(upbeat music) >> Welcome, everyone, to this CUBE Conversation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE. We're here to talk about the state of MarTech and AI. We're here with the co-founder and head of AI for Blueshift, Manyam Mallela. Welcome to the CUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John. Thank you for having me, excited to chat with you. >> Blueshift is a company you've co-founded with a couple other co-founders and you guys have a stellar pedigree going in data AI back before it was fashionable, in the old days, Web 1.0, if you want to call it that. So, you know, we know what you guys have been doing in your careers. Now you got a company on the cutting edge, solving problems for customers as they transition from this new, new way of doing things where users have data and power and control, customers are trying to be more authentic, got walled gardens emerging everywhere but that we're supposed to be away from walled gardens. So there's a whole set of new patterns, new expectations and new behaviors. So all this is challenging, but yet it's an opportunity. So I want to get into it. What is your vision? And what's your view on the MarTech today and AI, and how do you guys fit into that, that story? >> Yeah. Great question, John. We are still in the very early innings of where every digital experience is informed, both creatively from the marketing side of our organization, as well as the AI doing the heavy lifting under the herd to be able to create those experience at scale. And I think today every digital customer and every user out there are leaving a trail of very rich, very frequent interaction data with their brands and organizations that they interact with. You know, if you look at each of us, many, many moments and hours of our digital lives are with these interactions that we do on screens and devices, and that leaves a rich trail of data. And brands that are winning, brands that we want to interact with more, have user privacy and user safety at the center of it. And then they build that authentic connection from there on. And, you know, just like when we log into our favorite streaming shows or streaming applications, we want to see things that are relevant to us. They, in some sense, knowing kind of intimately our preferences or changing taste. And how does a brand or organization react to that but still make room for that authentic connection? >> It's an awesome opportunity. And it's a lot of challenges, and it's just starting, I totally agree. Let me ask you a question, Manyam, if you don't mind. How did you guys come up with Blueshift? I know you guys have been in this game before it was fashionable, so to speak, but you know, solving Web 1.0, 2.0 problems. And then, you know, Walmart Labs, everyone knows the history of Walmart and how fast they were with inventory and how they used data. You have that kind of trajectory. When you saw this opportunity, was it like the team was saying, wow, look at this, it's right in our wheelhouse, or, how did you guys get here, and then how did it all come together? >> Yeah, thanks for offering me an opportunity to share our personal journey. You know, I think prior to starting Blueshift with my co-founders, who I worked with for almost the past 20 years of my life, we were at a company called Kosmix, which was a Silicon Valley, early AI pioneer. We were doing semantics search, and in 2011, Walmart started their Silicon Valley innovation hub, Walmart Labs, with the acquisition of Kosmix. And, you know, we went into Walmart Labs, and until then they were already an e-commerce leader. They had been practicing e-commerce for better part of 12 years prior to that, but they're certainly you know, behind, compared to their peers, right? And the peers to be named! (laughs) But, they saw this lack of what it is that they were doing so well in brick and mortar that they're not able to fully get there on the digital side. And, you know, this was almost a decade ago. And when they brought in our team with a lot of AI and data systems at scale, building things at the cutting edge, you know, we went into it a little bit naively, thinking, you know, hey, we are going to solve this problem for Walmart scale in three months. (laughs) But it took us three years to build those systems of engagement. Despite Walmart having an enormous amount of resources being the number one retailer in the world and the data and the resource at their disposal, we had to rethink a lot of assumptions and the trends that were converging were, you know, uses for interacting with them across multiple formats and channels. And both offline and online, the velocity and complexity of the data was increasing. All the marketing and merchandising teams said even a millisecond delay for me is unconscionable. And how do you get fresh data and activated at the moment of experience, without delay, this significant challenge at scale? And that's what we solve for our organizations. >> It really is the data problem. It's a scale problem. It's all that. And then having the software to have that AI predictive and, you know, it's omnichannel when you think about it, in that retail and that brick and mortar term used for physical space and digital converging. And we saw the pandemic pull forward this same dynamic where events and group behaviors and just interactions were all converging. So this line between physical and digital is now blurred, completely blended, the line between customer experience and marketing has been erased, and you guys are the center of this. What does it mean for the customer? Because the customers out there, your customers, or potential customers. They got problems to solved. They're going all digital cloud-native applications, the digital transformation. This is the new normal, and some are on it, are starting it, some are way behind. What are they- What's the situation with the customers? >> Yeah, that's certainly the maturity of, you know, the, each brand and organization along that, you know, both transformation and from transformation to actually thriving in that ecosystem. And how do we actually win, you know, share of mind and then share of, like, that market that they're looking to does take a while. And, and many are, you know, kind of midway through their journey. I think, there was, initially there is a lot of, you know, push towards let's collect all the data that we can but then, you know, how does the actually data becomes something useful that changes experience for Manyam versus John is really that critical moment. And that moment is when, you know, a lot of things come into place. And if I look at, like, the broader landscape, there are certainly lines of powers like Discovery, like Udacity and LendingTree, and Zumper car pods across all these industries. Who would've thought like, you know, all these industries who you would not think of actually as solving a digital engagement problem are now saying that's the key to our success and our growth. >> Yeah. It's absolutely the number one problem. This is the number one opportunity for all businesses, not just verticals here and there, all verticals. So walk me through your typical customer scenario. You know, what are the challenges that they face? You're in the middle of it, you're solving these problems, what are their challenges that they face and how do you guys solve them? >> Absolutely. So I'll talk through two examples, one from a finance industry, one from online learning, you know, o One of our great customers that we partner with is LendingTree. They offer tens of millions of customers' finance products that span from home loans, students loans, auto loans, credits, all of that. And, and let these people come into their website and collect information that is relevant to the loan that they're considering, but engage them in a way for the next period of time. So if you typically think about engagement, it's not just a one interaction, usually that follows a series of steps an organization has to take to be able to explain all their offerings in a way that is digestible and relevant and personalized to each of those millions of customers and actually have them through the funnel and measure it and report on it and make sure that that is the most relevant to them. So in a finance setting that is about consuming credit products, consuming loan products, consuming reporting products in an online context. I'll give you an example of one of our customers, Udacity. Imagine you are a marketing team of two people, and you are in challenged with, how do you engage 20 million students. You're not going to write 20 million communications that are different for each of those students, certainly. I think you need a system to say what did actually all these students come for? How do I learn what they want at this moment in time? What do they want next? If they actually finished something that they started two months ago, would they be eligible for the right course? Maybe today we are talking about self-driving cars. That's the course that I should bring in front of them. And that's only a small segment of the students but someone else maybe on the media and the production side. How do I personalize the experience so that every single step of the way for that student is, you know, created and delivered at scale? And that's kind of the problem that we solve for our brands, which is they have these millions of touchpoint that are, that they have, how do they bring all their data, very fresh and activated at the moment of action? >> So you guys are creating the 10x marketer. I mean, kind of- >> That's right. That's a very (indistinct)- >> 10X engineer, the famous, you're 10X engineer. >> Right. >> You guys are bringing a lot of heavy lifting to short staffs or folks that don't have a data science team or data engineering team. You're kind of bringing that 10x marketing capability. >> Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it. I call it the mission impossible, which is, you know, you're signing up for the mission impossible, for every marketing team, it's like, now they're like, they are the product managers they're the data scientists, they're the analysts. They are the creator, you know, author, all of that combined into a role. And now you're entrusted with this really massive challenge. And how do you actually get there? And it's that 10x marketer who are embracing these technologies to get there. >> Well, I'm looking forward to challenging though because I can imagine you get a lot of skeptics out there. I don't believe you. It sounds too good to be true. And I want to get to that in the next segment, but I want to ask you about the state of MarTech and AI specifically. MarTech traditionally has been on Web 2.0 standards, DNS, URLs. It's the naming system of the internet. It's the internet infrastructure. So- >> Right. what needs to change to make that scale higher? Does, is there any new abstraction or any kind of opportunities for doing things in just managing you know, tokens that need to be translated? It's hard to do cross to- I mean, there's a lot of problems with Web 2.0 legacy that kind of holds back the promise of high availability of data, privacy, AI, more machine learning, more exposure of data. Can you share your vision on this next layer? >> Absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of excitement about what Web3 would bring us there in the very early innings of that possibility. But the challenge of, you know, data that leads to authentic experience still remains the same whichever metaverse we might actually interact with a brand name, like, you know, even if I go to a Nike store in the Metaverse, I still need to understand what that customer really prefers and keep up with that customer as they change their preferences. And AI is the key to be able to help a marketer. I call it the, you know, our own group call it like IPA you know, which is ingest all possible data, even from Metaverse, you know, the protocols might change, the formats might change, but then you have to not only have a sense of what happened in the past. I think there are more than enough tools to know what happened. There are only emerging tools to tell you what might happen. How do I predict? So ingest, predict, and then next step is activate. Actually you had to do something with it. How do I activate it, that the experience for you, whether it's Web3 or Web2 changes, and that IPA is kind of our own brew of, you know, AI marketing that we are taking to market. >> And that's the enablement piece, so how does this relate to the customer's data? You guys are storing all the data? Are they coming in? Is there a huge data lake involved? Can I bring in third party data? Does it have to be all be first party? How is that platform-level enabling this new form of customer engagement? >> Absolutely. There's a lot of heavy lifting that the data systems that one has to you know, bring to bear upon the problem, data systems ranging from, you know, distributed search, distributed indexing, low latency systems, data lakes that are built for high velocity, AI machine learning, training model inference, that validation pipeline. And, you know, we certainly leverage a lot of of data lake systems out there, including many of the components that are, you know, provided by our preferred partner, AWS and open source tools. And these data systems are certainly very complex to manage. And for an organization that, with a, you know, 5 to 10 people team of marketers, they're usually short staffed on the, the amount of attention that they get from rest of the organization. And what we have made is that you can ingest a lot more raw data. We do the heavy lifting, but both data management, identity resolution, segmentation, audience building, predictions, recommendations, and then give you also the delivery piece, which is, can I actually send you something? Can I put something in front of the user and measure it and report on it and tell you that, this is the ROI? How do, if all this would be for nothing, if actually you go through all this and there's no real ROI. And we have kind of, you know, our own forester did a total economic impact study with us. And they have found, they have found 781% ROI for implementing Blueshift. And it's a tremendous amount of ROI you get once you are able to reorient your organizations towards that. >> You know, Manyam, one of the problems of being a visionary and a pioneer like you guys are, you're early a lot. And so you must be scratching your head going, oh, the hot buzzword these days is the semantic layer, in Khan, you see snowflake and a bunch of other people kind of pushing this semantic layer. It's basically a data plane essentially for data, right? >> Right. >> And you guys have done that. Been there, done that, but now that's in play, you guys have this. >> That's right. >> You've got all this semantic search built in into the system, all this in data ingestion, it's a full platform. And so I need to ask you how you see this vectoring into the future state of customer engagement. Where, where do you see this intersecting with the organizations you're trying to bring this to? Are they putting more investment in, are they pulling back? Are they, where are, where are they and where are you guys relative to this, this technology? And, and, and, and first of all let's get your reaction to this semantic layer first. >> Right, right. It's a fantastic, you know, as a technologist, I love, you know, kind of the ontology and semantic differences, you know, how, how, you know, data planes, data meshes, data fabrics are put together. And, you know, I saw this, you know, kind of a dichotomy between CIO org and CMO org, right? The CO says like, you know, I have the best data plane, the data mesh, the data fabric. And the CMO says like, but I'm actually trying to accomplish something for this campaign. And they're like, oh, that, does it actually connect the both of pieces? >> So I think, the- >> Yeah? >> The CMO org certainly will need purpose-built applications, on top of the data fabric, on top of the data lakes, on top of the data measures, to be able to help marketing teams both technical and semi-technical to be able to accomplish that. >> Yeah. And then, and the new personas they want turnkey, they want to have it self-service. Again, the 10x marketer is someone with a small staff that can do the staff of hundred people, right? >> That's absolutely- >> So that's where it's going. And this is, this i6s the new normal. >> So, we call them AI marketers. And I think it's a, it's like you're calling a 10x marketer. I think, you know, over time we didn't have, you know this word, business intelligence analyst, but then once the tool are there, then they become business intelligence analysts. I think likewise, once these tools are available then we'll have AI marketers out in the market. >> Well, Manyam, I'd love to do a full, like, one-hour podcast with you. You can go for a long time with these topics given what you guys are working on, how relevant it is, how cool it is right now, and with what you guys have as a team and solution. I really appreciate you coming on the CUBE to chat. For the last minute we have here, give a quick plug for the company, what you guys are up to, size, funding, revenues, what you're looking for. What should people pay attention to? Give the plug. >> Yeah. Yeah, we are a global team, spanning, you know, multiple time zones. You know, we have raised $65 million to date to build out our vision and, you know, over the last eight years of our funding, we have served hundreds of customers and continuing to, you know, take on more. I think, you know, our hope is that over time, the next 10,000 organizations see this as a very much an approachable, you know, problem to solve for themselves, which I think is where we are. AI marketing is real doable, proven ROI. Can we get the next 10,000 customers to embrace that? >> You know, as we always used to say in the kind of web business and search, it's the contextual and the behavioral, you got to bring 'em together here. You got all that technology for the, for the sites and applications for the behavior and converting that contextually into value. Really compelling solution. Thanks for sharing your insight. >> Yeah. Thank you John, really appreciate this. >> Okay, this is CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick with The Cube. If you can't tell over my shoulder, we are at Oracle Park. It's a glorious day. The marine layer is burning off and it is really spectacular. We're happy to be here. Haven't been here since, I think 2014. It's an interesting event called Sports Tech Tokyo World Demo Day. About 25 technology companies in the sports area are giving demos all day today. It's a huge program, and we're excited to have our next guest coming from the analytics side. She's Sezin Aksoy, Global Data Strategy and Analytics for AXS. >> Correct. >> Welcome. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> Glad to be here. >> So Global Data Strategy. Everything's all about data. >> Correct. >> So, somebody's really happy to have you on board. What are so... What do you, what are you working on, what was top of line. >> Sure, so it's going to sound cheesy but data is the power of the world. >> Yes. >> It's going to empower people making better decisions, so that's kind of my role is at AXS. So AXS is the ticketing platform for live entertainment events. We operate in the US, Europe, as well as in Japan. And, if you think about it, when a consumer comes to your website, that's the first touchpoint that you have. Whether they buy the ticket or don't. Whether they buy or sell, and transfer the ticket, or they attend the event, all those are various touchpoints that we are collecting. So that we can inform our clients to make better decisions with data. >> Right. >> Whether it's pricing decisions, or marketing decisions, or scanning an event, which gates will be more busier than others. So, that's kind of what my team works on. >> Excellent. So, let's jump into a little bit on the dynamic pricing. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> Because we saw, we've seen dynamic pricing. And you said you were in the airline industry. >> Correct. >> We've seen it in the hotel industry. >> Yup. >> My father in law talks about when he was doing dynamic pricing as a young kid. >> Sizen: Okay. Just making a call when somebody came through the door, at eleven o'clock. >> Sizen: Yeah. (laughs) >> Jeffrey: What's my marginal cost... >> Okay, yep. >> Jeffrey: with somebody in that room or not. There's really slow to get beyond, kind of the entertain, oh excuse me, the travel industry for other people... >> Hm mm. Yep. >> To kind of get on board the dynamic pricing. >> Yeah. We saw the Giants here... >> Yep. >> Actually a couple of years ago. We came by, they were starting to do dynamic pricing. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> A Friday night Dodger game, compared to a Tuesday day... >> Sizen: Yep. >> Milwaukee game, very, very different. >> Sizen: Hm mm. >> So, what are some of the factors going in, what are some of the resistance, >> Sizen: Yeah. >> that had to be overcome for people to actually accept that it's okay to charge more for a Friday night Dodger game, than a Tuesday afternoon Milwaukee game. >> Yep, so yeah, so my background start with the airlines, which is where dynamic pricing, revenue management started at, specifically the American Airlines. If you think about there are a lot of similarities between airlines and live entertainments. Fixed costs, you have to, flight has to go, or the game has to be played no matter how many people are there. So, you really have a limited time to really maximize your revenue. And you kind of have a product that the demand level is different by day, whether it's a Tuesday game or Friday game. It really something you have to study the sort of the behavior from the consumers when they buy their tickets. What are the factors they put into play to make that decision? And in that mix, San Francisco Giants was one of the first teams that actually incorporated dynamic pricing about ten years ago, that slowly. The challenges with it is we are not as the consumer, not as trained to know that the price may change. Hotels, airlines been doing it for years and years. >> Right. >> And for them, also it didn't start from like doing all the flights in day one. So it's really needs to be a phased approach. It needs to be a lot of education for the public, and to think about the right way to think about it is, you want incentivize people to buy early. And you want to make sure they are the ones that getting the best price, and not necessarily the people that are buying last minute. >> Right. >> If you're buying last minute, then you must accept that it maybe the available today you're not looking for or the price not you looking for. But I will say though that plans change, people decide to not attend the game. The reason is that, potential for finding other seats for that similar game. But, really for you, have your plans. It's better to buy early, and that's kind of what the industries needs to be trained on, more and more. >> Right. >> Was there more opportunity in getting additional value out of that high demand game? Or was the bigger opportunity in getting, kind of lowering the prices on the less desirable games, and getting kind of marginal revenue on that side. Where was the easy money made, >> Yeah. >> Jeffrey: On dynamic pricing? I mean the immediate impact is from the high value seats for the high value games, cause that's really is your premium product at that point. But in the meantime, there's always a low number of seats that you have in your premium area. And if you find the right price, and if you start earlier. And really the goal is to sell all the seats, and to fill all the seats. >> Right. >> Also, just selling the seats is not, doesn't get you far enough. You want to make sure people actually come to the game, and they're the people that are going to attend the game. Right? >> Right. >> So, if you kind of, the lower level has many more seats, so it's really has to be both ways. It can't be in one area, either dynamic pricing and you don't do it. It's just all about training the public and consumers. >> Right. Now, the other interesting you said in your kind of intro, was keeping track of... What are the busiest turnstiles? And where people coming? And the flow within the game. >> Sizen: Yep. >> What are some of the analytics that you do there, >> Sizen: Yep. >> And how are teams using those... >> Sizen: Yep. >> that information to provide a better fan experience? >> Yeah, so we have scanned data, and we actually have it real time. So, we are able to provide the teams. We have kineses streams, not to go too technical, to kind of empower them to do their game operations in a certain way. So example would be, you could study the past games and understand where people came from. Typically for a Friday game verse a Tuesday game, your crowd will look different, right. The Friday game, maybe the more the families or Saturday or Sunday. But Tuesday may be more corporate world, right. So understanding they're patterns, but also than having that data accessible to you to real time. So, that way you're able to see how many people are coming in from this one gate to other. You can man the gates differently that way. And the real time data is not something that comes just easily. There's a lot of infrastructure built for it. >> Right. >> But we've done it at AXS, and we've been able to provide to the teams so they can manage their getting in better. >> Right. >> So real time's interesting cause you know a lot of these conversations about real time, and I would say, "How do you define real time?" And in my mind, it's in time to do something about it. >> Exactly. >> So, using real time, I mean are there things they can do in real time to either lighten the load at an overdone gate, or... >> Sizen: Yeah. >> What are some of the real time impacts that people are using this data to do? >> Yeah, so exactly the example you provided. Like making sure there are more people at this one gate as opposed to others. But also, like knowing who's coming into the arena. So AXS's I-D ticketing, I-D based ticketing platform, so we actually know who's coming in. It's a rotating barcode, so if you just copy-paste the ticket, and text your friend. That doesn't work, that eliminates fraud as well. But because we know who's coming in, you can actually empower your sales reps as a team to make sure you are, you know, if they are coming to a suite or a premium area. So in so actually just scanned in, so you kind of come up with ideas for sales reps. As well as some of the marketing activations, like... It could be that you have people that typically come in late. You want to incentivize them. You could actually come up with promotions on merch and food and beverage to incentivize them early, right? Or at the same time you can actually, there are some platforms that do marketing activation. You may have had a lot of hotdogs left that you couldn't sell. Towards the late quarter, you could send a message to everyone saying, "Okay, ya know, hot dogs are 20 percent off." >> Right, right. >> So that, you need real time for it, for data for that. Cause you again need to know how many people scanned in. You may want to know how many people scanned out. So for some conferences and other type events, you want to make sure there's a Fire Marshall rules, so you want to make sure. So all the real time data is helpful for that if you just look at the purchaser data, you're not going to get that specifically there. >> That's really interesting cause I was going to say, What are some of the next things that we can expect to see dynamic pricing applied to, and you just went through them which are really situational specific. >> Yep. >> Opportunities to clear inventory, to do whatever. >> Exactly, it's not just a ticket purchase. It could be applied to other things as well. >> Right, Right. >> Yeah. >> How cool. So what other kind of data sets are you looking at to help teams that maybe we're not thinking about. >> Sure, just when people buy their tickets. What marketing may have they done, so that we can understand the web traffic, and did they buy the ticket when you send out that email. Or did they buy it three days later. So that's one area. As well as sort of, the inventory that you have available for that game. Does it sell faster for that Friday game versus a Tuesday game? We also, we're a comprehensive marketplace where we have both primary and secondary in the same map. To give the convenience back to the consumers, so you kind of have a chance to see all the inventory available in front of you. So, a bit of understanding how tickets transact in the secondary marketplace is helpful for the teams to really price their product better. Cause sometimes we have... I work for a team, so I have that background where you may have just 20 price points, and you've done it for 20 years but it's been certainly changing then. But now that you have all these different data points on the second, you also you kind of maybe is like, 'Okay I need 40 price points really because there's that much differentiation demand. >> Wow, really sophisticated analysis... >> Yeah, it's a passion area for me, so... >> And doing the real time, real time data flow and everything. >> Yeah, yeah. A really interesting, interesting conversation. >> Yeah. >> To go so far beyond just dynamic pricing. >> Exactly. >> It uses more sophisticated methods to get more value, provide better experience for the fans. >> And actually in Japan, they do more about dynamic pricing. So they utilize our platform to actually able to price every seat differently if they wanted to. We've just went out with on sales for Big League teams, and that's how they apply that. So it's been used elsewhere, maybe in the U-S in sports. It's definitely catching up, and it's much much big difference from the 10 years ago. But, I think Japan has already been kind of doing that. >> Excellent. >> Mm hm. >> Well Sizen, thanks for taking a few minutes, and sharing those stories. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that may not be conscious of, but hopefully we're getting the benefit of. >> Yeah, thank you. >> All right. Sizen, and I'm Jeff. Yes, we're live. They're banging on something down there. I'm not sure what, but keep watching. We'lls be here at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Thanks for watching, and see ya next time. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, we are wrapping up day three of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. CUBE's live coverage, I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with Stu Miniman, my esteemed cohost for these past three days, it's been fun working with you, Stu. >> Rebecca, it's been a great show, real excited. Our first time at a Microsoft show and it's a big one. I mean, the crowds are phenomenal. Great energy at the show and yeah, it's been great breaking down this ecosystem with you. >> So, three days, what do we know, what did you learn, what is your big takeaway, what are you going to to go back to Boston with? >> You know, it's interesting, we've been all talking and people that I know that have been here a couple of years, I've talked to people that have been at this show for decades, this is a different show. There's actually a friend of mine said, he's like, "Well look, Windows pays the bills for a lot of companies." There's a lot of people that all the Windows components, that's their job. I mean, I think back through my career when I was on the vendor side, how many rollouts of Exchange and SharePoint and all these things we've done over the years. Office 365 been a massive wave that we watched. So Microsoft has a broad portfolio and they've got three anchor shows. I was talking with one of the partners here and he's like, "You know, there's not a lot of channel people "at this event, at VMworld there's a lot of channel people." I'm like, "Well yeah because there's a separate show "that Microsoft has for them." You and I were talking at an earlier analytics session with Patrick Moorhead and he said, "You know when I look at the buy versus build, "a lot of these people are buying and I don't "feel I have as many builders." Oh wait, what's that other show that they have in the Spring, it's called Microsoft Build. A lot of the developers have moved there so it's a big ecosystem, Microsoft has a lot of products. Everything from, my son's excited about a lot of the Xbox stuff that they have here. Heck, a bunch of our crew was pickin' up Xbox sweatshirts while they're here. But a lot has changed, as Tim Crawford said, this is a very, it feels like a different Microsoft, than it even was 12 or 24 months ago. They're innovating, so look at how fast Microsoft moves and some of these things. There's good energy, people are happy and it's still trying to, you know. It's interesting, I definitely learned a lot at this show even though it wasn't the most sparkly or shiny but that's not necessarily a bad thing. >> Right, I mean, I think as you made a great point about just how integral Microsoft is to all of our lives as consumers, as enterprise, the Xbox, the Windows, the data storage, there's just so much that Microsoft does that if we were to take away Microsoft, I can't even imagine what life would be like. What have been your favorite guests? I mean, we've had so many really, really interesting people. Customers, we've had partners, we're going to have a VC. What are some of the most exciting things you've heard? >> Yeah, it's interesting, we've had Jeffrey Snover on the program a couple of years ago and obviously a very smart person here. But at this show, in his ecosystem, I mean, he created PowerShell. And so many people is like, I built my career off of what he did and this product that he launched back in 2001. But we talked a little bit about PowerShell with him but then we were talking about Edge and the Edge Boxes and AI and all those things, it's like this is really awesome stuff. And help connecting the dots to where we hid. So obviously, big name guest star, always, and I always love talking to the customers. The thing I've been looking at the last couple of years is how all of these players fit into a multicloud world. And Microsoft, if you talk about digital transformation, and you talk about who will customers turn to to help them in this multicloud world. Well, I don't think there's any company that is closer to companies applications across the spectrum of options. Office 365 and other options in SaaS, all the private cloud things, you start with Windows Server, you've got Windows on the desktop, Windows on the server. Virtualization, they're starting to do hyperconversion everything, even deeper. As well as all the public cloud with Azure and developers. I talked to the Azure functions team while I was here. Such breadth and depth of offering that Microsoft is uniquely positioned to play in a lot of those areas even if, as I said, certain areas if the latest in data there might be some other company, Google, Amazon, well positioned there. We had a good discussion Bernard Golden, who's with Capital One, gave us some good commentary on where Alibaba fits in the global scheme. So, nice broad ecosystem, and I learned a lot and I know resonated with both of us, the "you want to be a learn it all, not a know it all." And I think people that are in that mindset, this was a great show for them. >> Well, you bring up the mindset, and that is something that Satya Nadella is really such a proponent of. He says that we need to have a growth mindset. This is off of the Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth research that talks about how important that is, how important continual learning is for success. And that is success in life and success on the job and organization success and I think that that is something that we are also really picked up on. This is the vibe of Microsoft, this is a company, Satya Nadella's leadership, talking to so many of the employees, and these are employees who've been there for decades, these are people who are really making their career, and they said, "Yeah, I been here 20 years, if I had my way, "I'll be here another 30." But the point is that people have really recommitted to Microsoft, I feel. And that's really something interesting to see, especially in the tech industry where people, millennials especially, stay a couple years and then move on to the next shiny, new thing. >> Yeah, there was one of our first guests on for Microsoft said that, "Been there 20 years and what is different about "the Satya Nadella Microsoft to the others is "we're closer and listening even more to our customers." We talk about co-creation, talk about how do we engage. Microsoft is focusing even deeper on industries. So that's really interesting. An area that I wanted to learn a little bit more about is we've been talking about Azure Stack for a number of years, we've been talking about how people are modernizing their data center. I actually had something click with me this week because when I look at Azure Stack, it reminds me of solutions I helped build with converged infrastructure and I was a big proponent of the hyper-converged infrastructure wave. And what you heard over and over again, especially from Microsoft people, is I shouldn't think of Azure Stack in that continuum. Really, Azure Stack is not from the modernization out but really from the cloud in. This is the operating model of Azure. And of course it's in the name, it's Azure, but when I looked at it and said, "Oh, well I've got partners like "Lenovo and Dell and HPE and Sysco." Building this isn't this just the next generation of platform there? But really, it's the Azure model, it's the Azure operating stack, and that is what it has. And it's more, WSSD is their solution for the converged and then what they're doing with Windows Server 2019 is the hyper-converged. Those the models that we just simplify what was happening in the data center and it's similar but a little bit different when we go to things like Azure and Azure Stack and leads to something that I wanted to get your feedback on. You talk business productivity because when we talk to companies like Nutanix, we talk to companies like Cohesity who we really appreciate their support bringing us here, giving us this great thing right in the center of it, they talk about giving people back their nights and weekends, giving them back time, because they're an easy button for a lot of things, they help make the infrastructure invisible and allow that. Microsoft says we're going to try to give you five to ten percent back of your business productivity, going to allow you to focus on things like AI and your data rather than all the kind of underlying spaghetti underneath. What's your take on the business productivity piece of things? >> I mean, I'm in favor of it; it is a laudable goal. If I can have five to ten percent of my day back of just sort of not doing the boring admin stuff, I would love that. Is it going to work, I don't know. I mean, the fact of the matter is I really applaud what Cohesity said and the customers and the fact that people are getting, yes, time back in their day to focus on the more creative projects, the more stimulating challenges that they face, but also just time back in their lives to spend with their children and their spouse and doing whatever they want to do. So those are really critical things, and those are critical things to employee satisfaction. We know, a vast body of research shows, how much work life balance is important to employees coming to their office or working remotely and doing their best work. They need time to recharge and rest and so if Microsoft can pull that off, wow, more power to them. >> And the other thing I'll add to that is if you, say, if you want that work life balance and you want to be fulfilled in your job, a lot of times what we're getting rid of is some of those underlying, those menial tasks the stuff that you didn't love doing in the first place. And what you're going to have more time to do, and every end user that we talked to says, "By the way, I'm not getting put out of a job, "I've got plenty of other tasks I could do." And those new tasks are really tying back to what the business needs. Because business and IT, they need to tie together, they need to work together, it is a partnership there. Because if IT can't deliver what the business needs, there's other alternatives, that's what Stealth IT was and the public cloud could be. And Microsoft really positions things as we're going to help you work through that transition and get there to work on these environments. >> I want to bring up another priority of Microsoft's and that is diversity. So that is another track here, there's a lot of participants who are learning about diversity in tech. It's not a good place right now, we know that. The tech industry is way too male, way too white. And Satya Nadella, along with a lot of other tech industry leaders, has said we need more underrepresented minorities, we need more women, not only as employees but also in leadership positions. Bev Crair, who was on here yesterday, she's from Lenovo. She said that things are starting to change because women are buying a lot of the tech and so that is going to force changes. What do you think, do you buy it? >> And I do, and here's where I'd say companies like Lenovo and Microsoft, when you talk about who makes decisions and how are decisions made, these are global companies. Big difference between a multi-national company or a company that's headquartered in Silicon Valley or Seattle or anything versus a global company. You look at both of those companies, they have, they are working not just to localize but have development around the world, have their teams that are listening to requirements, understand what is needed in those environments. Going back to what we talked about before, different industries, different geographies, and different cultures, we need to be able to fit and work and have products that work in those environments, everything. I think it was Bev that talked about, even when we think about what color lights. Well, you know, oh well default will use green and red. Well, in different cultures, those have different meanings. So yeah, it is, it's something that definitely I've heard the last five to ten years of my career that people understand that, it's not just, in the United States, it can't just be the US or Silicon Valley creating great technology and delivering that device all the way around the world. It needs to be something that is globally developed, that co-creation, and more, and hopefully we're making progress on the diversity front. We definitely try to do all we can to bring in diverse voices. I was glad we had a gentleman from Italy shouting back to his daughters that were watching it. We had a number of diverse guests from a geography, from a gender, from ethnicity, on the program and always trying to give those various viewpoints on theCUBE. >> I want to ask you about the show itself: the 30,000 people from 5,000 different organizations around the globe have convened here at the Orange County Convention Center, what do you think? >> Yeah, so it was impressive. We go to a lot of shows, I've been to bigger shows. Amazon Reinvent was almost 50,000 last year. I've been to Oracle OpenWorld, it's like takes over San Francisco, 60 or 70,000. This convention center is so sprawling, it's not my favorite convention center, but at least the humidity is to make sure I don't get dried out like Las Vegas. But logistics have run really well, the food has not been a complaint, it's been good, the show floor has been bustling and sessions are going well. I was talking to a guy at breakfast this morning that was like, "Oh yeah, I'm a speaker, "I'm doing a session 12 times." I'm like, "You're not speaking on the same thing 12 times?" He's like, "No, no it's a demo and hands on lab." I'm like, "Oh, of course." So they make sure that you have lots of different times to be able to do what you want. There is so much that people want to see. The good news is that they can go watch the replays of almost all of them online. Even the demos are usually something that they're cloud enabled and they get on live. And of course we help to bring a lot of this back to them to give them a taste of what's there. All of our stuff's always available on the website of thecube.net. This one, actually, this interview goes up on a podcast we call theCUBE Insights. So please, our audience, we ask you, whether it's iTunes or your favorite podcast reader, go to Spotify, theCUBE Insights. You can get a key analysis from every show that we do, we put that up there and that's kind of a tease to let you go to thecube.net and see the hundreds and thousands of interviews that we do across all of our shows. >> Great, and I want to give a final, second shout out to Cohesity, it's been so fun having them, being in the Cohesity booth, and having a lot of great Cohesity people around. >> Yeah, absolutely, I mean, so much I wish we could spend a little more time even. AI, if we go back to the keynote analysis then, but you can watch that, I can talk about the research we've done, and said how the end user information that Microsoft can get access to to help people when you talk about what they have, the TouchPoint to Microsoft Office. And even things like Xbox, down to the consumer side, to understand, have a position in the marketplace that really is unparalleled if you look at kind of the breadth and depth that Microsoft has. So yeah, big thanks to Cohesity, our other sponsors of the program that help allow us to bring this great content out to our community, and big shout out I have to give out to the community too. First time we've done this show, I reached out to all my connections and the community reached back, helped bring us a lot of great guests. I learned a lot: Cosmos DB, all the SQL stuff, all the Office and Microsoft 365, so much. My brain's full leaving this show and it's been a real pleasure. >> Great, I agree, Stu, and thank you so much to Microsoft, thank you to the crew, this has been a really fun time. We will have more coming up from the Orange County Civic Center, Microsoft Ignite. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman, we will see you in just a little bit. (digital music)

>> Covering VMWorld 2015. Brought to you by VMWare, and its ecosystem sponsors. Now your hosts, Jon Furrier, and Dave Velante. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we are here live in Muscone North Lobby at VMWorld 2015 San Francisco, this is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE's flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier the founder of SiliconANGLE, joining my cohost Dave Velante, confounder of Wikibon.com Our next guest is Pat Kelsinger, CEO of VMware. Welcome back to theCUBE. Again every year. >> Hey my pleasure. >> Six years now in a row. CUBE alum in all our CUBEs. Thanks for taking the time. I know you're super busy. Thanks for-- >> My pleasure. >> Number one for the record. Number one guest. Number one CUBE. >> That's on the record. >> Yeah I was bugging you guys yesterday, that you tell that to all your guests. >> It's definitive that you are number one. >> Now you're the only one who's outlast us. 34 minutes is a record and your handlers were so mad at us. But that's okay. Thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure. >> So keynote was great. Just everyone who didn't watch the keynote, go check out the replay. It's on siliconangle.tv, on VMware.com under vmworld. Really good speech this year. I like how you laid out the future. Really set the canvas for the next generation. So was that kind of by design? Were you thinking hey I want to paint the picture. A lot of talk about VMware in the news that recently, speeds and feeds, Vcloud, all this product stuff. On day one. What was the purpose of the speech? >> Yeah and it really was as Rob and Carl and I were sort of architecting the speeches, and this whole idea of run, build, deploy, secure, and how we were trying to carry that theme through everything that we were doing. And having me kick it off would have been very traditional, right, and we says well what would it mean if I was wrapping it up with a much more visionary and future looking speech and ask Carl to set context. And the more we tried that idea, right it really sort allowed me to I'll say go to a different altitude, and you know rise up from some of the more techy things that I love but to put it in a context that's much more industry and futuristic. So the more we played with the idea, the more we liked the idea, and given the good response from this morning, I think it worked pretty well. >> And it brings a long term perspective, versus the short term myopic you know, what we can do and stock prices, all that stuff today so congratulations. But one of the things I noticed was this asymmetric messaging around the future. And I want to ask you because I asked you three years ago, Pat is hybrid cloud the resting, full destination or is it just a way station in between public, private cloud. Oh it's the future. So hybrid cloud I've been asking all the guests. What is hybrid cloud and what is it today, because clouds are different. Every company will have a different cloud. Is hybrid cloud a product or the outcome of deployment or engineering like distributed computing? >> You know clearly from our perspective is, you know it is the culmination right, of bringing together these capabilities. And to deliver to our users the ability to treat a range of different clouds, you know from SAS providers, through what they're doing in their own private data center, and be able to treat that in a homogeneous way. That they can look at the set of resources, they can manage across those secure, across those environments right, and in many cases have increasing flexibility of how they run their workloads and you know scale them across. That is the vision of what we're off to build. That is what unified hybrid cloud is about. Now obviously underneath that right, there's a whole lot of work to get done. And from us and a product perspective, hey that means our management products got to be heterogeneous. Right it means that they networking layer, hmm there's some things I can do when it's Vcloud Air on the other end of the wire, and you know VMware stacked within the data center, and you know wasn't that cross cloud VMotion, wasn't that cool? You know to me that was my favorite demo of the show. And then in other cases, boy there's more limited things. And we are starting to demonstrate even connectivity at the core networking layer into Amazon, right and one of the work bench will show let me show you how we can extend the NSX connection all the way into an Amazon node, I mean so those pieces are part of that broader set of vision, but we want our customers to be able to say, VMware you are my best partner to deliver that complete set of cloud services that I require. >> I like how you brought in the history lesson there, brought us some early intel days, and I want to ask you this question, the futuristic question around what's possible, because really you laid out the future. And I want to bring in kind of the Moore's law analogy. I just interviewed Jerry Chen at Graylock, and he said I was talking about cloud, and VMware's role potentially in the future, whether it's openstack today or containers tomorrow, he said, "Is this technology the best "of the last generation, or the first "of the next generation?" And I want you to take that quote in context. Talk about what Moore's laws could look like in the cloud, in the future if you assume that the market's going to be you know 10x improved, 100x improvements in these areas. How does Moore's law apply to the cloud, because the cloud is an accelerant? >> Yeah, and you know the beauty of Moore's law, you know I mean if you go down to it's fundamentals, right it's not a law in the physics sense. Right it's an observation in the economic and technology sense, right, this doubling every two years. And the power of the cloud though, is it allows you to benefit from both the scale, right you know the performant capabilities, as well as the economics right, because it's saying you know you can scale out, as well as scale up in each processor capacity. And that really is the magic of the cloud, and you're able to do that dynamically. And essentially I can rent the biggest computer in the world now I mean for ten bucks I can rent the largest supercomputer that's ever been built. It might be only for you know a few milliseconds, right but the ability to aggregate essentially an unlimited scale resource for my application you know is just fabulous. So you really benefit from Moore's law both economically as well as the scale. Each node gets bigger and faster as well. And that ability right is why every cloud is built on x86 is because you see this engine of innovation that has not stopped. >> So do you see creativity being unleashed on that, because I mean I know there's all these different themes of them over the years of unleash your creativity, but unleashing now think about that concept of unlimited as you were pointing out. What are some of the things that you see, and you guys on the VMware team see around what creatively is going to get done in that new world? >> Yeah and you know clearly some of the things that we described here as well, I mean some of the things with respect to security. Right you know these are very much game changing, and you know people as they build more and more of their mission critical environments, you have to address it. You know enabling some of these forward looking analytics environment that we described, and very much the proactive future that we described that you know, I mean you know it's not like machine learning and some of these AI algorithms. I mean these are 30 year kinds of investigations, and now you've just got this enormous compute resource that I can even take some mediocre algorithms with extraordinary amounts of data, and start bringing some incredible insights that predict behavior and opportunity. Right I mean those are exciting capabilities. If you start going into different domains as well, where all of a sudden you're, I mean you can ask almost any question, and get an answer very quickly to those when you've put your services and capabilities into the cloud. So it's so many ways, you know we're just creating you know this next phase of innovation that, as we described the proactive phase of the internet. >> You said recently, "We've committed ourselves "to the heterogeneous management strategy, "which allows us to be managing "in a multicloud environment both on and off premise, "including AWS and Microsoft Azure." Two questions. How much of AWS and Microsoft Azure are you managing today, and do you expect to be managing in the future? Let me start there. >> Yeah, and you know today we have a small amount that is being managed by a lot of customers. Right and you know it's interesting because almost every customer's asking, right but it's putting those CMP layers in, those cloud management platforms layer using those in the day and many cases it's I want to do a little bit, so I know that it works. Right I want to know that the proof point is there, that I can use it in that capacity. But what we're finding for customers is okay I need the promise of where I might go, but I got so much work to do just to operationalize my own private cloud environment that the reality of how much they're really doing in that way is fairly modest. Right now we're not bothered by that. In the sense that you know they are going through this fundamental transformative phase, and most of the private cloud automation for our management stack today is in this phase where they are going from ITIL, CMDB, trouble ticket dominated environments to self-service automated provisioning catalog environments. And they are so deep into that transition that taking advantage of some of the heterogeneous cloud things is sort of number four on their list and they haven't clicked off number one two and three yet. But that promise is definitely there, and we're seeing an increasing amount of customers taking advantage of it. >> So the second part of my question, and I want you to help me square a circle. So we've heard Joe Tucci in the past talk about the advantages that some of the big hyperscale guys have in homogeneity, and part of VMware strategy over the years has really been to get VMware out into the cloud service provider space. At the same time we live in this heterogeneous world, so how can you achieve that vision, with all that heterogeneity? What is the underlying strategy and technology that enables you to do that? >> Yeah in different layers of the stack, you need to do different things. And for instance at the lowest layer, cross cloud VMotion, that's going to be homogeneous for quite a while, right? (laughs) Just is, right and there's lots of things in terms of copying page tables, synchronizing page tables. Fail forward, fail back environments. >> You've got your best people working on it, but. >> Yeah. >> It's not trivial. >> And yeah right and that kind of stuff. But at higher levels of the stack, depositing work loads, observing work loads, getting telemetry on work loads, okay there you can be highly heterogeneous, so really I'd say the higher you are in the stack, the more heterogeneous you can be. Right the lower you go in stack, you know to deliver a value proposition, right you know it's exciting the customers, the more homogeneous you tend to be. And obviously technologies tend to sediment down over time. So our commitment is you know, a broader and broader set of cloud capabilities across other party clouds, and of course we want to enable as many of our partner clouds as well, and those technologies. I mean one of my most exciting products NSX, right you know one of the fastest growing segments, is into service providers who are running that as part of their cloud as well. So that's going to build some of those hybrid networking capabilities into non-VMware hosted cloud environments as well. >> You talked in your keynote about your Cinderella career. Is VMware your glass slipper? >> Is it my-- >> Is it your glass slipper? (all laugh) >> Well you know I'm loving what I'm doing right now. It's a great place to be in the industry. I don't expect to go anywhere else, so you know at this point in time I'd say yep sure is. >> Well so you were asked yesterday on CNBC, you know they want to know about how you touch consumers, and you gave some very good examples of ways that you power companies that power consumers. You also gave some internet of things, I would call internet of things examples, you said, "There are 7,200 objects orbiting the earth." And IT in your bloodstream were two, sort of two examples that you gave, so you upleveled your keynote this morning. Wondered if you could talk about VMware's role in powering things like the internet of things, and things like consumer technologies. >> Yeah you know one of the, maybe my favorite examples right now on some of the internet of things that we're doing, one is a medical devices. You know heart monitors, you know being able to pain medication injection devices and so on. It's ends, you know the next generation of those is going to be managed through a cell phone. Right you know so you'll be able to go to your cell phone, you click oh, my pacemaker kicked me three times last night, right kind of things. But those devices need to be managed and secured. So how's the next generation going to be done? The leveraging, air watch and our horizon suite. We're going to be doing that kind of capability. Right and those things are just, you know I mean we're talking about people's lives, and changing the lives, but then it's also about the telemetry that goes on the other end. You know my wife has a heart monitor in right now. Just, and you how painful it is to get access to that data? Right you know. >> It's my heart. >> Yeah and you know why is it so hard. It's going to be hosted in the cloud, and we're building those clouds for those environments and to me, some of those applications, you know it's not just about going to an IT guy and let me tell you how you can save a bunch of money. You know let me go to that IT guy and say let's go partner into your line of business and say how can we change your business? Right and that's really where I try to end this morning's speech is very much, right that is the role that everybody at VMworld gets to play. You're the smartest tech guys. Go be the evangelists, the entrepreneurs, inside of your business. Because you are the person who's going to enable them to take advantage of these core trends to change their business. >> Yeah one thing on that point is that people looking at, we talked to some, a lot of customers and CIOs, and they're looking at the different vendors. Oracle, you know they're looking at VMware, wherever, IBM, HP and everyone else. But the trend that we're seeing is kind of pivoting off the appliance and engineered systems concept and end to end, you mentioned homogeneity and heterogeneous at the top of the stack. They want an end to end solution. They want it to work so it can kind of outcomes you described. In order to have that they need developers, and you guys have an ecosystem that has a big focus on dev ops. So very geeky company, a lot of engineering at VMware. A lot of people know what dev ops is. Is that servicing up at the top of the senior management team where dev ops is top priority? The API-ification, these kinds of things. Can you share some of the mindset and some of the conversations you're having at the senior level with dev ops and developers. >> Yeah I find the conversation, by the way I'd be very interested in your guys' perspective on this. You know with one of the recent dev ops conferences recently that we had a team go and attend, and we're presenting some of our products and value propositions there, and a survey was done of how many of those were IT folks versus how many of those were developers. And what was the answer? >> Ops dev. >> It was almost all IT folk. >> It's, yeah. >> Operations guys. >> Right because do developers really want to carry pagers at midnight? Right you know it's. You know, no. Right you know and there's this funny-- >> No they're too busy writing code. >> Exactly, right. >> They write code at night. >> And so there's this aspect of hey, they want programmable infrastructure, right because they don't want some long, trouble ticket kind of model to go get infrastructure, so they want API access that's automated, self provisioned and so on. But do they really want to take over infrastructure operations? And that the answer to that is no freakin' way. >> Yeah, no way. >> At that point of way. >> Because they you know, so it's very much they don't want to be bottlenecked right, they want to be enabled by infrastructure right for it. And so a lot of this dev ops is how do we bring those two worlds together so the developers can go do what they want to do, right develop, innovate, and at the pace of that that they are never limited by any of the infrastructure deployment or lifecycle management capacities. So as we're having those conversations, it's very much how can we present more and more API access to a more, and more automated set of our products. And that's why we've embraced openstack. That's why we've embraced containers. It's why we've done the cloud foundry. Right it's why we continue to have our own traditional vsim interfaces that we've supported forever. We're just going to give them more API surface area than any other guy on the planet, and the next thing that comes up, right if the Volante development environment emerges, hey we're going to support that. If they get more than 10 developers on it, we'll be there. >> Right, CrowdChat. >> You support CrowdChat APIs, so I got to ask, the development's a good point, I love that point, because IT is where your wheelhouse is. Certainly in the ops side of VMware's install base. But now you bring up the developer community, those guys have embraced containers. That's changed the game a lot, because now you can abstract away the complexity you guys can provide, and kind of harden that top. So how do you see that market? So two questions. Containers, comment on the containers. We asked that last year. And where's the line on the hardened top? Where's the line where developers, hey don't look here you're cool, programmable interface whatever you want to call it, infrastructurous code, where's the line on the stack? And then develop this new developer ecosystem that's developing? >> And I think as I said last year when I was on the CUBE that you know we see the container trend as a more significant, a long term one even than openstack. Right and I think it really does become the biggest issue in the future for developers because it's an application value proposition right and at that level, how can I make application development, deployment, lifecycle management in a more effective and productive way. And software does eat the world, and everybody needs to become more productive in their application experience. And then the hardened top question. You know it's a great question because developers, do they want to reach, I mean do they want to go worry about infrastructure? No they don't, but they don't want to be hindered by infrastructure right at that level, so the question is can we present in a light way, open way that they can take care and not worry about oh how do I get enough storage for this. How do I secure that network, how do I connect to this other thing, what is my directory service. We're trying to present an infrastructure that gives them the surface area that they require, so that they don't need to go down the stack. Because they're not going down the stack because they want to but because there isn't a flexible, easy way for them to get there another way. >> To them it's just like smashing rocks, I mean they don't want to do that. They want to program some code. >> That's right you know. They want application code, interface code, you know things that create business value. So our job is to present them a capability that makes those things easy. And that's what the Photon platform announcement was all about, making it easy. Making it easy for traditional IT. >> NSX is playing a role there, too, big time. >> Oh yeah absolutely. NSX you know we're doing the bindings in the storage layers. We're absolutely bundling in the right way so that IT gets visibility into that environment so they can manage and secure it, you know deploy it, but the developers get the flexible interfaces that they like as well and really, sort of, if you remember the old Oklahoma movie, can the cowboys and the farmers be friends? Right you know and that's our objective is to bring those two worlds together. >> So I got to bring up the cloud native question, because we're seeing this transition now to, Dave and I were talking in theCUBE on the intro here about the old mini computer trend and how that spawned a whole level, you know you had Sun, HP, back, and Intel writing chips and this x86 servers. The whole SAP, workflow, ERP systems, manufacturing got innovated, all this new automation happened. So we're seeing cloud native take on a similar role there where you're seeing people at the services level, the big consulting firms want to deploy more apps fast. And you mentioned the apps are taking over Hollywood. So where do you see the pressure point for the services-- >> Bird Man or Angry Bird, I don't know. >> So that trend's happening right now. So what's the pressure, what's holding back that explosion of new services that are going to roll out, consulting services, big firms rolling out apps for banks and every vertical, as you said they're being disrupted. What in the infrastructure is holding back that? >> You know I think that, and part of the reason we're so excited about some of the Photon announcements in that sense is because it is too hard and too slow today. You know at the, it's heavy, complicated. Right the IT processes aren't nimble, and you know self service environments are minimally deployed. Right you got the application guys over here, hey they're innovating at pace, and these scale outs, container oriented microservices architectures that are beginning to, they're not scalable, they're not manageable, they're not secure. Right so the problems are so obvious on both sides of it. Right but it's these worlds are coming together, some of the early embodiments you know of the new applications et cetera are so thrilling that people are really are moving into the space. So the fundamental limiters right we think are, you know an agile, light weight infrastructure with the right set of northbounds APIs that give programmatic access to the infrastructure. And on the other end is a developer environment that can take advantage of those, that's highly productive with the level of software skills. I think ultimately you know on that side of things, you're going to be developing, you're going to be limited by software development capacity. And that's what we are finding when we meet, and particular Pivotal meets with the largest companies in the world right their biggest issue is, do I have the software development skills to do that? Can I be productive at that level? You know the app is now more important than the color and the warrantee on the car. You know that's the shift that's occurring. >> Pat I want to ask you a couple public policy questions. I don't want to get into politics, but as a CEO in Silicon Valley, you know you hear folks like Donald Trump sort of saying well we should really clamp down, he goes after Zuckerberg for example. >> Build that wall. >> Right build a wall. But he goes after Zuckerberg in particular. I'm talking about H1b visas so. What's your take I mean presumably, you want more talent, we educate talent, what do you say as a CEO of a public company regarding educating and then keeping folks here? >> I think it's wonderful that the world wants to export our top talent, their top talent, to the United States right. And almost-- >> Right, thank you. >> I mean please. >> Where's your best. >> Absolutely. >> And smartest people. >> And the fact that we want to close our doors to the most talented human beings on the planet that want to come and work, develop, create the next generation of startups in our, right in our communities and on our soil, right to me that's a stupid policy. >> Yeah great, and then the second question. You mentioned self driving cars. I wanted to ask you about, you know for decades, millennia, we've seen machines replace humans. And we're seeing now that GDP grows, you know income grows, but the average, median income has dropped from $55,000 down to say $50,000. From '99 til today. Yet you guys and I'll be interested in you, too John. You live out in Silicon Valley. And it's like okay well there's always opportunities. Because you guys live in a virtual reality field, and you're positive thinkers right. So are you concerned as again a CEO of a public company, and somebody who's pretty prominent, about that effect and what's the answer? Is it more education, and what can companies like VMware do to support that? Not that trend, but to reverse that trend? >> You know at the heart you know you mentioned education, to me that's so right, you know so foundational at that level and increasing you know STEM education, beginning at the earliest ages, you know we need more software programmers. We need more women in software programming in particular. I mean we have almost half the population is excluded from that potential right today by the very low entry rates into those areas. We got to fix those issues. The quality of U.S. education at the secondary level, you know at the collegiate and university level's unmatched on the planet, right. You know at the high school and junior high level it's pretty weak on a world scale. Those things are fundamental, got to be fixed in that respect. I also believe that you know many of these technology shifts are actually going to enable a, let's say a renaissance of some of the communities that some of the areas that have been not available for American workers and this whole idea of, I'll say just briefly mention in my speech this morning, the idea of customized, automated manufacturing. Well as that emerges you know now, right if I can have highly automated, customized manufacturing, you know 3D printing, et cetera that occurs, boy you know I believe we will see a resurgence of some of the manufacturing sectors you know back onto mature market, to soils, to back onto American soil as well. Because it isn't just going to be a cost arbitrage question anymore to find the lowest cost labor on the planet. Transportation costs become you know, essentially a barrier to export. >> And you're unlocking like, see big data as an example. You're unlocking new jobs around data analysis, and development. >> Right. >> You know that's very much what we see as one of the huge opportunities associated with internet connectivity in a global basis, whether it's health care, education, or unlocking new jobs-- >> Internet of things. >> I mean machines like airplanes, throwing off data, they're going to need people to analyze that. So I got to ask the question along with Dave, is that you know when I was talking with some young college kids and my wife and I talked to our two youngest, who are, one's in eighth grade, and one's a freshman in high school, around how to think about technologies. Not just oh you need to be computer science and have two daughters, so obviously we're talking to them about hey don't be bullied out of computer science. If you love technology there's plenty of things. So what's your take on that? What's your view on different opportunities for young people? Women, boys, girls. All across the board. It used to be just programming, electrical engineering, computer science. And now it's kind of like the two pillars. But now what new opportunities do you see to a young physics major, or someone in high school who just loves technology? Because they're all connected. They're all on Instagram, they're doing their thing. >> Uh-huh. >> They're breathing technology, they're natives. >> Yeah. >> So what academic, what things might inspire young people? >> Yeah I think some of-- (coughs) Excuse me. You know some of it is taking down some of those, I'll say false barriers or perceptions as well, and John Hennessy, president of Stanford, you know he and I have a great relationship, and Stanford now is almost 50/50 in the incoming class for women into computer science. I mean obviously they put huge emphasis on that, and so they said you know getting away from first player shooter games as the first touchpoint of technology and into much more social experiences has changed the perception, right, of you know females into that sector. Excuse me. You know I've still got two more days of VMWorld to go. I need a voice. >> The CUBE is tiring. >> We might outlast you this time. You beat us last time, 34 minutes that was a record. >> I think it was longer. >> It was more like 50 minutes. >> Yeah, right at that-- >> But there's a lot of >> opportunities to your point. I mean there's not just programming. There's a lot of interdisciplinary stuff now. >> Yeah and that was exactly the next point I was going to make. Because computer science and programming ends up being cool in every aspect. Right you know whether you're in economics. Hey you know I mean you got to build models. Hey if you're in the medical field. Hey there's an increasing amount of telemetry, big data, other things coming into it. Every field is touching on it, and to me that cross disciplinary view of the impact of technology, into every segment and every interest, becomes more and more powerful going forward. And I think some of those are the ways that we can actually change the perception even right that everybody, it's sort of like, imagine if you would go to school, and you would say our school does not teach math. I mean would you send your kid to that school? Of course not. >> Only if they had programming on top, instead of math. >> Right but... And they say, but you know your daughter, she wants to be a psychologist. But you're not going to teach her math? You know it's a basic life skill. She got to learn math. That is the essential of technology and computer science going forward. It is a basic life skill that we have to teach everybody, and have to participate in it regardless of what field that may pursue. >> So we're getting crunched on time here. I want to ask you my final question. Dave probably may have a final, final question. Seems to be the new thing going on here at the CUBE. This year at Vmworld, what do you think will happen this week when you look back down the road? You've got a great career here. Looking great with VMware, we love working with you on the CUBE here and the keynotes. What about this year is so transitional for VMware? Is it the fact that now we have full dev ops, now the cloud is mainstream? Is it the fact that the company's transforming itself into a whole, another power. Is it because the ecosystem, all of the above? What's your take on this year's kind of inflection point for VMware? >> Yeah I think you know obviously at the front of the list for us is this whole unified hybrid cloud. And really getting people to view, because you know three years ago, cloud was ooh I'm an enterprise customer. Now it's really how can I take advantage of these resources that will be heterogeneous across multiple environments and the value proposition that we can be and everybody needs to be doing that. So that's one of the takeaways. You know second is the engagement into the developer community, the Photon announcements are probably the most second, the second most important shift to thinking that we've delivered here. Maybe the third is you know the thing that I'm always thrilled about when I show up at VMworld is the ecosystem. You know friends and foe alike here show up to talk about how they're collaborating together to bring more from the things that we do, and that's what's just so energizing about it. When you go around the show floor it's just overwhelming. >> And you've got investors too after the VCs. Top tier VCs, NEA's here. Graylock, XL, all of them are here. >> Well a lot of startups coming out of the woodworks, too. >> Oh yeah. >> They launch at VMworld. >> Absolutely. >> You know it's just wonderful that way, and this ecosystem effect just couldn't be more powerful, and alive and well than it is here at the show this year. >> And we're six years here, we love watching the transformation. We've seen everyone. Palmer has produced that first slide that was there and now here so great job. >> Yeah and thank you for expanding our space this year. That's really great. >> Hey you know what. >> Us going north. >> You know. >> You said you were in a corner of Moscone North. I mean I said this is the CUBE. (all laugh) I think you mispositioned that. >> We were in the lobby, the big lobby of Moscone North. >> Half the lobby. >> We have the lobby. >> Thanks for everything, we appreciate six years. And great to see you every year, and thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share your insight, >> Oh thank you I love it. and the data, and your vision, and product news. Thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> Pat Kelsinger here live inside theCUBE, here in San Francisco, Moscone North lobby. We got the big lobby here, and of course it's Vmworld 2015. I'm John Furrier with Dave Velante. We'll be right back. (light rock music)