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

>> live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's the Cube covering A W s reinforce 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back and run cubes. Live coverage of A W S Amazon Webster's reinforced their inaugural conference around security here in Boston. Messages. I'm John for a day. Volante Day we've been talking about Blockchain has been part of security, but no mention of it here. Amazon announced a Blockchain intention, but was more of a service model. Less of a pure play infrastructure or kind of a new game changes. So we thought we would get our friends to come on, the Cuban tell. Tell us about it. Val Birch, Avicii CEO and founder. A pencil day that Cube alumni formerly of NetApp, among other great companies, and Ed You, founder and CEO of Strong Salt. Welcome to the Q. Tell us why aren't we taught him a Blockchain at a security conference on cloud computing, where they always resource is different. Paradigm is decentralized. What's your take? >> So maybe having been in this world for about 18 24 months now, Enterprise lodging reinvents about six months ago and jazz he mentioned that he finally understood US enterprise an opportunity, and it was the integrity value, finest complex, even announced a specific product announced database available, >> maybe bythe on cryptographic verifiability of transactions minus the complexity of smart contract wallets. Wait, you party with Amazon way too. Versions right? One for distributed use cases. When I call, everyone rises. Never like you need to know what >> the Amazon wants to be that hard on top like complexity. But the reality is, they're they're They're world is targeting a new generation star 14 show is the new generation of developing >> a >> new generation of David. They were. Some of those are in trouble, and I'm hard core on this because it's just so obvious. >> I just can't get him behind myself if you don't >> see this out quicker. The new developers are younger and older systems people. There's a range of ages doing it. They're they're seeing the agility, and it's a cultural shift, not just the age thing. Head this. They're not here right now. This is the missing picture of this show, and my criticism of reinforces big, gaping hole around crypto and blocks, >> and I actually know that people I don't see anything here because it is difficult to currency. >> Blocking is very important that people understand way. Launch strong allows you to see the launching. I don't think that works. Basically, Just like Well, well said everything you do, you always have a single source. I think that's something that people doing this thing here. You want to get your thoughts on this because you made a comment >> about security native being the team here and security native implying that Dev ops what they did for configuration hardening the infrastructures code. You have to consider this token economic business model side of it with the apple cases, a decision application is still an application. Okay. Blockchain is still in infrastructure dynamic their software involved. I mean, we're talking about the same thing is they're lost in translation. In your opinion? >> Well, yeah, I think that you know, to your point, Val, if you can abstract that complexity away, But the fundamentals of of cryptography and software engineering and game theory coming together is what always has fascinated me about this space. And so you're right. I think certainly enterprise customers don't wanna you know, they hear crypto, though no, although it's interesting it was just a conference IBM yesterday. They talk a lot about Blockchain. Don't talk about crypto to me. They go together. Of course, IBM. They don't like to talk a lot about job loss and automation, but But the reality is it's there and it's it's it's has a lot of momentum, which is why you started the company. >> Yeah, we're actually seeing it all over right now. And again, our thing is around reducing, If not eliminating the friction towards adopting Blockchain so less is more. In our case, we're explicitly choosing not to do crypto wallets or currency transactions. It's that Andy Jassy observation the integrity value, the core integrity, value for financial reconciliation, for detecting supply chain counterfeiting for tracking assets and inventory across to your distribution. Unifying multiple source systems of record into a shared state. Those are the kinds of applications received >> culture, and there's so many different use cases, obviously, so >> an Amazon likes to use that word. Words raised the bar, which is more functionality, but on the other, phrases undifferentiated, heavy lifting. There's a lot of details involved in some of those complexity exactly what you're talking about that can be automated away. That's goodness. But you still have a security problem of mutability, which is a beautiful thing with Blockchain. >> Actually, a lot of times people actually forgot to mention one thing that blotchy and all you do that's actually different before was Actually privacy is actually not just security is also privacy, which actually is getting bigger and bigger. As we know, it's something that people feel very strongly about because it's something they feel personal about. And that's something that, in fact, took economics encourages a lot of things that enables privacy that was not able to do before. >> Well, look at Facebook. What do you think about >> face? I'm wonder that you know, I'm a public face book critic. I think they've been atrocious job on the privacy front so far in protecting our data. On the other hand, if you know it's kind of like the mullahs report, if you actually read Facebook's white paper, it's a it's not a launch. It's an announcement. That's a technical announcement. It's so well written, designed so far, and it's Facebook doesn't completely control it. They do have a vision for program ability. They're evolving it from being a permissions toe, ultimately a permission less system. So on paper, I like what I read. And I think it will start to, you know, popularizing democratize the notion of crypto amongst the broader population. I'm going to take a much more weight see approach. Just you know, >> I always love Facebook. I think the den atrocious job. But I'm addicted. I have all my stuff on there, um, centralized. They're bringing up, they bring in an education. Bitcoin is up for a reason. They're bringing the masses. They're showing that this is real market. This is kind of like when the web was still viewed as Kitty Playground for technologists say, Oh, well, it's so slow. And that was for dummies. And you had the Web World Wide Web. So when that hit, that same arguments went down right this minute, crypto things for years. But with Facebook coming, it really legitimizes that well, you bring 2,000,000,000 people to the party. Exactly a lot of good. Now the critics of Facebook is copied pass craft kind of model and there's no way they're gonna get it through because the world's not gonna let Facebook running run commerce and currents. It's like it's like and they don't do it well anyway. So I think it's gonna be a game changing market making move. I think they'll have a play in there, but I don't think that's not gonna have a global force. Says a >> lot that you get 100 companies to put up 10 >> 1,000,000 Starship is already the first accomplice. >> They don't need any more money. We have my dear to us, but >> still the power but the power of that ecosystem to me. I was a big fan of this because I think it gives credibility. So many companies get get interested in it, and I'm not sure exactly what's gonna come out of it. It's interesting that, you know, Bitcoins up. They said, Oh, cell, you're becoming like No, no, no, this is This is a very mature >> Well, I I think open is gonna always win. If you look at you know, the Web's kind of one example of kind of maturity argument. I think the rial analog for me, at least my generation value probably relate to this. David, you as well, you know, I've been born yet you are But, you know, T c p I p came after S n a which IBM on the deck net was the largest network at that time to >> not serious. Says >> mammal. Novell was land all three proprietary network operating systems. So proprietary Narcisse decimated by T c p i p. So to me, I think even their Facebook does go in there. They will recognize that unless they stay open, I think open will always win. I think I think this is the beginning of the death of the closed platform. >> Yeah, they're forced her. I think they have to open it up because if you didn't open up, people won't trust them, and people will use them. And if a Blockchain if you don't have a community behind it, there will be nothing. >> Well, so the thing about the crypto spraying everywhere with crypto winter, But but to your point d c p i p h t t p d >> N s SMTP >> Those were government funded or academic funded protocols. People stop spending money on him, and then the big Internet companies just co opted. No, no, that's what G mails built on. >> Well, I've always said >> so But when you finish the thought, is all this crypto money that came in drove innovation? Yeah, So you're seeing, you know, this new Internet emerge, and I think it's it's really think people, you know, sort of overlooked a lot of the innovation that's >> coming. I have always said, Dave, that Facebook is what the Web would look like if Tim Berners Lee took venture financing. Okay, because what they had at the time was a browser and the way that stand up websites for self service information. They kept it open and it drives. Facebook became basically the Web's version of a, well, lengthen does the same Twitter has opened. They have no developer community. So yeah, I think it is the only company in my opinion, actually does a good job opening up their data. Now they charge you for that. It brings up way still haven't encrypt those. The only community that's entire ethos is based on openness and community you mentioned. And that is a key word >> in traditional media. Of course, focus on the bad stuff that happens, but you know those of us in the business who will pay attention to it, see There's a lot of goodness to is a lot of mission driven, a lot of openness, and it's a model for innovation. What do you guys think about the narrative now to break up big tech? You know you're hearing Facebook, Amazon, Google coming under fire. What are your thoughts on that? >> So I wrote a block, maybe was ahead of its time about 18 months ago. Is coincided with Ginny Rometty, a Davos and 2018 2019 talking about data responsibility. Reason we're having this conversation is at the tech industry. By and large and especially the fang stocks or whatever we're calling them now have been irresponsible with our data. The backlash is palpable in Europe. It's law in Europe. Backlash we knew was going to start at the state level here. There's already ahead of my personal schedule. Federal discussions, FTC DOJ is in a couple weeks ago, so it's inevitable that this sort of tech reckoning is coming in. Maur responsibility is gonna have to be demonstrated by all the custodians of our data, and that's why we're positioning. Check it as a chain of custody is a service to demonstrate to the regulators your customers, your partners, suppliers, you know, transparency, irrefutable transparency, using Blockchain for how you're handling data. You know, if you don't have that, transparency can prove it. Or back to the same old discussions were back Thio Uninformed old legislators making you know Internet, his tubes type regulations. So here, here >> and DOJ, you could argue that they may be too slow to respond to Microsoft back in the nineties. I'm not sure breaking up big tech is the right thing, because I think it's almost like a t. The little Tex will become big checks again, but they should not be breaking the law. >> I think there's a reason why is there's actually a limitation off. What is possible in technology because they understand and also Facebook understands well, is that it's actually very, very hard to have data that's owned by your customers. But you are the one who's keeping track over everything, and you are the one using the data right. It's like a no win, because if you think about encryption cryptography, yes, you can make the data encrypted. That way, the customer has the key. They control it, but then Facebook can offer the service is. So now you have a Congress thinking, Well, if there's no technological way of doing this, what can you do in a legal perspective on a, you know, on the law perspective, toddy make it so that the customer actually owned the data. We actually think that is a perfect reason why you have to actually fix the book. Actually, technical should be built on our platform because we actually allow them to have a day that's encrypted and stupid able to operations holiday tha if the customer give them the permission to do so. And I think that's the perfect word way to go forward. And I think Blockchain is the fundamental thing that brings everybody together, you know, way that actually benefits everyone knows >> and take him into explain strong salt your project. What's it about? What's the mission? Where you >> so so we see strong saw as actually privacy. First, we literally are beauty, a platform where developers including Facebook linked and salesforce can't you build on top of platform, right? So what happens when you do this is that they actually give the data governess to the customers, customers Mashona data. But because our cryptography they actually can offer service is to the customers. When a customer allowed them to do so, for example, we have something. All search of encryption allows you to encrypt the data and still give the search. Aubrey on the data without decrypting the data. First, by giving the power to developers and also the community there, you can have our abstract you currently use. But they're not hard to use that frictionless and still offer the same service that Frank Facebook or sell stolen offer the favor. >> You could do some discovery on it. >> You can't do things >> some program ability around >> exactly, even though the data is encrypted. But custom owns the day. So the customer has to give them permission to do so Right this way. Actually, in fact, launched the first app that I told you it's called strong vote. You can Donald ios or Andrew it And you can't you see the Blockchain play little You can see the rocking your fingerprint. I think a fingertip to see what happens to a data. You see everything that happens when Sheriff I or you open a fire or something, I guess. >> Congratulations, Val. Give a quick plug for your project chain kid into the new branding. They're like it. Pencil data. Where are you on your project? >> So after nine months of hard selling, we're finding out what customers actually paying for right now. In our case, it's hardening their APS, their data and their logs and wrapping the chain of custody around those things. And the use case of the security conference like this is actually quite existential When you think about it, One of the things that the industry doesn't talk enough about is that every attack we read about in the headlines was three privilege escalation. So the attackers somehow hacked. Your Web server managed to get administrative credentials and network or domain administrative credentials. And here's what professional attackers do once they have godlike authority on your network. They identify all the installed security solutions, and they make themselves invisible because they can. After that, they operate with impunity. Our technology, the security use case that we're seeing a lot of traction is, is we can detect that we're applying Blockchain. We're agnostic, so bring your own Blockchain in our case. But we're able >> chain kit a product. Is it a development environment >> globally. Available service Jose on AWS rest ful AP eyes and fundamentally were enabling developers to harden their app stuff to wrap a chain of custody around key data or logs in their laps so that when the attacker's attempt a leverage at administrative authority and tamper with locks tamper >> with service, not a software, >> it's a apply. It's a developer oriented service, but >> this is one of the biggest problems and challenges security today. You see the stat after you get infiltrated. It takes 250 or 300 days to even detect, and I have not heard that number shrink. I've heard people aspire number streaking this. >> We can get it down to realize a crime tip of the spear. That's what we're excited to be here. We're excited to talk about One of the dirty secrets of the security industry is that it shouldn't take a year to detect in advance attack. >> Guys, Thanks for coming on. Cuban sharing your insight. Concussions in your head. Well, great to see you. >> Likewise. And thank you, j for having us on here, and we're looking forward to coming back and weigh. Appreciate. Absolutely >> thankful. Spj Thanks for you. >> It was always paying it forward. Of course, really the most important conversation, that security is gonna be a Blockchain type of implementation. This is a reality that's coming very soon, but we're here. They do is reinforce. I'm talking about the first conference with Amazon Web sources dedicated to sightsee. So's Cee Io's around security jumper. Develop the stables for more coverage. After this short break, >> my name is David.