(funky music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, this is theCUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for Informatica World 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host, with Rebecca Knight who's on the floor getting some data, getting some reports. She's my co-host here this week. Next guest is Bruce Chizen, board member of Informatica, OG, original gangster of the tech scene. Been there, done that. Welcome back to theCUBE, great to see you. >> Yeah, great to see you, John. >> Big alumni. I love having you on because you're kind of, you're a historian through experience, still active in the industry, obviously, Informatica. Four years private. >> Historian, that's scary. >> You've been around the block. You've seen more waves than I have, and that's a lot. But, you know, you've done a lot of things and you've seen the waves. You've run companies, you've been on boards. You've been on Informatica board. Four years private, a lot of great things can go on. Michael Dell proved that. He took Dell Computer, which is now Dell Technologies, he took it private, and I asked him. He wanted to retool and didn't want to do the shot clock of being a public company. Filing, and sour beans and all those regulations, 'cause he knew what was coming, the wave was coming. Informatica did the same thing, so I'm expecting an IPO, or MNA big deal happening. But four years, with great product people, you're on the board. Data, our original conversation four years ago on theCUBE, hasn't changed. >> No. It's the same wave, and now everyone's jumping on the wave. >> The good thing for Informatica is, as a private company, we got to do things that we could not have done as a public company. The level of investment we made in R&D, the transition from perpetual, or on-premise, to subscription. The investment in the sales organization. Couldn't have done that as a public company 'cause the shareholders tend to be too short term focused. >> And also I will add, just to get your reaction to, is that, my observation, looking at these situations when you have smart people, the board, like yourself, and the product team. Which I've been complimentary of Informatica's, as you know. Some other critical analysis, but that's different. But, great product engineering people. When you don't have the pressure of time, you could watch things gestate and when you're early, you have an advantage. Talk about that, because that's a strategic thing, most people aren't talking about, but you an early lead on data. You've had product engineering leadership, and you had time. >> It's not as easy as you make it sound. Keep in mind, Informatica is owned by financial sponsors. Private equity. >> Yeah, there's some pressure. >> CPP. And it's up to people like myself on the board, the other independent board member, the management team, to continue to remind the investors that if we make early investments and they pay off the company will be worth more and they'll ultimately make more money and their partners will make more money. >> I made it sound like you're on the beach drinking wine. >> A great example is what Informatica did with the data catalog. That was an early investment. No one really knew whether it would pan out. Sounded good, but it required a significant investment, that came out of the pockets of our investors and we were able to convince them to do that. Another great example is CLAIRE. You know, AI is hot. Well had we not invested in CLAIRE, three, three and a half years ago, CLAIRE would not be in existence today. Couldn't have done that as a public company. >> And it gives you a little bit of a lead, again, there's just no shot clock on public. But yeah, the private executives, they're not going to let you sit around and hit the beach and clip coupons. You got to work hard. But I got to ask >> The other thing you've seen the company has gone from a great point product company, great products, to really developing a platform, and architecting a platform. Which requires a significant amount of engineering. >> I was going to ask you about that, I'm glad you jumped the gun on that. Platform is the key. Speaking of platforms, I was just at Adobe, a company you're very familiar with, they're rolling out a new platform. Platforms are now back in vogue but it's not the old way. The old way was build a platform, have a competitive advantage, lock in your nested solution in imitability. Now it's platform open, different twist. How is that different? 'Cause you've seen the platform where you got to own it, barest entry, proprietary technology, to platform that's open extensible. >> Yeah, customers have gotten smart. No customer wants to be held hostage to one individual platform. SAP being a great example. Microsoft Windows being another example. They want to make sure that if they choose one platform, they could easily migrate to another. It's one of the reasons why Informatica is in such a sweet spot, because we allow our customers to choose which Cloud infrastructure providers they want to put their workloads on. And they can use multiple Cloud infrastructure. >> I got to ask about the competition now. Not competition but co-opetition, just marketplace in general. Everybody's jumping on the same wave that you guys have been on. You go to YouTube.com/Siliconangle look up Informatica videos I've done here with the team and you four years ago. Look up some of the things we were talking about, not a lot of many people talk about data driven, hardcore analytics, next-gen. These are the kind of topics that in AI machine learning, now everyone's talking about them. What's different about Informatica as the noise level increases around some of these things? Certainly, it's pretty obvious AI is going to be hot. Multi-generational Cloud, multi-generational things can happen. Operations, AI automation. >> Yeah. >> But what's different about Informatica? What should people know about Informatica that might be unique that you can lend some insight into? >> So when I think about the competition, or the co-opetition, I put those competitors in two buckets. There's a whole slew of smaller players that have some really good point products. Fortunately for Informatica, they don't have the scale to compete. And when I say scale to compete, not just on the go to market side, but they can't afford to invest two hundred million dollars a year in research and development building a complete platform. So, even though they're kind of ankle biters and occasionally I feel like the company has to slap them around, and they're annoyances, I don't think they're a big threat. The Cloud infrastructure players, the platform guys, Google, AWS, Azure, will continue to provide data tools that are developed for their stack. They will do some things that will be good enough. The good news is Informatica does great as it relates to enterprise Cloud management. So, if an enterprise really cares about their data, and they really care about having choice in the future, and they don't want to be held hostage to any one platform, Informatica is the only game in town. >> You're one of the best at doing theCUBE. This is our tenth year, and I remember telling some NetApp people because they invested in Cloud early, too, they don't get the credit. This is another example of Informatica invested early on in Cloud. I talked to Emmett and Anil years ago, they were well down that Cloud path. So Johnny-come-lately's going to jump on the Cloud 'cause there's an advantage so props to Informatica. >> And plus it's not Cloud only. Most of the large enterprises are hybrid, they will be hybrid for many years to come. In fact, if you look at workloads today, they majority of the workloads are still on-premise. >> Scales come up a lot. You know my commentary and theCUBE, everyone who watches me knows I like to rap about I was the first to call Amazon the trillion dollar opportunity because of the scale. Scale is the new competitive advantage, I've said that. I've said open is the new lock in. Value is the new lock in is what I said. So now you've got scales. The question is how does a startup compete if scale is table stakes? Is it race for funding? Snowflakes got to three billion dollar evaluation. Are they worth three billion? We're going to analyze that in theCUBE later. But they raise almost a billion dollars in cash. Do you scale up with cash and grow? >> Great technology. It starts out with really great technology. An organization like Snowflake, great technology. Look at Databricks, great technology. So, I look at the great new startups, what makes them great is that they have an innovative technological solution that's hard to replicate. Then they get the funding, and they're able to scale. That's what it takes to be a startup. >> And that's almost the OG, original gangster, Vectra Capital model. >> That's correct. >> Agile, iterate your way to success. No craft, no scale. Just speed. Is the world going back to the old formula? >> It's going back to innovation. To technical innovation. Especially given that you have so many scale players. You can no longer just come in there as a startup. Money alone is not going to enable you to be successful. >> All right I want you to pay it forward for all the young people graduating. I just was at my daughter's Cal, Berkeley graduation yesterday. Although she wasn't in this class. Cal just graduated their inaugural first-generation class of data science. Databricks was involved in that, they donated a lot of software. They're very Cal oriented. People who graduate high school, elementary school, this is a new field. Not enough jobs. Berkeley, a leading institution, first class ever in data science. What skill gaps are out there that need to be filled that people could learn now to get ahead and get an advantage in the workforce? >> My view, John, it starts in middle school with math. If we could help our kids who are in middle school to get through algebra, studies have shown they will move on to undergrad and then many of them will move to graduate work. We've got to start early. Yeah, there's some simple fixes. Help people become coders, help people do other things. But the reality is >> If you can't get the algebra done you're not going to code. >> We have to solve the longer term problems. So when I think about jobs of the future, we've got to create people who are creative, but at the same time understand the basics. >> Math, stats, great stuff. Final question. Are you going to run a company again soon? >> So I get that question quite often. First of all, I love doing what I do today, which is kind of a lot of little stuff. I do miss running a company. But, as I've told a whole bunch of people, I have no desire to ever report to a board again. So unless I own 51% of that company, I will not be running a company. >> Well now you know the deal terms, anyone who's watching for an investment from Bruce partnering with them. Great stuff. What's missing? What's around the corner? What are people missing in the news these days in the trends? What's coming that's exciting that nobody's talking about? >> I think what's happening, and this happens each wave, there's been so much excitement about the movement from On-Premises to Cloud, about AI and machine learning, I don't think people really appreciate how early it is. That we're this much in to it and we've got a long ways to go. And the old workflows that are on-premise, the amount of advancement in artificial intelligence and machine learning has so far to go, that people need to be patient and continue to invest aggressively in what's going to transpire ten years from now, not six months from now. And then you add things like 5G, faster speed WiFi, that also is going to have this huge impact. >> Great insight, Bruce. Thanks for sharing that insight. Get the kids learning math in middle school, gateway to coding, gateway to graduate work. Next ten waves, lot of waves coming. Bruce, thanks for sharing the insight. Good to see you again. >> Thanks, John. It's a pleasure. >> CUBE coverage here in Informatica World 2019. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. We'll be back with more after this short break. (funky music)