(inspiring music) >> Welcome back to The Cube's coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier for re:Mars coverage. Two days of live action, a lot of things happening in space, robotics, automation, and machine learning. That's Mars spelled backwards, but that's machine learning, automation, robotics and space. Got a great guest, Jens Ortmann, associate director at Boston Consulting Group, also known as BCG. Jens, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you very much. >> So tell me what you're working on. You've got a very cool project you're working on, 'Involved'. Take us through what it is, explain what the project is. >> Yeah, so I'm part of the data science unit within BCG Gamma and I'm focusing on solving business problems for the automotive industry. What I would like to talk about is actually a small internal site project that we were building. It's a conversion rate engine, where we built an advanced analytics tool that computes the conversion rate for car dealerships, at scale. So for every single car dealer in a market, we can compute the conversion rate. >> John: What is a conversion rate? Can you explain that? >> So a conversion rate is very simple. It's actually out of the people that come into your car dealership, how many do you, as a car dealer, manage to sell a car to? >> So, what's your sell, through monthly kind of- >> Per visitor that come into, so your walk-ins. >> So, physical? >> Physical, yeah. So this was for physical stores. It's actually a key metric for sales performance for car dealerships, or for the automotive manufacturers to be aware of. >> So I'm watching here in the show floor at re:Mars, you've got the 'Just Walk Through', which is Amazon's 'take whatever you want and go', are you seeing you're getting analytics on like people coming in, you can see them, there's a drop off rate? Take me through how it works, the challenges because I don't envision like, "Oh, so they walked in and they left but they didn't leave with a car." It's not take and walk out, it's not grab and go. But the concept of using computer vision, I can imagine it being a popular thing. So how do you measure this, people coming in? >> It's actually a big challenge that we learned when we were doing this project. Traditionally, people were measuring it with like these laser sensors but the signal is very, very messy. Now when we wanted to do it at scale, we partnered with an Israeli startup called Play Sense, who aggregate mobile phone data. So we used mobile footfall data to measure how many people visit a store. So it actually is a combination of three main data sources to get to the conversion rate. One, as I mentioned, the mobile footfall data, the second one is building footprints, actual outlines of buildings that we source from the cadastral agency that we need to use it to cut out the footfall data to get the visitors. And the third one, of course, is sales that we get from the official car registration data. Then we combine those to have the key numbers. >> Is there a facial recognition involved in this? >> There's no facial recognition involved. >> So the tire kickers that come in and kick the tires and leave, but might come back. Is that factored in too, or? >> So there is a lot of pre-processing going on to really only get the signals from visitors. So filtering out people that maybe come into the store after hours, cleaning crews, people that come into the store every day, people that work there, they would be in the footfall data. So we applied some logic to identify exactly those people that are most likely actually visitors interested in buying a car >> Well everyone can relate to buying a car, obviously. I wanted you to step back and you mentioned scale. Can you scope the scale of the problem for us? How big is this observation space? What systems are involved? 'Cause when you say scale, I'm thinking all the dealerships in the aggregate. Or, is it by franchise or is it anonymous data? Can you scale the scope of this thing, or scope the scale? >> So we built this as a prototype for the German market and we used the top 10 car brands in Germany. They have around 10,000 car dealerships, for which we all have data. The actual mobile phone footprint data, it's a lot more. I think it was 30 million data points. >> Are you triangulating that? How does that mobile data work? Signal? >> So the mobile data is coming through apps. So mobile apps where you allow the app to track your location. >> Got it, okay. >> That gets anonymized and then you have these mobile data aggregators, like Play Sense. >> Got it, okay. >> That sell the data on. >> So you have to plug into a lot of systems? >> Yes. >> To make all this work. >> Yes and a lot of different data sources. >> And how easy is that? What's the challenge there? Is it cloud integration? How are you guys pulling this together? >> So we build it as a prototype initially, based on our own internal infrastructure, using basic Python and regular cloud infrastructure to process the data. >> All right, so I'm looking at my notes here. Data sets, you have a lot of data sets. What kind of analytics are you running on that? Can you share some examples? >> So I have to be careful since we filed a patent on this but a lot of the thing is actually in data processing, making sure that the data points we get are accurate and usable for this, and then differentiating between the different types of businesses that people are running. So there is on the one hand, you have the problem of outliers, basically filtering out when numbers don't make sense. On the other hand, there is a lot going on in the business itself. Like what do you do when a car dealership sells cars of multiple brands? You see only one visitor seeing cars of different brands but you see sales for two different types of brands. So this is just two examples of some of the processing that we had to implement to make this happen. >> So where can people find out information on this project? Or is it pretty much not public? Are you sharing anything publicly? >> So currently, we have held off the publication on this because we filed a patent on it. We're now about to go to market, building out a solution for the US as well, to then bring this to clients. >> What do you think about this show here at re:Mars? What's your assessment of the vibe? What's it like? Share with the folks who aren't here, what's your takeaway? >> It's really fun. It's really impressive. And it has a great, really inspiring vibe of cool innovative solutions. >> Yeah, you get the creative geniuses, you got the industrial geniuses, you got the software geniuses, all kind of coming together, and they're real people and they're here as a community. To me, the positive future vibe of this show, really is resonating in the keynotes and the energy. It's a forward thinking, positive message. And it's not marketing, this is the vibe. >> Exactly, I think it's something we really need at the moment. >> Yeah, we can solve all of the global problems by going to the moon and Mars. First the moon, then Mars. Who knows, maybe the breakthrough is there. >> People solve a lot of fundamental issues along the way that'll help in a lot of different areas as well. >> I wonder if I'll be alive when there's tourism in the moon. I was just joking with the folks earlier, "Oh yeah, I left that part on Earth, I have to go get it." Cause there's going to be a whole infrastructure there. Construction, all in good time. Okay, what's next for you guys? Tell me what's next on the project. You got a patent pending, so you're a little bit tight lipped and quiet on the secret sauce, I get that. What's next for the vision of the project? >> So this is just one example of how we can use this. Especially this footfall data set in an innovative way in the automotive industry. What we would like to look into is getting more details. Currently, we only see a single data point for a visitor. What would be interesting to understand, also, like the journey of visitors. Did they visit other car dealerships? Or, where are they from? What demographics do they come from? If you can tie that to a geographic location. And then on the business side as well, linking this for example, for companies to marketing campaigns. Does advertisement catch on? Do discounts catch on? Do they drive more people into the stores? Do they drive more sales? How does it affect conversion rate? Also, benchmark within the network, how different car dealerships are performing, how different brands are performing. And then eventually, everything is going to online. This can also be a foundation to set a baseline for online sales, which is still at the very early stages in the automotive industry. >> Yeah, I think there's a lot of reference implementations here for other applications, not just dealerships, all footfall traffic. That's interesting. The question I have for you, and the final question really before we wrap up, is the convergence of online, offline, physical, virtual. It's pretty clear we're living in a hybrid steady state right now, with all the post pandemic and the innovations pulled forward. So, having a device on me, IOT device or phone, will be a big part of things. So I'm buying online and I'm walking in, I'm one presence, virtually and physical. How do you guys see that around the corner? What's next there? Because I can see that coming together in my mind. >> It is. I mean, we can see it happen at Tesla. Tesla barely has any physical dealerships anymore, they have showrooms and do all the sales online. And I think that has a large impact on the industry at the moment. Driving the more traditional manufacturers also to think about what can be and what can be in a digital and online first world. >> Yeah, well this is happening. Well, Jens, thanks for coming on. I appreciate the commentary on re:Mars. Thanks for sharing your perspective and sharing about your project at Boston Consulting Group, also known as BCG. >> Thank you very much. >> Very reputable firm. Okay, that's the Cube coverage here at re:Mars. I'm John Furrier, your host. Two days of wall to wall coverage here. It's a great show. Machine learning, automation, robotics, and space, Mars. Of course, you got Reinvent, the big show, and at Reinforce, the security show. You got the space-software-robotics show, security. And then of course Reinvent is the big show. The Cube covers it, all three will be here. So keep watching here for more coverage. We'll be right back. (gentle inspiring music)

>> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube Conversation. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto Studios today, having a Cube Conversation, you know, with the COVID situation going on we've had to change our business and go pretty much 100% digital. And as part of that process, we wanted to reach out to our community, and talk to some of the leaders out there, because I think leadership in troubling times is even more amplified in it's importance. So we're excited to be joined today by two leaders in our community. First one being John Chambers, a very familiar face from many, many years at Cisco, who's now the founder and CEO of JC2 Ventures. John, great to see you. >> Jeff, it's a pleasure to be with you again. >> Absolutely. And joining him is Umesh Sachdev, he's the co-founder and CEO of Uniphore. First time on theCUBE, Umesh, great to meet you. >> Jeff, thank you for having me, it's great to be with you. >> You as well, and I had one of your great people on the other day, talking about CX, and I think CX is the whole solution. Why did Uber beat cabs, do you want to stand on a corner and raise your hand in the rain? Or do you want to know when the guy's going to come pick you up, in just a couple minutes? So anyway, welcome. So let's jump into it. John, one of your things, that you talked about last time we talked, I think it was in October, wow how the world has changed. >> Yes. >> Is about having a playbook, and really, you know, kind of thinking about what you want to do before it's time to actually do it, and having some type of a script, and some type of direction, and some type of structure, as to how you respond to situations. Well there's nothing like a disaster to really fire off, you know, the need to shift gears, and go to kind of into a playbook mode. So I wonder if you could share with the viewers, kind of what is your playbook, you've been through a couple of these bumps. Not necessarily like COVID-19, but you've seen a couple bumps over your career. >> So it's my pleasure Jeff. What I'll do is kind of outline how I believe you use an innovation playbook on everything from acquisitions, to digitizing a company, to dealing with crisis. Let's focus on the playbook for crisis. You are right, and I'm not talking about my age, (John laughing) but this is my sixth financial crisis, and been through the late 1990s with the Asian financial crisis, came out of it even stronger at Cisco. Like everybody else we got knocked down in the 2001 tech bubble, came back from it even stronger. Then in 2008, 2009, Great Recession. We came through that one very, very strong, and we saw that one coming. It's my fourth major health crisis. Some of them turned out to be pretty small. I was in Mexico when the bird pandemic hit, with the President of Mexico, when we thought it was going to be terrible. We literally had to cancel the meetings that evening. That's why Cisco built the PLAR Presence. I was in Brazil for the issue with the Zika virus, that never really developed much, and the Olympics went on there, and I only saw one mosquito during the event. It bit me. But what I'm sharing with you is I've seen this movie again and again. And then, with supply chain, which not many people were talking about yet, supply chain crisis, like we saw in Japan with the Tsunami. What's happening this time is you're seeing all three at one time, and they're occurring even faster. So the playbook is pretty simple in crisis management, and then it would be fun to put Umesh on the spot and say how closely did you follow it? Did you agree with issues, or did you disagree, et cetera, on it. Now I won't mention, Umesh, that you've got a review coming up shortly from your board, so that should not affect your answer at all. But the first playbook is being realistic, how much was self-inflicted, how much was market. This one's largely market, but if you had problems before, you got to address them at the same time. The second thing is what are the five to seven things that are material, what you're going to do to lead through this crisis. That's everything from expense management, to cash preservation. It's about how do you interface to your employees, and how do you build on culture. It's about how do you interface to your customers as they change from their top priority being growth and innovation, to a top priority being cost savings, and the ability to really keep their current revenue streams from churning and moving. And it's about literally, how do make your big bets for what you want to look like as you move out of this market. Then it's how do you communicate that to your employees, to your shareholders, to your customers, to your partners. Painting the picture of what you look like as you come out. As basic as that sounds, that's what crisis management is all about. Don't hide, be visible, CEOs should take the role on implementing that playbook. Umesh to you, do you agree? And have fun with it a little bit, I like the give and take. >> I want to see the playbook, do you have it there, just below the camera? (Jeff laughing) >> I have it right here by my side. I will tell you, Jeff, in crisis times and difficult times like these, you count all the things that go right for you, you count your blessings. And one of the blessings that I have, as a CEO, is to have John Chambers as my mentor, by my side, sharing not just the learning that he had through the crisis, but talking through this, with me on a regular basis. I've read John's book more than a few times, I bet more than anybody in the world, I've read it over and over. And that, to me, is preparation going into this mode. One of the things that John has always taught me is when times get difficult, you get calmer than usual. It's one thing that when you're cruising on the freeway and you're asked to put the brakes, but it's quite another when you're in rocket ship, and accelerating, which is what my company situation was in the month of January. We were coming out of a year of 300% growth, we were driving towards another 300% growth, hiring tremendously, at a high pace. Winning customers at a high pace, and then this hit us. And so what I had to do, from a playbook perspective, is, you know, take a deep breath, and just for a couple of days, just slow down, and calmly look at the situation. My first few steps were, I reached out to 15 of our top customers, the CEOs, and give them calls, and said let's just talk about what you're seeing, and what we are observing in our business. We get a sense of where they are in their businesses. We had the benefit, my co-founder works out of Singapore, and runs our Asia business. We had the benefit of picking up the sign probably a month before everyone else did it in the U.S. I was with John in Australia, and I was telling John that "John, something unusual is happening, "a couple of our customers in these countries in Asia "are starting to tell us they would do the deal "a quarter later." And it's one thing when one of them says it, it's another when six of them say it together. And John obviously has seen this movie, he could connect the dots early. He told me to prepare, he told the rest of the portfolio companies that are in his investment group to start preparing. We then went to the playbook that John spoke of, being visible. For me, culture and communication take front seat. We have employees in ten different countries, we have offices, and very quickly, even before the governments mandated, we had all of them work, you know, go work from home, and be remote, because employee safety and health was the number one priority. We did our first virtual all-hands meeting on Zoom. We had about 240 people join in from around the world. And my job as CEO, usually our all-hands meeting were different functional leaders, different people in the group talk to the team about their initiatives. This all-hands was almost entirely run by me, addressing the whole company about what's going to be the situation from my lens, what have we learned. Be very factual. At the same time, communicating to the team that because of the fact that we raised our funding the last year, it was a good amount of money, we still have a lot of that in the bank, so we going to be very secure. At the same time, our customers are probably going to need us more than ever. Call centers are in more demand than ever, people can't walk up to a bank branch, they can't go up to a hospital without taking an appointment. So the first thing everyone is doing is trying to reach call centers. There aren't enough people, and anyways the work force that call centers have around the world, are 50% working from home, so the capacity has dropped. So our responsibility almost, is to step up, and have our AI and automation products available to as many call centers as we can. So as we are planning our own business continuity, and making sure every single employee is safe, the message to my team was we also have to be aggressive and making sure we are more out there, and more available, to our customers, that would also mean business growth for us. But first, and foremost is for us to be responsible citizens, and just make it available where it's needed. As we did that, I quickly went back to my leadership team, and again, the learning from John is usually it's more of a consensus driven approach, we go around the table, talk about a topic for a couple of hours, get the consensus, and move out of the room. My leadership meetings, they have become more frequent, we get together once a week, on video call with my executive leaders, and it's largely these days run by me. I broke down the team into five different war rooms, with different objectives. One of them we called it the preservation, we said one leader, supported by others will take the responsibility of making sure every single employee, their families, and our current customers, are addressed, taken care of. So we made somebody lead that group. Another group was made responsible for growth. Business needs to, you know, in a company that's growing at 300%, and we still have the opportunity, because call centers need us more than ever, we wanted to make sure we are responding to growth, and not just hunkering down, and, you know, ignoring the opportunity. So we had a second war room take care of the growth. And a third war room, lead by the head of finance, to look at all the financial scenarios, do the stress tests, and see if we are going to be ready for any eventuality that's going to come. Because, you know, we have a huge amount of people, who work at Uniphore around the world, and we wanted to make sure their well being is taken care of. So from being over communicative, to the team and customers, and being out there personally, to making sure we break down the teams. We have tremendous talent, and we let different people, set of people, run different set of priorities, and report back to me more frequently. And now, as we have settled into this rhythm, Jeff, you know, as we've been in, at least in the Bay area here, we've been shelter in place for about a month now. As we are in the rhythm, we are beginning to do virtual happy hours, every Thursday evening. Right after this call, I get together with my team with a glass of wine, and we get together, we talk every but work, and every employee, it's not divided by functions, or leadership, and we are getting the rhythm back into the organization. So we've gone and adjusted in the crisis, I would say very well. And the business is just humming along, as we had anticipated, going into this crisis. But I would say, if I didn't have John by my side, if I hadn't read his book, the number of times that I have, every plane ride we've done together, every place we've gone together, John has spoken about war stories. About the 2001, about 2008, and until you face the first one of your own, just like I did right now, you don't appreciate when John says leadership is lonely. But having him by our side makes it easier. >> Well I'm sure he's told you the Jack Welch story, right? That you've quoted before, John, where Jack told you that you're not really a good leader, yet, until you've been tested, right. So you go through some tough stuff, it's not that hard to lead on an upward to the right curve, it's when things get a little challenging that the real leadership shines through. >> Completely agree, and Jack said it the best, we were on our way to becoming the most valuable company in the world, he looked me in the eye and said "John, you have a very good company." And I knew he was about to give me a teaching moment, and I said "What does it take to have a great one?" He said a near death experience. And I thought I did that in '97, and some of the other management, and he said, "No, it's when you went through something "like we went through in 2001, "which many of our peers did die in." And we were knocked down really hard. When we came back from it, you get better. But what you see in Umesh is a very humble, young CEO. I have to remember he's only 34 years old, because his maturity is like he's 50, and he's seen it before. As you tell, he's like a sponge on learning, and he doesn't mind challenging. And what what he didn't say, in his humbleness, is they had the best month in March ever. And again, well over 300% versus the same quarter a year ago. So it shows you, if you're in the right spot, i.e. artificial intelligence, i.e. cost savings, i.e. customer relationship with their customers, how you can grow even during the tough times, and perhaps set a bold vision, based upon facts and a execution plan that very few companies will be able to deliver on today. So off to a great start, and you can see why I'm so honored and proud to be his strategic partner, and his coach. >> Well it's interesting, right, the human toll of this crisis is horrible, and there's a lot of people getting sick, and a lot of people are dying, and all the estimations are a lot more are going to die this month, as hopefully we get over the hump of some of these curves. So that aside, you know, we're here talking kind of more about the, kind of, the business of this thing. And it's really interesting kind of what a catalyst COVID has become, in terms of digital transformation. You know, we've been talking about new ways to work for years, and years, and years, and digital transformation, and all these kind of things. You mentioned the Cisco telepresence was out years, and decades ago. I mean I worked in Mitsubishi, we had a phone camera in 1986, I looked it up today, it was ridiculous, didn't work. But now, it's here, right. Now working from home is here. Umesh mentioned, you know, these huge call centers, now everybody's got to go home. Do they have infrastructure to go home? Do they have a place to work at home? Do they have support to go home? Teachers are now being forced, from K-12, and I know it's a hot topic for you, John, to teach from home. Teach on Zoom, with no time to prep, no time to really think it through. It's just like the kids aren't coming back, we got to learn it. You know I think this is such a transformational moment, and to your point, if this goes on for weeks, and weeks, and months, and months, which I think we all are in agreement that it will. I think you said, John, you know, many, many quarters. As people get new habits, and get into this new flow, I don't think they're going to go back back to the old ways. So I think it's a real, you know, kind of forcing function for digital transformation. And it's, you can't, you can't sit on the sidelines, cause your people can't come to the office anymore. >> So you've raised a number of questions, and I'll let Umesh handle the tough part of it. I will answer the easy part, which is I think this is the new normal. And I think it's here now, and the question is are you ready for it. And as you think about what we're really saying is the video sessions will become such an integral part of our daily lives, that we will not go back to having to do 90% of our work physically. Today alone I've done seven major group meetings, on Zoom, and Google Hangouts, and Cisco Webex. I've done six meetings with individuals, or the key CEOs of my portfolio. So that part is here to stay. Now what's going to be fascinating is does that also lead into digitization of our company, or do the companies make the mistake of saying I'm going to use this piece, because it's so obvious, and I get it, in terms of effectiveness, but I'm not going to change the other things in my normal work, in my normal business. This is why, unfortunately, I think you will see, we originally said, Jeff, you remember, 40% maybe as high as 45% of the Fortune 500 wouldn't exist in a decade. And perhaps 70% of the start-ups wouldn't exist in a decade, that are venture capital backed. I now think, unfortunately, you're going to see 20-35% of the start-ups not exist in 2 years, and I think it's going to shock you with the number of Fortune 500 companies that do not make this transition. So where you're leading this, that I completely agree with, is the ability to take this terrible event, with all of the issues, and again thank our healthcare workers for what they've been able to do to help so many people, and deal with the world the way it is. As my parents who are doctors taught me to do, not the way we wish it was. And then get your facts, prepare for the changes, and get ready for the future. The key would be how many companies do this. On the area Umesh has responsibility for, customer experience, I think you're going to see almost all companies focus on that. So it can be an example of perhaps how large companies learn to use the new technology, not just video capability, but AI, assistance for the agents, and then once they get the feel for it, just like we got the feel for these meetings, change their rhythm entirely. It was a dinner in New York, virtually, when we stopped, six weeks ago, traveling, that was supposed to be a bunch of board meetings, customer meetings, that was easy. But we were supposed to have a dinner with Shake Shack's CEO, and we were supposed to have him come out and show how he does cool innovation. We had a bunch of enterprise companies, and a bunch of media, and subject matter expertise, we ended up canceling it, and then we said why not do it virtually? And to your point, we did it in 24 different locations. Half the people, remember six weeks ago, had never even used Zoom. We had milk shakes, and hamburgers, and french fries delivered to their home. And it was one of the best two hour meetings I've seen. The future is this now. It's going to change dramatically, and Umesh, I think, is going to be at the front edge of how enterprise companies understand how their relationship with their customers is going to completely transform, using AI, conversational AI capability, speech recognition, et cetera. >> Yeah, I mean, Umesh, we haven't even really got into Uniphore, or what you guys are all about. But, you know, you're supporting call centers, you're using natural language technology, both on the inbound and all that, give us the overview, but you're playing on so many kind of innovation spaces, you know, the main interaction now with customers, and a brand, is either through the mobile phone, or through a call center, right. And that's becoming more, and increasingly, digitized. The ability to have a voice interaction, with a machine. Fascinating, and really, I think, revolutionary, and kind of taking, you know, getting us away from these stupid qwerty keyboards, which are supposed to slow us down on purpose. It's still the funniest thing ever, that we're still using these qwerty keyboards. So I wonder if you can share with us a little bit about, you know, kind of your vision of natural language, and how that changes the interaction with people, and machines. I think your TED Talk was really powerful, and I couldn't help but think of, you know, kind of mobile versus land lines, in terms of transformation. Transforming telecommunications in rural, and hard to serve areas, and then actually then adding the AI piece, to not only make it better for the front end person, but actually make it for the person servicing the account. >> Absolutely Jeff, so Uniphore, the company that I founded in 2008. We were talking about it's such a coincidence that I founded the company in 2008, the year of the Great Recession, and here we are again, talking in midst of the impact that we all have because of COVID. Uniphore does artificial intelligence and automation products, for the customer service industry. Call centers, as we know it, have fundamentally, for the last 20, 30 years, not have had a major technology disruption. We've seen a couple of ways of business model disruption, where call centers, you know, started to become offshore, in locations in Asia, India, and Mexico. Where our calls started to get routed around the world internationally, but fundamentally, the core technology in call centers, up until very recently, hadn't seen a major shift. With artificial intelligence, with natural language processings, speech recognition, available in over 100 languages. And, you know, in the last year or so, automation, and RPA, sort of adding to that mix, there's a whole new opportunity to re-think what customer service will mean to us, more in the future. As I think about the next five to seven years, with 5G happening, with 15 billion connected devices, you know, my five year old daughter, she the first thing she does when she enters the house from a playground, she goes to talk to her friend called Alexa. She speaks to Alexa. So, you know, these next generation of users, and technology users will grow up with AI, and voice, and NLP, all around us. And so their expectation of customer service and customer experience is going to be quantum times higher than some of us have, from our brands. I mean, today when a microwave or a TV doesn't work in our homes, our instinct could be to either go to the website of the brand, and try to do a chat with the agent, or do an 800 number phone call, and get them to visit the house to fix the TV. With, like I said with 5G, with TV, and microwave, and refrigerator becoming intelligent devices, you know, I could totally see my daughter telling the microwave "Why aren't you working?" And, you know, that question might still get routed to a remote contact center. Now the whole concept of contact center, the word has center in it, which means, in the past, we used to have these physical, massive locations, where people used to come in and put on their headsets to receive calls. Like John said, more than ever, we will see these centers become dispersed, and virtual. The channels with which these queries will come in would no more be just a phone, it would be the microwave, the car, the fridge. And the receivers of these calls would be anywhere in the world, sitting in their home, or sitting on a holiday in the Himalayas, and answering these situations to us. You know, I was reading, just for everyone to realize how drastic this shift has been, for the customer service industry. There are over 14 million workers, who work in contact centers around the world. Like I said, the word center means something here. All of them, right now, are working remote. This industry was never designed to work remote. Enterprises who fundamentally didn't plan for this. To your point Jeff, who thought digitization or automation, was a project they could have picked next year, or they were sitting on the fence, will now know more have a choice to make this adjustment. There's a report by a top analyst firm that said by 2023, up to 30% of customer service representatives would be remote. Well guess what, we just way blew past that number right away. And most of the CEOs that I talked to recently tell me that now that this shift has happened, about 40% of their workers will probably never return back to the office. They will always remain a permanent virtual workforce. Now when the workforce is remote, you need all the tools and technology, and AI, that A, if on any given day, 7-10% of your workforce calls in sick, you need bots, like the Amazon's Alexa, taking over a full conversation. Uniphore has a product called Akira, which does that in call centers. Most often, when these call center workers are talking, we have the experience of being put on hold, because call center workers have to type in something on their keyboard, and take notes. Well guess what, today AI and automation can assist them in doing that, making the call shorter, allowing the call center workers to take a lot more calls in the same time frame. And I don't know your experience, but, you know, a couple of weekends ago, the modem in my house wasn't working. I had a seven hour wait time to my service provider. Seven hour. I started calling at 8:30, it was somewhere around 3-4:00, finally, after call backs, wait, call back, wait, that it finally got resolved. It was just a small thing, I just couldn't get to the representative. So the enterprises are truly struggling, technology can help. They weren't designed to go remote, think about it, some of the unique challenges that I've heard now, from my customers, is that how do I know that my call center representative, who I've trained over years to be so nice, and empathetic, when they take a pee break, or a bio break, they don't get their 10 year old son to attend a call. How do I know that? Because now I can no more physically check in on them. How do I know that if I'm a bank, there's compliance? There's nothing being said that isn't being, is, you know, supposed to be said, because in a center, in an office, a supervisor can listen in. When everyone's remote, you can't do that. So AI, automation, monitoring, supporting, aiding human beings to take calls much better, and drive automation, as well as AI take over parts of a complete call, by the way of being a bot like Alexa, are sort of the things that Uniphore does, and I just feel that this is a permanent shift that we are seeing. While it's happening because of a terrible reason, the virus, that's affecting human beings, but the shift in business and behavior, is going to be permanent in this industry. >> Yeah, I think so, you know it's funny, I had Marten Mickos on, or excuse me, yeah, Marten Mickos, as part of this series. And I asked him, he's been doing distributed companies since he was doing MySQL, before Sun bought them. And he's, he was funny, it's like actually easier to fake it in an office, than when you're at home, because at home all you have to show is your deliverables. You can't look busy, you can't be going to meetings, you can't be doing things at your computer. All you have to show is your output. He said it's actually much more efficient, and it drives people, you know, to manage to the output, manage to what you want. But I want to shift gears a little bit, before we let you go, and really talk a little bit about the role of government. And John, I know you've been very involved with the Indian government, and the French government, trying to help them, in their kind of entrepreneurial pursuits, and Uniphore, I think, was founded in India, right, before you moved over here. You know we've got this huge stimulus package coming from the U.S. government, to try to help, as people, you know, can't pay their mortgage, a lot of people aren't so fortunate to be in digital businesses. It's two trillion dollars, so as kind of a thought experiment, I'm like well how much is two trillion dollars? And I did the cash balance of the FAANG companies. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Alphabet, just looking at Yahoo Finance, the latest one that was there. It's 333 billion, compared to two trillion. Even when you add Microsoft's 133 billion on top, it's still shy, it's still shy of 500 billion. You know, and really, the federal government is really the only people in a position to make kind of sweeping, these types of investments. But should we be scared? Should we be worried about, you know, kind of this big shift in control? And should, do you think these companies with these big balance sheets, as you said John, priorities change a little bit. Should it be, keep that money to pay the people, so that they can stay employed and pay their mortgage, and go buy groceries, and maybe get take out from their favorite restaurant, versus, you know, kind of what we've seen in the past, where there's a lot more, you know, stock buy backs, and kind of other uses of these cash. As you said, if it's a crisis, and you got to cut to survive, you got to do that. But clearly some of these other companies are not in that position. >> So you, let me break it into two pieces, Jeff, if I may. The first is for the first time in my lifetime I have seen the federal government and federal agencies move very rapidly. And if you would have told me government could move with the speed we've seen over the last three months, I would have said probably not. The fed was ahead of both the initial interest rate cuts, and the fed was ahead in terms of the slowing down, i.e. your 2 trillion discussion, by central banks here, and around the world. But right behind it was the Treasury, which put on 4 trillion on top of that. And only governments can move in this way, but the coordination with government and businesses, and the citizens, has been remarkable. And the citizens being willing to shelter in place. To your question about India, Prime Minister Modi spent the last five years digitizing his country. And he put in place the most bandwidth of any country in the world, and literally did transformation of the currency to a virtual currency, so that people could get paid online, et cetera, within it. He then looked at start-ups and job creation, and he positioned this when an opportunity or problem came along, to be able to perhaps navigate through it in a way that other countries might struggle. I would argue President Macron in France is doing a remarkable job with his innovation economy, but also saying how do you preserve jobs. So you suddenly see government doing something that no business can do, with the scale, and the speed, and a equal approach. But at the same time, may of these companies, and being very candid, that some people might have associated with tech for good, or with tech for challenges, have been unbelievably generous in giving both from the CEOs pockets perspective, and number two and three founders perspective, as well as a company giving to the CDC, and giving to people to help create jobs. So I actually like this opportunity for tech to regain its image of being good for everybody in the world, and leadership within the world. And I think it's a unique opportunity. For my start-ups, I've been so proud, Jeff. I didn't have to tell them to go do the right thing with their employees, I didn't have to tell them that you got to treat people, human lives first, the economy second, but we can do both in parallel. And you saw companies like Sprinklr suddenly say how can I help the World Health Organization anticipate through social media, where the next spread of the virus is going to be? A company, like Bloom Energy, with what KR did there, rebuilding all of the ventilators that were broken here in California, of which about 40% were, out of the stock that they got, because it had been in storage for so long, and doing it for all of California in their manufacturing plant, at cost. A company like Aspire Foods, a cricket company down in Texas, who does 3D capabilities, taking part of their production in 3D, and saying how many thousand masks can I generate, per week, using 3D printers. You watch what Umesh has done, and how he literally is changing peoples lives, and making that experience, instead of being a negative from working at home, perhaps to a positive, and increasing the customer loyalty in the process, as opposed to when you got a seven hour wait time on a line. Not only are you probably not going to order anything else from that company, you're probably going to change it. So what is fascinating to me is I believe companies owe an obligation to be successful, to their employees, and to their shareholders, but also to give back to society. And it's one of the things I'm most proud about the portfolio companies that I'm a part of, and why I'm so proud of what Umesh is doing, in both a economically successful environment, but really giving back and making a difference. >> Yeah, I mean, there's again, there's all the doctor stuff, and the medical stuff, which I'm not qualified to really talk about. Thankfully we have good professionals that have the data, and the knowledge, and know what to do, and got out ahead of the social distancing, et cetera, but on the backside, it really looks like a big data problem in so many ways, right. And now we have massive amounts of compute at places like Amazon, and Google, and we have all types of machine learning and AI to figure out, you know, there's kind of resource allocation, whether that be hospital beds, or ventilators, or doctors, or nurses, and trying to figure out how to sort that all out. But then all of the, you know, genome work, and you know, kind of all that big heavy lifting data crunching, you know, CPU consuming work, that hopefully is accelerating the vaccine. Because I don't know how we get all the way out of this until, it just seems like kind of race to the vaccine, or massive testing, so we know that it's not going to spike up. So it seems like there is a real opportunity, it's not necessarily Kaiser building ships, or Ford building planes, but there is a role for tech to play in trying to combat this thing, and bring it under control. Umesh, I wonder if you could just kind of contrast being from India, and now being in the States for a couple years. Anything kind of jump out to you, in terms of the differences in what you're hearing back home, in the way this has been handled? >> You know, it's been very interesting, Jeff, I'm sure everyone is concerned that India, for many reasons, so far hasn't become a big hot spot yet. And, you know, we can hope and pray that that remains to be the case. There are many things that the government back home has done, I think India took lessons from what they saw in Europe, and the U.S, and China. They went into a countrywide lockdown pretty early, you know, pretty much when they were lower than a two hundred positive tested cases, the country went into lockdown. And remember this is a 1.5 billion people all together going into lockdown. What I've seen in the U.S. is that, you know, California thankfully reacted fast. We've all been sheltered in place, there's cabin fever for all of us, but you know, I'm sure at the end of the day, we're going to be thankful for the steps that are taken. Both by the administration at the state level, at the federal level, and the medical doctors, who are doing everything they can. But India, on the other hand, has taken the more aggressive stance, in terms of doing a country lockdown. We just last evening went live at a University in the city of Chennai, where Uniphore was born. The government came out with the request, much like the U.S., where they're government departments were getting a surge of traffic about information about COVID, the hospitals that are serving, what beds are available, where is the testing? We stood up a voice bot with AI, in less than a week, in three languages. Which even before the government started to advertise, we started to get thousands of calls. And this is AI answering these questions for the citizens, in doing so. So it goes back to your point of there's a real opportunity of using all the technology that the world has today, to be put to good use. And at the same time, it's really partnering meaningfully with government, in India, in Singapore, in Vietnam, and here in the U.S., to make sure that happens on, you know, John's coaching and nudging, I became a part of the U.S.-India Strategic Partnership Forum, which is truly a premier trade and commerce body between U.S. and India. And I, today, co-chaired the start-up program with, you know, the top start-ups between U.S. and India, being part of that program. And I think we got, again, tremendously fortunate, and lucky with the timeline. We started working on this start-up program between U.S. and India, and getting the start-ups together, two quarters ago, and as this new regulation with the government support, and the news about the two trillion dollar packages coming out, and the support for small businesses, we could quickly get some of the questions answered for the start-ups. Had we not created this body, which had the ability to poll the Treasury Department, and say here are questions, can start-ups do A, B, and C? What do you have by way of regulation? And I think as a response to one of our letters, on Monday the Treasury put out an FAQ on their website, which makes it super clear for start-ups and small businesses, to figure out whether they qualify or they don't qualify. So I think there's ton that both from a individual company, and the technology that each one of us have, but also as a community, how do we, all of us, meaningfully get together, as a community, and just drive benefit, both for our people, for the economy, and for our countries. Wherever we have the businesses, like I said in the U.S., or in India, or parts of Asia. >> Yeah, it's interesting. So, this is a great conversation, I could talk to you guys all night long, but I probably would hear about it later, so we'll wrap it, but I just want to kind of close on the following thought, which is really, as you've talked about before John, and as Umesh as you're now living, you know, when we go through these disruptions, things do get changed, and as you said a lot of people, and companies don't get through it. On the other hand many companies are birthed from it, right, people that are kind of on the new trend, and are in a good position to take advantage, and it's not that you're laughing over the people that didn't make it, but it does stir up the pot, and it sounds like, Umesh, you're in a really good position to take advantage of this new kind of virtual world, this new digital transformation, that's just now waiting anymore. I love your stat, they were going to move X% out of the call center over some period of time, and then it's basically snap your fingers, everybody out, without much planning. So just give you the final word, you know, kind of advice for people, as they're looking forward, and Umesh, we'll get you on another time, because I want to go deep diving in natural language, I think that's just a fascinating topic in the way that people are going to interact with machines and get rid of the stupid qwerty keyboard. But let me get kind of your last thoughts as we wrap this segment. Umesh we'll let you go first. >> Umesh, you want to go first? >> I'll go first. My last thoughts are first for the entrepreneurs, everyone who's sort of going through this together. I think in difficult times is when real heroes are born. I read a quote that when it's a sunny day, you can't overtake too many cars, but when it's raining you have a real opportunity. And the other one that I read was when fishermen can't go out fishing, because of the high tide, they come back, and mend their nets, and be ready for the time that they can go out. So I think there's no easy way to say, this is a difficult time for the economy, health wise, I hope that, you know, we can contain the damage that's being done through the virus, but some of us have the opportunity to really take our products and technology out there, more than usual. Uniphore, particularly, has a unique opportunity, the contact center industry just cannot keep up with the traffic that it's seeing. Around the world, across US, across Asia, across India, and the need for AI and automation would never be pronounced more than it is today. As much as it's a great business opportunity, it's more of a responsibility, as I see it. There can be scale up as fast as the demand is coming, and really come out of this with a much stronger business model. John has always told me in final words you always paint the picture of what you want to be, a year or two out. And I see Uniphore being a much stronger AI plus automation company, in the customer service space, really transforming the face of call centers, and customer service. Which have been forced to rethink their core business value in the last few weeks. And, you know, every fence sitter who would think that digitalization and automation was an option that they could think of in the future years, would be forced to make those decisions now. And I'm just making sure that my team, and my company, and I, am ready to gear to that great responsibility and opportunity that's ahead of us. >> John, give you the final word. >> Say Jeff, I don't know if you can still hear me, we went blank there, maybe for me to follow up. >> We gotcha. >> Shimon Peres taught me a lot about life, and dealing with life the way it is, not the way you wish it was. So did my parents, but he also taught me it always looks darkest just before the tide switches, and you move on to victory. I think the challenges in front of us are huge, I think our nation knows how to deal with that, I do believe the government has moved largely pretty effectively, to give us the impetus to move, and then if we continue to flatten the curve on the issues with the pandemic, if we get some therapeutic drugs that dramatically reduce the risk of death, for people that get the challenges the worst, and over time a vaccine, I think you look to the future, America will rebound, it will be rebounding around start-ups, new job creation, using technology in every business. So not only is there a light at the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel, I think we will emerge from this a stronger nation, a stronger start-up community. But it depends on how well we work together as a group, and I just want to say to Umesh, it's an honor to be your coach, and I learn from you as much as I give back. Jeff, as always, you do a great job. Thank you for your time today. >> Thank you both, and I look forward to our next catch up. Stay safe, wash your hands, and thanks for spending some time with us. >> And I just want to say I hope and pray that all of us can get together in Palo Alto real quick, and in person, and doing fist bumps, not shake hands or probably a namaste. Thank you, it's an honor. >> Thank you very much. All right, that was John and Umesh, you're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto Studios, thanks for tuning in, stay safe, wash your hands, keep away from people that you're not that familiar with, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. (calm music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Silicon Valley. It's the Cube. Covering Google Cloud X17. >> Okay welcome back, everyone. We are live in Palo Alto for two days of coverage of Google Next 2017. I'm John Furrier, we're here with Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify. No longer a startup, they're scaling up. You guys do it very well. Tom, great to see you. Welcome to the Cube. >> Great to be here. >> Saw you at RSA, you guys had an exceptional event. One Presence to show, obviously a security show, you're in the security business. But also mobile world congress will try to get you on again security's hot, front and center at mobile world congress. >> Yeah. >> Security is front and center at Google Cloud Next. Security is front and center at blank event. It's happening everywhere right? So give us the update. What is Centrify, obviously the "No Breach" is your tagline. What's up with Centrify? Give us a quick update on what you're up to. >> Yeah, absolutely. So we're a security company focused, as you said, on identity. And we really address the issue of too many passwords and too much privilege. The fundamental issue that's happening within security, is like 75 billion dollars is being spent on it, it's one of the fastest growing market segments, but it's failing because the breaches are far outnumbering, and growing at a faster rate, than the amount of money being spent on that. And so, we're trying to rethink security by looking at where are the breaches are coming from, and they're coming in from, like in the case of Podesta, stealing usernames and passwords. And Verizon said two thirds of breaches involve stolen credentials. And Forrester just recently said that 80 percent of breaches involve the compromise of privileged accounts, the rude accounts for the infrastructure etc. So if two thirds, to 80 percent of breaches involve identity, we fundamentally believe you need to focus a lot more on that, and that's what we're all about. Focusing on identity. >> And what is this? Is this a new revelation, or is this something that you guys have felt was happening for a long time, or has it just been the matter of fact, that's what's happening? >> You know it's, we have some great investors, and we have Excel, Mayfield, Index, Sigma now called Jex, and Square Adventures. And one of the board members told me, the markets come to you, because we've been doing this for over 10 years. And focusing on identity, and people are like, "Oh okay, that's interesting." But now, if you look at just the massive number of breaches that are occurring, and the focus that identity is the leading attack vector, and then you couple it with the whole move to the Cloud, I know we're going to be talking about what Google is doing in the Cloud, etc. It actually makes the problem even worse. And so we feel that we've been plugging along, doing and focusing on identity, and now kind of the market has come to us, because of the move to Cloud, and the hackers are going after identities. >> Yeah it's interesting, I saw a Facebook friend, I won't say his name for privacy, because I don't have the right to talk about it, he's in bitcoin, so obviously that world is an underbelly in itself. Yeah but, interesting thing is that he had two factor authentication on his phone, and someone hacked his phone and they sent the password back to his phone, all his bank accounts are gone. >> Oh my goodness. >> So this is an example of that privileged identity. So that even two factor authentication, in that case, didn't work. So you starting to see this, right? So what's the answer, and how does it relate to cloud? There's no perimeter in the cloud. Is it federated identity, is it some blocked chain thing, is there new model? What's your view on this, and how you guys attacking it specifically? >> Yeah, I mean in a world in which we're increasingly moving to the cloud, what can you secure? Like if I'm at a Starbucks in Palo Alto, on my Ipad, talking to Google apps, talking to sales force etc., I don't have any Anti Virus, I'm not using any next gen firewall, or VPN etc. So the focus needs to shift to securing the user. And you really need to start integrating, and leveraging, from a multi factor authentication biometrics as well. Use that phone, use the touch ID, to actually ensure that. And then also, in the cloud, start analyzing user behavior. And actually determine, well wait a minute, this person normally doesn't login from China, but now he's accessing the sales force, or Facebook etc. So, it's becoming, evolving more to utilizing mobile device as part of your identity, and it's also leveraging machine learning to understand what normal behavior is, and blocking abnormal behavior. >> And also using big data techniques, because your point about China is interesting. Anyone who travels might have had this situation, we go to Vegas a lot for the Cube, but like I'm in Vegas then I pull out an ATM withdrawal, next I go to use my other credit card, and it says "woah fraud alert." >> Tom: Yes. >> Well, wait a minute, I made a cell phone call, I took money out of the bank, and yet the credit card didn't know that I'm in Vegas. Now that's interesting, so conversely, China's accessing my accounts, and I'm making phone calls in Palo Alto, that should be obvious. >> Yeah. >> That just seems like it's just so disfragmented data sets. >> So historically, the definition of identity was a username, and a password. But, in a Cloud world, identity should be redefined in terms of your applications, your device, your location, and your activity. So, if you are trying to access an app from China, it should ask you for four or five additional bits of information, instead of two factors, it should be multi-factor, and it should include biometrics as well. So, machine learning is this going to become even more critical to reduce fraud, and the compromise of credentials. >> So, let's talk about google next. Because one of the things that, I mean really we know Google, we're living in Palo Alto, they're all around us, they're in Mountain View, Larry Page lives in the hood here. Google has always been a technology innovator, and it's clear that that's the lead for their Cloud. But the enterprise, which they're by the way serious, Dian Green is very serious with enterprise, they're just starting to move down that road. You've been there for awhile, on mobile, and in the enterprise, what is some of the things that people should know about on how hard it is in the enterprise? Specifically with Cloud, what is some of the things that you see as table stakes? >> Yeah, it's actually having meat eating sales reps out in the field. Not relying on some person who's-- >> John: Some bot. >> Yeah some bot, or some 20 year old calling from Austin, or Mountain View, but it's actually having someone there, with a technical architect, that can hop on a subway, or be there within a half hour to spend some quality time. >> John: And strategic selling too right? >> Exactly. Because they have a challenge, which is they're competing with both Microsoft and Amazon. And obviously Microsoft has the enterprise people, and Amazon is really ramping up in that area. And I think that, so you can throw the technology, but enterprise accounts want to be able to have a conversation face to face, more so than executive coming out and having a dinner with someone. >> Take me through a sales motion, because this is important. You and I have talked about this in the past, and Dave Loth and I always talk about it on the Cube. And it used to be well known in the VC circles, that sales forces are expensive because the sales motions are different. What is the typical sales motion for an enterprise like Sell. Because it's not as simple as saying, "self service, Cloud, put your credit card down," and get you know, Cooper and Eddy's support, terminal access, static IP's, virtual servers, oh by the way I got a support DB2 as well. A non Oracle database, or Oracle. >> Well, look I mean, it's very easy to have that bite over the web for when you start a developer for a new application. And Amazon's done a great job at that, Microsoft's getting there as well. So if you really want the existing applications to move to the Cloud, you have to sit down and have conversations about a hybrid Cloud environment. Because people will have on premise active directory, they'll have a set of security policies, etc. And so the conversation needs to be had, is like how do you bridge on premise, with the Cloud as well, and make that heterogeneous environment look and feel and smell like it's homogeneous from authentication, authorization, audit perspective, compliance perspective, etc. So you certainly need to first and foremost be able to put architects out there, have that conversation, etc. And you just can't rely too much on partners. And I think from there service level agreements, and then also showing that your Cloud platform is incredibly secure as well. >> Yeah I would agree, I would just say one, on the meat eating sales rep, basically what that means people understand the domain, with an architect technically that's going to SC, and then you have to really kind of have an understanding that there's a multiple stakeholder role. One's a recommender, one's an influencer, one's a decision maker, and it is a campaign. It's a multi pronged campaign. >> Yeah you have to think-- >> John: Know their problems, give them a solution, value creation. >> Absolutely. >> John: Value selling. >> Because there's just a level of complexity. And again I'm not saying that Google for new projects, with the current sales motion, can't bring on an app, and maybe that app leverages their machine learning, which seems to be world class right? >> TensorFlow's getting great traction, Intel's building chips for that as well. >> Yeah. >> Google owns a great developer mind share, and I think they've really cracked the code on open source, and they have great empathy with the developers, we were talking about with Val earlier. But with operationally I just see a disconnect. And Amazon's quietly ramping up too, they're no spring chicken either when it comes to direct selling, but they're been working more years on that. >> And I think you seen the word Hybrid Cloud, and I know you spent time with the folks at Vmware, talking about the relationship with Ama... That's all about the Hybrid Cloud, which people need, the enterprises need a bridge and on ramp. And I think, from our perspective- >> Vmware is very solid with Gelsinger and their sales force. They're very, >> Yeah absolutely. >> Very strong with enterprise selling. >> And that's what we focus, cause we initially started on premise, we tied things in to active directory for example, but now we have a Cloud platform, and we advertise and promote ourselves as addressing identity for the Hybrid environment, and providing the bridge between the two, and I think that's critical. >> Now do you guys have an enterprise sales force, right? >> Absolutely. >> So you've invested in that, over ten years? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. So we have over 60 percent of the Fortune 50, and 80 percent of our sales comes from the Global 2000. We've grown, we're over 100 million in sales, so we're in there having that conversation with enterprises all the time. >> So Tom, so we know Diane Green lives in the neighborhood, so let's pretend she calls us up, "Hey Tom, John, come over. "We'll have a cocktail, and dinner. "I need your advice on how to ramp up my enterprise, "operational empathy, and strategy." What would we advise her? What would you advise her, I have my own opinion. But go to you first. >> I really think and focus on, obviously use the machine learning as a key wedge for new applications, but really focus on the concept of Hybrid. And she mastered going from physical to virtual. Now, everyone's virtualized, and so she needs to figure out how I can get virtual to Cloud, V to C, right? And have the people, and have the conversation, and provide bridging technologies as well. So I think that is going to require, not just purely Cloud based stuff, but it's going to probably provide, she's going to need, either through partnerships, or developer stuff. >> Or M and A. >> Or M and A, she's going to have to build connectors, to help facilitate the bridging, because she can go after definitely the 20 percent of the new stuff, but if you want to attack the 80 percent of the existing stuff, and she did a masterful job of going physical to virtual-- >> At VMware. >> At VMware, and now her challenge is to go V to C. Virtual to Cloud. >> So my advice, Diane if you're watching, is the following: One, don't screw up the Google formula. And I know she's transforming Google, and that's a good thing, they need that right now. But I think, what I like about what I'm seeing at Google Next right now is that they have great technology chops. In kind of the Google, pat themselves on the back kind of way, which is they got mojo, they've always had great technology mojo, and that comes down from the founder. So the machine learning stuff, the AI, the stuff that they're doing in their portfolio has, I call the coolness-relevant factor on the tech. What I would do, is I would specifically nurture that, cause she's also a good knack for doing innovative things, and she's very innovative manager, and I've seen that at Vmware, and other places that she's been advising. So she's got a knack for, "Ahh that's cool, look we should do that cool technology "that's going to have legs in the future." So she's got a good sage picking out the technology. I would do an M and A. I would just stop expanding the existing Google culture relative to that sales motions and the enterpriseness, and just go buy somebody. Spend the billion dollars, or more, take someone out whose got full global, regional sales force, why not? Because then those guys already have the relationships, so the buy, build, to the sales force might take too long. I'm not sure that they could get there. I mean, what do you think about that? >> Yeah I think it's, I think they've been public about it. I think they have to invest in their own, but I do think that M and A, I mean they're number three, and they got to do something. Clearly the machine learning AI stuff is going to be huge. We're actually very impressed, I got emails from the folks at the show, about this whole video stuff, in terms of their ability to use the machine learning, and AI to interpret video, which is pretty impressive. But again that's going to be more for a vertical. Or a specific type of application. And so I think they're going to need to do a combination . >> Here's the thing that I'm seeing though. There's a speed of Google, and there's a speed of enterprise. They might have to throttle down, I don't want to say dumb down, that's particularly not the issue, it's more of throttle down the cadence of what enterprises are comfortable with. For example, SLA's, their SLA's are a little bit gray area, but they're awesome on, "hey it only costs X dollars, "import this great data and crunch all this stuff." So they've got great pricing. >> They need to master, Diane did a masterful job of like, overnight she had a utility that could go P to V, and you flipped it up, and everything just magically worked. And they need to prove that they can forklift the applications, with minimal to no changes, and things magically work. And that requires a bunch of software partnership technology, that it's like flipping a switch to go the Cloud. And if you don't like it, then you can roll it back as well. >> What's their security in position in your mind? You've done an audit, you been keeping track of it, or they're secure. Or what's the needs of the enterprise that they should be addressing for security? Well you guys have a relationship with any other booth at the event. >> Yeah absolutely, and we integrate at multiple levels as well. I think they're doing a pretty good job, I think that other vendors like Microsoft are really more heavily investing in areas that we're in, such as identity, so Microsoft has basically replicated the playbook with active directory, and they have something called Azure AD, and so Google doesn't have anything that's equivalent. That's good for us, that actually leads to opportunities, but they could do more in the areas of identity. I think if you look at what Amazon's doing in terms of web application firewalls, and protecting applications that are being spun up in the cloud. I think those are areas that can be improved. Encryption, key management, etc. So if you look at the slide that they have where they say insecurity, I think they list three items, but then if you were to compare it to say Microsoft, or Amazon, they've got five, six, seven items right there as well. I think that there's definitely going to be needs and requirements that need to be met and addressed there. So it's good, for us. >> Well to me it's just a matter of their evolution, they can only go as fast as they can go. That's what the people that I tend to talk to don't get. They can be critical of Google, but at the end of the day they can only go so fast. >> Yeah, and also another bit of advice, is they do have a very good install base with Gsuite, formerly Google apps, but they got to do a better job of leveraging that when people try to move to infrastructure as a server-- >> I think they're taken that advice because it was clear that they're at this event, was they're showcasing a lot of the stats on Gsuite, they're also talking about the apps. And that's consistent with IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft. They're throwing in their Sass layers as part of the stack as well. That's how they can differentiate from Google. What else do they have right? >> Really it's almost like a startup company that's been around for a few years. They have their initial product, and they come out with their second product and the board members will say, "Well what's the adoption of cross selling "the new product with the existing?" And so it should be interesting to see if they can get people that bought in to the Gsuite vision, to say, "Oh okay, now I'm going to start firing up servers "on the Google Cloud platform." >> Well you bring up a good point about their Gsuite, and I mentioned Microsoft using Office 365 as an example. Oracle throws their apps into the blender, if you will. On the numbers and everything. It's interesting Wikibon research is showing that the past layers squeezing, that's a big debate in our own research team, but Gartner research that I just recently looked at from February. Basically there's a new talk about Sass, so if you start including Sass, then you got to open up the conversation to Salesforce, Adobe, and on and on and on. Because there's a Cloud service provider model out there. Linkedin's a service provider. So what is Sass, I always look at it like what's the Sass equation look like. I mean, what does Cloud really look like? >> I look at the statistics, because we address both infrastructure as a service, and software as a service as well, with our identity solutions. Clearly infrastructure as a service is a much bigger market, Sass is pretty significant, but if you add up Sass, infrastructure, and Pass, it's about 24 billionish right there. But guess what, Amazon already has over 10 of it last year. Amazon has 40 percent of the Cloud market as well. And they've proven that you don't have to have a Sass capability to be incredibly successful in the Cloud. >> Well they have their one Sass that was called Amazon.com, but they broke that out. Alright, Tom what's next for you guys at Centrify. What's on your, anything coming up, things you're working on, share some quick plug for Centrify, and the progress you're making in status? >> We've been doing this for 10 years, and we feel really good about providing basically a platform for identity. And one theme and trend that we're seeing a lot of in the security market is that buyers have security fatigue, they're so sick of dealing with point solutions, and I think that's working to our advantage, that people are looking at a vendor such as us, that can address, not only single sign up, but multi-factor authentication, privilege account management as well. So we're very much focused these days on providing a set of solutions that are all built on a platform, and just kind of filling in-- >> When you say fatigue, you mean sprawl and applications they're buying just another platform, because they do try to try everything, why wouldn't they? They're getting tired of that? >> In security you just have a lack of security knowledge. There's a huge skills gap when it comes to security. And if you have to buy a point solution to address every little bit of security, you just can't hire people, right? And then you find that you have air gaps that actually makes you less secure. And so we've over time built this platform up, and now we're really seeing that people are like, I don't have to get a standalone EMM, a standalone SSO, a standalone MFA solution, a standalone password vault solution etc. So we're very much focused on selling our platform to customers and with this whole mindset of customers wanting to consolidate vendors. Historically vendor consolidation was about buyers wanting that, but now IT people want that. And so we're really just focusing on, internally articulating how we can actually address a lot of problems that people have with too much privilege, and too many passwords. >> And you guys are expanding your sales force team? >> Oh absolutely. We've definitely hit the critical mass. We're over a hundred million sales, we're growing fast, we're cash flow positive as well. >> John: Alright, congratulations. The VC's happy. Time to go public, so what's your evaluation? Unicorn. >> No comment on that, rule 40 and all that fun stuff. We got a lot of checkboxes right there. >> I think your VC partner is right, your investor, the world is spinning towards you because if you look at the identity, and nearly everything in the digital world, whether it's Cloud, data, or packets or people. It's going to be a persona based focus. Not like, what company you work for. >> We had this huge trend of consumerization of IT, so it's really about the user. So focus on securing the user, not focusing on securing the network, because the network's gone. >> Finally, 30 years later, it's coming back to the user. It's been talked about, the passports, the digital wallet. >> Exactly. >> John: Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify, a hot startup growing over 100 million in sales. Heard here on the Cube. Very successful company. Really have a nice approach, world's spinning towards them. Really hopefully a great solution for our security and our liberties so we don't get hacked over and over again. It's the Cube, bringing you all the coverage of Google Next, here in the studio I'm John Furrier. Be right back with more, after this short break. (resonant techno music)

>> Wait. Okay, We're back. Live here at Stanford University Alumni Center. What a great day. Stanford loved this place. A lot of brilliant minds here. And this is the Stanford Excel Seventeenth annual symposium called Excel Enterprise. That's the hashtag falls on Twitter here with Jeff Kelly. Silicon angles. Exclusive coverage is too cute. Our flagship program about the events extract the signal from the noise. And our next guest is Amanda Richardson, the head of product. That president. Welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. Awesome. >> So really amazing event. I'LL see a lot of big minds here, and we're also live in San Francisco at the age of us somewhere all the developers air geeking out with Amazon and all the tools you the head of product President, tell us what is President. Tell us what you're doing here. >> So, President, a collaborative presentations will. So we look forward, Teo, helping our users create idea, share ideas and really have a platform for uh, putting. Their message is out there and better sharing with the audience is So we're here because we love excel. I'm here because I'm a GSP alum and any reason to get back to the farm is a good one, and we just think it's a great place to meet people piers and share ideas and hopefully learn from each other's mistakes. >> So what? You're the new business school president? >> So I got you a job before the new business school. It's pretty awesome, but I kind of want to go back. I was joking with my husband this morning. I think it may be time for a phD. >> Yeah, Sanford's Grace, but as the head of product, you can. You still get the geek out? >> Yeah, >> And look at also the market side. You gotta look into engineering also product. So in this whole enterprise two point Oh, thank you just never happened. It's still happening. It's like going and going. But now with cloud with mobile, it's all happening right? So I got that cloud mobile social thing going on. We've been covering. So knowing it's looking angle. What are you seeing now as the market drivers for those two forces cloud and mobile and social is all that coming together? >> Um, it is all coming together, and I think you know, we call it like the consumerism ation of enterprise. Right. So, um people have one phone, one device, one presence. I think five years ago you probably tried to keep your world separated between your enterprise, professional life and your personal life, and now it really all comes together. So you've gotta solve the problems for the enterprise users in the same way you solve problems for consumers, right? What are their big needs? What are their pain points? Where do they find value, focus on those areas and make it easy to use on DH? I think that's what's finally accelerating on bringing really cool, sexy problems to the enterprise users. You just bring a consumer approach. One >> of the biggest barriers that you see in that adopts House of consumer ization of consideration of the enterprise has been talked about for many, many years and finally was seeing a ray of hope. >> Yeah, wave and making the lives the end of the tunnel >> sunrise a face. So it's there, it's there. So one of the key drivers that are helping this go faster now versus years before Oh yes, next two years next year. >> Um so I think I think mobile is actually a great point, so you can't keep pieces like Evernote, Dropbox President out of your users hands. I mean, I remember being in meetings with manager meetings five, seven years ago, talking about how we're gonna ban Facebook, and that just seems quaint now because it's all in your phone and you can't tell people not to bring their phones to work. So I think Mobil's had a huge impact and getting more of these products and tools into the hands of the consumers and out of really this kind of big brother control type situation, Thie Other thing I think that's happening is just worlds are blending together and the availability of of tools on the Internet. It sounds silly to say, but, you know, you can remember five, ten years ago, you couldn't access your perhaps it's near p program. Or perhaps this even productivity tools from home. There was a time when we all had to remote in and yeah, I mean, I'm dating myself and showing why I color my hair. But it really is. You know, the world is changing, and I think, thank goodness for the Internet, thanking us for the Web and thank goodness for >> Mo. It's interesting you mention the dating yourselves first. You look fabulous, you know, you know world. I mean, I'm older, I know how old I am. And I just had the twenty seven year old kid on drop box. So you know, that's young. But, you know, it's a lot of senior folks now. This enterprise market is shifting from consumer. You seeing some of the leaders are those experienced managers because they've lived through the right client server that lived through the that first wave. So is that just because we're more, there's more people that know that market more amusing? You're seeing a lot more cos they're not not the twenty something. It's over thirty five over forty. >> Yeah, eso no comment on age. But Thea, I think what excites me about the space I can just talk about myself is you know, I have a consumer background. So it was super fun to be in consumer five ten years ago when you know Internet was taking off. He finally have a platform on which you have millions of users to test and learn and grow. And now that you can apply that to enterprise, I mean, I think it's new challenges but similar challenges. And I really think one of the more interesting things is that it's actually solving really compelling problems. One of the you know, um, I think there are a lot of opportunities out there around photo sharing and, um, Geo location and, you know, putting together your social graph. But you know, where I find passion and energy is actually providing value and solving problems and really being a key part of someone's someone's life, That's what gets me here. Hope that keeps others here. >> So let's talk about you're solving really interesting problem. What is the mean? What is your wife? What is president about? Why are you doing what you're doing? Is it simply, you know, we've talked. We hear a lot about the concerns around power point and right death by the PowerPoint slide and that kind of thing is that really, uh, the issue you've set out to overcome our tell us a little about what you do and why you do it. >> So, um, we certainly get compared to power point a lot, but where we, uh problem we really like to solve on on a more grand scale is that we believe ideas are best shared and best collaborated about. So if you think of ideas like jeans, they can come together. They can be built on each other. A great example of president uses. There is an organization in Syria rebel organization that used President to really be the platform to explain their ideas and what the issues really were in a quick, meaningful, impactful way. I think having a platform by which you can share ideas and better understand each other can apply Teo making the world a better place but can also apply Teo helping scientists share their information around the globe, building on ideas and I know even within president, we use the tool. Teo better communicate product road maps to engineering so that we can better align. I think it's all about communication. Helping ideas grow faster and helping the world to be a more understanding place. I mean, it's a little peace, love and happiness, but it it is why we get out of bed every morning. We really think because he's a great tool for people to be the platform for them to share their ideas. And >> so I'm actually president User. I've started using recently. Actually, I downloaded. You can see here about the kind of downloaded the desktop version, and I were working on the plane that was coming out here from Boston. But, you know, it's certainly a very interesting platform. It's very different from Power. Point certainly creates much, much more compelling type of way to present information. Uh, what are some of the design principles that's had a product? What are some of the things that you really kind of court your philosophy in terms of design, find it and and implementing our should say, creating the kind of user interface and the way people interact with information? >> Yes. So I'm really proud of President of the co founders have really doubled down, if you will, on our design effort. So we have a full time user research staff. We have a full time data research that we have a full time design staff, all three different roles, all three big teams. I'm really focused on understanding our users. So we saw for key user problems in terms of design principles, specifically that we focus on, we like to, uh, help users understand structure of their ideas. So one of the challenges of President. For those who come from a power point model is everything should be linear. And one of our principles is that not all ideas are linear. There may be areas where we consume into different pieces. So helping to communicate that that is particularly important for us and how to provide simple structure. Um, I think the other ideas, uh, helping to make it beautiful. We believe that words are better. What are? Excuse me? Pictures are better. Way to communicate in words. Um, you know, death by bullet point >> thing is a common affliction, >> eh? So how can you, uh, say something with a picture that would have taken a hundred words? And that's what we try to do. >> So you know what? Your problem is? Both kind of software service, but also down with stop version. Right? Mentioned. But you know what? The software service Mom, you're able, I assume, to collect data on the way people are using your product, right. How does kind of that type of information do you incorporate that into the design process and making changes to the product come to talk about how you used data analysis really >> product. Yeah. So, you know, I believe the role of product managers to understand the user intimately have a point of view on a strategy, but then early validate through data. So not to Pripyat. We do have data about your desktop PC, which is what >> I covered. Big data for what? You have no problem with that. >> So we focus a lot on one or user stew. Do what makes them successful way try toe. Have measurable outcomes for all of our initiatives, whether its user behavior or defining what a good presidents are really helping users to solve their problems. We use data tio, on the small level, optimized and on a big level really define an objective and a goal. So how can we really push things through the funnel to get to the user to their success point, which we measure is giving a presentation. >> So both find ten of tactical issues, but also a kind of inform your larger >> are big company KP eyes. They're all based on data. >> Okay, thanks for coming on The tears. We gotta break that. Their next guest coming in lining up all of the crowd's breaking up the Silicon Angles Exclusive coverage of Stanford Excel seventeen Annual symposium. Hashtag Excel Enterprise Where it sells Doing a lot of great enterprises is Cuba's looking angles. Coverage of Stanford Excel Symposium right back with our next guest after this short break.