>> Okay. We're here with Vasanth Kumar who's the Principal Solutions Architect for MongoDB. Vasanth, welcome to "theCube." >> Thanks Dave. >> Hey, listen, I feel like you were born to be an architect in technology. I mean, you've worked for big SIs, you've worked with many customers, you have experience in financial services and banking. Tell us, the audience, a little bit more about yourself, and what you're up to these days. >> Yeah. Hi, thanks for the for inviting me for this discussion. I'm based out of Bangalore, India, having around 18 years experience in IT industry, building enterprise products for different domains, verticals, finance built and enterprise banking applications, IOT platforms, digital experience solutions. Now being with MongoDB nearly two years, been working in a partner team as a principal solutions architect, especially working with ISBs to build the best practices of handling the data and embed the right database as part of their product. I also worked with technology partners to integrate the compatible technology compliance with MongoDB. And also worked with the private cloud providers to provide a database as a service. >> Got it. So, you know, I have to Vasanth, I think Mongo, you kind of nailed it. They were early on with the trends of managing unstructured data, making it really simple. There was always a developer appeal, which has lasted and then doing so with an architecture that scales out, and back in the early days when Mongo was founded, I remember those days, I mean, digital transformation, wasn't a thing, it wasn't a buzz word, but it just so happens that Mongo's approach, it dovetails very nicely with a digital business. So I wonder if you could talk about that, talk about the fit and how MongoDB thinks about accelerating digital transformation and why you're different from like a traditional RDBMS. >> Sure, exactly, yeah. You had a right understanding, let me elaborate it. So we all know that the customer expectation changes day by day, because of the business agility functionality changes, how they want to experience the applications, or in apps that changes okay. And obviously this yields to the agility of the information which transforms between the multiple systems or layers. And to achieve this, obviously the way of architecting or developing the product as completely a different shift, might be moving from the monolith to microservices or event-based architecture and so on. And obviously the database has to be opt for these environment to adopt these changes, to adopt the scale of load and the other thing. Okay. And also like we see that the common, the protocol for the information exchange is JSON, and something like you, you adopt it. The database adopts it natively to that is a perfect fit. Okay. So that's where the MongoDB fits perfectly for billing or transforming the modern applications, because it's a general purpose database which accepts the JSON as a payload and stores it in a BSON format. You don't need to be, suppose like to develop any particular application or to transfer an existing application, typically they see the what is the effort required and how much, what is the cost involved in it, and how quickly I can do that. That's main important thing without disturbing the functionality here where, since it is a multimodal database in a JSON format, you don't easily build an application. Okay? Don't need a lot of transformation in case of an RDBMS, you get the JSON payload, you transform into a tabular structure or a different format, and then probably you build an ORM layer and then map it and save it. There are lot of work involved in it. There are a lot of components need to be written in between. But in case of MongoDB, what they can do is you get the information from the multiple sources. And as is, you can put it in a DB based on where, or you can transform it based on the access patterns. And then you can store it quickly. >> Dave: Got it. And I tell Dave, because today you haven't context data, which has a selected set of information. Probably tomorrow the particular customer has more information to put it. So how do you capture that? In case of an RDBMS, you need to change the schema. Once you scheme change the schema, your application breaks down. But here it magically adopts it. Like you pass the extra information, it's open for extension. It adopts it easily. You don't need to redeploy or change the schema or do something like that. >> Right. That's the genius of Mongo. And then of course, you know, in the early days people say, oh, you know, Mongo, it won't scale. And then of course we, through the cloud. And I follow very closely Atlas. I look at the numbers every quarter. I mean, overall cloud adoption is increasing like crazy, you know, our Wiki Bon analyst team. We got the big four cloud vendors just in IAS growing beyond a 115 billion this year. That's 35% on top of, you know, 80-90 billion last year. So talk more about how MongoDB fits with the cloud and how it helps with the whole migration story. 'Cause you're killing it in that space. >> Yeah. Sure. Just to add one more point on the previous question. So for continuously, for past four to five years, we have been the number one in the wanted database. >> Dave: Right Okay. That that's how like the popularity is getting done. That's how the adoption has happened. >> Dave: Right. >> I'm coming back to your question- >> Yeah let's talk about the cloud and database as a service, you guys actually have packaged that very nicely I have to say. >> Yeah. So we have spent lot of effort and time in developing Atlas, our managed database as a service, which typically gives the customer the way of just concentrating on their application rather than maintaining and managing the whole set of database or how to scale infrastructure. All those things on work is taken care. You don't need to be an expert of DB, like when you are using an Atlas. So we provide the managed database in three major cloud providers, AWS, GCP, and Azure, and also it's a purely a multicloud, you know, like you can have a primary in AWS and you have the replicated nodes in GCP or Azure. It's a purely multicloud. So that like, you don't have a cloud blocking. You feel that, okay, your business is, I mean, if this is the right for your business you are choosing the model, you think that I need to move to GCP. You don't need to bother, you easily migrate this to GCP. Okay. No vendor lock in, no cloud lock in this particular- >> So Vasanth, maybe you could talk a little bit more about Atlas and some of the differentiable features and things that you can do with Atlas that maybe people don't know about. >> Yeah, sure Dave like, Atlas is not just a manage database as a service, you know, like it's a complete data platform and it provides many features. Like for example, you build an application and probably down the line of three years, the data which you captured three years back might be an old data. Like how do you do it? Like there's no need for you to manually purge or do thing. Like we do have an online archival where you configure the data. So that like the data, which is older than two years, just purge it. So automatically this is taken care. So that like you have hot data kept in Atlas cluster and the cold data moved up to an ARKit. And also like we have a data lake where you can run a federated queries . For example, you've done an archival, but what if people want to access the data? So with data lake, what it can do is, on a single connection, you can fire a- you can run a federated queries both on the active and the archival data. That's the beauty, like you archive the data, but still you can able to query it. And we do also have a charts where like, you can build in visualization on top of the data, what you have captured. You can build in graphs or you can build in graphs and also embed these graphs as part of your application, or you can collaborate to the customers, to the CXOs and other theme. >> Dave: Got it. >> It's a complete data platform. >> Okay. Well, speaking of data platform, let's talk about Io-Tahoe's data RPA platform, and coupling that with Mongo DB. So maybe you could help us understand how you're helping with process automation, which is a very hot topic and just this whole notion of a modern application development. >> Sure. See, the process automation is more with respect to the data and how you manage this data and what to derive and build a business process on top of it. I see there are two parts into it. Like one is the source of data. How do you identify, how do you discover the data? How do you enrich the context or transform it, give a business context to it. And then you build a business rules or act on it, and then you store the data or you derive the insights or enrich it and store it into DB. The first part is completely taken by Io-Tahoe, where you can tag the data for the multiple data sources. For example, if we take an customer 360 view, you can grab the data from multiple data sources using Io-Tahoe and you discover this data, you can tag it, you can label it and you build a view of the complete customer context, and use a realm web book and then the data is ingested back to Mongo. So that's all like more sort of like server-less fashion. You can build this particular customer 360 view for example. And just to talk about the realm I spoke, right? The realm web book, realm is a backend APA that you can create on top of the data on Mongo cluster, which is available in addclass. Okay. Then once you run, the APS are ready. Data as a service, you build it as a data as a service, and you fully secure APIs, which are available. These APS can be integrated within a mobile app or an web application to build in a built in modern application. But what left out is like, just build a UI artifacts and integrate these APIs. >> Yeah, I mean we live in this API economy companies. People throw that out as sort of a buzz phrase, but Mongo lives that. I mean, that's why developers really like the Mongo. So what's your take on DevOps? Maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, your perspective there, how you help Devs and data engineers build faster pipelines. >> Yeah, sure. Like, okay, this is the most favorite topic. Like, no, and it's a buzzword along, like all the DevOps moving out from the traditional deployment, what I learned online. So like we do support like the deployment automation in multiple ways okay, and also provide the diagnostic under the hood. We have two options in Mongo DB. One is an enterprise option, which is more on the on-prem's version. And Atlas is more with respect to the cloud one manage database service. Okay. In case of an enterprise advanced, like we do have an Ops manager and the Kubernetes operator, like a Ops manager will manage all sort of deployment automation. Upgrades, provides your diagnostics, both with respect to the hardwares, and also with respect to the MongoDB gives you a profiling, slow running queries and what you can get a context of what's working on the data using that. I'm using an enterprise operator. You can integrate with existing Kubernetes cluster, either in a different namespace on an existing namespace. And orchestrate the deployment. And in case of Atlas, we do have an Atlas-Kubernetes operator, which helps you to integrate your Kubernetes operator. And you don't need to leave your Kubernetes. And also we have worked with the cloud providers. For example, we have we haven't cloud formation templates where you can just in one click, you can just roll out an Atlas cluster with a complete platform. So that's one, like we are continuously working, evolving on the DevOps site to roll out the might be a helm chart, or we do have an operator, which has a standard (indistinct) for different types of deployments. >> You know, some really important themes here. Obviously, anytime you talk about Mongo, simplicity comes in, automation, you know, that big, big push that Io-Tahoe was making. What you said about data context was interesting because a lot of data systems, organizations, they lack context and context is very important. So auto classification and things like that. And the other thing you said about federated queries I think fits very well into the trend toward decentralized data architecture. So very important there. And of course, hybridisity. I call it hybridisity. On-prem, cloud, abstracting that complexity away and allowing people to really focus on their digital transformations. I tell ya, Vasanth, it's great stuff. It's always a pleasure chatting with Io-Tahoe partners, and really getting into the tech with folks like yourself. So thanks so much for coming on theCube. >> Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Thanks for having a nice discussion with you. >> Okay. Stay right there. We've got one more quick session that you don't want to miss.

(upbeat music) >> Hello, welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE here in our Palo Alto studio. We got a great conversation with the CEO of Lacework, David Hatfield. Who's in on theCUBE remote. David great to see you guys, a security platform at Lacework, you're at the helm as CEO. Welcome to theCUBE conversation. >> Thank you, John. Great to see you congrats to you and the team and all the success. I think what you guys are doing is really important so happy to be part of it. >> Great to have you in the community and you guys are doing great work. I know about Lacework I've done some due diligence on you guys. I love your business model, but for the folks who don't know what you guys do, take a minute to explain who is Lacework? What do you guys do? What's your positioning? And what's your focus? >> Yeah, well, we're a modern data security platform for the cloud. And so I think data science meets cloud security ultimately. The company has been around since 2015. We received one of the largest financing rounds that we're aware of I think in history in security business, $525 million in January. Led by Sutter Hill Ventures which many people may know about they founded PureStorage with the notion that we're going to go fundamentally change and revamp the ownership model for a high speed data storage using flash versus using spinning disc drives. I spent eight years with that company. Love with what we built there. Then Mike Speiser considered an investment in a company called Snowflake computing. I think you're aware of what Snowflake does which is bringing data warehousing into the cloud. And the third big investment that Sutter Hill made is really to help disrupt security, and that's in Lacework. So north of a billion dollar valuation a 300% year over year growth and have a ton of momentum. So at the core of what we do, it's really trying to merge, when we look at we look at security as a data problem, security and compliance the data problem. And when you apply that to the cloud, it's a massive data problem. you literally have trillions of data points across shared infrastructure that we need to be able to ingest and capture and then you need to be able to process efficiently and provide context back to the end-user. And so we approached it very differently than how legacy approaches have been in place, you know largely rules-based engines that are written to be able to try and stop the bad guys. And they miss a lot of things. And so our data-driven approach that we patented is called a polygraph. It's a, it's a security architecture and there are three primary benefits. It does a lot of things, but the three things that we think are most profound first is it eliminates the need for, you know dozens of point solutions. I was shocked when I, you know kind of learned about security. I was at Symantec back in the day. And just to see how fragmented this market is, it's one of the biggest markets in tech. $124 billion in annual spend growing at, to $300 billion in the next three years. And it's massively fragmented. And the average number of point solutions that customers have to deal with is dozens. Like literally 75 is the average number. And so we wanted to take a platform approach to solve this problem where the larger the attack surface that you put in the more data that you put into our machine learning algorithms the smarter it gets and the higher, the efficacy. So eliminating point solutions is his value proposition one. Point two is that we have to be 10 X better than everybody else in the business. Otherwise the merchant companies don't get a breakout and become long and during companies. And so there's a number of different dimensions. The first dimension that I think is probably the most important is efficacy, you know in anomaly detection or in, you know threat detection where you're trying to identify what risks we have in the business. It's, it's generally a very noisy activity. And so rules-based approaches on average will produce a hundred alerts to our one or two. Those, the signal to noise ratio, is, is, you know is a massive a 100x, but call it 10x a reduction. And so we're actually delivering the needle versus the haystack for security administrators and dev developers to actually solve the problem. So it's 10x, higher efficacy it's 10x faster to be able to resolve the problems. And obviously the ROI is, is a no-brainer because you're eliminating all these points which is in having to manage it. And the third, and probably the thing that I'm most excited about what we're doing and what our customers are already realizing is that we're transforming security and compliance teams from kind of compliance into business enablers. when you automate all these processes and you build it into, you know the CICD platforms for the developers you actually enable the developers to write code to differentiate their business, you know to create new customer experiences to get competitive advantage and drive revenue for their businesses. And, and you know that's not what security has done up to this point. We oftentimes, they're the ones we're the ones having to say, no, you know we're slow down or it's too risky, etc. But when you automate that and you increase the efficacy you can enable the developers to do their thing. And it allows the CSOs and allows the security professionals to up level their responsibility into selling and driving revenue. And that is increasingly going to become more and more important for supply chains and partners of these cloud native businesses of how secure am I working with you, etc. And so we think that that transformation of the role of security is going to be as, as meaningful as the technology that we're providing the business. So we're super excited about it. >> I could tell you have so much going on this investment team Sutter Hill, you mentioned big time players huge success track record. Just saw them written up in the wall street journal as one of the best venture capital firms and returns. It's just that the bets are all coming home, but their bet strategy is simple. Disrupting the market that's growing and changing PureStorage, you mentioned company you've worked for, you know people were saying, oh, they'll never get escape velocity. They disrupted an existing, boring storage market changed the game there, security, right for change. A lot of tools, a lot of people have buying tools off the shelf, you know and everyone fighting for the platform. That seems to be the conversation. So I have to ask you, you guys want to be the player that that platform you are, that platform what's different in this platform where everyone's trying to be a security platform, what's makes you different. >> Yeah. So I mean, I think the platform wars are, are clearly, upon us, you know I think what's different about our approach is that we were built on the cloud, for the cloud so we're a cloud native business that, you know runs our business on AWS and everything that we do. We don't have hardware, we don't own data centers. we don't have any of the legacy elements that are there. we use software run on the cloud to enable this. So that's point number one point number two is we did the hard work of mapping the data elements that are out there and adjusting them in and then have this polygraph, you know behavioral anomaly detection, that is it can be applied to today. It's being applied to vulnerability and discovery management and containers and Kubernetes. But over time we believe it extends very naturally to a larger part of the attack server. So we don't have to rewrite the data engine to develop solutions across broader attack services. We already have that, you know so I think our time to develop and innovate will be profound. And I think the third thing that we're seeing companies do and largely the legacy bigger companies is that they're just acquiring their way there. And, it's very, very difficult to acquire 8 to 10 to 20, 30 companies, 30 different CTOs 30 different code bases and try and integrate them to provide a delightful customer experience. And, the parallels, you know in the storage business are, are are pretty similar actually, Dell bought EMC, EMC bought a hundred companies. And, we went after a platform approach to be able to go attack them with a unified file system in a in a unified customer experience that was native for the media that we're working with. We're doing the same playbook here, you know which is you have to have the hard work of the foundation elements in place to be cloud native to deliver great outcomes, great efficacy and and a really great customer experience. So when we get head to head with any of these points coming out and trying to solve something for containers or Kubernetes, or just vulnerability discovery and management, etc, or we're competing with the legacy companies that have, a hodgepodge of acquisitions that they're trying to pull together we went North of 95% of the time. our POC win rates are phenomenal better than anything I've ever seen. We had a pretty good one to appear too. And the, the product and the experience and the efficacy kind of stand on their own once we're in those fights. So part of why we enjoy working with AWS and are really focused on building the partnership together is that it creates awareness of what could be and what possibilities all we want is a shot. And, our approach is such that you can be up and running in minutes, you know and every single one of our customers does a POC. So we'll stand behind our technology as our real differentiator compared to anybody else that's out there. >> Great. You guys had great traction going on with the company certainly saw the investment news that you mentioned earlier at the top. Why did you come on as CEO? And when did you come on and join the team? And what was the reason? What, what, what attracted you to join as the CEO of Lacework? >> Well, I've been involved in the company for since the beginning actually I invested in the early rounds participated on the board and I've always bought into this. The thesis that security is fundamentally a data problem. And if we can get the data problem and the data processing right, you know you can fundamentally change the industry but you need to have a major inflection. And that inflection is people moving to the cloud. And we all have seen it during the pandemic. things are accelerating. AWS just did their earnings yesterday. I think they increased their top-line guidance from 46 billion to 56 billion this year. I mean, it's a machine that is continuing to move forward. They have 30% market share. Azure's investing at 20% GCP still investing people are moving their businesses online aggressively. And as they shift to the cloud the rules-based approach just doesn't work. It doesn't scale. And so a new approach needs to be done. And so by being cloud native and best of breed and solving the thorny problem of this data processing problem first, you know it gives us an opportunity to use that to then extend and build a business, you know at an enduring level over the next 10 to 20 years. And that's Sutter's model, that's their playbook. They don't invest in 400 companies and kind of spray and pray, which is what most venture funds do. And I love them. They're great. And we appreciate the investment in tech, but Sutter's focus is find a really big market find a catalyst for change. In our case, it's moving to the cloud and then build a modern approach. that is 10x better in every dimension. And that attracted to me. I mean, it's, it's a, it's one of the biggest markets in tech and it's one of the most important things that we can do is a digital business is to ensure that we're secure and we're safe and the threats are becoming much more skilled much more deliberate, much better funded. And so the importance for us to ensure that company's security is really tight is, is increasingly critical. So the combination of those factors, and then as I dove back into it and talked to a bunch of customers and talk to partners and seeing the outcomes and enthusiasm that they had and the, the team is phenomenal. And so talking to them, and I just kind of got energized by the opportunity to go build a really important company that really delivers great outcomes. So I'm having a ball great to be back into it. >> Yeah. It's great to have leadership that has experienced that you have and go to the next level because this is classic next level. When you talk about Amazon's earnings and cloud scale and hybrid and edge right around the corner at scale as well. So you start to see that transformation really hit the tipping point, which is changing the landscape on the developer side, which I think is super valuable. I think you hit that. You mentioned core problem. You guys look at that through the lens of data problem. How does this trend of everything going hybrid and soon to be, you know edge core to edge impact your businesses of tailwind? How do you see you capturing that next level of scale from a business perspective for lease work? >> Well, I think that the trend, you know from core to edge, you know, hybrid and, you know ultimately cloud a hundred percent, there we've started with the cloud native businesses. Like, we've been focusing on those companies that are already there, you know and so now we're we just had finished a phenomenal record-breaking Q1 and multiple seven figure deals, you know with very complex global environments where they do have a hybrid environment and they are leveraging the edge. And we're perfect for that. I mean, as you think about what we deliver in its most simplistic context, you know we're effectively delivering a security solution from the container to control plane, right. You know we want to be able to have a granular understanding of operated trillions of data points coming in and those can be collected in the core. They can be collected on-prem. They can be collected in the cloud. Ultimately they need to be collected and then contextualized so, you know and this is where our behavioral polygraph technology transitions data into information that's useful via the polygraph. And so we think that, the complexity that's added with environments that are hybrid environments that are leveraging the edge environments that are leveraging the cloud native all need a control plane to run across that to deliver efficacy, you know, for our customers. And, we work with, you know AWS has their own security tools. Azure has some security tools UCPs security tools, but ultimately, our, our challenge and opportunity is to be best of breed to deliver incremental value on top of that and that horizontal value across it. so customers have choice but they know that their security posture is, is, is secure. And so we, we see it as a tailwind for our businesses as we go forward. >> I always said the companies that have the horizontal scalability with cloud and then have that vertical AI kind of vibe where you can get in the context of the data is there to win it all. And I think that you guys have a great solution potentially there. I want to get more information if you don't mind double clicking on that with me, this is kind of a different take on cloud security because you've got the scalability, which gives you the observation space. And then you got to get the context to get the right patterns or whatever magic you guys have in the, in the secret sauce. But you doing that on top of massive exponential velocity. >> Yeah. >> Where's that secret sauce? Is it in the compute? Is it in the software? What's different about what you guys have in security to give us a- >> It's all in the, it's all in the software. Ultimately, it's the intelligence of how you capture it how you ingest it, how you, you process it but then ultimately how you, how you contextualize it and then how you apply it to different problems. and so the attack surface area and security is a very broad, that's why there's so many point solutions that are out there. And so the breadth of solutions, you know we just want to continue to add solutions and capabilities on top of this polygraph security architecture that allows for the same kind of simple experience, the same kind of 10x value proposition, but, but, but wider. And so we can eliminate more and more of those of those point solutions. So, our, our thinking on it is that, you know we can participate once we have a customer the land and expand motion of what we have. We want to make it really really frictionless for customers to try our technology. And so that's why we do POC. That's why it only takes a couple of minutes and you can do it for just Kubernetes or just containers or just vulnerability discovery and managed like wherever your specific pain point is. We want to help identify what that is, you know give you a chance to try it. And then once we prove ourselves it's very easy to extend that across the board. So we get natural growth in velocity from people moving to cloud and just, you know more usage of, of compute and storage and sort of etc, but breadth of actually the security or posture or a tax service that they have as well. So, you know so I think we have an opportunity to benefit from, from both the depth and the breadth, you know but the value that we're delivering is ultimately the software that we're running on top of the infrastructure. And you mentioned observability, there's a number of companies that are leveraging the data and insights collected in different ways to converge security and observability over time. And, we see that, you know that ultimately there's a very very big security company that needs to be built. That really is best of breed, but the data and the insights that we're providing to our primary customer, which is really DevOps. I mean, it's really the development communities and the builders or who we're changing security for and enabling, in addition to the security teams, you know we think that we're going to continue to drive software that adds value on that data set and it can be applied to multiple problems in the future. So today security is a massive market. We're going to focus there, but it does. It does extend pretty naturally to other markets >> It's a hot market security. Everyone needs to have the latest and greatest and also has to be effective. I got to ask you specifically around startup transition to a rapidly growing company to now you're going to the next level where you're starting to having to get into some serious, big complex enterprise go to market sales motions. So what's in it for the customer. What's the, what's the pain point? What's the customer orientation. What do you marketing into as a solution? Is it the developer? Is it the CSO? Is it the CXO, what's in it for the enterprise? Why Lacework, why are they engaging? You guys get record numbers. What's the, what's in it for them. What's the, if I'm the customer what's in it for me? >> Ultimately efficacy, which is your security posture is it goes up significantly, simplicity, which is makes it easier for you to do your other jobs, you know and I'll have to look for those needles in a haystack and ROI, you know which is it's just compelling, and much, much more efficient than what, what you're doing today. So that that's a pretty universal value proposition and applies to cloud native businesses that are high growth that applies to government agencies. It applies to a large complex enterprises. We have a wonderful kind of go to market motion right now. I think Andy Byron and the team who've been here have really done a wonderful job of really making the customer buying experience and the journey really efficient, you know and help them quantify the impact and the risks and then deliver value. And I think, that that applies in sort of the commercial mid-market and cloud native space. And like I mentioned, we had, a number of deals in the quarter that were seven figure deals, you know in very complex organizations with massive demands. And, you know it ultimately selling is a team sport and, you know and still having the process and the rigor, that's there fine tuning that to make sure you have the people and the partnerships, you know, that deliver solutions in the way that customers want to buy them and then ultimately deliver a value proposition that is just unquestionably better. And I think we have all of those elements, you know we'll be entering the, the large enterprise very aggressively in the quarters to come. I that's where I've come from, you know running a multi-tool, you know, kind of go to market engines where you've got mid-market commercial enterprise large enterprise government across all geographies is, is really fun to expand. And, we're we're hiring as fast as we can maintain quality, you know? And so we're out of that startup phase now and entering into real scale. And, I think that, you know in the AWS marketplace I think we're the number one startup vendor. If I, if I got my facts, right. for, for private offers, we're one of the top security players and top 50 ISBs in the marketplace overall. And so in order for us to get the motion we need to make sure that we're delivering our value in the context of how companies want to buy it. And people want to use AWS credits, you know to apply to their solutions. And so it's really important for us to make that frictionless buying experience occur. And so we're excited about it. I think we've got a really nice start and it's the fun part of building companies, which is how do you attune things to make sure you're making it really really easy for the market to absorb your technology. And then once you're there, delight the hell out of them and just make sure that, that there's that they're excited in our, our net retention rates are the best I've seen in the marketplace. Our net promoter scores, you know, are in the high fifties low sixties, which, which is fantastic in this space. I think it's best in class by order of magnitude some players, big SIM players that are out there, you know have a customer in net promoter score of four. You know that means 96% of the people or 96 boats that says they wouldn't recommend the solution to their, to their peers. So, at pure, we've got this at scale. So from 70 to, in the, in the low eighties I think we have the opportunity to do the same thing here. So, combination of tailoring the motion that we have making it really easy for the buyer to buy what they want with whom they want from whom they want, you know and then just spreading a value proposition. That is a no brainer is, is I think the secret recipe >> If anything, it's interesting, you know you're so much experience in the enterprise and tech with cloud native you're basically laying out the success formula, which is if you have a value proposition you should be able to get it in quickly. You don't need the top down. win everything you can have a value proposition that can be enabled for usage and then grow rapidly when it's successful and that's cloud, that's the cloud business model. So it's not so much about organic versus this. It's really what the preferred motion is. >> It's speed, and I think developers in particular it's why the cloud happened, right? I.T wasn't delivering services in, in the speed and the efficacy that, that, that the developers wanted. And so in order to appeal to the developer community you need to deliver something that's frictionless and easy and fits into JIRA and fits into their workflow processes and speaks their language. And so we built our platform and our solutions for builders because that's where the money is. That's where the pain point is and that's and they want to build secure code. They just don't want to be told no. And so, we want to automate that process and make code secure and do that, you know in the build phase and then do it in the runtime. And then across the CICD pipeline we want to continuously be adding value across that. And, and the developers, candidly when pure bought the solution, many years ago and I introduced him to the company, it was it was the general manager of our software business unit that bought it not the security team. And I think that's a trend that is continuing that we're going to focus on. >> A lot of people realize that security and compliance and automation kind of all go together where you don't want to disrupt developers to kind of engineer something just to do an integration, for instance. So there's a real business model impact that you're hitting on here. That's not just a technical solution. It's really how the business is operating. And I think that to me is super interesting use case. What's your reaction to that? Do you see this as a, as a- >> No it's, that's that's that third part that I was talking about, you know which is that's most exciting is that, you know people are calling shift left, right. so moving, you know security into the development pipeline as it's happening and in integrating security architects as value added into the development organizations themselves and leveraging automated machine learning tools like ours to be able to simplify and automate the process versus slowing it down. So we think that shift left is, is super exciting and, and will continue. And we actually think we're the leaders in that space. We want to continue to be the leaders in that. >> Congratulations, great insight. Awesome to have you on and to hear from your experience and also the great venture that your scaling up and to the next level. Lacework, David thanks for coming on, but I'll give you the last minute to close us out. Give us a quick plug for the company vitals, what you're working on now, what you're looking for, you're obviously hiring give a quick plug for Lacework. What you, what are you working on? >> So, number one, we love our partnership with AWS. And so we're going to continue to invest, invest there. Two the businesses growing North of 300% year over year. That means that we've got record breaking growth and lots of hiring. So we're hiring across all functions. And three give us an opportunity. I, I think that, you know, you can fundamentally we want to be the bar of what you define all other security companies and all the technology companies. So it's a high bar. We want to make it frictionless, frictionless to try give us a shot, give us some feedback. And I'm grateful and privileged to be part of this, this wonderful team. So look forward to spending more time with you, John, in the future. >> Man, looking forward to a lot lots of talk about David Hatfield CEO of Lacework great company scaling up again. Another success story in cloud, cloud native as Po, COVID comes to a close, if you will for this phase and people get back to real life. The scale of cloud is going to be leading it and a new technology is going to be powering it. This is theCube conversation. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (soft music playing) (music fades)

(bright music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021 brought to you by IBM. >> Hello everybody, welcome back to IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm pleased to welcome back a long time Cube alum, Jim Whitehurst, who's the president of IBM. And I'll call him chief cultural evangelist, welcome Jim. Great to see you again. >> Great to see you, Dave. Thanks so much for having me. >> Yeah, it's really our pleasure. And I want to start off, it's just over a year as president of IBM. And I wonder, you know, when you're a little kid or, you know, early in your career, computer science class, did you ever think you'd be president of a company that was founded in 1911? I mean, amazing. I wonder if you could share what's the most important thing you've learned in your first year? >> Well, look, I mean, as you said, I would've never thought it. Yeah, I was the first kid to have an IBM PC on the block and was always into technology but never saw myself as like, you know, running a big tech company. So it is humbling. I would say that there are tons of lessons in the first year. I guess the two that strike me most is one is just related to strategy and that's, you know, Red Hat and most technology companies, we're very customer focused. But it's around whatever technology we're bringing to market where IBM has fundamentally transitioned. And kind of transformed itself over time to make sure it can meet customer needs. So it's sold off businesses, it's bought other businesses, it's created new businesses. So it really shows the kind of the focus and value on serving our customers and doing whatever it takes to do it. And that's been a fundamental kind of different strategy than most companies have had. I think one of the reasons that we've been around for over a 100 years. The second is I'm deeply into culture and I've talked a lot about the difference of running Red Hat, it's all about innovation versus Delta Airlines where I was before, which is driving efficiency. IBM is both and so really trying to think through how you run an organization that needs to run the financial systems of the world, that extraordinary reliability and drive roadmaps on things like quantum computing. At the same time be able to innovate iteratively with our customers and in open source communities. And kind of getting that balance right as a leader. It's, you're kind of doing what we did at Red Hat and what we did at Delta but kind of doing it together. And I think that stretched me as a leader and kind of taught me a lot about how we're thinking about continuing to evolve the culture at IBM. >> Now, of course, you do this leadership series, you put out things out on LinkedIn and words matter. And that's what I take away from a lot of the little short hits that you do, which I really appreciate. My stuff that I put Jim on LinkedIn, it's just, you got to invest like 15, 20 minutes. So I really appreciate the short hits. But you do that regular series and I'm curious do you do that to reach more IBM people? Are you an open source culture? You're trying to help others. And I'm curious as to sort of why that platform as opposed to sending around an internal thing an IBM. And I'm wondering if your principles and how they've evolved kind of post pandemic. >> Well, so first off, maybe that comes from Red Hat but I think IBM shares that it's if you have something really, really valuable, you want to share it. And look, when I am out talking to our customers, CEOs and some of the biggest companies in the world, honestly we rarely talk about technology 'cause other people are more detailed or deep in that. We primarily do talk about culture. And how you think about again, how do you take an organization that's been built to drive efficiency and scale on a global basis and make it able to be more nimble and more innovative? And so, and obviously, hopefully that's all with IBM and Red Hat technologies. But ultimately most of my conversations at a senior leadership level are about culture and leadership style to drive that. And so if that's valuable for CEOs of some of the world's largest companies, it's valuable to leaders kind of across all spectrums, all sizes. And so I think LinkedIn is a good way to kind of take some of those messages and make sure we were able to share those much more broadly. So certainly I spend more time talking about it inside of IBM and I spend a lot of time with our clients talking about it. But I think many of the lessons are applicable more broadly. And so why not share them? And LinkedIn's a great platform to be able to do that. >> How about you, how have your principles, how have your principles sort of changed and how have they evolved post pandemic? >> Well, I think a couple things, so one is the pandemic kind of forces you to get more precise about it. And what I mean by that is so much of leadership is about building credibility and trust and influence. And when you're seeing someone in 3D live, visual cues can kind of mean a lot in the water cooler conversations. Or who you run into in the hall can all help kind of create that level of trust. But you can't do that in 2D. As great as Zoom and other platforms are, you just can't quite do it. And so you have to be much more thoughtful in how you're creating opportunities to kind of create trust. So I'd say I've gotten more surgical in thinking about kind of what those elements of leadership are that do that. I think the second thing I've really learned at IBM again is back to this. We have to be able to do both, drive a future state in a known world as well as, I call it seek a future state in an unknown world. So driving a roadmap for quantum computing takes a number of different technologies coming together in one year, in two years, in five years. And that really does have to be pre-planned, which is very very different, that I'll call the iterative innovation approach that we use at Red Hat and open source communities and working with our clients. And we have to do both. And so as a leader you really have to understand the problem you're trying to solve and apply slightly different kind of leadership tactics against that. So when you're executing a known versus you are trying to create something in an unknown, does require different approaches and we have to do both in IBM. And I think that's the struggle a lot of companies have, every company needs to do that. If you're Delta Airlines, you don't want anybody innovating on the safety procedures before your flight. Yet you want a lot of innovation happening on your website and your mobile app. So how do you bring those together? And as a leader you can have a common set of values, but recognize you have to bring different tools to the table, depending on the context in which you're leading. And so I learned a lot more and gotten a lot crisper with that since being at IBM. >> Interesting, I mean, the pandemic, we all know it's been terrible but one of the upshots has been we had a glimpse of the future sort of shoved into a forced march of digital in 2020. And so obviously the next 10 years ain't going to be like the last 10 years. And one of the things we've been talking about is ecosystems and partnerships and the power and leverage that you can get from those. And Arvin has said, laid it out, we are returning to growth company. And so I wonder if you could talk to how partnerships and ecosystems play into that return to growth for IBM. >> Well, first off a key part of our strategy we talk about hybrid cloud and AI. It's not just about, hey, a platform that runs across all the different deployment models is convenient. It's also because innovation is coming from so many sources today. It's coming from a by-product from the web 2.0 companies, it's coming from open source. It's coming from an explosion of startups because of the amount of capital in venture capital. It's coming from traditional software companies. It's coming from our clients who are participating in open source. And so you have so many sources of innovation. Much of what we're doing is landing a platform that allows you to consume innovation safely and reliably from wherever it's coming from. So a core part of a platform by definition is the ecosystem around it. Having a platform that runs everywhere is great but if you don't have any applications that run on it who cares. And so ecosystem and partners have always been important to IBM, but for this strategy of this horizontal platform oriented strategy, it is critical to our success because much of the platform is the ecosystem. And so we've already talked about investing a billion dollars in that ecosystem to get ISBS and other partners on our platform, again, to ultimately kind of create that kind of horizontal layer where I can run anything that I want to on it and I can run that anywhere I want to. And so the two sides of that so all the innovation happening on top and making sure it runs everywhere is what really unlocks the freedom of choice. That reduces friction to innovation, which allows everybody in the ecosystem from our clients to ISVs to hardware partners to innovate more quickly. And that's what we really see as the benefit of our platform. It's not a horizontal stove pipe, come innovate in this one place. It's recognizing innovation's happening in so many places. And the only way we're going to be able to allow people to ingest that is to have a horizontal platform that everyone's participating in. Which is why partners and ecosystem are so important, not only to the success of our platform, but to the, I'd say, as a success of this next generation of computing. These horizontal fabrics that require an ecosystem kind of built around them. >> I think that's an important nuance that maybe people don't understand that yes, you have a platform. Obviously, OpenShift is a linchpin but it's an enabler for people to build other platforms. It's not the be all, end all platform that's sort of ultimately becomes another Island. And so that is a key part of the growth strategy and presumably expand your total available market. >> Oh, absolutely and so this is the key is we can talk about great IBM technologies. We're doing amazing things in security and AI and natural language processing and all these other areas. But the platform is a recognition that we're not going to do everything for everybody anymore. There's just the democratization of technology means that there is so many sources of innovation. And so first and foremost, we have to land a platform so you can consume anything from anywhere. And then of course, we'll drive our own pace of innovation both in hardware and software around that platform. But we are just a player on that platform, which we're really instantiating for really anybody to be able to reach customers or customers to reach sources of innovation. >> I know sustainability is a passion of yours, that it's obviously a hot topic right now. Oftentimes I joke tongue in cheek, Milton Friedman's rolling over in his grave with all this ESG talk. And I know you just posted recently on LinkedIn. And of course I went right down to Kavanaugh because my premise is not only is sustainability the right thing to do, it's also good business. But I wonder if you could give us your perspectives on this. >> Yeah, well, so first off, I mean, as a large global citizen as IDM I think this is an important role that we play and look, this isn't new to IBM. We came out with our first statements around environment in 1970. We put out our first report that's become our environmental impact report in 1990. We've been talking about climate since the early two thousands. So we've been involved in this for a long, long time because I do think it's important broadly. But there's also a specific role I think IBM can play beyond just our own individual actions to reduce our own footprint. Because of some of the extraordinary technologies that IBM has worked on in the years especially around semiconductors, we have just an amazing amount of technology, expertise, intellectual property around material science. And so just a couple of examples of those that relate to the environment. We in doing some other work realized that we had a way to be able to recycle PET plastic, which is a real problem because so many clothes and other things are now made out of PET. And it's really hard to recycle but a by-product of other work we're doing realized we could do that. And so we've formed a JV and we're funding that to not profit from it but to make sure that much more of the world's PET is recycled. Or the work that we're doing on batteries, where using ocean water instead of rare earth minerals to make batteries that not only are cleaner but last longer. Those are kind of byproducts of our kind of core business. The areas that we can see the benefits of innovation and material science being able to impact the world. I am hopeful that we'll be able to play a role with all of that in clear air carbon capture. I mean, that's still far further away but I do think IBM has a unique role that we can play because of our deep expertise in, again, material science, quantum computing, and modeling that put us in a unique position to have a major impact on the world. >> I wonder if we could talk a little bit about sort of IBM and its technology bets. And I've made the point a number of times in my writing that IBM's R and D spend has been about pretty constant, about $6 billion a year. But as IBM is jettison certain businesses got out of the x86 server business and it got out of the Foundry business with micro electronics. Now it's spinning out NewCo. What happens, the effect is that R and D as a percent of revenue goes way, way up. And my premise has always been that allows IBM to be more focused. So whether it's hybrid cloud, AI, quantum, Edge where are you placing your technology bets and maybe give us a sense of how you ranked them, some of your favorites. >> Yeah, so, look, that's exactly right. I mean, we are one of the few places that still invest a massive amount in R and D, especially in fundamental research. And so I'll kind of break down kind of the core areas. So first off, what I'd say is part of the hybrid cloud platform is recognizing we don't need to do everything for everyone. There is great open source technology. There are great other vendors that are doing things that we can enable our customers to access via the platform. So we're not trying to do everything for everybody in the way maybe 40 years ago we did. Because we understand there's so much great other technology out there that we're going to make sure that we expose. So we're investing in areas where we think we can uniquely add value that need to happen that others aren't doing. So AI, let me take that as an example. There's tremendous work happening in machine learning that we see every day because of Facebook and people trying to identify cats. And so I don't mean to trivialize it, there's a phenomenal work happening there. There's a lot less work being done on in AI on things where you have a lot less data. Or areas where you need explainable unbiased AI and the problem with machine learning engines is they're not auditable by definition. That's kind of a black box. And so we do a lot of work in areas like that. We do a lot of work in natural language processing. So we've had more of a as a kind of publicity kind of push the technology something called Project Debater. Where Watson can debate kind of champion debaters. That was mainly to make sure we can understand language in context, which allows for being able to better handle call centers in areas like that. Allows us to understand source code, which also is thinking about how you migrate applications from on-premise to the cloud. So we have a bunch of AI things that we are doing and is a core focus of what we're doing. But in specifically we're investing in areas like anti-biased auditability, natural language processing, areas where others aren't. Which is unique and we can bring those capabilities together with what others are doing. Security, obviously, a huge, huge area where we've invested in quantum safe encryption. We've invested in confidential computing. In other words, even in compute mode your data is encrypted. So you can keep your own keys, so not even we on our cloud can see your data. So a lot of investments happening around security and that's going to continue to be an area as we know that's going to get more and more and more scrutiny. So heavy, heavy focus there. Heavily focused on technologies that help you kind of modernize your infrastructure. So automation tools, integration tools and areas around that. So on the software side, those are kind of the main areas. When you look on the hardware side, obviously quantum is a significant area where we have a leadership position we continue to drive. But even semiconductor research in kind of process technology. So we announced something with Intel to work with them to bring some of our process technologies. As we kind of go from 7 nanometers to 5 to 2 to ultimately 1. That set of technologies is an area where we have a real leadership position and we'll continue to work with now Intel. We continue to work with others to drive that forward. So whole bunch of areas both on the hardware and the software side that we continue to make progress on. >> Yeah, the Silicon piece is interesting. And when we saw that Arvin as part of the Intel announcements that we thought originally, oh, maybe it's just about quantum but it's really much more than that. You mentioned the process. We dug into it and we realized, wow, we said Power10 actually has the highest performance. And because of the way in which you are not to geek out but you're you dis-aggregate memory. And Pat Gelsinger talked about system on a package. It turns out folks that IBM is actually the leader in that type of capability. And also the way that systems on chips use memory is very inefficient but IBM has actually invented some techniques to make that much more efficient. That's sort of the future of semiconductors. And the reason why we spend so much time thinking about it is because it's of national interest. There's a huge chip shortage, which doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon. So that's a critical part of national competitiveness and technology competitiveness going forward. >> Well, and the other interesting part about that, and you talked about Power10, going back to the hybrid cloud platform that we talked about. It's not just about running applications across wherever you want to run them. It also abstracts the chip architecture. So all of a sudden whether it's on the mainframe, it's on power, it's on ARM, it's on x86 and a whole bunch of other technologies that might get developed. We're making it much easier to kind of consume that specialization or variety at the hardware level. Recognize as Moore's law runs its course there's no longer this inevitability of everything's just going to go to x86. I think we are going to see more variety because we're going to have needs in the factory floor or in the automobile or with massive container as applications. Where you're going to need, whether it's kind of shared memory or different architectures all the way out to kind of low battery consumption. And that whole kind of breadth and our hybrid cloud platform enables that variability. And then IBM obviously has great technology to enable kind of building unique capability in hardware. So we kind of play on both sides of it, both kind of developing great technologies but then making it really easy for developers to consume and use those specialized features. >> I'm glad you brought that up, Jim. We mentioned Moore's law because we're all talking about how Moore's law is waning and it's quote, unquote dead. But the reality is, is the outcome of Moore's law which is the doubling of performance every two years is actually accelerating because of the common actuarial factors of CPU's and GPU's and NPUs and accelerators and DSPs. If you add all those up and actually, we're actually quadrupling every two years. So we have more processing power at much lower costs because of the volumes that you're seeing on things like ARM. So it's actually a very exciting time. We're entering an era that really, it's hard to get your mind around sometimes. So my question is how should we think about the future state of IBM? What does that look like? >> Well, so first off, the thing that I've found extraordinary about IBM kind of having been there now just a little over a year as an employee, a couple of years, I guess, when Red Hat was acquired. Is it is unique in fundamentally changing, again, who we are to kind of meet the needs going forward. And if you think about the needs in technology, recognize it was only like 20 years ago that Nicholas Carr wrote his famous article, IT Doesn't Matter, it's about back office. And in that world, IBM was really, really effective at building and running IT systems for our clients. We would come in, we would just kind of do everything for them. Today, technology is the forefront of developing or building competitive advantage for almost any business. And so nobody wants to kind of hand the keys, so we no longer are necessarily doing things for our clients. We're doing things with our clients. So there's a whole set of work, and we talked about how we engage with our clients, how we're much more collaborative and co-creative and our whole garage model to help build the capability to innovate with our clients is a key part of what we're doing. We'll continue to drive core technologies forward like quantum in key areas that require billions of dollars of research that frankly no one else is willing to do. And then we bring it all together with this hybrid cloud platform where we recognize it's no longer about us doing it all for you anymore. We're going to do the things where we can uniquely add value but then provide it all on a platform which allows you to consume from wherever, however you want to in a safe, secure, reliable way. So as we watch this next generation of computing unfold, cloud shouldn't end up being a bunch of vertical stove pipes. It truly needs to be kind of a horizontal platform that allows you to run any application anywhere in a safe, secure, reliable way and our architecture helps do that. So it's no longer able to do everything for you. It's we can do things uniquely on a platform and work with you to be able to help you kind of create your own pace of innovation, your own sources of advantage. And so that's the broad kind of direction that we're going, again, as enterprises move from consuming technology to be more efficient, to driving advantage with it. They need partners who understand that focused on their success and can innovate with them. And that's really where we're going with our technology, with our services capability and kind of our approach to how we work with our clients. >> Yeah, Jim, you just laid out the Holy grail of computing in the coming decade and with IBM's acquisition of Red Hat. And it really enables that vision and clearly the company is one of the top few that are in a position to do that. Jim Whitehurst, thanks so much for coming back on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time. >> Thanks for having me, it's great to chat. >> All right and thank you for watching. Keep it right there for more content of theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the virtual edition, be right back. (gentle music)

>> Instructor: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS Worldwide Public Sector. >> And welcome back to theCUBE's virtual coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. I'm John Furrier your host. This is theCUBE virtual. Special coverage of the public sector. Today Rebecca Wetherly, Director of Worldwide Public Sector System Integrator Partners for AWS. Great to see you. Welcome to theCUBE virtual. >> Thanks, John. I'm glad to be here. >> So just the news we've been covering all through re:Invented priors, just the growth in public sector. The acceleration with the pandemic, it's just that this acceleration has been massive. So I want to just get get your take. It's been hard but also, it's been an opportunity for partners. >> You leading the Integrators. >> Sure. >> They're on the front lines. I got to ask you, (chuckling) what is AWS doing to support their partners, as the business models are forced really upon them to move faster? >> Yeah, sure. Thank you. Let me start with saying that, companies are really building a business in partnering with us. Because of global needs such as the pandemic. But we also have many partners that are coming to us because of our customer demand outside of COVID. Because we're a leader in cloud innovation, and because we've got a global field engagement and go-to-market strategy. You know AWS is a customer driven company, and our partners are also our customers. We have a full suite of programs for our partners and whether they be a consulting partner or a technology partner. We have tens of thousands of partners all across the globe, with more than 35,000 new partners since January 2016. And in our public sector space, we have over 1,500 partners with solutions and experience, delivering on a combination of government, education, and nonprofit customer missions all around the world. Consulting partners are really professional services firms. That help customers of all types and sizes design, architect, build, migrate and manage workloads and applications on AWS. They accelerate the journey to the cloud for our customers. And they often are implementing technology solutions. As you referred to around COVID, that our technology partners are actually developing. So consulting partners are SIs that I work with, Strategic Consultant Partners, Managed Service Providers, and also resellers. And they are providing really great value to our customers by providing strategic advisory services, implementation and migration services, Staffog. They also have great specialty depth and machine learning or AI. IOT, data lakes and analytics. And even in things like communication tools using technologies like we're doing today on zoom, and taking those to our customers. Our technology partners on the other hand they deliver hardware, connectivity services and software solutions that are hosted or integrated with AWS cloud. And they deliver components to broad customer solutions, often via our consulting partners. We have a great, a great way of delivering technology through our AWS Marketplace and we'll talk about that in a minute. But I will say, that our tech partners are helping our customers decrease their deployment times, provide cost optimization and infrastructure for DevOps and production workloads. They're also lowering their costs on code development by using our broad portfolio of services. And oftentimes for our public sector customers they are helping shorten the path to achieving regulatory requirements for our public sector needs. >> That's awesome. You guys have a lot to do there to support your partners. Obviously the main concern is, how do I maintain that profitability in the fast pace. And then making sure that their customers can also transition and ride the digital transformation wave. So I have to ask you, what programs are you guys offering to help these partners succeed because certainly it's beyond just the profitability. it's this new business model of Cloud-scale. So what programs specifically are you guys offering? >> Yeah, we have a lot of different programs at AWS. The first stop is really the AWS Partner Network. Which I'll refer to as the APN. This is really our global partner program for technology and consulting businesses to leverage Amazon Web Services to build solutions and services for customers. The APN is the first place where companies can build, market, and sell their offerings, and provide valuable business, technical, and opportunities for marketing with their customers. Our programs provide promotional support. We provide visibility throughout our website. We give partners opportunities to engage with customers for events, social media. And we provide access to funding and go-to market opportunities. I touched on briefly our AWS Marketplace . And this is really a great program offering to our customers both consulting partners and technology partners. The AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement and entitlement of provisioning software across 50 different categories. And we have more than 8,000 transactional listings. That marketplace connects customers with more than 1,000 different ISBs or independent software vendors to help meet their business needs. And we have more than 300,000 customers using software from the AWS Marketplace. The Marketplace is also available on 24 different regions. So when a customer chooses to use the Marketplace they have the opportunity to procure their software from our consulting partners and leverage the software and the technology from our from our tech partners. Other really cool programs we have are our Partner Transformation Program or SaaS Factory Program, and also our Migration Acceleration Program. >> Awesome. Great programs. What else are you guys besides programs, Are you guys doing >> Yeah. >> to help partners succeed. Because I know there's a lot of touches, there's some new things going on. What else do you guys do? >> Yeah, I think we have a lot of great resources available to our partners. Most of our partners have Partner Development Managers that are working with them on a daily basis. Access to our business development and sales teams, solutions architects and other subject matter experts. Really getting deep into the technology and having access to those folks to help our partners design, build, architect and validate a purchase with customers. Also our Professional Services Teams.Right? They are deep subject matter experts that our partners have the ability to tap into. And then of course, because of the way we go to market in public sector, access and engagement with our capture, bid, and proposal teams are super important. We also have to consider access for our partners to be trained and become certified. That's a real requirement that our customers need to help them achieve their goals. We offer digital and classroom training for our partners to be able to learn at their own pace or via an AWS instructor. And AWS training and certification helps our partners build competence, confidence, and credibility with our customers. We also have AWS competencies. And our competency program is designed to identify, validate, and promote APN partners that have demonstrated technical expertise and proven customer success. One of the most critical competencies for us is and these days is around our migration. Migration competencies allows our partners to accelerate their customer's cloud adoption journey by providing strategy, personnel tools, education, and tech support to their customers. One of those customers and partners is InterVision. They're a consulting firm that provide strategic advisory services to organizations to help them run, grow, and transform their business needs with the cloud via modern IT services. Their experts have a deep history in technology solutions and they have a deep bench of certified engineers and data scientists to excel delivering Managed Services and Migration Services to both public sector and commercial customers. And with the California Department of Technology. Which is a state agency that provides authority and responsibility over all aspects of technology for California state governments, they selected InterVision to work with them due to their expertise and their proprietary offering called Cloud Migration Lifecycle Assurance. And that offering provided that CDT, the ability, pardon me. To take advantage of their Cloud Migration operations and optimization specialty. So our partners are really getting great opportunities to build their business and to accelerate their their work with us through a variety of programs, and by really digging deep and leveraging all of the programs that are available to them. >> It's nice with the mix of programs, plus the field support, plus the care they're nurtured that, grow that. As you know in these in these markets where you have partnerships and channels and relationships. You need to be profitable. And profitability is about happy customers. >> Rebecca: Sure. >> And margins.(chuckles) Making money. >> Rebecca: Yeah. Sure. >> You got to make money to stay in business. So, this is a big opportunity as the new economics of cloud come into the channel. This is really a big conversation. Moving fast, scaling up, new kinds of services. The integrators are really having a good time here. And these are new practices. How can someone learn more? What's out there? How does someone get engaged with you guys? What information can they, is there a site? Is there a program? How does someone get the resources? What would they do? >> Yeah. Well, I will tell you. The first stop is really our website. And that may sound trivial but that is the best place to get started for us. You're going to find there by visiting https://aws.amazon.com. You can register to become an AWS partner very easily. Right there you're going to get step-by-step instructions and learning paths, as well as tutorials and how to get your business up and running, and how to become a partner. And the journey largely looks like this. Right? One. get on board. Get familiar. Establish your relationship and join the Amazon Partner Network. Go through some very basic training and get familiar with their services. Second. Develop those technical and sales skills. Develop a business model where AWS lends the greatest value to your partner business. And as you move through the tiers of maturity, we will co-invest in your business to help you scale. And then three, really go to market. Establish the pathways to your customers. Build out your differentiated approach. Look at the competencies we offer and decide which ones are going to be the most relevant to you. We want you to leverage the funding mechanisms we have, and we want you also to think about how we co-market together. There are so many roads to success and AWS offers lots of different partner programs and opportunities to develop your unique roadmap John. >> Yeah, that's great enablement. That is super valuable. Having the co-funding, the go marketing, and the tools and the programs. All there to enable services to be successful. Rebecca, thanks for sharing that program. >> My pleasure. >> Great to have you on. Rebecca Wetherly, >> Thank you so much. Director of the Worldwide Public Sector System Integrator Partners. A big growing part of the public sector when we need it the most, which is now and it's growing. So check them out. Thanks for watching. This is theCUBE coverage. CUBE virtual, for AWS re:Invent reinvent public sector, special coverage. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering HPE Discover 2017, brought to you by Hewlett Packard Enterprise. >> Okay, welcome back everyone, we're live in Las Vegas. This is the Cube's coverage, exclusive coverage, of Hewlett Packard Enterprise HPE Discover 2017. And I'm John Furrier, co-founder SiliconAngle Media with my co-founder David Latte and also cohost. Our next guest is Alastair Winner, vice president HPE point next portfolio. Welecome back to theCUBE. Good to see you. >> Alastair: Thank you. Great to be here. >> So, okay, Pointnext Portfolio, Pointnext, new presence, take a minute, Alastair just explain Pointnext, how everything fits together. I know it's a little bit redundant for you but let's that start that off. >> Sure, no, I'd be delighted to explain. So, as you're aware the company has gone though a number of transformations and transitions. One of which was the spin merge of enterprise services to CSC, now DXC technology, we're, they're here on the show floor, so great partner of ours. But of course that created a lot of noise in the market and confusion honestly with our customers as to whether or not HPE was in the services business or not. So, the idea of the rebranding was to make it very clear, service is critically important. It's like the third part of our company strategy. So we have Hybrid IT, IT Edge and the expertise to make it happen and that expertise is HPE Pointnext. And the branding was chosen deliberately not to, to sort of replicate what you'd find in other traditional vendors. We don't talk about services in our brand. And Pointnext is literally to help our customers point at what's next in their digital transformation journey. So, that's where the brand comes from. >> David: So what's the brand promise? For Pointnext? >> I mean for us, it's about giving customers access to our expertise and we talk about really, a complete life cycle of a experience. So, previously we had consulting and support. Those terms have gone now. So we're looking clearly end to end of customer's experience and really starting with the outcome they're looking for, and having advisory, professional and operation services that connect those things together to deliver the, deliver the outcome. >> And what is the spin merge made up of? HPE Services and was it, the CSC combo? >> So we had a very significant, really IT outsourcing business, which was called enterprise services that was the previous EDS business. So yeah, that spun out and joined to CSC to become DXC Technology. >> How should customers look at you vis a vis HPE and the Enterprise partners? Obviously there, there the combination, how do you guys, where' the lines, where do you guys shake hands, where's the handoff, what are some of the engagements, like share with us some of the day to day tactical execution of your, of the portfolio? >> So I guess, we're still relatively new in terms of the brand and we're trying to really connect the dots internally to ensure that we present to our customers a seamless experience. I guess one of the things that the spin merge has enabled us to do is to engage much more actively with systems integrators and other consulting companies where perviously it was quite challenging to do so. So, with the likes of PWC and KMPG and Wipro and so previously we had, I mean they were interested in buying our technology. But from a services point of view, there was always some conflict. Now we have clarity, right? So, so part of our strategy is to really ensure we're engaging very actively with systems integrators. And likewise, we're also working very actively with our reseller partners. So, clearly HP has a long history of partnering and.. >> John: Channel. >> And as we call it it channel. And our channel partners are also going through a transformation because selling hardware is no longer a sustainable business for them in the long term. So, really helping them to transform their business from being product led to services led. I guess, I mean, the other thing we're really focused on is you know what are the solution areas. What are the business outcomes that we as an organization can really focus on because as you know digital transformation is huge, I mean it's a, you know.. >> Well, I'm glad you brought that up about the decline in the service, from a business model stand point, but we were saying in our opening, on our editorial segment that, you know a lot of people get hung up on that, but in reality, the numbers are all pointed to massive growth. Wikibon just put out a seminal report around true private cloud at a twenty to fifty billion dollar opportunity, market TAM. So, that's just private cloud. That's just. >> Yes. >> Cloud liking your infrastructure on PRAM. That's not including Hybrid Cloud. So when you factor in true private cloud, which is current state, situation, with Hybrid Cloud and then now, the, what I call the kind of the long reaching but viable vision of multicloud, >> Yep. those are really key dots that are connection for customers. So, okay margins of hardware might shift to places but the services, whether its IOT, an app integration, really it's a the center of this. >> It absolutley is at the center of it. And of course, I mean there is still clearly value from our products and our product innovation. But the way we present that value to our customers has to, has to change. And you're quite right, many of the customers, in fact the majority of the customers I talked to really view private cloud as their principal delivery vehicle, internally. IT view as their principal delivery vehicle. What we're doing through solutions like flexible capacity is enabling an IT team, to you know, to align the supply and demand of IT through an opex model rather than a capex model and really helping them right size the environment. So they can manage the fluctuations that they see because with digital there are, you know, there are many many more, the frequency of change is much a, much more... >> So the dollars are shifting to services, certainly the Edge but you brought up channel. This is a huge opportunity because now channel is reconfiguring both at the global systems integrator side as well as what was traditionally as VARS and VABS and ISBs, >> Yes. as they get closer to the customer. So you guys are kind of the glue layer between what was once HBE, get some training, speeds and feeds, to much more solution oriented. And trends there that you can highlight that should be notable for customers in around how the services is leading some of that change at the front lines? >> Well, I mean, you're absolutely right and I would say you know for us it's about outcomes, looking. We're not trying to sell the customers something. We're looking for an outcome that customer needs and then translating that into, into a chain of technology, people and process changes that they need to implement. And there I mean there are many examples on the show floor actually of services-led solutions. You know, we have the intelligent spaces cube for example where we're helping customers to manage, very valuable real estate in their, in their property, you know where you're always looking for spaces to meet your colleagues. When you turn up you want it to be digitally enabled. You know, we can combine all of these great technologies whether you know that HP or partner ISV technology into a solution. And then present it to the customer as a service. So you consume it as you use it as oppose to buying all the pieces, having to integrate together yourself, you'll own and operate, that's clearly the model, that, that's the model of the past. >> Alastair, the CIO's in our community, if I could summarize, they're telling us, I got to run the business, I got legacy systems that I have to manage, I have to grow the business. I have new apps. Maybe some of those are IOT, certainly many of them are data oriented, AI, big data, whatever you want to call it. And then I have to transform the business. So that's their digital transformation, >> Alastair: Yes. >> certainly their IT transformation, their hybrid component. So is that a valid way, to sort of look at the business, and then how specifically is Pointnext helping in those three broad areas? >> So, I would, I would completely agree. In fact the way we think about our portfolio is one of accelerating what's next. So this, you know this digital transformation, this change, and how do we accelerate and make customers much more agile in addressing the business requirements. Because, you know IT and the business are really synonymous now with each other. It's not a, it's not a back office anymore. It's the way the customer engages with their customers, with their employees, with their partners. I mean it is the interface now in which we work. So, we're all about accelerating. How can we accelerate that. And then, you're absolutely right the majority of our customers have an existing in store bays. The have many layers of, or previous generations of technology. You know it's, it's homogenous, it's complex. You know there, there are different ways of managing all of these assets. And the way we help there is really by simplifying. So we're encouraging our customers to work with us, allow us to manage the complexity, which frees up resources and money for them to then to go in and invest in the accelerate, accelerating what's next. So we're doing, for example, activities like, we call it operational support service. So we're monitoring and managing remotely the assets of the company that the IT team would have historically have done. You know, you go into like a mission control center and see all the, you know, all the lights, monitors. I mean we can do that for a customer. You know, the customer doesn't have to do that anymore. And the resources that frees up, they can go in and invest in the, in the, in their digital transformation. >> So that's not outsourcing, per se. >> No. >> You're certainly managing infrastructure on behalf of your customer. They on the assets, it's on their books? >> So, so we can do it traditional, you know capex model where it's on their books. Or we can include it inside a flexible capacity arrangement where, they're, you know they're actually paying per use. And that experience is part of the, of the solution. So we can integrate it into a pay per use model. >> I mean it seems like one of the things that HP services has done over the last several years, is sort of envision and reimagine that entire services experience and try to make it as cloud like as possible. >> Yes. >> I mean you got a head of that, I mean this has been, I don't know, three, four five years in the making. So, kind of give us an update that's gone and then, you know on a scale of one to 10, how far did you get? Are you at a five, a six, a nine? And what's new from here? >> So it's a great question. So, I'd probably give us a six, we're probably at a six I would say. So the, the offer itself, so flexible capacity, is, you know we've had in them market for five years now so yeah, we know how to do this. And it's very successful. We've never lost a customer. We have net promoter scores in the high 90's, so yeah, where we have landed it, customers love it right? So, we know it's very successful. And really what we now need to do as a company is sort of amplify that model as our principal go to market. Okay, so we're a product company, we sell products. So, there's a pivot that we're approaching I would say where we need to you know, use that as really being the lead, the lead model. So, I think, I think a solution designed for IT, where IT consume units of IT, we've got that nailed, right? I think, I think it's great. But flexible capacity doesn't address every customer's requirement. So for an enterprise customer, it works really nicely. For a tier two, tier three service provider, it works very nicely. We've got a whole tranche of customers, who really don't have the scale to benefit from flexible capacity that still want insights into their utilization, and their capacity. So we're actually, as part of our Gen 10 launch, we introducing something called HPE Capacity Care Service. So we're sort of extracting the secret source from flexible capacity. We're not actively managing the capacity on behalf of the customer, but we're giving the customer the assets to do it themselves. So that will be available by the end of this calendar year, so we're very excited about that. And the other thing we're doing is actually, to move away from selling units of IT service, like virtual machine containers or cause, and actually trying to focus on outcomes. So were starting to talk about things like back up as service, big data as service with Hadoop. So, again, really trying to create a platform that the customer can consume and all the complexity is abstracted and we present it as a service. So, we're at the early stages there. We've got very big aspirations for that. We think that's the way that our customers will want to buy from us. You know, they don't want the pieces, they want, they want the platform, the want an outcome as a service. >> Alastair, great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for sharing. My final question for you, to end the segment is pretend I'm a CXO, CIO, CDO, CSO, whatever, CEO, Alastair, bottom line me. How are you going to make IT easier for me and simpler? Go. >> So, I'm going to make it easier by ensuring that we present you with our expertise. We're going to create an environment though which you can consume IT. And we're going to accelerate your digital transformation. >> Alright. Accelerate change, obviously congeeled economies here. There's no doubt about it. It's got a little cloud flavor, hybrid cloud, multi cloud. It's theCUBE bringing you all the data here from HPE Discover. More live action for three days of exclusive coverage with theCUBE. We'll be right back with more after this short break. (light techno music)