Hey welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE we're in San Francisco at Zuora Subscribed 2017 about 2,000 people talking about the subscription economy but what I liked is when Tien had some sample stories up he went with the big iron he went with GE and he went with Caterpillar companies that you probably don't think of a subscription economy like maybe do Spotify or Amazon Prime so we're really excited up Tom Buckler he's the Director of IOT and Channel Solutions for Caterpillar Tom welcome >> Yeah I appreciate it thanks for having me >> So I love that you had a ton of industrial internet stories I mean this is real this is not like coming down the road but it's here today >> no absolutely  you know we've I mentioned during the keynote that since the mid 90s we've been connecting equipment since the mid 90s we've been on our autonomous journey and and you know it's just today we can talk about the largest industrial fleets of over five hundred thousand assets connected all of that valuable information coming in to help our customers and then the fully autonomous fleets in the mines which it's pretty exciting stuff >>   right I mean you and you touched on something we talk about often in the context of GE we've had GE on a number of times where those GE sell engines or do they sell propulsion to the airlines and you talked about do we sell you know this big earth-moving equipment or do we sell X number I know how you measure big giant masses of rock and gravel move but really selling it as a service not necessarily just the truck >> yeah I think that you know that was an important part of our discussion because when we talk about IOT and digital it's really a very customer centric strategy so we're going to get into services like IOT type or digital based services which is our cat connect portfolio if it's going to help serve our customers that we have today in the industries we play be more successful increase their operations increase their efficiency so we're not looking to build a platform or be a software company right you know when we get into this space it's focused on those customers and increasing their profitability and that's what leads us into these areas we're going to be a heavy equipment manufacturer we're going to sell big iron that's what we do we're going to leverage digital to help our customers be more successful >> you say that but I'm telling you I can I can turn the lens a little bit I see a whole lot of software company behind that big iron >> so no I'm not you know and there's there's there's a lot of software on those machines right you know there is a lot of software that's coming off those machines and and certainly we want to take all of that information we want to put analytics on it helped our customers go from being reactive to predictive right and really that's why we're at this conference right because when you get to what we call our cat connect services a lot of those are subscription-based you know when we're connecting a you know five hundred thousand machines or we're able to go out and you know enable grade assist on a machine over the air or we're going to have these predictive health services to make sure uptime is maximized all of those are data driven services through CAD connect and they're all subscriptions right so it's a natural fit for us to migrate into that along with our product business it's um >> just interesting numbers that you shared in the keynote five hundred thousand connected machines you talked about you know the obvious stuff no and unplanned downtime these are huge assets that need to run as close to 24/7 as they predictably can but then you mentioned just looking at some other data and not even really heavy lifting data but customers getting tremendous utilization gains right by leveraging some of the software that you guys have incorporated in the machines >> yeah it's powerful stuff I mean if I talk about construction you know the customer we mentioned is they asked us to connect all 16,000 pieces their equipment you know 3,000 of those work at earthmoving machines you know the other 13,000 weren't they were a variety of other types of machines but with the customer with that information and when they can get put it on one screen and they can look at utilization they can look at location they can look at idle time they can increase their utilization significantly so basic data with a fleet that size can help customers realize 10 almost 20 percent utilization gains and across the fleet that size it's big money right and it's big customer value but even all the way down to the person who's got 10 machines you know they can start to look at idle time they can look at you know operator abuse and how you know where they can train their operators better to perform better so basic information on some of these machines is very valuable it's >> it's such an interesting concept because you keep talking about your customers doing better with the assets that you guys provide them you know when you're in a subscription relationship and you have this ongoing back and forth repetitive connection it's a very different relationship than when you just sell something and you ship it and you take the money and you go on to the other one it seems like that's really kind of the secret sauce of the subscripts economy that's not enough people really highlight yeah you know in some cases >> that's a great point and you know one of the strengths of Caterpillar is is our global dealer network and and so you mentioned about selling the product you know when when when we sell the product our dealers provide that product and sell it to our customers they generally have a long-standing relationship with that customer everything from helping them with uptime to machine selection to operations operator training so we're in the business of working with customers through the long haul but to your point that these digital services you know they create a digital relationship that's ongoing along with our dealers relationship that they've had for four decades right it's it's a really powerful kind of combination >> and then I  would imagine the data that you're now getting back off these machines which before before they were all connected you know you kind of saw them at the maintenance cycles and you could kind of see you know maybe what happened or didn't happen or maybe there's some patterns that are at Geographic or type of job or whatever but now you know I love that the quote we used to take a sample of old data and now we take all of current data it must be tremendous value for you guys to develop better products have better maintenance on your own products see how these things can do much much better >> yeah you're absolutely  right and you know when we talk about the data of the products a lot of people initially go to telematics and certainly when we talk about you know five hundred thousand assets where I'm talking telematics but we also do about 5 million fluid samples a year off different compartments we've got visual inspections they're on electronically through can't inspect that's all the data coming back so all of that information is really rich information and to your point we can take that all the way back to new product design and make sure that our next products are optimized >> pretty exciting stuff solutely and it who doesn't love a big yellow tractor truck actually all right Tom well thanks for a taking a few minutes out of your busy day and congratulations >> all right thanks for having me Tom Buckler I'm Jeff Frick you're >> he's  watching theCUBE we'll be back after this short break thanks for watching