hey welcome back to los angeles thecube is live here at kubecon cloud native con 2021 we're so excited to be here in person lisa martin with dave nicholson and we are here with priyanka sharma the executive director of cnc at prayanka welcome to the program thank you so much for having me first of all congratulations on doing an event in person in such a safe clean way i was really impressed when i walked in this morning was asked for my vaccination record my temperature was scanned you're proving you can do these events safely this isn't rocket science so agreed and i'm so glad you appreciate all the measures we've put in place because this is how we can do it in-person interaction is essential for us as human beings for us as professionals and so we owe it to each other to just do the right thing you know have a vaccine requirement wear your masks have these what i call the traffic light uh system where if you have a green a green band it means people can come a little closer it's okay red means please at least six feet of distance and these things go a long way in making an event successful in times like this they do i love that when i saw that mine keeps falling off i'm cold so it keeps falling i'm green just so you know i know you're green what about you i'm green here you can can i have yours that's my favorite and you know you fell off again you had um the three folks that came up who were uh like uh co-chairs co-chairs yeah yeah and uh and they did almost a little almost a little skit yes that on the surface people could say well that's ridiculous and it's like no it's not it's giving everybody the guidelines so that everyone can be comfortable because when i see your green wristband i understand that you are comfortable because i don't want to accidentally reach out to give you a fist bump when you might be particularly of course yeah yeah so no visual cues make it easy yes yeah yeah very very easy very comfortable talk about the energy at the event this is the second full day tina was standing room only yesterday give us an overview of the energy and some of the things that are happening since you can't replicate those hallway networking conversations on video conference i know exactly what you mean man it is so lovely to be in person to meet people and you know for those who are comfortable there's like the fist bumps and the hugs and the big smiles and that energy i haven't seen it in almost two years um and even you know just standing on stage as i was telling you folks uh off camera i've been in this role for over a year and a close to a year and a half i've done three cube cons already but this was my first in person and being on that stage experiencing the energy of the people in that room like when i asked everyone during my keynote i was like are you all proud to be team cloud native and i got a resounding yes back from the audience that's what i'm talking about yeah you know it was amazing what's some of the news that's breaking lots of stuff going on obviously some first one in person in almost two years but talk to me about some of the the news that's breaking here at the event yes so so much new stuff to share um from our side on cncf our journey has been very much about being celebrating our culture and welcoming more and more people into it so that we can have more folks in team cloud native to take various jobs to find fulfillment and all those great things right and all of our announcements are around that theme of people finding a place here people paying it forward in this community and building the culture the first one i would like to share is the announcement of the kubernetes and cloud native associate certification so this is an exam that is going to go live end of the year so people sign up apparently the beta signups went away like this after i announced it so it was really cool wow popular by demanding yeah very very popular and it's it's an exam for folks who are brand new to cloud native and it the studying for it you'll go through you know the fun fundamentals of kubernetes what is the cncf landscape what are the key projects and ultimately you will actually deploy an application using coop cuddle commands and it's such a great primer so so how brand new can someone be when you when you say brand new are you talking about someone who already has a phd in computer science but hasn't done anything in the kubernetes space tell me how brand new can you be uh-huh that's a very good question and it is literally you can come with zero knowledge you would of course have to study for the exam and like go through that journey but the idea is that it is the gateway and so it is possible you're a phd in computer science but you've studied some esoteric part of computer science that's very unconnected to what we do sure go ahead and take it but maybe most likely you would like the more advanced certifications better but if you're let's say a marketer looking to break into the cloud native industry this is the move take this exam and suddenly all these employers you speak their language they'll be impressed that you took it and it's it's an opportunity to advance your career the oh community is huge i was looking at the website the other day 138 000 contributors yes from more than 177 countries 186 is the latest number 186 awesome 289 plus million lines of code written this community is really so productive and so prolific and it's great that you're offering more folks that don't have the background like you were saying to be able to get in and get started absolutely it's our whole thing of bring in more people because as you all probably know there's so much demand for cloud native skill sets across job functions so that's why we're here to help with yeah i you know i i want to double click on this as we say because you hear the word inclusive associated with this whole community so much um you're talking about something that is a certification yeah a marketer okay fine but we're really talking about anyone who has the drive to potentially completely transform their lives yes and in this age where things can be done remotely you don't necessarily have to live in silicon valley or cambridge massachusetts to do this or in one of the other global centers of technology anywhere yeah so that's the that's the kind of energy that's part of this that isn't a part of any large industry focused conference because you really are making opportunities for people of all backgrounds to change their lives so i don't know i don't am i extending a a virtual thank you from all of those people whose lives have been changed and will be changed in the future maybe i am but so but talk about inclusiveness in in you know from from other perspectives yes i think that you know talent drive skills none of these are exclusive to a certain zip code you know people everywhere have great qualities and deserve chances and why shouldn't they be part of a community that as you said is especially inclusive feels especially nice to be a part of and that's what i exhorted the community to do in my keynote yesterday which is that our ranks will grow and we should go out of our way to make sure our ranks grow and we do that by shining a light on our culture telling people to join in lending a hand and you know letting people's personalities shine even when they'll be different from who we are whether in terms of job function or skill set whatever and i think that's the top level um paradigm that we want to have right where we are always welcoming people when we think of inclusiveness it is you know there is certifications like kcna did do a great job there are also efforts that we must always be doing so something that we work on constantly consistently is contributor strategy where we're working on creating ladders and pathways for folks to become open source contributors it is known now that open source contributions lead to job advancement in your career right and so the whole goal is bring people in not just to hang out not just to talk but to actually grow and actually kubecon cloudnativecon is a great example of another little thing we do which is uh we uh award uh underrepresented minorities and people who are who need need-based funds scholarships to attend nice yeah and it's changed one thousand 1518 lives already and we actually uh in uh in this event have announced that we are renaming the scholarship to the dan khan scholarship fund um i i do you folks know dan yes did yeah so dan he breathed life into team cloud native right he built this organization to have the impact that it does today and all the while he was relentlessly focused on diversity equity inclusion so it was it was just like the idea came from within the team and the minute someone said it it just struck a chord with all of us yeah we're like we're doing this no question and it was one of the fastest decisions we've ever made i saw uh some results of a dei micro survey on the website where 75 percent of respondents say this community is becoming more inclusive there's obviously work to go but as a female in technology you feel that you see that as well yes i think i'm very proud of that survey that we did by the way because it's our way we're going to keep doing it it's our way to keep a pulse on the ecosystem because you can keep doing initiatives right but if people are not feeling great then who cares and so um but yes i think dei is a journey if there is no destination right always we have to be thinking harder trying harder to you know i think for example something cncf's done a great job is identifying particularly gender diverse folks who are in the community and maybe could deserve a role of high responsibility so i'm really proud that our technical oversight committee which is our really the top technical people in the ecosystem who desi decide project stuff they are led by a woman there's many women on that and it's they're all very exemplary awesome technologists and so i think um the diversity survey gives us like a hint into like the things people do like and i mean the fact remains we need to do more to source more people to come into the ecosystem we need to always be changing and evolving with the needs of the community right as i mentioned the community is 138 000 strong 6.8 million plus contributions so far you can imagine by opening that dei door just the thought diversity that comes in alone and the number of projects that will come from folks that just come in with a different mindset oh 100 we are already seeing that um we started off as folks who had you know lots of projects from the great big tech companies people who had web scale problems as i call it and that was great but in recent years the end users who are initially just consuming this technology and that too slowly are now hook line and sinker in and we have like argo cd came from intuit which is an end user uh backstage came from spotify which is an end user so this trend is growing and the diversity as you said is continuing yeah i i'm particularly interested in the dynamic where you have people who have their day job if you will where their employer is absolutely 100 encouraging them to participate in the community to develop things that will not only help the employer and that mission but also building uh solutions for everyone and providing enrichment for the for the person and and i i'm i'm going to make a little bit of a prediction i want to get your thoughts on this i think that um one of the silver linings of what we've been through in the pandemic having a lot of people at home having that relationship with your primary employer be just a little bit different and just a little bit more removed i think everyone is realizing that you know what um we all need a passion play to be a part of in addition to whatever we're doing to put bread on the table in the immediate future and so i i think that i want to hear your thoughts there's going to be an explosion in contributions from people and hopefully a lot more openness on the part of employers to let people dedicate their time to this do you do you see that do you think that yes i think i think you're really on to something here um something i mentioned in my keynote right was this conversation i've had with so many that we in this community our identity is cloud native first so we're folks who are in team cloud native before we are working at insert company name you know um google at t spotify whatever it's not a dig on the company it's actually a celebration of those companies because they are liking the developments that happen in open source they are appreciating the value these people are creating and they're employing them so absolutely there is this ongoing trend of folks seeing great value in folks who understand this cloud native projects in particular and of course right because we have been such a great place for industry collaboration lots of vendors have great products make lots of money on these projects and that's as it should be and so the value of the people contributing to these projects is very high and it will only continue to grow i imagine so so here we are in los angeles at kubecon cloud native con 21 what's what's next well uh the good news is this was the first of many to come hybrid events in person plus virtual and the next one is happening in end of may in valencia for europe 22. valencia spain and i have heard beautiful weather very nice people amazing food so just for that that alone is worth registration yes i know right it's going to be amazing i'm so excited and i hope i will see you folks there sign me up i've never been to spain i'm there me too let's do it excited let's do it for our spanish-speaking uh viewers i will say claroque he you can't you do you can do it all you can speak spanish on the queue we can have something honestly i'm impressed i'm impressed i can't i can't do that any and you donated your green card so thank you so much so nice congratulations on the event thank you uh for growing the community for and growing the diversity of it and for the the projects that are going on now and we're sure many more to come we look forward to seeing you in valencia in may thank you so much see you in valencia all right we'll see you there for dave nicholson i'm lisa martin we are live in los angeles the cube is covering kubecon and cloudnativecon at 21. stick around we'll be back after a short break with our next guest

>> Narrator: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think, brought to you by IBM. >> Hi everybody. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital version of IBM Think. Wendi Whitmore is here. She's the vice president of IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence. Wendy, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. >> Yeah, you're welcome. With a name like X-Force. That is a killer name. Tell us about X-Force. How are you protecting us? >> Yeah, we get a lot of interesting questions. So, my team is responsible for a pretty wide range of things. They range from incident response. So, when you think of data breaches, typically organizations will call an outside firm, and they'll jump on a plane and respond to threats on-site. Obviously right now, we're jumping on a bit fewer planes, but we still are helping our customers investigate data breaches, and we are on-site when needed. We also have a team of threat intelligence analysts and researchers, who are experts in a wide range of fields from geopolitical issues to cyber-related issues to industry specific. And then we've also got a team that does data breach simulations in a very immersive environment. We've got facilities at Cambridge Massachusetts, as well as within Europe, and now of course, we're bringing all those virtual as well. So, really anything that helps our clients respond more effectively to a data breach is something that we do. >> So, X-Force is traveling right now on empty planes, I presume. >> We are as needed. So, many clients have certainly shifted to where their whole environments are off-site and working remote as well, but we still have clients who are asking us to work on-site, and in those cases we have added a new protective gear to our go-backs, which are usually equipped with hard drives and disc imaging software and passports, and now we have some additional equipment to bring as well. >> And that breach simulation that you talked about. So that's what, like a penetration test, or in similar type of activities? >> Yeah, great question. No, it's actually an immersive environment where we go in, and actually simulate an entire breach for our clients. So, everything from the initial attack, how they would do the data analytics, to things like, how do they respond to the press, and inquiries from the press about the breach, how do they do media training, how they work with their legal counsel. So, it's really a comprehensive immersive environment that simulates kind of the heart pounding that occurs when you actually respond to a data breach. >> Oh, that's awesome, so that mean best practices in communications as well and the PR. I mean, that is obviously, maybe something that's often overlooked, but something that you guys are applying best practice to. >> Wendi: It's such a huge piece of it now, right? Our organizations are not always graded just on the breach itself, but more so on how they respond and how they communicate. The good news is, in that scenario that you can communicate effectively about a breach, and you can have something pretty negative that happens to your organization, but if you respond well, and you communicate really effectively to your clients and to the public, we've seen time and again that those brands actually have no reputational damage, and if anything, their clients trust them even more moving forward. >> We were early on when recording the, just trying to measure the budget impact of COVID-19, but we were early in recording the work from home shift. About 20% of the CIO organizations that we surveyed, actually spending more, or planning to spend more, but many weren't prepared for this work from home. They had to really beef up, and not just adding licenses of video collaboration software, but security for sure, a VPN infrastructure, et cetera. So, can you talk a little bit about how clients have responded, how you've helped them respond to that shif? How has the threat matrix changed? >> Well, so in terms of the attack surface, you mentioned there's a lot more people working from home, right? So, what we've got is over 220 million people in the United States, over one billion people in India alone, that are now working from home. So as you can imagine, that attack surface has really increased from an attacker perspective, right? And coupled with that, is that since March 1st, we've already seen a 6000% increase in coronavirus related spam. So, you've now got this larger attack surface that organizations need to protect against, and you've got an increase in threats and threat activity that is attacking them. So, from that perspective, pretty difficult for CIOs who are used to defending an environment that may be more on-site, and now have this really wide range of attack surface certainly more difficult for them to respond to. The other thing that we've seen, so one of the things that's super critical in these types of situations is to have an incident response plan, and to make sure that you're testing it. So, in our work that we've done both with our incident response teams, as well as with the teams that train clients in how to respond to breaches more effectively, we've seen that 76% of organizations don't actually have a consistently tested or applied incident response plan, and one in four have no plan at all. So, I will say that in terms of how we're working with clients, the first thing that any organization can do right now, is actually, have a plan and test it. So, if you're starting from scratch, it's really as simple as putting words on paper, understanding how you're going to get a hold of your critical team members, having a backup plan in place for communication strategies if your primary infrastructure goes offline. So making sure you know how to get a hold of your personnel. If you're more mature, then what we're really encouraging our clients to do is have a variety of scenarios that they're testing against, and make sure that they're running through those. So, a great one to practice right now, would be a ransomware attack. In particular, how does your organization respond effectively to it? What do you do when you get the initial notification? Do you have critical and sensitive data that's backed up offline, and not always connected to the network? If so, you're going to be in a much better spot to effectively defend against those attacks and limit any of the negative impact to them. >> So, a couple things I want to sort of follow up in. So, what I heard was you've got more fragile work-from-home infrastructure, and you've got somewhat, well, significantly more vulnerable users. I've often said, bad user behavior is going to trump good security infrastructure every time. So, you've got many more opportunities for the bad guys to get in. And so, I'm hearing that threat response is now more critical than ever. It's always been critical. The communication to the board has been hey, chances are we're going to get infiltrated. We got to find it fast, and it's really about response, incident response. We can build modes, we can build layers, but we have to put a plan for that response. And so, it sounds like that's something that maybe is heightened as a result of this COVID-19 crisis. >> Wendi: Oh, it absolutely is. I think it's now more critical than ever. I think there's two approaches, right? So, one of them would be improvising through chaos, which we don't necessarily encourage, right? There's a difference between that and really managing through disruption, and that's what we're encouraging our clients to do, is look at how we can create sustainable processes and procedures. You may have a very well-established team that does response, but perhaps they haven't worked remotely before. So, that means testing those procedures, now taking them to a scenario where everyone is remote. What does that mean? It may mean that you need to capture less data over the network, because perhaps you just don't have the bandwidth or the capacity to do it. We've certainly looked at how we do that. How do we answer questions that are critically needed from an investigative perspective, for example, but without maybe all the resources that we would prefer to have. So, what we're really looking at, is kind of shifting in the way that we manage through these. And then, you mentioned that users who maybe sometimes make bad decisions, right? We're all guilty of that, because especially with that increase in spam, there's also been an increase in Nation-State actors who are now sending out new lures and new attempts to get access to environments that are related to coronavirus. So, we've got cyber criminals, Nation-State actors, everyone, and we're now at home looking to effectively defend. So, some things that organizations can do with that, would be insuring that they have multi-factor authentication on all remotely accessible systems. So, devices, applications, anything that can be accessed remotely should have multi-factor authentication. That will help limit some of the impact. As it relates to spam, organizations should really be making sure they've got good email spam-filtering systems in place, and if they have the capability to send out some test emails to their employees, they should do that, right? We are getting numb. I will say, our CIO and their office does it at least once a week where I know I'm getting a very well-crafted email, and I have to really think twice, and it's really made me think differently about opening my email, and making sure that I'm doing some due diligence, to make sure I know where the email's coming from. One of the things we do, is also any external email is labeled external, so that way if it's a lure that appears to be, it's coming from another employee, but it's actually coming from an external email address, that's another way to help users make some good decisions, and really limit your attack surface, and reduce the threat. >> I think the points you're making here are very important, because if you think about the work-from-home cadence, it's a lot different. You're not nine to five. I mean, who works nine to five anyway, but your hours are different. Oftentimes, you got children to hone. You got dogs barking, kids are crawling all over us on the video. And so, oftentimes, of course we're frenzied at work, but there's a different kind of frenzy, so you might not be as in tune. So, you're basically saying, exercise that a little bit to get people, like a fire drill, to really get them tuned to being sensitized to such phishing attack. >> Right, well if you think about this from the viewpoint of an attacker, all of those scenarios that you mentioned, where you have a global pandemic. So, we're not just talking about a regional threat, like a hurricane or a tornado. In a case of a pandemic, or any of these type of situations, people are more likely to be reading the news, be probably checking social media more often, so that they can get an understanding of the latest news and information that may impact them. If you're an attacker, you've got now this kind of environment of global chaos that's been created, and you can use it to your advantage, because the reality is, as long as there's money to be made, attackers are going to want to take advantage of that scenario. So, what we're really talking about is, as you're reading your work email, as you're checking your personal email, taking a step back, slowing things down amidst all the distractions, barking dogs and co-workers now that may be at your house, also known as children, right? So, we need to really take a step back, and make sure that we are slowing things down, reading and doing due diligence in opening emails that will help all of the CIO and CISO type organizations more effectively to protect their organizations and their clients as well. >> When you talked about ransomware earlier, and I inferred from your comments that best practice, create an air gap, but I'm wondering also, can analytics play a role there, just in terms of identifying anomalous behavior? What else can I do to protect myself from ransomware? >> Great question. So, on the visibility side, which I think is what you're talking about, right? How do we detect these types of attacks? There's lots of great software out there. Typically, what we would want our visibility at the endpoints. So, usually some sort of EDR tool, which is an endpoint detection and response tool. That's going to allow us to capture things. In the old days, we would talk about antivirus software, and now you really have kind of next generation of antivirus software, which also gives you behavioral analytics and actions on the keyboard. We want to be able to detect that in any size environment. So, the more visibility we have into that, the better, but aside from just adopting new technology, potentially, there are best practices steps that we can take, and I mentioned earlier about making sure that you understand what is your most critical and sensitive data, and that you've got it backed up, and a lot of times we go into environments, and they say, "Well yeah, we have backups." This is great, but what they're not realizing, is that oftentimes those backups are connected to the network at all times, and in the case of a ransomware breach, you typically then will see those backups corrupted as well, and organizations will find themselves in a position where they say, "Well, we don't have any valid backups now "that we can restore from, in order to make sure "that we have a safe environment." And so, it's important that organizations understand and do a survey of what is their most critical and sensitive data, and then make sure that's backed up offline, and I say that, because it's not usually viable for organizations to have all of their data backed up offline. That costs a lot of money. That requires a lot of storage, but to look at really prioritizing their environment, their data within it, and making sure that they can have access to that which is needed, and then ultimately that's going to prevent you even needing to have the conversation about ransomware, because you still have access to that data. >> Yeah Wendi, I think you're making some really important points there. The tech obviously, is critical. People shifting to SD-WAN, securing endpoints, securing gateways, but really the processes are very very important, and I'll just throw out an example. If I'm making a snapshot of the Cloud, I'm not backed up. You better make sure that you understand how to recover from that backup, because just that copy is not a backup. You need the proper type of recovery software. You need to test that. Your thoughts on that. >> Yeah, that's absolutely true. So, what we want to make sure is that during the course of a potential ransomware attack, that the email's critical sensitive data is available offline. So, I mentioned earlier that testing is one of the best things that we're recommending. One of the most effective preparations is having an incident response plan, testing it for particular scenarios, and so in this case, one of the other things that we talk about a lot is limiting the impact of a breach. Every organization is going to get attacked, especially in today's day and age where you've got a larger attack surface. The win is really limiting the impact of that attack, and limiting the cost, and having an incident response plan, and having a team of people, whether they're internal or external that are responsible for responding to attacks, is the number one cost management. The number one decrease in cost is having access to that team. Typically, it will save an organization over a million dollars when the average cost of a data breach is about $4 million. So, that's pretty significant, and ultimately, if we can test, as you mentioned, those backups, that they are available in an offline scenario. In the course of one of those IR program plans or tests, that's great. It's a win for the organization. They can ensure that that data is going to be available, and it really helps them exercise that muscle memory in advance of an actual attack. >> Yeah, so the backup corp is actually becomes a really even more important component now. This has been great information. Where can people go specifically as it relates to COVID-19? I want to go look up a checklist to make sure. I've been scrambling to get my homeworkers up and running, get them productive, but boy, I really want to focus now on the things that I should be doing to button up my organization. Where can I go to learn more about this? >> Yeah, so there's so much great information out there, from everyone in the industry, but IBM is clearly no different. So, what we've done is action repurpose at IBM.com homepage where we've got a tremendous amount of information on COVID-19, and then IBM Security.com as well. Our team that focuses on breach response, has in particular, a site called X-Force Exchange, where we're sharing indicators, and we have a particular component that's related to COVID-19 specifically, and then lastly, we've got a free service, which is a threat intelligence enclave that we are hosting with our partner TruSTAR, that is specific to COVID-19 where industry organizations can sign up and then share in real time, threat indicators related to this, and have really that intelligence that's been also qualified by their peers, and many large organizations are using that to defend their environments. So, a lot of great resources out there. >> Wendy, you're an amazing source of knowledge. Thanks so much for coming on the theCUBE, and thanks to the X-Force team, doing some travel when necessary, and helping people really get a handle on this in this crazy crisis time. So, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. >> You're welcome, and certainly stay safe, and thanks for having me on. >> Back at you. All right, and thank you everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE. You're watching our continuous coverage of IBM Think 2020 Digital Think. Be right back right after this short break. (uplifting music)

>>from San Francisco. It's the Cube covering. Get lab commit 2020 Brought to you by get lab. >>I am stupid, man, and this is the Cubes coverage of Get Lab. Commit 2020 here in San Francisco. Still hard saying 2020 and not thinking we're in the future. Joining us first time on the program. Darren Murph, who's the head of remote at get lab and a little birdie, told me that he also has a Guinness Book of World record. So, >>Darren, before we get >>into your day job, bring us back, is it? It's, uh, it's an interesting thing. >>Yeah, it's true. Surreal to have their records. So I'm the world's most prolific professional blogger, which is kind of crazy of Britain. About 10 million words or so When the record was given, it was about 17,000 articles, which was an article published every two hours, 24 7 for four straight years, which actually makes my chest hurt just a bit saying that out loud. >>But Darrin, I'm going thio going to do the Turing test right now >>because I'm not sure you're human being. I have been a blogger. When I had my regular cadence of 2 to 3 articles a week and knew the you know, 10 p.m. When the kids were in bed when I would do that stuff. The amount of words you're saying, um, you know that does not compute with me, but amazing stuff. Congratulations on. And you still you don't keep up that pace >>anymore. Try actually, part of >>my job here, get Lab is to make the all remote section of our handbook a lot bigger and better than it. ISS. So I'm still cranking away very different capacity than covering consumer electronics, but still cranking. Yeah, all right. >>Remote? Yes. Really interesting topic. When we talk about the future of work, you talk about the gig economy. There's all these ways that, you know, how do we leverage and enable global and changing workforce? And it's really fascinating. Get lab over 1100 employees and completely remote keynote this morning talked about, you know, the woman in New Zealand that's completely cut off with everything except for the Internet. She does her own power and everything like that, but she could just be part of the team and you don't even know. So tell us a little bit. What does that mean? Head of remote for your >>old. So as we've grown, it's It's interesting. There's an intersection of hiring and recruiting, talent branding, but also process. So we have a lot of people joining the company that come from co located spaces. And there's a certain acclamation period to getting used to remote and doing remote. Well, you think about people that have joined a co located company. They walk into an office where they've had a professional design, their office space. So they have ergonomic chairs, ergonomic monitors. Everything is set up for them. But if you're working from home or working for some wires from somewhere outside of an office, now that's on. You did. How do you do meetings? Well, how do you do? A synchronous Well, so part of my role is to work through those processes to make sure everyone, when they're on board and get lab, is giving the best possible experience. If they're coming into a remote role for the first time, >>you do you have any bias towards it makes sense to just build it in my home. Is it good to go to Oh, You know, I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there's this cool place where I can go where they have good coffee and the people I can hang out with everything in between. What are some of the best >>practices there? The beauty of all remote is we don't say you have to work from home. You can work from anywhere. So wherever you're most comfortable, maybe that's a co working space. Maybe that's at a friend's house. Maybe that's a different place. Every month we have people that travel all around the world and every month or in a different time zone. That's the beauty of it. So we have over 1100 employees, but none of them operate their days quite the same as anyone else, and that that's the beauty of a super diverse and inclusive team. And, well, actually reimburse co working space expensing expenses. If you just feel more comfortable working in a group or you need to leave your home for any reason. Okay, >>um, we talked to sit a little bit about, you know, does this remote work for every type of job? His feedback from the light Combinator people were like, If you're in finance, It might not be the best fit on dhe one. Understand? How does the software help does it if if I'm someone that's doing development, you know, doesn't poke me every once in a while and say, Hey, you know, maybe you should eat and sleep every once in a while And you know, you've been going at this a little long time, you know? How does both the kind of the kind of HR and the technology piece fit together? >>Well, we hire people that are managers of one, so having a high degree of autonomy is really important. So you need to have a lot of self awareness in managing your day, and that includes taking breaks. And so we encourage people to take vacation, take breaks whenever they need it, and again everyone is different. So we enable people to take that as they need that. But no doubt when you're hiring, you want to look for things like that. It helps to have some experience in the working world, definitely with interns in junior level level level people, you need to check in with them more often because managing their own time and themselves when you're not in an office setting can feel a bit far, but actually get lab. The product is tailor made for remote teams because it's built by remote and even on the marketing side of things where no code really is involved. We use it to manage entire projects and entire events. And the beauty of that is it hones in on documentation, which is essential to do remote. Well, so we say any part of a project that you're moving forward try to move that forward and add context in a way that someone else who may be asleep right now when they wake up and read your stuff along the way they have context of what you did and can pick it up from there and move it on to the next step so that that helps us work really well, remotely. But honestly, that is probably useful for co located teams as well. And so a lot of people look at us as all you know, you have this all remote team. Things must be drastically different, but the truth is, all remote forces you to do things that you should be doing anyway. Transparency, documentation iteration. We just have to do them much more quickly and much more intentionally. >>Yeah, when everybody gets together event like this, Are they okay being on the same room, or do they want to go documents and things and hand things off? >>The funny thing about that is people will often say I don't know if I could I could work well in a remote environment because I really love the energy of being with other people. And the truth is in person, interactions are vital to a remote company. We have to be really intentional about that as well. So we get a CZ many people, as we can together for things like get lab, commit and get lab, contribute where we invite the entire company. But the subtle differences when you're in a co located space and you see people on a daily basis, sometimes you can take for granted in person interactions you have because you think I'll just see them again and again and again, but never in a remote setting. When you have to be intentional about when you'll see a person, it's it's there's a certain level of energy and, um, you proactively look forward to moments like that because you don't get them is often. So we build a lot of great bonds and relationships around those key in person moments. >>Is there anything along the communication technologies that you recommend you use video conference thing or, you know, phone calls? Or you know what some of the recommended How do I make sure you get, you know, some high bandwith interacting? >>There's a few tools that we use that didn't exist not too long ago, but because they exist now they've made all remote as a concept far more approachable and feasible. Google Docks is a big one. We cover agendas and things like that and something that could be edited by multiple people at once. Zuma's another one. Zoom is really amazing for video communication because many, many dozens of people hundreds of people, could be on the same call. And with very little technical difficulty, everyone can communicate well, which has been amazing for us being able to see each other on connect on a meaningful in a meaningful way, and the last one is actually get lab the product. So we build our handbooks. We have over 3000 pages of publicly accessible Get Live Handbook, How We Do Everything that is All publicly available on the Web and built and edited by Get Lab the product. So as we use get lab product to edit and iterated on their handbook, we as a get lab team see things that could be done better, more efficiently, and that gives us a flywheel of making the product better and then making the handbook better. So, >>Darren, I'm just curious where there any kind of interesting findings that you've had, uh, going to a company this size now with everything remote that you know, surprises >>the team. Well, I've worked remotely my entire career in different stages of remote. So some of the companies have been about 50 50 and some have been most of the people in the office. And then I've been one of maybe 10% of the company that works. Outside of it, you see all different facets of how people and companies communicate when you're in a hybrid remote setting. But the beautiful thing about all remote is it truly makes everyone a first class citizen. So a lot of people will say in a hybrid setting. If I don't go to the office frequently enough, miss out on some things. Or maybe I miss out on praise or promotion opportunities. Things like that. You feel like a second class citizen. So in, in in, in an environment like that, you have to take certain approaches to include people. You have to think about it intentionally to include those remote individuals, whereas if it's all remote, you're all on a level playing field. I think the other interesting thing is we have an amazingly diverse team over 65 countries because we hire the world's best talent from wherever they are. And so you'll be talking with someone on a call and you'll just see what's in their background. You think that looks completely foreign to where I am, and it's an amazing way to engage with someone and learn about them, learn about a new culture and truly keep a more global perspective. And lastly, all remote enables a workforce that may have been rejected at other stages of the workforce. So things like caregivers or working parents or military spouses where their spouse has to move at each new deployment. Ah, lot of these people might say, You know, it's too complicated to continue to reinvent my career with every move along the way in an all remote setting. Your job goes with you as those changes in life happened. And I just think that's going to become more than Norm, where the notion of moving for a career will seem silly, like the career should just follow you, no matter where life takes you. >>Yeah, I guess that lets follow upon that is we've reached a point where people expect, you know, immediate response. It's a text. It's something like that. When I'm dealing with dispersed and remote, how do you make How do you is that something you deal with? Is it something that is a team monitoring and handling that? But how do I make sure that I'm a little? I would I think, that it has to be a little bit more forgiving of not being an instant response. >>I tell you, all remote is actually much better for your mental health insanity than other settings, and it's because it forces us to work a synchronously. There's no other way to do it. We have people spread or call 65 countries, so almost every time zone is covered. But that also means there's almost a guarantee that someone on your team isn't a vastly different times, so they may be asleep the entire time. Europe working. We also allow people to just structure their day day today differently, depending on what they have going on appointments, things they need to attend to with their Children, things like that. So within a single as mindset, it enables all of us to take a step back and just assume that whatever we're doing is done with no one else online, so it can removes the burden of this nonstop string of slag messages where you have to respond to things immediately within a given time frame. We don't operate in that construct. I'll tell you, just from a mental health standpoint, when you have an entire company that embraces that were all given a little more breathing room to do really good. Deep work requires long periods of uninterrupted time, and we've seen massive improvements on the product and just team morale. When we embrace that and I feel like as a whole as a society, we're getting close to a tipping point where people are just to their limit on how many more slack messages or e mails or pings or urgent, urgent, urgent things they could do while also doing their job well. So we may be a little bit ahead of the curve on that. But my hope is that the industry at large embraces that allows the people more time to actually do the work they were hired. >>Darren Murph love the idea. Hope it definitely spreads beyond. Everybody absolutely can use the breathing room and being able to focus because we we know that multitasking really is a myth when it comes down to it. So great to be able to chat with you in person and thank you for all the >>work you're doing. A remote. Thanks for having me here. I appreciate it. All right, check out the cube dot net for all of our coverage, whether you were at an event or watching remote or after it, >>we've got all the content for you to meet him in. Thank you for watching the Cube

>> From Cambridge, Massachusetts it's theCUBE, covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by, SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host, Paul Gillan. Chris Lynch, good friend is here CEO, newly minted CEO and AtScale and legend. Good to see you. >> In my own mind. >> In mine too. >> It's great to be here. >> It's awesome, thank you for taking time. I know how busy you are, you're running around like crazy your next big thing. I was excited to hear that you got back into it. I predicted it a while ago you were a very successful venture capitalists but at heart, you're startup guy, aren't ya? >> Yeah 100%, 100%. I couldn't be more thrilled, I feel invigorated. I think I've told you many times, when you've interviewed me and asked me about the transition from being an entrepreneur to being a VC and since it's a PG show, I've got a different analog than the one I usually give you. I used to be a movie star and now I'm an executive producer of movies. Now am back to being a movie star, hopefully. >> yeah well, so you told me when you first became a VC you said, I look for startups that have a 10X impact either 10X value, 10X cost reduction. What was it that attracted you to AtScale? What's the 10X? >> AtScale, addresses $150 billion market problem which is basically bringing traditional BI to the cloud. >> That's the other thing you told me, big markets. >> Yeah, so that's the first thing massive market opportunity. The second is, the innovation component and where the 10X comes we're uniquely qualified to virtualize data into the pipeline and out. So I like to say that we're the bridge between BI and AI and back. We make every BI user, a citizen data scientist and that's a game changer. And that's sort of the new futuristic component of what we do. So one part is steeped in, that $150 billion BI marketplace in a traditional analytics platforms and then the second piece is into you delivering the data, into these BI excuse me, these AI machine learning platforms. >> Do you see that ultimately getting integrated into some kind of larger, data pipeline framework. I mean, maybe it lives in the cloud or maybe on prem, how do you see that evolving over time? >> So I believe that, with AtScale as one single pane of glass, we basically are providing an API, to the data and to the user, one single API. The reason that today we haven't seen the delivery of the promise of big data is because we don't have big data. Fortunate 2000 companies don't have big data. They have lots of data but to me big data means you can have one logical view of that data and get the best data pumped into these models in these tools, and today that's not the case. They're constricted by location they're constricted by vendor they're constricted by whether it's in the cloud or on prem. We eliminate those restrictions. >> The single API, I think is important actually. Because when you look at some of these guys what they're doing with their data pipeline they might have 10 or 15 unique API's that they're trying to manage. So there's a simplification aspect to, I suppose. >> One of the knocks on traditional BI has always been the need for extract databases and all the ETL that goes that's involved in that. Do you guys avoid that stage? You go to the production data directly or what's the-- >> It's a great question. The way I put it is, we bring Moses to the mountain the mountain being the data, Moses being the user. Traditionally, what people have been trying to do is bring the mountain to Moses, doesn't scale. At AtScale, we provide an abstraction a logical distraction between the data and the BI user. >> You don't touch, you don't move the data. >> We don't move the data. Which is what's unique and that's what's delivering I think, way more than a 10X delivery in value. >> Because you leave the data in place you bring that value to wherever the data is. Which is the original concept of Hadoop, by the way. That was what was profound about Hadoop everybody craps on it now, but that was the game changer and if you could take advantage of that that's how you tap your 10X. >> To the difference is, we're not, to your point we're not moving the data. Hadoop, in my humble opinion why it plateaued is because to get the value, you had to ask the user to bring and put data in yet another platform. And the reason that we're not delivering on big data as an industry, I believe is because we've too many data sources, too many platforms too many consumers of data and too many producers. As we build all these islands of data, with no connectivity. The idea is, we'll create this big data lake and we're going to physically put everything in there. Guess what? Someday turned out to be never. Because people aren't going to deal with the business disruption. We move thousands of users from a platform like Teradata to a platform like Snowflake or Google BigQuery, we don't care. We're a multi-cloud and we're a hybrid cloud. But we do it without any disruption. You're using Excel, you just continue and use it. You just see the results are faster. You use Tableau, same difference. >> So we had all the vertical rock stars in here. So we had Colin in yesterday, we had Stonebraker around earlier. Andy Palmer just came on and Chris here with the CEO who ultimately sold the company to HP. That really didn't do anything with it and then spun it off and now it's back. Aaron was, he had a spring in his step yesterday. So when you think about, Vertica. The technology behind Vertica go back 10 years and where we come now give us a little journey of, your data journey. >> So I think it plays into the, the original assertion is that, vertical is a best-in-class platform for analytics but it was yet another platform. The analog I give now, is now we have Snowflake and six months, 12 months from now we're going to have another one. And that creates a set of problems if you have to live in the physical world. Because you've all these islands of data and I believe, it's about the data not about the models, it's about the data. You can't get optimal results if you don't have an optimal access to the pertinent data. I believe that having that Universal API is going to make the next platform that more valuable. You're not going to be making the trade-off is, okay we have this platform that has some neat capability but the trade-off is from an enterprise architecture perspective we're never going to be able to connect all this stuff. That's how all of these things proliferated. My view is, in a world where you have that single pane of glass, that abstraction layer between the user and the data. Then innovation can be spawned quicker and you can use these tools effectively 'cause you're not compromising being able to get a logical view of the data and get access to it as a user. >> What's your issue with Snowflake you mentioned them, Mugli's company-- >> No issue, they're a great partner of ours. We eliminate the friction between the user going from an on-prem solution to the cloud. >> Slootman just took over there. So you know where that's going. >> Yep (laughing) >> Frank's got the magic touch. Okay good, you say they're a partner yours how are you guys partnering? >> They refer us into customers that, if you want to buy Snowflake now the next issue is, how do i migrate? You don't. You put our virtualization layer in and then we allow you access to Snowflake in a non-disruptive way, versus having to move data into their system or into a particular cloud which creates sales friction. >> Moving data is just, you want to avoid it at all cost. >> I do want to ask you because I met with your predecessors, Dave Mariani last year and I know he was kind of a reluctant CEO he didn't really want to be CEO but wanted to be CTO, which is what he is now. How did that come about, that they found you that you connected with them and decided this was the right opportunity. >> That's a great question. I actually looked at the company at the seed stage when I was in venture, but I had this thing as you know that, I wanted to move companies to Boston and they're about my vintage age-wise and he's married with four kids so that wasn't in the cards. I said look, it doesn't make sense for me to seed this company 'cause I can't give you the time you're out in California everything I'm instrumenting is around Boston. We parted friends. And I was skeptical whether he could build this 'cause people have been talking about building a heterogeneous universal semantic layer, for years and it's never come to fruition. And then he read in Fortune or Forbes that I was leaving Accomplice and that I was looking for one more company to operate. He reached out and he told me what they were doing that hey, we really built it but we need help and I don't want to run this. It's not right for the company and the opportunity So he said, "I'll come and I'll consult to you." I put together a plan and I had my Vertica and data robot. NekTony guys do the technical diligence to make sure that the architecture wasn't wedded to the dupe, like all the other ones were and when I saw it wasn't then I knew the market opportunity was to take that, rifle and point it at that legacy $150 billion BI market not at the billion dollar market of Hadoop. And when we did that, we've been growing at 162% quarter-over-quarter. We've built development centers in Bulgaria. We've moved all operations, non-technical to Boston here down in our South Station. We've been on fire and we are the partner of choice of every cloud manner, because we eliminate the sales friction, for customers being able to take advantage of movement to the cloud and we're able through our intelligent pipeline and capability. We're able to reduce the cost significantly of queries because we understand and we were able to intelligently cash those queries. >> Sales ops is here, all-- >> Sales marketing, customer support, customer success and we're building a machine learning team here at Dev team here. >> Where are you in that sort of Boston build-out? >> We have an office on 711 Atlantic that we opened in the fall. We're actually moving from 4,000 square feet to 10,000 this month. In less than six months and we'll house by the first year, 100 employees in Boston 100 in Bulgaria and about that same hundred in San Mateo. >> Are you going after net new business mainly? Or there's a lot of legacy BI out there are you more displacing those products? >> A couple of things. What we find is that, customers want to evolve into the cloud, they don't want a revolution they want a evolution. So we allow them, because we support hybrid cloud to keep some data behind the firewall and then experiment with moving other data to the cloud platform of choice but we're still providing that one logical view. I would say most of our customers are looking to reap platform, off of Teradata or something onto a, another platform like Snowflake. And then we have a set of customers that see that as part of the solution but not the whole solution. They're more true hybrids but I would say that 80% of our customers are traditional BI customers that are trying to contemporize their environments and be able to take advantage of tabular support and multidimensional, the things that we do in addition to the cube world. >> They can keep whatever they're using. >> Correct, that's the key. >> Did you do the series D, you did, right? >> Yes, Morgan Stanely led. >> So you're not actively but you're good for now, It was like $50 million >> Yeah we raised $50 million. >> You're good for a bit. Who's in the Chris Lynch target? (laughs) Who's the enemy? Vertica, I could say it was the traditional database guys. Who's the? >> We're in a unique position, we're almost Switzerland so we could be friend to foe, of anybody in that ecosystem because we can, non-disruptively re-platform customers between legacy platforms or from legacy platforms to the cloud. We're an interesting position. >> So similar to the file sharing. File virtualization company >> The Copier. >> Copier yeah. >> It puts us in an interesting position. They need to be friends with us and at the same time I'm sure that they're concerned about the capabilities we have but we have a number of retail customers for instance that have asked us to move down from Amazon to Google BigQuery, which we accommodate and because we can do that non-disruptively. The cost and the ability to move is eliminated. It gives customers true freedom of choice. >> How worried are you, that AWS tries to replicate what you guys do. You're in their sights. >> I think there are technical, legal and structural barriers to them doing that. The technical is, this team has been at it for six and a half years. So to do what we do, they'll have to do what we've done. Structurally from a business perspective if they could, I'm not sure they want to. The way to think about Amazon is, they're no different than Teradata, except for they want the same vendor lock-in except they want it to be the Amazon Cloud when Teradata wanted it to be, their data warehouse. >> They don't promote multi-cloud versus-- >> Yeah, they don't want multi-cloud they don't want >> On Prem >> Customers to have a freedom of choice. Would they really enable a heterogeneous abstraction layer, I don't think they would nor do I think any of the big guys would. They all claim to have this capability for their system. It's like the old IBM adage I'm in prison but the food's going to get three squares a day, I get cable TV but I'm in prison. (laughing) >> Awesome, all right, parting thoughts. >> Parting thoughts, oh geez you got to give me a question I'm not that creative. >> What's next, for you guys? What should we be paying attention to? >> I think you're going to see some significant announcements in September regarding the company and relationships that I think will validate the impact we're having in the market. >> Give you some leverage >> Yeah, will give us, better channel leverage. We have a major technical announcement that I think will be significant to the marketplace and what will be highly disruptive to some of the people you just mentioned. In terms of really raising the bar for customers to be able to have the freedom of choice without any sort of vendor lock-in. And I think that that will create some counter strike which we'll be ready for. (laughing) >> If you've never heard of AtScale before trust me you're going to in the next 18 months. Chris Lynch, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> It's my pleasure. >> Great to see you. All right, keep it right there everybody we're back with our next guest, right after this short break you're watching theCUBE from MIT, right back. (upbeat music)

(techno music) >> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts everybody, we're here with theCUBE at the MIT Chief Data Officer Information Quality Conference. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Paul Gillin. Susan Wilson is here, she's the vice president of data governance and she's the leader at Informatica. Blake Anders is the corporate vice president of data governance at New York Life. Folks, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So, Susan, interesting title; VP, data governance leader, Informatica. So, what are you leading at Informatica? >> We're helping our customers realize their business outcomes and objectives. Prior to joining Informatica about 7 years ago, I was actually a customer myself, and so often times I'm working with our customers to understand where they are, where they going, and how to best help them; because we recognize data governance is more than just a tool, it's a capability that represents people, the processes, the culture, as well as the technology. >> Yeah so you've walked the walk, and you can empathize with what your customers are going through. And Blake, your role, as the corporate VP, but more specifically the data governance lead. >> Right, so I lead the data governance capabilities and execution group at New York Life. We're focused on providing skills and tools that enable government's activities across the enterprise at the company. >> How long has that function been in place? >> We've been in place for about two and half years now. >> So, I don't know if you guys heard Mark Ramsey this morning, the key-note, but basically he said, okay, we started with enterprise data warehouse, we went to master data management, then we kind of did this top-down enterprise data model; that all failed. So we said, all right, let's pump the governance. Here you go guys, you fix our corporate data problem. Now, right tool for the right job but, and so, we were sort of joking, did data governance fail? No, you always have to have data governance. It's like brushing your teeth. But so, like I said, I don't know if you heard that, but what are your thoughts on that sort of evolution that he described? As sort of, failures of things like EDW to live up to expectations and then, okay guys over to you. Is that a common theme? >> It is a common theme, and what we're finding with many of our customers is that they had tried many of the, if you will, the methodologies around data governance, right? Around policies and structures. And we describe this as the Data 1.0 journey, which was more application-centric reporting to Data 2.0 to data warehousing. And a lot of the failed attempts, if you will, at centralizing, if you will, all of your data, to now Data 3.0, where we look at the explosion of data, the volumes of data, the number of data consumers, the expectations of the chief data officer to solve business outcomes; crushing under the scale of, I can't fit all of this into a centralized data at repository, I need something that will help me scale and to become more agile. And so, that message does resonate with us, but we're not saying data warehouses don't exist. They absolutely do for trusted data sources, but the ability to be agile and to address many of your organizations needs and to be able to service multiple consumers is top-of-mind for many of our customers. >> And the mind set from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 has changed. From, you know, data as a liability, to now data as this massive asset. It's sort of-- >> Value, yeah. >> Yeah, and the pendulum is swung. It's almost like a see-saw. Where, and I'm not sure it's ever going to flip back, but it is to a certain extent; people are starting to realize, wow, we have to be careful about what we do with our data. But still, it's go, go, go. But, what's the experience at New York Life? I mean, you know. A company that's been around for a long time, conservative, wants to make sure risk averse, obviously. >> Right. >> But at the same time, you want to keep moving as the market moves. >> Right, and we look at data governance as really an enabler and a value-add activity. We're not a governance practice for the sake of governance. We're not there to create a lot of policies and restrictions. We're there to add value and to enable innovation in our business and really drive that execution, that efficiency. >> So how do you do that? Square that circle for me, because a lot of people think, when people think security and governance and compliance they think, oh, that stifles innovation. How do you make governance an engine of innovation? >> You provide transparency around your data. So, it's transparency around, what does the data mean? What data assets do we have? Where can I find that? Where are my most trusted sources of data? What does the quality of that data look like? So all those things together really enable your data consumers to take that information and create new value for the company. So it's really about enabling your value creators throughout the organization. >> So data is an ingredient. I can tell you where it is, I can give you some kind of rating as to the quality of that data and it's usefulness. And then you can take it and do what you need to do with it in your specific line of business. >> That's right. >> Now you said you've been at this two and half years, so what stages have you gone through since you first began the data governance initiative. >> Sure, so our first year, year and half was really focused on building the foundations, establishing the playbook for data governance and building our processes and understanding how data governance needed to be implemented to fit New York Life in the culture of the company. The last twelve months or so has really been focused on operationalizing governance. So we've got the foundations in place, now it's about implementing tools to further augment those capabilities and help assist our data stewards and give them a better skill set and a better tool set to do their jobs. >> Are you, sort of, crowdsourcing the process? I mean, you have a defined set of people who are responsible for governance, or is everyone taking a role? >> So, it is a two-pronged approach, we do have dedicated data stewards. There's approximately 15 across various lines of business throughout the company. But, we are building towards a data democratization aspect. So, we want people to be self-sufficient in finding the data that they need and understanding the data. And then, when they have questions, relying on our stewards as a network of subject matter experts who also have some authorizations to make changes and adapt the data as needed. >> Susan, one of the challenges that we see is that the chief data officers often times are not involved in some of these skunkworks AI projects. They're sort of either hidden, maybe not even hidden, but they're in the line of business, they're moving. You know, there's a mentality of move fast and break things. The challenge with AI is, if you start operationalizing AI and you're breaking things without data quality, without data governance, you can really affect lives. We've seen it. In one of these unintended consequences. I mean, Facebook is the obvious example and there are many, many others. But, are you seeing that? How are you seeing organizations dealing with that problem? >> As Blake was mentioning often times what it is about, you've got to start with transparency, and you got to start with collaborating across your lines of businesses, including the data scientists, and including in terms of what they are doing. And actually provide that level of transparency, provide a level of collaboration. And a lot of that is through the use of our technology enablers to basically go out and find where the data is and what people are using and to be able to provide a mechanism for them to collaborate in terms of, hey, how do I get access to that? I didn't realize you were the SME for that particular component. And then also, did you realize that there is a policy associated to the data that you're managing and it can't be shared externally or with certain consumer data sets. So, the objective really is around how to create a platform to ensure that any one in your organization, whether I'm in the line of business, that I don't have a technical background, or someone who does have a technical background, they can come and access and understand that information and connect with their peers. >> So you're helping them to discover the data. What do you do at that stage? >> What we do at that stage is, creating insights for anyone in the organization to understand it from an impact analysis perspective. So, for example, if I'm going to make changes, to as well as discovery. Where exactly is my information? And so we have-- >> Right. How do you help your customers discover that data? >> Through machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities of our, specifically, our data catalog, that allows us to do that. So we use such things like similarity based matching which help us to identify. It doesn't have to be named, in miscellaneous text one, it could be named in that particular column name. But, in our ability to scan and discover we can identify in that column what is potentially social security number. It might have resided over years of having this data, but you may not realize that it's still stored there. Our ability to identify that and report that out to the data stewards as well as the data analysts, as well as to the privacy individuals is critical. So, with that being said, then they can actually identify the appropriate policies that need to be adhered to, alongside with it in terms of quality, in terms of, is there something that we need to archive. So that's where we're helping our customers in that aspect. >> So you can infer from the data, the meta data, and then, with a fair degree of accuracy, categorize it and automate that. >> Exactly. We've got a customer that actually ran this and they said that, you know, we took three people, three months to actually physically tag where all this information existed across something like 7,000 critical data elements. And, basically, after the set up and the scanning procedures, within seconds we were able to get within 90% precision. Because, again, we've dealt a lot with meta data. It's core to our artificial intelligence and machine learning. And it's core to how we built out our platforms to share that meta data, to do something with that meta data. It's not just about sharing the glossary and the definition information. We also want to automate and reduce the manual burden. Because we recognize with that scale, manual documentation, manual cataloging and tagging just, >> It doesn't work. >> It doesn't work. It doesn't scale. >> Humans are bad at it. >> They're horrible at it. >> So I presume you have a chief data officer at New York Life, is that correct? >> We have a chief data and analytics officer, yes. >> Okay, and you work within that group? >> Yes, that is correct. >> Do you report it to that? >> Yes, so-- >> And that individual, yeah, describe the organization. >> So that sits in our lines of business. Originally, our data governance office sat in technology. And then, our early 2018 we actually re-orged into the business under the chief data and analytics officer when that role was formed. So we sit under that group along with a data solutions and governance team that includes several of our data stewards and also some others, some data engineer-type roles. And then, our center for data science and analytics as well that contains a lot of our data science teams in that type of work. >> So in thinking about some of these, I was describing to Susan, as these skunkworks projects, is the data team, the chief data officer's team involved in those projects or is it sort of a, go run water through the pipes, get an MVP and then you guys come in. How does that all work? >> We're working to try to centralize that function as much as we can, because we do believe there's value in the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing in those types of things. So we're trying to build those communications channels and build that network of data consumers across the organization. >> It's hard right? >> It is. >> Because the line of business wants to move fast, and you're saying, hey, we can help. And they think you're going to slow them down, but in fact, you got to make the case and show the success because you're actually not going to slow them down to terms of the ultimate outcome. I think that's the case that you're trying to make, right? >> And that's one of the things that we try to really focus on and I think that's one of the advantages to us being embedded in the business under the CDAO role, is that we can then say our objectives are your objectives. We are here to add value and to align with what you're working on. We're not trying to slow you down or hinder you, we're really trying to bring more to the table and augment what you're already trying to achieve. >> Sometimes getting that organization right means everything, as we've seen. >> Absolutely. >> That's right. >> How are you applying governance discipline to unstructured data? >> That's actually something that's a little bit further down our road map, but one of the things that we have started doing is looking at our taxonomy's for structured data and aligning those with the taxonomy's that we're using to classify unstructured data. So, that's something we're in the early stages with, so that when we get to that process of looking at more of our unstructured content, we can, we already have a good feel for there's alignment between the way that we think about and organize those concepts. >> Have you identified automation tools that can help to bring structure to that unstructured data? >> Yes, we have. And there are several tools out there that we're continuing to investigate and look at. But, that's one of the key things that we're trying to achieve through this process is bringing structure to unstructured content. >> So, the conference. First year at the conference. >> Yes. >> Kind of key take aways, things that interesting to you, learnings? >> Oh, yes, well the number of CDO's that are here and what's top of mind for them. I mean, it ranges from, how do I stand up my operating model? We just had a session just about 30 minutes ago. A lot of questions around, how do I set up my organization structure? How do I stand up my operating model so that I could be flexible? To, right, the data scientists, to the folks that are more traditional in structured and trusted data. So, still these things are top-of-mind and because they're recognizing the market is also changing too. And the growing amount of expectations, not only solving business outcomes, but also regulatory compliance, privacy is also top-of-mind for a lot of customers. In terms of, how would I get started? And what's the appropriate structure and mechanism for doing so? So we're getting a lot of those types of questions as well. So, the good thing is many of us have had years of experience in this phase and the convergence of us being able to support our customers, not only in our principles around how we implement the framework, but also the technology is really coming together very nicely. >> Anything you'd add, Blake? >> I think it's really impressive to see the level of engagement with thought leaders and decision makers in the data space. You know, as Susan mentioned, we just got out of our session and really, by the end of it, it turned into more of an open discussion. There was just this kind of back and forth between the participants. And so it's really engaging to see that level of passion from such a distinguished group of individuals who are all kind of here to share thoughts and ideas. >> Well anytime you come to a conference, it's sort of any open forum like this, you learn a lot. When you're at MIT, it's like super-charged. With the big brains. >> Exactly, you feel it when you come on the campus. >> You feel smarter when you walk out of here. >> Exactly, I know. >> Well, guys, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. It was great to have you. >> Thank you for having us. We appreciate it, thank you. >> You're welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody. Paul and I will be back with our next guest. You're watching theCUBE from MIT in Cambridge. We'll be right back. (techno music)

>> from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's three Cube covering M I T. Chief data officer and information quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back. We're here to wrap up the M I T. Chief data officer officer, information quality. It's hashtag m i t CDO conference. You're watching the Cube. I'm David Dante, and Paul Gill is my co host. This is two days of coverage. We're wrapping up eyes. Our analysis of what's going on here, Paul, Let me let me kick it off. When we first started here, we talked about that are open. It was way saw the chief data officer role emerged from the back office, the information quality role. When in 2013 the CEO's that we talked to when we asked them what was their scope. We heard things like, Oh, it's very wide. Involves analytics, data science. Some CEOs even said Oh, yes, security is actually part of our purview because all the cyber data so very, very wide scope. Even in some cases, some of the digital initiatives were sort of being claimed. The studios were staking their claim. The reality was the CDO also emerged out of highly regulated industries financialservices healthcare government. And it really was this kind of wonky back office role. And so that's what my compliance, that's what it's become again. We're seeing that CEOs largely you're not involved in a lot of the emerging. Aye, aye initiatives. That's what we heard, sort of anecdotally talking to various folks At the same time. I feel as though the CDO role has been more fossilized than it was before. We used to ask, Is this role going to be around anymore? We had C I. Ose tell us that the CEO Rose was going to disappear, so you had both ends of the spectrum. But I feel as though that whatever it's called CDO Data's our chief analytics off officer, head of data, you know, analytics and governance. That role is here to stay, at least for for a fair amount of time and increasingly, issues of privacy and governance. And at least the periphery of security are gonna be supported by that CD a role. So that's kind of takeaway Number one. Let me get your thoughts. >> I think there's a maturity process going on here. What we saw really in 2016 through 2018 was, ah, sort of a celebration of the arrival of the CDO. And we're here, you know, we've got we've got power now we've got an agenda. And that was I mean, that was a natural outcome of all this growth and 90% of organizations putting sea Dios in place. I think what you're seeing now is a realization that Oh, my God, this is a mess. You know what I heard? This year was a lot less of this sort of crowing about the ascendance of sea Dios and Maura about We've got a big integration problem of big data cleansing problem, and we've got to get our hands down to the nitty gritty. And when you talk about, as you said, we had in here so much this year about strategic initiatives, about about artificial intelligence, about getting involved in digital business or customer experience transformation. What we heard this year was about cleaning up data, finding the data that you've got organizing it, applying meditator, too. It is getting in shape to do something with it. There's nothing wrong with that. I just think it's part of the natural maturation process. Organizations now have to go through Tiu to the dirty process of cleaning up this data before they can get to the next stage, which was a couple of three years out for most of >> the second. Big theme, of course. We heard this from the former head of analytics. That G s K on the opening keynote is the traditional methods have failed the the Enterprise Data Warehouse, and we've actually studied this a lot. You know, my analogy is often you snake swallowing a basketball, having to build cubes. E D W practitioners would always used to call it chasing the chips until we come up with a new chip. Oh, we need that because we gotta run faster because it's taking us hours and hours, weeks days to run these analytics. So that really was not an agile. It was a rear view mirror looking thing. And Sarbanes Oxley saved the E. D. W. Business because reporting became part of compliance thing perspective. The master data management piece we've heard. Do you consistently? We heard Mike Stone Breaker, who's obviously a technology visionary, was right on. It doesn't scale through this notion of duping. Everything just doesn't work and manually creating rules. It's just it's just not the right approach. This we also heard the top down data data enterprise data model doesn't works too complicated, can operationalize it. So what they do, they kick the can to governance. The Duke was kind of a sidecar, their big data that failed to live up to its promises. And so it's It's a big question as to whether or not a I will bring that level of automation we heard from KPMG. Certainly, Mike Stone breaker again said way heard this, uh, a cz well, from Andy Palmer. They're using technology toe automate and scale that big number one data science problem, which is? They spend all their time wrangling data. We'll see if that if that actually lives up >> to his probable is something we did here today from several of our guests. Was about the promise of machine learning to automate this day to clean up process and as ah Mark Ramsay kick off the conference saying that all of these efforts to standardize data have failed in the past. This does look, He then showed how how G s K had used some of the tools that were represented here using machine learning to actually clean up the data at G S. K. So there is. And I heard today a lot of optimism from the people we talked to about the capability of Chris, for example, talking about the capability of machine learning to bring some order to solve this scale scale problem Because really organizing data creating enterprise data models is a scale problem, and the only way you can solve that it's with with automation, Mike Stone breaker is right on top of that. So there was optimism at this event. There was kind of an ooh, kind of, ah, a dismay at seeing all the data problems they have to clean up, but also promised that tools are on the way that could do that. >> Yeah, The reason I'm an optimist about this role is because data such a hard problem. And while there is a feeling of wow, this is really a challenge. There's a lot of smart people here who are up for the challenge and have the d n a for it. So the role, that whole 360 thing. We talked about the traditional methods, you know, kind of failing, and in the third piece that touched on, which is really bringing machine intelligence to the table. We haven't heard that as much at this event. It's now front and center. It's just another example of a I injecting itself into virtually every aspect every corner of the industry. And again, I often jokes. Same wine, new bottle. Our industry has a habit of doing that, but it's cyclical, but it is. But we seem to be making consistent progress. >> And the machine learning, I thought was interesting. Several very guest spoke to machine learning being applied to the plumbing projects right now to cleaning up data. Those are really self contained projects. You can manage those you can. You can determine out test outcomes. You can vet the quality of the of the algorithms. It's not like you're putting machine learning out there in front of the customer where it could potentially do some real damage. There. They're vetting their burning in machine, learning in a environment that they control. >> Right, So So, Amy, Two solid days here. I think that this this conference has really grown when we first started here is about 130 people, I think. And now it was 500 registrants. This'd year. I think 600 is the sort of the goal for next year. Moving venues. The Cube has been covering this all but one year since 2013. Hope to continue to do that. Paul was great working with you. Um, always great work. I hope we can, uh we could do more together. We heard the verdict is bringing back its conference. You put that together. So we had column. Mahoney, um, had the vertical rock stars on which was fun. Com Mahoney, Mike Stone breaker uh, Andy Palmer and Chris Lynch all kind of weighed in, which was great to get their perspectives kind of the days of MPP and how that's evolved improving on traditional relational database. And and now you're Stone breaker. Applying all these m i. Same thing with that scale with Chris Lynch. So it's fun to tow. Watch those guys all Boston based East Coast folks some news. We just saw the news hit President Trump holding up jet icon contractors is we've talked about. We've been following that story very closely and I've got some concerns over that. It's I think it's largely because he doesn't like Bezos in The Washington Post Post. Exactly. You know, here's this you know, America first. The Pentagon says they need this to be competitive with China >> and a I. >> There's maybe some you know, where there's smoke. There's fire there, so >> it's more important to stick in >> the eye. That's what it seems like. So we're watching that story very closely. I think it's I think it's a bad move for the executive branch to be involved in those type of decisions. But you know what I know? Well, anyway, Paul awesome working with you guys. Thanks. And to appreciate you flying out, Sal. Good job, Alex Mike. Great. Already wrapping up. So thank you for watching. Go to silicon angle dot com for all the news. Youtube dot com slash silicon angles where we house our playlist. But the cube dot net is the main site where we have all the events. It will show you what's coming up next. We've got a bunch of stuff going on straight through the summer. And then, of course, VM World is the big kickoff for the fall season. Goto wicked bond dot com for all the research. We're out. Thanks for watching Dave. A lot day for Paul Gillon will see you next time.

>> from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering M I T. Chief data officer and information quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everybody watching the Cuban leader live tech coverage. We here covering the M I t CDO conference M I t CEO Day to wrapping up. Bob Parr is here. He's a partner in principle at KPMG, and he's joined by Streetcar Krishna, who is the managing director of data science. Aye, aye. And innovation at KPMG. Gents, welcome to the Cube. Thank >> thank you. Let's start with your >> roles. So, Bob, where do you focus >> my focus? Ah, within KPMG, we've got three main business lines audit tax, an advisory. And so I'm the advisory chief date officer. So I'm more focused on how we use data competitively in the market. More the offense side of our focus. So, you know, how do we make sure that our teams have the data they need to deliver value? Uh, much as possible working concert with the enterprise? CDO uh, who's more focused on our infrastructure, Our standards, security, privacy and those >> you've focused on making KPMG better A >> supposed exactly clients. OK, >> I also have a second hat, and I also serve financial service is si Dios as well. So Okay, so >> get her out of a dual role. I got sales guys in >> streetcar. What was your role? >> Yeah, You know, I focus a lot on data science, artificial intelligence and overall innovation s o my reaction. I actually represent a centre of >> excellence within KPMG that focuses on the I machine learning natural language processing. And I work with Bob's Division to actually advance the data site off the store because all the eye needs data. And without data, there's no algorithms, So we're focusing a lot on How do we use a I to make data Better think about their equality. Think about data lineage. Think about all of the problems that data has. How can we make it better using algorithms? And I focused a lot on that working with Bob, But no, it's it's customers and internal. I mean, you know, I were a horizontal within the form, So we help customers. We help internal, we focus a lot on the market. >> So, Bob, you mentioned used data offensively. So 10 12 years ago, it was data was a liability. You had to get rid of it. Keep it no longer than you had to, because you're gonna get soon. So email archives came in and obviously thinks flipped after the big data. But so what do you What are you seeing in terms of that shift from From the defense data to the offensive? >> Yeah, and it's it's really you know, when you think about it and let me define sort of offense versus defense. Who on the defense side, historically, that's where most of CEOs have played. That's risk regulatory reporting, privacy, um, even litigation support those types of activities today. Uh, and really, until about a year and 1/2 ago, we really saw most CEOs still really anchored in that I run a forum with a number of studios and financial service is, and every year we get them together and asked him the same set of questions. This was the first year where they said that you know what my primary focus now is. Growth. It's bringing efficiency is trying to generate value on the offensive side. It's not like the regulatory work's going away, certainly in the face of some of the pending privacy regulation. But you know, it's It's a sign that the volume of use cases as the investments in their digital transformations are starting to kick out, as well as the volumes of data that are available. The raw material that's available to them in terms of third party data in terms of the the just the general volumes that that exist that are streaming into the organization and the overall literacy in the business units are creating this, this massive demand. And so they're having to >> respond because of getting a handle on the data they're actually finding. Word is, they're categorizing it there, there, >> yeah, organizing that. That is still still a challenge. Um, I think it's better with when you have a very narrow scope of critical data elements going back to the structure data that we're talking it with the regulatory reporting when you start to get into the three offense, the generating value, getting the customer experience, you know, really exploring. You know that side of it. There's there's a ton of new muscle that has to be built new muscle in terms of data quality, new muscle in terms of um, really more scalable operating model. I think that's a big issue right now with Si Dios is, you know, we've got ah, we're used to that limited swath of CDs and they've got Stewardship Network. That's very labor intensive. A lot of manual processes still, um, and and they have some good basic technology, but it's a lot of its rules based. And when you do you think about those how that constraints going to scale when you have all of this demand. You know, when you look at the customer experience analytics that they want to do when you look at, you know, just a I applied to things like operations. The demand on the focus there is is is gonna start to create a fundamental shift >> this week are one of things that I >> have scene, and maybe it's just my small observation space. But I wonder, if you could comment Is that seems like many CBO's air not directly involved in the aye aye initiatives. Clearly, the chief digital officer is involved, but the CDO zehr kind of, you know, in the background still, you see that? >> That's a fantastic question, and I think this is where we're seeing some off the cutting it change that is happening in the industry. And when Barbara presenter idea that we can often civilly look at data, this is what it is that studios for a long time have become more reactive in their roles. And that is that is starting to come forefront now. So a lot of institutions were working with are asking What's the next generation Roll off a CDO and why are they in the background and why are they not in the foreground? And this is when you become more often they were proactive with data and the digital officers are obviously focused on, you know, the transformation that has to happen. But the studios are their backbone in order to make the transformation. Really. And if the CDO started, think about their data as an asset did as a product did us a service. The judicial officers are right there because those are the real, you know, like the data data they're living so CDO can really become from my back office to really become a business line. We've >> seen taking the reins in machine learning in machine learning projects and cos you work with. Who >> was driving that? Yeah. Great question. So we are seeing, like, you know, different. I would put them in buckets, right? There is no one mortal fits all. We're seeing different generations within the company's. Some off. The ones were just testing out the market. There's two keeping it in their technology space in their back office. Take idea and, you know, in in forward I d let me call them where they are starting to experiment with this. But you see, the mature organizations on the other end of the spectrum, they are integrating action, learning and a I right into the business line because they want to see ex souls having the technology right by their side so they can lead leverage. Aye, aye. And machine learning spot right for the business right there. And that is where we're seeing know some of the new models. Come on. >> I think the big shift from a CDO perspective is using a i to prep data for a That's that's fundamentally where you know, where the data science was distributed. Some of that data science has to come back and free the integration for equality for data prepping because you've got all this data third party and other from customer streaming into the organization. And you know, the work that you're doing around, um, anomaly detection is it transcends developing the rules, doing the profiling, doing the rules. You know, the very manual, the very labor intensive process you've got to get away from that >> is used in order for this to be scale goes and a I to figure out which out goes to apply t >> clean to prepare the data toe, see what algorithms we can use. So it's basically what we're calling a eye for data rather than just data leading into a I. So it's I mean, you know, you developed a technology for one off our clients and pretty large financial service. They were getting closer, like 1,000,000,000 data points every day. And there was no way manually, you could go through the same quality controls and all of those processes. So we automated it through algorithms, and these algorithms are learning the behavior of data as they flow into the organization, and they're able to proactively tell their problems are starting very much. And this is the new face that we see in in the industry, you cannot scale the traditional data governance using manual processes, we have to go to the next generation where a i natural language processing and think about on structure data, right? I mean, that is, like 90% off. The organization is unstructured data, and we have not talked about data quality. We have not talked about data governance. For a lot of these sources of information, now is the time. Hey, I can do it. >> And I think that raised a great question. If you look at unstructured and a lot of the data sources, as you start to take more of an offensive stance will be unstructured. And the data quality, what it means to apply data quality isn't the the profiling and the rules generation the way you would with standard data. So the teams, the skills that CEOs have in their organizations, have to change. You have to start to, and, you know, it's a great example where, you know, you guys were ingesting documents and there was handwriting all over the documents, you know, and >> yeah, you know, you're a great example, Bob. Like you no way would ask the client, like, you know, is this document gonna scanned into the system so my algorithm can run and they're like, Yeah, everything is good. I mean, the deal is there, but when you then start scanning it, you realize there's handwriting and the information is in the handwriting. So all the algorithms breakdown now >> tribal knowledge striving Exactly. >> Exactly. So that's what we're seeing. You know, if I if we talk about the digital transformation in data in the city organization, it is this idea dart. Nothing is left unseen. Some algorithm or some technology, has seen everything that is coming into. The organization has has has a para 500. So you can tell you where the problems are. And this is what algorithms do. This scale beautifully. >> So the data quality approaches are evolving, sort of changing. So rather than heavy, heavy emphasis on masking or duplication and things like that, you would traditionally think of participating the difficult not that that goes away. But it's got to evolve to use machine >> intelligence. Exactly what kind of >> skill sets people need thio achieve that Is it Is it the same people or do we need to retrain them or bring in new skills. >> Yeah, great question. And I can talk from the inspector off. Where is disrupting every industry now that we know, right? But we knew when you look at what skills are >> required, all of the eye, including natural language processing, machine learning, still require human in the loop. And >> that is the training that goes in there. And who do you who are the >> people who have that knowledge? It is the business analyst. It's the data analyst who are the knowledge betters the C suite and the studios. They are able to make decisions. But the day today is still with the data analyst. >> Those s Emmys. Those sm >> means So we have to obscure them to really start >> interacting with these new technologies where they are the leaders, rather than just waiting for answers to come through. And >> when that happens now being as a data scientist, my job is easy because they're Siamese, are there? I deploy the technology. They're semi's trained algorithms on a regular basis. Then it is a fully fungible model which is evolving with the business. And no longer am I spending time re architect ing my rules. And like my, you know, what are the masking capabilities I need to have? It is evolving us. >> Does that change the >> number one problem that you hear from data scientists, which is the 80% of the time >> spent on wrangling cleaning data 10 15 20% run into sm. He's being concerned that they're gonna be replaced by the machine. Their training. >> I actually see them being really enabled now where they're spending 80% of the time doing boring job off, looking at data. Now they're spending 90% of their time looking at the elements future creative in which requires human intelligence to say, Hey, this is different because off X, >> y and Z so let's let's go out. It sounds like a lot of what machine learning is being used for now in your domain is clean things up its plumbing. It's basic foundation work. So go out. Three years after all that work has been done and the data is clean. Where are your clients talking about going next with machine learning? Bob, did you want? >> I mean, it's a whole. It varies by by industry, obviously, but, um but it covers the gamut from, you know, and it's generally tied to what's driving their strategies. So if you look at a financial service is organization as an example today, you're gonna have, you know, really a I driving a lot of the behind the scenes on the customer experience. It's, you know, today with your credit card company. It's behind the scenes doing fraud detection. You know, that's that's going to continue. So it's take the critical functions that were more data. It makes better models that, you know, that that's just going to explode. And I think they're really you can look across all the functions, from finance to to marketing to operations. I mean, it's it's gonna be pervasive across, you know all of that. >> So if I may, I don't top award. While Bob was saying, I think what's gonna what What our clients are asking is, how can I exhilarate the decision making? Because at the end of the day on Lee, all our leaders are focused on making decisions, and all of this data science is leading up to their decision, and today you see like you know what you brought up, like 80% of the time is wasted in cleaning the data. So only 20% time was spent in riel experimentation and analytics. So your decision making time was reduced to 20% off the effort that I put in the pipeline. What if now I can make it 80% of the time? They're I put in the pipeline, better decisions are gonna come on the train. So when I go into a meeting and I'm saying like, Hey, can you show me what happened in this particular region or in this particular part of the country? Previously, it would have been like, Oh, can you come back in two weeks? I will have the data ready, and I will tell you the answer. But in two weeks, the business has ran away and the CDO know or the C Street doesn't require the same answer. But where we're headed as as the data quality improves, you can get to really time questions and decisions. >> So decision, sport, business, intelligence. Well, we're getting better. Isn't interesting to me. Six months to build a cube, we'd still still not good enough. Moving too fast. As the saying goes, data is plentiful. Insights aren't Yes, you know, in your view, well, machine intelligence. Finally, close that gap. Get us closer to real time decision >> making. It will eventually. But there's there's so much that we need to. Our industry needs to understand first, and it really ingrained. And, you know, today there is still a fundamental trust issues with a I you know, it's we've done a lot of work >> watch Black box or a part of >> it. Part of it. I think you know, the research we've done. And some of this is nine countries, 2400 senior executives. And we asked some, ah, a lot of questions around their data and trusted analytics, and 92% of them came back with. They have some fundamental trust issues with their data and their analytics and and they feel like there's reputational risk material reputational risk. This isn't getting one little number wrong on one of the >> reports about some more of an >> issue, you know, we also do a CEO study, and we've done this many years in a row going back to 2017. We started asked them okay, making a lot of companies their data driven right. When it comes to >> what they say they're doing well, They say they're day driven. That's the >> point. At the end of the day, they making strategic decisions where you have an insight that's not intuitive. Do you trust your gut? Go with the analytics back then. You know, 67% said they go with their gut, So okay, this is 2017. This industry's moving quickly. There's tons and tons of investment. Look at it. 2018 go down. No, went up 78%. So it's not aware this issue there is something We're fundamentally wrong and you hit it on. It's a part of its black box, and part of it's the date equality and part of its bias. And there's there's all of these things flowing around it. And so when we dug into that, we said, Well, okay, if that exists, how are we going to help organizations get their arms around this issue and start digging into that that trust issue and really it's the front part is, is exactly what we're talking about in terms of data quality, both structured more traditional approaches and unstructured, using the handwriting example in those types of techniques. But then you get into the models themselves, and it's, you know, the critical thing she had to worry about is, you know, lineage. So from an integrity perspective, where's the data coming from? Whether the sources for the change controls on some of that, they need to look at explain ability, gain at the black box part where you can you tell me the inferences decisions are those documented. And this is important for this me, the human in the loop to get confidence in the algorithm as well as you know, that executive group. So they understand there's a structure set of processes around >> Moneyball. Problem is actually pretty confined. It's pretty straightforward. Dono 32 teams are throwing minor leagues, but the data models pretty consistent through the problem with organizations is I didn't know data model is consistent with the organization you mentioned, Risk Bob. The >> other problem is organizational inertia. If they don't trust it, what is it? What is a P and l manage to do when he or she wants to preserve? Yeah, you know, their exit position. They attacked the data. You know, I don't believe that well, which which is >> a fundamental point, which is culture. Yes. I mean, you can you can have all the data, science and all the governance that you want. But if you don't work culture in parallel with all this, it's it's not gonna stick. And and that's, I think the lot of the leading organisations, they're starting to really dig into this. We hear a lot of it literacy. We hear a lot about, you know, top down support. What does that really mean? It means, you know, senior executives are placing bats around and linking demonstrably linking the data and the role of data days an asset into their strategies and then messaging it out and being specific around the types of investments that are going to reinforce that business strategy. So that's absolutely critical. And then literacy absolutely fundamental is well, because it's not just the executives and the data scientists that have to get this. It's the guy in ops that you're trying to get you. They need to understand, you know, not only tools, but it's less about the tools. But it's the techniques, so it's not. The approach is being used, are more transparent and and that you know they're starting to also understand, you know, the issues of privacy and data usage rights. That's that's also something that we can't leave it the curb. With all this >> innovation, it's also believing that there's an imperative. I mean, there's a lot of for all the talk about digital transformation hear it everywhere. Everybody's trying to get digital, right? But there's still a lot of complacency in the organization in the lines of business in operation to save. We're actually doing really well. You know, we're in financial service is health care really hasn't been disrupted. This is Oh, it's coming, it's coming. But there's still a lot of I'll be retired by then or hanging. Actually, it's >> also it's also the fact that, you know, like in the previous generation, like, you know, if I had to go to a shopping, I would go into a shop and if I wanted by an insurance product, I would call my insurance agent. But today the New world, it's just a top off my screen. I have to go from Amazon, so some other some other app, and this is really this is what is happening to all of our kind. Previously that they start their customers, pocketed them in different experience. Buckets. It's not anymore that's real in front of them. So if you don't get into their digital transformation, a customer is not going to discount you by saying, Oh, you're not Amazon. So I'm not going to expect that you're still on my phone and you're only two types of here, so you have to become really digital >> little surprises that you said you see the next. The next stage is being decision support rather than customer experience, because we hear that for CEOs, customer experience is top of mind right now. >> No natural profile. There are two differences, right? One is external facing is absolutely the customer internal facing. It's absolutely the decision making, because that's how they're separating. The internal were, says the external, and you know most of the meetings that we goto Customer insight is the first place where analytics is starting where data is being cleaned up. Their questions are being asked about. Can I master my customer records? Can I do a good master off my vendor list? That is where they start. But all of that leads to good decision making to support the customers. So it's like that external towards internal view well, back >> to the offense versus defense and the shift. I mean, it absolutely is on the offense side. So it is with the customer, and that's a more directly to the business strategy. So it's get That's the area that's getting the money, the support and people feel like it's they're making an impact with it there. When it's it's down here in some admin area, it's below the water line, and, you know, even though it's important and it flows up here, it doesn't get the VIN visibility. So >> that's great conversation. You coming on? You got to leave it there. Thank you for watching right back with our next guest, Dave Lot. Paul Gillen from M I t CDO I Q Right back. You're watching the Cube

>> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (futuristic music) >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and we extract the signal from the noise. This is day two, we're sort of wrapping up the Chief Data Officer event. It's MIT CDOIQ, it started as an information quality event and with the ascendancy of big data the CDO emerged and really took center stage here. And it's interesting to know that it's kind of come full circle back to information quality. People are realizing all this data we have, you know the old saying, garbage in, garbage out. So the information quality worlds and this chief data officer world have really come colliding together. Robert Abate is here, he's the Vice President and CDO of Global IDS and also the co-chair of next year's, the 14th annual MIT CDOIQ. Robert, thanks for coming on. >> Oh, well thank you. >> Now you're a CDO by background, give us a little history of your career. >> Sure, sure. Well I started out with an Electrical Engineering degree and went into applications development. By 2000, I was leading the Ralph Lauren's IT, and I realized when Ralph Lauren hired me, he was getting ready to go public. And his problem was he had hired eight different accounting firms to do eight different divisions. And each of those eight divisions were reporting a number, but the big number didn't add up, so he couldn't go public. So he searched the industry to find somebody who could figure out the problem. Now I was, at the time, working in applications and had built this system called Service Oriented Architectures, a way of integrating applications. And I said, "Well I don't know if I could solve the problem, "but I'll give it a shot." And what I did was, just by taking each silo as it's own problem, which was what EID Accounting Firm had done, I was able to figure out that one of Ralph Lauren's policies was if you buy a garment, you can return it anytime, anywhere, forever, however long you own it. And he didn't think about that, but what that meant is somebody could go to a Bloomingdale's, buy a garment and then go to his outlet store and return it. Well, the cross channels were different systems. So the outlet stores were his own business, retail was a different business, there was a completely different, each one had their own AS/400, their own data. So what I quickly learned was, the problem wasn't the systems, the problem was the data. And it took me about two months to figure it out and he offered me a job, he said well, I was a consultant at the time, he says, "I'm offering you a job, you're going to run my IT." >> Great user experience but hard to count. >> (laughs) Hard to count. So that's when I, probably 1999 was when that happened. I went into data and started researching-- >> Sorry, so how long did it take you to figure that out? You said a couple of months? >> A couple of months, I think it was about two months. >> 'Cause jeez, it took Oracle what, 10 years to build Fusion with SOA? That's pretty good. (laughs) >> This was a little bit of luck. When we started integrating the applications we learned that the messages that we were sending back and forth didn't match, and we said, "Well that's impossible, it can't not match." But what didn't match was it was coming from one channel and being returned in another channel, and the returns showed here didn't balance with the returns on this side. So it was a data problem. >> So a forensics showdown. So what did you do after? >> After that I went into ICICI Bank which was a large bank in India who was trying to integrate their systems, and again, this was a data problem. But they heard me giving a talk at a conference on how SOA had solved the data challenge, and they said, "We're a bank with a wholesale, a retail, "and other divisions, "and we can't integrate the systems, can you?" I said, "Well yeah, I'd build a website "and make them web services and now what'll happen is "each of those'll kind of communicate." And I was at ICICI Bank for about six months in Mumbai, and finished that which was a success, came back and started consulting because now a lot of companies were really interested in this concept of Service Oriented Architectures. Back then when we first published on it, myself, Peter Aiken, and a gentleman named Joseph Burke published on it in 1996. The publisher didn't accept the book, it was a really interesting thing. We wrote the book called, "Services Based Architectures: A Way to Integrate Systems." And the way Wiley & Sons, or most publishers work is, they'll have three industry experts read your book and if they don't think what you're saying has any value, they, forget about it. So one guy said this is brilliant, one guy says, "These guys don't know what they're talking about," and the third guy says, "I don't even think what they're talking about is feasible." So they decided not to publish. Four years later it came back and said, "We want to publish the book," and Peter said, "You know what, they lost their chance." We were ahead of them by four years, they didn't understand the technology. So that was kind of cool. So from there I went into consulting, eventually took a position as the Head of Enterprise and Director of Enterprise Information Architecture with Walmart. And Walmart, as you know, is a huge entity, almost the size of the federal government. So to build an architecture that integrates Walmart would've been a challenge, a behemoth challenge, and I took it on with a phenomenal team. >> And when was this, like what timeframe? >> This was 2010, and by the end of 2010 we had presented an architecture to the CIO and the rest of the organization, and they came back to me about a week later and said, "Look, everybody agrees what you did was brilliant, "but nobody knows how to implement it. "So we're taking you away, "you're no longer Director of Information Architecture, "you're now Director of Enterprise Information Management. "Build it. "Prove that what you say you could do, you could do." So we built something called the Data CAFE, and CAFE was an acronym, it stood for: Collaborative Analytics Facility for the Enterprise. What we did was we took data from one of the divisions, because you didn't want to take on the whole beast, boil the ocean. We picked Sam's Club and we worked with their CFO, and because we had information about customers we were able to build a room with seven 80 inch monitors that surrounded anyone in the room. And in the center was the Cisco telecommunications so you could be a part of a meeting. >> The TelePresence. >> TelePresence. And we built one room in one facility, and one room in another facility, and we labeled the monitors, one red, one blue, one green, and we said, "There's got to be a way where we can build "data science so it's interactive, so somebody, "an executive could walk into the room, "touch the screen, and drill into features. "And in another room "the features would be changing simultaneously." And that's what we built. The room was brought up on Black Friday of 2013, and we were able to see the trends of sales on the East Coast that we quickly, the executives in the room, and these are the CEO of Walmart and the heads of Sam's Club and the like, they were able to change the distribution in the Mountain Time Zone and west time zones because of the sales on the East Coast gave them the idea, well these things are going to sell, and these things aren't. And they saw a tremendous increase in productivity. We received the 2014, my team received the 2014 Walmart Innovation Project of the Year. >> And that's no slouch. Walmart has always been heavily data-oriented. I don't know if it's urban legend or not, but the famous story in the '80s of the beer and the diapers, right? Walmart would position beer next to diapers, why would they do that? Well the father goes in to buy the diapers for the baby, picks up a six pack while he's on the way, so they just move those proximate to each other. (laughs) >> In terms of data, Walmart really learned that there's an advantage to understanding how to place items in places that, a path that you might take in a store, and knowing that path, they actually have a term for it, I believe it's called, I'm sorry, I forgot the name but it's-- >> Selling more stuff. (laughs) >> Yeah, it's selling more stuff. It's the way you position items on a shelf. And Walmart had the brilliance, or at least I thought it was brilliant, that they would make their vendors the data champion. So the vendor, let's say Procter & Gamble's a vendor, and they sell this one product the most. They would then be the champion for that aisle. Oh, it's called planogramming. So the planogramming, the way the shelves were organized, would be set up by Procter & Gamble for that entire area, working with all their other vendors. And so Walmart would give the data to them and say, "You do it." And what I was purporting was, well, we shouldn't just be giving the data away, we should be using that data. And that was the advent of that. From there I moved to Kimberly-Clark, I became Global Director of Enterprise Data Management and Analytics. Their challenge was they had different teams, there were four different instances of SAP around the globe. One for Latin America, one for North America called the Enterprise Edition, one for EMEA, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and one for Asia-Pacific. Well when you have four different instances of SAP, that means your master data doesn't exist because the same thing that happens in this facility is different here. And every company faces this challenge. If they implement more than one of a system the specialty fields get used by different companies in different ways. >> The gold standard, the gold version. >> The golden version. So I built a team by bringing together all the different international teams, and created one team that was able to integrate best practices and standards around data governance, data quality. Built BI teams for each of the regions, and then a data science and advanced analytics team. >> Wow, so okay, so that makes you uniquely qualified to coach here at the conference. >> Oh, I don't know about that. (laughs) There are some real, there are some geniuses here. >> No but, I say that because these are your peeps. >> Yes, they are, they are. >> And so, you're a practitioner, this conference is all about practitioners talking to practitioners, it's content-heavy, There's not a lot of fluff. Lunches aren't sponsored, there's no lanyard sponsor and it's not like, you know, there's very subtle sponsor desks, you have to have sponsors 'cause otherwise the conference's not enabled, and you've got costs associated with it. But it's a very intimate event and I think you guys want to keep it that way. >> And I really believe you're dead-on. When you go to most industry conferences, the industry conferences, the sponsors, you know, change the format or are heavily into the format. Here you have industry thought leaders from all over the globe. CDOs of major Fortune 500 companies who are working with their peers and exchanging ideas. I've had conversations with a number of CDOs and the thought leadership at this conference, I've never seen this type of thought leadership in any conference. >> Yeah, I mean the percentage of presentations by practitioners, even when there's a vendor name, they have a practitioner, you know, internal practitioner presenting so it's 99.9% which is why people attend. We're moving venues next year, I understand. Just did a little tour of the new venue, so, going to be able to accommodate more attendees, so that's great. >> Yeah it is. >> So what are your objectives in thinking ahead a year from now? >> Well, you know, I'm taking over from my current peer, Dr. Arka Mukherjee, who just did a phenomenal job of finding speakers. People who are in the industry, who are presenting challenges, and allowing others to interact. So I hope could do a similar thing which is, find with my peers people who have real world challenges, bring them to the forum so they can be debated. On top of that, there are some amazing, you know, technology change is just so fast. One of the areas like big data I remember only five years ago the chart of big data vendors maybe had 50 people on it, now you would need the table to put all the vendors. >> Who's not a data vendor, you know? >> Who's not a data vendor? (laughs) So I would think the best thing we could do is, is find, just get all the CDOs and CDO-types into a room, and let us debate and talk about these points and issues. I've seen just some tremendous interactions, great questions, people giving advice to others. I've learned a lot here. >> And how about long term, where do you see this going? How many CDOs are there in the world, do you know? Is that a number that's known? >> That's a really interesting point because, you know, only five years ago there weren't that many CDOs to be called. And then Gartner four years ago or so put out an article saying, "Every company really should have a CDO." Not just for the purpose of advancing your data, and to Doug Laney's point that data is being monetized, there's a need to have someone responsible for information 'cause we're in the Information Age. And a CIO really is focused on infrastructure, making sure I've got my PCs, making sure I've got a LAN, I've got websites. The focus on data has really, because of the Information Age, has turned data into an asset. So organizations realize, if you utilize that asset, let me reverse this, if you don't use data as an asset, you will be out of business. I heard a quote, I don't know if it's true, "Only 10 years ago, 250 of the Fortune 10 no longer exists." >> Yeah, something like that, the turnover's amazing. >> Many of those companies were companies that decided not to make the change to be data-enabled, to make data decision processing. Companies still use data warehouses, they're always going to use them, and a warehouse is a rear-view mirror, it tells you what happened last week, last month, last year. But today's businesses work forward-looking. And just like driving a car, it'd be really hard to drive your car through a rear-view mirror. So what companies are doing today are saying, "Okay, let's start looking at this as forward-looking, "a prescriptive and predictive analytics, "rather than just what happened in the past." I'll give you an example. In a major company that is a supplier of consumer products, they were leading in the industry and their sales started to drop, and they didn't know why. Well, with a data science team, we were able to determine by pulling in data from the CDC, now these are sources that only 20 years ago nobody ever used to bring in data in the enterprise, now 60% of your data is external. So we brought in data from the CDC, we brought in data on maternal births from the national government, we brought in data from the Census Bureau, we brought in data from sources of advertising and targeted marketing towards mothers. Pulled all that data together and said, "Why are diaper sales down?" Well they were targeting the large regions of the country and putting ads in TV stations in New York and California, big population centers. Birth rates in population centers have declined. Birth rates in certain other regions, like the south, and the Bible Belt, if I can call it that, have increased. So by changing the marketing, their product sales went up. >> Advertising to Texas. >> Well, you know, and that brings to one of the points, I heard a lecture today about ethics. We made it a point at Walmart that if you ran a query that reduced a result to less than five people, we wouldn't allow you to see the result. Because, think about it, I could say, "What is my neighbor buying? "What are you buying?" So there's an ethical component to this as well. But that, you know, data is not political. Data is not chauvinistic. It doesn't discriminate, it just gives you facts. It's the interpretation of that that is hard CDOs, because we have to say to someone, "Look, this is the fact, and your 25 years "of experience in the business, "granted, is tremendous and it's needed, "but the facts are saying this, "and that would mean that the business "would have to change its direction." And it's hard for people to do, so it requires that. >> So whether it's called the chief data officer, whatever the data czar rubric is, the head of analytics, there's obviously the data quality component there whatever that is, this is the conference for, as I called them, your peeps, for that role in the organization. People often ask, "Will that role be around?" I think it's clear, it's solidifying. Yes, you see the chief digital officer emerging and there's a lot of tailwinds there, but the information quality component, the data architecture component, it's here to stay. And this is the premiere conference, the premiere event, that I know of anyway. There are a couple of others, perhaps, but it's great to see all the success. When I first came here in 2013 there were probably about 130 folks here. Today, I think there were 500 people registered almost. Next year, I think 600 is kind of the target, and I think it's very reasonable with the new space. So congratulations on all the success, and thank you for stepping up to the co-chair role, I really appreciate it. >> Well, let me tell you I thank you guys. You provide a voice at these IT conferences that we really need, and that is the ability to get the message out. That people do think and care, the industry is not thoughtless and heartless. With all the data breaches and everything going on there's a lot of fear, fear, loathing, and anticipation. But having your voice, kind of like ESPN and a sports show, gives the technology community, which is getting larger and larger by the day, a voice and we need that so, thank you. >> Well thank you, Robert. We appreciate that, it was great to have you on. Appreciate the time. >> Great to be here, thank you. >> All right, and thank you for watching. We'll be right back with out next guest as we wrap up day two of MIT CDOIQ. You're watching theCUBE. (futuristic music)

>> from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering M. I. T. Chief Data officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019 Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >> Welcome back to M I. T. Everybody watching the Cube. The leader in live tech coverage we hear a Day two of the M I t chief data officer information Quality Conference Day Volonte with Paul Dillon. Andy Palmer's here. He's the co founder and CEO of Tamer. Good to see again. It's great to see it actually coming out. So I didn't ask this to Mike. I could kind of infirm from someone's dances. But why did you guys start >> Tamer? >> Well, it really started with an academic project that Mike was doing over at M. I. T. And I was over in of artists at the time. Is the chief get officer over there? And what we really found was that there were a lot of companies really suffering from data mastering as the primary bottleneck in their company did used great new tech like the vertical system that we've built and, you know, automated a lot of their warehousing and such. But the real bottleneck was getting lots of data integrated and mastered really, really >> quickly. Yeah, He took us through the sort of problems with obviously the d. W. In terms of scaling master data management and the scanning problems was Was that really the problem that you were trying to solve? >> Yeah, it really was. And when we started, I mean, it was like, seven years ago, eight years ago, now that we started the company and maybe almost 10 when we started working on the academic project, and at that time, people weren't really thinking are worried about that. They were still kind of digesting big data. A zit was called, but I think what Mike and I kind of felt was going on was that people were gonna get over the big data, Um, and the volume of data. And we're going to start worrying about the variety of the data and how to make the data cleaner and more organized. And, uh, I think I think way called that one pretty much right. Maybe >> we're a little >> bit early, but but I think now variety is the big problem >> with the other thing about your big day. Big data's oftentimes associated with Duke, which was a batch and then you sort of saw the shifter real time and spark was gonna fix all that. And so what are you seeing in terms of the trends in terms of how data is being used to drive almost near real time business decisions. >> You know, Mike and I came out really specifically back in 2007 and declared that we thought, uh, Hadoop and H D f s was going to be far less impactful than other people. >> 07 >> Yeah, Yeah. And Mike Mike actually was really aggressive and saying it was gonna be a disaster. And I think we've finally seen that actually play out of it now that the bloom is off the rose, so to speak. And so they're They're these fundamental things that big companies struggle with in terms of their data and, you know, cleaning it up and organizing it and making it, Iike want. Anybody that's worked at one of these big companies can tell you that the data that they get from most of their internal system sucks plain and simple, and so cleaning up that data, turning it into something it's an asset rather than liability is really what what tamers all about? And it's kind of our mission. We're out there to do this and it sort of pails and compare. Do you think about the amount of money that some of these companies have spent on systems like ASAP on you're like, Yeah, but all the data inside of the systems so bad and so, uh, ugly and unuseful like we're gonna fix that problem. >> So you're you're you're special sauce and machine learning. Where are you applying machine learning most most effectively when >> we apply machine learning to probably the least sexy problem on the planet. There are a lot of companies out there that use machine learning and a I t o do predictive algorithms and all kinds of cool stuff. All we do with machine learning is actually use it to clean up data and organize data. Get it ready for people to use a I I I started in the eye industry back in the late 19 eighties on, you know, really, I learned from the sky. Marvin Minsky and Mark Marvin taught me two things. First was garbage in garbage out. There's no algorithm that's worth anything unless you've got great data, and the 2nd 1 is it's always about the human in the machine working together. And I've really been working on those two same principles most of my career, and Tamer really brings both of those together. Our goal is to prepare data so that it can be used analytically inside of these companies, that it's actually high quality and useful. And the way we do that involves bringing together the machine, mostly these advanced machine learning algorithms with humans, subject matter experts inside of these companies that actually know all the ins and outs and all the intricacies of the data inside of their company. >> So say garbage in garbage out. If you don't have good training data course you're not going good ML model. How much how much upfront work is required. G. I know it was one of your customers and how much time is required to put together on ML model that can deal with 20,000,000 records like that? >> Well, you know, the amazing thing that this happened for us in the last five years, especially is that now we've got we've built enough models from scratch inside of these large global 2000 companies that very rarely do we go into a place where there we don't already have a model that's pre built. That they can use is a starting point. And I think that's the same thing that's happening in modeling in general. If you look a great companies like data robot Andi and even in in the Python community ml live that the accessibility of these modeling tools and the models themselves are actually so they're commoditized. And so most of our models and most of the projects we work on, we've already got a model. That's a starting point. We don't really have to start from scratch. >> You mentioned gonna ta I in the eighties Is that is the notion of a I Is it same as it was in the eighties and now we've just got the tooling, the horsepower, the data to take advantage of it is the concept changed? The >> math is all the same, like, you know, absolutely full stop, like there's really no new math. The two things I think that have changed our first. There's a lot more data that's available now, and, you know, uh, neural nets are a great example, right? in Marvin's things that, you know when you look at Google translate and how aggressively they used neural nets, it was the quantity of data that was available that actually made neural nets work. The second thing that that's that's changed is the cheap availability of Compute that Now the largest supercomputer in the world is available to rent by the minute. And so we've got all this data. You've got all this really cheap compute. And then third thing is what you alluded to earlier. The accessibility of all the math that now it's becoming so simple and easy to apply these math techniques, and they're becoming you know, it's It's almost to the point where the average data scientists not the advance With the average data, scientists can do a practice. Aye, aye. Techniques that 20 years ago required five PhDs. >> It's not surprising that Google, with its new neural net technology, all the search data that it has has been so successful. It's a surprise you that that Amazon with Alexa was able to compete so effectively. >> Oh, I think that I would never underestimate Amazon and their ability to, you know, build great tact. They've done some amazing work. One of my favorite Mike and I actually, one of our favorite examples in the last, uh, three years, they took their red shift system, you know, that competed with with Veronica and they they re implemented it and, you know, as a compiled system and it really runs incredibly fast. I mean, that that feat of engineering, what was truly exceptional >> to hear you say that Because it wasn't Red Shift originally Park. So yeah, that's right, Larry Ellison craps all over Red Shift because it's just open source offer that they just took and repackage. But you're saying they did some major engineering to Oh >> my gosh, yeah, It's like Mike and I both way Never. You know, we always compared par, excelled over tika, and, you know, we always knew we were better in a whole bunch of ways. But this this latest rewrite that they've done this compiled version like it's really good. >> So as a guy has been doing a eye for 30 years now, and it's really seeing it come into its own, a lot of a I project seems right now are sort of low hanging fruit is it's small scale stuff where you see a I in five years what kind of projects are going our bar company's gonna be undertaking and what kind of new applications are gonna come out of this? But >> I think we're at the very beginning of this cycle, and actually there's a lot more potential than has been realized. So I think we are in the pick the low hanging fruit kind of a thing. But some of the potential applications of A I are so much more impactful, especially as we modernize core infrastructure in the enterprise. So the enterprise is sort of living with this huge legacy burden. And we always air encouraging a tamer our customers to think of all their existing legacy systems is just dated generating machines and the faster they can get that data into a state where they can start doing state of the art A. I work on top of it, the better. And so really, you know, you gotta put the legacy burden aside and kind of draw this line in the sand so that as you really get, build their muscles on the A. I side that you can take advantage of that with all the data that they're generating every single day. >> Everything about these data repose. He's Enterprise Data Warehouse. You guys built better with MPP technology. Better data warehouses, the master data management stuff, the top down, you know, Enterprise data models, Dupin in big data, none of them really lived up to their promise, you know? Yeah, it's kind of somewhat unfair toe toe like the MPP guys because you said, Hey, we're just gonna run faster. And you did. But you didn't say you're gonna change the world and all that stuff, right? Where's e d? W? Did Do you feel like this next wave is actually gonna live up to the promise? >> I think the next phase is it's very logical. Like, you know, I know you're talking to Chris Lynch here in a minute, and you know what? They're doing it at scale and at scale and tamer. These companies are all in the same general area. That's kind of related to how do you take all this data and actually prepare it and turn it into something that's consumable really quickly and easily for all of these new data consumers in the enterprise and like so that that's the next logical phase in this process. Now, will this phase be the one that finally sort of meets the high expectations that were set 2030 years ago with enterprise data warehousing? I don't know, but we're certainly getting closer >> to I kind of hoped knockers, and we'll have less to do any other cool stuff that you see out there. That was a technology just >> I'm huge. I'm fanatical right now about health care. I think that the opportunity for health care to be transformed with technology is, you know, almost makes everything else look like chump change. What aspect of health care? Well, I think that the most obvious thing is that now, with the consumer sort of in the driver seat in healthcare, that technology companies that come in and provide consumer driven solutions that meet the needs of patients, regardless of how dysfunctional the health care system is, that's killer stuff. We had a great company here in Boston called Pill Pack was a great example of that where they just build something better for consumers, and it was so popular and so, you know, broadly adopted again again. Eventually, Amazon bought it for $1,000,000,000. But those kinds of things and health care Pill pack is just the beginning. There's lots and lots of those kinds of opportunities. >> Well, it's right. Healthcare's ripe for disruption on, and it hasn't been hit with the digital destruction. And neither is financialservices. Really? Certainly, defenses has not yet another. They're high risk industry, so Absolutely takes longer. Well, Andy, thanks so much for making the time. You know, You gotta run. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right, keep it right. Everybody move back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching the Cube from M I T c B O Q. Right back.

>> from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering M I T. Chief data officer and information quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everybody, You're watching the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage, and we're covering the M I t CDO conference M I t. CDO. My name is David Monty in here with my co host, Paul Galen. Mike Stone breakers here. The legend is founder CTO of Of Tamer, as well as many other companies. Inventor Michael. Thanks for coming back in the Cube. Good to see again. Nice to be here. So this is kind of ah, repeat pattern for all of us. We kind of gather here in August that the CDO conference You're always the highlight of the show. You gave a talk this week on the top 10. Big data mistakes. You and I are one of the few. You were the few people who still use the term big data. I happen to like it. Sad that it's out of vogue already, but people associated with the doo doop it's kind of waning, but regardless, so welcome. How'd the talk go? What were you talking about. >> So I talked to a lot of people who were doing analytics. We're doing operation Offer operational day of data at scale, and they always make most of them make a collection of bad mistakes. And so the talk waas a litany of the blunders that I've seen people make, and so the audience could relate to the blunders about most. Most of the enterprise is represented. Make a bunch of the blunders. So I think no. One blunder is not planning on moving most everything to the cloud. >> So that's interesting, because a lot of people would would would love to debate that, but and I would imagine you probably could have done this 10 years ago in a lot of the blunders would be the same, but that's one that wouldn't have been there. But so I tend to agree. I was one of the two hands that went up this morning, and vocalist talk when he asked, Is the cloud cheaper for us? It is anyway. But so what? Why should everybody move everything? The cloud aren't there laws of physics, laws of economics, laws of the land that suggest maybe you >> shouldn't? Well, I guess 22 things and then a comment. First thing is James Hamilton, who's no techies. Techie works for Amazon. We know James. So he claims that he could stand up a server for 25% of your cost. I have no reason to disbelieve him. That number has been pretty constant for a few years, so his cost is 1/4 of your cost. Sooner or later, prices are gonna reflect costs as there's a race to the bottom of cloud servers. So >> So can I just stop you there for a second? Because you're some other date on that. All you have to do is look at a W S is operating margin and you'll see how profitable they are. They have software like economics. Now we're deploying servers. So sorry to interrupt, but so carry. So >> anyway, sooner or later, they're gonna have their gonna be wildly cheaper than you are. The second, then yet is from Dave DeWitt, whose database wizard. And here's the current technology that that Microsoft Azure is using. As of 18 months ago, it's shipping containers and parking lots, chilled water in power in Internet, Ian otherwise sealed roof and walls optional. So if you're doing raised flooring in Cambridge versus I'm doing shipping containers in the Columbia River Valley, who's gonna be a lot cheaper? And so you know the economies of scale? I mean, that, uh, big, big cloud guys are building data centers as fast as they can, using the cheapest technology around. You put up the data center every 10 years on dhe. You do it on raised flooring in Cambridge. So sooner or later, the cloud guys are gonna be a lot cheaper. And the only thing that isn't gonna the only thing that will change that equation is For example, my lab is up the street with Frank Gehry building, and we have we have an I t i t department who runs servers in Cambridge. Uh, and they claim they're cheaper than the cloud. And they don't pay rent for square footage and they don't pay for electricity. So yeah, if if think externalities, If there are no externalities, the cloud is assuredly going to be cheaper. And then the other thing is that most everybody tonight that I talk thio including me, has very skewed resource demands. So in the cloud finding three servers, except for the last day of the month on the last day of the month. I need 20 servers. I just do it. If I'm doing on Prem, I've got a provision for peak load. And so again, I'm just way more expensive. So I think sooner or later these combinations of effects was going to send everybody to the cloud for most everything, >> and my point about the operating margins is difference in price and cost. I think James Hamilton's right on it. If he If you look at the actual cost of deploying, it's even lower than the price with the market allows them to their growing at 40 plus percent a year and a 35 $40,000,000,000 run rate company sooner, Sooner or >> later, it's gonna be a race to the lot of you >> and the only guys are gonna win. You have guys have the best cost structure. A >> couple other highlights from your talk. >> Sure, I think 2nd 2nd thing like Thio Thio, no stress is that machine learning is going to be a game is going to be a game changer for essentially everybody. And not only is it going to be autonomous vehicles. It's gonna be automatic. Check out. It's going to be drone delivery of most everything. Uh, and so you can, either. And it's gonna affect essentially everybody gonna concert of, say, categorically. Any job that is easy to understand is going to get automated. And I think that's it's gonna be majorly impactful to most everybody. So if you're in Enterprise, you have two choices. You can be a disrupt or or you could be a disruptive. And so you can either be a taxi company or you can be you over, and it's gonna be a I machine learning that's going going to be determined which side of that equation you're on. So I was a big blunder that I see people not taking ml incredibly seriously. >> Do you see that? In fact, everyone I talked who seems to be bought in that this is we've got to get on the bandwagon. Yeah, >> I'm just pointing out the obvious. Yeah, yeah, I think, But one that's not quite so obvious you're is a lot of a lot of people I talked to say, uh, I'm on top of data science. I've hired a group of of 10 data scientists, and they're doing great. And when I talked, one vignette that's kind of fun is I talked to a data scientist from iRobot, which is the guys that have the vacuum cleaner that runs around your living room. So, uh, she said, I spend 90% of my time locating the data. I want to analyze getting my hands on it and cleaning it, leaving the 10% to do data science job for which I was hired. Of the 10% I spend 90% fixing the data cleaning errors in my data so that my models work. So she spends 99% of her time on what you call data preparation 1% of her time doing the job for which he was hired. So data science is not about data science. It's about data integration, data cleaning, data, discovery. >> But your new latest venture, >> so tamer does that sort of stuff. And so that's But that's the rial data science problem. And a lot of people don't realize that yet, And, uh, you know they will. I >> want to ask you because you've been involved in this by my count and starting up at least a dozen companies. Um, 99 Okay, It's a lot. >> It's not overstated. You estimated high fall. How do you How >> do you >> decide what challenge to move on? Because they're really not. You're not solving the same problems. You're You're moving on to new problems. How do you decide? What's the next thing that interests you? Enough to actually start a company. Okay, >> that's really easy. You know, I'm on the faculty of M i t. My job is to think of news new ship and investigate it, and I come up. No, I'm paid to come up with new ideas, some of which have commercial value, some of which don't and the ones that have commercial value, like, commercialized on. So it's whatever I'm doing at the time on. And that's why all the things I've commercialized, you're different >> s so going back to tamer data integration platform is a lot of companies out there claim to do it day to get integration right now. What did you see? What? That was the deficit in the market that you could address. >> Okay, great question. So there's the traditional data. Integration is extract transforming load systems and so called Master Data management systems brought to you by IBM in from Attica. Talent that class of folks. So a dirty little secret is that that technology does not scale Okay, in the following sense that it's all well, e t l doesn't scale for a different reason with an m d l e t l doesn't scale because e t. L is based on the premise that somebody really smart comes up with a global data model For all the data sources you want put together. You then send a human out to interview each business unit to figure out exactly what data they've got and then how to transform it into the global data model. How to load it into your data warehouse. That's very human intensive. And it doesn't scale because it's so human intensive. So I've never talked to a data warehouse operator who who says I integrate the average I talk to says they they integrate less than 10 data sources. Some people 20. If you twist my arm hard, I'll give you 50. So a Here. Here's a real world problem, which is Toyota Motor Europe. I want you right now. They have a distributor in Spain, another distributor in France. They have a country by country distributor, sometimes canton by Canton. Distribute distribution. So if you buy a Toyota and Spain and move to France, Toyota develops amnesia. The French French guys know nothing about you. So they've got 250 separate customer databases with 40,000,000 total records in 50 languages. And they're in the process of integrating that. It was single customer database so that they can Duke custom. They could do the customer service we expect when you cross cross and you boundary. I've never seen an e t l system capable of dealing with that kind of scale. E t l dozen scale to this level of problem. >> So how do you solve that problem? >> I'll tell you that they're a tamer customer. I'll tell you all about it. Let me first tell you why MGM doesn't scare. >> Okay. Great. >> So e t l says I now have all your data in one place in the same format, but now you've got following problems. You've got a d duplicated because if if I if I bought it, I bought a Toyota in Spain, I bought another Toyota in France. I'm both databases. So if you want to avoid double counting customers, you got a dupe. Uh, you know, got Duke 30,000,000 records. And so MGM says Okay, you write some rules. It's a rule based technology. So you write a rule. That's so, for example, my favorite example of a rule. I don't know if you guys like to downhill downhill skiing, All right? I love downhill skiing. So ski areas, Aaron, all kinds of public databases assemble those all together. Now you gotta figure out which ones are the same the same ski area, and they're called different names in different addresses and so forth. However, a vertical drop from bottom to the top is the same. Chances are they're the same ski area. So that's a rule that says how to how to put how to put data together in clusters. And so I now have a cluster for mount sanity, and I have a problem which is, uh, one address says something rather another address as something else. Which one is right or both? Right, so now you want. Now you have a gold. Let's call the golden Record problem to basically decide which, which, which data elements among a variety that maybe all associated with the same entity are in fact correct. So again, MDM, that's a rule's a rule based system. So it's a rule based technology and rule systems don't scale the best example I can give you for why Rules systems don't scale. His tamer has another customer. General Electric probably heard of them, and G wanted to do spend analytics, and so they had 20,000,000 spend transactions. Frank the year before last and spend transaction is I paid $12 to take a cab from here here to the airport, and I charged it to cost center X Y Z 20,000,000 of those so G has a pre built classification system for spend, so they have parts and underneath parts or computers underneath computers and memory and so forth. So pre existing preexisting class classifications for spend they want to simply classified 20,000,000 spent transactions into this pre existing hierarchy. So the traditional technology is, well, let's write some rules. So G wrote 500 rules, which is about the most any single human I can get there, their arms around so that classified 2,000,000 of the 20,000,000 transactions. You've now got 18 to go and another 500 rules is not going to give you 2,000,000 more. It's gonna give you love diminishing returns, right? So you have to write a huge number of rules and no one can possibly understand. So the technology simply doesn't scale, right? So in the case of G, uh, they had tamer health. Um, solve this. Solved this classification problem. Tamer used their 2,000,000 rule based, uh, tag records as training data. They used an ML model, then work off the training data classifies remaining 18,000,000. So the answer is machine learning. If you don't use machine learning, you're absolutely toast. So the answer to MDM the answer to MGM doesn't scale. You've got to use them. L The answer to each yell doesn't scale. You gotta You're putting together disparate records can. The answer is ml So you've got to replace humans by machine learning. And so that's that seems, at least in this conference, that seems to be resonating, which is people are understanding that at scale tradition, traditional data integration, technology's just don't work >> well and you got you got a great shot out on yesterday from the former G S K Mark Grams, a leader Mark Ramsay. Exactly. Guys. And how they solve their problem. He basically laid it out. BTW didn't work and GM didn't work, All right. I mean, kick it, kick the can top down data modelling, didn't work, kicked the candid governance That's not going to solve the problem. And But Tamer did, along with some other tooling. Obviously, of course, >> the Well, the other thing is No. One technology. There's no silver bullet here. It's going to be a bunch of technologies working together, right? Mark Ramsay is a great example. He used his stream sets and a bunch of other a bunch of other startup technology operating together and that traditional guys >> Okay, we're good >> question. I want to show we have time. >> So with traditional vendors by and large or 10 years behind the times, And if you want cutting edge stuff, you've got to go to start ups. >> I want to jump. It's a different topic, but I know that you in the past were critic of know of the no sequel movement, and no sequel isn't going away. It seems to be a uh uh, it seems to be actually gaining steam right now. What what are the flaws in no sequel? It has your opinion changed >> all? No. So so no sequel originally meant no sequel. Don't use it then. Then the marketing message changed to not only sequel, So sequel is fine, but no sequel does others. >> Now it's all sequel, right? >> And my point of view is now. No sequel means not yet sequel because high level language, high level data languages, air good. Mongo is inventing one Cassandra's inventing one. Those unless you squint, look like sequel. And so I think the answer is no sequel. Guys are drifting towards sequel. Meanwhile, Jason is That's a great idea. If you've got your regular data sequel, guys were saying, Sure, let's have Jason is the data type, and I think the only place where this a fair amount of argument is schema later versus schema first, and I pretty much think schema later is a bad idea because schema later really means you're creating a data swamp exactly on. So if you >> have to fix it and then you get a feel of >> salary, so you're storing employees and salaries. So, Paul salaries recorded as dollars per month. Uh, Dave, salary is in euros per week with a lunch allowance minds. So if you if you don't, If you don't deal with irregularities up front on data that you care about, you're gonna create a mess. >> No scheme on right. Was convenient of larger store, a lot of data cheaply. But then what? Hard to get value out of it created. >> So So I think the I'm not opposed to scheme later. As long as you realize that you were kicking the can down the road and you're just you're just going to give your successor a big mess. >> Yeah, right. Michael, we gotta jump. But thank you so much. Sure appreciate it. All right. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right into the short break. You watching the cue from M i t cdo Ike, you right back

>> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. (dramatic music) >> Welcome back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, and we extract the signal from then noise. And, we're here at the MIT CDOIQ, the Chief Data Officer conference. I'm Dave Vellante with my cohost Paul Gillin. Day two of our wall to wall coverage. Aaron Kalb is here. He's the cofounder and chief data officer of Alation. Aaron, thanks for making the time to come on. >> Thanks so much Dave and Paul for having me. >> You're welcome. So, words matter, you know, and we've been talking about data, and big data, and the three Vs, and data is the new oil, and all this stuff. You gave a talk this week about, you know, "We're maybe not talking the right language "when it comes to data." What did you mean by all that? >> Absolutely, so I get a little bit frustrated by some of these cliques we hear at conference after conference, and the one I, sort of, took aim at in this talk is, data is the new oil. I think what people want to invoke with that is to say, in the same way that oil powered the industrial age, data's powering the information age. Just saying, data's really cool and trendy and important. That's true, but there are a lot of other associations and contexts that people have with data, and some of them don't really apply as, I'm sorry, with oil. And, some of them apply, as well, to data. >> So, is data more valuable than oil? >> Well, I think they're each valuable in different ways, but I think there's a couple issues with the metaphor. One is that data is scarce and dwindling, and part of value comes from the fact that it's so rare. Whereas, the experience with data is that it's so plentiful and abundant, we're almost drowning in it. And so, what I contend is, instead of talking about data as compared to oil, we should talk about data compared to water. And, the idea is, you know, water is very plentiful on the planet, but sometimes, you know, if you have saltwater or contaminated water, you can't drink it. Water is good for different purposes, depending on its form, and so it's all about getting the right data for the right purpose, like water. >> Well, we've certainly, at least in my opinion, fought wars, Paul, over oil. >> And, over water. >> And, certainly, conflicts over water. Do you think we'll be fighting wars over data? Or, are we already? >> No, we might be. One of my favorite talks from the sessions here was a keynote by the CDO for the Department of Defense, who was talking about, you know, the civic duty about transparency but was observing that, actually, more IP addresses from China and Russia are looking at our public datasets than from within the country. So, you know, it's definitely a resource that can be very powerful. >> So, what was the reaction to your premise from the audience. What kind of questions did you get? >> You know, people actually responded very favorably, including some folks from the oil and gas industry, which I was pleased to find. We have a lot of customers in energy, so that was cool. But, what it was nice being here at MIT and just really geeking out about language and linguistics and data with a bunch of CDOs and other people who are, kind of, data intellectuals. >> Right, so if data is not the new oil. >> And, water isn't really a good analogy either, because the supply of water is finite. >> That's true. >> So, what is data? >> Yeah. >> Space? >> Yeah, it's a good point. >> Matter? >> Maybe it is like the universe in that it's always expanding, right, somehow. Right, because any thing, any physic which is on the planet probably won't be growing at that exponential speed. >> So, give us the punchline. >> Well, so I contend that water, while imperfect, is, actually, a really good metaphor that helps for a lot of things. It has properties like the fact that if it's a data quality issue, it flows downstream like pollution in a river. It's the fact that it can come in different forms, useful for different purposes. You might have gray water, right, which is good enough for, you know, irrigation or industrial purposes, but not safe to drink. And so, you rely on metadata to get the data that's in the right form. And, you know, the talk is more fun because you've a lot of visual examples that make this clear. >> Yeah, of course, yeah. >> I actually had one person in the audience say that he used a similar analogy in his own company, so it's fun to trade notes. >> So, chief data officer is a relatively new title for you, is it not? In terms of your role at Alation. >> Yeah, that's right, and the most fun thing about my job is being able to interact with all of the other CDOs and CDAOs at a conference like this. And, it was cool to see. I believe this conference doubled since the last year. Is that right? >> No. >> No, it's up about a hundred, though. >> Right. >> Well. >> And, it's about double from three years ago. >> And, when we first started, in 2013, yeah. >> 130 people, yeah. >> Yeah, it was a very small and intimate event. >> Yeah, here we're outgrowing this building, it seems. >> Yeah, they're kicking us out. >> I think what's interesting is, you know, if we do a little bit of analysis, this is a small data, within our own company, you know, our biggest and most visionary customers typically bought Alation. The buyer champion either was a CDO or they weren't a CDO when they bought the software and have since been promoted to be a CDO. And so, seeing this trend of more and more CDOs cropping up is really exciting for us. And also, just hearing all of the people at the conference saying, two trends we're hearing. A move from, sort of, infrastructure and technology to driving business value, and a move from defense and governance to, sort of, playing offense and doing revenue generation with data. Both of those trends are really exciting for us. >> So, don't hate me for asking this question, because what a lot of companies will do is, they'll give somebody a CDO title, and it's, kind of, a little bit of gimmick, right, to go to market. And, they'll drag you into sales, because I'm sure they do, as a cofounder. But, as well, I know CDOs at tech companies that are actually trying to apply new techniques, figure out how data contributes to their business, how they can cut costs, raise revenue. Do you have an internal role, as well? >> Absolutely, yeah. >> Explain that. >> So, Alation, you know, we're about 250 people, so we're not at the same scale as many of the attendees here. But, we want to learn, you know, from the best, and always apply everything that we learn internally as well. So, obviously, analytics, data science is a huge role in our internal operations. >> And so, what kinds of initiatives are you driving internally? Is it, sort of, cost initiatives, efficiency, innovation? >> Yeah, I think it's all of the above, right. Every single division and both in the, sort of, operational efficiency and cost cutting side as well as figuring out the next big bet to make, can be informed by data. And, our goal was to empower a curious and rational world, and our every decision be based not on the highest paid person's opinion, but on the best evidence possible. And so, you know, the goal of my function is largely to enable that both centrally and within each business unit. >> I want to talk to you about data catalogs a bit because it's a topic close to my heart. I've talked to a lot of data catalog companies over the last couple years, and it seems like, for one thing, the market's very crowded right now. It seems to me. Would you agree there are a lot of options out there? >> Yeah, you know, it's been interesting because when we started it, we were basically the first company to make this technology and to, kind of, use this term, data catalog, in this way. And, it's been validating to see, you know, a lot of big players and other startups even, kind of, coming to that terminology. But, yeah, it has gotten more crowded, and I think our customers who, or our prospects, used to ask us, you know, "What is it that you do? "Explain this catalog metaphor to me," are now saying, "Yeah, catalogs, heard about that." >> It doesn't need to be defined anymore. >> "Which one should I pick? "Why you?" Yeah. >> What distinguished one product from another, you know? What are the major differentiation points? >> Yeah, I think one thing that's interesting is, you know, my talk was about how the metaphors we use shape the way we think. And, I think there's a sense in which, kind of, the history of each company shapes their philosophy and their approach, so we've always been a data catalog company. That's our one product. Some of the other catalog vendors come from ETL background, so they're a lot more focused on technical metadata and infrastructure. Some of the catalog products grew out of governance, and so it's, sort of, governance first, no sorry, defense first and then offense secondary. So, I think that's one of the things, I think, we encourage our prospects to look at, is, kind of, the soul of the company and how that affects their decisions. The other thing is, of course, technology. And, what we at Alation are really excited about, and it's been validating to hear Gartner and others and a lot of the people here, like the GSK keynote speaker yesterday, talking about the importance of comprehensiveness and on taking a behavioral approach, right. We have our Behavioral IO technology that really says, "Let's not look at all the bits and the bytes, "but how are people using the data to drive results?" As our core differentiator. >> Do your customers generally standardize on one data catalog, or might they have multiple catalogs for multiple purposes? >> Yeah, you know, we heard a term more last season, of catalog of catalogs, you know. And, people here can get arbitrarily, you know, meta, meta, meta data, where we like to go there. I think the customers we see most successful tend to have one catalog that serves this function of the single source of reference. Many of our customers will say, you know, that their catalog serves as, sort of, their internal Google for data. Or, the one stop shop where you could find everything. Even though they may have many different sources, Typically you don't want to have siloed catalogs. It makes it harder to find what you're looking for. >> Let's play a little word association with some metaphors. Data lake. (laughter) >> Data lake's another one that I sort of hate. If you think about it, people had data warehouses and didn't love them, but at least, when you put something into a warehouse, you can get it out, right. If you throw something into a lake, you know, there's really no hope you're ever going to find it. It's probably not going to be in great shape, and we're not surprised to find that many folks who invested heavily in data lakes are now having to invest in a layer over it, to make it comprehensible and searchable. >> So, yeah, the lake is where we hide the stolen cars. Data swamp. >> Yeah, I mean, I think if your point is it's worse than lake, it works. But, I think we can do better a lake, right. >> How about data ocean? (laughter) >> You know, out of respect for John Furrier, I'll say it's fantastic. But, to us we think, you know, it isn't really about the size. The more data you have, people think the more data the better. It's actually the more data the worse unless you have a mechanism for finding the little bit of data that is relevant and useful for your task and put it to use. >> And to, want to set up, enter the catalog. So, technically, how does the catalog solve that problem? >> Totally, so if we think about, maybe let's go to the warehouse, for example. But, it works just as well on a data lake in practice. >> Yeah, cool. >> Through the catalog is. It starts with the inventory, you know, what's on every single shelf. But, if you think about what Amazon has done, they have the inventory warehouse in the back, but what you see as a consumer is a simple search interface, where you type in the word of the product you're looking for. And then, you see ranked suggestions for different items, you know, toasters, lamps, whatever, books I want to buy. Same thing for data. I can type in, you know, if I'm at the DOD, you know, information about aircraft, or information about, you know, drug discovery if I'm at GSK. And, I should be able to therefore see all of the different data sets that I have. And, that's true in almost any catalog, that you can do some search over the curated data sets there. With Alation in particular, what I can see is, who's using it, how are they using it, what are they joining it with, what results do they find in that process. And, that can really accelerate the pace of discovery. >> Go ahead. >> I'm sorry, Dave. To what degree can you automate some of that detail, like who's using it and what it's being used for. I mean, doesn't that rely on people curating the catalog? Or, to what degree can you automate that? >> Yeah, so it's a great question. I think, sometimes, there's a sense with AI or ML that it's like the computer is making the decisions or making things up. Which is, obviously, very scary. Usually, the training data comes from humans. So, our goal is to learn from humans in two ways. There's learning from humans where humans explicitly teach you. Somebody goes and says, "This is goal standard data versus this is, "you know, low quality data." And, they do that manually. But, there's also learning implicitly from people. So, in the same way on amazon.com, if I buy one item and then buy another, I'm doing that for my own purposes, but Amazon can do collaborative filtering over all of these trends and say, "You might want to buy this item." We can do a similar thing where we parse the query logs, parse the usage logs and be eye tools, and can basically watch what people are doing for their own purposes. Not to, you know, extra work on top of their job to help us. We can learn from that and make everybody more effective. >> Aaron, is data classification a part of all this? Again, when we started in the industry, data classification was a manual exercise. It's always been a challenge. Certainly, people have applied math to it. You've seen support vector machines and probabilistic latent cement tech indexing being used to classify data. Have we solved that problem, as an industry? Can you automate the classification of data on creation or use at this point in time? >> Well, one thing that came up in a few talks about AI and ML here is, regardless of the algorithm you're using, whether it's, you know, IFH or SVM, or something really modern and exciting that keeps learning. >> Stuff that's been around forever or, it's like you say, some new stuff, right. >> Yeah, you know, actually, I think it was said best by Michael Collins at the DOD, that data is more important than the algorithm because even the best algorithm is useless without really good training data. Plus, the algorithm's, kind of, everyone's got them. So, really often, training data is the limiting reactant in getting really good classification. One thing we try to do at Alation is create an upward spiral where maybe some data is curated manually, and then we can use that as a seed to make some suggestions about how to label other data. And then, it's easier to just do a confirm or deny of a guess than to actually manually label everything. So, then you get more training, get it faster, and it kind of accelerates that way instead of being a big burden. >> So, that's really the advancement in the last five to what, five, six years. Where you're able to use machine intelligence to, sort of, solve that problem as opposed to brute forcing it with some algorithm. Is that fair? >> Yeah, I think that's right, and I think what gets me very excited is when you can have these interactive loops where the human helps the computer, which helps the human. You get, again, this upward spiral. Instead of saying, "We have to have all of this, "you know, manual step done "before we even do the first step," or trying to have an algorithm brute force it without any human intervention. >> It's kind of like notes key mode on write, except it actually works. I'm just kidding to all my ADP friends. All right, Aaron, hey. Thanks very much for coming on theCUBE, but give your last word on the event. I think, is this your first one or no? >> This is our first time here. >> Yeah, okay. So, what are your thoughts? >> I think we'll be back. It's just so exciting to get people who are thinking really big about data but are also practitioners who are solving real business problems. And, just the exchange of ideas and best practices has been really inspiring for me. >> Yeah, that's great. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you for the support of the event, and thanks for coming on theCUBE. It was great to see you again. >> Thanks Dave, thanks Paul. >> All right, you're welcome. >> Thank you, sir. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE from MIT CDOIQ. Be right back. (upbeat music)

>> from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering M I T. Chief data officer and information quality Symposium 2019. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back to M I. T. Everybody. This is the Cube. The leader in live coverage. My name is David wanted. I'm here with my co host, Paul Gill, in this day to coverage of the M I t cdo I Q conference. A lot of acronym stands for M I. T. Of course, the great institution. But Chief Data officer information quality event is his 13th annual event. Lars to Maria's here is the managing partner of Brass Rat Capital. Cool name Lars. Welcome to the Cube. Great. Very much. Glad I start with a name brass around Capitol was That's >> rat is reference to the M I t school. Okay, Beaver? Well, he is, but the students call it a brass rat, and I'm third generation M i t. So it's just seen absolutely appropriate. That is a brass rods and capital is not a reference to money, but is actually referenced to the intellectual capital. They if you have five or six brass rats in the same company, you know, we Sometimes engineers arrive and they could do some things. >> And it Boy, if you put in some data data capital in there, you really explosions. We cause a few problems. So we're gonna talk about some new regulations that are coming down. New legislation that's coming down that you exposed me to yesterday, which is gonna have downstream implications. You get ahead of this stuff and understand it. You can really first of all, prepare, make sure you're in compliance, but then potentially take advantage for your business. So explain to us this notion of open government act. >> Um, in the last five years, six years or so, there's been an effort going on to increase the transparency across all levels of government. Okay, State, local and federal government. The first of federal government laws was called the the Open Data Act of 2014 and that was an act. They was acted unanimously by Congress and signed by Obama. They was taking the departments of the various agencies of the United States government and trying to roll up all the expenses into one kind of expense. This is where we spent our money and who got the money and doing that. That's what they were trying to do. >> Big picture type of thing. >> Yeah, big picture type thing. But unfortunately, it didn't work, okay? Because they forgot to include this odd word called mentalities. So the same departments meant the same thing. Data problem. They have a really big data problem. They still have it. So they're to G et o reports out criticizing how was done, and the government's gonna try and correct it. Then in earlier this year, there was another open government date act which said in it was signed by Trump. Now, this time you had, like, maybe 25 negative votes, but essentially otherwise passed Congress completely. I was called the Open as all capital O >> P E >> n Government Data act. Okay, and that's not been implemented yet. But there's live talking around this conference today in various Chief date officers are talking about this requirement that every single non intelligence defense, you know, vital protection of the people type stuff all the like, um, interior, treasury, transportation, those type of systems. If you produce a report these days, which is machine, I mean human readable. You must now in two years or three years. I forget the exact invitation date. Have it also be machine readable. Now, some people think machine riddle mil means like pdf formats, but no, >> In fact, what the government did is it >> said it must be machine readable. So you must be able to get into the reports, and you have to be able to extract out the information and attach it to the tree of knowledge. Okay, so we're all of sudden having context like they're currently machine readable, Quote unquote, easy reports. But you can get into those SEC reports. You pull out the net net income information and says its net income, but you don't know what it attaches to on the tree of knowledge. So, um, we are helping the government in some sense able, machine readable type reporting that weaken, do machine to machine without people being involved. >> Would you say the tree of knowledge You're talking about the constant >> man tick semantic tree of knowledge so that, you know, we all come from one concept like the human is example of a living thing living beast, a living Beeston example Living thing. So it also goes back, and they're serving as you get farther and farther out the tree, there's more distance or semantic distance, but you can attach it back to concept so you can attach context to the various data. Is this essentially metadata? That's what people call it. But if I would go over see sale here at M I t, they would turn around. They call it the Tree of Knowledge or semantic data. Okay, it's referred to his semantic dated, So you are passing not only the data itself, but the context that >> goes along with the data. Okay, how does this relate to the financial transparency? >> Well, Financial Transparency Act was introduced by representative Issa, who's a Republican out of California. He's run the government Affairs Committee in the House. He retired from Congress this past November, but in 2017 he introduced what's got referred to his H R 15 30 Um, and the 15 30 is going to dramatically change the way, um, financial regulators work in the United States. Um, it is about it was about to be introduced two weeks ago when the labor of digital currency stuff came up. So it's been delayed a little bit because they're trying to add some of the digital currency legislation to that law. >> A front run that Well, >> I don't know exactly what the remember soul coming out of Maxine Waters Committee. So the staff is working on a bunch of different things at once. But, um, we own g was asked to consult with them on looking at the 15 30 act and saying, How would we improve quote unquote, given our technical, you know, not doing policy. We just don't have the technical aspects of the act. How would we want to see it improved? So one of the things we have advised is that for the first time in the United States codes history, they're gonna include interesting term called ontology. You know what intelligence? Well, everyone gets scared by the word. And when I read run into people, they say, Are you a doctor? I said, no, no, no. I'm just a date. A guy. Um, but an intolerant tea is like a taxonomy, but it had order has important, and an ontology allows you to do it is ah, kinda, you know, giving some context of linking something to something else. And so you're able Thio give Maur information with an intolerant that you're able to you with a tax on it. >> Okay, so it's a taxonomy on steroids? >> Yes, exactly what? More flexible, >> Yes, but it's critically important for artificial intelligence machine warning because if I can give them until ology of sort of how it goes up and down the semantics, I can turn around, do a I and machine learning problems on the >> order of 100 >> 1000 even 10,000 times faster. And it has context. It has contacts in just having a little bit of context speeds up these problems so dramatically so and it is that what enables the machine to machine? New notion? No, the machine to machine is coming in with son called SP R M just standard business report model. It's a OMG sophistication of way of allowing the computers or machines, as we call them these days to get into a standard business report. Okay, so let's say you're ah drug company. You have thio certify you >> drugged you manufactured in India, get United States safely. Okay, you have various >> reporting requirements on the way. You've got to give extra easy the FDA et cetera that will always be a standard format. The SEC has a different format. FERC has a different format. Okay, so what s p r m does it allows it to describe in an intolerant he what's in the report? And then it also allows one to attach an ontology to the cells in the report. So if you like at a sec 10 Q 10 k report, you can attach a US gap taxonomy or ontology to it and say, OK, net income annual. That's part of the income statement. You should never see that in a balance sheet type item. You know his example? Okay. Or you can for the first time by having that context you can say are solid problem, which suggested that you can file these machine readable reports that air wrong. So they believe or not, There were about 50 cases in the last 10 years where SEC reports have been filed where the assets don't equal total liabilities, plus cheryl equity, you know, just they didn't add >> up. So this to, >> you know, to entry accounting doesn't work. >> Okay, so so you could have the machines go and check scale. Hey, we got a problem We've >> got a problem here, and you don't have to get humans evolved. So we're gonna, um uh, Holland in Australia or two leaders ahead of the United States. In this area, they seem dramatic pickups. I mean, Holland's reporting something on the order of 90%. Pick up Australia's reporting 60% pickup. >> We say pick up. You're talking about pickup of errors. No efficiency, productivity, productivity. Okay, >> you're taking people out of the whole cycle. It's dramatic. >> Okay, now what's the OMG is rolling on the hoof. Explain the OMG >> Object Management Group. I'm not speaking on behalf of them. It's a membership run organization. You remember? I am a >> member of cold. >> I'm a khalid of it. But I don't represent omg. It's the membership has to collectively vote that this is what we think. Okay, so I can't speak on them, right? I have a pretty significant role with them. I run on behalf of OMG something called the Federated Enterprise Risk Management Group. That's the group which is focusing on risk management for large entities like the federal government's Veterans Affairs or Department offense upstairs. I think talking right now is the Chief date Officer for transportation. OK, that's a large organization, which they, they're instructed by own be at the, um, chief financial officer level. The one number one thing to do for the government is to get an effective enterprise worst management model going in the government agencies. And so they come to own G let just like NIST or just like DARPA does from the defense or intelligence side, saying we need to have standards in this area. So not only can we talk thio you effectively, but we can talk with our industry partners effectively on space. Programs are on retail, on medical programs, on finance programs, and so they're at OMG. There are two significant financial programs, or Sanders, that exist once called figgy financial instrument global identifier, which is a way of identifying a swap. Its way of identifying a security does not have to be used for a que ce it, but a worldwide. You can identify that you know, IBM stock did trade in Tokyo, so it's a different identifier has different, you know, the liberals against the one trading New York. Okay, so those air called figgy identifiers them. There are attributes associated with that security or that beast the being identified, which is generally comes out of 50 which is the financial industry business ontology. So you know, it says for a corporate bond, it has coupon maturity, semi annual payment, bullets. You know, it is an example. So that gives you all the information that you would need to go through to the calculation, assuming you could have a calculation routine to do it, then you need thio. Then turn around and set up your well. Call your environment. You know where Ford Yield Curves are with mortgage backed securities or any portable call. Will bond sort of probabilistic lee run their numbers many times and come up with effective duration? Um, And then you do your Vader's analytics. No aggregating the portfolio and looking at Shortfalls versus your funding. Or however you're doing risk management and then finally do reporting, which is where the standardized business reporting model comes in. So that kind of the five parts of doing a full enterprise risk model and Alex So what >> does >> this mean for first? Well, who does his impact on? What does it mean for organizations? >> Well, it's gonna change the world for basically everyone because it's like doing a clue ends of a software upgrade. Conversion one's version two point. Oh, and you know how software upgrades Everyone hates and it hurts because everyone's gonna have to now start using the same standard ontology. And, of course, that Sarah Ontology No one completely agrees with the regulators have agreed to it. The and the ultimate controlling authority in this thing is going to be F sock, which is the Dodd frank mandated response to not ever having another chart. So the secretary of Treasury heads it. It's Ah, I forget it's the, uh, federal systemic oversight committee or something like that. All eight regulators report into it. And, oh, if our stands is being the adviser Teff sock for all the analytics, what these laws were doing, you're getting over farm or more power to turn around and look at how we're going to find data across the three so we can come up consistent analytics and we can therefore hopefully take one day. Like Goldman, Sachs is pre payment model on mortgages. Apply it to Citibank Portfolio so we can look at consistency of analytics as well. It is only apply to regulated businesses. It's gonna apply to regulated financial businesses. Okay, so it's gonna capture all your mutual funds, is gonna capture all your investment adviser is gonna catch her. Most of your insurance companies through the medical air side, it's gonna capture all your commercial banks is gonna capture most of you community banks. Okay, Not all of them, because some of they're so small, they're not regularly on a federal basis. The one regulator which is being skipped at this point, is the National Association Insurance Commissioners. But they're apparently coming along as well. Independent federal legislation. Remember, they're regulated on the state level, not regularly on the federal level. But they've kind of realized where the ball's going and, >> well, let's make life better or simply more complex. >> It's going to make life horrible at first, but we're gonna take out incredible efficiency gains, probably after the first time you get it done. Okay, is gonna be the problem of getting it done to everyone agreeing. We use the same definitions >> of the same data. Who gets the efficiency gains? The regulators, The companies are both >> all everyone. Can you imagine that? You know Ah, Goldman Sachs earnings report comes out. You're an analyst. Looking at How do I know what Goldman? Good or bad? You have your own equity model. You just give the model to the semantic worksheet and all turn around. Say, Oh, those numbers are all good. This is what expected. Did it? Did it? Didn't you? Haven't. You could do that. There are examples of companies here in the United States where they used to have, um, competitive analysis. Okay. They would be taking somewhere on the order of 600 to 7. How 100 man hours to do the competitive analysis by having an available electronically, they cut those 600 hours down to five to do a competitive analysis. Okay, that's an example of the type of productivity you're gonna see both on the investment side when you're doing analysis, but also on the regulatory site. Can you now imagine you get a regulatory reports say, Oh, there's they're out of their way out of whack. I can tell you this fraud going on here because their numbers are too much in X y z. You know, you had to fudge numbers today, >> and so the securities analyst can spend Mme. Or his or her time looking forward, doing forecasts exactly analysis than having a look back and reconcile all this >> right? And you know, you hear it through this conference, for instance, something like 80 to 85% of the time of analysts to spend getting the data ready. >> You hear the same thing with data scientists, >> right? And so it's extent that we can helped define the data. We're going thio speed things up dramatically. But then what's really instinct to me, being an M I t engineer is that we have great possibilities. An A I I mean, really great possibilities. Right now, most of the A miles or pattern matching like you know, this idea using face shield technology that's just really doing patterns. You can do wonderful predictive analytics of a I and but we just need to give ah lot of the a m a. I am a I models the contact so they can run more quickly. OK, so we're going to see a world which is gonna found funny, But we're going to see a world. We talk about semantic analytics. Okay. Semantic analytics means I'm getting all the inputs for the analysis with context to each one of the variables. And when I and what comes out of it will be a variable results. But you also have semantics with it. So one in the future not too distant future. Where are we? We're in some of the national labs. Where are you doing it? You're doing pipelines of one model goes to next model goes the next mile. On it goes Next model. So you're gonna software pipelines, Believe or not, you get them running out of an Excel spreadsheet. You know, our modern Enhanced Excel spreadsheet, and that's where the future is gonna be. So you really? If you're gonna be really good in this business, you're gonna have to be able to use your brain. You have to understand what data means You're going to figure out what your modeling really means. What happens if we were, You know, normally for a lot of the stuff we do bell curves. Okay, well, that doesn't have to be the only distribution you could do fat tail. So if you did fat tail descriptions that a bell curve gets you much different results. Now, which one's better? I don't know, but, you know, and just using example >> to another cut in the data. So our view now talk about more about the tech behind this. He's mentioned a I What about math? Machine learning? Deep learning. Yeah, that's a color to that. >> Well, the tech behind it is, believe or not, some relatively old tech. There is a technology called rd F, which is kind of turned around for a long time. It's a science kind of, ah, machine learning, not machine wearing. I'm sorry. Machine code type. Fairly simplistic definitions. Lots of angle brackets and all this stuff there is a higher level. That was your distracted, I think put into standard in, like, 2000 for 2005. Called out. Well, two point. Oh, and it does a lot at a higher level. The same stuff that already f does. Okay, you could also create, um, believer, not your own special ways of a communicating and ontology just using XML. Okay, So, uh, x b r l is an enhanced version of XML, okay? And so some of these older technologies, quote unquote old 20 years old, are essentially gonna be driving a lot of this stuff. So you know you know Corbett, right? Corba? Is that what a maid omg you know, on the communication and press thing, do you realize that basically every single device in the world has a corpus standard at okay? Yeah, omg Standard isn't all your smartphones and all your computers. And and that's how they communicate. It turns out that a lot of this old stuff quote unquote, is so rigidly well defined. Well done that you can build modern stuff that takes us to the Mars based on these old standards. >> All right, we got to go. But I gotta give you the award for the most acronyms >> HR 15 30 fi G o m g s b r >> m fsoc tarp. Oh, fr already halfway. We knew that Owl XML ex brl corba, Which of course >> I do. But that's well done. Like thanks so much for coming. Everyone tried to have you. All right, keep it right there, everybody, We'll be back with our next guest from M i t cdo I Q right after this short, brief short message. Thank you

(techno music) >> From Cambridge, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Covering MIT Chief Data Officer and Information Quality Symposium 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Welcome back to MIT CDOIQ. The CDO Information Quality Conference. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante. I'm here with my co-host, Paul Gillin. This is our day two of our two day coverage. Jean Ross is here. She's the principle research scientist at MIT CISR, Jean good to see you again. >> Nice to be here! >> Welcome back. Okay, what do all these acronyms stand for, I forget. MIT CISR. >> CISR which we pronounce scissor, is the Center for Information Systems Research. It's a research center that's been at MIT since 1974, studying how big companies use technology effectively. >> So and, what's your role as a research scientist? >> As a research scientist, I work with both researchers and with company leaders to understand what's going on out there, and try to present some simple succinct ideas about how companies can generate greater value from information technology. >> Well, I guess not much has changed in information technology since 1974. (laughing) So let's fast forward to the big, hot trend, digital transformation, digital business. What's the difference between a business and a digital business? >> Right now, you're hoping there's no difference for you and your business. >> (chuckling) Yeah, for sure. >> The main thing about a digital business is it's being inspired by technology. So in the past, we would establish a strategy, and then we would check out technology and say, okay, how can technology make us more effective with that strategy? Today, and this has been driven a lot by start-ups, we have to stop and say, well wait a minute, what is technology making possible? Because if we're not thinking about it, there sure are a lot of students at MIT who are, and we're going to miss the boat. We're going to get Ubered if you will, somebody's going to think of a value proposition that we should be offering and aren't, and we'll be left in the dust. So, our digital businesses are those that are recognizing the opportunities that digital technologies make possible. >> Now, and what about data? In terms of the role of digital business, it seems like that's an underpinning of a digital business. Is it not? >> Yeah, the single biggest capability that digital technologies provide, is ubiquitous data that's readily accessible anytime. So when we think about being inspired by technology, we could reframe that as inspired by the availability of ubiquitous data that's readily accessible. >> Your premise about the difference between digitization and digital business is interesting. It's more than just a sematic debate. Do companies now, when companies talk about digital transformation these days, in fact, are most of them of thinking of digitization rather than really transformative business change? >> Yeah, this is so interesting to me. In 2006, we wrote a book that said, you need to become more agile, and you need to rely on information technology to get you there. And these are basic things like SAP and salesforce.com and things like that. Just making sure that your core processes are disciplined and reliable and predictable. We said this in 2006. What we didn't know is that we were explaining digitization, which is very effective use of technology in your underlying process. Today, when somebody says to me, we're going digital, I'm thinking about the new value propositions, the implications of the data, right? And they're often actually saying they're finally doing what we thought they should do in 2006. The problem is, in 2006, we said get going on this, it's a long journey. This could take you six, 10 years to accomplish. And then we gave examples of companies that took six to 10 years. LEGO, and USAA and really great companies. And now, companies are going, "Ah, you know, we really ought to do that". They don't have six to 10 years. They get this done now, or they're in trouble, and it's still a really big deal. >> So how realistic is it? I mean, you've got big established companies that have got all these information silos, as we've been hearing for the last two days, just pulling their information together, knowing what they've got is a huge challenge for them. Meanwhile, you're competing with born on the web, digitally native start-ups that don't have any of that legacy, is it really feasible for these companies to reinvent themselves in the way you're talking about? Or should they just be buying the companies that have already done it? >> Well good luck with buying, because what happens is that when a company starts up, they can do anything, but they can't do it to scale. So most of these start-ups are going to have to sell themselves because they don't know anything about scale. And the problem is, the companies that want to buy them up know about the scale of big global companies but they don't know how to do this seamlessly because they didn't do the basic digitization. They relied on basically, a lot of heroes in their company to pull of the scale. So now they have to rely more on technology than they did in the past, but they still have a leg up if you will, on the start-up that doesn't want to worry about the discipline of scaling up a good idea. They'd rather just go off and have another good idea, right? They're perpetual entrepreneurs if you will. So if we look at the start-ups, they're not really your concern. Your concern is the very well run company, that's been around, knows how to be inspired by technology and now says, "Oh I see what you're capable of doing, "or should be capable of doing. "I think I'll move into your space". So this, the Amazon's, and the USAA's and the LEGO's who say "We're good at what we do, "and we could be doing more". We're watching Schneider Electric, Phillips's, Ferovial. These are big ole companies who get digital, and they are going to start moving into a lot of people's territory. >> So let's take the example of those incumbents that you've used as examples of companies that are leaning into digital, and presumably doing a good job of it, they've got a lot of legacy debt, as you know people call it technical debt. The question I have is how they're using machine intelligence. So if you think about Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, they own horizontal technologies around machine intelligence. The incumbents that you mentioned, do not. Now do they close the gap? They're not going to build their own A.I. They're going to buy it, and then apply it. It's how they apply it that's going to be the difference. So do you agree with that premise, and where are they getting it, do they have the skill sets to do it, how are they closing that gap? >> They're definitely partnering. When you say they're not going to build any of it, that's actually not quite true. They're going to build a lot around the edges. They'll rely on partners like Microsoft and Google to provide some of the core, >> Yes, right. >> But they are bringing in their own experts to take it to the, basically to the customer level. How do I take, let me just take Schneider Electric for an example. They have gone from being an electrical equipment manufacturer, to a purveyor of energy management solutions. It's quite a different value proposition. To do that, they need a lot of intelligence. Some of it is data analytics of old, and some of it is just better representation on dashboards and things like that. But there is a layer of intelligence that is new, and it is absolutely essential to them by relying on partners and their own expertise in what they do for customers, and then co-creating a fair amount with customers, they can do things that other companies cannot. >> And they're developing a software presumably, a SAS revenue stream as part of that, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> How about the innovators dilemma though, the problem that these companies often have grown up, they're very big, they're very profitable, they see disruption coming, but they are unable to make the change, their shareholders won't let them make the change, they know what they have to do, but they're simply not able to do it, and then they become paralyzed. Is there a -- I mean, looking at some of the companies you just mentioned, how did they get over that mindset? >> This is real leadership from CEO's, who basically explain to their boards and to their investors, this is our future, we are... we're either going this direction or we're going down. And they sell it. It's brilliant salesmanship, and it's why when we go out to study great companies, we don't have that many to choose from. I mean, they are hard to find, right? So you are at such a competitive advantage right now. If you understand, if your own internal processes are cleaned up and you know how to rely on the E.R.P's and the C.R.M's, to get that done, and on the other hand, you're using the intelligence to provide value propositions, that new technologies and data make possible, that is an incredibly powerful combination, but you have to invest. You have to convince your boards and your investors that it's a good idea, you have to change your talent internally, and the biggest surprise is, you have to convince your customers that they want something from you that they never wanted before. So you got a lot of work to do to pull this off. >> Right now, in today's economy, the economy is sort of lifting all boats. But as we saw when the .com implosion happened in 2001, often these breakdown gives birth to great, new companies. Do you see that the next recession, which is inevitably coming, will be sort of the turning point for some of these companies that can't change? >> It's a really good question. I do expect that there are going to be companies that don't make it. And I think that they will fail at different rates based on their, not just the economy, but their industry, and what competitors do, and things like that. But I do think we're going to see some companies fail. We're going to see many other companies understand that they are too complex. They are simply too complex. They cannot do things end to end and seamlessly and present a great customer experience, because they're doing everything. So we're going to see some pretty dramatic changes, we're going to see failure, it's a fair assumption that when we see the economy crash, it's also going to contribute, but that's, it's not the whole story. >> But when the .com blew up, you had the internet guys that actually had a business model to make money, and the guys that didn't, the guys that didn't went away, and then you also had the incumbents that embrace the internet, so when we came out of that .com downturn, you had the survivors, who was Google and eBay, and obviously Amazon, and then you had incumbent companies who had online retailing, and e-tailing and e-commerce etc, who thrived. I would suspect you're going to see something similar, but I wonder what you guys think. The street today is rewarding growth. And we got another near record high today after the rate cut yesterday. And so, but companies that aren't making money are getting rewarded, 'cause they're growing. Well when the recession comes, those guys are going to get crushed. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> And you're going to have these other companies emerge, and you'll see the winners, are going to be those ones who have truly digitized, not just talking the talk, or transformed really, to use your definition. That's what I would expect. I don't know, what do you think about that? >> I totally agree. And, I mean, we look at industries like retail, and they have been fundamentally transformed. There's still lots of opportunities for innovation, and we're going to see some winners that have kind of struggled early but not given up, and they're kind of finding their footing. But we're losing some. We're losing a lot, right? I think the surprise is that we thought digital was going to replace what we did. We'd stop going to stores, we'd stop reading books, we wouldn't have newspapers anymore. And it hasn't done that. Its only added, it hasn't taken anything away. >> It could-- >> I don't think the newspaper industry has been unscathed by digital. >> No, nor has retail. >> Nor has retail, right. >> No, no no, not unscathed, but here's the big challenge. Is if I could substitute, If I could move from newspaper to online, I'm fine. You don't get to do that. You add online to what you've got, right? And I think this right now is the big challenge. Is that nothing's gone away, at least yet. So we have to sustain the business we are, so that it can feed the business we want to be. And we have to make that transition into new capabilities. I would argue that established companies need to become very binary, that there are people that do nothing but sustain and make better and better and better, who they are. While others, are creating the new reality. You see this in auto companies by the way. They're creating not just the autonomous automobiles, but the mobility services, the whole new value propositions, that will become a bigger and bigger part of their revenue stream, but right now are tiny. >> So, here's the scary thing to me. And again, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. And I've been an outspoken critic of Liz Warren's attack on big tech. >> Absolutely. >> I just think if they're breaking the law, and they're really acting like monopolies, the D.O.J and F.T.C should do something, but to me, you don't just break up big tech because they're good capitalists. Having said that, one of the things that scares me is, when you see Apple getting into payment systems, Amazon getting into grocery and logistics. Digital allows you to do something that's never happened before which is, you can traverse industries. >> Yep. >> Yeah, absolutely >> You used to have this stack of industries, and if you were in that industry, you're stuck in healthcare, you're stuck in financial services or whatever it was. And today, digital allows you to traverse those. >> It absolutely does. And so in theory, Amazon and Apple and Facebook and Google, they can attack virtually any industry and they kind of are. >> Yeah they kind are. I would certainly not break up anything. I would really look hard though at acquisitions, because I think that's where some of this is coming from. They can stop the overwhelming growth, but I do think you're right. That you get these opportunities from digital that are just so much easier because they're basically sharing information and technology, not building buildings and equipment and all that kind of thing. But I think there all limits to all this. I do not fear these companies. I think there, we need some law, we need some regulations, they're fine. They are adding a lot of value and the great companies, I mean, you look at the Schneider's and the Phillips, yeah they fear what some of them can do, but they're looking forward to what they provide underneath. >> Doesn't Cloud change the equation here? I mean, when you think of something like Amazon getting into the payments business, or Google in the payments business, you know it used to be that the creating of global payments processing network, just going global was a huge barrier to entry. Now, you don't have nearly that same level of impediment right? I mean the cloud eliminates much of the traditional barrier. >> Yeah, but I'll tell you what limits it, is complexity. Every company we've studied gets a little over anxious and becomes too complex, and they cannot run themselves effectively anymore. It happens to everyone. I mean, remember when we were terrified about what Microsoft was going to become? But then it got competition because it's trying to do so many things, and somebody else is offering, Sales Force and others, something simpler. And this will happen to every company that gets overly ambitious. Something simpler will come along, and everybody will go "Oh thank goodness". Something simpler. >> Well with Microsoft, I would argue two things. One is the D.O.J put some handcuffs on them , and two, with Steve Ballmer, I wouldn't get his nose out of Windows, and then finally stuck on a (mumbles) (laughter) >> Well it's they had a platform shift. >> Well this is exactly it. They will make those kind of calls . >> Sure, and I think that talks to their legacy, that they won't end up like Digital Equipment Corp or Wang and D.G, who just ignored the future and held onto the past. But I think, a colleague of ours, David Moschella wrote a book, it's called "Seeing Digital". And his premise was we're moving from a world of remote cloud services, to one where you have to, to use your word, ubiquitous digital services that you can access upon which you can build your business and new business models. I mean, the simplest example is Waves, you mentioned Uber. They're using Cloud, they're using OAuth.in with Google, Facebook or LinkedIn and they've got a security layer, there's an A.I layer, there's all your BlockChain, mobile, cognitive, it's all these sets of services that are now ubiquitous on which you're building, so you're leveraging, he calls it the matrix, to the extent that these companies that you're studying, these incumbents can leverage that matrix, they should be fine. >> Yes. >> The part of the problem is, they say "No, we're going to invent everything ourselves, we're going to build it all ourselves". To use Andy Jassy's term, it's non-differentiated heavy lifting, slows them down, but there's no reason why they can't tap that matrix, >> Absolutely >> And take advantage of it. Where I do get scared is, the Facebooks, Apples, Googles, Amazons, they're matrix companies, their data is at their core, and they get this. It's not like they're putting data around the core, data is the core. So your thoughts on that? I mean, it looks like your slide about disruption, it's coming. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. >> No industry is safe. >> Yeah, well I'll go back to the complexity argument. We studied complexity at length, and complexity is a killer. And as we get too ambitious, and we're constantly looking for growth, we start doing things that create more and more tensions in our various lines of business, causes to create silos, that then we have to coordinate. I just think every single company that, no cloud is going to save us from this. It, complexity will kill us. And we have to keep reminding ourselves to limit that complexity, and we've just not seen the example of the company that got that right. Sooner or later, they just kind of chop them, you know, create problems for themselves. >> Well isn't that inherent though in growth? >> Absolutely! >> It's just like, big companies slow down. >> That's right. >> They can't make decisions as quickly. >> That's right. >> I haven't seen a big company yet that moves nimbly. >> Exactly, and that's the complexity thing-- >> Well wait a minute, what about AWS? They're a 40 billion dollar company. >> Oh yeah, yeah, yeah >> They're like the agile gorilla. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> I mean, I think they're breaking the rule, and my argument would be, because they have data at their core, and they've got that, its a bromide, but that common data model, that they can apply now to virtually any business. You know, we're been expecting, a lot of people have been expecting that growth to attenuate. I mean it hasn't yet, we'll see. But they're like a 40 billion dollar firm-- >> No that's a good example yeah. >> So we'll see. And Microsoft, is the other one. Microsoft is demonstrating double digit growth. For such a large company, it's astounding. I wonder, if the law of large numbers is being challenged, so. >> Yeah, well it's interesting. I do think that what now constitutes "so big" that you're really going to struggle with the complexity. I think that has definitely been elevated a lot. But I still think there will be a point at which human beings can't handle-- >> They're getting away. >> Whatever level of complexity we reach, yeah. >> Well sure, right because even though this great new, it's your point. Cloud technology, you know, there's going to be something better that comes along. Even, I think Jassy might have said, If we had to do it all over again, we would have built the whole thing on lambda functions >> Yeah. >> Oh, yeah. >> Not on, you know so there you go. >> So maybe someone else does that-- >> Yeah, there you go. >> So now they've got their hybrid. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> You know maybe it'll take another ten years, but well Jean, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE, >> it was great to have you. >> My pleasure! >> Appreciate you coming back. >> Really fun to talk. >> All right, keep right there everybody, Paul Gillin and Dave Villante, we'll be right back from MIT CDOIQ, you're watching theCUBE. (chuckles) (techno music)