(upbeat music) >> We're back at VeamON 2022, at the Aria in Las Vegas. You're watching The Cube. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host, David Nicholson. Danny Allan here is the Chief Technical Officer at Veeam. And he's joined by Ope Bakare who's the Chief Technical Officer at HBC Dave. One of the few companies that's older than my home. >> Unbelievable. >> Ope. >> That's right. >> Danny, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. It's true by the way. 1670, we're going to learn more about HBC. But I wonder, Danny, if you could set it up. The kind of topic of this discussion here is hybrid cloud, we've got a pretty interesting use case, give us the high level, what should we be focused on here? >> So lots of customers today focused on digital transformation and moving into the cloud, everyone talks about that, I can take my workload and move into the cloud. And one of the interesting things that we saw originally was, you know, I'll just lift it and move it over there. That's not necessarily the best model for the cloud. So you see people doing that. What I actually think is really interesting, and I know Ope has been very focused on is actually transforming the application so that works most effectively in the cloud model. >> So Ope, maybe give us the background on HBC, for folks who aren't familiar with the company and your role there. >> Sure, so HBC is 350, somewhat years old. It's the oldest corporation that's continually existed in North America. I have the privilege to serve as the chief technology officer there. And, you know, HBC is a company that has innovation kind of baked into its core DNA. We have to keep reinventing ourselves, otherwise, we get stagnant and we get left behind. Clearly, we're still around so--. >> So far so good. >> We must be doing something right. But kind of pivoting to what you were saying earlier, you know, our journey to the cloud was multifaceted. Some of it was to improve the pace of innovation, some of it was to improve on quality. So you know, we have typical data center technologies, and, you know, we had some of the typical issues you would have, right, so some older equipment, you know, failures, etc, etc. When you're in the cloud, a lot of that is just managed for you. Again, it's about what I talked about this morning, it's about moving your team up the value chain, towards creating value, right? So you start with the managing of core basic infrastructure, and you start consuming them as services. The interesting thing is, as you mentioned, for the vast majority of people, your first foray into the cloud, is pick up all those virtual machines that you had on-prem, and put them in the cloud. And that's great, you get, immediately you get a better, possibly a better or more available under a cloud platform there. But you're just barely scratching the surface. You don't really get into cloud until you start consuming cloud native services, until you go serverless, you go stateless with containers in Kubernetes, you can use platforms like, you know, Kafka for streaming your data, as opposed to, you know, constructing cumbersome, easy to break data pipelines and all that. So it's a very interesting pivot. And I think a lot of people sometimes struggle with going past that first step, they have the VMs, it's familiar to what they're used to. But for us, we had a digital transformation in the works. We were replatforming from a legacy platform, some of you may know, Blue Martini. But we were moving to a more modern, more flexible platform that was really suited to accelerate our omni channel strategy. Thank goodness we did because the pandemic came around and proved it exactly correct. >> Good timing. >> Yeah, so that's really what happened for us, that actually forced us forward in the cloud journey. >> So Alan Nance, who was at the time, he was like a CIO slash CTO at Philips. And he said to me, if you just lift and shift to the cloud, this is early days of cloud, he said, he's not going to change your operational model. The company, if you want to save billions, you got to change that operational model. But listening to what Ope just said, Danny, what does that mean, from your perspective, I mean, cloud native, and what does that do for your business? >> Well, cloud native,. The benefit of the cloud, of course, makes completely portable, and it's elastic, you can scale almost infinitely, and you don't have to build it. However, the hard part is not the technology. I always say the hard part is the process, you actually have to rewrite your applications to take advantage of all the things in the cloud. And that is not an easy thing. So what we're seeing a lot in the industry across our customer base, is when they have a greenfield opportunity, a new project, they always start in the cloud. We're not seeing a lot of, hey, am going to completely modernize my applications, because that's expensive. It's already built. And so customers will sometimes pick that up and move it to the cloud. And sometimes they'll actually move it back on premises, because the cost model isn't there. But I do think in the long term, if you're looking at four or five years, all the new applications will be designed for a cloud native experience. What that means is written in containers, with container orchestration, you know, seamlessly orchestrating the entire portfolio and data lifecycle. >> So Ope. >> Spot on. >> Translate that into what actually happened at HBC. So as Danny said, we're not going to just going to move everything into the cloud, we've got a hybrid setup, maybe some of the new stuff. What did you do? You have the, your back end systems, your database kind of protected that? How did you go about this omni channel journey? >> So, you know, for us, you know, by the way, that was completely spot on. You know, it's not a fallacy to really examine some cost, because we all have to, we'll have to live in the real world, right? We understand that there are budgets, and there are limits to what we can accomplish within a fiscal year. So you look at an application that's already built, that's already fulfilling the business purpose for which for which it was built. What's the value in immediately going and taking it all apart and containerizing it? If there is a small or easy lift, sure, it might be worth it. But if it's a major system that you have to rewrite, the ROI is just not there, right? So a lift and shift model in that scenario, kind of makes sense. But what you said earlier is exactly what we did. When we had an opportunity again, with the omni channel strategy, we're looking to strengthen our digital arm. And so we were moving from our legacy platform to this new one. And that required us to do a bunch of work. So we had to modernize some of our services, we had to change some of our data, our data process, how we stream data into and out of the e-commerce platform. And all of that actually provided sort of almost a groundswell of support for all of this transformative works. Apologies, for all this transformative work we had to do. So it totally made sense in that case, we actually were able to kill two birds with one stone, really transform and go cloud native, at the same time as deprecating a bunch of legacy technologies that to be perfectly frank didn't really have much of a place in the cloud. >> So many questions. I hope, go. >> Yeah, so it's interesting, because when you talk about that sort of journey to cloud that you're on, sometimes people will ask the question, well, how long before everything is in the cloud? And often the answer is, if you look at what's called the vanishing point, where the two sides of the highway come together, off in the distance, it's like, that's, that's when it'll happen. But as you get closer to that point, it gets further away. So if you had to categorize it in terms of a percentage of where you are now, and then an aspiration over time, how would you categorize that? >> So I have the pleasure of telling you that we are probably at about, I'd say 90% in the cloud? >> Oh, wow, okay. >> We were very aggressive about it. And frankly, I think, you know, first of all, I have the privilege to lead an amazing team. And they did everything possible to make this real. We had a goal, and it was focusing on our customers, being customer obsessed, really. And for us, data centers just didn't make sense in that world. So all we did was work towards how do we deprecate these legacy technologies? How do we consolidate and then move them to the cloud as quickly as possible? So for us 90%, and we're going even even further. Is that last 10% worth it, to go for that? I mean, you know, what's the, you know, you get to that marginal return? >> I really think the next 5% will be worth it, the last five we're not going to pursue and here's why. So think about, you know, we talked about really low latency things that need to be physically in the building. So we have a bunch of, we have a whole lot of fulfillment and distribution centers, right? Those, in some cases, we have automation equipment that really requires low latency connectivity to physical equipment. Moving that to the cloud, is not really a high value proposition. If you think about, you know, large corporate presences, there are some pieces of technology that you could move to the cloud. But again, latency in the customer, the users experience might be compromised as a result. If there's no value, really, to moving that into the cloud, why would you do it? >> And wouldn't you have to freeze the application in order to move it into the cloud or not for these 10% or 5%, or not necessarily? >> Not necessarily. In many cases, we have applications that are built in a distributed fashion so that you can take, you know, some percentage of it, move it to the cloud, validate it over there, and then move the rest of it-- >> You could build some kind of abstraction layer, okay. So the million dollar question is, what does Veeam have to do with all this? >> Well, so Veeam has been for quite some time now, our data protection engine. You know, when I talk about moving people up the value stack, I don't take that lightly. For me, you know, having engineers do things like and please forgive me for a second here, but do things like backups, to me that's, it's a hard requirement, but it's not really high value for me. So if I can get a platform that can use policies, can use tags can operate natively in the cloud. And once you have it running, you can set it and forget it, other than your periodic, you know, business continuity to DR Tests. You know, that's the dream scenario. And we've achieved that largely. We still have some legacy systems that are not on vignette. But that's something that's going to change over the next, let's call it 18 or so months. >> So did you evolve as Veeam evolved? How long have you been in this role? I apologize-- >> I've been with HBC for three years now. >> Okay, so now, Veeam goes, well, I remember I first saw Veeam at a VMUG. I'm like VMware, I was just brilliant, right? Of course, we all say that. Now, but you saw Veeam's ascendancy through virtualization, and then it took a while, but then all of a sudden, bare metal, the first in SAS, great cloud strategy. Now the first in I don't know if I can say that. Scratch that. We will talk to you about that tomorrow. Someone will come here. >> Someone else will come here. At VeeamON. So, from what you know, about HBC, did you kind of follow that Veeam strategy, they were just sort of there as you migrate it to the cloud, SAS, you know, Microsoft 365, etc? >> Yeah, so we actually started using Veeam in a very limited capacity quite some time ago, mostly to protect on-prem virtualized workloads. And that was, you know, that was really the limit. And, you know, my team had been used Veeam, in my previous role when I worked for a large healthcare provider, health care company in the states. So I was pretty familiar with Veeam as a platform, I was very familiar with the journey. I think that you know, more than many other, most of their competition, they've made the transition into the cloud first world, far more successfully. If you think about the policy engine, the automatic tearing, by age, as well as some of the cloud tagging, and the full integration with the native capabilities in AWS and Azure, it's been a dream scenario for us. >> You and I have talked about this Danny, and a lot of your competitors, especially early on the cloud, they wrap their stack in, you know, to container, or Kubernetes, it's shoved it in the cloud, which is really hosted on prem app. You guys didn't do that. I mean, I pushed you on this a number of times. What did you do? >> Every time there's a modern infrastructure, we say, how can we actually apply data protection, modern data protection to that infrastructure, specifically. We don't try and take what already exists. And Veeam started at this. If you think back when we first started, everyone was doing agents. And if you took an agent, put it on a hypervisor, and you'd 100 of them running at the same time, you would kill your production system. So we said, we'll take a snapshot at the hypervisor level. And then when storage arrays came up with snapshots, let's take advantage of that. When we went to the cloud, we said let's take advantage of the API's rather than trying to put an agent in there. And so every time we encounter a new infrastructure, we say, how do we take advantage of what that infrastructure is bringing? >> We're going to dig into more of this tomorrow. But I don't want to steal from the HBC story. Let me ask you about, you talked about, we talk a lot about digital transformation and modernization. And, of course, COVID was like a force march to digital, we all sort of realize this. What do you see Ope, that's now permanent? Whether it's, you know, security, data protection, and how you're thinking about modernization? What are those practices that are now best practices that will become permanent? >> Well, the obvious one that kind of hits up hits us all in the face is remote work. For the past, let's call it two ish years, my team has been almost completely remote. And as a result, you know, we've been able to show that, for us, it worked just fine. There were some teething pains as we all did >> It was like Y2K. Wasn't it? Hey, the world didn't end. >> It became a non factor very quickly, why? Because for most technology organizations were too used to working outside of normal hours. So it wasn't a stretch really to extend a logic to just working, you know, working remotely permanently. That said, you know, one of the things that for us, and I'm going to deviate away from the technology side for a second, one of the things that is really critical for us is we're trying to make sure that we respect people's work-life balance. As we have colleagues who work from home, you know, today, it's very easy to roll out of bed in the morning, you know, put your zoom suit on, and you know, where you're wearing your shorts, and all that and just work the whole day and then around like five to 7 P.M. or whatever, you sign off and you just realized, I just spent way more time working than I probably would have if I were going to the office. That's you know, it's a great productivity-- >> With no breaks. >> With no breaks, right? And there's no button, no water cooler moments or whatever. But, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to come up with various ways to respect people's, you know, work-life balance. Interestingly enough, we actually have a law that is going to effect in early June, in Ontario, where there will be a right to disconnect. So outside of normal working hours, you will be required to disconnect from your employees unless it is an operational issue, or some other pertinent emergency that requires them to engage. So, I think that's going to become the new norm as we go forward. Coming back to technology, I think just looking at the last two years, I don't know if you've noticed the same thing, but the pace of innovation seems to have picked up a tick. And I think that is going to become the new normal. You're going to see a lot of people challenging status quo a lot of sacred, a lot of sacred cows are going to get, you know, get, you know put out to pasture. And I think that's a good thing for our industry, it's going to quicken the pace of innovation. And it's also going to make people more thoughtful about where they place their bets, I think. You know, the other thing, this is the last one, dollars and cents. If you think about the pandemic, when it first started, we all had to take a breath, because instantly, a whole lot of industries just paused, right? And when that happened, you know, you had no revenue coming in. You had, it was whoa, what are we doing here? And I think that also sharpened our focus, when it came to making some some decisions. You know, we all had to deal with, you know, in some cases, furloughs and some cases reductions. Thankfully, we're all back to back to normal now. But where you place your bets financially, it's going to drive a lot of technology decision in investing, right? So I think that's going to be a larger part of our kind of landscape going forward. >> So that last point about innovation, Danny, it's got to be music to your ears, because your, the premise, you're saying, behind Veeam, is you look at the next trend and then modernize, you put meaning behind modern data protection. It's not just a tagline. You gave a couple of good examples. But talk a little bit more about, you know, what Ope just said and what that means to you guys? >> Well, at a technology level, I always talk about three things being part of modern data protection. One is, around the security, everyone working from home, there's intellectual property going into the home on the endpoint in Microsoft Teams, in all the collaboration tools, that needs to be protected. And actually, we're seeing because of the rise in ransomware, cyber insurance is actually requiring data protection for that. So a big part of modern data protection is all about the security of the environment. The second is cloud acceleration. We want customers to move to the cloud. I love sitting here quietly listening to him tell the story of what they're doing, because it's perfect. That is the story that we want from our customers moving to the cloud. And we don't want to stop that in any way. In fact, all of our licensing models go to market, support set cloud acceleration. And then the last thing is, of course, data protection. If they're going to do that, you own that data, you need to protect it on any cloud and on every cloud. And so our focus around modern data protection is those three things. Ransomware protection, cloud acceleration and modern data protection >> In an environment that is not bespoke, I presume, we're going to talk about Supercloud tomorrow. But right, but this idea that instead of going to, I don't know, if you run on Google, AWS, Azure, whatever, but instead of going there and doing your thing, and going over here and doing your on-prem, but you want a consistent experience across all your estates, whether it's on-prem and the cloud, eventually out to the edge, we're going to talk about that tomorrow, too. Is that a fair premise? >> It is. I mean, operational consistency is absolutely crucial for my team to succeed. I mean, think about running multiple different tools for data protection, it just creates a whole lot of interaction, let's call it that has friction. And ultimately, with anything and technology, wherever there's friction, you're going to have problems eventually, and you're going to have varying levels of skill in the team. Suppose you have part of your data protection team, you lose one or two people to COVID for a week, right? And you have a DR test. And it's so happens that these are the experts at FUBAR software, that is your data protection platform. The people that you may have on-prem, available may not have the right skills. I mean, unifying that stuff and actually running them out of the same ethos, really. I think that creates operational consistency that is so valuable for us to be successful. There was one thing I wanted to bring up, just hearing what you said earlier. Zero trust, I think is going to become part of our industry baseline as well. Zero trust approaches to network connectivity to tooling so that you stop dealing with traditional VPN. >> Tho nication >> Tho nication It just, that's where we're going as well. So apologies but-- >> No, not at all, it was a buzzword before the pandemic. >> It was but it's actually-- >> Now, it's a mandate. >> It's kind of, it's come back and become actually useful. >> If people are trying to, okay, what does this really mean? What does this mean to our organization? Exciting times, you know, the thing is, there's a lot of unknowns, right? And we certainly saw that with COVID. So how do you as a technologist deal with, you know, it used to be we would automate the known. This industry is built on that, right? How are you approaching what you don't know, from a technology, infrastructure and process standpoint? >> So I'm going to, everyone watching, everyone turn their videos off, when it's, I'm going to give them a secret, it's the people. The people are the secret sauce. If you surround yourself with amazing people, curious people, you can solve any problem. I again, like I said, I have the privilege of leading this team. And we have some amazing thinkers and problem solvers. If you set them to task and give them the right support as a leader, they will accomplish anything. And so for me, having a robust and just really diversely skilled team allows us to attack any problem, I have zero, I have zero worries about the future of state of technology, I have absolute confidence, we'll be able to engage, master and exploit whatever technologies come our way or any other challenges that actually happened to you know, be in our path as well. >> We hear this a lot in The Cube people process technology. Technology, figure itself out and get the good people you can get the right process and win. >> Absolutely. >> Ope, Danny, thanks so much for coming on The Cube. Danny, we'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon Danny's coming back and we're going to dig into a lot of this stuff and double click on it. Appreciate your time. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> This is Dave Vellante, for David Nicholson. You're watching The Cube's coverage VeamON 2022. From the Aria, in Las Vegas. This is day one. Keep it right there. (enchanting music)

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel and AWS. Yeah, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Cubes Walter Wall coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. We've gone virtual along with reinvent and we heard in Andy Jassy is hours long. Keynote a number of new innovations in the area of storage. And with me to talk about that is Milan Thompson Bukovec. She's the vice president of Block and Object Storage and AWS. That's everything. Elastic block storage s three Glacier, the whole portfolio Milon. Thanks for coming on. >>Great to see you. >>Great to see you too. So you heard Andy. We all heard Andy talk a lot about reinventing different parts of the platform, reinventing industries and a really kind of exciting and visionary put talk that he put forth. Let's >>talk >>about storage, though. How is storage reinventing itself? >>Well, as you know, cloud storage was essentially invented by a W s a number of years ago. And whether that's in 2000 and six, when US three was launched, or 2000 and eight when CBS was launched and we first came up with this model of pay as you go for durable, attached storage. Too easy to instances. And so we haven't stopped and we haven't slowed down. If anything, we've picked up the rate of reinvention that we've done across the portfolio for storage. I think, as Andy called out, speed matters. And it matters for how customers air thinking about how do they pivot and move to the cloud as quickly as they can, particularly this year. And it matters a lot in storage as well, because the changing access patterns of what customers air doing with their new cloud applications, you know they're they're transforming their businesses and their applications, and they need a modern storage platform underneath it. And that's what you have with AWS Storage. And he talked about some of the key releases, particularly in block storage. It's actually kind of amazing. What's what's been done with CBS is here. We launched GP three GP two was the previous generation general purpose volume type. We launched that in 2000 and 14 again thief, first type of general purpose volume that had this great combination of simplicity and price, and just about everybody uses it for a boot or often a data volume. And with GP three, which was available yesterday with Andy's announcement, we added four times peak throughput on top of GP two, and it's a 20% lower storage price per gigabyte per month. And we took the feedback. The number one feedback we got on GP to which was how can I separate buying throughput and I ops from storage capacity? And that is really important. That goes back to the promise of the cloud. And it goes back to being able to pick what aspect do you want to scale your storage on? And so, with GP three, you could buy a certain amount of capacity. And if you're good with that capacity, but you need more throughput, more eye ops, you can buy those independently. And that is that fine grained customization for those changing data patterns that I just talked about. And it's available for GP three today. >>Yeah, that was I looked at that, like my life is a knob that you could turn Okay, juice my eye ops. And don't touch my capacity. I'm happy there. I don't wanna pay for more of it. >>And thio add to that it's a knob you could turn if you need it. We have more throughput, more eye ops as a baseline capacity for your storage capacity than we did for GP to. But then you can tune it based on whatever you need, not just now, but in the future. >>So so given the pandemic, I mean, how has that affected E? Everybody is talking about going to the cloud, because where else you gonna go? But But how has that affected what customers are doing this year, and does it change your roadmap at all? Does it change your thinking? >>Well, I have to say, there's two main things that we've seen. One is it's really accelerated customers thinking about getting off of on premises and into the club. It's done that because nobody really wants to manage the data center. And if there's ever a year you don't want to manage the data center, it's 2020 and it's because, particularly with storage appliances, it takes a long time to acquire. Let's just take storage area networks or sense super expensive. You get a fixed amount of capacity you have to acquire. It takes months to come in you gotta rack and stack. Then you gotta change all your networking and maintain it. Ah, lot of customers don't want to do that. And so what it's done for us is it's really, uh, you know, accelerated our thinking and you saw yesterday and Andy's keynote as well. Of how do we build the first san in the cloud? And we launched Io two. In August of this year, we introduced the first nines of durability, again reinventing how people think about durability and their block storage. But just this week we now have a Iot to block Express with 2 56 K ai ops, four K megabytes of throughput in 64 terabytes of capacity, that sand level performance. And it's available for preview because I 02 is going to be your son in the cloud. And that is a direct correlation to what we hear from customers, which is how can I get away from these expensive on premises purchases like Sands and combine the performance with the elasticity that I need? So that's the first thing. How can we accelerate getting off of these very rigid procurement cycles that we have and having to manage a data center. It's not just for EBS, its for S. Trias. Well, the second thing we're hearing from customers is how can I have the agility? So you talk to customers as well. He talked to CEOs and C. T. O s. It's been a crazy year in 2020. It was one thing that a company has to do its pivot. It's really figure out. How are you going to adjust and adjust quickly? And so we have customers like Ontario Telehealth Network up in Canada, where they went from 8000 to 30,000 users because they're doing virtual health for Ontario. And we have other customers who, you know, that's a pivot. That's an increase. And we have other customers, like APS Flyer, where their goal is to just save money without changing their application. And they also did a pivot. They used the intelligence hearing storage class, which is the most popular storage class, as three offers for data lakes, and they were able to make that change save 18% on their storage cost, no change of their application, just using the capabilities of AWS. And so his ability to pivot helped you know really make us think and accelerate what we're building as well. And so one of the things that we launched just recently for intelligent hearing is we added two new archival tears to intelligent hearing. And those are archival tears, you know, just like intelligence hearing automatically watches every object industry storage and your data lake and gives you dynamic pricing based on if it's frequently accessed in a month or inflict infrequently accessed, you can turn on archival tear. And if your object your pork a file, for example, isn't access or your backup isn't access for 90 days, intelligence hearing will automatically move it to glacier characteristics of archival or too deep archive and give you the same price. A dollar, a terabyte per month. If your data is an access to 180 days, it's done automatically, and it means you save up to 90% 95% and cost on that storage. And so, if you if you think about those two trends, how can I get away from getting locked into those on premises Hardware cycles? How can I get away from it faster for sands and other hardware appliances and then the other trend is how can I pivot and use the innovation and the reinvention in our storage services to just save money and be more agile in these changing conditions? >>So I gotta ask you follow up question on staying in the cloud, because when you think of sand, you think of switches. You think of complexity, but I get that you're connecting to the performance of a sand. But you guys are all about simplicity. So how did you What's behind there? Can you take us under the covers? Just you guys build your own little storage network because it's cloud. It's gotta be fast and simple. >>That's right. When we're thinking about performance and cost, we go down to the metal for this stuff. We think about Unicosta a very fine grained level, and when we're building new technology that we know is gonna be the foundation for everything we're doing for that high performance, we went down to the protocol level. We're using something called Us RD. It's all rolled up under the hood for Block Express, and it's the foundation of that super super high performance. As you know, there's a lot of engineering behind the scenes in the cloud and for for what we've done this year, as part of that reinvention we've reinvented all the way down to the protocol way. >>Let me ask you that the two things that come up in our survey when you talk to CEOs, they say two priorities. Security is actually second cloud migration actually popped up to the top. So where does storage fit in that whole notion about cloud migration, >>Storage eyes, usually where a lot of people start, you know, Luckily, with a W s, you don't have to choose between security or cloud of migration. Security is job one for every AWS service. And so when customers air thinking about how do I move an application, they gotta move the data first. And so they start from the from the data. What storage do I use? What is the best fit for the storage and how do I best secure that's storage? And so the innovation that we dio on storage always comes with that. That combination of, you know, migration, the set of tools that we provide for getting data from on premises into the cloud. We have tools like aws data sync which do a great job of this on. Then we also look at things like how do we continue to take the profile of security forward? And one example of that is something we launched just this week called Bucket keys s three bucket keys. And it drops the cost of using kms for service side encryption with us three by over 90%. And the way it does it is that we've integrated those two services super closely together so that you can minimize the amount of costs that you make for very, very frequent request. Because in data lakes you have millions and billions of objects and our goal is to make security so cost effective people don't even think about it. That also goes for other parts of the platform. We have guard duty for us three now, and what that does is security anomaly detection automatically to track your access patterns across as three and flag when something is not quite what it should be. And so this idea of like how do I not only get my data into the cloud? But then how do I take advantage of the breath of the storage portfolio, but also the breath of the AWS services to really maximize that security profile as well as the access patterns that I want from my application. >>Well, my way hit the major announcements and unfortunately, out of time. But I really would love to have you back and go deeper and have you share your vision of what the cloud storage piece looks like going forward. Thanks so much for coming in. The Cube is great to have you. >>Great to be here. Thanks, Dave. CIA. >>See you later and keep it right, everybody. You're watching the cubes. Coverage of aws reinvent 2020 right back.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Yukon and Cloud. Native Con North America. 2020. Virtual Brought to You by Red Hat, The Cloud, Native Computing Foundation and Ecosystem Partners. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeffrey here with the Cube coming to you from our Palo Alto studios with our ongoing coverage of Q. Khan Cloud, Native Con 2020 North America. Of course, it's virtual like everything else is in 2020 but we're excited to be back. It's a terrific show, and we're excited our next guest. So let's introduce him. And we've got Sam Warner, the VP of offering manager and business line executive for storage for IBM. Sam. Great to see you. >>Great to be here. >>And also joining us is Brent Compton. He's a senior director of data services for Redhead. Great. See you, Brent. >>Thank you. >>So let's let's jump into it. Cloud Native. Everything's about cloud native. Everything's about containers. Everything is about kind of container ization and flexibility. But then there's this thing in the back and called storage. We actually have toe keep this stuff and record this stuff and have data protection for this stuff in business resiliency love to jump into it, so lets you know where does storage fit within a container world? And how is the growth of containers and the adoption containers really had you rethink the way that you think about storage and how clients you think about stories saying, Let's start with you >>e mean, it's a great question. And first off, I'm really excited about another cube con. Uh, we did Europe now, uh, doing North America so very excited to be, you know, seeing all the you know, all the news and all the people talking about the advancements around kubernetes. And we're very excited about it now. You asked a very good question. Important question. We're seeing an acceleration of digital transformation, and the people that are going through this digital transformation are using containers to now modernize the rest of their infrastructure. The interesting thing about it, though, is those initiatives are being driven out of the application teams. The business lines in an organization, and a lot of them don't understand that there's a lot of complexity to this storage piece here. So the storage teams I talked to are all of a sudden getting these initiatives thrown on them or a kind of halfway their strategy. And they're scratching their heads, trying to figure out now how they can support these applications with persistent storage. Because that's not where containers started. They started with micro services, and now now they're in a quandary. They have to deliver a certain S L. A to their customers, and they're trying to figure out how they do it in this new environment, which in a lot of cases, has been designed outside of their scope. So they're seeing issues with data protection. Some of the kind of core things that they've been dealing with for years are now. They're now having to solve all over again. So that's what we're working on helping them with reinventing how storage is deployed to help them deliver the same level of security, availability and everything they have in the past. Uh, in these new environments, >>right? So, yeah, e say you've been involved in this for a long time. You know, you've worked in hyper converge. You've worked in big data. You know, the evolution of big data continues to change, as ultimately we want to get people the information to make good decisions, but we've gone through a lot of integrations over the years. So how is it different? You know? Now how is it different with containers? What can we finally do you as a as an architect that we couldn't do before? >>Infrastructure is code. That's, I think, one of the fundamental differences of the storage admin of yesteryear versus storage admin of today today, Azaz Sam mentioned As people are developing and deploying applications, those applications need to dynamically provisioned the infrastructure dynamically provisioned what they need from compute dynamically provisioned what they need from storage dynamically provisioned network paths and so that that that element of infrastructure is code. A dynamically provisioned infrastructure is very different from well from yesterday, when applications or teams needed to. Well, when they needed storage, they would you know, they would file a ticket and typically wait. Now they make an a p A. Now they make an A p. I call and storage is dynamically provisioned and provided to their application. >>But what what I think hard to understand for the layman. And maybe it's just me, right? I It's very easy to understand dynamic infrastructure around, um compute right, I'm Pepsi. I'm running it out for the Super Bowl. I need I know how much people are gonna hit by hit my site and it's kind of easy to understand. Dynamic provisioning around networking again for the same example. What's less easy to understand its dynamic provisioning for storage? It's one thing to say, you know, there's a there's a pool of storage resource is that I'm going to dynamically provisioned for this particular after this particular moment. But one of the whole things about the dynamic is not only is it available when you need it, but I could make it big, and conversely, I could make it smaller go away. I get that for servers, and I kind of get that for networking, supporting an application and that example I just talked about. But we can't It doesn't go away a lot of the time for storage, right? That's important data that's maybe feeding another process. There's all kinds of rules and regulations, So when you talk about dynamic infrastructure for storage, it makes a lot of sense for grabbing some to provision for some new application. But it's >>hard to >>understand in terms of true dynamics in terms of either scaling down or scaling up or turning off when I don't particularly need that much capacity or even that application right now, how does it work within storage versus No, just servers or I'm grabbing them and then I'm putting it back in the pool. >>Let me start on this one, and then I'm gonna hand it off to Brent. Um, you know, let's not forget, by the way, that enterprises have very significant investments in infrastructure and they're able to deliver six nines of availability on their storage. And they have d are worked out in all of their security, encryption, everything. It's already in place, and they're sure that they can deliver on their SLS. So they want to start with that. You have to leverage that investment. So first of all, you have to figure out how to automate that into the environment, that existing sand, and that's where things like uh, a P I s the container storage interface CS I drivers come in. IBM provides that across your entire portfolio, allowing you to integrate your storage into a kubernetes environment into an open shipped environment so that it can be automated, but you have to go beyond that and be able to extend that environment, then into other infrastructure, for example, into a public cloud. So with the IBM flash system, family with our spectrum virtualized software were actually able to deploy that storage layer not only on Prem on our award winning a race, but we can also do it in the cloud. So we allow you to take your existing infrastructure investments and integrate that into your communities environment and using things like danceable, fully automated environment. I'll get into data protection before we're done talking. But I do want Brent to talk a bit about how container native storage comes into that next as well. On how you can start building out new environments for, uh, for your applications. >>Yeah, What the two of you are alluding to is effectively kubernetes services layer, which is not storage. It consumes storage from the infrastructure, Assam said. Just because people deploy Kubernetes cluster doesn't mean that they go out and get an entirely new infrastructure for that. If they're deploying their kubernetes cluster on premises, they have servers. If they're deploying their kubernetes cluster on AWS or an azure on G C P. They have infrastructure there. Uh, what the two of you are alluding to is that services layer, which is independent of storage that can dynamically provisioned, provide data protection services. As I mentioned, we have good stuff to talk about their relative to data protection services for kubernetes clusters. But that's it's the abstraction layer or data services layer that sits on top of storage, which is different. So the basics of storage underneath in the infrastructure, you know, remain the same, Jeff. But the how that storage is provisioned and this abstraction layer of services which sits on top of the storage storage might be IBM flash system array storage, maybe E m c sand storage, maybe a W S E B s. That's the storage infrastructure. But this abstraction layer that sits on top this data services layer is what allows for the dynamic interaction of applications with the underlying storage infrastructure. >>And then again, just for people that aren't completely tuned in, Then what's the benefit to the application developer provider distributor with that type of an infrastructure behind And what can they do that they just couldn't do before? >>Well, I mean Look, we're, uh, e I mean, we're trying to solve the same problem over and over again, right? It's always about helping application developers build applications more quickly helps them be more agile. I t is always trying to keep up with the application developer and always struggles to. In fact, that's where the emergency cloud really came from. Just trying to keep up with the developer eso by giving them that automation. It gives them the ability to provision storage in real time, of course, without having open a ticket like friends said. But really, the Holy Grail here is getting to a developed once and deploy anywhere model. That's what they're trying to get to. So having an automated storage layer allows them to do that and ensure that they have access to storage and data, no matter where their application gets it >>right, Right, that pesky little detail. When I have to develop that up, it does have to sit somewhere and and I don't think storage really has gotten enough of of the bright light, really in kind of this app centric, developer centric world, we talk all the time about having compute available and and software defined networking. But you know, having this software defined storage that lives comfortably in this container world is pretty is pretty interesting. In a great development, I want to shift gears a >>little bit. Just one thing. Go >>ahead, >>plus one to Sam's comments. There all the application developer wants, they want an A P I and they want the same a p I to provision the storage regardless of where their app is running. The rest of the details they usually don't care about. Sure. They wanted to perform what not give him an A p I and make it the same regardless of where they're running the app. >>Because not only do they want to perform, they probably just presume performance, right? I mean, that's the other thing is that the best in class quickly becomes presumed baseline in a very short short period of time. So you've got to just you just got to just deliver the goods, right? They're gonna get frustrated and not be productive. But I wanted to shift gears up a little bit and talk about some of the macro trends. Right? We're here towards the end of 2020. Obviously, Cove It had a huge impact on business and a lot of different ways. And it's really evolved from March, this light switch moment. Everybody work from home, too. Now, this kind of extended time, that's probably gonna go on for a while. I'm just curious some of the things that you've seen with your customers not so much at the beginning, because that was that was a special and short period of time. But mawr, as we've extended and and are looking to, um, probably extended this for a while, you know, What is the impact of this increased work from home increase attack surface? You know, some of these macro things that we're seeing that cove it has caused and any other kind of macro trends beyond just this container ization that you guys were seeing impacting your world. Start with you, Sam. >>You know, I don't think it's actually changed what people were going to do or the strategy. What I've seen it do is accelerate things and maybe changed the way they're getting their, uh and so they're actually a lot of enterprises were running into challenges more quickly than they thought they would. And so they're coming to us and asking us to help them. Saw them, for example, backing up their data and these container environments as you move mission critical applications that maybe we're gonna move more slowly. They're realizing that as they've moved them, they can't get the level of data protection they need. And that's why actually we just announced it at the end of October. Updates to our modern data protection portfolio. It now is containerized. It could be deployed very easily in an automated fashion, but on top of that, it integrates down into the A P. I layer down into CSE drivers and allows you to do container where snapshots of your applications so you could do operational recovery. If there's some sort of an event you can recover from that you can do D R. And you can even use it for data migration. So we're helping them accelerate. So the biggest I think requests I'm getting from our customers, and how can you help us accelerate? And how can you help us fix these problems that we went running into as we tried to accelerate our digital transformation? >>Brent, Anyone that you wanna highlight? >>Mm. Okay. Ironically, one of my team was just speaking with one of the cruise lines, um, two days ago. We all know what's happened them. So if we just use them as an example, I'm clearly our customers need to do things differently now. So plus one to Sam's statement about acceleration on I would add another word to that which is agility, you know, frankly, they're having to do things in ways they never envisioned 10 months ago. So there need to cut cycle times to deploy effectively new ways of how they transact business has resulted in accelerated poll for these types of infrastructure is code technologies. >>That's great. The one that jumped in my mind. Sam, is you were talking. We've we've had a lot of conversations. Obvious security always comes up on baking security and is is a theme. But ransomware as a specific type of security threat and the fact that these guys not only wanna lock up your data, but they want to go in and find the backup copies and and you know and really mess you up so it sounds like that's even more important to have the safe. And we're hearing, you know, all these conversations about air gaps and dynamic air gaps and, you know, can we get air gaps and some of these infrastructure set up so that we can, you know, put put those backups? Um, and recovery data sets in a safe place so that if we have a ransomware issue, getting back online is a really, really important thing, and it seems to just be increasing every day. We're seeing things, you know, if you can actually break the law sometimes if you if you pay the ransom because where these people operate, there's all kind of weird stuff that's coming out of. Ransomware is a very specific, you know, kind of type of security threat that even elevates, you know, kind of business continuity and resiliency on a whole nother level for this one particular risk factor. When if you're seeing some of that as well, >>it's a great point. In fact, it's clearly an industry that was resilient to a pandemic because we've seen it increase things. Is organized crime at this point, right? This isn't the old days of hackers, you know, playing around this is organized crime and it is accelerating. And that's one thing. I'm really glad you brought up. It's an area we've been really focused on across our whole portfolio. Of course, IBM tape offers the best most of the actual riel air gapping, physical air gapping We could take a cartridge offline. But beyond that we offer you the ability to dio you know, different types of logical air gaps, whether it's to a cloud we support. In fact, we just announced Now the spectrum protect. We have support for Google Cloud. We already supported AWS Azure IBM Cloud. So we give you the ability to do logical air gapping off to those different cloud environments. We give you the ability to use worm capability so you can put your backups in a vault that can't be changed. So we give you lots of different ways to do it. In our high end enterprise storage, we offer something called Safeguarded copy where we'll actually take data off line that could be recovered almost instantly. Something very unique to our storage that gives you, for the most mission critical applications. The fastest path recovery. One of things we've seen is some of our customers have done a great job creating a copy. But when the event actually happens, they find is gonna take too long to recover the data and they end up having to pay the ransom anyway. So you really have to think through an Indian strategy on we're able to help customers do a kind of health checks of their environment and figure out the right strategy. We have some offerings to help come in and do that for our customers. >>Shift gears a little bit, uh, were unanswerable fest earlier this year and a lot of talk about automation. Obviously, answer was part of the Red Hat family, which is part of the IBM family. But, you know, we're seeing Mawr and Mawr conversations about automation about, you know, moving the mundane and the air prone and all the things that we shouldn't be doing as people and letting people doom or high value stuff. When if you could talk a little bit about the role of automation, that the kind of development of automation and how you're seeing that, you know, impact your deployments, >>right? You want to take that one first? >>Yeah, sure. Um, s o the first is, um when you think about individual kubernetes clusters. There's a level of automation that's required there. I mean, that's the fundamental. I mean, back to the infrastructure is code that's inherently. That's automation. To effectively declare the state of what you want your application, your cluster to be, and that's the essence of kubernetes. You declare what the state is, and then you pass that declaration to kubernetes, and it makes it so. So there's the kubernetes level automation. But then there's, You know what happens for larger enterprises when you have, you know, tens or hundreds of kubernetes clusters. Eso That's an area of Jeff you mentioned answerable. Now that's an area of with, you know, the work, the red hats doing the community for multi cluster management, actually in the community and together with IBM for automating the management of multiple clusters. And last thing I'll touch on here is that's particularly important as you go to the edge. I mean, this is all well and good when you're talking about, you know, safe raised floor data center environments. But what happens when you're tens or hundreds or even thousands of kubernetes clusters are running in an oil field somewhere? Automation becomes not only nice to have, but it's fundamental to the operation. >>Yeah, but let me just add onto that real quick. You know, it's funny, because actually, in this cove it era, you're starting to see that same requirement in the data center in the core data center. In fact, I would say that because there's less bodies now in the data center, more people working remotely. The automation in need for automation is actually actually accelerating as well. So I think what you said is actually true for the core data center now as well, >>right? So I wanna give you guys the last word before before we close the segment. Um, I'm gonna start with you, Brent. Really, From a perspective of big data and you've been involved again in big data for a long time. As you look back, it kind of the data warehouse era. And then we had kind of this whole rage with the Hadoop era, and, you know, we just continue to get more and more sophisticated with big data processes and applications. But at the end of the day, still about getting the right data to the right person at the right time to do something about it. I wonder if if you can, you know, kind of reflect over that journey and where we are now in terms of this mission of getting, you know, the right data to the right person at the right time so they could make the right decision. >>I think I'll close with accessibility. Um, that Z these days, we you know, the data scientists and data engineers that we work with. The key problem that they have is is accessibility and sharing of data. I mean, this has been wonderfully manifest. In fact, we did some work with the province of Ontario. You could look that stop hashtag house my flattening eso the work with them to get a pool of data. Scientists in the community in the province of Ontario, Canada, toe work together toe understand how to track co vid cases s such so that government could make intelligent responses and policy based on based on the fax so that that need highlights the accessibility that's required from today's, you know, yesteryear. It was maybe, uh, smaller groups of individual data scientists working in silos. Now it's people across industry as manifest by that That need accessibility as well as agility. They need to be able to spin up an environment that will allow them to in this case, um, to develop and deploy inference models using shared data sets without going through years of design. So accessibility on back to the back to the the acceleration and agility that Sam talked about. So I'll close with those words >>That's great. And the consistent with the democratization of two is another word that we're here, you know, over and over again in terms of, you know, getting it out of the hands of the data scientists and getting it into the hands of the people who are making frontline business decisions every day. And Sam for you, for your clothes. I love for you Thio reflect on kind of the changing environment in terms of your requirements for the types of workloads that you now are, you know, looking to support. So it's not just taking care of the data center and relatively straightforward stuff. But you've got hybrid. You've got multi cloud, not to mention all the media, the developments in the media between tape and obviously flash, um, spinning, spinning drives. But you know, really, We've seen this huge thing with flash. But now, with cloud and the increased kind of autumn autonomy ization of of units to be able to apply big batches in small batches to particular workloads across all these different requirements. When if you could just share a little bit about how you guys are thinking about, you know, modernizing storage and moving storage forward. What are some of your what are some of your your priorities? What are you looking forward to, uh, to be able to deliver, You know, basically the stuff underneath all these other applications. I mean, applications basically is data whether you I and some in some computer on top. You guys something underneath the whole package? >>Yeah. Yeah. You know, first of all, you know, back toe what Brent was saying, Uh, data could be the most valuable asset of an enterprise. You could give an enterprising, incredible, uh, competitive advantage as an incumbent if you could take advantage of that data using modern analytics and a I. So it could be your greatest asset. And it can also be the biggest inhibitor to digital transformation. If you don't figure out how to build a new type of modern infrastructure to support access to that data and support these new deployment models of your application. So you have to think that through. And that's not just for your big data, which the big data, of course, is extremely important and growing at incredible pace. All this unstructured data, You also have to think about your mission critical applications. We see a lot of people going through their transformation and modernization of S a p with move toe s four Hana. They have to think about how that fits into a multi cloud environment. They need to think about the life cycle of their data is they go into these new modern environments. And, yes, tape is still a very vibrant part of that deployment. So what we're working on an IBM has always been a leader in software defined storage. We have an incredible portfolio of capabilities. We're working on modernizing that software to help you automate your infrastructure. And sure, you can deliver enterprise class sls. There's no nobody's going to alleviate the requirements of having, you know, near perfect availability. You don't because you're moving into a kubernetes environment. Get a break on your downtime. So we're able to give that riel enterprise class support for doing that. One of the things we just announced that the end of October was we've containerized our spectrum scale client, allowing you now toe automate the deployment of your cluster file system through communities. So you'll see more and more of that. We're offering you leading modern native protection for kubernetes will be the first to integrate with OCP and open ship container storage for data protection. And our flashes from family will continue to be on the leading edge of the curve around answerable automation and C s I integration with who are already so we'll continue to focus on that and ensure that you could take advantage of our world class storage products in your new modern environment. And, of course, giving you that portability between on from in any cloud that you choose to run in >>exciting times. No, no shortage of job security for you, gentlemen, that's for sure. All right, Well, Brent, Sam, thanks for taking a few minutes and, uh, is great to catch up. And again. Congratulations on the success. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alrighty, Sammy's Brent. I'm Jeff, You're watching the cubes. Continuing coverage of Q. Khan Cloud, Native Con North America 2020. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>>from around the globe. >>It's the Cube with coverage >>of Coop con and cloud, Native con Europe 2020 Virtual brought to you by Red Hat, The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back. I'm stew minimum. And this is the Cube's coverage of cube con cloud, native con Europe 2020 of course, happening virtual this year. We always love when we get to talk to the practitioners in this community. So much happening in the developer space and really excited to have on the program first time guest in a very timely topic, we welcome our bod. Hassani, Who is the back and lead for house? My flattening, which is a joint research project. It related to code 19 associated with the University of Toronto. About thanks so much for joining us. >>Thank you. >>All right, so maybe explain how is my flattening? You know, the term flattening the curve is something that I think everyone around the globe is familiar with. Now, um, you know, Canada, you've got some great initiatives going. So help us understand how you got involved in this in what? What is the project? Sure, So I'll >>take a stock to March, which now feels like years ago. Um, back in March, way could look across in Europe, and we saw that. You know, I feel we're being overwhelmed. This new Cobra thing was happening, and there seems to be nothing happening here despite the fact that we know what was going on in Europe. So this whole collaboration started. It's really the brainchild of Dr Ben. Fine. Who's the radiologist that actually and partners on the idea was, Why don't we put all the data that is related to co bid, uh, for the province of Ontario, where I'm from in one place, right. So for the data mining people, like a lot of people on the on the program here and for the data minded people of Ontario to be able to have the information they need to make targeted both of the general public on that policy makers to really empower them with the right tools. We know the data was siloed in health care, and we know, you know, when this whole thing started, everything was on a website, you would get a daily update, but it wasn't something that you could analyze. Something you couldn't use. Really? It was unusable. How everything kind of started it. What if we did something about that? What if we brought all the data in one place? What if we visualize it and put all the resources in place that was released? How is my fattening got a Which is this initiative that I got involved with back in March and what we've been doing is building a number of dashboards based on Kobe data that are close to real time as possible. Doing a number of analyses. Um, the answer, your specific questions and doing deep dives into specific question. We have a team of scientific experts where our leadership, um you know Dr Ben Fine. I mentioned earlier. There's Dr Laura Rosello, the epidemiologists out of Ah, Perceptron. Oh, and then we have a Dr Alley that he's Austin Oy. Who the data science lead over it. Quick. Also, we got this kind of three perfect or the organization of the right talent required, and we've been trying Yeah, and whatever way we can by making the data transparent, >>Yeah, there's been a lot of initiatives, obviously that have had to accelerate really fast during this time it bring us inside a little bit. How long did it take to spend the site up? How do you make sure you're getting good data in Who decides? You know which visualizations love to hear a little bit about? You know how that has matured over the months that you've had project out there >>for sure. So when we started what people were doing out on Twitter, really, where there's a lot of this activity was happening was people were grabbing expect sheets and typing out every day what was happening. And I mean, coming from I'm not by any means a technical developer. That's not what I specialize in, but having some development dot com, and it makes sense that things could be done so much better. So we started to build data pipelines. Starting in March. We had a couple of government sources that were public. It was basically scrapping the government website and recording that in a database. Um, and then we start to visualize that we're using, you know, whatever we could that we started with Pablo just because we had a few. We're trying to build a community, right? So a community people want help and do this. But we have some tableau experts on our team and our community and, you know, the way we went. So we had the database. We started to connect with tableau and visualize it. Do you know, besides into and also that and then the project has matured from that web stopper ever since, with more complex data, pipeline building and data from different sources and visualizing them in different ways and expanding our dash boarding and expanding our now >>well in the cube con show that we're here at is so much about community. Obviously, open source is a major driver of what's going on there. So it sounded like that was that was a big piece of what you're working on. Help us bring inside out of that community build. I'd love to hear if there's any projects and tools you mentioned tableau for visualization, but anything from open source also that you're using. >>So actually, I I've never been involved in open source project before That this was kind of my first attempt, if you will, on we started, uh, on get hub quite early on. Actually, one of the partners I got involved in re shots was was Red hat off course. They're known for doing open source and for selling at it, and we have some amazing help from them into how we can organize community. Um, and we started to move the community over from getting up to get lab. You know, we started to the way we collaborate in slack. Ah, lot of times. And there's a lot of silos that we started to break those down and move them into get lab. And all conversations were happening in public that would beam or more closer to an open source approach. And honestly, a lot of people that are involved are our students, grass students who want to help our people in the community that want to help people from all kind of different backgrounds. I think we're really bringing in open source is not not a known concept in a lot of these clinical scientific communities, right? It's a lot more developer oriented, and I think it's been it's been learning opportunity for everyone involved. Uh, you know, something that may seem kind of default or basic have been a big learning opportunity for everyone of, you know, issues shocking and labeling and using comments and I'll going back into our own old ways of like, emailing people are people. Um, they had been digital art to it, and we'll get a lot of the big one. Um, we went from having this kind of monolithic container rising it and using Kubernetes, of course, were developed with the help of Red Hat. We're able to move everything over to their open shift dedicated platform, and that was that allowed us to do is really do a lot of do things a lot better and do things in a more mature way. Um, that's that's quite a bit of information, but that's kind of high level. What it? >>Well, no, it's great. We One of the things we've been poking out for the last few years is you know, in the early days you talk about kubernetes. It was Oh, I need things at a scale on And, you know, while I'm sure that the amount of data and scale is important, speed was a major major piece of what you need to be involved in and you'll be able to rally and James So can you talk a little bit more. Just open shift. What did that bring to the environment? Any aspects related to the data that red hat help you with. >>So a few things there. The one thing that open shift I think really helped us with was really mean and how to help us with generally was establishing a proper see I CD pipeline. Right. So now we we use git lab itself. We have get lab runners that everyone, basically all developers involved have their own branches when they push code to get auto. We like to their branch. It just made everything a lot easier and a lot faster to be able to push things quickly without worrying about everything breaking That was definitely a big plus. Um, the other thing that we're doing with, uh that is using containers. Actually, we've been working on this open data hub, which is, you know, working on another great open source project which is again built on kubernetes and trying to break down some of the barriers when it comes to sharing data in the healthcare system. Um, we're using that and we, with the help of red, how we're able to deploy that to be able to collaborate between hospitals, share data securely. You do security analytics and try to break down some of these silos that I've gone up due to fears over security and find the so That's another great example open source helping us kind of pushing forward. >>Well, that that's I'm glad you brought that up The open data hub, that collaboration with other places when you have data being able to share that, you know, has to be important talk. This was a collaboration to start with, you know, what's the value of being able to work with other groups and to share your data beyond beyond just the community that's working on it. >>So if you think about what's happening right now in a lot of hospitals in Canada, and I mean it's the same in the US is everyone is in this re opening stage. We shut down the economy. We should down a lot of elective surgeries and a lot of procedures. I know hospitals are trying to reopen right so and trying to figure out how to go back to their old capacity, and in that they're all trying to solve the same problem in different ways. So everyone is in their silo trying to tackle the same problems in a way. So what we're trying to do is basically get everyone together and collaborate on this open, open source environments, right? And what this open data allows us to do in to some degree alleviate some of the fears over sharing data so that we're not all doing the same thing in parallel are not talking to each other. We're able to share code, share data, get each other's opinions and, you know, use your resources in the healthcare system or official the drill, you know, all trying to address the same goal here. >>So imagine if you've had a lot of learnings from this project that you've done. Have you given any thought to? You know, once you get past that kind of the immediate hurdle of covert 19 you know what? Will this technology be able to help you going forward? You know, what do you see? Kind of post dynamic, if you will. >>I think the last piece I touched on, there is a big thing that I'm really hoping we'll be able to push forward past the pandemic. I think what? What the pandemic has shown us is the need for more transparency and more collaboration and being able to be more agile in response to things faster. And that's know how they're operating. And I think we know that now we can see that. I'm hoping that can be used as an opportunity to be able to bring people together to collaborate on projects like, How's my funding outside of this, right? We're not Not only the next pandemic. Hopefully I never come. Um but but for other, bigger problem that we face every day, collaboration can only help things, not tender thing. I'm hoping that's one big side effect that comes out of this. And I think the data transparency thing is is another big one that I'm hoping can improve outside of the situation. >>Yeah, I I wonder if I can ask you just a personal question. We've heard certain organizations say that, you know, years of planning have been executed in months. When I think about all the technologies that you had thrown at you, all the new things you learned often that something that would have taken years. But you didn't month. So how do you work through that? You know, there's only 24 hours in any day, and we do need some sleep. So what was important from your standpoint? What partners into tools helped, you know, and And the team, you know, take advantage of all of these new technologies. >>Yeah, honestly, I think that the team is really, really important. We've had an amazing set of people that are quite diverse and then usually would, quite honestly, never be seen in the same room together just because of all the different backgrounds that are there. Um, so that was a big driver. I think everyone was motivated to get things done. What happens when we first launched the site? We, you know, put it together. Basic feedback mechanism. Where we where we could hear from the public on. We've got an outpouring of support, people saying that they found that information really useful. And I think that pushed everyone to work harder and ah, and kind of reinforces our belief that this is what we're doing is helpful on, is making a difference in someone's life. And I think everyone that helped everyone work harder in terms of some of the tools that we use. Yeah, I totally agree. I think there was a 1,000,000 things that we all learned. Um, and it definitely wasn't amazing. Growing opportunity, I think, for the whole group. Um, I I don't know if there's a There's any wisdom I can impart. They're more than I think we were just being pushed by the need and being driven by the support that we're getting. Okay, >>well, you know, when there's a necessity to get things done, it's great to see the team execute the last question I have for you. You've got all this data. You've got visualizations. You've been going through a lot of things any any interesting learnings that you had or something that you were. You able to visualize things in a certain way in the community, reacted anything that you've learned along the way. That may be surprised you. >>That's a really interesting question there. I think the biggest, the biggest learning opportunity or surprise for me was what? How much people are willing to help if you just write, um, a lot of people involved. I mean, this is a huge group of volunteers who are dedicating their time to this because they believe in it on because they think they're doing the right thing and they're doing it for a bigger cause. It sounds very cheesy. Um, but I think that was wonderful to me to see that we can bring together such diverse people to dedicate their time for freedom to do something for the public. >>Yeah, well, and along that note, I I see on the website there is a get involved. But so is there anything you know, skill set or people that you're looking for, uh, further to help the team >>100%. So I think when I every time we do a presentation of any thought really got for anyone who's watching to just go on our site and get involved, there's a 1,000,000 different things that you can get involved with. If you're a developer, we can always use help. If you're a data, this person, we can always use help If you're a designer, honestly, there were a community driven organization. Uhm and we can always use more people in that community. That's that's the unique thing about the organization. 100%. Please do to house my finding, Dr and you get involved in get Lab. >>Well, so far, but thank you so much for sharing. We definitely encourage the unity get involved. It's projects like this that are so critically important. Especially right now during the pandemic. Thanks so much for joining. And thank you for all the work the team did. >>Thank you for having me. >>Alright. And stay tuned for more coverage from Cube Con Cloud native on 2020 in Europe Virtual Edition. I'm Stew Minimum. And thank you for watching the Cube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

>> live from Anaheim, California. It's the queue covering nutanix dot next twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back, everyone to the cubes. Live coverage of nutanix dot Next here in Anaheim, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Furrier. We have two guests for this next segment. We have Stephanie Scare Aldi. She is the director of operations and support for Electra. Thank you so much for coming on the cues. And we have James Ellery, director innovation and governance at Electra. Thank you, James. >> Thanks for having us. >> So I want to start with you, James. Tell our viewers a little bit about electorates. Ontario, based for our viewers who are not familiar. What do what do you do? What do you about? >> So we are a energy solutions provider in Ontario, Canada. Basically, we are an ldc a local distribution company, but we're trying to transition from the poles and wires into really energy solutions provider. We We're about a million customers are approaching a million customers right now and wear actually four utility companies that came together to form Electra. And we just recently emerged with a fifth now, so We're rapidly growing in the in Ontario, and we have very much more growth to come. >> It's all those mergers. How does I t all fit together? Different systems, all kind of legacy. Mishmash. What's what's What's the environment like? >> So the environment Right now there is a tremendous amount of data center Stephanie's actually leading our data center consolidation project. There are tremendous amount of data centers across a fast geographical location, and we're using NUTANIX actually to consolidate everything onto a single platform right now. So there's a lot of work to be done. Definitely a lot of integration to be done, but we're confident that we'LL get it all done and we want to move to new tanks by phone. >> So right now we have about, I think, eleven data centers and we've been mandated to get down to two. So we're use up utilizing technology like nutanix too kind of, you know, get down and scale ability. So wait >> here for a lot of customs from nutanix around, how it's been a great system for manageability and also getting rid of some older gear, whether it's old GMC Cem Dale stuff. So we're seeing a lot of, you know, go from twenty four racks to six. This is kind of the ratios pushing stuff from eight weeks. Tow two hours, new operational benefits. How close are you guys up to that now? Because you get all this stuff you consolidating down the merger's makes a lot of sense. What's some of the operational benefits you seeing with nutanix That you could share, >> I think, is a per example that you just gave. We're working on a front office consolidation project and we're moving. We're doubling our VD i environment, and we actually just got three new nodes in a few weeks ago and it took a matter of two hours to get everything spun up and ready. So traditionally, it would take us weeks of planning and getting someone in and specialized technicians and now make a phone call a few hours and it's done. So you see, like already the benefits of you know growing are our infrastructure, and it's enabling us to merge faster with different utilities. >> I want to actually back up now and talk about the journey to Nutanix and talk about life before nutanix and now life after it. What was that what were sort of the problems that you were trying to solve? And why was Nutanix the answer >> So I could speak to that way back in twenty fifteen? We're looking at video, and we're implementing it across organization. And we're running its issues on three tier architecture where whenever there was a performance issue, we would talk to the sand guy and we'LL talk to the server guy and we talked to the networking guy. And although everyone's trying to help everyone sort of looking at each other, saying, Okay, where is this problem? Really, really land? And the issue with that is, as you guys know what VD I I mean, user performance and user experience is key, right? That's King. So you know, when you're trying to take away someone's physical desktop and give him a virtual desktop, they want the same or better performance. And anytime we had an issue, we had to resolve it rapidly. So when we look at everything we said, Okay, this is okay, but it's not sustainable for the scale, ability in the growth that we had, especially because with, you know, ah media environment, its scales very rapidly and If the application scares wrapped scales rapidly, you need the infrastructure to scale as rapidly as your application and perform just as good. So what happened was we looked at nutanix. We said, You know what? If we can look at a single pane of glass to figure out where any performance issues lie, that makes operations much more operations, that management administration much easier for us. And that's really where we started our journey with nutanix. We went from a three note cluster to start and we're up to fourteen nodes now, just in our VD I cluster alone. >> And what about about the future? What? What is the future hold in terms of this partnership, >> I think for us were really hoping to go to fully H V in the next six or twelve months. Uh, I know, James. We're really pushing it and trying to get that in because, you know, way want to simplify our technologies. And I think by moving to a Chevy, I think, you know, we'LL save some money. >> So what we're looking to do with Nutanix isn't you know, there's been a lot of wins for us moving to NUTANIX, especially with regards to support Support's been fantastic. I mean, you know, although we don't like to call support because I mean something's probably wrong way love calling you guys because every time we call support, it's, you know, everyone's always there to help. And I'm not only the support from the support team, but also through our venders or a vendor are counts, you know, I've or who we love way love the whole team because they're there for you to help me. We run into some pretty significant issues. One of the things that happened to us was we had some changing workloads in our media environment. Through no fault of nutanix is you know when when we introduce some additional workloads, we didn't anticipate some of the challenges that would come along with introducing those workloads. And what happened was we filled up our hot storage rather rapidly. Nutanix came in right away because we call them up and said, You know, we're having big performance issues. We need some help and they brought in P E O. C notes to help us get over the hump. They were there for us. I mean, within a week, they got us right back up and running and fully operational and even better performance than we had before. So until we could get our own notes procured and in house, which was fantastic, I've never seen that levels from another organization. So we love the support from Nutanix on DH. Since then, we've grown. So we've actually looked at nutanix for General server computer platform as well. And we're doing Christ Cross hyper visor Support across high provides a replication Sorry from production to D. R. So we're actually running Acropolis. Indy are running GM. Where in production. But has Stephanie alluded to? We're trying to get off of'Em were completely, you know, everyone talks about the attacks. We don't like the V attacks with Phil on a baby anywhere for something that's commodity. And we're looking to repurpose that money so we can look at other things such as you ten exciting way very much. Want to move to the cloud for D R. And that's sort of our direction. >> OK, so you guys have the m we're now, not you Not yet off the anywhere, but you plan to be >> playing to be Yes. >> Okay, So what's it going to look like How long is that gonna take or what is that? We're >> really hoping at the next six to twelve months. So I think we're really gonna push hard at. We've been talking to some people and it seems like it's gonna be a pretty smooth transition, So looking forward to it. And I think our team is really looking for true as well. That's >> one of the challenges right. That the team is really is one of the challenges because we've merged and there's a lot of change going on organization. It's difficult to throw more change at people, right? There's a whole human component, Teo everything that we do. So you know Well, that's why we moved GHB into d. R. To start because we said, You know what, give the operations folks time to look at it, timeto play with it, time to get familiar with it. And then we'LL make the change in production. But like we said, you know, moving over age, he's going to save us a ton of money like a ton of money that we can repurpose elsewhere to really start moving the business forward >> about operations for second. Because one of the things you told earlier is that consolidation? You're leading the project at the VD. I think we're new workloads. There's always gonna be problems. Always speed bumps and hot spots, as they say. But what has changed with the advent of software and Dev ops and automation starts to come into it. How do you see that playing out? Because you tell this is a software company. So you guys knew them when they were five years ago Now, But this is the trend in I t. Operations have clean program ability for the infrastructure. What's your view on that? What's your reaction to that? And you guys getting theirs at the goal >> that is >> like part of our road map. And we're gonna be working with our NUTANIX partners t build a roll map, actually, the next coming few weeks. So because we are emerging all these utilities, we'd love to get automation and orchestration, and we actually have another budget in three years. So it is on our road map. We want to get there right, because we want to have her staff work on business strategy. We don't want their fingers to keyboards. We want them actually working with the business and solution ing and not, you know, changing tapes or working on supporting a system when we don't have to do that anymore. Because now there's so it's so much simpler running any tennis environment. I know James is saying a lot of change for employees. There used to be M where Nutanix is new to a lot of them. I think they're quickly seeing the benefit of managing it because now they get to do things that are a little bit more fun than just managing an environment. >> And this is point cost to repurpose what you're paying for a commodity for free. And if you can repurpose and automata way the manual labor that's boring and repetitive, moving people to a higher value activity. >> Exactly. And we love the message we heard today about being invisible. >> Yeah, I love that >> way, Lovett. I mean, that's essentially we wanted. The business doesn't really care what you're doing behind the scenes, right? They just want their applications to work. They want everything to work seamlessly. So that's what we want to get, too. We want to get to that invisibility where we're moving the business, Ford. We're enabling them through technology, but they don't need to worry about the back end of what's actually going on. >> Stephanie, I want to ask you about both a personal and professional passion of yours, and that is about bringing more women into technology. You are a senior woman in technology, and we know we know the numbers. There is a dearth of female leaders. There is a dearth of underrepresented minorities, particularly in in high level management roles. So I want to hear from you both from a personal standpoint in terms of what your thoughts are on this problem and why, why we have this problem and then also what you, an elector are doing to remedy it. >> Yeah, I think you know, I'm really lucky to work at Electra because we actually have a diversion inclusion committee that I'm part of with a lot of stem organizations. But I think you know, there's all these great programs going on, and but I still don't see enough women in this in this industry, and I think a lot of it stems from you walk into a room, and if you're the only one of you it's really intimidating. So I think we really need to work on making people feel more welcome. You know, getting more women in cedar senior leadership positions and kind of bring them to events like this, gaming them on the Internet. Going to the university is going to the schools and talking to education and talking to, you know, CEOs and seals that don't have sea level women executives and saying, You know, there's a business benefit toe having diversity of all kinds in an organization, you know, you know, strength lies in differences, not in similarities. And I think we can really grow businesses and have that value if we have different types of opinions. And I think there's, you know, statistic shows when you have more diversity, your business is more successful. So I think senior leaders should pay attention and, you know, purposely try to hire more a more diverse workforce >> and what do you have anything to add to that? I mean, I know that it that it's maybe tougher for a man to weigh in on this issue, but at the same time it is one that affects all of us. >> Absolutely. And I think seventy, said it best right when you bring in, you know, multiple bill from different ethnicities from different genders. I mean, it's it's that wealth of knowledge and everyone brings from the different experiences they have in life, and I think that's what you need. You don't want to know the collective all thinking the same way you want the collective that bring the diversity into your organization. And I think you know, when I was in school, we had one woman in my entire computer engineering class, and you know that you wanted to see that change, right? I love to see more of that disease. More women being in the work force, especially within technology. >> I >> think that's Ah, it's fantastic for technology. >> Stephanie, What's your advice for young girls out there? Maybe in high school college, who are having gravitating towards either it's computer science or some sort of stem related field that might be intimidated? >> I think the one important thing you can do is like really rely on your family and friends for encouragement, cause I think sometimes it is gonna be intimidating, you know, For me I'd walk into a course and I was the only female my computer networking class. But I had, like my father, always encouraged me to push me to say, like, Don't ever be intimately. Don't ever be scared and you need a little bit of a fix. Came because for a little bit it is going to be just you in a room. But I think the more you speak up and the more you just kind of push yourself, I think it is going to get better. And I think it's almost kind of cool when you're the only female. Because you feel that pride. I want to do better. I want to do better for all of us to say like we can be. Not just a good, even better. >> Great. So great advice. Yeah. Stephanie James. Thank you both. So much for coming on. Thanks for having us. Pleasure talking, Teo. Thanks. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have so much more of nutanix dot Next coming up in just a little bit

>> Live from Orlando, Florida It's the que covering Accelerate nineteen. Brought to you by important >> Welcome back to the Cubes Coverage of Fortinet. Accelerate twenty nineteen. Live from Orlando, Florida I'm Lisa Martin with Peter Burress, and we're welcoming to the keep for the first time. Jeff Fully senior business development manager from Siemens. Jeff. Thanks for joining Peter and me today. >> Thanks for having me appreciate >> it. So everybody knows Seaman's in some form or fashion or capacity. Ah, here we are in a cyber security event. Talk to us a little bit about what Seamen's and Fortinet are doing together as partners and a little bit about your role in business. >> Sure, so the organization the part of semen that I'm a part of, is more of a digital industries. So what we do is ah, lot of NT operational technology environment area. So it's it's more of the harsh environments oil and gas, waste water, rail transportation. So we do a lot of the communication and the cyber security around that. We're working with Fortinet in order to bring the best of the practices on cybersecurity into that OT environment. So we're doing a collaboration between the two because there's that communication that needs to happen. They still need that access point into at OT environment >> Now. Explain why? Because because, you know, guys have grown up presuming that everything was going to be connected and a lot of business leaders presume that everything's going to be connected. The okey guys have had to work in a very, very different world where they had to do real time work, sometimes for thirty years. So take us a little bit through that dynamic. And why is it that today we actually Khun, start having conversations about how these two things come together, work together and generate value together? >> Sure, so typically from operational technology environment when they put something together, is normally for a twenty or thirty year span. They want to put something in the network and the environment that's going to last. That's going to be out there. It's not. They don't change it. They don't upgrade it normally, as they do in the ninety environment, which typically has like a five year life cycle. So in OT environment, what's happening? Noah's know times are changing and all these cyber attacks are happening. They're being mandated to do this. A good example is, in two thousand five, President Obama signed into a legislative order that you, we must in the US secure critical infrastructure and part of that securing that, saying We're going to make sure that you know we're not going to be happy because in the utility market, if we take down four of the major interconnects between their power grid than that stated that us had become a third world country in eight days. So what we're doing is >> not do that. >> No, we're trying to help prevent that. So by doing so, we need to add security. And historically, from noti environment, it's always been about there's not been remote access. There's not been that connectivity. It's always been about electrical and mechanical devices. But now is these devices are getting smarter. They're getting Mohr intelligent. There's more information to get out of it. You get more efficiency and more information out of so you can know. Do your job better. You could do remote access. And like in Florida, here we have a bunch of hurricanes. There's the ability to say after a hurricane, I could get remote access or I could do that communication out to these devices where you wouldn't be able to do periodically in the past. So because of that, because connectivity we need to start securing our infrastructure to make sure that no, as we get access to that potential, that the bad guys get access to those devices, too. So we're working with our product portfolio and partners like Fortinet in order to make sure that we're applying the best of the security in the O t world. >> So when this convergence, we're talking probably with folks who are not used to change. Change is hard for everybody. However, as you said and back in two thousand five became a presidential mandate. But also it >> was two thousand fifteen >> two thousand five. Obama signed in tow the listen president till two thousand. And I'm sorry. >> Thank you for the mass >> housing one. >> Yeah, just years ago on the math expert. So just a few years ago, there was this mandate from President Obama which we clarified was only four years ago. So but historically, folks that are not used to having to change system so quickly. Yet here's this mandate. There's also this increasing abundance of separate tax. How do you have those, I presume, difficult conversations with Theo Teesside about the opportunity for OT convergence and the benefits and why they have to get on board with this. >> So historically, from the OT side, they've been very reluctant to do something like this. They want to own their own environment. They want to do that. It's always been the perception that if you bring that cyber security of the world into that OT environment, it's going to hinder their operations. But that's not really the case. The convergence of T and O. T has been happening for decades now. I started my job seem it's in two thousand in the telecom world, and we were doing that convergence of n ot back in two thousand when we're doing voiceover. I pay right because that was happening back then. So this convergence of Tino Tee is It's an ongoing thing. It's just in. Different markets are different industries, so now that we're doing that, we're bringing it in there. They're starting to have that conversation, but then it becomes a really who owns that The operation are who owns that security? No ot still wants to drive their own. They want to own their own. Where I saying, Look, I know we have the knowledge we have experience. Let's help you get there So there's generally a demarcation point that they've come to an agreement on where I Teo say we're going to help you to this point. And then you can own all the critical assets out on the far end. >> So let's talk about that demarcation point. What constitutes what characterizes that demarcation point? What are where are we today? Because we're moving from hardwired, uh, thirty year footprint to increasingly wireless, uh, faster. We're moving towards that, but we're how far our way when you talk to customers. What is what are the attributes of that demarcation point? It's >> interesting because we sew it. That goes everything we saw of customers that are on dialogue, communication, serial communication, Ethernet fiber, wireless. Lt s o. There's a broad range of that we call the pipe. So you know the pipe is the communication just between the side down to the OT side really helps to find that demarcation is when you get down to what are the critical assets, what's really the operation or what's making money for that company on those of the assets, which really the operational organization's own and then the side really provides that communication down to that to that ball. >> Got it. So it's really business specific. But are we starting to see Are we started to see? Well, it's got a little bit more processing power or it's got a little bit more. There's the's security attributes that are associated with it or ot guys picking up on T related security, starting elements of it faster than others >> they are on. But really, it's it's ah, it's region and as industry specific and it's really what's driving it So like in the U. S. Like I meant in the utility sector, three utility sector has requirements called no exit, and these narcs IP requirements said you must do these things and they get very specific to the point of. You must have something that will detect anti virus or malware. You must do this if you look into Canada. Canada just recently passed away. Be requirements for Ontario and those are based upon framework cyber security framework to do that. So it's really debate the industry that they're in and the region that they're in. That's what's really driving that our how deeper and far they're going to go. >> And it goes back to your original point that it's being driven by regulatory edict or a past exposure and trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. >> They don't want to make the news, and they don't want to be pushed by the government. But those were really the two things in the operational technology or environment that's really driving for that cyber. >> Thank you, Sierra, One of your favorite success stories that really highlights the opportunities that O. T. And I t Convergence have enabled for customers of forty nine Seaman's >> Oh yeah, there's, ah again because I'm global experience. No, I've got around the world, but actually one of the favorites is Actually, there's two of them that have happened just here in North America, Oneness in Texas and one is in Canada. And both of these requirements came to say that they had a specific date, that they needed to make requirements to meet the regulatory otherwise, that they were going to get fined and they came to us and it is both home were pretty last minute. So what we're able to do is to say, Look, we have this platform that's rated for harsh environment. That's no into your networking to provide that communication. So then what we could do is we can work with our partners, put that application on that OT environment and then install and get certified for your application. So there was two of you, Like I said, one in the U. S. And one in Canada. Which way made the deadline's where they came back and said, No, thank you very much, very appreciative. >> And how quickly were you able to get this up and running is that they didn't miss the deadline and we're able to certain gleanings value from this. >> I just did a write up on one. We got a phone call on a Friday that they needed to provide a solution. So we worked over the weekend, and on Monday we proposed a solution. So once you do that, no, obviously they need to go through their value chain to get to sign offs, and we have to go through our process. But it was within thirty days were able to install it make their deadline and make sure that they were compliant. >> That's a pretty good marketing message to deliver that you guys could enable Such It is such a big convergence and it's a month's period >> of thirty days. >> Pretty impressive. >> That was, That was That was one thing that I think we all worked out. There was a deadline. We all work toward that. It was a trusted partner thing, you know. The customer came to us, they were asking for some stuff. They trusted us to do that. So like I said, we worked over the weekend, help them do that. We felt we had the right solution to address their requirements and at the end of the day were ableto meet that thirty day deadline. >> But the trust is not just with you. It's not just a seaman's. It's with an expanding array of cos it Seaman's is working. That's correct. What is it like working with a company like Ford Net to try to ensure that these new domains that are characterized by enormous uncertainty, technological operational organisational are not undermined by challenges of crafting that sushi solution together in such ways, it can be implemented quickly and with a high degree facility. >> I think it's a great opportunity for saying it's important not to be working together only from the fact of Fortinet has got the history. They've got the technology. They've got the name in their market space on DH. They've got the capability to deliver that Siemens. And for if you look from our customer space in our environment, no, we're very well developed, well entrenched in our customer. So to be able to bring the technology and the experience and the know how and bring that those cyber security requirements which are now being pushed down into the OT environment in and no amount of time it's not. There's no development needed, there's no additional stuff fourteen and already has that knowledge from the space. So to bring that into the environment, it's very beneficial. I think both of us, in order to help drive their customer opportunities in our market. >> And they talked a lot this morning during the keynote about where they are from the competitive leadership perspective that was peppered, ah, lot throughout the first at least ninety minutes of the keynote. But presumably obviously everybody has choice. Everybody likes choice. Simons has choice there. I'm just curious to get your take on some of the announcements that came out today from Fortinet. Does that excite Seaman's? Were you involved in that? In terms of being able to take the next set of customers who have the same challenge that you describe with the Texas based on Canada based customers and show them we can help you together? Seaman's importing that transform in thirty days. >> I think it's very exciting with fourteen that's doing in the new capabilities and functional yet they're coming out with. I think that's really going to be able to enhance our offering because it's really a differentiator for us. If you look at us from the operational technology side, there's not a lot of people out there that can actually do with porting that's able to bring to the table. So all these additional features functionality that was coming out by Fortinet to be able to put it on to our platform and our environment and to be able to offer that in the operational technology side. So I think it's a big differentiator from our competitors for both forty and for seeming to be able to jointly provide this offering to our customers. >> Just one question about your competition. A lot of companies like Siemens, especially that especially strong in the OT space, not just your customers. But suppliers like yourselves have also struggled a bit as they try to find a Z trying navigate that way forward to convergence of tea. No tea on appropriate convergence of tea. No tea. What is it about Seamans that has allowed you to not stub your toe or cut off your leg? Like some of the competitors, >> I believe that's because we've had a long history in both the A I T o T space. If you look at the vertical, are the digital industry that we're in right now. It's been very much ot centric for the last twenty five thirty years, but we have seen minces No. Three hundred seventy nine thousand people worldwide strong. We're very embracing the newer technology and the newer capabilities myself coming. No, starting with Siemens twenty years ago with a nice background being able to bring that knowledge that ability and doing that convergence of the idea no t within Seaman's for so long. I think we understand our customers, and we've been listening to them. And then we're partnering up with companies like Fortinet. Health says, Bring that technology that capability to our customers >> said that expertise, that partnership, What's your recommendation has be wrapped things up here for customers who are at the precipice of being able to understand why I know Teenie to converge with your recommendation for them to tackle this challenge successfully. >> I think the best advice I could have is let's sit down and have that conversation. Let's see what the requirements are. Let's see what they're trying to accomplish because I believe with the solutions that Siemens has between communication, the network in the security and then they technology and the capability that forty nets bring to the table we can to help design a customized solution for their environment in order to make sure that they can address their cyber security needs >> and do so quickly. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining Peter and me on the cute this afternoon. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you for >> for Peter. Boris. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube

live from Orlando Florida it's the cube coverage conf 18 got to you by spunk welcome back to Splunk kampf 18 hashtag Splunk conf 18 you watching the cube the leader in live tech coverage we go out to the events we extract the signal from the noise I'm Dave Volante with my co-host Stu many men we love to talk to the customers too we've had seven out of ten of our interviews today have been with the customers Tony Alessandra was here as the chief architect at the co-operators group limited insurance company up in Canada leader in that field Tony thanks so much for coming on the yeah it's great to be here thanks for having me so we were talking off-camera about some of the innovation that's going on in Toronto and want to get to that innovation is actually in your long title yeah there's the time but tell us about your role as chief architect and then some of the other areas that you touch yes certainly so my primary role at the co-operators group is to serve as chief architect for the group of companies and so it's a fancy term to mean that I influence how we invest in technology and process for our strategy and for our operational imperatives I also have responsibility for information security within our organization so I have a great team led by a C so at the co-operators group and essentially our role is to to protect the data of our clients right we have a million unique clients across Canada that entrust us with a lot of personal and confidential data we have thousands of financial advisers throughout the company and so we have retail outlets throughout the entire geography of Canada and essentially we collect a lot of data and and with respect to policies for commercial businesses for private clients for subscribers etc and I also manage an innovation portfolio for the organization and so it's actually I'll work with our business stakeholders within the organization to figure out how we could accelerate new businesses accelerate new capabilities with the use of technology who's excited that's a big big big role that you have if I want to send the the regime you have for security say the seaso reports to you yes sir and there's a set CIO there right there is yeah so I report to the to the executive vice president and CIO of the co-operators group of companies and and my responsibility within the organization is to report back to our CIO on all the responsibilities that I talked to you about okay so this the C so technically reports up through the CIO and C so reports up through me into the CIO yeah which is that's a whole other interesting discussion maybe if we have time we could talk about that absolutely um so a lot of data I mean we think about insurance company regulated you got your claim systems which are critical you have your agent systems which are also critical different types of data both data on customers but when you talk about the data that you guys collect where's it come from what are you trying to do with with that data yes so so you know I'll start I'll start with the motive right the problem that we're trying to solve and so I'll say first and foremost we're an insurance company we offer assurance and protection to our clients right and so in the process of offering assurance and protection to our clients you know they entrust us with massive amounts of data like you know as we as we mentioned before but we'll also need to set a good example because a lot of the assurance some of the assurance that we offer to our clients is also cyber protection we offer cyber insurance to our clients we need to set a good example we need to demonstrate resilience right Splunk is a primary tool in our Arsenal where we're showing our clients that we have good resilience to be able to detect and respond to security threats when they happen that's part of our mandate right so our responsibility with respect to using Splunk is to collect data from all of our major systems within our organization we use Blonk to monitor we use Blanc to detect and we also use Splunk to respond when something is going on what is this is really interesting you're being proactive about from your you know from an actuarial standpoint you rate your risk you're being very proactive when many if not most insurance companies would do is say ok what what's the history yeah and are there any high-profile breaches and yeah as opposed to what you're doing like sounds like you're really inspecting what the policies and the procedures and the technology of your clients is I think you hit on an important point right and so the important point is that you know the the the art of actuarial science is to rely on a lot of history in the past you know to predict the risks of the future but the reality is that model is falling apart very quickly because there is very little history for cyber threats and the other aspect of it is its inconsistent its evolving and it's changing on a regular basis right and so that's why you use platforms like Splunk use platforms like spunk to detect new threats and to end to in sort of to advance new correlations what should we be concerned about which threats are relevant to us which ones can we ignore and unless you have good platforms to do correlation unless you have good automation you're gonna need a large army of people to chase things that may not be relevant to either you or your clients so Tony your industry usually has quite a bit of M&A as to kind of fund the growth that's going on curious how does Splunk in your data strategy fit into M&A type a quiz yeah yeah and so I think that's one of the biggest potential uses of Splunk for us right and so the way that insurance is evolving right now is insurance companies are all trying to figure out how they get involved in the loss prevention game right in the past it's all been about assurance right it's all been about protection and so when you think about the Internet of Things is one of the biggest untapped opportunities for insurance companies it's all about data right so smart homes smart buildings cars outfitted with telematics so it's every history you wearing wearable devices so in terms of health and you know a health insurance and life insurance protection etc all of this data is meaningful to offer value to clients beyond what we've been able to do in the past one of the things we've looked at I know the industry is looking at is well how do you value that data is that something your company's gotten into yeah absolutely and so you know part of what we need to figure out is how to model that data to give the right level of engagement to the customer so to create that two-way engagement with the customer right how am i doing how am i driving is the weather a threat for me in in the in the foreseeable future in terms of things that I need to protect is there a hailstorm coming you know should I should I you know have alerts and and and you know provide you know ask clients to move some of their valuables indoors I mean all of these are things that will increase that engagement with our clients because face it with insurance your clients engage with you two times a year right two major time policy renewal and if they're unfortunate enough to have a claim right we need to have a but we need to have a better game much more proactive game with them so you're in other ways a risk consultant with your your clients right yeah so describe that so you client comes to you says they're interested or you go to them they're interested in in in in a security you know insurance where does it start do you ask them you have Splunk do you advise them as to what are you going to look at their policies and procedures well how does it work so so I think you know Splunk is one of those valuable assets that enables the capability right insurance you know the game is becoming all about data having massive amounts of data and being able to use that data to help assess the risks for a client properly right because without having good data everything is a great guest these days I mean with climate change with cyber risks evolving with customers preferences changing data is going to be the meaningful difference in terms of understanding what risks a client has what the probability is and how to write a meaningful policy for them where they're engaged and they understand it well enough as well understand it well enough to prevent some of their losses and that's really the issue that we're trying to figure out how do we help clients understand their risks and then prevent losses prevent or minimize losses for them and and what role does Splunk play in that you you know your your your client are you a an advisor or you encourage your customers to use belong counters at all so we're talking about our future roadmap right now and this is what we're trying to figure out what's blanc this is where we see the strategic opportunities with blah right and so when we look at the co-operators the way that co-operators has been using Splunk in the past is for their security sim we were one of the very first large companies in Canada to put our security sim on Splunk we were the very first large company in Canada to put our sim in Splunk clout right and so we we you know we're very proud with being able to work with Splunk for for charting that course right for setting the example our next course is how do we leverage a platform as powerful as Splunk now to give value to our customers we're protecting our customers data assets and now it's about returning valuable insights back to the customers in terms of loss prevention that's our forward-thinking approach in terms of how we stay ahead in terms of leveraging this as a unique asset as a unique capability so your leader you've got street cred you can now extend that to your client base I mean for an insurance company risk you know chaos is just cash as I like to say it's opportunity for you guys and to the extent that you can help clients mitigate that risk to win-win it's essentially for them the reduction in expected loss it can actually hate to say this but could actually pay for the insurance which is let's take attractive it's a massive win and I think you know the other part you know that people need to think differently about is the way that people consume insurance will change dramatically as well in the next tenure so and so where you think now that you know your typical home and auto insurance you will buy an annual policy well the reality is that Home Sharing car sharing ride-sharing insurance will change to what we call episodic oh right and so essentially you'll be consuming insurance for an activity right and the only way that you'll be able to sort of drive that activity in a meaningful way is to have a lot of data on that activity right where are you driving how did you drive you know what what are the risks associated to when you're driving in the geography that you're driving where are you renting out your home what are the rooms to which client and so understanding all of those elements give us the best opportunity at giving you just in time insurance for the right risks surance as a service I love it personalized for me I mean the model generally item as a consumer is broken it's very bespoke my insurance company doesn't know who I am it's just to check a bunch of boxes off and they sent me another form every year and advised some new things and I don't even know what half the time they are that's exactly right right then the and the only way you're able to personalize is to have all of that data on an individual on a company on an event right so we give you insurance for you based on your needs based on your risks Tony we know there's a lot of AI happening up in the Toronto area yeah maybe our audience might not know tell them a little bit about that and how you're thinking about AI and what interest you have and what's Blanc's talking about when they talk about AI yeah you're absolutely right I mean there's a loop there's a massive amount of artificial intelligence activity in the Toronto Kitchener corridor within southern Ontario I would say it's early days for insurance in terms of how we leverage AI I think you know some of the early wins for us have been what we refer to as chat BOTS or virtual assistants right helping clients so this is basically speed and convenience for clients right clients need to know something very quickly very predictive short-tailed answers we're there for customers who choose to do that where it's going next is helping clients assess risk and predict outcomes associated to risks right and so there's a lot of different use cases that we're working there partnerships with startups partnerships with mainstream organizations like Splunk is an important partner for us in this area and of course academic institutions that are investing right this is all part of it for the sales channel for the risk channel for claims processing so imagine being able to submit a claim on a mobile device gathering all that data being able to correlate that data to say we've seen this before right based on the correlation here's your damages we could processes as quickly here's the experts you need to go to here's the restoration facilities that you'll engage those are massive opportunities for client service and for an ability for an insurance company to settle things quickly right we're talking about weather before it's obviously a changing dynamic has a change variable and maybe it's it's model Abel I don't know but but clearly weather incidents are on the rise have caught companies and probably insurance companies you know a little bit off guard you know climate change etc the boiling seas this we've heard yeah what do you guys what's your position on that how do you accommodate that and pass it on to your customers and well I think this is what we're well known for right and so first of all we're not gonna be able to control the weather but what we'd be able to do is prevent it from getting worse right and so when you'll hear the leadership within our organization talk especially our CEO our CEO is very passionate about building resilient communities and that starts with making sure that we're building communities in the right spots not in flood plains not in areas of high risk of forest fires or or other things that you could you know potentially prevent you know within a certain geography and so that's first and foremost right and so we're a leader in this space in Canada how do you become a leader in this area you collect data understand the geography understand the trends associated to the understand the future risks associated to those geographies based on weather trends and then lobby governments builders entrepreneurs everybody land development consortiums to say we need to build communities in better places we need to build more resilient communities and then thereafter it's making sure that you're leveraging data to be able to predict and minimize losses for clients in those areas right and that's what you'll use weather data for right who do I need to alert we have threats on the way what can we prevent how do we minimize these losses for Canadians I think the big risk that we all need to understand if the weather continues to change at the same pace are our you know people will not be able to afford the risks right and so the insurance will rise exponentially and and you know will we we won't have a sustainable model for the future so it's clear for you guys it's really all about the data one of the challenges that a lot of companies in your industry have is the data it's about the data for them to insurance companies you could argue our you know IT companies in many respects they develop products that are put together by technologists but a lot of the data is in silos yeah as Splunk allowed you to break down those silos and and is that yet part while you're a leader well like I could talk about what's where Splunk has been able to to offer us that that that ability is with security right and so we have data we have information security log data associated to our systems and our application everywhere on Prem our partner sites in our agency offices on different endpoint devices in the cloud with our different service providers so what Splunk has been able to do is us to be able to aggregate that data consume that data build valid use cases and to correlate that and raise proper alerts right that's our main priority right now is to build resilience with information security that knowledge will take us to these other areas that we want to do in offering now the value back to our clients right embed that value into our product offerings is our next logical step awesome Tony thanks very much for coming on the cube really appreciate it you're welcome it's good to meet you in the pleasure have the leaves changed in Toronto its Toronto by the way stew no tea it's coming it's coming fast Dave a lot a force to Minutemen thanks for watching we'll be right back after this short break you're watching the cube from Splunk Kampf 18 [Music]

(electronic music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada it's The Cube covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by The Cube. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to The Cube live coverage here in Toronto, Canada Ontario for Untraceable presents Blockchain Futurist Conference. Two days we've been here. We're on day two, amazing event here, great community, I'm John Furrier your host. Dave Vellante went back east so he was here yesterday. Our next guest Pablo Gonzales is the Founder and CEO of Genesis Blockchain Technologies, welcome to The Cube thanks for joining me. >> Thank you for having me. >> So I'm glad to have you on. First of all when Bradley Rodder says oh watch out for that guy, you must be smart because we trust Bradley so but you're doing something really cool. The future of trading and exchanges has been a topic that everyone's been talking about but not a lot of people have been actually moving the needle on. You've got some movement here, people doing here but no one's actually had the full package and they're running as fast as they can to do it. You guys have done it. >> We have. >> How? Take a minute, what have you guys done? What is the product? How did you guys do it and what can people use today? >> Thank you. So it's no longer hot air, as you said. A lot of people are saying what they're going to do. We're here to say what we have done which is very different. Yesterday up at the main stage we launched the world's first decentralized exchange on a mobile platform. We're fully licensed by the Costa Rican Commodities Exchange, we have brokerage license, a currency exchange license and a money remittance license. We already possess the licenses, we're not in pursuit of the licenses we have them. What we did obviously we pursued an MNA strategy, we acquired companies that were over a decade in the business and we just transformed them and cryptomized them, as I use the term and launched the exchange with those licenses and platforms. We listed the exchange with over 40 coins. Over four billion dollars of shared market cap and over half a million dollars of daily trading and liquidity. >> So this is right now going on in Costa Rica, mainly if stable. Is it stable? How's the stability there? >> So Costa Rica is extremely stable, they haven't had an army for over 50 years, it's considered a world-class country for banking, for international businesses so much so. Amazon, HP, Intel, all these humongous companies have large operations in the country. >> And their posture to crypto is they've come out formally. >> Yes. >> To state well what's the posture from Costa Rica? >> So they consider cryptocurrencies a commodity and not a security and that's why went on to pursue a commodities exchange license. >> So that opens up doors for you to do this. >> Of course it opens up the doors, think about it. So you can now trade Bitcoin with gold. In our exchange, not as of today we're going to launch that in January, so now you can trade cryptocurrencies with commodities and cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies. >> So I'm just kind of speculating here in terms of my mind where I'm going with this. Almost imagine the shakeup that's coming. It's like a blender, we trading gold and Bitcoin it's just like who would have thought that was possible a year ago? >> That's correct. >> They've been compared, people compare Bitcoin to new digital gold but actually comparing them this is going to shakeup like a blender. >> That's correct. >> Blend up the commodities market. >> Disrupt it. >> What's your vision? What do you see happening? >> I just think that a lot of people are focusing on they say on one of the interviews earlier today, one of the interviewers was asking me is that Bitcoin to the moon? I'm like guys we need to stop. If we want this industry to really grow and develop stop using those analogies. We need to create a community that's larger, we need mass adoption and I think by including the commodities into the equation you're catering to the traditional investors that are a little bit uncomfortable with cryptocurrencies because they don't know about them but they know about gold and then all of a sudden now you compare gold with Bitcoin. >> It brings retail into it. >> Yes. >> It brings a real retail market. >> That's correct. >> You know I just want to say something. I agree with you 100%. These news outlets out there, these other people they tend to focus on the price of Bitcoin and it's almost like okay can we get over that? Yes it's going to go up and down, if you're in the long game it should be 20,000. Okay we can buy that but let's talk about what people are doing. Who's building something? >> Yes. >> That's the focus. So if I ask you now that question, hey Pablo what have you built and what you you going to continue to build if this is a foundational product, what are you guys going to do on top of it? What's the build plan? >> Thank you. So yesterday we launched the decentralized exchange with 40 coins. We're going to add probably between now and December another 110 different tokens. We're doing 20 for now and in January we're launching a centralized exchange so that's where we're going to add the fiat currencies and the commodities. >> What date again? >> End of January. >> Okay got it. >> Then we're going to make an announcement in November at one of the conferences in Malta and so we're reserving the date and everything else for that but in May of next year we're launching over the counter trading desk with full KYC AML you know counter terrorism financing, all of the world class policies and by this time next year we're going to be launching our institutional platform. So we want to be a one stop shop via the currency exchange that we own. We already have the ability from the Central Bank of Costa Rica which is amazing to issue Visa cards. So now our users, besides trading, they can take their crypto with them from their mobile phone, convert it to fiat and pay, you know, for gasoline, buy groceries. >> So I'm an entrepreneur, I got my own cube coin coming out, cube token, security token or utility, what's in it for me? If I asked you Pablo what's in it for me? What do I get out of it as a business? Are people going to start trading my coins? Am I instantly going to have an over the counter so as a business what do I have to worry about? What's the benefit? What matters to me? What's the impact? >> So if you were to be a coin to list on our exchange you mean? Well first of all we all know exchanges now to list on them you know they're changing, some of them I'm not going to say the name. >> They're charging a lot of money. >> Yeah 400 BTC and crazy amounts like this. We are going to charge. It's a business at the end of the day but what we're looking for with the coins that we're going to list is partnerships and seeing what ways we can do more entrepreneurial projects to change the landscape of the industry together as an exchange and a coin because potentially what a coin is is a company. You know what's behind the coin is what's important to us and not the coin itself. As the company develops and progresses so will the coin's price appreciated value or depreciated value and so yes, besides facilitating trading fees and lowering that, up listing and so forth what we're bringing to the table wants to be much more dynamic. >> You got to balance you know business that you got to do with infrastructure build out. It's like the old telecom days you got to build some cell towers before you roll out mobile. You got to build this entire retail global fabric. >> Yes. How does community play in for it? Obviously community is very important. I agree with you that's big time. How are you guys building your community? Tapping into anything else? Obviously Untraceable has got a great community. How are you going to grow your community. >> So as an exchange there could be a conflict of interest we have to be really careful how we get involved in the community but what we want to do is by selected partnerships with projects and coins. The coins are already doing their work. They are appealing to a community. They are raising the money from that community what we want to do is we want to partner up with those coins, the coins that are worth partnering up with and that way our reach automatically will multiply. On top of that of course we want to work with government and banks and institutions. We believe, it may not be popular what I'm about to say, you know the good old honor kids that came to the hardcore crypto, forget about central banks and centralization, I don't think that that's ever going to happen. I think the more we cooperate with government, that the more we work with them, we together can shape the industry and the landscape for good. I do believe in that. It's a collaboration and cooperation with governments and banks to us is pivotal. >> I mean you can be a coach to the regulatory. >> Absolutely. >> You can be an advocate and partner. >> We are being. >> And not an enemy. >> In Costa Rica, so before they considered and they took a position on whether is was a commodity or not you know they approached us and we were teaching them so much so that a congressman that was going to be at the conference and couldn't make it, he's the founder of the Libertarian movement in Costa Rica he created a think tank of crypto because of us that now has Latin America reach. Think about it, there are 1.3 billion people in Latin America. >> They have mobile phones. >> Exactly. That can now learn about crypto and so we're going to capitalize on this. >> It's a real democratization, what you do is change a society. If you continue to get this right this is really key. Congratulations. Now I want to ask you personal questions so I love the hat, you look great. >> Thank you. >> How did you get here? Were you scratching an itch that was around this? Was it, how did you get to the point where you said hey I'm going to go out and build the first exchange. I'm going to roll up the companies, wire them together, cryptotize them and go nuts and build an exchange. I mean how did you get here? What's the story? >> Thank you well, it's a story. I began entrepreneurial projects over 10 years ago, been in the private sector, because Costa Rica is a services company we put together a call center. Took it from like four people to 4000 people in four years. I went on to like building my own sports brand in over 10 countries but then about two years ago a few companies from Canada they called me from here, they called me to help them go public in the Canadian Securities Exchange. I took two companies public last year and after that I was saying to myself and the crew guys what do we do next? How can we really disrupt the industry? And one of the things we were talking about was man, we're in a decentralized community that brags about decentralization, trading and centralized exchanges. How ironic is that? >> Yeah it's got to change. >> So we said you know what let's be the pioneers, let's head out on a quest to build the world's first mobile decentralized exchange and we achieved that. It's unbelievable. Now you hear all the big guys, the whales talking about we're going to come up with a decentralized exchange because that's what people want at the end of the day and we were able to be the first ones ever to give that. >> And stability is critical. I mean I was just at a bank starting up a new account for a new startup that we're doing and they're like is this a blockchain company? I'm like no, no God no, no, no we're a media business. >> Those are bad guys. >> So you can't even open a bank account some places. So this has really got to get fixed and I got liquid, I got fiat currency, I got to make movements around. The retail market, whether it's trading, investing, it's got to be converted over to the new world. >> Yes, yes. >> I mean it's almost like a full changeover. >> That's correct. Obviously I think that it'll be a transition process. It'll take some time. There are some banks that already getting more involved into the process. What's interesting in our case is we even got the Costa Rican Central Bank to be our bank. Think about it, we're not banking with any private bank or public bank but the Costa Rican Central Bank and I think that more and more banks will follow suit as they see good use cases. The ICO craze of last year, I don't think that it did any good to the greater good of the community. If anything it brought a lot of prejudice. >> It's a black eye. They'll be a hangover on that but that's like the dotcom bubble. All those things on the dotcom bubble actually happened so I think you're going to just see get that jested out of the system. >> Inevitable. >> And focus on quality. That's what happening now. >> Inevitable. >> Pablo thanks for coming on. Pablo Gonzales who is the Founder and CEO of Genesis Blockchain Technologies. First ever exchange bringing all new magic to the marketplace. This is The Cube bringing you the content magic here in Toronto, Canada. I'll be right back with more. Stay with us. Live coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. >> Hey, welcome back everyone, here's theCUBE live here in Toronto, Canada in Ontario for Untraceable presents Blockchain Futurist Conference. I'm John Furrier here with Al Burgio, Julie Lyle for the wrap up of the show. Special guests, industry legend Al, serial entrepreneur, Julie, CMO, Barnes and Noble. >> (laughs) >> Great career you've had and you're here new to, first time, we're going to have these big events. At the wrap up we try to get a handle on it and I think the big story here, for me at least, was, during this week, you got a futurist conference, while the price of crypto was plummeting to an all-time low for the year. Yet everyone's upbeat, 'cause they're talking about the future, not about prices. This has been a big part of what we see, build out durable companies, real entrepreneurial activity. Sure, they want to make profit. People scrounging a little bit here and there but most of the time upbeat. >> It's hard to judge things or understand things from afar, John, and people tend to look at prices all day long but that doesn't necessarily give you an indication of what's going on with blockchain technology with some of the organizations out there. The team at Untraceable by far a leader, not just in Canada but internationally with people that are able to try out the entrepreneurs and what have you and it's events like this with just a couple days you get yourself brought up to speed and keep your finger on the pulse. >> Big names. >> Yeah huge names. >> And a futurist event, you got to have some players, some whales on the money side, check, got whose actually inventing the future, entrepreneurial hustle, pitch competitions happening, so all this is blending together. Julie, your perspective, first time seeing a crypto culture community, what's your observation? >> Well I would echo what Al has said about the event itself, it was really well organized and what I was impressed with, surprised actually, but impressed with was the combination of both the technologists as well as the investors and those that are trying to understand how to build these commercial communities and commercial applications out. For a marketer like myself, it's difficult enough to see around corners, but to understand this technology and to have people here who are really trying to target it at solving a specific real-world business problem, it seems like a natural extension of the march on towards bigger and greater, more powerful communities. >> And the technology is interesting, because in previous jobs you've had, you've innovated with data, real-time user data, user experience. Now the shift of token economics potentially could have a huge slingshot advantage to create new opportunities, instrumentation, targeted experiences. Seeing that big time here but the plumbing's not yet in place. It's like the roads aren't paved out. When is blockchain going to be good? >> Yeah, so everyone, there's a clear sentiment: blockchain's the future, the visions are amazing. Ironically, the name of the conference is the Blockchain Futurist Conference and so you have some visions of this that are maybe five to 10 years out, but many of what others are working on, it's the here and now, right? >> Yeah. >> You have opportunities that can demonstrate product market fit today. Others maybe within the next 24 months and they're working hard to do that, fostering their communities of early adopters, businesses perhaps, consumers. In the market in general there's this concern, when's the use going to happen. Quite frankly, we're seeing early stage projects, companies going to market extremely quick. Normally this is the stuff that private companies do. You don't hear the successes and failures; most fail. >> Irrational exuberance certainly happening, going on, but that's ending, you're starting to see that with some of the bubble popping a little bit. It's not so much a mega pop, it's more of a big air coming out of it. But I want to ask both you guys, as senior industry players, because I see couple things happening that are eye level: Token economics is driving a new business model innovation. Blockchain is infrastructure, making things go immutable, having advantages of decentralized infrastructure. And the middle between the two is interoperability. These are the core themes. How do we get all those working together and what would be the benefits of all those working together? Interoperability is a big theme of this event. >> Yeah, it starts with obviously having a forum where you can collaborate with like-minded individuals and you're hearing a lot of these conversations happening and getting a sense of what people are working on as well. It's a new emerging technology. In terms of interoperability, I tend to look at integration as perhaps more important than a focus around interoperability, looking at pre-existing systems in the market and really identifying ways where they can slowly, gradually use aspects of or features of blockchain to really start this shift and this movement and this evolution towards web 3.0. >> Julie, your observations about business model innovation, opportunities that marketers and senior people should be thinking about, mindset-wise? >> Loyalty, obviously, would be a great application, but I think there's far more sophisticated business models around actually, again, the communities, the power of networks, right, and artificial intelligence, blockchain and just what the internet and technology is doing to drive those communities and to empower those consumers. That's where this is headed. It seems to me like a very natural extension. I would also say though, that there's a lot of work to be done in corporate America, private or public businesses. There's a lot of infrastructure to build that interoperability and to make it a seamless experience that will either drive value and adoption or won't, and we've seen that with other technologies fail as well. >> We've seen the same classic adopts, cloud computing, same thing >> Absolutely. >> Amazon, no one's ever going to use it. Oh my God, let's make it consumable and easy. Boom, usage goes up. >> Absolutely. >> Same kind of thing going on here. >> Yeah, user interface is evolving for all things blockchain. >> Alright, guys, thanks so much for coming on. Final predictions, you want to dare make a prediction, Al? >> Before a prediction, one of the things I'd really like to highlight for this event really was having the opportunity to share the stage with someone like Larry King. >> Take a minute to explain what happened. Larry King, the legend-- >> Legend. >> Was here, explain what happened. >> The CNN Larry King. We had fellow legends on the stage and I was humbled to be in their presence. Larry King really was here. He had the opportunity to interview some of the brightest minds in blockchain and in a lot of ways help bring legitimacy to this event, let along the space. Conversations that we'd hear in the hallways of people having conversations with people that they know and sharing with them that they were attending this event and oh, is it blockchain, is it bitcoin, you're going to one of those conferences and then mentioning that one of the headliners was Larry King, is all of a sudden-- >> What was he like, what was your impression of him? Certainly getting up there but-- >> I would say it's exactly the Larry King we know. His questions were phenomenal, really engaging and he knew how to direct those questions. Each question he had for the right fellow attendee on stage. It was awesome. >> Awesome. Well, congratulations, a great job. That's a wrap here, live in Toronto, Canada in Ontario with the Futurist Conference CUBE coverage. Special guests, Al Burgio, Julie here at theCUBE. Thanks for watching, see you next time. (upbeat music)

(electronic music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada. It's the Cube. Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by the Cube. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Cube coverage here in Toronto, Canada. We're in Ontario to the Untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference. This is day two of two days of coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host. Our next guest is serial entrepreneur, Chris Harper, the CEO of Jereki and Mapogo Ventures. Welcome. >> And ZippedScript. >> And ZippedScript. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Hey, lot of balls in the air, a lot of irons in the fire. Welcome to the Cube. >> Hey, good to have me, man. I'm excited to be here. This is awesome. >> So before we get into, you're a serial entrepreneur, what are you working on now? Take a quick minute, explain. >> Yeah. >> Where the names came from, what do they mean, what are you doing? >> So, first things first, we'll start with Jereki. Jereki is a Japanese proverb which means to achieve enlightenment through one's own efforts. So Jereki is a shell company and we currently run this company, it's called Chase your Drink. It basically is replacing pop and juice as a mix for any hard liquor. No sugar, no calories, nothing artificial and the kicker, we got 90 vitamins in these to combat your hangover the next day. So if you're not drinking with Chase, you're drinking wrong. (laughs) >> It's a chaser. >> Chaser, exactly. >> Yeah. >> And these are in stores like, it'll be in Sobeys, Farm Boy in Canada, GNC soon. And it's going really well. >> Okay, how 'about the venture firm? >> Yes, so the next company is Mapogo Ventures. Mapogo is actually, it comes from a group of lions in the African Savanna that were only six lions, but they dominated the savanna for their whole life span, which is super rare, and they took down animals like giraffes, rhinos, and became legend. It was a folk legend about these Mapogo lions. So Mapogo is a venture firm. We specialize in food and beverage companies. If you're doing something epic, we want to talk to you. And then we also specialize in blockchain cryptocurrency and anything that's on the forefront of what's going on in the tech space. So if anybody's interested, they think they have a great idea, you can reach out to us wherever you guys put contact information, I don't know. >> We'll put it up there. >> Yeah, yeah, definitely. >> What's the website? >> Mapogoventures.com >> Okay, got it. >> Yeah, Mapogoventures.com. >> And how much are you guys investing? What's the kind of round size you guys do? >> So it totally depends. We almost don't have a limit or a minimum. It's all about the team, the idea, where you're going, and what you need. We'll get you what you need. >> Is it a new firm, are you making business? >> It's a new firm, it's a new firm. So we have two companies that we're looking at right now, but we don't have any companies in the portfolio, we're looking to add. >> Great, awesome. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Well any great ideas, check it out. How about crypto? What's your seeing, what's your thing, what are you seeing on crypto? What kind of deals? Obviously the flight to quality right now is starting to see the ICOs kind of burning out here and there, but the ones that are solid are standing and growing in a build-out mode. >> I mean, the whole space right now, everybody's worried about it, right? If you're an outsider, you're looking at it like it's all down. But one thing I did want to say during this interview was this is a great event. Untraceable, they sent up an incredible event and even if you're not into cryptocurrency, if you're a business person, crypto's only been around for, you know, six, seven years. So everybody in this room did something before crypto. Right? So they're all multi-faceted individuals and if you're not in crypto, if you're scared of crypto, if you're hesitant about crypto, if you don't understand it, you should be here. You should be at these events because it's priceless networking and who knows where you can go. >> Plus, starting companies on a down, on down the bottom of the market-- >> Yeah. >> Is when the best companies get built. >> 1000%, you know. What did Warren Buffet say? Be fearful when others are greedy, be greedy when others are fearful. Looks to me that the market-- >> Yeah. >> Is incredibly fearful. So maybe you should consider being greedy right now. >> For the people that aren't here, what's the vibe of the show? What's your take, what's the hallway conversations like? >> Yeah, I mean, the vibe of the show. This is actually one of the best conferences I've been to. I've been to a few in New York. This one is incredible. Everyone's so friendly. You can come here, don't know anyone. >> Yeah. >> People will say hi to you. They'll introduce themselves to you. Next thing you know, you had an idea, now you have funding. But it's up to you to make this situation a great situation. >> What's interesting is this sector, blockchain and crypto. >> Yeah. >> Attracts alpha entrepreneurs, alpha engineers. >> Okay. >> You mentioned-- >> Mapogo. >> Smart people are in this world. They've done things before, so this is really interesting. >> Yeah, like people always forget that. They see crypto and they get nervous 'cause like I don't know anything about it. Remember guys, this is a new industry. And we're only in, you know, the first couple innings. This is going to be huge. So come, learn, and surround yourself with killers. >> Alright, what's the coolest thing you've seen so far here? >> The coolest thing I've seen so far. You know, I'm going to be completely honest with you. Larry King. I was so happy to see Larry King and it's awesome that a guy like that is supporting the community, you know. >> Yeah. >> Because this is really a revolutionary technology, the blockchain technology. >> You've done a lot entrepreneurial things since you were 10, you were talking before we came on. >> Yeah. >> How does that help you right now navigate this scene and looking at deals and your own deals and you're building out, you're investing. Other entrepreneurs are coming in, sometimes first time entrepreneurs, how does that help you and what advice would you give other entrepreneurs? >> So I started really young, not knowing where I was going to go. It was kind of just like in my blood. But, you know, you got to get out, you got to talk to people, you know. I always say no deal happens on your couch. You got to jump off the porch. You got to go out, you got to network, you got to meet people. And I started doing that at a young age which got my conversation skills a lot more advanced, so now I can go in and close a deal in 10 minutes where, you know, back in the day, it might take me two hours and I probably wouldn't even close it. So what I would say. >> 10 minutes is a good metric. >> It is. >> That's hey. >> Hey, I don't need to say more or less. If it's an interesting idea, let's go. You should be able to tell me what it is. >> Yeah. >> We should be able to hammer something out. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much what's going on. >> Awesome. And what's some of the plans that you have for your ventures? Let's go back, the zip line, what's that one? >> Oh, yeah, ZippedScript. >> ZippedScript, I'm sorry. >> So I can't talk too much about ZippedScript. It's launching in fall of 2018. ZippedScript is basically going, it is revolutionizing the higher education industry and the transcript section in that industry. And all I can say is we may or may not be using blockchain technology to do it. >> Got it, okay. >> Yeah. >> And how about the chaser, that sounds very cool. >> Yeah, it is really cool. And, I mean, you guys can go to chase your drink.com, check it out. You can head over to our Instagram, Chase Your Drink. It's taken over. You know, this cola flavor I've got here and tropical thunder is pineapple mango, but cola tastes just like Coca-Cola. >> Yeah. >> Without any of the bad ingredients. And it's really taken over. You know, our biggest problem is supply. >> Yeah. >> We just can't produce enough, but we're fixing that problem. >> That's a good problem to have. >> It's a very good problem to have, right. >> How did you get into the venture side? Just you're scratching an itch, you wanted to put some of your money to work, did you raise unlimited partners, how's that, how'd that develop? >> Totally. >> And what's the current situation? >> Yeah, so it was a group of fellow entrepreneurs and we're all working on our own companies, but we're all ADD, right? And we're like I'm doing this, I'm doing that, but we have all these contacts, all these different skill sets, and we're all great friends. So that's another very important thing that most people talk about. Surround yourself with like minded people, but you want them to have different skill sets. >> Awesome. >> I don't want a clone. I have a clone, we're not going to work well together. >> You want added value, you don't want to subtract value. >> Yeah, exactly. So we came together and we're like we have so much value in so many different spaces, we can walk companies through, you know, a proven concept in any industry, food and beverage, cryptocurrency, and basically you won't make mistakes that we made. That's the bottom line. So you'll accelerate your success by working with us. >> Well, Chris, great to have you on. >> Yeah. >> Congratulations on your success. >> It was amazing, man. >> Check out Chase, check out the fund if you've got a great idea, contact Chris, go the cube.net, you can find his information there. I'm John Furrier here in Toronto with all the action here at the Blockchain Futurist Conference where the future's being created, robust industry, people looking at the long term, this is where the action is. Thanks for watching. Stay with us for day two coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

(techy music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018, brought to you by theCUBE. (techy music) >> Hello, everyone, and welcome back. This is the live CUBE coverage here in Toronto, Ontario here in Canada for the Untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference. This is day two of wall-to-wall CUBE coverage. We've got great presentations going on, live content here on theCUBE as well as in the sessions, great networking, but more important all the thought leaders in the industry around the world are coming together to try to set the standards and set up a great future for cryptocurrency and blockchain in general. Our next two guests are very special guests for theCUBE and we're excited to have them on, the Honorable Wayne Caines, Minister of National Security for the government of Bermuda, and Kevin Richards, concierge on the Fintech business development manager, part of the Bermuda Business Development Agency. Thank you guys for coming on, really appreciate the time. >> Thanks very much. >> Thank you for having us. >> Why this is so important is that we heard your presentation onstage, for the folks, they can catch it online when they film it and record it, but the Bermuda opportunity has really emerged as a shining light around the world, specifically in the United States. In California, where I live, Silicon Valley, you guys are now having great progress in hosting companies and being crypto-friendly. Take a minute to explain what's happening, what's the current situation, why Bermuda, why now, what's developing? >> This has all happened over the last eight months. We were looking in November of 2017 to go in the space. In January we went to the World Economic Forum in Davos in Switzerland. When we went to Davos in Switzerland something very interesting happened. People kept coming up to us, I was like the Hound of the Baskerville, or the Pied Piper if you please, and so, so many people were coming up to us finding out more information about Bermuda. We realized that our plan that we thought we could phase in over 18 months, that it had to be accelerated. So, whilst we were at the World Economic Forum in Davos we said to people, "Listen, if you want to change the world, "if you want to help Bermuda to grow, if you're serious," this is a Thursday, "Meet us in Bermuda on the Monday morning." On the Monday morning there are 14 different people in the room. We sat in the room, we talked about what we wanted the world to be, how could Bermuda be in place, what are the needs in this industry, and by the Wednesday we had a complete and total framework, and so we split up into industries. Number one was ICOs, we wanted to look at how to regulate the ICO market. Number two, we wanted to look at digital asset exchanges or cryptocurrencies or how do we regulate security tokens and utility tokens and what do exchanges look like, how do we do exchanges in Bermuda, and then we wanted to talk about education and setting up incubators. And so, come fast forward to July, August, we have an ICO bill in place that allows us to look at setting up ICOs in Bermuda. We wanted to focus on the legal and the regulatory framework, so this is a nascent space. A number of people are concerned about the dark actors, and so we wanted to set up a jurisdiction that traded on our international reputation. Now, remember for the last 60 years reinsurance, finance, captives, hedge funds, people in the financial services market have been coming to Bermuda because that's what we do well. We were trading on the reputation of our country, and so we couldn't do anything to jeopardize that. And so, when we put in place the ICO legislation we had consultants from all over the world, people that were bastions and beasts in industry, in the ICO industry and in the crypto world came to Bermuda and helped us to develop the legislation around setting up an ICO. So, we passed the ICO legislation. The next phase was regulating cryptocurrencies, regulating digital assets, and we set up a piece of legislation called the Digital Asset Business Act, and that just regulates the digital asset space exchanges, and the last piece we wanted to do was a banking piece, and this is the last and we believe the most significant piece. We were talking to people and they were not able to open up bank accounts and they were not able to do, so we said, "Listen, "the Bermuda banking environment is very strong." Our banking partners were like, "Listen, "we love what you guys are doing, "but based on our corresponding banking relationships "we don't want to do anything to jeopardize that space," but how could we tell people to come to Bermuda, set up your company, and they can't open bank accounts? And so, we looked at, we just recently passed creating a new banking license that allows people to set up their business in Bermuda and set up banking relationships and set up bank accounts. That simply has to receive the governor's Royal Assent. As you know, Bermuda's still a British pan-territory, and financial matters have to get the okay of the Queen, and so that is in the final stages, but we're excited, we're seeing an influx, excuse me, a deluge of people coming to Bermuda to set up their companies in Bermuda. >> So, the first two pieces are in place, you have the legislation... >> Mm-hm. >> Mm-hm. >> You have the crypto piece, and now the banking's not yet, almost approved, right? >> It's there, it simply has to get the final sign-off, and we believe that it should take place within the next two weeks. So, by the time this goes to air and people see it we believe that piece will be in place. >> So, this is great news, so the historical perspective is you guys had a good reputation, you have things going on, now you added on a new piece not to compromise your existing relationships and build it on. What have you guys learned in the process, what did you discover, was it easy, was it hard, what are some of the learnings? >> What we've learnt is that KYC, know your customers, and the AML, anti-money laundering, and terrorist financing pieces, those are the critical pieces. People are looking in this space now for regulatory certainty, so when you're talking about people that are in the space that are doing ICOs of $500 million or exchanges that are becoming unicorns, a billion dollar entity in three months, they want a jurisdiction that has regulatory certainty. Not only do they want a jurisdiction with regulatory certainty, they want to open up the kimono. What has this country done in the past, what do they have to trade on? We're saying you can go to a number of countries in the world, but look at our reputation, what we're trading on, and so we wanted to create a space with regulatory certainty, and so we have a regulatory body in Bermuda called the Bermuda Monetary Authority, and they are an independent regulator that they penned the Digital Asset Business Act, and so the opportunity simply for people around the world saying, "Listen, we want to do an ICO, "we want to set up an exchange. "Where's a country that we can go to that has a solid reputation? Hold on, how many countries have law surrounding"-- >> Yeah. >> "The Digital Asset Business Act, how many ICO countries have laws. Guess what, Bermuda becomes a standout jurisdiction in that regard. >> Having a regulation signaling is really important, stability or comfort is one, but the one concern that we hear from entrepreneurs, including, you know, ourselves when we look at the market is service providers. You want to have enough service providers around the table so when I come in and domicile, say, in Bermuda you want to have the banking relationships, you want to have the fiduciary-- >> Yes. >> You want to have service providers, law firms and other people. >> Yes. >> How are you guys talking about that, is that already in place? How does that fit into the overall roadmap for your vision? >> I don't want to beat a horse (laughs) or beat a drum too much, that is what we do as a country. So, we have set up, whether it's a group of law firms and the Bermuda, excuse me, the Bermuda Monetary Authority, the Bermuda that's the register of companies that sets up the companies. We have Kevin, and Kevin will tell you about it, he leads our concierge team. So, it's one throat to choke, one person that needs, so when you come to really understand that the ease of business, a county that's business-friendly with a small country and with a small government it's about ease of reference. Kevin, tell us a little about the concierge team. >> It's like the Delaware of the glove, right? >> Absolutely. >> Come in, domicile, go and tell us how it works. >> I'll give you a little bit of background on what we do on the concierge side. So, one thing that we identified is that we want to make sure that we've got a structure and a very clearly defined roadmap for companies to follow so that process from when they first connect with the BDA in Bermuda to when they're incorporated and set up and moved to Bermuda to start running their business is a seamless process that has very clearly identifiable road marks of different criteria to get through. So, what I do as a concierge manager is I will identify who that company needs to connect with when they're on the ground in Bermuda, get those meetings set up for when they come down so that they have a very clearly mapped out day for their trip to Bermuda. So, they meet with the regulator, they meet with the government leaders, they meet with the folks who've put together legislation that, obviously you mentioned the service providers, so identifying who's the right law firm, corporate service provider, advisory firm on the ground in Bermuda, compliance company, and then making sure that depending on what that company wants to achieve out of their operation in Bermuda they've got an opportunity to connect with those partners on their first trip so that they can put that road map together for-- >> So, making it easy... >> Making it very easy to set up in Bermuda. >> So, walk me through, I want to come down, I want to do business-- >> Yeah. >> Like what I hear, what do I do? >> So, you send me an email and you say, "Listen, Wayne, we're looking at "doing an ICO launch in Bermuda. "I would like to meet with the regulator. "Can you put a couple law firms in place," in an email. I zip that over to Kevin or you go on our Fintech.bm website-- >> Yeah, I was going to say... >> Fintech.bm website, and Kevin literally organizes a meeting. So, when you come to Bermuda for your meeting you have a boardroom and all the key players will be in the boardroom. >> Got it. >> If you need somebody to pick you up at the airport, if you need a hotel, whatever you need from soup to nuts our team actually makes that available to you, so you're not running around trying to find different people to meet, everyone's there in the room. >> And the beauty of Bermuda is that, you know, the city of Hamilton's two square kilometers, so your ability to get a lot done in one day is, I think, second to nowhere else on the planet, and working with the BDA concierge team you're, you know, we connect with the client before they come down and make sure we identify what their needs are. >> The number one question I have to ask, and this is probably the most important for everyone, is do they have to wear Bermuda shorts? (laughs) >> When you come you tell us your size, you tell us what size and what color you want and we'll make sure, so the... I tell this story about the Bermuda shorts. The Bermuda shorts, Bermuda's always had to adapt and overcome. Bermuda, we have something called the Bermuda sloop and it's a sailing rig, and so we... The closest port to Bermuda is Cape Hatteras in North Carolina and we wanted to cut down the time of their voyage, so we created a sailing rig called the Bermuda rig or the Bermuda sloop. Over the years that has become the number one adopted rig on sailing boats. We've always had to adapt and become innovative. The Bermuda shorts were a way to adapt and to get through our very hot climate, and so if you look at just keep that in mind, the innovation of the Bermuda sloop and the Bermuda shorts. Now, this Fintech evolution is another step in that innovation and a way that we take what's going on in the world and adapt it to make it palatable for everyone. >> What's the brand promise for you guys when you look at when entrepreneurs out there and other major institutions, especially in the United States, again, Silicon Valley's one of the hottest issues around-- >> Yes. >> Startups for expansion, right now people are stalled, they don't know what to do, they hear Malta, they hear other things going on. What's the promise that you guys are making to the law firms and the people, entrepreneurs out there trying to establish and grow? >> The business proposition is this, you want a jurisdiction that is trading on years of solid regulation, a country and a government that understands business, how to be efficacious in business. When you come to Bermuda you are trading on a country that this is what we've done for a living. So, you don't have to worry about ethical government, is your money going to be safe. We have strong banking relationships, strong law firms, top tier law firms in Bermuda, but more importantly, we have legislation that is in place that allow you to have a secure environment with a clear regulatory framework. >> What should people look for as potentially might be gimmicks for other countries to promote that, you know, being the Delaware for the globe and domiciling, and what are some of the requirements? I mean, some have you've got to live there, you know, what are some of the things that are false promises that you hear from other potential areas that you guys see and don't have to require and put the pressure on someone? >> When you hear the people say, "We can turn your company around in the next day." That we don't require significant KYC and AML. Red flags immediately go up with the global regulatory bodies. We want when a person comes to Bermuda to know that we have set what we believe is called the Bermuda Standard. When you come to Bermuda you're going to have to jump through some legal and regulatory hoops. You can see regulation, the ICO regulation and the Digital Asset Business Act on BermudaLaws.bm. BermudaLaws.bm, and you can go through the legislation clause by clause to see if this meets your needs, how it will affect your business. It sets up clearly what the requirements are to be in Bermuda. >> What's the feedback from business, because you know, when you hear about certain things, that's why Delaware's so easy, easy to set up, source price all know how to do in a corporation, let's say in the United States-- >> We don't have the SEC handicaps that they have in America, going from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. You're dealing with a colony that allows you to be in a domicile that all of the key players finances... We have a number of the key elements that are Bermuda. We're creating a biosphere that allows a person to be in a key space, and this is, you have first move as advantage in Bermuda. We have a number of things that we're working on, like the Estonia model of e-residency, which we will call EID, that creates a space that you are in Bermuda in a space that is, it's protected, it's governed. We believe that when companies set up in Bermuda they are getting the most secure, the strongest business reputation that a country could have. >> The other thing I would add, I'll just say, you know, quality, certainty, and community is what that brand represents. So, you know, you've got that historical quality of what Bermuda brings as a business jurisdiction, you have the certainty of the regulation and that pathway to setting your company up and incorporating in Bermuda, and then the community piece is something that we've been working on to make sure that any of the players that are coming to Bermuda and connecting with Bermuda and setting up there, they feel like they're really integrated into that whole community in Bermuda, whether it be from the government side, the private sector side. You can see it with the companies that have set up that are here today, you know, they really have embraced that Bermuda culture, the Bermuda shorts, and what we're really trying to do as a jurisdiction in the tech space. >> What can I expect if I domicile in Bermuda from a company perspective, what do I have to forecast? What's the budget, what do I got to do, what's my expectation? Allocate resources, what's going to be reporting, can you just give us some color commentary? >> So, with reference, it depends what you're trying to do, and so there will be different requirements for the ICO legislation. For the ICO legislation a key piece of the document actually is the whitepaper. Within the whitepaper you will settle what your scope of business is, what do you want to do, what you know, everything, everything that you require will be settled in your whitepaper. After the whitepaper is approved and if it is indeed successful, you go to the Bermuda Monetary Authority and they will outline what they require of you, and very shortly thereafter you will able to set up and do business in Bermuda. With reference to the digital asset exchanges, the Digital Asset Business Act, such a clear guideline, so you're going to need to have a key man in Bermuda, a key woman in Bermuda. >> Yeah. >> You're going to need to have a place of presence in Bermuda, so there are normal requirements-- >> There's levels of requirements based upon the scope. >> Absolutely. >> So, if you run an exchange it has to be like ghosting there. >> Yeah, yeah, you need boots on the ground. >> And that's why the AML and the KYC piece is so important. >> Yeah. Well, I'm super excited, I think this is a great progress and this has been a big uncertainty, you know, what does this signal. People have, you know, cognitive dissonance around some-- >> Yes. >> Of the decisions they're making, and I've seen entrepreneurs flip flop between Liechtenstein, Malta, Caymans. >> Right. >> You know, so this is a real concern and you guys want to be that place. >> Not only, we will say this, Bermuda is open for business, but remember, when you see the requirements that we have some companies won't meet the standard. We're not going to alter the standard to accommodate a business that might not be what we believe is best for Bermuda, and we believe that once people see the standard, the Bermuda Standard, it'll cascade down and we believe that high tides raises all boats. >> Yeah. >> We have a global standard, and if a company meets it we will be happy for them to set up and do business in Bermuda. >> Well, I got to say, it's looking certainly that leaders like Grant Fondo in Silicon Valley and others have heard good things. >> Yeah. >> How's been the reaction for some of the folks on the East Coast, in New York and around the United States and around the world? What has been some of the commentary, what's been the anecdotal feedback that you've heard? >> We're meeting three and four companies every day of the week. Our runway is full of Fintech companies coming to Bermuda, from... We have insurtech companies that are coming in Bermuda, people are coming to Bermuda for think tanks, to set up incubators and to do exploratory meetings, and so we're seeing a huge interest in Bermuda the likes have not been seen in the last 20 years in Bermuda. >> Well, it's been a pleasure chatting with you and thanks for sharing the update and congratulations. We'll keep in touch, we're following your progress from California, we'll follow up again. The Honorable Wayne Caines, the Minister of National Security of the government of Bermuda, and Kevin Richards, concierge taking care of business, making it easy for people. >> Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. >> We'll see, I'm going to come down, give me the demo. >> We're open for business and we're looking forward to seeing everybody. (laughs) >> Thank you for the opportunity. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Major developments happening in the blockchain, crypto space. We're starting to see formation clarity around, standards around traditional structures but not so traditional. It's not your grandfather's traditional model. This is what's great about blockchain and crypto. CUBE coverage here, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching, stay with us. More day two coverage after this short break. (techy music)

>> Hi from Toronto, Canada. It's the CUBE covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018 brought to you by the CUBE. >> Welcome back to the live coverage. Day Two of the CUBE here in Toronto, Ontario in Canada for the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference wall-to-wall coverage Day Two. A lot of action going on. Tons of great content, tons of great after-hour networking. Just overall great vibe. In light of the market crashing, bitcoin stabilizing, some old coins getting crushed. We got it all covered for here. I'm John Furrier, your host for the CUBE, and our next guest is Nithin Eapen, who's the chief investment officer of Arcadia Crypto Ventures. Arcadia Crypto Ventures, welcome to the CUBE, good to see you. >> Hey good to see you too John. Thank you for having me here. >> Keep alumni in the know. Okay. So first of all, you're an investor in crypto. Everyone's running for the hills. A dip is happening, a crash, or some will say. Your perspective, what's happening in the market? >> See, happening in the market. So typically just like in any asset class, there was a huge run-up that happened very quickly. It didn't go up slow, alright? And the geeks were in early, the libertarians came in after that, then there were speculators. And the retail market also came in, and they all came in together for let's say the December after the November Thanksgiving week and everybody learnt about cryptos, they came in. Alright, the next set of guys haven't come in. Alright? So there's nothing for them there. Nobody's holding them there. And there were expecting the institutional investors to come in and that hasn't happened due to custody problems, ETF problems and all that stuff. Alright, it started going down. The weak hands are falling. The weak hands are keeping on falling and as with any technology, any bubble of people have come in, now they feel that okay the world is coming to an end and they are selling all their stuff. All the ICOs that have raised money in Ether, selling the Ether. All this together is pushing it down, and everybody's waiting for that next set of investors, or the, every 10 X, I mean, an asset goes up, there's a new set of guys who are supposed to come in, and this time it hasn't come in and we're waiting for that. >> You're on the panel here at the event. A lot of different panels, but one panel I watched you were on, you talked about the token model, people were holding Ether. It's kind of a debate, you know, and Bradley Rotter, another investor was saying, hey, there are too many tokens out there. You had different perspective, but one of the things I wanted to get your reaction to is that people who held on to the Ether lost their runway and it creates a harder road to hold. So people were converting to Fiat. This is a big issue. How are we going to get by this? This whole lot of Ether, more people are going to come in. The dynamics of investing in this token model, has it changed? How are you looking at it, and I'd say, how do you help startups? >> So regarding a lot of tokens, first thing is there are a lot of tokens out there. See that is going to happen. It's just like in the 1999, okay, a lot of websites and a lot of Internet companies, pet.com, everybody's an Internet company. Same way, everybody is a token. 95 to 99 percent of them are going to go away and the good ones will rise from those ashes, okay. Now regarding runway, a lot of these projects have pretty much raised enough money for 50 years of runway. So it has crashed one-fifth, okay, they have 10 years worth of runway. Typically, in the olden days, a small company with an idea or a MVP was max going to raise one million to two or three million, alright? And all of them anyway have that even after Ether has crashed. I'm saying, just don't panic okay? You still have 10 years worth of runway. Utilize that, build upon it because the high period may be over where you can just raise money on a white paper. You've got the money, build yourself. You promised your real investors I'm going to build this great thing. So this is where we're going to see the great founders to the average and the bad ones where they've hit a wall, they don't know what to do, they'll fold their hands and walk away. Really good founders, they're resilient. They will, no matter how hard they're pushed to the wall, they're going to come up with the product, you see, and they're going to try to meet customer demands. They're going to get through the feedback loop, check what the customer wants and start delivering it. >> So basically what you're saying is there's so much money being raised, and I agree with you by the way. If you go the classic venture capital route, if you had a Powerpoint or prototype or even a working product with recurring revenue, your serious preferred stock financing will be anywhere from three to 15 million. >> Oh my god. And that's high end. >> That's a high end. >> 15 million will be on the high end. Some cases are raising 50 million, some cases 70 plus million, so even if you cut that in half, it's still a better outcome on the first round. I agree at that, so I think that's interesting. The other one that you mentioned is that things are dynamic, that we're seeing here at the show is in the hallways, everybody's talking about flight-to-quality. And I was talking yesterday on the wrap-up of Day One that you can tell the good deals from the bad deals by is the venture architecture working for the coin, or is the coin working for the venture architecture. And so this flight-to-quality combined with how people are optimizing their build up is critical. >> Yes. >> Talk about some things that you're seeing with this flight-to-quality. Is there anything in particular? Is it blockchain? Is it token economics? Where's the quality deals from your perspective? >> I feel quality lies in the founder of this. The founding team, because the idea, if you really ask me what is an idea here? An idea is just like mental masturbation. Guys who sit there can come up with so many ideas. That's what ideas are, okay? Now taking these ideas to fruition, like building it. There's a capital raising part, okay? Now a lot of people are good at capital raising. They're raising money and a lot of capital coming in. That's awesome because you need capital to attract talent to the space because a lot of talent who are maybe in astrophysics or in mechanical engineering, you want that talent to come here and come with ideas and build the stuff. Okay, the capital has come in. Now once the capital has come in, you really have to build the stuff. Even after you build the stuff, you have to go find the customer right? You have to go and acquire customers and all these three things coming together are so hard in reality. And that's why the venture capital always give a little bit of money to make sure that these guys are not wasting the whole thing away, right? >> Well, the other thing I want to get in touch, get on to you is here is that, in the old days, Silicon Valley, you got to move there, the VCs were there. Now, talking about the global phenomenon, the capital formation is both inside the United States and outside the United States. Certainly inside the United States, you're starting to see the formation around traditional structures, security token, which is more like, it feels like a security, a more preferred financing model. Equity's now involved. Outside United States, a booming utility token market. Your thoughts on how that's progressing, still open, still crazy? What's your thoughts? >> So the capital model, the beauty that has happened today is, earlier, you had to pitch to two hundred VCs or three hundred VCs to get one guy to put money into it. Most of the time, they'll be wasting your time, alright? So you had to go to them to get a million. And you didn't have any other option. You couldn't get it from a small enthusiast of your project to give you five hundred bucks or a thousand bucks. So now, you have that option, okay. Now that option is being cut by regulation, by the STC and people like that coming in saying, oh you can't do that, it has to be a security token. Alright, let's make it a security token. The moment you make it a security token, my question is, can you raise money from outside? Are you stopping that? Then again it doesn't really make sense. You're cutting the small investor, the chance for him to buy into a good, okay? It was only the VCs like Sequoia, or somebody like that, who could access a deal like Google. Now we have a chance for something like Google to come up with the common man whose putting five hundred, like Ethereum. There was no venture capitalist or Wall Street who got involved in Ethereum. The real money was made by very common people who supported a decentralized world computer. >> All CVCs get it now, market entries or whoever's getting involved, starting to see VCs dabble in there. Has that changed the investment dynamic at all? >> It has because the VCs, they have this feeling they've missed out, right? So now they're putting in five and 10 million dollars into a project, valuing a project to three hundred million. It changes the dynamics because now all these guys, like, there are so many projects that are raising like a hundred million because the VCs, all these private investors, are giving 10, 15, 20 million. Like recently for example, they've raised a 300 million dollar fund. They can't invest 10 thousand to 50 thousand to 100 thousand, right? They have to push 10 million to manage the money. That is skewing stuff, and I personally am not very interested in those kinds of projects, because it's without a community power at that time, so I don't know how the token economics is going to be fruitful for the second investor, the third investor. >> And Block Tower, we found out yesterday, is also investing in putting a fund together, a venture fund. It's interesting. We'll see how that shakes out. One thing that is going to change is the dynamics. You mentioned community, obviously, a big part of that. Big community here at the Futurist event, Toronto. So they've got a Canadian culture, a lot of Ethereum DNA in this area. What are you hearing at this event? What are some of the things that you're hearing in the hallways? You've obviously been on some panels at this event, and you're highly networked. What are you hearing? What's, with your ears to the ground, what's it telling you? >> You were talking about Block Tower, yes, they're doing a venture fund. It's great. He's a very very smart investor and they're going to do very well. On the ground, so most of the questions right now are coming, so we've reached the point that okay, we have built up the blockchains or the bit coins. We want it to be faster, alright? Everybody's looking for scalability. Who can bring scalability? The EOS guys are out there. They are saying they can do, you know what, five thousand or 10 thousand or 100 thousand transactions per second. So scalability is a very very big thing. I personally consider something like interoperability, bigger. Interoperability in the sense, alright, so now you have these multiple chains. It's just like multiple types of phones. Now imagine you had an AT&T phone and you couldn't call the Verizon phone customer, alright? We're at that point. We have all these chains, there's Ethereum, there's One Chain, there's EOS. Okay, I've built, let's say, a distributor app, let's say it's a poker app on Ethereum. But I can't play with the guy who's on EOS right? What if he also wants to play poker in this poker app? Is there somewhere we can make this integrate and interoperable? Now to make it interoperable, now we have, if we go into details, there are assets, there are tokens on both sides. How can we transfer tokens from one chain to the other chain making sure there's no double-spend happening? >> I mean there's two things. That was the consumability, making it easy to use, one. And two, I think you're right on. Interoperability's huge. You got to have that. >> Interface, as you said. Interface is big. To make it simple, it's still the geeks. In geeks, a lot of people are using command lang prompts. You can't expect the common man sitting at home. It's just like email. Email was there from 1978. It's only when all these tools like, beginning '94, and the browser came in, that people started using it. So those things have to come in. >> A lot of work's got to get done. So many on the blockchain side. Well, great to have you on. Good to see you. Congratulations on your panels and this afternoon, you're doing a good job. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. >> Thank you so much, John. >> Any predictions by the way? >> Predictions, I don't know, I'm not a predictions guy. I just go with the market. >> Price of bitcoin 20 thousand? >> Oh I never get into those predictions. I never want to get it. I think that it's possible that the bear market can continue for a longer time based on the fact that the newer money cannot come in. It has happened before. Bitcoin has fallen so many times at the 70, 80 percent range and then it stayed stagnant for a year before the next round up came. >> And certainly we got work (inaudible). Thanks for coming on. Keep coverage here live in Toronto, Ontario. Keep coverage here with the untraceable Blockchain Futurist Conference here of two days. Day Two, keep coverage. We're back after this short break. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Toronto, Canada. It's The Cube, covering Blockchain, futurist conference 2018. Brought to you by, The Cube. >> Hello, everyone, welcome back. The Cube's live coverage here in Toronto, Ontario, for Untraceable's Blockchain futurist conference. Two days, this is day one of two days, of Cube coverage. I'm John Furrier, your host. Our next guest is, Azam Shaghaghi, who is the director of public relations, and strategy for Shivom.io. Really interesting story, raised a bunch of money in 15 seconds in an ICO. Really interesting story, welcome to The Cube. Thanks for coming in. >> Yeah, thank you so much for having me. >> So we were just talking on camera, you studied at NASA in Northern California, where I live, and you've got this really cool venture. Before we get into it, talk about what you guys did with the ICO, then talk about what the company does. >> Sure, the project Shivom is about owning your own DNA. So, we are sequencing DNA, and storing it on the patient-friendly platform on Blockchain. Which actually give the power back to the donors, and the people that have the... I mean, and the users, basically. So basically, you can monetize, manage and... >> Control your data. >> Control your own data. >> How much did you guys raise? You did 15 seconds, give us the numbers. What happened? >> So we raised the 35 million. We reached the hard-cap, our public sell was sold out under 15 seconds. >> 15 seconds? - 15 seconds. >> And what month was that? >> It was, actually, on May, the third. >> So it was post, after, I mean, a lot of these actually just went out last year. Still, that's really a good signal, given the climate at that time. >> Exactly, and I think it's about what your actually, your intention is, in order to disrupt. We're talking about genomic information. We're talking about healthcare. At a very highly regulated industry, right? A lot of things have been untapped in that sector. So, hopefully, with the help of Blockchain, A.I., and advanced technology, we can disrupt. >> Now I...Crystal Rose, who's the CEO of Sensay Token, when I interviewed her, in Puerto Rico, she had a comment, which I love, I still use to this day. She makes kind of like A.I. chat boxes, really cool things, your brain and the Blockchain. Similar concept that you're doing, you're DNA on the Blockchain, that you can own and manage, for your own personal benefit, and/or value. >> Exactly. >> That's kind of the concept, if I get that right? >> That it is. >> Okay, who does the genoming? >> Oh, you mean the sequencing? >> Yeah, the sequencing. >> So, I mean, right now, there are companies out there that they do the, I mean, the... >> So, I've got to get it done, and then I bring it to the platform? How does that work? >> So what we, actually, we do, we have created the marketplace, for the industry players, right? For the donors, for the users, for the governments, hospitals, insurance companies, and research labs. So, basically, after you sequence your DNA, we can, you can give it us and we sequence, we manage it, and secure it, store it on the Blockchain. Obviously, we are doing a lot of partnerships with different companies and different ventures. We have an alliance, with different partners out there, that we do, we're trying to promote that, in terms of also helping to develop the kits. >> So I get this right, so a variety of touchpoints, with stakeholders, service providers would do the service, >> Exactly. >> and the users themselves...so if I get my DNA sequence... >> Why? >> If I get my DNA sequence... >> Right... >> Do I direct the provider to put it on the Blockchain, or do I take it myself and put it on the Blockchain? >> So, when you sequence, well, okay, so you just sign up in our platform, >> Got it. >> and after that you sign up in order to sequence your DNA. The kit will be sent out to you. So, it's all through Spark contract. >> So I use your marketplace and you do all the work? >> We do all the work. >> Got it, and how does the tokens work? >> So, basically... >> The better the DNA, the more tokens you get? I wish. Whoops! >> I wish it was like that. I don't think that there is a discussion of a better... >> Okay, I know I'm kidding. >> like DNA. >> I'm afraid you get my DNA sequence, I've got all of these diseases, who knows what I have. Alzheimers or, you know. >> Well that's maybe why you should figure that out, right? Why don't you just sequence your DNA? But, what was the question again? I'm sorry, I forgot. >> So I use your marketplace, and I instruct the service provider to put the DNA. How does the tokens work? >> Oh yes, so the token is OMX token. So, per transaction there is kind of like the token economics that actually has, is kind of like being managed. For example, you donate your DNA to a research lab, you get a certain amount of OMX, and each OMX is going to be worth, you know, some fraction to a varium. >> So some people might know 23 and me. >> Right. >> And do the mail-order kit, same thing. I think some other folks have, I think Ancestry.com does something similar. How do you guys differ from them? Just, decentralized, or they are centralized, obviously. >> They're very centralized, and there is also, there has been research going on, and that they even don't know what is going on, after they sequence your DNA, where that information is going, how is it being stored, so it is all, kind of like, company's property after it is... then you, kind of like, basically sign an agreement that you will give out all the authority to them, and they can do whatever they want to do with it. So basically you are on chain, and we are creating this economy of precision... so, we are promoting precision medicine, we're promoting advanced healthcare, and how we can tackle rare disease, for example, like cancer. We just kicked off, two projects, one in India, and one in Africa. So, we partner with EMQT, a not-for-profit organization, in Africa, in order to sequence 100 people that has Sickle Cell Disease. >> If I want to team the company, how big are you guys, what are you going to do with the funding, where's the product? Take us to a quick update on where you guys are at. >> Sure, we just actually, we had a shuffle in our management team after the ICO, obviously. Now we are moving towards the product development. So, we are hiring a lot of developers, we are working on product development. We are on our roadmap, and are on track. Obviously, we have initiation, re-initiated some of the partnerships, and some of the projects. We are on our marketing, get innovative, kind of like PR, strategy right now, and with a new team... >> And what's the PR strategy, you're in charge of that, is there an outreach, is it promoting the service provider, does it get the marketplace out there? >> It's everything, literally. So we are at the first thing, that our first pillar is the community. So, we want to have the community, you know, engaged in everything that we do. We keep updating them, we get them involved. That's what matters, you know, with us, and we have an organic, kind of like, community. We've already great support in Asia, in India, I mean all over the world, but we are like, very kind of like, you know, some industries favorite...market's favorite. >> Community's super important, well I love your mission. I'd love to keep in touch. It's getting loud in here, but I'd love to follow up with you guys. >> Yeah, obviously, thank you so much for your time. >> People, it's a great project, I mean, it's one of those things where this is a real example of de-centralization, where you can use your own information, and broker that for value. Be part of studies, I'd imagine. >> Exactly. >> Engage with community. >> And create an impact. >> Great, so thanks so much for coming out, appreciate it. It's The Cube coverage live, here, in Toronto, Ontario, for the Blockchain Futurist conference, John Furrier, day one, coverage. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE, covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. >> Hello everyone and welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage here in Toronto, Canada, in Ontario. We are here live breaking down what's going on in the Blockchain world. It's the Untraceables event here, Tracy and team doing a great job of Untraceable. They're putting on the Blockchain Futurist conference. This is about the future, bringing the industry together. All the luminaries are here; Bounds of Ethereum, Ackerson Ecosystem influencers, original gangsters- OGs-are here, of course theCube, we got 2018 coverage breaking it down, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Wrapping up day one Dave, I know you got to take off and head back on a flight home, let's break down and analyze what's going on in the industry. Yesterday we had the first annual ever, first inaugural Cloud and Blockchain summit, global Blockchain and Cloud summit, two worlds coming together. Here it's a little bit different this is all about cryptocurrency, it's all about blockchain. Big movements, speculators versus builders is my theme and everyone's recognizing the trend of price shifts billions lost in market gap that were gained last year but still some are up. But the focus is about entrepreneurship on a global scale, this is the focus here, right? It's a lot of VIPs, a lot of players coming together. I don't see people crying in their wine about the prices- although you can see it on Anthony Di Iorio's face, probably a setback or the Ethereum community on the price but still, the long game is what they're going after. Your thoughts and analysis? >> Well you definitely seeing a lot of talk about the boom and bust cycles. And we're hearing a lot from people -but by the way, there are a couple of guys who went big, maybe hedge fund guys or other fund guys that are taking a bath, maybe they got in big in January, December, not the best time to get in. So you are seeing some long faces there, but generally the sentiment is: hey, these boom and bust cycles they come and they go we've seen them before, now's the time to hunker down and innovate, execute, and figure out how to add substance and value. Now, first of all, I would say a couple things. One is those guys probably have... a store of fiat currency that they cashed out, number one, so they're feeling pretty good. Two is, the big difference to me John, is in 2018, crypto is much more in the mainstream news. You see it on CNBC, you see it in every medium po- every day you get a medium post, everybody's blogging about it, whereas obviously we've been blogging about bitcoin for five, six years but the mainstream media has picked up on it. >> Seven years. >> Seven years, there you go. So the mainstream media has picked up on it so it's much more front and center than it ever has been in the past. So I think that's a different dynamic. There seems to be still a lot of opportunistic sentiment, people are sanguine about the future and I think that's because we're seeing some real hardcore innovation going on in real use cases. Now, having said all that, the other scenario is there's just a lot of competition for quality projects, we're hearing too many coins out there, you're seeing all these ICOs tied to Ethereum in an oversupply right now, and you're clearly seeing that affect the price of Ethereum, which has dropped, on a percentage basis, much more than bitcoin. It's down considerably this year, whereas bitcoin actually is still up. Ethereum's trading about where it was last September, Bitcoin's up considerably since last September. So you know, a lot of cycles, a lot of instability still, but a lot of optimism. >> The bottom line for me is that the big question that's coming out of this event and this whole week here in Toronto is why do cryptocurrencies matter, the mass influence and adoption of Blockchain technology, where is that on the progress bar? This is the topic, and again, a lot of people that are "poo pooing" this revolution and I'm seeing on my Facebook feed all the time, "bitcoin's at zero," there's a lot of nonbelievers. Here's what I would say, here's my analysis. I think that the comparisons to the dot-com bubble with all the irrational exuberance that was part of that phase, this ICO phase, is crashing. No doubt about them. The ICOs in the United States are down, almost to nill. Certainly a lot of action going outside the United States, still unregulated, still wild, wild, east- or west depending how you call it. So yeah, that's happening and a lot of the bad stuff's being filtered out there's an emphasis on build which you mentioned. But here's the thing that no one might not see in the mainstream. During the dot-com bubble, there was all this companies that were started to it public and that was because the market wanted it. That's what happened with the cryptocurrency ICOs, the market wanted more products, then just manufactured it and then they realized, oh shit too many tokens. But if you look at the internet revolution, and I think this is the comparison with blockchain and crypto. You got blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, which is token economics are absolute gamechangers and the demand for that is very high and there are more people coming on every day in a mass adoption basis. The internet actually never stopped, if you looked at internet penetration rates, Mary Meeker would point out at Morgan Stanley, now she's at Kleiner Perkins, that the internet adoption rate of the internet during the bubble and then post-bubble continued to accelerate. That means more people got on the internet. So therefore the population of users became larger and larger every day. That really level-setted the reality that this was not a fad, not going away. I see blockchain and token economics having the same trajectory where there'll be more people adopting the technology then putting it into use than ever before. That's the tell sign. If that trend line continues to grow, the corrections will all take place, cycles will happen, but the entrepreneurs will follow the money, they're going to follow the user experience, they're going to follow the demand for opportunity. That to me is going to be the major tell sign. I think that's the general sentiment that I'm feeling here is screw the price of the tokens, yes there's too many tokens, clear out the dead wood, get back down to building companies, that's validated by the fact that there are more deals being done from a financing standpoint that are starting to look like traditional funding structures. Security tokens, equities, starting to see people talk and fundraising, lower rounds, not the big mega rounds. Money that's going to be around 7 to 30 million, 30 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 plus. This is going to be traditional structures, not the land grab utility token which gets you into the tailspin of basically managing coins distribution, managing all these things. There'll be a balance, but that's really kind of what's happening. >> So that's great analysis John, I would add to that that the fundamentals are still in place, blockchain attacks inefficiencies. Where there's a middle man and there's inefficiencies and there are waste, blockchain is being applied to attack those inefficiencies. I think the second thing is that new capital-raising vehicles have catalyzed massive investments and are catalyzing innovation and a whole new breed of developers. The third point is a global phenomemon. You don't have to be in Silicon Valley, or New York City, or Boston, or Austin, in the United states, or from an Ivy League school, it's happening around the world, you're seeing non-US countries and island countries invite developers in, giving them tax havens, and as a result, it's becoming much more of a global phenomenon than a lot of the internet startups were. There are a lot of adoption barriers. I mean you have the cyclicality and the volatility, you've got industries that are essentially entrenched: financial services, healthcare, lots of defense and aerospace industries, very much entrenched, it's going to take a long time for that collaboration to come together. And you also have a lot of scams. >> Yeah >> There's going to be a shake out, we predicted that I think in February in the Bahamas, we predicted the flight to quality, people are trying to figure out where that quality is right now. And to your point, you're also seeing more hybrid models, more traditional equity models combined with token models, and that's not a surprise. You're going to see more and more of that as a hedge. The token model still gives people the potential for liquidity, and as long as that fundamental remains in place, I think that dynamic will- is here to stay. >> And also, you and I have seen many cycles of innovation you talk about in the industry, many waves. The people that we talked to that have been through multiple waves like Brailey Rodder, (mumbles) and others, experience, they all know what's going on. The difference here that I think is interesting is that the smart contrast, the flight to quality, the companies that have buildable products, are going to get the attention. Now the difference now in this community that I think is interesting that makes the funding dynamic different is you have now community dynamics. You've got open source software, Cloud computing, and new technology with new capital formation dynamics. I think those three things are the perfect storm of innovation that's being overlooked. and the interplay between that is going to give us a look and feel of an industry that we've never seen before. So we can compare and contrast waves "oh, BC, Client-Server, blah blah blah," I don't think this is going to look like any of those waves, it's going to look different. And that's going to be really the shake out between the pundits who claim they know what's going on, or... predictions whatnot. Talking to the people, putting the ear to the ground in the communities, that's key. And for the companies, the ones that are going to win are the ones that can build community, tap into communities, and grow communities because they're now part of the ecosystem. It's not just selling products to them, they got to be a bidirectional, symbiotic relationship between communities at large, in this ecosystem. I think these are going to be new dynamics they're going to be- impact valuation, it's going to impact time to market, time to value, and ultimately give the entrepreneurs and the investors what they need, which is good outcomes in the process. >> You know it's interesting you were saying about the waves. And the waves in the past, and certainly looking back, were quite easy to identify, they tended to be architectural, you know centralized mainframe, and they went to client server, then you went to the sort of public internet, and then this cloud of remote services. The next wave is maybe not ... blatantly architectural, but it's this blending of digital services that's ubiquitous across all industries. And I think the key is, there's an automation layer on top of these digital services, which is powered by AI and machine intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning, and blockchain is part of that automation layer. And people are building new businesses on top of that and disrupting existing industries. I think there's no industry that's safe from disruption as I put it before, there are some entrenched, high-risk industries like financial services, healthcare, defense, aerospace, education, that are going to take longer but ultimately there's waste in all of those businesses and I will say I think a lot of the incumbents are going to hop on this trend and do very well picking up blockchain and defending against the disruptors. Not all will make it, but a lot of the big guys are going to put some serious resources into this and they're going to lead in to blockchain in a big way. >> Yeah and just to kind of wrap up, I think you're the fact that what we're seeing here is that engineering-led dynamics are happening, blockchain's going to lay down the plumbing, it's got to be stable, desensualized applications over the top with token economics is the business model of innovation. We got technology theater booming with innovation with engineering-led initiatives, that's got to accelerate, that's infrastructure, that's got to be more cloud-like, that's got to be much more stable, that's got to get laid down, got to put the roads down if you will, and then the business model innovation coming from the software this is the game changer so you're looking at all the smart money, smart money is saying okay, we see guys building product, let's see some unique IP, let's see some token economics that are nobel and different for what's happening, that to me is going to be the new investor algorithm if you will, for vetting. And it's been that way in a way, the smart money follows the smart engineers, what are you building? And then they vet that with other stands so again, big engineering-led focus. >> So what would you do now- okay, soyou were hearing this week, too many damn tokens, everything's tied to Ethereum, most ICOs, what would you do now if you're an entrepreneur, you have an idea, you have a potential to build a community, where would you focus, would you just try to float another token? Would you go overseas? What would you do in that situation? >> I would look at the regulatory frameworks as a way, as a guidepost to risk management, right. I think you're going to see some regulatory regimes try to manage the bridge between slow changing, old guard, to new fast, and loose. Crypto-'Cause look at it. It's fast and loose, but there's real people that are working on it. I would focus on the real people that have builders, I'd look at the mechanisms where they're domiciling, and what they do with the economics or the tokens. One thing I will tell you that is that, as an entrepreneur, this is like, a golden rule, your focus is everything: focus, focus, focus. If you're focused on managing distribution of coins, and the arbitrage of coin pricing, that takes away form the focus of engineering and building. I think that's going to be an easy binary test for an investor to say, "what are these guys working on?" Is the token working for the venture, or is the venture working for the token? That is a fundamental mindset, if that is... Not in the right position, it should be: the token works for the venture, not the venture working for the token. That to me, I would run for the hills, if I see someone working for the token, I'd say, "I don't want to fly at all at that deal." Because you could maybe pass up some money right in the short term, but you're going to miss the long game. That's the way I look at it. >> And again, I would add to that, I mean, yeah, okay, so there are a bunch of crypto-billionaires that got minted, and they got in early and good for them, but that doesn't mean there's not more opportunities. And when I think of a company like Dell Michael Dell wasn't the first in PC's, you know? Compact was the first, you know, Rod Canion, the back of the napkin, that urban legend. But what Michael Dell did is he improved on the system. He took inefficiencies out of the supply chain, and became the dominant player! So first move advantage, yes, okay, great, you missed being a billionaire potentially. But the wave tends to get bigger after the market matures. And as a result, I think my focus would be on building, to your theme, building that community, demonstrating value, and then, eventually, I think you're going to be able to use Block Chain, Crypto currencies, tokenization, crypto economics to power your business. But figure out a way to actually execute today and prove value; that's what I would do. >> Again, all great stuff, great analysis, Dave, Good to see you here, where again: this is theCUBE's coverage in Toronto for Block Chain Futurist Conference. Again, this is part of our 2018 initiating coverage of the Block Chain Industry with our video presence. Engaging the community is an upstream content project sharing the data with you, so you can make your decisions, and understand who to connect with. That's our model, we're going to do it. We've been covering BitCoin and Block Chain since 2011, on siliconangle.com, that's our journalism site. Go to theCUBE.net, that's where we have all the videos, and soon to be our CUBE token coming out, be part of our network. Join our community if you wannna get engaged, we're happy to have you. Thanks for watching Day 1 of the Futurist Conference here in Toronto, Ontario. Thanks for watching.