>>Welcome back here on the Cube. I'm John Walls. We are in Las Vegas at the Venetian, and this is Reinvent 22 in the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. Glad to have you with us here as we continue our conversations. I'm joined by Paul Puckett, who's the former director of the Enterprise Cloud Management Services at the US Army. Paul, good to see you sir. Hey, you as well, John. Thank you. And Justin, she who is managing director and cloud go to market lead at Accenture Federal Services. Justin, good morning to you. Good morning, John. Yeah, glad to have you both here on the cube. First time too, I believe, right? Yes sir. Well, welcome. I wish we had some kind of baptism or indoctrination, but I'll see what I can come up with in the next 10 minutes for you. Let's talk about the Army, Paul. So enterprise cloud management, US Army. You know, I can't imagine the scale we're talking about here. I can't imagine the solutions we're talking about. I can't imagine the users we're talking about. Just for our folks at home, paint the picture a little bit of what kind of landscape it is that you have to cover with that kind of title. >>Sure. The United States Army, about 1.4 million people. Obviously a global organization responsible for protecting and defending the United States as part of our sister services in the Department of Defense. And scale often comes up a lot, right? And we talk about any capability to your solution for the United States Army scale is the, the number one thing, but oftentimes people overlook quality first. And actually when you think of the partnership between the Army and Accenture Federal, we thought a lot when it came to establishing the enterprise Cloud management agency that we wanted to deliver quality first when it came to adopting cloud computing and then scale that quality and not so much be afraid of the, the scale of the army and the size that forces us to make bad decisions. Cuz we wanted to make sure that we proved that there was opportunity and value in the cloud first, and then we wanted to truly scale that. And so no doubt, an immense challenge. The organization's been around for now three years, but I think that we've established irreversible momentum when it comes to modernization, leveraging cloud computing >>For the army. So let's back up. You kind of threw it in there, the ecma. So this agency was, was your a collaboration, right? To create from the ground up and it's in three years in existence. So let's just talk about that. What went into that thinking? What went into the planning and then how did you actually get it up and run into the extent that it is today? >>Sure. Well, it was once the enterprise cloud management office. It was a directorate within the, the CIO G six of the United States Army. So at the headquarters, the army, the chief information Officer, and the G six, which is essentially the military arm for all IT capability were once a joint's organization and the ECMO was created to catalyze the adoption of cloud computing. The army had actually been on a, a cloud adoption journey for many years, but there wasn't a lot of value that was actually derived. And so they created the ecma, well, the ECMO at the time brought me in as the director. And so we were responsible for establishing the new strategy for the adoption of cloud. One of the components of that strategy was essentially we needed an opportunity to be able to buy cloud services at scale. And this was part of our buy secure and build model that we had in place. And so part of the buy piece, we put an acquisition strategy together around how we wanted to buy cloud at scale. We called it the cloud account management optimization. OTA >>Just rolls right off the >>Tongue, it just rolls right off the tongue. And for those that love acronyms, camo, >>Which I liked it when I was say cama, I loved that. That was, that was, >>You always have to have like a tundra, a little >>Piece of that. Very good. It was good. >>But at the time it was novetta, no, Nevada's been bought up by afs, but Novea won that agreement. And so we've had this partnership in place now for just about a year and a half for buying cloud computing net scale. >>So let's talk about, about what you deal with on, on the federal services side here, Justin, in terms of the army. So obviously governance, a major issue, compliance, a major issue, security, you know, paramount importance and all that STEM leads up to quality that Paul was talking about. So when you were looking at this and keeping all those factors in, in your mind, right? I mean, how many, like, oh my God, what kind of days did you have? Oh, well, because this was a handful. >>Well, it was, but you could see when we were responding to the acquisition that it was really, you know, forward thinking and forward leaning in terms of how they thought about cloud acquisition and cloud governance and cloud management. And it's really kind of a sleepy area like cloud account acquisition. Everyone's like, oh, it's easy to get in the cloud, you know, run your credit card on Amazon and you're in, in 30 seconds or less. That's really not the case inside the federal government, whether it's the army, the Air Force or whoever, right? Those, those are, they're real challenges in procuring and acquiring cloud. And so it was clear from, you know, Paul's office that they understood those challenges and we were excited to really meet them with them. >>And, and how, I guess from an institutional perspective, before this was right, I I assume very protective, very tight cloistered, right? You, you, in terms of being open to or, or a more open environment, there might have been some pushback was they're not. Right? So dealing with that, what did you find that to be the case? Well, so >>There's kind of a few pieces to unpacking that. There's a lot of fear in trepidation around something you don't understand, right? And so part of it is the teaching and training and the, and the capability and the opportunity in the cloud and the ability to be exceptionally secure when it comes to no doubt, the sensitivity of the information of the Department of Defense, but also from an action acquisition strategy perspective, more from a financial perspective, the DOD is accustomed to buying hardware. We make these big bets of these big things to, to live in today's centers. And so when we talk about consuming cloud as a utility, there's a lot of fear there as well, because they don't really understand how to kind of pay for something by the drink, if you will, because it incentivizes them to be more efficient with their utilization of resources. >>But when you look at the budgeting process of the d od, there really is not that much of incentive for efficiency. The p PPE process, the planning program, budgeting, execution, they care about execution, which is spending money and you can spend a lot of money in the cloud, right? But how are you actually utilizing that? And so what we wanted to do is create that feedback loop and so the utilization is actually fed into our financial systems that help us then estimate into the future. And that's the capability that we partnered with AFS on is establishing the closing of that feedback loop. So now we can actually optimize our utilization of the cloud. And that's actually driving better incentives in the PPE >>Process. You know, when you think about these keywords here, modernized, digitized, data driven, so on, so forth, I, I don't think a lot of people might connect that to the US government in general just because of, you know, it's a large intentionally slow moving bureaucratic machine, right? Is that fair to characterize it that way? It >>Is, but not in this case. Right? So what we done, >>You you totally juxtapose that. Yeah. >>Yeah. So what we've done is we've really enabled data driven decision making as it relates to cloud accounts and cloud governance. And so we have a, a tool called Cloud Tracker. We deployed for the army at a number of different classifications, and you get a full 360 view of all of your cloud utilization and cloud spend, you know, really up to date within 24 hours of it occurring, right? And there a lot of folks, you know, they didn't never went into the console, they never looked at what they were spending in cloud previously. And so now you just go to a simple web portal and see the entire entirety of the army cloud spend right there at your fingertips. So that really enables like better decision making in terms of like purchasing savings plans and reserved instances and other sorts of AWS specific tools to help you save money. >>So Paul, tell me about Cloud Tracker then. Yeah, I mean from the client side then, can you just say this dashboard lays it out for you right? In great detail about what kind of usage, what kind of efficiencies I assume Yeah. What's working, what's not? >>Absolutely. Well, and, and I think a few things to unpack that's really important here is listen, any cloud service provider has a concept. You can see what you're actually spending. But when it comes to money in the United States government, there are different colors of money. There's regulations when it comes to how money is identified for different capabilities or incentives. And you've gotta be very explicit in how you track and how you spend that money from an auditability perspective. Beyond that, there is a move when it comes to the technology business management, which is the actual labeling of what we actually spend money on for different services or labor or software. And what Cloud Tracker allows us to do is speak the language of the different colors of money. It allows us to also get very fine grain in the actual analysis of, from a TBM perspective, what we're spending on. >>But then also it has real time hooks into our financial systems for execution. And so what that really does for us is it allows us to complete the picture, not just be able to see our spend in the cloud, but also be able to able to see that spending context of all things in the P P P E process as well as the execution process that then really empowers the government to make better investments. And all we're seeing is either cost avoidance or cost savings simply because we're able to close that loop, like I said. Yep. And then we're able to redirect those funds, retag them, remove them through our actual financial office within the headquarters of the army, and be able to repurpose that to other modernization efforts that Congress is essentially asking us to invest >>In. Right. So you know how much money you have, basically. Exactly. Right. You know how much you've already spent, you know how you're spending it, and now you how much you have left, >>You can provide a reliable forecast for your spend. >>Right. You know, hey, we're, we're halfway through this quarter, we're halfway through the, the fiscal year, whatever the case might be. >>Exactly. And the focus on expenditures, you know, the government rates you on, you know, how much have you spent, right? So you have a clear total transparency into what you're going to spend through the rest of the fiscal. Sure. >>All right. Let's just talk about the relationship quickly then about going forward then in terms of federal services and then what on, on the, the US Army side. I mean, what now you've laid this great groundwork, right? You have a really solid foundation where now what next? >>We wanna be all things cloud to the army. I mean, we think there's tremendous opportunity to really aid the modernization efforts and governance across the holistic part of the army. So, you know, we just, we want to, we wanna do it all with the Army as much as we can. It's, it's, it's a fantastic >>Opportunity. Yeah. AFS is, is in a very kind of a strategic role. So as part of the ecma, we own the greater strategy and execution for adoption of cloud on behalf of the entire army. Now, when it comes to delivery of individual capabilities for mission here and there, that's all specific to system owners and different organizations. AFS plays a different role in this instance where they're able to more facilitate the greater strategy on the financial side of the house. And what we've done is we've proven the ability to adopt cloud as a utility rather than this fixed thing, kind of predict the future, spend a whole bunch of money and never use the resource. We're seeing the efficiency for the actual utilization of cloud as a utility. This actually came out as one of the previous NDAs. And so how we actually address nda, I believe it was 2018 in the adoption of cloud as a utility, really is now cornerstone of modernization across all of the do d and really feeds into the Jo Warfighting cloud capability, major acquisition on behalf of all of the D O D to establish buying cloud as just a common service for everyone. >>And so we've been fortunate to inform that team of some of our lessons learned, but when it comes to the partnership, we just see camo moving into production. We've been live for now a year and a half. And so there's another two and a half years of runway there. And then AFS also plays a strategic role at part of our cloud enablement division, which is essentially back to that teaching part, helping the Army understand the opportunity of cloud computing, align the architectures to actually leverage those resources and then deliver capabilities that save soldier's >>Lives. Well, you know, we've, we've always known that the Army does its best work on the ground, and you've done all this groundwork for the military, so I'm not surprised, right? It's, it's a winning formula. Thanks to both of you for being with us here in the executive summit. Great conversation. Awesome. Thanks for having us. A good deal. All right. Thank you. All right. You are watching the executive summit sponsored by Accenture here at Reinvent 22, and you're catching it all on the cube, the leader in high tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. I've got a CUBE alum with me next. Ajay Patel is here, the SVP and GM of Modern Apps and Management at VMware. Ajay, welcome back to the program, it's great to see you. >> Well thank you for having me. It's always great to be here. >> Glad that you're doing well. I want to dig into your role as SVP and GM with Modern Apps and Management. Talk to me about some of the dynamics of your role and then we'll get into the vision and the strategy that VMware has. >> Makes sense. VMware has created a business group called Modern Apps and Management, with the single mission of helping our customers accelerate their digital transformation through software. And we're finding them leveraging both the edge and the multiple clouds they deploy on. So our mission here is helping, them be the cloud diagnostic manager for application development and management through our portfolio of Tazu and VRealize solutions allowing customers to both build and operate applications at speed across these edge data center and cloud deployments And the big thing we hear is all the day two challenges, right of managing costs, risks, security, performance. That's really the essence of what the business group is about. How do we speed idea to production and allow you to operate at scale. >> When we think of speed, we can't help, but think of the acceleration that we've seen in the last 18 months, businesses transforming digitally to first survive the dynamics of the market. But talk to me about how the, the pandemic has influenced catalyzed VMware's vision here. >> You can see in every industry, this need for speed has really accelerated. What used to be weeks and months of planning and execution has materialized into getting something out in production in days. One of great example I can remember is one of my financial services customer that was responsible for getting all the COVID payments out to the small businesses and being able to get that application from idea to production matter of 10 days, it was just truly impressive to see the teams come together, to come up with the idea, put the software together and getting production so that we could start delivering the financial funds the companies needed, to keep them viable. So great social impact and great results in matter of days. >> And again, that acceleration that we've seen there, there's been a lot of silver linings, I think, but I want to get in next to some of the industry trends that are influencing app modernization. What are you seeing in the customer environment? What are some of those key trends that are driving adoption? >> I mean, this move to cloud is here to stay and most of customers have a cloud first strategy, and we rebranded this from VMware the cloud smart strategy, but it's not just about one particular flavor of cloud. We're putting the best workload on the best cloud. But the reality is when I speak to many of the customers is they're way behind on the bar of digital plats. And it's, that's because the simple idea of, you know, lift and shift or completely rewrite. So there's no one fits all and they're struggling with hardware capability, their the development teams, their IT assets, the applications are modernized across these three things. So we see modernization kind of fall in three categories, infrastructure modernization, the practice of development or devops modernization, and the application transform itself. And we are starting to find out that customers are struggling with all three. Well, they want to leverage the best of cloud. They just don't have the skills or the expertise to do that effectively. >> And how does VMware help address that skills gap. >> Yeah, so the way we've looked at it is we put a lot of effort around education. So on the everyone knows containers and Kubernetes is the future. They're looking to build these modern microservices, architectures and applications. A lot of investment in just kind of putting the effort to help customers learn these new tools, techniques, and create best practices. So theCUBE academy and the effort and the investment putting in just enabling the ecosystem now with the skills and capabilities is one big effort that VMware is putting. But more importantly, on the product side, we're delivering solutions that help customers both build design, deliver and operate these applications on Kubernetes across the cloud of choice. I'm most excited about our announcement around this product. We're just launching called Tanzu application platform. It is what we call an application aware platform. It's about making it easy for developers to take the ideas and get into production. It kind of bridging that gap that exists between development and operations. We hear a lot about dev ops, as you know, how do you bring that to life? How do you make that real? That's what Tanzu application platform is about. >> I'm curious of your customer conversations, how they've changed in the last year or so in terms of, app modernization, things like security being board level conversations, are you noticing that that is rising up the chain that app modernization is now a business critical initiative for our businesses? >> So it's what I'm finding is it's the means. It's not that if you think about the board level conversations about digital transformation you know, I'm a financial services company. I need to provide mobile FinTech. I'm competing with this new age application and you're delivering the same service that they offered digitally now, right. Like from a retail bank. I can't go to the store, the retail branch anymore, right. I need to provide the same capability for payments processing all online through my mobile phone. So it's really the digitalization of the traditional processes that we're finding most exciting. In order to do that, we're finding that no applications are in cloud right. They had to take the existing financial applications and put a mobile frontend to it, or put some new business logic or drive some transformation there. So it's really a transformation around existing application to deliver a business outcome. And we're focusing it through our Tanzu lab services, our capabilities of Tanzu application platform, all the way to the operations and management of getting these products in production or these applications in production. So it's the full life cycle from idea to production is what customers are looking for. They're looking to compress the cycle time as you and I spoke about, through this agility they're looking for. >> Right, definitely a compressed cycle time. Talk to me about some of the other announcements that are being made at VMworld with respect to Tanzu and helping customers on the app modernization front, and that aligned to the vision and mission that you talked about. >> Wonderful, I would say they're kind of, I put them in three buckets. One is what are we doing to help developers get access to the new technology. Back to the skills learning part of it, most excited about Tanzu of community edition and Tanzu mission control starter pack. This is really about getting Kubernetes stood up in your favorite deployment of choice and get started building your application very quickly. We're also announcing Tanzu application platform that I spoke about, we're going to beta 2 for that platform, which makes it really easy for developers to get access to Kubernetes capability. It makes development easy. We're also announcing marketplace enhancements, allowing us to take the best of breed IC solutions and making them available to help you build applications faster. So one set of announcements around building applications, delivering value, getting them down to market very quickly. On the management side, we're really excited about the broad portfolio management we've assembled. We're probably in the customer's a way to build a cloud operating model. And in the cloud operating model, it's about how do I do VMs and containers? How do I provide a consistent management control plane so I can deliver applications on the cloud of my choice? How do I provide intrinsic observability, intrinsic security so I can operate at scale. So this combination of development tooling, platform operations, and day two operations, along with enhancements in our cost management solution with CloudHealth or being able to take our universal capabilities for consumption, driving insight and observity that really makes it a powerful story for customers, either on the build or develop or deploy side of the equation. >> You mentioned a couple of things are interesting. Consistency being key from a management perspective, especially given this accelerated time in which we're living, but also you mentioned security. We've seen so much movement on the security front in the last year and a half with the massive rise in ransomware attacks, ransomware now becoming a household word. Talk to me about the security factor and how you're helping customers from a risk mitigation perspective, because now it's not, if we get attacked, it's when. >> And I think it's really starts with, we have this notion of a secure software supply chain. We think of software as a production factory from idea to production. And if you don't start with known good hard attacks to start with, trying to wire in security after attack is just too difficult. So we started with secure content, curated images content catalogs that customers are setting up as best practices. We started with application accelerators. These are best practice that codifies with the right guard rails in place. And then we automate that supply chain so that you have checks in every process, every step of the way, whether it's in the build process and the deploy process or in runtime production. And you had to do this at the application layer because there is no kind of firewall or edge you can protect the application is highly distributed. So things like application security and API security, another area we announced a new offering at VM world around API security, but everything starts with an API endpoint when you have a security. So security is kind of woven in into the design build, deploy and in the runtime operation. And we're kind of wire this in intrinsically to the platform with best of breed security partners now extending in evolving their solution on top of us. >> What's been some of the customer feedback from some of the new technologies that you announced. I'm curious, I imagine knowing how VMware is very customer centric, customers were essential in the development and iteration of the technologies, but just give me some of the idea on customer feedback of this direction that you're going. >> Yeah, there's a great, exciting example where we're working with the army to create a software factory. you would've never imagined right, The US army being a software digital enterprise, we're partnering with what we call the US army futures command in a joint effort to help them build the first ever software development factory where army personnel are actually becoming true cloud native developers, where you're putting the soldiers to do cloud native development, everything in the terms of practice of building software, but also using the Tanzu portfolio in delivering best-in-class capability. This is going to rival some of the top tech companies in Silicon valley. This is a five-year prototype project in which we're picking cohorts of soldiers, making them software developers and helping them build great capability through both combination of classroom based training, but also strong technical foundation and expertise provided by our lab. So this is an example where, you know, the industry is working with the customer to co-innovate, how we build software, but also driving the expertise of these personnel hierarchs. As a soldier, you know, what you need, what if you could start delivering solutions for rest of your members in a productive way. So very exciting, It's an example where we've leapfrogging and delivering the kind of the Silicon valley type innovation to our standard practice. It's traditionally been a procurement driven model. We're trying to speed that and drive it into a more agile delivery factory concept as well. So one of the most exciting projects that I've run into the last six months. >> The army software factory, I love that my dad was an army medic and combat medic in Vietnam. And I'm sure probably wouldn't have been apt to become a software developer. But tell me a little bit about, it's a very cool project and so essential. Talk to me a little bit about the impetus of the army software factory. How did that come about? >> You know, this came back with strong sponsorship from the top. I had an opportunity to be at the opening of the campus in partnership with the local Austin college. And as General Milley and team spoke about it, they just said the next battleground is going to be a digital backup power hub. It's something we're going to have to put our troops in place and have modernized, not just the army, but modernize the way we deliver it through software. It's it speaks so much to the digital transformation we're talking about right. At the very heart of it is about using software to enable whether it's medics, whether it's supplies, either in a real time intelligence on the battlefield to know what's happening. And we're starting to see user technology is going to drive dramatically hopefully the next war, we don't have to fight it more of a defensive mode, but that capability alone is going to be significant. So it's really exciting to see how technology has become pervasive in all aspects, in every format including the US army. And this partnership is a great example of thought leadership from the army command to deliver software as the innovation factory, for the army itself. >> Right, and for the army to rival Silicon valley tech companies, that's pretty impressive. >> Pretty ambitious right. In partnership with one of the local colleges. So that's also starting to show in terms of how to bring new talent out, that shortage of skills we talked about. It's a critical way to kind of invest in the future in our people, right? As we, as we build out this capability. >> That's excellent that investment in the future and helping fill those skills gaps across industries is so needed. Talk to me about some of the things that you're excited about this year's VMworld is again virtual, but what are some of the things that you think are really fantastic for customers and prospects to learn? >> I think as Raghu said, we're in the third act of VM-ware, but more interestingly, but the third act of where the cloud is, the cloud has matured cloud 2.0 was really about shifting and using a public cloud for the IS capabilities. Cloud 3.0 is about to use the cloud of choice for the best application. We are going to increasingly see this distributed nature of application. I asked most customers, where does your application run? It's hard to answer that, right? It's on your mobile device, it's in your storefront, it's in your data center, it's in a particular cloud. And so an application is a collection of services. So what I'm most excited about is all business capables being published as an API, had an opportunity to be part of a company called Sonos and then Apogee. And we talked about API management years ago. I see increasingly this need for being able to expose a business capability as an API, being able to compose these new applications rapidly, being able to secure them, being able to observe what's going on in production and then adjust and automate, you can scale up scale down or deploy the application where it's most needed in minutes. That's a dynamic future that we see, and we're excited that VM was right at the heart of it. Where that in our cloud agnostic software player, that can help you, whether it's your development challenges, your deployment challenges, or your management challenges, in the future of multi-cloud, that's what I'm most excited about, we're set up to help our customers on this cloud journey, regardless of where they're going and what solution they're looking to build. >> Ajay, what are some of the key business outcomes that the cloud is going to deliver across industries as things progress forward? >> I think we're finding the consistent message I hear from our customers is leverage the power of cloud to transform my business. So it's about business outcomes. It's less about technology. It's what outcomes we're driving. Second it's about speed and agility. How do I respond, adjust kind of dynamic contiuness. How do I innovate continuously? How do I adjust to what the business needs? And third thing we're seeing more and more is I need to be able to management costs and I get some predictability and able to optimize how I run my business. what they're finding with the cloud is the costs are running out of control, they need a way, a better way of knowing the value that they're getting and using the best cloud for the right technology. Whether may be a private cloud in some cases, a public cloud or an edge cloud. So they want to able to going to select and move and have that portability. Being able to make those choices optimization is something they're demanding from us. And so we're most excited about this need to have a flexible infrastructure and a cloud agnostic infrastructure that helps them deliver these kinds of business outcomes. >> You mentioned a couple of customer examples and financial services. You mentioned the army software factory. In terms of looking at where we are in 2021. Are there any industries in particular, maybe essential services that you think are really prime targets for the technologies, the new announcements that you're making at VM world. >> You know, what we are trying to see is this is a broad change that's happening. If you're in retail, you know, you're kind of running a hybrid world of digital and physical. So we're seeing this blending of physical and digital reality coming together. You know, FedEx is a great customer of ours and you see them as spoken as example of it, you know, they're continue to both drive operational change in terms of being delivering the packages to you on time at a lower cost, but on the other side, they're also competing with their primary partners and retailers and in some cases, right, from a distribution perspective for Amazon, with Amazon prime. So in every industry, you're starting to see the lines are blurring between traditional partners and competitors. And in doing so, they're looking for a way to innovate, innovate at speed and leverage technology. So I don't think there is a specific industry that's not being disrupted whether it's FinTech, whether it's retail, whether it's transportation logistics, or healthcare telemedicine, right? The way you do pharmaceutical, how you deliver medicine, it's all changing. It's all being driven by data. And so we see a broad application of our technology, but financial services, healthcare, telco, government tend to be a kind of traditional industries that are with us but I think the reaches are pretty broad. >> Yeah, it is all changing. Everything is becoming more and more data-driven and many businesses are becoming data companies or if they're not, they need to otherwise their competition, as you mentioned, is going to be right in the rear view mirror, ready to take their place. But that's something that we see that isn't being talked about. I don't think enough, as some of the great innovations coming as a result of the situation that we're in. We're seeing big transformations in industries where we're all benefiting. I think we need to get that, that word out there a little bit more so we can start showing more of those silver linings. >> Sure. And I think what's happening here is it's about connecting the people to the services at the end of the day, these applications are means for delivering value. And so how do we connect us as consumers or us employees or us as partners to the business to the operator with both digitally and in a physical way. And we bring that in a seamless experience. So we're seeing more and more experience matters, you know, service quality and delivery matter. It's less about the technologies back again to the outcomes. And so very much focused in building that the platform that our customers can use to leverage the best of the cloud, the best of their people, the best of the innovation they have within the organization. >> You're right. It's all about outcomes. Ajay, thank you for joining me today, talking about some of the new things that the mission of your organization, the vision, some of the new products and technologies that are being announced at VM world, we appreciate your time and hopefully next year we'll see you in person. >> Thank you again and look forward to the next VMWorld in person. >> Likewise for Ajay Patel. You're very welcome for Ajay Patel. I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching theCUBEs coverage of VMWorld of 2021. (soft music)

>> Live, from Washington DC it's the Cube. Covering AWS Public-Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to AWS public sector here in Washington DC, the Cube's live coverage, two-day coverage, I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Co-hosting alongside John Ferrier, and we are welcoming back to the Cube, 13 time Cube alum, Sanjay Poonen in the COO of VM-Ware. Thank you so much for coming back on the show >> VIP status, by the way. >> Yes, absolutely. >> Thank you, Rebecca. >> That's definitely VIP status. >> Yes we have a red carpet rolled out >> Delighted to be here. I've lost track of the number of times, but when you're having fun it's good. >> Exactly, so tell us a little bit about what is VM-ware's role here in the public sector, what are you doing here at this conference? >> VM-ware and AWS announced a partnership in October 2016, and it really was the coming together of the best in the public cloud, with the best in the private cloud for what we describe as the hybrid cloud opportunity. And the past two and a half years, coming up on three years pretty soon, has been incredibly exciting. We started off with some of the key industries that we felt, for us, the public sector is among our top three industries. But financial services, telco, public sector, healthcare, manufacturing, all the key industries, technology, we're looking for ways by which they could take their applications into the cloud without having to re-factor and re-platform those applications. That's a big deal because it's wasted of work, if you can lift and shift and then innovate. And that's the value we brought to the public sector and some of our earliest customers, were customers in the public sector like MIT, schools, most of the regulated industries. In the on premise world, we're very strong in almost every, civilian, military, the legislative advance, the judicial advance, the federal agency, all of them use us. Millions and millions of work loads. The question really is how is they think about modernization can they get the best manifesto of the public cloud while leveraging their VM footprint >> So some would say that modernization may not include the original VM-ware vision because a lot of the governments are tryna replace and equated old systems like coldblow, mainframes, whatever, but you guys have been around dominated the operating side of IT for a while so you're kind of seeing the first wave of virtualization, the first wave of modernization but there's some cloud native people they might see that as like "Whoa, is that old school?" So what is particular perspective on that innovation dynamic? Because a lot of the public sector investors are awakening now going "Oh my god, I can move fast with Cloud" So Cloud is bringing on a new set of disruptors in IT, you guys have already been there on the first wave of disruption, so how do balance that kind of presence, >> Yeah >> But also disruption, you might be viewed that way, I'm not sure. >> Yeah, I would say, actually, that the first wave of our free reign modernization started with this device before Cloud. Okay, in 2007 when the iPhone came out there was a significant move by big parts of the public sector to move away from blackberry, which is kind of what they use for the decade prior to that. And when we brought AirWatch, we began to see some of the earliest industries that were adopting the public sector. Many of the agencies started to look at us now, so we actually began our journey into this modernization discussion in the workplace transformation, part of the discussion before we got to Cloud. So we were prepared for some of what that looked like, for example, census 2020 that entire for all the workers something is being done with mobile devices now as opposed to paper or surveys that were done maybe 10, 20 years ago, and all powered and secured by Workspace ONE. Now, when it got to Cloud we were prepared for that because, you know, we knew a little bit of what that meant and mobile and Cloud were some of the two top discussion items that people were talking about as modernization at first under the banner of digital transformation. We had to begin to showcase to a customer that moving an application, now we're talking clients server three tier architectures as opposed to a cobalt mainframe that's really where we have but the bulk of the 886 architecture that's from virtualized VM-ware if you could take them now to the cloud and then use some of the services that these guys are building whether it's data based, whether it's artificially intelligence, machine learning, if you waste all your time in re-platforming and re-marketing an application it's that much less time you have to do some of those innovative things. And the lift and shift process once we had this sort of highway into the Cloud, so to speak, which is what VM-ware Cloud and AWS does, it became so apparent, so we are that process, we had to then work what we can talk about Fred RAM certification all of these things that I'm (inaudible) >> In AirWatch was really a critical acquisition, turns out a boom for you guys with public sector. >> Oh yeah. >> You guys had the iPhone was a driver not so much the blocking and tackling of virtualizing data centers and IT, which you had a presence in, but it was the mobility piece. >> Well since 1998, 99, since the company was founded, the public sector business of VM-ware has been very important, I mean I would say, like I said it's the top three and so, we have tremendous amount of relationships some of our biggest deals. Eight figures plus deals where done with some of the biggest and many of our partners here. >> So it's a large business. >> Large business. >> Did you break that in the numbers? >> We did but we have always said it so a top three, we have always talked about in our earnings calls, some big, large customer examples like US Army, and then , which is also a sort of representative of this community here. Safe, local education. All the universities are using us. So the footprint of VW-ware premise was well documented, well understood, lots of spent going on there. What we didn't have an access to, we had some virtual desktops, VDIs. This mobile aperture gave us a whole new banner of spending. But then the Cloud aperture is kind of taking this to a whole new level. And quite frankly if you look at the commercial sector, the overall IT spent in the world is about one trillion we track and about 150 to 200 billion of that, 15 to 20 % is being spent on the Cloud. And the public sector, governs sector is starting to track that, they are probably a little bit lagging in certain areas to commercial. But that 15 to 20 % is only going to get 30 or 40 % in the next five years. VM-ware has been one the top infrastructure companies, we are looking at our move, a bigger part of the wall of share that we gain as people move their investment to the Cloud. >> When you are thinking about the different clients and customers that you're working with, the Sled groups and then the corporate customers, what-how different are they and how, what's on the public sector's mind versus your corporate clients? And how do you manage the relationships differently? >> Yeah, we have sort of segment them at VM-ware and many companies have done the same thing into three pockets. One is who we describe as the federal public sector customers that are civilian, military and we mirror that in almost every country so Theresa here, for example, runs AWS and we have a similar type of work structure to hear in each of the key regions. The second big segment is healthcare, many of the healthcare organizations are regulated there's similar characteristics and the third is SLED, state local education. And those three pockets are very similar patterns in the way in which they buy, their CIOs are similar and they also have often very similar security requirements. So the highest maybe something like a FED and FedRAMP and we some specialized needs that they have for certain certifications on the device or certifications on the Cloud and we have to comply with all of those. But then as you get to the ones that are in the state local maybe they don't as many and higher certifications but what it's helped is to basically work with partners with a very similar across this, and the proposition on the initial transformation is really modernization of either the data center and their applications or modernization of the device. And VM-ware is very uniquely provisioned to help on both those fronts. >> And security is really top of mind >> Absolutely >> I mean we've heard on the main stage and we know how big a threat these cyber threats face. These Cyber threats pose. >> Absolutely, and if you think about aspects of security. Security has multiple aspects of where you can think of them as control points. The network, the end-point, the cloud, identity and lots of event management that is collected. These are the five biggest markets of security. In each of those areas VM-ware is starting to play more. For example, network, you know, five, six years ago people didn't think of VM-ware in that area but with NSX our leading software define networking area, we have become the lead on that segment and about half of our use cases are security related for a use case called micro-segmentation. So the government can basically segment out a set of their apps and through software, think of these as on-off switches almost like light switches only allow certain apps to access certain parts of the data center. That's very easily done through NSX. Workspace ONE, the endpoint can now be extremely secure and provide all the levels of security that Blackware provided in their proprietary devices but now on any device. So we've been systematically looking at each of these areas I would estimate about 15 to 20 % of VM-ware revenue is security related use cases and public sector this is a very, very key place where we get grilled on and we have to satisfy their level of requirements for security. >> Sanjay, what are you doing here? I know you said you are speaking at a panel, Fireside chat, what's your agenda of the week? What's the story? What some of the key talking points for VM-ware? >> VM-ware is one of the top sponsors here, I don't know whatever is global or platinum or whatever the highest level is, you will see our name's there. And largely what we did when we announced this partnership was, you know, Andy and I were classmates at school. We wanted to build a very close partnership at their big events, so you will see us at all the major summits. VM-ware is a top sponsor, and you'll see them also at >> Doubling down on the relationships. >> Yep, we're doubling down. And they're doing the same at VM-world, so we said "Listen" and I think I talked about this in one of your previous shows. If you can mingle, VM-ware has collectively about 100,000 people that come to all the VM-ware events across the world and maybe about half a million to people who watch those events online. Amazon has probably twice that number. But if we can mingle each other audiences because they are coming off into both shows and we, the best showing up at AWS summits and we'll give them lots of access to VM-world. >> Ups* >> (laughs) There we go. >> Operations >> Hey, that's got a ring to it. I like it >> That's exactly the vision. So we, first of all, VM-ware is a big presence and the acquisition we've done, also, like Cloud helped also has a big presence, so that's one. Number two, we try as often as possible to have either a key note or some kind of Provence, I've had a good friendship with Theresa. She invited me to speak, I think there's an event with their top five hundred customers, sort of a key note inside that. And I do that a little later this afternoon. And it's also a tremendous opportunity, I think they have 13 or 15,000 attendees here to meet some of our top customers, so those are the three things that I'm doing over the course of the next day and a half. >> You got the CIA deal 2013, what that has done, in gestation period since then, a lot of other folks in the DC circuit here, public sector, government, agencies, they are all going "Hmm, Amazon has got the right formula" so Theresa put the formula together, people are adopting it, you guys do the strategic deal with AWS with your AA gown on, as a student of the game if you will in tech, Sanjay, which you are, knowing what you know now at VM-ware what's your perspective on this? Because you got a big tail wind with Cloud, you get clarity in what you guys do, in what AWS does, you also have multi Cloud with other Clouds, I mean you got NSX with a nice product, you got multi Cloud built-in hybrid, I mean, pretty good at spot for VM-ware for public sector. What's your perspective on this? >> Yeah, two parts to your question. First off, tremendous respect for Andy. I was describing before I go out on the show with both of you, when we were in school, I wouldn't have put him, in 1987 when we graduated, as the person who would of been the pied piper of this public Cloud revolution. But kudos to him, Theresa a fantastic executive and I think that, you know, 2013 CIA deal put them on an incredible place to be, a front runner in this and many other deals they've done similarly. VM-ware, we saw over the last, you know, 3, 4, 5 years is a significant rise of Amazon in our accounts. Customers were asking us "Why can't we get the best of both worlds? Why does it have to be on premise runs and VM-ware and public lines and I've got to portent and refactor and re platform my applications?" So our customers drove a us together and what we've sort to do in our relationship with Amazon is we meet on a quarterly basis, we review feature and function, product road map, we're aggressive, with our sales teams are trying to pursue opportunities together. And that's really helped us, you know, that's part of the reason I'm here, so, the more that we can do together to satisfy customers, customers like seeing big partners come together, even if, it feels a little bit like Berlin wall moment, right? You remember 1987? You had the US and Soviet Union and people were surprised by that. I that that the general consensus was complete surprise in 2016 when we announced the project with Amazon. But with every move we made like for instance, recently we announced the FedRAM status, one of our biggest 8 figure deals we had announced in our queue for was with a major customer that's in this segment, actually. Our public sector SLED and the more that we can do this, I think there's a lot of future ahead of us. >> Berlin is interesting, you know, tearing down that wall that was a moment that came down and the government, the theme that we are hearing over and over again is red tape. Lag with data it hurts application work loads so fast data, make it available, cut the read tape out of procurement, I mean, basically, 1980s, 1990s, procurement rules don't apply to how people consume and deploy technology today. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Tear down that red tape. >> I think you got that right. I think the governments mandate to go Cloud first in the, you know, last several administrations was absolutely key and certain elementary work loads like websites, I mean why, so if it's a public website that's holding public information, I mean, of course, you've got to worry about security but the data public anyway. Okay, so, what's going to get hacked? I mean, why don't you move all websites that are web content, so some of those early work loads are moved over very easy. I would call it so, the 1-O-1 of posting. Why would you want to have server just to host a website? But once that's done the more mission critical applications, Windows work loads, Oracle's sequel service databases, Virtual desktops, now you are starting to see and I think eventually some of the more mission critical apps like SAP or Oracle apps, I think you see them also now with a lot of customers in both public sectors and commercial- >> Military DOD tactical edges, >> Absolutely. >> The military lives are on the line, it's not a video game, lag actually will kill people. So you want to have that application peaked. >> Exactly. >> With the right architect >> One of the things that are so inspiring about being here at the public sector summit is that we are seeing all these used cases, of using the Cloud for good to solve pressing environmental challenges, health challenges, social challenges, what are you seeing, what is VM-ware working on that is, that is particularly inspiring to you? >> I am glad you asked that Rebecca. I would say that's one the things and Amazon shares a similar value where we think that, you know, technology companies have to think beyond themselves and be a force for good. I think that one of the first times at any major conference, last year we had the Nobel Peace Prize winner who's changed the world, Malala, come and speak and I think everyone who comes to major tech conferences, and we had one of the biggest conferences, was, I mean, we had grown big men, 6 foot tall crying at the end of that. And we had a number of customers that we loved to be able to talk about there stories, Make A wish is an example of an organization that, you know, if someone's with a terminal disease and they want to have some wish that they could wish for, all the infrastructure runs in VM-ware and we can help them serve that audience better, we have a number of charitable organization, Red Cross was on (unintelligible), so we, a big part of pad mind the attire of companies, kind of charter in our EPICC values has been people of integrity, people of work with the customers and the community. Our values EPICC stands for execution, passion, integrity customer and community. And that last C I think is very important, cause, you know, we live in a world and the more important thing is not necessarily how much money you make but what a force you can be for changing people's life. That lasts forever. You can't take your money into the grave but the more you can have on people, impact on people's lives, I mean, John, I am delighted to see your daughter. >> Yeah. >> I mean that generation continues >> Well, it's community right? >> And you're passing on those values onto the next generation or helping people that's the bigger story of life and that gets us equally excited as innovation. >> Communities can now be instrumented via digital technologies, so your faster time to find truth, people who have communities were very active, the data is there, it's all in the data and so you can see the impact >> You know, I think that's absolutely key. So John, I would agree with you and I think you as, you know, you talk to companies that's an important question to ask them. Because we are all in this together. There is no whether it's competitors or what's not, we can all serve the greater community, here for good and make this world a better place, you know there is a lot of what we do that helps the world run better, that's good, infrastructure helps us run better, but helping the world be a better place, it takes both individual and collective will. >> Well one of the talent gaps is not just computer programming and tech people it's architects for the new society that needs help and these key policy questions like governance and responsibilities, you're seeing YouTube and Facebook and our neck of the woods responsible for all this impact and they don't really kind of, there's no oversight. (laughs) >> Well, listen I'm not going to get into the public debate about, you know, privacy and governance and so on. I would say that one thing that, you know, we're also really excited to kind of give back to the community in terms of education. One of the things that is very powerful to VM-ware is our user groups. We call them V-mugs, VM-ware user groups and there's collectively about 150, 200000 of them and it's amazing when you spend time with them, they are really, really, they are members of the community really because they're customers and partners and they dedicate their time to educating others and the more that we can use online forums, I love the way in which you're using your online platform with the AI and other techniques. I think artificial intelligence becomes the ground equalizer, give access to everybody. >> Access to the voice is access to the data but right now as you pointed out we need a society that's going to have shared values and I think that's like where the good is coming from and it's easy to get on the bad tech band wagon which everyone is on right now but there are examples of tech for good, you mentioned- >> But when you say shared values, is that you, I mean is that possible? >> Well, I think there is, there is an awakening going on now from Silicon Valley where I live and here in DC which it's, it's in my face here because people as tech savvy here as they are in say Silicon Valley, no offense, but those people aren't as tech savvy here as they are in Silicon Valley, they don't go deep on the impact of tech but they see the results of bad tech. So I don't see a lot of a vandalizing going on outside of certain areas around tech for good. So I think there's a lot of great examples, human trafficking, you're seeing tech for hiring, new generations onboard training, skills gap, so efficiencies in healthcare, there is so many areas that tech could be used for good and if people were educated on focusing on that and not the bad, I mean bad's got to eradicated, certainly, I'm not for bad things but maybe there's a lot more good, the good pile is much bigger than the bad pile in tech, so, when I say shared values is recognition of that which is let's get on the same page, there's bad and there's good, have that debate and then apply the tech. >> Yeah, interesting. It's a galvanizing force. >> Well, it's just like any invention whether it's the printing press or the use of fire, I mean, there is good use of it and there's bad use of it. And we got to to find ways by which technology while this debate is going on as to as some of these social media platforms, my fundamental belief is that technology is going to transform society, the reason I came to the United States as an immigrant was to study computer science and I felt like the United States had, you know, when I came to this college I hade never heard of called Dartmouth College in Haven New Hampshire, was very fortunate to have a scholarship to go there but that's because I wanted to study computer science and I felt like computer science could change a lot of the way at which, you know, at that time, I was just trying to program and learn how to, you know, create algorithms but if you look at what transformed every aspect whether it's the mobile device which is really a computer in your pocket or Cloud computing which is kind of bringing the super computer into the Cloud. >> (inaudible) >> I think it's tremendous what we can do and we have to constantly find ways by which artificial intelligence and these forces of, you know, the next part of general mobile, Cloud computing can be used for greater good. >> Did you go to scholarship on full bode with basketball? (all laugh) >> Man, we got the Warriors with two ball games. >> So you are a big Warriors and for the folks that don't know Sanjay, we always used to talk about every time Warriors looking good to stay alive but not looking good >> So sad to see. I mean it's sort of, the last game I was watching last night, it was, it was sad, it was, of course, it was a win but also a loss to see KD go down that way was just absolutely tearful, yeah, but, you know, we have one more game. >> It's going to be hard >> It's going to be hard to, you know, kind of beat the crowd and the crowd is really loud at Oracle and get one more game and then, yeah, I think it'll get to game 7, we'll what happens but it's just great to their heart. >> I'm from Boston so I'm kind of over Golden state but I am sure everyone is over Boston and our red socks and our throw-ins and our pads >> Duck tour has only been 15 months? >> I know exactly! Exactly! We're still- >> There will be a Celtic warriors game >> That would have been so good >> That would have been so good like the Lakers (inaudible) >> It was more recent than that. It was the pads victory, so yeah >> Okay >> Yeah, anyway. Just saying, just saying. Sanjay, thank you so much for coming back on The cube, we look forward to your 14th visit on the show. >> Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, John. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Ferrier, stay tuned for more AWS public sector summit here in Washington DC. (Upbeat Music)

>> Live from the MIT Campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering the 12th Annual MIT chief data officer and Information Quality Symposium. Brought to you by: SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of MITCDOIQ here in Cambridge, Massachusetts on the MIT Campus. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Peter Burris. Peter, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Thanks for joining me. >> Absolutely, good to see you again, Rebecca. >> These are my stomping grounds. >> Ha! >> So welcome to Massachusetts. >> It's an absolutely beautiful day in Cambridge. >> It is, it is, indeed. I'm so excited to be hosting this with you, what do you think, this is about chief data officer information quality. We're really going to get inside the heads of these chief data officers, find out what's on their minds, what's keeping them up at night, how are they thinking about data, how are they pricing it, how are they keeping it clean, how are they optimizing it, exploiting it, how are they hiring for it? What do you think is the top issue of the day, in your mind. There's a lot to talk about here, what's number one? >> Well, I think the first thing, Rebecca, is that if you're going to have a chief in front of your name then, at least in my mind, that means the Board has directed you to generate some return on the assets that you've been entrusted with. I think the first thing that the CDO, the chief data officer, has to do is start to do a better job of pricing out the value of data, demonstrating how they're turning it into assets that can be utilized and exploited in a number of different ways to generate returns that are actually superior to some of the other assets in the business because data is getting greater investment these days. So I think the first thing is, how are you turning your data into an asset, because if you're not, why are you achieve anything? >> (laughs) No, that's a very good point. The other thing we were talking about before the cameras were rolling, is the role of the CDO, chief data officer, and the role of the CIO, chief information officer, and how those roles differ. I mean is that something that we're going to get into today? What do you think? >> I think it's something certainly to ask a lot of the chief data officers that are coming on, there's some confusion in the industry about what the relationship should be and how the roles are different. The chief data officer as a concept, has been around for probably 10-12 years, something like that. I mean, the first time I heard it was probably 2007-2008. The CIO role has always been about information, but it ended up being more about the technology, and then the question was, what does a Chief Technology Officer does? Well it was a Chief Technology Officer could have had a different role, but they also seem to be increasing the responsible for the technology. So if you look at a lot organizations that have a CDO, the CIO looks more often to be the individual in charge of the IT assets, the technology officer tends to be in charge of the IT infrastructure, and the CDO tends to be more associated with, again, the role that the data plays, increasingly associated with analytics. But I think, over the next few years, that set of relationships is going to change, and new regimes will be put in place as businesses start to re-institutionalize their work around their data, and what it really means to have data as an asset. >> And the other role we've not mentioned is the CDO, Chief Digital Officer, which is the convergence of those two roles as well. How do you see, you started out by saying this is really about optimizing the data and finding a way to make money from it. >> Or generate a return. >> Generate a return, exactly! Find value in it, exactly. >> One of the things about data, and one of the things about IT, historically, is that it often doesn't generate money directly, but rather indirectly, and that's one of the reasons why it has been difficult to sustain investments in. The costs are almost always direct, so if I invest in an IT project, for example, the costs show up immediately but the benefits come through whatever function I just invested in the application to support. And the same thing exists with data. So if we take a look at the Chief Digital Officer, often that's a job that has been developed largely close or approximate to the COO to better understand how operations are going to change as a consequence of an increasing use of data. So, the Chief Digital Officer is often an individual whose entrusted to think about as we re-institutionalize work around data, what is that going to mean to our operations and our engagement models too? So, I think it's a combination of operations and engagement. So the Chief Digital Officer is often very proximate to the COO thinking about how data is going to change the way organization works, change the way the organization engages, from a strategic standpoint first, but we're starting to see that role move more directly into operations. I don't want to say compete with the COO, but work much more closely with them in an operational level. >> Right, and of course, depending organization to organization. >> It's always different, and to what degree are your assets historically data-oriented, like if you're a media company or if you're a financial services company, those are companies that are very strong lineages of data as an asset. If you're a manufacturing company, and you're building digital twins, like a GE or something along those lines, then you might be a little bit newer to the game, but still you have to catch up because data is going to mush a lot of industries together, and it's going to to be hard to parse some of these industries in five to ten years. >> Well, precisely, one of the things you said was that the CDO, as a role, is really only 11-12 years old. In fact that this conference is in its 12th year, so really it started at the very beginning of the CDO journey itself, and we're now amidst the CDO movement. I mean, what do you think, how is the CDO thinking about his or her role within the larger AI revolution? >> Well, that's a great question, and it's one of the primary reasons why it's picking up pace. We've had a number of different technology introductions over the past 15 - 20 years that have bought us here. The notion of virtualizing machines changed or broke that relationship between applications and hardware. The idea of very high speed, very flexible, very easy to manage data center networking broke the way that we thought about how resources could be bought together. Very importantly, in the last six or seven years, the historical norm for storage was disc, which was more emphasized how do I persist the data that results from a transaction, and now we're moving to flash, and flash-based systems, which is more about how can I deliver data to new types of applications. That combination of things makes it possible to utilize a lot of these AI algorithms and a lot of these approaches to AI, many of which the algorithms have been around for 40-50 years, so we're catalyzing a new era in which we can think about delivering data faster with higher fidelity, with lower administrative costs because we're not copying everything and putting it in a lot of different places. That is making it possible to do these AI things. That's precisely one of the factors that's really driving the need to look at data as an asset because we can do more with it than we ever have before. You know, it's interesting, I have a little bromide, when people ask me what's really going on in the industry, what I like to say is for the first 50 years of the industry, it was known process, unknown technology. We knew we were going to do accounting, we knew we were going to do HR, there was largely given to us legal or regulatory or other types of considerations, but the unknown was, do we put it on a mainframe? Do we put it on a (mumbles) Do we use a database manager? How distributed is this going to be? We're now moving into an era where it's unknown process because we're focused on engagement or the role that data can play in changing operations, but the technology is going to be relatively common. It's going to be Cloud or Cloud-like. So, we don't have quite as, it's not to say that technology questions go away entirely, they don't, but it's not as focused on the technology questions, we can focus more on the outcomes, but we have a hard time challenging those outcomes or deciding what those outcomes are going to be, and that's one of the interesting things here. We're not only using data to deliver the outcomes, we're also using data to choose what outcomes to pursue. So it's an interesting recursive set of activities where the CDO is responsible for helping the business decide what are we going to do and also, how are we going to do it? >> Well, exactly. That's an excellent point, because there are so many, one of the things that we've heard about on the main stage this morning is the difficulty a lot of CDOs get with just buy-in, and really understanding, this is important, and this is not as important or this is what we're going to do, this is what we're saying the data is telling us, and these are the actions we're going to take. How do you change a culture? How do you get people to embrace it? >> Well, this is an adoption challenge, and an adoption challenges are always met by showing returns quickly and sustainably. So one of the first things, which is why I said, one of the first things that a CDO has to do is show the organization how data can be thought of as an asset, because once you do that, now you can start to describe some concrete returns that you are able to help deliver as a consequence of your chief role. So that's probably the first thing. But, I think, one of the other things to do is to start doing things like demonstrating the role that information quality plays within an organization. Now, information quality is almost always measured in terms of the output or the outcomes that it supports, but there are questions of fidelity, there are questions of what data are we going to use, what data are we not going to use? How are we going to get rid of data? There's a lot of questions related to information quality that have process elements to them, and those processes are just now being introduced to the organization, and doing a good job of that, and acculturating people to understanding the role of equality plays, information quality plays, is another part of it. So I think you have to demonstrate that you have conceived and can execute on a regime of value, and at the same time you have to demonstrate that you have particular insight into some of those on-going processes that are capable of sustaining that value. It's a combination of those two things that, I think, the chief data officer's going to have to do to demonstrate that they belong at the table, on-going. >> Well, today we're going to be talking to an array of people, some from MIT who study this stuff >> I hear they're smart people. >> Yeah, maybe. A little bit. We'll see, we'll see. MIT, some people from the US Government, so CDOs from the US Army, the Air Force, we've got people from industry too, we've also got management consultants coming on to talk about some best practices, so it's going to be a great day. We're going to really dig in here. >> Looking forward to it. >> Yes. I'm Rebecca Knight, for Peter Burris, we will have more from MITCDOIQ in just a little bit. (techno music)

>> Announcer: From San Jose, it's theCUBE. (upbeat music) Presenting Big Data, Silicon Valley, brought to you by Silicon Angle Media and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live on our first day of coverage of our event, Big Data SV. This is our tenth Big Data event. We've done five here in Silicon Valley. We also do them in New York City in the fall. We have a great day of coverage. We're next to where the Startup Data conference is going on at Forger Tasting Room and Eatery. Come on down, be part of our audience. We also have a great party tonight where you can network with some of our experts and analysts. And tomorrow morning, we've got a breakfast briefing. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host, Peter Burris, and we're excited to welcome to theCUBE for the first time the CEO of Kinetica, Paul Appleby. Hey Paul, welcome. >> Hey, thanks, it's great to be here. >> We're excited to have you here, and I saw something marketer, and terms, I grasp onto them. Kinetica is the insight engine for the extreme data economy. What is the extreme data economy, and what are you guys doing to drive insight from it? >> Wow, how do I put that in a snapshot? Let me share with you my thoughts on this because the fundamental principals around data have changed. You know, in the past, our businesses are really validated around data. We reported out how our business performed. We reported to our regulators. Over time, we drove insights from our data. But today, in this kind of extreme data world, in this world of digital business, our businesses need to be powered by data. >> So what are the, let me task this on you, so one of the ways that we think about it is that data has become an asset. >> Paul: Oh yeah. >> It's become an asset. But now, the business has to care for, has to define it, care for it, feed it, continue to invest in it, find new ways of using it. Is that kind of what you're suggesting companies to think about? >> Absolutely what we're saying. I mean, if you think about what Angela Merkel said at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, that she saw data as the raw material of the 21st century. And talking about about Germany fundamentally shifting from being an engineering, manufacturing centric economy to a data centric economy. So this is not just about data powering our businesses, this is about data powering our economies. >> So let me build on that if I may because I think it gets to what, in many respects Kinetica's Core Value proposition is. And that is, is that data is a different type of an asset. Most assets are characterized by, you apply it here, or you apply it there. You can't apply it in both places at the same time. And it's one of the misnomers of the notion of data as fuels. Because fuel is still an asset that has certain specificities, you can't apply it to multiple places. >> Absolutely. >> But data, you can, which means that you can copy it, you can share it. You can combine it in interesting ways. But that means that the ... to use data as an asset, especially given the velocity and the volume that we're talking about, you need new types of technologies that are capable of sustaining the quality of that data while making it possible to share it to all the different applications. Have I got that right? And what does Kinetica do in that regard? >> You absolutely nailed it because what you talked about is a shift from predictability associated with data, to unpredictability. We actually don't know the use cases that we're going to leverage for our data moving forward, but we understand how valuable an asset it is. And I'll give you two examples of that. There's a company here, based in the Bay Area, a really cool company called Liquid Robotics. And they build these autonomous aquatic robots. And they've carried a vast array of senses and now we're collecting data. And of course, that's hugely powerful to oil and gas exploration, to research, to shipping companies, etc. etc. etc. Even homeland security applications. But what they did, they were selling the robots, and what they realized over time is that the value of their business wasn't the robots. It was the data. And that one piece of data has a totally different meaning to a shipping company than it does to a fisheries companies. But they could sell that exact same piece of data to multiple companies. Now, of course, their business has grown on in Scaldon. I think they were acquired by Bowing. But what you're talking about is exactly where Kinetica sits. It's an engine that allows you to deal with the unpredictability of data. Not only the sources of data, but the uses of data, and enables you to do that in real time. >> So Kinetica's technology was actually developed to meet some intelligence needs of the US Army. My dad was a former army ranger airborne. So tell us a little bit about that and kind of the genesis of the technology. >> Yeah, it's a fascinating use case if you think about it, where we're all concerned, globally, about cyber threat. We're all concerned about terrorist threats. But how do you identity terrorist threats in real time? And the only way to do that is to actually consume vast amount of data, whether it's drone footage, or traffic cameras. Whether it's mobile phone data or social data. but the ability to stream all of those sources of data and conduct analytics on that in real time was, really, the genesis of this business. It was a research project with the army and the NSA that was aimed at identifying terrorist threats in real time. >> But at the same time, you not only have to be able to stream all the data in and do analytics on it, you also have to have interfaces and understandable approaches to acquiring the data, because I have a background, some background in that as well, to then be able to target the threat. So you have to be able to get the data in and analyze it, but also get it out to where it needs to be so an action can be taken. >> Yeah, and there are two big issues there. One issue is the inter-offer ability of the platform and the ability for you to not only consume data in real time from multiple sources, but to push that out to a variety of platforms in real time. That's one thing. The other thing is to understand that in this world that we're talking about today, there are multiple personas that want to consume that data, and many of them are not data scientists. They're not IT people, they're business people. They could be executives, or they could be field operatives in the case of intelligence. So you need to be able to push this data out in real time onto platforms that they consume, whether it's via mobile devices or any other device for that matter. >> But you also have to be able to build applications on it, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So how does Kinetica facilitate that process? Because it looks more like a database, which is, which is, it's more than that, but it satisfies some of those conventions so developers have an afinity for it. >> Absolutely, so in the first instance, we provide tools ourselves for people to consume that data and to leverage the power of that data in real time in an incredibly visual way with a geospatial platform. But we also create the ability for a, to interface with really commonly used tools, because the whole idea, if you think about providing some sort of ubiquitous access to the platform, the easiest way to do that is to provide that through tools that people are used to using, whether that's something like Tablo, for example, or Esri, if you want to talk about geospatial data. So the first instance, it's actually providing access, in real time, through platforms that people are used to using. And then, of course, by building our technology in a really, really open framework with a broadly published set of APIs, we're able to support, not only the ability for our customers to build applications on that platform, and it could well be applications associated with autonomous vehicles. It could well be applications associated with Smart City. We're doing some incredible things with some of the bigger cities on the planet and leveraging the power of big data to optimize transportation, for example, in the city of London. It's those sorts of things that we're able to do with the platform. So it's not just about a database platform or an insights engine for dealing with these complex, vast amounts of data, but also the tools that allow you to visualize and utilize that data. >> Turn that data into an action. >> Yeah, because the data is useless until you're doing something with it. And that's really, if you think about the promise of things like smart grid. Collecting all of that data from all of those smart sensors is absolutely useless until you take an action that is meaningful for a consumer or meaningful in terms of the generational consumption of power. >> So Paul, as the CEO, when you're talking to customers, we talk about chief data officer, chief information officer, chief information security officer, there's a lot, data scientist engineers, there's just so many stakeholders that need access to the data. As businesses transform, there's new business models that can come into development if, like you were saying, the data is evaluated and it's meaningful. What are the conversations that you're having, I guess I'm curious, maybe, which personas are the table (Paul laughs) when you're talking about the business values that this technology can deliver? >> Yeah, that's a really, really good question because the truth is, there are multiple personas at the table. Now, we, in the technology industry, are quite often guilty of only talking to the technology personas. But as I've traveled around the world, whether I'm meeting with the world's biggest banks, the world's biggest Telco's, the world's biggest auto manufacturers, the people we meet, more often than not, are the business leaders. And they're looking for ways to solve complex problems. How do you bring the connected card alive? How do you really bring it to life? One car traveling around the city for a full day generates a terabyte of data. So what does that really mean when we start to connect the billions of cars that are in the marketplace in the framework of connected car, and then, ultimately, in a world of autonomous vehicles? So, for us, we're trying to navigate an interesting path. We're dragging the narrative out of just a technology-based narrative speeds and feeds, algorithms, and APIs, into a narrative about, well what does it mean for the pharmaceutical industry, for example? Because when you talk to pharmaceutical executives, the holy grail for the pharma industry is, how do we bring new and compelling medicines to market faster? Because the biggest challenge for them is the cycle times to bring new drugs to market. So we're helping companies like GSK shorten the cycle times to bring drugs to market. So they're the kinds of conversations that we're having. It's really about how we're taking data to power a transformational initiative in retail banking, in retail, in Telco, in pharma, rather than a conversation about the role of technology. Now, we always needs to deal with the technologists. We need to deal with the data scientists and the IT executives, and that's an important part of the conversation. But you would have seen, in recent times, the conversation that we're trying to have is far more of a business conversation. >> So if I can build on that. So do you think, in your experience, and recognizing that you have a data management tool with some other tools that helps people use the data that gets into Kinetica, are we going to see the population of data scientists increase fast enough so our executives don't have to become familiar with this new way of thinking, or are executives going to actually adopt some of these new ways of thinking about the problem from a data risk perspective? I know which way I think. >> Paul: Wow, >> Which way do you think? >> It's a loaded question, but I think if we're going to be in a world where business is powered by data, where our strategy is driven by data, our investment decisions are driven by data, and the new areas of business that we explored to creat new paths to value are driven by data, we have to make data more accessible. And if what you need to get access to the data is a whole team of data scientists, it kind of creates a barrier. I'm not knocking data scientists, but it does create a barrier. >> It limits the aperture. >> Absolutely, because every company I talk to says, "Our biggest challenge is, we can't get access to the data scientists that we need." So a big part of our strategy from the get go was to actually build a platform with all of these personas in mind, so it is built on this standard principle, the common principles of a relational database, that you're built around anti-standard sequel. >> Peter: It's recognizable. >> And it's recognizable, and consistent with the kinds of tools that executives have been using throughout their careers. >> Last question, we've got about 30 seconds left. >> Paul: Oh, okay. >> No pressure. >> You have said Kinetica's plan is to measure the success of the business by your customers' success. >> Absolutely. >> Where are you on that? >> We've begun that journey. I won't say we're there yet. We announced three weeks ago that we created a customer success organization. We've put about 30% of the company's resources into that customer success organization, and that entire team is measured not on revenue, not on project delivered on time, but on value delivered to the customer. So we baseline where the customer is at. We agree what we're looking to achieve with each customer, and we're measuring that team entirely against the delivery of those benefits to the customer. So it's a journey. We're on that journey, but we're committed to it. >> Exciting. Well, Paul, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE for the first time. You're now a CUBE alumni. >> Oh, thank you, I've had a lot of fun. >> And we want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, live in San Jose, with Peter Burris. We are at the Forger Tasting Room and Eatery. Super cool place. Come on down, hang out with us today. We've got a cocktail party tonight. Well, you're sure to learn lots of insights from our experts, and tomorrow morning. But stick around, we'll be right back with our next guest after a short break. (CUBE theme music)