(upbeat music) >> From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi everyone, this is Dave Vellante from the CUBE. And we're getting ready for the Snowflake Data cloud summit four geographies, eight tracks more than 40 sessions for this global event. Starts on November 17th, where we're tracking the rise of the Data cloud. You're going to hear a lot about that, now, by now, you know, the story of Snowflake or you know, what maybe you don't but a new type of cloud native database was introduced in the middle part of last decade. And a new set of analytics workloads has emerged that is powering a transformation within organizations. And it's doing this by putting data at the core of businesses and organizations. You know, for years we marched to the cadence of Moore's law. That was the innovation engine of our industry, but now that's changed it's data plus machine intelligence plus cloud. That's the new innovation cocktail for the technology industry and industries overall. And at the Data cloud summit we'll hear from Snowflake executives, founders, technologists, customers, and ecosystems partners. And of course, you going to hear from interviews on the CUBE. So, let's dig in a little bit more and help me are two Snowflake experts. Felipe Hoffa is a data cloud advocate and Kent Graziano is a chief technical evangelist post at Snowflake. Gents, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks for having us on, this is great. >> Thank you. >> So guys first, I got to congratulate you on getting to this point. You've achieved beyond escape velocity and obviously one of the most important IPOs of the year, but you got a lot of work to do. I know that what, what are the substantive aspects behind the Data cloud? >> I mean, it's a new concept right? We've been talking about infrastructure clouds and SaaS applications living in application clouds and Data cloud is the ability to really share all that data that we've been collected. You know, we've spent what how many a decade or more with big data now but have we been able to use it effectively? And that's really where the Data cloud is coming in and Snowflake and making that a more seamless, friendly, easy experience to get access to the data. I've been in data warehousing for nearly 30 years now. And our dream has always been to be able to augment an organization's analytics with data from outside their organization. And that's just been a massive pain in the neck with having to move files around and replicate the data and maybe losing track of where it came from or where it went. And the Data cloud is really giving our customers the ability to do that in a much more governed way, a much more seamless way and really make it push button to give anyone access to the data they need and have the performance to do the analytics in near real time. It's total game changer is as you already know and just it's crazy what we're able to do today compared it to what we could do when I started out in my career. >> Well, I'm going to come back to that 'cause I want to tap your historical perspective, but Felipe let me ask you, So, why did you join Snowflake? You're you're the newbie here? What attracted you? >> Exactly? I'm the newbie, I used to work at Google until August. I was there for 10 years. I was a developer advocate there also for data you might have heard about the BigQuery. I was doing a lot of that. And then as time went by Snowflake started showing up more and more in my feeds within my customers in my community. And it came the time, well, I felt that like, you know, when wherever you're working, once in a while you think I should leave this place I should try something new, I should move my career forward. While at Google, I thought that so many times, as anyone would do, and it was only when Snowflake showed up, like where Snowflake is going now, why Snowflake is being received by all the customers that I saw this opportunity. And I decided that moving to Snowflake would be a step forward for me. And so far I'm pretty happy, like the timing has been incredible, but more than the timing and everything, it's really, really a great place for data. What I love first is data, sharing data, analyzing data and how Snowflake is doing it's for me to mean phenomenal. >> So, Kent, I want to come back to you and I say tap maybe your historical perspective here. And you said it's always been a dream that you could do these other things bringing in external data. I would say this, that I don't want to push a little bit on this because I have often said that the EDW marketplace really never lived up to its promises of 360 degree views of the customer real time or near real time analytics. And, and it really has been as you kind of described are a real challenge for a lot of organizations. When Hadoop came in we got excited that it was going to actually finally live up to that vision and, and duped it a lot and don't get me wrong, I mean, the whole concept of bring that compute to data and lowering the cost and so forth. But it certainly didn't minimize complexity. And, and it seems like, feels like Snowflake is on the cusp of actually delivering on that promise that we've been talking about for 30 years. I wonder, if you could share your perspective is it, are we going to get there this time? >> Yeah. And as far as I can tell working with all of our customers some of them are there. I mean, they thought through those struggles that you were talking about that I saw throughout my career and now with getting on Snowflake they're delivering customer 360 they're integrating weblogs and IOT data with structured data from their ERP systems or CRM systems, their supply chain systems. And it really is coming to fruition. I mean, the industry leaders, you know, Bill Inman and Claudia Imhoff, they've had this vision the whole time but the technology just wasn't able to support it. And the cloud, as we said about the internet, changed everything. And then Ben wine teary, and they're in their vision and building the system, taking the best concepts from the Hadoop world and the data Lake world and the enterprise data warehouse world and putting it all together into this, this architecture that's now Snowflake and the Data cloud solve it. I mean, it's the classic benefit of hindsight is 2020 after years in the industry, they'd seen these problems and said like, how can we solve them? Does the Cloud let us solve these problems? And the answer was yes, but it did require writing everything from scratch and starting over with, because the architecture of the Cloud just allows you to do things that you just couldn't do before. >> Yeah. I'm glad you brought up you know, some of the originators of the data warehouse because it really wasn't their fault. They were trying to solve a problem. It was the marketers that took it and really kind of made promises that they couldn't keep. But, the reality is when you talk to customers in the so old EDW days and this is the other thing I want to tap you guys' brains on. It was very challenging. I mean, one customer one time referred to it as a snake, swallowing a basketball. And what he meant by that is every time there's a change Sarbanes Oxley comes and we have to ingest all this new data. It's like, Oh, it's to say everything slows down to a grinding halt. Every time Intel came out with a new microprocessor, they would go out and grab a new server as fast as they possibly could. He called it chasing the chips and it was this endless cycle of pain. And so, you know, the originators of the data whereas they didn't have the compute power they didn't have the Cloud. And so, and of course they didn't have the 30, 40 years of pain to draw upon. But I wonder if you could, could maybe talk a little bit about the kinds of things that can be done now that we haven't been able to do here to form. >> Well, yeah. I remember early on having a conversation with Bill about this idea of near real time data warehousing and saying, is this real, is this something really people need? And at the time he was a couple of decades ago, he said now to them they just want to load their data sooner than once a month. That was the goal. And that was going to be near real time for them. And, but now I'm seeing it with our customers. It's like, now we can do it, you know, with things like the Kafka technology and snow pipe in Snowflake that people are able to get that refresh way faster and have near real time analytics access to that data in a much more timely manner. And so it really is coming true. And the, the compute power that's there, as you said, we've now got this compute power in the Cloud that we never dreamed of. I mean, you would think of only certain, very large, massive global companies or governments could afford super computers. And that's what it would have taken. And now we've got nearly the power of a super computer in our mobile device that we all carry around with us. So being able to harness all that now in the Cloud is really opening up opportunities to do things with data and access data in a way that, again really, we just kind of dreamed of before as like we can democratize data when we get to this point. And I think that's where we are. We're at that inflection point where now it's possible to do it. So the challenge on organizations is going to be how do we do it effectively? How do we do it with agility? And how do we do it in a governed manner? You mentioned Sarbanes Oxley, GDPR, CCPA, all of those are out there. And so we have all of that as well. And so that's where we're going to get into it, right into the governance and being able to do that in a very quick, flexible, extensible manner and Snowflakes really letting people do it now. >> Well, yeah. And you know, again, we've been talking about Hadoop and I, again, for all my fond thoughts of that era, and it's not like Hadoop is gone but it was a lot of excitement around it, but governance was a huge problem. And it was kind of a bolt on. Now, Felipe I going to ask you, like, when you think about a company like Google, your former employer, you know, data is at the core of their business. And so many companies the data is not at the core of their business. Something else is, it's a process or a manufacturing facility or whatever it is. And the data is sort of on the outskirts. You know, we often talk about in, in stove pipes. And so we're now seeing organizations really put data at the core of their, it becomes central to their DNA. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that. And also, if you've got a lot of experience with developers, is there a developer angle here in this new data world? >> For sure, I mean, I love seeing everything like throughout my career at Google and my two months here and talking to so many companies, you never thought before like these are database companies but they are the ones that keep rowing. The ones that keep moving to the next stage of their development is because they are focusing on data. They are adapting the processes, they are learning from it. Me, I focus a lot on developers. So, I met when I started this career as an advocate of first, I was a software engineer and my work so far, has we worked, I really loved talking to the engineers on the other companies. Like, maybe I'm not the one solving the business problem, but at the end of the day, when these companies have a business problem that they want to grow, they want to have data. There are other engineers that are scientists like me that want to work for the company and bring the best technology to solve the problems. And Yeah, there's so much where data can help, yes, as we evolved the system for the company, and also for us, for understanding the systems things like of survivability, and recently there was a big company a big launch on survivability (indistinct) whether they are running all of their data warehousing needs. And all of that needs on snowflake, just because running these massive systems and being able to see how they're working generates a lot of data. And then how do you manage it? How do you analyze it? Or Snowflake is really there to help cover the two areas. >> It's interesting my business partner, John farrier cohost of the CUBE, he said, gosh I would say middle of the last decade, maybe even around the time 2013, when Snowflake was just coming out, he said, he predicted the data would be the new development kit. And it's really at the center of a lot of the data life cycle the what I call the data pipelines. I know people use that term differently but I'm very excited about the Data cloud summit and what we're going to learn there. And I get to interview a lot of really cool people. So, I appreciate you guys coming up, but, Kent who should attend the Data cloud summit, I mean, what should they expect to learn? >> Well, as you said earlier, Dave, there's so many tracks and there's really kind of something for everyone. So, we've got a track on unlocking the value of the Data cloud, which is really going to speak to the business leaders, you know, as to what that vision is, what can we do from an organizational perspective with the Data cloud to get that value from the data to move our businesses forward. But we've also done for the technicians migrating to snowflake. Sessions on how to do the migration, modernizing your data Lake, data science, how to do analytics with the, and data science in Snowflake and in the Data cloud, and even down to building apps. So the developers and building data products. So, you know, we've got stuff for developers, we've got stuff for data scientists. We've got stuff for the data architects like myself and the data engineers on how to build all of this out. And then there's going to be some industry solution spotlights as well. So we can talk about different verticals folks in FinTech and healthcare, there's going to be stuff for them. And then for our data superheroes we have a hallway track where we're going to get talks from the folks that are in our data superheroes which is really our community advocacy program. So these are folks who are out there in the trenches using Snowflake delivering value at their organizations. And they're going to talk down and dirty. How did they make this stuff happen? So it's going to be to some hope, really something for everyone, fireside chats with our executives. Of course something I'm really looking forward to myself. So was fun to hear from Frank and Christian and Benoit about what's the next big thing, what are we doing now? Where are we going with all of this? And then there is going to be a some awards we'll be giving out our data driver awards for our most innovative customers. So this is going to be a lot, a lot for everybody to consume and enjoy and learn about this, this new space of, of the Data cloud. >> Well, thank you for that Kent. And I'll second that, at least there's going to be a lot for everybody. If you're an existing Snowflake customer there's going to be plenty of two or one content, we can get in to the how to use and the best practice, if you're really not that familiar with Snowflake, or you're not a customer, there's a lot of one-on-one content going on. So, Felipe, I'd love to hear from you what people can expect at the Data cloud summit. >> Totally, so I would like to plus one to everyone that can say we have a phenomenal schedule that they, the executive will be there. I really wanted to especially highlight the session I'm preparing with Trevor Noah. I'm sure you might have heard of him. And we are having him at the Data cloud summit and we are going to have a session. We are going to talk about data. We are preparing a session. That's all about how people that love data that people that want to make that actionable. How can they bring storytelling and make it more, have more impact as he has well learn to do through his life? >> That's awesome, So, we have Trevor Noah, we're not just going to totally geek out here. we're going to have some great entertainment as well. So, I want you to go to snowflake.com and click on Data cloud summit 2020 there's four geos. It starts on November 17th and then runs through the week and in the following week in Japan. So, so check that out. We'll see you there. This is Dave Vellante for the CUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> (Instructor)From the cube studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >> Hi everyone. This is Dave Volante, the cube, and we're getting ready for the snowflake data cloud summit four geographies eight tracks, more than 40 sessions for this global event starts on November 17th, where we're tracking the rise of the data cloud. You're going to hear a lot about that now by now, you know the story of Snowflake or you know, what maybe you don't, but a new type of cloud native database was introduced in the middle part of last decade. And a new set of analytics workloads has emerged that is powering a transformation within organizations. And it's doing this by putting data at the core of businesses and organizations. You know for years, we marched to the cadence of Moore's law. That was the innovation engine of our industry, but now that's changed it's data plus machine intelligence plus cloud. That's the new innovation cocktail for the technology industry and industries overall. And at the data cloud summit, we'll hear from snowflake executives, founders, technologists, customers, and ecosystems partners. And of course, you're going to hear from interviews on the cube. So let's dig in a little bit more and to help me, are two snowflake experts, Filipe Hoffa is a data cloud advocate and Kent Graziano is a chief technical evangelists post at Snowflake. Gents great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah thanks for having us on this is great. >> Thank you. >> So guys, first, I got to congratulate you on getting to this point. You've achieved beyond escape velocity, and obviously one of the most important IPOs of the year, but you got a lot of work to do I know that Filipe, let me start with you data cloud. What's a data cloud and what are we going to learn about it at the data cloud summit? >> Oh, that's an excellent question. And let me tell you a little bit about our story here. And I really, really, really admire what Kent has done. I joined the snowflake like less than two months ago, and for me it's been a huge learning experience. And I look up to Kent a lot on how we deliver the message and how do we deliver all of that. So I would love to hear his answer first. >> Okay, that's cool. Okay Kent later on. So talk of data cloud, that's a catchy phrase, right? But it vectors into at least two of the components of my innovation, innovation cocktail. What, what are the substantive substantive aspects behind the data cloud? >> I mean, it's a, it's a new concept, right? We've been talking about infrastructure clouds and SAS applications living in an application clouds so data cloud is the ability to really share all that data that we've been collecting. You know, we've, we've spent what, how many days a decade or more with big data now, but have we been able to use it effectively? And that's, that's really where the data cloud is coming in and snowflake in making that a more seamless, friendly, easy experience to get access to the data. I've been in data warehousing for nearly 30 years now. And our dream has always been to be able to augment an organization's analytics with data from outside their organization. And that's just been a massive pain in the neck with having to move files around and replicate the data and maybe losing track of where it came from or where it went. And the data cloud is really giving our customers the ability to do that in a much more governed way, a much more seamless way, and really make it push button to give anyone access to the data they need and have the performance to do the analytics in near real time. It's it's total game changer as, as you already know, and just it's crazy what we're able to do today, compared to what we could do when I started out in my career. >> Well, I'm going to come back to that cause I want to tap your historical perspective, but Filipe, let me ask you. So why did you join snowflake? You're you're the newbie here. What attracted you? >> Exactly, I'm the newbie. I used to work at Google until August. I was there for 10 years. I was a developer advocate there also for data, you might have heard about a big query. I was doing a lot of that and then as time went by, Snowflake started showing up more and more in my feeds, within my customers, in my community. And it came the time. When, I felt that like, you know, when wherever you're working, once in a while you think I should leave this place, I should try something new. I should move my career forward. While at Google, I thought that so many times as anyone would do, and it was only when snowflake showed up, like where snowflake is going now, how snowflake is, is being received by all the customers that I saw this opportunity. And I decided that moving to Snowflake would be a step forward for me. And so far I'm pretty happy. Like the timing has been incredible, but more than the timing and everything, it's really, really a great place for data. What I love first is data sharing data, analyzing data and how Snowflake is doing it it promotes me in phenomena. >> So Ken, I want to come back to you and I say, tap, maybe your historical perspective here. And you said, you know, it's always been a dream that you could do these other things bring in external data. I would say this, that I don't want to push a little bit on this because I have often said that the EDW marketplace really never lived up to its promises of 360 degree views of the customer in real time or near real time analytics. And, and it really has been, as you kind of described are a real challenge for a lot of organizations when Hadoop came in you know, we had, we we we got excited that it was kind of going to actually finally live up to that vision and and and we duped it a lot. And it don't get me wrong. I mean, the whole concept of, you know, bring the compute to data and the lowering the cost and so forth, but it certainly didn't minimize complexity. And, and it seems like, feels like Snowflake is on the cusp of actually delivering that promise that we've been talking about for 30 years. I wonder if you could share your perspective, is it, are we going to get there this time? >> Yeah. And as far as I can tell working with all of our customers, some of them are there. I mean, they're, they Fought through those struggles that you were talking about that I saw throughout my career and now with getting on Snowflake they're, they're delivering customer 360, they're integrating weblogs and IOT data with structured data from their ERP systems or CRM systems, their supply chain systems. And it really is coming to fruition. I mean, the, you know, the industry leaders, you know, Bill Inman and Claudia M Hoff, they've had this vision the whole time, but the technology just wasn't able to support it. And the cloud, as we said about the internet, changed everything and then Ben Y and Terry, in their vision and building the system, taking the best concepts from the Hadoop world and the data Lake world and the enterprise data warehouse world, and putting it all together into this, this architecture, that's now, you know Snowflake and the data cloud solved it. I mean, it's the, you know, the, the classic benefit of her insight is 2020 after years in the industry, they had seen these problems and said like, how can we solve them? Does the cloud let us solve these problems? And the answer was yes, but it did require writing everything from scratch and starting over with because the architecture the cloud just allows you to do things that you just couldn't do before. Yeah I'm glad you brought up, you know, some of the originators of the data warehouse, because it really wasn't their fault. They were trying to solve a problem. That was the marketers that took it and really kind of made promises that they couldn't keep. But the reality is when you talk to customers in the, in the, so the old EDW days, and this is the other thing I want to, I want to tap your guys' brains on. It was very challenging. I mean, one, one customer, one time referred to it as a snake, swallowing a basketball. And what he meant by that is you know, every time there's a change, you know, Sarbanes Oxley comes and we have to ingest all this new data. It's like, Oh, it's just everything slows down to a grinding halt. Every time Intel came out with a new microprocessor, they would go out and grab a new server as fast as they possibly could. He called it chasing the chips, and it was this endless cycle of pain. And so, you know, the originators of the data whereas they didn't, they didn't have you know the compute power, they didn't have the cloud. >> Yeah. >> And so, and of course they didn't have the 30- 40 years of pain to draw upon. But, but I wonder if you could, could maybe talk a little bit about the kinds of things that can be done now that we haven't been able to do here before. >> Well, yeah I remember early on having a conversation with, with Bill about this idea of near real time data warehousing and saying, is this real? Is this something really need people need? And at the time it was, was a couple of decades ago, he said no to them they just want to load their data sooner than once a month. >> Yeah. >> That was the goal. And that was going to be near real time for them. And, but now I'm seeing it with our customers. It's like, now we can do it, you know, with things like the Kafka technology and snow pipe in, in Snowflake, that people are able to get that refresh way faster and have near real time analytics access to that data in a much more timely manner. And so it really is coming true. And the, the compute power that's there, as you said, you know we, we've now got this compute power in the cloud that we never dreamed of. I mean, you would think of only certain very large, massive global companies or governments could afford supercomputers. And that's what it would have taken. And now we've got nearly the power of a supercomputer in our mobile device that we all carry around with us. So being able to harness all that now in the cloud is really opening up opportunities to do things with data and access data in a way that again really we just kind of dreamed of before. It's like, we can, we can democratize data when we get to this point. And I think that's the, that's where we are, we're at that inflection point where now it's, it's possible to do it. So the challenge on organizations is going to be, how do we do it effectively? How do we do it with agility? And how do we do it in a governed manner? You mentioned Sarbanes Oxley, GDPR, CCPA, all of those are out there. And so we have all of that as well. And so that's where, that's where we're going to get into it, right. Is into the governance and being able to do that in a very quick, flexible, extensible manner and you know, Snowflakes really letting people do it now. >> Well, yeah and you know, again, we've been talking about Hadoop and again, for all my, my fond thoughts of that era, and it's not like hadoop is gone, but, but it was a lot of excitement around it but but governance was a huge problem and it was kind of a ball tough enough. Felipe I got to ask you, like when you think about a company like Google your former employer, you know, data is at the core of their business. And so many companies, the data is not at the core of their business. Something else is it's a process or a manufacturing facility or you know whatever it is. And the data is sort of on the outskirts. You know, we often talk about in, in stove pipes. And so we're now seeing organizations really put data at the core of their it becomes, you know, central to their, to their DNA. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that. And also if you've got a lot of experience with developers, is there, is there a developer angle here in this new data world? >> Oh, for sure. I mean, I love seeing every, like throughout my career at Google and my two months here and talking to so many companies, you never thought before, like these are database companies, but the the ones that keep rowing. The ones that keep moving to the next stage of their development is because they are focusing on data. They are adapting the processes they learning from it. And me, I focus a lot on developers. So I mean when I started This career as an advocate. First I was a software engineer and my work so far, has been work, I really loved talking to the engineers on the other companies. Like maybe I'm not the one solving the business problem, but at the end of the day, when these companies have a business problem that they want to row, they want to have data. There are other engineers that are scientists likes me that are, that, that want to work for work for the company and bring the best technology to solve the problems. Yeah, there's so much where data can help as we evolve the system for the company. And also for us for understanding the systems, things like observability and recently, there was a big company, a big launch on observability the company name is observable, where they are running all of their data warehousing needs. And all of their data needs on Snowflake, just because running these massive systems and being able to see how they're working generates a lot of data. And then how do you manage it? How do you analyze it? Or snowflake is already there to help. >> Well you know >> I covered the two areas. >> It's interesting my, my business partner, John farrier, cohost of the cube, he said, gosh, I would say middle of the last decade, maybe even around the time, you know, 2013, when Snowflake was just coming out, he said, he predicted the data would be the new development kit. And you know, it's really at the center of a lot of, you know, the data life cycle, the, the, what I call the data pipelines. I know people use that term differently, but, but I'm, I'm very excited about the data cloud summit and what we're going to learn there. And I get to interview a lot of really cool people. And so I appreciate you guys coming on, but Kent, who, who should attend the data cloud summit, I mean, what, what are the, what should they expect to learn? >> Well, as you said earlier, Dave, there's, there's so many tracks and there's really kind of something for everyone. So we've got a track on unlocking the value of the data cloud, which is really going to speak to, you know, the business leaders, you know, as to what that vision is, what can we do from an organizational perspective, with the data cloud to get that value from the data to, to move our businesses forward. But we've also got, you know, for the technicians migrating to Snowflake training sessions on how to do the migration, modernizing your data like data science, you know how to do analytics with the, and data science in Snowflake and in the data cloud and even down to building apps. So the developers and building data products. So, you know, we've got stuff for developers, we've got stuff for data scientists. We've got stuff for the, the data architects like myself and the data engineers on how to, how to build all of this out. And then there's going to be some industry solutions spotlights as well. So we can talk about different verticals of folks in FinTech and, and in healthcare. There's going to be stuff for them. And then for our, our data superheroes, we have a hallway track where we're going to get talks from the folks that are in our data superheroes, which is really our community advocacy program. So these are folks who are out there in the trenches using Snowflake, delivering value at, at their organizations. And they're going to talk you know down and dirty. How did they make this stuff happen? So there's going to be just really something for everyone, fireside chats with our executives, of course, something I'm really looking forward to in myself. It's always fun to, to hear from Frank and Christian. And Benwah about, you know, what's the next big thing, you know, what are we doing now? Where are we going with all of this? And then there is going to be some awards. We'll be giving out our data driver awards for our most innovative customers. So this is going to be a lot, a lot for everybody to consume and enjoy and learn about this, this new space of, of the data cloud. >> Well, thank you for that Kent. And I'll second that, I mean, there's going to be a lot for everybody. If you're an existing Snowflake customer, there's going to be plenty of two on one content we can get in to the how to's and the best practice. If you're really not that familiar with Snowflake, or you're not a customer, there's a lot of one-on-one content going on. If you're an investor and you want to figure out, okay, what is this vision? And can, you know, will this company grow into its massive valuation and how are they going to do that? I think you're going to, you're going to hear about the data cloud and really try get a perspective. And you can make your own judgment as to, to, you know, whether or not you think that it's going to be as large a market as many people think. So Felipe, I'd love to hear from you what people can expect at the data cloud summit. >> Totally, so I would love to plus one to everyone that Kent said. We have a phenomenal schedule that the the executive will be there. And I really wanted to specially highlight the session I'm preparing with Trevor Noah. I'm sure you might have heard of him. And we are having him at the data cloud summit, and we are going to have a session. We're going to talk about data. We are preparing a session, That's all about how people that love data, that people that want to make data actionable. How can they bring storytelling and make it more, have more impact as he has well learned to do through his life. >> That's awesome, So yeah, Trevor Noah, we're not just going to totally geek out here. We're going to, we're going to have some great entertainment as well. So I want you to go to snowflake.com and click on data cloud summit, 2020 there's four geos. It starts on November 17th and then runs through the week and then the following week in Japan. So, so check that out. We'll see you there. This is Dave Volante for the cube. Thanks for watching. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Hi everyone, this is Dave Vellante at theCUBE, and we're getting ready for the Snowflake Data Cloud Summit. four geographies, eight tracks, more than 40 sessions for this global event. starts on November 17th, where we're tracking the rise of the data cloud. You're going to hear a lot about that. Now, by now, you know the story of Snowflake or, you know what? Maybe you don't. But a new type of cloud-native database was introduced in the middle part of the last decade. And a new set of analytics workloads has emerged, that is powering a transformation within the organizations. And it's doing this by putting data at the core of businesses and organizations. For years, we marched to the cadence of Moore's law. That was the innovation engine of our industry, but now that's changed. It's data, plus machine intelligence, plus cloud. That's the new innovation cocktail for the technology industry and industries overall. And in the Data Cloud Summit, we'll hear from Snowflake executives, founders, technologists, customers, and ecosystems partners. And of course, you're going to hear from interviews on theCUBE. So let's dig in a little bit more. And to help me are two Snowflake experts. Felipe Hoffa is a data cloud advocate and Kent Graziano is a chief technical evangelist, both at Snowflake. Gents, great to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us on, this is great. >> Thank you. >> So guys, first, I got to congratulate you on getting to this point. You've achieved beyond escape velocity and obviously one of the most important IPOs of the year, but you got a lot of work to do and I know that. Felipe, let me start with you. Data cloud, what's a data cloud and what are we going to learn about it at the Data Cloud Summit? >> Oh, that's an excellent question. And, let me tell you a little bit about our story here. And I really, really, really admire what Kent has done. I joined Snowflake like less than two months ago and for me, it's been a huge learning experience. And I look up to Kent a lot on how we deliver the method here, how do we deliver all of that? So, I would love to hear his answer first. >> Dave: Okay, that's cool. Okay Kent, leader on. (Kent laughing) So we took it. Data cloud, that's a catchy phrase, right? But it vectors into at least two of the components of my innovation cocktail. What are the substantive aspects behind the data cloud? >> I mean, it's a new concept, right? We've been talking about infrastructure clouds and SaaS applications living in the application cloud, so data cloud is the ability to really share all that data that we've been collecting. We've spent what? How many da-- A decade or more with big data now, but have we been able to use it effectively? And that's really where the data cloud is coming in and Snowflake, in making that a more seamless, friendly, easy experience to get access to the data. I've been in data warehousing for nearly 30 years now. And our dream has always been to be able to augment an organization's analytics with data from outside their organization. And that's just been a massive pain in the neck with having to move files around and replicate the data and maybe losing track of where it came from or where it went. And the data cloud is really giving our customers the ability to do that in a much more governed way, a much more seamless way, and really make it push button to give anyone access to the data they need and have the performance to do the analytics in near real-time. It's a total game changer as you already know. And just, it's crazy what we're able to do today compared to what we could do when I started out in my career. >> Well, I'm going to come back to that 'cause I want to tap your historical perspective. But Felipe, let me ask you, so why did you join Snowflake? You're the newbie here, what attracted you? >> And finally, I'm the newbie. I used to work at Google until August. I was there for 10 years, I was a developer advocate there also for data, you might have heard about the BigQuery, I was doing a lot of that. And though as time went by, Snowflake started showing up more and more in my feeds, within my customers, in my community. And it came the time when I felt like-- Wherever you're working, once in a while you think, "I should leave this place, "I should try something new, "I should move my career forward." While at Google, I thought that so many times as anyone will do. And it was only when Snowflake showed up, like where Snowflake is going now, how Snowflake is being received by all the customers, that I saw this opportunity. And I decided that moving to Snowflake would be a step forward for me. And so far I'm pretty happy, like the timing has been incredible, but more than the timing and everything, it's really, really a great place for data. What I love first is data, sharing data, analyzing data and how Snowflake is doing it, its promising phenomena. >> So, Kent, I want to come back to you and I said, tap maybe your historical perspective here. And you said, it's always been a dream that you could do these other things, bring in external data. I would say this, that I would want to push a little bit on this because I have often said that the EDW marketplace really never lived up to its promises of 360 degree views of the customer, in real-time or near real-time analytics. And it really has been, as you kind of described it, a real challenge for a lot of organizations. When Hadoop came in, we had-- We got excited that it was going to actually finally live up to that vision and Hadoop did a lot. And don't get me wrong, I mean, the whole concept of, bring the computer data and lowering the cost and so forth. But it certainly didn't minimize complexity. And it seems like, feels like Snowflake is on the cusp of actually delivering on that promise that we've been talking about for 30 years. I wonder if you could share your perspective as an o-- Are we going to get there this time? >> Yeah. And as far as I can tell working with all of our customers, some of them are there. I mean, they thought through those struggles that you were talking about, that I saw throughout my career. And now with getting on Snowflake they're delivering customer 360, they're integrating weblogs and IOT data with structured data from their ERP systems or CRM systems, their supply chain systems and it really is coming to fruition. I mean, the industry leaders, Bill Inmon and Claudia Imhoff, they've had this vision the whole time, but the technology just wasn't able to support it and the cloud, as we said about the internet, changed everything. And then Benoit and Thierry in their vision in building the system, taking the best concepts from the Hadoop world and the data lake world and the enterprise data warehouse world, and putting it all together into this architecture, that's now Snowflake and the data cloud, solved it. I mean, it's-- The classic benefit of hindsight is 20/20, after years in the industry, they had seen these problems and said like, "How can we solve them? "Does the cloud let us solve these problems?" And the answer was, yes, but it did require writing everything from scratch and starting over with, because the architecture of the cloud just allows you to do things that you just couldn't do before. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought up some of the originators of the data warehouse, because it really wasn't their fault, they were trying to solve a problem. It was the marketers that took it and really kind of made promises that they couldn't keep. But, the reality is when you talk to customers in the sort of the old EDW days, and this is the other thing I want to tap you guys' brains on, it was very challenging. I mean, and one customer one time referred to it as a snake swallowing a basketball. And what he meant by that is, every time there's a change, or Sarbanes-Oxley comes and we have to ingest all this new data. It's like aargh! It's just everything slows down to a grinding halt. Every time Intel came out with a new microprocessor they would go out and grab a new server as fast as they possibly could, he called it chasing the chips. And it was this endless cycle of pain. And so, the originators of the data warehouse, they didn't have the compute power, they didn't have the cloud. And so-- And of course they didn't have like 30, 40 years of pain to draw upon. But I wonder if you could maybe talk a little bit about the kinds of things that can be done now that we haven't been able to do here tofore. >> Well, yeah. I remember early on having a conversation with Bill about this idea of near real-time data warehousing and saying, "Is this real? "Is this something really people need?" And at the time, it was a couple of decades ago, he said, "No, to them, they just want to load their data "sooner than once a month." That was the goal. And they-- That was going to be near real-time for them. And, but now I'm seeing it with our customers. It's like, now we can do it. With things like the Kafka technology and Snowpipe in Snowflake, that people are able to get that refresh way faster and have near real-time analytics access to that data in a much more timely manner. And so it really is coming true. And the compute power that's there, as you said, we've now got this compute power in the cloud that we never dreamed of. I mean, you would think of only certain, very large, massive global companies or governments could afford supercomputers. And that's what it would have taken. And now we've got nearly the power of a super computer in our mobile device that we all carry around with us. So being able to harness all of that now in the cloud, is really opening up opportunities to do things with data and access data in a way that, again, really, we just kind of dreamed of before. Its like, we can democratize data when we get to this point. And I think that's where we are, we're at that inflection point, where now it's possible to do it. So the challenge on organizations is going to be how do we do it effectively? How do we do it with agility? And how do we do it in a governed manner? You mentioned Sarbanes-Oxley, GDPR, CCPA, all of those are out there. And so we have all of that as well. And so that's where we're going to get into it, ride us into the governance and being able to do that in a very quick, flexible, extensible manner. And Snowflakes really letting people do it now. >> Well, yeah. And again, we've been talking about Hadoop, and again, for all my fond thoughts of that era, and it's not like Hadoop is gone, but there was a lot of excitement around it, but governance was a huge problem. And it was kind of a bolt on. And now, Felipe I got to ask you, when you think about a company like Google, your former employer, data is at the core of their business. And so many companies, the data is not at the core of their business, something else is, it's a process or a manufacturing facility or whatever it is. And the data is sort of on the outskirts. We often talk about in stovepipes. And so we're now seeing organizations really, put data at the core of their... And it becomes central to their DNA. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that. And also, if you've got a lot of experience with developers, is there a developer angle here in this new data world? >> Oh, for sure. I mean, I love seeing every-- Like throughout my career at Google and my two months here, I'm talking to so many companies, that you never thought before, like these are database companies. But the ones that keep growing, the ones that keep moving to the next stage of their development is because they are focusing on data, they are adopting the processes, They are learning from it. And, me per-- I focus a lot on developers, so I mean, when I started this career as an advocate, first, I was a software engineer. And my work so far, has been... (mumbles) I really love talking to the engineers on the other companies, like... Maybe I'm not the one solving the business problem, but at the end of the day, when these companies have a business problem through out the world, they want to have data. There are other engineers that are scientists like me that are... That want to work for the company and bring the best technology to solve the problems. Yeah, for example, there's so much where data can help. If, as we evolve the systems for the company and also for us for understanding these systems, things like observability. And recently, there was a big company, a big launch on observability, on the company names of Cyberroam, where they are running all of their data warehousing needs and all of their data needs on Snowflake. Just because running these massive systems and being able to see how they're working, generates a lot of data. And then how do you manage it? How do you analyze it? Snowflake is ready there to help and support the two areas. >> It's interesting, my business partner, John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE, he said, gosh, I would say the middle of the last decade, maybe even around the time, 2013, when Snowflake was just coming out. He said... He predicted that data would be the new development kit. And, it's really at the center of a lot of the data life cycle, the-- What I call the data pipelines, I know people use that term differently. But, I'm very excited about the Data Cloud Summit and what we're going to learn there. And I get to interview a lot of really cool people. And so I appreciate you guys coming on. But Kent, who should attend the Data Cloud Summit? I mean, what are the-- What should they expect to learn? >> Well, as you said earlier Dave, there's so many tracks and there's really kind of something for everyone. So we've got a track on unlocking the value of the data cloud, which is really going to speak to the business leaders, as to what that vision is, what can we do from an organizational perspective with the data cloud to get them value from the data to move our businesses forward? But we've also got for the technicians, migrating to Snowflake. Training sessions on how to do the migration and modernizing your data lake, data science. How to do analytics with, and data science in Snowflake and in the data cloud. And even down to building apps, for the developers and building data products. So, we've got stuff for developers, we've got stuff for data scientists, we've got stuff for the data architects like myself and the data engineers, on how to build all of this out. And then there's going to be some industry solutions spotlights as well. So we can talk about different verticals, folks in FinTech and in healthcare, there's going to be stuff for them. And then for our data superheroes, we have a hallway track where we're going to get talks from the folks that are in our data superheroes, which is really our community advocacy program. So these are folks that are out there in the trenches using Snowflake, delivering value at their organizations. And they're going to talk down and dirty of how did they make this stuff happen? So there's going to be just really, something for everyone. Fireside chats with our executives, of course, something I'm really looking forward to myself. It's always fun to hear from Frank and Christian and Benoit, about what's the next big thing, what are we doing now? Where are we going with all of this? And then there is going to be some awards. We'll be giving out our Data Driver Awards for our most innovative customers. So there's going to be a lot for everybody to consume and enjoy and learn about this new space of the data cloud. >> Well, thank you for that Kent and I'll second that, and there's going to be a lot for everybody. If you're an existing Snowflake customer, there's going to be plenty of two of one content, where we can get in to the how tos and the best practice. If you're really not that familiar with Snowflake or you're not a customer, there's a lot of one-on-one content going on. If you're an investor and you want to figure out, "Okay, what is this vision? "And can, will this company grow into its massive valuation? "And how are they going to do that?" I think you're going to hear about the data cloud and really try to get a perspective and you can make your own judgment as to whether or not you think that it's going to be as large a market as many people think. So Felipe, I'd love to hear from you what people can expect at the Data Cloud Summit. >> Totally. So I would love to plus one to every one that Kent said, we have a phenomenal schedule that day, the executives will be there. But I really wanted to especially highlight the session I'm preparing with Trevor Noah. I'm sure you must have heard of him. And we are having him at the Data Cloud Summit, and we are going to have a session. We are going to talk about data. We are preparing a session that's all about how people that love data, that people that want to make that actionable, how can they bring storytelling and make it have more impact as he has well learned to do through his life. >> That's awesome. So, yeah, Trevor Noah, we're not just going to totally geek out here. We're going to have some great entertainment as well. So I want you to go to snowflake.com and click on Data Cloud Summit 2020. There's four geos. It starts on November 17th and then runs through the week and then the following week in Japan. So, check that out, we'll see you there. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with coverage of the Global .NEXT digital experience. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT global digital experience. We've been at the Nutanix shows since the first time they ever happened, way back at the Fontainebleau, in Miami, of course. Nutanix is now a public company. A lot of news, a lot going on, and the first time they've done, first, a global event and digital event because this was the convergence of the events that they were originally going to have both in North America as well as Europe. So happy to welcome back to the program. To help kick it off, first of all, we have Monica Kumar, she's the Senior Vice President of Marketing with Nutanix. And also joining us is Virginia Gambale, she is a Managing Partner at Azimuth Partners LLC and also a board member of Nutanix. Virginia, Monica, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> Thank you, Stu. >> So the event here, of course, the line we've used at many of those shows is, how do we bring people together even while we're apart? Good energy, great speakers, everything from Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Simon Sinek, in the opening, in Trevor Noah for some entertainment in day two, and lots of announcements with partners, customers, of course, speaking, and lots of the Nutants. So, Monica, maybe I start with you. You've had a very a close role in helping to shape a lot of what's going on here. I kind of teed up. Give us, from your standpoint, really, kind of the goals, give us a little bit of insight into putting this together for an online audience versus the kind of party that we have for the users when they come together in-person. >> Yeah, thank you so much, Stu. And I'm so excited to have Virginia here with us as well. You know, obviously, the world is so different now. And one of the biggest things that we've been doing for the last six, seven months is figuring out how do we stay connected with our customers, with our partners, with our own employees, and society at large? So, along the same lines, .NEXT has evolved to, of course, also being a virtual event, but at the same time, the biggest design factor for .NEXT is really the connection with customers, partners, our own employees, and influencers, and society at large. So you'll see a lot of our agenda is designed around future of work and what does it mean to be a leader and a technology leader, a technology provider in this world while we are living through the pandemic. We're also talking about future of education, future of healthcare, future financial services, all the things that matter to us as human beings, and then what's the role that technology is going to play in that, and, of course, how can Nutanix as a technology vendor help our customers navigate these uncertain times. So that's how most of our content is on day-one. And then day-two is really all about the latest and greatest cool tech. And you're going to hear a lot about and you've heard a lot about cloud technology and cloud being that constant enabler of innovation for businesses and for IT. So all of our hybrid cloud, multicloud, our core hyperconverged infrastructure, and how that's evolving to hybrid cloud infrastructure, it's about platform as a service, DevOps, I mean, database solutions, and these are competing solutions, you name it. So that's going to be at day-two. And then day-three is a partner exchange. So, obviously, partners are really important to us. That's the village, the ecosystem. And we have a whole day dedicated to our partners in helping understand how can we together bring the best solutions to market. >> Virginia, I'd love to get your experience so far with the event that you've attended. >> Well, I always find that .NEXT experiences a very broadening, enriching experience. I tell people who have never heard of cloud, who are well in the cloud, who are wanting to just learn about it, just sort of standing at the precipice of embarking on this journey, to watch or participate or go to the .NEXT for Nutanix, because it is so rich with content and speakers that are so intelligent about an experience about what they are doing and embarking on. And then in addition to that, there's always a hint and a lookout at the future and where we are going and where we need to think about where we are going. So I am very excited. The first part of this virtual .NEXT, I didn't know what to expect, but I am extremely pleased. >> Well, yeah, Virginia, you bring up a really good point. It's not just the cool technology, and there's lots of that, but what, personally, how do I enrich myself, how do I reach my career, how do enrich my community, that heart that Nutanix talks a lot about. Monica, obviously cloud has been a very important piece of the discussion. I noticed a little bit of shift in marketing. For a couple of years, the enterprise cloud was the discussion. Dheeraj's teams is out, he said, "Okay, we're going to change HCI from hyperconverged infrastructure to hybrid cloud infrastructure." You and I had had a conversation when the announcement of Nutanix Clusters with AWS, and at the show, Scott Guthrie, of course, wearing the signature red polo, and deeper partnership with Microsoft for Azure. Definitely, lots of excitement around that because Microsoft is a company that most people partner with and work with and use their technologies. And things like Azure Arc have the real promise to help us live in this hybrid and multicloud world. So we'd love to just briefly touch on the cloud pieces, what you're seeing in the news from Nutanix's standpoint? >> Absolutely. So one of the big pieces of news that's come out of .NEXT is a partnership with Azure, and we are super-excited for that partnership. Not only is Nutanix Clusters going to be available on Azure and we are jointly developing that solution to bring hybrid cloud solution to customers, you rightfully mentioned Azure Arc, we are also working to integrate Azure Arc across on-premises and Azure cloud. So, ultimately, for us, it's really about technology being a means to an end. The end is business outcomes for our customers, the end is a better customer experience, better employee experience, growth for the company in terms of revenue and profitability. And ultimately, that's what technology is doing, is really simplifying the use of cloud technology and build that hybrid cloud fabric that customers can deploy very quickly, very easily, seamlessly, and then manage it very easily, oh, and by the way, also be able to move their apps and data and license across the on-premises and, in this case, Azure environment. So very excited. By the way, we don't just stop there. When you say cloud, and when we say hybrid cloud and multicloud, it's, of course, on-premises, it's, of course, the hyperscaler clouds, but then there are service provider clouds. Because in region, and then, by the way, I don't know if you heard Khaled Soudani, he's the CTO at SocGen, he joined us as well in one of the keynotes, and obviously, they are building hybrid clouds. And when we talk about hybrid cloud to customers, it's also service provider cloud, which could be for data locality, data residency regions. It's also Nutanix's own cloud, the Nutanix cloud. So that's definitely one of the big pieces of news coming out of .NEXT, is this morphing or I would say evolution of hyperconverged infrastructure to becoming the hybrid cloud infrastructure. >> Virginia, of course, the big discussion this year has been the impact of COVID and what that's meant to IT priorities, CIO priorities. In a lot of the conversations we've been having on theCUBE this year, there's been a real acceleration on a lot of those cloud initiatives that Monica was talking about. So what are you hearing? What are you seeing? What are some of those imperatives that are either accelerating or, and are there some things that people are saying, "Hey, we might want to put this on ice for a few months?" >> Well, I can tell you, from my work with clients, the many public boards that I sit on, which span from financial services, to pure tech, all the way through to consumer-facing businesses, I really see the spectrum. And three years ago, when I was on theCUBE, we were talking about standing at the precipice and jumping in. Now, we are full on, we are in it. And Monica talked about all these different public clouds and the various providers who are leading their own way. But what I love and I think it's really important is that we need an independent company that actually begins to step back and help all the leaders that are running technology and operations and customer-facing functions, to be able to help them do their job. So here we are today, talking to various CEOs and C-suite executives. And the big issues are, "Okay, this stuff isn't so scary, we are in it, we need it for being able to function in the COVID world, and we also need it because our customers need us to need this, to have it." So, when we look at our portfolio of how businesses are investing in technology and other areas going forward, innovation, cost management, and also cyber seemed to be sort of the three very important themes of the day. And I believe that, today, as we sit through the next few days with .NEXT, we are really going to find stories, experiences, and visions about how we can actually address all three of those. >> Yeah, I think the point, Virginia, you're making is so fantastic, that this is the age of innovation while organizations also have to focus on cost intelligence. And that's the number one thing we're hearing from our customers. I mean, like when you were talking, it just reminded me, in the old days and maybe even up to five years ago, and the CIOs were all about knowing technology knowhow and managing costs, and like it was a cost center. But now you look at IT, IT is at the forefront of driving innovation. IT is at the forefront of adopting cloud. But at the same time, IT is also tasked with being smart about cost optimization. So you're right, that's exactly what we're also going to discuss the .NEXT, is how can technology help our customers innovate and, at the same time, be intelligent about cost optimization and which cloud to use for which workloads, for example. >> Yes, and also having the flexibility and the optionality to be able to put these things together. >> Well, yeah, Monica, simplicity was always at the core of what Nutanix did. And talking about the hybrid cloud solutions, it's very important you talk about the fact that it's the same operational model wherever things lived. The one piece that you didn't cover yet, that Virginia teed up, cyber security. So, absolutely, we would need innovation, we need to look at costs, but security is something that went from, it was already at the top of the list, to, oh, my gosh, in 2020, it feels like it's even higher there. So how does Nutanix make sure that, Nutanix along with your partners are making sure that companies, their data, their employees are all secure as possible? >> Absolutely. You mentioned that simplicity is a design principle for Nutanix from day-one, add to that security, security has been a guiding light from day-one, and security is built into our platform. It's not an afterthought, it's something we designed our products to incorporate right from the beginning. And there's a reason for that. The reason is we have over 17,000 customers, and a lot of them are running big, huge enterprise business critical workloads on Nutanix, including public sector, including state and local governments. And we have to ensure that they are able to make the environment secure using Nutanix technology. So whether it's our core technology platform, where we have things built in like data encryption, audit capabilities, or whether it's some of our new portfolio products. Last time, I think, Stu, we talked about how Nutanix offers now this complete cloud platform. 10 years ago, we started with a core foundation, which is hyperconverged infrastructure. But in the last few years, we've added on data center services, like other storage, different types of storage, consolidation, ability for customers, networking options, DR, we've added DevOps and database services, we've added desktop services. If you combine all of those three together with our digital infrastructure services, that's a complete cloud platform that has to be secure for our customers to run enterprise apps on databases, analytics workloads, and also build cloud native applications and run on it, and be able to run the same stack in a public cloud or private on-premises cloud. That has to be secure, so that's the number one design principle for Nutanix. >> Virginia, if Dave Alante was here, he would probably throw out the line that security has really become a board-level discussion. Well, you sit on a few boards, so I'd love to hear a little bit of your insights there as to the security that Monica talked about. Is this something that comes up at every board meeting? What kind of concerns are there out there today? >> Well, Stu, there is no question, it historically has come up at every board meeting. And one of the issues with that has always been the cost growth and escalation that takes place, and can we keep throwing more dollars at securing our environment. Fast-forward, look where we are today. We are highly dispersed workforce. So our attack surface has increased exponentially. And when we think about all the products that we're using, from virtual desktop and functioning from wherever we are in this world, how can that not help, but in the mind of a board director who doesn't know too much about technology, it would frighten them even more. However, the thing that I constantly always underscore is the sooner we move to these more modernized infrastructures, the better our ability will be to secure our environment at a very cost-efficient model. Because these technologies, particularly like Nutanix, have security built into them. And instead of having to add constantly to our cyber workforce, who's going to be looking at and parsing through information, we are able to have these embedded sensors and our ability to have the infrastructure talk to us about where our vulnerabilities are, as opposed to us having to go in and try to figure that out either post event or at some point pre any type of event. So it's very exciting time. I really encourage people to just get off our legacy environments as fast as we can and go to these modernized technology infrastructures and to the vendors who make this invisible to us. And I think the board members start to then say, "Okay, I can begin to understand that." I often give an example of if you're building a smart house versus you buy an old house and you're trying to put cameras on the side and sensors in the windows and in the doors, you can't possibly be as effective in your security as if you built it from the ground up to be secure. >> Yeah, definitely, it is challenging to retrofit that. Modernization is definitely a drum beat we've seen. Monica, a question for you on that theme is, in many ways, the current economic situation is a challenge, but it's also a forcing function. If I can need to keep up, if I need my employees to stay productive, I often need to rapidly adapt some modern solutions like Virginia was saying. Any words on that from what you're hearing from your customers and how Nutanix is helping? >> Absolutely. As I said earlier, I think the more IT leaders we talk to, it's become clear to us that there's three major mandates for IT that they are supporting. It's business growth, it's customer experience, and it's employee experience. So, in terms of modernization, absolutely, we find that IT stakeholders are very keen to go on a journey, which kind of looks like this, and again, it may not be the same for everybody, but starting with data center modernization or what we call infrastructure modernization. So really standardizing and consolidating all the key workloads so they can most efficiently use the data center assets. But then the next step very quickly becomes automation. And I think that's what Virginia was alluding to earlier, is we can no longer throw more and more people at things like security and provisioning and patching and updating and expect us to deliver the service-level agreements we have with business. So automation becomes really key. And, of course, with AI and machine learning, there's a lot of solutions out there around automation, and Nutanix is obviously big in terms of automating. Our one-click upgrades are legendary. That's even before people talked about AI and machine learning, we've been offering them. But then the next step becomes, very quickly, is, okay, great, I've automated everything, IT has become a service, my stakeholders are, I'm able to deliver the service-level agreements, well, what's next? How do I get the flexibility to on-demand spin up environments? And I think that's where the linkage with public cloud comes in, that's where customers are starting to build hybrid cloud. And then the ultimate nirvana that we're hearing from many customers is, they want to be able to use the right cloud for the right workload. A lot of our customers don't want to be stuck, and I'm using the word stuck kind of loosely, but just not with one public cloud. Just like our customers use a lot of different hardware providers in some cases, they also want to have the optionality of using an Azure for one workload, maybe an AWS for something else, maybe it's on-premises for something else, maybe it's a service provider for something else, and that's the ultimate nirvana for IT. So that would be the ultimate modernization, is where you have this kind of like an infinite computing solution, where you can go tap into any resource you need at the point in time that you need it for and be able to pay the right price for that and have a single management across everything. So you don't have to worry about the complexity of managing for environments, it's all done through one single plane, and that's where Nutanix comes in. Really, that's what we are doing, is making it really easy for our customers to reach from this infrastructure modernization, all the way to this hybrid multicloud world, with a single, unified management plan, the ability to move data, applications, and license around as they choose to, and have a cost-optimized solution. >> And let me add to that because I love what Monica is saying. You know, as a corporate fiduciary, I want my partners to do what they do best. So having each cloud provider really continue down the path of the areas that they are best in class in as opposed to wasting their time competing with each other on the same stuff, which doesn't help me evolve as a consumer, and it doesn't help them grow their business. And so, by enabling this kind of hybrid world, we are allowing each of these cloud providers to be able to do what they do best, which helps us invest in our future as consumers. >> All right, so Virginia, talking about fiduciary duties, as a board member, there's a topic that was talked a little bit at the show, but we'd love your feedback. And Monica, I want to hear the company's superior parent. Of course, I'm talking about the founder and CEO, Dheeraj Pandey is, there's a transition, there's a look, looking for the new CEO. If I have the line right, he's he said he will be a Nutant forever even though his role will become a little bit more invisible, of course, what Nutanix has been trying to do with infrastructure and clouds before. So, Virginia, what does this mean for today and for the direction of the company? And then Monica, I would love kind of the internal look from an employee standpoint. >> Well, Stu, thank you for asking the question. I actually did a significant post on LinkedIn a couple of days ago because I really wanted to express to the world how blown away I am by our founder, Dheeraj. I've been working with him now over the last three years. And as I have gotten to know him, and I have worked with a lot of founders in my life, and I've worked with a lot of CEOs who were founders and some that were not founders, they were just CEOs and they came in after the fact, and it is rare that you find an individual that is just so focused on driving the mission forward in a very selfless way. And from the very beginning, people who ended up talking to with our CEO over their life's journey with Nutanix over the last 10, 11 years, will say the same exact same thing, which is, his single focus was about the mission and how Nutanix can support and grow the mission of the organization and what the world needs today. And it is rare that an individual will say, at a certain point in time, "I have taken this thing that I have created to a certain point, and now, it is yet at another inflection point, and it needs to continue on in a significant way. So being concerned about every facet, from do I have the right talent, do I have the right offering, do I have the right capital position, do I have the right board, do I have the right person at the helm? And I have spent a lot of time talking with Dheeraj, which is a gift and a pleasure in life, and to be able to have a candid conversation about where is Nutanix going next and how best to get there. And for a CEO to be able to sit down and talk to their board about that, it is really unique. And to have someone who cares so much about the future of the company, I was really blown away. So I'm very excited about our prospects going forward. Otherwise, I would not have joined this board. We all have, our lives are challenged, and life is short, and we want to spend the time doing the things that we believe in and we love and support. So I am very excited for the next chapter. We have built an incredible base. And now we're poised for very significant growth. And I think to underscore that, you saw the performance of the company was extremely good, the partnerships that are coming out, this is exactly the time when you want to, again, self-effacing, disrupting yourself, looking at where we need to go next. The time to do that is not at the point where you are there and you've arrived at that next step, but just as you're about to take off on a launch. And I think we're here. And I'm very excited. >> Yeah, I'll add to that. So, first of all, Virginia, we are so thrilled that you're on the board. As far as Dheeraj goes, I believe he's a force of nature. I think that's what Virginia said. And look, I'm a parent, and for those of you who are parents out there, this will probably resonate. When a child is born, you nurture your child and you take care of them. At some point, they leave for college. And for me, it was a hard one coming from a different culture, but I almost seem this is akin to that. Dheeraj is the founding father of Nutanix. He has really nurtured the company, he's built it up, he's given us all the right culture principles, and now, he's sending us off to call it saying, "Okay, this is the next phase of your life, go do the best you can and take Nutanix to the next level." And I'm really, really proud to be part of this company, I've been here for a year-and-a-half, we have amazing talent, people are important, we have amazing innovations. And, by the way, this new year, we started a fiscal year in August, it's going to be full of amazing innovations. I mean, this is only the beginning, what you've heard in the last two or three weeks, a lot more is coming down. And then there are some process that we've put in place so people process technology, process to actually scale as a larger company. So I think what Dheeraj has done is really set us up for the next phase of our life, and he's always going to be there for us as an advisor just like a parent is there for the child when they're off to college and off to doing other things in life. That's what I believe. >> Well, Monica and Virginia, thank you so much for sharing the updates. theCUBE really appreciates being able to be part of the Nutanix .NEXT event, and great to catch up with both of you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for continuing to work with us. Thank you. >> All right, stay tuned for more from Nutanix .NEXT digital experience. I'm Stu Miniman. And thank you for watching theCUBE. (gentle music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with coverage of the Global .NEXT digital experience. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to theCUBE's coverage of the Nutanix .NEXT global digital experience. We've been at the Nutanix shows since the first time they ever happened, way back at the Fontainebleau, in Miami, of course. Nutanix is now a public company. A lot of news, a lot going on, and the first time they've done, first, a global event and digital event because this was the convergence of the events that they were originally going to have both in North America as well as Europe. So happy to welcome back to the program. To help kick it off, first of all, we have Monica Kumar, she's the Senior Vice President of Marketing with Nutanix. And also joining us is Virginia Gambale, she is a Managing Partner at Azimuth Partners LLC and also a board member of Nutanix. Virginia, Monica, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you so much for having us. >> Thank you, Stu. >> So the event here, of course, the line we've used at many of those shows is, how do we bring people together even while we're apart? Good energy, great speakers, everything from Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Simon Sinek, in the opening, in Trevor Noah for some entertainment in day two, and lots of announcements with partners, customers, of course, speaking, and lots of the Newtons. So, Monica, maybe I start with you. You've had a very a close role in helping to shape a lot of what's going on here. I kind of teed up. Give us, from your standpoint, really, kind of the goals, give us a little bit of insight into putting this together for an online audience versus the kind of party that we have for the users when they come together in-person. >> Yeah, thank you so much, Stu. And I'm so excited to have Virginia here with us as well. You know, obviously, the world is so different now. And one of the biggest things that we've been doing for the last six, seven months is figuring out how do we stay connected with our customers, with our partners, with our own employees, and society at large? So, along the same lines, .NEXT has evolved to, of course, also being a virtual event, but at the same time, the biggest design factor for .NEXT is really the connection with customers, partners, our own employees, and influencers, and society at large. So you'll see a lot of our agenda is designed around future of work and what does it mean to be a leader and a technology leader, a technology provider in this world while we are living through the pandemic. We're also talking about future of education, future of healthcare, future financial services, all the things that matter to us as human beings, and then what's the role that technology is going to play in that, and, of course, how can Nutanix as a technology vendor help our customers navigate these uncertain times. So that's how most of our content is on day-one. And then day-two is really all about the latest and greatest cool tech. And you're going to hear a lot about and you've heard a lot about cloud technology and cloud being that constant enabler of innovation for businesses and for IT. So all of our hybrid cloud, multicloud, our core hyperconverged infrastructure, and how that's evolving to hybrid cloud infrastructure, it's about platform as a service, DevOps, I mean, database solutions, and these are competing solutions, you name it. So that's going to be at day-two. And then day-three is a partner exchange. So, obviously, partners are really important to us. That's the village, the ecosystem. And we have a whole day dedicated to our partners in helping understand how can we together bring the best solutions to market. >> Virginia, I'd love to get your experience so far with the event that you've attended. >> Well, I always find that .NEXT experiences a very broad and enriching experience. I tell people who have never heard of cloud, who are well in the cloud, who are wanting to just learn about it, just sort of standing at the precipice of embarking on this journey, to watch or participate or go to the .NEXT for Nutanix, because it is so rich with content and speakers that are so intelligent about an experience about what they are doing and embarking on. And then in addition to that, there's always a hint and a lookout at the future and where we are going and where we need to think about where we are going. So I am very excited. The first part of this virtual .NEXT, I didn't know what to expect, but I am extremely pleased. >> Well, yeah, Virginia, you bring up a really good point. It's not just the cool technology, and there's lots of that, but what, personally, how do I enrich myself, how do I reach my career, how do enrich my community, that heart that Nutanix talks a lot about. Monica, obviously cloud has been a very important piece of the discussion. I noticed a little bit of shift in marketing. For a couple of years, the enterprise cloud was the discussion. Dheeraj's teams is out, he said, "Okay, we're going to change HCI from hyperconverged infrastructure to hybrid cloud infrastructure." You and I had had a conversation when the announcement of Nutanix Clusters with AWS, and at the show, Scott Guthrie, of course, wearing the signature red polo, and deeper partnership with Microsoft for Azure. Definitely, lots of excitement around that because Microsoft is a company that most people partner with and work with and use their technologies. And things like Azure Arc have the real promise to help us live in this hybrid and multicloud world. So we'd love to just briefly touch on the cloud pieces, what you're seeing in the news from Nutanix's standpoint? >> Absolutely. So one of the big pieces of news that's come out of .NEXT is a partnership with Azure, and we are super-excited for that partnership. Not only is Nutanix Clusters going to be available on Azure and we are jointly developing that solution to bring hybrid cloud solution to customers, you rightfully mentioned Azure Arc, we are also working to integrate Azure Arc across on-premises and Azure cloud. So, ultimately, for us, it's really about technology being a means to an end. The end is business outcomes for our customers, the end is a better customer experience, better employee experience, growth for the company in terms of revenue and profitability. And ultimately, that's what technology is doing, is really simplifying the use of cloud technology and build that hybrid cloud fabric that customers can deploy very quickly, very easily, seamlessly, and then manage it very easily, oh, and by the way, also be able to move their apps and data and license across the on-premises and, in this case, Azure environment. So very excited. By the way, we don't just stop there. When you say cloud, and when we say hybrid cloud and multicloud, it's, of course, on-premises, it's, of course, the hyperscaler clouds, but then there are service provider clouds. Because in region, and then, by the way, I don't know if you heard Khaled Soudani, he's the CTO at SocGen, he joined us as well in one of the keynotes, and obviously, they are building hybrid clouds. And when we talk about hybrid cloud to customers, it's also service provider cloud, which could be for data locality, data residency regions. It's also Nutanix's own cloud, the Nutanix cloud. So that's definitely one of the big pieces of news coming out of .NEXT, is this morphing or I would say evolution of hyperconverged infrastructure to becoming the hybrid cloud infrastructure. >> Virginia, of course, the big discussion this year has been the impact of COVID and what that's meant to IT priorities, CIO priorities. In a lot of the conversations we've been having on theCUBE this year, there's been a real acceleration on a lot of those cloud initiatives that Monica was talking about. So what are you hearing? What are you seeing? What are some of those imperatives that are either accelerating or, and are there some things that people are saying, "Hey, we might want to put this on ice for a few months?" >> Well, I can tell you, from my work with clients, the many public boards that I sit on, which span from financial services, to pure tech, all the way through to consumer-facing businesses, I really see the spectrum. And three years ago, when I was on theCUBE, we were talking about standing at the precipice and jumping in. Now, we are full on, we are in it. And Monica talked about all these different public clouds and the various providers who are leading their own way. But what I love and I think it's really important is that we need an independent company that actually begins to step back and help all the leaders that are running technology and operations and customer-facing functions, to be able to help them do their job. So here we are today, talking to various CEOs and C-suite executives. And the big issues are, "Okay, this stuff isn't so scary, we are in it, we need it for being able to function in the COVID world, and we also need it because our customers need us to need this, to have it." So, when we look at our portfolio of how businesses are investing in technology and other areas going forward, innovation, cost management, and also cyber seemed to be sort of the three very important themes of the day. And I believe that, today, as we sit through the next few days with .NEXT, we are really going to find stories, experiences, and visions about how we can actually address all three of those. >> Yeah, I think the point, Virginia, you're making is so fantastic, that this is the age of innovation while organizations also have to focus on cost intelligence. And that's the number one thing we're hearing from our customers. I mean, like when you were talking, it just reminded me, in the old days and maybe even up to five years ago, and the CIOs were all about knowing technology knowhow and managing costs, and like it was a cost center. But now you look at IT, IT is at the forefront of driving innovation. IT is at the forefront of adopting cloud. But at the same time, IT is also tasked with being smart about cost optimization. So you're right, that's exactly what we're also going to discuss the .NEXT, is how can technology help our customers innovate and, at the same time, be intelligent about cost optimization and which cloud to use for which workloads, for example. >> Yes, and also having the flexibility and the optionality to be able to put these things together. >> Well, yeah, Monica, simplicity was always at the core of what Nutanix did. And talking about the hybrid cloud solutions, it's very important you talk about the fact that it's the same operational model wherever things lived. The one piece that you didn't cover yet, that Virginia teed up, cyber security. So, absolutely, we would need innovation, we need to look at costs, but security is something that went from, it was already at the top of the list, to, oh, my gosh, in 2020, it feels like it's even higher there. So how does Nutanix make sure that, Nutanix along with your partners are making sure that companies, their data, their employees are all secure as possible? >> Absolutely. You mentioned that simplicity is a design principle for Nutanix from day-one, add to that security, security has been a guiding light from day-one, and security is built into our platform. It's not an afterthought, it's something we designed our products to incorporate right from the beginning. And there's a reason for that. The reason is we have over 17,000 customers, and a lot of them are running big, huge enterprise business critical workloads on Nutanix, including public sector, including state and local governments. And we have to ensure that they are able to make the environment secure using Nutanix technology. So whether it's our core technology platform, where we have things built in like data encryption, audit capabilities, or whether it's some of our new portfolio products. Last time, I think, Stu, we talked about how Nutanix offers now this complete cloud platform. 10 years ago, we started with a core foundation, which is hyperconverged infrastructure. But in the last few years, we've added on data center services, like other storage, different types of storage, consolidation, ability for customers, networking options, DR, we've added DevOps and database services, we've added desktop services. If you combine all of those three together with our digital infrastructure services, that's a complete cloud platform that has to be secure for our customers to run enterprise apps on databases, analytics workloads, and also build cloud native applications and run on it, and be able to run the same stack in a public cloud or private on-premises cloud. That has to be secure, so that's the number one design principle for Nutanix. >> Virginia, if Dave Alante was here, he would probably throw out the line that security has really become a board-level discussion. Well, you sit on a few boards, so I'd love to hear a little bit of your insights there as to the security that Monica talked about. Is this something that comes up at every board meeting? What kind of concerns are there out there today? >> Well, Stu, there is no question, it historically has come up at every board meeting. And one of the issues with that has always been the cost growth and escalation that takes place, and can we keep throwing more dollars at securing our environment. Fast-forward, look where we are today. We are highly dispersed workforce. So our attack surface has increased exponentially. And when we think about all the products that we're using, from virtual desktop and functioning from wherever we are in this world, how can that not help, but in the mind of a board director who doesn't know too much about technology, it would frighten them even more. However, the thing that I constantly always underscore is the sooner we move to these more modernized infrastructures, the better our ability will be to secure our environment at a very cost-efficient model. Because these technologies, particularly like Nutanix, have security built into them. And instead of having to add constantly to our cyber workforce, who's going to be looking at and parsing through information, we are able to have these embedded sensors and our ability to have the infrastructure talk to us about where our vulnerabilities are, as opposed to us having to go in and try to figure that out either post event or at some point pre any type of event. So it's very exciting time. I really encourage people to just get off our legacy environments as fast as we can and go to these modernized technology infrastructures and to the vendors who make this invisible to us. And I think the board members start to then say, "Okay, I can begin to understand that." I often give an example of if you're building a smart house versus you buy an old house and you're trying to put cameras on the side and sensors in the windows and in the doors, you can't possibly be as effective in your security as if you built it from the ground up to be secure. >> Yeah, definitely, it is challenging to retrofit that. Modernization is definitely a drum beat we've seen. Monica, a question for you on that theme is, in many ways, the current economic situation is a challenge, but it's also a forcing function. If I can need to keep up, if I need my employees to stay productive, I often need to rapidly adapt some modern solutions like Virginia was saying. Any words on that from what you're hearing from your customers and how Nutanix is helping? >> Absolutely. As I said earlier, I think the more IT leaders we talk to, it's become clear to us that there's three major mandates for IT that they are supporting. It's business growth, it's customer experience, and it's employee experience. So, in terms of modernization, absolutely, we find that IT stakeholders are very keen to go on a journey, which kind of looks like this, and again, it may not be the same for everybody, but starting with data center modernization or what we call infrastructure modernization. So really standardizing and consolidating all the key workloads so they can most efficiently use the data center assets. But then the next step very quickly becomes automation. And I think that's what Virginia was alluding to earlier, is we can no longer throw more and more people at things like security and provisioning and patching and updating and expect us to deliver the service-level agreements we have with business. So automation becomes really key. And, of course, with AI and machine learning, there's a lot of solutions out there around automation, and Nutanix is obviously big in terms of automating. Our one-click upgrades are legendary. That's even before people talked about AI and machine learning, we've been offering them. But then the next step becomes, very quickly, is, okay, great, I've automated everything, IT has become a service, my stakeholders are, I'm able to deliver the service-level agreements, well, what's next? How do I get the flexibility to on-demand spin up environments? And I think that's where the linkage with public cloud comes in, that's where customers are starting to build hybrid cloud. And then the ultimate nirvana that we're hearing from many customers is, they want to be able to use the right cloud for the right workload. A lot of our customers don't want to be stuck, and I'm using the word stuck kind of loosely, but just not with one public cloud. Just like our customers use a lot of different hardware providers in some cases, they also want to have the optionality of using an Azure for one workload, maybe an AWS for something else, maybe it's on-premises for something else, maybe it's a service provider for something else, and that's the ultimate nirvana for IT. So that would be the ultimate modernization, is where you have this kind of like an infinite computing solution, where you can go tap into any resource you need at the point in time that you need it for and be able to pay the right price for that and have a single management across everything. So you don't have to worry about the complexity of managing for environments, it's all done through one single plane, and that's where Nutanix comes in. Really, that's what we are doing, is making it really easy for our customers to reach from this infrastructure modernization, all the way to this hybrid multicloud world, with a single, unified management plan, the ability to move data, applications, and license around as they choose to, and have a cost-optimized solution. >> And let me add to that because I love what Monica is saying. You know, as a corporate fiduciary, I want my partners to do what they do best. So having each cloud provider really continue down the path of the areas that they are best in class in as opposed to wasting their time competing with each other on the same stuff, which doesn't help me evolve as a consumer, and it doesn't help them grow their business. And so, by enabling this kind of hybrid world, we are allowing each of these cloud providers to be able to do what they do best, which helps us invest in our future as consumers. >> All right, so Virginia, talking about fiduciary duties, as a board member, there's a topic that was talked a little bit at the show, but we'd love your feedback. And Monica, I want to hear the company's superior parent. Of course, I'm talking about the founder and CEO, Dheeraj Pandey is, there's a transition, there's a look, looking for the new CEO. If I have the line right, he's he said he will be a Newton forever even though his role will become a little bit more invisible, of course, what Nutanix has been trying to do with infrastructure and clouds before. So, Virginia, what does this mean for today and for the direction of the company? And then Monica, I would love kind of the internal look from an employee standpoint. >> Well, Stu, thank you for asking the question. I actually did a significant post on LinkedIn a couple of days ago because I really wanted to express to the world how blown away I am by our founder, Dheeraj. I've been working with him now over the last three years. And as I have gotten to know him, and I have worked with a lot of founders in my life, and I've worked with a lot of CEOs who were founders and some that were not founders, they were just CEOs and they came in after the fact, and it is rare that you find an individual that is just so focused on driving the mission forward in a very selfless way. And from the very beginning, people who ended up talking to with our CEO over their life's journey with Nutanix over the last 10, 11 years, will say the same exact same thing, which is, his single focus was about the mission and how Nutanix can support and grow the mission of the organization and what the world needs today. And it is rare that an individual will say, at a certain point in time, "I have taken this thing that I have created to a certain point, and now, it is yet at another inflection point, and it needs to continue on in a significant way. So being concerned about every facet, from do I have the right talent, do I have the right offering, do I have the right capital position, do I have the right board, do I have the right person at the helm? And I have spent a lot of time talking with Dheeraj, which is a gift and a pleasure in life, and to be able to have a candid conversation about where is Nutanix going next and how best to get there. And for a CEO to be able to sit down and talk to their board about that, it is really unique. And to have someone who cares so much about the future of the company, I was really blown away. So I'm very excited about our prospects going forward. Otherwise, I would not have joined this board. We all have, our lives are challenged, and life is short, and we want to spend the time doing the things that we believe in and we love and support. So I am very excited for the next chapter. We have built an incredible base. And now we're poised for very significant growth. And I think to underscore that, you saw the performance of the company was extremely good, the partnerships that are coming out, this is exactly the time when you want to, again, self-effacing, disrupting yourself, looking at where we need to go next. The time to do that is not at the point where you are there and you've arrived at that next step, but just as you're about to take off on a launch. And I think we're here. And I'm very excited. >> Yeah, I'll add to that. So, first of all, Virginia, we are so thrilled that you're on the board. As far as Dheeraj goes, I believe he's a force of nature. I think that's what Virginia said. And look, I'm a parent, and for those of you who are parents out there, this will probably resonate. When a child is born, you nurture your child and you take care of them. At some point, they leave for college. And for me, it was a hard one coming from a different culture, but I almost seem this is akin to that. Dheeraj is the founding father of Nutanix. He has really nurtured the company, he's built it up, he's given us all the right culture principles, and now, he's sending us off to call it saying, "Okay, this is the next phase of your life, go do the best you can and take Nutanix to the next level." And I'm really, really proud to be part of this company, I've been here for a year-and-a-half, we have amazing talent, people are important, we have amazing innovations. And, by the way, this new year, we started a fiscal year in August, it's going to be full of amazing innovations. I mean, this is only the beginning, what you've heard in the last two or three weeks, a lot more is coming down. And then there are some process that we've put in place so people process technology, process to actually scale as a larger company. So I think what Dheeraj has done is really set us up for the next phase of our life, and he's always going to be there for us as an advisor just like a parent is there for the child when they're off to college and off to doing other things in life. That's what I believe. >> Well, Monica and Virginia, thank you so much for sharing the updates. theCUBE really appreciates being able to be part of the Nutanix .NEXT event, and great to catch up with both of you. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you for continuing to work with us. Thank you. >> All right, stay tuned for more from Nutanix .NEXT digital experience. I'm Stu Miniman. And thank you for watching theCUBE. (gentle music)