>>Partnerships in the technology business, they take many forms. For example, technology engineering partnerships, they drive value in terms of things like integration and simplification for customers. There are product partnerships. They fill gaps to create more comprehensive portfolios and more fluid relationships. Partner ecosystems offer high touch services. They offer managed services, specialty services, and other types of value based off of strong customer knowledge and years of built up trust partner. Ecosystems have evolved quite dramatically over the last decade with the explosion of data and the popularity of cloud models. Public, private, hybrid cross clouds. You know, yes it's true. Partnerships are about selling solutions, but they're also about building long term sustainable trust, where a seller learns the ins and outs of a customer's organization and can anticipate needs that are gonna drive bottom line profits for both sides of the equation, the buyer and the seller. >>Hello and welcome to our program. My name is Dave Ante and along with Lisa Martin, we're going to explore how Hitachi Van Tara drives customer success with its partners. First up, Lisa speaks with Kim King. She's the senior vice president of Strategic Partners and Alliances at Hitachi Van. And they'll set the table for us with an overview of how Hitachi is working with partners and where their priorities are focused. Then Russell Kingsley, he's the CTO and global VP of Technical sales at Hitachi Van Tara. He joins Lisa for a discussion of the tech and they're gonna get into cloud generally and hybrid cloud specifically in the role that partners play in the growing as a service movement. Now, after that I'll talk with Tom Christensen, he's the global technology advisor and executive analyst at Hitachi Vitara. And we're gonna talk about a really important topic, sustainability. We're gonna discuss where it came from, why it matters, and how it can drive bottom line profitability for both customers and partners. Let's get right to it. >>Where for the data driven, for those who understand clarity is currency. Believe progress requires precision and no neutral is not an option. We're for the data driven. The ones who can't tolerate failure, who won't put up with downtime or allow access to just anyone. We're for the data driven who act on insight instead of instinct. Bank on privacy instead of probabilities and rely on resilience instead of reaction. We see ourselves in the obsessive, the incessant, progressive, and the meticulously engineered. We enable the incredible identify with the analytical and are synonymous with the mission critical. We know what it means to be data driven because data is in our dna. We were born industrial and and we breathe digital. We speak predictive analytics so you can keep supply chains moving. We bleed in store and online insights so you can accurately predict customer preferences. We sweat security and digital privacy so you can turn complex regulations into competitive advantage. We break down barriers and eliminate silos. So you can go from data rich to data driven because it's clear the future belongs to the data driven. >>Hey everyone, welcome to this conversation. Lisa Martin here with Kim King, the SVP of Strategic Partners and Alliances at Hitachi Ventera. Kim, it's great to have you on the program. Thank you so much for joining me today. >>Thanks Lisa. It's great to be here. >>Let's talk about, so as we know, we talk about cloud all the time, the landscape, the cloud infrastructure landscape increasingly getting more and more complex. What are some of the biggest challenges and pain points that you're hearing from customers today? >>Yeah, so lot. There are lots, but I would say the, the few that we hear consistently are cost the complexity, right? Really the complexity of where do they go, how do they do it, and then availability. They have a lot of available options, but again, going back to complexity and cost, where do they think that they should move and how, how do they make that a successful move to the cloud? >>So talk to me, Hitachi Ventura has a great partner ecosystem. Where do partners play a role in helping customers to address some of the challenges with respect to the cloud landscape? >>Yeah, so part, our partners are really leading the way in the area of cloud in terms of helping customers understand the complexities of the cloud. As we talked about, they're truly the trusted advisor. So when they look at a customer's complete infrastructure, what are the workloads, what are the CRI critical applications that they work with? What's the unique architecture that they have to drive with that customer for a successful outcome and help them architect that? And so partners are truly leading the way across the board, understanding the complexities of each individual customer and then helping them make the right decisions with and for them. And then bringing us along as part of that, >>Talk to me a little bit about the partner landscape, the partner ecosystem at Hitachi Ventura. How does this fit into the overall strategy for the company? >>So we really look at our ecosystem as an extension of our sales organization and and really extension across the board, I would say our goal is to marry the right customer with the right partner and help them achieve their goals, ensure that they keep costs in check, that they ensure they don't have any security concerns, and that they have availability for the solutions and applications that they're trying to move to the cloud, which is most important. So we really, we really look at our ecosystem as a specialty ecosystem that adds high value for the right customers. >>So Kim, talk to me about how partners fit into Hitachi van's overall strategy. >>So I think our biggest differentiators with partners is that they're not just another number. Our partner organization is that valued extension of our overall sales pre-sales services organization. And we treat them like an extension of our organization. It's funny because I was just on a call with an analyst earlier this week and they said that AWS has increased their number of partners to 150,000 partners from, it was just under a hundred thousand. And I'm really not sure how you provide quality engagement to partners, right? And is how is that really a sustainable strategy? So for us, we look at trusted engagement across the ecosystem as a def differentiation. Really our goal is to make their life simple and profitable and really become their primary trusted partner when we go to market with them. And we see that paying dividends with our partners as they engage with us and as they expand and grow across the segments and then grow globally with us as well. >>And that's key, right? That synergistic approach when you're in customer conversations, what do you articulate as the key competitive differentiators where it relates to your partners? >>So really the, that they're the trusted advisor for that partner, right? That they understand our solutions better than any solution out there. And because we're not trying to be all things to our customers and our partners that we being bring best breaths of breed, best of breed solutions to our customers through our partner community, they can truly provide that end user experience and the successful outcome that's needed without, you know, sort of all kinds of, you know, crazy cha challenges, right? When you look at it, they really wanna make sure that they're driving that co-developed solution and the successful outcome for that customer. >>So then how do you feel that Hitachi Ventura helps partners really to grow and expand their own business? >>Wow, so that's, there's tons of ways, but we've, we've created a very simplified, what we call digital selling platform. And in that digital selling platform, we have allowed our partners to choose their own price and pre-approve their pricing and their promotions. They've actually, we've expanded the way we go to market with our partners from a sort of a technical capabilities. We give them online what we call Hitachi online labs that allow them to really leverage all of the solutions and demo systems out there today. And they have complete access to any one of our resources, product management. And so we really have, like I said, we actually provide our partners with better tools and resources sometimes than we do our own sales and pre-sales organization. So we, we look at them as, because they have so many other solutions out there that we have to be one step ahead of everybody else to give them that solution capability and the expertise that they need for their customers. >>So if you dig in, where is it that Hiti is helping partners succeed with your portfolio? >>Wow. So I think just across the board, I think we're really driving that profitable, trusted, and simplified engagement with our partner community because it's a value base and ease of doing business. I say that we allow them to scale and drive that sort of double digit growth through all of the solutions and and offerings that we have today. And because we've taken the approach of a very complex technical sort of infrastructure from a high end perspective and scale it all the way through to our mid-size enterprise, that allows them to really enter any customer at any vertical and provide them a really quality solution with that 100% data availability guarantee that we provide all of our customers. >>So then if we look at the overall sales cycle and the engagement, where is it that you're helping cus your partners rather succeed with the portfolio? >>Say that again? Sorry, my brain broke. No, >>No worries. So if we look at the overall sales cycle, where is it specifically where you're helping customers to succeed with the portfolio? >>So from the sales cycle, I think because we have the, a solution that is simple, easy, and really scaled for the type of customer that we have out there, it allows them to basically right size their infrastructure based on the application, the workload, the quality or the need that application may have and ensure that we provide them with that best solution. >>So then from a partner's perspective, how is it that Hitachi van is helping them to actually close deals faster? >>Yeah, so lots of great ways I think between our pre-sales organization that's on call and available a hundred percent of the time, I think that we've seen, again, the trusted engagement with them from a pricing and packaging perspective. You know, we, you know, two years ago it would take them two to three weeks to get a pre-approved quote where today they preapproved their own quotes in less than an hour and can have that in the hands of a customer. So we've seen that the ability for our partners to create and close orders in very short periods of time and actually get to the customer's needs very quickly, >>So dramatically faster. Yes. Talk about overall, so the partner relationship's quite strong, very synergistic that, that Hitachi Ventura has with its customers. Let's kind of step back out and look at the cloud infrastructure. How do you see it evolving the market evolving overall in say the next six months, 12 months? >>Yeah, so we see it significantly, we've been doing a lot of studies around this specifically. So we have a couple of different teams. We have our sort of our standard partner team that's out there and now we have a specialty cloud service provider team that really focuses on partners that are building and their own infrastructure or leveraging the infrastructure of a large hyperscaler or another GSI and selling that out. And then what we found is when we dig down deeper into our standard sort of partner reseller or value added reseller market, what we're seeing is that they are want to have the capability to resell the solution, but they don't necessarily wanna have to own and manage the infrastructure themselves. So we're helping both of them through that transition. We see that it's gonna, so it's funny cuz you're seeing a combination of many customers move to really the hyperscale or public cloud and many of them want to repatriate their infrastructure back because they see costs and they see challenges around all of that. And so our partners are helping them understand, again, what is the best solution for them as opposed to let's just throw everything in the public cloud and hope that it works. We're we're really helping them make the right choices and decisions and we're putting the right partners together to make that happen. >>And how was that feedback, that data helping you to really grow and expand the partner program as a whole? >>Yeah, so it's been fantastic. We have a whole methodology that we, we created, which is called PDM plan, develop monetize with partners. And so we went specifically to market with cloud service providers that'll, and we really tested this out with them. We didn't just take a solution and say, here, go sell it, good luck and have, you know, have a nice day. Many vendors are doing that to their partners and the partners are struggling to monetize those solutions. So we spend a lot of time upfront planning with them what is not only the storage infrastructure but your potentially your data resiliency and, and everything else that you're looking at your security solutions. How do we package those all together? How do we help you monetize them? And then who do you target from a customer perspective so that they've built up a pipeline of opportunities that they can go and work with us on and we really sit side by side with them in a co-development environment. >>In terms of that side by side relationship, how does the partner ecosystem play a role in Hitachi Venturas as a service business? >>So our primary go to market with our, as a service business is with and through partners. So our goal is to drive all, almost all of of our as a service. Unless it's super highly complex and something that a partner cannot support, we will make sure that they really, we leverage that with them with all of our partners. >>So strong partner relationships, very strong partner ecosystem. What would you say, Kim, are the priorities for the partner ecosystem going forward? The next say year? >>Yeah, so we have tons of priorities, right? I think really it's double digit growth for them and for us and understanding how a simpler approach that's customized for the specific vertical or customer base or go to market that they have that helps them quickly navigate to be successful. Our goal is always to facilitate trusted engagements with our partners, right? And then really, as I said, directionally our goal is to be 95 to a hundred percent of all of our business through partners, which helps customers and then really use that trusted advisor status they have to provide that value base to the customer. And then going back on our core tenants, which are, you know, really a trusted, simplified, profitable engagement with our partner community that allows them to really drive successful outcomes and go to market with us. And the end users >>Trust is such an important word, we can't underutilize it in these conversations. Last question. Sure. From a channel business perspective, what are some of the priorities coming down the pi? >>Oh, again, my biggest priority right, is always to increase the number of partner success stories that we have and increase the value to our partners. So we really dig in, we, we right now sit about number one or number two in, in our space with our partners in ease of doing business and value to our channel community. We wanna be number one across the board, right? Our goal is to make sure that our partner community is successful and that they really have those profitable engagements and that we're globally working with them to drive that engagement and, and help them build more profitable businesses. And so we just take tons of feedback from our partners regularly to help them understand, but we, we act on it very quickly so that we can make sure we incorporate that into our new program and our go to markets as we roll out every year. >>It sounds like a great flywheel of communications from the partners. Kim, thank you so much for joining me today talking about what Hitachi Vanta is doing with its partner ecosystem, the value in IT for customers. We appreciate your insights. >>Thank you very much. >>Up next, Russell Kingsley joins me, TTO and global VP of technical sales at Hitachi van you watch in the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. Hey everyone, welcome back to our conversation with Hitachi van Tara, Lisa Martin here with Russell Skillings Lee, the CTO and global VP of technical sales at Hitachi Van Russell. Welcome to the program. >>Hi Lisa, nice to be here. >>Yeah, great to have you. So here we are, the end of calendar year 2022. What are some of the things that you're hearing out in the field in terms of customers priorities for 2023? >>Yeah, good one. Just to, to set the scene here, we tend to deal with enterprises that have mission critical IT environments and this has been been our heritage and continues to be our major strength. So just to set the scene here, that's the type of customers predominantly I'd be hearing from. And so that's what you're gonna hear about here. Now, in terms of 20 23, 1 of the, the macro concerns that's hitting almost all of our customers right now, as you can probably appreciate is power consumption. And closely related to that is the whole area of ESG and decarbonization and all of that sort of thing. And I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on that one because that would be a whole session in itself really, but sufficient to say it is a priority for us and we, we are very active in, in that area. >>So aside from from that one that that big one, there's also a couple that are pretty much in common for most of our customers and, and we're in areas that we can help. One of those is in an exponential growth of the amount of data. It's, it's predicted that the world's data is going to triple by 2025 as opposed to where it was in 2020. And I think everyone's contributing to that, including a lot of our customers. So just the, the act of managing that amount of data is, is a challenge in itself. And I think closely related to that, a desire to use that data better to be able to gain more business insights and potentially create new business outcomes and business ideas are, is another one of those big challenges in, in that sense, I think a lot of our customers are in what I would kind of call, I affectionately call the, the post Facebook awakening era. >>And that, and what I mean by that is our traditional businesses, you know, when Facebook came along, they kind of illustrated, hey, I can actually make some use out of what is seemingly an enormous amount of useless data, which is exactly what Facebook did. They took a whole lot of people's Yeah. The minutia of people's lives and turned it into, you know, advertising revenue by gaining insights from, from those, you know, sort of seemingly useless bits of data and, you know, right. And I think this actually gave rise to a lot of digital business at that time. You know, the, this whole idea of what all you really need to be successful and disrupt the business is, you know, a great idea, you know, an app and a whole bunch of data to, to power it. And I think that a lot of our traditional customers are looking at this and wondering how do they get into the act? Because they've been collecting data for decades, an enormous amount of data, right? >>Yes. I mean, every company these days has to be a data company, but to your point, they've gotta be able to extract those insights, monetize it, and create real value new opportunities for the business at record speed. >>Yes, that's exactly right. And so being able to, to wield that data somehow turn it, it kind of turns out our customer's attentions to the type of infrastructure they've got as well. I mean, if you think about those, those companies that have been really successful in leveraging that data, a lot of them have, especially in the early days, leverage the cloud to be able to build out their capabilities. And, and the reason why the cloud became such a pivotal part of that is because it offered self-service. IT and, you know, easy development platforms to those people that had these great ideas. All they needed was access to, to, you know, the provider's website and a credit card. And now all of a sudden they could start to build a business from that. And I think a lot of our traditional IT customers are looking at this and thinking, now how do I build a similar sort of infrastructure? How do I, how do I provide that kind of self-service capability to the owners of business inside my company rather than the IT company sort of being a gatekeeper to a selected set of software packages. How now do I provide this development platform for those internal users? And I think this, this is why really hybrid cloud has become the defacto IT sort of architectural standard, even even for quite traditional, you know, IT companies. >>So when it comes to hybrid cloud, what are some of the challenges the customers are facing? And then I know Hitachi has a great partner ecosystem. How are partners helping Hitachi Ventura and its customers to eliminate or solve some of those hybrid cloud challenges? >>Yeah, it's, it, it's a great question and you know, it's, it's not 1975 anymore. It's not, it's not like you're going to get all of your IT needs from, from one, from one vendor hybrid by sort of, it's, you know, by definition is going to involve multiple pieces. And so there basically is no hybrid at all without a partner ecosystem. You really can't get everything at, at a one stop shop like you used to. But even if you think about the biggest public cloud provider on the planet, aws even, it has a marketplace for partner solutions. So, so even they see, even for customers that might consider themselves to be all in on public cloud, they are still going to need other pieces, which is where their marketplace come comes in. Now for, for us, you know, we are, we're a company that, we've been in the IT business for over 60 years, one of one of the few that could claim that sort of heritage. >>And you know, we've seen a lot of this type of change ourselves, this change of attitude from being able to provide everything yourself to being someone who contributes to an overall ecosystem. So partners are absolutely essential. And so now we kind of have a, a partner first philosophy when it comes to our routes to market on, you know, not just our own products in terms of, you know, a resale channel or whatever, but also making sure that we are working with some of the biggest players in hybrid infrastructure and determining where we can add value to that in our, in our own solutions. And so, you know, when it comes to those, those partner ecosystems, we're always looking for the spaces where we can best add our own capability to those prevailing IT architectures that are successful in the marketplace. And, you know, I think that it's probably fair to say, you know, for us, first and foremost, we, we have a reputation for having the biggest, most reliable storage infrastructure available on the planet. >>And, and we make no apologies for the fact that we tout our speeds and feeds and uptime supremacy. You know, a lot of our, a lot of our competitors would suggest that, hey, speeds and feeds don't matter. But you know, that's kind of what you say when, when you're not the fastest or not the most reliable, you know, of course they matter. And for us, what we, the way that we look at this is we say, let's look at who's providing the best possible hybrid solutions and let's partner with them to make those solutions even better. That's the way we look at it. >>Can you peel the, the onion a little bit on the technology underpinning the solutions, give a glimpse into that and then maybe add some color in terms of how partners are enhancing that? >>Yeah, let me, let me do that with a few examples here, and maybe what I can do is I can sort of share some insight about the way we think with partnering with, with particular people and why it's a good blend or why we see that technologically it's a good blend. So for example, the work we do with VMware, which we consider to be one of our most important hybrid cloud partners and in, and in fact it's, it's my belief, they have one of the strongest hybrid cloud stories in the industry. It resonates really strongly with, with our customers as well. But you know, we think it's made so much better with the robust underpinnings that we provide. We're one of the, one of the few storage vendors that provides a 100% data availability guarantee. So we, we take that sort of level of reliability and we add other aspects like life cycle management of the underpinning infrastructure. >>We combine that with what VMware's doing, and then when you look at our converged or hyper-converged solutions with them, it's a better together story where you now have what is one of the best hybrid cloud stories in the industry with VMware. But now for the on premise part, especially, you've now added a hundred percent data, data availability guarantee, and you've made managing the underlying infrastructure so much easier through the tools that we provide that go down to that level A level underneath where VMware are. And so that's, that's VMware. I've got a couple, couple more examples just to sort of fill, fill that out a bit. Sure. Cisco is another part, very strong partner of ours, a key partner. And I mean, you look at Cisco, they're a 50 billion IT provider and they don't have a dedicated storage infrastructure of their own. So they're going to partner with someone. >>From our perspective, we look at Cisco's, Cisco's customers and we look at them and think they're very similar to our own in terms of they're known to appreciate performance and reliability and a bit of premium in quality, and we think we match them them quite well. They're already buying what we believe are the best converge platforms in the industry from Cisco. So it makes sense that those customers would want to compliment that investment with the best array, best storage array they can get. And so we think we are helping Cisco's customers make the most of their decision to be ucs customers. Final one for, for you, Lisa, by way of example, we have a relationship with, with Equinix and you know, Equinix is the world's sort of leading colo provider. And the way I think they like to think of themselves, and I too tend to agree with them, is their, they're one of the most compelling high-speed interconnect networks in the world. >>They're connected to all of the, the, the significant cloud providers in most of the locations around the world. We have a, a relationship with them where we find we have customers in common who really love the idea of compute from the cloud. Compute from the cloud is great because compute is something that you are doing for a set period of time and then it's over you. Like you have a task, you do some compute, it's done. Cloud is beautiful for that. Storage on the other hand is very long lived storage doesn't tend to operate in that same sort of way. It sort of just becomes a bigger and bigger blob over time. And so the cost model around public cloud and storage is not as compelling as it is for compute. And so our, with our relationship with Equinix, we help our customers to be able to create, let's call it a, a data anchor point where they put our arrays into, into an Equinix location, and then they utilize Equinix as high speeding interconnects to the, to the cloud providers, okay. To take the compute from them. So they take the compute from the cloud providers and they own their own storage, and in this way they feel like we've now got the best of all worlds. Right. What I hope that illustrates Lisa is with those three examples is we are always looking for ways to find our key advantages with any given, you know, alliance partners advantages, >>Right? What are, when you're in customer conversations, and our final few minutes here, I wanna get, what are some of the key differentiators that you talk about when you're in customer conversations, and then how does the partner ecosystem fit into Hitachi vans as a service business? We'll start with differentiators and then let's move into the as service business so we can round out with that. >>Okay. Let's start with the differentiators. Yeah. Firstly and I, and hopefully I've kind of, I've hit this point hard, hard enough. We do believe that we have the fastest and most reliable storage infrastructure on the planet. This is kind of what we are known for, and customers that are working with us already sort of have an appreciation for that. And so they're looking for, okay, you've got that now, how can you make my hybrid cloud aspirations better? So we do have that as a fundamental, right? So, but secondly I'd say, I think it's also because we go beyond just storage management and, and into the areas of data management. You know, we've got, we've got solutions that are not just about storing the bits. We do think that we do that very well, but we also have solutions that move into the areas of enrichment, of the data, cataloging of the data, classification of the data, and most importantly, analytics. >>So, you know, we, we think it's, some of our competitors just stop at storing stuff and some of our competitors are in the analytics space, but we feel that we can bridge that. And we think that that's a, that's a competitive advantage for us. One of the other areas that I think is key for us as well is, as I said, we're one of the few vendors who've been in the marketplace for 60 years and we think this, this, this gives us a more nuanced perspective about things. There are many things in the industry, trends that have happened over time where we feel we've seen this kind of thing before and I think we will see it again. But you only really get that perspective if you are, if you are long lived in the industry. And so we believe that our conversations with our customers bear a little bit more sophistication. It's not just, it's not just about what's the latest and greatest trends. >>Right. We've got about one minute left. Can you, can you round us out with how the partner ecosystem is playing a role in the as service business? >>They're absolutely pivotal in that, you know, we, we ourselves don't own data centers, right? So we don't provide our own cloud services out. So we are 100% partner focused when it comes to that aspect. Our formula is to help partners build their cloud services with our solutions and then onsell them to their customers as as as a service. You know, and by what quick way of example, VMware for example, they've got nearly 5,000 partners selling VMware cloud services. 5,000 blows me away. And many of them are our partners too. So we kind of see this as a virtuous cycle. We've got product, we've got an an alliance with VMware and we work together with partners in common for the delivery of an as a service business. >>Got it. So the, as you said, the partner ecosystem is absolutely pivotal. Russell, it's been a pleasure having you on the program talking about all things hybrid cloud challenges, how Hitachi van is working with its partner ecosystems to really help customers across industries solve those big problems. We really appreciate your insights and your time. >>Thank you very much, Lisa. It's been great. >>Yeah, yeah. For Russell Stingley, I'm Lisa Martin. In a moment we're gonna continue our conversation with Tom Christensen. Stay tuned. >>Sulfur Royal has always embraced digital technology. We were amongst the first hospitals in the UK to install a full electronic patient record system. Unfortunately, as a result of being a pioneer, we often find that there's gaps in the digital solutions. My involvement has been from the very start of this program, a group of us got together to discuss what the problems actually were in the hospital and how we could solve this. >>The digital control center is an innovation that's been designed in partnership between ourselves, anti touch, and it's designed to bring all of the information that is really critical for delivering effective and high quality patient care. Together the DCC is designed not only to improve the lives of patients, but also of our staff giving us information that our demand is going to increase in the number of patients needing support. The technology that we're building can be replicated across sulfur, the NCA, and the wider nhs, including social care and community services. Because it brings all of that information that is essential for delivering high quality efficient care. >>The DCC will save time for both staff and more importantly our patients. It will leave clinicians to care for patients rather than administrate systems and it will allow the system that I work with within the patient flow team to effectively and safely place patients in clinically appropriate environments. >>But we chose to partner with Hitachi to deliver the DCC here at Sulfur. They were willing to work with us to co-produce and design a product that really would work within the environment that we find ourselves in a hospital, in a community setting, in a social care setting. >>My hopes for the DCC is that ultimately we will provide more efficient and reliable care for our patients. >>I do believe the digital control center will improve the lives of staff and also the patients so that we can then start to deliver the real change that's needed for patient care. >>Okay, we're back with Tom Christensen, who's the global technology advisor and executive analyst at Hitachi Van Tara. And we're exploring how Hitachi Van Tower drives customer success specifically with partners. You know Tom, it's funny, back in the early part of the last decade, there was this big push around, remember it was called green it and then the oh 7 0 8 financial crisis sort of put that on the back burner. But sustainability is back and it seems to be emerging as a mega trend in in it is, are you seeing this, is it same wine new label? How real is this trend and where's the pressure coming from? >>Well, we clearly see that sustainability is a mega trend in the IT sector. And when we talk to CIOs or senior IT leaders or simply just invite them in for a round table on this topic, they all tell us that they get the pressure from three different angles. The first one is really end consumers and end consumers. Nowaday are beginning to ask questions about the green profile and what are the company doing for the environment. And this one here is both private and public companies as well. The second pressure that we see is coming from the government. The government thinks that companies are not moving fast enough so they want to put laws in that are forcing companies to move faster. And we see that in Germany as an example, where they are giving a law into enterprise companies to following human rights and sustainability tree levels back in the supply chain. >>But we also see that in EU they are talking about a new law that they want to put into action and that one will replicate to 27 countries in Europe. But this one is not only Europe, it's the rest of the world where governments are talking about forcing companies to move faster than we have done in the past. So we see two types of pressure coming in and at the same time, this one here starts off at the CEO at a company because they want to have the competitive edge and be able to be relevant in the market. And for that reason they're beginning to put KPIs on themself as the ceo, but they're also hiring sustainability officers with sustainability KPIs. And when that happens it replicates down in the organization and we can now see that some CIOs, they have a kpi, others are indirectly measured. >>So we see direct and indirect. The same with CFOs and other C levels. They all get measured on it. And for that reason it replicates down to IT people. And that's what they tell us on these round table. I get that pressure every day, every week, every quarter. But where is the pressure coming from? Well the pressure is coming from in consumers and new laws that are put into action that force companies to think differently and have focus on their green profile and doing something good for the environment. So those are the tree pressures that we see. But when we talk to CFOs as an example, we are beginning to see that they have a new store system where they put out request for proposal and this one is in about 58% of all request for proposal that we receive that they are asking for our sustainability take, what are you doing as a vendor? >>And in their score system cost has the highest priority and number two is sustainability. It waits about 15, 20 to 25% when they look at your proposal that you submit to a cfo. But in some cases the CFO say, I don't even know where the pressure is coming from. I'm asked to do it. Or they're asked to do it because end consumers laws and so on are forcing them to do it. But I would answer, yeah, sustainability has become a make trend this year and it's even growing faster and faster every month we move forward. >>Yeah, Tom, it feels like it's here to stay this time. And your point about public policy is right on, we saw the EU leading with privacy and GDPR and it looks like it's gonna lead again here. You know, just shifting gears, I've been to a number of Hitachi facilities in my day. OWA is my favorite because on a clear day you can see Mount Fuji, but other plants I've been to as well. What does Hitachi do in the production facility to reduce CO2 emissions? >>Yeah, I think you're hitting a good point here. So what we have, we have a, a facility in Japan and we have one in Europe and we have one in America as well to keep our production close to our customers and reduced transportation for the factory out to our customers. But you know, in the, in the, in the May region back in 2020 13, we created a new factory. And when we did that we were asked to do it in an energy, energy neutral way, which means that we are moving from being powered by black energy to green energy in that factory. And we build a factory with concrete walls that were extremely thick to make it cold in the summertime and hot in the winter time with minimum energy consumption. But we also put 17,000 square meters of solar panel on the roof to power that factory. >>We were collecting rain waters to flush it in the toilet. We were removing light bulbs with L E D and when we sent out our equipment to our customers, we put it in a, instead of sending out 25 packages to a customer, we want to reduce the waste as much as possible. And you know, this one was pretty new back in 2013. It was actually the biggest project in EA at that time. I will say if you want to build a factory today, that's the way you are going to do it. But it has a huge impact for us when electricity is going up and price and oil and gas prices are coming up. We are running with energy neutral in our facility, which is a big benefit for us going forward. But it is also a competitive advantage to be able to explain what we have been doing the last eight, nine years in that factory. We are actually walking to talk and we make that decision even though it was a really hard decision to do back in 2013, when you do decisions like this one here, the return of investment is not coming the first couple of years. It's something that comes far out in the future. But right now we are beginning to see the benefit of the decision we made back in 2013. >>I wanna come back to the economics, but before I do, I wanna pick up on something you just said because you know, you hear the slogan sustainability by design. A lot of people might think okay, that's just a marketing slogan, slogan to vector in into this mega trend, but it sounds like it's something that you've been working on for quite some time. Based on your last comments, can you add some color to that? >>Yeah, so you know, the factory is just one example of what you need to do to reduce the CO2 emission and that part of the life of a a product. The other one is really innovating new technology to drive down the CO2 emission. And here we are laser focused on what we call decarbonization by design. And this one is something that we have done the last eight years, so this is far from you for us. So between each generation of products that we have put out over the last eight years, we've been able to reduce the CO2 emission by up to 30 to 60% between each generation of products that we have put into the market. So we are laser focused on driving that one down, but we are far from done, we still got eight years before we hit our first target net zero in 2030. So we got a roadmap where we want to achieve even more with new technology. At its core, it is a technology innovator and our answers to reduce the CO2 emission and the decarbonization of a data center is going to be through innovating new technology because it has the speed, the scale, and the impact to make it possible to reach your sustainability objectives going forward. >>How about recycling? You know, where does that fit? I mean, the other day it was, you know, a lot of times at a hotel, you know, you used to get bottled water, now you get, you know, plant based, you know, waters in a box and, and so we are seeing it all around us. But for a manufacturer of your size, recycling and circular economy, how does that fit into your plans? >>Yeah, let me try to explain what we are doing here. Cause one thing is how you produce it. Another thing is how you innovate all that new technology, but you also need to combine that with service and software, otherwise you won't get the full benefit. So what we are doing here, when it comes to exploring circular economics, it's kind of where we have an eternity mindset. We want to see if it is possible to get nothing out to the landfill. This is the aim that we are looking at. So when you buy a product today, you get an option to keep it in your data center for up to 10 years. But what we wanna do when you keep it for 10 years is to upgrade only parts of the system. So let's say that you need more CBU power, use your switch the controller to next generation controller and you get more CPU power in your storage system to keep it those 10 years. >>But you can also expand with new this media flash media, even media that doesn't exist today will be supported over those 10 years. You can change your protocol in the, in the front end of your system to have new protocols and connect to your server environment with the latest and greatest technology. See, the benefit here is that you don't have to put your system into a truck and a recycle process after three years, four years, five years, you can actually postpone that one for 10 years. And this one is reducing the emission again. But once we take it back, you put it on the truck and we take it into our recycling facility. And here we take our own equipment like compute network and switches, but we also take competitor equipment in and we recycle as much as we can. In many cases, it's only 1% that goes to the landfill or 2% that goes to the landfill. >>The remaining material will go into new products either in our cycle or in other parts of the electronic industry. So it will be reused for other products. So when we look at what we've been doing for many years, that has been linear economics where you buy material, you make your product, you put it into production, and it goes into land feed afterwards. The recycling economics, it's really, you buy material, you make your product, you put it into production, and you recycle as much as possible. The remaining part will go into the landfill. But where we are right now is exploring circle economics where you actually buy material, make it, put it into production, and you reuse as much as you can. And only one 2% is going into the landfill right now. So we have come along and we honestly believe that the circular economics is the new economics going forward for many industries in the world. >>Yeah. And that addresses some of the things that we were talking about earlier about sustainability by design, you have to design that so that you can take advantage of that circular economy. I, I do wanna come back to the economics because, you know, in the early days of so-called green, it, there was a lot of talk about, well, I, I, I'll never be able to lower the power bill. And the facilities people don't talk to the IT people. And that's changed. So explain why sustainability is good business, not just an expense item, but can really drive bottom line profitability. I, I understand it's gonna take some time, but, but help us understand your experience there, Tom. >>Yeah, let me try to explain that one. You know, you often get the question about sustainability. Isn't that a cost? I mean, how much does it cost to get that green profile? But you know, in reality when you do a deep dive into the data center, you realize that sustainability is a cost saving activity. And this one is quite interesting. And we have now done more than 1,200 data center assessment around the world where we have looked at data centers. And let me give you just an average number from a global bank that we work with. And this one is, it is not different from all the other cases that we are doing. So when we look at the storage area, what we can do on the electricity by moving an old legacy data center into a new modernized infrastructure is to reduce the electricity by 96%. >>This is a very high number and a lot of money that you save, but the CO2 mission is reduced by 96% as well. The floor space can go up to 35% reduction as well. When we move down to the compute part, we are talking about 61% reduction in electricity on the compute part just by moving from legacy to new modern infrastructure and 61% on the CO2 emission as well. And see this one here is quite interesting because you save electricity and you and you do something really good for the environment. At the same time, in this case I'm talking about here, the customer was paying 2.5 million US dollar annually and by just modernizing that infrastructure, we could bring it down to 1.1 million. This is 1.4 million savings straight into your pocket and you can start the next activity here looking at moving from virtual machine to containers. Containers only use 10% of the CPU resources compared to a virtual machine. Move up to the application layer. If you have that kind of capability in your organization, modernizing your application with sustainability by design and you can reduce the C, the CO2 emission by up to 50%. There's so much we can do in that data center, but we often start at the infrastructure first and then we move up in the chain and we give customers benefit in all these different layers. >>Yeah, A big theme of this program today is what you guys are doing with partners do, are partners aware of this in your view? Are they in tune with it? Are they demanding it? What message would you like to give the channel partners, resellers and, and distributors who may be watching? >>So the way to look at it is that we offer a platform with product, service and software and that platform can elevate the conversation much higher up in the organization. And partners get the opportunity here to go up and talk to sustainability officers about what we are doing. They can even take it up to the CEO and talk about how can you reach your sustainability KPI in the data center. What we've seen this round table when we have sustainability officers in the room is that they're very focused on the green profile and what is going out of the company. They rarely have a deep understanding of what is going on at the data center. Why? Because it's really technical and they don't have that background. So just by elevating the conversation to these sustainability officers, you can tell them what they should measure and how they should measure that. And you can be sure that that will replicate down to the CIO and the CFO and that immediately your request for proposal going forward. So this one here is really a golden opportunity to take that story, go out and talk to different people in the organization to be relevant and have an impact and make it more easy for you to win that proposal when it gets out. >>Well really solid story on a super important topic. Thanks Tom. Really appreciate your time and taking us through your perspectives. >>Thank you Dave, for the invitation. >>Yeah, you bet. Okay, in a moment we'll be back. To summarize our final thoughts, keep it right there. >>Click by click. The world is changing. We make sense of our world by making sense of data. You can draw more meaning from more data than was ever possible before, so that every thought and every action can build your path to intelligent innovation to change the way the world works. Hitachi Van Tara. >>Okay, thanks for watching the program. We hope you gained a better understanding of how Hitachi Ventura drives customer success with its partners. If you wanna learn more about how you can partner for profit, check out the partner togetherPage@hitachiventera.com and there's a link on the webpage here that will take you right to that page. Okay, that's a wrap for Lisa Martin. This is Dave Valante with the Cube. You a leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(bright music) >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special Cube Conversation here, in the Palo Alto studios, for theCUBE, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconeANGLE Media and theCUBE, and cohost of theCUBE. My next guest is Adrian Scott, who is the CEO of Soma Capital and Head of Technology of decent.bet. You can get the idea of that going to be all about, but, industry legend-- >> Yeah. >> Star of the big screen, good to see you, thanks for comin' in. >> Thank you John, it's great to see you. >> I'm glad I wanted to talk to you, because I know you've been doing a lot of traveling, you've been living in Panama, and overseas, outside the US, mainly around the work you've been doing on the crypto side, obviously Blockchain and with the start of decent.bet, lot of great stuff, but congratulations on a successful initial coin offering! >> Thank you. >> Great stuff, but you're also notable in the industry, initial investor in Napster, our generation, first P2P, the first renegade, you know, break down the movie business, but the beginning of what we're now seeing as that decentralized revolution. But you've seen many waves of innovation. You've seen 'em come and go. But this one in particular, Blockchain, decentralized internet, decentralized applications, crypto. Pretty awesome, and lot of young guns are coming in, a lot of older, experienced, alpha entrepreneurs are coming in like yourself, and, we're lookin' at it too. What's your take on it? I mean, how do you talk people that are like, "Well, hey, this is just a scam on the ICS site, "is this real, is it a bubble?" Share your vision on what this is all about, this whole mega-trend, crypto, decentralized. >> And I'll also add, in addition to what you mentioned, the other neat thing here is just the global nature of it. Because we're so used to being Silicon Valley-centric, and having to dig around for funding here, and also, looking only at talent that would move here, whereas with this whole new industry, it's very global, there's global teams, international teams, and, some of the Silicon Valley folks are just struggling to stay relevant, and stay in the game, so that's a fascinating aspect to this new revolution as well. >> And also, the thing I love about this market, it's very efficient, it takes away inefficiencies, in venture capital right now, and private equity being disrupted, that's where the arbitrage is, hence the ICO bubble, but, there is real, legit opportunities, you have Soma Capital, you're an investment fund, that you're doing token investments on. The global nature is interesting, I want to just ask here about this, because, my view is, it changes valuation, it changes valuation mechanisms, it changes the makeup of the venture architecture, it makes up on how people recruit teams, the technology used, and with open source, I mean, this is a first-time view at a new landscape. You can't take a pattern match, model, to this, your thoughts. >> Agree completely, and the efficiency you mentioned, applied to teams, and surfacing engineering talent, and the mathematical minds that can handle crypto internationally, the formation of teams internationally online is actually something special as well, so, with Decent Bet, our team, our founding team includes folks from the US, Panama, Australia, as well, who met up, in a Facebook chat group! And that's how they initially connected, and they didn't know each other physically, before this connection online, and that led to this project, Decent Bet, and ICO, and so on. So it's-- >> You created value from essentially a digital workforce, but, I mean, it reminds me of, like in the old days, you'd chat, and it wasn't a lot of face-to-face, but then now there's video gaming culture, you know, you come in, "Hey, you want to play a game," people don't even know each other, and get a visual, and also an immersive experience with each other. This is now the application for entrepreneurial equations, so this kind of gaming, the game is startups! So how are you looking at this, and how are you investing in it, what are some of the things, and what can people learn from what we're seeing in this new game-ified, if you will, you know, world of starting companies? >> I think one of the things you alluded to there has really become visible, which is the importance of video, as a medium, and I'm still, absorbing and adjusting to that myself. For example, we do video communications, we do conversations at Decent Bet, of the founding team, and, it really connects to the community, and it's so important, and I'm still absorbing it, like I mentioned, 'cause I'm just so used to publishing articles that are very clearly written, and detailed, and so on. We just did an AMA video, an Ask Me Anything video, in Las Vegas, with the executive team, and it went for 80 minutes, answering the questions, that the community had all submitted! And I just try and imagine that five years ago, it's new way of relating-- >> 'Cause there was no blogging, link back, the only thing you could do in blogging. >> Yeah. >> And then write a perfect blog post, or white paper. >> Exactly. >> And that was who you were. >> Yeah. >> Not anymore, it's more community driven. >> Exactly, and that video as a piece of it, has become so, so important, as a way of communicating the character of the team, and-- >> Before we get into decent.bet, I want to drill those, I think it's a great use case, and again, congratulations on great work there. I want to ask you about something that I've been fascinated with, because I obviously, our generation, we grew up on open source when it was second-class citizen, now it runs the whole world, as first-tier, first-class citizen in software world. The role of the community was really important in software development, 'cause that kept a, it kept a balance, there was governance, was consensus, these are words that you hear in the crypto world. And now, whether it's content and or ICO, the role of the community, and certainly, areas that's out of control in the ICO site, people are cracking down on certainly, like you see Facebook and Twitter trying to do something, but you can't stop the wisdom of the crowd. The role of the community in this crypto, decentralized market, ICOs and whatnot, is super important. Can you share your thoughts, and color commentary on why the community's so important, how do you deal with it (laughs), any best practices, either through scar tissue, or successes, share your thoughts on this. >> Oh yeah, it's totally become a factor, and it's 24/7, right? So, when you are running a crypto project, you need your community management team to be there, in the community channels, 24/7, you need to have somebody there, and they need to be at a certain level that they can handle the challenging questions! And we've definitely had moments where, we have people who try to create FUD, potentially, you know, and bring up stuff, and bring it up again later and whatnot, and we need to be proactive, so when questions come up, we were there to be able to explain, "Okay, here's where you can see this on the Blockchain. "You can verify it yourself." And sometimes, it happens when the team is just about to get on a plane (laughs), and be out of internet communication for a while, so, it's a real challenge, and there's been the voice of experience, on that. >> So talk about how you guys connect, because obviously, being connected is important with community access, but also, with connection, increases the service area for hacks, are you guys carrying five burner phones each, how do you handle email, how have you guys dealt with the whole, you know, there is a lot of online activity, certainly, people trying to do some spear phishing, or whatever tactics there are. Telegram has been littered with a lot of spoofing, and what not, so, all this is going on, that you got to have access communication. But there's a safety component that could have really big impacts to these businesses, that aren't tokeners, because, hacking can be easy if you don't protect yourself. >> We really like Signal app, as a communications medium, there's a new one, starting to grow now, called Threema, which is pretty interesting. Telegram, is just a real challenge, and it's unfortunate, because it's now become this metric. >> How many people are active on your channels-- >> That investors like to look at the size of the Telegram group, but we don't actually have a Telegram group for Decent Bet. And we've used Slack, we are going to be rolling out a internally hosted Slack replacement soon based on Rocket.Chat, we really like Rocket.Chat. As you mentioned, there are spear phishing, we do see that, and, one of the nice things is, a few years ago, you had trouble convincing a team to take security seriously! But you know, when you have team members who may have lost $10,000 in a hack-- >> Or more! >> Or more, you know, there's no question that this needs to be a priority, and everybody buys in on it. So that is one net positive out of this. >> Well let's talk about Decent Bet, fascinating use case, it's in the gaming area, gaming as in like betting, my friend Paul Martino invested I think in DraftKings, one of those other companies, I forget which one it was. In the US, there was regulatory issues, but, you know, outside the US where I think you guys are, there's not as much issue. Perfect use case for tokens, in my opinion. So, take a minute to explain Decent Bet, what you guys are all about, and talk about the journey of conception, when you guys conceived it, to ICO. >> Yeah. Decent Bet was founded about a year ago, by the CEO Jedidiah Taylor, who developed an interesting idea, and plan, so, the neat thing about Decent Bet is, first of all, you have all the benefits of the Ethereum Blockchain, in terms of verifying, transactions, and verifying the house's take. Additionally, what Decent Bet does is distributes all the profits of the casino back to the token-holders. 95% goes as proportionally, and then 5% is awarded in a lottery, so there's no profit for any Decent Bet entity, it all goes back to the tokenholders. So you use the token to play, by gambling, but you can also use your token to convert into house shares, for a quarter, and participate in-- >> So the house always wins, that a good model, right? >> Yes. >> You could become the house, through the tokens. >> Exactly, so, the motto we use is our house is your house (laughs). >> Don't bet against the house. >> Yeah. >> Alright so, I love the gambling aspect of it, I think that's going to be a winner. Tech-involved, ICO process bumps, learnings, things you could share with folks? >> Yeah, so, on the technology, one of the neat things we are doing is, we do offer a slots game, which is a primary component of online gambling, and casinos, a pretty dominant piece of the action. But, if you are going to do a simple slots game on the Blockchain, and wait around for blocks to be mined, you're not going to have a great experience. 'Cause you're going to be waiting around, more than you're going to be clicking that button. So, what we use is a technology called state channels, which allows us to do a session, kind of on a side channel, so to speak, and through this state channel, at the end of the session, you post back the results. So you get the verifiability of the Blockchain, but without the delay. So that's a major difference. >> That's off chain, right? >> Yeah. >> Or the on chain is off chain. >> It's kind of-- >> So you're managing the league, to see the chain, so you still experience, and then get to preserve it on the chain. >> Exactly-- >> Okay. >> In terms of the ICO experience, we initiated the ICO end of September, ran for a month, raised more than 52,000 Ether, so very productive ICO process, but with actually some interesting details, so, the ICO structure limited the amount that a particular address could purchase, in the first phases, to 10,000 worth, and then 20,000 dollars worth, with the idea of getting the tokens into the hand of, of people who are going to potentially use them for betting, not just-- >> The more the merrier for you, not, no one taking down allocations, big players. >> Exactly. >> Or whales. >> Not just for the whales, take all, kind of thing. So, that was a interesting structure, and-- >> And that worked well? >> Yeah! >> Alright, talk about the dynamic of post-ICO, because now you guys are building, can you give an update on the state of where you guys are at with the product, availability, how that's going, 'cause obviously you raised the capital through the ICO, democratize it if you will through clever mechanism, which is cool, thanks for sharing that, now what happens? Now, what's going on? >> Yeah, I mean, I think we're doing pretty well in terms of hitting milestones, and showing progress compared to a lot of projects, we released our test net, with slots, and then sportsbook, at the beginning of January, and mid-January, for sportsbook. And, we also did some upgrades with our wallet, we released that, for some enhanced usability, and handling during high peaks on the Ether network, Ethereum network. And then, also, our moving to main net. So we did some newer versions of the test net-- >> When did the main net come in? >> Main net is coming out end of April, and we're on track with that. >> Great, awesome. Congratulations, congratulations on a great job, 52,000 Ether, great raise there, and awesome opportunity. Soma Capital. >> Mm-hmm. >> You're investing now, what do you look for for deals, there's more money chasing good deals now, as we can see, has been a flight to quality obviously. Great global landscape still, what are you looking for? And advice to folks who are looking to do a token, sale, what's your-- >> Big thing we look for are real projects, so (laughs), and they're not that many out there, so we do look for a real use case that makes sense, because, there's a lot of folks out there just sticking Blockchain tag onto anything. And it's not just-- >> Like Kodak for instance. >> Yeah. >> Kodak's the prime example. >> Yes. There are projects out there doing interesting things, Guardium is doing some neat things in terms of 911 response, and opening that up, and creating an alternative to government services. There's WorkCoin, which is-- >> Do you invest in Guardium? >> Yeah, in Guardium, yeah. >> I interviewed them in Puerto Rico. >> Okay, great. >> Great project. >> So very interesting, I was recently giving a talk at a university in Guatemala, and, the students there at business school, it really resonated, the message there, to them, about okay, government 911 is maybe not the ultimate solution for getting help when you need it. >> Well I think, there's a lot of this AI for a good concept, going to Blockchain for good, because, you're seeing a lot of these easy, low-hanging fruit applications around these old structural intuitions. And that's where the action is, right, I mean, do you agree? >> Yeah, yes. And the other thing we're looking at is not just Blockchain. So I really like talking about the field more as crypto, and, I have a little video I did on calling it kind of decentralized, crypto-enabled applications, or platforms. So, beyond Blockchain, we have DAGs, Directed Acyclic Graphs, one interesting-- >> Like Hashgraph. >> Yeah, Ha-- >> Hashgraph's a DAG, isn't it? It's kind of a DAG, Hashgraph? >> Yeah, so, I'm not a huge fan of Hashgraph, one that I do like is called Guld, G-U-L-D, which is, again, thinking beyond the Blockchain. 'Cause we get so tied into Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain-- >> What does beyond the Blockchain mean to you? Thinking beyond the Blockchain, what does that mean to you? >> So, the proof of work process, the mining process, the creating new blocks process, is one way of doing things. But we have all these other things going on in crypto, like the signing process, and so on, and so, you can use those in a DAG, a different architecture than just this mining new blocks, you know, mental model. And so, that can be used for different use cases, for publishing, for group consensus, and so on. And so, Guld is an example of a project where it looks like there is something real there, and that's a very interesting product. >> Advice for folks that are looking at tokeneries, because, again, we've said this on theCUBE many times, people know, I'm beating this drum, you got the startups, that see an opportunity, which is fantastic, and then on the end of the spectrum, you got the, "Oh, shit, we're out of business, "let's pivot, throw the Hail Mary, put Blockchain on it, "crypto, and get an ICO, and get some going." And then you've got these growth companies that are, either self funded and or growing, that have decentralized kind of feel to it, it has an architecture that's compatible with tokenization. >> Yeah. >> So we see those three categories. Do you agree, am I missing anything? In terms of the profile? And which ones do you like? >> Well, I think one thing that we need to look at, in each of those cases, is decentralization actually happening, in the project? And are people actually thinking about decentralization. Because, it can be scary for a traditional company! Because, if it truly becomes decentralized, you're not controlling it anymore. And so, that is-- >> If you're based on control, then it's incompatible. >> And that's the real Hail Mary, right? (laughs) When you give up that control, if you give it up, so, we have examples coming out, where, you know, Ripple is running just a few nodes, Neo's running a few more, and you know, things that are not really decentralized, and they're saying, "Well, we're going to be," (laughs) you know? >> Will they ever? >> Is it going to be in the future-- >> Yeah, that's always the question, will they ever be? They've already made their money, well certainly Ripple's done well, but, I mean, what's the incentive to go-- >> Yeah. >> Decentralized. >> Yeah, so if, if you are creating a new project, the benefit from this architecture, beyond the money, is to think about it in that decentralized way, and figure out token economics that work, in that context, in that paradigm! And that's really where the challenge is, but also really where some of the benefits can rise, because, that is what enables truly new ways of doing things. >> Talk about the dynamic, because I actually, I live in Silicon Valley, I've been here 19 years, going on 20, you know, I moved from the east coast, and basically, if you weren't here, this is where the action is. If you're in the sports of tech, this is where all the athletes are. That's now changed, as you mentioned earlier, when we started, it's everywhere. Now, also there's jurisdictional issues, I mean the US, one guy's told me, the US is turning into Europe, all these regulations, it's not as much free capital as you think, and then, we certainly know that. With FCC, and others are putting the clamp down. But, structuring the token, is a concern, right? Or consideration. >> Yes. >> And a concern, so, you know, US entrepreneur, what should they do in your opinion, and if someone's outside the US, what do they do? What's the play book, or, not play book, what's the best path right now? >> Leave the US (laughs). Move out of the US. >> Tell that, wife and four kids. See you later. Yeah, but that's real legit, that's-- >> Come and check out Panama, one of my friends is building a Blockchain incubator, crypto-incubator, I mean I think if you're-- >> What's it like to move out of the United States, I know you just recently went to Panama for this, but, what's it like? Is it scary down there, I mean, is it entrepreneurially friendly? What's the vibe, what's the scene like, take a minute to explain that. >> So I've actually been out there 12 years now, in Panama. One of the neat things, you want a place that has an international outlook, international perspectives, so, you want to think in terms of a Dubai, a Singapore, a Hong Kong. And so, Panama has some aspects of that, it's not perfect, but it does have that international perspective thanks to the Canal! So it has, you know, a hundred years! (laughs) >> It also has the Panama papers, which is a negative blowback for those guys, so it's a safe place to do commerce, in your opinion? >> Um, it is a nice geographic base to do international commerce. >> Got it. >> So, you don't necessarily want to rely on the local jurisdiction, but, in terms of a geographic base, that is US time zone, US dollar, no hurricanes, it's a very interesting place. >> Puerto Rico's got the hurricanes, we know that. >> Yeah. >> Final thoughts, just overall perspective, you've been around the block, we've been around the block, both of us have, I mean, I kind of have these pinch me almost like, "Damn, this is great time, "I wish I was 22," I mean, do you have those? What's it like, how you explain this environment? If people ask you, "Hey, what was it like in the old days?" You know, when you have to provision all your own stack, and do all the stuff, it's pretty interesting right now. What's your thoughts? >> Yeah, I mean, I think we're going through an interesting moment right now, where, we are getting to a point where the forces of centralization are coming against the forces of decentralization, and that includes from the regulatory, as well as the business side, and so, I think it is important, as we look where to dedicate our efforts to, to really find ways to increase the decentralization as a factor that encourages creativity, and entrepreneurship. >> Yeah, it really is a personal, I think it's a great environment. Decent.bet, bet, make your bets, any updates on how to get tokens, what people can expect, a quick plug-in for Decent. >> Yeah, check out our website, we've got links to exchanges, the token is currently listed on Cryptotopia, HitBTC, and a couple other exchanges, and, yeah! Please check out the test net, please check out the white paper, and just learn about how this protocol works, this platform works. I think it is very inspiring, as a structure. >> Adrian Scott here, inside theCUBE, Soma Capital, also experienced entrepreneur himself, technologist, and has been through the ICO process, head of technology at decent.net, we'll be checkin' it out, it's theCUBE Conversation, I'm John Furrier, here in Palo Alto, California. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>> Narrator: From Nice, France, it's theCUBE, covering .NEXT Conference 2017 Europe. Brought to you by Nutanix. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's live coverage from Nutanix .NEXT in Nice, France. Always love when we get to dig in of some of the practitioners, the users at this conference 'cause a lot of 'em have shown up for this show. Happen to welcome to the program first time guest Mohammed Ibrahim, who's the head of IT with Securities and Investment Company or SICO headquartered out of Bahrain. Great to see you Hello, how are you? Good to see you, too. It's really my pleasure to participate and to be here and joining the .NEXT Conference. I'm very lucky to be here. Thank you so much. And you've been at both of the European shows? Exactly, I have attended last year in Vienna, and that was really good as well. And this year I really see a very big development and enhancement and the difference between this year and last year which is a very good progress. So, Mohammed, first tell us about SICO. How long's the company been around? Kind of the breadth of coverage and locations and the like. Yeah, SICO, it's actually, it's a wholesale bank headquartered in Bahrain, and we are a premiere wholesale bank in the region, Middle East and North Africa. We do business in two different lines like asset management because we manage more than one billion US dollar as asset management and portfolio managers, and we are also a custodian house. And the brokerage business, this is one of our main business lines as well because we are brokers and we started as brokers, and now we are a wholesale bank. Our coverage as I said is MENA, Middle East and North Africa, and we have our also subsidiary brokerage arm in United Arab Emirates. It's SICO UAE. It's our brokerage arm there, and they are also working under SICO. You were telling me SICO's been around since 1995. Give us a little bit of your background. How long have you been on there? Actually, yeah, SICO established in 1995, and I joined SICO in 2007, and since that time I'm at SICO, I started as the head of infrastructure, and now I am the head of IT looking after the whole IT and services in SICO. Maybe explain to us those roles, infrastructure and IT, and kind of how many people, how many data centers, that kind of stuff. We have actually one data center which is on the main side, and we have another data center in our DR side, that's the recovery side. And yeah, it's very, very sophisticated because we are operating as a bank and we have a core banking system. We have a trading platform. We are serving more than 1,900 customers, and our customers are government, pension fund, high-worth net individuals, corporates, so we have fund managers. This all our customers, and this is actually very critical customers for us. We are in IT of course. We have couple of units. We have the infrastructure and application. I was actually entitled for the infrastructure, looking after the platform and security network, and recently from couple of years back, I have been promoted to be the head of IT and looking after the applications as well as the infrastructure. Great, and you've got security under your preview which I have to imagine is taking a lot of time and budget these days. Exactly, it was a very, again, critical task and a critical position because handling the security, it was really important for the business and for our data and our confidentiality. So, it was really a good practice and a good experience. And now we are actually enhancing more in our information security policy because as you know, cyber security is one of the important topics, especially when you go to the digitalization. And this is our main purpose and our main target, is to do digitalization automation and enhancing this domain, plus ensuring the security is very standard, very high level, matching the whole expectations, the fund regulator, as well as the worldwide standards. Brought up a great point, Mohammed, there. I want you to explain to our audience what is digitization mean to SICO? For us, digitalization is actually, it's more than giving online services. Automation for our services as well. Make it easy because the wholesale bank actually have different line of services, and getting into access to your data, to your portfolio managing your orders, placing your orders, getting your positions, guaranteeing your cash statements, this is all actually, transferring your cash, this is all something that it's very important for the customer. And in many places, even in the Gulf, even in the area, it happens manually, so we are trying to be more automated, more smart, and this is for us, is the digitalization in the time being. Okay, so let's dig into the part of your job but your whole job too, the infrastructure itself. What's the role of infrastructure when you're doing the digitalization? You've probably gone through some transformations there. If you can tell us a little bit about kind of what it was like, and kind of what led to where you are and where you're going? Mainly, this is a very important question actually, and I love to answer it because when I joined SICO, it was a traditional infrastructure. As many people did, it's a physical implementation. You have servers, you have network switches, so it was a very traditional. And this was actually the challenge is to move SICO from the traditional way of the infrastructure into very simple way and very standard way, allowing you to grow, allowing you to add more applications, allowing you to really develop and focus more on the functionalities other than infrastructure. Since you also have limited resources in terms of IT resources, so you need really to think about simple infrastructure giving you the functionalities you expect, giving you the stability, that resiliency, and as well as giving you the opportunity to add more sort of critical applications on top of that. So I have to imagine in your time virtualization played a role in this, and when did Nutanix come into the picture? Actually, Nutanix came into the picture when we decided to go with our online and trading platform, SICO Life. SICO Life, it's actually a very important and critical product for us because it allows our customers to get the direct market access, and we are currently online with seven markets, and we are going for the globe as well because we are planning to go for Europe and US markets. So to build this kind of critical system you have to have a cloud. You have to think about virtualization because again, following the traditional implementation of infrastructure, it will not help you. And it will take a long, long time, and it will be very complex in terms of administration and support. For this reason, we have to had actually our private cloud, because again, you will stuck with the regulator if you go with the public cloud. If you tell him I'm going for a public cloud, he will tell you it's against confidentiality. You cannot take the customer information and put it somewhere. So we said, okay, we will go for our private cloud, and this was a challenge. We need a hyper-converged infrastructure. We need infrastructure that is smart enough to be hosting all our VMs with a central monitoring, central sort of administration, and easy as well. So we have converted more than couple of solutions around the world, and Nutanix was one of the proposed solutions coming to us. And we have done a very sophisticated vendor selection, and I think we have taken the right decision when we have selected Nutanix to be our infrastructure for a trading platform. Before I get into the Nutanix a little bit more, some people when they hear I built a private cloud, they say, well, you virtualized some environment, you did some things. What were your internal requirement? What makes it a cloud versus just okay, I've automated some things, or I've done some things? Did you have certain criteria that you went through or what did you do? Did you benchmark yourselves against the public cloud from kind of the usage and the agility? How do you sort that out? Again, it's very important, the question, because this was the strategy when I joined SICO from the beginning. As I said, we have or we had actually, a traditional infrastructure and the market, and the standards was ahead actually. So you have to bring SICO infrastructure into the standards. Traditional infrastructure, it doesn't give you that facility to grow and to add more sort of systems. It's very difficult, so this was actually the criteria and the requirements from our side. We need to have a simple infrastructure where we can add additional servers seamlessly. We can grow, we can expand, we can add more resources without rebuilding the whole infrastructure because the physical implementation, if you're stuck with the capacity, you have to shut down the server, bring a new server, do another implementation, bring everybody involved to do the new implementation. But with the virtualization, it's easy. It's a virtual server. It's a data, you take it somewhere. Just only you need to provide the infrastructure that can host it. And with the Nutanix or with the hyper-converged infrastructure, you can whenever you need additional resources, you can add resources, and you can keep your application running as is. You can keep your data as is, and without interrupting the business, without interrupting the operation, and without interrupting customers as well. And this was actually the criteria when we selected and when we decided to go with our hybrid-converged infrastructure. Okay, that's great. Do you have any metrics as to kind of operations or how many headcount you have working on things? What's been the impact of the planned Nutanix? This what we have done actually. I told you we did like a vendor selection, and we compared two different vendors. And actually, to be more honest, four vendors actually. Monitoring and developing and comparing different technologies. So if you go with the traditional infrastructure and implementation, how it will go in terms of support, in terms of implementation, timelines, the cost, post-implementation, support, even with the converged infrastructure because I remember in that time we had a converged infrastructure where some people like well-known companies were talking about converged infrastructure. And we had the hyper-converged infrastructure solution, which was a very a new into the market. For this reason, we had taken, I think, a decision where everybody said, Mohammed and SICO, I think you are taking a very what you can say? It's a very new decision. It's something that is-- Say it's risky? Exactly, some people consider it a little bit risky because you are doing something, it's still not yet many people did it, especially in the financial services and the banking sector. But as I told you, it was a challenge that you had to take and you had to go through because you have to have your own private cloud. Why, because you have to host whatever VMs you need. Whenever you need to add a VM, it will be very easy for you. Whenever you want to expand, it will be also easy for you. And with your resources, current IT resources, you can still handle this sophisticated systems and the critical systems. And this was a challenge because again every time you implement a new system, you add to payroll additional resources and you hire more resources. The business will be killed. You said something I've heard lots from financial markets these days is, the business is changing, so you need to have the agility to be able to respond and deliver what you need. And to be honest, again, I will tell you frankly speaking, now the management and the business decision makers, they look to the IT that they have a buttons. When I tell you something, you should press the button and bring it to me. They don't actually think about how much sophisticated that your system have already in the background. So they don't care about the technicality. They care more about the functionality and the deliverables. IT, it's very now challenging and the decision makers and the IT management and the technical resources we have a very challenge, a very high challenge, that whenever they get the requirements and a lot of priorities are coming from the business, they have to be always ready. So if you don't have a simple and a proper infrastructure that can really flexible, help you achieve all of these kind of deliverables, then you will stuck. And people will look at you like you are in 19th century. So we are now in 91, we are growing. We have to grow. We have to be very fast like others. It sounds like your saying Nutanix provides the easy button for the infrastructure. From my experience and from the implementation we have done, I think Nutanix, with our systems, it could really achieve our target. And we could really implement the trading platform in a very good time as we expected, even less. And we could really do this kind of performance. We could really achieve the deliverables as we expected. We have more than expected performance. We have the right choice in terms of expansion. We have also good support from Nutanix, which is really helping a lot in terms of critical systems because it's a 24 by 7. I cannot actually afford a couple minutes even downtime. It's the markets. I'm accessing the markets, so I'm placing orders, and these orders are money. And if the customer while placing the order his order did not reach the market because of the system, he will kill us. (laughs) Exactly, this is how much, and actually it's seconds because the price in the markets is changing, and the customer is placing the order. So if I did not give him the very stable platform that he can really place the order into the market with this moment and then it got delayed, then he will lose money. And I will lose the customer, and I will lose the business. For this reason, it's very critical and it's very important to have such a simple, flexible, reliable solution for your system. Mohammed Ibrahim, really appreciate the updates on what SICO has been doing. Thank you so much and best of luck. We'll be back with lots more programming here from theCUBE's coverage of Nutanix .NEXT, I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE.