>> (narrator) From around the globe. It's theCUBE. With digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE virtual. Our coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 continues. I'm Lisa Martin. Got a couple of guests joining me next. Wendy Moore the VP of product marketing from Trend Micro is here and Geva Solomonovich Global Alliances CTO from Snyk. Wendy and Geva, It's great to have you both on the program today. >> Thanks for having us. Great to be here. >> Hi, thanks for having us. >> Last year we were probably all crammed in Vegas together. Here we are virtually but it's great that we're still able to connect. So lot has gone on since we were all at re:Invent in Vegas last year. Wendy, let's start with you from a security perspective there's been a growth in open source vulnerabilities that have impacted enterprises globally. Talk to me about what you're seeing there. What's going on? >> Yeah. Well. I think everybody in this audience recognizes the rapid shift to the use of open source in development teams. And what we've seen alongside that is a rapid increase in the number of vulnerabilities that are showing up in open source software. So that means that vulnerabilities that can be exploited and cause damage to your company's application, reputation and your customers, are on the increase out there. >> And a number that you sent over was two and a half X growth in open source vulnerabilities in the last year. Has that number gone up during the pandemic? >> So I'm not sure if the vulnerabilities have gone up during the pandemic, but we've definitely seen an increase in exploitation of vulnerabilities. There's so much in the news about ransomware incidents in healthcare targeting pharmaceutical organizations, and most of those are taking advantage of vulnerabilities. Not necessarily in open source, but some of it is definitely happening in open source. >> Now we've been talking about the rise in ransomware for awhile, and it's all... The numbers and types of companies and healthcare organizations like is it schools, governments, for example lot of vulnerabilities being exploited that's for sure. >> So Geva let's go over to you. Talk about from Synk's perspective. The impact on businesses and how can you guys help. >> And then I'll put in a few insights there. on the open source risk. Wendy talked about it as well. Why is it growing? One of course is open source tuition usage is growing. So of course it bulges, the amounts of vulnerabilities is growing and the amount of exploits. But when you look at it from a hacker's perspective, attacking is an ROI based activity. Hackers want to spend their hacking hours where they're more likely to get our reward, be able to get that ransom or steal the data or do whatever they can. And open source actually makes it much easier for them than a lot of these other alternatives. One, the source is open. So just finding a vulnerability is much easier than trying to find the vulnerability in proprietary code. Two, there's like a market for these exploits and companies even like need for chapter. One of the byproducts of that is you can just go and feel the vulnerabilities out there and pick the ones that you want to try to exploit. But three, which is really the most critical piece is that if you do find the juicy vulnerability in a very popular open source package, the amount of companies you can attack is not one, is thousands or tens of thousands because that's precisely what makes the popular open source packages popular. It's being used broadly and so if you spend this effort to develop an exploit and then you can send it like there just across the world to 10 thousands of companies you're more likely to be successful. And that's what's driving a lot of the hacker attention into the open source vulnerabilities and that's why the growing. >> So it's a low cost high reward for those hackers. Wendy what are some of the ways that organizations can protect themselves from this? >> Well, one of the best ways to protect themselves against exploitation of vulnerabilities and against vulnerability showing up in their code is to actually analyze their code and scan it looking for vulnerabilities. And the best possible place to do that is actually in the code repository. So before code is ever packaged up and deployed it actually gets caught really early. So it's all about shifting security left. But some of the challenges with that is that you know the code repository, Tory and the code and open source has largely been the domain of DevOps and the developers and security who is tasked with managing the risk of the organization has little to know visibility into what vulnerabilities might exist. So something that's a growing part of an enterprise risk profile the security team doesn't really see. And that's a big gap for most organizations. >> So in terms of that visibility being essential, sounds like maybe even a cultural gap there. Geva what are your recommendations? We, you know, we talk about SecOps, we talk about DevOps. Is the solution DevSecOps or SecDevOps? >> I mean, all these partners are definitely helping there but you kind of need to break it down and understand what their problems, which is what Wendy was articulating. Why you have these traditional security teams have all their traditional tools. They look at mostly and let's call it the IC type security. Then you have this entire new category of risk which is lets say open source risk, but it's just inside the code repository inside a GitHub repo or somewhere, or they completely have no visibility into. And what that causes is one has to have a conversation with the developers who are those who are convenient to pick those vulnerabilities, remove them from the code. And, but to also, just from the mind ensuring that in our location it's hard for you to protect something that you don't have visibility into which causes opensource security to be possibly under provisioned in your entire a security fence. As you're looking at the security risk. And as we are talking about solution, so one of the movements we've seen with DevOps, where you know engineering team and IT teams have come together to have a shared ownership of the results of deploying these applications. In production now you expand out into DevSecOps. It's okay to actually make this work. We need to have a shared responsibility model where both developers step up to take some ownership and the traditional security each step up to understand what the developers are doing, build tools to make it easier for them. And ultimately I think Wendy nailed it on the head. She said the best way to protect yourself is actually to remove the vulnerable line of code from your application, not wait for it to be deployed and try to put some blocks in there. >> All right. So Wendy how are Trend Micro and Snyk working together to resolve that challenge that you guys just described? >> Yeah, we'll Trend Micro and Snyk have been working together for over a year now. And we came out with an initial offering and now we're coming out with a new offering that is really focused on basically delivering that code scanning ability right in the code repository. And through Trend Micro's Cloud One platform, we are delivering this as a service to the security operations team so that they get visibility of anything that Snyk finds in the code repository. And they can take action from there. So Trend Micro's Cloud One security services platform basically equips cloud builders with a whole bunch of different types of technologies to satisfy their different infrastructure requirements. So we've got things like workload security application security, network security, a number of different take types of security tools. And this just brings another security tool to the security operations team and the DevOps team so that they can basically extend their visibility and their security controls back to the code repository. >> Geva what are some of the impacts that you're seeing. So for obviously besides wanting to find those vulnerabilities faster as when you talk about shifting left. Give me some examples of some customers that you were working with maybe in the first iteration and what the impact has been. >> The impact is the... what, sorry, can you repeat the question? >> Yeah. Impact of your technologies together? You said that there's a new offering coming up but talk to me about some of the impact that these customers are making. >> Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Thank you for repeating the question. And so this joint product is very cunning from a multiple perspective. So one, it's going to be delivered inside the Cloud One platform, which Wendy just talked about. You asked before what is the impact of COVID? And one of the big impacts has been on the financial stress. Every company in every, every vendor is having. And so just the ease of managing less vendors and less tools and less places to procurement is of high value for every organization Just in terms of efficiency of operations. And just being able to acquire this new product on an existing platform where there are already consuming security tools. That by itself is amazing value. And number two, we're taking again... We're taking a technology which is a cloud native, it's a modern technology. And that's typically has been outside of the purview of a traditional security team and making it accessible to them in a place where it's easy for them to try out and they can, you know, start small and grow from there. They don't have to make a big commitment to get going. And more importantly, it's giving them visibility into this important technology that they didn't have before. >> So Wendy this is all intended at bridging that gap? I'm just curious, like if we take a peek inside, what this enables SecOps to do what it enables DevOps to do. What were some of the feedback that you're hearing from customers about those teams coming together and actually being able to work very collaboratively with that shift left actually being able to be done? >> Yeah. I mean, you know, if you talk to... There's some organizations who do this really well. They're very mature and their security operations teams and their DevOps teams work very closely together collaboratively, excuse me. And they also understand each other's needs. So they're able to insert tools into the security pipeline that don't slow DevOps down but also meet the needs of the security team. Whereas we see some other organizations where Dev is at one side of the pipeline and you've got security at the other and they don't tend to converse or meet. And those are the organizations where there tends to be more challenges. So the idea with this new solution is it's going to give the security team visibility of basically the scale and scope of their open source situation. So that they've actually got some data to go have conversations with the DevOps teams and start going in that direction of making those teams work more seamlessly together. I mean, you used the term DevSecOps before, some organizations that's a very real situation. Others still have a long way to go. And we think this is a great first step to bring those teams together. >> Fostering long-term friendships I'm sure. Just talk to me about the go to market, Wendy. How are you guys going to market together? Trend Micro and Snyk selling direct channel? What is it like? >> So this is actually going to be a Trend Micro Cloud One offering. So we jointly developed it with Snyk but it's going to be Trend Micro who is selling it. And we go to market a number of different ways. AWS marketplace is a big channel to market for us And this will be available for purchase there. When it becomes available in January. And also, we also work very closely with channel partners as well who also participate in AWS marketplace. >> So what are some of the things that you're expecting to customers to be able to take advantage of around the time of re:Invent and into early 2021? >> Yeah. I really encourage customers to visit our page on the AWS re:Invent platform. We're going to have all kinds of exciting demos there. You can go learn more about this new offering that we're delivering jointly developed with Snyk. And you can also ask about how you can sign up for early access to this new offering. So highly encourage you to go check that out. >> Excellent, early access is always nice to be a beta tester and really get that symbiotic relationship. >> Geva last question for you is as the Global Alliances CTO I imagine your customer conversations in the last year have changed dramatically. Talk to me about some of the things that you really think like in terms of like exposing vulnerabilities. Let's talk about exposing opportunities that that Snyk is helping organizations do so that they can not just keep the lights on during this very unprecedented time but actually be winners of tomorrow. >> Yeah, I think again at the heart of the DevOps movement and why it's been successful it's reducing that feedback loop between writing some codes, getting it to production in the hands of customers, getting the feedback from them and rinse and repeat and starting that loop. And those who have it, the faster you can get to market faster and can deliver value faster ultimately are the winners. Now, one of the things we've seen with the COVID is a lot of the this outbound activity has been going down. People have been going less to events and need to look more internally and how you can become better as an organization. And you've actually seen an increase in the investment of a digital transformation and cloud journeys and stuff like that. And one of the... One of kind of the traditional inhibitors that's going fast and all in into the cloud is the loss of control of the traditional security teams on the application development. Where now people can, you know... deploy hundreds of times every application to the cloud a day. And what we've seen is that they come to Snyk or to companies like ours, so we can secure those new modern development life cycles and give the security feedback to the developers as they're building the applications and give the security teams the visibility into those pipelines and application domain. So they have a sense that they're not losing all the control they used to have. They're still getting visibility into those application development and actually allowing their organizations to go faster because of it they can sign up to and be doing the technologies and actually increase the speed of going to the cloud. >> Yeah and that's critical because as we, you mentioned as we've been talking about for months now that the acceleration of cloud adoption, the speed of digital transformation it's one of those things that's challenging to do. You've got to have visibility. Period. In order to facilitate that. And if it's another thing that you kind of were describing Geva as that visibility provides that sense of control or trust, and that's also huge for not just a business to catch vulnerabilities but for teams the DevOps teams, the SecOps teams to be working together in a highly collaborative way. Do you agree Wendy? >> Absolutely. And the beautiful thing is this sets that up This tool. So it allows them to work together very collaboratively but it also sets up that visibility. So that down the road there could be even further automation into that process. Because you know, the whole purpose of DevOps is to take the people out of it. Right. So, but in order... You need to set up those processes to begin with. So this is a first step in terms of setting up that automation and visibility amongst those two teams. >> Excellent. And can you say one more time Wendy where prospective customers can go to learn more and become a early adopter? >> Yeah, absolutely. So visit our Trend Micro page at the AWS reinvent platform. And there you'll be able to learn much more about the offering and also learn how you can access the early adopter program. >> Excellent. You guys thank you so much for joining me on the program today. Sharing what Trend Micro and Snyk are doing together and how you're helping organizations cross-functionally be successful. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you, Lisa. Appreciate it. >> Thank you so much. >> My pleasure. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE virtual. (upbeat music)

>>Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the Cube covering Cisco Live 2020 right to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back, everyone to the Cube's live coverage Day four of four days of wall to wall action here in Barcelona, Spain, for Cisco Live. 2020. I'm John Furrier with my co host Dave Volante, with a very special guest here to wrap up Cisco Live. The president of Europe, Middle East Africa and Russia. Francisco Wendy Mars Cube Alumni. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on to. I kind of put a book into the show here. Thanks for joining us. >>It's absolutely great to be here. Thank you. >>So what a transformation. As Cisco's business model of continues to evolve, we've been saying brick by brick, we still think big move coming. I think there's more action. I can sense the walls talking to us like Cisco live in the US and more technical announcement. In the next 24 months, you can see you can see where it's going. It's cloud, it's APS. It's policy based program ability. It's really a whole another business model shift for you and your customers. Technology shift in the business model shift. So I want to get your perspective this year. Opening. Keynote. Oh, you let it off Talking about the philosophy of the business model, but also the first presenter was not a networking guy. It was an application person. App dynamics. Yep, this is a shift. What's going on with Cisco? What's happening? What's the story? >>You know, if if you look for all of the work that we're doing is is really driven by what we see from requirements from our customers to change, that's happening in the market and it is all around. You know, if you think digital transformation is the driver organizations now are incredibly interested in, how do they capture that opportunity? How do they use technology to help them? But, you know, if you look at it, really, there's the three items that are so important it's the business model evolution. It's actually the business operations for for organizations. Plus, there people, they're people in the communities within that those three things working together. And if you look at it with, it's so exciting with application dynamics there because if you look for us within Cisco, that linkage off the application layer through into the infrastructure into the network. And bringing that linkage together is the most powerful thing because that's the insights and the value our customers are looking for. >>You know, we've been talking about the the innovation sandwich, you know, you got data in the middle and you've got technology and applications underneath. That's kind of what's going on here, but I'm glad you brought up the part about business model. This is operations and people in communities. During your keynote, you had a slide that laid out three kind of pillars. Yes, people in communities, business model and business operations. There was no 800 series in there. There was no product discussions. This is fundamentally the big shift that business models are changing. I tweeted provocatively, the killer wrap in digital business model. Because you think about it. The applications are the business. What's running under the covers is the technology, but it's all shifting and changing, so every single vertical every single business is impacted by. This is not like a certain secular thing in the industry. This is a real change. Can you describe how those three things are operating with that can >>sure. I think if you look from, you know, so thinking through those three areas. If you look at the actual business model itself, our business models is organizations are fundamentally changing and they're changing towards as consumers. We are all much more specific about what we want. We have incredible choice in the market. We are more informed than ever before. But also we are interested in the values of the organizations that we're getting the capability from us as well as the products and the services that naturally we're looking to gain. So if you look in that business model itself, this is about, you know, organizations making sure they stay ahead from a competitive standpoint about the innovation of portfolio that they're able to bring, but also that they have a strong, strong focus around the experience, that they're customer gains from an application, a touch standpoint that all comes through those different channels, which is at the end of the day, the application. Then if you look as to how do you deliver that capability through the systems, the tools, the processes? As we all evolve, our businesses have to change the dynamic within your organization to cope with that. And then, of course, in driving any transformation, the critical success factor is your people and your culture. You need your teams with you. The way teams operate now is incredibly different. It's no longer command and control. It's agile capability coming together. You need that to deliver on any transformation. Never, never mind. Let it be smooth, you know, in the execution they're all three together. >>But what I like about that model and I have to say, this is, you know, 10 years of doing the Cube, you see that marketing in the vendor community often leads what actually happens. Not surprising as we entered the last decade, there's a lot of talk about Cloud. Well, it kind of was a good predictor. We heard a lot about digital transformation. A lot of people roll their eyes and think it's a buzzword, but we really are. I feel like exiting this cloud era into the digital era. It feels, really, and there are companies that get it and are leaning in. There are others that maybe you're complacent. I'm wondering what you're seeing in Europe just in terms of everybody talks digital, every CEO wants to get it right. But there is complacency. Their financial services said Well, I'm doing pretty well, not on my watch. Others say, Hey, we want to be the disruptors and not get disrupted. What are you seeing in the region? In terms of that sentiment, >>I would say across the region, you know, there will always be verticals and industries that slightly more advanced than others. But I would say that the bulk of conversations that I'm engaged in independence of the industry or the country in which we're having that conversation in there is a acceptance off transfer. Digital transformation is here. It is affecting my business. I if I don't disrupt, I myself will be disrupted and we challenged Help me. So I You know, I'm not disputing the end state and the guidance and support soon drive the transition and risk mitigated manner, and they're looking for help in that there's actually pressure in the board room now around a what are we doing within within organizations within the enterprise service, right of the public sector, any type of style of company. There's that pressure point in the board room of Come on, we need to move it speed. >>Now the other thing about your model is technology plays a role and contribute. It's not the be all end. All that plays a role in each of those the business model of business operations developing and nurturing communities. Can you add more specifics? What role do you see technology in terms of advancing those three years? >>So I think, you know, if you look at it, technology is fundamental to all of those fears in regard. Teoh Theo innovation that differentiation technology could bring the key challenges. One being able to apply it in a manner where you can really see differentiation of value within the business. So and then the customer's organization. Otherwise, it's technology for the sake of technology. So we see very much a movement now to this conversation of talk about the use case, the use cases, the way by which that innovation could be used to deliver value to the organization on also different ways by which a company will work. Look at the collaboration Kate Capability that we announced earlier this week of helping to bring to life that agility. Look at the the APP D discussion of helping the link the layer of the application into the infrastructure of the network to get to root, cause identification quickly and to understand where you may have a problem before you actually arises and causes downtime many, many ways. >>I think the agility message has always been a technical conversation. Agile methodology, technology, softer development, No problem check. That's 10 years ago. But business agility is moving from a buzz word to reality. Exactly. That's what you're kind of getting. >>Their teams have. Teams operate, how they work and being able to be quick, efficient, stand up, stand down and operate in that way. >>You know, we were kind of thinking out loud on the Cube and just riffing with Fabio Gori on your team on Cisco's team about clarification with you, Gene Kim around kind of real time. What was interesting is we're like, Okay, it's been 13 years since the iPhone, and so 13 years of mobile in your territory in Europe, Middle East Africa mobility has been around before the iPhone, so more advanced data privacy much more advanced in your region. So you you you have a region that's pretty much I think, the tell signs for what's going on North American around the world. And so you think about that. You say Okay, how is value created? How the economics changing this is really the conversation about the business model is okay. If the value activities are shifting and being more agile and the economics are changing with SAS, if someone's not on this bandwagon is not an end state discussion, very. It's done Deal. >>Yeah, it's But I think also there were some other conversation which, which are very prevalent here, is in the region so around trust around privacy law, understanding compliance. If you look at data where data resides, portability of that data GDP our came from Europe has pushed out on those conversations will continue as we go over time. And if I also look at, you know, the dialogue that you saw, you know, within World Economic Forum around sustainability that is becoming a key discussion now within government here in Spain, you know, from a climate standpoint and many other areas >>as well. David, I've been riffing around this whole where the innovation is coming from. It's coming from your region, not so much the us US. We've got some great innovations. But look at Blockchain. Us is like, don't touch it pretty progressive outside United States. A little dangerous to, But that's where innovation is coming from, and this is really the key that we're focused on. I want to get your thoughts on. How do you see it going? Next level? The next level. Next. Gen Business model. What's your What's your vision? >>So I think there'll be lots of things if we look at things like it with the introduction. Introduction of artificial intelligence, Robotics capability five g of course, you know, on the horizon we have Mobile World Congress here in Barcelona a few weeks time. And if you talked about with the iPhone, the smartphone, of course, when four g was introduced, no one knew what the use case where that would be. It was the smartphone, which wasn't around at that time. So with five G and the capability there, that will bring again yet more change to the business model for different organizations and capability and what we can bring to market >>the way we think about AI privacy data ownership becomes more important. Some of the things you were talking about before. It's interesting what you're saying. John and Wendy, the GDP are set this standard and and you're seeing in the US they're stovepipes for that standard California is gonna do want every state is gonna have a difference, and that's going to slow things down. It's going to slow down progress. Do you see sort of an extension of GDP, our like framework of being adopted across the region, potentially accelerating some of these sticky issues and public policy issues that can actually move the market forward? >>I think I think that will because I think there'll be more and more if you look at this is terminology of data. Is the new oil What do you do with data? How do you actually get value from that data? Make intelligent business decisions around that? So, yeah, that's critical. But yet if you look for all of ours, we are extremely passionate about where's our data used again? Back to trust and privacy. You need compliance, you need regulation. And I think this is just the beginning off how we will see that >>evolving. You know, when you get your thoughts. David, I've been riffing for 10 years around the death of storage. Long live storage. But data needs to be stored somewhere. Networking is the same kind of conversation just doesn't go away. In fact, there's more pressure now to get the smartphone. That was 13 years ago, before that. Mobility, data and Video. Now super important driver. That's putting more pressure on you guys. And so hey, we did well, networking. So it's kind of like Moore's Law. More networking, more networking. So video and data are now big your thoughts on video and data video. >>But if you look out the Internet of the future, you know what? So if you look for all of us now, we are also demanding as individuals around capability and access of. That's an Internet of the future. The next phase. We want even more so they'll be more more requirement for speed availability, that reliability of service, the way by which we engage in we communicate. There's some fundamentals there, so continuing to grow, which is which is so, so exciting force. >>So you talk about digital transformation that's obviously in the mind of C level executives. I got to believe security is up. There is a topic one other. What's the conversation like in the corner office when you go visit your customers? >>So I think there's a There's a huge excitement around the opportunity, realizing the value of the of the opportunity on. You know, if you look at top of mind conversations around security around, making sure that you can make taint, maintain that fantastic customer experience because if you don't the customer go elsewhere, How do you do that? How do you enrich at all times and also looking at market? Jason sees, you know, as you go in a new tour at senior levels, within, within organizations independent of the industry in which they're in. They're a huge amount of commonalities that we see across those of consistent problems by which organizations are trying to solve. And actually, one of the big questions is what's the pace of change that I should operate us on? When is it too fast? And one is one of my too slow and trying to balance that is exciting but also a challenge for a company. >>So you feel like sentiment. There's still strong, even though we're 10 years into this, this bull market you get Brexit, China tensions with US US elections. But but generally you see sentiment still pretty strong demand. >>So I would say that the the the excitement around technology, the opportunity that is there around technology in its broader sense is greater than ever before. And I think it's on all of us to be able to help organizations to understand how they can consume and see value from us. But it's a fantastic times, >>gets economic indicators way. So >>I know you >>have to be careful, >>but really, the real I think I'm trying to get to is is the mindset of the CEO. The corner office right now is it is that we're gonna we're gonna grow short term by cutting or do we going to be aggressive and go after this incremental opportunity? And it's probably both. You see a lot of automation in cars >>both, and I think if you look fundamentally for organizations, it's it's the three things helped me to make money, how to save money, keep me out of trouble. So those are the pivots they all operate with on, you know, depending on where an organization is in its journey, whether they're start up there in the middle, the more mature and some of the different dynamics and the markets in which they operate in a well, there's all different variables, you know? So it's it's it's mixed. >>Wendy, thanks so much to spend the time to come on. The Cube really appreciate great keynote folks watching. If you haven't seen the keynote opening section, that's good. Second, the business model. I think it's really right on. I think that's gonna be a conversation will continue. So thanks for sharing that before we look. Before we leave, I want to just ask a question around, What? What's going on for you here in Barcelona? As the show winds down, you had all your activities. Take us in the day in the life of what you do. Customer meetings. What were some of those conversations? Take us inside inside. What? What goes on for you here? >>I tell you, it's been an amazing It's been amazing few days, So it's a combination of customer conversations around some of the themes We just talked about conversations with partners. There's investor companies that we invest in a Cisco that I've been spending some time with on also spending time with the teams as well. The definite zone, you know, is amazing. We have this afternoon the closing session where we got a fantastic, um, external guests who's coming in is going to be really exciting as well. And then, of course, the party tonight and will be announcing the next location, which I'm not going to reveal now. Later on today, >>we kind of figured it out because that's our job is to break news, but we're not gonna break it for you to have that. Hey, thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate. When any market in Europe, Middle East Africa and Russia for Cisco she's got her hand on the pulse and the future is the business model. That's what's going on. Fundamentally radical change across the board in all areas. This is the Cube, bringing you all the action here in Barcelona. Thanks for watching. >>Yeah, yeah,

>>from Las >>Vegas. It's the cues covering quality security Conference 2019 Bike. Wallace. Hey, welcome back It ready? Geoffrey here with the Cube were at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It's actually raining outside, which is pretty odd, but through the desert is happy. We're here at the Kuala Security Conference. Been going on for 19 years. It's our first time here. We're excited to be here, but we got a really familiar Gaston. She's been on a number of times that Nutanix next, conferences and girls who code conferences, etcetera. So we're happy to have back Wendy Pfeifer. She's the C I O of Nutanix and as of August, early this year, a board member for quality. So great to see you. >>Nice to see you again, too. So it's raining outside. I'll have to get out. >>I know it's pretty, uh, pretty cool, actually. School coming in on the plane. But let's let's jump into a little bit from your C I, Oh, roll. We're talking a lot about security and in the age old thing came up in the keynote. You know, there's companies that have been hacked, and then there's companies that have been hacked and don't know it yet, but we're introducing 1/3 type of the company. Here is one of the themes which is that you actually can prevent, you know, not necessarily getting hacked, but kind of the damage and destruction and the duration once people get in. I'm just curious from your CEO >>hat. How >>do you look at this problem? That the space is evolving so quickly? How do you kind of organize your your thoughts around it? >>Yeah, for me. First of all, um, it starts with good architecture. So whether it's our own products running or third party products running, we need to ensure that those products are architected for resilience. And that third kind of company, the Resilient company, is one that has built in architecture er and a set of tools and service is that are focused on knowing that we will be hacked. But how can we minimize or even eliminate the damage from those hacks? And in this case, having the ability to detect those hacks when their incoming and to stop them autonomously is the key to HQ Wallace's play and the key to what I do as CEO at Nutanix, >>right? So one of the other things that keeps coming up here is kind of a budget allocation to security within the CEO budget on. And I think Mr Clark said that, you know, if you're doing 3% or less, you're losing, and you gotta be spending at least 8%. But I'm curious, because it to me is kind of like an insurance story. How much do you spend? How much do you allocate? Because potentially the downside is enormous. But you can't spend 100% of your budget just on security. So how do you think about kind of allocating budget as a percentage of spin versus the risk? >>Well, I love that question. That's part of the art of being a C i O A. C. So, you know, first of all, we have ah mixed portfolio of opportunities to spend toe hold to divest at any one time, and I t portfolio management has been around for 30 years, 40 years, almost as long as some of the people that I know. However, um, we always have that choice, right? We're aware of risk, and then we have the ability to spend. Now, of course, perfect security is to not operate at all. But that's about that's, you know, swinging too far the wrong way on Dhe. Then we also have that ability, maybe to not protect against anything and just take out a big old cyber security policy. And where is that policy might help us with lawsuits? It wouldn't necessarily have help us with ongoing operations. And so it's somewhere in the middle, and I liked some of the statistics that they share today. One of the big ones for me was that companies that tend to build resilient worlds of cybersecurity tend to spend about 10% of their total I t operating budgets on cyber security. That makes sense to me, and that reflects my track record at Nutanix and elsewhere, roughly in that amount of spending. Now you know, checking the box and saying, Well, we're spending 10% on cybersecurity doesn't really buy us that much, and also we have to think about how we're defining that spend on cyber security. Part of that spend is in building resilient architectures and building resilient code. And uh, that's sort of a dual purpose spend, because that also makes for performance code it makes for scalable, supportable code, et cetera. So you know, we can do well by doing good in this >>case. So again, just to stay on that beam permit, it went. So when you walk the floor at R S. A. And there's 50,000 people and I don't even know how many vendors and I imagine your even your I T portfolio now around security is probably tens of products, if not hundreds, and certainly tens of vendors again. How do you How do you? You kind of approach it. Do you have trusted advisors around certain point solutions? Are you leveraging? You know, system integrators or other types of specialists to help? You kind of sort through and get some clarity around this just kind of mess. >>Well, all of us actually are looking for that magic discernment algorithm. Wouldn't it be great if >>you could just >>walk up to a vendor and apply the algorithm? And ah ha. There's one who's fantastic. We don't have that, and so we've got a lot of layers of ingest. I try to leave room in my portfolio for stealth and emerging technologies because generally the more modern the technology Is the Mauritz keeping pace with the hackers out there and the bad guys out there? Um, we do have sort of that middle layer that surround the ability for us to operate at scale because we also have to operate these technologies. Even the most cutting edge technology sometimes lack some of the abilities for us to ingest them into our operations. And then they're sort of the tried and true bedrock that hopefully is built into products we consume. Everything from public Cloud service is to, uh, you know, hardware and so on. And so there's this range of choices. What we have to dio ultimately is we use that lens of operations and operational capability. And first of all, we also ensure that anything we ingest meets our design standards and our design standards include some things that I think are fascinating. I won't go into too much detail because I know how much you love this detail. But you know, things like are the AP eyes open? What is integration look like? What's the interaction design look like? And so those things matter, right? Ultimately, we have to be able to consume the data from those things, and then they have to work with our automation, our machine learning tools. Today at Nutanix, for example, you know, we weigh like toe. I'm happy to say we catch, you know, most if not all of any of the threats against us, and we deal with well over 95% of them autonomously. And so were a living example of that resilient organization that is, of course, being attacked, but at the same time hopefully responding in a resilient way. We're not perfect knock on wood, but we're actively engaged. >>So shifting gears a little bit a bit a bit now to your board hat, which again, Congratulations. Some curious. You know, your perspective on kind of breaking through the clutter from the from the board seat Cos been doing this for 19 years. Still relatively small company. But, you know, Philippe talked a lot about kind of company. Percy's me industry security initiatives that have to go through what are some of the challenges and opportunities see sitting at the board seat instead of down in the nitty gritty down the CEO. >>Well, first of all, um, quality is financially a well run responsible organization and one of Philippe and the leadership teams. Goals has always been toe operate profitably and tow. Have that hedge on DSO. What that means is that as consumers, we can count on the longevity of the organization and the company's ability to execute on its road map. It's the road map that I think is particularly attractive about Wallace. You know, I am who I am. I'm an operator. I'm a technologist. And so although I'm a board member and I care about all dimensions of the company, the most attractive component is that this this road map in those 19 years of execution are now coming to fruition at exactly the right time. For those of us who need these tools in these technologies to operate, this is a different kind of platform and its instrumented with machine learning with a I. At a time when the Attackers and the attacks are instrumented that way as well as as you mentioned, we have a lot of noise in the market today, and these point solutions, they're gonna be around for a while, right? We operate a messy and complex and wonderful ecosystem. But at the same time, the more that we can streamline, simplify on and sort of raised that bar. And the more we can depend on the collected data. From all of these point tools to instrument are automated responses, the better off we'll be. And so this is, Ah, platform whose whose time has come and as we see all of the road map items sort of coming to fruition. It's really, really exciting. And it's, you know, just speaking for a moment of someone who's been a leader in various technology companies in the security and, you know, technology space for some time. One of the most disappointing things about many technology startups is that they don't build in that that business strength. Thio have enough longevity and have enough of a hedge to execute on that brilliant vision. And so many brilliant ideas have just not seen the light of day because of a failure to execute. In this case, we have a company with a track record of execution that's monetized the build out of the platform, and now also these game changing technologies are coming to fruition. It's it's really, really exciting to be a part of it. >>So Wendy, you've mentioned a I machine learning Probably get checked. The transfer of a number of times 85 times is this interview. So it's really interesting, you know, kind of there's always a lot of chatter in the marketplace, But you talked about so many threats coming in and we heard about Mickey noticed. Not really for somebody sitting in front of a screen anymore to pay attention, this stuff. So when you look at the opportunity of machine learning and artificial intelligence and how that's going to change the role of the CEO and specifically and security when if you can share your thoughts on what that opens up >>absolutely s so there's kind of two streams here I'd love to talk about. The first is that we've had this concern as we've moved to Public Cloud and I t that i t people would be left behind. But in fact, after sort of ah little Dev ops blip where non i t people were writing code that was them consumed by enterprises were now seen the growth of I t. Again and what this relates to is this In the past, when we wanted to deploy something in public cloud. We had to be able Thio compose an express infrastructure as code. And, um, folks who are great at infrastructure are actually pretty lousy at writing code, and so that was a challenge. But today we have low code and know code tools, things like work Otto, for example, that my team uses that allow us to express the operational processes that we follow sort of the best practices and the accumulated knowledge of these I t professionals. And then we turn the machine on that inefficient code and the machine improves and refines the code. So now, adding machine learning to the mix enables us to have these I t professionals who know more than you'd ever imagine about storage and compute and scaling and data and cybersecurity and so on. And they're able to transform that knowledge into code that a machine can read, refine and execute against. And so we're seeing this leap forward in terms of the ability of some of these tools. Thio transform how we address the scale and the scope in the complexity of these challenges. And so on the one side, I think there's new opportunity for I T professionals and for those who have that operational expertise to thrive because of these tools on the other side, there's also the opportunity for the bad guys in the in the cyberspace. Um, Thio also engage with the use of thes tools. And so the use of these tools, that sort of a baseline level isn't enough. Now we need to train the systems, and the systems need to be responsive, performance resilient. And also, they need to have the ability to be augmented by to be integrated with these tools. And so suddenly we go from having this utopian. Aye, aye. Future where you know, the good looking male or female robot, you know, is the nanny for our kids, um, to something much more practical that's already in place, which is that the machine itself, the computer itself is refining in augmenting the things that human beings are doing and therefore able to be first of all, more responsive, more performance, but also to do that layer of work that is not unique to human discernment. >>Right? We hear that over and over because the press loved to jump on the general. May I think it's much more fun to show robots than then Really, the applied A I, which is lots of just kind of like Dev ops. Lots of little improvements. Yeah, lots of little places. >>Exactly. Exactly. You know, I mean, I kind of like the stories of our robot overlords, you know, take it over to. But the fact is, at the end of the day, these machine, it's just math. It's just mathematics. That's all it is. It's compute. >>So when you find let you go, I won't touch about women in tech. You know, you're a huge proponent of women in tech. You're very active on lots of boards and cure with Adriaan on the girls and Tech board where we last where we last sat down. Um, and you're making moves now. Obviously, you've already got a C title. Now you're doing more bored work. I just wonder if you can kind of share your thoughts of how this thing's kind of movement is progressing. It seems to have a lot of of weight behind it, but I don't know if the numbers air really reflecting that, but you're you're on the front lines. What can you shares? You know, you're trying to help women. That's much getting detect. But to stay into tech, I think, is what most of the stats talk about. >>Yeah, I've got a lot of thoughts on this. I think I'll try to bring our all the vectors together. So I recently was awarded CEO of the year by the Fisher Center for Data and Analytics and thank you very much. And the focus there is on inclusive analytics and inclusive. Aye, aye. And And I think this this is sort of a story that that makes the point. So if we think about all of the data that is training these technology tools and systems, um, and we think about the people who are creating these systems and the leaders who are our building, these systems and so on, for the most part, the groups of people who are working on these things technologists, particularly in Silicon Valley. They're not a diverse set of people. They're mostly male. They're overwhelmingly male. Many are from just a handful of of, um, you know, countries and groups, right? It's it's It's mainly, you know, Caucasian males, Indian males and Asian males. And and because of that, um, this lack of diverse thinking and diverse development is being reflected in the tools in ways that eventually will build barriers for folks who don't share those characteristics. As an example, Natural language processing tooling is trained by non diverse data sets, and so we have challenges with that. For example, people who are older speak a little bit more slowly and have different inflections in general on how they speak. And the voice recognition tools don't recognize them as often. People who have heavy accents, for example, are just not recognized. Yes, you know, I always have a phone, Um, and this is my iPhone and I have had an iPhone for 10 years. Siri, my, you know, helpful Agent has been on the phone in all those years. And in all of those years, um, I have had a daughter named Holly H O l L Y. And every time that I speak Thio, I dictate to Syria to send a message on. I use my daughter's name. Holly. Syria always responds with the spelling. H o L I. The Hindu holiday. Now, in 10 years, Siri has never learned that. When I say Holly, I'm most likely mean my daughter >>was in the context of the sentence. >>Exactly. Never, ever, ever. Because, you know Siri is an Aye aye, if you will. That was built without allowing for true user input through training at the point of conversation. And so s So that's it. That's bad architecture. There's a lot of other challenges with that architecture that reflect on cybersecurity and so on. One tiny example. But I think that, um now more than ever, we need diverse voices in the mix. We need diverse training data. We need, you know, folks who have different perspectives and who understand different interaction design to be not only as a tech entrepreneurs, builders and leaders of country of companies like, you know, girls in tech Support's educating women supporting women entrepreneurs. I'm I'm also on the board of another group called Tech Wald. That's all about bringing US combat veterans into the technology workforce. There's another diverse group of people who again can have a voice in this technology space. There are organizations that I work with that go into the refugee that the permanent refugee camps and find technically qualified folks who can actually build some of this training data for, ah, you know, analytics and a I We need much, much more of that. So, you know, my heart is full of the opportunity for this. My my head's on on fire, you know, and just trying to figure out how can we get the attention of technology companies of government leaders and and before it's too late, are training data sets are growing exponentially year over year, and they're being built in a way that doesn't reflect the potential usage. I was actually thinking about this the other day. I had an elderly neighbor who ah, spoke with me about how excited he waas that he he no longer could drive. He wasn't excited about that. He no longer could drive. He couldn't see very well and couldn't operate a car. And he was looking forward to autonomous vehicles because he was gonna have a mobility and freedom again. Right? Um, but he had asked me to help him to set up something that he had on his computer, and it was actually on his phone. But he there was their voice commands, but But it didn't understand him. He was frustrated. So he said, Could you help me. And I thought, man, if his mobile phone doesn't understand him, how's the autonomous vehicle going to understand him so that the very population who needs these technologies the most will will be left out another digital divide? And and, um, now is the moment while these tools and technologies are being developed, a word about Wallace. You know, when I was recruited for the board, um, you know, they already had 50 50 gender parity on the board. It wasn't even a thing in my interviews. We didn't talk about the fact that I am female at all. We talked about the fact that I'm an operator, that I'm a technologist. And so, um, you know that divide? It was already conquered on HK. Wallace's board that's so not true for many, many other organizations and leadership teams is particularly in California Silicon Valley. And so I think there's a great opportunity for us to make a difference. First of all, people like me who have made it, you know, by representing ourselves and then people of every gender, every color, every ethnicity, immigrants, et cetera, um, need to I'm begging you guys stick with it, stay engaged don't let the mean people. The naysayers force you to drop out. Um, you know, reconnect with your original values and stay strong because that's what it's gonna take. >>It's a great message. And thank you for your passion and all your hard work in the space. And the today it drives better outcomes is not only the right thing to do and a good thing to do that it actually drives better outcomes. >>We see that. >>All right, Wendy, again. Always great to catch up. And congratulations on the award and the board seat and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you. All right, She's windy. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube with a quality security conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> 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 dot Next at NUTANIX. We're here in Anaheim, California. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight were joined by Wendy M. Pfeiffer. She is the chief information officer at Nutanix. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. Wendy, thank you for having me. And this is not your first time you this year. A Cube alum. >> I am a Cube alum. It's so much fun. It's kind of weird, though. We're inside of this Cuban outside of us is all the action in the Exposition Hall is kind of crazy and cool. >> It is that there's a lot of energy here. I want to start our conversation by taking you back in time to nineteen eighties. You growing up in Silicon Valley, you notice an advertisement in the newspaper that dead tree medium NASA wants ideas on how to organize its dashboard. Better for astronauts. Yeah, >> So they had a program called CD T I cockpit displays of traffic information and they were looking for innovative ideas to make what was really a very small display provide information for the shuttle astronauts as they were re entering the atmosphere. And so, if you can imagine coming back into the atmosphere, it very high speed. And there was concern that there would be a traffic in the area. Regular airplanes flying, you know, relatively much slower. And so how could the same air traffic displays that were used for aviators be sort of modified to give real time information? Teo the astronauts, I will tell you that I never contributed much to that project, but I discovered large scale computer systems. And I just love the idea of these things large networks, large computers on just the through the vast interconnectedness of things. And so that got me interested in technology, whereas before I thought I was interested in science and math. And it turns out, of course, there's some great synergy among those topics. >> So So the internship at NASA is what propelled your interest and really, what launched your career in technology? Yes. Now you are the CEO of Nutanix. This this amazing company thiss startup That's now billion dollars with the market cap in multiple billions of dollars. Yes. So talk a little bit about your experience as CEO and what and what in what you're hearing, particularly at this dot next show. Yeah, I think >> one of the things that's happening is we're all in the midst of a huge transformation in terms of how digital technology affects business and empowers and enables business and as CEOs were right in the middle of that Wei have. Many of us have tons of legacy equipment and things from vendors, but we also have this desire for leading digital transformation in our companies. And so companies like Nutanix and there aren't many companies like Nutanix, but technologies like ours bridge that gap. We can run the legacy workloads in on premise data centers on pick a vendor's hardware. But we can also run the same work loads on our operating system in public clouds. And so it's kind of the best of both worlds, and it bridges thes two worlds that CEOs have been struggling to bridge, and it does so in a way that doesn't require us to re train our people or find, you know, a small team of rocket scientists who are, you know, worth more than the GDP of small countries. So we're able Teo, actually execute. Still keep the lights on. Still do the the old school things that we need to do but also operate with excellence at that more modern end of the technology spectrum. That's huge. And I'm hearing that from so many folks all around the show, whether it's, you know, people who are responsible for infrastructure or Dev Ops kind of crosses all of those bridges. And and as Nutanix, the CEO, I get to represent how any company like ours a billion and a half dollars publicly traded company, can use technology to enable itself, because I use our technology to do all the things we need to do as a company. >> But that's exactly just what you're talking about. That balance that these companies need to strike with thinking about the maintenance, thinking about the storage, thinking about the protection, but then also thinking in a much more visionary in strategic way about how we really transform our business and get our and get the work done that we need to get done. Can you talk a little bit about the fact that these consumer technologies have really leapfrog the thie enterprise vendors and sort of embarrassing it, frankly, should be for these big technology behemoth that they haven't done more to make cooler, sleeker technologies? >> Absolutely. Oh, my gosh, this is my favorite topic. And it's why I have my smart here. So on this smartphone, this is a is an apple phone on this smartphone. I have a ton of applications and a ton of functionality, and you know, so I have Facebook on my smartphone, right? And I love Facebook. >> But when I >> downloaded and I started using Facebook, I didn't say, you know Oh my gosh, fall. Now I have my social media application. So there's no way I could use Twitter or Instagram or anything else because my standard is Facebook. And that's the only thing I'm going to use. No, no, no. I have a multitude of APS and I used them as I choose when I want to, in the way that I want Teo, those abs inherit things from this platform. They have access to my contact data. They understand my location if I allow them tio etcetera. So all of those things are unconsciously in what is actually a phone. Now try to get your desk phone to do that right? It doesn't. And yet in the enterprise space, we have vendors who are selling us for millions of dollars, desk phones, and those were supposed to be as performance delightful, interesting as this device. And then we have laptop computers and we have desktop computers. None of those things is even a third as interesting, engaging, useful and easy to use as this consumer attack, which, by the way, is a lot less expensive. I spend millions of dollars on a V audio visual room systems of conferencing technology, whereas when I go home I can se teoh Amazon or Google. Hey, you know Amazon. Show me my my shows. You know I can I can I can ask for any show I want to watch on TV. When I downloaded Pokey Mongo, I love playing video games and games. When I downloaded Pokemon go on my phone. I >> didn't have to >> watch, you know, five five minute video snippets to teach me how to install the application. Within minutes, I was, you know, catching all the Pokemon I could what in what is really a very complex application that also includes augmented reality. And so I think it's time that first of all the vendors who sell to us, who are so used to that every three years, the enterprise license agreement is renewed. Or, you know, Hey, we're a pick something, you know, a one hardware vendors shop. So we that's what we standardize on that is doing two things. One, they're killing their own industry, and they're also killing. They're they're ruining. It is ability to deliver and to be useful and transformative. Two companies way and it way also have to demand better way. Have to stop buying that Dunc. And we have to start finding ways whether we have to build it ourselves or using machine learning tools to train the machine on how to do these things that that enterprise it cos don't deliver to us. And we also need to look for vendors like Nutanix that build that bridge that allow us to stop worrying about Oh my gosh, You know, we've got to make this legacy thing work with this new thing. We don't have to worry about that so much anymore. And now we can focus on this user experience The interaction design what we might do within an ecosystem That is our own unique companies and our own unique set of systems and also ultimately allowing our people, which is what companies are made up of allowing our people to to have the experience that they want tohave, just like we do with our own devices. I can choose how I want to interact with this thing, and I can turn it off if I don't want to use it. >> So so much of what you're talking about is really about getting companies and then the leaders of these companies to think differently. And that is the biggest managerial challenge. And it's a challenge when you're in sales. And so how do you How do you approach that problem? Because it because you've really laid it out so clearly we are used, Teo, so much intuitiveness and ease and beauty in the technology that we use in our personal lives. And then we come to work way put up with a lot of junk. >> We do, right? I mean, like, I know you're not saying anything out loud, but I know you. You're agree without you here with your laptop on the table there. You know, first of >> all, our work forces are changing. Generally, we keep talking, at least in circles that I sit in about, you know, the millennials are entering the work force. No. You know, the Millennials and Jen Zy are already make up almost half of our workforce today and will be at that somewhere around. I think it's seventy percent by twenty, twenty five of the workforce, so >> they're already here. Those >> folks already have a different relationship with technology than my generation did my generation. And I'm a Magen axe, I think. Yeah. Um so my my hub to Exactly So the big >> hair A my generation. >> I >> watched the birth of some of these consumer technologies, but this next couple of generations grew up with him already in place. And so they don't even think about the fact that this is technology. This is dependent, just is just part of them. And so I think we need Thio, Throw off the old filters and get out of the way. It's a lot more about choice and self service and freedom and flexibility and a mixed portfolio. And there are so many ways to educate ourselves about those things if if we don't naturally have that instinct. But it starts with diverse thinking, diverse tools. I believe that whatever you know, PC Mac laptop tablet mobile device that you're comfortable with your company should enable you to use. And you should use the applications that that makes the most sense to that make you the most productive. And then it's his job or it's leaderships job to create that that really rich ecosystem, where those applications and tools have the nutrients that they need and the capabilities that they need to work together well, understanding how to create and maintain that ecosystem mean what is an ecosystem? It's this sort of happy accident of all sorts of creatures at various levels in the in the pyramid coming together and figuring out a way to cohabit and to survive and then, hopefully to thrive. And so no one can get too important. No one voice no one species. No one layer can be outsized compared to the others because of So what do you have? Well, you have a species collapse. They run out of the fuel that helps them to thrive. And so I think, of course, our planet at a macro level is an example of that. But our company's our families, our neighborhoods. All of those things are micro examples that that matched the macro and are dependant on the same laws of physics and science and so on in order to thrive in to function. >> Well, you're talking you You just highlighted the importance of diversity. And and you made this comment about No one person can get two important or no one part of the species. In fact, if you look at the tech landscape Ueno, who's too important and it's the pros who are who are running the show in a lot of ways. Still, I want to hear from you as a senior leader, a female senior leader in technology you noticed, >> and Theo the manicure. Yeah, >> but how? What? What do you see? What? Tell us what it's like. I mean, is it as bad as we hear? And, um, and and And how have you in your career overcome a lot of these challenges? And then how What do you see as your responsibility to the next generation who's coming up? >> Absolutely. So it is as bad as we hear. It's sometimes worse than we here. And I think that especially there are certain sectors of society and tech society where the bro culture that we've heard about is fully in play. What mitigates that is the human beings who make up the bro culture so often. These guys don't understand the the effect of all of them and mass, and so often they're just being natural. Many, especially start ups. The start of fuel. Silicon Valley, You know, they started with some great ideas and with some dreamers and often those those people with the great ideas and dreamers you know they are males, and what do you do? You get your buddies together. You know, when you get a little extra money, you get the next round of bodies. You invite people, you know, so >> there's a little >> bit of that syndrome that's happening. There are also wonderful incubators and fields where women are also in that start up mode, and I'm a member of the Board of Girls and Tech. We have a number of things like Way have an amplified competition that supports women, tech the entrepreneurs, so there's certainly more than just men. But the history has been that however, a lot of people talk about that For me, that's not the emphasis for me. The emphasis is on how we change our jobs and our definition of work in general. And this is so fascinating to me. >> I think we've been working for years >> and years on, you know, how do we get more women and stem and encourage girls to go through this path in school? You know, it turns out women and men are both equally interested in science and math and all those things. But the starting jobs and tech are are horrendous when it comes to matching women's interests in skills and this isthe stereo, I'm going to start stereotype here. I hate doing this, but in general terms, men tend to be able to work on things serially. They tend to have a singular focus and to appreciate the singular focus and so you can lay out a path first, your socks and your shoes and the guy will follow that, and we'LL master each step along the way. And that's that's a way that you know, it's stereotypically a lot of male brain brains. Progress for women, for female brains were multifaceted way sort of have this ability. I don't know if it's evolutionary or environment or whatever. I'm not like an expert, thank God. >> But we have this >> ability to multi task all the time. I could be, you know, holding my kid and, um, talking on the phone and, you know, making sure dinners cooking, okay. And, you know, maybe it's a business call, and I might be hiring someone or firing someone, and I'm giving equal focused attention to each very important task. And so we sort of have that that ability because we have that ability. That's the kind of job that you know. Okay, you enter college and you're taking a software development computer science, of course. And you take all computer science courses until you get that degree. And now you get your first software developer job and you sit in this little cubicle and all day long you write code. Well, you know, fine. If I've sort of have that single threaded mentality, I'm ready. All right. I guess I'm going to do this. I'm gonna Masters are >> gonna get through the layers >> of writing code as fast as I can and someday I'll rule the world or start my own company over on the female side, we say this is going to kill me. I don't want to do that. What a boring jobs. Because Because also, I'm interested in I'm interested in the Japanese language and I'm interested in design. And, you know, I love to cook. And also, you know, I'm just been working through, you know, theories of space and time and in my physics study, and to just have to focus my mind all by myself all day long in this cubicle on writing, you know, some part of a bigger program. It's not attractive. And so what we find is that women are dropping out of thes focus degree programs and they're dropping out of the early stages of technology careers. Which means that by the time you get to my stage, there is not a very few of us right, >> So you said we needed we need to change the definition of work. Yes, What does that mean? >> Well, the Millennials and Gen Z and countries that are that are very young, like some of the Eastern European countries that air, that air, just reinventing themselves. They've already done that. It's the gig economy. It's the idea that as an individual, I can choose the things I want to work on. We've tried Teo, sort of emulate that in in the agile methodologies right? I get to choose my tasks, but it's this sort of. It was taken the soul out of it. But this is really that independent contractors might be doing. You know a few things that once I might be designing shoes like one of my friends is she's she's created her own shoe company, and at the same time I might be writing code Azaz a gig for some other company. And you know what? I might also be involved in, you know, a charitable work. Or I might be volunteering at my kid's school and doing all of those things together at the same time in parallel is interesting to us. It's engaging to us. We put more. >> So how'd you do that? At your team at NUTANIX? How do you help your employees, uh, do all the things that they want to do in addition to obviously getting their work done? Yeah, well, It's always a >> balance right. One of the really important things is to create an environment of tools and technologies and processes that allow people to choose the things they want to choose. It's not always well understood. Some people say thank you. I get to use the tools I like. Other people say there's too many tools what we d'Oh. And so we try to find something down the middle for those guys. Exactly. Secondly, I hire and mentor leaders who are very diverse and open, and they're thinking so that we can constantly kind of reinvent ourselves as an I T organization. But ultimately it gets down to enabling culturally people to think differently, to raise their hand and say, You know, I am a network engineer, but I would like Tio automate this thing over here or, you know, I Yes, I'm a systems engineer, but I'd like to deploy the network, just allowing them to get out of their comfort zone and to experiment. It's also really important to understand the balance of it. People who choose it love engineering and love technology, but we'LL also love process and interaction, and so we're already this mash up of personality types. And, you know, I would say more multifaceted you are, the more you're able to play multiple sports or or have multiple skills or play offense and defense, then the more able you are to thrive in the new World in the new economy. And sometimes it's just finding those mavericks Or, you know, I like to say I'm a little civil, like, you know, I've >> got a little personalities and you know it. Sometimes you got >> to bring one of those personalities to the table. Sometimes you have to bring many of those personalities to the table, and it's gonna be okay for folks to do that. >> I love it. I love it. Great. Well, Wendy, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It's always fun talking to you. Thank you. Appreciate it. I'm Rebecca Knight. You are watching the Cube. They'LL be much more to come

(techno music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live! Europe. Brought to you by Cisco and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage in Barcelona for Cisco Live! 2019. I'm John Furrier co-host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Wendy Mars. She is the president of Cisco EMEAR. Europe, Middle East, and Africa and Russia. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> One of the themes this year certainly is Cloud. Data is starting to come together. The other backdrop is besides security and all the things going on with data, is the global landscape. So Cisco, obviously North America everyone knows what's going on over there at Cisco Live!. What's happening in Europe? Obviously GDPR has been hot in the past year. What's new, what's the scene like here? >> You know I think that certainly the scene is one of huge excitement. You know, from our customers across the whole region of Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia. It's an incredibly diverse region. But you know if you look at the different countries, the different markets, one thing that absolutely is a constant theme that we hear is the desire and the appetite to gain the benefit from transformation. You know, in the digital transformation and what that value can be. And realizing that. If we look for ours, you know, within Cisco and the positioning around and realizing the secure, intelligent platform is absolutely resonating. Things like Multi-Cloud and realizing that. Reinventing the network. The security challenge in dealing with that. And how you address it with the multi-domain architecture approach. Our customers are really engaged in the conversation, want to learn more. Most importantly, want help with the how. Show me how to do it. >> You guys must be leading the conversation within Cisco. Obviously your team in Europe, Middle East, and Africa and Russia because the complexity around compliance and data has been front and center now for 24 months. >> Yes. >> Now hitting mainstream global landscape. >> Yup. >> This is really impacting the architecture. I mean, look at the, how intent based networking is developing. Policy based fill in the blank. To connecting to multiple clouds. >> Yup. >> So, kind of complex, a whole new architecture, re-imagining networking. How are you guys seeing the trends now? Is it still at the tipping point? Is it still early? What's your assessment of the role of data as it gets more complex, more compliant driven? >> I think that it certainly, if you look for organizations, the power of being able to understand and the importance of your data, where it resides. Being able to demonstrate that. Having the integrity and the quality of that data is extremely important as well. There's a heightened awareness in the market and for organizations. Global organizations who conduct business in EMEAR. You know, of course and we are one of those as well. A knowledge and understanding and appreciation of compliance and regulation. It's only going to become more intense, you know, as we go forward. For organizations to really have robust and rigorous processes around all of that. Technology can be an enabler in the process as well. >> What are the unique aspects, Wendy, in the region? You obviously have visibility on what goes on in North America. What's different in Europe? Especially in the context of Cloud, Multi-Cloud, obviously GDPR, although it's a framework now for everybody. >> Yup. >> Around the world. But what's unique? In the region. >> So I think the uniqueness is, you know, if you look from a Multi-Cloud standpoint for example where organizations are, have been I would say, depending on some of the countries and markets, a little bit more hesitant around a movement to Cloud. Now there is a movement but it's more one of, well what is appropriate for me and how do I ensure I can embrace Multi-Cloud in a way that makes sense for my business? So rather than a full move to public there's been a selected. Based on application and workload environments. Also understanding the security. Back to compliance. And also the regulation. Impacts of some of those movements as well. Of course that depends upon the vertical or the industry in which those organizations are operating. For those who are highly regulated like healthcare, the pharmaceutical sector there's a deep inspect that goes on there as well. I think there's a further requirement for due diligence around some of those topics as well. >> Well, you know, the Snowden backlash had some paranoia for sure with... Everybody said it's going to go to two or three clouds and that's clearly not been the case. >> Yup. >> You have, you know, many dozens and hundreds of service providers that are specialists, obviously, in the region. So, we heard today about, really, an end to end architecture. >> Mmm-hmm. >> Which is a bold and ambitious vision. You have a technical background as well. I wonder if you could just describe sort of how that's all going to to transpire. How do you take the customers on their journey? What are they asking you for help with? Where do you see it going? >> Yeah, so if you look at, you know, from David this morning. David Geckeler and what he talked about. Really for those different domains there are competencies, you know, a few things. There's the data center, there is the edge, there was the security world, the collaboration world. The reality of it is though, that as an enterprise or any organization indeed consumes those things. They want to be able to work across all of those areas. They want the innovation to work in a seamless manner. Because at the end of the day the problem to solve to is simplify for me. I need to automate, reduce complexity. I want to roll out and deploy policy. In a consistent and cohesive way. In order to make that happen you have to have these environments able to talk to each other. More importantly push that policy in a cohesive manner across these environments. For ours it's a journey. It's not something you can do overnight. You have to work within your engineering teams and your ecosystem in order to bring that to life. Do it in a way where the customer can consume it. >> I think you really nailed what we see in the trend as well. This cross domain component. With API's now, which are open, are pushing data around. >> Yup. >> You're moving data from point A to point B. Sounds like networking to me. Policy is important. >> Yup. >> But the configuration, the deployment which used to be hard is now being automated. So the question I have for you, we're here in the DevNet zone, I mean it's packed, people are learning about programming. What is the impact of all this to developers who are trying to build apps and your ecosystem? Because there's got to be an opportunity there. Some might go the way of the old guard and kind of fade away. Some new kinds of providers might rise up. >> Yeah, you know there's huge opportunity here and I think it's opportunity around the requirement for new skills, new competencies. Also around new capability to bring this to life. Because if you look from a development standpoint, if you look at how you realize value with organizations and where does the money flow between some of these environments is interesting. The ecosystem itself, for Cisco, what I believe makes this even more powerful is bringing to life for them and accelerating with the ecosystem. At the end of the day the customer will buy an ecosystem style environment. For us to be able to work with all of those parties as we have over many years. There will be new players, the ISV community, the developer community that we work with, that will be really powerful for us as we move. >> So you see the ecosystem growing significantly? Ecosystem growing? >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> What are some examples... >> I mean just look at here, look at all the organizations that are here. >> Well I think the development trends clearly intersecting with networking as it's more programmable. Right? >> Yup. >> That's the big takeaway for us. You can program the network, you have infrastructure as code. That's the DevOps promise. >> Yup. >> That's now here. The question we're looking at is, okay, what's going to be the impact to value creation? If I'm a customer, what does it mean to me? As we look at that I tend to think about the Cisco original business model. Enabling technology. How would you answer that question of what's being enabled today? What's the big ah-ha for customers? What are you guys enabling for your partners and your tech? >> Yeah, so I think a big part of it is we see now a lot of the conversation is around what is use case. It's not just a, I've got some cool stuff, show me the cool stuff that works, it's how do I apply that into my environment to derive value? And that value may be around efficiency. It may be around provisioning in a more rapid manner. Automating in a more realized manner. Lots of different instances where organizations are going to see the benefit associated with that but also it allows them to free up time of their people and their teams to move into newer areas as well. As they move their own business models. It's a massive transition that's happening in the industry overall. It's not just, we're not just changing for the sake of change, we're changing because the market is asking us to do that. >> So customers have to make bets on who their Multi-Cloud provider is going to be. >> Yup. >> Obviously Cisco is coming at that from a position of networking strength. Which is a good place to come from. There are other, there are alternatives. >> Sure. >> Cause it's a big market. >> Yup. >> And it's strategic. What gives you confidence that Cisco is the right solution? What are you telling your customers in that regard? >> If I look at the, what gives me confidence is the fact that we have an openness. If you look from an API standpoint, a developer's standpoint, we've always operated in a mode of an openness so that you have an environment where anyone can write to. That's, people want that, it's incredibly important. So not having a proprietary stance is very powerful. I think also being able to work with a ecosystem that's there, where you have a dependency on others and you meet in the channel on certain solutions and innovations as well. So you empower a greater community to start to drive that acceleration with you as well. If I have a look at the, we talk about reinventing the network. It's happening, it's happening now. You see us doing it and just how important the network is. More than ever before in this transition. Around a number of areas with security, with policy. We see it come to life now. >> Well the old saying the network is the computer. Well duh. (laughter) Cisco is the network. >> Yup. >> I got to ask you about Brexit. As somebody who's based in the UK. >> Yup. Thoughts on effects that that has. Obviously Cisco, a global company but your perspectives on Brexit. >> Yeah, so if I look for a, you know, as someone who lives in the UK, you know, clearly we hear about Brexit a lot. As you do in your country as well. I would say for as we are very, Cisco is a global company, we're very familiar with working with these types of instances and situations. The UK remains for us an incredibly important market and will continue to be. We'll continue to invest from a capabilities and a skills standpoint. I think just for us now, working with our teams there and making sure that there's, we minimize any impacts based on scenarios. To our customers and our partners. And think it through. >> Rules change, you'll adapt. >> Yeah. >> I got to ask you about R, the Russia piece. >> Uh-huh. >> Russia's GDP is about the size of Spain if I'm correct. Interesting that you carve that out as distinct opportunity. How's the business going there? Maybe some comments around Russia. >> Sure. I can't talk directly about business performances, we're in quiet period. I guess we call it out specifically because it is not part of Europe, Middle East or Africa. But is a very important part of our region of EMEAR. If I look forwards of, you know, we believe that there's significant opportunity for us. In that market we have a fantastic team that work closely where, there again with our customers and partners. We believe there's absolutely the opportunity there for us at Cisco in that market. >> Do you have a development team there as well or, or? >> We have capability there that works locally with all of our teams and, you know, engineering competence, sales teams, etc. as well. Yeah. >> Some good math teached there in Russia. >> Wendy, how are you guys organized in your territory? How do you guys maintain close to the customer in the countries? Is it a country strategy? How, just for the people who don't know your business? >> Yeah, it is a country strategy. We have about 123 countries within EMEAR. We have teams that live and operate in all of those countries. That stay very close to us from a regional perspective. So we're one team, you know, that really drives that scale. I have a fantastic opportunity to go and visit those teams. And spend a lot of time on the road. I enjoy it and they do too, you know. >> Is there anything that you could talk to your customers that are watching here or anyone interested. As you guys have transformed as a company, certainly if you look at what Cisco's done over the past few years. A complete transformation, building on your base. You've been through it, you've been agile and getting nimble. >> Yup. >> Being more use case driven, etc., etc. What have you learned? What's your learnings? What would you pay it forward in terms of advice? >> Yeah, if I look at it we're not through, we're still, you know, we're still on the journey. I think a big part of it is accepting and acknowledging a need for change is really important. A big part of this change is culture. If I look forwards within Cisco and the culture of our teams, our people. Having an attitude and a style of a desire, a curiosity. And a willingness for change is really, really important. As we talk about the transformation topic, you need both. Technology is incredibly important and powerful but you need a spirit and a culture in your people and your teams to want to drive that change with you. >> You need that culture DNA, it starts at the top. Well thank you for taking the time. >> A pleasure. >> We look forward to following your progress as we take our CUBE global the next couple years. Looking forward to keeping an eye on what you guys are doing. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Great to see you. >> With theCUBE here live in Barcelona for Cisco Live! 2019. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music) (silence)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo, Live Europe, Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> All right, welcome back to the Cubes. Live coverage in Barcelona for Sisqo Live twenty nineteen. John for Rico's Cube with David Lantz. Our next guest is Wendy Marches, the President of Cisco, E. M. R. Europe, Middle East in Africa and Russia. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> So one of the things themes this year certainly is cloud data center coming together. But the other backdrop is besides security and all of the things going on with data is the global landscape. So Cisco, see, North American Windows were going on their school live? What's happening in Europe? Actually, GPR has been hot in the past year. What's new? What's the scene like here? >> You know, I think that certainly the scene is one of huge excitement, you know, from our customers across the whole region of Europe, Middle East, Africa, Russia. It's an incredibly diverse region. But you know, if you look at the different countries, the different markets one thing that absolutely is a constant theme that we hear is the desire and the appetite to gain the benefit from transformation. You know, in the digital transformation and what that value can be and realizing that. And if we look for ours, you know within within Cisco and the positioning around realizing the secure intelligent platform is absolutely resonating, you know, so things like multi cloud and realizing that reinventing the network, the security challenge and dealing with that, how you address it with the multi domain architecture approach so our customers are really engaged in the conversation, want to learn more, but most importantly, want help with how. Show me how to do it. >> You guys must be leading the conversation within Cisco as your team in Europe, Miller's nephew in Russia. Because the complexity around compliance and data has been front and center Now for twenty four months now hitting mainstream global landscape, this >> is really >> impacting the architecture. We look at the how intent based NETWORKINGS developing policy based fill in the blank two. Connecting to multiple clouds so kind of complex. A whole new architecture. Reimagining networking. How are you guys seeing them? Trends now is it's still at the tipping point is it's still early. What's your? What's your assessment of the role of data as it gets more complex, more compliant, driven? >> So I think that it's certainly if you look for organizations, the power of being able to understand the importance of your data where it resides, being able to demonstrate that having the integrity and the quality of that data is extremely important as well. So there's a heightened awareness in the market for organizations, global organizations who conduct business in a mere, you know, of course, and we are one of those as well. So a knowledge and understanding and appreciation ofthe compliance regulation. It's only going to become Mohr intense, you know, as we go for. So for organizations to really have robust and rigorous processes around, all of that on technology could be an enabler in the process as well. What >> are the >> unique aspects? Wendy Inn in the region, you obviously have visibility. And on what goes on in North America, what's different in Europe, especially in the context of cloud multi cloud? Obviously GPR, although it's a framework now for for for everybody get on the world. But what's unique in the region? >> So I think the uniqueness is, you know, if you look from a multi cloud standpoint, for example, where you know organizations are, have been, I would say depending on some of the countries and markets a little bit more hesitant around a movement to cloud. And now there is a movement. But it's more one of, well, what is appropriate for me. And how do I ensure I can embrace multi cloud in a way that makes sense for my business. So, rather than a full move to public, there has been a selected, you know, based on application of workload environments and also understanding the security, back to compliance. And also the regulation impacts have some of those movements as well. And of course, that depends upon the vertical or the industry in which those organizations are operating. So for those who are highly regulated, like health care, you're the pharmaceutical sector. There's a deep inspect that goes on there as well, so I think there's a further requirement for due diligence around some of those topics as well. >> Well, in the you know, the Snowden backlash had some paranoia for sure, with everybody saw going to go to two or three clouds. And that's clearly not been the case. Yeah, you have no many dozens and hundreds of service providers that air that air specialists obviously in the region. So we heard today about a million end to end architecture, which is a a bold and ambitious vision. You have a technical background as well. I wonder if you could just describe sort of how that's all going toe transpire. How do you take the customers on their journey? What are they asking you for help with? And where do you see it going? >> Yeah. So if you look at, you know from David this morning, David, get clear on what he talks about. So really, you know, for those different domains, there are competencies, you know, if you think so. There's the data center. There is the edge. There was security world, the collaboration world. So the reality of it is, though, that as a cousin, enterprise or any organization indeed consumes those things. They want to be able to work across all of those areas. And they want the innovation to work in a seamless manner. Is that the end of the day? The problem to solve. To simplify for me, Anita automate reduced complexity. I wanna roll and deploy policy and a consistent in cohesive way. So in order to make that happen, you have to have these environments able to talk to each other, but more importantly, pushed that policy in a cohesive manor across these environments. So for us, it's a journey, eh? So it's not something you could do over Nice. You have to work within your engineering teams and your ecosystem in order to bring that to life and do it in a way where the custom consider could consume it. >> I think you really nailed that. We see in the trend as well. This cross domain component with AP Eyes now but you're open are pushing data around you, moving data from point A to Point B. Sounds like networking. To me, policy is important, but the configuration the deployment, which used to be hard, is now being automated. So the question I have for you here in the definite zone means packed People are learning about programming. >> What is the >> impact of all this to developers were trying to build APS and your ecosystem. There's gotta be an opportunity there some Mike go the way of the old guard fade away and some new kinds of providers might rise up. >> Yeah, you know, this huge opportunity here, and I think it's opportunity around the requirement for new skills, new competencies, but also around you capability to bring this the life. Because if you look from a development standpoint, if you look at how you realize value with organizations and where does the money flow between some of these environments is interesting and the ecosystem itself. You know, Francisco, what What I believe makes us even more powerful is bringing to life on them and accelerating with the ecosystem, because at the end of the day, the customer will buy an ecosystem style environment. So for us to be able to work with all of those parties as we have over many years and there will be new players, the I s. P community, the developer community that we work with that will be really powerful >> forces with system growing significantly, ecosystem grow >> Absolutely, absolutely awesome. Example. Just lookit here because of the organizations that are here. >> I think the development trends clearly intersecting with networking as more programmable right? >> Yeah. >> That's the big takeaway for us. You can program the network. You have infrastructure as code. That's the devil. Promise that now here. Question we're looking at is okay. What's it going to be? The impact of value creation. So from a customer, what does it mean to me? So so, as we look at that, I sent the thing about the Cisco original business model enabling technology. How would you answer that Question of what's being enabled today. What's the big half a customer's? What are you guys enabling for your partners in your >> S o? I think a big part of it is we see now a lot of the conversation there's around What is is the use case. So it's not just a I've got some cool stuff. Show me the cost ofthe that work is how do I apply that into my environment to derive value and that value, maybe around efficiency and maybe a brand provisioning in a more rapid manner, automating in a more realized manner. Lots of different instances where organizations they don't see the benefit associated with that, but also it allows them to free up time of their people. And their teams to move into new areas as well as they move their own business models. Because, you know, it's a massive transition that's happening in the industry. Overall, it's not just were not just changing for the sake of change were changing because the market is asking us to do that >> well. And so customers have to make bets on who they're multi cloud providers, maybe, and obviously Cisco's coming out that from a position of networking strength, which is a good place to come from. But there are other there alternatives because the Bigg market headed strategic. What gives you confidence that Cisco's the right solution? What are you telling your customers in that regard? >> So you know, if I look at the, what gives me confidence is the fact that we have an openness. You know, if you look from A from a P I standpoint of developer standpoint, we've always operated in a mode of an openness so that you have an environment where anyone could write to that's people want that it's incredibly importance or not. Having a proprietary stance is very powerful, but I think also being able to work with a ecosystem that's there where you are a dependency on others, and you meet with the meat in the channel on certain solutions and innovations as well. So you empower a greater community to start to drive that acceleration with you? A swell. You know, I will. Look at the you know, we talk about reinventing the network. It's happening. It's happening now, you see, is doing it. And just how important the network is more than ever before in this transition, you know, ran a number of areas with security with policy, and it's way see it come to life now. >> Well, the old saying the network is the computer will do you no. Cisco's the network. Yeah. I gotta ask you about Brexit is someone who's based in the UK thoughts on effects that that has. I mean, obviously, sir Francisco Global Company. But your perspectives on Brexit >> s So if I look for, you know, as someone who lives in the U. K. You know, clearly we hear about brexit a loss, you know, you do in your country as well. And I would say four words. We over. You know what Cisco is? A global company were very fair. We're very familiar with working with these types of instances and situations. The UK remains for us is an incredibly important market and will continue to be on We'll, you know, we'll continue to invest from a capabilities and a skill standpoint, and I think just force now, you know, working with our teams there. I'm making sure that there's we minimize any impacts based on scenarios, you know, to our customers and apartments. The rules get through. >> Rules change. Adept. I >> could ask >> you about our The Russia piece rushes of GDP is about the size of Spain from correct, interesting that you carve that out of a distinct opportunity. How's the business going there and maybe some comments around >> you're so I can't talk directly about business performances were in quiet period. But I guess we call it out specifically because it is not part of Europe, Middle Eastern Africa, but is a very important part of our region of Vermeer. And if I look for cores of, you know, we believe that there is significant opportunity for us in that market. We have a fantastic team that were closely where there again with our customers and partners. And, you know, we believe there's, you know, absolutely opportunity for Sisko in that market >> development team there as well. Our way >> have we have capability there that works locally with all of our all of our teams and, you know, engineering Competent sale steams etcetera as well. Yeah. >> Good. Good math. >> Wendy, how are you guys organized in your territory? How do you guys maintain close to the customer in the countries? Is the country strategy had just people don't. >> It is a country strategy. So we have, you know, about one hundred twenty three countries within a mere on, we have teams that live and operate in all of those countries. That's Avery close to us from a regional perspective. So want team, you know, that really drives that scale. I'm a fantastic opportunity to go and visit those teams. You know, I spent a lot of time on the road on DH. You know, I enjoy Ascend and they do to, you know, >> is there anything you could talk to your customers that are watching here? Anyone interested, as you guys have transformed as a company, Certainly looking what Cisco is done over the past few years a complete transformation building on your base You've been through You've been agile getting nimble being Mohr use case driven Central, Central. What have you learned? What's your learnings? And what would you pay it forward in terms of advice? >> Yeah, So, you know, if I if I look at it, we're not through, we're still you know we're still on the journey and I think a big part of it is accepting and acknowledging a need for change is really important. But a big part of this change is culture. You're a friend of Ford's within Sisko, and the culture of our teams are people on having an attitude in a style of a desire, a curiosity, Onda willingness for change is really, really important. And as we talk about the transformation topic, you need both. You know, technology's incredibly important and powerful, but you need a spirit and a culture and your people in your teams you want to drive that change with you >> in their culture starts in trouble. Thank you for taking the time. >> Thank you >> for the following your progress as we take our cue. Global next couple of years. Looking forward to keeping an eye on. You guys are doing. Thanks for joining. >> Thank you. Thank you. See you >> here. Live in Barcelona. Francisco live twenty nineteen. We're back with more after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat digital music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Fransico at the Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day, single track conference. A lot of, just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice. And we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference. It's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the chief of staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. >> Great to see you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? >> Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. And I went, I don't know who she is, but I love her, and I love her message. So fast forward, attended my first Catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco which I didn't know. So, what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding. Okay, well let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored, overall with Cisco, about 15 different events. Catalyst Conference, AMPLIFY Women's Pitch Night. I think we've done eight. Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana. She is amazing, she's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. (laughs) It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech, and especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. >> Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at a IBM event many, many moons ago and said you know, we got to get involved. >> It was random. >> The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones from a couple years ago is really taking off, the little like, tile-like device. >> That's right, that's right. >> Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. >> And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think it was Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was >> Yeah. the last year or the year before, I just did volunteer, >> Good, good. and it was great. >> So you know, the sponsorship list has really grow this year, and it's a who's who of corporate logos, >> Absolutely. which is great. We're looking at it over, across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turned on the cameras, about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, 'cause it's kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be, not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as Girls in Tech. So why don't talk to kind of what your experience is there, what are guys doing, how are you trying to add a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? >> Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said hey let's just go do this. So then our first year, we really were focused specifically on events, and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of Girls in Tech, which is global, and phenomenoal, and 100,000 plus members, etc. This year, in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful, and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect. And there's some new cool things coming out on that front from Girls In Tech. And I really want to just say, hey it's great to have our name associated with Girls In Tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real big key focus area for us this year. Plus the events, 'cause this is, you know, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing, and I get all psyched watching all these young ladies walk around. >> Right. >> Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age. Back in the day (laughs). >> That's right, dune day, thankfully. >> That's right. >> So that's interesting, in terms of how do you measure your ROI in the investment? Clearly, recruiting has got to big a piece right? You can never get enough >> Yeah. people, and even though machines are going to take everybody's job, Everyone >> That's right one day seems to have a whole lot of open recs, and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? 'Cause we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. >> Absolutely. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity is not just a buzz word, it's a thing. We know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings, I mean, there's real, relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? >> Right, right. So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. You know, every quarter, we sit down with Girls In Tech and we get an impact report of what are you Cisco, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls In Tech, and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a Hack-A-Thon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report, also. >> And do you find it's a higher kind of ROI, in, not so much a smaller organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it fit in with your whole strategy? Yeah, I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us, and we're growing, right? So we're only >> Right. the second year in, and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. >> Right. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem, what would you tell 'em about this organization and why they should get more involved? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself, and the brand of her, and the brand that is Girls In Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 10, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal, and now 100,000 plus members, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but you know, it's also the right thing to do. Because again, I go back to my super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing. You can't, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. >> It's so funny, talk about the role models, we interviewed Maria Klawe, who runs Harvey Mudd, years ago, at Grace Hopper, and that was such a big part of her theme right? >> Are there people, >> Absolutely. are there women that the younger gals can look up to, and see oh, she looks kind of like me, or I could be like like her one day, and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerburg, and Jobs, and kind of the male tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old [Wendy] 10-25, or 14 13 year old, or 25 is going to look up to and say, that's me >> Exactly. in a few years, if I work, so ... >> Exactly. >> It's such an important piece of the whole component. >> My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women magazine. And she has this catch phrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady that's graduating, and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's my passion event, yeah. >> Alright, well Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Alright, she's Wendy Howell, I'm Jeff Frick. We are at Girls In Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco, thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

(upbeat music) >> From San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're at Downtown San Francisco, Girls in Tech Catalyst. Great event. We've been coming for a couple of years. About 700 professionals, mainly women, a few men, and I think they brought in a busload of kids to get inspired, talking about their stories, and really, it's a series. It's a one-track conference, two days, about 20 minute talks and really good stuff. Really great content. Check it out online if you didn't register this year. Make sure you come next year, and we're excited to have our next guest, Cube alum, really from one of the hottest companies in tech right now, she's Wendy Pfeifer, the CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, great to see you again. >> Hey, nice to see you, Jeff. >> Absolutely, so we see you at Nutanix Next all the time, but we haven't seen you at Girls in Tech. >> Yeah. >> So how long have you been involved in Girls in Tech? >> So, I've been involved since the very first meet up, more than 10 years ago. Girls in Tech was very inspiring to me, and I was here at the Catalyst Conference last year, and I'm a member of the board of Girls in Tech as well, so I'm able to give back and provide some leadership at that level. >> So we just had Adriana on, and she was going through-- >> Yeah. >> Some of the numbers, I mean, the growth of this organization, second to Nutanix, is off the chart. >> Yeah. >> I mean, really amazing. >> It really is amazing, you know. In some ways our time has come. Adriana's had this big vision for a really long time. Really focused on educating women, helping them to understand the potential of careers in tech, and technology knowledge, and that's a global message, and a message that resonates at every age level, and in lots of different sectors of society, so it's juts a privilege to be able to partner with her and others on the board, to enable the vision, and Nutanix as well, you know, is donating, is present here at these conferences, and partnering at Catalyst and Amplify, and other parts of the organization. >> Right, because it's not only the right thing to do, it's also good business, which has been proven time and time again. >> Absolutely, and you know, it's kind of taken on this passion, mission, just excitement thing, but it is practical as well and you know, all the studies, I'm sure so many folks have talked with you about this. There's so many studies, there's so much research that says diversity brings better decision-making, better product development. >> Right. >> And better satisfaction in our work environments as well. >> Right. The other thing that struck me talking to Adriana, and I guess I just didn't know, kind of the breadth of types of activities that Girls in Tech's put on. So we've been to Catalyst before. We've been to-- the Pitch Night, Amplify-- >> Amplify, yeah. >> But I didn't know, she's running, you know, there's all kinds of different-- types of things. >> Absolutely. I think the underlying passion is for education. If you think about, particularly people in underserved communities, there is a real opportunity, you know coding, and learning to code, learning to interact with computers; that's a language that transcends geographic boundaries, ethnic boundaries, age, and religious boundaries, and it's something that, you know ever since my days at Yahoo, I really felt like technology could bring the world together, and today in particular, there is so much disparity between women and men and their access to technology education and technology careers. >> Right. >> That this is, you know, more than just creating a level playing field. I think we're making our own playing field. We're not going to their playing field, anymore. We're creating our own at locations like this. >> Right, and clearly a bunch of founders are here today, who've-- >> Yeah. >> Started their own companies. But the other thing I think is interesting, is culture keeps coming up time and time again in all these conversations, and Adriana's built a culture starting, always from the top down, with the board. It's a phenomenal board of professional women-- >> Yes. >> That she's pulled together of this organization. >> Yeah, there are a couple of males on the board, too. I want to make sure I point out. >> Yep. >> Because we're a diverse board as well, but she has. She has brought together people who are leaders in the technology space, but also folks who are passionate about building a healthy nonprofit organization; one that's global, one that can scale, and so we also look at the fundamentals, and the business fundamentals as well, so we are expanding from 60 to 100 countries, and from 100,000 members to 200,000 members, I mean, who would think, right? >> Right, right, right. >> It's extraordinary. Even then, though, those 200,000 women are a drop in the bucket, compared to the 50% of the global population-- >> Right. >> Who are female. >> Right. And then you work at Nutanix. Super hot-- >> Yeah. >> I don't want to say startup anymore. You guys have IPO'd. >> Right, right. >> But, you know, but you're livin' it in terms of trying to get enough, good, qualified talent-- >> Yes. >> Just to feed the one engine that I Nutanix, so it's a real-- >> Yeah. >> Demand in the market place. >> Definitely, that's the case, you know, we sort of struggle with the thought, you know, are there just not enough women candidates in these fields, but what we learn at conferences like this is, that there are enough women candidates, but we don't necessarily recognize those women, and we don't know where to find them, and they may not find the sort of work that we represent to be attractive. And so we're sort of trying to change how we speak and think. Culture is a good word, but it's a revolution. It's a cultural revolution in terms of identifying talent where it sits. We spoke a lot in the last day and a half around blended careers, the bringing together of art and technology, or communication and technology, and the fact is that technology just underscores everything we do-- >> Right. >> Nowadays. >> Right. >> And so, you know, having people who can blend those things, is a real advantage, and women have this ability to take a multi-faceted approach to the work that we do and the way that we live our lives. We multi-task as a sport. >> Right, right. It's interesting, too, as the machines get better and as A.I. gets better, machine learning, the softer skills applied with the context become so much more important than necessarily just the super hard-core coding skills. >> You know, I have a story around that. So, we've just deployed, my IT department has deployed a machine-learning tool at Nutanix, to replace a lot of the interactions that happen on our help desk, and we found we just couldn't scale as the company was scaling, so we've been training A.I. from a company called Moveworks, and you know, we've been training it uniquely with our voice, and I think a little bit with my voice, and I just had one of our employees write back to me and say, "Not only is this thing", we call it Xbot, "Not only is Xbot solving my problems, but", he said, "she is pretty sassy, too." And I'm like, yay, he knows it's a she! >> Right, right. >> Right, and she's sassy too, so yeah, that unique voice-- >> Right. >> Is infusing even the machine-learning training that we're doing-- >> Right. >> And I think that makes for a more delightful experience-- >> Right. >> For all of us. >> It's funny, the voice thing, 'cause you know, Google had their very famous, the restaurant reservation call-in demo-- >> Yes! >> They got capped on a little bit-- >> Right. >> For, you know, was it real or not, but what made it so, so dramatic was the human-like elements in the conversation of the machine-- with ums, and ahs-- >> Absolutely. >> And uhs, and pauses, which we laugh about, 'cause we can shoot Cube interviews, everybody wants to cut those parts out, and we're like no, that's what makes people, people. >> Right, exactly, I agree with you. And at the same time, you know, there are, you know, things that are uniquely female stereotypes. We're more wordy. We have more things to say. >> Right. >> You know, we're more multi-dimensional. We can hold two thoughts at the same time, and so that's part of the richness of communication and our interaction too, but to the extent to which we can embed that in our technologies and our interactions, those are the extent to which they'll be more delightful-- >> Right. >> It's no coincidence that Siri and Cortana and all of those A.I.s sort of have this female persona, and I don't know if you know this, the, you know, Cortana, who's the Microsoft, you know, A.I., you know, she's voiced by the same character that's Cortana in one of their video games-- >> Oh, really? >> And she's sort of this like, badass fighter gal, too, so check it out. >> Well, we know what happened to Bob, right? >> Right. >> I know, poor Bob. >> Which, ironically, was Melinda Gates's project. Which, I don't know if you knew-- that story. >> I did not know that. >> So yeah, Melinda Gates's introduction to Bill was as product manager for Bob, which, if you don't know that story, check it out. It's old history. >> Oh, that's-- fantastic! >> But it's very good. Alright, before I let you go, one last thing. >> Yes. >> So you spoke, and they've got these great posters all around the room with little highlights from people's-- >> Yes. >> Conversations and yours was, I described it off the wall, "It's okay to be bad." >> Yes. >> I'd love, for the people that missed it, what's the message there? It's an important message. >> Yeah. >> Especially for women. >> Yeah, I think as women, you know, we don't have a lot of role models and when I get up as a role model, I'm one of the few CIO's who's female and Silicon Valley. You know, we give these speeches, and they sort of make us like Mother Teresa, you know. First you hae your mission in mind, and you lean in, and you do all these awesome things. But the fact is, it is actually okay, to be yourself. It's okay to be bitchy. It's okay to be cranky. It's okay for anger to fuel you. It's okay to be aggressive, and even if your male counterparts tell you otherwise, or say, "Wow, that's "unseemly.", I think it's just okay. We don't have to be pure and perfect in order to be successful. I can be those things all at the same time. And I also say, it's also okay to be good, to be merciful, to be soft-spoken, to be wordy, to be studious; that combination of things. We're allowed to be our genuine selves, and we don't have to be perfect to be successful and I feel like I embody that-- in particular. >> Yes, you certainly do. You certainly do! >> What, I'm not perfect? >> Yes, I mean the Nutanix story is a phenomenal story. >> It is. We are fortunate, we've been there since the beginning-- >> Absolutely. >> Watching it grow, and so no-- >> Helping us to frame the story, so thanks to The Cube. I appreciate that. >> Well, and you're super successful, and the company's successful so the fact that are Wendy, you know, you are who you are. You're a big personality, and it comes through, and it's great, and it works, and you're successful, so, if they need someone to look up to, you're certainly a fantastic role model. >> Thank you so much. Well I appreciate that. It's funny, 'cause I have never tried to be a role model, and now, just by accident, I've survived long enough. Here I am. (both laughing) >> Well that's a whole different conversation-- >> Right, right. >> You just look around like, I am the oldest guy in the room. But that's a different thing. >> I know. You're actually the only guy, just sayin'. >> Alright, well Wendy thanks for takin' a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you next at Nutanix next, if not sooner. >> I look forward to it, thanks. >> Alright, thanks. She's Wendy, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube from women, or Girls in Tech Catalyst 2018. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference, brought to you by Girls in Tech. (upbeat digital music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Fransico at the Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference 2018. About 700 people, mainly women, some men. I think they brought in a school bus load of girls to participate. And really it's a two-day, single track conference. A lot of, just presentations by senior executive women telling their story, how they got to where they were, giving some inspirational advice. And we're psyched to be here. Adriana runs a great, great conference. It's a super organization, and we're excited to have our next guest. She's Wendy Howell, the chief of staff for Cisco Services. Wendy, great to see you. >> Great to see you, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely, so you're here instead of Cisco Live, which I think is great for you. What do think about this event? Why are you involved in Girls in Tech? >> Yeah, so I discovered Girls in Tech probably about three years ago and saw Adriana speak on just some interview. And I went, I don't know who she is, but I love her, and I love her message. So fast forward, attended my first Catalyst about three years ago, found out that we had two VPs that were on the board at Cisco which I didn't know. So, what's going on here? Let's do something with these guys. They were trying to put together a global partnership, and we really, they just couldn't get it over the line. Well, what's the problem? Funding. Okay, well let's fund it and let's just go. So we signed a global partnership two years ago with Girls in Tech. We've done, I think we've sponsored, overall with Cisco, about 15 different events. Catalyst Conference, AMPLIFY Women's Pitch Night. I think we've done eight. Hacking for Humanity events globally. It's just an amazing organization. It's the right organization at the right time. You know Adriana. She is amazing, she's a force of nature. And so I liken myself to be a mini Adriana for Cisco. (laughs) It's the time to get more and more focus on getting women in tech, and especially making sure that we have role models for the young ladies that are coming up in technology. >> Right, right. That's funny, that's how we found Adriana as well. I think she was on at a IBM event many, many moons ago and said you know, we got to get involved. >> It was random. >> The Pitch Night is really fun. You know, that's just a great event. And one of the ones from a couple years ago is really taking off, the little like, tile-like device. >> That's right, that's right. >> Which I can't remember the name, but it's not tile. >> And in fact, I saw one of your interviews, I think it was Sandy Carter. I don't know whether it was >> Yeah. the last year or the year before, I just did volunteer, >> Good, good. and it was great. >> So you know, the sponsorship list has really grow this year, and it's a who's who of corporate logos, >> Absolutely. which is great. We're looking at it over, across the way. And we talked about it a little bit before we turned on the cameras, about how some of the bigger tech companies specifically, 'cause it's kind of a tech focused event, obviously, can be, not only more involved, but a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more organized, a little bit more coordinated in the way that they put resources behind events such as Girls in Tech. So why don't talk to kind of what your experience is there, what are guys doing, how are you trying to add a little bit more purpose and organization behind your efforts? >> Right, and again, originally the partnership, it came together quite fast after we sort of said hey let's just go do this. So then our first year, we really were focused specifically on events, and let's do events together to really get our name associated with the brand of Girls in Tech, which is global, and phenomenoal, and 100,000 plus members, etc. This year, in our second year, I think we're being a little more thoughtful, and we really want to continue to show the ROI for our organization. So we're really focusing more on the recruiting aspect. And there's some new cool things coming out on that front from Girls In Tech. And I really want to just say, hey it's great to have our name associated with Girls In Tech, but what's it doing for us? What are we doing for the women that we're supporting? Let's hire them into Cisco, let's hire them into AWS. So that's a real big key focus area for us this year. Plus the events, 'cause this is, you know, not only is it great for us, but I get to bring my team here and they come away feeling fantastic and amazing, and I get all psyched watching all these young ladies walk around. >> Right. >> Many of them, I'm like, I wasn't even thinking about things like this when I was your age. Back in the day (laughs). >> That's right, dune day, thankfully. >> That's right. >> So that's interesting, in terms of how do you measure your ROI in the investment? Clearly, recruiting has got to big a piece right? You can never get enough >> Yeah. people, and even though machines are going to take everybody's job, Everyone >> That's right one day seems to have a whole lot of open recs, and can't fill the people. So is there anything else that you look at besides just hiring, or is it the number of people that come through the process? How do you measure? 'Cause we know it's not only just good and the right thing to do, but there's real business benefit to participating in diversity programs. >> Absolutely. And I mean, every large organization right now, over the last three years, has come to that realization. This diversity is not just a buzz word, it's a thing. We know that there is greater ideas that come out of it, more diverse ideas, bookings, I mean, there's real, relatable, tangible feedback that you can get from it, right? >> Right, right. So recruiting is a big one for us, but also we look at the impact. You know, every quarter, we sit down with Girls In Tech and we get an impact report of what are you Cisco, what have you done, Cisco, and what has it done for Girls In Tech, and what has it done for us? How many people have we had attend a Hack-A-Thon? How many dollars have we supported with? How many people are going through a boot camp? So that's sort of the way we look at it as well, the impact report, also. >> And do you find it's a higher kind of ROI, in, not so much a smaller organization, but these are relatively small events compared to Cisco Live and a lot of the big events that are in the industry. Is it just a more focused return? Is it a better return? How does it fit in with your whole strategy? >> Yeah, I would call it more focused. It's more of a niche, but it still provides us, and we're growing, right? So we're only >> Right. the second year in, and I truly believe that if we continue our focus in this area, I can see a strong, high trajectory if you will. >> Right. So just a pitch for companies like Cisco that aren't involved with Girls in Tech, who you may compete with, you may not compete with, you probably partner with out in the ecosystem, what would you tell 'em about this organization and why they should get more involved? >> Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple things. So number one, Adriana herself, and the brand of her, and the brand that is Girls In Tech now. If you think about it, I mean, 10, 11 years now, so going from one chapter to 62 plus, hopefully 75, I think, by 2020 is the goal, and now 100,000 plus members, being associated with this brand is fabulous for your business, but you know, it's also the right thing to do. Because again, I go back to my super passionate about the next generation of female leaders and these role models that the younger folks are seeing. You can't, you can't even put a price on how valuable that is for them. >> It's so funny, talk about the role models, we interviewed Maria Klawe, who runs Harvey Mudd, years ago, at Grace Hopper, and that was such a big part of her theme right? >> Are there people, >> Absolutely. are there women that the younger gals can look up to, and see oh, she looks kind of like me, or I could be like like her one day, and it's such an important thing. And she talked about, you know, Zuckerburg, and Jobs, and kind of the male tech rock stars, if you will, are tech rock stars, but they're not necessarily the ones that some 14 year old [Wendy] 10-25, or 14 13 year old, or 25 is going to look up to and say, that's me >> Exactly. in a few years, if I work, so ... >> Exactly. >> It's such an important piece of the whole component. >> My friend, a buddy of mine, she's the founder of Austin Women magazine. And she has this catch phrase that's fabulous. She goes, the female role models, if you can't see it, you can't be it. So if I'm a 24 year old young lady that's graduating, and I don't see anyone else who looks like me, then what do I do? So that's why I love this event in particular. It's my passion event, yeah. >> Alright, well Wendy, your passion comes through and thanks for taking a few minutes of your time with us. >> Absolutely, thank you for having me. >> Absolutely. Alright, she's Wendy Howell, I'm Jeff Frick. We are at Girls In Tech Catalyst in downtown San Francisco, thanks for watching. (upbeat digital music)

>> Hey welcome back to everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studio for a CUBE conversation. The crazy conference schedule is just about ready to break over our heads, but we still have a little time to do CUBE conversations before we hit the road. But one show we're doing this summer that we've never done before is Kubecon Cloud Native Con, I got to get all the words. It used to be Cloud Native, now Kubecon's up front. But we're going to go to the European show first time ever. It's May 2nd through 4th at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. We're really excited to go 'cause obviously a ton of activity around containers and Kubecon and Kubernetes, and we're excited to have a little preview of the show with two folks. We've got Wendy Cartee, she is the Senior Director Cloud Native Applications Marketing for VMWare. Welcome. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. >> And also giving us a little preview on her keynote, maybe we can get something out of her, I don't know, Aparna Sinha, she is a Group Product Manager for Kubernetes and Google's Kubernete Engine at Google, long title. Just see the Kubernete shirt, that's all we need to see. Welcome. >> Thank you. Glad to be here. >> Absolutely. So for the folks that have not been to Kubecon before, let's go through some of the basics. How big is it? Who can they expect to be there? Do you have the fancy letter for them to give to their boss to get out of work for a week? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Give us the basics. >> This is going to be our biggest event in Europe yet. So we're expecting actually four thousand plus people. We expect that it'll be sold out. So, folks should register early. And who should go? Actually tends to be a mix of developers who want to contribute to the project as well as users. I think in Austin, which was our last conference, there was about a 50/50 mix of folks that were using Kubernetes. So it's a really great place to meet others that are using the software. >> Are there a couple of new themes this year? Or is just just kind of generic training and moving the platform along? Or are there some big announcements that people can expect? >> Yeah, I expect some big announcements. And I expect that there'll be a couple of themes around security, around Serverless, that's a major area, and around developer experience, and of course machine learning. So those are some of the things that are top of mind for the community. >> And probably Service Mesh will be another round of hot topics this year as well. >> Which one? >> Service Mesh. >> Jeff: What is that? >> It's a project that is a part of CNCF around Envoy. And it's essentially the notion of having a stack of services that provide everything from connectivity to API access for microservices. >> I ask because we had an old customer of Service Mesh saying they got bought by some services company... >> Yeah, this is, I think the term is an old term, so obviously when you start using Kubernetes it's really around breaking down your applications and having microservices. You get a proliferation of microservices. Service Mesh essentially enables you to manage those, so set up security and communication between those services and then manage them at scale, so that's really what a Service Mesh is. And Envoy is at the heart of that. And then there's a project called Istio. There will definitely be, and there was a lot of discussion around that at Kubecon in Austin. And they'll be some training before the conference this time. There are several co-located events. There'll be some training beforehand. So for folks that want to learn, they're new to Kubernetes, they're new to the concept of Service Mesh, I would recommend coming a day early or two days early, 30th and 1st, there's a number of different workshops. >> It's pretty amazing just the growth and the momentum of containers and Serverless, and obviously Docker kind of came out of nowhere a couple three or four years ago. And then Kubernetes really kind of seemed to jump on the scene in terms of at least me paying attention, probably a couple two, three years ago. And it's phenomenal. And even only just to check it out, Google's putting on all these little development workshops. This one was at Santa Clara Convention Center probably a month ago that I went down. And the place was packed, packed. And it was, get out your laptop, get out your notes, and let's start going through and developing applications and really learning. I mean, why does this momentum continue to grow so strongly? >> From what we see, we have enterprises that are in the journey of digital, you're kind of going on the digital transformation. >> Jeff: Right. >> And to drive that faster business model they need technologies like Cloud Native to help them with faster development, to help them with driving new innovations in their application, and I think that that's what we see in the Kubernetes community. I think we see developers and contributors coming to conferences like Kubecon, especially to really learn from each other and find out what are some of the latest innovations in this space and how they can bring that back into their companies to drive faster development, and at the end of it, essentially driving better services, better experience for their end users as well. >> And it's really been interesting watching the VMWare story particularly, because you know people were a little confused when the merger happened with Dell and EMC and how was that going to affect (mumbles) and VMWare, and yet, the ecosystem is super vibrant. We do VMworld every single year. It's one of our biggest shows. The thing is packed with a really excited ecosystem, obviously you guys made big moves with Amazon last year. You're making moves with Google and Kubernetes, and it was funny. People were concerned a couple years. It's almost this rebirth of what's going on at VMworld and this adoption of really (mumbles) technology as well as open source technologies. Has the culture changed inside? Is this something that you guys figured you have to do or was it always there under the covers and maybe we just weren't paying enough attention? >> Yeah, I think it was always there. I think we are very close to the transformation and the journey that our customers are on. And obviously the customers themselves have a full stack solution deployed in their environment today. Many of them are using vSphere or vSan or NSX, vRealize Portfolio to build their business, and they're looking at how to transform and add containers as another layer on top of their software defined data center, to essentially breathe some of these newer technologies into their environment as well. >> Yeah, and Aparna, Google's been sharing open source stuff for a while. Even back to early Hadoop, Hadoop days. So, as big and powerful as a company that it is and as much as scale is such an important piece of that competitive advantage, it's wild that you guys are opening things up and really embracing an open source developer kind of ethos to acknowledge. As smart as you are, as big as you are, as much power as you have, you don't have all the smartest people inside the four walls of Google. Well, Google has always contributed to open source. I think we have a very long and rich history of sharing software and, you know, really doing joint development. So Android is an open source, Chrome, Chromium is open source. TensorFlow is open source. And Kubernetes really is, I think, different in that sense in that there is a thriving community around it and Google's been very, very active, and I've been very active personally, in developing that community and engaging in the project. And I think that goes back to what you were saying about the meetups. There are several meetups all around, so it's not just in one location. I think globally. And I think the reason it's so diverse and so many people are involved is because it does lead to, you know, Kubernetes enables a benefit that is meaningful in enterprises, large and small, where you can start rolling out applications multiple times a day. And it just gives developers that productivity. It's very accessible. And over the years, especially as the project has matured, it has become, it's like my daughter or my son can go and they can use it. It's really easy to use. So it's not hard to pick up either. >> And it's also interesting because we do a lot of shows, as you know, theCUBE goes to a ton of shows, and everybody wants the attention of developer if they haven't had (mumbles) everybody's got a developer track a developer this, a developer that. Everybody wants to get to developers. It's very competitive. As a developer you have a lot of options of where you want to spend your time. But really, especially Google, kind of comes at it from, and always has, development first. Right? It's kind of developer first. So I'm curious, you talked about the community that's going to be gathered in Denmark when you've got contributors as well as users and contributors all kind of blended together. Not really forced together, but coming together around this universal gravity that is Kubernetes. What is that enable that you don't get if you're traditionally either a developer show or kind of a user show? >> Yes, I think that's really important and one of the beautiful things about open source, is that you get what you see. And you can actually change it and own it and it's not some other entity that owns it. So we'll have many companies presenting, so Bookings.com, Spotify, New York Times, Ebay, Lyft. These are all companies that are using Kubernetes and also contributing to Kubernetes. And so it's a nice virtual cycle. And what you get from that is you're in touch, you're in constant touch with your users. So a lot of them actually use Google Kubernetes Engine, and I know what they're looking for. And so we can then shape the project and shape the product accordingly. >> Then the other question I always think is interesting when you're working with open source projects and contributors, right? A lot of times it's a big part of whom they are, especially if they're a good contributor. You know, it's part of their identity, it's part of the way they connect with their community, but they got to get work done for the company, too. So in terms of kind of managing in the development world with contributing people, people contributing to open source projects as well as you got to get our work done that we're working on, too. How do you manage that? How is kind of best practices for having a vibrant open source contributing staff that's also being very productive in getting their day job done? >> I think engineers love to learn from other engineers and developers, and I think that community is the reason why they come. And it's not only our conferences when everybody gets together at a conference like Kubecon, but there's a tremendous amount of activity day to day offline over conference calls like Zoom and, you know I'm on some of the calls that Aparna is on and its amazing. You have people from all over the world, developers from everywhere, who will meet on a weekly basis, and they'll Slack each other. And I think that that sense of community, that sharing of information and really learning some of the best practices and learning what others have done is why people come, and it's great to have a conference like Kubecon where people can finally come together and meet in person and just kind of enjoy each other's presence and communicate face to face, and really connect in person. We're very excited about Kubecon and kind of being part of that energy, that enthusiasm that is in the community. >> It's interesting, the Slack, the kind of cross-enterprise Slack phenomenon, which I hadn't really been exposed to until a couple of projects we got involved with, and I got invited into these other companies' Slack, which I didn't really know that that was a thing to open up that wall in between the two companies and enable a very similar type of interaction and engagement that I have with my peers inside the walls as I do now with my peers outside the walls. So that's a pretty interesting twist in enabling these tools to build community outside of your own company. >> Yes, it is, and Slack is a great tool for that. But even aside from the tooling, I think that the pace of software innovation is very, very fast these days. And if you stay within the walls of your company you miss out on so much innovation that is available, and I totally agree with Wendy. Contributors and developers in general, they like to know what's next. And they like to contribute to what's next. And you said you went to some of the meetups, so you can sort of see that you're actually benefiting from that, from both contributing as well as from meeting with and absorbing what others are doing. You're directly benefiting your company, you're directly benefiting in your own job because you're innovating. >> So before we let you go, any particular session or something is happening at the show in Denmark that either you're super excited about or maybe is a little bit kind of flying underneath the radar that people should be aware of that maybe they didn't think to go to that type of session. >> Well I think there are a variety of excellent sessions at the Kubecon that's coming up. There are user topics. Arpana talked about some of the companies that will be there to share their experience. I've seen talks about communities and contributors and how they can contribute and build the community. I think there are SIG updates that I think would be very informative. And I also think that there are a lot of announcements that will be made at the event as well. I think that's exciting for everybody to see the new innovations that's coming out that impact the community, the users, and in general the ecosystem as well. >> Aparna? >> Yeah, yeah, so if I were to lay it out, I mean definitely folks should register early 'cause it's going to sell out. There were a thousand plus submissions and a 125 talks have been accepted. There are 31 Google talks. There's all manner of content. I would suggest users go a little bit early if they want to get the hands-on training in the workshops. And then as Wendy mentioned, I think on May 2nd there's a contributor summit, which is actually, that's the thing that's flying under the radar. It's a free event, and if you want to learn how to contribute to Kubernetes, that's where a lot of the training will be. And the SIGs, the special interest groups, in the community, each of them will be giving an introduction to what they do. So it's a really good event to meet maintainers, meet contributors, become one yourself. And then in terms of the agenda, I think I mentioned the topics. I'm giving a keynote. I think I'm giving the opening keynote there. It'll be about developer experience, because that's a big deal that we're working on in Kubernetes, and I think there's many new innovations in improving the developer experience with Kubernetes. I'll also be giving an overall project update. And then some of the other keynotes, there's a keynote on KubeFlow, which is a machine learning framework on top of Kubernetes. And then there's a series of talks on security and how to run securely in containers. >> All right, well I think we're almost ready. We got to register, we got to study up, and make a couple contributions before we're headin' over there, right? >> Absolutely. >> All right, Wendy, Aparna, thanks for taking a few minutes and look forward to seeing you across the pond in a month or so. It's May 2nd through 4th in Denmark at the Bella Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Thanks again for stopping by. >> Wendy: Thank you. >> Aparna: Thank you. >> All right, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Palo Alto, we'll see you next time. Thanks for watchin'.

>> Narrator: Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE covering .NEXT conference. Brought to you by Nutanix. >> Welcome back to Washington, D.C. everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with Stu Miniman, this is day two of our coverage of .NEXT Conf #NEXTConf. Wendy M. Pfeiffer is here. She's the relatively new CIO of Nutanix. Wendy, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me, good to be here. >> Okay, you got my attention. You said there's a reason for it. >> Reason for the M? >> For the M. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's my mom's middle initial, her middle name is Michelle. My middle name is Michelle and my ten-year-old daughter Holly's middle name is Michelle and we sort of pass along our female heritage. I send Holly a message whenever I do anything publicly that it's a shout out to her. She gets to lead, she gets to be proud of her feminine heritage as well as her family heritage. >> I love that, that is fantastic. Quick aside, I'm going to make you laugh. We're at the race track one day and there was this one guy, and he was winning and I wasn't winning so I said, it's like the eighth race, How are you doing this? Well his last name began with an M. He goes, I'm just betting on all the horses with an M in it. >> That could be another good reason. Thanks for the tip. >> Anyway, welcome to theCUBE and welcome to Nutanix. Five months in on the job, you got a really strong IT background. GoPro, Yahoo, both companies of senior leadership. Robert Half, I think, was on the resume as well. >> Yeah, CISCO Systems, Exodus Communications. >> You've seen it all. >> Which means I'm old. I've been around a long time. Any company, I would work anywhere. >> Not as old as I am, honey. So, what's the experience been like at Nutanix? Tell us about the onboarding. >> It is a playground, I love it. Nutanix, I was hoping that they would have the technology that I love and they do. It's one of the first places I've worked where it doesn't matter if I need server storage, we have that. It's pretty cool. I have a really amazing team and then the leadership there is fantastic. It's also the first time in my career where I'm working for a company that sells to CIO's and so my opinion of our product matters. I get to be customer number one, drink our champagne, that sort of thing. In fact, I'm on that path, we call it Eat Your Own Dog Food, when I came on board and I said, I don't want the dog food. We're going to be drinking our own champagne. I want the good stuff. I'm getting to play and just experience the product and experience that process and then people care what I think, people who are developing product care what I think and that's great. >> Are the sales guys dragging you into situations as well? >> They are totally dragging me into situations. I'm not that compelling in direct sales but I have been giving them some tips on how to sell to CIO's. Just letting them know how to approach us, and some of the things that we care about and don't care about. What's great as well is, I'm not very good at being fake, so when I talk about using our product and when I'm excited about our product, it's pretty, you know, it's genuine. If I don't like something, you know that too. >> Well CIO's, you're part of a network. >> We are. >> And that network is sort of immutable, in my opinion. >> It's a secret cabal. It really is, we get together in treehouses and exchange the password. >> But there's a code, right? >> There is. >> You're not going to give another one of your peers some bad advice, even if you are a CIO of a company that's trying to sell to them. >> That's right. It's a small circle. I do belong to some groups that get together and talk about some of our common challenges and one of our cardinal rules is that no vendors are allowed and there's no selling. We do, if we have some expertise, we'll share that but we really don't cross that line. So when I do give advice, they know it's genuine, as much as possible. >> Wendy, we always like to ask CO's, what's challenging you today? Typical IT, we always said for years, it was like, Okay, your headcount next year is going to be flat, your budget's going to be declining. What do you see when you're talking to your peers? What are some of the biggest challenges that they see? >> It's a few things. One thing is, the transformation that's happening around digital technologies and moving into the cloud. It's requiring a transformation of skill sets as well. We really have a challenge, first of all, in deciding, if we have traditional IT folks, how do we transform their skill sets? How do you make an infrastructure guy or gal someone who writes code? That's one thing and just a dearth of talent. There aren't enough people entering the workforce. That's one thing. Another thing is, really just about the pace of innovation. By nature, when you get to a senior executive level, you're almost less innovative than you might've originally been but we're supposed to be the paragons of innovation and new ideas and so we struggle with that. We struggle to keep it fresh and reinvent ourselves. I left a fairly traditional career to go to GoPro, just because of that desire to reinvent myself and try something hard and new. We've got that struggle as well. I'd think as well, just the changing business models, too. There's a lot, we're always balancing CapEx, OpEx, a lot of us have a big investment in OpEx and in SaaS and then trying to balance that with CapEx. We've always got those challenges. I think that's a lot of it. >> Wendy, we're 10 years into this journey of what cloud and how it's going to affect it and the role of the CIO is something that's been in the center of it. Does the CIO become irrelevant? Does he become a broker of services? You talked a little bit about some of the changing roles. How was your viewpoint on cloud, has it changed over the last few years in some of your different roles and I'm curious inside of Nutanix, how public cloud fits into what you use. >> I think there's a couple of layers. One layer that doesn't go away is operations. Whether it's taking operational expertise and transforming that into code for DevOps, or whether it's transforming it into process for on-premise infrastructure, you have to have that knowledge and you have to have that leadership so I don't think the need for leadership is ever really going away. I think the center of leadership is changing over time and has sort of moved from place to place but ultimately, we have to have folks who understand how to build whatever it is, to scale, who understand how to flex, who understand how to deal with crisis. Then also, there's some fundamentals towards architecture and building blocks. Yes, we're architecting differently. We're architecting with code in the cloud but the principles underlying those things are relatively the same. I don't think that the functions, the need for leadership, is going away at all but I do think that we have to be flexible in our thinking. I will say the title CIO it's actually never kind of been right. Chief Digital Officer or Chief AWS Officer. All of those things are not exactly right. We need to not be so precious about titles and just go back to thinking and leading and innovating and let the titles take care of themselves. >> I got to still ask you about this emergent role of the Chief Data Officer. We can all agree data's important, whatever bromide you want to use, data's the new oil and so forth and so on. Many of the chief data officers that we've talked to are individuals that maybe do a lot of governance, lot of things that CIO's generally aren't responsible for. Yet at the same time, data is becoming this new competitive advantage and it's so important to information technology. What are your thoughts on data, helping companies become data-driven and what is the role of the CIO in that context? >> First of all, data is really, really important. How a company deals with its data is a gigantic differentiator. Obviously, we have all this opportunity in the areas of machine learning and potentially AI and so on. When I was at Yahoo, one of the things I worked on was our privacy initiatives and even back then, we had the ability to ingest a lot of data about our users and we had the ability, algorithmically, to do behavioral targeting. But we had to make some ethical decisions and some compliance decisions about how we used that data and so, the technology has been available for some time, but where we haven't caught up is in policy. I think that Chief Data Officer is really at the nexus of creating policy, understanding capabilities and deciding how we apply those things. We've always needed that role. Sometimes it's the CIO, sometimes it's the Chief Privacy Officer, we've always needed that role but the role is a little bit different, I think, with data because of the power of the data. I do think there's a need for some knowledge of the law, GDPR is coming down from Europe and there's a key factor there. Ultimately, data needs to be treated like an asset. It's product as much as anything else. I think someone who's akin to a Chief Product Officer needs to handle the company's data and that data needs to imbue the product, it needs to go to market plans. It also can be a reflection of the culture of the company, as well. Even collecting data on ourselves and how we operate and how our employees move through their cycles is very, very powerful. Always with ethics, though. That's the thing that, if you leave data in the hands of pure engineers or pure technologists, then you need some sorts of checks and balances as well because sometimes we're overcome by the possibilities of the technology, without thinking through the possibilities that affect human beings. We need that balance. >> I've always felt like the CIO is the field general and should be implementing the data strategy but he or she shouldn't be necessarily responsible for, Okay, how are we going to monetize the data? Who has access to data? What are the data policies? That seems like a full-time job but there is overlap, though. >> It's messy, right? A lot of times it has to do with, I mean at that sea level, those are all board-level positions, right? Ultimately, we're responsible for the financial health of the company >> Sure. >> At that level. Really, we're playing to our strengths. Sometimes we come to the table and we understand how to monetize data. Sometimes we come to the table and we know how to efficiently manage operations. There's usually a mix. There's somebody with a CTO or a CPO or a CIO title or a Chief Data Officer title, but it's less about the title and more about those strengths that show up around the executive table but there needs to be somebody, or maybe a combination of a couple of somebodies, who are hungry for the value that they can derive from that data and accrue that to value to the company. >> It's some notion of swim lanes for accountability but recognizing there's some overlap. We got to talk about women in tech, but go ahead. >> Just two things, Wendy. >> Did you notice I'm a girl? >> As a technology leader, I'm curious if you see differences between yourself being a technology leader in Silicon Valley and those outside the Valley and the second one, just curious if you've had any learnings working now for a company that sells to the enterprise versus being on the consumer side of the house at GoPro and some of the others? >> Silicon Valley is a bubble. We all breathe our own oxygen. We think we're pretty cool. We tend to be libertarian as a group and therefore, we have libertarian policies that are embodied in how we develop code, how we create product and we're creating our own little culture but we're not in sync with a lot of the rest of the world. Luckily, one of the pieces of our culture is about building things that are open and so people can repurpose our technologies in ways that make sense for them. The other thing is, even more profound, is the effect of millennials on both Silicon Valley and outside of Silicon Valley. Millennials are changing how we develop code, how we organize our companies, et cetera. Your other question, can't remember. >> Consumer versus selling to the enterprise. >> I think the difference really is just internally, my job it was a different sport, working for a consumer company because people weren't generally smarter than me around my technology. In the consumer company. But they are a lot smarter than me. I am not the technical expert in the room at Nutanix. All of them know more than I do. >> No offense, but I'll bet. >> That was a little intimidating. I had to think twice, do I want to go back to being in junior high? >> Got to ask you, your journey. 17% of the IT industry's employment comprises women. Just so happens that 17% of the guests on theCUBE are women. We really try and go overboard on it. >> Hard to find us. >> There's a clear disparity in pay, it's well-documented. What was your journey to get here? >> It's only now that I'm old and wise and at a senior level that people are making a big thing about me being female. I've been female my entire career. >> Never heard boo. >> I never traded on it. I will tell you that throughout my career, I have been given advice that would seem ridiculous if it were given to a male. As an example, I've been told that I use too many words. That I'm too emotional. I've been told, can you imagine? If I said, Hey Bob, could you button up that top button of your shirt, there? When you sit down, don't spread your legs because I'm drawn to looking at Girls, women, we get that advice from senior advisors. We're told, Be less emotional. I've always ignored that advice. I'm a mom, I have the blonde 1980's hair. There's not much I can do about that. Being genuinely myself, it was all I could figure out how to be. It just so happens that now I'm in my 50's and I'm a CIO, so suddenly that's a thing. It's never been a thing. It's been something where my entire career, I've had to just keep my own counsel and be genuine and the fact that I'm female and feminine and a mom, doesn't diminish the fact that I'm also a brilliant technologist, that I'm good at leading people. I can feel empathy and care in my heart for a person, at the same time that I'm firing them for non-performance. I can be multifaceted. I think that's women's superpower. I think when we try to be just one thing or we try to be more like the traditional male in leadership, then it's like being Jerry Rice and walking onto the field with your legs tied together. My unfair advantage, to quote John Madden, I got to use my unfair advantage. My unfair advantage is that I think in a multifaceted way. >> Wendy M., thanks so much for coming. I'm glad we could make time for you, I'm glad you could make time for us. Thank you. >> Thank you, appreciate it, it was fun. >> Keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back to wrap. This is theCUBE in D.C. at Nutanix .NEXT. Right back.

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering Food It, Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here at the Cube. We're in Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum which celebrates history but we're talking about tech in the food and agricultural space. Here at the Food IT Convention, about 350 people, somebody came all the way from New Zealand, got food manufacturers. We've got tech people, we've got big companies, start-ups and we have a lot of represents from academe which is always excited to have them on, so our next guest is Dr. Andy Thulin, he's the Dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, or SLO as we like to call them. Welcome. >> That's right. >> And all the way from Iowa, we have Dr. Wendy Wintersteen. She's the Dean of College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Iowa State. Welcome. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely, so first off, just kind of your impressions of this event? Small, intimate affair, one actually introduced everyone this morning, which I thought was a pretty interesting thing. Kind of your first impressions. >> It's a great environment. We have this mix of technology and a few production people here, but people thinking about the future. That's always an exciting place to be. >> Really, the environment, having the little set of exhibits, where people can go around, visit with entrepreneurs. It really, a great setting, I think for the discussion. >> So, Wendy, when you introduced your portion on the panel, you talked about the scale on which Iowa produces a lot of things. Pigs, and corns, and eggs, and chickens, and, so, you've been watchin' this space for a while. How do you see, from your perspective, kind of this technology wave, as it hits. Is it new, have we just not been payin' attention? Or is there something different now? >> Well, I think the speed of adoption, the speed of innovation is increasing, clearly. But, it's been a long time now that we've had power drive tractors so the farmers can sit and work on the technology in the cab related to their soil mapping, or yield monitors and the tractor's driving itself. So, we've had that sort of thing in Iowa for a long time and that continues to be improved upon, but that'd be just one example of what we're seeing. And, obviously, California has a huge agricultural presence, again, some people know, some people don't, the valley from top to bottom is something on the order of 500 miles of a whole lot of agriculture, so again, does this, do you see things changing? Is this more of the same? >> No, absolutely changing. I mean California produces some, a little over 400 different products. A lot of 'em, about a 100 of 'em, lead the country, in terms of marketplace. So, there's a lot of technology with the issues of water, lack thereof, or cleaning it up, or the labor challenges that we have for harvesting products. It's really turned into quite a challenge, so challenge drives innovation, you know, when you have your back against the wall, For example, in the strawberry fields I think, a year ago they had $800 million worth of labor to produce $2.4 million, billion dollars worth of strawberries. When you think about that, that's a lot of labor. When you can't get that labor in, you're drivin' by it, you got $300 million, wherever, they just weren't able to harvest it all 'cuz there was nobody to pick 'em. So, when you think about that, it's a billion dollars. It's a billion dollars that they couldn't get to. That drives innovation, so there's a lot of innovation goin' in these products. >> Pretty interesting, 'cuz, obviously, the water one jumps out, especially here in California, you know we had a really wet winter. The reservoirs are full. In fact, they're lettin' water out of the things. I would say we don't have a water problem, we have a water storage problem. This came up earlier today. The points of emphasis change, the points of pain change, and labor came up earlier. The number of people, the minimum wage laws, and the immigration stuff that's going on. Again, that's a real concern if you've got a billion dollars worth of strawberries sittin' in a field that you can't get to. >> Yeah, it's a real challenge. California faces a couple of shortages. We've got a water shortage, we've got a labor shortage, but we also have a talent shortage. We were talking this morning about the number of young people going to Ag colleges. It's up dramatically and we need all that talent and more. Everyone needs, all the grain industry, if you will, across the country, all the people that run these farms and ranches, and all, they're getting older. Who's coming back behind them? It's a technology driven industry today. It's not something that you can just go out and pick it up and start doing. It takes talent and science and technology to manage these operations. >> So, it's interesting. There's been science on kind of the genetic engineering if you will, genetically modified foods for a long time. Monsanto is always in the newspaper. But I asked something that's kind of funny, right, 'cuz we've been genetically modifying our food for a long time. Again, drive up and down I-5 and you'll see the funny looking walnut trees, that clearly didn't grow that way with a solid base on the bottom and a high-yield top. So, talk about attitudes, about this and people want it all. They want organic, but they also want it to look beautiful and perfect, be priced right and delivered from a local farmer. There's no simple solution to these problems. There's a lot of trade-offs that people have to make based on value so I wonder if you could talk about how that's evolving, Wendy, from your point of view. >> Well, certainly as we think about the products we produce in Iowa, we know that producers are willing to produce whatever the consumer would like. But they really want to be assured they have a market, so, right now in Iowa, we have cage-free eggs being produced, and those are being produced because there's a contract with a buyer, and, so I think producers are willing to adapt and address different opportunities in the big markets, different segments of that market, if they can see that profit opportunity that will allow them to continue in their business. From the producer's point of view, the subtheme of this show is Fork to Farm, as opposed to Farm to Fork which you think is the logical way, but it's come up and it's been discussed here quite a bit. It's the consumer, again, like they're doing in every business, is demanding what they want, they're willing to pay, and they're very specific in what they want. Was this like a sudden wave that hit from the producer point of view, or is this an opportunity? Is this a challenge? How is that kind of shifting market dynamics, impacting the producers? >> Well, I think it's all being driven by technology. We're talkin' this morning, years ago, it was the expert, you know, Wendy's of the world they had all the knowledge and then you had all the consumers listening to 'em and trusting 'em. Today, you have, as I call it, the mama tribe, or the soccer tribe, or that sort of thing, where they're listening to other parents, other mothers in that group, they're listening to the blogs, they're listening to their friends, that's driving the conversation and there's less science and technology behind it. They don't trust and the transparency thing comes up constantly. Technology has allowed this just wide open space where now they got so much information, how do they process that. What's real, what's not real, in terms of biotech, or is it this, or is it that? Is it wholesome, you know, all these factors. >> It's funny 'cuz you brought up the transparency earlier today as well, so people know what they're getting, they want to know, they really care. They just don't want to just get whatever generic ABC, like they used to. >> Right, and I think, again, there's a certain segment of the market that is very interested in that and companies are responding. I give the example of Nestles, and so, you get on their web page and you can see the ability to scan the code on a particular product and go and get a lot of information about that product back on the web page of that company. I think that for certain groups of consumers that's going to become even more important, and we have to be prepared to meet that demand. >> So, in terms of what's going on at your academic institutions, how is the environment changing because of technology, we've got these huge macro trends happening, right, cloud is a big thing, Edge Computing, which is obviously important, got to get the cloud to the edge (laughs) of the farm, sensors, big data, being able to collect all this data, I think somebody earlier said it went from no data to now a flood of data, how are you managing that? Better analytics and then, of course, there's fun stuff like drones and some of these other things that can now be applied. How's that workin' it's way into what you're doing in terms of training the next generation of entrepreneurs as well as the kind of traditional farmers in this space? >> Well, I think, first of all, we're seeing a lot more integration between what we do in engineering, and what we do in computer science, and what we do in agriculture and business. The overlap and the connection across those disciplines is occurring not just with our faculty but also with our students. We had a group of students at Iowa State before they graduated from the college, able to start a company called ScoutPro that was based on using technology to help farmers identify pests in the field, and that became a company using the technology to do that. Of course, that relied on software development, as well as clear understanding of agronomic and pest management strategy. I think those integrated approaches are occurring more and more. >> I think at Cal Poly it's, our motto has been for over a hundred years Learn by Doing, hands-on learning. That's key to us, as you have a lecture class, you have a lab that goes along with it so they're forced to. We have over 45 to 50 classes, enterprise classes, where you can come in and you can raise, let's say marigolds and then you can provide that whole value train, chain and sell it. You can raise broiler chicks every quarter, for 35 days you can raise 'em up, 7,000 birds and there's teams of students in these classes, they can do it, then they manage the whole process. A winery, for example, it's a bonded winery. They do the whole process. They know how to change the pumps and all that, so it's hands-on but you take that from there up to where those students go out into the industry. Our university just signed an agreement with Amazon for the cloud, so we're moving the whole complex, our IT, to the cloud through that organization. Is that right or wrong, I don't know, but we've got to do things faster, quicker, and just our infrastructure, would a cost us millions to do that, but that allowed the students, what is it, Apple is only, the iPhone is 10 years old tomorrow. Tomorrow. These kids, that's all they grew up with. So, we're constantly having to change our faculty, our leadership teams, constantly have to change to keep up and stay side-by-side with the technology, so it's changed our Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Cal Poly has a partnership with the community, with the university, it started in College of Business and we have a whole floor of a building in downtown San Luis Obispo and across the street we've got 60 apartments for students that are involved in these start-ups to live there so they can walk across the street, get right engaged. So, we're trying to do everything we can, every university is trying to do everything they can to kind of keep this space flowing, and this enthusiasm with these young people. That's where the change is going to occur. >> Right, right. Exciting times. >> It is exciting. >> It is. >> Alright, well, unfortunately, we are out of time. So, we're going to have to leave it there, but I really want to thank you for stopping by and wish you both safe travels home. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Dr. Thulin, Dr. Winterston, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the Cube. It's Food IT in Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering NAB 2017, brought to you by HGST. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube, we're at NAB 2017, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. A hundred thousand people that are here, have been coming for decades, it's really quite a convention. It's our first trip here, but we're really excited to be joined by an industry veteran, she's been coming for a while, coming off a pretty impressive keynote, it's Wendy Aylsworth. She's the Chief Executive Officer at Walden Pond, and a many year veteran at Warner Brothers, right? So, welcome. >> Yes I am. Thank you. >> So first impressions of the show. You've been coming for a while, it seems to have kind of a different theme every year, what do you see this year that kind of strikes you? >> A little less focus on physical devices and I think there's a growing focus on software, and how those applications help streamline production processes, distribution processes, so you're seeing the real, more heavy move to IP and software applications. >> Right, right. Which, of course, is so consistent with what we see in many other industries, right? Between, a lot of it is driven by your mobile phone and expected behavior, and basically the entire world. I say it's like your remote control for your life now. Basically everything is on your phone. But a big piece of it is Cloud. And with Cloud now, people can dial-up at a moment's notice, basically infinite amounts of compute and store, and leverage that horse power in ways that you just can't do on a local device. So I'm curious, you've been in the business for a while, how has Cloud adoption changed the game? And how does it continue to change the game as we look forward? >> Yeah exactly. I just came from this keynote by Steven Guggenheimer, of Microsoft, where he talked about it being all about bandwidth, processing and storage. And, as those increase, and become more available it kind of democratizes the ability for people to get away from having to purchase their own physical devices, and it has opened up really a wide capability for new methods of doing production that actually couldn't even be done before. As well as long distance collaboration, and more rapid distribution, and then the ability to track and understand how data is flowing, so that you might be able to better understand the consumer. It really allows a content creator to get closer to their audience. And over time I think we will continue to see that ability grow. >> Which is so interesting because the proliferation of types of content is exploding, right? >> Wendy: It is. >> Everything from your classic big houses, to new houses like Netflix. Somebody told me earlier in the week that Netflix is one of the biggest producers now of independent content, to YouTubers, with not much more than an iPhone and a microphone that can go out, and if they've got a compelling piece of content, and they relate to a specific audience, can see tremendous numbers that a lot of people would do anything for. So that democratization is a huge item, but if you don't have an audience and you're not reaching them, and you're not measuring them, pretty tough because everybody is one swipe away from something else to watch. >> Well in fact, one of the discussions, really now is about that marketing capability because, the best marketing capabilities are still in the hands of the people who have been doing it for decades and decades and know where their audiences are and how to reach them, although those are shifting. And, the ability to provide tools that help new content creators find their audience are going to become critical needs in the future. >> Right, right. And less and less we see at other places, I'm sure we'll see it here, is that marketing intuition going to be the driver of the big spin. Now it's okay, you have intuition, but what's, You know, do you have some data to back it up? And the intuition can help drive the direction and the data collection, but at the end of the day, we see it in every other industry, I'm sure we'll see it here too, where it's data-driven decisions, using automation, using software to get better results in an increasingly competitive world. >> Yeah, and getting the right results because, as we know, there's tons and tons and tons of data, but it's understanding the data and putting good intelligence to it that allows you to make the right decisions. >> Right, right. Now as you're consulting to executives, who've been in the industry a while, what are they telling you? Are they excited? Are they scared? Are they slightly caught off guard? I mean there's so much new information opportunity. I'm struck by this kind of compression, it seems like, from the outside looking in, around your release weekend, it's so competitive to have. So there's only, whatever, 52 weekends a year, so many films trying to hit that particular window, and it seems like this, such pressure to make that number in a really short period of time. At the other hand, there's all these on-demand opportunities, there's all these alternate forms of distribution. It seems like a really difficult changing environment for these houses to be in. >> It is. It's a difficult changing environment. I haven't heard anybody be disappointed or pessimistic about it. I think they recognize that throughout history things change and you must change with it. The interesting thing there is, is that it's traditional windows are shrinking, but hopefully over time it'll become more apparent where there can be other moneys to be made in later windows or in different augmented settings. So I'll use as an example virtual reality. If virtual reality becomes a type of media in its own right, then it could be that you take a title type of content and one of its offshoots is a virtual reality piece that's then sold separately and monetized separately. So I think there is pressure on the traditional windows, to make them shorter, to get more revenue faster, but there are an awful lot of new technologies bubbling up that will create new types of content in the future and the smart players will get into that and monetize it as rapidly as they can. >> The other thing of course, that's changed significantly, along with Cloud, is just the cost of all this technology infrastructure, in terms, you know, just compute, and store, and networking just continue to crash down in terms of the cost and now, with these alternative things that you might have down the road, that you may or may not even know are going to be opportunities. How is that changing looking at the asset value? Cuz before, maybe you couldn't keep dailies, or maybe storage of all this stuff was a liability, it was expensive, and once you've got the finished product out the door maybe you're less likely to keep all the derivative works. But in today's world you might have some new distribution form that you didn't even think about before. Oh I wish I had this version, or that version, or that rough cut. >> I think asset keeping is always going to be a problem. I don't think it's any different than our homes, or any closet or drawer you own with, you know, when you started in your first apartment you had limited space and every time you get a bigger house then you fill it up, and then all of a sudden you decide you want to downsize and you got a problem. And I think that's always going to be a challenge, where companies have to figure out, what is the best of these assets that I should retain, and what should I not bother to retain. Because it's frankly too expensive to keep everything. That said, in the shift from analog to digital content creation, we've seen the production step, it's just so easy to take more photos and keep them. So there's been a shift in putting the onus on the content, directly on the content creator to decide what they think is the best of their work that should be kept, because it's unmanageable now. Just like my cellphone pictures are unmanageable. >> It's funny the pictures, because before, you know, pictures were rare, and a special picture was special, because it was like open up an Easter egg, right? You took your film down, maybe it was a couple weeks after you got back from vacation, you had a couple rolls of 36, and maybe one or two great ones right, >> Maybe you got one great shot, yeah. >> where you had that treasured picture of a relative or something. Now it's almost a curse of abundance because you can just push your button down, and the hard drives are getting bigger, and everything is getting faster. Now I have thousands, I can't even find a good one, not because I didn't have a good one, because I have to wallow through 2,472 cuz the 73rd is the one that I really want. That must be amplified tremendously in this space. >> Maintenance of your storage, again, I don't care whether it's the shoes in your closet or your photographs on your phone, or for a movie production. All of the footage that they're shooting and all of the special effects, and all these different forms of content that are coming in. Management of what you're going to retain is still a problem. Maybe there's machine learning that can help us wittle that down. >> Right, right. Certainly AI and machine learning are coming. But I wonder if you're hearing much about that, not only for the standard metadata that we would want, we had someone on earlier talking about archiving and basic kind of metadata, but now we can get into the metadata at a frame level, and a lot better intelligence. I'm sure in the future will be value judgements as well, as to whether this is a good shot, or not a bad shot, or it's applicable to whatever. Are you seeing much curiosity, adoption, experimentation, what do you kind of see? >> A lot of interest, a couple of experiments, not particularly in the what to say area, but a lot of experiments in other areas of production that are monotonous and boring like, take the example of pulling great shots from a film, in order to cut together a trailer, or a teaser that's going to go on the air. Well, a machine can pick out the best shots, thereby saving the person time of going through all the shots, and pulling the right footage. And then the editor can spend their time doing what they do best, which is taking those shots, and cutting them into an interesting sequence. So, I see a lot of experimentation going on that rudimentary machine learning being applied to quality control. So every time a file gets shipped from one company to another, they check it to make sure that it's correct. Well applying a machine, that's a really boring job, applying a machine to figure out whether that pile came in correctly and didn't get corrupted, great use of machine learning. >> So when you're in the field, what do you hear as kind of the top priorities from some of the people that you're working with now, in this super crazy, evolving environment? What are they looking to your help and assistance for? >> Well, in terms of Cloud sorts of work, they're looking to reduce their capital assets and be able to aggregate and use the resources of the Cloud to lower their costs of development. >> Just kind of a classic CAPEX versus, yeah... versus OPEX. >> And in some cases, whether they can help streamline their process, and speed up their schedule, and do things more in parallel. >> It seems like a perfect match. Because movies, by their very nature, are these transient little projects that form and come together, be produced, and then they disappear. >> Wendy: And then they disappear. >> And that's like perfect kind of an application for a Cloud world, which is the same thing, it's on demand, you assemble it, use it, when it's done it goes back. So it seems like a pretty good match. >> And applications in the Cloud that are modeling themselves to offer the services, based upon the usage, as opposed to setting up a long-term contract, those are the apps that are going to win. >> Right, and that's very consistent with the way that industry has worked for a long long time, right? >> Wendy: Yeah. >> Yeah, alright, well I'll give you the last word as you're leaving the show here in a couple days, headed back to L.A. What do you thinking about for the balance of 2017 that you're taking away, that you're excited to share with some of your clients? >> I think the power of doing little steps, and getting involved into using machine learning in various methods, whether that be in the Cloud or in a local Cloud. And then looking longer range to where artificial intelligence will actually play into that. But there's initial steps that have to be done in terms of applying machine learning first, and then I think we'll get into the more interesting stuff of artificial intelligence five years down the street. >> Yeah, early days, exciting times. >> Wendy: It is very exciting. >> Alright well Wendy, well thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day. >> I really appreciate the time. >> Alright, Wendy Aylsworth from Walden Pond. I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the Cube. We're at NAB 2017, from Las Vegas. We'll be right back.