>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with David Nicholson, day four of MWC '23. Show's winding down a little bit, but it's still pretty packed here. Lot of innovation, planes, trains, automobiles, and we're talking 5G all week, private networks, connected breweries. It's super exciting. Really happy to have Warren Jackson here as the Edge Gateway Product Technologist at Dell Technologies, and Scott Waller, the CTO of the 5G Open Innovation Lab. Folks, welcome to theCUBE. >> Good to be here. >> Really interesting stories that we're going to talk about. Let's start, Scott, with you, what is the Open Innovation Lab? >> So it was hatched three years ago. Ideated about a bunch of guys from Microsoft who ran startup ventures program, started the developers program over at Microsoft, if you're familiar with MSDN. And they came three years ago and said, how does CSPs working with someone like T-Mobile who's in our backyard, I'm from Seattle. How do they monetize the edge? You need a developer ecosystem of applications and use cases. That's always been the thing. The carriers are building the networks, but where's the ecosystem of startups? So we built a startup ecosystem that is sponsored by partners, Dell being one sponsor, Intel, Microsoft, VMware, Aspirant, you name it. The enterprise folks who are also in the connectivity business. And with that, we're not like a Y Combinator or a Techstars where it's investment first and it's all about funding. It's all about getting introductions from a startup who might have a VR or AI type of application or observability for 5G slicing, and bring that in front of the Microsoft's of the world, or the Intel's and the Dell's of the world that they might not have the capabilities to do it because they're still a small little startup with an MVP. So we really incubate. We're the connectors and build a network. We've had 101 startups over the last three years. They've raised over a billion dollars. And it's really valuable to our partners like T-Mobile and Dell, et cetera, where we're bringing in folks like Expedo and GenXComm and Firecell. Start up private companies that are around here they were cohorts from our program in the past. >> That's awesome because I've often, I mean, I've seen Dell get into this business and I'm like, wow, they've done a really good job of finding these guys. I wonder what the pipeline is. >> We're trying to create the pipeline for the entire industry, whether it's 5G on the edge for the CSPs, or it's for private enterprise networks. >> Warren, what's this cool little thing you got here? >> Yeah, so this is very unique in the Dell portfolio. So when people think of Dell, they think of servers laptops, et cetera. But what this does is it's designed to be deployed at the edge in harsh environments and it allows customers to do analytics, data collection at the edge. And what's unique about it is it's got an extended temperature range. There's no fan in this and there's lots of ports on it for data ingestion. So this is a smaller box Edge Gateway 3200. This is the product that we're using in the brewery. And then we have a bigger brother of this, the Edge Gateway 5200. So the value of it, you can scale depending on what your edge compute requirements are at the edge. >> So tell us about the brewery story. And you covered it, I know you were in the Dell booth, but it's basically an analog brewery. They're taking measurements and temperatures and then writing it down and then entering it in and somebody from your company saw it and said, "We can help you with this problem." Explain the story. >> Yeah, so Scott and I did a walkthrough of the brewery back in November timeframe. >> It's in Framingham, Mass. >> Framingham, Mass, correct. And basically, we talked to him, and we said, what keeps you guys up at night? What's a problem that we can solve? Very simple, a kind of a lower budget, didn't have a lot money to spend on it, but what problem can we solve that will realize great benefit for you? So we looked at their fermentation process, which was completely analog. Somebody was walking around with a clipboard looking at analog gauges. And what we did is we digitized that process. So what this did for them rather than being completely reactive, and by the time they realized there was something going wrong with the fermentation process, it's too late. A batch of scrap. This allowed them to be proactive. So anytime, anywhere on the tablet or a phone, they can see if that fermentation process is going out of range and do something about it before the batch gets scrapped. >> Okay. Amazing. And Scott, you got a picture of this workflow here? >> Yeah, actually this is the final product. >> Explain that. >> As Warren mentioned, the data is actually residing in the industrial side of the network So we wanted to keep the IT/OT separation, which is critical on the factory floor. And so all the data is brought in from the sensors via digital connection once it's converted and into the edge gateway. Then there's a snapshot of it using Telit deviceWISE, their dashboarding application, that is decoding all the digital readings, putting them in a nice dashboard. And then when we gave them, we realized another problem was they're using cheap little Chromebooks that they spill beer on once a week and throw them out. That's why they bought the cheap ones 'cause they go through them so fast. So we got a Dell Latitude Rugged notebook. This is a brand new tablet, but they have the dashboarding software. So no matter if they're out there on the floor, but because the data resides there on the factory they have access to be able to change the parameters. This one's in the maturation cycle. This one's in the crashing cycle where they're bringing the temperature back down, stopping the fermentation process, getting it ready to go to the canning side of the house. >> And they're doing all that from this dashboard. >> They're doing all from the dashboard. They also have a giant screen that we put up there that in the floor instead of walking a hundred yards back behind a whole bunch of machinery equipment from a safety perspective, now they just look up on the screen and go, "Oh, that's red. That's out of range." They're actually doing a bunch of cleaning and a bunch of other things right now, too. So this is real time from Boston. >> Dave: Oh okay. >> Scott: This is actually real time from Boston. >> I'm no hop master, but I'm looking at these things flashing at me and I'm thinking something's wrong with my beer. >> We literally just lit this up last week. So we're still tweaking a few things, but they're also learning around. This is a new capability they never had. Oh, we have the ability to alert and monitor at different processes with different batches, different brews, different yeast types. Then now they're also training and learning. And we're going to turn that into eventually a product that other breweries might be able to use. >> So back to the kind of nuts and bolts of the system. The device that you have here has essentially wifi antennas on the back. >> Warren: Correct. >> Pull that up again if you would, please. >> Now I've seen this, just so people are clear, there are also paddle 5G antennas that go on the other side. >> Correct. >> That's sort of the connection from the 5G network that then gets transmogrified, technical term guys, into wifi so the devices that are physically connected to the brew vats, don't know what they're called. >> Fermentation tanks. >> Fermentation tanks, thank you. Those are wifi. That's a wifi signal that's going into this. Is that correct? >> Scott: No. >> No, it's not. >> It's a hard wire. >> Okay, okay. >> But, you're right. This particular gateway. >> It could be wifi if it's hard wire. >> It could be, yes. Could be any technology really. >> This particular gateway is not outfitted with 5G, but something that was very important in this application was to isolate the IT network, which is on wifi and physically connected from the OT network, which is the 5G connection. So we're sending the data directly from the gateway up to the cloud. The two partners that we worked with on this project were ifm, big sensor manufacturer that actually did the wired sensors into an industrial network called IO-Link. So they're physically wired into the gateway and then in the gateway we have a solution from our partner Telit that has deviceWISE software that actually takes the data in, runs the analytics on it, the logic, and then visualizes that data locally on those panels and also up to their cloud, which is what we're looking at. So they can look at it locally, they're in the plant and then up in the cloud on a phone or a tablet, whatever, when they're at home. >> We're talking about a small business here. I don't know how many employees they have, but it's not thousands. And I love that you're talking about an IT network and an OT network. And so they wanted, it is very common when we talk about industrial internet of things use cases, but we're talking about a tiny business here. >> Warren: Correct. >> They wanted to separate those networks because of cost, because of contention. Explain why. >> Yeah, just because, I mean, they're running their ERP system, their payroll, all of their kind of the way they run their business on their IT network and you don't want to have the same traffic out on the factory floor on that network, so it was pretty important. And the other thing is we really, one of the things that we didn't want to do in this project is interrupt their production process at all. So we installed this entire system in two days. They didn't have to shut down, they didn't have to stop. We didn't have to interrupt their process at all. It was like we were invisible there and we spun the thing up and within two days, very simple, easy, but tremendous value for their business. >> Talk about new markets here. I mean, it's like any company that's analog that needs to go digital. It's like 99% of the companies on the planet. What are you guys seeing out there in terms of the types of examples beyond breweries? >> Yeah, I could talk to that. So I spent a lot of time over the last couple years running my own little IoT company and a lot of it being in agriculture. So like in Washington state, 70% of the world's hops is actually grown in Washington state. It's my hometown. But in the Ag producing regions, there's lack of connectivity. So there's interest in private networks because the carriers aren't necessarily deploying it. But because we have the vast amount of hops there's a lot of IPAs, a lot of hoppy IPAs that come out of Seattle. And with that, there's a ton of craft breweries that are about the same size, some are a little larger. Anheuser-Busch and InBev and Heineken they've got great IoT platforms. They've done it. They're mass scale, they have to digitize. But the smaller shops, they don't, when we talk about IT/OT separation, they're not aware of that. They think it's just, I get local broadband and I get wifi and one hotspot inside my facility and it works. So a little bit of it was the education. I have got years in IT/OT security in my background so that education and we come forward with a solution that actually does that for them. And now they're aware of it. So now when they're asking questions of other vendors that are trying to sell them some type of solution, they're inherently aware of what should be done so they're not vulnerable to ransomware attacks, et cetera. So it's known as the Purdue Model. >> Well, what should they do? >> We came in and keep it completely separated and educated them because in the end too we'll build a design guide and a starter kit out of this that other brewers can use. Because I've toured dozens of breweries in Washington, the exact same scenario, analog gauges, analog process, very manual. And in the end, when you ask the brewer, what do they want out of this? It keeps them up at night because if the temperature goes out of range, because the chiller fails, >> They ruined. >> That's $30,000 lost in beer. That's a lot to a small business. However, it's also once they start digitizing the data and to Warren's point, it's read-only. We're not changing any of the process. We augmented on top of their existing systems. We didn't change their process. But now they have the ability to look at the data and see batch to batch consistency. Quality doesn't always mean best, it means consistency from batch to batch. Every beer from exhibit A from yesterday to two months from now of the same style of beer should be the same taste, flavor, boldness, et cetera. This is giving them the insights on it. >> It's like St. Louis Buds, when we were kids. We would buy the St. Louis Buds 'cause they tasted better than the Merrimack Buds. And then Budweiser made them all the same. >> Must be an East coast thing. >> It's an old guy thing, Dave. You weren't born yet. >> I was in high school. Yeah, I was in high school. >> We like the hops. >> We weren't 21. Do me a favor, clarify OT versus IT. It's something we talk about all the time, but not everyone's familiar with that separation. Define OT for me. >> It's really the factory floor. You got IT systems that are ERP systems, billing, you're getting your emails, stuff like that. Where the ransomware usually gets infected in. The OT side is the industrial control network. >> David: What's the 'O' stand for? >> Operation. >> David: Operation? >> Yeah, the operations side. >> 'Cause some people will think objects 'cause we think internet of things. >> The industrial operations, think of it that way. >> But in a sense those are things that are connected. >> And you think of that as they are the safety systems as well. So a machine, if someone doesn't push the stop button, you'd think if there's a lot of traffic on that network, it isn't guaranteed that that stop button actually stops that blade from coming down, someone's going to lose their arm. So it's very tied to safety, reliability, low latency. It is crafted in design that it never touches the internet inherently without having to go through a security gateway which is what we did. >> You mentioned the large companies like InBev, et cetera. You're saying they're already there. Are they not part of your target market? Or are there ways that you can help them? Is this really more of a small to mid-size company? >> For this particular solution, I think so, yeah. Because the cost to entry is low. I mean, you talk about InBev, they have millions of dollars of budgets to spend on OT. So they're completely automated from top to bottom. But these little craft brewers, which they're everywhere in the US. Vermont, Washington state, they're completely manual. A lot of these guys just started in their garage. And they just scaled up and they got a cult kind of following around their beers. One thing that we found here this week, when you talk around edge and 5G and beer, those things get people excited. In our booth we're serving beer, and all these kind of topics, it brings people together. >> And it lets the little guy compete more effectively with the big giants. >> Correct. >> And how do you do more with less as the little guy is kind of the big thing and to Warren's point, we have folks come up and say, "Great, this is for beer, but what about wine? What about the fermentation process of wine?" Same materials in the end. A vessel of some sort, maybe it's stainless steel. The clamps are the same, the sensors are the same. The parameters like temperature are key in any type of fermentation. We had someone talking about olive oil and using that. It's the same sanitary beverage style equipment. We grabbed sensors that were off the shelf and then we integrated them in and used the set of platforms that we could. How do we rapidly enable these guys at the lowest possible cost with stuff that's at the shelf. And there's four different companies in the solution. >> We were having a conversation with T-Mobile a little earlier and she mentioned the idea of this sounding scary. And this is a great example of showing that in fact, at a relatively small scale, this technology makes a lot of sense. So from that perspective, of course you can implement private 5G networks at an industrial scale with tens of millions of dollars of investment. But what about all of the other things below? And that seems to be a perfect example. >> Yeah, correct. And it's one of the things with the gateway and having flexibility the way Dell did a great job of putting really good modems in it. It had a wide spectrum range of what bands they support. So being able to say, at a larger facility, I mean, if Heineken wants to deploy something like this, oh, heck yeah, they probably could do it. And they might have a private 5G network, but let's say T-Mobile offers a private offering on their public via a slice. It's easy to connect that radio to it. You just change the sims. >> Is that how the CSPs fit here? How are they monetized? >> Yeah, correct. So one of our partners is T-Mobile and so we're working with them. We've got other telco partners that are coming on board in our lab. And so we'll do the same thing. We're going to take this back and put it in the lab and offer it up as others because the baseline building blocks or Lego blocks per se can be used in a bunch of different industries. It's really that starter point of giving folks the idea of what's possible. >> So small manufacturing, agriculture you mentioned, any other sort of use cases we should tune into? >> I think it's environmental monitoring, all of that stuff, I see it in IoT deployments all over the world. Just the simple starter kits 'cause a farmer doesn't want to get sold a solution, a platform, where he's got to hire a bunch of coders and partner with the big carriers. He just wants something that works. >> Another use case that we see a lot, a high cost in a lot of these places is the cost of energy. And a lot of companies don't know what they're spending on electricity. So a very simple energy monitoring system like that, it's a really good ROI. I'm going to spend five or $10,000 on a system like this, but I'm going to save $20,000 over a year 'cause I'm able to see, have visibility into that data. That's a lot of what this story's about, just giving visibility into the process. >> It's very cool, and like you said, it gets people excited. Is it a big market? How do you size it? Is it a big TAM? >> Yeah, so one thing that Dell brings to the table in this space is people are buying their laptops, their servers and whatnot from Dell and companies are comfortable in doing business with Dell because of our model direct to customer and whatnot. So our ability to bring a device like this to the OT space and have them have that same user experience they have with laptops and our client products in a ruggedized solution like this and bring a lot of partners to the table makes it easy for our customers to implement this across all kinds of industries. >> So we're talking to billions, tens of billions. Do we know how big this market is? What's the TAM? I mean, come on, you work for Dell. You have to do a TAM analysis. >> Yes, no, yeah. I mean, it really is in the billions. The market is huge for this one. I think we just tapped into it. We're kind of focused in on the brewery piece of it and the liquor piece of it, but the possibilities are endless. >> Yeah, that's tip of the spear. Guys, great story. >> It's scalable. I think the biggest thing, just my final feedback is working and partnering with Dell is we got something as small as this edge gateway that I can run a Packet Core on and run a 5G standalone node and then have one of the small little 5G radios out there. And I've got these deployed in a farm. Give the farmer an idea of what's possible, give him a unit on his tractor, and now he can do something that, we're providing connectivity he had never had before. But as we scale up, we've got the big brother to this. When we scale up from that, we got the telco size units that we can put. So it's very scalable. It's just a great suite of offerings. >> Yeah, outstanding. Guys, thanks for sharing the story. Great to have you on theCUBE. >> Good to be with you today. >> Stop by for beer later. >> You know it. All right, Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson and the entire CUBE team, we're here live at the Fira in Barcelona MWC '23 day four. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

(contemplative upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to this CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE, here in Palo Alto, California. Got a great topic on expanding capabilities for urgent computing. Dan Stanzione, he's Executive Director of TACC, the Texas Advanced Computing Center, and Rajesh Pohani, VP of PowerEdge, HPC Core Compute at Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, welcome to this CUBE Conversation. >> Thanks, John. >> Thanks, John, good to be here. >> Rajesh, you got a lot of computing in PowerEdge, HPC, Core Computing. I mean, I get a sense that you love compute, so we'll jump right into it. And of course, I got to love TACC, Texas Advanced Computing Center. I can imagine a lot of stuff going on there. Let's start with TACC. What is the Texas Advanced Computing Center? Tell us a little bit about that. >> Yeah, we're part of the University of Texas at Austin here, and we build large-scale supercomputers, data systems, AI systems, to support open science research. And we're mainly funded by the National Science Foundation, so we support research projects in all fields of science, all around the country and around the world. Actually, several thousand projects at the moment. >> But tied to the university, got a lot of gear, got a lot of compute, got a lot of cool stuff going on. What's the coolest thing you got going on right now? >> Well, for me, it's always the next machine, but I think science-wise, it's the machines we have. We just finished deploying Lonestar6, which is our latest supercomputer, in conjunction with Dell. A little over 600 nodes of those PowerEdge servers that Rajesh builds for us. Which makes more than 20,000 that we've had here over the years, of those boxes. But that one just went into production. We're designing new systems for a few years from now, where we'll be even larger. Our Frontera system was top five in the world two years ago, just fell out of the top 10. So we've got to fix that and build the new top-10 system sometime soon. We always have a ton going on in large-scale computing. >> Well, I want to get to the Lonestar6 in a minute, on the next talk track, but... What are some of the areas that you guys are working on that are making an impact? Take us through, and we talked before we came on camera about, obviously, the academic affiliation, but also there's a real societal impact of the work you're doing. What are some of the key areas that the TACC is making an impact? >> So there's really a huge range from new microprocessors, new materials design, photovoltaics, climate modeling, basic science and astrophysics, and quantum mechanics, and things like that. But I think the nearest-term impacts that people see are what we call urgent computing, which is one of the drivers around Lonestar and some other recent expansions that we've done. And that's things like, there's a hurricane coming, exactly where is it going to land? Can we refine the area where there's going to be either high winds or storm surge? Can we assess the damage from digital imagery afterwards? Can we direct first responders in the optimal routes? Similarly for earthquakes, and a lot recently, as you might imagine, around COVID. In 2020, we moved almost a third of our resources to doing COVID work, full-time. >> Rajesh, I want to get your thoughts on this, because Dave Vellante and I have been talking about this on theCUBE recently, a lot. Obviously, people see what cloud's, going on with the cloud technology, but compute and on-premises, private cloud's been growing. If you look at the hyperscale on-premises and the edge, if you include that in, you're seeing a lot more user consumption on-premises, and now, with 5G, you got edge, you mentioned first responders, Dan. This is now pointing to a new architectural shift. As the VP of PowerEdge and HPC and Core Compute, you got to look at this and go, "Hmm." If Compute's going to be everywhere, and in locations, you got to have that compute. How does that all work together? And how do you do advanced computing, when you have these urgent needs, as well as real-time in a new architecture? >> Yeah, John, I mean, it's a pretty interesting time when you think about some of the changing dynamics and how customers are utilizing Compute in the compute needs in the industry. Seeing a couple of big trends. One, the distribution of Compute outside of the data center, 5G is really accelerating that, and then you're generating so much data, whether what you do with it, the insights that come out of it, that we're seeing more and more push to AI, ML, inside the data center. Dan mentioned what he's doing at TACC with computational analysis and some of the work that they're doing. So what you're seeing is, now, this push that data in the data center and what you do with it, while data is being created out at the edge. And it's actually this interesting dichotomy that we're beginning to see. Dan mentioned some of the work that they're doing in medical and on COVID research. Even at Dell, we're making cycles available for COVID research using our Zenith cluster, that's located in our HPC and AI Innovation Lab. And we continue to partner with organizations like TACC and others on research activities to continue to learn about the virus, how it mutates, and then how you treat it. So if you think about all the things, and data that's getting created, you're seeing that distribution and it's really leading to some really cool innovations going forward. >> Yeah, I want to get to that COVID research, but first, you mentioned a few words I want to get out there. You mentioned Lonestar6. Okay, so first, what is Lonestar6, then we'll get into the system aspect of it. Take us through what that definition is, what is Lonestar6? >> Well, as Dan mentioned, Lonestar6 is a Dell technology system that we developed with TACC, it's located at the University of Texas at Austin. It consists of more than 800 Dell PowerEdge 6525 servers that are powered with 3rd Generation AMD EPYC processors. And just to give you an example of the scale of this cluster, it could perform roughly three quadrillion operations per second. That's three petaFLOPS, and to match what Lonestar6 can compute in one second, a person would have to do one calculation every second for a hundred million years. So it's quite a good-size system, and quite a powerful one as well. >> Dan, what's the role that the system plays, you've got petaFLOPS, what, three petaFLOPS, you mentioned? That's a lot of FLOPS! So obviously urgent computing, what's cranking through the system there? Take us through, what's it like? >> Sure, well, there there's a mix of workloads on it, and on all our systems. So there's the urgent computing work, right? Fast turnaround, near real-time, whether it's COVID research, or doing... Project now where we bring in MRI data and are doing sort of patient-specific dosing for radiation treatments and chemotherapy, tailored to your tumor, instead of just the sort of general for people your size. That all requires sort of real-time turnaround. There's a lot AI research going on now, we're incorporating AI in traditional science and engineering research. And that uses an awful lot of data, but also consumes a huge amount of cycles in training those models. And then there's all of our traditional, simulation-based workloads and materials and digital twins for aircraft and aircraft design, and more efficient combustion in more efficient photovoltaic materials, or photovoltaic materials without using as much lead, and things like that. And I'm sure I'm missing dozens of other topics, 'cause, like I said, that one really runs every field of science. We've really focused the Lonestar line of systems, and this is obviously the sixth one we built, around our sort of Texas-centric users. It's the UT Austin users, and then with contributions from Texas A&M , and Texas Tech and the University of Texas system, MD Anderson Healthcare Center, the University of North Texas. So users all around the state, and every research problem that you might imagine, those are into. We're just ramping up a project in disaster information systems, that's looking at the probabilities of flooding in coastal Texas and doing... Can we make building code changes to mitigate impact? Do we have to change the standard foundation heights for new construction, to mitigate the increasing storm surges from these sort of slow storms that sit there and rain, like hurricanes didn't used to, but seem to be doing more and more. All those problems will run on Lonestar, and on all the systems to come, yeah. >> It's interesting, you mentioned urgent computing, I love that term because it could be an event, it could be some slow kind of brewing event like that rain example you mentioned. It could also be, obviously, with the healthcare, and you mentioned COVID earlier. These are urgent, societal challenges, and having that available, the processing capability, the compute, the data. You mentioned digital twins. I can imagine all this new goodness coming from that. Compare that, where we were 10 years ago. I mean, just from a mind-blowing standpoint, you have, have come so far, take us through, try to give a context to the level of where we are now, to do this kind of work, and where we were years ago. Can you give us a feel for that? >> Sure, there's a lot of ways to look at that, and how the technology's changed, how we operate around those things, and then sort of what our capabilities are. I think one of the big, first, urgent computing things for us, where we sort of realized we had to adapt to this model of computing was about 15 years ago with the big BP Gulf Oil spill. And suddenly, we were dumping thousands of processors of load to figure out where that oil spill was going to go, and how to do mitigation, and what the potential impacts were, and where you need to put your containment, and things like that. And it was, well, at that point we thought of it as sort of a rare event. There was another one, that I think was the first real urgent computing one, where the space shuttle was in orbit, and they knew something had hit it during takeoff. And we were modeling, along with NASA and a bunch of supercomputers around the world, the heat shield and could they make reentry safely? You have until they come back to get that problem done, you don't have months or years to really investigate that. And so, what we've sort of learned through some of those, the Japanese tsunami was another one, there have been so many over the years, is that one, these sort of disasters are all the time, right? One thing or another, right? If we're not doing hurricanes, we're doing wildfires and drought threat, if it's not COVID. We got good and ready for COVID through SARS and through the swine flu and through HIV work, and things like that. So it's that we can do the computing very fast, but you need to know how to do the work, right? So we've spent a lot of time, not only being able to deliver the computing quickly, but having the data in place, and having the code in place, and having people who know the methods who know how to use big computers, right? That's been a lot of what the COVID Consortium, the White House COVID Consortium, has been about over the last few years. And we're actually trying to modify that nationally into a strategic computing reserve, where we're ready to go after these problems, where we've run drills, right? And if there's a, there's a train that derails, and there's a chemical spill, and it's near a major city, we have the tools and the data in place to do wind modeling, and we have the terrain ready to go. And all those sorts of things that you need to have to be ready. So we've really sort of changed our sort of preparedness and operational model around urgent computing in the last 10 years. Also, just the way we scheduled the system, the ability to sort of segregate between these long-running workflows for things that are really important, like we displaced a lot of cancer research to do COVID research. And cancer's still important, but it's less likely that we're going to make an impact in the next two months, right? So we have to shuffle how we operate things and then just, having all that additional capacity. And I think one of the things that's really changed in the models is our ability to use AI, to sort of adroitly steer our simulations, or prune the space when we're searching parameters for simulations. So we have the operational changes, the system changes, and then things like adding AI on the scientific side, since we have the capacity to do that kind of things now, all feed into our sort of preparedness for this kind of stuff. >> Dan, you got me sold, I want to come work with you. Come on, can I join the team over there? It sounds exciting. >> Come on down! We always need good folks around here, so. (laughs) >> Rajesh, when I- >> Almost 200 now, and we're always growing. >> Rajesh, when I hear the stories about kind of the evolution, kind of where the state of the art is, you almost see the innovation trajectory, right? The growth and the learning, adding machine learning only extends out more capabilities. But also, Dan's kind of pointing out this kind of response, rapid compute engine, that they could actually deploy with learnings, and then software, so is this a model where anyone can call up and get some cycles to, say, power an autonomous vehicle, or, hey, I want to point the machinery and the cycles at something? Is the service, do you guys see this going that direction, or... Because this sounds really, really good. >> Yeah, I mean, one thing that Dan talked about was, it's not just the compute, it's also having the right algorithms, the software, the code, right? The ability to learn. So I think when those are set up, yeah. I mean, the ability to digitally simulate in any number of industries and areas, advances the pace of innovation, reduces the time to market of whatever a customer is trying to do or research, or even vaccines or other healthcare things. If you can reduce that time through the leverage of compute on doing digital simulations, it just makes things better for society or for whatever it is that we're trying to do, in a particular industry. >> I think the idea of instrumenting stuff is here forever, and also simulations, whether it's digital twins, and doing these kinds of real-time models. Isn't really much of a guess, so I think this is a huge, historic moment. But you guys are pushing the envelope here, at University of Texas and at TACC. It's not just research, you guys got real examples. So where do you guys see this going next? I see space, big compute areas that might need some data to be cranked out. You got cybersecurity, you got healthcare, you mentioned oil spill, you got oil and gas, I mean, you got industry, you got climate change. I mean, there's so much to tackle. What's next? >> Absolutely, and I think, the appetite for computing cycles isn't going anywhere, right? And it's only going to, it's going to grow without bound, essentially. And AI, while in some ways it reduces the amount of computing we do, it's also brought this whole new domain of modeling to a bunch of fields that weren't traditionally computational, right? We used to just do engineering, physics, chemistry, were all super computational, but then we got into genome sequencers and imaging and a whole bunch of data, and that made biology computational. And with AI, now we're making things like the behavior of human society and things, computational problems, right? So there's this sort of growing amount of workload that is, in one way or another, computational, and getting bigger and bigger. So that's going to keep on growing. I think the trick is not only going to be growing the computation, but growing the software and the people along with it, because we have amazing capabilities that we can bring to bear. We don't have enough people to hit all of them at once. And so, that's probably going to be the next frontier in growing out both our AI and simulation capability, is the human element of it. >> It's interesting, when you think about society, right? If the things become too predictable, what does a democracy even look like? If you know the election's going to be over two years from now in the United States, or you look at these major, major waves >> Human companies don't know. >> of innovation, you say, "Hmm." So it's democracy, AI, maybe there's an algorithm for checking up on the AI 'cause biases... So, again, there's so many use cases that just come out of this. It's incredible. >> Yeah, and bias in AI is something that we worry about and we work on, and on task forces where we're working on that particular problem, because the AI is going to take... Is based on... Especially when you look at a deep learning model, it's 100% a product of the data you show it, right? So if you show it a biased data set, it's going to have biased results. And it's not anything intrinsic about the computer or the personality, the AI, it's just data mining, right? In essence, right, it's learning from data. And if you show it all images of one particular outcome, it's going to assume that's always the outcome, right? It just has no choice, but to see that. So how we deal with bias, how do we deal with confirmation, right? I mean, in addition, you have to recognize, if you haven't, if it gets data it's never seen before, how do you know it's not wrong, right? So there's about data quality and quality assurance and quality checking around AI. And that's where, especially in scientific research, we use what's starting to be called things like physics-informed or physics-constrained AI, where the neural net that you're using to design an aircraft still has to follow basic physical laws in its output, right? Or if you're doing some materials or astrophysics, you still have to obey conservation of mass, right? So I can't say, well, if you just apply negative mass on this other side and positive mass on this side, everything works out right for stable flight. 'Cause we can't do negative mass, right? So you have to constrain it in the real world. So this notion of how we bring in the laws of physics and constrain your AI to what's possible is also a big part of the sort of AI research going forward. >> You know, Dan, you just, to me just encapsulate the science that's still out there, that's needed. Computer science, social science, material science, kind of all converging right now. >> Yeah, engineering, yeah, >> Engineering, science, >> slipstreams, >> it's all there, >> physics, yeah, mmhmm. >> it's not just code. And, Rajesh, data. You mentioned data, the more data you have, the better the AI. We have a world what's going from silos to open control planes. We have to get to a world. This is a cultural shift we're seeing, what's your thoughts? >> Well, it is, in that, the ability to drive predictive analysis based on the data is going to drive different behaviors, right? Different social behaviors for cultural impacts. But I think the point that Dan made about bias, right, it's only as good as the code that's written and the way that the data is actually brought into the system. So making sure that that is done in a way that generates the right kind of outcome, that allows you to use that in a predictive manner, becomes critically important. If it is biased, you're going to lose credibility in a lot of that analysis that comes out of it. So I think that becomes critically important, but overall, I mean, if you think about the way compute is, it's becoming pervasive. It's not just in selected industries as damage, and it's now applying to everything that you do, right? Whether it is getting you more tailored recommendations for your purchasing, right? You have better options that way. You don't have to sift through a lot of different ideas that, as you scroll online. It's tailoring now to some of your habits and what you're looking for. So that becomes an incredible time-saver for people to be able to get what they want in a way that they want it. And then you look at the way it impacts other industries and development innovation, and it just continues to scale and scale and scale. >> Well, I think the work that you guys are doing together is scratching the surface of the future, which is digital business. It's about data, it's about out all these new things. It's about advanced computing meets the right algorithms for the right purpose. And it's a really amazing operation you guys got over there. Dan, great to hear the stories. It's very provocative, very enticing to just want to jump in and hang out. But I got to do theCUBE day job here, but congratulations on success. Rajesh, great to see you and thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Okay. >> Thanks very much. >> Great conversation around urgent computing, as computing becomes so much more important, bigger problems and opportunities are around the corner. And this is theCUBE, we're documenting it all here. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (contemplative music)

>> From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE. Covering VMware, Women Transforming Technology 2019. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hi, Lisa Martin, on the ground with theCUBE, at Vmware in Palo Alto, California at the fourth annual Women Transforming Technology event, WT-squared. Love this event. So excited to welcome back to theCUBE Betsy Sutter, VMware's Chief People Officer. Betsy, this event is incredible, year after year. >> Yeah. >> How do you do it? >> I don't do it. A team of people do it. But I love it and I love it that you're here. You're as passionate about this as I am. Our fourth! And this one is bigger and better than ever. I love it. And, you know, it's really all about just connecting women so we can continue to innovate and shape the future. So, super fun! >> It is super fun. One of the things that I love is that as soon as you walk onto the campus in the morning, ahead of the event, even walking up to registration, you can feel positivity, sharing, collaboration, experiences being shared. This community movement-- you literally can feel it. And then we walked in, your opening keynote this morning. >> Yeah, wasn't she amazing? Joy Buolamwini >> Wow. Amazing. What she was sharing. Breakthrough data of all the biases that are being built into just facial recognition software alone. >> Yeah. >> Her passion for highlighting the bias and then identifying it and then mitigating it, that passion was not only coming from her, but the entire audience. In person, I can imagine the livestream, just got it. >> Yeah. You know, she is amazing. I mean, she's an innovator. I mean, she's a brainiac. She's funny, she's artsy. But she's an innovator. But what's interesting about her is she's an inclusive innovator. Right? It's all about inclusion and I love her approach to this. I just spent an hour with her in a Fireside Chat where a number of us got to have a conversation with her and she's about as interesting as anybody I've ever met in terms of where she's taking this research so that she can create, just a better world. >> And she's doing that. One of the things that was, the word inclusivity kind of popped up, and intersectionality, a number of times, where she was showing data, AI data, from Microsoft, IBM, Face++, and just showing the massive differences in those data sets alone, so the whole inclusivity theme was very paralleled, in my opinion, but she's actually getting these companies to start evaluating their data sets to change that so that Oprah Winfrey, for example, face recognition doesn't come up as a male. >> That's right. Yeah, she has done some interesting, interesting work, and she's not approaching it as if it's a race issue in particular, right. She's taking a completely different, very positive approach, to highlighting a real problem. I mean, we knew that inclusion is a challenge in technology, but inclusion in artificial intelligence is by far worse, and I love it that she's unpacking that. >> I also love that, as a marketer, I loved how she formed the Algorithmic Justice League. >> Right. >> I couldn't think of a better name, myself. But that she's seeing three tenets of that. One is highlight the bias. >> That's right. >> And I thought, that's awareness. There needs to be more awareness of that because my mind was blown seeing these models today, and then she brings in Amazon and shows them, look at your data sets. >> Right. >> And so there needs to be more awareness, consistent awareness, it's kind of classic marketing of, there are a lot of challenges, but AI is so pervasive, I can imagine a lot of baby boomers probably have iPhones with facial recognition and don't understand, wow, even that, unlocking my phone, is a problem. How deep does this go across emerging technologies that are being developed today? >> That's right. And then she just talks about, in such broad terms, I mean she has a global mind around the social impact that this is having, whether it's in artwork, whether it's in self-driving car technologies, whatever it is. I mean, it's huge. And she's able to kind of look out and think about it in that light. And given the work that we're doing at VMware around inclusion and diversity, it's kind of a fresh new angle to really unpacking the layers of complexity that face these issues. >> Yeah, you're right. That was a thing that also caught my attention was there were so many layers of bias. >> Yeah, yeah. >> We can think of, you know, the numbers of women, or lack thereof, in technology. One of the things that Joy said, kind of along the parallels of layers was, the under-represented majority, as she says, it's women and people of color. >> That's right. >> It's layer upon layer upon layer. >> It is. >> Wow. Just cracking the surface. >> She's just scratching things, but the way she's doing her approach, I think, just brings a whole new light to this. I'm very grateful that she was able to speak to all of us, right. It's really about bringing women together to have these kinds of conversations so we can start to think about how we want to innovate and shape the future. She also touches on just this aspect of communities, which I love. And, you know, I've long said that people join communities, not companies, per se, and one of the things that we've done at VMware is tried to think about how do you create an inclusive culture, if you will, that embraces all sorts of communities. And Joy just started talking about a whole new dimension to how we think about that, which was fun. >> So you have been at the helm of people at VMware for a long time. >> I have. >> Lots of transformation. >> Yeah. >> I'm curious to get your, if you look back at the last four years now of WT-squared, how have you learned from even just speakers like Joy and helped to transform not just WT-squared but VMware, its diversity and inclusion efforts in and of themself? >> Yeah, you know, one of the things that I love about VMware and I love about WT-squared is that it's really a consortium or a collective of companies coming together, so this is not a VMware branded event, or a VMware event just by itself. It's just a collective. And then we try and broaden that circle so we can have more and more conversation. And I think that's what I'm most pleased with, I mean, we work hard at making sure that this collective is involved from the get-go in terms of, what do we want to talk about, so we can have the real and relevant conversations about inclusion and diversity, especially as women in tech, which, in some regards, is getting better, but in many, it's just not, and so how do you double down on that in an authentic way and really get business results. >> Exactly. It's all about getting business results. >> It is. >> One of the things that surprises me, in some cases, is when you see, whether it's from McKenzie or whatnot, different studies that show how much more profitable businesses are with women at the executive levels, and it just, that seems like a no-brainer, yet there's so many, the lack of women in technology, but also the attrition rates. >> Yeah. >> Really staggering, if you look at it, compared to any other industries. >> That's right. And, you know, we have a longstanding relationship with Stanford. >> Yes. >> The Clayman Institute. VMware helped found the VMware Stanford Women's Leadership Innovation Lab, which I'm exceedingly proud of. But, yeah, research shows this over and over. But one of the things that I love about my work is bridging that into how corporations operate and how people just work at work, and so that keeps me intellectually engaged, I'll say that, for sure. But, yeah, that is the big challenge. >> I'm also, what I love, just observing the attendees at the event, is you see all age levels. >> Yeah, I love that, too. >> And you have the tracks, the Emerging Leaders track for those who are younger, earlier in their career, The Executive track, the Technical track, and you've got a track about of sharing best practices, which I also love, or just hearing stories of, "How did you face this obstacle, maybe it wasn't, that didn't cause you to turn, or to leave the industry?" I think those are so important to help share. "Oh my God, I'm going through the same thing," for example. But might just help the next, or not just the next generation, but even those of us who might be middle-career from not leaving and going, "Okay, maybe it's the situation, I need to get into a different department, a different company, but I love technology and I'm going to stay no matter what." >> Yeah. Keeping those conversations elevated is one aspect of this, but then to your point, the cross-pollination of all these different kinds of women and what they've experienced in tech, the panel today was amazing, right. We had Ray, we had Lisa, and we had Susan. All different perspectives, different generations, but talking about sort of their challenges as they've navigated this, and where they all want to see it go. So I do think there's a bit of a common vision for where we want this to go, which is wonderful, but bringing all these different perspectives is the differential. And that's what we do here. We try and replicate that. And what will happen all through the day as I go to those different tracks, I'll hear from these different women and the questions are always just a blast to hear, right, because I learn so much from what's top-of-mind, what's keeping people up at night as they venture into tech and continue into tech. >> Anything in particular that surprises you? >> You know, one young woman asked me about my concern around communication and interaction because of how technology's affected how people do that-- rarely face-to-face like you and I are right now. And there're so many other visual and sensory cues that go into having a conversation with another human being, so we had a great conversation about what's good about it from a technology standpoint, and what's bad about it, and I think that's actually what Joy was talking about in her talk today, as well. But I was pleased that a very young person asked me that question. I know people of my generation, we talk about it, but it was fun to hear, kind of inspiring to hear a younger person say, "Is this all good?" >> Well and you're right, it probably was a nice, pleasant, refreshing surprise because we think of younger generations as, kind of, you say, cloud-native or born of the cloud, born on the phone, who are so used to communicating through different social media platforms. To hear that generation saying, you know, or even bringing it to our attention, like, "Shouldn't we be actually talking in person or by using technology like video conferencing and zoom things for engaging?" Think of how many people wouldn't fall asleep in meetings if video conferencing was required? >> That's right. That's exactly right. And another woman, a little further along in her career, what was weighing on her was how she stayed being a responsible and ethical person when she doesn't really know all the ingredients of what she's helping to create. And that's just a mindset that I haven't heard before. I thought that was wonderful. >> That is. Because we often talk about responsibility and accountability with respect to data science or AI, for example. It's interesting to hear an individual contributor talking about, "Where do I fall in that accountability/responsibility spectrum?" Is not a common question. >> No, and you know, we think we're creating a world of more transparency but, really, when you're coding you're not really sure what might happen with that code. And I thought Susan Fowler did a lovely job talking about that today on the panel, as well. That there's a huge responsibility in terms of what you're doing. So connecting those dots, understanding all the ingredients, I think corporations like VMware, and VMware does this in large part today, it gets harder, it's more complex, but we're going to have to answer those questions about what kind of pie or cake are we really baking with this, right? >> Exactly. Exactly. Could you have, if you looked back to when you first joined VMware, envisioned all of the transformation and the strength in community and numbers that you're helping to achieve with women transforming technology? >> I really couldn't. I mean, the industry is amazing, you know, I was at the right place at the right time and got to ride this tech wave. It's been great. No, I couldn't have imagined it, and now things are moving at an unprecedented place, things are much more complex. I have to call my adult children to get input onto this, that, and the other. >> (laughs) >> But no, it is a dream come true. It's been an absolute honor and privilege for me to be a part of this. I love it. >> When you talk with VMware partners or customers, are they looking to-- Betsy, how have you been able to build this groundswell and maintain it? >> Yeah, you know, my focus is primarily on the culture and the environment of the company, and I'm a really good listener. So that's the key. >> It is key. You just listen and pay attention to what people are saying, what matters to them, what's bothering them, and you continue to hold on to, sort of, those, you know, those North Stars of what you're trying to build and I always knew that I wanted to build the sustainable cultures, something that would last the test of time. So we're at 21 years. I've done 19 of them, so it's been great. You know, but you want to make sure you keep that rebar in the ground as you continue to build up. This community is solid. They're doin' it. Yeah, it's great. >> And it must be receptive. We talked about companies or leaders or businesses being receptive to change. I think I talked about that with Caroline and Shannon, who were part of that panel, and said, you know, oftentimes, we're talking with leaders, again, business units, companies, who aren't receptive to that change. Cultural change is really difficult, but it's essential. I was talking with Michael Dell a few months ago at Boomi World and said, "How have you managed as Dell has grown so massively to change the culture in a way that, you know, enables that growth?" It's a really hard thing to do. But for companies to do digital transformation and IT transformation, the culture, the people have to be receptive. I think, to one of your strengths, they have to be willing to listen. >> Yeah. And you never really arrive, right. So you constantly are in beta mode in the world, and so if you never assume that you've arrived, then you can pause, or that you just constantly want to beta things, then you have an edge, and I think Michael Dell's clearly got vision around that, right. I know Pat Gelsinger does, too. And so I like just partnering with those great minds, those great business and strategic minds, and then just building on the people component or the cultural component. But I, too, I'm constantly trying to produce new products and pay attention to what the customer wants. >> When you see things in the news like some of the harassment issues, say, for example, that Uber has experienced, I imagine you're watching the news or reading it and you're thinking, if I could just say three things to those people. When you see things like that, what are the top three things you would recommend that, not in reaction, though, but how can that culture change to deliver the customer experience, ultimately, that they need to, but what are some of the things that you think, these are easy fixes? >> Yeah, I think in watching a lot of my companies in the industry and how they've responded, for me, my advice would be, you should elevate that conversation. That conversation's not going to go away. And so you need to elevate it, give it a lot of sunlight and oxygen, really understand it, don't try and move away from it, don't push it down. And that's something we do at VMware, we're constantly elevating the conversation. One of the things I love about this culture, it's made me a lot better at what I do, is I can always answer the question, "Why are we doing that?" And so that's, why are we doing that? And if I can't answer why, we have a problem. And a why just sort of symbolizes intellectual curiosity, right, so that's what we're trying to keep alive and that's what I tell my other colleagues in the industry is just keep that conversation going: there's no quick fix to this, people are complex, don't pretend you really know. So elevate it and let's get to really know each other a lot better. >> And there's so much good that can come from any sort of blight or negativity, there really is, but you're right. Especially in this day and age, with everything being on camera, you can't hide. >> And, you know, it's okay to admit that you made a mistake. >> I agree. >> It's really okay. And so there's something about that that we've got to get back. >> I think it's one of the most admirable things of any human trait or corporation is just admitting, ah, this was the wrong turn, >> Right. >> I said the wrong thing. >> You know what, we made a mistake. We've course-corrected. >> I'm human. >> Yes. >> Exactly. >> Exactly. >> So we talked about Joy opening things off today and Ashley Judd-- >> I know, I can't wait. >> I bet you can't wait. She is the closing keynote. What are the things that inspire you about Ashley's work? >> I just think that she's wicked-smart. And I think she's using her platform in a really powerful way. And for her to want to come here and speak to us just reflects her passion, and the juxtaposition of Joy with Ashley is fabulous, right. Really gives you a lot to think about, so I can't wait to see Ashley. >> And just even juxtaposing those two, like you said, you can just see massive diversity there, in thought, in background, and experience, in life experiences, but both coming from different perspectives and different angles that can be so inspirational >> Yeah. To all of us in the audience. >> Yeah, and positive. You know, they're taking this positive approach to this movement and, yeah, very different women, but both really, really smart, very passionate. Resilient, clearly. And persistent. They're going to keep movin' it forward. >> Persistence is the key. So, great event so far. It's not even over, but what are your dreams for next year's event? >> Oh, we just have to keep going. I'd love to see more companies join the consortium. We've learned a couple things about, we just are going to start the conversation earlier about what we want the event to be. We love hosting people on the campus, obviously, and luckily we have terrific weather today, but I would just like to see companies come together and have the conversation, and that was really the impetus for this, is that we wanted to make sure we got a lot of diverse perspectives that were dealing with these real issues, and let's talk about what women in technology at all levels, as you pointed out, what's top-of-mind for them? And what do they need to have the conversation about? Let's bring 'em together, let's let 'em connect and start to innovate and create the future. >> Well I'm already looking forward to next year, Betsy. >> Yeah, me too. >> It's been such a pleasure to talk to you again. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> Thank you so much for spending time with me on theCUBE today. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate your time. >> Super fun. >> Good. You're watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at Women Transforming Technology, the fourth annual. Thanks for watching. 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>> From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE. Covering VMware Women Transforming Technology 2019. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hi, Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at the fourth annual Women Transforming Technology event VMware, WT squared, one of my favorite events and I'm joined by two PhDs, both from, I'm going to say this one time, the Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab, we've got Shannon Gilmartin, senior research scholar. Hi, Shannon. >> Hi, great to be here. >> And we've got, great to have you, we've got Caroline Simard, managing director of the lab. Ladies, thank you so much for joining. >> Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. >> So this event, we were talking about before we started, that you, walk into the keynote, opening keynote which in and of itself was electric but the energy that comes into the room with, VMware was telling me a little while ago, about 1500 live attendees. >> Incredible. >> Not even including those that were watching the livestream. The energy comes into the room and then, of course, this morning with Joy, I'm going to try to say her name, Buolamwini. The poet of code, the MIT researcher who started really, sharing with us the significant biases in AI. The energy, if it could even be down that more, I can't even imagine it, so. I can imagine the panel that you guys were on this morning was quite charged. The panel title was, I found interesting, Inclusive Innovators Designing For Change. So Caroline, talk to us about designing for change. You look through a design lens, what does that mean? >> Yeah, so I think what, to frame the morning, and then Shannon was the moderator, so I want, she picked the topic of design. But I think what Joy really showed is the power that is possible to realize when women and women of color and people from different dimensions of identity are included in creating technology and how much better technology will be for society, right? If all voices are included, and I would also say that some of her comments also make it clear that it is fundamentally irresponsible not to have diversity at the table in designing the technology of tomorrow. The consequences on different kinds of people and different populations are significant. And so this is why Shannon really picked this idea of, as engineers and designers and creators of this technology, how do you keep in mind the responsibility that you have? >> So yeah, talk to us more about the design and why that is so critical. >> And the way we positioned it for our panelists, it was titled Inclusive Innovators Designing For Change, and we were going to explore how meaningful change towards greater diversity and equity is realized in engineering cultures. And in the very technology that's being created. More specifically though, how do individuals and communities of people design for change in their technical environments? Even when this environment may not be initially very receptive to new ways of interacting. To new ways of thinking, to new ways of achieving. And so the whole panel was premised on this idea of people are designers of change in their environments. How does that happen? How do people interface with barriers to those design processes? And what is advice for the younger generation as they look ahead to their pathways as designers for change? >> Yeah, 'cause change in any context of life is hard. >> Yep. >> Yes. >> Right, it's an uphill battle. But designing for that change, I'm curious what some of the commentary was from the panelists about, when you're encountering, whether it's a company or a leadership group within a company that, to your point, isn't receptive, what were some of the comments or stories of how that was changed over time to become receptive and understand, the massive potential that that change can have? I mean we look at numbers like, companies with women on the leadership communities are far more profitable, so what were some of those, from, I don't get it, to, oh my gosh, why aren't we doing sooner? >> And we have this amazing range of perspectives represented on the panel, so we had a VMware CTO, chief technology officer Ray O'Farrell. And he was really talking about from a leader perspective, a key idea here when there are barriers and blocks and inertia, is to open things up and really start listening. And this is a skill and a talent and a group practice that is so little done, so infrequently done. So poorly done, sometimes. But really key in the face of those barriers is to actually say, instead of shutting down, open up and start listening to what's happening. Another one of our panelists, Susan Fowler who is the Time Magazine Person of the Year as one of the silence breakers in 2017, she was really talking about how, expect the steps, you're going to need to go through a lot of steps to make your voice heard. And ultimately, for Susan, she made the decision to go public with what she had encountered and was facing and grappling with and struggling, as were many of her colleagues. But she was really talking about the step by step process that's involved in a large organization, when you're hitting blocks, you just got to keep on fighting that good fight, and you also need to be doing your very best work at the same time, it's a high pressure situation. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So. >> Absolutely, we also heard from Lisa Gelobter who is the CEO of tEQuitable, an organization that's creating a safe place for change agents to share their stories when they're encountering these blocks and this kind of unfair treatment. And she talked about, also, the need to do your best work but also the critical importance of community in being more resilient as you're trying drive change in your environment, right? And this is the kind of community that is being built today with this event, right? It's really paying attention especially for her, as a black woman engineer, being the only one constantly at the table fighting for change has been something that she has realized she needs to pay a lot of attention to so that she can be much more resilient as a leader for longterm change. Another topic that I think, in terms of generating change, that really came through both in the panel and during this morning's keynote, and that we pay a lot of attention to at the lab, is to really highlight bias. Is to really diagnose what is really happening in organizations? Or in AI, as we heard from Joy this morning. So a lot of people genuinely aspire to treat others fairly, right? But they don't realize that their workplaces are so far from being a meritocracy, that there's these structural inequalities that are really embedded in all of the ways that people are working. And so when you're able to show people exactly how it shows up in their company, right? The promotion rates for women of color for example, being lower than for other people, the exact points of data that they need to see, that they're not treating people the same way and creating the same kind of pathways for impact for different kinds of people, then that has a lot of power to drive change because a lot of people, then, will be very motivated to say, okay, I see this is happening in my org every day. Now I can design a different approach, right? How do I redesign the way I'm working today? In my units. >> And take action. >> And take action. >> 'Cause you actually have the data, it's such a dichotomy at times, that we have, we're surrounded by data especially in Silicon Valley. But one of the things that shocked me, what Joy showed this morning is, when she put on blast, IBM, Microsoft, and what was it, Face++, about looking at all of the built in biases to facial recognition. But, one of the things that really also, I thought, was interesting, was that, she went and showed this to these companies, who responded, and those numbers are actually improving. And then when she said, hey Amazon, so, the fact that even that one person is able to show, look at some of the massive problems that you're training these models to have, they need to be able to see that. So the highlight, I think, the highlight the bias, and the communicate, communicate, communicate and listen, are three critical elements to any place being successful. >> Exactly. >> Exactly. One additional part of both Joy's presentation and Lisa's comments too, really spoke to action needing to take an intersectional approach. So Joy's data breaks it down by race and gender and all of a sudden, you see completely different trends. Lisa spoke to that as well in her comments. Key to this designing for change process is really wearing the hat of someone who is looking through the world with an intersectional lens. And understanding how different axes operate together uniquely for different groups. And that's when you see these biases being highlighted really in full force, in full relief. So both of these points and these presentations really brought that up. >> Yeah and the intersectionality that Joy talked about was even evident and you could parallel it to, why it was important to look at all these different sources of facial recognition data, how disparate some of them were. >> Right, right. >> I know. >> Without that lens you couldn't see all of that variation even across the different providers. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, and she talked, too, about how everything is classified in a binary way, right? In terms of gender identity, and then where data doesn't even see people who are Non-Binary. >> Exactly. >> So it's like, >> That's still a huge omission >> again, exactly. That we have a lot more work to do to have data that truly captures all the dimensions we're interested in. >> It does, it does. Long way to go, but the fact that it's being highlighted and opportunities like, not just what VMware does but the lab as well. So let's talk a little bit about the lab. It kind of got its start in 2013 when then Stanford president Doctor John Hennessy, provided some funding. I had the opportunity to interview him last week, lovely man. Last year VMware did a big endowment of about 15 million. What's going on, Caroline, we'll start with you, what's going on at the lab? What are you guys studying now? What are some of the breakthroughs that have been uncovered in the last 12 months? >> Yeah, so a big part of our lab's work and since we began this work, has been to really bridge the gap between research and practice, right? And so a lot of why there's little progress being made is because you have a lot of research happening in the academy, in the ivory tower, if you will. And then you have a lot of innovative practices being tested but without necessarily the research foundation and the research frameworks to truly evaluate it. And so, our work has been to really bridge those two things together. And explore those boundaries so we can have more innovative research but also more evidence based practices come in, right? And since the VMware endowment we've been able to, really grow in our aspirations in the kind of data, in the kind of research questions that we can really ask. One of them is this focus on the more intersectional, longterm study of really documenting the experience of women of color. And really understanding the nature of their career pathways across racial dimensions, right? And really highlighting a lot more of, qualitative deep insight, generate their stories, right? And really centering their experience. The other one is, investing in large scale datasets that capture gender, race, age, and other identity dimensions and look at their longterm career trajectories. This is actually work that Shannon is leading. So we have an exciting dataset where we have people through five years and we see what happens to them, who gets promoted? Who doesn't? Who gets top talent designation, who gets a salary increase? Who, and then we're excitingly, looking at social network data, so who's meeting with who? And then what kind of connections do you need to be able to advance in your career? And are there some systematic inequalities there, right? And a big part of our work then is to design these interventions where we work with companies to test what we call a small wins approach. It always starts with diagnosis, here's what's going on in your very specific workplace and your culture. And then we co-design with leaders and managers. It doesn't work for us or HR or anybody to say, go do this, or you should do this. It's really about really engaging managers who want to do better in coming up with the design fix, if you will, that they can come up with. Informed by our research, so it's a co-design process. And then we roll it out and we test the outcomes pre and post, so. We're doing a lot more work now to disseminate what we're learning through these interventions so that other organizations can implement this very similar approach. >> First I love that it's called an intervention. 'Cause I think that's incredibly appropriate. (Shannon and Caroline laughing) Second, are you seeing an uptick in the last year of companies, obviously VMware and Dell being two great companies that are very focused on, not just women in technology, but I loved how Joy said today, it's women and people of color are the underrepresented majority. Are you seeing an uptick in companies willing to, accept the intervention and collaborate with you to really design from within for that change? >> Yes absolutely. And I would say that in this industry people are comfortable with piloting things and doing a little R and D experiment, right? So it's also a culturally appropriate way of thinking, okay, what if we try this, and see what happens? And so I see a lot of energy from organizations and based on what you were talking about, it's also, I think companies are aware that it's, the overlapping dimensions of identity increasingly aware, are within their own walls, but then, in their consumer base, right? So how is their product affecting different kinds of people? Are their customers experiencing bias from the very platforms that they build? And so I think that's also a very powerful, entryway into this intersectional conversation because, the product is, so foundational to the business of the company. >> It is, and especially event after event that we cover on theCUBE, customer experience in any industry, is critical because as consumers of whatever it is, we have so much choice. Shannon last question for you. One of the things that always interests me is the attrition rate being so high in technology. I'm curious what you guys are finding in the lab with, mentioning following women on maybe their first five years. Are you seeing any glaringly obvious, challenges that are driving that attrition? Is it, it's got to be more than the motherhood penalty. >> Right, right. We're looking at a range of, what we call pathway outcomes really for young people just starting out in their very first, second jobs, where they are several years later, we're looking at odds of promotion, odds of leaving the company, odds of moving and making a lateral move into some other kind of line of business, maybe taking them out of, let's say, a technical role and moving them into a non technical role. Each and every one of those critical moments is worthy of deeper study for us. And what we're doing, really, is taking this intersectional lens and understanding how do those different moments vary for different groups of women? It's not enough just to say, all women have some x percentage of an attrition rate. We're trying to understand how attrition really varies by sub-groups of women. And how that varies over time with what interactions that precede it and then follow. One of the themes that we've really been looking at in, for instance, attrition stories, is the assignment. Which projects, what kinds of assignments are people getting in their first few years on the job? How are some of those make or break? With what net consequence for women, men, from different racial ethnic backgrounds, different ages, different countries? And understanding, really, the role of those assignments in someone's longer term career pathway, just how important they are. And what kinds of interventions we can hand design to really elevate access to the best assignments for everyone, basically. >> Gosh, you guys, this is so fascinating and so inspiring what you're doing at the lab I wish we had more time, but you'll have to come back next year! >> Exactly. >> Absolutely we will thank you so much for having us. >> Thank you so much, Lisa. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you so much. For theCUBE I'm Lisa Martin, on the ground at WT squared, thanks for watching. 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(techno music) >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Austin, Texas at the Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab. As you can see behind me, there's racks and racks and racks of gear, where they build all types of vessel configurations around specific applications, whether its Oracle or S.A.P. And more recently a lot more around artificial intelligence, whether it's machine learning, deep learning, so it's a really cool place to be. We're excited to be here. And our next guest is Bala Chandrasekaran. He is in the technical staff as a systems engineer. Bala, welcome! >> Thank you. >> So how do you like playing with all these toys all day long? >> Oh I love it! >> I mean you guys have literally everything in there. A lot more than just Dell EMC gear, but you've got switches and networking gear-- >> Right. >> Everything. >> And not just the gear, it's also all the software components, it's the deep learning libraries, deep learning models, so a whole bunch of things that we can get to play around with. >> Now that's interesting 'cause it's harder to see the software, right? >> Exactly right. >> The software's pumping through all these machines but you guys do all types of really, optimization and configuration, correct? >> Yes, we try to make it easy for the end customer. And the project that I'm working on, machine learning for Hadoop, we try to make things easy for the data scientists. >> Right, so we got all the Hadoop shows, Hadoop World, Hadoop Summit, Strata, Big Data NYC, Silicone Valley, and the knock on Hadoop is always it's too hard, there aren't enough engineers, I can't get enough people to do it myself. It's a cool open source project, but it's not that easy to do. You guys are really helping people solve that problem. >> Yes and what you're saying is true for the infrastructure guys. Now imagine a data scientist, right? So Hadoop cluster accessing it, securing it, is going to be really tough for them. And they shouldn't be worried about it. Right? They should be focused on data science. So those are some of the things that we try to do for them. >> So what are some of the tips and tricks as you build these systems that throw people off all the time that are relatively simple things to fix? And then what are some of the hard stuff where you guys have really applied your expertise to get over those challenges? >> Let me give you a small example. So this is a new project A.I. we hired data scientists. So I walk the data scientist through the lab. He looked at all he cluster and he pulled me aside and said hey you're not going to ask me to work on these things, right? I have no idea how to do these things. So that kind of gives you a sense of what a data scientist should focus on and what what they shouldn't focus on. So some of the things that we do, and some of the things that are probably difficult for them is all the libraries that are needed to run their project, the conflicts between libraries, the dependencies between them. So one of the things that we do deliver this pre-configured engine that you can readily download into our product and run. So data scientist don't have to worry about what library I should use. >> Right. >> They have to worry about the models and accuracy and whatever data science needs to be done, rather than focusing on the infrastructure. >> So you not only package the hardware and the systems, but you've packaged the software distribution and all the kind of surrounding components of that as well. >> Exactly right. Right. >> So when you have the data scientists here talking about the Hadoop cluster, if they didn't want to talk about the hardware and the software, what were you helping them with? How did you engage with the customers here at the lab? >> So the example that I gave is for the data scientist that we newly hired for our team so we had to set up environments for them. so that was the example, but the same thing applies for a customer as well. So again to help them in solving the problem we tried to package some of the things as part of our product and deliver it to them so it's easy for them to deploy and get started on things. >> Now the other piece that's included and again is not in this room is the services -- >> Right. >> And the support so you guys have a full team of professional services. Once you configure and figure out what the optimum solution is for them then you got a team that can actually go deploy it at their actual site. >> So we have packaged things even for our services. So the services would go to the customer side. They would apply the solution and download and deploy our packages and be able to demonstrate how easy it is to think of them as tutorials if you like. So here are the tutorials. Here's how you run various models. So here's how easy it is for you to get started. So that's what they would train the customer on. So there's not just the deployment piece of it but just packaging things for them so they can show customers how to get started quickly, how everything works and kind of of give a green check mark if you will. >> So what are some of your favorite applications that people are using these things for? Do you get involved in the applications stack on the customer side? What are some of the fun use cases that people use in your technology to solve? >> So for the application my project is about mission learning on Hadoop via packaging Cloudera's CDSW that's Cloudera Data Science Workbench as part of the product. So that allows data science access to the Hadoop cluster and abstracting the complexities of the cluster. So they can access the cluster. They can access the data. They can have security without worrying about all the intricacies of the cluster. In addition to that they can create different projects, have different libraries in different projects. So they don't have to conflict with each other and also they can add users to it. They can work collaboratively. So basically choose to help data scientists, software developers, do their job and not worry about the infrastructure. >> Right. >> They should not be. >> Right great. Well Bala it's pretty exciting place to work. I'm sure you're having a ball. >> Yes I am thank you. >> All right. Well thanks for taking a few minutes with us and really enjoyed the conversation. >> I appreciate it thank you. All right he's Bala. I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from Austin, Texas at the Dell EMC High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence Labs. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(upbeat music) >> Thank you for coming to the HBCN AI Innovation Lab. So, I'm sure that you've heard a lot of excitement in the industry about what we can do with AI and machine learning and deep learning. And our team in our lab has been building solutions for this space. So, very similar to what we do with our other solutions, including high performance computing where we take servers, storage, networking, software, and put it all together to build and design targeted solutions for a particular use case and then bring in services and support along with that, so that we have a complete product. That's what we're doing for the AI space, as well. So, whether we're doing with machine learning, algorithms and whether your data, say for example in Hadoop, or whether your doing deep learning, convolution neural networks, R&M. And no matter what technology you're using, right? So, you have different choices for compute, that those compute choices can be CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, custom ASICs. There's all sorts of different choices for compute. Similarly you have a lot of different choices for networking, for storage, and your actual use case. Right, are you doing image recognition, fraud detection, what are you trying to do? So our goal is multiple form. First, we want to bring in all these new technologies, all these different technologies, see how they work well together. Specifically in the AI space, we want to make sure that we have the right software framework. Because of a big piece of putting these solutions together is making sure that your MXNet and CAP B, and Tensorflow, and all these frameworks are working well together, along with all these different neural network models. So putting all these things together are making sure that we can run standard benchmark datasets so we can do comparisons across configurations, and then as a result of all that work, share best practices and tuning. Including the storage piece as well. Our top 500 cluster is over here, so multiple racks, this is a cluster that is more that 500 servers today, so around 560 servers. And on the latest top 500 list, which is a list that's published twice a year of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world. We started with a smaller number of CPUs. We had 128 servers. And then we added more servers, we swapped over to the next generation of CPUs, then we added even more servers, and now we have the latest generation Intel CPUs in this cluster. One of the questions we've been getting more and more, is what do you see with liquid cooling? So, Dell has had the capability to do liquid cooled systems for a while now, but we recently added this capability into factory as well. So you can order systems that are direct contact liquid cooled directly from factory. Let's compare the two, right? Right over here, you have an air cooled rack. Here we have the exact same configuration, so the same compute infrastructure, but with liquid cool. The CPU has a cold plate on it, and that's cooled with facilities water. So these pipes actually have water flowing through them, and so each sled has two pipes coming out of it, for the water loop, and these pipes from each server, each sled, go into these rack manifolds, and at the bottom of the rack over there, is where we have our heat exchanger. In our early studies, we have seen that, your efficiency in terms of how much performance you get out of the server, should not matter whether you're air cooled or liquid cooled, if you're air cooling solution can provide enough cooling for your components. So, what they means is, if you have a well air cooled solution, it's not going to perform any worse than a liquid cooled solution. What the liquid cooling allows you to do is in the same rack space, put in a higher level configuration, higher TDP processors, more disks, a configuration that you say cannot adequately air cool, that configuration in the same space in your data center with the same air flow, you will be able to liquid cool. The biggest advantage of liquid cooling today, is to do with PUE ratios. So how much of your infrastructure power are you using for compute and your infrastructure versus for cooling and power. This is production, this is part of the cluster. What we are doing right now is we are running rack level studies, right? So we've done single chassis studies in our thermal lab along with our thermal engineers on the advantages of liquid cooling and what we can do and how it works for our particular workloads. But now we have a rack level solution, and so we are running different types of workloads, manufacturing workloads, weather simulation, some AI workloads, standard high performance, linpack benchmarks, on an entire rack of liquid cooled, an entire rack of air cooled, all these racks have metered PDUs, where we can measure power, so we're going to measure power consumption as well, and then we have sensors which will allow us to measure temperature, and then we can tell you the whole story. And of course, we have a really, you know, phenomenal group of people in our thermal team, our architects, and we also have the ability to come in and evaluate a data center to see, does liquid cooling make sense for you today. It's not a one size fits all, and liquid cooling is what everybody must do and you must do it today, no. It's a, and that's the value of this lab, right? Actual quantitative results, for liquid cooling, for all our technologies, for all our solutions, so that we can give you the right configuration, right optimizations, with the data backing it up for the right decision for you, instead of forcing you into the one solution that we do have. So now we're actually standing right in the middle of our Zenith super computers, so all the racks around you are Zenith. You can hear that the noise level is higher, that's because this is one cluster, it's running workload right now, both from our team and our engineers, as well as from customers who can get access into the lab and run their workload. So that noise level you hear, is an actual super computer, we have C6420 servers in here today, with the Intel Xeon scalable family processors, and that's what you see in these racks behind you and in front of you. And this cluster is interconnected using the Omnipath interconnect. There are thousands and thousands of applications in the HPC space, and over the years we've added more and more capability. So today in the lab we do a lot of work with manufacturing applications, that's computational fluid dynamic, CFDs, CAE, structural mechanics, you know, things like that. We do a lot of work with life sciences, that's next generation sequencing applications, molecular dynamics, cryogenic electron microscopy, we do weather simulation applications, and a whole bunch more. Quantum chromo dynamics, we do a whole bunch of benchmarking of subsystems. So tests, for compute, for network, for memory, for storage, we do a lot of parify systems, and I/O tests, and when I talk about application benchmarking, we're doing that across different compute, network, and storage to see what the full picture looks like. The list that I've given you, is not a complete list. This switch is an Dell Network H-Series switch, which supports the Omnipath fabric, the Omnipath interconnect, that today runs at a hundred gigabits per second. What you have is all the clusters, all the Zenith servers in the lab, are connected to this switch. Because we started with a few number of servers and then scaled, we knew we were going to grow. We chose to start with a director class switch, which allowed us to add leaf modules as we grew. So the servers, the racks, that are closest to the switch have copper cables, the ones that are coming from across the lab have our fiber cables. So, you know, this switch is what allows us to call this HPC cluster, where we have a high-speed interconnect for our parallel and distributed computations, and a lot of our current deep learning work is being done on this cluster as well on the Intel Xeon side. (upbeat music)

(energetic electronic music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We're in a very special place. We're in Austin, Texas at the Dell EMC HPC and AI Innovation Lab. High performance computing, artificial intelligence. This is really where it all happens. Where the engineers at Dell EMC are putting together these ready-made solutions for the customers. They got every type of application stack in here, and we're really excited to have our next guest. He's right in the middle of it, he's Michael Bennett, Senior Principal Engineer for Dell EMC. Mike, great to see you. >> Great to see you too. >> So you're working on one particular flavor of the AI solutions, and that's really machine learning with Hadoop. So tell us a little bit about that. >> Sure yeah, the product that I work on is called the Ready Solution for AI Machine Learning with Hadoop, and that product is a Cloudera Hadoop distribution on top of our Dell powered servers. And we've partnered with Intel, who has released a deep learning library, called Big DL, to bring both the traditional machine learning capabilities as well as deep learning capabilities to the product. Product also adds a data science workbench that's released by Cloudera. And this tool allows the customer's data scientists to collaborate together, provides them secure access to the Hadoop cluster, and we think all-around makes a great product to allow customers to gain the power of machine learning and deep learning in their environment, while also kind of reducing some of those overhead complexities that IT often faces with managing multiple environments, providing secure access, things like that. >> Right, cause the big knock always on Hadoop is that it's just hard. It's hard to put in, there aren't enough people, there aren't enough experts. So you guys are really offering a pre-bundled solution that's ready to go? >> Correct, yeah. We've built seven or eight different environments going in the lab at any time to validate different hardware permutations that we may offer of the product as well as, we've been doing this since 2009, so there's a lot of institutional knowledge here at Dell to draw on when building and validating these Hadoop products. Our Dell services team has also been going out installing and setting these up, and our consulting services has been helping customers fit the Hadoop infrastructure into their IT model. >> Right, so is there one basic configuration that you guys have? Or have you found there's two or three different standard-use cases that call for two or three different kinds of standardized solutions? >> We find that most customers are preferring the R7-40XC series. This platform can hold 12 3 1/2" form-factor drives in the front, along with four in the mid-plane, while still providing four SSDs in the back. So customers get a lot of versatility with this. It's also won several Hadoop benchmarking awards. >> And do you find, when you're talking to customers or you're putting this together, that they've tried themselves and they've tried to kind of stitch together and cobble together the open-source proprietary stuff all the way down to network cards and all this other stuff to actually make the solution come together? And it's just really hard, right? >> Yeah, right exactly. What we hear over and over from our product management team is that their interactions with customers, come back with customers saying it's just too hard. They get something that's stable and they come back and they don't know why it's no longer working. They have customized environments that each developer wants for their big data analytics jobs. Things like that. So yeah, overall we're hearing that customers are finding it very complex. >> Right, so we hear time and time again that same thing. And even though we've been going to Hadoop Summit and Hadoop World and Stratus, since 2010. The momentum seems to be a little slower in terms of the hype, but now we're really moving into heavy-duty real time production and that's what you guys are enabling with this ready-made solution. >> So with this product, yeah, we focused on enabling Apache Spark on the Hadoop environment. And that Apache Spark distributed computing has really changed the game as far as what it allows customers to do with their analytics jobs. No longer are we writing things to disc, but multiple transformations are being performed in memory, and that's also a big part of what enables the big DL library that Intel released for the platform to train these deep-learning models. >> Right, cause the Sparks enables the real-time analytics, right? Now you've got streaming data coming into this thing, versus the batch which was kind of the classic play of Hadoop. >> Right and not only do you have streaming data coming in, but Spark also enables you to load your data in memory and perform multiple operations on it. And draw insights that maybe you couldn't before with traditional map-reduce jobs. >> Right, right. So what gets you excited to come to work every day? You've been playing with these big machines. You're in the middle of nerd nirvana I think-- >> Yeah exactly. >> With all of the servers and spin-discs. What gets you up in the morning? What are you excited about, as you see AI get more pervasive within the customers and the solutions that you guys are enabling? >> You know, for me, what's always exciting is trying new things. We've got this huge lab environment with all kinds of lab equipment. So if you want to test a new iteration, let's say tiered HGFS storage with SSDs and traditional hard drives, throw it together in a couple of hours and see what the results are. If we wanted to add new PCIE devices like FPGAs for the inference portion the deep-learning development we can put those in our servers and try them out. So I enjoy that, on top of the validated, thoroughly-worked-through solutions that we offer customers, we can also experiment, play around, and work towards that next generation of technology. >> Right, 'cause any combination of hardware that you basically have at your disposal to try together and test and see what happens? >> Right, exactly. And this is my first time actually working at a OEM, and so I was surprised, not only do we have access to anything that you can see out in the market, but we often receive test and development equipment from partners and vendors, that we can work with and collaborate with to ensure that once the product reaches market it has the features that customers need. >> Right, what's the one thing that trips people up the most? Just some simple little switch configuration that you think is like a minor piece of something, that always seems to get in the way? >> Right, or switches in general. I think that people focus on the application because the switch is so abstracted from what the developer or even somebody troubleshooting the system sees, that oftentimes some misconfiguration or some typo that was entered during the switch configuration process that throws customers off or has somebody scratching their head, wondering why they're not getting the kind of performance that they thought. >> Right, well that's why we need more automation, right? That's what you guys are working on. >> Right yeah exactly. >> Keep the fat-finger typos out of the config settings. >> Right, consistent reproducible. None of that, I did it yesterday and it worked I don't know what changed. >> Right, alright Mike. Well thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day, and don't have too much fun playing with all this gear. >> Awesome, thanks for having me. >> Alright, he's Mike Bennett and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching The Cube, from Austin Texas at the Dell EMC High Performance Computing and AI Labs. Thanks for watching. (energetic electronic music)

>> (Announcer) From Boston, Massachusetts, it's the Cube! Covering LiveWorx 18. Brought to you by PTC. >> Welcome back to the Seaport in Boston, everybody. This is day one of the LiveWorx show, PTC's big IoT user conference, but it's much, much more than that. My name's Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman. You're watching the Cube, the leader in LiveTech coverage. It's really our pleasure to have Devin Cleary here, he's the Director of Events at PTC. Dev, thanks so much for coming on The Cube, and thanks for putting together such a great show. >> Oh, thank you so much for having me. This is great. >> You're welcome. So, I say it's a user conference, but it's so much more. I mean, talk about what your intent was and what you've created, you and your team at LiveWorx. >> Absolutely. So for us, we take a step back in corporate events. And we're really trying to bring sort of a unique flair to the corporate events world. In a nutshell, we at PTC have a 25 year legacy of doing really powerful user events, and it was really an inspiration two years ago to kind of shake the mold. And again, no pun intended, be disruptive in the marketplace. So for us, we sort of coined a new term or strategy that we call Industry Inclusiveness. And this is something where we wanted to sort of break down the four walls of the company, and invite industry influencers, individuals who are leading the charge, inclusive of actual competitors, 'cause for us, it's better together. And the whole story and talk track around LiveWorx is collaboration accelerates innovation. So for us, we want to make sure we embrace a lot of different people, walks of life, and diversity, and the intent is to create a one time a week a year, successful program that focuses and profiles nine of the most disruptive technologies on the planet. So this is everything from robotics to AI, to IoT, to AR, blockchain, and so much more. And for us, this is really the essence of what LiveWorx has become, which again for us, we want everyone to know that this event is sort of the world's most respected digital transformation conference. >> So, couple things I want to point out. Well, so over 6,000 people here, the kickoff was in the theater-in-the-round I've only seen that-- We do over a hundred events every year, I've only seen it done twice, and it's worked both times. I think it's a home run when you do the theater-in-the-round. The intro was like, I tweeted out this morning, it was like an Olympic opening ceremony. I mean really, where do you get your inspiration from that? >> So, you know what, for us, I have a really amazing team that works with me and collaboratively. And for us, we really want to sort of challenge the status quo. So, we always look for things actually outside of the tech bubble, if you will. We look at music. We look at fashion. We look at art. We look at a lot of pop culture sort of references and that sort of stems our ideas of how we sort of nurture and create what we call the apex, or LiveWorx or what you saw this morning. And for us, I'm all about what I call delight moments. So these are moments that frankly are sort of above and beyond the core content of what the conference offers and just making people have a great time. Showmanship and entertainment is just as much important as the core again content that we offer at LiveWorx. >> Dev, you've got a big tent here with a lot of different topics. There's a show I go to, we talk about the random collision of unusual suspects, which this reminded me of. Can you talk a little bit about how in these diverse communities, yet we should see some overlap and some bumping together. >> Yeah. Absolutely. So, again with LiveWorx, and sort of again profiling these nine to ten most disruptive technologies out there, we're always trying to recruit people that are very diverse from various backgrounds. You know, one specific goal that we have, just from a geographic persepective is making sure that over half our audience is from international markets outside of the United States. So again, when you're bumping shoulders or walking the halls everywhere around us, you're guaranteed to hear someone that comes from a different walk of life, a different experience, a different educational background and that adds a lot of value to the overall conference. Now, again, we target everyone from administrators to engineers, developers and more because really this show runs the gamut on everything from product design and sort of the ideas of what you want to do, all the way through service, manufacturing, it is the full scope of industry 4.0. So, to your point, there's a lot of intersection and a lot of overlapping because every company, every person, every individual, wants to experience and learn how to embrace what we call disruptive tech. >> You know, again, we do a lot of shows and the vast majority, when someone like you guys brings us to a show, they want to showcase their products and basically pimp up their own stuff. You chose a different approach. First of all, thank you for that. So, this today has been all about thought leadership. Stu and I were saying it reminds us of some of the stuff we do with MIT. Where you have professors, you have thought leaders, talking about not, kind of frankly, some boring products. >> And it's not a sales pitch. >> Right, it's not a sales pitch. But, why that decision and what's your vision for where you want to take this thing? >> Yeah, so again, I would say that a lot of conferences, and this is no offense to my brothers and my sisters in the events world out there, but people are so sick and tired of going to the standard trade show. The days of pipe-and-drape and aisles of just being pitched to and receiving free stress balls, and hiring staff that might not even be employed by the company, but they just frankly look good, those days are completely over. In our audience, the technologists who really matter in this world, who are doing a lot of great work, they want that substance and that core content. So, for us, it's really a vision about that's embraced and sort of evolved into give back and let the content lead your success. And that is going to help amplify the voice and further the mission. We look at LiveWorx as a catalyst well beyond the company that employs me and the people that work for just these companies. We have a vision to make Boston an epicenter, a headquarters, a world-renown attraction for technologists world-wide knowing this city for IoT and for AR. And for us, we embrace the innovation district as that pallet, that backdrop, that environment to allow us to really accomplish that. So, LiveWorx is growing exponentially. We experienced double digit growth this year, which was amazing. Starting where I was only with this company two years ago and less than 25 hundred attendees and we're at 6,100 right now live on the show floor at LiveWorx. So the future is really bright for us, and we're embracing this notion of the convention center is only going to be constricting for so long. It's time that we also implode those four walls and we embrace the outside. And what our plans are going for, which I'm really excited to sort of announce, is we're going to be now becoming more of an industrial innovation week in Boston, and taking our plans mainstream. So, that means taking the content that we focus on, and the partners that we work with, and the industry thought leaders and now you start to actually replicate these events throughout the entire seaport. So, think of it, and again most of you know South by Southwest, I'm a big fan and an avid follower, think of it South by Southwest meets Industrial, and that is the future of this show. >> Love it, and you know, we're thrilled to be part of it. And it's palpable. You actually see now, in the seaport... You know, we were talking off camera, you can't compete with Silicon Valley or on terms with Silicon Valley does. You shouldn't even try. We're bicoastal, we have an office in Palo Alto we know it well. It's a unique vortex. But certainly, IoT, Blockchain, VR, there really is some clear innovation going on here so, if you can focus on that, you can actually really blossom an ecosystem and that's really what you're doing. >> Oh, absolutely. And, again, PTC has been headquartered here for over 25 years, they're a leader in industrial innovation. They're a company that believes in giving back. We have curated and nurtured through partnerships with Harvard Business School, with MIT Innovation Lab, etc. We have cultivated some of the greatest startups of our time right now, who are creating groundbreaking technology in IoT, in AR, that is changing the world. We're even actually doing work right now in our backyard with Boston Children's Hospital, for example. Doing incredible work with our Vuforia product in AR that's helping actually find a cure for Alzheimer's. So, again, the possibilities are endless, and the innovation is limitless. >> Well, you're the hot company right now, obviously growing very rapidly, you're kind of like the Comeback Kid. You're clearly punching above your weight. The Scott Kirsner article in the Globe was unbelieveable. >> (Devin) Thank you I know we're very... Shout out to Scott. >> And so, you got to be thrilled with that. But, what's interesting to me, Dev, is you're not... You could ride that wave, and just pump up PTC but you're doing things that will allow you to sustain this as a community member, paying it forward, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but that's what I see. Thoughts? >> A hundred percent. And, again, the way that we sort of frame LiveWorx is I want you to think of PTC as the presenting sponsor. They are an investor in the vision that this team has to carry forward the community and the movement all around industrial innovation. And again, we feel that Boston being sort of our headquarters in our backyard, it's important that we're giving back and again, furthering that opportunity to further solidify our right as a rightful heir of IoT and AR, as a city, as a community and as the state of Massachusetts. >> Dev, wondering if you could give our audience that didn't come to this event a quick flavor of what's going on, flavoring and I loved you had the Boston food trucks all right outside. They're a little warm. My friends from the west coast are like, "This isn't warm." But for Boston, it hit summer. But, give us a quick tour around what people missed. >> Yeah, so we're all about an immersive experience at LiveWorx. Again, you're going to have sort of a checklist of what you absolutely need to have at an event to sustain someone's expectations. So, the content, the networking, the value. But again, we like to take it a step further and things that I call delight moments. So, for example, this year in Extropolis, and Extropolis, for those of you at home, that is our sort of expectation shattering, ground-breaking, playground for adults in technology. So, every corner, every ounce, every inch of this show floor has something to engage, ignite the 5 senses and tell our story. And one example specifically that I love to highlight this year is I've actually created the vision with a whole slew of individuals from PTC and partners and whatnot. Something we call the X-factory. Manufacturing is one of the biggest industries in business in the world. Mostly every company at an enterprise level has some sort of manufacturing component to it. And what we wanted to do this year is create the factory of the future. Meaning, working with the leaders like McKinsey, and again HeroTech and global brands in Germany who are defining manufacturing and who founded manufacturing in our history, we have partnered with them to say, "What does that factory of the future look like? What are companies going to be doing five, ten, fifteen years from now and what can we expect?" You're getting that first at LiveWorx, which is awesome, and the whole process is "Let's not have a standard kiosk. Let's not do a laptop with a video. Let's actually build out a 20,000 square foot industrial factory with multiple stations from digital engineering to service to again, AR induced digital twins and everything else in between. And let's actually have every single attendee create, design and manufacture a smart connected product. We're working with our partner, Bell and Howell, from a shipping, service and supply chain perspective, and again, we are blowing the roof off this show on that one activation, and there's over a hundred in total throughout this entire show this week. So, that's a little bit of a flavor of LiveWorx. And beyond that, we do things, everything from a puppy daycare hour to sort of do a high tech low touch feel. We do incredible food presentations and we're going to be ending with a big bang tomorrow with our closing party called the Mix-It Six, which is one of my favorite programs the entire week. And that is actually a superhero themed event where we're actually having a guest host and a personal friend, Paul Rudd, who was the Ant Man for Marvel, he'll be hosting our event. And the whole notion around superheroes is that we tell everyone this week "Unleash your inner superhero". Take advantage of the technology that is on display, and realize how it can enable and empower you to now have superhuman powers. So, everything from AR giving you the power to see the invisible, to IoT helping you get the power to predict the future. Everything is possible and everything is creative at LiveWorx. >> Well, it's obviously working. And so, I'm sure the execs are seeing this going, "Great. Good Job. Way to go. We've got some momentum. Let's double down." But, you back up two years ago, how did you sell this to the folks? Cause we see a lot of guys like, "Alright, how many leads we going to get out. How much revenue we going to drive" How'd you get through that knothole? >> So, let's put it in this perspective. There's a lot of intrinsic and intangible ways to measure the success of a show, and the value and the impact brought to a company. One thing I would actually say, I've worked in the tech industry for over six years now, I've been in the events business for over a decade, I've worked for some of the most incredible and impressive, and media-driven startups in the world right now. PTC, though, is a very interesting ecosystem. Their executives actually embrace the notion of what I presented first and foremost, about again, industry inclusiveness as we call that term. And for us, we have a vision at PTC to be disruptive, to be ground-breaking. If we do not embrace that ourselves, as our culture and our business model, how do we hope someone else to believe in the product, and the vision and the mission that we set forth in the marketplace. >> And from that, you got a response of, "Yeah, let's do it." >> So, again, am I going to be a hundred percent honest and transparent? Was everyone embracing that a hundred percent? No. But again, I think the proof is in the pudding and I think again it's a leap of faith in saying, "Listen, take a chance. Be disruptive, and see what the product of our fruits of our labor could be." And again, here you have it three years later, triple the size of the audience, tripling the size of the success, seeing multiple customers, multiple partners multiple industry leaders now attaching themselves to this brand. So for us, LiveWorx is nothing greater than a record breaking success this year, and I'm so excited for the rest of you at home to experience on the live stream, or again check out 2019 June 10-13. >> June 10, right here. Right? >> (Devin) Right here again. >> Dev, first of all thanks so much for having The Cube here and making us a part of this awesome event and look forward to working with you in the future. Congratulations on all your success. >> Thank you so much. >> You're very welcome. By the way, check out thecube.net that's where all the videos here will be. Check out siliconangle.com all the editorial coverage. Wikibond.com is where the research is. We're a wrap here from LiveWorx day one. Dave Vellante, for Stu Miniman. Thanks so much for watching, we'll see you next time.

from the VMware campus in Palo Alto California it's the Cuban covering women transforming technologies hi I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with the cube at VMware in Palo Alto at the third annual women transforming Technology event and we're here with a cube alumni Betsy Sutter SVP & chief people officer at V and we're so great to have you back on the cube thank you it's great to be here this is a very exciting day yes I love these types of events because you walk in and you just feel the sense of community and empowerment and and that's one of the great things that WT squared is in in and of itself its acronym of organizations that's right industry academia and nonprofits to help women connect learn from each other and support each other not just here in Silicon Valley but beyond and this is 30 annual this was sold out like within hours yes amazing amazing momentum that you guys have brought now to the third year great yeah we're really excited we're really excited and it's a new approach right it's creating as you said a consortium of companies to come together and just have real-time conversations about what's going on around gender equality and so yeah I'm really proud of this conference mostly because it just brings such a diverse set of people together men and women we have more men attending this year than ever before and so the conversations are just elevated they're fun yeah so you started at VMware when I was a startup with about a hundred people and here you were now managing this organization that of 20,000 people yeah big undertaking yeah talk to me about kind of the cultural change in shifts that you've seen and probably been able to drive from you know the last 15 years or so yeah you know the culture has been a pretty deliberate strategy from day one and I give the first CEO and founder Diane Greene a tremendous amount of credit for being really clear about what she wanted to build and she really wanted to build a sustainable company and a culture and she knew culture was the differentiator and even the current CEO today Pat Gallagher and I know that this is the single biggest differentiator that we can continue to strengthen in the company and then all the diversity inclusion and conversations are just part of that at this point in time but it was a deliberate regi plain and simple always keeping an eye on that and the values are at the core of that right and then the culture and the behavior reflect the values and so it's just been steadfast and stalwart on who we want to be over the past 20 years it's our 20th anniversary as a company and yeah I've been here for 17 of those but that's the work that I've really focused on it's been terrific that being deliberate is really key there yep so this third event inclusion in action is the theme yep how do you see that Bing how do you how do you live that and infiltrate that at VMware yeah well you know we are a company that has wanted to disrupt the tech space and so in order to do that we've had to stay focused on innovation innovation innovation and we really innovate in everything not just in our technology and our products but how we bring them to market how we support them but it also affects a lot of the work that I do in my space and in order to innovate you have to be inclusive of just a lot of different viewpoints and I like to say that we started out sort of in as an industrial research kind of company we were born out of Stanford a lot of computer science you know graduate students creating what we've now become and that's just been kind of the path is just collaboration even though we're 22,000 people now we still kind of take that approach to everything we do and speaking of Stanford big news out yes morning yeah gratulations thank you is investing 15 million dollars in a new women's leadership Innovation Lab that's right Danford that's amazing yeah we're thrilled we are so excited and Shelly Carell professor of sociology at Stanford we our partnership has been with Stanford since 2013 I think they've really helped us navigate everything that we've done in the inclusion and diversity space and so this is a new chapter and it's around women's leadership and it's around women's leadership and innovation and this lab I think is gonna reap some great results research based work is sort of at the heart and soul who we are right and so this is just more of that it's gonna be great to take progressive research groundbreaking research and put it into practice and so Shelley and I couldn't be more excited about what's next awesome well one of the interesting things is I was reading in the press release this morning that came out that according to McKinsey companies with diversity at the executive level 21 percent write more profitable that's right why aren't more companies even paying attention you know that that is a great question because most companies are about making money and wanting to be profitable yeah so it's it's perplexing that people aren't really honing in on what research is showing but you know suddenly it comes down to power and influence it's all about who has the power and who has the influence and so part of what we're doing with Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab is figuring out how to get women into more leadership positions and get them into more powerful and influential positions and that will be the thing that equalizes you know gender inequality so in the last six months we have had big movements me too yeah time's up yep growtopia there I'm Emily Chang published recently right how when you when you when that first came out with all the Harvey Weinstein stuff teachers say good we need to be able to get to leverage this moment and was that do you see that as being pulled into the tech industry and and helping to accelerate making this diversity change i I think things are getting accelerated and amplified because I think voices are being used and heard and I think there's a movement and I think women are coming together as a consortium around their gender and understanding that the real issues are around power and influence and tackling it head-on and the quality of the conversations around all of these movements is it's inspiring to me after spending 30 odd years in tech so I think things are really starting to change because women are using their voices yeah speaking of women using their voices you had Laila Ali as a keynote yeah that was so fantastic strong confident woman yeah who the daughter of Muhammad Ali who tried to talk her out of becoming a fighter right tried to - I love how she said he tried to actually kind of get me I think it was my idea to not go into it right so obviously a woman probably born with a lot of natural confidence but I loved how she kind of talked to all of us and said he sometimes that light goes out or its dimmed and I need to remind myself with you our best yeah so you probably see a good amount of females that have that sort of innate confidence that love engineering and I'm gonna do this how do you encourage those women to may be mentor some of the of the either younger or not other females who want to do something but are intimidated by you know maybe don't have that natural confidence how do you kind of facility at that empowerment yeah well I do think Leila's story is amazing and you know most importantly she's an entrepreneur and a businesswoman right I mean what she's done with her career with her foundation but what she's done with her career is most impressive and I love that digging deep and find that warrior from within yeah but I think for women today I think the difference is that we're able to have the conversation with each other and even with the opposite sex and I think companies are starting to understand that if you don't have diversity you're not going to have innovation and you're not going to win and most companies that I've worked for and VMware in particular we want to win we want to lead we want to disrupt and we want to impact the world and we want and need to make money as well but I think for women now the conversation is allowed I know that people are listening on both sides of the fence and we do a lot of VMware just to make sure that conversation is alive one of the things I'm really proud of it VMware and that I really believe is it's been the quality of the conversations since day one that have put us where we are in the world and in the industry and as a company and so the conversation shifting a little bit right we're talking more about this and it's those quality conversations that just keep it going and and that's sort of core to who we are so we'll just continue that trend and it's great being able to talk to the cube because you're allowing us to amplify the quality of the conversation so I'm grateful and we're happy to be a part of that so just just the about the event there are a number of tracks right also that was something that I was mentioned to you before we we started filming was I loved that when I walked in there was a jot yeah I love that and as well as a LinkedIn profile right resume clinic all of these you think minor things those can be really impact that's right if a woman has a great head challenge wow this is fantastic or somebody guiding her on what or what not to put on a LinkedIn profile just even providing some of these things that are foundational yep that's really huge it is really huge and it's also just a new platform for these conversations to continue whether it's just a visual because you're looking at my LinkedIn headshot or my Twitter feed or whatever it is but these are all really small things but matter really small things really matter yes and so building those up into people's psyches and their abilities is sort of what we're trying to do as part of the conference so in context of the third annual event the sold-out events and this great announcement of what VMware and Stanford are doing yeah what are some of those quick wins or exciting ones that you're looking forward to seeing the rest of 2018 yeah I think I love that question I think the key is continuing to join forces to continue to lock arms and continue the conversations and so a lot of what I love to do professionally and personally is create those platforms for people to do those kinds of things and that's what women transforming technology is about this year and has been about the last two years and I think we'll just continue to do that and people will tell us what we need to know and where we need to go awesome if you look back at your career would you have forecast your success being you know the chief people officer is c-level or would you yeah you know what was that yeah I met such that's it I'm just starting at this point in my career to really reflect on that no I never imagined having this amount of responsibility and privilege never in my wildest dreams it wasn't an aspirational goal I knew that I wanted as much influence as I could have to achieve results I'm a professional problem solver this is a pretty meaty problem that we're tackling but no I I didn't a dream it now I feel a huge amount of responsibility to start to talk about it I'm a I think I mentioned you I'm a behind-the-scenes kind of person I like to work back there understanding the problem diagnosing it coming up with a solution and then helping implement it but now it's time to kind of talk about what's happened and where we are and set course for the future with so many wonderful women last question for you yep because the attrition rate is so high for females in technology yeah what advice would you give to a woman who's on the cusp of leaving not to sort of family but just going I'm not sure I feel supported here what advice would you give her yeah I would give that person and I do give this advice on the right to go out and have lots of conversations and just start those conversations you just don't know what you don't know and I've had women come to me and at the end of 45 minutes to an hour tell me they're thinking about doing something else and it saddens me especially if they're at vmware because i don't want them to leave but go out and have those conversations and explore what's next don't be afraid of the conversation and sharing what's happening to you with you at your work and events like women transforming technology are only going to help continue to get more eyes and ears on every side of whatever gap we've got aware of this and help all of us become part of the solution that's right to accelerate diversity because as the data show companies could be far more profitable if they've got that thought diversity that's exactly right and it's just that simple but it's just that difficult exactly yeah it was that simple well Betsy thank you so much but a pleasure joining us and allowing us to be part of the voice and getting this away it's out there for women transforming technology as well as helping to hopefully empower and inspire all of the current and future generations yeah attack no I really appreciate you being here - thank you our pleasure yeah we want to thank you for watching the cube I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at women transforming Technology thanks for watching [Music]

(upbeat electronic music) >> Narrator: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE covering Women Transforming Technology. >> Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE. We are on the ground at VMware in Palo Alto, with the third annual Women Transforming Technology event and I'm very excited to be joined by the CEO of Women Who Code, Alaina Percival. Alaina, nice to have you here. >> Hi, thank you very much for having me. >> So tell me about Women Who Code. You co-founded it a while ago. Give us a little bit of a background about what your organization is. >> Yeah, Women Who Code is the largest and most active community of technical women in the world. Our mission is to see women excel in technology careers, and that's because we have a vision of women becoming executives, technical executives, founders, board members, and of course through a pathway of being software engineers. >> So Women Who Code started, originally, back in 2011 as a community. Tell me a little bit about the genesis of that and what you've transformed it into, today. >> Yeah, it started off as a local community, and it was just a space to get together with other technologists, and what we started to see is it was this thing that was just fun and kind of our little secret for, you know, that first year, and we realized-- at one point I said, "Hey other women around the world deserve to have this, as well." And, that's really where the focus to grow globally came about and focus on women: building on their skills and building up their leadership skills and if you invite software engineers to a leadership and networking event, they won't come, but we hold an average of five free technical events every single day, throughout the world, and at those events, they're primarily technology events where we weave in a little bit of leadership and networking, but it feels authentic and its an event that software engineers are excited to be. >> Five events per day, that's incredible. So, VMware became a partner back in 2015, when you had around nine or 10,000 members. Now, today, its over 137,000 global members. Talk to us about the strategic partnership with VMware and what that's enabled Women Who Code to achieve. >> Yeah, we can't accomplish what we accomplish without the partners that support us. We try not to charge our members for anything. So, those 1,900 events we put on last year were free. We've given away $2.8 million in our weekly newsletter of scholarships, and conference tickets, encouraging our community to go out there in the broader tech community and we can do those things, we can launch in the cities that we can launch in, we can elevate women as leaders around the world, but we can only do that through partners, and VMware is one of our founding partners and what that took is someone in executive leadership to see who we could be, because we're very small, and we were very local when we came to VMware and talked to them about what our vision was and what we were going to accomplish and I say now, what I said back then, is we've only scratched the surface of what we are going to achieve. >> There's some commonalities, some parallels that Women Who Code has with VMware. You know, this is the third annual Women Transforming Technology event at VMware here and its sold out within hours. Walking into that room it's very empowering. The excitement and the passion are there and you just start to feel a sense of community. Tell me about the parallels that you see with VMware and some of the visions that they share about, not just raising awareness for the diversity gaps and challenges, but also taking a stand to be accountable in that space. And what they announced this morning with Stanford, with this massive $15 million investment in this Innovation Lab of actually wanting to dig deep into these barriers to help identify them to help eradicate them. What are some of the visionary similarities with Women Who Code and VMware? >> Yeah, so what you see with that is you know, you're investing in someone or an organization that already has the potential. Our average age of our community is 30. We have a lot of trouble claiming that you achieve what you achieve in your career, because of us. We know we play a part in it, but we know that potential, that raw power, exists within you, and when someone sees and knows that that's there and gives you what you need to be able to harness that potential, you are able to achieve great things, global things. You're able to change the world, and that's what we do for our members and their careers, and that's what our partners, like VMware do for us. >> I saw on your website: 80% of members experience a positive career impact, after joining Women Who Code. 80% of women, that's huge. >> Yeah, and a lot of that comes from the people that you connect with, the sense of belonging. We had a women at the end of Hackathon, in Manila come up to our leaders, there, and she started crying. She said, "I was about to leave the industry and I realize I have a place." And that sense of belonging that you get from coming to a Women Who Code event that's very welcoming, it can really help to override all of those unconscious biases that you encounter every day, throughout the course of your career, and it helps you to realize, "I'm not alone. There's a lot of really smart, talented women in the tech industry, who want me to be in my job and being in my job isn't just for me. I'm lifting up the people around me, as well." >> So one of the things that we hear a lot about is a lot of focus on STEM programs and getting young girls interested in STEM fields to study in college, but another thing that's huge is the attrition rates. Women are leaving technology at alarming rates, and a lot of people think it's to go off and have children, and it's actually not the case. What are some of the things that have surprised you about women kind of in that, maybe, mid-stage of their career that are leaving, and how can Women Who Code help to impact that, positively? >> Yeah, so what you're speaking to is definitely the data showing that women are leaving their technical careers at a rate of 50% at the mid-career level, and they're leaving their overall careers, if you aggregate women in careers, at a rate of 20% over a 30 year period, so that gap is huge and the industry is a great industry for women. You've got a lot of job security, a lot of job opportunity, a lot of flexibility. All of these things are great for women and their careers, but what you're encountering is often being the only, or one of the only, and you really don't overcome that, until you're getting above 20%, 25%, 30% of that feeling of being the only on a team, and what I think is the biggest issue with women coming into their careers at what kind of wears you down is the unconscious bias. It's something that you encounter on a daily, or multiple times a day basis. That thing that if you complained about a single one of them, you'd be the weird person who complains, at your company. And so, what Women Who Code really does is: one, it helps to create a sense of belonging, it helps to build domain-specific and non-domain-specific skills, it helps you to envision your career, not just the next step in your career, but the step after that, and the step after that, so it's really working to combat those things that you're to, on a daily basis, to provide that sense of community, to remind you, you do belong, and to really help you envision and achieve your career goals, long-term. >> So you have about 137,000 members, globally. And when we had Lily Chang on earlier, she was talking about the Shanghai and Beijing and kind of what that sort of thing meant to her going back there now, on the board. Tell us, maybe give me an example of a real shining star, who joined Women Who Code and was able to get that support, and that guidance, and that camaraderie to continue to be successful, and actually be promoted, and succeed. >> Yeah, so one example that I love is a woman came up to me at an event, last year, and she said, "Hey Alaina, I was going to the Women Who Code Python events, and I now, today, because of what I learned, ended up choosing a path in data science. I'm a senior data scientist, and this year, I'm being flown across country to speak, as an expert in data science. I would not be in this career path, without Women Who Code." Another story that I love is a woman who came up to me at a Hackathon and she told me her story that she had joined Women Who Code, in February, and she was going to our events and kind of figured out what she wanted to do, and by the summer she had transitioned into a new job, gotten a job with The Weather Channel, as a software engineer, and she was making more than double any salary that she had had prior to that. >> Wow. >> And so its career direction, competing job offers, which really increases your likelihood of having a higher salary, those are kind of two examples that I love. The one thing that we haven't talked about is our leadership program. We have a global leadership program, which really actions you to build skill-based volunteering and become a local tech leader. It opens up lines of communication between you and executives at your company. You often get called in as a thought leader at companies. You typically will receive a promotion or a pay increase, at a higher rate than you would otherwise. Some of our leaders get press mentions, get invited to be speakers at conferences, or even advisors on advisory boards. And so, when I look at the stories that are coming from our leaders, one of my favorite stories is a woman in Atlanta. She had a master's in CS. She was inside of the box, you know, the person that every company wants to hire. She was incredibly shy, and when she stepped up as a Women Who Code leader she said, "Oh Alaina, I'm going to be the worst leader." And, okay you've got this. At her first event, she stoop up and she was like, "My name's Erica. Feel free to ask me questions," and kind of sat down, as quickly as possible, but she stood in the front of that room. She began to be perceived by the community, and by herself, as a leader. And in under one year, she was invited, she didn't even apply, to speak at three different tech conferences, and she went from barely being able to say her name in front of a nice community to giving a talk to a standing-room-only crowd. >> Wow, very impactful. And is that for other opportunities that you guys deliver, in terms of public speaking, or was that because she was able to, through Women Who Code, to start to get more confidence in her own capabilities and in her own skin? >> Experience, confidence, self-perception, community-perception, I had one lead at our community tell me that she became a leader at Women Who Code, by regularly attending events. One day, the leader was running late, so she said, "Oh, well, you know I can probably get this started. I've been coming enough," so she went and stood at the front of the room, welcomed everyone, got everything going, said our pitch and she said, by the end of that three-hour event, people thought she was a leader and she began to think, "Oh yeah, I'm a leader," and she says, "Hey, I know that I can get an interview anywhere I want. I know that this opens doors for me." I had one leader tell me that she interviewed with SpaceX, and they specifically told her in the interview that they were impressed with her Women Who Code leadership and that was one of the reasons they were interviewing her. >> Wow, what have been some of the things that have really blown you away, in the few years that this organization has been around? >> It's just the individual stories. It's, every step of the way, the impact that it has in the lives of our leaders in our community. And I honestly feel, everyday, that I get to do this for a job. >> With what VMware announced this morning, with Stanford and this huge investment that they're making into Women's Leadership and Innovation Lab, to look at some significant barriers that women in technology are facing and to identify those barriers that we can then eradicate, what are some of the things that you're looking forward to, from that research and how you think that can actually benefit Women Who Code? >> Yeah, I'm very excited to see what comes out from there. I think we need a lot more research to help us to understand at what point things are happening and what things you can be doing that really help to overcome. I think that combining research with the real-world, in-person action that Women Who Code does and the work that we do with our community would have an even bigger impact. >> I also think what it speaks to is accountability. You know, a very large, very successful, 20-year-old organizations standing up saying, "We actually want to study this," and I think that there's a message there of accountability, which is, I think, a very important one that other organizations can definitely learn from. >> Yeah, I think that also they're going to an organization outside of them and funding that. And so, the research that comes out of there might come back and say, "You're doing this wrong. This is how you can be doing it better." And so, the fact that they're willing to make an investment and say, "Hey, we want to see this better, not only for us. It's not just going to be internal. This data's going out to the world." That's an investment in global change. That's not just holding that in at a personal or organizational level. >> Right, so in addition to that news that came out today, what are some of the things that you're going to walk away, from this third annual Women Transforming Technology event going, "Ah, that was awesome. Now, this gives me even more ideas for Women Who Code." >> Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity to connect with, especially, women who are in leadership positions and figure out how we can better service women at the higher tiers of their career, because you don't stop needing support, and you don't stop growing your career, once you become a director or a vice president. You continue to invest in your career, and you continue to needs support. And so, I'm really looking for ways that we can better serve those women. >> And hopefully, we start to see that attrition number at 50% start to come down. >> Alaina: Definitely. >> Alaina, thanks so much for your time. It was a pleasure to chat with you, and we wish you continued success with Women Who Code. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE, on the ground at VMware, for the third annual Women Transforming Technology event. Thanks for watching. (funky electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, CA Its theCUBE covering Women Transforming Technology. (music beats) >> I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE and we are on the ground in Palo Alto at VMware for the third annual Women Transforming Technology event. Excited to be talking with Stephanie Joe, next Vice President of Operations in the Networking and Security business here at VMware. Hi Stephanie. >> Hi, thanks for having me. >> Lisa: Thanks for joining me today >> Lisa: Absolutely, our pleasure >> So, you've been in tech for a long time at VMware, for about five years. >> Stephanie: Yes >> Tell me a little bit about your journey in tech. Was it, did you want to get into software and technology many years ago? >> Stephanie: So being actually a native of the Silicone Valley and being raised in this in California, my father worked for a high tech company for 30 plus years. And so, for me it was natural to go into technology. I'm very much of a finance person and numbers person, so it gave me the opportunity to take my desire for math and my desire for finance and be close to products and be close to innovation. So, I would say yes, from early on it was no question that I would be working in technology. Its a great place to be in the Silicone Valley for that. >> Lisa: It is. It really is. >> yeah yeah >> So you were in finance for a long time >> Stephanie: Yes >> then moved into operations. >> Stephanie: Yes, a couple years ago. >> How did you get that courage to go, you know what I've been doing this for a long time >> Stephanie: Yeah >> and you mentioned your dad, you know, working in it for 30 years. >> Stephanie: Yes >> I think parent's generation was you get a job and you do the same thing for 30 or 40 years >> Stephanie: In the same company >> Yes. How did you get that courage internally to go you know what I want to try something different. >> Yeah, so being in finance, I had the opportunity to work in many different groups within the finance organization and as I worked in finance, I got the opportunity to take a look at what was important to me and what was interesting to me and although I love my numbers piece, I also was very much interested in process and operations and holding people accountable. And, I got to a point, honestly, where I was in finance and I tried many different pieces of finance, and I got to a point where okay, what am I going to do next? Um, and there's also something that's been important to me is constantly re reinvigorating myself, and rebranding myself, not rebranding but continuing my brand. And as part of that, operations was just the next natural piece and I had thought about making that dive many different times in my finance career, but there was always either that risk of oh its a little scary, or there was something else I still wanted to do within finance. And an opportunity came along a couple of years ago, and specifically in the networking security space. And VMware, it is one of the highest priorities within the company and because of the technology, and because of the opportunity, I said you know, now is the right time to go do this. Now is the right time to take that leap, take that chance. And, at the same time, I also knew I had the backing of supporters and mentors to help me be successful in that move. Um, I knew it wasn't going to be a slam dunk. I've always told people you almost have to do that next thing that you know you're going to be able to contribute, yet at the same time, its a little scary And, you have to have the confidence and the planning around that confidence to go for it. Um and take that risk. And its been worthwhile. It has been a nice change. Its given me new energy and I think I know I am contributing to the company. >> And it must feel good. >> Stephanie: Yes >> You talked about, touched on a number of points we have heard today at the Women Transforming Technology event where we, you know things were kicked off this morning, ahh with Laylah Ali who talked about having, finding that courage, and that confidence. Um, but also needing to be mentioned being around an organization, whether its an organization or just a group who support whatever change that you are thinking of making, >> Yeah >> And I do think some change that's scary is good >> Yeah >> Ah, but I think that is one of the hallmarks of women transforming technology >> Stephanie: Yes >> is this consortium of industry, nonprofits, academia coming together to to confront head on the issues, the diversity issues that we're facing. >> Not just as women in technologies, >> Stephanie: Right a lot of different gaps >> Right But, also providing that support and enabling women and men >> Stephanie: Right >> to have mentors to learn from because it isn't just >> Stephanie: Yes >> challenging to get women in tech, its very challenging to retain women in technology who leave at very high rates >> yes >> for other careers. >> Correct Correct >> So how did you at being at, you said, Cisco for quite a long time and now >> correct VMware five years, >> Did you have women in leadership positions that you looked up to that were mentors to you? >> I think, so its interesting when you dive into your career at the very beginning, long time ago, you don't necessarily think about okay who are my mentors or who do I look up to? Or is there women specifically who can support me? I think for me its become just natural and I've had the opportunity where I've had a combination of both leaders, men and women, that have been mentors to me and supporters and as I moved forward in my career, I've discovered what was important was having, even a diverse set of mentors, men and women, but a circle of women around me too, that were living the challenges I was living. And I also don't think I realized some of the diversity challenges I was living until I got to a certain point and I looked back and went wow and I listened and part of WT2 allows you to listen to some of the other challenges that other people are having and you realize, I'm not alone and that person is experiencing the same thing that I'm experiencing. and I've now turned into a position of, where I am like, how can I help you? How can I help that you live through the same things that um, I've lived through. How can I help you and how can I help you contribute? This is a forum that allows us to come together and create new mentors, to get away from the everyday busyness and be selfish for a day and think about myself and how can I improve on things. Um, but really to connect and share our stories. >> You mentioned >> Stephanie: So I am thankful for that >> the word accountability earlier too and I think one of the things that's great about women transforming technology, women who code, we also, we cover a lot of women events, women and data science. Its at the VMware level, VMware is a huge organization very successful for many years, >> Stephanie: Yes >> But, they the this long-standing partnership Stanford and now the Clayman Institute, and now the new Innovation Lab, from an accountability perspective you are starting to see it. I shouldn't say starting, but you're seeing it in a big way >> Yes >> That's a big investment >> Stephanie: Yeah big investment by a big corporation >> Yes >> With 20 plus thousand people and of course Stanford University. >> Stephanie: right To look at what are these big barriers, um, that are effecting, that effect everybody >> Stephanie: That effect everybody. >> And how can they start to identify them and start to eradicate them and having companies participate and step up to be accountable to that is huge. >> Its huge. And I think, you know, its a journey, right. And I think we all started a couple of years ago just looking at the facts and looking at the data, and not pushing but I think presenting the facts of this is what our own diversity metrics look like. Not just men versus women, but, you know, different different you know, diversity factors in addition to okay, as a result of these facts, then what should we do as far as the next step. And I think over the past couple of years, there has been a natural progression around we're going to start looking at this and we're going to start asking questions, and we're going to start holding people accountable to doing what they said they were going to do from a people perspective, Diversity being one of them. So its been nice seeing that evolvement. Exciting to me is the partnership between VMware and Stanford because I think it takes it to the next level of its not just the data, its not just the facts, its not just we know its important, its what are the underlying behaviors underneath it, what are the underlying actions that we now can take, not just for VMware, not just for Stanford, but for the whole entire community, right? And that's what its all about. Its about coming together as a multiple different companies coming together as a great institution like Stanford coming together saying how can we make a difference in the community that we live in and make a difference from a technology perspective, so >> Yeah >> Its exciting to me and I think it will be interesting to be a part of the journey, but also see where we are a year from now, two years from now. >> Right, so you've, you sound like you have sort of found you voice with ah, wanting to be inspire inspirational >> Stephanie: yeah to other women, whatever stage of their career. >> Stephanie: Yeah >> It just seems like something that sort of occurred to you. Hey, I've been through this. I'm not the only one. A lot of people go through this. Um, what was that kind of ah hah moment when you said I have an opportunity here to give back. >> Stephanie: Yeah, I think its interesting cause I look back and I'm like there wasn't, well maybe their were a couple of moments, where I am like wait wait that comment just made, that was because I was a woman not because of what I was contributing. And, either it was like, okay, that was an interesting comment and how do I handle it. But it really wasn't, I think, until I was up in the higher ranks, right, and I starting saying okay, I've done a lot, we've been very results oriented, how do I start giving back? And how do I start mentoring others? And it started out as mentoring others that were maybe new college grads or maybe just new people to the company. And as I started mentoring to others, then I started realizing too that some of the women that I was mentoring, wait, their living through the same things that I lived through. And there was a big time where I thought oh it was just Stephanie. Right, oh, its just unique to me. Nobody else was dealing with this or it I also went through a period of like I wasn't any different than anybody else, right. And then as I started going through this, I realized no there's others that are living the same path that I lived. Um, and I think that I can help them grow and contribute to their own growth. And by the way, me, at the same time, me learn from them, um which is what its all about. >> Lisa: Very symbiotic >> Yeah >> It takes events like this, like WT squared, to identify hey, there is a lot of commonality and challenges that we all face regardless of gender or sexual orientation or what not. The more you are aware of some of these challenges, the more we can identify how how do we hold acc organizations or what not accountable. It takes that courage though to come together and be the one to raise your hand thinking you might have a dumb question when of course there really are no dumb questions (laugher) And finding that support, I mean, the strength in numbers, right, that's what the Golden State >> Warriors, Golden State Warriors >> Exactly. >> It is the team I love (laugher) >> Um, but its really true and its a very pervasive feeling when you come to an event like this, you walk in, and you feel that there's this inclusion >> Stephanie: Yeah >> Lisa: Across >> Stephanie: You feel the power of the people in the audience, but you also feel the affirmation from the panels or you know, Laylah Ali who is speaking today and her struggles and her journey, um, and just saying I can identify with that, right. I'm not alone, but also how do we together come together and have a voice, right? How do we hold others accountable? And doing it in a way that is fair. I think that's what all of us are ask for. Its not, I have never asked for special treatment because I am a woman or because I am an Asian, but because its fair, right, and I'm treated fair, and I'm treated the way that my peers are treated. Um, and I think that's what we all want. >> Yeah >> Yeah >> You mentioned Laylah Ali, her keynote this morning was it was great. >> Phenomenal I think its so, you you can tell, even if I hadn't seen her speak, you know Laylah Ali is a very strong woman >> Stephanie: Yes >> Physically, mentally, but it was really refreshing for her to say hey there's moments where I got to recheck, what's my purpose here, what am I doing. >> Stephanie: My inside warrior >> Yes, and I love that she said you know we got to find that inner warrior. She's in there >> Yeah >> Sometimes she's quiet, um, maybe has some tape across her mouth, but seeing a naturally innately strong female saying sometimes I don't feel that way, I think that is a very important message to get out, to all of those people, regardless of gender or orientation who don't have this sort of natural confidence that a Laylah Ali has. That's normal. >> Yeah yeah. And for me hearing somebody else say, a couple of things she said having that interior warrior, inside warrior, who, okay give yourself a day to feel bad. Give yourself a day to deal with it. And then its time to go back for the fight. Its time to go focus on what's important to you and bring out that passion and go. And, how many times have all of us felt that? Um, many a times. Um, the other part that, for me, that really hit home for me was confidence. And its funny, cause some people will say Oh,Steph you have very high confidence and I am like no I don't. And she said something to confidence is in planning and being prepared. >> Lisa: Yes >> And as I think about that, that is something that is very true. It resonated very close to me and I think about as I talk to women and they I say you are going to go into this meeting, think about how you are going to prepare for that meeting. Because then it allows you to immediately say yep, this is what we should do. Yep, this is my idea. To be able to have that voice. So I would say for me, those were probably the two pieces, right, confidence and preparation, or being prepared to have confidence and the inside warrior where it just really hit home for me. >> The preparation thing I thought was really cool too because we talk a lot about imposter syndrome. >> Stephanie: Yeah >> And its a real issue that a lot of people face, >> Stephanie: Very true >> Whatever stage of career they are at or industry, but she's right in that if you're prepared for whatever it is that you are doing, that confidence will come. But preparation is really key. >> Stephanie: Yeah I chuckle a little bit because when you say the imposter piece, I will admit I think there was a time in my career where I acted a certain way, and I was in meetings as a certain way, or I went down a path because that's the path you should go down, right. Um, but it wasn't true to myself and so I think the part around being prepared, being confident as a result of being prepared, really allows you to be true to yourself and allows you to bring out the passion. That's important. Um, and that applies to everybody, not just us. >> It does. So in your, kind of wrapping things up here, what are some of the cultural um shifts that you've seen being in tech industry for 20 years and some of the things you are looking forward to in the next year at VMware? >> Stephanie: Yeah, so I will say, cultural shifts, just from the standpoint of awareness, right. I think that is a very important piece of people being respectful and aware of the environment that we're in and people having the conversations. I don't think we would even be having these conversations 10 years ago. and there is multiple different reasons for that. Whether it be results of showing with inclusion and with diversity, you have better business results. Um, or whether it be people speaking up and saying hey, we have a right to have a voice. We have a right to be treated in a certain way. And so, from a culture standpoint, that voice and that awareness has then lead to being able to have the conversations of how people should be treated, how they should be respected, and how we um, should even have the discussion with each other. Right? Looking forward, I look forward to the fact of being able to have a stronger voice. And when I say a stronger voice, I don't mean hey, let's go for the fight and let's make sure we've go the right numbers. But it really is the voice in the room. Um, I think we still have the discussion around the numbers. We haven't necessarily had the discussion of how do we make sure that the people in the room, that is a diverse set of people, that their voices come out, so we get a diverse set of of suggestions and ideas to come to the best outcome. >> Stephanie, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE, >> Stephanie: Thank you for having me. >> And sharing your backstory and your history. And um, its really nice to hear from other mentors who recognize and are proud to be in that position. So, thank you. >> Its a pleasure. Thank you >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin, on the ground at VMware for the third annual Women Transforming Technology. Thanks for watching. (closing music beats)

(electronic music) >> Announcer: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE! Covering women transforming technology. >> Hi, welcome to theCube. Lisa Martin on the ground at the 3rd Annual Women Transforming Technology event at VMware in Palo Alto, and I'm joined by an author and a senior VMware engineer, Pratima Rao Gluckman. Welcome to the Cube, Pratima. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here >> It's great to have you here. So you have been an engineer here for about ten years. You knew from when you were a kid, love this, engineer, you knew you wanted to be that. You fell in love with your first programming class. It was like a Jerry McGuire, you complete me kind of moment I'm imagining. Tell me a little bit about your career in engineering and specifically as a female. >> Okay, so I was raised, born and raised, in India, and I grew up in an environment where I was gender blind. You know, my oldest sister played cricket for the country. >> Lisa: Wow! >> And it was a man's game! You know and a lot of people kind of talked about that, but it wasn't like she couldn't do it, right? So, I always grew up with this notion that I could do anything, and I could be whoever I wanted to be. And then I came to the United States, and that whole narrative stayed with me, the meritocracy narrative. Like you work hard, you know, society, the world will take care of you, and good things will happen, but it wasn't until 2016 was when I had this aha moment, and that's when I suddenly felt, suddenly I was aware of my gender, and I was like, okay I'm a female in tech, and there's lots of challenges for women in tech. And I didn't quite realize that. It was just that aha moment, and VMware has been a great company. I've been with VMware for nine years, I started as an engineer, and I moved into engineering management. We had Diane Greene who founded the company, the culture was always meritocratic, but I think something in 2016 kind of made me just thinking about my career and thinking about the careers of the women around me, I felt like we were stuck. But at the same time be focused on the women that were successful, for instance Yanbing Li, who's our senior VP and general manager of our storage business. And we were talking about her, and I said, this is what I said, I said, "There are some women who are successful despite everything "that we're dealing with, and I just want "to know their stories, and I'm going to write this book." The moment I said that it just felt right. I felt like this was something I wanted to do, and the stories in this book are inspiring stories of these women, just listening to Laila Ali this morning, her inspirational story, and this book has around 19 stories of these executive women, and they're just not role models, I mean every story offers strategies of how to thrive in the tech world. >> So interesting that first of all I love the title, Pratima, of this book, "Nevertheless She Persisted." So simple, so articulate, and so inspiring. So interesting, though, that you were working as an engineer for quite a few years before you realized, kind of looked around, like, whoa, this is a challenge that I'm actually living in. Yanbing is a CUBE alumni, I love her Twitter handle. So you said all right, I want to talk to some women who have been persistent and successful in their tech careers, as kind of the genesis of the book. Talk to us about, maybe, of those 19 interviews that range from, what, c-levels to VPs to directors. What are some of the stories that you found, what kind of blew your mind of, wow, I didn't know that you came from that kind of background? >> So when I started off I was very ambitious. I said I'd go interview CEO women, and I did a lot of research, and I found some very disturbing facts. You know, Fortune Magazine lists Fortune 500 companies, and they rank them based on their prior year's fiscal revenues, and from that data there were 24 women CEOs in 2014. That number dropped to 21 in 2015, and it dropped again in 2016, but it went up slightly in 2017 to 32 women, which is promising, but back in 2018 we're down to 24. So we have very very few women CEOs, and when I started off I said I'll talk to the CEO women, and I couldn't find any CEO women, my network, my friends' network, And so I dropped one level and I said let me go talk to SVPs and when I looked at VMware and VMware's network, Yanbing was one of them, so she's in the book, and then I reached out to contacts outside of my network. So I have some women from LinkedIn, I have Google, I have Facebook, I have some women from startups. So I have around four CEOs in the book, I've got, and what's great about this book is it's got a diverse set of women. Right? They have different titles; I've got directors, senior directors, VPs, Senior VPs, GMs, and CEOs. And some of them have PhDs, some of them have a Master's Degree, and some actually don't have formal training in computer science. I thought this would be interesting because a woman with any background can relate to it. Right? And so that was helpful. And so that's kind of how I went off and I started to write this book. And when I interviewed these women, there was a common theme that just kept emerging, and that was persistence. And they persisted against gender bias, stereotype threat, just the negative messages from media and society. I mean like Laila Ali was talking about just even the messages she got from her dad. >> Right. >> Right? Someone who was so close to her who basically said "Women can't box." And that didn't stop her; I mean she persisted. When I was listening to her, she didn't use the word, but, you know, she said she was believing in herself and all that, but she persisted through all those negative messages, right? And she said no one can tell her what to do. (laughs) >> Yeah her confidence is very loud and clear, and I think that you do find women, and I imagine some of them are some of the interviewees in your book, who have that natural confidence, and as you were saying when Muhammad Ali was trying to talk her out of it, and trying to, as she said, "He tried to get me think it was my idea," but she just knew, well no, this is what I want to do. And she had that confidence. Did you find that a lot of the women leaders in this book had that natural confidence? Like you grew up in an environment where you just believed "I can do this, my sister's playing cricket." Did you find that was a common thread, or did you find some great examples of women who wanted to do something, but just thought "Can I do this?" And "How do I do that?" What was the kind of confidence level that you saw? >> I was surprised because I had a question on imposter syndrome, and I asked these women, Telle Whiteney, who's the CEO, she was the CEO, ex-CEO >> Lisa: Grace Hopper >> Yes. The founder of Grace Hopper. I asked her about imposter syndrome and this is what she told me, she said "I feel like I'm not good enough" and that actually gave me goosebumps. I remember I was sitting in front of greatness and this is what she was telling me. And then I asked her "How do you overcome it?" and she said "I just show up the next day." And that actually helped me with this book because I am not an author. >> That's persistence. >> I mean I am an author now but 2 years ago when I started to write this, writing is not my forte. I'm a technologist, I build teams, I manage teams, I ship products, I ship technical products, but everyday I woke up and I said, "I'm feeling like an imposter." It was just her voice right? Yanbing also feels the same way, I mean she does feel times where she feels like, "I'm lacking confidence here." Majority of the people actually, pretty much all the women, this one woman, Patty Hatter, didn't feel like she had imposter syndrome but the rest of them face it everyday. Talia Malachi who's a principal engineer at VMWare, it's very hard to be a PE, she said that she fights it every day, and that was surprising to me, right? Because I was sitting in front of all these women, they were confident, they've achieved so much, but they struggle with that every day. But all they do is they persist, they show up the next day. They take those little steps and they have these goals and they're very intentional and purposeful, I mean just like what Layla said, right? She said, "Everything that I've done in the last 20 years "has been intentional and purposeful." And that's what these women did. And I learned so much from them because 20 years ago I was a drifter (laughs) you know I just kind drifted and I didn't realize that I could set a goal and I could reach it and I could do all these amazing things, and I didn't think any of this was possible for me. But I'm hoping that some girl somewhere can read this book and say "You know what this is possible", right? This is possible and you know role models, I think we need lots of these role models. >> We do I think, you know imposter syndrome I've suffered for it for so long before I even knew what it was and I'll be honest with you even finding out that it was a legitimate issue was (exhales) okay I'm not the only one. So I think it's important that you, that these women and youth are your voice, in your book, identified it. This is something I face everyday even though you may look at me on the outside and think, "She's so successful, she's got everything." And we're human. And Laila Ali talked about of having to revisit that inner lawyer, that sometimes she goes silent, sometimes the pilot light goes out and needs to be reignited or turned back up. I think that is just giving people permission, especially women, and I've felt that in the keynote, giving us permission to go, "Ah, you're not going to feel that everyday, "you're not going to feel it everyday." Get up the next day to your point, keep persisting and pursuing your purpose is in and of itself so incredibly empowering. >> Right but also imposter syndrome is good for you and I talk about that a little bit in the book. And you know why it's good for you? It's you getting out of your comfort zone, you're trying something different, and it's natural to feel that way, but once you get over it, you've mastered that, and Laila talked about it too today she said, "You get uncomfortable to the point "where you get comfortable." >> Lisa: Yes. >> So every time that you find that you have this imposter syndrome, just remember that greatness is right around the corner. >> Yep. I always say "Get uncomfortably uncomfortable". >> Pratima: Yes. >> And I loved how she said that today. So one of the big news of the day is VMWare with Stanford announcing that they are investing $15,000,000 in a new Women's Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford. Phenomenal. >> Pratima: Yes. >> And they're really going to start studying diversity and there's so many different gaps that we face, wage gap, age gap, gender gap, you know mothers vs motherless gap, and one of the things that was really interesting that, I've heard this before, that the press release actually cited a McKinsey report that says, "Companies with diversity "on their executive staff are 21% more profitable." >> Yes. >> And that just seems like a, no duh, Kind of thing to me for organizations like VMWare and your other partners in this consortium of Wt Squared to get on board to say, "Well of course." Thought diversity is so important and it actually is demonstrated to impact a companies' profitability. >> Right, yeah. And that's true, I just hope that more people listen to it and internalize it, and organizations internalize that, and what VMWare's doing is fantastic. I mean I'm so proud to be part of this company that's doing this. And you Shelly talked about change right? She said, "I think, right now the way I feel "about this whole thing, is we need to stop talking about "diversity and inclusion, we just need to say "enough is enough, this is important, let's just do it." >> Lisa: We should make this a part of our DNA. >> Exactly. Just make it, why do we have to fight for all this, right? It's just pointless and you know, men have wives and daughters and mothers and you know, It impacts societies as a whole and organizations, and we have so much research on this and what I like about what the Stanford Research Lab is doing is, they're actually working with woman all the way from middle-school to high-school to the executive suite, and that's amazing because research has now shown, there was a report in March 2014 by a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, for Judith Warner, and so she documented, just with the rate of change, like I talked with all the percentages and the number of women CEOs, just with that rate of change, the equality of men and women at the top will not occur until 2085. >> Lisa: Oh my goodness. >> That's 63 years from now. That means all our daughters would be retired by then. My daughters was born on 2013 and so she won't live in a world of female leaders that's representative of the population. And so that realization actually really, really, really broke my heart and that made me want to write this book, to create these role models. And what Stanford is doing, is they're going to work on this and I'm hoping that they can make that transition sooner. Like we don't have to wait 'till 2085. I want this for my daughter. >> It has to be accelerated, yes. >> It has to be accelerated and I think all of us need to do that, our daughters should be in the 20s, 30s when this happens, not when they're in their 70s. >> Lisa: And retired. >> And retired, I mean we don't want that. And we don't know how that number's going to get pushed further, right? Like if we don't do anything now... It. (exhales) >> Lisa: Right. 2085 becomes, what? >> I know! It's insane. >> In the spirit of being persistent, with the theme of this 3rd annual Wt Squared being Inclusion in Action, you're a manager and in a people or hiring role, tell me about the culture on your team and how your awareness and your passion for creating change here, lasting change. How are you actually creating that inclusion through action in your role at VMWare? >> So what I do is when I have to hire engineers on my team, I talk to my recruiter, have a conversation, I'm like, "I need more diversity." It's just not women, I want diversity with the men too. I want different races, different cultures because I believe that if I have a diverse team I'm going to be successful. So it's almost like I'm being selfish but that is very important. So I have that conversation with my recruiters, so I kind have an expectation set. And then we go through their hiring process and I'm very aware of just the hiring panel, like who I put on the panel, I make sure to have at least a women on the panel and have some diversity. My team right now is not really that diverse and I'm working hard to make that because it is hard, you know the pipeline has to get built at a certain point, and then start getting those resumes, but I try to have at least one female on the panel, and during the selection process the first thing I'll tell them is, let's get the elephant out of the room, age, gender, whatever, like let's take that out, let's just talk about skills and how well this person has done in an interview. And that's how I conducted and you know I've had fairly good success of hiring women on the team. But I've also seen that it's hard to retain women because they tend to drop-out faster than the men and so it's constant, it's just constant work to make that happen. >> Yeah. I wish we had more time to talk about retention because it is a huge issue. So the book is Nevertheless, She Persisted. Where can people get a copy of the book? >> So you can get it on Amazon, that's, I think, the best place to get it. You can also get it from my publisher's site which is FriesenPress. >> Excellent well Pratima thank you so much for stopping by. >> Thank you. >> And sharing your passion, how your persisting, and how you're also helping more of us learn how to find that voice and pursue our passions, thank you. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching. We are TheCUBE on the ground at VMWare for the Third Annual Women Transforming Technology Event. I'm Lisa Martin thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco. It's theCUBE! Covering RedHat Summit 2018. Brought to you by Red Hat. >> Alright welcome back, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Red Hat 2018. I'm John Furrier, the co host of theCUBE with John Troyer, co-founder of TechReckoning Advisory Firm. Next guest is Chris Wright, Vice President and CTO Chief of Technology of his Red Hat. Great to see you again, thanks for joining us today. >> Yeah, great to be here. >> Day one of three days of CUBE coverage, you got, yesterday had sessions over there in Moscone South, yet in classic Red Hat fashion, good vibes, things are rocking. Red Hat's got a spring to their step, making some good calls technically. >> Chris: That's right. >> Kubernetes' one notable, Core OS Acquisition, really interesting range, this gives, I mean I think people are now connecting the dots from the tech side, but also now on the business side, saying "Okay we can see now some, a wider market opportunity for Red Hat". Not just doing it's business with Linux, software, you're talking about a changing modern software architecture, for application developers. I mean, this is a beautiful thing, I mean. >> Chris: It's not just apps but it's the operator, you know, operation side as well, so we've been at it for a long time. We've been doing something that's really similar for quite some time, which is building a platform for applications, independent from the underlying infrastructure, in the Linux days I was X86 hardware, you know, you get this HeteroGenius hardware underneath, and you get a consistent standardized application run time environment on top of Linux. Kubernetes is helping us do that at a distributive level. And it's taken some time for the industry to kind of understand what's going on, and we've been talking about hybrid cloud for years and, you really see it real and happening and it's in action and for us that distributed layer round Kubernetes which just lights up how do you manage distributed applications across complex infrastructure, makes it really real. >> Yeah it's also timing's everything too right? I mean, good timing, that helps, the evolution of the business, you always have these moments and these big waves where you can kind of see clunking going on, people banging against each other and you know, the glue layers developing, and then all of a sudden snaps into place, and then it just scales, right? So you're starting to see that, we've seen this in other ways, TCPIP, Linux itself, and you guys are certainly making that comparison, being Red Hat, but what happens next is usually an amazing growth phase. Again, small little, and move the ball down the field, and then boom, it opens up. As a CTO, you have to look at that 20 mile stair now, what's next? What's that wave coming that you're looking at in the team that you have on Red Hat's side and across your partners? What's the wave next? >> Well there's a lot of activity going on that's beyond what we're building today. And so much of it, first of all, is happening in Open Source. So that itself is awesome. Like we're totally tuned into these environments, it's core to who we are, it's our DNA to be involved in these Open Source communities, and you look across all of the different projects and things like machine learning and blockchain, which are really kind of native Open Source developments, become really relevant in ways that we can change how we build functionality and build business, and build business value in the future. So, those are the things that we look at, what's emerging out of the Open Source communities, what's going to help continue to accelerate developers' ability to quickly build applications? Operations team's ability to really give that broad scale, policy level view of what's going on inside your infrastructure to support those applications, and all the data that we're gathering and needing to sift through and build value from inside the applications, that's very much where we're going. >> Well I think we had a really good example of machine learning used in an everyday enterprise application this morning, they kicked off the keynote, talking about optimizing the schedule and what sessions were in what rooms, you know, using an AI tool right? >> Chris: That's right. >> And so, that's reality as you look at, is that going to be the new reality as you're looking into the future of building in these kind of machine learning opportunities into everyday business applications that, you know, in the yesteryear would've been just some, I don't know, visual basic, or whatever, depending on how far back you look, right? You know, is that really going to be a reality in the enterprise? It seems so. >> It is, absolutely. And so what we're trying to do is build the right platforms, and build the right tools, and then interfaces to those platforms and tools to make it easier and easier for developers to build, you know, what we've been calling "Intelligent Apps", or applications that take advantage of the data, and the insights associated with that data, right in the application. So, the scheduling optimization that you saw this morning in the keynote is a great example of that. Starting with basic rules engine, and augmenting that with machine learning intelligence is one example, and we'll see more and more of that as the sophisticated tools that are coming out of Open Source communities building machine learning platforms, start to specialize and make it easier and easier to do specific machine learning tasks within an application. So you don't have to be a data scientist and an app developer all in one, you know, that's, there's different roles and different responsibilities, and how do we build, develop, life cycle managed models is one question, and how do we take advantage of those models and applications is another question, and we're really looking at that from a Red Hat perspective. >> John F: And the enterprises are always challenged, they always (mumbles), Cloud Native speaks to both now, right? So you got hybrid cloud and now multi-cloud on the horizon, set perfectly up with Open Shift's kind of position in that, kind of the linchpin, but you got, they're still two different worlds. You got the cloud-native born in the cloud, and that's pretty much a restart-up these days, and then you've got legacy apps with container, so the question is, that people are asking is, okay, I get the cloud-native, I see the benefits, I know what the investment is, let's do it upfront, benefits are horizontally scalable, asynchronous, et cetera et cetera, but I got legacy. I want to do micro-servicing, I want to do server-less, do I re-engineer that or just containers, what's the technical view and recommendation from Red Hat when you say, when the CIO says or enterprise says, "Hey I want to go cloud native for over here and new staff, but I got all this old staff, what do I do?". Do I invest more region, or just containerize it, what's the play? >> I think you got to ask kind of always why? Why you're doing something. So, we hear a lot, "Can I containerize it?", often the answer is yes. A different question might be, "What's the value?", and so, a containerized application, whether it's an older application that's stateful or whether it's a newer cloud-native application (mumbles), horizontally scalable, and all the great things, there's value potentially in just the automation around the API's that allow you to lifecycle manage the application. So if the application itself is still continuing to change, we have some great examples with some of our customers, like Keybank, doing what we call the "Fast moving monolith". So it's still a traditional application, but it's containerized and then you build a CICD model around it, and you have automation on how you deliver and deploy production. There's value there, there's also value in your existing system, and maybe building some different services around the legacy system to give you access, API access, to data in that system. So different ways to approach that problem, I don't think there's a one size fits all. >> So Chris, some of this is also a cultural and a process shift. I was impressed this morning, we've already talked with two Red Hat customers, Macquarie and Amadeus, and you know Macquarie was talking about, "Oh yeah we moved 40 applications in a year, you know, onto Open Shift", and it turns out they were already started to be containerized and dockerized and, oh yeah yeah you know, that is standard operating procedure, for that set of companies. There's a long tail of folks who are still dealing with the rest of the stuff we've had to deal, the stack we've had to deal with for years. How is Red Hat, how are you looking at this kind of cultural shift? It's nice that it's real, right? It's not like we're talking about microservices, or some sort of future, you know, Jettison sort of thing, that's going to save us all, it's here today and they're doing it. You know, how are you helping companies get there? >> So we have a practice that we put in place that we call the "Open Innovation Lab". And it's very much an immersive practice to help our customers first get experience building one of these cloud native applications. So we start with a business problem, what are you trying to solve? We take that through a workshop, which is a multi-week workshop, really to build on top of a platform like Open Shift, real code that's really useful for that business, and those engineers that go through that process can then go back to their company and be kind of the change agent for how do we build the internal cultural shift and the appreciation for Agile development methodologies across our organization, starting with some of this practical, tangible and realist. That's one great example of how we can help, and I think part of it is just helping customers understand it isn't just technology, I'm a technologist so there's part of me that feels pain to say that but the practical reality is there's whole organizational shifts, there's mindset and cultural changes that need to happen inside the organization to take advantage of the technology that we put in place to build that optimize. >> John F: And roles are changing too, I'll see the system admin kind of administrative things getting automated way through more operating role. I heard some things last week at CubeCon in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I want to share some quotes and I want to get your reaction. >> Alright. >> This is the hallway, I won't attribute the names but, these were quotes, I need, quote, "I need to get away from VP Engine firewalls. I need user and application layer security with unfishable access, otherwise I'm never safe". Second quote, "Don't confuse lift and shift with running cloud-native global platform. Lot of actors in this system already running seamlessly. Versus say a VM Ware running environment wherein V Center running in a data center is an example of a lift and shift". So the comments are one for (mumbles) cloud, you need to have some sort of security model, and then two, you know we did digital transformation before with VM's, that was a different world, but the new world's not a lift and shift, it's re-architect of a cloud-native global platform. Your reaction to those two things, and what that means to customers as they think about what they're going to look like, as they build that bridge to the future. >> Security peace is critical, so every CIO that we're talking to, it's top of mind, nobody wants to be on the front page of The Wall Street Journal for the wrong reasons. And so understanding, as you build a micro-services software architected application, the components themselves are exposed to services, those services are API's that become potentially part of the attack surface. Thinking of it in terms of VPN's and firewalls, is the kind of traditional way that we manage security at the edge. Hardened at the edge, soft in the middle isn't an acceptable way to build a security policy around applications that are internally exposing parts of their API's to other parts of the application. So, looking at it for me, application use case perspective, which portions of the application need to be able to talk to one another, and it's part of why somebody like Histio are so exciting, because it builds right in to the platform, the notion of mutual authentication between services. So that you know you're talking to a service that you're allowed to talk to. Encryption associated with that, so that you get another level of security for data and motion, and all of that is not looking at what is the VPN or what is the VLAN tag, or what is the encapsulation ID, and thinking layer two, layer three security, it's really application layer, and thinking in terms of that policy, which pieces of the application have to talk to each other, and nobody else can talk to that service unless it's, you know, understood that that's an important part for how the application works. So I think, really agree, and you could even say DevSecOps to me is something that I've come around to. Initially I thought it was a bogus term and I see the value in considering security at every step of build, test and deliver an application. Lift and shift, totally different topic. What does it mean to lift and shift? And I think there's still, some people want to say there's no value in lift and shift, and I don't fully agree, I think there's still value in moving, and modernizing the platform without changing the application, but ultimately the real value does come in re-architecting, and so there's that balance. What can you optimize by moving? And where does that free up resources to invest in that real next generation application re-architecting? >> So Chris, you've talked about machine learning, right? Huge amounts of data, you've just talked about security, we've talked about multi-cloud, to me that says we might have an issue in the future with the data layer. How are people thinking about the data layer, where it lives, on prem, in the cloud, think about GDPR compliance, you know, all that sort of good stuff. You know, how are you and Red Hat, how are you asking people to think about that? >> So, data management is a big question. We build storage tooling, we understand how to put the bytes on disc, and persist, and maintain the storage, it's a different question what are the data services, and what is the data governance, or policy around placement, and I think it's a really interesting part of the ecosystem today. We've been working with some research partners in the Massachusetts Open Cloud and Boston University on a project called "Cloud Dataverse", and it has a whole policy question around data. 'Cause there, scientists want to share data sets, but you have to control and understand who you're sharing your data sets with. So, it's definitely a space that we are interested in, understand, that there's a lot of work to be done there, and GDPR just kind of shines a light right on it and says policy and governance around where data is placed is actually fundamental and important, and I think it's an important part, because you've seen some of the data issues recently in the news, and you know, we got to get a handle on where data goes, and ultimately, I'd love to see a place where I'm in control of how my data is shared with the rest of the world. >> John F: Yeah, certainly the trend. So a final question for you, Open Source absolutely greatness going on, more and more good things are happening in projects, and bigger than ever before, I mean machine learning's a great example, seeing not just code snippets, code bases being you know, TensorFlow jumps out at me (mumbles), what are you doing here this year that's new and different from an Open Source standpoint, but also from a Red Hat standpoint that's notable that people should pay attention to? >> Well, one of the things that we're focused on is that platform layer, how do we enable a machine learning workload to run well on our platform? So it starts actually at the very bottom of the stack, hardware enablement. You got to get GPUs functional, you got to get them accessible to virtual machine based applications, and container based applications, so that's kind of table stakes. Accelerate a machine learning workload to make it usable, and valuable, to an enterprise by reducing the training and interference times for a machine learning model. Some of the next questions are how do we embed that technology in our own products? So you saw Access Insights this morning, talking about how we take machine learning, look at all of the data that we're gathering from the systems that our customers are deploying, and then derive insights from those and then feed those back to our customers so they can optimize the infrastructure that they're building and running and maintaining, and then, you know, the next step is that intelligent application. How do we get that machine learning capability into the hands of the developer, and pair the data scientist with the developers so you build these intelligent applications, taking advantage of all the data that you're gathering as an enterprise, and turning that into value as part of your application development cycle. So those are the areas that we're focused on for machine learning, and you know, some of that is partnering, you know, talking through how do we connect some of these services from Open Shift to the cloud service providers that are building some of these great machine learning tools, so. >> Any new updates on (mumbles) the success of Red Hat just in the past two years? You see the growth, that correlates, that was your (mumbles) Open Shift, and a good calls there, positioned perfectly, analysts, financial analysts are really giving you guys a lot of props on Wall Street, about the potential revenue growth opportunities on the business side, what's it like now at Red Hat? I mean, do you look back and say, "Hey, it was only like three years ago we did this", and I mean, the vibes are good, I mean share some inside commentary on what's happening inside Red Hat. >> It's really exciting. I mean, we've been working on these things for a long time. And, the simplest example I have is the combination of tools like the JBoss Middleware Suite and Linux, well they could run well together and we have a lot of customers that combine those, but when you take it to the next step, and you build containerized services and you distribute those broadly, you got a container platform, you got middleware components, you know, even providing functionality as services, you see how it all comes together and that's just so exciting internally. And at the same time we're growing. And a big part of-- >> John F: Customers are using it. >> Customers are using it, so putting things into production is critical. It's not just exciting technology but it's in production. The other piece is we're growing, and as we grow, we have to maintain the core of who we are. There's some humility that's involved, there's some really core Open Source principles that are involved, and making sure that as we continue to grow, we don't lose sight of who we are, really important thing for our internal culture, so. >> John F: Great community driven, and great job. Chris, thanks for coming on theCUBE, appreciate it. Chris Wright, CTO of Red Hat, sharing his insights here on theCUBE. Of course, bringing you all a live action as always here in San Francisco in Moscone West, for Red Hat Summit 2018, we'll be right back. (electronic music) (intense music)

you hey welcome back everybody jeff rick here with the cube we're at the Accenture technology vision 2018 pre-event the actual paper comes out in a couple days we got invited for a preview or excited to be here we came last year and it's pretty wild you know five big trends influencing the technology world Accenture is at the leading edge so we're happy to be here we've got a new guest Jason well she's the managing director of a centers extended reality are you doing Rachel it see you nice to meet you so you guys are not doing a our VR ER BR you've come up with it you coulda grabbed at all in extender II out right sort of XR every one of it I like it so you're running this business you know give us kind of an update how its evolving you know we see the devices the movies are starting to come out but it's still so nascent it is but at you know what we're seeing we've seen a lot of it up shift from a year ago two years ago all this stuff was being done in the Innovation Lab so the corporate Innovation Lab sitting in Silicon Valley they were trying things out for concepts of what have you we've seen a ship now where it's the business starting to push the agenda so it maybe it's the VP of Operations maybe it's the chief Learning Officer and I think that trends a big difference because it starts to mean the business is seeing this as it could provide value now still we're seeing a lot of pilots so we've kind of moved into proof of concept to the pilot to some major deployments but it's a pretty big trend that we've done that that shift even you know we're starting to see our P's come out right but again is another key signpost that this is moving beyond that just test and learn phase - actually real implementations so it's pretty interesting we talked to bail BAP Studios and they make movies and MBR and it's you know it's kind of an interesting parallel when they used to make movies that's just filming what used to be on stage right and it takes a while to understand kind of this new platform and to start to operate in that new platform are there some examples that you can that you've seen where it's no longer just a 3d version of what I used to do is shoot 2d but actually starting to take advantage of this new medium yeah well I think in terms of the different types of trainings we look at immersive training or VR training probably the hottest segment of that you know we kind of have the world broken down into ten different segments the immersive training is definitely the hottest of the ten segments that we're seeing client interested and partially because it applies to every organization right now so they move them from CBT to VR type training and I think in that space there's still a lot of lot to be learned around okay how do I reinvent that experience I can do things in three dimensions I could create personally the idea of presence where I'm actually kind of getting to the subconscious level of people if I can recreate an experience to them it's pretty real right so just understanding how to use the medium and not just repeat that same CBT based training right it's an evolution that we're going through right now so you're the creative directors the experienced designers that are used to 2d or having to relearn this this medium and that's a specific use case where we're seeing the you know some of those challenges and some of the opportunities and what is it about that what are some of the things are discovering that that is either makes it easier learning better learning is it just a different type of experience or there is the type of experience that they can now throw in a training environment so different than they could ever represent before I think you know welcome one of the things is you can do training in in situations you couldn't have done before you know put somebody in a nuclear power plant meltdown but I can't really do that in the real world I can drop you into VR and again this idea if you do it really well you see the mind it's pretty much real right I could put someone through that pressure cooker multiple times over and over again and it's just I can't do that in the real world if I do that two dimensions on a flat screen I'm not getting that that lingering effect where you know I actually felt like I wanted it experience and you know the military's been doing that for years so recreating types of situational awareness simulations to basically get people prepared for that now you see companies like Walmart Paul talked about right at Walmart doing it for Black Friday right it's kind of crazy that's it out all black right exactly weeks before so I think those kind of you think about inclusion and diversity training you know sexual harassment training so things that the medical field has been looking at VR for like treating post-traumatic stress syndrome or you know addiction therapy they've been doing that for a number of years now so you know how do you take that in a good way in an ethical way and start to apply that right to training and you know the thing there is is I think this is why we're in the early stages some of that is we need more data around the effectiveness of it so the academic research says it's gonna be better like because because that's spatial awareness the fact that it's right I've recreated a real situation in my head but we just need more metrics and more data that shows the really the powerful effect of that over time okay I think that's what some of our clients are waiting for and you said there's two kind of 10 categories you guys have broken it down what are some of the other leading ones beyond education shirts so you know if I take on just run through them real quick we kind of break the world into enterprise use cases where the user of the glasses of the headsets is an employee and then the consumer base or customer base use cases on the enterprise side we're looking at the value chain from design and engineering kind of factoring in operations is the second category immersive training being the third pretty much the digital workplace so the idea if you saw the demo the teleportation so I replaced videoconferencing with with VR conferencing I don't know if I'm ready for that hey so how about tell the conference's we save that one to the end yeah I don't want to say I want to be sitting at home you know in my lounge where I'm trying to die and then you get stuck on the conference and then on the consumer side there's sort of the obvious use case immersive marketing right we've had digital marketing for years we had the web we had mobile now we're gonna have AR and VR that's gonna be a big advertising space for for brands then you look at companies like unity are doubling down and how they're gonna enable that so immersive marketing the ARV our commerce post-sale services and and then you know a big category is the you know not just a our VR and how it enables the value chain but how is it going to become a product feature for brand new products the companies to go after so you know I've been a reality in the car we already have HUDs up displays but we have driverless cars you're gonna start to put v are inside the driverless cars as an entertainment platform so it's a whole different sort of segment beyond just how do i how do i been able to value troy how do i actually start to to create new products to services a new monetization so early really still to figure out you know what to do with this medium which you really haven't had before and in fact the guys that bail Bob said don't only they have to figure out to do the medium but the only way to do it is to actually do the development inside the medium you know you don't develop outside then go in and check it out it doesn't work you got to be actually in the medium itself to be doing really effective velvet well I think what's interesting is you look at the studios that are really kind of moved into the VR space for entertainment Penrose Studios here in San Francisco great studio they're just so amazed amazing work they are ones that are pushing the envelope just like the movie industry did on the tools to create VR right well let those those those innovations will find their way into the main street tools for those of us who aren't coding and entertainment you know but we still need the tools to create these types of experiences alright Jason well it's gonna be an exciting year and I look forward to to an update a year from now that sounds good all right he's Jason wells I'm Jeff Rick you're watching the queue from the Accenture technology vision 2018 thanks for watching to catch you next time

>> Host: Live from Las Vegas. It's The Cube! Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. (electronic music) Brought to you by Oracle. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're here live at the Mandalay Bay for Oracle's Modern CX Show, Modern Customer Experience, this is the Cube, I'm John Furrier. My co-host, Peter Burris, two days of wall-to-wall coverage. Day two, my next guest is Katrina Gosek, Senior Director Commerce Product Strategy, (mumbles) Oracle upper world a few years ago, and Alistair Galbraith Sr, Director of CX, Customer Experience Innovation Lab with Oracle. Welcome to The Cube, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, welcome. >> So commerce is part of the story, it's just not marketing, there's transactions involved, there's R & D, there's a lot of technology. The show here is the common theme of just modernizing the customer experience, which is good, because it's the outcomes. But commerce is one of them. Give us the update, what's hot for you guys this week? >> Yeah, I think what's different this year, from any other year in the past is the pace of innovation is changing, because I think there's so much disruption in the commerce space, and particularly in retail and also B to B commerce. There's lots of new expectations from customers. I know we've been saying that for years, right? But I think the technologies now, that can enable some new experiences, have rapidly changed. Now it's completely fathomable to leverage AI to drive more high-end personalization or to leverage internet of things, to embed commerce more into everyday experience. >> John: Where's the innovation in retail? 'Cause retail's not a stranger to data. They've had data models going back, but certainly digital changes things, they're at the edge of the networks, so it's a little bit of internet of things meets consumer data, the data's huge if you can get the identity of the person. That seems to be the key conversation: how do you guys enable that to take advantage of the sea of data that you're providing form the data cloud, third party and first party data? >> Well I think there's a lot of fun approaches. Oracle has a technology called the Oracle ID Graph, which starts to merge a lot of identities across channels, so where customers are using data cloud, that can inform those micro interactions as they move between channels, and I think one of the trends we've been seeing this year that we're talking about as My Channel, is that customers no longer really complete one interaction or one transaction in one place. They might start on mobile, move to voice, move into a physical store, and we're trying to track that customer in all of those places, so a lot of our focus, and you see data cloud moves into AI, is enabling brands to move this data around more easily without needing to know everything about the customer themselves. >> John: Well that's the key for the experience of the customer, because they don't want to have to answer the same questions again if they're on a chat bot, and they've already been at a transaction. Knowing what someone's doing at any given time is good contextual data. >> Alistair: Yep. >> Well it's funny you say that, because when we talk to customers or end consumers, they're not thinking, "I need more artificial intelligence, "I need more data around my experience, "I need internet of things", they're thinking, "I want convenience, I want this to be fast and quick, "I want you to know me as a brand, "I don't want to have to re-enter everything. "If I'm talking to a customer service agent, "versus someone in the store, versus interacting online". So data's a huge part of that, the challenge is how do you make it consistent? >> John: Katrina has a great point: it's not the technology, it's about what they're trying to do. >> Katrina: Yeah, exactly, very much. >> Well the experience comes back to, in many respects, convenience, and, "I want you to sustain "the state of where I am in my journey for me". >> Katrina: Correct, yeah. >> Or at least not blow my state up. So it's interesting, the journey used to be a role or a context thing, and now we're adding physical location to it, as well as device. So go back to this notion of new experiences. 'Cause it's got to be more than, you can look at something on your phone and then transact on your phone. What are some of the new experiences on the horizon? 'Cause that is a lot to do with where you guys think digital technology's going to go. >> I think some of those experiences are micro-interactions, so that could be people are using voice shopping, but not for the entire purchase, just a re-order this thing, what's the status of this thing? And brands are also using the data that they're gathering to tweak and adjust those interactions. So we're seeing data coming from real world devices and IOT changing the expectation of the customer, as they, maybe, we showed some stories where people are re-ordering products using voice, and then when they shift between these channels, that micro piece of data is really changing that interaction. The other challenge we're seeing is the consistency of the interaction, you said yourself, not only it's the complexity of "what did I do?", but if I do something here and I do something here, I should get the same experience both times. >> So we're talking mostly at this point about the B to C, the consumer world. In many respects, some of the most interesting experiences, we can envisage in the B to B world, where a community of sellers is selling to a community of buyers, and the state that's really important is how does that buying community interact with each other? As they discover things and share information. So how do you see this notion of new experiences starting to manifest itself in the B to B world? >> Katrina: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I often, we work with both B to C and B to B clients, and I actually think B to B has always been more focused on personalization, because they do have so much information about their customers, contract data, a lot of information about the buyer, the companies, they've always done kind of online custom personalized catalogs. So I think there's a lot that B to C can learn from B to B about how to leverage that data to personalize experiences. >> John: And vice-versa too, it's interesting, to that point, the B to C is a leading indicator on the experience side, but B to B's got the blocking and tackling down, if they have the data. 'Cause having the data, you get the goods. Okay, so here's the question for you: with the consumers going to digital, you're seeing massive, we were reporting yesterday, here on The Cube and also on siliconhill.com, as well as Adage, not that we didn't predict this, but ad spend now on digital has surpassed TV for the first time. Which is an indicator, but the ad tech world's changing, because how people are engaging with the customer is changing, so the question is, what technology is going to help transition those ad dollars, from banner ads to older formats to something more compelling and using data? 'Cause you can imagine retail being less about click, buy, to sharing data. So the spend's going to only grow on advertising or reaching consumers. That conversion, that experience is going to have to move from direct response clicking, to more experience, what tech is out there? >> Well, I think the biggest challenge has always been tracking and personalizing for a unique interaction. Just the sheer volume of data that's coming in, it's just too hard to consume. So I think the blend of AI and AI with the ability to tweak, adjust, look at multi-variate tests, and change the interaction as it goes, that's going to really massively affect the journeys for retailers, and I think the big benefit as brands move to the cloud, the cost of innovation, the cost of trying something and failing is so much less, and the pace of innovation is so much faster, I think we're seeing people try new things with the data they've got. Find out what works and what doesn't. >> Here's a question for you guys. We're talking to Jess Cahill, when this came up yesterday as well, Peter brought this up as part of the big data action going on with the AI and whatnot. Batch to real time is a shift, and this is clear here in the show that the batch is there, but still an older, but real time data in motion consumers in motion are out there, so the real time is now the key. Can you comment on that? >> I think it goes back to what Alistair was saying earlier about those micro-moments. I think transacting in new and unexpected places, ways, I think that's the key, and that's actually a huge challenge for our customers, because you have to be able to use that data in real time, because that customer is standing there with their phone, or in front of Alexa, or a speaker. >> John: It's an opportunity. >> It's a huge opportunity, and I think those opportunities are everywhere now. In a couple of years be the refrigerator, if you're re-ordering groceries, leveraging the screen, so I think that's going to be the challenge, but I think we've got time to help our customers figure out how to leverage that in real time. I think staying nimble and agile is going to be key and failing fast, and I guess a more positive way to say this-- >> The Agile Marketer, I think we had Roland Smart on yesterday, he literally wrote the book. But this is interesting, if you have the data, you can do these kinds of things. So the question is, certainly your point about the refrigerator and all these different things is going to create the omni-channel nightmare. It's not going to be, certainly multi-multi-omni. It's going to be too many challenges to deal with. >> Alistair: I think we prefer to see it as the omni-channel dream, than the nightmare. (group laughs) >> So many channels, there's no more channels, right? >> Well I think that's where things like Marketing Cloud, things like Integration Cloud help orchestrate that omni-channel journey, so that to your point on marketing and ad-spend, being able to analyze whether a benefit or promotion I showed during one micro-interaction affected something somewhere else, is so challenging but so important when you're moving this ad spend around. And I think where orchestrating and joining these micro-moments together, it's really where we're focusing a lot of our investment at the moment. >> One of the big things that's happening in the industry today is we're starting to develop techniques, and approaches, methods, for conceptualizing how a real thing is turned into a digital representation. IBM calls and not to mention them, or GE, perhaps more of a customer ... (group laughs) Yeah, I just did. >> That's all right. >> This notion of a digital twin. Commerce succeeds, where online electronic commerce succeeds as we are more successful at representing goods and services digitally. What's the relationship between IOT and some of these techniques for manifesting things digitally? And commerce, because commerce can expand its portfolio, things it can cover, as more of these things can be successfully digitally represented? >> I think that's key, and that's actually one of the predictions that we talked about in our keynote is how do you represent new ways of representing the physical store, the physical space with customers, so for me, I think something that probably Back to the Future or Judy Jetson, like a few years ago, augmented reality, or virtual reality, I think now we're going to see that more. We're starting to see it more with furniture sales, for example, you're on your iPad at home, and you can put the couch you've chosen in the space, right there with you, and see if it fits, but you're in your home, you don't have to go to the furniture store, and kind of guess with your tape measure whether the couch fits or not. And I think that's applicable in B to B as well, as 3D CAD drawings, you can kind of see them in VR, or AR. >> Amazon just announced Look, yesterday, which is the selfie tool that allows you to see what you're wearing. >> I think we're going to see a lot more of it in the coming years. >> Well, in many respects, it also, going back to this, we asked the question earlier about B to B, B to C, and the ability to represent that community. We're going to start seeing more of a household approach, as to just a consumer approach, and I think you just mentioned a great one. When we are successfully, or when we are willing to start capturing more data about our physical house or what's going on inside, so that we can make more informed decisions, with others, about how we want to do things, has an enormous impact on the quality of the experience, and where people are going to go to make their purchases. >> Alistair: Definitely, and I think that as we try and merge those experiences between B to B and B to C, what we know about someone as a consumer also directly affects their buying decisions, as a B to B employee buying for their brand. And that just increases the sheer volume of data that people are trying to manage and test and orchestrate. I think we're seeing a shift not only in people being prepared to surrender some degree of privacy for a increased experience, but we're also seeing people trusting in that virtual experience being a reality when they buy. So people have a much higher trust level in AR, if I visualize a couch and then buy it, I've got a degree of faith that when it turns up, it'll be like the one I looked at. And I think that increased trust is really making virtual experiences, digital commerce, so much easier. >> I think that's an interesting point, we had CMO of Time Warner on yesterday, Kristen O'Hara, and she was, we asked her, "Oh yeah, these transformations", big use case, she's on stage, but I asked her, "How was it like the old way? "What would you do before Oracle?", she goes, "Well, there was no old way", they never did. The point is, she said, the point was we became a direct to consumer company, so B to B and B to C are completely merging. So now the B to B's have to be a B to C, inherently because of the direct connect to the consumer. Not saying that their business model's changing, just that's the way the consumer is impacting. >> Peter: Or is it data connection to a consumer? >> A data connection, and where there's gesture data, or interaction data coming in, so this makes, the B to Bs now have to bolt on more stuff, like loyalty, you mentioned loyalty, things of that nature. >> Yeah, if you're a B to B company, you're selling to other businesses, but who are the people on the other business? There are people who shop every day in consumer applications, so their expectations are, "I'm going to have a great personalized experience, "I'm going to be able to leverage the same tools "that I see in my consumer shopping experiences "for my B to B experience, why would it be different?" So I think that's something that B to B is really learning from B to C as well. >> True, but although there seems to be something of a counter-veiling trend, but an increasing number of people are now working at home. So in many respects, where we're going to, is we're talking about experience, not just being online. One of my little heroes, when I was actually trying to do development, a million years ago, was Christopher Alexander. The Timeless Way of Building, which was one of the basic texts that people use for a lot of this customer experience stuff, and the observation that he made was, you talk about spaces, you talk about people moving into spaces to do things in context. And increasingly, the spaces that we have to worry about are not just what's on the screen, but the physical space that people move in, and operate in, an the idea is, I'm going somewhere to do something, and I'm bringing physical space with me. So all of these, the ability to represent space, time and interests and wants and needs, are going to have an enormous impact on experience. Wouldn't you agree? >> Massively, and I think the challenge using that same approach is that people are co-existing in multiple spaces concurrently. They no longer do one thing at the same time. >> Peter: They may be in the same physical place, but have two different contexts associated with it. Like working my home office, I'm both a father, as well as an employee. >> Alistair: Yes. >> And those two sometimes conflict. (Katrina laughs) >> Yeah, absolutely, and you're a consumer and an employee, and as a father, you're potentially affecting the decisions that the rest of your household is making, as well as the decisions that your business is making, all in slightly different ways. But those two experiences with the B to B and B to C, overlap one another. >> Peter: In fact, switching contexts from consumer to father is one of the primary reasons why I lose where I am in the journey. So these are very powerful, and the ability to have the data and then go to your customers, and say, "We will be able to provide that end to end for you, "so that you can provide a consistent "and coherent experience for your customers" is really crucial. Is that kind of where you're taking us? >> Yeah, I mean we've always commerce isn't kind of a standalone little thing, it really connects and glues together so many other types of experiences, so it connects to marketing, it connects to service, you need all of that, to be able to make the experience work. So we're really focused on making sure that it's easy to connect those applications together, that its easy to manage them behind the scenes, and that it appears seamless to the customer on the front end. >> One other thought that I have is, and in many respects, increasingly, because we're going to be able to represent more things digitally, which means we'll be able to move more stuff through commerce platforms. This is where the CX is going to meet the customer road, is in the commerce platforms. Do you guys agree with that? You're going to measure things all over the place, but I'm just curious-- >> John: It's their products, yeah. >> What do you think? Is it going to be increasingly the basis for honest CX? >> Well we're already seeing it become the basis, so I wouldn't say it's a future thing, I think it's been a reality for quite some time, where commerce is the hub that kind of connects, in retail, the store to marketing experiences. >> John: It's bonafide data is what it is too. >> Yeah. >> That's good data. >> Katrina: It holds so much product information, transaction information, customer information, and it just connects and leverages. I don't know if you would agree? >> Alistair: I would agree completely, and I think you look at the fact that most companies ultimately are selling a product, so that's commerce, and I think the transition is that rather than going into the commerce site or the commerce space, you see a lot of brands over the last 12 months have got rid of their store.brand.com thing and just merged their commerce experience into everything else, you're always selling. And we've customers deploy commerce without the cart, but as a product and communication marketing model, to get this tracking data moving around. >> We were talking about Jack earlier, yesterday, Berkowitz, who was talking data, we were talking about data, good data, dirty data, clean data, and data quality in general. >> Katrina: It's a tough problem. >> In context to value, and he said a quote, he said, "Good data makes things happen, "great data makes amazing things happen". And to your point, retail, commerce data, you can't, it's undisputed, it's a transaction. It's a capture in time, and that can be used in context to help other data sets become more robust. >> Well, in many respects it's the most important first person data that you have in your business. >> Katrina: Yeah, and I think from an Oracle perspective, what we're doing with the adaptive intelligent applications for commerce, and for the other applications as well, and particular for commerce is combing that first hand information you have about your products and your customers as an online business, but then the immense amount of data that the data cloud has behind the scenes that augments and allows you to automatically personalize, when a customer comes to your storefront, because they're coming already with all the context that they have elsewhere out in the world, and you can combine that with your own data, and I think really enhance the experience. >> John: Yeah it's funny, we were joking yesterday, Oracle went to bed a software company, woke up a data company. >> Katrina: Yeah (laughs). >> So the data cloud is pretty impressive, what's happened there and what that's doing. >> Katrina: It's amazing, it's a huge differentiator for us. >> Huge differentiator. Okay, final word, I'd like both you guys to just quickly comment to end this segment, awesome segment on commerce and data, which we love. But your reaction to the show, what's the bottom line, what's exciting you this week? Share with the folks, each of you, a quick soundbite of what's happening here and the impact people should know about. >> Sure from a commerce perspective, this is the first year where we've got a 50/50 split in our customer base, so we're seeing a lot of our un-premise customers move to cloud, which is great, and we're really growing our commerce cloud customer base. I'm very excited about that. >> And you're trying to get 100% now, it's never going to be a hundred. >> Katrina: (laughs) Yeah, we need to work with customers and what's right for them, but yeah, it's very exciting right now. >> Alistair, your take? >> I think for me, it's just the sheer pace of innovation, we're seeing brands go from un-premised stories that would take 12, 15, 18 months to add new features, make changes to small nimble brands rolling out incredible innovative features in 12, 18 week time frames, and we're seeing more people having more discussions around the art of the possible. >> John: All right, Katrina, Alistair, great comment, great insight, great conversation about data and commerce, of course cloud, it's the marketing clouds, all cloud world, it's commerce cloud, it's data cloud, it's just the cloud (laughs). I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris, move live coverage here from Las Vegas, Oracle Modern CX after this short break. (electronic music) >> Host: Robert--