(bright music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone, theCUBE coverage here at AWS re:Mars 2022. I'm John, your host of the theCUBE. re:Mars, part of the three re big events, re:Invent is the big one, re:Inforce the security, re:MARS is the confluence of industrial space, of automation, robotics and machine learning. Got a great guest here, Muhammad Faisal senior consultant solutions architect at Capgemini. Welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So we, you just we're hearing the classes we had with the professor from Okta ML from Washington. So he's in the weeds on machine learning. He's down getting dirty with all the hardcore, uncoupling it from hardware. Machine learning has gone really super nova in the past couple years. And this show points to the tipping point where machine learning's driving space, it's driving robotics industrial edge at unprecedented rates. So it's kind of moving from the old I don't want to say old, couple years ago and the legacy AI, I mean, old school AI is kind of the same new school with a twist it's just modernized and has faster, cheaper, smaller chips. >> Yeah. I mean, but there is a change also in the way it's working. So you had the classical AI, where you are detecting something and then you're making an action. You are perceiving something, making an action, you're detecting something, and you're assuming something that has been perceived. But now we are moving towards more deeper learning, deep. So AI, where you have to train your model to do things or to detect things and hope that it will work. And there's like, of course, a lot of research going on into explainable AI to help facilitate that. But that's where the challenges come into play. >> Well, Muhammad , first let's take, what do you do over there? Talk about your role specifically. You're doing a lot of student architecting around AI machine learning. What's your role? What's your focus. >> Yeah. So we basically are working in automotive to help OEMs and tier-one suppliers validate ADAS functions that they're working on. So advanced driving assistance systems, there are many levels that are, are when we talk about it. So it can be something simple, like, you know, a blind spot detection, just a warning function. And it goes all the way. So SAE so- >> So there's like the easy stuff and then the hard stuff. >> Muhammad : Exactly. >> Yeah. >> That's what you're getting at. >> Yeah. Yeah. And, and the easy stuff you can test validate quite easily because if you get it wrong. >> Yeah. >> The impact is not that high. The complicated stuff, if you have it wrong, then that can be very dangerous. (John laughs) >> Well, I got to say the automotive one was one was that are so fascinating because it's been so archaic and just in the past recent years, and Tesla's the poster child for this. You see that you go, oh my God, I love that car. I want to have a software driven car. And it's amazing. And I don't get a Tesla on now because that's, it's more like I should have gotten it earlier. Now I'm going to just hold my ground. >> Everyone has- >> Everyone's got it in Palo Alto. I'm not going to get another car, no way. So, but you're starting to see a lot of the other manufacturers, just in the past five years, they're leveling up. It may not be as cool and sexy as the Tesla, but it's, they're there. And so what are they dealing with when they talk about data and AI? What's the, what's some of the challenges that you're seeing that they're grappling with in terms of getting things integrated, developing pipelines, R and D, they wrangling data. Take us through some of the things. >> Muhammad: I mean, like when I think about the challenges that autonomous or the automakers are facing, I can think of three big ones. So first, is the amount of data they need to do their training. And more importantly, the validation. So we are talking about petabytes or hundred of petabytes of data that has to be analyzed, validated, annotated. So labeling to create gen, ground truth processed, reprocessed many times with every creation of a new software. So that is a lot of data, a lot of computational power. And you need to ensure that all of the processing, all of handling of the data allows you complete transparency of what is happening to the data, as well as complete traceability. So your, for home allocations, so approval process for these functions so that they can be released in cars that can be used on public roads. You need to have traceability. Like you can, you are supposed to be able to reproduce the data to validate your work that was done. So you can, >> John: Yeah >> Like, prove that your function is successful or working as expected. So this, the big data is the first challenge. I see that all the automotive makers are tackling. The second big one I see is understanding how much testing is enough. So with AI or with classical approach, you have certain requirements, how a function is supposed to work. You can test that with some test cases based on your architecture, and you have a successful or failed result. With deep learning, it gets more complicated. >> John: What are they doing with deep learning? Give an example of some of things. >> I mean, so you are, you need to then start thinking about statistics that I will test enough data with like a failure rate of potentially like 0.0, 0.1%. How much data do I need to test to make sure that I am achieving that rate. So then we are talking about, in terms of statistics, which requires a lot of data, because the failure rate that we want to have is so low. And it's not only like, failure in terms of that something is always detected, and if it's there, but it's also having like, a low false positive rate. So you are only detecting objects which are there and not like, phantom objects. >> What's some of the trends you're seeing across the client base, in terms of the patterns that they're all kind of, what, where's the state of their mindset and position with AI and some of the work they're doing, are they feeling, you feel like they're all crossed over across the chasm so to speak, in terms of executing, are they still in experimental mode in driving with the full capabilities is conservative or is it progressive? >> Muhammad: I mean, it's a mixture of both. So I'm in German automotive where I'm from, there is for functions, which are more complicated ones. There's definitely hesitancy to release them too early in the car, unless we are sure that they are safe. But of course, for functions which are assisting the drivers everyday usage they are widely available. Like one of the things like, so when we talk about this complex function. >> John: Highly available or available? >> Muhammad: I would say highly available. >> Higher? Is that higher availability and highly available. >> Okay. Yeah. (both laughing) >> Yeah, so. >> I know there's a distinction. >> Yeah. I mean >> I bring up as a joke cuz of the Jedi contract. (Muhammad laughs) >> I mean, in like, our architecture. So when we are developing our solution, high availability is one of our requirements. It is highly available, but the ADAS functions are now available in more and more cars. >> John: Well, latency, man. I mean, it's kind of a joke of storage, but it's a storage joke, but you know, it's latency, you got it, okay. (Muhammad laughs) But these are decisions that have to be made. >> Muhammad: They... >> I mean. >> Muhammad: I mean, they are still being made. >> So I mean, we are... >> John: Good. >> We haven't reached like, level five, which is the highest level of autonomous driving yet on public roads. >> John: That's hard. That's hard to do. >> Yeah. And I mean, the biggest difference, like, as you go above these levels is in terms of availability. So are they these functions? >> John: Yeah. >> Can they handle all possible scenarios or are they only available in certain scenarios? And of course the responsibility. So, it's, in the end, so with Tesla, you would be like, if you had a one you would be the person who is in control or responsible to monitor it. >> John: Yeah. But as we go >> John: Actually the reason I don't have a Tesla all my family would want one. I don't want to get anyone a Tesla. >> But I mean, but that's the sort the liabilities is currently on you, if like, you're not monitoring. >> Allright, so, talk about AWS, the relationship that Capgemini has with AWS, obviously, the partnerships there, you're here and this show is really a commitment to, this is a future to me, this is the future. >> Muhammad: Yeah. >> This is it. All right here, industrial, innovation's going to come massive. Back-office cloud, done deal. Data centers, hybrid somewhat multi-cloud, I guess. But hybrid is a steady state in the back-office cloud, game over. >> Muhammad: Yeah. >> Amazon, Azure, Google, Alibaba done. So super clouds underneath. Great. This is a digital transformation in the industrial area. >> Muhammad: Yeah. >> This is the big thing. What's your relationship with AWS >> Muhammad: So, as I mentioned, the first challenge, data, like, we have so much data, so much computational power and it's not something that is always needed. You need it like on demand. And this is where like a hyperscale or cloud provider, like AWS, can be the key to achieve, like, the higher, the acceleration that we are providing to our customers using our technology built on top of AWS services. We did a breakout session, this during re:MARS, where we demonstrated a couple of small tools that we have developed out of our offering. One of them was ability to stream data from the vehicle that is collecting data worldwide. So during the day when we did it from Vegas, driving on the strip, as well as from Germany, and while we are while this data is uploaded, it's at the same time real time anonymized to make sure it you're privacy aligned with the, the data privacy >> Of course. Yeah. That's hard to do right there. >> Yeah. And so the faces are blurred. The licenses are blurred. We also, then at the same time can run object detection. So we have real time monitoring of what our feed is doing worldwide. And... >> John: Do you, just curious, do you do that blurring? Is that part of a managed service, you call an API or is that built into the go? >> Muhammad: So from like part of our DSV, we have many different service offerings, so data production, data test strategy orchestration. So part of data production is worldwide data collection. And we can then also offer data management services, which include then anonymization data, quality check. >> John: And that's service you provide. >> Yeah. >> To the customer. Okay. Got it. Okay. >> So of course, like, in collaboration with the customer, so our like, platform is very modular. Microservices based the idea being if the customer already has a good ML model for anonymization, we can plug it into our platform, running on AWS. If they want to use it, we can develop one or we can use one of our existing ones or something off the shelf or like any other supplier can provide one as well. And we all integrate. >> So you are, you're tight with Amazon web services in terms of your cloud, your service. It's a cloud. >> Yeah. >> It's so Capgemini Super Cloud, basically. >> Exactly. >> Okay. So this we call we call it Super Cloud, we made that a thing and re:Invent Charles Fitzgerald would disagree but we will debate him. It's a Super Cloud, but okay. You got your Super Cloud. What's the coolest thing that you think you're doing right now that people should pay attention to. >> I mean, the cool thing that we are currently working on, so from the keynote today, we talked about also synthetic data for validation. >> John: Now That was phenomenal. So that was phenomenal. >> We are working on digital twin creation. So we are capturing data in real world creating a virtual identity of it. And that allows you the freedom to create multiple scenarios out of it. So that's also something where we are using machine learning to determine what are the parameters you need to change between, or so, you have one scenario, such as like, the cut-in scenario and you can change. >> John: So what scenario? >> A cut-in scenario. So someone is cutting in front of you or overtake scenario. And so, I mean, in real world, someone will do it in probably a nicer way, but of course, in, it is possible, at some point. >> Cognition to the cars. >> Yeah. >> It comes up as a vehicle. >> I mean, at some point some might, someone would be very aggressive with it. We might not record it. >> You might be able to predict too. I mean, the predictions, you could say this guy's weaving, he's a potential candidate. >> It it is possible. Yes. But I mean, but to, >> That's a future scenario. >> Ensure that we are testing these scenarios, we can translate a real world scenario into a digital world, change the parameters. So the distance between those two is different and use ML. So machine learning to change these parameters. So this is exciting. And the other thing we are... >> That is pretty cool. I will admit that's very cool. >> Yeah. Yeah. The other thing we like are trying to do is reduce the cost for the customer in the end. So we are collecting petabytes of data. Every time they make updates to the software, they have to re-simulate it or replay this data, so that they can- >> Petabytes? >> Petabytes of data. And, and physically sometimes on a physical hardware in loop device. And then this >> That's called a really heavy edge. You got to move, you don't want to be moving that around the Amazon cloud. >> Yeah. That that's, that's the challenge. And once we have replayed this or re-simulated it. we still have to calculate the KPIs out of it. And what we are trying to do is optimize this test orchestration, so that we are minimizing the REAP simulation. So you don't want the data to be going to the edge, >> Yeah. >> Unnecessarily. And once we get this data back to optimize the way we are doing the calculation, so you're not calculating- >> There's a huge data, integrity management. >> Muhammad: Yeah. >> New kind of thing going on here, it's kind of is it new or is it? >> Muhammad: I mean, it's- >> Sounds new to me. >> The scale is new, so- >> Okay, got it. >> The management of the data, having the whole traceability, that has been in automotive. So also Capgemini involved in aerospace. So in aerospace. >> Yeah. >> Having this kind of high, this validation be very strictly monitored is norm, but now we have to think about how to do it on this large scale. And that's why, like, I think that's the biggest challenge and hopefully what we are trying to, yeah, solve with our DSV offering. >> All right, Muhammad, thanks for coming on theCUBE. I really appreciate it. Great way to close out re:MARS, our last interview our the show. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate your time. >> I mean like just one last comment, like, so I think in automotive, like, so part of the automation the future is quite exciting, and I think that's where like- >> John: Yeah. >> It's, we have to be hopeful that like- >> John: Well, the show is all about hope. I mean, you had, you had space, moon habitat, you had climate change, potential solutions. You have new functionality that we've been waiting for. And, you know, I've watch every episode of Star Trek and SkyNet and kind of SkyNet going on air. >> The robots. >> Robots running cubes, robot cubes host someday. >> Yeah. >> You never know. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. Okay. That's theCUBE here. Wrapping up re:MARS. I'm John Furrier You're watching theCUBE, stay with us for the next event. Next time. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

perfect all right we're good uh muhammad you ready yeah i have a watery eyes always so i always tell my interviewers or the producers that sometimes it shouldn't there shouldn't be a problem in the 10-minute window but well yeah so do that while i'm talking you'll see it on the return feed it's a little delayed but and most people have tears when they see dave vellante yeah i i have that effect on people thanks for that okay we all said we good leonard why don't you go alex bye-bye yeah alex got the i just got the thumbs up we're good okay muhammad here we go on dave in five four three we continue now with the network powering hybrid work now we just heard from lawrence wang on the rapid move to wi-fi 6e which is going to increase wi-fi efficiency enable routers and devices to more efficiently use bandwidth and that additional spectrum that lawrence talked about that means more wi-fi channels which is really going to help reduce overlap between networks and make a noticeable difference especially in crowded places we're here now with muhammad imam who's senior director of product management for catalyst switching this is a multi-billion dollar business for cisco if you ever listen to cisco's earnings calls you'll hear the cfo scott heron he'll talk about the catalyst 9000 and double-digit growth and switching this is the fastest ramping product in cisco's history so muhammad that's got to make you feel pretty good yes indeed thank you david and thank you for having me here yeah great to have you so uh look catalyst 9000 it's been really successful what does the 9000x bring to the table for your customers yeah absolutely and um indeed the catalyst 9000 family of switches have been extremely popular with our customers as you said fastest ramping product in cisco's history and the last four or five years we have really evolved the catalyst 9000 family of switches to a very comprehensive product portfolio um addressing the various enterprise use cases that that we that we address but now we see increase in demand on the networks and that really stems from some of the most recent trends that we are seeing right part of it is hybrid workspaces is going to be a video dominant hybrid workspace right a lot of cases is going to be high definition 4k 8k videos we are seeing cloud-based applications everywhere right my spreadsheet is used to be on excel sheet now it's either an office 365 or smartsheets my files used to be on my computer now it's on in the dropbox right so these are trends that are really uh putting pressure on our networks we are also seeing trends where vr headsets are becoming common they are being used for trainings and education use cases webex hologram in certain industries we are seeing robotics are becoming more and more popular and they come with a lot of um applications that are very latency sensitive and as lawrence mentioned earlier wi-fi 6e is really making over the year multi gigabit wi-fi possible right and for all of these different trends and the recent technologies that that are evolving we really need the network that can really address and deliver for these applications and that's where we are bringing the catalyst 9000 x that addresses the increase in network demand we are expanding the catalyst 9000 family with top-of-line premium introductions in the access layer of the switches of the network as well as in the aggregation and core layers so we are bringing 400 gig high-speed core and enterprise core and edge layers of the network we are bringing point-to-point ip ipsec security which will give you 100 gig of ipsec encryption um high density of multi-gigabit which is becoming very common as we evolve our wi-fi networks because we don't want our wired infrastructure to be the bottleneck when the wireless infrastructure is capable of going more than a gig high density of 90 watt powering the smart buildings use cases right right um these are all different use cases that are being enabled by the catalyst 9000 and the new getless 9000x family is really addressing some of these new trends and applications well it's good because the metaverse is coming too and we're going to need some help with that right who knows how much bandwidth will need for metabolism absolutely yeah guarantee will be a lot more but so i want to i want to hear more about the the new products that you've just launched and maybe how these offerings are going to help with this new hybrid work model that we've just been discussing absolutely so let me start with the catalyst 9300 we are introducing the catalyst 9300x which is the highest density full multi-gigabit platform with 100 gig uplinks and 90 watt of power on every port available right that's an industry first that we are bringing on the catalyst 9300 family it is also capable of one terabit per second of a stacking which is also unheard of in the industry this will serve our customers with all the new trends that we talked about including the hybrid world um and some of the new trends that are going to come in the next decade but 9300x is not just a high-end campus switch it can also be a lean branch and a box solution where you don't really need an sd van but you do need an encryption point to point from the catalyst 93 from your front branch with the catalyst 9300x to the data center or to the cloud so for the first time we are introducing the ipsec based encryption natively in the hardware and that means no compromise on performance and you can get up to 100 gig of encrypted traffic with the catalyst 9300x second is the catalyst 9400 we are introducing soup 2 and soup 2 xl with 100 gig uplinks enhancing and the the scale and performance giving our customers options for fully loaded line rate multi give it board on a 10 slot chassis right it will give you two to three times bandwidth boost to your existing line cards since it completely removes the over subscriptions and you know the soup 2 on the catalyst 9400 is coming up with the version of the asic that we used in the past on the catalyst 9600 that means it's also bringing the core capabilities that we used that we today have on 9600 on the catalyst 9400 and that brings high density 10 gig um ports on the catalyst 9400 without over subscription right with the core capabilities then we have the catalyst 9600 where we are introducing is supervisor 2 which really triples the bandwidth per slot on the catalyst 98600 it introduces 400 gig uplink and truly drives the transition to 200 gig in the core get 6k customers uh with excel scale requirements now they can transition to the cat 9k with soup 2. and by the way we are also introducing a combo line card on the catalyst 9600 which means now you don't have to burn a whole slot for your uplink pores in fact you can get up to 400 gig of uplink with this new line card um so that's that's a bunch of things that we are bringing on the catalyst 9600 in line with catalyst 9600 we are also introducing catalyst 9500x 100 gig box with 400 gig uplinks in a fixed form factor and all the benefits that i just talked about on the on the supervisor 2 and 9600 it's also available in a fixed form factor on catalyst 9500x got it so that's in summary kind of the multiple uh product lines that we are introducing yeah it's a lot to unpack there i mean your the big theme there of course is optionality you got a lot of choices for customers i love the encrypt everything without a trade-off you know no performance impact and anytime you can reduce my oversubscription it's going to make me happy you know muhammad we've reported in our breaking analysis segments the importance of custom silicon and not every company has the resources or the expertise to develop their own silicon cisco of course does catalyst 9k is bringing silicon 1 based products with this launch tell us more about that why is this important yeah that's really exciting development that we have on the cad 9k family because you know the silicon one is a powerful asic that enables high performance and high scale with modern silicon architecture bringing the architect a converged architecture for switching as well as routing cad 9k as we know has been running on a uadp asic which has been a programmable asic it has served us really well so far on the cat9k family but with the silicon one we are taking it to another level silicon one brings the capabilities of uadp asic and unlocks the excel scale and high performance in the enterprise switches this is a critical and foundational element to meet the core requirement for the next ticket silicon one is a 12.8 terabits per second chip supports up to 10 million routes supports much deeper buffers brings multi-slice voq architectures with this new architecture silicon 1a6 has paved the way to transition the cad 6k xl deployments to cat 9k right so that's kind of the the um the silicon one uh importance in the ket99k family that we are bringing now yeah and it brings differentiation a lot of people kind of sometimes don't appreciate that but but when you have the control like that you can do things that you might not be able to do with off-the-shelf silicon but so but i i want to ask you what about customers that previously purchased from you as you evolve the portfolio to 9k x how do you protect their investment yeah thank you for asking that question because when we started building the cad 9k we always thought about investment protection for our customers so if you buy today how you will have a very long life for that for that product and you will be able to unlock new powers on that platform that you have purchased maybe five years back right that's exactly what we are doing with the catalyst 199000x talking about modular right on the modular side the supervisors that that that we are introducing now are backward compatible with the line cars that you already have in some cases the lime card throughput is doubling and tripling because now you have a new machine that is going to power these line cards right so you don't have to change your line card you just change your supervisor and you have much higher performance and scale with this new supervisor similarly on the stackables you can stack with the existing catalyst 9300s for example and you will be able to you don't have to rip and replace everything it's not a forklift upgrade for our customers you can continue benefiting from your existing catalyst 9000 deployments and add to the power with the catalyst 9000x components as well as new platforms that we are introducing nice that's key this just speaks to the software content that you guys i know you have a lot of software engineers running around and this is welcome to the 2020s folks new world you know i i muhammad zero trust was kind of a buzzword before the pandemic but it's really become a mainstream topic today we talked about the infrastructure we know security has to be built in from the start it can't be bolted on and zero trust is really top of mind for customers how are their security requirements changing as a result of hybrid work and and how do you make sure that as we shift to hybrid that these new security requirements are addressed what are you doing there absolutely and we know as you said security is top of mind for our customers in fact security has been highlighted as the number one reason why a lot of customers pick cisco and cat9k we have a comprehensive zero truss architecture with software defined access where we started with segmentation and expanded into endpoint classification and visibility now we are taking that to the next level and we are introducing talus powered truss assessment for unmanaged endpoints to further make the the workplace is stronger with zero trust and software defined access truss analytics it detects traffic from end points that are exhibiting unusual um behavior by pretending to be um using a mag spoofing or probe is spoofing or man the metal techniques when truss analytics detects such anomalies it signals endpoint analytics to lower the trusted score so we have a trusted score system when when the trusted score goes down it shows up on the dashboard and the network admin can completely deny or limit the access to the network from these endpoints from other security aspect that we are introducing and i touched on that briefly earlier is um for non-sdvan internet only branches where we are where where services security services might be in the cloud right that's a trend that we are seeing to secure that connectivity from a lean branch to the cloud we are introducing the ipsec capability with the catalyst 9300x and that's built in as as we just talked about and as far as the automation is concerned for these use cases they are we are bringing those automation with our command center the cisco dna center and we are bringing the full life cycle of automation as well as assurance for the secure connectivity that is being provided with the with the cisco dna center well a couple takeaways there for me i mean endpoint security has really become much more important up for obvious reasons when you have remote workers the built-in ipsec just that really emphasizes that you got to have it you know built in from the ground up you can't just bolt it on and the automation is key the number one problem that csos face is you know lack of talent so automation you know definitely helps helps with that so okay muhammad thank you so much really appreciate you coming on in a moment we'll look at private 5g and what's been happening at mobile world congress you're watching cube's coverage of the network powering hybrid work made possible by cisco

from the VMware campus in Palo Alto California it's the Cuban covering women transforming technologies hi I'm Lisa Martin on the ground with the cube at VMware in Palo Alto at the third annual women transforming Technology event and we're here with a cube alumni Betsy Sutter SVP & chief people officer at V and we're so great to have you back on the cube thank you it's great to be here this is a very exciting day yes I love these types of events because you walk in and you just feel the sense of community and empowerment and and that's one of the great things that WT squared is in in and of itself its acronym of organizations that's right industry academia and nonprofits to help women connect learn from each other and support each other not just here in Silicon Valley but beyond and this is 30 annual this was sold out like within hours yes amazing amazing momentum that you guys have brought now to the third year great yeah we're really excited we're really excited and it's a new approach right it's creating as you said a consortium of companies to come together and just have real-time conversations about what's going on around gender equality and so yeah I'm really proud of this conference mostly because it just brings such a diverse set of people together men and women we have more men attending this year than ever before and so the conversations are just elevated they're fun yeah so you started at VMware when I was a startup with about a hundred people and here you were now managing this organization that of 20,000 people yeah big undertaking yeah talk to me about kind of the cultural change in shifts that you've seen and probably been able to drive from you know the last 15 years or so yeah you know the culture has been a pretty deliberate strategy from day one and I give the first CEO and founder Diane Greene a tremendous amount of credit for being really clear about what she wanted to build and she really wanted to build a sustainable company and a culture and she knew culture was the differentiator and even the current CEO today Pat Gallagher and I know that this is the single biggest differentiator that we can continue to strengthen in the company and then all the diversity inclusion and conversations are just part of that at this point in time but it was a deliberate regi plain and simple always keeping an eye on that and the values are at the core of that right and then the culture and the behavior reflect the values and so it's just been steadfast and stalwart on who we want to be over the past 20 years it's our 20th anniversary as a company and yeah I've been here for 17 of those but that's the work that I've really focused on it's been terrific that being deliberate is really key there yep so this third event inclusion in action is the theme yep how do you see that Bing how do you how do you live that and infiltrate that at VMware yeah well you know we are a company that has wanted to disrupt the tech space and so in order to do that we've had to stay focused on innovation innovation innovation and we really innovate in everything not just in our technology and our products but how we bring them to market how we support them but it also affects a lot of the work that I do in my space and in order to innovate you have to be inclusive of just a lot of different viewpoints and I like to say that we started out sort of in as an industrial research kind of company we were born out of Stanford a lot of computer science you know graduate students creating what we've now become and that's just been kind of the path is just collaboration even though we're 22,000 people now we still kind of take that approach to everything we do and speaking of Stanford big news out yes morning yeah gratulations thank you is investing 15 million dollars in a new women's leadership Innovation Lab that's right Danford that's amazing yeah we're thrilled we are so excited and Shelly Carell professor of sociology at Stanford we our partnership has been with Stanford since 2013 I think they've really helped us navigate everything that we've done in the inclusion and diversity space and so this is a new chapter and it's around women's leadership and it's around women's leadership and innovation and this lab I think is gonna reap some great results research based work is sort of at the heart and soul who we are right and so this is just more of that it's gonna be great to take progressive research groundbreaking research and put it into practice and so Shelley and I couldn't be more excited about what's next awesome well one of the interesting things is I was reading in the press release this morning that came out that according to McKinsey companies with diversity at the executive level 21 percent write more profitable that's right why aren't more companies even paying attention you know that that is a great question because most companies are about making money and wanting to be profitable yeah so it's it's perplexing that people aren't really honing in on what research is showing but you know suddenly it comes down to power and influence it's all about who has the power and who has the influence and so part of what we're doing with Stanford VMware Women's Leadership Innovation Lab is figuring out how to get women into more leadership positions and get them into more powerful and influential positions and that will be the thing that equalizes you know gender inequality so in the last six months we have had big movements me too yeah time's up yep growtopia there I'm Emily Chang published recently right how when you when you when that first came out with all the Harvey Weinstein stuff teachers say good we need to be able to get to leverage this moment and was that do you see that as being pulled into the tech industry and and helping to accelerate making this diversity change i I think things are getting accelerated and amplified because I think voices are being used and heard and I think there's a movement and I think women are coming together as a consortium around their gender and understanding that the real issues are around power and influence and tackling it head-on and the quality of the conversations around all of these movements is it's inspiring to me after spending 30 odd years in tech so I think things are really starting to change because women are using their voices yeah speaking of women using their voices you had Laila Ali as a keynote yeah that was so fantastic strong confident woman yeah who the daughter of Muhammad Ali who tried to talk her out of becoming a fighter right tried to - I love how she said he tried to actually kind of get me I think it was my idea to not go into it right so obviously a woman probably born with a lot of natural confidence but I loved how she kind of talked to all of us and said he sometimes that light goes out or its dimmed and I need to remind myself with you our best yeah so you probably see a good amount of females that have that sort of innate confidence that love engineering and I'm gonna do this how do you encourage those women to may be mentor some of the of the either younger or not other females who want to do something but are intimidated by you know maybe don't have that natural confidence how do you kind of facility at that empowerment yeah well I do think Leila's story is amazing and you know most importantly she's an entrepreneur and a businesswoman right I mean what she's done with her career with her foundation but what she's done with her career is most impressive and I love that digging deep and find that warrior from within yeah but I think for women today I think the difference is that we're able to have the conversation with each other and even with the opposite sex and I think companies are starting to understand that if you don't have diversity you're not going to have innovation and you're not going to win and most companies that I've worked for and VMware in particular we want to win we want to lead we want to disrupt and we want to impact the world and we want and need to make money as well but I think for women now the conversation is allowed I know that people are listening on both sides of the fence and we do a lot of VMware just to make sure that conversation is alive one of the things I'm really proud of it VMware and that I really believe is it's been the quality of the conversations since day one that have put us where we are in the world and in the industry and as a company and so the conversation shifting a little bit right we're talking more about this and it's those quality conversations that just keep it going and and that's sort of core to who we are so we'll just continue that trend and it's great being able to talk to the cube because you're allowing us to amplify the quality of the conversation so I'm grateful and we're happy to be a part of that so just just the about the event there are a number of tracks right also that was something that I was mentioned to you before we we started filming was I loved that when I walked in there was a jot yeah I love that and as well as a LinkedIn profile right resume clinic all of these you think minor things those can be really impact that's right if a woman has a great head challenge wow this is fantastic or somebody guiding her on what or what not to put on a LinkedIn profile just even providing some of these things that are foundational yep that's really huge it is really huge and it's also just a new platform for these conversations to continue whether it's just a visual because you're looking at my LinkedIn headshot or my Twitter feed or whatever it is but these are all really small things but matter really small things really matter yes and so building those up into people's psyches and their abilities is sort of what we're trying to do as part of the conference so in context of the third annual event the sold-out events and this great announcement of what VMware and Stanford are doing yeah what are some of those quick wins or exciting ones that you're looking forward to seeing the rest of 2018 yeah I think I love that question I think the key is continuing to join forces to continue to lock arms and continue the conversations and so a lot of what I love to do professionally and personally is create those platforms for people to do those kinds of things and that's what women transforming technology is about this year and has been about the last two years and I think we'll just continue to do that and people will tell us what we need to know and where we need to go awesome if you look back at your career would you have forecast your success being you know the chief people officer is c-level or would you yeah you know what was that yeah I met such that's it I'm just starting at this point in my career to really reflect on that no I never imagined having this amount of responsibility and privilege never in my wildest dreams it wasn't an aspirational goal I knew that I wanted as much influence as I could have to achieve results I'm a professional problem solver this is a pretty meaty problem that we're tackling but no I I didn't a dream it now I feel a huge amount of responsibility to start to talk about it I'm a I think I mentioned you I'm a behind-the-scenes kind of person I like to work back there understanding the problem diagnosing it coming up with a solution and then helping implement it but now it's time to kind of talk about what's happened and where we are and set course for the future with so many wonderful women last question for you yep because the attrition rate is so high for females in technology yeah what advice would you give to a woman who's on the cusp of leaving not to sort of family but just going I'm not sure I feel supported here what advice would you give her yeah I would give that person and I do give this advice on the right to go out and have lots of conversations and just start those conversations you just don't know what you don't know and I've had women come to me and at the end of 45 minutes to an hour tell me they're thinking about doing something else and it saddens me especially if they're at vmware because i don't want them to leave but go out and have those conversations and explore what's next don't be afraid of the conversation and sharing what's happening to you with you at your work and events like women transforming technology are only going to help continue to get more eyes and ears on every side of whatever gap we've got aware of this and help all of us become part of the solution that's right to accelerate diversity because as the data show companies could be far more profitable if they've got that thought diversity that's exactly right and it's just that simple but it's just that difficult exactly yeah it was that simple well Betsy thank you so much but a pleasure joining us and allowing us to be part of the voice and getting this away it's out there for women transforming technology as well as helping to hopefully empower and inspire all of the current and future generations yeah attack no I really appreciate you being here - thank you our pleasure yeah we want to thank you for watching the cube I'm Lisa Martin on the ground at women transforming Technology thanks for watching [Music]

(electronic music) >> Announcer: From the VMware campus in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE! Covering women transforming technology. >> Hi, welcome to theCube. Lisa Martin on the ground at the 3rd Annual Women Transforming Technology event at VMware in Palo Alto, and I'm joined by an author and a senior VMware engineer, Pratima Rao Gluckman. Welcome to the Cube, Pratima. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here >> It's great to have you here. So you have been an engineer here for about ten years. You knew from when you were a kid, love this, engineer, you knew you wanted to be that. You fell in love with your first programming class. It was like a Jerry McGuire, you complete me kind of moment I'm imagining. Tell me a little bit about your career in engineering and specifically as a female. >> Okay, so I was raised, born and raised, in India, and I grew up in an environment where I was gender blind. You know, my oldest sister played cricket for the country. >> Lisa: Wow! >> And it was a man's game! You know and a lot of people kind of talked about that, but it wasn't like she couldn't do it, right? So, I always grew up with this notion that I could do anything, and I could be whoever I wanted to be. And then I came to the United States, and that whole narrative stayed with me, the meritocracy narrative. Like you work hard, you know, society, the world will take care of you, and good things will happen, but it wasn't until 2016 was when I had this aha moment, and that's when I suddenly felt, suddenly I was aware of my gender, and I was like, okay I'm a female in tech, and there's lots of challenges for women in tech. And I didn't quite realize that. It was just that aha moment, and VMware has been a great company. I've been with VMware for nine years, I started as an engineer, and I moved into engineering management. We had Diane Greene who founded the company, the culture was always meritocratic, but I think something in 2016 kind of made me just thinking about my career and thinking about the careers of the women around me, I felt like we were stuck. But at the same time be focused on the women that were successful, for instance Yanbing Li, who's our senior VP and general manager of our storage business. And we were talking about her, and I said, this is what I said, I said, "There are some women who are successful despite everything "that we're dealing with, and I just want "to know their stories, and I'm going to write this book." The moment I said that it just felt right. I felt like this was something I wanted to do, and the stories in this book are inspiring stories of these women, just listening to Laila Ali this morning, her inspirational story, and this book has around 19 stories of these executive women, and they're just not role models, I mean every story offers strategies of how to thrive in the tech world. >> So interesting that first of all I love the title, Pratima, of this book, "Nevertheless She Persisted." So simple, so articulate, and so inspiring. So interesting, though, that you were working as an engineer for quite a few years before you realized, kind of looked around, like, whoa, this is a challenge that I'm actually living in. Yanbing is a CUBE alumni, I love her Twitter handle. So you said all right, I want to talk to some women who have been persistent and successful in their tech careers, as kind of the genesis of the book. Talk to us about, maybe, of those 19 interviews that range from, what, c-levels to VPs to directors. What are some of the stories that you found, what kind of blew your mind of, wow, I didn't know that you came from that kind of background? >> So when I started off I was very ambitious. I said I'd go interview CEO women, and I did a lot of research, and I found some very disturbing facts. You know, Fortune Magazine lists Fortune 500 companies, and they rank them based on their prior year's fiscal revenues, and from that data there were 24 women CEOs in 2014. That number dropped to 21 in 2015, and it dropped again in 2016, but it went up slightly in 2017 to 32 women, which is promising, but back in 2018 we're down to 24. So we have very very few women CEOs, and when I started off I said I'll talk to the CEO women, and I couldn't find any CEO women, my network, my friends' network, And so I dropped one level and I said let me go talk to SVPs and when I looked at VMware and VMware's network, Yanbing was one of them, so she's in the book, and then I reached out to contacts outside of my network. So I have some women from LinkedIn, I have Google, I have Facebook, I have some women from startups. So I have around four CEOs in the book, I've got, and what's great about this book is it's got a diverse set of women. Right? They have different titles; I've got directors, senior directors, VPs, Senior VPs, GMs, and CEOs. And some of them have PhDs, some of them have a Master's Degree, and some actually don't have formal training in computer science. I thought this would be interesting because a woman with any background can relate to it. Right? And so that was helpful. And so that's kind of how I went off and I started to write this book. And when I interviewed these women, there was a common theme that just kept emerging, and that was persistence. And they persisted against gender bias, stereotype threat, just the negative messages from media and society. I mean like Laila Ali was talking about just even the messages she got from her dad. >> Right. >> Right? Someone who was so close to her who basically said "Women can't box." And that didn't stop her; I mean she persisted. When I was listening to her, she didn't use the word, but, you know, she said she was believing in herself and all that, but she persisted through all those negative messages, right? And she said no one can tell her what to do. (laughs) >> Yeah her confidence is very loud and clear, and I think that you do find women, and I imagine some of them are some of the interviewees in your book, who have that natural confidence, and as you were saying when Muhammad Ali was trying to talk her out of it, and trying to, as she said, "He tried to get me think it was my idea," but she just knew, well no, this is what I want to do. And she had that confidence. Did you find that a lot of the women leaders in this book had that natural confidence? Like you grew up in an environment where you just believed "I can do this, my sister's playing cricket." Did you find that was a common thread, or did you find some great examples of women who wanted to do something, but just thought "Can I do this?" And "How do I do that?" What was the kind of confidence level that you saw? >> I was surprised because I had a question on imposter syndrome, and I asked these women, Telle Whiteney, who's the CEO, she was the CEO, ex-CEO >> Lisa: Grace Hopper >> Yes. The founder of Grace Hopper. I asked her about imposter syndrome and this is what she told me, she said "I feel like I'm not good enough" and that actually gave me goosebumps. I remember I was sitting in front of greatness and this is what she was telling me. And then I asked her "How do you overcome it?" and she said "I just show up the next day." And that actually helped me with this book because I am not an author. >> That's persistence. >> I mean I am an author now but 2 years ago when I started to write this, writing is not my forte. I'm a technologist, I build teams, I manage teams, I ship products, I ship technical products, but everyday I woke up and I said, "I'm feeling like an imposter." It was just her voice right? Yanbing also feels the same way, I mean she does feel times where she feels like, "I'm lacking confidence here." Majority of the people actually, pretty much all the women, this one woman, Patty Hatter, didn't feel like she had imposter syndrome but the rest of them face it everyday. Talia Malachi who's a principal engineer at VMWare, it's very hard to be a PE, she said that she fights it every day, and that was surprising to me, right? Because I was sitting in front of all these women, they were confident, they've achieved so much, but they struggle with that every day. But all they do is they persist, they show up the next day. They take those little steps and they have these goals and they're very intentional and purposeful, I mean just like what Layla said, right? She said, "Everything that I've done in the last 20 years "has been intentional and purposeful." And that's what these women did. And I learned so much from them because 20 years ago I was a drifter (laughs) you know I just kind drifted and I didn't realize that I could set a goal and I could reach it and I could do all these amazing things, and I didn't think any of this was possible for me. But I'm hoping that some girl somewhere can read this book and say "You know what this is possible", right? This is possible and you know role models, I think we need lots of these role models. >> We do I think, you know imposter syndrome I've suffered for it for so long before I even knew what it was and I'll be honest with you even finding out that it was a legitimate issue was (exhales) okay I'm not the only one. So I think it's important that you, that these women and youth are your voice, in your book, identified it. This is something I face everyday even though you may look at me on the outside and think, "She's so successful, she's got everything." And we're human. And Laila Ali talked about of having to revisit that inner lawyer, that sometimes she goes silent, sometimes the pilot light goes out and needs to be reignited or turned back up. I think that is just giving people permission, especially women, and I've felt that in the keynote, giving us permission to go, "Ah, you're not going to feel that everyday, "you're not going to feel it everyday." Get up the next day to your point, keep persisting and pursuing your purpose is in and of itself so incredibly empowering. >> Right but also imposter syndrome is good for you and I talk about that a little bit in the book. And you know why it's good for you? It's you getting out of your comfort zone, you're trying something different, and it's natural to feel that way, but once you get over it, you've mastered that, and Laila talked about it too today she said, "You get uncomfortable to the point "where you get comfortable." >> Lisa: Yes. >> So every time that you find that you have this imposter syndrome, just remember that greatness is right around the corner. >> Yep. I always say "Get uncomfortably uncomfortable". >> Pratima: Yes. >> And I loved how she said that today. So one of the big news of the day is VMWare with Stanford announcing that they are investing $15,000,000 in a new Women's Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford. Phenomenal. >> Pratima: Yes. >> And they're really going to start studying diversity and there's so many different gaps that we face, wage gap, age gap, gender gap, you know mothers vs motherless gap, and one of the things that was really interesting that, I've heard this before, that the press release actually cited a McKinsey report that says, "Companies with diversity "on their executive staff are 21% more profitable." >> Yes. >> And that just seems like a, no duh, Kind of thing to me for organizations like VMWare and your other partners in this consortium of Wt Squared to get on board to say, "Well of course." Thought diversity is so important and it actually is demonstrated to impact a companies' profitability. >> Right, yeah. And that's true, I just hope that more people listen to it and internalize it, and organizations internalize that, and what VMWare's doing is fantastic. I mean I'm so proud to be part of this company that's doing this. And you Shelly talked about change right? She said, "I think, right now the way I feel "about this whole thing, is we need to stop talking about "diversity and inclusion, we just need to say "enough is enough, this is important, let's just do it." >> Lisa: We should make this a part of our DNA. >> Exactly. Just make it, why do we have to fight for all this, right? It's just pointless and you know, men have wives and daughters and mothers and you know, It impacts societies as a whole and organizations, and we have so much research on this and what I like about what the Stanford Research Lab is doing is, they're actually working with woman all the way from middle-school to high-school to the executive suite, and that's amazing because research has now shown, there was a report in March 2014 by a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, for Judith Warner, and so she documented, just with the rate of change, like I talked with all the percentages and the number of women CEOs, just with that rate of change, the equality of men and women at the top will not occur until 2085. >> Lisa: Oh my goodness. >> That's 63 years from now. That means all our daughters would be retired by then. My daughters was born on 2013 and so she won't live in a world of female leaders that's representative of the population. And so that realization actually really, really, really broke my heart and that made me want to write this book, to create these role models. And what Stanford is doing, is they're going to work on this and I'm hoping that they can make that transition sooner. Like we don't have to wait 'till 2085. I want this for my daughter. >> It has to be accelerated, yes. >> It has to be accelerated and I think all of us need to do that, our daughters should be in the 20s, 30s when this happens, not when they're in their 70s. >> Lisa: And retired. >> And retired, I mean we don't want that. And we don't know how that number's going to get pushed further, right? Like if we don't do anything now... It. (exhales) >> Lisa: Right. 2085 becomes, what? >> I know! It's insane. >> In the spirit of being persistent, with the theme of this 3rd annual Wt Squared being Inclusion in Action, you're a manager and in a people or hiring role, tell me about the culture on your team and how your awareness and your passion for creating change here, lasting change. How are you actually creating that inclusion through action in your role at VMWare? >> So what I do is when I have to hire engineers on my team, I talk to my recruiter, have a conversation, I'm like, "I need more diversity." It's just not women, I want diversity with the men too. I want different races, different cultures because I believe that if I have a diverse team I'm going to be successful. So it's almost like I'm being selfish but that is very important. So I have that conversation with my recruiters, so I kind have an expectation set. And then we go through their hiring process and I'm very aware of just the hiring panel, like who I put on the panel, I make sure to have at least a women on the panel and have some diversity. My team right now is not really that diverse and I'm working hard to make that because it is hard, you know the pipeline has to get built at a certain point, and then start getting those resumes, but I try to have at least one female on the panel, and during the selection process the first thing I'll tell them is, let's get the elephant out of the room, age, gender, whatever, like let's take that out, let's just talk about skills and how well this person has done in an interview. And that's how I conducted and you know I've had fairly good success of hiring women on the team. But I've also seen that it's hard to retain women because they tend to drop-out faster than the men and so it's constant, it's just constant work to make that happen. >> Yeah. I wish we had more time to talk about retention because it is a huge issue. So the book is Nevertheless, She Persisted. Where can people get a copy of the book? >> So you can get it on Amazon, that's, I think, the best place to get it. You can also get it from my publisher's site which is FriesenPress. >> Excellent well Pratima thank you so much for stopping by. >> Thank you. >> And sharing your passion, how your persisting, and how you're also helping more of us learn how to find that voice and pursue our passions, thank you. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching. We are TheCUBE on the ground at VMWare for the Third Annual Women Transforming Technology Event. I'm Lisa Martin thanks for watching. (upbeat music)