(upbeat intro music) >> Hello everyone. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm your host, John Furrier, here in Palo Alto, California. Got a special remote guest coming in. Teresa Carlson, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport, theCUBE alumni, one of the first, let me go back to 2013, Teresa, former AWS. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Oh my gosh, almost 10 years. That is unbelievable. It's hard to believe so many years of theCUBE. I love it. >> It's been such a great honor to interview you and follow your career. You've had quite the impressive run, executive level woman in tech. You've done such an amazing job, not only in your career, but also helping other women. So I want to give you props to that before we get started. Thank you. >> Thank you, John. I, it's my, it's been my honor and privilege. >> Let's talk about Flexport. Tell us about your new role there and what it's all about. >> Well, I love it. I'm back working with another Amazonian, Dave Clark, who is our CEO of Flexport, and we are about 3,000 people strong globally in over 90 countries. We actually even have, we're represented in over 160 cities and with local governments and places around the world, which I think is super exciting. We have over 100 network partners and growing, and we are about empowering the global supply chain and trade and doing it in a very disruptive way with the use of platform technology that allows our customers to really have visibility and insight to what's going on. And it's a lot of fun. I'm learning new things, but there's a lot of technology in this as well, so I feel right at home. >> You quite have a knack from mastering growth, technology, and building out companies. So congratulations, and scaling them up too with the systems and processes. So I want to get into that. Let's get into your personal background. Then I want to get into the work you've done and are doing for empowering women in tech. What was your journey about, how did it all start? Like, I know you had a, you know, bumped into it, you went Microsoft, AWS. Take us through your career, how you got into tech, how it all happened. >> Well, I do like to give a shout out, John, to my roots and heritage, which was a speech and language pathologist. So I did start out in healthcare right out of, you know, university. I had an undergraduate and a master's degree. And I do tell everyone now, looking back at my career, I think it was super helpful for me because I learned a lot about human communication, and it has done me very well over the years to really try to understand what environments I'm in and what kind of individuals around the world culturally. So I'm really blessed that I had that opportunity to work in healthcare, and by the way, a shout out to all of our healthcare workers that has helped us get through almost three years of COVID and flu and neurovirus and everything else. So started out there and then kind of almost accidentally got into technology. My first small company I worked for was a company called Keyfile Corporation, which did workflow and document management out of Nashua, New Hampshire. And they were a Microsoft goal partner. And that is actually how I got into big tech world. We ran on exchange, for everybody who knows that term exchange, and we were a large small partner, but large in the world of exchange. And those were the days when you would, the late nineties, you would go and be in the same room with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. And I really fell in love with Microsoft back then. I thought to myself, wow, if I could work for a big tech company, I got to hear Bill on stage about saving, he would talk about saving the world. And guess what my next step was? I actually got a job at Microsoft, took a pay cut and a job downgrade. I tell this story all the time. Took like three downgrades in my role. I had been a SVP and went to a manager, and it's one of the best moves I ever made. And I shared that because I really didn't know the world of big tech, and I had to start from the ground up and relearn it. I did that, I just really loved that job. I was at Microsoft from 2000 to 2010, where I eventually ran all of the U.S. federal government business, which was a multi-billion dollar business. And then I had the great privilege of meeting an amazing man, Andy Jassy, who I thought was just unbelievable in his insights and knowledge and openness to understanding new markets. And we talked about government and how government needed the same great technology as every startup. And that led to me going to work for Andy in 2010 and starting up our worldwide public sector business. And I pinch myself some days because we went from two people, no offices, to the time I left we had over 10,000 people, billions in revenue, and 172 countries and had done really amazing work. I think changing the way public sector and government globally really thought about their use of technology and Cloud computing in general. And that kind of has been my career. You know, I was there till 2020, 21 and then did a small stint at Splunk, a small stint back at Microsoft doing a couple projects for Microsoft with CEO, Satya Nadella, who is also an another amazing CEO and leader. And then Dave called me, and I'm at Flexport, so I couldn't be more honored, John. I've just had such an amazing career working with amazing individuals. >> Yeah, I got to say the Amazon One well-documented, certainly by theCUBE and our coverage. We watched you rise and scale that thing. And like I said at a time, this will when we look back as a historic run because of the build out. I mean as a zero to massive billions at a historic time where government was transforming, I would say Microsoft had a good run there with Fed, but it was already established stuff. Federal business was like, you know, blocking and tackling. The Amazon was pure build out. So I have to ask you, what was your big learnings? Because one, you're a Seattle big tech company kind of entrepreneurial in the sense of you got, here's some working capital seed finance and go build that thing, and you're in DC and you're a woman. What did you learn? >> I learned that you really have to have a lot of grit. You, my mom and dad, these are kind of more southern roots words, but stick with itness, you know. you can't give up and no's not in your vocabulary. I found no is just another way to get to yes. That you have to figure out what are all the questions people are going to ask you. I learned to be very patient, and I think one of the things John, for us was our secret sauce was we said to ourselves, if we're going to do something super transformative and truly disruptive, like Cloud computing, which the government really had not utilized, we had to be patient. We had to answer all their questions, and we could not judge in any way what they were thinking because if we couldn't answer all those questions and prove out the capabilities of Cloud computing, we were not going to accomplish our goals. And I do give so much credit to all my colleagues there from everybody like Steve Schmidt who was there, who's still there, who's the CISO, and Charlie Bell and Peter DeSantis and the entire team there that just really helped build that business out. Without them, you know, we would've just, it was a team effort. And I think that's the thing I loved about it was it was not just sales, it was product, it was development, it was data center operations, it was legal, finance. Everybody really worked as a team and we were on board that we had to make a lot of changes in the government relations team. We had to go into Capitol Hill. We had to talk to them about the changes that were required and really get them to understand why Cloud computing could be such a transformative game changer for the way government operates globally. >> Well, I think the whole world and the tech world can appreciate your work and thank you later because you broke down those walls asking those questions. So great stuff. Now I got to say, you're in kind of a similar role at Flexport. Again, transformative supply chain, not new. Computing wasn't new when before Cloud came. Supply chain, not a new concept, is undergoing radical change and transformation. Online, software supply chain, hardware supply chain, supply chain in general, shipping. This is a big part of our economy and how life is working. Similar kind of thing going on, build out, growth, scale. >> It is, it's very much like that, John, I would say, it's, it's kind of a, the model with freight forwarding and supply chain is fairly, it's not as, there's a lot of technology utilized in this global supply chain world, but it's not integrated. You don't have a common operating picture of what you're doing in your global supply chain. You don't have easy access to the information and visibility. And that's really, you know, I was at a conference last week in LA, and it was, the themes were so similar about transparency, access to data and information, being able to act quickly, drive change, know what was happening. I was like, wow, this sounds familiar. Data, AI, machine learning, visibility, common operating picture. So it is very much the same kind of themes that you heard even with government. I do believe it's an industry that is going through transformation and Flexport has been a group that's come in and said, look, we have this amazing idea, number one to give access to everyone. We want every small business to every large business to every government around the world to be able to trade their goods, think about supply chain logistics in a very different way with information they need and want at their fingertips. So that's kind of thing one, but to apply that technology in a way that's very usable across all systems from an integration perspective. So it's kind of exciting. I used to tell this story years ago, John, and I don't think Michael Dell would mind that I tell this story. One of our first customers when I was at Keyfile Corporation was we did workflow and document management, and Dell was one of our customers. And I remember going out to visit them, and they had runners and they would run around, you know, they would run around the floor and do their orders, right, to get all those computers out the door. And when I think of global trade, in my mind I still see runners, you know, running around and I think that's moved to a very digital, right, world that all this stuff, you don't need people doing this. You have machines doing this now, and you have access to the information, and you know, we still have issues resulting from COVID where we have either an under-abundance or an over-abundance of our supply chain. We still have clogs in our shipping, in the shipping yards around the world. So we, and the ports, so we need to also, we still have some clearing to do. And that's the reason technology is important and will continue to be very important in this world of global trade. >> Yeah, great, great impact for change. I got to ask you about Flexport's inclusion, diversity, and equity programs. What do you got going on there? That's been a big conversation in the industry around keeping a focus on not making one way more than the other, but clearly every company, if they don't have a strong program, will be at a disadvantage. That's well reported by McKinsey and other top consultants, diverse workforces, inclusive, equitable, all perform better. What's Flexport's strategy and how are you guys supporting that in the workplace? >> Well, let me just start by saying really at the core of who I am, since the day I've started understanding that as an individual and a female leader, that I could have an impact. That the words I used, the actions I took, the information that I pulled together and had knowledge of could be meaningful. And I think each and every one of us is responsible to do what we can to make our workplace and the world a more diverse and inclusive place to live and work. And I've always enjoyed kind of the thought that, that I could help empower women around the world in the tech industry. Now I'm hoping to do my little part, John, in that in the supply chain and global trade business. And I would tell you at Flexport we have some amazing women. I'm so excited to get to know all. I've not been there that long yet, but I'm getting to know we have some, we have a very diverse leadership team between men and women at Dave's level. I have some unbelievable women on my team directly that I'm getting to know more, and I'm so impressed with what they're doing. And this is a very, you know, while this industry is different than the world I live in day to day, it's also has a lot of common themes to it. So, you know, for us, we're trying to approach every day by saying, let's make sure both our interviewing cycles, the jobs we feel, how we recruit people, how we put people out there on the platforms, that we have diversity and inclusion and all of that every day. And I can tell you from the top, from Dave and all of our leaders, we just had an offsite and we had a big conversation about this is something. It's a drum beat that we have to think about and live by every day and really check ourselves on a regular basis. But I do think there's so much more room for women in the world to do great things. And one of the, one of the areas, as you know very well, we lost a lot of women during COVID, who just left the workforce again. So we kind of went back unfortunately. So we have to now move forward and make sure that we are giving women the opportunity to have great jobs, have the flexibility they need as they build a family, and have a workplace environment that is trusted for them to come into every day. >> There's now clear visibility, at least in today's world, not withstanding some of the setbacks from COVID, that a young girl can look out in a company and see a path from entry level to the boardroom. That's a big change. A lot than even going back 10, 15, 20 years ago. What's your advice to the folks out there that are paying it forward? You see a lot of executive leaderships have a seat at the table. The board still underrepresented by most numbers, but at least you have now kind of this solidarity at the top, but a lot of people doing a lot more now than I've seen at the next levels down. So now you have this leveled approach. Is that something that you're seeing more of? And credit compare and contrast that to 20 years ago when you were, you know, rising through the ranks? What's different? >> Well, one of the main things, and I honestly do not think about it too much, but there were really no women. There were none. When I showed up in the meetings, I literally, it was me or not me at the table, but at the seat behind the table. The women just weren't in the room, and there were so many more barriers that we had to push through, and that has changed a lot. I mean globally that has changed a lot in the U.S. You know, if you look at just our U.S. House of Representatives and our U.S. Senate, we now have the increasing number of women. Even at leadership levels, you're seeing that change. You have a lot more women on boards than we ever thought we would ever represent. While we are not there, more female CEOs that I get an opportunity to see and talk to. Women starting companies, they do not see the barriers. And I will share, John, globally in the U.S. one of the things that I still see that we have that many other countries don't have, which I'm very proud of, women in the U.S. have a spirit about them that they just don't see the barriers in the same way. They believe that they can accomplish anything. I have two sons, I don't have daughters. I have nieces, and I'm hoping someday to have granddaughters. But I know that a lot of my friends who have granddaughters today talk about the boldness, the fortitude, that they believe that there's nothing they can't accomplish. And I think that's what what we have to instill in every little girl out there, that they can accomplish anything they want to. The world is theirs, and we need to not just do that in the U.S., but around the world. And it was always the thing that struck me when I did all my travels at AWS and now with Flexport, I'm traveling again quite a bit, is just the differences you see in the cultures around the world. And I remember even in the Middle East, how I started seeing it change. You've heard me talk a lot on this program about the fact in both Saudi and Bahrain, over 60% of the tech workers were females and most of them held the the hardest jobs, the security, the architecture, the engineering. But many of them did not hold leadership roles. And that is what we've got to change too. To your point, the middle, we want it to get bigger, but the top, we need to get bigger. We need to make sure women globally have opportunities to hold the most precious leadership roles and demonstrate their capabilities at the very top. But that's changed. And I would say the biggest difference is when we show up, we're actually evaluated properly for those kind of roles. We have a ways to go. But again, that part is really changing. >> Can you share, Teresa, first of all, that's great work you've done and I wan to give you props of that as well and all the work you do. I know you champion a lot of, you know, causes in in this area. One question that comes up a lot, I would love to get your opinion 'cause I think you can contribute heavily here is mentoring and sponsorship is huge, comes up all the time. What advice would you share to folks out there who were, I won't say apprehensive, but maybe nervous about how to do the networking and sponsorship and mentoring? It's not just mentoring, it's sponsorship too. What's your best practice? What advice would you give for the best way to handle that? >> Well yeah, and for the women out there, I would say on the mentorship side, I still see mentorship. Like, I don't think you can ever stop having mentorship. And I like to look at my mentors in different parts of my life because if you want to be a well-rounded person, you may have parts of your life every day that you think I'm doing a great job here and I definitely would like to do better there. Whether it's your spiritual life, your physical life, your work life, you know, your leisure life. But I mean there's, and there's parts of my leadership world that I still seek advice from as I try to do new things even in this world. And I tried some new things in between roles. I went out and asked the people that I respected the most. So I just would say for sure have different mentorships and don't be afraid to have that diversity. But if you have mentorships, the second important thing is show up with a real agenda and questions. Don't waste people's time. I'm very sensitive today. If you're, if you want a mentor, you show up and you use your time super effectively and be prepared for that. Sponsorship is a very different thing. And I don't believe we actually do that still in companies. We worked, thank goodness for my great HR team. When I was at AWS, we worked on a few sponsorship programs where for diversity in general, where we would nominate individuals in the company that we felt that weren't, that had a lot of opportunity for growth, but they just weren't getting a seat at the table. And we brought 'em to the table. And we actually kind of had a Chatham House rules where when they came into the meetings, they had a sponsor, not a mentor. They had a sponsor that was with them the full 18 months of this program. We would bring 'em into executive meetings. They would read docs, they could ask questions. We wanted them to be able to open up and ask crazy questions without, you know, feeling wow, I just couldn't answer this question in a normal environment or setting. And then we tried to make sure once they got through the program that we found jobs and support and other special projects that they could go do. But they still had that sponsor and that group of individuals that they'd gone through the program with, John, that they could keep going back to. And I remember sitting there and they asked me what I wanted to get out of the program, and I said two things. I want you to leave this program and say to yourself, I would've never had that experience if I hadn't gone through this program. I learned so much in 18 months. It would probably taken me five years to learn. And that it helped them in their career. The second thing I told them is I wanted them to go out and recruit individuals that look like them. I said, we need diversity, and unless you all feel that we are in an inclusive environment sponsoring all types of individuals to be part of this company, we're not going to get the job done. And they said, okay. And you know, but it was really one, it was very much about them. That we took a group of individuals that had high potential and a very diverse with diverse backgrounds, held 'em up, taught 'em things that gave them access. And two, selfishly I said, I want more of you in my business. Please help me. And I think those kind of things are helpful, and you have to be thoughtful about these kind of programs. And to me that's more sponsorship. I still have people reach out to me from years ago, you know, Microsoft saying, you were so good with me, can you give me a reference now? Can you talk to me about what I should be doing? And I try to, I'm not pray 100%, some things pray fall through the cracks, but I always try to make the time to talk to those individuals because for me, I am where I am today because I got some of the best advice from people like Don Byrne and Linda Zecker and Andy Jassy, who were very honest and upfront with me about my career. >> Awesome. Well, you got a passion for empowering women in tech, paying it forward, but you're quite accomplished and that's why we're so glad to have you on the program here. President and Chief Commercial Officer at Flexport. Obviously storied career and your other jobs, specifically Amazon I think, is historic in my mind. This next chapter looks like it's looking good right now. Final question for you, for the few minutes you have left. Tell us what you're up to at Flexport. What's your goals as President, Chief Commercial Officer? What are you trying to accomplish? Share a little bit, what's on your mind with your current job? >> Well, you kind of said it earlier. I think if I look at my own superpowers, I love customers, I love partners. I get my energy, John, from those interactions. So one is to come in and really help us build even a better world class enterprise global sales and marketing team. Really listen to our customers, think about how we interact with them, build the best executive programs we can, think about new ways that we can offer services to them and create new services. One of my favorite things about my career is I think if you're a business leader, it's your job to come back around and tell your product group and your services org what you're hearing from customers. That's how you can be so much more impactful, that you listen, you learn, and you deliver. So that's one big job. The second job for me, which I am so excited about, is that I have an amazing group called flexport.org under me. And flexport.org is doing amazing things around the world to help those in need. We just announced this new funding program for Tech for Refugees, which brings assistance to millions of people in Ukraine, Pakistan, the horn of Africa, and those who are affected by earthquakes. We just took supplies into Turkey and Syria, and Flexport, recently in fact, just did sent three air shipments to Turkey and Syria for these. And I think we did over a hundred trekking shipments to get earthquake relief. And as you can imagine, it was not easy to get into Syria. But you know, we're very active in the Ukraine, and we are, our goal for flexport.org, John, is to continue to work with our commercial customers and team up with them when they're trying to get supplies in to do that in a very cost effective, easy way, as quickly as we can. So that not-for-profit side of me that I'm so, I'm so happy. And you know, Ryan Peterson, who was our founder, this was his brainchild, and he's really taken this to the next level. So I'm honored to be able to pick that up and look for new ways to have impact around the world. And you know, I've always found that I think if you do things right with a company, you can have a beautiful combination of commercial-ity and giving. And I think Flexport does it in such an amazing and unique way. >> Well, the impact that they have with their system and their technology with logistics and shipping and supply chain is a channel for societal change. And I think that's a huge gift that you have that under your purview. So looking forward to finding out more about flexport.org. I can only imagine all the exciting things around sustainability, and we just had Mobile World Congress for Big Cube Broadcast, 5Gs right around the corner. I'm sure that's going to have a huge impact to your business. >> Well, for sure. And just on gas emissions, that's another thing that we are tracking gas, greenhouse gas emissions. And in fact we've already reduced more than 300,000 tons and supported over 600 organizations doing that. So that's a thing we're also trying to make sure that we're being climate aware and ensuring that we are doing the best job we can at that as well. And that was another thing I was honored to be able to do when we were at AWS, is to really cut out greenhouse gas emissions and really go global with our climate initiatives. >> Well Teresa, it's great to have you on. Security, data, 5G, sustainability, business transformation, AI all coming together to change the game. You're in another hot seat, hot roll, big wave. >> Well, John, it's an honor, and just thank you again for doing this and having women on and really representing us in a big way as we celebrate International Women's Day. >> I really appreciate it, it's super important. And these videos have impact, so we're going to do a lot more. And I appreciate your leadership to the industry and thank you so much for taking the time to contribute to our effort. Thank you, Teresa. >> Thank you. Thanks everybody. >> Teresa Carlson, the President and Chief Commercial Officer of Flexport. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is International Women's Day broadcast. Thanks for watching. (upbeat outro music)

>>Hello friends and welcome back to Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, where we are live from the show floor at AWS Reinvent. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by my fabulous co-host John Furrier. John, how was your lunch? >>My lunch was great. Wasn't very complex like it is today, so it was very easy, >>Appropriate for the conversation we're about >>To have. Great, great guests coming up Cube alumni and great question around complexity and how is wellbeing teams be good? >>Yes. And, and and on that note, let's welcome John from DeWit as well as Danny from Inox. I swear I'll be able to say that right by the end of this. Thank you guys so much for being here. How's the show going for you? >>Excellent so far. It's been a great, a great event. You know, back back to pre Covid days, >>You're still smiling day three. That's an awesome sign. John, what about you? >>Fantastic. It's, it's been busier than ever >>That that's exciting. I, I think we certainly feel that way here on the cube. We're doing dozens of videos, it's absolutely awesome. Just in case. So we can dig in a little deeper throughout the rest of the segment just in case the audience isn't familiar, let's get them acquainted with your companies. Let's start with do it John. >>Yeah, thanks Savannah. So do it as a global technology company and we're partnering with deleted cloud providers around the world and digital native companies to provide value and solve complexity. John, to your, to your introductory point with all of the complexities associated with operating in the cloud, scaling a business in the cloud, a lot of companies are just looking to sort of have somebody else take care of that problem for them or have somebody they can call when they run into, you know, into problems scaling. And so with a combination of tech, advanced technology, some of the best cloud experts in the world and unlimited tech support or we're offloading a lot of those problems for our customers and we're doing that on a global basis. So it's, it's an exciting time. >>I can imagine pretty much everyone here on the show floor is dealing with that challenge of complexity. So a couple customers for you in the house. What about you Danny? >>I, I come from a company which operates in a financial industry market. So we essentially a global broker, financial trading broker. Which what this means for those people who don't really understand, essentially we allow clients to be able to trade digitally and speculate with different pricing, pricing tools online. We offer a different products for different type of clients. We have institutional clients, we've got our affiliates, partners programs and we've got a retail clients and this is where AWS and Doit comes handy allows us to offer our products digitally across the globe. And one of the key values for us here is that we can actually offer a product in regions where other people don't. So for example, we don't compete in North America, we don't compete in EME in Europe, but we just do it in AWS to solve our complex challenges in regions that naturally by, depending on where they base, they have like issues and that's how we deliver our product. >>And which regions, Latin >>America, Latin, the entire Africa, subcontinent, middle East, southeast Asia, the culture is just demographic is different. And what you used to have here is not exactly what you have over there. And obviously that brings a lot of challenges with onboarding and clients, deposit, trading activities, CDN latency, all of >>That stuff. It's interesting how each region's different in their, their posture with the cloud. Someone roll their own, someone outta the box. So again, this brings up this theme this year guys, which is about end to end seeing purpose built like specialty solutions. A lot of solutions going end to end with data makes kind of makes it more complicated. So again, we got more complexity coming, but the greatest the cloud is, you can abstract that away. So we are seeing this is a big opportunity for partners to innovate. You're seeing a lot of joint engineering, a lot more complexities coming still, but still end to end is the end game so to speak. >>A absolutely John, I mean one, one of the sort of ways we describe what we try to do for our customers like Equinox is to be your co-pilot in the cloud, which essentially means, you know, >>What an apt analogy. >>I think so, yeah, >>Well, well >>Done there. I think it works. Yvanna. Yeah, so, so as I mentioned, these are the majority or almost all of our customers are pretty sophisticated tech savvy companies. So they don't, you know, they know for most, for the most part what they're trying to achieve. They're approaching scale, they're at scale or they're, or they're through that scale point and they, they just wanna have somebody they can call, right? They need technology to help abstract away the complex problem. So they're not doing so much manual cloud operational work or sometimes they just need help picking the next tech right to solve the end to end use case that that they're, that they're dealing with >>In business. And Danny, you're rolling out solutions so you're on, you're on the front lines, you gotta make it easier. You didn't want to get in the weeds on something that should be taken care of. >>Correct. I mean one of the reasons we go do it is you need to, in order to involve do it, you need to know your problems, understand your challenges, also like a self review only. And you have to be one way halfway through the cloud journey. You need to know your problems, what you want to achieve, where you want to end up a roadmap for the next five years, what you want to achieve. Are we fixing or developing a building? And then involve those guys to come and help you because they cannot just come with magic one and fix all your problems. You need to do that yourself. It's not like starting the journey by yourself. >>Yeah. One thing that's not played up in this event, I will say they may, I don't, they missed, maybe Verner will hit it tomorrow, but I think they kind of missed it a little bit. But the developer productivity's been a big issue. We've seen that this year. One of the big themes on the cube is developer productivity, more velocity on the development side to keep pace with what's on, what solutions are rolling out the customers. And the other one is skills gap. So, and people like, and people have old skills, like we see VMware being bought by Broadcom for instance, got a lot of IT operators at VMware, they gotta go cloud somewhere. So you got new talent, existing talent, skill gaps, people are comfortable, yet the new stuff's there, developers gotta be more productive. How do you guys see that? Cuz that's gonna be how that plays now, it's gonna impact the channel, the partnership relationship, your ability to deliver. >>What's your reaction to that first? Well I think we obviously have a tech savvy team. We've got developers, we've got dev, we've got infrastructure guys, but we only got so much resource that we can afford. And essentially by evolving due it, I've doubled our staff. So we got a tech savvy senior solution architects which comes to do the sexy stuff, actually develop and design a new better offering, better product that makes us competitive. And this is where we involved, essentially we use the due IT staff as an staff employees that our demand is richly army of qualified people. We can actually cherry pick who we want for the call to do X, Y, and Z. And they're there to, to support you. We just have to ask for help. And this is how we fill our gap from technical skills or budget constrained within, you know, within recruitment. >>And I think, I think what, what Danny is touching on, John, what you mentioned is, is really the, the sort of the core family principle of the company, right? It's hard enough for companies like Equinox to hire staff that can help them build their business and deliver the value proposition that they're, that they see, right? And so our reason for existence is to sort of take care of the rest, right? We can help, you know, operate your cloud, show you the most effective way to do that. Whether they're finops problems, whether they're DevOps problems, whether dev SEC ops problems, all of these sort of classic operational problems that get 'em the way of the core business mission. You're not in the business of running the cloud, you're in the business of delivering customer value. We can help you, you know, manage your cloud >>And it's your job to do it. >>It is to do it >>Can, couldn't raise this upon there. How long have y'all been working together? >>I would say 15 months. We took, we took a bit of a conservative approach. We hope for the baseball, prepare for the worst. So I didn't trust do it. I give them one account, start with DEF U A C because you cannot, you just have to learn the journey yourself. So I think I would, my advice for clients is give it the six months. Once you establish a relationship, build a relationship, give them one by one start slowly. You actually understand by yourself the skills, the capacity that they have. And also the, for me consultants is really important And after that just opens up and we are now involving them. We've got new project, we've got problem statement. The first thing we do, we don't Google it, we just say do it. Log a ticket, we got the team. You're >>A verb. >>Yeah. So >>In this case we have >>The puns are on list here on the Cuban general. But with something like that, it's great. >>I gotta ask you a question cuz this is interesting John. You know, we talked last year on the cube and, and again this is an example of how innovations playing out. If you look at the announcements, Adam Celski did and then sw, he had 13 or so announcements. I won't say it's getting boring, but when you hear boring, boring is good. When you start getting into these, these gaps in the platforms as it grows. I won't say they was boring cause that really wasn't boring. I like the data >>Itself. It's all fascinating, John, >>But it, but it's a lot of gap filling, you know, 50 connectors you got, you know, yeah. All glue layers being built in AI's critical. The match cloud is there. What's the innovation? You got a lot of gaps being filled, boring is good. Like Kubernetes, we say there boring means, it's being invisible. That means it's going away. What's the exciting things from your perspective in cloud here? >>Well, I think, I mean, boring is an interesting word to use cuz a company with the heritage of AWS is constantly evolving. I mean, at the core of that company's culture is innovation, technology, development and innovation. And they're building for builders as, as you know, just as well as I do. Yeah. And so, but what we find across our customer base is that companies that are scaling or at scale are using maybe a smaller set of those services, but they're really leveraging them in interesting ways. And there is a very long tail of deeper, more sophisticated fit for purpose, more specific services. And Adam announced, you know, who knows him another 20 or 30 services and it's happening year after year after year. And I think one of the things that, that Danny might attest to is, I, I spoke about the reason we exist and the reason we form the company is we hold it very, a very critical part of our mission is to stay abreast of all of those developments as they emerge so that Danny and and his crew don't have to, right? And so when they have a, a, a question about SageMaker or they have a question about sort of the new big data service that Adam has announced, we take it very seriously. Our job is to be able to answer that question quickly and >>Accurately. And I notice your shirt, if you could just give a little shirt there, ops, cloud ops, DevOps do it. The intersection of the finance, the tuning is now we're hearing a lot of price performance, cost recovery, not cost recovery, but cost management. Yeah. Optimizing. So we're seeing building scale, but now, now tuning almost a craft, the craft of the cloud is here. What's your reaction to that? It, >>It absolutely is. And this is a story as old as the cloud, honestly. And companies, you know, they'll, they'll, companies tend to follow the same sort of maturity journey when they first start, whether they're migrating to the cloud or they were born in the cloud as most of our customers are. There's a, there's a, there's an, there's an access to visibility and understanding and optimization to tuning a craft to use your term. And, and cost management truly is a 10 year old problem that is as prevalent and relevant today as it was, you know, 10 years ago. And there's a lot of talk about the economics associated with the cloud and it's not, certainly not always cheaper to run. In fact, it rarely is cheaper to run your business from any of the public cloud providers. The key is to do it and right size it and make sure it's operating in accordance and alignment with your business, right? It's okay for cloud process to go up so long as your top line is also >>Selling your proportion. You spend more cloud to save cloud. That's it's >>Penny wise, pound full. It's always a little bit, always a little bit of a, of a >>Dilemma on, on the cost saving. We didn't want to just save money. If you want to save money, just shut down your services, right? So it's about making money. So this is where do it comes, like we actually start making, okay, we spend a bit more now, but in about six months time I will be making more money. And we've just did that. We roll out the new application for all the new product offering host to AWS fully with the guys support, a lot of long, boring, boring, boring calls, but they're productive because we actually now have a better product, competitive, it's tailored for our clients, it's cost effective. And we are actually making money >>When something's invisible. It's working, you know, talking about it means it's, it's, it's operational. >>It's exactly, it's, >>Well to that point, John, one of the things we're most proud of in, you know, know this year was, was the launch of our product we called Flex Save, which essentially does exactly what you've described. It's, it's looking for automation and, and, and, and automatic ways of, yes. Saving money, but offering the opportunities to, to to improve the economics associated with your cloud infrastructure. >>Yeah. And improving the efficiency across the board. A hundred percent. It, it's, oh, it's awesome. Let's, and, and it's, it's my understanding there's some reporting and insights that you're able to then translate through from do it to your CTO and across the company. Denny, what's that like? What do you get to see working >>With them? Well, the problem is, like the CTO asked me to do all of that. It is funny he thinks that he's doing it, but essentially they have a excellent portal that basically looks up all of our instances on the one place. You got like good analytics on your cost, cost, anomalies, budget, costal location. But I didn't want to do that either. So what I have done is taken the next step. I actually sold this to the, to my company completely. So my finance teams goes there, they do it themselves, they log in, check, check, all the billing, the costal location. I actually has zero iteration with them if I don't hear anything from them, which is one of the benefits. But also there is lot of other products like the Flexe is virtually like you just click a finger and you start saving money just like that. Easy >>Is that easy button we've been talking about on >>The show? Yeah, exactly, exactly how it is. But there is obviously outside of the cost management, you actually can look at what is the resource you using do actually need it, how often you use it, think about the long term goal, what you're trying to achieve, and use the analytics to, and actually I have to say the analytics much better than AWS in, in, in, in cmp. It's, it's just more user friendly, more interactive as opposed to, you know, building the one in aws. >>It's good business model. Make things easy for your customers. Easy, simple >>To use. >>It's gotta be nice to hear John. >>Well, so first of all, thank you daddy. >>We, we work, but in all seriousness, you know, we, we work, Danny mentioned the trust word earlier. This is at the core of if we don't, if we're not able to build trust with our clients, our business is dead. It, it just doesn't exist. It can't scale. In fact, it'll go the opposite direction. And so we're, we work very, very hard to earn that trust and we're willing to start small to Danny's example, start small and grow. And that's why we're very, one of the things we're most proud of is, is how few customers tend to leave us year over year. We have customers that have been with us for 10 years. >>You know, Andy, Jesse always has, I just saw an interview, he was on the New York Times event in New York today as a CEO of Amazon. But he's always said in these build out phases, you gotta work backwards from the customer and innovate on behalf of the customer. Cause that's the answer that will always be a good answer for the outcome versus optimizing for just profit, you know what I'm saying? Or other things. So we're still in build out mode, >>You know, as a, as a, as a core fundamental sort of product concept. If you're not solving important problems for our customer, what are you, why, why are you investing? It just >>Doesn't make it. This is the beauty we do it. We actually, they wait for you to come to do the next step. They don't sell me anything. They don't bug me with emails. They're ready. When you're ready to make that journey, you just log a ticket and then come and help you. And this is the beauty. You just, it's just not your, your journey. >>I love it. That's a, that's a beautiful note to lead us to our new tradition on the cube. We have a little bit of a challenge for the both of you. We're looking for your 32nd Instagram real thought leadership sizzle anecdote. Either one of you wanna go first. John looks a little nauseous. Danny, you wanna give it a go? >>Well, we've got a few expressions, but we don't Google it. We just do it. And the key take, that's what we do now at, at, and also what we do is actually using their stuff as an influence employees richly. Like that's what we do. >>Well done, well done. Didn't even need the 30 seconds. Fantastic work, Danny. I love that. All right, John, now you do have to go. Okay, >>I'll goodness. You know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll I'll go back to what I mentioned earlier, if that's okay. I think we, you know, we exist as a company to sort of help our customers get back to focusing on why they started the business in the first place, which is innovating and delivering value to customers. And we'll help you take care of the rest. It's as simple as that. Awesome. >>Well done. You absolutely nailed it. I wanna just acknowledge your fan club over there watching. Hello everyone from the doit team. Good job team. I love, it's very cute when guests show up with an entourage to the cube. We like to see it. You obviously deserve the entourage. You're, you're both wonderful. Thanks again for being here on the show with Oh yeah, go ahead >>John. Well, I would just like to thank Danny for, for agreeing to >>Discern, thankfully >>Great to spend time with you. Absolutely. Let's do it. >>Thank you. Yeah, >>Yeah. Fantastic gentlemen. Well thank you all for tuning into this wonderful start to the afternoon here from AWS Reinvent. We are in Las Vegas, Nevada with John Furier. My name's Savannah Peterson, you're watching The Cube, the leader in high tech coverage.

(relaxing intro music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's Coverage here live at reinvent 2022. We're here at the Executive Summit upstairs with the Accenture Set three sets broadcasting live four days with theCUBE. I'm John Furrier your host, with two great guests, cube alumnis, back Tanuja Randery, managing director Amazon web service for Europe middle East and Africa, known as EMEA. Welcome back to the Cube. >> Thank you. >> Great to see you. And Karthik Narain, who's the Accenture first cloud lead. Great to see you back again. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming back on. All right, so business transformation is all about digital transformation taken to its conclusion. When companies transform, they are now a digital business. Technologies powering value proposition, data security all in the keynotes higher level service at industry specific solutions. The dynamics of the industry are changing radically in front of our eyes for for the better. Karthik, what's your position on this as Accenture looks at this, we've covered all your successes during the pandemic with AWS. What, what do you guys see out there now as this next layer of power dynamics in the industry take place? >> I think cloud is getting interesting and I think there's a general trend towards specialization that's happening in the world of cloud. And cloud is also moving from a general purpose technology backbone to providing specific industry capabilities for every customer within various industries. But the industry cloud is not a new term. It has been used in the past and it's been used in the past in various degrees, whether that's building horizontal solutions, certain specialized SaaS software or providing capabilities that are horizontal for certain industries. But we see the evolution of industry cloud a little differently and a lot more dynamic, which is we see this as a marketplace where ecosystem of capabilities are going to come together to interact with a common data platform data backbone, data model with workflows that'll come together and integrate all of this stuff and help clients reinvent their industry with newer capabilities, but at the same time use the power of democratized innovation that's already there within that industry. So that's the kind of change we are seeing where customers in their strategy are going to implement industry cloud as one of the tenants as they go through their strategy. >> Yeah, and I see in my notes, fit for purposes is a buzzword people are talking about right size in the cloud and then just building on that. And what's interesting, Tanuja I want to get your thoughts because in the US we're one country, so yeah, integrating is kind of within services. You have purview over countries and these regions it's global impact. This is now a global environment. So it's not just the US North America, it's Latin America it's EMEA, this is another variable in the cross connecting of these fit for purpose. What's your view of the these industry specific solutions? >> Yeah, no and thanks Karthik 'cause I'm a hundred percent aligned. You know, I mean, you know this better than me, John, but 90% of workloads have not yet moved to the cloud. And the only way that we think that's going to happen is by bringing together business and IT. So what does that mean? It means starting with business use cases whether that's digital banking or smart connected factories or frankly if it's predictive maintenance or connected beds. But how do we take those use cases leverage them to really drive outcomes with the technology behind them? I think that's the key unlock that we have to get to. And very specifically, and Adam talked about this a lot today, but data, data is the single unifier for all of business and IT coming together to drive value, right? However, the issue is there's a ton of it, (John Furrier chuckling) right? In fact, fun fact if you put all the data that's going to be created over the next five years, which is more than the last 30 years, on a one terabyte little floppy, disk drive, remember those? Well that's going to be 15 round trips to the moon (John Furrier chuckling) and back. That's how much data it is. So our perspective is you got to unify, single data lake, you got to modernize with AI and ML, and then you're going to have to drive innovation on that. Now, I'll give you one tiny example if I may which I love Ryanair, big airline, 150 million passengers. They are also the largest supplier of ham and cheese sandwiches in the air. And catering at that scale is really difficult, right? If you have too much food wastage, sustainability issues, too little customers are really unhappy. So we work with them leveraging AWS cloud and AI ML to build a panini predictor. And in essence, it's taking the data they've got, data we've got, and actually giving them the opportunity to have just the right number of paninis. >> I love the lock and and the key is data to unlock the value. We heard that in the keynote. Karthik, you guys have been working together with AWS and a lot of successes. We've covered some of those on the cube. As you look at these industry solutions they're not the obvious big problems. They're like businesses, you know it could be the pizza shop it could be the dentist office, it could be any business any industry specific carries over. What is the key to unlock it? Is it the data? Is it the solution? What's that key? >> I think, you know the easier answer is all of the about, but like Tanuja said it all starts by bringing the data together and this is a funny thing. It's not creating new data. This data is there within enterprises. Our clients have these data the industries have the data, but for ages these data has been trapped in functional silos and organizations have been doing analytics within those functions. It's about bringing the data together whether that's a single data warehouse or a data mesh. Those are architectural considerations. But it's about bringing cross-functional data together as step one. Step two, is about utilizing the power of cloud for democratized innovation. It's no longer about one company trying to reinvent the wheel, or create a a new wheel within their enterprise. It's about looking around through the power of cloud marketplace to see if there's a solution that is already existing can we use that? Or if I've created something within my company can I use that as a service for others to use? So, the number one thing is using the power of democratized innovation. Second thing is how do you standardize and digitize functions that does not need to be reinvented every single time so that, you know, your organization can do it or you could use that or take that from elsewhere. And the third element is using the power of the platform economy or platforms to find new avenues of revenue opportunity, customer engagement and experiences. So these are all the things that differentiates organization, but all of this is underpinned by a unified data model that helps, you know, use all the (indistinct) there. >> Tanuja, you have mentioned earlier that not everyone has their journey of the cloud looks the same and certainly in the US and EMEA you have different countries and different areas. >> Yep. >> Their journeys are different. Some want speed and fees, some will roll their own. I mean data brick CEO, when I interviewed them that last week, they started database on a credit card swiped it and they didn't want any support. Amazon's knocking on their door saying, "you want support?" "No, we got it covered." Obviously they're from Berkeley and they're nerds, and they're cool. They can roll their own, but not everyone can. >> Yeah. >> And so you have a mix of customer profiles. How do you view that and what's your strategy? How do you get them over productive seeing that business value? What's that transformation look like? >> Yeah, John, you're absolutely right. So you've got those who are born in cloud, they're very savvy, they know exactly what they need. However, what I do find increasingly, even with these digital native customers, is they're also starting to talk business use cases. So they're talking about, "okay how do I take my platform and build a whole bunch of new services on top of that platform?" So, we still have to work with them on this business use case dimension for the next curve of growth that they want to drive. Currently with the global macroeconomic factors obviously they're also very concerned about profitability and costs. So that's one model. In the enterprise space, you have differences. >> Yeah. >> Right, You have the sort of very, very, very savvy enterprises, right? Who know exactly what they're looking for. But for them then it's about how do I lean into sustainability? In fact, we did a survey, and 77% of users that we surveyed said that they could accelerate their sustainably goals by using cloud. So in many cases they haven't cracked that and we can help them do that. So it's really about horses for courses there. And then, then with some other companies, they've done a lot of the basic infrastructure modernization. However, what they haven't been able to yet do is figure out how they're going to actually become a tech company. So I keep getting asked, can I become a tech company? How do I do that? Right? And then finally there are companies which don't have the skills. So if I go to the SMB segment, they don't always have the skills or the resources. And there using scalable market platforms like AWS marketplace, >> Yeah. >> Allows them to get access to solutions without having to have all the capabilities. So it really is- >> This is where partner network really kind of comes in. >> Absolutely. >> Huge value. Having that channel of solution providers I use that term specifically 'cause you're providing the solution for those folks. >> Yeah. Exact- >> And then the folks at the enterprise, we had a quote on the analyst segment earlier on our Cube, "spend more, save more." >> Yeah. >> That's the cloud equations, >> Yeah. because you're going to get it on sustainability you're going to save it on, you're going to save on cost recovery for revenue, time to revenue. So the cloud is the answer for a lot of enterprises out of the recession. >> Absolutely, and in fact, we need to lean in now you heard Adam say this, right? I mean the cost savings potential alone from on-prem to cloud is between 40 and 60 percent. Just that. But I don't think that's it John. >> The bell tightening he said is reigning some right size. Okay, but then also do more, he didn't say that, but analysts are generally saying, if you spend right on the cloud, you'll save more. That's a general thesis. >> Yeah. >> Do you agree with that? >> I absolutely think so. And by the way, usage is, people use it differently as they get smarter. We're constantly working with our customers by the way though, to continuously cost optimize. So you heard about our Graviton3 instances for example. We're using that to constantly optimize, but at the same time, what are the workloads that you haven't yet brought over to the cloud? (John Furrier chuckling) And so supply chain is a great idea. Our health cloud initiative. So we worked with Accenture on the Accenture Health Insights platform, which runs on AWS as an example or the Goldman Sachs one last year, if you remember. >> I do >> The financial cloud. So those, those are some of the things that I think make it easier for people to consume cloud and reimagine their businesses. >> It's funny, I was talking with Adam and we had a little debate about what an ISV is and I talked to the CEO of Mongo. They don't see themselves on the ISV. As they grew up on the cloud, they become platforms, they have their own ISVs and data bricks and Snowflake and others are developing that dynamic. But there's still ISVs out there. So there's a dynamic of growth going on and the need for partners and our belief is that the ecosystem is going to start doubling in size we believe, because of the demand for purpose built or so out of the box. I hate to use that word "out of the box", but you know turnkey solutions that you can buy another one if it breaks. But use the building blocks if you want to build the foundation. That is more durable, more customizable. Do that if you can. >> Well, >> but- >> we've got a phenomenal, >> shall we talk about this? >> Yeah, go get into- >> So, we've built a five year vision together, Accenture and us. which is called Velocity and you'll be much better in describing it, but I'll give you the simple version of Velocity which is taking AWS powered industry solutions and bringing it to market faster, more repeatable and at lower cost. And so think about vertical solutions sitting on a horizontal accelerator platform able to be deployed making transformation less complex. >> Yeah. >> Karthik, weight in on this, because I've talked to you about this before. We've said years ago the horizontal scalability of the cloud's a beautiful thing but verticals where the ML works great too. Now you got ML in all aspects of it. Horizontal verticals here now. >> Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Again, the power of this kind of platform that we are launching, by the way we're launching tomorrow we are very excited about it, is, create a platform- >> What are you launching tomorrow? Hold on, I got news out there. What's launching? >> We are going to launch a giant platform, which will help clients accelerate their journey to industry cloud. So that's going to happen tomorrow. So what this platform would provide is that this is going to provide the horizontal capabilities that will help clients bootstrap their launch into cloud. And once they get into cloud, they would be able to build industry solutions on this. The way I imagine this is create the chassis that you need for your industry and then add the cartridges, industry cartridges, which are going to be solutions that are going to be built on top of it. And we are going to do this across various industries starting from, you know, healthcare, life sciences to energy to, you know, public services and so on and so forth >> You're going to create a channel machine. A channel creation machine, you're going to allow people to build their own solutions on top of that platform. And that's launching tomorrow. Make sure we get the news on that. >> Exactly. And- >> Ah, No, >> Sorry, and we genuinely believe the power of industry cloud, if you think about it in the past to create a solution one had to be an ISV to create a solution. What cloud is providing for industry today in the concept of industry clouds, this, industry companies are creating industry solution. The best example is, along with, you know, AWS and Accenture, Ecopetrol, which is a leader in the energy industry, has created a platform, you know called Water Intelligence and Management platform. And through this platform, they are attacking the audacious goal of water sustainability, which is going to be a huge problem for humanity that everybody needs to solve. As part of this platform, the goal is to reduce, you know, fresh water usage by 66% or zero, you know, you know, impact to, you know, groundwater is going to be the goal or ambition of Ecopetrol. So all of this is possible because industry players want to jump to the bandwagon because they have all the toolkit of of the cloud that's available with which they could build a software platform with which they can power their entire industry. >> And make money and have a good business. You guys are doing great. Final word, partnership. Where's it go next? You're doing great. Put a plugin for the Accenture AWS partnership. >> Well, I mean we have a phenomenal relationship and partnership, which is amazing. We really believe in the power of three which is the GSI, the ISV, and us together. And I have to go back to the thing I keep focused on 90% of workloads not in cloud. I think together we can enable those companies to come into the cloud. Very importantly, start to innovate launch new products and refuel the economy. So I think- >> We'll have to check on that >> Very, very optimistic. >> We'll have to check on that number. >> That seems a little- >> You got to check on that number. >> 90 seems a little bit amazing. >> 90% of workloads. >> That sounds, maybe, I'd be surprised. Maybe a little bit lower than that. Maybe. We'll see. >> We got to start turning it. >> It's still a lot. >> (laughs) It's still a lot. >> A lot more. Still first, still early days. Thanks so much for the conversation Karthik great to see you again Tanuja, thanks for your time. >> Thank you, John. >> Congratulations, on your success. Okay, this is theCube up here in the executive summit. You're watching theCube, the leader in high tech coverage, we'll be right back with more coverage here, and the Accenture set after the short break. (calm outro music)

hello I'm John Furrier with thecube and welcome to this special presentation of the cube and Horizon 3.ai they're announcing a global partner first approach expanding their successful pen testing product Net Zero you're going to hear from leading experts in their staff their CEO positioning themselves for a successful Channel distribution expansion internationally in Europe Middle East Africa and Asia Pacific in this Cube special presentation you'll hear about the expansion the expanse partner program giving Partners a unique opportunity to offer Net Zero to their customers Innovation and Pen testing is going International with Horizon 3.ai enjoy the program [Music] welcome back everyone to the cube and Horizon 3.ai special presentation I'm John Furrier host of thecube we're here with Jennifer Lee head of Channel sales at Horizon 3.ai Jennifer welcome to the cube thanks for coming on great well thank you for having me so big news around Horizon 3.aa driving Channel first commitment you guys are expanding the channel partner program to include all kinds of new rewards incentives training programs help educate you know Partners really drive more recurring Revenue certainly cloud and Cloud scale has done that you got a great product that fits into that kind of Channel model great Services you can wrap around it good stuff so let's get into it what are you guys doing what are what are you guys doing with this news why is this so important yeah for sure so um yeah we like you said we recently expanded our Channel partner program um the driving force behind it was really just um to align our like you said our Channel first commitment um and creating awareness around the importance of our partner ecosystems um so that's it's really how we go to market is is through the channel and a great International Focus I've talked with the CEO so you know about the solution and he broke down all the action on why it's important on the product side but why now on the go to market change what's the what's the why behind this big this news on the channel yeah for sure so um we are doing this now really to align our business strategy which is built on the concept of enabling our partners to create a high value high margin business on top of our platform and so um we offer a solution called node zero it provides autonomous pen testing as a service and it allows organizations to continuously verify their security posture um so we our company vision we have this tagline that states that our pen testing enables organizations to see themselves Through The Eyes of an attacker and um we use the like the attacker's perspective to identify exploitable weaknesses and vulnerabilities so we created this partner program from a perspective of the partner so the partner's perspective and we've built It Through The Eyes of our partner right so we're prioritizing really what the partner is looking for and uh will ensure like Mutual success for us yeah the partners always want to get in front of the customers and bring new stuff to them pen tests have traditionally been really expensive uh and so bringing it down in one to a service level that's one affordable and has flexibility to it allows a lot of capability so I imagine people getting excited by it so I have to ask you about the program What specifically are you guys doing can you share any details around what it means for the partners what they get what's in it for them can you just break down some of the mechanics and mechanisms or or details yeah yep um you know we're really looking to create business alignment um and like I said establish Mutual success with our partners so we've got two um two key elements that we were really focused on um that we bring to the partners so the opportunity the profit margin expansion is one of them and um a way for our partners to really differentiate themselves and stay relevant in the market so um we've restructured our discount model really um you know highlighting profitability and maximizing profitability and uh this includes our deal registration we've we've created deal registration program we've increased discount for partners who take part in our partner certification uh trainings and we've we have some other partner incentives uh that we we've created that that's going to help out there we've we put this all so we've recently Gone live with our partner portal um it's a Consolidated experience for our partners where they can access our our sales tools and we really view our partners as an extension of our sales and Technical teams and so we've extended all of our our training material that we use internally we've made it available to our partners through our partner portal um we've um I'm trying I'm thinking now back what else is in that partner portal here we've got our partner certification information so all the content that's delivered during that training can be found in the portal we've got deal registration uh um co-branded marketing materials pipeline management and so um this this portal gives our partners a One-Stop place to to go to find all that information um and then just really quickly on the second part of that that I mentioned is our technology really is um really disruptive to the market so you know like you said autonomous pen testing it's um it's still it's well it's still still relatively new topic uh for security practitioners and um it's proven to be really disruptive so um that on top of um just well recently we found an article that um that mentioned by markets and markets that reports that the global pen testing markets really expanding and so it's expected to grow to like 2.7 billion um by 2027. so the Market's there right the Market's expanding it's growing and so for our partners it's just really allows them to grow their revenue um across their customer base expand their customer base and offering this High profit margin while you know getting in early to Market on this just disruptive technology big Market a lot of opportunities to make some money people love to put more margin on on those deals especially when you can bring a great solution that everyone knows is hard to do so I think that's going to provide a lot of value is there is there a type of partner that you guys see emerging or you aligning with you mentioned the alignment with the partners I can see how that the training and the incentives are all there sounds like it's all going well is there a type of partner that's resonating the most or is there categories of partners that can take advantage of this yeah absolutely so we work with all different kinds of Partners we work with our traditional resale Partners um we've worked we're working with systems integrators we have a really strong MSP mssp program um we've got Consulting partners and the Consulting Partners especially with the ones that offer pen test services so we they use us as a as we act as a force multiplier just really offering them profit margin expansion um opportunity there we've got some technology partner partners that we really work with for co-cell opportunities and then we've got our Cloud Partners um you'd mentioned that earlier and so we are in AWS Marketplace so our ccpo partners we're part of the ISP accelerate program um so we we're doing a lot there with our Cloud partners and um of course we uh we go to market with uh distribution Partners as well gotta love the opportunity for more margin expansion every kind of partner wants to put more gross profit on their deals is there a certification involved I have to ask is there like do you get do people get certified or is it just you get trained is it self-paced training is it in person how are you guys doing the whole training certification thing because is that is that a requirement yeah absolutely so we do offer a certification program and um it's been very popular this includes a a seller's portion and an operator portion and and so um this is at no cost to our partners and um we operate both virtually it's it's law it's virtually but live it's not self-paced and we also have in person um you know sessions as well and we also can customize these to any partners that have a large group of people and we can just we can do one in person or virtual just specifically for that partner well any kind of incentive opportunities and marketing opportunities everyone loves to get the uh get the deals just kind of rolling in leads from what we can see if our early reporting this looks like a hot product price wise service level wise what incentive do you guys thinking about and and Joint marketing you mentioned co-sell earlier in pipeline so I was kind of kind of honing in on that piece sure and yes and then to follow along with our partner certification program we do incentivize our partners there if they have a certain number certified their discount increases so that's part of it we have our deal registration program that increases discount as well um and then we do have some um some partner incentives that are wrapped around meeting setting and um moving moving opportunities along to uh proof of value gotta love the education driving value I have to ask you so you've been around the industry you've seen the channel relationships out there you're seeing companies old school new school you know uh Horizon 3.ai is kind of like that new school very cloud specific a lot of Leverage with we mentioned AWS and all the clouds um why is the company so hot right now why did you join them and what's why are people attracted to this company what's the what's the attraction what's the vibe what do you what do you see and what what do you use what did you see in in this company well this is just you know like I said it's very disruptive um it's really in high demand right now and um and and just because because it's new to Market and uh a newer technology so we are we can collaborate with a manual pen tester um we can you know we can allow our customers to run their pen test um with with no specialty teams and um and and then so we and like you know like I said we can allow our partners can actually build businesses profitable businesses so we can they can use our product to increase their services revenue and um and build their business model you know around around our services what's interesting about the pen test thing is that it's very expensive and time consuming the people who do them are very talented people that could be working on really bigger things in the in absolutely customers so bringing this into the channel allows them if you look at the price Delta between a pen test and then what you guys are offering I mean that's a huge margin Gap between street price of say today's pen test and what you guys offer when you show people that they follow do they say too good to be true I mean what are some of the things that people say when you kind of show them that are they like scratch their head like come on what's the what's the catch here right so the cost savings is a huge is huge for us um and then also you know like I said working as a force multiplier with a pen testing company that offers the services and so they can they can do their their annual manual pen tests that may be required around compliance regulations and then we can we can act as the continuous verification of their security um um you know that that they can run um weekly and so it's just um you know it's just an addition to to what they're offering already and an expansion so Jennifer thanks for coming on thecube really appreciate you uh coming on sharing the insights on the channel uh what's next what can we expect from the channel group what are you thinking what's going on right so we're really looking to expand our our Channel um footprint and um very strategically uh we've got um we've got some big plans um for for Horizon 3.ai awesome well thanks for coming on really appreciate it you're watching thecube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to the Cube's special presentation with Horizon 3.ai with Raina Richter vice president of emea Europe Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific APAC for Horizon 3 today welcome to this special Cube presentation thanks for joining us thank you for the invitation so Horizon 3 a guy driving Global expansion big international news with a partner first approach you guys are expanding internationally let's get into it you guys are driving this new expanse partner program to new heights tell us about it what are you seeing in the momentum why the expansion what's all the news about well I would say uh yeah in in international we have I would say a similar similar situation like in the US um there is a global shortage of well-educated penetration testers on the one hand side on the other side um we have a raising demand of uh network and infrastructure security and with our approach of an uh autonomous penetration testing I I believe we are totally on top of the game um especially as we have also now uh starting with an international instance that means for example if a customer in Europe is using uh our service node zero he will be connected to a node zero instance which is located inside the European Union and therefore he has doesn't have to worry about the conflict between the European the gdpr regulations versus the US Cloud act and I would say there we have a total good package for our partners that they can provide differentiators to their customers you know we've had great conversations here on thecube with the CEO and the founder of the company around the leverage of the cloud and how successful that's been for the company and honestly I can just Connect the Dots here but I'd like you to weigh in more on how that translates into the go to market here because you got great Cloud scale with with the security product you guys are having success with great leverage there I've seen a lot of success there what's the momentum on the channel partner program internationally why is it so important to you is it just the regional segmentation is it the economics why the momentum well there are it's there are multiple issues first of all there is a raising demand in penetration testing um and don't forget that uh in international we have a much higher level in number a number or percentage in SMB and mid-market customers so these customers typically most of them even didn't have a pen test done once a year so for them pen testing was just too expensive now with our offering together with our partners we can provide different uh ways how customers could get an autonomous pen testing done more than once a year with even lower costs than they had with with a traditional manual paint test so and that is because we have our uh Consulting plus package which is for typically pain testers they can go out and can do a much faster much quicker and their pain test at many customers once in after each other so they can do more pain tests on a lower more attractive price on the other side there are others what even the same ones who are providing um node zero as an mssp service so they can go after s p customers saying okay well you only have a couple of hundred uh IP addresses no worries we have the perfect package for you and then you have let's say the mid Market let's say the thousands and more employees then they might even have an annual subscription very traditional but for all of them it's all the same the customer or the service provider doesn't need a piece of Hardware they only need to install a small piece of a Docker container and that's it and that makes it so so smooth to go in and say okay Mr customer we just put in this this virtual attacker into your network and that's it and and all the rest is done and within within three clicks they are they can act like a pen tester with 20 years of experience and that's going to be very Channel friendly and partner friendly I can almost imagine so I have to ask you and thank you for calling the break calling out that breakdown and and segmentation that was good that was very helpful for me to understand but I want to follow up if you don't mind um what type of partners are you seeing the most traction with and why well I would say at the beginning typically you have the the innovators the early adapters typically Boutique size of Partners they start because they they are always looking for Innovation and those are the ones you they start in the beginning so we have a wide range of Partners having mostly even um managed by the owner of the company so uh they immediately understand okay there is the value and they can change their offering they're changing their offering in terms of penetration testing because they can do more pen tests and they can then add other ones or we have those ones who offer 10 tests services but they did not have their own pen testers so they had to go out on the open market and Source paint testing experts um to get the pen test at a particular customer done and now with node zero they're totally independent they can't go out and say okay Mr customer here's the here's the service that's it we turn it on and within an hour you're up and running totally yeah and those pen tests are usually expensive and hard to do now it's right in line with the sales delivery pretty interesting for a partner absolutely but on the other hand side we are not killing the pain testers business we do something we're providing with no tiers I would call something like the foundation work the foundational work of having an an ongoing penetration testing of the infrastructure the operating system and the pen testers by themselves they can concentrate in the future on things like application pen testing for example so those Services which we we're not touching so we're not killing the paint tester Market we're just taking away the ongoing um let's say foundation work call it that way yeah yeah that was one of my questions I was going to ask is there's a lot of interest in this autonomous pen testing one because it's expensive to do because those skills are required are in need and they're expensive so you kind of cover the entry level and the blockers that are in there I've seen people say to me this pen test becomes a blocker for getting things done so there's been a lot of interest in the autonomous pen testing and for organizations to have that posture and it's an overseas issue too because now you have that that ongoing thing so can you explain that particular benefit for an organization to have that continuously verifying an organization's posture yep certainly so I would say um typically you are you you have to do your patches you have to bring in new versions of operating systems of different Services of uh um operating systems of some components and and they are always bringing new vulnerabilities the difference here is that with node zero we are telling the customer or the partner package we're telling them which are the executable vulnerabilities because previously they might have had um a vulnerability scanner so this vulnerability scanner brought up hundreds or even thousands of cves but didn't say anything about which of them are vulnerable really executable and then you need an expert digging in one cve after the other finding out is it is it really executable yes or no and that is where you need highly paid experts which we have a shortage so with notes here now we can say okay we tell you exactly which ones are the ones you should work on because those are the ones which are executable we rank them accordingly to the risk level how easily they can be used and by a sudden and then the good thing is convert it or indifference to the traditional penetration test they don't have to wait for a year for the next pain test to find out if the fixing was effective they weren't just the next scan and say Yes closed vulnerability is gone the time is really valuable and if you're doing any devops Cloud native you're always pushing new things so pen test ongoing pen testing is actually a benefit just in general as a kind of hygiene so really really interesting solution really bring that global scale is going to be a new new coverage area for us for sure I have to ask you if you don't mind answering what particular region are you focused on or plan to Target for this next phase of growth well at this moment we are concentrating on the countries inside the European Union Plus the United Kingdom um but we are and they are of course logically I'm based into Frankfurt area that means we cover more or less the countries just around so it's like the total dark region Germany Switzerland Austria plus the Netherlands but we also already have Partners in the nordics like in Finland or in Sweden um so it's it's it it's rapidly we have Partners already in the UK and it's rapidly growing so I'm for example we are now starting with some activities in Singapore um um and also in the in the Middle East area um very important we uh depending on let's say the the way how to do business currently we try to concentrate on those countries where we can have um let's say um at least English as an accepted business language great is there any particular region you're having the most success with right now is it sounds like European Union's um kind of first wave what's them yes that's the first definitely that's the first wave and now we're also getting the uh the European instance up and running it's clearly our commitment also to the market saying okay we know there are certain dedicated uh requirements and we take care of this and and we're just launching it we're building up this one uh the instance um in the AWS uh service center here in Frankfurt also with some dedicated Hardware internet in a data center in Frankfurt where we have with the date six by the way uh the highest internet interconnection bandwidth on the planet so we have very short latency to wherever you are on on the globe that's a great that's a great call outfit benefit too I was going to ask that what are some of the benefits your partners are seeing in emea and Asia Pacific well I would say um the the benefits is for them it's clearly they can they can uh talk with customers and can offer customers penetration testing which they before and even didn't think about because it penetrates penetration testing in a traditional way was simply too expensive for them too complex the preparation time was too long um they didn't have even have the capacity uh to um to support a pain an external pain tester now with this service you can go in and say even if they Mr customer we can do a test with you in a couple of minutes within we have installed the docker container within 10 minutes we have the pen test started that's it and then we just wait and and I would say that is we'll we are we are seeing so many aha moments then now because on the partner side when they see node zero the first time working it's like this wow that is great and then they work out to customers and and show it to their typically at the beginning mostly the friendly customers like wow that's great I need that and and I would say um the feedback from the partners is that is a service where I do not have to evangelize the customer everybody understands penetration testing I don't have to say describe what it is they understand the customer understanding immediately yes penetration testing good about that I know I should do it but uh too complex too expensive now with the name is for example as an mssp service provided from one of our partners but it's getting easy yeah it's great and it's great great benefit there I mean I gotta say I'm a huge fan of what you guys are doing I like this continuous automation that's a major benefit to anyone doing devops or any kind of modern application development this is just a godsend for them this is really good and like you said the pen testers that are doing it they were kind of coming down from their expertise to kind of do things that should have been automated they get to focus on the bigger ticket items that's a really big point so we free them we free the pain testers for the higher level elements of the penetration testing segment and that is typically the application testing which is currently far away from being automated yeah and that's where the most critical workloads are and I think this is the nice balance congratulations on the international expansion of the program and thanks for coming on this special presentation really I really appreciate it thank you you're welcome okay this is thecube special presentation you know check out pen test automation International expansion Horizon 3 dot AI uh really Innovative solution in our next segment Chris Hill sector head for strategic accounts will discuss the power of Horizon 3.ai and Splunk in action you're watching the cube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage foreign [Music] [Music] welcome back everyone to the cube and Horizon 3.ai special presentation I'm John Furrier host of thecube we're with Chris Hill sector head for strategic accounts and federal at Horizon 3.ai a great Innovative company Chris great to see you thanks for coming on thecube yeah like I said uh you know great to meet you John long time listener first time caller so excited to be here with you guys yeah we were talking before camera you had Splunk back in 2013 and I think 2012 was our first splunk.com and boy man you know talk about being in the right place at the right time now we're at another inflection point and Splunk continues to be relevant um and continuing to have that data driving Security in that interplay and your CEO former CTO of his plug as well at Horizon who's been on before really Innovative product you guys have but you know yeah don't wait for a breach to find out if you're logging the right data this is the topic of this thread Splunk is very much part of this new international expansion announcement uh with you guys tell us what are some of the challenges that you see where this is relevant for the Splunk and Horizon AI as you guys expand uh node zero out internationally yeah well so across so you know my role uh within Splunk it was uh working with our most strategic accounts and so I looked back to 2013 and I think about the sales process like working with with our small customers you know it was um it was still very siled back then like I was selling to an I.T team that was either using this for it operations um we generally would always even say yeah although we do security we weren't really designed for it we're a log management tool and we I'm sure you remember back then John we were like sort of stepping into the security space and and the public sector domain that I was in you know security was 70 of what we did when I look back to sort of uh the transformation that I was witnessing in that digital transformation um you know when I look at like 2019 to today you look at how uh the IT team and the security teams are being have been forced to break down those barriers that they used to sort of be silent away would not commute communicate one you know the security guys would be like oh this is my box I.T you're not allowed in today you can't get away with that and I think that the value that we bring to you know and of course Splunk has been a huge leader in that space and continues to do Innovation across the board but I think what we've we're seeing in the space and I was talking with Patrick Coughlin the SVP of uh security markets about this is that you know what we've been able to do with Splunk is build a purpose-built solution that allows Splunk to eat more data so Splunk itself is ulk know it's an ingest engine right the great reason people bought it was you could build these really fast dashboards and grab intelligence out of it but without data it doesn't do anything right so how do you drive and how do you bring more data in and most importantly from a customer perspective how do you bring the right data in and so if you think about what node zero and what we're doing in a horizon 3 is that sure we do pen testing but because we're an autonomous pen testing tool we do it continuously so this whole thought I'd be like oh crud like my customers oh yeah we got a pen test coming up it's gonna be six weeks the week oh yeah you know and everyone's gonna sit on their hands call me back in two months Chris we'll talk to you then right not not a real efficient way to test your environment and shoot we saw that with Uber this week right um you know and that's a case where we could have helped oh just right we could explain the Uber thing because it was a contractor just give a quick highlight of what happened so you can connect the doctor yeah no problem so um it was uh I got I think it was yeah one of those uh you know games where they would try and test an environment um and with the uh pen tester did was he kept on calling them MFA guys being like I need to reset my password we need to set my right password and eventually the um the customer service guy said okay I'm resetting it once he had reset and bypassed the multi-factor authentication he then was able to get in and get access to the building area that he was in or I think not the domain but he was able to gain access to a partial part of that Network he then paralleled over to what I would assume is like a VA VMware or some virtual machine that had notes that had all of the credentials for logging into various domains and So within minutes they had access and that's the sort of stuff that we do you know a lot of these tools like um you know you think about the cacophony of tools that are out there in a GTA architect architecture right I'm gonna get like a z-scale or I'm going to have uh octum and I have a Splunk I've been into the solar system I mean I don't mean to name names we have crowdstriker or Sentinel one in there it's just it's a cacophony of things that don't work together they weren't designed work together and so we have seen so many times in our business through our customer support and just working with customers when we do their pen tests that there will be 5 000 servers out there three are misconfigured those three misconfigurations will create the open door because remember the hacker only needs to be right once the defender needs to be right all the time and that's the challenge and so that's what I'm really passionate about what we're doing uh here at Horizon three I see this my digital transformation migration and security going on which uh we're at the tip of the spear it's why I joined sey Hall coming on this journey uh and just super excited about where the path's going and super excited about the relationship with Splunk I get into more details on some of the specifics of that but um you know well you're nailing I mean we've been doing a lot of things on super cloud and this next gen environment we're calling it next gen you're really seeing devops obviously devsecops has already won the it role has moved to the developer shift left is an indicator of that it's one of the many examples higher velocity code software supply chain you hear these things that means that it is now in the developer hands it is replaced by the new Ops data Ops teams and security where there's a lot of horizontal thinking to your point about access there's no more perimeter huge 100 right is really right on things one time you know to get in there once you're in then you can hang out move around move laterally big problem okay so we get that now the challenges for these teams as they are transitioning organizationally how do they figure out what to do okay this is the next step they already have Splunk so now they're kind of in transition while protecting for a hundred percent ratio of success so how would you look at that and describe the challenge is what do they do what is it what are the teams facing with their data and what's next what are they what are they what action do they take so let's use some vernacular that folks will know so if I think about devsecops right we both know what that means that I'm going to build security into the app it normally talks about sec devops right how am I building security around the perimeter of what's going inside my ecosystem and what are they doing and so if you think about what we're able to do with somebody like Splunk is we can pen test the entire environment from Soup To Nuts right so I'm going to test the end points through to its I'm going to look for misconfigurations I'm going to I'm going to look for um uh credential exposed credentials you know I'm going to look for anything I can in the environment again I'm going to do it at light speed and and what what we're doing for that SEC devops space is to you know did you detect that we were in your environment so did we alert Splunk or the Sim that there's someone in the environment laterally moving around did they more importantly did they log us into their environment and when do they detect that log to trigger that log did they alert on us and then finally most importantly for every CSO out there is going to be did they stop us and so that's how we we do this and I think you when speaking with um stay Hall before you know we've come up with this um boils but we call it fine fix verifying so what we do is we go in is we act as the attacker right we act in a production environment so we're not going to be we're a passive attacker but we will go in on credentialed on agents but we have to assume to have an assumed breach model which means we're going to put a Docker container in your environment and then we're going to fingerprint the environment so we're going to go out and do an asset survey now that's something that's not something that Splunk does super well you know so can Splunk see all the assets do the same assets marry up we're going to log all that data and think and then put load that into this long Sim or the smoke logging tools just to have it in Enterprise right that's an immediate future ad that they've got um and then we've got the fix so once we've completed our pen test um we are then going to generate a report and we can talk about these in a little bit later but the reports will show an executive summary the assets that we found which would be your asset Discovery aspect of that a fix report and the fixed report I think is probably the most important one it will go down and identify what we did how we did it and then how to fix that and then from that the pen tester or the organization should fix those then they go back and run another test and then they validate like a change detection environment to see hey did those fixes taste play take place and you know snehaw when he was the CTO of jsoc he shared with me a number of times about it's like man there would be 15 more items on next week's punch sheet that we didn't know about and it's and it has to do with how we you know how they were uh prioritizing the cves and whatnot because they would take all CBDs it was critical or non-critical and it's like we are able to create context in that environment that feeds better information into Splunk and whatnot that brings that brings up the efficiency for Splunk specifically the teams out there by the way the burnout thing is real I mean this whole I just finished my list and I got 15 more or whatever the list just can keeps growing how did node zero specifically help Splunk teams be more efficient like that's the question I want to get at because this seems like a very scale way for Splunk customers and teams service teams to be more so the question is how does node zero help make Splunk specifically their service teams be more efficient so so today in our early interactions we're building customers we've seen are five things um and I'll start with sort of identifying the blind spots right so kind of what I just talked about with you did we detect did we log did we alert did they stop node zero right and so I would I put that you know a more Layman's third grade term and if I was going to beat a fifth grader at this game would be we can be the sparring partner for a Splunk Enterprise customer a Splunk Essentials customer someone using Splunk soar or even just an Enterprise Splunk customer that may be a small shop with three people and just wants to know where am I exposed so by creating and generating these reports and then having um the API that actually generates the dashboard they can take all of these events that we've logged and log them in and then where that then comes in is number two is how do we prioritize those logs right so how do we create visibility to logs that that um are have critical impacts and again as I mentioned earlier not all cves are high impact regard and also not all or low right so if you daisy chain a bunch of low cves together boom I've got a mission critical AP uh CPE that needs to be fixed now such as a credential moving to an NT box that's got a text file with a bunch of passwords on it that would be very bad um and then third would be uh verifying that you have all of the hosts so one of the things that splunk's not particularly great at and they'll literate themselves they don't do asset Discovery so dude what assets do we see and what are they logging from that um and then for from um for every event that they are able to identify one of the cool things that we can do is actually create this low code no code environment so they could let you know Splunk customers can use Splunk sword to actually triage events and prioritize that event so where they're being routed within it to optimize the Sox team time to Market or time to triage any given event obviously reducing MTR and then finally I think one of the neatest things that we'll be seeing us develop is um our ability to build glass cables so behind me you'll see one of our triage events and how we build uh a Lockheed Martin kill chain on that with a glass table which is very familiar to the community we're going to have the ability and not too distant future to allow people to search observe on those iocs and if people aren't familiar with it ioc it's an instant of a compromise so that's a vector that we want to drill into and of course who's better at Drilling in the data and smoke yeah this is a critter this is an awesome Synergy there I mean I can see a Splunk customer going man this just gives me so much more capability action actionability and also real understanding and I think this is what I want to dig into if you don't mind understanding that critical impact okay is kind of where I see this coming got the data data ingest now data's data but the question is what not to log you know where are things misconfigured these are critical questions so can you talk about what it means to understand critical impact yeah so I think you know going back to the things that I just spoke about a lot of those cves where you'll see um uh low low low and then you daisy chain together and they're suddenly like oh this is high now but then your other impact of like if you're if you're a Splunk customer you know and I had it I had several of them I had one customer that you know terabytes of McAfee data being brought in and it was like all right there's a lot of other data that you probably also want to bring but they could only afford wanted to do certain data sets because that's and they didn't know how to prioritize or filter those data sets and so we provide that opportunity to say hey these are the critical ones to bring in but there's also the ones that you don't necessarily need to bring in because low cve in this case really does mean low cve like an ILO server would be one that um that's the print server uh where the uh your admin credentials are on on like a printer and so there will be credentials on that that's something that a hacker might go in to look at so although the cve on it is low is if you daisy chain with somebody that's able to get into that you might say Ah that's high and we would then potentially rank it giving our AI logic to say that's a moderate so put it on the scale and we prioritize those versus uh of all of these scanners just going to give you a bunch of CDs and good luck and translating that if I if I can and tell me if I'm wrong that kind of speaks to that whole lateral movement that's it challenge right print serve a great example looks stupid low end who's going to want to deal with the print server oh but it's connected into a critical system there's a path is that kind of what you're getting at yeah I use Daisy Chain I think that's from the community they came from uh but it's just a lateral movement it's exactly what they're doing in those low level low critical lateral movements is where the hackers are getting in right so that's the beauty thing about the uh the Uber example is that who would have thought you know I've got my monthly Factor authentication going in a human made a mistake we can't we can't not expect humans to make mistakes we're fallible right the reality is is once they were in the environment they could have protected themselves by running enough pen tests to know that they had certain uh exposed credentials that would have stopped the breach and they did not had not done that in their environment and I'm not poking yeah but it's an interesting Trend though I mean it's obvious if sometimes those low end items are also not protected well so it's easy to get at from a hacker standpoint but also the people in charge of them can be fished easily or spearfished because they're not paying attention because they don't have to no one ever told them hey be careful yeah for the community that I came from John that's exactly how they they would uh meet you at a uh an International Event um introduce themselves as a graduate student these are National actor States uh would you mind reviewing my thesis on such and such and I was at Adobe at the time that I was working on this instead of having to get the PDF they opened the PDF and whoever that customer was launches and I don't know if you remember back in like 2008 time frame there was a lot of issues around IP being by a nation state being stolen from the United States and that's exactly how they did it and John that's or LinkedIn hey I want to get a joke we want to hire you double the salary oh I'm gonna click on that for sure you know yeah right exactly yeah the one thing I would say to you is like uh when we look at like sort of you know because I think we did 10 000 pen tests last year is it's probably over that now you know we have these sort of top 10 ways that we think and find people coming into the environment the funniest thing is that only one of them is a cve related vulnerability like uh you know you guys know what they are right so it's it but it's it's like two percent of the attacks are occurring through the cves but yeah there's all that attention spent to that and very little attention spent to this pen testing side which is sort of this continuous threat you know monitoring space and and this vulnerability space where I think we play a such an important role and I'm so excited to be a part of the tip of the spear on this one yeah I'm old enough to know the movie sneakers which I loved as a you know watching that movie you know professional hackers are testing testing always testing the environment I love this I got to ask you as we kind of wrap up here Chris if you don't mind the the benefits to Professional Services from this Alliance big news Splunk and you guys work well together we see that clearly what are what other benefits do Professional Services teams see from the Splunk and Horizon 3.ai Alliance so if you're I think for from our our from both of our uh Partners uh as we bring these guys together and many of them already are the same partner right uh is that uh first off the licensing model is probably one of the key areas that we really excel at so if you're an end user you can buy uh for the Enterprise by the number of IP addresses you're using um but uh if you're a partner working with this there's solution ways that you can go in and we'll license as to msps and what that business model on msps looks like but the unique thing that we do here is this C plus license and so the Consulting plus license allows like a uh somebody a small to mid-sized to some very large uh you know Fortune 100 uh consulting firms use this uh by buying into a license called um Consulting plus where they can have unlimited uh access to as many IPS as they want but you can only run one test at a time and as you can imagine when we're going and hacking passwords and um checking hashes and decrypting hashes that can take a while so but for the right customer it's it's a perfect tool and so I I'm so excited about our ability to go to market with uh our partners so that we understand ourselves understand how not to just sell to or not tell just to sell through but we know how to sell with them as a good vendor partner I think that that's one thing that we've done a really good job building bring it into the market yeah I think also the Splunk has had great success how they've enabled uh partners and Professional Services absolutely you know the services that layer on top of Splunk are multi-fold tons of great benefits so you guys Vector right into that ride that way with friction and and the cool thing is that in you know in one of our reports which could be totally customized uh with someone else's logo we're going to generate you know so I I used to work in another organization it wasn't Splunk but we we did uh you know pen testing as for for customers and my pen testers would come on site they'd do the engagement and they would leave and then another release someone would be oh shoot we got another sector that was breached and they'd call you back you know four weeks later and so by August our entire pen testings teams would be sold out and it would be like well even in March maybe and they're like no no I gotta breach now and and and then when they do go in they go through do the pen test and they hand over a PDF and they pack on the back and say there's where your problems are you need to fix it and the reality is that what we're going to generate completely autonomously with no human interaction is we're going to go and find all the permutations of anything we found and the fix for those permutations and then once you've fixed everything you just go back and run another pen test it's you know for what people pay for one pen test they can have a tool that does that every every Pat patch on Tuesday and that's on Wednesday you know triage throughout the week green yellow red I wanted to see the colors show me green green is good right not red and one CIO doesn't want who doesn't want that dashboard right it's it's exactly it and we can help bring I think that you know I'm really excited about helping drive this with the Splunk team because they get that they understand that it's the green yellow red dashboard and and how do we help them find more green uh so that the other guys are in red yeah and get in the data and do the right thing and be efficient with how you use the data know what to look at so many things to pay attention to you know the combination of both and then go to market strategy real brilliant congratulations Chris thanks for coming on and sharing um this news with the detail around the Splunk in action around the alliance thanks for sharing John my pleasure thanks look forward to seeing you soon all right great we'll follow up and do another segment on devops and I.T and security teams as the new new Ops but and super cloud a bunch of other stuff so thanks for coming on and our next segment the CEO of horizon 3.aa will break down all the new news for us here on thecube you're watching thecube the leader in high tech Enterprise coverage [Music] yeah the partner program for us has been fantastic you know I think prior to that you know as most organizations most uh uh most Farmers most mssps might not necessarily have a a bench at all for penetration testing uh maybe they subcontract this work out or maybe they do it themselves but trying to staff that kind of position can be incredibly difficult for us this was a differentiator a a new a new partner a new partnership that allowed us to uh not only perform services for our customers but be able to provide a product by which that they can do it themselves so we work with our customers in a variety of ways some of them want more routine testing and perform this themselves but we're also a certified service provider of horizon 3 being able to perform uh penetration tests uh help review the the data provide color provide analysis for our customers in a broader sense right not necessarily the the black and white elements of you know what was uh what's critical what's high what's medium what's low what you need to fix but are there systemic issues this has allowed us to onboard new customers this has allowed us to migrate some penetration testing services to us from from competitors in the marketplace But ultimately this is occurring because the the product and the outcome are special they're unique and they're effective our customers like what they're seeing they like the routineness of it many of them you know again like doing this themselves you know being able to kind of pen test themselves parts of their networks um and the the new use cases right I'm a large organization I have eight to ten Acquisitions per year wouldn't it be great to have a tool to be able to perform a penetration test both internal and external of that acquisition before we integrate the two companies and maybe bringing on some risk it's a very effective partnership uh one that really is uh kind of taken our our Engineers our account Executives by storm um you know this this is a a partnership that's been very valuable to us [Music] a key part of the value and business model at Horizon 3 is enabling Partners to leverage node zero to make more revenue for themselves our goal is that for sixty percent of our Revenue this year will be originated by partners and that 95 of our Revenue next year will be originated by partners and so a key to that strategy is making us an integral part of your business models as a partner a key quote from one of our partners is that we enable every one of their business units to generate Revenue so let's talk about that in a little bit more detail first is that if you have a pen test Consulting business take Deloitte as an example what was six weeks of human labor at Deloitte per pen test has been cut down to four days of Labor using node zero to conduct reconnaissance find all the juicy interesting areas of the of the Enterprise that are exploitable and being able to go assess the entire organization and then all of those details get served up to the human to be able to look at understand and determine where to probe deeper so what you see in that pen test Consulting business is that node zero becomes a force multiplier where those Consulting teams were able to cover way more accounts and way more IPS within those accounts with the same or fewer consultants and so that directly leads to profit margin expansion for the Penn testing business itself because node 0 is a force multiplier the second business model here is if you're an mssp as an mssp you're already making money providing defensive cyber security operations for a large volume of customers and so what they do is they'll license node zero and use us as an upsell to their mssb business to start to deliver either continuous red teaming continuous verification or purple teaming as a service and so in that particular business model they've got an additional line of Revenue where they can increase the spend of their existing customers by bolting on node 0 as a purple team as a service offering the third business model or customer type is if you're an I.T services provider so as an I.T services provider you make money installing and configuring security products like Splunk or crowdstrike or hemio you also make money reselling those products and you also make money generating follow-on services to continue to harden your customer environments and so for them what what those it service providers will do is use us to verify that they've installed Splunk correctly improved to their customer that Splunk was installed correctly or crowdstrike was installed correctly using our results and then use our results to drive follow-on services and revenue and then finally we've got the value-added reseller which is just a straight up reseller because of how fast our sales Cycles are these vars are able to typically go from cold email to deal close in six to eight weeks at Horizon 3 at least a single sales engineer is able to run 30 to 50 pocs concurrently because our pocs are very lightweight and don't require any on-prem customization or heavy pre-sales post sales activity so as a result we're able to have a few amount of sellers driving a lot of Revenue and volume for us well the same thing applies to bars there isn't a lot of effort to sell the product or prove its value so vars are able to sell a lot more Horizon 3 node zero product without having to build up a huge specialist sales organization so what I'm going to do is talk through uh scenario three here as an I.T service provider and just how powerful node zero can be in driving additional Revenue so in here think of for every one dollar of node zero license purchased by the IT service provider to do their business it'll generate ten dollars of additional revenue for that partner so in this example kidney group uses node 0 to verify that they have installed and deployed Splunk correctly so Kitty group is a Splunk partner they they sell it services to install configure deploy and maintain Splunk and as they deploy Splunk they're going to use node 0 to attack the environment and make sure that the right logs and alerts and monitoring are being handled within the Splunk deployment so it's a way of doing QA or verifying that Splunk has been configured correctly and that's going to be internally used by kidney group to prove the quality of their services that they've just delivered then what they're going to do is they're going to show and leave behind that node zero Report with their client and that creates a resell opportunity for for kidney group to resell node 0 to their client because their client is seeing the reports and the results and saying wow this is pretty amazing and those reports can be co-branded where it's a pen testing report branded with kidney group but it says powered by Horizon three under it from there kidney group is able to take the fixed actions report that's automatically generated with every pen test through node zero and they're able to use that as the starting point for a statement of work to sell follow-on services to fix all of the problems that node zero identified fixing l11r misconfigurations fixing or patching VMware or updating credentials policies and so on so what happens is node 0 has found a bunch of problems the client often lacks the capacity to fix and so kidney group can use that lack of capacity by the client as a follow-on sales opportunity for follow-on services and finally based on the findings from node zero kidney group can look at that report and say to the customer you know customer if you bought crowdstrike you'd be able to uh prevent node Zero from attacking and succeeding in the way that it did for if you bought humano or if you bought Palo Alto networks or if you bought uh some privileged access management solution because of what node 0 was able to do with credential harvesting and attacks and so as a result kidney group is able to resell other security products within their portfolio crowdstrike Falcon humano Polito networks demisto Phantom and so on based on the gaps that were identified by node zero and that pen test and what that creates is another feedback loop where kidney group will then go use node 0 to verify that crowdstrike product has actually been installed and configured correctly and then this becomes the cycle of using node 0 to verify a deployment using that verification to drive a bunch of follow-on services and resell opportunities which then further drives more usage of the product now the way that we licensed is that it's a usage-based license licensing model so that the partner will grow their node zero Consulting plus license as they grow their business so for example if you're a kidney group then week one you've got you're going to use node zero to verify your Splunk install in week two if you have a pen testing business you're going to go off and use node zero to be a force multiplier for your pen testing uh client opportunity and then if you have an mssp business then in week three you're going to use node zero to go execute a purple team mssp offering for your clients so not necessarily a kidney group but if you're a Deloitte or ATT these larger companies and you've got multiple lines of business if you're Optive for instance you all you have to do is buy one Consulting plus license and you're going to be able to run as many pen tests as you want sequentially so now you can buy a single license and use that one license to meet your week one client commitments and then meet your week two and then meet your week three and as you grow your business you start to run multiple pen tests concurrently so in week one you've got to do a Splunk verify uh verify Splunk install and you've got to run a pen test and you've got to do a purple team opportunity you just simply expand the number of Consulting plus licenses from one license to three licenses and so now as you systematically grow your business you're able to grow your node zero capacity with you giving you predictable cogs predictable margins and once again 10x additional Revenue opportunity for that investment in the node zero Consulting plus license my name is Saint I'm the co-founder and CEO here at Horizon 3. I'm going to talk to you today about why it's important to look at your Enterprise Through The Eyes of an attacker the challenge I had when I was a CIO in banking the CTO at Splunk and serving within the Department of Defense is that I had no idea I was Secure until the bad guys had showed up am I logging the right data am I fixing the right vulnerabilities are my security tools that I've paid millions of dollars for actually working together to defend me and the answer is I don't know does my team actually know how to respond to a breach in the middle of an incident I don't know I've got to wait for the bad guys to show up and so the challenge I had was how do we proactively verify our security posture I tried a variety of techniques the first was the use of vulnerability scanners and the challenge with vulnerability scanners is being vulnerable doesn't mean you're exploitable I might have a hundred thousand findings from my scanner of which maybe five or ten can actually be exploited in my environment the other big problem with scanners is that they can't chain weaknesses together from machine to machine so if you've got a thousand machines in your environment or more what a vulnerability scanner will do is tell you you have a problem on machine one and separately a problem on machine two but what they can tell you is that an attacker could use a load from machine one plus a low from machine two to equal to critical in your environment and what attackers do in their tactics is they chain together misconfigurations dangerous product defaults harvested credentials and exploitable vulnerabilities into attack paths across different machines so to address the attack pads across different machines I tried layering in consulting-based pen testing and the issue is when you've got thousands of hosts or hundreds of thousands of hosts in your environment human-based pen testing simply doesn't scale to test an infrastructure of that size moreover when they actually do execute a pen test and you get the report oftentimes you lack the expertise within your team to quickly retest to verify that you've actually fixed the problem and so what happens is you end up with these pen test reports that are incomplete snapshots and quickly going stale and then to mitigate that problem I tried using breach and attack simulation tools and the struggle with these tools is one I had to install credentialed agents everywhere two I had to write my own custom attack scripts that I didn't have much talent for but also I had to maintain as my environment changed and then three these types of tools were not safe to run against production systems which was the the majority of my attack surface so that's why we went off to start Horizon 3. so Tony and I met when we were in Special Operations together and the challenge we wanted to solve was how do we do infrastructure security testing at scale by giving the the power of a 20-year pen testing veteran into the hands of an I.T admin a network engineer in just three clicks and the whole idea is we enable these fixers The Blue Team to be able to run node Zero Hour pen testing product to quickly find problems in their environment that blue team will then then go off and fix the issues that were found and then they can quickly rerun the attack to verify that they fixed the problem and the whole idea is delivering this without requiring custom scripts be developed without requiring credential agents be installed and without requiring the use of external third-party consulting services or Professional Services self-service pen testing to quickly Drive find fix verify there are three primary use cases that our customers use us for the first is the sock manager that uses us to verify that their security tools are actually effective to verify that they're logging the right data in Splunk or in their Sim to verify that their managed security services provider is able to quickly detect and respond to an attack and hold them accountable for their slas or that the sock understands how to quickly detect and respond and measuring and verifying that or that the variety of tools that you have in your stack most organizations have 130 plus cyber security tools none of which are designed to work together are actually working together the second primary use case is proactively hardening and verifying your systems this is when the I that it admin that network engineer they're able to run self-service pen tests to verify that their Cisco environment is installed in hardened and configured correctly or that their credential policies are set up right or that their vcenter or web sphere or kubernetes environments are actually designed to be secure and what this allows the it admins and network Engineers to do is shift from running one or two pen tests a year to 30 40 or more pen tests a month and you can actually wire those pen tests into your devops process or into your detection engineering and the change management processes to automatically trigger pen tests every time there's a change in your environment the third primary use case is for those organizations lucky enough to have their own internal red team they'll use node zero to do reconnaissance and exploitation at scale and then use the output as a starting point for the humans to step in and focus on the really hard juicy stuff that gets them on stage at Defcon and so these are the three primary use cases and what we'll do is zoom into the find fix verify Loop because what I've found in my experience is find fix verify is the future operating model for cyber security organizations and what I mean here is in the find using continuous pen testing what you want to enable is on-demand self-service pen tests you want those pen tests to find attack pads at scale spanning your on-prem infrastructure your Cloud infrastructure and your perimeter because attackers don't only state in one place they will find ways to chain together a perimeter breach a credential from your on-prem to gain access to your cloud or some other permutation and then the third part in continuous pen testing is attackers don't focus on critical vulnerabilities anymore they know we've built vulnerability Management Programs to reduce those vulnerabilities so attackers have adapted and what they do is chain together misconfigurations in your infrastructure and software and applications with dangerous product defaults with exploitable vulnerabilities and through the collection of credentials through a mix of techniques at scale once you've found those problems the next question is what do you do about it well you want to be able to prioritize fixing problems that are actually exploitable in your environment that truly matter meaning they're going to lead to domain compromise or domain user compromise or access your sensitive data the second thing you want to fix is making sure you understand what risk your crown jewels data is exposed to where is your crown jewels data is in the cloud is it on-prem has it been copied to a share drive that you weren't aware of if a domain user was compromised could they access that crown jewels data you want to be able to use the attacker's perspective to secure the critical data you have in your infrastructure and then finally as you fix these problems you want to quickly remediate and retest that you've actually fixed the issue and this fine fix verify cycle becomes that accelerator that drives purple team culture the third part here is verify and what you want to be able to do in the verify step is verify that your security tools and processes in people can effectively detect and respond to a breach you want to be able to integrate that into your detection engineering processes so that you know you're catching the right security rules or that you've deployed the right configurations you also want to make sure that your environment is adhering to the best practices around systems hardening in cyber resilience and finally you want to be able to prove your security posture over a time to your board to your leadership into your regulators so what I'll do now is zoom into each of these three steps so when we zoom in to find here's the first example using node 0 and autonomous pen testing and what an attacker will do is find a way to break through the perimeter in this example it's very easy to misconfigure kubernetes to allow an attacker to gain remote code execution into your on-prem kubernetes environment and break through the perimeter and from there what the attacker is going to do is conduct Network reconnaissance and then find ways to gain code execution on other machines in the environment and as they get code execution they start to dump credentials collect a bunch of ntlm hashes crack those hashes using open source and dark web available data as part of those attacks and then reuse those credentials to log in and laterally maneuver throughout the environment and then as they loudly maneuver they can reuse those credentials and use credential spraying techniques and so on to compromise your business email to log in as admin into your cloud and this is a very common attack and rarely is a CV actually needed to execute this attack often it's just a misconfiguration in kubernetes with a bad credential policy or password policy combined with bad practices of credential reuse across the organization here's another example of an internal pen test and this is from an actual customer they had 5 000 hosts within their environment they had EDR and uba tools installed and they initiated in an internal pen test on a single machine from that single initial access point node zero enumerated the network conducted reconnaissance and found five thousand hosts were accessible what node 0 will do under the covers is organize all of that reconnaissance data into a knowledge graph that we call the Cyber terrain map and that cyber Terrain map becomes the key data structure that we use to efficiently maneuver and attack and compromise your environment so what node zero will do is they'll try to find ways to get code execution reuse credentials and so on in this customer example they had Fortinet installed as their EDR but node 0 was still able to get code execution on a Windows machine from there it was able to successfully dump credentials including sensitive credentials from the lsas process on the Windows box and then reuse those credentials to log in as domain admin in the network and once an attacker becomes domain admin they have the keys to the kingdom they can do anything they want so what happened here well it turns out Fortinet was misconfigured on three out of 5000 machines bad automation the customer had no idea this had happened they would have had to wait for an attacker to show up to realize that it was misconfigured the second thing is well why didn't Fortinet stop the credential pivot in the lateral movement and it turned out the customer didn't buy the right modules or turn on the right services within that particular product and we see this not only with Ford in it but we see this with Trend Micro and all the other defensive tools where it's very easy to miss a checkbox in the configuration that will do things like prevent credential dumping the next story I'll tell you is attackers don't have to hack in they log in so another infrastructure pen test a typical technique attackers will take is man in the middle uh attacks that will collect hashes so in this case what an attacker will do is leverage a tool or technique called responder to collect ntlm hashes that are being passed around the network and there's a variety of reasons why these hashes are passed around and it's a pretty common misconfiguration but as an attacker collects those hashes then they start to apply techniques to crack those hashes so they'll pass the hash and from there they will use open source intelligence common password structures and patterns and other types of techniques to try to crack those hashes into clear text passwords so here node 0 automatically collected hashes it automatically passed the hashes to crack those credentials and then from there it starts to take the domain user user ID passwords that it's collected and tries to access different services and systems in your Enterprise in this case node 0 is able to successfully gain access to the Office 365 email environment because three employees didn't have MFA configured so now what happens is node 0 has a placement and access in the business email system which sets up the conditions for fraud lateral phishing and other techniques but what's especially insightful here is that 80 of the hashes that were collected in this pen test were cracked in 15 minutes or less 80 percent 26 of the user accounts had a password that followed a pretty obvious pattern first initial last initial and four random digits the other thing that was interesting is 10 percent of service accounts had their user ID the same as their password so VMware admin VMware admin web sphere admin web Square admin so on and so forth and so attackers don't have to hack in they just log in with credentials that they've collected the next story here is becoming WS AWS admin so in this example once again internal pen test node zero gets initial access it discovers 2 000 hosts are network reachable from that environment if fingerprints and organizes all of that data into a cyber Terrain map from there it it fingerprints that hpilo the integrated lights out service was running on a subset of hosts hpilo is a service that is often not instrumented or observed by security teams nor is it easy to patch as a result attackers know this and immediately go after those types of services so in this case that ILO service was exploitable and were able to get code execution on it ILO stores all the user IDs and passwords in clear text in a particular set of processes so once we gain code execution we were able to dump all of the credentials and then from there laterally maneuver to log in to the windows box next door as admin and then on that admin box we're able to gain access to the share drives and we found a credentials file saved on a share Drive from there it turned out that credentials file was the AWS admin credentials file giving us full admin authority to their AWS accounts not a single security alert was triggered in this attack because the customer wasn't observing the ILO service and every step thereafter was a valid login in the environment and so what do you do step one patch the server step two delete the credentials file from the share drive and then step three is get better instrumentation on privileged access users and login the final story I'll tell is a typical pattern that we see across the board with that combines the various techniques I've described together where an attacker is going to go off and use open source intelligence to find all of the employees that work at your company from there they're going to look up those employees on dark web breach databases and other forms of information and then use that as a starting point to password spray to compromise a domain user all it takes is one employee to reuse a breached password for their Corporate email or all it takes is a single employee to have a weak password that's easily guessable all it takes is one and once the attacker is able to gain domain user access in most shops domain user is also the local admin on their laptop and once your local admin you can dump Sam and get local admin until M hashes you can use that to reuse credentials again local admin on neighboring machines and attackers will start to rinse and repeat then eventually they're able to get to a point where they can dump lsas or by unhooking the anti-virus defeating the EDR or finding a misconfigured EDR as we've talked about earlier to compromise the domain and what's consistent is that the fundamentals are broken at these shops they have poor password policies they don't have least access privilege implemented active directory groups are too permissive where domain admin or domain user is also the local admin uh AV or EDR Solutions are misconfigured or easily unhooked and so on and what we found in 10 000 pen tests is that user Behavior analytics tools never caught us in that lateral movement in part because those tools require pristine logging data in order to work and also it becomes very difficult to find that Baseline of normal usage versus abnormal usage of credential login another interesting Insight is there were several Marquee brand name mssps that were defending our customers environment and for them it took seven hours to detect and respond to the pen test seven hours the pen test was over in less than two hours and so what you had was an egregious violation of the service level agreements that that mssp had in place and the customer was able to use us to get service credit and drive accountability of their sock and of their provider the third interesting thing is in one case it took us seven minutes to become domain admin in a bank that bank had every Gucci security tool you could buy yet in 7 minutes and 19 seconds node zero started as an unauthenticated member of the network and was able to escalate privileges through chaining and misconfigurations in lateral movement and so on to become domain admin if it's seven minutes today we should assume it'll be less than a minute a year or two from now making it very difficult for humans to be able to detect and respond to that type of Blitzkrieg attack so that's in the find it's not just about finding problems though the bulk of the effort should be what to do about it the fix and the verify so as you find those problems back to kubernetes as an example we will show you the path here is the kill chain we took to compromise that environment we'll show you the impact here is the impact or here's the the proof of exploitation that we were able to use to be able to compromise it and there's the actual command that we executed so you could copy and paste that command and compromise that cubelet yourself if you want and then the impact is we got code execution and we'll actually show you here is the impact this is a critical here's why it enabled perimeter breach affected applications will tell you the specific IPS where you've got the problem how it maps to the miter attack framework and then we'll tell you exactly how to fix it we'll also show you what this problem enabled so you can accurately prioritize why this is important or why it's not important the next part is accurate prioritization the hardest part of my job as a CIO was deciding what not to fix so if you take SMB signing not required as an example by default that CVSs score is a one out of 10. but this misconfiguration is not a cve it's a misconfig enable an attacker to gain access to 19 credentials including one domain admin two local admins and access to a ton of data because of that context this is really a 10 out of 10. you better fix this as soon as possible however of the seven occurrences that we found it's only a critical in three out of the seven and these are the three specific machines and we'll tell you the exact way to fix it and you better fix these as soon as possible for these four machines over here these didn't allow us to do anything of consequence so that because the hardest part is deciding what not to fix you can justifiably choose not to fix these four issues right now and just add them to your backlog and surge your team to fix these three as quickly as possible and then once you fix these three you don't have to re-run the entire pen test you can select these three and then one click verify and run a very narrowly scoped pen test that is only testing this specific issue and what that creates is a much faster cycle of finding and fixing problems the other part of fixing is verifying that you don't have sensitive data at risk so once we become a domain user we're able to use those domain user credentials and try to gain access to databases file shares S3 buckets git repos and so on and help you understand what sensitive data you have at risk so in this example a green checkbox means we logged in as a valid domain user we're able to get read write access on the database this is how many records we could have accessed and we don't actually look at the values in the database but we'll show you the schema so you can quickly characterize that pii data was at risk here and we'll do that for your file shares and other sources of data so now you can accurately articulate the data you have at risk and prioritize cleaning that data up especially data that will lead to a fine or a big news issue so that's the find that's the fix now we're going to talk about the verify the key part in verify is embracing and integrating with detection engineering practices so when you think about your layers of security tools you've got lots of tools in place on average 130 tools at any given customer but these tools were not designed to work together so when you run a pen test what you want to do is say did you detect us did you log us did you alert on us did you stop us and from there what you want to see is okay what are the techniques that are commonly used to defeat an environment to actually compromise if you look at the top 10 techniques we use and there's far more than just these 10 but these are the most often executed nine out of ten have nothing to do with cves it has to do with misconfigurations dangerous product defaults bad credential policies and it's how we chain those together to become a domain admin or compromise a host so what what customers will do is every single attacker command we executed is provided to you as an attackivity log so you can actually see every single attacker command we ran the time stamp it was executed the hosts it executed on and how it Maps the minor attack tactics so our customers will have are these attacker logs on one screen and then they'll go look into Splunk or exabeam or Sentinel one or crowdstrike and say did you detect us did you log us did you alert on us or not and to make that even easier if you take this example hey Splunk what logs did you see at this time on the VMware host because that's when node 0 is able to dump credentials and that allows you to identify and fix your logging blind spots to make that easier we've got app integration so this is an actual Splunk app in the Splunk App Store and what you can come is inside the Splunk console itself you can fire up the Horizon 3 node 0 app all of the pen test results are here so that you can see all of the results in one place and you don't have to jump out of the tool and what you'll show you as I skip forward is hey there's a pen test here are the critical issues that we've identified for that weaker default issue here are the exact commands we executed and then we will automatically query into Splunk all all terms on between these times on that endpoint that relate to this attack so you can now quickly within the Splunk environment itself figure out that you're missing logs or that you're appropriately catching this issue and that becomes incredibly important in that detection engineering cycle that I mentioned earlier so how do our customers end up using us they shift from running one pen test a year to 30 40 pen tests a month oftentimes wiring us into their deployment automation to automatically run pen tests the other part that they'll do is as they run more pen tests they find more issues but eventually they hit this inflection point where they're able to rapidly clean up their environment and that inflection point is because the red and the blue teams start working together in a purple team culture and now they're working together to proactively harden their environment the other thing our customers will do is run us from different perspectives they'll first start running an RFC 1918 scope to see once the attacker gained initial access in a part of the network that had wide access what could they do and then from there they'll run us within a specific Network segment okay from within that segment could the attacker break out and gain access to another segment then they'll run us from their work from home environment could they Traverse the VPN and do something damaging and once they're in could they Traverse the VPN and get into my cloud then they'll break in from the outside all of these perspectives are available to you in Horizon 3 and node zero as a single SKU and you can run as many pen tests as you want if you run a phishing campaign and find that an intern in the finance department had the worst phishing behavior you can then inject their credentials and actually show the end-to-end story of how an attacker fished gained credentials of an intern and use that to gain access to sensitive financial data so what our customers end up doing is running multiple attacks from multiple perspectives and looking at those results over time I'll leave you two things one is what is the AI in Horizon 3 AI those knowledge graphs are the heart and soul of everything that we do and we use machine learning reinforcement techniques reinforcement learning techniques Markov decision models and so on to be able to efficiently maneuver and analyze the paths in those really large graphs we also use context-based scoring to prioritize weaknesses and we're also able to drive collective intelligence across all of the operations so the more pen tests we run the smarter we get and all of that is based on our knowledge graph analytics infrastructure that we have finally I'll leave you with this was my decision criteria when I was a buyer for my security testing strategy what I cared about was coverage I wanted to be able to assess my on-prem cloud perimeter and work from home and be safe to run in production I want to be able to do that as often as I wanted I want to be able to run pen tests in hours or days not weeks or months so I could accelerate that fine fix verify loop I wanted my it admins and network Engineers with limited offensive experience to be able to run a pen test in a few clicks through a self-service experience and not have to install agent and not have to write custom scripts and finally I didn't want to get nickeled and dimed on having to buy different types of attack modules or different types of attacks I wanted a single annual subscription that allowed me to run any type of attack as often as I wanted so I could look at my Trends in directions over time so I hope you found this talk valuable uh we're easy to find and I look forward to seeing seeing you use a product and letting our results do the talking when you look at uh you know kind of the way no our pen testing algorithms work is we dynamically select uh how to compromise an environment based on what we've discovered and the goal is to become a domain admin compromise a host compromise domain users find ways to encrypt data steal sensitive data and so on but when you look at the the top 10 techniques that we ended up uh using to compromise environments the first nine have nothing to do with cves and that's the reality cves are yes a vector but less than two percent of cves are actually used in a compromise oftentimes it's some sort of credential collection credential cracking uh credential pivoting and using that to become an admin and then uh compromising environments from that point on so I'll leave this up for you to kind of read through and you'll have the slides available for you but I found it very insightful that organizations and ourselves when I was a GE included invested heavily in just standard vulnerability Management Programs when I was at DOD that's all disa cared about asking us about was our our kind of our cve posture but the attackers have adapted to not rely on cves to get in because they know that organizations are actively looking at and patching those cves and instead they're chaining together credentials from one place with misconfigurations and dangerous product defaults in another to take over an environment a concrete example is by default vcenter backups are not encrypted and so as if an attacker finds vcenter what they'll do is find the backup location and there are specific V sender MTD files where the admin credentials are parsippled in the binaries so you can actually as an attacker find the right MTD file parse out the binary and now you've got the admin credentials for the vcenter environment and now start to log in as admin there's a bad habit by signal officers and Signal practitioners in the in the Army and elsewhere where the the VM notes section of a virtual image has the password for the VM well those VM notes are not stored encrypted and attackers know this and they're able to go off and find the VMS that are unencrypted find the note section and pull out the passwords for those images and then reuse those credentials across the board so I'll pause here and uh you know Patrick love you get some some commentary on on these techniques and other things that you've seen and what we'll do in the last say 10 to 15 minutes is uh is rolled through a little bit more on what do you do about it yeah yeah no I love it I think um I think this is pretty exhaustive what I like about what you've done here is uh you know we've seen we've seen double-digit increases in the number of organizations that are reporting actual breaches year over year for the last um for the last three years and it's often we kind of in the Zeitgeist we pegged that on ransomware which of course is like incredibly important and very top of mind um but what I like about what you have here is you know we're reminding the audience that the the attack surface area the vectors the matter um you know has to be more comprehensive than just thinking about ransomware scenarios yeah right on um so let's build on this when you think about your defense in depth you've got multiple security controls that you've purchased and integrated and you've got that redundancy if a control fails but the reality is that these security tools aren't designed to work together so when you run a pen test what you want to ask yourself is did you detect node zero did you log node zero did you alert on node zero and did you stop node zero and when you think about how to do that every single attacker command executed by node zero is available in an attacker log so you can now see you know at the bottom here vcenter um exploit at that time on that IP how it aligns to minor attack what you want to be able to do is go figure out did your security tools catch this or not and that becomes very important in using the attacker's perspective to improve your defensive security controls and so the way we've tried to make this easier back to like my my my the you know I bleed Green in many ways still from my smoke background is you want to be able to and what our customers do is hey we'll look at the attacker logs on one screen and they'll look at what did Splunk see or Miss in another screen and then they'll use that to figure out what their logging blind spots are and what that where that becomes really interesting is we've actually built out an integration into Splunk where there's a Splunk app you can download off of Splunk base and you'll get all of the pen test results right there in the Splunk console and from that Splunk console you're gonna be able to see these are all the pen tests that were run these are the issues that were found um so you can look at that particular pen test here are all of the weaknesses that were identified for that particular pen test and how they categorize out for each of those weaknesses you can click on any one of them that are critical in this case and then we'll tell you for that weakness and this is where where the the punch line comes in so I'll pause the video here for that weakness these are the commands that were executed on these endpoints at this time and then we'll actually query Splunk for that um for that IP address or containing that IP and these are the source types that surface any sort of activity so what we try to do is help you as quickly and efficiently as possible identify the logging blind spots in your Splunk environment based on the attacker's perspective so as this video kind of plays through you can see it Patrick I'd love to get your thoughts um just seeing so many Splunk deployments and the effectiveness of those deployments and and how this is going to help really Elevate the effectiveness of all of your Splunk customers yeah I'm super excited about this I mean I think this these kinds of purpose-built integration snail really move the needle for our customers I mean at the end of the day when I think about the power of Splunk I think about a product I was first introduced to 12 years ago that was an on-prem piece of software you know and at the time it sold on sort of Perpetual and term licenses but one made it special was that it could it could it could eat data at a speed that nothing else that I'd have ever seen you can ingest massively scalable amounts of data uh did cool things like schema on read which facilitated that there was this language called SPL that you could nerd out about uh and you went to a conference once a year and you talked about all the cool things you were splunking right but now as we think about the next phase of our growth um we live in a heterogeneous environment where our customers have so many different tools and data sources that are ever expanding and as you look at the as you look at the role of the ciso it's mind-blowing to me the amount of sources Services apps that are coming into the ciso span of let's just call it a span of influence in the last three years uh you know we're seeing things like infrastructure service level visibility application performance monitoring stuff that just never made sense for the security team to have visibility into you um at least not at the size and scale which we're demanding today um and and that's different and this isn't this is why it's so important that we have these joint purpose-built Integrations that um really provide more prescription to our customers about how do they walk on that Journey towards maturity what does zero to one look like what does one to two look like whereas you know 10 years ago customers were happy with platforms today they want integration they want Solutions and they want to drive outcomes and I think this is a great example of how together we are stepping to the evolving nature of the market and also the ever-evolving nature of the threat landscape and what I would say is the maturing needs of the customer in that environment yeah for sure I think especially if if we all anticipate budget pressure over the next 18 months due to the economy and elsewhere while the security budgets are not going to ever I don't think they're going to get cut they're not going to grow as fast and there's a lot more pressure on organizations to extract more value from their existing Investments as well as extracting more value and more impact from their existing teams and so security Effectiveness Fierce prioritization and automation I think become the three key themes of security uh over the next 18 months so I'll do very quickly is run through a few other use cases um every host that we identified in the pen test were able to score and say this host allowed us to do something significant therefore it's it's really critical you should be increasing your logging here hey these hosts down here we couldn't really do anything as an attacker so if you do have to make trade-offs you can make some trade-offs of your logging resolution at the lower end in order to increase logging resolution on the upper end so you've got that level of of um justification for where to increase or or adjust your logging resolution another example is every host we've discovered as an attacker we Expose and you can export and we want to make sure is every host we found as an attacker is being ingested from a Splunk standpoint a big issue I had as a CIO and user of Splunk and other tools is I had no idea if there were Rogue Raspberry Pi's on the network or if a new box was installed and whether Splunk was installed on it or not so now you can quickly start to correlate what hosts did we see and how does that reconcile with what you're logging from uh finally or second to last use case here on the Splunk integration side is for every single problem we've found we give multiple options for how to fix it this becomes a great way to prioritize what fixed actions to automate in your soar platform and what we want to get to eventually is being able to automatically trigger soar actions to fix well-known problems like automatically invalidating passwords for for poor poor passwords in our credentials amongst a whole bunch of other things we could go off and do and then finally if there is a well-known kill chain or attack path one of the things I really wish I could have done when I was a Splunk customer was take this type of kill chain that actually shows a path to domain admin that I'm sincerely worried about and use it as a glass table over which I could start to layer possible indicators of compromise and now you've got a great starting point for glass tables and iocs for actual kill chains that we know are exploitable in your environment and that becomes some super cool Integrations that we've got on the roadmap between us and the Splunk security side of the house so what I'll leave with actually Patrick before I do that you know um love to get your comments and then I'll I'll kind of leave with one last slide on this wartime security mindset uh pending you know assuming there's no other questions no I love it I mean I think this kind of um it's kind of glass table's approach to how do you how do you sort of visualize these workflows and then use things like sore and orchestration and automation to operationalize them is exactly where we see all of our customers going and getting away from I think an over engineered approach to soar with where it has to be super technical heavy with you know python programmers and getting more to this visual view of workflow creation um that really demystifies the power of Automation and also democratizes it so you don't have to have these programming languages in your resume in order to start really moving the needle on workflow creation policy enforcement and ultimately driving automation coverage across more and more of the workflows that your team is seeing yeah I think that between us being able to visualize the actual kill chain or attack path with you know think of a of uh the soar Market I think going towards this no code low code um you know configurable sore versus coded sore that's going to really be a game changer in improve or giving security teams a force multiplier so what I'll leave you with is this peacetime mindset of security no longer is sustainable we really have to get out of checking the box and then waiting for the bad guys to show up to verify that security tools are are working or not and the reason why we've got to really do that quickly is there are over a thousand companies that withdrew from the Russian economy over the past uh nine months due to the Ukrainian War there you should expect every one of them to be punished by the Russians for leaving and punished from a cyber standpoint and this is no longer about financial extortion that is ransomware this is about punishing and destroying companies and you can punish any one of these companies by going after them directly or by going after their suppliers and their Distributors so suddenly your attack surface is no more no longer just your own Enterprise it's how you bring your goods to Market and it's how you get your goods created because while I may not be able to disrupt your ability to harvest fruit if I can get those trucks stuck at the border I can increase spoilage and have the same effect and what we should expect to see is this idea of cyber-enabled economic Warfare where if we issue a sanction like Banning the Russians from traveling there is a cyber-enabled counter punch which is corrupt and destroy the American Airlines database that is below the threshold of War that's not going to trigger the 82nd Airborne to be mobilized but it's going to achieve the right effect ban the sale of luxury goods disrupt the supply chain and create shortages banned Russian oil and gas attack refineries to call a 10x spike in gas prices three days before the election this is the future and therefore I think what we have to do is shift towards a wartime mindset which is don't trust your security posture verify it see yourself Through The Eyes of the attacker build that incident response muscle memory and drive better collaboration between the red and the blue teams your suppliers and Distributors and your information uh sharing organization they have in place and what's really valuable for me as a Splunk customer was when a router crashes at that moment you don't know if it's due to an I.T Administration problem or an attacker and what you want to have are different people asking different questions of the same data and you want to have that integrated triage process of an I.T lens to that problem a security lens to that problem and then from there figuring out is is this an IT workflow to execute or a security incident to execute and you want to have all of that as an integrated team integrated process integrated technology stack and this is something that I very care I cared very deeply about as both a Splunk customer and a Splunk CTO that I see time and time again across the board so Patrick I'll leave you with the last word the final three minutes here and I don't see any open questions so please take us home oh man see how you think we spent hours and hours prepping for this together that that last uh uh 40 seconds of your talk track is probably one of the things I'm most passionate about in this industry right now uh and I think nist has done some really interesting work here around building cyber resilient organizations that have that has really I think helped help the industry see that um incidents can come from adverse conditions you know stress is uh uh performance taxations in the infrastructure service or app layer and they can come from malicious compromises uh Insider threats external threat actors and the more that we look at this from the perspective of of a broader cyber resilience Mission uh in a wartime mindset uh I I think we're going to be much better off and and will you talk about with operationally minded ice hacks information sharing intelligence sharing becomes so important in these wartime uh um situations and you know we know not all ice acts are created equal but we're also seeing a lot of um more ad hoc information sharing groups popping up so look I think I think you framed it really really well I love the concept of wartime mindset and um I I like the idea of applying a cyber resilience lens like if you have one more layer on top of that bottom right cake you know I think the it lens and the security lens they roll up to this concept of cyber resilience and I think this has done some great work there for us yeah you're you're spot on and that that is app and that's gonna I think be the the next um terrain that that uh that you're gonna see vendors try to get after but that I think Splunk is best position to win okay that's a wrap for this special Cube presentation you heard all about the global expansion of horizon 3.ai's partner program for their Partners have a unique opportunity to take advantage of their node zero product uh International go to Market expansion North America channel Partnerships and just overall relationships with companies like Splunk to make things more comprehensive in this disruptive cyber security world we live in and hope you enjoyed this program all the videos are available on thecube.net as well as check out Horizon 3 dot AI for their pen test Automation and ultimately their defense system that they use for testing always the environment that you're in great Innovative product and I hope you enjoyed the program again I'm John Furrier host of the cube thanks for watching

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's extended coverage. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We are here in Monaco at the Yacht Club, part of the VIP Gala with Prince Albert, DigitalBits, theCUBE. theCUBE and Prince Albert celebrating Monaco leaning into crypto. I'm here with Natasha Mahfar, who's our guest. She just came on theCUBE. Great story. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much for having me. >> Tell the folks what you do real quick. >> Sure. So I actually started my career in Silicon Valley, like you have. And I had the idea of creating a startup in mental health that was voice based only. So it was peer to peer support groups via voice. So I created this startup, pretended to be a student at Stanford and built out a whole team, and unfortunately, at that time, no one was in the space of mental health and voice. Now, as you know, it's a $30 billion industry that's one of the biggest in Silicon Valley. So my career really started from there. And due to that startup, I got involved in the World XR Forum. Now, the World XR Forum is kind of like a mini Davos, but a little bit more exclusive, where we host entrepreneurs, people in blockchain, crypto, and we have a five day event covering all sorts of topics. So- >> When you host them, you mean like host them and they hang out and sleep over? It's a hotel? Is it an event? A workshop? >> There's workshops. We arrange hotels. We pretty much arrange everything that there is. >> It's a group get together. >> It's a group get together. Pretty much like Davos. >> And so Natasha, I wanted to talk to you about what we're passionate about which is theCUBE is bringing people up to have a voice and give them a voice. Give people a platform. You don't have to be famous. If you have something to say and share, we found that right now in this environment with media, we go out to an event, we stream as many stories, but we also have the virtual version of our studio. And I could tell you, I've found that internationally now as we bring people together, there are so many great stories. >> Absolutely. >> Out there that need to be told. And the bottleneck isn't the media, it's the fact that it's open now. >> Yes. >> So why aren't the stories coming out? So our mission is to get the stories. >> Wow. >> Scale stories. The more stories that are scaled, the more people can feel it. More people are impacted by it, and it changes the world. It gets people serendipity with data 'cause we're, you know, you shared some data about what you're working on. >> Yeah, of course. It's all about data these days. And the fact that you're doing it so openly is great because there is a need for that today, so. >> What do you see right now in the market for media? I mean, we got emerging markets, a lot of misinformation. Trust is a big problem. >> Right. >> Bullying, harassing. Smear campaigns. What's news, what's not news. I mean, how do you get your news? I mean, how do people figure out what's going on? >> No, absolutely. And this is such a pure format and a way of doing it. How did you come up with the idea, and how did you start? >> Well, I started... I realized after the Web 2.0, when social media started taking over and ruining the democratization . Blogging, podcasting, which I started in 2004, one of the first podcasts in Silicon Valley. >> Wow. >> I saw the network of that. I saw the value that people had when normal people, they call it user generated content, shared information. And I discovered something amazing that a nobody like me can have a really top podcast. >> Well, you're definitely not a nobody, but... >> Well, I was back then. And nobody knew me back then. But what it is is that even... If you put your voice out there, people will connect to it. And if you have the ability to bring other people in, you start to see a social dynamic. And what social media ruined, Facebook, Twitter, not so much Twitter 'cause Twitter's more smeary, but it's still got to open the API, LinkedIn, they're all terrible. They're all gardens. They don't really bring people together, so I think that stalled for about almost eight years or nine years. Now, with crypto and decentralization, you start to see the same thing come back. Democratization, level the playing field, remove the middle man and person, intermediate the middle bottlenecks. So with media, we found that live streaming and going to events was what the community wants. And then interviewing people, and getting their ideas out there. Not promotional, not getting paid to say stuff. Yeah, they get the plug in for the company that they're working on, that's good for everybody. But more share something that you're passionate about, data. And it works. And people like it. And we've been doing it for 12 years, and it creates a great brand of openness, community, and network effect. So we scaled up the brand to be- >> And it seems like you're international now. I mean, we're sitting in Monte Carlo, so I don't think it gets better than that. >> Well, in 2016, we started going international. 2017, we started doing stuff in Europe. 2018, we did the crypto, Middle East. And we also did London, a lot of different events. We had B2B Enterprise and Crypto Blooming. 2019, we were like, "Let's go global with staff and whatnot." >> Wow. >> And the pandemic hits. >> I know. >> And that really kind of allowed us to pivot and turn us into a virtual hybrid. And that's why we're into the metaverse, as we see the value of a physical face to face event where intimacy's there, but why aren't my friends connected first party? >> Right. How much would you say the company has grown from the time that you kind of pivoted? >> Well, we've grown in a different direction with new capabilities because the old way is over. >> Right. >> Every event right now, this event here, is in person. People are talking. They get connections. But every person that's connecting has a social graph behind them that's online too, and immediately available. And with Instagram, direct messaging, Telegram, Signal, all there. >> It's brilliant. Honestly, it was brilliant idea and a brilliant pivot. >> Thank you for interviewing me. >> Yeah, of course. (Natasha and John laugh) >> Any other questions? >> That should do it. >> Okay. Are you going to have fun tonight? >> Absolutely. >> What is your take of the Monaco scene here? What's it like? >> You know, I think it's a really interesting scene. I think there's a lot of potential because this is such an international place so it draws a very eclectic crowd, and I think there's a lot that could be done here. And you have a lot of people from Europe that are starting to get into this whole crypto, leaving kind of the traditional banks and finance behind. So I think the potential is very strong. >> Very progressive. Well, Natasha, thank you for sharing. >> Thank you so much. >> Here on theCUBE. We're the extended edition CUBE here in Monaco with Prince Albert, theCUBE, and Prince Albert, DigitalBits Al Burgio, a great market here for them. And just an amazing time. And thanks for watching. Natasha, thanks for coming on. Thanks for watching theCUBE. We'll be back with more after this break. (upbeat music)

>>Yeah. Hello and welcome to the Cuba's International Women's Showcase, featuring International Women's Day. I'm John, host of the Kiwi here in California. Great remote guest. She's amazing founder and C e O of Cuba, and great to see you. Okay, thanks for coming on. Um, good to see you. >>You as well. Always a pleasure. You >>know, International Women's Day is the big celebration. We're doing a lot of interviews with great people making things happen, moving and shaking things. Um, but every day, International Women's Day, As far as I'm concerned, it's happening all around the world. But these are stories of innovation, the stories of changes, the stories of transformation for the better. You've been doing a lot of things. Um and I want to get into that. But let's start with your background. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you've got going on. >>Yeah, my background is a little strange. I used to be a maritime archaeologists. So dumb shit breaks for a little bit. That was amazing. I always just It's only partial just because it's actually a bit of truth to it, that learning how to, you know, handle things at depth really does train you to be a C e o. Because you learn to control your breath and and focus on the things that matter and not be so reactive because it's three activity that will panic that will kill you. Uh, always knowing how to reframe. Return to the basics. Um, there's a really good things to hold on to, even in the world of business. Right? So I at some point, ended up doing doing a lot of things. Largely business development, following my time diving and amazing woman. Um, another woman for International Women's Day named Doctor who was a biotech entrepreneur from Japan, stepping down as her role at the helm of her company. Um, and she wanted to launch a space for a young innovators from around the world who are doing amazing work to tackle this very complex challenges we all know exist, um, and figure out a way to give them time and space to do their best work and pursue their their highest visions for change. We decided that we would focus on for-profit companies largely who were using sustainable, scalable business models to pursue both profit and purpose. Um creating a virtuous cycle between the return of money to a company and putting that into to go even further and faster towards, um, solving a problem. Um, so we now have companies over 200 companies from around the world that we have helped support tackling every single, sustainable development goal. Um, and I'm proud to say, you know, particularly related to the subject that fifty-nine percent of our companies have a woman founder or CO-FOUNDER. Um, and 69% of the founder of color. Um, so we're working with entrepreneurs from every every area of the world. Many approximate to the problem that they are trying to solve, so they intimately understand it. Um, and they're doing amazing things. >>Yeah, you can help the great mission. You have a lot of other things going on your helping women encouraging them to your career in the tech sector. Um, good statistics could be better, right? Is higher and better. So, um, what are you guys doing? What, you specifically to help and encourage women to forge their career and tech? >>Yeah. I mean, look, the good news is I do think that it's getting better. I particularly think that we will see the adventure is improving. Um, it takes a while because the companies that have been funded up until now are still working in the biggest amount in the later stages. So I think that percentage hasn't been shifting. But I have to believe that that's a bit of an illusion, and then a couple of years, we're going to start to sea level out. But you know as well as I do that they're pretty poultry statistics in terms of the amount of venture that women like cos. Capture, Um, and the other ways that women are doubted, um, in terms of their ability and potential. Um, so we we love to work with any underrepresented group of entrepreneurs, and there's ways that we do that whether it's helping them sort of find their power and hold space and be confident. And, um, you know, be able to pitch to any room, talk to any investor, talk to any customer but also working to be directed about some of the systemic challenges, both in terms of talking to existing investors and trying to educate them to see the opportunities that they're missing because there is a an economic imperative to them understanding what they're missing. Um, but there's also some things that we're doing in-house to make sure that we're also helping to close capital gaps for all our entrepreneurs. So we actually now have a suite of three capital mechanisms that are entrepreneurs can access on the back end of our incubator, a microphone fund, which is very quick turnaround, small amounts of capital for entrepreneurs who existing opportunities owns, which is a tax destination. Just this in the U. S. But that's meant to be deployed so that they can access capital towards revenue without credit checks, collateral being put up, a slow moving pace of banks and C. D. S s. It's particularly useful for people who may not raise venture. And it's useful for, uh, you know, people who maybe don't have that friends and family check that they can expect similar. We've got a great angel network who look at the best impact deals from around the world. Um, and it doesn't have to be a housing company, just a great venture that's pursuing impact on profit. Um, and then lastly, we're just about to announce that we have a fund of our own on the back end of our incubator that funds only healthy and companies. Um, it's an early stage fund. Um, but watch this space because our pipeline is just increasing your every year. We used to sort of just 16 companies here. Now, we're serving 60 this year, so, um, yeah, it's really exciting. Um, and so obviously, it's really great that, you know, we're going to be able to help scale the impact that we want to see. Uh, ideally a lot. A lot faster. >>Well, you definitely taking control. I remember when we had a few years ago. I think four years ago, you just thinking about getting going and going now with great tailwind. Um, >>and the diversity >>of sources of capital as well as diversity of firms is increasing. That's helping, uh, that we're seeing, but you're also got the back end fun for the housing companies. But also, you've been involved in we capital for a long time. Can you talk about that? Because that's a specific supporting women entrepreneurs initiative. Um, yeah. What's up with capital share? That >>was That was another venture that I-i embarked on with such coz. Um as well as Sheila Johnson and Jonny Adam, Person who runs Rethink Impact. We capital is a group of about 16 women that I pulled together women investors to invest through rethink impact, which is another fun that is looking for impact businesses but predominantly looking for those businesses that are led by women. So this investment group is women supporting women. Um, through the use of deployment of capital, um, they're doing amazingly well. They've had some really stunning news recently that I'll let you dig up. >>I'll definitely thanks for the lead there. I'm gonna go jump on that story. >>Yeah, >>the Okay, Thanks for that lead on that trend, though in Silicon Valley and certainly in other areas that are hot like New York, Boston and D. C. Where you're at, um, you're seeing now multiple years in almost a decade in of the pioneers of these women, only funds or women only firms and your investment. Um, and it's starting to increase to under all underrepresented minorities and entrepreneurs. Right? So take us through how you see that because it's just getting more popular. Is that going to continue to accelerate in your mind? Are their networks of networks. They cross pollinating. >>Yeah, I think you know, it's It's I'm glad to see it. And, you know, it's been a long time coming. I think you know, I think we all look forward to a future where it's not necessary. Um, and you know, funds. Just invest in everyone Until then, making sure that we have specific pools of capital allocated to ensure that that, you know, those entrepreneurs who have not always been equally represented get to pursue their ideas not just because they deserve to pursue their ideas, but because the world needs their ideas. Right. And as I mentioned, there is a business imperative, right? We've got lots of examples of businesses like banks that you wouldn't have gotten a shot just because the investors just didn't understand the opportunity. Um, and I think that's normal. That's human. It happens to everyone. You are successful as an investor largely because you recognize patterns. And if something is, you know, outside of your life experience, you are not going to identify it. So it's very important that we create different kinds of capital run by different types of people. Um, and, uh, and you know. I know lots of investors have every type that are investing in these funds because they recognize that, you know, perhaps the highest growth potential is gonna come out of these, you know, particular kind of funds, which is really exciting. >>That's super important, because half the world is women, and that's just like the population is inspired by many new ventures. And that's super exciting trend. I wanna ask you about your other areas of doing a lot of work in the queue has been to buy multiple times, um, initially reporting on a region out there, and that's certainly isn't important part of the world. Um, you've got a lot of good news going on there. Can you share what's going on with, uh, the social entrepreneurship going on in Bahrain around the region? >>Yeah, I'm happy to. We we've actually been so privileged to work with a W S for a very long time. Almost since the start of the incubator they've supported are entrepreneurs, all of our entrepreneurs with access to cloud credits and services. Um, and we've sort of double down with a W S in the last couple of years in areas where We both want to create an uplift, um, for small businesses and rapidly growing tax solutions to these these social environmental problems. We see. So there's been an excellent partner to do that. And one of the areas we did in the water was with rain, particularly with women, tech startups, women tech startups in Bahrain. Yeah, we did that last year. We had an amazing group of women over in D. C. Um, and we continue to support them. One of them is actually in the process of raising. I think she just closed her seed round recently. And that's why for, um, al yet, um, and she created playbook, which is an amazing, uh, platform for women to take master classes and network and really sort of level up, as one says, Um, but also, um, the mall of work. Um uh, just really talented women over in Bahrain, um, pushing the envelope and all sorts of directions, and it was wonderful to get the opportunity to work with them. Um, that has now spawned another set of programs serving entrepreneurs in the Middle East in North Africa. They were also working on with us as well as the U S. State Department. Um, so we're going to be working for the next two years with entrepreneurs to help our recovery from covid. Um, in China. Um, and then I'm also proud to say that we're working with a W s in South Africa because there is just an extraordinary energy, you know, in the continent, Um, and some amazing entrepreneurial minds working on, you know, the many problems and opportunities that they're facing and recognizing. Um So we're supporting, you know, companies that are working on finding, um, skilled refugees to be able to help them resettle and use their talents and make money. Um, sadly, are very relevant company now with what's going on in Ukraine. Um, but also, uh, zombie and satellite company, um, companies that are preventing food, food waste by providing, um, solar-powered refrigerators to rural areas in South Africa. Um, so a lot of, um, you know, just incredible talent and ideas that we're seeing globally. Um, and happy to be doubling down on that with the help of a W s. >>That's awesome. Yeah, following the work when we met in D. C. And again, you always had this international view um it's International Women's Day. It's not North America >>Women's Day. It's >>International Women's Day. Can you share your thoughts on how that landscape is changing outside the U. S. For example, and around the world and how the international peace is important and you mentioned pattern matching? Um, you also, when you see patterns, they become trends. What do you see forming that have been that that are locked in on the U. C they're locked in on that are happening that are driving. What are some of those trends that you see on the international side that's evolving? >>Yeah. You know, I think the wonderful opportunity with the Internet and social media is that, you know, both, uh, we can be more transparent about areas for improvement and put a little pressure where maybe things are moving fast enough. We've all seen the power of that, Um, the other, um, you know, things that certainly in countries where women maybe as free to move and operate, they can still acquire skills education they can set up cos they can do so so much. Um, you know, through these amazing technologies that we now have at our disposal growing an amazing rates. Um, they can connect via zoom. Right? I think that while the pandemic definitely set women back and we should acknowledge that, um, uh, the things that the pandemic perhaps helped us to exponentially scale will move women forward. And perhaps that's the target to hang on to, to feel optimistic about where we're headed. >>And also, there's a lot of problems to solve. And I think one of the things we're seeing you mentioned the Ukraine situation. You're seeing the geopolitical landscape changing radically with technology driving a lot of value. So with problems comes opportunities. Um, innovation plays a big role. Can you share some of the successful stories that you were inspired by that you've seen, um, in the past couple of years. And as you look forward, what What some of those innovation stories look like? And what are you inspired by? >>Yeah. I mean, there's so, so many. Um, you know, we just, uh, had a couple of entrepreneurs, and just the last year, Um, you know, after I think everyone sort of took an initial breath with the pandemic, They realize that they either had an opportunity or they had a problem to solve to your point. Um, and they did that well or not. And or some of them, you know, just didn't didn't have any more cards to play and had to really pivot. Um, it was really interesting to see how everyone handled handled that particular moment in time. One company that I think of is everywhere. Um, and she had created a wearable device that you can just put on your ear. It looks like an earring right at the top of your ear. Um, and it was for her for herself because she suffered from pulmonary complications. And, uh, without more discreet wearable, you know, had to wear a huge device and look around and oxygen tank and, you know, just to sort of have a good quality of life. Um, it turns out, obviously, during covid, that is a very useful item, not just for patients suffering from covid and wanting to know what their oxygen levels were doing, but also potentially athletics. So, um, she's really been able to double down as a result of the trends from the pandemic. Um, and I'm really proud of part of her. And that's actually where another great one that we just just came through. Our last 15 is Maya. Um, and she had a brick and mortar store. Um, uh, called Cherry Blossom. Intimate where she helped women have an enjoyable experience finding, uh, and fitting bras post mastectomy to include sort of, you know, the necessary, um, prosthetics and things like that. Um, she even made it so that you could go with your friends who haven't had a mistake, and she could also find some lovely luxury. Um, but the pandemic meant that that experience was sort of off the table. Um, and what they did was she decided to make it a technological one. So now she's she's essentially will be part of it. You can, you know, go to my, um, online. And you can, um, you know, order, uh, measure yourself, work with a specialist, all online, get a few different options, figure out the one that's perfect for you and the rest back. Um, and I don't think without the pandemic, that would not have happened. So she's now able to serve exponentially more. Um, you know, women who deserve to feel like themselves post it to me. >>That's also a model and inspirational. I have to ask you for the young women out there watching. What advice would you share with them as they navigate into a world that's changing and evolving and getting better with other women, mentors and entrepreneurs and or just an ecosystem of community? What advice would you give them as they step into the world and have to engage and experience life? >>Yeah, gosh, part of me always wants to resist that they don't listen to anyone to do you follow your heart, follow your gut, or at least be careful who you listen to because a lot of people will want to give you advice. I would >>say, Uh, that's good advice. Don't take my advice. Well, you've been a great leader. Love the work, you're doing it and I'll say N D. C. But all around the world and again, there's so much change going on with innovation. I mean, just the advances in technology across the board, from with machine learning and AI from linguistics and understanding. And I think we're going to be a bigger community. Your thoughts on as you see community organically becoming a big part of how people are engaging. What's your what's your view As you look out across the landscape, communities becoming a big part of tribes. What's your vision on how the role of communities place? >>You know, we we actually do you think a lot about community and healthy. And we say that are you know, alchemy really is providing space, you know, physical and mental space to think, um, access access to capital access to networks, Um, community, Um, and the community piece is very, very important. Are entrepreneurs leave us like the number one thing that they miss is being among like-minded, um, you know, slightly slightly crazy audacious people. Um, and I often joked that we're building a kind army because it is, you know, it's people who want to do it differently if people want to do it with integrity. Is people who are in it for a very different motivations than just money. Um, and, you know, you start to feel the power of that group together and its entirety and what that might look like as as a community solving global problems. Um, and it really is inspiring. Um, I do think that people are starving for FaceTime and people time, real human time after the pandemic, I think they won't go away. It's a great tool, but we all want a little bit of that, and I will mention just along those lines. And if you don't mind a quick plug for an event that we're having March 16, Um, also in partnership with a W s called Build her relevant to International Women's Day as well. People can, either. If they're in the city, they can come in person. But we also have a virtual program, and we'll be listening to some of the most inspiring. Women leaders and entrepreneurs both in government and also the private sector share their knowledge on the side of the pandemic for for, you know, the next tribal group of women entrepreneurs and leaders. >>That's great. Well, you are on our website for sure. >>Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. >>And we love the fact that you're in our community as well. Doing great work. Thanks for spending time with the Cube and on International Women's Day celebration. Thanks for coming on and sharing. >>Thank you, John. >>Okay. The Cube International showcase Women's Day, featuring some great guests all around the world, Not just in the U S. But all over the world. I'm your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, hm, Yeah.

>>mhm. Hello and welcome to the Cubes presentation of Women in text. Global Event Celebrating International Women's Day I'm John for your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California and we had a great remote guests coming in from Bahrain in the Middle East. Cather Allegheny, general manager of 9 73 Labs. Uh, thanks for coming in and and being part of the Cube our International Women's Day. You can't get any more international in Bahrain. Thank you for coming on. >>It's my great pleasure and honour to be here. John, thank you so much for this opportunity. >>Well, I'm super excited to chat with you because in our two visits with the Cube in Bahrain covering the summit there the past few years, we notice of surgeon entrepreneurship. Um, it's almost as if the region of AWS has create this revitalization and energy and vitality and and momentum around entrepreneurship. Can you >>share? What's >>the scene down there? What's the What's it like? >>Well, uh, when it comes to my country, we're lucky to have a small population. It's not that large, but we have so many creative people who is eager to try the entrepreneurial journey, and having Amazon as a data centre in Bahrain is a privilege. And they are pushing, uh, to have more entrepreneurial ideas and innovation and solutions within the ecosystem of rain. So definitely with their support, I can I can see that so many youths, they are eager to come in and contribute. >>I noticed that you're also the general manager of, uh, 9 73 labs, but also the founder of a company. So you've got two things going on here. You've got the entrepreneurial thing happening. Um, this seems to be normal. People got entrepreneurial activity and the job doing both. They're both entrepreneurial. Is that normal? >>Yes, Absolutely. Well, I started my entrepreneurial journey back in, uh, four years and I've been appointed as a general manager of 97 3 labs, which is I'm leading on digital innovation. So that compliments my passion of being an entrepreneur. And while we can acquire talented people and support them to create their own solutions the best way they can So basically, uh, following the main pillars of the lab that I'm working on, which is conducting appropriate research and data analytics, innovation and sustainability. So, uh, for my two founded cos it's not only one I've worked in Fintech and also in property as well. >>What inspired you to be an entrepreneur and technology? >>Well, I would say that my inspiration was to think outside the box, and I see problems and gaps as an opportunity. So that helps me to figure out and come up with solutions that can be beneficial for everyone. So analysing detail as well as something that I would really love. And also, um, enhancing my skills and being more creative is my inspiration. >>I know this is a lot of entrepreneur activity in Bahrain. A lot of investors are now coming into the market. Um, what are some of the things that are going on there? Can you share what the entrepreneurial scene is like there what people are working on has cloud computing accelerated that? What's what are some of the things happening there on the ground? >>Um, I would see that there is multiple competitions or hackathons run by multiple financial institutions. Uh, and also, uh, there are so many NGO s as I am a board member and technology and business society and also a member of women empowerment in the field of cheque, we are trying to motivate and accelerate the desire to be within this ecosystem of entrepreneurial journey. So, basically, uh, we have the Supreme Council of Women who is pushing as well women and ladies to be in this, uh, sector, uh, from early age from, uh, university or even high school graduates that they should start on working on their ideas and come up with solutions. So you can see that everyone is up to, uh, being part of the ecosystem by putting in their ideas. >>And the government wants to be digitally completely transformed, and >>by certain >>they're pushing it hard to >>Absolutely. Yes, we have the governmental sector trying to migrate from legacy infrastructure to the cloud. I would say, uh and it's it's more efficient for government and also to the private sector as well. >>You know, one of the things that jumped out at me when I was in my rain visiting was there was a lunch. Uh, I'm sorry. Breakfast for women in tech. And I went there because I always go to those breakfast cause I really want to see and meet people. I had to get kicked out because it wasn't a table space. So I was for all the people that were there, Um, because I was the guy that was spot for women, it was sold out, was lying and lying to get in. So there's a huge interest of women in tech. I saw that firsthand. There are more and more people want to come in. So motivating women to consider Korean tech is really the focus. What steps do you see to make that happen? How do we take that to the next level? What's your view on motivating women to get into tech? How would you talk about that? >>Well, absolutely. I think it's really crucial to have a woman contribution within the field of cheque. But I believe there is some challenges, given our cultural norms of how man perceived woman working in the field of cheque, sometimes society burden woman from, you know, pursuing her passion to be in because it's a demanding field. I would say that it's, uh, equal to the medical field. You have to keep on updating and to be aware about what's going on. Um, so basically, that might create a bit of a burden for specifically married women of looking after her husband or their families. So I think, uh, this is one of the challenges. But the steps to overcome those challenge challenges is why, uh, you know, trying to shift and change the way, uh, society think about where women should position herself and what kind of job should she should be. And, uh, So I think the other thing is by having educational curriculum that we taught in schools, teaching both genders about the importance of, uh, how we are equal and how we can complement each other in that field because the future is in technology. So the young generation should understand this very well. >>How is the women, um, entrepreneurship going? Are they being finance for their ventures out there? What's the what's the What's the momentum and progress on women starting ventures? >>Yes, absolutely. We're lucky to have our first lady, the wife of the king who is heading the Supreme Council of Women who is pushing women to create their own businesses or to come to become an entrepreneur. Also, we have financings becoming through the government with an entity called Temkin will provide different plants and support all through, not financials only, but it covers other areas of businesses as well. So financing is not a problem again for an entrepreneur. Uh, woman. As an entrepreneur, you can always seek multiple options for financing, not necessarily inside. It can be international as well. >>So a lot of good capital there also, this fellowship opportunities. I noticed you were a Halsey in, uh, fellow. The fellowship with the Halsey in organisation. Talk about that. That experience? >>Well, I really loved the experience. We started in fact, last year, and we flew to Washington in July, and we've met with Amazon people who were really supportive. We got solution architects supporting us of how to build the solution that we want to deliver. And I got my CTO to get trained by the Amazon as well. So we found so much value and the courses and the mentorship they provided, uh, and I'm really glad to be part of that family and their CEO. She said, Now, uh, for a lifetime, you are part of our family, and, you know, it's all the support that we needed to get. >>It's a great community. What advice would you give to people who are out there who want to learn and get into cloud computing and take that step towards creating value on whether it's entrepreneurial or within a company. What's the secret formula that you would say our secrets to success? >>Absolutely. I think a cloud is a a massive, and it's a brilliant opportunity for any technology to be built on myself. I believe in the cloud. Most or all of my solutions is built on cloud. And now even me leading the digital lab on building infrastructure on cloud and basically it will give you more room. Uh, identify more gaps. You do assessment. You can utilise the tools that is within cloud, which is artificial intelligence machine learning. Uh, you call it so you can seize the opportunity to the maximum, and you can skill faster. So basically, you're not limited to your, uh, country. You can go across countries as well utilising cloud >>Catherine to talk about what's next for you. What's the next step? >>Well, uh, the next step in my new role or a new job leading on a digital innovation in 973 Labs is to finalise my strategy and also to acquire talented young people And, uh, you know, go through a programme, which is I designed where they get the mentorship, the support till they get a final product that will be invested in. And they can guarantee themselves a carrier, uh, within the digital love that I'm trying to lead on. Uh, and I think the projects that will be covering not specifically only infant IQ, it could be in any other industry. So, uh, we're trying to follow the recent trends, Uh, thanks to Amazon and Google and the other companies that we can extract data and create our own reporting. So to, uh, come up where we should be investing our time. >>That's great. I wanna ask you about the demographics of the folks in Bahrain. I noticed that they're very a lot of young entrepreneurs coming up and learn a lot of them. Um, is that true? >>Yes, Uh, our population, the majority of our youth, uh and I would say, um uh, the average age is in thirties until 35 or 36. So, relatively, we have so many young people or youth who was eager to learn. But again, we need the expertise. We need older people to also mentor and coach the young generation of how they should calculate the risk and come up with a proper business models and brilliant ideas. >>Well, I'm very impressed with the folks down there, I said before the pandemic. Unfortunately, the pandemic it, But we really wanted to have a cube location there, a lot of vitality out of action, a lot of good stuff going on. Certainly with the NWS region in there, it's really create a lot of value. And so we're looking forward to hearing more. And, uh, thanks for coming on and sharing your storey with us and for the folks out there watching. What advice would you give to women who are watching around the world around entrepreneurship? What's going on from your experience? What should we be doing and talking about? What's the Storey? I'll see this theme is bias, uh, inherent bias and in the culture, um, what would you share your thoughts on to the world? >>Well, I think the only advice I can give to all of the women out there just try something new to try to solve a problem. There are so many gaps we have around. Just look around. You just take one step forward and try it. At least once in your life, you can come up with a brilliant, uh, solution that serves all humankind, not only the people of your country. So even if the road is bumpy, just be have the courage, be resilient and go for it. >>And we're all connected on the Internet. So of course, we can communicate with each other and have a good time and and grow the community. Thanks so much for coming on the Cube and celebrating International Women's Day with us as part of our special presentation. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. >>Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much. >>Okay, this is the cubes presentation of women in text. Global event Celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John for a host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah,

>>Mhm. >>Hello, Welcome to the Cubes presentation of women in Tech Global events Celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John for a host of the Cube. Got a great guest here. Isabella, who is the vice president of worldwide Public Sector EMEA Sales for AWS Amazon Web service Europe, Middle East and Africa Isabella Thanks for spending the time and coming on this, uh, this programme for International Women's Day. Appreciate it. >>Thank you very much for having me on that one. It's an exciting topic, John. >>A lot of things going on. A lot of themes. Um, we'll get into that. But first tell us about your career and how you got to be working at a W s. >>Yeah, that that's that's really interesting. Storey, I would say I give you first of all the headline. I am a dental technician by training. I am business administration economics by study, and I spent my really whole life intact. So my first message here is that you can have a great career press intact, having a diverse background. Um, what you need really is to be curious and to be eager to learn. And you see that I've slightly tweaked our leadership principles saying learn and be curious on that one. But when you agree on that one saying, I am curious, I want to learn this is really a great place in technology and in a W s to be in and to progress a career. It's really, really cool. And when I look ahead, I see that because the industry lines are blurring more and more, they are more and more diverse skill sets that were reverse roles coming in, and that is really opening an exciting opportunity also for women, but also in a broader sense of diversity to go and and have a career in technology. It is quite exciting. Back to my career. I started in a in a company. I think when I look back at that and reflect, it was a startup these days very, very early in parallel computing moved on than into management consulting into into international consulting project and managing those ones. And when I look at that piece, I have built out at that point exactly my industry skills and that was beginning in the oil and gas industry when I then transitioned in a bigger cooperation into the e R P space that also continues on a global scale. And then eventually I switched over and, um, and started to go deeper into another industry segment, which was the public sector. And when you come from oil and gas, that is a transition that comes to national oil companies. So that just a sort of naturally came but gave me absolutely different scope. So 16 years in oil and gas and then processed into public sector. Now, in my last global role, I really get across the whole discussion about Cloud. And this is why I got also in touch with aws, um, talking about Wow, this is the future. This is really the way of how computing is gonna be consumed in future and how agile those types of a of a model is. And that was really super intrigued, also having a sort of a really startup mentality. And this is and here I am, as this is responsible for for a mayor in public sector. >>But I love the throwback to parallel computing. I remember those days exciting Storey and I love the point about a lot of opportunities with tech. There's so the aperture of technology has really widened the surface area for things you can do and bring a diverse background to is really amazing. Great point. Great insight. I have to ask you, um what first Got you interested in working in the tech sector? How did you get attracted to the parallel computing? Um, what was the gravitational pole? Was there a moment of of luck? Serendipity. What happened? Tell us, uh, how you got interested in the tech sector, >>John, I wish I would tell you now, a storey that this was the wow moment, right where I came across something and that sparked the idea. Can I tell you a secret? So when I started my study, the the thing that I said or the statement I made was it just I want to work in everything, but not in, >>uh >>this is And and maybe maybe that is how the brain process. So the brain process I want to work in i t. And this is how I got into it. No, but seriously, I think the first part was I got my business degree, but I got it from a technical in your university. This is why I come First time came across that in a broader sense. What I say is it later or is it early? I don't think so. That was for me at the right time. That was mechanical engineering engineering and I t. I've also built a couple of seasons around that part. That was the first one. And certainly when I get into this company that was on parallel computing at that time and under talk, being responsible for optimisation models for refineries as sort of transition into that one. So coming really from a technical university background being on a daily basis was that and being in in this in those topics all the time and also thinking about how could I progress that way and also having my first engagement with the company, Um, in that space that got me intrigued and stuck into the startup space. Um, not calling as a startup those days, but also in the technology side. And I think the farms have been so cool if I look back on that one, >>you know, what's the thing about that Storey is that you were in an environment that was technical and nerdy, and we're seeing that now people are. We had a leader on a W s that I interviewed. She said we're nerd native. The younger generation is natively nerdy. And there they got tech. They're touching it everywhere there in things owns there in think tanks and build a building things. So this is this is the new situation. So, you know, this is kind of where we're going. So the next question I have for you is, um how do we encourage young women and girls to get a career in tech? Are there initiatives that you guys have? I know get I t initiative that 80 bucks runs is one. How do we get this? This word out that it's all in front of us that the environment is rich to >>bring careers >>in together. >>Yeah, and I think to your point, you can't start early enough on that one, right? So I can say it has been a different touch points, but I think I also had an inspiration earlier where I really thought about here. I can do everything right. So from that perspective that paves the way into a looking at, I can equally proceed different career passes, but you touched on the get I t side And I really, really love that initiative that that we as a W s have put together. And I've been a judge on that one. And it's amazing results that have been driving that. So the initiative has and and and and defined frame it is encouraging girls in the age of 12 13 and also that but but potentially also then later going and considering and career in tack. Um, with that one, it brings these challenges that that teams are solving for specifically. For example, schools are taking problems on that they're gonna frame and set up into a in a sort of a mini startup mode, thinking about what is the business case, How do I go from a detailed plan but also still keep a big picture in mind and then bring it forward into a pitch? This is a very, very round of and defined programme that we have set up, and it really very it sparks very, very great. Not very, but but great ideas in the sense of it sparks the ideas for for really how those problems can be can be solved in those communities and potentially be beyond what I really love about it. It forces diversity. You think about it. It's not only just for for girls or it's not for younger women, but it is diverse team. So they are from a diversity perspective. It brings different perspectives into it, and it's in and is solving those problems for communities or challenges for communities. So since we started that one we have, we have had a very, very strong participation in the UK, for example, from 136 schools and I think over 30,000 students. We are now rolling this initiative also out to other countries in Europe, and I had the pleasure to participate in the one in Germany. So I think that that was really an outstanding experience and it really brings that top of mind again and again. Think thinking about no matter what your background is, just go and solve problems for your school, for your community, get people together, get diverse perspective and get things going. >>I love that example, is a great storey because it also allows people to get their hands on some technology experiment breaks to fix it get building at the young age. But also the theme this year is breaking the bias. Right. So when you get to the younger ages, the bias can be worked on there. This is a great example of that. Is that have an impact there as well? >>Yeah, I think so. Very much it is. You have You have those teams that are naturally then working around the problem, and they are really absolutely focused on the topic. They are absolutely focused on solving a challenge. And I think that really brings this the diversity of perspective together. And in that context, the teams are also looking at what we what we have in in in our organisation, what makes really that strong culture, which are the leadership principles. Right? So we are this this is a invent and simplify. This is a built trust very much. Just just deal respectfully with other people, but also be able to discuss, had you a strong opinion but then also agree on the direction. So I think it really brings that to the topic. And by that broadens the base of the collaboration great >>organic diversity from day one as they say Amazon phrase. But let's speaking of Amazon phrases and leadership principles. One of the things that we hear Amy Jackie talked about this all the time. But now Adam Sadowsky talks about as well as the new CEO of AWS. Um is to be the world's best employer, right? So you know, one of the things is the diversity, inclusion and equity part of the equation. And and, of course, they're they're putting storeys out like this is a great, great service, and we're happy to be working with them on this. So why is diversity, inclusion and equity such an important part of this leadership principle? Uh, for Amazon and the world? Can you share your thoughts and and share the the urgency and imperative of why this is a big deal? >>Look, I think now, first of all, we need to acknowledge that we are all diverse, right, and we can, by default, say that So we are bringing all these diverse views. We are bringing a lot of diverse perspective when we are joining a company. When we are talking to other people in each and every interaction, we are expressing our diversity and and we we we as a W s believe that when technology is delivered, it should be in a way that it should be built in a way that is first of all, diverse. It is equitable, and it is inclusive. Um, and we have the responsibility to make that happen. And we also have, as an organisation, the responsibility to take the way, way on to understand what does it take to get there and to get the commitment out to make sure that we bring more diverse perspective, we bring more diverse perspective. We force those ones, and we build on that we never stop on looking at bringing more and more diversity. And that's one, I think, Um, we are as a W s committed to a diverse workforce for one reason, and that is our customers are diverse. The challenges are diverse, so delivering the best solution needs a diverse perspective. This is where the best of innovation comes together when you have people that can discuss. But those people also feel safe to express themselves and to have their voice heard. So that's the second part where it is. It's the customer focus, and we are extremely customer obsessed. But on the other hand, it is also the question about we do it for our people because we want and that comes then back to your point on also on the on the leadership principle. We want our people to feel the belonging into the organisation. This is what they are in their safe point. This is what they deliver at the best, also for our customers and what they feel that they are part of the organisation. When you take diversity equity and inclusion together, the outcome of of all of three is is belonging. So we want to to really drive that to make sure that we we dr more aspects of that diversity into the organisation. So we bring a broad basis of our colleagues, um, into into the organisation and make the work voice heard. Now that that's one hang on and then we we we we want actively recruit women into to drive this gender diversity specifically as well. When we look, for example, at a media and we are going to colleges, we're going to two events were going to conferences when we want to really offer the benefits for for our industry leading, for example, parent leave, mentorships and sponsorship programmes which are women to develop their careers to to really focus on that one. So I think it is striving for being the Earth were best employer by bringing those top industry programmes to live, to make sure that each and every diverse personality can find a space at AWS and run at the best for the best of our customers, >>that's a great point. The world's divers, the customers are diverse and if you put the three words together, they're all equally important. It got to include everyone got to be diverse. Everyone has to have equity. That is a community that's about what community is about. And and we are now doing seeing more community focus than ever before. In today's world, this is super important. Quick follow up on that the role of community. What's your vision on community? Because >>people want to belong >>to something, they want to be part of a tribe. This community, >>Yeah, and that's why I'm saying I think when you to, to your point again to reinforce that when you bring the three words together, you get this community feeling you get the belonging. I think it's also the question of a strong culture. You, you, you the ability to offer a cultural framework that people can identify with where they see that the breaths and depths of their skills and all the people around the globe can be folded in. I think this is massive, and this is extremely powerful to bring that to life and to be able to offer this to to our colleagues that are working at a W S. But also beyond that is a universal, universal message that we can spread. >>Yeah, I gotta say, uh, props to Amazon AWS and we're investing in the queue. We're doing more of these interviews. This is a force multiplier. I think, uh, diversity, inclusion and equity is a force multiplier. Competitive advantage. The product gets better, the people are happier. It's just a wonderful thing. So I really appreciate the the insight and points on that. That's a great, great segment. Lastly, though we're speaking of the number of inspiring women, you're one of them. Thanks for joining us as part of Celebration International Women's Day. I'd like to ask you, um, who inspires you? Yeah, >>Look, there are there are so many just I I think we are. We are living in a world where you get the inspiration from very, very many sources. But if I drive that back to what has shaped my career, what has shaped my past? I would say that there are There are two main data points. The first one is I'm really going back to my dad. When I went back to him and says that what eventually can I do? He just looked at me and said, Do whatever you want And this is how I really went into life rolling up the sleeves, saying Okay, yeah, well, let's go there, Right So it inspired me to to to look at the positive side and to always take it from an opportunity perspective to go and do whatever I wanted to do. What I thought is interesting for me and where I have been really curious and wanted to learn more about that is one and the other one. Besides the all the framework that we, for example, have had a W s, the leadership principles, our culture of diversity, but also our culture of of, um of of discussion, high debate, and those types are super, super inspirational when it also comes for me to drive in the next level of getting getting everybody on the same page. Um, I had a discussion, was one of my former escape managers as capable managers, and the the sentence that he has formed that is still sticks with me is I was looking at the next career point, and we have been discussing that back and forth, and he he was always asking the same questions. What do you want to do next? And I gave him an answer. He never answered. He just walked away and I did that two times, and I eventually figured out that it's probably not what he really wanted to hear. And when we started to go into a discussion, he he pointed me to a to A to A to to affect or to a direction that he said, Do you want to wait for dead man's slippers? And this is a sentence just you don't really under need to understand that in price and deaths. But if you think about the picture just like this, there is the old chair and then you have the slippers. Is that something? This is something we always think myself back and forth. I'm thinking. What? What? Which point I am I at. And is that eventually also a point where I would say this is a dead man slippers transition point. And this is what inspired me of thinking about the next three points staying agile and also staying, staying always curious and learning. >>So go on to the next level is about pushing yourself and really rethinking and going after things that maybe aspirational but attainable at the same time. Understanding that role sounds like that was growth opportunity. >>Yes, it was a growth opportunity. Then it never comes to the to the point where you're gonna say, I'm gonna now that's it, right? I've learned everything. It is a I'm gonna step out. It's gonna be outside my comfort zone. Am I ready to do that? And it's at the right point for me and I think it's the answer to that. One is always Yes, this is how you stay, Stay, keep up with technology. But you keep up also with all the fantastic opportunities that that that the life and also the environment. Like, for example, a W s offer. >>Isabella, thank you for coming on and sharing this storey. One last question I'll ask you, is what's next for you. What do you want to do next? Your worldwide public sector executive leader for Europe, Middle East and Africa for AWS Hot company? The regions are everywhere. There's more regions as locals owns. Everything is happening. It's expanding. You're in the middle of it. What's next for you? >>I want to see cloud being the driver of innovation and and business dynamics. Business model change. And I want to be part of this business model change that is based on cloud in future, for the benefit of public sector and all the other entities, and also very much for the for the benefit of all citizens around the globe. That's my next >>Well, it sounds like it's been a very diverse, inclusive and highly equitable, and I want to be part of that. Want to belong to that? Thank you for sharing and looking forward to more conversations and thank you for spending the time to come on the cubes presentation here. Thank you so much. >>Thank you. so much I >>appreciate. Okay. The representation of women in tech global events celebrating International Women's Day. This is the first episode will be more. We're going to get more and more storeys out. But March 8th is a big day. We're celebrating today. International. I'm John Ferry, the host of the Cube. Thanks for watching.

>>Yeah. Hello and welcome to the Cubes Presentation of Women in Tech Global Event Celebrating International Women's Day I'm John for a host of the Cube. We had a great guest in Cuba. Alumni Veranda re vice president. Commercial sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa. EMEA at AWS Amazon Web service to great to see you. Thank you for coming in all the way across the pond and the US to Palo Alto from London. >>Thank you, John. Great to see you again. I'm super excited to be part of this particularly special event. >>Well, this is a celebration of International Women's Day. It's gonna continue throughout the rest of the year, and every day is International Women's Day. But you're actually international. Your women in Tech had a great career. We talk that reinvent. Let's step back and walk through your career. Highlights to date. What have been some of the key things in your career history that you can share? >>Uh, thanks, John. It's always nice to reflect on this, you know? Look, I the way I would classify my career. First of all, it's very it's been very international. I was born and raised in India I went to study in the US It was always a dream to go do that. I did my masters in Boston University. I then worked in the U S. For a good 17 years across A number of tech, uh, tech companies in particular, started my career at McKinsey in the very early days and then moved on to work for E M. C. You'll you'll probably remember them, John. Very well, of course, There now, Del um And then I moved over to Europe. So I've spent the last 18 years here in Europe. Um, and that's been across a couple of different things. I I always classify. Half my career has been strategy, transformation, consulting, and the other half of my career is doing the real job of actually running operations. And I've been, you know, 12 15 years in the tech and telecom sector had the excitement of running Schneider Electric's business in the UK Denniston and Private Equity went back to McKinsey Boomerang, and then a W s called me, and how could I possibly refuse that? So it's been really exciting, I think the one big take away when I reflect on my career is. I've always had this Northstar about leading a business someday, and then I've sort of through my career master set of skills to be able to do that. And I think that's probably what you see. Very eclectic, very mobile, very international and cross industry. Uh, in particular. >>I love the strategy and operations comment because they're both fun, but they're different ones. Very execution, tactical operating. The business strategy is kind of figuring out the future of the 20 mile stare. You know, playing that chess match, so to speak, all great skills and impressive. But I have to ask you, what got you in the tech sector? Why technology? >>Well, so you know, in some ways I kind of fell into it, John, right? Because when I was growing up, my father was always in the tech space, so he had a business and fax machines and he was a reseller of cannon. If you remember Cannon, um, and microfilm equipment and I grew up around him, and he was a real entrepreneur. I mean, always super visionary about new things that were coming out. And so as I followed him around, I said, I kind of wanna be him. And it's a little bit about that sort of role model right early in your career. And then when I moved to the U. S. To study again, it wasn't like I thought I was gonna go to attack. I mean, I wasn't an engineer, you know. I grew up in India with economics degree. That's when women went into We didn't necessarily go into science. But when I joined McKinsey in the early days, I ended up working with, you know, the big companies of the days. You know, the IBMs, the E M. C. Is the Microsoft the oracles, etcetera. So I just then began to love, love the innovation, always being on the sort of bleeding edge. Um, and I guess it was a little bit just fascinating for me not being an engineer to learn how technology had all these applications in terms of how businesses advanced. So I guess, Yeah, that's kind of why I still think it around with it. It's interesting >>how you mentioned how you at that time you pipeline into economics, which is math. Of course. Uh, math is needed for economics, but also the big picture and This is one of the conversation we're having, Uh, this year, the breaking down the barriers for women in tech. Now there's more jobs you don't You don't need to have one pathway into into science or, you know, we're talking stem versus steam arts are super important, being creative. So the barriers to get in are being removed. I mean, if you think about the surface area for technology. So I got to ask you, what barriers do you think Stop girls and young women the most in considering a career in Tech? >>I've got to start with role models, John. Right? Because I think a number of us grew up, by the way, being the only not having the allies in the business, right? All of us, all the all the managers and hiring people are males rather than females. And the fact of the matter is, we didn't have this sort of he for she movement. And I think that's the biggest barrier is not having enough role models and positive role models in the business. I can tell you that research shows that actually, when you have female role models, you tend to hire more and actually what employees say is they feel more supportive when they have actually female managers. So I think there are lots of goodness, but we just need to accelerate how many role models we have. I think the other things I will say to you as well is, if you look at just the curriculum and the ability to get women into stem, right, I mean, we need to have colleges, universities, schools also encouraging women into stem. And you've probably heard about our programme. You know, it's something we do to encourage girls into stem. I think it's really important that teachers and others are actually encouraging girls to do math, for example, right? It's not just about science. Math is great. Logic is great, by the way. Philosophy is great. I just love what you said. I think increasingly, the EQ and EQ parts have to come together, and I think that's what women excel at. Um, so I think that's another very, very big carrier, and then the only other thing I will say is we're gonna watch the language we use, like when I think about job descriptions, they tend to be very male oriented languages we look at CVS now, if you haven't been a female in tech for a long time, your CV isn't going to show a lot of tech, is it? So for recruiters out there, look for competencies. Look for capabilities. You mentioned strategy and arts earlier. We have this leadership principles, As you know, John, really well, think big and dive deep, right? That strategy and operations. And so I think we we need to recruit for that. And we need to recruit for culture. And we need to recruit for people with ambition, an aspiration and not always Just look at 20 years of experience because you're not gonna find it. So I think those are some of the big barriers. Um, that I that I at least think, is stopping women from getting into town. But the biggest one is not enough women at the top hiring women. >>I think people want to see themselves, or at least an aspirational version of what they could be. And I think that's only gonna get better. Lots changed. A lot has happened over the years, but now, with technology in everyone's life, covid pulled forward a lot of realities. You know, the current situation in Europe where you're you are now has pulled forward a lot of realities around community, cyber, digital, our lives. And I think this opens up new positions, clearly cybersecurity. And I'm sure the job boards in every company is hiring people that didn't exist years ago, but also this new problems to solve. So the younger generation coming up, um, is gonna work on these problems, and they need to have role models. So what's your reaction to that? You know, new problems are opportunities their new so usually solved by probably the next generation. Uh, they need mentors. All this kind of works together. What's your reaction? >>Yeah, and, you know, let me pick up on something we're doing that I think is really important. I think you have to address age on the pipeline problem, you know, because they're just is a pipeline problem, you know, at the end of the day, And by that, what I mean is, we need to have more and more people with the and I'm not gonna use the word engineering or science. I'm going to use the word digital skills, right? And I think what we've we've committed to doing, John, you know, I'm very proud of this is we said we're gonna train 29 people 29 million people around this world on digital skills for free by 2025. Right, That's gonna help us get that pipeline going. The other thing we do is something called Restart where we actually do 12 weeks of training for the under, employed and under served right and underrepresented communities. And that means in 12 weeks we can get someone. And you know, this case I talk to you about this before I love it. Fast food operator to cloud, right? I mean, that's that's what I call changing the game on pipeline. But But here's the other stand. Even if the pipeline is good and we often see that the pipeline can be as much as 50% at the very early career women, by the time you get into the C suite, you're not a 50 anymore. You're less than 20%. So the other big thing John there, and this comes back to the types of roles you have an opportunities you create. We've got to pull women through the pipeline. We've really got to encourage that there are sponsors and not just mentors. I think women are sorry to say this over mentored and under sponsored. We need more people say I'm gonna open the door for you and create the opportunity I had that advantage. I hit people through my career. By the way, they were all men, right? Who actually stood out there and bang on the door and said, Okay, Tunisia is gonna go do this. And my first break I remember was having done strategy all my life when the CEO come into the room and you said, You're gonna better locks and you're gonna go run the P and L in Benelux and I almost fainted because I thought, Oh, my God, I've never run a PNR before But it's that type of risk taking that's going to be critical. And I think we've got to train our leaders and our managers to have those conversations be the sponsors, get that unconscious bias training. We all have it. Every single one of us has it. I think those are the combinations of things that are going to actually help open the door and make a see that Actually, it's not just about coding. It's actually about sales. It's about marketing. It's about product management. It's about strategy. It's about sales operations. It's about really, really thinking differently about your customers, right? And that's the thing that I think is attractive about technology. And you know what? Maybe that leads you to eventually become a coder. Or maybe not. Maybe you enter from coding, but those are all the range is available to you in technology, which is not good at advertising, >>that there's more applications than ever before. But I love your comment about over mentoring and under sponsored. Can you quickly just define the difference between those two support elements sponsoring versus, uh, mentoring sponsoring >>So mentors And by the way they can range from my son is my mentor, you know, is a great reverse mentor. By the way, I really encourage you to have the reverse mentoring going. So many mentors are people from all walks of your life, right? And you should have, you know, half a dozen of those. At least I think right who are going to be able to help you deal with situations, help coach you give you feedback respond to concerns You're having find ways for you to navigate all the stuff you need, by the way. Right? And feedback the gift we need that sponsors. It's not about the feedback. Necessarily. It's people who literally will create opportunities for you. Mentors don't necessarily do that. Sponsors will say you You know what? We got the phone. Call John and say, John, I've got the perfect person for you. You need to go speak to her. That's the big difference. John and a couple of sponsors. It's not about many, >>and that's where the change happens. I love that comment. Good call. I'm glad I could double down on that. Now that you have the environment, pipeline and working, you have the people themselves in the environment getting better sponsors and mentors, hopefully working more and more together. But once they're in the environment, they still got to be part of it. So as girls and young women and to the working sector for tech, what advice would you give them? Because now they're in the game there in the arena. So what advice would you give them? Because the environments they are now >>yeah, yeah. I mean, Gosh, John, it's you know, you've lived your career in this space. It's an exciting place to be right. Um, it's a growth opportunity. And I think that's a really important point because the more you enter sectors where there's a lot of growth and I would say hyper right growth, that's just gonna open the doors to so many more things. If you're in a place where it's all about cost cutting and restructuring, do you know what? It's super hard to really compete and have fun, right? And as we say, make history. So it's an exciting place. Today's world transformation equals digital transformation, right? So tech is the place to be, because tech is about transformation, Right? So coming in here, the one advice I would give you is Just do it because believe me, there's so much you can do, like take the risk, find someone is going to give you that entree point and get in the door right? And look, you know what's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you don't like it. Fine. There's lots of other things than to go to. So my advice is, you know, don't take the mm. The really bad tips I've received in my career, right? Don't let people tell you you can't do it. You're not good enough. You don't have the experience, right? It's a male's world. You're a woman. It's all about you and not about EQ. Because that's just rubbish, Frankly, right. The top tip I was ever given was actually to take the risk and go for it. And that was my father. And then all these other sponsors I've had around the way. So that's that's the one thing I would say. The other thing I will say to you is the reason I advise it and the reason you should go for it. It's purposeful. Technology is changing our lives, you know, And we will all live to be no longer. 87 I think 100 right? And so you have the opportunity to change the course of the world by coming to technology. The vaccine deployment John was a great example, right? Without cloud, we couldn't have launch these vaccines as fast as we did. Right? Um, so I think there's a tonne of purpose. You've got to get in and then you've got to find. As I said, those sponsors, you've got to find those mentors. You've got to not worry about vertical opportunities and getting promoted. You gotta worry about horizontal opportunities, right? And doing the things that I needed to get the skills that you require, right? I also say one thing. Um, don't Don't let people tell you not to speak up, not to express your opinion. Do all of the above be authentic, Be authentic style. You will see more role models. Many, many more role models are gonna come out in tech that are going to be female role models. And actually, the men are really stepping up to the role models. And so we will be better together. And here's the big thing. We need you. We can do this without women. There's no possible way that we will be able to deliver on the absolute incredible transformation we have ahead of us without you. >>Inclusion, Diversity equity. These are force multipliers for companies. If applied properly, it's competitive advantage. And so breaking the bias. The theme this year is super super important. It sounds like common sense, but the reality is you break the bias It's not just women as men, as all of us. What can we do? Better to bring that force multiplier capabilities and competitive advantage of inclusion, diversity, equity to business. >>So the first thing I would say and my doctor used to always tell me this if it hurts, don't do it right. I would say to you just do it. Get diverse teams in place because if you have diverse teams, you have diversity of thought. You don't have to worry as much about bias because, you know, you've got the people around the table who actually represent the world. We also do something really cool. We have something called biassed busters. And so in meetings we have bias borders. People are going to, like, raise their hand and say, I'm not sure that that was really meant the way it was supposed to be, So I think that's just a nice little mechanism that we have here, Um, in a W s that helps. The other thing I would say to you is being your authentic self. You can't be a man and mentioned be women, and you're not gonna replicate somebody else because you're never gonna succeed if you do that, you know? So I would say be your authentic self all of the time, You know, we know. We know that women are sometimes labelled as aggressive when they're really not. Don't worry about it. It's not personal. I think the main thing you have to do is and I advise women all the time Is calibrate the feedback you're getting okay? Don't catastrophizing it right. Calibrate it. Taken in, you don't have to react to every feedback in the world, right? And make sure that you're also conscious of your own biases, right? So I think those are my Those are my two cents John for what they were for breaking device. I love the thing. >>Be yourself, You know, Don't take it too personal. Have some fun. That's life. That's a life lesson. Um, Final question, while I got you here, you're a great inspiration, and you're a great role model. You're running a very big business for Amazon web services. Europe, Middle East and Africa is a huge territory. It's its own thing. It's It's like you're bigger than some companies out there. Your role in your organisation. What's the hot area out there you were talking before camera. That's emerging areas that you're focused on. People are watching this young women, young ladies around the world. We're gonna look at this and say, What wave should I jump on? What's the hot things happening in in Europe? Middle Eastern Africa? >>I think the three things I would mention and I'm sure there's I'm sure, John, as we've spoken to my peers across the other gos, right, there are some similarities. The very, very hot thing right now is sustainability. Um, and you know, people are really building sustainability into their strategy. It's no longer sort of just an E S G goal in itself. It's actually very much part of changing the way they do business. So I think that's the hard part. And that's why again, I think it's a phenomenal place to be. I think the other big thing that we're absolutely talking about a lot is, and you know, this is getting even more complicated right now is just around security and cyber security and where that's going and how can we be really thinking about how we address some of these concerns that are coming out and I think there's There's something. There's a lot to be said about the way we build our infrastructure in terms of that context. So I think that's the second one. I think the third one is. People are really looking at technology to change the way businesses operate. So how does HR operate? How do you improve your employee value proposition? How do you do marketing in the next generation? How do you do finance in the next generation? So across the business is no longer the place of I t. It really is about changing the way we are as businesses and all of us becoming tech companies at the core. So the big thing there, John, is data data at the heart of everything we do data not because it's there in front of you, but data because you can actually make decisions on the back of it. So those are the things, Um, I seem to come across a lot more than anything else. >>It's always great to talk to you, your senior leader at AWS, um, inspirational to many. And thank you for taking the time to speak with us here on this great event. Women in text. Global Celebration of International Women's Day. Thank you so much for your time. >>Thank you, John. Always great to talk to you. >>We will definitely be keeping in touch More storeys to be had and we're gonna bring it to you. This is the cubes continuing presentation of women in tech. A global event celebrating International Women's Day. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>>Hey, welcome back everyone to the cubes coverage of eaters reinvent 2021. So our third day wall-to-wall coverage. I'm my coach, Dave Alonzo. He we're getting all the action two sets in person. It's also a virtual hybrid events with a lot of great content online, bringing you all the fresh voices, all the knowledge, all the news and all the action and got great guests here today. As your renderer, managing director of AWS is Europe, middle east, and Africa also known as EMIA. Welcome to the cube. Welcome, >>Welcome. Thanks for coming on. Lovely to be here. >>So Europe is really hot. Middle east Africa. Great growth. The VC culture in Europe specifically has been booming this year. A lot of great action. We've done many cube gigs out there talking to folks, uh, entrepreneurship, cloud, native growth, and then for us it's global. It's awesome. So first question got to ask you is, is you're new to AWS? What brought you here? >>Yeah, no, John, thank you so much. I've been here about three and a half months now, actually. Um, so what brought me here? Um, I have been in and around the tech world since I was a baby. Um, my father was an entrepreneur. I sold fax machines and microfilm equipment in my early days. And then my career has spanned technology in some form or the other. I was at EMC when we bought VMware. Uh, I was a Colt when we did a FinTech startup joined Schneider in my background, which is industrial tech. So I guess I'm a bit of a tech nerd, although I'm not an engineer, that's for sure. The other thing is I've spent a huge part of my career advising clients. And so while I was at McKinsey on business transformation and cloud keeps coming up, especially post pandemic, huge, huge, huge enabler, right of transformation. So when I got the call from AWS, I thought here's my opportunity to finally take what companies are wrestling with, bring together a pioneer in cloud with our enterprise and start-up and SMB clients connect those dots between business and technology and make things happen. So it real magic. So that's what brought me here. And I guess the only other thing to say is I'd heard a lot of other culture, customer mash, obsession, and leadership principles. >>That's why I'm here. It's been a great success. I got to ask you too, now that your new ostium McKinsey, even seeing the front lines, all the transformation, the pandemic has really forced everybody globally to move faster. Uh, things like connect were popular in EMEA. How, how is that going out? There's at the same kind of global pressure on the digital transformation with cloud? What are you seeing out there? >>I've been traveling since I joined, uh, around 10 of the countries already. So Ben planes, trains, automobiles, and what you definitely see is massive acceleration. And I think it's around reinvention of the business. So people are adopting cloud because it's obviously there's cost reasons. There's MNA reasons. There's really increasingly more about innovating. How do I innovate my business? How do I reinvent my business? So you see that constantly. Um, and whether you're a enterprise company or you're a startup, they're all adopting cloud in different, different ways. Um, I mean, I want to tell a core to stack because it's really interesting. And Adam mentioned this in his keynote five to 15% only of workloads have moved to the cloud. So there's a tremendous runway ahead of us. Um, and the three big things on people's minds helped me become a tech company. So it doesn't matter who you are, you're retail, whether you're life sciences or healthcare. You've probably heard about the Roche, uh, work that we're doing with Roche around accelerating R and D with data, or if you're a shoes Addie desk, how do you accelerate again, your personalized experiences? So it doesn't matter who you have helped me become a tech company, give me skills, digital skills, and then help me become a more sustainable company. Those are the three big things I'm thinking of. >>So a couple of things to unpack there. So think about it. Transformation. We still have a long way to go to your point, whatever 10, 15%, depending on which numbers you look at. We've been talking a lot in the cube about the next decade around business transformation, deeper business integration, and the four smarts to digital. And the woke us up to that, accelerated that as you say, so as you travel around to customers in AMEA, what are you hearing with regard to that? I mean, many customers maybe didn't have time to plan. Now they can sit back and take what they've learned. What are you hearing? >>Yeah. And it's, it's a little bit different in different places, right? So, I mean, if you start, if you look at, uh, you know, our businesses, for example, in France, if you look at our businesses in Iberia or Italy, a lot of them are now starting they're on the, at least on the enterprise front, they are now starting to adopt cloud. So they stepping back and thinking about their overall strategy, right? And then the way that they're doing it is actually they're using data as the first trigger point. And I think that makes it easier to migrate because if you, if you look at large enterprises and if you think of the big processes that they've got and all the mainframes and everything that they need to do, if you S if you look at it as one big block, it's too difficult. But when you think about data, you can actually start to aggregate all of your data into one area and then start to analyze and unpack that. >>So I think what I'm seeing for sure is in those countries, data is the first trigger. If you go out to Israel, well that you've got all, it's really start up nation as you know, right. And then we've got more of the digital natives and they want to, you know, absorb all of the innovation that we're throwing at them. And you've heard a lot here at reinvent on some of the things, whether it's digital twins or robotics, or frankly, even using 5g private network, we've just announcement. They are adopting innovation and really taking that in. So it really does differ, but I think the one big message I would leave you with is bringing industry solutions to business is critical. So rather than just talking it and technology, we've got to be able to bring some of what we've done. So for example, the Goldman Sachs financial cloud, bring that to the rest of financial services companies and the media, or if you take the work we're doing on industrials and IOT. So it's really about connecting what industry use cases with. >>What's interesting about the Goldman Dave and I were commenting. I think we coined the term, the story we wrote on Thursday last week, and then PIP was Sunday superclouds because you look at the rise of snowflake and Databricks and Goldman Sachs. You're going to start to see people building on AWS and building these super clouds because they are taking unique platform features of AWS and then sacrificing it for their needs, and then offering that as a service. So there's kind of a whole nother tier developing in the natural evolution of clouds. So the partners are on fire right now because the creativity, the market opportunities are there to be captured. So you're seeing this opportunity recognition, opportunity, capture vibe going on. And it's interesting. I'd love to get your thoughts on how you see that, because certainly the VCs are here in force. I did when I saw all the top Silicon valley VCs here, um, and some European VCs are all here. They're all seeing this. >>So pick up on two things you mentioned that I think absolutely spot on. We're absolutely seeing with our partners, this integration on our platform is so important. So we talk about the power of three, which is you bring a JSI partner, you bring an ISV partner, you bring AWS, you create that power of three and you take it to our customers. And it doesn't matter which industry we are. Our partner ecosystem is so rich. The Adam mentioned, we have a hundred thousand partners around the world, and then you integrate that with marketplace. Um, and the AWS marketplace just opens the world. We have about 325,000 active customers on marketplace. So sassiphy cation integration with our platform, bringing in the GSI and the NSIs. I think that's the real power to, to, to coming back to your point on transformation on the second one, the unicorns, you know, it's interesting. >>So UK France, um, Israel, Mia, I spent a lot of time, uh, recently in Dubai and you can see it happening there. Uh, Africa, Nigeria, South Africa, I mean all across those countries, you're saying huge amount of VC funding going in towards developers, towards startups to at scale-ups more and more of a, um, our startup clients, by the way, uh, are actually going IPO. You know, initially it used to be a lot of M and a and strategic acquisitions, but they have actually bigger aspirations and they're going IPO and we've seen them through from when they were seed or pre-seed all the way to now that they are unicorns. Right? So that there's just a tremendous amount happening in EMEA. Um, and we're fueling that, you know, you know, I mean, born in the cloud is easy, right? In terms of what AWS brings to the table. >>Well, I've been sacred for years. I always talked to Andy Jassy about this. Cause he's a big sports nut. When you bring like these stadiums to certain cities that rejuvenates and Amazon regions are bringing local rejuvenation around the digital economies. And what you see with the startup culture is the ecosystems around it. And Silicon valley thrives because you have all the service providers, you have all the fear of failure goes away. There's support systems. You start to see now with AWS as ecosystem, that same ecosystem support the robustness of it. So, you know, it's classic, rising tide floats all boats kind of vibe. So, I mean, we don't really have our narrative get down on this, but we're seeing this ecosystem kind of play going on. Yeah. >>And actually it's a real virtuous circle, or we call flywheel right within AWS because a startup wants to connect to an enterprise. An enterprise wants to connect to a startup, right? A lot of our ISV partners, by the way, were startups. Now they've graduated and they're like very large. So what we are, I see our role. And by the way, this is one of the other reasons I came here is I see our role to be able to be real facilitators of these ecosystems. Right. And, you know, we've got something that we kicked off in EMEA, which I'm really proud of called our EMEA startup loft accelerator. And we launched that a web summit. And the idea is to bring startups into our space virtually and physically and help them build and help them make those connections. So I think really, I really do think, and I enterprise clients are asking us all the time, right? Who do I need to involve if I'm thinking IOT, who do I need to involve if I want to do something with data. And that's what we do. Super connectors, >>John, you mentioned the, the Goldman deal. And I think it was Adam in his keynote was talking about our customers are asking us to teach them how to essentially build a Supercloud. I mean, our words. But so with your McKinsey background, I would imagine there's real opportunities there, especially as you, I hear you talk about IMIA going around to see customers. There must be a lot of, sort of non-digital businesses that are now transforming to digital. A lot of capital needs there, but maybe you could talk about sort of how you see that playing out over the next several years in your role and AWS's role in affecting that transfer. >>Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you're right actually. And I, you know, maybe I will, from my past experience pick up on something, you know, I was in the world of industry, uh, with Schneider as an example. And, you know, we did business through the channel. Um, and a lot of our channel was not digitized. You know, you had point of sale, electrical distributors, wholesalers, et cetera. I think all of those businesses during the pandemic realized that they had to go digital and online. Right. And so they started from having one fax machine in a store. Real literally I'm not kidding nothing else to actually having to go online and be able to do click and collect and various other things. And we were able with AWS, you can spin up in minutes, right. That sort of service, right. I love the fact that you have a credit card you can get onto our cloud. >>Right. That's the whole thing. And it's about instances. John Adam talked about instances, which I think is great. How do businesses transform? And again, I think it's about unpacking the problem, right? So what we do a lot is we sit down with our customers and we actually map a migration journey with them, right? We look across their core infrastructure. We look at their SAP systems. For example, we look at what's happening in the various businesses, their e-commerce systems, that customer life cycle value management systems. I think you've got to go business by business by business use case by use case, by use case, and then help our technology enable that use case to actually digitize. And whether it's front office or back office. I think the advantages are pretty clear. It's more, I think the difficulty is not technology anymore. The difficulty is mindset, leadership, commitment, the operating model, the organizational model and skills. And so what we have to do is AWS is bringing not only our technology, but our culture of innovation and our digital innovation teams to help our clients on that journey >>Technology. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time coming on the cube. We have a couple more minutes. I do want to get into what's your agenda. Now that you're got you're in charge, got the landscape and the 20 mile stare in front of you. Cloud's booming. You got some personal passion projects. Tell us what your plans are. >>So, um, three or four things, right? Three or four, really big takeaways for me is one. I, I came here to help make sure our customers could leverage the power of the cloud. So I will not feel like my job's been done if I haven't been able to do that. So, you know, that five to 15% we talked about, we've got to go 50, 60, 70%. That that's, that's the goal, right? And why not a hundred percent at some point, right? So I think over the next few years, that's the acceleration we need to help bring in AMEA Americas already started to get there as you know, much more, and we need to drive that into me. And then eventually our APJ colleagues are going to do the same. So that's one thing. The other is we talked about partners. I really want to accelerate and expand our partner ecosystem. >>Um, we have actually a huge growth by the way, in the number of partners signing up the number of certifications they're taking, I really, really want to double down on our partners and actually do what they ask us for, which is join. Co-sell joined marketing globalization. So that's two, I think the third big thing is when you mentioned industry industry industry, we've got to bring real use cases and solutions to our customers and not only talk technology got to connect those two dots. And we have lots of examples to bring by the way. Um, and then for hire and develop the best, you know, we've got a new LP as you know, to strive to be at its best employer. I want to do that in a Mia. I want to make sure we can actually do that. We attract, we retain and we grow and we develop that. >>And the diversity has been a huge theme of this event. It's front and center in virtually every company. >>I am. I'm usually passionate about diversity. I'm proud actually that when I was back at Schneider, I launched something called the power women network. We're a network of a hundred senior women and we meet every month. I've also got a podcast out there. So if anyone's listening, it's called power. Women's speak. It is, I've done 16 over the pandemic with CEOs of women podcast, our women speak >>Or women speak oh, >>And Spotify and >>Everything else. >>And, um, you know, what I love about what we're doing is AWS on diversity and you heard Adam onstage, uh, talk to this. We've got our restock program where we really help under employed and unemployed to get a 12 week intensive course and get trained up on thought skills. And the other thing is, get it helping young girls, 12 to 15, get into stem. So lots of different things on the whole, but we need to do a lot more of course, on diversity. And I look forward to helping our clients through that as well. >>Well, we had, we had the training VP on yesterday. It's all free trainings free. >>We've got such a digital skills issue that I love that we've said 29 million people around the world, free cloud training. >>Literally the th the, the gap there between earnings with cloud certification, you can be making six figures like with cloud training. So, I mean, it's really easy. It's free. It's like, it's such a great thing. >>Have you seen the YouTube video on Charlotte Wilkins? Donald's fast food. She changed her mind. She wanted to take Korea. She now has a tech career as a result of being part of restock. Awesome. >>Oh, really appreciate. You got a lot of energy and love, love the podcast. I'm subscribing. I'm going to listen. We love doing the podcast as well. So thanks for coming on the >>Queue. Thank you so much for having me >>Good luck on anemia and your plans. Thank you. Okay. Cube. You're watching the cube, the leader in global tech coverage. We go to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John furrier with Dave, a lot to here at re-invent physical event in person hybrid event as well. Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) >> Despite its 70 to $80 billion total available market, computer storage is like a small town, everybody knows everybody else. We say in the storage world, there are a hundred people, and 99 seats. Infinidat is a company that was founded in 2011 by storage legend, Moshe Yanai. The company is known for building products with rock solid availability, simplicity, and a passion for white glove service, and client satisfaction. Company went through a leadership change recently, in early this year, appointed industry vet, Phil Bullinger, as CEO. It's making more moves, bringing on longtime storage sales exec, Richard Bradbury, to run EMEA, and APJ Go-To-Market. And just recently appointed marketing maven, Eric Hertzog to be CMO. Hertzog has worked at numerous companies, ranging from startups that were acquired, two stints at IBM, and is SVP of product marketing and management at Storage Powerhouse, EMC, among others. Hertzog has been named CMO of the year as an OnCon Icon, and top 100 influencer in big data, AI, and also hybrid cloud, along with yours truly, if I may say so. Joining me today, is the newly minted CMO of Infinidat, Mr.Eric Hertzog. Good to see you, Eric, thanks for coming on. >> Dave, thank you very much. You know, we love being on theCUBE, and I am of course sporting my Infinidat logo wear already, even though I've only been on the job for two weeks. >> Dude, no Hawaiian shirt, okay. That's a pretty buttoned up company. >> Well, next time, I'll have a Hawaiian shirt, don't worry. >> Okay, so give us the backstory, how did this all come about? you know Phil, my 99 seat joke, but, how did it come about? Tell us that story. >> So, I have known Phil since the late 90s, when he was a VP at LSA of Engineering, and he had... I was working at a company called Milax, which was acquired by IBM. And we were doing a product for HP, and he was providing the subsystem, and we were providing the fiber to fiber, and fiber to SCSI array controllers back in the day. So I met him then, we kept in touch for years. And then when I was a senior VP at EMC, he started originally as VP of engineering for the EMC Isilon team. And then he became the general manager. So, while I didn't work for him, I worked with him, A, at LSA, and then again at EMC. So I just happened to congratulate him about some award he won, and he said "Hey Herzog, "we should talk, I have a CMO opening". So literally happened over LinkedIn discussion, where I reached out to him, and congratulate him, he said "Hey, I need a CMO, let's talk". So, the whole thing took about three weeks in all honesty. And that included interviewing with other members of his exec staff. >> That's awesome, that's right, he was running the Isilon division for awhile at the EMC. >> Right. >> You guys were there, and of course, you talk about Milax, LSA, there was a period of time where, you guys were making subsystems for everybody. So, you sort of saw the whole landscape. So, you got some serious storage history and chops. So, I want to ask you what attracted you to Infinidat. I mean, obviously they're a leader in the magic quadrant. We know about InfiniBox, and the petabyte scale, and the low latency, what are the... When you look at the market, you obviously you see it, you talk to everybody. What were the trends that were driving your decision to join Infinidat? >> Well, a couple of things. First of all, as you know, and you guys have talked about it on theCUBE, most CIOs don't know anything about storage, other than they know a guy got to spend money on it. So the Infinidat message of optimizing applications, workloads, and use cases with 100% guaranteed availability, unmatched reliability, the set and forget ease of use, which obviously AIOps is driving that, and overall IT operations management was very attractive. And then on top of that, the reality is, when you do that consolidation, which Infinidat can do, because of the performance that it has, you can dramatically free up rack, stack, power, floor, and operational manpower by literally getting rid of, tons and tons of arrays. There's one customer that they have, you actually... I found out when I got here, they took out a hundred arrays from EMC Hitachi. And that company now has 20 InfiniBoxes, and InfiniBox SSAs running the exact same workloads that used to be, well over a hundred subsystems from the other players. So, that's got a performance angle, a CapEx and OPEX angle, and then even a clean energy angle because reducing Watson slots. So, lots of different advantages there. And then I think from just a pure marketing perspective, as someone has said, they're the best kept secret to the storage industry. And so you need to, if you will, amp up the message, get it out. They've expanded the portfolio with the InfiniBox SSA, the InfiniGuard product, which is really optimized, not only as the PBA for backup perspective, and it works with all the backup vendors, but also, has an incredible play on data and cyber resilience with their capability of local logical air gapping, remote logical air gapping, and creating a clean room, if you will, a vault, so that you can then recover their review for malware ransomware before you do a full recovery. So it's got the right solutions, just that most people didn't know who they were. So, between the relationship with Phil, and the real opportunity that this company could skyrocket. In fact, we have 35 job openings right now, right now. >> Wow, okay, so yeah, I think it was Duplessy called them the best kept secret, he's not the only one. And so that brings us to you, and your mission because it's true, it is the best kept secret. You're a leader in the Gartner magic quadrant, but I mean, if you're not a leader in a Gartner magic quadrant, you're kind of nobody in storage. And so, but you got chops and block storage. You talked about the consolidation story, and I've talked to many folks in Infinidat about that. Ken Steinhardt rest his soul, Dr. Rico, good business friend, about, you know... So, that play and how you handle the whole blast radius. And that's always a great discussion, and Infinidat has proven that it can operate at very very high performance, low latency, petabyte scale. So how do you get the word out? What's your mission? >> Well, so we're going to do a couple of things. We're going to be very, very tied to the channel as you know, EMC, Dell EMC, and these are articles that have been in CRN, and other channel publications is pulling back from the channel, letting go of channel managers, and there's been a lot of conflict. So, we're going to embrace the channel. We already do well over 90% of our business within general globally. So, we're doing that. In fact, I am meeting, personally, next week with five different CEOs of channel partners. Of which, only one of them is doing business with Infinidat now. So, we want to expand our channel, and leverage the channel, take advantage of these changes in the channel. We are going to be increasing our presence in the public relations area. The work we do with all the industry analysts, not just in North America, but in Europe as well, and Asia. We're going to amp up, of course, our social media effort, both of us, of course, having been named some of the best social media guys in the world the last couple of years. So, we're going to open that up. And then, obviously, increase our demand generation activities as well. So, we're going to make sure that we leverage what we do, and deliver that message to the world. Deliver it to the partner base, so the partners can take advantage, and make good margin and revenue, but delivering products that really meet the needs of the customers while saving them dramatically on CapEx and OPEX. So, the partner wins, and the end user wins. And that's the best scenario you can do when you're leveraging the channel to help you grow your business. >> So you're not only just the marketing guy, I mean, you know product, you ran product management at very senior levels. So, you could... You're like a walking spec sheet, John Farrier says you could just rattle it off. Already impressed that how much you know about Infinidat, but when you joined EMC, it was almost like, there was too many products, right? When you joined IBM, even though it had a big portfolio, it's like it didn't have enough relevant products. And you had to sort of deal with that. How do you feel about the product portfolio at Infinidat? >> Well, for us, it's right in the perfect niche. Enterprise class, AI based software defined storage technologies that happens run on a hybrid array, an all flash array, has a variant that's really tuned towards modern data protection, including data and cyber resilience. So, with those three elements of the portfolio, which by the way, all have a common architecture. So while there are three different solutions, all common architecture. So if you know how to use the InfiniBox, you can easily use an InfiniGuard. You got an InfiniGuard, you can easily use an InfiniBox SSA. So the capability of doing that, helps reduce operational manpower and hence, of course, OPEX. So the story is strong technically, the story has a strong business tie in. So part of the thing you have to do in marketing these days. Yeah, we both been around. So you could just talk about IOPS, and latency, and bandwidth. And if the people didn't... If the CIO didn't know what that meant, so what? But the world has changed on the expenditure of infrastructure. If you don't have seamless integration with hybrid cloud, virtual environments and containers, which Infinidat can do all that, then you're not relevant from a CIO perspective. And obviously with many workloads moving to the cloud, you've got to have this infrastructure that supports core edge and cloud, the virtualization layer, and of course, the container layer across a hybrid environment. And we can do that with all three of these solutions. Yet, with a common underlying software defined storage architecture. So it makes the technical story very powerful. Then you turn that into business benefit, CapEX, OPEX, the operational manpower, unmatched availability, which is obviously a big deal these days, unmatched performance, everybody wants their SAP workload or their Oracle or Mongo Cassandra to be, instantaneous from the app perspective. Excuse me. And we can do that. And that's the kind of thing that... My job is to translate that from that technical value into the business value, that can be appreciated by the CIO, by the CSO, by the VP of software development, who then says to VP of industry, that Infinidat stuff, we actually need that for our SAP workload, or wow, for our overall corporate cybersecurity strategy, the CSO says, the key element of the storage part of that overall corporate cybersecurity strategy are those Infinidat guys with their great cyber and data resilience. And that's the kind of thing that my job, and my team's job to work on to get the market to understand and appreciate that business value that the underlying technology delivers. >> So the other thing, the interesting thing about Infinidat. This was always a source of spirited discussions over the years with business friends from Infinidat was the company figured out a way, it was formed in 2011, and at the time the strategy perfectly reasonable to say, okay, let's build a better box. And the way they approached that from a cost standpoint was you were able to get the most out of spinning disk. Everybody else was moving to flash, of course, floyers work a big flash, all flash data center, etc, etc. But Infinidat with its memory cache and its architecture, and its algorithms was able to figure out how to magically get equivalent or better performance in an all flash array out of a system that had a lot of spinning disks, which is I think unique. I mean, I know it's unique, very rare anyway. And so that was kind of interesting, but at the time it made sense, to go after a big market with a better mouse trap. Now, if I were starting a company today, I might take a different approach, I might try to build, a storage cloud or something like that. Or if I had a huge install base that I was trying to protect, and maybe go into that. But so what's the strategy? You still got huge share gain potentials for on-prem is that the vector? You mentioned hybrid cloud, what's the cloud strategy? Maybe you could summarize your thoughts on that? >> Sure, so the cloud strategy, is first of all, seamless integration to hybrid cloud environments. For example, we support Outpost as an example. Second thing, you'd be surprised at the number of cloud providers that actually use us as their backend, either for their primary storage, or for their secondary storage. So, we've got some of the largest hyperscalers in the world. For example, one of the Telcos has 150 Infiniboxes, InfiniBox SSAS and InfiniGuards. 150 running one of the largest Telcos on the planet. And a huge percentage of that is their corporate cloud effort where they're going in and saying, don't use Amazon or Azure, why don't you use us the giant Telco? So we've got that angle. We've got a ton of mid-sized cloud providers all over the world that their backup is our servers, or their primary storage that they offer is built on top of Infiniboxes or InfiniBox SSA. So, the cloud strategy is one to arm the hyperscalers, both big, medium, and small with what they need to provide the right end user services with the right outside SLAs. And the second thing is to have that hybrid cloud integration capability. For example, when I talked about InfiniGuard, we can do air gapping locally to give almost instantaneous recovery, but at the same time, if there's an earthquake in California or a tornado in Kansas City, or a tsunami in Singapore, you've got to have that remote air gapping capability, which InfiniGuard can do. Which of course, is essentially that logical air gap remote is basically a cloud strategy. So, we can do all of that. That's why it has a cloud strategy play. And again we have a number of public references in the cloud, US signal and others, where they talk about why they use the InfiniBox, and our technologies to offer their storage cloud services based on our platform. >> Okay, so I got to ask you, so you've mentioned earthquakes, a lot of earthquakes in California, dangerous place to live, US headquarters is in Waltham, we're going to pry you out of the Golden State? >> Let's see, I was born at Stanford hospital where my parents met when they were going there. I've never lived anywhere, but here. And of course, remember when I was working for EMC, I flew out every week, and I sort of lived at that Milford Courtyard Marriott. So I'll be out a lot, but I will not be moving, I'm a Silicon Valley guy, just like that old book, the Silicon Valley Guy from the old days, that's me. >> Yeah, the hotels in Waltham are a little better, but... So, what's your priority? Last question. What's the priority first 100 days? Where's your focus? >> Number one priority is team assessment and integration of the team across the other teams. One of the things I noticed about Infinidat, which is a little unusual, is there sometimes are silos and having done seven other small companies and startups, in a startup or a small company, you usually don't see that silo-ness, So we have to break down those walls. And by the way, we've been incredibly successful, even with the silos, imagine if everybody realized that business is a team sport. And so, we're going to do that, and do heavy levels of integration. We've already started to do an incredible outreach program to the press and to partners. We won a couple awards recently, we're up for two more awards in Europe, the SDC Awards, and one of the channel publications is going to give us an award next week. So yeah, we're amping up that sort of thing that we can leverage and extend. Both in the short term, but also, of course, across a longer term strategy. So, those are the things we're going to do first, and yeah, we're going to be rolling into, of course, 2022. So we've got a lot of work we're doing, as I mentioned, I'm meeting, five partners, CEOs, and only one of them is doing business with us now. So we want to get those partners to kick off January with us presenting at their sales kickoff, going "We are going with Infinidat "as one of our strong storage providers". So, we're doing all that upfront work in the first 100 days, so we can kick off Q1 with a real bang. >> Love the channel story, and you're a good guy to do that. And you mentioned the silos, correct me if I'm wrong, but Infinidat does a lot of business in overseas. A lot of business in Europe, obviously the affinity to the engineering, a lot of the engineering work that's going on in Israel, but that's by its very nature, stovepipe. Most startups start in the US, big market NFL cities, and then sort of go overseas. It's almost like Infinidat sort of simultaneously grew it's overseas business, and it's US business. >> Well, and we've got customers everywhere. We've got them in South Africa, all over Europe, Middle East. We have six very large customers in India, and a number of large customers in Japan. So we have a sales team all over the world. As you mentioned, our white glove service includes not only our field systems engineers, but we have a professional services group. We've actually written custom software for several customers. In fact, I was on the forecast meeting earlier today, and one of the comments that was made for someone who's going to give us a PO. So, the sales guy was saying, part of the reason we're getting the PO is we did some professional services work last quarter, and the CIO called and said, I can't believe it. And what CIO calls up a storage company these days, but the CIO called him and said "I can't believe the work you did. We're going to buy some more stuff this quarter". So that white glove service, our technical account managers to go along with the field sales SEs and this professional service is pretty unusual in a small company to have that level of, as you mentioned yourself, white glove service, when the company is so small. And that's been a real hidden gem for this company, and will continue to be so. >> Well, Eric, congratulations on the appointment, the new role, excited to see what you do, and how you craft the story, the strategy. And we've been following Infinidat since, sort of day zero and I really wish you the best. >> Great, well, thank you very much. Always appreciate theCUBE. And trust me, Dave, next time I will have my famous Hawaiian shirt. >> Ah, I can't wait. All right, thanks to Eric, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, and we'll see you next time. (bright upbeat music)

>>Um, Jamie Sharath with Liga data, I'm primarily on the delivery side of the house, but I also support our new business teams. I'd like to spend a minute really just kind of telling you about, uh, uh, legal data where basically a Silicon valley startup, uh, started in 2014 and, uh, our lead iron, our executive team, basically where the data officers at Yahoo before this, uh, we provide managed data services and we provide products that are focused on telcos. So we have some experience in non telco industry, but our focus for the last seven years or so is specifically on telco. So again, something over 200 employees, we have a global presence in north America, middle east Africa, Asia, and Europe. And we have folks in all of those places. Uh, I'd like to call your attention to the, uh, the middle really of the screen there. >>So here is where we have done some partnership with Cloudera. So if you look at that, you can see we're in Holland and, uh, Jamaica, and then a lot to throughout Africa as well. Now the data fabric is the product that we're talking about. And the data fabric is basically a big data type of data warehouse with a lot of additional functionality involved. The data fabric is comprised of, uh, some something called flare, which we'll talk about admitted below there, and then the Cloudera data platform underneath. So this is how we're partnering together. We, uh, we, we have this tool and it's, uh, it's functioning and delivering in something over and up. Oops. So flare now, flare is a piece of that. It's legal data IP. The rest is Cloudera. And what flare does is that basically pulls in data and integrates it to an event streaming, uh, platform. >>It, uh, it is the engine behind the data fabric. Uh, it's also a decisioning platform. So in real time, we're able to pull in data. We're able to run analytics on it and we're able to alert our, do whatever is needed in a real-time basis. Of course, a lot of clients at this point are still sending data in batch. So it handles that as well, but we call that a cut off picture Sanchez. Now Sacho is a very interesting app. It's an AI analytics app for executives. What it is is it runs on your mobile phone. It ties into your data. Now this could be the data fabric, but it couldn't be a standalone product. And basically it allows you to ask, you know, human type questions to say, how are my gross ads last week? How are they comparing against same time last week before that? >>And even the same time 60 days ago. So as an executive or as an analyst, I can pull it up and I can look at it instantly in a meeting or anywhere else without having to think about queries or anything like that. So that's pretty much for us legal data. Now, it really does set the context of where we are. So this is a traditional telco environment. So you see the systems of record and you see the cloud, you see OSS and BSS day. So one of the things that the next step above which calls we call the system of intelligence of the data fabric does, is it mergers that BSS and OSS data. So the longer we have any silos or anything that's separated, it's all coming into one area to allow business, to go in or allow data scientists go in and do that. >>So if you look at the bottom line, excuse me, of the, uh, of the system of intelligence, you can see that flare is the tool that pulls in the data. So it provides even screening capabilities, it preserves entity states, so that you can go back and look at it to the state at any time. It does stream analytics that is as the data is coming in, it can perform analytics on it. And it also allows real-time decisioning. So that's something that, uh, that's something that business users can go in and create a system of, uh, if them's, it looks very much like a graph database where you can create a product that will allow the user to be notified if a certain condition happens. So for instance, a bundle, so a real-time offer or user is fixing to run out of is ongoing and an offer can be sent to him right on the fly. >>And that's set up by the business user as opposed to programmers a data infrastructure. So the fabric has really three areas. That data is persistent, obviously there's the data lake. So the data lake stores that level of granularity that is very deep years and years of history, data scientists love that. And, uh, you know, for a historical record keeping and requirements from the government, that data would be stored there. Then there's also something we call the business semantics layer and the business semantics layer contains something over 650 specific telco KPIs. These are initially from PM forum, but they also are included in, uh, various, uh, uh, mobile operators that we've delivered at. And we've, we've grown that. So that's there for business. The data lake is there for data scientists, analytical stores, uh, they can be used for many different reasons. There are a lot of times RDBMS is, are still there. >>So these, this, this basically platform, this cloud they're a platform can tie into analytical data stores as well via flair access and reporting. So graphic visualizations, API APIs are a very key part of it. A third-party query tools, any kind of grid jewels can be used. And those are the, of course, the, uh, the ones that are highly optimized and allow, you know, search of billions of records. And then if you look at the top, it's the systems of engagement, then you might vote this use cases. So telco reporting, hundreds of KPIs that are, that are generated for users, segmentation, basically micro to macro segmentation, segmentation will play a key role in a use case. We talk about in a minute monetizations. So this helps telco providers monetize their specific data, but monetize it in, okay, how to do they make money off of it, but also how might you leverage this data to, in, in dates with another client? >>So for instance, in some cases where it's allowed a DPI is used and the, uh, fabric tracks exactly where each person goes each, uh, we call it a subscriber, goes within his, uh, um, uh, internet browsing for 5g and, uh, all that data is stored. Uh, whereas you can tell a lot of things where the segment, the profile that's being used and, you know, what are they propensity to buy? Did they spend a lot of time on the Coca-Cola page? There are buyers out there that find that information very valuable, and then there's sideshow. And we spoke briefly about Sacha before that sits on top of the fabric or it's it's alone. >>So, so the story really that we want to tell is, is one, this is, this is one case out of it. This is a CVM type of case. So there was a mobile operator out there that was really offering, you know, packages, whether it's a bundle or whether it's a particular tool to subscribers, they, they were offering kind of an abroad approach that it was not very focused. It was not depending on the segments that were created around the profiling earlier, uh, the subscriber usage was somewhat dated and this was causing a lot of those. Uh, a lot of those offers to be just basically not taken and not, not, uh, uh, there was limited segmentation capabilities really before the, uh, before the, uh, fabric came in. Now, one of the key things about the fabric is when you start building segments, you can build that history. >>So all of that data stored in the data lake can be used in terms of segmentation. So what did we do about that? The, the, the MDNO, the challenge, uh, we basically put the data fabric in and the data fabric was running Cloudera data platform and that, uh, and that's how we team up. Uh, we facilitated the ability to personalize campaign. So what that means is, uh, the segments that were built and that user fell within that segment, we knew exactly what his behavior most likely was. So those recommendations, those offers could be created then, and we enable this in real time. So real-time ability to even go out to the CRM system, again, their further information about that, all of these tools, again, we're running on top of the cloud data platform, uh, what was the outcome? Willie, uh, outcome was that there was a much more precise offer given to the client that is, that was accepted, you know, increase in cross sell and upsell subscriber retention. >>Uh, our clients came back to us and pointed out that, uh, it was 183% year on year revenue increase. Uh, so this is a, this is probably one of the key use cases. Now, one thing to really mention is there are hundreds and hundreds of use cases running on the fabric. And, uh, I would even say thousands. A lot of those have been migrated. So when the fabric is deployed, when they bring the, uh, Cloudera and the legal data solution in there's generally a legacy system that has many use cases. So many of those were, were migrated virtually all of them in pen, on put on the cloud. Uh, another issue is that new use cases are enabled again. So when you get this level of granularity and when you have campaigns that can now base their offers on years of history, as opposed to 30 days of history, the campaigns campaign management response systems, uh, are, are, uh, are enabled quite a bit to do all, uh, to be precise in their offers. Yeah. >>Okay. So this is a technical slide. Uh, one of the things that we normally do when we're, when we're out there talking to folks, is we talk and give an overview and that last little while, and then we give a deep technical dive on all aspects of it. So sometimes that deep dive can go a couple of hours. I'm going to do this slide and a couple of minutes. So if you look at it, you can see over on the left, this is the, uh, the sources of the data. And they go through this tool called flare that runs on the cloud. They're a data platform, uh, that can either be via cues or real-time cues, or it can be via a landing zone, or it can be a data extraction. You can take a look at the data quality that's there. So those are built in one of the things that flare does is it has out of the box ability to ingest data sources and to apply the data quality and validation for telco type sources. >>But one of the reasons this is fast to market is because throughout those 10 or 12 opcos that we've done with Cloudera, where we have already built models, so models for CCN, for air for, for most mediation systems. So there's not going to be a type of, uh, input that we haven't already seen are very rarely. So that actually speeds up deployment very quickly. Then a player does the transformation, the, uh, the metrics, continuous learning, we call it continuous decisioning, uh, API access. Uh, we, uh, you know, for, for faster response, we use distributed cash. I'm not going to go too deeply in there, but the layer and the business semantics layer again, are, are sitting top of the Cloudera data platform. You see the cough, but flu, uh, Q1 on the right as well. >>And all of that, we're calling the fabric. So the fabric is Cloudera data platform and the cloud and flair and all of this runs together. And by the way, there've been many, many, many, many hundreds of hours testing flare with Cloudera and, uh, and the whole process, the results, what are the results? Well, uh, there are, there are four I'm going to talk about, uh, we saw the one for the, it was called my pocket pocket, but it's a CDM type, uh, use case. Uh, the subscribers of that mobile operator were 14 million plus there was a use case for a 24 million plus a year on year revenue was 130%, uh, 32 million plus for 38%. These are, um, these are different CVM pipe, uh, use cases, as well as network use cases. And then there were 44%, uh, telco with 76 million subscribers. So I think that there are a lot more use cases that we could talk about, but, but in this case, this is the ones we're looking at again, 183%. This is something that we find consistently, and these figures come from our, uh, our actual end client. So how do we unlock the full potential of this? Well, I think to start is to arrange a meeting and, uh, it would be great to, to, uh, for you to reach out to me or to Anthony. Uh, we're working in conjunction on this and we can set up a, uh, we can set up a meeting and we can go through this initial meeting. And, uh, I think that's the very beginning. Uh, again, you can get additional information from Cloudera website and from the league of data website, Anthony, that's the story. Thank you. >>Oh, that's great. Jeremy, thank you so much. It's a, it's, it's wonderful to go deep. And I know that there are hundreds of use cases being deployed in MTN, um, but great to go deep on one. And like you said, it can, once you get that sort of architecture in place, you can do so many different things. The power of data is tremendous, but it's great to be able to see how you can, how you can track it end to end from collecting the data, processing it, understanding it, and then applying it in a commercial context and bringing actual revenue back into the business. So there is your ROI straightaway. Now you've got a platform that you can transform your business on. That's, that's, it's a tremendous story, Jimmy, and thank you for your partnership. So, um, that's, uh, that's, that's our story for today, like Jamie says, um, please do fleet, uh, feel free to reach out to us. Um, the, the website addresses are there and our contact details, and we'd be delighted to talk to you a little bit more about some of the other use cases, perhaps, um, and maybe about your own business and, uh, and how we might be able to make it, make it perform a little better.

>>Hi today, I'm going to talk about network analytics and what that means for, for telecommunications as we go forward. Um, thinking about, uh, 5g, what the impact that's likely to have on, on network analytics and the data requirement, not just to run the network and to understand the network a little bit better. Um, but also to, to inform the rest of the operation of the telecommunications business. Um, so as we think about where we are in terms of network analytics and what that is over the last 20 years, the telecommunications industry has evolved its management infrastructure, uh, to abstract away from some of the specific technologies in the network. So what do we mean by that? Well, uh, in the, in the initial, uh, telecommunications networks were designed, there were management systems that were built in, um, eventually fault management systems, uh, assurance systems, provisioning systems, and so on were abstracted away. >>So it didn't matter what network technology had, whether it was a Nokia technology or Erickson technology or Huawei technology or whatever it happened to be. You could just look at your fault management system, understand where false, what happened as we got into the last sort of 10, 15 years or so. Telecommunication service providers become became more sophisticated in terms of their approach to data analytics and specifically network analytics, and started asking questions about why and what if in relation to their network performance and network behavior. And so network analytics as a, as a bit of an independent function was born and over time, more and more data began to get loaded into the network analytics function. So today just about every carrier in the world has a network analytics function that deals with vast quantities of data in big data environments that are now being migrated to the cloud. >>As all telecommunications carriers are migrating as many it workloads as possible, um, to the cloud. So what are the things that are happening as we migrate to the cloud that drive, uh, uh, enhancements in use cases and enhancements and scale, uh, in telecommunications network analytics? Well, 5g is the big thing, right? So 5g, uh, it's not just another G in that sense. I mean, in some cases, in some senses, it is 5g means greater bandwidth, lower latency and all those good things. So, you know, we can watch YouTube videos with less interference and, and less sluggish bandwidth and so on and so forth. But 5g is really about the enterprise and enterprise services. Transformation, 5g is more secure, kind of a network, but 5g is also a more pervasive network 5g, a fundamentally different network topology than previous generations. So there's going to be more masts and that means that you can have more pervasive connectivity. >>Uh, so things like IOT and edge applications, autonomous cars, smart cities, these kinds of things, um, are all much better served because you've got more masks that of course means that you're going to have a lot more data as well. And we'll get to that. The second piece is immersive digital services. So with more masks, with more connectivity, with lower latency with higher man, the potential, uh, is, is, is, is immense for services innovation. And we don't know what those services are going to be. We know that technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, things like this have great potential. Um, but we, we have yet to see where those commercial applications are going to be, but the innovation and the innovation potential for 5g is phenomenal. Um, it certainly means that we're going to have a lot more, uh, edge devices, um, uh, and that again is going to lead to an increase in the amount of data that we have available. >>And then the idea of pervasive connectivity when it comes to smart, smart cities, uh, autonomous, autonomous currents, um, uh, integrated traffic management systems, um, all of this kind of stuff, those of those kind of smart environments thrive where you've got this kind of pervasive connectivity, this persistent, uh, connection to the network. Um, again, that's going to drive, um, um, uh, more innovation. And again, because you've got these new connected devices, you're going to get even more data. So this rise, this exponential rise in data is really what's driving the change in, in network analytics. And there are four major vectors that are driving this increase in data in terms of both volume and in terms of speed. So the first is more physical elements. So we said already that 5g networks are going to have a different apology. 5g networks will have more devices, more and more masks. >>Um, and so with more physical elements in the network, you're going to get more physical data coming off those physical networks. And so that needs to be aggregated and collected and managed and stored and analyzed and understood when, so that we can, um, have a better understanding as to why things happened the way they do, why the network behaves in which they do in, in, in, in ways that it does and why devices that are connected to the network. And ultimately of course, consumers, whether they be enterprises or retail customers, um, behave in the way they do in relation to their interaction within our edge nodes and devices, we're going to have a, uh, an explosion in terms of the number of devices. We've already seen IOT devices with your different kinds of trackers and, uh, and, and sensors that are hanging off the edge of the network, whether it's to make buildings smarter car smarter, or people smarter, um, in, in terms of having the, the, the measurements and the connectivity and all that sort of stuff. >>So the numbers of devices on the agent beyond the age, um, are going to be phenomenal. One of the things that we've been trying to with as an industry over the last few years is where does the telco network end, and where does the enterprise, or even the consumer network begin. You used to be very clear that, you know, the telco network ended at the router. Um, but now it's not, it's not that clear anymore because in the enterprise space, particularly with virtualized networking, which we're going to talk about in a second, um, you start to see end to end network services being deployed. Um, uh, and so are they being those services in some instances are being managed by the service provider themselves, and in some cases by the enterprise client, um, again, the line between where the telco network ends and where the enterprise or the consumer network begins, uh, is not clear. >>Uh, so, so those edge, the, the, the proliferation of devices at the age, um, uh, in terms of, um, you know, what those devices are, what the data yield is and what the policies are, their need to govern those devices, um, in terms of security and privacy, things like that, um, that's all going to be really, really important virtualized services. We just touched on that briefly. One of the big, big trends that's happening right now is not just the shift of it operations onto the cloud, but the shift of the network onto the cloud, the virtualization of network infrastructure, and that has two major impacts. First of all, it means that you've got the agility and all of the scale, um, uh, benefits that you get from migrating workloads to the cloud, the elasticity and the growth and all that sort of stuff. But arguably more importantly for the telco, it means that with a virtualized network infrastructure, you can offer entire networks to enterprise clients. >>So if you're selling to a government department, for example, is looking to stand up a system for certification of, of, you know, export certification, something like that. Um, you can not just sell them the connectivity, but you can sell them the networking and the infrastructure in order to serve that entire end to end application. You could sentence, you could offer them in theory, an entire end-to-end communications network, um, and with 5g network slicing, they can even have their own little piece of the 5g bandwidth that's been allocated against the carrier, um, uh, and, and have a complete end to end environment. So the kinds of services that can be offered by telcos, um, given virtualize network infrastructure, uh, are, are many and varied. And it's a, it's a, it's a, um, uh, an outstanding opportunity. But what it also means is that the number of network elements virtualized in this case is also exploding. >>That means the amount of data that we're getting on, uh, informing us as to how those network elements are behaving, how they're performing, um, uh, is, is, is going to go up as well. And then finally, AI complexity. So on the demand side, um, while historically, uh, um, network analytics, big data, uh, has been, has been driven by, um, returns in terms of data monetization, uh, whether that's through cost avoidance, um, or service assurance, uh, or even revenue generation through data monetization and things like that. AI is transforming telecommunications and every other industry, the potential for autonomous operations, uh, is extremely attractive. And so understanding how the end-to-end telecommunication service delivering delivery infrastructure works, uh, is essential, uh, as a training ground for AI models that can help to automate a huge amount of telecommunications operating, um, processes. So the AI demand for data is just going through the roof. >>And so all of these things combined to mean big data is getting explosive. It is absolutely going through the roof. So that's a huge thing that's happening. So as telecommunications companies around the world are looking at their network analytics infrastructure, which was initially designed for service insurance primarily, um, and how they migrate that to the cloud. These things are impacting on those decisions because you're not just looking at migrating a workload to operate in the cloud that used to work in the, in the data center. Now you're looking at, um, uh, migrating a workload, but also expanding the use cases in that work and bear in mind, many of those, those are going to need to remain on prem. So they'll need to be within a private cloud or at best a hybrid cloud environment in order to satisfy a regulatory jurisdictional requirements. So let's talk about an example. >>So LGU plus is a Finastra fantastic service provider in Korea. Um, huge growth in that business over the last, uh, over the last 10, 15 years or so. Um, and obviously most people will be familiar with LG, the electronics brand, maybe less so with, uh, with LG plus, but they've been doing phenomenal work. And we're the first, uh, business in the world who launch commercial 5g in 2019. And so a huge milestone that they achieved. And at the same time they deploy the network real-time analytics platform or in rep, uh, from a combination of Cloudera and our partner calmer. Now, um, there were a number of things that were driving, uh, the requirement for it, for the, for the analytics platform at the time. Um, clearly the 5g launch was that was the big thing that they had in mind, but there were other things that re so within the 5g launch, um, uh, they were looking for, for visibility of services, um, and service assurance and service quality. >>So, you know, what services have been launched? How are they being taken up? What are the issues that are arising, where are the faults happening? Um, where are the problems? Because clearly when you launch a new service, but then you want to understand and be on top of the issues as they arise. Um, so that was really, really important. The second piece was, and, you know, this is not a new story to any telco in the world, right. But there are silos in operation. Uh, and so, um, taking advantage of, um, or eliminating redundancies through the process, um, of, of digital transformation, it was really important. And so particular, the two silos between wired and the wireless sides of the business come together so that there would be an integrated network management system, um, for, uh, for LGU plus, as they rolled out 5g. So eliminating redundancy and driving cost savings through the, the integration of the silos is really, really important. >>And that's a process and the people thing every bit, as much as it is a systems and a data thing. So, um, another big driver and the fourth one, you know, we've talked a little bit about some of these things, right? 5g brings huge opportunity for enterprise services, innovation. So industry 4.0 digital experience, these kinds of use cases, um, are very important in the south Korean marketing and in the, um, in the business of LGU plus. And so, uh, um, looking at AI and how can you apply AI to network management? Uh, again, there's a number of use cases, really, really exciting use cases that have gone live now, um, in LG plus since, uh, since we did this initial deployment and they're making fantastic strides there, um, big data analytics for users across LGU plus, right? So it's not just for, um, uh, it's not just for the immediate application of 5g or the support or the 5g network. >>Um, but also for other data analysts and data scientists across the LGU plus business network analytics, while primarily it's primary it's primary use case is around network management, um, LGU plus, or, or network analytics, um, has applications across the entire business, right? So, um, you know, for customer churn or next best offer for understanding customer experience and customer behavior really important there for digital advertising, for product innovation, all sorts of different use cases and departments within the business needed access to this information. So collaboration sharing across the network, the real-time network analytics platform, um, it was very important. And then finally, as I mentioned, LG group is much bigger than just LG plus it's because the electronics and other pieces, and they had launched a major group wide digital transformation program in 2019, and still being a part of that was, well, some of them, the problems that they were looking to address. >>Um, so first of all, the integration of wired and wireless data service data sources, and so getting your assurance data sources, your network, data sources, uh, and so on integrated with is really, really important scale was massive for them. Um, you know, they're talking about billions of transactions in under a minute, uh, being processed, um, and hundreds of terabytes per day. So, uh, you know, phenomenal scale, uh, that needed to be available out of the box as it were, um, real time indicators and alarms. And there was lots of KPIs and thresholds set that, you know, w to make, make it to meet certain criteria, certain standards, um, customer specific, real time analysis of 5g, particularly for the launch root cause analysis, an AI based prediction on service, uh, anomalies and service service issues was, was, was a core use case. Um, as I talked about already the provision of service of data services across the organization, and then support for 5g, uh, served the business service, uh, impact, uh, was extremely important. >>So it's not just understand well, you know, that you have an outage in a particular network element, but what is the impact on the business of LGU plus, but also what is the impact on the business of the customer, uh, from an outage or an anomaly or a problem on, on, on the network. So being able to answer those kinds of questions really, really important, too. And as I said, between Cloudera and Kamarck, uh, uh, and LGU plus, uh, really themselves an intrinsic part of the solution, um, uh, this is, this is what we, we ended up building. So a big complicated architecture space. I really don't want to go into too much detail here. Um, uh, you can see these things for yourself, but let me skip through it really quickly. So, first of all, the key data sources, um, you have all of your wireless network information, other data sources. >>This is really important because sometimes you kind of skip over this. There are other systems that are in place like the enterprise data warehouse that needed to be integrated as well, southbound and northbound interfaces. So we get our data from the network and so on, um, and network management applications through file interfaces. CAFCA no fire important technologies. And also the RDBMS systems that, uh, you know, like the enterprise data warehouse that we're able to feed that into the system. And then northbound, um, you know, we spoke already about me making network analytics services available across the enterprise. Um, so, uh, you know, uh, having both the file and the API interface available, um, for other systems and other consumers across the enterprise is very important. Um, lots of stuff going on then in the platform itself to petabytes and persistent storage, um, Cloudera HDFS, 300 nodes for the, the raw data storage, um, uh, and then, uh, could do for real time storage for real-time indicator analysis, alarm generation, um, uh, and other real time, um, processes. >>Uh, so there, that was the, the core of the solution, uh, spark processes for ETL key quality indicators and alarming, um, and also a bunch of work done around, um, data preparation, data generation for transferal to, to third party systems, um, through the northbound interfaces, um, uh, Impala, API queries, um, for real-time systems, uh, there on the right hand side, and then, um, a whole bunch of clustering classification, prediction jobs, um, through the, uh, the, the, the, the ML processes, the machine learning processes, uh, again, another key use case, and we've done a bunch of work on that. And, um, I encourage you to have a look at the Cloudera website for more detail on some of the work that we did here. Um, so this is some pretty cool stuff. Um, and then finally, just the upstream services, some of these there's lots more than, than, than simply these ones, but service assurance is really, really important. So SQM cm and SED grade. So the service quality management customer experience, autonomous controllers, uh, really, really important consumers of, of the, of the real-time analytics platform, uh, and your conventional service assurance, um, functions like faulted performance management. Uh, these things are as much consumers of the information and the network analytics platform as they are providers of data to the network, uh, analytics >>Platform. >>Um, so some of the specific use cases, uh, that, uh, have been, have been stood up and that are delivering value to this day and lots of more episodes, but these are just three that we pulled out. Um, so first of all, um, uh, sort of specific monitoring and customer quality analysis, Karen response. So again, growing from the initial 5g launch and then broadening into broader services, um, understanding where there are the, where there are issues so that when people complaining, when people have an issue, um, that, um, uh, that we can answer the, the concerns of the client, um, in a substantive way, um, uh, AI functions around root cause analysis or understanding why things went wrong when they went wrong. Um, uh, and also making recommendations as to how to avoid those occurrences in the future. Uh, so we know what preventative measures can be taken. Um, and then finally the, uh, the collaboration function across LGU plus extremely important and continues to be important to this day where data is shared throughout the enterprise, through the API Lira through file interfaces and other things, and through interface integrations with, uh, with upstream systems. >>So, um, that's kind of the, the, uh, real quick run through of LGU plus the numbers are just stave staggering. Um, you know, we've seen, uh, upwards of a billion transactions in under 40 seconds being, um, uh, being tested. Um, and, and we've gone beyond those thresholds now, already, um, and we're started and, and, and, and this isn't just a theoretical sort of a benchmarking test or something like that. We're seeing these kinds of volumes of data and not too far down the track. So, um, with those things that I mentioned earlier with the proliferation of, of, um, of network infrastructure, uh, in the 5g context with virtualized elements, with all of these other bits and pieces are driving massive volumes of data towards the, uh, the, the, the network analytics platform. So phenomenal scale. Um, this is just one example we work with, with service providers all over the world is over 80% of the top 100 telecommunication service providers run on Cloudera. >>They use Cloudera in the network, and we're seeing those customers, all migrating legacy cloud platforms now onto CDP onto the Cloudera data platform. Um, they're increasing the, the, the jobs that they do. So it's not just warehousing, not just ingestion ETL, and moving into things like machine learning. Um, and also looking at new data sources from places like NWTF the network data analytics function in 5g, or the management and orchestration layer in, in software defined networks, network, function, virtualization. So, you know, new use cases coming in all the time, new data sources coming in all the time growth in, in, in, in the application scope from, as we say, from edge to AI. Um, and so it's, it's really exciting to see how the, the, the, the footprint is growing and how, uh, the applications in telecommunications are really making a difference in, in facilitating, um, network transformation. And that's covering that. That's me covered for today. I hope you found that helpful, um, by all means, please reach out, uh, there's a couple of links here. You can follow me on Twitter. You can connect to the telecommunications page, reach out to me directly at Cloudera. I'd love to answer your questions, um, uh, and, uh, and talk to you about how big data is transforming networks, uh, and how network transformation is, is accelerating telcos, uh, throughout >>Jamie Sharath with Liga data, I'm primarily on the delivery side of the house, but I also support our new business teams. I'd like to spend a minute really just kind of telling you about the legal data, where basically a Silicon valley startup, uh, started in 2014, and, uh, our lead iron, our executive team, basically where the data officers at Yahoo before this, uh, we provide managed data services, and we provide products that are focused on telcos. So we have some experience in non telco industry, but our focus for the last seven years or so is specifically on telco. So again, something over 200 employees, we have a global presence in north America, middle east Africa, Asia, and Europe. And we have folks in all of those places, uh, I'd like to call your attention to the, uh, the middle really of the screen there. So here is where we have done some partnership with Cloudera. >>So if you look at that and you can see we're in Holland and Jamaica, and then a lot to throughout Africa as well. Now, the data fabric is the product that we're talking about. And the data fabric is basically a big data type of data warehouse with a lot of additional functionality involved. The data fabric is comprised of, uh, some something called a flare, which we'll talk about in a minute below there, and then the Cloudera data platform underneath. So this is how we're partnering together. We, uh, we, we have this tool and it's, uh, it's functioning and delivering in something over 10 up. So flare now, flare is a piece of that legal data IP. The rest is there. And what flare does is that basically pulls in data, integrates it to an event streaming platform. It's, uh, it is the engine behind the data fabric. >>Uh, it's also a decisioning platform. So in real time, we're able to pull in data. We're able to run analytics on it, and we're able to alert are, do whatever is needed in a real-time basis. Of course, a lot of clients at this point are still sending data in batch. So it handles that as well, but we call that a CA picture Sanchez. Now Sacho is a very interesting app. It's an AI analytics app for executives. What it is is it runs on your mobile phone. It ties into your data. Now this could be the data fabric, but it couldn't be a standalone product. And basically it allows you to ask, you know, human type questions to say, how are my gross ads last week? How are they comparing against same time last week before that? And even the same time 60 days ago. So as an executive or as an analyst, I can pull it up and I can look at it instantly in a meeting or anywhere else without having to think about queries or anything like that. >>So that's pretty much for us at legal data, not really to set the context of where we are. So this is a traditional telco environments. So you see the systems of record, you see the cloud, you see OSS and BSS data. So one of the things that the next step above which calls we call the system of intelligence of the data fabric does, is it mergers that BSS and OSS data. So the longer we have any silos or anything that's separated, it's all coming into one area to allow business, to go in or allow data scientists go in and do that. So if you look at the bottom line, excuse me, of the, uh, of the system of intelligence, you can see that flare is the tools that pulls in the data. So it provides even streaming capabilities. It preserves entity states, so that you can go back and look at it state at any time. >>It does stream analytics that is as the data is coming in, it can perform analytics on it. And it also allows real-time decisioning. So that's something that, uh, that's something that business users can go in and create a system of, uh, if them's, it looks very much like the graph database, where you can create a product that will allow the user to be notified if a certain condition happens. So for instance, a bundle, so a real-time offer or user is succinct to run out of is ongoing, and an offer can be sent to him right on the fly. And that's set up by the business user as opposed to programmers, uh, data infrastructure. So the fabric has really three areas. That data is persistent, obviously there's the data lake. So the data lake stores that level of granularity that is very deep years and years of history, data, scientists like that, uh, and, uh, you know, for a historical record keeping and requirements from the government, that data would be stored there. >>Then there's also something we call the business semantics layer and the business semantics layer contains something over 650 specific telco KPIs. These are initially from PM forum, but they also are included in, uh, various, uh, uh, mobile operators that we've delivered at. And we've, we've grown that. So that's there for business data lake is there for data scientists, analytical stores, uh, they can be used for many different reasons. There are a lot of times RDBMS is, are still there. So these, this, this basically platform, this cloud they're a platform can tie into analytical data stores as well via flair access and reporting. So graphic visualizations, API APIs are a very key part of it. A third-party query tools, any kind of grid tools can be used. And those are the, of course, the, uh, the ones that are highly optimized and allow, you know, search of billions of records. >>And then if you look at the top, it's the systems of engagement, then you might vote this use cases. So teleco reporting, hundreds of KPIs that are, that are generated for users, segmentation, basically micro to macro segmentation, segmentation will play a key role in a use case. We talked about in a minute monetization. So this helps teleco providers monetize their specific data, but monetize it in. Okay, how to, how do they make money off of it, but also how might you leverage this data to engage with another client? So for instance, in some where it's allowed a DPI is used, and the fabric tracks exactly where each person goes each, uh, we call it a subscriber, goes within his, uh, um, uh, internet browsing on the, on the four or 5g. And, uh, the, all that data is stored. Uh, whereas you can tell a lot of things where the segment, the profile that's being used and, you know, what are they propensity to buy? Do they spend a lot of time on the Coca-Cola page? There are buyers out there that find that information very valuable, and then there's signs of, and we spoke briefly about Sanchez before that sits on top of the fabric or it's it's alone. >>So, so the story really that we want to tell is, is one, this is, this is one case out of it. This is a CVM type of case. So there was a mobile operator out there that was really offering, you know, packages, whether it's a bundle or whether it's a particular tool to subscribers, they, they were offering kind of an abroad approach that it was not very focused. It was not depending on the segments that were created around the profiling earlier, uh, the subscriber usage was somewhat dated and this was causing a lot of those. A lot of those offers to be just basically not taken and, and not, not, uh, audited. Uh, there was limited segmentation capabilities really before the, uh, before the, uh, fabric came in. Now, one of the key things about the fabric is when you start building segments, you can build that history. >>So all of that data stored in the data lake can be used in terms of segmentation. So what did we do about that? The, the, the envy and, oh, the challenge this, uh, we basically put the data fabric in and the data fabric was running Cloudera data platform and that, uh, and that's how we team up. Uh, we facilitated the ability to personalize campaign. So what that means is, uh, the segments that were built and that user fell within that segment, we knew exactly what his behavior most likely was. So those recommendations, those offers could be created then, and we enable this in real time. So real-time ability to even go out to the CRM system and gather further information about that. All of these tools, again, we're running on top of the Cloudera data platform, uh, what was the outcome? Willie, uh, outcome was that there was a much more precise offer given to the client that is, that was accepted, no increase in cross sell and upsell subscriber retention. >>Uh, our clients came back to us and pointed out that, uh, it was 183% year on year revenue increase. Uh, so this is a, this is probably one of the key use cases. Now, one thing to really mention is there are hundreds and hundreds of use cases running on the fabric. And I would even say thousands. A lot of those have been migrated. So when the fabric is deployed, when they bring the Cloudera and the legal data solution in there's generally a legacy system that has many use cases. So many of those were, were migrated virtually all of them in pen, on put on the cloud. Uh, another issue is that new use cases are enabled again. So when you get this level of granularity and when you have campaigns that can now base their offers on years of history, as opposed to 30 days of history, the campaigns campaign management response systems, uh, are, are, uh, are enabled quite a bit to do all, uh, to be precise in their offers. Okay. >>Okay. So this is a technical slide. Uh, one of the things that we normally do when we're, when we're out there talking to folks, is we talk and give an overview and that last little while, and then we give a deep technical dive on all aspects of it. So sometimes that deep dive can go a couple of hours. I'm going to do this slide and a couple of minutes. So if you look at it, you can see over on the left, this is the, uh, the sources of the data. And they go through this tool called flare that runs on the cloud. They're a data platform, uh, that can either be via cues or real-time cues, or it can be via a landing zone, or it can be a data extraction. You can take a look at the data quality that's there. So those are built in one of the things that flare does is it has out of the box ability to ingest data sources and to apply the data quality and validation for telco type sources. >>But one of the reasons this is fast to market is because throughout those 10 or 12, uh, opcos that we've done with Cloudera, where we have already built models, so models for CCN, for air for, for most mediation systems. So there's not going to be a type of, uh, input that we haven't already seen are very rarely. So that actually speeds up deployment very quickly. Then a player does the transformations, the, uh, the metrics, continuous learning, we call it continuous decisioning, uh, API access. Uh, we, uh, you know, for, for faster response, we use distributed cash. I'm not going to go too deeply in there, but the layer in the business semantics layer again, are, are sitting on top of the Cloudera data platform. You see the Kafka CLU, uh, Q1, the right as well. >>And all of that, we're calling the fabric. So the fabric is Cloudera data platform and the cloud and flair and all of this runs together. And, and by the way, there've been many, many, many, many hundreds of hours testing flare with Cloudera and, uh, and the whole process, the results, what are the results? Well, uh, there are, there are four I'm going to talk about, uh, we saw the one for the, it was called my pocket pocket, but it's a CDM type, a use case. Uh, the subscribers of that mobile operator were 14 million plus there was a use case for 24 million plus that a year on year revenue was 130%, uh, 32 million plus for 38%. These are, um, these are different CVM pipe, uh, use cases, as well as network use cases. And then there were 44%, uh, telco with 76 million subscribers. So I think that there are a lot more use cases that we could talk about, but, but in this case, this is the ones we're looking at, uh, again, 183%. This is something that we find consistently. And these figures come from our, uh, our actual end client. How do we unlock the full potential of this? Well, I think to start is to arrange a meeting and, uh, it would be great to, to, uh, for you to reach out to me or to Anthony. Uh, we're working at the junction on this, and we can set up a, uh, we can set up a meeting and we can go through this initial meeting. And, uh, I think that's the very beginning. Uh, again, you can get additional information from Cloudera website and from the league of data website, Anthony, that's the story. Thank you. >>No, that's great. Jeremy, thank you so much. It's a, it's, it's wonderful to go deep. And I know that there are hundreds of use cases being deployed in MTN, um, but great to go deep on one. And like you said, it can, once you get that sort of architecture in place, you can do so many different things. The power of data is tremendous, but it's great to be able to see how you can, how you can track it end to end from collecting the data, processing it, understanding it, and then applying it in a commercial context and bringing actual revenue back into the business. So there is your ROI straight away. Now you've got a platform that you can transform your business on. That's, that's, it's a tremendous story, Jamie, and thank you for your part. Sure. Um, that's a, that's, that's our story for today. Like Jamie says, um, please do flee, uh, feel free to reach out to us. Um, the, the website addresses are there and our contact details, and we'd be delighted to talk to you a little bit more about some of the other use cases, perhaps, um, and maybe about your own business and, uh, and how we might be able to make it, make it perform a little better. So thank you.

>> From around the globe, it's the Cube! With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Well, welcome back to the Cube and our IBM Think initiative and today a fascinating subject with a dramatic shift that's going on in the Middle East and specifically in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is a significant partnership that has just recently been launched called SARIE, which is the Saudi Arabian real interbank express. And it basically is a, a dramatic move to make the kingdom cashless - and IBM is very much at the center of that. With me to talk about that role is Elhadji Cisse who at IBM is the MEA head of payments which of course is middle East and Africa. Elhadji, good to have you with us all the way from Dubai. Good to see you today. >> The pleasure's all mine. >> Good. Well, thank you for joining us. And let's, let's talk about this initiative. First off, the problem or at least the challenge that IBM and its partners are trying to solve and now how you're going about it. So let's just paint that 30,000 foot level, if you will, then we'll dive in a little deeper. >> All right. So if you look at the countries, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and in much of the region, Middle East and Africa, we have very cash driven society. And this provides lots of challenges in terms of government point of view, businesses' point of view. And even the consumer point of view. The cash transaction is becoming less and less traceable. You are less likely to see where the cash is going, where the cash is coming from. Maintaining the cash also is becoming more and more expensive in terms of security, in terms of recycling the cash, holding the cash, transacting the cash, all of that has to be taken into consideration. And the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the help of the crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has a visionary vision 2030 to be put in place that will enable them to revolutionize the entire financial sector. There's a segment within that called the FSDB, the financial sector development program. And that program, within that program, they have a goal to develop a digital platform that will enhance and enable the society to go to a more cashless society and also help define a full end to end digital environment for the, for the kingdom. >> So when you think about the scale of this, I mean it's almost mindblowing in a way, because in many cases we've been talking about with various of your colleagues at IBM, different initiatives that involve an organization or involve maybe a more regional partnership or something like that. This is national, right? This is every banking institution in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Businesses, government entities. I mean, if you would, share with me some of the complexity of this in terms of a project of that scale and, and trying to bring together these disparate systems that all have a different kind of legacy overhang, if you will, right. And now you're trying to modernize everybody moving towards the same goal in 2030, I think it's mind blowing. >> Yeah, it is. It is, John. And if you look at the complexity, if I may speak a little bit about how complex it is, let's start with the team. The team has been a full diverse team. We have 10 different nationalities. We have team from America, Canada, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, UK, Pakistan, India. I mean, you name it. We have the whole globe pretty much. Every single region, Australia also was there. We had the team of that magnitude. In addition to that, as you rightfully stated, we're not building a system for a particular company or particular industry. It is for the entire country, all the banks of Saudi Arabia: the 11 national banks and the 12 additional international banks that are there. The global corporates, such as the Telco corporation, the oil corporation that are there. All of them needs to be onboarded into this including the 17 million or 20 some million population that are there. Now, the keys to this that we have is that our partners, MasterCard and Saudi payments, we have mandated ourself not to divide ourselves into three teams. We have to go with this as one single team. This was the motto of the project. This is what made us successful. We didn't differentiate between IBM, MasterCard, or Saudi payment. We all went together and addressed every single challenge as a team with the three different layers. And that's what helped us become successful with this engagement. >> So let's look at the initiatives specifically then in terms of the technology that's driving this. We talk a lot about the digital transformation that's occurring in the world. And again, it's kind of a catch all phrase, but this truly is a almost a magical transformation that you're going through. So how did you address the various workloads, what's going to be done where and how, and by whom. And then this integration that has to go on with that, not only are you centralizing a lot of these functions but you also have to distribute them to institutions across the kingdom. So if you would share a little bit of insight on that. >> Yeah. So if you look, if you look at the architecture that we have put in place, it's really a very agile and flexible architecture in a way that we have put in a central entity, which is the payment hub that is, that will handle all the payments solution that is there. And we put the flexibility for all the consumers because we have different banks. If you look at the banks industry, we have banks that are very mature, banks that have a medium level of maturity, and some that are absolutely not mature at all. And with this solution that we have to get involved, we have to be Azure 222 enabled, which is the new language that we will be using. Now, the infrastructure that we put in place have enabled that flexibility, otherwise we will never going to be successful. You cannot come to a country and say everybody needs to be onboarded into this language. Everybody needs to be operating this way. No, that will never going to work. We have taken that into consideration from the beginning. We knew this would be a challenge and we put different tools within IBM that we have put in place in order to go to mitigate those, such as the WTX, which is the Webster transformation exchanger that enables us to transform messages from and to Azure 222 or to Azure 222 or to any type of format that the customer have, any of the customer would be the banks. So we encapsulate that. Another challenge that we have is on the on boarding aspect. A lot of banks, again depending on their maturity level, we have to be ready with different environment for them to be, to catch up with us. Not everybody will be able to onboard on the same time. So by leveraging our RTVS solution, the rational testable service virtualization, it enables us to mitigate, to virtualize an entire ecosystem, make it look like it is a physical environment for the banks to use as a test as opposed to in the normal circumstances, purchasing additional hardware additional software, additional components and doing that, we're just virtualizing it for those who are ready for a system testing, those who are ready for a performance test, those who're ready for any type of non-functional requirements testing aspect. So these tools and this mechanism have helped us with our complex system integration methodology to mitigate this complexity and make it easy for the ecosystem to be onboarded and make us successful in this deal. >> And you raised a really interesting point in terms of the maturity of different levels of technology within the banking institutions there. You've got, you know, I'm sure, as you pointed out, some very small enterprises, right? Very small towns, very small institutions whose systems might not be as sophisticated or as mature, basically. So ultimately, how do you tie all that in together so that there might be a very large institution that has a very robust set of infrastructure and processes in place. And then you've got it communicating with a very small institution. You've got to be a great translator, right? I mean, IBM does here. Because you don't have them sometimes basically talking the same language, literally in this case. >> Yes, absolutely. And this is really our forte. We are the system integrators of choice in this region. And this goes without saying, because of our platform and our processes and our people that we put together. If you look at this, this example again, on the integration layer, we've enabled two lines of communication, two channels for the community. They could either go for API if they are very mature or they could go to MQ which is a low level of, I won't say a low level, but a very old fashioned way of communicating. On that aspect, they not only they have two protocols to get to us, they can use any message format that they want as long as we agree and we have an end check on the language that they're going to be using. And this integration layer or the system of integration that we have built that enables us to add that flexibility on both entities. >> So this was just launched. I mean literally just launched. What's your timeline in order to have full or I guess, reasonable implementation. >> That's a great question. Actually, the average is 24 to 30 months. We have broken the world record. We have implemented this magnificent solution within 18 months. It's actually a 17 month and a half of implementation. With the scope that we have, that is onboarding all the banks, having deferred net settlement, having the Azure 222, billing solution on it. We had the, we had the billing we had the dispute management, we had the single proxies. We have the debit cap and limit management and the portal solution. So we have all of these component within 17 and a half month. This breaks the world record of implementing an instant payment solution globally. >> We'll call Guinness and get you in the book then. It is a remarkable achievement. It really is. And you know, and you've talked about some of the the values here in terms of reduced transaction costs. Greater stability, greater security, greater transactional relationships, I imagine market liquidity, right? In your thought, I mean, tie all that together for our viewers in terms of impact and what you think this kind of partnership is going to create in terms of changing the way basically financial services are delivered in the kingdom. >> So it will change a lot. And the impact in the economy, like I said this is going to be on a three-fold. One, from a consumer point of view, you'll be able to save time in making your transactions. You will be able to trace your transactions and be able to have enough data to understand how you're managing your budget in your annual transaction. From a business point of view, you will be able to save yourself from theft. I mean, again, having cash in your business, it will tend to having more people coming in and stealing them from you either your employees or your customers or anybody else. But having a cashless business nobody can literally steal your money. They can only steal your phone or steal your gadget that you have for that aspect. Managing and maintaining cash also is a big problem. Now from a government point of view, this is where it gets very interesting, especially for Saudi Arabia, the taxation of the employees or the payment of it, the trustability of all of that and being able to trace it and being able to say, okay how much tax you will need to pay by end of the year without you doing the calculation. That information was already provided to the government. And as a central bank, the printing of cash, maintaining cash, storing cash, securing cash all of those costs will be going away. This is why the country wanted to go into a cashless society. >> Well, it's a fascinating endeavor. And certainly congratulations on that front. We're talking about real time payments and really making a significant difference in in how services are delivered in the kingdom and Elhadji, I certainly have appreciated your time here today and talking about it and and wish you all the best down the road. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much, John. I appreciate it. >> All right. So we're talking about the journey to a cashless society in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and what Elhadji is doing and what IBM is doing to make that happen. I'm John Wallace and thanks for joining us here on the Cube!