>>from around the >>globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. Welcome back to the Cubes Coverage Cube Virtual coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 which is also virtual. We're not in person this year. We're doing the remote interviews. But of course, getting all the stories, of course, reinvented, full of partnerships full of news. And we've got a great segment here with Salesforce and AWS. Eileen Schneider Win, who is the senior vice president of strategic partnerships, and Maureen Lundergan, director of worldwide training and certification address. Maureen Eileen. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. And nice keynote. What's up with the partnership? Give us a quick over your lien. What's what's the Salesforce? A day was partnership. Take a minute to explain it. >>Sure, thank you. I think I'll start out by talking about how sales were thinks about strategic partnerships. So for us, it's really it starts with the customer and being where they want us to be. And we've been so fortunate to be in this relationship with AWS for over five years now. It really started out as an infrastructure based partnership as we were seeing customers start their digital transformation journeys and moved to the cloud. But what has been really exciting as we've spent more time working together and working with our customers, we have now started to move into emotion of really bringing some differentiated solutions between the number one CRM and the most broadly adopted cloud platform to market for customers, uh, in areas like productivity, security and training and certification which will talk more about in a bit Onda. Specifically, some of those solutions are service Cloud Voice Product, which we launched this summer, announced last fall, a dream force as well as our private connect product which creates great security between the AWS platform and Salesforce. >>What? Some of the impact area is actually the two clouds you mentioned CRM and Amazon. We're seeing data obviously being a part of the equation ai machine learning. Um, what's been the impact I lean to your customer specifically >>Yeah, so specifically I'd call out to areas what one is really that foundation of security. Specifically, as government regulations and data security has become more critical, we've really been able to partner together there and and that's been crucial for certain customers in certain regions as well a certain industries like government. Uh, in addition, I would call out again that service cloud voice partnership, a zoo. We see the world moving more digital. This really allows customers to go quickly and, uh, turn on. There are solutions from anywhere at any time. >>You know, I love that any time, anywhere kind of philosophy. Now more than ever. With the pandemic collaborations required more than ever, and some people are used to it. You know, I've seen more technical developers have used to working at home, but not everyone else. The workforce still needs to get the job done. So this idea of collaboration, what is the impact in for your customers and how are you guys helping them? Because I think this is a big theme of this year That's gonna not only carry over, even when the pandemics over this idea of anywhere is all about collaboration. >>Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, the exciting thing about the partnership is we've been talking digital transformation with customers for years, but I think what we saw at the beginning of this year, as we were all thrown home and forced Thio, you know, fire up our jobs from our bedrooms or our garages. It really came down to our ability to work quickly and turn on our solutions. It's and these unprecedented times, while we're going through this now, everything we're building really is the future. So it's not just the tools and technology, it's also the processes and how work is getting done that's really come into play. But again, I'll anchor back to that service blood voice solution. So for us, call centers were completely disrupted. You think of call centers and you know, pre 2020 everyone sitting in a room together, agent side by side managers, having the ability to pop over and assist with a call or managing escalation. Now that's been completely disrupted. And it's been very exciting for us to work with our customers, to reimagine what that looks like again both from a technology perspective but also from a process perspective. And along with that, you had to reimagine how employees are learning these solutions and being trained. So we're very grateful for the partnership with AWS, and we're doing some really amazing things together. >>You know this is one of my favorite things about the enablement of Cloud. But in Salesforce has been a pioneer. As you pointed out, this connectedness feature has always been there. Now more than ever, it's highlighted with call centers, not the call center more. It's the connected center. People are connecting. And I think, Maureen, I think last time you're in the Cube. A few years ago, we were talking about virtual training online, and that was pre pet pandemic. Now you're seeing surge of online training not only because people's jobs are changing and being displaced or even shut down. New roles are emerging, right? So the virtual space Virtual world digital world, there's everyone's getting more digital faster now. How has the cove in 19 changed the landscape for training and skills demand? From your perspective, I >>mean at AWS, we've been working on our virtual capabilities for a while, so we had a digital platform out. We had a great partnership, have a great partnership with Salesforce and putting content on trailhead. We had to pivot very rapidly to virtual instructor led training and also our certifications right. We were lucky that our vendors partnered with us rapidly to pivot certification toe proctor environment. And this actually has helped to expand our ability to deliver the both training and certification in locations that we may not have been able to do before. And we have seen while it slowed. Initially, we have seen such an uptake and training over the last, um, 6 to 8 months. It's been incredible. We've been working with our customers. We've been working with our partnerships like Salesforce. We've been pushing more content out. I think customers and partners air really looking for how toe upscale their employees, uh, in a in a way, that is easy for them. And so it's actually been a great surprise to see the adoption of all of our curriculum over the last couple months. >>Well, congratulations knows a lot more work to do. It's gonna get more engaging, more virtual, more rich media. But this idea of connecting lean I wanna get back to the your your thoughts earlier, um, mentioned trailhead. Maury mentioned trailhead. You guys were doing some work with the virtual training there. What? Can you tell us more about that? And how that's going so far? >>Sounds great. So trailhead is our free online learning platform. And it really started because we have a commitment to democratizing anyone's ability to enter our industry s so you could go there and both online or with our trail head go app and experience what we call trails, which our paths for learning again on different areas of knowledge and skills and technology. And late last year, we announced an incredible partnership with AWS, where we're bringing the AWS learning content and certification to trailhead. And this is really again driven by our customers to are asking us to do our part in bringing mawr of these skilled resource is into the ecosystem. But something I also wanna highlight is I feel like this moment that we're in right now has also forced everyone to reimagine how they're doing learning even businesses, how they're training their employees and again having this free platform. And the partnership with AWS has really helped us go very quickly and create a lot of impact with customers. >>I just want to say I love the trailhead metaphor because, you know, learnings nonlinear. It's asynchronous. You've got digital. So you want to take a shortcut? You gotta know the maps And I think that's, you know, people wanna learn versus the linear, you know, tracks on. And I think that's how people have been learning online. And AWS has got a data driven strategy. Marine, I want to get your take on this because as you bring content on the trailhead, can you talk about how that works? And how you working with Railhead? >>Yeah. I mean, we started conversations a couple of years ago, and I think the interesting thing is that Salesforce and AWS have a very similar philosophy about bringing education to anybody who wants it. You'll hear me talk a lot about that in my leadership talk at reinvent, but, um, we really believe that we wanna provide content where learners learn and salesforce and trailhead have this amazing captured audience. And, um, you know, we're really looking at exploring. How do we bring education to people that might not otherwise have access to it? On DSO, we started with really foundational level content, a ws Cloud, Practitioner Essentials and AWS Cloud for technical professionals. And the interesting thing is, both of those courses have been consumed. ITT's not enough to just put it out there you want people to complete the trails and we've seen such an amazing uptake on the courses with, like 85% completion rate on one of the trails and 95% completion rate on the other one. And to keep customers engage is really a credit toe. How trailhead is designed. >>You know, it's interesting. The certification people don't lose sight of the fact that that's kind of the in the end state. Then you start a new trail. I mean, this >>is >>the this is really what it's all about. Can you just share some observations that you've seen for people that are coming into this now to say, Hey, okay, what do I expect? And what are some of the outcomes? >>Yeah, I mean, first, what we're seeing is our customers are being very clear that they need more of these skills. So we're also seeing the need for Salesforce administrators out in our ecosystem. And I think with everything going on this year, it's also an opportunity for people who are looking to pivot. Their careers were moving to tech and again, this free learning platform and the content that we're bringing has been really powerful and again for us. The need for salesforce administrators and cloud practitioners out in our ecosystem are in more demand than ever. >>Maureen. From your perspective on AWS, you see a lot of the new new jobs cybersecurity, Brazilian openings. Where do you see the most needs on for training and certification? Can you highlight some of the areas that are emerging and trending, if you will? >>I would say it's interesting because what we're seeing is is both ends of the spectrum. People that are really trying to just really understand who cloud is, whether it's, ah, business leader within an organization, a finance person, a marketing person. So cloud practitioner, you know, we're seeing huge adoption and consumption on both our platform in on Salesforce. But also some other areas are security and machine learning machine learning. We have five learning paths on our digital platform. We've also extended that content out to other platforms and the consumption rate is significant. And so, you know, I think we're seeing, uh, customers consume that. But the other thing that we're doing is we're really focused on looking at who doesn't have access to education and making sure that's available. So I think the large adoption of Cloud Practitioner in Practitioner is is largely due to the other things that we're doing with programs like Restart our academic programs >>to close it out, Alina want to get your thoughts and final thoughts on the relationship and how people can find more information about this partnership and what it means. Take, take it home. >>Thank you for asking. So just like everything else we've been talking about today, we've had to reimagine how we're showing up at this event together and very exciting thing that my team has created is the AWS Virtual Park. And anyone can access that at salesforce dot com slash aws. So please go check it out. You can experience our products here from our experts and experience its innovation on your own. >>Great insight. Thanks for coming on and participating. Really appreciate Salesforce and AWS two big winning leading clouds working together Trail had great great offering. Thanks for coming on sharing the news. Appreciate >>it. Thank you. >>It's the Cube virtual covering. It was reinvent virtual. Of course. Check out all the information here All three weeks. Walter Wall coverage. I'm John Fury with the Cube. Thanks for watching

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a cube conversation, you know we're like six, seven, eight months into this COVID thing. We're going to be dealing with it for a while. And one of the themes we've heard about over and over as kind of a result of COVID is an increased in the attack surfaces. More people are working from home or work from anywhere. And security has only been increasing in importance. And we're excited to have somebody from the alumni group who's been on before she is Sandra Wheatley the SVP marketing threat intelligence and influencer communications at Fortinet. Sandra great to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, I'm happy to be here. >> Yeah, I think actually I misspoke. We've had a ton of great Fortinet people on we've talked to John and Ken and Phil and Tony, but actually I'm not sure that we've had you on before, so great to have you. >> No, this is my first time. >> Awesome, so let's jump into it but we're going to take a slightly different tack today and we're not going to talk about the technology as much as this other pesky little problem, which is people. And, you know we know there's a huge skills gap in tech in general right. There's tons and tons of open recs. If you go into all the big sites and then security it's even a more specific and a more acute problem. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about kind of your perspective on this problem, being a senior executive you know, at a security company, people is a big issue. How do you guys kind of look at the problem? How should people think about it and what are we going to do about it? >> Well, Jeff, you were completely right. The Cyber security skills gap. It's one of the biggest challenges that's facing organizations today. I mean if you look at the larger landscape, cyber crime is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world, in fact by 2021, it'll cost the world about 6 trillion in total. And so tackling this issue continues to be a big problem. And it's exasperated by this the skills gap we recently did a study of Fortinet and 73% of respondents acknowledged that at least one intrusion could be attributed to the lack of skilled professionals. So it's a huge problem. We know that it would take about 4 million professionals to close that gap. And in particular with COVID, it's become even more increased. We've seen a big uptick in attacks from cyber criminals, really targeting remote workers. It's a way into the enterprise network. We've seen a resurgence of ransomware and phishing targeting that workforce. And so as this threat landscape continues to increase it's definitely a problem that cybersecurity organizations public and private partnerships really need to tackle. >> It's interesting because we talk a lot about automation and we talk about the scale of the attacks and the scale of data and you know, everything is just going so up until the right that without automation, you know you have no hope and you need some help to basically separate signal from noise. That said you still need people. And really that automation is going to hopefully get the high visibility the high priority issues to the right people. But ultimately that's an enabler for a person, not a replacement for person, for people. And it doesn't take away this tremendous need for more security professionals. And the other thing that we hear Sandra over and over right, is that security is no longer a bolt on it's no longer, you know, you just build the wall around the outside of everything, right? It's got to be baked in throughout the entire process of the product development and deployment. So the importance and kind of the reach and the breadth of security people in the influence of the building new products and shipping new products has never been greater and yet we've got this huge shortage. >> Exactly and I think you touched on it. You know, what we're hearing from our customers is that they're really using this period during COVID to really take a long-term look at their cybersecurity investments and strategy. And so you're right increasingly organizations are taking more of a platform approach to security, where they have more automation integration and AI that's one help. The other area is organizations need to be making their employees more cyber aware because it impacts everyone even employees working at home organizations. We just released InfoSec training and we offered it we made it available for free, and it really enables organizations to help educate their employees about the risk of cybersecurity and helping them to understand not to hit on the phishing email because, you know, 68% of intrusions happened as a result of careless mistakes by employees. That's a big issue, but also really making sure that we bring more professionals into the industry. I like to say, there's no job security like cybersecurity. So at the beginning of COVID, we made all of our training free and to the public in general. And I believe we had 500,000 registrations in the first six months. So that really underscores the demand for cybersecurity skills. And then organizations can also really be tapping into underrepresented of demographics, like veterans like women who make up only 14% of the workforce overall. So there was a lots of things we can be doing and working together on this problem. >> Yeah, you touched on a whole bunch of things there. So let's unpack a couple of them specifically. One of the cool things about security is that you guys do work together and that there is a big benefit from working together. So it's a great place for kind of coopetition, especially as new threats come in and you guys can share that information. So there is an interesting kind of an ecosystem that there's, you know shared basically resources against the bad guys. But you guys did a really interesting thing with Salesforce, with the world economic forum specifically to go after this problem. So where did that come from, Why Salesforce? Why world economic forum and why take you know, kind of, I guess, out of the industry approach to really addressing getting more people as cybersecurity professionals? >> Well, for dinette as a founding member of the C foresee cybersecurity forum, it was created by the world economic forum about two years ago. And right from the beginning one of the initiatives that we began working on was to reduce the skills gap. And so we started working with the world economic forum Salesforce, which is another founding member and others to tackle this problem. And so we're provide all of our training we provide our training and curriculum on the salesforce Trailhead platform. We've also entered into another partnership with IBM, where we're providing our training on there as cyber skills platform. We're working with local universities like Berkeley and others to make sure that we're getting more of the curriculum into their certifications and degree programs. Interestingly enough, one of the issues with this challenges is that there's not a lot of universities offering degrees in cybersecurity, which is really surprising. And so we're seeing a lot more uptick and interest around awareness around this area. And so it's very encouraging to see the results of some of these partnerships. >> I don't, I mean, you I'm going to tease you kind of buried the lead but so people understand what you just said. You guys basically opened up your training catalog for free, during COVID as a reaction to help basically get more people trained. Am I getting that right? >> That's completely right. We saw that this is something that can really help our customers during this time. It's something we're committed to closing and we felt this was a really impactful way to help with that issue. >> That's amazing. And I saw you in an interview with Rob Rashad I believe is his name from your team. I wonder if you can, again, share with us some of the details in terms of the numbers of people that have gone through this program. Cause he mentioned them, somebody didn't write them down this is pretty significant numbers that you guys are running through this free program. >> Yeah, so we just passed a great big milestone of 500,000 certifications. Half of those have just been this year and that program's been in place for many, many years. So there's no doubt that this is something that's in huge demand. And so we continue to offer those trainings. This was one of the reasons why we just rolled out the InfoSec training for our customers and others to educate their employees. I mean, that's one point I think we had someone registering every seven minutes. And so the response to that was excellent. And that training program has eight different modules and the curriculum in that program actually provides credits for ISC, which is a a big certification in cybersecurity and CIISSP. So, you know, it's just an invaluable training program. >> That's wild, and again, it's free all the way, not just to register for, you know, the one-on-ones, but all the way through the certification process at the end. >> Well at the end, if you want to get the actual certification that's something that you can do separately after you do the training. Although we're working with some nonprofits to help pay for those certifications so that there's no financial burden to people. >> Wow, that's tremendous. And then the other piece that you mentioned but I just want to highlight it is the opportunity to go after underrepresented groups. And you specifically mentioned that you have a program for veterans and again, it seems so logical but some people just don't get it right. Then you've got a skills shortage and you've got a talent shortage. Why not tap into those markets and of those pools of people that are under utilized because, Oh, by the way, they probably have a bunch of good qualified people in there that you can leverage. >> That's exactly right, like vets if you look at take veterans for an example, they already have a lot of the skills that really work well for cybersecurity like situational awareness. They work very well under pressure. And so we started our veterans program about two years ago. And in addition to our training we offer mentoring curriculum, resume building, interviews skills building and now at this point, trained about a thousand veterans many have had jobs on one thing that we do that's different to other programs is that we bridge those candidates to our partners and customers who are looking for talent and really closed that whole loop. So it's not just about the training, but it's also finding them as well at the end of the training once it's been completed. >> Right, that's great. I also want to touch on another thing that you do beyond just training and this comes from you published a blog on July eighth of this year talking about overcoming the cybersecurity gap skills gap. But you talked about other things beyond just the people. And I want to highlight really some attitudinal things that you suggest for people to get over this world view, cyber security as an enabler, right? Not an obstacle recognize cybersecurity is a team effort. It's not just some superstar, get the C-suite involved collaborate on cybersecurity awareness and you know, thinking about these this issue at a little broader and a more kind of macro company-wide scale versus it's just the security people's job over in the security people's corner. And that's really the best way to take care of it. >> Absolutely, and that goes back to my earlier point. I mean the insider threat continues to be the biggest vector for attacks. A lot of times it's, you know, employees hitting on a phishing email I'm sure you've seen the increase in those. And so it's really, you're right. It's more, the responsibility just doesn't lie with the folks who lead the cybersecurity organization. We all have a responsibility to be much more educated and aware. And so I think you know, the board has to get them more involved. Executive management needs to make sure that they're providing the right training and education to their employees, that they're providing mentoring that the really encouraging more employees to move into cybersecurity and become certified. So there's lots of things that organizations need to be doing that include education training. And then also making sure that you're making the right technology investments so that you have an infrastructure in place that's agile and can be flexible enough to meet the increasing demands of the threat landscape. >> Right, I just wonder if you can share some insight on the conversation that happened before you guys opened this up to be free. 'Cause it's clearly, it's a move to do the right thing. It's a move to you know, to respond to the community that's suffering and it's something that you guys could do you had at your disposal, but I'm sure there was some naysayers in there they're saying "No, we can't give this away. This is super valuable stuff." How, you know how did you kind of make that decision to move forward? And I'm curious how it's kind of played out over time now that you've basically, as you said increased your exposure and people that are trained and you know, I'm sure a lot of positive, you know kind of second order benefits that you really didn't plan on when you were just trying to make a decision to help the community. >> Well, this was a decision that came from the top. Our CEO has always been committed to training. I mean, this is why we even started the program which our NSE program is one of the most robust in the industry. And so it's something that the founders have always been committed to. It's something that we've invested in. So there really wasn't any obstacles to doing this. This was something that everyone jumped on board with. The other thing is we really wanted to help our customers during this time. And we felt that this was one really meaningful way. We could help them by providing this training for free. And making sure that they have the talent that they need to really address all of the, you know, the expanding attack surface. But we were surprised by the demand and the response that was outstanding, right from the get-go. And so while we, you know, we've talked about this being offered to the end of the year we haven't really made any plans to change that. And so that it may continue beyond the end of the year because the demand is so great and the results have been so positive. >> Right. And I'm just curious, do you have in the training and I didn't go through exhaustively through the whole list of all the courses, but beyond just the professionals do you have all the basic training just for employees? I just don't click on the link. You know, it's so funny. I was at, I think it was RSA. One of the keynotes was a, a Cisco executive and she said you know, we tell people not to click links but that's what we do all day long. We click links, that's what we do, it's part of our job. And, you know, it's such a a weird behavior to tell people not to do. And I'm still confused how SurveyMonkey gets people to click on SurveyMonkey links but that's a different conversation for another day but I mean, are you offering the whole suite? And I just love to get your perspective as a security executive, when you talk to clients how to think about things beyond just the obvious you know, don't click on phishing emails and, you know, tighten up everything, but you know, more kind of high level how to think about security in this increasingly complex and dangerous world, if you will. >> Yeah, well, the training program has eight modules. It goes from the most basic training to the most advanced training. So our NSE one and two are really more about educating people about the threat landscape the threats out there, what it looks like the most basic emphasis security awareness around what you should do and what you should be looking out for. And all of our employees afforded that take that training. We take up to NSE 4, that's, something that's mandated. And so at the very basic level all organizations should be leveraging those modules for their employees and for individuals who are just interested at large. And then it really advances very quickly after that. And it's the most advanced, you know, it covers, you know cloud, the whole attack surface, AI, threat intelligence. And actually, as I mentioned earlier, provides credits for some of that top cybersecurity certifications in the industry, especially at the level of CSO. So it's very broad, it's extremely robust. And addition to those modules we also have what we call fast track training and that's really utilized by our customers and partners. And that's more focused on specific technology areas. It's very condensed, it may be a day or two days. And the demand for that has been phenomenal. So that's been another program we added about two years ago. That's been very well received. >> Wow, well, good for you guys. Good for you guys for making a proactive move in a very positive way to help your customers and help the community at large. It's just great to see, these are just tough times. They're going to be tough times for a little while longer. So, you know, it's nice that you have resources available that you're able to make to make available to the larger community. And I'm sure it's nothing, but goodness will come from it. So good move by you guys. And I'm sure there's a lot of tangential benefits as well. >> Thank you Jeff. >> Well, thank you Sandra for sharing the story and great to meet you and expand our our community over on the fourth tenet side, we've had a lot of great guests over the year so it was great to great to have you on as well. >> Thank you very much. We really appreciate all the support. >> Absolutely, thank you. All right, so go out and get your free training. Go to fortinet.com and sign up and you too could be a security expert, or at least as far as you want to go all the way up to certification. I'm Jeff, she's Sandra you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Online. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of AWS Public Sector's Summit Online. We've done this show for many years, of course, this time it's online rather than in person in the District of Washington, D.C. Happy to welcome to the program first time guest, a very good partner of AWS's, from Salesforce, it's Casey Coleman. She is the Senior Vice President of Global Government Solutions, once again, with Salesforce. Casey, thanks so much for joining us. >> Stu, thank you, glad to be here. >> All right, so first of all maybe, if you could, give us a little bit of level set, your role at Salesforce and obviously a long partnership with Amazon. Tell us a little bit about that. >> Yes, my role at Salesforce is to work with our customers in the public sector, globally, and really help them map out their digital transformation. You know, it's an ongoing journey and we help them understand how to break that down into actionable steps and really transform what they're doing to server their constituents and citizens better. >> Excellent, so of course, at the Public Sector Show a lot about leverage of GovCloud and the other services, all of the compliance that goes into that. Ahead of this event, you had a new update at Salesforce in partnership with AWS. Talk to us about it's the Government Cloud Plus. So what's entailed there? And tell us how AWS and Salesforce work together to launch this solution. >> Yeah, thanks Stu. We are so excited to announce the launch of GovCloud Plus which is Salesforce's Customer 360 CRM platform that runs on Amazon Web Services in the GovCloud in their GovCloud environment and we've just received a provisional APO provisional authority to operate from the FedRAMP Program office at the high security level. So we are announcing GovCloud Plus is FedRamp High, ready to go, generally available and ready for customers. >> Excellent, maybe bring us inside. What's different about how government agencies leverage Salesforce. For most companies out there, Salesforce is a critical piece of how they manage not only their sales force but marketing and lots of other pieces, anything specific that we should understand about the public sector. >> Yeah, it's a great question because even our name, Salesforce, sounds like a commercial kind of thing to do. Governments don't think of themselves as selling, but if you break down to a level of detail about what governments actually do, it is the same kind of functions. It's case management, it's benefits delivery, it's communications and outreach, it's all the same kind of functions that are necessary for commercial organizations to thrive. And so that's what we do, we translate that into government-ready terms so that they can serve child welfare, health information delivery, patient records, farmer information, all kinds of services for constituents of the public sector. And they might call them customers, they might call them citizens, residents, constituents, but it's those they serve. >> Yeah, well one of the things about Salesforce is, as you said, it's not just a sales tool, there's so much. You've got a very broad and deep ecosystem there as well as people that know how to use it. They get underneath the covers. When I think of not only is Salesforce the first company that I probably thought of and heard about that it was SaaS, but if you talk about the API economy, if you talk about how things integrate, Salesforce does a lot for developers. So I know one of the other pieces you had that everybody knows Dreamforce, maybe not as many people know the TrailheaDX Show that Salesforce just had for developers, so bring us a little bit inside what Salesforce is doing for developers and of course, the government angle along those lines, too. >> Yeah, there's a lot going on in the developer world. We were glad to be able to host a virtual version of our Trailhead Developer Conference and announce a lot of exciting, new developments, including Salesforce Anywhere which his really bringing an immersive voice, video, and chat environment to collaborate in the developer environment and in the delivery environment. And you bring that into the public sector and the benefits are amazing because one of the key challenges with government is keeping up with the pace of the public expectations at a pace of change in the commercial world. All of us shop and bank, and live on our mobile devices, and governments are being faced with the same expectations from the public to do anytime, anywhere, personalized service delivery. It's the (audio distortion) rapid development environment that Salesforce offers gives the public sector IT teams the ability to quickly respond to changing conditions like the COVID-19 pandemic, and rollout applications that are not only fast to develop and deploy, but they also benefit from being in the GovCloud environment, and so the compliance is already built in. And that's another key challenge that often arises, the public sector (audio distortion) is not only fielding new applications but making sure they're secure, and so with Salesforce, it's all built in. >> Yeah, it sounds a lot of system similarity to what we hear in the private sector. Of course, the balance between what IT is doing and how we enable developers. Of course, security, you mentioned, is super important. Anything, specifically, from the government sector that you'd say might be different from what we see in the general enterprise world? >> You know, the security is top of mind for the public sector, always, because they're dealing with the most sensitive data. They're dealing with the public trust. And trust is really the currency of government. They're not dealing in profit and market share, but they are dealing in a public trust and protecting information like financial data, health data, personal data, and so it's essential that the government has the best in class commercial tools to make sure they are providing world class security for their constituents and their mission. And that's one reason we're so excited to be partnering with AWS on GovCloud Plus because Amazon AWS has already deployed the FedRAMP High version of their infrastructures and service, and so by riding on top of that, we inherit all of those existing controls, add our own FedRAMP High controls, and our customers benefit from the best in class security from two of the most trusted names in the Public Cloud. >> Great, you know, absolutely, GovCloud has been a real boon for the entire industry when it talks about how government agencies are leveraging Cloud. You talked about sitting on top of GovCloud, the Government Cloud Plus leverages some of the certifications and the like. Can you bring us inside a little bit? How long did this effort take to get? Anything specific in the integrations or functionality that you might be able to highlight about this joint effort? >> Yeah we've been working on it for some time now, because it's essential to really think from the ground, up. And this is really not just re-platforming our Cloud solutions on AWS, it is rethinking the whole architecture so that we really are organically taking advantage of infrastructure services that AWS provides. So it is a really deep integration. And it's not only a tech integration, it's a strategic partnership too, and you're going to see a lot more announcements coming from both of us about the integration, the capabilities we're bringing together. And a lot of the work we're going to be doing continue to bring innovation to our joint customers. >> Excellent. You made reference to the pandemic. What are you hearing from your customers? How does this new offering impact them and support them both, today, as they're reacting to what happens as well as going forward, as we progress? >> Yeah, Stu, you know, the COVID-19 pandemic really exposed a fault line in government programs that weren't scaled to meet this demand. We saw Websites crashing when people were going to them, and just overwhelming them with questions about the health situation. We saw benefits programs that only worked when people could come in and sign up and apply in person, and obviously, with government offices shut down, that wasn't an option. And a lot of government workers were sent home to tele-work without much notice, and their infrastructure just couldn't support it. And so just in general, there was a lot of breakdowns along the way. But the good news is that a lot of public sector organizations and programs are making that pivot quickly. For example, we worked with one state agency that experienced a 400% spike in demand for applications for unemployment benefits. It makes sense. People are out of work, they need unemployment benefits, but they just couldn't respond to that kind of surge in demand. So we worked with them along with AWS and in less than a week, stood up a virtual contact center with chatbot so they could meet the demand and provide those vital services for their residents at a time of real need. So there's a lot to be optimistic about in the middle of this crisis; there is a lot of transformation happening. This kind of forcing function is producing a lot of innovation and transformation and I think it's really going to make a fundamental shift in how we reimagine government in the future. >> Yeah, Casey, you're absolutely right. This pandemic has shown a real spotlight on what works and what doesn't. And I think about not only government, but a lot of how finances work. Oftentimes, you have your plans in place, you have your budgets in place, you have funding cycles, so what are Salesforce and Amazon doing to help those customers? You talk about they have to ramp things up. Oh wait, were they financially ready for this? Some companies, "Oh wait, I have to temporarily "dial things down that's not in my 12-month "or 36-month plan." So are there things that you're doing to help customers short-term and long-term? Are you seeing some change in how people think about their planning and how they can be ready for what change happens out there? >> Yeah, one of the big findings from this while experience, not just in the public sector, but across every industry, has been that digital transformation may, in the past, have been viewed as a nice-to-have. It is now really the only way to connect and serve both the customers and employees, and so digital first, digital transformation is rapidly becoming an urgent imperative because this situation is not going away overnight. And even when we get back to some state of normal, it's going to be different. And so digital first and being able to move quickly to rollout services rapidly, to be able to start small and then scale rapidly, these are things that benefit any organization, whether it's government or commercial. >> Excellent, well Casey, I'll let you have the final word what you want people to have as their takeaway of Salesforce's participation in the AWS Private Sector Online Event. >> We are just so excited to be here with AWS to jointly come to our customers with GovCloud Plus, the FedRAMP High authorized environment for the best in class CRM, and customer and employee services. Our partnership with AWS is one that we're excited about. You're going to see a lot more announcements coming soon. It's not only a technology integration, it's also a strategic partnership, and we think our customers are, jointly, just going to be really excited about the development. So thank you for the time and glad to be here. >> All right, well thank you so much, Casey. Congratulations on the Government Cloud Plus launch and absolutely look forward to hearing more about it in the future. >> Thank you, Stu. >> All right, be sure to stay tuned. Lots more coverage of theCUBE at AWS Public Sector Summit Online. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching theCUBE. (soft electronic music)

>>Live from Seattle, Washington. It's the cube covering Smartsheet engage 2019 brought to you by Smartsheet. >>Welcome back everyone to Seattle, Washington. We are here at Smartsheet engaged 2019 I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost Jeff Frick. You're watching the cube. We are here with a cube alum, a cube veteran, Dion Hinchcliffe, VP and principal analyst at constellation research at at Washington DC. Thank you so much for returning to the cube. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. So we're here to talk with you about the future of work, which is a huge topic but a fascinating one. I want you to start by giving sort of a broad brush of what you see are the biggest changes right now happening in the workplace is driven by the new, the rise of digital technologies. >>Sure. I mean while it digital is infusing everything in the workplace these days, right? And so we've had the past waves of productivity tools and then mobile devices came through and then eventually augmented reality and virtual reality are going to literally change how we perceive the workplace. And then we have just everyday trends like remote working. And now people can work from anywhere, right? It's fantastic. And that's, that's really revolutionized a lot of things. There are things in 2% of the workforce per year is becoming a remote work force. Companies like ADP have a quarter of their workforce working from home, right? Accenture, same thing. They're getting rid of office space and they, they work out of their house unless there's a client site. And because you can create a, create the experience that you want. And one of the really big trends is this is this trend towards being able to shape the employee experience the way that you want to, using the tools that you prefer. >>And some people call this shadow it, other people call it innovation, right? And so that's one of the, one of the big changes. And then we have things like the gig economy, which is allowing people to build the lifestyles they want doing any kind of work they want when they want to, when they feel like it on their own terms. And that's, that's really quite exciting too. So all these, this confluence of forces all enabled them driven by technology. But it's also leading to a lot of what we call cognitive overload workers that are not lifelong learners are feeling overwhelmed by this. And that's another big challenge. >>Well, you also get this tools proliferation, which they're just not, they're just not word and, and Excel anymore. But you've got a tab open with Salesforce, you've got a tab open with Slack, you've got Gmail open, you've got docs open and you've got Smartsheet open. You might have a JIRA open. I mean, so how is that gonna sort itself out as we just kind of keep adding new tabs of apps that we have to keep up >>and we need all this technology to do better work. I mean the, these apps provide value except that it's increased in the onboarding time for workers. It's making it hard for us to train people. In some companies it's hard to retain people because they feel like they have to go to work and there's this onslaught of technologies they have to have tabs open and get their jobs done. And they do. And so we're seeing things like, you know, we're at the Smartsheet conference where, you know, how can we centralize work a little bit better, streamline it by integrating the tools and creating more focus in on what we're doing. And that's a very big trend. So my latest digital workplace trends report, we say this, we're seeing these hubs form, you know like Slack is another work hub that's become very popular inside of organizations. >>They have over 1100 application integrations that allow people to spend their time in one place and kind of work through all these other systems from one hub. So we're dealing with this complexity, you know, starting to be able to do this now, but it's early days still a big challenge. So what's a, what are you seeing now? So what's the, what is the answer then? I mean we have you just described all of these trends that are taking place that are making, making the work modern workplace so much more complex, dealing with workers who have, they're dealing with cognitive overload leaders who want more with less. What are some of the answers? What are some of the most exciting tools that you're seeing right now? We talked already about Smartsheet and Slack. We see the new digital experience platforms are emerging and low code and no code is also becoming popular. >>I'd be able to take the pieces of the applications you want and create more streamline experiences. So the CIO of Accenture, Andrew Wilson, solve his problem right away there. They're knowledge workers are just being choked by all of these tools, but yet we need the value they provide. So he began to divide up the employee experience, the 100 top moments and then he built experiences that enabled, you know, project management and onboarding and all of these key activities to be friction-free built out of their existing applications, but streamlined to just what they needed to do. And he used this as his top priority as a digital leader is to say, we've got to take as much complexity away so we can get at the values with streamlining and simplification. And we now have tools that allow that shaping to happen very quickly. It's almost reminds me of kind of the competition for Deb's right now. >>It's the competition for employees. And then we've talked a lot about the consumerization of it in mobile devices for the customer experience, but there hasn't been as much talk about leveraging that same kind of expected behavior, right? Or expected inner engagement interaction with the apps on the actual employee engagement side, which is probably as fierce of a battle as it is to get customers. Cause I think there's a lot more than 2% customers out available. But yeah, we only get 2% unemployment in the Bay area. Now it's creating effectively negative unemployment, right? Anything under 3%. So this is the challenges. Employee experience is usually low on the priority list for CEOs. They usually have analytics and cloud and cybersecurity and all these things that they have to get done that are higher priority. Yet customer experience is, is one of those priorities. But how does an employee give a good customer experience when they have a poor experience to deliver it with? Right. We're seeing you can do with talented people, is expecting to do a great job. And then give them a bunch of hard to use tools, right. Which is what's happening. So we are now finally seeing that prioritization go up a little bit because employee experience is part of delivering great customer experience and it's how you, how you create that experience to begin with. So small >>and leaders are seeing that as a priority of retaining their top people because they understand that their workers need to feel satisfied with their work life. >>Yeah. And now we have data on a lot of these things we didn't have before and I'm sure you've seen the numbers that are, most employees are disengaged at work. The majority, right between 50 and 60% depending on whose data you're looking at. That's an enormous untapped investment that workers are not performing the way that they could if they had better employee experiences. And what's disengaging is, as I mentioned, you know, giving a talented person allows you tools or allows you experience, right and expect them to do great is right. It doesn't happen. >>How much do you think AAL or excuse me, AI and machine learning will be able to offload enough of the mundane to flip the bit on how engaged they are in their job. >>Yeah, it's, it's interesting cause there's, you know, there's two sides of the coin there. Some people like a, a job that they can just kind of phone in and it's kind of rote and they can come in, they don't have to think too hard and then they can go home to their family and some people are hired on that basis. Right. Um, because that's the challenge. AI and machine learning will absolutely automate most rote work. If you look at like Adobe sensei, I was at the Adobe conference and, and they were talking about how all of these creative types, you'll have all these mundane tasks automated for them. And I could see everybody looking at each other going, I get paid to do. >>Right, right. >>So you know, it, you'll see things like robotic process automation is working. I mean, I hear anecdotes all the time from CIO is how they had, they cut like 25% out of their call center because they handed it over to the box. Right. You know, as bill processing, that's one of the, and sorting and matching bills, the invoices, it's a manual job even in today's world until very recently. So we are seeing that happen about the most rote level and it just, but it's just going to climb up from there. >>What do you see down the road though? I mean in terms of those, in terms of those employees who are raising their saying hands saying weed, I kind of want that job. I are you, are you seeing what's going to happen to those people? Are they going to have to learn new skills? Are they, are they going to be invested in by their companies? >>Well you hope so. You know, it's interesting. We see that all the big vendors now have these big education programs. Salesforce has Trailhead. SAP just announced open SAP where they giveaway massively open online courses. And you know, Microsoft has done this with Microsoft developers network way back in the day, trying to educate people. I mean you can get re-skilled for nothing for free now if you want to do it. But this is the challenges. Even though every technological revolution in the past, and it looks like this one too has totally changed the employment picture. Uh, uh, by and large it creates more jobs than we lose. And that looks like it's going to happen here. But the people who lose the jobs aren't the ones that tend to gain the jobs, the new jobs, right? Yeah. The, it's hard to take somebody who's, who's sorting bills and say, I need you to develop a new AI algorithms because that's where the next strategic jobs are going to be directing the AI to do all these things. Right. And so I think the short term is going to be dislocation and it's happening so fast that unless society, government, and enterprises really intervene that to upskill these folks, we are going to have a challenge. >>Well, we're in this really weird time too, in between, I mean, the classic one is long haul trucking, right? Which is perfect for autonomous vehicles, you know, to carry a lot of that freight and everyone pretty much agrees that's going to happen. At the same time, there's, there's a huge shortage of available truck drivers today. Uh, like there never has been. So as these weird, and again, it's probably not the best thing for a young kid to get into, right? Because it's not, doesn't have a lot great long. >>Right? Right. >>Well, and you know, you look at Uber and their stated direction is, is they want to get rid of all these drivers, right? They want it, they want self-driving taxis. And you know, we're getting close to where that might actually happen, right? Uh, and so the unskilled labor is going to be hit by far the worst. You have to become skilled labor in, in the digital economy. Uh, and so a big part of the future of work is going to be finding ways to, to get the skills into people's hands. You know, like Facebook and other large organizations don't even require a college degree. What they want people, the people that can deliver, they can take these things and create the, you know, the, the great products of the future. And so, you know, those everyone has to become a knowledge worker. >>And, and as Laird Hamilton said on the main stage today, it's the, it's the, the formula of learning to really understand when you're starting from a point of, wow, I don't know much about that. I bet. I guess I'd better learn about it. And then learning a lot about it along the way. We all have to be able to adapt and adopt those new, >>no, absolutely. Now the, uh, uh, and so w we see up-skilling and cross skilling becoming more transdisciplinary. So business people are becoming it folks now and it folks really business people, you know, we've had this business, it divide for a long time and cracks me up. I still go to big companies in the it departments using its own building. Right. But those days are going away. And now seeing that, you know, now as it people over on the business side that live there now. Right. You know, so we're seeing this kind of, this blending where digital is infusing everything and so you have to become digitally competent. Uh, and this is where we have to make that simpler. This is going back to the, you know, the, the, the digital workplace, the average user has had the number of applications they have to learn double or triple in the last just the last five years. Right. So it's a big challenge. >>So what should kids be majoring in today? What's your, >>Oh, a game design. Know the gaming industry is bigger than the movie by a large, large margin. Right. And, and that, that's where all the experience of these immersive experiences in virtual reality and augmented reality really come from. And then you can go into business. Right. You know, >>even sociology majors can design games. >>Yeah. It's just, you know, it's just get, like you said, it's, it's the poor tweeners right. That get bumped on the old and aren't necessarily in a position to take care of the new, yeah. I'll have to take care of. And unfortunately, uh, not a lot of great record of retraining today, but maybe that's going to have to be a much more significant investment because there just aren't the people to fill those positions, period. Right? Yeah. Well, and there's these big market places now you can build the career of your dreams. You'd go to Upwork or Gigster. I mean, these are big job markets where you can go and find work and do it from anywhere using a tablet you bought for $50 off Amazon. Right, right. You know, it just that most of you aren't even aware of that. They can do that. Right, right, right. >>So it's this fast changing world. Put a few bucks away for insurance and you've put a few bucks away in your 401k and you, yeah. You know, not just living off the cash plus a little bit to cover your costs, which unfortunately a lot of their, like the Uber drivers and the Lyft drivers are anyway, you know, they're not really banking that thing for building a, a career. Well, I've crawled to those platforms and it's interesting, entrepreneurial activities, very common in places like Asia, right? Where if, you know, they come here, they build businesses right away. Right. And they're used to that. So w and we lost some of that, but I think we were gave a economy is giving a lot of that back to us. We have to relearn it again, you know? Right. >>Well Deon, thank you so much for coming on the cube. It was a pleasure having you. Absolutely. Thanks. So Jeff. Thanks Rebecca. I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. Stay tuned to more of the cubes live coverage of NJ engaged 2019.

>> Live, from San Francisco. It's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2019. Here in Moscone, we're talking so much multi clouds. It's been raining all day, really windy. To help us wrap up our third day, what we call theCUBE Insights, I have our co-CEO, Dave Vellante. I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome back to the program. It's been at least 15 times on the program, I think our counter is breaking as to how many you've been on, Ray Wang, who is the founder, chairman and analyst with Constellation Research, also the host of dDsrupTV who was gracious enough to have me on the podcast earlier this year, Ray. >> Little reciprocity there, Stu. >> Hey, we got to get you back on, this is awesome! Day three is wrap-up and this is going to be fun. >> Ray, as we say, theCUBE is everywhere, except it's really a subset of what you and the Constellation Research team do, we see you all over the place so thanks for taking time to join us. Alright, so tell us what's going on in your world, Ray. >> So what we're seeing here is actually really interesting, we've got a set of data-driven business models that are being lit up, and you see IBM everywhere in that network. And it's not about Cloud, it's not about AI, it's not about security, it's not about Blockchain. It's really about companies are actually building these digital networks, these business models, and they're lighting them up. IBM-Maersk, we saw things with insurance companies, you see it with food trust, you see it with healthcare. It's happening, and it's the top customers that are doing this. And so it's like we see a flicker of hope here at IBM that they're turning around, they're not just selling services, they're not just selling software, they're actually delivering these business models to executives and companies, and the early adopters are getting it. >> Ray that was one of the questions we had, is what's the theme of the show and-- >> There is no theme! >> You're giving us the theme here of what it should be because we talk digital, we talk cognitive, we talk all these other big thought-y words because we need to think while we're here, right? >> We need to think, we need to think! No, but the thing is this is a theme-less show, people can't figure it out but the main thing is, look, I've got a problem, this digital disruption is happening, my business models are changing. Help me be part of that shift, or I may go away! And people realize that and that's what they're starting to get, and you see that in all the reference customers the people that were on stage. The science slams were also really great. I don't know if you had a chance to catch those but the science slams were kind of a flicker into research, IBM research which is the heart of IBM, is coming up. They're going from concept to commercialization so much faster than they used to be, used to be research would do a project people are like, that's kind of cool, maybe I'll adopt it. They're now saying hey, let's get this into the market, let's get into academia, let's get early adopters on board. >> So Ray, what do you make of the Red Hat deal? What does it say about IBM's strategy? Do you like the deal? What does it say about the industry at large? >> It's a great question. The Red Hat deal to me was overpaid, however, at 20x multiples, that's what PE firms are paying. So every vendor is now competing with PE firms for assets. Red Hat, at about 9x, 10x? Makes a lot of sense, at 20x? It's kind of like, okay, is this the Hail Mary or is this the future strategy or is this basically what the new company is? I would have rather taken that money and put it into venture funds to continue what they're doing with these network models. That would have been a better strategy to me but Red Hat's a great company, you get a great team, you get great COs you get great tooling. >> So you would've rather seen tuck-ins to actually build that network effect that you've been alluding to. Of course that would have taken longer you know, wouldn't have solidified Ginni's legacy. So, it's a big move, a big move on the chessboard. >> Well the legacy's interesting, last year the stock was down some 20-some percent, it's up 20% since January so we're going to see what happens, but it's a doubt component. >> Well I've always said she inherited a bag of rocks from Palmisano at the peak of 2012 and then it got hit hard and she had to architect the transformation. It took, I don't know, five years plus, so, you know, she was dealt a tough hand, in my opinion. >> She had a bad hand, but we've had seven years to play this. I think that's what the market's saying. >> So it's on her, is what you're saying. >> It's now on her. She's got to turn this around, finish the legacy, but you've got a great CEO in waiting with the Red Hat guy. >> Jim Whitehurst you're saying? >> Yeah, he's good >> So she's what, Ginni is 60, 61? Is that about right? >> She's past the retirement age. Normally IBM CEOs would have gone through. >> 61 to 63 I think, is that range maybe, hey, women live longer so maybe they live longer as the CEO of IBM, I don't know. >> She did get a bad hand, but I think when you execute the strategy that money, here's the tough part. Investors are saying, hey, we'd rather take your money, back away from you through stock buybacks, dividends and mergers and acquisitions, and we don't trust you to do the innovation. That's happening to every company, including all of IBM's customers. The problem is if you do that, they're hedging against those companies too. The same investors are taking 50, 100 million, giving it to three kids in a start-up anywhere in the world and saying, hey, go disrupt these guys, so they're betting against their own investments and hedging. So that's the challenge she's up against. >> We talked about in our open for the show here. It's developers, though, that's the business model. We saw IBM struggle for years to get any real traction there, there's little pockets there, they've got great legacy in open source, but Red Hat's got developers. Ray, you go and see a lot of shows, who's doing well with developers out there? >> Microsoft redid their developer network by going younger with GitHub, whole bunch of other acquisitions, this is a great developer buy in that percent. But the other piece that we noticed here was it's the partner developers that are coming in in force. It's not your average developer. I'm going to build a coding and do a mobile app, it's people that work for large system integrators, large networks, small midsize VARs, those are where the developers are coming from and now they have a reason, right? Now they have a reason to build and I think that's been a good turnaround. >> How about Salesforce with the developer angle, what's your radar say there? >> It's not about the developer angle on the Salesforce side, what's interesting about the Salesforce side is Trailhead. This is, like, learning management meets gamification meets a whole LinkedIn training program in the back end. This is the way to actually take out LinkedIn without going after LinkedIn, by giving everyone a badge. There's a couple of million people actually on this thing. Think about this, all getting badges, all training each other, all doing customer support and experience, that's amazing! They crowd-source customer experience and learning right there. And they're building a community and they're building a movement. That's the thing, Salesforce is about a movement. >> Couple of others, SAP and Oracle, give us your update there. >> I think SAP's in the middle of trying to figure out what they have to do to make those investments. We see a lot of partnerships with Microsoft and IBM as they're doing the Cloud upgrades, that's an area. The acquisition of Qualtrics is another great example, 20x. 20x is the number people are now paying for for acquisitions and for assets on that end. And Oracle's going to be interesting to watch, post-Kurian to see how they come at it. They have a lot of the assets, they've got to put them together to get there, and then we've got all these interesting things like ServiceNow and Adobe on the other end. Like, ServiceNow is like, great platform! Awesome, people are building and extending the Cloud in ServiceNow, but no leadership! Right? I mean, you've got a consumer CEO trying to figure out enterprise, a consumer CMO trying to figure out enterprise, and they don't know if am I a platform or am I an app? You've got to figure that out now! People want to work with you! >> Well it is a company in transition at the top, for sure. >> But they can do nothing and still make a ton of money on the way out. >> And they've kicked butt since Donahoe came on, I mean just from a performance standpoint, amazing. >> Oh yeah, performance? You can do nothing and I think it's still going to coast but the thing is at some point it's going to come bite you, you got to figure that out. >> How do you think that Kurian will fit at Google, what's your take there? >> You know, early reactions on Kurian at Google is good, right? The developers are embracing him, he understands what the problems are. Let's be honest, I've said this many times to you guys in private and also in public, you know. It was a mess, it was a cluster before. I mean, you had three years, and you lost traction in the market, right? And it's because you didn't get enterprise, you couldn't figure out partners and, I mean, you paid sales people on consumption! Who does that? You're a sales rep, you're like, I'm not going to do this on consumption! Makes no sense! >> Ray, Kurian had been quoted that no acquisition is off the table, you know, they didn't buy GitHub, they didn't buy Red Hat, do you see them making a 10, 20 million dollar acquisition to get them into the enterprise space? >> Billion. >> Yeah, sorry, 20 billion. >> I think there's a lot that they go after. I know there's rumors about ServiceNow, there's a couple of other things. I think the first acquisition, if I were to make it would be Looker. I mean I love that thing that's on there and buy Snowflake too while you're at it. But we'll see what they do. I think the strategy is they've got to win back the trust of enterprises. People need to know, I'm buying your relationship, I have a relationship, I can count on you to be successful as opposed to, hey, you know, you can get this feature for less and if you do this on a sustained unit or, I want to know I can trust you and build that relationship and I think that's what they're going to focus on. >> Well, come on, isn't Google's business still ads? I mean, that's still where all their revenue is. >> It is, but the other category is $10 billion. That other category of devices and Cloud and all that? That's still a big category and that's where all the growth is. I mean look at this, it's a full frontal assault between Amazon and Google, Amazon Alexa versus Google Home, right? Amazon in ads, $10 billion in ads, going after Google's ad business. Amazon doing an AWS versus Google Cloud. Google's under assault right now! >> Give us the update on Constellation, your conference is really taking off, you've got great buzz in the industry, and congratulations on getting that off the ground. >> And the Tech for Good stuff, loved it. >> Thank you. We had great event, December 10th, talking about the future of the Internet. What it means in terms of, you know, digital rights, human rights in a digital age, was really that conference. Our big flagship conference is November 4th through 7th, it's at Half Moon Bay. We get about 250 CXOs together, about 100 vendors and tech folks that are visionaries and bring them together, that's doing well, and we do our healthcare summits. We brought on a new analyst, David Chou. David Chou, and if you've seen him before, he's like one of the top analysts for CIOs and chief data officers in the healthcare space, he's at HIMSS right now. >> He's awesome, we know him from Twitter. He's been on, he's great. >> Yeah, so we do healthcare summits twice a year and that's been picking up, some of the top thinkers in healthcare. We bring them in to Las Vegas, we do a brainstorming session, we work with them. They think about ideas and then we meet again, so. >> Alright, Ray, we want to give you the final word. We're halfway through IBM Think, what have you been thinking about this and any final musings on the industry? >> So I was very upset last year at how it was run. And I think this has run much better than last year. I think they did a good job. February in San Francisco? Never again, don't do that. I know it's May next year, is when this event's going to be. But I think the main thing is IBM's got to do more events than once a year. If you get enterprise marketing you realize it's at the beginning of the year, it's still sales kick-off and partners. March? March is like closing the quarter, so you do an event in April or May, and you do it in April or May but you have multiple events that are more targeted. This theme-less approach is not working. Right, partners are a little confused but they're here because it's once a year. But more importantly, build that pipeline over the quarters, don't just stop at a certain set of events, and I think they'll get very successful if they do that. >> Alright well, Ray, next time you come on the program, can you please bring a little bit of energy? We'll try to get you on early in the show when you're not so worn down. >> I know. >> Thanks as always. >> Appreciate you coming back on, man. >> Hey thanks, man, it's theCUBE! I love being on this thing.. >> Always a pleasure. >> Alright and, yeah, we always love helping you extract the signal from the noise. We're Dave Vellante, John Furrier, Lisa Martin. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks for watching day three of theCUBE at IBM Think. Join us tomorrow, thanks for watching. (light music)