>>Mhm. Hey there. Welcome to the cubes coverage of Splunk dot com. 21. I'm lisa martin. I've got a new guest joining me on the cube for the first time please welcome 20 pierce the senior manager of cybersecurity at the Y 20. Welcome to the program. >>Hi, glad to be here. >>So your linked in profile. I wanted to ask you about this. It states that you are delivering an evidence based approach to cybersecurity. What does that mean? An evidence based approach? And how are you and spunk helping to deliver this approach? >>Yeah. And I'd like to call it like the out case outcome based the price basically you start with what you're trying to accomplish and work with backwards. A lot of people say I've got a problem and then they go try to buy a tool or whatever to go fix the problem. I go in and I'm like all right, I got a problem. Let me figure out what's realistically I can use in the environment. So it's just basically working back so you have, you know, a breach. What if I what are all the different things that I knew to leverage to meet the controls for that breach. Right? And so um think of mitre in a way as a layered way of looking things um and the full defense and depth. So that's kind of my approach, I go when I figure out what the problem is and I answer the question and I used to do that because funk is able to give me a big data to everything. Got a guy so I like to be able to pull in all the different data types that I need to answer our questions, um, to do that. Right. And so whether it's a vulnerability management, patching your networking a good, a good example of this, like most common hacks in the world go after known vulnerabilities, right? And we get kind of caught up in all that. Um, one of the things we like to do here do, why is like we like to combine what's happening in the network. So the threat landscape in which is the network guys, the vulnerability guys who are scanning the data and then actually the patching, who is, who is actually, you know, mitigating the problem putting all those into one screen has really helped people with their risk rating. >>Talk to me a little bit about some of the changes, we've seen massive changes in the threat landscape in cybersecurity in the last year and a half during the pandemic. We've seen massive increase in ransomware. DDoS attacks, ransomware becoming a household word, the executive order that just came down a few months ago. What are some of the things that you've seen? Have you seen the acceleration of organizations coming to help? We know that it's not a matter of if we get attacked. It's when how are you, how are you seeing the last 18 months influence what you're doing. >>Oh man, it's been quite a crazy, right? And so um, by trade, I'm a instant responder, you know, uh high level investigator and possible solutions architect. So I, I get called in a lot for those kind of things. It has been kind of nuts. But you know, one of the things I always tell them when it started understanding what your threat landscaping is, um, and identify your key cyber terrain. Unfortunately most, you know, most companies as they grow, they get really big, they don't really do that. So they don't, they miss the consolidation point, right? I always say, hey, you know, if you're, if you're going to do this, if you say you have a ransomware attack, the first thing you can do is, you know, there's so many different controls that you can do to stop that you really need to know where it is and ejecting and then you can isolate if you need to um, what we're seeing in the companies. They, because they don't all have full coverage, right? And they expect their endpoint protections to actually do its job, you know, and sometimes that's, you know, don't get me wrong, there are some amazing endpoint protections out there, but you really need to be able to log it, you need to know what it looks like and you need to know where it is. So if you need a in case of a ransomware attack as it spreads through the network, you're able to isolate it and rewrite it to like, I like to call it a black hole the land and just reroute it so I can isolate it and then I can go after it. Um instead of trying to try to do every endpoint at a time because you'll get you'll get whacked >>definitely. So talk to me about working and partnering with Splunk and it's full security stuff. How does that, how is that a differentiator for you and your rule? >>Okay. So one of the things that we do here any why is we can find simmons sores one combined offering. Right? So we we try to bring the data in, we operationalize it and then we try to do something with it, right? We we find that. And then if you really think about that in a situation where the spunk products, it's the spunk or funky s and then phantom, right? And so that's the automation play. So we try to combine all those into one combined offering. So that when when bad things happen where we make a decision, we say all right, So, hey, um what we're seeing in the industry is like a lot of times people spend so much time hunting the known to to forget about the unknown. Think about the target. Hack a couple of years ago. Um the oil and gas attack just recently, you know, they miss those core things. So we try to say all right, well let's automate a lot of that known stuff so that the incident responders can focus on the unknown. And so when you combine all three of those products, you get a pretty good security staff >>when you say automating The known, is that at all in any way like helping companies get back to basics. I've been hearing a lot in the last 18 months that some from a data protection perspective and from a ransomware attack perspective. So it's it's when not if but are you saying that companies are are sort of skipping past the basics where security is concerned? Yeah, >>Well, it's I don't say it's skipping past the basics. Right? I think that sometimes people get caught up in the definitions of what it is. Right? So there's there's so many, there's so many fair more shop there. Right? So like I'm a big fan of your trust. Um a lot of instant responded to using minor, I use minor for that as as it retains the instant response. Some people like to use high trust and I think a lot of what happens is they get lost in the confusion of all these different frameworks. Right? I like to go back to basics. I've been doing cyber for Oh, oh my oh my gosh, about 20 plus years. Right. Um I'm an active hacker. I like this is what I do. I like to call a defense in depth. Right? So when you're when you're doing that, if you follow the defense and depth Satur, it doesn't matter what framework you have, you can actually go back and you can Fix that problem. Right? So going back in the automation of unknown to an unknown, we know, and IOC is 100% now, you can say IOC it's like a hash, right? So when a bad thing happens like an exploit, first thing we try to do is we try to grab that hash and then we try to build a roll around it to stop that hash from spreading and going anywhere else. That's a We know 100% of it's bad. Now can exploits change their hash. Absolute. And it happens all the time, but for that Moment in time that hash is 100%. And so we try to say, hey look, you know, we got an endpoint protection but also why don't we use automation to block it at the boundary or why don't we keep it from doing lateral movement? Why don't we why don't we activate it from a defense and depth. So you have your network. Um I like to say, hey look you have your egress ingress and your lateral movement. So if you understand all those three fact factors, you can automate the control so that it doesn't spread, you know, you had mentioned ransomware, it's been really huge, right? And everybody goes, oh well, you know, if we do zero try zero trust, talks about, you know, segmentation a whole lot and then a segmentation is usually important. It won't stop everything but it will do a good job being able to you'll ever swung we actually pull that in and we say hey you know from and why are we take all that network? And we try to put it in a single pane of glass so that we can see everything. And then once we're able to see it, once we get a good robust data set and understand that operations were able to go in and automate it and so if I can go in and say hey look all these hashes are bad. Yeah I'm not going to rely on my end point, I'm going to put another control in place. So at the end point misses it, I have another control that will actually layer it and prevent it from spreading. >>Which is absolutely critical. Talk to me about some of the outcomes that Ey and Splunk are delivering to the end user customers. Everyone's always talking about it's all about outcomes. What are some of those? >>Yeah so we have um we really embraced like the data to everything right? So I I kind of have this opinion of like uh you know everything's data so everything needs to be secured right? Uh the people who missed that tend to get whacked pretty quickly. Um So what I like to do is I'm like all right so you know like IOT is huge out there right now O. T. Is doing it. So some of the things that we've done is like from a health care perspective um We've done we've combined I. O. T. And I. T. Into a commonality solution leveraging like network simple things like pulling in from the wind, pulling in um understanding what those Mac addresses are so that you can actually do like a workplace analytics around um say R. F. I. D. Tagging right? So you know where your people are at? Um Here we also do like a call a sock in a box where we put that put everything together that every like a from a tiered perspective like a tier one tier two analysts. You know what is that they need to do to mitigate mitigate observe something, What is the investigator need? Right? So we try to simplify those conversations so that you know exactly around like a threat hunting as well like threat hunter an investigator, they're totally different roles, right? So they need to be separated. We also like tie in like the um what is it? I really hate uh like power point. I'm not a big power point guy right? So I really like to be able to give the says oh he needs to understand what risk is, right? So we try to automated so we can get to that too. He can pull up his phone and pull up his punk app and he knows at any given time what his risk rating of his company, right? So we try to combine all those in. Like again, you know there is um we do stuff around Blockchain supply chain. You know, it doesn't really matter if it's a data analytics tool. You know a lot of people look at Funk as a sim. I don't just like look at it that way. I look at as a data analytics tool that does sim. It's just one of the functions this does. If you start understanding data and all the different things that data can do, then you need to go in and you can use Funk to basically answer those questions so that you can start putting in a control set. >>What what's the differentiated value that Ey and Splunk bring together to customers. What really sets this partnership and what it delivers apart. >>Well I'm I'm I'm biased on that right? Because I run the North America 17 for you like for consulting. So I would say that those two things is innovation and time to value. Right? So for let's start with innovation for a minute because Funk is so customizable right? Because it pretty much can integrate with just two. Anything we're able to go very fast, take data in and do something with it and operationalize. It doesn't matter who the customer is is they're going to give us a question. We'll break it all the way down and we'll understand what you're going to answer A good example that is like we were doing stuff around P. C. I. Compliance. The checklist. You know the financial sector, they get a huge amount of audits, right? Especially around PC. I. So we took all the Pc. I checklist and we said harry, what can we, what can we answer those questions? And so we built a dashboard that actually sends out a report to internal audit and we call it compliance over time, right? It's looking at data in a different perspective to answer a question. Now the other thing is that we like, we try to do here is, you know, with the, as we do is Funk and funk helps us with this, right? We have a great relationship with them is um, basically, oh I have a, I lost my train of thought there for me. So uh, innovations time to value, right? So from time to value what we do is we used to say, hey look, we have a lot of stuff in our lab. But one of the things I don't like to do is I don't like to um, go to clients and say, hey look, we were going to build this for the first time. I like to say, hey look, here's these questions in the industry. Get ahead of the question and go build in our labs so that when we when we actually get on site, our time to value is not in months. You know, we can begin weeks because we already have a huge repository of um use cases now those every use case is actually tied into an automation play. And so when we say that we say hey look here's everything is flowing, let's do this, let's go answer that question and let's go automate it and you let's make a decision where where we want to automate and where do we want a human interaction. Mhm. >>Talk to me about what's next for the partnership in terms of the future, what what can you tell us where E Y. And Splunk are going together? >>So we've been partying around um I think our next things that we're really looking at is A I um we're really getting kind of into that as well as A R. And D. R. Technology. Right? So um especially around like I'm looking at like the energy companies in the financial banking and one of the things I would love to do is like um go into you know a bank A. T. M. Right? And right now it takes somebody actually has to plug into that and to do a diagnostic on it. I would love to be able to get to a point where you can just take your camera scan the QR code on the on the device and then pull up an A. R. And it runs all the diagnostics on the device as its there. Another one is like the infrastructure um instead of actually going out, plugging into like say a solar panel going out pulling out of the tablet just scanning the solar panels and it tells you if it's good or bad and that's kind of the next step that we're trying to do. We're trying to really take that uh and dated everything and just kind of turn it on its end um like and you've got to remember everything is data nowadays, right? It's not the old days where you know, things are moving around and everything is in the file folders, it's gone right? Everything is data. So everything is security, right? And we know the first thing is we need to know what our threat landscape is. We need to know what that is and we need to apply that. All right. So if we can simplify answering questions, that's so much better. And one of the things I like about flunked is it scales really well, right? And I've looked at some of these fetters and don't get me wrong, I mean everybody has their place. The one thing I like about spunk is it doesn't mean it literally scales really well. So the more data you can get into it, it actually does better. Right? Um and how you do it now, that's just our approach. That's the next steps that we're really looking at from a technology standpoint, >>exciting stuff, Tony thank you for joining me sharing what ey and Splunk are doing together. Some of the unique use cases that you're helping to solve for customers and some of the things that you're excited about. We appreciate your time on your information. >>No, this is fun. You know, like I said, I'm a big fan. I even wore my spunk shirt just for this meeting. >>Fantastic. You're on brand well, Tony. Thank you. Again. We appreciate your time. >>All right. Thank you. You have a wonderful day. >>Thanks you as well for Tony Pierce. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of splunk.com 21. Thanks for watching, >>enjoy. Bye bye mm. Mm hmm.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld iNspire, brought to you by Pegasystems. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. And now that the dust has settled on the event, we wanted to have a little postmortem power panel, and I'm really excited to have three great guests here today. Adrian Swinscoe is a customer service and experience advisor and the best-selling author of a couple of books: "How to Wow" and "Punk CX." Adrian great to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Hey Dave. >> And Shelly Kramer's a principal, analyst, and a founding partner at Futurum Research, CUBE alum. Shelly, good to see you. >> Hi, great to see you too. >> And finally, Don Schuerman who is the CTO of Pegasystems and one of the people that was really highlighting the keynotes. Don, thanks for your time, appreciate you coming on. >> Great to be here. >> Guys, let's start with some of the takeaways from the event, and if you don't mind I'm going to set it up. I had some, I had many many notes. But I'll take a cue from Alan's keynote, where he talked about three things: rethinking the customer engagement, that whole experience, that as a service, I'm going to say that certainly the second part of last decade came to the front and center and we think is going to continue in spades. And then new tech, we heard about that. Don we're going to ask you to chime in on that. Modern software, microservices, we've got machine intelligence now. And then I thought there were some really good customer examples. We heard from Siemens, we heard from the CIO and head of digital at Aflac, the Bank of Australia. So, some really good customer examples. But Shelly, let me start with you. What were your big takeaways of PegaWorld iNspire 2020, the virtual edition? >> You know, what I love is a focus, and we have talked a lot about that here at Futurum Research, but what I love is the thinking that what really is important now is to think about rethinking and kind of tearing things apart. Especially when we're in a time, we're in difficult economic times, and so instead of focusing on rebuilding and relaunching as quickly as possible, I think that now's the time to really focus on reexamining what is it that our customers want? How is it that we can best serve them? And really sort of start from ground zero and examine our thinking. And I think that's really at the heart of digital transformation, and I think that both in this virtual event and in some interviews I was lucky enough to do in advance with some of the Pega senior team, that was really a key focus, is really thinking about how we can re-architect things, how we can do things in ways that are more efficient, that impact people more effectively, that impact the bottom line more effectively. And to me that's really exciting. >> So Adrian, CX is obviously your wheelhouse. A lot of the conversation at PegaWorld iNspire was of course about customer experience, customer service. How do you think the content went? What were some of the highlights for you? And maybe, what would you have liked to hear more of? >> Well I think, thanks Dave, I actually really enjoyed it. I actually kind of thought was, first of all I should say that I've been to a bunch of virtual summits and I thought this was one of the best ones I've done in terms of its pace and its interactivity. I love the fact that Don was bouncing around the screen, kind of showing us around the menu and things. I thought that was great. But the things that I thought really stood out for me was this idea of the context around accelerating digital transformation. And that's very contextual, it's almost being forced upon us. But then this idea of also the center-out thinking and the Process Fabric. Because it really reminded me of, and Don you can maybe correct me if I'm wrong here, is taking a systems-thinking approach to delivering the right outcomes for customers. Because it's always struck me that there's a contradiction at the heart of the rhetoric around customer-centricity where people say they want to do the right things by customers but then they force them down this channel-centric or process-centric way of thinking. And so actually I thought it was really refreshing to hear about this center-out and Process Fabric platform that Pega's building. And I thought it's really exciting because it felt like actually we're going to start to take a more systemic look and take to delivering great service and great experience. So I thought that was really great. Those were my big headlines out of the summit. >> So Don, one of the-- >> Adrian I think-- >> Go ahead, please. >> Yeah, I think the whole idea, you know, and Alan referred to center-out as a business architecture, and I think that's really an important concept because this is really about the intersection of that business goal. How do I truly become customer-centric? And then how do I actually make my technology do it? And it's really important for that to work where you put your business logic in the technology. If you continue to do it in the sort of channel-centric way or really data-centric, system-centric way that historically has been the approach, I don't think you can build a sustainable platform for great customer engagement. So I think that idea of a business architecture that you clued in on a little bit is really central to how we've been thinking about this. >> Let's stay on that for a second. But first of all, I just want to mention, you guys did a good job of not just trying to take a physical event and plug in into virtual. So congratulations on that. The virtual clicker toss, and you know, you were having some fun eating your eggs. I mean that was, that's great. And the Dropkick Murphys couldn't be live, but you guys still leveraged that, so well done. One of the better ones that I've seen. But I want to stay on your point there. Alan talked about some of the mistakes that are made, and one of the questions I have for you guys is, what is the state of customer experience today, and why the divergence between great, and good, and pretty crappy? And Alan talked about, well, people try to impose business process top-down, or they try to infuse logic in the database bottom-up. You really got to do that middle-out. So, Don I want to come back to you. Let's explore that a little bit. What do you really mean by middle-out? Where am I putting the actual business logic? >> Yeah, I think this is important, right. And I think that a lot of time we have experiences as customers. And I had one of these recently with a cable provider, where I spent a bunch of time on their website chatting with a chatbot of some kind, that then flipped me over to a human. When the chatbot flipped me to the human, the human didn't know what I was doing with the chatbot. And that human eventually told me I had to call somebody. So I picked up the phone, I made the phone call. And that person didn't know what I was doing on chat with the human or with the chatbot. So every time there's a customer, I'm restarting. I'm reexplaining where I am. And that to me is a direct result of that kind of channel-centric thinking, where all of my business logic ends up embedded in, "Well hey, we're going to build a cool chatbot. "And now we're going to build a cool chat system. "And by the way, "we're going to keep our contact centers running." But I'm not thinking holistically about the customer experience. And that's why we think this center-out approach is so important, because I want to go below the channel. And I want to think about that customer journey. What's the outcome I'm trying to get to? In the case of my interaction, I was just trying to increase my bandwidth so that I could do events like this, right? What's that outcome that I'm trying to get to and how do I get the customer to that outcome in a way that's as efficient for the business and as easy for the customer as possible regardless of what channel they're on. And I think that's a little bit of a new way of thinking. And again, it means thinking not just about the customer goal, but having an opinion, whether you are a business leader or an IT person, about where that logic belongs in your architecture. >> So, Adrian. Don just described the sort of bot and human experience, which mimics a lot of the human experience that we've all touched in the past. So, but the customer journey that Don talked about isn't necessarily one journey. There's multiple journeys. So what's your take on how organizations can do better with that kind of service. >> Well I think you're absolutely right, Dave. I mean, actually during the summer I was talking, I was listening to Paul Greenberg talk about the future of customer service. And Paul said something that I think was really straightforward but really insightful. He said, "Look, organizations think about customer journeys "but customers don't think about journeys "in the way that organizations do. "They think discontinuously." So it's like, "I'm going to go to channel one, "and then channel three, and then channel four, "and then channel five, and then back to channel two. "And then back to channel five again." And they expect those conversations to be picked up across those different channels. And so I think what we've got to do is develop, as Don said, build an architecture that is, that works around trying to support the different journeys but allows that flexibility and that adaptability for customers to jump around and to have one of those continuous but disconnected conversations. But it's up to us to try and connect them all, to deliver the service and experience that the customers actually want. >> Now Shelly, a lot of the customer experience actually starts with the employees, and employees don't like when the customer is yelling at them saying, "I just answered all those questions. "Why do I have to answer them again?" So you've, at your firm, you guys have written a lot about this, you've thought a lot about it, you have some data I know you shared on theCUBE one time that 80% of employees are disengaged. And so, that affects the customer experience, doesn't it? >> Yeah it does, you know. And I think that when I'm listening to Don's explanation about his cable company, I'm having flashbacks to what feels like hundreds of my own experiences. And you're just thinking, "This does not have to be this complicated!" You know, ten years ago that same thing that Don just described happened with phone calls. You know, you called one person and they passed you off to somebody else, and they passed you off to somebody else, and you were equally as frustrated as a customer. Now what's happening a lot of times is that we're plugging technology in, like a chat bot, that's supposed to make things better but we're not developing a system and processes throughout our organization, and also change management, what do I want to say, programs within the organization and so we're kind of forgetting all of those things. So what's happening is that we're still having customers having those same experiences that are a decade old, and technology is part of the mix. And it really shouldn't be that way. And so, one thing that I really enjoyed, speaking about employees, was listening to Rich Gilbert from Aflac. And he was talking about when you're moving from legacy processes to new ones, you have to plan for and invest in change management. And we talk about this all the time here at Futurum, you know technology alone is never the answer. It's technology plus people. And so you have to invest in people, you have to invest in their training in order to be able to support and manage change and to drive change. And I think one really important part of that equation is also listening to your employees and getting their feedback, and making them part of the process. Because when they are truly on your front lines, dealing with customers, many times dealing with stressed, upset, frustrated customers, you know, they have a lot of insights. And sometimes we don't bring them into those conversations, certainly early enough in the process to help, to let them help guide us in terms of the solutions and the processes that we put in place. I think that's really important. >> Yeah, a lot of-- >> Shelly, I think-- >> If I may, a lot of the frustration with some employees sometimes is those processes change, and they're unknown going into it. We saw that with COVID, Don. And so, your thoughts on this? >> Yeah, I mean, I think the environment employees are working in is changing rapidly. We've got a customer, a large telecommunications company in the UK where their customer service requests are now being handled by about 4,000 employees pulled from their marketing department working distributed because that's the world that we're in. And the thing I was going to say in response to Shelly is, Alan mentioned in his keynote this idea of design thinking. And one of the reasons why I think that's so important is that it's actually about giving the people on the front lines a voice. It's a format for engaging the employees who actually know the day-to-day experiences of the customers, the day-to-day experiences of a customer service agent, and pulling them into the solution. How do we develop the systems, how do we rethink our processing, how does that need to plug into the various channels that we have? And that's why a lot of our focus is not just on the customer service technology, but the underlying low code platform that allows us to build those processes and those chunks of the customer journey. We often refer to them as "microjourneys" that lead to a specific outcome. And if you're using a low code based platform, something that allows anybody to come in and define that process, you can actually pull employees from the front lines and put them directly on your project teams. And all of a sudden you get better engagement but you also get this incredible insight flowing into what you're doing because you're talking to the people who live this day in and day out. >> Well and when you have-- >> So let's stay on this for a second, if we can. Shelly, go ahead please. >> Sure. When you have a chance to talk with those people, to talk with those front line employees who are having an opportunity to work with low code, no code, they get so excited about it and their jobs are completely, the way they think about their jobs and their contribution to the company, and their contribution to the customer, and the customer experience, is just so wonderful to see. And it's such an easy thing to do, so I think that that's really a critical part of the equation as it relates to success with these programs. >> Yeah, staying close to the customer-- >> Can I jump in? >> Yeah, please Adrian. >> Can I jump in on that a little, a second. I think Shelly, you're absolutely right. I think that it's a really simple thing. You talk about engagement. And one of the key parts of engagement, it seems to me, is that, is giving people a voice and making them feel important and feel heard. And so to go and ask for their opinion and to help them get involved and make a difference to the work that they do, the outcomes that their customers receive, and the overall productivity and efficiency, can only have a positive impact. And it's almost like, it feels self-evident that you'd do that but unfortunately it's not very common. >> Right. It does feel self-evident. But we miss on that front a lot. >> So I want to ask, I'm going to come back to, we talked about people process, we'll come back to that. But I want to talk about the tech. You guys announced, the big announcement was the Pega Process Fabric. You talked about that, Don, as a platform for digital platforms. You've got all these cool microservices and dynamic APIs and being able to compose on the fly, so some pretty cool stuff there. I wonder, with the virtual event, you know, with the physical event you've got the hallway traffic, you talk to people and you get face-to-face reactions. Were you able to get your kind of real-time reactions to the announcement? What was that like? Share with us please. >> Yeah, so, we got well over 1,000 questions in during the event and a lot of them were either about Process Fabric or comments about it. So I think people are definitely excited about this. And when you strip away all of the buzzwords around microservices and cloud, et cetera, I think what we're really getting at here is that work is going to be increasingly more distributed. We are living proof of that right now, the four of us all coming here from different studios. But work is going to be distributed for a bunch of reasons. Because people are more distributed, because organizations increasingly are building customer journeys that aren't just inside their walls, but are connected to the partners and their ecosystem. I'm a bank but I may, as part of my mortgage process, connect somebody up to a home insurer. And all of a sudden the home buying process goes beyond my four walls. And then finally, as you get all of these employees engaged with building their low code apps and being citizen developers, you want to let the 1,000 flowers to bloom but you also need a way to connect that all back together. And Process Fabric is about putting the technology in place to allow us to take these distributed bits of work that we need to do and weave them together into experiences that are coherent for a customer and easy for an employee to navigate. Because I think it's going to be really really important that we do that. And even as we take our systems and break them up into microservices, well customers don't interact with microservices. Customers interact with journeys, with experiences, with the processes you lay out, and making sure we can connect that up together into something that feels easy for the customer and the employee, and gets them to that result they want quickly, that's what the vision of Process Fabric is all about. >> You know, it strikes me, I'm checking my notes here. You guys talked about a couple of examples. One was, I think you talked about the car as sort of a mobility experience, maybe, you know, it makes me wonder with all this AI and autonomous vehicle stuff going on, at what point is owning and driving your own vehicle really going to be not the norm anymore? But you talked about this totally transformed, sorry to use that word, but experience around autos. And certainly financial services is maybe a little bit more near-term. But I wonder Shelly, Futurum, you know, you guys look ahead, how far can we actually go with AI in this realm? >> Well, I think we can go pretty far and I think it'll happen pretty fast. And I think that we're seeing that already in terms of what happened when we had the Coronavirus COVID-19, and of course we're still navigating through that, is that all of a sudden things that we talked about doing, or thought about doing, or planned doing, you know later on in this year or 2021, we had to do all of those things immediately. And so again, it is kind of like ripping the Bandaid off. And we're finding that AI plays a tremendously important role in relieving the workload on the frontline workers, and being able to integrate empathy into decision making. And you know, I go back to, I remember when you all first rolled out the empathy part of your platform, Don, and just watching a demo on that of how you can slide this empathy meter to be warmer, and see in true dollars and cents over time the impact of treating your customers with more empathy, what that delivers to a company. And I think that AI that continues to build and learn and again, what we're having right now, is we're having this gigantic volume of needs, of conversation, of all these transactions that need to happen at once, and great volumes make for better outcomes as it relates to artificial intelligence and how learning can happen more quickly over time. So I think that it's, we're definitely going to see more use of AI more rapidly than we might've seen it before, and I don't think that's going to slow down, at all. Certainly, I mean there's no reason for it to slow down. The benefits are tremendous. The benefits are tremendous, and let me step back and say, following a conversation with Rob Walker on responsible AI, that's a whole different ball of wax. And I think that's something that Pega has really embraced and planted a flag in. So I think that we'll see great things ahead with AI, and I think that we'll see the Pega team really leading as it relates to ethical AI. And I think that's tremendously important as well. >> Well that's the other side of the coin, you know. I asked how far can we go and I guess you're alluding to how far should we go. But Adrian, we also heard about agility and empathy. I mean, I want an empathic service provider. Are agility and empathy related to customer service, and how so? >> Well, David, I think that's a great question. I think that, you talk about agility and talk about empathy, and I think the thing is, what we probably know from our own experience is that being empathetic is sometimes going to be really hard. And it takes time, and it takes practice to actually get better at it. It's almost like a new habit. Some people are naturally better at it than others. But you know, organizationally, I talk about that we need to almost build, almost like an empathetic musculature at an organizational level if we're going to achieve this. And it can be aided by technology, but we, when we develop new muscles it takes time. And sometimes you go through a bit of pain in doing that. So I think that's where the agility comes in, is that we have to test and learn and try new things, be willing to get things wrong and then correct, and then kind of move on. And then learn from these kind of things. And so I think the agility and empathy, it does go hand in hand and it's something that will drive growth and increasing empathetic interactions as we go forward. But I think it's also, just to build on Shelly's point, I think you're absolutely right that Pega has been leading the way in this sort of dimension, in terms of its T-switch and its empathetic advisor. But now the ethical AI testing or the ethical bias testing adds a dimension to that to make sure it's not just about all horsepower, but being able to make sure that you can steer your car. To use your analogy. >> So AI's coming whether we like it or not. Right, Shelly? Go ahead. >> It is. One real quick real world example here is, you know, okay so we have this time when a lot of consumers are furloughed. Out of work. Stressed about finances. And we have a lot of Pega's customers are in the financial services space. Some of the systems that they've established, they've developed over time, the processes they've developed over time is, "Oh, I'm talking with Shelly Kramer and she has a "blah-blah-blah account here. "And this would be a great time to sell her on "this additional service," or whatever. And when you can, so that was our process yesterday. But when you're working with an empathic mindset and you are also needing to be incredibly agile because of current circumstances and situations, your technology, the platform that you're using, can allow you to go, "Okay I'm dealing "with a really stressed customer. "This is not the best time "to offer any additional services." Instead what we need to ask is this series of questions: "How can we help?" Or, "Here are some options." Or whatever. And I think that it's little tweaks like that that can help you in the customer service realm be more agile, be more empathetic, and really deliver an amazing customer experience as a result. And that's the technology. >> If I could just add to that. Alan mentioned in his keynote a specific example, which is Commonwealth Bank of Australia. And they were able, multiple times this year, once during the Australian wildfires and then again in response to the COVID crisis, to completely shift and turn on a dime how they interacted with their customer, and to move from a prioritization of maybe selling things to a prioritization of responding to a customer need. And maybe offering payment deferrals or assistance to a customer. But back to what we were talking about earlier, that agility only happened because they didn't have the logic for that embedded in all their channels. They had it centralized. They had it in a common brain that allowed them to make that change in one place and instantly propagate it to all of the 18 different channels in which they touch their customer. And so, being able to have agility and that empathy, to my mind, is explicitly tied to that concept of a center-out business architecture that Alan was talking about. >> Oh, absolutely. >> And, you know, this leads to discussion about automation, and again, how far can we go, how far should we go? Don, you've been interviewed many many times, like any tech executive, about the impact of AI on jobs. And, you know, the typical response of course is, "No, we want augmentation." But the reality is, machines have always replaced humans it's just, now it's the first time in terms of cognitive function. So it's a little different for us this time around. But it's clear, as I said, AI is coming whether we like it or not. Automation is very clearly on the top of people's minds. So how do you guys see the evolution of automation, the injection of automation into applications, the ubiquity of automations coming in this next decade? Shelly, let's start with you. >> You know, I was thinking you were going to ask Don that question so I'm just listening and listening. (laughing) >> Okay, well we can go with Don, that's-- >> No I'm happy to answer it. It's fine, it just wasn't what I expected. You know, we are really immersed in the automation space. So I very much see the concerns that people on the front line have, that automation is going to replace them. And the reality of it is, if a job that someone does can be automated, it will be automated. It makes sense. It makes good business sense to do that. And I think that what we are looking at from a business agility standpoint, from a business resilience standpoint, from a business survival standpoint, is really how can we deliver most effectively to serve the needs of our customers. Period. And how we can do that quickly and efficiently and without frustration and in a way that is cost effective. All of those things play into what makes a successful business today, as well as what keeps employees, I'm sorry, as well as what keeps customers served, loyal, staying around. I think that we live in a time where customer loyalty is fleeting. And so I think that smart businesses have to look at how do we deepen the relationships that we have with customers? How can we use automation to do that? And the thing about it, you know, I'll go back to the example that Don gave about his cable company that all of us have lived through. It's just like, "Oh my gosh. "There's got to be a better way." So compare that to, and I'm sure all of us can think of an experience where you had to deal with a customer service situation in some way or another, and it was the most awesome thing ever. And you walked away from it and you just went, "Oh my gosh. I know I was talking to a bot here or there." Or, "I know I was doing this, but that solved my problem. "I can't believe it was so easy! "I can't believe it was so easy! "I can't wait to buy something from this company again!" You know what I'm saying? And that's really, I think, the role that automation can play. Is that it can really help deepen existing relationships with our customers, and help us serve them better. And it can also help our employees do things that are more interesting and that are more relevant to the business. And I think that that's important too. So, yes, jobs will go. Yes, automation will slide into places where we've done things manually and repetitive processes before, but I think that's a good thing. >> So, we've got to end it shortly here but I'll give you guys each a last opportunity to chime in. And Adrian, I want to start with you. I invoked the T-word before, transformation, a kind of tongue-in-cheek joking because I know it's not your favorite word. But it is the industry's favorite word. Thinking ahead for the future, we've talked about AI, we've talked about automation, people, process and tech. What do you see as the future state of customer experience, this mix of human and machine? What do we have to look forward to? >> So I think that, first of all, let me tackle the transformation thing. I mean, I remember talking about this with Duncan Macdonald who is the CIO across at UPC, which is one of Pega's customers, on my podcast there the other week. And he talked about, he's the cosponsor of a three year digital transformation program. But then he appended the description of that by saying it's a transformation program that will never end. That's the thing that I think about, because actually, if you think about what we're talking about here, we're not transforming to anything in particular, you know. It's not like going from here to there. And actually, the thing that I think we need to start thinking about is, rather than transformation we actually need to think about an evolution. And adopting an evolutionary state. And we talked about being responsive. We talked about being adaptable. We talked about being agile. We talk about testing and learning and all these different sort of things, that's evolutionary, right? It's not transformational, it's evolutionary. If you think about Charles Darwin and the theory of the species, that's an evolutionary process. And there's a quote, as you've mentioned I authored this book called "Punk CX," there's a quote that I use in the book which is taken from a Bad Religion song called "No Control" and it's called, "There is no vestige of a beginning, "and no prospect of an end." And that quote comes from a 1788 book by James Hutton, which was one of the first treaties on geology, and what he found through all these studies was actually, the formation of the earth and its continuous formation, there is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. It's a continuous process. And I think that's what we've got to embrace is that actually change is constant. And as Alan says, you have to build for change and be ready for change. And have the right sort of culture, the right sort of business architecture, the right sort of technology to enable that. Because the world is getting faster and it is getting more competitive. This is probably not the last crisis that we will face. And so, like in most evolutionary things, it wasn't the fittest and the strongest that survived, it was the ones that were most adaptable that survived. And I think that's the kind of thing I want to land on, is actually how, it's the ones that kind of grasp that, grasp that whole concept are the ones that are going to succeed out of this. And, what they will do will be... We can't even imagine what they're going to do right now. >> And, thank you. And Shelly, it's not only responding to, as Adrian was saying, to crisis, but it's also being in a position to very rapidly take advantage of opportunities and that capability is going to be important. You guys are futurists, it's in the name. Your thoughts? >> Well I think that, you know, Adrian's comments were incredibly salient, as always. And I think that-- >> Thank you. >> The thing that this particular crisis that we are navigating through today has in many ways been bad, but in other ways, I think it's been incredibly good. Because it has forced us, in a way that we really haven't had to deal with before, to act quickly, to think quickly, to rethink and to embrace change. Oh, we've got to work from home! Oh, we've got 20 people that need to work from home, we have 20,000 people that need to work from home. What technology do we need? How do we take care of our customers? All of these things we've had to figure out in overdrive. And humans, generally speaking, aren't great at change. But what we are forced to do as a result of this pandemic is change. And rethink everything. And I think that, you know, the point about transformation not being a beginning and an end, we are never, ever, ever done. It is evolutionary and I think that as we look to the future and to one of your comments, we are going faster with more exciting technology solutions out there, with people who are incredibly smart, and so I think that it's exciting and I think that all we are going to see is more and more and more change, and I think it will be a time of great resilience, and we'll see some businesses survive and thrive, and we'll see other businesses not survive. But that's been our norm as well, so I think it's really, I think we have some things to thank this pandemic for. Which is kind of weird, but I also try to be fairly optimistic. But I do, I think we've learned a lot and I think we've seen some really amazing exciting things from businesses who have done this. >> Well thanks for sharing that silver lining, Shelly. And then, Don, I'm going to ask you to bring us to the finish line. And I'm going to close my final question to you, or pose it. You guys had the wrecking ball, and I've certainly observed, when it comes to things like digital transformations, or whatever you want to call it, that there was real complacency, and you showed that cartoon with the wrecking ball saying, "Ehh not in my life, not on my watch. "We're doing fine." Well, this pandemic has clearly changed people's thinking, automation is really top of mind now at executive. So you guys are in a good spot from that standpoint. But your final thoughts, please? >> Yeah, I mean, I want to concur with what Adrian and Shelly said and if I can drop another rock quote in there. This one is from Bob Dylan. And Dylan famously said, "The times they are a changing." But the quote that I keep on my wall is one that he tossed off during an interview where he said, "I accept chaos. "I'm not sure if it accepts me." But I think digital transformation looks a lot less like that butterfly emerging from a cocoon to go off happy to smell the flowers, and looks much more like accepting that we are in a world of constant and unpredictable change. And I think one of the things that the COVID crisis has done is sort of snapped us awake to that world. I was talking to the CIO of a large media company who is one of our customers, and he brought up the fact, you know, like Croom said, "We're all agile now. "I've been talking about five years, "trying to get this company to operate in an agile way, "and all of a sudden we had to do it. "We had no choice, we had to respond, "we had to try new things, we had to fail fast." And my hope is, as we think about what customer engagement and automation and business efficiency looks like in the future, we keep that mindset of trying new things and continuously adapting. Evolving. At the end of the day, our company's brand promise is, "Build for change." And we chose that because we think that that's what organizations, the one thing they can design for. They can design for a future that will continue to change. And if you put the right architecture in place, if you take that center-out mindset, you can support those immediate needs, but set yourself up for a future of continuous change and continuous evolution and adaptation. >> Well guys, I'll quote somebody less famous. Jeff Frick, who said, "The answer to every question "lives somewhere in a CUBE interview." and you guys have given us a lot of answers. I really appreciate your time. I hope that next year at PegaWorld iNspire we can see each other face-to-face and do some live interviews. But really appreciate the insights and all your good work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> And thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante and our coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. Be right back, right after this short break. (lighthearted music)

from Austin Texas it's the cube covering cube con and cloud native con 2017 brought to you by Red Hat the Lenox foundations and the cubes ecosystem partners well everyone welcome back to our exclusive coverage from the cube here in Austin Texas we're live on the floor at cloud native con and cube con cubic on like kubernetes gone not the cube con us but cute con we're Michele norelli who's the senior software engineer at Microsoft also the co-chair with Kelsey Heights our great event record-setting attendance I'm John ferry your host with stew minimun Michele welcome to the cube thank you so much for having me so people don't know about if they might have watch the street if you had a stream you're on stage keynoting and managing the whole program here congratulations more attendees here at this event than all the other cube cause of cloud native combined shows the growth and interest in a new way to develop new way to engage with other developers and create value yeah kubernetes has been the heart of it explain cloud native con and cube con what's the difference because I love cloud native but what's this Cooper Denny's thing I love that too yeah was it related a intertwine Wayne take him into his plane there's a there's a really big kubernetes audience and community and they need time to engage and just like work with each other and learn from each other and that's where coop Connie came from soku-kun with the original conference and the first one was a November in Seattle in 2016 and I was actually at that wine was a few hundred people and it was just so small people were actually asking like what is a pod what is kubernetes which are fine questions asked today as well but it was everyone was asking this question nobody was past that point and then you know kubernetes was donated to the CNCs and there were also these other cloud native projects that came about in the space and so we wanted a conference that encompasses both all of the cloud native projects as well as serbs the kubernetes community as well so that's where both of them came from some of the other cloud native projects have their own conferences like Prometheus has prom time and that's been growing as well I think the last one was 200 people up from 70 the last so I gotta ask you because we even cover us we were there at the cube con I was actually having drinks with Luke Tucker at JJ we're like hey we should do this Cuban Eddie's thing and bolted onto the Linux Foundation so you're president creates with the whole team it's been fun to watch Wow yeah but it's the tale of two stories in the community in the industry companies that got funded and we're building open-source and our participants who are building projects out and then a new onboarding of new developers coming into the community a lot of first-timers here you're seeing a visibility into the success of cloud yeah and they're Rieger engaged so you got a lot of folks who have invested into the community and new entrants a migration into the community yeah what does that dynamic mean to the CN CF how is that impacting how you structure in the programming and what are some of the insiders talking about what it is what's the reality yeah I think a lot of it has to do with you know this is a really positive community and there are just like so many people working together and collaborating not just because they I mean it looks like nice to be in a positive community right but you kind of have to like these problems are really hard and it's good to learn from different organizations that have like come across these projects or problems starting in the in the space before and they'll come and collaborate I think some of the things that we've been talking about inside the community is how to actually how to onboard people so the kubernetes community is starting up a new mentorship program to help people that are new to the community start learning how to review code and then PR code and and be productive members in the community and whatever they whatever area they want miss Michelle want to hear about kind of some of the breadth and depth of the community here yeah you know we went there's so many announcements there's a bunch of wando's yeah it's a brand new project I think what it was four projects a year ago and it's now 14 you know right how does somebody's supposed to get their arms around it should they be beat me about that you know where should somebody start you know what do you recommend yeah start with the that's a great question by the way I think that people should start with with a solution to a problem they already have so just know that people have run into these problems before and you should just go into the thing that you know about first and then if that leads you to a different problem and there's a solution that the CNCs you know has already come across then you can go into and dive into the other palms for example I am really interested in kubernetes and have been in that space but I think tracing is really interesting too and I want to start learning how to incorporate that into my workflow as well so show you you're also one of the diversity chairs yeah for the event you talk about kind of a diverse global nature of this community yeah we are spread across all time zone so I actually want to share an experience I have as a sake lead in kubernetes so at first I really wanted to serve all of the time zones and so we have these weekly sick meetings at 9:30 a.m. Pacific and I was like no maybe we should have like alternate meetings like alternate weekly meetings for other time zones but after talking to those the people in the other time sounds like they're very far off actually like China Asia Pacific I realize that they're actually more interested in reading notes and watching videos which is something I didn't actually know you know it's it's you think like oh you have to serve every community in the same way but what I've learned and face to face yeah base to base exactly and that's not actually how that's not how actually everybody wants to interact and so that's been an interesting thing I've learned from the diverse nature and this in the space let's see a challenges I mean we've been talking we're just that reinvent last week at Amazon obviously the number of services that they're rolling out is pretty strong there's a leader in the cloud but as multi cloud becomes the choice for most most enterprises and businesses the service requirements the baseline is got to be established seeing your community rolling out a lot of great new services but storage old storage is transferring to machine learning in AI and you got I Oh tea right around the corner new new kinds of applications yeah okay it's changing the game on the old card storage and security obviously two important areas you got to store the data data is that the card of the value proposition and then security security how are you guys dealing with that those challenges those political grounds that people are have a lot of making a lot of money in an old storage you mean ship a storage drive and here's an architecture those are being disrupted yeah I think they I mean they'll continue to be disrupted I think people are just going to bring in new and new more new and new use cases and then people will come and meet them meet those customers where they are and people just have to change I guess get used to it yeah shifter die yeah I think that some that that we are getting to that point but I can't only time will tell we'll see what are something exciting things that you see from the new developers I just recognize some friends here that I've haven't that dark wondering the community are new and they're kind of like licking their chops like wow what an excitement I could feel value and I could have a distribution I got a community and I can make money and then Dan said you know project products profits you put the product profit motive right on the table but he's clear at the same not pay to play it's okay to have profits if you have a good product for me project I buy that but the new developers like that because as an end scoreboard what are you guys doing with that new community what survived there around those kinds of opportunities you guys creating any programs for them or yeah I think just to just they can get involved you know I think knowledge is power perspective is power also so being involved helps give you a perspective to see where those gaps are and then come up with those services that are profitable or those tools that are profitable and I think this space can be very lucrative based on the number of people he sponsors I think he said he said the show was wondering if you can comment when you're building the schedule how do you balance you know all those platinum sponsors versus you know some of the you know practitioner companies that are also getting involved how do you there are there are different levels of sponsorship right like you mentioned the events team has a sponsorship section or sponsorship team and they handle most of placing sponsors and all of that and so they'll get whatever level they want but actually Kelsey and I do a lot of research and see like what's happening in the community what's interesting what's new and and we'll find time to highlight that as well which one is research what's your role in Microsoft share with the audience what are you working on what's your day-to-day job is it just foundation work are you doing coding what do you coding what's your fav is the VI MX what do you prefer yes my work is 30% community and 70% engineering I really love engineering but I also really love the community and just getting these opportunities to give back you know build skills as well learning how to speak in front of people as well these are both valuable skills to learn and it gives me an opportunity to just give back what I've learned so I appreciate those but I mostly work on developer tools that are open source that help people use containers and kubernetes a little more easily so I work on projects like Helms drafts and Brigade and these are just like things that we've seen the pain points that we've experienced and we want to kind of share our solutions with them so draft is the one I've been working on a lot have you heard of drops okay let me do the two second draft is a tool for application developers to build containerized apps without really understanding or having to understand all of what is kubernetes and containers so that's my favorite space to know you know one of the things we look at coming in here is there's that balance between there's complexity but there's flexibility you know I've heard Kelsey talking about our on when I talk to customer they're like oh I love kubernetes because I take vault and I take envoy and I take all these different things that put together and it does what I want but a lot of people are daunted and they say oh I want to I want to just go to Microsoft Azure and they'll take care of that so how do you look at that and what is the balance that we should be looking for as an industry yeah we've been emphasizing in the community a lot on plug ability across contracts it's like a theme that I think almost every project hurts and a word that you'll hear a lot I'm sure you already have heard a lot and I think that's because you can't meet everyone's needs so you build this modular component that does one thing very well and then you learn how to extend it and or you give people the ability to extend it and so that's really great for scaling a project I I do really appreciate the clouds coming out all of them with their own managed services because it's hard to operate and understand all of these things it's it takes a lot of depth in knowledge context and just prior experience and so I think that'll just make it a lot easier for people to onboard onto these technologies I was going to ask you I was going to ask so you brought up fug ability we saw you know Netflix on stage was his phenomenal of the culture yeah dynamic I think that the Schumer important conversation you know something we've been talking about silage is a real part of what we're seeing tech being a part of but the the things that popped out at me in the keynote were service mesh and pluggable architecture so I want to get your thoughts for the folks that aren't there is that in the trenches and inside the ropes what is a pluggable architecture and what is a service mesh these days because you got lyft and uber and all these great companies who have built hyper scale and large-scale systems in open source and now our big tech success stories donating these kinds of approaches pluggable architectures and service man talk a minute to explain so pluggable architectures this is why you have one layer of your stuff there's a piece of software that does something does one thing very well but you know every I like to say that every company is a snowflake and that's okay and so you may have some workflow or need that is specific to your company and so we shouldn't limit you to just what we think is the right solution to a problem we should allow you to extend or extend these pieces of software with modular components or just extensible components that that work for you does that make a little more sense yeah I work on helm and we also have a pluggable architecture because we were just getting so many requests from the community and it didn't make sense to put everything in the core code based if we did if we accepted one thing it would really just interrupt somebody else's workflow so that that's helped us a lot in in my personal experience I really like plug water it's actually that means you can go build a really kick butt app yeah nail it down to your specifications but decoupler from a core or avoiding kind the old spaghetti code mindset but kind of creating a model where it can be leveraged yeah plugin we all know plugins are but right so so that someone else could take advantage of it exactly yeah a service mesh that's evolved yeah heard a lot of that what is that yeah it's um so developers this is actually the lift story is really interesting to me so at lyft developers were really uneasy about moving from the monolith to the micro-services architecture just because they didn't early understand the network component and we're like network reliability would not be so reliable would fail and time service meshes have allowed engineers at lyft to understand where their failures happen and in terms like of a network standpoint and so you're basically abstracting with network layer and allowing more transparency into it this is like very useful for when you have lots of Micra services and you want this kind of reliability and stability awesome so one point 9s coming Spence support Windows that's what key and now a congratulations just go to the next level I mean growth talk about the growth because it's fun for us to watch you know kind of a small group core young community less than three years old really to kubernetes kind of had some traction but it really is going to be commoditized and that's not a bad thing so how do you what's your take on this what's the vibe what's that what's the current feeling inside the community right now excited pinching ourselves no I think everybody's in awe everybody is in awe and we're just like we want to make this the best experience possible in terms of an open source experience you know we want to welcome people to the community we want to serve the people's needs and we just we just want to do a good job because this is really fun and I think the people working on these problems are having a lot of fun with with seeing this kind of growth and support it's been great certainly for US president creation president and creation of this whole movement it's been fun to watch a document final question what should people expect this week what is the show going to hopefully do what's your prediction what's your purpose here what should people expect this week and the folks that didn't make it what do they miss okay there are so many things happening it's insane you're going to get a little bit of everything there's lots of different tracks lots of diverse content I think I'm when I go to conferences in my personal experience I really love technical salons those are really great because you can get your hands dirty and you can get questions answered by the people who created the project that's an experience that is is really powerful for me I went to the first open tracing salon and that's where I kind of got my hands dirty with tracing and been siegelman who's doing the keynote today this afternoon was the person who was teaching me how to like do this stuff so yeah it was awesome like some marketing fluff no it's not and it's just like it's it's real experienced very expert like experts you know in the in the space teaching you these things so that that definitely can't be replicated I think the cig sessions will be really cool there's a big focus on not just learning stuff but also collaborating and and just talking about things before they get documented so that's a really good experience here it's an action-packed schedule I tweeted that it feels like I'm you know when Burning Man had like a hundred people announced this big thing I think this is the beginning of a amazing industry people are cool they're helpful they're getting you're getting involved answering questions open-book here yeah at cloud native Punk you've got thanks Michele Farrelly been coming on co-chair senior engineer at Microsoft great to have her on the cube great keynote great color great fun exciting times here at cloud native con I'm John furry the founders look at angle media with too many men my co-hosts more live coverage after the short break

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCube. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat techno music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman here with Justin Warren. This is theCUBE's coverage of VMworld2017. Believe it or not it's our eighth year covering this show. About 23,000 here in attendance and pulls from around the world even though there is a European show. But happen to welcome to the program, a first time guest, to theCUBE, someone I've known for a number of years. So, great to pull you in front of the camera. Dan Frith who is a consultant with Penguin Punk. We had one of my guests this morning said, you know this is the punk rock set so it only makes sense that, you know, you've got the shoes and the hair, and even hit a punk show >> Dan: Yep. >> here in Vegas >> Dan: I did, I did. >> when you first got here. >> Dan: Yep. >> So, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks for having me. >> So, Dan, just for our audience, give us a little bit about your background. You're heavily involved in the VMware community. You're a VIMA leader. >> Dan: Yeah. >> Tell us your background and what you're doing these days. >> Dan: Yeah, sure. Thanks, Stu. I've been working with Virtualization for about 15 year now. Started with Workstation, went to ESX 2. And sort of it all went from there. I thought that was pretty cool stuff. Kept me really busy for a long time. Branched out into further data center technologies. I'm really interested in things that go in racks, and how they can help people do stuff better, faster and smarter. >> Dan: Yeah. >> I tell you, I've been working with VMware for about the same time, 15 years. Had a little bit more hair and less gray, you know, when that started, I loved some of the IBM to TV commericals where it was like, "Where did all the servers go?" Racked it all up and things like that. To watch the evolution and the ebbs and flows in this community >> Dan: Yep. >> has been pretty cool. So, how important is VMware today in your ecosystem? >> Yeah, it's critical to what we do every day. A lot of our customers are very VMware focused. Not just for the high proviso. It's all management automation that we wrap around that stuff. NSX is becoming more and more critical to what we're doing. Got a lot of complicated cloud plays happening locally. NSX is really helping us to get where we need to be where traditionally maybe it was bit of a slower, harder process. We've certainly found stuff like that is really helping us get some good winds on the board. >> Could you unpack that a little bit for us? Definitely coming into the show, I hear a lot about NSX. Lots of customers doing what I taught. Some of the ecosystem at large is like when you really get in there's some complicated pieces. Networking, security, >> Dan: That's right. >> never going to be simple? >> Dan: Right. >> So what are some of the challenges? How do we get over some of them? And what does this really deliver? >> Yeah, I think some of the biggest challenges with networking and security in the enterprise isn't the actual tech anymore it's the way that we apply the processes to that tech, the policies, the frameworks and governments, the risk, compliance assessments, all that sort of stuff. People don't necessarily understand that world inside their business. Having something like NSX come in it gives them the opportunity to reassess what they're actually trying to achieve, what's critical from an application perspective down rather than just thinking about the infrastructure and the tools they're using. It's not just about switches, routers, firewalls anymore. It's about what I'm actually trying to achieve, what really needs to talk to what, and now I can make this happen with this tool that's actually really flexible and agile, and very easy to get up and running. >> But the thing around the security aspect of it in particular, is that it's not the same sort of audience that you would normally be talking to if you're a VMware sort of person. >> Dan: That's right. It's usually handled by someone completely different. Similarly, the networking can be a little bit funny as well because the networking people are all about the hardware, and the switches, and things that plug into it. And this virtual switching idea, when I first heard NSX you're going to teach BGP to virtualization? >> I know, >> and I think that's been very interesting as well. I think we saw the last 10 years the storage and virtualization guys seem to come together reasonably well and start to cooperate on stuff. And we're finally understanding what storage is to VMware guys and vice versa. Whereas the networking stuff is still that dark art where you have to have >> Yeah. >> a certain number of letters after your name to make it work. And the security guys, again, they're a whole different beast, right? They're kind of like the DBA's of the infrastructure world. >> So, how far along in using storage as sort of an analogy. How far down that journey of getting people together and to understand each other on both sides. >> Yeah, so I think its still pretty early days. I know VMware's been very bullish about what NSX can do to transform your infrastructure. But I think there's a lot of conversations that still need to be had at a reasonably high level in organizations to get people understanding exactly what they can do with this stuff, and I think realize the potential of what they can do. Sometimes it's not actually what they need to do now, it's what they need to do three years from now. And I think a lot of businesses just aren't planning ahead that far, right? >> Dan, I'm curious your take on the keynote this morning. Pat got on stage. I thought good energy. I thought it was one of his best keynotes that he's given. >> Dan: Absolutely. >> But for your audience, kind of in your geo, digital transformation, kind of the journey to cloud. How much of that kind of hit home for you? Any critiques that you'd give. >> So, cloud's obviously a hot topic where I'm based. The VMware AWS story is getting more and more interesting. But, again, for Australia still not so much. You've got it in one geo right now. Australia is not going to be enabled for awhile. It took AWS a long time to get a presence down there. >> I think if I heard right, they said within a year by the time we come back to VMWorld next year, which I think is going to be in Vegas unfortunately again, but they said we should be across all the Amazon availability zones. >> Yeah, in which case that could be tremendously interesting. But I've got to crunch a few numbers to make sure this really works because I like the idea. It's a neat idea. It's very good for those legacy enterprises that don't really want to get away from vSphere to Shared who've got the kind of crusty applications that don't really run very well on public cloud. But they're in the middle of their transformation piece, perhaps. They're trying to get cloud-native. This is a nice stepping stone. If VMware can execute on it, makes sense financially. >> So, what are some of the financial price points that you're seeing out there? You know, we've heard over the years, VMware sometimes is everybody's yelling about it, sometimes not as much, cloud is going to be the savior Or wow, it's really expensive- >> Dan: That's right, it sort of varies. I think one of the points this morning they said, "You can have a variable cost model." And a lot of the businesses I deal with they hate that stuff. They need to know every month how much they're going to spend. >> Stu: Yeah, CFO doesn't like uncertainty, right? >> Absolutely not. Yeah, and this kind of stuff can get out of control really quickly. I'm not yet convinced unless you put the right controls, governance, framework, all that stuff on top of it. That's going to be the key thing, I think, for the success of this. >> There's a lot of talk about innovation which involves change and risk. And so, if we're trying to keep things into constrained boxes where we may not understand exactly what it's going to be, then by definition we're reducing as much risk as we can which is kind of- >> What's been fascinating with the customers I work with who are all traditional enterprises, services, those types. They've got CIOs coming in and saying, "Let's go to cloud. Everyone's in the cloud." They've sent it all up there and they go, "Oh my three-tier application actually doesn't work in this cloud. I need to bring it back. We've got those people going through those cycles already locally. Yeah, there's a lot of innovation going on at a high level. But I think some of the homework hasn't been done, to make that successful. And I think that's what people need to focus more on is an application centric, or even a business outcome centric... You know we use 2,000 applications in the enterprise but what do they all do. >> Justin: What are they for? >> What are they for? Are they just there because they've always been there? Or can we carve some of this stuff out? >> Yeah, how do softwares and service and public cloud fit into that discussion. >> Yeah. So, I think they're going to be more and more critical. I think the maturity around some of the softwares and service offerings has been really good. People are loving the offloader risk and the offload our responsibility for SAS. I think some of the problem is around, again, it's compliance, risk, people aren't necessarily backing up their Office365 stuff. They're sort of relying on Microsoft to have things in place. They're potentially not realizing some of the risk they're exposing themselves to. Not that this stuff is dodgy but it's tricky to navigate how you actually protect- >> I was talking to a security person yesterday, and they were like, "Oh, yeah, no if I just use SAS I don't need to worry about the security, right?" And I was like, "No, you need to worry about it even more." >> Dan: Yeah, yeah. >> We've seen plenty of examples of people who have put data into AWS for example, and then their S3 bucket is just open for the world to see. >> Dan: That's right. The simplicity adds a bit more mystery where it probably shouldn't. >> Yeah, doing your homework and understanding the tools that you're about to go and use is important. >> Dan: Yeah, understanding the risks and understanding some of the consequences of your actions. It's not just about reducing the floor tiles on your own premises stuff. It's about understanding what the data is actually doing, where it's going, and what it's going to mean to someone if they get ahold of that data. >> Yeah, but it's not a new situation really. Cloud's been around for over ten years now. A lot of these ideas of IT working with the business because that's what IT is about. It's not exactly a radical concept. >> It's not a massive change in what we're doing. I think some of the problem is we haven't done that very well to begin with. Now, we've just put another infrastructure construct in place and gone, "Oh, well now well work with the business on this." Unfortunately, we still aren't working with the business. You still got pockets of the business doing their own thing. It's poorly understood. IT is a cost center, a pain, a drain on the business, if you will. And it's hard for them to, I think, bridge that gap. We need to focus a bit more on making the gap between what the business is trying to achieve and what IT can do to help them. I don't think the cloud necessarily takes that conversation away. >> Yeah, unfortunately the technologies never going to be a silver bullet but I heard you say that IT still is looked at as a cost center for a lot of your environments. And I hear people maybe they're too optimistic. Not only is IT a cost center, they're working with the business. Maybe IT is driving the business. Sounds like maybe you're not there quite yet. >> So, I don't think that's happening in the big enterprises just yet. The more conservative ones are still struggling, I think, with bridging that gap between IT and business. The ones who can't see the value of what they're doing from an IT perspective, they're always going to struggle with that kind of stuff. >> How about just a general concept of digital transformation. In your area is that something, are people embracing it? I've read a great article actually by one of the networking vendors, and he said, "Look, people might not agree with digital transformation but digital disruption is definitely real." >> Absolutely. >> Stu: What are you seeing? >> If there's a way we can shoehorn a way of doing things differently into traditional business, into traditional IT companies as well, and making them understand that they're not just there to take all their money and not necessarily deliver on all of their promises. And if the business can start understanding that their is some value in IT, then I'm all for digital disruption if that's a mechanism to make that happen. Realistically though, I'm still faced with the same challenges of legacy software being out of support, and hardware that's sweating the asset, taking it a little too far. Those kind of problems are realistically what I'm still seeing every day. >> Kind of like the concept that Pat talked about in the keynote today of cyber hygiene. Just doing the basics >> Dan: That's right. >> Dan: Doing the basics. And I think some people are struggling with those basics because they've never done it or they've sort of forgotten how to do it, or they expect, magically, that their new shiny cloud will do that for them. Or their service provider and that's definitely not the case. >> Justin: Yeah. >> We're still pretty early in the show. But any of the announcements so far, anything jump out at you? Or anything that you've seen yet that you want to highlight? >> I'm excited about the VM in AWS thing. I think it's good to finally see that. The annoucement last year at VMworld US, now it's generally available. Limited but generally available. >> Yeah, it was actually announced like a month after the show last year. One of the things we were a little frustrated that there was a three letter name big company that they made an announcement with which was up on stage talking about security today but not so much their cloud offerings. >> Not so much about that stuff. Yeah, so it's been a weird, I'm not going to say it's a pivot but it's certainly a bit of a twist. >> So, you're also a VMUG leader. What are the pain points that you're hearing from people in the community? What do they look for out of the ecosystem that would make their jobs a whole lot easier? >> I think people are sometimes struggling with the complexity of the ecosystem. It's still fairly broad and diverse. And sometimes people struggle to actually navigate their way through what they need to get done. I think that's what a lot of our VMUG members are struggling with day to day. >> I guess I don't see the vendors in the ecosystem solving that problem. It tends to be the distribution, consultants and the like that will help explain that. Because the problem we have, even if I just take storage or networking, these are really complicated things. And there's not going to be one solution that fits 90% of it. So, that's why I need to understand, you said a customer with 2,000 applications, how do I manage that stack of applications? How do I deal with that? You're a consultant. How do you help people through some of these challenges? >> So, I generally try to start with what's important to people. Like what's really making the business tick? What hurt them the most when it goes down? What costs them money? And some people have a really hard time understanding how much money their burning every time an application falls over. And then we just try to make some links between the infrastructure, the application that keeps that outcome running for them. >> Yeah, one of the things I've been poking at is there's too many things that IT is doing that they suck at. And I'm not trying to poke at them. It's what we call the undifferentiated heavy lifting. Come on, I think we talk to anybody, you're no good at building a data center. Please don't do another one. >> Dan: That's right. >> Somebody else can do it. Now, I'm not saying it all goes to public cloud. Lots of options how you do that. But from the ground up and as we work our way, what drives the business? What creates value for the business? And finding those areas. Roles of the CIO is changing greatly, role of IT. >> Yeah. >> Things are going to look very different in five years than it does today. >> Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I think people don't necessarily appreciate the value of consultants who can help them on their journey. Because it's hard. IT is hard. Enterprise is hard. And putting IT and Enterprise in the same sentence that really makes it very hard. >> Justin: Yeah, very hard. >> You got to be careful. I saw there was one of those sarcastic memes years ago. It was like, "Consultants, if you can't solve the problem at least there's lots of money to be made moving it along." >> Yeah, yeah. And redefining the problem is another fun one. >> Justin: That's always fun. >> Yeah. >> So, Dan people want to learn more about what you're doing. How do they find you? >> So, they can find me at penguinpunk.net. I've got a blog there. It's been running there for about 10 years now. You can find me on the Twitters @penguinpunk. And various other things. Come to a VMUG meeting in Brisbane if you're ever in the area. We'll buy you a beer and treat you nice. >> Stu: Excellent. Love to do that. We have yet to do theCUBE in Australia but it's definitely what we want to do. So, Dan, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thanks, Stu. For Justin and Stu, we'll be back with lots more coverage here from VMworld 2017. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)