[Music] from the cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston it's the cube covering the IBM think brought to you by IBM welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM think 2020 the digital version of IBM think Bill Smith is here he's the general manager of IBM Global Financing bill thanks for coming on thank you very much for having me up I'm looking forward to it yeah me too so you know I remember the days of the the glory days of IBM you know leasing I used to run the leasing program for a couple of years at IDC and it was just it was an awesome time but things have changed a lot I mean iBM has really transformed its financing army what do we need to know about today's IBM Global Financing well some things are still saying but as you said a lot is different we constantly are celebrating our 40th anniversary this year a big part of our business is now software and services financing a lot of project man Singh we still do a lot of hardware business but it's a much much smaller portion of our thirty billion dollar asset base so it's a great business it was a great business back then when you were involved in it the very profitable and and interesting business today as it was then as I said big difference though a lot of software and services yeah well I've of course I would have mentioned that most if not all mainframes are still leased but now you've expanded it to many many more areas what can you tell us about you know some of the financial metrics you know what's the profile of the business look like yeah sure it's a it's a big business it looks a lot like a bank and we're around 30 billion in asset we do business and you know 40 plus countries around the world 26% return on equity most of the portfolio's very high percentage of that portfolio is investment rate so a couple other key metrics is we we actually issue our own debt we became an SCC registrant a couple years ago we have a you know many debt holders we only have one owner and one equity owner and that's IBM it's a very good business but 2% of IBM's revenue but about 10% of IBM's from yeah well so now this is an important aspect that I want to join to it when people you know look at the IBM balance sheet they'll you know go out or whatever Yahoo Finance and say oh my gosh look at all this debt must be you know I know of course the redhead acquisition is part of that but you're carrying a lot of the debt as part of the financing operation but people need to understand it's a very profitable and very high quality debt and if we could just address that one of the big benefits to becoming an SCC registrant is the amount of transparency that we were able to provide the investors so unlike other captive financing companies they just get rolled in to different units or parts of the books you know we actually report in the segment reporting every quarter we certify just like they you know public company would we're still a wholly owned subsidiary but the level of transparency is really great for the investors which is why you know debt holders were able to Willington by our paper it's still a very client based business we do very specialized structures we only do business and NIT as I told the board many times I'd be on board many times we don't do planes trains and automobiles we only do we only do I see and and really you know 99 percent of our businesses is IBM only so you talked about branching into software and services I'm interested in how the the client base has has transformed as a result of that sure you know there's a lot of digital transformations going on there's still a lot of ERP implementations around the world very large project so we we described it as project financing so if client will come to us and say bill we'd like to match the benefit of this very large GBS or services engagement that the IBM team is leading we like to match the benefit when we have the cash outlay so we'll put a structure together that will delay the payment for when those benefits begin to come online for the enterprise and then match payment with when benefits are actually received it's proven to be a very very effective financing instrument for us but highly effective economic instruments for the clients also gives if I'm you know contracting with IBM services you've got a major incentive for the services organization to deliver value as soon as possible and that aligns everybody doesn't it it absolutely does you know we have a lot of business partners where they'll do similar structures as well so other integrators you know if the redhead acquisition and and clients moving to a hybrid cloud model sometimes there's a migration that will take place between the traditional legacy systems and when they move that cloud well that bubble of been we take Dera so will will finance that migration effort for the client and again to match their cash outlays with when they receive the benefit that I've left from that cloud migration in the day there were tons of leasing companies who would take the risk and predict the residual values and then they'd take the paper and and and then it was just an awesome business and of course the government provided some incentives to do that with the investment tax credit what about things like refurbished equipment is that's still something that you do today or is that a thing of the mainframe pass that's great yeah that's a great question you know it's a it's still a really important and a sustainable business for us we we take equipment back that comes off of a lease or sometimes alone but typically a lease and we will refurbish that or reman factor that equipment and then put it back into market oftentimes it goes into our services organization for them to use with their clients the global technology services typically you know we will we will matram a fact or a remarket about 29,000 IT devices a week 16,000 tons of idea quipment around the in a year around the world so these remanufacturing refurbishing centers so it's a even though the hardware business has come down in its percentage of IBM's business compared to software and services it's still a very very big business as you can see by the the size of the number of equipment and the tonnage what about some of the initiatives that are so you mentioned you know the digital transformation a lot going on with cloud machine intelligence I mean those big projects you know some of them are still multi-year you know seven weeks people say oh there's no more multi-year projects but digital transformations are multi-year projects even though you might take them in chunks but I'm going to capitalize those can I finance them as well what role does does IBM finance play in that you absolutely can and and that is a big big part of our business today though the the client will they look I've got a very large digital transformation project going to take place in four countries we are looking for an opportunity to match those cash outlays with when those countries come online or when we begin to receive the benefits we also want you've been and some of the software that goes with this digital transformation and we also want to spin and the IT infrastructure that's required so we may put those services software and hardware on a different financial instruments but it looks like you know one total bill for the client and it and its global it's a global footprint so we're able to handle the different currencies around the world and and again most importantly match those cash outlays with when the benefits are received so bill you know as long as I've been in this business the IT investments from a CFOs perspective have always been viewed as a higher risk granted higher reward but but you know the the CFOs would say okay you're gonna have to have a little higher IRR for this one because you know the business moves so fast technology changes so quickly how are you seeing the CIO - CFO conversation evolve what's your advice to see iPods in terms of how they talk to two CFO's that's another really good question so I was just on with actually new client this morning one was the F of the other one was a treasurer and they were asking my opinion about this financial instrument and and and getting some advice actually the conversation went look it's not really cost the debt issue the cost of money is always part of the economic decision but oftentimes those clients use financing instrument as a way to manage the asset manage the asset throughout the life the project they also want to focus on the delivery the quality of the delivery I think that takes place during these very very large project financing engagements so the CFO specifically said look I really like business case it's quite clear when we're gonna receive these benefit what I'd like to know Bill is how do you view the risk of the implementation and you know we were able to share with them the risk work that we do with with GBS team our level of confidence that it will be done on time and on budget and the skill level of the of the partner team that's been assigned so it actually has allowed us to have a different conversation with different group or senior level at the account CFO Treasury sometimes the controller you play an important role in de-risking the the business case and as well I mean I would imagine right now in there you know these on certain times that you know IBM Global Financing can provide liquidity to businesses who need it that you you know are confident you know are stable business but might need some help you know getting through this pandemic we can and as you said the what makes us a little different is you know we make credit decisions on what we call arm's length credit visions you know for a standalone albeit at the financing company so we're very very focused on maintaining the right investment grade of the portfolio we're going to make really really good prudent risk decisions you know that being said we have some fabulous IBM clients that have been clients for a long time we work very closely with them understanding their financial structures what's what's important to them and they're very transparent with us about you know with financial challenges they have so we'll continue to provide that liquidity we are going to be very prudent but we'll certainly help those really good clients well last question it's kind of where do you see this going what's your kind of vision for IBM global global finance and give us a little glimpse of the future sure you know I think you'll see us continue to migrate in the direction of the IBM company moves the IBM company is aggressively moving towards a hybrid cloud model we'll continue to provide those migration services will continue to do you know some short-term financing a part of the business we didn't talk about was the commercial financing we provide short-term working capital through IBM 6000 isness partners so to help them with their free cash flow running their businesses you know that's a pretty big business for us we'll do about you know 14 billion or so in financing to that commercial financing business so I'll see that continue as well and then finally I'm sure you'll see us continue to grow the software and services financing as well and we'll stay with the very very high anything rate for whatever is left of IBM's Hardware portfolio point you made about the partner financing is huge like you said it helps them bridge their free cash flow it makes IBM a more attractive partner for through those resellers and partners it does and we've been in that business for a very very long time oftentimes we are one of the you know largest predators for those partners so the liquidity that we provide Danville allow them to run their businesses day to day with that short term working capital is something that we're very committed to you over the long term for IBM product and services so IBM Global Financing a very important and strategic part of IBM's business a differentiator a very few companies actually can provide that type of service to their clients and so bill really appreciate you coming to the Kuban and sharing that with with our audience great to have you back yeah very much Brad you've been a real pleasure - our pleasure as well thank you for watching everybody this is Dave Volante for the cube our continuous coverage of IBM think 2020 we'll be right back right after this short break you're watching the cube [Music] you

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube Conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios today, having a Cube Conversation, you know, with the COVID situation going on we've had to change our business and go pretty much 100% digital. And as part of that process, we wanted to reach out to our community, and talk to some of the leaders out there, because I think leadership in troubling times is even more amplified in it's importance. So we're excited to be joined today by two leaders in our community. First one being John Chambers, a very familiar face from many, many years at Cisco, who's now the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. John, great to see you. >> Jeff, it's a pleasure to be with you again. >> Absolutely. And joining him is Umesh Sachdev, he's the co-founder and CEO of Uniphore. First time on theCUBE, Umesh, great to meet you. >> Jeff, thank you for having me, it's great to be with you. >> You as well, and I had one of your great people on the other day, talking about CX, and I think CX is the whole solution. Why did Uber beat cabs, do you want to stand on a corner and raise your hand in the rain? Or do you want to know when the guy's going to come pick you up, in just a couple minutes? So anyway, welcome. So let's jump into it. John, one of your things, that you talked about last time we talked, I think it was in October, wow how the world has changed. >> Yes. >> Is about having a playbook, and really, you know, kind of thinking about what you want to do before it's time to actually do it, and having some type of a script, and some type of direction, and some type of structure, as to how you respond to situations. Well there's nothing like a disaster to really fire off, you know, the need to shift gears, and go to kind of into a playbook mode. So I wonder if you could share with the viewers, kind of what is your playbook, you've been through a couple of these bumps. Not necessarily like COVID-19, but you've seen a couple bumps over your career. >> So it's my pleasure Jeff. What I'll do is kind of outline how I believe you use an innovation playbook on everything from acquisitions, to digitizing a company, to dealing with crisis. Let's focus on the playbook for crisis. You are right, and I'm not talking about my age, (John laughing) but this is my sixth financial crisis, and been through the late 1990s with the Asian financial crisis, came out of it even stronger at Cisco. Like everybody else we got knocked down in the 2001 tech bubble, came back from it even stronger. Then in 2008, 2009, Great Recession. We came through that one very, very strong, and we saw that one coming. It's my fourth major health crisis. Some of them turned out to be pretty small. I was in Mexico when the bird pandemic hit, with the President of Mexico, when we thought it was going to be terrible. We literally had to cancel the meetings that evening. That's why Cisco built the PLAR Presence. I was in Brazil for the issue with the Zika virus, that never really developed much, and the Olympics went on there, and I only saw one mosquito during the event. It bit me. But what I'm sharing with you is I've seen this movie again and again. And then, with supply chain, which not many people were talking about yet, supply chain crisis, like we saw in Japan with the Tsunami. What's happening this time is you're seeing all three at one time, and they're occurring even faster. So the playbook is pretty simple in crisis management, and then it would be fun to put Umesh on the spot and say how closely did you follow it? Did you agree with issues, or did you disagree, et cetera, on it. Now I won't mention, Umesh, that you've got a review coming up shortly from your board, so that should not affect your answer at all. But the first playbook is being realistic, how much was self-inflicted, how much was market. This one's largely market, but if you had problems before, you got to address them at the same time. The second thing is what are the five to seven things that are material, what you're going to do to lead through this crisis. That's everything from expense management, to cash preservation. It's about how do you interface to your employees, and how do you build on culture. It's about how do you interface to your customers as they change from their top priority being growth and innovation, to a top priority being cost savings, and the ability to really keep their current revenue streams from churning and moving. And it's about literally, how do make your big bets for what you want to look like as you move out of this market. Then it's how do you communicate that to your employees, to your shareholders, to your customers, to your partners. Painting the picture of what you look like as you come out. As basic as that sounds, that's what crisis management is all about. Don't hide, be visible, CEOs should take the role on implementing that playbook. Umesh to you, do you agree? And have fun with it a little bit, I like the give and take. >> I want to see the playbook, do you have it there, just below the camera? (Jeff laughing) >> I have it right here by my side. I will tell you, Jeff, in crisis times and difficult times like these, you count all the things that go right for you, you count your blessings. And one of the blessings that I have, as a CEO, is to have John Chambers as my mentor, by my side, sharing not just the learning that he had through the crisis, but talking through this, with me on a regular basis. I've read John's book more than a few times, I bet more than anybody in the world, I've read it over and over. And that, to me, is preparation going into this mode. One of the things that John has always taught me is when times get difficult, you get calmer than usual. It's one thing that when you're cruising on the freeway and you're asked to put the brakes, but it's quite another when you're in rocket ship, and accelerating, which is what my company situation was in the month of January. We were coming out of a year of 300% growth, we were driving towards another 300% growth, hiring tremendously, at a high pace. Winning customers at a high pace, and then this hit us. And so what I had to do, from a playbook perspective, is, you know, take a deep breath, and just for a couple of days, just slow down, and calmly look at the situation. My first few steps were, I reached out to 15 of our top customers, the CEOs, and give them calls, and said let's just talk about what you're seeing, and what we are observing in our business. We get a sense of where they are in their businesses. We had the benefit, my co-founder works out of Singapore, and runs our Asia business. We had the benefit of picking up the sign probably a month before everyone else did it in the U.S. I was with John in Australia, and I was telling John that "John, something unusual is happening, "a couple of our customers in these countries in Asia "are starting to tell us they would do the deal "a quarter later." And it's one thing when one of them says it, it's another when six of them say it together. And John obviously has seen this movie, he could connect the dots early. He told me to prepare, he told the rest of the portfolio companies that are in his investment group to start preparing. We then went to the playbook that John spoke of, being visible. For me, culture and communication take front seat. We have employees in ten different countries, we have offices, and very quickly, even before the governments mandated, we had all of them work, you know, go work from home, and be remote, because employee safety and health was the number one priority. We did our first virtual all-hands meeting on Zoom. We had about 240 people join in from around the world. And my job as CEO, usually our all-hands meeting were different functional leaders, different people in the group talk to the team about their initiatives. This all-hands was almost entirely run by me, addressing the whole company about what's going to be the situation from my lens, what have we learned. Be very factual. At the same time, communicating to the team that because of the fact that we raised our funding the last year, it was a good amount of money, we still have a lot of that in the bank, so we going to be very secure. At the same time, our customers are probably going to need us more than ever. Call centers are in more demand than ever, people can't walk up to a bank branch, they can't go up to a hospital without taking an appointment. So the first thing everyone is doing is trying to reach call centers. There aren't enough people, and anyways the work force that call centers have around the world, are 50% working from home, so the capacity has dropped. So our responsibility almost, is to step up, and have our AI and automation products available to as many call centers as we can. So as we are planning our own business continuity, and making sure every single employee is safe, the message to my team was we also have to be aggressive and making sure we are more out there, and more available, to our customers, that would also mean business growth for us. But first, and foremost is for us to be responsible citizens, and just make it available where it's needed. As we did that, I quickly went back to my leadership team, and again, the learning from John is usually it's more of a consensus driven approach, we go around the table, talk about a topic for a couple of hours, get the consensus, and move out of the room. My leadership meetings, they have become more frequent, we get together once a week, on video call with my executive leaders, and it's largely these days run by me. I broke down the team into five different war rooms, with different objectives. One of them we called it the preservation, we said one leader, supported by others will take the responsibility of making sure every single employee, their families, and our current customers, are addressed, taken care of. So we made somebody lead that group. Another group was made responsible for growth. Business needs to, you know, in a company that's growing at 300%, and we still have the opportunity, because call centers need us more than ever, we wanted to make sure we are responding to growth, and not just hunkering down, and, you know, ignoring the opportunity. So we had a second war room take care of the growth. And a third war room, lead by the head of finance, to look at all the financial scenarios, do the stress tests, and see if we are going to be ready for any eventuality that's going to come. Because, you know, we have a huge amount of people, who work at Uniphore around the world, and we wanted to make sure their well being is taken care of. So from being over communicative, to the team and customers, and being out there personally, to making sure we break down the teams. We have tremendous talent, and we let different people, set of people, run different set of priorities, and report back to me more frequently. And now, as we have settled into this rhythm, Jeff, you know, as we've been in, at least in the Bay area here, we've been shelter in place for about a month now. As we are in the rhythm, we are beginning to do virtual happy hours, every Thursday evening. Right after this call, I get together with my team with a glass of wine, and we get together, we talk every but work, and every employee, it's not divided by functions, or leadership, and we are getting the rhythm back into the organization. So we've gone and adjusted in the crisis, I would say very well. And the business is just humming along, as we had anticipated, going into this crisis. But I would say, if I didn't have John by my side, if I hadn't read his book, the number of times that I have, every plane ride we've done together, every place we've gone together, John has spoken about war stories. About the 2001, about 2008, and until you face the first one of your own, just like I did right now, you don't appreciate when John says leadership is lonely. But having him by our side makes it easier. >> Well I'm sure he's told you the Jack Welch story, right? That you've quoted before, John, where Jack told you that you're not really a good leader, yet, until you've been tested, right. So you go through some tough stuff, it's not that hard to lead on an upward to the right curve, it's when things get a little challenging that the real leadership shines through. >> Completely agree, and Jack said it the best, we were on our way to becoming the most valuable company in the world, he looked me in the eye and said "John, you have a very good company." And I knew he was about to give me a teaching moment, and I said "What does it take to have a great one?" He said a near death experience. And I thought I did that in '97, and some of the other management, and he said, "No, it's when you went through something "like we went through in 2001, "which many of our peers did die in." And we were knocked down really hard. When we came back from it, you get better. But what you see in Umesh is a very humble, young CEO. I have to remember he's only 34 years old, because his maturity is like he's 50, and he's seen it before. As you tell, he's like a sponge on learning, and he doesn't mind challenging. And what what he didn't say, in his humbleness, is they had the best month in March ever. And again, well over 300% versus the same quarter a year ago. So it shows you, if you're in the right spot, i.e. artificial intelligence, i.e. cost savings, i.e. customer relationship with their customers, how you can grow even during the tough times, and perhaps set a bold vision, based upon facts and a execution plan that very few companies will be able to deliver on today. So off to a great start, and you can see why I'm so honored and proud to be his strategic partner, and his coach. >> Well it's interesting, right, the human toll of this crisis is horrible, and there's a lot of people getting sick, and a lot of people are dying, and all the estimations are a lot more are going to die this month, as hopefully we get over the hump of some of these curves. So that aside, you know, we're here talking kind of more about the, kind of, the business of this thing. And it's really interesting kind of what a catalyst COVID has become, in terms of digital transformation. You know, we've been talking about new ways to work for years, and years, and years, and digital transformation, and all these kind of things. You mentioned the Cisco telepresence was out years, and decades ago. I mean I worked in Mitsubishi, we had a phone camera in 1986, I looked it up today, it was ridiculous, didn't work. But now, it's here, right. Now working from home is here. Umesh mentioned, you know, these huge call centers, now everybody's got to go home. Do they have infrastructure to go home? Do they have a place to work at home? Do they have support to go home? Teachers are now being forced, from K-12, and I know it's a hot topic for you, John, to teach from home. Teach on Zoom, with no time to prep, no time to really think it through. It's just like the kids aren't coming back, we got to learn it. You know I think this is such a transformational moment, and to your point, if this goes on for weeks, and weeks, and months, and months, which I think we all are in agreement that it will. I think you said, John, you know, many, many quarters. As people get new habits, and get into this new flow, I don't think they're going to go back back to the old ways. So I think it's a real, you know, kind of forcing function for digital transformation. And it's, you can't, you can't sit on the sidelines, cause your people can't come to the office anymore. >> So you've raised a number of questions, and I'll let Umesh handle the tough part of it. I will answer the easy part, which is I think this is the new normal. And I think it's here now, and the question is are you ready for it. And as you think about what we're really saying is the video sessions will become such an integral part of our daily lives, that we will not go back to having to do 90% of our work physically. Today alone I've done seven major group meetings, on Zoom, and Google Hangouts, and Cisco Webex. I've done six meetings with individuals, or the key CEOs of my portfolio. So that part is here to stay. Now what's going to be fascinating is does that also lead into digitization of our company, or do the companies make the mistake of saying I'm going to use this piece, because it's so obvious, and I get it, in terms of effectiveness, but I'm not going to change the other things in my normal work, in my normal business. This is why, unfortunately, I think you will see, we originally said, Jeff, you remember, 40% maybe as high as 45% of the Fortune 500 wouldn't exist in a decade. And perhaps 70% of the start-ups wouldn't exist in a decade, that are venture capital backed. I now think, unfortunately, you're going to see 20-35% of the start-ups not exist in 2 years, and I think it's going to shock you with the number of Fortune 500 companies that do not make this transition. So where you're leading this, that I completely agree with, is the ability to take this terrible event, with all of the issues, and again thank our healthcare workers for what they've been able to do to help so many people, and deal with the world the way it is. As my parents who are doctors taught me to do, not the way we wish it was. And then get your facts, prepare for the changes, and get ready for the future. The key would be how many companies do this. On the area Umesh has responsibility for, customer experience, I think you're going to see almost all companies focus on that. So it can be an example of perhaps how large companies learn to use the new technology, not just video capability, but AI, assistance for the agents, and then once they get the feel for it, just like we got the feel for these meetings, change their rhythm entirely. It was a dinner in New York, virtually, when we stopped, six weeks ago, traveling, that was supposed to be a bunch of board meetings, customer meetings, that was easy. But we were supposed to have a dinner with Shake Shack's CEO, and we were supposed to have him come out and show how he does cool innovation. We had a bunch of enterprise companies, and a bunch of media, and subject matter expertise, we ended up canceling it, and then we said why not do it virtually? And to your point, we did it in 24 different locations. Half the people, remember six weeks ago, had never even used Zoom. We had milk shakes, and hamburgers, and french fries delivered to their home. And it was one of the best two hour meetings I've seen. The future is this now. It's going to change dramatically, and Umesh, I think, is going to be at the front edge of how enterprise companies understand how their relationship with their customers is going to completely transform, using AI, conversational AI capability, speech recognition, et cetera. >> Yeah, I mean, Umesh, we haven't even really got into Uniphore, or what you guys are all about. But, you know, you're supporting call centers, you're using natural language technology, both on the inbound and all that, give us the overview, but you're playing on so many kind of innovation spaces, you know, the main interaction now with customers, and a brand, is either through the mobile phone, or through a call center, right. And that's becoming more, and increasingly, digitized. The ability to have a voice interaction, with a machine. Fascinating, and really, I think, revolutionary, and kind of taking, you know, getting us away from these stupid qwerty keyboards, which are supposed to slow us down on purpose. It's still the funniest thing ever, that we're still using these qwerty keyboards. So I wonder if you can share with us a little bit about, you know, kind of your vision of natural language, and how that changes the interaction with people, and machines. I think your TED Talk was really powerful, and I couldn't help but think of, you know, kind of mobile versus land lines, in terms of transformation. Transforming telecommunications in rural, and hard to serve areas, and then actually then adding the AI piece, to not only make it better for the front end person, but actually make it for the person servicing the account. >> Absolutely Jeff, so Uniphore, the company that I founded in 2008. We were talking about it's such a coincidence that I founded the company in 2008, the year of the Great Recession, and here we are again, talking in midst of the impact that we all have because of COVID. Uniphore does artificial intelligence and automation products, for the customer service industry. Call centers, as we know it, have fundamentally, for the last 20, 30 years, not have had a major technology disruption. We've seen a couple of ways of business model disruption, where call centers, you know, started to become offshore, in locations in Asia, India, and Mexico. Where our calls started to get routed around the world internationally, but fundamentally, the core technology in call centers, up until very recently, hadn't seen a major shift. With artificial intelligence, with natural language processings, speech recognition, available in over 100 languages. And, you know, in the last year or so, automation, and RPA, sort of adding to that mix, there's a whole new opportunity to re-think what customer service will mean to us, more in the future. As I think about the next five to seven years, with 5G happening, with 15 billion connected devices, you know, my five year old daughter, she the first thing she does when she enters the house from a playground, she goes to talk to her friend called Alexa. She speaks to Alexa. So, you know, these next generation of users, and technology users will grow up with AI, and voice, and NLP, all around us. And so their expectation of customer service and customer experience is going to be quantum times higher than some of us have, from our brands. I mean, today when a microwave or a TV doesn't work in our homes, our instinct could be to either go to the website of the brand, and try to do a chat with the agent, or do an 800 number phone call, and get them to visit the house to fix the TV. With, like I said with 5G, with TV, and microwave, and refrigerator becoming intelligent devices, you know, I could totally see my daughter telling the microwave "Why aren't you working?" And, you know, that question might still get routed to a remote contact center. Now the whole concept of contact center, the word has center in it, which means, in the past, we used to have these physical, massive locations, where people used to come in and put on their headsets to receive calls. Like John said, more than ever, we will see these centers become dispersed, and virtual. The channels with which these queries will come in would no more be just a phone, it would be the microwave, the car, the fridge. And the receivers of these calls would be anywhere in the world, sitting in their home, or sitting on a holiday in the Himalayas, and answering these situations to us. You know, I was reading, just for everyone to realize how drastic this shift has been, for the customer service industry. There are over 14 million workers, who work in contact centers around the world. Like I said, the word center means something here. All of them, right now, are working remote. This industry was never designed to work remote. Enterprises who fundamentally didn't plan for this. To your point Jeff, who thought digitization or automation, was a project they could have picked next year, or they were sitting on the fence, will now know more have a choice to make this adjustment. There's a report by a top analyst firm that said by 2023, up to 30% of customer service representatives would be remote. Well guess what, we just way blew past that number right away. And most of the CEOs that I talked to recently tell me that now that this shift has happened, about 40% of their workers will probably never return back to the office. They will always remain a permanent virtual workforce. Now when the workforce is remote, you need all the tools and technology, and AI, that A, if on any given day, 7-10% of your workforce calls in sick, you need bots, like the Amazon's Alexa, taking over a full conversation. Uniphore has a product called Akira, which does that in call centers. Most often, when these call center workers are talking, we have the experience of being put on hold, because call center workers have to type in something on their keyboard, and take notes. Well guess what, today AI and automation can assist them in doing that, making the call shorter, allowing the call center workers to take a lot more calls in the same time frame. And I don't know your experience, but, you know, a couple of weekends ago, the modem in my house wasn't working. I had a seven hour wait time to my service provider. Seven hour. I started calling at 8:30, it was somewhere around 3-4:00, finally, after call backs, wait, call back, wait, that it finally got resolved. It was just a small thing, I just couldn't get to the representative. So the enterprises are truly struggling, technology can help. They weren't designed to go remote, think about it, some of the unique challenges that I've heard now, from my customers, is that how do I know that my call center representative, who I've trained over years to be so nice, and empathetic, when they take a pee break, or a bio break, they don't get their 10 year old son to attend a call. How do I know that? Because now I can no more physically check in on them. How do I know that if I'm a bank, there's compliance? There's nothing being said that isn't being, is, you know, supposed to be said, because in a center, in an office, a supervisor can listen in. When everyone's remote, you can't do that. So AI, automation, monitoring, supporting, aiding human beings to take calls much better, and drive automation, as well as AI take over parts of a complete call, by the way of being a bot like Alexa, are sort of the things that Uniphore does, and I just feel that this is a permanent shift that we are seeing. While it's happening because of a terrible reason, the virus, that's affecting human beings, but the shift in business and behavior, is going to be permanent in this industry. >> Yeah, I think so, you know it's funny, I had Marten Mickos on, or excuse me, yeah, Marten Mickos, as part of this series. And I asked him, he's been doing distributed companies since he was doing MySQL, before Sun bought them. And he's, he was funny, it's like actually easier to fake it in an office, than when you're at home, because at home all you have to show is your deliverables. You can't look busy, you can't be going to meetings, you can't be doing things at your computer. All you have to show is your output. He said it's actually much more efficient, and it drives people, you know, to manage to the output, manage to what you want. But I want to shift gears a little bit, before we let you go, and really talk a little bit about the role of government. And John, I know you've been very involved with the Indian government, and the French government, trying to help them, in their kind of entrepreneurial pursuits, and Uniphore, I think, was founded in India, right, before you moved over here. You know we've got this huge stimulus package coming from the U.S. government, to try to help, as people, you know, can't pay their mortgage, a lot of people aren't so fortunate to be in digital businesses. It's two trillion dollars, so as kind of a thought experiment, I'm like well how much is two trillion dollars? And I did the cash balance of the FAANG companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, just looking at Yahoo Finance, the latest one that was there. It's 333 billion, compared to two trillion. Even when you add Microsoft's 133 billion on top, it's still shy, it's still shy of 500 billion. You know, and really, the federal government is really the only people in a position to make kind of sweeping, these types of investments. But should we be scared? Should we be worried about, you know, kind of this big shift in control? And should, do you think these companies with these big balance sheets, as you said John, priorities change a little bit. Should it be, keep that money to pay the people, so that they can stay employed and pay their mortgage, and go buy groceries, and maybe get take out from their favorite restaurant, versus, you know, kind of what we've seen in the past, where there's a lot more, you know, stock buy backs, and kind of other uses of these cash. As you said, if it's a crisis, and you got to cut to survive, you got to do that. But clearly some of these other companies are not in that position. >> So you, let me break it into two pieces, Jeff, if I may. The first is for the first time in my lifetime I have seen the federal government and federal agencies move very rapidly. And if you would have told me government could move with the speed we've seen over the last three months, I would have said probably not. The fed was ahead of both the initial interest rate cuts, and the fed was ahead in terms of the slowing down, i.e. your 2 trillion discussion, by central banks here, and around the world. But right behind it was the Treasury, which put on 4 trillion on top of that. And only governments can move in this way, but the coordination with government and businesses, and the citizens, has been remarkable. And the citizens being willing to shelter in place. To your question about India, Prime Minister Modi spent the last five years digitizing his country. And he put in place the most bandwidth of any country in the world, and literally did transformation of the currency to a virtual currency, so that people could get paid online, et cetera, within it. He then looked at start-ups and job creation, and he positioned this when an opportunity or problem came along, to be able to perhaps navigate through it in a way that other countries might struggle. I would argue President Macron in France is doing a remarkable job with his innovation economy, but also saying how do you preserve jobs. So you suddenly see government doing something that no business can do, with the scale, and the speed, and a equal approach. But at the same time, may of these companies, and being very candid, that some people might have associated with tech for good, or with tech for challenges, have been unbelievably generous in giving both from the CEOs pockets perspective, and number two and three founders perspective, as well as a company giving to the CDC, and giving to people to help create jobs. So I actually like this opportunity for tech to regain its image of being good for everybody in the world, and leadership within the world. And I think it's a unique opportunity. For my start-ups, I've been so proud, Jeff. I didn't have to tell them to go do the right thing with their employees, I didn't have to tell them that you got to treat people, human lives first, the economy second, but we can do both in parallel. And you saw companies like Sprinklr suddenly say how can I help the World Health Organization anticipate through social media, where the next spread of the virus is going to be? A company, like Bloom Energy, with what KR did there, rebuilding all of the ventilators that were broken here in California, of which about 40% were, out of the stock that they got, because it had been in storage for so long, and doing it for all of California in their manufacturing plant, at cost. A company like Aspire Foods, a cricket company down in Texas, who does 3D capabilities, taking part of their production in 3D, and saying how many thousand masks can I generate, per week, using 3D printers. You watch what Umesh has done, and how he literally is changing peoples lives, and making that experience, instead of being a negative from working at home, perhaps to a positive, and increasing the customer loyalty in the process, as opposed to when you got a seven hour wait time on a line. Not only are you probably not going to order anything else from that company, you're probably going to change it. So what is fascinating to me is I believe companies owe an obligation to be successful, to their employees, and to their shareholders, but also to give back to society. And it's one of the things I'm most proud about the portfolio companies that I'm a part of, and why I'm so proud of what Umesh is doing, in both a economically successful environment, but really giving back and making a difference. >> Yeah, I mean, there's again, there's all the doctor stuff, and the medical stuff, which I'm not qualified to really talk about. Thankfully we have good professionals that have the data, and the knowledge, and know what to do, and got out ahead of the social distancing, et cetera, but on the backside, it really looks like a big data problem in so many ways, right. And now we have massive amounts of compute at places like Amazon, and Google, and we have all types of machine learning and AI to figure out, you know, there's kind of resource allocation, whether that be hospital beds, or ventilators, or doctors, or nurses, and trying to figure out how to sort that all out. But then all of the, you know, genome work, and you know, kind of all that big heavy lifting data crunching, you know, CPU consuming work, that hopefully is accelerating the vaccine. Because I don't know how we get all the way out of this until, it just seems like kind of race to the vaccine, or massive testing, so we know that it's not going to spike up. So it seems like there is a real opportunity, it's not necessarily Kaiser building ships, or Ford building planes, but there is a role for tech to play in trying to combat this thing, and bring it under control. Umesh, I wonder if you could just kind of contrast being from India, and now being in the States for a couple years. Anything kind of jump out to you, in terms of the differences in what you're hearing back home, in the way this has been handled? >> You know, it's been very interesting, Jeff, I'm sure everyone is concerned that India, for many reasons, so far hasn't become a big hot spot yet. And, you know, we can hope and pray that that remains to be the case. There are many things that the government back home has done, I think India took lessons from what they saw in Europe, and the U.S, and China. They went into a countrywide lockdown pretty early, you know, pretty much when they were lower than a two hundred positive tested cases, the country went into lockdown. And remember this is a 1.5 billion people all together going into lockdown. What I've seen in the U.S. is that, you know, California thankfully reacted fast. We've all been sheltered in place, there's cabin fever for all of us, but you know, I'm sure at the end of the day, we're going to be thankful for the steps that are taken. Both by the administration at the state level, at the federal level, and the medical doctors, who are doing everything they can. But India, on the other hand, has taken the more aggressive stance, in terms of doing a country lockdown. We just last evening went live at a University in the city of Chennai, where Uniphore was born. The government came out with the request, much like the U.S., where they're government departments were getting a surge of traffic about information about COVID, the hospitals that are serving, what beds are available, where is the testing? We stood up a voice bot with AI, in less than a week, in three languages. Which even before the government started to advertise, we started to get thousands of calls. And this is AI answering these questions for the citizens, in doing so. So it goes back to your point of there's a real opportunity of using all the technology that the world has today, to be put to good use. And at the same time, it's really partnering meaningfully with government, in India, in Singapore, in Vietnam, and here in the U.S., to make sure that happens on, you know, John's coaching and nudging, I became a part of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, which is truly a premier trade and commerce body between U.S. and India. And I, today, co-chaired the start-up program with, you know, the top start-ups between U.S. and India, being part of that program. And I think we got, again, tremendously fortunate, and lucky with the timeline. We started working on this start-up program between U.S. and India, and getting the start-ups together, two quarters ago, and as this new regulation with the government support, and the news about the two trillion dollar packages coming out, and the support for small businesses, we could quickly get some of the questions answered for the start-ups. Had we not created this body, which had the ability to poll the Treasury Department, and say here are questions, can start-ups do A, B, and C? What do you have by way of regulation? And I think as a response to one of our letters, on Monday the Treasury put out an FAQ on their website, which makes it super clear for start-ups and small businesses, to figure out whether they qualify or they don't qualify. So I think there's ton that both from a individual company, and the technology that each one of us have, but also as a community, how do we, all of us, meaningfully get together, as a community, and just drive benefit, both for our people, for the economy, and for our countries. Wherever we have the businesses, like I said in the U.S., or in India, or parts of Asia. >> Yeah, it's interesting. So, this is a great conversation, I could talk to you guys all night long, but I probably would hear about it later, so we'll wrap it, but I just want to kind of close on the following thought, which is really, as you've talked about before John, and as Umesh as you're now living, you know, when we go through these disruptions, things do get changed, and as you said a lot of people, and companies don't get through it. On the other hand many companies are birthed from it, right, people that are kind of on the new trend, and are in a good position to take advantage, and it's not that you're laughing over the people that didn't make it, but it does stir up the pot, and it sounds like, Umesh, you're in a really good position to take advantage of this new kind of virtual world, this new digital transformation, that's just now waiting anymore. I love your stat, they were going to move X% out of the call center over some period of time, and then it's basically snap your fingers, everybody out, without much planning. So just give you the final word, you know, kind of advice for people, as they're looking forward, and Umesh, we'll get you on another time, because I want to go deep diving in natural language, I think that's just a fascinating topic in the way that people are going to interact with machines and get rid of the stupid qwerty keyboard. But let me get kind of your last thoughts as we wrap this segment. Umesh we'll let you go first. >> Umesh, you want to go first? >> I'll go first. My last thoughts are first for the entrepreneurs, everyone who's sort of going through this together. I think in difficult times is when real heroes are born. I read a quote that when it's a sunny day, you can't overtake too many cars, but when it's raining you have a real opportunity. And the other one that I read was when fishermen can't go out fishing, because of the high tide, they come back, and mend their nets, and be ready for the time that they can go out. So I think there's no easy way to say, this is a difficult time for the economy, health wise, I hope that, you know, we can contain the damage that's being done through the virus, but some of us have the opportunity to really take our products and technology out there, more than usual. Uniphore, particularly, has a unique opportunity, the contact center industry just cannot keep up with the traffic that it's seeing. Around the world, across US, across Asia, across India, and the need for AI and automation would never be pronounced more than it is today. As much as it's a great business opportunity, it's more of a responsibility, as I see it. There can be scale up as fast as the demand is coming, and really come out of this with a much stronger business model. John has always told me in final words you always paint the picture of what you want to be, a year or two out. And I see Uniphore being a much stronger AI plus automation company, in the customer service space, really transforming the face of call centers, and customer service. Which have been forced to rethink their core business value in the last few weeks. And, you know, every fence sitter who would think that digitalization and automation was an option that they could think of in the future years, would be forced to make those decisions now. And I'm just making sure that my team, and my company, and I, am ready to gear to that great responsibility and opportunity that's ahead of us. >> John, give you the final word. >> Say Jeff, I don't know if you can still hear me, we went blank there, maybe for me to follow up. >> We gotcha. >> Shimon Peres taught me a lot about life, and dealing with life the way it is, not the way you wish it was. So did my parents, but he also taught me it always looks darkest just before the tide switches, and you move on to victory. I think the challenges in front of us are huge, I think our nation knows how to deal with that, I do believe the government has moved largely pretty effectively, to give us the impetus to move, and then if we continue to flatten the curve on the issues with the pandemic, if we get some therapeutic drugs that dramatically reduce the risk of death, for people that get the challenges the worst, and over time a vaccine, I think you look to the future, America will rebound, it will be rebounding around start-ups, new job creation, using technology in every business. So not only is there a light at the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel, I think we will emerge from this a stronger nation, a stronger start-up community. But it depends on how well we work together as a group, and I just want to say to Umesh, it's an honor to be your coach, and I learn from you as much as I give back. Jeff, as always, you do a great job. Thank you for your time today. >> Thank you both, and I look forward to our next catch up. Stay safe, wash your hands, and thanks for spending some time with us. >> And I just want to say I hope and pray that all of us can get together in Palo Alto real quick, and in person, and doing fist bumps, not shake hands or probably a namaste. Thank you, it's an honor. >> Thank you very much. All right, that was John and Umesh, you're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto Studios, thanks for tuning in, stay safe, wash your hands, keep away from people that you're not that familiar with, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live, from Silicon Valley, it's "the Cube," covering Mobile World Congress 2017. Brought to you by Mintel. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Palo Alto, California, covering Mobile World Congress, which is later in Spain right now, in Barcelona, it's gettin' close to bedtime, or, if you're a night owl, you're out hittin' the town, because Barcelona stays out very late, or just finishing your dinner. Of course, we'll bring in all theCube coverage here. News analysis, commentary, and of course, reaction to all the big mega-trends. And our next two guests is Guy Churchward who is the President and CEO of Data Torrent, formerly of EMC. You probably recognize him from theCube, from the EMC world, the many times he's been on. Cube alumni. And Phu Hoang, who's the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Data Torrent. Co-founder, one of the founders. Also one of the early, early Yahoo engineers. I think he was the fourth engineer at Yahoo. Going way back on the 90s. Built that to a large scale. And Yahoo is credited for the invention of Hadoop, and many other great big data things. And we all know Yahoo was data-full. Guys, welcome to theCube's special coverage. Great to see you. >> Thank you so much. So I'm psyched that you guys came in, because, two things. I want to talk about the new opportunity at Data Torrent, and get some stories around the large scales experience that you guys have dealing with data. 'Cause you're in the middle of where this is intersecting with Mobile World Congress. Right now, Mobile World Congress is on the collision course between cloud-ready, classic enterprise network architectures with consumer, all happening at the same time. And data, with internet of things, is that going to be at the center of all the action? So, (laughing) these are not devices. So, that's the core theme. So, Guy, I want to get your take on, what attracted you to Data Torrent? What was the appeal for the opportunity? >> You mean, why am I here, why have I just arrived? >> I've always data-obsessed. You know this. From the days of running the storage business on their data protection, before that I was doing data analytics and security forensics. And if you look at, as you said, whether it's big data, or cloud, and the immersion of IOT, one thing's for sure, for me. It was never about big data, as in a big blob of stuff. It was all about small data sprawl. And the world's just getting more diverse by the second, and you can see that by Mobile World, right? The challenge then you have is, companies, they need to analyze their business. In other words, data analytics. About 30 years ago, when I was working for BA Systems, I remember meeting a general of the army. And he said the next war will be one in the data center, not on the battlegrounds. And so you really understand-- >> He's right about that. >> Yeah. And you have to be very, very close. So in other words, companies have started to obsess about what I call the do loop. And that really means, when data is created, and then ingesting the data, and getting insight from the data, and then actioning on that. And it's that do loop. And what you want to do, is you want to squeeze that down into a sub-second. And if you can run your analytics at the pace of your business, then you're in good shape. If you can't, you lose. And that means from a security perspective, or you're not going to win the bids. In any shape or form. That's not a business-- >> John: So speed is critical. >> Yeah, and people say, speed and accuracy. Because what you don't want to do is to run really really fast and fall off a cliff. So you really need to make sure that speed is there and accuracy is there. In the good old days, when I was running security forensics, you could either do complex end processing, which was a very small amount of information coming in and then querying it like crazy, or things like log management, where you would store data at rest, and then look at it afterwards. But now with the paradigm of all the technology catching up, so whether that's the disk space that you get, and the storage and the processing, and things like Hadoop with the clustering, you now break that paradigm. Where you can collect all the information from a business and process it before you land the data, and then get the insight out of it, and then action. So that was my thing, of looking and saying, look, this whole thing's going to happen. In last year -- >> And at large scale, too. I mean, what you're talking about in the theoretical side makes a lot of sense, but also putting that into large scale, is even more challenging. >> Yeah, we had, when I was going through the processes, dating, you know, to see whether was a company that made sense, I chatted one of our investors. And they're also a customer. And I said, why did you choose Data Torrent? And they said, "We tested everything in production, we tested all the competitive products out there, and we broke everything except Data Torrent. And actually, we tested you in production up to a billion events per second, and you didn't break. And we believe that that quantity is something that you need as a stepping stone to move forward." >> And what use cases does that fit for? Just give me some anecdotal (snaps fingers) billion transactions. At that speed, what's some use cases that really take advantage of that? >> They were mastering in, what I would call, industrialization of IT. So in other words, once you get into things like turbines, wind generation, train parts. We're going to be very very soon, looking out of a window and seeing -- >> John: So is it flow data? Is it the speed of the flow? Is it the feed of all the calculations, or both? >> It's a bit of both. And what I'll do, is I'll give Phu a chance, otherwise, we'll end up chatting about it. >> John: Phu, come on, you're the star. (laughing) When you founded this company, you had a background at Yahoo, which you built from scratch, but that was a first-mover opportunity, Web 1.0, as they say. That evolved up and then, everyone used Yahoo Finance. Everyone used Yahoo Search as a directory early on. And then everything just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and then you had to build your own stuff with Hadoop. >> Yeah. >> So you lived it. The telcos don't have the same problem. They actually got backed into the data, from being in the voice business, and then the data business. The data came after the voice. So what's the motivation behind Data Torrent? Tell us a little bit more. >> It's exactly what you say, actually. Going through the 12 years at Yahoo, and really, we learned big data the hard way. Making mistakes month after month, about how to do this thing right. We didn't have the money, and then we found out that, actually, proprietary systems of the shelf system that we thought were available, really couldn't do their jobs. So we had to invent our own technology, to deal with the kind of data processing that we had. At some point, Yahoo had a billion users using Yahoo at any given point in time, right? And the amount of impressions, the amount of clicks, the amount of activity, that a billion users have, onto the system. And all of the log files that you have to process to understand what's going on. On the other side of that, we need to be able to understand all of those activities in order to sell to our advertisers. Slice and dice behaviors and users, and so on. We didn't have the technology to do that. The only thing we knew how to do was, to have these cheap racks of cheap servers, that we were using to serve webpages. And we turned to that to say, this is what we're going to need to do, to solve these big data problems. And so, the idea of, okay we need to take this big problem and divide it into smaller pieces, so that we can run on these cheap servers, sort of became the core tenant of how we do distributor processing that became Hadoop, at the end of the day, right? >> You had big data come in because you were, big data-full, as we say. You weren't building software to solve someone else's problem. You had your own problem, you had a lot of data. You were full with data. >> Exactly. >> Had to go on a data diet, to your point. (crosstalk) >> And no one to turn to. >> And no one to turn to. >> All right. So let's spin this around or Mobile World Congress. 'Cause the big theme is, obviously, we all know what device is. In fact, we just released here on theCube early this morning Peter Burris pre-announced our new research initiative called IOTP. Which stands for Internet Of Things And People. And so now you add the complexity of people devices, whether that's going to be some sort of watch, phones, anything around them. That adds to the industrial aspect of turbines and what not. Internet of Things is a new edge architecture. So the data tsunami coming, besides the challenges of telcos to provision these devices, are going to be very challenging. So the question I want to ask you guys is, how do you see this evolving, because you have certainly connectivity. Yeah, you know, low latency, small little data coming from the windmills or whatever. Versus big high-dense bandwidth, mobility. And then you got network core issues, right. So how does this going to look like? Where does the data piece fit in? Because all aspects of this have data. What's your thoughts on this, and architecture. Tell us about your impressions, and the conversations you've had. >> First of all, I think data will exist everywhere. On the fringe, in the middle, at the center. And there's going to be data analytics and processing in every path of that. The challenge will be to kind of figure out what part of processing do you put on the fringe, what part do you put at the center. And I think that's a fluid thing that is going to be constantly changing. Going back to the telcos. We've had numbers of conversationw with telcos. And, yes we're helping them right now with their current set of issues around capacity management and billing, all those things. But they are also looking to the next step in their business. They're making all this money from provisioning, but they know they sit on top of this massive amount of really valuable data, from their customers. Every cellphone is sending them all of this data. And so there's a huge opportunity for them to monetize, or really produce value, back to their customers. And that could come in form of offers, to customers. But now you're talking about massive analytics targeting. That is also real-time, because if you're sending an offer to someone at a particular location, if you do that slowly, or in batch, and you give them an offer 10 minutes later, they're no longer where they are. They're 10 minutes away, right? >> Well, first two questions to follow up on that. One, do they know they have a data advantage opportunity here? Do they know that data is potentially a competitive advantage? >> From our conversation, they absolutely do. They're just trying to figure out, so what do we do here? It's new to them. >> I want to get both your perspectives. Guy, I want you to weigh in on this one, 'cause this is another theme that's coming out of the reporting and analysis from Mobile World Congress. This has come also from the cloud side as well. Integration now, is more important than ever, because, for instance, they might have an Oracle there, there might be Oracle databases outside their network. That they might want to tap into. So tapping other people's data. Not just what they can get, the telcos. It's going to be important. So how do you guys see the integration aspect, how we, top of the first inning, national anthem going on. I mean, where are we in this integration? There's a pregame, or, what inning are we in on this? >> Yeah, we're definitely not on the home run on it. I think our friend, and your friend Steve Manly, I sat down with him, and I gave him a brief, you know, what we were doing, and he was blown away by the technology and the opportunity, but he was certainly saying, but the challenge is the diversity of the data types. And then where they're going to be. Autonomic cars. You know each manufacturer will tell the car behind it, what it just experienced, but the question is, when will a Tesla tell a Range Rover, or tell a BMW? So you have actually -- >> They're different platforms, just different stats, it's a nightmare. >> Right. So in other words, >> And trackability. And whether it's going to be open APIs, whether it's technologies like Kafka. But the integration of that, and making sure that you can do transformation and then normalize it and drive it forward. It's kind of interesting, you know. You mentioned the telco space, and do they understand it. In some respects, what Phu went through with Yahoo, in other words, you go to a webpage, you pull it up, it knows you because of a cookie and it figures out, and then sells advertising to you on that page. Now think about you as a location, and you're walking past a Starbucks, and they want to sell you a coffee for ten cents less than they would normally do. They need to know you're there then. And this is the thing, and this is why real-time is going to be so critical. And similarly, like you said, you look out the window and you see DHL, or UPS, or FedEx drones out the window. You not only have an insight issue. You also have a security issue, you have a compliance issue, you have a locational issue. >> I think you're onto something. And I think I actually had this talk today with Steve Manly EMC World last year, around time series data. So this is interesting. Everyone wants to store everything, but it actually might not be worth anything anymore. If the drone is delivering your package, or whatever realtime data is in realtime, it's really important right there in realtime, or near realtime. It might not be worth anything after. But yet a purchase at a store, at a time, might be worth knowing that as a record to pull in. You get what I'm saying? So there's a notion of data that's interesting. >> And I think, and again, Phu's the expert. I'm still running up onto it. It's just a pet hobby, an obsession of mine. But the market has this term ETL. In other words, Extract, Transform, Land. Or load. But in essence, it's always talked about in that (mumbles) batch. In other words, I get the data, transform it, drop it, and then I have a look at it. We're going upside-down. So the idea now is to actually extract, transform, insight, action, then landing. So in other words, get the value at the fresh data, before it's the data late. Because if you set the data late, by default, it's actually stale. And actually, then there's the fascination of saying, if you're delivering realtime data to a person, you can't think fast enough to actually make a live decision. So therefore, you've almost got any information that comes to you, has to tier out. So it comes to a process. You get that fresh use of it, and then it drops into a data lake. And so I think there's using both, but I think what will you see in the market, and, again, you've experienced the disk flash momentum that happened last year. You're going to see that from a data source from at-rest, advanced, to real-time data streams on our applications next year. So I think the issue is, the formative year, and back to your, you know, get it right, get the integration, but make sure your APIs are there, talking to the right technologies. I think everything's going to be exciting this year and new and fresh and people really want to do it. Next year is going to be the year where you're going to see an absolute changing of the guards. >> And then also the SLA requirements, they'll start to get into this when you start looking at integration. >> You're absolutely right. Actually, the SLA part is actually very very important here. Because, as you move analytics from this back world, where it has, you do it once a day, and if it dies, it's okay, you just do it again. To where it is now continuous, 24 by 7, giving you insight continuously about your business, your people, your services, and so on. Then all of a sudden, it has to have the same characteristics as your business. Which is, it's 24 by 7, it can never go down, it can never lose data. So, all of a sudden you're putting tremendous requirements on an analytics system, which has, all the way from the beginning of history 'til now, been a very relaxed batch thing, to all of a sudden being something that is enterprise-grade, 24 by 7. And I think that that's actually where it's going to be the toughest nut to crack. >> So tell about some of the things that you've learned. And pretend for a second, let's pretend that you, as a co-founder at Data Torrent, and Guy, and you are teamed up. You guys run this telco. Let's just make one up, Verizon. Or AT&T, or pick one. And you sit there saying, okay, you've got the keys to the kingdom. And you can do whatever you want (laughing). You can be Donald Trump, or you can be whoever you want. You can fire everybody, or you can pick it over and run it. What would you do? You know you've got IOT. So this is business model innovation opportunities. I want you to put the technical hat on, plus knowing what you know around the business model opportunities. What do you do? You know IOT's an opportunity. Amazon is going after that heavily. Do you bolt a cloud together? Do you go after Amazon? Do you co-op with Amazon? Do you co-integrate? Do you grab the IOT? Do you use the data? I mean, given where we are today, what's the best move if we were consulting with this. >> You know, I will be the last person to be talking about giving advice to a telco. But since we are, we own our own telco here, and then we're pretending, I would say the following. IOT is going to happen, right? Earlier, when I say a billion people, that's just human beings. Once you now talk about censoring, you can program how many times they can send you data per second, then the growth in volume is immense, right? I think there's a huge opportunity, as a telco, in terms of the data that they have available and the insight that they could have about what's going on. That is not easy. I don't think that, as a telco, in the current DNA of a telco, I can go ahead and do all that analytics and really open up my business to the data insight layer. I would partner, and find a way-- >> Well, we're consulting, we're going to sit around and say hey, what do we have? We have relationship with the consumer, big marketing budgets. We can talk to them directly, we have access to their device. >> But you'll bifurcate the business. We're in the boardroom here, this is nothing more than that. But I would look at it and say look, you've got a consumer business, the same as in IOT. There's really, for me, there's three parts of IOT. There is the bit that I love which, you can geek out, which is basically the consumer market, which, there's no money in for a large-scale tenant, right, enterprise. And then you have the industrialization of IOT, which is I've got a leaky pipe, and I want a hardened device, ruggedized, which is wifi, so, now as a telco, I could create a IOT cloud, that allows me to put these devices out there, and in fact, I use Arlo, the little cameras. And they've got one now, where I can basically float it with its own cellular signal. So it's its own cellphone. That's a great use of IOT for that. And then you step to the consumer side of, I've got a cellphone, and then what I'll do is literally, in essence, riff off what Yahoo did in the early days and say, I'm now the new browser. The person's the browser. So in other words, follow the location, follow where he is, and then basically do locational-based advertising. >> By the way, you have to license the patent from our earlier guest, he'll say will he leak, 'cause he's got th6e patent on personal firewall for personal server. He's built a mobile personal server. >> Yeah. >> But this is the opportunity around wireless. Why I love the confusion, but the opportunity around wireless right now is, you can get bandwidth at high capacity. You have millimeter wave four, that doesn't go through walls, but you have other diverse frequencies and spectrum for instance, you can blend it all together to have that little drip signal, if you will, going into the cloud from the leaky pipe. Or if you need turbine, full-fat pipe, you maybe go somewhere. So, I think this is an interesting opportunity. >> And they're going to end up watching the data centers as well. There's still the gamut of saying our customer is going to continue to support their own data centers, or are there going to be one to a hundred data centers out there? And then how does selling a manufacturer or a telco play into that, and do they want to be that guy or not? >> Guy, Phu, thanks for coming in. I want to give you guys a chance to put a plug in for Data Torrent. Thanks for sharing some great commentary on the industry. So, what's up with you guys? Give us the update. Are you hiring? You growing? What are you guys doing? Customers? What's the update? Technology, innovations? >> So we've got a release coming out tomorrow which is a momentum release. I can't talk too much about the numbers, but in essence, from a fact base, we have a thing called a patchy apex. So it's open sourced, so you can use our product for free. But that's growing like gangbusters. From a top-level project, that's actually the fastest-growing one, and it's only been out for seven months. We just broke through 50,000 users on it. From our product, we're doing very well on the back of it. So we actually have subscription for the production side. >> So revenue is a subscription model. >> Yeah, and we meet both sides. So in other words, for the engineer who writes it, you've got the open source. And then when you put it into production, from the operations side, you can then license our products to enable you to manage an easy-- >> So when it gets commercialized, you pay as you go, when you use it. >> And you don't have to, if you don't want to. You've got all the tools to do it. But, we focus for our products group of, time to value, total cost of ownership. We're trying to bring Hadoop and real scale, realtime streaming to the masses. So what's the technology innovation? What's the disruptive enabler for you guys? >> I think we talked about it, right? You've got two really competing trends going on here. On one side, data is getting more and more and more massive. So it's going to take longer and longer to process it. Yet at the other side, business wants to be able to get data, have insight, and take action sub-second. So how do you get both at the same time? That's really the magic of the technology. >> Thanks for coming in. Great to meet you, Phu. I'd love to talk about the old Yahoo days, a total throwback, Web 1.0, a great time in history, pre-bubble bursting. Greatness happening in the valley and all around the world, and I remember those days clearly. Guy, great to see you. Congratulations on your new CEO committee. And great to have you on theCube. This is theCube bringing the coverage, and commentary, and reaction of Mobile World Congress here, in California. As everyone goes to bed in Barcelona, we're just gettin' down to the end of our day here in the afternoon in California. Be right back with more after this short break. (techno music)