>> Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell theCUBE privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly, we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges. And there's a little doubt we're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. While security in the public cloud is certainly world class, the result of multicloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. And at the end of the day, more, not less, . But there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy, industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today, there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but is becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection people, technologies and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello, and welcome to "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into theCUBE two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. Jeff Boudreau is the President and General Manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG, and he's going to share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're going to ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now, Jeff is going to be joined by Travis Vigil. Travis is the Senior Vice-President of Product Management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's going to give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also going to challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. (upbeat music) We're here with Jeff Boudreau and Travis Vigil, and we're going to dig into the details about Dell's big data protection announcement. Guys, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Good to see you. Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. Alright, let's start off Jeff, with the high level. You know, I'd like to talk about the customer, what challenges they're facing? You're talking to customers all the time. What are they telling you? >> Sure, as you know, we spend a lot of time with our customers, specifically listening, learning, understanding their use cases, their pain points within their specific environments. They tell us a lot. No surprise to any of us that data is a key theme that they talk about. It's one of their most important assets. They need to extract more value from that data to fuel their business models, their innovation engines, their competitive edge. So, they need to make sure that that data is accessible, it's secure and its recoverable, especially in today's world with the increased cyber attacks. >> Okay, so maybe we could get into some of those challenges. I mean, when you talk about things like data sprawl, what do you mean by that? What should people know? >> Sure, so for those big three themes, I'd say, you have data sprawl, which is the big one, which is all about the massive amounts of data. It's the growth of that data, which is growing at unprecedented rates. It's the gravity of that data and the reality of the multicloud sprawl. So stuff is just everywhere, right? Which increases that surface as attack space for cyber criminals. >> And by gravity, you mean the data's there and people don't want to move it. >> It's everywhere, right? And so when it lands someplace, think Edge, Core or Cloud, it's there. And it's something we have to help our customers with. >> Okay, so it's nuanced 'cause complexity has other layers. What are those layers? >> Sure. When we talk to our customers, they tell us complexity is one of their big themes. And specifically it's around data complexity. We talked about that growth and gravity of the data. We talk about multicloud complexity and we talk about multicloud sprawl. So multiple vendors, multiple contracts, multiple tool chains, and none of those work together in this multicloud world. Then that drives their security complexity. So, we talk about that increased attack surface. But this really drives a lot of operational complexity for their teams. Think about we're lacking consistency through everything. So people, process, tools, all that stuff, which is really wasting time and money for our customers. >> So, how does that affect the cyber strategies and the, I mean, I've often said the Cisco, now they have this shared responsibility model. They have to do that across multiple clouds. Every cloud has its own security policies and frameworks and syntax. So, maybe you could double click on your perspective on that. >> Sure. I'd say the big challenge customers have seen, it's really inadequate cyber resiliency and specifically, they're feeling very exposed. And today as the world with cyber attacks being more and more sophisticated, if something goes wrong, it is a real challenge for them to get back up and running quickly. And that's why this is such a big topic for CEOs and businesses around the world. You know, it's funny. I said this in my open. I think that prior to the pandemic businesses were optimized for efficiency, and now they're like, "Wow, we have to actually put some headroom into the system to be more resilient." You know, are you hearing that? >> Yeah, we absolutely are. I mean, the customers really, they're asking us for help, right? It's one of the big things we're learning and hearing from them. And it's really about three things. One's about simplifying IT. Two, it's really helping them to extract more value from their data. And then the third big piece is ensuring their data is protected and recoverable regardless of where it is going back to that data gravity and that very, you know, the multicloud world. Just recently, I don't know if you've seen it, but the Global Data Protected, excuse me, the Global Data Protection Index. >> GDPI. >> Yes. Jesus. >> Not to be confused with GDPR. >> Actually, that was released today and confirms everything we just talked about around customer challenges. But also it highlights at an importance of having a very cyber, a robust cyber resilient data protection strategy. >> Yeah, I haven't seen the latest, but I want to dig into it. I think this, I've done this many, many years in a row. I'd like to look at the time series and see how things have changed. All right. At a high level, Jeff, can you kind of address why Dell, from your point of view is best suited? >> Sure. So, we believe there's a better way or a better approach on how to handle this. We think Dell is uniquely positioned to help our customers as a one stop shop, if you will, for that cyber resilient multicloud data protection solution and needs. We take a modern, a simple and resilient approach. >> What does that mean? What do you mean by modern? >> Sure. So modern, we talk about our software defined architecture. Right? It's really designed to meet the needs not only of today, but really into the future. And we protect data across any cloud and any workload. So, we have a proven track record doing this today. We have more than 1,700 customers that trust us to protect more than 14 exabytes of their data in the cloud today. >> Okay, so you said modern, simple and resilient. What do you mean by simple? >> Sure. We want to provide simplicity everywhere, going back to helping with the complexity challenge. And that's from deployment to consumption, to management and support. So, our offers will deploy in minutes. They are easy to operate and use, and we support flexible consumption models for whatever the customer may desire. So, traditional subscription or as a service. >> And when you talk about resilient, I mean, I put forth that premise, but it's hard because people say, "Well, that's going to cost us more. Well, it may, but you're going to also reduce your risk." So, what's your point of view on resilience? >> Yeah, I think it's something all customers need. So, we're going to be providing a comprehensive and resilient portfolio of cyber solutions that are secure by design. And we have some unique capabilities and a combination of things like built in immutability, physical and logical isolation. We have intelligence built in with AI part recovery. And just one, I guess fun fact for everybody is we have, our cyber vault is the only solution in the industry that is endorsed by Sheltered Harbor that meets all the needs of the financial sector. >> So it's interesting when you think about the NIST framework for cybersecurity. It's all about about layers. You're sort of bringing that now to data protection. >> Jeff: Correct. Yeah. >> All right. In a minute, we're going to come back with Travis and dig into the news. We're going to take a short break. Keep it right there. (upbeat music) (upbeat adventurous music) Okay, we're back with Jeff and Travis Vigil to dig deeper into the news. Guys, again, good to see you. Travis, if you could, maybe you, before we get into the news, can you set the business context for us? What's going on out there? >> Yeah. Thanks for that question, Dave. To set a little bit of the context, when you look at the data protection market, Dell has been a leader in providing solutions to customers for going on nearly two decades now. We have tens of thousands of people using our appliances. We have multiple thousands of people using our latest modern, simple PowerProtect Data Manager Software. And as Jeff mentioned, we have, 1,700 customers protecting 14 exabytes of data in the public clouds today. And that foundation gives us a unique vantage point. We talked to a lot of customers and they're really telling us three things. They want simple solutions. They want us to help them modernize. And they want us to add as the highest priority, maintain that high degree of resiliency that they expect from our data protection solutions. So, that's the backdrop to the news today. And as we go through the news, I think you'll agree that each of these announcements deliver on those pillars. And in particular, today we're announcing the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance. We are announcing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery Enhancements, and we are announcing enhancements to our APEX Data Storage Services. >> Okay, so three pieces. Let's dig to that. It's interesting, appliance, everybody wants software, but then you talk to customers and they're like, "Well, we actually want appliances because we just want to put it in and it works." >> Travis: (laughs) Right. >> It performs great. So, what do we need to know about the appliance? What's the news there? >> Well, you know, part of the reason I gave you some of those stats to begin with is that we have this strong foundation of experience, but also intellectual property components that we've taken that have been battle tested in the market. And we've put them together in a new simple, integrated appliance that really combines the best of the target appliance capabilities we have with that modern, simple software. And we've integrated it from the, you know, sort of taking all of those pieces, putting them together in a simple, easy to use and easy to scale interface for customers. >> So, the premise that I've been putting forth for months now, probably well over a year, is that data protection is becoming an extension of your cybersecurity strategies. So, I'm interested in your perspective on cyber recovery. Your specific news that you have there. >> Yeah, you know, we are in addition to simplifying things via the appliance, we are providing solutions for customers no matter where they're deploying. And cyber recovery, especially when it comes to cloud deployments, is an increasing area of interest and deployment that we see with our customers. So, what we're announcing today is that we're expanding our cyber recovery services to be available in Google Cloud. With this announcement, it means we're available in all three of the major clouds and it really provides customers the flexibility to secure their data no matter if they're running on-premises, in Acolo, at the Edge, in the public cloud. And the other nice thing about this announcement is that you have the ability to use Google Cloud as a cyber recovery vault that really allows customers to isolate critical data and they can recover that critical data from the vault back to on-premises or from that vault back to running their cyber protection or their data protection solutions in the public cloud. >> I always invoke my favorite Matt Baker here. "It's not a zero sum game", but this is a perfect example where there's opportunities for a company like Dell to partner with the public cloud provider. You've got capabilities that don't exist there. You've got the on-prem capabilities. We could talk about Edge all day, but that's a different topic. Okay, so my other question Travis, is how does this all fit into APEX? We hear a lot about APEX as a service. It's sort of the new hot thing. What's happening there? What's the news around APEX? >> Yeah, we've seen incredible momentum with our APEX solutions since we introduced data protection options into them earlier this year. And we're really building on that momentum with this announcement being providing solutions that allow customers to consume flexibly. And so, what we're announcing specifically is that we're expanding APEX Data Storage Services to include a data protection option. And it's like with all APEX offers, it's a pay-as-you-go solution. Really streamlines the process of customers purchasing, deploying, maintaining and managing their backup software. All a customer really needs to do is specify their base capacity. They specify their performance tier. They tell us do they want a one year term or a three year term and we take it from there. We get them up and running so they can start deploying and consuming flexibly. And as with many of our APEX solutions, it's a simple user experience all exposed through a unified APEX Console. >> Okay, so it's, you're keeping it simple, like I think large, medium, small. You know, we hear a lot about T-shirt sizes. I'm a big fan of that 'cause you guys should be smart enough to figure out, you know, based on my workload, what I need. How different is this? I wonder if you guys could address this. Jeff, maybe you can start. >> Sure, I'll start and then- >> Pitch me. >> You know, Travis, you jump in when I screw up here. >> Awesome. >> So, first I'd say we offer innovative multicloud data protection solutions. We provide that deliver performance, efficiency and scale that our customers demand and require. We support as Travis said, all the major public clouds. We have a broad ecosystem of workload support and I guess the great news is we're up to 80% more cost effective than any of the competition. >> Dave: 80%? >> 80% >> Hey, that's a big number. All right, Travis, what's your point of view on this? >> Yeah, I think number one, end-to-end data protection. We are that one stop shop that I talked about, whether it's a simplified appliance, whether it's deployed in the cloud, whether it's at the Edge, whether it's integrated appliances, target appliances, software. We have solutions that span the gamut as a service. I mentioned the APEX Solution as well. So really, we can provide solutions that help support customers and protect them, any workload, any cloud, anywhere that data lives. Edge, Core to Cloud. The other thing that we hear as a big differentiator for Dell, and Jeff touched on on this a little bit earlier, is our Intelligent Cyber Resiliency. We have a unique combination in the market where we can offer immutability or protection against deletion as sort of that first line of defense. But we can also offer a second level of defense, which is isolation, talking about data vaults or cyber vaults and cyber recovery. And more importantly, the intelligence that goes around that vault. It can look at detecting cyber attacks. It can help customers speed time to recovery. And really provides AI and ML to help early diagnosis of a cyber attack and fast recovery should a cyber attack occur. And if you look at customer adoption of that solution, specifically in the cloud, we have over 1300 customers utilizing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. >> So, I think it's fair to say that your portfolio has obviously been a big differentiator. Whenever I talk to your finance team, Michael Dell, et cetera, that end-to-end capability, that your ability to manage throughout the supply chain. We actually just did an event recently with you guys where you went into what you're doing to make infrastructure trusted. And so my take on that is you, in a lot of respects, you're shifting the client's burden to your R&D. now they have a lot of work to do, so it's not like they can go home and just relax. But that's a key part of the partnership that I see. Jeff, I wonder if you could give us the final thoughts. >> Sure. Dell has a long history of being a trusted partner within IT, right? So, we have unmatched capabilities. Going back to your point, we have the broadest portfolio. We're a leader in every category that we participate in. We have a broad deep breadth of portfolio. We have scale. We have innovation that is just unmatched. Within data protection itself, we are the trusted market leader. No if, ands or buts. We're number one for both data protection software in appliances per IDC and we were just named for the 17th consecutive time the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So, bottom line is customers can count on Dell. >> Yeah, and I think again, we're seeing the evolution of data protection. It's not like the last 10 years. It's really becoming an adjacency and really, a key component of your cyber strategy. I think those two parts of the organization are coming together. So guys, really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming. >> Thank you, sir. >> Dave. >> Travis, good to see you. All right, in a moment I'm going to come right back and summarize what we learned today, what actions you can take for your business. You're watching "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Right back. >> Advertiser: In our data-driven world, protecting data has never been more critical. To guard against everything from cyber incidents to unplanned outages, you need a cyber resilient multicloud data protection strategy. >> It's not a matter of if you're going to get hacked, it's a matter of when. And I want to know that I can recover and continue to recover each day. >> It is important to have a cyber security and a cyber resiliency plan in place because the threat of cyber attack are imminent. >> Advertiser: PowerProtect Data Manager from Dell Technologies helps deliver the data protection and security confidence you would expect from a trusted partner and market leader. >> We chose PowerProtect Data Manager because we've been a strategic partner with Dell Technologies for roughly 20 years now. Our partnership with Dell Technologies has provided us with the ability to scale and grow as we've transitioned from 10 billion in assets to 20 billion. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect Data Manager, you can enjoy exceptional ease of use to increase your efficiency and reduce costs. >> I'd installed it by myself, learn it by myself. It was very intuitive. >> While restoring your machine with PowerProtect Data Manager is fast, we can fully manage PowerProtect through the center. We can recover a whole machine in seconds. >> Instructor: Data Manager offers innovation such as transparent snapshots to simplify virtual machine backups, and it goes beyond backup and restore to provide valuable insights into protected data, workloads and VMs. >> In our previous environment, it would take anywhere from three to six hours a night to do a single backup of each VM. Now, we're backing up hourly and it takes two to three seconds with the transparent snapshots. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect's Data Manager, you get the peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and available whenever you need it. >> Data is extremely important. We can't afford to lose any data. We need things just to work. >> Advertiser: Start your journey to modern data protection with Dell PowerProtect's Data Manager. Visit dell.com/powerprotectdatamanager >> We put forth the premise in our introduction that the worlds of data protection in cybersecurity must be more integrated. We said that data recovery strategies have to be built into security practices and procedures and by default, this should include modern hardware and software. Now, in addition to reviewing some of the challenges that customers face, which have been pretty well documented, we heard about new products that Dell Technologies is bringing to the marketplace that specifically address these customer concerns. And there were three that we talked about today. First, the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance, which is an integrated system taking advantage of Dell's history in data protection, but adding new capabilities. And I want to come back to that in a moment. Second is Dell's PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Google Cloud platform. This rounds out the big three public cloud providers for Dell, which joins AWS and Azure support. Now finally, Dell has made its target backup appliances available in APEX. You might recall, earlier this year we saw the introduction from Dell of APEX Backup Services and then in May at Dell Technologies World, we heard about the introduction of APEX Cyber Recovery Services. And today, Dell is making its most popular backup appliances available in APEX. Now, I want to come back to the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance because it's a new integrated appliance and I asked Dell off camera, "Really what is so special about these new systems and what's really different from the competition?" Because look, everyone offers some kind of integrated appliance. So, I heard a number of items. Dell talked about simplicity and efficiency and containers and Kubernetes. So, I kind of kept pushing and got to what I think is the heart of the matter in two really important areas. One is simplicity. Dell claims that customers can deploy the system in half the time relative to the competition. So, we're talking minutes to deploy, and of course that's going to lead to much simpler management. And the second real difference I heard was backup and restore performance for VMware workloads. In particular, Dell has developed transparent snapshot capabilities to fundamentally change the way VMs are protected, which leads to faster backup and restores with less impact on virtual infrastructure. Dell believes this new development is unique in the market and claims that in its benchmarks, the new appliance was able to back up 500 virtual machines in 47% less time compared to a leading competitor. Now, this is based on Dell benchmarks, so hopefully these are things that you can explore in more detail with Dell to see if and how they apply to your business. So if you want more information, go to the Data Protection Page at dell.com. You can find that at dell.com/dataprotection. And all the content here and other videos are available on demand at theCUBE.net. Check out our series on the blueprint for trusted infrastructure, it's related and has some additional information. And go to siliconangle.com for all the news and analysis related to these and other announcements. This is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching "The Future of Multicloud Protection" made possible by Dell, in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat music)

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

>>Hi, we're back. We're watching, you're watching the cube coverage of Falcon 2022 live from the aria in Las Vegas, Dave Valante with Dave Nicholson and we, yes, folks, there are females in the cyber security industry. Amanda Adams is here. So the vice president of America Alliance at CrowdStrike. Thanks for coming on. >>Thank you so much for having me. >>We it's, it's fantastic to, to actually, as I was starting to wonder, but we >>Do have females in leadership. >>Wait, I'm just kidding. There are plenty of females here, but this cybersecurity industry in general, maybe if we have time, we can talk about that, but I wanna talk about the, the Alliance program, but before I do, yeah. You know, you, you got a nice career here at CrowdStrike, right? You've kind of seen the ascendancy, the rocket ship you've been on it for five years. Yep. So what's that been like? And if you had to put on the binoculars and look five years forward, what can you tell us in that 10 year span? Oh >>My goodness. What a journey it's been over the last five, six years. I've been with CrowdStrike almost six years and really starting with our first core group of partners and building out the alliances, seen obviously the transformation with our sales organization. And as we scaled, I think of our, of our technology. We started with, I think, two products at that time, we were focused on reinventing how our customers thought about NextGen AB but also endpoint detection response. From there, the evolution is really driving towards that cloud security platform, right? How our partners fit into that. And, and how we've evolved is it's not just resell. It's not just focusing on the margin and transactions. We really have focused on building the strategic relationships with our partners, but also our customers and fitting them in that better together story with that CrowdStrike platform. It's been the biggest shift. Yeah. >>And you've got that. The platform chops for that. It's just, I think you're up to 22 modules now. So you're not a point product. You guys make that, that, that point lot now in terms of the, the partners and the ecosystem, you know, it's, it's, it's good here. I mean, it's, this it's buzzing. I've said it's like service. I've said, number of times, it's like service. Now back in 2013, I was there now. They didn't have the down market, the SMB that you have that's right. And I think you you're gonna have an order. You got 20,000 customers. That's right. I predict CrowdStrike's gonna have 200,000. I, I'm not gonna predict when I need to think about that. But, but in thinking about the, the, the co your colleagues and the partners and the skill sets that have evolved, what's critical today. And, and, and what do you see as critical in the future? >>So from a skill set standpoint, if I'm a partner and engaging with CrowdStrike and our customers, if you think about, again, evolving away from just resell, we have eight routes to market. So while that may sound complicated, the way that I like to think about it is that we truly flex to our partners, go to market their business models of what works best for their organization, but also their customers. The way that they've changed, I think from a skillset standpoint is looking beyond just the technology from a platform, building a better together story with our tech Alliance partners or store, if thinking about the XDR Alliance, which we are focusing on, there's so much great value in bringing that to our customers from a skillset standpoint, beyond those services services, we've talked about every day. I know that this is gonna be a top topic for the week yesterday through our partner summit, George, our CEO, as well as Jim Cidel, that's really the opportunity as we expand in new modules. If you think about humo or log scale identity, and then cloud our partners play a critical role when it comes into the cloud migration deployment integration services, really, we're not gonna get bigger from a services organization. And that's where we need our partners to step in. >>Yeah. And, you know, we we've talked a lot about XDR yeah. Already in day one here. Yeah. With, with the X extending into other areas. That's right. I think that services be, would become even more critical at that point, you know, as you spread out into the, really the internet of things that's right. Especially all of the old things that are out there that maybe should be on the internet, but aren't yet. Yeah. But once they are security is important. So what are you doing in that arena from a services perspective to, to bolster that capability? Is it, is it, is it internally, or is it through partners generally? >>It's definitely, I think we look to our partners to extend beyond the core of what we do. We do endpoint really well, right? Our services is one of the best in the business. When you look at instant response, our proactive services, supporting our customers. If you think to XDR of integration, building out those connect air packs with our customers, building the alliances, we really do work with our partners to drive that successful outcome with our customers. But also too, I think about it with our tech alliances of building out the integration that takes a lot of effort and work. We have a great team internally, which will help guide those services to be, to be built. Right. You have to have support when you're building the integrations, which is great, but really from like a tech Alliance and store standpoint, looking to add use cases, add value to more store apps for our customers, that's where we're headed. Right. >>What about developers? Do you see that as a component of the ecosystem in the future? Yeah, >>Without a doubt. I mean, I think that as our partner program evolves right now working with our, our developers, I mean, there's different personas that we work with with our customer standpoint, but from a partner working with them to build our new codes, the integration that's gonna be pretty important. >>So we were, we sort of tongue in cheek at the beginning of this interview yeah. With women in tech. And it's a, it's a topic that, on the cube that we've been very passionate about since day one yep. On the cube. So how'd you get in to this business? H how did your, your career progress, how did you get to where you are? >>You know, I have been incredibly fortunate to have connections, and I think it's who, you know, and your network, not necessarily what, you know, to a certain extent, you have to be smart to make it long term. Right. You have to have integrity. Do what you're saying. You're gonna do. I first started at Cisco and I had a connection of, it was actually a parent of somebody I grew up with. And they're like, you would fit in very nicely to Cisco. And I started with their channel marketing team, learned a ton about the business, how to structure, how to support. And that was the first step into technology. If you would've asked me 20 years ago, what did I wanna do? I actually wanted to be a GM of an organization. And I was coming outta I come on, which is great, which I'm, it really is right up. >>If you knew me, you're like, that actually makes a lot of sense. But coming outta college, I had an opportunity. I was interviewing with the golden state warriors in California, and I was interviewing with Cisco and that I had two ops and I was living in San Jose at the time. The golden state warriors of course paid less. It was a better opportunity in sales, but it was obviously where I wanted to go from athletics. And I grew up in athletics, playing volleyball. Cisco paid me more, and it was in San Jose. And really the, the golden state warriors seemed that I was having that conversation. They said, one year community is gonna be awful. It's awful from San Jose to Oakland, but also too, like you have more money on the table. Go take that. And so I could have very much ended up in athletics, most likely in the back office, somewhere. Like I would love that. And then from there, I went from Cisco. I actually worked for a reseller for quite some time, looking at, or selling into Manhattan when I moved from California to Manhattan, went to tenable. And that was when I shifted really into channel management. I love relationships, getting snow people, building partnerships, seeing that long term, that's really where I thrive. And then from there came to CrowdStrike, which in itself has been an incredible journey. I bet. Yeah. >>Yeah. I think there's an important thread there to pull on. And that is, we, we put a lot of emphasis on stem, which people, some sometimes translate into one thing, writing code that's right. There are, but would you agree? There are many, many, many opportunities in tech that aren't just coding. >>Absolutely. >>And I think I, as a father of three daughters, it's, it's a message that I have shared with them. Yeah. They are not interested in the coding part of things, but still, they need to know that there are so many opportunities and, and it's always, sometimes it's happenstance in terms of finding the opportunity in your case, it was, you know, cosmic connection that's right. But, but that's, you know, that's something that we can foster is that idea that it's not just about the hardcore engineering and coding aspect, it's business >>That's right. So if, if there was one thing that I can walk away from today is I say that all the time, right? If you look at CrowdStrike in our mission, we really don't have a mission statement. We stop breaches every single day. When I come to work and I support our partners, I'm not super technical. I obviously know our technology and I, I enable and train our partners, but I'm not coding. Right. And I make an impact to our business, our partners, more importantly, our customers, every single day, we have folks that you can come from a marketing operations. There is legal, there's finance. I deal with folks all across the business that aren't super technical, but are making a huge impact. And I, I don't think that we talk about the opportunities outside of engineering with the broader groups. We talk about stem a lot, but within college, and I look to see like getting those early in career folks, either through an intern program could be sales, but too, if they don't like, like sales, then they shift into marketing or operations. It's a great way to get into the industry. >>Yeah. But I still think you gotta like tech to be in the tech business. Oh, you >>Do? Yeah. You do. I'm >>Not saying it's like deep down is like, not all of us, but a lot of us are kind of just, you know, well, at least you, >>At least you can't hate it. >>Right. Okay. But so women, 50% of the population, I think the stat is 17% in the technology. Yeah. Industry, maybe it's changed a little bit, but you know, 20% or, or less, why do you think that is? >>I, you know, I always go back to within technology, people hire from their network and people that they know, and usually your network are people that are very like-minded or similar to you. I have referred females into CrowdStrike. It's a priority of mine. I also have a circle that is also men, but also too, if you look at the folks that are hired into CrowdStrike, but also other technology companies, that's the first thing that I go to also too. I think it's a little bit intimidating. Right. I have a very strong personality and I'm very direct, but also too, like I can keep up with our industry when it comes to that stereotypes essentially. And some people maybe are introverted and they're not quite sure where they fit in. Right. Whether it's marketing operations, et cetera. So they, they're not sure of the opportunities or even aware of where to get started. You know what I mean? >>Yeah. I mean, I think there is a, a, a stereotype today, but I'm not sure why it's, is it unique to the, to the technology industry? No. Is it not? Right? It happens >>Thinking, I mean, there's so many industries where healthcare, >>Maybe not so much. Right. Because you know, >>You have nurses versus doctors. I feel like that is flipped. >>Yeah. That's true. Nurses versus doctors. Right. Well, I, I know a lot of women doctors though, but >>Yeah. That's kind of flipped. It's better. >>Yeah. Says >>Flipped over. Yeah. I think it's more women in medical school now, but than than men. But, >>And, and I do think in our industry, you know, when you look at companies like IBM, HPE, Cisco, Dell, and, and, and many others. Yeah. They are making a concerted effort for on round diversity. They typically have somebody who's in charge of diversity. They report, you know, maybe not directly to the CEO, but they certainly have a seat at the table. That's right. And you know, maybe you call it, oh, it's quotas. Maybe the, the old white guys feel, you know, a little slighted, whatever. It's like, nobody's crying for us. I mean, it's not like we got screwed. >>See, I know problema we can do this in Spanish. Oh, oh, >>Oh, you're not a old white guy. Sorry. We can do >>This in Spanish if you want. >>Okay. Here we go. So, no, but, but, but I, so I do think that, that the industry in general, I talked to John Chambers about this recently and he was like, look, we gotta do way better. And I don't disagree with that. But I think that, I think the industry is doing better, but I wonder if like a rocket ship company, like CrowdStrike who has so many other things going on, you know, maybe they gotta get you a certain size. I mean, you've reached escape velocity. You're doing obviously a lot of corporate, you know, good. Yeah. You know, and, and, and, and we just had earlier on we, you know, motor motor guides was very cool. Yeah. So maybe it's a maturity thing. Maybe these larger companies with you crowd size $40 billion market cap, but maybe the, the hundred plus billion dollar market cap companies. I don't know. I don't know. You guys got a bigger market cap than Dell. So >>I, I don't think it's necessarily related to market cap. I think it's the size of the organization of how many roles are open that we currently write. So we're at just over 6,000 employees. If you look at Cisco, how many thousands of employees they have there's >>Right. Maybe a hundred thousand employees. >>That's right. There's >>More opportunities. How many, what's a headcount of crowd strike >>Just over 6,000, >>6,000. So, okay. But >>If you think about the, the areas of opportunity for advancement, and we were talking about this earlier, when you look at early and career or entry level, it's actually quite, even right across the Americas of, we do have a great female population. And then as progression happens, that's where it, it tees off from a, a female in leadership. And we're doing, we're focusing on that, right? Under JC Herrera's leadership, as well as with George. One of the things that I always think is important though, is that you're mindful as, as the female within the organization and that you're out seeking somebody, who's not only a mentor, but is a direct champion for you when you're not in the room. Right. This is true of CrowdStrike. It's true of every organization. You're not gonna be aware of the opportunities as the roles are being created. And really, as the roles are being created, they probably have somebody in mind. Right. And so if you have somebody that's in that room says, you know what, Amanda Adams would be perfect for that. Let's go talk to her about it. You have to have somebody who's your champion. Yeah. >>There there's, there's, there's a saying that 80% of the most important moments in your life happen in your absence. Yeah. And that's exactly right. You know, when they're, when someone needs to be there to champion, you, >>Did that happen for you? >>Yes. I have a very strong champion. >>So I mean, I, my observation is if, if you are a woman in tech and you're in a senior leadership position, like you are, or you're a, you're a general manager or a P and L manager or a CEO, you have to be so incredibly talented because all things being equal, maybe it's changing somewhat in some of those companies I talked about, but for the last 30 years, all takes be equal. A, a, a woman is gonna lose out to a man who is as qualified. And, and I think that's maybe slowly changing. Maybe you agree with that, maybe you don't. And maybe that's, some people think that's unfair, but you know, think about people of color. Right. They, they, they, they grew up with less op opportunities for education. And this is just the statistics that's right. Right. So should society overcompensate for that? I personally think, yes, the, the answer is just, they should, there should still be some type of meritocracy that's right. You know, but society has a responsibility to, you know, rise up all ships. >>I think there's a couple ways that you can address that through Falcon funds, scholarship programs, absolutely. Looking at supporting folks that are coming outta school, our internship program, providing those opportunities, but then just being mindful right. Of whether or not you publish the stats or not. We do have somebody who's responsible for D I, within CrowdStrike. They are looking at that and at least taking that step to understand what can we do to support the advancement across minorities. But also women is really, really important. >>Did you not have a good educational opportunity when you were growing up where you're like you had to me? Yeah, no, seriously, >>No. Seriously. I went to pretty scary schools. Right. >>Okay. So you could have gone down a really bad path. >>I, a lot of people that I grew up with went down really, really bad paths. I think the inflection point at, at least for me what the inflection point was becoming aware of this entire universe. Yeah. I was, I was headed down a path where I wasn't aware that any of this existed, when I got out of college, they were advertising in the newspaper for Cisco sales engineers, $150,000 a year. We will train. I'm a smart guy. I had no idea what that meant. Right. I could have easily gone and gotten one of those jobs. It was seven or eight years before I intersected with the tech world again. And so, you know, kind of parallel with your experience with you had someone randomly, it's like, you'd be great at Cisco. Yeah. But if, if you're not around that, and so you take people in different communities who are just, this might as well be a different planet. Yes. Yeah. The idea of eating in a restaurant where someone is serving you, food is uncomfortable, right? The idea of checking into a hotel, the idea of flying somewhere on an airplane, we talk about imposter syndrome. That's right. There are deep seated discomfort levels that people have because they just, this is completely foreign, but >>You're saying you could have foreign, you could have gone down a path where selling drugs or jacking cars was, was, was lucrative. >>I had, I had, yeah. I mean, we're getting, we're getting like deep into societal things. I was, I was very lucky. My parents were very, very young, but they're still together to this day. I had loving parents. We were very, very poor. We were surrounded by really, really, really bad stuff. So. >>Okay. So, so, okay. So this, >>I, I don't, I don't compare my situation to others. >>White woman. That's I guess this is my point. Yeah. The dynamic is different than, than a kid who grew up in the inner city. Yes. Right. And, and, and they're both important to address, but yeah. I think you gotta address them in different ways. >>Yes. But if they're, but if they're both completely ignorant of this, >>They don't know it. So it's lack of >>A, they'll never be here. >>You >>Never be here. And it's such a huge, this is such a huge difference from the rest of the world and from the rest, from the rest of our economy. >>So what would you tell a young girl? My daughters, aren't interested in tech. They want to go into fashion or healthcare, whatever Dave's daughters maybe would be a young girl, preteen, maybe teen interested in, not sure which path, why tech, what would advice would you give? >>I think just understanding what you enjoy about life, right? Like which skills are you great at? What characteristics about roles and not really focusing on a specific product. Definitely not cybersecurity versus like the broader network. I mean, literally what do you enjoy doing? And then the roles of, you know, from the skillset that's needed, whether that be marketing, and then you can start to dive into, do I wanna support marketing for a corporate environment for retail, for technology like that will come and follow your passion, which I know is so easy to say, right? But if you're passionate about certain things, I love relationships. I think that holding myself from integrity standpoint, leading with integrity, but building strong relationships on trust, that's something I take really pride in and what I get enjoyment with. It's >>Obviously your superpower. >>It, >>It is. >>But >>Then it will go back to OST too, just being authentic in the process of building those relationships, being direct to the transparency of understanding, like again, knowing what you're good at and then where you can fit into an organization, awareness of technology opportunities, I think will all lend that to. But I also wouldn't worry, like when I was 17 year old, I, I thought I would be playing volleyball in college and then going to work for a professional sports team. You know, life works out very differently. Yeah. >>Right. And then, and for those of you out there, so I love that. Thank you for that great interview. Really appreciate letting us go far field for those of you might say, well, I don't know, man. I don't know what my passion is. I'll give you a line from my daughter, Alicia, you don't learn a lot for your kids. She said, well, if you don't know what your passion is, follow your curiosity. That's great. There you go. Amanda Adams. Thanks so much. It was great to have you on. Okay. Thank you. Keep it right there. We're back with George Kurtz. We're to the short break. Dave ante, Dave Nicholson. You watching the cube from Falcon 22 in Las Vegas.

(electronic music) >> The cloud is evolving. You know, it's no longer just a set of remote services accessed through a public cloud. Rather, it's expanding to on-premises, to multiple premises, across clouds, and eventually out to the edge. The challenge for customers is how to treat these locations as one. The opportunity for technology companies is to make that as simple as possible from an operational perspective. Welcome to this CUBE program where we're featuring Pure Storage in its latest innovations in bringing infrastructure and applications more closely together, fusing them, if you will. And today, we have a two-part program. First, we're going to hear from Rob Lee who's the CTO of Pure Storage and then my colleague John Walls is going to talk to Scott Sinclair of Enterprise Strategy Group. Scott will provide his expert analysis on infrastructure modernization and what to expect in today's changing world. So joining me right now is Rob Lee, CTO of Pure Storage. Welcome, Rob, good to see you. >> Good to see you again too, Dave. >> So take us through the announcements from today at a high level. What's most exciting about what you're delivering? >> Yeah, absolutely. So as you know, many announcement today, many things to discuss. But overall, I think what's most exciting is it's the expansion of our ability to help customers along the modern data journey. We've always thought of the journey to modern data as being formed by three pillars, if you will, certainly, modernizing infrastructure, modernizing operations and applications. And today's announcements are really in that kind of middle category of, like you said, bringing infrastructures and applications a lot more closely together. We've been modernizing infrastructure since day one, probably, people best know us for that and today's announcements are really about tackling that operations piece, bringing infrastructure and code and applications more closely together. So when we think about Pure Fusion, for example, that's really a huge step forward in how we're enabling our customers to manage large fleets of infrastructure, products, and components to deliver those services in a more automated, more tightly-integrated, seamlessly transparently delivered way to the applications that they serve, whether these services are being delivered by many different arrays in one location, many different arrays in different data center locations, or between the premise, on-premise environment and the cloud environment. Likewise, on the application front, when we think about today's announcements in Portworx Data Services, that's really all about how do we make the run and operate steps of a lot of the application building blocks that cloud-native developers are using and relying on, the database applications that are most poplar in open source, Cassandra, Mongo, so on and so forth, how dow we make the run and operate pieces of those applications a lot more intuitive, a lot more easily deployed, scaled, managed, monitored for those app developers? And so a ton of momentum. It's a big step forward on that front. And then right in the middle, when we think about today's announcements in Pure One, that's really all about how do we create more visibility, connecting the monitoring and management of the infrastructure running the apps and bring those closer together? So when we think about the visibility, we're now able to deliver for Portworx topologies allowing developers and DevOps teams to look at the entire tech stack, if you will, of a container environment from the application to the containers, to the Kubernetes cluster, to the compute nodes, all the way down to the storage, and be able to see everything that's going on, the root cause of any sort of problems that come up, that again, that's all in service of bringing infrastructure and applications a lot more closely together. So that's really how I view it and like I said, that's really the next step in our journey of helping customers modernize between infrastructure, operations, and their applications. >> Okay, so you got the control plane piece which is all about the operating model, you've got Pure One, you mentioned that which is for monitoring, you've got the Portworx piece which brings sort of development and deployment together in both infrastructure as code and better understanding of that full stack of, like you say, from applications through the clusters, the containers, all the way down to the storage. So I feel like it's not even the storage anymore. I mean, it's cloud. (chuckling) >> It is and you know, I chuckle a little bit because at the end of the day, we deliver storage but what customers are looking for is, and what they value and what they care about is their data. Now obviously, the storage is in service of the data and what we're doing with today's announcements is, again, just making it, extending our reach, helping customers work with their data a couple more steps down the road beyond just serving the bits and bytes of the storage but now getting into how do we connect the data that's sitting on our storage more quickly, get it, you know, in the hands of developers and the applications more seamlessly and more fluidly across these different environments. >> How does this news fit into Pure's evolution as a company? I mean, I don't see it as a pivot because a pivot's like, okay, we're going to go from here and now we're doin' this? >> Rob: Yeah, we were doing this, now we're doing that, right. >> And so it's more like a reinvention or a progression of the vision and the strategy. Can you talk to that? >> Absolutely. You know what, I think between those two words, I would say it's a progression, it's a next step in the journey as opposed to a reinvention. And again, I go back to, you know, I go back to the difference between storage and data and how customers are using data. We've been on a long-term path, long-term journey to continue to help customers modernize how they work with data, the results they're able to drive from the data. We got our start in infrastructure and just, you know, if you want to do bleeding edge things with data, you're not going to do it on decades-old infrastructure. So let's fix that component first, that's how we got our start. Today's announcement are really the next couple of steps along that journey. How do we make the core infrastructure more easily delivered, more flexible to operate, more automated in the hands of not just the DevOps teams, the IT teams, but the application developers? How do we deliver infrastructure more seamlessly as code? Well, why is that important? It's important because what customers are looking for out of their data is both speeds and feeds, the traditional kind of measures, bandwidth, iOps, latency, that sort of thing, but they're looking for speed of agility. You look at the modern application space around how data's being processed, it's a very, very fast-moving application space. The databases that are being used today may be different than the ones being used three months from now or six months from now. And so developers, application teams are looking for a ton more flexibility, a ton more agility than they were three, five, 10, 15 years ago. The other aspect is simplicity and reliability. As you know, that's a core component of everything we do. Our core products, you know, our arrays, our storage appliances, we're very well-known for the simplicity and reliability we drive at the individual product level. Well, as we scale and look at larger environments, as we look at customers' expectations for what they expect from a cloud-like service, there's the next level of scale and how we deliver that simplicity and reliability. And what do I mean by that? Well, a large enterprise customer who wants to operate like a cloud, wants to be able to manage large fleets of infrastructure resources, be able to package them up, deliver infrastructure services to their internal customers, they want to be able to do it in a self-service, policy-driven, easy to control, easy to manage way and that's the next level of fleet level simplicity and that's really what Pure Fusion is about is allowing operators that control plane to specify those attributes and how that service should be delivered. Same thing with Portworx, if we think about simplicity and reliability, containers, cloud-native applications, micro services, a lot of benefits there. A very fast-moving space, you can mix and match components, put them together very easily, but what goes hand in hand with that is now a need for a greater degree of simplicity 'cause you have more moving parts, and a greater need for reliability because, well now, you're not just serving one application but 30 or 40 working in unison. And that's really what we're after with Portworx and Portworx Data Services and the evolution of that family. So getting back to your original question, I really look at today's announcements as not a pivot, not a reinvention, but the next logical steps in our long-term journey to help customers modernize everything they do around data. >> Right, thanks for that, Rob. Hey, I want to switch topics. So virtually every infrastructure player now has an as-a-service offering and there're lots of claims out there about who was first, who's the best, et cetera. What's Pure's position on this topic? You claim you're ahead of the pack in delivering subscription and as-a-service offerings in the storage industry. You certainly were first with Evergreen. That was sort of a real change in how folks delivered. What about as-a-service and Pure as-a-service? What gives you confidence that you have the right approach and you're lead in the industry in this regard? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think of, first and foremost, we think of everything we do at Pure as a service and whether that's delivering products and helping customers to run and operate in an as-a-service model internally, or whether it's Pure taking on more of that run and operate as-a-service, ourselves, with Pure as a service. And so the second part of your question which is what is it that sets us apart, what are we doing differently, what gives us confidence that this is the right path, well, fundamentally, I think the difference is obviously this is a, you know, a hotter topic in the industry of late, but I think the difference is between us and the competitive set is we really look at this as a product and technology-led philosophy and strategy and we have since day one. And I think that's different than a lot of others in the industry who look at it as a little bit more of a packaging exercise between financial services, professional services, wrap it up in T(s) and C(s) and you call it a service. And what do I mean by that? So, you know, if you look internally at Pure, everything we do we think of as a service. We have a business unit organized around it, we have an engineering team, significant resources dedicated to it and building out service offerings. When we think about why this is technology-led, I think of a service. For something to be thought of as a service, it's got to be flexible, it's got to be adaptable. I've got to be able to grow as a customer and evolve as I need, whether that's changing needs in terms of performance and capacity, I've got to be able to do that without being locked into day-one, rigid kind of static some lands of having the capacity planned or plan out what my user's going to look like 18 months from now. I've got to be able to move and evolve and grow without disruption, right? You know, it's not a service if you're going to make me do a data migration or take a down time. And so when I net all that out, what are the things that you need the attributes that you need to be able to deliver a service? Well, you need a product set that is going to be able to be highly malleable, highly flexible, highly evolvable. You need something that's going to be able to cover the entire gamut of needs, whether it's price performance, tiers, you know, high performance capacity, lower cost, price points. You need something that's got a rich set of capabilities whether it's access protocols, file block object, whether it's data protection properties, you know, replications, snapshots, ransomware protection. So you need that full suite of capabilities but in order to deliver it as a service and enable me, as a customer, to seamlessly grow and change, that's got to be delivered on a very tight set of technology that can be repurposed and configured in different ways. You can't do this on 17 different products (chuckling) and expect me to change and move every single time that I have a service need change. And so when I net that out, that puts us in an absolutely differentiated position to be able to deliver this because again, everything we do is based on two core product families, Portworx adds a third. We're able to deliver all of the major storage protocols, all of the data protection capabilities across all of the price performance and service tiers, and we're able to do this on a very tight code base. And as you know, everything we do is completely non-disruptive so all of the elements really add up in our favor. And like I said, this is a huge area of a strategic focus for us. >> So these offerings, they're all part of the service-driven component of your portfolio, is that correct? >> Absolutely, yep. >> Great. You talk all the time about modern data experiences, modern application, the modern data changing the way customers think about infrastructure. What exactly does that mean and how are you driving that? >> Well, I think it means a couple of different things, but if I were to net it out, it's a greater demand for agility, a greater demand for flexibility and optionality. And if we look at why that is, you know, when I talk to customers, as they think about an infrastructure, largely, they think about their existing application demands and needs, what they're spending 90% of their time and budget dealing with today, and then the new stuff that they're getting more and more pressured to go off and build and support which is oftentimes the more strategic initiatives that they have to serve, so they're kind of balancing both worlds. And in the new world of modern applications, it's much more dynamic, meaning the application sets that are being deployed are changing all the time, the environments and what the infrastructure needs to deliver has to change more quickly in terms of scaling up, down, growing, it has to be a lot more elastic, and has much more variance. And what I mean by that is you look at a modern, cloud-native, micro services architecture-type application, it's really, you know, 20, 30, 40 different applications all working in concert with one another under the hood. This is a very different infrastructure demand than your more traditional application set. Back in the day, you have an Oracle application, you go design an environment for that. It's a big exercise, but once you put it in place, it has its own lifecycle. These days with modern applications, it's not just one application, it's 20 or 30, you've got to support all of them working in unison, you don't want to build separate infrastructures for each piece, and that set of 20 or 30 applications is changing very rapidly as open source ecosystem moves forward, as the application space moves forward. And so when customers think about the change in demands and infrastructure, this is kind of what they're thinking about and having to juggle. And so that, at the end of the day, drives them to demand much more flexibility in their infrastructure being able to use it for many different purposes, much more agility being able to adapt very, very quickly, and much more variance or dynamic range, the ability to support many different needs on the same set of infrastructure. And this is where we see very, very strong demand indicators and we're very invested in meeting these needs because they fit very well with our core product principles. >> Great, thank you for that. I really like that answer because it's not just a bunch of slideware mumbo-jumbo. You actually put some substance on it. Rob, we're going to have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us today. >> Thank you. >> And look forward to havin' you back soon. Now, in a moment, Scott Sinclair who's a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group speaks with theCUBE's John Walls to give you the independent analyst's take. You're watching theCUBE, your global leader in high tech coverage. (techno music) >> Agility is what all digital organizations strive for, and for almost the entirety of the enterprise storage industry, agility and storage aren't words you'd often hear together. Since the founding of Pure Storage, we've been laser focused on taking what's painful about traditional enterprise storage and making it better. We imagined a world where consumers self-service the provisioning of their storage resources to match the performance and data protection capabilities that their applications require. No endless back and forth between application owners and storage teams, just true on-demand self-service. At the same time, imagine all of the complex storage management operations required to make this possible being automated through software. From the placement of the initial workload to storage adjusting with the unpredictable needs of an application and seamlessly migrating and rebalancing the fleet as needed, all with zero down time and no manual intervention. And finally, imagine almost limitless scale that adjusts to meet your business' data management needs over time. This is what we believe the future of enterprise storage looks like. >> Today, we are announcing Pure Fusion, a leap forward in enterprise storage, marrying the best parts of the public cloud with the storage experience and capabilities you've come to expect from Pure. By bringing the simplicity and scalability of the cloud operating model with on-demand consumption and automated provisioning, organizations can deliver an enterprise-grade managed, self-service storage model that unifies fleets of arrays and optimizes storage pulls on the fly. End users will be able to rapidly consume volumes, file systems, and advanced data services like replication without waiting for backend manual work making storage hardware truly invisible. And organizations will be able to scale seamlessly across block, file, and object workloads, leveraging the power of the entire Pure Storage family, including FlashArray, Pure Cloud Block Store, FlashBlade, and Portworx. (electronic music) >> It is time to take a look at what Pure's up to from a slightly different perspective. To help us do that is Scott Sinclair who's a senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. And Scott, thanks for joining us here, on theCUBE. Good to see ya today. >> Great to see you. >> All right, so let's jump into this. First, we'll get to the announcement in just a little bit. First off, in terms of Pure's strategy, as you've been watching this company evolve over years now, how has it evolved? And then we'll go to the announcements and how that fits into the strategy. But first off, let's just take them from your point of view where have they been and how are they doin'? >> You know, many people know of Pure or maybe they don't know of their history as an all-Flash array. I think Pure has always been, ever since they entered the IT industry as a pioneer, they're one of the early ones that said look, we're going all in on the all-Flash array business and a focus on Flash technology. Then they were early pioneers in things like Evergreen and things like storage-as-a-service capabilities for on-premises storage. And the entire time, they've had a really almost streamline focus on ease of use which, you know, from the outside, I think everyone talks about ease of use and making things simple for IT, but Pure has really made that almost like core as part of not only their product and their design but also part of their culture. And one of the things, and we'll get into this a little bit as we talk about the announcements, but, you know, if you look at these announcements and where Pure's going, they're trying to expand that culture, that DNA around ease of use or simplicity, and expanding it beyond just storage or IT operations, and really trying to see okay, how do we make the entire digital initiative process or the larger IT operations journey simpler. And I think that's part of where Pure is going is not just storage but focusing more on apps, operations, and data, and making it easier for the entire experience. >> So how do the announcements we're talking about, well, there're three phases here, and again, we'll unpack those separately, but in general, how do the announcements then, you think, fit into that strategy and fit into their view and your view, really, of the market trends? >> I think one of the big trends is, you know, IT in terms for most businesses is, it's not just an enabler anymore. IT's actually in the driver's seat. We see in our research at ESGU, we just did this study and I'm going to glance over my notes as I'm kind of talking, but we see one of the things is more than half of businesses are identifying some portion of their revenue is coming from digital products or digital services. So data is part of the revenue chain for a majority of organizations according to what we're seeing in our research. And so what that does is it puts IT right in that core, you know, that core delivery model of where the faster IT can operate, the faster organizations can realize these revenues opportunities. So what is that doing to IT organizations? Well first off, it makes their life a lot harder, it makes demands continue to increase. But also, this old adage or this old narrative that IT's about availability, it's about resiliency, it's about keeping the lights on and ensuring that the business doesn't go down, well none of that goes away. But now, IT organizations are being measured on their ability to accelerate operations. And in this world where everything's becoming more, you know, more complex, there're more demands, organizations are becoming more distributed, application demands are becoming more diverse and they're growing in breadth. All of this means that more pressure is falling not only on the IT operations but also on the infrastructure providers like Pure Storage to step up and make things even simpler with things like automation and simplification which, you know, we're going to talk about, but to help accelerate those operations. >> Yeah, I mean, if you're DevOps these days, I mean, and you're talkin' about kind of these quandaries that people are in, but what are these specific challenges do you think, on the enterprise level here, that Pure is addressing? >> Well so for example, you talked about developers and driving into that in particular, I want to say let's see, glance at my notes here, about two-thirds of organizations say they're under pressure to accelerate IT initiatives due to pressures specifically from DevOps teams as well as line of business teams. So what does that mean? It means that as organizations build up and try to accelerate either their revenue creation via the creation of software or products, or things of that, that drive, that support a DevOps team, maybe it's improving customer experience for example, as well as other line of business teams such as analytics and trying to provide better insights and better decision making off of data, what that means is this traditional process of IT operations of where you submit a trouble ticket and then it takes, after a few days, something happens and they start doing analysis in terms of basically what ends up being multiple days or multiple weeks, to end up to basically provision storage, it just takes too long. And so in these announcements what we're seeing is Pure delivering solutions that are all about automating the backend services and delivering storage in a way that is designed to be easily and quickly consumed by the new consumers of IT, the developers, the line of business teams via APIs where you can write to a standard API and it goes across basically lots of different technologies and happens very quickly where a lot of the backend processes are automated, and essentially, making the storage invisible to these new consumers. And all of that just delivers value because what these groups are doing is now they can access and get the resources that they need and they don't have to know about what's happening behind the scenes which, candidly, they don't really know much about, right now, and they don't really care. >> Right. (chuckling) That's right. Yeah, what I don't see, what I don't know won't hurt me. And it can, as we know, it can. So let's look at the announcements. Pure Fusion, I think we were hearing about that just a little bit before, earlier in the interview that Dave was conducting, but let's talk about Pure Fusion and your thoughts on that. >> Pure Fusion is what I was talking about a little bit where they're abstracting a lot of the storage capabilities and presenting it as an API, a consistent API that allows developers to provision things very quickly and where a lot of the backend services are automated and, you know, essentially invisible to the developer. And that is, I mean, it addresses where, you know, I kind of talk about this with some of the data that we just, you know, some of our research stats that we just discussed, but it's where a lot of organizations are going. The bottom line is, we used to, in a world where IT services weren't growing as fast and where everything had to be resilient and available, you could put a lot of personnel power or personal hours focused on okay, making sure every box and everything was checked prior to doing a new implementation.and all that was designed to reduce risk and possibly optimize the environment and reduce cost. Now in this world of acceleration what we've seen is organizations need faster responsiveness from the IT organization. Well that's all well and good, but the problem is it's difficult to do all those backend processes and make sure that data's fully being protected or making sure that everything is happening behind the scenes the way it should be. And so this is, again, just mounting more and more pressure. So with things like Pure Fusion what they're doing is they're essentially automating a lot of that on the backend and really simplifying it and making it so storage, or IT administrators can provide access to their line of business, to development teams to leverage infrastructure a lot faster while still ensuring that all those backend services, all those operations still happen. Portworx Data Services also announced and we're hearing it from Dave, for that perspective may be a game-changer in terms of storage. So your take on that and Portworx? >> You know, I really like Portworx. I've been following them ever since prior to the acquisition. One of the things that they were very early on is understanding the impact of micro services on the industry and really, the importance of designing infrastructure around for that environment. I think what they're doing around data services is really intriguing. I think it's really intriguing, first off, for Pure as a company because it elevates their visibility to a new audience and a new persona that may not have been familiar with them. As organizations are looking at, you know, one of the things that they're doing with this data services is essentially delivering a database-as-a-service platform where you can go provision and stand up databases very quickly and again, similar to we talked about fusion, a lot of those backend processes are automated. Really fascinating, again, aligns directly with this acceleration need that we talked about. So, you know, a huge value, but it's really fascinating for Pure because it opens them up to, you know, hey, there's this whole new world of possible consumers that where they're, that they can get experience to really, the ease of use that Pure is known for a lot of the capabilities that Portworx is known for, but also just increase really the value that Pure is able to deliver to some of these modern enterprises. >> And just to add, briefly, on the enhancements that Pure One also being announced today. Your take on those? >> I like that as well. I think one of the things if I kind of go through the list is a lot of insights and intelligence in terms of new app, sizing applications for the environment if I remember correctly, and more, you know, better capabilities to help ensure that your environment is optimized which candidly is a top challenge around IT organizations. We talk about, again, I keep hitting on this need to move faster, faster, faster. One of the big disconnects that we've seen and we saw it very early when organizations were moving to, for example, public cloud services, is this disconnect towards for this individual app, how many resources do I really need and I think that's something that, you know, vendors like Pure need to start integrating more and more intelligence. And that's, my understanding is they're doing with Pure One which is really impressive. >> I hope it's all it takes. Scott, we appreciate the time. Thank you for your insights into what has been a big day for Pure Storage. But thank you again for the time. Scott Sinclair at the Enterprise Strategy Group, senior analyst, there. Let's go back to Dave Vellante now with more on theCUBE. (electronic music) >> Thanks for watching this CUBE program made possible by Pure Storage. I want to say in summary, you know, sometimes it's hard to squint through all the vendor noise on cloud and as-a-service, and all the buzz words, and acronyms in the marketplace. But as I said at the top, the cloud is changing, it's evolving, it's expanding to new locations. The operating model is increasingly defining the cloud. There's so much opportunity to build value on top of the massive infrastructure build-out from the hyperscalers to $100 billion in CapEx last year, alone. This is not just true for technology vendors, but organizations are building their own layer to take advantage of the cloud. Now, of course, technology's critical so when you're evaluating technology solutions, look for the following. First, the ability of the solution to simplify your life. Can it abstract the underlying complexity of a cloud, multiple clouds, connect to on-prem workloads in an experience that is substantially identical, irrespective of location? Does the solution leverage cloud-native technologies and innovations and primitives and APIs or is it just a hosted stack that's really not on the latest technology curve, whether that's processor technology or virtualization, or machine learning, streaming, open source tech, et cetera? Third, how programmable is the infrastructure? Does it make developers more productive? Does it accelerate time to value? Does it minimize rework and increase the quality of your output? And four, what's the business impact? Will customers stand up and talk about the solution and how it contributed to their digital transformation by flexibly supporting emerging data-intensive workloads and evolving as their business rapidly changed? These are some of the important markers that we would suggest you monitor. Pure is obviously driving hard to optimize these and other areas, so watch closely and make your own assessment as to how, what they and others are building will fit into your business. Now as always, this content is available on demand on theCUBE.net, so definitely check that out. This I Dave Vellante for John Walls and the entire CUBE team, thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see ya next time. (soft electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome back to the Cookie Conundrum, A Recipe For Success an industry conference and summit from Quancast on the demise of third-party cookies. We've got a great industry panel here to break it down. Chris Guenther, senior vice president global head of Programmatic at News Corp. Chris, thanks for coming on. Xiao Lin, managing director solutions at Xaxis, and Somer Simpson, vice president of product at Quancast stellar panel. Looking forward to this conversation. Thanks for coming on and chatting about the cookie conundrum. >> Thank you for having us. >> So, Chris, we'll start with you at News Corp obviously major publisher. Deprecation of third-party cookies affects everyone. You guys have a ton of traffic, ton of audience across multiple formats. Tell us about the impact to you guys and the reliance you guys had on them. And what are you going to do to prepare for this next level change? >> Sure. I mean, I think like everyone in this industry there is a, you know, a significant reliance and I think it's something that a lot talk about audience targeting, but obviously they realize that third party cookies pervasive across the whole ad tech ecosystem, MarTech stack. And so, you know, we have to think about, you know how that impact, you know, our vendor the vendors we work with, what it means in terms of our use cases across marketing, across advertising across site experience. So, you know, without a doubt, it's significant. But you know, we look at it as listen. It's disruptive in disruption and change is always a little scary, but overall it's a it's a long overdue reset. I mean, I think that, you know, our perspective is that the the cookies, as we all know, is it was a crutch, right? It's sort of a technology being used in way it shouldn't. And so, as we look at what's going to happen presumably after Jan 2022, then it's a good way to kind of fix on some bad practices practices that lead to data, leakage, practice sort of devalued for our perspective. Some of the, you know, we offered as, as publishers. And I think that this is a key thing is that we're not just looking to as we look through post gen world, not just kind of recreating the prior world. Because the prior world was flawed or I guess I could say the current world since it hasn't changed yet. But the current world is flawed. Let's not just replicate that. You know, let's make sure that third party cookies goes away other work around like fingerprinting and things like that, you know, also go away. So, you know, philosophically that's where our head's at. And so, you know, as we look at how we are preparing you look at sort of what are the core building blocks of preparing for this world. Obviously one of the key ones is privacy compliance. Like how do we treat our users with consent? You know, obviously are we aligned with the regulatory environments? You know, in some ways we're not looking just to Jan 2022 but Jan 2023, where there's going to be the majority of our audiences, we covered by regulation. And so I think from regulation up to data gathering, to data activation, all built around an internal identifier that we've developed that allows us to have a a consistent look at our user is whether they're logged in or obviously, anonymous. So it's really looking across all those components, across all our sites, and all in a privacy compliant way. So a lot of work to be done, a lot of work in progress but you know, we're excited about what's going on. >> I like how you framed it, you know, old world or next gen kind of the current situation is kind of flawed. And as you think about Programmatic, the concept is mind blowing and what needs to be done. So we'll come back to that because I think that original content view is certainly relevant. It's a huge investment, and you've got great content and audience consuming it. Xiao, from a major media standpoint get your perspective on the impact because you've got clients who want to get their message out in front of the audience at the right time, at the right place and the right context. Right? So yeah, privacy, you got consent and all of these things kind of boiling up how do you help clients prepare? Because now they can go direct to the consumer. You know, everyone, everyone has a megaphone now everyone's you know, everyone's here, everyone's connected. So how are you impacted by this new notion? >> You know, if the cookieless future was a tik tok dance, we'd be dancing right now and at least until the next year. This has been top of mind for us and our clients for quite some time. But I think as each day passes the picture becomes clearer and more in focus. The end of the third party cookie does not mean the end of Programmatic. So clients work with us in transforming their investments into real business outcomes based on our expertise and based on our tech. So we continue to be in a great position to lead, to educate, to partner, and to grow with them along this cookieless future. The impact will be all encompassing in changing the ways we do things now and also accelerating the things that we've already been building on. So we take it from the top. Planning will have a huge impact because it's going to start becoming more strategic around real business outcomes. We're omni-channel. So clients wants to drive outcomes through multiple touch points of a consumer's journey. Whether that's programmatic, whether that's as a cookie free environment like connected TV, out of home, audio, gaming, and so forth. So we're going to see more of these strategic holistic plans. Creative will have a lot of impact. It will start becoming more important with Creative testing, Creative insights, you know, Creative in itself is cookieless. So there will be more focus on how to drive a brand dialogue, to connect to consumers with less targeting, with less cookies. With the cohesiveness of holistic planning, Creative can align through multiple channels. And lastly, the role of AI will become increasingly important. You know, we've always looked to build our tech, our products, to compliment new and existing technology as well as the client's own data and tech stack to deliver these outcomes for them. And AI in its core is just taking inputted data and having an output of your desired outcomes. So input data could be DSP data beyond cookies such as browser, such as location, such as contextual, a publisher taking client's first party data, first party CRM data like store visitation sales site activity. And using that to optimize in real time regardless of what vendor or what channel we're on. So as we're learning more about this cookieless dance, we're helping our clients on the steps of it, and also introducing our own moves. >> That's awesome. Data is going to be a key value proposition, you know connecting in with content real time. Great stuff. Somer, with your background in journalism and you're the tech VP of product at Quancast. You have the keys to the kingdom over there. It's interesting, journalism is about truth you know, good content, original content. But now you have a data challenge, problem, opportunity on both sides, brands and publishers coming together. This is a data problem in a way. It's a tech stack, not so much just, you know getting the right ads to show up at the right place, the right time. It's really bigger than that now. What's your take on this? >> You know, I, so first I think that consumers already sort of accept that there is a reasonable value exchange, you know, for their data, in order to access free content. Right? And that's a critical piece for us to all kind of understand. Over the past. Yeah, probably two years, since even before the GDPR, we've been doing a ton of discovery with customers, both publishers and marketers. And so, you know, we kind of known this this cookie going away thing is, has been coming and you know, Google's announcement just kind of confirmed it. And it's been really really interesting since Google's announcement how the conversations have changed with our customers and other folks that we talk to. And I've almost gone from being like a product manager to a therapist because there's such an emotional response. From the marketer perspective, there's real fear there. There's like, Oh my God, how you know, it's not just about delivering ads. It's about how do I control frequency? How do I measure, you know, success? You know, because the technology has grown so much over the years to really give marketers the ability to deliver personalized, you know, advertising good content to consumers and be able to monitor it and control it so that it's not too, too intrusive. On the publisher perspective side, we see a slightly different response. It's more of a yes. Right? You know, we're taking back control and we're going to stop the data leakage. We're going to get the value back for our inventory. Both things are a good thing. But if it's not managed, it's going to be like ships passing in the night. Right? In terms of, you know, them coming together. Right? And that's the critical pieces that they have to come together. They have to get closer. You got to cut out a lot of like that LUMAscape in the middle so that they can talk to each other and understand what's the value exchange happening between marketers and publishers and how do we do that without cookies? >> Yeah. It's a fascinating, I love your insight there. I think it's so relevant. And it's got broader implications because, you know, if you look at how data is impacting some of these big structural changes and refactoring of industries look at cybersecurity, you know no one wants to share their data but now if they share, they get more insight more machine learning, benefit, more AI benefit. So now we have the sharing notion but that goes against counter the big guys that want a walled garden. They want to hoard all the data and control that to provide their own personalization. So you have this confluence of, hey I want to hoard the data and then now I want to share the data. So Chris and Homer, in the wheelhouse you've got original content and there's other providers out there. So is there the sharing model coming? with privacy and these kinds of services is the open come back again? How do you guys see this? The confluence of open versus walled gardens. Because you need the data to make machine learning good. >> I'll start off. I mean, listen, I think you have to give credit to the walled gardens I've created. And I think as we look as publishers, what are we offering to our clients? What are we offering to the buy-side? We need to be compelling. We shouldn't just be, obviously, as journalists I think that there is a case of, you know the importance of funding journalism. But ultimately we need to make sure we're meeting the the KPIs and the business needs of the buy-side. And I think around that, it is, you know there's sort of three core pillars to that. It's ease of access, it's scope of activation and targeting, and finally, measurable results. So as I think, as us, as an individual publisher of so we have multiple publications so we do have scale, but then in partnership with other publishers perhaps organizations like Prebid, you know I think we can, we're trying to address that. And I think we can offer something that's compelling and transparent in terms of what these results are. But obviously, you know, I want to make sure it's clear that transparent terms of results, but obviously where there's privacy in terms of the data. And I I think we've all heard about like data clean rooms, a lot of them out there flogging those wares. And I think there's something valuable, but you know I think it's who is sort of the right partner or partners, and ultimately who allows us to get as close as possible to the buy side. And so that we can share that data for targeting shared for perhaps for measurement, but obviously all in a privacy compliant way. >> Somer, what's your take on this? Because you talk about the future of the open internet democratization. The network effect that we're seeing in virality and across multiple omni-channels as Xiao pointed out, it's happening. That's the distribution now. So that's almost an open garden model. So it's like >> Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's, you know back in the day, you know, Nightrider who was the first group that I, that I worked for, you know each of those individual properties were not hugely valuable on their own from a digital perspective. but together as a unit, they became valuable. Right. And got a scale for advertisers. Now we're in a place where, you know, I kind of think that each of those big networks are going to have to come together and work together to compare in size to the, to the walled gardens. And yeah, this is something that we've talked about before, an open garden. I think that's the definitely the right route to take. And I agree with Chris. It's about publishers getting as close to the marketers as possible, working with the tech companies that enable them to do that, and doing so in a very privacy centric way. >> Xiao how do we bring the brands and agencies together to get ready for third-party cookies? Because there is a therapist moment here of it's going to be okay, the parachute will open. The future is not going to be as grim. It's a real opportunity, but if managed properly. What's your take on this? Is it just more first party data strategy? And what's your assessment of this? >> So we're collaborating right now with ball grants on how to distill very complex cookieless future you know, what's going to happen in the future. To six steps that we can take right now and marketers should take. The first step is gather Intel on what's working on your current campaign analyzing the data sets across cookie free environment. So you can translate those tactics eventually when the cookies do go away. So we have to look at things like temporal or time analysis. We can look at log level data. We can look at site analytics data. We can look at brand measurement tools and how Creative really impacts the campaign success. The second thing we can look at is geo-targeting strategies. The geo-targeting strategy has been underrated because the granularity and DL data could go down all the way to the local level, even beyond zip code. So for example, the census block data. And this is especially important for CPG brands. So we're working closely with the client teams to understand not only the online data, but the offline data and how we can utilize that in the future. We want to optimize investments around markets that are working, so strong markets, and then test in underperforming markets. The third thing we can look at is contextual. So contextual by itself is cookie free. We could build on small-scale usage to test and learn various keywords and content categories based sets, working closely with partners to find ways to leverage their data, to mimic audiences that you are trying to target right now with cookies. The fourth one is publisher data or publisher targeting. So working with your publishers that you have strong relationships with who can curate similar audiences using their own first party data and conducting RFIs to understand the scale and reach against your audience and your future roadmap. So work with your top publishers based on historical data to try to recreate your best strategies. The fifth thing, and I think this is very important, is first party data. That's going to matter more than ever in the cookieless future. Brands will need to think about how to access and develop the first party data starting with the consumer, seeing of value in exchange for the information it's a goldmine and understanding your consumer their intent, their journey. And you need a really great data sciences team to extract insights out of that data, which will be crucial. So partner with strategic onboarding vendors and vet their ability to accept first party data into a clean room environment for targeting, for modeling, for insights. And lastly, the sixth thing that we can do is begin inform prospecting by dedicating test budget to start gaining learnings about cookieless. One, one place that we can start, and it is under invested right now, is Safari and Firefox. They have been cookieless for quite some time. So you can start here and begin testing here. Work with your data scientist team to understand the right mixes to target and start exploring other channels outside of just programmatic cookies. Like CTV, digit auto home, radio, gaming, and so forth. So those are the six steps that we're taking right now with our clients to prepare and plan for the cookieless future. >> So, Chris, let's go back to you. What's the solution here? Is there one, is there multiple solutions? What's the future look like for a cookieless future? >> I think the one certain answer is there definitely is not just one solution. As we all know right now, there seems to be endless solutions, a lot of ideas out there, proposals when the W3C, work happening within other industry bodies, you know, private company solutions being offered. And you know, it's a little bit, it's enough to make everyone's head spin and to try to track it to understand it and understand the impact. And as a publisher, we're obviously, you know, a lot of people are knocking on our door, you know they're saying, hey, our solution is one that it's going to bring in lots of money. You know, all the buy-side is going to use it. This is the one like unlock all the spend. And it's our experience so far is that none of these solutions are, cause I think everyone's still testing and learning. No one on the buy side from our, from our knowledge is really committed to one or a few. It's all about a testing stage. I think that, you know, putting aside all that noise I think what matters the most to us as publishers, actually something Somer mentioned before. It's about control. You know, if we're going to work with a, you know, again outside of our sort of independent internal identifier work that we're doing, if we're going to work with an outside party or an outside approach, does it give us control >> As a publisher to ensure that it is, you know we control the, the data from our users, you know there isn't that data leakage, it's privacy compliant. You know, what information gets shared out there? What is it what's released within, you know within the bitstream? If it is something that's attached to a, someone, a declared user, a registered user that if that then is not somehow amplified or leverage off in another site in a way that is leveraging bit stream data or fingerprinting and going again. And so I think that the spirit of what we're trying to do in a post third party cookie world. And so those controls are critical. And I think to have those controls as publisher we have to be collectively be disciplined. And you know, what solutions that we sort of we test out and what we eventually adopt. But even when that adoption point arrives it definitely will not be one. There will be multiple because there's just too many cases to address. >> Great, great insight there from you guys at News Corp. Somer, let's get back to you. I want to get your thoughts. You've been in many waves of innovation, ups and downs. We're on a new one now. We talked about the open internet and democratization. Journalism is under a lot of pressure now but there's now a wave of quality people, really leaning in towards fighting misinformation, understanding truth and community and data is at the heart of it. What do you see as the new future for journalists to reward journalism? Is there a way, is there a path forward? >> So there's what I hope is going to happen. And then I'm just going to ignore what could, right. You know, there's a trend in market right now at a number of fronts, right? So there are marketers who are leaning in to wanting to spend their marketing dollars with quality journalists, focusing on BiPAC owned and operated, really leaning into supporting those businesses that have been and those publishers that have been ignored for years. I really hope that this trend continues. We are leaning into helping marketers curate that supply, right. And, and really, you know, speak with their dollars about the things that they support and value in market. So I'm hoping that that trend continues. And it's not just sort of like a marketing blip but we will do everything possible to kind of encourage that behavior and give people the information that they need to find. You know, truly high quality journalism. >> That's awesome. Chris, Xiao, Somer, thanks for coming on and sharing your insight on this panel on the cookieless future. Before we go, just quick summary, each of you if you don't mind just giving a quick sound bite or bumper sticker of what we can expect. If you had to throw a prediction for what's going to happen in the next 24 months. Chris, we'll start with you. >> It's going to be quite a ride. I think that's an understatement. I think that there, I wouldn't be surprised if if Google delays the change to the Chrome by a couple months. And may give the industry some much needed time. But no one knows, I guess, I guess I'm not except for someone somewhere, we are deep within Chrome. So I think we all have to operate in a way that changes that happen, changes that happen quickly. And it's going to cover across all facets of the industry, all facets of, you know, from advertising and marketing. So just be prepared. >> Okay. Xiao. Along those same lines, be prepared. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. You know, we're all dancing in this together. I think for us, it's planning and preparing and also building on what we've already been working on. So omni-channel, AI, Creative, and I think clients will lean more into those different channels. >> Awesome. Somer, take us home. Last words. >> I think we're in the throwing spaghetti against the wall stage, right? So this is a time of discovery of leaning and trying everything out learning and iterating as fast as we possibly can. >> Awesome. And I love the cat in the background over your shoulder. I can't stop staring at your wonderful cat. Somer, thanks for coming on. Xiao, Chris, thanks for coming on this awesome panel industry breakdown of the Cookie Conundrum, a Recipe for Success data AI open the future is here. It's coming. It's coming fast. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.

>>what? Hello, I'm john free with the cube. I want to welcome Conrad Feldman, the founder and Ceo of Kwan cast here to kick off the quan cast industry summit on the demise of third party cookies. The events called the cookie conundrum, a recipe for success. The changing advertising landscape, super relevant conversation just now. More than ever. Conrad welcome to your own program kicking this off. Thanks for holding this event. It's a pleasure. Great to chat with you today. So a big fan been following your company since the founding of it. Been analytics is always the prize of any data driven company. Media. Anything's all data driven now. Um, talk about the open internet because now more than ever it's under siege. As I, as I mentioned in my open, um, we've been seeing the democratization, a new trend of decentralization. We're starting to see um, you know, everyone's present online now, Clay Shirky wrote a book called, here comes everyone in 2005. Well everyone's here. Right? So you know, we're here, it's gonna be more open. But yet people are looking at as close right now. You're seeing the big players, um, or in the data. What's your vision of this open internet? >>Well, an open internet exists for everyone. And if you think about the evolution of the internet, when the internet was created for the first time really in history, anyone that had access to the internet could publish the content, whatever they were interested in and could find an audience. And of course that's grown to where we are today, where five billion people around the world are able to engage in all sorts of content, whether that's entertainment or education, news, movies. What's perhaps not so widely understood is that most of that content is paid for by advertising and there's a lot of systems that support advertising on the open Internet and some of those are under siege today certainly. >>And what's the big pressure point? Is it just more control the data? Is it just that these walled gardens are wanting to, you know, suck the audience in there? Is that monetization driving it? What's where's the friction? >>Well, the challenges is sort of the accumulation of power into a really small number of now giant corporations who have actually reduced a lot of the friction that marketers have in spending their money effectively. And it means that those companies are capturing a disproportionate spend of the ad budgets that fund digital content. So the problem is if more of the money goes to them, less of its going to independent content creators. It's actually getting harder for independent voices to emerge and be heard. And so that's the real challenges. That has more power consolidates into just a limited number of tech giants. The funding path for the open Internet becomes constrained and there'll be less choice for consumers without having to pay for subscriptions. >>Everyone knows the more data you have the better and certainly, but the centralized power when the trend is going the other way, the consensus is everyone wants to be decentralized more truth, more trust all this is being talked about on the heels of the google's news around, you know, getting rid of third party cookies and others have followed suit. Um, what does this mean? I mean, this cookies have been the major vehicle for tracking and getting that kind of data. What is gonna be replaced with what is this all about? And can you share with us what the future will look like? >>Sure, Well, just as advertising funds the open Internet is advertising technology that supports that advertising spend. It supports sort of the business of advertising that funds the open Internet. And within all of that technology is the need for different systems to be able to align around um the identification of for example, a consumer, Have they been to this site before? Have they seen an ad before? So there's all of these different systems that might be used for advertising for measurement, for attribution, for creating personalization. And historically they've relied upon the third party cookie as the mechanism for synchronization. Well, the third party cookie has been in decline for some time. It's already mostly gone from actually apple safari browser, but google's chrome has so much control over how people access the internet. And so it was when Google announced that chrome was going to deprecate the third party cookie, that it really sort of focus the minds of the industry in terms of finding alternative ways to tailor content and ultimately to just simply measure the effectiveness of advertising. And so there's an enormous amount of um innovation taking place right now to find alternative solutions. >>You know, some are saying that the free open internet was pretty much killed when, you know, the big comes like facebook and google started bringing all this data and kind of pulls all sucks all the auction in the room, so to speak. What's this mean with cookies now getting, getting rid of um, by google has an impact publishers because is it helpful? I mean hurtful. I mean, where's the where is that, what the publisher impact? >>Well, I don't think anyone really knows right now. So first of all, cookies weren't necessarily a very good solution to the sort of the challenge of maintaining state and understanding those sorts of the delivery of advertising and so on. It's just the one that's commonly used, I think for different publishers it may mean different things. But many publishers need to be able to demonstrate the value and the effectiveness of the advertising solutions that they deliver. So they'll be innovating in terms of how they use their first party data. They'll be continuing to use contextual solutions that have long been used to create advertising relevant, relevant. I think the big question of course is how we're going to measure it that any of this is effective at all because everyone relies upon measuring advertising effectiveness to justify capturing those budgets in the first place. >>You know, you mentioned contextual come up a lot also in the other interviews we've done with the folks in the around the internet around this topic of machine learning is a big 12 What is the impact of this with the modernization of the solution? You mentioned cookies? Okay cookies, old technology. But the mechanisms in this ecosystem around it or not, it funds the open internet. What is that modern solution that goes that next level? Is it contextual metadata? Is that shared systems? What's the it's the modernization of that. >>It's all of those and and more. There's no there's no single solution to replace the third party cookie. There'll be a combination of solutions. Part of that will be alternative identity mechanisms. So you know, you will start to see more registration wars to access content so that you have what's called a deterministic identify there will be statistical models so called probabilistic models, contextual has always been important. It will become more important and it will be combined with we use contextual combining natural language processing with machine learning models to really understand the detailed context of different pages across the internet. You'll also see the use of first party data and there are discussions about shared data services as well. I think there's gonna be a whole set of different innovations that will need to inter operate and it's going to be an evolutionary process as people get used to using these different systems to satisfy the different stages of the media fulfillment cycle from research and planning to activation to measurement. >>You know, you put up walled gardens. I want to just touch on the on on this kind of concept of walled gardens and and and and compare and contrast that with the demand for community, open internet has always fostered a community vibe. You see network effects mostly in distinct user communities or subnets of sub networks. If you will kind of walled gardens became that kind of group get together but then became more of a media solution to make the user is the product, as they say, facebook's a great example, right? People talk about facebook and from that misinformation abuse walled garden is not the best thing happening right now in the world, but yet is there any other other choice? That's how they're going to make money? But yet everyone wants trust, truth community. Are they usually exclusive? How do you see this evolving, what's your take? >>Well, I think the open internet is a, is a forum where anyone can have their voice, uh, put their voice out there and have it discovered and it's in that regard, it's a it's a force for good look. I think there are there are challenges, obviously in terms of some of the some of the optimization that takes place with inside the walled gardens, which is, is sort of optimized to drive engagement can have some unintended consequences. Um obviously that's something that's, that's broadly being discussed today and the impact on society, but sort of more at a more pointed level, it's just the absorption of advertising dollars. There's a finite amount of money from advertisers. It's estimated to be $400 billion this year in digital advertising. So it's a huge amount of money in terms of funding the open Internet, which sounds great except for its increasingly concentrated in a tiny number of companies. And so, you know, our job at Quan cast as champions of the free and open Internet is to help direct money effectively to publishers across the open internet and give advertisers a reliable, repeatable way of accessing the audiences that they care about in the environment they care about and delivering advertising results. >>It's a publisher, we care a lot about what our audience wants and try to serve them and listen to them. If we could get the data, we want that data and then also broker in the monetization with advertisers, who might want to reach that audience in whatever way. So this brings up the question of, you know, automation and role of data. You know, this is a huge thing to having that data closed loop, if you will for for publishers. But yet most publishers are small, some niche. And even as they can become super large, they don't have all the data and more, the more data, the better the machine learning. So what's the answer to this as it goes forward? How do we get there? What's the dots that that we need to connect to get that future state? >>So I think it takes it takes companies working together effectively. I think a really important part of it is, is a more direct conversation with consumers. We've seen that change beginning to happen over the past few years with the introduction of regulations that require clear communication to consumers about the data that's captured. And y and I think that creates an opportunity to explain to your audience is the way in which content is funded. So I think that consumer that consumer conversation will be part of the collective solution. >>You know, I want to as we wind down this kickoff segment, get your thoughts and vision around um, the evolution of the internet and you guys have done some great work at quan Cast is well documented, but everyone used to talk about traffic by traffic, then it became cost of acquisitions. PPC search. This is either mechanisms that people have been using for a long, long time, then you know, your connections but audience is about traffic, audience traffic. If this if my family is online, doesn't it become about networks and the people. So I want to get your thoughts and your vision because if community is going to be more important than people agree that it is and things are gonna be decentralized, more openness, more voices to be heard. You need to dress ability. The formation of networks and groups become super important. What's your vision on that? >>So my vision is to create relevance and utility for consumers. I think that's one of the things that's often forgotten is that when we make advertising more relevant and useful for consumers, it automatically fulfils the objectives that publishers and marketers have, everyone wins when advertising is more relevant. And our vision is to make advertising relevant across the entire open internet so that that ad supported model can continue to flourish and that five billion and hopefully many more billions in the future, people around the world have access to high quality, diverse content. >>If someone asked you Conrad, what is quant cast doing to make the open internet viable now that cookies are going away? What's the answer? >>So well, the cookie pieces is a central piece of it in terms of finding solutions that will enable sort of planning activation and measurement post cookies and we have a lot of innovation going on. There were also working with a range of industry bodies and our and our partners to build solutions for this. What we're really trying to do is to make buying the open internet as straightforward for marketers as it is today and buying the walled gardens. The reason the walled gardens capture so much money is they made it really easy for marketers to get results, marketers would like to be able to spend their money across all of the diverse publishes the open internet. You know, our job at Comcast is to make it just as easy to effectively spend money in funding the content that they really care about in reaching the audiences that they want. >>Great stuff. Great Mission. Conrad, thanks for coming on. Conrad Feldmann founder and Ceo here at the cookie conundrum recipe for success event, Quant Cast Industry summit on the demise of third party cookies. Thank you. Conrad appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, I'm john ferrier, stay with us for more on the industry event around the middle cookies. Mhm Yeah, yeah, thank you. Mhm. Welcome back to the Qantas industry summit on the demise of third party cookies, the cookie conundrum, a recipe for success. I'm john furrier host of the cube, the changing landscape of advertising is here and shit Gupta, founder of you of digital is joining us chief. Thanks for coming on this segment. Really appreciate, I know you're busy, you've got two young kids as well as providing education to the digital industry, you got some kids to take care of and train them to. So welcome to the cube conversation here as part of the program. >>Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here. >>So the office of the changing landscape of advertising really centers around the open to walled garden mindset of the web and the big power players. We know the big 34 tech players dominate the marketplace so clearly in a major inflection point and we've seen this movie before Web mobile revolution which was basically a reply platform NG of capabilities. But now we're in an error of re factoring the industry, not re platt forming a complete changing over of the value proposition. So a lot at stake here as this open web, open internet, global internet evolves. What are your, what's your take on this, this industry proposals out there that are talking to this specific cookie issue? What does it mean? And what proposals are out there? >>Yeah, so, you know, I I really view the identity proposals and kind of to to kind of groups, two separate groups. So on one side you have what the walled gardens are doing and really that's being led by google. Right, so google um you know, introduce something called the privacy sandbox when they announced that they would be deprecating third party cookies uh as part of the privacy sandbox, they've had a number of proposals unfortunately, or you know, however you want to say they're all bird themed for some reason, I don't know why. Um but the one, the bird theme proposal that they've chosen to move forward with is called flock, which stands for Federated learning of cohorts. And essentially what it all boils down to is google is moving forward with cohort level learning and understanding of users in the future after third party cookies, unlike what we've been accustomed to in this space, which is a user level understanding of people and what they're doing online for targeting tracking purposes. And so that's on one side of the equation, it's what google is doing with flock and privacy sandbox now on the other side is, you know, things like unified I. D. Two point or the work that I. D five is doing around building new identity frameworks for the entire space that actually can still get down to the user level. Right? And so again, unified I. D. Two point oh comes to mind because it's the one that's probably got the most adoption in the space. It's an open source framework. So the idea is that it's free and pretty much publicly available to anybody that wants to use it and unified, I need to point out again is user level. So it's it's basically taking data that's authenticated data from users across various websites you know that are logging in and taking those authenticated users to create some kind of identity map. And so if you think about those two work streams right, you've got the walled gardens and or you know, google with flock on one side and then you've got unified I. D. Two point oh and other I. D. Frameworks for the open internet. On the other side, you've got these two very differing type of approaches to identity in the future. Again on the google side it's cohort level, it's going to be built into chrome. Um The idea is that you can pretty much do a lot of the things that we do with advertising today, but now you're just doing it at a group level so that you're protecting privacy, whereas on the other side of the open internet you're still getting down to the user level. Um And that's pretty powerful. But the the issue there is scale, right? We know that a lot of people are not logged in on lots of websites. I think the stat that I saw is under five of all website traffic is authenticated. So really if you if you simplify things you boil it all down, you have kind of these two very differing approaches. >>I guess the question it really comes down to what alternatives are out there for cookies and which ones do you think will be more successful? Because I think, you know, the consensus is at least from my reporting, in my view, is that the world agrees. Let's make it open, Which one is going to be better. >>Yeah, that's a great question, john So as I mentioned, right, we have we have to kind of work streams here, we've got the walled garden work streams, work stream being led by google and their work around flock, and then we've got the open internet, right? Let's say unified I. D to kind of represents that. I personally don't believe that there is a right answer or an endgame here. I don't think that one of them wins over the other, frankly, I think that, you know, first of all, you have those two frameworks, neither of them are perfect, they're both flawed in their own ways. There are pros and cons to both of them. And so what we're starting to see now is you have other companies kind of coming in and building on top of both of them as kind of a hybrid solution. Right? So they're saying, hey, we use, you know, an open I. D. Framework in this way to get down to the user level and use that authenticated data and that's important. But we don't have all the scale. So now we go to google and we go to flock to kind of fill the scale. Oh and hey, by the way, we have some of our own special sauce, right? We have some of our own data, we have some of our own partnerships, we're gonna bring that in and layer it on top. Right? And so really where I think things are headed is the right answer, frankly, is not one or the other. It's a little mishmash of both. With a little extra something on top. I think that's that's what we're starting to see out of a lot of companies in the space. And I think that's frankly where we're headed. >>What do you think the industry will evolve to, in your opinion? Because I think this is gonna, you can't ignore the big guys on this because these programmatic you mentioned also the data is there. But what do you think the market will evolve to with this, with this conundrum? >>So, so I think john where we're headed? You know, I think we're right now we're having this existential existential crisis, right? About identity in this industry, because our world is being turned upside down, all the mechanisms that we've used for years and years are being thrown out the window and we're being told they were gonna have new mechanisms, Right? So cookies are going away device ids are going away and now we got to come up with new things and so the world is being turned upside down and everything that you read about in the trades and you know, we're here talking about it, right? Like everyone's always talking about identity right now, where do I think this is going if I was to look into my crystal ball, you know, this is how I would kind of play this out. If you think about identity today. Right? Forget about all the changes. Just think about it now and maybe a few years before today, Identity for marketers in my opinion has been a little bit of a checkbox activity. Right? It's been hey, um, okay, uh, you know ad tech company or a media company, do you have an identity solution? Okay. Tell me a little bit more about it. Okay, Sounds good. That sounds good. Now can we move on and talk about my business and how are you going to drive meaningful outcomes or whatever for my business? And I believe the reason that is, is because identity is a little abstract, right? It's not something that you can actually get meaningful validation against. It's just something that, you know. Yes, You have it. Okay, great. Let's move on, type of thing. Right. And so that, that's, that's kind of where we've been now, all of a sudden The cookies are going away, the device ids are going away. And so the world is turning upside down in this crisis of how are we going to keep doing what we were doing for the last 10 years in the future. So everyone's talking about it and we're trying to re engineer right? The mechanisms now if I was to look into the crystal ball right 2 3 years from now where I think we're headed is not much is going to change. And what I mean by that john is um uh I think that marketers will still go to companies and say do you have an ID solution? Okay tell me more about it. Okay uh Let me understand a little bit better. Okay you do it this way. Sounds good. Now the ways in which companies are going to do it will be different right now. It's flock and unified I. D. And this and that right. The ways the mechanisms will be a little bit different but the end state right? Like the actual way in which we operate as an industry and kind of like the view of the landscape in my opinion will be very simple or very similar, right? Because marketers will still view it as a tell me you have an ID solution. Make me feel good about it. Help me check the box and let's move on and talk about my business and how you're going to solve for my needs. So I think that's where we're going. That is not by any means to discount this existential moment that we're in. This is a really important moment where we do have to talk about and figure out what we're going to do in the future. My just my viewpoint is that the future will actually not look all that different than the present. >>And I'll say the user base is the audience. Their their data behind it helps create new experiences, machine learning and Ai are going to create those and we have the data you have the sharing it or using it as we're finding shit Gupta great insight dropping some nice gems here. Founder of you of Digital and also the Adjunct professor of Programmatic advertising at Levi School of Business and santa Clara University professor. Thank you for coming dropping the gems here and insight. Thank you. >>Thanks a lot for having me john really appreciate >>it. Thanks for watching. The cooking 100 is the cube host Jon ferrier me. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Hello welcome back to the cookie conundrum recipe for success and industry conference and summit from Guanacaste on the demise of third party cookies. Got a great industry panel here to break it down chris Gunther Senior Vice president Global Head of programmatic at news corp chris thanks for coming on Zal in Managing Director Solutions at Z axis and Summer Simpson. Vice president Product at quan cast stellar panel. Looking forward to this conversation. Uh thanks for coming on and chatting about the cookie conundrum. Thank you for having us. So chris we'll start with you at news corp obviously a major publisher deprecation of third party cookies affects everyone. You guys have a ton of traffic, ton of audience across multiple formats. Um, tell us about the impact to you guys and the reliance he has had on them. And what are you gonna do to prepare for this next level change? >>Sure. I mean, I think like everyone in this industry there's uh a significant reliance and I think it's something that a lot of talk about audience targeting but obviously that reliance on third party cookies pervasive across the whole at tech ecosystem Martek stack. And so you know, we have to think about how that impact vendor vendors, we work with what it means in terms of use cases across marketing, across advertising, across site experience. So, you know, without a doubt, it it's it's significant, but you know, we look at it as listen, it's disruptive, uh, disruption and change is always a little scary. Um, but overall it's a, it's a long overdue reset. I mean, I think that, you know, our perspective is that the cookies, as we all know was it was a crutch, right sort of a technology being used in way it shouldn't. Um, and so as we look at what's going to happen presumably after Jan 2022 then it's, it's a good way to kind of fix on some bad practices practices that lead to data leakage, um, practice or devalue for our perspective, some of the, you know, we offered as as publishers and I think that this is a key thing is that we're not just looking to as we look at the post gender world, not just kind of recreating the prior world because the prior world was flawed or I guess you could say the current world since it hasn't changed yet. But the current world is flawed. Let's not just not, you know, let's not just replicate that. Let's make sure that, you know, third party cookie goes away. Other work around like fingerprinting and things like that. You know, also go away so philosophically, that's where our heads at. And so as we look at how we are preparing, you know, you look at what are the core building blocks of preparing for this world. Obviously one of the key ones is privacy compliance. Like how do we treat our users with consent? Yeah, obviously. Are we um aligned with the regulatory environments? Yeah. In some ways we're not looking just a Jan 2022, but Jan 23 where there's gonna be the majority of our audiences we covered by regulation. And so I think from regulation up to data gathering to data activation, all built around an internal identifier that we've developed that allows us to have a consistent look at our users whether they're logged in or obviously anonymous. So it's really looking across all those components across all our sites and in all in a privacy compliant way. So a lot of work to be done, a lot of work in progress. But we're >>excited about what's going on. I like how you framed at Old world or next gen kind of the current situation kind of flawed. And as you think about programmatic, the concept is mind blowing and what needs to be done. So we'll come back to that because I think that original content view is certainly relevant, a huge investment and you've got great content and audience consuming it from a major media standpoint. Get your perspective on the impact because you've got clients who want to get their their message out in front of the audience at the right time, at the right place and the right context. Right, So your privacy, you got consent, all these things kind of boiling up. How do you help clients prepare? Because now they can go direct to the consumer. Everyone, everyone has a megaphone, now, everyone's, everyone's here, everyone's connected. So how are you impacted by this new notion? >>You know, if if the cookie list future was a tic tac, dance will be dancing right now, and at least into the next year, um this has been top of mind for us and our clients for quite some time, but I think as each day passes, the picture becomes clearer and more in focus. Uh the end of the third party cookie does not mean the end of programmatic. Um so clients work with us in transforming their investments into real business outcomes based on our expertise and based on our tech. So we continue to be in a great position to lead to educate, to partner and to grow with them. Um, along this uh cookie list future, the impact will be all encompassing in changing the ways we do things now and also accelerating the things that we've already been building on. So we take it from the top planning will have a huge impact because it's gonna start becoming more strategic around real business outcomes. Uh where Omni channel, So clients want to drive outcomes, drew multiple touch points of a consumer's journey, whether it has programmatic, whether it has uh cookie free environment, like connected tv, digital home audio, gaming and so forth. So we're going to see more of these strategic holistic plans. Creative will have a lot of impact. It will start becoming more important with creative testing. Creative insights. You know, creative in itself is cookie list. So there will be more focused on how to drive uh brand dialogue to connect to consumers with less targeting. With less cookies, with the cohesiveness of holistic planning. Creative can align through multiple channels and lastly, the role of a. I will become increasingly important. You know, we've always looked to build our tech our products to complement new and existing technology as well as the client's own data and text back to deliver these outcomes for them. And ai in its core it's just taking input data uh and having an output of your desired outcome. So input data could be dSP data beyond cookies such as browser such as location, such as contextual or publisher taking clients first party data, first party crm data like store visitation, sales, site activity. Um and using that to optimize in real time regardless of what vendor or what channel we're on. Um So as we're learning more about this cookie list dance, we're helping our clients on the steps of it and also introducing our own moves. >>That's awesome. Data is going to be a key value proposition, connecting in with content real time. Great stuff. Somewhere with your background in journalism and you're the tech VP of product at quan cast. You have the keys to the kingdom over there. It's interesting Journalism is about truth and good content original content. But now you have a data challenge problem opportunity on both sides, brands and publishers coming together. It's a data problem in a way it's a it's a tech stack, not so much just getting the right as to show up at the right place the right time. It's really bigger than that now. What's your take on this? >>Um you know, >>so first >>I think that consumers already sort of like except that there is a reasonable value exchange for their data in order to access free content. Right? And that's that's a critical piece for us to all kind of like understand over the past. Hi guys, probably two years since even even before the G. D. P. R. We've been doing a ton of discovery with customers, both publishers and marketers. Um and so you know, we've kind of known this, this cookie going away thing has been coming. Um And you know, Google's announcement just kind of confirmed it and it's been, it's been really, really interesting since Google's announcement, how the conversations have changed with with our customers and other folks that we talked to. And I've almost gone from being like a product manager to a therapist because there's such an emotional response. Um you know, from the marketing perspective, there's real fear there. There's like, oh my God, how you know, it's not just about, you know, delivering ads, it's about how do I control frequency? How do I, how do I measure, you know, success? Because the technology has has grown so much over the years to really give marketers the ability to deliver personalized advertising, good content, right. The consumers um and be able to monitor it and control it so that it's not too too intrusive on the publisher perspective side, we see slightly different response. It's more of a yes, right. You know, we're taking back control and we're going to stop the data leakage, we're going to get the value back for our inventory. Um and that both things are a good thing, but if it's, if it's not managed, it's going to be like ships passing in the night, right? In terms of um of, you know, they're there, them coming together, right, and that's the critical pieces that they have to come together. They have to get closer, you got to cut out a lot of that loom escape in the middle so that they can talk to each other and understand what's the value exchange happening between marketers and publishers and how do we do that without cookies? >>It's a fascinating, I love love your insight there. I think it's so relevant and it's got broader implications because, you know, if you look at how data's impact, some of these big structural changes and re factoring of industries, look at cyber security, you know, no one wants to share their data, but now if they share they get more insight, more machine learning, benefit more ai benefit. So now we have the sharing notion, but that goes against counter the big guys that want to wall garden, they want to hoard all the data and and control that to provide their own personalization. So you have this confluence of, hey, I want to hoard the data and then now I want to share the data. So so christmas summer you're in the, in the wheelhouse, you got original content and there's other providers out there. So is there the sharing model coming with privacy and these kinds of services? Is the open, come back again? How do you guys see this uh confluence of open versus walled gardens, because you need the data to make machine learning good. >>So I'll start uh start off, I mean, listen, I think you have to give credit to the walled gardens have created, I think as we look as publishers, what are we offering to our clients, what are we offering to the buy side? We need to be compelling. We shouldn't just be uh yeah, actually as journalists, I think that there is a case of the importance of funding journalism. Um but ultimately we need to make sure we're meeting the KPI is and the business needs of the buy side. And I think around that it is the sort of three core pillars that its ease of access, its scope of of activation and targeting and finally measurable results. So as I think is us as an individual publishers, so we have, we have multiple publications. So we do have scale. But then in partnership with other publishers perhaps to organizations like pre bid, you know, I think we can, you know, we're trying to address that and I think we can offer something that's compelling um, and transparent in terms of what these results are. But obviously, you know, I want to make sure it's clear transparent terms of results, but obviously where there's privacy in terms of the data and I think the form, you know, I think we've all heard a lot like data clean rooms, a lot of them out there flogging those wears. I think there's something valuable but you know, I think it's the right who is sort of the right partner or partners um and ultimately who allows us to get as close as possible to the buy side. And so that we can share that data for targeting, share it for perhaps for measurement, but obviously all in a privacy compliant >>way summer, what's your take on this? Because you talk about the future of the open internet democratization, the network effect that we're seeing in Vire al Itty and across multiple on the on the channels. Is that pointed out what's happening? That's the distribution now. So um that's almost an open garden model. So it's like um yeah, >>yeah, it's it's um you know, back in the day, you know, um knight ridder who was who was the first group that I that I worked for, um you know, each of those individual properties, um we're not hugely valuable on their own from a digital perspective, but together as a unit, they became valuable, right, and got scale for advertisers. Now we're in a place where, you know, I kind of think that each of those big networks are going to have to come together and work together to compare in size to the, to the world gardens. Um, and yeah, this is something that we've talked about before and an open garden. Um, I think that's the, that's the definitely the right route to take. And I and I agree with chris it's, it's about publishers getting as close to the market. Is it possible working with the tech companies that enable them to do that and doing so in a very privacy centric >>way. So how do we bring the brands and agencies together to get ready for third party cookies? Because there is a therapist moment here of it's gonna be okay. The parachute will open. The future is not gonna be as as grim. Um, it's a real opportunity. But if managed properly, what's your take on this is just more first party data strategy and what's your assessment of this? >>So we collaborated right now with ball grants on how did this still very complex cookie list future. Um, you know what's going to happen in the future? 2, 6 steps that we can take right now and market should take. Um, The first step is to gather intel on what's working on your current campaign, analyzing the data sets across cookie free environment. So you can translate those tactics eventually when the cookies do go away. So we have to look at things like temperature or time analysis. We could look at log level data. We could look at site analytics data. We can look at brand measurement tools and how creative really impacts the campaign success. The second thing we can look at is geo targeting strategies. The geo target strategy has been uh underrated because the granularity and geo data could go down all the way to the local level, even beyond zip code. So for example the census black data and this is especially important for CPG brands. So we're working closely with the client teams to understand not only the online data but the offline data and how we can utilize that in the future. Uh We want to optimize investments around uh markets that are working so strong markets and then test and underperforming markets. The third thing we can look at is contextual. So contextual by itself is cookie free. Uh We could build on small scale usage to test and learn various keywords and content categories based sets. Working closely with partners to find ways to leverage their data to mimic audiences that you are trying to target right now with cookies. Um the 4th 1 is publisher data or publisher targeting. So working with your publishers that you have strong relationships with who can curate similar audiences using their own first party data and conducting RFs to understand the scale and reach against your audience and their future role maps. So work with your top publishers based on historical data to try to recreate your best strategies. The 15 and I think this is very important is first party data, you know, that's going to matter more than ever. In the calculus future brands will need to think about how to access and developed the first party data starting with the consumers seeing a value in exchange for the information. It's a gold mine and understanding of consumer, their intent, the journey um and you need a really great data science team to extract insights out of that data, which will be crucial. So partner with strategic onboarding vendors and vet their ability to accept first party data into a cleaner environment for targeting for modeling for insight. And lastly, the six thing that we can do is begin to inform prospect prospecting by dedicating test budget to start gaining learnings about cookie list 11 place that we can start and it is under invested right now is Safari and Firefox. They have been calculus for quite some time so you can start here and begin testing here. Uh work with your data scientist team to understand the right mix is to to target and start exploring other channels outside of um just programmatic cookies like CTV digital, out of home radio gaming and so forth. So those are the six steps that we're taking right now with our clients to uh prepare and plan for the cookie list future. >>So chris let's go back to you. What's the solution here? Is there one, is there multiple solutions? What's the future look like for a cookie was future? >>Uh I think the one certain answers, they're definitely not just one solution. Um as we all know right now there there seems to be endless solutions, a lot of ideas out there, proposals with the W three C uh work happening within other industry bodies uh you know private companies solutions being offered and you know, it's a little bit of it's enough to make everyone's head spin and to try to track it to understand and understand the impact. And as a publisher were obviously a lot of people are knocking on our door. Uh they're saying, hey our solution is one that is going to bring in lots of money, you know, the all the buy side is going to use it. This is the one like I ma call to spend um, and so expect here and so far is that none of these solutions are I think everyone is still testing and learning no one on the buy side from our, from our knowledge is really committed to one or a few. It's all about a testing stage. I think that, you know, putting aside all that noise, I think what matters the most to us as publisher is actually something summer mentioned before. It's about control. You know, if we're going to work with a again, outside of our sort of, you know, internal identifier work that we're doing is we're going to work with an outside party or outside approach doesn't give us control as a publisher to ensure that it is, we control the data from our users. There isn't that data leakage, it's probably compliant. What information gets shared out there. What is it, what's released within within the bid stream? Uh If it is something that's attached to a somewhat declared user registered user that if that then is not somehow amplified or leverage off on another site in a way that is leveraging bit stream data or fingerprinting and going against. I think that the spirit of what we're trying to do in a post third party cookie world so that those controls are critical and I think they have those controls, his publisher, we have collectively be disciplined in what solutions that we we test out and what we eventually adopt. But even when the adoption point arrives, uh definitely it will not be one. There will be multiple because it's just too many use cases to address >>great, great insight there from, from you guys, news corp summer. Let's get back to you. I want to get your thoughts. You've been in many waves of innovation ups and downs were on a new one. Now we talked about the open internet democratization. Journalism is under a lot of pressure now, but there's now a wave of quality people really leaning in towards fighting misinformation, understanding truth and community and date is at the heart of it. What do you see as the new future for journalists, reward journalism is our ways their path forward. >>So there's uh, there's what I hope is going to happen. Um, and then I'm just gonna ignore what could write. Um, you know, there's there's a trend in market right now, a number of fronts, right? So there are marketers who are leaning into wanting to spend their marketing dollars with quality journalists, focusing on bipac owned and operated, really leaning into into supporting those businesses that have been uh, those publishers that have been ignored for years. I really hope that this trend continues. Um We are leaning into into helping um, marketers curate that supply right? And really, uh, you know, speak with their dollars about the things that that they support. Um, and uh, and and value right in market. So I'm hoping that that trend continues and it's not just sort of like a marketing blip. Um, but we will do everything possible to kind of like encourage that behavior and and give people the information they need to find, you know, truly high quality journalism. >>That's awesome chris Summer. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insight on this panel on the cookie list future. Before we go, just quick summary each of you. If you don't mind just giving a quick sound bite or bumper sticker of what we can expect. If you had to throw a prediction For what's going to happen in the next 24 months Chris We'll start with you. >>Uh it's gonna be quite a ride. I think that's an understatement. Um I think that there, I wouldn't be surprised if if google delays the change to the chrome by a couple of months and and may give the industry some much needed time, but no one knows. I guess. I guess I'm not except for someone somewhere deep within chrome. So I think we all have to operate in a way that changes to happen, changes to happen quickly and it's gonna cover across all facets of the industry, all facets of from advertising, marketing. So just be >>prepared. >>Yeah, along the same lines, be prepared, nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. Uh You know, while dancing in this together. Uh I think um for us it's um planning and preparing and also building on what we've already been working on. Um So omni channel ai um creative and I think clients will uh lean more into those different channels, >>awesome. So we'll pick us home, last word. >>I think we're in the throwing spaghetti against the wall stage. Right, so this is a time of discovery of leaning in trying everything out, Learning and iterating as fast as we possibly >>can. Awesome. And I love the cat in the background over your shoulder. Can't stop staring at your wonderful cat. Thanks for coming on chris, Thanks for coming on. This awesome panel industry breakdown of the cookie conundrum. The recipe for success data ai open. Uh The future is here, it's coming, it's coming fast. I'm john fryer with the cube. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Welcome back to the Quant Cast industry summit on the demise of third party cookies. The cookie conundrum, a recipe for success. We're here peter day. The cto of quad cast and crew T cop car, head of product marketing quad cast. Thanks for coming on talking about the changing advertising landscape. >>Thanks for having us. Thank you for having >>us. So we've been hearing this story out to the big players. Want to keep the data, make that centralized control, all the leverage and then you've got the other end. You got the open internet that still wants to be free and valuable for everyone. Uh what's what are you guys doing to solve this problem? Because cookies go away? What's going to happen there? How do people track things you guys are in this business first question? What is quan cast strategies to adapt to third party cookies going away? What's gonna be, what's gonna be the answer? >>Yeah. So uh very rightly said, john the mission, the Qantas mission is the champion of free and open internet. Uh And with that in mind, our approach to this world without third party cookies is really grounded in three fundamental things. Uh First as industry standards, we think it's really important to participate and to work with organizations who are defining the standards that will guide the future of advertising. So with that in mind, we've been participating >>with I. A. B. >>Tech lab, we've been part of their project Triarc. Uh same thing with pre bid, who's kind of trying to figure out the pipes of identity. Di di di di di pipes of uh of the future. Um And then also is W three C, which is the World Wide Web Consortium. Um And our engineers and our engineering team are participating in their weekly meetings trying to figure out what's happening with the browsers and keeping up with the progress they're on things such as google's block. Um The second uh sort of thing is interoperability, as you've mentioned, there are lots of different uh I. D. Solutions that are emerging. You have you I. D. Two point oh, you have live RAM, you have google's flock. Uh And there will be more, there are more and they will continue to be more. Uh We really think it is important to build a platform that can ingest all of these signals. And so that's what we've done. Uh The reason really is to meet our customers where they are at today. Our customers use multiple different data management platforms, the mps. Um and that's why we support multiple of those. Um This is not going to be much different than that. We have to meet our customers where we are, where they are at. And then finally, of course, which is at the very heart of who contrast is innovation. Uh As you can imagine being able to take all of these multiple signals in including the I. D. S. And the cohorts, but also others like contextual first party um consent is becoming more and more important. Um And then there are many other signals, like time, language geo location. So all of these signals can help us understand user behavior intent and interests um in absence of 3rd party cookies. However, uh there's there's something to note about this. They're very raw, their complex, they're messy all of these different signals. Um They are changing all the time, they're real time. Um And there's incomplete information isolation. Just one of these signals cannot help you build a true and complete picture. So what you really need is a technology like AI and machine learning to really bring all of these signals together, combine them statistically and get an understanding of user behavior intent and interests and then act on it, be it in terms of providing audience insights um or responding to bid requests and and so on and so forth. So those are sort of the three um fundamentals that our approach is grounded in which is industry standards, interoperability and and innovation. Uh and you know, you have peter here, who is who is the expert So you can dive much deeper into >>it. Is T. T. O. You've got to tell us how is this going to actually work? What are you guys doing from a technology standpoint to help with data driven advertising in a third party cookie list world? >>Well, we've been um This is not a shock, you know, I think anyone who's been close to his space has known that the 3rd Party Cookie has been um uh reducing inequality in terms of its pervasiveness and its longevity for many years now. And the kind of death knell is really google chrome making a, making the changes that they're gonna be making. So we've been investing in the space for many years. Um and we've had to make a number of hugely diverse investment. So one of them is in how as a marketer, how do I tell if my marketing still working in the world without >>computers? The >>majority of marketers completely reliant on third party cookies today to tell them if they're if they're marketing is working or not. And so we've had to invest heavily and statistical techniques which are closer to kind of economic trick models that markets are used to things like out of home advertising, It's going to establishing whether they're advertising is working or not in a digital environment actually, >>just as >>often, you know, as is often the case in these kind of times of massive disruption, there's always opportunity to make things better. And we really think that's true. And you know, digital measurement has often mistaken precision for accuracy. And there's a real opportunity to kind of see the wood for the trees if you like. And start to come with better methods of measuring the affections of advertising without third party cookies. And in fact to make countless other investments in areas like contextual modeling and and targeting that third party cookies and and uh, connecting directly to publishers rather than going through this kind of bloom escape that's gonna tied together third party cookies. So if I was to enumerate all the investments we've made, I think we'll be here till midnight but we have to make a number of vestments over a number of years and that level investments only increasing at the moment. >>Peter on that contextual. Can you just double click on that and tell us more? >>Yeah, I mean contextual is unfortunately these things, this is really poorly defined. It can mean everything from a publisher saying, hey, trust us, this dissipated about CVS to what's possible now and has only really been possible the last couple of years, which is to build >>statistical >>models of the entire internet based on the content that people are actually consumed. And this type of technology requires massive data processing capabilities. It's able to take advantage of the latest innovations in there is like natural language processing and really gives um computers are kind of much deeper and richer understanding of the internet, which ultimately makes it possible to kind of organize, organized the Internet in terms of the types of content of pages. So this type of technology has only been possible the last two years and we've been using contextual signals since our inception, it's always been massively predictive in terms of audience behaviours, in terms of where advertising is likely to work. And so we've been very fortunate to keep the investment going um and take advantage of many of these innovations that have happened in academia and in kind of uh in adjacent areas >>on the ai machine learning aspect, that seems to be a great differentiator in this day and age for getting the most out of the data. How is machine learning and ai factoring into your platform? >>I think it's, it's how we've always operated right from our interception when we started as a measurement company, the way that we were giving our customers at the time, we were just publishers, just the publisher side of our business insights into who their audience was, were, was using machine learning techniques. And that's never really changed. The foundation of our platform has always been, has always been machine learning from from before. It was cool. A lot of our kind of, a lot of our core teams have backgrounds in machine learning phds in statistics and machine learning and and that really drives our our decision making. I mean, data is only useful if you can make sense of it and if you can organize it and if you can take action on it and to do that at this kind of scout scale, it's absolutely necessary to use machine learning technology. >>So you mentioned contextual also, you know, in advertising, everyone knows in that world that you've got the contextual behavioural dynamics, the behavior that's kind of generally everyone's believing is happening. The consensus is undeniable is that people are wanting to expect an environment where there's trust, there's truth, but also they want to be locked in. They don't wanna get walled into a walled garden, nobody wants to be in the world, are they want to be free to pop around and visit sites is more horizontal scalability than ever before. Yet, the bigger players are becoming walled garden, vertical platforms. So with future of ai the experience is going to come from this data. So the behavior is out there. How do you get that contextual relevance and provide the horizontal scale that users expect? >>Yeah, I think it's I think it's a really good point and we're definitely this kind of tipping point. We think, in the broader industry, I think, you know, every published right, we're really blessed to work with the biggest publishers in the world, all the way through to my mom's vlog, right? So we get to hear the perspectives of publishers at every scale. I think they consistently tell us the same thing, which is they want to more directly connected consumers, they don't wanna be tied into these walled gardens, which dictate how they must present their content and in some cases what content they're allowed to >>present. >>Um and so our job as a company is to really provide level >>the playing field a little bit, >>provide them the same capabilities they're only used to in the walled gardens, but let's give them more choice in terms of how they structure their content, how they organize their content, how they organize their audiences, but make sure that they can fund that effectively by making their audiences in their environments discoverable by marketers measurable by marketers and connect them as directly as possible to make that kind of ad funded economic model as effective in the open Internet as it is in social. And so a lot of the investments we've made over recent years have been really to kind of realize that vision, which is, it should be as easy for a marketer to be able to understand people on the open internet as it is in social media. It should be as effective for them to reach people in the environment is really high quality content as it is on facebook. And so we invest a lot of a lot of our R and D dollars in making that true. We're now live with the Comcast platform, which does exactly that. And as third party cookies go away, it only um only kind of exaggerated or kind of further emphasizes the need for direct connections between brands and publishers. And so we just wanna build the technology that helps make that true and gives the kind of technology to these marketers and publishers to connect and to deliver great experiences without relying on these kind of walled >>gardens. Yeah, the Director Director, Consumer Director audience is a new trend. You're seeing it everywhere. How do you guys support this new kind of signaling from for for that's happening in this new world? How do you ingest the content and just this consent uh signaling? >>Uh we were really fortunate to have an amazing, amazing R and D. Team and, you know, we've had to do all sorts to make this, you need to realize our vision. This has meant things like, you know, we have crawlers which scan the entire internet at this point, extract the content of the pages and kind of make sense of it and organize it uh, and organize it for publishers so they can understand how their audiences overlap with potential competitors or collaborators. But more importantly, organize it for marketers. So you can understand what kind of high impact opportunities are there for them there. So, you know, we've had to we've had to build a lot of technology. We've had to build analytics engines, which can get answers back in seconds so that marketers and publishers can kind of interact with their own data and make sense of it and present it in a way that's compelling and help them drive their strategy as well as their execution. We've had to invest in areas like consent management because we believe that a free and open internet is absolutely reliant on trust and therefore we spend a lot of our time thinking about how do we make it easy for end users to understand who has access to their data and easy for end users to be able to opt out. And uh and as a result of that, we've now got the world's most widely adopted adopted consent management platform. So it's hard to tackle one of these problems without tackling all of them. Were fortunate enough to have had a large enough R and D budget over the last four or five years, make a number investments, everything from consent and identity through context, your signals through the measurement technologies, which really bring advertisers >>and Publishers places together great insight. Last word for you is what's the what's the customer view here as you bring these new capabilities of the platform, uh what's what are you guys seeing as the highlight uh from a platform perspective? >>So the initial response that we've seen from our customers has been very encouraging, both on the publisher side as well as the marketer side. Um I think, you know, one of the things we hear quite a lot is uh you guys are at least putting forth a solution, an actual solution for us to test Peter mentioned measurement, that really is where we started because you cannot optimize what you cannot measure. Um so that that is where his team has started and we have some measurement very, very uh initial capabilities still in alpha, but they are available in the platform for marketers to test out today. Um so the initial response has been very encouraging. People want to engage with us um of course our, you know, our fundamental value proposition, which is that the Qantas platform was never built to be reliant on on third party data. These stale segments like we operate, we've always operated on real time live data. Um The second thing is, is our premium publisher relationships. We have had the privilege of working like Peter said with some of the um biggest publishers, but we also have a very wide footprint. We have first party tags across um over 100 million plus web and mobile destinations. Um and you know, as you must have heard like that sort of first party footprint is going to come in really handy in a world without third party cookies, we are encouraging all of our customers, publishers and marketers to grow their first party data. Um and so that that's something that's a strong point that customers love about us and and lean into it quite a bit. Um So yeah, the initial response has been great. Of course it doesn't hurt that we've made all these are in the investments. We can talk about consent. Um, and you know, I often say that consent, it sounds simple, but it isn't, there's a lot of technology involved, but there's lots of uh legal work involved as it as well. We have a very strong legal team who has expertise built in. So yeah, very good response. Initially >>democratization. Everyone's a publisher. Everyone's a media company. They have to think about being a platform. You guys provide that. So I congratulate Peter. Thanks for dropping the gems there. Shruti, thanks for sharing the product highlights. Thanks for, for your time. Thank you. Okay, this is the quan cast industry summit on the demise of third party cookies. And what's next? The cookie conundrum. The recipe for success with Kwan Cast. I'm john free with the cube. Thanks for watching. Mm

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Splunk .Conf19. Brought to you by Splunk. >> Welcome to theCUBE everybody, we're here in Las Vegas for Splunk's .Conf, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, here with Lisa Martin for the next three days. Lisa will be here tomorrow and the next day. I'm going to be carrying it solo, this is our seventh year .Conf, Splunk's conference celebrating their 10th year. Our first guest is Melissa Zicopula, vice president of managed services of Herjavec Group. Robert's been on before, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> I always get that, Herjavec? >> Herjavec Group. >> Herjavec Group. >> Happy to be here. >> Well known for the Shark Tank, but what's really interesting about Robert and your company is that we had multiple conversations and the Shark Tanks is what he's known for in the celebrity world. >> Melissa: Yes. >> But he's a nerd, he's a geek, he's one of us! (laughing) >> He's absolutely a cyber-security expert in the field, yes. >> So tell us what's going on this year at .Conf obviously security continues to be focus you guys have a booth here, what's the message you guys are sharing, what's the story from your standpoint? >> Yeah, so we do, Herjavec we're focusing on managed security services, where information security is all we do, focusing on 24/7 threat detection, security operations and also threat management. So, we want to be able to demo a lot of our capabilities, we're powered by Splunk, our HG analytics platform uses, heavily uses Splunk on the back end. So we want to be able to showcase for our customers, our clients, our prospects different types of use cases, different types of ways to detect malicious activity, while leveraging the tool itself. >> And data we're been covering since 2013, Splunk's .Conf, it's always been a data problem, but the data problem gets bigger and bigger, there's more volume than ever before which shifts the terms to the adversaries because ransomware is at an all time high. >> Melissa: Sure. >> Data is where the value is, but that's also where the attack vectors are coming from. This isn't going away. >> Absolutely, yeah, we want to focus on not just what type of data you're ingesting into your instance but to also understand what types of log sources you're feeding into your sim today. So we have experts actually focus on evaluating the type of log sources we're bringing in. Everything from IPS, to AV, to firewall you know, solutions into the sim so that way we can build use cases those, to be able to detect different types of activity. We leverage different types of methodologies, one of them is Mitre framework, CIS top 20. And being able to couple those two together it's able to give you a better detection mechanism in place. >> I want to some kind of, clarification questions because we talked to a lot of CSOs and CIOs and and CXOs in general. >> Melissa: Sure. >> The roles are changing, but the acronyms of the providers out in the market place are specializing, some have unique focuses, some have breadth, some have depth, you guys are an MSSPP. So, MSSPP, not to be confused with an MSP. Or ISV, there's different acronyms, what is the difference between an MSSPP versus an MSP? >> Melissa: Correct, so it's, we are a MSSP, which is a Managed Security Service Provider. And what we do is just, we're focused on we're very security-centric. So information, security is all we do everything from threat detection, we even have a consulting advisory role where we're actually doing penetration exams. We're PCI compliant, obviously SOC operations are the bread and butter of our service. Whereas, other MSPs, Managed Services Providers, they can do anything from architecture, network operations in that purview. So, we're focused on more of SIM solutions, endpoint, being able to manage any of your security technologies. And also, monitor them to take a fact into the SOC. >> So you guys are very focused? >> Melissa: Very focused on security. >> Then what's the key decision point for a customer to go with you guys, and what's the supplier relationship to the buyer because they're buying everything these days! >> Melissa: Sure. >> But they want to try and get it narrowed down so the right people are in the right place. >> Melissa: Yeah, so one of the great things about Herjavec Group is we are, you know, we're vendor agnostic, we have tons of experts in, you know, expertise resources that monitor, manage different types of technologies. Whether it's Splunk and other technologies out there, we have a team of people, that are very, very, you know, centric to actually monitor and manage them. >> How big is Splunk, in relative with your services? How involved are they with the scope? >> Melissa: Over 60% of our managed clients today, utilize Splunk, they're heavy Splunk users, they also utilize Splunk ES, Splunk Core, and from a management side, they're implementing them into their service. All of the CSOs and CROs or CIOs are leveraging and using it, not just for monitoring and security but they're also using it in development environments, as well as their network operations. >> So, one of the things I've been, I won't say preaching, because I do tend to preach a lot, but I've been saying and amplifying, is that tools that have come a long in the business and there's platforms and Splunk has always kind of been that, a platform provider, but also a good tool for folks. But, they've been enabling value, you guys have built an app on Splunk, the proprietary solutions. >> Absolutely. >> Could you tell me about that because this is really where the value starts to shift, where domain expertise focused practices and services, like you guys are doing, are building on someone else's platform with data, talk about your proprietary app. >> Absolutely, so we discovered, a few years ago, was that customers needed help getting to the data faster. So we were able to build in built-in queries, you know literally one click, say if you wanted to get to a statistical side of how many data sources are logging your SIM, is the data, you know, modeling complete, you know, is there anything missing in the environment or are there any gaps that we need to fill? You're able to do it by just clicking on a couple of different, you know, buttons within the tool itself. It gives you a holistic view of not just the alerts that are firing in your environment but all the data log sources that are coming into your SIM instance. It's a one stop shop. And also, what's great about it, is that it also powers Splunk ES, so Splunk ES also has similar tools and they are, literally, I mean that tool is so great you can go in, you can look at all the alerts, you can do an audit trail, you can actually do drill-down analysis, you can actually see the type of data like PCAP analysis, to get to the, you know, the type of activity you want to get to on a granular level. So, both tools do it really well. >> So you have hooks into ES, Splunk ES? >> Yes, we can actually see, depending on the instance that it's deployed on, 'cause our app is deployed on top of Splunk for every customer's instance. They're ale to leverage and correlate the two together. >> What are some of the trends in the marketplace that you're seeing with your customers? Obviously, again, volumes are increasing, the surface area of attacks is coming in it's more than log files now, it's, you got traces, you got other metrics >> Melissa: Sure. >> Other things to measure, it's almost It's almost too many alerts, what do you-- >> Yeah, a lot of KPI's. The most important thing that any company, any entity wants to measure is the MTTD, the Mean Time To Detection, and also mean time to resolve, right? You want to be able to ensure that your teams are have everything at their fingertips to get to the answer fast. And even if there's an attack or some type of breach in their environment, to at least detect it and understand where it is so they can quarantine it from spreading. >> What's the biggest surprise that you've seen in the past two years? I mean, 'cause I look back at our interviews with you guys in 2013, no 2015. I mean, the narrative really hasn't changed global security, I mean, all the core, top line stories are there, but it just seems to be bigger. What's the big surprise for you in terms of the marketplace? >> The big surprise for me is that companies are now focusing more on cyber-hygiene. Really ensuring that their infrastructure is you know, up to par, right? Because you can apply the best tools in-house but if you're not cleaning up you know, your backyard (laughing) it's going to get tough. So now we have a lot of entities really focusing and using tools like Splunk you know, to actually analyze what's happening in their environment, to clean up their back of house, I would say and to put those tools in place so they could be effective. >> You know, that's a classic story clean up your own house before you can go clean up others, right? >> Right. >> And what a trend we've been seeing in the marketplace on theCUBE and talking to a lot of practitioners is, and channel partners and suppliers is that, they tend to serve their customers, but they don't clean up their own house and data's moving around so now with the diversity of data, they've got the fabric search, they got all kind of new tools within Splunk's portfolio. >> It's a challenge, and it could be you know, lack of resources, it just means that we have you know, they don't have the right expertise in-house so they used managed security providers to help them get there. For example, if a network, if we identify the network being flat, we can identify you know, how to help them how to be able to kind of, look at the actual security landscape and what we need to do to have good visibility in their environment from places they didn't know existed. >> What's the one, one or two things that you see customers that need to do that, they aren't doing yet? You mentioned hygiene is a trend, what are some other things that that need to be addressed, that are almost, well that could be critical and bad, but are super important and valuable? >> I think now a lot of, actually to be quite honest a lot of our clients today or anyone who's building programs, security programs are getting you know, very mature. They're adopting methodologies, like Mitre Framework, CIS Top 20, and they're actually deploying and they're actually using specific use cases to identify the attacks happening in their environment. Not just from a security-centric standpoint but also from an operations side you know, you could identify misconfigurations in your environment, you can identify things that are you know, just cleaning up the environment as well. >> So, Splunk has this thing called SOAR, Security-- >> Automation. >> Orchestration Automation Recovery, resilience whatever R, I think R stands for that. How does that fit in to your market, your app and what you guys are doing? >> So it definitely fits in basically, being able to automate the redundant, mundane types of tasks that anyone can do, right? So if you think about it, if you have a security operations center with five or 10 analysts, it might take one analyst to do a task, it might take them two or three hours, where you can leverage a tool like Phantom, any type of SOAR platform to actually create a playbook to do that task within 30 seconds. So, not only are you minimizing the amount of you know, head count to do that, you're also you know, using your consistent tool to make that function make that function you know, more, I want to say enhanced. So you can build play books around it, you can basically use that on a daily basis whether it's for security monitoring or network operations, reporting, all that becomes more streamlined. >> And the impact to the organization is those mundane tasks can be demotivating. Or, there's a lot more problems to solve so for productivity, creativity, can you give some examples of where you've seen that shift into the personnel, HR side the human resource side of it? >> Yeah, absolutely so you know, you want to be able to have something consistent in your environment, right? So you don't want others to get kind of, get bored or you know, when you're looking at a platform day in and day out and you're doing the same task everyday, you might miss something. Whereas, if you build an automation tool that takes care of the low hanging fruit, so to speak, you're able to use a human component to put your muscles somewhere else, to find some you know, the human element to actually look for any types of malicious anomalies in the environment. >> How much has teamwork become a big part of how successful companies manage a security threat landscape? >> Very, very important. I mean, you're talking about leveraging different teams on the engineering side, on the operations side, even you know, coupling that with business stakeholders. You absolutely need to get the business involved so they have an understanding of what's critical to their environment, what's critical to their business, and making sure that we're taking security, obviously seriously, which a lot of companies know already, but not impeding on the operation. So doing it safely without having to minimize impact. >> Well let's just, I got to ask you this question around kind of, doing the cutting edge but not getting bled out, bleeding edge, bleeding out and failing. Companies are trying to balance you know, being cutting edge and balancing hardcore security Signal FX is a company that Splunk bought, we've been following them from the beginning. Strong tracing, great in that cloud native environment. So cloud native with micro services is super hot in areas you know, people see with Kubernetes and so on happening, kind of cutting edge though! >> Melissa: Right. >> You don't want to be bleeding edge 'cause there's some risks there too so, how do you guys advise your clients to think about cloud native with Splunk and some of the things that they're there but as the expression goes "there's a pony in there somewhere" but it's risky still, but certainly it's got a lot of promise. >> Yeah, you know, it's all about you know, everyone's different, every environment's different. It's really about explaining those options to them what they have available, whether they go on the cloud, whether they stay on-prem, explaining them from a cost perspective, how they can implement that solution, and what the risks are involved if they had and how long that will take for them to implement it in their environment. >> Do you see a lot of clients kicking the tires in cloud native? >> A lot of customers are migrating to cloud. One, because they don't have to keep it in a data warehouse, they don't have to have somebody manage it, they don't have to worry about hardware or licenses, renewals, all that. So, it's really easy to spin up a you know, a cloud instance where they can just keep a copy of it somewhere and then configure it and manage it and monitor it. >> Melissa, great insight, and love to have you on theCUBE, I got to ask you one final question >> Melissa: Sure. >> As a, on a personal note well, personal being you're in the industry you know, I hear a lot of patterns out there, see a lot of conversations on theCUBE. One consistent theme is the word scale. Cloud brings scale to the table, data scaling, so data at scale, cloud at scale, is becoming a reality for customers, and they got to deal with it. And this also impacts the security piece of it. What are some of the things that you guys and customers are doing to kind of one, take advantage of that wave but not get buried into it? >> Absolutely, so you just want to incorporate into the management life cycle, you know you don't want to just configure then it's one and done, it's over. You want to be able to continually monitor what's happening quarter over quarter you know, making sure that you're doing some asset inventory, you're managing your log sources, you have a full team that's monitoring, keeping up with the processes and procedures, and making sure that you know, you're also partnering with a company that can can follow you you know, year over year and build that road map to actually see what you're building your program, you know. >> So here's the personal question now, so, you're on this wave, security wave. >> Melissa: Sure. >> It's pretty exciting, can be intoxicating but at the same time, it's pretty dynamic. What are you excited about these days in the industry? What's really cool that you're getting jazzed about? What's exciting you in the industry these days? >> Automation, absolutely. Automation, being able to build as many playbooks and coupling that with different types of technologies, and you know, like Splunk, right? You can ingest and you can actually, automate your tier one and maybe even a half of a tier two, right, a level two. And that to me is exciting because a lot of what we're seeing in the industry now is automating as much as possible. >> And compare that to like, five years ago in terms of-- >> Oh absolutely, you know, SOAR wasn't a big thing five years ago, right? So, you had to literally sit there and train individuals to do a certain task, their certain function. And then you had to rely on them to be consistent across the board where now, automation is just taken that to the next level. >> Yeah it's super exciting, I agree with you. I think automation, I think machine learning and AI data feeds, machine learning. >> Michelle: Right. >> Machine learning is AI, AI is business value. >> Being able to get to the data faster, right? >> Awesome, speed, productivity, creativity, scale. This is the new formula inside the security practice I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. More live coverage here for the 10th anniversary of Splunk .Conf, our seventh year covering Splunk from a start-up, to going public, to now. One of the leaders in the industry. I'm John Furrier, we'll be right back. (techno music)

>> It's The Cube, covering WTG TRANSFORM 2019. Brought to you by WINSLOW Technology Group. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. We're here in Boston, Massachusets, across the Mass Pike from Fenway Park, and happy to welcome back to the program Mike Berthiaume, who's Director of Systems Engineering at Nutanix, a good partner of Winslow Technology Group. Mike, thanks for joining us. >> Well as always Stew, it's great to be here. This is number three for us I think, this has become kind a bit of a tradition. >> The third year we've done at this, I've seen you at many of the local user groups here and as I say, a nice home game after lots of travels around the globe. Talking about lots of technologies. >> For sure, looking forward to it. >> What I've always loved, diggin in, in a show like this is we've got users. Scott and the team have a 189 users, many of them are Nutanix customers. So let's start there, what's top of mind from your customers today? >> A lot, so there's a lot happening, as we know in the industry. Things are changing and our customers are trying to figure out what it means for them. But at the end of the day it's all about IT, providing the value back to the business. I think CIOs, and we were just speaking about this in our session, are really pushing their staff to look at public cloud as a potential option. So in many of the folks working on the trenches realize, "Oh yeah, public cloud does make sense "for some things but not necessarily everything." The true strategy we have to have as an organization is multi-cloud, figure out how to make that work. So that's really what we're hearing, and the good news is from our product portfolio Nutanix, and what we're doing. We're really very much in lockstep with that. >> When I think back when that whole wave of hyper-converged infrastructure aged the eye which, Nutanix to its credit never was like, HCI, HCI. It was about simplicity, it was about working on the business, and underneath it that's software that drives the company. The founders of the company came from some of the hyperscalers, some of the file system design underneath there. So when you hear, well the promise of public cloud is supposed to be simple and economic. Well public cloud, we understand is neither simple nor cheap. >> That's right. >> Hyper-converged infrastructure did simplify environments, and changes the economics of how we think if it. When I talk to Nutanix customers it's like, "Oh hey, I don't no longer need to do constant care feeding "of this stack of wires and stuff put together, "much of it is much simpler." You talk about customers, they're going to that multi-cloud, hybrid cloud environment, they're trying to figure out their strategy. Rick Gowan in his presentation said something I thought resonated with me, which is, "You don't want to end up in hybrid cloud, "just you ended up there by mistake without plans," And unfortunately that's where IT is, I've got lots of projects that I do, and I do them as I need them and I realize, "Oh wait, somebody's manage, maintain, "and pull all these things together." So help us understand where Nutanix fits in that multi-cloud story today, which is more than just where people that might not of looked in a couple a years, know the appliance. >> Yeah sure, and I think from are, and mentioned before our roots come from those big large public cloud environments like Google, and Amazon, and others. But when we talk about multi-cloud, and you also made the point that simplicity is probably one of the core values that our customers see Nutanix as being on the forefront there. So I would say that for me, hybrid cloud and I think the mantra within Nutanix, hybrid cloud is not something that many manufacturers have been able to achieve. It's a lot a separate silos, right and as soon as you create multiple silos, you're actually creating operational disruption, and you're actually creating complexity. So if you have to manage public cloud a, public cloud b, your on-prem environment, and maybe your remote offices, and even your edge with different management tools. There's not a ton of value there from a simplicity stand point. So what we strive to do? Is we strive to create that abstraction, that single consistent control plane. That goes between your on-premises, your remote offices, and now truly extend that into the public cloud. So I can manage my resources in the public cloud, in the same way I would on premises. Whether that be next generation applications that probably truly do belong in a public cloud, like cloud-native apps, or my traditional legacy applications that have been running in my data center for years. So that's really what it comes down to, is being able to provide that true seamless experience for users. And at the end a the day businesses and users shouldn't really care where their applications are, it should be whatever most cost effective for the business. And based on who you are as a user, if you're a developer? Or you are a executive? Where my application is shouldn't matter, it should be available wherever I am. >> Mike one of the things that's been interesting watching Nutanix is not the growth of the core market, but its got this three-tier architecture. You have a lot of different software pieces, some of which, at least today are not necessarily directly tied back to the original hyper-converged infrastructure. Where are you with the customers locally? Any kind a proof points? You can give us that kind a help us understand the strategy a bit more. >> I think the majority of the customers are running Nutanix here locally in New England, and probably a good majority of the world are running Nutanix, running kind of the core Nutanix, right. And the value that they're driving from that, they're seeing there is immense. They're getting the simplicity having the ability to run their operations, click one button to do their upgrades without disruption. There is a lot of value there. That's solving many of the issues. Now the higher level capabilities, and the higher level features. In order to be able to deliver those in a consistent way, you have to have a solid core foundation. All right, so that sold core foundation is our core ACI platform, or our cloud like infrastructure. One of the things I'll always say to customers is, "When you look at your Nutanix infrastructure, "your software to find data center, "it actually resembles what's running in a public cloud." So whether, if you're running applications in Amazon for example, you're running in a highly scalable distributed architecture. That's the exact same thing you're doing with Nutanix, and the reason they've been able to deliver those higher value services is because they have that solid foundation underneath it. So if you want to run your environment in a similar way, and true hybrid cloud? You've got to follow their playbook, and the technology that you're choosing, and we believe Nutanix is that right choice. >> Yeah and in many ways we're seeing the blurring the lines between them. I've interviewed people from Nutanix that's on the Cooper Netty Show, that experience that I have and Nutanix has partnerships with some of the public cloud environments. So we're seeing that location matters a little bit less. >> Absolutely, I think the nirvana again if we can imagine, what is this all going to look like five years from now? It's a single portal, single interface where I'm requesting some sort of a business service, or an application. And when I deploy it, it's not going to ask me where it's going to go? It's going to out it where it belongs based on the cost and business logic that I've actually defined in the system. And if it needs to go on Amazon? Or it needs to go on Azure? The decision is going to be made based on business logic, as opposed to technology decision, which I think is what matters. >> So Mike, I can't let you go without talking about, Winslow Technology's here, is a big Dell partner. >> %100. And they sell the Dell XE solution here. They're people out there, there is well the Dell relationship. Yes, they are one Nutanix biggest partners, but they are also, if you look out into the market and you look at market share? The biggest alternative to a Nutanix agency I-Option is the Dell EMC VxRail. So help us understand that dynamic, and how that's playing out in your world? >> Yeah that's a great question, and I kind of expected the controversial questions, as always on theCube, so thanks Stu. In terms a that I would say that when you look at Nutanix, the first thing I'll say is all HCI is not created equal. There is pretty significant differences between the two platforms. Yeah combining and storage, we could loosely define as HCI, but we really can't look at competing solutions as true cloud like infrastructure. Running our controller virtual machine in the user space, and having mobility of applications across hypervisors, and across clouds on a single platform is something very unique to Nutanix. So we're absolutely seeing competitive pressure for sure, but when we have the opportunity to talk to customers about what their multi-cloud journey really means to them? The discussion usually moves forward in a positive way. So I think our view, our perspective. You mention simplicity, we're all about choice, freedom of choice, we don't want to lock our customers into anymore particular technology. Let's do what makes most sense for the business, whether it's alternative public cloud, alternative hardware, or even alternative hypervisors. We give customers choice, we don't have a religion around any one particular technology. We talk about containerization for example, and kubernetes. We give customers the ability to deploy kubernetes on crime, leveraging the source version in kubernetes. All of the capabilities within the Nutanix platform will run on of the hypervisors we support. Right, so that's an important distinction too, it's not like we're telling you have to run one particular hyupervisor to get x feature. So an important distinction point there is we truly do believe in giving our customers the freedom to choose. >> Yeah that's great, just last thing Mike I got to imagine your customers are asking a lot a questions. There's all these new things coming out there that look, sound, or feel a little like what Nutanix is doing. So from the big ones like AWS Outposts, Azure, had Azure stacked, now is the new Azure HCI. So what do you tell your customers when the start calling and asking about these technologies? >> Well, if you look at the history? We've been doing this for a long time now, I've been here for over five years, and Nutanix has been doing this sense two, we've released our product back in 2011, after a couple a years of development. So we've been doing it longer than anybody else, and we also really built our platform around a mantra, that we are highly scalable distributed architecture, along enabling choice, and providing a level of simplicity that customers won't see in any other platform. So just the amount of development and engineering and focus around our customers and the needs of our customers really makes us sustain that. And if you look at just the overall growth of Nutanix, and the transition we're making now to more of a subscription base business model. It makes sense for customers and we've given them the ability to consume in a way that is even more incremental than it was in the past, and certainly more differentiated than what our competitors do. >> All right, Mike Berthiaume always a pleasure to catch up with you on camera, as well as off. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much appreciate it Stu. >> All right, more coverage here from WTG Transform 2019. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCube. (upbeat music)

>> Live from San Francisco it's the Cube, covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Moscone North. You're watching the Cube's live coverage of IBM Think 2019. This is day three of four days of coverage. I'm Stu Miniman, my cohost is Dave Velante. We've been talking so much about multi Cloud this week that a pineapple express has hit San Francisco, heavy winds and rains but we're safe and dry inside. They're handing out ponchos and making sure that everybody can still at all the information that they have. Happy to welcome back to the program Bala Rajaraman, who's an IBM fellow and vice president with the IBM Cloud Group. Bala, thanks so much for joining us. >> Very nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you guys and thank you again. Very good to see you guys. So, it's always, and I mean this, an honor to be able to talk to the IBM Fellows. I've had the pleasure of working with a number of IBM Fellows, and, of course, we've had many of them on the Cube. It is not just an honorific. It means you've done the work, you've been with IBM for more years than we'll mention on camera. >> (chuckles loudly) >> I did protect you there. But, Bala, we had you on the program a year ago, I think. Give us the update as to what you've been working on and, as we're speaking right now, the IBM research, the key note is going on and I love the connection between what happens at IBM in some of the, you know the pure research, what happens at universities and that funnel of innovation that happens through the company. >> Oh, that's a great question. I'm glad to be back here and it's been a fairly eventful year as you guys know. I worked on our public cloud, we worked with a lot of clients, and we looked at kind of the dynamics of the market, and what is the transition to take advantage of Cloud technologies and there was certain, not just barriers, but certain opportunities in terms of looking at things like private cloud, and you guys have done some really good work on some of the research there. So, private Clouds became a point of focus for me and over the last year, working with a lot of clients the notion of hybrid became really important. And hybrid is not just a Cloud structure it is how you actually build applications on top of it. So, when you look at some of the announcements around things like Watson everywhere it is not driven by just having Watson in different places but the use cases it addresses. So, things like manufacturing where you're bringing more intelligence to the edge, to the manufacturing floor, but you take advantage of big data analytics on the Cloud. How does that work together? How do you address a lot of the technical movements of data, etc. And so that was really the great opportunity and insights that we saw and that drove our multi Cloud and public Cloud strategy. >> You bring up a really good point. I mean, the application is, you know, it's the reason why infrastructure existed, is to run the application and the data's important and I think back 10 years ago, it was like, well, am I going to burst applications? Are they going to stretch between them? And the dialogue has changed quite a bit. It's now with micro services architectures. It's not that my application's spread, it's that pieces of applications could live different places. They can live in a multi Cloud, I sometimes might be splitting it up into geography or time. So, IBM has strong ties, it has lots of applications that deliver, and working in all of these developer micro services environment. Tell us where the work's happening and what you're hearing from users? >> You know, it's a really good question. So, I think we really see three movements here. We accept the fact and the market has validated it in terms of hybrid Cloud, which is, you got pieces running on Prime, you have pieces running on the Edge, you got pieces running on one or more Cloud providers. So the hybrid multi Cloud landscape is really a preferred architecture. But that architecture also brings complexity, and the three dimensions of complexity that I see are one, around programming models and integration. How do all of these components integrate together from a programming perspective? Because you choosing different Clouds for different reasons and how do those capabilities integrate together? The second element is data. You got data moving to different Clouds, you got compute moving to data. How does data governance, how does data integration work? And Rob Thomas talked a lot about some of our different shaders there. The third element is managing the environment from a security perspective, from a compliance perspective, from a configurational consistency perspective, from an upgrade perspective, from an availability and monitoring per... These three dimensions and the amount of work we're doing in that context, not just in terms of the existing portfolio around integration, but when you look at the complexity of micro services, a number of entities, you really start bringing in elements of AI into the discussion. So, how do you enable operations with AI? How do you enable data placement, categorization, governance with AI? So, it is, even thought it might seem like different technologies, I think bringing them together just to solve this problem is perhaps one of the most exciting things that we can provide to the market. >> So, Bala, when it was becoming clear that public Cloud was going to be a force, way back when, people with large estates on Prime started talking about Hybrid, we use that term now, maybe they didn't use it then, but the notion, as Stu was describing, that you'd have some parts of the workload in public, some parts in private, maybe there's bursting. This was long before Edge and the ascendancy of micro services and Docker and Core OS and the like, and then it became pretty obvious to a lot of users, wow, this is really complicated and the use cases just don't warrant the business case. So, these things have changed. We've seen the ascendancy of these other services. You just laid out three complexities, the programming models, the data movement, which is huge, and then, how do you manage all that? So, how are the use cases evolving? Is the business case more compelling now, today, than it was, say 10, 12 years ago? >> Yes, and I think that's a really, really good question because it takes the problem to the next level. The need for Hybrid always existed. It was impractical to look at very, very large complex workloads, transactional needs, to say that there is a one solution fits it all, I can move it somewhere. I think expanding and taking advantage of different Cloud capabilities is much more of a realistic scenario and a more pragmatic, cost effective, and it meets many of the business cases. >> And that's how we got to the 20 percent though-- >> Exactly. >> Which (mumbles) would call a chapter one. >> Yep. So, now we have chapter two. Now, why is chapter two realistic? Your question was very apropos, meaning that there's complexity, and when you open up the aperture to more choices the complexity expands exponentially. What has been really central to it, has been the notion of what degree of consistency can I get across all of these elements? And open source, the emergence of things like containers and Kubernetes, not just from a run time perspective, but from a manageability and orchestration perspective, and giving you a foundation against which the consistency that it can take advantage of, is been the fundamental revolution over the last two years, which has made that intractable problem that we had with multiple choices and the complexity therein to become much more feasible. And so, if you look at our strategy underpinning those three dimensions of programming models and integration, data and management, which are not complexities but realistic needs for enterprises to take things into production. The notion of an underlying open, multi Cloud hybrid platform based on technologies like containers and Kubernetes and orchestrating across that is the fundamental transformation that has happened. And that is the exciting part. If it's open you create an ecosystem, you really address enterprise concerns from how do I build stuff in a consistent way and leverage skills in the market to all the way, how can I manage it to production goals and security goals. I think we are on the cusp of something that can really transform the way enterprises build applications, and that's what Jenny was mentioning when she said that we are very well positioned to take advantage of the Hybrid transformation and the markets behind it. That is the technical underpinnings of why we think we can do it. >> I'm glad you brought up ecosystem because it's vitally important and you've got a few larger companies, I mean wouldn't it be nice if we just say, "Oh, I'll just use one cloud?" well, that's not going to happen. That's not practical. You'd love it to be IBM's cloud, Amazon would love it to be their cloud. It's just not going to happen. So, you have this complexity. Ecosystem is critical. You've only got a few companies that really have the resources to deliver what you described and to attract the ecosystem. So, specifically, can you talk about the ecosystem and how that's evolving, from IBM's perspective? >> So, we're just peeling the onion, and I think we're going through a good progression. When you look at development of an ecosystem, the ability to provide choice to an enterprise, and the foundations on which the ecosystem is built is very critical. Now, if you look at the history of ecosystems it's been built on certain standard programming models, a certain APIs, so, Arvind keeps talking about things like TCPIP was the foundation of why the internet became a platform. So, in a similar vein, when you look at things like Kubernetes, the open standards around it, the ability through all of these orchestration and run time capabilities to create a variety of choice, and the set of choices work together and can be managed together. That is going to create an immense ecos... We are already seeing pieces of it, right? I mean, Kubernetes is becoming a model in which many providers are providing the same component across different clouds. You see the the adaption of Kubernetes across different clouds. So, rather than looking at an individual part of the ecosystem, it is how can we create a broad ecosystem based on open standards, open capabilities, interoperable standards, whether they are formal standards or they are de facto standards. That is what is exciting about this environment. >> And you're essentially saying that Kubernetes is sort of that analog to old reliable TCPIP here, or is that-- >> Yes, to a certain extent. I mean, I think if I combine TCPIP, HTTP, DNS, how things work together, how things can be managed together, you're moving up to the next level of coherent standards across every provider. And that set of standards, the things that made the internet work, Kubernetes makes applications work. So, networks work together, now applications work together and data works together, which is really nice. >> That a rat hole, Stu, but those are largely government funded standards, which, after a while, dried up because people said, "Okay, hey, we're there," and now you got open source as the sort of new-- >> Open source is the engine for innovation, and I think it's a circuitous way to get to that pithy phrase that says, "Open source is the engine of innovation." but that is really the progressive logic that gets you to the fact that it's important. So, Bala, if we have a solid foundational layer one of the things, if I think back in my career 10 years or even 20 years, things like automation and intelligence in my environment, we've been talking about it for a long time. Can you explain why now, 2019 is different and how some of these are actually coming to reality more than some of the efforts we've done in the past? >> That's a great point because there are two interesting trends that are happening. One of them is, the ability to build intelligent systems at scale is being enabled by the cloud. You have the emergence of standard platforms. Now it becomes an application game, which is how can I leverage the scale, the availability and the models of innovation to solve really tricky problems? Whether it is supply chains that are globally distributed or enterprises that need survivability in different ways, all the way from the Clouds to the Edge, what other new architecture is possible? But this distribution's also caused complexity, and when you have complexity you have to bring some of these new technologies into play, like AI and so on and so forth, and so, the combination of these three events, Cloud, the emergence of open standards that span multiple Clouds, and the complexity it creates, but the answer's that complexity that also have emerged, to me, is a very critical point for innovation. I think the landscape is going to look completely different going forward. >> And I don't think you had the business case for automation, right? Do you remember people were afraid of automation. It's like, "Well, why should we really do this? "We can handle this manually," but today, with digital transformation, data, machine intelligence and the Cloud you can actually make a significant business case to transform your business and drive competitive advantage that you couldn't make 20 years ago. >> You have no choice but to look at automation-- >> I think that. >> Because the scale and that everything's there. >> And go back to the notion of micro services. You're taking something that you could fence and you could apply certain prescriptive measures to keep it under control, now you have micro services, you have SAS systems, you have data that is being dispersed, you have computing that's being dispersed. The only way to take advantage of that agility is to create a different level of being able to understand the systems, secure the systems, and that is going to be driven by new technologies, completely new technologies. >> Alright, so, Bala, you mentioned one of my favorite words, innovation, so what are you seeing in the cloud, both from IBM, from your customers, from your partners, where is that incubation for some of those next trends, you and I, if we were prepped from this, thinking about Bell Lev back in the day or the space race, where do we get those ancillary innovations that help transform industries? How will Cloud impact that? >> I think there's two interesting questions there. One is how will cloud impact innovation, but more importantly, how will innovation impact cloud? Right, and both of these directions are important. So, Cloud really gives you the ability to Cloud, and, again I look at Cloud as, kind of in quotes "Cloud" because it includes a variety of easy access to resources, the open source innovation, the ecosystem that gets built, all of them are drivers of innovation. And it gives a way to easily exploit that innovation. I see that as the fundamental value of Cloud. Now, the interesting part is there's a bunch of other innovations, whether you look at the Debater from Watson, or you look at quantum technologies, you look at some of the Watson capabilities around conversation. How do those start transforming existing processes? So, when you look at, for example, to me one of the exciting things about Debater is when you can process incredible amounts of information, not only to provide insight but to provide rational insights and rationalizable insights. It is a tremendous innovation. Can that be applied to topics like why is my network having a problem? And can you actually debate with a system to isolate the problem? The amount of possibilities, when you look at those, how they transform, how you run your Clouds, how you run applications in the Cloud, how you work across the ecosystem, I think there's a tremendous amount of potential. And I think obviously, with things like quantum solving a different class of problems, making it easily accessible, solving different kinds of security issues, the potential is... The accessibility to innovation, with the innovation, and how it impacts the foundation that delivers that innovation. I think there's a great marriage right there. >> Bala, I want to give you the final word, lots going on here at IBM, we'd seen a year ago, we were five or six different shows pulled together, we're here at the renovated Moscone Center, thousands of people walking around, going to so many different sessions, diversity. Give us a key take away that you want people to have when they walk away from IBM Think 2019. >> So, to me, the two key take aways are one, your observation that everything is coming together is really symptomatic of the change in IBM. We are bringing things together to address complexity, make complexity simple for our clients, to bring innovation to our clients. So that's number one. And that has to be done in an open, in an ecosystem across, not just providers, but across a whole, not only a partnership but a resource ecosystem, a open source ecosystem, and the drivers of innovation that we are participating in and how we are going to influence that is something that I look forward to as well. So that's the combination. >> And it's got to be done through code. I mean, it can't just be services and I know IBM knows this, right? >> Oh, yes. >> It's built this company, this recent chapter on top of services, but that's a huge opportunity for IBM, to take its deep industry expertise, codify it through software and code, and deliver on that vision. This is an enormous opportunity. >> Exactly, and the opportunities for code are great because now it's really transforming what new code, what is the potential of code in this ecosystem. >> Well, Bala, really appreciate you coming back, sharing your body of effort that's happening to help pull together and help simplify this multi hybrid Cloud environment. >> Great, thank you very much, guys. >> Great to have you again. >> Thanks. Alright, and we're here for another two days helping to break down all the complexities, go through the nuances, speak to the thought leaders, the customers, the partners. Dave Velante is my cohost for this segment. John Furrier's here, Lisa Martin's here and I'm Stu Miniman, and as always thank you for watching the Cube. (music)

(electronic dance music) (Intel Jingle) (ethereal electronic dance music) ♪ Okay ♪ (upbeat techno dance music) ♪ Oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Oh oh oh oh oh ♪ ♪ Take it back take it back ♪ ♪ Take it back ♪ ♪ Take it back take it back ♪ ♪ Take it back ♪ ♪ Take it back take it back ♪ ♪ Yeah everybody get loose yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Ye-yeah yeah ♪ ♪ Yeah yeah ♪ ♪ Everybody everybody yeah ♪ ♪ Whoo whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo yeah ♪ ♪ Everybody get loose whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ >> As a courtesy to the presenters and those around you, please silence all mobile devices, thank you. (electronic dance music) ♪ Everybody get loose ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ (upbeat salsa music) ♪ Ha ha ha ♪ ♪ Ah ♪ ♪ Ha ha ha ♪ ♪ So happy ♪ ♪ Whoo whoo ♪ (female singer scatting) >> Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. Our program will begin momentarily. ♪ Hey ♪ (female singer scatting) (male singer scatting) ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Whoo ♪ (female singer scatting) (electronic dance music) ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red red red red ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red red red red ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red red red red ♪ ♪ Red don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ In don't go ♪ ♪ Oh red go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red red red red ♪ ♪ All hands are red don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in red red red red ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in red go ♪ >> Ladies and gentlemen, there are available seats. Towards house left, house left there are available seats. If you are please standing, we ask that you please take an available seat. We will begin momentarily, thank you. ♪ Let go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ All hands are in don't go ♪ ♪ Red all hands are in don't go ♪ (upbeat electronic dance music) ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ I live ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Hey ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Ah ♪ ♪ Ah ah ah ah ah ah ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ ♪ Just make me ♪ (bouncy techno music) >> Ladies and gentlemen, once again we ask that you please take the available seats to your left, house left, there are many available seats. If you are standing, please make your way there. The program will begin momentarily, thank you. Good morning! This is Lenovo Transform 2.0! (keyboard clicks) >> Progress. Why do we always talk about it in the future? When will it finally get here? We don't progress when it's ready for us. We need it when we're ready, and we're ready now. Our hospitals and their patients need it now, our businesses and their customers need it now, our cities and their citizens need it now. To deliver intelligent transformation, we need to build it into the products and solutions we make every day. At Lenovo, we're designing the systems to fight disease, power businesses, and help you reach more customers, end-to-end security solutions to protect your data and your companies reputation. We're making IT departments more agile and cost efficient. We're revolutionizing how kids learn with VR. We're designing smart devices and software that transform the way you collaborate, because technology shouldn't just power industries, it should power people. While everybody else is talking about tomorrow, we'll keep building today, because the progress we need can't wait for the future. >> Please welcome to the stage Lenovo's Rod Lappen! (electronic dance music) (audience applauding) >> Alright. Good morning everyone! >> Good morning. >> Ooh, that was pretty good actually, I'll give it one more shot. Good morning everyone! >> Good morning! >> Oh, that's much better! Hope everyone's had a great morning. Welcome very much to the second Lenovo Transform event here in New York. I think when I got up just now on the steps I realized there's probably one thing in common all of us have in this room including myself which is, absolutely no one has a clue what I'm going to say today. So, I'm hoping very much that we get through this thing very quickly and crisply. I love this town, love New York, and you're going to hear us talk a little bit about New York as we get through here, but just before we get started I'm going to ask anyone who's standing up the back, there are plenty of seats down here, and down here on the right hand side, I think he called it house left is the professional way of calling it, but these steps to my right, your left, get up here, let's get you all seated down so that you can actually sit down during the keynote session for us. Last year we had our very first Lenovo Transform. We had about 400 people. It was here in New York, fantastic event, today, over 1,000 people. We have over 62 different technology demonstrations and about 15 breakout sessions, which I'll talk you through a little bit later on as well, so it's a much bigger event. Next year we're definitely going to be shooting for over 2,000 people as Lenovo really transforms and starts to address a lot of the technology that our commercial customers are really looking for. We were however hampered last year by a storm, I don't know if those of you who were with us last year will remember, we had a storm on the evening before Transform last year in New York, and obviously the day that it actually occurred, and we had lots of logistics. Our media people from AMIA were coming in. They took the, the plane was circling around New York for a long time, and Kamran Amini, our General Manager of our Data Center Infrastructure Group, probably one of our largest groups in the Lenovo DCG business, took 17 hours to get from Raleigh, North Carolina to New York, 17 hours, I think it takes seven or eight hours to drive. Took him 17 hours by plane to get here. And then of course this year, we have Florence. And so, obviously the hurricane Florence down there in the Carolinas right now, we tried to help, but still Kamran has made it today. Unfortunately, very tragically, we were hoping he wouldn't, but he's here today to do a big presentation a little bit later on as well. However, I do want to say, obviously, Florence is a very serious tragedy and we have to take it very serious. We got, our headquarters is in Raleigh, North Carolina. While it looks like the hurricane is just missing it's heading a little bit southeast, all of our thoughts and prayers and well wishes are obviously with everyone in the Carolinas on behalf of Lenovo, everyone at our headquarters, everyone throughout the Carolinas, we want to make sure everyone stays safe and out of harm's way. We have a great mixture today in the crowd of all customers, partners, industry analysts, media, as well as our financial analysts from all around the world. There's over 30 countries represented here and people who are here to listen to both YY, Kirk, and Christian Teismann speak today. And so, it's going to be a really really exciting day, and I really appreciate everyone coming in from all around the world. So, a big round of applause for everyone whose come in. (audience applauding) We have a great agenda for you today, and it starts obviously a very consistent format which worked very successful for us last year, and that's obviously our keynote. You'll hear from YY, our CEO, talk a little bit about the vision he has in the industry and how he sees Lenovo's turned the corner and really driving some great strategy to address our customer's needs. Kirk Skaugen, our Executive Vice President of DCG, will be up talking about how we've transformed the DCG business and once again are hitting record growth ratios for our DCG business. And then you'll hear from Christian Teismann, our SVP and General Manager for our commercial business, get up and talk about everything that's going on in our IDG business. There's really exciting stuff going on there and obviously ThinkPad being the cornerstone of that I'm sure he's going to talk to us about a couple surprises in that space as well. Then we've got some great breakout sessions, I mentioned before, 15 breakout sessions, so while this keynote section goes until about 11:30, once we get through that, please go over and explore, and have a look at all of the breakout sessions. We have all of our subject matter experts from both our PC, NBG, and our DCG businesses out to showcase what we're doing as an organization to better address your needs. And then obviously we have the technology pieces that I've also spoken about, 62 different technology displays there arranged from everything IoT, 5G, NFV, everything that's really cool and hot in the industry right now is going to be on display up there, and I really encourage all of you to get up there. So, I'm going to have a quick video to show you from some of the setup yesterday on a couple of the 62 technology displays we've got on up on stage. Okay let's go, so we've got a demonstrations to show you today, one of the greats one here is the one we've done with NC State, a high-performance computing artificial intelligence demonstration of fresh produce. It's about modeling the population growth of the planet, and how we're going to supply water and food as we go forward. Whoo. Oh, that is not an apple. Okay. (woman laughs) Second one over here is really, hey Jonas, how are you? Is really around virtual reality, and how we look at one of the most amazing sites we've got, as an install on our high-performance computing practice here globally. And you can see, obviously, that this is the Barcelona supercomputer, and, where else in New York can you get access to being able to see something like that so easily? Only here at Lenovo Transform. Whoo, okay. (audience applauding) So there's two examples of some of the technology. We're really encouraging everyone in the room after the keynote to flow into that space and really get engaged, and interact with a lot of the technology we've got up there. It seems I need to also do something about my fashion, I've just realized I've worn a vest two days in a row, so I've got to work on that as well. Alright so listen, the last thing on the agenda, we've gone through the breakout sessions and the demo, tonight at four o'clock, there's about 400 of you registered to be on the cruise boat with us, the doors will open behind me. the boat is literally at the pier right behind us. You need to make sure you're on the boat for 4:00 p.m. this evening. Outside of that, I want everyone to have a great time today, really enjoy the experience, make it as experiential as you possibly can, get out there and really get in and touch the technology. There's some really cool AI displays up there for us all to get involved in as well. So ladies and gentlemen, without further adieu, it gives me great pleasure to introduce to you a lover of tennis, as some of you would've heard last year at Lenovo Transform, as well as a lover of technology, Lenovo, and of course, New York City. I am obviously very pleasured to introduce to you Yang Yuanqing, our CEO, as we like to call him, YY. (audience applauding) (upbeat funky music) >> Good morning, everyone. >> Good morning. >> Thank you Rod for that introduction. Welcome to New York City. So, this is the second year in a row we host our Transform event here, because New York is indeed one of the most transformative cities in the world. Last year on this stage, I spoke about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and our vision around the intelligent transformation, how it would fundamentally change the nature of business and the customer relationships. And why preparing for this transformation is the key for the future of our company. And in the last year I can assure you, we were being very busy doing just that, from searching and bringing global talents around the world to the way we think about every product and every investment we make. I was here in New York just a month ago to announce our fiscal year Q1 earnings, which was a good day for us. I think now the world believes it when we say Lenovo has truly turned the corner to a new phase of growth and a new phase of acceleration in executing the transformation strategy. That's clear to me is that the last few years of a purposeful disruption at Lenovo have led us to a point where we can now claim leadership of the coming intelligent transformation. People often asked me, what is the intelligent transformation? I was saying this way. This is the unlimited potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution driven by artificial intelligence being realized, ordering a pizza through our speaker, and locking the door with a look, letting your car drive itself back to your home. This indeed reflect the power of AI, but it just the surface of it. The true impact of AI will not only make our homes smarter and offices more efficient, but we are also completely transformed every value chip in every industry. However, to realize these amazing possibilities, we will need a structure built around the key components, and one that touches every part of all our lives. First of all, explosions in new technology always lead to new structures. This has happened many times before. In the early 20th century, thousands of companies provided a telephone service. City streets across the US looked like this, and now bundles of a microscopic fiber running from city to city bring the world closer together. Here's what a driving was like in the US, up until 1950s. Good luck finding your way. (audience laughs) And today, millions of vehicles are organized and routed daily, making the world more efficient. Structure is vital, from fiber cables and the interstate highways, to our cells bounded together to create humans. Thankfully the structure for intelligent transformation has emerged, and it is just as revolutionary. What does this new structure look like? We believe there are three key building blocks, data, computing power, and algorithms. Ever wondered what is it behind intelligent transformation? What is fueling this miracle of human possibility? Data. As the Internet becomes ubiquitous, not only PCs, mobile phones, have come online and been generating data. Today it is the cameras in this room, the climate controls in our offices, or the smart displays in our kitchens at home. The number of smart devices worldwide will reach over 20 billion in 2020, more than double the number in 2017. These devices and the sensors are connected and generating massive amount of data. By 2020, the amount of data generated will be 57 times more than all the grains of sand on Earth. This data will not only make devices smarter, but will also fuel the intelligence of our homes, offices, and entire industries. Then we need engines to turn the fuel into power, and the engine is actually the computing power. Last but not least the advanced algorithms combined with Big Data technology and industry know how will form vertical industrial intelligence and produce valuable insights for every value chain in every industry. When these three building blocks all come together, it will change the world. At Lenovo, we have each of these elements of intelligent transformations in a single place. We have built our business around the new structure of intelligent transformation, especially with mobile and the data center now firmly part of our business. I'm often asked why did you acquire these businesses? Why has a Lenovo gone into so many fields? People ask the same questions of the companies that become the leaders of the information technology revolution, or the third industrial transformation. They were the companies that saw the future and what the future required, and I believe Lenovo is the company today. From largest portfolio of devices in the world, leadership in the data center field, to the algorithm-powered intelligent vertical solutions, and not to mention the strong partnership Lenovo has built over decades. We are the only company that can unify all these essential assets and deliver end to end solutions. Let's look at each part. We now understand the important importance data plays as fuel in intelligent transformation. Hundreds of billions of devices and smart IoTs in the world are generating better and powering the intelligence. Who makes these devices in large volume and variety? Who puts these devices into people's home, offices, manufacturing lines, and in their hands? Lenovo definitely has the front row seats here. We are number one in PCs and tablets. We also produces smart phones, smart speakers, smart displays. AR/VR headsets, as well as commercial IoTs. All of these smart devices, or smart IoTs are linked to each other and to the cloud. In fact, we have more than 20 manufacturing facilities in China, US, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, Germany, and more, producing various devices around the clock. We actually make four devices every second, and 37 motherboards every minute. So, this factory located in my hometown, Hu-fi, China, is actually the largest laptop factory in the world, with more than three million square feet. So, this is as big as 42 soccer fields. Our scale and the larger portfolio of devices gives us access to massive amount of data, which very few companies can say. So, why is the ability to scale so critical? Let's look again at our example from before. The early days of telephone, dozens of service providers but only a few companies could survive consolidation and become the leader. The same was true for the third Industrial Revolution. Only a few companies could scale, only a few could survive to lead. Now the building blocks of the next revolution are locking into place. The (mumbles) will go to those who can operate at the scale. So, who could foresee the total integration of cloud, network, and the device, need to deliver intelligent transformation. Lenovo is that company. We are ready to scale. Next, our computing power. Computing power is provided in two ways. On one hand, the modern supercomputers are providing the brute force to quickly analyze the massive data like never before. On the other hand the cloud computing data centers with the server storage networking capabilities, and any computing IoT's, gateways, and miniservers are making computing available everywhere. Did you know, Lenovo is number one provider of super computers worldwide? 170 of the top 500 supercomputers, run on Lenovo. We hold 89 World Records in key workloads. We are number one in x86 server reliability for five years running, according to ITIC. a respected provider of industry research. We are also the fastest growing provider of hyperscale public cloud, hyper-converged and aggressively growing in edge computing. cur-ges target, we are expand on this point soon. And finally to run these individual nodes into our symphony, we must transform the data and utilize the computing power with advanced algorithms. Manufactured, industry maintenance, healthcare, education, retail, and more, so many industries are on the edge of intelligent transformation to improve efficiency and provide the better products and services. We are creating advanced algorithms and the big data tools combined with industry know-how to provide intelligent vertical solutions for several industries. In fact, we studied at Lenovo first. Our IT and research teams partnered with our global supply chain to develop an AI that improved our demand forecasting accuracy. Beyond managing our own supply chain we have offered our deep learning supply focused solution to other manufacturing companies to improve their efficiency. In the best case, we have improved the demand, focused the accuracy by 30 points to nearly 90 percent, for Baosteel, the largest of steel manufacturer in China, covering the world as well. Led by Lenovo research, we launched the industry-leading commercial ready AR headset, DaystAR, partnering with companies like the ones in this room. This technology is being used to revolutionize the way companies service utility, and even our jet engines. Using our workstations, servers, and award-winning imaging processing algorithms, we have partnered with hospitals to process complex CT scan data in minutes. So, this enable the doctors to more successfully detect the tumors, and it increases the success rate of cancer diagnosis all around the world. We are also piloting our smart IoT driven warehouse solution with one of the world's largest retail companies to greatly improve the efficiency. So, the opportunities are endless. This is where Lenovo will truly shine. When we combine the industry know-how of our customers with our end-to-end technology offerings, our intelligent vertical solutions like this are growing, which Kirk and Christian will share more. Now, what will drive this transformation even faster? The speed at which our networks operate, specifically 5G. You may know that Lenovo just launched the first-ever 5G smartphone, our Moto Z3, with the new 5G Moto model. We are partnering with multiple major network providers like Verizon, China Mobile. With the 5G model scheduled to ship early next year, we will be the first company to provide a 5G mobile experience to any users, customers. This is amazing innovation. You don't have to buy a new phone, just the 5G clip on. What can I say, except wow. (audience laughs) 5G is 10 times the fast faster than 4G. Its download speed will transform how people engage with the world, driverless car, new types of smart wearables, gaming, home security, industrial intelligence, all will be transformed. Finally, accelerating with partners, as ready as we are at Lenovo, we need partners to unlock our full potential, partners here to create with us the edge of the intelligent transformation. The opportunities of intelligent transformation are too profound, the scale is too vast. No company can drive it alone fully. We are eager to collaborate with all partners that can help bring our vision to life. We are dedicated to open partnerships, dedicated to cross-border collaboration, unify the standards, share the advantage, and market the synergies. We partner with the biggest names in the industry, Intel, Microsoft, AMD, Qualcomm, Google, Amazon, and Disney. We also find and partner with the smaller innovators as well. We're building the ultimate partner experience, open, shared, collaborative, diverse. So, everything is in place for intelligent transformation on a global scale. Smart devices are everywhere, the infrastructure is in place, networks are accelerating, and the industries demand to be more intelligent, and Lenovo is at the center of it all. We are helping to drive change with the hundreds of companies, companies just like yours, every day. We are your partner for intelligent transformation. Transformation never stops. This is what you will hear from Kirk, including details about Lenovo NetApp global partnership we just announced this morning. We've made the investments in every single aspect of the technology. We have the end-to-end resources to meet your end-to-end needs. As you attend the breakout session this afternoon, I hope you see for yourself how much Lenovo has transformed as a company this past year, and how we truly are delivering a future of intelligent transformation. Now, let me invite to the stage Kirk Skaugen, our president of Data Center growth to tell you about the exciting transformation happening in the global Data C enter market. Thank you. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) >> Well, good morning. >> Good morning. >> Good morning! >> Good morning! >> Excellent, well, I'm pleased to be here this morning to talk about how we're transforming the Data Center and taking you as our customers through your own intelligent transformation journey. Last year I stood up here at Transform 1.0, and we were proud to announce the largest Data Center portfolio in Lenovo's history, so I thought I'd start today and talk about the portfolio and the progress that we've made over the last year, and the strategies that we have going forward in phase 2.0 of Lenovo's transformation to be one of the largest data center companies in the world. We had an audacious vision that we talked about last year, and that is to be the most trusted data center provider in the world, empowering customers through the new IT, intelligent transformation. And now as the world's largest supercomputer provider, giving something back to humanity, is very important this week with the hurricanes now hitting North Carolina's coast, but we take this most trusted aspect very seriously, whether it's delivering the highest quality products on time to you as customers with the highest levels of security, or whether it's how we partner with our channel partners and our suppliers each and every day. You know we're in a unique world where we're going from hundreds of millions of PCs, and then over the next 25 years to hundred billions of connected devices, so each and every one of you is going through this intelligent transformation journey, and in many aspects were very early in that cycle. And we're going to talk today about our role as the largest supercomputer provider, and how we're solving humanity's greatest challenges. Last year we talked about two special milestones, the 25th anniversary of ThinkPad, but also the 25th anniversary of Lenovo with our IBM heritage in x86 computing. I joined the workforce in 1992 out of college, and the IBM first personal server was launching at the same time with an OS2 operating system and a free mouse when you bought the server as a marketing campaign. (audience laughing) But what I want to be very clear today, is that the innovation engine is alive and well at Lenovo, and it's really built on the culture that we're building as a company. All of these awards at the bottom are things that we earned over the last year at Lenovo. As a Fortune now 240 company, larger than companies like Nike, or AMEX, or Coca-Cola. The one I'm probably most proud of is Forbes first list of the top 2,000 globally regarded companies. This was something where 15,000 respondents in 60 countries voted based on ethics, trustworthiness, social conduct, company as an employer, and the overall company performance, and Lenovo was ranked number 27 of 2000 companies by our peer group, but we also now one of-- (audience applauding) But we also got a perfect score in the LGBTQ Equality Index, exemplifying the diversity internally. We're number 82 in the top working companies for mothers, top working companies for fathers, top 100 companies for sustainability. If you saw that factory, it's filled with solar panels on the top of that. And now again, one of the top global brands in the world. So, innovation is built on a customer foundation of trust. We also said last year that we'd be crossing an amazing milestone. So we did, over the last 12 months ship our 20 millionth x86 server. So, thank you very much to our customers for this milestone. (audience applauding) So, let me recap some of the transformation elements that have happened over the last year. Last year I talked about a lot of brand confusion, because we had the ThinkServer brand from the legacy Lenovo, the System x, from IBM, we had acquired a number of networking companies, like BLADE Network Technologies, et cetera, et cetera. Over the last year we've been ramping based on two brand structures, ThinkAgile for next generation IT, and all of our software-defined infrastructure products and ThinkSystem as the world's highest performance, highest reliable x86 server brand, but for servers, for storage, and for networking. We have transformed every single aspect of the customer experience. A year and a half ago, we had four different global channel programs around the world. Typically we're about twice the mix to our channel partners of any of our competitors, so this was really important to fix. We now have a single global Channel program, and have technically certified over 11,000 partners to be technical experts on our product line to deliver better solutions to our customer base. Gardner recently recognized Lenovo as the 26th ranked supply chain in the world. And, that's a pretty big honor, when you're up there with Amazon and Walmart and others, but in tech, we now are in the top five supply chains. You saw the factory network from YY, and today we'll be talking about product shipping in more than 160 countries, and I know there's people here that I've met already this morning, from India, from South Africa, from Brazil and China. We announced new Premier Support services, enabling you to go directly to local language support in nine languages in 49 countries in the world, going directly to a native speaker level three support engineer. And today we have more than 10,000 support specialists supporting our products in over 160 countries. We've delivered three times the number of engineered solutions to deliver a solutions orientation, whether it's on HANA, or SQL Server, or Oracle, et cetera, and we've completely reengaged our system integrator channel. Last year we had the CIO of DXE on stage, and here we're talking about more than 175 percent growth through our system integrator channel in the last year alone as we've brought that back and really built strong relationships there. So, thank you very much for amazing work here on the customer experience. (audience applauding) We also transformed our leadership. We thought it was extremely important with a focus on diversity, to have diverse talent from the legacy IBM, the legacy Lenovo, but also outside the industry. We made about 19 executive changes in the DCG group. This is the most senior leadership team within DCG, all which are newly on board, either from our outside competitors mainly over the last year. About 50 percent of our executives were now hired internally, 50 percent externally, and 31 percent of those new executives are diverse, representing the diversity of our global customer base and gender. So welcome, and most of them you're going to be able to meet over here in the breakout sessions later today. (audience applauding) But some things haven't changed, they're just keeping getting better within Lenovo. So, last year I got up and said we were committed with the new ThinkSystem brand to be a world performance leader. You're going to see that we're sponsoring Ducati for MotoGP. You saw the Ferrari out there with Formula One. That's not a surprise. We want the Lenovo ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile brands to be synonymous with world record performance. So in the last year we've gone from 39 to 89 world records, and partners like Intel would tell you, we now have four times the number of world record workloads on Lenovo hardware than any other server company on the planet today, with more than 89 world records across HPC, Java, database, transaction processing, et cetera. And we're proud to have just brought on Doug Fisher from Intel Corporation who had about 10-17,000 people on any given year working for him in workload optimizations across all of our software. It's just another testament to the leadership team we're bringing in to keep focusing on world-class performance software and solutions. We also per ITIC, are the number one now in x86 server reliability five years running. So, this is a survey where CIOs are in a blind survey asked to submit their reliability of their uptime on their x86 server equipment over the last 365 days. And you can see from 2016 to 2017 the downtime, there was over four hours as noted by the 750 CXOs in more than 20 countries is about one percent for the Lenovo products, and is getting worse generation from generation as we went from Broadwell to Pearlie. So we're taking our reliability, which was really paramount in the IBM System X heritage, and ensuring that we don't just recognize high performance but we recognize the highest level of reliability for mission-critical workloads. And what that translates into is that we at once again have been ranked number one in customer satisfaction from you our customers in 19 of 22 attributes, in North America in 18 of 22. This is a survey by TVR across hundreds of customers of us and our top competitors. This is the ninth consecutive study that we've been ranked number one in customer satisfaction, so we're taking this extremely seriously, and in fact YY now has increased the compensation of every single Lenovo employee. Up to 40 percent of their compensation bonus this year is going to be based on customer metrics like quality, order to ship, and things of this nature. So, we're really putting every employee focused on customer centricity this year. So, the summary on Transform 1.0 is that every aspect of what you knew about Lenovo's data center group has transformed, from the culture to the branding to dedicated sales and marketing, supply chain and quality groups, to a worldwide channel program and certifications, to new system integrator relationships, and to the new leadership team. So, rather than me just talk about it, I thought I'd share a quick video about what we've done over the last year, if you could run the video please. Turn around for a second. (epic music) (audience applauds) Okay. So, thank you to all our customers that allowed us to publicly display their logos in that video. So, what that means for you as investors, and for the investor community out there is, that our customers have responded, that this year Gardner just published that we are the fastest growing server company in the top 10, with 39 percent growth quarter-on-quarter, and 49 percent growth year-on-year. If you look at the progress we've made since the transformation the last three quarters publicly, we've grown 17 percent, then 44 percent, then 68 percent year on year in revenue, and I can tell you this quarter I'm as confident as ever in the financials around the DCG group, and it hasn't been in one area. You're going to see breakout sessions from hyperscale, software-defined, and flash, which are all growing more than a 100 percent year-on-year, supercomputing which we'll talk about shortly, now number one, and then ultimately from profitability, delivering five consecutive quarters of pre-tax profit increase, so I think, thank you very much to the customer base who's been working with us through this transformation journey. So, you're here to really hear what's next on 2.0, and that's what I'm excited to talk about today. Last year I came up with an audacious goal that we would become the largest supercomputer company on the planet by 2020, and this graph represents since the acquisition of the IBM System x business how far we were behind being the number one supercomputer. When we started we were 182 positions behind, even with the acquisition for example of SGI from HP, we've now accomplished our goal actually two years ahead of time. We're now the largest supercomputer company in the world. About one in every four supercomputers, 117 on the list, are now Lenovo computers, and you saw in the video where the universities are said, but I think what I'm most proud of is when your customers rank you as the best. So the awards at the bottom here, are actually Readers Choice from the last International Supercomputing Show where the scientific researchers on these computers ranked their vendors, and we were actually rated the number one server technology in supercomputing with our ThinkSystem SD530, and the number one storage technology with our ThinkSystem DSS-G, but more importantly what we're doing with the technology. You're going to see we won best in life sciences, best in data analytics, and best in collaboration as well, so you're going to see all of that in our breakout sessions. As you saw in the video now, 17 of the top 25 research institutions in the world are now running Lenovo supercomputers. And again coming from Raleigh and watching that hurricane come across the Atlantic, there are eight supercomputers crunching all of those models you see from Germany to Malaysia to Canada, and we're happy to have a SciNet from University of Toronto here with us in our breakout session to talk about what they're doing on climate modeling as well. But we're not stopping there. We just announced our new Neptune warm water cooling technology, which won the International Supercomputing Vendor Showdown, the first time we've won that best of show in 25 years, and we've now installed this. We're building out LRZ in Germany, the first ever warm water cooling in Peking University, at the India Space Propulsion Laboratory, at the Malaysian Weather and Meteorological Society, at Uninett, at the largest supercomputer in Norway, T-Systems, University of Birmingham. This is truly amazing technology where we're actually using water to cool the machine to deliver a significantly more energy-efficient computer. Super important, when we're looking at global warming and some of the electric bills can be millions of dollars just for one computer, and could actually power a small city just with the technology from the computer. We've built AI centers now in Morrisville, Stuttgart, Taipei, and Beijing, where customers can bring their AI workloads in with experts from Intel, from Nvidia, from our FPGA partners, to work on their workloads, and how they can best implement artificial intelligence. And we also this year launched LICO which is Lenovo Intelligent Compute Orchestrator software, and it's a software solution that simplifies the management and use of distributed clusters in both HPC and AI model development. So, what it enables you to do is take a single cluster, and run both HPC and AI workloads on it simultaneously, delivering better TCO for your environment, so check out LICO as well. A lot of the customers here and Wall Street are very excited and using it already. And we talked about solving humanity's greatest challenges. In the breakout session, you're going to have a virtual reality experience where you're going to be able to walk through what as was just ranked the world's most beautiful data center, the Barcelona Supercomputer. So, you can actually walk through one of the largest supercomputers in the world from Barcelona. You can see the work we're doing with NC State where we're going to have to grow the food supply of the world by 50 percent, and there's not enough fresh water in the world in the right places to actually make all those crops grow between now and 2055, so you're going to see the progression of how they're mapping the entire globe and the water around the world, how to build out the crop population over time using AI. You're going to see our work with Vestas is this largest supercomputer provider in the wind turbine areas, how they're working on wind energy, and then with University College London, how they're working on some of the toughest particle physics calculations in the world. So again, lots of opportunity here. Take advantage of it in the breakout sessions. Okay, let me transition to hyperscale. So in hyperscale now, we have completely transformed our business model. We are now powering six of the top 10 hyperscalers in the world, which is a significant difference from where we were two years ago. And the reason we're doing that, is we've coined a term called ODM+. We believe that hyperscalers want more procurement power than an ODM, and Lenovo is doing about $18 billion of procurement a year. They want a broader global supply chain that they can get from a local system integrator. We're more than 160 countries around the world, but they want the same world-class quality and reliability like they get from an MNC. So, what we're doing now is instead of just taking off the shelf motherboards from somewhere, we're starting with a blank sheet of paper, we're working with the customer base on customized SKUs and you can see we already are developing 33 custom solutions for the largest hyperscalers in the world. And then we're not just running notebooks through this factory where YY said, we're running 37 notebook boards a minute, we're now putting in tens and tens and tens of thousands of server board capacity per month into this same factory, so absolutely we can compete with the most aggressive ODM's in the world, but it's not just putting these things in in the motherboard side, we're also building out these systems all around the world, India, Brazil, Hungary, Mexico, China. This is an example of a new hyperscale customer we've had this last year, 34,000 servers we delivered in the first six months. The next 34,000 servers we delivered in 68 days. The next 34,000 servers we delivered in 35 days, with more than 99 percent on-time delivery to 35 data centers in 14 countries as diverse as South Africa, India, China, Brazil, et cetera. And I'm really ashamed to say it was 99.3, because we did have a forklift driver who rammed their forklift right through the middle of the one of the server racks. (audience laughing) At JFK Airport that we had to respond to, but I think this gives you a perspective of what it is to be a top five global supply chain and technology. So last year, I said we would invest significantly in IP, in joint ventures, and M and A to compete in software defined, in networking, and in storage, so I wanted to give you an update on that as well. Our newest software-defined partnership is with Cloudistics, enabling a fully composable cloud infrastructure. It's an exclusive agreement, you can see them here. I think Nag, our founder, is going to be here today, with a significant Lenovo investment in the company. So, this new ThinkAgile CP series delivers the simplicity of the public cloud, on-premise with exceptional support and a marketplace of essential enterprise applications all with a single click deployment. So simply put, we're delivering a private cloud with a premium experience. It's simple in that you need no specialists to deploy it. An IT generalist can set it up and manage it. It's agile in that you can provision dozens of workloads in minutes, and it's transformative in that you get all of the goodness of public cloud on-prem in a private cloud to unlock opportunity for use. So, we're extremely excited about the ThinkAgile CP series that's now shipping into the marketplace. Beyond that we're aggressively ramping, and we're either doubling, tripling, or quadrupling our market share as customers move from traditional server technology to software-defined technology. With Nutanix we've been public, growing about more than 150 percent year-on-year, with Nutanix as their fastest growing Nutanix partner, but today I want to set another audacious goal. I believe we cannot just be Nutanix's fastest growing partner but we can become their largest partner within two years. On Microsoft, we are already four times our market share on Azure stack of our traditional business. We were the first to launch our ThinkAgile on Broadwell and on Skylake with the Azure Stack Infrastructure. And on VMware we're about twice our market segment share. We were the first to deliver an Intel-optimized Optane-certified VSAN node. And with Optane technology, we're delivering 50 percent more VM density than any competitive SSD system in the marketplace, about 10 times lower latency, four times the performance of any SSD system out there, and Lenovo's first to market on that. And at VMworld you saw CEO Pat Gelsinger of VMware talked about project dimension, which is Edge as a service, and we're the only OEM beyond the Dell family that is participating today in project dimension. Beyond that you're going to see a number of other partnerships we have. I'm excited that we have the city of Bogota Columbia here, an eight million person city, where we announced a 3,000 camera video surveillance solution last month. With pivot three you're going to see city of Bogota in our breakout sessions. You're going to see a new partnership with Veeam around backup that's launching today. You're going to see partnerships with scale computing in IoT and hyper-converged infrastructure working on some of the largest retailers in the world. So again, everything out in the breakout session. Transitioning to storage and data management, it's been a great year for Lenovo, more than a 100 percent growth year-on-year, 2X market growth in flash arrays. IDC just reported 30 percent growth in storage, number one in price performance in the world and the best HPC storage product in the top 500 with our ThinkSystem DSS G, so strong coverage, but I'm excited today to announce for Transform 2.0 that Lenovo is launching the largest data management and storage portfolio in our 25-year data center history. (audience applauding) So a year ago, the largest server portfolio, becoming the largest fastest growing server OEM, today the largest storage portfolio, but as you saw this morning we're not doing it alone. Today Lenovo and NetApp, two global powerhouses are joining forces to deliver a multi-billion dollar global alliance in data management and storage to help customers through their intelligent transformation. As the fastest growing worldwide server leader and one of the fastest growing flash array and data management companies in the world, we're going to deliver more choice to customers than ever before, global scale that's never been seen, supply chain efficiencies, and rapidly accelerating innovation and solutions. So, let me unwrap this a little bit for you and talk about what we're announcing today. First, it's the largest portfolio in our history. You're going to see not just storage solutions launching today but a set of solution recipes from NetApp that are going to make Lenovo server and NetApp or Lenovo storage work better together. The announcement enables Lenovo to go from covering 15 percent of the global storage market to more than 90 percent of the global storage market and distribute these products in more than 160 countries around the world. So we're launching today, 10 new storage platforms, the ThinkSystem DE and ThinkSystem DM platforms. They're going to be centrally managed, so the same XClarity management that you've been using for server, you can now use across all of your storage platforms as well, and it'll be supported by the same 10,000 plus service personnel that are giving outstanding customer support to you today on the server side. And we didn't come up with this in the last month or the last quarter. We're announcing availability in ordering today and shipments tomorrow of the first products in this portfolio, so we're excited today that it's not just a future announcement but something you as customers can take advantage of immediately. (audience applauding) The second part of the announcement is we are announcing a joint venture in China. Not only will this be a multi-billion dollar global partnership, but Lenovo will be a 51 percent owner, NetApp a 49 percent owner of a new joint venture in China with the goal of becoming in the top three storage companies in the largest data and storage market in the world. We will deliver our R and D in China for China, pooling our IP and resources together, and delivering a single route to market through a complementary channel, not just in China but worldwide. And in the future I just want to tell everyone this is phase one. There is so much exciting stuff. We're going to be on the stage over the next year talking to you about around integrated solutions, next-generation technologies, and further synergies and collaborations. So, rather than just have me talk about it, I'd like to welcome to the stage our new partner NetApp and Brad Anderson who's the senior vice president and general manager of NetApp Cloud Infrastructure. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) >> Thank You Kirk. >> So Brad, we've known each other a long time. It's an exciting day. I'm going to give you the stage and allow you to say NetApp's perspective on this announcement. >> Very good, thank you very much, Kirk. Kirk and I go back to I think 1994, so hey good morning and welcome. My name is Brad Anderson. I manage the Cloud Infrastructure Group at NetApp, and I am honored and privileged to be here at Lenovo Transform, particularly today on today's announcement. Now, you've heard a lot about digital transformation about how companies have to transform their IT to compete in today's global environment. And today's announcement with the partnership between NetApp and Lenovo is what that's all about. This is the joining of two global leaders bringing innovative technology in a simplified solution to help customers modernize their IT and accelerate their global digital transformations. Drawing on the strengths of both companies, Lenovo's high performance compute world-class supply chain, and NetApp's hybrid cloud data management, hybrid flash and all flash storage solutions and products. And both companies providing our customers with the global scale for them to be able to meet their transformation goals. At NetApp, we're very excited. This is a quote from George Kurian our CEO. George spent all day yesterday with YY and Kirk, and would have been here today if it hadn't been also our shareholders meeting in California, but I want to just convey how excited we are for all across NetApp with this partnership. This is a partnership between two companies with tremendous market momentum. Kirk took you through all the amazing results that Lenovo has accomplished, number one in supercomputing, number one in performance, number one in x86 reliability, number one in x86 customers sat, number five in supply chain, really impressive and congratulations. Like Lenovo, NetApp is also on a transformation journey, from a storage company to the data authority in hybrid cloud, and we've seen some pretty impressive momentum as well. Just last week we became number one in all flash arrays worldwide, catching EMC and Dell, and we plan to keep on going by them, as we help customers modernize their their data centers with cloud connected flash. We have strategic partnerships with the largest hyperscalers to provide cloud native data services around the globe and we are having success helping our customers build their own private clouds with just, with a new disruptive hyper-converged technology that allows them to operate just like hyperscalers. These three initiatives has fueled NetApp's transformation, and has enabled our customers to change the world with data. And oh by the way, it has also fueled us to have meet or have beaten Wall Street's expectations for nine quarters in a row. These are two companies with tremendous market momentum. We are also building this partnership for long term success. We think about this as phase one and there are two important components to phase one. Kirk took you through them but let me just review them. Part one, the establishment of a multi-year commitment and a collaboration agreement to offer Lenovo branded flash products globally, and as Kurt said in 160 countries. Part two, the formation of a joint venture in PRC, People's Republic of China, that will provide long term commitment, joint product development, and increase go-to-market investment to meet the unique needs to China. Both companies will put in storage technologies and storage expertise to form an independent JV that establishes a data management company in China for China. And while we can dream about what phase two looks like, our entire focus is on making phase one incredibly successful and I'm pleased to repeat what Kirk, is that the first products are orderable and shippable this week in 160 different countries, and you will see our two companies focusing on the here and now. On our joint go to market strategy, you'll see us working together to drive strategic alignment, focused execution, strong governance, and realistic expectations and milestones. And it starts with the success of our customers and our channel partners is job one. Enabling customers to modernize their legacy IT with complete data center solutions, ensuring that our customers get the best from both companies, new offerings the fuel business success, efficiencies to reinvest in game-changing initiatives, and new solutions for new mission-critical applications like data analytics, IoT, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. Channel partners are also top of mind for both our two companies. We are committed to the success of our existing and our future channel partners. For NetApp channel partners, it is new pathways to new segments and to new customers. For Lenovo's channel partners, it is the competitive weapons that now allows you to compete and more importantly win against Dell, EMC, and HP. And the good news for both companies is that our channel partner ecosystem is highly complementary with minimal overlap. Today is the first day of a very exciting partnership, of a partnership that will better serve our customers today and will provide new opportunities to both our companies and to our partners, new products to our customers globally and in China. I am personally very excited. I will be on the board of the JV. And so, I look forward to working with you, partnering with you and serving you as we go forward, and with that, I'd like to invite Kirk back up. (audience applauding) >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Well, thank you, Brad. I think it's an exciting overview, and these products will be manufactured in China, in Mexico, in Hungary, and around the world, enabling this amazing supply chain we talked about to deliver in over 160 countries. So thank you Brad, thank you George, for the amazing partnership. So again, that's not all. In Transform 2.0, last year, we talked about the joint ventures that were coming. I want to give you a sneak peek at what you should expect at future Lenovo events around the world. We have this Transform in Beijing in a couple weeks. We'll then be repeating this in 20 different locations roughly around the world over the next year, and I'm excited probably more than ever about what else is coming. Let's talk about Telco 5G and network function virtualization. Today, Motorola phones are certified on 46 global networks. We launched the world's first 5G upgradable phone here in the United States with Verizon. Lenovo DCG sells to 58 telecommunication providers around the world. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Shanghai, you saw China Telecom and China Mobile in the Lenovo booth, China Telecom showing a video broadband remote access server, a VBRAS, with video streaming demonstrations with 2x less jitter than they had seen before. You saw China Mobile with a virtual remote access network, a VRAN, with greater than 10 times the throughput and 10x lower latency running on Lenovo. And this year, we'll be launching a new NFV company, a software company in China for China to drive the entire NFV stack, delivering not just hardware solutions, but software solutions, and we've recently hired a new CEO. You're going to hear more about that over the next several quarters. Very exciting as we try to drive new economics into the networks to deliver these 20 billion devices. We're going to need new economics that I think Lenovo can uniquely deliver. The second on IoT and edge, we've integrated on the device side into our intelligent devices group. With everything that's going to consume electricity computes and communicates, Lenovo is in a unique position on the device side to take advantage of the communications from Motorola and being one of the largest device companies in the world. But this year, we're also going to roll out a comprehensive set of edge gateways and ruggedized industrial servers and edge servers and ISP appliances for the edge and for IoT. So look for that as well. And then lastly, as a service, you're going to see Lenovo delivering hardware as a service, device as a service, infrastructure as a service, software as a service, and hardware as a service, not just as a glorified leasing contract, but with IP, we've developed true flexible metering capability that enables you to scale up and scale down freely and paying strictly based on usage, and we'll be having those announcements within this fiscal year. So Transform 2.0, lots to talk about, NetApp the big news of the day, but a lot more to come over the next year from the Data Center group. So in summary, I'm excited that we have a lot of customers that are going to be on stage with us that you saw in the video. Lots of testimonials so that you can talk to colleagues of yourself. Alamos Gold from Canada, a Canadian gold producer, Caligo for data optimization and privacy, SciNet, the largest supercomputer we've ever put into North America, and the largest in Canada at the University of Toronto will be here talking about climate change. City of Bogota again with our hyper-converged solutions around smart city putting in 3,000 cameras for criminal detection, license plate detection, et cetera, and then more from a channel mid market perspective, Jerry's Foods, which is from my home state of Wisconsin, and Minnesota which has about 57 stores in the specialty foods market, and how they're leveraging our IoT solutions as well. So again, about five times the number of demos that we had last year. So in summary, first and foremost to the customers, thank you for your business. It's been a great journey and I think we're on a tremendous role. You saw from last year, we're trying to build credibility with you. After the largest server portfolio, we're now the fastest-growing server OEM per Gardner, number one in performance, number one in reliability, number one in customer satisfaction, number one in supercomputing. Today, the largest storage portfolio in our history, with the goal of becoming the fastest growing storage company in the world, top three in China, multibillion-dollar collaboration with NetApp. And the transformation is going to continue with new edge gateways, edge servers, NFV solutions, telecommunications infrastructure, and hardware as a service with dynamic metering. So thank you for your time. I've looked forward to meeting many of you over the next day. We appreciate your business, and with that, I'd like to bring up Rod Lappen to introduce our next speaker. Rod? (audience applauding) >> Thanks, boss, well done. Alright ladies and gentlemen. No real secret there. I think we've heard why I might talk about the fourth Industrial Revolution in data and exactly what's going on with that. You've heard Kirk with some amazing announcements, obviously now with our NetApp partnership, talk about 5G, NFV, cloud, artificial intelligence, I think we've hit just about all the key hot topics. It's with great pleasure that I now bring up on stage Mr. Christian Teismann, our senior vice president and general manager of commercial business for both our PCs and our IoT business, so Christian Teismann. (techno music) Here, take that. >> Thank you. I think I'll need that. >> Okay, Christian, so obviously just before we get down, you and I last year, we had a bit of a chat about being in New York. >> Exports. >> You were an expat in New York for a long time. >> That's true. >> And now, you've moved from New York. You're in Munich? >> Yep. >> How does that feel? >> Well Munich is a wonderful city, and it's a great place to live and raise kids, but you know there's no place in the world like New York. >> Right. >> And I miss it a lot, quite frankly. >> So what exactly do you miss in New York? >> Well there's a lot of things in New York that are unique, but I know you spent some time in Japan, but I still believe the best sushi in the world is still in New York City. (all laughing) >> I will beg to differ. I will beg to differ. I think Mr. Guchi-san from Softbank is here somewhere. He will get up an argue very quickly that Japan definitely has better sushi than New York. But obviously you know, it's a very very special place, and I have had sushi here, it's been fantastic. What about Munich? Anything else that you like in Munich? >> Well I mean in Munich, we have pork knuckles. >> Pork knuckles. (Christian laughing) Very similar sushi. >> What is also very fantastic, but we have the real, the real Oktoberfest in Munich, and it starts next week, mid-September, and I think it's unique in the world. So it's very special as well. >> Oktoberfest. >> Yes. >> Unfortunately, I'm not going this year, 'cause you didn't invite me, but-- (audience chuckling) How about, I think you've got a bit of a secret in relation to Oktoberfest, probably not in Munich, however. >> It's a secret, yes, but-- >> Are you going to share? >> Well I mean-- >> See how I'm putting you on the spot? >> In the 10 years, while living here in New York, I was a regular visitor of the Oktoberfest at the Lower East Side in Avenue C at Zum Schneider, where I actually met my wife, and she's German. >> Very good. So, how about a big round of applause? (audience applauding) Not so much for Christian, but more I think, obviously for his wife, who obviously had been drinking and consequently ended up with you. (all laughing) See you later, mate. >> That's the beauty about Oktoberfest, but yes. So first of all, good morning to everybody, and great to be back here in New York for a second Transform event. New York clearly is the melting pot of the world in terms of culture, nations, but also business professionals from all kind of different industries, and having this event here in New York City I believe is manifesting what we are trying to do here at Lenovo, is transform every aspect of our business and helping our customers on the journey of intelligent transformation. Last year, in our transformation on the device business, I talked about how the PC is transforming to personalized computing, and we've made a lot of progress in that journey over the last 12 months. One major change that we have made is we combined all our device business under one roof. So basically PCs, smart devices, and smart phones are now under the roof and under the intelligent device group. But from my perspective makes a lot of sense, because at the end of the day, all devices connect in the modern world into the cloud and are operating in a seamless way. But we are also moving from a device business what is mainly a hardware focus historically, more and more also into a solutions business, and I will give you during my speech a little bit of a sense of what we are trying to do, as we are trying to bring all these components closer together, and specifically also with our strengths on the data center side really build end-to-end customer solution. Ultimately, what we want to do is make our business, our customer's businesses faster, safer, and ultimately smarter as well. So I want to look a little bit back, because I really believe it's important to understand what's going on today on the device side. Many of us have still grown up with phones with terminals, ultimately getting their first desktop, their first laptop, their first mobile phone, and ultimately smartphone. Emails and internet improved our speed, how we could operate together, but still we were defined by linear technology advances. Today, the world has changed completely. Technology itself is not a limiting factor anymore. It is how we use technology going forward. The Internet is pervasive, and we are not yet there that we are always connected, but we are nearly always connected, and we are moving to the stage, that everything is getting connected all the time. Sharing experiences is the most driving force in our behavior. In our private life, sharing pictures, videos constantly, real-time around the world, with our friends and with our family, and you see the same behavior actually happening in the business life as well. Collaboration is the number-one topic if it comes down to workplace, and video and instant messaging, things that are coming from the consumer side are dominating the way we are operating in the commercial business as well. Most important beside technology, that a new generation of workforce has completely changed the way we are working. As the famous workforce the first generation of Millennials that have now fully entered in the global workforce, and the next generation, it's called Generation Z, is already starting to enter the global workforce. By 2025, 75 percent of the world's workforce will be composed out of two of these generations. Why is this so important? These two generations have been growing up using state-of-the-art IT technology during their private life, during their education, school and study, and are taking these learnings and taking these behaviors in the commercial workspace. And this is the number one force of change that we are seeing in the moment. Diverse workforces are driving this change in the IT spectrum, and for years in many of our customers' focus was their customer focus. Customer experience also in Lenovo is the most important thing, but we've realized that our own human capital is equally valuable in our customer relationships, and employee experience is becoming a very important thing for many of our customers, and equally for Lenovo as well. As you have heard YY, as we heard from YY, Lenovo is focused on intelligent transformation. What that means for us in the intelligent device business is ultimately starting with putting intelligence in all of our devices, smartify every single one of our devices, adding value to our customers, traditionally IT departments, but also focusing on their end users and building products that make their end users more productive. And as a world leader in commercial devices with more than 33 percent market share, we can solve problems been even better than any other company in the world. So, let's talk about transformation of productivity first. We are in a device-led world. Everything we do is connected. There's more interaction with devices than ever, but also with spaces who are increasingly becoming smart and intelligent. YY said it, by 2020 we have more than 20 billion connected devices in the world, and it will grow exponentially from there on. And users have unique personal choices for technology, and that's very important to recognize, and we call this concept a digital wardrobe. And it means that every single end-user in the commercial business is composing his personal wardrobe on an ongoing basis and is reconfiguring it based on the work he's doing and based where he's going and based what task he is doing. I would ask all of you to put out all the devices you're carrying in your pockets and in your bags. You will see a lot of you are using phones, tablets, laptops, but also cameras and even smartwatches. They're all different, but they have one underlying technology that is bringing it all together. Recognizing digital wardrobe dynamics is a core factor for us to put all the devices under one roof in IDG, one business group that is dedicated to end-user solutions across mobile, PC, but also software services and imaging, to emerging technologies like AR, VR, IoT, and ultimately a AI as well. A couple of years back there was a big debate around bring-your-own-device, what was called consumerization. Today consumerization does not exist anymore, because consumerization has happened into every single device we build in our commercial business. End users and commercial customers today do expect superior display performance, superior audio, microphone, voice, and touch quality, and have it all connected and working seamlessly together in an ease of use space. We are already deep in the journey of personalized computing today. But the center point of it has been for the last 25 years, the mobile PC, that we have perfected over the last 25 years, and has been the undisputed leader in mobility computing. We believe in the commercial business, the ThinkPad is still the core device of a digital wardrobe, and we continue to drive the success of the ThinkPad in the marketplace. We've sold more than 140 million over the last 26 years, and even last year we exceeded nearly 11 million units. That is about 21 ThinkPads per minute, or one Thinkpad every three seconds that we are shipping out in the market. It's the number one commercial PC in the world. It has gotten countless awards but we felt last year after Transform we need to build a step further, in really tailoring the ThinkPad towards the need of the future. So, we announced a new line of X1 Carbon and Yoga at CES the Consumer Electronics Show. And the reason is not we want to sell to consumer, but that we do recognize that a lot of CIOs and IT decision makers need to understand what consumers are really doing in terms of technology to make them successful. So, let's take a look at the video. (suspenseful music) >> When you're the number one business laptop of all time, your only competition is yourself. (wall shattering) And, that's different. Different, like resisting heat, ice, dust, and spills. Different, like sharper, brighter OLA display. The trackpoint that reinvented controls, and a carbon fiber roll cage to protect what's inside, built by an engineering and design team, doing the impossible for the last 25 years. This is the number one business laptop of all time, but it's not a laptop. It's a ThinkPad. (audience applauding) >> Thank you very much. And we are very proud that Lenovo ThinkPad has been selected as the best laptop in the world in the second year in a row. I think it's a wonderful tribute to what our engineers have been done on this one. And users do want awesome displays. They want the best possible audio, voice, and touch control, but some users they want more. What they want is super power, and I'm really proud to announce our newest member of the X1 family, and that's the X1 extreme. It's exceptionally featured. It has six core I9 intel chipset, the highest performance you get in the commercial space. It has Nvidia XTX graphic, it is a 4K UHD display with HDR with Dolby vision and Dolby Atmos Audio, two terabyte in SSD, so it is really the absolute Ferrari in terms of building high performance commercial computer. Of course it has touch and voice, but it is one thing. It has so much performance that it serves also a purpose that is not typical for commercial, and I know there's a lot of secret gamers also here in this room. So you see, by really bringing technology together in the commercial space, you're creating productivity solutions of one of a kind. But there's another category of products from a productivity perspective that is incredibly important in our commercial business, and that is the workstation business . Clearly workstations are very specifically designed computers for very advanced high-performance workloads, serving designers, architects, researchers, developers, or data analysts. And power and performance is not just about the performance itself. It has to be tailored towards the specific use case, and traditionally these products have a similar size, like a server. They are running on Intel Xeon technology, and they are equally complex to manufacture. We have now created a new category as the ultra mobile workstation, and I'm very proud that we can announce here the lightest mobile workstation in the industry. It is so powerful that it really can run AI and big data analysis. And with this performance you can go really close where you need this power, to the sensors, into the cars, or into the manufacturing places where you not only wannna read the sensors but get real-time analytics out of these sensors. To build a machine like this one you need customers who are really challenging you to the limit. and we're very happy that we had a customer who went on this journey with us, and ultimately jointly with us created this product. So, let's take a look at the video. (suspenseful music) >> My world involves pathfinding both the hardware needs to the various work sites throughout the company, and then finding an appropriate model of desktop, laptop, or workstation to match those needs. My first impressions when I first seen the ThinkPad P1 was I didn't actually believe that we could get everything that I was asked for inside something as small and light in comparison to other mobile workstations. That was one of the I can't believe this is real sort of moments for me. (engine roars) >> Well, it's better than general when you're going around in the wind tunnel, which isn't alway easy, and going on a track is not necessarily the best bet, so having a lightweight very powerful laptop is extremely useful. It can take a Xeon processor, which can support ECC from when we try to load a full car, and when we're analyzing live simulation results. through and RCFT post processor or example. It needs a pretty powerful machine. >> It's come a long way to be able to deliver this. I hate to use the word game changer, but it is that for us. >> Aston Martin has got a lot of different projects going. There's some pretty exciting projects and a pretty versatile range coming out. Having Lenovo as a partner is certainly going to ensure that future. (engine roars) (audience applauds) >> So, don't you think the Aston Martin design and the ThinkPad design fit very well together? (audience laughs) So if Q, would get a new laptop, I think you would get a ThinkPad X P1. So, I want to switch gears a little bit, and go into something in terms of productivity that is not necessarily on top of the mind or every end user but I believe it's on top of the mind of every C-level executive and of every CEO. Security is the number one threat in terms of potential risk in your business and the cost of cybersecurity is estimated by 2020 around six trillion dollars. That's more than the GDP of Japan and we've seen a significant amount of data breach incidents already this years. Now, they're threatening to take companies out of business and that are threatening companies to lose a huge amount of sensitive customer data or internal data. At Lenovo, we are taking security very, very seriously, and we run a very deep analysis, around our own security capabilities in the products that we are building. And we are announcing today a new brand under the Think umbrella that is called ThinkShield. Our goal is to build the world's most secure PC, and ultimately the most secure devices in the industry. And when we looked at this end-to-end, there is no silver bullet around security. You have to go through every aspect where security breaches can potentially happen. That is why we have changed the whole organization, how we look at security in our device business, and really have it grouped under one complete ecosystem of solutions, Security is always something where you constantly are getting challenged with the next potential breach the next potential technology flaw. As we keep innovating and as we keep integrating, a lot of our partners' software and hardware components into our products. So for us, it's really very important that we partner with companies like Intel, Microsoft, Coronet, Absolute, and many others to really as an example to drive full encryption on all the data seamlessly, to have multi-factor authentication to protect your users' identity, to protect you in unsecured Wi-Fi locations, or even simple things like innovation on the device itself, to and an example protect the camera, against usage with a little thing like a thinkShutter that you can shut off the camera. SO what I want to show you here, is this is the full portfolio of ThinkShield that we are announcing today. This is clearly not something I can even read to you today, but I believe it shows you the breadth of security management that we are announcing today. There are four key pillars in managing security end-to-end. The first one is your data, and this has a lot of aspects around the hardware and the software itself. The second is identity. The third is the security around online, and ultimately the device itself. So, there is a breakout on security and ThinkShield today, available in the afternoon, and encourage you to really take a deeper look at this one. The first pillar around productivity was the device, and around the device. The second major pillar that we are seeing in terms of intelligent transformation is the workspace itself. Employees of a new generation have a very different habit how they work. They split their time between travel, working remotely but if they do come in the office, they expect a very different office environment than what they've seen in the past in cubicles or small offices. They come into the office to collaborate, and they want to create ideas, and they really work in cross-functional teams, and they want to do it instantly. And what we've seen is there is a huge amount of investment that companies are doing today in reconfiguring real estate reconfiguring offices. And most of these kind of things are moving to a digital platform. And what we are doing, is we want to build an entire set of solutions that are just focused on making the workspace more productive for remote workforce, and to create technology that allow people to work anywhere and connect instantly. And the core of this is that we need to be, the productivity of the employee as high as possible, and make it for him as easy as possible to use these kind of technologies. Last year in Transform, I announced that we will enter the smart office space. By the end of last year, we brought the first product into the market. It's called the Hub 500. It's already deployed in thousands of our customers, and it's uniquely focused on Microsoft Skype for Business, and making meeting instantly happen. And the product is very successful in the market. What we are announcing today is the next generation of this product, what is the Hub 700, what has a fantastic audio quality. It has far few microphones, and it is usable in small office environment, as well as in major conference rooms, but the most important part of this new announcement is that we are also announcing a software platform, and this software platform allows you to run multiple video conferencing software solutions on the same platform. Many of you may have standardized for one software solution or for another one, but as you are moving in a world of collaborating instantly with partners, customers, suppliers, you always will face multiple software standards in your company, and Lenovo is uniquely positioned but providing a middleware platform for the device to really enable multiple of these UX interfaces. And there's more to come and we will add additional UX interfaces on an ongoing base, based on our customer requirements. But this software does not only help to create a better experience and a higher productivity in the conference room or the huddle room itself. It really will allow you ultimately to manage all your conference rooms in the company in one instance. And you can run AI technologies around how to increase productivity utilization of your entire conference room ecosystem in your company. You will see a lot more devices coming from the node in this space, around intelligent screens, cameras, and so on, and so on. The idea is really that Lenovo will become a core provider in the whole movement into the smart office space. But it's great if you have hardware and software that is really supporting the approach of modern IT, but one component that Kirk also mentioned is absolutely critical, that we are providing this to you in an as a service approach. Get it what you want, when you need it, and pay it in the amount that you're really using it. And within UIT there is also I think a new philosophy around IT management, where you're much more focused on the value that you are consuming instead of investing into technology. We are launched as a service two years back and we already have a significant number of customers running PC as a service, but we believe as a service will stretch far more than just the PC device. It will go into categories like smart office. It might go even into categories like phone, and it will definitely go also in categories like storage and server in terms of capacity management. I want to highlight three offerings that we are also displaying today that are sort of building blocks in terms of how we really run as a service. The first one is that we collaborated intensively over the last year with Microsoft to be the launch pilot for their Autopilot offering, basically deploying images easily in the same approach like you would deploy a new phone on the network. The purpose really is to make new imaging and enabling new PC as seamless as it's used to be in the phone industry, and we have a complete set of offerings, and already a significant number customers have deployed Autopilot with Lenovo. The second major offering is Premier Support, like in the in the server business, where Premier Support is absolutely critical to run critical infrastructure, we see a lot of our customers do want to have Premier Support for their end users, so they can be back into work basically instantly, and that you have the highest possible instant repair on every single device. And then finally we have a significant amount of time invested into understanding how the software as a service really can get into one philosophy. And many of you already are consuming software as a service in many different contracts from many different vendors, but what we've created is one platform that really can manage this all together. All these things are the foundation for a device as a service offering that really can manage this end-to-end. So, implementing an intelligent workplace can be really a daunting prospect depending on where you're starting from, and how big your company ultimately is. But how do you manage the transformation of technology workspace if you're present in 50 or more countries and you run an infrastructure for more than 100,000 people? Michelin, famous for their tires, infamous for their Michelin star restaurant rating, especially in New York, and instantly recognizable by the Michelin Man, has just doing that. Please welcome with me Damon McIntyre from Michelin to talk to us about the challenges and transforming collaboration and productivity. (audience applauding) (electronic dance music) Thank you, David. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> We on? >> So, how do you feel here? >> Well good, I want to thank you first of all for your partnership and the devices you create that helped us design, manufacture, and distribute the best tire in the world, okay? I just had to say it and put out there, alright. And I was wondering, were those Michelin tires on that Aston Martin? >> I'm pretty sure there is no other tire that would fit to that. >> Yeah, no, thank you, thank you again, and thank you for the introduction. >> So, when we talk about the transformation happening really in the workplace, the most tangible transformation that you actually see is the drastic change that companies are doing physically. They're breaking down walls. They're removing cubes, and they're moving to flexible layouts, new desks, new huddle rooms, open spaces, but the underlying technology for that is clearly not so visible very often. So, tell us about Michelin's strategy, and the technology you are deploying to really enable this corporation. >> So we, so let me give a little bit a history about the company to understand the daunting tasks that we had before us. So we have over 114,000 people in the company under 170 nationalities, okay? If you go to the corporate office in France, it's Clermont. It's about 3,000 executives and directors, and what have you in the marketing, sales, all the way up to the chain of the global CIO, right? Inside of the Americas, we merged in Americas about three years ago. Now we have the Americas zone. There's about 28,000 employees across the Americas, so it's really, it's really hard in a lot of cases. You start looking at the different areas that you lose time, and you lose you know, your productivity and what have you, so there, it's when we looked at different aspects of how we were going to manage the meeting rooms, right? because we have opened up our areas of workspace, our CIO, CEOs in our zones will no longer have an office. They'll sit out in front of everybody else and mingle with the crowd. So, how do you take those spaces that were originally used by an individual but now turn them into like meeting rooms? So, we went through a large process, and looked at the Hub 500, and that really met our needs, because at the end of the day what we noticed was, it was it was just it just worked, okay? We've just added it to the catalog, so we're going to be deploying it very soon, and I just want to again point that I know everybody struggles with this, and if you look at all the minutes that you lose in starting up a meeting, and we know you know what I'm talking about when I say this, it equates to many many many dollars, okay? And so at the end the day, this product helps us to be more efficient in starting up the meeting, and more productive during the meeting. >> Okay, it's very good to hear. Another major trend we are seeing in IT departments is taking a more hands-off approach to hardware. We're seeing new technologies enable IT to create a more efficient model, how IT gets hardware in the hands of end-users, and how they are ultimately supporting themselves. So what's your strategy around the lifecycle management of the devices? >> So yeah you mentioned, again, we'll go back to the 114,000 employees in the company, right? You imagine looking at all the devices we use. I'm not going to get into the number of devices we have, but we have a set number that we use, and we have to go through a process of deploying these devices, which we right now service our own image. We build our images, we service them through our help desk and all that process, and we go through it. If you imagine deploying 25,000 PCs in a year, okay? The time and the daunting task that's behind all that, you can probably add up to 20 or 30 people just full-time doing that, okay? So, with partnering with Lenovo and their excellent technology, their technical teams, and putting together the whole process of how we do imaging, it now lifts that burden off of our folks, and it shifts it into a more automated process through the cloud, okay? And, it's with the Autopilot on the end of the project, we'll have Autopilot fully engaged, but what I really appreciate is how Lenovo really, really kind of got with us, and partnered with us for the whole process. I mean it wasn't just a partner between Michelin and Lenovo. Microsoft was also partnered during that whole process, and it really was a good project that we put together, and we hope to have something in a full production mode next year for sure. >> So, David thank you very, very much to be here with us on stage. What I really want to say, customers like you, who are always challenging us on every single aspect of our capabilities really do make the big difference for us to get better every single day and we really appreciate the partnership. >> Yeah, and I would like to say this is that I am, I'm doing what he's exactly said he just said. I am challenging Lenovo to show us how we can innovate in our work space with your devices, right? That's a challenge, and it's going to be starting up next year for sure. We've done some in the past, but I'm really going to challenge you, and my whole aspect about how to do that is bring you into our workspace. Show you how we make how we go through the process of making tires and all that process, and how we distribute those tires, so you can brainstorm, come back to the table and say, here's a device that can do exactly what you're doing right now, better, more efficient, and save money, so thank you. >> Thank you very much, David. (audience applauding) Well it's sometimes really refreshing to get a very challenging customers feedback. And you know, we will continue to grow this business together, and I'm very confident that your challenge will ultimately help to make our products even more seamless together. So, as we now covered productivity and how we are really improving our devices itself, and the transformation around the workplace, there is one pillar left I want to talk about, and that's really, how do we make businesses smarter than ever? What that really means is, that we are on a journey on trying to understand our customer's business, deeper than ever, understanding our customer's processes even better than ever, and trying to understand how we can help our customers to become more competitive by injecting state-of-the-art technology in this intelligent transformation process, into core processes. But this cannot be done without talking about a fundamental and that is the journey towards 5G. I really believe that 5G is changing everything the way we are operating devices today, because they will be connected in a way like it has never done before. YY talked about you know, 20 times 10 times the amount of performance. There are other studies that talk about even 200 times the performance, how you can use these devices. What it will lead to ultimately is that we will build devices that will be always connected to the cloud. And, we are preparing for this, and Kirk already talked about, and how many operators in the world we already present with our Moto phones, with how many Telcos we are working already on the backend, and we are working on the device side on integrating 5G basically into every single one of our product in the future. One of the areas that will benefit hugely from always connected is the world of virtual reality and augmented reality. And I'm going to pick here one example, and that is that we have created a commercial VR solution for classrooms and education, and basically using consumer type of product like our Mirage Solo with Daydream and put a solution around this one that enables teachers and schools to use these products in the classroom experience. So, students now can have immersive learning. They can studying sciences. They can look at environmental issues. They can exploring their careers, or they can even taking a tour in the next college they're going to go after this one. And no matter what grade level, this is how people will continue to learn in the future. It's quite a departure from the old world of textbooks. In our area that we are looking is IoT, And as YY already elaborated, we are clearly learning from our own processes around how we improve our supply chain and manufacturing and how we improve also retail experience and warehousing, and we are working with some of the largest companies in the world on pilots, on deploying IoT solutions to make their businesses, their processes, and their businesses, you know, more competitive, and some of them you can see in the demo environment. Lenovo itself already is managing 55 million devices in an IoT fashion connecting to our own cloud, and constantly improving the experience by learning from the behavior of these devices in an IoT way, and we are collecting significant amount of data to really improve the performance of these systems and our future generations of products on a ongoing base. We have a very strong partnership with a company called ADLINK from Taiwan that is one of the leading manufacturers of manufacturing PC and hardened devices to create solutions on the IoT platform. The next area that we are very actively investing in is commercial augmented reality. I believe augmented reality has by far more opportunity in commercial than virtual reality, because it has the potential to ultimately improve every single business process of commercial customers. Imagine in the future how complex surgeries can be simplified by basically having real-time augmented reality information about the surgery, by having people connecting into a virtual surgery, and supporting the surgery around the world. Visit a furniture store in the future and see how this furniture looks in your home instantly. Doing some maintenance on some devices yourself by just calling the company and getting an online manual into an augmented reality device. Lenovo is exploring all kinds of possibilities, and you will see a solution very soon from Lenovo. Early when we talked about smart office, I talked about the importance of creating a software platform that really run all these use cases for a smart office. We are creating a similar platform for augmented reality where companies can develop and run all their argumented reality use cases. So you will see that early in 2019 we will announce an augmented reality device, as well as an augmented reality platform. So, I know you're very interested on what exactly we are rolling out, so we will have a first prototype view available there. It's still a codename project on the horizon, and we will announce it ultimately in 2019, but I think it's good for you to take a look what we are doing here. So, I just wanted to give you a peek on what we are working beyond smart office and the device productivity in terms of really how we make businesses smarter. It's really about increasing productivity, providing you the most secure solutions, increase workplace collaboration, increase IT efficiency, using new computing devices and software and services to make business smarter in the future. There's no other company that will enable to offer what we do in commercial. No company has the breadth of commercial devices, software solutions, and the same data center capabilities, and no other company can do more for your intelligent transformation than Lenovo. Thank you very much. (audience applauding) >> Thanks mate, give me that. I need that. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we are done. So firstly, I've got a couple of little housekeeping pieces at the end of this and then we can go straight into going and experiencing some of the technology we've got on the left-hand side of the room here. So, I want to thank Christian obviously. Christian, awesome as always, some great announcements there. I love the P1. I actually like the Aston Martin a little bit better, but I'll take either if you want to give me one for free. I'll take it. We heard from YY obviously about the industry and how the the fourth Industrial Revolution is impacting us all from a digital transformation perspective, and obviously Kirk on DCG, the great NetApp announcement, which is going to be really exciting, actually that Twitter and some of the social media panels are absolutely going crazy, so it's good to see that the industry is really taking some impact. Some of the publications are really great, so thank you for the media who are obviously in the room publishing right no. But now, I really want to say it's all of your turn. So, all of you up the back there who are having coffee, it's your turn now. I want everyone who's sitting down here after this event move into there, and really take advantage of the 15 breakouts that we've got set there. There are four breakout sessions from a time perspective. I want to try and get you all out there at least to use up three of them and use your fourth one to get out and actually experience some of the technology. So, you've got four breakout sessions. A lot of the breakout sessions are actually done twice. If you have not downloaded the app, please download the app so you can actually see what time things are going on and make sure you're registering correctly. There's a lot of great experience of stuff out there for you to go do. I've got one quick video to show you on some of the technology we've got and then we're about to close. Alright, here we are acting crazy. Now, you can see obviously, artificial intelligence machine learning in the browser. God, I hate that dance, I'm not a Millenial at all. It's effectively going to be implemented by healthcare. I want you to come around and test that out. Look at these two guys. This looks like a Lenovo management meeting to be honest with you. These two guys are actually concentrating, using their brain power to race each others in cars. You got to come past and give that a try. Give that a try obviously. Fantastic event here, lots of technology for you to experience, and great partners that have been involved as well. And so, from a Lenovo perspective, we've had some great alliance partners contribute, including obviously our number one partner, Intel, who's been a really big loyal contributor to us, and been a real part of our success here at Transform. Excellent, so please, you've just seen a little bit of tech out there that you can go and play with. I really want you, I mean go put on those black things, like Scott Hawkins our chief marketing officer from Lenovo's DCG business was doing and racing around this little car with his concentration not using his hands. He said it's really good actually, but as soon as someone comes up to speak to him, his car stops, so you got to try and do better. You got to try and prove if you can multitask or not. Get up there and concentrate and talk at the same time. 62 different breakouts up there. I'm not going to go into too much detai, but you can see we've got a very, very unusual numbering system, 18 to 18.8. I think over here we've got a 4849. There's a 4114. And then up here we've got a 46.1 and a 46.2. So, you need the decoder ring to be able to understand it. Get over there have a lot of fun. Remember the boat leaves today at 4:00 o'clock, right behind us at the pier right behind us here. There's 400 of us registered. Go onto the app and let us know if there's more people coming. It's going to be a great event out there on the Hudson River. Ladies and gentlemen that is the end of your keynote. I want to thank you all for being patient and thank all of our speakers today. Have a great have a great day, thank you very much. (audience applauding) (upbeat music) ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ♪ ♪ Ba da bop bop bop ba do ♪

>> Announcer: Live, from Washington D.C. It's Cube Conversations, with John Furrier. >> Hello there, welcome to the special Cube Conversation, I'm John Furrier with the Cube here in Washington D.C. at the headquarters of Amazon Web Services Public Sector, here in Arlington, Virginia, right around the corner from D.C. Our next guest is Robert Groat, with the Executive Vice President of Technology at Smartronix, a service provider in Cloud and an IT. Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you John. >> So we're in D.C. and the Cube's getting the lay of the land, so much innovation happening around Cloud and disruption, you got one group going, scratching their heads, wondering what's happening, some groups saying what happened, and you got people making it happen, right? >> Exactly. >> What's the big "ah-ha" moment people might not know looking into D.C. now? What is the real trend? What are the people that are making it, what are they doing? Is it the Cloud, is it mobile, is it data-driven? >> Yeah, I think it's all of those components, but I think one of the things that you're really seeing is that the Cloud is enabling these organizations, these traditional organizations, to really transform in the way that they deliver and consume IT services. IT services have been a mess in this town for a long time, the contracting process has been a mess, some of the things that happened, some of the smaller organizations have had a chance to be really innovative and take a leadership role in delivering services to the community and not just the large beltway bandits that we've seen in the past. So I think some of the "ah-ha" moments are probably around, you know, we've been working, Smartronix has been working with the public sector and Cloud since 2009, so really one of the early pioneers, and we used to run across all of these issues where security was the blocker, and it would take a long time to convince people that the security in the Cloud really was what it needed to be. Now we're seeing, in terms of an "ah-ha" moment, we're seeing that security is the enabler, we're seeing that these organizations are really embracing the fact that you can do things in the Cloud from the security perspective that you could never do before. And I think that you've got this kind of next generation of managed service provider that embraces those tenants of how to manage services and manage security services and it's really disrupting the way that the Federal Government's done business in the past. >> You know, we were at the Public Sector Summit last June, and we were commeters, the first time the Cube was at an event, which we had been to other ones before that, but it was very clear to me that we're in a no-excuses government at this point, cause there's a lot of forcing functions. You have one, connected social media, and everyone's like hey, why can't I do that over there? It's like the old iPhone moment on the enterprise. Why can't I bring me iPhone to work? You know, years ago, right? >> Exactly. >> Now you have security looking down the barrel, and IOT happening, and you don't have a thing, so you have Swiss cheese called malware, attacking every hole, every corner of the network potentially is compromised. >> Exactly. >> So security is forcing, and we're at cyberwar. >> We are! >> You can't deny that, so why isn't the Congress emergency funding for more security, or is it happening? >> Well, they need to be, but if you look at, if you look at the way traditional data centers are built and on-premise infrastructure is built, you had a variety of contractors coming in, each kind of doing their own thing, you had this heterogeneous infrastructure that was all built and kind of tangled together, and there wasn't this great way of being able to look at Cloud services or be able to look at a Greenfield environment, and have everything that's happening in that environment aware to you. And that's really what the Cloud is enabling. You're actually. >> You mean program the whole infrastructure? >> Programmable infrastructure, exactly. You're actually, every single thing that happens in a Cloud environment ends up being an API call. Each one of those API calls ends up being logged, and when you have every event that's happening in your environment, you don't have that in a traditional data center. When you have every event that's happening in that environment, and you can apply some of these new primatives that AWS is providing around machine learning and AI, now you're using those to attack those vectors that you're talking about, to protect critical infrastructure, really in ways that you couldn't do before, and you can actually, with this programmable infrastructure, you can actually really look at being able to respond to events, and have autonomic response and remediation of these events. So when something happens, you've programmatically defined how you're going to respond to those events, and it's repeatable. >> Yeah, one of the things I'll share with you, I did an interview with, I think it was the CTO or the CSO of Fortinet, which is a security vendor, >> Mhmm. >> And we were talking, and we were totally geeking out, he was like the complexity of the Cloud actually is an advantage in the security, and I said what do you mean by that? He goes, most of the hackers will focus the main payload of their vector on one particular item, and that's where all their energy, if they have to hunt too far, they kind of give up.6 >> It's just like on the battlefield. The surface area of attack matters, and when you have such a wide, vast surface area of attack, there's no way for them to. >> So you agree with that? >> 100% agree with that. >> How is that, how do I turn that complexity, obviously there's a main range of tools to make the Cloud easier, but complexity of scale, how do I turn that as an IT person or a manager, or an executive, into a security advantage? What do I do? >> So the security advantage is that every time you build a rule, every time you think about compliance and maintaining compliance for your organization, you're actually starting to build knowledge and a new capability. That can be applied programmatically now, across your entire set of enclaves that you use for managing infrastructure, so when we develop one thing as a manage service provider, to make sure we're meeting some kind of compliance mandate, that now can be shared across all of our clients in the space, and this can start to really help create that protective ops infrastructure. >> So you scale more observation space to get more data, that gives you also an advantage. >> It does, it does. And then when you can actually take that data and use it to train to understand where these advance persistent threats are, you can then really start to do things, that this was the province of really large organizations, only in the past. And now AWS has democratized that ability to use these tools around artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve security. >> Robert, you can't go back five years without hearing, are you kidding me, that Cloud is insecure. Turns out, Cloud is becoming a better security paradigm than building on site because of human error or other force majors or any kind of other acts. >> That's exactly right. Anybody who's looking at it from a security perspective and thinks that they can have the same kind of security that, you know, a multi-billion dollar company like AWS can provide, they're mistaken. And the main thing around that is, they don't have transparency to every event happening in that environment, and that's what you get when you start to utilize Cloud services. >> Yeah, I think Verizon was the first company that notified me that this might be the trend. I think this was like a 2011 time-frame. Don't discount a multi-tenant Cloud. >> Exactly. >> Like okay, and they realized and have been tracking that like okay, so big trends in technology, tailwinds and headwinds. What trends are tailwinds for the growth, and what are the headwinds, what's the blockers? >> Well the tailwinds is the fact that I think everybody's kind of not resigned to the fact, but they're seeing the Cloud first as probably a strategy that they should take. And, you know, we've seen the government be laggards in the past with adopting new technology, I think what they're seeing now, especially in the Department of Defense, and then some of the Federal organizations that we're working with, they're actually seeing that perhaps their adversaries are having a competitive advantage by moving into the Cloud, maybe they should look at the competitive advantages that they should have moving into the Cloud infrastructure. Not just security, but the ability to be innovative and agile and deliver services much faster than they've ever been able to deliver them before. >> Well we had a different approach and automated actual code bases so that you can actually deploy services and automatically code them up with glue instantly, so it's interesting. >> That is one of the fundamental things, that when you start looking at infrastructure's code, and you look at things that you can make repeatable in these environments, then look at how many times the government's probably built out a particular enterprise software staff, whether it's Share-A-Plan or >> Authentication. >> It all gets repeated, once that gets cauterized and done right with the right subject-matter experts, then you can start to create service catalogs that these organizations can use and rapidly deploy things in a repeatable and manageable fashion. >> This is an open-source ethos. >> It is. >> We're on the shoulders of others, why replicate something that's already a service, throw it in a service catalog, make it a micro-service, make it an API. >> And that culture's finally transformed in the Federal Government, that didn't used to be the culture, right? >> People must be like, finally! >> It used to be, I have to have my arms wrapped around this, I have to be able to understand everything that's happening, and you would always hear some of these larger organizations say, you know, I don't want to have vendor lock-in. Even now sometimes, you'll see it a little bit. I don't want go with, maybe AWS, because I'll have vendor lock-in, yet for dozens of years, they've been locked into proprietary databases to commercial enterprise platforms, these behemoth software things that AWS again has helped to democratize by providing these primitives and allowing people to build things backed on open-source. >> You're speaking our language, we talk about this all the time, the lock-in, there's always a lock-in spec somewhere, if it's good, the issue is proprietary software and switching costs. >> Yes. >> And choice, right? So that the dimensions to evaluate for customers that we've seen that's successful is, okay, I don't mind lock-in if it's a damn good solution, I'm going to lock that in. >> Right. >> But I have choice. This is going to be interesting, right? So the multi-cloud conversation that is going on around the DOD is interesting, we've been reporting and out in the field, we've been getting the data coming in, saying hey, this DOD kind of overture is interesting, because now if they take the same route as the CIA, we're talking about massive infiltration of Amazon Web Services across the government, because that CIA's kicking ass and taking names with Amazon. >> Mhmm. >> Now you've got the DOD looking down potentially a single-cloud option, other vendors are crying foul calling, we need spec in policy, which is a hijack model of putting in multi-cloud requirement. What's your thoughts on that? Should it be requirement or should we jump off? >> Well, for one, when you have innovators in a space and they take a lead in the space, you're going to get, that's a forcing function for other companies to compete, and that's not a bad thing, it really isn't. And a lot of these organizations, there might be reasons that are very valid reasons for them to consider multi-cloud, or even consider what they have within their own on-premise infrastructure. You've got, you know, tens and tens of years of legacy technical debt in your data center, there's not a reason to pull everything into the Cloud environment, there might be reasons to just let that die a slow death and sunset that. >> Got the mainframe. >> And, like the mainframe stuff, for them to look at even migrating mainframe capabilities into the Cloud, it's a lot of rewrite, it's a lot of things that need to happen. And maybe there's ways that you can extend that on-premise environment, breathe a little bit of life into the on-premise environment, while you're building out your new infrastructure. And that's probably the right path to take. >> And some people choose to have Cobalt code running banks right now, and just because they have that process. >> And it's working, and you know, they'll inevitably come to the time that they have to do that migration. >> Great commentary, great to have you on, great to chat about the technology trends. Smartronix, what are you guys doing, how do you guys fit into this trend, take a minute to talk about what you guys do, and your opportunity. >> Sure, Smartronix is about a 20-year-old company, we talk about some of our competitors will talk about being born in the Cloud, we were actually pretty much born in the enterprise, we helped the Marine Core establish their network operation security command, 20 some years ago, we were first to kind of lead virtualization technologies to help the forward-deployed forces move in and create kind of these tactical data centers, mobile data centers that can move into theater, so it's always kind of been on the forefront of network operations and cybersecurity, and innovative solutions, innovative use of technology, in government. >> The battle field's an instant case of how to deploy. >> Absolutely. >> You need wireless. >> Austere environments, you know, low-power, they used to bring trucks in to be able to set up their mobile data center, and we actually using virtualization technology back in 2004, you know. >> You got to push the envelope. >> You have to. >> Your job is to push the envelope. >> And that's really where I think Smartronix has done a really good job, is that we've helped these large organizations that are in very secure and highly-regulated compliance-driven environments, and utilize technology in innovative ways. More securely, and more optimally in these environments. So when we had a chance in 2009, to do a solution for President Obama at the time, they introduced the Recovery Act, they needed a website to track 750 billion dollars worth of funding. We came in with a pretty innovative solution. They said they had 10 weeks to build this, you're not going to do that in a data center environment. We came in with a solution that said on day one, we're going to utilize Amazon Web Services capabilities, we're going to build out the test endeavor while we build out the data center environment, and we're going to make your deadline by October 1st. And that was really the jumpstart of what we did. >> Do you meet your deadline? >> We absolutely did. >> What was that other website that you didn't actually get the deadline done, they had to bring in? >> Yeah, the healthcare. >> Oh, the Obama. >> So this one was recovery.gov, a very well-documented success, it ended up being the very first cloud-first initiative for the Federal Government. The very first government property running on public Cloud infrastructure, and then from there we migrated to >> Well, he doesn't get the credit he deserves on open government. >> He doesn't. >> He opened up data sets, he changed the game. >> He did, and again, that was, I think when you look at historically, when you look back at the CTOs and CIOs of the Federal Government at that time, they were really trying to look to see how commercial technologies could be applied in the government, how you could get that agility and innovation, and speed of business of commercial and do that in the Federal Government. And I think we embraced that at Smartronix pretty early on, and we were kind of on the leading edge sometimes of delivering this kind of abilities and services. >> Literally. So, you guys are the right group to call for IT to get modernized, because this is is problem. No one can hide anymore, there's no more excuses. And again, this is the lack of innovation. If you've been sitting around not innovating, now there's cyberwars attacking, you got cybersecurity, IT needs to transform, they got to do it like really fast. >> You got all of these competing pressures, security, you've got time, you've got cost, you've got capabilities, all of those things competing. You need to have a trusted advisor, a partner, to get you through that. What Smartronix has created, we call it our four pillars, and these are very simple pillars, but it's really really required for really looking at Cloud services strategy. You have to help the organization define what the business outcomes are that they want in these environments, help them think through what the roadmap and strategy is to get there, and then when you go to the second pillar, which is design, there's unique ways to design things to make it cloud-native, to utilize cloud-native services that also, when you get to the implementation and migration point, you're building these in a programmatic way that makes it easier to operate and manage, and that's the fourth pillar. So if you can get these organizations to think from strategy all the way through to run, all the way through to operations management, you're going to have the more effective organization and better services in your environment. >> Robert Groat, Executive Vice President of Technology at Smartronix, thanks for spending that time with me. >> Thanks, John. >> I'm John Furrier with the Cube, in Washington D.C., actually in Arlington, Virginia at Amazon Web Services Public Sector headquarters, thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Narrator: Live from Orlando, Florida it's theCUBE covering PentahoWorld 2017. Brought to you by Hitachi Vantara. >> Welcome back to sunny Orlando everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, and this is our second day covering PentahoWorld 2017. theCUBE was here in 2015 when Pentaho had just been recently acquired by Hitachi. We then, let's see, around September timeframe we saw Hitachi rebrand, Hitachi Data Systems rebrand as Hitachi Vantara, bringing together three components of its business, the Hitachi Data Systems business, the Hitachi Insights business, and of course, the Pentaho Analytics platform. We heard yesterday from Brian Householder, the president and COO of Hitachi Vantara, what the strategy was. I thought he was a very crisp, clear presenter. The strategy made a lot of sense, it resonated. Obviously a lot of execution to be done. And then subsequently at the last two days we've heard largely from Pentaho practitioners who are applying this end to end analytics platform to really transform their businesses, to really become data driven supporting those digital transformations. So pretty positive story overall. A lot of work to be done. We got to see how this whole edge to outcome plays out. Sounds good. There's got to be some execution there. We got to see the ecosystem grow for sure. These guys got a great story. This conference should explode. >> It's really a validation for Pentaho. They've been on the market for more than a decade now as the spearhead for the open source analytics revolution in business analytics, and in predictive modeling, and in data integration, all of it open source. And they've come very far and they're really a blue chip solution program. I think this show has been a great validation of Pentaho's portfolio presence in the market. Now Hitachi Vantara has a gem of a core asset. Clearly, the storage market, the data center converged infrastructure, the core Hitachi Data Systems product lines, are starting to experience the low growth that such a mature space experiences. And clearly they're placing a strong bet on Hitachi Vantara that the IoT, that the edge analytics market, will just boom wide open. Hitachi Insight Group, which was only created last year by their corporate parent, was chartered to explore opportunities in IoT. They've got the Lumata platform. They had, Hitachi Next, their conference last month, focused on IoT. I think that's really the capstone, the Lumata portfolio, in this overall story. Now, I think what we're hearing this week is that great, they've got the components, the building blocks, of potential growth, but I don't think they're going to be able to achieve takeoff growth until such time, Hitachi Vantara, they have a stronger, more credible reach out to the developer community, specifically the developers who are building the AI and machine learning for deployment to the edge. That will require to have credibility in that space. Clearly it's going to have to be the new set of frameworks, such as TensorFlow, and MXNet, and Fee-an-o, and so forth. They're going to need some sort of a modeling framework or abstraction from it that sits on top of the Pentaho platform or really across all of their offerings, including Lumata, and enables a developer to using, the mainstream application developer to use code, whether it be Python or R or Java, whatever, to build the deep learning and AI models at the highest level of abstraction, the business level of abstraction, then to automatically compile those models, which are computational graphs, down to formats that are optimized and efficient to run on devices of all sorts, chip sets of all sorts, that are increasingly resource constrained. They're not there yet. I'm not hearing that overall developer story at this show. I think they've got a lot of smart people, including Brian, pushing them in that direction. Hopefully next year's PentahoWorld or however they may rebrand this show, I think they'll probably have more of that put together, but we'll keep on waiting to see. >> And that's something that I pushed on a little bit this week. In particular, that requires a whole new go to market where the starting point is developers and then you're nurturing those developers. And certainly Pentaho has experience with community editions, but that was more to get enterprise buyers to kind of try before they buy. As you know well, Jim, the developer community is, they're very fickle, they're persnickety, they're demanding, and they're super smart, and they can be your best advocates or they'll just ignore you. That's just kind of the way it is with developers. And if you can appeal to them you can get a foothold in markets. We've seen it. Look at what Microsoft has done, look at what Amazon has done, certainly Docker, you know, on and on and on. >> Community marketing that's full bore (mumbles) user groups, developer days, hackathons, the whole nine yards, I'm not seeing a huge emphasis on community marketing in that really evangelistic sense. They need to go there seriously. They need to win the hearts and minds of the next generation developer, the next generation developer who actually won't care about whether it's TensorFlow backends or the other ones. What they will care is the high level framework, and really a collaborative framework, that's a solution provider gives them for their teams to collaborate on building and training and deploying all this stuff. I'm not hearing from this solution provider, devops really, here this year. Hopefully in the coming years there will be. Other vendors are a bit further along than they are. We see a bit further along IBM is. We see a bit further along like Cloudera and others are in putting together really a developer friendly ecosystem of components within a broader data lake framework. >> Yeah, and that's not been the historical Pentaho DNA. However, as you know, to reach out, have a community effort to reach out to developers requires resources and commitment, and it's not a one shot deal. But, it also requires a platform, and what we're seeing today is the formation of that. The reformation of Hitachi into Hitachi Vantara with a lot of resources that has a vision of a platform, of which Pentaho is a critical component, but it's going to take a lot of effort, a lot of cultivating. I presume they're having those conversations internally. They're not ready to have them externally, which is I presume why they're not having them. But that's something that we're going to certainly watch for in the coming years. What else? You gave a talk this afternoon. >> Yeah, AI is Eating the Edge, and it was well received. In fact, when I prepared my thoughts and my research about a month ago for this event I was thinking, "Am I way too far ahead?" This is Pentaho. I've been of course familiar with them since their inception. I thought, "Are there other users? "Are there developers? "Is their community going deep into AI "and all the IoT stuff?" And the last day or so here at this event it's like, "Whoa, everybody here is into that. "They know this stuff." So, not only was I relieved that I wouldn't have to explain the ABCs of all that, they were ahead of me in terms of the questions I got. The questions are, once again, what framework should we adopt for AI, the whole TensorFlow, all those framework wars, which I think are sort of overblown and they will be fairly soon, it'll be irrelevant, but those kinds of questions. Those are actually developer level questions that people are just here and they're coming to me with. >> Well, you know, I tell you, I'm no expert in frameworks, but my advice would be whatever framework you adopt you're probably not going to be using that same framework down the road. So you have to be flexible as an organization. A lot of technical leaders tell me this is look, technology is going to come and it's going to go. We got to have great people. We've got to be able to respond to the market requirements. We have to have processes that allow us to be proactive and responsive, and that your choice of framework should ensure that it doesn't constrict you in those areas. >> And you know, the framework that actually appeals to this crowd, including the people in my room, it's a wiki bot framework, it's also what Brian Hopkins of Forrester presented, the three tier architecture. There's the edge devices. There are the gateways or hubs. There's the cloud. We call them primary, secondary, tertiaries. Whatever you call them, you put different data, you put different analytics on each of those tiers. And then really in many ways in a modular fashion then you begin to orchestrate with Kubernetes and so forth these AI infused apps and these distributed architectures, like self driving vehicles or whatever. And the buzz I've been getting here, including in my session, everybody is saying, "Yeah, that's exactly the way to go." In other words, thinking in those terms prevents you as a developer from thinking that AI has to be some monolithic frigging stack on one single node. No, it actually has to be massively parallel and distributed, because these are potentially very compute intensive applications. I think there's a growing realization in the developer community that when you're talking about developing AI you're really talking about developing two core workloads. There's the inferencing, which is where the magic happens in terms of predictions and classifications, but even more resource consumptive is the training that has to happen in the cloud, and that's data, that's exabytes, petabytes intensive potentially. That's compute intensive. Very different workload. That definitely needs to happen in the cloud primarily. There's a little bit of federated training that goes out to the edge, but that's really the exception right now. So there's a growing realization in the developer community that boy, we better get a really good platform for training. And actually they could leverage, we've seen it in our research of wiki bot is that, many AI developers, many deep learning developers, actually leverage their Spark clusters for training of TensorFlow and so forth, because of in memory massive parallelism, so forth and so on. I think there will be a growing realization in the developer community that the investments they've been making in Hadoop and Spark will just be leveraged for this growing stack, for training if nothing else. >> Well, in 8.0 that was sort of the big buzz here. And you and I talked at the open with Rebecca, our other co-host, about 8.0 A lot of incremental improvements. But you know what, in talking to customers that's kind of what they want. They want Pentaho to do a good job of incorporating, curating, open source content, open source platforms and products, bringing them into their system, and making sure that their customers can take advantage of them. That's what they consistently kept asking for. They weren't freaked out about lack of AI and lack of deep learning and ML and Weka is fine. Now maybe it's a blind spot, I don't know. >> No, no, actually I've had 24 hours since they announced to chew on it. In fact, I have a SiliconANGLE article going up fairly soon with essentially my trip report and my basic takeaway. And actually what I like about 8.0 is that it focuses on streaming, bringing open source analytic streaming more completely into the Pentaho data integration platform, in other words, their stronger interoperability with Spark streaming, with Kafka, and so forth, but also they have the ability within 8.0 to better match realtime streaming workloads to execution engines in a distributed fabric. In other words, what I think that represents not only in terms of Hitachi Vantara's portfolio, but in terms of where the industry is going with all things to do with big data applications whether or not they involve AI is streaming is coming into the mainstream, pun intended, and data at rest platforms are starting to become marginalized in a lot of applications. In other words, Hadoop is data at rest par excellence, so are a fair number of other no SQL platforms. Those are not going away. Those are the core of your data lakes. But most development is being developed now, most AI and machine learning is being developed for streaming environments that increasingly are edge oriented. So Pentaho, Hitachi Vantara, for 8.0 have put in the right incremental features for the market that lies ahead. So in many ways I think that was actually a well thought out release for this particular event. >> Great. Okay, some of the highlights here. We had a lot of different industries, gaming, we had experts on autonomous vehicles, we had the NASDAQ guys on, that was a very interesting segment, the German police interview you did, the chief data officer of community colleges in Indiana. So, a lot of diversity, which underscores the platformness of Pentaho. It's not some industry specific system. It is a horizontal capabilities platform. Final thoughts on the show, some interesting things that you saw, things you learned? >> Yeah, on the show itself, they did a really good job. Hitachi Vantara, of course it's a new brand, but it's an old company, and it's even an old established set of product teams that have come together in a hurry essentially, though it's really been two years since the acquisition. They did a really good job of presenting a unified go to market message. That's a good start They've done a good job of the fact that they had these two shows in a rapid sequence, Hitachi Next, which was IoT and Lumata, but it was Hitachi Vantara, and now this one where it's all data analytics. The fact that here in the peak of fall event season they had these two shows really highlighting their innovations and their romance for those two core of their portfolio, and have done a good job of positioning themselves in each case, that shows that the teams are orchestrating well in terms of at least go to market presenting their value prop. I think in terms of the actual, we've had a lot of great customer and partner interviews on this show. And I think, you mentioned gaming first, I wasn't actually on the gaming related CUBE interview, but gaming is a hot, of course it's a hot, hot market for AI increasingly. A lot of AI that gets developed now for lots of applications involves simulations of whatever scenario you're building, including like autonomous vehicles. So gaming is in many ways a set of practices that are well established and mature that are becoming fundamental to development of all AI, because you're developing synthetic data based on simulation environments. The fact that Hitachi Vantara has strong presence as a data provider in the gaming market I think in many ways indicates that they've got ... It's a crowded marketplace. They have much larger competitors and deeper pocketed, but I think the fact is they've got all the piece parts needed to be a roaring success in this new era, and they've got strong and very loyal customers I'm discovering, not discovering, I've known this all along. But, since I've rejoined the analysts' space it's been revalidated that Pentaho how strong in blue chip they are. Now that they're a new brand in a new era, they're turning themselves around fairly well. I don't think that they'll be isolated by ... Clearly, I mean, with AI ... AI right now belongs to AWS and Microsoft and Google and IBM to some degree. We have to recognize that the Hitachi Vantaras of the world right now are still a second tier in that arena. They probably have to hitch their wagon to at least one of those core cloud providers as a core partner going forward to really prevail. >> Dave: Which they can do. >> Yeah, they can do. >> Alright. Jim, thanks very much for closing with me. Thanks to you all for watching. theCUBE puts out a lot of content. You can go to SiliconAngle.com to see all the news. theCUBE.net is where we host all these videos. Wikibon.com is our research site, so check that out, as well. We've got CrowdChats going on, CrowdChat.net. It's just unbelievable. >> Unbelievable. >> Rush of content. We're all about the data, we're all about sharing, so check those sites out. Thanks very much to the crew here. Great job. And next week a lot going on. We're in New York City. We've got some stuff going on there. Want to thank our sponsor, without whom this show, this CUBE show, would not be possible, Hitachi Vantara slash Pentaho. >> Thank you to sunny Orlando. It's great and wonderful. >> This has been theCUBE at PentahoWorld 2017. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (techno music)

(switch clicking) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick, here with theCUBE. We're at the Mission Bay Conference Center in downtown San Francisco at Node Summit 2017. TheCUBE's been coming here for a number of years. In fact, Ryan Dahl's one of our most popular interviews in the history of the show, talking about Node. And, the community's growing, the performance is going up and there's a lot of good energy here, so we're excited to be here and there's a lot of big companies that maybe you would or wouldn't expect to be involved. And, we're excited to have Gaurav Seth. He is the Product Manager for Several Things JavaScript. I think that's the first time we've ever had that title on. He's from Microsoft. Thanks for stopping by. >> Yeah, hey, Jeff, nice to be here. Thanks for having me over. >> Absolutely, >> Yes. >> so let's just jump right into it. What is Microsoft doing here in such a big way? >> So, one of the things that Microsoft is, like, I think we really are, now, committed and, you know, we have the mantra that we are trying to follow which is any app, any developer, any platform. You know, Node actually is a great growing community and we've been getting soaked more and more and trying to help the community and build the community and play along and contribute and that's the reason that brings us here, like, it's great to see the energy, the passion with people around here. It's great to get those connections going, have those conversations, hear from the customers as to what they really need, hear from developers about their needs and then having, you know, a close set of collaboration with the Core community members to see how we can even evolve the project further. >> Right, right, and specifically on Azure, which is interesting. You know, it's been interesting to watch Microsoft really go full bore into cloud, via Azure. >> Right. >> I just talked to somebody the other day, I was talking about 365 being >> Uh huh. >> such a game-changer in terms of cloud implementation, as a big company. There was a report that came out about, you know, the path at 20 billion, >> Right. >> so, clearly, Microsoft is not only all-in, but really successfully >> Right. >> executing on that strategy >> Yeah, I mean-- >> and you're a big piece of that. >> Yes, I mean, I think one of the big, big, big pieces, really, is as the developer paradigms are changing, as the app paradigms are changing, you know, how do you really help make developers this transition to a cloud-native world? >> Right, right. >> How do you make sure that the app platforms, the underlying infrastructure, the cloud, the tools that developer use, how do you combine all of them and make sure that you're making it a much easier experience for developers to move on >> Right. >> from their existing paradigms to these new cloud-native paradigms? You know, one of the things we've been doing on the Azure side of the house and when, especially when we look at Node.js as a platform, we've been working on making sure that Node.js has a great story across all the different compute models that we support on Azure, starting from, like, hey, if you you want to do server list of functions, if you want to do BasS, if you want to go the container way, if you want to just use WEAMS, and, in fact, we just announced the Azure container instances, today, >> Right. >> so it's, one of the work, some of the work we are doing is really focused on making sure that the developer experiences as you migrate your workloads from old traditional, monolithic apps are also getting ready to move to this cloud native era. >> Right, so it's an interesting point of view from Microsoft 'cause some people, again, people in-the-know already know, but a lot of people maybe don't know, kind of, Microsoft's heritage in open source. We think, you know, that I used to buy my Office CD, >> Right. >> and my Outlook CD >> Right. >> you know, it's different, especially as you guys go more heavily into cloud, >> Right. >> you need to be more open to the various tools of the developer community. >> That's absolutely true and one of the focus areas for us, really, has been, you know, as we think through the cloud-native transition, what are the big pieces, the main open source tools, the frameworks that are available and how do we provide great experiences for those on Azure? >> Right, right. >> Right, because, at times, people come with the notion that, hey, Azure probably might just be good for dot NET or might just be good for Windows, but, you know, the actual fact, today, is really that Azure has great supporting story for Linux, Azure has great story for a lot of these open source tools and we are continuing to grow our story in that perspective. >> Right. >> So, we really want to make sure that open source developers who come and work on our platform are successful. >> And then, specifically for Node, and you're actually on the Board, so you've got >> Right. >> a leadership position, >> Yep. >> when you look at Node.js within the ecosystem of opensource projects and the growth that we keep hearing about in the sessions, >> Yep. >> you know, how are you, and you specifically and Microsoft generally, kind of helping to guide the growth of this community and the development of this community as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger? >> Right, I think that's a great question. I think from my perspective, and also Microsoft's perspective, there are a bunch of things we are actually doing to engage with the community, so I'll kind of list out three or four things that we are doing. I think the first and foremost is, you know, we are a participant in the Node.js Foundation. >> Right. >> You know, that's where like, hey, we kind of look at the administrative stuff. We are a sponsor of, you know, at the needed levels, et cetera, so that's just the initial monetary support, but then it gets to really being a part of the Node Core Committee, like, as we work on some of the Core pieces, as we evolve Node, how can we actually bring more perspectives, more value, into the actual project? So, that's, you know, we have many set of engineers who are, right now, working across different working groups with Node and helping evolve Node. You know, you might have heard about the NAPI effort. We are working with the Diagnostics Working Group, we are working with the Benchmarking Working Group and, you know, bringing the thing. The third thing that we did, a while back, was we also did this integration of bringing Chakra which is the JavaScript Runtime from Microsoft that powers Microsoft Edge. We made Node work with Chakra because we wanted to bring the power of Node to this new platform called Windows IoT >> Right, right. >> and, you know, the existing Node could not get there because some of the platform limitations. So, those are like some of the few examples that we've, and how we've been actually communicating and contributing. And then, I think the biggest and the foremost for me, really, are the two pillars, like when I think about Microsoft's contribution, it's really, like, you know, the big story or the big pivot for us is, we kind of go create developer tools and help make developer live's easier by giving them the right set of tools to achieve what they want to achieve in less time, be more productive >> Right, right. >> and the second thing is, really, like the cloud platforms, as things are moving. I think across both of those areas, our focus really had been to make sure that Node as a language, Node as a platform has great first-class experiences that we can help define. >> Right. Well, you guys are so fortunate. You have such a huge install base of developers, >> Right. >> but, again, traditionally, it wasn't necessarily cloud application developers and that's been changing >> Yep. >> over time >> Yep. >> and there's such a fierce competition for that guy, >> Yep. >> or gal, who wakes up >> Yep. >> in the morning or not, maybe, the morning, at 10:00, >> Yep. >> has a cup of coffee >> Yep. >> and has to figure out what they're going to develop today >> Right. >> and there's so many options >> Right. >> and it's a fierce competition, >> Right. >> so you need to have an easy solution, you need to have a nice environment, you need to have everything that they want, so they're coding on your stuff and not on somebody else's. >> That's true, I mean I, you know, somehow, I kind of instead of calling it competition, I have started using this term coopetition because between a lot of the companies and vendors that we talk about, right, it's more about, for all of us, it's working together to grow the community. >> Right. >> It's working together to grow the pie. You know, with open source, it's not really one over the other. It's like the more players you have and the more players who engage with great ideas, I think better things come out of that, so it's all about that coopetition, >> rather than competition, >> Right. >> I would say. >> Well, certainly, around and open source project, here, >> Yes, exactly. >> and we see a lot of big names, >> Exactly. >> but I can tell you, I've been to a lot of big shows where they are desperately trying to attract >> Right, right, yes. >> the developer ecosystem. "Come develop on our platforms." >> Yes, yes. >> So, you're in a fortunate spot, you started, >> Yes, I mean that-- >> not from zero, but, but open source is different >> Yes. >> and it's an important ethos because it is much more community >> Exactly, exactly. >> and people look at the name, they don't necessarily look at the title >> Exactly. >> or even the company >> Yep, exactly. >> that people work for. >> Exactly, and I think having more players involved also means, like, it's going to be great for the developer ecosystem, right, because everybody's going to keep pushing for making it better and better, >> Right. >> so, you know, as we grow from a smaller stage to, like, hey, there's actually a lot of enterprised option of these use case scenarios that people are coming up with, et cetera, it's always great to have more parties involved and more people involved. >> Gaurav, thank you very much >> Yeah. >> and, again, congratulations on your work here in Node. Keep this community strong. >> Sure. >> It looks like you guys are well on your way. >> Yeah. Thanks, Jeff. >> All right. >> Thanks for your time, take care, yeah. >> Guarav Seth, he's a Project Lead at Microsoft. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Node Summit 2017. Thanks for watching. (upbeat synthpop music)

(upbeat pop music) >> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California. In the heart of Silicon Valley. It's theCUBE, covering QuickBooks Connect 2016! Sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks. (upbeat pop music) Now, here are your hosts, Jeff Frick and John Walls. >> Welcome back here on theCUBE. Along with Jeff Frick, I'm John Walls. As we continue our coverage here at QuickBooks Connect 2016. Gathering here in San Jose at the Convention Center. Third annual gathering with a record crowd of more than 5,000 attendees. (crowd noise) So the show continues to show explosive growth. Which is, I guess you can say a lot about what Intuit's doing, in terms of how it's growing its portfolio, in terms of how it serves the business ... The small business and the medium-size business communities. With us now is Sasan Goodarzi, who is the EVP of the small business group at Intuit. Sasan, good to have you with us-- >> Thank you. >> We appreciate the time. >> Thank you for having me. >> What are the keynote stars today? You were talking about some key things, big things about the company about how we're going to help save time. How we're going to have more accessibility to money. And ultimately what we could do to deliver a better proposition to small business. So talk about that, if you would, a little about that theme on the keynote stage, and how that applies to what you're doing in general with QuickBooks. >> Sure, sure. Well one of the things that our customers have taught us is, that there are three things that are important to them. One is time, so they can actually spend running their business and the product that they're passionate about; versus all the tedious, drudgery things that it takes to run your business. The second is money. It's mind boggling the effort that goes into earning money. But how hard is it for them to actually get access to their money. And then last, but not least, is ways to help them grow their business. They're experts in their industry, but where they need help is ways in which that they can drive growth. And so everything that we do is centered around those three things. And it's what inspires us when we show up to work every single day. So a lot of, obviously, what we talked about today on stage, was just very quick, we call ESPN highlight reels of here's the innovation that's coming your way to either save you time, put more money into your pocket, or help you grow your business, or your practice. >> Sure, okay. >> What's amazing is as I say, as much as they've worked to finally get that sale, a lot of times it seems all the collection side-- >> That's right. >> For small business. A huge issue, getting paid. To do all that work, sell it, have a happy customer and then, don't necessarily get their receivables in line. >> That's right. I know we threw a lot of stats out there this morning. But first of all, 80% of small businesses have some sort of a cash flow issue. And in that context about 65% of them have invoices that are 60 days overdue. And in fact, they live and die by getting paid on time. And so, obviously, the innovations that we talked about on stage today, were how do you get access to those funds right away. >> Jeff: Right, right. >> That's one element of it. The other element is we have all the data of small businesses. And so we know what they're good for. And so we can deliver loans to them on the spot. If they have payables and they want to borrow on the payable to make payroll for the week, or they want to go buy more inventory to grow their business, we can actually fund them very quickly. Literally within minutes. And so those are examples of what we showed on stage today all in service of helping them thrive and achieve their dreams. >> I love to ding into that a little bit, because growth actually exacerbates your cash flow problem if you're not managing it well. And now suddenly you're selling more and you got to buy to fulfill those obligations. But the fact that you almost have a secondary market now for people to be able to borrow money without pulling all their paper together, and trekking down to the bank and hoping they can get it, because you actually have the real data. It's updated (chuckles)-- >> That's right. >> All the time. And it's a different set of data ... Potentially more complete set of data for a lender to actually make that decision, than the stack of paper that they bring down-- >> That's right. >> to the local bank. >> That's right. Well, you know it's interesting. You just said something that triggered a thought. When you think about startups that go out and get VC money ... There's a reason why they have board of directors, 'cause the board of directors what they're looking for is one, do you have a growth plan, but then how do you manage that growth? How do you make sure you have enough money? How much money are you burning per week? And are you going to be able to maintain that growth? Small businesses don't have that. They don't have the board of directors that are actually helping them with some of those decisions. They may not be surrounded by a CFO or a finance expert in the office. And so part of what we're trying to do is just digitize and automate everything so they don't have to worry about that. And secondarily I think to the point you made, helping them with access to money at the point in which they need it. But I think even before we get to that stage, what we're trying to do is help them by being that board of directors without having to have one. Which is to helping them manage their cash flow, their inventory. Because as they're on that growth curve ... One of the main reasons why they go out of business is 'cause they're growing fast, but they're not managing their funds, and they do not have enough money sometimes to make payroll. >> Right. Well we've heard the stat from a couple of different sources but 50% of all small businesses fail in the first five years-- >> That's right. >> of operation. And the use of accounting and accountant, what that could do to increase your odds of being in business for the long term. So certainly you could see where all that is coming in play. You mentioned payments, so we're thinking about Apply Pay. That was one of the announcements-- >> Yes. >> You had. Google Calendar, talking about time. >> Sasan: Yes. >> And then AMEX with the loans. So the power of these partnerships, I'd like to hear from you on that, because, you know, big names, right (chuckles) >> Sasan: Yes, yes. >> That I ... If Jeff or I or anybody watching ran a little mom and pop operation in Morgantown, WV, I've got Apple, and I've got Google, and I've got Intuit on my side. Talk about leveraging that power for small businesses? >> Yes, actually listening to you inspires me around what Intuit is doing for these small businesses. And it starts with our vision of having an open platform. It's less about what we innovate on that platform, but our goal is to bring all of the innovation; whether it's our engineers or engineers outside of our four walls. Bring all of that innovation on our platform, so that in fact we can digitize and automate everything with Google Calendar. So we can go in and we know all of where you spent your time, and help you easily, with one click, invoice your customers. Or, as an example you used, be able to use Apple Pay Touch where you can immediately get paid. But that's because our goal is to have an open platform where we bring all the innovation of the best companies out there to you. So that you can run your business on any device, and you don't have to worry about which application it is, but that we do it all for you. >> I just love the Google Calendar example, because so many great innovations today are basically reassembling stuff that's already out there; leveraging APIs and presenting it in a different way. And so the fact that you're taking advantage of Google Calendar, which so so many people ... You probably know the numbers use ... And then have that drive your billing, have that drive your time management, and then just take advantage of the data that's there, or as Scott said, "Take advantage of the data that's in your phone." >> Sasan: That's right. >> It knows exactly how far you went on that drive to the client. It knows when you left and when you arrived-- >> That's right. >> and when you got home. So the leverage of Cloud platform with APIs, to pull that data in and drive in a seamless integration, it makes (chuckles) it makes too much sense, right? (Sasan laughs) It does, and when you think about someone like Google, where there's a billion people that use Gmail ... >> A billion. >> And most of them are using ... There's a billion people that have Gmail accounts. >> Jeff: Wow. >> And over 60% of our customers use Google Calendar to run their business. And so, it's only intuitive to figure out a way well, how do we automate all of that-- >> Jeff: Right. >> so that the customer doesn't have to use cookbooks for taxes and accounting, then go to Google Calendar to see where they spent their time so they can figure out how to invoice? >> And they type it in, right. >> Just integrate it all together so it's all in one place, yeah. >> How do you all keep focused when your market, your potential market's so big? You've got, I don't know ... I've read, was it 800 million possible businesses, right? Small businesses. >> Sasan: That's right. >> So how do you ... If you look at what would be reasonable growth trajectory and expansion, your plans ... How do you keep your eyes on the target, and how do you determine that target? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Let me start with where you just ended, which is there are 800 million self-employed and small businesses worldwide. And 97 to 8% of 'em actually are not using the Cloud to run their business, or their time. And the way we prioritize is think about the countries that are the biggest opportunity to create virility by those that are using the platform. And so we've prioritized which countries that we're going after, and really doubling down in those countries. And that's where we really are able to focus our efforts in time. 'Cause once we create this, what we call the network effect, the more small businesses and self-employed we get to use the platform, the more we get accountants to be able to see the power of the platform. The more they tell their friends. The more accountants are recommending it, you in essence create this flywheel effect of more and more going to the Cloud. And once we get that flywheel effect going, we'll think about what's that next country that we want to go into. We're not that serial about it, but our biggest focus comes from being clear which countries we're going to play in today, and which countries, for now, we're going to wait 'til we get this network effect going. >> And now you've got this whole new way to work. People that are giving up part of their house or apartment for Airbnb rentals. Or people that are driving in Uber for four hours a couple of days a week. Again, those are all based on systems that are driving that engagement. Do you see that it's just a whole new opportunity, do you see a lot of growth in ... I always forget the technical term for-- >> Sasan: The digamy ... The giga-- >> The gig. >> Sasan: The gig economy. >> The gig economy. >> That's right-- >> Which is a whole new and swelling thing. >> It is. >> And for a lot of those people, they are even less sophisticated on keeping track of their tax withdrawals than the small mom and pop store (chuckles)-- >> Sasan: That's right. >> that's at least been paying their social security for a number of years. >> Sasan: That's right. >> So another huge opportunity for you. >> It absolute is. One of the myths is most self-employed are actually not part of the gig economy. There's the photographer that you may call on to come take pictures of your family, or the landscaper that's a one-person shop. That's 90% of self-employment. About less than 10% is the Airbnbs, the Lyft, and the Ubers of the world. But that number's only going to grow over time. In fact, our view is in this day and age people will work at a company for three to four years at a time. We believe in ten years, people will work for three to four companies in a day. 'Cause they're workers, and they're outsourcing their time to different companies. >> Jeff: Three or four companies-- >> A day. >> Jeff: A day? >> A day. Because in essence, they're self-employed. Now I may work for you and do a job. I may work for you and do a job. That's actually starting to happen today. Except it's a small part of the economy. We believe ten years from now it'll be a huge part of the economy. And that creates a huge opportunity for us, 'cause they're all self-employed. >> Right. >> Before you head out, again, one of the big trend topics, artificial intelligence, machine learning. How do those come into play in your vision for the company's vision, and the products and services that you think you could develop that can be put to use? >> Yeah, in fact we think there are two core competencies that we must have. One is an open platform where we integrate all applications into the platform, whether it's ours or somebody else's. The second is being amazing at leveraging the data, whether it's data from a PayPal app, a Square app our own app. And leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, so we can do the work for our customers. So we believe when it comes to data and artificial intelligence, that is actually one of two or three primary core competencies that we are building as a company. And it's something we're not new at. We've been doing this for years. In fact, last year in TurboTax we've reduced the amount of time it took to do your taxes by 40%, by using machine learning. And we're now applying that within QuickBooks. >> I'd like you to reduce my tax liability by about 40%. (Jeff laughs) If we can (chuckles) take care of that and I'm yours. >> Or at least-- >> Well, listen-- >> Or at least get you to the July deadline. (John laughs) >> If you just make less income-- (Jeff laughing) >> That's right. >> I'm sure that's doable. (Sasan laughs) >> If you don't make it, you don't pay it. >> Sasan: That's right (chuckles). >> You mentioned ESPN earlier about the stage and all that. You made top plays today, no doubt about it with the keynotes address. >> Sasan: Oh, thank you-- >> Job very well done. >> Thank you very much. >> Jeff: Cute Kim's (mumbles) coming. >> Sasan: Thank you. >> And thank you (Jeff laughs) for joining us here on theCUBE. We appreciate the time-- >> Thank you, thank you for having me. >> John: You bet. Back with more-- >> Alright, thanks. QuickBooks Connect 2016 here in San Jose. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat pop music)