(gentle instrumental music) >> Okay, we're back with Tom Christensen who's the global technology advisor and executive analyst at Hitachi Vantara. And we're exploring how Hitachi Vantara 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 07-08 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 IT. 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 nowadays 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 follow the human rights and sustainability, three 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 themselves as the CEO, but they also are 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 tables. I get that pressure every day, every week, every quarter. But where is the pressure coming from? Well, the pressure is coming from end 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 three pressures that we see. But when we talk to CFOs as an example, we are beginning to see that they have a new score 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 store system, cost has the highest priority and number two is sustainability. It weighs 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." But 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 maker 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, and we saw the EU leading with privacy and GDPR, and it looks like it's going to lead again here. Just shifting gears, I've been to a number of Hitachi facilities in my day. Odawara 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 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 reduce transportation for the factory out to our customers. But you know, in the EMEA region, back in 2013, we created a new factory. And when we did that, we were asked to do it in an energy neutral way, which means that we are moving from being powered by black energy to green energy in that factory. And we built a factory with concrete walls that were extremely thick to make it cold in the summertime and hot in the wintertime, with minimum energy consumption. But we also put 17,000 square meters of solar panels on the roof to power that factory. We were collecting rain water to flush it in the toilet. We were removing light bulbs with LED. And when we send out our equipment to our customers, we put it in a rack, 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 EMEA 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 in 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 the 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 want to come back to the economics, but before I do, I want to pick up on something you just said, because you hear the slogan, "Sustainability by design." A lot of people might think, "Okay, that's just a marketing slogan to vector 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, the factory is just one example of what you need to do to reduce the CO2 emission in that part of the life of 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 new 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's a technology innovator and our answer is to reduce the CO2 emission, and the decarbonization of the 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? Where does that fit? I mean, the other day it was... A lot of times at a hotel you used to get bottled water now you get plant-based waters in a box 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 because 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 want to do when you keep it for 10 years, is to upgrade only parts of the system. So let's say that you need more CPU power, you just 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 disk media, flash media, even media that doesn't exist today will be supported over those 10 years. You can change your protocol 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 computer network and switches, but we also take competitive 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 the landfill afterwards. The recycling economics is 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 circular economics, where you actually buy material, make it, put it into production, and you reuse as much as you can. And only 1-2% 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 do want to come back to the economics, because in the early days of so-called green IT, there was a lot of talk about, "Well 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 understand it's going to take some time, but help us understand your experience there Tom. >> Yeah, let me try to explain that one. 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 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 emission 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 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 U.S. 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 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. 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 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 see in this round table when we have sustainability officers in the room, is that they are 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 in 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 there will immediately be a 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. (gentle instrumental music)

>>In the early part of this century, we're talking about the 2005 to 2007 timeframe. There was a lot of talk about so-called green it. And at that time there was some organizational friction. Like for example, the line was that the CIO never saw the power bill, so he or she didn't care, or that the facilities folks, they rarely talked to the IT department. So it was kind of that split brain. And, and then the oh 7 0 8 financial crisis really created an inflection point in a couple of ways. First, it caused organizations to kind of pump the brakes on it spending, and then they took their eye off the sustainability ball. And the second big trend, of course, was the cloud model, you know, kind of became a benchmark for it. Simplicity and automation and efficiency, the ability to dial down and dial up capacity as needed. >>And the third was by the end of the first decade of the, the two thousands, the technology of virtualization was really hitting its best stride. And then you had innovations like flash storage, which largely eliminated the need for these massive farms of spinning mechanical devices that sucked up a lot of power. And so really these technologies began their march to mainstream adoption. And as we progressed through the 2020s, the effect of climate change really come into focus as a critical component of esg. Environmental, social, and governance. Shareholders have come to demand metrics around sustainability. Employees are often choosing employers based on their ESG posture. And most importantly, companies are finding that savings on power cooling and footprint, it has a bottom line impact on the income statement. Now you add to that the energy challenges around the world, particularly facing Europe right now, the effects of global inflation and even more advanced technologies like machine intelligence. >>And you've got a perfect storm where technology can really provide some relief to organizations. Hello and welcome to the Path to Sustainable It Made Possible by Pure Storage and Collaboration with the Cube. My name is Dave Valante and I'm one of the host of the program, along with my colleague Lisa Martin. Now, today we're gonna hear from three leaders on the sustainability topic. First up, Lisa will talk to Nicole Johnson. She's the head of Social Impact and Sustainability at Pure Storage. Nicole will talk about the results from a study of around a thousand sustainability leaders worldwide, and she'll share some metrics from that study. And then next, Lisa will speak to AJ Singh. He's the Chief Product Officer at Pure Storage. We've had had him on the cube before, and not only will he share some useful stats in the market, I'll also talk about some of the technology innovations that customers can tap to address their energy consumption, not the least of which is ai, which is is entering every aspect of our lives, including how we deal with energy consumption. And then we'll bring it back to our Boston studio and go north of Italy with Mattia Ballero of Elec Informatica, a services provider with deep expertise on the topic of sustainability. We hope you enjoyed the program today. Thanks for watching. Let's get started >>At Pure Storage, the opportunity for change and our commitment to a sustainable future are a direct reflection of the way we've always operated and the values we live by every day. We are making significant and immediate impact worldwide through our environmental sustainability efforts. The milestones of change can be seen everywhere in everything we do. Pure's Evergreen Storage architecture delivers two key environmental benefits to customers, the reduction of wasted energy and the reduction of e-waste. Additionally, Pure's implemented a series of product packaging redesigns, promoting recycled and reuse in order to reduce waste that will not only benefit our customers, but also the environment. Pure is committed to doing what is right and leading the way with innovation. That has always been the pure difference, making a difference by enabling our customers to drive out energy usage and their data storage systems by up to 80%. Today, more than 97% of pure arrays purchased six years ago are still in service. And tomorrow our goal for the future is to reduce Scope three. Emissions Pure is committing to further reducing our sold products emissions by 66% per petabyte by 2030. All of this means what we said at the beginning, change that is simple and that is what it has always been about. Pure has a vision for the future today, tomorrow, forever. >>Hi everyone, welcome to this special event, pure Storage, the Path to Sustainable it. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Very pleased to be joined by Nicole Johnson, the head of Social Impact and Sustainability at Pure Storage. Nicole, welcome to the Cube. Thanks >>For having me, Lisa. >>Sustainability is such an important topic to talk about and I understand that Pure just announced a report today about sustainability. What can you tell me what nuggets are in this report? >>Well, actually quite a few really interesting nuggets, at least for us. And I, I think probably for you and your viewers as well. So we actually commissioned about a thousand sustainability leaders across the globe to understand, you know, what are their sustainability goals, what are they working on, and what are the impacts of buying decisions, particularly around infrastructure when it comes to sustainable goals. I think one of the things that was really interesting for us was the fact that around the world we did not see a significant variation in terms of sustainability being a top priority. You've, I'm sure you've heard about the energy crisis that's happening across Europe. And so, you know, there was some thought that perhaps that might play into AMEA being a larger, you know, having sustainability goals that were more significant. But we actually did not find that we found sustainability to be really important no matter where the respondents were located. >>So very interesting at Pure sustainability is really at the heart of what we do and has been since our founding. It's interesting because we set out to make storage really simple, but it turns out really simple is also really sustainable. And the products and services that we bring to our customers have really powerful outcomes when it comes to decreasing their, their own carbon footprints. And so, you know, we often hear from customers that we've actually really helped them to significantly improve their storage performance, but also allow them to save on space power and cooling costs and, and their footprint. So really significant findings. One example of that is a company called Cengage, which is a global education technology company. They recently shared with us that they have actually been able to reduce their overall storage footprint by 80% while doubling to tripling the performance of their storage systems. So it's really critical for, for companies who are thinking about their sustainability goals, to consider the dynamic between their sustainability program and their IT teams who are making these buying decisions, >>Right? Those two teams need to be really inextricably linked these days. You talked about the fact that there was really consistency across the regions in terms of sustainability being of high priority for organizations. You had a great customer story that you shared that showed significant impact can be made there by bringing the sustainability both together with it. But I'm wondering why are we seeing that so much of the vendor selection process still isn't revolving around sustainability or it's overlooked? What are some of the things that you received despite so many people saying sustainability, huge priority? >>Well, in this survey, the most commonly cited challenge was really around the fact that there was a lack of management buy-in. 40% of respondents told us this was the top roadblock. So getting, I think getting that out of the way. And then we also just heard that sustainability teams were not brought into tech purchasing processes until after it's already rolling, right? So they're not even looped in. And that being said, you know, we know that it has been identified as one of the key departments to supporting a company sustainability goals. So we, we really want to ensure that these two teams are talking more to each other. When we look even closer at the data from the respondents, we see some really positive correlations. We see that 65% of respondents reported that they're on track to meet their sustainability goals. And the IT of those 65%, it is significantly engaged with reporting data for those sustainability initiatives. We saw that, that for those who did report, the sustainability is a top priority for vendor selection. They were twice as likely to be on track with their goals and their sustainability directors said that they were getting involved at the beginning of the tech purchasing program. Our process, I'm sorry, rather than towards the end. And so, you know, we know that to curb the impact of climate crisis, we really need to embrace sustainability from a cross-functional viewpoint. >>Definitely has to be cross-functional. So, so strong correlations there in the report that organizations that had closer alignment between the sustainability folks and the IT folks were farther along in their sustainability program development, execution, et cetera, those co was correlations, were they a surprise? >>Not entirely. You know, when we look at some of the statistics that come from the, you know, places like the World Economic Forum, they say that digitization generated 4% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. So, and that, you know, that's now almost three years ago, digital data only accelerates, and by 2025, we expect that number could be almost double. And so we know that that communication and that correlation is gonna be really important because data centers are taking up such a huge footprint of when companies are looking at their emissions. And it's, I mean, quite frankly, a really interesting opportunity for it to be a trailblazer in the sustainability journey. And, you know, perhaps people that are in IT haven't thought about how they can make an impact in this area, but there really is some incredible ways to help us work on cutting carbon emissions, both from your company's perspective and from the world's perspective, right? >>Like we are, we're all doing this because it's something that we know we have to do to drive down climate change. So I think when you, when you think about how to be a trailblazer, how to do things differently, how to differentiate your own department, it's a really interesting connection that IT and sustainability work together. I would also say, you know, I'll just note that of the respondents to the survey we were discussing, we do over half of those respondents expect to see closer alignment between the organization's IT and sustainability teams as they move forward. >>And that's really a, a tip a hat to those organizations embracing cultural change. That's always hard to do, but for those two, for sustainability in IT to come together as part of really the overall ethos of an organization, that's huge. And it's great to see the data demonstrating that, that those, that alignment, that close alignment is really on its way to helping organizations across industries make a big impact. I wanna dig in a little bit to here's ESG goals. What can you share with us about >>That? Absolutely. So as I mentioned peers kind of at the beginning of our formal ESG journey, but really has been working on the, on the sustainability front for a long time. I would, it's funny as we're, as we're doing a lot of this work and, and kind of building our own profile around this, we're coming back to some of the things that we have done in the past that consumers weren't necessarily interested in then but are now because the world has changed, becoming more and more invested in. So that's exciting. So we did a baseline scope one, two, and three analysis and discovered, interestingly enough that 70% of our emissions comes from use of sold products. So our customers work running our products in their data centers. So we know that we, we've made some ambitious goals around our Scope one and two emissions, which is our own office, our utilities, you know, those, they only account for 6% of our emissions. So we know that to really address the issue of climate change, we need to work on the use of sold products. So we've also made a, a really ambitious commitment to decrease our carbon emissions by 66% per bed per petabyte by 2030 in our product. So decreasing our own carbon footprint, but also affecting our customers as well. And we've also committed to a science-based target initiative and our road mapping how to achieve the ambitious goals set out in the Paris agreement. >>That's fantastic. It sounds like you really dialed in on where is the biggest opportunity for us as Pure Storage to make the biggest impact across our organization, across our customers organizations. There lofty goals that pure set, but knowing what I know about Pure, you guys are probably well on track to, to accomplish those goals in record time, >>I hope So. >>Talk a little bit about advice that you would give to viewers who might be at the very beginning of their sustainability journey and really wondering what are the core elements besides it, sustainability, team alignment that I need to bring into this program to make it actually successful? >>Yeah, so I think, you know, understanding that you don't have to pick between really powerful technology and sustainable technology. There are opportunities to get both and not just in storage right in, in your entire IT portfolio. We know that, you know, we're in a place in the world where we have to look at things from the bigger picture. We have to solve new challenges and we have to approach business a little bit differently. So adopting solutions and services that are environmentally efficient can actually help to scale and deliver more effective and efficient IT solutions over time. So I think that that's something that we need to, to really remind ourselves, right? We have to go about business a little bit differently and that's okay. We also know that data centers utilize an incredible amount of, of energy and, and carbon. And so everything that we can do to drive that down is going to address the sustainability goals for us individually as well as, again, drive down that climate change. So we, we need to get out of the mindset that data centers are, are about reliability or cost, et cetera, and really think about efficiency and carbon footprint when you're making those business decisions. I'll also say that, you know, the earlier that we can get sustainability teams into the conversation, the more impactful your business decisions are going to be and helping you to guide sustainable decision making. >>So shifting sustainability and IT left almost together really shows that the correlation between those folks getting together in the beginning with intention, the report shows and the successes that peers had demonstrate that that's very impactful for organizations to actually be able to implement even the cultural change that's needed for sustainability programs to be successful. My last question for you goes back to that report. You mentioned in there that the data show a lot of organizations are hampered by management buy-in, where sustainability is concerned. How can pure help its customers navigate around those barriers so that they get that management buy-in and they understand that the value in it for >>Them? Yeah, so I mean, I think that for me, my advice is always to speak to hearts and minds, right? And help the management to understand, first of all, the impact right on climate change. So I think that's the kind of hearts piece on the mind piece. I think it's addressing the sustainability goals that these companies have set for themselves and helping management understand how to, you know, how their IT buying decisions can actually really help them to reach these goals. We also, you know, we always run kind of TCOs for customers to understand what is the actual cost of, of the equipment. And so, you know, especially if you're in a, in a location in which energy costs are rising, I mean, I think we're seeing that around the world right now with inflation. Better understanding your energy costs can really help your management to understand the, again, the bigger picture and what that total cost is gonna be. Often we see, you know, that maybe the I the person who's buying the IT equipment isn't the same person who's purchasing, who's paying the, the electricity bills, right? And so sometimes even those two teams aren't talking. And there's a great opportunity there, I think, to just to just, you know, look at it from a more high level lens to better understand what total cost of ownership is. >>That's a great point. Great advice. Nicole, thank you so much for joining me on the program today, talking about the new report that on sustainability that Pure put out some really compelling nuggets in there, but really also some great successes that you've already achieved internally on your own ESG goals and what you're helping customers to achieve in terms of driving down their carbon footprint and emissions. We so appreciate your insights and your thoughts. >>Thank you, Lisa. It's been great speaking with you. >>AJ Singh joins me, the Chief Product Officer at Peer Storage. Aj, it's great to have you back on the program. >>Great to be back on, Lisa, good morning. >>Good morning. And sustainability is such an important topic to talk about. So we're gonna really unpack what PEER is doing, we're gonna get your viewpoints on what you're seeing and you're gonna leave the audience with some recommendations on how they can get started on their ESG journey. First question, we've been hearing a lot from pure AJ about the role that technology plays in organizations achieving sustainability goals. What's been the biggest environmental impact associated with, with customers achieving that given the massive volumes of data that keep being generated? >>Absolutely, Lisa, you can imagine that the data is only growing and exploding and, and, and, and there's a good reason for it. You know, data is the new currency. Some people call it the new oil. And the opportunity to go process this data gain insights is really helping customers drive an edge in the digital transformation. It's gonna make a difference between them being on the leaderboard a decade from now when the digital transformation kind of pans out versus, you know, being kind of somebody that, you know, quite missed the boat. So data is super critical and and obviously as part of that we see all these big benefits, but it has to be stored and, and, and that means it's gonna consume a lot of resources and, and the, and therefore data center usage has only accelerated, right? You can imagine the amount of data being generated, you know, recent study pointed to roughly by twenty twenty five, a hundred and seventy five zetabytes, which where each zettabyte is a billion terabytes. So just think of that size and scale of data. That's huge. And, and they also say that, you know, pretty soon, today, in fact in the developed world, every person is having an interaction with the data center literally every 18 seconds. So whether it's on Facebook or Twitter or you know, your email, people are constantly interacting with data. So you can imagine this data is only exploding. It has to be stored and it consumes a lot of energy. In fact, >>It, oh, go ahead. Sorry. >>No, I was saying in fact, you know, there's some studies have shown that data center usage literally consumes one to 2% of global energy consumption. So if there's one place we could really help climate change and, and all those aspects, if you can kind of really, you know, tamp down the data center, energy consumption, sorry, you were saying, >>I was just gonna say, it's, it's an incredibly important topic and the, the, the stats on data that you provided and also I, I like how you talked about, you know, every 18 seconds we're interacting with a data center, whether we know it or not, we think about the long term implications, the fact that data is growing massively. As you shared with the stats that you mentioned. If we think about though the responsibility that companies have, every company in today's world needs to be a data company, right? And we consumers expect it. We expect that you are gonna deliver these relevant, personalized experiences whether we're doing a transaction in our personal lives or in business. But what is the, what requirements do technology companies have to really start billing down their carbon footprints? >>No, absolutely. If you can think about it, just to kind of finish up the data story a little bit, the explosion is to the point where, in fact, if you just recently was in the news that Ireland went up and said, sorry, we can't have any more data centers here. We just don't have the power to supply them. That was big in the news and you know, all the hyperscale that was crashing the head. I know they've come around that and figured out a way around it, but it's getting there. Some, some organizations and and areas jurisdictions are saying pretty much no data center the law, you know, we're, we just can't do it. And so as you said, so companies like Pure, I mean, our view is that it has an opportunity here to really do our bit for climate change and be able to, you know, drive a sustainable environment. >>And, and at Pure we believe that, you know, today's data success really ultimately hinges on energy efficiency, you know, so to to really be energy efficient means you are gonna be successful long term with data. Because if you think of classic data infrastructures, the legacy infrastructures, you know, we've got disk infrastructures, hybrid infrastructures, flash infrastructures, low end systems, medium end systems, high end systems. So a lot of silos, you know, a lot of inefficiency across the silos. Cause the data doesn't get used across that. In fact, you know, today a lot of data centers are not really built with kind of the efficiency and environmental mindset. So there's a big opportunity there. >>So aj, talk to me about some of the steps that Pure is implementing as its chief product officer. Would love to get your your thoughts, what steps is it implementing to help Pures customers become more sustainable? >>No, absolutely. So essentially we are all inherently motivated, like pure and, and, and, and everybody else to solve problems for customers and really forward the status quo, right? You know, innovation, you know, that's what we are all about. And while we are doing that, the challenge is to how do you make technology and the data we feed into it faster, smarter, scalable obviously, but more importantly sustainable. And you can do all of that, but if you miss the sustainability bit, you're kind of missing the boat. And I also feel from an ethical perspective, that's really important for us. Not only you do all the other things, but also kind of make it sustainable. In fact, today 80% of the companies, the companies are realizing this, 80% today are in fact report out on sustainability, which is great. In fact, 80% of leadership at companies, you know, CEOs and senior executives say they've been impacted by some climate change event, you know, where it's a fire in the place they had to evacuate or floods or storms or hurricanes, you, you name it, right? >>So mitigating the carbon impact can in fact today be a competitive advantage for companies because that's where the puck is going and everybody's, you know, it's skating, wanting to skate towards the, and it's good, it's good business too to be sustainable and, and, and meet these, you know, customer requirements. In fact, the the recent survey that we released today is saying that more and more organizations are kickstarting, their sustainability initiatives and many take are aiming to make a significant progress against that over the next decade. So that's, that's really, you know, part of the big, the really, so our view is that that IT infrastructure, you know, can really make a big push towards greener it and not just kind of greenwash it, but actually, you know, you know, make things more greener and, and, and really take the, the lead in, in esg. And so it's important that organizations can reach alignment with their IT teams and challenge their IT teams to continue to lead, you know, for the organization, the sustainability aspects. >>I'm curious, aj, when you're in customer conversations, are you seeing that it's really the C-suite plus it coming together and, and how does peer help facilitate that? To your point, it needs to be able to deliver this, but it's, it's a board level objective these days. >>Absolutely. We're seeing increasingly, especially in Europe with the, you know, the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis that, you know, that's, that's, you know, unleashed. We definitely see it's becoming a bigger and bigger board level objective for, for a lot of companies. And we definitely see customers in starting to do that. So, so in particular, I do want to touch briefly on what steps we are taking as a company, you know, to to to make it sustainable. And obviously customers are doing all the things we talked about and, and we're also helping them become smarter with data. But the key difference is, you know, we have a big focus on efficiency, which is really optimizing performance per wat with unmatched storage density. So you can reduce the footprint and dramatically lower the power required. And and how efficient is that? You know, compared to other old flash systems, we tend to be one fifth, we tend to take one fifth the power compared to other flash systems and substantially lower compared to spinning this. >>So you can imagine, you know, cutting your, if data center consumption is a 2% of global consumption, roughly 40% of that tends to be storage cause of all the spinning disc. So you add about, you know, 0.8% to global consumption and if you can cut that by four fifths, you know, you can already start to make an impact. So, so we feel we can do that. And also we're quite a bit more denser, 10 times more denser. So imagine one fifth the power, one 10th the density, but then we take it a step further because okay, you've got the storage system in the data center, but what about the end of life aspect? What about the waste and reclamation? So we also have something called non-disruptive upgrades. We, using our AI technology in pure one, we can start to sense when a particular part is going to fail and just before it goes to failure, we actually replace it in a non-disruptive fashion. So customer's data is not impacted and then we recycle that so you get a full end to end life cycle, you know, from all the way from the time you deploy much lower power, much lower density, but then also at the back end, you know, reduction in e-waste and those kind of things. >>That's a great point you, that you bring up in terms of the reclamation process. It sounds like Pure does that on its own, the customer doesn't have to be involved in that. >>That's right. And we do that, it's a part of our evergreen, you know, service that we offer. A lot of customers sign up for that service and in fact they don't even, we tell them, Hey, you know, that part's about to go, we're gonna come in, we're gonna swap it out and, and then we actually recycle that part, >>The power of ai. Love that. What are some of the, the things that companies can do if they're, if they're early in this journey on sustainability, what are some of the specific steps companies can take to get started and maybe accelerate that journey as it's becoming climate change and things are becoming just more and more of a, of a daily topic on the news? >>No, absolutely. There's a lot of things companies can do. In fact, the four four item that we're gonna highlight, the first one is, you know, they can just start by doing a materiality assessment and a materiality assessment essentially engages all the stakeholders to find out which specific issues are important for the business, right? So you identify your key priorities that intersect with what the stakeholders want, you know, your different groups from sales, customers, partners, you know, different departments in the organization. And for example, for us, when we conducted our materiality assessment, for us, our product we felt was the biggest area of focus that could contribute a lot towards, you know, making an impact in, in, in from a sustainability standpoint. That's number one. I think number two companies can also think about taking an Azure service approach. The beauty of the Azure service approach is that you are buying a, your customer, they're buying outcomes with SLAs and, and when you are starting to buy outcomes with SLAs, you can start small and then grow as you consume more. >>So that way you don't have systems sitting idle waiting for you to consume more, right? And that's the beauty of the as service approach. And so for example, for us, you know, we have something called Evergreen one, which is our as service offer, where essentially customers are able to only use and have systems turned onto as much as they're consuming. So, so that reduces the waste associated with underutilized systems, right? That's number two. Number three is also you can optimize your supply chains end to end, right? Basically by making sure you're moving, recycling, packaging and eliminating waste in that thing so you can recycle it back to your suppliers. And you can also choose a sustainable supplier network that following sort of good practices, you know, you know, across the globe and such supply chains that are responsive and diverse can really help you. Also, the big business benefit benefited. >>You can also handle surges and demand, for example, for us during the pandemic with this global supply chain shortages, you know, whereas most of our competitors, you know, lead times went to 40, 50 weeks, our lead times went from three to six weeks cuz you know, we had this sustainable, you know, supply chain. And so all of these things, you know, the three things important, but the fourth thing I say more cultural and, and the cultural thing is how do you actually begin to have sustainability become a core part of your ethos at the company, you know, across all the departments, you know, and we've at Pure, definitely it's big for us, you know, you know, around sustainability starting with a product design, but all of the areas as well, if you follow those four items, they'll do the great place to start. >>That's great advice, great recommendations. You talk about the, the, the supply chain, sustainable supply chain optimization. We've been having a lot of conversations with businesses and vendors alike about that and how important it is. You bring up a great point too on supplier diversity, if we could have a whole conversation on that. Yes. But I'm also glad that you brought up culture that's huge to, for organizations to adopt an ESG strategy and really drive sustainability in their business. It has to become, to your point, part of their ethos. Yes. It's challenging. Cultural change management is challenging. Although I think with climate change and the things that are so public, it's, it's more on, on the top mindset folks. But it's a great point that the organization really as a whole needs to embrace the sustainability mindset so that it as a, as an organization lives and breathes that. Yes. And last question for you is advice. So you, you outlined the Four Steps organizations can take. I look how you made that quite simple. What advice would you give organizations who are on that journey to adopting those, those actions, as you said, as they look to really build and deploy and execute an ESG strategy? >>No, absolutely. And so obviously, you know, the advice is gonna come from, you know, a company like Pure, you know, our background kind of being a supplier of products. And so, you know, our advice is for companies that have products, usually they tend to be the biggest generator, the products that you sell to your, your customers, especially if they've got hardware components in it. But, you know, the biggest generator of e-waste and, and and, and, and, and kind of from a sustainability standpoint. So it's really important to have an intentional design approach towards your products with sustainability in mind. So it's not something that's, that you can handle at the very back end. You design it front in the product and so that sustainable design becomes very intentional. So for us, for example, doing these non-disruptive upgrades had to be designed up front so that, you know, a, you know, one of our repair person could go into a customer shop and be able to pull out a card and put in a new card without any change in the customer system. >>That non-receptive approach, it has to be designed into the hardware software systems to be able to pull that on. And that intentional design enables you to recover pieces just when they're about to fail and then putting them through a recovery, you know, waste recovery process. So that, that's kind of the one thing I would say that philosophy, again, it comes down to if that is, you know, seeping into the culture, into your core ethos, you will start to do, you know, you know, that type of work. So, so I mean it's important thing, you know, look, this year, you know, with the spike in energy prices, you know, you know, gas prices going up, it's super important that all of us, you know, do our bit in there and start to drive products that are fundamentally sustainable, not just at the initial, you know, install point, but from an end to end full life cycle standpoint. >>Absolutely. And I love that you brought up intention that is everything that peers doing is with, with such thought and intention and really for organizations and any industry to become more sustainable, to develop an ESG strategy. To your point, it all needs to start with intention. And of course that that cultural adoption, aj, it's been so great to have you on the program talking about what PEER is doing to help organizations really navigate that path to sustainable it. We appreciate your insights on your time. >>Thank you, Lisa. Pleasure being on board >>At Pure Storage. The opportunity for change and our commitment to a sustainable future are a direct reflection of the way we've always operated and the values we live by every day. We are making significant and immediate impact worldwide through our environmental sustainability efforts. The milestones of change can be seen everywhere in everything we do. Pures Evergreen storage architecture delivers two key environmental benefits to customers, the reduction of wasted energy and the reduction of e-waste. Additionally, pures implemented a series of product packaging redesigns, promoting recycle and reuse in order to reduce waste that will not only benefit our customers, but also the environment. Pure is committed to doing what is right and leading the way with innovation. That has always been the pure difference, making a difference by enabling our customers to drive out energy usage and their data storage systems by up to 80% today, more than 97% of Pure Array purchased six years ago are still in service. And tomorrow our goal for the future is to reduce Scope three emissions Pure is committing to further reducing our sold products emissions by 66% per petabyte by 2030. All of this means what we said at the beginning, change that is simple and that is what it has always been about. Pure has a vision for the future today, tomorrow, forever. >>We're back talking about the path to sustainable it and now we're gonna get the perspective from Mattia Valerio, who is with Elec Informatica and IT services firm and the beautiful Lombardi region of Italy north of Milano. Mattia, welcome to the Cube. Thanks so much for coming on. >>Thank you very much, Dave. Thank you. >>All right, before we jump in, tell us a little bit more about Elec Informatica. What's your focus, talk about your unique value add to customers. >>Yeah, so basically Alma Informatica is middle company from the north part of Italy and is managed service provider in the IT area. Okay. So the, the main focus area of Al Meca is reach digital transformation innovation to our clients with focus on infrastructure services, workplace services, and also cybersecurity services. Okay. And we try to follow the path of our clients to the digital transformation and the innovation through technology and sustainability. >>Yeah. Obviously very hot topics right now. Sustainability, environmental impact, they're growing areas of focus among leaders across all industries. A particularly acute right now in, in Europe with the, you know, the energy challenges you've talked about things like sustainable business. What does that mean? What does that term Yeah. You know, speak to and, and what can others learn from it? >>Yeah. At at, at our approach to sustainability is grounded in science and, and values and also in customer territory, but also employee centered. I mean, we conduct regular assessments to understand the most significant environment and social issues for our business with, with the goal of prioritizing what we do for a sustainability future. Our service delivery methodology, employee care relationship with the local supplier and local area and institution are a major factor for us to, to build a such a responsibility strategy. Specifically during the past year, we have been particularly focused on define sustainability governance in the company based on stakeholder engagement, defining material issues, establishing quantitative indicators to monitor and setting medium to long-term goals. >>Okay, so you have a lot of data. You can go into a customer, you can do an assessment, you can set a baseline, and then you have other data by which you can compare that and, and understand what's achievable. So what's your vision for sustainable business? You know, that strategy, you know, how has it affected your business in terms of the evolution? Cuz this wasn't, hasn't always been as hot a topic as it is today. And and is it a competitive advantage for you? >>Yeah, yeah. For, for, for all intense and proposed sustainability is a competitive advantage for elec. I mean, it's so, because at the time of profound transformation in the work, in the world of work, CSR issues make a company more attractive when searching for new talent to enter in the workforce of our company. In addition, efforts to ensure people's proper work life balance are a strong retention factor. And regarding our business proposition, ELEX attempts is to meet high standard of sustainability and reliability. Our green data center, you said is a prime example of this approach as at the same time, is there a conditioning activity that is done to give a second life to technology devices that come from back from rental? I mean, our customer inquiries with respect to sustainability are increasingly frequent and in depth and which is why we monitor our performance and invest in certification such as EcoVadis or ISO 14,001. Okay, >>Got it. So in a previous life I actually did some work with, with, with power companies and there were two big factors in it that affected the power consumption. Obviously virtualization was a big one, if you could consolidate servers, you know, that was huge. But the other was the advent of flash storage and that was, we used to actually go in with the, the engineers and the power company put in alligator clips to measure of, of, of an all flash array versus, you know, the spinning disc and it was a big impact. So you, I wanna talk about your, your experience with Pure Storage. You use Flash Array and the Evergreen architecture. Can you talk about what your experience there, why did you make that decision to select Pure Storage? How does that help you meet sustainability and operational requirements? Do those benefits scale as your customers grow? What's your experience been? >>Yeah, it was basically an easy and easy answer to our, to our business needs. Okay. Because you said before that in Elec we, we manage a lot of data, okay? And in the past we, we, we see it, we see that the constraints of managing so many, many data was very, very difficult to manage in terms of power consumption or simply for the, the space of storing the data. And when, when Pure came to us and share our products, their vision to the data management journey for Element Informatica, it was very easy to choose pure why with values and numbers. We, we create a business case and we said that we, we see that our power consumption usage was much less, more than 90% of previous technology that we used in the past. Okay. And so of course you have to manage a grade oil deploy of flash technology storage, but it was a good target. >>So we have tried to monitoring the adoption of flash technology and monitor monitoring also the power consumption and the efficiency that the pure technology bring to our, to our IT systems and of course the IT systems of our clients. And so this is one, the first part, the first good part of our trip with, with Pure. And after that we approach also the sustainability in long term of choosing pure technology storage. You mentioned the Evergreen models of Pure, and of course this was, again, challenge for us because it allows, it allow us to extend the life cycle management of our data centers, but also the, IT allows us to improve the facility of the facilities of using technology from our technical side. Okay. So we are much more efficient than in the past with the choose of Pure storage technologies. Okay. Of course, this easy users, easy usage mode, let me say it, allow us to bring this value to our, to all our clients that put their data in our data centers. >>So you talked about how you've seen a 90% improvement relative to previous technologies. I always, I haven't put you in the spot. Yeah, because I, I, I was on Pure's website and I saw in their ESG report some com, you know, it was a comparison with a generic competitor presuming that competitor was not, you know, a 2010 spinning disc system. But, but, so I'm curious as to the results that you're seeing with Pure in terms of footprint and power usage. You, you're referencing some of that. We heard some metrics from Nicole and AJ earlier in the program. Do you think, again, I'm gonna put you in the spot, do you think that Pure's architecture and the way they've applied, whether it's machine intelligence or the Evergreen model, et cetera, is more competitive than other platforms that you've seen? >>Yeah, of course. Is more competitor improve competitive because basically it allows to service provider to do much more efficient value proposition and offer services that are more, that brings more values to, to the customers. Okay. So the customer is always at the center of a proposition of a service provider and trying to adopt the methodology and also the, the value that pure as inside by design in the technology is, is for us very, very, very important and very, very strategic because, because with like a glass, we can, our self transfer try to transfer the values of pure, pure technologies to our service provider client. >>Okay. Matta, let's wrap and talk about sort of near term 2023 and then longer term it looks like sustainability is a topic that's here to stay. Unlike when we were putting alligator clips on storage arrays, trying to help customers get rebates that just didn't have legs. It was too complicated. Now it's a, a topic that everybody's measuring. What's next for elec in its sustainability journey? What advice would you might have? Sustainability leaders that wanna make a meaningful impact on the environment, but also on the bottom line. >>Okay, so sustainability is fortunately a widely spread concept. And our role in, in this great game is to define a strategy, align with the common and fundamentals goals for the future of planet and capable of expressing our inclination and the, and the particularities and accessibility goals in the near future. I, I say, I can say that are will be basically free one define sustainability plan. Okay? It's fundamentals to define a sustainability plan. Then it's very important to monitor the its emissions and we will calculate our carbon footprint. Okay? And least button list produces certifiable and comprehensive sustainability report with respect to the demands of customers, suppliers, and also partners. Okay. So I can say that this three target will be our direction in the, in the future. Okay. >>Yeah. So I mean, pretty straightforward. Make a plan. You gotta monitor and measure, you can't improve what you can't measure. So you gonna set a baseline, you're gonna report on that. Yep. You're gonna analyze the data and you're gonna make continuous improvement. >>Yep. >>Matea, thanks so much for joining us today in sharing your perspectives from the, the northern part of Italy. Really appreciate it. >>Yeah, thank you for having aboard. Thank you very >>Much. It was really our pleasure. Okay, in a moment, I'm gonna be back to wrap up the program and share some resources that could be valuable in your sustainability journey. Keep it right there. >>Sustainability is becoming increasingly important and is hitting more RFPs than ever before as a critical decision point for customers. Environmental benefits are not the only impetus. Rather bottom line cost savings are proving that sustainability actually means better business. You can make a strong business case around sustainability and you should, many more organizations are setting mid and long-term goals for sustainability and putting forth published metrics for shareholders and customers. Whereas early green IT initiatives at the beginning of this century, were met with skepticism and somewhat disappointing results. Today, vendor r and d is driving innovation in system design, semiconductor advancements, automation in machine intelligence that's really beginning to show tangible results. Thankfully. Now remember, all these videos are available on demand@thecube.net. So check them out at your convenience and don't forget to go to silicon angle.com for all the enterprise tech news of the day. You also want to check out pure storage.com. >>There are a ton of resources there. As an aside, pure is the only company I can recall to allow you to access resources like a Gartner Magic Quadrant without forcing you to fill out a lead gen form. So thank you for that. Pure storage, I love that. There's no squeeze page on that. No friction. It's kind of on brand there for pure well done. But to the topic today, sustainability, there's some really good information on the site around esg, Pure's Environmental, social and Governance mission. So there's more in there than just sustainability. You'll see some transparent statistics on things like gender and ethnic diversity, and of course you'll see that Pure has some work to do there. But kudos for publishing those stats transparently and setting goals so we can track your progress. And there's plenty on the sustainability topic as well, including some competitive benchmarks, which are interesting to look at and may give you some other things to think about. We hope you've enjoyed the path to Sustainable it made possible by Pure Storage produced with the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech, tech coverage.

>>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.

>>Hello and run. Welcome back to the Cube's live coverage here. Day three of Cube's coverage, two sets, wall to wall coverage. Third set upstairs in the Executive Briefing Center. I'm John Furry, host of the Cube with Dave Alon. Two other hosts here. Lot of action. Dave. The cheer here is the CEO of MongoDB, exclusive post on Silicon Angle for your prior to the event. Thanks for doing that. Great to see >>You. Likewise. Nice to see you >>Coming on. See you David. So it's great to catch up. Prior to the event for that exclusive story on ecosystem, your perspective that resonated with a lot of the people. The traffic on that post and comments have been off the charts. I think we're seeing a ecosystem kind of surge and not change over, but like a an and ISV and new platform. So I really appreciate your perspective as a platform ISV for aws. What's it like? What's this event like? What's your learnings? What's your takeaway from your customers here this year? What's the most important story going on? >>First of all, I think being here is important for us because we have so many customers and partners here. In fact, if you look at the customers that Amazon themselves announced about two thirds of those customers or MongoDB customers. So we have a huge overlap in customers here. So just connecting with customers and partners has been important. Obviously a lot of them are thinking about their plans going to next year. So we're kind of meeting with them to think about what their priorities are and how we can help. And also we're sharing a little bit of our product roadmap in terms of where we're going and helping them think through like how they can best use Mongadi B as they think about their data strategy, you know, going to next year. So it's been a very productive end. We have a lot of people here, a lot of sales people, a lot of product people, and there's tons of customers here. So we can get a lot accomplished in a few days. >>Dave and I always talk on the cube. Well, Dave always goes to the TAM expansion question. Expanding your total stressful market, the market is changing and you guys have a great position growing positioned. How do you look at the total addressable market for Mongo changing? Where's the growth gonna come from? How do you see your role in the market and how does that impact your current business model? >>Yeah, our whole goal is to really enable developers to think about Mongo, to be first when they're building modern applications. So what we've done is first built a fir, a first class transactional platform and now we've kind expanding the platform to do things like search and analytics, right? And so we are really offering a broad set of capabilities. Now our primary focus is the developer and helping developers build these amazing applications and giving them tools to really do so in a very quick way. So if you think about customers like Intuit, customers like Canva, customers like, you know, Verizon, at and t, you know, who are just using us to really transform their business. It's either to build new applications quickly to do things at a certain level of performance of scale they've never done before. And so really enabling them to do so much more in building these next generation applications that they can build anywhere else. >>So I was listening to McDermott, bill McDermott this morning. Yeah. And you listen to Bill, you just wanna buy from the guy, right? He's amazing. But he was basically saying, look, companies like he was talking about ServiceNow that could help organizations digitally transform, et cetera, but make money or save money or in a good position. And I said, right, Mongo's definitely one of those companies. What are those conversations like here? I know you've been meeting with customers, it's a different environment right now. There's a lot of uncertainty. I, I was talking to one of your customers said, yeah, I'm up for renewal. I love Mongo. I'm gonna see if they can stage my payments a little bit. You know, things like that. Are those conversations? Yeah, you know, similar to what >>You having, we clearly customers are getting a little bit more prudent, but we haven't seen any kind of like slow down terms of deal cycles or, or elongated sales cycles. I mean, obviously different customers in different sectors are going through different issues. What we are seeing customers think about is like how can I, you know, either drive more efficiency in my business like and big part of that is modernization of my existing legacy tech stack. How can maybe consolidate to a fewer set of vendors? I think they like our broad platform story. You know, rather than using three or four different databases, they can use MongoDB to do everything. So that that resonates with customers and the fact that they can move fast, right? Developer productivity is a proxy for innovation. And so being able to move fast to either seize new opportunities or respond to new threats is really, you know, top of mind for still C level executive. >>So can your software, you're right, consolidation is the number one way in which people are save money. Can your software be deflationary? I mean, I mean that in a good way. So >>I was just meeting with a customer who was thinking about Mongo for their transactional platform, elastic for the search platform and like a graph database for a special use case. And, and we said you can do all that on MongoDB. And he is like, oh my goodness, I can consolidate everything. Have one elegant developer interface. I can keep all the data in one place. I can easily access that data. And that makes so much more sense than having to basically use a bunch of peace parts. And so that's, that's what we're seeing more and more interest from customers about. >>So one of the things I want to get your reaction to is, I was saying on the cube, now you can disagree with me if you want, but at, in the cloud native world at Cuban and Kubernetes was going through its hype cycle. The conversation went to it's getting boring. And that's good cause they want it to be boring. They don't want people to talk about the run time. They want it to be working. Working is boring. That's invisible. It's good, it's sticky, it's done. As you guys have such a great sticky business model, you got a great install base. Mongo works, people are happy, they like the product. So it's kind of working, I won't wanna say boring cuz that's, it's irrelevant. What's the exciting things that Mongo's bringing on top of the existing base of product that is gonna really get your clients and prospects enthused about the innovation from Mongo? What's what cuz it's, it's almost like electricity in a way. You guys are very utility in, in the way you do, but it's growing. But is there an exciting element coming that you see that they should pay attention to? What's, what's your >>Vision that, right, so if you look back over the last 10, 15 years, there's been big two big platform shifts, mobile and cloud. I think the next big platform shift is from what I call dumb apps to smart apps. So building more intelligence into applications. And what that means is automating human decision making and embedding that into applications. So we believe that to be a fundamentally a developer problem to solve, yes, you need data scientist to build the machine learning algorithms to train the models. Yeah. But ultimately you can't really deploy, deployed at scale unless you give developers the tools to build those smart applications that what we focused on. And a big part of that is what we call application driven analytics where people or can, can embed that intelligence into applications so that they can instead rather having humans involved, they can make decisions faster, drive to businesses more quickly, you know, shorten it's short and time to market, et cetera. >>And so your strategy to implement those smart apps is to keep targeting the developer Yes. And build on that >>Base. Correct. Exactly. So we wanna essentially democratize the ability for any customer to use our tools to build a smart applications where they don't have the resources of a Google or you know, a large tech company. And that's essentially resonating with our customer base. >>We, we were talking about this earlier after Swami's keynote, is most companies struggle to put data at the core of their business. And I don't mean centralizing it all in a single place as data's everywhere, but, but really organizing their company and democratizing data so people can make data decisions. So I think what you're saying, essentially Atlas is the platform that you're gonna inject intelligence into and allow developers to then build applications that are, you know, intelligent, smart with ai, machine intelligence, et cetera. And that's how the ones that don't have the resources of a Google or an Amazon become correct the, that kind of AI company if >>You, and that's, that's the whole purpose of a developer data platform is to enable them to have the tools, you know, to have very sophisticated analytics, to have the ability to do very sophisticated indexes, optimized for analytics, the ability to use data lakes for very efficient storage and retrieval of data to leverage, you know, edge devices to be able to capture and synchronize data. These are all critical elements to build these next generation applications. And you have to do that, but you don't want to stitch together a thousand primitives. You want to have a platform to do that. And that's where we really focus. >>You know, Dave, Dave and I, three, two days, Dave and I, Dave Ante and I have been talking a lot about developer productivity. And one observation that's now validated is that developers are setting the pace for innovation. Correct? And if you look at the how they, the language that they speak, it's not the same language as security departments, right? They speak almost like different languages, developer and security, and then you got data language. But the developers are making choices of self-service. They can accelerate, they're driving the behavior behavior into the organizations. And this is one of the things I wrote about on Friday last week was the organizational changes are changing cuz the developers set the pace. You can't force tooling down their throat. They're gonna go with what's easy, what's workable. If you believe that to be true, then all the security's gonna be in the developer pipeline. All the innovations we've driven off that high velocity developer site, we're seeing success of security being embedded there with the developers. What are you gonna bring up to that developer layer that's going to help with security, help with maybe even new things, >>Right? So, you know, it's, it's almost a cliche to say now software is in the world, right? Because every company's value props is driven by, it's either enabled to find or created through software. What that really means is that developers are eating all the work, right? And you're seeing, you saw in DevOps, right? Where developers basically enro encroach into the ops world and made infrastructure a programmable interface. You see developers, to your point, encroaching in security, embedding more and more security features into their applications. We believe the same thing's gonna happen with data scientists and business analysts where developers are gonna embed that functionality that was done by different domains in the Alex world and embed that capability into apps themselves. So these applications are just naturally smarter. So you don't need someone to look at a dashboard and say, aha, there's some insight here now I need to go make a decision. The application will do that for you and actually make that decision for you so you can move that much more quickly to run your business either more efficiently or to drive more, you know, revenue. >>Well the interesting thing about your business is cuz you know, you got a lot of transactional activity going on and the data, the way I would say what you just described is the data stack and the application stacks are coming together, right? And you're in a really good position, I think to really affect that. You think about we've, we've operationalized so many systems, we really haven't operationalized our data systems. And, and particularly as you guys get more into analytics, it becomes an interesting, you know, roadmap for Mongo and your customers. How do you see that? >>Yeah, so I wanna be clear, we're not trying to be a data warehouse, I get it. We're not trying to be like, you know, go compete. In fact, we have nice partnership with data bricks and so forth. What we are really trying to do is enable developers to instrument and build these applications that embed analytics. Like a good analogy I'd use is like Google Maps. You think about how sophisticated Google Maps has, and I use that because everyone has used Google Maps. Yeah. Like in the old, I was old enough to print out the directions, map quest exactly, put it on my lap and drive and look down. Now have this device that tells me, you know, if there's a traffic, if there's an accident, if there's something you know, going will reroute me automatically. And what that app is doing is embedding real time data into, into its decision making and making the decision for you so that you don't have to think about which road to take. Right? You, you're gonna see that happen across almost every application over the next X number of years where these applications are gonna become so much smarter and make these decisions for you. So you can just move so much more quickly. >>Yeah. Talk about the company, what status of the company, your growth plans. Obviously you're seeing a lot of news and Salesforce co CEO just resigned, layoffs at cnn, layoffs at DoorDash. You know, tech unfortunately is not impacted, thank God. I'm not that too bad. Certainly in cloud's not impacted it is impacting some of the buying behavior. We talked about that. What's going on with the company head count? What's your goals? How's the team doing? What are your priorities? >>Right? So we we're going after a big, big opportunity. You know, we recognize, obviously the market's a little choppy right now, but our long term, we're very bullish on the opportunity. We believe that we can be the modern developer data platform to build these next generation applications in terms of costs. We're obviously being a little bit more judicious about where we're investing, but we see big, big opportunities for us. And so our overall cost base will grow next year. But obviously we also recognize that there's ways to drive more efficiency. We're at a scale now. We're a 1.2 billion business. We're gonna announce our Q3 results next week. So we'll talk a little bit more about, you know, what we're seeing in the business next week. But we, we think we're a business that's growing fast. You know, we grew, you know, over 50, 50% and so, so we're pretty fast growing business. Yeah. You see? >>Yeah, Tuesday, December 6th you guys announce Exactly. Course is a big, we always watch and love it. So, so what I'm hearing is you're not, you're not stepping on the brakes, you're still accelerating growth, but not at all costs. >>Correct. The term we're using is profitable growth. We wanna, you know, you know, drive the business in a way that we think continues to seize the opportunity. But we also, we always exercise discipline. You know, I, I'm old enough where I had to deal with 2000 and 2008, so, you know, seen the movie before, I'm not 28 and have not seen these markets. And so obviously some are, you know, emerging leaders have not seen these kinds of markets before. So we're kind of helping them think about how to continue to be disciplined. And >>I like that reference to two thousand.com bubble and the financial crisis of 2008. I mentioned this to you when we chat, I'd love to get your thoughts. Now looking back for reinvent, Amazon wasn't a force in, in 2008. They weren't really that big debt yet. Know impact agility, wasn't it? They didn't hit that, they didn't hit that cruising altitude of the value pro cloud agility, time of value moving fast. Now they are. So this is the first time that they're a part of the economic equation. You're on, you're on in the middle of it with Amazon. They could be a catalyst to recover faster if plan properly. What's your CEO take on just that general and other CEOs might be watching and saying, Hey, you know, if I play this right, I could leverage the cloud. You know, Adams is leading into the cloud during a recession. Okay, I get that. But specifically there might be a tactic. What's your view on >>That? I mean, what, what we're seeing the, the hyperscalers do is really continue to kind of compete at the raw infrastructure level on storage, on compute, on network performance, on security to provide the, the kind of the building blocks for companies like Monga Beach really build on. So we're leveraging that price performance curve that they're pushing. You know, they obviously talk about Graviton three, they're talking about their training model chip sets and their inference model chip sets and their security chip sets. Which is great for us because we can leverage those capabilities to build upon that. And I think, you know, if you had asked me, you know, in 2008, would we be talking about chip sets in 2022? I'd probably say, oh, we're way beyond that. But what it really speaks to is those things are still so profoundly important. And I think that's where you can see Amazon and Google and Microsoft compete to provide the best underlying infrastructure where companies like mongadi we can build upon and we can help customers leverage that to really build the next generation. >>I'm not saying it's 2008 all over again, but we have data from 2008 that was the first major tailwind for the cloud. Yeah. When the CFO said we're going from CapEx to opex. So we saw that. Now it's a lot different now it's a lot more mature >>I think. I think there's a fine tuning trend going on where people are right sizing, fine tuning, whatever you wanna call it. But a craft is coming. A trade craft of cloud management, cloud optimization, managing the cost structures, tuning, it's a crafting, it's more of a craft. It's kind of seems like we're >>In that era, I call it cost optimization, that people are looking to say like, I know I'm gonna invest but I wanna be rational and more thoughtful about where I invest and why and with whom I invest with. Versus just like, you know, just, you know, everyone getting a 30% increase in their opex budgets every year. I don't think that's gonna happen. And so, and that's where we feel like it's gonna be an opportunity for us. We've kind of hit scap velocity. We've got the developer mind share. We have 37,000 customers of all shapes and sizes across the world. And that customer crown's only growing. So we feel like we're a place where people are gonna say, I wanna standardize among the >>Db. Yeah. And so let's get a great quote in his keynote, he said, if you wanna save money, the place to do it is in the cloud. >>You tighten the belt, which belt you tightening? The marketplace belt, the wire belt. We had a whole session on that. Tighten your belt thing. David Chair, CEO of a billion dollar company, MongoDB, continue to grow and grow and continue to innovate. Thanks for coming on the cube and thanks for participating in our stories. >>Thanks for having me. Great to >>Be here. Thank. Okay, I, Dave ante live on the show floor. We'll be right back with our final interview of the day after this short break, day three coming to close. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

>> We're back at the ARIA Las Vegas. We're covering CrowdStrike's Fal.Con 22. First one since 2019. Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson on theCUBE. Adam Meyers is here, he is the Senior Vice President of Intelligence at CrowdStrike. Adam, thanks for coming to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> Interesting times, isn't it? You're very welcome. Senior Vice President of Intelligence, tell us what your role is. >> So I run all of our intelligence offerings. All of our analysts, we have a couple hundred analysts that work at CrowdStrike tracking threat actors. There's 185 threat actors that we track today. We're constantly adding more of them and it requires us to really have that visibility and understand how they operate so that we can inform our other products: our XDR, our Cloud Workload Protections and really integrate all of this around the threat actor. >> So it's that threat hunting capability that CrowdStrike has. That's what you're sort of... >> Well, so think of it this way. When we launched the company 11 years ago yesterday, what we wanted to do was to tell customers, to tell people that, well, you don't have a malware problem, you have an adversary problem. There are humans that are out there conducting these attacks, and if you know who they are what they're up to, how they operate then you're better positioned to defend against them. And so that's really at the core, what CrowdStrike started with and all of our products are powered by intelligence. All of our services are our OverWatch and our Falcon complete, all powered by intelligence because we want to know who the threat actors are and what they're doing so we can stop them. >> So for instance like you can stop known malware. A lot of companies can stop known malware, but you also can stop unknown malware. And I infer that the intelligence is part of that equation, is that right? >> Absolutely. That that's the outcome. That's the output of the intelligence but I could also tell you who these threat actors are, where they're operating out of, show you pictures of some of them, that's the threat intel. We are tracking down to the individual persona in many cases, these various threats whether they be Chinese nation state, Russian threat actors, Iran, North Korea, we track as I said, quite a few of these threats. And over time, we develop a really robust deep knowledge about who they are and how they operate. >> Okay. And we're going to get into some of that, the big four and cyber. But before we do, I want to ask you about the eCrime index stats, the ECX you guys call it a little side joke for all your nerds out there. Maybe you could explain that Adam >> Assembly humor. >> Yeah right, right. So, but, what is that index? You guys, how often do you publish it? What are you learning from that? >> Yeah, so it was modeled off of the Dow Jones industrial average. So if you look at the Dow Jones it's a composite index that was started in the late 1800s. And they took a couple of different companies that were the industrial component of the economy back then, right. Textiles and railroads and coal and steel and things like that. And they use that to approximate the overall health of the economy. So if you take these different stocks together, swizzle 'em together, and figure out some sort of number you could say, look, it's up. The economy's doing good. It's down, not doing so good. So after World War II, everybody was exuberant and positive about the end of the war. The DGI goes up, the oil crisis in the seventies goes down, COVID hits goes up, sorry, goes down. And then everybody realizes that they can use Amazon still and they can still get the things they need goes back up with the eCrime index. We took that approach to say what is the health of the underground economy? When you read about any of these ransomware attacks or data extortion attacks there are criminal groups that are working together in order to get things spammed out or to buy credentials and things like that. And so what the eCrime index does is it takes 24 different observables, right? The price of a ransom, the number of ransom attacks, the fluctuation in cryptocurrency, how much stolen material is being sold for on the underground. And we're constantly computing this number to understand is the eCrime ecosystem healthy? Is it thriving or is it under pressure? And that lets us understand what's going on in the world and kind of contextualize it. Give an example, Microsoft on patch Tuesday releases 56 vulnerabilities. 11 of them are critical. Well guess what? After hack Tuesday. So after patch Tuesday is hack Wednesday. And so all of those 11 vulnerabilities are exploitable. And now you have threat actors that have a whole new array of weapons that they can deploy and bring to bear against their victims after that patch Tuesday. So that's hack Wednesday. Conversely we'll get something like the colonial pipeline. Colonial pipeline attack May of 21, I think it was, comes out and all of the various underground forums where these ransomware operators are doing their business. They freak out because they don't want law enforcement. President Biden is talking about them and he's putting pressure on them. They don't want this ransomware component of what they're doing to bring law enforcement, bring heat on them. So they deplatform them. They kick 'em off. And when they do that, the ransomware stops being as much of a factor at that point in time. And the eCrime index goes down. So we can look at holidays, and right around Thanksgiving, which is coming up pretty soon, it's going to go up because there's so much online commerce with cyber Monday and such, right? You're going to see this increase in online activity; eCrime actors want to take advantage of that. When Christmas comes, they take vacation too; they're going to spend time with their families, so it goes back down and it stays down till around the end of the Russian Orthodox Christmas, which you can probably extrapolate why that is. And then it goes back up. So as it's fluctuating, it gives us the ability to really just start tracking what that economy looks like. >> Realtime indicator of that crypto. >> I mean, you talked about, talked about hack Wednesday, and before that you mentioned, you know, the big four, and I think you said 185 threat actors that you're tracking, is 180, is number 185 on that list? Somebody living in their basement in their mom's basement or are the resources necessary to get on that list? Such that it's like, no, no, no, no. this is very, very organized, large groups of people. Hollywood would have you believe that it's guy with a laptop, hack Wednesday, (Dave Nicholson mimics keyboard clacking noises) and everything done. >> Right. >> Are there individuals who are doing things like that or are these typically very well organized? >> That's a great question. And I think it's an important one to ask and it's both it tends to be more, the bigger groups. There are some one-off ones where it's one or two people. Sometimes they get big. Sometimes they get small. One of the big challenges. Have you heard of ransomware as a service? >> Of course. Oh my God. Any knucklehead can be a ransomwarist. >> Exactly. So we don't track those knuckleheads as much unless they get onto our radar somehow, they're conducting a lot of operations against our customers or something like that. But what we do track is that ransomware as a service platform because the affiliates, the people that are using it they come, they go and, you know, it could be they're only there for a period of time. Sometimes they move between different ransomware services, right? They'll use the one that's most useful for them that that week or that month, they're getting the best rate because it's rev sharing. They get a percentage that platform gets percentage of the ransom. So, you know, they negotiate a better deal. They might move to a different ransomware platform. So that's really hard to track. And it's also, you know, I think more important for us to understand the platform and the technology that is being used than the individual that's doing it. >> Yeah. Makes sense. Alright, let's talk about the big four. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Tell us about, you know, how you monitor these folks. Are there different signatures for each? Can you actually tell, you know based on the hack who's behind it? >> So yeah, it starts off, you know motivation is a huge factor. China conducts espionage, they do it for diplomatic purposes. They do it for military and political purposes. And they do it for economic espionage. All of these things map to known policies that they put out, the Five Year Plan, the Made in China 2025, the Belt and Road Initiative, it's all part of their efforts to become a regional and ultimately a global hegemon. >> They're not stealing nickels and dimes. >> No they're stealing intellectual property. They're stealing trade secrets. They're stealing negotiation points. When there's, you know a high speed rail or something like that. And they use a set of tools and they have a set of behaviors and they have a set of infrastructure and a set of targets that as we look at all of these things together we can derive who they are by motivation and the longer we observe them, the more data we get, the more we can get that attribution. I could tell you that there's X number of Chinese threat groups that we track under Panda, right? And they're associated with the Ministry of State Security. There's a whole other set. That's too associated with the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force. So, I mean, these are big operations. They're intelligence agencies that are operating out of China. Iran has a different set of targets. They have a different set of motives. They go after North American and Israeli businesses right now that's kind of their main operation. And they're doing something called hack and lock and leak. With a lock and leak, what they're doing is they're deploying ransomware. They don't care about getting a ransom payment. They're just doing it to disrupt the target. And then they're leaking information that they steal during that operation that brings embarrassment. It brings compliance, regulatory, legal impact for that particular entity. So it's disruptive >> The chaos creators that's.. >> Well, you know I think they're trying to create a they're trying to really impact the legitimacy of some of these targets and the trust that their customers and their partners and people have in them. And that is psychological warfare in a certain way. And it, you know is really part of their broader initiative. Look at some of the other things that they've done they've hacked into like the missile defense system in Israel, and they've turned on the sirens, right? Those are all things that they're doing for a specific purpose, and that's not China, right? Like as you start to look at this stuff, you can start to really understand what they're up to. Russia very much been busy targeting NATO and NATO countries and Ukraine. Obviously the conflict that started in February has been a huge focus for these threat actors. And then as we look at North Korea, totally different. They're doing, there was a major crypto attack today. They're going after these crypto platforms, they're going after DeFi platforms. They're going after all of this stuff that most people don't even understand and they're stealing the crypto currency and they're using it for revenue generation. These nuclear weapons don't pay for themselves, their research and development don't pay for themselves. And so they're using that cyber operation to either steal money or steal intelligence. >> They need the cash. Yeah. >> Yeah. And they also do economic targeting because Kim Jong Un had said back in 2016 that they need to improve the lives of North Koreans. They have this national economic development strategy. And that means that they need, you know, I think only 30% of North Korea has access to reliable power. So having access to clean energy sources and renewable energy sources, that's important to keep the people happy and stop them from rising up against the regime. So that's the type of economic espionage that they're conducting. >> Well, those are the big four. If there were big five or six, I would presume US and some Western European countries would be on there. Do you track, I mean, where United States obviously has you know, people that are capable of this we're out doing our thing, and- >> So I think- >> That defense or offense, where do we sit in this matrix? >> Well, I think the big five would probably include eCrime. We also track India, Pakistan. We track actors out of Columbia, out of Turkey, out of Syria. So there's a whole, you know this problem is getting worse over time. It's proliferating. And I think COVID was also, you know a driver there because so many of these countries couldn't move human assets around because everything was getting locked down. As machine learning and artificial intelligence and all of this makes its way into the cameras at border and transfer points, it's hard to get a human asset through there. And so cyber is a very attractive, cheap and deniable form of espionage and gives them operational capabilities, not, you know and to your question about US and other kind of five I friendly type countries we have not seen them targeting our customers. So we focus on the threats that target our customers. >> Right. >> And so, you know, if we were to find them at a customer environment sure. But you know, when you look at some of the public reporting that's out there, the malware that's associated with them is focused on, you know, real bad people, and it's, it's physically like crypted to their hard drive. So unless you have sensor on, you know, an Iranian or some other laptop that might be target or something like that. >> Well, like Stuxnet did. >> Yeah. >> Right so. >> You won't see it. Right. See, so yeah. >> Well Symantec saw it but way back when right? Back in the day. >> Well, I mean, if you want to go down that route I think it actually came from a company in the region that was doing the IR and they were working with Symantec. >> Oh, okay. So, okay. So it was a local >> Yeah. I think Crisis, I think was the company that first identified it. And then they worked with Symantec. >> It Was, they found it, I guess, a logic controller. I forget what it was. >> It was a long time ago, so I might not have that completely right. >> But it was a seminal moment in the industry. >> Oh. And it was a seminal moment for Iran because you know, that I think caused them to get into cyber operations. Right. When they realized that something like that could happen that bolstered, you know there was a lot of underground hacking forums in Iran. And, you know, after Stuxnet, we started seeing that those hackers were dropping their hacker names and they were starting businesses. They were starting to try to go after government contracts. And they were starting to build training offensive programs, things like that because, you know they realized that this is an opportunity there. >> Yeah. We were talking earlier about this with Shawn and, you know, in the nuclear war, you know the Cold War days, you had the mutually assured destruction. It's not as black and white in the cyber world. Right. Cause as, as Robert Gates told me, you know a few years ago, we have a lot more to lose. So we have to be somewhat, as the United States, careful as to how much of an offensive posture we take. >> Well here's a secret. So I have a background on political science. So mutually assured destruction, I think is a deterrent strategy where you have two kind of two, two entities that like they will destroy each other if they so they're disinclined to go down that route. >> Right. >> With cyber I really don't like that mutually assured destruction >> That doesn't fit right. >> I think it's deterrents by denial. Right? So raising the cost, if they were to conduct a cyber operation, raising that cost that they don't want to do it, they don't want to incur the impact of that. Right. And think about this in terms of a lot of people are asking about would China invade Taiwan. And so as you look at the cost that that would have on the Chinese military, the POA, the POA Navy et cetera, you know, that's that deterrents by denial, trying to, trying to make the costs so high that they don't want to do it. And I think that's a better fit for cyber to try to figure out how can we raise the cost to the adversary if they operate against our customers against our enterprises and that they'll go someplace else and do something else. >> Well, that's a retaliatory strike, isn't it? I mean, is that what you're saying? >> No, definitely not. >> It's more of reducing their return on investment essentially. >> Yeah. >> And incenting them- disincening them to do X and sending them off somewhere else. >> Right. And threat actors, whether they be criminals or nation states, you know, Bruce Lee had this great quote that was "be like water", right? Like take the path of least resistance, like water will. Threat actors do that too. So, I mean, unless you're super high value target that they absolutely have to get into by any means necessary, then if you become too hard of a target, they're going to move on to somebody that's a little easier. >> Makes sense. Awesome. Really appreciate your, I could, we'd love to have you back. >> Anytime. >> Go deeper. Adam Myers. We're here at Fal.Con 22, Dave Vellante, Dave Nicholson. We'll be right back right after this short break. (bouncy music plays)

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston bringing you data driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is breaking analysis with Dave Vellante. >> Despite fears of inflation, supply chain issues skyrocketing energy and home prices and global instability caused by the Ukraine crisis CIOs and IT buyers continue to expect overall spending to increase more than 6% in 2022. Now, while this is lower than our 8% prediction that we made earlier this year in January, it remains in line with last year's roughly six to 7% growth and is holding firm with the expectations reported by tech executives on the ETR surveys last quarter. Hello and welcome to this week's wiki bond cube insights powered by ETR in this breaking analysis, we'll update you on our latest look at tech spending with a preliminary take from ETR's latest macro drill down survey. We'll share some insights to which vendors have shown the biggest change in spending trajectory. And we'll tap our technical analysts to get a read on what they think it means for technology stocks going forward. The IT spending sentiment among IT buyers remains pretty solid. >> In the past two months, we've had conversations with dozens of CIOs, chief digital officers data executives, IT managers, and application developers, and across the board, they've indicated that for now at least their spending levels remain largely unchanged. The latest ETR drill down data which will share shortly, confirms these anecdotal checks. However, the interpretation of this data it's somewhat nuanced. Part of the reason for the spending levels being you know reasonably strong and holding up is inflation. Stuff costs more so spending levels are higher forcing IT managers to prioritize. Now security remains the number one priority and is less susceptible to cuts, cloud migration, productivity initiatives and other data projects remain top priorities. >> So where are CIO's robbing from Peter to pay Paul to focus on these priorities? Well, we've seen a slight uptick in certain speculative. IT projects being put on hold or frozen for a period of time. And according to ETR survey data we've seen some hiring freezes reported and this is especially notable in the healthcare sector. ETR also surveyed its buyer base to find out where they were adjusting their budgets and the strategies and tactics they were using to do so. Consolidating IT vendors was by far the most cited tactic. Now this makes sense as companies in an effort to negotiate better deals will often forego investments in newer so-called best of breed products and services, and negotiate bundles from larger suppliers. You know, even though they might not be as functional, the buyers >> can get a better deal if they bundle together from one of their larger suppliers. Think Microsoft or a Dell or other, you know, large companies. ETR survey respondents also cited cutting the cloud bill where discretionary spending was in play was another strategy or tactic that they were using. We certainly saw this with some of the largest snowflake customers this past quarter. Where even though they were still growing consumption rapidly certain snowflake customers dialed down their consumption and pushed spending off to future quarters. Now remember in the case of snowflake, anyway, customers negotiate consumption rates and their pricing based on a total commitment over a period of time. So while they may consume less in one quarter, over the lifetime of the contract, snowflake, as do many other cloud companies, have good visibility on the lifetime value of a deal. Now this next chart shows the latest ETR spending expectations among more than 900 respondents. The bars represent spending growth expectations from the periods of December, 2021 that's the gray bars, March of 2022 survey in the blue, and the most recent June data, That's the yellow bar. So you can see spending expectations for the quarter is down slightly in the mid 5% range. But overall for the year expectations remain in the mid 6% range. Now it's down from 8%, 8.3% in December where it looked like 2022 was going to really be a breakout year and have more momentum than even last year. Now, remember this was before Russia invaded Ukraine which occurred in mid-February of this year. So expectations were a little higher. So look, generally speaking CIOs have told us that their CFOs and CEOs have lowered their earnings outlooks and communicated that to Wall Street. They've told us that unless and until these revised forecasts appear at risk, they continue to expect their budget levels to remain pretty constant. Now there's still plenty of momentum and spending velocity on specific vendor platforms. Let's take a look at that. >> This chart shows the companies with the greatest spending momentum as measured by ETRs proprietary net score methodology. Net score essentially measures the net percent of customers spending more on a particular platform. That measurement is shown on the Y axis. The red line there that's inserted that red dotted line at 40%, we consider to be a highly elevated mark. And the green dots are companies in the ETR survey that are near or above that line. The X axis measures the presence in the data set, how much, you know sort of pervasiveness, if you will, is in the data. It's kind of a proxy for market presence. Now, of course we all know Kubernetes is not a company, but it remains an area where organizations are spending lots of resources and time particularly to modernize and mobilize applications. Snowflake remains the company which leads all firms in spending velocity, but as you'll see momentarily, despite its highest position relative to everybody else in the survey, it's still down from its previous levels in the high seventies and low 80% range. AWS is incredibly impressive because it has an elevated level but also a big presence in the data set in the survey. Same with Microsoft, same with ServiceNow which also stands out. And you can see the other smaller vendors like HashiCorp which is increasingly being seen as a strategic cross cloud enabler. They're showing, spending momentum. The RPA vendors you see in there automation anywhere and UI path are in the mix with numerous security companies, CrowdStrike, CyberArk, Netskope, Cloudflare, Tenable Okta, Zscaler Palo Alto networks, Sale Point Fortunate. A big number of cybersecurity firms hovering at or above that 40% mark you can see pure storage remains elevated as do PagerDuty and Coupa. So plenty of good news here, despite the recent tech crash. So that was the good, here's the not so good. So >> there is no 40% line on this chart because all these companies are well below that line. Now this doesn't mean these companies are bad companies. They just don't have the spending velocity of the ones we showed earlier. A good example here is Oracle. Look how they stand out on the X axis with a huge market presence. And Oracle remains an incredibly successful company selling to high end customers and really owning that mission critical data and application space. And remember ETR measures spending activity, but not actual spending dollars. So Oracle is skewed as a result because Oracle customers spend big bucks. But the fact is that Oracle has a large legacy install base that pulls down their growth rates. And that does show up in the ETR survey data. Broadcom is another example. They're one of the most successful companies in the industry, and they're not going after growth at all costs at all. They're going after EBITDA and of course ETR doesn't measure EBIT. So just keep that in mind, as you look at this data. Now another way to look at the data and the survey, is exploring the net score movement over the last period amongst companies. So how are they moving? What's happening to the net score over time. And this chart shows the year over year >> net score change for vendors that participate in at least three sectors within the ETR taxonomy. Remember ETR taxonomy has 12, 15 different segments. So the names above or below the gray dotted line are those companies where the net score has increased or decreased meaningfully. So to the earlier chart, it's all relative, right? Look at Oracle. While having lower net scores has also shown a more meaningful improvement in net score than some of the others, as have SAP and Teradata. Now what's impressive to me here is how AWS, Microsoft, and Google are actually holding that dotted line that gray line pretty well despite their size and the other ironically interesting two data points here are Broadcom and Nutanix. Now Broadcom, of course, as we've reported and dug into, is buying VMware and, and of, of course most customers are concerned about getting hit with higher prices. Once Broadcom takes over. Well Nutanix despite its change in net scores, in a good position potentially to capture some of that VMware business. Just yesterday, I talked to a customer who told me he migrated his entire portfolio off VMware using Nutanix AHV, the Acropolis hypervisor. And that was in an effort to avoid the VTEX specifically. Now this was a smaller customer granted and it's not representative of what I feel is Broadcom's ICP the ideal customer profile, but look, Nutanix should benefit from the Broadcom acquisition. If it can position itself to pick up the business that Broadcom really doesn't want. That kind of bottom of the pyramid. One person's trash is another's treasure as they say, okay. And here's that same chart for companies >> that participate in less than three segments. So, two or one of the segments in the ETR taxonomy. Only three names are seeing positive movement year over year in net score. SUSE under the leadership of amazing CEO, Melissa Di Donato. She's making moves. The company went public last year and acquired rancher labs in 2020. Look, we know that red hat is the big dog in Kubernetes but since the IBM acquisition people have looked to SUSE as a possible alternative and it's showing up in the numbers. It's a nice business. It's going to do more than 600 million this year in revenue, SUSE that is. It's got solid double digit growth in kind of the low teens. It's profitability is under pressure but they're definitely a player that is found a niche and is worth watching. The SolarWinds, What can I say there? I mean, maybe it's a dead cat bounce coming off the major breach that we saw a couple years ago. Some of its customers maybe just can't move off the platform. Constant contact we really don't follow and don't really, you know, focus on them. So, not much to say there. Now look at all the high priced earning stocks or infinite PE stocks that have no E and divide by zero or a negative number and boom, you have infinite PE and look at how their net scores have dropped. We've reported extensively on snowflake. They're still number one as we showed you earlier, net score, but big moves off their highs. Okta, Datadog, Zscaler, SentinelOne Dynatrace, big downward moves, and you can see the rest. So this chart really speaks to the change in expectations from the COVID bubble. Despite the fact that many of these companies CFOs would tell you that the pandemic wasn't necessarily a tailwind for them, but it certainly seemed to be the case when you look back in some of the ETR data. But a big question in the community is what's going to happen to these tech stocks, these tech companies in the market? We reached out to both Eric Bradley of ETR who used to be a technical analyst on Wall Street, and the long time trader and breaking analysis contributor, Chip Symington to get a read on what they thought. First, you know the market >> first point of the market has been off 11 out of the past 12 weeks. And bare market rallies like what we're seeing today and yesterday, they happen from time to time and it was kind of expected. Chair Powell's testimony was broadly viewed as a positive by the street because higher interest rates appear to be pushing commodity prices down. And a weaker consumer sentiment may point to a less onerous inflation outlook. That's good for the market. Chip Symington pointed out to breaking analysis a while ago that the NASDAQ has been on a trend line for the past six months where its highs are lower and the lows are lower and that's a bad sign. And we're bumping up against that trend line here. Meaning if it breaks through that trend it could be a buying signal. As he feels that tech stocks are oversold. He pointed to a recent bounce in semiconductors and cited the Qualcomm example. Here's a company trading at 12 times forward earnings with a sustained 14% growth rate over the next couple of years. And their cash flow is able to support their 2.4, 2% annual dividend. So overall Symington feels this rally was absolutely expected. He's cautious because we're still in a bear market but he's beginning to, to turn bullish. And Eric Bradley added that He feels the market is building a base here and he doesn't expect a 1970s or early 1980s year long sideways move because of all the money that's still in the system. You know, but it could bounce around for several months And remember with higher interest rates there are going to be more options other than equities which for many years has not been the case. Obviously inflation and recession. They are like two looming towers that we're all watching closely and will ultimately determine if, when, and how this market turns around. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks to my colleagues, Stephanie Chan, who helps research breaking analysis topics sometimes, and Alex Myerson who is on production in the podcast. Kristin Martin and Cheryl Knight they help get the word out and do all of our newsletters. And Rob Hof is our Editor in Chief over at siliconangle.com and does some wonderful editing for breaking analysis. Thank you. Remember, all these episodes are available as podcasts wherever you listen. All you got to do is search breaking analysis podcasts. I publish each week on wikibon.com and Siliconangle.com. And of course you can reach me by email at david.vellante@siliconangle.com or DM me at DVellante comment on my LinkedIn post and please do check out etr.ai for the best survey data in the enterprise tech business. This is Dave Vellante for the CUBE insights powered by ETR. Stay safe, be well. And we'll see you next time. (soft music)

>>Mm. Welcome back to the seaports in Boston City is abuzz. Bruins tonight, Celtics Tomorrow night. We're all excited. We're talking open source, which is a very exciting topic. Every company is using open source. I mean, it is the mainspring of innovation. I'm Dave along with my co host, Paul Dillon. And you're watching the cubes. Coverage of Red Hat. Summer 2022. Raj Raj Masinga is here. He's hybrid and emerging Platforms lead at Accenture and Ghetto Greber. Who's red hats? Business group lead eccentric. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. Thanks for coming >>on. Thank you. >>Thank you, Raj. We saw in the keynote up there today with Stephanie. She's coming on tomorrow. Rockstar Stephanie. Cheers. Also a Boston sports fan, and I have to work at it, but you can talk about the history with red hat. How long have you guys been at this? And give us a journey update. >>Well, first of all, thanks for having us here. Um, yes, we are big fans of Red Hat and especially Stephanie. I get to I had the pleasure of working with a very closely, um, our relationship with Red Hat goes many, many years, decades I think. And but Paul, come here will tell you that. You know, we've been focused a lot with the formation of our new business unit in Cloud. First around, migrating to the public cloud. But now, as we focus more and more around how our clients begin to operate in the public cloud in the cloud ecosystem hybrid is coming much more into focus. And Red Hat is very much a key client of a key partner of us. So we go way back. But this is all about us doubling down and increasing our partnership and deepening it with them. >>So, uh, you talked today about hybrid Cloud is everything. And it seems like a couple of years ago there was focuses more on moving to the public cloud and getting off of private infrastructure. Has there been a change in the ways in which customers are thinking, are they gonna be hanging onto their private infrastructure longer, perhaps, than was expected a couple of years ago? >>I think the first of all, it's a very different industry by industry. If you look at retail or consumer goods, I think there's a big movement in terms of percentages of workloads that are getting moved onto public cloud. If you look at industries like banking or utilities or government, more regular financial services, more regulated industries. I think we are finding a much larger percentage of their workloads because of regulatory reasons and security reasons, etcetera. Our need to remain either on premise or in private cloud. So I think it very much depends on the industry. But regardless the hype, you know, especially with the movement to edge now hybrid is going to be, you know, permeating everything. So I think by industry depends. But but the edges driving a whole new flywheel. >>You know, we started the Cuban 2010, so the cloud was, you know, modern cloud. Anyway, it was like, say, four years in into it and at the time, to your point Raj Financial Services, there was an evil word. No way we're ever going to the cloud. No, that's changed, obviously. But then, when the financial crisis hit, >>you >>had so initially it was a lot of tyre kicking experimentation. When the financial crisis hit, you had a lot of CFO saying, Okay, let's shift Capex to Apex and so that was sort of a bridge. And then after we came out, it was like this spate of innovation. And then we saw that during the pandemic, where cloud migration was a high priority and or it was the lifeline. And now it sounds like customers are kind of rethinking to your earlier conversation. What is cloud? It's that operating model. So I wonder if you could sort of Can you confirm that's kind of the journey that customers are taking? Where are they today? What does it mean? There? You know the the operating model. What do they consider cloud? >>Um, you actually, you see it? It's like it's really try forward to the cloud. Uh, but where it was in the beginning, If it doesn't hype about Public Cloud, they become more and more aware that it's hybrid because they have to bring the legacy system and process into the cloud as well. And it takes more time that actually they have fought before. So it's like there was a process of learning and also like in the steps moving forward to the operating model because they also understand I cannot operate a cloud like I was operating in the classical way like my old data centre and everything. It needs all the capabilities it needs, all the skills and especially if you go in a hybrid world. And it's a hybrid operation between the classic traditional but also the new ways of how you operate into a cloud. And you really see also the financial services. Now, uh, we had, uh I mean watch presented at keynote. We had a client in Germany. He made a decision, a very traditional financial services clients providing the service to chairman saving banks. And they did this decision and I would say, if you have spoken to them 10 years ago, they will not go into the cloud. But now they went to the cloud via private cloud, and now they got the confidence about how to operate in it. And now they move forward into a public cloud. But from a private cloud into the public cloud. Today, after security, they have up Skilling on skills and people and they understand the process and what's really required and needed in order to have such an environment. >>Generally, what's the strategy with regard to modernisation organisations? More building like an abstraction layer? Uh, with microservices and then connecting to the cloud. Or are they actually rewriting applications to make them cloud native? What are you What are you advising clients from a strategy standpoint, and I know it depends, but, you know, it's >>a It's a great question. I think the genesis to that strategy is how they view infrastructure, Right? So you know, everyone is, has this kind of, I don't know that this is almost mythical opinion out there with cloud. You don't need to worry about your infrastructure. All the providers will worry about it, and you just need to move it there. But the opposite is true. It's really critical what your infrastructure strategy is as you move to the cloud, because depending on what workload you have, you know it can be on any one of the continuum that you described. So the first thing is, where do you want to house your workload? Is the question and that will drive. How what do you want to do with your application? Whether you want to just maintain it the way it is, Do you want to simply modernise it, keeping where it is, or do you want to completely risk in it or even eliminated. So so I think the entire basically the answer to your question around. Do we? What do we do with the application? Is fundamentally driven by what is your infrastructure strategy and what that workload needs to do for you. >>So I know you want to jump in, but I got to follow up. You're saying hardware matters because we heard Paul Corvino today talking about this hardware renaissance. I'm actually I just ran a power panel called. Does hardware still matter? You're saying it matters? >>Yeah. And and it doesn't. And infrastructure doesn't always. I mean, now that you can do infrastructure as code, right? I mean, I was at the Del summit last time and read That is a huge partner of Dell now, right? Which, you know, uh, was much more, uh, partnered with VM ware. But I think the whole ecosystem is opening up, and even the hardware providers are looking at this in a much more nimble way. But yes, it's very much part of the conversation. They haven't gone away. >>During your keynote. You outlined sort of your strategy. Going forward is called cloud first. Yes. What does cloud first mean? >>Well, um, we we want to make sure that when we talk about transformation of business with our clients, So extension always goes with the idea of an industry lens of solving a specific problem for a client. What is the business problem we solve? And increasingly, what we want to message and drive to our clients is if you're thinking about, regardless of what the business is technologies absolutely critical to whatever transformation you're doing and when. When you look at technology, you have to think cloud first because that's where all the innovation is happening. That's where all the, um um, investments are being driven. Whether it's an I mean, it's a software vendor, but it's a hardware vendor with its uh, so you have to think cloud first when you think about transforming your business. >>Uh, what is How does modernisation play into that? You know, a lot of vendors are throwing a lot of resources that the modernisation market VM ware, Tanzania and IBM and such, uh, how interesting our customers really a Modernising legacy applications >>hugely right, because fundamentally, I think everything is now driven by our experiences. What we now are used to in terms of, uh, interfacing with applications are interfacing with function sets or interfacing with technology. So there is a lot of inherent, um, legacy technology that doesn't have that experience. So when you think about transforming, you have to come at it from an experience point of view. And when you think in those terms modernisation or even rebuilding the same, even if it's the same function set, uh, re skinning it and modernisation is critical for the purposes of engagement. >>What's the number one challenge that customers that you're working with face in terms of modernisation? Is it trying to figure out like Rogers sort of laying out the portfolio? What do I do with it? Do I modernise it? Do I retire it? Do I let it just die on the vine? What's their number one challenge? >>Uh, mainly it depends also on the industry, but it's, uh, I would say, for the highly regulated, certainly regulations. They always have an own interpretation of the regulations. Regulation means for them, but normally it's not really what they understand. But I think this is more and more coming to Annie's and more people understand what it really means, but it's also what we see a lot. They think first about technology, but not what kind of business problem they want, Uh, and they want to solve. So it's like, instead of having a technology neutral discussion is really do want to achieve, um, to have really start on this side and then having this discussion away, which, obviously it's one of the key, even because they start to the cloud even without having a strategy without having a vision. If you have a clear vision, if you have a clear strategy, you know where you want to go, and then you can make your business case. You can make you architecture and then you decide on technology. And then, of course, on this journey, all the things about security compliance coming to the plane, Yeah, and I think I think that's the easiest approach. But clients struggle to understand. Of course, I mean, the technology is changing rapidly. Even new products and release cycle new life cycles, the complexity of all the tools hardware we mentioned before network is changing new working coming up. It's really hard to keep pace or keep up with the base of the technology and what's happening even for us. And then you understand the complexity and bring this complexity back to simplicity, but not without losing. We have this also keynote the efficiency and, uh, flexibility for an engineer, because that's what he needs >>to your clients. Have the skill sets to do all that such a self serving question to you guys. But but no, do they? I mean, there's a skills shortage. There's a a battle for talent. So how are they >>dealing? I mean, it's obvious the battle for talent is here. I mean, everybody is looking for the best talent, and if we need, if you need a full stack. Engineer, for example, is very hard to get a full stack engineer on your ground. You call really cloud native. So you have to up skill people to re skilled people. There's also a change coming into it and the changes not to forget. So it's what we say most time. The technology is an easy part, but the change change the organisation, change up skilled organisation. That's the hard part because you need to change from from one mindset to another, and we know from the from the past. What change? People are not open to change in general, so we need to change the mindset. >>I wanna go back to Hybrid Cloud because we have Dani from Red Hat was on earlier and he said, Edges really redefining the definition of hybrid cloud. It's it's more complex architecture, and it's changing the nature of how we think about hybrid Cloud. Are you seeing that with your customers? Are they changing their thinking about what hybrid means in that context? >>Yeah, completely. You know, I was I was We did a bunch of, uh, research recently, and I had I just wanted to make sure I called this. I mean, there's a flexible report that came out that says 80% of all enterprises now are on hybrid 89% multi cloud redheaded. A report that said 80% of our businesses are expected to, um, uh, increase their use of open source. Right, So So, yes, hybrid is everywhere. Edge is driving it, but there's a There's another critical element to that movement. The complexity of our clients. Estates are increasing because whether it's hybrid or whether it's edge or whatever, they are now. You know, given if you're a C i or a C T o. Your estate is really complex now. So one of the things that we now need to do is how do we simplify that? So, you know, we think and we've been talking with red hat about this. We need to come up with a clean, you know, we keep calling it, you know, single pane of glass for a enterprise that allows them to look at their estate in a way that allows them to then simply make some innovative decisions across the entire state. So, yes, edges driving hybrid. But the key thing that we now need to overcome is how do we manage that complexity? >>We have new term. Uh, I call it Super Cloud, but the session is a better word. Medic cloud. That's gonna what I think of that century. I think of deep industry expertise. Of course, we have that, but with the partnership from redhead, it's a very it's horizontal in the sense that it can go anywhere. So how do you guys work in in terms of within Accenture plugging into your deep industry expertise? And how does that horizontal redhead >>fit. That's a really good question. So, you know, one of the things, you know. First of all, we came out with a announcement today about our expanded relationship with Red Hat. One of the key elements in that announcement is how we are looking and bringing in red Hat into our industry business motions. So we actually have decided to pick a certain number of industries. You know, financial services is one. Telco is another. We are thinking about utilities in Europe. Public health is a is another one that we are looking at. And as we come up with our offerings, you heard me and Stephanie talk about joint offerings earlier on the keynote. Um, these offerings are industry offerings, but in those offerings we have embedded and we are, they're powered by redhead technology. Um, that allows these industry solutions to drive innovation through their technology. Um, yes. Red hat can be, for the most part, a horizontal cross industry, you know, technology. But you have to really bring them into specific industrial solutions because of the way we go to market. And I think Red hat brings innovation, uh, in a way that these industries haven't seen before. >>So I mean, how do you stay out of their way? Because they have a services operation that they're trying to grow. And that's your business as well. So where the lines of demarcation >>back to your question? I I don't I don't think there is a limiting opportunity. Read? Had, you know Stephanie Me, Paul, we're all talking about How do we collectively increase both our armies? You know, I I Yes, there might be occasional overlaps in the trenches, but when you look at the bigger picture, it is not a problem at all. >>I wouldn't think so. I mean, the way you're describing Rogers exactly the way it should work. You lead with the business, figure out the business problem, how you're gonna solve that. The technology will take care of itself. Technologies come and they go. And you want to use modern technologies, obviously. But if you don't get the business piece right, forget no technology is gonna save you >>exactly, right. And and the complexities of what the businesses today are facing is getting more and more difficult. And I think actually, technologies like red hat, you know, they're the whole concept of open source, I think is very creative around driving innovations from the market. I >>want to ask you that because Paul Kermie is you know, the storey was sort of an homage to open source. How much do customers really care about open source >>customers care about innovation and and anything that drives innovation to their business, whether it's whether it comes from technology, whether it comes from crowdsourcing, whether it comes from, you know, uh, marketing doesn't matter. I think when you look at the key hunger for innovation and how open source drives innovation, it becomes part of the business conversation. And, uh and I think that's been one of the mantras that Paul has had from day one about how this is such a great platform for innovation. And I think that's >>something customers asked for. They say we must develop this using open source platforms and tool sets. >>Um, it depends. I think I think there are some technology CEO s R c T O s that are much more religious about what? Their technologies that needs to be there are others that are that are much more business oriented. Um, so yes, there are. You know, if it's more in telecom field, I think telecom or some of the more, uh, technology driven fields, they will ask for open source. In others, they we bring, bring it through as part of offering. >>Here's the nuance that I see and you mentioned Paul Cormier. Accenture, especially. I mean, you look at your ascendancy as a company, you for years would take known processes and codify them in software. And you made, you know, a lot of great innovations doing that. And people who made a lot of >>money >>today, this new normal, he calls it. I call it the new abnormal. You don't know what's around the corner. You have to build flexibility into your business, and that is something that open source enables. Uh, so that's sort of this, Really Not really. We don't want to speak about it too much. Business resiliency and flexibility is that that is the new normal. I don't see how you can do it without without open sources expertise. >>I completely agree that I and I think, um, it's actually an asset. So you know, in some ways, selfishly, by having open source in a solution stack some of the innovation gets them much more democratised, right? So? So it can come from a much broader sweet. So the load is not only an extension to come up with all the innovation we can, we can actually come up with a more democratised way of bringing that innovation in. So I think that's that's >>great. And it doesn't always go back to the community. I mean, Amazon built a $70 billion business on open source, but not all right, guys. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you very much for having a pleasure. All right, keep it right there. This is Dave Volonte for Paul Dillon. The Cubes. Continuous coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022 from the seaport in Boston. We'll be right back. >>Mm mm.

>>The cube presents, Dell technologies world brought to you by Dell. >>Welcome back to Las Vegas. We're here in the Venetian convention center. My name is Dave Alan. I'm here with my co-host John fur. You're watching the Cube's live coverage of Dell tech world 2022. Great crowd. I would say 7,000, maybe even 8,000 people. When you add in all the peripheral attendees, Jeff Clark is here. He's the vice chairman and co-chief operating officer of Dell technologies. Great to see you face to face, man. >>Hey guys. Good to see you again. Awesome. >>So really enjoyed your keynote this morning. You were pumped up, uh, I thought the, the presentations and the demos were crisp. So congratulations. Thank you. How you feeling? >>Doing a great job? How am I feeling? Uh, well, one relieved. If you know me well enough, I'm an engineer by heart. So trade the anxiety to do that is, uh, and build up is quite draining, but having it done, I feel pretty good now, but I feel good about what we discussed. Uh, it was a fun day to be able to talk to real customers and partners face to face like we're doing here and showcasing what we've been doing. I must admit that was a little bit of fun. Yeah. >>Well, we're chilling on the cube. Uh, we're laid back as you know. Um, what was your favorite moment? Cause you got a lot of highlights. The snowflake deal. We love been talking about it all, all show. Um, the, the, I IP of Dell with software define was pretty cool. Lot of great stuff. What's what >>Some cool laptop stuff too. That was interesting. You know, I don't have to. Where's the, where's the share button. >>We have a discord server now and all 18,000 people want to know. >>You're asking me to pick a monks, my should, which I like the most. >>How big is your monitor on your desk? >>Uh, I have a 49 on one side and a 42 on the other side. That's what both you guys need >><laugh> productivity, da >><laugh> well, in the world of zoom, it was incre incredibly productive to have that surface area in front of you. So, which of my announcements was my favorite, I think from a raw technology point of view, showcasing Dell, thinking about what we've done in a very differentiated way. It's hard not to say the power flex >>Engagement. Oh, look at that. Look, I wrote just, just wrote down power flex. Yep. Right. >><laugh> okay. Think about it. Softer defined. We, the leader and softer defined, uh, infrastructure that can be, think of it as independently, independent ability to scale compute from storage so we can linear scale and those no bounds, unlimited IO performance. The ability to put file block support, hyper hypervisors and bare metal all on a single platform. And then we made a, a bunch of other improvements around it. It's truly an area where we a leader we're differentiated in our core IP matters >>And that's Dell IP, Dell technology top >>The bottom. >>Okay, cool. >>So from a pure technical point of view, it's probably my favorite. What's not liked about PowerMax, the most mission critical, the most secure high end storage system in the world. And we made it better. We made it more secure. We put an isolated vault in it. We added some, uh, multifactor authentication. We improved the architecture for twice the performance, 50% better response time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, pretty cool. <laugh> and then you gotta put a notebook in front of everybody where you think about in this modern workplace. And what we've learned is hybrid users. What software that we've embedded into that latitude 93 30 was pretty interesting. I thought. And then if I pull day one into the conversation, sort of the direction of where we're going of, multi-cloud the role of multi-cloud and our ability to be sort at the center of our customers multi-cloud world. I loved how Chuck described moving from multi-cloud by default to multi cloud, by design, and then the subsequent architecture that we put behind it. And then probably cherry on the old cake was the snowflake announcement that got a lot of people excited about bringing a really differentiated view of cloud based analytics down on our object storage. I know that was more than one, but I can't help. >>I like the cherry on top >>You've um, said a number of times, I think the 85% of your engineers are software engineers. You talked about, is that the right number, roughly? Yes, sir. And, and so, uh, you talked also about 500 new features today and, and every time you're talking about those features, I inferred anyway, it was part of the OS. A lot of it anyway, a lot of software does hardware still matter? And if so, why? >>Of course hardware still >>Matter. Explain why. >>Well, last time I checked doesn't the software stuff work on the hardware. Exactly. Doesn't the software things make hardware calls to exploit the capability we built into the software. Of course it does says it absolutely does matter, but I think what we're trying to describe or to get across today is we're moving up the stack, we're adding more value. Basically our customers are dragging us into a broader set of problems and software is increasingly the answer to that running on the best hardware, the best infrastructure, being able to build the right software abstraction to hook into either data frameworks, like a snowflake, being able to present our storage assets of software in the pub book cloud, ultimately the ability to pull them and think of it as a pool of storage for developers to make developers lives easier. Yeah. That's where we're going >>And, and is accurate in your view, you're going up to stack more software content and there's value. That's also flowing into Silicon, whether it's accelerators or Nicks and things like that, is that a right way to think about what's happening in hardware and software. We, >>You and I have had a number of conversations, David, the evolution of the architecture, where we're going from a general purpose CPU based thing to now specialty processors, whether that be a smart Nick purpose, built accelerators. If we leaped all the way out to quantum, really purpose built accelerators for a specific algorithm, there's certainly specialization going on. And as that happens, more software and software defined is necessary to knit together. And we have to be the person that does that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. >>Talk about how the software defined piece makes the innovation happen on the hardware. Is it, is it the relationship that it's decoupled or you guys are just building design Silicon to make the software better? Cuz that interplay is a design, uh, is designed in, right? >>Uh, I, I think it's a little bit of both clearly being able to exploit the underlying hardware features and capabilities in your software in a differentiated way is important. Something we've excelled at for many, many years, but then the ability to abstract. If you think about some of the things that we talk about as a data fabric or a data plane and a data plane working across different architectures, that's an abstracted piece of software that ultimately leads to a very different and that's where we're driving towards >>What's different now. And what's similar now from the past, I was just on a, a panel. I talking about space, Cal poly and California space symposium and this hardware and space and it's, software's driving everything you can't do break, fix and space. It's talk about the edge. You can't talk about. You can't do break hard to do break, fix and space. So you gotta rely on software in the supply chain. Big part of the design as software becomes more prevalent with open source and et cetera, that innovation equation is designed in. What's your, what's your thoughts on that? >>Help me understand John, what more of this specific of what you're looking for, where do you want to dive into >>The, as Silicon becomes more of a more efficient, what does that do for the software in things like edge, for instance, as the boxes move out and the, the devices move to the home, they gotta be faster, more intelligent, more secure. Uh, Michael says it's a, it's a compute tower now 5g for instance. >>Yeah. Uh, maybe another way to look at it. We've been in the industry a little while for the longest time hardware capabilities were always ahead of software. We built great hardware. We let software catch up. What's changed certainly in this time. And as we look going forward is the software capabilities are now ahead of those very hardware capabilities in bringing it. And to me, that's a, it's a very fundamental change. Certainly in my 35 years of doing this, that's very different. And if you believe that continues, which I do, particularly as we face increasingly more difficult challenges to continue with Moore's law, how do we continue to build out the transistor density? We've all benefited from for four, five decades now, softer innovation is going to lead, which is what we tried to hint at today. And I think that's the future. That's where you're gonna see us continue to drive and think about how we talk about, uh, technology today. I know Dave and I had this conversation not too long ago, whether it's infrastructure is code, who would've thought of that idea a decade ago. <laugh> uh, if we think about, uh, data as code we were talking about before we got on air, what data on code data's little bits, one's in zero stored in Silicon, you store >>It, <laugh> you move it >>Around now. So it, it opens the door or the door to, I think innovation done differently and perhaps even done it more scale as if we abstract it correctly. >>Yeah. And might led a good point on when he was on about all the good benefits that come from that in the customer and in society. And I guess the next question with the customer side, it take your, if the, if the flip, if the script is flipping, which I believe that it is, I agree with you. How does the customers deal with the innovation strategy? Because now they wanna take advantage of the new innovation, but what problems and opportunities are they facing? That's different now than say a decade ago, if you're in it or you're trying to create a great group within your CISO organization. I mean, there are problems now that we didn't see before. What do you, how do you see that? >>Well, I, I, I think the, the biggest change would be again, if you look and reflect on our careers, it was sort of in the business, it played a role. It was often put off to the corner, just make the place sort of work. And today, and I think the pandemic has the pandemic and global health crisis accelerated this technology is now part of people's business and you can't compete without technology. And in fact, we saw it during the early days of the pandemic, those CU customers that were further along on their digital transformation, generally weathered the storm in their sector better than those who were behind. >>Yeah, >>Absolutely. What does that tell us technology was an enabler. Technology helped them, whether the storm prepared them, made them more competitive. So now I think I don't meet many CIO and CEOs who don't have the conversation about their business model and technology being symbiotic, that they're integrated, that they can't do one without the other. That's a very different mindset than when we grew up in this industry where this stuff was. So now you take that as a basis. We got data everywhere. Most of the data's gonna come out of the data, not in the data center's gonna be created outside of the data center. The attack surface has grown disproportionately >>People, people sharing data, too, their data with other data, very much so generating >>Data in places. Sometimes they don't know where it is and hope to get it back. So the role to be able to protect that estate, if you will, to be able to protect the information, which increasingly data is companies fuel, but makes 'em go, how do you protect it? How do you ultimately analyze it? How do you provide them the insights to ultimately run and drive their business? That's the opportunity. >>So we are in the same wavelength with Powerflex and, and I'm a little concerned about confirmation bias, but, but I, I wanna say this, I really like the way your Dell's language and yours specifically has evolved. You talk about abstraction layers, hiding that underlying complexity, building value on top of the hyperscalers on prem connecting sore, we call it super cloud. You guys call it multi-cloud. We saw two examples of that today, project Alpine and the snowflake is early examples. Uh, I'm trying to gauge how real this is. We think it's real. Uh, we talked to customers who clearly say, this is what they want. Um, I wonder if you could add a little detail to that, some color on your thoughts on, on how real this is, how it will evolve over time. >>Well, from our, from our seat and the way that I, that, that I see it in driving our underlying product development, roadmaps, people want to drag into conversation about public and private and this, and what have you. And, and that's not how customers work today. Uh, customers really have got to this point where they want to use the best capabilities regardless of where they lie. And if that's keeping mission critical data on premise taking advantage of analytic tools in the cloud, doing some test dev in the public cloud, moving out to edge, they want to be able to do that reasonably quickly and not. We were talking about this before we got on the air in an easy fashion. It can't be complex. Yeah. So how do you actually knit this together in a way that is not complex and enables customers? That's what I think customers want. So you think about our multi-cloud vision. It's about building an ecosystem across all of the public clouds, which we've made announcement and announcement to do that. Well, >>You said earlier default versus by design, which referencing to the multi-cloud. But I think the design is the key word here. The design is a system architecture you're talking about. You said also technology and business models are tied together and enable or that's. If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want, they wanna leverage whatever they can. And at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do >>Well, that that's exactly right. If I take that in what, what Dave was saying. And, and, and I summarize it the following way. If we can take these cloud assets in Cape capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to delivery, distributed platform, game over, >>Tell us we gotta wrap, which bummed me out because I, we had so much, we haven't covered. We haven't talked about 5g. We really haven't hit on apex. Uh, what else is exciting? You something, you know, let's let's in the last minute or so, let's do a wrap. >>We just, >>I know we just got started. We had >>A schedule, >>Two guys, the boss, this >>Is great. We wanna go the next, >>Not when it comes to the schedule, just laid >>Out the, just laid out the checkmate move right there. You know, um, >>Look, what I get excited about, uh, >>Edge to me is a domain that we're gonna see in this part of our careers have the same level of innovation and discovery that we just saw in the early part of our careers and probably times 10 or times a hundred. And I, and I think about the world we live in and matching up what's happening in this digitization of our world and everything, having a sensor in it, collecting data everywhere on everything, and then being able to synthesize it in a way that we can derive reasonable insight from to be able to make real time decisions from whether that be in healthcare, a smart city, a factory of the transportation area, our own website of how the traffic comes in and how we present our offers more effectively to what you want, which are different than what Dave wants. The possibilities are unlimited and, or on the half of the first ending, if you like baseball, analogies, absolutely. And a long way to go and a tremendous amount of innovation that'll happen here. I get excited about that place. Now. It's not gonna happen overnight every once say, oh, we're smoking edge. Wasn't at IOT, stop putting a timeframe on it. Yeah. Know, the foundation is built to be able to develop, evolve and innovate from here. Like I've never seen. >>And the playbook to get back to your game overcome is whoever can simplify the comp and reduce the complexity and make things simpler and easier. That's, I mean, that's kind of the formula for success basically. I mean, it sounds kind of easy, right? Like >>Spot on, >>Just do it, but what, but that's hard. >>Remember it's hard and being able to build data centers and, and millions of places. So for example, what we'll leave in a little 5g, you think about all of the public cloud data centers today. I think there's roughly 600 locations. You've got 7 million cell towers. Yeah. 7 million cell towers gonna >>Be like how reach right there. >>Data center at the edge of the network. Yeah. As we just aggregate the telecom infrastructure. Sure. From a monolithic big black box into a disaggregated standards based architecture with virtualization and containerization in it. >>I mean, outta compute, I love the whole Metro operating model there, like having that data center at that edge, all that wire wireless coming in. >>I >>Agree. Pretty impressive. Powering the Teslas and all the cars out there sending telematics to, uh, people's phones. And >>Let's wait to next wearables >>Here >>To, I was gonna say next Dell technology world choose to have some fun. <laugh> >>Jeff Clark. Thanks so much for coming to the cube. You're awesome guest and, uh, congratulations on all the success and really appreciate your time. Yeah. Thanks for >>Having me. Thanks for kind words. >>All right. Thank you for watching. This is Dave for John furrier, Dell tech world 2022 live. We'll be right back. You're watching the cube. >>That was great. Mean you great riff.

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is "Breaking Analysis" with Dave Vellante. >> When Facebook changed its name to Meta last fall, it catalyzed a chain reaction throughout the tech industry. Software firms, gaming companies, chip makers, device manufacturers, and others have joined in hype machine. Now, it's easy to dismiss the metaverse as futuristic hyperbole, but do we really believe that tapping on a smartphone, or staring at a screen, or two-dimensional Zoom meetings are the future of how we work, play, and communicate? As the internet itself proved to be larger than we ever imagined, it's very possible, and even quite likely that the combination of massive processing power, cheap storage, AI, blockchains, crypto, sensors, AR, VR, brain interfaces, and other emerging technologies will combine to create new and unimaginable consumer experiences, and massive wealth for creators of the metaverse. Hello, and welcome to this week's Wiki Bond Cube Insights, powered by ETR. In this "Breaking Analysis" we welcome in cyber expert, hacker gamer, NFT expert, and founder of ORE System, Nick Donarski. Nick, welcome, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you, sir, glad to be here. >> Yeah, okay, so today we're going to traverse two parallel paths, one that took Nick from security expert and PenTester to NFTs, tokens, and the metaverse. And we'll simultaneously explore the complicated world of cybersecurity in the enterprise, and how the blockchain, crypto, and NFTs will provide key underpinnings for digital ownership in the metaverse. We're going to talk a little bit about blockchain, and crypto, and get things started there, and some of the realities and misconceptions, and how innovations in those worlds have led to the NFT craze. We'll look at what's really going on in NFTs and why they're important as both a technology and societal trend. Then, we're going to dig into the tech and try to explain why and how blockchain and NFTs are going to lay the foundation for the metaverse. And, finally, who's going to build the metaverse. And how long is it going to take? All right, Nick, let's start with you. Tell us a little bit about your background, your career. You started as a hacker at a really, really young age, and then got deep into cyber as a PenTester. You did some pretty crazy stuff. You have some great stories about sneaking into buildings. You weren't just doing it all remote. Tell us about yourself. >> Yeah, so I mean, really, I started a long time ago. My dad was really the foray into technology. I wrote my first program on an Apple IIe in BASIC in 1989. So, I like to say I was born on the internet, if you will. But, yeah, in high school at 16, I incorporated my first company, did just tech support for parents and teachers. And then in 2000 I transitioned really into security and focused there ever since. I joined Rapid7 and after they picked up Medis boy, I joined HP. I was one of their founding members of Shadowlabs and really have been part of the information security and the cyber community all throughout, whether it's training at various different conferences or talking. My biggest thing and my most awesome moments as various things of being broken into, is really when I get to actually work with somebody that's coming up in the industry and who's new and actually has that light bulb moment of really kind of understanding of technology, understanding an idea, or getting it when it comes to that kind of stuff. >> Yeah, and when you think about what's going on in crypto and NFTs and okay, now the metaverse it's you get to see some of the most innovative people. Now I want to first share a little bit of data on enterprise security and maybe Nick get you to comment. We've reported over the past several years on the complexity in the security business and the numerous vendor choices that SecOps Pros face. And this chart really tells that story in the cybersecurity space. It's an X,Y graph. We've shown it many times from the ETR surveys where the vertical axis, it's a measure of spending momentum called net score. And the horizontal axis is market share, which represents each company's presence in the data set, and a couple of points stand out. First, it's really crowded. In that red dotted line that you see there, that's 40%, above that line on the net score axis, marks highly elevated spending momentum. Now, let's just zoom in a bit and I've cut the data by those companies that have more than a hundred responses in the survey. And you can see here on this next chart, it's still very crowded, but a few call-outs are noteworthy. First companies like SentinelOne, Elastic, Tanium, Datadog, Netskope and Darktrace. They were all above that 40% line in the previous chart, but they've fallen off. They still have actually a decent presence in the survey over 60 responses, but under that hundred. And you can see Auth0 now Okta, big $7 billion acquisition. They got the highest net score CrowdStrike's up there, Okta classic they're kind of enterprise business, and Zscaler and others above that line. You see Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft very impressive because they're both big and they're above that elevated spending velocity. So Nick, kind of a long-winded intro, but it was a little bit off topic, but I wanted to start here because this is the life of a SecOps pro. They lack the talent in a capacity to keep bad guys fully at bay. And so they have to keep throwing tooling at the problem, which adds to the complexity and as a PenTester and hacker, this chaos and complexity means cash for the bad guys. Doesn't it? >> Absolutely. You know, the more systems that these organizations find to integrate into the systems, means that there's more components, more dollars and cents as far as the amount of time and the engineers that need to actually be responsible for these tools. There's a lot of reasons that, the more, I guess, hands in the cookie jar, if you will, when it comes to the security architecture, the more links that are, or avenues for attack built into the system. And really one of the biggest things that organizations face is being able to have engineers that are qualified and technical enough to be able to support that architecture as well, 'cause buying it from a vendor and deploying it, putting it onto a shelf is good, but if it's not tuned properly, or if it's not connected properly, that security tool can just hold up more avenues of attack for you. >> Right, okay, thank you. Now, let's get into the meat of the discussion for today and talk a little bit about blockchain and crypto for a bit. I saw sub stack post the other day, and it was ripping Matt Damon for pedaling crypto on TV ads and how crypto is just this big pyramid scheme. And it's all about allowing criminals to be anonymous and it's ransomware and drug trafficking. And yes, there are definitely scams and you got to be careful and lots of dangers out there, but these are common criticisms in the mainstream press, that overlooked the fact by the way that IPO's and specs are just as much of a pyramid scheme. Now, I'm not saying there shouldn't be more regulation, there should, but Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, cryptocurrency, and you think about, it's really the confluence of software engineering, cryptography and game theory. And there's some really powerful innovation being created by the blockchain community. Crypto and blockchain are really at the heart of a new decentralized platform being built out. And where today, you got a few, large internet companies. They control the protocols and the platform. Now the aspiration of people like yourself, is to create new value opportunities. And there are many more chances for the little guys and girls to get in on the ground floor and blockchain technology underpins all this. So Nick, what's your take, what are some of the biggest misconceptions around blockchain and crypto? And do you even pair those two in the same context? What are your thoughts? >> So, I mean, really, we like to separate ourselves and say that we are a blockchain company, as opposed to necessarily saying(indistinct) anything like that. We leverage those tools. We leverage cryptocurrencies, we leverage NFTs and those types of things within there, but blockchain is a technology, which is the underlying piece, is something that can be used and utilized in a very large number of different organizations out there. So, cryptocurrency and a lot of that negative context comes with a fear of something new, without having that regulation in place, without having the rules in place. And we were a big proponent of, we want the regulation, right? We want to do right. We want to do it by the rules. We want to do it under the context of, this is what should be done. And we also want to help write those rules as well, because a lot of the lawmakers, a lot of the lobbyists and things, they have a certain aspect or a certain goal of when they're trying to get these things. Our goal is simplicity. We want the ability for the normal average person to be able to interact with crypto, interact with NFTs, interact with the blockchain. And basically by saying, blockchain in quotes, it's very ambiguous 'cause there's many different things that blockchain can be, the easiest way, right? The easiest way to understand blockchain is simply a distributed database. That's really the core of what blockchain is. It's a record keeping mechanism that allows you to reference that. And the beauty of it, is that it's quote unquote immutable. You can't edit that data. So, especially when we're talking about blockchain, being underlying for technologies in the future, things like security, where you have logging, you have keeping, whether you're talking about sales, where you may have to have multiple different locations (indistinct) users from different locations around the globe. It creates a central repository that provides distribution and security in the way that you're ensuring your data, ensuring the validation of where that data exists when it was created. Those types of things that blockchain really is. If you go to the historical, right, the very early on Bitcoin absolutely was made to have a way of not having to deal with the fed. That was the core functionality of the initial crypto. And then you had a lot of the illicit trades, those black markets that jumped onto it because of what it could do. The maturity of the technology though, of where we are now versus say back in 97 is a much different world of blockchain, and there's a much different world of cryptocurrency. You still have to be careful because with any fed, you're still going to have that FUD that goes out there and sells that fear, uncertainty and doubt, which spurs a lot of those types of scams, and a lot of those things that target end users that we face as security professionals today. You still get mailers that go out, looking for people to give their social security number over during tax time. Snail mail is considered a very ancient technology, but it still works. You still get a portion of the population that falls for those tricks, fishing, whatever it might be. It's all about trying to make sure that you have fear about what is that change. And I think that as we move forward, and move into the future, the simpler and the more comfortable these types of technologies become, the easier it is to utilize and indoctrinate normal users, to be able to use these things. >> You know, I want to ask you about that, Nick, because you mentioned immutability, there's a lot of misconceptions about that. I had somebody tell me one time, "Blockchain's Bs," and they say, "Well, oh, hold on a second. They say, oh, they say it's a mutable, but you can hack Coinbase, whatever it is." So I guess a couple of things, one is that the killer app for blockchain became money. And so we learned a lot through that. And you had Bitcoin and it really wasn't programmable through its interface. And then Ethereum comes out. I know, you know a lot about Ether and you have solidity, which is a lot simpler, but it ain't JavaScript, which is ubiquitous. And so now you have a lot of potential for the initial ICO's and probably still the ones today, the white papers, a lot of security flaws in there. I'm sure you can talk to that, but maybe you can help square that circle about immutability and security. I've mentioned game theory before, it's harder to hack Bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain than it is to mine. So that's why people mine, but maybe you could add some context to that. >> Yeah, you know it goes to just about any technology out there. Now, when you're talking about blockchain specifically, the majority of the attacks happen with the applications and the smart contracts that are actually running on the blockchain, as opposed to necessarily the blockchain itself. And like you said, the impact for whether that's loss of revenue or loss of tokens or whatever it is, in most cases that results from something that was a phishing attack, you gave up your credentials, somebody said, paste your private key in here, and you win a cookie or whatever it might be, but those are still the fundamental pieces. When you're talking about various different networks out there, depending on the blockchain, depends on how much the overall security really is. The more distributed it is, and the more stable it is as the network goes, the better or the more stable any of the code is going to be. The underlying architecture of any system is the key to success when it comes to the overall security. So the blockchain itself is immutable, in the case that the owner are ones have to be trusted. If you look at distributed networks, something like Ethereum or Bitcoin, where you have those proof of work systems, that disperses that information at a much more remote location, So the more disperse that information is, the less likely it is to be able to be impacted by one small instance. If you look at like the DAO Hack, or if you look at a lot of the other vulnerabilities that exist on the blockchain, it's more about the code. And like you said, solidity being as new as it is, it's not JavaScript. The industry is very early and very infantile, as far as the developers that are skilled in doing this. And with that just comes the inexperience and the lack of information that you don't learn until JavaScript is 10 or 12 years old. >> And the last thing I'll say about this topic, and we'll move on to NFTs, but NFTs relate is that, again, I said earlier that the big internet giants have pretty much co-opted the platform. You know, if you wanted to invest in Linux in the early days, there was no way to do that. You maybe have to wait until red hat came up with its IPO and there's your pyramid scheme folks. But with crypto it, which is again, as Nick was explaining underpinning is the blockchain, you can actually participate in early projects. Now you got to be careful 'cause there are a lot of scams and many of them are going to blow out if not most of them, but there are some, gems out there, because as Nick was describing, you've got this decentralized platform that causes scaling issues or performance issues, and people are solving those problems, essentially building out a new internet. But I want to get into NFTs, because it's sort of the next big thing here before we get into the metaverse, what Nick, why should people pay attention to NFTs? Why do they matter? Are they really an important trend? And what are the societal and technological impacts that you see in this space? >> Yeah, I mean, NFTs are a very new technology and ultimately it's just another entry on the blockchain. It's just another piece of data in the database. But how it's leveraged in the grand scheme of how we, as users see it, it can be the classic idea of an NFT is just the art, or as good as the poster on your wall. But in the case of some of the new applications, is where are you actually get that utility function. Now, in the case of say video games, video games and gamers in general, already utilize digital items. They already utilize digital points. As in the case of like Call of Duty points, those are just different versions of digital currencies. You know, World of Warcraft Gold, I like to affectionately say, was the very first cryptocurrency. There was a Harvard course taught on the economy of WOW, there was a black market where you could trade your end game gold for Fiat currencies. And there's even places around the world that you can purchase real world items and stay at hotels for World of Warcraft Gold. So the adoption of blockchain just simply gives a more stable and a more diverse technology for those same types of systems. You're going to see that carry over into shipping and logistics, where you need to have data that is single repository for being able to have multiple locations, multiple shippers from multiple global efforts out there that need to have access to that data. But in the current context, it's either sitting on a shipping log, it's sitting on somebody's desk. All of those types of paper transactions can be leveraged as NFTs on the blockchain. It's just simply that representation. And once you break the idea of this is just a piece of art, or this is a cryptocurrency, you get into a world where you can apply that NFT technology to a lot more things than I think most people think of today. >> Yeah, and of course you mentioned art a couple of times when people sold as digital art for whatever, it was 60, 65 million, 69 million, that caught a lot of people's attention, but you're seeing, I mean, there's virtually infinite number of applications for this. One of the Washington wizards, tokenized portions of his contract, maybe he was creating a new bond, that's really interesting use cases and opportunities, and that kind of segues into the latest, hot topic, which is the metaverse. And you've said yourself that blockchain and NFTs are the foundation of the metaverse, they're foundational elements. So first, what is the metaverse to you and where do blockchain and NFTs, fit in? >> Sure, so, I mean, I affectionately refer to the metaverse just a VR and essentially, we've been playing virtual reality games and all the rest for a long time. And VR has really kind of been out there for a long time. So most people's interpretation or idea of what the metaverse is, is a virtual reality version of yourself and this right, that idea of once it becomes yourself, is where things like NFT items, where blockchain and digital currencies are going to come in, because if you have a manufacturer, so you take on an organization like Nike, and they want to put their shoes into the metaverse because we, as humans, want to individualize ourselves. We go out and we want to have that one of one shoe or that, t-shirt or whatever it is, we're going to want to represent that same type of individuality in our virtual self. So NFTs, crypto and all of those digital currencies, like I was saying that we've known as gamers are going to play that very similar role inside of the metaverse. >> Yeah. Okay. So basically you're going to take your physical world into the metaverse. You're going to be able to, as you just mentioned, acquire things- I loved your WOW example. And so let's stay on this for a bit, if we may, of course, Facebook spawned a lot of speculation and discussion about the concept of the metaverse and really, as you pointed out, it's not new. You talked about why second life, really started in 2003, and it's still around today. It's small, I read recently, it's creators coming back into the company and books were written in the early 90s that used the term metaverse. But Nick, talk about how you see this evolving, what role you hope to play with your company and your community in the future, and who builds the metaverse, when is it going to be here? >> Yeah, so, I mean, right now, and we actually just got back from CES last week. And the Metaverse is a very big buzzword. You're going to see a lot of integration of what people are calling, quote unquote, the metaverse. And there was organizations that were showing virtual office space, virtual malls, virtual concerts, and those types of experiences. And the one thing right now that I don't think that a lot of organizations have grasp is how to make one metaverse. There's no real player one, if you will always this yet, There's a lot of organizations that are creating their version of the metaverse, which then again, just like every other software and game vendor out there has their version of cryptocurrency and their version of NFTs. You're going to see it start to pop up, especially as Oculus is going to come down in price, especially as you get new technologies, like some of the VR glasses that look more augmented reality and look more like regular glasses that you're wearing, things like that, the easier that those technologies become as in adopting into our normal lifestyle, as far as like looks and feels, the faster that stuff's going to actually come out to the world. But when it comes to like, what we're doing is we believe that the metaverse should actually span multiple different blockchains, multiple different segments, if you will. So what ORE system is doing, is we're actually building the underlying architecture and technologies for developers to bring their metaverse too. You can leverage the ORE Systems NFTs, where we like to call our utility NFTs as an in-game item in one game, or you can take it over and it could be a t-shirt in another game. The ability for having that cross support within the ecosystem is what really no one has grasp on yet. Most of the organizations out there are using a very classic business model. Get the user in the game, make them spend their money in the game, make all their game stuff as only good in their game. And that's where the developer has you, they have you in their bubble. Our goal, and what we like to affectionately say is, we want to bring white collar tools and technology to blue collar folks, We want to make it simple. We want to make it off the shelf, and we want to make it a less cost prohibitive, faster, and cheaper to actually get out to all the users. We do it by supporting the technology. That's our angle. If you support the technology and you support the platform, you can build a community that will build all of the metaverse around them. >> Well, and so this is interesting because, if you think about some of the big names, we've Microsoft is talking about it, obviously we mentioned Facebook. They have essentially walled gardens. Now, yeah, okay, I could take Tik Tok and pump it into Instagram is fine, but they're really siloed off. And what you're saying is in the metaverse, you should be able to buy a pair of sneakers in one location and then bring it to another one. >> Absolutely, that's exactly it. >> And so my original kind of investment in attractiveness, if you will, to crypto, was that, the little guy can get an early, but I worry that some of these walled gardens, these big internet giants are going to try to co-op this. So I think what you're doing is right on, and I think it's aligned with the objectives of consumers and the users who don't want to be forced in to a pen. They want to be able to live freely. And that's really what you're trying to do. >> That's exactly it. You know, when you buy an item, say a Skin in Fortnite or Skin in Call of Duty, it's only good in that game. And not even in the franchise, it's only good in that version of the game. In the case of what we want to do is, you can not only have that carry over and your character. So say you buy a really cool shirt, and you've got that in your Call of Duty or in our case, we're really Osiris Protocol, which is our proof of concept video game to show that this all thing actually works, but you can actually go in and you can get a gun in Osiris Protocol. And if we release, Osiris Protocol two, you'll be able to take that to Osiris Protocol two. Now the benefit of that is, is you're going to be the only one in the next version with that item, if you haven't sold it or traded it or whatever else. So we don't lock you into a game. We don't lock you into a specific application. You own that, you can trade that freely with other users. You can sell that on the open market. We're embracing what used to be considered the black market. I don't understand why a lot of video games, we're always against the skins and mods and all the rest. For me as a gamer and coming up, through the many, many years of various different Call of Duties and everything in my time, I wish I could still have some this year. I still have a World of Warcraft account. I wasn't on, Vanilla, Burning Crusade was my foray, but I still have a character. If you look at it that way, if I had that wild character and that gear was NFTs, in theory, I could actually pass that onto my kid who could carry on that character. And it would actually increase in value because they're NFT back then. And then if needed, you could trade those on the open market and all the rest. It just makes gaming a much different thing. >> I love it. All right, Nick, hey, we're out of time, but I got to say, Nick Donarski, thanks so much for coming on the program today, sharing your insights and really good luck to you and building out your technology platform and your community. >> Thank you, sir, it's been an absolute pleasure. >> And thank you for watching. Remember, all these episodes are available as podcasts, just search "Breaking Analysis Podcast", and you'll find them. I publish pretty much every week on siliconangle.com and wikibond.com. And you can reach me @dvellante on Twitter or comment on my LinkedIn posts. You can always email me david.vellante@siliconangle.com. And don't forget, check out etr.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE Insights, powered by ETR, happy 2022 be well, and we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>From the cube studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, bringing you data-driven insights from the cube and ETR. This is breaking analysis with Dave Vellante >>UI path has always been an unconventional company. You know, it started with humble beginnings. It was essentially a software development shop. And then it caught lightning in a bottle with its computer vision technology. And it's really it's simplification mantra. And it created a very easy to deploy software robot system for bespoke departments. So they could automate mundane tasks. You know, you know, the story, the company grew rapidly was able to go public early this year. Now consistent with its out of the ordinary approach. While other firms are shutting down travel and physical events, UI path is moving ahead with forward for its annual user conference next week with a live audience there at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, it's also fast-forwarding as a company determined to lead the charge beyond RPA and execute on a more all encompassing enterprise automation agenda. Hello everyone. And welcome to this week's Wiki bond Cuban sites powered by ETR in this breaking analysis and a head of forward four we'll update you in the RPA market. >>The progress that UI path has made since its IPO and bringing some ETR customer survey data to contextualize the company's position in the overall market and relative to the competition. Here's a quick rundown of today's agenda. First, I want to tell you the cube is going to be at forward for, at the Bellagio next week, UI paths. This is their big customer event. It's live. It's a physical event. It's primarily outdoors. You have to be vaccinated to attend. Now it's not completely out of the ordinary John furrier and the cube. We're at AWS public sector this past week. And we were at mobile world Congress and one of the first big hybrid events of the year at Barcelona. And we thought that event would kick off the fall event season live event in earnest, but the COVID crisis has caused many tech firms. Most tech firms actually to hit the pause button, not UI path. >>They're moving ahead, they're going forward. And we see a growing trend for smaller VIP events with a virtual component topic, maybe for another day. Now we've talked extensively about the productivity challenges and the automation mandate. The pandemic has thrust upon us. Now we've seen pretty dramatic productivity improvements as remote work kicked in, but it's brought new stresses. For example, according to Qualtrics, 32% of working moms said their mental health has declined since the pandemic hit. 15% of working dads said the same by the way. So one has to question the sustainability of this perpetual Workday, and we're seeing a continuum of automation solutions emerging. And we'll talk about that today. We're seeing tons of MNA, M and a as well, but now in that continuum on the left side of the spectrum, there's Microsoft who in some ways they stand alone and that Azure is becoming ubiquitous as a SAS cloud collaboration and productivity platform. >>Microsoft is everywhere and in virtually every market with their video conferencing security database, cloud CRM, analytics, you name it, Microsoft is pretty much there. And RPA is no different with the acquisition of soft emotive. Last year, Microsoft entered the RTA market in earnest and is penetrating very deeply into the space, particularly as it pertains to personal approach, personal productivity building on its software state. Now in the middle of that spectrum, if you will, we're seeing more M and a, and that's defined really by the big software giants. Think of this domain as integrated software plays SAP, they acquired contexture, uh, uh, they also acquired a company called process insight service now acquired Intella bought Salesforce service trace. We see in for entering the fray. And I, I would put even Pega Pega systems in this camp, software companies focused on integrating RPA into their broader workflows into their software platforms. >>And this is important because these platforms are entrenched. They're walled gardens of sorts and complicated with lots of touchpoints and integration points. And frankly, they're much harder to automate because of their entrenched legacy. Now on the far side of that, spectrum are the horizontal automation players and that's being led by UI path with automate automation anywhere as the number two player in this domain. And I didn't even put blue prism prism in there more M and a recently announced, uh, that Vista is going to acquire them. Vista also owns TIBCO. They're going to merge those two companies, you know, tip goes kind of an integration play. And so again, I'm, I might, I would put them in that, you know, horizontal piece of the spectrum. So with that as background, we're going to look at how UI path has performed since we last covered them at IPO. >>And then we'll bring in some ETR survey data to get the spending view from customers. And then we'll wrap up now just to emphasize the importance of, of automation and the automation mandate mandate. We talk about it all the time in this program, we use this ETR chart. It's a two dimensional view with net score, which is a measure of spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share, which is a proxy for pervasiveness in the dataset. That's on the horizontal axis. Now note that red dotted line at signifies companies with an elevated position on the net score, vertical axis, anything over that is considered pretty good, very good. Now this shows every spending segment within the ETR taxonomy and the four spending categories with the greatest velocity are AI cloud containers and RPA. And they've topped the charts for quite a while. Now they're the only four categories which have sustained above that 40% line consistently throughout the pandemic. >>And even before now, the impressive thing about cloud of course, is it has a spending has both spending momentum on the vertical axis at a very large share of the, of the market share of presence in the dataset. The point is RPA is nascent still. It has an affinity with AI as a means of more intelligently identifying and streamlining process improvements. And so we expect those to, to remain elevated and grow to the right together, UI path pegs it's Tam, total available market at 60 billion. And the reality is that could be understated. Okay. As we reported from the UI path S one analysis, we did pre IPO. The company at that time had an AR annual recurring revenue of $580 million and was growing at 65% annually at nearly 8,000 customers at the time, a thousand of which had an ARR in excess of a hundred K and a net revenue retention, the company had with 145%. >>So let's take a look at the picture six months forward. We mentioned the $60 billion Tam ARR now up over 725 million on its way to a billion ARR holding pretty steady at 60% growth as is an RR net revenue retention, and more than a thousand new customers in 200 more with over a hundred thousand in ARR and a small operating profit, which by the way, exceeded the consensus pretty substantially. Profitability is not shown here and no one seems to care anyway, these days it's all about growing into that Tam. Well, that's a pretty good looking picture. Isn't it? The company had a beat and a raise for the quarter early this month. So looking good, right? Well, you ask how come the stock's not doing better. That's an interesting question. So let's first look at the stocks performance on a relative basis. Here, we show you I pass performance against Pega systems and blue prism. >>The other two publicly traded automation, pure plays, you know, sort of in the case of Pega. So UI path outperformed post its IPO, but since the early summer Pega has been the big winner. Well, UI path slowly decelerated, you see blue prism was the laggard until it was announced. It was in an acquisition talks with a couple of PE firms and the prospects of a bidding war sent that yellow line up. As you can see UI path, as you can see on the inset has a much higher valuation than Pega and way higher than blue prison. Pega. Interestingly is growing revenues nicely at around 40%. And I think what's happening is the street simply wants more, even though UI path beat and raised wall street, still getting comfortable with which is new to the public market game. And the company just needs to demonstrate a track record and build trust. >>There's also some education around billings and multi-year contracts that the company addressed on its last earnings call, but the street was concerned about ARR from new logos. It appears to be slowing down sequentially in a notable decline in billings momentum, which UI pass CEO, CFO addressed on the earnings call saying, look, they don't need to trade margin for prepaid multi-year deals, given the strong cash position while I give anything up. And even though I said, nobody cares about profitability. Well, I guess that's true until you guide for an operating loss. When you've been showing a small profit in recent recent quarters, which you AIPAC did, then all of a sudden people care. So UI path, isn't a bit of an unknown territory to the street and it has a valuation that's pretty rich, very rich, actually at 30 times, a revenue multiple greater than 30 times revenue, multiple. >>So that's why in, in my view, investors are being cautious, but I want to address a dynamic that we've seen with these high growth rocket ship companies, something we talked about with snowflake. And I think you're seeing some of that here with UI paths, different model in the sense that snowflake is pure cloud, but I'm talking about concerns around ARR from new logos and in that growth on a sequential basis. And here's what's happening in my view with UI path, you have a company that started within departments with a small average contract size in ACV, maybe 25,000, maybe 50,000, but not deep six figure deals that wasn't UI paths play it because the company focused so heavily on simplicity and made it really easy to adopt customer saw really fast ROI. I mean breakeven in months. So you very quickly saw expansion into other departments. >>So when ACV started to rise and installations expanded within each customer UI path realized it had to move beyond being a point product. And it started thinking about a platform and making acquisitions like process gold and others, and this marked a much deeper expansion into the customer base. And you can see that here in this UI path, a chart that they shared at their investor deck customers that bought in 2016 and 2017 expanded their they've expanded their spend 15, 13, 15, 18 20 X. So the LTV, the lifetime value of the customer is growing dramatically. And because UI path has focused on simplicity, it has a very facile freemium model, much easier to try before you buy than its competitors. It's CAC, it's customer acquisition costs are likely much lower than some of its peers. And that's a key dynamic. So don't get freaked out by some of those concerns that we raised earlier, because just like snowflake what's happening is the company for sure is gaining new customers. >>Maybe just not at the same rate, but don't miss the forest through the trees. I E they're getting more money from their existing customers, which means retention, loyalty and growth. Speaking of forests, this chart is the dynamic I'm talking about. It's an ETR graphic that shows the components of net score or against spending momentum net score breaks down into five areas that lime green at the top is new additions. Okay? So that's only 11% of the customer mentions by the way, we're talking about more than 125 responses for UI path. So it's meaningful. It's, it's actually larger in this survey, uh, or certainly comparable to Microsoft. So that says something right there. The next bar is the forest green forest. Green is where I want you to focus. That's customer spending 6% or more in the second half of the year, relative to the first half. >>The gray is flat spending, which is quite large, the pink or light red that's spending customer spending 6% or worse. That's a 4% number, but look at the bottom bar. There is no bar that's churn. 0% of the respondents in the survey are churning and churn is the silent killer of SAS companies, 0% defections. So you've got 46% spending, more nobody leaving. That's the dynamic that is powering UI path right now. And I would take this picture any day over a larger lime green and a smaller forest green and a bigger churn number. Okay. So it's pretty good. It's not snowflake good, but it's solid. So how does this picture compare to UI pass peers? Well, let's take a look at that. So this is ETR data, same data showing the granularity net score for Microsoft power, automate UI path automation, anywhere blue prism and Pega. >>So as we said before, Microsoft is ubiquitous. What can we say about that? But UI path is right there with a more robust platform, not to overlook Microsoft. You can't, but UI path, it'll tell you that they don't compete head to head for enterprise automation deals with Microsoft. Now, maybe they will over time. They do however, compete head to head with automation anywhere. And their picture is quite strong. As you can see here, it has this blue Prism's picture and even Pega, although blue prism, automation, anywhere UI path and power automate all have net scores on this chart. As you can see the table in the upper right over 40% Pega does not. But again, we don't see Pega as a pure play RPA vendor. It's a little bit of sort of apples and oranges there, but they do sell RPA and ETR captures in their taxonomy. >>So why not include them also note that UI path has, as I said before, more mentions in the survey than power automate, which is actually quite interesting, given the ubiquity of Microsoft. Now, one other notable notable note is the bright red that's defections and only UI path is showing zero defections. Everybody else has at least even of the slim, some defections. Okay. So take that as you will, but it's another data 0.1. That's powerful, not only for UI path, but really for the entire sector. Now, the last ETR data point that we want to share is our famous two dimensional view. Like the sector chart we showed earlier, this graphic shows net score on the vertical axis. That's against spending velocity and market share or pervasiveness on the horizontal axis. So as we said earlier, UI path actually has greater presence in the survey than the ever-present Microsoft. >>Remember, this is the July survey. We don't have full results from the September, October survey yet. And we can't release them until ETR is out of its quiet period. But I expect the entire sector, like everything is going to be slightly down because as we reported last week, tech spending is moderated slightly in the second half of this year, but we don't expect the picture to change dramatically. UI path and power automate, we think are going to lead and market presence in those two plus automation anywhere are going to show strength and spending momentum as well. Most of the sector. And we'll see who comes in above the 40% line. Okay. What to watch at forward four. So in summary, I'll be looking for a few things. One UI path has hinted toward a big platform announcement that will deepen its capabilities to go beyond being an RPA point tool into much more of an enterprise automation platform rewriting a lot of the code Linux cloud, better automation of the UI. >>You're going to hear all kinds of new product announcements that are coming. So I'll be listening for those details. I want to hear more from customers to further confirm what I've been hearing from them over the last couple of years and get more data, especially on that ROI on that land and expand. I want to understand that dynamic and that true enterprise automation. It's going to be good to get an update face to face and test some of our assumptions here and see where the gaps are and where UI path can improve. Third. I want to talk to ecosystem players to see where they are in participating in the value chain here. What kind of partner has UI path become since it's IPO? Are they investing more in the ecosystem? How to partners fit into that flywheel fourth, I want to hear from UI path management, Daniel DNAs, and other UI path leaders, they're exiting toddler Ville and coming into an adolescent phase or early adulthood. >>And what does that progression look like? How does it feel? What's the vibe at the show. And finally, I'm very excited to participate in a live in-person event to see what's working, see how a hybrid events are evolving. We got a good glimpse at mobile world Congress and this week, and, uh, in DC and public sector summit, here's, you know, the cube has been doing hybrid events for years, and we intend to continue to lead in this regard and bring you the best, real time information as possible. Okay. That's it for today. Remember, these episodes are all available as podcasts, wherever you listen. All you do is search braking analysis podcast. We publish each week on Wiki bond.com and siliconangle.com. And you can always connect on twitter@devolanteoremailmeatdaviddotvolanteatsiliconangle.com. Appreciate the comments on LinkedIn. And don't forget to check out E T r.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Volante for the cube insights powered by ETR be well, and we'll see you next time.

>> From The Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data driven insights from The Cube and ETR, this is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> UiPath has always been an unconventional company. You know it started with humble beginnings. It's essentially a software development shop. Then it caught lightning in a bottle with its computer vision technology. It's really, it's simplification mantra and it created a very easy to deploy software robot system for bespoke departments so they could automate mundane tasks. You know the story. The company grew rapidly, was able to go public early this year. Now consistent with its out-of-the-ordinary approach, while other firms are shutting down travel and physical events, UiPath is moving ahead with Forward IV, it's annual user conference next week with a live audience there at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. It's also fast forwarding as a company, determined to lead the charge beyond RPA and execute on a more all-encompassing Enterprise automation agenda. Hello everyone and welcome to this week's Wikibond Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis and ahead of Forward IV, we'll update you in the RPA market the progress that UiPath has made since its IPO and bringing some ETR customer survey data that's contextualized the company's position in the overall market and relative to the competition. Here's a quick rundown of today's agenda. First I want to tell you theCube is going to be at Forward IV at the Bellagio next week. UiPath, this is their big customer event. It's live, it's a physical event. It's primarily outdoors. You have to be vaccinated to attend. Now, this not completely out of the ordinary. John Furrier and theCube were at AWS Public Sector this past week and we were at Mobile World Congress in one of the first big hybrid events of the year at Barcelona. We thought that event would kick of the fall event season, live event in earnest but the COVID crisis has caused many tech firms, most tech firms actually, to hit pause button. Not UiPath, they're moving ahead. They're going forward and we see a growing trend for smaller VIP events with a virtual component, topic maybe for another day. Now we've talked extensively about the productivity challenges and the automation mandate the pandemic has thrust upon us. Now, we've seen pretty dramatic productivity improvements as remote work kicked in but its brought new stresses. For example, according to Qualtrics, 32% of working moms said their mental health has declined since the pandemic hit. 15% of working dads said the same by the way. So, one has to question the sustainability of this perpetual workday. And we're seeing a continuum of automation solutions emerging and we'll talk about that today. We're seeing tons of M&A as well but now, in that continuum, on the left-side of the spectrum, there's Microsoft who in some ways, they stand alone and their Azure is becoming ubiquitous as a SaaS-Cloud collaboration and productivity platform. Microsoft is everywhere and in virtually every market, whether video conferencing, security, database, cloud, CRM, analytics, you name it. Microsoft is pretty much there and RPA is no different. With the acquisition of Softomotive last year, Microsoft entered the RTA market in earnest and is penetrating very deeply into the space, particularly as it pertains to personal productivity building on its software stake. Now in the middle of that spectrum if you will, we're seeing more M&A and that's defined really by the big software giants. Think of this domain as integrated software place. SAP, they acquired Contextere. They also acquired a company called Process Insights, Service now acquired Inttellebot. Salesforce acquired Servicetrace, we see Infor entering the frame and I would put even Pega, Pega systems in this camp. Software companies focused on integrating RPA into their broader workflows, into their software platforms and this is important because these platforms are entrenched Their well guardants of thoughts and complicated with lots of touchpoints and integration points and frankly they are much harder to automate because of their entrenched legacy. Now, on the far side of that spectrum, are the horizontal automation players and that's been let by UiPath with automation anywhere as the number two player in this domain. And I even put a blue prism in there more M&A recently announced that Vista is going to acquire them Vista also owns Tibco, they are going to merge those two companies. You know Tibco is come up with the integration play. So again I would put them in that you know, horizontal piece of the spectrum. So with that as background, we're going to look at how UiPath has performed since we last covered them and IPO and I'm going to bring in some ETR survey data to get the spending view from customers and we'll wrap up. Now, just to emphasize the importance of automation and the automation mandate, we talk about it all the time in this program. We use this ETR chart. It's a two dimensional view with net score which is the measure of spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share which is a proxy for pervasiveness in the data set that's on the horizontal axis. Now note that red dotted line, it signifies companies within elevated position on the net score vertical axis anything over that is considered pretty good. Very good. Now this shows every spending segment within the ETR taxonomy. And the four spending categories with the greatest velocity are AI, cloud, containers and RPA. And they have topped the charts for quite a while now. They are the only 4 categories which have sustained above that 40% line consistently throughout the pandemic and even before. Now the impressive thing about cloud of course is it has both spending momentum on the vertical axis and a very large market share or presence in the data set. The point is RPA is nascent still. It has an affinity with AI as a means of more intelligently identifying and streamlining process improvements. And so we expect those two to remain elevated and grow to the right together. UiPath pegs its TAM, total available market at 60 billion. And the reality is that could be understated. Okay, as we reported from the UiPath S1 analysis we did pre IPO, the company at that time had an ARR annual recurring revenue of $580 million and it was growing at 65% annually. And nearly 8000 customers at the time, a 1000 of which had an ARR in excess of a 100k. And the net revenue retention the company had was over 145%. So let's take a look at the pictures 6 months forward. We mentioned the $60 billion TAM, ARR now up over $726.5 million on its way to a billion ARR holding pretty steady at 60% growth as is NRR, net revenue retention and more then a 1000 new customers and 200 more with over a 100000 in ARR and a small operating profit which by the way exceeded the consensuses pretty substantially. Profitability is not shown here and no one seems to care anyway these days. It's all about growing into that TAM. Well that's a pretty good looking picture, isn't it? The company had a beat and a raise for the quarter earlier this month, so looking good right. Well you ask how come the stock is not doing better. That's an interesting question. So let's first look at the stocks performance on a relative basis. Here we show UiPath performance against Pega systems and blue prism, the other two publicly traded automation. Pure plays sort of in the case of Pega. So UiPath outperformed post its IPO but since the early summer Pega is been the big winner while UiPath slowly decelerated. You see Blue prism was at the lag until it was announced that it was in an acquisition talks with a couple of PE firms and the prospects of a bidding war sent that yellow line up as you can see. UiPath as you can see on the inset, has a much higher valuation than Pega and way higher than blue Prism. Pega interestingly is growing revenues nicely at around 40%. And I think what's happening is that the street simply wants more. Even though UiPath beat and raised, Wallstreet is still getting comfortable with management which is new to the public market game and the company just needs to demonstrate a track record and build trust. There's also some education around billings and multi-year contracts that the company addressed on its last earnings call. But the street was concerned about ARR for new logos. It appears to be slowing down sequentially and a notable decline in billings momentum which UiPath CFO addressed on the earnings call saying look they don't need the trade margin for prepaid multi year deals, given the strong cash position. Why give anything up. And even though I said nobody cares about profitability well, I guess that's true until you guide for an operating loss when you've been showing small profit in recent quarters what UiPath did. Then, obviously people start to care. So UiPath is in bit of an unknown territory to the street and it has a valuation, it's pretty rich. Very rich actually at 30 times revenue multiple or greater than 30 times revenue multiple. So that's why in my view, investors are being cautious. But I want to address a dynamic that we have seen with this high growth rocket chip companies. Something we talked about Snowflake and I think you are seeing some of that here with UiPath. Different model in the sense that Snowflake is pure cloud but I'm talking about concerns around ARR and from new logos and that growth in a sequential basis. And here's what's happening in my view with UiPath. You have a company that started within departments with a smaller average contract size, ACV maybe 25000, may be 50000 but not deep six figure deals. That wasn't UiPath's play. And because the company focused so heavily on simplicity and made it really easy to adapt, customers saw really fast ROI. I mean break-even in months. So we very quickly saw expansion into other departments. So when ACV started to rise and installations expanded within each customer, UiPath realized it had to move beyond a point product and it started thing about a platform and making acquisitions like Processgold and others and this marked a much deeper expansion into the customer base. And you can see that here in this UiPath chart that they shared at their investor deck, customers that bought in 2016 and 2017 expanded their spend 13, 15, 18, 20x So the LTV, life time value of the customer is growing dramatically and because UiPath is focused on simplicity, and has a very facile premium model much easier to try before you buy than its competitors it's CAC, Customer acquisition cost are likely much lower than some of its peers. And that's a key dynamic. So don't get freaked out by some of those concerns that we raised earlier because just like Snowflake what's happening is that the company for sure is gaining new customers, may be just not at the same rate but don't miss the forest through the trees I.e getting more money from their existing customers which means retention, loyalty and growth. Now speaking of forest, this chart is the dynamic I'm talking about, its an ETR graphic that shows the components of net score against spending momentum. Net score breaks down into 5 areas. That lime green at the top is new additions. Okay, so that's only 11% of the customer mentions. By the way we are talking about more than a 125 responses for UiPath. So it's meaningful, it's actually larger in this survey or certainly comparable to Microsoft. So that's just something right there. The next bar is the forest green. Forest green is what I want you to focus. That's customer spending 6% or more in the second half of the year relative to the first half. The gray is flat spending which is quite large. The pink or light red, that's spending customers spending 6% or worse, that's a 4% number. But look at the bottom bar. There is no bar, that's churn. 0% of the responders in the survey are churning. And Churn is the silent killer of SaaS companies. 0% defections. So you've got 46% spending more, nobody leaving. That's the dynamic powering UiPath right now and I would take this picture any day over a larger lime green and a smaller forest green and a bigger churn number. Okay, it's pretty good, not Snowflake good but it's solid. So how does this picture compare to UiPath's peers. Let's take a look at that. So this is ETR data, same data showing the granularity net score for Microsoft power automate, UiPath automation anywhere, Blue Prism and Pega. So as we said before, Microsoft is ubiquitous. What can we say about that. But UiPath is right there with a more robust platform. Not to overlook Microsoft, you can't but UiPath will you that the don't compete head to head for enterprise automation deals with Microsoft and may be they will over time. They do however compete head to head with automation anywhere. And their picture is quite strong as you can see here. You know as is Blue Prism's picture and even Pega. Although Blue Prism automation anywhere UiPtah and power automate all have net scores on this chart as you can see the tables in the upper right over 40%, Pega does not. But you can see Pega as a pure play RPA vendor it's a little bit of sort of apples and oranges there but they do sell RPA and ETR captures in their taxonomy so why not include them. Also note that UiPath has as I said before more mentions in the survey than power automate which is actually quite interesting given the ubiquity of Microsoft. Now, one other notable note is the bright red that's defections and only UiPath is showing zero defections Everybody else has at least little of the slims on defections. Okay, so take that as you will but its another data point, the one that is powerful nit only for UiPath but really for the entire sector. Now the last ETR data point that we want to share is the famous two dimensional view. Like the sector chart we showed earlier, this graphic shows the net score on the vertical axis that's against spending velocity and market share or pervasiveness on the horizontal axis. So as we said earlier, UiPath actually has a greater presence in the survey than the ever present Microsoft. Remember, this is the July survey. We don't have full results from the September-October survey yet and we can't release them until ETR is out of its quiet period but I expect the entire sector, like everything is going to be slightly down because as reported last week tech spending is moderated slightly in the second half of this year. But we don't expect the picture to change dramatically UiPath and power automate we think are going to lead in market presence and those two plus automation anywhere is going to show the strength in spending momentum as will most of the sector. We'll see who comes in above the 40% line. Okay, what to watch at Forward IV. So in summary I'll be looking for a few things. One, UiPath has hinted toward a big platform announcement that will deepen its capabilities to beyond being an RPA point tool into much more of an enterprise automation platform, rewriting a lot of the code Linux, cloud, better automation of the UI, you are going to hear all kind of new product announcements that are coming so I'll be listening for those details. I want to hear more from customers that further confirm what I've been hearing from them over the last couple of years and get more data especially on their ROI, on their land and expand, I want to understand that dynamic and that true enterprise automation. It's going to be good to get an update face to face and test some of our assumptions here and see where the gaps are and where UiPath can improve. Third, I want to talk to ecosystem players to see where they are in participating in the value chain here. What kind of partner has UiPath become since its IPO, are they investing more in the ecosystem, how do partners fit into that flywheel. Fourth, I want to hear from UiPath management Daniel Dines and other UiPath leaders, their exiting toddler wheel and coming into an adolescence phase or early adulthood. And what does that progression look like, how does it feel, what's the vibe at the show. And finally I'm very excited to participate in a live in-person event to see what's working, to see how hybrid events are evolving, we got to good glimpse at Mobile congress and this week in DC at public sector summit. As you know theCube is doing hybrid events for years and we intend to continue to lead in this regard and bring you the best real time information as possible. Okay, that's it for today. Remember these episodes are all available as podcasts wherever you listen, all you do is search breaking analysis podcast. We publish each week on Wikibound.com and Siliconangle.com and you can always connect on twitter @dvellante or email me at David.vellante@siliconangle.com Appreciate the comments on LinkedIn and don't forget to check out ETR.plus for all the survey data. This is Dave Vellante for theCube insights powered by ETR. Be well and will see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome to this cube conversation. I'm Lisa Martin. Joining me next is bran Kirschner, the vice president of strategy at DataStax Brian. Welcome to the program. Thank you. Glad to be here. Excited to unpack this survey that DataStax recently did. This is with 500 or so it executives, technology practitioners talking about data strategy. Talk to me, first of all, about the state of the data, racist, the name of the survey. Why did data sect students? What was the impetus behind that? >>Yeah. Great question. Thank you. So, you know, um, we are in a race for our company. Every organization is in a race to find ways to use data in new ways to move the business forward, satisfy your customers and so on. Um, it's okay to have a strategy to be a leader. It's probably okay to have a strategy, to be a fast follower. It might even be okay to say we stayed in touch with best practices and once they're proven we adopt them, but what's not okay, is one to lose track of where you need to be relative to how the market's moving most important than your competitors. But in general, customer expectations, your employee partner expectations are going to be set by companies potentially in different industries. So you need to be at the right spot in your journey. So that's why we do a lot of benchmarking, but as important is as your particular company's context and history and situation and technical architecture, um, kind of comes in contact with a strategy that looks great on paper, you have to understand is something slowing us down that we didn't expect because of our culture or unspoken incentives or, you know, what is our next best step for us? >>So in this, in this dataset, we really look to identify the leaders who are having the most success and then work back from the patterns and practices we saw with them to how different, different types of companies at different stages of their journey can find their next best step to make the right progress. >>So the showed that a lot of companies have a data strategy. The execution piece is a, is a different story. Talk to me about how this survey defines a data leader. What is it, what are some of the key characteristics? Yes, >>There are quite a few. Um, in fact, what we've done over the last year that we fed into the survey was, you know, in the course of my work and my colleagues work, we talked with lots of CEOs, hands-on techno practitioners, CTOs, and so on. And we put all that conversation and qualitative insight together into, uh, about 70 measures. Um, and so that was all in the survey. And once we got the data back, uh, we did a cluster analysis, bringing some data science, the data strategy, if you will. Um, and that's surface these segments. Um, and for example, how much revenue you were generating from data was not part of the, so then we mapped these segments and these practices against that, and we say, oh, the leaders generating the most revenue from data. So that gave us some confidence in using these patterns and practices to bucketize folks. >>And you found that the data, those companies in the data leadership category were able to attribute more than 20% of their data of two gives me 20% of their revenue to data and analytics. Talk to me about that 20% benchmark is that considered where a lot of organizations need to aim to be because there's still a lot of money on the table. Yeah, >>That's right. That's right. So, you know, in common industry parlance as a standard, you know, materiality on the balance sheet is 10%. Um, and we've seen a pretty significant number of companies hit that mark. Um, what we saw, which is interesting in our data was, you know, that's kind of a comfortable benchmark to pick it's an industry standard data's material, Hey, congratulations. Uh, but you're actually drill down further and you look at that 20% mark and you say, well, 10% is probably not aiming nearly high enough because a significant proportion of these leaders have already gotten to that 20% mark. Um, and so it's in part, you know, again about that benchmarking where you are, where's your destination, your destination, probably isn't we're on the board, your destination probably isn't its material. Your destination is probably, you know, it's big and it keeps getting bigger. >>And where are these data leaders with respect to deploying a hybrid data strategy? What is it about how they're organized and structurally what they're doing that is positioning them to actually really drive incremental revenue from data? >>Yes. Yeah. What stands out about the leaders, um, is, and, you know, we see this in our data, you can see this in any number of analysts, firms and other data sources hybrid cloud strategy is, you know, the dominant strategy for large enterprises, right? It's about preserving your flexibility to operate in multiple clouds. And on-prem, so that's pretty well understood. What we saw in this data was overwhelmingly almost a hundred percent of the data leaders also say they're pursuing a hybrid data strategy. So they're already doing that kind of same level of thoughtfulness and planning about how can we get and deploy apps and compute everywhere to how can we store and deploy and redeploy data everywhere. And there's a real steep curve to the extent where the folks who are just starting out, who may have a strategy, but have taken very little action. None of them strongly agree that they have that type of hybrid data strategy. Um, and so the pattern qualitative pattern we see is companies go down this hybrid cloud compute strategy for good reasons, and it pays off, starts to pay off. And then they realize, oh, we should be doing the same thing for data. Um, and that's giving these leaders, you know, a lot of agility control, flexibility, um, and opportunities. >>One of the things I found interesting in the report from a statistics perspective is that those data leaders that you talked about that are able to, or able to attribute more than 20% of their revenue to data and analytics twice as many of those are two. And they're two X likely to be using a robust open source data stack talking about that as it plays into the computing strategy and the ability to convert data into revenue. >>That's right. So they're, they're, they're almost a hundred percent comparable to the hybrid data strategy. Almost a hundred percent are also increasing their use of open source software. And I kind of think about this from, from two dimensions, right? The, the hybrid cloud and hybrid data strategy gives you agility, optionality flexibility for your infrastructure, for your compute, for your storage and so on. Um, then it's about really making sure you're using the best of breed tools for the job of creating value with data. Um, and if you look backwards, um, you know, the track record of open source technologies, Apache Cassandra Kafka spark at some of just like, you know, the applications and experiences that are, you know, have, have, you know, validated the massive impact data can have on a business. Um, the track record of open source is strong and you look at the cycle of innovation and you see, you know, Kafka having emerged and now pulse are emerging as sort of a, a newer, more cloud friendly version of Kafka and flank kind of emerging as potentially a successor to spark that cycle of innovation, arguably is accelerating. >>Um, and so as you think about what's, you know, what's unique to us as a company, um, it's the data you have, right? No one has the customer interactions. You have, nobody has a business processes you have. So what you want to do is take those best of breed tools and have flexibility about the infrastructure services to support them and focus your people on doing great things with the data. So don't try to solve a problem that the open source ecosystem has already solved, right? If you're, if you're writing that code, instead of focusing on what differentiates your business, that's a miss. Um, so when you see the leaders leaning hard into, um, open source, you know, it's because they've got the clarity about, we differentiate by using these best of breed tools on our data, not reinventing the wheel, >>Are these companies, you mentioned culture a minute ago, and that's always something that I find intriguing because it's very hard to change. We've been in the last 16, 18 months in an, in a very fast pace of change, as we know, but are you seeing these data leaders that are companies that are reorienting towards a data culture where data is part of everyone's job? >>Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So they, so it's interesting. Um, a majority of all companies said that reacting to the COVID crisis did increase their pace of innovation, but again, it's almost universal among, among those leaders. Um, and one of the patterns that stands out is indeed, when you say making it everyone's job, I'll put finer point on it. It's saying accountability for creating value, generating revenue with data is the line of business is accountability. I'm in conversations. I've literally had CEOs say, it's not my problem anymore. It's my problem to help them execute on the ideas, right? And that can even raise the bar because now they're coming up with bolder, bigger ideas, but it's not about it being the custodians of the data, trying to go to the business and say, Hey, could you use some data it's business, general managers, VPs now accountable for how have you used data to drive revenue? >>How can it change the way you sell or the way you service customers? Um, and so on. And, and that, um, in part, what we heard from some folks was in organizations with progressive CEOs, chief data officers, they have been going to the side to the business side of things and saying, Hey, I think we've got ways to do business better, but there wasn't pressure on the business. They're like our business is going fine. Uh, but once COVID hit, it was okay. We need to take out costs. We need to find new ways to grow. Um, and there's sort of that that drove and organic embrace of, ah, I see, I want to pick up the reins and, you know, work with my technology partners to make it happen, but now I see we should be driving it on the business side. >>And have you seen in the COVID era data strategy become really a board level initiative and, and to your point, one of the things that you've found is, is it's not just the culture of data being core to everyone's job, it's the accountability level at the line of business level. But I imagine that that data strategy is indeed a board level initiative. >>That's right. That's the biggest, when you mentioned culture, the biggest of the segments is a group whose biggest challenge is cultural change about almost a third of, of all organizations. Um, and you see there, there's this big drop, you know, compared to the leaders of whether the data strategy is a board level discussion, right. And you see this big drop in other metrics where, you know, do you have a data strategy, mild agreement like, oh yeah, we talk about data of everybody talks about data. Um, but it's really about getting that top down. This is a true corporate priority, which kind of circles back to our initial conversation, you know, if the goal is 20% or more of your revenue from data, it better be a board level conversation. Right. And, and, you know, if you have an effective board, you want the board to be helping to drive toward that. Um, so it really closes the loop on, you know, again, calibrating, what's our aspiration, um, what's at stake. And if we believe in the data, you know, we shouldn't be hesitating to elevate this to the board level and get their attention on >>It. Right. Give me an example of a, of a customer that's doing that. That's a data leader that's doing this really well. And one that pivoted to be able to, to use data and extract value and revenue from it during the last year and a half, >>I would say it's a little bit less of a pivot and more of an amazing success story. Um, uh, because of you look backwards a few years ago, um, home Depot made a significant board level, you know, top-down, company-wide commitment to a very bold digital and data strategy. And so, you know, by 2019, um, for one example, you know, Forester ranked them as a top retail app, um, uh, for customers, um, and all that work, which is already paying off, right. They're making big investments, but they're getting big payoffs. Um, when COVID hits home, Depot is able to deploy curbside delivery as a service. They did not have a feature they did not have in weeks at scale, um, which drove even more outsized returns during COVID. Um, and so it's, it's a little, uh, you know, it's a less of a pivot, but more about the value of making that commitment. >>Um, because you know, they, weren't planning on deploying curbside delivery to the app in weeks, but when COVID hit, they were able to, because they already had the cultural change, the infrastructure, the metrics, the technologies in place. Um, and so, you know, it's really a message about don't wait, right? If you are going to fast follow, if you are going to be away for proven best practices, you don't want to start off the blocks at zero. When something disruptive happens, you want to have some success stories, some practice at it under your belt. So, you know, even if you're, if you're, if you're fortunate enough not to have been pushed into radical action because of COVID, don't, don't let that stop you from seizing the day and actually starting to move. >>I now I've, I think I'll never have the same opinion of, of home Depot. Again, I will always go on there looking for light bulbs and batteries and flashlights thinking of them as a data company, but as a company, that, to your point, committed to it and push that accountability out into those lines of business. How does, what did the survey show in terms of those data leaders embracing, uh, open source, embracing a hybrid data strategy? How does that facilitate that, driving that accountability into the lines of business so that that revenue that's sitting on the table from data can be unpacked. >>Yeah, it's, it's almost, I think, you know, if I look at it from the technology side, um, imagine, you know, in the past, you're the custodian of data, you know, as a CIO and your job is to kind of make, make, make, you know, data's not lost. We comply with regulations, you know, for the kind of way we run the business yesterday and today doesn't break tomorrow. And so if I think about the shifts to where the lines of business are now accountable for finding new ways to use data, what are the, to come up with? Like, you know, if you think about like, you know, innovating in business, um, taking data under the wing, right? Your job now, as a manager is innovate, innovate your business model, deliver something we never delivered before deliver something. No one in our industry delivers. So on the tech side, you know, it should be exciting, but it also means you may be on the hook for delivering some capability that your company had never thought about. >>Um, so that really gets back to this idea of like, do you have access to, you know, the best infrastructure services through hybrid cloud and data strategy? Are you set up to use best of breed tools, even if, you know, last year we didn't have a scenario that uses best of breed tools. Well, now that the businesses, I think it really hard on how we differentiate with data. They're probably going to come up with some big bold ideas, um, again, which should be exciting, but you gotta be ready to invest in change and something new as opposed to keeping the lights on. >>Right. I think that pace of innovation, I don't know, maybe it's permanently altered because of the scenario was one that nobody ever expected to be in. As we saw so much transformation in the last year and a half, and the pace of innovation change and, and the, you know, the places that are like the home Depot being able to radically change so quickly. And so we saw a lot of other businesses that could not do that. What are some of the market trends that you're seeing as we're now coming around the corner into the second half of 2021? >>I mean, the acceleration is a great point because when you're using data to deliver value to customers or create value for your business, things actually build on them on each other. Right. So, you know, data doesn't get used up until the, the amazing things about digital data. It can be used and reuse and recombined. So if you saw, for example, you know, leaders are well on the way before COVID, do you have real time inventory we'll share. Uh, but then once COVID hit, do you have real time inventory? And can you make a recommendation for somebody that's out of stock became like, wow, we should get that done ASAP. So then as you see folks do some necessary things, um, you start to see, well, if we've got real-time inventory and we can make recommendations, why are we getting a 360 degree view of the customer from that data plus marketing data, right? >>And now the value gets unlocked. Whereas if you said, you know, two years ago, how can we justify creating a 360 degree view of the customer, some organizations might've been like, well, we can, you know, it's hard to do. We can't see the value. Whereas once you're doing a couple of these use cases, it becomes obvious that they'd be better together. Right. And so, um, if you see, you know, the home Depot, I think you're going to see, um, you know, essentially every retailer that wants to stay competitive is going to follow in that path. >>Do you think that those companies that become data leaders or are on the path to become data leaders that have the hybrid data strategy that are embracing OpenStack? Is that mentality in your opinion, going to separate the winners and the losers going forward in the next year plus? >>Yeah, I mean, I think, I think in a sense it has to, uh, because again, as I think, you know, there was a trend already in place for all of us as consumers, right. We love, for example, delightful recommendations, you know, uh, companies and applications that know us and just make our lives better because they're smart, like Netflix and Spotify, right. The classic examples. Um, but now you think about for anything. So Cengage is an education platform company, and they talk about being the Netflix of education. Um, and you know, retailers like home Depot, like target have gotten super smart about things like recommendations. Um, and you know, in the case of home Depot, like connecting me with the data that explains how to do DIY projects and use the tools I'm trying to buy. So, you know, the bar just keeps getting raised to the point where, you know, you look at, you know, you look at a, the e-commerce site of the past, we just sort of a dumb e-commerce site where it's, I can pick things, put them in a cart and buy, you know, that's not acceptable by any stretch of the imagination today, right. >>Are there user reviews? Are there, you know, recommendations? We expect all of this. Um, and I think you'll see it, you know, obviously retail's heavily disrupted by COVID pointing into the sphere, so to speak, but I mean, telehealth is another example where, you know, I think the writing is on the wall. If you can't do telehealth as a health system or a hospital, you know, very soon you're going to have a big problem. >>Yeah. The consumer demand is incredible for, I want whatever it is, if it's I'm shopping on Amazon or if it's going to be, but I want them to know what to recommend to me next, based on what I just thought we have that expectation that the Netflix is and the Spotify is to your point have set. And we also have that expectation in our business life. So when folks are buying it, interacting with software, they want the same thing, right. It's not just limited to healthcare retailers. That's >>Right. And I that's that there's a virtuous cycle, right? If you think about companies, you know, making that cultural change, leaning into using data to make things better, it's not just for customers, it's for your employees, it's for your partners, it's for your business processes. Right. And how are you going to be able to hire people who are super excited about making things better for customers, if you're also not, you know, internally making things better for your employees, right. There's just a real disconnect in terms of, you know, culture and personnel. There. >>That's a great point. Those are in my opinion, inextricably linked, Brian, it's been great to have you on the program. Thank you for sharing with us. The state of the data raised very interesting sort of that you guys have done. Folks can get their hands on that lot of opportunity and a lot of money on the table for organizations in any industry. Thanks so much for joining me today, brand thank you for Brian Kirschner. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching a cube conversation.

>>Kirk focuses on the approach to modern data quality and how it can enable the continuous delivery of trusted data. Take it away. Kirk >>Trusted data has been a focus of mine for the last several years. Most particularly in the area of machine learning. Uh, I spent much of my career on wall street, writing models and trying to create a healthy data program, sort of the run the bank and protect the franchise and how to do that at scale for larger organizations. Uh, I'm excited to have the opportunity today sitting with me as Victor to have a fireside chat. He is an award-winning and best-selling author of delete big data and most currently framers. He's also a professor of governance at Oxford. So Victor, my question for you today is in an era of data that is always on and always flowing. How does CDOs get comfortable? You know, the, I can sleep at night factor when data is coming in from more angles, it's being stored in different formats and varieties and probably just in larger quantities than ever before. In my opinion, just laws of large numbers with that much data. Is there really just that much more risk of having bad data or inaccuracy in your business? >>Well, thank you Kirk, for having me on. Yes, you're absolutely right. That the real problem, if I were to simplify it down to one statement is that incorrect data and it can lead to wrong decisions that can be incredibly costly and incredibly costly for trust for the brand, for the franchise incredibly costly, because they can lead to decisions that are fundamentally flawed, uh, and therefore lead the business in the wrong direction. And so the, the, the real question is, you know, how can you avoid, uh, incorrect data to produce incorrect insights? And that depends on how you view trust and how you view, uh, data and correctness in the first place. >>Yeah, that's interesting, you know, in my background, we were constantly writing models, you know, we're trying to make the models smarter all the time, and we always wanted to get that accuracy level from 89% to 90%, you know, whatever we could be, but there's this popular theme where over time the models can diminish an accuracy. And the only button we really had at our disposal was to retrain the model, uh, oftentime I'm focused on, should we be stress testing the data, it almost like a patient health exam. Uh, and how do we do that? Where we could get more comfortable thinking about the quality of the data before we're running our models and our analytics. >>Yeah, absolutely. When we look at the machine learning landscape, even the big data landscape, what we see is that a lot of focus is now put on getting the models, right, getting it worked out, getting the kinks worked out, but getting sort of the ethics, right. The value, right. That is in the model. Um, uh, and what is really not looked at what is not focused enough that, um, is the data. Now, if you're looking at it from a compliance viewpoint, maybe it's okay if you just look at the model, maybe not. But if you understand that actually using the right data with the right model gives you a competitive advantage that your competitors don't have, then it is far more than compliance. And if it is far more compliance, then actually the aperture for strategy opens up and you should not just look at models. You should actually look at the data and the quality and correctness of the data as a huge way by which you can push forward your competitive advantage. >>Well, I haven't even trickier one for you. I think, you know, there's so much coming in and there's so much that we know we can measure and there's so much we could replay and do what if analysis on and kind of back tests, but, you know, do you see organizations doing things to look around the corner? And maybe an interesting analogy would be something like with Tesla is doing whether it's sensors or LIDAR, and they're trying to bounce off every object they know, and they can make a lot of measurements, but the advancements in computer vision are saying, I might be able to predict what's around the corner. I might be able to be out ahead of the data error. I'm about to see tomorrow. Um, you know, do you see any organizations trying to take that futuristic step to sort of know the unknown and be more predictive versus reactive? >>Absolutely. Tesla is doing a bit Lincoln, uh, but so are others in that space and not autonomous driving space, um, uh, Waymo, the, uh, the, the, uh, Google company that is, uh, doing autonomous driving for a long period of time where they have been doing is collecting training data, uh, through their cars and then running a machine learning on the training data. Now they hit a wall a couple of years ago because the training data wasn't diverse enough. It didn't have that sort of Moore's law of insight anymore, even though it was more and more training data. Um, and so the, the Delta, the additional learning was just limited. So what they then decided to do was to build a virtual reality called car crafting, which were actually cars would drive around and create, uh, uh, predictive training data. Now, what is really interesting about that is that that is isn't a model. It is a model that creates predictive data. And this predictive is the actual value that is added to the equation here. And with this extra predictive data, they were able to improve their autonomous driving quite significantly. Uh, five years ago, their disengagement was, uh, raped was every, uh, 2000 miles on average. And, uh, last year, uh, five years later, it was every 30,000 miles on average, that's a 15 K improvement. And that wasn't driven by a mysterious model. It was driven by predictive data. >>Right, right. You know, that's interesting. I, I'm also a fan of trying to use data points that don't exist in the data sets. So it sounds like they were using more data data that was derived from other sources. And maybe the most simple format that I usually get started with was, you know, what, if I was looking at data from Glassdoor and I wanted to know if it was valid, if it was accurate, but of course there's going to be numbers in the age, field and salary and years of experience in different things. But what if the years of experience and age and academic level of someone no longer correlates to the salary yet that correlation component is not a piece of data that even lives in the column, the row, the cell. So I do think that there's a huge area for improvement and just advancement in the role data that we see in collect, but also the data science metrics, something like lift and correlation between the data points that really helped me certify and feel comfortable that this data makes sense. Otherwise it could just be numbers in the field >>Indeed. And, and this challenge of, of finding the data and focusing on the right subset of the data and manipulating it, uh, in the right, in a qualitatively right way is really something that has been with us for quite a number of years. There's a fabulous, uh, case, um, a few years back, uh, when, um, in Japan, when there was the suspicion that in Sumo wrestling, there was match fixing going on massive max fiction. Um, and, and so investigators came in and they took the data from the championship bouts and analyzed them and, uh, didn't find anything. And, uh, what was, what was really interesting is then later researchers came in and read the rules and regulations of Sumo wrestling and understood that it's not just the championship bouts that matter, but it's also sometimes the relegation matches that matter. And so then they started looking at those secondary matches that nobody looked at before and that subset of data, and they discovered there's massive match fixing going on. It's just, nobody looked at it because nobody just, as you said, that connection, uh, between th those various data sources or the sort of causal connectivity there. And so it's, it's, it's really crucial to understand, uh, that, uh, driving insight out of data, isn't a black box thing where you feed the data in and get it out. It really requires deep thinking about how to wire it up from the very beginning. >>No, that's an interesting story. I kind of wonder if the model in that case is almost the, the wrestlers themselves or the output, but definitely the, the data that goes into it. Um, yeah. So, I mean, do you see a path where organizations will achieve a hundred percent confidence? Because we all know there's a, I can't sleep at night factor, but there's also a case of what do I do today. It's, I'm probably not living in a perfect world. I might be sailing a boat across an ocean that already has a hole in it. So, you know, we can't turn everything off. We have to sort of patch the boat and sail it at the same time. Um, what do you think the, a good approaches for a large organization to improve their posture? >>You know, if you focus on perfection, you never, you never achieved that perfection a hundred percent perfection or so is never achievable. And if you want some radical change, then that that's admirable. But a lot of times it's very risky. It's a very risky proposition. So rather than doing that, there is a lot of low hanging fruit than that incremental, pragmatic step-by-step approach. If I can use an analogy from history, uh, we, we, we talk a lot about, um, the data revolution and before that, the industrial revolution, and when we think about the industrial revolution, we think about the steam engine, but the reality is that the steam engine, wasn't just one radical invention. In fact, there were a myriad of small incremental invade innovations over the course of a century that today we call the industrial revolution. And I think it's the various same thing when the data revolution where we don't have this one silver bullet that radically puts us into data Nirvana, but it is this incremental, pragmatic step-by-step change. It will get us closer. Um, pragmatic, can you speak in closer to where we want to be, even though there was always more work for us left? >>Yeah, that's interesting. Um, you know, that one hits home for me because we ultimately at Collibra take an incremental approach. We don't think there's a stop the world event. There's, you know, a way to learn from the past trends of our data to become incrementally smarter each day. And this kind of stops us from being in a binary project mode, right. Where we have to wait right. Something for six months and then reassess it and hope, you know, we kind of wonder if you're at 70% accuracy today is being at 71% better tomorrow, right? At least there's a measurable amount of improvement there. Uh, and it's a sort of a philosophical difference. And it reminds me of my banking days. When you say, uh, you know, past performance is no guarantee of future results. And, um, it's a nice disclaimer, you can put in everything, but I actually find it to be more true in data. >>We have all of these large data assets, whether it's terabytes or petabytes, or even if it's just gigabytes sitting there on all the datasets to learn from. And what I find in data is that the past historical values actually do tell us a lot about the future and we can learn from that to become incrementally smarter tomorrow. And there's really a lot of value sitting there in the historical data. And it tells me at least a lot about how to forecast the future. You know, one that's been sitting on the top of my mind recently, especially with COVID and the housing market a long time back, I competed with automation, valuation modeling, which basically means how well can you predict the price of a house? And, you know, that's always a fun one to do. And there's some big name brands out there that do that pretty well. >>Back then when I built those models, I would look at things like the size of the yard, the undulation of the land, uh, you know, whether a pool would award you more or less money for your house. And a lot of those factors were different than they are now. So those models ultimately have already changed. And now that we've seen post COVID people look for different things in housing and the prices have gone up. So we've seen a decline and then a dramatic increase. And then we've also seen things like land and pools become more valuable than they were in the housing model before, you know, what are you seeing here with models and data and how that's going to come together? And it's just, is it always going to change where you're going to have to constantly recalibrate both, you know, our understanding of the data and the models themselves? >>Well, indeed the, the problem of course is almost eternal. Um, oftentimes we have developed beautiful models that work really well. And then we're so wedded to this model or this particular kind of model. And we can fathom to give them up. I mean, if I think of my students, sometimes, you know, they, they, they, they have a model, they collect the data, then they run the analysis and, uh, it basically, uh, tells them that their model was wrong. They go out and they collect more data and more data and more data just to make sure that it isn't there, that, that, that their model is right. But the data tells them what the truth is that the model isn't right anymore that has context and goals and circumstances change the model needs to adapt. And we have seen it over and over again, not just in the housing market, but post COVID and in the COVID crisis, you know, a lot of the epidemiologists looked at life expectancy of people, but when you, when you look at people, uh, in the intensive care unit, uh, with long COVID, uh, suffering, uh, and in ICU and so on, you also need to realize, and many have that rather than life expectancy. >>You also need to look at life quality as a mother, uh, kind of dimension. And that means your model needs to change because you can't just have a model that optimizes on life expectancy anymore. And so what we need to do is to understand that the data and the changes in the data that they NAMIC of the data really is a thorn in our thigh of revisiting the model and thinking very critically about what we can do in order to adjust the model to the present situation. >>But with that, Victor, uh, I've really enjoyed our chat today. And, uh, do you have any final thoughts, comments, questions for me? >>Uh, you know, Kirk, I enjoyed it tremendously as well. Uh, I do think that, uh, that what is important, uh, to understand with data is that as there is no, uh, uh, no silver bullet, uh, and there is only incremental steps forward, this is not actually something to despair, but to give and be the source of great hope, because it means that not just tomorrow, but even the day after tomorrow and the day after the day after tomorrow, we still can make headway can make improvement and get better. >>Absolutely. I like the hopeful message I live every day to, uh, to make data a better place. And it is exciting as we see the advancements in what's possible on what's kind of on the forefront. Um, well with that, I really appreciate the chat and I would encourage anyone. Who's interested in this topic to attend a session later today on modern data quality, where I go through maybe five key flaws of the past and some of the pitfalls, and explain a little bit more about how we're using unsupervised learning to solve for future problems. Thanks Victor. Thank you, Kurt. >>Thanks, Kirk. And Victor, how incredible was that?

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE! With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Mark Foster, Senior Vice President of IBM Services and IBM's Global Business Services. It's a global landscape, the world's changing, it's going hybrid. Mark, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Great to see you, John, good to be with you. >> You know, the theme this year is all about hybrid cloud. Global transformation is the innovation at scale. That's the discussion, that's the way I see it. The question I have for you to start right away is how has the last year in particular changed businesses as they're leveraging the tech? You know, they want to solve their critical problems and transform themselves, the pandemic has forced them to look at this. How has this last year changed the way businesses are leveraging tech? >> Well, there's definitely been an acceleration in the digital transformations across all of our clients around the world. They have been compelled to leverage technology to connect with their customers in these unique times. They've been forced to use technology tools to allow their teams to connect and operate around the world. And all of this has reinforced also the opportunity to leverage things like extreme automation, AI, and the leverage of things like the cloud to deal with the virtual and more remote nature of working around the world. >> How much of the change last year do you think's going to to be temporary or long lasting. What's not going to be given up? (laughs) What are people realizing? Is it temporary or is it long lasting? What's your take? >> Well, I think we have to recognize that we are moving into a genuinely hybrid world, well, hybrid insofar as I think that some of the lessons we've learned over this past period are going to durably change the way we work, but we're also going to have a certain amount of back to the future, as well, as we try and put back some of the aspects of physical interaction, the ways of actually bringing empathy, creativity together through being together in groups. But I do think also we're going to take a number of these areas of acceleration and they're going to be extrapolated out to genuinely lead to an acceleration of what might've taken place over over five years taking place over a lot shorter period. >> You know, I think that group dynamic is really a big deal. I think that's going to be something that, to me, jumps out at this transformation. People want to work together. They want to be part of something, totally right on. With that, I got to ask you, now that we have this kind of new virtual experience, we're remote, we're not in person, wish we were, but even when we are in personal, it'll still be hybrid virtual experience events means we're still going to act as a group. This kind of brings up the idea of a virtual enterprise. You kind of mentioned that. What you mean and how do you define a virtual enterprise? >> Well, I think a virtual enterprise for us is an extension of the thought process we've had before around how technology is transforming the way all businesses operate. If you do apply, you know, the power of technology to build new business platforms and think about new ways of applying technology to transform your business processes, you think about the way that all of us are reinventing the relationship between people and technology in our organizations, the virtual enterprise just takes that to the next level. It recognizes that if you are able to take a location out of the equation, if you're able to leverage ecosystems more completely through connecting through networks of organizations, all of this extends the vision that we have of how the cognitive enterprise of the past comes to life. And we create this even more connected, even more expansive vision of business which is of course able to leverage technology within its own four walls. It's able to leverage it powerfully with its business partners. But then finally, it's about how you create the platforms upon which you create new ecosystems for competition and new markets that can be created in that way. >> That's really compelling insight right there. I think that's right on the money. I have to ask you, what do you think the differentiating characteristics are for this enterprise? What's going to be the differentiator, what's going to make it work? What do you need- >> I think what's going to make it work first of all, I think we think there's going to be a sort of a golden thread of what you might call an extended intelligent workflow that runs through the enterprise and its partners. And the power of that sort of thread of core processes and core differentiation to be brought to life by the mutual leverage of technology through partnerships is going to be a hugely powerful. So therefore all the partners' ability to embrace those technologies to embrace the vision for how those workflows come together is going to be very important. I think it's going to be very important that actually the ecosystem and its success becomes the strategy of the of the participants as opposed to being something that they happened to be going along with. So it becomes the strategy of the organization. And I think finally, there's a huge amount around here around how you leverage and think about the power of your people, the culture that you create to be inclusive and expansive in terms of applying new talent, building new talent, to allow this virtual enterprise to thrive. >> That's actually brilliant. You know, ecosystem is part of it, not an afterthought or a marketing gimmick. It's got to be part of it, that's awesome. Let's bring that to the next level. The role of the ecosystems are taking a bigger role for you, as you said, what specifically can you point to that has a change that's made in the ecosystem that you can point to, says that's an impactful change, this is a table stake, this is a guaranteed continuing practice. Can you give an example? >> Well, I think what we can see around the world in terms of how the world has solved for something like you're getting vaccines created and distributed on the back of the COVID crisis, that's taken an ecosystem coming together to work in completely different ways in an accelerated way to deliver on very big outcomes. Well, we can also see, you know, clients who are developing their strategies to try and connect the dots across different players to position their business as a platform upon which others bring their parts, their organizations to bear. And I think that we can see therefore that this idea of ecosystems is being used to solve really big problems, but it's also potentially a model that can be used to actually define really big market opportunities as well. And when you can connect the dots and you can expand your market footprint by combining with other key players at scale and also create a way that smaller organizations can come and sit upon the platforms that you create and leverage those capabilities, then the opportunity to actually use that to really expand your horizons of where your business can go are very real. >> You know, that's a really interesting, mind blowing concept. You think about the idea of a network effect or ecosystems, and integration, and collective intelligence. These are paradigms that have been around for awhile, at least past 10 years. It was the Holy Grail, let's hope we get to that. It seems like that's happening right now. And I think more than ever, it can be harnessed. And so I think you starting to see that with the hybrid cloud and it's not just tech, it's societal impact, it's impacting people, their jobs, and their ability to contribute and work. So this is a huge concept. So really excited this conversation. I guess the next question I have for you, Mark, is how do you bring clients this value? How do they create value? And how do they take this and transform their business with it? What's the playbook? >> Well, I think for clients, the first thing for them to recognize is to understand that this is the world that they are operating in. And I think that from a playbook point of view, the first thing I would say is you do need to think about which ecosystems do I want to play in? How do I think I could win by being a part of, or shaping an ecosystem? I think, secondly, there's the opportunity to think about how you use all the data that's out there in the world to be a stronger source of innovation across an ecosystem, to think about how your products and services could be modernized to succeed in that world. How you build those innovations into this new vision of an extended workflow or process view that binds the players of your ecosystem together. And you're really thinking about how to reinvent the way work gets done. Apply automation, apply AI, apply blockchain, apply IoT to transform those workflows is a massive, massive opportunity. To recognize that actually by the power of that, you're able to have significantly more impact than before. So make sure you're setting your ambitions high enough around the impact the change you're trying to drive can bring, and then I think also just making sure you're thinking all the time about what this means for the culture of your organizations, the workforce you want to connect with, how you want to access talent and bring it to bear across this new extended value chain? You know, who do you need to employ, versus who do you need to contract with, versus who do you need to make sure are participating in the processes that you're driving? And then finally, how do you make sure that you have the infrastructure, and the systems, and the applications that are open enough to allow you to really bring this vision to life? So the underlying hybrid cloud, hybrid architectures that you have and the networks you have that bind you together become fundamental. >> That's awesome. Great insight there. I guess my final question is how has your personal outlook changed in the past year when everyone is working from home? And now we're starting to see the pandemic, you know, light at the end of the tunnel from this pandemic, once we emerge out of it, people want to have a growth strategy, want to get back to real life. Any words of advice for our viewers on your personal outlook and as we come out of the pandemic and they can participate- >> Well, I think the first thing to recognize is we all have a collective wish around the world, probably for the first time for a long time, I think pretty much most people in humanity are sharing a shared view about a desire to have a more expansive horizon than the one that's outside the window of their kitchen, which I'm looking out of right now, and being able to get out and about, and engage in some more aspects that of normal life. And I do think that we're all looking forward to that opportunity. I think we're going to have to recognize that we're probably all going to also adapt our behaviors, going forward, but there's almost an enormous amount of exciting things that we've all got pent up we want to go and do, and I think, you know, the critical thing for us all is to hopefully approach that world safely. But at the same time, recognize that there is hope, we are working our way through this as a world. And as long as we try and make sure we do that in a way that is actually equitable, and that we do make sure that all boats are lifted as we return here, then I think that's a really positive view of how the future will be for all of us. So we should all look forward to that. >> Mark, it's great to have you on theCUBE. I love the insight, I love your message. It's right on, it's relevant, and super cool because that's what people want. They want to collaborate and be with people. I guess with the final minute we have left, share an observation from the past year and a half. Something that surprised you that happened in the industry, something that you didn't expect or something that you did expect that's positive that we can look to and say, "That's a good thing, we want to double down on that." >> Well, I think the positive thing that I think we can double down on is that we have all actually learned to be perhaps more open to interacting with people who we wouldn't otherwise have interacted with through this medium, that actually I have found that I've broadened my network of people that I've been engaging with through the fact that it has been actually relatively easy to connect even at high levels with people, but all the people have been able to connect in a strange way with a bigger group of connections than you would have done through the normal physical constraints of flying somewhere, seeing someone, meeting someone, and how you use your time to do that. So I would say one of the positive things is actually how open people have been to start new relationships over this virtual medium. Of course, the trick is going to be, can we build on those virtual relationships we've created and make them more sustainable once we're back to a more normal life and they become, you know, the new friendships, the new business relationships and networks that we can thrive on for the future? >> That's genius, love it. I agree. CUBE Virtual's here doing it. We're trying content, community, collaboration, connection, friendships, new things, touch someone with a click and engage. Mark Foster here, clicking into our CUBE Virtual for IBM Think. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music) ♪ Dah, deeah ♪ ♪ Dah, dee ♪ (chimes ringing)