>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCube, with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >> Welcome to the cubes coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. This is the cube virtual, I'm Lisa Martin and I have a new member, new guests on the cube today. Please welcome Gur Steif, the president of digital business automation at BMC Software. Gur, it's nice to have you on the program. >> Very nice to e-meet you, thank you so much for having me. >> Yes, nice to e-meet you as well. I like your office, your background, very nice by the way. >> It's a real background, it's not virtual. >> I Can tell, you got style. So, so much has changed this year and that's, and that's probably the most overused statement of 2020, right? But as we look at, you know, on theCube, every day we talk to businesses and vendors and every industry every part of the world. And we've been talking a lot about the acceleration of digital transformation, that one of the things that this challenging time has brought is that acceleration. Talk to me about it, as the leader of that for BMC, what are some of the things that you are seeing, what are you hearing from customers? >> It's a great question because customers are in fact having a hard time because there is an absolute acceleration and the need to really innovate more and faster than ever before. At the same time, a lot of customers have a lot of existing, I mean, you know, I don't like using the term legacy because it connotes something negative and in many cases those technologies are what made those companies great. So I really don't like using legacy as a negative term, but it is something you've got to carry with. And many of our customers, and we have been in a journey with our customers, have grown from the mainframe to distributed systems to virtual systems, to kind of first-generation cloud and now going into serverless architectures. And by the way, that's just the infrastructure view. At the same time, you know, on the data aspect, they went from, you know, traditional five systems to databases and SQL databases and now to all kinds of like no sequel databases and big data and streaming machine learning pipelines and on application technologies, we went from something very monolithic to client server to web and mobile and now it's all about DevOps. And the really challenging thing for customers for many of the companies we talk with is that none of those things go away, right? IT is in some cases, for some of our customers, is the archeological science. So we may want to create this amazing new system of innovation and system of engagement that is going to be 100% cloud-based. But some of the data and some of the fundamental elements come from systems of record that may run on a different environment. So this is very complex for customers. What we've done over the years is we're able, we're helped customers to move for distant transition and always manage new technologies and new capabilities without abandoning everything else and really managing it as one thing. What we're really excited about this year is that we are actually going SaaS, right? We've announced that the Control-M is going to be available as BMC Helix Control-M, available as SaaS, starting December 1st. Now, the really interesting element here is that when we are working with customers to do this, to really help them manage their environment better, it's not that we're saying, hey you're going to have to move all your estate from an on-prem to SaaS. Many customers actually tell us that this complexity is not going away. But because they're going to keep running a lot of their on-prem systems on prem, right a lot of their system of record. If you're a bank and you have a mainframe, you're not likely to just get rid of it anytime soon. Kind of like global warming, even with global warming glaciers take a long time to melt, right? The mainframe is going to be here for a really long time and systems of record are going to be on the mainframe and on-prem for a long time. And customers want to keep managing that because what we do is we help them run those systems better and they want to make sure they keep doing this but for all the no systems of innovation, they want to be able to do that natively in the cloud. And a SaaS offering is perfect for that. So we really try to help make it easy for customers, try to help them to manage any type of system they have from more legacy or more traditional systems to brand new serverless technologies and do it in a way that makes sense, whether it's on-prem or SaaS. >> Right, so in that hybrid multi-cloud environment which so many businesses are living in and as you talked about, I like your take on legacy versus sort of existing and sort of maybe business building foundational technologies that were essential at the time. So that hybrid multi-cloud world is just something that many companies are living in whether it's strategically, whether it's by, you know, organically by acquisition. In terms of having that workload automation across on-prem, public cloud, private cloud. Talk to me about how this is like aligning, I'm thinking like the DevOps folks with the lines of business. Because they all want to be driving towards business outcomes. And especially right now, it's about how can we keep pivoting our business as the world is changing to be successful and to be meeting our customer's demands where they want them to be met. >> It's a very very good point because the business requirement in many cases is really around agility. How can we move faster? And all those things we talked about, whether it's going into cloud or going into DevOps, or going into machine learning, it's about agility. It's agility on infrastructure or agility on the application architecture or agility on how we drive value out of data. So the business wants to move fast. At the same time, we have the requirement for stability, reliability, governance. Many industries are very, very regulated. If you're in the financial services industry, you spend a tremendous amount of time on dealing with regulation and compliance. So one of the things that we really try to do to help customers accelerate innovation is really help them incorporate everything that we do into the DevOps model, right? But do it in a smart way so that they can create automation rules, they can create everything that has to do with application, using code, right? It's jobs as code. So all the flow, all the definitions, all, everything that we do is all managed as code and the developers can store it as part of their, use DevOps tool chain. But there's an element there that allows the more traditional elements of the it organization to drive standards, to drive compliance, to drive policies to drive rules, that it has to be validated against before it goes into production. But what that does is it allows, it makes the developer, it makes it easier for a developer to really make sure that, as soon as they build the application, it is going to be compliant with all those policies. So it's not like they do all of that and roll it on, they do all these beautiful DevOps in tests and when it needs to go into production, it's close to a screeching halt because ops need to look at it and goes, wow, no, you need to change this, this, this, this, this and that, right? They're able to make sure it's all compliant from the get-go, which is really really valuable and allow companies to really accelerate their transformation, which is what everybody wants to do to drive the business outcomes. >> Exactly. We're looking for that, that catalyst or those catalysts that really facilitate businesses not just surviving today but really becoming the winners of tomorrow. So talk to me Gur, about the BMC and AWS, we talked about sort of this multi-cloud environment, the move with Control-M into SAS, what are you guys doing with AWS? So when we decided to move into SaaS, we said, we have to host our solution center. And it's important that we support multiple clouds before, like you could use Control-M on prem and use it to drive workloads that run in AWS or Azure or GCP, or you name it or private clouds for that matter all the way down to the mainframe. But when we were saying, we're going to roll Control-M out in SaaS, we said, we have to host it somewhere and we have to have a partner that's going to help us. I have an amazing team of developers that are the best, bar none in writing on-prem code. And they are going to be trading SaaS code for the first time. And we just found it that Amazon AWS with their SaaS factory, with the network of partners, with the tools was just a really really valuable way for us to accelerate that process. AWS has distinct that they call SaaS Factory which really helped us think through how we code some things, how to properly think about security, how to properly think about availability zones, how to properly think about so many things that are absolutely critical when you go into the SaaS world. So it really helped us accelerate the process. They also have a great network of partners that we're able to leverage and truly been a great partnership. >> So Control-M, Helix Control-M hosted on AWS. Talk to me about a customer situation. Now, for example, BMC customer, AWS environment needing to really drive their business forward, get that control and that visibility across their entire environment. How do you all work together, customer BMC, AWS? >> Great question. If they're an existing BMC customer, then they could simply talk to us, We can help them and we can introduce AWS where it's relevant or where they have some questions about how to work with the cloud. And many of our customers have a lot of experience with us in the on-prem world and they're choosing AWS as their cloud partner and so that's just a natural evolution and that's a super easy situation. There are cases where we actually work with AWS and AWS, as they work with customers to digitally transformed their environment, go and say, you could actually benefit from this. So there've been cases where we've actually worked together with AWS on some of those customer situations. Now we are in early days, right, the product is going to go GA December 1st. So right now we have about a dozen customers in what we call the early access program that we have not yet rolled this as generally available to the general public but the early integration, early work that we've done with AWS, not just on the technical side but across the ecosystem has been great. >> So go to market direct, go to market also through AWS. There's customers in that early access program, some of the things I'm thinking about when you're talking about what you guys are enabling is operational efficiencies, cost efficiencies. >> Absolutely. >> Anything that you can give us from one of those customers that's in early access, big business outcomes that they're achieving? >> I think the most fundamental aha moment for me, talking to the early access customers was, when we're thinking on-prem, we're thinking, okay, you know customer buys something, and we don't really cheap CDs, right, they download it. But you're thinking of time to value that's measured the days, sometimes weeks. And when we did the first proof of value with some of the early access customers, they didn't want to get into all the technical capabilities of the product at first, but the fact that they were able from the moment they got the welcome to BMC Control-M email, to the point that they were able to actually run jobs and drive value from the product in less than 10 minutes. That was eye opening for them and frankly, eye opening for me because I realized that the way you think about is different. because the fact that you can start to driving value within 10 minutes of getting your, welcome to BMC helix Control-M email, is just phenomenal. It's something that nobody could really accomplish with an on-prem environment. >> We've been talking about time to value for a long, long, long time. But I think in the context of today's world it's different 'cause as we saw when this pandemic first started, there was massive pivot. Businesses are pivoting and pivoting and pivoting. It's not just the one time, but it was really in the beginning I think about keeping the lights on and survival. Now it's as we get into this, and as we expect certain parts of this to be permanent in terms of how we work is changing, how we deliver services to customers that consumer demand is there in the consumer space, it's there in the it world as well. But like give me some nuggets of, what's of value to say like a higher education, like a university for example, is it being able to get students online faster? I'm just kind of looking for that silver nugget of value in a contextual setting. >> Let me give you an example from, actually let's, I'm going to pick an example from a really old industry, like a company that's been around for over a hundred years, right? So they've been around since before the mainframe, right? They build farming equipment, they build tractors, they build trucks. And every one of those has hundreds and thousands of sensors that collect data. So if you think about it now, this is a company that's been around for over a hundred years and never thought of itself as a technology company, but now they collect all this sensor data, they aggregate it, they try to make sense out of it. And then not only do they try to figure out, hey, you're going to have, one of your gaskets in the engine's going to to blow. They also kind of integrate that to some of the more legacy applications where they store customer data and parts information and dealer networks. So they can send the owner or the operator of the vehicle, an email saying, we can tell that your gasket is going to blow in the coming week, here are three dealers in your area that have that part on hand and are certified to make that repair, Would you like us to schedule an appointment? And they were able to reduce unplanned vehicle downtime by 40%. Now think of this, what this really means is that revenue producing assets are working more, more efficiently. Now, whether this is farm equipment, or, again, I'm deliberately picking old line industries to kind of make the point. So whether it's it's farming equipment or oil pipelines and oil Wells, right that if you have your revenue producing assets running at the higher uptime, that is a business outcome that everybody loves. >> Absolutely. I always loved those stories of traditional businesses that you talked about, who've really embraced digital transformation, done it in a smart way. But last question for you, that's a cultural shift. I'd love to just get your perspectives on the conversations that you're having with customers now, as you work with companies like that, like the traditional historical businesses, how quickly are they able to adapt their cultures and align those IT and business folks so that they don't get you swept by a newer fresher company born in the cloud that maybe has more agility and more willingness to take risks. >> One of our core beliefs of BMC is that companies are evolving into what we call the autonomous digital enterprise. That's a big transformation that the companies go through. And there are several tenants then on what it takes to really become an autonomous digital enterprise and you don't necessarily make progress on all of them at the same time. But one of those, as an example is enterprise DevOps, right? How do you read a drive agility, not just in your DevOps development processes but across how you think about it as an enterprise, right? Part of it is the data driven business, right? So the example we just gave, is how you really use data and turn it into insight and actually drive actionability, based on what you can really get from data. Which if you think about it makes so much sense, but it's not that easy to do and it requires you to also have these enterprise DevOps mindset as you innovate. There's many things, right? One of those things is automation everywhere, right? But at the end of the day we talk about automation. The more you automate, the more you could actually free up valuable resources to go do things that are high value. So there's plenty of elements to it but we believe, it's one of our core fundamental beliefs of BMC that enterprises are evolving and will continue to evolve to become autonomous digital enterprises. They will have to be digital, they will have to rely on technology to really survive and thrive in the decades to come. And we just want to be we with AWS, with BMC Control-M, Helix Control-M, just want to help them succeed in that mission. >> As a facilitator at that autonomous digital enterprise, well, Gur, it's been just a pleasure to have you on the program. Thanks for joining me today and sharing with us what BMC and AWS are doing together and how you're helping those organizations become the autonomous digital enterprise. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you so much. For Gur Steif, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE. (soft music)