, their momentum is, they're really putting their money where their mouth is. >> Yeah, so SAP is the cash register of the world. 70% of the world's transactions go through SAP, but most of us don't see it. So, it's amazing to see that they're ranked number 17 on those brands that are very, you know, if you told somebody you worked for SAP, they'd be like, oh, okay, I think I might have heard of that. >> Right. >> Or, I've heard that that was the reason why manufacturing is down, because the SAP system was down. So, it is a bold statement to say that you're gonna go from that, to a household name. Interestingly enough, part of that is becoming an ecosystem. So, becoming a platform. What we've heard today was a lot of talk about how SAP is transforming from a product company. You know, a point-of-sale system is one thing, but to say that you've built a ecosystem, and a platform around that, is the goal that I think I heard today from the stage floor. >> And you're right, you talk about, you know, them becoming a household name, with a product that's basically invisible to most people who probably use it. They have amassed 390,000 customers in 46 years. They've been around for a long time. This event, though, is massive. The partner area alone is huge. There's probably more than 20,000 people not just that are here, in Orlando, but, he said, Bill McDermott, a million people engaging with SAP Sapphire via the online experience. That's enormous. But to your point, it's all really fundamentally due to the partnerships, the systems integrators, the technology partners and more who have helped them on their transformation. >> Yeah, we had KPIT on, they said the guest has been on 20 Sapphires for 20 years, the event has gone on for 25 years in some form. He remembered, initially, they might have had one or two sessions. They have 12, KPIT has 12 sessions this year at the Sapphire 2018. There's a huge ecosystem of partners, here on the show floor. Over 500, I think, sessions in general. We had the VP of Community for S/4. They have 1,000 how-to videos on how to just do basic things in S/4. Huge community, huge event. SAP is starting to make end rolls and becoming, again, not just a products company, but an ecosystem company, I think. Sapphire in Orlando is a great example of how they're expanding the brand. >> Yes, and in fact, on the brand part, you know, that's one of the things that their CMO, Alicia Tillman, who was on main stage this morning, that's something that I've heard her talk about before. She's been the CMO for about nine months now, and she said, you know, and marketers will know, campaigns and messaging will change every quarter, six months, and that is fine. It's the brand narrative that they really started to work on at SAP. So, you're seeing this "Best-run companies run on SAP", it's sharing the value of what SAP can deliver with their partner ecosystem, in terms of how it's helping customers transform their businesses, transform industries, save lives. They've done a very focused job on showing how this invisible technology is really revolutionizing the world. They're now going, you know, full-force, embedding A.I., and really being quite bold, they're saying. I loved what Bill McDermott had on the slide this morning, of augmented intelligence. And there's always a lot of concern with A.I, right? Jobs being replaced. And he talked about what he, and some of the other world leaders, were talking about. And I liked augmented intelligence, to augment humanity, this connection of humans and machines working together. They're really being quite bold, and focused, in that area. I'm just curious what your take was from an advanced analytics A.I. perspective. >> So, there's a lot of talk around advanced A.I. analytics. At the end of the day, it's about actual business results. We're here in the booth of NetApp, who has done a great job, frankly, of transforming their image from a storage company in the middle of a transformation to being known as a data-driven company. So, NetApp has gone through a similar change that SAP is looking to do, from a brand perspective. Reasonably enough, we had the CIO, Bill, from NetApp, that talked about that transformation, and how data is a key part of their own transformation, internally. And, how SAP could probably hold NetApp up as a great example of a company that's using the predecessor to C/4HANA, which was just announced, on the staged hypers of taking data, analyzing that data, applying A.I, machine learning, more like machine learning in reality. Machine learning to that data, and then getting insights, so that humans can make better decisions. >> Right. You know, on that front, one of the themes I heard today, Keith, from not just Bill Miller, the CIO of NetApp, who was on here with us earlier, but some of their other partners, NetApp and SAP's partners, all talk about their own transformations, internally, as essential for them to become intelligent enterprises, which is a lot of what SAP's talking about. But I also thought that was quite valuable, from an external perspective, to hear NetApp talk so candidly about their transformation, and share that with their customers who are in similar positions. I think, when vendors will, say, drink their own champagne, and there's real proof there in the pudding. I think that's tremendously valuable for these brands. And we've just heard that kind of consistently throughout the day today, of companies that are showing how they're transforming to then help their customers also transform. >> So, one of the things that we like to ask on theCUBE is not just about current customer base, but, what new customers are you attracting? So, one of the interesting conversations is one of the last ones we had with WorkSpan, and how they're a small company, and they started out the gate with SAP, and how the brand has gone beyond this, oh, this is a manufacturing, supply chain, you must be a Fortune 500 company to even consider rolling it out to. You know what? We're a brand new company, providing a data-driven product, and out of the gate, we're selecting a S/4HANA and the platform to create this new product that's consumed by not necessarily technologists, that powers an alliance platform to find and curate business alliances. I thought that was an extremely interesting interview that shows the power of expanding beyond just a focus on traditional enterprise, but the power of data. And once you've become a platform, how you can power your partner ecosystem. >> I thought that was a great example, as well, of a company that's only been in business for three years, less than four years. How they saw this gap in the market, where they said, you know, we're surrounded by alliance partners of SAP's in this 16 football fields location that we're in. And WorkSpan found that 60 to 75% of announced alliances fail. Huge opportunity for them to then get in from a systematic perspective and align, you know, two companies' marketing automation systems, for example, and sales automation systems. And they really saw this big opportunity to, like you were saying, create an entirely new product, and probably create a new market as a result. I thought that was a really modern example of an idea that saw a huge gap, and can be transformative. I asked Ahmed, after we stopped rolling the cameras, all right, so you found 60 to 75% of these announced alliances fail, typically. What does WorkSpan think you can do to bring that number down? And he said, within two years, we wanna get that down to about 30%. >> Wow. That is an amazing stat. So, let's look at the companies that are digitally transforming. So we had two guests that I want to highlight, one with Mike McGivney from SAP SuccessFactors, which is SAP's people-focused cloud, and then Wolfgang Hopfes, the head of SAP Business for EMEA. And they're on a unique challenge. SAP has been around for 46 years, and in IT years, that's like, you know, 1,000. So, there's a lot of technical debt, that companies are now paying for. You know, back in the nineties, early 2000s, customizing SAP was all the rage. Now, customers are faced with, they have to digitally transform their organizations, how do they do so? Well, it's not so easy to move from a customized SAP to S/4. Bill trumpeted the numbers of 1,800 SAP HANA customers, which is great, well over a billion dollars in sales for an in-memory database. However, SAP has over 300,000 customers. So there's a lot of opportunity, but a lot of challenge. So, the ecosystem of partners, Fujitsu, NetApp, other infrastructure companies looking to help simplify the infrastructure so that technologists within these customer organizations can focus on the higher stack of those larger business challenges of basically pulling apart what they've built. Bill from NetApp shared how difficult their transformation was from their CRM to >> Hypers? >> Hypers. He called it painful, a painful six months. And what we saw today, I think, was a reality check. A lot of enterprises have a lot of pain ahead of them. >> Well, it's pain in a number of areas, and one of them is cultural. And I really thought, you know, you say, SAP being 46 years old is like, 1,000 in IT, or dog years. They're like the Gandalf of IT, right? But one of the things that I found quite remarkable is 46 year-old history, 390,000 customers. But clearly, they have been able to evolve their culture to be able to support what their customers need, and go from just being a supply chain procurement-focused type of business. And I thought that was really quite compelling, to see how they must have had to transform their culture, so that they can help businesses transform. They make it look easy, with the messaging and the momentum, but that was something that for a company that's an incumbent like that, is a bit of, you might say, even a model for how to do that right. >> Yeah, we talked to Joe Lazar, he's the SAP VP of Global Technology Partners. He talked about how SAP likes to be pushed to be a little uncomfortable by their partners, and we asked him the tough questions. You know, there's been tweets and there's been announcements from all the ACI vendors. I've talked to customer after customer that says, you know what, S/4HANA on HCI is what we want. A very quotable comment that he made was, we're not doing S/4 on HANA because we want to, we're doing S/4 on HANA because customers demand it. So, SAP is definitely listening to customer demand, S/4 on HANA is one of those things. You know, he tried to stay away from the bad word of certified on 4HANA, and validated, and focused on solutions, but SAP has a little ways to go. And that's kind of a, you talk to any HCI customer, validated and certified 4HANA is a bad word today, but SAP understands it and they're moving to certify the platform for HCI, so I thought that was a great example of them listening to customers and continuing to transform over the years. >> You're absolutely right. In fact, you know, if you look up digital transformation, one of the first pillars that you're gonna see is you gotta become customer-centric. And we really heard that a lot today. Even NetApp, when you were talking with Bill Miller about ONTAP in the cloud, going it's okay guys, maybe we have to listen to our customers. If we don't we won't be in business. That's a hallmark of an enterprise that is digitally transforming. >> Yeah, I'd argue that Dave Hitts was the one who forced that, that kind of cultural change. You had to bring in the founder to talk to the engineers and that had very engineer-driven thinking And I think Dave was very direct, like you know, we have to make the change or we won't be in business. The pendulum has changed to cloud. The SAP, which is not by any stretch of the mind, was never designed to run in the cloud, but they're adopting the technology for what customers are demanding. There's an AWS booth here, Fujitsu was the first one to say that, you know what, if customers need fail-fast environments, that's exactly where they should go, and put S/4 implementations, and then steady states should be moved to RMPRAM or private dating center or hosted solutions. So, the ecosystem seems to be embracing this change. >> Definitely. Anything that you're particularly looking forward to tomorrow for Day 2? >> You know what? I love talking to customers, so I'm looking forward to more customer conversations, talking about how is this being used? We haven't really talked a lot about Leonardo much. So, you know, IoT, A.I., how are these things that get a lot of press being perceived by actual customers? How are they being implemented? What's their true adoption rate? >> Awesome. Well, I look forward to hosting with you tomorrow, Keith. Thanks so much. >> I appreciate it. >> Thanks for watching. Keith and I have been at SAP Sapphire, bringing you some hopefully great informative content. From the NetApp booth, Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching.

>> From Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and we are in Orlando Florida, at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018 in the NetApp booth. We're excited to welcome to theCUBE from SAP the SVP of global technology partners Joe Zarb. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. >> I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me, excited to share with you all the great things that are going on here at SAPPHIRE and with SAP. >> This event is huge. Bill McDermott was saying this morning in his keynote that it's the biggest SAPPHIRE that you guys have ever done, and one of the numbers, he gave a lot of numbers this morning, I always geek out on numbers, >> Right. (laughs) >> He said you guys are expecting about a million people to engage with SAP related to SAPPHIRE. That's incredible. >> It's incredible, it's incredible. A million people, think about the global reach a company with 70% of the world's commerce transactions going through our systems, people want to know what's next? What's coming out next from an innovation point of view, what are our leaders saying? What are our partners saying about where the future is and it really speaks to the whole concept of digitizing business processes. Every company wants to be a startup and I think what you're seeing here is a lot of that excitement that SAP, we just consider ourselves a very big startup with a broad reach. So, I think Bill was able to capture that excitement, convey that excitement and I think the ecosystem is reflecting that. >> A 46 year old startup nonetheless, right? >> Yeah, right exactly. >> So as the leader of the technology partners, talk to us about how those technology partners have been fundamental in SAP's transformation. >> Totally fundamental, particularly as SAP starts to transform into really a platform company. The platform provides a level of abstraction that customers can leverage to simplify their infrastructure and their access to applications, and it also creates extensibility and it's all about the partner ecosystem. So one of the biggest agenda items that we have in terms of that is really the whole hyper-converged infrastructure play, and it's really going to be something that is going to help customers innovate, drive down costs and drive up ROI. There's very few plays that are a triple whammy and this is one of them. So the partner ecosystem to us that spans our global service providers, our technology partners which are both hardware and software partners, but we also have data syndication partners, and we have other partners in the management consultant fields, et cetera. They all contribute to expanding and enhancing our digital platform and our applications. >> So, one of the areas I like to challenge infrastructure companies on, NetApp is a data-driven infrastructure company, and when you're talking to enterprise, application-centric people, infrastructure's one of these things that's an afterthought. >> Right. >> But HCI is really changing the game. NetApp's SolidFire Division along with some of their now compute innovations to form this new HCI story. Can you provide some color? What's the significance of having an HCI based infrastructure for your SAP deployment? >> Yes, that's a great question. First let me back up and I completely agree with you, when you talk to most customers, their eyes glaze over when you start talking about storage, what have you, but when you start talking about the sophisticated customers that are driving innovation and trying to transform their business, there's really three technical elements that they're very focused on. One is connectivity. They're trying to connect to all kinds of devices, business processes, and aspects of their business that haven't been connected. They're connecting because they want to retrieve signals from areas in the field and areas of customers and products they've never collected before, as they connect these signals, they're creating tremendous storages of data. And so, until you get over that, realize the enormity of that problem and the scope of "How do you now take this data "and turn it into a collection "of perishable insights that you can act on?" Until you've reached that level of sophistication, you don't understand why a company like NetApp is critical to your entire digital infrastructure and story. And that whole hyper-converged area is really the ability to promise, it's a promise to the customer that their workload can scale essentially infinitely on premise, in the cloud, cloud to cloud, back to on premise. And so at SAP, as an application provider, we look at applications that are going to run at the edge, at the core and on premise, and in the cloud. HCI helps us deliver that vision at the application tier but you have to have the platform and the infrastructure there. And NetApp is a great partner to help us fulfill that vision as well as other partners, but they're very key. >> So you have your business applications, you have SAP HANA from a database and memory database capability. Now we're talking about the Leonardo stack. You have this, what's becoming a platform, and as a platform provider, you look towards your ecosystem to extend the capability of the platform, to create more value. Where are you seeing the value generated in the partnership with NetApp? >> That's a great question, so all of our partners have the ability to one, reinforce the dominance in those markets we choose to serve and those applications we choose to deliver. However the real value of the ecosystem and a company like NetApp, is when they take us out of our comfort zone, and by taking us out of our comfort zone, they're taking us to roll your own applications, custom applications, or third party non-SAP applications where they're storing and managing the data yet making it accessible to Leonardo for machine learning, to create block chain scenarios where we can create trusted relationships, leveraging data that may not be SAP data, and also in the whole internet of things. Connecting to sensors and using that data from sensors in ways that really have nothing to do with SAP's core applications per se, but may have benefits to the customer in ways that really needs to be co-innovated. So our partners are a critical player to put us outside of our comfort zone, force us to grow, force us to learn, force us to expand, and NetApp has proven to be one of those partners that can deal with a myriad of data types from a myriad of applications that force us to stretch into voice recognition, to force us into data mining and data analytics and the like. >> So as we talk about pushing out of your comfort zone, SAP has been extremely steady in being able to provide a mixture between hardware partners, whether it's appliance model for deployment of HANA to a partnerships with first level support through partners such as NetApp. Talk through where you guys are at in the partnership, specifically with a technology that's killer, that Bill talked about which is SAP HANA on HCI. Are we going to see HANA on HCI in the near future? Customers are really interested in it and it seems like a slam dunk. >> It seems like a no brainer, right? >> Yeah, like no brainer, yeah. >> And it is, it is a no brainer. We're going to see HANA on HCI, not because SAP wants HANA on HCI, it's because our customers want HANA on HCI, and we're slaves to our customers. So where we are right now is we know that we are a trusted supplier and provider to our customers and they know that the SAP brand stands for integrity and all of the -ilities that go with running a large complex enterprise, reliability, serviceability, maintainability et cetera. So we're actually working very closely with all of our HCI partners to go through a rather arduous certification process. Through that certification process it's a commitment that we're asking them to make and they're asking us to make for the long term. I don't like the word certification, I prefer new product introduction, because what we're asking them to do is build their products, tune it to our products, we're going to do the same and we're going to continuously innovate and continuously introduce new products. So the word, the former word, is certification. All I can say is, we don't like to pre-release or announce anything so watch this space, but I am so excited to be a tech head. >> What are some of the, if we look at a retailer, for example, who has to work with, say it's an apparel manufacturer and they've got a designer they've got to work with, textiles, all these different sources of information and it might take a year from a design to go from concept to actual product that they can sell. So you mentioned and I really like that you talked about insights as perishable, it was something about actionalbe insights, but for a company like an apparel company who has such a long cycle from concept to delivery, how will HCI facilitate them being able to link and sync, what Bill McDermott said this morning is, synchronize the supply chain with the demand chain? >> Right, yes, that whole value chain, value proposition. So, the beautiful thing is, all of those companies have a track record and a history of data. A lot of that data is right now in NetApp. So there's a lot of learnings and knowledge that haven't been mined and pooled out of that data that exists today. HCI is going to enable a couple of things. One is when you look at a distributed supply chain, we have probably the industry's leading distributed supply chain solution, track and trace capabilities, to be able to follow that product throughout it's life cycle. As we capture that data with HCI infrastructure, we're going to be able to analyze and transform those business processes, candidly, in ways that we haven't thought of yet. The beauty of HCI is, when you talk about retailers you're often times dealing with companies that have wire thin margins, so they want to be able to create products quickly, get them to market quickly and do it within the cost constraints. HCI is one of those rare platform and enabling technologies that delivers on that. It's going to allow you to rightsize your workload in the cloud or on premise or on the right size servers et cetera. And it's going to allow you to scale up as needed and manage a more efficient yet effective infrastructure. So I see HCI playing a role not only in retailers, but really across all industries. It's one of those really beautiful horizontal technologies that adds immediate value to those people that have reached that maturity curve. >> So as we talk about these advanced applications, can't help but get into topics such as ILT, edge in general, applications as we look at SAP as a platform company, applications SAP may not build directly but have to integrate with. How do you see HCI and your global partners figuring into those advanced applications and the infrastructure around that? >> Yeah so that's a great question, thank you. If you really look at those new emerging applications that are edge, core and cloud, lots of moving parts. Lots of moving parts gives you the opportunity to rightsize the workload and the processing at the edge or at the core at the cloud, but it also creates a tremendous amount of complexity. So to really create a breakthrough, you have to radically simplify and standardize the processes that manage that core, cloud, edge relationship. If you can create that environment, then people can deploy, manage, monitor, maintain these environments much more effectively with a lower skillset, right? So there's not that hurdle. I kind of think of it as today's IT infrastructure is kind of like a manual car and as you get bigger IT it becomes an 18-wheeler, it's a little hard to, unwieldy. You've got to be really good at driving in reverse and stuff like that. When you add HCI you're not necessarily going to an autonomous car but you've definitely got an automatic transmission, you probably could do a couple of things pretty well automatically right? And that allows a whole new class of drivers to get in the car. And so I think that's what HCI is going to do, as the architectures and the deployment methods get more complex, it's going to keep it manageable and within a skill base and price point that people can live with. >> I like that analogy, I think that's very simple to follow speaking of simplicity. I wanted to ask you about when you guys are going to market with partners. Bill McDermott has been very vocal, as we talked about when we kicked off this segment, about wanting to be one of the top ten most valuable brands. Among the likes of Apple, Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz, Google, who sell products that we can touch and wear and feel and see. With technology like SAP and even, say, what you're doing with NetApp on hyper-converged, what's the conversation like when you're talking about products that people may not even know are under the hood? How do you ignite a customer to be excited? What are some of those exciting customer examples that you see that really show how this technology from SAP and your partners can change a company, change an industry, change a life? >> Right. That's a great question and it's really the essence of a brand right? So first I would encourage all of your viewers, go play Bill's keynote from SAPPHIRE today, I mean, I think he was totally evangelical and I think he painted the picture so. From my perspective the brand, so first all of those brands that you mentioned, right, Apple and Google, these are all loyal SAP customers. They're also SAP partners so we're punching with the heavyweights. We're at, I think, number 17 in brand equity and we're working our way up. I think our focus isn't so much touching and feeling our products. I think it's more about trust, making a promise and a commitment to the market and that market validating that commitment and statement with money. Basically buying our products, deploying our products, and basing their business on our products. And so, when I think of SAP becoming that brand as more and more companies continue to rely on us, trust in us and as we become a more integrated economy and society, they're going to realize Apple is going to be able to trust Google because they're using SAP and they know there's integrity of the data and their processing. Google's going to be able to trust their suppliers, like NetApp and HP and et cetera because they're using SAP as well. So there's this, basically this movement of trust and brand identity that will be validated by our customers. We create the message, the customers create the brand. So I think that's our approach. >> Like trust is the new currency. >> It is, it really is, particularly in the data-based, data-oriented society and economy. >> My good friend Tom, on Twitter said that the future is data, the future isn't databases. So, I thought it was a brilliant quote, so shout out to Tom. So as we look at that, the future is data and not databases, and you guys have rolled out an established database in HANA, but how do you refocus, not on the actual technology but on the data itself as it relates to, you know NetApp has started to market themselves as a data-driven company. What's the relationship between the infrastructure, the database, the application and the actual data? >> So, good question, it's a long answer, so let me try to net out a couple of key areas there. So if you kind of look at data, data plays a point of origination where you're going to enter data and capture the transactions of the business. It's also the source of innovation. After capturing all that data there are these perishable insights and there are these anomalies and signals that are trapped in there that you're going to pull out. So when you look at the infrastructure itself, our belief is that consumers and the consumer experience with technology has created a very real time society. We chat in real time, we post images in real time, we message in real time and we believe that level of performance is what enterprises are going to demand. Batches going away. People, they don't want to hear, "Oh no it takes hours "to sift though a petabyte of data." They don't want to hear it. So they want to move to, they want their answers now, and so that's what we've really focused on is that whole real time experience, and we believe that data, like you said data, it is going to be both the source of insight, it's going to be the system of record and then it's really going to be the basis of the next generation products and services. So if you look at all the companies that people are trying to copy and mirror, they're giving away their software products and they're monetizing the insights that they glean from that data, right? So Facebook makes their money off of advertising that is based on your likes and preferences and shares, et cetera, like that. So their business isn't software, it's how do I monetize that data, that behavior that is trapped in that data, how do I surface those behaviors? So we think that's very core to us. We have a group within SAP that works with our partners and customers to help them build data-driven business models, data-driven business products and data-driven solutions and NetApp is core to all that. I think once you get and start to deal with the order of magnitude of data that we're talking about here, you have to move to an HCI and you have to move to a trusted player like that. >> The Facebook example as we wrap things up, you kind of just alluded to one of the things that I've heard some of your execs saying, including your CMO, Alicia Tillman, where, our customers don't care about the technology, they care about their customers and you kind of just articulated that really well. That that's what you need to be able to enable is what Facebook is delivering, what Apple is delivering, or what Google is delivering. So thanks so much Joe, for stopping by and sharing what you guys are doing with partners to really kind of fundamentally change the direction that SAP is going in. >> Thanks, it's great to be here and thanks for having me. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAPPHIRE 2018, thanks for watching. (digital music)