(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the program, and we're going to dig into the number one topic on the minds of every technology organization, that's cybersecurity. You know, survey data from ETR, our data partner, shows that among CIOs and IT decision makers, cybersecurity continues to rank as the number one technology priority to be addressed in the coming year. That's ahead of even cloud migration and analytics. And with me to discuss this critical topic area, are Jim Shook, who's the Global Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance Practice at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Andrew Gonzalez, who focuses on cloud and infrastructure consulting at DXC Technology. Gents, welcome, good to have you. >> Thanks Dave, great to be here. >> Thank you. >> Jim, let's start with you. What are you seeing from the front lines in terms of the attack surface and how are customers responding these days? >> It's always up and down and back and forth. The bad actors are smart, they adapt to everything that we do. So we're seeing more and more, kind of living off the land. They're not necessarily deploying malware, makes it harder to find what they're doing. And I think though, Dave, we've adapted and this whole notion of cyber resilience really helps our customers figure this out. And the idea there goes beyond cybersecurity, it's, let's protect as much as possible so we keep the bad actors out as much as we can, but then let's have the ability to adapt to, and recover to the extent that the bad actors are successful. So we're recognizing that we can't be perfect a hundred percent of the time against a hundred percent of the bad actors. Let's keep out what we can, but then recognize and have that ability to recover when necessary. >> Yeah, thank you. So Andrew, you know, I like what Jim was saying, about living off the land, of course, meaning using your own tooling against you, kind of hiding in plain sight, if you will. But, and as Jim was saying, you can't be perfect. But, so given that, what's your perspective on what good cybersecurity hygiene looks like? >> Yeah, so you have to understand what your crown jewel data looks like, what a good copy of a recoverable asset looks like when you look at an attack if it were to occur, right? How you get that copy of data back into production, and not only that but what that golden image actually entails. So, whether it's networking, storage, some copy of a source code, intellectual property, maybe seem to be data or an active directory or DNS dump, right? Understanding what your data actually entails that you can protect it, and that you can build out your recovery plan for it. >> So, and, where's that live? Where's that gold copy? You put in a yellow sticky? No, it's got to be, you got to be somewhere safe, right? So you have to think about that chain as well, right? >> Absolutely, yeah. So, a lot of folks have not gone through the exercise of identifying what that golden copy looks like. Everyone has a DR scenario, everyone has a DR strategy but actually identifying what that golden crown jewel data, let's call it, actually entails as one aspect of it and then where to put it, how to protect it, how to make it immutable and isolated? That's the other portion of it. >> You know, if I go back to sort of earlier part of last decade, you know, cybersecurity was kind of a checkoff item. And then as you got toward the middle part of the decade and I'd say clearly by 2016 it, security became a boardroom issue. It was on the agenda, you know, every quarter at the board meetings. So, compliance is no longer the driver, is my point. The driver is business risk, real loss of reputation or data, you know, or money, et cetera. What are the business implications of not having your cyber house in order today? >> They're extreme, Dave. I mean the, you know, bad actors are good at what they do. These losses by organizations, tens, hundreds of millions into the billions sometimes, plus the reputational damage that's difficult to really measure. There haven't been a lot of organizations that have actually been put out of business by an attack, at least not directly, if they're larger organizations, but that's also on the table too. So you can't just rely on, oh, we need to do, you know, A, B, and C because our regulators require it. You need to look at what the actual risk is to the business and then come up with the strategy from there. >> You know, Jim, staying with you, one of the most common targets we hear of attackers is to go after the backup corpus. So how should customers think about protecting themselves from that tactic? >> Well, Dave, you hit on it before, right? Everybody's had the backup and DR strategies for a long time going back to requirements that we had in place for physical disaster or human error. And that's a great starting point for a resilience capability, but that's all it is, is a starting point. Because the bad actors will, they also understand that you have those capabilities and they've adapted to that. In every sophisticated attack that we see the backup is a target, the bad actors want to take it out or corrupt it or do something else to that backup so that it's not available to you. That's not to say they're always successful and it's still a good control to have in place because maybe it will survive. But you have to plan beyond that. So, the capabilities that we talk about with resilience, let's harden that backup infrastructure. You've already got it in place, let's use the capabilities that are there like immutability and other controls to make it more difficult for the bad actors to get to. But then, as Andrew said, that gold copy, that critical systems, you need to protect that in something that's more secure which commonly we might say a cyber vault, although there's a lot of different capabilities for cyber vaulting, some far better than others, and that's some of the things that we focus on. >> You know, it's interesting, but I've talked to a lot of CIOs about this is, prior to the pandemic, they, you know, had their, as you're pointing out, Jim, they had their DR strategy in place but they felt like they weren't business resilient and they realized that when we had the forced march to digital. So, Andrew, are there solutions out there to help with this problem? Do you guys have an answer to this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm glad you brought up resiliency. We take a position that to be cyber resilient it includes operational resiliency, it includes understanding at the C-level what the implication of an attack means, as we stated, and then how to recover back into production. When you look at protecting that data, not only do you want to put it into what we call a vault, which is a Dell technology that is an offline immutable copy of your crown jewel data but also how to recover it in real-time. So DXC offers a, I don't want to call it a turnkey solution, since we architect these specific each client needs, right? When we look at what client data entails, their recovery point objectives, recovery time objectives, what we call quality of the restoration. But when we architect these out we look at not only how to protect the data but how to alert and monitor for attacks in real-time. How to understand what we should do when a breaches in progress. Putting together with our security operations centers a forensic and recovery plan and a runbook for the client. And then being able to cleanse and remediate so that we can get that data back into production. These are all services that DXC offers in conjunction with the Dell solution to protect and recover, and keep bad actors out. And if we can't keep 'em out, to ensure that we are back into production in short order. >> You know, this discussion we've been having about DR kind of versus resilience, and you were just talking about RPO and RTO, I mean, it used to be that a lot of firms wouldn't even test their recovery 'cause it was too risky or, you know, maybe they tested it on, you know, July 4th or something like that. But I'm inferring that's changed. I wonder if we could, you know, double click on recovery, how hard is it to test that recovery and how quickly are you seeing organizations recover from attacks? >> So it depends, right, on the industry vertical, what kind of data, again. Financial services client compared to a manufacturing client are going to be two separate conversations. We've seen it as quickly as being able to recover in six hours, in 12 hours. In some instances we have the grace period of a day to a couple days. We do offer the ability to run scenarios once a quarter where we can stand up in our systems the production data that we are protecting to ensure that we have a good recoverable copy, but it depends on the client. >> I really like the emphasis here, Dave, that you're raising and that Andrew's talking about. It's not on the technology of how the data gets protected it's focused on the recovery, that's all that we want to do. And so the solution with DXC really focuses on generating that recovery for customers. I think where people get a little bit twisted up on their testing capability is you have to think about different scenarios. So, there are scenarios where the attack might be small, it might be limited to a database or an application. It might be really broadly-based, like the NotPetya attacks from a few years ago. The regulatory environment, we call those attacks severe but plausible. So you can't necessarily test everything with the infrastructure but you can test some things with the infrastructure. Others, you might sit around on a tabletop exercise or walk through what that looks like to really get that recovery kind of muscle memory so that people know what to do when those things occur. But the key to it, as Andrew said before, have to focus down what are those critical applications? What do we need? What's most important? What has to come back first? And that really will go a long way towards having the right recovery points and recovery times from a cyber disaster. >> Yeah, makes sense, understanding the value of that data is going to inform you how to respond and how to prioritize. Andrew, one of the things that we hear a lot on theCUBE, especially lately is around, you know, IOT, IIOT, Industry 4.0, the whole OT security piece of it. And the problem being that, you know, traditionally operations technologies have been air-gapped often by design. But as businesses, increasingly they're driving initiatives like Industry 4.0 and they're connecting these OT systems to IT systems. They're, you know, driving efficiency, preventative maintenance, et cetera. So, a lot of data flowing through the pipes, if you will. What are you seeing in terms of the threats to critical infrastructure and how should customers think about addressing these issues? >> Yeah, so bad actors can come in many forms. We've seen instances of social engineering, we've seen, USB stick dropped in a warehouse. That data that is flowing through the IOT devices is as sensitive now as your core mainframe infrastructure data. So, when you look at it from a protection standpoint, conceptually it's not dissimilar from what we've been talking about, where you want to understand, again, what the most critical data is. Looking at IOT data and applications is no different than your core systems now, right? Depending on what your business is, right? So when we're looking at protecting these, yes, we want firewalls, yes, we want air gap solutions, yes, we want front-end protection but we're looking at it from a resiliency perspective. Putting that data, understanding what data entails to put in the vault from an IOT perspective is just as critical as it is for your core systems. >> Jim, anything you can add to this topic? >> Yeah, I think you hit on the key points there, everything is interconnected. So even in the days where maybe people thought the OT systems weren't online, oftentimes the IT systems are talking to them or controlling theM, SCADA systems, or perhaps supporting them. Think back to the pipeline attack of last year. All the public testimony was that the OT systems didn't get attacked directly but there was uncertainty around that and the IT systems hadn't been secured so that caused the OT systems to have to shut down. It certainly is a different recovery when you're shutting them down on your own versus being attacked but the outcome was the same that the business couldn't operate. So, you really have to take all of those into account. And I think that does go back to exactly what Andrew's saying, understanding your critical business services and then the applications and data, and other components that support those and drive those and making sure those are protected, you understand them, you have the ability to recover them if necessary. >> So guys, I mean you made the point, I mean, you're right, the adversary is highly capable, they're motivated 'cause the ROI is so, it's so lucrative. It's like this never ending battle that cybersecurity pros, you know, go through. It really is kind of frontline, sort of technical heroes, if you will. And so, but sometimes it just feels daunting. Why are you optimistic about the future of cyber from the good guys' perspective? >> I think we're coming at the problem the right way, Dave, so that focus. I'm so pleased with the idea that we are planning that the systems aren't going to be a hundred percent capable every single time and let's figure that out, right? That's real world stuff. So, just as the bad actors continue to adapt and expand, so do we. And I think the differences there, the common criminals, it's getting harder and harder for them. The more sophisticated ones, they're tough to beat all the time. And of course, you've raised the question of some nation states and other activities but there's a lot more information sharing, there's a lot more focus from the business side of the house and not just the IT side of the house that we need to figure these things out. >> Yeah, to add to that, I think furthering education for the client base is important. You brought up a point earlier, it used to be a boardroom conversation due to compliance reasons. Now as we have been in the market for a while we continue to mature the offerings, it's further education for not only the business itself but for the IT systems and how they interconnect, and working together so that these systems can be protected and continue to be evolved and continue to be protected through multiple frameworks as opposed to seeing it as another check the box item that the board has to adhere to. >> All right guys, we got to go. Thank you so much. Great conversation on a really important topic. Keep up the good work, appreciate it. >> Thanks Dan. >> Thank you. >> All right, thank you for watching. Stay tuned for more excellent discussions around the partnership between Dell Technologies and DXC Technology. We're talking about solving real world problems, how this partnership has evolved over time. Really meeting the changing enterprise landscape challenges. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

>> If you really want to make an impact to your business, it takes more than just moving your workloads into the cloud. So-called lift and shift is fine to reduce data center footprints and associated costs, but to really drive change, you don't want to simply "pave the cow path," as the saying goes. Rather, you need to think about the operating model, and that requires more comprehensive systems thinking. In other words, how will changes in technology affect business productivity? Or, you know what? Even flip that. What changes in my business process could lower cost, cut elapse times, and accelerate time to market, increase user productivity, and lower operational risks? And what role can technology play in supporting these mandates through modernization, automation, machine intelligence, and business resilience? And that's what we're here to discuss today. Welcome to Driving Business Results with Cloud Transformation, made Possible by Dell and DXC. My name is Dave Vellante, and today we're going to zoom out and explore many aspects of cloud transformation that leading organizations are acting on today. Yeah, sure, we're going to look at optimizing infrastructure, but we'll also dig deeper into cloud considerations, governance, compliance, and security angles, as well as the impact of emerging opportunities around edge and Industry 4.0. Our focus will be on how to remove barriers and help you achieve business outcomes. And to do this, our program features the long-term partnership between Dell and DXC. And we bring to this program six experts in three separate sessions, who are working directly with top organizations in virtually every industry to achieve high impact results. We're going to start with a conversation about cloud, the cloud operating model, and transforming key aspects of your infrastructure. And then we'll look into governance, security, and business resilience. And in our third session, we'll discuss exciting transformations that are occurring in smart manufacturing and facilities innovations. So let's get right into it with our first session. Enjoy the program. (bright music) Hello, and welcome to what is sure to be an insightful conversation about getting business results with cloud transformation. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with James Miller, Chief Technologist for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, and Jay Dowling, Americas Sales Lead for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, both with DXC Technology. Gentlemen, thanks for your time today. Welcome to theCube. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> Thank you Dave. Appreciate it. >> So let's get right into it. You know, I've talked to a lot of practitioners who've said, "Look, if you really want to drop zeros, like a lot of zeros to the bottom line, you can't just lift and shift." You really got to think about modernizing, the application portfolio. You got to think about your business model, and really think about transforming your business, particularly the operating model. So my first question, Jim, is, What role does the cloud play in modernization? >> Well, there are really three aspects that the, the cloud plays in modernization. You mentioned multiple zeros. One is cost optimization, and that can be achieved through business operations, through environmental, social, and governance. Also being more efficient with your IT investments. But that's not the only aspect. There's also agility and innovation. And that can be achieved through automation and productivity, speed to market for new features and functions, improvements in the customer experience, and the capability to metabolize a great deal more data in your environment, which the end result is an improvement in releasing of new things to the field. And finally, there's resilience. And I'm not really talking about IT resilience, but more of business resilience, to be able, to be able to handle operational risk, improve your securities and controls, deal with some of the talent gap that's in the industry, and also protect your brand reputation. So modernization is really about balancing these three aspects, cost optimization, agility and innovation, and resilience. >> So, so thank you for that. So Jay, I got to ask you, in the current climate, everybody's, you know, concerned, and there's not great visibility on the macro. So, Jim mentioned cost optimization. That seems to be one of the top areas that customers are focused on. The two I hear a lot are consolidating redundant vendors and optimizing cloud costs. So that's, you know, top of mind today. I think everybody really, you know, understands the innovation and, and, and agility piece, at least at a high level, maybe realizing it is different. And then the business resilience piece is really interesting because, you know, prior to the pandemic people, you know, they had a DR strategy, but they realized, "Wow, my business might not be that resilient." So Jay, my question to you is, What are you hearing when you talk to customers? What's the priority today? >> Yeah, the priority is an often overused term of digital transformation. You know, people want to get ready for next generation environments, customer experience, making sure they're improving, you know, how they engage with their clients and what their branding is. And what we find is a lot of clients don't have the underlying infrastructure in place today to get to where they want to get to. So cloud becomes an important element of that. But, you know, with DXC's philosophy, not everything goes to, not everything necessarily needs to go to cloud to be cost optimized, for instance. In many cases, you can run applications, you know, in your own data center, or on-prem, or in other environments, in a hybrid environment, or multi-cloud environment, and, and still be very optimized from a cost spend standpoint and also put yourself in position for modernization and for be able to do the, bring the things to the business that the clients are, you know, that their clients are looking for, like the CMO and the CFO, et cetera. Trying to use IT as a lever to drive business and to drive, you know, business acceleration and drive profitability, frankly. So there's a lot of dependency on infrastructure, but there's a lot of elements to it. And, and we advocate for, you know, there's not a single answer to that. We like to evaluate clients' environments and work with them to get them to an optimal target operating model, you know, so that they can really deliver on what the promises are for their departments. >> So if, let's talk about some of the, the barriers to realizing value in, in a context of modernization. We talked about cost optimization, agility, and, and, and resilience. But there's a business angle, and there's a technical angle here. 'Cause we always talk about people, process, and technology. Technology, oftentimes, CIOs will tell us, "Well, that's the easy part. We'll figured that out," whether it's true or not. But I agree, people and process is sometimes the tough one. So Jay, why don't you start. What do you see as the barriers, particularly from a business standpoint? >> I think people need to let their guard down and be open to the ideas that are, that are out there in the market from, you know, the, the standards that are being built by, you know, best in class models. And, and there's many people that have gone on, you know, cloud journeys and been very successful with it. There's others that have set high expectations with their business leaders that haven't necessarily met the goals that they need to meet or maybe haven't met them as quickly as they promised. So there's a, you know, there's a change management aspect that you'd need to look at with the, you know, with the environments. There's a, you know, there's a skillset set environment that they need to be prepared for. Do they have the people, you know, to deliver with the, you know, with the tools and the skills and the, and the models that that they're putting themselves in place for in the future versus where they are now? There's just a lot of, you know, there's a lot of different elements. It's not just a, "This price is better," or, "This can operate better than one environment over the other." I think we like to try to look at things holistically and make sure that, you know, we're being, you know, as much of a consultative advocate for the client, for where they want to go, what their destiny is, and based on what we've learned with other clients. You know, and we can bring those best practices forward because we've worked, you know, across such a broad spectra of clients versus them being somewhat contained and sometimes can't see outside of their own, you know, their own challenges, if you would. So they need, they need advocacy to help, you know, bring them to the next level. And we like to translate that through, you know, technology advances, which, you know, Jim's really good at doing for us. >> Yeah, Jim, is, is it, is it a, is the big barrier a skills issue, you know, bench strength? Are there other considerations from your perspective? >> Well, we, we've identified a number of factors that inhibit success of, of customers. One is thinking it's only a technology change in moving to cloud when it's much broader than that. There are changes in governance, changes in process that need to take place. The other is evaluating the cloud providers on their current pricing structure and performance. And, and we see pricing and structure changing dramatically every few months between the various cloud providers. And you have to be flexible enough to, to determine which providers you want. And it may not be feasible to just have a single cloud provider in this world. The other thing is a big bang approach to transformation, "I want to move everything, and I want to move it all at once." That's not necessarily the best approach. A well thought out cloud journey and strategy and timing your investments are really important to get at maximizing your business return on the journey to the cloud. And finally, not engaging stakeholders early and continuously. You have to manage expectations in moving to cloud on what business factors will get affected, how you will achieve your cost savings, and, and how you will achieve the business impact over the journey and reporting out on that with very strict metrics to all of the stakeholders. >> You know, mentioned multi-cloud just then. We had, in January 17th, we had our Supercloud 2 event. And Supercloud is basically, it's really multi, what multi-cloud should have been, I, I like to say. So it's this creating a common experience across clouds. And you guys were talking about, you know, there's different governance, there's different security, there's different pricing. So, and, and one of the takeaways from this event in talking to customers and practitioners and technologists is, you can't go it alone. So I wonder if you could talk about your partnership strategy, what do partners bring to the table, and what is, what is DXC's, you know, unique value? >> I'd be happy to lead with that if you'd like. >> Great. >> I, you know, we've got a vast partner ecosystem at DXC, given the size and, and the history of the company. I could use several examples. One of the larger partners in my particular space is Dell Technology, right? They're a great, you know, partner for us across many different areas of the business. It's not just a storage and compute play anymore. They're, they're on the edge. They're, you know, they're, they've got intelligence in their networking devices now. And they've really brought, you know, a lot of value to us as a partner. And, you know, there, there's somebody, you could look at Dell technology as somebody that might, you know, have a victim, you know, effect because of all the hyperscale activity and all the cloud activity. But they've really taken an outstanding attitude with this and say, "Listen, not all things are destined for cloud, or not all things would operate better in a cloud environment." And they like to be part of those discussions to see how they can, you know, how we can bring a multi-cloud environment, you know, both private and public, you know, to clients. And let's look at the applications and the infrastructure and, and what's, you know, what's the best optimal running environment, you know, for us to be able to bring, you know, the greatest value to the business with speed, with security, with, you know. And, you know, the things that they want to keep closest to the business are often things that you want to kind of, you know, keep on your premise or keep in your own data center. So they're, they're an ideal model of somebody that's resourced us well, partners with us well in the market. And, and we continue to grow that relationship day in and day out with those guys. And we really appreciate, you know, their support of our strategy, and, and we like to also compliment their strategy and work, you know, work together hand in hand in front of our clients. >> Yeah, you know, Jim, Matt Baker, who's the head of strategic planning at Dell talks about, "It's not a zero sum game." And I think, you know, you're right, Jay. I think initially people felt like, "Oh wow, it's, it is a zero sum game." But it's clearly not, and this idea of of, whether you call it supercloud or ubercloud or multicloud, clearly Dell is headed in in that direction. And I, you know, look at some of their future projects. There's their narrative. I'm curious from a technology standpoint, Jim, what your role is. Is it to make it all work? Is it to, you know, end to end? I wonder if you could help, you know, us understand that. >> Help us figure this out, Jim, here. (group laughing) >> Glad to expand on that. One of my key roles is developing our product roadmap for DXC offerings. And we do that roadmap in conjunction with our partners where we can leverage the innovation that our partners bring to the table. And we often utilize engineering resources from our partners to help us jointly build those offerings that adapt to changes in the market and also adapt to many of our customers changing needs over time. So my primary role is to look at the market, talk to our customers, and work with our partners to develop a product roadmap for delivering DXC products and services to our clients so that they can get the return on investment on their technology journeys. >> You know, we've been working with these two firms for a while now. Even predates, you know, the, the name DXC and that, that transformation. I'm curious as to what's, how you would respond to, "What's unique?" You know, you hear a lot about partnerships. You guys got a lot of competition. Dell has a lot of competition. What's specifically unique about this combination? >> I think, go ahead, Jim. >> I would say our unique approach, we call it cloud right. And that, that approach is making the right investments, at the right time, and on the right platforms. And our partners play a, play a key role in that. So we, we encourage our customers to not necessarily have a cloud first approach, but a cloud right approach where they place the workloads in the environment that is best suited from a technology perspective, a business perspective, and even a security and governance perspective. And, and the right approach might include mainframe. It might include an on-premises infrastructure. It could include private cloud, public cloud, and SaaS components all integrated together to deliver that value. >> Yeah, Jay, please. >> If you were... >> That is a complicated situation for a lot of customers. Chime in here. (Jay chuckles) >> And now, if you were speaking specifically to Dell here, like they, they also walk the talk, right? They invest in DXC as a partnership. They put people on the ground that their only purpose in life is to help DXC succeed with Dell in, you know, arm in arm in front of clients. And it's not, you know, it's not a winner take all thing at all. It's really a true partnership. They, they, they've brought solution resources. We have an account CTO. We've got executive sponsorship. We do regular QBR meetings. We have regular executive touchpoint meetings. It's really important that you keep a high level of intimacy with the client, with the partners, you know, and, and the, and the GSI community. And I, I've been with several GSIs, and, and this is an exceptional example of true partnership and commitment to success with Dell technology. I'm really extremely impressed on, on the engagement level that we've had there and, you know, continue to show a lot of support, you know, both for them. You know, there's other OEM partners, of course, in the market. There's always going to be other technology solutions for certain clients, but this has been a particularly strong element for us in our partnership and in our go-to-market strategy. >> Well, I think too, just my observation, is a lot of it's about trust. You guys have both earned the trust, the kind of, over the, over the years taking your arrows, you know, of over decades. And, and you know, that just doesn't happen overnight. So guys, I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. It's all about getting cloud right, isn't it? >> That's right. (chuckles) (Dave chuckles) >> Thank you Dave. Appreciate it very much. >> Dave, thank you. >> Jay, Jim, great to have you on. Keep it right there for more action on theCube. Be right back. (upbeat guitar music) (keyboard clicks) Welcome back to the program. My name is Dave Vellante, and in this session we're going to explore one of the more interesting topics of the day. IoT for smart factories and with me are Todd Edmunds, the Global CTO of Smart Manufacturing Edge and Digital Twins at Dell Technologies. That is such a cool title. (Todd chuckles) I want to be you. And Dr. Aditi Banerjee who's the Vice President, General Manager for Aerospace Defense and Manufacturing at DXC Technology. Another really cool title. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. >> Nice to be here. So, Todd, let's start with you. We hear a lot about Industry 4.0, smart factories, IIoT. Can you briefly explain like what is Industry 4.0 all about, and why is it important for the manufacturing industry? >> Yeah, sure, Dave. You know, it's been around for quite a while. And it's got, it's gone by multiple different names, as you said, Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, industrial IoT, smart factory, but it all really means the same thing. Its really applying technology to get more out of the factories and the facilities that you have to do your manufacturing. So being much more efficient, implementing really good sustainability initiatives. And so we really look at that by saying, "Okay, what are we going to do with technology to really accelerate what we've been doing for a long, long time?" So it's really not, it's not new. It's been around for a long time. What's new is that manufacturers are looking at this not as a one-off, two-off, individual use case point of view. But instead they're saying, "We really need to look at this holistically, thinking about a strategic investment in how we do this, not to just enable one or two use cases, but enable many, many use cases across the spectrum." I mean, there's tons of them out there. There's predictive maintenance, and there's OEE, overall equipment effectiveness, and there's computer vision. And all of these things are starting to percolate down to the factory floor. But it needs to be done in a little bit different way. And, and, and really, to really get those outcomes that they're looking for in smart factory, or Industry 4.0, or however you want to call it, and truly transform. Not just throw an Industry 4.0 use case out there, but to do the digital transformation that's really necessary and to be able to stay relevant for the future. You know, I heard it once said that you have three options. Either you digitally transform and stay relevant for the future, or you don't and fade into history like 52% of the companies that used to be on the Fortune 500 since 2000, right? And so really that's a key thing, and we're seeing that really, really being adopted by manufacturers all across the globe. >> Yeah so, Aditi, that's like digital transformation is almost synonymous with business transformation. So is there anything you'd add to what Todd just said? >> Absolutely. Though, I would really add that what really drives Industry 4.0 is the business transformation, what we are able to deliver in terms of improving the manufacturing KPIs and the KPIs for customer satisfaction, right? For example, improving the downtime, you know, or decreasing the maintenance cycle of the equipments, or improving the quality of products, right? So I think these are a lot of business outcomes that our customers are looking at while using Industry 4.0 and the technologies of Industry 4.0 to deliver these outcomes. >> So Aditi, I wonder if I could stay with you. And maybe this is a bit esoteric. But when I first started researching IoT and, and, and Industrial IoT 4.0, et cetera, I felt, you know, while there could be some disruptions in the ecosystem, I kind of came to the conclusion that large manufacturing firms, aerospace defense companies, the firms building out critical infrastructure, actually had kind of an incumbent advantage in a great opportunity. Of course, then I saw on TV, somebody now they're building homes with 3D printers. Its like, blows your mind. So that's pretty disruptive, but, so, but they got to continue. The incumbents have to continue to invest in the future. They're well capitalized. They're pretty good businesses, very good businesses. But there's a lot of complexities involved in kind of connecting the old house to the new addition that's being built, if you will, or this transformation that we're talking about. So my question is, How are your customers preparing for this new era? What are the key challenges that they're facing and the, the blockers, if you will? >> Yeah, I mean the customers are looking at Industry 4.0 for greenfield factories, right? That is where the investments are going directly into building the factories with the new technologies, with the new connectivities, right, for the machines. For example, industrial IoT, having the right type of data platforms to drive computational analytics and outcomes, as well as looking at edge versus cloud type of technologies, right? Those are all getting built in the greenfield factories. However, for the install-based factories, right, that is where our customers are looking at, "How do I modernize these factories? How do I connect the existing machine?" And that is where some of the challenges come in on, you know, the legacy system connectivity that they need to think about. Also, they need to start thinking about cybersecurity and operation technology security, right, because now you are connecting the factories to each other, right? So cybersecurity becomes top of mind, right? So there is definitely investment that is involved. Clients are creating roadmaps for digitizing and modernizing these factories and investments in a very strategic way, right? So perhaps they start with the innovation program, and then they look at the business case, and they scale it up, right? >> Todd, I'm glad Aditi brought up security. Because if you think about the operations technology, you know, folks, historically, they air gapped, you know, the systems. That's how they created security. That's changed. The business came in and said, "Hey, we got to, we got to connect. We got to make it intelligent." So that's, that's got to be a big challenge as well. >> It, it, it absolutely is Dave. And, and you know, you can no longer just segment that because really, to get all of those efficiencies that we talk about, that IoT and Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 promise, you have to get data out of the factory. But then you got to put data back in the factory. So no longer is it just firewalling everything is really the answer. So you really have to have a comprehensive approach to security, but you also have to have a comprehensive approach to the cloud and what that means. And does it mean a continuum of cloud all the way down to the edge, right down to the factory? It absolutely does because no one approach has the answer to everything. The more you go to the cloud, the broader the attack surface is. So what we're seeing is a lot of our customers approaching this from a, kind of that, that hybrid, you know, "write once, run anywhere" on the factory floor down to the edge. And one of the things we're seeing, too, is to help distinguish between what is the edge, and that, and, and bridge that gap between, like Dave, you talked about IT and OT. And also help that, what Aditi talked about, is the greenfield plants versus the brownfield plants that they call it, that are the legacy ones and modernizing those. Is, it's great to kind of start to delineate. What does that mean? Where's the edge? Where's the IT and the OT? We see that from a couple of different ways. We start to think about really two edges in a manufacturing floor. We talk about an industrial edge that sits, or some people call it a far edge or a thin edge, sits way down on that plan. It consists of industrial hardened devices that do that connectivity. The hard stuff about, "How do I connect to this obsolete legacy protocol and what do I do with it?" And create that next generation of data that has context. And then we see another edge evolving above that, which is much more of a data and analytics and enterprise grade application layer that sits down in the factory itself that helps figure out where we're going to run this. Does it connect to the cloud? Do we run applications on-prem? Because a lot of times that on-prem application is, is, needs to be done because that's the only way that its going to, it's going to work because of security requirements, because of latency requirements, performance, and a lot of times cost. It's really helpful to build that multiple edge strategy because then you kind of, you consolidate all of those resources, applications, infrastructure, hardware, into a centralized location. Makes it much, much easier to really deploy and manage that security. But it also makes it easier to deploy new applications, new use cases, and become the foundation for DXC's expertise and applications that they deliver to our customers as well. >> Todd, how complex are these projects? I mean, I feel like it's kind of the, the digital equivalent of building the Hoover Dam. I mean, it, it, it's, (chuckles) it, it, so. Yeah, how long does a typical project take? I know it varies, but what, you know, what are the critical success factors in terms of delivering business value quickly? >> Yeah, that's a great question in that, in that we're, you know, like I said at the beginning, we, this is not new. Smart factory and Industry 4.0 is not new. It's been, it's, people have been trying to implement the holy grail of smart factory for a long time. And what we're seeing is a switch, a little bit of a switch, or quite a bit of a switch, to where the enterprise and the IT folks are having a much bigger say and have a lot to offer to be able to help that complexity. So instead of deploying a computer here, and a gateway there, and a server there, I mean, you go walk into any manufacturing plant and you can see servers sitting underneath someone's desk or a, or a PC in a closet somewhere running a critical production application. So we're seeing the enterprise have a much bigger say at the table, much louder voice at the table to say, "We've been doing this at enterprise all the time. We, we know how to really consolidate, bring hyper-converged applications, hyper-converged infrastructure, to really accelerate these kind of applications, really accelerate the outcomes that are needed to really drive that smart factory, and start to bring that same capabilities down into the, on the factory floor." That way, if you do it once to make it easier to implement, you can repeat that. You can scale that. You can manage it much easily. And you can then bring that all together because you have the security in one centralized location. So we're seeing manufacturers, yeah, that first use case may be fairly difficult to implement and we got to go down in and see exactly what their problems are. But when the infrastructure is done the correct way, when that, think about how you're going to run that and how are you going to optimize the engineering. Well, let's take that, what you've done in that one factory, and then set. Let's that, make that across all the factories, including the factory that we're in, but across the globe. That makes it much, much easier. You really do the hard work once and then repeat, almost like a cookie cutter. >> Got it. Thank you. Aditi, what about the skillsets available to apply these, to these projects? You got to have knowledge of digital, AI, data, integration. Is there a talent shortage to get all this stuff done? >> Yeah, I mean definitely, a lot. Different types of skillsets are needed from a traditional manufacturing skillset, right? Of course, the basic knowledge of manufacturing is, is important. But the, the digital skillset sets like, you know, IoT, having a skillset in different protocols for connecting the machines, right, that experience that comes with it, data and analytics, security, augmented virtual reality programming. You know, again, looking at robotics and the digital twin. So you know, it's a lot more connectivity software, data driven skillsets that are needed to smart factory to life at scale. And, you know, lots of firms are, you know, recruiting these types of skill, resources with these skillsets to, you know, accelerate their smart factory implementation, as well as consulting firms like DXC Technology and others. We, we, we recruit. We, we train our talent to, to provide these services. >> Got it. Aditi, I wonder if we could stay on you. Let's talk about the partnership between DXC and Dell. What are you doing specifically to simplify the move to Industry 4.0 for customers? What solutions are you offering? How are you working together, Dell and DXC, to, to bring these to market? >> Yeah, Dell and DXC have a very strong partnership. You know, and we work very closely together to, to create solutions, to create strategies, and how we, we are going to jointly help our clients, right? So areas that we have worked closely together is edge compute, right, how that impacts the smart factory. So we have worked pretty closely in that area. We're also looked at vision technologies, you know. How do we use that at the edge to improve the quality of products, right? So we have several areas that we collaborate in. And our approach is that we, we want to bring solutions to our client, and as well as help them scale those solutions with the right infrastructure, the right talent, and the right level of security. So we bring a comprehensive solution to our clients. >> So, Todd, last question, kind of similar but different. You know, why Dell DXC? Pitch me. What's different about this partnership? You know, where do you, are you confident that, you know, you're going to be, deliver the best value to, to customers? >> Absolutely. Great question. You know, there's no shortage of bespoke solutions that are out there. There's hundreds of people that can come in and do individual use cases and do these things. And just, and, and, and that's, that's where it ends. What Dell and DXC Technology together bring to the table is, we do the optimization, the optimization of the engineering of those previously bespoke solutions upfront, together, right? The power of our scalables, enterprise-grade, structured, you know, industry standard infrastructure, as well as our expertise in delivering package solutions that really accelerate with DXC's expertise and reputation as a global, trusted, trusted advisor. Be able to really scale and repeat those solutions that DXC is so really, really good at. And, and Dell's infrastructure, and our, what, 30,000 people across the globe that are really, really good at that, at that scalable infrastructure, to be able to repeat. And then it really lessens the risk that our customers have and really accelerates those solutions. So it's again, not just one individual solutions, it's all of the solutions that not just drive use cases, but drive outcomes with those solutions. >> Yeah, the, you're right, the partnership has gone, I mean, I first encountered it back in, I think it was 2010, May of 2010, we had you, you guys both on theCube. I think you were talking about converged infrastructure. And I had a customer on, and it was, actually a manufacturing customer, was quite interesting. And back then it was, "How do we kind of replicate what's coming in the cloud?" And, and you guys have obviously taken it into the digital world. Really want to thank you for your time today. Great conversation, and love to have you back. >> Thank you so much. >> Absolutely. >> It was a pleasure speaking with you. >> I agree. >> All right, keep it right there for more discussions that educate and inspire on theCube. (bright music) Welcome back to the program and we're going to dig into the number one topic on the minds of every technology organization. That's cybersecurity. You know, survey data from ETR, our data partner, shows that among CIOs and IT decision makers, cybersecurity continues to rank as the number one technology priority to be addressed in the coming year. That's ahead of even cloud migration and analytics. And with me to discuss this critical topic area are Jim Shook, who's the Global Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance Practice at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Andrew Gonzalez, who focuses on Cloud and Infrastructure consulting at DXC Technology. Gents, welcome. Good to have you. >> Thanks Dave. Great to be here. >> Thank you. >> Jim, let's start with you. What are you seeing from the front lines in terms of the attack surface, and, and how are customers responding these days? >> It's always up and down and back and forth. The bad actors are smart. They adapt to everything that we do. So we're seeing more and more kind of living off the land. They're not necessarily deploying malware. Makes it harder to find what they're doing. And I think though, Dave, we've, we've adapted, and this whole notion of cyber resilience really helps our customers figure this out. And the idea there goes beyond cybersecurity, it's, "Let's protect as much as possible, so we keep the bad actors out as much as we can. But then, let's have the ability to adapt to and recover to the extent that the bad actors are successful." So we're recognizing that we can't be perfect a hundred percent of the time against a hundred percent of the bad actors. Let's keep out what we can, but then recognize and have that ability to recover when necessary. >> Yeah, thank you. So Andrew, you know, I like what Jim was saying about living off the land, of course, meaning using your own tooling against you, kind of hiding in plain sight, if you will. But, and, and as Jim is saying, you, you can't be perfect. But, so given that, what's your perspective on what good cybersecurity hygiene looks like? >> Yeah, so you have to understand what your crown jewel data looks like, what a good copy of a recoverable asset looks like. When you look at an attack, if it were to occur, right, how you get that copy of data back into production. And not only that, but what that golden image actually entails. So, whether it's networking, storage, some copy of a source code, intellectual property, maybe CMBD data, or an active directory, or DNS dump, right? Understanding what your data actually entails so that you can protect it and that you can build out your recovery plan for it. >> So, and where's that live? Where's that gold copy? You put on a yellow sticky? No, it's got to be, (chuckles) you got to be somewhere safe, right? So you have to think about that chain as well, right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. You, so, a lot of folks have not gone through the exercise of identifying what that golden copy looks like. Everyone has a DR scenario, everyone has a DR strategy, but actually identifying what that golden crown jewel data, let's call it, actually entails is one aspect of it. And then where to put it, how to protect it, how to make it immutable and isolated, that's the other portion of it. >> You know, if I go back to sort of earlier part of last decade, you know, cybersecurity was kind of a checkoff item. And as you got toward the middle part of the decade, and I'd say clearly by 2016, it, security became a boardroom issue. It was on the agenda, you know, every quarter at the board meetings. So compliance is no longer the driver, is, is my point. The driver is business risk, real loss of reputation or data, you know, it's, or money, et cetera. What are the business implications of not having your cyber house in order today? >> They're extreme, Dave. I mean the, you know, the bad actors are good at what they do. These losses by organizations, tens, hundreds of millions into the billions sometimes, plus the reputational damage that's difficult to, to really measure. There haven't been a lot of organizations that have actually been put out of business by an attack, at least not directly on, if they're larger organizations. But that's also on the table, too. So you can't just rely on, "Oh we need to do, you know, A, B and C because our regulators require it." You need to look at what the actual risk is to the business, and then come up with a strategy from there. >> You know, Jim, staying with you, one of the most common targets we hear of attackers is to go after the backup corpus. So how should customers think about protecting themselves from that tactic? >> Well, Dave, you hit on it before, right? Everybody's had the backup and DR strategies for a long time going back to requirements that we had in place for physical disaster or human error. And that's a great starting point for resilience capability. But that's all it is, is a starting point. Because the bad actors will, they also understand that you have those capabilities, and, and they've adapted to that. In every sophisticated attack that we see, the backup is a target. The bad actors want to take it out, or corrupt it, or do something else to that backup so that it's not available to you. That's not to say they're always successful, and it's still a good control to have in place because maybe it will survive. But you have to plan beyond that. So the capabilities that we talk about with resilience, let's harden that backup infrastructure. You've already got it in place. Let's use the capabilities that are there like immutability and other controls to make it more difficult for the bad actors to get to. But then as Andrew said, that gold copy, that critical systems, you need to protect that in something that's more secure, which commonly we, we might say a cyber vault. Although, there's a lot of different capabilities for cyber vaulting, some far better than others, and that's some of the things that we focus on. >> You know, it's interesting, but I've talked to a lot of CIOs about this, is prior to the pandemic, they, you know, had their, as you're pointing out, Jim, they had their DR strategy in place, but they felt like they weren't business resilient. And they realized that when we had the forced march to digital. So Andrew, are there solutions out there to help with this problem? Do you guys have an answer to this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I'm glad you brought up resiliency. We, we take a position that to be cyber resilient, it includes operational resiliency. It includes understanding at the C level what the implication of an attack means, as we stated, and then, how to recover back into production. When you look at protecting that data, not only do you want to put it into what we call a vault, which is a Dell technology that is an offline immutable copy of your crown jewel data, but also how to recover it in real time. So DXC offers a, I don't want to call it a turnkey solution since we architect these specific to each client needs, right, when we look at what client data entails, their recovery point, objectives, recovery time objectives, what we call quality of the restoration. But when we architect these out, we look at not only how to protect the data, but how to alert and monitor for attacks in real time, how to understand what we should do when a breach is in progress, putting together with our security operations centers, a forensic and recovery plan and a runbook for the client, and then being able to cleanse and remediate so that we can get that data back into production. These are all services that DXC offers in conjunction with the Dell solution to protect, and recover, and keep bad actors out. And if we can't keep them out to ensure that we are back into production in short order. >> You know, this, this discussion we've been having about DR kind of versus resilience, and, and you were just talking about RPO and RTO. I mean, it used to be that a lot of firms wouldn't even test their recovery 'cause it was too risky. Or, you know, maybe they tested it on, you know, July 4th or something like that. But, but it, I'm inferring that's changed. I wonder if we could, you know, double click on recovery? How hard is it to, to, to test that recovery, and, and how quickly are you seeing organizations recover from attacks? >> So it depends, right, on the industry vertical, what kind of data. Again, a financial services client compared to a manufacturing client are going to be two separate conversations. We've seen it as quickly as being able to recover in six hours, in 12 hours. In some instances we have the grace period of a day to a couple of days. We do offer the ability to run scenarios once a quarter where we can stand up in our systems the production data that we are protecting to ensure that we have a good recoverable copy. But it depends on the client. >> I really like the emphasis here, Dave, that you're raising and that Andrew's talking about. It's not on the technology of how the data gets protected. It's focused on the recovery. That's all that we want to do. And so the solution with DXC really focuses on generating that recovery for customers. I think where people get a little bit twisted up on their testing capability is, you have to think about different scenarios. So there are scenarios where the attack might be small. It might be limited to a database or an application. It might be really broadly based like the NotPetya attacks from a few years ago. The regulatory environment, we call those attacks severe but plausible. So you can't necessarily test everything with the infrastructure, but you can test some things with the infrastructure. Others, you might sit around on a tabletop exercise or walk through what that looks like to really get that, that recovery kind of muscle, muscle memory so that people know what to do when those things occur. But the key to it, as Andrew said before, have to focus down, "What are those critical applications? What do we need, what's most important? What has to come back first?" And that really will go a long way towards having the right recovery points and recovery times from a cyber disaster. >> Yeah, makes sense. Understanding the value of that data is going to inform you how to, how to respond and how to prioritize. Andrew, one of the things that we hear a lot on theCube, especially lately, is around, you know, IOT, IIOT, Industry 4.0, the whole OT security piece of it. And the problem being that, you know, traditionally, operations technologies have been air gapped, often by design. But as businesses, increasingly they're driving initiatives like Industry 4.0, and they're connecting these OT systems to IT systems. They're, you know, driving efficiency, preventative maintenance, et cetera. So a lot of data flowing through the pipes, if you will. What are you seeing in terms of the threats to critical infrastructure and how should customers think about addressing these issues? >> Yeah, so bad actors, you know, can come in many forms. We've seen instances of social engineering. We've seen, you know, a USB stick dropped in a warehouse. That data that is flowing through the IoT device is as sensitive now as your core mainframe infrastructure data. So when you look at it from a protection standpoint, conceptually, it's not dissimilar from what we've been been talking about where you want to understand, again, what the most critical data is. Looking at IoT data and applications is no different than your core systems now, right? Depending on what your, your business is, right? So when, when we're looking at protecting these, yes, we want firewalls, yes, we want air gap solutions, yes, we want front end protection, but we're looking at it from a resiliency perspective. Putting that data, understanding what what data entails to put in the vault from an IoT perspective is just as critical as as it is for your core systems. >> Jim, anything you can add to this topic? >> Yeah, I think you hit on the, the key points there. Everything is interconnected. So even in the days where maybe people thought the OT systems weren't online, oftentimes the IT systems are talking to them, or controlling them, SCADA systems, or perhaps supporting them. Think back to the pipeline attack of last year. All the public testimony was that the OT systems didn't get attacked directly. But there was uncertainty around that, and the IT systems hadn't been secured. So that caused the OT systems to have to shut down. It certainly is a different recovery when you're shutting them down on your own versus being attacked, but the outcome was the same that the business couldn't operate. So you really have to take all of those into account. And I think that does go back to exactly what Andrew's saying, understanding your critical business services, and then the applications and data and other components that support those and drive those, and making sure those are protected. You understand them, you have the ability to recover them if necessary. >> So guys, I mean, you made the point. I mean, you're right. The adversary is highly capable. They're motivated 'cause the ROI is so, it's so lucrative. It's like this never ending battle that cybersecurity pros, you know, go through. It really is kind of frontline sort of technical heroes, if you will. And so, but sometimes it just feels daunting. Why are you optimistic about the future of, of cyber from the good guy's perspective? >> I think we're coming at the problem the right way, Dave. So that, that focus, I'm so pleased with the idea that we are planning that the systems aren't going to be hundred percent capable every single time, and let's figure that out, right? That's, that's real world stuff. So just as the bad actors continue to adapt and expand, so do we. And I think the differences there, the common criminals, it's getting harder and harder for them. The more sophisticated ones, they're tough to beat all the time. And of course, you've raised the question of some nation states and other activities. But there's a lot more information sharing. There's a lot more focus from the business side of the house and not just the IT side of the house that we need to figure these things out. >> Yeah, to, to add to that, I think furthering education for the client base is important. You, you brought up a point earlier. It used to be a boardroom conversation due to compliance reasons. Now, as we have been in the market for a while, we continue to mature the offerings. It's further education for not only the business itself, but for the IT systems and how they interconnect, and working together so that these systems can be protected and continue to be evolved and continue to be protected through multiple frameworks as opposed to seeing it as another check the box item that the board has to adhere to. >> All right, guys, we got to go. Thank you so much. Great conversation on a, on a really important topic. Keep up the good work. Appreciate it. >> Thanks Dan. >> Thank you. >> All right, and thank you for watching. Stay tuned for more excellent discussions around the partnership between Dell Technologies and DXC Technology. We're talking about solving real world problems, how this partnership has evolved over time, really meeting the changing enterprise landscape challenges. Keep it right there. (bright music) Okay, we hope you enjoyed the program and learned some things about cloud transformation and modernizing your business that will inspire you to action. Now if you want to learn more, go to the Dell DXC partner page shown here, or click on the URL in the description. Thanks for watching everybody and on behalf of our supporters, Dell and DXC, good luck. And as always, get in touch if we can be of any assistance. (bright music)

>>Now welcome back to the Cube as we continue our coverage here. AWS Reinvent 2022, going out here at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Tens of thousands of attendees. That exhibit Hall is full. Let me tell you, it's been something else. Well, here in the executive summit, sponsored by Accenture. Accenture rather. We're gonna talk about Baptist Health, what's going on with that organization down in South Florida with me. To do that, I have Tony Abro, who's the SVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer. I have Ashley Lane, the managing director of the Accenture Healthcare Practice, and on the far end Poop Kumar, who is the VP and cto Baptist Health Florida won and all. Welcome. Thank you. First off, let's just talk about Baptist Health, the size of your footprint. One and a half million patient visits a year, not a small number. >>That was probably last year's number, but okay. >>Right. But not a small number about your footprint and, and what, I guess the client base basically that you guys are serving in it. >>Absolutely. So we are the largest organization in South Florida system provider and the 11 hospitals soon to be 12, as you said, it's probably about 1.8 million by now. People were, were, were supporting a lot of other units and you know, we're focusing on the four southern counties of South Florida. Okay. >>So got day Broward. Broward, yep. Down that way. Got it. So now let's get to your migration or your cloud transformation. As we're talking about a lot this week, what's been your, I guess, overarching goal, you know, as you worked with Accenture and, and developed a game plan going forward, you know, what was on the front end of that? What was the motivation to say this is the direction we're going to go and this is how we're gonna get there? >>Perfect. So Baptist started a digital transformation initiative before I came about three years ago. The board, the executive steering committee, decided that this is gonna be very important for us to support us, to help our patients and, and consumers. So I was brought in for that digital transformation. And by the way, digital transformation is kind of an umbrella. It's really business transformation with technology, digital technologies. So that's, that's basically where we started in terms of consumer focused and, and, and patient focus. And digital is a big word that really encompasses a lot of things. Cloud is one of, of course. And, you know, AI and ML and all the things that we are here for this, this event, you know, and, and we've started that journey about two years ago. And obviously cloud is very important. AWS is our main cloud provider and clearly in AWS or any club providers is not just the infrastructure they're providing, it's the whole ecosystem that provides us back value into, into our transformation. And then somebody, I think Adam this morning at the keynote said, this is a team sport. So with this big transformation, we need all the help and that we can get to mines and, and, and hands. And that's where Accenture has been invaluable over the last two years. >>Yeah, so as a team sport then depu, you, you've got external stakeholders, otherwise we talked about patience, right? Internal, right. You've, you've got a whole different set of constituents there, basically, but it takes that team, right? You all have to work together. What kind of conversations or what kind of actions, I guess have you had with different departments and what different of sectors of, of the healthcare business as Baptist Health sees it in order to bring them along too, because this is, you know, kind of a shocking turn for them too, right? And how they're gonna be doing business >>Mostly from an end user perspective. This is something that they don't care much about where the infrastructure is hosted or how the services are provided from that perspective. As long as the capabilities function in a better way, they are seemingly not worried about where the hosting is. So what we focus on is in terms of how it's going to be a better experience for, from them, from, from their perspective, right? How is it going to be better responsiveness, availability, or stability overall? So that's been the mode of communication from that perspective. Other than that, from a, from a hosting and service perspective, the clientele doesn't care as much as the infrastructure or the security or the, the technology and digital teams themselves. >>But you know, some of us are resistant to change, right? We're, we're just, we are old dogs. We don't like new tricks and, and change can be a little daunting sometimes. So even though it is about my ease of use and my efficiency and why I can then save my time on so and so forth, if I'm used to doing something a certain way, and that's worked fine for me and here comes Tony and Depo and here comes a, >>They're troublemaker >>And they're stir my pot. Yeah. So, so how do you, the work, you were giving advice maybe to somebody watching this and say, okay, you've got internal, I wouldn't say battles, but discussions to be held. How did you navigate through that? >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And Baptist has been a very well run system, very successful for 60 something odd years. Clearly that conversation did come, why should we change? But you always start with, this is what we think is gonna happen in the future. These are the changes that very likely will happen in the future. One is the consumer expectations are the consumer expectations in terms of their ability to have access to information, get access to care, being control of the process and their, their health and well-being. Everything else that happens in the market. And so you start with the, with that, and that's where clearly there are, there are a lot of signs that point to quite a lot of change in the ecosystem. And therefore, from there, the conversation is how do we now meet that challenge, so to speak, that we all face in, in, in healthcare. >>And then from there, you kind of designed the, a vision of where we want to be in terms of that digital transformation and how do we get there. And then once that is well explained and evangelized, and that's part of our jobs with the help of our colleagues who have, have been doing this with others, then is the, what I call a tell end show. We're gonna say, okay, in this, in this road, we're gonna start with this. It's a small thing and we're gonna show you how it works in terms of, in terms of the process, right? And then as, as you go along and you deliver some things, people understand more, they're on board more and they're ready for for more. So it's iterative from small to larger. >>The proof is always in the place, right? If you can show somebody, so actually I, I obviously we know about Accenture's role, but in terms of almost, almost what Tony was just saying, that you have to show people that it works. How, how do you interface with a client? And when you're talking about these new approaches and you're suggesting changes and, and making these maybe rather dramatic proposals, you know, to how they do things internally, from Accenture's perspective, how do you make it happen? How, how do you bring the client along in this case, batches >>Down? Well, in this case, with Tony and Depu, I mean, they have been on this journey already at another client, right? So they came to Baptist where they had done a similar journey previously. And so it wasn't really about convincing >>Also with Accenture's >>Health, also with Accenture's Health, correct. But it wasn't about telling Tony Dupe, how do we do this? Or anything like that. Cuz they were by far the experts and have, you know, the experience behind it. Well, it's really like, how do we make sure that we're providing the right, right team, the right skills to match, you know, what they wanted to do and their aspirations. So we had brought the, the healthcare knowledge along with the AWS knowledge and the architects and you know, we said that we gotta, you know, let's look at the roadmap and let's make sure that we have the right team and moving at the right pace and, you know, testing everything out and working with all the different vendors in the provider world specifically, there's a lot of different vendors and applications that are, you know, that are provided to them. It's not a lot of custom activity, you know, applications or anything like that. So it was a lot of, you know, working with other third party that we really had to align with them and with Baptist to make sure that, you know, we were moving together at speed. >>Yeah, we've heard about transformation quite a bit. Tony, you brought it up a little bit ago, depu, just, if you had to define transformation in this case, I mean, how big of a, of a, of a change is that? I mean, how, how would you describe it when you say we're gonna transform our, you know, our healthcare business? I mean, I think there are a lot of things that come to my mind, but, but how do you define it and, and when you're, when you're talking to the folks with whom you've got to bring along on this journey? >>So there's the transformation umbrella and compos two or three things. As Tony said, there is this big digital transformation that everybody's talking about. Then there is this technology transformation that powers the digital transformation and business transformation. That's the outcome of the digital transformation. So I think we, we started focusing on all three areas to get the right digital experience for the consumers. We have to transform the way we operate healthcare in its current state or, or in the existing state. It's a lot of manual processes, a lot of antiquated processes, so to speak. So we had to go and reassess some of that and work with the respective business stakeholders to streamline those because in, it's not about putting a digital solution out there with the anti cured processes because the outcome is not what you expect when you do that. So from that perspective, it has been a heavy lifting in terms of how we transform the operations or the processes that facilitates some of the outcomes. >>How do you know it's working >>Well? So I I, to add to what Deep was saying is I think we are fortunate and that, you know, there are a lot of folks inside Baptist who have been wanting this and they're instrumental to this. So this is not a two man plus, you know, show is really a, you know, a, a team sport. Again, that same. So in, in that, that in terms of how do we know it works well when, when we define what we want to do, there is some level of precision along the way. In those iterations, what is it that we want to do next, right? So whatever we introduce, let's say a, a proper fluid check in for a patient into a, for an appointment, we measure that and then we measure the next one, and then we kind of zoom out and we look at the, the journey and say, is this better? >>Is this better for the consumer? Do they like it better? We measure that and it's better for the operations in terms of, but this is the interesting thing is it's always a balance of how much you can change. We want to improve the consumer experience, but as deeply said, there's lot to be changed in, in the operations, how much you do at the same time. And that's where we have to do the prioritization. But you know, the, the interesting thing is that a lot of times, especially on the self servicing for consumers, there are a lot of benefits for the operations as well. And that's, that's where we're in, we're in it together and we measure. Yeah, >>Don't gimme too much control though. I don't, I'm gonna leave the hard lifting for you. >>Absolutely, absolutely right. Thank you. >>So, and, and just real quick, Ashley, maybe you can shine some light on this, about the relationship, about, about next steps, about, you know, you, you're on this, this path and things are going well and, and you've got expansion plans, you want, you know, bring in other services, other systems. Where do you want to take 'em in the big picture in terms of capabilities? >>Well, I, I mean, they've been doing a fantastic job just being one of the first to actually say, Hey, we're gonna go and make an investment in the cloud and digital transformation. And so it's really looking at like, what are the next problems that we need to solve, whether it's patient care diagnosis or how we're doing research or, you know, the next kind of realm of, of how we're gonna use data and to improve patient care. So I think it's, you know, we're getting the foundation, the basics and everything kind of laid out right now. And then it's really, it's like what's the next thing and how can we really improve the patient care and the access that they have. >>Well, it sure sounds like you have a winning accommodation, so I I keep the team together. >>Absolutely. >>Teamwork makes the dream >>Work. Absolutely. It is, as you know. So there's a certain amount of, if you look at the healthcare industry as a whole, and not, not just Baptist, Baptist is, you know, fourth for thinking, but entire industry, there's a lot of catching up to do compared to whatever else is doing, whatever else the consumers are expecting of, of an entity, right? But then once we catch up, there's a lot of other things that we were gonna have to move on, innovate for, for problems that we maybe we don't know we have will have right now. So plenty of work to do. Right. >>Which is job security for everybody, right? >>Yes. >>Listen, thanks for sharing the story. Yeah, yeah. Continued success. I wish you that and I appreciate the time and expertise here today. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be back with more. You're watching the Cube here. It's the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. And the cube, as I love to remind you, is the leader in tech coverage.

>>Hey everyone. And welcome to the cubes. Continuous coverage of AWS reinvent 2021. I'm Lisa Martin. So excited to be here in person with thousands of folks. Everybody covered vaccinated. We are winning one of the largest industry's largest tech hybrid events with AWS and it's huge ecosystem of partners. We're going to be having two black sets. Two remote says over a hundred guests, and I am pleased to welcome two new guests to the queue. Mike Milner is here the head of product management at trend micro and Danielle Greshaw worldwide partner solution architects at AWS guys. Welcome to the program. It's nice robbing us. Isn't it nice to say, I have this background noise of actual humans, >>Such a nice buzz. Yeah, it >>Really isn't. I suppose. So the last, obviously 20, 22 months have been quite challenging for all of us, kudos to AWS for doing this in such a safe manner. But Mike, I wanted to get kind of a background in the last year and a half or so since we last spoke, what's going on at trend micro, we've seen so much change in the security landscape, the threat landscape. What are some of the things that you guys are saying? >>Yeah, good question. So, you know, some things stay the same and some things are always changing certainly lately, a big rise in ransomware, really affecting companies. This is a case where in the past, maybe we were concerned with targeted attacks, but now things like ransomware can affect anyone. So it's really broad attacks looking at any possible threat, any possible vector that can impact >>Company ransomware as a service is on the rise massively. And it's become, I've talked to some about it a lot this last year and a half or so being with it growing so rapidly, it's now a matter of when we got hit, not if so that's a really interesting topic that you bring up. Daniel want to bring you into the conversation. Talk to us about from a partnership perspective and about what you guys are doing together with. >>I mean, we've had a partnership with trend micro. I mean, I've been at AWS almost eight years, as long as I've been there. I can remember, you know, trends being a huge AWS partner. Um, and of course we've evolved over the years. And, um, definitely in the last 12 to 18 months, we've been doing a lot of joint events together trying to broaden our reach of customers, um, about talking about trends, solution. And we're going now to a lot of companies that have not used cloud before and look at a solution such as trend solution as a way in which they can move their workloads into the cloud and feel secure and safe about it. And, you know, not have to worry about, you know, ransomware or any other kinds of cyber attacks and feel good about moving into the cloud, >>Thinking to the cloud while there's still so many folks that are working from home, working from anywhere really that will be for, >>He did that, uh, journey for a lot of companies who maybe weren't thinking about it, but now are making that move a lot faster. >>The, of the challenges that you're seeing in the last 20 months as the acceleration of digital transformation cloud adoption, it was for so many businesses that weren't there. And on that journey, I'm just curious what some of the things are that you guys have observed together in this interesting time. Yeah. >>Oh for sure. Certainly, you know, trend micro has a lot of capability, a lot of products. I focus on the cloud cloud one, but really the endpoint protection users are at home. They're remote, they're accessing their infrastructure from so many different environments. Like you said, it's really set this ahead probably 10 years, really this work from home concept, >>It has to talk to me about some of the other things that are changing. And then there's the security buyer like what's going on there? What are some of the conversations that you're having challenges that they're having, but this is kind of a new, uh, persona that's been. >>Yeah, I think there is a big shift happening here as consumers. We're so used to trying things out, adopting new technology really rapidly. And I think industry is kind of catching up. Historically, this has been kind of top down decisions. Uh, a CSO or executive is making security buying decisions. Increasingly customers want to actually try things out. They want to experience the value, see how it works in their environments. And this could be coming from different business units, different parts of the organization. So we've really been focusing on adapting our products, our capability, and how we address customers to really reach these people who are making these decisions. >>And I think more and more developers are actually part of that process as well, because they're being tasked with, if you're going to build it, you also have to operate it and you also have to secure it. And so, you know, >>What are some of the challenges that the specifically that you're hearing from developers that are helping you surely advanced cloud one and the partnership? >>I mean, I would say like for what I hear from developers is mostly how can I integrate this into my existing process and make it easy, but >>It's really developers who are shaping so much of the infrastructure that needs to be protected in the past. It maybe was the other way around. That's been a massive shift in the industry. And as you say, we need to help developers be secure without them having to learn a whole new set of skills and security. We want them to be security aware, but we can't expect them all to be experts. >>I was a developer myself for like 15, 16 years. And we're terrible at security we're terrible at. So, uh, anything that any products let that, that help in that journey is key >>For sure. And it's not that you don't want to be secure it's that really your goal is providing the business value and security. It needs to be there, but it's always going to be seen as kind of a drag kind of slowing things down. So we want to build tools to help their, >>I imagine too also. So it facilitate from a cultural perspective, the developers, the security folks becoming better partners together because the security, as we talked about in the very beginning, even mentioning ransomware is a massive issue. It's, it's a global issue with say national security issue for the U S and other countries like that. But that cultural shift has got to be interesting, especially Danielle, you as a former developer, talk to me about some of the customer conversations and how are you helping those developers become comfortable with the security responsibility. >>Again, it's back to integrating it into their normal process and to the dev ops process to just have that be an extra step in there, um, where they can, they can see that it's easy and B being easy as key. And then they can just be able to roll that out with everything that they're doing. They've already kind of like made the mind shift to test their work that they do. So it's now secure it. Um, and that's just one other practice that they start doing. So, >>Yeah, and I think it really goes in the other direction as well, security teams who have the responsibility for security. They now have to understand all of the new technologies coming out of AWS, all these new tools with Kubernetes, continuous integration, continuous deployment. And that's a big ask as well. We can't expect security teams to be experts in all that. So really it's the two sides of that coin >>For sure. The results are kind of like a shared responsibility model if you think of it in >>That way. Absolutely. Absolutely. >>Talk to me, Mike, about cloud one, is this a joint solution that just built on AWS? Help me understand it and what's going on with, >>For sure. I mean, cloud one is really a platform to help cloud builders be secure. We want to make security simple, and that is those different personas. We needed it to be simple for security, let them just set their policy goals. Hey, I need to be compliant to this standard or this standard. I want to follow the well-architected framework. These are my goals. And then the development teams need to work, deliver that value that they're trying to do and tools like cloud one, our goal is to really help them deliver that value and be secure following those guard rails and those goals set by security. And we do that across containers. Workloads server lists really extending our offering as customers start using new platforms. >>What are some of the things Mike that you've seen in during the pandemic, as we've seen this massive acceleration and the rush to the cloud what's been going on with cloud one from that perspective and how has the pandemic maybe helped shape the technology and the partnership? >>Yeah, that's a great point. Um, I think of it as well as, I mean, Cloud One, we build our platform and we've been doing that now remotely for the past two years with engineers all over the world, really around the world, five major engineering sites teams working from home. And in that time we've delivered all of our security value, but we've also ourselves deployed cloud one across eight regions worldwide. And now our engineering teams are deploying worldwide and we're making our system compliant and secure. So I really feel like all this remote work has helped us gain a really deeper understanding of the problems our customers are facing. For sure. Yeah. >>I was going to say just for us, as we've done some joint events together, we've had to do all of those things remotely. So that is definitely been a challenge, but also getting good with the messaging and making sure that we are able to connect with those customers, um, online, >>Right, as we knew, things shifted dramatically overnight for everyone in every industry. And it was interesting to see how technology helped shape and paved the pathway for those folks that survived and are now thriving. Um, but I did see some, some of the recent news on cloud one or on cloud security, the data data centers in nine countries. It sounds to me like a differentiator for trend micro in terms of data, sovereignty, data data. >>It's a major issue. These days, our companies, our customers are around the world and they've got their own security requirements. And obviously cloud one is helping them be secure, but they need to trust us with our compliance and with data sovereignty. They might have a specific requirement to store data within their own jurisdiction. And we want to support that, make it easy for them, security, simplified, >>Security stupefied. I like that. If we could only simplify more things in life, guys, that would be fantastic. Talk to me about, uh, a customer example that you think really speaks volumes to the partnership and the capabilities of club one. >>Yeah, I think it's interesting to see the companies come on board using cloud one who you don't typically associate with security issues like media companies who are used to sending information out security is a major concern. We've got major brands from news to media who needs security and it's coming up in more and more industries. Every company is a software company and they need to be secure. >>Really. Every company is a data company. You think of, of the supermarket, the grocery chains here we are at AWS reinvent, the big owning Amazon owning whole foods, for example, but the data challenge that did a growth challenge is huge it's and that's where I think the security, um, focus needs to be is wherever that data is. And now it's scattered everywhere. >>Absolutely trend micro has been in this business for over 30 years, and it's amazing to see the shifts of what's important, what needs to be secured, how it needs to be secured over that long a period. And we always feel that we're leading things. And I think cloud wine is really on the forefront for how customers are building applications, delivering value to their customers and we're helping them be secure. >>Yeah. And just to Mike's point, I mean, I definitely think, you know, years ago it was always financial services company, healthcare companies who had compliance requirements, but more and more travel and hospitality, media, and entertainment. These are all companies that are looking for security solutions. >>We're seeing a lot from a data privacy perspective. We're seeing regulations pop up all over the world, California as China DRCR. Exactly. And I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg for more data security regulations that we're going to see across the board as we humans and our technology companies are generating more and more and more data. That's the one thing that is not slowing down at all and they're not going to no pandemic. Right. So what's the vision going forward, Danielle, in terms of the partnership with trend micro? >>Um, I mean, I think again, we are always looking for joint customers who are looking for simplicity and looking for the, you know, the value proposition that cloud one has and just continuing to grow that customer base together. >>Yeah, for sure. I think it was two years ago. We were in person here at the cube in 2019. I think talking about cloud one is a new thing. Two years later, a lot has changed, but it's great to see the market validating all the effort we're putting into it. And industry looking at these big platforms that provide that broad security as the way forward. >>And then from an analyst perspective, there's a lot of value if coming down from the analyst for cybersecurity firms, because of the threats that we talked about, the net landscape changing the fact that it is so easy to launch ransomware, the fact that it is coming through every media, we're seeing a lot more value placed on cybersecurity firms from, from the industry, which has gotta be kudos to you guys and what you're doing and also help kind of guide direction in terms of the vision going forward. >>Yeah, for sure. I mean, we have threatened research. We are really into understanding what attackers are doing and they lead our direction. We're always on the forefront of protecting our customers from the leading threats >>And our partnerships, the most successful partnerships that we have, or the ones in which we're consistently innovating and trend has always been doing that with us. Any new service that we released, any, you know, as he taught, as Mike was talking about, uh, Kubernetes, et cetera, all of those new areas in which to go in the CA the partners that are able to keep up with us are the ones who are, you know, the most successful. So >>One of the things I know about many things of AWS is that it's very customer obsessed, focused on the customer. I imagine culturally Mike there's alignment there in turn Microsoft. >>Absolutely. And AWS is a great organization to work with because it shows through throughout interaction that they are customer obsessed. Absolutely. >>That's a good, that's a good thing to be obsessed about all things considered. Last question, guys, tell me what some of the things are that that attendees are going to be learning from both of you guys and from the booth at the event this week. >>So certainly from the cloud one trend micro booth right behind us. If the cameras can see it, uh, we've got demos of all the different functionality in cloud. One from containers, file storage workloads serverless, definitely come check that out to really see the breadth of the platform and what it can do to help. >>Awesome guys, thank you so much. You're now cube alumni got to give, you got branded masks, very COVID friendly. Uh, we appreciate your insights talking to us about trend micro, the AWS partnership and sharing some of those customer examples. Great work in the last 20 months. And it's great to have you here in person. Thanks for having very much for my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes, continuous coverage of AWS reinvent 2021, the cube, the global leader in live tech coverage.

>> Narrator: From around the globe it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World. Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. >> Welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of Dell Technology World. We've been covering Dell Tech World since it started really. It used to just be Dell World and there was EMC World after the merger and this is the all virtual version but we're excited to be here and we've got a great panel coming up. I think you're going to enjoy it. Our first guest is Rajesh Janey. He is the Senior Vice President of Global Alliances for APJ for Dell Technologies. Rajesh, where are you coming in from today? >> I'm speaking to you from Gurgaon, India. >> Awesome. It's the power of the virtual, right? It's not all bad that we don't have to get on planes all the time. >> Absolutely. >> And joining him is Utpal Bakshi. He is the Vice President and Global Vertical Head High Tech for Wipro. Utpal, good to see you. >> Nice to see you. >> And where are you calling us in from? >> I'm from Dallas, Texas. Actually suburb outside of Dallas called South Lake. >> Oh, excellent. Great to see you and again didn't have to get on a plane to do this so not all bad. And also joining us is Satish Yadavalli. He is the Vice President and Global Practice Head, Cloud and Infrastructure Services for Wipro. Satish, where are you joining us from? >> Hi, I'm joining from Bangalore, India. >> Excellent. Welcome. So gentlemen let's just jump into it. Wipro's a huge services firm, does a lot of work with Dell so I wonder Rajesh if you can talk really about the importance of partnerships and the importance of having somebody like Wipro within the Dell ecosystem. >> Absolutely. Thank you for having us on with Wipro. Wipro and we have had a partnership which is over two decades old and we have a multifaceted 360 degree kind of relationship with Wipro. Wipro is a platinum partner and what's more while we bring a lot of technology and products and the depth of product which are relevant to customer's transformation scenarios today, coupled with Wipro's consulting and services and design abilities this becomes an unbeatable power house so to say whereby we can work closely with a customer to help them transform and live in what we are calling the next normal. >> Yeah that's great. Utpal to you there's a lot of interesting trends going on. We've had cloud and big data been going on for a lot but really the talk in social media is what's driving your digital transformation, the CEO, the CIO or COVID and we all know what the answer is. So we've got a lot of new stuff in terms of digital transformation, working from anywhere, workforce transformation. Wonder if you can speak a little bit about how COVID has accelerated some of the priorities that your customers are trying to get done. >> Yeah. I think that's a great point. Wipro has been transforming over the last several years. We were a strong, large scale system integration partner, large IT organization but over the last several years we pivoted hard into the digital transformation world moving into the design side, leading the design, moving to cloud and helping our clients help make that journey and all of that got accelerated with the whole COVID situation. The work from home became all pervasive and the whole virtualization of the workforce really pivoted with some of our key transformational ideas around live workspace and the virtual desk which we've been working very closely with Dell have taken shape. So that has been a big part of our ongoing strategy. Doing the modernization off the network has also accelerated the customer networks and infrastructure was not necessarily set up for enabling these hybrid work environment. A lot of our clients are coming back and saying they want to modernize and actually accelerate. So that has all changed with COVID. Some of it is very positive actually for the business. >> Right. >> From an SI perspective. >> Satish, you've got cloud and infrastructure in your title. Public cloud really changed the game when Amazon kind of came on the scene and now we're seeing this evolution and change over time between a public cloud and hybrid cloud and multi cloud and cloud on cloud. I wonder if you could speak to and then even have an AWS inside of other people's clouds. They're trying to get it out there. The evolution of cloud both as a technology but really more as a way of thinking in terms of rapid deployment of new functionality to support the business and what you're seeing with your customers today. >> So let me share a perspective, right? Enterprises today are looking at options to extract greater value from hybrid cloud investment. It's a brownfield environment today where customers have their existing data centers but the hyperscalers have really come into play now and right cloud is the strategy which most of our customers embrace to address the market demands which are primarily focused on business outcomes today. As Wipro we have invested in developing a holistic extensible platform led approach called Wipro BoundaryLess Enterprise to drive business outcomes to customers. So the BLE construct is all about providing a ready to use plug-and-play platforms making IT easily consumable from multiple stakeholder personas be it admins, be it line of businesses, developers and partners. So basically we have built a holistic solution and our BLE solutions has majorly five building blocks. The first building block would be the BoundaryLess Data Center. The second is the BoundaryLess Container Platform. The third is the BoundaryLess Data Protection Platform. The fourth is the BoundaryLess Cloud Exchange where we get together all the internet connections and define the software defined network part to give access to the workloads across hybrid environments and the BoundaryLess Integration Platform which we call it as BLIP. Basically this is what we have put together to deliver an outcome to the customers powered by BLE. >> So BLE again, you call it the BoundaryLess Enterprise. What's the most important components of BLE? What are the things that most people are missing to actually implement the strategy? >> So if I actually build on you, right? The five building blocks let me elaborate in detail. The first is on the BoundaryLess Data Center. This enables our clients to deliver an infrastructure as a service across data centers and public clouds and enables customers to seamlessly move workloads from Edge to Cloud and manage them in a consistent and efficient model. That's the first building block of our BLE. The second important building block is container, right? We all know today container orchestration is key across hybrid cloud and with micro services and architectures becoming more prominent we see huge search for managing various Kubernetes enrollments with our clients. So our BLCP platform leverages solutions like VMware Tanzu, which is again a Dell company to enable clients manage the multicloud Kubernetes enrollments through a single pane of glass and provide seamless migration and movement of workloads across cloud environments. That's going to be the key in the future with microservices being dominant and every enterprise embracing microservices architectures this becomes very important building block in our overall solution. The third important stuff is BoundaryLess Data Protection. Now that data is all cross in hybrid cloud environment and application actually consume this data it is important to protect the data which is intellectual property and very critical to every business. So with the BLDP platform we ensure that we deliver availability, solidarity, security and reliability of cloud adoption increasingly and rapidly across multicloud platforms. So our solution leverages the DTC of Dell and other existing Dell storages and data production solutions to offer seamless and right cost models which will be very critical for any cloud transformation and schedules as we move forward. The fourth point which I was talking about is BLCE. This is basically a cloud exchange where in a hybrid cloud environment you need to establish connectivities across PaaS and SaaS platforms as well as on-premise networks to provide seamless access to data and the workloads which are in multicloud scenarios. So that's about BLCE. With respect to BLIP it is an integration platform. Today we are in a software defined world and when I talk about providing a single pane of glass solution it is important for us to have an integration platform where I can bring all EPIs together and do northbound and southbound integrations with the architectures of clients and the cloud providers to spin off workloads, to commission, decommission and provide a seamless consumption experience to clients across multiple hyperscalers and on-premise infrastructure. >> Thank you for that summary. I think you hit on all the big trends. I want to go back to you Rajesh 'cause you said that this is a really unique time. You've been in the business for a very long time. You've seen a lot of other transformations and you've seen a lot of big trends. Why is this one different? What makes where we are today such a unique point in time in this IT industry journey? >> Excellent. I think I would say we are in a period of what is called an enforced innovation. While most of the time transformation in IT has been very, very sequential or continuous I think we are seeing an order of shift in the transformation and this whole situation is forcing everyone to accelerate the pace of innovation and transformation. There are two key priorities for every organization in this time. One, build resilient operations and second employee safety. These two parameters have forced the organization to look at their businesses differently, look at their IT infrastructure differently and created a sort of opportunity you can say which is ripe for Wipro's BoundaryLess Enterprise because there are no boundaries. People are working from home. They're no longer in an office confined or boundary. So that's smart. Coming back we are seeing an accelerated innovation. That means our partnership to deliver customer transformation at scale becomes all the more important. Bringing all the good technologies of Dell on one side and combining it Wipro's size, scale and services help us lead in the marketplace for customer transformation. And what's more, we are adding our Dell financial services solutions as Dell Tech on demand to enable all this to be consumed as a service and with flexible payment options which Wipro helps us translate it to customer offerings. >> That's great. Utpal, I want to go to you and get your perspective on how customers, in terms of this boundaryless, how things have changed since March 15th which at least here in the US, I don't know if in India it was on the same date when everything basically got shut down. So it was this light switch moment. Everybody worked from home, no planning, no thought like ready, set, go to now we're six, seven, eight months into this thing and clearly we're it's a marathon not a sprint and even if we go back to some semblance of what was the old normal the new normal is going to be different and everyone is not going to go back to work full time like they did before. So how, from a customer perspective, from a technology implementation perspective and from an initiative and getting this stuff done how has that changed pre-COVID then oh my goodness, it's the light switch moment and now it's, hey, we're in this for the long term. >> Yeah. I think Rajesh did hit upon that a little bit. This is truly that moment where it was a forced innovation. Some of it was happening anyways and it was bound to happen but I think the COVID kind of accelerated all of it. What has impacted is it all started with, okay, how do we enable work from home? And that is when the whole BoundaryLess infrastructure, the virtual desk solutions and all of that started getting impact. I think after that most companies have realized that this is not a short term fix. It is a longterm it's going to be here for staying so they wanted to have a longterm fix so they wanted to come in with innovation but at the same time from a business perspective they've had impact in business so they wanted very creative business models for them to get set with the technology innovation quicker but they didn't want to do it in a traditional way of paying it all upfront and moving it to that. So that is where the creativity in terms of joint innovation which we did with Dell, in flexible payment options, bringing in some kind of an asset lease model and things like that have gained traction. A lot more conversations are around we want to transform help us find a way to make the transformation sooner with maybe less investment upfront and find a way to fund this from the future savings we'll get so that we can be ready for the future without necessarily impacting the bottom line today. All of that has changed, I would say in summary, has accelerated the adoption and the rate of change but it has also led to all of us thinking some creative business models and new approaches to doing business. >> Right, right. Satish back to you. What are the big conflicts that always exist? There's innovation versus security, right? And enabling innovation and giving people more power, more tools, more data to do things at the same time now your tax surface has increased you don't necessarily have everybody locked down on their home infrastructure and they were forced into this. When people are talking about digital transformation, how do they continue to drive forward and how are you helping them on innovation and enabling innovation at the same time as you talked about keeping the data protected and really thinking about business resiliency and continuity in this to increase the tax surface not only because of mobile, but now with the working from home thing? It's increased exponentially. >> Yeah. So I would just take an example of how Wipro handled this pandemic when it hit us and what solutions we get. So let me just give you a perspective. As we all know the current pandemic has disrupted many industries and we were no exception. Basically COVID has brought to the forefront many crucial factors in terms of business continuity process, the quality of employee experience and the automation connected with the employees. So while we enable our employees to connect, collaborate, and communicate with ease from anywhere from any device in a secure way with a consistent user experience powered by Wipro LiVE Workspace platform which actually takes care of delivering a seamless onboarding of user via the Wipro LiVE Workspace platform and consume all the services the way they used to traditionally consume when they were working from office? So this is something which is the power of Wipro LiVe Workspace platform we have implemented to deliver a seamless employee experience access to the workspaces. That's one but also there are some learnings. When we implemented the solutions on the flip side as businesses we must also acknowledge and be cognizant of the fact that employees are trying hard to juggle between frequent interruptions at home and notifications from various applications we receive both on corporate and personal devices. Basically in a nut shell it is difficult to have the culture of corporate to be working from home. Basically that's another big learning. While all of us are adjusting to this new normal we are in constant touch with our employees and trying to improve the overall employee connect and experience. From a solution perspective let me just give you what we actually did. We have close to 175,000 employees across the globe. Suddenly started working from home post lockdown. What does this mean? The traffic pattern suddenly changed the directions which were traditionally moving on a East to West direction started moving North to South. Basically this means a 100% of the workforce in a corporate started coming from the internet to access the corporate infrastructure and then gain access to the customer network. So basically we had to quickly swing in with our solutions and got our engineering teams to re engineer and tweet the infrastructure and security architecture to this new normal. By leveraging our Wipro BLE and video architectures which is powered by Dell VxRail, NSX we were able to spin off and build capacity on on-prem as well as on cloud in less than 24 hours post one got approvals from the client. Lastly we also deployed a back to work IoT solution which helped our employees to get back to work safely. Basically the solution offers various security parameters. Apart from traditional COVID updates it also helps in scanning the employees' temperatures, employee movement within the office premises, bundled with video analytics and enables secure touch less access to the ODCs for employees who are coming back to work. So we are putting all these solutions together and we pretty much seamlessly were able to navigate from the pandemic situation and get our business back to operations in a matter of days. >> 175,000 People. It's really interesting to think about how that network traffic completely changed from inside the firewalls to everything coming from the outside. It's a lot of people to get working from home right away so congratulations on that. As we come to a close Rajesh, I want to come back to you and talk about again, partnership in the age of this rapid acceleration of technology adoption, new technology move. We talked about the work from home. We've talked about cloud. We haven't talked very much about there's this other big thing that's coming down the pike which is 5G and IoT and kind of this entirely new scale of communication that's machine to machine, not person to person and now these connected devices. The amount of traffic continues to go up into the right at an accelerating rate. Tell us a little bit about the meaningfulness of having a partnership like Wipro that you guys can build solutions around new cutting edge technologies and have that real close connection with the customer or with all the supporting services. >> We'd love to. And maybe first I'll give you a perspective on how our employee base started working from home. Some other statistics that they wanted to show maybe add on towards what Satish said. We transitioned 120,000 employees. Twice the normal to work from home within two weeks and every day we are running something like 20,000 meetings and 16 million zoom minutes per day. That's the kind of traffic IT has seen. >> 16 million zoom minutes per day? >> Zoom minutes per day. >> Wow. >> That's the kind of traffic and our VPN traffic user load just tripled. At software or IT we call Dell digital. It was just a smooth and seamless experience. Now coming back, you said rightly. While we have partnered so far to deliver to the solution which are here today and the customers needs which are here today, what are we going to do for the future needs especially ie 5G IoT? We believe as a corporation that Edge is going to be the next wave of innovation. And next way our customers will benefit. Therefore connectivity to Edge via 5G becomes critical. IoT devices and managing the traffic and contain it there itself rather than flowing it back to data center becomes critical. As an example Wipro and Dell technologies are using our hyper converge solutions along with VMware telco and software for a European telco to provide automation and AI to deliver rapid results for the customer. So these are just early parts of it. We are partnering with Wipro to build solutions around 5G as well as telecom related innovation that'll come into the picture. IoT Satish spoke about a simple example of employee attendance. Imagine this is a need which will only accelerate from every organization, multiply it with the automation and AI that needs to be built into machines and feeding all the data back to drive some intelligence and refine the processes, refine the business outcomes. So I think we are working together on many such things and what's important is in all this, when the universe just explodes to devices and millions of devices, security becomes a paramount feature and we are working with Wipro to build what is called an embedded security into each of the solutions that we are designing. Security cannot be an afterthought or a bolt on it's becoming an integral part of the overall solution as we move towards the Edge. >> Yeah, right. And I think as Satish talked about all the distractions and notifications there're a lot of great opportunities for applied AI too to help people know what to do next. It's hard to be context switching all the time, not only on your work, but also the spouses working from home, the kids are doing homeschooling. It's not an optimal environment at all. Gentlemen thank you for your time. Congratulations on your partnership and hope you have a fantastic Dell Tech World. Sorry we can't be in person but this is not too bad. >> Thank you. >> Jeff >> Thank you >> Thank you Utpal, thank you Satish for your partnership. >> All right. Thank you gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Alright. Stay with us for continuing coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020. I'm Jeff Frick. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Live from Washington, DC, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat electronic music) (electronic whooshing) >> Okay, welcome back everyone. Live here in Washington, DC, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of AWS Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit. This is the reinvent for the global public sector. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, and Stu Miniman is here as well, he'll be coming out. Our next guest is Jeff Valentine, who is the Chief Product Officer at Cloudchecker, a really hot, growing company, innovating with the cloud around security and data management, all kinds of great stuff around compliance. Jeff, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> So we've been following you guys, you guys are at all the reinvents and summits with huge booths, you guys are growing like crazy. You guys cracked the code on using the cloud's scale and really delivering great value properties. And before we get into some of the public sector news and also new things for you guys, what's the core business for Cloudchecker and how are you different, and why are you guys winning? >> Yeah, no that's a great question. You know, businesses that are moving to the cloud have this huge problem, once you get to the cloud, it's probably more expensive than you thought, it's probably less secure than you thought, and you really don't know how to run it like you used to run your own data center. So we solve those problems, that's what a CMP does, a cloud Management Platform. Our system controls costs for government, it actually helps you to hit your budget, for security, we're monitoring continuously for all these weird things that might happen. And, of course, we're making a new announcement today, around compliance. >> Yeah, I mean, the phenomenon that we've seen, this is a pattern, including us, we're on Amazon, we started using it. You don't really know what happened 'til you look at your bill. (laughs) Once you go, oh damn, that's kind of elementary. But as it gets more complicated, new services are coming out, Amazon announces at every reinvent a zillion services. So you got Redshift, you got Stagement, all this new stuff's going on, you got to really manage that in like, a portfolio, you guys do that. >> We do. >> Now, how does that translate to the public sector? 'Cause some companies actually can't translate, and that's something that we looked at for who's successful. If a company can be good in commercial enterprise and also move to the public sector, they've got something going on that's right. The one's that can't, don't. And you guys are doing it, what's the unique public sector pivot or linkage or linchpin for you guys? >> That's a great question, you know, public sector, to us, is a large enterprise and we go to that market the same way we go to other large enterprises, we go through our partners. Sometimes agencies will come to us directly, that's great when they do. Oftentimes they need help from some of our partners around the show floor today. They're going to go to them for the people power and they'll come to Cloudchecker for the software or the automation. >> Jeff, when you said earlier that sometimes you go to the cloud, you're all excited to get in, and then you find out, maybe it's less secure than you thought. Where are the gaps? Help us square the circle, because you hear from, you know, the large cloud providers, cloud's more secure. People like myself actually believe it's probably more secure than what I can do as a small business, but where are the gaps that you're filling? >> Yeah, so here's the issue. It is inherently secure when it's used that way. Now, you've got 3500 developers that are writing code for various agencies, and if one of them forgets to close off a certain setting on, maybe an S3 bucket for Amazon, all of a sudden, somebody can get to that data. Our system is there to be a backstop, so we're automatically checking and alerting when there's a problem like that. >> So you automate that entire process. >> We automate that, we look at the whole thing every second. >> Awesome. >> Tell me about the customers' challenges, migrating to the cloud. How would you summarize the challenges that an agency or a group within the public sector migration challenges? What are the key things that goes through the customer that you guys can talk to directly? >> Sure, I mean, there's really three categories again. On the cost side, they have a budget to hit, and you really can't be over by a penny. It has to be matched up to the penny every single time. So we help them to do that, spend exactly what you're supposed to spend, not a penny more. The next problem they run into, of course, is the security. You need to be able to prove that you're secure, not just think you're secure, but know you're secure all the time. Our software's there to automate it. And then they have to actually prove through an audit process that they're compliant with various federal standards, like NIST 800-53 and others. They have to be compliant in that environment, as well, our software can automate that compliance. >> Tell me about the hard news you guys had. You had a press release that had gone out this morning, you guys had got some news, share the breaking news here on theCUBE. >> Sure, yeah. For years we've always been a security product and a cost product. The third leg of that stool is now total compliance. That total compliance module is free for all our customers, is free for all our current and future customers. But it automatically checks against 37 different compliance standards. So, HIPAA, PCI, all the NIST standards, et cetera, we're giving you a score card and a dashboard, how you're doing, and let's you remediate those problems when you see them. >> And what's the impact of the customer base? >> Well, they literally can't pass their security audits unless they do a lot of work today, to prove that they're in compliance with these standards. Our software now saves them the time to do that. >> So the trend is automation in this. >> It is. >> What's the secret sauce on the product side? Can you share a little bit of the Cloudchecker magic? >> Sure, let me try to describe it this way, Amazon's price list, which is complicated to understand, because there's 100,000 items on it, changes all the time. Nobody really gets that. They add new products, little variations, little instant sizes, little restrictions, little price changes, (chuckles) for every different type of way you can buy it, whether it's a reserved instance or not. And being able then, to unblend those to all your different customers, if you're a service provider and selling it again, you have to go share those costs. And, by the way, you then need to calculate your own margin on top of that. That manipulation of 100,000 things every second, we actually generate terabytes of data per month from each one of our customers and we store it for seven years. That volume, it's a really big data problem, that's our secret sauce, yeah. >> So, talk a little bit about the architecture of your products, 'cause when I think about security, you know, cost management, asset management, governance, even just within those categories, oftentimes, there's like a zillion point products. >> Yeah. >> It sounds like your philosophy is to have a, sort of an all-in-one. Maybe talk about some of the challenges of developing that product and how you're approaching it architecturally? >> Yeah, it starts with being deep on everything that we do. Our cost only product, if you just look at cost, hundreds of functions and reports, very complex product. Take that same level of complexity to security, we have 550 best practice checks, not 10 or 20, Amazon has 80, we have 550. (laughs) Take that now to compliance, not just a few standards, 37 different standards that we automatically monitor for. You have to have the depth in each one of those to be able to do any of them. >> And the depth comes from, obviously you've got to have some domain expertise, but then you've got codify that. >> We do, yeah, I mean, honestly, we started in 2011, so it's a maturity. You can't do it if you just started six months ago, (laughs) you have to build up. >> And how do you charge for the product? >> Our customers pay us on a percentage basis of what it costs them to run in the cloud. So if they're paying Amazon $10, they'll pay us a percentage of $10 to manage that. >> And that will vary by how many functions they turn on? Or, like for instance, the announcements that you had today, do I have to pay more for that or is that included in the cost? Maybe explain that. >> No, it's all included. Our philosophy has been, we don't want to nickel and dime our customers, they expect great value from our product. I have to keep adding value every day to keep them excited, so I'm going to continue to develop that product. It's never done, it's an ongoing process and we're going to keep adding free features to the product. >> So you have a solution, basically they win, you win. >> That's right, we get a percentage of all of cloud. I mean, Gartner says cloud's growing at 40%, yeah, we're growing it much faster, because our partners are growing and they're getting new customers that are growing and you get this compounding effect. >> Dave and I was talking about software economics, and then you add to that the cloud, it's amazing. Alright, I want to get into one last area before you go. You guys are an advanced technology partner of AWS. What does that mean? Obviously you bring a lot to the table with the product, you went into detail on that. What is being an advanced technology partner mean for agencies and potentially customers that are looking to work with you guys? >> Sure, now, being a technology partner of Amazon means that we have security and governments competencies, so we're experts in what we do. It means that we have staff that is certified on Amazon, we have top-secret clearance staff, we have partnerships with top-secret cleared agencies that work with us. Our software uniquely runs, not only in commercial, it runs on GovCloud and it runs on the IC region, the secret region, Amazon calls it, that's completely air-gapped from the rest of the world. That C2S marketplace is something that we do get a lot of business from. It's funny, Amazon can't tell us who the customer is, like, we get anonymized data, but they're using us. (laughter) We get the checks in the mail. >> You're doing the Cloudchecker thing. >> We're doing the Cloudchecker. But it's part of our business model to be able to serve, by being experts at Amazon. >> Last question, if I may, you know, the big talk about multi-cloud and, you know, different types of cloud. What are you seeing as the trend there and how does Cloudchecker, you know, help customers? >> Sure, I think today there's a competition amongst the cloud providers for the same workloads. I don't think that's going to be there in the future, I think cloud providers are going to specialize in certain areas. You're going to have some generalists that can do everything, like Amazon, I think there are going to be some that are better suited to working only in certain regions or only with certain functions. If you just wanted to do realtime video processing for theCUBE, there's other ways that you might look at doing that. In the future, a combination of best of breed for multi-cloud providers, needs a central management platform, and that's where we're enacting into it. >> That's an interesting dynamic, I totally like that approach on that observation. But also, I want to ask you, with respect to partnering, 'cause if you believe that to be true, which I think it's true, more providers are going to come into the space specialized, but also, they're going to look like service providers and professional services. We saw REAN Cloud being very successful, although they got cut back on that contract on the DOD, a new kind of system integratives are emerging. >> That's right. >> How do you talk about that, and what is happening with that model? 'Cause you can automate it. >> We can. >> And it kind of takes away the labor piece. How is the SI market changing? >> No, that's a good question. Most of the SIs with Amazon are our customers, so they all use our software. They'll put there logo on it, but they end up, you know, using our software to help them complete projects. When you end up competing for a project amongst other SIs, they're all competing for the same business, right? So, when you can go in with an automation solution that cuts your costs and maintains your margin, you're going to win that business more often. So they need to bring in automation to be competitive against the others that are doing it. >> And also speed of deployment's another factor, scale. >> I think that's right. >> How is that changing the game? >> No, it's totally true. We're going from, you know, state of local workloads to federal workloads and this JEDI program. You're going to start to see massive movements from data centers to the cloud. That's going to take time, but it requires both people and technology, we're the technology piece of that. >> It's not going to be years, it's going to be weeks. >> (laughs) That's true. >> Jeff, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Cloudchecker, check them out, great company, advanced technology partner with Amazon Web Services. Here on theCUBE, talking about public sector, this is theCUBE, here in Washington, DC, I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, stay with us for more live coverage, we'll be right back. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Announcer: It's theCUBE, covering VeeamOn 2018, brought to you by Veeam. >> Welcome back to VeeamOn 2018 everybody, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm with my cohost, Stu Miniman. Mike Conjoice is here, he's a Solutions Architect at Bupa Dental. Mike, over from the pond? >> Yeah absolutely. >> Over the pond rather, to America, welcome, from Bristol, England, great to have you on theCUBE, thank you. >> Thanks very much. >> Bupa Dental. Tell us about this 90,000 person organization. >> Yeah, so, Bupa's a global organization. They're primarily known for their health care insurance. Bupa Dental is a market unit that provides dental, NHS and private. So we're one of the largest private providers in the UK. We've got around 460 practices at the moment across the UK and Ireland. Bupa itself, 90,000 staff, 8,000 of that is dental. So that's clinicians and support staff. Were acquiring new practices, about three practices a week. >> Massive scale. >> Mike: Absolutely, it's huge. >> I've got to ask you, before we get into it. So health care, in England, NHS, you mentioned NHS and private. A lot of us in the United States, you know, have I think misconceptions, but what's your take on the quality of healthcare in England and the UK? A lot of people I talk to love it, they say it's really high quality. What's your take? >> It's certainly a different way of doing things, but then, it's a good model I feel. 'cause we all pay in, everyone can get that healthcare they need, they don't have to worry about being ill. You know, being ill shouldn't bankrupt you. So we do the NHS and private side of things. It's usually a lot of the same clinicians that run those models, but private we tend to cut the line a lot quicker, things like that. You're paying for the speed of the access to the clinicians, things like that. >> Okay, so but it's a hybrid model, so if you can afford it, then you can complement it, and it allows you to accelerate things. >> Mike: Absolutely. >> Okay, so there's still that level of quality that you can pay for, >> Yes, it's tiered >> But everybody's got healthcare, a hundred percent of the citizens are covered. >> Mike: Yeah. >> Mike, what's the kind of the stresses and the changes happening in healthcare, regulation like that impact from the technology sector? >> So at the moment, GDPR is obviously the big buzzword, I'm sure it's not the first time you've heard that this week. >> It's May 2018 >> We've got a countdown going. So a lot of our data is patient data, so it's critical healthcare data. So we're very lucky in Bupa to have a large information governance team that can manage a lot of the compliance and regulatory factors for us. So we need to be very aware of what we're doing with that data. We have the GDPR compliance side of things, where you've got the right to forget in an organization, but also the healthcare side of things can overrule that, that we are obliged to keep records for you know, certain amounts of time, depending on ages and things like that. >> And what kind of solutions are you architecting? >> So we, as I said, we acquire heavily, we acquire about two to three practices a week. So we are growing, so everything we look at is scale, not where we are now, but where we're going to be. You know, we've got plans to be at a thousand practices in no time at all. So a lot of the legacy frameworks that we follow, a lot of the legacy operational models we went with, they worked, but they don't scale well. So we need to put things so automation and intelligence, like Danny's been talking about in the keynote. It's things we really need to look at. We've started leveraging our data a lot more. So we pull back a lot of this data, we've got so much data, but we weren't really doing a lot with it. We've started running a lot of business intelligence, you know MIS data across that, to kind of learn how our patients use, I mean nobody likes going to the dentist, it's not a luxury treat that people go for. So trying to make that journey easier for the patients is kind of our end goal. We want to make it as painless as possible, apart from the dental bit. From making an appointment to kind of feeding back afterwards, and keeping that loop going, it's not just a one time end to end project. >> Yeah, so that whole experience. Take us inside the pieces that your patients don't see. Paint a picture of your infrastructure, I mean, what's there, what does it look like, and ultimately what applications are you supporting, you know, the top ones. >> Yeah, so dental practice management software isn't as advanced as probably as most people would think. Each practice has got a virtualization host in each. So we've got 500 service, remote branches on an MPLS link, so they're all coming back to a central data center where we keep all our offsite backups. >> Those are 500 physical servers? >> Yes, they're running Hyper-V, so they've got... They're quite low capacity, so there might be one or two VMs on each one. So although the scale is huge, the kind of the density is quite minimal. So we're bringing all that back across MPLS links that we're still not in an amazing place with network links in the UK, so some of our practices, they're not the best links, they're slow. Bringing back a lot of that data every night can be, you know, a massive issue, especially with the legacy software we were using previously. We need an offsite copy, we can't just cope with a local copy. We've had issues where practices have failed, practices have flooded, and without an offsite copy, you know, that backup drive floating in the water (mumbles) >> How does that local copy get made? That's done in an automated way from your remote location >> Yeah, so... >> It's not some gal at the desk doing the backup >> No, no, no >> like it used to be. >> Each practice has got like a USB or a NAS, depending on the size of the practice, and so we centrally manage that through the Veeam console in our data center. So each practice has a local backup job, to that storage every night, and then a backup copy job to our offsite data center to keep two copies of the data. >> And the office is closed, right, so it's not like you're dealing with high volume transactions that you're having to capture. I mean you've got a long enough window to get the stuff offsite, is that true? >> Yeah, so our bottleneck is always network, it's never source or target, it's always network. You know, some of our links we might get 200K uploads, so, if you're transferring a few gig of data it's never good. A lot of our data is digital imaging as well, which is really taking off. So you know you used to go and get an x-ray, now it's all 3D models of a scan of your mouth. So those files are... >> A lot of data. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Well we've done Cube gigs in the UK, so we know, sometimes those pipes are pretty small. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, so in the primary applications that you're supporting is this dental, this what you folks offer >> Yeah, so we've got, there's a couple of big players in the practice management software space, so we're kind of a split across those. They are moving towards private cloud software, but it's a slow process. These are the same softwares that you find in a single-person dental practice to these massive scales that we've got, so there's... They're very well known across the industry. So change is quite hard for them. >> So you're a Microsoft shop. Who's your server vendor? >> Dell. >> So you've got Dell servers, and Dell storage as well? >> Yes, so we've got Dell storage in the core. Just equal, equal logic. >> But Veeam is your primary data protection right? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And how long have you had Veeam in there? >> Probably two and a half years now. >> Okay, great, so let's go back to three years ago. >> The good times. >> What was life like then, and why did you bring in Veeam, and what change, take us through that whole case. >> So, like I said, we're highly acquisitive. So that came with a certain cadence and expectation. So we basically got what was given to us when we bought the practice. There was a lot of legacy backup providers, you know, all the classic ones. All over the place, no standardization of what was set up, what was backing up, the reporting. There was no central pane of glass to manage that. So it was taking a lot of engineer time to check those backups. So the infrastructure team that look after that, they were having to dedicate possibly two engineers a day just to check backups, which was an absolute nightmare. It's expensive as well, you know, they're not cheap guys to hire, so you just, you're getting them to do manual admin work. So we needed a change obviously, especially with the expectations of growth. I'd worked with Veeam previously as an MSV, so I knew the product, I knew how it worked. I kind of put it forward, I think it would be the best idea for us to go with it. So we kind of went through a partner, to kick off the initiation, and straightaway they said this is a big project, you want to get Veeam directly involved. So we had a lot of help from Veeam, the SEs, the sales guys. Everyone we wanted, we had access to, just because of the size of it. And it was something Veeam hadn't really done before, the whole remote office, the whole remote office scheme, because of the licensing, it can work out expensive per socket. So they were quite interested in it as well. That was our primary driver was kind of centralizing all that management and the reporting, and just freeing up time, just was the main... >> So did you, was it sort of a wholesale, we're doing Veeam, we're going all in? Across 500 server platforms. >> It was a big blast of it at the start, so we had a lot of physical 2003 servers, so they needed to be replaced anyway, so that was perfect timing for that. >> Dave: How convenient. >> Yeah it was good timing. 2008 >> Sorry CFO, we got to do it. >> We were very lucky actually. Our finance team are very trusting of us. If we say this is the right solution, they kind of, well, if that's what it takes. >> They bite the bullet. >> Yeah, yeah. So we had probably about 200 in one go, well, in one go, over a period of a couple of months. >> Dave: In (mumbles) kind of >> It wasn't the slickest process, because we were learning at the time. The network bandwidth was a big issue. But now moving forward we're still replacing servers. Any kind of BAU replacements, we'll always go out with this Hyper-V Veeam model. Any new practice we bring on, Hyper-V Veeam. It's just, we've done a lot of power shell scripting on the background as well to... 'Cause if you think, we've got 500 hosts, that's a thousand jobs running. It's 500 local, 500 copy. It's a lot to keep track of, so... >> So Mike, the next acquisition, do you have to change the infrastructure, or can you drop Veeam in as a first before you rip out some of the gear? >> We do tend to rip and replace, just to kind of standardize it. So we keep a... We don't want to go to 350 practices and they're one model, and there's 10 at a different one. So we tend to rip and replace with our MPLS and the server, switching, just trying to keep it standard as possible for management. >> Hard work. I mean what was your result? >> Pretty good actually, yeah. >> What changed? How did you measure the success? Was it sort you saw it and... >> So, reporting before was done by an MSP that looked after us. Reporting was creative, shall we say. So were getting 98-100% successes of what they reported on. So they may have been backing up 20 files, that was working. >> They had their thumb on the scale. >> Absolutely. So we've got a lot more confidence in what we're backing up now, even if we, you know, get, which we never do, but even if 30% failures, I'd rather know about 30% actual failures than just be blissfully ignorant. It's saved a lot of the infrastructure team's time, you know, with the scripting and the reporting, we're pulling a lot into Power BI as well, so management can see those stats realtime. It's just, you know buzzword, it just works. >> That was an ad, it just works. So you save time, your staff save time. What happened, they got their weekends and nights back? You were able to not hire as many people, I presume you didn't fire anybody? >> Not that I know of, no. It's allowed them to concentrate on the work they should be doing, the project work, the forward thinking work. With that kind of block it was not allowing these guys to innovate and to see where to change. They were doing a lot of reactive work, whereas now they're fully proactive, they're kind of looking about, what's the next thing, how can we get ahead of the curve. >> Why Veeam, I know we've got to go, and you might want to jump in. But why Veeam relative to the other choices that you had? >> Well first of all it was my experience with Veeam. I've never had a bad experience dealing with them. Their support is absolutely flawless. Anyone I speak to, I always say, hopefully you never need them, but, their support guys are just out of this world. The help they'll give and what they'll, they'll go above and beyond, they'll help with things that aren't necessarily Veeam, just to get you up and running. >> Mike, the last question I had for you is, you've been expanding beyond just virtualization, you're using Hyper-V, it was big news when Veeam supported that. You're doing a lot with SAS these days, you're probably not too much in public cloud, but what do you see, what interests you, what might bring you beyond kind of the one product you're using today? >> So 365 is big for us, we're going to be pushing to 365 next year. So the Veeam backup for Office 365 is something we're definitely going to look at. We do leverage Azure very heavily for our development. So things like direct restore to Azure are good for us. We can spin up a practice straight in Azure if their physical area fails, things like that are a big boost to us. >> All right we got to go. Mike, are you going to the party tonight? >> Mike: Absolutely. >> Dave: You're fired up? >> Theme party, yeah. >> Right, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you from me. >> Actually, sorry, one last question. >> Okay. >> If you had 'em all again, what would you do over, differently? >> Probably nothing, really. >> Oh, that was easy. All right, well, thanks again for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Keep right there, we're going to be back with our next guest right after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering Fortinet Accelerate 2018. Brought to you by Fortinet. >> Hi. Welcome back to Fortinet Accelerate 2018. I am Lisa Martin with the Cube. We're excited to be here for our second year. I'm joined by Peter Burris from the Cube as well. And we're very excited to be joined by our next guest, John Bove, the Vice President of America's channels at Fortinet. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. Thank you for having us. >> So, it's exciting for us to be here. I, as a marketer, geek out on tag lines. >> Yup. >> So, I'd love for you to kind of tell our viewers, strength and numbers. >> Yup. >> As the title of event. What does that mean? >> Well, it's really about the depth and breadth of what Fortinet's doing in the marketplace. You know, bringing the security fabric, not only to our customers, but to enable our partner community, right. So, Accelerate is a collection and we have about, almost 3,000 attendees here, about 2,300 of those are our carrier partners, resell partners, manage security service providers, and also our fabric ready alliance partners, right. So, the security fabric has allowed us to incorporate, you know, some additional third party technologies, right. And it's really, we're creating a really strong culture around, you know, integration and openness. >> Before we get into the technology, let's talk about pivot on that culture for a second. >> Sure. >> 'Cause one of the things that, that was evident from the keynotes this morning that Kenzie talked about, which really, this long standing partner driven culture that Fortinet has. You've recently come back to Fortinet. >> I have. >> Tell us about being a boomerang. What excites you about coming back? But also, how has that culture of really being partner-focus and maybe partner-first evolve? >> Well, the channel first culture at Fortinet makes my job really easy, right. And the reason that I came back was here with the company for six years, we experienced a tremendous, you know, run of revenue. And to have the opportunity to lead the America's Channel Organization is a great privilege. But, it really comes from the culture within the company of being a channel leverage and a channel first company. I think, you know, in Patrice's keynote this morning, and in Ken's keynote as well, they really talked about the channel program, and the channel partners. You know, the partners are the fabric of what we do as an organization. You know, and we're doing the security fabric. Something that they can build a business around. >> Joe, as you think about what the type or the nature of the changes that are taking place in all business. Security business, and as we've heard today, the repitity with which changes happening in security world. That, I got to believe is putting a fair amount of stress on your partners because they have to come up to speed very, very rapidly on new things, even as they demonstrate that they can sustain operational excellence for all things. What is the role that education's playing? Culturating your partner's to a new network. Or a new approach doing these, how is that leading to a better set of capabilities for your customers? >> Sure. Well, I think the one change in this digital transformation era is change, right. We're seeing customers consume technologies much differently than they ever have before. And so our partners have to be in a situation to be able to deliver those technologies. We're seeing the threat landscape continue to widen and be very broad in nature. And so, existing postures and existing deployments are not necessarily going to be able to protect those customers and quite frankly, from a partner standpoint, the way that they look at their business, and build their business needs to be different today than it was due to the change that digital transformation is driving. >> So in terms of your, sort of, symbiosis with the channel, we talked with Phil Quade just a minute ago, we talked about, you know, how our seat is looking to him, to say how are you guys doing this at Fortinet in terms of security? Tell me about the symbiotic relationship with your partners. What information are they bringing to you from the front lines from the customers? Whether it's education, fedsled, healthcare, that is helping to evolve Fortinet's technologies >> I mean, at the end of the day, security is a very noisy space right now, right. And we depend upon our partners, not only to ensure our programs and how we go deliver, you know, value to them, but also, I mean what the customers are telling them, and what they're seeing in the marketplace today. We're really focused on service enablement and the service delivery because the transactional type of business that we've seen in the past is no longer the route to market for success for, you know, the broad base, you know channel organizations, right. So, you know, we have a responsibility as a company to ensure that our partners have the capabilities to deliver services in ways that customers want it, you know, consume. You know, IOT is a marketplace that's been created, right. OT is opportunistic for the bad actors, right. The move to, of workloads, to public clouds and data based applications, and the fabric is really resonating with those partners in terms of being able to meet those customers changing needs. >> And you guys have had a, do a partner advisory council. >> We do. >> How long has that been going on? And what are some of the things that excite you about it? >> Yeah, so. Over 10 years we've had a partner advisory council. And it's, you know, it's industry leaders that are business owners and business drivers that, you know, really kind of keep us honest about what we're doing internally. They have access to our executive staff. They have access to, you know, product roadmaps as well. And you know, with the creation of the fabric, and what we're doing with our alliance partnerships, you know, they're kind of helping fill some of those holes as to, you know, what we're seeing in the marketplace today. You know, I think today we announced 11 additional fabric alliance partners. You know, today, organizations like Fanta for orchestration and automation, right. Integration is truly the new best breed. But the ability to react when things occur, and to orchestrate and to automate those controls are really important. And the company's done a great job, and we attribute a lot of that guidance to our partner advisory council. >> As Fortinet grows and expands its footprint, which in place new types of arrangements, like the CTA and other types of things, it's ecosystem continues to expand, in a way that Fortinet is moving towards the center. More of a focus, at least a low side >> Right. >> within the ecosystem. What does that mean from your ability to get partners, to influence partner behavior and customers, and get more pull through out of the entire ecosystem? How is that going to shape the way Fortinet competes in a way Fortinet serves its customers over the next few years? >> I think, simply put, you know, the tailwinds we have behind us. You know, we're on the precipice of two billion dollars in revenue. You know, we've got now line of sight to three and four here pretty quickly. We definitely think that the fabric is going to allow us to continue to scale and grow. You know, through that partner community. But quite frankly, I am amazed just in my time here, you know, how partners have embraced and really wrapped a business practice, in a service is first business practice, you know around that fabric. So, we're really excited about the opportunity that we have at hand. I think the fabric is going to continue to, you know, change the game, right. It's not about, you know, products. It's about delivering an integrated solution. >> Speaking of the fabric. I was kind of thinking of pivoting on what you were saying Peter, about differentiation. When partners have choices of companies to work with, you guys have been in this place for a really long time. >> We have, yup. >> But, besides the fabric, what are some of, maybe the other top two differentiators where a partner may be coming into the program that's, I get it, for with this partnership with Fortinet, we can go and really revolutionize customers in any industry >> You know, we're really unique in the market because we serve from the S&B to the mid-market, to the enterprise and some of the largest service provider brands. And that affords our partner community to be extremely diverse, and we want to be very easy to work with. So I think more than anything, my goal is to be simple and predictable in nature, and ensure that we're driving a very margin rich solution. You know, a lot of companies in the market will be enterprise focused or mid-market focused, and so, you know, we're really keen on establishing clear routes to market with our partner community. Aligning and investing where they fit. And then taking advantage of some of, even the vertical opportunities that the partners present based on those capabilities. >> I was, we were chatting a little bit earlier about education and that was one of the things I was reading, that, in some articles, that some of your guys did. And it's been awhile since I've been in college, and it just, it's so remarkable how, you know, smart classrooms, and it's BYOD, and how vulnerable school districts are for, obvious reasons we won't go into, for political reasons. But, even from a security perspective, I'm curious if there's any kind of, maybe, favorite example that you have of a partner, customer, through the channel in education that has really been able to facilitate a digital business transformation with the under pending of security, security transformation. >> I actually was just in a partner meeting, and we were talking about that very topic. And they had established with a, one of the top five largest school districts in the United States. A, you know, a fully deployed wireless mesh network. That they, once that was deployed, then they really were able to underpin it with, you know, the fortigate, fortios, and really be able to deliver the security posture back through that wireless infrastructure. You know, you make a really good point. We're seeing more and more internet connected devices. A lot of those internet connected devices are very low end in terms of their overall price point. And so these organizations, they're not necessarily pushing out vulnerabilities to it. And in patches in remediation. And that's why IOT security is so important in that kind of K through 12 example, right. Leveraging fortios, connecting to both land and wireless land capabilities, and it really, that's a great use case of how the fabric can impact a customer. >> So as you imagine the world of partnership in a play in the future, will they be more purveyors of hardware, purveyors of software, purveyors of services? How do you think the ecosystem's going to evolve as Fortinet expands it's footprint? >> Sure. That's a really good question. And quite frankly, I spend a lot of my time thinking about that. I feel, I truly feel like we have an obligation and a responsibility to help our partners through this digital transformation into where we think things are going to go. Things are moving towards security as a service. Things are moving towards, you know, on demand, you know, pay as you go, consumption modeling, right. And we have to put our partners in a situation to be able to deliver some goods and services to our customer based the way they want to buy, and make sure that they're driving value after the transaction. Because, you know, selling to the transaction is probably going to be a dying, you know, breed. It's really important that partners have the capabilities to install, deploy and support on the ongoing basis, in which is really becoming a best practice in the security space. >> And one of the other things about digital business is that historically businesses have been aligned by the arrangement of their assets so you can look at a transportation company and say, oh, that company is transportation assets, or financial services company and say, oh, that company is financial services assets. But digital business starts changing that. Because when you bring programmability and digital orientation to a lot of these assets, you reduce the specificity of those assets which increases mobility across businesses. >> That's right. >> How do you think the opportunity of helping partners transform in this business way is going to increase the noise or complexity or the interconnectedness and the potential conflicts within partners, as they go after? As their expertise, and their relationships becomes more fungible. >> That's a, I mean, that's really good point. We deal and we want to ensure that we've got a programmatic way to handle, you know, channel conflicts. Right, I mean at the end of the day. Partner brings us >> But also channel opportunity >> And channel opportunity, that's right. You know, so it's really about being consistent in how you treat, you know, the partner community and having really set rules. But, you know, digital transformation, if anything else, the thing that makes Fortinet so unique, is we are an engineering company. Security is very complicated. And the good news is that the heart of what we do is technology. The feedback we continue to get from our partners is that our technology is second to none. So we win on the technology side. And now with the momentum that we're seeing with the, you know, the fabric or the alliance programs, the momentum that we're seeing in the marketplace, and really kind of being prepared for this shift of technology by introducing the fabric concept. You know, we're really excited about the opportunity for our partners and the role they're going to play in the coming years. >> So as we kind of, you know, wrap things up here. I'll go back to where we started off with John and talking about the strength and numbers. And some things that I wrote down that I think Patrice shared this morning. Nearly 18,000 new customers acquired in 2017. >> That's right. >> What are your, as the channel chief. What are your hopes and dreams for what that number will look like at the end, by the end of 2018? >> You know, at the end of the day, I want to be able to drive and enable to channel organization to go take advantage of the tailwinds in the market, right. We want to go, continue to drive market share in the S&B, that's going to be partner-led. We want to go expand in the fabric, you know, within the mid-market. And we want to be very opportunistic in the enterprise, to go knock down some of the largest logos. You know, I'm mostly, the opportunity we have in the U.S. alone is really quite significant. And we're really excited to see, you know, as, you know, we just exceed the half a billion dollar mark in Q4 for the first time as a company, and so as we start, you know, planning in future quarters. It's really exciting to be a part of the momentum we have here at Fortinet. >> And I think the momentum is tangible. You can feel it here. You can hear it behind us in the expo. So >> It's quite exciting. >> We thank you so much John for stopping by to keep sharing >> Thank you. Thanks for having us. >> Absolutely. Sharing your insights and how the, I'm feeling another tagline with the fabric of our lives, but I think somebody else beat you guys to it. Cotton maybe? Anyway, thanks so much John for sharing what's going on in the channel and we wish you a great show. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> And for my co-host, Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching the Cube live from Fortinet Accelerate 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back. (light techno music)

>> Hey. Welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here, with The Cube. We're in Denver, Colorado at the Airworks show, put on by DJI, and who knew that we would fly, like a thousand miles to see the keynote speaker, guest speakers, the Menlo Park Fire Department, real close to us in Palo Alto, So, we're excited to have them here, and, also, to learn about the practical applications of drone technology for public safety. So, we're joined by Michael Ralston, he runs the Crisis Response and Innovation in Technology Practice Initiative at Menlo Park Fires. So, Michael, great to see you. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me here, Jeff. >> Absolutely. You're obviously here on the invitation of DJI so you guys must be doing some pretty interesting things. Not only with drones, but really looking at a broader technology suite of things that you guys can bring to bare, to save lives and put out fires. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. We're excited to be here, and the thing about DJI is that we've been working with them for years. We've been getting into the whole concept of using drones and using technology in crisis response. And so, it's all coming together right at the right time. We're excited about the announcements that are going on here because it really represents a culmination of what we've been trying to do. >> Right. But still, you're a real customer, and I thought it was interesting. The first part of the story was you guys decided to get drones and use them, you got one, and then it sat on the shelf for two years. Right? I mean, it's just not as easy, and then I think the other really important message that came out of your talk was, you kept kind of stumbling on to all these new requirements. Insurance, training, certifications. So, it wasn't easy, but that was years ago. And now, you guys are really leading the charge in using this technology. >> There is many, many people in the country who are all uncovering this Van Gogh at the same time. And so, what we really try to do, and try to bring across in our program is that it's not all about us and we're not necessarily the leaders. We may be one of the ones who are leading the charge, but what we've discovered over the years, over the years in our term, right? Which is really months. Is that that initial foundation stage, getting the drone and having it sitting there, we discovered quite a bit. We discovered that you have to do this first. Oh, wait. You got to do this first, you got to do this. And once we got to that point, where we had the right regulatory and political, community support, then we got into this growth stage. This is an exciting time. It was a transition point where now we're starting to ... Things are moving faster, we're starting to learn. We got out of middle school, we're now in high school. But that growth phase, that was... As exciting as it was, we started doing more and more missions. Use whichever cliche you want. "Two steps forward, one step back," whatever. We discovered that there's an ecosystem out there. This ecosystem is bigger than we are, and involves all kinds of other critical elements that have to be put in place and have to be developed, have to get deep. Things that are beyond our expertise, things such as logistics, such as training or support, or other regulatory elements. All those things, and technology, obviously. As we learned about this ecosystem, we started to realize that that's what's going to make all this work. It's not just us, we're like a start-up company. We're like a technology start-up company, within the fire district. But we realized, like any start-up company, that market has to be made. And so, we've spent a lot of time, a lot of effort putting together things, bringing people together, saying... People listen to us, we're the fire department. It's kind of fun to hangout with us, or we like to think so, but... >> It is (laughs). >> But, what that means is we say, "Hey, why don't we get everybody together, and let's have a conversation together." And, it's that symbiosis. It's that synergy, energy coming together, that new links, new networks are formed, and people start to realize, "Oh wow. You're doing that? We're doing that, too. Let's work together." And, we just stand by and go, "This is awesome," because it gets us to where we want to be, which is saving lives, obviously. >> It's interesting because you showed a symposium that you put on at Slack, again not only the ecosystem to enable you, but then you guys took a real active role then in passing that knowledge on to other departments and other institutions. Wondering if you can explain a little bit, how did that come together? How well was it received? And is that now part of an ongoing thing that you guys are going to continue to support. >> Well, brief answer. Absolutely, it's an ongoing thing. It's an ongoing thing beyond just drones, so we're calling it Technology Symposium. Meaning, we started to realize that there's all kinds of inventive technology. My program, Crisis Response, Innovation, and Technology is how do we go and leverage... make use of all the things we can put into the fire service to help us do what we do. Now, specifically to your question, this symposium. We had all these folks there together, and it was great. It was very well received and a lot of people came up to us afterwards saying, "I'm so glad you did this." And, it was because everyone thought it should be done. We are blessed by the fact of where we are, or geographically speaking. And, by the fact that when we do knock on people's doors they tend to answer, they're excited to go and participate. So, we're good at hosting a party. But we were hosting a party, that's what it was. We contributed what we knew, which was, "Hey, we're trying to climb this mountain, and we took this path." But there's lots of other people who have just as important programs, and they've learned a lot of other things we haven't learned because they took this path. Let's get them all together, and the only way we can get to the mountain top together is to share that information. >> Give us some specific examples of things that you guys do with drones that you could not do before that have been some of the really... Like, "Wow," "A-ha" moments when you deploy these things. >> How much time do you go? >> Give me your top couple, we've got time. You're the fire department, we got time. Nothing's burning, they are running drones back there. You could probably hear them in the background. >> There's quite a bit. The first place that I would start is we are the fire department and we do regular fire department things. We put out fires, we go to auto accidents, we go to medical things. All those things that we do can come up with a use case for a drone because when you think about it, as Chief Calvert mentioned earlier on in our presentation, our fire district, like any other fire department around the country, around the world, we protect life, we protect property, we protect the environment, right? Well, but when you think about, "What can a drone do?" "What can technology do, in general?" It can do three main things, right? And, these are critical things to us. One, is provide more safety. One, is provide better situational awareness, two. And three is, of course, better response time. Well, response time, situational awareness, and safety, that applies to medical calls, applies to car accidents, applies to fire. A more specific example is, you have a fire, and, conceptually, we live... I don't know what the traffic is like where-- >> I live right by you, in Palo Alto. So, it's not good (laughs). >> Picture yourself needing the fire department to get there, you call 911 and there's traffic. Now, lights and sirens are going to let people know, but you can't go anywhere if you're in a traffic jam. We face the same challenge. What if a drone could go straight over head, line of sight, and get there. Now, in some cases, that's life saving stuff. Bring an AED. An AED is a defibrillator. >> Right. >> That's one way that you can actually make use of a drone to get life-saving stuff there faster. Or, what happens if someone calls 911, it's a car accident, because you're supposed to do that, but it's a minor accident. Well, it's safer for us to drive code two, what we call.. You know, to drive without lights and sirens, just to go there and check it out, but it's not an emergency. It's safer for the citizens, it's safer for us. Send a drone there, you see right away that this is a fender bender, off to the side of the road, go there to check it out, but don't go lights and sirens. It's safer for them, it's safer for us. Or, "Hey, this is a fire. It's getting bigger and bigger." Not just send one engine, but send the calvary. So, another example is situational awareness. If you're on scene somewhere, if you think about it... And, you know, for those of us who are parents out there, we know what it's like to run a zone defense on your kids. You're processing a lot of things at once. Well, the act of a battalion chief or incident commander on scene of a fire or of a large incident, it's chaos. There's a lot of stuff going through that person's mind. He or she has to remain focused on their mission, but also take in a lot of information. And they're constantly looking around, they're constantly moving. What if, they had eyes in the sky. What if, instead of them having to walk around the building to get a 360 view, they had a screen here, and you have a drone that's just circling. It would provide tremendous amount of information for them. That'd be a game changer. >> Yeah, and it really came up in the keynote, too, about having someone who's trained, looking at the picture, who knows what to look for. What are the key signs they want to check out. So, again, really invaluable service. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. Well, very exciting times, and congrats for being highlighted, and keep doing the great work that you do. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> All right. He's Michael Ralston, I'm Jeff Rick. From Menlo Fire, I'm from The Cube. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.

>> Voiceover: Live from San Francisco, it's The Cube covering DevNet Create 2017, brought to you by Cisco. >> Welcome back everyone. We're live here in San Francisco, The Cube's exclusive coverage of Cisco's inaugural event DevNet Create. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE. My cohost Peter Burris, general manager of wikibon.com research. Next guest is Damon Edwards, co-founder of Rundeck. He's been on the crowd chats and does event DevOps and the enterprise, the content chair, co-founder of Rundeck, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you. >> Great to meet you. >> First and we've >> Good to be here. been in line chatting away. Quick though from you, Cisco getting into DevOps, the conversation's pretty straight forward. We think it's awesome that they're doing this. >> Damon: Yeah. >> Good direction, right in line with DevOps, things looking good, middle of the fairway. What do you do next? >> Damon: Yeah, I mean ... >> Where does Cisco take the ball from here and take it home? >> You know, I think it's just more of the same. I think that you can't underestimate the split that's happened in the DevOps have and have nots, that sounds kind of odd, but a lot that we talk about are the unicorns, the high flying special built organizations that really grew up with this in the last five to 10 years. I think where Cisco really plays is in the other 99% of commerce of the world, which is the core classic enterprises. DevOps really hasn't made that deep of a dent yet into that, I guess we call it dark IT, right? The rest of the world the people have to deal with 30 years of, in some places, different technology, skills, acquisitions, mismatches, all the legacy, all the bureaucracy of large organizations, and Cisco has a path into that and a voice of authority into that. So happy to see they're putting such emphasis on these DevOps and Agile ideas and help to drive them into that. >> And they got the app dynamics things going down too, that big acquisition. Their slogan is Where Apps Meet Infrastructure. We always just talk about infrastructure as code. They're talking about programmable networking, which is the same thing. We want more programmable. >> Damon: Right. So how do they make that transition to this new operational model? I mean, networks used to be very fragile, set in stone. >> Damon: Yeah. Someone used to joke, "Hey, they're called NoOps," because they would say no to everything from a developer standpoint. >> Damon: Sure. >> How do they transition from NoOps to a new operational model that's agile and adding value? >> The bigger issue here is that Ops is getting squeezed, right, so it's an existential crisis for them. The reason why they were always the no folks is because they're always spending their time protecting that capacity because they're overrun, they're always outnumbered, first of all, then they're being overrun with all these tickets of new stuff coming in plus incidents happening in the middle, the capacity has always been an issue. Now with this new DevOps, and really digital transformation inspired pressure, it's go, go, go faster, open things up. At the same time the same business folks are saying from the other direction lock things down, don't be the next hack. Don't be the next breach. Don't be the next major outage, right? >> John: It's really a lot of pressure It's a pressure cooker. >> Right. >> So they're squeezed. So the biggest with crisis, how do we relieve that, how do we relieve that pressure? And the key technique is to be able to actually allow other people to participate in what traditionally was only operations tasks. If you allow me to go one step ... >> John: Democratization of operations in a way. >> It is, and what they're doing, you see the organizations that really nailed this, they're dividing up the idea of an operations procedure. It used to be everything was in operations. You defined it, you ran it, and you have all security and management audit control over it. In these new ways what they're doing is they're breaking it up into three pieces to say the ability to define these automated procedures, the ability to execute them, and the ability to have that management control and oversight, let's make those in three discrete parts and let's move that to where the labor capacity makes the most sense. By doing that, operations can free up those bottlenecks, start to decouple more, allow the rest of the organization to move a lot quicker and not be in that horrible position of being squeezed to death and having to tell everybody no. >> There's a number of reasons why it's happening. Sorry. One of the key ones is that, and it brings us back to the Cisco conversation we're asking about this, is that is used to be that operations was tied to a particular asset. The server more often than not. And so a single individual could pool all those things together because a single individual, or single group, had control over virtually all the resources >> Damon: Right. >> that were a part of that. Now we're talking about applications that are inherently distributed, and so we can't look at the process of operations in the same way. This comes back to Cisco. Does the world need to think more discreetly about these new highly distributed, deeply distributed, applications differently, and is that going to catalyze the diffusion of more of these high quality DevOps principals? What do you think? >> Yeah, it has to. If you look at the business driver, which is this digital transformation, a lot of people scoff at because it's like wait, is this 1999? You need a website? What are we talking about, right? But you realize what it is is saying all these disparate systems we used to have, right. I could get my cable bill, but it's just online, it's just a PDF of what they send to the printers, right. But now on it, everything I could do when I call up the customer service agent, I want to do it through my phone or I want to do it on my laptop, and that means all those formerly distinct systems that lived in different windows on a customer service agents desktop and after the little things to check the router status blew up, well I'll just talk past it, right. But now it's really going to matter in this digital world. The business is driving that integration, so where things don't live in isolation anymore, and because of that the complexity and this distributed nature of these services is rising. >> John: Yeah. >> And when that that happens, that makes the operations inherently more difficult and just contributes to that squeeze even more and we got to find a way to relieve that. >> Great point and great analysis. That just picked off what we were talking about on our intro package of the redefinition of what a full stacked developer is. >> Damon: Yeah. >> Now full stack implies you're talking about a distributed application model where there's no isolation anymore so you could almost argue that that's going to be obsolete. It's a full horizontal developer. >> Well logic used to be full stack, but how they connect will be different. >> Which just brings up the notion of, okay, things were in isolation >> Right. >> built to the database, now I go down the network, now a whole new developer category potentially is emerging. Do you feel the same way? >> Damon: Yeah. >> I mean, we're speculating. We don't actually know. >> Sure. I mean, if you are Netflix, who prides itself on it's ability to go out, pay top of market, which means they are the top of market, and attract the best talent, only one can win that game. For everybody else in the world, this idea of we're going to have these polyglot, super human, I-know-everything engineers, it's never going to happen. We have to find a way to use our systems and our processes to allow that kind of integration to happen, and allow those people to define the control procedures and policies for the things that they know about, and then allow that all to integrate to where then we can have other folks operate it and run it. Again, that idea of moving those part around to where we can best take advantage of the labor, otherwise you're just ... You're never going to find it. Go to any conference, NASA DevOps Conference, and ask people how many LinkedIn spam messages do you get a day because the word DevOps is in your profile? >> Yeah. >> Everybody just laughs because it's dozens. You're never going to have that idea so you have to build the systems to recreate that full stack capability. >> And have people that have access to be one, rather than super human that becomes democratized at that level. >> Damon: Yeah. >> It's interesting. One of the things that you guys did at the DevOps Enterprise Summit, I know you were in the content chair. >> Damon: Sure. >> I made a note here for my ... Make sure I get this question to you, was I like this thing you guys touched upon. Is DevOps best left to grow organically or is there a growing need slash desire for an agile manifesto? (laughs) The top down, do the manifesto, or organic ... Thoughts? >> Yeah, I'd say no, because what DevOps is is a series of problem state- It's an umbrella over a bunch of problem statements and a bunch of solutions that keeps evolving. This is why the Devs conferences are so interesting because it's practitioners talking about what's worked for them. I feel like at the highest level, if you really need to have a definition, go ahead and read the Phoenix project or the DevOps handbook. They've done a great job of collating all of that, but at the end of the day it's not one thing. It's not a single practice. There's no single thing you can do to say I'm going to transform a major global financial services company into a fast, nimble operation. There is no one thing. It's a series of things that you have to try over and over again. Look at DevOps as a movement where you can learn from practitioners, apply it to your own organization, see what happens, report back, try some new stuff, and so on and so forth. >> So you could basically have a manifesto, but it's really just more of marching orders. Organically, it has to form on its own. That's basically the same. >> I think there already is. >> You could say hey we have a manifesto, but it's not like this is the playbook. You can get >> Damon: There is >> the handbook to learn. >> no playbook. >> Exactly. Okay, cool. Well, appreciate the insight. Let's talk about your business. What do you guys do? >> Damon: Sure. >> What are some of the things that Rundeck's doing that you're the co-founder of? Share a little bit about the company. >> Yeah, Rundeck is at the what is it, it's an orchestration and scheduling platform and it's used by operations organizations. Generally from large startups, but also large DevBox unicorns, but also a lot of large enterprises. What they're using it for is for defining and improving their operations procedures. What happens after deployment? Where do we define all the procedures to manage all these disparate systems, all these islands of automation. Chef and Puppet was the hottest thing around three years ago and now it's Docker and Kubernetes and everything else, and now we still have our old power shelf stuff, our late logic over there, some OpSquare stuff over there, so what are we going to do? We need a way to define the procedures, expand all those and allow people to participate in that operations world so they can relieve that crunch. We see a lot for automating the creative standard operating procedures like classic Runbook automation, with a next generation twist, we'll say, but we also see a lot of self service operations, meaning that let's let other people participate. Let's let developers define these procedures as Rundeck jobs, and then let operations vet them ... >> That's where you're talking about the operational being relieved a bit. >> Yeah, you have to. You can't just say there's one little group here that's going to deploy and run all of these things in this world. We have to let other people participate in that. Not just for deployment, which is big in the DevOps world, but for what happens after deployment that nobody wants to talk about. All the escalations, all the interruptions, all those problems, Rundeck really plays in that area help people to get that under control. >> Damon, thanks so much for sharing your insight. Congratulations on your startup and great to meet you in person. >> Yeah. >> We've had great chats in our crowd chat. You guys have been awesome with Gene Kim and the community that you're involved with with DevOps for the Enterprise Summit, practitioners sharing. That's a great ethos >> Damon: It's a pretty >> That really aligns >> awesome bet, yeah. >> with what's going on in the industry. Congratulations. More Cube coverage here exclusive of Cisco's inaugural event called DevNet Create, an extension of their DevNet core classic network and developer systems at Cisco. This is an open source one. This is out in the community. Not all Cisco, all part of the community. And of course we're bringing it to you with live coverage. I'm John for Peter Burris. Stay with us. (upbeat music) >> Hi. I'm April Mitchell, and I'm the senior director ...

(orchestra music) >> Man: Live from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, it's the Cube, covering IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit, Spring 2017, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Rick here at the Cube. We're in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit Spring 2017. It's a mouthful, but it's an ongoing series you know, it's not just one show. They're doing them on the east coast, west coast, and starting to take it all over the world. Really, a community of chief data officers coming together with the likes of their own, talking about common issues, best practices. And of course, IBM's got something to offer as well. So, we're excited to have our next guest, Ken Jacquier here. He's the Information Governance Practice from IBM. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> So, what have you been hearing in the hallways outside of the sessions? What's kind of the hot buzz topic? >> Well, actually everybody's pretty much talking about what came up in the sessions, it's all about the talent. How do these Chief Data Officers get the talent that they need to meet the mandate they've been given? >> It's not just automatically just like connect the data, via some APIs and the magic happens (laughs). >> Sometimes the people part is the hardest part. The technology's important, the machine learning is great, the algorithms are amazing, but it does come down to people. And there's some new skill sets that these chief data >> officers need in their people, so that's what they're talking about. >> So when you think about the talent, what kinds of jobs are talking about? We know the CDO job. >> Ken: Yeah. >> What kind of jobs are now underneath the CDO that are going to help the CDO get their job done? >> Yeah, absolutely. You've got the classic data scientist role that we are all talking about, we're all excited about because that can monetize the data. That's what gets the board's attention. So there's a lot of focus there. But a term that came up in the last session that I was in that I really liked was the data translator. And the point there was data scientists can be schooled in certain things, understand their algorithms, understand machine learning, but this really important skill set they're looking for is the data translator. >> So the business is looking to drive outcomes. The chief marking officer may have an objective. >> The vice president of sales has an objective. Supply chain needs to optimize. Who is the data translator that can get from this deep, difficult, often dirty data and translate it into what the business is trying to accomplish? It's a really cool role. >> Yeah, we've actually heard about this role pretty frequently, this concept very frequently when you come right down to it. And a lot of it pertains to who is in a position to understand data quality, how data transformation works, so that the outcome in fact is what's expected as opposed to just a consequence data wrong. >> Exactly. Two examples of that that I've heard today in the initial keynote session, it came up, that in this renaissance of data, we're going to look for people to bring the left side of their brain together and the right side of their brain together. In the last session, of the ladies at a large international bank, the chief data officer there, she said, "for me, honestly, even though this is difficult, "it's not about IQ, it's about EQ." I've got to have the people that can collaborate. I've got to have the people that can communicate both with the business and with the IT side. I mean, we all know that story, right. Such a challenge to pull IT and business together, >> but data is really forcing individually talented people to actually do that wherever they reside in the org chart. >> If you're the embed, you're the embed person from the CEO office working with that business unit, you've got to listen, you've got to convince them that you can help them, so it is really a softer skill. You know, the Da Vinci word has come up a couple of times. And what made Da Vinci so amazing is he had the science, but he also had the art, and the two are very, very connected. >> Exactly what we were talking about, exactly. And the listening skill is incredibly important as well. I mean a lot of times, there's so much emphasis in communication on getting your perspective out there. A lot of times in these situations, you're trying to express your view. Way underestimated skill, listening, how important that is for this stuff to work. >> So, your formal title is Information Governance Practice? >> Ken: Yes. >> Now, governance means a lot of things to a lot of people, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but from my >> perspective, it means how are you going to ensure, put in place rules and mechanisms and methods to ensure that works get done around a particular set of issues. So, when we talk about talent, we talk about creativity, we also can talk about governance so that we in fact get the right set of practices put in place, so not that it >> runs by itself, but it runs at a high quality. >> So one of the things that you're doing with clients, to try to take talent and rules and turn it into an actual function that does (mumbles) business values. >> Yeah, it's a great question. So again, and if anybody's listening to this and they're talking about careers, or they're thinking about work coming up, or you're coming out of college, and you're like what would I want to do, think about this conversation we're having and the opportunity here. So, you just described I've got to drive business agility, and I've got to mitigate risk. Those sound like conflicting objectives. They can't be anymore. The talent has to come in. And what we're trying to help companies with is how do you build both a culture, but then also how do you bring in talent that can be excited, and creative, and innovative to drive that business agility, but respects the fact that if we don't take care of this data, important people can get in trouble. If we don't take care of this data, our clients can be in trouble, and our credibility can be damaged. But that has to be handled in tandem. It can't be two separate functions. In the past, a lot of times, we did have maybe an EIM organization that does the institutional, keep the data quality clean, and then there were innovation teams over here playing around building the new business model acquiring companies. In this new world, all this data's coming together, and you've got to be able to develop. So the word we like to use nowadays with our clients is the appropriate governments. With your financial data, you're still going to have that locked down. You're still going to have all those policies, all those business rules. That's got to be in place. But then, there's certain data that we can maybe not manage quite as tightly. We can create a landing zone where we brought in external data or third party data, and we can let marketing have a little more freedom with that. And we can be a little more creative and innovative and I don't think they have to be opposite perspectives. If they have the right architecture and the right processes, and the right governance, you can do both. >> Is it easy for someone who's had the lockdown governance for so long to start to open up their mind and think about ways that they can open it? Or does it have to come from an external point of view that looks at it from a different lens and isn't kind of locked down by the old paradigm? >> Yeah, that's a great question. And there were three R's that came up in the meeting today in terms of talent. It was recruit. So to your point, to some degree, we're going to have to recruit new folks with new paradigms. A lot of conversation in there about what an incredible opportunity for the millennials and the newer folks in the workforce if they don't have those paradigms. On the other hand, we have to still >> retain deep institutional knowledge of our data. So that might mean retraining existing skill sets, people that really know our databases, that really know where the most important data lives, but retrain them a little bit for this new environment. And then the third R was retain. So as we build these hybrid skill sets, people that are good on the business side, good on the IT side, we make that investment. How does an organization, how does a company retrain them? And for the HR professionals out there, for the senior VPs of HR, that's where you come in. You need to help these companies write job descriptions, build career paths, show people that they can work in these environments and still grow, both financially, professional, and career wise. Does that make sense? >> That makes a ton of sense, interesting challenge. I just interviewed a millennial speaker at the Professional Businesswoman's Conference, and he just flat out said, the new paradigm from his point of view as a 26 year old, is most people aren't staying on the job for more than six years. It's almost kind of built in life sabbatical every couple three or four years. So, the retention challenge is very difficult and for that generation, so much it's kind of the purposefulness. And if you can get the purposefulness in, big motivator behavior. >> Purposefulness, being a part of something bigger. >> So that's where this balance can come in. If I'm working to appropriately govern my financial data, but I'm also given an opportunity to work with the acquisitions team that's bringing an international flavor into my company, that can give that younger person a little bit of both, and help with that retention. >> One of the challenges though when we think about governance is to ensure as you said, that the rules were appropriate. >> Ken: Yes. >> One of the other things we've heard here and we certainly know about is data as an asset is different than other assets, in that it's not following the economic scarcity because it's so easy to copy, share, combine, recombine, everything else. >> Ken: Very good point. >> As you think about combining those two things, that appropriateness of data governance for financial data is different from the appropriateness of data governance for marketing data, when you combine them, which appropriateness wins? >> (laughing) >> That's a good question. So, ultimately-- >> Do we have an answer? Is that something we're discovering, is that one of the things that we need to better understand over time? What do you think? >> Yeah I do. And you used the keyword, understand. >> So, a very old terminology in our space is data profiling, of truly understanding your data and understanding where everything lives. That's never been more important than it is today. The right amount of tagging in your data links. So to do what you just described. The answer lies within truly understanding and inventorying what you have, and then you have at least an opportunity to strike that balance. But a lot of folks are skipping that step. So just moving data, they're replicating data, >> they're populating their data links in the Hadoop systems. You've got to have governance even that environment. >> Oh absolutely. And we're seeing that being one of the greatest challenges as people try to put together these analytic pipelines. Is to ensure that there's appropriate governance at each stage in the pipeline to ensure that the outcomes are both what they expected. They can be surprised, but at least it's relevant. And that they themselves are not breaking any laws or rules, or ethical or otherwise, associated with how the data gets used. >> I'd like your economic analogy, because I think that's what customers need to do, and that's what I try to help them with. >> Depending on what their business model is, they're going to understand some concept of a supply chain. But likely they don't understand what you just said, the concept of an information supply chain. So rather than try to explain it in geek speak, with IBM tooling, or all the things we typically do, I encourage customers to think about their perception of a supply chain. How does something move from a raw material to a sold product in their industry, whether it's finance, or whether they're building airplanes or whatever >> they're doing? And then, the customer can start to relate. Okay, my data's doing the same thing isn't it? And oh, I need to start thinking, I get that, my engineering brain and my process, and I have roles in the company. I have (mumbles) that their job is to work on my supply chain out in the factory, you're saying apply those types of approaches to a supply chain for data, what you just described. And once that light bulb starts to go off, there's an opportunity to do what you just said. >> Absolutely, in fact, we specifically talk to our clients about the notion first of, the role of data, first of all, data as an asset. In other words, something that has a consequential impact on a set of activities so you can put it into with other things in supply chain. But we also talk about the value chain. The role the data plays in the value chain. Whatever metaphor, both of those concepts are not broadly understood. Because data is so sharable, is so easily copied, too frequently, people say uh, it's really not an asset. Until they start making the wrong decision widely and repeatedly. So they have to think about it as an asset, they have to think about it as a value chain, and that's where the governance becomes so crucial. It's because if you're not putting in place good governance for your value chains, then you're not creating any value pretty quickly. >> And it's interesting if we think about it. So, data's an asset. Marketing people, software companies have been using that term for a long time. But now that we're at this stage and we have chief data officers, at the C-level folks reporting into the board that have this responsibility. So now the concept's a little better understood. So now the next step is what does that mean? What do I do with my typical assets? What do I do with my human resources assets? If I manage a fleet, what do I do with that fleet? So if something's truly an asset, what do I do? What do I do with it on the general ledger? What do I do from a staffing perspective? Where does it fit into to my overall operating model? And that's kind of what we're seeing unfold here. At an event like this, that's the level of conversation that's starting to happen. Not that it's a marketing buzzword anymore, but if it's true, organizationally, what have I done with other assets? Does that apply to my data as well if I'm using that statement? >> Alright, Ken, we're going to have to leave it there. I know you've got to run off to a session, but thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. >> Thanks gentlemen. >> Alright, he's Ken. Peter, Jeff, you're watching the Cube at the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit 2017. Thanks for watching. (easy listening music) (percussive music)