from New York City it's the cube covering welcome to the new edge brought to you by pensando systems hey welcome back here ready Jeff Rick here with the cube we are in downtown Manhattan at the top of goldman sachs it was a beautiful day now the clouds coming in but that's appropriate because we're talking about cloud we're talking about edge and the launch of a brand new company is pensando and their event it's called welcome to the new edge and we're happy to have since we're goldman the guys who have the money we're barry Eggers a founding partner of Lightspeed ventures and randy pond the CFO a pensando gentlemen welcome thank you thank you so Barry let's start with you you think you were involved at this early on why did you get involved what what kind of sparked your interest we got involved in this round and the reason we got involved were mainly because we've worked with this team before at Cisco we know they're fantastic they're probably the most prolific team and the enterprise and they're going after a big opportunity so we were pleased when the company said hey you guys want to work with us on this as a financial investor and we did some diligence and dug in and found you know everything to our liking and jump right in didn't anybody tell them this startup is a young man's game they mixed up the twenty-something I think yeah they sort of turned the startup on its head if you will no pun intended that's going right yeah yeah and Randy you've joined him a CFO you've known them for a while I mean what is it about this group of people that execute kind of forward-looking transformation transformational technologies time and time again that's not a very common trait it's a it's a great question so you know the key for these guys have been well they've been together since the 80s so Mario look and primitive this is the 80s I work with them at their previous startup before Christian two ladies and they're the combination of their skills are phenomenal together so you know one of them has some of the vision of where they want to go the second guy is a substantive sort of engineer takes it from concept first drawing and then the Prem takes over the execution perspective and then drives this thing and they've really been incredible together and then we added Sony at crescendo as a as a product marketing person and she's really stepped up and become integral part on the team so they work together so well it just makes a huge difference yeah it's it's it's amazing that that a that they keep doing it and B that they want to keep doing it right because they've got a few bucks in the bank and they don't really need to do it but still to take on a big challenge and then to keep it under wraps for two and a half years that's pretty pretty amazing so curious Barry from your point of view venture investing you guys kind of see the future you get pitched by smart people all day when you looked at John Chambers kind of conversation of these ten-year kind of big cycles you know what did you think of that how do you guys kind of slice and dice your opportunities and looking at these big Nick's yeah going back going back to the team a little bit they've been pretty good at identifying a lot of these cycles they brought us land switching a long time ago with crescendo they sort of redefined the data center several times and so there's another opportunity what's driving this opportunity really is the fact that explosion of applications in the network and of course east-west traffic in the network so networks were more designed north-south and they're slowly becoming more east-west but because the applications are closer to the edge and networks today mostly provide services in the core the idea for pensando is well why don't we bring the service deliver the services closer to the applications improve performance better security and better monitoring yeah and then just the just the hyper acceleration of you know the amount of data the amount of applications and then this age-old it's we're going to use the data to the computer do you move the compute to the data now the answer is yes all the above so you got some money to work with we do you got a round that he could be around you guys are closing the C round so I think 180 people approximately I think somebody told me close enough so as you put some of this capital to work what are some of your priorities going forward so we will continue to hire both in the engineering side but more importantly now we're hiring in sales and service we've been waiting for the product quite frankly so we've just got our first few sales guys hired we've got a pretty aggressive ramp especially with the HP relationship to put people out into the field we've hired a couple guys in New York will continue to hire at the sales team we're ramping the supply chain and we've got a relative complicated supply chain model but that has to react now that we're going to market all that might be pretty used to do that we're changing facilities we need to grow we're sort of cramped in a one-story building open up one floor of a building right now so the money is going to be used sort of critically to really scale the business down they can go to market okay but a pretty impressive list of both partners and customers on launch day you don't see Goldman HPE Equinix I think it was quite a slide some of that is the uniqueness of the way we went to market and did the original due diligence on the product and bringing customers in early and then converting them to investors you end up with a customer investment model so they stayed with us Goldman's been through all three rounds we've been about HP and last model we had NetApp has been um two rounds now so we've we've continued to develop as a business with this small core group of customers and investors that we could try to expand every time we move to the next round and as Barry said earlier this is the first time we had a traditional financial investor in our rounds the rest of them have all been customers they've been friends and family for the most part did you join the board too right I did yeah so what are you what are you excited about what what do you see is I mean just clearly your side you invested but is there something just extra special here you know react chambers put in a 10-year 10-year cycle yeah we've talked about it I mean I'm excited to work with the team right there best-in-class working closely with John again is a lot of fun a chance to not exhaust yeah yeah you know a chance to read redefine the data center and be part of the next way even as a VC you love waves and build my Connick company right and I think we have a real opportunity in front of us it it takes a lot of money to do this and do it right and I think we have the team that proven they can execute on this kind of opportunities from I'm excited to see what the next five years hold for this company good well it was funny John teased him a little bit about you know all the M&A stuff that he was famous for at Cisco he's like I don't do that anymore now I'm an investor I want IPOs all the way what's all 18 thinks it is 18 companies in his portfolio their routes they're going to IPO all the way yeah that's that's a good point actually this team has been prolific and they've delivered products that have generated fifty billion dollars and any walk into any data center in the world you're gonna see a product this team has built however this team has not taken a company public so that's really the opportunity I think that's what excites them Randy's here it's why Jon's here that's why I'm here we want to build a company that can be an independent company be a lasting leader in a new category yeah so last word Randy for you for people that aren't familiar with the team that aren't familiar with with with what they've done what would you tell them about why you came to this opportunity and why you're excited about it well this there is no higher quality engineering team in the world didn't these people so it's to get re-engaged with them again with an entirely new concept that's catching a transition and the market was just too good an opportunity to pass I mean I had retired for 15 months and I came out of retirement to join this team much to the chagrin of my wife but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity high caliber talent it's um every day is is interesting I have to say well thanks for for sharing the story with us and and congratulations on a great day and in a terrific event thank you thank you very much all right he's berry he's Randy I'm Jeff you're watching the cube from the top of goldman sachs in Manhattan thanks for watching we'll see you next time

>>From New York city. It's the cube covering. Welcome to the new edge brought to you by systems. >>Okay, we'll come back. You're ready. Jeff Frick here with the cube. We're in downtown Manhattan at the top of Goldman Sachs, like 43 stories above the Hudson. It was a really beautiful view a couple hours ago, but the cloud has moved in and that's only appropriate cause it's cloud is a big theme of why we're here today. We're here for the Penn Zando event. It's called welcome to the new edge. They just come out of stealth mode after two and a half years, almost three years, raised a ton of money, got a really rockstar team and we're excited to have the CEO with us today to tell us a little bit about more what's going on. And that's prem Jane and again, the CEO of Penn Sandow prem. Great to see you. Nice to see you too. So everything we did running up to this event before we could get any of the news, we, we, we tried to figure out what was going on and all it kept coming up was NPLS, NPLS, NPLS, which I thought was a technology, which it is, but it's really about the team. Tell us a little bit about the team in which you guys have built prior and, and why you're such a, a well functioning and kind of forward thinking group of people. >>So I think the team is working together. Mario Luca, myself and Sony were working together since 1983 except for Sony. Sony joined us after the first company, which has crescendo, got acquired by Cisco in 1993 and since then four of us are working together. Uh, we have done many, uh, spinnings inside the Cisco and demo was the first one. Then we did, uh, uh, Nova systems, which was the second, then we did recently in CMA. Uh, and then after we left we thought we are going to retire, but we talked about it and we says, you know, there is still transitions happening in the industry and maybe we have few more years to go back to the, you know, industry and, and do something which is very challenging and, and uh, impacting. I think everything which we have done in the past is to create a impact in the industry and make that transition which is occurring very successful, >>which is really hard to do. And, and John Chambers who, who's on the board and spoke earlier today, you know, kind of talked about these 10 year cycles of significant change in our industry and you know, Clayton Christianson innovator's dilemma, it's really easy when you are successful at one of those to kind of sit on your laurels. In fact, it's really, really hard to kill yourself and go on to the next thing you guys have done this time and time and time again. Is there a unique chemistry in the way you guys look forward or you just, you just get bored with what you built and you want to build something new. I mean, what is some of the magic, because even John said, as soon as he heard that you were the team behind it, he was like, sign me up. I don't know what they're building but I don't really care cause I know these people can deliver. >>I think it's very good the, whenever you look at any startup, the most important thing which comes up as the team and you're seeing a lot of startup fails because the team didn't work together or they got their egos into this one. Since we are working for so long, they compliment each other. That's the one thing which is very important. Mario, Luca, myself, they come from engineering backgrounds. Sony comes from marketing, sales, uh, type of background and we all lady in terms of the brain, if you think about is the Mario behind the scene, Luca is really the execution machine and I'm, you can think like as a heart, okay. Putting this thing together. Uh, as a team, we work very complimentary with each other. It does not mean that we agree on everything, right? We disagree. We argue. We basically challenge each other. But one thing good about this particular team is that once we come to a conclusion, we just focus and execute. And team is also known to work with customers all the time. I mean, even when we started Penn Sando, we talked to many customers in the very beginning. They shape up our ideas, they shape up the directions, which is we are going and what transitions are occurring in the industries and all that. That's another thing which is we take customer very seriously in our thought process of building a product. >>So when you were thinking around sitting around the table, deciding whether you guys wanted to do it again, what were the challenges that you saw? What was the kind of the feedback loop that came in that, that started this? The, uh, the gym of the idea >>thing is also is that, uh, we had, we had developed so many different products as you saw today in the launch, eight or nine, uh, billion dollar product line and stuff like that. So we all have a very good system experience what is really needed, what transitions are occurring and stuff like that. When we started this one, we were not really sure what we wanted to do it, but in the last one when we did the, uh, NCMA, we realize that the enterprise thing, which we deliver the ACI solution for the enterprise, the realize that these services was the most complex way of incorporating into that particular architectures. So right from the beginning of interview realized that the, this particular thing is nobody has touched it, nobody thought about it out of the box thinking that how can you make it into a distributed fashion, which has also realized that cloud is going, everything distributed. >>They got away from the centralized appliances. So as the enterprise is now thinking of doing it cloud-like architectures and stuff like that. And the third thing which was really triggered us also, there was a company which is a new Poona which got acquired by Amazon in 2016 and we were looking at it what kinds of things they are doing and we said we can do much better architecturally and next generation, uh, architecture, which can really enable all the other cloud vendors. Some of them are our partners to make sure they can leverage that particular technologies and build the next generation cloud. And that's where this idea of new edge came in because we also saw that the new applications like IOT is five G's and artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics or drones, you just name it intelligent devices, which is going to get connected. What is the best place to process them is at the edge or also at the backend with the application where the server is running these and that is another edge compute edge, right? >>In that particular sense. So our idea was to develop a product so that it can cover wide segment of the market, enterprise cloud providers, service borders, but focus very narrowly delivering these services into existing architectures. Also people who are building, building the next generation architectures. Right, so it's the distributed services platform or the distributed services architecture. So at its core for people that didn't make it today, what is it? It's basically is a distributed service platforms. The foundation of that is really our custom processor, which is we have designed is highly programmable. It's software defined so that all the protocols, which is typically people hardwired in our case is programmable. It's all programs which is we are writing the language which you selected as before and before extensions. The software stack is the major differentiated thing which is running on the top of this particular processor, which is we have designed in such a way that is hardware agnostics. >>The the, the capabilities which we have built is easily integrated into the existing environment. So if people already have cloud and they want to leverage our technologies, they can really deploy it in the enterprise. We are basically replacing lot of appliances, simplifying the architectures, making sure they can enable the service as they grow model, which is really amazing because right now they had to say firewall goes here, load balancer goes here, these a VPN devices goes there. In our case it's very simple. You put in every server of our technologies and our software stack and our Venice, which is our policy manager, which is sitting outside and it's based upon Kubernete X a architectures is basically a microservices, which is we are running and managing the life cycle of this particular product family and also providing the visibility and uh, uh, accountability in terms of exactly what is going on in that particular network. >>And it's all driven by intent-based architecture, which is policy driven, right? So software defined sitting on software defined Silicon. So you get the benefits of the Silicon, but it's also programmable Silicon, but it's still, you're sitting, you've got a software stack on top of that that manages that cloud and then the form factors as small as a Nick. Yes. So he can stick it in the HP HP server. Yeah. It specifically goes into any PCI slot in any server, uh, in the industry. Yes. It's amazing. Well, first incarnation, but, but, but, but, but that's a really simple implementation, right? Just to get radiation and easy to deploy. Right. And you guys are, you're yourself where involved in security that's involved in managing the storage. It's simple low power, which I thought was a pretty interesting attribute that you defined early on. Clearly thinking about edge and these distributed, uh, things all over the place. >>They're metal programmable. And then the other thing that was talked about a lot today was the observability. Yes. Um, why observability why was that so important? What were you hearing from customers that were really leading you down that path? Yeah, it's important. Uh, you know, surprisingly enough, uh, the visibility is one of the biggest challenge. Most of the data center faces today. A lot of people tried to do multiple different things, but they're never able to do it, uh, in, in the way we are doing it. One is that we don't run anything on the host. Some people have done it right on the train running the agent on the host. Some people have tried to run virtual machines on the those particular environment. In our case there's nothing which is running on the host site. It runs on our card and having end to end that visibility we can provide latency, very accurate latency to the, to the applications which is very important for these customers. >>Also, what is really going on there is the problem in the network. Isolation is another big thing. When something get lost they don't know where it got lost. We can provide that thing. Another important thing that you're doing, which is not being done in the industries. Everything which is we are doing is flow based means if I'm talking to you, there is a flow being set up between you and me and we are monitoring every flow and one of the advantages of our processor is we have four to eight gigabytes of memory, so we can keep these States, have these flows inside, and that gives a tremendous advantage for us to do lots of things, which as you can imagine going forward, we will be delivering it such as, for example, behavior of these flows and things from this point of view, once you understand the behavior of the flow, you can also provide lot of security features because if I'm not talking to you and suddenly I start talking to you and I know that there's something went wrong, right, right. >>And they should be able to look at the behavior analysis and should be able to tell exactly what's going on. You mean we want a real time snapshot of what's really happening instead of a instead of a sample of something that happened a little. No, absolutely. You're absolutely connected. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that's terrific. So you put together to accompany and you immediately went out and talked to a whole bunch of customers. I was amazed at the number of customers and partners that you had here at the launch. Um, was that for validation? Were you testing hypotheses or, or were there some things that the customers were telling you about that maybe you weren't aware of or maybe didn't get the right priority? I think it's all of the above. What you mentioned our, it's in our DNA by the way. You know, we don't design products, we don't design things without talking to customers. >>Validation is very important that we are on the right track because you may try to solve the customer problem, which is not today's problem. Maybe future's problem. Our idea was that then you can develop the product it was set on the shelf. We don't want to do that. We wanted to make sure that, that this is the hard problem customer is facing today. At the same time looking at it, what futuristic in their architecture is understanding the customers, how, what are they doing today, how they're deploying it. The use cases are understanding those very well and making sure that we are designing. Because when we design a seeker, when your designer processor, you know, you cannot design for one year, it has to be a longterm, right? And you need to make sure that we understand the current problems, we understand the future problems and design that in pretty much your spark and you've been in this space forever. >>You're at Cisco before. And so just love to get your take on exponential growth. You know, such an interesting concept that people have a really hard time grasping exponential growth and we're seeing it clearly with data and data flows and ultimately everything's got to go through the network. I mean, when you, when you think back with a little bit of perspective at the incredible increase in the data flow and the amount of data is being stored and the distribution of these, um, applications now out to the edge and store and compute and take action at the edge, you know, what do you think about, how do you, how do you kind of stay on top of that as somebody who kind of sees the feature relatively effectively, how do you try to stay on top of exponential curves? As you know, very valuable data is very important for anybody in any business. >>Whether it's financial, whether it's healthcare, whether it's, and it's becoming even more and more important because of machine learning, artificial intelligence, which is coming in to really process this particular data and predict certain things which is going to happen, right? We wanted to be close to the data and the closest place to be data is where the application is running. That's one place clears closest to the data at the edge is where data is coming in from the IOT devices, from the 5g devices, from the, you know, you know all kinds of appliances which is being classified under IOT devices. We wanted to be, make sure that we are close to the data, doesn't matter where you deploy and we want to be agnostic. Actually our technologies and architectures designed that this boundary is between North, South, East, West is going to go away in future cloud. >>A lot of things which is being done in the backend will be become at the edge like we talked about before. So we are really a journey which is just starting in this particular detectors and you're going to see a lot more innovations coming from us continuously in this particular directions. And again, based upon the feedback which you're going to get from cloud customers with enterprise customers, but they were partners and other system ecosystem partners, which is going to give us a lot of feedback. Great. Well again, thanks for uh, for having us out and congratulations to uh, to you and the team. It must be really fun to pull the covers off. absolutely. It is very historical day for us. This is something we were waiting for two years and nine months to see this particular date, to have our customers come on the stage and talk about our technologies and why they think it's very important. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to talk to you. Thank you. Alright, thanks prem. Thanks. He's prem. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube where it depends. Sandow launch at the top of Goldman Sachs in downtown Manhattan. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> From New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering "Welcome To The New Edge." Brought to you by Pensando Systems. >> Hey, welcome back here ready. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are high atop Goldman Sachs in downtown Manhattan, I think it's 43 floors, for a really special event. It's the Pensando launch. It's really called welcome to the new edge and we talked about technology. We had some of the founders on but, these type of opportunities are really special to talk to some really senior leaders and we're excited to have John Chambers back on, who as you know, historic CEO of Cisco for many, many years. Has left that, is doing his own ventures he's writing books, he's investing and he's, happens to be chairman of the board of Pensando. So John, thanks for taking a few minutes with us. >> Well, more than a few minutes, I think what we talked about today is a major industry change and so to focus on that and focus about the implications will be a lot of fun. >> So let's jump into it. So, one of the things you led with earlier today was kind of these 10 year cycles and they're not exactly 10 years, but you outlined a series of them from mainframe, mini client server everybody knows kind of the sequence. What do you think it is about the 10 year kind of cycle besides the fact that it's easy and convenient for us to remember, that, kind of paces these big disruptions? >> Well, I think it has to do with once a company takes off they tend to, dominate that segment of the industry for so long that even if a creative idea came up they were just overpowering. And then toward the end of a 10 year cycle they quit reinventing themselves. And we talked earlier about the innovator's dilemma and the implications for it. Or an architecture that was designed that suddenly can't go to the next level. So I think it's probably a combination of three or four different factors, including the original incumbent who broke the glass, disrupted others, not disrupting themselves. >> Right, but you also talked about a story where you had to shift focus based on some customer feedback and you ran Cisco for a lot longer than 10 years. So how do you as a leader kind of keep your ears open to something that's a disruptive change that's not your regular best customer and your regular best salesman asking for a little bit faster, a little bit cheaper, a little bit of more the same versus the significant disruptive transformational shift? >> Well this goes back to one of my most basic views in life is I think we learn more from our setbacks or setbacks we were part of, or even the missteps or mistakes than you ever do your successes. Everybody loves to talk about successes and I'm no different there. But when you watched a great state like West Virginia that was the chemical center of the world and the coal mining center of the world, the 125,000 coal mines, six miners very well paid, 6,000 of the top engineers in the world, it was the Silicon Valley of the chemical industry and those just disappear. And because our state did not reinvent itself, because the education system didn't change, because we didn't distract attract a new set of businesses in we just kept doing the right thing too long, we got left behind. Then I went to Boston, it was the Silicon Valley of the world. And Route 128 around Boston was symbolic with the Silicon Valley and I-101 and 280 around it. And we had the top university at that time. Much like Stanford today, but MIT generating new companies. We had great companies, DEC, Wang, Data General. Probably a million jobs in the area and because we got stuck in a segment of the market, quit listening to our customers and missed the transitions, not only did we lose probably 1.2 million jobs on it, 100,000 out of DEC, 32,000 out of Wang, etc, we did not catch the next generation of technology changes. So I understand the implications if you don't disrupt yourself. But I also learned, that if you're not regularly reinventing yourself, you get left behind as a leader. And one of my toughest competitors came up to me and said, "John, I love the way you're reinventing Cisco "and how you've done that multiple times." And then I turned and I said "That's why a CEO has got to be in the job "for more than four or five years" and he said, "Now we disagree again." Which we usually did and he said, "Most people can't reinvent themselves." And he said "I'm an example." "I'm a pretty good CEO" he's actually a very good CEO, but he said, "After I've been there three or four years "I've made the changes, that I know "I've got to go somewhere else." And he could see I didn't buy-in and then he said, "How many of your top 100 people "you've been happy with once they've been "in the job for more than five years?" I hesitated and I said "Only one." And he's right, you've got to move people around, you've got to get people comfortable with disruption on it and, the hardest one to disrupt are the companies or the leaders who've been most successful and yet, that's when you got to think about disruption. >> Right, so to pivot on that a little bit in terms of kind of the government's role in jobs, specifically. >> Yes. >> We're in this really strange period of time. We have record low unemployment, right, tiny, tiny unemployment, and yet, we see automation coming in aggressively with autonomous vehicles and this and that and just to pick truck drivers as a category, everyone can clearly see that autonomous vehicles are going to knock them out in the not too distant future. That said, there's more demand for truck drivers today than there's every been and they can't fill the positions So, with this weird thing where we're going to have a bunch of new jobs that are created by technology, we're going to have a bunch of old jobs that get displaced by technology, but those people aren't necessarily the same people that can leave the one and go to the other. So as you look at that challenge, and I know you work with a lot of government leaders, how should they be thinking about taking on this challenge? >> Well, I think you've got to take it on very squarely and let's use the U.S. as an example and then I'll parallel what France is doing and what India is doing that is actually much more creative that what we are, from countries you wouldn't have anticipated. In the U.S. we know that 50% of the Fortune 500 will probably not exist in 10 years, 12 at the most. We know that the large companies will not incrementally hire people over this next decade and they've often been one of the best sources of hiring because of AI and automation will change that. So, it's not just a question of being schooled in one area and move to another, those jobs will disappear within the companies. If we don't have new jobs in startups and if we don't have the startups running at about three to four times the current volumes, we've got a real problem looking out five to 10 years. And the startups where everyone thinks we're doing a good job, the app user, third to a half of what they were two decades ago. And so if you need 25 million jobs over this next decade and your startups are at a level more like they were in the 90s, that's going to be a challenge. And so I think we've got to think from the government perspective of how we become a startup nation again, how we think about long-term job creation, how we think about job creation not taking money out of one pocket and give it to another. People want a real job, they want to have a meaningful job. We got to change our K through 12 education system which is broken, we've got to change our university system to generate the jobs for where people are going and then we've got to retrain people. That is very doable, if you got at it with a total plan and approach it from a scale perspective. That was lacking. And one of the disappointing things in the debate last night, and while I'm a republican I really want who's going to really lead us well both at the presidential level, but also within the senate, the house. Is, there was a complete lack of any vision on what the country should look like 10 years from now, and how we're going to create 25 million jobs and how we're going to create 10 million more that are going to be displaced and how we're going to re-educate people for it. It was a lot of finger pointing and transactional, but no overall plan. Modi did the reverse in India, and actually Macron, in all places, in France. Where they looked at GDP growth, job creation, startups, education changes, etc, and they executed to an overall approach. So, I'm looking for our government really to change the approach and to really say how are we going to generate jobs and how are we going to deal with the issues that are coming at us. It's a combination of all the the above. >> Yep. Let's shift gears a little bit about the education system and you're very involved and you talked about MIT. Obviously, I think Stanford and Cal are such big drivers of innovation in the Bay area because smart people go there and they don't leave. And then there's a lot of good buzz now happening in Atlanta as an investment really piggy-backing on Georgia Tech, which also creates a lot of great engineers. As you look at education, I don't want to go through K through 12, but more higher education, how do you see that evolving in today's world? It's super expensive, there's tremendous debt for the kids coming out, it doesn't necessarily train them for the new jobs. >> Where the jobs are. >> How do you see, kind of the role of higher education and that evolving into kind of this new world in which we're headed? >> Well, the good news and bad news about when I look at successful startups around the world, they're always centered around a innovative university and it isn't just about the raw horse power of the kids, It starts with the CEO of the university, the president of the university, their curriculum, their entrepreneurial approach, do they knock down the barriers across the various groups from engineering to business to law, etc? And are they thinking out of box? And if you watch, there is a huge missing piece between, Georgia Tech more of an exception, but still not running at the level they need to. And the Northeast around Boston and New York and Silicon Valley, The rest of the country's being left behind. So I'm looking for universities to completely redo their curriculum. I'm looking for it really breaking down the silos within the groups and focus on the outcomes. And much like Steve Case has done a very good job on focusing, about the Rust Belt and how do you do startups? I'm going to learn from what I saw in France at Polytechnique and the ITs in India, and what occurred in Stanford and MIT used to occur is, you've got to get the universities to be the core and that's where they kids want to stay close to, and we've got to generate a whole different curriculum, if you will, in the universities, including, continuous learning for their graduates, to be able to come back virtually and say how do I learn about re-skilling myself? >> Yeah. >> The current model is just not >> the right model >> It's broken. >> For the, for going forward. >> K through 12 is >> hopelessly broken >> Yeah. >> and the universities, while were still better than anywhere else in the world, we're still teaching, and some of the teachers and some of the books are what I could have used in college. >> Right, right >> So, we got to rethink the whole curriculum >> darn papers on the inside >> disrupt, disrupt >> So, shifting gears a little bit, you, played with lots of companies in your CEO role you guys did a ton of M&A, you're very famous for the successful M&A that you did over a number of years, but in an investor role, J2 now, you're looking at a more early stage. And you said you made a number of investments which is exciting. So, as you evaluate opportunities A. In teams that come to pitch to you >> Yeah. >> B. What are the key things you look for? >> In the sequence you've raised them, first in my prior world, I was really happy to do 180 acquisitions, in my current world, I'm reversed, I want them to go IPO. Because you add 76% of your headcount after an IPO, or after you've become a unicorn. When companies are bought, including what I bought in my prior role, their headcount growth is pretty well done. We'd add engineers after that, but would blow them through our sales channel, services, finance, etc. So, I want to see many more of these companies go public, and this goes back to national agenda about getting IPO's, not back to where they were during the 90's when it was almost two to three times, what you've seen over the last decade. But probably double, even that number the 90's, to generate the jobs we want. So, I'm very interested now about companies going public in direction. To the second part of your question, on what do I look for in startups and why, if I can bridge it, to am I so faired up about Pensando? If I look for my startups and, it's like I do acquisitions, I develop a playbook, I run that playbook faster and faster, it's how I do digitization of countries, etc. And so for a area I'm going to invest in and bet on, first thing I look at, is their market, technology transition, and business model transition occurring at the same time. That was Amazon of 15 years ago as an example. The second thing I look at, is the CEO and ideally, the whole founding team but it's usually just the CEO. The third thing I look for, is what are the customers really say about them? There's only one Steve Jobs, and it took him seven years. So, I go to the customers and say "What do you really think of this company?" Fourth thing I look for, is how close to an inflection point are they. The fifth thing I look for, is what they have in their ecosystem. Are they partnering? Things of that type. So, if I were to look at Pensando, Which is really the topic about can they bring to the market the new edge in a way that will be a market leading force for a whole decade? Through a ecosystem of partners that will change business dramatically and perhaps become the next major tech icon. It's how well you do that. Their vision in terms of market transitions, and business transitions 100% right. We've talked about it, 5G, IOT, internet of things, going from 15 billion devices to 500 billion devices in probably seven years. And, with the movement to the edge the business models will also change. And this is where, democratization, the cloud, and people able to share that power, where every technology company becomes a business becomes a, every business company becomes a technology company. >> Right. >> The other thing I look at is, the team. This is a team of six people, myself being a part of it, that thinks like one. That is so unusual, If you're lucky, you get a CEO and maybe a founder, a co-founder. This team, you've got six people who've worked together for over 20 years who think alike. The customers, you heard the discussions today. >> Right. >> And we've not talked to a single cloud player, a single enterprise company, a single insurance provider, or major technology company who doesn't say "This is very unique, let's talk about "how we work together on it." The inflection point, it's now you saw that today. >> Nobody told them it's young mans game obviously, they got the twenty-something mixed up >> No, actually were redefining (laughs) twenty-something, (laughs) but it does say, age is more perspective on how you think. >> Right, right. >> And Shimone Peres, who, passed away unfortunately, two years ago, was a very good friend. He basically said "You've got all your life "to think like a teenager, "and to really think and dream out of box." And he did it remarkably well. So, I think leaders, whether their twenty-something, or twenty-some years of experience working you've got to think that way. >> Right. So I'm curious, your take on how this has evolved, because, there was data and there was compute. And networking brought those two thing together, and you were at the heart of that. >> Mm-hmm. Now, it's getting so much more complex with edge, to get your take on edge. But, also more importantly exponential growth. You've talked about going from, how ever many millions the devices that were connected, to the billions of devices that are connected now. How do you stay? How do you help yourself think along exponential curves? Because that is not easy, and it's not human. But you have to, if you're going to try to get ahead of that next wave. >> Completely agree. And this is not just for me, how do I do it? I'm sharing it more that other people can learn and think about it perhaps the same way. The first thing is, it's always good to think of the positive, You can change the world here, the positive things, But I've also seen the negatives we talked about earlier. If you don't think that way, if you don't think that way as a leader of your company, leader of your country, or the leader of a venture group you're going to get left behind. The implications for it are really bad. The second is, you've got to say how do you catch and get a replicable playbook? The neat thing about what were talking about, whether it's by country in France, or India or the U.S., we've got replicable playbooks we know what to run. The third element is, you've got to have the courage to get outside your comfort zone. And I love change when it happens to you, I don't like it when it happens to me And I know that, So, I've got to get people around me who push me outside my comfort zone on that. And then, you've got to be able to dream and think like that teenager we talked about before. But that's what we were just with a group of customers, who were at this event. And they were asking "How do we get "this innovation into our company?" "How do we get the ability to innovate, through not just strategic partnerships with other large companies or partnerships with startups?" But "How do we build that internally?" It's comes down to the leader has to create that image and that approach. Modi's done it for 1.3 billion people in India. A vision, of the future on GDP growth. A digital country, startups, etc. If they can do it for 1.3 billion, tell me why the U.S. can not do it? (laughs) And why even small states here, can't do it. >> Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit, >> All right. >> A lot of black eyes in Silicon Valley right now, a lot of negativity going on, a lot of problems with privacy and trading data for currency and, it's been a rough road. You're way into tech for good and as you said, you can use technology for good you can use technology for bad. What are some things you're doing on the tech for good side? Because I don't think it gets the spotlight that it probably should, because it doesn't sell papers. >> Well, actually the press has been pretty good we just need to do it more on scale. Going back to Cisco days, we never had any major issues with governments. Even though there was a Snowden issue, there were a lot of implications about the power of the internet. Because we work with governments and citizens to say "What are the legitimate needs so that everybody benefits from this?" And where the things that we might have considered doing that, governments felt strongly about or the citizens wouldn't prosper from we just didn't do it. And we work with democrats and republicans alike and 90% of our nation believed tech was for good. But we worked hard on that. And today, I think you got to have more companies doing this and then, what, were doing uniquely in JC2, is were literally partnering with France on tech is for good and I'm Macron's, global tech ambassador and we focus about job creation and inclusion. Not just in Paris, or around Station F but throughout all the various regions in the country. Same thing within India, across 26 different states with Modi on how do you drive it through? And then if we can do it in France or India why can't we do it in each state in the U.S.? Partnering with West Virginia, with a very creative, president of the university there West Virginia University. With the democrats and republicans in their national senate, but also within the governor and speaker of the house and the president and senate within West Virginia, and really saying were going to change it together. And getting a model that you can then cookie cut across the U.S. if you change the curriculum, to your earlier comments. If you begin to focus on outcomes, not being an expert in one area, which is liable not to have a job >> Right. >> Ten years later. So, I'm a dreamer within that, but I think you owe an obligation to giving back, and I think they're all within our grasps >> Right >> And I think you can do, the both together. I think at JC2 we can create a billion dollar company with less than 10 people. I think you can change the world and also make a very good profit. And I think technology companies have to get back to that, you got to create more jobs than you destroy. And you can't be destroying jobs, then telling other people how to live their lives and what their politics should be. >> Yeah. >> That just doesn't work in terms of the environment. >> Well John, again, thanks for your time. Give you the last word on >> Sure >> Account of what happened here today, I mean you're here, and Tony O'Neary was here or at the headquarters of Goldman. A flagship launch customer, for the people that weren't here today why should they be paying attention? >> Well, if we've got this market transition right, the technology and business model, the next transition will be everything goes to the edge. And as every company or every government, or every person has to be both good in their "Area of expertise." or their vertical their in, they've got to also be good in technology. What happened today was a leveling of the playing field as it relates to cloud. In terms of everyone should have choice, democratization there, but also in architecture that allows people to really change their business models, as everything moves to the edge where 75% of all transactions, all data will be had and it might even be higher than that. Secondly, you saw a historic first never has anybody ever emerged from stealth after only two and a half years of existing as a company, with this type of powerhouse behind them. And you saw the players where you have a customer, Goldman Sachs, in one of the most leading edge areas, of industry change which is obviously finance leading as the customer who's driven our direction from the very beginning. And a company like NetApp, that understood the implication on storage, from two and a half years ago and drove our direction from the very beginning. A company like HP Enterprise's, who understood this could go across their whole company in terms of the implications, and the unique opportunity to really change and focus on, how do they evolve their company to provide their customer experience in a very unique way? How do you really begin to think about Equinix in terms of how they changed entirely from a source matter prospective, what they have to do in terms of the direction and capabilities? And then Lightspeed, one of the most creative intra capital that really understands this transition saying "I want to be a part of this." Including being on the board and changing the world one more time. So, what happened today? If we're right, I think this was the beginning of a major inflection point as everything moves to the edge. And how ecosystem players, with Pensando at the heart of that ecosystem, can take on the giants but also really use this technology to give everybody choice, and how they really make a difference in the future. As well as, perhaps give back to society. >> Love it. Thank you John >> My pleasure, that was fun. >> Appreciate it. You're John, I'm Jeff you're watching theCUBE. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Welcome to the New Edge. Brought to you by Pensando Systems. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're on top of Goldman Sachs in downtown Manhattan. It was a really beautiful day a couple of hours ago, but the rain is moving in, but it's appropriate 'cause we're talking about cloud. And we're here for a very special event. It's the Pensando launch, I'll get the pronunciation right, Pensando launch, and it's really about Welcome to the New Edge. And to start off, I mean, I couldn't come up with two better tech executives who've been around the block, seen it all, and they're both here for this launch event which is pretty special. On my left, Antonio Neri, CEO and president of HP. Antonio, great to see you. >> Thanks for having me. >> And John Chambers, of course we know him from his many years at Cisco, but now he's the chairman of Pensando, and of course J2 Ventures, and an author, and John, you're keeping yourself busy. >> I am, tryin' to change the world one more time. >> All right, so let's talk about that changing the world, 'cause you are two very high, powerful people. You run big companies, and you talked about, in your opening remarks, the next wave. You talked about these kind of 10-year waves. And we're starting a new one, which is why you got involved. Why did you see that coming, what do you see in Pensando, and how are we going to address this opportunity? >> Well, when you think about it, every 10 years there's a new leader in the marketplace, and nobody has stayed on top longer than 10 years and has led in the next market transition. We think about mainframes, IBM clearly the leader there, the mini computers, I'm biased toward Wang, but DEC was there. Then the client server and obviously Microsoft and Intel playing a very key role, followed by the internet where Cisco was very, very successful. And then followed, literally by that, by social media and then the cloud and then what I think will be bigger than any of the prior ones, it's about what happens as the cloud moves to the edge. And we may end up having a different term every time, but that really is what we saw today. And how we came together with a common vision as the cloud moves to the edge, what could an ecosystem of partners do, with a foundation, with Pensando at the core of that, to really take advantage from how do you deliver services to our joint customers in a way that no one else can. And have the courage, really, to go challenge Amazon in terms of their market dominance, but provide choice and say it's a multi cloud world. How do you provide that choice and then how do you differentiate it together with each partner? >> Antonio, you guys have been talking about edge for a long, long time. You've been on this for a while. HP's such a great company. Used to be, I think, one of the great validators if anyone could do a deal with HP. It was really a technology validation and a business validation, and I think that still holds true. So you must have, knocking on your door all day long. What did you see in this opportunity with Pensando? >> Well, first of all, John and I see the world from the same lens. We see a world where the enterprise of the future will be essentially cloud enabled and data-driven. And therefore we have to remove these barriers, call it the cloud in one place or the other one. We are going to live what are calling a edge-to-cloud world where, is a cloudless. Where the cloud experience is distributed everywhere. And where action happens is where we live and work right now, right here. We're having a conversation, we're producing data, and we are transmitting this real time. So, the point is, we believe the edge is a new frontier and that's where the vast majority is being created, 75%. of it created the edge. And this is where it starts by having a common vision and ultimately a same DNA, same culture. John and I share the same values for passion for customers, passion for driving a customer-driven innovation, and ultimately change the world like we have done for decades. And I think Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is uniquely positioned to be the edge-to-cloud platform delivered as a service. And together with Pensando and the great technology I bring about from the silicon side and on the softer side, together with our own knowhow and engineering capabilities, we can change the world again. >> And the fun part is, we can almost finish each other's sentences. (all laughing) We have a little bit different accent. The stability to have a common vision, having never really talked about it, and then a view of the common culture. Because strategic partnerships are really hard. And you said it on stage, but I cannot agree with it more. If you're cultures aren't similar, if you don't think how does your partner win first and how do you win second, this is very hard to do. And we can finish each other's sentences. >> And I think there is another point here that John and I truly believe, because it's part of our values. It's to use technology for good. So, one thing is accelerating the business innovation and what our enterprise customers are going through, but then how apply that technology to deliver some good. And we as a company have a clear purpose in life, which is to advance the way people live and work. So, I think as we go through this massive inflection point, both from the business side and the technology side, not only we can create a better world, but also give back somewhat to the communities as well. >> There are massive changes, and it's a sea-change in infrastructure in the way things are done, but you hit on three really key, simple words in your remarks earlier. Trust, engineering-driven, which is HP's culture from the earliest garage days, and customer-centric. So, we hear about data-driven but in engineering, you don't necessarily want to lead with that. Customer-centric you do have to lead and it's pretty interesting at Pensando, you talk to all these customers, and you're just launching the company today, you've been in stealth for over two years. But all these customers have been engaged with you since the very, very beginning. Pretty interesting approach. >> It is, and we do share a common passion on that. Every company says they're customer-driven, but just ask how the CEO spends his or her time. I just asked their customers, do they replace them first on every issue? We share that common value completely. >> Yeah, I spend 50% of my time on the road talking to customers. That's my goal, because I believe the truth is in the cold face. When you talk to customers, you get the truth, what the challenges and opportunities are. And we need to bring that succinct feedback back into our problem management engineering team to try to solve there's a problem. So take advantage of those opportunities by delivering a better experience. It starts with experience first and technology comes second. >> The other piece you talked about is your team, and diversity and really the power of diversity. And, I think it was, the Lincoln cabinet, band of people that didn't get along with each other and had a bunch of different points of view. But because of that, it surfaces issues and it lets you see multi sides. You said you handpicked that team. What are some of the things you thought about when you handpicked your team when you took the reins a couple years ago from the-- >> Well, it starts by, thought leadership and what, how they see the world, ultimately what the strengths are and how we bring those strengths for the power of one. I agree with John, I believe a team comes first, individual comes second. And if you can bring the best of each individual in a concerted way where you create an environment for debate and ultimately for getting alignment and moving forward with execution. That's what that is all about, leadership. So, I handpicked those people because each of them had that unique quality. Whether it's, you know, being very self-centric in the way you deliver the value proposition or very technology-centric, or very services oriented. So, we have picked those people for a reason and it's not easy to manage a very opinionated team. (all laughing) But once you can get them aligned, is actually incredible fun to watch. >> You know, I would make one tweak to what you just asked the question on. I had a chance to watch his team for the first time in our garage startup at my house. And they are very diverse with different opinions, they are very comfortable with disagreeing with each other. But they have a common set of values and a common end goal. I'm not sure the Lincoln cabinet had that. And that's so important to realize, because what we're about to do together and what each of us are trying to do in our own endeavors, it's so important to have a team that has that type of culture and the ability to move for that. >> The other team that mentioned, that kept coming up throughout the day, was the team that you're working with on Pensando. And how this team has been together for, I think you said the new 20, right? 25 plus years, and have built multiple projects, multiple products over many, many years. And now have this cohesion as you keep saying, they can finish their own sentences. You know, a really specific approach to get this group together that you know is not going to be strategy, it's going to be delivery. >> It is going to be the combination, if I may. And it is very unique that a team works together for over 25 years. It's a team that is a family and we are about as diverse as it gets in our backgrounds, our accents, our countries that our families came from. But it's a team that competes purely on getting market transitions right, that is always driven by our customers and what we need to do and build and put 'em always first in everything we do. And then it's fearless. We outline audacious goals at being number one in everything we do, and out of the eight products that we built together, we are number one in all eight. All of 'em with over 50% market share, and there was no number two. And so the ability to execute with that type of precision, customer-driven and the courage to do it and understand what we know and what we don't know. Coming together one more time, I mean it's really exciting, it will be a new definition of 20 somethings in a startup. >> So, getting you the last word Antonio, as you looked at John's chart with those 10-year blocks and the garage has been around Palo Alto for a long time. >> 82 years. >> You guys have seen a lot, 82 years, you've been through a few of these and you're still here and still doing a great job and still winning. So, as you look at that from your current position as CEO, what goes through your head? How are you making sure you're keeping ahead? How are you avoiding the Clayton Christensen Innovator's Dilemma, to make sure you're killing your own business before somebody else kills kind of the old stuff and making sure you're out in front. >> When I became a CEO, in the transition from Meg to me, I established three key priorities for myself. One is our customers and partners. Keep them at the center of everything we do. That's one of our core values. Second is innovation, innovation, innovation. Innovation from a customer-driven approach. And third is the culture of the company. And what a great example here with John, you know, leading an iconic company for decades. And so to me, I have been working very aggressive on the three of those aspects. And I'm very pleased with the progress we have made. But, now is about writing the next chapter of this company. And in order to write that next chapter company, you need to have a strong alignment at the top, all the way down, what I call ropes to the ground. So, fun enough, John is going to be in my event here in a couple of weeks. We'll bring the leadership team, the top 400 leaders, talking about how to disrupt yourself and how you pay for the company into the future. And the future, as I said, is we see an enterprise that's edge-centric, cloud-enabled, and data-driven, delivered as a service. So we are going to be the, as a service company with an edge-to-cloud platform that accelerates business from the data. And the combination of Pensando technologies and engineering capabilities, with our vision and our own intellectual property, we think we can deliver those unique experience for the customers in a more agile, cost-effective way and democratize the cloud, as John say, for the world. So, I'm incredibly excited about doing this. And who thought that John Chambers and Antonio Neri would be here, you know. And the reality is it takes leadership, so I value leadership, I value trust, and this partnership is built on trust. And we both have the same values. >> I appreciate you taking the time. I mean, we're going to talk about the products a little bit later. We've got some of the deeper product people. But, you know, I think the leadership thing is so important and I think it's harder. I think it's hard to be a great leader, it's hard to lead through transitions, and the pace of change is only accelerating, so the challenge is only going to increase. But I think communication and trust is such a big piece. I saw Dave Pottruck speak many, many times and he's very, very good. And I asked him, 'cuz we had a thing at school. I said, "Dave, why are you so good?" And he said, "Very simple. "As a CEO, my job is to communicate. "I have three constituents. "I have my customers, I have the street, "and I have my employees. "And so I treat it as a skill, I practice, I got a coach, "and I treat it like any other skill." And it's so hard and so important to provide that leadership, provide that direction, so everybody can pull the rope in the same direction. Nothing but the best to both of you and thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> It was a lot of fun. >> All right. >> It's a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> He's Antonio, he's John, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE, from the top of Goldman Sachs in Manhattan. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering, Imagine 2018. Brought to you by, Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere, Imagine 2018. Eleven hundred people buzzing all around us here. The eco system is hot, everybody's looking at all the various solutions, all the various bots, all the various activities going on. And we're excited to have relatively newcomer to the company. He's Kashif Mahbub, the VP, Product Marketing for Automation Anywhere. Kashif, welcome. >> Thanks for having me. >> So you said you've been here, we've had all the founders on I think, so you've been here about a year. So, first impressions, I imagine this is your first show, what do you think? >> It's actually my third show. >> Oh it is your show. >> Things are moving. >> Oh, were you a customer before? >> Company standard, yeah by company standards I would say I'm a veteran. (Jeff laughing) So we are doing these shows, all of these marketing activities at a very rapid pace. >> Very good, so one of the topics we haven't talked about so much today is this kind of digital workforce concept. And you guys have a really specific idea of what makes, kind of taking these things to actually be considered a digital workforce. So what are those three things that you guys combine, to have something that's unique in the market place? >> So we pioneered the concept of digital workforce. And in our parlance, in our definition, a digital workforce, especially at enterprise scale, comprises of three key components. RPA, which is robotic process automation. Cognitive automation, which is the ability of using AI and machine learning capabilities with the RPA. And last but not least, smart analytics. So, the combination of these three make up what we call a digital workforce. If any of one of these elements is missing, we feel that's not really a true digital workforce. So it is the workforce platform that we call enterprise, combines all of these capabilities together to really deliver a true enterprise class, digital workforce platform. >> Now how long have you guys been baking in the AI component of it, in the cognition piece. 'Cause there's a lot of talk about cognitive computing, and it's a big theme that IBM has had for a long, long time, and we're seeing AI work itself in to all kinds of interesting applications. Now kind of, where was your guys' AI journey, how long have you been at it, and where are you seeing kind of the break through to get to this digital workforce concept? >> So automation anywhere has been around for about 15 years now. So we have a very mature product. I look after the enterprise platform, and we just released version 11. So it makes it the most mature platform in the industry at the moment. Now to answer your question about AI, and bringing AI into it, that's fairly recent. But we are based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Google is one of our customers, so is Tesla, so is LinkedIn. These are three big AI companies, with their own AI Technology, yet they use Automation Anywhere platform as well. So, there is AI, and then there is AI with RPA. So think of it as purpose built AI capabilities that are infused through our digital workforce platform, to enhance our RPA capabilities. And you bring in analytics, then we talk about predictive analytics. So overall again, it's building a digital workforce that is enhanced by AI, that is enhanced by cognitive capabilities, so that RPA is not just RPA. It's RPA to the next level. >> Right, and really RPA that's gonna evolve. RPA that's eventually gonna write itself right, or write new versions of itself based on new things. And process improvement, new discoveries in terms of better ways to get things done. Using those other two legs of the spool. >> Yes, so you will see a lot of publications out there that talk about RPA evolving into AI, or AI taking over RPA. The fact is, there is again AI, and then there is AI combined with RPA. So if you take Google's example. Google uses us in the back end, yet it is one of the largest AI companies in the world. So AI, think of it as a big hammer. It has to be used very carefully, and we have purpose built AI into our product to make sure that we extract all the unstructured data. And then we, as Mihir mentioned, our CEO mentioned earlier in the key note, it is feeding this RPA monster that needs more and more data. And all of that data comes through our AI and cognitive capabilities. >> Right, and we know right, and for the machines to learn, they need more, and more, and more data so they get better and better. It's just the way computers do learn. It's very different from the way humans learn, it's a slightly different model. >> It's about building a digital map. You know, we use Waze and Google Maps and all of these different GPS driven capabilities to find our way around, Manhattan for example. Or Bay area for that matter. (Jeff laughing) Think of our digital workforce platform with AI capabilities and with analytics capabilities, as a digital map of an enterprise. We touch so many different infrastructure components. From CRM systems to ERP systems to HRIS systems, that the amount of data that we capture that passes through our system, gives us perhaps the best look that anyone can have into how data flows through an enterprise. And what's the best way to use it. >> Right, so I'm curious in terms of those vertical applications that you described, where have you seen the biggest impact now that you've started to bring the AI in? Are there certain verticals that are just ripe for significant positive change, and some that are less so? >> Yeah absolutely. So, there is a lot of data locked in documents still. So banking, finance and insurance. Those are the three verticals, three industries where our first step with our IQ Bot, which is our cognitive product. We have seen a lot of traction there. The reason for that is again, when we decipher these documents, when we decipher and capture all the data, we then use it very intelligently in automating the processes. So the first step to answer your question would be, organizations, industries that use unstructured data that is locked into their documents, all this dark data of methodology. We unlock that data, and then we use RPA and we feed this RPA monster to really automate the various processes. >> Every time you guys talk about all the data locked in these documents, I can't help but think of the old OCR days, when I got my first $1000 flatbed scanner to try to read a couple documents. It never worked back then, the era of a different place. >> Funny that you mention that because the OCR technology that got built into a lot of scanners later on, a lot of that technology we use under the covers, but at a much more enhanced level. So we partner with some of the best OCR technologies out there, but then we put AI on top of that to really take it to the next level. So when the data comes out of a simple OCR process, it's no longer just some data that you can, like we used to see. Now it's data that is structured, that can be automated in a few clicks. >> It has context right. And most importantly it has context, which makes all the difference in the world. Okay, so what are some of your priorities for next year, before I let you go. What are some of the things you're working on? If we sit down a year from now, what are we gonna be talking about that's new? Don't tell me any secrets, no NDA's have been signed here. (Jeff laughing) >> At Imagine, we come with an approach of an open book. Open kimono if you will, and we share all that we are working on. And all that we are working today, but also going forward. So AI is a big element of that. Automation, combined with any sort of automation, especially RPA combined with AI and machine learning capabilities, that's already, we have a product, as opposed to just an idea. It's a working product with dozens of organizations using it. But then we are infusing that AI into RPA, and making it intelligent RPA. Making it an intelligent digital workforce platform. That's the ultimate goal, and we are already well on our way. >> Alright well Kashif, thanks for a taking a few minutes of your time and congrats on a great show. >> Thank you, thanks for having me Jeff. >> Alright he's Kashif, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018 in New York City, thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From Times Square in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown Manhattan, actually midtown Manhattan, at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018, 1100 people talkin' about bots, talkin' about Robotics Process Automation, or RPA. And we're excited to have the guy that counts the money at the end of the day; it's important part of any business. He's a co-founder, Ankur Kothari, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. Ankur, great to see you. >> Great to be here, Jeff, thanks for having me. >> So, first off, as a co-founder, I think you're the third or fourth co-founder we've had on today. A little bit of reflection since you guys started this like 14 years ago. >> Yeah. Here we are, there's 1100 people, the room is packed. They had the overflow, they're actually all over us out here with the overflow for the keynote. Take a minute and kinda tell us how you feel about how this thing has evolved over time. >> It feels like a great party to be part of. Always, you're always happy. >> Right. >> One of the traits that you'll find a lot of co-founders is that they are always happy, never satisfied. They're always looking for the next big one. >> Right. >> But it's amazing to be part of Imagine because we learn so much from our customers and our partner as well. It's not just that we bring them together and we're talking. We're learning every time. It's becoming a big ecosystem. >> Right. >> And, an idea as big as a bot or a future of work is too big an idea for one company to continue. You want as many people to come. >> Right. >> So, our idea of Imagine was a little bit like Field of Dreams, you build and they'll come and they'll collaborate and it'll become bigger and bigger. >> And look all around us. I mean, we're surrounded by people and really, the ecosystem. >> And the bots as well, there are bots on the walls and everything else. >> Bots on the walls, partners everywhere. So let's dive into it a little bit. I mean, one of the ways that you guys participate in the ecosystem, and the ecosystem participates, is the Bot Store. >> Yes. >> So it's just like any other kind of an app store. >> Exactly. >> You've got people contributing. I assume you guys have contributed stuff. But we saw earlier in the keynote by Accenture, and EY, and Deloitte. And all types of companies are contributing bots into this ecosystem for lots of different functions or applications. So really, an interesting thing. How's that workin' out? Where'd you come up with the idea? And why's that so important? >> At Automation Anywhere we like to ask ourselves hard questions, as the leaders in this space. And we asked ourselves this question, "What can we now do to further accelerate our journey of all our customers to become a digital enterprise?" The answer came that we are to share in the new bot economy. Now once that answer was clear, every economy requires a marketplace. >> Right. >> And that's where the Bot Store came. It's a marketplace where producers meet the consumers, and you connect them. All we do is, we curate and make sure that the right things go up. But other than that, it's just like any other marketplace. And we thought that if we'll build the right marketplace where the producers meet consumers, we have thousands of customers and large companies looking at it. It will allow perfect place where all the right ideas get converted into product. >> Right. >> We have tons of partners who have domain expertise, functional expertise, vertical expertise; they can prioritize their expertise, they can convert it into IP. >> Right. >> They can do it for free, they can monetize it. So there's lots to gain for producers of all these bots. And if I am a consumer, now suddenly my time clock to make further shrinks, because instead of creating these bots all from scratch, I can download them from this Bot Store and snap them together like a Lego block. >> Right. >> So that's how the whole idea came. We launched it just two months ago and we have hundreds-- >> You just launched it two months ago? >> Yeah! And we have hundreds of bots in it. More than 80-100 partners have participated. We are getting at least 20-30 more submissions coming every day, and we have few hundred submissions coming every week. So, just like any free marketplace, it has an exponential nature. And that's the thing we are counting on. >> That's amazing, that you've got that much traction in such a short period of time. >> Thousands of downloads on a daily basis. Thousands of users just in two month's time. >> You know, we go to a ton of shows. We do over a hundred shows a year. And once shows get to a certain size, it starts to change a little bit. But when they're small like this, it's a very intimate affair on a couple floors here at the Sheraton, everyone is still really involved. They're really sharing. >> Yes. >> There's so much sharing of information. Not so much, you know ... Because they're not really competitors. Within their own companies, they're all part of this same team that are trying to implement this new thing. >> Exactly. >> And you really feel it. >> Exactly. >> So, the store's cool, but the bot economy. When you talk about the bot economy, we talk about API economy a lot. >> Yes. >> How do you see the bot economy? What are the factors that drive the bot economy, and how's it gonna evolve over time? >> We look at it as a few elements. The current version, we think that bot economy, like any economy, has a marketplace, which is our Bot Store. We have a program which we call Bot Games, because any good economy, any new economy, one of the trait is that the good idea can come from anyone. >> Right. >> It can come from anyplace. Like, any customers, any partner, anyone can bring. A good economy, what it does is it brings that idea from anyone, and it gives these vehicles for good ideas to take flight. If the idea is good, it becomes viral, and it has vehicles where those ideas can go to market. What we did was, we created a program called Bot Games. Yesterday on May 29th, we had the 1st Inaugural Bot Games. We invited developers, people who are part of these programs and their companies. And we gamified and created different games. And we thought that if we bring all these champions and pioneers and like-minded people in the same room, give them certain same problem, and then gamify it, put a clock on it, a lot of great ideas will come out of it. >> Right. >> And that came. And some of those ideas will make it to the marketplace, like a Bot Store, like an Imagine. >> Right. >> So that's where all the ideas connect to the customers. And the people who bring those ideas, they also come up. So that's the other aspect. So the Bot Games is where the ideas, you can crowdsource from places. Bot Store is where they go to the market. In between there is a gap. And we are trying to remove that gap by creating a stimulus package for this new bot economy. Like any economy time and again requires a stimulus pack, and we have created one. What we have done is that if you want to learn Automation Anywhere, right? If you want to understand, because that gap is you're to understand Automation Anywhere. We have created Automation Anywhere University a year ago. And now anyone can take courses for free to learn how to create bots. Whether they are customers or partners. And then, if you purchase these bots through one of our certified partners, the first three bots in year one are free. So we are removing the friction in between. If you have not started on this journey, your learning is free, you get ideas from different places, we can get these prebuilt bots, and the first three bots, if you purchase it through our partners, they are free. So we are removing that friction. And then, we are supporting that whole economy with the industry's largest customer success program. >> Right. So I'm curious if you know, maybe you don't know, of the bots in the bots store, how many are free and how many are paid, as a percentage? >> Interestingly, I don't have that stat because we don't actually worry about that. We let all our partners and people who are contributing to this Bot Store decide that. >> Right. >> Some bots they may decide to monetize, some they may not. It's listed on the Bot Store. Offhand, I would say-- >> Take a guess. Is it 50/50? A third? Two-thirds? >> The nature of it looks like 50/50. >> That's a good guess. Full caveat, it's a guess. We didn't do the analysis. >> Exactly. But here is the unique aspect. Yesterday we had a Bot Game, and the winner had an amazing idea that none of us had ever think of. He created this bot that automates the COE of all these programs. Now, we are talking. He is thinking of putting that on Bot Store. That's the power of bringing multiple people together. >> Right. >> That's the power of free economy, where the exponential nature of it is what we are counting on. And we are getting on a daily basis these new bot ideas, these new bots that are making it to the Bot Store. Just like your App Store. I go to App Store to get ideas what I can do on my phone. >> Right, right. >> Just like that, now we are finding our customers are going to Bot Store to figure out what else can they automate. >> Right, right. >> And that's been another amazing part of it. >> You know, it's so consistent. All these shows we go to, right? How do you unlock innovation? There's some really simple ways. One is, give more people the power, give more people the tools, and give more people the data. >> Exactly. >> And you'll get stuff out of it that the small subset of people that used to have access to those three things, they never found. They just didn't think of it that way, right? >> Exactly. And then we firmly believe that any technology, anything, once you democratize it, you give it in hands of everyone-- >> Right, right. >> You can't have a thriving economy unless everyone forms their own point of view. Unless everyone creates their own perspective. And that's our vision of this bot economy. We are bringing everyone and giving them these vehicles to try it out. Look, the technology has reached a stage where it's cheaper to try it out than talk about it. >> Yes. >> And we are doing that so that everyone forms their own unique point of view, and then they express that point of view and we connect those points of view to these thousands of customers worldwide. >> Right. >> Good ideas take flight, and all we have to do is create vehicles for those good ideas to take flight. >> Alright. So, Ankur, I gave you the last word before we wrap up here. If we come back next year, a year from now, inspired 2019, what are we gonna be talking about? What's on your roadmap? What're some of the priorities that you guys are workin' on over the next 12 months? >> We are talking about ... The next 12 months, we are looking at how to further accelerate this journey. Because what people are in this, the real problem people are trying to achieve is how to become a digital enterprise. Not just to automate, but how do you create a digital enterprise? You cannot become a digital enterprise unless your operations are digital. You cannot make your operations digital unless your processes are digital. And you cannot do that unless your workforce is digital. So we are trying to create technologies, vehicles, platforms, so that everyone can scale their program. Where pretty much everyone should have a digital colleague. Everyone should be able to create a bot. Everyone should be able to work with a bot. Every process, every department, every system should have a digital workforce working in it and that can allow you to create a digital enterprise that can scale up and scale down with the demand and supply. >> Alright-- >> That's what we are trying to start. >> Well, we look forward to gettin' the update next year. >> Exactly. >> Alright, Ankur, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day with us. >> Thanks for having me here, and I appreciate and enjoy the conversation. >> Alright, he's Ankur, I'm Jeff. We're at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE. See you next time.

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE, covering Imagine 2018. (upbeat electronic music) Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody, Jeff Frick here, with theCUBE, we're in downtown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere Inspire 2018, about 1,100 people talking about bots and RPA, that's robotic process automation, for those who aren't in the know. And we're excited to have another co-founder join us. She's Neeti Mehta, she's a SVP and co-founder, welcome. >> Nice to meet you Jeff. >> So you're tackling some of the softer, more complex issues that come up around machines and bots and people and working together, and people's jobs getting takeaway, so as leaders try to put in more automation, start thinking about adopting things like Automation Anywhere and bots, what are some of the big ethical things they need to think through? What are some of the bigger issues that maybe aren't top of mind, that are really worth a little deeper thought? >> So one of the things we like to bring to focus is, that corporate leadership and corporations must look at it with a human focus. Robotic process automation helps get rid of the mundane and repetitive tasks, but the ultimate goal is so that you can enable the humans to do more. To enable a lot more creativity, or outside the box thinking or come up with new service models. Come up with new ways to solve things. And this is only possible if you get rid of the repetitive, mundane tasks, which often bogs down humans. >> Right. >> And so, coming at it from asking leadership to look at it right from the forefront. How can we enable the humans to do more, how can we enable our human workforce to use this technology, to unleash that potential? >> Right, and how receptive is the workforce to that message, or are they just afraid that these bots are coming in to take their jobs on some of these more repetitive tasks or, you know, is the rollout and communication and some of your guys' customers, you've been at this for a while, you know is that part of the rollout? Is that part of the implementation to say, hey, you know, the goal here is to help these things with the stuff you don't like to do so much in your job. >> Right, right. >> So that you can have a higher level of productivity, a higher level of contribution. >> Right >> A higher level of everyday activity and tasks. >> Absolutely, I think change is always hard, and it takes a while to progress through it. Re-skilling is a part of some of this change that we are going through, especially with people working with bots or bots taking over some of the more repetitive, or mundane tasks, in a way. But having the leadership walk that change management, walk that transition with the human workforce, is part of our endeavor and we enable our corporations that work with us, and our partners, to make sure that they are able to do that and bring that focus to the human workforce. The more we talk about it, the more we put corporate focus on re-skilling and talking to our human workforce about what the ultimate vision is, and how we are going to get there, is very, very important. >> Right, now you're a co-founder, you've been at this for a while, and yet your blogs talk about audacious bots. Audacious is a really interesting choice of words, and one that you very specifically pick. What is so audacious about bots, and is that both a good thing and a bad thing? >> I think so, the audacity of bots, as I like to put it, is because bots promise to self-learn, or perform certain things like a human does, or perform cognitive functions. To some extent think through certain problems or questions that arise, and think is such a human skillset, and we're asking a bot to do the same thing as that, is very, very difficult. >> Right. >> For a human to comprehend. And that's why I call these bots audacious, because they promise to do all these things. But if we keep the thought process, that why are we enabling this technology, why are we focusing or encouraging this technology to be adopted? Is so that humans can unleash that potential, humans can get to that next level. >> Right. >> And so, it's important to do so. >> Right, Mihir touched on an interesting thing in a keynote, about now people are creating bots that are creating bots. >> Yes. >> So you know, I mean, we hear about that all the time, right? We've heard about the machines talking to one another in a language that nobody, that nobody understands what they're talking about. So have you seen the increases in compute, the increases in networking, the increases in storage, the prices of those things going down? How has that changed the evolution of the bots that you guys are creating, and how do you see that change in the evolution of the development of these tools going forward? >> Bots creating bots is an interesting concept, but remember that the context of the bot creating the bot is still up to the human. What we allow the bot to do, or what he is able to get more productivity out of, is important. And so, if we get those barriers right, or if we get those positions right for the bots to work in and then it is a pure corporate enhancement. It's an enhancement of everything the corporation brings to the table. >> Right, right. I'm just curious, like, so you guys been at this for a long time. When people start to really get into their journey with this technology and really you're starting to implement it and see things, what does happen to the human workforce? Do they get redeployed? Are they just doing different types of activities, generally within the same category of work? How have you actually seen it evolve in the real world? >> So yes to all those questions in a way. Some people will get redeployed, but what we are seeing right now is most people are able to take what they have and get rid of some of the things that they didn't really want to do anyways, which was very time-consuming. >> Right. >> And often, not a big value add to their own job sets that they're bringing to the workspace. So having that availability for the human to say, yes, I want to get rid of this 25% of my work that is very, very repetitive and have a bot do it so that I can actually go and do the five things I've always wanted to do. >> Right. >> But I never got to it. >> Right. >> And that's what we see on the work floor. We've also seen amongst all our implementations that humans who are embracing this bot enablement, as I like to call it, don't want to go back to the other way of doing it. It has improved their work life. It has improved what they bring to the table. It has improved how they deal with their coworkers or their jobs or what they are responsible for and they really don't wanna go back. That's what we're seeing on the floor. >> Right. >> And that's great. That means we're on the right track. We are enabling them with technology that will make a difference to that human. >> Right. >> And that is what this is all about. >> Right, I don't think, too, there's enough talk about, humans aren't really good at repetitive tasks. Those are where we make the most errors. Unfortunately people don't use the copy paste function enough. >> Yes. >> And I think we're aware it kind of manifests itself in just a consumer front-end application is addresses. >> Yes. >> And address verification when you buy something online and you get that thing that says, you know, here's the address that you typed in. >> Right. >> You know, here's the address that we have in our system. This is just a very clean, simple-- >> Crosscheck verification. >> Example of a crosscheck verification because we're not good as a species. >> Exactly. >> At repetitive, mundane tasks. >> It is, that's not our core strength and I haven't met a human who hasn't failed to impress me in some form or fashion. If we can unleash that potential on every human we are capable of such greatness. >> Right. >> We are not bound to transfer data from one system to another or do the same thing in rote without even considering or bringing in any enhancement to that data or that process. >> Right. >> And that's what we want to enable humans to do, to get to that next level. >> Right. >> Of what they're capable of. >> So Neeti, I want to give the last word. You've been at this from the beginning, 14 years, there's 1,100 plus people here in New York this week for this event, just your impressions of how does it feel to grow. I'm sure you're in a proud momma moment to see your company grow into what it's become. So as you look back and you reflect and you take in what's happening all around us here, just love to get your general impressions. >> It's been extremely exciting, I think, for multiple reasons. One is that we get to work with absolutely fantastic human beings, I think, who have brought a lot of greatness to Automation Anywhere and it's been an exciting journey from a career standpoint. From an industry and from a societal standpoint I think we're also at a cusp. We've changed a lot of the world of business and how it works and that is extremely satisfying to see. If we can leave something behind from the future of work prospects for our children, it is something that I am very happy about. >> Good, well, I gotta get some of this automation in my day to day life, let me tell you that. (laughs) All right Neeti, well thanks for taking a few minutes of your day and sitting down with us. >> Thanks Jeff, it was absolutely a pleasure. >> All right, she's Neeti, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine in New York City, thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)