(upbeat electronic music) >> Narrator: Live, from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering Informatica World 2018, brought to you by Informatica. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. This is the Cube's exclusive coverage, here in Las Vegas, at the Venetian Hotel. I'm John Furrier, co-host of the Cube, with Peter Burris co-hosting with me the next two days, wall-to-wall coverage. Our next guest is Richard Cramer, who's the Chief Healthcare Strategist for Informatica World, back from last year, had a great chat. We talked about data swamps and data lakes. This year it's about governance and the enterprise. Great to see you again, thanks for coming back. >> Thanks for having me back. >> Actually, healthcare, we can go on and on. Peter and I can rant about that, but this is really where the healthcare has had data challenges always. They've had regulations. Governance, some will say, maybe, maybe not. What's different this year, for you and your conversations? We talked about data swamps last year, and data lakes. Where is it this year? What's the conversation with customers in healthcare? What's happening? >> Well I think it really is a reflection of the maturity of people using data, naturally coming from a data swamp or a data lake. How do we keep it from becoming a swamp? You govern it. And so as people start to use data, which we're really coming into our own in healthcare, governance becomes the top topic. When I start to share data, and people ask me where'd this come from, what did it mean? And I'm not able to answer that question, that's a governance problem. And so we're really starting to see enterprise data governance and compliance come to the forefront of almost every one of my conversations. >> And where is the catalyst coming from? Is it some of the regulation? Is it some of the awareness? Is it in a moment where the straw breaks the camel's back, so to speak? Where is it coming from, the governance question? >> It really is coming from an executive level, where as we start to use data, we have more executive dashboards, there's a desire to actually make data-driven decisions, both for business purposes and clinical care, if you can't explain where the data came from and why, what it means when people ask you questions, they don't trust it. And so I think it really is, as we start to really use data for the first time, it needs to be reliable and trustworthy, and that's a governance problem. It's not a tool problem, it's not an architecture problem, it's a people or process problem, and that's governance. >> Well one of the things that's true about healthcare, is healthcare has been driving the vanguard of ethics in society, for probably a few centuries now. And it's starting to happen in technology as well. I think the whole concept of GDPR is made even that much clearer, as a consequence of people actually becoming a little bit more concerned about their health information getting into the hands of people they don't want to get access to that information. How is this relationship between healthcare, ethics, and now governance, starting to affect the conversations that you're having in healthcare and beyond? >> Well I think healthcare has had HIPAA, which is all about privacy and protection of information. We've had that for a long number of years, but that was really a data element, not an appropriate use, but hey, this data, you can't share without permission. Now we're talking-- >> And it wasn't about the subject, it was about the data that you controlled. >> That's right. And now we're really talking about, and genomic data is a big part of this, is the ethical use of data. Can I use this data appropriately? If I'm doing it for your benefit, and to help you care for yourself, yeah, I think we probably can. But it's a governance challenge, right? What data do I have? What am I allowed to use it for, for what purpose? And who has consented to that? We have a similar issue that if you're a hospital that also has a health plan, and you can share data about a patient from that health plan with that hospital. But how about a competing hospital across town? Well I can't share that data, potentially, because of regulatory reasons. So really, the need to know what data you have, what policies apply to that data, and be able to consistently and authoritatively govern that data, I think is really a good example of what's driving enterprise data governance and compliance. >> So on the compliance side, when you think about outside the United States, obviously GDPR Friday kicks in. That's creating a lot of awareness. >> Yes. >> What's the impact of that, if any, to healthcare? Is it no big deal, we've been there, we can handle this? They have the data issues. What are you hearing on that front? >> So really, two-fold. First, GDPR is probably the best representation of really good stringent, proper, consumer privacy data controls that exist. So even if you're not compelled to abide by GDPR, it's a great roadmap and it's a great model to follow, 'cause it's just good data discipline. We also have the good fortune at Informatica, that some of the leading healthcare organizations in the country, are our customers, and they happen to have footprints in Europe. And so they do in fact have a GDPR challenge. Do I have a patient from the EU that's coming to my U.S.-based facility? Do I have a U.S.-based patient that's in an EU facility? Do I have an EU licensed provider? The complexity of the GDPR challenge for some of our U.S.-based healthcare customers is pretty involved, and they're acutely aware of it. So I don't think there's been anything like GDPR in terms of data protection, that's existed in healthcare. >> Yeah, that's going to change the game. I guess, my gut feeling, again, you're the expert on this, but my feeling is that it will slow things down. It's mind-boggling that, I don't know, I'm a European patient going to a U.S. hospital, now something has to happen that didn't have to happen before. Or, is that, am I getting it right? >> I think that it holds the potential to get it to slow things down, if you treat it as a one-off. If you treat it as good data architecture, and you implement a system that that's just an artifact of how you manage data, it doesn't slow anything down, I think it makes things quicker. >> John: So the mandate is go faster. >> Because it's just the priorities. >> That's right. >> Well it sets a priority, and it forces you to have a good data architecture that operates like a well-oiled machine. >> But let me explain what I mean by that, 'cause it's very consistent with what you're saying. One of the biggest challenges about data is a lot of executives don't understand it, don't know what to do with it, can't treat it as an asset. GDPR, amongst other things, is forcing a consensus around what data can be to the business, what it should not be to the business, and that's helping to set priorities so that folks, you may be right, it may be a one-off basis. People may complain about it, but if it's used as an architectural direction, it may actually accelerate because it sets a consensus about what the priorities should be. >> Yes, and where you started is exactly why. It is a universally-understood business imperative that every executive knows. And the fact that underlying it is great data architecture, well that's just a bonus, 'cause it sets the priority correctly. >> But here's my challenge on that, because to create data architecture is aspirational for many, but not feasible in a short-term. So how do they get there? And then they want to have, hey, let's have some great data architecture. But what the Hell does that even mean? Some customers might be, I know hospitals might be more advanced, but there might, well maybe not, (laughing) but again, again, so take us through that. Some people might aspire for great data architecture, but it might take time to get there. >> So great data architecture, though, this is part of the generational market shift in data. And in the past, we had data silos, and data silos are bad, we must break them down and we must centralize and control data, as a path to value. That took a heck of a long time, and actually could not really be achieved. What's changed now is we accept silos are going to exist, self-service for data consumption exists, the problem is not now how do I centralize and control data within an inch of its life, to get value, the challenge now is how do I manage enterprise data as an asset, accepting that that's the landscape? A data catalog changes everything. >> Talk about the impact of that, 'cause this is super-important. It's not centralizing the data, it's just having a catalog with visibility into the meta-data, of all that data. >> Exactly right. So before, I didn't know where all of my data was, and data security being, and I, if I don't know I have it, how the heck can I secure it? Well with a catalog, for the first time, it's straightforward, simple, and easy, to know what data I have. You actually have a chance of securing it. So the answer, that's the path to getting real value with great data architecture, without taking decades to try and centralize and control. >> It's time for dancing. Richard, we got the music coming on. Last year it was data lakes, data swamps. That's awareness. Now it's enterprise governance, the catalog looking good from you guys. Congratulations. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you very much. >> Alright, day one. Wrapping down, kicking off the Solutions Exhibit Hall here for Informatica World 2018. I'm John Furrier and Peter Burris. Stay tuned for more coverage, here from Las Vegas, it's the Cube. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube! Covering Informatica World 2018. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Hey welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel Ballroom the main floor here it's The Cube out in the open, I'm John Furrier with my co-host Peter Burris this week, for the next two days. Our next guest is Richard Ganley, he's the senior vice president digital transformation solutions and global partners for Informatica. Richard, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure. >> We have three Palo Alto people on The Cube in Vegas. We probably all flew out here last night, but Informatica is doing great, you're dealing a lot with the digital transformation, dealing with the big large projects and partners, global partners. The ecosystem here is getting robust, and were going to expected to hear some announcements. We don't yet have the news in hand, but we hear some big ecosystem kind of announcements coming. Not sure you can talk about it, but talk about the ecosystem and the partner relationship that you guys are having with your customers. >> True absolutely, well I would look at it like this, you know we've got many of our partners here and part of the reason for that is the issue many of our users are trying to solve now, we call it digital transformation, but I think it's analogous to what happened about 20 years ago, when the internet was first really coming into our lives, people were getting online in large numbers. And many companies were scrambling for a strategy. You know they were worried about ordinary internet organizations who had already started to get online, but they were particularly worried about companies that looked a bit like them, who might get there first. And if we go to where we are today, many companies now, they're trying to unleash the power of data, they're trying turn all of that data that they got into some strategic advantage. And sure, customers of ours are worried about the likes of Amazon and Tesla to Informatica customers who are obviously very data driven, but they're also worried about organizations who are very much like them and what would happen if they unlock the power of their data first. So we see some of our customers trying to get ahead, trying to steal the march on companies that look very much like them, but also many organizations just struggling to find that place to start, and I think this is such a big problem, part of the reasons so many of our partners are here is cause it will take us all working together for the benefit of our customers, to solve these very very complex problems. >> I wonder if it's actually worse than it was 20 years ago, though right? Because 20 years ago, your general arrangement of assets, which pretty much every industry is defined by having relatively common arrangement of assets. You introduce data into that, it reduces assets specificity, you make things programmable, which means not only are you worried about companies that look like you, potentially you're worried about companies that look nothing like you, because data can quickly make them look like you. How does that play out into, as your partners are thinking about their business, how they engage customers? I've got a follow on question to that as well. >> Yeah, that's a good question Peter. I think the dynamic there, what is forcing people to do is to come up with a plan. You know, I don't think anybody can sit and wait to figure out what their plans going to be for data. They need to do something today. So we see many of our customers, very much in a hurry now, and I think boards of directors have woken up to the reality that they need to do something. So it has become a board room issue, but we see many boards now employing new titles, just like we saw 20 years ago when the internet came along. New titles being created like Chief Digital Officer, Chief Data Officer, Chief Analytics Officer, many of these new titles, new budgets becoming available. The hardest part for many is finding that starting point. And I think that's where many of our partners come in is many of our customers they'll turn to us, but they'll also turn to our partners for strategic advice, so it's important for us to all work together cause we've all got different skills that are part of the overall solution. >> But one of the challenges that I think everybody in the technology industry has, is that historically partnership arrangements have been tied to what industry are you in? What size company are you working with? And as digital takes root, it's going to change that very understanding of what kind of business is that customers in, what size are they going to be, what size can they be, is that starting to effect how you manage partners as well? How you manage relationships with your partners? >> I think it is. We're having to look at things very differently. I think many of our partners, they are changing as well. They're changing their businesses to deal with the changes in the world, as our customers become data driven, the business world is becoming disrupted you know our partners are going through that too. I think all businesses are fundamentally changing the way that they do business and it's the same for our partners, so I think the whole world, even society, is going through the same thing at the same time, we're all having to think differently about what we do, and it's data, data is changing the lives of everybody on the planet and every single business at the same time, including our partners. >> I got to ask you a question. The reality that we're hearing from customers is that there is a major shift going on with data. And you outlined them. But now combine that shift with, a couple of rooms in the house burning on fire, like GDPR. So you have this shift going on right? So more than every they need partners. So what we're hearing is, "Okay, we're used to dealing with a lot of regulations and data" to "Oh my God, we've been fast and loose just trying to scale up and scale out with the cloud and what not, and now I need help." They need help right now, they don't need a ten year project or a six month project, they need stuff instantly. How are you guys bringing those parties to the table? What does a customer do, what does a prospect do, do they say, "Hey, Informatica, you guys are like the Switzerland of data, you got the catalog and stuff, MDM, I like the story, I want to move on this, what do I do?" What do you guys, what do you say to that? Obviously it's a good prospect. >> That is a great question, and for most of our customers that's the hardest thing, is where to get started. What we see is, and this theme runs through our conference, there were four journeys that we see our customers going on, it's 360, getting a single view of their customers or products, governing their data, number two, and number three, moving to the cloud or hybrid, and fourthly, next generation analytics, putting data in the hands of business people who can use it to serve customers and run their business better. We see all of our customers, they typically will start in one of these areas and it really depends on what's most pressing and burning in their business. So if GDPR is an issue for them, that's typically where they'll start. They'll start with governance, but also at the same time, there's many people looking at GDPR, they're seeing if they can govern all of their data, build a solid foundation, they'll be in a great position for the future. So that is actually a really really good starting point. And GDPR has been a goodness. I think it's driven a lot of the right behaviors and it's waking a lot of people up to the realities that they need to govern their data. >> We've been getting involved in a lot of the partnership conversations with The Cube obviously we have a lot of interviews with suppliers and their partners, you're in charge of global partners. What does that mean, and what are you doing to get them to be more effective? Either working together with each other or with Informatica and with the customer. How are you growing the partner network? What's the value purpose? Take a minute to explain the value preposition for the partners. >> Yeah, so I think for partners, there's never been a better time to partner with Informatica. These are great times, as I was saying at the beginning, the world is becoming data driven, and this is perfect. I think where our partners really come in is around those four journeys that I mentioned. They've all got different expertise on different parts of their journey and we align with partners who've got different skills that we can use. So for example, if a customer is looking to solve for GDPR and they want to become data driven, they want to govern their data, we'll work with partners who've those special skills, whether it's on the implementation side, whether it's business consulting, whether it's strategy, all kinds of different partners will support us. And really for our customers that gives them a much richer solution. >> Who are you trying to attract? Cause as you guys are growing obviously we would predict that given the value proposition of Informatica you're probably going to have some growth there. What's your value proposition to pitch to people that might not yet be a partner? What are you offering them? What's the incentive? What would you say to the people watching that might be a potential partner? That say, "Hey I want to join the Informatica partner network." >> Yeah, for many of our newer partners we signed up a huge number of new partners last year, and I think one of the value propositions is that as the world becomes data driven, we need our partners, this is perfect timing, there's never been a better time to come and work with us. I think we've got great solutions, many great products that our partners can compliment our solutions around, so I think the timing is perfect, and we also welcome new partners as well. So I think this is a great time for our partners to build their business with Informatica. It's a great time to be a partner, it's a great time to be a customer, and it's a great time to be-- >> So you bring business, growth together, grow together kind of philosophy. Is that the, does that sound right? >> Yeah, I think it's all about growing together, the markets growing really really fast, our customers need help immediately right now, and between us and our partners we're in the perfect position to help them. >> Richard great stuff. Thanks for coming on, great to meet you. Here in Las Vegas is Palo Alto native, resident of course with two other Palo Alto residents here at the Informatica World 2018. Day one of two days of coverage with The Cube, exclusively here in Las Vegas live. Stay with us for more day one coverage after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Informatica World 2018. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Informatica World 2018. Live here in Las Vegas at the Venetian Hotel. I'm John Furrier, co-host with Peter Burris. Here for the next two days of wall to wall coverage. Our next guest is is Suresh Menon, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Master Data Management group within Informatica. He's got the keys to the kingdom, literally. Welcome back, good to see you. >> Thank you for having me. >> The key of all this pun intended is the data. And the cataloging's looking good. There's a lot of buzz around cataloging. What you guys have as a core product. Your customers love the product. The world's changing. Where are we, what's the update? >> Catalog is extremely important. Not just to enterprise data, the entire landscape by itself. But it's equally very exciting for MDM. Cause what has the potential to to is transform the way in how quickly people can get value out of MDM. Cause a combination of metadata and artificial intelligence through machine learning is what can create self-configuring, self-operating, even self maintaining Master Data Management. And that's extremely important because in today's world, the digital world that we live in, the explosion of data. The explosion of data sources. The new kinds of data that MDM is being asked to master, correlate and link with is becoming so huge that it's not humanly going to be possible to manage/curate this data. And you need to have AINML, and the underlying metadata awareness that the catalog brings, in order to solve these new problems. >> So Suresh, after you came onto theCUBE last year. You left and I said, there's a question I should've asked him. I'm going to put you on the spot. If you could do it. If you could create a new term for this Master Data Management. And where it's going. What would you call it? >> Yeah. You know Master Data Management has been around not for very long. About eight or nine years. It doesn't begin to describe the kind of problem that we're trying to solve here today. The only one that I can think of is 360's. It's more about getting the complete holistic view of all the business critical entities that you as an organization need to know. And 360 has traditionally been used around customer. But it's not only about the customer. You need to understand what products the customer owns. Engineer a 360 around their product. You need to understand how those customers interact with employees. You need an employee 360. You need an asset 360. How can you even begin to do householding, if you don't do a location 360? >> I want to build on that. In many respects it's the ability to sustain the context of data for different personas, for different applications, for different utilizations. So in many respects, Master Data Management really is the contextual framework by which an organization consumes data. Have I got that right? >> Absolutely. It is the you know. Another way to describe that would be it is what delivers the consistent authoritative description where you have the semantics being completely differently described in all of these cloud applications. We've gone very far away from the days maybe ten years ago, where you had a handful of CRM and ERP applications that you needed to disambiguate this information. Today I think I was reading this morning that an organization on average has 1,050 different cloud applications. And 3/4 of them are not connected to anything. And the describing, creating, authoring information around all these business critical entities. MDM is becoming the center of this ultra-connected universe in another way that I would look at it. >> It's also a key part of making data addressable. And we talked about this last year. But something that I have observed that's been happening since last year. The storage vendors have been radically changing their view. They're going to be have storage, but their data layer is sitting in all the clouds. That's interesting. That means that they're seeing that there's a data abstraction kind of underneath Informatica if you will. If that happens then you have to be working across all the clouds. Are customers seeing that? Are they coming to you saying that? Or are you guys getting out front? How do you view that dynamic? >> Customers are seeing that, have been seeing that for the last two to three years. As they have started taking these monolithic, very comprehensive, on premise applications to a fragmented set of applications in the cloud. Where do they keep a layer where they have all this business critical data in one place? And they're beginning to realize that as they move these things to the cloud, these applications are moving to the cloud, it's going from one to a couple of hundred. Master data is being seen as that layer that basically connects all these pieces of information together. And very importantly for a lot of these organizations, data that's proprietary to them. That they don't necessarily want locked up in an application that may or may not be there a couple of years down the road. >> The value shifting from state commodity. Even I was talking last week with the guys from NetApp about a great solid state drive they're going to have. But that values up top where the data is. And they have the data stored. So why not facilitate? And you guys can take it and integrate it into the applications, into the workloads. How is that going with respect to say catalog or the edge, for instance? How should a customer think about MDM? If they have to architect it out, what's the playbook? >> The number one thing is where the catalog comes in is first of all trying to identify in this highly fragmented universe you now have. As to where all your fragments, or master data reside. This is where the catalog comes in. It gives you in one Google-like text search, tells you where all the customer master attributes are residing across the landscape. Third party, on premise, in the cloud. The catalog will also tell you what the relative quality is of those those attributes. And then by apply AINML to it, be able to now figure out how those pieces of data can be transformed, cleansed, enriched and brought into MDM. The catalog has a role to play within MDM. What are the most appropriate matching and linking rules? What are the most appropriate survivorship trust tools that you need to apply? And how do you secure all that data that's now sitting in MDM? Because it's now in the cloud, and you know data security and protection is top of mind for most-- >> Talk about AI over at MDM. Because last year Claire was announced. We've seen certainly with GDPR that AI will play a role. Machine learning and AI. It's all coming together. The relationship between MDM and AI. Natural to me, seems like it's natural. How do you guys see the fit between AI and MDM? >> It is fundamental to MDM. And where we've begun our investment in AINML is one of the most core capabilities around MDM, which is being able to recognize potential duplicates. Or detect non-obvious relationships across this vast set of master data that's coming in. We've applied AINML, and we'll see a demo of that tomorrow, and we'll here in Vegas, is using machine learning on top of the world's best matching algorithms, in order to infer what are the most appropriate strategies in order to link and discover these entities? And build a relationship graph, without a human having to introspect the data. >> One of our predictions is that over the course of the next few years companies are actually going to start thinking about networks of data. That data is going to get the network formation treatment. That devices, and pages, and identities and services that we've gotten in the past. It does seem as though MDM could play a very, very important role in as you said identifying patterns in the data, utilization of the data. What constitutes a data node? What constitutes an edge? Number of different ways of thinking about it. Is that the direction that you see? First of all, do you agree with that notion of networks of data? And is that the direction you see MDM playing in the future? >> Absolutely. Because up until now MDM was used to solve the problem of creating a distinct node of data. Where we absolutely had to ensure that whatever it is then node was describing is actually the entire, complete, comprehensive entity. Now the next step, the new frontier for MDM is now about trying to understand the relationships across those nodes. And absolutely. MDM is both about that curation that governs, which is very important for GDPR and all of the other initiatives out there. But equally importantly now being able to understand how these entities are related across those, the graph of all of those nodes now. >> Weave in the role that security's going to play. Because MDM can... Well we'll step back. Everybody has historically figured that either data is secure or it's not. Largely because it was focused on a device. And if you have a device, and secure the device, all the data on that device got equally secured. Nowadays data is much more in flight. It's all over the place. It's a lot of different sources. The role that security plays in crafting the node, in privatizing data and turning it into an asset, is really important. But it could really use the information that's MDM to ensure that we are applying the appropriate levels of security, and types of security. Do you see an evolving role between MDM and data security? >> I would actually describe it differently. I would say that security is now the core design principal for MDM. It has to be baked into everything that we do around designing MDM for the future. Because like you said, we've again gone away from some handful of sources, bringing data into MDM in a highly protected, on premise environment with a very limited number of consumers. Now we have thousands of applications delivering that data to MDM. And you've got thousands of business users. Tens of thousands of them. Applications all leveraging that master data in the context of those interfaces. Security has never bee more important for MDM. This is again another way of security. And I want to bring catalog back again. Catalog is going to automatically tell the MDM configuration developer that these are pieces of data that should be protected. This is PII data. The the health data. This is credit data. That security is implicit in the design of those MDM initiatives. >> I think that's huge with cloud and connected edge in the network that is critical. I got to ask you. I now we're tight on time. I want to get one more question in. Define intelligent MDM. I've heard that term. What does that mean to you? You mentioned security design in the beginning. I get that, what that is. But I heard the term intelligent MDM. What is the definition of that? What does it mean? >> It really means MDM that is built for three new imperatives. One is being able to scale, what I would call digital scale. It's no longer enterprise scale. It is about being able to make sense of interactions and relationships, and being able to use the power of the catalog, and AINML, in order to connect all of these dots. Because connecting these dots is what's going to deliver immense business value to those organizations. Facilitate the rise of the business user, and their requirements. Intuitive interfaces that allow them to perform their day to day interaction with MDM. And finally time to value. Intelligent MDM should be up and running, not in months or years, but in weeks if not days. And this is where the power of catalog, power of machine learning, can make this a reality. >> That's a great clip. I'm going to clip that. That's awesome. And then putting it into action, that's the key to success. Suresh, thanks for coming on. Great to see you. >> Thank you very much. >> As always. You've got the keys to the kingdom, literally. MDM is at the center of it all, the things going on with data from cloud, edge computing, all connected. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burrs bringing all the action here at Informatica World 2018. We'll be back with more after this short break.