>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage, where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, of course virtually in this case, now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships and the flywheel they deliver in the technology business. And with me are Jason Kelly, he's the general manager global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Dasgupta, who's the vice president of marketing for IBM global business services. Folks it's great to see you again. I wish we were face-to-face, but this'll have to do. >> Good to see you Dave and same, I wish we were face to face, but we'll, we'll go with this. >> Soon. We're being patient. Jason, let's start with you. You, you have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >> So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said, we have a partner strategy Dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us, a partner strategy. Something that we it's not new, we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve in and build even stronger. This thought of a, a partner strategy is it... Nothing's better than the thought of a partnership and people say, "Oh, well, you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner." And it sounds almost as a one to one type relationship. Our strategy is much different than that Dave and our execution is even better. And that, that execution is focused on now the requirement that the market, our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners, that one... One player, can't deliver all their needs. They can't design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out, this thought of an ecosystem. And our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's, let's call it a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user, it's going to take many players to cover that. And then we as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the end client is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that end client. >> I think about when you talk about the, the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know the business books years ago where you see the conceptual value chain, you could certainly understand that and you could put processes together to connect them and now, you've got technology. I think of APIs. It's, it's, it really supports that everything gets accelerated and, and Mani, I wonder if you could address sort of the the go to market, how this notion of ecosystem which is so important is impacting the way in which you go to market. >> Absolutely. So modern business, you know demands a new approach to working. The ecosystem thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market. It's a mutual halo of the brands. So as responsible, you know, for the championship of, of the IBM and the Global Business Services brand, I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win, win, win as we say in the market. It should be a win for, our clients first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM, and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this go-to-market market strategy to life. >> So I wonder if we can maybe talk about, how this actually works and, and pulling some examples. You must have some favorites that we can touch on. Is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names? >> Sure. Names always work in debut writing. It's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy and I'll, I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds. As we're doing this virtually because of what, because of an unfortunate pandemic. Just disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path we go, whoa! (clears throat) How do we, how do we address that? Well, anytime there's a tough task IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely, or standing up a system behind the current social security administration, you know during the depression, you pick it. Well here we are now and why not start with that as an example because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here. First, Dave, this thought of, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives which is, how do we get this vaccine created in record time? Which it was. The fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. So Pfizer created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind that is a wonderful partner of ours, SAP trying to work with that. So us working with SAP, along with Pfizer in order to figure out, how to get that value chain and some would say supply chain, but I'll, I'll address that in a second, but there's many players there. And, and so we were in the middle of that with Pfizer committed to saying, how do we do that with SAP? So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency. You have Ms. State, Alocal, you have healthcare life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh, wait a second Dave, this is getting very complicated, right? Well, this is the thought of convening in the ecosystem. And this is what I'm telling you is, is our execution and it, it has worked well and so it's, it's it's happening now and we see it still developing and being, being, you know very productive in real time. But then, I said there was a another example and that's with me, you, Mani, whomever. You pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of, of the value chain. That's why I said I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is, is, is someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute that's not a small task. It's not just get, get the content there and put it in someone's arm. Instead there's scheduling that must be done. There's follow up, and entire case management like system. Salesforce is a master at this. So work.com team with IBM we said now, let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability, that user experience, user interaction interface and then also, in bringing another player in the ecosystem. One of ours, Watson health, along with our blockchain team, we brought together something called a digital health pass. So, I've just talked about two ecosystems where multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I call it out blockchain technology and obviously supply chain, but there's also AI, IOT. So you start to see where, look, this is truly an orchestration effort that has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master in design and tying that, that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome. You, me, Mani are all getting the shot, being healthy. That's a real-time example of us working with an ecosystem and teaming with key strategic partners. >> You know Mani, I, I, I mean, Jason you're right. I mean this pandemic's been horrible. I have to say, I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like, okay here's some big PCs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So, at least, the tech industry has saved the business. I mean, with, and earlier we mentioned AI, automation, data, you know, even things basic things like, security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right. I mean, IBM in particular, other large companies, you mentioned, SAP who have taken the lead and it's really, I, I don't, I Mani I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit but I wonder if there's some of your favorite partnerships that you can talk about. >> Yeah. So I'm going to, I'm going to build on what you just said, Dave. IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world's leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it. Now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution, you would need to connect these disparate systems sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the clients. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of, you know, you asked about favorites. There are, this is really a co-opetition market where everybody has products, everybody has services. The most important thing is how are we, how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case? I would say one important thing in this, as you observe how these stories are panning out. In an ecosystem, in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a "sell with" model from, from a go-to-market perspective. There is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners, right? So think about this, the span and scope or what we do here and so that's the sell through, and then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products for example, Salesforce, running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the, the modern way of doing business with modern IT. >> Well, and you mentioned co-opetition. I mean, I look at it, you're, you're, you're part of IBM that will work with anybody 'cause you're your customer first. Whether it's AWS, Microsoft, I mean, Oracle is a, is a, is a really tough competitor but your customers are using Oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean, as a, those are some, you know good examples I think of your point about co-opetition. >> Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case, Delta. Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile and now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right? With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down be more agile, be more secure be closer to their customers to try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud, on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The, the beauty of this model in a hybrid cloud approach is that you're able to put them on red hat openshift, you're able to do and package the, the services into microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a... On a portable almost a platform agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing as the ability, to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day. >> How about some of the like SaaS players? Like some of the more prominent ones. And we, we, we watched the ascendancy of ServiceNow and Workday, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an AI opportunity but maybe you could add some color there. >> So I like the fact Dave that you call out the different hyperscalers, for example whether it's AWS, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, hey, had this happened a long time ago, you know you started talking about the, the heft of the technology. I started thinking of all the, the the truck loads of servers or whatever they, you know they'd have to pull up, we don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud. And you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out. You start to think of what I call, I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers. They're both. And then you start to say, what are, what are different people supplying? Well, in that ecosystem, we know there's not going to be one player. There's going to be multiple. So we partner by doing just what Mani called out as this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, multi-clouds. Maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability, that flexibility, we empower and this is what it's doing is that co-opetition. We empower our partners, our strategic partners. We want them to be better with us and this is just the thought of, you know, being able to actually bring more together and move faster. Which is almost counter-intuitive. You're like, wait a minute, you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly. Because we have the capability to integrate those, those technologies and get that outcome that Mani mentioned. >> I would add to one Jason, you mentioned something very, very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast, you go alone. But if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view, in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >> What about like, so I get the technology players and there's maybe things that you do, that others don't or vice versa so the gap fillers, et cetera. But what about, how, maybe customers do they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, maybe they be, they they be customer or an NGO as another example. Are they part of this value chain part of this ecosystem? >> Absolutely. I'll give you... I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health pass. That digital health pass, is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential. Think of it as a health credential, not a vaccine passport cause it could be used for a test for, a negative test on COVID, it could be used for antibodies. So if you have this credential it's something that we as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of, you know getting people certifications versus a four-year diploma. How do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a Jenny Rometty thought. Let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then said wait, here's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of New York said that they want it to do it that way and they said, listen we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our New York citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable. It could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we want it to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with these strategic partners, like Salesforce and SAP, Alocal. I mean, I can just keep going. And we said, "Okay, let's do this." And this is this thought of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that Dave. This only brings it to the forefront just as you said. Yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem, we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together, convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcomes so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they, they want it. >> Guys, we've got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this, this digital transformation journey that we already, we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise. I love the hybrid cloud and AI focus. Jason and Mani, really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >> Thank you so much, Dave. Fantastic. >> Thank you Dave. Great to be with you. >> All right, and thank you for watching everybody. Dave Vellante, for the cube and in continuous coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. (poignant music) (bright uplifting music)

>>From around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by >>IBM. Welcome back to IBM Think 2021. This is the cubes ongoing coverage where we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise of course, virtually in this case now we're going to talk about ecosystems, partnerships in the flywheel, they deliver in the technology business and with me or Jason kelly, general manager, global strategic partnerships, IBM global business services and Mani Das Gupta, who is the vice president of marketing for IBM Global Business services folks. It's great to see you again in which we're face to face. But this will have to do >>good to see you Dave and uh same, I wish we were face to face but uh we'll we'll go with this >>soon. We're being patient, Jason. Let's start with you. You have a partner strategy. I wonder if you could sort of summarize that and tell us more about it. >>So it's interesting that we start with the strategy because you said we have a partner strategy dave and I'd say that the market has dictated back to us a partner strategy something that we it's not new and we didn't start it yesterday. It's something that we continue to evolve and build even stronger. This thought of a partner strategy is it nothing is better than the thought of a partner ship. And people say oh well you know you got to work together as one team and as a partner And it sounds almost as a 1-1 type relationship. Our strategies is much different than that. David our execution is even better and that that execution is focused on now. The requirement that the market our clients are showing to us and our strategic partners that one player can't deliver all their needs, they can't Design solution and deliver that from one place. It does take an ecosystem to the word that you called out. This thought of an ecosystem and our strategy and execution is focused on that. And the reason why I say it evolves is because the market will continue to evolve and this thought of being able to look at a client's let's call it a a workflow, let's call it a value chain from one end to the other, wherever they start their process to wherever it ultimately hits that end user. It's going to take many players to cover that. And then we, as IBM want to make sure that we are the general contractor of that capability with the ability to convene the right strategic partners, bring out the best value for that outcome, not just technology for technology's sake, but the outcome that the incline is looking for so that we bring value to our strategic partners and that in client. >>I think about when you talk about the value chain, you know, I'm imagining, you know, the business books years ago you see the conceptual value chain, you can certainly understand that you can put processes together to connect them and now you've got technology, I think of a P. I. S. It's it's really supports that everything gets accelerated and and uh money. I wonder if you could address some of the the go to market how this notion of of ecosystem which is so important, is impacting the way in which you go to market. >>Absolutely. So modern business, you know, demands a new approach to working the ecosystem. Thought that Jason was just alluding to, it's a mutual benefit of all these companies working together in the market, it's a mutual halo of the brands, so as responsible for the championship of the IBM and the global business services brand. I am very, very interested in this mutual working together. It should be a win win win, as we say in the market, it should be a win for our clients, first and foremost, it should be a win for our partners and it should be a win for IBM and we are working together right now on an approach to bring this, go to market strategy to life. >>So I wonder if we could maybe talk about how this actually works and and pull in some examples, uh you must have some favorites that that we can touch on. Uh is that, is that fair? Can we, can we name some names, >>sure names, always working debut, right. And it's always in context of reality that we can talk about, as I said, this execution and not just a strategy. And I'll start with probably what's right in the front of many people's minds as we're doing this virtually because of what because of an unfortunate pandemic, um, this disastrous loss of life and things that have taken us down a path. We go well, how do we, how do we address that? Well, any time there's a tough task, IBM raises its hand first. You know, whether it was putting a person on the moon and bringing them home safely or standing up a system behind the current Social Security Administration, you know, during the Depression, you pick it well here we are now. And why not start with that as an example? Because I think it calls out just what we mentioned here first day, this thought of a, of an ecosystem because the first challenge, how do we create uh and address the biggest data puzzle of our lives, which is how do we get this vaccine created in record time, which it was the fastest before that was four years. This was a matter of months. Visor created the first one out and then had to get it out to distribution. Behind. That is a wonderful partner of R. S. A. P. Trying to work with that. So us working with S. A. P. Along with Pfizer in order to figure out how to get that value chain. And some would say supply chain, but I'll address that in a second. But there's many players there. And so we were in the middle of that with fires are committed to saying, how do we do that with S. A. P. So now you see players working together as one ecosystem. But then think about the ecosystem that that's happening where you have a federal government agency, a state, a local, you have healthcare, life science industry, you have consumer industry. Oh wait a second day. This is getting very complicated, Right? Well, this is the thought of convening an ecosystem and this is what I'm telling you is our execution and it has worked well. And so it's it's it's happening now. We still it's we see it's still developing and being, being, you know, very productive in real time. But then I said there was another example and that's with me, you mani whomever you pick the consumer. Ultimately we are that outcome of of the value chain. That's why I said, I don't want to just call it a supply chain because at the end is a someone consuming and in this case we need a shot. And so we partnered with Salesforce, IBM and Salesforce saying, wait a minute, that's not a small task. It's not just get the content there and put it in someone's arm instead they're scheduling that must be done. There's follow up an entire case management like system sells force is a master at this, so work dot com team with IBM, we sit now let's get that part done for the right type of UI UX capability that the user experience, user interaction interface and then also in bringing another player in the ecosystem, one of ours Watson health along with our block changing, we brought together something called a Digital Health pass. So I've just talked about two ecosystems work multiple ecosystems working together. So you think of an ecosystem of ecosystems. I called out Blockchain technology and obviously supply chain but there's also a I I O T. So you start to see where look this is truly an orchestration effort. It has to happen with very well designed capability and so of course we master and design and tying that that entire ecosystem together and convening it so that we get to the right outcome you me money all getting into shot being healthy. That's a real time example of us working with an ecosystem and teeming with key strategic partners, >>you know, money, I mean Jason you're right. I mean pandemics been horrible, I have to say. I'm really thankful it didn't happen 20 years ago because it would have been like okay here's some big pcs and a modem and go ahead and figure it out. So I mean the tech industry has saved business. I mean with not only we mentioned ai automation data, uh even things basic things like security at the end point. I mean so many things and you're right, I mean IBM in particular, other large companies you mentioned ASAP you have taken the lead and it's really I don't money, I don't think the tech industry gets enough credit, but I wonder if there's some of your favorite, you know, partnerships that you can talk about. >>Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna build on what you just said. Dave IBM is in this unique position amongst this ecosystem. Not only the fact that we have the world leading most innovative technologies to bring to bear, but we also have the consulting capabilities that go with it now to make any of these technologies work towards the solution that Jason was referring to in this digital health pass, it could be any other solution you would need to connect these disparate systems, sometimes make them work towards a common outcome to provide value to the client. So I think our role as IBM within this ecosystem is pretty unique in that we are able to bring both of these capabilities to bear. In terms of you know, you asked about favorite there are this is really a coop petition market where everybody has products, everybody has service is the most important thing is how how are we bringing them all together to serve the need or the need of the hour in this case, I would say one important thing in this. As you observe how these stories are panning out in an ecosystem in in part in a partnership, it is about the value that we provide to our clients together. So it's almost like a cell with model from from a go to market perspective, there is also a question of our products and services being delivered through our partners. Right? So think about the span and scope of what we do here. And so that's the sell through. And then of course we have our products running within our partner companies and our partner products, for example. Salesforce running within IBM. So this is a very interesting and a new way of doing business. I would say it's almost like the modern way of doing business with modernity. >>Well. And you mentioned cooperation. I mean you're you're part of IBM that will work with anybody because your customer first, whether it's a W. S. Microsoft oracle is a is a is a really tough competitor. But your customers are using oracle and they're using IBM. So I mean as a those are some good examples. I think of your point about cooper Titian. >>Absolutely. If you pick on any other client, I'll mention in this case. Delta, Delta was working with us on moving, being more agile. Now this pandemic has impacted the airline sector particularly hard, right With travel stopping and anything. So they are trying to get to a model which will help them scale up, scale down, be more agile will be more secure, be closer to their customers, try and understand how they can provide value to their customers and customers better. So we are working with Delta on moving them to cloud on the journey to cloud. Now that public cloud could be anything. The beauty of this model and a hybrid cloud approach is that you are able to put them on red hat open shift, you're able to do and package the services into a microservices kind of a model. You want to make sure all the applications are running on a portable, almost platform. Agnostic kind of a model. This is the beauty of this ecosystem that we are discussing is the ability to do what's right for the end customer at the end of the day, >>how about some of the like sass players, like some of the more prominent ones and we watched the ascendancy of service now and and, and work day, you mentioned Salesforce. How do you work with those guys? Obviously there's an Ai opportunity, but maybe you could add some, you know, color there. >>So I like the fact that you call out the different hyper scholars for example, uh whether it's a W. S, whether it's Microsoft, knowing that they have their own cloud instances, for example. And when you, when you mentioned, he had this happened a long time ago, you know, you start talking about the heft of the technology, I started thinking of all the truckloads of servers or whatever they have to pull up. We don't need that now because it can happen in the cloud and you don't have to pick one cloud or the other. And so when people say hybrid cloud, that's what comes out, you start to think of what I I call, you know, a hybrid of hybrids because I told you before, you know, these roles are changing. People aren't just buyers or suppliers, they're both. And then you start to say what we're different people supplying well in that ecosystem, we know there's not gonna be one player, there's gonna be multiple. So we partner by doing just what monty called out is this thought of integrating in hybrid environments on hybrid platforms with hybrid clouds, Multi clouds, maybe I want something on my premises, something somewhere else. So in giving that capability that flexibility we empower and this is what's doing that cooperation, we empower our partners are strategic partners, we want them to be better with us. And this is this thought of being able to actually bring more together and move faster which is almost counterintuitive. You're like wait a minute you're adding more players but you're moving faster. Exactly because we have the capability to integrate those those technologies and get that outcome that monty mentioned, >>I would add to this one. Jason you mentioned something very very interesting. I think if you want to go just fast you go alone but if you want to go further, you go together. And that is the core of our point of view in this case is that we want to go further and we want to create value that is long lasting. >>What about like so I get the technology players and there may be things that you do that others don't or vice versa. So the gap fillers etcetera. But what about how to maybe customers that they get involved? Perhaps government agencies, may they be they be customer or an N. G. O. As another example, Are they part of this value chain? Part of this ecosystem? >>Absolutely. I'll give you I'll stick with the same example when I mentioned a digital health past that Digital Health Pass is something that we have as IBM and it's a credential Think of it as a health credential not a vaccine passport because it could be used for a test for a negative test on Covid, it could be used for antibiotics. So if you have this credential, it's something that we, as IBM created years back and we were using it for learning. When you think of getting people uh certifications versus a four year diploma, how do we get people into the workforce? That was what was original. That was a jenny Rometty thought, let's focus on new collar workers. So we had this asset that we'd already created and then it's wait, there's a place for it to work with, with health, with validation verification on someone's option, it's optional. They choose it. Hey, I want to do it this way. Well, the state of new york said that they wanted to do it that way and they said, listen, we are going to have a digital health pass for all of our, all of our new york citizens and we want to make sure that it's equitable, it could be printed or on a screen and we want it to be designed in this way and we wanted to work on this platform and we want to be able to, to work with the strategic Partners, a Salesforce and ASAP and work. I mean, I can just keep and we said okay let's do this. And this is the start of collaboration and doing it by design. So we haven't lost that day but this only brings it to the forefront just as you said, yes, that is what we want. We want to make sure that in this ecosystem we have a way to ensure that we are bringing together convening not just point products or different service providers but taking them together and getting the best outcome so that that end user can have it configured in the way that they want it >>guys, we got to leave it there but it's clear you're helping your customers and your partners on this this digital transformation journey that we already we all talk about. You get this massive portfolio of capabilities, deep, deep expertise, I love the hybrid cloud and AI Focus, Jason and money really appreciate you coming back in the cubes. Great to see you both. >>Thank you so much. Dave Fantastic. All >>Right. And thank you for watching everybody's day Vigilante for the Cuban. Our continuous coverage of IBM, think 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there. Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. >>Mhm.

if Studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cute conversation hi I'm Stu minuteman and welcome to a special cube conversation we've been talking to leaders around the industry about how they are helping their organizations and their customers in these challenging time with Kovac 19 really happy to bring back to the program one of our cube alumni he also has a new title Paul Cormier is now the president and CEO of Red Hat Paul it is great to see you we live geographically not too far apart normally we would be getting together person for summit of course that event happening digitally but thanks so much for joining us all right so Paul you have you know storied history at Red Hat you know I've sat through many keynotes where you walk through the product in portfolio looked at the acquisitions looked at the strategic direction moves taking the new job as CEO is a big move in regular times of course we're not in regular times we're in rather unique times here so let's start there what does it mean about coming into this new role in the times that we are facing you know you know as I see it considering the times here I think it's probably one of the biggest decisions I have made in my career to take on this new job only because don't as you know Stu talked a lot I've been here from certainly the beginning of our move to the enterprise in 19 years I was played 120 or so and and I think I actually think that we brought such a big value our customers I think that customers actually going to see even more value as we come out of this because than they have in the past for one thing with the combination of IBM were able to reach a wider set of customers out there if we can bring into the Linux world where all the innovations happening so I think I think our customers we've treated this our product line is an enterprise-grade product line since the beginning since day one we're literally helping our customers eat their businesses running at this point on our product lines because of you know everything we've done the victim enterprise-class you know so Paul some previous you know challenges in my my career you talk about whether financial you know whether it is natural disasters or 9/11 you know the technical industry needs to kind of rally together but you know one of the things that is different about this is the impact that has on every employee I wasn't surprised to see that the letter that you sent out to all of the associates was you know posted on the Red Hat site it didn't need to be leaked or anything like that so you know the transparency always is appreciated but bring us inside a little bit the organization you know how are you you know helping your employees and making sure that they can deal with all the personal things that they need to deal with while still being there for your customers your I mean well first of all first of all one of the things is you know we're sort of used to working remotely when the need arises even full-time for that case a big percentage of our associates are work remotely 1% of the time we've always had the philosophy in that we especially in engineering where we go after the best possible talent and the unique part of being 100 percent open-source focus is that our engineers know the other engineers that are working in our communities whether they know them better met them face to face they certainly know them very well on a professional level so a lot of our people were used to working remotely the other thing the other thing is most of Red Hat is type A personality type people so that's that's a good thing on some days and may be a tough thing on other days but but what that means is everybody works from home at some period whether it's you know they go to the office all day and wake up at midnight and do some more or that's Saturday or Sunday we're all pretty much you know set up to do that so our IT department has been you know they've been fabulous through this you know we've had you know a gazillion more hours of both VPN and video hours and it's just all work but they've had a great test bed for all these years so from from that standpoint from that technical standpoint worked very well from from the employee standpoint we've really we've really picked up the video All Hands videoconferencing from once a quarter every two weeks and so you know I had an All Hands meeting two days ago three days ago when I was announced on my new role and I committed to them we're gonna we're gonna have it all hands every two weeks come in talk we'll give you the updates etc so I think that's one thing you can't over communicate that I like this and I think the third thing that my I guess that's to say my former products for now but you know I still I still love those guys buying my form proved the products group they actually had a very great idea they're holding virtual office hours for their for their colleagues in the field once a week and we're actually holding once in the morning once later at night for the people in asia-pacific actual hours with a product managers in the engineers except for getting on videoconference to integrate and in talk with the folks out in the field about what we're doing in the products and in what's going on and what's upcoming and hear their issues as well I think this serves as two things the first thing that serves a certainly it keeps people engaged but secondly you know our people love the technology and so to some extent with everything going on around kovin and how serious it is in every country it almost gives our our people almost an escape from that to really spend an hour or two a day on this and just really have conversations with each other about the business and the products and the technology so that's become a really big hit inside as well yeah you know definitely there are some things that just get amplified you talked about you know we're used to being able to be on or join meetings you know regardless of the time of day amateur your team plenty of blue jeans and zoom meetings before this but it has taken a slightly different tone now with you know you've now got everybody at home you know and managing you know other personal relationships and things that are happening on the outside you you are still holding red hat summit at the end of April you think there's there's a real strong you know push from your team to you know balance and make sure that you're there for your customers but it's it's not going to be as much of the hoopla there's not that you know the slag and the announcements that are going on why is it important to still bring the community together and you know meet with your partners and customers you know rather than push it off to later this year you know it's a great question you know I said anyone know that when I stand up on stage for my keynote at the summit every year even though I'm so many year I don't know me son it's 1314 something like that even when even it's such a rush because we really do stand there you know Jim talked about this on our internal handoff where he said you know remember Paul and I on a ballroom with one of the first summits at some hotel we look behind the curtain and I said to him there's 300 people out there and you know last year in Boston I looked out and said wow there's 10,000 people here it's amazing so it really started as a as a way to really talk to an interact with both our customers and our community as well but it turned into a celebration and not just a celebration of internal RedHat people a celebration of the whole ecosystem and partners and customers and upstream people of how far open-source and linux has come and we didn't think that celebration part this year was really appropriate considering where we were but but we all still have a job to do we're all doing him remotely and as I said we're running made our customers business so we felt it was really important to put this out there to have our customers understand where we're going in the coming year the new some of the new products that we have coming and how we can help them and so that's really more of the tone this year and we feel that still important we all have a big job right now in coming out of this we're even going to have bigger jobs and how we re-entry into this and balance that so that's really the focus this year how we can continue to help with the technology we brought to the enterprise for the last 19 years yeah Paul the last question I have for you you know I think back to summit last year Satya Nadella was on stage Jenny Jenny Rometty was up on stage of course Red Hat you know tightly tied into you know abroad community and ecosystem network out there so as the leader of Red Hat you know how are you you know in contact and working with you know the communities and the partner ecosystem to both manage through and be ready for the other side of today I mean in one regard especially with many it's almost more at this point I mean that the partners in the ecosystems are really important many of the partners especially the smaller partners they look to us for leadership so so we still have communication with them and partly the summit is is for them as well well some of the larger partners like that you mentioned Microsoft a certainly IBM and an Amazon and Google and others we actually communicate almost more now that we're all working from home because as I said earlier the same goes outside as it does in inside you just can't and over communicate this environment and you know as you know sue the tech industry looks like this giant industry but it really is kind of a small industry and a lot of us know each other from for many years and so that communication is going on we're comparing notes actually in many cases we're comparing notes maybe even more than we might have in the past well no what are you guys doing at your company the plan for this is and I've actually seen some of the partners who focus on proprietary technologies even become a more bit more open on those discussions now so I think maybe that could be if there's any good outcome of this that could be one of the outcomes that's slightly positive all right well Paul thank you so much for the update congratulations on your new role we absolutely are looking forward to the summit at the end of the month thanks again always great to see you soon thanks very much all right be sure to check out the cube dotnet where you can see the the preview of Red Hat summit as well as the guests that we will have there we will have Paul Stephanie Matt Hicks lots of the Red Hat executives their customers and partners I'm Stu minimun and thank you for watching the cube [Music]

>> Announcer: Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit, brought to you by IBM. (upbeat electronic music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Dave Vellante. We are joined by Jim Kavanaugh. He is the Senior Vice President transformation and operations at IBM. And Inderpal Bhandari he is the chief, the global chief data officer at IBM. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> Happy to be here. >> So, you both spoke in the key note today and Jim, you were talking about how we're in a real seminal moment for businesses with this digital, this explosion in digital and data. CEOs get this obviously, but how do you think, do companies in general get it? What's the buy-in, in terms of understanding just how big a moment we're in? >> Well, as I said in the key note, to your point, I truly believe that all businesses in every industry are in a true, seminal moment. Why? Because this phenomenon, the digital disruption, is impacting everything, changing the nature of competition, altering industry structures, and forcing companies to really rethink to design a business at its core. And that's what we've been doin' here at IBM, trying to understand how we transition from an old world of going after pure efficiency just by gettin' after economies of scale, process standardization, to really know, how do you drive efficiency to enable you to get competitive advantage? And that has been the essence of what we've been trying to do at IBM to really reinvent our company from the core. >> So most people today have multiple jobs. You guys, of course, have multiple jobs. You've got an internal facing and an external facing so you come to events like this and you share knowledge. Inderpal, when we first met last year, you had a lot of knowledge up here, but you didn't have the cognitive blueprint, ya know, so you were sharing your experiences, but, year plus in now, you've developed this cognitive blueprint that you're sharing customers. So talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah so, we are internally transforming IBM to become a cognitive enterprise. And that just makes for a tremendous showcase for our enterprise customers like the large enterprises that are like IBM. They look at what we're doing internally and then they're able to understand what it means to create a cognitive enterprise. So we've now created a blueprint, a cognitive enterprise blueprint. Which really has four pillars, which we understand by now, given our own experience, that that's going to be relevant as you try to move forward and create a cognitive enterprise. They're around technology, organization considerations, and cultural considerations, data, and also business process. So we're not just documenting that. We're actually sharing not just those documents, but the architecture, the strategies, pretty much all our failures as we're learning going forward with this, in terms of, developing our own recipes as we eat our own cooking. We're sharing that with our clients and customers as a starting point. So you can imagine the acceleration that that's affording them to be able to get to process transformation which, as Jim mentioned, that's eventually where there's value to be created. >> And you talked about transparency being an important part of that. So Jim, you talked about three fundamentals shifts going on that are relevant, obviously, for IBM and your clients, data, cloud, and engagement, but you're really talking about consumerization. And then you shared with us the results of a 4,000 CXO survey where they said technology was the key to sustainable business over the next four or five years. What I want to ask you, square the circle for me, data warehouse used to be the king. I remember those days, (laughing) it was tough, and technology was very difficult, but now you're saying process is the king, but the technology is largely plentiful and not mysterious as it is anymore. The process is kind of the unknown. What do you take away from that survey? Is it the application of technology, the people and process? How does that fit into that transformation that you talked about? >> Well, the survey that you talked about came from our global businesses services organization that we went out and we interviewed 4,000 CXOs around the world and we asked one fundamental question which is, what is number one factor concerning your long term sustainability of your business? And for the first time ever, technology factors came out as the number one risk to identify. And it goes back to, what we see, as those three fundamental shifts all converging and occurring at the same time. Data, cloud, engagement. Each of those impacting how you have to rethink your design of business and drive competitive advantage going forward. So underneath that, the data architecture, we always start, as you stated, prior, this was around data warehouse technology, et cetera. You applied technology to drive efficiency and productivity back into your business. I think it's fundamentally changed now. When we look at IBM internally, I always build the blueprint that Inderpal has talked about, which everything starts with a foundation of your data architecture, strategy governance, and then business process optimization, and then determining your system's architecture. So as we're looking inside of IBM and redesigning IBM around enabling end-to-end process optimization, quote-to-cash, source to pay, hire to exit. Many different horizontal process orientation. We are first gettin' after, with Inderpal, with the cognitive enterprise data platform what is that standard data architecture, so then we can transform the business process. And just to tie this all together to your question earlier, we have not only the responsibility of transforming IBM, to improve our competitiveness and deliver value, we actually are becoming the showcase for our commercialized entities of software solutions, hardware, and services. To go sell that value back to clients over all. >> And part of that is responsibility for data ownership. Who owns the data. You talked about the West Coast, the unnamed West Coast companies which I of course tweeted out to talk about Google and Amazon. And, but I want to press on that a little bit because data scientists, you guys know a lot of them especially acquiring The Weather Company They will use data to train models. Those models, IP data seeps into those models. How do you protect your clients from that IP, ya know, seepage? Maybe you could talk about that. >> Talk about trust as a service and what it means. >> Yeah, ya know, I mentioned that in my talk at the key note, this is a critical, critical point with regard to these intelligent systems, AI systems, cognitive systems, in that, they end up capturing a lot of the intellectual capital that the company has that goes to the core of the value that the company brings to it's clients and customers. So, in our mind, we're very clear, that the client's data is their data. But not only that, but if there's insights drawn from that data, that insight too belongs to them. And so, we are very clear about that. It's architected into our setup, you know, our cloud is architected from the ground up to be able to support that. And we've thought that through very deeply. To some extent, you know, one would argue that that's taken us some time to do that, but these are very deep and fundamental issues and we had to get them right. And now, of course, we feel very confident that that's something that we are able to actually protect on the behalf of our clients, and to move forward and enable them to truly become cognitive enterprises, taking that concern off the table. >> And that is what it's all about, is helping other companies move to become cognitive enterprises as you say. >> Based on trust, at the end of the day, at the heart of our data responsibility at IBM, it's around a trusted partner, right, to protect their data, to protect their insights. And we firmly believe, companies like IBM that capture data, store data, process data, have an obligation to responsibly handle that data, and that's what Jenny Rometty has just published around data responsibility at IBM. >> Great, well thank you so much Inderpal, Jim. We really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. >> [Jim and Inderpal] Thank you. >> We will have more from the IBM Chief Data Officer Strategy Summit, just after this. (upbeat music)