(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the program, and we're going to dig into the number one topic on the minds of every technology organization, that's cybersecurity. You know, survey data from ETR, our data partner, shows that among CIOs and IT decision makers, cybersecurity continues to rank as the number one technology priority to be addressed in the coming year. That's ahead of even cloud migration and analytics. And with me to discuss this critical topic area, are Jim Shook, who's the Global Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance Practice at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Andrew Gonzalez, who focuses on cloud and infrastructure consulting at DXC Technology. Gents, welcome, good to have you. >> Thanks Dave, great to be here. >> Thank you. >> Jim, let's start with you. What are you seeing from the front lines in terms of the attack surface and how are customers responding these days? >> It's always up and down and back and forth. The bad actors are smart, they adapt to everything that we do. So we're seeing more and more, kind of living off the land. They're not necessarily deploying malware, makes it harder to find what they're doing. And I think though, Dave, we've adapted and this whole notion of cyber resilience really helps our customers figure this out. And the idea there goes beyond cybersecurity, it's, let's protect as much as possible so we keep the bad actors out as much as we can, but then let's have the ability to adapt to, and recover to the extent that the bad actors are successful. So we're recognizing that we can't be perfect a hundred percent of the time against a hundred percent of the bad actors. Let's keep out what we can, but then recognize and have that ability to recover when necessary. >> Yeah, thank you. So Andrew, you know, I like what Jim was saying, about living off the land, of course, meaning using your own tooling against you, kind of hiding in plain sight, if you will. But, and as Jim was saying, you can't be perfect. But, so given that, what's your perspective on what good cybersecurity hygiene looks like? >> Yeah, so you have to understand what your crown jewel data looks like, what a good copy of a recoverable asset looks like when you look at an attack if it were to occur, right? How you get that copy of data back into production, and not only that but what that golden image actually entails. So, whether it's networking, storage, some copy of a source code, intellectual property, maybe seem to be data or an active directory or DNS dump, right? Understanding what your data actually entails that you can protect it, and that you can build out your recovery plan for it. >> So, and, where's that live? Where's that gold copy? You put in a yellow sticky? No, it's got to be, you got to be somewhere safe, right? So you have to think about that chain as well, right? >> Absolutely, yeah. So, a lot of folks have not gone through the exercise of identifying what that golden copy looks like. Everyone has a DR scenario, everyone has a DR strategy but actually identifying what that golden crown jewel data, let's call it, actually entails as one aspect of it and then where to put it, how to protect it, how to make it immutable and isolated? That's the other portion of it. >> You know, if I go back to sort of earlier part of last decade, you know, cybersecurity was kind of a checkoff item. And then as you got toward the middle part of the decade and I'd say clearly by 2016 it, security became a boardroom issue. It was on the agenda, you know, every quarter at the board meetings. So, compliance is no longer the driver, is my point. The driver is business risk, real loss of reputation or data, you know, or money, et cetera. What are the business implications of not having your cyber house in order today? >> They're extreme, Dave. I mean the, you know, bad actors are good at what they do. These losses by organizations, tens, hundreds of millions into the billions sometimes, plus the reputational damage that's difficult to really measure. There haven't been a lot of organizations that have actually been put out of business by an attack, at least not directly, if they're larger organizations, but that's also on the table too. So you can't just rely on, oh, we need to do, you know, A, B, and C because our regulators require it. You need to look at what the actual risk is to the business and then come up with the strategy from there. >> You know, Jim, staying with you, one of the most common targets we hear of attackers is to go after the backup corpus. So how should customers think about protecting themselves from that tactic? >> Well, Dave, you hit on it before, right? Everybody's had the backup and DR strategies for a long time going back to requirements that we had in place for physical disaster or human error. And that's a great starting point for a resilience capability, but that's all it is, is a starting point. Because the bad actors will, they also understand that you have those capabilities and they've adapted to that. In every sophisticated attack that we see the backup is a target, the bad actors want to take it out or corrupt it or do something else to that backup so that it's not available to you. That's not to say they're always successful and it's still a good control to have in place because maybe it will survive. But you have to plan beyond that. So, the capabilities that we talk about with resilience, let's harden that backup infrastructure. You've already got it in place, let's use the capabilities that are there like immutability and other controls to make it more difficult for the bad actors to get to. But then, as Andrew said, that gold copy, that critical systems, you need to protect that in something that's more secure which commonly we might say a cyber vault, although there's a lot of different capabilities for cyber vaulting, some far better than others, and that's some of the things that we focus on. >> You know, it's interesting, but I've talked to a lot of CIOs about this is, prior to the pandemic, they, you know, had their, as you're pointing out, Jim, they had their DR strategy in place but they felt like they weren't business resilient and they realized that when we had the forced march to digital. So, Andrew, are there solutions out there to help with this problem? Do you guys have an answer to this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm glad you brought up resiliency. We take a position that to be cyber resilient it includes operational resiliency, it includes understanding at the C-level what the implication of an attack means, as we stated, and then how to recover back into production. When you look at protecting that data, not only do you want to put it into what we call a vault, which is a Dell technology that is an offline immutable copy of your crown jewel data but also how to recover it in real-time. So DXC offers a, I don't want to call it a turnkey solution, since we architect these specific each client needs, right? When we look at what client data entails, their recovery point objectives, recovery time objectives, what we call quality of the restoration. But when we architect these out we look at not only how to protect the data but how to alert and monitor for attacks in real-time. How to understand what we should do when a breaches in progress. Putting together with our security operations centers a forensic and recovery plan and a runbook for the client. And then being able to cleanse and remediate so that we can get that data back into production. These are all services that DXC offers in conjunction with the Dell solution to protect and recover, and keep bad actors out. And if we can't keep 'em out, to ensure that we are back into production in short order. >> You know, this discussion we've been having about DR kind of versus resilience, and you were just talking about RPO and RTO, I mean, it used to be that a lot of firms wouldn't even test their recovery 'cause it was too risky or, you know, maybe they tested it on, you know, July 4th or something like that. But I'm inferring that's changed. I wonder if we could, you know, double click on recovery, how hard is it to test that recovery and how quickly are you seeing organizations recover from attacks? >> So it depends, right, on the industry vertical, what kind of data, again. Financial services client compared to a manufacturing client are going to be two separate conversations. We've seen it as quickly as being able to recover in six hours, in 12 hours. In some instances we have the grace period of a day to a couple days. We do offer the ability to run scenarios once a quarter where we can stand up in our systems the production data that we are protecting to ensure that we have a good recoverable copy, but it depends on the client. >> I really like the emphasis here, Dave, that you're raising and that Andrew's talking about. It's not on the technology of how the data gets protected it's focused on the recovery, that's all that we want to do. And so the solution with DXC really focuses on generating that recovery for customers. I think where people get a little bit twisted up on their testing capability is you have to think about different scenarios. So, there are scenarios where the attack might be small, it might be limited to a database or an application. It might be really broadly-based, like the NotPetya attacks from a few years ago. The regulatory environment, we call those attacks severe but plausible. So you can't necessarily test everything with the infrastructure but you can test some things with the infrastructure. Others, you might sit around on a tabletop exercise or walk through what that looks like to really get that recovery kind of muscle memory so that people know what to do when those things occur. But the key to it, as Andrew said before, have to focus down what are those critical applications? What do we need? What's most important? What has to come back first? And that really will go a long way towards having the right recovery points and recovery times from a cyber disaster. >> Yeah, makes sense, understanding the value of that data is going to inform you how to respond and how to prioritize. Andrew, one of the things that we hear a lot on theCUBE, especially lately is around, you know, IOT, IIOT, Industry 4.0, the whole OT security piece of it. And the problem being that, you know, traditionally operations technologies have been air-gapped often by design. But as businesses, increasingly they're driving initiatives like Industry 4.0 and they're connecting these OT systems to IT systems. They're, you know, driving efficiency, preventative maintenance, et cetera. So, a lot of data flowing through the pipes, if you will. What are you seeing in terms of the threats to critical infrastructure and how should customers think about addressing these issues? >> Yeah, so bad actors can come in many forms. We've seen instances of social engineering, we've seen, USB stick dropped in a warehouse. That data that is flowing through the IOT devices is as sensitive now as your core mainframe infrastructure data. So, when you look at it from a protection standpoint, conceptually it's not dissimilar from what we've been talking about, where you want to understand, again, what the most critical data is. Looking at IOT data and applications is no different than your core systems now, right? Depending on what your business is, right? So when we're looking at protecting these, yes, we want firewalls, yes, we want air gap solutions, yes, we want front-end protection but we're looking at it from a resiliency perspective. Putting that data, understanding what data entails to put in the vault from an IOT perspective is just as critical as it is for your core systems. >> Jim, anything you can add to this topic? >> Yeah, I think you hit on the key points there, everything is interconnected. So even in the days where maybe people thought the OT systems weren't online, oftentimes the IT systems are talking to them or controlling theM, SCADA systems, or perhaps supporting them. Think back to the pipeline attack of last year. All the public testimony was that the OT systems didn't get attacked directly but there was uncertainty around that and the IT systems hadn't been secured so that caused the OT systems to have to shut down. It certainly is a different recovery when you're shutting them down on your own versus being attacked but the outcome was the same that the business couldn't operate. So, you really have to take all of those into account. And I think that does go back to exactly what Andrew's saying, understanding your critical business services and then the applications and data, and other components that support those and drive those and making sure those are protected, you understand them, you have the ability to recover them if necessary. >> So guys, I mean you made the point, I mean, you're right, the adversary is highly capable, they're motivated 'cause the ROI is so, it's so lucrative. It's like this never ending battle that cybersecurity pros, you know, go through. It really is kind of frontline, sort of technical heroes, if you will. And so, but sometimes it just feels daunting. Why are you optimistic about the future of cyber from the good guys' perspective? >> I think we're coming at the problem the right way, Dave, so that focus. I'm so pleased with the idea that we are planning that the systems aren't going to be a hundred percent capable every single time and let's figure that out, right? That's real world stuff. So, just as the bad actors continue to adapt and expand, so do we. And I think the differences there, the common criminals, it's getting harder and harder for them. The more sophisticated ones, they're tough to beat all the time. And of course, you've raised the question of some nation states and other activities but there's a lot more information sharing, there's a lot more focus from the business side of the house and not just the IT side of the house that we need to figure these things out. >> Yeah, to add to that, I think furthering education for the client base is important. You brought up a point earlier, it used to be a boardroom conversation due to compliance reasons. Now as we have been in the market for a while we continue to mature the offerings, it's further education for not only the business itself but for the IT systems and how they interconnect, and working together so that these systems can be protected and continue to be evolved and continue to be protected through multiple frameworks as opposed to seeing it as another check the box item that the board has to adhere to. >> All right guys, we got to go. Thank you so much. Great conversation on a really important topic. Keep up the good work, appreciate it. >> Thanks Dan. >> Thank you. >> All right, thank you for watching. Stay tuned for more excellent discussions around the partnership between Dell Technologies and DXC Technology. We're talking about solving real world problems, how this partnership has evolved over time. Really meeting the changing enterprise landscape challenges. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

>> If you really want to make an impact to your business, it takes more than just moving your workloads into the cloud. So-called lift and shift is fine to reduce data center footprints and associated costs, but to really drive change, you don't want to simply "pave the cow path," as the saying goes. Rather, you need to think about the operating model, and that requires more comprehensive systems thinking. In other words, how will changes in technology affect business productivity? Or, you know what? Even flip that. What changes in my business process could lower cost, cut elapse times, and accelerate time to market, increase user productivity, and lower operational risks? And what role can technology play in supporting these mandates through modernization, automation, machine intelligence, and business resilience? And that's what we're here to discuss today. Welcome to Driving Business Results with Cloud Transformation, made Possible by Dell and DXC. My name is Dave Vellante, and today we're going to zoom out and explore many aspects of cloud transformation that leading organizations are acting on today. Yeah, sure, we're going to look at optimizing infrastructure, but we'll also dig deeper into cloud considerations, governance, compliance, and security angles, as well as the impact of emerging opportunities around edge and Industry 4.0. Our focus will be on how to remove barriers and help you achieve business outcomes. And to do this, our program features the long-term partnership between Dell and DXC. And we bring to this program six experts in three separate sessions, who are working directly with top organizations in virtually every industry to achieve high impact results. We're going to start with a conversation about cloud, the cloud operating model, and transforming key aspects of your infrastructure. And then we'll look into governance, security, and business resilience. And in our third session, we'll discuss exciting transformations that are occurring in smart manufacturing and facilities innovations. So let's get right into it with our first session. Enjoy the program. (bright music) Hello, and welcome to what is sure to be an insightful conversation about getting business results with cloud transformation. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with James Miller, Chief Technologist for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, and Jay Dowling, Americas Sales Lead for Cloud and Infrastructure Services, both with DXC Technology. Gentlemen, thanks for your time today. Welcome to theCube. >> Great. Thanks for having us. >> Thank you Dave. Appreciate it. >> So let's get right into it. You know, I've talked to a lot of practitioners who've said, "Look, if you really want to drop zeros, like a lot of zeros to the bottom line, you can't just lift and shift." You really got to think about modernizing, the application portfolio. You got to think about your business model, and really think about transforming your business, particularly the operating model. So my first question, Jim, is, What role does the cloud play in modernization? >> Well, there are really three aspects that the, the cloud plays in modernization. You mentioned multiple zeros. One is cost optimization, and that can be achieved through business operations, through environmental, social, and governance. Also being more efficient with your IT investments. But that's not the only aspect. There's also agility and innovation. And that can be achieved through automation and productivity, speed to market for new features and functions, improvements in the customer experience, and the capability to metabolize a great deal more data in your environment, which the end result is an improvement in releasing of new things to the field. And finally, there's resilience. And I'm not really talking about IT resilience, but more of business resilience, to be able, to be able to handle operational risk, improve your securities and controls, deal with some of the talent gap that's in the industry, and also protect your brand reputation. So modernization is really about balancing these three aspects, cost optimization, agility and innovation, and resilience. >> So, so thank you for that. So Jay, I got to ask you, in the current climate, everybody's, you know, concerned, and there's not great visibility on the macro. So, Jim mentioned cost optimization. That seems to be one of the top areas that customers are focused on. The two I hear a lot are consolidating redundant vendors and optimizing cloud costs. So that's, you know, top of mind today. I think everybody really, you know, understands the innovation and, and, and agility piece, at least at a high level, maybe realizing it is different. And then the business resilience piece is really interesting because, you know, prior to the pandemic people, you know, they had a DR strategy, but they realized, "Wow, my business might not be that resilient." So Jay, my question to you is, What are you hearing when you talk to customers? What's the priority today? >> Yeah, the priority is an often overused term of digital transformation. You know, people want to get ready for next generation environments, customer experience, making sure they're improving, you know, how they engage with their clients and what their branding is. And what we find is a lot of clients don't have the underlying infrastructure in place today to get to where they want to get to. So cloud becomes an important element of that. But, you know, with DXC's philosophy, not everything goes to, not everything necessarily needs to go to cloud to be cost optimized, for instance. In many cases, you can run applications, you know, in your own data center, or on-prem, or in other environments, in a hybrid environment, or multi-cloud environment, and, and still be very optimized from a cost spend standpoint and also put yourself in position for modernization and for be able to do the, bring the things to the business that the clients are, you know, that their clients are looking for, like the CMO and the CFO, et cetera. Trying to use IT as a lever to drive business and to drive, you know, business acceleration and drive profitability, frankly. So there's a lot of dependency on infrastructure, but there's a lot of elements to it. And, and we advocate for, you know, there's not a single answer to that. We like to evaluate clients' environments and work with them to get them to an optimal target operating model, you know, so that they can really deliver on what the promises are for their departments. >> So if, let's talk about some of the, the barriers to realizing value in, in a context of modernization. We talked about cost optimization, agility, and, and, and resilience. But there's a business angle, and there's a technical angle here. 'Cause we always talk about people, process, and technology. Technology, oftentimes, CIOs will tell us, "Well, that's the easy part. We'll figured that out," whether it's true or not. But I agree, people and process is sometimes the tough one. So Jay, why don't you start. What do you see as the barriers, particularly from a business standpoint? >> I think people need to let their guard down and be open to the ideas that are, that are out there in the market from, you know, the, the standards that are being built by, you know, best in class models. And, and there's many people that have gone on, you know, cloud journeys and been very successful with it. There's others that have set high expectations with their business leaders that haven't necessarily met the goals that they need to meet or maybe haven't met them as quickly as they promised. So there's a, you know, there's a change management aspect that you'd need to look at with the, you know, with the environments. There's a, you know, there's a skillset set environment that they need to be prepared for. Do they have the people, you know, to deliver with the, you know, with the tools and the skills and the, and the models that that they're putting themselves in place for in the future versus where they are now? There's just a lot of, you know, there's a lot of different elements. It's not just a, "This price is better," or, "This can operate better than one environment over the other." I think we like to try to look at things holistically and make sure that, you know, we're being, you know, as much of a consultative advocate for the client, for where they want to go, what their destiny is, and based on what we've learned with other clients. You know, and we can bring those best practices forward because we've worked, you know, across such a broad spectra of clients versus them being somewhat contained and sometimes can't see outside of their own, you know, their own challenges, if you would. So they need, they need advocacy to help, you know, bring them to the next level. And we like to translate that through, you know, technology advances, which, you know, Jim's really good at doing for us. >> Yeah, Jim, is, is it, is it a, is the big barrier a skills issue, you know, bench strength? Are there other considerations from your perspective? >> Well, we, we've identified a number of factors that inhibit success of, of customers. One is thinking it's only a technology change in moving to cloud when it's much broader than that. There are changes in governance, changes in process that need to take place. The other is evaluating the cloud providers on their current pricing structure and performance. And, and we see pricing and structure changing dramatically every few months between the various cloud providers. And you have to be flexible enough to, to determine which providers you want. And it may not be feasible to just have a single cloud provider in this world. The other thing is a big bang approach to transformation, "I want to move everything, and I want to move it all at once." That's not necessarily the best approach. A well thought out cloud journey and strategy and timing your investments are really important to get at maximizing your business return on the journey to the cloud. And finally, not engaging stakeholders early and continuously. You have to manage expectations in moving to cloud on what business factors will get affected, how you will achieve your cost savings, and, and how you will achieve the business impact over the journey and reporting out on that with very strict metrics to all of the stakeholders. >> You know, mentioned multi-cloud just then. We had, in January 17th, we had our Supercloud 2 event. And Supercloud is basically, it's really multi, what multi-cloud should have been, I, I like to say. So it's this creating a common experience across clouds. And you guys were talking about, you know, there's different governance, there's different security, there's different pricing. So, and, and one of the takeaways from this event in talking to customers and practitioners and technologists is, you can't go it alone. So I wonder if you could talk about your partnership strategy, what do partners bring to the table, and what is, what is DXC's, you know, unique value? >> I'd be happy to lead with that if you'd like. >> Great. >> I, you know, we've got a vast partner ecosystem at DXC, given the size and, and the history of the company. I could use several examples. One of the larger partners in my particular space is Dell Technology, right? They're a great, you know, partner for us across many different areas of the business. It's not just a storage and compute play anymore. They're, they're on the edge. They're, you know, they're, they've got intelligence in their networking devices now. And they've really brought, you know, a lot of value to us as a partner. And, you know, there, there's somebody, you could look at Dell technology as somebody that might, you know, have a victim, you know, effect because of all the hyperscale activity and all the cloud activity. But they've really taken an outstanding attitude with this and say, "Listen, not all things are destined for cloud, or not all things would operate better in a cloud environment." And they like to be part of those discussions to see how they can, you know, how we can bring a multi-cloud environment, you know, both private and public, you know, to clients. And let's look at the applications and the infrastructure and, and what's, you know, what's the best optimal running environment, you know, for us to be able to bring, you know, the greatest value to the business with speed, with security, with, you know. And, you know, the things that they want to keep closest to the business are often things that you want to kind of, you know, keep on your premise or keep in your own data center. So they're, they're an ideal model of somebody that's resourced us well, partners with us well in the market. And, and we continue to grow that relationship day in and day out with those guys. And we really appreciate, you know, their support of our strategy, and, and we like to also compliment their strategy and work, you know, work together hand in hand in front of our clients. >> Yeah, you know, Jim, Matt Baker, who's the head of strategic planning at Dell talks about, "It's not a zero sum game." And I think, you know, you're right, Jay. I think initially people felt like, "Oh wow, it's, it is a zero sum game." But it's clearly not, and this idea of of, whether you call it supercloud or ubercloud or multicloud, clearly Dell is headed in in that direction. And I, you know, look at some of their future projects. There's their narrative. I'm curious from a technology standpoint, Jim, what your role is. Is it to make it all work? Is it to, you know, end to end? I wonder if you could help, you know, us understand that. >> Help us figure this out, Jim, here. (group laughing) >> Glad to expand on that. One of my key roles is developing our product roadmap for DXC offerings. And we do that roadmap in conjunction with our partners where we can leverage the innovation that our partners bring to the table. And we often utilize engineering resources from our partners to help us jointly build those offerings that adapt to changes in the market and also adapt to many of our customers changing needs over time. So my primary role is to look at the market, talk to our customers, and work with our partners to develop a product roadmap for delivering DXC products and services to our clients so that they can get the return on investment on their technology journeys. >> You know, we've been working with these two firms for a while now. Even predates, you know, the, the name DXC and that, that transformation. I'm curious as to what's, how you would respond to, "What's unique?" You know, you hear a lot about partnerships. You guys got a lot of competition. Dell has a lot of competition. What's specifically unique about this combination? >> I think, go ahead, Jim. >> I would say our unique approach, we call it cloud right. And that, that approach is making the right investments, at the right time, and on the right platforms. And our partners play a, play a key role in that. So we, we encourage our customers to not necessarily have a cloud first approach, but a cloud right approach where they place the workloads in the environment that is best suited from a technology perspective, a business perspective, and even a security and governance perspective. And, and the right approach might include mainframe. It might include an on-premises infrastructure. It could include private cloud, public cloud, and SaaS components all integrated together to deliver that value. >> Yeah, Jay, please. >> If you were... >> That is a complicated situation for a lot of customers. Chime in here. (Jay chuckles) >> And now, if you were speaking specifically to Dell here, like they, they also walk the talk, right? They invest in DXC as a partnership. They put people on the ground that their only purpose in life is to help DXC succeed with Dell in, you know, arm in arm in front of clients. And it's not, you know, it's not a winner take all thing at all. It's really a true partnership. They, they, they've brought solution resources. We have an account CTO. We've got executive sponsorship. We do regular QBR meetings. We have regular executive touchpoint meetings. It's really important that you keep a high level of intimacy with the client, with the partners, you know, and, and the, and the GSI community. And I, I've been with several GSIs, and, and this is an exceptional example of true partnership and commitment to success with Dell technology. I'm really extremely impressed on, on the engagement level that we've had there and, you know, continue to show a lot of support, you know, both for them. You know, there's other OEM partners, of course, in the market. There's always going to be other technology solutions for certain clients, but this has been a particularly strong element for us in our partnership and in our go-to-market strategy. >> Well, I think too, just my observation, is a lot of it's about trust. You guys have both earned the trust, the kind of, over the, over the years taking your arrows, you know, of over decades. And, and you know, that just doesn't happen overnight. So guys, I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. It's all about getting cloud right, isn't it? >> That's right. (chuckles) (Dave chuckles) >> Thank you Dave. Appreciate it very much. >> Dave, thank you. >> Jay, Jim, great to have you on. Keep it right there for more action on theCube. Be right back. (upbeat guitar music) (keyboard clicks) Welcome back to the program. My name is Dave Vellante, and in this session we're going to explore one of the more interesting topics of the day. IoT for smart factories and with me are Todd Edmunds, the Global CTO of Smart Manufacturing Edge and Digital Twins at Dell Technologies. That is such a cool title. (Todd chuckles) I want to be you. And Dr. Aditi Banerjee who's the Vice President, General Manager for Aerospace Defense and Manufacturing at DXC Technology. Another really cool title. Folks, welcome to the program. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. >> Nice to be here. So, Todd, let's start with you. We hear a lot about Industry 4.0, smart factories, IIoT. Can you briefly explain like what is Industry 4.0 all about, and why is it important for the manufacturing industry? >> Yeah, sure, Dave. You know, it's been around for quite a while. And it's got, it's gone by multiple different names, as you said, Industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, industrial IoT, smart factory, but it all really means the same thing. Its really applying technology to get more out of the factories and the facilities that you have to do your manufacturing. So being much more efficient, implementing really good sustainability initiatives. And so we really look at that by saying, "Okay, what are we going to do with technology to really accelerate what we've been doing for a long, long time?" So it's really not, it's not new. It's been around for a long time. What's new is that manufacturers are looking at this not as a one-off, two-off, individual use case point of view. But instead they're saying, "We really need to look at this holistically, thinking about a strategic investment in how we do this, not to just enable one or two use cases, but enable many, many use cases across the spectrum." I mean, there's tons of them out there. There's predictive maintenance, and there's OEE, overall equipment effectiveness, and there's computer vision. And all of these things are starting to percolate down to the factory floor. But it needs to be done in a little bit different way. And, and, and really, to really get those outcomes that they're looking for in smart factory, or Industry 4.0, or however you want to call it, and truly transform. Not just throw an Industry 4.0 use case out there, but to do the digital transformation that's really necessary and to be able to stay relevant for the future. You know, I heard it once said that you have three options. Either you digitally transform and stay relevant for the future, or you don't and fade into history like 52% of the companies that used to be on the Fortune 500 since 2000, right? And so really that's a key thing, and we're seeing that really, really being adopted by manufacturers all across the globe. >> Yeah so, Aditi, that's like digital transformation is almost synonymous with business transformation. So is there anything you'd add to what Todd just said? >> Absolutely. Though, I would really add that what really drives Industry 4.0 is the business transformation, what we are able to deliver in terms of improving the manufacturing KPIs and the KPIs for customer satisfaction, right? For example, improving the downtime, you know, or decreasing the maintenance cycle of the equipments, or improving the quality of products, right? So I think these are a lot of business outcomes that our customers are looking at while using Industry 4.0 and the technologies of Industry 4.0 to deliver these outcomes. >> So Aditi, I wonder if I could stay with you. And maybe this is a bit esoteric. But when I first started researching IoT and, and, and Industrial IoT 4.0, et cetera, I felt, you know, while there could be some disruptions in the ecosystem, I kind of came to the conclusion that large manufacturing firms, aerospace defense companies, the firms building out critical infrastructure, actually had kind of an incumbent advantage in a great opportunity. Of course, then I saw on TV, somebody now they're building homes with 3D printers. Its like, blows your mind. So that's pretty disruptive, but, so, but they got to continue. The incumbents have to continue to invest in the future. They're well capitalized. They're pretty good businesses, very good businesses. But there's a lot of complexities involved in kind of connecting the old house to the new addition that's being built, if you will, or this transformation that we're talking about. So my question is, How are your customers preparing for this new era? What are the key challenges that they're facing and the, the blockers, if you will? >> Yeah, I mean the customers are looking at Industry 4.0 for greenfield factories, right? That is where the investments are going directly into building the factories with the new technologies, with the new connectivities, right, for the machines. For example, industrial IoT, having the right type of data platforms to drive computational analytics and outcomes, as well as looking at edge versus cloud type of technologies, right? Those are all getting built in the greenfield factories. However, for the install-based factories, right, that is where our customers are looking at, "How do I modernize these factories? How do I connect the existing machine?" And that is where some of the challenges come in on, you know, the legacy system connectivity that they need to think about. Also, they need to start thinking about cybersecurity and operation technology security, right, because now you are connecting the factories to each other, right? So cybersecurity becomes top of mind, right? So there is definitely investment that is involved. Clients are creating roadmaps for digitizing and modernizing these factories and investments in a very strategic way, right? So perhaps they start with the innovation program, and then they look at the business case, and they scale it up, right? >> Todd, I'm glad Aditi brought up security. Because if you think about the operations technology, you know, folks, historically, they air gapped, you know, the systems. That's how they created security. That's changed. The business came in and said, "Hey, we got to, we got to connect. We got to make it intelligent." So that's, that's got to be a big challenge as well. >> It, it, it absolutely is Dave. And, and you know, you can no longer just segment that because really, to get all of those efficiencies that we talk about, that IoT and Industrial IoT and Industry 4.0 promise, you have to get data out of the factory. But then you got to put data back in the factory. So no longer is it just firewalling everything is really the answer. So you really have to have a comprehensive approach to security, but you also have to have a comprehensive approach to the cloud and what that means. And does it mean a continuum of cloud all the way down to the edge, right down to the factory? It absolutely does because no one approach has the answer to everything. The more you go to the cloud, the broader the attack surface is. So what we're seeing is a lot of our customers approaching this from a, kind of that, that hybrid, you know, "write once, run anywhere" on the factory floor down to the edge. And one of the things we're seeing, too, is to help distinguish between what is the edge, and that, and, and bridge that gap between, like Dave, you talked about IT and OT. And also help that, what Aditi talked about, is the greenfield plants versus the brownfield plants that they call it, that are the legacy ones and modernizing those. Is, it's great to kind of start to delineate. What does that mean? Where's the edge? Where's the IT and the OT? We see that from a couple of different ways. We start to think about really two edges in a manufacturing floor. We talk about an industrial edge that sits, or some people call it a far edge or a thin edge, sits way down on that plan. It consists of industrial hardened devices that do that connectivity. The hard stuff about, "How do I connect to this obsolete legacy protocol and what do I do with it?" And create that next generation of data that has context. And then we see another edge evolving above that, which is much more of a data and analytics and enterprise grade application layer that sits down in the factory itself that helps figure out where we're going to run this. Does it connect to the cloud? Do we run applications on-prem? Because a lot of times that on-prem application is, is, needs to be done because that's the only way that its going to, it's going to work because of security requirements, because of latency requirements, performance, and a lot of times cost. It's really helpful to build that multiple edge strategy because then you kind of, you consolidate all of those resources, applications, infrastructure, hardware, into a centralized location. Makes it much, much easier to really deploy and manage that security. But it also makes it easier to deploy new applications, new use cases, and become the foundation for DXC's expertise and applications that they deliver to our customers as well. >> Todd, how complex are these projects? I mean, I feel like it's kind of the, the digital equivalent of building the Hoover Dam. I mean, it, it, it's, (chuckles) it, it, so. Yeah, how long does a typical project take? I know it varies, but what, you know, what are the critical success factors in terms of delivering business value quickly? >> Yeah, that's a great question in that, in that we're, you know, like I said at the beginning, we, this is not new. Smart factory and Industry 4.0 is not new. It's been, it's, people have been trying to implement the holy grail of smart factory for a long time. And what we're seeing is a switch, a little bit of a switch, or quite a bit of a switch, to where the enterprise and the IT folks are having a much bigger say and have a lot to offer to be able to help that complexity. So instead of deploying a computer here, and a gateway there, and a server there, I mean, you go walk into any manufacturing plant and you can see servers sitting underneath someone's desk or a, or a PC in a closet somewhere running a critical production application. So we're seeing the enterprise have a much bigger say at the table, much louder voice at the table to say, "We've been doing this at enterprise all the time. We, we know how to really consolidate, bring hyper-converged applications, hyper-converged infrastructure, to really accelerate these kind of applications, really accelerate the outcomes that are needed to really drive that smart factory, and start to bring that same capabilities down into the, on the factory floor." That way, if you do it once to make it easier to implement, you can repeat that. You can scale that. You can manage it much easily. And you can then bring that all together because you have the security in one centralized location. So we're seeing manufacturers, yeah, that first use case may be fairly difficult to implement and we got to go down in and see exactly what their problems are. But when the infrastructure is done the correct way, when that, think about how you're going to run that and how are you going to optimize the engineering. Well, let's take that, what you've done in that one factory, and then set. Let's that, make that across all the factories, including the factory that we're in, but across the globe. That makes it much, much easier. You really do the hard work once and then repeat, almost like a cookie cutter. >> Got it. Thank you. Aditi, what about the skillsets available to apply these, to these projects? You got to have knowledge of digital, AI, data, integration. Is there a talent shortage to get all this stuff done? >> Yeah, I mean definitely, a lot. Different types of skillsets are needed from a traditional manufacturing skillset, right? Of course, the basic knowledge of manufacturing is, is important. But the, the digital skillset sets like, you know, IoT, having a skillset in different protocols for connecting the machines, right, that experience that comes with it, data and analytics, security, augmented virtual reality programming. You know, again, looking at robotics and the digital twin. So you know, it's a lot more connectivity software, data driven skillsets that are needed to smart factory to life at scale. And, you know, lots of firms are, you know, recruiting these types of skill, resources with these skillsets to, you know, accelerate their smart factory implementation, as well as consulting firms like DXC Technology and others. We, we, we recruit. We, we train our talent to, to provide these services. >> Got it. Aditi, I wonder if we could stay on you. Let's talk about the partnership between DXC and Dell. What are you doing specifically to simplify the move to Industry 4.0 for customers? What solutions are you offering? How are you working together, Dell and DXC, to, to bring these to market? >> Yeah, Dell and DXC have a very strong partnership. You know, and we work very closely together to, to create solutions, to create strategies, and how we, we are going to jointly help our clients, right? So areas that we have worked closely together is edge compute, right, how that impacts the smart factory. So we have worked pretty closely in that area. We're also looked at vision technologies, you know. How do we use that at the edge to improve the quality of products, right? So we have several areas that we collaborate in. And our approach is that we, we want to bring solutions to our client, and as well as help them scale those solutions with the right infrastructure, the right talent, and the right level of security. So we bring a comprehensive solution to our clients. >> So, Todd, last question, kind of similar but different. You know, why Dell DXC? Pitch me. What's different about this partnership? You know, where do you, are you confident that, you know, you're going to be, deliver the best value to, to customers? >> Absolutely. Great question. You know, there's no shortage of bespoke solutions that are out there. There's hundreds of people that can come in and do individual use cases and do these things. And just, and, and, and that's, that's where it ends. What Dell and DXC Technology together bring to the table is, we do the optimization, the optimization of the engineering of those previously bespoke solutions upfront, together, right? The power of our scalables, enterprise-grade, structured, you know, industry standard infrastructure, as well as our expertise in delivering package solutions that really accelerate with DXC's expertise and reputation as a global, trusted, trusted advisor. Be able to really scale and repeat those solutions that DXC is so really, really good at. And, and Dell's infrastructure, and our, what, 30,000 people across the globe that are really, really good at that, at that scalable infrastructure, to be able to repeat. And then it really lessens the risk that our customers have and really accelerates those solutions. So it's again, not just one individual solutions, it's all of the solutions that not just drive use cases, but drive outcomes with those solutions. >> Yeah, the, you're right, the partnership has gone, I mean, I first encountered it back in, I think it was 2010, May of 2010, we had you, you guys both on theCube. I think you were talking about converged infrastructure. And I had a customer on, and it was, actually a manufacturing customer, was quite interesting. And back then it was, "How do we kind of replicate what's coming in the cloud?" And, and you guys have obviously taken it into the digital world. Really want to thank you for your time today. Great conversation, and love to have you back. >> Thank you so much. >> Absolutely. >> It was a pleasure speaking with you. >> I agree. >> All right, keep it right there for more discussions that educate and inspire on theCube. (bright music) Welcome back to the program and we're going to dig into the number one topic on the minds of every technology organization. That's cybersecurity. You know, survey data from ETR, our data partner, shows that among CIOs and IT decision makers, cybersecurity continues to rank as the number one technology priority to be addressed in the coming year. That's ahead of even cloud migration and analytics. And with me to discuss this critical topic area are Jim Shook, who's the Global Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance Practice at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Andrew Gonzalez, who focuses on Cloud and Infrastructure consulting at DXC Technology. Gents, welcome. Good to have you. >> Thanks Dave. Great to be here. >> Thank you. >> Jim, let's start with you. What are you seeing from the front lines in terms of the attack surface, and, and how are customers responding these days? >> It's always up and down and back and forth. The bad actors are smart. They adapt to everything that we do. So we're seeing more and more kind of living off the land. They're not necessarily deploying malware. Makes it harder to find what they're doing. And I think though, Dave, we've, we've adapted, and this whole notion of cyber resilience really helps our customers figure this out. And the idea there goes beyond cybersecurity, it's, "Let's protect as much as possible, so we keep the bad actors out as much as we can. But then, let's have the ability to adapt to and recover to the extent that the bad actors are successful." So we're recognizing that we can't be perfect a hundred percent of the time against a hundred percent of the bad actors. Let's keep out what we can, but then recognize and have that ability to recover when necessary. >> Yeah, thank you. So Andrew, you know, I like what Jim was saying about living off the land, of course, meaning using your own tooling against you, kind of hiding in plain sight, if you will. But, and, and as Jim is saying, you, you can't be perfect. But, so given that, what's your perspective on what good cybersecurity hygiene looks like? >> Yeah, so you have to understand what your crown jewel data looks like, what a good copy of a recoverable asset looks like. When you look at an attack, if it were to occur, right, how you get that copy of data back into production. And not only that, but what that golden image actually entails. So, whether it's networking, storage, some copy of a source code, intellectual property, maybe CMBD data, or an active directory, or DNS dump, right? Understanding what your data actually entails so that you can protect it and that you can build out your recovery plan for it. >> So, and where's that live? Where's that gold copy? You put on a yellow sticky? No, it's got to be, (chuckles) you got to be somewhere safe, right? So you have to think about that chain as well, right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. You, so, a lot of folks have not gone through the exercise of identifying what that golden copy looks like. Everyone has a DR scenario, everyone has a DR strategy, but actually identifying what that golden crown jewel data, let's call it, actually entails is one aspect of it. And then where to put it, how to protect it, how to make it immutable and isolated, that's the other portion of it. >> You know, if I go back to sort of earlier part of last decade, you know, cybersecurity was kind of a checkoff item. And as you got toward the middle part of the decade, and I'd say clearly by 2016, it, security became a boardroom issue. It was on the agenda, you know, every quarter at the board meetings. So compliance is no longer the driver, is, is my point. The driver is business risk, real loss of reputation or data, you know, it's, or money, et cetera. What are the business implications of not having your cyber house in order today? >> They're extreme, Dave. I mean the, you know, the bad actors are good at what they do. These losses by organizations, tens, hundreds of millions into the billions sometimes, plus the reputational damage that's difficult to, to really measure. There haven't been a lot of organizations that have actually been put out of business by an attack, at least not directly on, if they're larger organizations. But that's also on the table, too. So you can't just rely on, "Oh we need to do, you know, A, B and C because our regulators require it." You need to look at what the actual risk is to the business, and then come up with a strategy from there. >> You know, Jim, staying with you, one of the most common targets we hear of attackers is to go after the backup corpus. So how should customers think about protecting themselves from that tactic? >> Well, Dave, you hit on it before, right? Everybody's had the backup and DR strategies for a long time going back to requirements that we had in place for physical disaster or human error. And that's a great starting point for resilience capability. But that's all it is, is a starting point. Because the bad actors will, they also understand that you have those capabilities, and, and they've adapted to that. In every sophisticated attack that we see, the backup is a target. The bad actors want to take it out, or corrupt it, or do something else to that backup so that it's not available to you. That's not to say they're always successful, and it's still a good control to have in place because maybe it will survive. But you have to plan beyond that. So the capabilities that we talk about with resilience, let's harden that backup infrastructure. You've already got it in place. Let's use the capabilities that are there like immutability and other controls to make it more difficult for the bad actors to get to. But then as Andrew said, that gold copy, that critical systems, you need to protect that in something that's more secure, which commonly we, we might say a cyber vault. Although, there's a lot of different capabilities for cyber vaulting, some far better than others, and that's some of the things that we focus on. >> You know, it's interesting, but I've talked to a lot of CIOs about this, is prior to the pandemic, they, you know, had their, as you're pointing out, Jim, they had their DR strategy in place, but they felt like they weren't business resilient. And they realized that when we had the forced march to digital. So Andrew, are there solutions out there to help with this problem? Do you guys have an answer to this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I'm glad you brought up resiliency. We, we take a position that to be cyber resilient, it includes operational resiliency. It includes understanding at the C level what the implication of an attack means, as we stated, and then, how to recover back into production. When you look at protecting that data, not only do you want to put it into what we call a vault, which is a Dell technology that is an offline immutable copy of your crown jewel data, but also how to recover it in real time. So DXC offers a, I don't want to call it a turnkey solution since we architect these specific to each client needs, right, when we look at what client data entails, their recovery point, objectives, recovery time objectives, what we call quality of the restoration. But when we architect these out, we look at not only how to protect the data, but how to alert and monitor for attacks in real time, how to understand what we should do when a breach is in progress, putting together with our security operations centers, a forensic and recovery plan and a runbook for the client, and then being able to cleanse and remediate so that we can get that data back into production. These are all services that DXC offers in conjunction with the Dell solution to protect, and recover, and keep bad actors out. And if we can't keep them out to ensure that we are back into production in short order. >> You know, this, this discussion we've been having about DR kind of versus resilience, and, and you were just talking about RPO and RTO. I mean, it used to be that a lot of firms wouldn't even test their recovery 'cause it was too risky. Or, you know, maybe they tested it on, you know, July 4th or something like that. But, but it, I'm inferring that's changed. I wonder if we could, you know, double click on recovery? How hard is it to, to, to test that recovery, and, and how quickly are you seeing organizations recover from attacks? >> So it depends, right, on the industry vertical, what kind of data. Again, a financial services client compared to a manufacturing client are going to be two separate conversations. We've seen it as quickly as being able to recover in six hours, in 12 hours. In some instances we have the grace period of a day to a couple of days. We do offer the ability to run scenarios once a quarter where we can stand up in our systems the production data that we are protecting to ensure that we have a good recoverable copy. But it depends on the client. >> I really like the emphasis here, Dave, that you're raising and that Andrew's talking about. It's not on the technology of how the data gets protected. It's focused on the recovery. That's all that we want to do. And so the solution with DXC really focuses on generating that recovery for customers. I think where people get a little bit twisted up on their testing capability is, you have to think about different scenarios. So there are scenarios where the attack might be small. It might be limited to a database or an application. It might be really broadly based like the NotPetya attacks from a few years ago. The regulatory environment, we call those attacks severe but plausible. So you can't necessarily test everything with the infrastructure, but you can test some things with the infrastructure. Others, you might sit around on a tabletop exercise or walk through what that looks like to really get that, that recovery kind of muscle, muscle memory so that people know what to do when those things occur. But the key to it, as Andrew said before, have to focus down, "What are those critical applications? What do we need, what's most important? What has to come back first?" And that really will go a long way towards having the right recovery points and recovery times from a cyber disaster. >> Yeah, makes sense. Understanding the value of that data is going to inform you how to, how to respond and how to prioritize. Andrew, one of the things that we hear a lot on theCube, especially lately, is around, you know, IOT, IIOT, Industry 4.0, the whole OT security piece of it. And the problem being that, you know, traditionally, operations technologies have been air gapped, often by design. But as businesses, increasingly they're driving initiatives like Industry 4.0, and they're connecting these OT systems to IT systems. They're, you know, driving efficiency, preventative maintenance, et cetera. So a lot of data flowing through the pipes, if you will. What are you seeing in terms of the threats to critical infrastructure and how should customers think about addressing these issues? >> Yeah, so bad actors, you know, can come in many forms. We've seen instances of social engineering. We've seen, you know, a USB stick dropped in a warehouse. That data that is flowing through the IoT device is as sensitive now as your core mainframe infrastructure data. So when you look at it from a protection standpoint, conceptually, it's not dissimilar from what we've been been talking about where you want to understand, again, what the most critical data is. Looking at IoT data and applications is no different than your core systems now, right? Depending on what your, your business is, right? So when, when we're looking at protecting these, yes, we want firewalls, yes, we want air gap solutions, yes, we want front end protection, but we're looking at it from a resiliency perspective. Putting that data, understanding what what data entails to put in the vault from an IoT perspective is just as critical as as it is for your core systems. >> Jim, anything you can add to this topic? >> Yeah, I think you hit on the, the key points there. Everything is interconnected. So even in the days where maybe people thought the OT systems weren't online, oftentimes the IT systems are talking to them, or controlling them, SCADA systems, or perhaps supporting them. Think back to the pipeline attack of last year. All the public testimony was that the OT systems didn't get attacked directly. But there was uncertainty around that, and the IT systems hadn't been secured. So that caused the OT systems to have to shut down. It certainly is a different recovery when you're shutting them down on your own versus being attacked, but the outcome was the same that the business couldn't operate. So you really have to take all of those into account. And I think that does go back to exactly what Andrew's saying, understanding your critical business services, and then the applications and data and other components that support those and drive those, and making sure those are protected. You understand them, you have the ability to recover them if necessary. >> So guys, I mean, you made the point. I mean, you're right. The adversary is highly capable. They're motivated 'cause the ROI is so, it's so lucrative. It's like this never ending battle that cybersecurity pros, you know, go through. It really is kind of frontline sort of technical heroes, if you will. And so, but sometimes it just feels daunting. Why are you optimistic about the future of, of cyber from the good guy's perspective? >> I think we're coming at the problem the right way, Dave. So that, that focus, I'm so pleased with the idea that we are planning that the systems aren't going to be hundred percent capable every single time, and let's figure that out, right? That's, that's real world stuff. So just as the bad actors continue to adapt and expand, so do we. And I think the differences there, the common criminals, it's getting harder and harder for them. The more sophisticated ones, they're tough to beat all the time. And of course, you've raised the question of some nation states and other activities. But there's a lot more information sharing. There's a lot more focus from the business side of the house and not just the IT side of the house that we need to figure these things out. >> Yeah, to, to add to that, I think furthering education for the client base is important. You, you brought up a point earlier. It used to be a boardroom conversation due to compliance reasons. Now, as we have been in the market for a while, we continue to mature the offerings. It's further education for not only the business itself, but for the IT systems and how they interconnect, and working together so that these systems can be protected and continue to be evolved and continue to be protected through multiple frameworks as opposed to seeing it as another check the box item that the board has to adhere to. >> All right, guys, we got to go. Thank you so much. Great conversation on a, on a really important topic. Keep up the good work. Appreciate it. >> Thanks Dan. >> Thank you. >> All right, and thank you for watching. Stay tuned for more excellent discussions around the partnership between Dell Technologies and DXC Technology. We're talking about solving real world problems, how this partnership has evolved over time, really meeting the changing enterprise landscape challenges. Keep it right there. (bright music) Okay, we hope you enjoyed the program and learned some things about cloud transformation and modernizing your business that will inspire you to action. Now if you want to learn more, go to the Dell DXC partner page shown here, or click on the URL in the description. Thanks for watching everybody and on behalf of our supporters, Dell and DXC, good luck. And as always, get in touch if we can be of any assistance. (bright music)

>> Welcome back to the program, and we're going to dig into the number one topic on the minds of every technology organization. That's cybersecurity. Survey data from ETR, our data partner, shows that among CIOs and IT decision makers, cybersecurity continues to rank as the number one technology priority to be addressed in the coming year. That's ahead of even cloud migration and analytics. And with me, to discuss this critical topic area, are Jim Shook, who's the global director of cybersecurity and compliance practice at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Andrew Gonzalez, who focuses on cloud and infrastructure consulting at DXC Technology. Gents, welcome, good to have you. >> Thanks, Dave. Great to be here. >> Thank you. >> Jim, let's start with you. What are you seeing from the front lines in terms of the attack surface and how are customers responding these days? >> It's always up and down and back and forth. The bad actors are smart, they adapt to everything that we do, so, we're seeing more and more kind of living off the land, they're not necessarily deploying malware, makes it harder to find what they're doing. And I think, though, Dave, we've adapted and this whole notion of cyber resilience really helps our customers figure this out. And the idea there goes beyond cybersecurity, it's let's protect as much as possible, so we keep the bad actors out as much as we can, but then let's have the ability to adapt to and recover to the extent that the bad actors are successful. So, we're recognizing that we can't be perfect 100% of the time against 100% of the bad actors. Let's keep out what we can, but then recognize and have that ability to recover when necessary. >> Yeah, thank you. So, Andrew, I like what Jim was saying about living off the land, of course, meaning using your own tooling against you, kind of hiding in plain sight, if you will. And as Jim was saying, you can't be perfect, but so, given that, what's your perspective on what good cybersecurity hygiene looks like? >> Yeah, so you have to understand what your crown-jewel data looks like, what a good copy of a recoverable asset looks like when you look at an attack, if it were to occur, right? How you get that copy of data back into production. And not only that, but what that golden image actually entails. So, whether it's networking, storage, some copy of a source code, intellectual property, maybe SIM2B data, or an Active Directory, or DNS dump, right? Understanding what your data actually entails, so that you can protect it, and that you can build out your recovery plan for it. >> So, and where's that live? Where's that gold copy? You put in a yellow sticky? You know, it's got to be somewhere safe, right? So, you have to think about that chain as well, right? >> Absolutely. Yeah. So, a lot of folks have not gone through the exercise of identifying what that golden copy looks like. Everyone has a DR scenario, everyone has a DR strategy, but actually identifying what that golden crown-jewel data, let's call it, actually entails is one aspect of it, and then where to put it, how to protect it, how to make it immutable and isolated, that's the other portion of it. >> If I go back to sort of earlier part of last decade, cybersecurity was kind of a check-off item, and then as you got toward the middle part of the decade, and I'd say clearly by 2016, security became a boardroom issue, it was on the agenda every quarter at the board meetings. So, compliance is no longer the driver is my point. The driver is business risk, real loss of reputation, or data, or money, etc. What are the business implications of not having your cyber house in order today? >> They're extreme, Dave. I mean, the bad actors are good at what they do, these losses by organizations tens, hundreds of millions into the billions, sometimes, plus the reputational damage that's difficult to really measure. There haven't been a lot of organizations that have actually been put out of business by an attack, at least not directly, if they're larger organizations. But that's also on the table too. So, you can't just rely on, oh, we need to do A, B and C because our regulators require it. You need to look at what the actual risk is to the business, and then come up with the strategy from there. >> Jim, staying with you. One of the most common targets we hear of attackers is to go after the backup corpus. So, how should customers think about protecting themselves from that tactic? >> Well, Dave, you hit on it before, right? Everybody's had the backup and DR strategies for a long time going back to requirements that we had in place for physical disaster or human error. And that's a great starting point for a resilience capability. But that's all it is, is a starting point. Because the bad actors will, they also understand that you have those capabilities, and they've adapted to that. In every sophisticated attack that we see, the backup is a target, the bad actors want to take it out, or corrupt it, or do something else to that backup so that it's not available to you. That's not to say they're always successful, and it's still a good control to have in place because maybe it will survive. But you have to plan beyond that. So, the capabilities that we talk about with resilience, let's harden that backup infrastructure, you've already got it in place, let's use the capabilities that are there like immutability and other controls to make it more difficult for the bad actors to get to. But then, as Andrew said, that gold copy, that critical systems, you need to protect that in something that's more secure, which commonly we might say a cyber vault, or there's a lot of different capabilities for cyber vaulting, some far better than others. And that's some of the things that we focus on. >> You know, it's interesting, but I've talked to a lot of CIOs about this prior to the pandemic, they had their, as you're pointing out, Jim, they had their DR strategy in place, but they felt like they weren't business-resilient, and they realized that when we had the forced march to digital. So, Andrew, are there solutions out there to help with this problem? Do you guys have an answer to this? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm glad you brought up resiliency. We take a position that to be cyber resilient, it includes operational resiliency, it includes understanding at the C level what the implication of an attack means, as we stated, and then how to recover back into production. When you look at protecting that data, not only do you want to put it into what we call a vault, which is a Dell technology that is an offline immutable copy of your crown-jewel data, but also how to recover it in real time. So, DXC offers a, I don't want to call it a turnkey solution, since we architect these specific to each client needs, right? When we look at what client data entails, their recovery point, objectives, recovery time objectives, what we call quality of the restoration, but, when we architect these out, we look at not only how to protect the data, but how to alert and monitor for attacks in realtime. How to understand what we should do when a breach is in progress. Putting together with our security operations centers a forensic and recovery plan and a runbook for the client. And then being able to cleanse and remediate, so that we can get that data back into production. These are all services that DXC offers in conjunction with the Dell solution to protect and recover and keep bad actors out. And if we can't keep 'em out, to ensure that we are back into production in short order. >> This discussion we've been having about DR kind of versus resilience, and you were just talking about RPO and RTO, I mean, it used to be that a lot of firms wouldn't even test their recovery, 'cause it was too risky, or maybe they tested it on July 4th or something like that, but I'm inferring that's changed. I wonder if we could double-click on recovery, how hard is it to test that recovery, and how quickly are you seeing organizations recover from attacks? >> So, it depends, right? On the industry vertical, what kind of data, again, financial services client compared to a manufacturing client are going to be two separate conversations. We've seen it as quickly as being able to recover in six hours, in 12 hours, in some instances we have the grace period of a day to a couple days, we do offer the ability to run scenarios once a quarter where we can stand up in our systems, the production data that we are protecting to ensure that we have a good recoverable copy. But it depends on the client. >> I really like the emphasis here, Dave, that you're raising and that Andrew's talking about, it's not on the technology of how the data gets protected, it's focused on the recovery. That's all that we want to do. And so, the solution with DXC really focuses on generating that recovery for customers. I think where people get a little bit twisted up on their testing capability is you have to think about different scenarios. So, there are scenarios where the attack might be small, it might be limited to a database or an application. It might be really broadly based, like the NotPetya attacks from a few years ago. In the regulatory environment we call those attacks severe but plausible. So, you can't necessarily test everything with the infrastructure, but you can test some things with the infrastructure, others, you might sit around on a tabletop exercise, or walk through what that looks like to really get that recovery kind of muscle memory, so that people know what to do when those things occur. But the key to it, as Andrew said before, have to focus down what are those critical applications. What do we need? What's most important? What has to come back first? And that really will go a long way towards having the right recovery points and recovery times from a cyber disaster. >> Yeah, makes sense. Understanding the value of that data is going to inform you how to respond and how to prioritize. Andrew, one of the things that we hear a lot on theCUBE, especially lately, is around IOT, IIOT, Industry 4.0, the whole OT security piece of it. And the problem being that, traditionally, operations technologies have been air gapped, often by design, but as businesses increasingly they're driving initiatives like Industry 4.0, and they're connecting these OT systems to IT systems. They're driving efficiency, preventative maintenance, etc. So, a lot of data flowing through the pipes, if you will. What are you seeing in terms of the threats to critical infrastructure, and how should customers think about addressing these issues? >> Yeah. So, bad actors can come in many forms, we've seen instances of social engineering, we've seen USB stick dropped in a warehouse. That data that is flowing through the IOT device is as sensitive now as your core mainframe infrastructure data. So, when you look at it from a protection standpoint, conceptually, it's not dissimilar from what we've been talking about, where you want to understand, again, what the most critical data is. Looking at IOT data and applications is no different than your core systems now, right? Depending on what your business is, right? So, when we're looking at protecting these, yes, we want firewalls, yes, we want air gap solutions, yes, we want front end protection, but we're looking at it from a resiliency perspective. Putting that data, understanding what data entails to put in the vault from an IOT perspective is just as critical as it is for your core systems. >> Jim, anything you can add to this topic? >> Yeah, I think you hit on the key points there. Everything is interconnected. So, even in the days where maybe people thought the OT systems weren't online, oftentimes the IT systems are talking to them, or controlling them SCADA systems, or perhaps supporting them. Think back to the pipeline attack of last year. All the public testimony was that the OT systems didn't get attacked directly, but there was uncertainty around that, and the IT systems hadn't been secured. So, that caused the OT systems to have to shut down. It certainly is a different recovery when you're shutting them down on your own versus being attacked, but the outcome was the same, that the business couldn't operate. So, you really have to take all of those into account, and I think that does go back to exactly what Andrew's saying, understanding your critical business services, and then the applications and data, and other components that support those and drive those, and making sure those are protected, you understand them, you have the ability to recover them if necessary. >> So guys, I mean, you made the point, I mean, you're right. The adversary is highly capable, they're motivated, 'cause the ROI is so lucrative. It's like this never-ending battle that cybersecurity pros go through, it really is kind of frontline sort of technical heroes, if you will. But sometimes it just feels daunting. Why are you optimistic about the future of cyber from the good guys' perspective? >> I think we're coming at the problem the right way, Dave, so that focus, I'm so pleased with the idea that we are planning that the systems aren't going to be 100% capable every single time and let's figure that out, right? That's real-world stuff. So, just as the bad actors continue to adapt and expand, so do we. And I think the differences there, the common criminals, it's getting harder and harder for them. The more sophisticated ones, they're tough to beat all the time, and, of course, you've raised the question of some nation states and other activities, but there's a lot more information sharing, there's a lot more focus from the business side of the house, and not just the IT side of the house that we need to figure these things out. >> Yeah. To add to that, I think furthering education for the client base is important. You brought up a point earlier, it used to be a boardroom conversation due to compliance reasons. Now, as we have been in the market for a while, we continue to mature the offerings, it's further education for not only the business itself, but for the IT systems and how they interconnect, and working together so that these systems can be protected, and continue to be evolved, and continue to be protected through multiple frameworks as opposed to seeing it as another check-the-box item that the board has to adhere to. >> All right, guys. We got to go. Thank you so much. Great conversation on a really important topic. Keep keep up the good work. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you. >> All right. And thank you for watching. Stay tuned for more excellent discussions around the partnership between Dell Technologies and DXC Technology. We're talking about solving real-world problems, how this partnership has evolved over time, really meeting the changing enterprise landscape challenges. Keep it right there.

(upbeat music playing) >> Narrator: theCUBE presents Ignite 22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >> Hey guys, girls, welcome back. It's theCUBE Live in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand for Palo Alto Networks Ignite 22. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. Dave, We've had some great conversations. This is day one of two days of cube coverage. We're talking with Palo Alto executives, their partner network, their customers, going to be learning a lot about what they've been doing to really be that golden nugget. >> Yeah. We've talked, Lisa, about how Palo Alto Networks is affecting a TAM expansion strategy through acquisitions and integration and company CDW, that I remember, you know, been around a long time. I remember back in the Comdex days talk about transformation of a company. Really excited to have them on. >> We're going to talk about that. Stephanie Hagopian is here, the VP of Security at CDW. >> Stephanie, >> Hey it's great to have you on the program. >> It's so nice to be here. Thank you. >> So lots going on. CDW has made several acquisitions in the past couple of quarters alone as it relates to security. Talk to us about what's going on. >> Yes. So we are way more than the computer warehouse that you used to know. The computer catalog days, we've moved beyond that. We've made a lot of strategic acquisitions in the past several quarters. The reason for that is we're trying to change our image and our brand and how, more importantly, we engage with our customers in security. We used to traditionally be, you know, kind of at the end of the procurement cycle with our customers, and we want to be an advisor. We want to really sell solutions and help influence the outcomes that our clients are trying to achieve when it comes to, not just security, but also risk, governance, threatened vulnerability management, how are they dealing with major issues around zero trust and building a zero trust framework for a company. >> Lisa: And I imagine these acquisitions, that really from a catalyst perspective was really driven >> Yeah. by the customers and what they were >> absolutely wanting to see and feel and hear and be able to do. >> Absolutely. So the acquisitions have given us over 400 delivery resources, consultants, advisors people who can actually engage with our clients who have real life experience, have worked with global organizations, some of the biggest companies in the world in order to solve their problems. And using that experience to be able to to really create higher value, you know as we interact and engage. >> Dave: You were telling us, Stephanie, that you actually came into CDW through an acquisition. >> I did. >> And I think if you go back 10 years ago when the cloud was just sort of hitting its steep steep ramp, and it looked, it was pretty obvious. And at the same time you had what we affectionately called you know, box sellers. And it was very clear that if they didn't transform their businesses and you know, the, they a lot of 'em were small, regional companies. They had the owners had big houses and big boats but the companies were going to go away if they didn't transform. So it's interesting to me that you've chosen security and governance in some of the really most difficult areas to as part of that transformation. Where did that come from, from your perspective and you know, why security and why such challenging areas? >> Well, I've been part of security in the security industry for over 20 years, and I've loved the fact it is challenging. It's what, it's what makes us so important and critical to our clients. Security's not an easy problem to solve. And it, it's because the landscape keeps changing. The advent of cloud and now hybrid infrastructure creates endless challenges for our customers. Threat actors change. We have insider threats, we have external threats. There's all sorts of risk when you talk about third parties and how third parties interact with organizations. We have supply chain management. And now that we've moved into this hybrid work environment of virtual, not virtual. You know, we have people kind of engaging within organizations in different ways. There's just a lot of risk associated with that. It's not easy and you have to engage with stakeholders across the entire organization. You have to understand how legal thinks of this and compliance and HR. It's not just an IT issue, it's a business issue. And we understand that and it's just, it's so interesting for us to engage with our customers on critical initiatives and security is at the top of the list. It's not just a, a CISO or even a CIO problem anymore. Boards care about this, >> Lisa: Right? >> We make or break companies with cybersecurity and risk strategies. That's why it's so critical. So we consider ourselves to be a high priority for every single organization, big or small. >> Lisa: From a security perspective, what's the common denominator among industries that you're seeing? >> Oh, I mean, we see, in terms of common denominator, I think every single organization's contending with ransomware. >> Ah >> That's probably number one. Breaches. You know, how do you prevent bad actors from doing something, you know, that's threatening to information sensitive data, especially consumer data. Third party risk is a big topic, and how to secure hybrid cloud infrastructures which is a key part of, you know, Palo's strategy as well. And we realize that. >> Why do they buy from CDW? Pitch me. I'm a customer, what can you do for me? >> Yeah. Because we want to partner. So we, we provide true advisory and consulting services to our customers. We aren't there just to make a sale and walk away. We want long-term commitments and long-term partnerships with our customer base. We're there to, to give them outcomes, right? And to align to their priorities and their challenges. It's, it's not a one and done for us. This is about a long-term partnership and that's what makes us so different. And we're now through the acquisition strategies. We're the largest security integrator in North America in terms of our revenue and our size just our sheer size and capability and the amount of full-time employees we have dedicated to this part of our business. So they know they can trust us and that we can scale. >> Dave: Do you? Is is it a, a teach me how to fish strategy? Or is it also if >> Yeah, >> if you want to have, if I, if I as a customer want to have you continue to manage or at least provide some kind of managed services, where's the the line? >> Stephanie: Yeah. So we are incredibly unique in the way we've built out our security practice in that we, we do both. And we want our clients to understand that there are going to be elements of what they do that they want to keep in house from a security perspective. That is why, and it also came from an acquisition, we have a workforce development team for security. We actually are a Palo authorized training partner. And we're incredibly proud of that fact because we don't just want to configure technology. We want to enable our customers to enhance and maintain their investments with Palo and with all technologies, with all of security. At the same time, we know they can't do everything in-house, and it just might make more sense to do manage through us. So we have end-to-end managed capabilities as well and we continue to enhance that part of our business. >> So a lot, a lot of opportunities for customers there. Talk a little bit about the Palo Alto Network's extension of the value prop that you just talked about. >> Oh yes. We love, you know, Palo is taking a platform approach and really focusing on helping customers rationalize their IT infrastructure around security. We're doing the same exact thing and focusing on zero trust is huge. We're, we're having those conversations with our customers as well. We want them to take their Palo investment and try to create a platform approach because there's simplicity and cost savings in that. The security conversations becoming a CFO conversation, right? We love rationalizing those technology investments in a way that makes sense. And we're right in line with Palo in that we want to provide those capabilities end to end and we want to ensure they integrate and use that all of the capabilities within your platform to the extent of that investment, right? We want them to use everything and not just parts of the technology or just do a partial deployment. We want them to use everything that it functionally is available to them through that investment. >> Dakesh, in his keynote this morning, said the answer is not just more people. I know there's this, this, this gap between the number of required number of cyber professionals that we need and >> Stephanie: Oh yeah. >> And how many employees we have, et cetera, et cetera. However, you just can't get there overnight. So that's where service providers, you know, come in. >> Stephanie: It's huge. >> I saw a stat recently, I think it said 50% of organizations in North America don't have a SOC. >> That's true. >> Okay. So they, they need managed services. So, >> Stephanie: They do. >> What are you seeing with some of the small and mid-size companies >> Stephanie: Managed >> and, and and how does, how is that, how is that going? We're entering a new era with, >> Stephanie: Yeah with, you know, cloud can can be a, a great help and and reduce the IT load internally. >> Yeah. >> Dave: What, what's the dynamic like in the customer base? >> Smaller customers especially they just can't attract the cyber talent. It's a high demand field because there just aren't many people who have that capability, right? For us, providing managed a managed SOC is huge. One of our key acquisitions, Sirius, was our largest acquisition recently, brought us a 24 7 managed SOC capability. And that's exactly what our mid-size customers want and demand and what they need, and it's more cost effective. And now they don't have to worry about being a security business. That's not what they are. They need to run their businesses and that's what we provide through managed capabilities especially for that customer base in particular. >> Lisa: And and >> Dave: How about the really small customers, right? Who, who, you know, they're in some ways the most vulnerable. >> Yeah >> Right? >> In many ways >> They don't have the budgets they're kind of working hand to mouth. How, how do you help them? >> Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we provide cost effective managed capabilities. So there's managed for enterprise, there's managed for mid-market, but then for small medium businesses they want something that is at the right price point. And that's what we're doing actually in co-development with Palos. That's why we're expanding, not just our professional services capabilities with the Palo platform, but also providing managed support for every aspect of the platform so that customers don't need to invest in full-time employees to do that. They can, they have a predictable cost model that's affordable, that they can leverage over time. So we're very intent on making sure we're fulfilling that not just for our big customers but also for SMB and our, and small businesses as well. >> So you really have that whole suite taken care of >> The whole suite, yeah. I want to talk about some of the the large enterprises for a second. I saw a survey recently that, you know, you talked about security is a board level conversation. It is. >> Stephanie: Very much so. >> We talk about that all the time, CFO conversation but the survey that I saw recently was that there's not there's lack of alignment on boards with the executive suite where security is concerned. Are you seeing that and how can CDW and the Palo Alto partnership help gain that important alignment? >> Stephanie: Yeah So we, we face this all the time. What's on the CISO whiteboard might not be on the CFO's whiteboard or the, the board's whiteboard right? We love, and this is the whole part of our strategy and our strategy partnering with Palo, is that we want to engage further up on the, on the cycle. The, you know, we don't want to to talk to them at the end of the purchasing cycle because we're not providing value. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> We want to help advise them and build the business case. And by them, I mean our CISOs are, you know the heads of network security. You know, their are various stakeholders that we want to engage with to help them build the business case and the justification so that they are speaking the same language as the board member, the CFO. And we do that in many ways. I think the biggest is that we've we've built a global security strategy office that encompasses practitioners. So these are former CISOs, CIOs CTOs who have sat in their shoes and done what they've done. And we bring that experience to bear, coincidentally but not so coincidentally, Palo has the same capability. So Palo's also has a team of field CISOs and former practitioners. So we're partnering together to make sure that we're enabling our customers in, in providing the right value statements and the the right ROI within the the board meetings so that they get that investment right. And they're able to do what they need to do to secure the infrastructure. >> Dave: I mean, historically the business case has been we're going to help you not get breached, and you're going to reduce your, your, your loss >> Stephanie: (indistinct) still relevant. >> And, and I'm, and it's still very relevant. Is there any sort of on the other side of the algebra algebraic equation where actually having this kind of security practice can actually drive productivity >> Absolutely. >> Or or even drive revenue and can you talk about that part of the equation? >> Stephanie: Yeah, security as an industry, we're we've gotten a lot smarter. We understand it's not just about the compliance aspect or the data privacy aspect. It's very important to your point, you know breach prevention is certainly, you know, a a great justification. It's also about automation. So you think of SOAR, right? Providing automation and visibility and dashboard views into who's doing what actually really reduces administrative overhead. We, you know, we want to re-allow our clients to repurpose individuals because there are a finite amount of people in the security industry to focus on higher value tasks. So we're enabling just a lot of cost savings through that. Self-service is a big piece of this. You know, when you think about security we bring along a lot of automation, self-service automation of business logic, and business process. There's a huge value in cost savings attached to that. So that's huge. That's a huge part of the security conversation. >> I was reading, you talked about the cybersecurity skills gap and I was reading some interesting numbers that there's 26 million developers in the world less than 3 million cybersecurity professionals. >> Stephanie: Yeah. >> Talk to us about one of your favorite customer stories where you think CDW and Palo really nailed it in terms of helping organization drive that value the top line value, the bottom line value while enabling them with your expertise. >> Oh my gosh, I don't even want to focus on one because since we became a Palo authorized training partner we have worked with over a hundred clients. We just started this this year and we've helped over a hundred clients and thousands of people get enabled on on Palo firewall configuration and training and development. So we've co, we've partnered together as and we've impacted over a hundred organizations this year in making sure their people are enabled and they're, they're going from that I'm a developer generic to I'm a security professional. So we're helping to close that cybersecurity workforce gap. And we're just so excited at the scale we've been able to do that in such a short amount of time that, I mean, if you think about next year and the year following I mean it's going to be thousands of different clients. But you think about each client, we're impact we're, we're holding classes with 30 plus people. So we've already impacted thousands of people which is amazing. >> Right? So the idea to scale the program in in calendar year 2023 >> Absolutely. We're going to, we, we tried it. This was a trial run and it was amazingly successful trial run. So we're incredibly excited to scale this even more and continue to provide, you know, that element, that workforce development element, that training element for the entire Palo's stack, not just elements of it. >> Lisa: Excellent. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on the program. >> Stephanie: Thank you. >> Sharing what CDW and Palo Alto Networks are doing together. The what's in it for me from a customer perspective, big impact there. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you so much. >> Dave: Great to have you >> Lisa: Our pleasure. >> It's great to have, great to be here. >> Yeah. For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> The transformation of Dell into Dell EMC, and now Dell Technologies, has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocketship PC company, to a middling enterprise player, forced to go private, to a debt-laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech, i.e., VMware. And now is a $100 billion dollar giant with a low-margin business, a strong balance sheet, and the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry. The financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book "Play Nice But Win," in a captivating chapter called "Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue." Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number-one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin-out of VMware from Dell, and a massive wealth-creation milestone, pending, of course, the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell, and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Now, today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're going to hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's going to answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the President of Dell's ISG business. That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's going to talk about the product angle, and specifically, how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott, who's the Senior Vice President of Marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on APEX, which is Dell's as-a-Service offering, and then the new edge platform called Project Frontier. Now, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, that we're going to see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jenn Saavedra, who's Dell's Chief Human Resource Officer, about hybrid work, and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I want to share our independent perspectives on the company, and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. Now, as you know, we love data here at theCUBE, and one of our partners, ETR, has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ETR's proprietary Net Score methodology on the vertical axis, that's a measure of spending velocity, and on the x-axis is overlap or pervasiveness in the data sample. This is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell's CSG products, laptops in particular, are dominant on both the x and the y dimensions. CSG is the Client Solutions Group, and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue, and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot that represents Dell's ISG business, that we're going to talk to Jeff Boudreau about. That's the Infrastructure Solutions Group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is its, as I said, its most profitable from a margin standpoint. It comprises the EMC storage business, as well as the Dell server business, and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut. Had we done so, Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers, and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server, and its storage sectors. But the nuance is, look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis. That represents a highly elevated Net Score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now, we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin. Storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business, in addition to the server space. The last point on this graphic is, we put a box around VMware, and it's prominently present on both the x and y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software-defined high-margin offerings in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been, had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives for Michael Dell were just too attractive, and it's unlikely that a spin-in would've unlocked the value in the way a spin-out did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials, to give you a sense of where the company stands today. Dell is a company with over $100 billion dollars in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue, and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate, for a company that size. But because it's a hardware company, primarily, its margins are low, with operating income 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin. With VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins were in the low 30s. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on R&D, but because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash-flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12-month revenue. Dell's APEX, and of course its hardware maintenance business, is recurring revenue, and that is only about 5 billion in revenue, and it's growing at 8% annually. Now, having said that, it's the equivalent of ServiceNow's total revenue. Of course, ServiceNow has 23% operating margin and 16% free cash-flow margin, and more than $5 billion in cash on the balance sheet, and an $85 billion market cap. That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment, with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story. And hence it's conservative, and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing, thanks to VMware's cash flow. Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake et al., they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction, to the tune of $46 billion it added to the balance sheet debt. Now, Dell's debt, the core debt, net of its financing operation, is now down to 16 billion, and it has $7 billion in cash on the balance sheet. So a dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So, pretty good picture. But Dell, a $100 billion company, is still only valued at 28 billion, or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar. HPE's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc., Dell's laptop and PC competitor, is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than $50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple that's over 3x, about 3.3x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes, and no. Dell's performance, relative to its peers in the market, is very strong. It's winning, and has an extremely adept go-to-market machine, but its lack of software content and its margin profile leads one to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. So what are some of those levers, and what might that look like, going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware, and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market. And it can provide infrastructure for pretty much any application in any use case, in pretty much any industry, in pretty much any geography in the world. And it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware-heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely HP, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. and HPE, and IBM, which has had an abysmal decade from a performance standpoint, and has had to shrink to grow again, and obviously do a massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder-led company, which makes a cultural difference, in our view. And it's actually comfortable with a low-margin software-light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that, and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, has a much better chance of doing well at 100 billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. APEX is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now, remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're going to try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as-a-Service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers, and generate recurring revenue. And that's a good thing, because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as-a-Service and reduce risk for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead. Specifically, Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board. As Matt Baker, Dell's Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. What he means by that is, just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds. What we call supercloud. And that's Dell's strategy, to take advantage of public cloud capex, and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds, and out to the edge. That's ambitious, and technically it's nontrivial. But listen to Dell's Vice Chairman and Co-COO, Jeff Clarke, explain this vision. Please play the clip. >> You said also, technology and business models are tied together, and an enabler. >> That's right. >> If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want. They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do. >> Well, that's exactly right. If I take that and what Dave was saying, and I summarize it the following way: if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to deliver a distributed platform, game over. >> Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Furrier called it a "business operating system." Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system, or cloud operating environment, to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale capex. Now, is it really game over, as Jeff Clarke said, if Dell can do that? Uh, (sucks in breath) I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course, it's got to be funded. And that's going to take time, and in this industry, it tends to move, companies tend to move in lockstep. So, as often is the case, it's going to come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin. Data management, extending data protection into cybersecurity as an adjacency, and of course, edge and telco/5G opportunities. All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher-margin software content, it can thrive with a lower-margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers, and maybe through tuck-in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here, "Ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem," because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if APEX is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges at the same time, in my view. It's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And its ecosystem today is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. The Snowflake deal is an example of up-the-stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that Snowflake relationship, and more relationships like that. Specifically, I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live in a data-heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, I'd like to see that inside of APEX. I'd like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today, in its early days. The point is, with Dell's go-to-market advantage, which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem, hybrid, edge, supercloud player that I want to partner with to drive more business? You'd be crazy not to. But Dell has a lot on its plate, and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable Infrastructure-as-a-Service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly evolve. And of course, we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante, we hope you enjoy the rest of the program. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> I'm Dave Nicholson and welcome to Dell Technologies World 2022. I'm delighted to be joined by Tony Bishop. Tony is senior vice president, enterprise strategy at Digital Realty. Tony, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave. Happy to be here. >> So Tony, tell me about your role at Digital Realty and give us a little background on Digital Realty and what you do. >> Absolutely, so my job is to figure out how to make our product and experience relevant for enterprises and partners alike. Digital Realty is probably one of the best kept secrets in the industry. It's the largest provider of multi-tenant data center capacity in the world, over 300 data centers, 50 submetros, 26 countries, six continents. So it's a substantial provider of data center infrastructure capacity to hyperscale clouds to the largest enterprise in the world and everywhere in between. >> So what's the connection with Dell? What are you guys doing with Dell? >> I think it's going to be a marriage made in heaven in terms of the partnership. You think of Dell as the largest leading provider of critical IT infrastructure for companies around the world. They bring expertise in building the most relevant performant efficient infrastructure, combine that with the largest most relevant full spectrum capability provider of data center capacity. And together you create this integrated pre-engineered kind of experience where infrastructure can be delivered on demand, secure and compliant, performant and efficient and really unlock the opportunity that's trapped in the world around data. >> So speaking of data, you have a unique view at Digital Realty because you're seeing things in aggregate, in a way that maybe a single client wouldn't be seeing them. What are some of the trends and important things we need to be aware of as we move forward from a data center, from an IT perspective, frankly. >> Yeah, it's an excellent question. The good part of the vantage point is we see emerging trends as they start to unfold 'cause you have the most unique diverse set of customers coming together and coming together, almost organized like in a community effect because you have them connecting and attaching to each other's infrastructure sharing data. And what we've seen is in explosion in data being created, data being processed, aggregated, stored, and then being enriched. And it's really around that, what we call the data creation life cycle, where what we're seeing is that data then needs to be shared across many different devices, applications, systems, companies, users, and that ends up creating this new type of workflow driven world that's very intelligent and is going to cause a radical explosion in all our eyes of needing more infrastructure and more infrastructure faster and more infrastructure as a service. >> Yeah, when you talk about data and you talk about all of these connectivity points and communication points, talk about how some of those are explained to us. Some of these are outside of your facilities and some of them are within your facilities. In this virtualized abstracted world we live in it's easy to think that everything lives in our endpoint mobile device but talk about how that gravity associated with data affects things moving forward. >> Absolutely, glad you brought up about the mobile device because I think it's probably the easiest thing to attach to, to think about how the mobile device has radically liberated and transformed end users and in versions of mobile devices, even being sensors, not just people on a mobile phone proliferating everywhere. So that proliferation of these endpoints that are accessing and coming over different networks mobile networks, wifi networks, corporate networks, all end up generating data that then needs to be brought together and processed. And what we found is that we've found a study that we've been spending multiple years and multiple millions of dollars building into an index in a tool called the Data Gravity Index where we've been able to quantify not only this data creation life cycle, but how big and how fast and how it creates a gravitational effect because as more data gets shared with more applications, it becomes very localized. And so we've now measured and predicted for 700 mentors around the world where that data gravity effect is occurring and it's affecting every industry, every enterprise, and it's going to fundamentally change how infrastructure needs to be architected because it needs to become data centric. It used to be connectivity centric but with these mobile phones and endpoints going everywhere you have to create a meeting place. And it has to be a meeting place where the data comes together and then systems and services are brought and user traffic comes in and out of. >> So in other words, despite your prowess in this space you guys have yet to solve the speed of light issue and the cost of bandwidth moving between sites. So is it fair to say that in an ideal world you could have dozens of actually different customers, separate entities that are physically living in data center locations that are built and posted and run by Digital Realty, communicating with one another. So when these services are communicating instead of communicating over a hundred miles or a thousand miles, it's like one side of the chicken wire fence to the other, not that you use chicken wire in your data center but you get the point, is that fair. >> It is, it's like the mall analogy, right? You're building these data malls and everybody's bringing their relevant infrastructure and then using private secure connections between each other and then enabling the ability for data to be exchanged, enriched and new business be conducted. So no, physics hasn't been solved, Dave, just to add to that. And what we're finding is it's not just physics. One of the other things that we're continuing to see and hear from customers and that we continue to study as a trend is regulations, compliance and security are becoming as big a factors as physics is. So it's not just physics and cost which I agree with what you're saying but there's also these other dimensions that's in effect in placement, connectivity in the management of data and infrastructure, basically, in all major metros around the world where companies do business and providers support them, or customers come to meet them both physically and digitally. It's an interesting trend, right? I think a number of the industrians call it a digital twin where there's a virtual version and of a digital version and a physical version and that's probably the best way to think of us, is that secure meeting place where each can have their own secure infrastructure of what's being digitized but actually being placed physically. >> Yeah, that's interesting. When you look at this from the Dell, Digital Realty partnership perspective we know here at theCUBE that Dell is trying to make consumption of what they build, very, very simple for end user customers. Removing the complexity of the underlying hardware. There's a saying that the hardware doesn't matter anymore. You hear things referred to as serverless or no code, low code, those sort of abstract away from the reality of what's going on under the covers. But APEX, as an example from Dell allows things to be consumed as operational expense, dramatically simplifying the process of consuming that hardware. Now, if you go down to almost the concrete layer where Digital Realty starts up, you're looking at things like density and square footage and power consumption, right? >> Yep. >> So tell me, you mentioned infrastructure. Tell me about the kind of optimization from a hardware standpoint that you expect to see from Dell. >> Yeah, in the data center, the subset of an industry, they call it digital or mission critical infrastructure, the space, the power, the secure housing, how do you create physical isolation? How do you deal with cooling and containment? How do you deal with different physical loads? 'Cause some of the more dense computers likely working with Dell and some of the various semiconductors that Dell takes and wraps into intelligent compute and storage blocks, the specialized processing for our use cases like artificial intelligence and machine learning, they run very fast, they generate a lot of heat and they consume a lot of power. So that means you have to be very smart about the critical infrastructure and the type of server infrastructure storage coming together where the heat can be quickly removed. The power is obviously distributed to it, so it can run as constant and as fast as possible to unlock insights and processing. And then you also need to be able to deal with things like, hey, the cabling between the server and the storage has to be that when you're running parallel calculations that there's an equal distance between the cabling. Well, if I don't think about how I'm physically bringing the server storage and all of that together and then having space that can accommodate and ensure the equal cabling in the layout, oh and then handle these very heavy physical computers. So that physical load into the floor, it becomes very problematic. So it's hidden, most people don't understand that engineering but that's the partnership that why we're excited about with Dell is you're bringing all that critical expertise of supporting all those various types of use cases of infrastructure combinations and then combining the engineering understanding of how do I build for the right performance, the right density, the right TCO and also do it where physical layout of having things in proximity and in a contiguous space can then be the way to unlock processing of data and connecting to others. >> Yeah, so from an end user perspective, I don't need to care about any of what you just said. All I heard was wawawawawa (chuckles). I will consume my APEX delivered Dell by the drink, as a service, as OPEX, however I want to consume it. But I can rest assured that Digital Realty and Dell are actually taking care of those meaningful things that are happening under the hood. Maybe I'm revealing my long term knuckle dragging hardware guy credentials when I just get that little mentioning. >> (indistinct) you got it, performance secure compliant and I don't need to worry about it. The two of you're taking care of it and you're taking care of it for me. And every major mentor around the world delivered in the experience it needs to be delivered in. >> So from the Digital Realty point of view, what are the things that not necessarily keep you up at night worrying, but sort of wake you up in the morning early with a sense of renewed opportunity when it comes to the data center space, a lot of people would think, well we're in the era of cloud, no one's building any data centers except for monster cloud players. But that's definitely not the case, is it? There's a demand for what you folks are building and delivering. So first, what's the opportunity look like and then what are the constraints that are out there? Is it dirt, is it power? What are the constraints you face? >> We have probably all the above, is the shortest answer, right? So we're not wawawa, right Dave? But what we are is the opportunity is huge because it's not one platform, there's many platforms there isn't one business that exists today that doesn't use many applications, doesn't consume many different services both internally and externally, and doesn't generate a ton of data that they may not even know where it is. So that's the exciting part. And that continues to force a requirement that says I need to be able to connect to all those clouds which you can do at our platform but I also need to be able to put infrastructure or the storage of data next to it and in between it. So it's like an integration approach that says if I think physical first think physical that's within logical proximity to where I have employees, customers, partners, I have business presence. That's what drives us, and in our industry continues to grow both. And we see it in our own business. It's a double digit growth rate for both commercial oriented enterprises and service providers in the telco cloud, or content kind of space. So it's kind of like a best of both worlds. I think that's what gets us excited. If I should take a second part of the question, what ends up boring is like all of us, it is a physical world, physical world start with, do we have enough power? Is it durable, sustainable and secure? Is it available? Do we have the right connectivity options. Keeping things available is a full-time job, making it so that you can accommodate local nuances when you start going in different regions and countries and metros there's a lot of regional policy compliance or market specific needs that have to be factored in. But you're still trying to deliver that consistent physical availability and experience. So it's a good problem to have but it's a critical infrastructure problem that I would put in the same kind of bucket as power companies, energy companies, telecommunication companies, because it's a meeting place for all of that. >> So you've been in this business, not just at Digital Realty but you you've been in this part of the IT world for a while. >> Yeah. >> How has the persona of a customer for a Digital Realty changed over time? Have we seen the kind of consolidation that people would expect in this space in terms of fewer but larger customers coming in and seeking floor space? >> Well, I think it's been the opposite of what probably people predict. And I pause there intentionally being very candid and open. And it's probably why that using data as the proxy to understand, is that it's a many to many world that's only getting bigger, not smaller. As much as companies consolidate, there's more that appear. Innovation is driving new businesses and new industries or the digitization of old industries which is then creating a whole multiplier effect. So what we're seeing is we're actually seeing a rapid uptake in the enterprise side of our business which is why I'm here in driving that. That really was much more nominal five years ago for being the provider of the space and capabilities for telcos and large hyperscalers continues to go because it's not like a once and done, it's I need to do this in many places. I need to continue to bring as there's a push towards the edge, I need to be able to create meeting places for all of it. And so to us, we're seeing a constant growth in more companies becoming customers on the enterprise side more enterprises deploying in more places solving more use cases. And more service providers figuring out new ways to monetize by bringing their infrastructure and making an accessibility to be connected to on our platform. >> So if I'm here hearing you right, you're saying that people who believe that we are maybe a few years away from everything being in a single cloud are completely off base. >> Mmh hmm. >> That is not the direction that we're heading, from your view, right? >> We love our cloud customers, they're going to continue to grow. But it's not all going to one cloud. I think what you would see is, that you would see where a great way to assess that and break it down is enterprise IT, Gartner's Forecast 4.2, four and a half trillion a year in spend, less than a third of that's hitting public cloud. So there's a long tail first of all, it's not going to one cloud of people. There's like seven or eight major players and then you go, okay, well, what do I do if it's not in seven or eight major players? Well, then I need to put it next to it. Oh, that's why we'll go to a Digital Realty. >> Makes a lot of sense. Tony Bishop, Digital Realty. Thanks for joining us on theCUBE. Have a great Dell Technologies World. For me, Dave Nicholson, stay tuned more live coverage from Dell Technologies World 2022 as we resume in just a moment. (soft music)

>>I want to welcome back to the cubes coverage. We're here at another event in person I'm John furrier, host of the cube. We've got to CNCF coop con cloud native con for in-person 2021. And we're back. It's a hybrid event and we're streaming lives on all channels, as well as all the folks watching a great guest kicking off the show here from the co-chairs from cataract coast. Is that right? Danielle Cook. Who's the vice president at Fairwinds and John Foreman director at Accenture. Thanks for coming on your co-chair. Your third co-chair is not here, but you guys are here to talk about the cloud maturity model. Pretty mature funding is flowing tons of announcements. We're going to have a startup on $200 million. They're announcing in funding and observability of all of all hot spaces. Um, so the maturity is it's the journey in the cloud native space now is crossed over to mainstream. That's the we've been telling that story for a couple of years. Now, you guys have been working on this. Tell us about the cloud maturity model you guys worked on. >>So we got together earlier this year because we, um, four of us had been working on maturity models. So Simon Forester, who is one of the co-chairs, who isn't here, he had worked on a maturity model that looked at your legacy journey, all the way to cloud native, um, myself, I had been part of the Fairwinds team working on the Kubernetes maturity model. So, and then, um, we have Robbie, who's not here. And John Foreman, who we all got together, they had worked on a maturity model and we put it together and I've been working since February to go, what is cloud native maturity and what are the stages you need to go through to achieve maturity. So put this together and now we have this great model that people can use to take them from. I have no idea what cloud native is to the steps they can take to actually be a mature organization. >>And, you know, you've made it when you have a book here. So just hold that up to the camera real quick. So you can see it. It's very much in spirit of the community, but in all seriousness, it book's great, but this is a real need. What was the pain point? What was jumping out at you guys on the problem? Was it just where people like trying to get more cloud native, they want to go move faster. It was a confusing, what were the problems you solve in? >>Well, and if anything is, if we start at the beginning, right, there was during the cloud journey DevSecOps and the Kootenays being a thing that then there's journeys to DevSecOps tributaries as well. But everything is leading to cloud native. It's about the journey to cloud native. So everybody, you know, we're taught to go John, the ecosystem's an eyesore man. If I look at, you know, landscape, >>The whole map I >>Need, it's just like in trend map, it's just so confusing what we do. So every time we go to, I revert the wheel and I get them from zero to hero. So we just put together a model instead that we can re reuse yeah. As a good reference architecture. So from that is a primary, how we built because the native trademark you have with us today. So it's a five scale model from one to five what's twice today, or how to, to, you know, what our job is getting to a five where they could optimize a really rocket rolling. >>You know, it's interesting. I love these inflection points and, you know, being a student of history and the tech business there's moments where things are the new thing, and they're really truly new things like first-time operationalized dev ops. I mean the hardcore dev ops or early adopters we've been doing that, you know, we know that, but now mainstream, like, okay, this is a real disruption in a positive way. So the transformation is happening and it's new, new roles, new, new workflows, new, uh, team formations. So there's a, it's complicated in the sense of getting it up and running so I can see the need. How can you guys share your data on where people are? Because now you have more data coming in, you have more people doing dev ops, more cloud native development, and you mentioned security shepherds shifting left. Where's the data tell you, is it, as you said, people are more like a two or more. What's the, what's the data say? >>So we've had, so part of pulling this model together was your experience at Accenture, helping clients, the Fairwinds, um, experience, helping people manage Kubernetes. And so it's from out dozens of clusters that people have managed going, okay, where are people? And they don't even know where they are. So if we provide the guidelines from them, they can read it and go, oh, I am at about two. So the data is actually anecdotal from our experiences at our different companies. Um, but we, you know, we we've made it so that you can self identify, but we've also recognized that you might be at stage two for one application, but five for another application. So just because you're on this journey, doesn't mean everything is in, >>It's not boiler plate. It's really unique to every enterprise because they everyone's different >>Journey. Put you in journey with these things. A big part of this also torn apart one to five, your clients wants to in denial, you know? So, so Mr. CX level, you are level two. We are not, there's no way we would deal with this stuff for years. You've got to be a five. No, sorry. You're too. >>So >>There's use denial also about this. People think they do a cloud-native director rolling, and I'm looking at what they're doing and go, okay, do you do workups security? And they go, what's that? I go, exactly. So we really need to peel back the onion, start from seed year out and we need to be >>All right. So I want to ask more about the, um, the process and how that relates to the themes are involved. What are some of the themes around the maturity model that you guys can share that you see that people can look at and say, how do I self identify? What's the process will come to expect? >>Well, one of the things we did when we were putting it together was we realized that there were themes coming out amongst the maturity model itself. So we realized there's a whole people layer. There's a whole policy layer process and technology. So this maturity model does not just look at, Hey, this is the tech you need to do. It looks at how you introduce cloud native to your organization. How do you take the people along with it? What policies you need to put in place the process. So we did that first and foremost, but one of the things that was super important to all of us was that security was ever present throughout it. Because as everything is shifting left, you need to be looking at security from day one and considering how it's going to happen and roll out from your developers all the way to your compliance people. Um, it's super important. And one of the themes throughout. >>So, so it would be safe to say, then that security was a catalyst for the maturity models because you gotta be mature. I mean, security, you don't fool around security. >>About the last year when I created the program for, since I worked with Cheryl Holland, from CCF, we put together the community certification, her special program. I saw a need where security was a big gap in communities. Nobody knew anything about it. They wanted to use the old rack and stack ways of doing it. They wanted to use their tray micro tombs from yesteryear, and that doesn't work anymore. You need a new set of tools for Kubernetes. It's the upgrade system. It's different way of doing things. So that knowledge is critical. So I think you're part of this again, on this journey was getting certifications out there for people to understand how to do better. Now, the next phase of that now it's how do we put all these pieces together and built this roadmap? >>Well, it's a great group. You guys have the working groups hard to pronounce the name, but, uh, it's a great effort because one of the things I'm hearing and we've been reporting this one, the Cubans looking angle is the modern software developers want speed, and they don't want to wait for the old slow groups now and security, and it are viewed as blockers and like slow things down. And so you start to see a trend where those groups could provide policy and then start putting, feeding up, uh, data models that allow the developers in real time to do their coding, to shift left and to be efficient and move on and code not be waiting for weeks or days >>Comes to play. So today is the age of Caleb's right now, get up this emerging we're only to have now where everything is code policies, code, securities, code policies, cookie figures, code. That is the place for, and then again, walk a fusion more need for a cargo office. >>Okay. What's your thoughts on that? >>So I think what's really important is enabling service ownership, right? You need the developers to be able to do security, see policy, see it live and make sure that, you know, you're not your configuration, isn't stopping the build or getting into production. So, you know, we made sure that was part of the maturity model. Like you need to be looking continuous scanning throughout checking security checking policy. What is your process? Um, and we, you know, we made that ever present so that the developers are the ones who are making sure that you're getting to Kubernetes, you're getting to cloud native and you're doing it. >>Well, the folks watching, if you don't know the cloud native landscape slide, that ecosystem slide, it's getting bigger and bigger. There's more new things emerging. You see role of software abstractions coming in, automation and AI are coming in. So it makes it very challenging if you want to jump right in lifting and shifting to the clouds, really easy check, been there, done that, but companies want to refactor their applications, not just replatform refactoring means completely taking advantage of these higher level services. So, so it's going to be hard to navigate. So I guess with all that being said, what you guys advice to people who are saying, I need the navigation. I need to have the blueprint. What do I do? How do I get involved? And how do I leverage this? >>We want people to, you can go on to get hub and check out our group and read the maturity model. You can understand it, self identify where you're at, but we want people to get involved as well. So if they're seeing something that like, actually this needs to be adjusted slightly, please join the group. The cardiograph is group. Um, you can also get copies of our book available on the show. So if you, um, if you know, you can read it and it takes you line by line in a really playful way as to where you should be at in the maturity model. >>And on top of that, if you come Thursday was Sonia book. And of course, a lot of money, one day, I promise >>You guys are good. I gotta ask, you know, the final question is like more and more, just more personal commentary. If you don't mind, as teams start to change, this is obviously causing a lot of positive transformation if done, right? So the roles and the teams are starting to change. Hearing SRS are now not just the dev ops guys provisioning they're part of the, of the scale piece, the developers shifting left, new kind of workflows, the role of certain engineers and developers now, new team formations. Why were you guys seeing that evolve? Is there any trends that you see around how people are reconfiguring their team makeup? >>I think a lot of things is going to a single panic last tonight, where I'm taking dev and ops and putting them one panel where I can see everything going on in my environment, which is very critical. So right now we're seeing a pre-training where every client wants to be able to have the holy grail of a secret credit class to drive to that. But for you to get there, there's a lot of work you've got to do overnight that will not happen. And that's where this maturity model, I think again, will enhance that ability to do that. >>There's a cultural shift happening. I mean, people are changing there's new skillsets and you know, obviously there's a lot of people who don't have the skill. So it's super important that people work with Kubernetes, get certified, use the maturity model to help them know what skills they need. >>And it's a living document too. It's not, I mean, a book and I was living book. It's going to evolve. Uh, what areas you think are going to come next? So you guys have to predict if you had to see kind of where the pieces are going. Uh, obviously with cloud, everything's getting, you know, more Lego blocks to play with more coolness you have in the, in this world. What's coming next with Sue. Do you guys see any, any, uh, forecasts or >>We're working with each one of the tag groups within the CNCF to help us build it out and come up with what is next based on their expertise in the area. So we'll see lots more coming. Um, and we hope that the maturity grows and because of something that everybody relies on and that they can use alongside the landscape and the trail map. And, um, >>It's super valuable. I think you guys need a plug for any people want to, how they join. If I want to get involved, how do I, what do I do? >>Um, you can join the Carter Garfish group. You can check us out on, get hub and see all the information there. Um, we have a slack channel within the CNCF and we have calls every other Tuesday that people can see the pools. >>Awesome. Congratulations, we'll need it. And super important as people want to navigate and start building out, you know, you've got to edge right around the corner there it's happening real fast. Data's at the edge. You got cloud at the edge. Azure, AWS, Google. I mean, they're pushing really hardcore 5g, lot changes. >>Everybody wants to cloud today. Now one client is, one is more cloud. At least both the cloud is comfortable playing everywhere. One pump wife had DevOps. >>It's distributed computing back in the modern era. Thank you so much for coming on the keep appreciating. Okay. I'm Jennifer here for cube con cloud native con 2021 in person. It's a hybrid event. We're here live on the floor show floor, bringing you all the coverage. Thanks for watching station all day. Next three days here in Los Angeles. Thanks for watching. >>Thank you.

[upbeat electronic music] >> Hi everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AnsibleFest 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We're here with Eric Pennington, Director of Solutions Engineering, and Mike Todaro, Senior Epic Cache Consultant at Sapphire Health. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on theCUBE and chatting about the wave of Cloud, cloud-native, Sapphire Health and Ansible. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> So, let's get started. Can you guys just briefly describe Sapphire Health and what you guys are doing there. The consulting services, the trends that you're seeing. Just take a step, a minute to describe the environment at Sapphire Health and what you guys are doing. >> For sure, yeah. So, Sapphire Health was a consultancy that was founded by the CEO back in 2016, Austin Park, who also serves as a CTO for some healthcare organizations, because he was having difficulty finding an organization that really specialized in Epic infrastructure. So you might be familiar with some of the large players in Epic consultancies, but they are typically focused more on the application side, so configuring like the ambulatory clinical system or something like that. And there really wasn't a solution that he could find in the market for an organization that was focused on Epic infrastructure and some of the more technical components of managing an Epic technical ecosystem. So, Austin founded a team. Mike was one of the early folks to join. I joined a little bit later. But he put a team together to, again, really focus on the technical components of an Epic implementation. And since then, we've been providing managed services for Epic infrastructure for a number of organizations. We've been focusing on platform migrations from, for example, AIX to REL for Epic organizations, and we've been focusing on some growth areas as well in the Cloud. Epic systems is now able to be hosted on the public Cloud, that's a relatively recent occurrence. So, we're working with some organizations in that space as well. Mike, anything you'd add there? >> No, I think that pretty much covers it. We've spent a large fraction of our effort making sure that we're engineering solutions for these clients that move them in the directions towards Cloud readiness, towards containerization, automation, and those sorts of things. I think Eric's description's spot on. >> So, you guys must be busy. I mean, I can only imagine the action happening right now as people realized, with the pandemic specifically, two areas that we've reported aggressive growth on was public sector and healthcare. Both were under massive strains of pressure to get faster. (chuckles) Can you guys just weigh in real quickly on what you guys are seeing and how that's impacted your consulting services, but also the customer. What's going on in their minds? >> Absolutely, we had some customers very early on in the beginning of the pandemic where we were given the cadence of updates coming from Epic, the needs for growth for those customers where both in ICU surge capability as well as just general admittance. There was a flurry of hardware purchasing, provisioning, set up. An increased cadence around patching for various pieces of the Epic environment including Epic code directly. All of those things. The tempo of all of that increased once the pandemic began, and we spent a significant fraction of time trying to find better ways, faster ways to engineer what we were already doing for clients, simply so that we could continue to keep up with the surge in demand without requiring an additional surge in investment in people, where it wasn't necessary. Obviously, some growth was necessary, but we wanted to help our clients get the most out of what they already had so that they could spend that money where it was needed to help patients. >> Yeah, awesome, great stuff. So, we're here at AnsibleFest getting into the action. It's all about automation. So I have to ask you guys, what led you to start exploring automation solutions at Sapphire Health? >> Yeah, so there's quite a few reasons. I would say the most critical is that we've been providing managed services to organizations around infrastructure management for some time. And as you can imagine, infrastructure management has some repetitive tasks, and I'm quoting my colleague, Mike, here, but a good administrator is a lazy administrator. And what we mean when we say that is, if there's a repetitive task that's being performed over and over again, if there's an opportunity to automate it, that's going to save us time. But more importantly, that's going to... Paul, these lights here. Let me move around a little bit, should come back, there we go. But it's going to provide an opportunity for us to focus on more value-add services for the client. It's going to reduce costs for the client in terms of the services that we're providing. And I think most importantly, it's removing the possibility for human error or the possibility for error overall. So it's a natural evolution of us observing the time that we're spending with our client partners, and again, it really provides a lot of value to Sapphire as an organization and our customer partners as well. >> Mike, you want to weigh in on this automation trend. How do you see it evolving? I mean, obviously sounds good when you want to automate things that you do repetitive tasks, but is there more going on that you see in automation that goes beyond just, okay, if you do it three times-automated kind of vibe. >> Sure. Automating repetitive tasks is the kiddie end of the pool. That's how we get... That's how we sell the idea to people who just don't get the concept yet. But there are workflows that really aren't feasible outside of automation. We tend to think of automation, in some cases in this sort of limited way, but automation is really... What we really are targeting with automation is more about workflow. It's less about individual tasks, and it's more about an idea of workflow or a business requirement from its origin all the way through its implementation. So, I've got just the simplest case that jumps immediately to mind, is I have a new hire, I've got to provision them an account. I need to provision it across multiple systems. I've got to do it in our single sign on. They need home directories. They might need access. They need building accesses we need to generate. You got to generate badges for these people. And these are all workflows that are normally disparate. You know, you have to take your sheet to this guy, take your sheet to this guy, here's my new hire form. Really, what you really want is, we got a new hire, everything's checked out, put it in this basket here and let the automation move it through all of these systems all the way across. And that's the sort of thing, like I said, that's a very limited, very simple idea, but that's the kind of thing we really want. We want to get in the door with automation with simple things and then we want to teach... We want clients and ourselves to be challenged, to be creative, to find new ways to apply it that aren't immediately obvious. >> Yeah, I was smiling because I love the example of the kiddie end of the pool because automation is going mainstream, and it used to be kind of, you know, for the geeks who were doing the hardcore stuff who got the whole big picture. Now you're seeing with AI automation moving in and with Cloud, a lot more automation happening. So, I can almost see in my mind mental image of people wearing bubbles in the pool, kind of like going in the deep end, get back over here. Stay in your lane. Yeah, but this is the trend, and I want to get into this because you guys are involved in this Epic migration that's been talked about. So for the folks that aren't in, say the health care space, put a little context around Epic and then I want to get into this whole migration discussion. I think that kind of points to some real value propositions. So, what is Epic for the folks outside healthcare? >> Sure, so Epic is one of the leading EHRs or electronic health records software in the world. It is by far the most deployed in the United States. What's involved in building an Epic, or performing an Epic migration. Epic is hundreds of systems. When you think about Epic as an umbrella concept, it is servers and end-user workstations and all of these things. When we talk about platform migration, what we're usually talking about is the transactional database. They call it the ODB or whichever term I think you feel applies best. When we perform all those migrations, we're usually talking about... When we perform one of those migrations, we're usually talking about an AIX to Red Hat migration, although you can just do hardware to hardware. Involved in that is a number of things. You're building new VMs. You're setting up patch cycles, setting up the patching server. Installing the various administration scripts that Epic provides. Installing the software that runs the DB, which at the moment is either InterSystems Cache or Iris. There's the provisioning of the local security users. There's the configuration of the OS. If you're moving from AIX to Red Hat, you're talking generally about a bit endians conversions, so, big endian to little endian, there's a tool for that. There's a lot of these little stats. And the thing is, is that, they're all very, very well defined and very similar, and so, they look identical in many of these cases from one implementation of Epic to the next. And that's not true for the entire Epic stack necessarily, but at the ODB level, this stuff is all very similar, and this is a very right place to automate. This screams automate, and we do this because, I mean, who wants to make mistakes. If you write and build your script and debug it, the script runs, it doesn't make mistakes. I make mistakes, the script doesn't. So, we do that, and we end up spending less time on these repetitive, unnecessary tasks. We guarantee the correctness of them, or we do a better job of guaranteeing the correctness of them, and all of that ends up saving money in the long run. >> That's awesome, and thanks for the context. I was going to get there on the automation piece. It really sets the table for the automation. Real quick clarification. How much or what kind of software work is involved in a migration? >> Oh, so there's the installation of... You have from the installation of the OS and the configuration of the OS, the building in the patch server, the implementation, testing, and patch cycling. There's those data conversions I talked about. There's environment refreshes where we copy an existing environment on a regular basis to another environment for things like testing, for troubleshooting purposes or for other reasons. There's more than one database for Epic. There's one big production database. You have training databases, and you have playground databases for people to work in so they can learn to use the system better, and then there are, I mean, there's a galaxy. >> Oh man, so it's a huge system. Okay, so I got to ask the security question. >> Sure. >> Is security element as important when selecting automation or how has that factored in? I mean, right now that's super important, obviously, records are key, but honestly, where does that fit into the automation piece of security? >> Yeah, I think that's a very important question, and as you alluded to, security is incredibly important. It's very important in healthcare in particular. And in fact, with healthcare, there's a lot of regulatory requirements. There's a lot of requirements that individual healthcare institutions have that we as a partner to that institution need to follow. So, as we were evaluating automation vendors and automation solutions, a highly secure system was not a nice to have or like a value add, it was something that was absolutely critical and paramount to being able to successfully automate any of the things that we're doing. So I'll turn it over to Mike to talk about some of the specifics, but as we evaluated Ansible, we saw that it really supported robust security. So, Mike, can you comment a little bit more on that? >> Sure. There's a number of ways that we use Ansible to help improve the security posture for clients. One of the ways is Ansible playbooks are written to be runnable against the server and nothing will change unless something is set incorrectly. And this lets us assure that the configuration is where we expect it to be so we don't get drift on these servers. Now, remember I said an Epic environment is a lot of servers. If one or two of these... >> John: Mike, if you don't mind, I need to interrupt. What is, when you say drift, what are you referring to? >> So when I say drift, what I mean is, if there's a bunch of different servers and I as an administrator have to work on one or two of these servers just for little things during the day, I might make a change on one of these servers advertently or inadvertently, and then that server's configuration is now slightly out of phase with the other servers, which could be benign, but it could also be a security hole. Having Ansible able to run nightly and continue to adjust these servers back to the expected baseline, and in the case of things like tower, be able to report that these things were out of position. Let us know, hey, it lets us reduce the attack surface, first of all. It lets us multiply it, like a force multiply our attention across this farm of servers, and it gives us that sort of clarity that we know we're doing what we have to do to make sure these servers continue to be safe. >> That's an awesome service. That right there is, I mean, just going in manually trying to figure all this stuff out, it's just a nightmare. I mean, what a great relief that is. I mean, just the alternative is what, you know, more pain and suffering human wise, that's the labor, and then risk on attack because people go to bed. >> I'm a patient. The thing is, on a personal note, I'm a patient too, all of us are. We all have doctors. We have to go to the hospital for things occasionally. And if we fail when we perform these security audits, if we fail when we perform these security checks, patient data can get lost. It can get sent to people who shouldn't have it. And I'm a patient, I have no desire for my medical information to be available anywhere but in the hands of my doctor or myself. And that's the thought I try to stay with when I'm working on these systems. I'm a patient. It's not that I'm doing this because... I mean, the knock-on effects of reducing liability for the customers cannot be ignored or overstated, and they're critical, but, ultimately, my eyesight is on the patient. >> Yeah and having that stability is huge. Okay, this brings up the whole automation thing as it becomes more mainstream for you guys, specifically, is critical. The system's there, you have to watch farms, all the action happening, it's a huge system. Complex automation is key. How are you guys continuing to push the automation envelope into the Sapphire Health's consulting practice? >> Well, as you mentioned, John, yeah, we're really taking a look at the entire technical infrastructure when we're working with our clients. And we are offering fully outsourced managed services for organizations, not just around the Epic infrastructure but things like networking devices, security and other third party systems. So with that, we're seeing a lot of these things that are going on, and we're always evaluating opportunities for automation. There's actually two areas in particular that we're seeing gain a lot of momentum with our customers, and we're seeing a lot of opportunity for automation. The first is business continuity and disaster recovery, specifically within Epic. So, Epic has very stringent requirements for resiliency, as you can imagine. When the system goes down, a hospital can't really do what it needs to do from a billing standpoint, a clinical standpoint, so very robust disaster recovery and resiliency standards and solutions are very important. However, there's not a lot of automation that's available either from Epic or, as far as I know, other consultancies, so what we did is we built a script that provides failover automation. So some of the tasks that would be very manual in terms of failing over to your DR solution, we've automated that, and that again, removes a lot of the opportunity for human error, really speeds up the failover process. And so with the customers that we work with, that's something that we provide. Another big area that we're seeing is environment refreshes. So within Epic, there are different environments that are, basically, all their data is copied over on a recurring basis from the production environment, and the refreshes can have a lot of manual steps involved, so we found an opportunity and have implemented some automation around environment refreshes for some of our managed services clients. And as we continue to go throughout, you know, building our Cloud practice in some other areas, I'm very confident that we're going to see, you know, infrastructure is code more opportunities for automation around areas like that. >> I mean, you guys got to love the DevOps vibe going on now. Mike, I mean, you guys have seen the movie before in the old legacy going back to the mainframes, so you probably still run into a lot of older systems that still do a purpose. I mean, I have a lot of friends and clients that are working in the big banks, and they still have all the old school that does their job well, but containerization and Cloud kind of give life to these systems because now we're living in this system architecture called distributed computing again with the Cloud. It's the same game, different, different stuff though. >> Absolutely. Years ago, almost every Epic client was running on AIX, and maybe not mainframe but more mini computer. The migration path for almost all of the clients has been to move from those AIX mini computers down to VMs running Red Hat, or running Linux, and the natural evolution of that path is to move at least disaster recovery data centers into the Cloud, and then for some clients, the economics say the whole data center to the Cloud. So, absolutely that path is, it's well forged, it's there. I suspect that we'll see a lot more of clients, even larger hospitals, beginning to move down that road in the near future. >> And for the folks watching who may not have the scar tissue that we have, AIX was IBM's old Unix, a kind of mid-range mini computer. It was kind of client server, it was client server going now again being modernized. So obviously Red Hat is now part of IBM, but it speaks not just to IBM, this is about Ansible, right. So this is like, there is action happening here, so this is a case study of pretty much all migrations. It's not just the fact that it's AIX to Red Hat, it's system to the new thing that has benefits. >> Absolutely. >> What's your take, Mike, on that that kind of paradigm, because a lot of people going through similar situations just change AIX to something else. You have a lot of this migration re-platforming going on with the opportunity to kind of tweak it and add stuff to it. What's your advice and what's your reaction to this big trend? >> My advice for this trend, honestly, my advice is when you're planning these migrations, you know they're coming. Even if you're not in the cycle yet, you know it's coming. My advice is start brainstorming your implementation of the automation now. Get your automation into the system as you platform into your new platform, because it is far easier to build that entire platform with automation as a critical component than it is to bolt it on later, and you will get much more out of your investment and time and effort if you've integrated it from the very beginning. I would say anyone that was looking to perform a platform migration now and hadn't already begun serious consideration of running automation or had no plans for an automation, was setting themselves up for a very long and very difficult road to hell, and I would advise against it at this point. >> Great, great insight, Mike and Eric. Thanks for coming on, appreciate your insight here. You guys want to give a quick plug for the company? What you guys are looking to do, hiring, any update you want to share because great, great content you guys just shared here. Thanks for doing that. Take a minute to put a plug for the company. >> Yeah, I think a quick plug here. Yeah, if you're a talented cache admin, there's not too many Mikes out there, so we're definitely looking for more Mikes. But more broadly, we're really looking to expand into the Cloud space. We're rapidly expanding our managed services opportunities, and what we're seeing is a lot of organizations have like one ODB admin or one client systems ECSA admin. And what they run into is that person will leave, that person will retire, that person needs to get married and go on their honeymoon. It's kind of a problem, so we're working with a lot of organizations to not just fully outsource their environment but to provide a hybrid-managed service to provide overflow, to provide capabilities, to scale up with upgrades and projects like that. So, talk to us, we're pretty darn good at it, as you heard from Mike. We've got a couple of Mikes, again, we could use more, so if you are a Mike, please reach out. >> I think we virtualized him, we just virtualized Mike, you know, virtualization is a huge trend. >> If data writes Mike, we need to do that, yeah. >> Are you a body, are you the real Mike? >> (laughing) As far as I know, my wife would appreciate it if you guys would clone me a few times. >> You know, I've heard horror stories, Eric, around root passwords, like, who has the root password, oh, she left two years ago, kind of situations, this happens. I mean, this is not... it sounds like crazy but people leave. >> Yeah, I mean, nobody works anywhere forever, right? >> Don't be that company where you lose the root password, and never mind the ransomware action. Oh my God, must be brutal. Anyway, we can go another segment on that. Eric, thank you for coming on. Mike, thank you for your insight, really appreciate it, thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. >> Absolutely. >> Absolutely, it was our pleasure. >> Stay right here for continued coverage of AnsibleFest 2021. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. (slow tempo electronic music)

>>Mhm. Mhm Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of AWS summit here. Public sector summit here in Washington, D. C. I'm john for your host, We're live at a physical event. People face to face. We're here with the cube on the ground back in business. Of course we have a virtual cube. We got the cube studios in Palo alto in boston. We're gonna bring you all the great coverage and our next guest is parallel casa, Anita Casanova got it. Chief of Channels at Pegasystems, also known as mega official titles, head of global partner ecosystem. But you're known as the Chief of channels. >>Absolutely, thank >>you for coming on. >>Absolutely nice to be here face to face in an event. >>Feel happy, feels good. It feels great. People are happy. I'm still good attendance. Considering what it is about 5, 6000 people roughly give or take maybe up to 7000, who knows. But you guys have a really strong relationship with AWS, you're the chief of the channel. You guys have a great enabling product that crashes itself, as you guys say. So let's get into it before explain what PEG A does. >>Okay, so paga he's a $1 billion dollar company. It's a software company and we call it that software built itself Because we are definitely here to crash customer complexity. So we do it by three doing three things, 1-1 customer engagement customers, customer service and also intelligent automation. So we are a platform and we are helping any single client that has a complex solution to make it simple and to have a good customer experience. >>So I got it wrong. It doesn't crash itself, it crashes complexity, It builds itself okay there it is. All right, I got that out of the way. Software that crashes itself actually doesn't really kind of doesn't sound like a compelling products, but it's not the case. So I gotta ask you So ecosystems are a big part of the cloud amazon has a great ecosystem but the ecosystem has ecosystem is starting to see an expansion of the cloud business with the software model. With cloud scale. What are you guys doing in the channel within the public sector? How do you guys work, how do people engage with you? >>Okay, so first of all we we were always very friendly channel partner but we were using our partners only for implementation because our product is so so uh built for each of the clients, there's a lot of services opportunity and we have very strong peg a practices in the different partners. But last year when I came in I came in almost 16 months ago we decided that we wanted also to improve our our sales with the partners. So we are engaging with partners and to and from the beginning of a sale cycle and brainstorming on what the client needs in order to be more efficient to reduce cost to the moment of the implementation. So we have been working with several uh system integrators, some resellers and with aws as our cloud platform. So we have been moving everything we can to the peg, a cloud that is on aws and clients are are really happy to be modernized in there because there you have the security, the scalability then you the new versions of the product without having to be worrying about it because it's done by our support. >>So it's software on amazon. So customers can buy your software through the marketplace or whatever through a partner or the marketplace and then they can still use the higher level services at in AWS, correct? >>They can use a high services in AWS or with any other partner system Integrator that also works with AWS and we have many cases where we are we we use the power of three. Right. We work with AWS accenture and and for example, Peg or we can use lay does or or booz allen or a parrot on any of the partners that are here in government. >>So you know, the channel equation, you're the chief of the channel. Channel channels love simplicity, simple products to buy. They love products that can throw off gross profit. And you said services, how is that going? Are you guys seeing a good economic equation with your partners? >>Well, our partners do between five and 10 IX of uh, of the revenue that we do on software on services. So that equation definitely works and they love it for that. At the same time we have invested five x the quantity of people that we have supporting the channel. For example, here in government we have invested also two or three times on the rest of the of the business. But there has been definitely good investments for partners. The partners are happy with us because again they not only they can do a good business one off, they can then radiate one. You usually clients one day once they buy peg for one of their use cases or case management as we call it, they usually want to replicate it in other cases and that is where the partners are doing enormous money because they are replicating the same use case in different departments. >>That's the way it's supposed to be, it's their touching the customer, they're adding value on top of your product. So they get to have the best of both worlds high margins on the profits and the services but yet worked with the customer directly to engage, make sure they get the right solution from you and a W. S together. >>Absolutely. Okay, >>what are the key challenges that you find that partners need to solve and overcome to keep this this this equation going. What do you guys focus on? You mentioned more people, what are some of the trends in the public cloud? I mean public sector area? What's this with the dynamics? >>So in in this moment the whole world is with a huge need of digital transformation the every single client but especially in government, they had all digital transformation projects. But they were going at slow motion because of the situation of the pandemic that I don't even want to name it again because everybody's talking about it but it's a reality. These projects have to accelerate 10 times. So whatever it was going to be done in five years has been done in one. So the biggest challenge that we are having is to ensure that we have that capacity to support all these projects that are being done very fast and and for that that's why we also need our partners right Because they have big mega practices. They have been investing as well as we are to ensure that we cover all those needs and but for now we are doing well and so that's that's right. We are growing as a company and with the partners >>carol great to have you on board with the company now kicking some butt now in the channel, Chief of channel good margins happy customers growth. What are some of the use case successes that you've had. Can you name a few customers and what they've done and what's their best practice? >>Well we have, I will name some government because we are in a public secretary event but we have and I will name north America although we also have in the rest of the world. So U. S. Census. That is something that everybody has done right. Even if you did in your mobile, you did it on paper, you did it on the phone. All of that was managed by paga And for the first time ever there was zero than downtime. Not a single problem to access the web. For example, the the US census took us 50% less expense than the one that we did in 2010 just because we use this digital approach And then we also were 50% more efficient because we needed, we didn't need to use all that paper storage that was used in the past. So we taxpayers have to be happy because they really spend less than what they should have spent on this topic. So definitely that was one of the biggest cases that we have in 2020. We have other, we took big big projects like the US and or we do smaller projects and there's one that is not small but that is smaller, that is the New Jersey court that caught my attention because I imagine myself in a situation like that that you are like my mistake taken to the court and you and they are, they are you have to defend yourself that was taking three hours and it's stressful, right? And you don't have to be there if you don't need to And this process got to 20 minutes, that is also reduction and expenses even jail expenses sometimes. So that was one that we did as well. And and that was just by making four legacy systems getting to one having a much faster experience on that. So >>a lot of migrations, a lot of cloud native re factoring going on in the applications sounds like >>yes. What we do is whatever legacy systems you have, we managed to ensure that we connect them all and to have a front line so that you can access information real time and that you can as a user and that you can really have a better experience whatever you do today, whatever company telco company you have, bank you use, I can guarantee you have you have, you speak to you just don't know about >>that. It's under the covers. I gotta ask you my final question. So you guys really doing some good business out here, what if people watching here trying to understand the dynamics of public sector market? What's your take, what's your what do you what would you say, that person? What's the big story happening in public sector? >>Well, to begin with, I'm not a public sector experts, I'm sure that there's a lot of public sector experts out there that can tell me, oh no, you missed this point. But what I have seen in these days that I have been here with the team is that the government needs to act fast in order to digitalized all these projects. So one of our partners yesterday was telling me that there is a mandate in in the army for example to move everything to cloud. How do you do it? They don't even know they're there, there are people that they don't they don't know how to do this. So our partners are building solutions to help them faster get into the cloud because they have to do it by the end of the year. And these are the key things that we are working on with partners to build solutions that can really can access for robust and they can >>escape. It's a very robust ecosystem. Yes, So amazon is an ecosystem you guys and you have an ecosystem. >>It's an ecosystem of ecosystems and that is what works right because Amazon has very good sellers for example, very good people that know the clients and they have a lot of experience but they are not specialized in what to do >>with the channel. These >>other partners have a peg a practice, they are experts and as I told you this is about crushing complexity. So it's making you need to understand the technology and the details behind it to make the best solution to the client. >>Corolla. Great to have you on very dynamic. Love, Love chatting with you Corolla Cazenove >>Cazenove >>Cazenove chief of channels that Pegasystems also known as peg a great to have you on, congratulations on your success. Ecosystems within an ecosystem crushing complexity. Mr que bringing you all the signal out there from the noise. I'm john Kerry. Thanks for watching. Mhm. Mhm.

>> Voiceover: From theCUBE's Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE Conversation. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase. Next Big Thing in AI, Security and Life Sciences featuring Ahana for the AI Trek. I'm your host, John Furrier. Today, we're joined by two great guests, Steven Mih, Ahana CEO, and Sachin Nayyar, Securonix CEO. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on theCUBE. We're talking about the Next-Gen technologies on AI, Open Data Lakes, et cetera. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having us, John. >> Thanks, John. >> What a great line up here. >> Sachin: Thanks, Steven. >> Great, great stuff. Sachin, let's get in and talk about your company, Securonix. What do you guys do? Take us through, I know you've got a slide to help us through this, I want to introduce your stuff first then jump in with Steven. >> Absolutely. Thanks again, Steven. Ahana team for having us on the show. So Securonix, we started the company in 2010. We are the leader in security analytics and response capability for the cybermarket. So basically, this is a category of solutions called SIEM, Security Incident and Event Management. We are the quadrant leaders in Gartner, we now have about 500 customers today and have been plugging away since 2010. Started the company just really focused on analytics using machine learning and an advanced analytics to really find the needle in the haystack, then moved from there to needle in the needle stack using more algorithms, analysis of analysis. And then kind of, I evolved the company to run on cloud and become sort of the biggest security data lake on cloud and provide all the analytics to help companies with their insider threat, cyber threat, cloud solutions, application threats, emerging internally and externally, and then response and have a great partnership with Ahana as well as with AWS. So looking forward to this session, thank you. >> Awesome. I can't wait to hear the news on that Next-Gen SIEM leadership. Steven, Ahana, talk about what's going on with you guys, give us the update, a lot of stuff happening. >> Yeah. Great to be here and thanks for that such, and we appreciate the partnership as well with both Securonix and AWS. Ahana is the open source company based on PrestoDB, which is a project that came out of Facebook and is widely used, one of the fastest growing projects in data analytics today. And we make a managed service for Presto easily on AWS, all cloud native. And we'll be talking about that more during the show. Really excited to be here. We believe in open source. We believe in all the challenges of having data in the cloud and making it easy to use. So thanks for having us again. >> And looking forward to digging into that managed service and why that's been so successful. Looking forward to that. Let's get into the Securonix Next-Gen SIEM leadership first. Let's share the journey towards what you guys are doing here. As the Open Data Lakes on AWS has been a hot topic, the success of data in the cloud, no doubt is on everyone's mind especially with the edge coming. It's just, I mean, just incredible growth. Take us through Sachin, what do you guys got going on? >> Absolutely. Thanks, John. We are hearing about cyber threats every day. No question about it. So in the past, what was happening is companies, what we have done as enterprise is put all of our eggs in the basket of solutions that were evaluating the network data. With cloud, obviously there is no more network data. Now we have moved into focusing on EDR, right thing to do on endpoint detection. But with that, we also need security analytics across on-premise and cloud. And your other solutions like your OT, IOT, your mobile, bringing it all together into a security data lake and then running purpose built analytics on top of that, and then having a response so we can prevent some of these things from happening or detect them in real time versus innovating for hours or weeks and months, which is is obviously too late. So with some of the recent events happening around colonial and others, we all know cybersecurity is on top of everybody's mind. First and foremost, I also want to. >> Steven: (indistinct) slide one and that's all based off on top of the data lake, right? >> Sachin: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So before we go into on Securonix, I also want to congratulate everything going on with the new cyber initiatives with our government and just really excited to see some of the things that the government is also doing in this space to bring, to have stronger regulation and bring together the government and the private sector. From a Securonix perspective, today, we have one third of the fortune 500 companies using our technology. In addition, there are hundreds of small and medium sized companies that rely on Securonix for their cyber protection. So what we do is, again, we are running the solution on cloud, and that is very important. It is not just important for hosting, but in the space of cybersecurity, you need to have a solution, which is not, so where we can update the threat models and we can use the intelligence or the Intel that we gather from our customers, partners, and industry experts and roll it out to our customers within seconds and minutes, because the game is real time in cybersecurity. And that you can only do in cloud where you have the complete telemetry and access to these environments. When we go on-premise traditionally, what you will see is customers are even thinking about pushing the threat models through their standard Dev test life cycle management, and which is just completely defeating the purpose. So in any event, Securonix on the cloud brings together all the data, then runs purpose-built analytics on it. Helps you find very few, we are today pulling in several million events per second from our customers, and we provide just a very small handful of events and reduce the false positives so that people can focus on them. Their security command center can focus on that and then configure response actions on top of that. So we can take action for known issues and have intelligence in all the layers. So that's kind of what the Securonix is focused on. >> Steven, he just brought up, probably the most important story in technology right now. That's ransomware more than, first of all, cybersecurity in general, but ransomware, he mentioned some of the government efforts. Some are saying that the ransomware marketplace is bigger than some governments, nation state governments. There's a business model behind it. It's highly active. It's dominating the scene and it's a real threat. This is the new world we're living in, cloud creates the refactoring capabilities. We're hearing that story here with Securonix. How does Presto and Securonix work together? Because I'm connecting the dots here in real time. I think you're going to go there. So take us through because this is like the most important topic happening. >> Yeah. So as Sachin said, there's all this data that needs to go into the cloud and it's all moving to the cloud. And there's a massive amounts of data and hundreds of terabytes, petabytes of data that's moving into the data lakes and that's the S3-based data lakes, which are the easiest, cheapest, commodified place to put all this data. But in order to deliver the results that Sachin's company is driving, which is intelligence on when there's a ransomware or possibility, you need to have analytics on them. And so Presto is the open source project that is a open source SQL query engine for data lakes and other data sources. It was created by Facebook as part of the Linux foundation, something called Presto foundation. And it was built to replace the complicated Hadoop stack in order to then drive analytics at very lightning fast queries on large, large sets of data. And so Presto fits in with this Open Data Lake analytics movement, which has made Presto one of the fastest growing projects out there. >> What is an Open Data Lake? Real quick for the audience who wants to learn on what it means. Does is it means it's open source in the Linux foundation or open meaning it's open to multiple applications? What does that even mean? >> Yeah. Open Data Lake analytics means that you're, first of all, your data lake has open formats. So it is made up of say something called the ORC or Parquet. And these are formats that any engine can be used against. That's really great, instead of having locked in data types. Data lakes can have all different types of data. It can have unstructured, semi-structured data. It's not just the structured data, which is typically in your data warehouses. There's a lot more data going into the Open Data Lake. And then you can, based on what workload you're looking to get benefit from, the insights come from that, and actually slide two covers this pictorially. If you look on the left here on slide two, the Open Data Lake is where all the data is pulling. And Presto is the layer in between that and the insights which are driven by the visualization, reporting, dashboarding, BI tools or applications like in Securonix case. And so analytics are now being driven by every company for not just industries of security, but it's also for every industry out there, retail, e-commerce, you name it. There's a healthcare, financials, all are looking at driving more analytics for their SaaSified applications as well as for their own internal analysts, data scientists, and folks that are trying to be more data-driven. >> All right. Let's talk about the relationship now with where Presto fits in with Securonix because I get the open data layer. I see value in that. I get also what we're talking about the cloud and being faster with the datasets. So how does, Sachin' Securonix and Ahana fit in together? >> Yeah. Great question. So I'll tell you, we have two customers. I'll give you an example. We have two fortune 10 customers. One has moved most of their operations to the cloud and another customer which is in the process, early stage. The data, the amount of data that we are getting from the customer who's moved fully to the cloud is 20 times, 20 times more than the customer who's in the early stages of moving to the cloud. That is because the ability to add this level of telemetry in the cloud, in this case, it happens to be AWS, Office 365, Salesforce and several other rescalers across several other cloud technologies. But the level of logging that we are able to get the telemetry is unbelievable. So what it does is it allows us to analyze more, protect the customers better, protect them in real time, but there is a cost and scale factor to that. So like I said, when you are trying to pull in billions of events per day from a customer billions of events per day, what the customers are looking for is all of that data goes in, all of data gets enriched so that it makes sense to a normal analyst and all of that data is available for search, sometimes 90 days, sometimes 12 months. And then all of that data is available to be brought back into a searchable format for up to seven years. So think about the amount of data we are dealing with here and we have to provide a solution for this problem at a price that is affordable to the customer and that a medium-sized company as well as a large organization can afford. So after a lot of our analysis on this and again, Securonix is focused on cyber, bringing in the data, analyzing it, so after a lot of our analysis, we zeroed in on S3 as the core bucket where this data needs to be stored because the price point, the reliability, and all the other functions available on top of that. And with that, with S3, we've created a great partnership with AWS as well as with Snowflake that is providing this, from a data lake perspective, a bigger data lake, enterprise data lake perspective. So now for us to be able to provide customers the ability to search that data. So data comes in, we are enriching it. We are putting it in S3 in real time. Now, this is where Presto comes in. In our research, Presto came out as the best search engine to sit on top of S3. The engine is supported by companies like Facebook and Uber, and it is open source. So open source, like you asked the question. So for companies like us, we cannot depend on a very small technology company to offer mission critical capabilities because what if that company gets acquired, et cetera. In the case of open source, we are able to adopt it. We know there is a community behind it and it will be kind of available for us to use and we will be able to contribute in it for the longterm. Number two, from an open source perspective, we have a strong belief that customers own their own data. Traditionally, like Steven used the word locked in, it's a key term, customers have been locked in into proprietary formats in the past and those days are over. You should be, you own the data and you should be able to use it with us and with other systems of choice. So now you get into a data search engine like Presto, which scales independently of the storage. And then when we start looking at Presto, we came across Ahana. So for every open source system, you definitely need a sort of a for-profit company that invests in the community and then that takes the community forward. Because without a company like this, the community will die. So we are very excited about the partnership with Presto and Ahana. And Ahana provides us the ability to take Presto and cloudify it, or make the cloud operations work plus be our conduit to the Ahana community. Help us speed up certain items on the roadmap, help our team contribute to the community as well. And then you have to take a solution like Presto, you have to put it in the cloud, you have to make it scale, you have to put it on Kubernetes. Standard thing that you need to do in today's world to offer it as sort of a micro service into our architecture. So in all of those areas, that's where our partnership is with Ahana and Presto and S3 and we think, this is the search solution for the future. And with something like this, very soon, we will be able to offer our customers 12 months of data, searchable at extremely fast speeds at very reasonable price points and you will own your own data. So it has very significant business benefits for our customers with the technology partnership that we have set up here. So very excited about this. >> Sachin, it's very inspiring, a couple things there. One, decentralize on your own data, having a democratized, that piece is killer. Open source, great point. >> Absolutely. >> Company goes out of business, you don't want to lose the source code or get acquired or whatever. That's a key enabler. And then three, a fast managed service that has a commercial backing behind it. So, a great, and by the way, Snowflake wasn't around a couple of years ago. So like, so this is what we're talking about. This is the cloud scale. Steven, take us home with this point because this is what innovation looks like. Could you share why it's working? What's some of the things that people could walk away with and learn from as the new architecture for the new NextGen cloud is here, so this is a big part of and share how this works? >> That's right. As you heard from Sachin, every company is becoming data-driven and analytics are central to their business. There's more data and it needs to be analyzed at lower cost without the locked in and people want that flexibility. And so a slide three talks about what Ahana cloud for Presto does. It's the best Presto out of the box. It gives you very easy to use for your operations team. So it can be one or two people just managing this and they can get up to speed very quickly in 30 minutes, be up and running. And that jump starts their movement into an Open Data Lake analytics architecture. That architecture is going to be, it is the one that is at Facebook, Uber, Twitter, other large web scale, internet scale companies. And with the amount of data that's occurring, that's now becoming the standard architecture for everyone else in the future. And so just to wrap, we're really excited about making that easy, giving an open source solution because the open source data stack based off of data lake analytics is really happening. >> I got to ask you, you've seen many waves on the industry. Certainly, you've been through the big data waves, Steven. Sachin, you're on the cutting edge and just the cutting edge billions of signals from one client alone is pretty amazing scale and refactoring that value proposition is super important. What's different from 10 years ago when the Hadoop, you mentioned Hadoop earlier, which is RIP, obviously the cloud killed it. We all know that. Everyone kind of knows that. But like, what's different now? I mean, skeptics might say, I don't believe you, but it's just crazy. There's no way it works. S3 costs way too much. Why is this now so much more of an attractive proposition? What do you say the naysayers out there? With Steve, we'll start with you and then Sachin, I want you to like weigh in too. >> Yeah. Well, if you think about the Hadoop era and if you look at slide three, it was a very complicated system that was done mainly on-prem. And you'd have to go and set up a big data team and a rack and stack a bunch of servers and then try to put all this stuff together and candidly, the results and the outcomes of that were very hard to get unless you had the best possible teams and invested a lot of money in this. What you saw in this slide was that, that right hand side which shows the stack. Now you have a separate compute, which is based off of Intel based instances in the cloud. We run the best in that and they're part of the Presto foundation. And that's now data lakes. Now the distributed compute engines are the ones that have become very much easier. So the big difference in what I see is no longer called big data. It's just called data analytics because it's now become commodified as being easy and the bar is much, much lower, so everyone can get the benefit of this across industries, across organizations. I mean, that's good for the world, reduces the security threats, the ransomware, in the case of Securonix and Sachin here. But every company can benefit from this. >> Sachin, this is really as an example in my mind and you can comment too on if you'd believe or not, but replatform with the cloud, that's a no brainer. People do that. They did it. But the value is refactoring in the cloud. It's thinking differently with the assets you have and making sure you're using the right pieces. I mean, there's no brainer, you know it's good. If it costs more money to stand up something than to like get value out of something that's operating at scale, much easier equation. What's your thoughts on this? Go back 10 years and where we are now, what's different? I mean, replatforming, refactoring, all kinds of happening. What's your take on all this? >> Agreed, John. So we have been in business now for about 10 to 11 years. And when we started my hair was all black. Okay. >> John: You're so silly. >> Okay. So this, everything has happened here is the transition from Hadoop to cloud. Okay. This is what the result has been. So people can see it for themselves. So when we started off with deep partnerships with the Hadoop providers and again, Hadoop is the foundation, which has now become EMR and everything else that AWS and other companies have picked up. But when you start with some basic premise, first, the racking and stacking of hardware, companies having to project their entire data volume upfront, bringing the servers and have 50, 100, 500 servers sitting in their data centers. And then when there are spikes in data, or like I said, as you move to the cloud, your data volume will increase between five to 20x and projecting for that. And then think about the agility that it will take you three to six months to bring in new servers and then bring them into the architecture. So big issue. Number two big issue is that the backend of that was built for HDFS. So Hadoop in my mind was built to ingest large amounts of data in batches and then perform some spark jobs on it, some analytics. But we are talking in security about real time, high velocity, high variety data, which has to be available in real time. It wasn't built for that, to be honest. So what was happening is, again, even if you look at the Hadoop companies today as they have kind of figured, kind of define their next generation, they have moved from HDFS to now kind of a cloud based platform capability and have discarded the traditional HDFS architecture because it just wasn't scaling, wasn't searching fast enough, wasn't searching fast enough for hundreds of analysts at the same time. And then obviously, the servers, et cetera wasn't working. Then when we worked with the Hadoop companies, they were always two to three versions behind for the individual services that they had brought together. And again, when you're talking about this kind of a volume, you need to be on the cutting edge always of the technologies underneath that. So even while we were working with them, we had to support our own versions of Kafka, Solr, Zookeeper, et cetera to really bring it together and provide our customers this capability. So now when we have moved to the cloud with solutions like EMR behind us, AWS has invested in in solutions like EMR to make them scalable, to have scale and then scale out, which traditional Hadoop did not provide because they missed the cloud wave. And then on top of that, again, rather than throwing data in that traditional older HDFS format, we are now taking the same format, the parquet format that it supports, putting it in S3 and now making it available and using all the capabilities like you said, the refactoring of that is critical. That rather than on-prem having servers and redundancies with S3, we get built in redundancy. We get built in life cycle management, high degree of confidence data reliability. And then we get all this innovation from companies like, from groups like Presto, companies like Ahana sitting on double that S3. And the last item I would say is in the cloud we are now able to offer multiple, have multiple resilient options on our side. So for example, with us, we still have some premium searching going on with solutions like Solr and Elasticsearch, then you have Presto and Ahana providing majority of our searching, but we still have Athena as a backup in case something goes down in the architecture. Our queries will spin back up to Athena, AWS service on Presto and customers will still get served. So all of these options, but what it doesn't cost us anything, Athena, if we don't use it, but all of these options are not available on-prem. So in my mind, I mean, it's a whole new world we are living in. It is a world where now we have made it possible for companies to even enterprises to even think about having true security data lakes, which are useful and having real-time analytics. From my perspective, I don't even sign up today for a large enterprise that wants to build a data lake on-prem because I know that is not, that is going to be a very difficult project to make it successful. So we've come a long way and there are several details around this that we've kind of endured through the process, but very excited where we are today. >> Well, we certainly follow up with theCUBE on all your your endeavors. Quickly on Ahana, why them, why their solution? In your words, what would be the advice you'd give me if I'm like, okay, I'm looking at this, why do I want to use it, and what's your experience? >> Right. So the standard SQL query engine for data lake analytics, more and more people have more data, want to have something that's based on open source, based on open formats, gives you that flexibility, pay as you go. You only pay for what you use. And so it proved to be the best option for Securonix to create a self-service system that has all the speed and performance and scalability that they need, which is based off of the innovation from the large companies like Facebook, Uber, Twitter. They've all invested heavily. We contribute to the open source project. It's a vibrant community. We encourage people to join the community and even Securonix, we'll be having engineers that are contributing to the project as well. I think, is that right Sachin? Maybe you could share a little bit about your thoughts on being part of the community. >> Yeah. So also why we chose Ahana, like John said. The first reason is you see Steven is always smiling. Okay. >> That's for sure. >> That is very important. I mean, jokes apart, you need a great partner. You need a great partner. You need a partner with a great attitude because this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. So the Ahana founders, Steven, the whole team, they're world-class, they're world-class. The depth that the CTO has, his experience, the depth that Dipti has, who's running the cloud solution. These guys are world-class. They are very involved in the community. We evaluated them from a community perspective. They are very involved. They have the depth of really commercializing an open source solution without making it too commercial. The right balance, where the founding companies like Facebook and Uber, and hopefully Securonix in the future as we contribute more and more will have our say and they act like the right stewards in this journey and then contribute as well. So and then they have chosen the right niche rather than taking portions of the product and making it proprietary. They have put in the effort towards the cloud infrastructure of making that product available easily on the cloud. So I think it's sort of a no-brainer from our side. Once we chose Presto, Ahana was the no-brainer and just the partnership so far has been very exciting and I'm looking forward to great things together. >> Likewise Sachin, thanks so much for that. And we've only found your team, you're world-class as well, and working together and we look forward to working in the community also in the Presto foundation. So thanks for that. >> Guys, great partnership. Great insight and really, this is a great example of cloud scale, cloud value proposition as it unlocks new benefits. Open source, managed services, refactoring the opportunities to create more value. Stephen, Sachin, thank you so much for sharing your story here on open data lakes. Can open always wins in my mind. This is theCUBE we're always open and we're showcasing all the hot startups coming out of the AWS ecosystem for the AWS Startup Showcase. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (bright music)

>>from around the globe. >>It's the cube >>With digital coverage of IBM think 2021 brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to the cube coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube ricardo for lenses here with me is the global managing director for IBM at Citigroup recorded. Great to see you. Thank you for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me. >>You're the team leader for Citigroup Managing Director um, a lot going on in the world of finance, Fintech technology, scale transformation. All this is happening. Always a leading edge indicator give us your perspective on the market right now on the, on that vertical and in general because there's so much scale is so much machine learning, so much going on, so much competitive advantages. Give us an overview of the industry, how you see them. >>So john I had the good fortune of working essentially around the world of work in europe in Asia in Australia, back here in north America. And I'll tell you what, there are some, some uh, dynamics are specific to a market. There are also a lot of common threads, right? You know, a lot of common threads right? As you know, my industry, financial services in the middle of uh great disruption right from payments to a global wealth to understand exactly. Not to reposition yourself is a, is a startup. Oftentimes looking time to be dis intimidated by many of the context. I have found that many financial institutions are very adept, a change in the way they operate a lot more nimble than they had been in the past. And they found ways to incorporate a lot of the techniques that some of the Frontex operate with. So they all have shark tanks, they all find a way to uh progress investments that they get to a point of uh, failing fast, right, more are some more adept than others. But for the most part, I'd say that everyone in the market is looking to beef up their, their core competences. >>And, you know, the financial, um, industry has never been shy of using technology ever. They've always poured it on. They always want to get more edge. Um, what's your, what is the edge now in the industry for, um, financial and, and in general, businesses who were learning how to be agile? What's the edge? >>I think the edges really finding a way to be ambidextrous, right? Because in many respects that you don't want to hold on to a franchise to what got you to a level of success. It's oftentimes it's in the case of my client is to be in good stead for more than 100 years, Right? So you don't want to let that go. But you also want to grow a new set of skills and grow competences that they need to take into the future. I have found that in many respects that many of my clients are remind me of what lookers and one said maybe 2025 years ago, our former Ceo and chairman, who said the last thing that IBM needs is a strategy. In fact, I think that many of our financial institutions that don't need a strategy, they just need the competences to innovate and executed scale and it's a lot easier said than that >>card. I want to get your perspective before we move on to some of the initiatives and work at city, which is probably compelling. But I want to get your expert opinion on a question that comes up all the time with customers and that are going post pandemic and looking at growth strategies. The idea of the unit economics of their business models tend to change with more data, more digital acceleration. Is there any observations that you could share for leaders who are looking to get that financial mindset or how the business is changing with whether it's copies or business models. Because at the end of the day, the financial upside of what we're seeing with digital is pretty significant. The economics are seem to be a real game changer on these, these conversations about acceleration, but also the results are business results are money. >>Absolutely, john, as a matter of fact, that I'd argue that while it's true that the common theme, so many and that several of our financial institutions are growing a skill in, in a, in a uh, approaching problems in a different fashion is also true that there's been a lot of redistribution of wealth across financial enterprises, Right? So it's not lost on all of us. Right. The security look at market globalization of the financial institutions, on the work. They really come all over the place with the clear winners in several sectors, site in Asia and europe as quality of North America. So what I argue is that while I think we're all tired of hearing the data is the new oil, right? It's also true that we need to find a way to finally harness the power of it. Right? And that's what I think IBM is more more adept at, right, argue that many of the common threads that we've seen across the financial institutions and back to the, to the measures of success you would indicate in a minute ago, not really around cloud, right around data and around digital transformation. Right? So our approach to cloud, for instance is unique, right? While there are a number of uh very competent hyper scholars, we've taken a different approach to it, right? We've taken our approach is more than after other highly specialized regulated workloads, right. Organ after the layer that allows you to port application seamlessly based on regulation costs and competition across multiple platforms. Right? So this hybrid concept has only been at the center of our strategy and that's the one that mama is is delivering our clients greatest value. Tell you what. I think one client told me once after hearing our hybrid story that while there were many cloud providers, there wasn't anyone that could help them out as much as I B. M. Dealing with your legacy and in all candor. I think it's fair to say that legacy is here to say well past our investment horizon. Right? So that level of self awareness, I think ended up believe forming our collaborations for years to come. >>You know, I'm a big believer and I've reported this and certainly talked to Arvin when um he was on the cube about this microservices, containers, kubernetes, these kinds of new technologies really allow for legacy to integrate well into the new modern era of computing in hybrid cloud. So totally agree. And that is really key tailwind for for innovation and these transformations. I have to ask you ricardo what's going on at city and IBM tell us take us through some things that you're working on, some of the exciting projects that you're driving. >>So the disclaimer is that I started this well three months ago, so I'll try to do my my team proud here. But what I'll tell you is that the teams you talk about are alive and well, it's sitting right? So on the cloudfront we are doing exactly that. We're focusing on on on being uh cities partner on the heavy cloud deployment, acknowledging that higher Ecologist is an ecosystem of participants, right? Technology that IBM s dominance in on prime computing. We'll go through a very different face going forward. We not only a comfortable with it, but we are trying to accelerate its deployment. Right? So you mentioned communities, you mentioned containers, Hence a redhead acquisition, right? Which has been central to the collaboration that we've uh we've established the city and we look at the broad, I'm also gonna go back to data and I will tell you that, uh, you know, uh, cities in the midst of a transformation journey of their own right. It's also the middle of a regulatory challenge. That's second to none. Right. With with the zero cc. Findings that then led to a financial remediation plan that the bank has put in place over the past two months. With that in mind we are looking to help the bank make a make a good crisis make the most of the crisis, right? And so helping, for instance, Mark Sabino, the head of Innovation City, find ways to infuse Ai into their internal Codec practices doing that. It's just smart business. The results in much better outcome at a lower cost and it's something that can scale because it's all seen before. Oftentimes our solutions have lacked the ability to scale to really keep up with them in >>ricardo. The relationship between IBM and city has been long standing. I believe. I read somewhere you're celebrating 100 year partnership. Is that true? If so. I mean, it's a huge milestone. What's the take us through the history and where this is going as a partnership? >>I've heard as a matter of fact is that as I first came on board that in fact our companies have been added for more than 100 years and someone showed me an actual document 100 years old, there was proof positive of that. So I'll tell you, I know that our firms would be added again 100 years from now. I will probably not be here to toast to it but I'm certain they will continue to collaborate and for the strong is this is my responsibility. I'll do whatever I can to help you continue to grow. We're only going to focus on three things I spoke about every cloud. Would you also want to be the partner? Is the bank transforms its operations right and infuse in it. Our Ai and process, information skills and capabilities. I think if we do that, we'll continue to collaborate and will continue to have our partnership fully rests on two pillars that is always independent, which are really innovation can trust >>great commentary, great uh an account that you're leading probably a great team behind how many people are on this team must be pretty massive and I'd love to see that document by the way, was it a memo? Was that type written was a handwritten? You know, it was a P. O. >>It was an Akron document and I get your copy. >>Uh so historic. I love those history. I love the IBM culture longstanding relationships. Final question for you. You've been in the industry for a while, you've seen many waves of innovation if you're talking to a customer, your friend or colleague and they had asked you ricardo, why is this wave so big and so important? What would you tell them, >>john I think at the heart of this transformation, the evolution, the way they should call it is not the intellectual products, the international new processes but entire no value chains that are being established by players that in many cases need need each other to coexist. This is hardly been the case in the past. I think IBM will form a great example of it, right? And so I do think that this is far more disruptive than what we have witnessed in years past and I can't wait to get get in it and my part to lead us through it >>ricardo, great insight, totally agree. This is a time of open collaboration, an ecosystem you're seeing in the ecosystem and network effect where people are integrating together in this new connected distributed economy. Global economy, thank you for coming on the cube, appreciate your >>time. Thank you so much for having me. >>Okay, Ricardo for Relenza, Global managing director for IBM at Citigroup. This is the Cube coverage of IBM think 2021. I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>>Mhm Yes. Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of red hat summit 2021 virtual. I'm john for your host of the cube we're here with Hillary Hunter, the VP and CTO and IBM fellow of IBM cloud at IBM. Hillary, Great to see you welcome back, You're no stranger to us in the cube your dentist few times. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks so much for having me back. Great to talk more today >>I believe I B M is the premier sponsor for red hat summit this year. No, I mean I think they're somewhat interested in what's happening. >>Yeah, you know, somebody is such a great event for us because it brings together clients that, you know, we work together with red head on and gives us a chance to really talk about that overall journey to cloud and everything that we offer around cloud and cloud adoption um, and around redheads capabilities as well. So we look forward to the summit every year for sure. >>You know, the new IBM red hat relationship obviously pretty tight and successful seeing the early formations and customer attraction and just kind of the momentum, I'll never forget that Red hat something was in SAN Francisco. I sat down with Arvin at that time, uh, Red hat was not part of IBM and it was interesting. He was so tied into cloud native. It was almost as if he was dry running the acquisition, which he announced just moments later after that. But you can see the balance. The Ceo at IBM really totally sees the cloud. He sees that experience. He sees the customer impact. This has been an interesting year, especially with Covid and with the combination of red hat and IBM, this cloud priority for IT leaders is more important than ever before. What's your, what's your take on this? Because clearly you guys are all in on cloud, but not what people think, what's your, what's your view on this? >>Yeah. You know, from, from the perspective of those that are kind of data oriented IBM Institute for Business Value, did lots of studies over the last year, you know, saying that over 60% of leaders feel, you know, increased urgency to get to the cloud, um they're intending to accelerate their program to the cloud, but I think, you know, just even as consumers where each very conscious that our digital behaviors have changed a lot in the last year and we see that in our enterprise client base where um everything from, you know, a bank, we work that that that had to stand up their countries equivalent of the payroll protection program in a matter of weeks, which is just kind of unheard of to do something that robust that quickly or um, you know, retail obviously dealing with major changes, manufacturing, dealing with major changes and all consumers wanting to consume things on an app basis and such, not going into brick and mortar stores and such. And so everything has changed and months, I would say have sort of timeframes of months have been the norm instead of years for um, taking applications forward and modernizing them. And so this journey to cloud has compressed, It's accelerated. And as one client I spoke with said, uh, in the midst of last year, you know, it is existential that I get to cloud with urgency and I think That's been that has been the theme of 2020 and now also 2021. And so it is, it is the core technology for moving faster and dealing with all the change that we're all experiencing. >>That's just so right on point. But I got I want to ask you because this is the key trend enterprises are now realizing that cloud native architecture is based on open source specifically is a key architectural first principle now. >>Yeah. >>What's your, what, what would you say to the folks out there who were listening to this and watching this video, Who were out in the enterprise going, hey, that's a good call. I'm glad I did it. So I don't have any cognitive dissidence or I better get there faster. >>Yeah. You know, open source is such an important part of this conversation because I always say that open source moves at the rate and pays a global innovation, which is kind of a cute phrase that I really don't mean it in anyways, cute. It really is the case that the purpose of open sources for people globally to be contributing. And there's been innovation on everything from climate change to you know, musical applications to um things that are the fundamentals of major enterprise mission critical workloads that have happened is everyone is adopting cloud and open source faster. And so I think that, you know this choice to be on open source is a choice really, you know, to move at the pace of global innovation. It's a choice too um leverage capabilities that are portable and it's a choice to have flexibility in deployment because where everyone's I. T is deployed has also changed. And the balance of sort of where people need the cloud to kind of come to life and be has also changed as everyone's going through this period of significant change. >>That's awesome. IBM like Red has been a long supporter and has a history of supporting open source projects from Lenox to kubernetes. You guys, I think put a billion dollars in Lenox way back when it first started. Really power that movement. That's going back into the history books there. So how are you guys all collaborating today to advance the open source solutions for clients? >>Yeah, we remain very heavily invested in open source communities and invested in work jointly with Red Hat. Um you know, we enabled the technology known as um uh Rackham the short name for the Red Hat advanced cluster management software, um you know, in this last year, um and so, you know, provided that capability um to to become the basis of that that product. So we continue to, you know, move major projects into open source and we continue to encourage external innovators as well to create new capabilities. And open source are called for code initiatives for developers as an example, um have had specific programs around um uh social justice and racial issues. Um we have a new call for code out encouraging open source projects around climate change and sustainable agriculture and all those kind of topics and so everything from you know, topics with developers to core product portfolio for us. Um We have a very uh very firm commitment in an ongoing sustained contribution on an open source basis. >>I think that's important. Just to call out just to kind of take a little sidebar here. Um you guys really have a strong mission driven culture at IBM want to give you props for that. Just take a minute to say, Congratulations call for code incredible initiative. You guys do a great job. So congratulations on that. Appreciate. >>Thank you. Thank you. >>Um as a sponsor of Red Hat Summit this year, I am sponsoring the zone Read at um you have you have two sessions that you're hosting, Could you talk about what's going on? >>Yeah, the the two sessions, so one that I'm hosting is around um getting what we call 2.5 x value out of your cloud journey. Um and really looking at kind of how we're working with clients from the start of the journey of considering cloud through to actually deploying and managing environments and operating model on the cloud um and where we can extract greater value and then another session um that I'm doing with Roger Primo, our senior vice President for strategy at IBM We're talking about lessons and clouded option from the Fortune 500, so we're talking there about coca cola european bottling partners, about lumen technologies um and um also about wonderman Thompson, um and what they're doing with us with clouds, so kind of two sessions, kind of one talking a sort of a chalkboard style um A little bit of an informal conversation about what is value meaning cloud or what are we trying to get out of it together? Um And then a session with roger really kind of focused on enterprise use cases and real stories of cloud adoption. >>Alright so bottom line what's going to be in the sessions, why should I attend? What's the yeah >>so you know honest honestly I think that there's kind of this um there's this great hunger I would say in the industry right now to ascertain value um and in all I. T. Decision making, that's the key question right? Um not just go to the cloud because everyone's going to the cloud or not just adopt you know open source technologies because it's you know something that someone said to do, but what value are we going to get out of it? And then how do we have an intentional conversation about cloud architecture? How do we think about managing across environments in a consistent way? Um how do we think about extracting value in that journey of application, modernization, um and how do we structure and plan that in a way? Um that results in value to the business at the end of the day, because this notion of digital transformation is really what's underlying it. You want a different business outcome at the end of the day and the decisions that you take in your cloud journey picking. Um and open hybrid, multi cloud architecture leveraging technologies like IBM cloud satellite to have a consistent control plan across your environments, um leveraging particular programs that we have around security and compliance to accelerate the journey for regulated industries etcetera. Taking intentional decisions that are relevant to your industry that enable future flexibility and then enable a broad ecosystem of content, for example, through red hat marketplace, all the capabilities and content that deploy onto open shift, et cetera. Those are core foundational decisions that then unlock that value in the cloud journey and really result in a successful cloud experience and not just I kind of tried it and I did or didn't get out of it what I was expecting. So that's really what, you know, we talk about in these in these two sessions, um and walk through um in the second session than, you know, some client use cases of, of different levels and stages in that cloud journey, some really core enterprise capabilities and then Greenfield whitespace completely new capabilities and cloud can address that full spectrum. >>That's exciting not to get all nerdy for a second here, But you know, you bring up cloud architecture, hybrid cloud architecture and correct me if I'm wrong if you're going to address it because I think this is what I'm reporting and hearing in the industry against the killer problem everyone's trying to solve is you mentioned, um, data, you mentioned control playing for data, you mentioned security. These are like horizontally scalable operating model concepts. So if you think about an operating system, this is this is the architecture that becomes the cloud model hybrid model because it's not just public cloud cloud native or being born in the cloud. Like a startup. The integration of operating at scale is a distributed computing model. So you have an operating system concept with some systems engineering. Yeah, it sounds like a computer to me, right. It sounds like a mainframe. Sounds like something like that where you're thinking about not just software but operating model is, am I getting that right? Because this is like fundamental. >>Yeah, it's so fundamental. And I think it's a great analogy, right? I think it's um you know, everyone has kind of, their different description of what cloud is, what constitutes cloud and all that kind of thing, but I think it's great to think of it as a system, it's a system for computing and what we're trying to do with cloud, what we're trying to do with kubernetes is to orchestrate a bunch of, you know, computing in a consistent way, as, you know, other functions within a single server do. Um What we're trying to do with open shift is, you know, to enable um clients to consume things in a consistent way across many different environments. Again, that's the same sort of function um conceptually as, you know, an operating system or something like that is supposed to provide is to have a platform fundamentally, I think the word platform is important, right? Have a platform that's consistent across many environments and enables people to be productive in all those environments where they need to be doing their computing. >>We were talking before we came on camera about cloud history and we were kind of riffing back and forth around, oh yeah, five years ago or six years ago was all the conversations go to the cloud now, it's like serious conscience around the maturity of cloud and how to operate that scale in the cloud, which is complex, it's complex system and you have complexity around system complexity and novelty complexity, so you have kind of all these new things happening. So I want to ask you because you're an IBM fellow and you're on the cloud side at IBM with all this red hat goodness you've got going on, Can you give us a preview of the maturity model that you see the IBM season, that red hats doing so that these architectures can be consistent across the platforms, because you've got def sec ops, you've got all these new things, you've got security and data at scale, it's not that obviously it's not easy, but it has to be easier. What's what's the preview of the maturity model? >>Yeah, you know, it really is about kind of a one plus one equals three conversation because red hats approach to provide a consistent platform across different environments in terms of Lennox and Kubernetes and the open shift platform um enables that first conversation about consistency and maturity um in many cases comes from consistency, being able to have standards and consistency and deployment across different environments leads to efficiency. Um But then IBM odds on that, you know, a set of conversations also around data governance, um consistency of data, cataloguing data management across environments, machine learning and ai right bringing in A. I. For I. T. Operations, helping you be more efficient to diagnose problems in the IT environment, other things like that. And then, you know, in addition, you know, automation ultimately right when we're talking about F. R. I. T. Ops, but also automation which begins down at the open shift level, you know with use of answerable and other things like that and extends them up into automation and monitoring of the environment and the workloads and other things like that. And so it really is a set of unlocking value through increasing amounts of insight, consistency across environments, layering that up into the data layer. Um And then overall being able to do that, you know efficiently um and and in a consistent way across the different environments, you know, where cloud needs to be deployed in order to be most effective, >>You know, David Hunt and I always talk about IBM and all the years we've been covering with the Cube, I mean we've pretty much been to every IBM events since the Cube was founded and we're on our 11th year now watching the progression, you guys have so much expertise in so many different verticals, just a history and the expertise and the knowledge and the people. They're so smart. Um I have to ask you how you evolved your portfolio with the cloud now um as it's gone through, as we are in the 2021 having these mature conversations around, you know, full integration, large scale enterprise deployments, Critical Mission Mission Critical Applications, critical infrastructure, data, cybersecurity, global scale. How are you evolve your portfolio to better support your clients in this new environment? >>Yeah, there's a lot in there and you hit a lot of the keywords already. Thank you. But but I think that you know um we have oriented our portfolio is such that all of our systems support Red hat um and open shift, um our cloud, we have redhead open shift as a managed service and kubernetes is at the core of what we're doing as a cloud provider and achieving our own operational efficiencies um from the perspective of our software portfolio, our core products are delivered in the form of what we refer to as cloud packs on open shift and therefore deploy across all these different environments where open shift is supported, um products available through Red hat marketplace, you know, which facilitates the billing and purchasing an acquisition and installation of anything within the red hat ecosystem. And I think, you know, for us this is also then become also a journey about operational efficiency. We're working with many of our clients is we're kind of chatting about before about their cloud operating model, about their transformation um and ultimately in many cases about consumption of cloud as a service. Um and so um as we, you know, extend our own cloud capabilities, you know, out into other environment through distributed cloud program, what we refer to as as IBM cloud satellite, you know, that enables consistent and secure deployment of cloud um into any environment um where someone needs, you know, cloud to be operated. Um And that operating model conversation with our clients, you know, has to do with their own open shift environments that has to do with their software from IBM, it has to do their cloud services. And we're really ultimately looking to partner with clients to find efficiency in each stage of that journey and application modernization in deployment and then in getting consistency across all their environments, leveraging everything from uh the red hat, you know, ACM capabilities for cluster management up through a i for beauty shops and automation and use of a common console across services. And so it's an exciting time because we've been able to align our portfolio, get consistency and delivery of the red half capabilities across our full portfolio and then enable clients to progress to really efficient consumption of cloud. >>That's awesome. Great stuff there. I got to ask you the question that's on probably your customers minds. They say, okay, Hillary, you got me sold me on this. I get what's going on, I just gotta go faster. How do I advance my hybrid cloud model faster? What are you gonna do for me? What do you have within the red hat world and IBM world? How are you gonna make me go faster? That's in high quality way? >>Yeah. You know, we often like to start with an assessment of the application landscape because you move faster by moving strategically, right? So assessing applications and the opportunity to move most quickly into a cloud model, um, what to containerized first, what to invest in lift and shift perspective, etcetera. So we we help people look at um what is strategic to move and where the return on investment will be the greatest. We help them also with migrations, Right? So we can help jump in with additional skills and establish a cloud center of competency and other things like that. That can help them move faster as well as move faster with us. And I think ultimately choosing the right portfolio for what is defined as cloud is so important, having uh, an open based architecture and cloud deployment choice is so important so that you don't get stuck in where you made some of your initial decisions. And so I think those are kind of the three core components to how we're helping our clients move as quickly as possible and at the rate and pace that the current climate frankly demands of everyone. >>You know, I was joking with a friend the other night about databases and how generations you have an argument about what is it database, what's it used for. And then when you kind of get to that argument, all agree. Then a new database comes along and then it's for different functions. Just the growth in the internet and computing. Same with cloud, you kind of see a parallel thing where it's like debate, what is cloud? Why does he even exist? People have different definitions. That was, you know, I mean a decade or so ago. And then now we're at almost another point where it's again another read definition of, okay, what's next for cloud? It's almost like an inflection point here again. So with that I got to ask you as a fellow and IBM VP and Cto, what is the IBM cloud because if I'm going to have a discussion with IBM at the center of it, what does it mean to me? That's what people would like to know. How do you respond to that? >>Yeah. You know, I think two things I think number one to the, to the question of accelerating people's journeys to the cloud, we are very focused within the IBM cloud business um on our industry specific programs on our work with our traditional enterprise client base and regulated industries, things like what we're doing in cloud for financial services, where we're taking cloud, um and not just doing some sort of marketing but doing technology, which contextualize is cloud to tackle the difficult problems of those industries. So financial services, telco uh et cetera. And so I think that's really about next generation cloud, right? Not cloud, just for oh, I'm consuming some sauce, and so it's going to be in the cloud. Um but SAS and I SV capabilities and an organization's own capabilities delivered in a way appropriate to their industry in in a way that enables them to consume cloud faster. And I think along those lines then kind of second thing of, you know, whereas cloud headed the conversation in the industry around confidential computing, I think is increasingly important. Um It's an area that we've invested now for several generations of technology capability, confidential computing means being able to operate even in a cloud environment where there are others around um but still have complete privacy and authority over what you're doing. And that extra degree of protection is so important right now. It's such a critical conversation um with all of our clients. Obviously those in things like, you know, digital assets, custody or healthcare records or other things like that are very concerned and focused about data privacy and protection. And these technologies are obvious to them in many cases that yes, they should take that extra step and leverage confidential computing and additional data protection. But really confidential computing we're seeing growing as a topic zero trust other models like that because everyone wants to know that not only are they moving faster because they're moving to cloud, but they're doing so in a way that is without any compromise in their total security, um and their data protection on behalf of their clients. So it's exciting times. >>So it's so exciting just to think about the possibilities because trust more than ever now, we're on a global society, whether it's cyber security or personal interactions to data signing off on code, what's the mutability of it? I mean, it's a complete interplay of all the fun things of uh of the technology kind of coming together. >>Absolutely, yeah. There is so much coming together and confidential computing and realizing it has been a decade long journey for us. Right? We brought our first products actually into cloud in 2019, but its hardware, it's software, it services. It's a lot of different things coming together. Um but we've been able to bring them together, bring them together at enterprise scale able to run entire databases and large workloads and you know um pharmaceutical record system for Germany and customer records for daimler and um you know what we're doing with banks globally etcetera and so you know it's it's wonderful to see all of that work from our research division and our developers and our cloud teams kind of come together and come to fruition and and really be real and be product sizable. So it's it's very exciting times and it's it's a conversation that I think I encourage everyone to learn a little bit more about confidential computing. >>Hillary hunter. Thank you for coming on the cube. Vice President CTO and IBM fellow which is a big distinction at IBM. Congratulations and thanks for coming on the Cuban sharing your insight. Always a pleasure to have you on an expert always. Great conversation. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure. >>Okay, so cubes coverage of red Hat Summit 21 of course, IBM think is right around the corner as well. So that's gonna be another great event as well. I'm john Feehery, a host of the cube bringing all the action. Thanks for watching. Yeah.

>>Thank you for joining us for accelerate next event. I hope you're enjoying it so far. I know you've heard about the industry challenges the I. T. Trends HP strategy from leaders in the industry and so today what we wanna do is focus on going deep on workload solutions. So in the most important workload solutions, the ones we always get asked about and so today we want to share with you some best practices, some examples of how we've helped other customers and how we can help you. All right with that. I'd like to start our panel now and introduce chris idler, who's the vice president and general manager of the element. Chris has extensive solution expertise, he's led HP solution engineering programs in the past. Welcome chris and Mark Nickerson, who is the Director of product management and his team is responsible for solution offerings, making sure we have the right solutions for our customers. Welcome guys, thanks for joining me. >>Thanks for having us christa. >>Yeah, so I'd like to start off with one of the big ones, the ones that we get asked about all the time, what we've been all been experienced in the last year, remote work, remote education and all the challenges that go along with that. So let's talk a little bit about the challenges that customers have had in transitioning to this remote work and remote education environments. >>Uh So I I really think that there's a couple of things that have stood out for me when we're talking with customers about V. D. I. Um first obviously there was a an unexpected and unprecedented level of interest in that area about a year ago and we all know the reasons why, but what it really uncovered was how little planning had gone into this space around a couple of key dynamics. One is scale. Um it's one thing to say, I'm going to enable V. D. I. For a part of my work force in a pre pandemic environment where the office was still the central hub of activity for work. It's a completely different scale. When you think about okay I'm going to have 50, 60, 80, maybe 100 of my workforce now distributed around the globe. Um Whether that's in an educational environment where now you're trying to accommodate staff and students in virtual learning, Whether that's in the area of things like Formula one racing, where we had the desire to still have events going on. But the need for a lot more social distancing. Not as many people able to be trackside but still needing to have that real time experience. This really manifested in a lot of ways and scale was something that I think a lot of customers hadn't put as much thought into. Initially the other area is around planning for experience a lot of times the V. D. I. Experience was planned out with very specific workloads are very specific applications in mind. And when you take it to a more broad based environment, if we're going to support multiple functions, multiple lines of business, there hasn't been as much planning or investigation that's gone into the application side. And so thinking about how graphically intense some applications are. Uh one customer that comes to mind would be Tyler I. S. D. Who did a fairly large rollout pre pandemic and as part of their big modernization effort, what they uncovered was even just changes in standard Windows applications Had become so much more graphically intense with Windows 10 with the latest updates with programs like Adobe that they were really needing to have an accelerated experience for a much larger percentage of their install base than they had counted on. So, um, in addition to planning for scale, you also need to have that visibility into what are the actual applications that are going to be used by these remote users? How graphically intense those might be. What's the logging experience going to be as well as the operating experience. And so really planning through that experience side as well as the scale and the number of users is kind of really two of the biggest, most important things that I've seen. >>You know, Mark, I'll just jump in real quick. I think you covered that pretty comprehensively there and it was well done. The a couple of observations I've made, one is just that um, V. D. I suddenly become like mission critical for sales. It's the front line, you know, for schools, it's the classroom, you know, that this isn't Uh cost cutting measure or uh optimization in IT. measure anymore. This is about running the business in a way it's a digital transformation. One aspect of about 1000 aspects of what does it mean to completely change how your business does. And I think what that translates to is that there's no margin for error, right? You know, you really need to to deploy this in a way that that performs, that understands what you're trying to use it for. That gives that end user the experience that they expect on their screen or on their handheld device or wherever they might be, whether it's a racetrack classroom or on the other end of a conference call or a boardroom. Right? So what we do in the engineering side of things when it comes to V. D. I. R. Really understand what's a tech worker, What's a knowledge worker? What's the power worker? What's a gP really going to look like? What time of day look like, You know, who's using it in the morning, Who is using it in the evening? When do you power up? When do you power down? Does the system behave? Does it just have the, it works function and what our clients can can get from H. P. E. Is um you know, a worldwide set of experiences that we can apply to, making sure that the solution delivers on its promises. So we're seeing the same thing you are christa, We see it all the time on beady eye and on the way businesses are changing the way they do business. >>Yeah. It's funny because when I talked to customers, you know, one of the things I heard that was a good tip is to roll it out to small groups first so you can really get a good sense of what the experiences before you roll it out to a lot of other people and then the expertise. Um It's not like every other workload that people have done before. So if you're new at it make sure you're getting the right advice expertise so that you're doing it the right way. Okay. One of the other things we've been talking a lot about today is digital transformation and moving to the edge. So now I'd like to shift gears and talk a little bit about how we've helped customers make that shift and this time I'll start with chris. >>All right Hey thanks. Okay so you know it's funny when it comes to edge because um the edge is different for every customer and every client and every single client that I've ever spoken to of. H. P. S. Has an edge somewhere. You know whether just like we were talking about the classroom might be the edge. But I think the industry when we're talking about edges talking about you know the internet of things if you remember that term from not too not too long ago you know and and the fact that everything is getting connected and how do we turn that into um into telemetry? And I think Mark is going to be able to talk through a a couple of examples of clients that we have in things like racing and automotive. But what we're learning about Edge is it's not just how do you make the Edge work? It's how do you integrate the edge into what you're already doing? And nobody's just the edge. Right. And so if it's if it's um ai ml dl there that's one way you want to use the edge. If it's a customer experience point of service, it's another, you know, there's yet another way to use the edge. So, it turns out that having a broad set of expertise like HP does, um, to be able to understand the different workloads that you're trying to tie together, including the ones that are running at the, at the edge. Often it involves really making sure you understand the data pipeline. What information is at the edge? How does it flow to the data center? How does it flow? And then which data center, which private cloud? Which public cloud are you using? Um, I think those are the areas where we, we really sort of shine is that we we understand the interconnectedness of these things. And so, for example, Red Bull, and I know you're going to talk about that in a minute mark, um the racing company, you know, for them the edges, the racetrack and, and you know, milliseconds or partial seconds winning and losing races, but then there's also an edge of um workers that are doing the design for the cars and how do they get quick access? So, um, we have a broad variety of infrastructure form factors and compute form factors to help with the edge. And this is another real advantage we have is that we we know how to put the right piece of equipment with the right software. And we also have great containerized software with our admiral container platform. So we're really becoming um, a perfect platform for hosting edge centric workloads and applications and data processing. Uh, it's uh um all the way down to things like a Superdome flex in the background. If you have some really, really, really big data that needs to be processed and of course our workhorse reliance that can be configured to support almost every combination of workload you have. So I know you started with edge christa but and and we're and we nail the edge with those different form factors, but let's make sure, you know, if you're listening to this, this show right now, um make sure you you don't isolate the edge and make sure they integrated with um with the rest of your operation, Mark, you know, what did I miss? >>Yeah, to that point chris I mean and this kind of actually ties the two things together that we've been talking about here at the Edge has become more critical as we have seen more work moving to the edge as where we do work, changes and evolves. And the edge has also become that much more closer because it has to be that much more connected. Um, to your point talking about where that edge exists, that edge can be a lot of different places. Um, but the one commonality really is that the edge is an area where work still needs to get accomplished. It can't just be a collection point and then everything gets shipped back to a data center back to some other area for the work. It's where the work actually needs to get done. Whether that's edge work in a used case like V. D. I. Or whether that's edge work. In the case of doing real time analytics, you mentioned red bull racing, I'll bring that up. I mean, you talk about uh, an area where time is of the essence, everything about that sport comes down to time. You're talking about wins and losses that are measured as you said in milliseconds. And that applies not just to how performance is happening on the track, but how you're able to adapt and modify the needs of the car, adapt to the evolving conditions on the track itself. And so when you talk about putting together a solution for an edge like that, you're right. It can't just be, here's a product that's going to allow us to collect data, ship it back someplace else and and wait for it to be processed in a couple of days, you have to have the ability to analyze that in real time. When we pull together a solution involving our compute products are storage products or networking products. When we're able to deliver that full package solution at the edge, what you see results like a 50 decrease in processing time to make real time analytic decisions about configurations for the car and adapting to real time test and track conditions. >>Yeah, really great point there. Um, and I really love the example of edge and racing because I mean that is where it all every millisecond counts. Um, and so important to process that at the edge. Now, switching gears just a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about um some examples of how we've helped customers when it comes to business agility and optimizing the workload for maximum outcome for business agility. Let's talk about some things that we've done to help customers with that >>mark, give it a >>shot. >>Uh, So when we, when we think about business agility, what you're really talking about is the ability to implement on the fly to be able to scale up and scale down the ability to adapt to real time changing situations. And I think the last year has been, has been an excellent example of exactly how so many businesses have been forced to do that. Um I think one of the areas that I think we've probably seen the most ability to help with customers in that agility area is around the space of private and hybrid clouds. Um if you take a look at the need that customers have to be able to migrate workloads and migrate data between public cloud environments, app development environments that may be hosted on site or maybe in the cloud, the ability to move out of development and into production and having the agility to then scale those application rollouts up, having the ability to have some of that. Um some of that private cloud flexibility in addition to a public cloud environment is something that is becoming increasingly crucial for a lot of our customers. >>All right, well, we could keep going on and on, but I'll stop it there. Uh, thank you so much Chris and Mark. This has been a great discussion. Thanks for sharing how we help other customers and some tips and advice for approaching these workloads. I thank you all for joining us and remind you to look at the on demand sessions. If you want to double click a little bit more into what we've been covering all day today, you can learn a lot more in those sessions. And I thank you for your time. Thanks for tuning in today.

momentum is gathering [Music] business is evolving more and more quickly moving through one transformation to the next because change never stops it only accelerates this is a world that demands a new kind of compute deployed from edge to core to cloud compute that can outpace the rapidly changing needs of businesses large and small unlocking new insights turning data into outcomes empowering new experiences compute that can scale up or scale down with minimum investment and effort guided by years of expertise protected by 360-degree security served up as a service to let it control own and manage massive workloads that weren't there yesterday and might not be there tomorrow this is the compute power that will drive progress giving your business what you need to be ready for what's next this is the compute power of hpe delivering your foundation for digital transformation welcome to accelerating next thank you so much for joining us today we have a great program we're going to talk tech with experts we'll be diving into the changing economics of our industry and how to think about the next phase of your digital transformation now very importantly we're also going to talk about how to optimize workloads from edge to exascale with full security and automation all coming to you as a service and with me to kick things off is neil mcdonald who's the gm of compute at hpe neil always a pleasure great to have you on it's great to see you dave now of course when we spoke a year ago you know we had hoped by this time we'd be face to face but you know here we are again you know this pandemic it's obviously affected businesses and people in in so many ways that we could never have imagined but in the reality is in reality tech companies have literally saved the day let's start off how is hpe contributing to helping your customers navigate through things that are so rapidly shifting in the marketplace well dave it's nice to be speaking to you again and i look forward to being able to do this in person some point the pandemic has really accelerated the need for transformation in businesses of all sizes more than three-quarters of cios report that the crisis has forced them to accelerate their strategic agendas organizations that were already transforming or having to transform faster and organizations that weren't on that journey yet are having to rapidly develop and execute a plan to adapt to this new reality our customers are on this journey and they need a partner for not just the compute technology but also the expertise and economics that they need for that digital transformation and for us this is all about unmatched optimization for workloads from the edge to the enterprise to exascale with 360 degree security and the intelligent automation all available in that as a service experience well you know as you well know it's a challenge to manage through any transformation let alone having to set up remote workers overnight securing them resetting budget priorities what are some of the barriers that you see customers are working hard to overcome simply per the organizations that we talk with are challenged in three areas they need the financial capacity to actually execute a transformation they need the access to the resource and the expertise needed to successfully deliver on a transformation and they have to find the way to match their investments with the revenues for the new services that they're putting in place to service their customers in this environment you know we have a data partner called etr enterprise technology research and the spending data that we see from them is it's quite dramatic i mean last year we saw a contraction of roughly five percent of in terms of i.t spending budgets etc and this year we're seeing a pretty significant rebound maybe a six to seven percent growth range is the prediction the challenge we see is organizations have to they've got to iterate on that i call it the forced march to digital transformation and yet they also have to balance their investments for example at the corporate headquarters which have kind of been neglected is there any help in sight for the customers that are trying to reduce their spend and also take advantage of their investment capacity i think you're right many businesses are understandably reluctant to loosen the purse strings right now given all of the uncertainty and often a digital transformation is viewed as a massive upfront investment that will pay off in the long term and that can be a real challenge in an environment like this but it doesn't need to be we work through hpe financial services to help our customers create the investment capacity to accelerate the transformation often by leveraging assets they already have and helping them monetize them in order to free up the capacity to accelerate what's next for their infrastructure and for their business so can we drill into that i wonder if we could add some specifics i mean how do you ensure a successful outcome what are you really paying attention to as those sort of markers for success well when you think about the journey that an organization is going through it's tough to be able to run the business and transform at the same time and one of the constraints is having the people with enough bandwidth and enough expertise to be able to do both so we're addressing that in two ways for our customers one is by helping them confidently deploy new solutions which we have engineered leveraging decades of expertise and experience in engineering to deliver those workload optimized portfolios that take the risk and the complexity out of assembling some of these solutions and give them a pre-packaged validated supported solution intact that simplifies that work for them but in other cases we can enhance our customers bandwidth by bringing them hpe point next experts with all of the capabilities we have to help them plan deliver and support these i.t projects and transformations organizations can get on a faster track of modernization getting greater insight and control as they do it we're a trusted partner to get the most for a business that's on this journey in making these critical compute investments to underpin the transformations and whether that's planning to optimizing to safe retirement at the end of life we can bring that expertise to bayer to help amplify what our customers already have in-house and help them accelerate and succeed in executing these transformations thank you for that neil so let's talk about some of the other changes that customers are seeing and the cloud has obviously forced customers and their suppliers to really rethink how technology is packaged how it's consumed how it's priced i mean there's no doubt in that to take green lake it's obviously a leading example of a pay as pay-as-you-scale infrastructure model and it could be applied on-prem or hybrid can you maybe give us a sense as to where you are today with green lake well it's really exciting you know from our first pay-as-you-go offering back in 2006 15 years ago to the introduction of green lake hpe has really been paving the way on consumption-based services through innovation and partnership to help meet the exact needs of our customers hpe green lake provides an experience that's the best of both worlds a simple pay-per-use technology model with the risk management of data that's under our customers direct control and it lets customers shift to everything as a service in order to free up capital and avoid that upfront expense that we talked about they can do this anywhere at any scale or any size and really hpe green lake is the cloud that comes to you like that so we've touched a little bit on how customers can maybe overcome some of the barriers to transformation what about the nature of transformations themselves i mean historically there was a lot of lip service paid to digital and and there's a lot of complacency frankly but you know that covered wrecking ball meme that so well describes that if you're not a digital business essentially you're going to be out of business so neil as things have evolved how is hpe addressed the new requirements well the new requirements are really about what customers are trying to achieve and four very common themes that we see are enabling the productivity of a remote workforce that was never really part of the plan for many organizations being able to develop and deliver new apps and services in order to service customers in a different way or drive new revenue streams being able to get insights from data so that in these tough times they can optimize their business more thoroughly and then finally think about the efficiency of an agile hybrid private cloud infrastructure especially one that now has to integrate the edge and we're really thrilled to be helping our customers accelerate all of these and more with hpe compute i want to double click on that remote workforce productivity i mean again the surveys that we see 46 percent of the cios say that productivity improved with the whole work from home remote work trend and on average those improvements were in the four percent range which is absolutely enormous i mean when you think about that how does hpe specifically you know help here what do you guys do well every organization in the world has had to adapt to a different style of working and with more remote workers than they had before and for many organizations that's going to become the new normal even post pandemic many it shops are not well equipped for the infrastructure to provide that experience because if all your workers are remote the resiliency of that infrastructure the latencies of that infrastructure the reliability of are all incredibly important so we provide comprehensive solutions expertise and as a service options that support that remote work through virtual desktop infrastructure or vdi so that our customers can support that new normal of virtual engagements online everything across industries wherever they are and that's just one example of many of the workload optimized solutions that we're providing for our customers is about taking out the guesswork and the uncertainty in delivering on these changes that they have to deploy as part of their transformation and we can deliver that range of workload optimized solutions across all of these different use cases because of our broad range of innovation in compute platforms that span from the ruggedized edge to the data center all the way up to exascale and hpc i mean that's key if you're trying to affect the digital transformation and you don't have to fine-tune you know be basically build your own optimized solutions if i can buy that rather than having to build it and rely on your r d you know that's key what else is hpe doing you know to deliver things new apps new services you know your microservices containers the whole developer trend what's going on there well that's really key because organizations are all seeking to evolve their mix of business and bring new services and new capabilities new ways to reach their customers new way to reach their employees new ways to interact in their ecosystem all digitally and that means app development and many organizations of course are embracing container technology to do that today so with the hpe container platform our customers can realize that agility and efficiency that comes with containerization and use it to provide insights to their data more and more that data of course is being machine generated or generated at the edge or the near edge and it can be a real challenge to manage that data holistically and not have silos and islands an hpe esmerald data fabric speeds the agility and access to data with a unified platform that can span across the data centers multiple clouds and even the edge and that enables data analytics that can create insights powering a data-driven production-oriented cloud-enabled analytics and ai available anytime anywhere in any scale and it's really exciting to see the kind of impact that that can have in helping businesses optimize their operations in these challenging times you got to go where the data is and the data is distributed it's decentralized so i i i like the esmerel of vision and execution there so that all sounds good but with digital transformation you get you're going to see more compute in in hybrid's deployments you mentioned edge so the surface area it's like the universe it's it's ever-expanding you mentioned you know remote work and work from home before so i'm curious where are you investing your resources from a cyber security perspective what can we count on from hpe there well you can count on continued leadership from hpe as the world's most secure industry standard server portfolio we provide an enhanced and holistic 360 degree view to security that begins in the manufacturing supply chain and concludes with a safeguarded end-of-life decommissioning and of course we've long set the bar for security with our work on silicon root of trust and we're extending that to the application tier but in addition to the security customers that are building this modern hybrid are private cloud including the integration of the edge need other elements too they need an intelligent software-defined control plane so that they can automate their compute fleets from all the way at the edge to the core and while scale and automation enable efficiency all private cloud infrastructures are competing with web scale economics and that's why we're democratizing web scale technologies like pinsando to bring web scale economics and web scale architecture to the private cloud our partners are so important in helping us serve our customers needs yeah i mean hp has really upped its ecosystem game since the the middle of last decade when when you guys reorganized it you became like even more partner friendly so maybe give us a preview of what's coming next in that regard from today's event well dave we're really excited to have hp's ceo antonio neri speaking with pat gelsinger from intel and later lisa sue from amd and later i'll have the chance to catch up with john chambers the founder and ceo of jc2 ventures to discuss the state of the market today yeah i'm jealous you guys had some good interviews coming up neil thanks so much for joining us today on the virtual cube you've really shared a lot of great insight how hpe is partnering with customers it's it's always great to catch up with you hopefully we can do so face to face you know sooner rather than later well i look forward to that and uh you know no doubt our world has changed and we're here to help our customers and partners with the technology the expertise and the economics they need for these digital transformations and we're going to bring them unmatched workload optimization from the edge to exascale with that 360 degree security with the intelligent automation and we're going to deliver it all as an as a service experience we're really excited to be helping our customers accelerate what's next for their businesses and it's been really great talking with you today about that dave thanks for having me you're very welcome it's been super neal and i actually you know i had the opportunity to speak with some of your customers about their digital transformation and the role of that hpe plays there so let's dive right in we're here on the cube covering hpe accelerating next and with me is rule siestermans who is the head of it at the netherlands cancer institute also known as nki welcome rule thank you very much great to be here hey what can you tell us about the netherlands cancer institute maybe you could talk about your core principles and and also if you could weave in your specific areas of expertise yeah maybe first introduction to the netherlands institute um we are one of the top 10 comprehensive cancers in the world and what we do is we combine a hospital for treating patients with cancer and a recent institute under one roof so discoveries we do we find within the research we can easily bring them back to the clinic and vis-a-versa so we have about 750 researchers and about 3 000 other employees doctors nurses and and my role is to uh to facilitate them at their best with it got it so i mean everybody talks about digital digital transformation to us it all comes down to data so i'm curious how you collect and take advantage of medical data specifically to support nki's goals maybe some of the challenges that your organization faces with the amount of data the speed of data coming in just you know the the complexities of data how do you handle that yeah it's uh it's it's it's challenge and uh yeah what we we have we have a really a large amount of data so we produce uh terabytes a day and we we have stored now more than one petabyte on data at this moment and yeah it's uh the challenge is to to reuse the data optimal for research and to share it with other institutions so that needs to have a flexible infrastructure for that so a fast really fast network uh big data storage environment but the real challenge is not not so much the i.t bus is more the quality of the data so we have a lot of medical systems all producing those data and how do we combine them and and yeah get the data fair so findable accessible interoperable and reusable uh for research uh purposes so i think that's the main challenge the quality of the data yeah very common themes that we hear from from other customers i wonder if you could paint a picture of your environment and maybe you can share where hpe solutions fit in what what value they bring to your organization's mission yeah i think it brings a lot of flexibility so what we did with hpe is that we we developed a software-defined data center and then a virtual workplace for our researchers and doctors and that's based on the hpe infrastructure and what we wanted to build is something that expect the needs of doctors and nurses but also the researchers and the two kind of different blood groups blood groups and with different needs so uh but we wanted to create one infrastructure because we wanted to make the connection between the hospital and the research that's that's more important so um hpe helped helped us not only with the the infrastructure itself but also designing the whole architecture of it and for example what we did is we we bought a lot of hardware and and and the hardware is really uh doing his his job between nine till five uh dennis everything is working within everyone is working within the institution but all the other time in evening and and nights hours and also the redundant environment we have for the for our healthcare uh that doesn't do nothing of much more or less uh in in those uh dark hours so what we created together with nvidia and hpe and vmware is that we we call it video by day compute by night so we reuse those those servers and those gpu capacity for computational research jobs within the research that's you mentioned flexibility for this genius and and so we're talking you said you know a lot of hard ways they're probably proliant i think synergy aruba networking is in there how are you using this environment actually the question really is when you think about nki's digital transformation i mean is this sort of the fundamental platform that you're using is it a maybe you could describe that yeah it's it's the fundamental platform to to to work on and and and what we see is that we have we have now everything in place for it but the real challenge is is the next steps we are in so we have a a software defined data center we are cloud ready so the next steps is to to make the connection to the cloud to to give more automation to our researchers so they don't have to wait a couple of weeks for it to do it but they can do it themselves with a couple of clicks so i think the basic is we are really flexible and we have a lot of opportunities for automation for example but the next step is uh to create that business value uh really for for our uh employees that's a great story and a very important mission really fascinating stuff thanks for sharing this with our audience today really appreciate your time thank you very much okay this is dave vellante with thecube stay right there for more great content you're watching accelerating next from hpe i'm really glad to have you with us today john i know you stepped out of vacation so thanks very much for joining us neil it's great to be joining you from hawaii and i love the partnership with hpe and the way you're reinventing an industry well you've always excelled john at catching market transitions and there are so many transitions and paradigm shifts happening in the market and tech specifically right now as you see companies rush to accelerate their transformation what do you see as the keys to success well i i think you're seeing actually an acceleration following the covet challenges that all of us faced and i wasn't sure that would happen it's probably at three times the paces before there was a discussion point about how quickly the companies need to go digital uh that's no longer a discussion point almost all companies are moving with tremendous feed on digital and it's the ability as the cloud moves to the edge with compute and security uh at the edge and how you deliver these services to where the majority of applications uh reside are going to determine i think the future of the next generation company leadership and it's the area that neil we're working together on in many many ways so i think it's about innovation it's about the cloud moving to the edge and an architectural play with silicon to speed up that innovation yes we certainly see our customers of all sizes trying to accelerate what's next and get that digital transformation moving even faster as a result of the environment that we're all living in and we're finding that workload focus is really key uh customers in all kinds of different scales are having to adapt and support the remote workforces with vdi and as you say john they're having to deal with the deployment of workloads at the edge with so much data getting generated at the edge and being acted upon at the edge the analytics and the infrastructure to manage that as these processes get digitized and automated is is so important for so many workflows we really believe that the choice of infrastructure partner that underpins those transformations really matters a partner that can help create the financial capacity that can help optimize your environments and enable our customers to focus on supporting their business are all super key to success and you mentioned that in the last year there's been a lot of rapid course correction for all of us a demand for velocity and the ability to deploy resources at scale is more and more needed maybe more than ever what are you hearing customers looking for as they're rolling out their digital transformation efforts well i think they're being realistic that they're going to have to move a lot faster than before and they're also realistic on core versus context they're they're their core capability is not the technology of themselves it's how to deploy it and they're we're looking for partners that can help bring them there together but that can also innovate and very often the leaders who might have been a leader in a prior generation may not be on this next move hence the opportunity for hpe and startups like vinsano to work together as the cloud moves the edge and perhaps really balance or even challenge some of the big big incumbents in this category as well as partners uniquely with our joint customers on how do we achieve their business goals tell me a little bit more about how you move from this being a technology positioning for hpe to literally helping your customers achieve their outcomes they want and and how are you changing hpe in that way well i think when you consider these transformations the infrastructure that you choose to underpin it is incredibly critical our customers need a software-defined management plan that enables them to automate so much of their infrastructure they need to be able to take faster action where the data is and to do all of this in a cloud-like experience where they can deliver their infrastructure as code anywhere from exascale through the enterprise data center to the edge and really critically they have to be able to do this securely which becomes an ever increasing challenge and doing it at the right economics relative to their alternatives and part of the right economics of course includes adopting the best practices from web scale architectures and bringing them to the heart of the enterprise and in our partnership with pensando we're working to enable these new ideas of web scale architecture and fleet management for the enterprise at scale you know what is fun is hpe has an unusual talent from the very beginning in silicon valley of working together with others and creating a win-win innovation approach if you watch what your team has been able to do and i want to say this for everybody listening you work with startups better than any other company i've seen in terms of how you do win win together and pinsando is just the example of that uh this startup which by the way is the ninth time i have done with this team a new generation of products and we're designing that together with hpe in terms of as the cloud moves to the edge how do we get the leverage out of that and produce the results for your customers on this to give the audience appeal for it you're talking with pensano alone in terms of the efficiency versus an amazon amazon web services of an order of magnitude i'm not talking 100 greater i'm talking 10x greater and things from throughput number of connections you do the jitter capability etc and it talks how two companies uniquely who believe in innovation and trust each other and have very similar cultures can work uniquely together on it how do you bring that to life with an hpe how do you get your company to really say let's harvest the advantages of your ecosystem in your advantages of startups well as you say more and more companies are faced with these challenges of hitting the right economics for the infrastructure and we see many enterprises of various sizes trying to come to terms with infrastructures that look a lot more like a service provider that require that software-defined management plane and the automation to deploy at scale and with the work we're doing with pinsando the benefits that we bring in terms of the observability and the telemetry and the encryption and the distributed network functions but also a security architecture that enables that efficiency on the individual nodes is just so key to building a competitive architecture moving forwards for an on-prem private cloud or internal service provider operation and we're really excited about the work we've done to bring that technology across our portfolio and bring that to our customers so that they can achieve those kind of economics and capabilities and go focus on their own transformations rather than building and running the infrastructure themselves artisanally and having to deal with integrating all of that great technology themselves makes tremendous sense you know neil you and i work on a board together et cetera i've watched your summarization skills and i always like to ask the question after you do a quick summary like this what are the three or four takeaways we would like for the audience to get out of our conversation well that's a great question thanks john we believe that customers need a trusted partner to work through these digital transformations that are facing them and confront the challenge of the time that the covet crisis has taken away as you said up front every organization is having to transform and transform more quickly and more digitally and working with a trusted partner with the expertise that only comes from decades of experience is a key enabler for that a partner with the ability to create the financial capacity to transform the workload expertise to get more from the infrastructure and optimize the environment so that you can focus on your own business a partner that can deliver the systems and the security and the automation that makes it easily deployable and manageable anywhere you need them at any scale whether the edge the enterprise data center or all the way up to exascale in high performance computing and can do that all as a service as we can at hpe through hpe green lake enabling our customers most critical workloads it's critical that all of that is underpinned by an ai powered digitally enabled service experience so that our customers can get on with their transformation and running their business instead of dealing with their infrastructure and really only hpe can provide this combination of capabilities and we're excited and committed to helping our customers accelerate what's next for their businesses neil it's fun i i love being your partner and your wingman our values and cultures are so similar thanks for letting me be a part of this discussion today thanks for being with us john it was great having you here oh it's friends for life okay now we're going to dig into the world of video which accounts for most of the data that we store and requires a lot of intense processing capabilities to stream here with me is jim brickmeyer who's the chief marketing and product officer at vlasics jim good to see you good to see you as well so tell us a little bit more about velocity what's your role in this tv streaming world and maybe maybe talk about your ideal customer sure sure so um we're leading provider of carrier great video solutions video streaming solutions and advertising uh technology to service providers around the globe so we primarily sell software-based solutions to uh cable telco wireless providers and broadcasters that are interested in launching their own um video streaming services to consumers yeah so this is this big time you know we're not talking about mom and pop you know a little video outfit but but maybe you can help us understand that and just the sheer scale of of the tv streaming that you're doing maybe relate it to you know the overall internet usage how much traffic are we talking about here yeah sure so uh yeah so our our customers tend to be some of the largest um network service providers around the globe uh and if you look at the uh the video traffic um with respect to the total amount of traffic that that goes through the internet video traffic accounts for about 90 of the total amount of data that uh that traverses the internet so video is uh is a pretty big component of um of how people when they look at internet technologies they look at video streaming technologies uh you know this is where we we focus our energy is in carrying that traffic as efficiently as possible and trying to make sure that from a consumer standpoint we're all consumers of video and uh make sure that the consumer experience is a high quality experience that you don't experience any glitches and that that ultimately if people are paying for that content that they're getting the value that they pay for their for their money uh in their entertainment experience i think people sometimes take it for granted it's like it's like we we all forget about dial up right those days are long gone but the early days of video was so jittery and restarting and and the thing too is that you know when you think about the pandemic and the boom in streaming that that hit you know we all sort of experienced that but the service levels were pretty good i mean how much how much did the pandemic affect traffic what kind of increases did you see and how did that that impact your business yeah sure so uh you know obviously while it was uh tragic to have a pandemic and have people locked down what we found was that when people returned to their homes what they did was they turned on their their television they watched on on their mobile devices and we saw a substantial increase in the amount of video streaming traffic um over service provider networks so what we saw was on the order of 30 to 50 percent increase in the amount of data that was traversing those networks so from a uh you know from an operator's standpoint a lot more traffic a lot more challenging to to go ahead and carry that traffic a lot of work also on our behalf and trying to help operators prepare because we could actually see geographically as the lockdowns happened [Music] certain areas locked down first and we saw that increase so we were able to help operators as as all the lockdowns happened around the world we could help them prepare for that increase in traffic i mean i was joking about dial-up performance again in the early days of the internet if your website got fifty percent more traffic you know suddenly you were you your site was coming down so so that says to me jim that architecturally you guys were prepared for that type of scale so maybe you could paint a picture tell us a little bit about the solutions you're using and how you differentiate yourself in your market to handle that type of scale sure yeah so we so we uh we really are focused on what we call carrier grade solutions which are designed for that massive amount of scale um so we really look at it you know at a very granular level when you look um at the software and and performance capabilities of the software what we're trying to do is get as many streams as possible out of each individual piece of hardware infrastructure so that we can um we can optimize first of all maximize the uh the efficiency of that device make sure that the costs are very low but one of the other challenges is as you get to millions and millions of streams and that's what we're delivering on a daily basis is millions and millions of video streams that you have to be able to scale those platforms out um in an effective in a cost effective way and to make sure that it's highly resilient as well so we don't we don't ever want a consumer to have a circumstance where a network glitch or a server issue or something along those lines causes some sort of uh glitch in their video and so there's a lot of work that we do in the software to make sure that it's a very very seamless uh stream and that we're always delivering at the very highest uh possible bit rate for consumers so that if you've got that giant 4k tv that we're able to present a very high resolution picture uh to those devices and what's the infrastructure look like underneath you you're using hpe solutions where do they fit in yeah that's right yeah so we uh we've had a long-standing partnership with hpe um and we work very closely with them to try to identify the specific types of hardware that are ideal for the the type of applications that we run so we run video streaming applications and video advertising applications targeted kinds of video advertising technologies and when you look at some of these applications they have different types of requirements in some cases it's uh throughput where we're taking a lot of data in and streaming a lot of data out in other cases it's storage where we have to have very high density high performance storage systems in other cases it's i gotta have really high capacity storage but the performance does not need to be quite as uh as high from an io perspective and so we work very closely with hpe on trying to find exactly the right box for the right application and then beyond that also talking with our customers to understand there are different maintenance considerations associated with different types of hardware so we tend to focus on as much as possible if we're going to place servers deep at the edge of the network we will make everything um maintenance free or as maintenance free as we can make it by putting very high performance solid state storage into those servers so that uh we we don't have to physically send people to those sites to uh to do any kind of maintenance so it's a it's a very cooperative relationship that we have with hpe to try to define those boxes great thank you for that so last question um maybe what the future looks like i love watching on my mobile device headphones in no distractions i'm getting better recommendations how do you see the future of tv streaming yeah so i i think the future of tv streaming is going to be a lot more personal right so uh this is what you're starting to see through all of the services that are out there is that most of the video service providers whether they're online providers or they're your traditional kinds of paid tv operators is that they're really focused on the consumer and trying to figure out what is of value to you personally in the past it used to be that services were one size fits all and um and so everybody watched the same program right at the same time and now that's uh that's we have this technology that allows us to deliver different types of content to people on different screens at different times and to advertise to those individuals and to cater to their individual preferences and so using that information that we have about how people watch and and what people's interests are we can create a much more engaging and compelling uh entertainment experience on all of those screens and um and ultimately provide more value to consumers awesome story jim thanks so much for keeping us helping us just keep entertained during the pandemic i really appreciate your time sure thanks all right keep it right there everybody you're watching hpes accelerating next first of all pat congratulations on your new role as intel ceo how are you approaching your new role and what are your top priorities over your first few months thanks antonio for having me it's great to be here with you all today to celebrate the launch of your gen 10 plus portfolio and the long history that our two companies share in deep collaboration to deliver amazing technology to our customers together you know what an exciting time it is to be in this industry technology has never been more important for humanity than it is today everything is becoming digital and driven by what i call the four key superpowers the cloud connectivity artificial intelligence and the intelligent edge they are super powers because each expands the impact of the others and together they are reshaping every aspect of our lives and work in this landscape of rapid digital disruption intel's technology and leadership products are more critical than ever and we are laser focused on bringing to bear the depth and breadth of software silicon and platforms packaging and process with at scale manufacturing to help you and our customers capitalize on these opportunities and fuel their next generation innovations i am incredibly excited about continuing the next chapter of a long partnership between our two companies the acceleration of the edge has been significant over the past year with this next wave of digital transformation we expect growth in the distributed edge and age build out what are you seeing on this front like you said antonio the growth of edge computing and build out is the next key transition in the market telecommunications service providers want to harness the potential of 5g to deliver new services across multiple locations in real time as we start building solutions that will be prevalent in a 5g digital environment we will need a scalable flexible and programmable network some use cases are the massive scale iot solutions more robust consumer devices and solutions ar vr remote health care autonomous robotics and manufacturing environments and ubiquitous smart city solutions intel and hp are partnering to meet this new wave head on for 5g build out and the rise of the distributed enterprise this build out will enable even more growth as businesses can explore how to deliver new experiences and unlock new insights from the new data creation beyond the four walls of traditional data centers and public cloud providers network operators need to significantly increase capacity and throughput without dramatically growing their capital footprint their ability to achieve this is built upon a virtualization foundation an area of intel expertise for example we've collaborated with verizon for many years and they are leading the industry and virtualizing their entire network from the core the edge a massive redesign effort this requires advancements in silicon and power management they expect intel to deliver the new capabilities in our roadmap so ecosystem partners can continue to provide innovative and efficient products with this optimization for hybrid we can jointly provide a strong foundation to take on the growth of data-centric workloads for data analytics and ai to build and deploy models faster to accelerate insights that will deliver additional transformation for organizations of all types the network transformation journey isn't easy we are continuing to unleash the capabilities of 5g and the power of the intelligent edge yeah the combination of the 5g built out and the massive new growth of data at the edge are the key drivers for the age of insight these new market drivers offer incredible new opportunities for our customers i am excited about recent launch of our new gen 10 plus portfolio with intel together we are laser focused on delivering joint innovation for customers that stretches from the edge to x scale how do you see new solutions that this helping our customers solve the toughest challenges today i talked earlier about the superpowers that are driving the rapid acceleration of digital transformation first the proliferation of the hybrid cloud is delivering new levels of efficiency and scale and the growth of the cloud is democratizing high-performance computing opening new frontiers of knowledge and discovery next we see ai and machine learning increasingly infused into every application from the edge to the network to the cloud to create dramatically better insights and the rapid adoption of 5g as i talked about already is fueling new use cases that demand lower latencies and higher bandwidth this in turn is pushing computing to the edge closer to where the data is created and consumed the confluence of these trends is leading to the biggest and fastest build out of computing in human history to keep pace with this rapid digital transformation we recognize that infrastructure has to be built with the flexibility to support a broad set of workloads and that's why over the last several years intel has built an unmatched portfolio to deliver every component of intelligent silicon our customers need to move store and process data from the cpus to fpgas from memory to ssds from ethernet to switch silicon to silicon photonics and software our 3rd gen intel xeon scalable processors and our data centric portfolio deliver new core performance and higher bandwidth providing our customers the capabilities they need to power these critical workloads and we love seeing all the unique ways customers like hpe leverage our technology and solution offerings to create opportunities and solve their most pressing challenges from cloud gaming to blood flow to brain scans to financial market security the opportunities are endless with flexible performance i am proud of the amazing innovation we are bringing to support our customers especially as they respond to new data-centric workloads like ai and analytics that are critical to digital transformation these new requirements create a need for compute that's warlord optimized for performance security ease of use and the economics of business now more than ever compute matters it is the foundation for this next wave of digital transformation by pairing our compute with our software and capabilities from hp green lake we can support our customers as they modernize their apps and data quickly they seamlessly and securely scale them anywhere at any size from edge to x scale but thank you for joining us for accelerating next today i know our audience appreciated hearing your perspective on the market and how we're partnering together to support their digital transformation journey i am incredibly excited about what lies ahead for hp and intel thank you thank you antonio great to be with you today we just compressed about a decade of online commerce progress into about 13 or 14 months so now we're going to look at how one retailer navigated through the pandemic and what the future of their business looks like and with me is alan jensen who's the chief information officer and senior vice president of the sawing group hello alan how are you fine thank you good to see you hey look you know when i look at the 100 year history plus of your company i mean it's marked by transformations and some of them are quite dramatic so you're denmark's largest retailer i wonder if you could share a little bit more about the company its history and and how it continues to improve the customer experience well at the same time keeping costs under control so vital in your business yeah yeah the company founded uh approximately 100 years ago with a department store in in oahu's in in denmark and i think in the 60s we founded the first supermarket in in denmark with the self-service and combined textile and food in in the same store and in beginning 70s we founded the first hyper market in in denmark and then the this calendar came from germany early in in 1980 and we started a discount chain and so we are actually building department store in hyber market info in in supermarket and in in the discount sector and today we are more than 1 500 stores in in three different countries in in denmark poland and germany and especially for the danish market we have a approximately 38 markets here and and is the the leader we have over the last 10 years developed further into online first in non-food and now uh in in food with home delivery with click and collect and we have done some magnetism acquisition in in the convenience with mailbox solutions to our customers and we have today also some restaurant burger chain and and we are running the starbuck in denmark so i can you can see a full plate of different opportunities for our customer in especially denmark it's an awesome story and of course the founder's name is still on the masthead what a great legacy now of course the pandemic is is it's forced many changes quite dramatic including the the behaviors of retail customers maybe you could talk a little bit about how your digital transformation at the sawing group prepared you for this shift in in consumption patterns and any other challenges that that you faced yeah i think uh luckily as for some of the you can say the core it solution in in 19 we just roll out using our computers via direct access so you can work from anywhere whether you are traveling from home and so on we introduced a new agile scrum delivery model and and we just finalized the rolling out teams in in in january february 20 and that was some very strong thing for suddenly moving all our employees from from office to to home and and more or less overnight we succeed uh continuing our work and and for it we have not missed any deadline or task for the business in in 2020 so i think that was pretty awesome to to see and for the business of course the pandemic changed a lot as the change in customer behavior more or less overnight with plus 50 80 on the online solution forced us to do some different priorities so we were looking at the food home delivery uh and and originally expected to start rolling out in in 2022 uh but took a fast decision in april last year to to launch immediately and and we have been developing that uh over the last eight months and has been live for the last three months now in the market so so you can say the pandemic really front loaded some of our strategic actions for for two to three years uh yeah that was very exciting what's that uh saying luck is the byproduct of great planning and preparation so let's talk about when you're in a company with some strong financial situation that you can move immediately with investment when you take such decision then then it's really thrilling yeah right awesome um two-part question talk about how you leverage data to support the solid groups mission and you know drive value for customers and maybe you could talk about some of the challenges you face with just the amount of data the speed of data et cetera yeah i said data is everything when you are in retail as a retailer's detail as you need to monitor your operation down to each store eats department and and if you can say we have challenge that that is that data is just growing rapidly as a year by year it's growing more and more because you are able to be more detailed you're able to capture more data and for a company like ours we need to be updated every morning as a our fully updated sales for all unit department single sku selling in in the stores is updated 3 o'clock in the night and send out to all top management and and our managers all over the company it's actually 8 000 reports going out before six o'clock every day in the morning we have introduced a loyalty program and and you are capturing a lot of data on on customer behavior what is their preferred offers what is their preferred time in the week for buying different things and all these data is now used to to personalize our offers to our cost of value customers so we can be exactly hitting the best time and and convert it to sales data is also now used for what we call intelligent price reductions as a so instead of just reducing prices with 50 if it's uh close to running out of date now the system automatically calculate whether a store has just enough to to finish with full price before end of day or actually have much too much and and need to maybe reduce by 80 before as being able to sell so so these automated [Music] solutions built on data is bringing efficiency into our operation wow you make it sound easy these are non-trivial items so congratulations on that i wonder if we could close hpe was kind enough to introduce us tell us a little bit about the infrastructure the solutions you're using how they differentiate you in the market and i'm interested in you know why hpe what distinguishes them why the choice there yeah as a when when you look out a lot is looking at moving data to the cloud but we we still believe that uh due to performance due to the availability uh more or less on demand we we still don't see the cloud uh strong enough for for for selling group uh capturing all our data we have been quite successfully having one data truth across the whole con company and and having one just one single bi solution and having that huge amount of data i think we have uh one of the 10 largest sub business warehouses in global and but on the other hand we also want to be agile and want to to scale when needed so getting close to a cloud solution we saw it be a green lake as a solution getting close to the cloud but still being on-prem and could deliver uh what we need to to have a fast performance on on data but still in a high quality and and still very secure for us to run great thank you for that and thank alan thanks so much for your for your time really appreciate your your insights and your congratulations on the progress and best of luck in the future thank you all right keep it right there we have tons more content coming you're watching accelerating next from hpe [Music] welcome lisa and thank you for being here with us today antonio it's wonderful to be here with you as always and congratulations on your launch very very exciting for you well thank you lisa and we love this partnership and especially our friendship which has been very special for me for the many many years that we have worked together but i wanted to have a conversation with you today and obviously digital transformation is a key topic so we know the next wave of digital transformation is here being driven by massive amounts of data an increasingly distributed world and a new set of data intensive workloads so how do you see world optimization playing a role in addressing these new requirements yeah no absolutely antonio and i think you know if you look at the depth of our partnership over the last you know four or five years it's really about bringing the best to our customers and you know the truth is we're in this compute mega cycle right now so it's amazing you know when i know when you talk to customers when we talk to customers they all need to do more and and frankly compute is becoming quite specialized so whether you're talking about large enterprises or you're talking about research institutions trying to get to the next phase of uh compute so that workload optimization that we're able to do with our processors your system design and then you know working closely with our software partners is really the next wave of this this compute cycle so thanks lisa you talk about mega cycle so i want to make sure we take a moment to celebrate the launch of our new generation 10 plus compute products with the latest announcement hp now has the broadest amd server portfolio in the industry spanning from the edge to exascale how important is this partnership and the portfolio for our customers well um antonio i'm so excited first of all congratulations on your 19 world records uh with uh milan and gen 10 plus it really is building on you know sort of our you know this is our third generation of partnership with epic and you know you are with me right at the very beginning actually uh if you recall you joined us in austin for our first launch of epic you know four years ago and i think what we've created now is just an incredible portfolio that really does go across um you know all of the uh you know the verticals that are required we've always talked about how do we customize and make things easier for our customers to use together and so i'm very excited about your portfolio very excited about our partnership and more importantly what we can do for our joint customers it's amazing to see 19 world records i think i'm really proud of the work our joint team do every generation raising the bar and that's where you know we we think we have a shared goal of ensuring that customers get the solution the services they need any way they want it and one way we are addressing that need is by offering what we call as a service delivered to hp green lake so let me ask a question what feedback are you hearing from your customers with respect to choice meaning consuming as a service these new solutions yeah now great point i think first of all you know hpe green lake is very very impressive so you know congratulations um to uh to really having that solution and i think we're hearing the same thing from customers and you know the truth is the compute infrastructure is getting more complex and everyone wants to be able to deploy sort of the right compute at the right price point um you know in in terms of also accelerating time to deployment with the right security with the right quality and i think these as a service offerings are going to become more and more important um as we go forward in the compute uh you know capabilities and you know green lake is a leadership product offering and we're very very you know pleased and and honored to be part of it yeah we feel uh lisa we are ahead of the competition and um you know you think about some of our competitors now coming with their own offerings but i think the ability to drive joint innovation is what really differentiate us and that's why we we value the partnership and what we have been doing together on giving the customers choice finally you know i know you and i are both incredibly excited about the joint work we're doing with the us department of energy the oak ridge national laboratory we think about large data sets and you know and the complexity of the analytics we're running but we both are going to deliver the world's first exascale system which is remarkable to me so what this milestone means to you and what type of impact do you think it will make yes antonio i think our work with oak ridge national labs and hpe is just really pushing the envelope on what can be done with computing and if you think about the science that we're going to be able to enable with the first exascale machine i would say there's a tremendous amount of innovation that has already gone in to the machine and we're so excited about delivering it together with hpe and you know we also think uh that the super computing technology that we're developing you know at this broad scale will end up being very very important for um you know enterprise compute as well and so it's really an opportunity to kind of take that bleeding edge and really deploy it over the next few years so super excited about it i think you know you and i have a lot to do over the uh the next few months here but it's an example of the great partnership and and how much we're able to do when we put our teams together um to really create that innovation i couldn't agree more i mean this is uh an incredible milestone for for us for our industry and honestly for the country in many ways and we have many many people working 24x7 to deliver against this mission and it's going to change the future of compute no question about it and then honestly put it to work where we need it the most to advance life science to find cures to improve the way people live and work but lisa thank you again for joining us today and thank you more most importantly for the incredible partnership and and the friendship i really enjoy working with you and your team and together i think we can change this industry once again so thanks for your time today thank you so much antonio and congratulations again to you and the entire hpe team for just a fantastic portfolio launch thank you okay well some pretty big hitters in those keynotes right actually i have to say those are some of my favorite cube alums and i'll add these are some of the execs that are stepping up to change not only our industry but also society and that's pretty cool and of course it's always good to hear from the practitioners the customer discussions have been great so far today now the accelerating next event continues as we move to a round table discussion with krista satrathwaite who's the vice president and gm of hpe core compute and krista is going to share more details on how hpe plans to help customers move ahead with adopting modern workloads as part of their digital transformations krista will be joined by hpe subject matter experts chris idler who's the vp and gm of the element and mark nickerson director of solutions product management as they share customer stories and advice on how to turn strategy into action and realize results within your business thank you for joining us for accelerate next event i hope you're enjoying it so far i know you've heard about the industry challenges the i.t trends hpe strategy from leaders in the industry and so today what we want to do is focus on going deep on workload solutions so in the most important workload solutions the ones we always get asked about and so today we want to share with you some best practices some examples of how we've helped other customers and how we can help you all right with that i'd like to start our panel now and introduce chris idler who's the vice president and general manager of the element chris has extensive uh solution expertise he's led hpe solution engineering programs in the past welcome chris and mark nickerson who is the director of product management and his team is responsible for solution offerings making sure we have the right solutions for our customers welcome guys thanks for joining me thanks for having us krista yeah so i'd like to start off with one of the big ones the ones that we get asked about all the time what we've been all been experienced in the last year remote work remote education and all the challenges that go along with that so let's talk a little bit about the challenges that customers have had in transitioning to this remote work and remote education environment uh so i i really think that there's a couple of things that have stood out for me when we're talking with customers about vdi first obviously there was a an unexpected and unprecedented level of interest in that area about a year ago and we all know the reasons why but what it really uncovered was how little planning had gone into this space around a couple of key dynamics one is scale it's one thing to say i'm going to enable vdi for a part of my workforce in a pre-pandemic environment where the office was still the the central hub of activity for work uh it's a completely different scale when you think about okay i'm going to have 50 60 80 maybe 100 of my workforce now distributed around the globe um whether that's in an educational environment where now you're trying to accommodate staff and students in virtual learning uh whether that's uh in the area of things like uh formula one racing where we had uh the desire to still have events going on but the need for a lot more social distancing not as many people able to be trackside but still needing to have that real-time experience this really manifested in a lot of ways and scale was something that i think a lot of customers hadn't put as much thought into initially the other area is around planning for experience a lot of times the vdi experience was planned out with very specific workloads or very specific applications in mind and when you take it to a more broad-based environment if we're going to support multiple functions multiple lines of business there hasn't been as much planning or investigation that's gone into the application side and so thinking about how graphically intense some applications are one customer that comes to mind would be tyler isd who did a fairly large roll out pre-pandemic and as part of their big modernization effort what they uncovered was even just changes in standard windows applications had become so much more graphically intense with windows 10 with the latest updates with programs like adobe that they were really needing to have an accelerated experience for a much larger percentage of their install base than than they had counted on so in addition to planning for scale you also need to have that visibility into what are the actual applications that are going to be used by these remote users how graphically intense those might be what's the login experience going to be as well as the operating experience and so really planning through that experience side as well as the scale and the number of users uh is is kind of really two of the biggest most important things that i've seen yeah mark i'll i'll just jump in real quick i think you you covered that pretty comprehensively there and and it was well done the couple of observations i've made one is just that um vdi suddenly become like mission critical for sales it's the front line you know for schools it's the classroom you know that this isn't a cost cutting measure or a optimization nit measure anymore this is about running the business in a way it's a digital transformation one aspect of about a thousand aspects of what does it mean to completely change how your business does and i think what that translates to is that there's no margin for error right you really need to deploy this in a way that that performs that understands what you're trying to use it for that gives that end user the experience that they expect on their screen or on their handheld device or wherever they might be whether it's a racetrack classroom or on the other end of a conference call or a boardroom right so what we do in in the engineering side of things when it comes to vdi or really understand what's a tech worker what's a knowledge worker what's a power worker what's a gp really going to look like what's time of day look like you know who's using it in the morning who's using it in the evening when do you power up when do you power down does the system behave does it just have the it works function and what our clients can can get from hpe is um you know a worldwide set of experiences that we can apply to making sure that the solution delivers on its promises so we're seeing the same thing you are krista you know we see it all the time on vdi and on the way businesses are changing the way they do business yeah and it's funny because when i talk to customers you know one of the things i heard that was a good tip is to roll it out to small groups first so you could really get a good sense of what the experience is before you roll it out to a lot of other people and then the expertise it's not like every other workload that people have done before so if you're new at it make sure you're getting the right advice expertise so that you're doing it the right way okay one of the other things we've been talking a lot about today is digital transformation and moving to the edge so now i'd like to shift gears and talk a little bit about how we've helped customers make that shift and this time i'll start with chris all right hey thanks okay so you know it's funny when it comes to edge because um the edge is different for for every customer in every client and every single client that i've ever spoken to of hp's has an edge somewhere you know whether just like we were talking about the classroom might be the edge but but i think the industry when we're talking about edge is talking about you know the internet of things if you remember that term from not to not too long ago you know and and the fact that everything's getting connected and how do we turn that into um into telemetry and and i think mark's going to be able to talk through a couple of examples of clients that we have in things like racing and automotive but what we're learning about edge is it's not just how do you make the edge work it's how do you integrate the edge into what you're already doing and nobody's just the edge right and and so if it's if it's um ai mldl there's that's one way you want to use the edge if it's a customer experience point of service it's another you know there's yet another way to use the edge so it turns out that having a broad set of expertise like hpe does to be able to understand the different workloads that you're trying to tie together including the ones that are running at the at the edge often it involves really making sure you understand the data pipeline you know what information is at the edge how does it flow to the data center how does it flow and then which data center uh which private cloud which public cloud are you using i think those are the areas where where we really sort of shine is that we we understand the interconnectedness of these things and so for example red bull and i know you're going to talk about that in a minute mark um uh the racing company you know for them the the edge is the racetrack and and you know milliseconds or partial seconds winning and losing races but then there's also an edge of um workers that are doing the design for for the cars and how do they get quick access so um we have a broad variety of infrastructure form factors and compute form factors to help with the edge and this is another real advantage we have is that we we know how to put the right piece of equipment with the right software we also have great containerized software with our esmeral container platform so we're really becoming um a perfect platform for hosting edge-centric workloads and applications and data processing yeah it's uh all the way down to things like our superdome flex in the background if you have some really really really big data that needs to be processed and of course our workhorse proliance that can be configured to support almost every um combination of workload you have so i know you started with edge krista but but and we're and we nail the edge with those different form factors but let's make sure you know if you're listening to this this show right now um make sure you you don't isolate the edge and make sure they integrate it with um with the rest of your operation mark you know what did i miss yeah to that point chris i mean and this kind of actually ties the two things together that we've been talking about here but the edge uh has become more critical as we have seen more work moving to the edge as where we do work changes and evolves and the edge has also become that much more closer because it has to be that much more connected um to your point uh talking about where that edge exists that edge can be a lot of different places but the one commonality really is that the edge is is an area where work still needs to get accomplished it can't just be a collection point and then everything gets shipped back to a data center or back to some some other area for the work it's where the work actually needs to get done whether that's edge work in a use case like vdi or whether that's edge work in the case of doing real-time analytics you mentioned red bull racing i'll i'll bring that up i mean you talk about uh an area where time is of the essence everything about that sport comes down to time you're talking about wins and losses that are measured as you said in milliseconds and that applies not just to how performance is happening on the track but how you're able to adapt and modify the needs of the car uh adapt to the evolving conditions on the track itself and so when you talk about putting together a solution for an edge like that you're right it can't just be here's a product that's going to allow us to collect data ship it back someplace else and and wait for it to be processed in a couple of days you have to have the ability to analyze that in real time when we pull together a solution involving our compute products our storage products our networking products when we're able to deliver that full package solution at the edge what you see are results like a 50 decrease in processing time to make real-time analytic decisions about configurations for the car and adapting to to real-time uh test and track conditions yeah really great point there um and i really love the example of edge and racing because i mean that is where it all every millisecond counts um and so important to process that at the edge now switching gears just a little bit let's talk a little bit about some examples of how we've helped customers when it comes to business agility and optimizing their workload for maximum outcome for business agility let's talk about some things that we've done to help customers with that mark yeah give it a shot so when we when we think about business agility what you're really talking about is the ability to to implement on the fly to be able to scale up to scale down the ability to adapt to real time changing situations and i think the last year has been has been an excellent example of exactly how so many businesses have been forced to do that i think one of the areas that that i think we've probably seen the most ability to help with customers in that agility area is around the space of private and hybrid clouds if you take a look at the need that customers have to to be able to migrate workloads and migrate data between public cloud environments app development environments that may be hosted on-site or maybe in the cloud the ability to move out of development and into production and having the agility to then scale those application rollouts up having the ability to have some of that some of that private cloud flexibility in addition to a public cloud environment is something that is becoming increasingly crucial for a lot of our customers all right well i we could keep going on and on but i'll stop it there uh thank you so much uh chris and mark this has been a great discussion thanks for sharing how we helped other customers and some tips and advice for approaching these workloads i thank you all for joining us and remind you to look at the on-demand sessions if you want to double click a little bit more into what we've been covering all day today you can learn a lot more in those sessions and i thank you for your time thanks for tuning in today many thanks to krista chris and mark we really appreciate you joining today to share how hpe is partnering to facilitate new workload adoption of course with your customers on their path to digital transformation now to round out our accelerating next event today we have a series of on-demand sessions available so you can explore more details around every step of that digital transformation from building a solid infrastructure strategy identifying the right compute and software to rounding out your solutions with management and financial support so please navigate to the agenda at the top of the page to take a look at what's available i just want to close by saying that despite the rush to digital during the pandemic most businesses they haven't completed their digital transformations far from it 2020 was more like a forced march than a planful strategy but now you have some time you've adjusted to this new abnormal and we hope the resources that you find at accelerating next will help you on your journey best of luck to you and be well [Music] [Applause] [Music] 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>>from around the globe. It's the >>cube >>with digital >>coverage of IBM >>Think 2021 >>brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to the cube coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube ricardo for lenses here with me is the global managing director for IBM at Citigroup recorded. Great to see you. Thank you for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me. >>You're the team leader for Citigroup Managing Director um, a lot going on in the world of finance, Fintech technology, scale transformation, all this is happening. Always leading edge indicator. Give us your perspective on the market right now on the, on that vertical and in general because um there's so much scale is so much machine learning, so much going on, so much competitive advantages. Give us an overview of the industry, how you see them. >>So john about the fortune of working essentially around the world of work in europe in asia in Australia, back here in north America. And I'll tell you what, there are some, some uh, dynamics are specific to a market. There are also a lot of common threads, right? You know, a lot of common threats, right? As you know, my industry, financial services in the middle of uh great disruption right from payments to a global wealth to understand exactly. Not to reposition yourself is a, is a startup. Oftentimes looking time to be dis intimidated by many in the context. I have found many financial institutions are very adept, a change in the way they operate, a lot more nimble than they have been in the past. And they found ways to incorporate a lot of techniques that some of the Frontex operate with. So they all have shark tanks, they all find a way to uh, progress investments that they get to a point of uh, failing fast, right, more are some more adept than others. But for the most part, I'd say that everyone in the market is looking to beef up their their core competences. >>And, you know, the financial, um, industry has never been shy of using technology ever. They've always poured it on. They always want to get more edge. Um, what's your, what is the edge now in the industry for, um, financial and, and in general, businesses who were learning how to be agile? What's the edge? >>I think the edges really finding a way to be ambidextrous, right? Because in many respects, you do want to hold on to a franchise to what got you to a level of success. It's oftentimes it's in the case of my client is in good stead for more than 100 years, Right? So you don't want to let that go. But you also want to grow a new set of skills and grow competences that they need to take into the future. I have found that in many respects that many of my clients are remind me of what lugers and one said maybe 2025 years ago. Our former Ceo and chairman who said the last thing that IBM needs is a strategy. In fact, I think that many of our financial institutions that don't need a strategy, they just need the competences to innovate and executed scale and it's a lot easier said than that >>card. I want to get your perspective before we move on to some of the initiatives and work at city, which is probably compelling. But I want to get your expert opinion on a question that comes up all the time with customers and that are going post pandemic and looking at growth strategies. The idea of the unit economics of their business models tend to change with more data, more digital acceleration. Is there any observations that you could share for leaders who are looking to get that financial mindset or of of how the business is changing with whether it's KPI S or business models. Because at the end of the day, the financial upside of what we're seeing with digital is pretty significant. The economics are seem to be a real game changer on these, these conversations are about acceleration, but also the results are business results are money. >>Absolutely john as a matter of fact, that I'd argue that while it's true that the common theme so many and that several of our financial institutions are growing a skill in, in a, in a uh, approaching problems in a different fashion is also true that there's been a lot of redistribution of wealth across financial enterprises, right? So it's not lost on all of us. Right. The security look at market globalization of the financial institutions, on the work. They've really done a little place with the clear winners in several sectors, right? In Asia and europe, as well as here in North America. So what I argue is that while I think we're all tired of hearing the data is the new oil, right? It's also true that we need to find a way to finally harness the power of it. Right? And that's what I think IBM is more more adept at, right, argue that many of the common threads that we've seen across the financial institutions and back to the to the measures of success you would indicate in a minute ago, really around cloud, right around data and around digital transformation. Right? So our approach to cloud, for instance, is unique, right? While there are a number of uh very competent hyper Steelers, we've taken a different approach to it, right? We've taken our approach is more than after other highly specialized regulated workloads, right. Organ after the layer that allows you to port application seamlessly based on regulation costs and competition across multiple platforms. Right? So this hybrid concept has only been at the center of our strategy and that's the one that mama is is delivering our clients. Greatest father tell you what. I think one client told me once after hearing our hybrid story that while there were many cloud providers, there wasn't anyone that could help them quite as much as I B. M. Dealing with their legacy and in all candor, I think it's fair to say that legacy is here to say well past our investment horizon. Right? So that level of self awareness, I think ended up believing forming our collaborations for years to come. >>You know, I'm a big believer and I've reported this and certainly talked to Arvin when um he was on the cube about this microservices, containers, kubernetes, these kinds of new technologies really allow for legacy to integrate well into the new modern era of computer, what's going on at city and IBM tell us take us through some things that you're working on, some of the exciting projects that you're driving. >>So the disclaimer is that I started this well three months ago, so I'll try to do my my team proud here. But what I'll tell you is that the teams you talk about are alive and well, that's sitting right. So on the cloudfront we are doing exactly that we're focusing on, on on being uh cities partner on the heavy cloud deployment, acknowledging that uh fabric odyssey is an ecosystem of participants, right. Technology that IBM uh dominance in on prem computing will go through a very different face going forward. We not only a comfortable with it, but we're trying to accelerate its deployment. Right? So you mentioned communities, you mentioned containers, hence a redhead acquisition, right? Which has been central to the collaboration that we've uh we've established the city and we look at the growth. I'm also gonna go back to data and I will tell you that uh you know, uh, cities in the midst of a transformation journey of their own right. It's also the middle of a regulatory challenge. That's second to none. Right. With with the zero cc. Findings that then led to a final remediation plan that the bank has put in place over the past two months. With that in mind, we are looking to help the bank make a make a good crisis make the most of the crisis right. And so helping for instance, Mark Sabino, the head of innovation City, find ways to infuse Ai into their internal audit practices doing that. It's just smart business, the results in much better outcome at a lower cost and it's something that can scale because it's all seen before. Oftentimes our solutions have lacked the ability to scale to really keep up with them in >>ricardo. The relationship between IBM and City has been long standing. I believe. I read somewhere you're celebrating 100 year partnership. Is that true? If so. I mean it's a huge milestone. What's the take us through the history and where this is going as a partnership? >>I've heard as a matter of fact is that as I first came on board that in fact our companies have been added for more than 100 years and someone showed me an actual document 100 years old, there was proof positive of that. So I'll tell you, I know that our firms would be added again 100 years from now. I will probably not be here to toast to it, but I'm certain they will continue to collaborate and for the strong is this is my responsibility or do whatever I can to help you continue to grow. We're only going to focus on three things I spoke about every cloud, but you also want to be the partner is the bank transforms its operations right and infuse in it. Our AI and process information, skills and capabilities. I think if we do that we'll continue to collaborate and will continue to have our partnership fully rests on two pillars that is always independent, which are really innovation and trust >>great commentary. Great. An account that you're leading probably great team behind how many people are on this team must be pretty massive. And I'd love to see that document by the way. Was it a memo? Was that type written was a handwritten? You know, it was a P. O. Okay. >>It was an Akron document that I get your copy. >>Uh so historic. I love those history. I love the IBM culture longstanding relationships. Final question for you. You've been in the industry for a while, you've seen many waves of innovation. If you're talking to a customer, your friend or colleague and they had asked you ricardo, why is this wave so big and so important? What would you tell them? >>John I think at the heart of this transformation, the evolution, the way they should call it is not the introduction of new products, the international processes, but entire no value chains that are being established by players that in many cases need need each other to coexist. This is hardly ever been the case in the past. I think IBM will form a great example of it, right? And so I do think that this is far more disruptive than what we have witnessed in years past and I can't wait to get get in it and my part to lead us through it >>ricardo. Great insight, totally agree. This is a time of open collaboration and ecosystem you're seeing in the ecosystem and network effect where people are integrating together in this new connected distributed economy. Global economy, thank you for coming on the cube, appreciate your time. >>Thank you so much for having me. >>Okay ricardo for Relenza, Global Managing Director for IBM at Citigroup, This is the Cube coverage of IBM think 2021 I'm John for your host. Thanks for watching. Mhm

>>from around the globe, >>it's the cube with digital coverage of IBM >>Think 2021 brought to you by IBM Hello welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm john for your host of the cube had a great conversation here about cloud data, AI and all things. C X O from KPMG is Vinod Swaminathan who's the strategy head of strategy of Ai data and cloud as well as the C. I. O advisory at KPMG you know thanks for coming on the cube. >>My pleasure jOHn thanks for having me. >>So you guys have an interesting perspective, you sit between the business value being created from technology and the clients trying to put it to work um and KPMG impeccable reputation over the years obviously bringing great business value to clients. You guys do that. Um you're in the middle of the hot stuff cloud data and Ai um Ai is great if you have the data and the architecture do that in cloud scale brings so many new good things to the table. Um how is this playing out right now in your mind because we're here at IBM think where the story is transformed, transformation is the innovation. Innovation does set the table for net new capabilities at scale. This seems to be a common thread here. What's your take on the current situation? >>Well, let me start with the fundamental premise that we're seeing playing out with many of our clients and that is, clients are beginning to connect the different silos within their business to better respond to what their customers are asking for. Um you know, we we tend to work with large enterprises, very well established businesses and we're also fortunate to serve the needs of high growth companies as well. So we're in a very unique position as a trusted advisor to both legacy companies transforming and high growth companies looking to drive the transformation in the industry as well. So there are a few things that we're seeing right the first and foremost is responding quickly and effectively to very rapidly changing customer needs. And I think the pandemic really, you know put a spotlight on how fast organizations had to pivot and I have to commend a lot of these organizations and doing a phenomenal job, I would argue, spit band aiding and gluing together a response to what their customers expected. Right? So as I look at post pandemic, we're seeing a lot of clients now looking to take stock of things that they did during the pandemic, how they address customer demand to really smooth them out and streamline as a strategy, how they're going to become more customer driven KPMG. We call this the connected enterprise where you really work effectively across the front, middle and back office in an enterprise to seamlessly address the client. Right? Anything you do in finance really is driven by what your customers want. It's no longer, hey finance sit in the back office, right. Anything you do in marketing is no longer hey I'm doing it just to address the demand side of the equation, right? It's very integral to connect marketing with fulfillment. Right? So we call this the connected enterprise. So that transformation is only possible if customers and our clients are able to effectively leverage cloud from an architectural perspective. And when I say cloud, what we're seeing, smarter clients of ours start to think about is cloud in its entirety. So it's not just the public cloud, it's the cloud architecture, right? The ability to scale up scale out right scale down, right, irrespective of where all of this sits from an infrastructure perspective. So cloud is very critical for becoming that connected enterprise. Uh The data pieces integral, I think the data business today represents trillions of dollars. I think everybody has bought into the fact that data is the new oil and all of that good stuff that we've heard. Uh but it really is a trillion dollar business and it has some unique challenges. So being connected requires, right that are that an enterprise become very data driven? I think it's hard to escape ai it's everywhere to the point where we don't even uh we're not even conscious of ai at work, Right? So I think uh five years ago a I was a novel concept today. It's the expectation of customers who interact with big brands that ai is an integral part of how they are being served. Right? So cloud data ai architecture sort of the ingredients if you will. And then cool technology really starts to bring this connected concept together and post pandemic. We're going to start to see a lot of rationalization uh and big investments and moving forward in this trajectory. >>It's interesting cloud data now you, the way you talk about it makes me think about like this the constant of the old Os I stack right? You have infrastructure and cloud, you have data in the middle layer and then A. I is that that wonder area where the upside takes advantage of that data? Um Very cool insight. You know, Thanks for sharing that. The question I have for you put the pandemic I want to get your reaction to some conversations I've had in the industry and they tend to go like this. Um when we come out of the pandemic this is like a C X O. Talking to Ceo. Or C. I. O. Or C. So when we come out of the pandemic we need a growth strategy, we need to be hidden, we need to be on the upswing, okay? Not on the downswing or still trying to figure it out. Um And and that's a cool conversation because there's been to use cases that we've identified companies that had no has had a headwind because of the pandemic either because of business disruption or the second categories, they've had a tail when they had a business opportunity. So the ones that had a headwind, they would retool, they used the pandemic to retool and the ones that had the tailwind would use the pandemic to either bring net new capabilities or or transform and innovate. So either way that's a successful use case. The ones who didn't do anything aren't going to survive much. We know that, but in those two cases they're not mutually exclusive. That's what the smart money's been doing. The smart teams. What's your advice now that we're in that mode where we're coming around the corner? How do companies get on that uptick? What have you guys advise into clients? What are you hearing and what, what's your reaction to that concept? >>Well, I think every company that is going to be on the survivors list post pandemic actually has digitally transformed, um, you know, even if they don't want to acknowledge it right in a lot of different ways. Um, so I think that's here to stay. Um, what I, and I'll give you a simple example, um, you know, I, I belong to a local club, you know, kitchen shut down, you know, no activities. I was amazed that it took them only four days John four days to actually bring a digital reservation system online through their mobile app. So in the past, the mobile app was simply for me to go look at the directory. But now I can do so many more things. Right? And I was talking to my club CI. All right. I mean, really not a C I. O. But you know, it was uh, it was, it was a staff member who was charged with driving the digital transformation. So there you go. >>Good consultant, you, you know, uh >>but what he talked to me about was fascinating. And this is what we're going to see. Right? So first he said, another was so easy to bring some of those, you know, interactive experience type capabilities online to serve our customer base. It made us think, why the hell didn't we do it before. Alright, so, back to your question, I think post pandemic, we're going to see a lot of companies recognizing that low code, no code, right? Cloud AI capabilities are very much within the reach of the average business user, right? In companies like IBM have done a phenomenal job of demystifying the technology and trying to make it much more accessible for the business user. We're going to see continued momentum, right? And adopting these kinds of simple technologies to transform right business processes, customer interaction, so on and so forth. Right? So we we see that coming out of the pandemic, there's no stopping that. I think the second thing we see is a very firm commitment at the leadership level um that you know, stopping or slowing down these kinds of activities is a non starter at the board level. That's a nonstarter at the management committee level, right? Don't come to me saying we need to slow down things, Come to me saying we need to speed up things, right? But that said, we're seeing rationalization, conversations begin to happen and that starts with the strategy, right, tailwind or headwind, irrespective of which side of the equation you fell right in that, in that dynamic, what we're seeing is clients coming back and saying, all right, we know our strategy needs to be different. Let's make sure that we have a strategy that aligns better with um where our customers want to go, where the industry is headed. And let's acknowledge that there are technological capabilities now, but actually turbocharge the execution of the strategy. Technology is not the strategy, it's still connected enterprise thought. How do I serve my customers whose expectations have dramatically changed coming out of the pandemic? And that's why I gave you the club example. I never want to call anybody to make a reservation anymore. I mean, even the local hair salon has a queuing system and a reservation system because you know, that's just the way it is, Right? So there are some simple things that have happened on the customer side of uh, you know, the equation, which is forcing a lot of our clients to start, you know, accelerating their digital investments. Um, you know, rather than decelerating, >>it's interesting. That's great insight. I think just to summarize that, I think you're pointing out is the obvious, hey, it works the indifference of the digital to go the next level and see X O. S and C I O. S have had, you know, either politics or blockers or just will it work? And, and I think with the pandemic necessity is the mother of all inventions. You say, hey, we got to get back on business that the economics and the user experience is more than acceptable. It's actually preferred. I think that club example really highlights that expectation change and I >>think that's an interesting architecture discussion right? And I don't mean that technically I think businesses are starting to think about how are they architect right. And this is where the connected enterprise concept from KPMG is resonating because now you know we see our clients no longer thinking about finance, sales marketing right and fulfillment right? That's how the architect of their business before now they're realizing that they need to sort of put it on its side. Right, I love the cube analogy, I'm going to borrow it, they're flipping the cube on the side and pulling out a whole new business architecture which by the way is enabled and supported by an underlying technology architecture that's very different. Right? So I think businesses are going to get re architected in technology companies like IBM and Red Hot are going to be right there helping clients go through that re architected along with partners like us. >>The script has been flipped and the cube has been turned and I think this was the revelation. The economics are clear. So I gotta ask you, I mean I've always been I've been joking with IBM the president like it, but I've been saying that, you know, business now is software enabled and the operating systems, distributed computing. As you mentioned, these subsystems are part of this fabric and red hat there and operating systems company. Um so kind of in a good position with what Marvin's doing. If you think about if you look at squint through and connect the dots, I mean you're looking at an underlying operating system that's open and connected to business, it's not just software apps that run something like an ear piece system, it's an business software model for the entire company completely instrumented. This is what hybrid cloud is, could you, because you take a few minutes to talk about the relationship that you guys have with IBM on how you guys are working together to bring this hybrid cloud vision to their customers and to the market. >>So KPMG and IBM go back about 20 plus years long standing relationship. Um In fact, I kid around with many of my fellow partners here at KPMG that IBM is the only relationship that we did not divest off when we went through our let's flip management consulting off from our accounting business, so on and so forth that everybody went through, right? So very long standing relationship, you know, we're a trusted partner of IBM well we're very different from a lot of the partners that IBM has were business consultants, right? We don't have, you know, we help clients think through their business first before we get into the technology implementation. So I don't have armies of IBM certified engineers sitting on the bench looking for work to do. It's actually the other way around. Right? So it's been a great marriage when IBM has phenomenal technology in this case. You know, they have been leaders in AI, we've got an AI based relationship now going back five years, um you know, where we consumed Watson proved to ourselves and the world that it can be done very innovatively supporting business transformation. And now we're able to, together with IBM effectively have that conversation with clients, right? Because we're client number zero, uh we're big into a hybrid, multi cloud, um you know, we're big red hat customers. Uh you know, we use red hat in our own modernization of several different workloads. So our relationship with IBM is very strong, were a good supplier to them as well, so we help them with their strategy and go to market as well. So an interesting sort of relationship. Um look, when we work with clients, we typically tend to, you know, take a trusted advisor role uh with clients, our brand speaks to the trust that we're able to bring when we talk to clients. Uh I kid around um you know, when you're going through a transformation, you probably want the town skeptic holding your hand. That's us, right? We're very risk averse. We like working with clients who you know, kind of want that, you know, critical look when they're investing in technology driven transformation. Um you know, some of the things that IBM has done is pretty phenomenal. Right? So for example, I don't see um you know, I I don't see a lot of providers out there who give clients the kind of options that IBM gives with their multi cloud capabilities. Right? So, you know, show me conversational ai capability that can run on private cloud, that can run on google amazon IBM and a whole bunch of other cloud providers. Right? So I think as IBM invests in that open right philosophy and obviously the red hat acquisition only further enhances that, right, um it's a great opportunity for us to be able to take very powerful KPMG value propositions um you know, enabled by this kind of IBM technology, Right? So that's how we tend to go to market. Um one of the solutions were offering with IBM is called the KPMG data mesh. It's built on IBM cloud pack for data, which is enabled by red hats open shift and it's a very innovative solution in the marketplace that fundamentally asked the question to clients, why are you spending inordinate amount of time and resources moving data around in order to become data driven? Uh it just amazes me john how much money is being thrown at, you know, moving data around, particularly as you get into this complex hybrid, multi cloud world. Right. How many times am I going to move data from, you know, a mainframe database into my, you know, cloud repository before I can start doing uh real higher value work. Right, So KPMG data mesh enabled by the IBM cloud packed the data says, hey, legal data, wherever it is. You know, we can take up to 30 of costs out and really get you on this journey to become data driven without spending the first nine months of every project building a data warehouse or building an expensive data where data lake, Right? Because all of those, frankly our 20th century mindset, right? So if I can leave the data where it is, your favorite terminology virtually is the data and really focus on what do I do with the data as opposed to, you know, how do I move the data? Right. It really starts to change the mindset around becoming data driven. Right, so that's a great example of a solution where we've married our value proposition to clients around connected and trusted and leveraged IBM technology. Right? In a hybrid multi cloud one, >>you know, a great insight, love the focus. Hybrid cloud, congratulations on your KPMG mesh solution, their cloud mesh, awesome. Taking advantage of the IBM work and love your perspective on the industry. I think you you called it right? I think that's a great perspective. That's the way we're on big transformation innovation wave. Thanks for coming on the key, appreciate it. >>Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me have a good day. >>Okay, Cube coverage of IBM think 2021. I'm John for your host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Mhm >>mm.

>>Welcome to this IBM Watson health client conversation here. We're probing the dynamics of the relationship between IBM and its clients. And we're looking back, we're exploring the present situation and discussing the future state of healthcare. My name is Dave Volante from the cube and with me are Alex Dillard. Who's a senior director data analysis at blue choice, blue choice health plan, and Darryl decode, who is IBM with IBM Watson health. Of course. Welcome gentlemen. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Hey, >>So, you know, you think about lasting relationships. They're the foundation to any partnership and this past year, and it's tested all of us. We've had to rely on both personal and professional relationships to get us through the pandemic. So Alex, let me start with you. How has the partnership with IBM supported you in 2020? >>Well, uh, I've just a piece of a larger puzzle. Uh, the relationship that Darrell and I have had is confined to IBM Watson health, but blue cross blue shield, South Carolina, which food choice is a wholly owned subsidiary of has had a standing relationship with IBM on the it side. Uh, we are a mainframe shop, uh, about 70% of our it infrastructure is on a mainframe. And, uh, that puts us as a segment one client for IBM, we're in the top 300 of all of their clients in the Americans. And more specifically we're the fourth largest, um, uh, Linux on Z shop in the world. So, uh, we've got a lot of diversification at blue cross blue shield of South Carolina and the mainframe and the vastness of that. It infrastructure reflects that, uh, diversification. We are more than just a crossing the shield. Uh, that's typically what people think of is insurance when they think of crossing shield, but we also have a division that does a lot of subcontract work for government programs, uh, track air, which is the military healthcare, uh, claims processing and Medicare claims processing. >>We were a subcontractor of other folks that use our back office, it infrastructure to, to run their claims through. So that's, that's the larger, um, aspect of our relationship that, that blue cross blue shield of South Carolina house with IBM, uh, as it relates to Watson health, we have been a client since 1994 and obviously that predates the IBM proper. Uh, we were a client of med stat and then Truven, who then, uh, was bought by IBM. So we have used the products from Watson health throughout our system to support provider profiling, uh, count group reporting, um, and ad hoc analysis and to some extent to, uh, support our value-based products with, uh, ACO and PCMH, >>Uh, products. >>Awesome. Thank you for that. So Daryl is very long-term relationship. Obviously, if people forget sometimes that, uh, how IBM has modernized the Z Alex talked about, uh, Linux on the mainframe. That's pretty cool. I wonder if you could talk about specifically the things that, that you've done with Alex in his, in his, in his team, you know, thinking back last year, what were your accomplishments that you really stand out? >>Yeah, so, so one thing that jumps to mind is, uh, given the long standing relationship, I relied heavily on Alex to help us work through a multi-year renewal. And it was, it was a, um, a good adventure for us. We, we were able to laugh along the way. We certainly had some, some phone calls that, that were a little bit challenging, but the great thing about it was that the relationship that Alex and I had, he really views it as a partnership. And that was just so encouraging and uplifting. So to me, from my perspective, that was absolutely, uh, one of the highlights of my year and working through even through the pandemic and all that, we figured it out. >>So you guys, when you get together, go ahead, please. >>That's what I had as well. Um, you know, the, the unique thing about the Watson health contract is because it involves data. Uh, we take the stance that it's an it contract, so I'm on the business side. So I've got to just, as Daryl has to navigate it with me, we've got to navigate a large of your it bureaucracy. Um, and, uh, it, it was challenging. Um, you know, the business people kind of smooth the tracks and then you get the lawyers involved in, it just goes haywire. So, um, we were able to navigate that. Um, uh, so yeah, so it was a big accomplishment. So Alex, it's not real sexy to talk about, but we got it done >>Well. So Alex you're, you're in sales, so you're, you're used to role playing. So imagine you're, you're, you're sitting down, uh, sorry, Darryl. You're used to, role-playing out. Imagine you're sitting down with Alex and you're thinking about 20, 21 planning, so, you know, take it away. W what do you, what would you ask, what would you talk about or share with us? >>Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, so I, I know that, you know, one of the key objectives is, uh, continued to ingest, engage with your members and you have key business strategies. I know you recently migrated over to a new PBM, and so there, there's some complexities that come with that. Um, but just, you know, Alex, if you don't mind, why don't you share a little bit about kind of your, your perspective on what 2020 would hold for you in your organization? Well, I think that due to the pandemic, we are, I personally kick the, can down the road on a couple of things, particularly >>Having a strategic roadmap discussion, um, you know, uh, I was going to get into this later, but I enjoy doing things face-to-face rather than, uh, over the phone or, or virtually. And so, uh, I guess I was a little too optimistic about maybe being able to get together late 2020 to have that strategic roadmap discussion. Um, I think, uh, given what has developed with, um, the pandemic and vaccines and stuff, I may, I may be able to get everybody on the same page later this year, hopefully. Uh, but certainly we want to have a strategic roadmap discussion. Um, we license, uh, Watson Hills, uh, cat group insights, uh, tool, which we use for employer group reporting. And we are currently in the beginning stages of rolling that out to our external clients, whether it's agents, brokers, um, those types of folks. And then it vanished we as our core product that we use for analysis, and that product is transitioning to what is called health insights. And so from an analytical standpoint, my staff and the staff of our cluster areas will need to sort of move to health insights since that's where it's going, uh, from an analytic standpoint. So we're going to work on that as well. Um, and then some more detailed things around database rebuilds and stuff like that. Those are all sort of on the roadmap for 2021. >>Yeah. So, you know, you talk about strategic planning and you think about the way planning used to be. I mean, sometimes you take a longer term horizon, maybe that's five years, you know, technology cycles, you know, even though they go very fast, but you see major technology shifts, they're like go through these seven year cycles, you see that in financial world. And then with the, with the pandemic, we're talking about seven day cycles, you know, how do I support people work from home? Do I open the store or not? You know, it's a day-to-day type of thing. So I wonder if you could each talk about personally and professionally w how, how is 2020, you know, changed you and maybe position you for, for what's ahead, maybe Alex, you could start, >>Well, you know, I'm an analyst, so I always fall back to the numbers. What are the numbers show us, um, you know, people can have four perceptions, but, uh, the numbers give us a reality. So the reality is that a year ago, pre pandemic, uh, just 13% of blue cross blue shield employees were working from home a hundred percent, uh fast-forward to today. And that number is now 87%. So think about, uh, just the lift from a it infrastructure to support that we almost, all of those people are using Citrix to get in to our network. Uh, we're using a remote desktop. So you've got this pipeline that probably had to go from, you know, this small, to huge, to get all this bandwidth, all this data and everything. So you've got that huge lift. Um, and then it affects different areas, um, differently. Uh, I don't have any first-line staff, any staff that are member facing, so I didn't really have to navigate, you know, how do these people talk to our member? >>How does staff talk to our members on the phone when they're at home, as opposed to in the office, and, you know, is there background noise, things like that. So I've got analysts, uh, they're just crunching numbers. Um, but my, my, my personal, uh, feeling was I like doing managing by walking around, you know, stopping and talking to other, working on. So that went away and I like face-to-face meetings, as I've mentioned, and that went away. So it was really a culture change for me personally, it was a culture change for our organization. Uh, and, and now we're having conversations with executive management that, you know, if you've got staff who have been doing a good job and they remain productive, you know, give me a reason they got to come back in, which is just, as you told me that I'm going to be the case a year ago, I would have been, you know, flabbergasted, but that's where we are right now. >>And so on a personal standpoint, you know, I went home for a little while and then came back. And so my wife also works for blue cross blue shield of South Carolina. Um, so, you know, she set up in the dining room working, uh, I have my own book in our living room working, and then we've got a great side, you know, the school is not in session, you know, in person. So he's doing virtual learning. So combine all those things, and you've got all kinds of crazy things that could happen. Uh, and then you've got staff who are in the same situation. Um, so it was a lot to handle. And the longer it goes on the novelty of working from home wears off, and you kind of realize, you know, I can't go do this. I can't go out to eat. I can't do all types of things that I used to do. And so that affects your mental health. So as, as a leader, um, of my small area, and then our executives really had to become more, uh, uh, in, in people's faces. So we've got, we've done a lot more video, uh, messages, a lot more emails. Um, I have been tasked with being very deliberate about checking on how everything is going at their house. Are they getting what they need? Um, you know, how are they feeling? Are they getting up and exercising, all those things that you took for granted, uh, beforehand. >>Yeah. So Daryl, anything you'd add to that in terms of specifically in terms of how you might, how you might change the way in which you interact with your clients generally, uh, an Alex specifically, Alex likes, face to face, you know, we can't wait. All right. >>Yeah, yeah. It's funny. We never quite got to do it Alex, but we were talking about doing a virtual happy hour at one point too, to just celebrate the success. Um, but for me, you know, typically I would travel and visit Alex face-to-face on maybe a monthly basis. And so it it's been really hard for me. I didn't realize how, how much I enjoyed that in-person interaction. And so that, that was something that I I've been, you know, working through and finding ways to, to still interact with people. And I'm certainly making, making the best of, of the video phone calls and, you know, that sort of thing. So, uh, just work working to maintain those relationships. >>I wonder if I could ask you when, when, when this thing, when we're through the pandemic, what do you expect the work from home percentage? I think I heard 13% prior to the pandemic, 87% today. What do you think is going to be post pandemic? >>That is a good question. Um, it, it may go back to maybe 60% at home. I think, I think there will be a simple majority, uh, working from home. Um, that's, that's from our planning, uh, space planning standpoint. That's, that's what we are, uh, what we're expecting, um, if, if production stays, um, at acceptable levels, um, >>Do you feel like productivity was negatively impacted positive? It will be impacted or it's kind of weird. >>Yeah. All the metrics that we track show that it was, it was sustained and in some areas even better. Uh, and if you really think about, um, sort of your typical day when you work from home, I found, uh, that I was logged on an hour earlier. That's probably what's happening with other staff as well is they're, they're motivated to get up and, and get online, uh, earlier. >>Yeah. Mostly tech leaders that I talk to share that sentiment, that the productivity is actually improved. So Darryl, I presume you see the same thing in your observation space. Yeah. >>Yeah. I, I do. And, and I have other clients too, and, and, and they are definitely looking at ways to continue to work remotely. I know that for a lot of people who are in the office all the time, uh, having a little bit more flexibility when you work from home can be a good thing. And, and like you said, you, you have to make sure that the productivity is still there and the productivity is up. Um, but I, I could see that the trend continuing absolutely >>I'd love for you to, to look at Darryl and say, and tell him what the kinds of things that IBM can do to help you both today, immediately 20, 21, and in the future and a Darryl, how, how your, how you'll respond. >>Well, I'll tell you that. Um, so in 2020, what, what changed most dramatically for us as a health plan? Uh, and, and I, it echoes what we see across the country is the gigantic shift in telehealth. Um, you know, if, if, again, if you look at the numbers, uh, our telehealth visits per thousand, so that's the number of visits per thousand members in a given month, went up 1472%. And so, you know, the common response to that is, well, you know, your visits overall probably, you know, were flat because, uh, you know, they just weren't happening in that. And that's not necessarily true for us. So if you look at visits overall, they written down four and a half percent. Um, so there was a shift, but it, it was not a big enough shift to account for, uh, visits overall sustaining the level that they were pre pandemic. >>Um, so as we look into 2021, uh, we will be investigating how we can maintain, uh, the, uh, the accessibility of our healthcare providers via telehealth. Um, you know, one of the projects that we started in 2020, uh, was based upon the choosing wisely campaign. So if you're not familiar with choosing wisely, it's a very well thought out process. It involves many, many provider specialties and its sole target is to reduce low value care. Uh, so we took it upon ourselves to Institute sort of a mirror of that plan or that program at, at blue cross here in South Carolina. And so as we moved to 2021, obviously those low value services just because of the pandemic were reduced, uh, and some of the high-value care was reduced as well. And so what we are going to try to do is bring back habit, bring back that high value care, but not bring back that low value care and so low value care or things like vitamin D testing. Uh, it can be other things like, um, uh, CT for head headaches, um, imaging for low abdominal pain, things like that. So, uh, we want to focus on low, uh, eliminating what value care, bringing back high value care, >>Okay, Dale, you're up? How are you going to help Alex achieve that? So, so good news is, is that we've got the analytic warehouse and the database where all of the data is captured. And so we we've got the treasure trove of information and data. And so what we'll do is we'll come alongside Alex and his team will do the analytics, we'll provide the analytic methods measures, and we'll also help him uncover where perhaps those individuals may be, who had postponed care, um, because of the pandemic. And so we can put together strategies to help make sure that they get the care that they need. Uh, I also a hundred percent agree that tele-health hopefully is something that will continue because I do think that that is a good way and efficient way to get care for people. Um, and, you know, as a, as, as a way to, to address some of their needs and, and in, in a safe way too. >>So, um, I, I look forward to working with Alec and his team over this coming year. I think there is, uh, knowing Alex and, and the partnership and his readiness to be a client reference for us. You know, those are all great, um, recognition of how he partners with us. And we really value and appreciate, uh, the relationship that we have with blue cross blue shield, South Carolina and, and blue choice. Excellent. Daryl's right. The, the, the database we use already has some of that low value care measures baked into it. And so throughout 2020, I've worked with our analytic consulting team. Uh, it's under Daryl too, to talk about what's on the product product roadmap for adding to the cadre of live low value care measures inside advantage suite. Uh, so that's something that we'll actively be, um, uh, discussing because certainly, you know, we're, we're obviously not the only client only health plan clients. So there may be other plans that have priorities that very different made very differently than ours. Uh, so we want to give them what we're studying, what we're interested in, so they can just add it in to all their other client feedback, uh, for advantage suites, roadmap. Excellent. >>Look, my last question, Alex is how would you grade IBM, if you had to take a bundle of sort of attributes, you know, uh, delivery, uh, value for service relationship, uh, et cetera, how would you grade the job that IBM is doing? >>I, the thing that I enjoy most about working with IBM and Darryl specifically, is that they're always challenging us to look at different things. Um, things that sometimes we hadn't considered, because obviously it may be an issue for another health plan client or an employer client that they've got. Uh, they tell us, this is what we're seeing. You know, you should look at it. Uh, a lot of times they do some of the foundational work in producing a report to show us what they're seeing in our data that is similar to what is in some of their other clients data. So that's refreshing to be, uh, challenged by IBM to look at things that we may not be, uh, looking at, uh, or maybe missing, because we've got our eye on the ball on something else you >>Care to put a letter grade on that. >>Oh, definitely. Definitely. Thank you. >>Well, Darryl, congratulations, that says a lot and, uh, we have to leave it there and one at a time, but, but Daryl, anything that I didn't ask Alex, that you, you wanted me to, >>So, um, Alex re able to keep your tennis game up during the pandemic? Uh, I, yes, I tried as, as often as my wife would let me good. I would play every time I was asked, but, uh, yeah, so I, I did have to temper it a little bit, although when you spend all day with her and, and my son, you know, she may be a little more, uh, lenient on letting me leave the house. Well, maybe she's >>Yeah. The tribute to the late great comedian Mitch Hedberg, who says, uh, you know, when I, I played tennis, I played against the wall walls. Really good, hard to beat if it's pandemic appropriate. >>Oh, that's good. That's a true statement. And there was a lot of that going on, a lot of that play and playing against the wall. >>Hey, thanks so much, stay safe and really appreciate the time. Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank you. You're >>Really welcome. It was a great conversation and thank you for watching and spending some time with client conversations with IBM Watson health.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the Q. Come to you from our Palo Alto studio with our ongoing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. The digital experience Let's jump into a really excited to have our next guest CIA Sam Bird, the president of the Client Solutions Group for Dell. Sam, where you joining us from today? >>Hey, I am joining you live from Austin, Texas. Jeff looks beautiful. All weather? Yeah, its's turning really nice. Uh, nice time to be here in Austin, right? So, >>Sam, let's jump into it. I mean, you, you cover, you know, kind of the heart of what Dell started with which was which was PCs. And, you know, it's funny. A couple days ago, Michael tweeted because he likes to tweet, which is fun. An article that said that the PC officially died today. It's a reference back to an article I had to look at the January 26 2010. Officially, the PC officially died today. >>That >>is so bizarre, and that is not in fact, not true, you guys. We're seeing unprecedented demand, so I wonder if it is You Look back at that. And I'm sure you saw Michaels tweet. What kind of goes through your head? Because we're in a very different space than we were 10 years ago. >>Yeah, I think the world's changed a lot, Jeff from 10 years ago. I got to say, uh, the PC died 10 years ago. It feels pretty good being being dead for 10 years. So I think we actually saw a, you know, still alive and very vibrant. PC. So you think about everything that's happened with Cove it We have seen the PC and people using technology to stay connected, whether it's, you know, working in their business, learning from home, staying connected with other family members. So we'd like to talk about it Is the renaissance of the PC. It kind of this rebirth reemergence of this really good friend that you had has become really core toe how we're getting stuff done in the world today, and we've stayed bullish about the opportunity around the PC. Michaels had that view from, you know, when he started this company, and we've since expanded to many other areas beyond selling PCs. But we continue to be really committed to the value of that technology in people's hands, >>right? So just in defense of the of the article, it was written on the launch of the iPad right, which was a new a new form factor. And, you know, we've seen this proliferation of form factors both within PCs and mobile phones, and you know, the sizes of screens getting bigger and the size of green getting smaller and surface all kinds of different things. So I wonder if you could share, you know, kind of your perspective in, you know, kind of the opportunity that opens up when people are looking for different types of form factors. And then, more importantly, I think now it's horses for courses. So when I'm sitting at my desk, you know, I haven't a big giant XPS with all the ram and GPU and stuff Aiken stuff into it. If I'm going to the airport with a long flight, I want something small and light and easy to carry and what's interesting, I think, with cloud it enables you now to basically have the form factor that you need where you need it for the types of work that you're trying to get done. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, if you if you take that 10 years ago, article to today we have had an enormous amount of innovation in the industry that's made the device is exciting and appealing for how people wanna want to operate. So, you know, we've seen Jeff a shift towards more mobile form factors with cove in. So, um, a commercial space that used to be maybe half desktops, half notebooks is now in the 70% range. More mobile form factors which reflects how people want to use them. You know, they're sitting at home, they need that device to be portable. They wanna go between rooms and home. That's the other thing that we found in some of our, you know, research and work on the spaces. You know, people might want to sit at the kitchen table in the morning in the afternoon. Maybe they're outside. They might have their kids do in school from home and have to be around them part of the day, so they still need a mobile kind of form factor, but it's plugged in. I want full power to run my applications. And, like you said, we will get back to a world with travel and people being mobile. And then you need to dial in the right form factor that has maybe a smaller screen, more portable device. So one of the things that's kept this business vibrant, you know, for the past 10 years and right now is a bigger screen experience is really, really valuable. A keyboard and multiple ways of in putting into devices are valuable, so there's core. Things are great. And then we've got systems that are set up for how people want to use them. You know, we still have designers sitting at home using big desktop workstations because the most powerful thing there times really valuable. There's a right system for how you want to use technology, and I think that that's attendant, you know, an approach we take in our business, and that's what we see in the industry. I think that's what's helped keep it very vibrant and alive. >>I love it, I love it. It is truly that work from anywhere and anywhere as you just defined, could be a whole bunch of things, and it doesn't even mean just at home or just at the coffee shop. That's really interesting. Is you even change locations where you're working within within the home. That really supports that. So, >>you >>know, Cove, it hits light switch moment. Everybody's gotta work from home. So huge, huge pressure there. And now, as you said, you know, we're seven months into it. Still gonna be going on for a little bit while a little while before people go back. Huge, huge boost to your guys business. I'm curious if you can share some thoughts in terms of, you know, now, I I need to kind of project a little bit of that office back to the work from anywhere situation. And, you know, you guys are that you're kind of that edge device that ultimately connects back to the mother ship. >>Yeah, I think it's and that's where we've seen people realized. It's a really valuable device that helps keep them, you know, productive and connected. Um, we have seen it's very interesting of it used to be, you know, pre co vid for Most people work with the location, you know, Post Cove. It it's something you do, and suddenly it's very location agnostic, and we see the world operating that way in the future Jeff of these devices at the edge or need gonna be working in a world where sometimes it makes sense to be in an office. Maybe there's collaboration, other things you need to dio. But we're going to see people working from home working from a coffee shop, working from, you know, anywhere in the world, and we're gonna need to stay connected. In that way, it's enabling a great set of talent. It's enabling people to be where they want, you know, get done what they need to do in their personal lives and then be contributing in a great way, thio to a business. So I think technology plays a huge role in going and getting that done. And to me, the world doesn't just return back to a you know, pre cove in space. But we're now in this. We've learned we can operate in this kind of multi modality world where technology can help keep us connected, collaborating, getting stuff done in some cases more productive than ever before, and it's kind of unleashed this new wave of thinking. I think we will continue to see great creativity on stuff we're putting in our devices to enable that, you know, software applications approaches that are gonna enable that that will really take us forward as we look at the future. >>You know, I'm just curious if you could share, uh, you know, kind of Ah, general breakdown by kind of form factor. What do you see between kind of, you know, I don't know if you split high end desktops and low on desktops and then, you know, kind of laptops and Chromebooks, what's kind of the high level kind of breakdown, and how's that? Is it change significantly over the last several years? And you you just mentioned a boost. You know, during the time of Cove in >>Yeah, we've seen a shift towards notebooks. Now you know much Is the article you you pulled up from 10 years ago? I think the death, the death of the desktop has also been much exaggerated. So we're Maurin, a mode of 70% of the systems that were selling our notebooks 70 to 80% range. It's a little higher, and consumer Andi, that's, you know, 20 points up in the commercial space. So we're seeing, you know, people have valued that kind of portability of systems. You know that, said is we talk through some of the ways people use it. There are great uses for desktops, for people are in the same place where I need ultimate ultimate power and then a z your home. We've seen a little more shift Teoh a suddenly you know, portability. That was really valuable because you had Salesforce's engineers on the road all the time. And I really wanted something that, you know, lasted had great battery life and was really easy to carry around. Suddenly we're in a world plugged in at home like we look at our devices, we've gone. Now more than half of our laptops are basically on is we have intelligence built into our systems. That tunes how battery management is done. Empower Management's done. More than half those systems are now in a mode of all, basically, always on a C. So people are, you know, plugged in all the time. They would like a little more powerful system. So whether they're running, zoom or teams or some other app. Multitasking. It's like there's a, you know, different requirements there. I think that changes Azzawi go forward and we get back to, you know, the notebook. It's like the ultimate design people want is a great big screen. That's super light, and the battery lasts forever. And I'm like that keeps our engineers and designers working every day because that's a really hard, complex thing to solve. And, you know, we're we continue to work and and and push that next forward. Now it's a little more biased to power. Sitting on a desk. We will be back in a world where it's gonna be, Yeah, I want power to sit on the desk, be on a video conference, get work done. But I also need to be able to take that on the road with >>Yeah, I just think, you know, because of the proliferation of online applications, right? And you know so much of our work day no pun intended, you know, is done in all these different cloud based applications, whether its sales force or slack or asana or whether we're, you know, working in in, uh, social media applications or even are you know kind of cloud enabled local applications. You know, a lot of times I find you don't have to carry your device right. E can lead the one device of one location, one of the other. I know it's almost like you pick up exactly where you were when you log back into chrome or you log back into whatever your browser is. If you've got it all configured, you know you don't even need to carry. A lot of times I find it's it's it's really nice. And if I have to check a message on the phone, No, it's a very different way of working, and, uh, I think it's really pretty slick. I do want to get into productivity, which you've talked about a lot. You know, I've always said the best productivity investment anybody could make is a second screen on the desktop. I mean, it's so much more productive to have a second screen the third screen. You go to places like Wall Street and the NASDAQ floor, where time matters and productivity matters, their screens all over the place and you guys are doing a ton of fun stuff with screens. Big giant curve things, and you made an interesting observation in other interviews that now people are consuming their entertainment content via those screens, whether it's an over the top service with Netflix or or whatever. So this this kind of shift to, you know, kind of mawr content consumption as this blend between kind of what you do in your personal life and what you do in your work life, both in terms of time and content, you know, continue to mix so lot of exciting stuff happening in big, beautiful screens. >>Yeah, totally agree, Jeff. And we see you know we've looked at productivity and see boosts with a bigger screen around your system. Same thing with exactly as you describe putting two screens around the system or go to a trading floor and their screens everywhere because it's about the you know, it's about the content that you can consume and the, um, you know, the work that you go get done, and it's a lot more efficient to be able to have multiple screens. Whether it's looking at a presentation and doing a call, you know, a video call for work on on one screen or either side of Ah, screen. And we're seeing people build out that, you know, their home office, their work office. I think that's to me. The, you know, the exciting piece of you think about how technology is arming people to get their job done. Like you can't imagine if you had all the technology taken away from you. You're like, Okay, what am I gonna What am I go do? Like if the internet goes down, I don't quite know how to get go. Be productive here. You know, I go try to find someone who has a landline phone on the block and call someone up. Andi have actually have a discussion, but, like, I'm not gonna build out a work, you know, a workspace. I've gotta build out a home space companies that are pretty progressive, the ones that are investing Maurin technology for their employees. We're seeing them be ah, lot more successful in this covert air, which equals go get on the right tools the screen around the system, You know, the extra devices. So it's like, Hey, my postures. Great. I can actually go get work done. And I'm in a nice space. Same thing back in the office. We've built stuff. We're building low blue light technology into our commercial PCs. We put that on our high end consumer PC. So you know, now you can walk into your home office early in the morning. You can goto late at night. It will have you all tune so your body is ready to go to sleep. You know, you don't even have toe. I don't have to talk to your family at all during the day. You could just work all the time from your home office. But I think little pieces like that are going. How do we put technology in this world where it's, like, very easy toe walk in and out of your you know, your office and being tuned on. But, hey, I need to go to sleep or I need to be chilling out after that and get the right technology and capabilities that let people be successful. So I think it's pretty exciting. Everything we've been able to dio, >>right? So I want to shift gears a little bit. Um, talk about user interface. What? One of the reason of this article that we keep referencing 10 years ago was the launch of the iPad, right? And in the launch pad or the iPad didn't have, Ah, traditional keyboard. Um, but I think people found out that not having a traditional keyboard, depending on the type of your work you're doing is a little bit of an inhibitor to your productivity. But it really begs the question as we enter this new world of different types of interaction with these devices and the increased use of voice, whether it's with Siri or or Okay, Google, um, >>we've >>had, you know, regulations on the A d a. In terms of access to websites and this and that. Aziz, you kind of look into the future of of human interaction with these devices as you get more and more horsepower toe work with on the GPU and the CPU and you know, can free up more. Resource is to this type of activity. I know you can't share anything too far down the road. But what? How do you see kind of the future evolving to get beyond this quality keyboard that was designed to slow people down because types were, too. I'm still waiting for the more efficient keyboard option to be to be available. But what's the future of human interaction with these things? To take the the degree of efficiency up another level? >>Hey, Jeff, we will do a custom keyboard for you. So you get me your you get me your high speed layout, we'll get you get you one of those. Um, you know, we do see it is pretty remarkable how long the keyboards been around and we still see it's It's also remarkable to me how powerful that is as a input device for, you know, for some tasks in the world. So what we see is it's not gonna be what replaces the keyboard. And there's one way of going and doing things. But all this compute the sensors that capability on the systems are just gonna allow people to operate the way that they want to operate. So you look at a PC today. It still has this great keyboard. It still has a laptop form factor that has, you know, been there for It's probably 25 years or so. It's actually pretty nice because it fits on your lap. It balances really well on the coffee table. Um, it's, you know, We've looked at so many different form factors, and it actually is a stayed around for a good reason because it it's pretty pretty functional. You know, you take on top of that, though we've built touch in tow, all our systems and screen. So a capability that's available to many of our customers and I go people are just starting. In the beginning, it was like Okay, Hey, how do I take this PC with touch on the screen and then you go? I don't want to do everything with touch, but gosh, it's like how maney you now touch it. If it's something's not touch, you know you have little marks on the screen. I went thio, I went. Thio was looking and working with someone here in a design, a design firm, and, uh, they had a product that was non touch, and it's like I reached in touch the screen to try to make it bigger because my eyes were not quite as good and they were like, Oh yeah, that's not a touch that's not a touch system and everyone touches the screen so it's like that becomes normal voice is going to become normal we have capability on the PC. Like you said, there's a bunch of voice ecosystems. Not everything is easiest to go do invoice. There are some things where you go ahead. I just want to go touch that, you know, gesture in the same way we look at intelligence on the system of also going There are things I wanna have just happen because I always I always do that and I shouldn't have to do voice. I shouldn't have to do gesture, touch everything else like, Hey, maybe I start the morning and I always pull up my calendar. Why doesn't that happen? Or I like to listen to her, You know, a song in the evening as I'm typing away on email on getting things buttoned up for the day. It's like your system can anticipate some of those things and it will just do that for you. So I think I think you're exactly right. We're going to see multiple ways of interacting with technology, and it needs to be natural and easy for us and then let the user pick pick the way that they want to go and do things right. >>Well, you just touched on a whole, you jumped ahead to questions on my list of things I want to talk about. And really, that's the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence, not in a generic way. That's an app that sits inside of the PC, but but in terms of using that intelligence as you just described based on my work flow based on my habit based on the applications I use based on you know what, you can observe and learn about me. Or maybe it SSM dictate down from from the corporate set up. You know how that PC operates for me? Because I think that's it is a really interesting thing, right? Everyone uses their machine differently, and whether they use, you know, shortcuts or not, How many tabs do they have open? You know, the the variability. You must have crazy studies on this in terms of the way people actually operate. These things is so, so high, so huge opportunity to, you know, again kind of remove the the get the signal from the noise and help people decide what they should do. Prioritize what they should do and add a layer of of simplicity to you. know it is a complex amount of notifications firing at me all day long. >>Yeah, I think that's a huge. You know, you talked about the potential you have in a world where more APS that we use our cloud cloud based of going How do I augment the capability in this client device at the edge To be intelligent and helped me go do mawr versus just being, you know, really dumb and serving up this other other content. And I think everything you describe is opportunity that we see We started Jeff about five years ago and have been very aggressive and putting intelligence and machine learning into the systems we started on our work stations, where there is an obvious application of, like, how do I tune a system to get the most performance out of an application? And we saw settings configurations making them different helped tune these very specific, you know, cad engineering programs that developers were running their times really valuable. They want the most performance. We used to have to have people sit down and we go. Okay, let's go run this application. Under this workload, we can put a table together. Here's a bunch of recommendations. We started going well, Hey, how do we have that happened? Automat like, let's try different settings. Figure out what works. The machines should should self tune itself then and figure out what's right and get based on exactly what I'm running. And people can be running different combinations so suddenly got a lot smarter than our great engineer sitting in the lab and figuring out those tables. And then, you know, from that time then we brought it to I think, what's just tip of the iceberg Now, where we start looking at, uh, performance across all our systems? What applications of my running go set things up so that it works? We talked a little bit about batteries and power management. Hey, how am I using this system if I am a really mobile person? Always, you know, taking my battery down to really low levels, hopping on a plane, I need to be quickly charged, like the system can figure out. Hey, I really need to tune things. Not for when, when you go through all the mechanics of a battery, it's like I am willing to sacrifice some on the longevity of the battery to enable really fast charging of that system because Jeffs always on the go Jeff runs his battery down. I need to make sure when he plugs in, he has maximum juice. Hey, here's Sam who's in a work from home mode, always plugged in. It's not great on any battery in the world to always be at, you know, maximum maximum charge every single minute of the day. And Sam has not unplugged his system in the past. You know, five days. Hey, we can run that at 95% and he will have a long life to that battery and be really happy with the system. And he's never gonna run out of power. You can start doing in that space. You can start doing it around sound and the environment that people are in, how we get smart. And I think there's an enormous amount you could do on top of that, like you described just how people have used the systems and it can sound a little eerie, but like it's what we you know, the machine suddenly knows how I'm going to go do stuff, but I'm like I would like that it to be anticipating what I'm doing, and then it starts taking that mundane stuff that we have to do that just eats up time and, you know, goes and gets that done for us. So we could be focused on the creative and the really pushing the boundaries, thinking >>I love it because it always goes back to kind of what do you optimizing for right? And there isn't necessarily one answer to that question, and there's a lot of factors that go into that in terms of the timing. As you said, the person their behavior you know happen to GPS is I'm at an airport. Probably need to plug in for you in the airplane. It's a good stuff. I want to. I want to shift gears a little bit, Sam, to talk about operating systems, Um, and and you know, chromebooks air out now. And you know, it was kind of this breakthrough to go beyond kind of Windows based systems. I think there's a lot of people that you know hope at >>some point >>will be, you know, have the option to run Lennox based systems. But it's just, you know, with a cloud based world and a multi, you know, kind of device interaction with all those different applications, whether it's it's my phone or my my desktop or my laptop or my my chromebook or my whatever. Um, Aziz, you start to think about kind of operating systems and opening up, you know, kind of a new level of innovation with because the expectation now for for like, a chromebook is that it's almost 100% Web based APS, right? That there's really not a lot of need for anything local. Maybe a quick download, a picture too attached to to an email or something. How do you kind of look at the future and kind of operating systems for PC? Specifically? >>Yeah. Well, I think is You describe Jeff, the applications and what you're doing on the system has become increasingly important over time, and it will only become more important as we go go forward. So, you know, from that point of view window, we dio work with windows. We do work with Google and chrome. I mean, Windows 10 is a really good based operating system. Chrome has a lot of nice capability in that operating system, you know, Obviously Apple, a competitor, has a different approach in that space. But I think we have a really good set of offerings that we can put on our our systems. And then we're focused on tuning that experience on top of the operating system. I I think it's still too complicated to go and put a, you know, get a new PC into a work or home environment, retire the old PC and manage that system. And what we look at is independent of that operating system. People want to go get their stuff done. We need to make that great. They wanna get their device, they want to turn it on and they want to go use it. And we want to build a world where, like, as I'm getting a new device, my device should know me well enough to go. Hey, Sam, this is this is the right time to get a device. This is the right kind of device that you should get based on what you're going and doing. Hey, I'm going to just keep you up to date. I am going to you think about any issues with the system. We still have too many things that flow through a traditional Hey, there's an I T. Help desk and then they figure that out and then I go toe level two or level three if they can't sort that out. Hey, how do we put that stuff to your point, Jeff before around intelligence, How do we automate those processes? So we're thinking through You know what needs to happen on that system, keeping it up to date and fixing and remediating that system. So I think there's a huge potential regardless of what operating system is beneath it, and we have very good choices there to go. We've got to make that experience the one that's great for the users and that that's where we're really focusing our, you know, our time and our energy, Right? >>So let me shift gears again a little bit and full disclosure I've bought, and I don't know how many XPS towers in a row. I think I'm on my third or fourth in a row. I love >>it. I >>mean, I'm a desktop. I like to just pack those things full of as much horsepower and GPU and CPU and memory as I possibly can because to me again, Back to an investment and productivity. I don't wanna be waiting for slow machines. I just to me it's a couple 100 bucks for this upgrade. That upgrade, it seems brain dead to me that people don't do that. But in terms of when you get these things now and it comes in the mail, it's basically a >>box and a machine, and >>you think back to the old days right when there was books and warranty cards and, you know, a whole plethora of stuff that kind of fell out of that box. I know you know. That's That's probably a leading indicator on the consumer side, about some of your efforts around sustainability and and being efficient and obviously taking advantage of things like the cloud in terms of activating these machines in this and that. But I wonder if you can share a little bit on what you guys have been doing about sustainability, because I know it's important. You know, there's a big focus around, you know, kind of environmental trash on old electron ICS, which is a riel, a real problem that people are dressing. So I wonder if you can. You know. Take a minute, Thio, to share your guys efforts in this area. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Jeff. It is. It is really important. And we see, you know, arming the world with technology so people can do better. Things really matters, but I love doing stuff outside, like I want the environment to be great. And we need to do that in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. So a couple of places we, you know, pushed really aggressively. You touched on the packaging. So whether that's taking, um, content out of boxes, that doesn't that doesn't need to be there. We've made very aggressive commitments with a series of 2030 goals that we're marching towards is a company where we said, you know, 100% of our packaging will be from sustainable or recyclable sources. So we've already moved aggressively in that space. When you look at what ocean bound plastic we're putting in our boxes, how we think about the materials that were picking, you know, cardboard, and using that in ways that go through the you know, the mail and can be shipped effectively. So we have maximum content there that can be recycled. We've we've committed that we will take back a system for every system that we ship. So getting and building this circular economy for electron ICS, we think is is very important. So we take the stuff that we've got out there and we put that back into a recycle process where you know your old PC can become part of your new cutting edge technology PC and we've led the industry and doing that in plastics were taking plastics from cases and plastics from systems, getting that back into new systems. We've done that with precious metals from the from the, uh, PCB lay board designs inside the systems. We've done that with rare earth metals and magnets, and we think there's opportunity to go farther in that space and then the 3rd 3rd kind of thing that we've committed Jeff is by by 2030 to have half the content of our new systems, be from recycled or renewable content. And we do a good job today of having the content in the systems be recyclable. It's almost over 90% by weight, but what we want to do and the work we need to go do is go get that recycled content going into a cutting edge technology that we're putting out there, and it's not. That's not a simple problem of going. People want things a structurally strong as possible, a super thin as performance as possible. And then we need to you, you know, we gotta use, um, basically waste that comes through and gets turned into new products. So we have our engineers are material science people working on how we make that riel. And we set some aggressive goals with, you know, Michael and the company that will be leadership and that we don't quite exactly know how to get there, but put us on the right kind of edge of pushing and doing the things that we need. Thio. We can have great technology and, you know, be responsible in the way that, as you said, is very important. >>It's great, and it's good to write it down, right? If you don't write it down, then it's just it just disappears into the into the ether. So, Sam, I really enjoyed getting to catch up. I want to give you the final word with a little bit. Look to the path and a little bit look to the future, right? A lot of conversation about Moore's law, and we got to the end of Moore's law and blah, blah, blah. And and I think that, you know, there's obviously technology behind that, and there's some real conversations. But to me, the more interesting topic around Moore's law is really the idea of Moore's law and this continual advancement of technology that's better, faster, cheaper. You've been doing this for 20 years at Del. You've seen tons of, you know, kind of Moore's law impacts and operating in this world where, you know, compute, compute storage and networking just is on this exponential scale on whether you want to talk about GP use or whatever again to me, it's not about the number, of course, and the transistor. It's about the transition in the core. It's about really the concept of this working in a world where you know you're gonna have a lot more. Where is power work with How do you How do you kind of reflect on, you know, the stuff that you're shipping today versus what you were shipping five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and then, more importantly, is you look forward. Um, you know what is what are you excited about? What gets you up in the morning? What puts a big smile on your face? Still come to work after 20 years of Dell? >>Yeah. You know, Jeff, it's a great question because the industry has changed so much over the last 10 20 years. So it's sometimes a fun thing. Toe. Look back at some of the products that we put out before. That seemed amazing at that point in time and you stack them against what we're doing now and then it could bring you down to Earth a little bit. So you see, the, uh, you see just the exponential improvements that we're able to make around the design of the product, the capability of the products. And I see that continuing the thing that gives me, you know, huge thought around this the device and the PC and the role is gonna play at the edge. We just did some research and we were looking at Millennials and Gen Z and looking around the world, and that is a huge and growing part of the population. It will be the the users of technology in the future with the world we're in today, 45% of them. So almost half of them said they would take their dollars and they want a premium, high end PC experience, and they would prioritize that versus other things they spend money on to go and have a great PC as a personal tool. Do you think about that translating to in a work environment they're gonna expect those same kind of great tools? And then to the question you asked, You know, I see a huge opportunity to continue to push forward the value and the way people use these devices, whether it's the intelligence we talked about. That to me is really exciting around building a machine that knows me and does things for me and how I want to use it, our ability to build immersive experiences so that you know, whether I'm gaming after work, collaborating with co workers like how do I put it so that we're together and it's a good Aziz that in person experience, we're gonna be able to do that with technology. You talked in a great questions around. Hey, the ways people interact with the systems, it will become natural. It will become whatever way they want to go and do that. And I think we can do that in a world where, yes, you can walk between all kinds of different devices. There will not be one device to end all. You'll be in a small screen device. You're gonna use a monitor. You're going to use a PC device. There will be technology across the home. But toe have that have that link together in the role that PC is gonna play in. That to me, is exciting. And we continue to, you know, invest aggressively. Michael saw that when he started the company. We continue to believe in the power of technology, and we're gonna figure out and drive those breakthroughs that will make the, you know, products exciting. And I love doing that every day of seeing the innovation we can put together and how that makes a difference for people. To me, that's really an exciting thing. >>Well, Sam, thank you. Thank you for the update. Again, the rumors of the PCs demise were greatly overstated. 10 years and glad to see that you're just kicking tail and doing exciting things. So thanks for for sharing your insight and your experience with us. >>Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Jeff. Great to talk to you. >>Absolutely. All right. He's Sam. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cubes. Continuing coverage of Dell Technology World 2020 The Digital Experience. Thanks for watching. See you next time.