>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Everyone, welcome to the special CUBE Conversation here in the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. We have our quarantine crew and we are here getting all the stories and all the top news, information from experts and thought leaders in the industry. And we're here for a special interview as part of Informatica's digital, virtual event happening. We have Tracey Newell who's the president of Informatica, a CUBE alumni. Great to have you on remotely. Normally you're here in person, but we're in person. Thanks for coming on. >> (laughs) It's great to be here, John. We're virtually together. Happy to spend time together. >> Yeah, and we were in a really tough crisis situation with COVID-19, had a lot of discussions around strategies of how to manage it, get through it, and grow beyond it. But business needs to go on, and this has been the theme. You got to kind of stabilize your base, move forward. But a lot of people are looking at either retrenching and rethinking with coming out of this on the other side. You guys have a digital, virtual event happening where you still got to get the word out. You are the president of Informatica. You guys have a value proposition that is core to the future. It's data and it's been something that we've talked about for years on theCUBE around data's value. And now, this is now apparent to everybody in this COVID crisis. You're talking to customers all the time. What are they thinking? It's not just an industry inside baseball, kind of inside the ropes conversation. This is now mainstream. What are you hearing from your customers? >> Yeah, so it's certainly been interesting times. Digital transformation, has been a CEO on boardroom discussion now for several years and customers have known for a while that the key to having a real strong transformation is data. They've got to have high-quality data to make the right decisions. And what I've been hearing from clients, I've spent a lot of time over the last six to eight weeks while we are in the midst of this situation, talking to customers that are thriving, that are retailers quickly trying to stand up e-commerce sites because their customers are trying to reach them virtually, and they're just not equipped for that. And so data's key when it comes to e-commerce, of course. And yet, there's other customers that know that they do have to re-imagine, they have to re-plan, they have to re-organize coming out of this situation. And even though some of these clients have been hit pretty hard economically, they're all saying data is the most important thing to make sure that they make the right decisions and the right calls. So literally, CDO for a Fortune 100 manufacturer said data is more important today than it was 60 days ago 'cause we've got to make the right decisions. >> It's interesting, we were joking on theCUBE just last week around the term virtualization, which was kind of VMware invented, and that enabled Amazon to be a cloud, right? So without virtualization, all of that value wouldn't have been realized and that whole wave. But now when you think about virtual living, which we're all kind of doing, this interview here is an illustration of that, the virtualization of life and companies is now happening. So when we come out of this, it's going to be a hybrid world (laughs). People are going to not ignore what just happened, they're going to see the benefits. E-commerce, to your point, has grown in the past eight weeks faster than it has grown in the past 10 years. I just saw a stat come out. So now we believe that the world is going to be accelerated on this digital side quickly, not just the talking point. But as we go physical and hybrid, this is going to be a double-down situation. So what are the challenges in that? Because obviously, it's a complex world digital, it's not easy, you don't just video stream. And it's community, it's data (laughs). What are the challenges? What are the core challenges that customers have to solve to execute through this new reality? >> Yeah, so many customers are, as I said, rethinking and re-planning. There's a large oil and energy company where the CIO said, "I want to be data center free over the last few years." And we're talking about, "Why is that?" And this move to cloud is simply accelerating given the current situation that people are in, and why is that? Well, we're certain they're trying to improve analytics. They're trying to innovate, and they're doing an outstanding job. And yet at the same time, every time they can sunset one of those legacy applications that's sitting on premise, they can save millions and millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as they start to exit the data center. So we see a huge move to cloud. It's complex because they have to make sure, again, a large insurance company said, "We're sunsetting our cloud data warehouse, our data lake, "and by the way, we're using that to close our books "every quarter, so we can't get this wrong." And so from our standpoint, we built most of the on-premise data warehouse and data lakes. We're pretty good at this stuff. And we're very focused on helping our clients here. >> It's interesting, you're going to see a lot of core thinking around what's important going forward and doubling down around it. I just did an interview for a developer audience and I asked, "What's the reality "that you think comes out of this?" And the answer was microservices and cloud native and automation is here to stay. It's definitely been validated. There's really no debate there. You guys have had this intelligent and automation fabric product in the environment out there, is one of the value propositions of Informatica. How does that fit into all this? And can you give some examples of customers and/or prospects that take advantage of this and how it relates to being positioned to help going forward? >> Great question. So we believe that automation and AI is critical for clients to have a data-driven strategy because data is everywhere, it's fragmented. But you can't solve this by sheer muscle. You got to have AI and machine learning underlying everything that you're doing around your data strategy. So our strategy has been simple for a long time. If you buy one-for-one family category Informatica, we believe that you should choose the best-of-breed. And Gartner thinks that we're best-of-breed in all categories that we play in. But if you have a second or third product, you should get the benefits of AI and machine learning. Examples would include the American Medical Association. They're clearly such an important client to serve these days. They're using our data quality, our data integration, and our master data management tools to ensure that they have privacy but also accurate data at the same time. >> It's interesting the at scale problem that we're seeing and the current environment we were just talking about earlier is exposes the value of data because we're lurking at home. This is an edge on the network (laughs). There's still data being processed, you need security. So the complexity now doesn't change the need for governance and compliance. All these things are still available. So it seems that the game is still the same, but yet now more complexity's been surfaced from this. What's your thoughts on this? You've been talking to customers pre-COVID, pre-pandemic. And now you're going to be doing during and post. There's more complexity but the game doesn't change. You still got to do all these things. >> The importance of making sure you have a holistic data strategy is more important now than ever before. Again, when I talk to clients, some as we've mentioned with e-commerce, they're saying, "I've got to have a 360 degree view "of my customers, my partners, my suppliers." CFOs want a 360 degree view of their supply chain so they can do better vendor management than ever before. And yet, at the same time as we mentioned, they're trying to modernize their data as they move to cloud and improve analytics. And of course, you can't accomplish either one of those objectives if you don't have a strong governance strategy. So this concept of an intelligent data platform is really resonating with clients. I had a large GSI in our briefing center back when we were doing that a few months ago, and they said, "You know, gosh, "we would need 20 companies to do what you do." And that you've got to have a platform play, and it's all got to be backed through AI and machine learning to make sure you're making the best decisions. >> You know, platform business is not for the faint of heart. And I've looked at, and we've built platforms certainly on theCUBE on a small scale. But the difference between a tool and a platform are two different things. Platforms enable change and create value. You create more value than you deliver for the partner that's building on top of that, seems to be the tenet of platforms. Whether it's cybersecurity or data, this has just been a ton of tools, right (laughs)? So you got a tool for this, you got a tool for that. So this has been one of those things, again, we've talked with them and you guys were on theCUBE many years about in this big data world. As you move to a platform, what are some of the analytic challenges that the customers need to be thinking about to solve? Because you're starting to see the bifurcation of a nice-to-have versus core. The analytics 360, you mentioned business 360. Hey, who doesn't want a 360 degree view of their business? But is it a nice-to-have or is it critical? So these are the kind of conversations I would love to get your thoughts on, Tracey. Nice-to-haves versus critical, and what are the key problems to solve for analytics? >> Yeah, so when you think about analytics, really, frankly, any decision that clients are making right now, you got to make sure that this is truly the most important. That it's got a business case behind it, and it's the most important place to be spending your dollars these days. What I'm seeing with clients, just last week, a large airline, you can imagine, they invested heavily in data governance and data privacy because they know that it's important to have an analytical and clear view to who are their customers, and how do they make sure they protect the privacy of the customers while they build on their loyalty program? We just, last week, saw a large auto manufacturer, again, investing heavily in this area of data governance and privacy. One of my favorite stories came from a CDO who's in oil and energy. Again, another industry making tough choices right now. And they said, "I want my data "to be like pouring myself a glass of water." And I looked at him, I said, "What does that mean?" And she goes, "Well, if you go pour yourself a glass of water, you don't curate the water, "test the water, and prep the water." And of course, that's what all these expensive data scientists are doing. They're spending all their time trying to understand the data. And so CFOs are getting tired of two reports showing up on their desk to answer one question and the reports say something else. Which one do you believe? You've got to have a trusted and really strong analytical approach to making the decisions that clients are going to be forced to make coming out of this situation and the data's integrity has never been more important. >> I love the water example because it's really a lot of flow. You've got fast flowing data. You've got real relevance, maybe slow data but it's relevant. You've got clean data, you've got dirty data. I mean, thinking about the old database days, cleansing data, it's a term. Data wrangling, totally makes sense. This is the outcome that they want. They just want to have the applications sides dealing with the data as fast as possible, most relevant. So it is like water. But to make that happen, you got to have the processing (laughs) behind the curtain. This is the hard part. Can you just illustrate some thinking around how you guys help do that? Because, okay, you've got a platform. But if you're making the water clean and flowing on tap if you will, what goes on to make that happen? Take me through the pitch there, what do you guys do? >> Yeah, so we think every enterprise in the future is going to want to invest in a data marketplace. And so what we announced in December as part of our governance solution, which again, is tied into the entire intelligent data platform on all that we do, for us to helping customers to modernize their products with master data management. We're heavily invested in cloud native solutions with all the major hyper-scalers. And then combined with our governance solutions, we've announced a data marketplace where the very business friendly application that the data scientists can use. They don't have to be data engineers or data wranglers. And yet, it's also a place where people can go to have a clean and trusted view. It's all backed by machine learning and AI so that data scientists can see, you know, where did this data pull from? Based upon, you know, you asked this question, then you might also want to look over here to get a different answer to your question. Understand, what's been certified, who certified the solution? All those questions. We always say you can ask the internet anything. How come you can't ask your own company anything and trust the information? And that's what we've announced with our governance solutions, then the clean enterprise data marketplace. >> I love data value. Both have been close to my heart from day one. Maybe back when theCUBE started in 2010 when Hadoop hit the scene, we saw the value of data. I always felt it was going to be part of the applications. And now more than ever, these kinds of things like trust, real time, and being programmable. I mean, when I start thinking about automation, you're really talking about programmability, right? So you got to have the efficiencies. I think you guys have got a really interesting value proposition there. Great stuff. >> Yeah, well, your example on Hadoop and Big Data, we're seeing a repeat in history again. When everyone built the on-premise data warehouses and data lake, they used Informatica to automate and to build at scale. And then we did it again when people moved to Big Data and they started investing in Hadoop and Cloudera and Hortonworks, now Cloudera, of course. We helped to accelerate that automation, and that's exactly what we're doing again in cloud. So most CIOs are trying to again sunset legacy applications, and the faster you can speed data ingestion at scale, but also understand data quality and data integrity at the same time so that you don't move your on-premise data, data swamp into the cloud, that's expensive. We can really help to look at this holistically and solve these problems for customers faster. >> Well, Tracey, it's great to see you. I wish we could be there in person, but there's no personal event. You've got a virtual digital event happening. It's going to be ongoing which is digital. So it's 365 days a year more ongoing. Take a minute to talk to your customers that are out there since we have you on camera. Let's automate the value proposition. What's the update on Informatica? What's the pitch to your customers and prospects? What's new with Informatica? Why Informatica? Your core value proposition and why they should work with you. >> Yeah, so we've been serving our customers for 25 years. And the reason why we have such loyalty, This is John Furrier here inside theCUBE studios we serve 85 of the Fortune 100, over half the global 2000. for an update with Informatica's digital conference. The reason why customers come back and speak on our behalf Take a look at it, check it out online. and literally thousands of customers speak on our behalf, Join the community. Be part of those thousands of customers that they have, it's humbling, is because we have the best and check it out, give them feedback. Again, we're remote, we're virtual. It's a virtual CUBE. intelligent data platform in the market. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. And we also understand our customers aren't buying software. (soft music) They're buying a business outcome. And we have more people in customer success to enable customers to be successful in all of these journeys we've talked about today. And so I'd like to encourage everyone to attend CLAIREview, which is our new conference series, kicks off on May 20th. CLAIRE is our AI engine, is a Netflix-like experience where you can learn more about all the areas where we can help you in the items we've discussed today. So for clients that are looking to save money by sunsetting legacy apps, we can help accelerate your move to the cloud, improve analytics while you also build a data governance strategy and culture into your environment. So really excited about it, John. I mean, it will be an ongoing series so that based on what you learn and what you like, we'll recommend future sessions for you to help you be successful coming out of this current situation. >> Tracey, thanks for that great insight.

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Everyone, welcome to the special CUBE Conversation here in the Palo Alto studios of theCUBE. We have our quarantine crew and we are here getting all the stories and all the top news, information from experts and thought leaders in the industry. And we're here for a special interview as part of Informatica's digital, virtual event happening. We have Tracey Newell who's the president of Informatica, a CUBE alumni. Great to have you on remotely. Normally you're here in person, but we're in person. Thanks for coming on. >> (laughs) It's great to be here, John. We're virtually together. Happy to spend time together. >> Yeah, and we were in a really tough crisis situation with COVID-19, had a lot of discussions around strategies of how to manage it, get through it, and grow beyond it. But business needs to go on, and this has been the theme. You got to kind of stabilize your base, move forward. But a lot of people are looking at either retrenching and rethinking with coming out of this on the other side. You guys have a digital, virtual event happening where you still got to get the word out. You are the president of Informatica. You guys have a value proposition that is core to the future. It's data and it's been something that we've talked about for years on theCUBE around data's value. And now, this is now apparent to everybody in this COVID crisis. You're talking to customers all the time. What are they thinking? It's not just an industry inside baseball, kind of inside the ropes conversation. This is now mainstream. What are you hearing from your customers? >> Yeah, so it's certainly been interesting times. Digital transformation, has been a CEO on boardroom discussion now for several years and customers have known for a while that the key to having a real strong transformation is data. They've got to have high-quality data to make the right decisions. And what I've been hearing from clients, I've spent a lot of time over the last six to eight weeks while we are in the midst of this situation, talking to customers that are thriving, that are retailers quickly trying to stand up e-commerce sites because their customers are trying to reach them virtually, and they're just not equipped for that. And so data's key when it comes to e-commerce, of course. And yet, there's other customers that know that they do have to re-imagine, they have to re-plan, they have to re-organize coming out of this situation. And even though some of these clients have been hit pretty hard economically, they're all saying data is the most important thing to make sure that they make the right decisions and the right calls. So literally, CDO for a Fortune 100 manufacturer said data is more important today than it was 60 days ago 'cause we've got to make the right decisions. >> It's interesting, we were joking on theCUBE just last week around the term virtualization, which was kind of VMware invented, and that enabled Amazon to be a cloud, right? So without virtualization, all of that value wouldn't have been realized and that whole wave. But now when you think about virtual living, which we're all kind of doing, this interview here is an illustration of that, the virtualization of life and companies is now happening. So when we come out of this, it's going to be a hybrid world (laughs). People are going to not ignore what just happened, they're going to see the benefits. E-commerce, to your point, has grown in the past eight weeks faster than it has grown in the past 10 years. I just saw a stat come out. So now we believe that the world is going to be accelerated on this digital side quickly, not just the talking point. But as we go physical and hybrid, this is going to be a double-down situation. So what are the challenges in that? Because obviously, it's a complex world digital, it's not easy, you don't just video stream. And it's community, it's data (laughs). What are the challenges? What are the core challenges that customers have to solve to execute through this new reality? >> Yeah, so many customers are, as I said, rethinking and re-planning. There's a large oil and energy company where the CIO said, "I want to be data center free over the last few years." And we're talking about, "Why is that?" And this move to cloud is simply accelerating given the current situation that people are in, and why is that? Well, we're certain they're trying to improve analytics. They're trying to innovate, and they're doing an outstanding job. And yet at the same time, every time they can sunset one of those legacy applications that's sitting on premise, they can save millions and millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as they start to exit the data center. So we see a huge move to cloud. It's complex because they have to make sure, again, a large insurance company said, "We're sunsetting our cloud data warehouse, our data lake, "and by the way, we're using that to close our books "every quarter, so we can't get this wrong." And so from our standpoint, we built most of the on-premise data warehouse and data lakes. We're pretty good at this stuff. And we're very focused on helping our clients here. >> It's interesting, you're going to see a lot of core thinking around what's important going forward and doubling down around it. I just did an interview for a developer audience and I asked, "What's the reality "that you think comes out of this?" And the answer was microservices and cloud native and automation is here to stay. It's definitely been validated. There's really no debate there. You guys have had this intelligent and automation fabric product in the environment out there, is one of the value propositions of Informatica. How does that fit into all this? And can you give some examples of customers and/or prospects that take advantage of this and how it relates to being positioned to help going forward? >> Great question. So we believe that automation and AI is critical for clients to have a data-driven strategy because data is everywhere, it's fragmented. But you can't solve this by sheer muscle. You got to have AI and machine learning underlying everything that you're doing around your data strategy. So our strategy has been simple for a long time. If you buy one-for-one family category Informatica, we believe that you should choose the best-of-breed. And Gartner thinks that we're best-of-breed in all categories that we play in. But if you have a second or third product, you should get the benefits of AI and machine learning. Examples would include the American Medical Association. They're clearly such an important client to serve these days. They're using our data quality, our data integration, and our master data management tools to ensure that they have privacy but also accurate data at the same time. >> It's interesting the at scale problem that we're seeing and the current environment we were just talking about earlier is exposes the value of data because we're lurking at home. This is an edge on the network (laughs). There's still data being processed, you need security. So the complexity now doesn't change the need for governance and compliance. All these things are still available. So it seems that the game is still the same, but yet now more complexity's been surfaced from this. What's your thoughts on this? You've been talking to customers pre-COVID, pre-pandemic. And now you're going to be doing during and post. There's more complexity but the game doesn't change. You still got to do all these things. >> The importance of making sure you have a holistic data strategy is more important now than ever before. Again, when I talk to clients, some as we've mentioned with e-commerce, they're saying, "I've got to have a 360 degree view "of my customers, my partners, my suppliers." CFOs want a 360 degree view of their supply chain so they can do better vendor management than ever before. And yet, at the same time as we mentioned, they're trying to modernize their data as they move to cloud and improve analytics. And of course, you can't accomplish either one of those objectives if you don't have a strong governance strategy. So this concept of an intelligent data platform is really resonating with clients. I had a large GSI in our briefing center back when we were doing that a few months ago, and they said, "You know, gosh, "we would need 20 companies to do what you do." And that you've got to have a platform play, and it's all got to be backed through AI and machine learning to make sure you're making the best decisions. >> You know, platform business is not for the faint of heart. And I've looked at, and we've built platforms certainly on theCUBE on a small scale. But the difference between a tool and a platform are two different things. Platforms enable change and create value. You create more value than you deliver for the partner that's building on top of that, seems to be the tenet of platforms. Whether it's cybersecurity or data, this has just been a ton of tools, right (laughs)? So you got a tool for this, you got a tool for that. So this has been one of those things, again, we've talked with them and you guys were on theCUBE many years about in this big data world. As you move to a platform, what are some of the analytic challenges that the customers need to be thinking about to solve? Because you're starting to see the bifurcation of a nice-to-have versus core. The analytics 360, you mentioned business 360. Hey, who doesn't want a 360 degree view of their business? But is it a nice-to-have or is it critical? So these are the kind of conversations I would love to get your thoughts on, Tracey. Nice-to-haves versus critical, and what are the key problems to solve for analytics? >> Yeah, so when you think about analytics, really, frankly, any decision that clients are making right now, you got to make sure that this is truly the most important. That it's got a business case behind it, and it's the most important place to be spending your dollars these days. What I'm seeing with clients, just last week, a large airline, you can imagine, they invested heavily in data governance and data privacy because they know that it's important to have an analytical and clear view to who are their customers, and how do they make sure they protect the privacy of the customers while they build on their loyalty program? We just, last week, saw a large auto manufacturer, again, investing heavily in this area of data governance and privacy. One of my favorite stories came from a CDO who's in oil and energy. Again, another industry making tough choices right now. And they said, "I want my data "to be like pouring myself a glass of water." And I looked at him, I said, "What does that mean?" And she goes, "Well, if you go pour yourself a glass of water, you don't curate the water, "test the water, and prep the water." And of course, that's what all these expensive data scientists are doing. They're spending all their time trying to understand the data. And so CFOs are getting tired of two reports showing up on their desk to answer one question and the reports say something else. Which one do you believe? You've got to have a trusted and really strong analytical approach to making the decisions that clients are going to be forced to make coming out of this situation and the data's integrity has never been more important. >> I love the water example because it's really a lot of flow. You've got fast flowing data. You've got real relevance, maybe slow data but it's relevant. You've got clean data, you've got dirty data. I mean, thinking about the old database days, cleansing data, it's a term. Data wrangling, totally makes sense. This is the outcome that they want. They just want to have the applications sides dealing with the data as fast as possible, most relevant. So it is like water. But to make that happen, you got to have the processing (laughs) behind the curtain. This is the hard part. Can you just illustrate some thinking around how you guys help do that? Because, okay, you've got a platform. But if you're making the water clean and flowing on tap if you will, what goes on to make that happen? Take me through the pitch there, what do you guys do? >> Yeah, so we think every enterprise in the future is going to want to invest in a data marketplace. And so what we announced in December as part of our governance solution, which again, is tied into the entire intelligent data platform on all that we do, for us to helping customers to modernize their products with master data management. We're heavily invested in cloud native solutions with all the major hyper-scalers. And then combined with our governance solutions, we've announced a data marketplace where the very business friendly application that the data scientists can use. They don't have to be data engineers or data wranglers. And yet, it's also a place where people can go to have a clean and trusted view. It's all backed by machine learning and AI so that data scientists can see, you know, where did this data pull from? Based upon, you know, you asked this question, then you might also want to look over here to get a different answer to your question. Understand, what's been certified, who certified the solution? All those questions. We always say you can ask the internet anything. How come you can't ask your own company anything and trust the information? And that's what we've announced with our governance solutions, then the clean enterprise data marketplace. >> I love data value. Both have been close to my heart from day one. Maybe back when theCUBE started in 2010 when Hadoop hit the scene, we saw the value of data. I always felt it was going to be part of the applications. And now more than ever, these kinds of things like trust, real time, and being programmable. I mean, when I start thinking about automation, you're really talking about programmability, right? So you got to have the efficiencies. I think you guys have got a really interesting value proposition there. Great stuff. >> Yeah, well, your example on Hadoop and Big Data, we're seeing a repeat in history again. When everyone built the on-premise data warehouses and data lake, they used Informatica to automate and to build at scale. And then we did it again when people moved to Big Data and they started investing in Hadoop and Cloudera and Hortonworks, now Cloudera, of course. We helped to accelerate that automation, and that's exactly what we're doing again in cloud. So most CIOs are trying to gain some legacy applications, and the faster you can speed data ingestion at scale, but also understand data quality and data integrity at the same time so that you don't move your on-premise data, data swamp into the cloud, that's expensive. We can really help to look at this holistically and solve these problems for customers faster. >> Well, Tracey, it's great to see you. I wish we could be there in person, but there's no personal event. You've got a virtual digital event happening. It's going to be ongoing which is digital. So it's 365 days a year more ongoing. Take a minute to talk to your customers that are out there since we have you on camera. Let's automate the value proposition. What's the update on Informatica? What's the pitch to your customers and prospects? What's new with Informatica? Why Informatica? Your core value proposition and why they should work with you. >> Yeah, so we've been serving our customers for 25 years. And the reason why we have such loyalty, we serve 85 of the Fortune 100, over half the global 2000. The reason why customers come back and speak on our behalf and literally thousands of customers speak on our behalf, it's humbling, is because we have the best intelligent data platform in the market. And we also understand our customers aren't buying software. They're buying a business outcome. And we have more people in customer success to enable customers to be successful in all of these journeys we've talked about today. And so I'd like to encourage everyone to attend CLAIREview, which is our new conference series, kicks off on May 20th. CLAIRE is our AI engine, is a Netflix-like experience where you can learn more about all the areas where we can help you in the items we've discussed today. So for clients that are looking to save money by sunsetting legacy apps, we can help accelerate your move to the cloud, improve analytics while you also build a data governance strategy and culture into your environment. So really excited about it, John. I mean, it will be an ongoing series so that based on what you learn and what you like, we'll recommend future sessions for you to help you be successful coming out of this current situation. >> Tracey, thanks for that great insight. One final personal question I want to ask you. I've been following you guys for a long time, and we've had you on theCUBE many times. You've been a seasoned veteran in the industry. You've seen cycles of innovation. You've seen the ups and downs over the years. You've been on boards, you've been a leader, a senior leader. What do you talk about with your friends and peers when you look at this current inflection point? As there's the candid conversations are happening, it's really an opportunity, but also there are serious challenges. As a leader, how should leaders be thinking about getting through this? What's your personal view? You've seen many cycles. You've see many waves. This wave coming is going to be big. This change is certainly going to create an uptick, we believe, exponentially a step function transformation. What's your view? What are some of the conversations that you're having with your friends, peers around what to do? >> Yeah, so I think in any situation like the one that we're in, it's important first and foremost to take care of the employees, take care of the customers, take care of the short term needs. That's critical. And yet at the same time in parallel, to be thinking longer term because there is an opportunity when you go through a situation like this to regroup and to think about, what will be the key markets that come back the fastest? What will be your differentiation, your company's differentiation so that you come out of this when the market does start to rebound and really thriving. So it's always this constant balance of how you deal with the short-term and the realities that we're in because people are making some tough decisions. And yet at the same time, make sure that you're very clear on your long-term strategy so that you can come out of this swinging. >> Great advice. That's a masterclass right there. Thank you for sharing that. Of course, check out Informatica's CLAIREview event. Of course, the digital events are always online. Check them out. Tracey, thanks for your time and thanks for that insight and update, appreciate it. >> Yeah, great to be here, John. Look forward to seeing you in person soon. >> Okay, take care. This is John Furrier here inside theCUBE studios for an update with Informatica's digital conference. Take a look at it, check it out online. Join the community. Be part of those thousands of customers that they have, and check it out, give them feedback. Again, we're remote, we're virtual. It's a virtual CUBE. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (soft music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host John Furrier. We are joined by Tracey Newell, she is the President Global Field Operations at Informatica. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, for coming back on theCUBE. >> Coming back on theCUBE, it's great to be here. >> So the last time you were on, you had just taken over as the president of Global Field Operations. Give our viewers a catch up on exactly what you've been doing over these past two years, and what the journey's been like. >> Yeah, no that's great, thanks so much. As a reminder the last time we were together, I had just joined the company. I was literally two weeks in, and yet I actually did join Informatica three years ago. So I joined on the board of directors, and I was on the board for two years, and the company was doing so extremely well that after a couple of years we all agreed that I would step off the board and join the management team. >> I got to get in on this! >> I know, exactly. I've got to get off the sidelines and get into the game. >> Both sides of the table, literally. >> Exactly. >> So that's really interesting that you were on the board watching this growth and seeing, obviously participating in it, too, as a board member, but then you said, "I want to be here, I want to be doing this." What was it about the opportunity that so excited you that you felt that way? >> Well, it's funny, because when I did join the management team I spent two months on a listening tour, and the first question from all the employees and our partners was, "Why'd you do that?" Usually it goes the other way around, you go from the management team to the board. And the answer was really simple in that my hypothesis in joining the board was that digital transformation is an enterprise board of director's decision, that governments and large organizations are trying to figure this out with the CEO, the board, the management team, because it's critical, and yet it's also really hard. It's complicated, the data is everywhere. And so when you have something that's important and really complicated, you need a thought leader. And so my belief was that Informatica should be that thought leader. And two years in we were doing so phenomenally well with the platform play that we had been driving from an R&D standpoint, it just seemed like such an amazing opportunity to literally get off the sidelines and get into the game. And it's just been fabulous. >> And you have experience, obviously, doing field organizations so you've been there, done that. Also you have some public sector experience, so also being on the board was a time when Informatica went private. And that was a good call because they don't have to deal with the shot clock of the public markets and doing all those mandatory filings, and a lot of energy, management energy goes into being public company. >> That's right. >> At the time where they could get the product development and reposition some of the assets, and the thing that was interesting with you guys, they had customers already. So they didn't have to go out and get new customers to test new theses. >> That's right. >> They had existing customers. >> Oh no, we serve the biggest companies and governments on the planet. Globally, a very large percentage of the global 2000, is kind of our sweet spot. And yet thousands and thousands of customers in the mid market. And so to your point, John, exactly we had built out this platform that included all things on-premise, we're almost synonymous, PowerCenter and ETL, that's kind of been our sweet spot. And MDM data quality, but adding in all of the focus on big data, all the area of IPAAS, all the work that everybody's doing with AWS, with Azure, with Salesforce.com, with Google Cloud, and suddenly we've got this platform play, backed by AI and machine learning, and it's a huge differentiator. >> So you've seen a lot of experience, again you worked in the industry for a long time, you know what the field playbook is, VCs say the enterprise playbook. It's changing, though, you're seeing some shifts and Bruce Chizen was talking to me yesterday about this, there's a shift back to technology advantage and openness. It used to be technology advantage, protect it, that's your competitive advantage, hold it, lock in, but it's changing from that to technology, but open. This is the new equation, what's your take on that? >> Our strategy's been really simple, that we want to be best of breed in everything that we do. And Gartner seems to agree with us. In all five categories we play in we are up and to the right. And yet we want you to get a benefit that if you do decide to buy one product, and then add a second, or a third, or a fourth family, you're going to get the benefit of all that being backed by a platform play, and by AI and machine learning. And so this concept of we'll work with everybody, a customer called us Switzerland of Data, and that's certainly true, we partner with everybody. Where you do see synergies to leverage your entire data platform, you're going to get a real advantage that no one else will have. >> You've got a lot of customers, this is a very intimate conference here at Informatica, this is our fourth year covering it, it's been great to watch the journey, but also the evolution and the tailwinds you guys have. What are some of the customer conversations you're having? You're in all the top meetings here, I know you guys are busy running around, I see you doing meetings and the whole team's here. What are some of the top-level priorities and challenges and opportunities that your customers have? >> We literally have thousands of people at the conference here as you know, and it's just been phenomenal. So I've been in back-to-back meetings, meeting with some of the largest companies in retail that are trying to figure out, "How do I serve my customer base online?" "And yet when they walk into one of my stores, "I want to know that. "My salesperson needs to know exactly what that person's "been shopping for, and looking on the Internet for, "if they're on my site, "or perhaps what they've been tweeting about." So they want to know everything about their customer that there is to know. The banks want to know who their high wealth clients are. And hey want to make sure that if they call in on a checking account and have a bad customer service experience, they want to know that. If it's a hospitality company, they want to understand what's going on every time you check into a hotel. If you looked for a quote and you don't actually follow through, they want to understand that. And so there's this theme of understanding everything that there is to know about a customer. And yet at the same time, a huge requirement for governance, in the California Privacy Act, the CCPA and GDPR are changing everything. I had a large bank once say, and this was years ago, "How can I forget you?" Which is what GDPR says I have the right, you have the right to be forgotten in Europe. How can I forget you if I don't know who you are? Again that's because data's everywhere, and again we're enabling that, so it's a pretty exciting time. It literally is about companies transforming themselves. >> I remember the industry when search engines came out, when the web came out, you had Google and those greenfield opportunities, they were excellent, you type in a keyword and you get results. When people tried to do enterprise search, it was like all these different databases, so you had constraints and you had legacy. Similar today, right? So how has that changed? What's different about it now? And again you had compliance and regulation coming over the top. How does an enterprise unlock those constraints? >> It's funny, you say unlock the power of data is one of our catchphrases. I'm meeting with CIOs around the planet who sound like they're CMOs, because they're using these phrases. They're saying things like, "I need to disrupt myself before someone disrupts me." Or there was one, it was a large oil and energy, it was a CIO at this massive company said, "Data's the new goldmine, and I need a shovel." So they're using these phrases, and to your point, how do you do that? Again, we do think it is about getting the right platform that plays both on-premise and ties in everything the customers are doing in cloud. So we see partnerships as being critical here. But at the same time, one of our fastest growing solutions has been our enterprise data catalog, which is operating at the metadata level. My peer in products Amit Walia likes to say, "How come you can ask the Internet anything at all?" You're so used to it, when your kids ask you a question, you just get online, I don't know, and get the answer. But you can't do that in your own enterprise. And suddenly, because of what we're doing at the metadata level working with all of the different companies around the globe through open APIs, you can now do that inside your enterprise, and that is really unlocking the capabilities for companies to run their businesses. >> You're giving us so much great insight into the kinds of conversations you're having about this deep desire to know the customer and understand his wants and needs at every moment. And yet the technology is so often the easy part, and the hard part of the implementation are the people and the processes. Can you talk a little bit about the stumbling blocks and the challenges that you're seeing with customers as they are embarking on their digital transformations? >> That's a great question. Because one of the things that I caution our clients about is companies get so focused on, I've got to pick the right technology. And we agree with that, again, that's why we focus so much, we've got to be best in breed in every decision. We're not going to lock you into something that doesn't make sense. And yet half of the battle, if you would, in these projects, it's not about the technology, it's a people/process issue. So think about to have a comprehensive view of your data, if you're a large CPG company or a large bank, you might have 10 CIOs, 50 CIOs. We have customers that have 10 ERP systems, we have folks that talk about 50 ERP systems. These are very cross functional, complex projects, and so our focus is on customer success and customer for life. I have more people in customer success than I do in sales by design. Literally thousands of people around the world, this is all that we do, that are focused on business outcomes. And so we really give an extra guarantee, if you would, to our customers to make sure they know that we're in this to make sure that they're successful, and when we start running into challenges, we're going to raise those high so that both organizations can make sure that we get to that promise that everybody is committed to. >> Talk about the ecosystem, because you continue to get success with the catalog, which is looking good. Great that, by the way, we covered that on theCUBE, I remember those conversations like it was yesterday. That really enables a lot, so you're seeing some buzz here around obviously the big clouds, the Google announcement, Amazon, and Microsoft are all here, on-premise, you've got that covered. But the ecosystem partners have a huge economic opportunity, because with the value proposition that you guys are putting forth that's rolling out with a huge customer base, the value-to-economic shift has changed, so that the economics are changing for the better for the customer and the value's increasing. That's kind of an Amazon-like effect if you think about that flywheel. That's attracting a lot of people in to your ecosystem because there's a money making opportunity. >> That's right. >> Talk about that dynamic. >> It's been humbling. I'm really pleased with Informatica World and how things are shaping up because we've had some amazing speakers here as you mentioned, from Amazon, Thomas Crane here from Google Cloud, AWS sending their CMO. It's just been a phenomenal event, yet if you go to the show for literally dozens and dozens and dozens of other providers that are critical to our customers that we want to partner with. When we say partner, we actually do deep R&D together so that there's a true value proposition where the customer gets more and a better-together solution when they choose Informatica and their critical partners. There's another category of partners that I think you're hinting at which is the large GSIs. >> The global system integrators, yeah. >> The global systems integrators. >> Accenture, Deloitte. >> Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant have been phenomenal partners to us. And so again, when you talk about this being a board level discussion, which literally I've met with so many CIOs who say, "I just presented to my board last week, "let me tell you about this journey that we're on." Of course the large global system integrators are in the middle of that and we are very clear, we don't want to compete with those folks that are so good at both the vision and also really good in arms and legs and execution to help drive massive workflow change for our clients. So we work together brilliantly with those folks. >> And these are meaty projects, too, so it's not like they're used to, back in the old days when these projects were massive, rolling out these big ERP systems, the CRMs, back when people were instrumenting their operation of businesses. Similar now with data, these are massive, lucrative, profitable opportunities. >> These are really strategic for the client, the global system integrator, and for us for all of the same reasons. This drives massive change in a good way for our clients to keep ahead of whoever's nipping at their heels, but certainly it's a tremendous services opportunity for the large integrators, there's no question. >> Being humble. >> One of the things that's really coming through here is Informatica's commitment to solving the skills gap, especially with the Next 25 program, and this is something your company's being really thoughtful about. I'm interested from your perspective, particularly as somebody who's been in the technology industry and was on the board for a while, how do you see the skills gap and what the technology industry is doing as a whole to combat it? And then your advice from your vantage point in terms of what you think are the next things that kids should be studying in schools? >> This reminds me, and Furrier, you're talking about the old days, so I'm going to date myself, it reminds me a lot of when the Internet first started to occur. This is a very similar type change. People have been, companies have been trying to make these changes and they're starting to realize that it does start, they've got to have a good grasp of the data in order to run all of these strategic initiatives that they've got. And so it's tremendous opportunity, to your point, for young people. So how do we think about that? Certainly we do our fair share of hiring interns trying to get them early in life, when they're sophomores, juniors coming into senior year and then hiring those folks. So we see an opportunity for our own company to bring in those young people, if you would. And then the GSIs, the global systems integrators, we partner quite a bit with them, because we see them as massive scalers, they have-- >> How about people specialize in majors, any areas of interest that someone might want to specialize in to be a great contributor in the data world? Obviously stats and math are clear on machine learning and that side. But there's affects, there's societal, business outcome challenges that have not yet been figured out. What areas do you see that someone can go after, have a career around? >> So it literally is a business and a technical problem that we're solving, and so there's going to be career opportunities for everyone that's in school. Whether it be on the business side, whether it's business management, marketing, sales, because again think about when you talk about change of management, it is a CMO trying to rethink how do they reach their clients. It is a sales leader thinking, "How do I get better analytics as to what's working "and what's not working?" And then of course it crosses over into computer science and engineering, as well, where you're actually developing these products, and developing these AI applications that are just beginning to take off. But it's in the early days, so for young folks coming out of schools this is a tremendous opportunity. >> Well, next you'll have to find what's up with the field, and your customers, and then next year, next event. >> Yeah, I can't wait, it's great. I've really enjoyed spending time with you all, and we look forward to seeing you soon. >> Indeed, well thank you so much for coming on theCUBE, Tracey. >> Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight, for John Furrier, you've been watching theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World, stay tuned. (upbeat music)

(futuristic music) >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're having a CUBE conversation in our Palo Alto studios, we're waiting for the crazy madness of the second half conference season to begin but before that it's nice to get a little bit of a break in the action and we can have people into our studio in Palo Alto. We're really excited to have our next guest really adding to this journey that we've been kind of watching over a course of many years with Informatica, she's Tracey Newell she's the newly announced President, global field operations from Informatica, Tracey great to meet you. >> Yeah nice to meet you. >> Absolutely. So we've following Informatica for a long time, I think our first visit to Informatica world was 2015 back when it was still a public company, I think it was Info which still has this legacy, that's the hashtag for this show. >> It certainly does. >> Which is kind of funny cause it's not really a stock ticker anymore. So it's been quite a journey and really well timed with kind of the big data revolution. You joined the board a couple years ago. >> I did in 2016. >> But you just decided to leave Mahogany Row and take off the board outfit and jump in and get on the field and get dirty. So why did you decide to get into the nitty gritty? >> Yeah so I joined the board because I really believed in the mission so. Digital transformation is something that's real, it's a boardroom discussion. Every enterprise and government around the world's trying to figure this out and so I wanted to be part of that and I've had a front row seat for a couple of years. >> Right right. >> I'm not one to sit on the sidelines for very long and I thought this is just too much fun and I want to get in the game so I asked to step down and I've recently joined as a president of Global Field ops. >> Great so your background is a little bit of confusion due to history, a lot of sales, you've been running sales for lot different companies, been in the valley for a while. But sales is really under you so you haven't really left your sales hat, that's just part of now a bigger role that you're going to be doing with Informatica. >> Yeah that's right, it's a bigger and broader role, but my favorite thing is running sales organizations. So I've done other things too, I've run operations, and customer success, but I was thrilled to join and also run professional services as well cause that's so important to the delivery and for our customers. >> So you'll write the digital transformation, it's the hop topic, it's what everybody is talking about, and it's true and as Informatica is in the middle of it, data is such a big piece of the digital transformation as everybody, we used to joke, there are no companies except software companies. I think we're taking it to the next step, now there are no software companies, really everybody should be a data company, and Informatica is sitting right in the middle of that world. No that's right, yeah data is the new currency, it's become of the most important assets for enterprises, everyone's trying to transform, they're trying to disrupt, they're trying to take on the leader or they're trying to keep their lead. And they need all their information throughout their organization in order to do that and so you know one of the stories hat I really like, Graham Thompson's our CIO and he talks to lots of CIOs and he'll use this analogy in that you know he'll say does your CFO have good containment strategy around their most important asset, and that's revenue. Does your CFO, does he or she know what the data is and inevitably the CIO will say of course. Well that's great does he know or she know how they're spending the money and who's spending the money? Do they have controls and compliance and security around that and of course the answer is yes yes yes and yes. And it inevitably turns to the CIO to say well if data is your most important asset, if that truly is the currency in your organization, do you know where all of your data is? And the answers always no. And there's lots of reasons for that, it's most enterprises have hundreds if not thousands of databases and shadow IT projects everywhere. But if the answers no then how do take advantage and leverage that information to the companies advantage? How do you control it, how do you have compliance and that's where we come in. >> So what's the Informatica special sauce? What's the secret sauce that you guys can bring to the party that nobody else can? >> Yeah so I think inevitably that it would be the platform so our intelligent data platform is really important to the enterprise. The CIOs that I've been meeting with for the last decade have said you know I can't have ten widgets that are all solving a similar problem cause it's just too expensive. I need the bet with the leader in the space and so what we're doing to provide that for enterprises is really important and yet at the same time, you've got to be the best at what you do, you can't just be comprehensive but you have to have best debris technology. We're spending 17 cents of every dollar in r&d and we're so focused on just this one thing, our mission is to lead in digital transformation for the large enterprise and we've been doing this for 25 years so we've spent billions of dollars at making sure our customers are invested in us and that we protect that investment. >> Right. So what is your charge is as you're starting your new role I think the press release just came out a couple days ago. You know what does O'Neil say to you, you know we want you, here's where we want you to go take down that next mountain, what are some of your short term priorities, what are some of your longer term priorities? >> Yeah so we have a great opportunity in front of us. So stating the obvious I'm here to drive growth and expansion both in market share opportunities, we have over nine thousand customers globally and yet we all know that there's a tremendous opportunity to continue direct market shares. This is a global phenomena and yet our largest customers we have 85 of the Fortune 100, they certainly need a lot of support and we're here to help provide that leadership. And we do a lot of best practice sharing, we do a lot around helping customers on their journeys cause we see these themes given that we do work with the largest companies around the world. >> And I'm sure you're going to be getting on a plane and meeting with a whole bunch of customers over the next, over the next several weeks and months but was there something from your board position that you could see was a consistent pattern that you really see an opportunity for growth, kind of an unexploited opportunity as people are going through this digital transformation cause we talk all the time, it's how do I get started and you know I have small projects to give me early success and kind of those types of conversations but clearly we're kind of beyond the beginning and we should be starting to move down the field a little bit. >> Yeah certainly. So we work with all the global SIs and we won't ever try to take their place you know Insentrum, Delite, Capgemeni, Cottonsmith, they're tremendous at what they do and we partner with them very well. But we've absolutely seen consistent themes as we work with these big enterprises, I mean we've seen Coca Cola work on delivering new packaging for the World Cup where they drove exponential sales and they wanted to use the power of all of their data. The data in the Cloud, the data that they have on premise, the data in all the SAS applications and that's where we come in and really help them, helping them to leverage all of their information and to do that in an intelligent way and so we've seen several patterns emerge how customers can get started and we've created a series of workshops and summits and specialists that we we can sell on a pro forma basis in helping customers figure out where those quick fixes are. There's a couple of key big buckets, we see most large enterprise moving from on premise to Cloud and they're trying to figure out a a migration strategy so we help a lot there. Most customers are trying to figure out how to get closer to their customers so we do a lot of work around customer intimacy. Intimacy could be driving the top line, cross sale, up sale, or even customer retention. B&P Paraboss did a lot of work with us there around getting closer to you know in their wealth practice. And then we do quite a bit around governance as you would expect. That's a hot topic with GDPR again if you can't say you know where all your data is well then how can you be compliant? >> Right how can you delete me? >> How can you delete me if you don't know where your data is. There's a number of practices that we've set up and we'll do some not for fee consulting work to help customers try and figure this out. >> Yeah clearly when we first met Informatica in 2015, you know the Cloud was moving, the public Cloud, but it wasn't near what it is today. And I guess you guys just had a recent announcement, Google Cloud Next is coming up in a couple of weeks and so you guys are now doing some stuff with Google Cloud? We are yeah so we're pretty good listeners I think that's important if you're going to be a business partner to your clients you got to know what they want and one of the things that clients have said to us is we need you to partner with our partners. You know the days of proprietary and sole source, you know we're going to be everything to you without working with anyone you know those days are over. And so the key Cloud partners our customers have asked us to work with include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Azure, so you're right last week we did make an announcement that we've done deep integration and we're spending our r&d dollars for customers that are investing with Google to make those investments more valuable and we announced API management and integration with Google make that easy for customers so. Informatica world we announced native integration in our Ipass platform for Microsoft so over and over again you'll hear us continue to do more with the the partners that our customers want us to and that's a win win for everybody. >> Its just so funny too because when people talk about a company like say Coca Cola which you brought up they talk about it like it's a company. No it's like not a company, it's many many companies, many many projects, many many challenges you know it's not just one entity that has a relationship with one other entity. >> That's right. >> But the other thing I think is interesting times and Coke's a good example or Ford or pick many old line industrial companies that used to have distribution right and what was the purpose of distribution is to break bulk is to communicate information and to get the product close to the customer. But the manufacturer never knew what happened once they shipped that stuff off into their distribution. Now it's a whole different world, they have a direct connection with their in customer, they're collecting data from their in customer, and so they have a relationship and an opportunity and a challenge with that they never had before. They just sent it off to the distributor and off it went and hopefully it doesn't come back for repair. (laughing) >> No that's right but you're exactly right, and that's the challenge that customers are facing. I don't care if it's a customer in the mid market or it's a customer in large enterprise or if it's a government organization. They need to know all aspects of their customer partner supplier information and how to communicate globally if they're going to drive disruption. And one of the CIOs of a Fortune 500 made a comment that we decided that we were going to disrupt ourselves before someone else disrupted us. And that's, that's my comment on why this is a board level discussion, it's super important, and we can help solve those problems. >> It's funny Dave Potrick one of my favorite executives used to be the number two guy at Charles Schwab and I remember him speaking when they went to fix price trading back in the day, I'm aging myself unfortunately but you know he said the same thing, we have to disrupt ourselves before somebody else disrupts us. And if you're not thinking that way you're going to get disrupted so better it be you than someone that you don't even see and usually it's not your side competitor, it's the one coming from a completely different direction that you weren't even paying attention to. >> That's right. And we see that over and over again and you made the right comment in that it's not always easy, some of these Fortune 500s through consolidation, even the Global 2000. They've done all these acquisitions and so you've got hundreds of BUs that don't have any systems tied together and how do you start to create a common connection in so that you can build your brand and you can try differentiation and that's the key, that's back to the intelligent data platform. >> Right and as you said and there's not single systems and now we got API economy, things are all connected so you don't necessarily even have that much direct control over a lot of these opportunities and you said that first I think it's just like okay where's your data? Can you start with the very simple question and a lot of people aren't really sure and can't even start from there. >> That's right. >> So good opportunities. >> Absolutely, there's no question. >> Alright Tracey, well thank you for stopping by, congratulations on your, on your new position and moving from Mahogany Row down into, down into the trenches. >> Down on the field. >> I'm sure they're going to be happy to have you down there on the field. >> Yeah no thanks Jeff I'm happy to be here and thanks for the time today. >> Thank you and we'll see you in Informatica world if not sooner. >> That's right. >> Alright she's Tracey Newell I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCube from Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (futuristic music)