okay we're back this is Dave vellante Wikibon org i'm here with jeff Frek we're here at knowledge service now is big customer event we're at the aria hotel a lot of enthusiasm a lot of great stories we're seeing a pattern emerged IT is essentially this collection of disparate processes we have a lot of activity going on spreadsheets people using email to really keep track of what's going on many many systems trying to keep track of inventory assets process these problems incidents changes etc etc and it's just this big web of mess here comes service now a single system of record a cmdb that allows you to essentially tailor your processes to your business as opposed to some kind of technology module or some other kind of software system jason wu yan is here he's the vice president of operations for a cloud sherpas works within the ServiceNow business unit at Cloud Sherpas was a big sponsor of the show Jason welcome to the cube thank you very much so you heard my little intro of guys must be excited big sponsor a lot of a lot of action going on in this this event how do you feel we feel outstanding we're happy to be a part of the the event this is my third knowledge conference and of course as the director of training in service now I like to say there are more people in training at this conference that attended the entire knowledge 11 conference so it's a pretty phenomenal event so how was it progressed over the years this is my first knowledge and so I don't have that history I'd say that you know we leave a long legacy with service now all the way back to some of the very first knowledge conferences that occurred in first knowledge conference we probably could have had a the entire conference in this table right and of course today with almost four thousand attendees it's it's certainly grown tremendously we've got somewhere the neighborhood 1,200 people that have gone through training at this event alone we did a big part of providing that training for on behalf of service now with other partners as well and it's an exciting event there's a large buzz here as I'm sure you've seen there really is yes sir Cloud Sherpas other than a great name you know tell us about the company it's a great it's a great story to tell Gartner likes to turma cloud services brokerage and so first and foremost we're cloud services brokerage we have three strategic partnerships we are a Salesforce a partner we are one of the largest Salesforce partners in the world actually top five from a certification standpoint we're the largest Google Enterprise integrator in the world we're actually Google Google's partner of the year in 2011 and 2012 of course we like to think we're pretty good at servicenow as well a little background on us in the ServiceNow business unit we were the first partner in the United States Forest Service now we are the first partner to achieve preferred status at servicenow and the only partner to achieve that status globally today so how's it work so a customer wants to implement service now or google enterprise or Salesforce you basically are that brokerage layer in between so talk about how that works well we help customers adopt manage and enhance their cloud solutions of course focusing on this particular context service now and we are there from day one we're there to help them bring the platform into their environment we're help there to help them refine their processes and practices and of course ultimately align that to the service now a tool and help them manage that through their life cycle so how do you get ready for this what do you tell customers they need to do I tell customers commonly it's best to start where you're at with any improvement activity and ultimately in an enterprise deployment of software you're going to take that as an opportunity to improve I say start where you're at take the time to understand how you do things today you'd be surprised to see how often customers don't aren't all on the same page as to how they perform incident or what the key processes are underneath that or even what the key performance objectives are for that of course we recommend starting where you're at of course we have requirements workshops opportunities we have a number of I tell practices and other types of areas where we can help elaborate those requirements and better align them to their business needs but first and foremost you need to understand what you want your environment to look like some a requirement standpoint the workflows are key so what are the big obstacles that you see people running into when they try to do implement like this I would say in general taking too big of a bite you know there are over twenty two applications as an example in service now you don't want to start day one with 22 applications it's not because ServiceNow wouldn't be able to handle it ServiceNow can deploy very rapidly you really start simple start where you're mature or start where you have the most profound opportunity to improve and align to better practices get the foundation of the platform in place stabilize that and then move on to your next phase and progressively adopt more and more of the application so it's with the pattern that's emerging here we're hearing from customers people starting with incident problem management change management you know why there why why do we see that pattern emerging I think more across the industry that it tends to be a place where customers have have focused on over time so that tends to be where they're more mature they tend to have a better understanding of maybe what their shortcomings are today in those spaces so they tend to be an easier place to start what percentage of them are displacing some other legacy software versus we've heard about I'm not counting excel in that in that list or lotus notes because we hear a lot about that but I would presume there's other software out there that they're displacing we see a lot of software that gets this place down there of course point solutions where there's a lot of databases and homegrown applications handling change your change approvals or cab boards or those types of things of course it's a good opportunity to consolidate that and of course you know service now is known within the industry is being a pretty proficient solution but there are other solutions and we are offering seen that we're offsetting those as well you have we have the steam of no.2 now do you have any you know favorite examples that you can share with us or what are you some of your customers doing ha we've got a lot of good examples i would say probably most recently we just helped a very large clothing manufacturer an american good american company that had nine support environments globally and they had nine different ways of doing everything and they look use this as an opportunity to consolidate those and get to a single source of record get to a single workflow globally and in that they also transformed and improve their processes and and that was something that they couldn't have accomplished with really any other project or really any other tool in the market they of course chose to go down the path with with service now and you know a short few months later they're implemented across incident problem changed service request Service Catalog a very profound Service Catalog spanning literally hundreds of request items employee self-service portal that's been branded to their to their corporate brands there's been a lot of excitement in their injuries or community because they look like their company when they're when they're asking for support and they get a much more automated and in much more efficient process what was the genesis of that was it again something was breaking they had to change it was it let's just take a step back there's opportunity that we wanted to do this or were the easing service now and some other minor role and said wow you know we can actually use this tool to take advantage and do something transformation and generally what we see is service now it's really the enabler it's the enabler to transition transform now we've seen global sis do this forever that's their big thing we're going to help you consolidate and get your hands around it I think service now gives you the ability to to do that neutral of a partner or neutral of an outsourcing provider you can get your arms around it on your own and again many customers are relatively mature and incident problem and change and so it's a good opportunity for them to find those areas where they can aspire to better practice better process and to implement that into service count tool how was your business involves I mean it's so interesting because the poster child of SAS and Salesforce you guys obviously you know chose well that was 1999 may we are in 2013 it's really taking a long time Google Enterprise okay that's make sense but Google you know big whale I see you know guys like workday you know service now come out why do you think it's taken such a long time for these applications to catch on and and how has cloud sherpas you know progressed over those over that time frame well what i would say is the notion of a cloud services brokerage didn't exist eight to ten years ago right that that aggregation point didn't really exist it was those point solutions were always provided by those point providers or their tightly coupled partners in that space and of course with the emergence of this notion of a brokerage that's helping aggregate and manage and enhance low solutions you know we're seeing a lot of degrees of freedom so you know where we started we started as a firm that was focused on Google that emerged into Salesforce and now is through in a company called Navitus a few earlier or late last year now the ServiceNow practice as well and you know moreover it's it's it's where things are going right the truth is is that end-users and corporations and and whether it's you on your iPhone and for personal use or business use you want those applications available you want to have a solid user experience ServiceNow was really first in this space to be able to offer that in a way that was truly platform neutral that just worked whether it was a smart phone or an iPad or a desktop or laptop of what happened so talk about your strategy clouds share purrs and talk a little bit about how you differentiate well we differentiated in a number of ways but specific in the ServiceNow business unit and III don't think it's it could be said enough the cloud services brokerage is a huge differentiating point for us right having the scale that we do globally having you know several key strategic partners enables us to see areas and aspects of the industry that I don't think other partners can but from a service town business you know perspective I think we have a live a couple a couple differentiating points when is we were one of the first adopters of the platform from a partner perspectives so obviously we have a lot of deep skills in this we've done over 320 implementations of service now to date to have and of course 320 over 320 and through that history we've seen we've seen a lot of heuristics we've seen a lot of customer success stories we've seen a lot of things in the platform that customers are asking for time and time again and we've been able to fit that need both by my IT service management but also by industry as well a great example of that is we've got a number of custom applications that we've developed one of them as is a document management document processing application that a lot of legal firms are using in fact what we found is we built it for one company a few years ago Morrison forest or better known as mofo and now five or six legal firms later they've all asking for that same application and so we're finding that there's also you know real opportunity from an industry perspective to align to some of those point solutions extend the platform and just include those in the solution here's so much today about Big Data and you know it's all about this unstructured mass of information a bring structure to unstructured data maybe lending structured and unstructured some people don't even like those terms because it's all sort of blending how does analytics play into this whole IT Service Management IT automation there's a lot of metrics so they get this automating this forms based process is there a place for that or is is there not right now because everybody's kind of doing their own thing you know ten years ago I t was all about the tnit right it's all about the technology now it's all about the eye it's all about the information a great examples we're seeing a lot of partner solutions emerge in the ServiceNow ecosystem that are trying to better rationalize data there are tools like mere 42 for example which it's whole purpose is to is to bolt onto service now and provide a more comprehensive analytic package and there are many other examples of that as well in truth it's a services lead operation at this point it's not a technology led operation the only way to really ensure that you're delivering any quality of services or support is the quality of data that you provide and that starts with your requirements and those requirements need to bridge the performance measures in those performance there is just being an easy way to be accessible transparent and manageable and of course that's a big part of what service now does so how do you see this cloud brokerage you know space evolving over the next three to five years what's going to change you're going to hear a lot more from Cloud Sherpas in the space in the next three to five years that's for sure you know I think what we're going to find is is that more and more you're going to you're going to see gsis and other types of firms moving to this sort of model right I mean we're only we're going to take a lot of business away from them and and in that process you know it's going to get the right levels of attention you know what what I really think that cloud services brokerage is is it's a firm that is extremely experienced in the platform and the products they sell but more importantly the underlying reason for selling that product in the first place you know services IT services in this case it's a company that's known for being a little bit more nimble than some of those GS is you know getting the proposals out quickly and being effect effective and efficient and not looking to establish this enormous agreement but but a series of agreements that gets a customer to to where they need to go and I think what we're going to see is it is time and time again that the the early adopters in the cloud services brokerage spaces are going to be are going to be growing at rates like our business unit for example are business units currently growing at one hundred and fifty percent it's a tough tough job to keep up with but tools like ServiceNow certainly help us manage that and keep us on track with our own projects your own time carts and our own tasks yeah so you guys are great on the rocket ship with good service now pulling them along are they pulling you along a little bit of both like bikers drafting yeah so hexcel and I Jason we'll listen thanks very much for coming on the cube and sharing the cloud sherpas story will give you the last word here what advice would you give to folks that are you know maybe kicking the tires and mostly thirty percent of the audience here are not ServiceNow customers they're thinking about it what would you tell those guys have a good understanding of where you're at have a good vision of what you want to achieve and don't be afraid to go to the cloud it's not as not as hard as it sounds its clouds not scary just jump right in the water's fine hi Jason thanks very much for coming on really appreciated a good luck with managing that crazy growth and pleasure meeting you thanks very much all right Jeff reckon I'll be back with our next guest keep right here this is the cube we drop it of these events and we're covering the wall-to-wall service now knowledge will be right back from Las Vegas right after this