(light techno music) >> Okay, welcome back, everyone from theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Mars here in Las Vegas. Back in person, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Re:MARS stands or Machine learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space. And we're covering all the action two days, day two. And we're here with Regina Manfredi, who's the VP of global CSPs, Cloud Service Providers Alliances with Teradata. Great to see you. Cloud service providers or- >> Cloud services providers, the hyperscalers. >> Hyperscalers, the big guys. All the CapEx, Amazon. >> Yes. >> The big guys. >> Indeed, thanks for having me. >> Yeah, Thanks for coming on. So tell about your role. So alliances, you're here with AWS. What's the role with AWS and Teradata? >> So AWS and Teradata have recently entered into a strategic collaboration agreement where we're really focused on building solutions together, leveraging AWS services, as well as Teradata's outstanding architecture, as it relates to the data analytics platform that we provide for our customers in the cloud today. And we're really trying to drive better outcomes for data scientists, business analysts, etc. >> You know, just recently, did a CUBE conversation with Teradata, and I was really surprised to find, not shocked, but kind of surprised, the scale of the computation that's going on in some of the cloud things you're doing. And you have the legacy on-premises data warehouse traditional business as well. >> Regina: We do. >> And there's a huge shift going on. A lot of the kind of upstarts, "Oh, data warehouse, old school. Data warehouse, it's antiquated, old," but that's not true. You guys have a lot of cloud action. >> We do, we have substantial cloud action that's occurring with our customers today. We actually just released earlier this year an announcement around 1,000 node tests in the cloud together with AWS, and had success, no downtime, no failures at all. And so we're pretty proud about that, and excited about what that's going to hold for our customers who need that level of scale. >> Well, Regina, I got to tell you, I have a little bit of a confession here. I'm a cloud data nerd by my training. And, you know, I've always watched all the different kind of levels of transformation with the industry, and you know, this is going to change that, that's going to kill that. Everything's going to be killed and then it never dies, but it just changes. Even today, SQL is still like the prominent language, it's never going to, in fact it's amplified further because that's what people like. So that just proves that things don't always get replaced. And so I wanted to ask you this because as we're here at this event at re:MARS, you have space, you have all these ambitious positive goals, and they just need to do some machine learning. They need some cloud, they need some, they need to have the solutions. >> Regina: Yes. They're not going to like get in the weed and say, "Oh, this is a better Hadoop cluster than this Kubernetes cluster. So it's not about sometimes the tech, it's about the solution. >> It is, and one of the things that was interesting for us in our session earlier this week was the fact that we had so many customers approach us after that session and say, "I just need help preparing my data. Running my models, training my models, and making sure that they run and can be deployed. And I don't want to move all this data all the time and have all this failure rate that I'm experiencing." And so it was very basic requirements and needs as people begin into their journey on AI/ML for their business. And so it was reaffirming that we're on the right track and driving the right tools for them. I want to get your perspective on what you're thinking about the show, but first, I want to ask this since you brought that up. Swami was on stage and he said, "You can spend your entire time and your career just trying to figure out what's going on, machine learning." >> Regina: Yup. >> "Which open source framework's going to be better than the other one." I mean, it's just a lot of work to even figure it out. We just had the Fiddler's AI CEO on who worked out all the hyperscalers, say Facebook tend to, you know, real, you know, super alpha geek, if you will. And he was saying, and we were talking about open source, free software, integrations are a big part of where cloud scale, and the value is being captured for companies and people who are doing projects. Integrating some managed services, so this is where I see you, guys, going right now with Teradata, having all these cloud services built on the install base. >> Right. Which is not, doesn't hurt that at all. It just only helps it as they would migrate to cloud, its integrations, so you take a little bit of Amazon here, a little bit of Teradata there. >> Regina: Absolutely. >> What's your perspective, what's your reaction to that? >> So, I agree. And we think that's part of our secret sauce. You know, what we want to have is a data analytics platform in the cloud that allows data scientists, and architects, etc., to bring their own tools. So whatever they're utilizing today, we want them to be able to utilize it in vantage, and make sure that, A, can drive some efficiencies, and also, some better, smarter economics, as it relates to their particular projects. And so I agree with you 100% , and would tell you that we view that as somewhat our competitive advantage. It's not about being all proprietary. We want those integrations, and we've got dozens of them with AWS, and- >> Can you give example, can you give a couple examples of some integrations that highlight that? >> Sure, so right now we've got an integration with SageMaker today that allows our customers or data scientists to come in, prepare the data, and actually leverage SageMaker to build and train the models, and then deploy very quickly and easily without having to do all the data movement within their architecture. >> It's just so fascinating. I can't wait to have more conversation with you guys about this because I just think the world's spinning in a direction where, with low code, no code, >> Regina: Yup. >> you can see code, companion whisperer, that they have CodeWhisperer they launched today, they're writing subroutines for machine learning. And so it's not autocomplete, it's subroutine. So you're seeing all these advances on the technology. So it comes back to the building blocks, the integration. It just seems like going to be like a plug and play. That's old, were all, are old words. Mix and match, plug and play, interoperability, were old words, like, in the old days. Now they're becoming more relevant. What's your take on all that? >> Yeah, I would agree. I don't think that we should be competing against the algorithms, and neither do we. We want to just actually build out the toolsets that drive the enablement based on what a customer's requirements and needs are, and based on what the investments that they've already made within their own enterprises. >> You know, what's interesting about this event, I love to get your reaction to what re:MARS means to you because it's machine learning, automation, robotics, and space. Not your typical tech conference. >> Regina: No. >> Okay, little bit of a mixed bag there, so to speak. I love it. I think it's like super alpha geek, very nerdy, super nerds are here. And the topics kind of reflect the future. For the people that are watching that aren't here, what's your vibe on the show? What's your takeaway? How would you explain what's going on here from a market perspective, from a vibe perspective, what's happening? >> This is my first re:MARS actually, and I would have to tell you that I feel like it just, general observation, a few things, one, the conversations are more meaningful and we're getting into the meat of what a data scientist truly needs in order to be successful in their role and help drive their enterprise. That's number one. So I think, to your point, we're all kind of geeking out together here. The other thing that I think is pretty exciting is the amount of use cases, and ways in which we are driving impact. AWS and Teradata driving impact for the business analysts in the enterprise environment, but also for the people, their customers. That's pretty exciting to see. >> You know, it's interesting. When I first, was kind of like thinking about the show and what I was going to expect, it kind of overexceeded my expectations in the sense of what I was thinking about IOT, industrial, and digital innovation. 'Cause that's going to scale. I think now we're at a tipping point with machine learning that the industrial, IOT markets is going to explode 'cause machine learning's ready. But there was a whole positive, save the earth angle >> Regina: Yes. >> that caught my attention. >> Regina: Yes. You know, the discoveries from space are going to potentially have impact for the good, not just a cliche some sustainability messaging. It was actually real. >> Right, I think that that's exciting in an area in which we're excited to explore. We're doing a lot of work behind the scenes around sustainability and ESG initiatives for our customers, but also for the greater good. It's about driving outcomes for the greater good and being responsible with how we approach that. You know, the other thing I noticed too from a robotics standpoint, given I live in California, is a huge robotics culture there, you know. It's like bigger than football and baseball, and some sports. They provide A and B team and people get cut from the B team. There's so much demand to be on the robotics team. It's not a club, it's a team. >> Regina: Right. And so, you look at what's going on robotics, it's so exciting in the sense that if you're young and you're into tech, this is like- >> Regina: This is the place to be. >> I mean, why wouldn't you be hanging out here? >> Yeah, well, and I visited the booth over at University of Michigan, and how they're driving robotics to help support the human body to go further distances, and to drive better performance and health for individuals, and was really impressed with the work that they're doing, and even saw a use case and a need where I thought, you know, I have a quadriplegic sister-in-law, who I thought, "Wow, someday, maybe she'll be upright and walking again." >> John: Yeah. >> And those were exciting conversations to have while I was here. >> The advances on the material management robots I think is fascinating to see that growth. Well, let's get back to Teradata real quick to kind of close out future of what's next. Obviously, a lot of migration to the cloud happening. What's the outlook on the landscape and where do you see it evolving? Because you're seeing what the hyperscalers are doing, the cloud service providers, they're providing the CapEx. In fact, we coined the term supercloud, last re:Invent, that's become a thing. And Charles Fitzgerald would think it's not a thing, he debates us online all the time on Twitter. But it's, you can build on top of a CapEx. >> Regina: Yup. >> They did all the heavy lifting. You know, Snowflake, Databricks, the list goes on and on. So building on top of that to build proprietary advantages or even just sustainable advantages is now easier to do. So superclouds are kind of in play. So that means whoever's got the playbook can win. So you guys seem to be executing that playbook of having the installed base, and then working with AWS >> Regina: Yes. >> to ride that wave. Tell us about the migration strategies you're seeing, and what are your customers doing specifically, and take us through a customer that's leaning into the cloud and driving. >> So when I think about specific customers that are leaning in, you know, the first and most important thing that we're hearing is, you've got to be able to scale. I've got 1,000 nodes or 100 nodes, or whatnot. And so we're addressing that because we think that there's a place for hybrid cloud. We think everyone's moving and rushing towards the cloud, but even one of our competitors last week announced that there's a place for on-prem, and we would agree. >> John: Yeah. >> So that is something that we're really focused on, and you take, for example, the automotive industry. We're seeing a lot of work being done together with our joint customers, AWS and Teradata, and some of these auto manufacturers who are experiencing supply chain issues and challenges today, and also need to drive better quality control measures within their own lines, in the manufacturing lines. And so we're working together with them to look at what type of machine learning and AI can we be leveraging together as part of the overall solution to drive those analytics, and make sure that they have better quality control >> You know, that's really good insight about the on-premise thing. And I think that supports what we're seeing around hybrid. We see hybrid as a steady state going forward, period. >> Regina: Yeah. >> And that will evolve into multi thing. Multi-cloud, you want to call it, or superclouds, and more things. Basically, distributed computing. So if you look at the edge here, the edge is just on-premise. What is the premise? It's an edge or big device, small device, data center is a large edge. >> Regina: Right. >> And so if you're using cloud hybrid, the distinction kind of goes away. And I think this is where we'll going to see the winners emerge in data. Because remember, you go back to 2010, Hadoop was the big thing, big data. And that kind of crashed and burned. And then now you're seeing Databricks picking up a lot of that. Snowflake, you guys are there. And so it's still going on, this transformation in data. >> Regina: It is. And I think hybrid's a huge deal. What are customers saying around that? Because I think they're just trying to figure out cloud scale. >> I think they're trying to figure out cloud scale, I think they're also trying to figure out security. And so, you know, when we're talking to our customers, that absolutely is critical. And I would also suggest that the customer base is really looking for, "Hey, don't just help me migrate, I really need to modernize." And so driving the right use cases for the customer is important. >> You know, another thing that you, guys, have a lot of core expertise in is governance. And we've seen how that has played in all the compliance, and all these conversations are kind of converging. Do you have closed, do you have open? Machine learning needs more data, dow do you protect it? So that set a hot area that I see as well. And that's something that's emerging, 'cause cyber's also involved too, like, you have cyber security threats on code, so I'm curious to see how that turns out. What's your perspective on, what's Teradata's perspective on the security, open, closed perspective? Any- >> It's a priority for, security is a priority for us. And I don't think that we've officially made that determination yet, right? We're still exploring, and we're going to do whatever our customers require of us. In terms of an open, closed perspective, I think we want to be flexible. Again, like I said before, it's about being open and supportive of whatever the customer requirement is especially across the different industries. >> Well, Regina, great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. Great insight, great to catch up on Teradata, cloud play. Very strong move. I think it's a good one. Final question I want to ask you though, is a little bit more about the personnel in the industry, like, obviously, if you're young, you're seeing all this space here, machine learning's not obvious. I know schools now are training it, but you start to see new personas come into the workforce. Where are the gaps? I mean, obviously, we have a lot of new opportunities, like, cybersecurity has a lot of job openings. Is there any observations that you have around or advice to younger folks coming in, from a career standpoint? Because a lot of job openings are skills that weren't even taught in school. >> Regina: Right, that's- >> You know. >> And then you got the women in check, and you have all kinds of opportunities now that aren't just engineering, right? >> Regina: Yes. >> It's not just engineering. It's computer science, so there's a whole in-migration of new talent coming in the industry. >> Yes, I think maintaining a curious mind is really critical, and taking time to invest in learning. You know, there are so many resources available to us at our disposal that that don't cost us a dime. And so my advice to anybody who is curious, remain curious, dig in, and get some experience, and don't be afraid to stick your neck out, and try it. >> Well, in this conference we have robots welcome, you know, in this out there. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> Regina, thanks for coming out here. Really appreciate it >> John, thank you, it's a pleasure. >> CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Amazon re:MARS. I'm John Furrier, your host. Stay with more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat bright music)

(triumphant orchestral music) >> Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, here inside theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto. We have a great CUBE conversation around security, malware, phishing, and we got Atif Mushtaq who's the CEO of SlashNext. It's a startup here in the Bay Area with a Series A funding and they really solved probably one of the hardest problems that people are trying to crack the code on, which is how do you solve the human problem of not getting phished? And that is the technique how people are getting in. Actually, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming in. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I love bringing the startups in to get the real lay of the land because you got some funding, you got customers, you just kind of get out in the market, you're at the frontlines of security. And you're solving one of the hardest problems. >> That's right. >> Malware, phishing. >> Phishing, yes. >> So before we get into it, take a minute to explain what the company's doing. What is SlashNext? Why did you start the company? What's the early product look like? And what's the core problem you're targeting? >> Yeah, of course, I mean, I think you already told that. We are a company that is completely focused on phishing and social engineering. We are not a part-time, phishing is not a part-time problem for us. The company was built on the problem that, okay, that phishing is a growing problem, and we really need a technology and a company who's dedicatedly focused on social engineering and phishing. Before founding SlashNext, I worked for a company called FireEye. And the FireEye was not about phishing. FireEye was all about malware problem, right? So when I came out of that, I started to see that there was a time when the malware were really growing rapidly, right? And at that time, they were trying to exploit problems in the software, and exploiting that without any human intervention, right? And over the period of time, what we saw that Google, Microsoft, the world, they tried to make their software really secure. So during my last days at FireEye, I started to feel that malware growth is going down, and the reason is that Microsoft software are much better than they used to be. Google is really determined that nobody should really exploit my software to install malware. But at the same time I was seeing that, okay, the cyber crimes are rising. So if the malware are going down, what is really causing the cyber crimes? And, end of the day, I found that, okay, the game has changed. Now it's more about tricking humans and tricking in such a way that they give you their information, they click on the malware themselves, without exploiting anything in the software. And I also found that, you know what, I mean, you can't really solve this problem with just conventional computing, right? With just the algorithm. You really need to understand the human psychology because these guys are exploiting that psychology. Fear, trust, and reward. All of us have these emotions, right? They just have to exploit them in such a way that we get excited enough to hand over our information willingly to them. And this is where we start-- >> And it's working too, by the way. We know the numbers are off the charts and we cover it heavily on siliconangle.com, and we're about to do a bunch more content on cybersecurity and national security. So now it's not just the individual, the implications are broader. >> That's right. >> But let's go back. Before we get into that, I want to get it back, when you said at FireEye, the company you worked for, you said they were just doing malware. So they saw malware declining, you saw the trends going up. Before you wrote a line of code, that's what you saw. When you started the technology, what did you do next? >> I think it started with the problem. I think first of all, I really wanted to make sure that I'm solving a growing problem. If the problem is going down, eventually other people will catch up and by the time you have a solution, maybe the problem is not really there. So it's funny that at that time there were so many other companies trying to solve the malware problem, and they didn't realize that, okay, the malware problems are going down, right? And because I was working for a company who started the malware thing around 2004 or '05, right? So I had already seen-- >> A little bit older. The trend moves on. The fashion moved to phishing. But what did you start writing code on? Is it born in the cloud, did you have servers? What were you doing? How were you getting going? >> Yes, the code technology is based on cognitive computing. And the reason you really need a cognitive computing or artificial intelligence because you need computer software who could understand emotions. Because phishing is about exploiting the human emotion. And they try to exploit you by giving you a piece of text or some visuals in order to trick you. Okay, your CEO lookalike say, okay, transfer me $50,000. There's nothing really malware in it, right? It's just $50,000 transfer to me, right? They give you a fake login page of PayPal. No malware in that, they're just using the logo and sometimes they ask you, okay, there are various computer problems on your laptop, right? In order to fix that, you need to call us, right? So they're trying to exploit your emotion of trust, reward, and greed. So, end of the day, we thought that, okay, unless we have an army of researchers who are doing all this job because they understand the human emotions, or we can build programs that can understand these emotions, and whenever they see someone is trying to exploit this emotion, they can trigger on that. So result is that we have built a technology in the cloud. So while your user is checking an email, or a webpage is being rendered on the computer screen, within milliseconds we find, okay, something suspicious is going on. And we send the information to a cloud, and from our cloud we launch the browser in realtime. So while I'm seeing this webpage on my screen, the computer programs are actually seeing a copy of that from the cloud. The only difference is that, this, I might not be the tech-savvy guy, but the computer algorithm that actually looking into that webpage, seeing what logo is being used and reading the natural language, they're quite tech-savvy. So with it-- >> Talk about the technology. So, you had customers out of the gate before you had one dime of venture capital. You started getting paying customers. How are they deploying? What was the original product? What was their initial traction? Is it a SaaS model? Do they buy software? What were they paying you for? >> The form factor was hardware based. The hardware was cloud-powered. The whole purpose of the hardware was to sniff the network traffic, all the web traffic at the network switch level, and whenever they see something suspicious, they engage that cloud. So all the secret sauce and the main technology resided at the cloud. It was just a mechanical way for us to sniff the traffic. So the first product that we sold was that hardware device. And now we're moving more towards other form factor-- >> And you guys catch some phishing out of the gate? Did you guys solve some problems out of the gate? >> Yeah, within seconds, we started catching stuff. We, first of all, started seeing direct filtration attempts. We started seeing the phishing attempt right away. And this is where, I think, we got them by surprise because they already have all these big vendors already in place, and they were kind of over confident. They said, okay, you know what? You look like a young guy who's rarely had big claims. >> You had FireEye, you must know what you're talking about, we'll give it a shot. >> We'll give it a shot and they never believed that, okay? They thought, okay, maybe I can catch one or two phishing attacks, right? >> I have nothing to lose. I'll try it, I'm probably >> I'll try-- >> going to be on the plan, one more, what's one more box? >> But we got them by surprise. At the very, very beginning, the moment you attach the network traffic, we'll start tripping and this is how we got, I mean, no marketing material, no website. A founder is going without any presentation, and just selling. And I a hired a VP of sales who would actually carry the box with me. I would manufacture the box in my bedroom. My wife would put stickers, she's really good at that. And we actually pack it-- >> It looks good, yeah. >> It looks good. >> Little micro boxes, well, trying the chip on there. No, only kidding. Yeah, so you got the products, how many customers did you get on the early stages? How many did you get in that month? >> We had around 10 paying customer, and the revenue for around three, $400,000 ARR before we went in front of the VCs. And these guys had actually seen FireEye, and FireEye took a lot of money before they even had the paying customer. And they said, you know, what are you doing? >> You did a good move there. So, Atif, bootstrapping is a great, I think it's not only brave from an entrepreneurial standpoint, it really gives you the more creative freedom, because if you're putting your own cash on the table. So it's commitment and also it gives you creative license, not like that extra pressure. Most VCs might, some of these might give you a pass. Most are a bunch of board meetings and want to put pressure on you. >> That's right. >> Let's take a step back. Give us a 101 on the current state of malware. What are the different types of malware out there? You mentioned a few of them just a second ago. Break down the top malware, I mean, the phishing attacks. What are the top phishing attacks that you're seeing right now that people should know about? That may not know about. >> Okay, so there are two things. I would call it, first of all, there are two things that are happening when it comes to phishing. First of all, the mechanism that phishing attacks for using is moving beyond email. That is the first change. Now we are seeing phishing attacks spreading through advertisement, through social media, through messaging apps. Previously it was just emails. So that's one difference that we are seeing. Another difference is that the type of phishing's changing as well. Historical, it has been about fake login pages or money transfer scams. Now we are seeing a lot more things that were never been tried by the bad guys. You are seeing the scareware scams where suddenly there's a popup on your screen and they're asking you, to install a malware because there's a problem on your system and so-called anti-virus is going to solve that problem, right? We're seeing browser extensions being spread through phishing, right? We are seeing telephone fraud happening through this phishing, right? So it has moved beyond just fake login pages. So, first of all, more communication medium, and at the same time, more type of phishing attacks that are happening. So, right now, if you say around 20 to 30% of attacks that we are catching are the credential stealing, fake login pages. Around 20 to 30% are the rogue software, fake Flash player, fake PDF readers, and all that. And then the rest are the, you know what, browser extensions. >> So what is spear phishing? I hear that term a lot. >> Spear phishing is the targeted phishing. Spear phishing is that I'm not sending it to hundreds and thousands of people randomly, and who are gets victim to it, that's a bonus, right? >> The system admin for the Linux kernel for the bank. >> Yeah, I'm targeting you. >> I'm targeting him, social engineering. >> So I'm going to LinkedIn. I'm going to LinkedIn. I want to target your company. So I got your name, I got your email, and I'm sending one email to you. That is spear phishing, right? The drive by phishing is all about sending it to thousands and thousands of peoples, and then getting them phished. But there's one thing, there's one trend that is happening that is actually making spear phishing going away. What's really happening is that a lot of people who are targeting you, they don't need to send you the direct email. They actually go to the black market and all these guys who are randomly hunting you, they got your name from there. So they don't have to work hard. >> Dark web has my contact. >> Right, so I can go there and say, you know what, John, is there anyone with this email who you recently phished? And the guy who never really cared about you acted and die. I got that guy infected, how much you going to pay me for that? I pay you $50, and now I got access to your information without even sending you any spear phishing email. So this dark market and this overall cyber crime business actually has made much easier for the guys who really want to target you. Spend 50 bucks instead of I try to send you emails, and I have to set up all these website. I don't have to do anything. I can simply go to that dark web and can buy your information. >> This is a really good point. I think this is some people, it scares a lot of people, but it's well known the crime syndicates in the dark web are well advanced and well funded. So a lot of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies help fueling that. Share your opinion on that. Share some color commentary about how sophisticated and how robust the economy is in the dark web. >> There are hundreds and millions of dollars. I mean, the guys are making millions of dollars. There was a ransomware called CryptoLocker and called in to FBI. They made tons of millions of dollars. So the money is huge. And Bitcoin is actually fueling that. Previously it was very difficult. You can always track by it. Previously, around 2006, I remember there was a ransomware, and they were asking you to transfer money through Western Union. But you can really catch those guys, the money trail always there. Bitcoin is one thing that really fueled the dark web. Because for the very first time, you can steal people's money without leaving any trail. And that is actually, I think, is the unfortunate consequences is it is really fueling the cyber crimes because now you don't have to care about you getting tracked, getting arrested. >> Yeah, I mean, we have a debate on theCUBE all the time about this. I mean, that with every dark movement there's also a light at the end of the tunnel. Gaming culture leads a lot of the user experience. The dark web, I think, is leading a lot of the transactional things. If you think about Shadow IT before cloud was popular, Shadow IT is what drove a lot of the cloud early adopter. Some are saying that the dark web, and cryptocurrency, and blockchain, token economics, actually is a leading indicator of what we might become. So the dark web might become the operational model. >> That's right. >> Because you just turn the lights on and say, hey, if this is so inefficient, why not just adopt this efficient market? Yeah, you can't track it but it's more efficient. So, again, that's a little bit provocative and a little bit radical, but, I mean, think about it. A lot of problems going on. Bitcoin certainly is a great way to clear that cash out. >> That's right. >> And cannabis sales in the US is driving a lot of Bitcoin as well. >> That's right. >> Moving money around. So, follow the money, you'll find the technology, is what I always say. So, your thoughts now on the business. How do you see the business shaping? What are you guys trying to do? What's the product currently? You got some venture capital. You got Wing VC. >> That's right. >> And Norwest too. >> Norwest Partners. >> Great firms. What's it like? How much did you raise? What are you looking to do? >> So, we raised around $9 million last year, and we are gearing up for our CDSP earlier next year. So we have actually made great progress, and I think that one of the biggest thing that we're getting from our investors is that, I mean, just like FireEye, we got into the business of all this multi-vector phishing at the early stage. So, we have an advantage of around two to three years, as compared to our competitors, right? And at the same time, they also know that we are not developing a niche enterprise product. There are four billion internet users and phishing is all of them problem. So just think about that, right? We just have a tiny customer base, right? But if you target all those internet users, it's going to be around seven billion internet users. >> So do you have a strategy laid out yet? It's going to be an enterprise business? You're targeting individuals? Have you had a clear visibility on some of the target beach yet? >> So next two to three years is going to be all enterprise, right? And we'll start with the Northern America and all that. Maybe a later stage, little bit of the international expansion. But, overall, if you see the road map, and we really want to make a great company. I never really started this company to at least sell it for $100 million. >> You probably made some good dough at FireEye, so. They take care of you? >> Yeah, yeah, of course. (John and Atif laughing) But I think the purpose was that, I mean, I have nothing else to do, right? I mean, and so I'm not a serial entrepreneur. It was never the purpose that I can sell something quickly. >> You want to build a durable company. >> I want to build a durable company, and all the VCs, they want us to build a durable company because they want really, want a big exit, right? But I think the roadmap that they're seeing is that, okay, you know what, you can start with enterprise, and then you can go into the consumer space. And then, I think the problem is huge. It's not something that you can only sell to enterprise, or you can only sell to consumer, right? Every internet user is a victim. >> Yeah, and I think there's an opportunity for a vendor to come, I mean, a supplier, to come out of the market. And I've always said to the Illumio guys, Alan Cohen, and a bunch of other venture-backed companies, that it's going to be a new company, a new brand, that will be the big player. Because if you look at the market share, no one company actually has dominant market share in cybersecurity. >> That's right. >> So you have thousands of flowers blooming, but no clear winner yet. And I think that's a function of throwing everything at cybersecurity, and the buyers are like, I'll take anything. I'm so desperate. So there's a huge factor of desperation. How do you see that being solved? Because it is a desperate market, because people, they can't play offense, they got to play defense, they got to protect. And so the perimeter's gone. Used to be the moat and the firewall switch. Now it's gone, the perimeter. >> Is gone. >> Is gone, and so now you have service areas off the charts. So how do you protect it? (chuckles) What do you see? >> I think we started with the device model, right? But I think now we moving towards the software and the endpoint business. And we really believe that you need to cover the remote user. I mean, you just barely spend eight hours in the office, right? So we are actually developing technologies that are going to target the remote users, and we going to target multiple type of devices and all that. So that's our next big thing. Off of the same cloud technology. Cloud you have already developed, right? Now you have to develop multiple form factors or multiple ways to actually access that cloud. >> Multi-factor authentication, not just two-factor authentication really is the key, biometrics, things of that nature. Google's got some stuff going on there. But I want to get your thoughts on the cloud. I mean, cloud obviously is something you, cloud's your secret sauce. >> A big part of it. >> Is it on Amazon, Google? Which cloud do you use? >> It's distributed between AWS, but the core of our logic is actually reside in our own data centers. The reason is that the kind of GPU power that we wanted, because we are rendering all these pages in realtime, right? So we never got that kind of GPU support from the off-the-shelf AWS, right? So we really built our own-- >> So custom GPU powerhouse? >> Yes. >> For all the floating point calculations. >> Yeah, because you have to run millions of browser instances. Can you imagine? We are running all these virtual browser, continue-- >> Why didn't you start a GPU cloud? It's another venture. >> Yeah, another venture. (John laughing) But I think that's the lead for that because AI and the metrics calculation is going to be the key, right? And they're adding support. But around 2014 to be really frag-a-mit, it look like a joke. That you can have hundreds of millions of browser getting up and down, getting up and down, in realtime, right? So we got a very customized cloud for that purpose, and that's actually barrier to entry for a lot of other vendors. >> Yeah, and I think the cloud provides you some good agility as well. And they have, Amazon's kicking butt, we love Amazon. Okay, so now on the future. Hiring, you got some people. What are the key priorities for you guys? Engineering, obviously. More and more engineering. >> Engineering. >> Technology's cognitive. What kind of skill sets are you looking build? Machine learning, AI? >> It's already based on the machine learning and AI because we're doing the natural language processing, computer vision analysis. Because you want computer to see things, what's being rendered on the screen, right? So we already have the technology. What we really want to do now is to make it accessible for a variety of customers. Not every customer wants a hardware device, not every customer wants endpoint solution, right? You need to order multiple form factors. So you want to use this cloudware endpoint? Okay, you take that one. Okay, you love hardware device, right? But, end of the day, you're offering your cloud service to other people. So, first of all, building more form factors and definitely more customer traction. >> I better ask you the question, 'cause I just love the entrepreneurial hustle. And congratulations on the startup and it's looking really, great space to be in, by the way. So it's super, super great. 10 years out from now, in your mind's eye, what's the preferred future look like in your mind? For your company and the outcome that 10 years from now. What's it going to look like? What's the state of phishing and security? If you're successful, if you achieve your mission, what happens? >> Okay, so, I think, I mean, it's kind of funny. Over success lies with the bad news, right? I think every tech landscape is changing. It's usually one train lost was seven to eight years, before it goes down and the bad guys move to the next train. I think this is the very first time they have started targeting humans viciously, right? The problem is that by the time you have a trained professional, the new people who are emerging in, right? I don't think, right, this problem is going to get solved any time sooner. We can't rely on the humans to train, to get trained. You can't really make a user a computer security researches, right? In my opinion, eventually technology has to catch up. In my opinion. So I think we have to keep innovating because hackers are going to find new methods, and we have to keep on catching up. And I think we'll be a phishing protection company in the next 10 years. Maybe adjacent product, but I think we really want to be focus on this. >> And social engineering, to your point, and tell me if you agree with this, it's been very successful for hackers. Social engineering has been the tactic. And there's a variety of forms of social engineering. >> That's right. >> Great, awesome. Well, good luck with everything. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. We have Atif Mushtaq, the CEO of SlashNext. Hot startup funded by Norwest Venture Capital and Wing VC, two good firms that we know very well. They know their tech. And, again, security. Great problem to solve. And if there's a big thing you want to go after and solve a big problem, it's security. It's theCUBE bringing you the theCUBE coverage here in Palo Alto. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (triumphant orchestral music)

(innovative music) >> Hi everyone, this is Dave Vallente and welcome to part one of our four part series Conquering Enterprise Cloud co-sponsored by Oracle. You know, Cloud is on everyone's minds these days and for good reason. I'm here with Chuck Hollis of Oracle, good to see you again Chuck. >> Thanks, Dave, you know it's great to be here. You know, I think we both think this is an increasingly important topic for any IT leader these days. I'm looking forward to a deep discussion. >> You know, that's right, Chuck. Our goal here is really to deconstruct Cloud computing and specifically try and address the challenges faced by most IT groups today. We really want to understand how to best utilize Cloud to create business capabilities and really have a frank conversation about Oracle's role in Cloud. So let's dig in. In our initial segment, we're going to start with the big Why. Why is there so much interest in Cloud models and why now? Let me start by sharing some data from a survey of 1,200 respondents that we just finished last month. 33% of the respondents are thinking tactically as Cloud first. 49% are thinking about deploying Cloud selectively and only 8% say Cloud only. Less than 10% say no Cloud. So this data clearly underscores that Cloud is on virtually everyone's mind. We know public Cloud is still small, but it's rapid growth has everybody trying to figure out their own Cloud strategies. >> You know what this tells me is that over 90 percent of your 1,200 respondents are thinking seriously about Cloud in some form these days. If that's not mandate, I don't know what is. >> Well Chuck, how do you think we got here? I mean in the last few years, it looks like we've gone from 90% being skeptical of Cloud, to 90% really taking it quite seriously. Large companies like Microsoft and Oracle have completely reshaped their strategies around Cloud. >> You know, you're right. Maybe we take a step back and figure out why we're having this discussion in the first place. >> I think a good starting point might be how business itself has changed over the last few years and of course when the business changes, IT really has to adapt. Chuck, you talk to a lot of customers and really a lot of IT people. What is driving the shift from your perspective? >> If you really want to talk big picture, I think we've gone from an economy of things to an economy of information. Everything an organization does, or might ever want to do, is entirely grounded in information these days. So it's no surprise to me that IT is starting to matter a lot more than it ever has. Another way of saying the same thing I think IT has become one of the big three ingredients you need for business success. Great people, great financials, now great IT. >> You know, I remember years ago when we felt like the job of IT was to support the business, you know by automating financials or HR or whatever. Now the opposite is true. In many cases, IT has really become the business. >> Right, let me offer a different view. One way to look at any organization is as a collection of business processes. Building stuff, finding customers, making them happy, learning from the experience and doing it better the next time. To do any of these things, at any scale these days, you're going to need serious IT capabilities. >> You know, it's funny, we've both been in this business for a while and it seems like it takes less and less time for the latest buzz word to become main stream reality. I mean look at Cloud, obviously, Mobile, Big Data, IOT, what used to take a decade, or even longer, it's really now happening in a few short years. Now a lot of people feel like it's the consumer of the consumerization of IT that's driven by the likes of Facebook and Google that are really responsible for this shift and of course they're the epitome of Cloud companies my question to you is are traditional enterprises finally tuning in? >> You know, sure, consumerization of IT it's a factor. But what I really think we're seeing is an entire generation of business leaders that want to use information in new ways to thrive and compete. And they're depending on IT to help them do that. You know I find today's business leaders a whole lot more IT savvy than just five or ten years ago. >> Sure, in our survey of 1,200, we asked what the key drivers were to move to Cloud and here's what people said. Number one, scalability. Number two, agility and number three was cost. So I wanted to explore this a little bit with you. People don't typically associate traditional IT and the vendors that serve that space with these attributes, particularly agility and scalability, but even cost as well. Now cost I know can be complicated and somewhat misleading, it's not just the acquisition cost or the published price of the Cloud service, but my question is, why should anyone take seriously the perspectives of someone like yourself, a long time enterprise IT guy working at a company that was founded in the 1970's. >> Ouch. Well I think that's fair enough. Look, I think longevity in this industry isn't necessarily a disadvantage, but failure to adapt sure is. For example, Intel was founded in 1968, Microsoft was founded in 1975, Cisco in 1984 and I don't think you're saying that these guys are somehow irrelevant just because they've been so successful for a long time. As far as me, I spent close to forty years in this industry and I'm still not bored. For some strange reason, I've always been fascinated with Enterprise IT. I've also had the privilege of meeting with thousands of IT leaders over these decades and learning from each and every one of them. And I've also done pretty well at calling the big shifts over the years. So, you can take it or leave it. More to the point. I can't argue with your findings. I would suggest though that there might be a deeper interpretation to some of these. >> What do you mean by that? >> Well, let's take scalability. I think it's more than just getting really big. You know, for some shops, it's also about getting global. Look, if you're going to deliver IT services close to your users, using a public Cloud provider to get global footprint can look pretty attractive. Look how popular contract workers have become in most work places. That makes it really easy for management to dial labor costs up, or down, without too much drama. I think they'd like to be able to do the same thing with their IT costs. Or maybe we consider agility. Most people would think that the ability for IT to move faster is a good thing and yeah, that's true, but there's more to it. We're now getting to the point where there's all sorts of attractive public Cloud services that just aren't practical to attempt to recreate with a traditional IT model. If you think about it, the very best IT stuff these days runs in the Cloud. That's where all the R&D is going. And you know, I agree with you on your point on costs. I think way too often, people focus on the cost of the ingredients instead of the cost of the meal. You'll hear people say it's often cheaper to buy servers instead of rent capacity. But I always wonder, are you forgetting to include things like data center cost, people cost and that sort of thing. >> Sure. >> Public Cloud providers are very good at assembling the ingredients and offering an attractive service. In house IT groups, maybe not so much. And we can't forget opportunity cost either. When those resources are freed up, what higher value activities could they be working on other than just patching infrastructure. You know I don't think this debate will be definitively answered anytime soon. >> For the customers you talk to, let me ask you a question, is Cloud becoming less of an IT thing and more of a business thing and isn't that being driven by the ascendancy of public Cloud? >> I think you're right. Step back bit and think about how virtualization came into the market. I categorize virtualization as more of an IT win than a business win. IT saw most of the benefit, but the business users got pretty much the exact same capabilities they had before and just got them a little faster and a little cheaper. It didn't really change the game for the business users. Now when we think about public Cloud, the business realizes that they can now do things that just aren't practical to attempt to do in house. >> Right. >> So if we think about this, it's quickly becoming a business thing because no business person wants to give up on a competitive advantage. So they've started to get very vocal about IT moving to a Cloud model as quickly as possible. Remember, decades ago, we were all talking about globalization, everybody had to get global. >> Sure. >> I think business leaders realized that they had to either invest in getting global to get in the game or suffer the consequences. And I think the exact same thing is happening with Cloud. >> Well staying on that trend, it's reflected in our forecast when you look at aggregate IT spending. >> Roughly about a trillion dollars are spent on IT infrastructure and related activities. And long term, our forecast show that about a third of that spend is going to go into the public Cloud, a third is going to be On-prem, Cloud like in that organizations will be attempting to operate their own Clouds on premises, and about a third will be Legacy stuff that people are just going to manage in a slowly declining fashion. >> You know that sounds about right to me. I think another way of saying the same thing is that over the long-term, two-thirds of IT spend will shift to some sort of Cloud model. Whether that's a public Cloud, or something cloud-like that lives in the data center. I also think you're seeing that shift reflected in R&D spend for the major IT players. I can't speak for the other vendors, but at Oracle, the vast majority of our R&D spend is now tied to the Cloud in some meaningful way. If you look at our recent acquisitions, they're all in that category. StackEngine, Ravello, NetSuite, Dime, on and on. Here's the point for Enterprise ITlers. It's going to be increasingly difficult to stay current without embracing some sort of Cloud model. It's where most of the industry investment is going these days. >> Okay, let's talk about the looming talent shift you know again, the data shows, in our forecast, that over the next 10 years we'll see about 200 billion dollars coming out of IT staff expense. Shifting to vendor R&D in the form of Cloud, whether that's public Cloud, or On-prem. What does that mean to you? >> You know I think that's a great factoid. And it's not that surprising to me. When you buy a Cloud service, you're not just buying infrastructure, you're also buying the expertise and the automation to run it effectively. If you think about it, that would represent a huge shift in the Enterprise IT labor market. >> Well let's follow that thread, which is the people side of the equation. The joke is you only need two things in IT, you need money and you need people. We've talked about the cost. Talk about how Cloud impacts skill and expertise requirements. How do you see CIO's thinking about this challenge? >> You know, I think you bring up a great point. IT organizations have to compete for talent just like everyone else does. And anytime I'm with a group of CIO's, the talent and staffing discussion always comes up. Because not having the right people on your team is almost worse than not having the budget you need. >> But the real point there is that the best people want to work in a modern environment. >> That's true. >> One where you can keep developing their talents and their skill sets and these days, that means Cloud. My question is, can traditional IT organizations keep up with this change? >> You know, I don't think there's a yes, no answer to that, but I'd say they've got to try really hard. Look, you can already see signs of progress. The application developer community has embraced Cloud models and Tooling in a huge way. I think their far more productive as a result and I don't think they're going back. I'd like to think the infrastructure and operations folks are starting to see the same light. Now, just to be clear, I don't think the IT infrastructure guys are being stubborn about Cloud. It's just that getting there is a lot harder than it looks. So we, as vendors, have to work to come up with strategies and approaches that works the way they do. That being said, I've got IT leaders telling me that it's a lot easier to find key talent when you can offer them a modern environment to work in. And these days, that means Cloud. Look, it's not unusual to go through an IT org chart these days and find a beginning Cloud team working alongside the traditional IT function. I see clear evidence that IT leaders know that they need to start investing in a new way of doing things. >> Okay so Chuck, I think it's time to wrap up this segment with a quick summary. Why don't you start us off? >> I guess the first key point I'd offer is that Cloud has moved from theoretical to inevitable. >> Yeah and so let's remember the findings that I shared earlier. A third of the respondents are thinking tactically as Cloud first. 49% are thinking about Cloud selectively. Only 8% say Cloud only and less than 10% say no Cloud at all. >> Yeah, congratulations, that means 90% of you are out there thinking hard about Cloud going forward. If we look at why that is, I think we can point to the macro trends, for example, every business is trying to compete in the digital economy, and no one wants to be left behind. >> And you know, the data supports that as well based on our survey. The top three motivators were scalability, agility and of course cost is always a factor. >> And the only thing I'd add to that list is that I see Cloud becoming a business strategy issue and not just an IT only discussion. I think the next big point is that Cloud has already started to transform the vendor side of the equation. What were those forecasts? >> Well long-term, we see about a third of IT spend moving to a public Cloud model, a third moving to a Cloud model that's On-prem and about a third being spent to maintain Legacy environments. >> And I think the implication is pretty clear. IT vendors are going to invest where the money is going. And that's Cloud. And I think we need to reiterate the point about how Cloud is transforming the people's side of the equation. >> Dave: Well, that's big, our forecast is that about 200 billion dollars of labor cost is going to come out of the data center and go directly into the Cloud model. >> And if you're going to want to attract the best people, which we all do, you're going to have to give them a modern environment to work in. And that's quickly becoming Cloud. So why don't we take a moment and give people a preview of what we'll be talking about next. >> Well, sure, in this segment we wanted to look at the forces behind Cloud and more importantly, why Enterprise IT can't escape its gravitational pull. In our next segment, we're going to look at why familiar approaches to the Cloud might not always work for all Enterprise organizations and what can be done about it. >> Thanks everyone. See ya next time. (innovative music)